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Over the span of a handful of months, the most ancient ruling houses of Europe collapsed under the weight of deprivation and suffering brought about by the Great War. As communist revolutionaries burn Russia to the ground, their comrades preach blood and fire on the streets of Berlin, and while the Allied countries celebrate their noble victory, the starving, exhausted people of the German Reich face a new enemy more terrible than any they faced in the trenches. This is a 100% listener-funded sh...
This episode vividly portrays the brutal conditions faced by German soldiers in WWI, from the unyielding mud and filth of the trenches to the horrific impact of artillery and gas attacks. It also explores the devastating effects of the Allied blockade on the German home front, leading to widespread starvation and a collapse in morale. The narrative culminates in Germany's desperate 1918 offensives, the spread of revolutionary fervor, and the dramatic abdication of the Kaiser, leaving a legacy of betrayal that fueled future conflicts.
Support the podcast by subscribing to the Martyr Made Substack . The Second World War was the greatest catastrophe in human history. Sixty million people dead. Entire nations destroyed. All sides engaged in the wholesale slaughter of enemy civilian populations. And the nuclear demon unleashed upon the world. It was the war in which the United States and our allies conquered the world, and eighty years after Germany's defeat, the story of the war remains our civilization's most important load-bea...
Hi everybody. This is a short Easter message I put together a year or two ago. It's been up on the Martyr Made Substack - which you should all go subscribe to at your earliest convenience - but I thought I'd release it here for everyone. I hope everyone had a blessed week, and that you have a blessed day. Happy Easter.
This episode delves into the astonishing biographical and thematic coincidences between Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky, revealing how their lives, marked by trauma and isolation, led to profoundly different philosophical and personal outcomes. Using René Girard's mimetic theory, the talk highlights Dostoevsky's journey of redemption through confronting self-deception, contrasted with Nietzsche's path to madness and self-destruction, emphasizing the choices each made when faced with life's ultimate challenges.
Hi everybody. This is the audio version of a six-part essay series called Blacks and Jews. I wrote it for my Substack a while back, so if it sounds like I’m reading instead of speaking naturally, it’s because in this case I am. I decided to release this to everyone on the main feed because, in light of the recent uproar and brewing Democratic Party civil war over the Israel-Palestine conflict, it’s suddenly become quite timely. Black and Jewish Americans were uniquely united until the late 1960s...
I’m re-uploading all the podcasts from a new hosting service, so I thought I’d go ahead and put the full Epstein series up while I was at it. This series deals with some very dark material. It is not for listening with kids in the car or where other people can hear it at work. If you appreciate this podcast, please consider helping to support it by subscribing to the MartyrMade Substack for $5 p/month or $50 p/year. The Substack includes subscribers-only essays, and a subscribers-only podcast fe...
This episode will cover the period from 1948 – the year of Israeli independence and the Palestinian Nakba – to the Lebanon War of 1982. It is not meant to be a thorough history of that period, as Fear & Loathing was of the pre-1948 period – to do that justice would require another ten episodes, not just one. This one has a narrower focus. The story we’re gonna hear today is not about every figure, and event, and motivation relevant to the conflict, but is specifically about how the level of ...
The Great Migration of 1915-1960 saw over six million African Americans move from the rural South to the big cities of the North and West. It was one of the largest mass migrations in human history, and one whose consequences defined American domestic politics throughout the 20th century. But it wasn’t the first time the industrial cities of America had experienced massive demographic transformation, and the black migrants would run smack into the immigrants of previous generations. In the 1960s...
In August 1921, 10,000-20,000 armed coal miners marched on Mingo County, West Virginia to lift the martial law imposed there, free their jailed brethren, and avenge the assassination of one of their local heroes. At least 20,000 more wives, young boys and other civilians followed the army providing medical, logistical and other services. Before it was over, they would storm a mountainside under fire from entrenched machine guns, and while being bombed from the air. It was the largest and most se...
This episode serves as a prologue to the "Whose America?" series, delving into the history of American labor wars. It explores the rigid class systems from which America emerged, highlighting the struggles of working men and women against powerful economic forces. The episode sheds light on the exploitation and forced labor endured by early colonists, setting the stage for understanding the subsequent labor movements and conflicts.
Hey everyone. After the recent Thoughts On Ukraine episode, I thought it would be a good idea to bring someone on the show who has a different perspective. Kristaps Andrejsons is a Latvian journalist,
Hey everybody. Many of you have asked for my thoughts on the crisis in Ukraine, so here they are. I re-recorded it because the audio was trash the first time around. Sorry about that. This is the kind of content I usually put on the Substack subscribers-only feed, so if you like this and can spare $5, please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing at martyrmade.substack.com . Here are some links I mention in the show: The Snipers Massacre On Maidan How the West Sowed the Seeds of War in U...
There’s a quote always attributed to Winston Churchill – falsely, I think? – that goes something like, “If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by 30, you have no brain.” I’ve got a different version that I like a lot better, and it goes, “If you’re not reading Nietzsche at 20, you have no heart. But if you haven’t transitioned to Dostoevsky by 30…” In this episode, I look through the lives and work of the two 19th century existentialist authors, who have a...
History is replete with examples of leaders, nations, and empires who left a trail of blood behind them. But with the Bolshevik takeover of Russia after the First World War, something new crawled from the depths of the earth onto the surface of the world. Never before had a government shown such uninhibited savagery toward its own people, during peacetime, as a matter of policy and in the name of scientific management. After Nazi Germany was defeated in the Second World War, Stalin’s Soviet Unio...
This is a short piece I did for Daniele's History on Fire podcast. Many of you may have already heard it, but I thought I'd put it on the main feed just in case. It was a fun break from Jim Jones, and nice to be a little less serious for once. Hope you enjoy. More short episodes like this will be available to subscribers only at the MartyrMade Substack.
Jim Jones and Peoples Temple follow the remnants of the 1970s radical left into the fire. WARNING: Extreme language and disturbing content. Thank you to www.campuspress.com for sponsoring this series. Support the show by subscribing to the MartyrMade Substack. Huge thanks to the folks behind the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown Project. This podcast wouldn't have been possible without their indispensable hard work recording, organizing, and transcribing the Peoples Temple tapes and other ...
This was originally intended to be part of the previous episode, but I decided to break them up. Warning: EXTREME LANGUAGE AND GRAPHIC CONTENT The student movement is dead. The Black Panther Party is torn apart by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Activism devolves into struggle sessions and terrorism, as the movement for civil rights and social justice is left to "drunks, hypes, freaks, and madmen." Treason drives Jim Jones off a cliff. Support the show by subscribing to the MartyrMade Substack. This seri...
This episode begins where the '60s end, when the radicalism of that decade crash headlong into the diminishing expectations of 1970s America. The Weather Underground veers off toward its explosive climax. As the idealism of the student movement is shunted into self-help fads and therapy sessions, what remaining energy of the radical left is drained into increasingly bizarre and violent channels. I broke this episode up into two parts, so it ends a bit abruptly. The second segment will be availab...
This episode discusses the beginning of Peoples' Temple's slide into radicalism after Jim Jones leads his people to California. We also talk about the development of 1960s radical political movements, and Jonestown conspiracy theories. I had to record this episode in a hotel bathroom while on travel for work. The audio quality has some issues at various points. Hopefully, it's not too bad. Support the show by subscribing to the MartyrMade Substack.
In this episode I trace the trajectory of the civil rights movement through the 1960s, and the gradual shift in emphasis and leadership from the stoic southern marchers following Martin Luther King, Jr to the militant Black Power soldiers of the northern ghettos. Support the show by subscribing to the MartyrMade Substack.
This is part 2 of a podcast series on Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple movement. An eccentric loner as a child, Jim Jones finds purpose in the fight for racial and economic justice.
This episode serves as a deep-diving prologue to the 'God's Socialist' series on Jim Jones and Peoples Temple. It weaves together three distinct narratives: the ongoing racial cleansing by Latino gangs in Los Angeles, the historical challenges faced by Black Americans during the Great Migration illustrated by the Cicero riots, and a horrific lynching in Valdosta, Georgia. The host then reflects on personal encounters with homelessness and the broader societal implications of indifference, setting a powerful context for the radicalization and tragic end of the Peoples Temple.
This is part 2 of a series I’ve been working on with Daniele Bolelli. In part 1, he covered the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre carried out by the US Army. I was working on my next major series when Daniele asked me to do a companion episode on My Lai, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. From his description: “Because I felt like I was ordered to do it, and it seemed like that, at the time I felt like I was doing the right thing.” —Private First Class Paul Meadlo explaining his role in the My Lai M...
“Mexica ‘beliefs’ have been discussed confidently enough, but academics being natural theologians, usually at an unnaturally abstract pitch. My interest is not in belief at this formal level, but in sensibility: the emotional, moral, and aesthetic nexus through which thought comes to be expressed in action, and so made public, visible, and accessible to our observation.” -Inga Clenninden | Aztecs: An Interpretation Human sacrifice is not a human universal. The institution emerges at a specific s...
In which I take a break from banging out my human sacrifice episode to check in with my patient listeners. I’m working on a series of companion episodes to go along with Daniele Bolelli’s History on Fire series on the Spanish conquest of Mexico. If you haven’t heard the first episode of his series (available on iTunes and everything else) and the bonus episode he put out (available on his website), you really need to listen to them before you get into what I’m doing here. Cheers, everyone....
The final episode details the evolution of modern Zionism, highlighting internal Jewish political divisions and the distinct visions of leaders like Herzl, Weizmann, and Ben-Gurion. It explores the rise of militant groups like the Irgun and Stern Gang, their terror campaigns against the British and Arabs, and the impact of the Holocaust on Zionist resolve. The narrative culminates in the UN partition vote, the declaration of Israel, and the ensuing war, revealing the strategic expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the enduring cycle of violence, emphasizing the need for mutual recognition.
This episode delves into the escalating tensions in Palestine between 1929 and 1939, tracing the Zionist response to the massacres, the rise of militant figures, and the increasing desperation of European Jews facing Nazi persecution. It also explores the parallel awakening of Palestinian Arab resistance, marked by dispossession, the emergence of populist religious leaders like Izzedine al-Qassam, and the British Empire's brutal counterinsurgency tactics. The narrative highlights the profound and often violent clash of nationalisms and the tragic implications of external powers' policies.
