Unrelated: decided I should spend my daily bus riding time doing something more productive than looking out the window so I started listening to Hardcore History, going with King of Kings because the other free series available now is about WW1 which I've already read multiple books about lately. The one review I read was mixed:

I'm curious in general though if he picks up steam once he gets on a subject or if it's always so rambly - so far today I've heard a lot about the storytelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, a lot of imagining Clint Eastwood as a Spartan, and a little about a story in the Book of Daniel about the king of Babylon. After 30 minutes of that I arrived at work wondering if I was ever going to actually hear about the Persians. I could see myself enjoying this a lot on long car rides but 30 minutes at a time might be brutal if the tangents are always this frequent.

A standard ploy around these parts, I might add.

I found that one pretty weak, dropped out about a half hour into the second one. The new one on the bomb is pretty good, probably a better way to gauge if you'll like Carlin's schtick, too. The WWI stuff is easily the best he's done, so you might want to reconsider there, also.

Spicy's on.

You guys had better start swotting up on Creationism in time for the mandatory citizenship tests that are probably coming.

Is zero-hedge finally long again? If not watch for a crash right after they reverse course.

If you're not into rambly I don't think you will like the podcast very much. It's been a while since I listened to that episode, but you may have another hour or more before the Persians actually arrive on the scene.

Btw for anyone into the illuminating mundanities of life in previous eras, I cannot recommend this book enough. Just amazing stuff about how people used to live, and how tons of things we take for granted are often very very modern.



https://www.amazon.com/At-Home-Short.../dp/0767919394

+1 on all of this. He did one on the eastern front in WWII that was also good. But it was old so I had to buy it.

Trump wants to cut taxes, eliminate social programs, stop environmental regulation, eliminate Dodd Frank, gut consumer protections. ....

Why shouldn't the stock market go up? The *******s don't care what happens to other people or even what happens to the economy in 5 years.

WWI stuff was indeed awesome, but Wrath of the Khans might have been awesomer.

Suzzer,

Love Bill Bryson but haven't read that book. Will try to fit it in if I find the time, thanks.

I trolled my parents into calling their congress critters and demand a congressional and doj investigation into voter fraud. It could be fun if enough republicans demanded it.

Positively orgasmic recommendations of the Khans series from friends were what finally spurred me to even check out the podcast, but it didn't do much for me.

What's there to know? "Everything is the way it is because God made it that way. The end."

Lesson 1: It's called Creation Science
Lesson 2: Everything is the way it is because God made it that way.
The end.

Don't do King of Kings, it was by far the weakest of the multi-ep series and was super rambling and pointless, yeah. I'd do what I did, which was pirate all of them and then I just donated money on his website once I had established that I was enjoying them. I recommend Punic Nightmares or Ghosts of the Ostfront, Wrath of the Khans is pretty good too. If you want a single ep (which is still like 4.5 hours long, it might be the longest single ep) then Prophets of Doom is good and is still available for free download.

Ghosts of the Ostfront is elite, Prophets of Doom is a good intro to how he rolls.

goofy: you should probably start learning Russian in your spare time.

Ghosts of the Ostfront is my fave of the multi-ep series. Only caveat is the subject matter might be too familiar to people who know a lot about the WW2 Eastern Front.

Also, Prophets of Doom has some interesting parallels imo in how the translation and dissemination of the Bible in German, and Luther's encouragement to people to interpret it for themselves, is a bit similar to what's going on now with old media losing their grip over the reporting and interpretation of news events. With the same absurd and chaotic results in many instances. That's what I was thinking about when I listened to it, anyway.

Just FYI, the people of /r/askHistorians aren't huge fans of Dan Carlin.

Yeah this is annoying. Apparently liberals are starting to fall for legitimately fake news. I've even seen some of the stories on 2+2.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-fake-...004503877.html

Starting to?

There was about 50% as much fake liberal news on FB during the last year as there was fake conservative news. (20% liberal to 40% conservative)

Both numbers were staggeringly hard to swallow imo

I see it on my feed. Multiple friends talked about the fictional "fascism forever' club. Applying the same skeptical eye to information that supports your biases as those that oppose it is very difficult.