This is Episode 30 — a landmark episode.

And today, I’m not telling you a parable. I’m not telling you a story about cats or chairs or Thor or Thanos. I’m going to tell you what happened to me this week.

The week that lasted a hundred years .

And what it taught me about the machine we’re all living inside.

This long, painful, clarifying week...I saw the Thanos Thread playing out not where I expected it, but in the place I once thought was safest.

Welcome to Circa 1945: Breaking the Machine. A podcast of parables about the Holocaust, and what it would take to build a genocide-proof society.

This week, we’re listening for a different kind of signal — not a shout, not a slogan, but a frequency.

Because hatred rarely announces itself.

More often, it hums under the surface — in jokes, in phrases, in the words that sound harmless to some and threatening to others.

Today’s story is about those frequencies — dog whistles — and the people who have learned to hear them.

Check out ⁠this link⁠ to the ADL's most comprehensive database of coded language and symbols.

Image Source: ⁠https://www.maxizoo.ie/magazine/dog/training/dog-whistle-training/⁠

Welcome to Circa 1945: Breaking the Machine. A podcast of parables about the Holocaust, and what it would take to genocide-proof a society.

Every so often I stumble across a line so perfect it stops me cold.

⁠In the documentary "The Rise of the Nazi Party," author and historian Dr. Michael Lynch said:⁠

"Nazism was like a snowball. It flourished in cold, dark times. But you subject it to sunlight, and it will melt. The economy is the sun."

I wanted to hug him. Because in one sentence he captured everything I’ve been trying to explain for twenty-seven episodes: ideology is climate-dependent. When societies grow cold — economically, morally, spiritually — hate rolls downhill and gathers mass.

Today’s episode is about heat. About what it means to keep a society warm enough to stay human.

Welcome to Circa 1945: Breaking the Machine — a podcast of parables about the Holocaust, and what it would take to build a genocide-proof society.

We live in a culture obsessed with true crime. Podcasts. Documentaries. Netflix series. There’s an entire industry devoted to exploring the “criminal mind.”

And you know what? I get it. Especially for women, especially for survivors — many of us have been hurt, or scared, or stalked, and the fascination makes sense. We want to understand predators. We want to make sure it never happens to us again.

But here’s the thing. After a lifetime of being hurt by not one, not two, but many different people, my perspective is very different.

Where others see endless variety, I see only a few basic shapes. Where others are fascinated, I’m… bored.

Let me tell you why.

Image Source: ⁠https://columbian.gwu.edu/fingerprint-analysis-fact-v-fiction⁠

Welcome back to Circa 1945: Breaking the Machine — a podcast of parables about the Holocaust, and what it would take to build a genocide-proof society.

This week’s story begins with a baby. A baby doesn’t change, but the room he is in sure can. Just as we baby-proof our homes, we can genocide-proof our societies — with padded corners like food security, reproductive choice, housing integration, refugee protection, and checks on power.

Image Source: ⁠https://www.dubizzle.com/blog/property/baby-proofing-your-house/⁠

Welcome to Circa 1945: Breaking the Machine — a podcast of parables about the Holocaust, and what it would take to build a genocide-proof society.

This is an episode about vigilance. About living on the tracks when others say you are obsessed. And about how we might find, at the end of our lives, that vigilance was worth everything.

Credit to Viktor E Frankl, who influenced my life more than any other single author. Everyone should listen to his "Man's Search for Meaning" audiobook at least once.

Audiobook: https://youtu.be/M6Ibg1UZVdU?si=_Ur41RYpj7BjWDBO

Image Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-lessons-from-viktor-frankls-book-mans-search-meaning-sean-murray/

Welcome to Circa 1945: Breaking the Machine — a podcast of parables about the Holocaust, and what it would take to build a genocide-proof society.

This week’s story begins with something as ordinary as the shirt on your back. Because the clothes we wear are never just fabric. They are identity. They are ritual. They are power. And sometimes, they are survival.

This is the inspiring event I encountered, the ⁠Fair Fashion Festival.

Image Source: https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/en/blog/2024/12/16/sustainable-fashion-to-fit-each-season

Welcome back to Circa 1945: Breaking the Machine. A podcast of parables about the Holocaust — and what it would take to build a genocide-proof society.

This week, I want to talk about something in the news — but not in the way you’ve heard it elsewhere. The shooting of Charlie Kirk has sparked headlines, outrage, and theater. But this episode isn’t about him as an individual. It’s about the machinery that turns tragedy into spectacle, and grief into a weapon.

⁠Don't let them "Horst-Wessel" Charlie Kirk. ⁠

Image Source: ⁠https://www.life.com/history/a-brutal-pageantry-the-third-reichs-myth-making-machinery-in-color/⁠

Welcome to Circa 1945: Breaking the Machine.

This podcast asks one question: what would it take to genocide-proof a society?

We’ve talked about scarcity, propaganda, obedience, solidarity. But today, I want to talk about something else. Something we don’t usually think of as infrastructure — ritual.

And I want to start with a scene you already know.

Image Source: ⁠https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ce/87/96/ce87969919182f71b830ed5e2ff84fa5.jpg⁠

Welcome to Circa 1945: Breaking the Machine — a podcast of parables about the Holocaust, and what it would take to build a genocide-proof society.

This week, I want to try something unusual. Instead of telling a parable, I want you to close your eyes — unless you’re driving — and imagine something with me.

Imagine a stage. The air is heavy, the floor cold beneath bare feet. In the beginning, the people stand tall, shoulders squared, breath steady. The lights are soft, the music calm. But with each step, the bodies bend, the air tightens, the sound sharpens — until the dance collapses into silence.

Genocide is not sudden. It is not abstract. Genocide is a dance. Ten steps. Ten positions of the human body. Each one more bent, more burdened, more broken than the last. A choreography of cruelty, rehearsed over years, until the final silence falls.

Further Reading:

⁠The Ten Stages of Genocide⁠ framework, enriched by ongoing critique and new perspectives, remains an essential tool in the global effort to ⁠learn from history and prevent its worst chapters from repeating⁠. By understanding both the hearts and the gears that drive genocide, we stand a better chance of recognizing the warning signs in time – and fulfilling the promise of “Never Again.”