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"Herod the king, in his raging, charged he hath this day: his men of might, in his own sight, all young children to slay." So goes the Coventry Carol, a traditional English Christmas song commemorating the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem. According to the Christian Gospel of Matthew, the jealous ruler of Judea so feared the arrival of the messiah that he ordered this slaughter of his own infant subjects. Herod's name rings through the ages with tyranny and evil. But who was Herod the Great?

This episode of Gladio Free Europe explorers the life and afterlife of Jewish history's most consequential monarch. Liam and Russian Sam situate King Herod in his historical context, as a pious Jewish monarch and a Hellenistic warrior-king. Born into an ambitious family descended from the conquered backwater of Edom, nobody expected Herod would ever assume control of the Hasmonean Kingdom of Judea. But as the Mediterranean world collapsed into a century of bloody turmoil, Herod used dynastic conflicts in both Jerusalem and in Rome to propel himself to the greatest heights of power. After he was suddenly named King of the Jews by the Roman Senate, Herod had to contend with ruling the most fractious kingdom in the Near East, and the most defiant corner of the vast Roman Empire.

Though his ancestors were converts to Judaism, brought into the Israelite fold at the point of a sword, Herod reigned as a pious Jew. Even scholars who doubted his commitment to the faith acclaimed his act of rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, the center of all Jewish ritual. Though a Roman puppet who never attempted to liberate his subjects from foreign domination, Herod brought enormous prosperity and glory to his kingdom. The land that he once ruled is still marked by great works, built in Hellenistic fashion both to honor his God and to honor his own glory.

Despite his great successes, Herod was cruel, vindictive, and unceasingly murderous. Although his role in folklore derives from fiction and rumor rather than actual acts, his reputation for cruelty is well-deserved. Deeply paranoid and acutely aware of his own vulnerabilities, Herod dispatched every threat to his reign with unflinching violence. Even his own wives and children could not escape this violence. After his death, Herod would be immortalized not for his contributions to his kingdom and his faith, but instead for his wickedness. This episode will touch on the origins of Hanukkah and of Christmas to understand the career of one of the most fascinating and terrifying figures of the ancient world.

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At the dawn of the Middle Ages, small numbers of Jewish families ventured across the frozen Alps, seeking a new life in a foreign land they called Ashkenaz. In their workshops, at the market, and around the shabbat table, these people created a new language in secret: one that joined together the Hebrew writing system of ancient Palestine with the Germanic vocabulary of their Christian neighbors. Despite its obscure and polygenic medieval origins, this neighborhood speech would grow to become a fundamental element of Jewish history and identity and a true world language: Yiddish.

This episode of Gladio Free Europe explores the origins and development of Yiddish with the help of Wilf, esteemed circumpolar Yiddish scholar and longtime friend of the pod. Wilf guides Liam and Russian Sam through the complexities of the language's development and grammar. The many influences on Yiddish, from its Semitic alphabet to its Slavic grammatical structures and its unexpected Romance loans, tell the story of the Ashkenazi Jewish people. So too does the resilience and growth of Yiddish in spite of centuries of hostility and, in the 20th century, near-total annihilation. 

Putting Yiddish in the context of the rise of rabbinical Judaism and the expansion of the diaspora, we see how this Germanic vernacular developed alongside the liturgical language of Hebrew. While widespread bilingualism meant Yiddish and Hebrew would influence each other throughout their history, the two languages were often perceived in conflict. Yiddish would be demeaned and degraded throughout its history, both by vicious bigots who hated its Jewishness and pious scholars who thought it not Jewish enough. Yet despite centuries of hardship, the language would blossom across the medieval period into a literary language along the lines of French and Italian. Medieval Jewish writers eagerly took part in the broader European tradition of chivalric romance. Yiddish adventure stories about Jewish knights, Jewish princesses, even a Jewish King Arthur were widely read and have some lingering influence on Jewish folklore to this day. As Yiddish spread eastward, out of the German lands and into the kingdoms of the Slavs and Hungarians, the language of the Ashkenazi Jews ceased to be a medium of communication with Christians, but instead an ethnolect that could only be understood by Jews. The unique situation of Eastern European Jews, more numerous and more culturally distinctive than their Western European neighbors, would be fundamental to the later development of Yiddish.

Listen to the newest episode of Gladio Free Europe to understand what makes Yiddish, the heymish mother tongue of the Jewish hearth, unique among the languages and such a treasured aspect of the Jewish experience. Borek-habo!

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From 1880 to 1930, life on Earth was reshaped in ways previously inconceivable. Nowhere was this transformation more total than in Florida. In a single generation, a peninsula hardly charted since the days of Ponce de Leon was molded into a testing ground for new modes of living and capital accumulation. This episode of Gladio Free Europe drains the marshy mysteries of time to understand how Florida, once the most foreign of all the contiguous territories, became perhaps the most fundamentally American state of all.

Jackson (@GraceCathedralPark) returns to the show for a deep exploration of modern Florida history, running from the noble failures of Reconstruction up through the reassertion of Confederate control and the establishment of a new society, a unique and twisted marriage of northern venality with southern barbarity. Gilded Age robber-barons like Henry Flagler took to the waters for pleasure and for profit, turning the remote Sunshine State into a secret garden for the idle rich. Railroads soon connected Florida to the American mainland north and south, bringing both well-heeled investors and threadbare farmers down the peninsula. Poor whites in particular saw Florida as a beacon of the New South, where a man could make his fortune in land sales or the orange boom. But these newcomers had little interest in sharing their wealth with the African American residents of Florida, some of whose ancestors had been working the swampy soil since the Spanish era.

Florida after Reconstruction experienced some of the worst racial terror anywhere in the United States, with an exceptionally high rate of lynchings and episodes of mass violence at Ocoee and Rosewood, where white mobs ransacked black neighborhoods and murdered dozens upon dozens. Then the swamps, once a refuge for escaped slaves and Seminole Indians, were drained out to the sea, paved over to make room for America's newest feat of social engineering: the suburb.

By the Roaring '20s, Florida's economy primarily revolved around real estate and tourism. Middle-class Americans flocked to the new neighborhoods that sprawled across the ruined wetlands, many of which were designed for cars rather than people, and most of which were racially segregated. Meanwhile significant numbers of Cuban immigarnts migrated to the Gulf port of Tampa, turning a small fishing town into a cigar city that rivaled Havana.

Transformations along these lines happened across the United States, particularly in other Sun Belt regions such as Arizona and Southern California. But nowhere else were these changes so extreme, so rapid, and so destructive... not only to the natural landscape upon which these plains were laid, but on the residents pushed aside to built this petty-bourgeois fantasy. The state has been a theme park since decades before the Mouse spread his ears. In many ways, Florida is its own kind of twisted intentional community, and perhaps America's most successful utopian experiment.

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Since the first European settlers took unsteady steps on its alien shores, America has been haunted by the Devil. Fears of Satan and his human confederates have long since lurked in our psyche, and played an overlooked role in the cultural and political development of the United States. In this week's episode of Gladio Free Europe, Liam and Russian Sam descend into the blackest reaches of American and European folklore to see how our forbearers understood the unspeakable.

This episode explores the development of satanic conceptions and imagery in American life, beginning with the emergence of the demonic beings in ancient Jewish cosmology through the spread of Christianity and the settlement of the New World. Medieval and Early Modern Europeans saw Satan everywhere, guiding the hands of sinners and unbelievers to tempt mankind and doom souls to Hell. The devil was understood to be the real ruler of this sinful earth, as proven by the encirclement of Christendom by kingdoms of heretics and heathens. European explorers in America, Africa, and Asia believed the religions they encountered were expressions of Satanism, and used this belief to justify colonial institutions of violence and subjugation. Even within Christian lands, Satan held sway through the power of his followers, the secret legions of witches.

This diabolical worldview had real implications on early American society, most notoriously in the New England Witch Trials in which hundreds of Puritans were accused of being willing agents of Satan. Though belief in witches faded across the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans still understood the Devil to be clawing at their back. In all of these periods, it was also understood that Old Scratch could be defeated at his own games. This motif is exceptionally common in American folk tales and especially folk songs, even making its way into William Dieterle's iconic 1941 film THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER.

Though most Americans no longer believe in the devil in a literal monstrous sense, more metaphysical attitudes toward Satan survive. We continue to understand evil in terms of external corruption, as a deviation from our humanity rather than the result of our lowest impulses. And across the 20th and 21st centuries, periods of distrust and paranoia have allowed true belief Satan and his witches to re-emerge in our discourse. Despite how modern and rational contemporary Americans imagine ourselves to be, the Devil has us in his clutches.

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American troops descend into a humid jungle, sniped at from the trees from an invisible enemy. Unable to discern insurgents from civilians, the army begins burning villages and destroying entire communities. After years of failures on the battlefield, and extreme criticism of the war at home and abroad, American troops withdraw battered and beaten, leaving piles of native corpses in their wake. Sound familiar? This is the Second Seminole War, one of the largest conflicts fought on American soil and the bloodiest war waged against Native Americans.

This episode of Gladio Free Europe continues our discussion on the conquest and settlement of the Sunshine State, with a focus on the violent but ultimately unsuccessful subjugation of the Seminole Nation. Though little-discussed in modern times, this brutal and genocidal struggle made Florida what it is today. The violent removal of thousands of Seminoles from Florida to Oklahoma would open up the peninsula to white settlement and the expansion of plantation slavery. By the outbreak of the Civil War, Florida would be an essential piece of the Southern economy. The circumstances of Seminole defeat, including the betrayal of Chief Osceola, would be a black stain the reputation of American military, President Andrew Jackson, and the United States at large. And while most Seminoles were deported, Seminole resistance would continue for the next century. Some reseilient Seminoles, led by people such as Billy Bowlegs, would stand their ground in the South Florida swamps until the present day. In Oklahoma, Seminoles like the black warrior John Horse would continue their struggle against colonization and and empire.

Parallel to conflicts with the Seminoles, Florida history would be shaped by many enterprising eccentrics who sought to tame this wild country as they saw fit. Liam, Russian Sam, and Jackson discuss the careers of figures like Jean Lafitte, the New Orleans pirate who had a brief thassalocracy across the Gulf of Mexico, and Zepheniah Kingsley, a bizarre and contradictory Quaker planter who proclaimed the evils of racism while holding dozens of black slaves in bondage, and apparently styled himself not as a white planter but instead as a polygamist African chief. Listen to this latest episode of Gladio Free Europe to understand just why Florida is America's strangest state.

Please forgive the audio glitches in this episode! Ending track is "Seminole," recorded by the Esso Steel Band of Bermuda in 1959.

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Over five centuries ago, fabled conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon became the first European to place his espadrille on North American soil... yet it would take three more of those centuries the steamy, sunny peninsula he claimed would be host to any permanent European society. Florida was thus the first American state to be explored, yet the last to be settled. Colonial Florida presents a compelling question: what goes on here? The answer involves fisher-kings and filibusters, pirates and planters, Muscogees and Maroons, and many, many eccentric Florida Men.

Liam and Russian Sam are joined once again by Jackson (@GraceCthdralPrk) for the first in a series on the Sunshine State — probably the most peripheral of the Lower 48, yet fundamental to American history, from the unsteady beginnings of colonialism to the ravages of Andrew Jackson and eventually the 20th-century triumph of air conditioning, swamp-draining and beachfront real estate. This episode of Gladio Free Europe examines Florida in its long early days as a permanent borderland, a place contested by shifting configurations of European authority who never had more than nominal control over its swampy ground. This unique situation allowed Native American states to have longstanding levels of autonomy, from the Calusa kingdoms of the 16th century to the multiethnic Creek and Seminole confederations of the 19th. Although Florida would experience major political and demographic changes from 1513 to 1821, it would remain the eternal frontier. From Ponce de Leon through Andrew Jackson, no conquistador could fully quash Native resistance, and all colonizers had to afford legal rights and human dignity to the large numbers of free people of color residing in Florida. Though Europeans quickly found there was no fountain of youth and no cities of gold, rumors of exotic riches and fruitful soil continued to inspire generations of swindlers and swashbucklers.

Join Gladio Free Europe to see how all of these factors contribute to the myth-making of the Sunshine State, the most desired and most disreputable appendage to America.

Ending music is Harden Stuckey's "The River St. Johns" as performed by Jake Xerxes Fussell. The diva in the episode art is the Key Marco Cat, a timeless icon of Calusa craftsmanship.

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The Pacific Ocean is not all that separates the 50th state from the American mainland. The Hawaiian islands remain a place apart, with a distinct culture and national identity borne out of the cyclone of colonial exploitation. Liam and Russian Sam are joined by Miguel (@whitejsakai) for Gladio Free Europe's first exploration of the history of Hawai'i, beginning with a look at the award-winning 2020 documentary CANE FIRE.

Taking its name from the first Hollywood production shot on the island of Kauai, filmmaker Anthony Banua-Simon uncovers chains of exploitation that link the plantation economy of Hawai'i's past to the real estate and hospitality industries of the present. Accounts of violent labor wars in pre-statehood Hawaii are interwoven with contemporary vinettes of the everyday struggles of Hawaiian workers, and exoticized images used to sell Hawai'i from the 19th century to the present. While Hawai'i represents a tropical idyll for travelers across the globe, soaring costs of living rampant housing speculation have forced thousands of residents, particularly Native Hawaiians, to flee to the mainland.

A general history of Hawaiian colonization starts at 28:24, from the ill-advised decisions of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the illegal imposition of Haole (white American) rule more than a century later. In between, Hawaiian monarchs and ali'i aristocrats established a unified nation that was the first non-European polity to be internationally recognized a legal peer by colonial contemporaries and the first country on earth to achieve universal literacy. 19th century Hawaiians had a vibrant press in their native language and made important diplomatic connections with neighboring Polynesian nations also groaning under the colonial threat. While many of these transformations were related to the growing influence of New England missionaries and other Haoles over the islands, Native Hawaiians like the missionary Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia and the "merrie monarch" King Kalākaua were the primary actors in making contact with the world beyond the waves.

Like that of all nations, the identity of Hawai'i was carefully constructed by its aristocrats and industrialists during the development of a capitalist economy. Because while so many aspects of pre-colonial religion and culture were suppressed by missionaries and their aristocratic ali'i patrons, that which could be marketed to outsiders was preserved and promoted. Native Hawaiian leaders like Kalākaua and his sister Liliʻuokalani traveled the world to present an image of the Hawaiians as a dignified and civilized people. This was not enough to preserve Hawaiian sovereignty, but it established a romantic image of the islands that has enchanted outsiders for well over a century. Despite the violent overthrow of the islands' last queen, and the systematic disenfranchisement and ongoing of Native Hawaiians, Hawaiian culture, or at least a specific image of it, has found admirers as disparate as Elvis Presley and Chinese Premiere Jiang Zemin.

Please see below for a link to a clip of the 2025 Merrie Monarch Festival celebrating traditional Hawaiian ritual hula dance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6qOY7kze7I

Episode Art is the Portrait of Kamehameha III by Robert Dampier (1825).

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You read that right. 1800 years ago, a Roman youngster etched a taunting cartoon of a classmate raising his hand to salute a figure on a cross. This graffito, labeled "Alexamenos worshipping his god," is remarkable for two reasons: it is the oldest known artistic depiction of Jesus, and it happens to depict the Christian Messiah as a man with the head of a donkey.

This artistic choice might seem perplexing, but actually reflects an ancient pagan stereotype. In this Gladio Free Europe solo episode, Liam explores a three-thousand-year-old allegation: that Yahweh, the all-powerful God of Israel, was actually an ignoble ass. 

Despite being outright false, the idea that Judaism and Christianity had something to do with the worship of donkeys was a strong conviction of many ancient writers, even capable scholars like Tacitus and Posidonius. In fact, this myth goes back incredibly far into ancient history, with roots in Egyptian mythology and the cultural memory of the Hyksos, a Bronze Age dynasty of Levantine origin who appear to have actually included onolatry into their practice.

The story of ass worship, as an allegation and a practice, is as nearly as old as the history of civilization, with unexpected connections to Greek mythology, gnosticism, and the beginnings of Mesopotamian Kingship. Listen to this episode of Gladio to see why maybe the dutiful donkey really does deserve some veneration after all!

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At the dawning of the modern era, Spain was the most Catholic country on the planet. Desite the turbulence of the Reconquista, the conquest of America, the invasion of Napoleon, and the loss of every New World colony from California to Cuba, the Roman Catholic Church remained the foundation of solid yet stultifying social order. As the people of the kingdom began to struggle against these ancient bonds, the unspeakable question was posed: could there be a Spain without the church? For generations of Spaniards, this matter was so grave that it was worth the blood of innocents, the destruction of priceless chapels and relics, and a civil war that would split Iberia, and the world, into the camps of secular Republicanism and merciless Nationalism.

Longtime collaborator and Catholic correspondent James @gommunisd returns to Gladio Free Europe to explore the spiritual front of the Spanish Civil War, a complex and poignant conflict that in many ways prefigured the flames of despair that would consume nearly the entire planet in World War II. We begin with a look at the long history of anticlericalism in the Spanish Kingdom, as generations of Spaniards of all social classes rejected control of the church for various reasons and by various means. From the establishment of public schools rather than parish schools, to the violent destruction of monasteries and even killings of clergy, this had been a major part of Spanish history for a century before the Civil War. But as economic and intellectual transformations brought a semi-medieval Spanish society into the modern era, objections to this marriage of church and state became too loud to ignore. After the ruination of the Spanish American War and the despair of the Depression, the contest between a new Spain and an Old Spain boiled over an armed conflict that ended with over 200,000 innocents dead and the kingdom in the clutches of history's most successful fascist state.

In the second half of the episode, James explores international religious reactions to the war in Spain. Although American Catholics were mostly Democrats within Franklin Roosevelt's progressive New Deal coalition, church institutions overwhelmingly supported the nationalist clique despite the US policy of neutrality. As evidence of right-wing atrocities mounted, the American Catholic community found itself torn apart in its own sort of civil war. Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, Catholics and Protestants alike took part in delegations to Spain, gathering vital information about the conflict as it was happening. The Spanish Civil War was a test of integrity to civil and religious institutions across the western world: When atrocities are committed in your name, do you speak up? Or do you shut your eyes as children are killed in the name of God and country?

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In the winter of 1817, a caravan of half-starved Swabians crossed through miles of frozen forests to find their promised land: Ohio. In accordance with their egalitarian ethos and inspired by apocalyptic prophecy, these men and women rejected private ownership and held all things in common. This radical commune, which they called Zoar, would be the most successful intentional community in American history and one of the most enduring socialist experiments, lasting several years longer than even the Soviet Union.

Gladio Free Europe's Ohio correspondent Jern (@realJernfer) returns for another stirring story of the Buckeye state. Founded by Pietist refugees from the German state of Wurttemberg, Zoar put into practice the same kinds of radical ideas discussed previously among the Anabaptists, Quakers, and Shakers. Unlike most other communes, including Robert Owen's enlightenment dream of New Harmony, Zoar was stable and prosperous. Succeeding where so many others failed, the commune held together across multiple generations and even developed an early industrial economy. It attracted the envy and admiration of many other communities, including the controversial free-love society of Oneida.

Zoar saw itself as a refugee from the sinful and venal world outside, taking its name from the town that sheltered the Biblical Lot after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet the community's influence over Ohio trade and finance meant the outside world could not be kept away. Ultimately, Zoar would be a victim of its own success, as its wealthy residents decided to dissolve the commune and divvy up their belongings into private hands.

Despite ultimately failing in its mission to secede from the world of material things, Zoar is an inspiring story of what it looks like to build the New Moral World. And although its founders were sectarian socialists from the Holy Roman Empire, who spoke little English and had even less interest in the broader national project, the undaunted ambition of Zoar makes this small commune a quintessential chapter of American history.