Since the World's been Turning

 In this episode, we’re looking at the life of an American legend: a fighter pilot, astronaut, and  politician.  He’s John Glenn, the man who left an indelible impression on 20th century US history. 

We’re joined by special guest, American political and presidential historian Jeff Shesol. Jeff’s the author of Mercury Rising, John Glenn, John Kennedy and the Cold War. 

This time, we return to the United States and the battle for Civil Rights.   This conflict would involve President Kennedy, and his Attorney General brother. It would lead to the mobilisation of several (30,000) troops, the most for a single disturbance in United States history. 

While racism still exists in the United States today, and is in many ways as dangerous as ever, the desegregation of Universities in the American South cannot be taken for granted. Debatably, it all dates back to this historic conflict. So stay with us, as we dive into the frightening, and sobering history of the Ole Miss riots.  

Our guest for the week is special guest, William Doyle. William is the author of  James Meredith - An American Insurrection, along with the co-author of Meredith’s autobiography “A Mission from God”. 

 In this episode, we look at the astonishing rise of The Beatles  – the band once described as “Bigger than Jesus”. 

We’re joined by special guest Dr Kenneth L. Campbell, a history professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey where he teaches a course on Beatles’ history. Dr Campbell is also the author of “The Beatles and the 1960s: Reception, Revolution and Social Change”, and “American Popular Culture and the Beatles”

For the second time this series, or third if you count our episode on Doctor Zhivago, we find ourselves discussing the work of film director David Lean. Famous for his epics that pushed the limits of Hollywood technology and budgets, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ is undoubtedly his most ambitious work,  an epic amongst epics.

Here to talk about the man who works out those specifics, is our guest Steven Caton (Kayton), a professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Steve is the author of the book “Lawrence of Arabia, a film’s Anthropology.”

For the second time this series, or third if you count our episode on Doctor Zhivago, we find ourselves discussing the work of film director David Lean. Famous for his epics that pushed the limits of Hollywood technology and budgets, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ is undoubtedly his most ambitious work,  an epic amongst epics. Taking over a year to shoot, and shot largely on location in the Middle East, it had the second largest budget of any film made at the time, all while starring a borderline unknown. This project was one long-talked about in Hollywood, that had been attempted multiple times in the past few decades with little success. 

 In this episode, we return to Cuba and to the regime of socialist leader Fidel Castro. We’re traveling to the Bay of Pigs, the site of a botched invasion carried out by Cuban exiles, and financed by the US Government. 

Today, it’s remembered as a minor disaster, but it’s one of the most significant early events of the Cold War. 

This time we’re heading to the turbulent city of Berlin. Over its four-hundred-year lifetime, Berlin has been through unparalleled amounts of change. Finding itself at the epicentre of two world wars, and then split in half by the Cold War, history never takes a break in Berlin. 

Here to talk about Berlin  is our guest on this episode, retired British army officer and author Sir Barnabas (Barney) White-Spunner. Barney is the author of Berlin: The Story of a City, and a commander of the British Empire. 

In this episode we take a look at an enigmatic cultural icon and a Nobel Prize-winner, who’s been well-known for six decades – he’s Bob Dylan, one of the world’s most famous singer- songwriters.

 We’re joined by special guest Dennis McDougal, a music journalist based in Memphis, Tennessee, and the author of Dylan: The Biography. 

In this episode, we’re seeing Earth through the eyes of a Martian named Smith, and everything looks a little bit off. Robert A. Heinlein’s seminal science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land was released on the first of June, 1961, and to this day remains an influential and pivotal work in the history of science fiction and American Literature at large. 

Its story, of a human born on Mars coming back and discovering Earth for the first time, is a timeless one. It has rippled through history, making its imprint on everything from religion to the Oxford English Dictionary. But who was Robert Heinlein, the man behind this novel? How did this Democrat-turned-Republican, debatably-pro-war, ex-navy-officer become a legend in the 1960s counterculture?

Were joined by special guest Vice President of the Heinlein Society, Ken Walters

This episode takes us into the 1960s, as we return to the legacy of WWII, and look at a chilly figure who has fascinated historians for decades. 

He’s Adolf Eichmann, the man responsible for the transportation network that took hundreds of thousands of people to the Nazi death camps. In 1960, he’s finally captured in Argentina.  

Here to help us unpack Eichmann is special guest Giacomo Lichtner, a cultural historian of modern Europe and associate professor of history at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.  Giacomo has worked extensively on the portrayals of facism in cinema, and he also lectures about the Holocaust itself.