Swedish History Through Punk

Charles XII: the teenage warrior king who couldn't lose — until he lost everything. Gaz and Degsy tell it, and Degsy's mam Brenda is still here, mothering the memory of a 36-year-old who never came home.

Tonight's history (all true):

• Narva, 1700 — the fifteen-year-old king routs a Russian army of nearly forty thousand with eight thousand men, in a blizzard.
• - Poltava, 1709 — he marches into Russia, Peter the Great burns everything, the army freezes, and the empire is broken in a single day.
• - Five years hiding in the Ottoman Empire, a fortnight's ride home, and then a bullet through the head in a Norwegian trench in 1718, aged 36 — and to this day, nobody knows who fired it.

...with two original punk tracks: "Narva" and "Shot in the Dark".

Contains strong language. An AI-generated production: voices and music made with AI, history fact-checked by hand.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Degsy's mam, Brenda Higginbottom, has somehow reached the Arctic on mother's instinct — and she is NOT impressed. As Gaz and Degsy try to broadcast the story of the Swedish Vikings who went east, Brenda barges in with a fry-up and no respect whatsoever for live radio.

Tonight's history (all true, however loudly interrupted):

• The Varangian Guard — in 988, Emperor Basil II takes six thousand Viking hard-lads as his personal bodyguard.
• - Miklagård — what the Norse called Constantinople, reached by rowing east down the rivers.
• - Halfdan — a bored Varangian who carved his name in runes inside the Hagia Sophia. Still there a thousand years on.
• - Ingvar the Far-Travelled — the great expedition east that never came home, remembered on runestones across Sweden.

...with two original punk tracks: "Miklagård" and "Proper Breakfast".

Contains strong language. An AI-generated production: voices and music made with AI, history fact-checked by hand.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two foul-mouthed British punks, Gaz and Degsy, have broken into a cabin outside Kiruna, cut the fence to a radio mast, and gone on air. In the pilot they blast through the birth of modern Sweden — getting drunker, and louder, as they go.

Tonight's history (all true, however badly told):

• Gustav Vasa — the Stockholm Bloodbath of 1520, the flight to Dalarna, the Mora skiers, and the day in 1523 Sweden told Denmark to do one.
• - Nils Dacke — the 1542–43 Småland uprising against the punk-turned-king.
• - The warship Vasa — the grandest ship in the world, sunk after 1,300 metres in 1628. Too posh to float.

...with three original punk tracks along the way: "Do One (Vasa's Comin')", "Dacke's Army" and "Too Posh to Float".

Contains strong language. An AI-generated production: voices and music made with AI, history fact-checked by hand.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.