With Zero Hour dealt with, we’re looking at how the Western Allies laid the foundations for the democratization of Western Germany. From the foundation of parties to the Marshall Plan, the Allies were not exactly on the same page.

In a crossover with Javi Marcos, you’re getting an episode in which he interviews me.

Jim and I started a new subseries in our ongoing coverage of German history. This time, we will cover the divided Germany after World War II up until reunification. In our first installment, we set the scene in 1945, directly after the war. How did Germany look, and how was its outlook? And what is the myth of Zero Hour?

With board game designer Bryan Kromrey, I talk about the adaptation of the famous RTS “Company of Heroes”, how the modern Kickstarter economy works and how his process for a second edition went.

Origin stories are a Hollywood trope. Oftentimes, they’re rote and uninteresting, but if done right, they can recontextualize and enrich characters you never thought would rise above mid-level anti-hero-badassery. Case in point: the Hound, who gives the speech of a lifetime to Sansa in “A Game of Thrones”.

Finally, we’re in the home stretch. From the peace of Brest-Litovsk to the Kaiserschlacht offensive to the breakdown of the Central Powers and the winding down of the war in the fall, we’re doing the whole picture.

In the next installment of our ongoing series, we talk about Bran’s Dream from AGOT, Bran III. It’s a testament to Martin’s abilities as a gardener as well as to our ability to constantly reinterpret the source text.

We continue into the year 1917! This time, our focus is not on

We’re continuing the story of World War I with the year 1916. The battles of Verdun and the Somme are the most famous, and we’re giving them the space they deserve, but the Romanian campaign, the Brusilov offensive and the Battle of Jutland also get their share. To top it off, we delve into the politics of the year, which may surprise you in how consequential they were.

It was only a question of time until we hit one of the most profound and meaningful pieces of text in the whole ASOIAF corpus, but we did it! Sean and I talk Septon Meribald’s “broken men” speech. Follow us along hitting you over the head with deep in-text-analysis.