Age of Confusion - Pod.casts

Episode 20: Reagan vs. Kennedy

December 11, 2021 20:43 - 22 minutes - 36.8 MB

Episode 20 (Season 2, Episode 10): Click to Play! After all the political infighting, the 1972 Presidential race finally comes down to the clash of the titans: Ronald Reagan on the Republican side vs. Robert F. Kennedy on the Democratic side. The main issues are peace, rapport with the Soviets, and an end to the Cold War. But with the political winds constantly shifting and the X factor of anti-busing racist Governor George Wallace in the mix (yet again), nothing can be counted on. The fat...

Episode 19: Come to Jesus

November 21, 2021 19:28 - 28 minutes - 49.6 MB

As the 1972 primary season heats up, California Governor Ronald Reagan has his sights set on the White House, but he has to slay numerous dragons before he gets there: Richard Nixon, George Wallace and the sitting President of the United States, George Romney, not to mention the Democratic heir-apparent, Robert Kennedy. Will Nixon run? How will Wallace, running an insurgent racist campaign from the sidelines, affect the race? Who is bugging who, and why? Will the explosive matter of busing i...

Episode 18: The Atlanta Doctor

November 07, 2021 19:37 - 24 minutes - 40.8 MB

Lawrence McEnery, an emergency room doctor from Atlanta and passionate advocate for the ferociously anti-Communist John Birch Society, begins his career and life trajectory with an air crash in 1956, a political awakening in the early 1960s and eventually nascent aspirations for public office. A chance meeting with Ronald Reagan in an L.A. hotel room launches his political career. McEnery's anti-Communist fervor and his unlikely involvement with the rock band Refraction (discussed in Episode...

Episode 17: Summit

October 24, 2021 19:36 - 22 minutes - 26.1 MB

In the aftermath of the nuclear war scare, President George Romney decides his highest calling--and his key to reelection in 1972--is to make peace with the Russians and end the Cold War. But will Soviet leader Shelepin play ball? As the clock ticks down to major political shenanigans at home, and both Senators Ronald Reagan and Robert Kennedy position themselves for the game, Romney throws the dice on a high-stakes summit in Oslo with Shelepin to discuss a comprehensive peace treaty. It cou...

Episode 16: War Scare

October 10, 2021 19:45 - 22 minutes - 26 MB

Soviet leader Alexander Shelepin backs a bold move by Warsaw Pact forces to take over East Berlin as a final solution to the Communist bloc's long-simmering dispute with the West over the city. The move takes U.S. President George Romney by surprise, but immediately sets up the tensest moment of the entire Cold War. The world goes to the brink of nuclear annihilation, even closer than the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of humanity awaits a single decision, made by one man in a small chapel in the...

Bonus Episode: Mid-Season 2 Recap and Explainer

October 03, 2021 18:49 - 12 minutes - 14.8 MB

In this bonus episode, we'll do a brief recap of Episodes 11 through 15 (the first half of Season 2) as well as some thoughts on the real history that it's based on. The purpose of this episode is to bring listeners up to speed on the storyline, if they did not start with Episode 1, and also put the story in the context of actual history. These bonus episodes will come out twice a season: once at mid-season, and again in the gap between seasons. Length: 12:24 Next Episode: October 10, ...

Episode 15: China Bleeds Red

September 26, 2021 18:46 - 18 minutes - 21.4 MB

We turn for the first time to events in the People's Republic of China. Mao Zedong, the aging revolutionary and leader of the PRC, launches a last-ditch effort to ensure his continued relevance in a fractious governing party: the Cultural Revolution. Millions of people, mostly young, fan out through the cities and countryside enforcing the tenets of "Mao Zedong Thought," while other Communist leaders, like Lin Biao and Zhou Enlai, try their best to rein in the chaos from behind the scenes wi...

Episode 14: The New Purges

September 12, 2021 18:57 - 21 minutes - 24 MB

This episode shines a light on what's happening behind the Iron Curtain from the years 1964 to 1970, shortly after new Soviet leader Alexander Shelepin takes power in the USSR after deposing Khrushchev (episode 5). While at first it looks as if Shelepin, neo-Stalinist though he is, will not be as repressive or heavy-handed as his idol, an early spate of high-level executions of former Soviet leaders indicates otherwise. This proves to be only the beginning of an entirely new set of purges in...

Episode 13: Age of Aquarius

August 29, 2021 19:40 - 22 minutes - 25 MB

The culture and fabric of American life is changing rapidly in the late 1960s. A rock band called Refraction becomes bigger than the Beatles, and helps launch a popular movie, based on a classic of Beat literature, that becomes a cultural sensation. A host of new religious movements begin to challenge the orthodoxy of conservative American religious life; one of them, Scientology, benefits from the involvement of one of the highest-profile celebrities in the world. Meanwhile the Soviets beat...

Episode 12: Blood in the Sand

August 15, 2021 20:15 - 23 minutes - 26.8 MB

In 1969, as Arab states decline in prestige--and start to run out of water--a conflict brews between Israel and its deadliest enemy, the Egypt of Pan-Arabist General Nasser. When the water dispute explodes into a full-scale war, Soviet leader Alexander Shelepin uses the crisis to make his first major test of new U.S. President George Romney. What results is not merely a hot war in the Sinai desert, but a tense confrontation between the Cold War superpowers that threatens to trigger nuclear w...

Episode 11: Minority President

August 01, 2021 19:25 - 21 minutes - 24.6 MB

The new U.S. President George Romney, elected by a razor-thin margin in 1968, takes office in early 1969 amidst a welter of problems. The economy is tanking, his own party hates him, and the Soviets won't talk about anything. Romney struggles to find his footing as President in the midst of these challenges, but his own legislative priorities and political missteps begin to suggest he's in over his head. Will he get on track, or will the country continue to decline? Length: 21:36 Show N...

Bonus Episode: Post-Season 1 Recap and Explainer

July 19, 2021 19:07 - 16 minutes - 18.5 MB

In this bonus episode, I'll recap the story from Episodes 6 through 10, and also say a few words on the real history that is the basis of the story. The purpose of this episode is to bring listeners up to speed on the storyline, if they did not start with Episode 1, and also put the story in the context of actual history. These bonus episodes will come out twice a season: once at mid-season (between episodes 5 and 6), and again in the gap between seasons. Length: 16:01 Next Episode: Au...

Episode 10: 1968

June 20, 2021 20:07 - 26 minutes - 29.9 MB

With Vietnam over but many conditions worsening in America, the Presidential election season of 1968 gets off to an uneasy start. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson thinks he's got the Democratic nomination--and possibly the election--sewn up as a messy fight develops on the Republican side between moderates and conservatives. But the real X factor is the resentful politics of racist segregationists, now leaving the Democratic Party in droves over their concessions to civil rights. As the vari...

Episode 9: Sunset in Saigon

June 06, 2021 20:11 - 21 minutes - 24.8 MB

Coming to the end of his term, President John F. Kennedy finally moves to bring an end to American involvement in the now-unpopular war in Vietnam. Even as negotiations with the North Vietnamese lead nowhere and the U.S. military begins harboring resentment about JFK's handling of the conflict, Kennedy, with an eye toward securing his historical legacy, and battered by the doctors' scandal, begins troop withdrawals. But to secure his legacy politically and to help his likely successor Lyndon...

Episode 8: Doctors Scandal

May 23, 2021 19:24 - 22 minutes - 25.5 MB

Though carefully hidden for years with the willing complicity of the press, the seriousness of President John F. Kennedy's health problems becomes a serious public issue at about the same time as the concerted push to pass the Comprehensive Civil Rights Act gets going. Questions about cover-ups and wrongdoing in concealing JFK's potentially debilitating health conditions begin to damage his credibility and trustworthiness with the public. In the meantime, disastrous Congressional elections i...

Episode 7: Two Summers

May 09, 2021 18:07 - 27 minutes - 30.8 MB

Outbreaks of racial violence in the summer of 1965 force a further evolution of the civil rights movement as the African-American liberation struggle reaches a crucial phase. President Kennedy, realizing that civil rights must be his legacy, increasingly begins to view the ongoing war in Vietnam as a distraction he can no longer afford--but ending the conflict proves more difficult than anyone anticipated. In the summer of 1966, Kennedy suffers a terrible personal tragedy that crystallizes h...

Episode 6: Decision on Vietnam

April 25, 2021 17:32 - 25 minutes - 28.9 MB

President John F. Kennedy, re-elected with a narrower margin of victory than he expected in 1964, has spent most of the last year deferring the big decision on policy in Southeast Asia: commit U.S. forces directly, which seems to be the only way to prevent a Communist takeover of South Vietnam, or give up and go home. In spring 1965 he finally makes a decision. As American combat boots start to touch the soil of Vietnam, Kennedy finds himself boxed in by further difficulties on civil rights ...

Bonus Episode: Mid-Season 1 Recap and Explainer

April 18, 2021 19:25 - 13 minutes - 15.4 MB

In this bonus episode, we provide a brief recap of the story from Episodes 1 through 5, as well as some commentary on the real history it departs from and is based on. The purpose of this episode is to bring listeners up to speed on the storyline, if they did not start with Episode 1, and also put the story in the context of actual history. These bonus episodes will come out twice a season: once at mid-season (between episodes 5 and 6), and again in the gap between seasons. Length: 13:29...

Episode 5: Stilettos in Moscow

April 11, 2021 18:51 - 26 minutes - 24.9 MB

In this episode, the focus shifts to Moscow and a look at changes in the Communist world. Nikita Khrushchev, reviled in the Soviet Communist Party for buckling under to Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, is blissfully unaware of the threat to his power bubbling up in the ranks of the Party leadership. A coup is clearly afoot, but the competition for which bureaucratic apparatchik will replace him—Brezhnev, Suslov, Malenkov of somebody else—becomes unexpectedly fierce. Waiting in the shadow...

Episode 4: The 1964 Election

March 28, 2021 17:36 - 21 minutes - 20.8 MB

As Kennedy’s re-election campaign gets going in earnest, three main challengers on the Republican side duel each other, with varying degrees of commitment, for the nomination to oppose him. Each of them—Rockefeller, Goldwater and Lodge—is hobbled by a different problem that makes them unattractive to a crucial segment of the Republican party they need to win. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s serious health issues begin to impinge on the campaign, and civil rights leaders, disillusioned by his lack of le...

Episode 3: A Distant Corner of Asia

March 14, 2021 19:11 - 19 minutes - 18.6 MB

As the 1964 election season begins to heat up, the Kennedy administration’s “limited” involvement in propping up the repressive government of Vietnam becomes increasingly unglued, undermined by coups within the Vietnamese military and pressure by North Vietnam and its Communist allies, Russia and China. Kennedy dithers on a decision to begin involving American forces directly, but finally acts in response to domestic political concerns. Whether his actions will backfire very much remains to ...

Episode 2: Civil Rights Stalemate

March 12, 2021 07:00 - 20 minutes - 19.8 MB

In December 1963, the proposed legislation that John F. Kennedy thinks will be his crowning achievement—the Civil Rights Act—is coming to a head in Congress. But just when he needs to throw his back into the push to get it passed, the start of his re-election campaign, derailed by the failed assassination attempt in Dallas the month before, diverts his attention. Within the movement itself, the public face of the Civil Rights Movement begins to shift from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to other...

Episode 1: Near Miss in Dallas

March 11, 2021 07:04 - 19 minutes - 19 MB

In this, the inaugural episode of Age of Confusion, our voyage into the alternate timeline of history begins on November 22, 1963, as President John F. Kennedy, visiting Dallas, Texas to kick off his 1964 re-election campaign, narrowly avoids the bullets of a sniper perched in the Texas School Book Depository. The attempt itself, its aftermath, its personal and religious resonance for Kennedy and the ultimate fate of his would-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, are detailed. Length: 19:43 ...

Age of Confusion Trailer

March 08, 2021 18:34 - 2 minutes - 3.52 MB

Welcome to the Age of Confusion! This is the Age of Confusion podcast, an alternate history show that presents a reimagined version of American and world history in the 20th century. In 1963, an era of upheaval and rapid change, President John F. Kennedy was tragically assassinated in Dallas. Age of Confusion begins with this event, except with a different outcome: Kennedy survives and the history within the show takes a sharp divergence from the true history that unfolded in the real wo...