Gladio Free Europe
123 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago - ★★★★★ - 27 ratingsa sort of movie, sort of history podcast
https://www.patreon.com/GladioFreeEurope
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Episodes
E98 The Fall of Rome and Henri Pirenne
June 20, 2024 06:00 - 1 hour - 255 MBSupport us on Patreon --- On September 4, 476 the barbarian general Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor in the West and proclaimed himself king of Italy. After 500 years of existence, the Western Roman Empire was gone. But if you were living there at the time, would you have even noticed anything had changed? Liam and Russian Sam return to one of their favorite historical subjects, an area that has energized and terrified generations of scholars for 1500 years: the declin...
E97 B. Traven and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre
May 24, 2024 05:43 - 2 hours - 292 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Liam and Russian Sam tunnel beneath the hills of Mexico to uncover the remarkable history behind the 1948 film "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and its creators. Based on a 1927 novel about three American gold-hunters torn apart by greed, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the only modern novels whose author is effectively unknown. Attributed only to the mysterious "B. Traven," a German residing in Mexico, speculation over the writer's identit...
E96 Ármin Vámbéry and Hungarian Orientalism ft. Turan Explorer
May 08, 2024 05:00 - 2 hours - 301 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Liam, Russian Sam, and Turan Explorer continue their journey across the vast steppe of Hungarian Turanism in this episode on Ármin Vámbéry, the all-time Orientalist white boy whose remarkable wanderings were fundamental to the development of the Hungarian obsession with the East, and the rise of a political movement that would convince millions of Central Europeans that they were in fact Central Asians deep down. Coming from the humblest of beginning...
E95 The Origins of Hungarian Turanism ft. Turan Explorer
May 01, 2024 07:32 - 1 hour - 245 MBSupport us on Patreon --- This week, we have a very special guest coming to us from the steppe via transfer in Central Europe. This episode is all about the constitutive elements of Hungarian Turanism, the ideology that traces Hungarian origins back into Asia and often comes with a political program for what to do with that knowledge. In this multi-part series, we set the stage for a later exploration of Turanism as a doctrine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But...
E95 - The Origins of Hungarian Turanism ft. Turan Explorer
May 01, 2024 07:32 - 1 hour - 245 MBSupport us on Patreon --- This week, we have a very special guest coming to us from the steppe via transfer in Central Europe. This episode is all about the constitutive elements of Hungarian Turanism, the ideology that traces Hungarian origins back into Asia and often comes with a political program for what to do with that knowledge. In this multi-part series, we set the stage for a later exploration of Turanism as a doctrine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But...
E94 The Long 2014 ft. Grace Cathedral Park
April 24, 2024 04:00 - 1 hour - 232 MBSupport us on Patreon --- There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen. Vladimir Lenin surprisingly did not say these words about 2014, a year that saw monumental pivots in culture, technology, and world events and arguably never ended at all. Liam and Russian Sam are joined this week by their good friend Jackson or Grace Cathedral Park, a longtime advocate of the concept of "The Long 2014." They discuss how the last years of the Obama a...
E93 Frank Herbert: The Dune Behind Dune
April 17, 2024 06:23 - 1 hour - 167 MBSupport us on Patreon --- The Dune series has gone through a revival of late thanks to the film adaptations of Denis Villeneuve, but what are we to make of it? In this episode we explore Dune through the lens of its author, Frank Herbert. His beliefs defy easy political classification according to today's preconceived notions, making him difficult to situate. Herbert was a libertarian who was deeply uneasy with market forces, a localist with great sympathy for indigenous an...
E92 Irish Latin Americans and the San Patricio Battalion
March 21, 2024 06:41 - 39 minutes - 72.3 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Since the 17th century, nearly 10 million Irish people left their homes for an uncertain life abroad. While stories of Irish settlement in the United States and Canada are well-known, the lives of tens of thousands of Irish people who settled in Latin America are much more obscure. In the first Gladio Free Europe solo episode, Liam runs through the long history of the Irish presence in Latin America. As early as the time of Shakespeare many Irish p...
E91 King Philip's War and the End of Native Sovereignty
March 07, 2024 01:46 - 1 hour - 250 MBSupport us on Patreon --- In 1675, the Puritan colonies in North America were fighting for their lives. A brilliant young commander named Metacomet assembled a Native American coalition that upended a half-century of colonialism, pushed the English back to the coast, and would come very close to obliterating settler life in New England. In this episode of Gladio Free Europe, Liam and Russian Sam return to colonial New England to cover King Philip's War, a conflict that is li...
E90 After the First Thanksgiving
February 14, 2024 08:29 - 1 hour - 69.7 MBSupport us on Patreon --- In November 1622, the great diplomat Squanto died while leading a trade expedition with his English allies. Only a year had passed since he formed a treaty between the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the indigenous Wampanoag people. While the early years of English-Indian relations were marked by cooperation and accommodation, including the famous Thanksgiving feast, Squanto's passing marked a descent into a period of slowly ramping hostilities, culminating in...
E89 Katherina Kepler and the European Witch Hunts
January 03, 2024 05:00 - 1 hour - 251 MBSupport us on Patreon --- In 1615, just days before the New Year, famed astronomer Johannes Kepler received the news that would change his life. His mother Katharina had been accused as a witch. Over the next 6 years, the Keplers would battle these charges with every means at their disposal, just as the world around them began to collapse into the carnage of the Thirty Years' War. Gladio Free Europe continues our foray into the dusky world of European witchcraft with our account...
E88 Krampus and the Demons of the Alps
December 20, 2023 08:42 - 1 hour - 148 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Each Christmas season, the mountain peoples of Europe are beset by monsters. Fearsome figures like Krampus, Perchta, and the Kuker descend into quaint hilltop villages, sometimes to spread holiday cheer, sometimes to hasten the coming of spring, and sometimes just to sew chaos and discord. These figures are all part of similar winter celebrations found across the Alps, stretching from their western foothills in France all the way to the Dinaric Alps of ...
E87 The Meiji Restoration and Hokkaido ft. John Bellamy Poster
November 23, 2023 03:02 - 1 hour - 252 MBSupport us on Patreon --- This week, friend of the pod John Bellamy Poster commandeered a gunship and made his way onto Gladio Free Europe to discuss 19th century Japanese history in the backdrop of the unique historical manga Golden Kamuy. Exploring the pivotal moments that reshaped Japan, John takes us through the monumental arrival of Commodore Perry's black ships, an event that broke Japan's 220-year-old policy of isolation and precipitated a domino effect of change. We delv...
E87 Transylvania P. 2
November 09, 2023 02:08 - 1 hour - 153 MBWe return to the dark foothills of the Carpathians in our continuing history of Transylvania. This episode focuses on Europe's most infamous countess, Elizabeth Bathory, accused of torturing and killing up to 600 hundred young girls gathered from across Central Europe. While it's now agreed that Elizabeth Bathory was not a vampire, and didn't even bathe in anyone's blood, whether or not she was a serial killer has led to some interesting debate. Join us as we lay out the facts of the Batho...
E86 Transylvania P. 2
November 09, 2023 02:08 - 1 hour - 153 MBSupport us on Patreon --- We return to the dark foothills of the Carpathians in our continuing history of Transylvania. This episode focuses on Europe's most infamous countess, Elizabeth Bathory, accused of torturing and killing up to 600 hundred young girls gathered from across Central Europe. While it's now agreed that Elizabeth Bathory was not a vampire, and didn't even bathe in anyone's blood, whether or not she was a serial killer has led to some interesting debate. Join us ...
E85 Transylvania P. 1
October 26, 2023 23:14 - 1 hour - 76.5 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Americans are known for many things. Geographic insight of Eastern Europe is not one of them. Yet every American over age six can tell you which Romanian region is the home of Count Dracula. Thanks to the incredible popularity of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Transylvania has a unique place in the American and British popular consciousness, totally beyond that of any other province in this part of the world. To see how this came to pass, we have to understand...
E84 The Ainu Before Japan
October 12, 2023 03:00 - 1 hour - 257 MBSupport us on Patreon --- In 1869, the Meiji Emperor declared the northern island of Hokkaido to be sovereign territory of Japan. In a process direclty inspired by American colonization, Japanese settlers were brought in to "civilize" the territory, a process which would have terrible consequences for the indigenous inhabitants -- a non-Japanese people known as the Ainu. Japanese colonists and western onlookers derisively viewed the Ainu as isolated primitives, at best isolated re...
E83 Fritz Lang's Fury and the Brooke Hart Kidnapping
September 13, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour - 241 MBSupport us on Patreon --- In 1936, acclaimed German exile director Fritz Lang made his American debut: Fury. The ripped-from-the-headlines story of a deadly false accusation was acclaimed by critics as the best drama of the year, but audiences and studio executives shunned the film for its dark content and uncomfortable social commentary: particularly how Lang shed light on the crimes of his adopted country, including the brutal crisis of lynching. With Spencer Tracy playing the accu...
E82 God-Kings of Southeast Asia
August 30, 2023 06:09 - 1 hour - 134 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Put on your rubber boots, we're continuing our exploration of Southeast Asia as we excavate the deep jungle ruins of the Classical Age. From the Khmer Empire to Champa to Srivijaya and beyond, the early medieval period of Southeast Asian history is marked by the emergence of incredible states and empires whose histories, though tantalizingly obscure, hint at great narratives of conflict and cooperation. This episode of Gladio Free Europe travels across the ...
E81 The Start of Southeast Asia
August 16, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour - 178 MBSupport us on Patreon --- For thousands of years, voyagers from all across the known world have docked their ships in the harbors of Southeast Asia. The diverse countries that make up this region have played an essential role in human history, witnessing the first waves of migration out of Africa, the development of the earliest oceanic trade networks, the synthesis of political and religious ideas from both China and India, and the birth of overseas colonial empires. But to most people...
E80 Los Angeles Labor War p. 2
August 09, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour - 138 MBSupport us on Patreon --- It's October 1910 and Los Angeles is on fire. The California labor war had reached its highest level of violence with the bombing of the LA Times Building, and now the world wanted to know who was responsible. Some thought radical anarchists planted the bombs while others thought the LA robber barons had lit the fuse themselves to defame the worker's movement. Liam and Russian Sam they recount the riveting manhunt and ensuing trial, full of larger-than-life fi...
E79 Los Angeles Labor War
July 19, 2023 06:50 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBOn September 30, 1910, the L.A. Times declared that anarchism has been defeated in California. The city of Los Angeles would be rid of trade unionists. Less than 12 hours later, these same anarchists and trade unionists would strike back in the grandest act of terror thus committed in the United States. This deadly bombing launched a nationwide manhunt and one of the most publicized trials in American history, while also pushing both capital and labor in increasingly radical directions. Tho...
E79 Los Angeles Labor War p. 1
July 19, 2023 06:50 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBSupport us on Patreon --- On September 30, 1910, the L.A. Times declared that anarchism has been defeated in California. The city of Los Angeles would be rid of trade unionists. Less than 12 hours later, these same anarchists and trade unionists would strike back in the grandest act of terror thus committed in the United States. This deadly bombing launched a nationwide manhunt and one of the most publicized trials in American history, while also pushing both capital and labor in increa...
E78 The Flavorful Life of Yevgeny Prigozhin
June 28, 2023 08:11 - 1 hour - 58.7 MBSupport us on Patreon --- By now much of our audience may have heard of PMC Wagner, the mercenary group that marched on Moscow earlier this week in what appeared to be an abortive coup against the Russian government. Wagner infamous for its many alleged atrocities, and has been proven to be the most effective force in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But this notorious private army is all the work of larger-than-life dog vendor Yevgeny Prigozhin. Liam and Sam B recount the rise of Russia'...
E77 Pirosmani
June 21, 2023 08:53 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBSupport us on Patreon --- On Easter 1918, Georgian painter Nikolo Pirosmani passed away in a hospital bed before he could be examined by a physician. This enigmatic naive artist whose works graced the walls of half the taverns of Tbilisi was only mildly famous in the avant-garde world when he drew his last breath. But after this corporal death, Pirosmani would live on, reaching a mythic stature. Songs and stories of the mad painter of the Caucasus have spread widely across the past cent...
E76 River Pirates on the American Frontier
June 14, 2023 20:28 - 1 hour - 70.8 MBSupport us on Patreon --- At the close of 18th century, the Mississippi River ran dark with blood and whiskey. This great artery of North America was a lawless frontier contested by Spain, France, Britain, the United States, as well as indigenous governments like the Choctaw and Chickasaw that had no intention of vacating land that had been theirs for generations. But there was one more ingredient in this cauldron of conflict. River pirates took advantage of this chaos, playing all thes...
E75 Christianity in Japan - Warlords at Worship
June 08, 2023 23:49 - 1 hour - 74 MBSupport us on Patreon --- What do pocket watches, Korean prisoners, and samurai armor have in common? All of them help explain the close relationship between Portuguese merchants and Japanese warlords in the late 1500s. In this episode of Gladio Free Europe, we see how Portuguese Catholics entered the inner circles of Japan's most powerful men before a sudden change of heart turned this glamorous foreign religion into an underground cult. This episode focuses on the ways diffe...
E74 Christianity in Japan - The Priest and the Pirate
May 17, 2023 05:22 - 1 hour - 69.9 MBSupport us on Patreon --- In 1549, a Portuguese priest and a Japanese pirate disembarked on the port of Kagoshima with one purpose: to bring Christianity to the islands of Japan. They would be remarkably successful. Within 50 years, hundreds of thousands of Japanese people had been baptized, from lowly fishermen and merchants to powerful noblemen at the center of the shogun's circle. Yet after 100 years, almost all trace of this foreign religion had vanished. This episode is thi...
E73 Coronation Explainer
May 10, 2023 05:59 - 1 hour - 131 MBSupport us on Patreon --- England has a new king, and the realm has come down with a terrible case of coronation fever. You may have seen the ridiculous merchandise, the extravagant robes, or the swords and other odd utensils used in the ceremony, but you asking yourself — what does this all mean? Well, Liam and Russian Sam sat through the coronation of Charles III so you don't have to. This week's episode of Gladio Free Europe is a run-down of the various aspects of this solemn...
E73 The Coronation
May 10, 2023 05:59 - 1 hour - 131 MBSupport us on Patreon --- England has a new king, and the realm has come down with a terrible case of coronation fever. You may have seen the ridiculous merchandise, the extravagant robes, or the swords and other odd utensils used in the ceremony, but you asking yourself — what does this all mean? Well, Liam and Russian Sam sat through the coronation of Charles III so you don't have to. This week's episode of Gladio Free Europe is a run-down of the various aspects of this solemn...
E72 GFE World Travel Update
May 03, 2023 06:09 - 1 hour - 154 MBSupport us on Patreon --- After a couple weeks of adventuring across Japan and the Caucasus, the hosts of Gladio Free Europe are back in the States. Liam shares his experiences seeing the traces of the violent Sengoku period all across Japan's main island Honshu, and explains how this trip finally brought him to his "white guy into Buddhism" phase. Thousands of miles away, Russian Sam visited the ancient nations of Armenia and Georgia and got a front-seat view of how influences fr...
E71 - American Medical Atrocities in Guatemala
April 19, 2023 07:50 - 1 hour - 80.1 MBIn 2011, the US National Archives released 12,000 pages of documents relating to the activities of the Public Health Service in 1940s Guatemala. This report conclusively proved that a team of doctors led by John Charles Cutler, previously involved in the notorious Tuskegee Experiment, knowingly infected patients in Guatemala with syphilis and other venereal diseases. Our friend Krebbs joins Russian Sam for a discussion about this deeply shocking episode in the history of US-Latin American ...
E71 American Medical Atrocities in Guatemala
April 19, 2023 07:50 - 1 hour - 80.1 MBIn 2011, the US National Archives released 12,000 pages of documents relating to the activities of the Public Health Service in 1940s Guatemala. This report conclusively proved that a team of doctors led by John Charles Cutler, previously involved in the notorious Tuskegee Experiment, knowingly infected patients in Guatemala with syphilis and other venereal diseases. Our friend Krebbs joins Russian Sam for a discussion about this deeply shocking episode in the history of US-Latin American ...
E70 Introduction to the Christian Saints
April 12, 2023 05:52 - 54 minutes - 50.3 MBSupport us on Patreon --- This week, we talk about centaurs, demons, and self-filling pots of food. That's right, we're talking about saints and their hagiographies! This unusual genre stands at the crossroads between the Late Antique and Medieval worlds, and despite their often strange contents, they have a lot to tell us about the world in which they were written. Finally, we look at a firmly modern saint, a martyr who perished in the 1940s, and consider the ways in which the pass...
E70 - Introduction to the Christian Saints
April 12, 2023 05:52 - 54 minutes - 50.3 MBSupport us on Patreon --- This week, we talk about centaurs, demons, and self-filling pots of food. That's right, we're talking about saints and their hagiographies! This unusual genre stands at the crossroads between the Late Antique and Medieval worlds, and despite their often strange contents, they have a lot to tell us about the world in which they were written. Finally, we look at a firmly modern saint, a martyr who perished in the 1940s, and consider the ways in which the pa...
E69 The Trial of the Juntas ft. Kevin
April 05, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour - 218 MBSupport us on Patreon --- With Argentina, 1985 having been in the running for Best Foreign Language Film, we are joined by our good friend Kevin as we delve into the history of the Argentinian Junta and its genocidal campaign of disappearances, extrajudicial murder, torture, and the kidnapping of children. The latter crime is the subject of The Official Story, another Argentinian movie which actually was made in 1985 and approaches the crimes of the period from a more personal angle. ...
E68 - Alaska Chat with Jon
March 22, 2023 20:28 - 55 minutes - 51.1 MBGladio Free Europe received a frosty transmission this week from the icy waters of the Bering Sea. Writer, prophet, and friend of the pod Jon called in to talk about life in Alaska. We run through the past 300 years of the 49th state, beginning with initial bloody encounters between indigenous Yupik and Inuit peoples and the Russian Empire and the ensuing colonial contest with Britain, the United States, and even Spain. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what makes Alaska so dif...
E68 Alaska Chat with Jon
March 22, 2023 20:28 - 55 minutes - 51.1 MBGladio Free Europe received a frosty transmission this week from the icy waters of the Bering Sea. Writer, prophet, and friend of the pod Jon called in to talk about life in Alaska. We run through the past 300 years of the 49th state, beginning with initial bloody encounters between indigenous Yupik and Inuit peoples and the Russian Empire and the ensuing colonial contest with Britain, the United States, and even Spain. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what makes Alaska so dif...
E67.5 Even More Bog Bodies
March 01, 2023 06:37 - 57 minutes - 53.4 MBSupport us on Patreon --- More and more people are talking about bog bodies! Due to great feedback on our most recent episode we're following up our bog talk with an overview of recent developments in wetland archaeology and an overview of some of the most interesting bog sites in Europe. We dive into our favorite finds that we didn't have time to cover in our last episode, like the morbid battlefield of Alken Enge and the beautiful bog dog of Saxony. We expand our scope to bog bodies out...
E67 The Bog Bodies
February 22, 2023 06:30 - 1 hour - 79.7 MBSupport us on Patreon --- We get knee-deep in the peat this week to examine the bog body phenomenon. Due to their unusually anaerobic nature, bogs across the world have a remarkable ability to preserve any animal matter that falls into them. The cold and wet climate of Northern Europe has proven especially fruitful for the preservation of human corpses, many of which date back to the iron age and beyond. Generations of scholars have been enchanted by these enigmatic and unnerving corpses, ...
E66 Hail, Caesar!
February 08, 2023 06:55 - 1 hour - 62.1 MBWe are now on Patreon! We are not setting up a paywall, but if you would like to support Gladio Free Europe, we'll be thankful for your contribution. --- The Golden Age of Hollywood was a rough time to be an actor. Overdoses, suicides, and secret abortions were routine, but always escaped the papers thanks to the hard work of the studio fixers. In the 1930s to the 1950s, Hollywood studio heads hired thugs and corporate spies to maintain control of their employees and keep scandals under wr...
E65 New Smyrna, A Greek Colony in Florida?
January 25, 2023 05:58 - 1 hour - 121 MBSupport us on Patreon --- In 1768, hundreds of Greek peasants were brought to Florida by an ambitious British businessman in hopes of creating a classical paradise in America. Within just three months, New Smyrna would be the site of a full-on worker's revolution and this utopian dream would go in flames. Liam and Russian Sam go back to Florida this week to chart the early history of the Sunshine State, starting with the first European explorations of the soupy, steamy peninsula by Ponce...
E64 Queen Christina and the Swedish Empire ft. Anton
January 18, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour - 218 MBSupport us on Patreon --- This week, we are joined by archaeologist Anton Larsson to discuss the other English-language movie about the Thirty Years War: Queen Christina, a historical romance starring the famous Greta Garbo. We discuss the multifaceted legacy of Sweden's famous philosopher-queen who oversaw the end of the long war waged by her father Gustavus Adolphus before ultimately converting to Catholicism and abdicating the throne. We use this 1933 film to trace frenzied rise and fa...
E63 The Last Valley ft. Matt Christman
January 11, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour - 108 MBSupport us on Patreon --- The one and only Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House stopped by in our little valley to bring us the latest updates on the Thirty Years' War. We ventured into an overview of the history of the war, when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse roamed the Earth, the 1971 James Clavell flick The Last Valley starring Omar Sharif and Michael Caine, and Matt's upcoming series Hell on Earth where he and producer Chris Wade dive into the terrifying world of 17th-century Centra...
E62 The Man Who Came to Dinner
December 28, 2022 05:14 - 59 minutes - 55.3 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Bring out your cudgels, the midwestern barbarians are afoot! This week we delve into the massively underrated 1942 Christmas film The Man Who Came to Dinner starring Bette Davis and Monty Woolley, the story of the cranky proto-podcaster Sheridan Whiteside who seemingly breaks his hip on a speaking tour and is forced to recuperate in a podunk Ohio town. To contemporaries, Whiteside was obviously based on prolific critic and radio personality Alexander Woollcott, wh...
E61 Genetics 101 ft. Natasha
December 14, 2022 06:00 - 1 hour - 171 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Was your grandmother a Neanderthal? Did the English language originate in ancient Iran? What's a haplogroup anyway? These questions and more will be answered in our Q&A with returning guest Natasha, a molecular biologist with great insight into what recent breakthroughs in ancient DNA can and can't teach us about our past. This episode goes over the broad strokes of archaeogenetic research, using a few famous case studies to explore discoveries made through geneti...
E60 Legendary Ancestry Claims
December 07, 2022 06:00 - 1 hour - 207 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Thousands of years ago, the Egyptian princess Scota gave birth to a child who invented the Gaelic language and led his family on a journey through the desert for 440 years. Their descendants would move to Greece and then Spain, before becoming the first humans to finally conquer Ireland from a race of elves called the Tuatha Dé Danann. Meanwhile in Britain, 33 wicked Greek princess each married the Devil and gave birth to 33 terrible giants. Two exiled Trojan prin...
E59 Indigenous New England and the First Thanksgiving
November 23, 2022 06:34 - 1 hour - 213 MBSupport us on Patreon --- Every kid in America grows up hearing about "The First Thanksgiving" featuring Squanto, the Mayflower, and the surprising nutritional value of dead-fish fertilizer. But this patriotic narrative offers only a tiny glimpse at the astonishing and agonizing history of contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples of New England, who called themselves the Ninnimissinuok. Our multi-part series on 17th century New England begins by examining the beliefs, culture, rapi...
E58 Cyrus Teed and Koreshanity
November 16, 2022 06:16 - 2 hours - 232 MBSupport us on Patreon --- At the turn of the century, thousands of Americans believed they had met the messiah: Cyrus Teed, an unassuming doctor from upstate New York. In this episode, Liam and Russian Sam explore the dead religion of Koreshanity, a short-lived but influential cult that sought to establish a celibate utopia before the end of days. Fascinating, occasionally frightening, but always uniquely American, Cyrus Teed and the Koreshans are like a skeleton key to understanding t...
E57 The Golem
October 26, 2022 06:39 - 1 hour - 108 MBSupport us on Patreon --- In the heart of Old Prague, in the attic of the Altneuschul Synagogue, lies the inanimate body of a golem, or so the legend goes! We watched the 1920 classic of German cinema The Golem: How He Came Into The World to explore the strange history of this iconic creature, its ancient connection to the mythology of the Ancient Near East, and later Judaism. How did an entity so rooted in traditions of Jewish mysticism come to resonate with people across the globe, Jew a...