Listening

At the end of a long evening a long time ago a wise friend commented that neither one of us would ever write a great book, but we could be great readers. I’ve held onto that idea for 25+ years and then the pandemic added a new twist: more time walking and running has led to more time listening to podcasts (and a couple audio books) and, just like I like to do with books, I want to share….my reactions, impressions, thoughts, where the podcast takes me. So hopefully this is the start of a series on podcasts I’ve listened to, including what, why you should listen, and what might come next.

“Gallipoli: What led to Britain’s WW1 disaster?” from the Warfare podcast series

Yella: Trade, strategy, and market manipulation, wrapped around politics and military calculations, all happening during WW1 and all leading to utter chaos and failure.

Go on: A wicked smart historian knows you know the basics – Gallipoli was a catastrophic failure — and explains why Britain would make such a dumb mistake by walking through the economic and political calculations, the military assessments and context of the greater war going on. He tells a good story, building the narrative with both 10,000-foot strategic considerations and in-the-room details about the specific people involved. Among the revelations: the Brits manipulated the Chicago mercantile exchange in a scheme straight out of the movie ‘Trading Places;’ dry weather in Australia and frozen Great Lakes in the US and Canada can lead to bread riots in the UK; and, few more ominous signs before a battle than when an officer writes home to say, “don’t send my winter gear, because we’re not going to be here very long.”

To the end? Yes, listen all the way to the end because the historian brings in a twist that makes me want to teach this episode in an intelligence gathering and strategy class. Just brilliant.

So who: despite the podcast series title, ‘Warfare,’ this episode almost all about trade policies, political decision-making, macro-economics, and the folly of believing what you think you know. So any interest in trade and economics and this is a good one.

And then: not sure where I am going to go with this section – maybe sometimes explain the avenues listening to the podcast took me down (for example, today realizing that Kennedy’s ‘Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery’ barely mentions this, although that kind of make sense since it was less about the navy, after all). Or maybe thoughts on how this connects to another podcast or book or movie. For now, a work in prorgress.