Popehat: Listening to The Rest is History’s new series on the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and it’s as good as I hoped. Humanizes the guy, reveals the shitbirdery of his family and Hapsburg colleagues, and also explains why his assassination saved millions of birds.

Listening to The Rest is History’s new series on the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and it’s as good as I hoped. Humanizes the guy, reveals the shitbirdery of his family and Hapsburg colleagues, and also explains why his assassination saved millions of birds.

/2 Now really looking forward to them covering the slow-motion car crash that is July 1914 which is an absolutely terrifying story of our inability to stop terrible things from happening

Here's the BBC summarizing it in 60 seconds: m.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Aj...

1914 Live: The day that changed the world - BBCm.youtube.com Subscribe and 🔔 to the BBC 👉 https://bit.ly/BBCYouTubeSubWatch the BBC first on iPlayer 👉 https://bbc.in/iPlayer-Home http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww1 One hundred...

It's funny how, despite two World Wars, a much worse pandemic than COVID-19, the Great Depression, and god knows how many totalitarian atrocities, the world was still immensely better and nicer in 1950 than in 1900. Barring a full nuclear missile launch, I'm very sure we'll see 2050 the same way.

Maybe 2070 but yes. Europe spent all of 1875-1945 indulging in reckless extreme (L-R) politics and paid a massive price for it, learned the virtues of moderation/cooperation and rebuilt their society. One of the problems of the US is that the US never went through anything that pulverizing.

I'm pretty sure we *did* go through something almost as pulverizing a short while before that period.

Yes, but if you ask, why doesn't capital sacrifice in 1970 or 2005 and work together with labor to create a proper safety net, the Civil War is not relevant to that. We will saunter along without one until it becomes clear we have to build something like that up.

I dunno, it seems like the early 2010s were far better than the 2020s. The dream of consuming video without any ads was becoming real. Amazon was not yet a dystopian hellscape of SEO'd and sponsored products. Though, twitter still only allowed 120 characters, so it was mixed.

Also, GRRM's "Winds of Winter" was due out in just a few months.

I appreciate your optimism. I hope you're right. I intend to do my best to try to make it so, in my little way.

kind of like now

Leave subtext as subtext plz

Obligatory Simpsons Reference

...been saying for a while that I want to STUDY Weimar Germany, not LIVE in it. 😬

Sub-things that should remain sub-things: Yes: subtexts, subtweets, submarine sandwiches Temporarily: actual submarines No: subpar things. Except golfers.

It's an awesome podcast, isn't it? Brilliant, informative and entertaining in equal measure.

Important thing to remember is it was a deterrence failure, not a diplomatic one. Austria and Germany wanted an excuse for war with Serbia and Russia, and the murder gave it to them. They couldn’t be talked out of it, only deterred by stronger force. The force wasn’t convincing enough.

IIRC, also, some people in the German government thought Britain wouldn't *actually* honor its treaty obligations to defend Belgium.

If you haven't already, try The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark. I've never found a better treatment of that mess. www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

The Sleepwalkerswww.harpercollins.com “A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.” — Boston Globe One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books ...

Always reminded of the words of Blackadder: the reason there was a war was that it was too much bother not to have a war.

Reading the letters between the cousins that were heads of state in Europe was wild.

I'm sure a lot of people will have already heard of it but just in case they haven't, Dan Carlin's Blueprint for Armageddon podcast series is a fantastic deep-dive. www.dancarlin.com/product/hard...

Blueprint for Armageddon Series – Dan Carlin4.6 out of 5 starsAvailable for Amazon Prime4.4 out of 5 starsAvailable for Amazon Prime4.7 out of 5 starsAvailable for Amazon Prime4.4 out of 5 starsAvaila...www.dancarlin.com

I just listened to the HH addendum where Dan interviewed the two guys. Good stuff

I rather enjoyed “Europe’s Last Summer” since it just focused on, as you put it, the slow-motion car crash. Not the war. I’ll have check out the podcast. Thanks!

Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? by David Fromkin makes the argument that the German Army did it quite deliberately, which makes a lot of sense.

I wish they were here on bluesky. I can understand they still have a following on X, but their people / tribe are here on the sky.

I haven’t gotten there yet, sounds interesting

Oooh, I’m super interested in this bit of history (even kickstarted a board game about it). I’ll have to give this a listen

Exposes the lie of the "Great Man theory" of history

"The Guns of August" was still the standard text when I was in college, but I know a vast amount of historical docs have become available in the past 50 years that have rewritten that story.

open.spotify.com/show/5eLpTxh... does a great job of this with a sequential narrative of 20th century; highlights how much of it was path dependence while not letting guys like Wilhelm off the hook.

The History of the Twentieth Centuryopen.spotify.com Listen to The History of the Twentieth Century on Spotify. “The History of the Twentieth Century” is a podcast dedicated to telling the story of the twentieth century. While we love talking about inte...

Just listened to the Revolutions episode Mike Duncan did about this. Scary and stupid stuff

Pretty amazing that he ended up the man killed for a lot of anger that he probably empathized with more than any single person in the government that he was representing.

My favorite explanation of WWI: "I heard that it started when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he was hungry." youtu.be/tGxAYeeyoIc

Blackadder How did World War I Beginyoutu.be A great stimulus for the History class: causes of WW1.

"The poor ole ostrich died for nothin." LOLOL

This seems like a good time to post the excellent @hooks.bsky.social article detailing his day with Hapsburg folks in Texas thebaffler.com/latest/feeli...

At the Habsburg Convention in Plano | Christopher Hooksthebaffler.com Emperor Karl I was the least successful and most tragic Habsburg monarch. A symposium in Texas makes the case for why he should become a saint.

Emperor Karl sounds like a King Ralph sequel

Always a fantastic and surreal read.

I'm stunned at how well Alfred E. Neuman cleans up.

I'm stunned at how well Alfred E. Newman cleans up.

LLOL’ed 😂

Taught a couple of blocks from this spot. One of the best photos that I have ever taken.

Binge their 11-episode series that starts with Custer and ends with Sitting Bull. They’ve never done better work.

The is a very good listen. One side effect was it enabling historical perspective on seemingly sideshow Republicans as Kristi Noem and Doug Burgum and their Dakota states. (If I was a Dem king. I'd merge N & S Dakota & give the Senators to DC.)

Franz Josef is truly under-rated as one of the absolute assholes in history. Franz Ferdinand was just trying to show his wife the kind of pomp and ceremony he thought the woman he loved deserved (monarchical critiques aside) and deserves a better rap.

Listening to Radetzsky March at New Year's eve concert in Vienna and remembering that Franz Joseph ordered it in celebration of a massacre of italian civilians.

Have you checked this one out? The audiobook version is super worthy www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/105817...

The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan: 9780812980660 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Bookswww.penguinrandomhouse.com NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Economist • The Christian Science Monitor • Bloomberg Businessweek • The Globe and Mail From...

You got me hooked on this podcast, just like Fall of Civilization, and (I think) This Day in Esoteric Political History. Just wanted to say Thanks! 👍

Such a great podcast.

You’ve read Guns of August, right?

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