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Myth of the 20th Century

Myth of the 20th Century

77 episodes — Page 1 of 2

2023 – Year in Review

Tonight we discuss some of this past year’s highlights, starting with the run on Silicon Valley Bank and near repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. We then cover the geopolitical implications of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine mixed in with the attacks in Israel, crisis at the border, and the changing world of technology as... Read More

Jan 11, 2024

The Boniface Option

In pagan Germany sometime in the 8th century, legend has it that a Christian monk, who would later become known as Saint Boniface, gathered a tribe of non-believers around him and their most sacred tree. Thought to incite a vengeful bolt of lightning from Thor himself if cut down, Boniface, in front of all who... Read More

Dec 7, 2023

Mining – From the Depths of the Earth – After Dark

Even before humans developed metal tools, stonework, jewelry and mineral wealth have been an integral part in human society. With the advent of the industrial revolution, with coal being exploited as a primary energy source for heating and locomotion, even more minerals ranging from copper to iron to aluminum became accessible on a scale never... Read More

Oct 31, 2023

Podcast RSS is moving to Substack

Hey everyone – our podcasts will now be hosted on Substack going forward. Please let us know if you have trouble finding us. Here is the direct feed: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/2044762.rss Other options SpotifyPocket CastsTune In ——————————– Myth of the 20th Century – NEW PODCAST FEED TEST

Oct 25, 2023

Stone Choir – After Dark – Good vs Evil

The world is a complex place, filled with good and evil – and almost everything in between. The challenge of navigating this is that we are all tempted by something that we want, but ultimately will be our undoing. Christians frame this battle between God and Satan, with humans caught in the struggle to choose.... Read More

Oct 2, 2023

The Evolution of Transportation

Estimates place the amount of the earth’s land area dedicated to buildings and other fixed structures to be no more than 3%. But of that land, nearly half is exclusive to roads and parking structures in some urban areas. This fact, obviously a consequence of the prevalence of the automobile, illustrates the importance of transportation,... Read More

Sep 27, 2023

Australia – a History of Settlement

Australia, a name derived from the Latin for “southern land”, sits as a continent unto itself at the far reaches of the Asian landmass, receiving its first settlers over 50,000 years ago when the ice age connected the two by a land bridge. It was not until the European settlements in the 17th century did... Read More

Aug 27, 2023

Stone Choir – Christian Nationalism

In a time of increasing skepticism of globalization, stemming from losses in jobs, cultural heritage, and sovereignty over ones own homeland, nationalism has re-emerged onto the political stage in protest movements and increasingly populist governments. Christian nationalism, focused on the incorporation of church doctrine into a nation and often a sovereign, is not a new... Read More

Aug 6, 2023

Saudi Arabia and the (End of the) Petrodollar

In 1945 near the end of WWII, US President Franklin Roosevelt, on his way back from the Yalta summit, met on the cruiser USS Quincy in the Suez Canal with Kign Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. The meeting, prompted by Roosevelt asking how the United States had outlasted the mighty German war machine, was motivated... Read More

Jul 23, 2023

Someone Has to Say It – Tom Kawczynski

Carl von Clausewitz described war as politics by other means. In many ways the reverse could be said, with the modern state in the West seemingly arrayed against its own citizens in a constant battle of misdirection and interference in their lives. Tom Kawczynski, author of ‘Surviving the Fall of America’ and former town manager... Read More

Jul 14, 2023

Sex and the City – Women, Real Estate – After Dark

As a show that has primarily focused on geopolitical history, we at the Myth of the 20th Century have not touched on the subject of women as much as others. But given the importance of women to all societies, and especially those facing declining birth rates, existential ennui, and many other social ills seemingly common... Read More

Jun 23, 2023

Superpower Rivalry in the 21st Century

Soon after the end of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as ‘superpowers’, leaders of the two primary ideological power blocks across the world’s major continents. After nearly 50 years of competition, the United States emerged victorious, and led an unprecedented era of ‘globalization’ for the next 20 years... Read More

Jun 20, 2023

Pineapple Imperialism – a History of Hawaii

Viewed as a microcosm of Manifest Destiny beyond the confines of the geographical limits of the continental United States, the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the US in the late 19th century marked the beginning of what we now consider the global American Empire. To the Hawaiian peoples, it was a clearly just as... Read More

May 11, 2023

BANKING CRISIS – After Dark

The English word ‘bank’ meaning a depository and lending institution, derives from the Italian word ‘banca’, or ‘bench.’ This belies the origins of modern finance in Renaissance Italy, where deals initially struck at coffee house benches evolved into the great trading and banking houses of the Medicis, where double-entry book keeping enabled the matching of... Read More

Mar 17, 2023

The Changing World Order – Why Nations Succeed and Fail

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has written several books on the world of investing and the economy in general based on his years of experience as manager of the world’s largest hedge fund. In the latest of his ‘Principles’ series, Dalio applies his quantitative approach of macro investing to analyzing countries, seeking to identify... Read More

Feb 21, 2023

The World for Sale – Commodity Trading in Uncertain Times

The exchange of goods and services has existed since the earliest forms of civilization, from simple barter arrangements at the local town square to Phoenician traders navigating the Mediterranean with goods from Europe and North Africa. Today, however, the scope of exchange is truly massive, with online commerce coming to dominate nearly all segments of... Read More

Dec 19, 2022

Suburban Redevelopment – The Growth Ponzi Scheme

Ever since the Great Recession and financial crisis of the late 2000s, the American economic model of building large suburban housing developments with cheap credit and sometimes even cheaper building materials and standards has been called into question. Setting aside all the jobs generated in construction, banking, and other financial intermediation, municipal governments also depend... Read More

Nov 17, 2022

Zeihan – After Dark – the Collapse of Globalization

In the world of geopolitics, there are those that decide, and those that recommend. While it is debatable who wields more actual power, it is clear that the number of advisers, consultants, analysts, strategists and self-appointed experts clearly outweighs that of the policy makers. Peter Zeihan, a unique blend of the recommender class, has made... Read More

Oct 31, 2022

Unfriendly Fire – a History of False Flags

According to the BBC, “a false flag is a political or military action carried out with the intention of blaming an opponent for it. Nations have often done this by staging a real or simulated attack on their own side and saying the enemy did it, as a pretext for going to war. The term... Read More

Sep 24, 2022

Cadillac Desert – The American West and Its Disappearing Water

Prior to 1900, the western United States comprised less than 5% of the country’s total population. By 2000, that number had quadrupled to over 20%, and was on track to continue growing as a percentage of the total until only recently, where the southern states have begun outpacing it in term of number of people... Read More

Aug 30, 2022

Assassination – After Dark

With the alleged assassination of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri by US forces and the shooting of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the past few weeks, conspiracy theories abound as to the motives behind potential realignment in global politics and the media news cycle. Also in the news is economist Jeffrey Sachs making... Read More

Aug 5, 2022

Exxon Mobil – Peak Oil and its Consequences

Since the industrial revolution and the advent of fossil fuels in place of manual labor powering nearly all aspects of civilization from agriculture to transportation to manufacturing, human productivity and population have exploded, going from under 1 billion in 1750 to a projected population of 10 billion in 2100. In the 20th century, oil became... Read More

Jul 10, 2022

Sunset of the Ottomans

From the 14th through the early 20th century, the Middle East consisted of a hybrid civilization composed of various tribes and peoples stretching from the Balkans down through the Arabian Peninsula under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire. To its promoters, Constantinople administered a multicultural society that balanced ethnic and religious differences into a harmonious... Read More

Jun 24, 2022

The Rise of Goldman Sachs

As a $60 billion a year investment bank engaged in market making and asset management for equities, fixed income, commodity and derivative securities for large institutional clients, Goldman Sachs, having been founded in 1869, is arguably the world’s most recognizable name on Wall Street. Known for attracting some of the best financial talent, it is... Read More

Jun 8, 2022

The End of History and the Last Man

Published in 1992, political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ described a world in which he saw the 70+ year struggle between the authoritarian styles of government meeting an unequivocal end with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. What triumphed – principally the American system of ‘liberal democratic... Read More

Apr 26, 2022

Boeing – Troubled Skies

In 2019, Airbus surpassed for the first time Boeing as the largest aerospace company in the world, as two crashes of Boeing’s 737-Max airplane forced a grounding of the fleet and a halt in sales, eventually costing it $20 billion in associated fines and delays. While Boeing maintains a relatively strong overall safety record as... Read More

Mar 31, 2022

The Ukraine Crisis – After Dark

Following our interview with Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson on the crisis in Ukraine, we wanted to do a brief follow up on the potential long-reaching supply chain implications of the broader conflict between the West and East. Russia, being targeted now by nearly all Western nations with sanctions aimed at its financial payments infrastructure, telecommunications,... Read More

Mar 18, 2022

The Iliad – After Dark

The history of the Trojan War, assiduously studied and thoroughly documented today, was passed down through the centuries not by academic text, but by oral tradition. The conduit for communication, rather than scholarly prose, was the campfire poetry best told in the Iliad by Homer, author of the other great Greek epic The Odyssey. How... Read More

Feb 8, 2022

2021 – Year in Review

In terms of sheer drama and trauma, few years in recent memory compare to 2020, with the CoViD scare and BLM riots reaching worldwide. In 2021, by comparison, the past year was really more a continuation and consolidation of the last, as the Kyle Rittenhouse trial came to a surprising end, and the power elite... Read More

Jan 9, 2022

The Crowd – A Study of the Popular Mind

The great upheavals which precede changes of civilization, such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation of the Arabian Empire, seem at first sight determined more especially by political transformations, foreign invasion, or the overthrow of dynasties. But a more attentive study of these events shows that behind their apparent causes the... Read More

Dec 21, 2021

Soviet Cybernetics – Red Plenty

“Cybernetics attempts to find the common elements in the functioning of automatic machines and of the human nervous system, and to develop a theory which will cover the entire field of control and communication in machines and living organisms.” -Dr. Norbert Wiener writing in The Scientific American. Taken slightly less literally, in communist Russia, central... Read More

Dec 9, 2021

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race – After Dark

In the genre of horror literature, most plots revolve around the protagonists contending with a threat that is trying to kill them. In Thomas Ligotti’s works, however, the threat is not necessarily an external one, but that of existence itself. In his characteristically pessimistic way, Ligotti’s view is that with suffering outweighing the joys of... Read More

Oct 31, 2021

Years of Lead

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Europe – particularly the Axis Power countries – was the prime battleground for dominance between the emergent superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union. Along with East and West Germany, Italy was similarly divided along ideological lines, with pro-American, typically business-oriented interests, pitted against mostly... Read More

Oct 3, 2021

9/11

“All the democratic circles in America and Europe, in particular the Italian intelligence agency, know very well that the catastrophic attack was planned and carried out by the American CIA and Mossad, with the help of the Zionist world, to accuse the Arab countries and to persuade the Western powers to go into Iraq and... Read More

Sep 11, 2021

Plato – After Dark

Philosophy is a subject many engage in casually during parties, pillow chat – or even podcasts. But philosophy as a discipline is a field reserved for those serious – or fortunate enough – to have the time to dedicate to it. Usually concerning the more fundamental questions of existence and society, in the most basic... Read More

Sep 3, 2021

The Fall of Kabul

As the US officially draws down its presence in Afghanistan, the Taliban has wasted no time in reclaiming territory, forcing the American military to send in 5,000 marines to defend its Kabul embassy from becoming overrun. Meanwhile, the domestic war on ‘vaccine hesitants’ has brought about even more draconian measures on travel and employment. Tonight... Read More

Aug 17, 2021

Olympia

Filmed in 1936 Berlin during the Olympic games, Leni Riefenstahl’s ‘Olympia’ showcased the German celebration of international competition and virtues of athletic performance, sportsmanship, and, despite what critics may claim – goodwill amongst nations and peoples. Controversy however was inevitable as the Second World War was just around the corner, and tensions between the great... Read More

Jul 30, 2021

Afghanistan – a Retrospective

Landlocked and at the ancient crossroads of the Mongol, Persian, Alexandrian and British empires, Afghanistan has long held a history as a conduit for other peoples. In more recent history, the Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989 was only succeeded very briefly by a local Taliban coalition to then be knocked out by the United... Read More

Jul 19, 2021

California is our Future – After Dark

With American Independence Day rapidly approaching, and the heat of the summer bearing down on an already overstretched water and energy grid, thoughts of breaking away tempt the soul. With the breakdown of public infrastructure in the East Coast with the Colonial Pipeline, and official policy of rolling electricity blackouts in California spreading to the... Read More

Jul 4, 2021

The Camp of the Saints

Written in 1973 by Jean Raspail, ‘The Camp of the Saints’ depicts a dystopian scenario where France and the West in general is overrun with third world immigrants. Called a ’Stunningly Racist French Novel’ by the urban liberal clickfarm of record, The Huffington Post, readers without any preconceived notions of the book may ask themselves,... Read More

Jun 25, 2021

Fire on the Water – After Dark

Returning from a brief hiatus, we wanted to cover some of the more significant developments in recent weeks, including the latest attempts to get us to take the vaccine, PATCON 2.0, war in the Middle East, and a massive continuation of the consolidation we’ve seen in the financial markets. More of the same, perhaps, but... Read More

Jun 12, 2021

Kent State

As Vietnam War imagery goes, Kent State is up there with the self-immolating monk and children running from a napalm strike. The picture of Mary Ann Vecchio, standing over the body of Jeffrey Miller who, along with three others, had been shot and killed by Ohio National Guardsman in 1970 during a protest over the... Read More

May 28, 2021

The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business

In the days of Calvin Coolidge, it was said the “business of America is business.” By contrast to other cultures like the Japanese, whose “business is the Japanese”, America’s combination as a youthful country and having a vast untapped frontier, especially in its early years, made the one common denominator of a polyglot nation a... Read More

May 14, 2021

Dune – After Dark

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will... Read More

Apr 29, 2021

James LaFond – Ghost Snatchers

Set in the Rocky Mountains in the not too distant future, ‘Ghost Snatchers’ is a novel by James LaFond about an army of SJWs and their legions of color descending upon the last remaining redoubt of heritage Americans using Afghanistan War tactics. Originally scheduled to talk about his book, James joins us this evening just... Read More

Apr 17, 2021

General Dynamics – The Defender

In the world of modern military contracting, giants such as Lockheed and Boeing immediately come to mind. But back in the era of Cold War defense spending, one company stood out, reaching the number one spot in terms of sales in the 1980s – General Dynamics. With divisions spanning ground, naval and air based weapons... Read More

Apr 9, 2021

Ship in a Bottle – After Dark

“The trial never ends. We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons. And for one brief moment, you did. For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying... Read More

Mar 26, 2021

Cody Wilson – Defense Distributed

Described as a “praxis against American mono thought”, Cody Wilson’s work at Defense Distributed, which designs and builds machines that allow you to design and build implements of defense, has been an integral part of the modern conversation on the right and means to bear arms. Wilson himself has long held an interest in civic... Read More

Mar 17, 2021

Cyprus – a Nation Divided

Situated in one of the most beautiful parts of Europe, Cyprus is a popular destination for many tourists looking to enjoy the Mediterranean sun and an island lifestyle. Its natural advantages, however, also have attracted various powers throughout the millennia to occupy the island for its economic as well as strategic military value. To this... Read More

Mar 4, 2021

The Transgender-Industrial Complex

The one thing all of us have in common is we had a mother and father. A man, and a woman. No exceptions.  We are all the product of those that, evolutionarily speaking, were fit enough to make it to the next round. In the course of human history, there have been exceptions to this... Read More

Feb 23, 2021