Rank #1: Yellow Springs Ohio 1993

Jun 20 2015
14mins
Rank #2: Clarksdale Mississippi 1995

Nov 26 2014
13mins
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Rank #3: FRDH on the BBC: HIgh Crimes and Misdemeanours

Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it - listen to this important history and, please, share widely.
Nov 24 2019
56mins
Rank #4: FRDH: No Place of Greater Safety

The most infamous attack came in 2015, when the United States bombed an MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
Why? Are we seeing the end of the rules that governed warfare and provision of safe spaces for those caught in the crossfire? The origins of the Red Cross and humanitarian law go back to the middle of the 19th Century, to the battle of Solferino in 1859. The French Army under Napoleon III faced off against the Austrian Army led by Emperor Franz Joseph 1st. The politics behind the battle related to Italian independence but the battle is famous for much more.
300,000 men met on the field of battle near Solferino a small town between Milan and Verona. After nine hours of combat nearly five thousand were dead and more than 22,000 were wounded, many lying where they fell receiving no medical treatment.
A Swiss observer of the carnage, Henri Dunant, organized local people to bring some kind of relief to the stricken soldiers. Dunant, a man of private wealth, self-published a book about his experiences, it was the first step in the lobbying that would create the Red Cross in 1863 and the First Geneva Convention or the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field, the following year.
War today is different. Emperors no longer command armies into battle in great open spaces. Conflict is everywhere and involves everyone unlucky enough to be nearby.
In WW1 for every 10 soldiers killed 1 civilian died. Today that is reversed. For every soldier killed 10 civilians die.
Oct 25 2017
27mins
Most Popular Podcasts
Rank #5: Bible Study for Atheists: Don the Revelator

Dec 06 2019
14mins
Rank #6: FRDH: Republican Party Is Now a Faction How it Happened

And that is the heart of the crisis in America today: The Republicans are no longer a political party but a faction.
The danger of factions was noted at the foundation of the United States. In Federalist paper #10
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist_(Dawson)/10
James Madison defined faction as, "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
The Republican Party has been slowly morphing into a faction for almost 70 years. In this FRDH podcast the history of this change is told through applying the words of the Declaration of Independence to current Republican behavior.
The Declaration of Independence is really a bill of divorcement, a declaration before the community of nations of the causes leading the states to separate from Britain. As I read through the list this past holiday it was amazing how many could be applied to the Republican faction today.
Republican factionalism leads their elected representatives to upend existing Constitutional customs and norms and defamed the design of Madison, Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers by refusing to cooperate with anyone not of their group The design of the founders was a constitutional order that provided a mechanism for balancing the inevitable competing points of view that would grow in a society where people were free to follow different religions and debate ideas freely. Without respect for these rules the system cannot work.
The result is the United States has, over the last quarter of a century, become ungovernable and now, more than at any moment in my lifetime is on the edge of some kind of catastrophic disintegration.
Jul 18 2017
9mins
Rank #7: Civility And the Paradox of Tolerance

Share this podcast widely.
Jul 10 2018
12mins
Rank #8: America's Decades Long Incivil War

This documentary originally aired on BBC Radio 4. If you want to understand how America got to Trump you must understand this history recounted with great detail by Michael Goldfarb. Please share this documentary widely, urgently.
Mar 01 2019
59mins
Rank #9: WHAT IS A NATION? pt 5 From the ashes of Empires

Mar 25 2014
13mins
Rank #10: WHAT IS A NATION? pt. 2 Kurdistan

Apr 30 2014
15mins
Rank #11: FRDH Podcast Ep 4: Mind Of The South

Nov 10 2016
41mins
Rank #12: The Very, Very First Rough Draft of HIstory: What Assyria Can Teach Us

Mar 14 2019
15mins
Rank #13: Bible Study for Atheists: America, One Nation Under Whose God?

Spinoza, who wrote in Latin, coined the phrase Deus sive natura, God or Nature. Nature for Spinoza is is all there is. YOu can call it God if you like but it does not cause itself, or create itself. It is not the creator God of the Bible, anthropomorphized, and directing the fate of human beings and particularly the Israelites, his chosen people.
This was pretty revolutionary theory, for the late 17th century. By the late 18th century Jefferson and the Founders were moving it out of the realm of speculation and putting it into practice in the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment to the Constitution.
This is the second Bible Study for Atheists, a semi-regular feature of the FRDH podcast. Response to the first Bible Study for Atheists was overwhelmingly positive and is still regularly listened to at the FRDH podcast website. This edition of Bible Study for Atheists will provide background for those who wish to keep religion out of government in America and need to argue with evangelical friends and neighbors about why.
Jul 26 2017
10mins
Rank #14: Year 1 Trump report: Crazy or a member of the Club?

In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks at whether Trump is crazy or is he just a typical country club kind of person. Are his words about shithole countries and immigrants any different than you would hear most Sundays at the country club?
Among people of a similar social caste and with the unwritten rules of any club - you can say what you like and it will not be repeated outside the four walls of the clubhouse - when the talk turns to politics men and women, can vent their opinions on matters of politics and foreign affairs and race and immigration.
The language used, will frequently be exactly the same as Trump uses.
The solutions for political, economic and international problems will be as simplistic, although perhaps not expressed as crudely as Trump expresses his views. But they will be expressed with the absolute certainty of people who have money.
IN this FRDH Trump Year 1 anniversary podcast the focus is on understanding the President as a product of his class ... not a madman.
Jan 16 2018
12mins
Rank #15: Mind of the South

White Southerners are a powerful force in American politics. Not a majority - but the largest single political bloc - in the country. In the century after the Civil War this bloc was attached to the Democrats - Lincoln was a Republican -
and it acted as a drag anchor on the progressive forces that shaped the modern Democratic party. In response to the civil rights movement white Southerners shifted to the Republican party. Superiority is a key part of the white southern mindset, not just racial, but religious, as well. In the 18th and early 19th centuries the region saw a heavy influx of protestant immigrants from what is today Northern Ireland, Ulster.
In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb talks with Southern historians about the region and the mind of the South and traces the origins of recent events to well before Donald Trump entered politics.
And through the medium of the Republican party the mindset is spreading all over the country.
Aug 15 2017
11mins
Rank #16: Reality in the age of trump

Jun 20 2018
18mins
Rank #17: Brexit and the British Ambassador

Jul 13 2019
11mins
Rank #18: Bible Study for Atheists: Jewish Quarrels

Jun 09 2018
15mins
Rank #19: Republic or Empire: Pax Americana?

May 02 2019
35mins
Rank #20: Iran War Fever: a 40-year History

May 18 2019
10mins