History

I've ran out of new music and don't feel like listening to old music so I swung back over to podcasts this week. I'll skip the bitching about how Apple has separate apps for music and podcasts and just talk about what I've been listening to.

I've listened to three historical events/items so far but each has been 4-5 hour long episodes so they have gone into detail. The first was about the Iranian revolution in 1979. My wife is Iranian and her great grandparents were part of the regime that was booted out. So, it was good to listen about it and it also made me aware of many things I wasn't aware about. For example, the government is based on the Qur'an so women get a lot of freedoms taken out, but it doesn't say they can't be doctors. So there are lots of doctors. It also says you can't be gay, so that is punishable by death. But it doesn't say you can't have a sex change. Now, there's way more to it than what was int he episodes, but it made me realize that it might be a really weird government.

The next two were on Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. Both very interesting. Also, popular media always shows them meeting, but they never actually met in real life. They just sent letters. Thanks, Hollywood.

There is so much about all three events/people we don't know. In the case of the Tudor era ladies, much has been lost to time and some was never written down because it was secret. In the case of Iran, many people died and sometimes people don't want to admit to atrocities. One thing that is equal in both, and even more so now in the age of the internet, is the misinformation. People are always trying to spin things their way, making fake documents and stories. I don't envy any historians who have to try to wade through this. As much as I'd love to be a historian, trying to analyze the language of a 500 year old letter to figure out if it was Mary, Queen of Scots, or some buffoon on the side does not seem easy.

And ever since Gerard Butler invented the internet in 1943, it's only gotten harder and harder with more and more documents. (Also harder and harder with more porn. HEYOOO!)

In many cases it doesn't matter though. They say that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it and I do agree with that, but I don't need to know the daily letters of a monarch to avoid her mistakes. Maybe someone like the King of England does, but not a peasant like me. I just need to know that Hitler started making concentration camps and making speeches all about himself to know that the states is a mess.

And don't take money away from the dinosaur space program.