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#110 ‘the worst has happened’ - Ep 3 Scott vs Amundsen - a very British failure
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When Scott took a fifth man with him to the South Pole he signed each man’s death warrants. Not for the first time, Scott’s endless calculations for four men – pages and pages of scribbled notes on weights and distances and food and cooking fuel to carry – proved to be a waste of time. His surgeon had already warned him he’d calculated too little food per day for manhauling a sled. What’s more they only had four pairs of skis. They’d have to take it in turns to walk.
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#32 The curious case of inventing Scottishness
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25:02|Britain is gripped by fear of invasion. Government leaflet 'If the Invader Comes' calls for pepper and ‘a sharp knife to kill them if necessary.’ Churchill goes on BBC and says ‘we await undismayed by the impending assault. Perhaps it will come tonight.’ So why in private is Churchill saying he doubts the invasion would ever take place? (R)#02 A battle for air superiority? - Ep 2 Who really won the Battle of Britain?
29:38|Was the Battle of Britain a fight for Luftwaffe air superiority in order to enable an invasion? The Luftwaffe itself did not think so. It had another agenda altogether. (R)#01 Waterworld Flotilla - Ep 1 Who really won the Battle of Britain?
25:02|The Germans make extraordinary preparations for the immense task of invading Britain in 1940. Why bother when neither Hitler nor any senior German officer wanted to do it or thought it was possible?#118 'She will be called a man' (Jerome) - Ep 6 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church
39:45|Church Father, Jerome, wrote this about women who took vows of chastity for God. ‘When she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman, and will be called a man.’ What now survives from the Roman Empire – and the Church in particular - only tells one, heavily redacted, medieval version of the past.#117 The Rich man and Melania - Ep 5 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church
36:18|By AD400 all it took to be bishop was to be stratospherically wealthy. There was no demand that bishops even knew their bible until AD787.