The Martyr Made Podcast

This is part 2 of a podcast series on Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple movement. An eccentric loner as a child, Jim Jones finds purpose in the fight for racial and economic justice.

The podcast delves into the shocking history of Jim Jones and the People's Temple, emphasizing the radical shifts of the 1960s civil rights movement. It uncovers the tragic impact of racial violence in Los Angeles and explores the challenges faced by African Americans during their migration to the West Coast. Personal stories reveal the haunting legacy of racism and systemic oppression, while a poignant reflection on homelessness prompts deeper questions about societal responsibility. Listeners are drawn into a gripping narrative that intertwines hope and despair.

Guest Paul Meadlo, a soldier involved in the My Lai Massacre, discusses his role in the event. The podcast covers the events leading up to the massacre, the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and the impact on American society. It also explores the soldiers of Charlie Company and their training, as well as the horror and heroism of the My Lai Massacre. The aftermath of the massacre and the concept of a peace system are also discussed.

“Mexica ‘beliefs’ have been discussed confidently enough, but academics being natural theologians, usually at an unnaturally abstract pitch. My interest is not in belief at this formal level, but in sensibility: the emotional, moral, and aesthetic nexus through which thought comes to be expressed in action, and so made public, visible, and accessible to our observation.”-Inga Clenninden | Aztecs: An InterpretationHuman sacrifice is not a human universal. The institution emerges at a specific stage of human sociopolitical development, and recedes when the transition is complete. Rarely found among nomadic hunter-gatherers, ritual homicide is also nearly absent in archaic civilizations (except for a few residual instances such as royal burials). But human beings didn’t make the leap from nomadic foragers to pyramid builders overnight. Nestled between was a transitional stage, when newly-settled people faced the monumental task of ditching the ancient kinship system, sacrificing their freedom to kings, and reorganizing themselves into the first states. This fraught transition was imposed by violence, as primitive egalitarianism was replaced by class oppression, and human sacrifice was employed to define social boundaries and to stave off panic with brutal acts of self-assertion. Kings gloried in their total freedom, the less fortunate were terrorized into submission, and the gods looked on with dripping fangs and growling stomachs.If you would like to donate to help put some kibble in my bowl, you can do it at Patreon, or PayPal (email: martyrmade at gmail.com). Thank you to those of you who have donated, I really don’t know what to say other than that. Thank you.

Who’s hungry?Listen on iTunes!Listen on Stitcher! (seems to be some issue here… will try to fix)Visit MartyrMade Facebook page!

In which I take a break from banging out my human sacrifice episode to check in with my patient listeners.I’m working on a series of companion episodes to go along with Daniele Bolelli’s History on Fire series on the Spanish conquest of Mexico. If you haven’t heard the first episode of his series (available on iTunes and everything else) and the bonus episode he put out (available on his website), you really need to listen to them before you get into what I’m doing here. Cheers, everyone.

Modern Zionism began in the late 19th century with idealistic calls for spiritual renewal; by 1939, it had transformed into a desperate play for bare survival. Young revolutionaries do combat with Zionist elder statesmen for the soul of the movement. Hitler’s German Reich and Stalin’s Soviet Union do battle for Europe while everything between them is ground into the mud. Victims become victimizers, and the wider world gets an introduction to the dispute that has been confounding the British Empire for 20 years. Our episode begins with desperate Jews in Nazi Europe, it ends with the realization of the Zionist dream, for the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign state of Israel.

Riots. Massacres. The end of the world and everything in it. Palestinian Arabs finally find a voice in the wake of the 1929 massacres. Unable and unwilling to find a place for the Jews, Europe’s autoimmune disorder begins to tear the host apart. Desperate European Jews seek escape from Nazi persecution just as Palestinian resistance stiffens and the British become skeptical of the Zionist project.

Hi everyone. Been a long time. My day job has been downright abusive the last 2-3 months, but we’re back with Episode 4 of Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem. As the Middle Eastern regional order is hammered into place by the Entente powers, Zionism goes underground. Prosperity abroad and security in Palestine make the 1920s a relatively quiet period in this story. It’s been chaos behind us and nothing but chaos in front, but we’re in the eye of the storm. The British try a more inclusive approach toward the Arabs, but as the real effects of the Zionist project begin to be felt, tensions rise until the decade ends as it began… in violence.

We’re halfway through Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem, the history of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (If you haven’t listened to the first two episodes, you might want to do that for background, but this episode is an exploratory aside that can stand on its own as well.) I decided to throw something together to answer a few questions and get down in the weeds to talk about Arab tribal dynamics, honor culture, religion, and the mutual incomprehension that helped construct the Middle Eastern mousetrap a century ago, and remains an obstacle to progress in the region today.