Snakes & Otters Podcast
Episodes
Friday Feb 19, 2021
Episode 091 "Heroes: Louis XIV, The Sun King"
Friday Feb 19, 2021
Friday Feb 19, 2021
Francis takes the reins here and works hard to convince Robert and Martin that French king Louis XIV is a hero from the past worth emulating. Robert is willing to be convinced. Martin is busy testing his guillotine. Listen up to see how Francis fares in his endeavor.
Friday Feb 05, 2021
Episode 089 "Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement"
Friday Feb 05, 2021
Friday Feb 05, 2021
Civil rights is a story, and stories have characters. Martin takes the guys through a history episode examining some of those characters, the pioneers, leaders and martyrs of Civil Rights.
Friday Jan 01, 2021
Episode 084 "Wolves Upon Us: Battle of the Atlantic"
Friday Jan 01, 2021
Friday Jan 01, 2021
History time gang and we start a year long series on World War II with a Martin captained episode on the Battle of the Atlantic. We "dive" (see what I did there) into Wolf Pack tactics, hedgehogs, Enigma machines and the whole deal.
Friday Feb 07, 2020
Episode 037 "The Legacy of Rome"
Friday Feb 07, 2020
Friday Feb 07, 2020
Martin, Robert and Francis dive in to the long term legacy of Rome in the last of the 4 part series. There's also a glass raised to Terry Jones of Monty Python.
Friday Dec 20, 2019
Episode 030 "Our Heroes: Thomas Aquinas"
Friday Dec 20, 2019
Friday Dec 20, 2019
Robert captains a seriously deep episode on the father of Scholasticism, Doctor of the Church Thomas Aquinas. Francis is in awe and Martin works hard to keep up.
Reading much of Thomas Aquinas is a magnum opus unto itself, but his great masterwork, the Summa Theologica (often just called the Summa) is available online for free and in its entirety on the New Advent website.
And believe it or not, his Wikipedia page does a very good free biography of him and of his many great contributions to learning.
Friday Dec 06, 2019
Episode 028 "Rome: As Empires Go, This is the Big One"
Friday Dec 06, 2019
Friday Dec 06, 2019
In the second episode of our planned 4 part series on all things Rome, Martin puts the guys through their paces on the Roman Empire. He hones in on the idea of the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. Was it real? Martin brings in Adrian Goldsworthy's Pax Romana to start, and Francis counters with Edward Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire.
Friday Nov 15, 2019
Episode 025 "Our Heroes: Ulysses S. Grant"
Friday Nov 15, 2019
Friday Nov 15, 2019
Third Friday of the month means another "Our Heroes" episode. We started with Thomas More, went through film director and writer John Milius, and now we tackle general and president Ulysses S. Grant.
Martin starts with some of the newer biographies such as Grant by Ron Chernow from 2018, Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President by Geoffrey Perrett from 1998 and Grant by Jean Edward Smith from 2002 to lead the guys through why Grant is a hero and should be thought of as a great figure in US history. Francis recommends The Complete Personal Memoirs of General Ulysses S. Grant, written by the man himself which is still regarded as a relevant, useful source on the 19th century.
Friday Nov 01, 2019
Episode 023 "Our Debt to the Roman Republic"
Friday Nov 01, 2019
Friday Nov 01, 2019
In Part 1 of our planned four-part series on Rome, Robert kicks us off with an exploration of the virtues and vices of the Roman Republic. It becomes a cautionary tale on the 21st century with help from Francis and Martin.
Tom Holland's Rubicon from 2005 and Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus from 2007 and The Punic Wars from 2001 serve as launching points.