Imbalances of Power: 10 Episodes on English Political Revolution and Evolution

So much of the political principals in the English speaking world – constraints on executive power, the rule of law over prerogative, the modern jury trial, private property owned by individuals over collective rights, and more – were born and took hold in the conflagrations and upheavals of British history, with millennia of class conflict and religious sectarianism that forced compromises and capitulations that are still profoundly impacting the modern world today.

Trace the evolution of power in England in these 10 episodes as Dr. Sam inspects how the stage was set for representative democracy, for colonization and it’s tragedies, for empire, and for the political structures in place across so much of the globe in the 21st century…

The Early Modern Period



The Middle Ages and Earlier


The Politics of Today



And see more in the Becoming Modern playlist and in The Middle Ages playlist, as well the four Episodes exploring Who was Shakespeare?


Things You Don’t Know

Did Columbus really think that he was going to reach Asia?
What little do we actually know about Shakespeare, the person?
Why is it misleading to apply the word “religion” to Judaism and Hinduism?
How did Tisquantum (popularly known as Squanto) already know how to speak English before the Pilgrims had even arrived?
Ever heard that Florida has no history? Dr. Sam wants you to know how incorrect that common perception actually is…
How did so much of the Epic of Gilgamesh remain hidden and forgotten – but preserved – for over 2,000 years until being rediscovered in modern times?
What did Netflix’s movie “The Dig” miss about the most dramatic part of the whole Sutton Hoo discovery?
What does the English Civil War of the 1640s tell us about the American Civil War, and about the present?
How is the growing field of genetics being used to both tear down and reinforce the myth of ‘Race’ today?
Who were the Freemasons of the 1700s? How did they grow from a local Scottish fraternity to a global network?
How can one mid-sized U.S. city – Tulsa, Oklahoma – serve as a microcosm of so much of the triumphalism and tragedy of American history?
Why can no one agree on what “capitalism” actually is? And why does a lack of clear definition call into question so many other myths of the modern world?
How – and why – did universities begin in the Middle Ages, long before the scientific revolution and the “Enlightenment”?
Was there really an Exodus from Egypt like the one described in the Bible?
How did accusing people of witchcraft further several political agendas of the time?
How did mountains on the Moon help bring about an end to the Earth-centric view of the universe?
Why did every Renaissance-era ruler in Europe have a court astrologer?
Does a single coin prove that Vikings came all the way to what’s now the United States?
Why is the dramatic 2019 fire at Paris’ Notre Dame actually a common occurrence for cathedrals around Europe?
Why were churches in southern Europe becoming more and more highly decorated and elaborately embellished in the 1500 and 1600’s, while at the same time churches in northern Europe were being stripped of almost all of their ornamentation?
Why don’t US citizens directly elect their President? Or have a more proportional Senate?
How might a series of volcanic eruptions in the Americas have spurred the earliest Viking raids and the creation of the myth of Ragnarok in Scandinavia, halfway around the world?
Are people really becoming less religious than they used to be?
What did followers of the ancient and secretive branch of Christianity, Gnosticism, actually believe?
How did changes in the climate in the 1600s lead people to think they were living in the Apocalypse? How did this help spur the creation of institutions and forces that still shape the world today?
Could all of British history have turned out differently if the winds on the English channel had shifted direction on just one day in 1066?