This is my new podcast series, A History of the World According to David Rovics.  In this series, I take on history, starting with what we Americans call the Colonial Era, then working our way forward, tightening up the timeline as we go.

I'll upload new episodes every so often, gratis, here and on other platforms, including at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld.  You can find notes about each of the 16 episodes there now.  Eventually the whole series will be available for free download by anyone.
All of the episodes should be FCC-friendly for radio broadcast in the US, except for episode 11, because of the song, "Iceland, 2008."

For paid subscribers, 16 episodes are already up.  They can be found in the Everything folder -- if you're a CSA member, whether you signed up through Substack, Patreon, Bandcamp, or at davidrovics.com/subscribe, you should have gotten a welcome email with the link to the Everything folder, but feel free to contact me if you need that again!

A History of the World According to David Rovics

The danger of ignoring obvious historical parallels to unfolding events is the prospect of repeating them.

Just Like the Nazis Did

This episode explores events that took place between 1492 and the 1840’s.

The Alhambra Decree of 1492
The Golden Age of Piracy
Shays’ Rebellion
The War of 1812
The Merthyr Tydfil uprising
The Tolpuddle Martyrs
Colonization of Australia by capitalists and refugees
The Opium Wars in China
The Rent Strike Wars
Colonization of America by capitalists and refugees

Book recommendations that cover some of this history include A Peoples’ History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Villains of All Nations by Marcus Rediker.

A History of the World EPISODE 1

This episode covers events that took place between 1846-1916.

The Mexican-American War and the St. Patrick Battalion
The Fugitive Slave Act in Wisconsin
The Eureka Stockade uprising in Australia
John Brown and the abolitionist movement against slavery
The settler-colonial project in Oregon
Use of Egyptian mummies in the paper mills of Maine
Little Crow’s uprising of 1862 in Minnesota
The Highland Clearances in Scotland
The life and death of Joe Hill and the rise of the IWW
The Easter Rising in Ireland

Book recommendation for some of this history would be An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States as well as Loaded, both by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

A History of the World EPISODE 2

This episode covers events that took place from 1917-1921.

The rise and fall of the Working Class Union in Oklahoma
Danish syndicalism and the Battle of the Borso
World War 1 and the Pandemic of 1918
The Russian Revolution and US invasion of Russia
The Winnipeg General Strike
The Industrial Workers of the World and the lynching of Wesley Everest
The Palmer Raids
Kelly Butte and the use of prison labor in Oregon
The Tulsa Race Massacre
The Battle of Blair Mountain

There's no need to start at the beginning, necessarily, but all the episodes out so far can be found at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld, along with notes on each of them.

A History of the World EPISODE 3

1933-1941

The rise to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler
The International Brigades and the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War
Anti-immigration laws and sentiment in the west and the turning back of Jewish refugees
The kindertransports — rescuing Jewish children while leaving their parents to die
The SS Winnipeg and Pablo Neruda’s rescue of the Spanish refugees in France in 1939
Henry Ford and the popularity of fascism in the US
Ram Mohamed Singh Azad and resistance to colonialism in India
The US-imposed oil blockade on the Japanese Empire
The internment of Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans in the western US
Chiune Sugihara and the rescue of thousands of European Jews by “the Japanese Schindler”

On the Lincoln Battalion and the Spanish Civil War I recommend Carl Geiser’s Prisoners of the Good Fight.  On the rise to power of Hitler I recommend Berlin Diary by William Shirer.



A History of the World episode 4

1943-1949.  Listen to everything from the beginning at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld or just start with this one!

The arrests and executions of German communists such as Hamburg city councilor, Franz Jacob
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The boatlift of the Danish Jews to Sweden
The Dutch resistance and the killing of Henk Streefkerk
The Normandy landings
The liberation of Katharina Jacob and other Ravensbruck prisoners by the Red Army
The US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from Palestine, the Naqba
The Berlin Airlift of 1948-49

Book recommendation for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising would be The Bravest Battle by Dan Kurzman.  On Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Empire and the Bomb by Joseph Gerson.  On the Naqba, the Absence of Peace by Nicholas Guyatt.

A History of the World episode 5

2020-2022

The Centers for Disease Control suspend evictions nationwide (“Don’t Pay the Rent”)
New Zealand/Aotearoa becomes one of the very few places on Earth free of Covid-19 (“Aotearoa”)
George Floyd is executed on camera, and protests and riots explode across the US (“As I Watch Minneapolis Burn”)
Sustained protests take place across the US for months and millions of people say that Black lives matter (“Say Their Names”)
The Trump administration declares Portland and Seattle to be “anarchist jurisdictions” (“Anarchist Jurisdiction”)
Israel bombs Gaza again, with even bigger bombs than the last time (“Watch the Buildings Crumble”)
Palestine Action forms in the UK and starts destroying Elbit Systems factories (“Smashing Elbit Systems”)
There is a Heat Dome over Portland, Oregon and the temperature hits 116F/47C (“116 Degrees”)
Russian invades Ukraine, and the US imposes sanctions on Russia (“This is Not a Trade War”)
Georgia state police kill an activist named Tortuguita in a hail of bullets for trespassing (“Tortuguita’s Playlist”)

More episodes

This series basically ends here with 2022.  But for a lot of vitally important history on late 2023 and 2024, I have a three-part podcast series very much like this one which you can listen to at davidrovics.com/palestine.

A History of the World episode 16

I had a good time chatting the other day with the hosts of the podcast, Unfinished Business with Paul & Rob. We talked about Gaza and music and other things.  The interview with me begins 12 minutes in.

Unfinished Business interviews David Rovics

The words "collateral damage" have come to mean dead civilians. This song puts those words in context.


Collateral Damage

you loved your sweet country for all of your life
like your mother and father before you
the land runs deep, so deep in your blood
your flesh and your bone and your sinews
descendants and ancestors, deep as it goes
a relative circle as far as your eye
it can all be undone in the flash of an instant
mechanical thunder that bruises the sky

(chorus)
goodbye to my relatives, all of my life
never again will I see
you won't have a name when they fly the big airplanes
collateral damage is all you will be

from a faraway place where the language is strange
they come with their angry machines
and the clouds rain a metal that hurts when it falls
and it shatters the ground, making everything scream
and the children run crippled, the old people hide
the babies are caught in the rubble debris
but the strangers don’t know you, you are only a number
and how can they respect what they can’t even see

(chorus)

a mother is more than a number to a baby
who now has to grow up on it’s own
and a grandfather blinded and crippled at his age
is more than just a statistical drone
all of these people are human beings
and deserve to be more than a footnote
this cynical language of killing is killing us
caught like a bone in humanity’s throat

(chorus)

so if you see a ghost in the lonely wind blowing
like shrapnel the sound of the rain
and it’s speaking a language you don’t understand
but you know what it means just the same
it’s too late for innocence, all of that’s over now
don’t say that you didn’t know
when they come to collect for the damages owed
the collateral may be your own

(chorus)

Collateral Damage

Hammer

This piece was inspired by Conlon Nancarrow; not that I'm very familiar with his work, but his method was enough to inspire me to create a piece in a similar style to his own. It was made using one note, replicating it and dragging it to exactly the right place as many times as I needed, for both piano and harpsichord. That is, until I added in a new sound at the end, giving a lot of distortion to it.

I did not expect it to become as popular as it has, given that it was a rather momentary, on the spur, and random creation, and it is less conventionally accessible than many of my other pieces. My only regret may be that this has overshadowed my other work in terms of popularity.

I've created a sequel, and am currently working on a third Conlon Nancarrow inspired piece, but so far they've not measured up to the original. However, there are some interesting and exciting twists in the second piece, 'The Next Level', and I've put the third piece to the side, 'Piano Madness: The Spirit of Conlon Nancarrow Returns', having been unsatisfied with it, though I may attempt it again at some point.

Conlon Nancarrow Tribute

The San Patricios -- the international brigade you've probably never heard of (half a century before the Spanish Civil War).  This version is from Live in Rostrevor (2016) with Lorna McKinnon on harmonies.

St. Patrick Battalion

Episode 1: Tolpuddle Martyrs Part 1

There are various causes of deadly new novel viruses, as I have recently learned, along with many of you.  One of them is climate change, so we can be sure we'll be seeing more of them.  But whatever the reasons for the fatality rate of Covid-19, we do know why the last global pandemic, the so-called "Spanish Flu" in 1918 was so extremely deadly.  It was a pandemic caused by the particular conditions of the trenches of World War 1, and the movements of troops around the world at the end of the war.  This war virus ultimately killed more human beings on planet Earth in six months -- in every corner of the globe -- than the carnage of World War 1 caused in four years.

Recorded live as part of the Viral Solidarity Concert project at Big Red Studio on April 2nd, 2020.

The Pandemic of 1918

This trailer has been superseded. Please go to https://soundcloud.com/tayo-aluko/paul-robesons-love-song-by-tayo-aluko-the-trailer/

Paul Robeson's Love Song (trailer)(superceded)

Singer/songwriter, writer, podcaster (on Spotify, Substack & Patreon), libertarian socialist, dad, lover of life.

A History of the World episode 16

davidrovics

Related tracks