Presidential Leadership 101 holds that no President should enter a war without first cultivating the support of the American people. Efforts to do so without securing public support–the Mexican War, Vietnam–have been disasters.  No president should just suddenly and unconstitutionally attack another country without Congressional consultation, approval or public education, like the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor.  In the aftermath of such an act, it became more important than ever that Trump do what he should have done before the war–explain the reasons for the war, why it was necessary, and how it was consistent with our national security interests and our ideals. Trump utterly failed to explain why with even a scintilla of coherence why the war was necessary. He promised to commit war crimes, besmirching and weakening America’s moral reputation.  He set the stage by his failure of leadership for another disastrous failure in American foreign policy.

This episode analyzes and identifies these mistakes and shows, with the “Arsenal of Democracy speech” by Franklin D. Roosevelt in December 1940, how presidential speechmaking and the cultivation of public opinion in support of a successful foreign policy ought to be done.

No one, going back to the interpretation of William Gillette in the early years of the silent screen cinema, interpreted the Sherlock Holmes character with the authenticity that Jeremy Brett brought to the role in the ITV Granada series on British television (1984-1994). That series went back to the canonical short stories and lovingly adapted them to the screen, clearing away the distortions that past (and future) representations have rained down and continue to rain on the reputation of the detective.  This new recording is my latest attempt to interpret the Sherlockian short stories in a twenty-first century podcast adaptation, with respect to the great interpreters of the past, going back to Doyle, the originator himself, and moving forward to Brett. With apologies to Jeremy Brett, here is my acting effort to portray the style of Jeremy Brett in a Holmesian short story that Brett was not to portray in the TV Series (that series failing to film ALL of the short stories). One of the best of the stories that it left out was “The Reigate Squires,” from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.  And so, here is an attempted corrective to that omission, in the form of a pastiche of Jeremy Brett portraying the famous detective in the real Conan Doyle short story, “The Reigate Squires.”

I have never recorded an abridged version of a Sherlock Holmes mystery short story, not wishing to truncate the words of the great Conan Doyle.  However, it occurred to me that the time of three half-hour sitcoms may be too much for listeners to bear to listen to a Holmes short story.  In order to guard against this pity, I have recorded this abridged version of a humorous yet exciting Holmes short story, abridging it to under two half hour sitcoms in length.  I started out the recording thinking I could do so in twenty minutes.  It can’t be done while still doing justice to the story, to the writing and to the detective or the author. And so here in 47 minutes flat, is the abridged version, hopefully with all its essential glory retained.  –Your narrator, Rick Reiman.

We lost Ruth Paine this year on August 31.  Ruth was a great lady, one of the few heroes and persons of kindness in the run-up and the aftermath of the JFK assassination.  As Thomas Mallon has noted, we know so much about the moods, mind and appearances of Lee Harvey Oswald in the critical six weeks before the assassination because Oswald sometimes stayed at Ruth’s house, used Ruth’s typerwriter, and visited Ruth’s home the night before the assassination to retrieve something from her garage that she did not know was there: the rifle that Oswald used to kill JFK.  All this was possible because Ruth befriended Oswald’s wife, Marina, who certainly needed friends. HIstory might have turned out differently if Marina had returned the favor to Ruth and told her all that she knew, including the existence of the rifle in Ruth Paine’s garage.  This is my tribute to Ruth, who richly deserves it.

In my series of brand new readings of earlier recordings I had released in my more inexperienced narrative career, I introduce the latest of these: The Conan Doyle story. “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.”  Here again, Holmes must battle against no ordinary villain, but against a blackmailer of the most sinister antecedents. Has there ever been a bad guy more oily and rotten than Charles Milverton? Maybe the Grinch, perhaps.  But Milverton was a villain for all seasons, not just Christmas.  I hope that you enjoy it.  –Your audio narrator, Rick Reiman.

For Christmas this year, I roll out an encore presentation of my narration of Arthur Conan Doyle’s greatest short story, “The Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans.”  The English government is paralyzed by fear as its most closely guarded secret is stolen or bought by an international spy.  Its “most exalted person” (obviously Queen Victoria herself) is closely following the one man who can “save the state,” Sherlock Holmes.  Noth even Sherlock’s older and smarter brother, Mycroft, the other man vital to the state, can unlock the secret and save the plans.  Can Sherlock?  Hold your breath as Queen Victoria does in this story, and listen and find out.

If you enjoy these recordings, send an email to rreiman33@gmail.com and let me know.  They may be labors of love, but they take a lot of time and energy and I would like to know if people are listening and enjoying them.  Thank you!  –Your narrator, Rick Reiman

I continue the narration of A. C. Bradley’s famous lectures on the Tragedies of William Shakespeare, one of the finest in all of the critiques of these legendary plays.

In keeping with the other two encore recordings of major entries in the Sherlock Holmes canon of short stories, the “Abbey Grange” and the “Second Stain.”  I narrate once again, in what I hope will be a new and improved cover of “The Adventure of Black Peter.”   I hope you enjoy this entry in Sherlockean entertainment, on the eve of this holiday season. Sincerely yours, your narrator, Rick Reiman.

And now for something completely different…

Here is an audio introduction to the English literary critic, A.C. Bradley, and his legendary lectures on the high tragedies of William Shakespeare: the plays of Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear.  Bradley has been mute too long, buried in the mass of materials not properly advertised or displayed to the public in Project Gutenberg. If to live in the light is to to live in the light of Shakespeare, to hear the light of truth is to listen to A.C. Bradley.  These obscure podcast episodes of mine will hardly rescue either the Bard or Bradley. But if you enjoy this episode please let me know with a brief note to rreiman33@gmail.com and I will record more of the great lectures on Shakespeare of A.C. Bradley.  Signed, your narrator, Rick Reiman.

Close on the heels of the brilliant “Adventure of the Abbey Grange” was one of Conan Doyle’s masterworks, his short story, “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder.” Any writer who wishes to toss into the ring a Sherlock Holmes pastiche of his own, will likely think twice before doing so upon reading this story, which bids fair to be close to the pinnacle of Doyle’s work. While I recorded it some years ago during the early days of my acquaintance with the art of podcasting, I have refined that art to a degree.  Be however much that may be, this second version pushes the limits of that art, at least to farthest horizon of which I am today capable.  I hope that it will be found by everyone to be enjoyable. –Rick Reiman, September 26, 2025.

I have had the pleasure of recording nearly all of the Sherlock Holmes short stories for this podcast, but one stands out among all the others, both as a recording effort and as a story by the great Conan Doyle.   That is THIS story, a BRAND NEW RE-READING of “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.”  I first recorded this in the summer of 2022, in the early stages of my recovery from my first bout with COVID-19.  You can still listen to that version, if you go back through my episodes to that one recorded in mid-2022.  My raspy voice is unmistakable, but I soldiered on and did what I always do when I record these short stories: act the parts with all the fervor and ability that I can possibly muster. And why not make the effort even as I gasped for breath?  Conan Doyle was the master mystery structuralist, and a writer without peer in melding mystery with wit.  Never has the Holmes character seemed so keen or brilliantly drawn by the author.  The clues are parceled out just well enough that the reader feels he is on the path to a solution right alongside Holmes, although of course it is all a conceit that Doyle’s character Holmes (if he was just a character) shows is impossibly pretentious.

In this NEW READING AND RECORDING, I have tried to create as sonically and theatrically perfect a rendering of the story as possible, befitting its pride of place as first in the Sherlock Homes canon. It represents my learning as an audio narrator of the past six years. If you listen to no other of my recordings, LISTEN to this one.  And, if you do, I dare you to stop listening then.  Congratulations for chancing upon this rare opportunity to listen to the nearly-perfect recording of a nearly-perfect tale.

Here is an audio narration by Dr. Richard Reiman of this famous FDR speech.

“The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” by Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, was one of two stories in the canon which was told not in the voice of Dr. John Watson but in third-person.  Intended as the basis of a play, a one-act drama, it consists mainly of dialogue between two individuals at a time. Most of the time Holmes is one of the two persons, but not always.  The device was necessary to make the surprise of the story possible.  The story was published in the UK and in the US in 1921.  It is one of Doyle’s later compositions, but it is a crackerjack story all the same.  Narrated by Dr. Rick Reiman.

Well, it has been quite an odyssey.  Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic episodes have been narrated by readers like Stephen Fry, for a cost; and by readers like your host, for free, in the spirit of the 18th century Enlightenment. This series has been other-directed–directed to others–without charge or fee. The hope is to spread cheer and enjoyment of the mysteries of an extraordinary writer and his remarkable detective.  Please let me know, at rreiman33@gmail.com, if you have enjoyed this series.  And may I suggest that you listen to some of the best of these recordings, which I will identify soon, but which have long been available here at Audibly Speaking, my podcast.

–Your host, Rick Reiman, wishing you happy listening.

In this year of 2025, we celebrate the centennial of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  I have recorded the first three chapters of the heartbreaking novel, and the latest chapter is out today!  I have links to all three chapters below should you wish to listen to them in order.  Perhaps you, too, admire the green light on the far horizon.  Watch out, because it may be the chimera of the “American Dream,” an apparition best left in quotation marks as airy as the cocktails on Gatsby’s West Egg veranda.

Chapter One of The Great Gatsby

Chapter Two of The Great Gatsby

Chapter Three of The Great Gatsby (Below!)

In 1922, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle capped his marvelous series of Sherlock Holmes story with an entry in the series to rival any of his best: “The Problem of Thor Bridge.” How fitting that Doyle’s last great Holmes story may be the final Holmes story narrated by yours truly, Rick Reiman, for I am moving on to other academic contributions that may better suit my talents and more greatly increase the sum of my contributions to academic learning in these, the two thousands and twenties.

Some readers, who are avid fans of the atmosphere of the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes tale, “The Adventure of Shoscomb Old Place,” may be disappointed with the hastily wrapped conclusion that Doyle sought fit to conclude the story.  As a pastiche, a different ending concludes this audio narration of the tale. Will Sir Robert Norburton get his just deserts after all. Listen and learn to find out.

A hoped-for interview ahead with Gabra Zackman of audio narration fame is the news in today’s show on the channel. We also look back on the perils of narrating Sherlock Holmes while “falling out” with Covid, as well as the advances in the art of audio narration thanks to the progress of time.   Something different: Sherlock Holmes, sick with Covid, this time on AudiblySpeaking!

What a whimsical tale Dr. Watson has to tell of Jabez Wilson and “The Red-Headed League!” Between the laughter and the mirth that Holmes teases out of the tale, there emerges a dastardly crime so cunning that only Holmes himself could solve it.  John Clay, the “fourth smartest man in London,” according to Holmes, and probably a man working for Moriarty, the second smartest man, is plotting to bankrupt a vital English bank. But the narrator should not reveal the plot.  He simply takes the part of the players, in this narration by your audio interpreter of all things Holmesian, Rick Reiman. He hopes, and knows that, thanks to the brilliant writing of Arthur Conan Doyle, that you will enjoy it.

This is your narrator for this series, Dr. Rick Reiman. Americans know too little about the Early American Republic, the Republic of President Thomas Jefferson, leading to the War of 1812 and its aftermath, the Era of Good Feelings.  In this overview of Chapter 7 from The American Yawp, I summarize its major themes.  This will benefit my students, who must complete a Major Project in which they identify the major fractures in American life and politics from the 1780s through this major period in American history.

Hello, everybody! Rick Reiman here, audio narrator for Audibly Speaking. On rare occasions, I re-record a short story in the Sherlock Holmes series written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Not that I think I did a bad job in my reading the first time around. But I am quite certain that I am doing better in my reinterpretation of these stories as I go along, both sonically and artistically.  Therefore, I look back on those Sherlock Holmes stories that I think are Doyle’s very best and try to do them (and my audience) greater justice than I did the first time around.  I think that these stories, albeit on a digital platform, help us live out our digital lives more productively and in ways less likely to lead to digital addiction.  They are my contribution to the digital minimalism movement, for more information about which I heartily recommend the YouTube channel of Laura Malvoyante.  In what Holmes would call “my own small way,” this is a contribution of mine to that movement.

The story of American history, the “American Yawp,” begins with this chapter, Indigenous America, spanning 10,000 years of history. There is nothing quite like it in history, as you will hear when you listen to it.

What a pleasure it was for me to interview Laura Malvoyante about her insights into society’s growing need for digital minimalism in the face of the addictiveness of tech. Technology is a voracious feeder on the limited and priceless commodity of time in our lives.  At the same time, sometimes the antidote to this invasion is technology itself, in the form of devices that can force upon ourselves, in their build capacity and form factors, a more limited and rational relationship to the digital plenitude.  Laura’s matchless intelligence on this topic,  and her own personal journey through digital addiction and the nexus between disability and device, make this one of the most important and timely episodes presented on Audibly Speaking.

Move over Charles Dickens!  Stand aside, Scrooge!  For a nineteenth century English Christmas tale without parallel, you cannot do better than Sherlock Holmes’s conveying of the Christmas message in his discover and commutation of a felony, all to save a soul in the season of forgiveness of this time of year. My narration of this tale is my Christmas present to all of my listeners.  And now, happy listening ion the frosty air of crackling fires, ice crystals, and Sherlock Holmes himself.

This opinion piece on Medicare Advantage concerns the “hard-sell” that private insurance companies make this time of year on behalf of “Medicare Advantage,” the private insurance alternative to Original Medicare.  I record this podcast episode to warn seniors to do their homework, and ask the question, why are insurance companies so anxious to sell their Medicare Advantage plans and not the Supplement plans that offer the insurance companies so little of a profit margin? Hmm…maybe the question answers itself.  TV commercials give only one side of the story, the private insurance companies’ side.  They don’t lie, but they leave out much that seniors need to know before making what could be a very bad choice.

In our post-truth world, ignorance about Medicare has reached avalanche proportions.  The greatest and most secure health care system in the world is now suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the form of babbling malcontents whose ignorance of Medicare is only matched by their outrage at it.  Just go to Facebook or some other social media cesspool and you will see a lot of such heat, but precious little light.  Medicare complainers, please heal yourselves and do a little, or preferably a lot, of research. Please!

Today, Sunday, November 10, 2023, I reflect on the events of Veterans Day Weekend 1963, when JFK and Oswald lived out their last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, November 10-12, 1963. We review what we know of those fateful days. Next, I talk about the events of Wednesday, November 13 through Friday, November 22, 1963, to be published here on Audibly Speaking before Friday, November 22, 2024.

In this final episode about my opinions and experience with learning Medicare for retirement, I spread the word that many people are talking about:  Medicare Advantage plans and Part D Prescription Drug plans are undergoing big changes, premium hikes and in some cases disappearing acts during this Annual Election Period between October 15 and December 7. If you are on Medicare Advantage OR a Part D prescription drug plan (you can’t be on both) you need to research Medicare.gov to see if you have a plan that will continue to have the same benefits and premiums as in 2024. In most cases, benefits are going down, premiums are going up and some plans are actually shutting down.  Watch the Youtube videos by Mathew Claassen on Medicare for expert and accurate advice to follow. This episode is only my opinion and personal experience. It may not be yours.

In this third part of my series on what I have learned, or thought I have learned, about Medicare I talk about some myths I have discovered about Medicare Advantage and Part B.  While Medicare Advantage may be the right choice for some people, I cringe when I watch the commercials during this Annual Election Period and see the slick pitch that insurance companies make to see the cash cow (for them) of MA.  Here are the realities that I see from behind just some of the myths about both Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part B.

What in the world is Part D?  My personal experience learning what I appreciated to find out about Medicare Part D coverage is the subject of this this brief podcast episode. Disclaimer: These are my opinions and what my impressions were. This is no substitute or necessarily as accurate as your doing your own research on Medicare.  It is just an opinion piece on my reflections of my own experience.

Medicare is confusing– what an understatement. Two years out from retirement I decided to try to understand it, suspecting that it might take me that long.  I was not wrong!  Now that I am retired and am now on Medicare, I tell this slightly autobiographical tale of what I think I have learned about Medicare in hope that it will either be interesting to or helpful for others, whichever the case may be.

Listen to this audio version of my Youtube video explaining the “Single Bullet Theory” of the JFK assassination, and WHY IT IS TRUE.  Many conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination discredit themselves by disputing this thrice-confirmed theory first revealed by the Warren Commission in 1964.

In many ways, I regard this as my best recording of a chapter from “The American Yawp” yet.  I have deleted nothing from the text edited by its editors, Joseph Locke and Ben Wright.  I have added passages of my own where I think additions were needed to clarify what the original authors were trying to say.

Late in his authorial career, in the 1920s to be precise, Arthur Conan Doyle, who was then deeply immersed in beliefs of mysticism and seances, had occasion to pair his rational detective, Sherlock Holmes, with a case about vampires. Did Doyle change the hyper-rational Holmes to suit the author’s new beliefs? Listen and find out!

In the course that covers the first half of American History, the chapter on the Sectional Crisis of the Union, also sometimes called “The Impending Crisis,” leading to the American Civil War, is the penultimate such chapter.  Next to the magisterial, Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the crisis written by the great historian David Potter, that one audio narrated by Eric Martin, this chapter from the Open Educational Source textbook, “The American Yawp,” narrated by me, Dr. Rick Reiman, surveys the crisis well in capturing succinctly its fateful highlights. Listen, learn and enjoy. An historian myself I have added a few sentences of my own to improve, I firmly believe, on the chapter’s effort to make the Sectional Crisis more understandable.

No ordeal in American history changed America so much or so enduringly as the American Civil War.  Listen as well as read of the odyssey and what it was all about, or just listen with this audio offering.

Hector St. John de Crevecouer, a French immigrant to American wrote this classic essay, “What, Then, is this New Man, the American?” in 1782, as American Independence from Britain loomed.  Was he correct in his descriptions of Americans then?  Do his descriptions accurately describe Americans today?  How was he wrong then, if he was, and how do his descriptions fail to characterize Americans today, if indeed they do?

Join me, Dr. Rick Reiman, for my reading of the chapter on British North America, Chapter 3 to be precise, from The American Yawp, the celebrated Open Source textbook on the history of the United States and the lands that would become the American Nation.

Here is my audio narration of “Colliding Cultures,” a history of European and English colonization of early colonial America, a clash of cultures indeed.  This is from the Open Source textbook, “The American Yawp,” free to anyone interested, as we all should be, in American history.

In this epic short story, Arthur Conan Doyle exceeds himself.  “The Naval Treaty” is the longest of all of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories.  It contains allusions to his other stories and many humorous asides as well as quite larger-than-life characters, some almost Dickensian in their strangeness.  Holmes has to sift his clues and there are almost too many for him to select the relevant from the superfluous. “Almost,” but not too many–not for Sherlock Holmes.

World War II was a change agent in history like no other.  It can best be understood in pieces, barely grasped as a whole.  In this audio narration of Chapter 24 of The American Yawp, a U.S. History Textbook available as a free, modifiable educational resource, I narrate the American history piece.  The chapter sets it within the context of all other pieces.  I am that rare narrator who is also an historian.  I have taken the opportunity to make a few important corrections to the text, where I have perceived errors, and have added to it where I see important omissions.  I, too, offer the text free to my listeners, in the spirit of educating my fellow citizens and improving their lives. If you enjoy this recording, please let me know by emailing me a sentence or two to this effect at rreiman33@gmail.com.  I can track clicks and downloads but this is my only way of determining if anyone is actually listening.  Happy listening to all.

History Speaks again!  My audio narration of “The Great Depression,” chapter twenty-three from the blockbuster Open Resource textbook, The American Yawp, is now out. As an historian myself, I have enhanced this recording and narrative by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright with a few additions of my own, in keeping with the democratic principles of Open Educational Resources (OER), which this document is.  My contributions to this document, freely distributed as all OER are, are dedicated to the preservation of democracy in these United States, a dedication here that is mine and mine alone, not to be confused with the purposes of the authors of this textbook.  My hope and my contributions to this recording, including my edits and narration, represent a plea that all listeners vote for the Democratic nominee for President this November, to save our splendid Democracy. America… to thee, I sing.

Motive.  It is the thing that all juries want but do not need, in our system of justice, to determine guilt or innocence, The Warren Commission did not hazard a hypothesis on the question of Oswald’s motive, seen singularly.  But they did list a series of potential motives, seeded by his early life, and seen by his comments and those of others, that might have played a part in the formation of motive.  Here I summarize this penultimate chapter in The Warren Report, and argue that there is much to praise and much to critique about the Commission’s handling of this critical phase of the life of the assassin.

This chapter may be seen as the Big Enchilada of the Report.  Did the Warren Commission provide a credible investigation of the possibility of conspiracy in the crime?  The staff wracked its collective brains to see where any possible conspiracy might have emerged given the facts in the case. It also tracked down leads offered by private citizens that seemed the least bit credible.  This chapter of more than 130 pages, the longest in the Report, is the fruit of their work.  One thing seems clear from this chapter and this podcast episode: Jack Ruby’s shooting of Oswald either was not premeditated or was reached just seconds before he rushed up to Oswald in the basement of the Dallas city jail and set countless conspiracy theories into motion.

Continuing our summary of The Warren Report investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we come to Chapter Five.  The whole tenor of the investigation changed with the subject of this chapter.  It concerned the events that led to the federalization of the investigation itself, the violation of Oswald’s civil liberties in the Dallas jail climaxing in the assassination of Oswald himself by Jack Ruby during the transfer of Oswald from one jail to another.  The events of this chapter transformed the assassination from something seemingly weird to something seemingly unbelievable. In this summary, host Rick Reiman discusses the oddities of a criminal justice cast of characters in Dallas more concerned with reputation and appearance than the requirements of law and truth.  Chapter Five reminds us that the assassination and Dallas’s part in it were shaped by the realities of time and place, a very different time and place than any we are familiar with today.

In Chapter Four we have an overview of the evidence against Oswald.  Here I summarize the chapter.

A recent podcast episode by the excellent historians of the JFK assassination, Gerald Posner and Fred Litwin, prompted this podcast episode of mine. Given the need to speculate about so much that is important about the behavior of Oswald on November 21 (pre-assassination) and November 33 (post-assassination), is it possible to employ speculation as a technique for getting at the truth of why Oswald assassinated JFK, and what his post-assassination purposes might have been?  Can informed speculation ever rise to the level of good evidence?  And if so, what are the standards that such evidence must meet to achieve this state? Questions, questions, questions. I hope that Messers. Posner and/or Litwin respond to these questions, which are expanded upon in this episode of Audibly Speaking.

It’s core findings remain untouched.  Its conclusions have stood the test of time. In this episode we see the tour de force that lies at the foundation of this seminal chapter in The Warren Report: Chapter Three.  While subsequent research has expanded on the insights we gain from this chapter, which distilled the most important work of the Warren Commission, nothing has seriously contradicted its fundamental conclusion. What has deteriorated is not the Warren Report conclusions. No, those have stood the test of time.  What has deteriorated is the American people’s ability to separate fact from fiction and to accept fact even when it is staring them in the face–as it is here.  Will Americans continue to follow the carnival barkers of conspiracist thinking?  Americans through “Their government,” as FDR would say, has, with the Warren Report, done them the favor of representing them well.  Will the Americans people in the age of Trump accept the truth or follow the carnival barkers?

Today I summarize the Warren Report’s Chapter Two, “The Assassination.” It is a chapter that promises much but really delivers less than meets the eye.  Focusing on the details that form the background of the assassination, and continuing by trading in the shadowlands of lacunae about the event, chapter two is a mere overture to the real opera of the assassination, the fireworks that begin with Chapter Three, “The Shots from the Texas School Depository.”  Stay tuned for that chapter in our next summary episode on Audibly Speaking.

The Warren Commission’s Warren Report, at 888 pages, is a long slog.  For those for whom it is too long, I begin here a series of summaries of each of the chapters in the Report.  Each chapter exhibits the strengths and weaknesses of the Commission’s investigations.  The Commission’s faults can be exaggerated and it accomplishments overlooked.  This series opens with “Summary and Conclusions,” including one of the most controversial, if not the most controversial, sentence in the entire Warren Report.

We have an intermission episode in this series on the JFK assassination, with a personal view of the memories of the host on the assassination and why he was not taken in by conspiracy theories, in contrast to so many of his boomer cohorts along the way.

Today, Audibly Speaking reviews the magisterial book by famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  We revisit the things that make it unique and utterly unanswerable as a riposte to the crazy conspiracy theories that still pollute the writings about the 35th US President.

In this sidebar episode tracing the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald and we step back from the forest to examine the trees of the story. In this politically portentous year of 2024, learn what the conspiracy nonsense can do to help us save American democracy. And begin to learn why the strengths of the Warren Commission and its Warren Report far out weigh the particular weaknesses examined in a previous episode on Audibly Speaking.

Why did Lee Harvey Oswald go east from his boarding house in the aftermath of the JFK assassination, only to go west before his fatal encounter with Police Officer J.D. Tippit on November 22, 1963? The only possible answer was that his plans must have changed, along with his destination, at least temporarily. Ironically, however, his confrontation with Tippit, murderous though it was, may not have changed his destination at all, because he continued his journey west in its wake. An advertisement in the Dallas Morning News, never examined until now, may explain this mystery, as I explain in this episode.

We have now arrived at the critical moments.  What happened as the assassination occurred and what do we know of Oswald’s behavior during these most important of minutes? It turns out we know a great deal–so much in fact that we can even infer what was going on in Oswald’s mind on a minute by minute basis.  In this episode, we also speculate about the most mysterious of all questions. Where was Oswald going when he left his boarding house after the assassination? Here we engage in informed speculation, with an emphasis on the word “informed.”

How to help students understand the overwhelming evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald (and Oswald alone)?  Given the power of the evidence, no help ought be needed! Perhaps a concise run-through will do the trick?  Or a solemn and stately documentary? In a time when facts alone hold no sway, what is an historian to do? The answer is to marshal the evidence one more time, always one more time, until the bell, at long last, rings.  Even though it has been clanging now for more than sixty years, let up look at a day in the life of Oswald, the last day before the assassination, as the camera of evidence before him and before us, followed his every step, and recorded everything we need to know to state the obvious: that Oswald did it, and that he was a man utterly without help along the way.  This is a change of pace in our JFK series, a look directly at only one thing, the evidence against Oswald.

What was Lee Harvey Oswald up to in New Orleans between his failed assassination attempt against Retired General Edwin Walker in April 1963 and his trip to Mexico City in late September in pursuit of a visa to Communist Cuba?  What was the mix of motives that drove Oswald in these critical months prior to November 1963, when the president of the United States unexpectedly came into his sights.  Listen to this podcast episode for some insights into these questions.

In this final part of the three-part podcast series, we look at Oswald’s interior concerns in the days and hours before 12:30 pm CST on November 22, 1963.  In so doing we elucidate the most elusive of questions, the question of motive.

In this three-part series, we go into the mind of the assassin and try to understand Oswald’s motives.  This helps us understand why conspiracy thinking about the assassination makes no sense. If you believe that Oswald lacked motive, ability or opportunity to shoot JFK, a conspiracy seems to be a necessary alternative. In fact none of these three things were lacking in 1963.  There was no need for conspiracy. Oswald, however unbalanced, was actually quite smart.  His plans for greatness, deluded as they were, come down to two. Colored by the Cold War and the politics of a performative president, they gave him motives and opportunities galore to assassinate JFK. The conspiracy shysters don’t tell you about these realities and the politicians and explainers in the 1960s also did not want to talk about the geopolitics of the era, factors that make the mysteries of the assassination disappear, manufactured as they were by storytellers who only wanted to tell part of the story.

This is your host, historian Rick Reiman.  Go to my YouTube Channel, “JFK Demystified,” to view the first episode of a series of short videos called “On Background: Seeking the Hidden JFK Assassination.”  The series is on the evidence that is hiding in plain sight, namely the factors that block our view from the evidence that makes the assassination a simple thing to understand.  We look at the confusion regarding standards of evidence and proof, the con-men- conspiracy theories that lead people astray, the historical context that sends us back to the real world, and the accumulated evidence confirmed again and again by a series of investigation, each one clearing up the few original questions that arose from a legitimate concern that some of the evidence was hidden. It was, but it is hidden no more, a simple fact that speaks volumes about how history really works. Join me on YouTube for this series, “On Background.”  See you there.

Continuing the series of JFK assassination episodes in this, the 60th year since the assassination, we look not at the thinking of the CIA, FBI, Warren Commission, Mob, Cuba, Russia or any of the other institutions that have been falsely imagined as being behind it, but inside the mind of the man who actually did it, and did it alone: Lee Harvey Oswald.  It may not be the most popular theory, but facts don’t have to be popular. They only need to be true.  This is an essay by myself, Rick Reiman, and narrated by myself, in response to the excellent insights of Burt Griffin, who wrote the new book, JFK, Oswald, Ruby: Politics, Prejudice and Truth. A staff member on the Warren Commission (1963-1964). Griffin challenges historians to take the assassination seriously as history, something that is simple to understand once contextualized in history.  Frankly, historians have not recognized their responsibility in this regard.  Historians, when are you going to do your jobs, and take this intersection of the Cold War and cvil rights, which is what the assassination was, seriously as history?  Until they do, this will continue to be a blot, a stain and a disgrace for the historical profession, as it has been for sixty years.

Today, your host on Audiblyspeaking, Dr. Rick Reiman narrates his assessment of this year’s surprising news in the JFK assassination folklore: the claim by former secret service agent Paul Landis that he found a backseat bullet that allegedly refutes the famous “single bullet theory.”  The subtitle of today’s show might appropriately be, “Not so Fast.”

Most of the thousands of books on the JFK assassination are re-cyclings and re-spinnings of the foundational myths of the first generation of conspiracy fabulation tales. To hear Rob Reiner’s repetition of the tired magic bullet trope that we have heard before–you know the one that has long since been debunked–it seems that the half-story hoaxes that I discussed in my first Warren Commission episode two weeks ago are not just historical relics of the past.  They continue to be retailed to an unsuspecting public.  Here is the rest of the story of the very-unmagical second shot in the assassination, as well as the first shot, told in the epistemological technicolor of the truth.

One of the chief reasons why people still believe the nonsense of a conspiracy in the assassination of John F. Kennedy is because of the fiendishness of those, out of malice or effort at pecuniary gain, deliberately lie to their readers and tell only half of a story they know too well to be false.  We examine two of the many half-story hoaxes, as I call them, which try to spread the lie of conspiracy by covering up the proofs of no-conspiracy which have grown to mountainous proportions in the 60 years since 1963.

Tom Buchanan moves his sad life from East Egg to New York City, and all those in his orbit pay the price in chapter two of this archetypal novel of the Jazz Age. The contrast between the glitter and the gutter, and the sadness of the last chance is seen in Myrtal, another person used and discarded by Tom.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, was both a product of, and epitaph for, the Jazz Age of the Roaring ’20s.  Journey to West and East Egg again, as your host Rick Reiman narrates one of the great American novels of the twentieth (or any other) century.

Today is November 20, 2023, two days before the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  On the eve of this event, we look at the flagship government investigation of the crime, the Warren Commission and its work. Ironies abound in discussing the Commission. Its Report  has been savaged by many, most of whom have failed even to read it.  Critics, beginning with the conspiracy “buffs,” have largely cherrypicked the twenty-seven volumes of the documents and hearing transcripts for evidence in support of their claims, or for evidence that could be made to support their claims with sufficient imagination and blinders to ignore the other documents and testimony in the same volumes that counter their claims.  So it is with the Commission’s alleged “mistakes.”  In this two-part reflection on the work of the Warren Commission (1963-1964), we look at the Commission’s supposed errors or “mistakes,” and separate its actual failings from “unavoidable inabilities,” which, as we hear in this podcast, are not the same thing.

Part Two of this reflection series will focus on the strengths of the Warren Commission, strengths so powerful that they have survived three generations of scrutiny since that terrible day in Dallas.

You may have seen and heard the classic story of “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” here on History Revisited and Audibly Speaking before, but this is a new version, now with annotations included from the observations in Leslie S. Klinger’s The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Volume II (New York: Norton’s, 2005).  Listen to the story and the annotated digressions to journey through the dual labyrinths of the plot-line and the mind of Arthur Conan Doyle, in this, one of my all-time-favorites in the Sherlock Holmes canon!

In the run up to Halloween, there no more terrifying, thrilling and horrifying story in the Sherlock Holmes canon than this, “The Cardboard Box.”  Publishers were frightened to publish it and its author, John Watson, was persuaded to do so only on his deathbed.  Listeners are strongly encouraged to listen only at noon, in the bright sunshine, when demons are at a distance and vampires asleep in their coffins. If you must listen to this of an evening, have someone with you to hold onto.  Listen…if you dare.

In advance of the publication of Paul Landis’s new book on his memory as a Secret Service agent in the JFK detail on November 22, 1963, Landis has made a claim that has roiled the class of people interested in the controversies involving the JFK assassination.  In response to those parts of the claim that have been published (since the book itself will not come out until October) your host for this podcast, Rick Reiman, looks at the logical problems of the Landis claim, and why it should be considered little more than a myth and a mistaken memory.

This is Dr. Rick Reiman, professor of History at South Georgia State College.  Here I narrate sections from the National Archives’ public domain publication, “Putting the Bill of Rights to the Test.”  I read sections on the application of the First and Fifth Amendments. Listeners are encouraged to download the complete publication on the National Archives web site. The complete publication contains questions and primary documents that will enhance your experience in listening to this podcast episode and learning more about the Constitution.

Here is my review of the blockbuster movie by Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer.”  It is a tour de force for so many reasons, but gaps in Oppenheimer’s biography still remains, as I try to show in this review.

In 1940, American democracy was gravely threatened as never before, and only the American people stood against it as a reliable line of defense.  Could we say the same today if American democracy were similarly threatened?  Here is an analysis of the famous “Arsenal of Democracy” speech, annotated by your host,  Rick Reiman

A Russian Count and his mysterious son make an appointment with a doctor to examine the Count for catalepsy.  Catalepsy being the doctor’s speciality, it makes sense.  But the resident patient who lives at the doctor’s office may have a lively, or is it deadly, interest in the Russian visitors, unbeknownst to the doctor. What could possibly go wrong?  Everything, unless Sherlock Holmes can penetrate the fog of crime in this short story by the inimitable Conan Doyle.

Your audio narrator, Rick Reiman, takes you from London to the English Midlands, as we journey with Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and “the stockbroker’s clerk,” in quest of the solution to a mystery and a hideous crime.  Sherlock Holmes solves it only at the very end, and only with the aid of one of the criminals involved. See, or rather hear, if you can beat him to it.

The odyssey is almost complete: Virtually the entire canon of Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle have now been recorded, available free to the public, by the work and from the voice of audio narrator Rick Reiman. You can also catch the classic Hound of the Baskervilles, either here on AudiblySpeaking (available at the podcast by that name on Apple Podcasts) or at Librivox.org. This is an other-directed public service worthy of the spirit of the eighteenth century Enlightenment. Here is “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” for your enjoyment.

You listened to the sneak preview of this Arthur Conan Doyle classic a few days ago. Now here is the complete recording to enjoy.

Other than horse-racing, this is is the only Sherlock Holmes story featuring sports. In this case it is a missing football player, not a race horse, that confounds Holmes. Listen to this preview now. The complete audio narration will be released on June 1. Get the jump with this swift and breezy preview, now.

Inspector Lastrade of Scotland Yard informs Holmes that someone is robbing people’s houses of their busts of Napoleon and smashing them to bits in situ or a little distance away. What can be the meaning of this? Lastrade only really becomes interested when the affair is entangled in murder–the burglar knifed an Italian on his way out of a burgled house, and the dead man had a photo of the likely murdered in his pocket. Holmes continues to center his attention on the busts, not the dead man, a fact that Lastrade considers mad. As usual, Holmes is proven right in the denouement, a fact which can only be made clear by Holmes’s dazzlingly ingenious methods, as is revealed at the conclusion of the story.

Peter Carey, an English Sea Captain, with the reputation of being tyrannical and hard-hearted, is given the name “Black Peter” before he is killed by an unknown visitor to his home. Sherlock Holmes must help the novice detective, Stanley Hopkins, unravel the mystery of Peter Carey’s strange ending. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sprinkles clues to enable the reader the understand that Hopkins is too quick to close a case that only Sherlock Holmes can solve.

“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” was the last short story published in Conan Doyle’s first book-length collection of short stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892). It does not follow the usual pattern of opening with a brief Sherlock Holmes deduction that shows his brilliance, but focuses on Holmes’s tendency toward morose depression. Holmes complains to Watson that his clients are so dull that he is left to advice people on how to find lost lead pencils and ladies on how to secure such positions as governess. He shows Watson that he has really reached “Zero” with the case of Violet Hunter, who seeks advice on whether to become governess to Jephro Rucastle. The case turns out to be more diabolical and potentially deadly than even Holmes can imagine. Violet also turns out to be cut from the Sherlockian cloth as her own deductions and limitless curiosity plunges her into pathbreaking pages of discovery and drama. Watson even suspects that Holmes may fall in love with her. But the autistic detective remains a bachelor, and turns away from her in disinterest once she is no longer “at the center” of one of his cases. As for Holmes and Watson, they open the story criticizing each other like a tired married couple, and only grow united in purpose once Violet Hunter delivers them a mystery that brings the dynamic duo once together once more in pursuit of a game once again “afoot.”

Here is my “take” on one of the most famous novels of all time, “A Tale of Two Cities,” by Charles Dickens. Why is it so great? What the dickens was Dickens up to when he wrote it? And what should be our takeaway today. Tune in here, and listen, learn and, most importantly, enjoy!

I have narrated the ENTIRE novel, for Librivox. Listen to the whole thing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS3QBeYzt6E&t=7932s

In this, our second episode of “Puzzle Pieces,” in which we examine a separate mystery in American history, we look at the weaknesses of the Warren Commission’s efforts in 1964. This first investigation of the JFK assassination suffered from mistakes of its own making and errors over which it had little if no control whatsoever. Weaknesses could sometimes later become strengths, as their obvious highlighting could be–and were–addressed in subsequent investigations. Here we have a photograph of the Commissioners themselves–who did very little of the leg work for the Commission. The unsung staff did most of the work, and may be credited with many of the Commission’s monumental, if unsung and forgotten, successes. Next time on “Puzzle Pieces,” we go over those successes–here on AudiblySpeaking.

Your host, Rick Reiman, narrates “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb,” by Arthur Conan Doyle. This is rather one of the more graphic of the Sherlock Holmes tales, not for the faint of heart. But it contains several of Holmes’s most ingenious deductions along the way. My narrations of the Holmes stories must be nearing an end, since there are few of them that I have not yet read and released on Audibly Speaking thus far. I hope that you enjoy it.

This is your host on “Audibly Speaking,” Rick Reiman. Today, March 31, 2023, is the 60th anniversary of the taking of the famous backyard photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald, holding the rifle he would later use to kill President Kennedy and the pistol he would use to murder Officer J.D. Tippit forty-five minutes after that awful act in American history. This is a classic case of how historians untangle facts from allegations, and how the facts in the JFK assassination are imagined away and replaced by the will-of-the-wisp of “What-Ifs.” Let this year, the 60th anniversary of that dark day be the year we start listening to most historians, rather then the inhabitants of “Dallas in Wonderland,” with their absurd conspiracy theories. Thanks for listening–and please share this with others if you like it!

Your host on this podcast, “Audibly Speaking,” Rick Reiman, narrates this classic by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. That master of all detectives in literature, Sherlock Holmes, has once again to deal with the imbecility of the Scotland Yard detective, Lastrade, and the amateur cluelessness of the otherwise-devoted John Watson. Holmes once again defends an accused suspect whose guilt everyone else assumes is obvious. Not so, as it turns out. The unraveling of this tangled web is accomplished by tea time, by the man who shows how “elementary” it all actually is.

In this unabridged audio narration, I read my article for The Journal of Perpetrator Research (2019) Vol: 2 Issue: 2. There were only three actual “shots” in Dealey Plaza on that dark day, of course. They were the bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. But photographs are also metaphoric “shots,” and three were captured in the same seconds that the rifle blasts rang out, by the Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder with his 35-millimeter Bell and Howell Zoomatic camera. Three frames from this 26-second film represented the key photographs in this case, and they were to reverberate throughout American culture for decades to come. They were at once reflections, projections and evidence, as this article reveals.

This is my audio narration of my book review of Paul R. Gregory’s The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee, a newly published account of Gregory’s brush with Lee and Marina Oswald in 1962, a year before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Listeners can read the full review, of which this is an unabridged recording, at http://www.washingtondecoded.com.

Here is my audio narration of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.” This is Doyle’s Dickensian Christmas time story, one of many in which Holmes at first believes no crime has occurred, and later introduces a note of Christian charity in his resolution of the case. It involves a Christmas goose and a mystery unlocked in the frosty air of snowy London, circa the 1880s. Musical enhancements add to the holiday effect of this favorite in the Sherlock Holmes canon.

Join Holmes and Watson, and a sound show of horses hooves, Watson typing, and a crackling fire on a stormy night in Baker Street, as Holmes and Watson embark on one of their creepiest mysteries of the Sherlock Holmes canon!

In 2006, Prof. Aleida Assmann, the premier authority in the field of Cultural Memory, explained how memory works at different levels and in different formats. Here is a summary of her 2006 article, “Reframing Memory,” which dissects the different kinds of memory and how it is a special view to argue, as some academics have, that there is, and can be, no such thing as collective memory. This is my summary of her argument. Any errors in “translation” are mine alone. –Richard Reiman

This new version of a recording only published last week features audio enhancements and sound effects that put you in the time and place of the story, more dramatically than ever.

One of the most popular, and certainly most socially-conscious, of the Sherlock Holmes stories is “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” by Arthur Conan Doyle. A man disappears, a beggar enters the picture, and Holmes and Watson are caught between the devil and the deep, brown opium den called “The Bar of Gold.” Of course Holmes solves the mystery, but first he has to determine what the mystery is in the first place. Come along with Holmes and Watson on this dangerous journey–if you dare.

Conan Doyle’s choice for second favorite short story in his collection of 56 Sherlock Holmes tale was “The Red-Headed League.” In this brief introduction and commentary on this story, I point out its distinction as one of the most light-hearted and merry entries into the Holmes canon, a perfect “gift” for the present holiday season. Elsewhere on this podcast site, you may listen to my reading of this delightful story, whether you are red-headed or not!

In this, one of the funniest of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes must unravel a preposterous tale of a charity for red-headed men, in order to foil a bank robbery of enormous proportions. Truly, this is one of the favorites in the Sherlock Holmes canon.

In this, the final chapter, Holmes explains to Dr. Watson how he cracked the case of the Hound of the Baskervilles, and how all the proverbial loose ends may be tied up–once and forever.

In this, the penultimate chapter of the novel, Holmes and Watson together solve the crime and save Sir Henry Baskerville.

Holmes and Watson prepare a trap for the evil one who hails from Merripit House, in this pivotal chapter of the book, now nearing its fateful conclusion.

Sherlock Holmes makes his return in the novel, and not a moment too soon. After a frightful scare, the chapter moves closer to the story’s exciting denouement.

Watson pursues both leads, the identity of “L.L.” and that of the man on the Tor, and he unravels both mysteries in this important chapter.

We are rapidly nearing the end of our mystery. But Watson continues to collect new questions along with new clues. One is the mysterious identity of “L.L.,” a woman who somehow lured Sir Charles to the moor gate where he died his horrible death. The other is the identity of the mysterious man on the Tor. It turns out that Selden and Barrymore know about him, too. But who is he? Watson ponders…and speculates…

Capital and Labor

This is a reading of Chapter 16, on Capital and Labor, of The American Yawp, a free Open Educational Resource U.S. History textbook. This reading is by Dr. Richard Reiman, Ph.D., History.

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Reconstruction

This is a reading of Chapter 15, on Reconstruction, of The American Yawp, a free Open Educational Resource U.S. History textbook. This reading is by Dr. Richard Reiman, Ph.D., History.

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The gloom of the moor and the Great Grimpin Mire deepen as Watson explores the light upon the moor. Two terrible apparitions rise up before him. Listen–if you dare.

Read for you by Rick Reiman. The plot thickens.

Read for you by your host, Rick Reiman.

Read for you by Rick Reiman.  Subscribe and automatically receive the next episode in the series, Chapter 7, coming soon.

Read for you by your host, Rick Reiman.

Read for you by Rick Reiman.

Read for you by Rick Reiman.

The story continues, read for you by Rick Reiman.

Read for you by Rick Reiman.

n this brief essay we review your textbook’s list of causes of the French Revolution.

Read for you by Rick Reiman. This is another classic from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Every Doyle story contains slips and errors, whether of outrageous fortune or simply haste. In this four-minute introduction to the complete story, which I narrate next in this series on AudiblySpeaking, I bring the listener’s attention not only to some of these mistakes but also to some foregrounding of the backstory surrounding its writing and composition.

Once again, as in “A Study in Scarlett,” Arthur Conan Doyle reaches across the pond for material for a Sherlock Holmes story. In this case, it is a short story, about the long reach of the past and the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan in America. Three generations of Englishman face death from the grandfather’s involvement in the racist activities of the Klan. This is one of the few stories where, although Sherlock Holmes solves the mystery, he is late, much too late, in doing so.

Read by Rick Reiman, this was Doyle’s anticipated ending to the Sherlock Holmes story, the story that would “finish” Holmes off in the early 1890s, and leave Doyle free to write about other characters whom he was not so tired of. But it was not to be. Doyle’s readers, including Queen Victoria, insisted that Doyle resurrect Holmes. And so, by a rhetorical slight of hands, Doyle later saves Holmes from his suicidal embrace of, and fall with, the villain Moriarty, into the Reichenbach falls. That story is told in “The Empty House,” which you can all listen to, right here on AudiblySpeaking, the podcast.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Crooked Man” appeared in 1893 and subsequently in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was one of the 19 most popular stories in Doyle’s catalog of favorite Holmes tales. See my audio review of this book on AudiblySpeaking either before or following your listening to this story. And now, experience the story of “The Crooked Man–” if you dare.

What is this thing…called “white privilege?” Where does it come from and what is it all about?

In this classic Fireside Chat, FDR rallies the Nation two days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. One of his finest Fireside Chats, Roosevelt cleverly ties the mission to retaliate against Japan with the effort, not yet widely shared by Americans, to halt the march of fascism in Europe, represented by Hitler and Mussolini. The next day, December 10, Hitler would clear the way for FDR to accomplish this goal by suicidally declaring war on the United States.

Rick Reiman reviews “King Richard,” Michael Dobbs’s just-published micro-history of a selected phase of the Watergate scandal, now approaching its Fiftieth anniversary.

In this “tongue in cheek” audio narration, Dr. Reiman portrays Sherlock Holmes as he would have sounded had he lived in 2021, and had he agreed to help my students understand their big assignment of this summer semester. Of course, our course site contains the complete instructions for the assignment. I hope that this will help as well. If you like this narration, check out my two other, “real” Sherlock Holmes stores below, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and narrated by me.

The shocking attacks against Asian Americans in 2021 are outgrowths of a long history of bigotry against these, our fellow citizens. Besides bringing shame to America’s claim of “liberty and justice for all,” these attacks flow from the ignorance of too many Americans in this history of bigotry, especially of the worst violation of civil liberties in all of American history, the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. To defeat this legacy of bigotry and to break with this sorry past, Americans must first learn to remember.

In this first Unit of a new online course that seeks to demystify the evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we look at the first evidence, the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald in the first eighty minutes following the assassination.

Carton reconnoiters the Defarge’s wine shop in this episode, and learns of Madame Defarge’s dark plans for the Evremonde family. Dr. Manette, out of the trauma of his son-in-law’s imminent execution (and its connection to his own testimony), returns to his shoemaking once again. Carton instructs Jarvis Lorry on what he should do the next day to save the Evremondes.

I have finally crossed the finish line! My audio narration for Librivox is finally complete, with all forty-five chapters now in the can. I can now say “it’s a wrap.” And what a terrific chapter to end on. Dickens is at his most reflective. A novel of horror somehow has wended its way to a chapter that produces a happy ending for all, at least for all of the good-hearted and well-intended. Dickens even has kind things to say about Parisians and the French, which is quite startling coming from such a prototypical British writer. This is not history but it is magnificently philosophical, spiritual and transcendent, perhaps the best specimen of the age of Romanticism that ever flowed from the pen of men.

In this chapter, Dr. Manette’s long-buried message, found in the Bastille by Ernest Defarge, is used to condemn Charles Darnay, son-in-law of the good doctor and husband of his fair daughter, to death at the Guillotine!  In vain does Dr. Manette protest that he no longer condemned the entire Evremonde family to the last of its line, now that the latest Marquis, dear Charles, has his head on the block.   Madame Defarge is confidant that her use of the doctor’s note of condemnation will foil the doctor’s effort to free Charles.

And, not only that: She has plans to dispatch Lucy and little Lucy, as Evremondes themselves as well as the doctor, hoping that they too will be shaved by the revolutionary razor.  What will stand between Charles and the bloodthirsty wishes of Madame Defarge?  Spoiler alert: Where is Miss Pross as all this is going on?

In this chapter of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Darnay is sentenced to death on the accusations of the Dafarges and, incredibly, Dr. Manette, in the form of an old condemnation by the prisoner in the Bastille long before he knew Charles. Sydney Carton persuades Jarvis Lorry to rap up affairs in Paris and prepare to leave at once with Lucy, Little Lucy, Miss Pross and presumably the freed Charles Darnay.  But Carton asks Lorry to keep his safe passage pass with him for when the man arrives at the last minute.  Lorry knows that escape is impossible, but his new-found respect for Sydney assures himself that there is method in this madness.  Carton has made the game by chapter’s end–and has sealed his own fate.

“A Hand at Cards,” Book Three, Chapter Eight of A Tale of Two Cities.  Here many of the characters in the novel are on stage in one chapter.  Carton reappears and must “turn” the spy John Barsad to his purposes.  Pross and Cruncher are “over the top,” as usual, but Carton is another matter entirely. He must be played with great skill, conveying both his quickness of mind and his moral regeneration believably. In fact, he rises almost to the level of scrubbed purity as Lucy Manette. And yet, he must be a believable character. You be the judge if I have succeeded.  One thing that is sure, it is exhausting.

In this chapter, Charles Darnay is saved. Or is he?  The good Doctor Manette works his magic.  But the Defarges will not give up on their quest to send every member of the Evremonde family to the guillotine.

Dickens’s most atypical novel grows still darker, even for him, in this terrifying chapter from A Tale of Two Cities.  Lucy travels into the chaotic streets of revolutionary Paris to try to catch a glimpse of her beloved Charles in the Bastille.  She runs into a wood-sawyer, enraptured by La Guillotine and bent on revenge against aristocrats. Will Charles survive the night, or the chapter? It is announced herein that his trial begins tomorrow.

Book Three, chapter Four of Dickens’s classic novel. Doctor Manette is off to La Force to try to save the life of Charles Darnay. Will he succeed?  Stay tuned, as they say, and “Listen to History” on audiblyspeaking.com.

Another entry in my evolving audio narration of Charles Dickens’s magisterial novel, A Tale of Two Cities.  This chapter is called “The Grindstone.”  It is a difficult chapter to read because it involves characters of different sexes exchanging dialogue quickly and in states of duress.  Unlike other chapters where the characters are over the top in the writing, and where as a result the dialogue can be read in a similar fashion, here the pathos must be presented sympathetically with a minimum of melodrama.  I hope I have succeeded!

In this episode, the mansion of the Marquis St. Evremonde goes up in flames as the Revolutionary mob torches the ancestral home of Charles Darnay (secretly the new Marquis).  The old Marquis’s functionary, Gabelle, is, in consequence, about to be arrested.   This will draw Darnay from safety in England to mortal peril in France, as he will decide to journey to Paris–and possible imprisonment and death–to save his friend, Gabelle.

Another preview of my upcoming Librivox recording of A Tale of Two Cities, due out in April 2020. This is chapter 30, “Drawn to the Loadstone Rock.” If you enjoy this, won’t you leave a comment telling me so?

Book Two, Chapter 21, “Echoing Footsteps,” of A Tale of Two Cities, by the inimitable Charles Dickens.

Book Two, Chapter 25 of Dickens’s classic novel.

Book Two, Chapter 19 of Dickens’s classic.

This chapter of “A Tale of Two Cities,” is called “The Gorgon’s Head,” and is one of the more difficult chapters in the novel to narrate, at least in my opinion.  It has more than its share of the long, meandering and prolix sentences for which Dickens was famous. Even when read with the eyes, it takes time to make sense of them. On top of that it has extensive dialogue intertwined with lines from the omniscient narrator.  One saving grace is that the characters are typically “over the top” in their demeanor, either simon pure (Charles Darnay) or deeply evil (the Marquis de Evremonde), allowing for an “over the top” narrative style.  One does not need to be an Olivier or a Meryl Streep to read these lines correctly!

In about six months the entire novel will be available, free of course, on the open source audiobook site, Librivox. org.  I hope that you enjoy this sample.

Narrated by Dr. Rick Reiman

In this classic short story in the Sherlock Holmes series, Holmes, with the help of Dr. Watson, matches wits with a woman, Irene Adler. Spoiler alert: The woman wins. It is one of the few Sherlock Holmes stories in which Holmes fails. And he never forgets it!

The players:

Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Rick Reiman

Dr. Watson: Dr. Rick Reiman

The King of Bohemia: Dr. Rick Reiman

Irene Adler: Dr. Rick Reiman 

The following podcast is a feature of “Constitution Day 2020” at South Georgia State College. As a result of the pandemic, the different elements of the event are presented in a manner consistent with safety and social distancing. The South Georgia College website (http://www.sgsc.edu) contains a webpage with more information on the displays for Constitution Day that appear physically on both the Douglas and Waycross campuses.

This podcast is a presentation of Dr. Rick Reiman, Professor of History. The title, “The Constitution in Context” refers to the fact that the Constitution is a living document that rises or falls on its success in meeting challenges completely unanticipated by its framers. One of the most challenging times for the Constitution was the period of the 1790s, the first decade of our national life under the Constitution. The podcast looks at how two political parties emerged, neither considering the other legitimate, and clashing in their respective interpretations of the meaning of the Constitution. The fact that the framers included not a single word about parties in the Constitution and regarded them as a baneful influence further ratcheted up the tension and danger of this party conflict to the survival of the Republic. The nation passed the test–then. But the Constitution will forever remain challenged, tested by the changing conflicts of each generation of Americans.

Make sure that you follow the rubric questions exactly in writing your Reflection post on Darcy Frey’s “The Last Shot.” This assignment will have you using GALILEO on your SGSC web site to help answer one of the rubric questions. See the grading rubric in the Advance Organizer for this Reflection assignment for more information about this assignment.

Here I discuss student reactions in the past to Peggy McIntosh’s 1989 article on “White Privilege.” Some students have said that this article is out of date and does not really apply to today.  Or is that reaction just a dodge to avoid recognizing the reality of white privilege?  Such avoidance may actually “prove” McIntosh’s case.  Make sure you supply her definition of white privilege in your Reflection post, as you answer all of the rubric questions for this assignment.

In this podcast episode I discuss how you can best approach the article by Anna Quindlen, “How Reading Changed My Life,” and write a Reflection post to complete the assignment and achieve the highest grade you can possibly earn. Good luck!

You can find the questions in the grading rubric for this assignment that you need to answer about Francisco Jimenez’s childhood.  In this podcast episode, I merely discuss the strategies that you should use to find the answers to these questions.

In this podcast we look at how primary sources, in this case an audio recording purporting to be from Dealey plaza during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, can raise questions tentatively resolved through inference.  In this case, the inference proved correct, confirmed by additional research.

Whither the world order created in 1945?

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What are the strengths and weaknesses of the European Union, as well as the prospects for its long-term survival?

The Cold War from 1962 to 1991. Photo of Mikhail Gorbachev, final president of the Soviet Union.

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We look at the Cold War from 1945 to 1962 in this podcast. Refer to your Unit 6, Discussion 2 assignment in GeorgiaVIEW for the question that you must answer for this assignment.

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Culture in art and ideas.

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What were the causes of the Holocaust? What was it? What was its nature? How does it represent a new crime in history? What does it say about so-called Western “civilization?” We explore all these questions in this important podcast episode in our course.

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In this podcast we trace the major events of the Second World War. This podcast will help you answer the Discussion assignment question that you have for the Unit 5, Discussion 4 of this course.

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Why did the first World War not end in 1919 and really only ended in 1945, by which time it was called the Second World War? This podcast helps you answer this question.

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hat were the six features of Fascism? In this podcast, we learn what ideas Fascism consisted of and how it arose during the years in-between the two World Wars and set the stage for the outbreak of the Second World War.

From the First World War’s beginning to the Second World War’s End.

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Great Britain encourages a skeptical Uncle Sam to jump in to the swimming pool of imperialism…

Albert Einstein becomes an American citizen (October 1940) Between the 1889s and 1914, revolutionary changes occurred in our understanding of science, psychology and physics…

The theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, presented in the Communist Manifesto (1848), was yet another theory of progress so popular in the nineteenth century, along with Darwinism, Positivism and nationalism. Marxism was popular with the proletarians created by the Industrial Revolution, because it predicted that they would one day win a successful proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie all over the world, one whose success was the inevitable product of class conflict between the two classes. For the same reason, the middle class hated this theory and fought the rise of the proletariat. The theories of Marx and Engels would never be borne out or live up to their predictions. BUt it was a major fear factor that explains much about the politics of the middle class in the late nineteenth century and the birth of social welfare legislation, which Marx had never foreseen or predicted.

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Who was Charles Darwin, this Newton of the Nineteenth century? And what was his theory of the evolution of species by natural selection. How did it impact virtually every aspect of Western Civilization, from political ideologies to psychology and philosophy? In this special landmark podcast, Dr. Reiman explores his significance.

ationalism took a dark turn for the worse after 1848. Nations that came into existence after 1848–such as Germany and Italy–were unified by military monarchies adopting the strategies of statecraft and war. In this podcast, Dr. Reiman traces the ways in which these two nations buried liberalism in their countries and strengthened autocratic government between 1848 and 1871, lighting the long fuse to World War I.

The Revolutions of 1848 in Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Rome were the last liberal national revolutions in Europe because they all failed, and because they all raised the specter of a new kind of revolution, revolution by the communist proletariat. In this podcast, you will prepare for the Unit 3, Discussion 5 assignment by understanding the causes and consequences of these events, as well as the meaning of the new ideas of Socialism and Communism that were birthed by them.

In this podcast we look at the false hope that the French Revolution of 1830 put in the hearts of the liberal bourgeoisie (middle class).  “Hearts” is the correct word, because Romanticism was a driving force of this liberal revolution, as the painting by Eugene Delacroix shows here.  The Revolution of 1830 set up the middle class for an awful fall, and the fall came with the bloody revolutions of 1848 all over Europe, revolutions that decoupled liberalism from nationalism and revolution forever afterwards.

Here we trace the reasons why the Industrial Revolution in its first place and time, 1750-1848 Great Britain was so unregulated and cruel.

Between 1750 and 1840, Great Britain was alone in experiencing the first Industrial Revolution. In this podcast I discuss what every nation first has to possess in order to experience an Industrial Revolution of its own, and what Great Britain did possess by 1750.

In this Introduction, we look at the definition and revolutionary consequences of the Industrial Revolution.

Many leaders of the nineteenth century, reflected Romantic ideas by their actions. Among the most notable was Abraham Lincoln, US president from 1861 to 1865. Here our podcast looks at the ways in which Lincoln reflected the values of Romanticism in his person, actions and ideas, and how he would never have been heard from had there not been a Romantic movement.

In this podcast we continue talking about the French Revolution, specifically its ideas and the events within the Revolution that represent those ideas and helped to trigger them.

In this brief essay we review your textbook’s list of causes of the French Revolution.

Here we look at the French Revolution’s consequences, as a prelude to looking at its causes. Why reverse the logical order of this analysis? If you understand the consequences of the French Revolution, namely its importance, you should then be in a position to be interested in learning next about its causes.

In this podcast, I get more specific about the structure of your Good War Discussion post.  How many examples of your topic do you discuss? What might be good topics for you to discuss?  Which ones were positive and which were negative? You need to give one specific example each and explain how it was negative or positive.  I hope that this helps.  This is what you need to listen to instead of coming to class the week of October 21.  You also should spend your time that week preparing for and submitting your Good War Discussion post.