Stuff What You Tell Me! || Rebellion and Resistance in History, Art and Culture

Despite over half a century of abolitionist activity, including subversive activism, dissent, debate, protest and attempts at electoral process, by the end of the 1850s the demise of slavery seemed to some to still be as far from becoming reality as ever.

Enter John Brown. Whereas the division over the issue of slavery had riven the young federal society of the US apart, John Brown never wavered, questioned or acted against the defining principle of his life: slavery was an abomination that must end.

In the course of this pursuit Brown befriended one of the US's most famous orators, fugitive slave Frederick Douglass, and set about putting a plan into motion that, with Douglass' help, would make the awful institution untenable.

In this episode we go with Brown, through this defining and contradictory period in world history, as he lays his body down, as well as that of anybody whose sacrifice he deemed would serve the cause, to bring about an end to establishment slavery.

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In the second "Coup de Pod" episode in Stuff What You Tell Me history, the show is finally taken over by someone capable. Awesome storyteller Dominique Reviglio takes us down the path of the history of women's rebellion; on a journey through the millennia of both oppression and rebellion, before exploring the militant Suffragette movement that erupted in Britain in the first decades of the 20th century.

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The passing of the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 opened up a new battlefront in the United States between those for and against the institution of slavery. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who sponsored the bill, supported the notion of popular sovereignty; that the people who lived in a certain territory could decide by themselves whether or not to allow slavery. In so doing, he began a race between rebellious free-staters and resistant pro-slavery partisans to claim Kansas as their own, which lead to an outburst of violence that history remembers as the Bleeding of Kansas.

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In antebellum United States , chattel slavery was deeply embedded. It was an integral part of the socio-economic systems of the various states and thus protected by the constitution. The 'Railroad Rebels' didn't care. They knew that slavery was wrong. They were the ones who suffered from it, the ones who escaped from it; they were those who harboured fugitives, and who helped them move from servitude to liberty; people of all colours and classes who flouted the law on a daily basis, because their principles and beliefs demanded it of them. They were the ones formed what became known as the Underground Railroad, a loose, organic, grass-roots system helping fugitive slaves. It is because of them, that institutional slavery is now dead. And thank f**k for that. Long live the Railroad Rebels.

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Stuff What You Tell Me comes out of one of the most remarkable countries on earth: The Netherlands. This underrated, little swamp has, for well over a millennium, punched far above its weight in terms of influencing global culture, language, philosophy, commerce, religion and cheese. Its history is one that, we felt, needed to be recognised in a way that can be appreciated by a modern, podcast-listening audience. So, with great joy, let us introduce 'The History of the Netherlands' podcast In it, we tell the story of this special swamp, and how it grew into becoming a global superpower, as well as exploring its important role in the wider historical developments in Europe and the world over the previous thousand or so years.

To listen, search for History of the Netherlands wherever you download your sweet, sweet audio-rumblings. Once you've found us, hit subscribe!

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