#7: Coronavirus: Fighting 'The Rona'

In part 3 of my election season journey through Texas I visit the site of a real American apocalypse, where the world really did ended in a fire storm of flames... ...just as it was prophesied in the Bible. ***** You can read all of the articles in full, which include my photography, on my Substack (link below). Don't forget to subscribe for free to hear about my future projects! https://standingplaces.substack.com/ 

In part 2 of my election season journey through Texas I return to the Reagan-era, when I once met the US President in a church in south Dallas… ...as the world was about to end. ***** You can read all of the articles in full, which include my photography, on my Substack (link below). Don't forget to subscribe for free to hear about my future projects! https://standingplaces.substack.com/ 

This is the first episode in my new series of seven stories from a 2,000-mile road trip across Texas in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election campaign. My journey begins the moment I was mistaken for a Hollywood celebrity by a man with a gun in a ghost town near the US-Mexico border. He wanted to talk to me about all-out war and the end of the world.  Pull up a stool and I'll tell you about it... ***** You can read all of the articles in full, which include my photography, on my Substack (link below). Don't forget to subscribe for free to hear about my future projects! https://standingplaces.substack.com/   

During the final weeks of the US presidential election campaign in 2024, I did a 2,000-mile road trip across Texas. It was my first time back since I lived in Dallas as a kid during the 1980s.  What followed was a series of seven travel stories reflecting on the carnival of American politics, and the questions of identity, faith and fear that Americans have long grappled with. And it wasn't until I arrived in Dallas, picked up a rental and hit the road, that I began to understand just how much of my personal story has been shaped by my long and rather curious relationship with the Lone Star State. You can read the articles in full, which include my photography from the trip on my Substack (link below). Don't forget to subscribe for free to hear about my future projects! https://standingplaces.substack.com/ 

In this episode we meet the voice and the inspiration behind Blanco White, the stage name of Josh Edwards, a guitarist and singer-songwriter from London. Josh studied flamenco guitar in Cádiz in Spain, and later the Andean instrument the charango in Sucre in Bolivia. In 2016 he released his first EP, 'The Wind Rose' which was followed by 'Colder Heavens' and 'Nocturne'. His first full album, 'On The Other Side' was released in 2020. His growing fan base is now global and he's performed to sell out concerts across Europe and the United States. The music of Blanco White brings together Andalusian and Latin American traditions from both sides of the Atlantic and the songs are filled with forgotten histories, lost poetry and languages, ocean crossings and soundscapes that are other-worldly. This is the story - told through his own songs - of the places that have shaped Josh as a musician, how he learned the musical traditions of very different cultures, and the search for his own creative voice and musical identity in the spaces in between. Music on this episode is exclusively by Blanco White. Special thanks to Yucatan Records and the Blanco White project for permission to use the songs.

What is happening to the soul of America? It's a question the whole world is asking as Americans start voting in the most bizarre general election in their history. Yet regardless of who wins the 2020 Presidential race, it's clear that something is going horribly wrong in the world's oldest democracy. Tempting as it may be to blame America's malaise exclusively on Donald Trump, to do so would be naive. Trumpism is a symptom of a disease that's ravaged America's body politic for generations. In this episode we meet the American author and political commentator, Jared Yates Sexton to discuss his new book "American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People". We explore the myth of American exceptionalism, and how white identity, evangelical Christianity, and conspiracy theories like QAnon are weaponised in American politics. SHOW NOTES If you'd like to do some further exploring of the themes that we cover in this episode, below are some links you may find helpful. The two books by Jared Yates Sexton that are mentioned in this episode are "The People Are Going To Rise Like Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage", which chronicles Jared's experience of covering Donald Trump's Presidential campaign in 2016. His most recent book, "American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World But Failed It's People" explores the myth of American exceptionalism, white identity, and evangelical Christianity as a powerful political tool. Reply All is a podcast about the internet, but in many ways it's a show about making sense of modern life, and how to survive it! They've recently done two episodes dedicated to Q Anon: episode #165 (The Mold and the Beautiful) and episode #166 (Country of Liars) which explores who's behind QAnon. Rabbit Hole is an 8-part podcast series produced by the NYT tech columnist, Kevin Roose. The show explores how the internet is affecting us and what can happen when we move our lives online. It doesn't look exclusively at Q Anon per se but the wider digital environment, and how You Tube in particular has been directing people to extremist content for years. If you'd like to understand more about the Satanic panic of the 1980s, Gimlet Media has produced a brilliant podcast series called Conviction: American Panic. Conviction tells the story John Quinney who grew up in the 1980s and at the age of 10 falsely accused his own father of being the leader of an underground satanic cult that was sacrificing babies and sexually abusing children. What John's family didn't realise at the time was that right across America there were hundreds of families being swept up in this religious panic, and by the time it subsided scores of people were in jail on little to no evidence. It's one of the most bizarre chapters in American judicial history, but it's also very relevant to today's satanic hysteria and the cult of QAnon. NPR's regular podcast 'Throughline' explores stories from history that have a modern day resonance, and two recent episodes are particularly relevant to this episode; Conspiracy, which delves into how and why conspiracy theories are fundamental to American life, and how they're so easily manipulated by political opportunists; and The Evangelical Vote which looks at what it means to be an evangelical Christian in America today and how evangelicals have become a powerful electoral bloc in US politics. Throughline has also just started a new series called "(mis)Representative Democracy" which unpacks some of the myths and popular assumptions about American democracy. The first episode tells the not-so-democratic history of how and why America's Electoral College was created - the body that elects the President of the USA and which you're likely to hear a lot more about over the coming weeks and months. The long history of white supremacism and systemic racism in American comes up several times in this episode, although we didn't have time to explore it in depth. Scene On Radio, produced by the Centre for Documentary Studies at Duke University, is a Peabody-nominated podcast hosted by veteran broadcaster John Biewen. He recently produced and co-presented a 14-part series called 'Seeing White' which explores what's happening in mainstream white identity in America (not the KKK and neo-Nazis) and how the idea of whiteness has evolved over the centuries. The series also has a study guide and fully referenced bibliography for further reading and listening. More recently, Scene On Radio produced a 12-part series earlier this year called "The Land That Never Has Been Yet". It tells the less well known story of democracy in America going right back to the beginning of the republic. It looks at authoritarianism, voter suppression, gerrymandering, foreign intervention and the role of money in America's elections. ***FOLLOW THE SHOW***  You can subscribe to Standing Places on iTunes, Google Podcasts and Spotify and please rate, review and share the show so that more people can hear about it. You can also like and follow the Facebook page.

So we're all grounded for the foreseeable future. None of us will be travelling the way we used to any time soon. And so we wait, and remember, and imagine the open roads and open skies we crave and miss. In this episode I share a few poems about the excitement of setting off again, and our insatiable itch for new horizons. But the best journeys are the ones that teach us new things; not just about the places we visit, but also the places we call home. And the best poems are the ones that give us hope... ***FOLLOW THE SHOW***  You can subscribe to Standing Places on iTunes, Google Podcasts and Spotify and please rate, review and share the show so that more people can hear about it. You can also like and follow the Facebook page. Music on this episode is by Lee Rosevere, Doug Maxwell, Josh Kirsch and Aaron Kenny.

Most of the world is now in some form of pandemic lockdown, and everything around us is changing – politics, economics, international relations. How do we navigate this new terrain? What are the implications for liberal democracy? What might a 'new normal' look like for the world order? Paul Buchanan is Director of 36th Parallel Assessments, a geopolitical risk and strategic assessment consultancy based in New Zealand.  He's a former intelligence and defence consultant for the US government, and an expert in authoritarianism, unconventional warfare, international security and comparative politics. Paul grew up in Argentina, and has worked extensively across Latin America and the Asia Pacific, as well as for a number of security agencies in Washington DC, including the Pentagon and the State Department. Music on this episode is by Eveningland and Blue Dot Sessions. 

As the coronavirus lockdown is further extended here in the UK, it's hard to know when or indeed how our lives will return to any sense of normality. In the meantime we wait, and we hope, and we tune in for news of better times. In this episode I reflect on the importance of journalists – the good ones – who inform us, widen our worlds, and in times of crisis can so often find just the right words to lift our spirits. One of the good ones is Fergal Keane, whose 'Letter to Daniel' remains one of the best loved pieces of audio the BBC has ever aired. I hope this episode encourages you.

Since recording my last episode it seems that I contracted the coronavirus. So here are some reflections on fighting 'The Rona', the silence of London's traffic-less skies, and the poetry of one of New Zealand's best writers, Brian Turner. If you're feeling unwell or afraid right now, I hope this episode is an encouragement. You're not alone. If you'd like to explore more of Brian Turner's writing, a good place to start is "Boundaries: People and Places of Central Otago", available from Penguin.   Music on this episode is by Chris Haugen.