Shows
Rearview Mirror ChroniclesThe Mitfords Revisited: Saints, Sinners, and ScandalSend us a textLast year, our deep-dive into the wild world of the Mitford sisters ruffled a few aristocratic feathers and sparked a torrent of listener emails. The question that echoed through every message was simple, but loaded: Were they all bad?In this follow-up episode, Keith peels back the layers of myth, gossip, and public outrage to look at the whole Mitford clan, this time, including the much-overlooked brother, Tom, and their delightfully eccentric parents. We venture beyond the headlines about fascists and communists, parties and poultry, to ask if it’s possible fo...2025-06-1919 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesMaster of Shadows: The Ruthless World of Robert CecilSend us a textLet’s begin in the shadows. London, 1603. The city is thick with smoke, secrets, and the scent of betrayal. Beneath the grand stone facades of Elizabethan power, a network of spies weaves through taverns, palaces, and plague-ridden streets. In this world, trust is a luxury—and survival depends on knowing what others don’t.At the heart of it all: Robert Cecil. Hunchbacked, sharp-eyed, and more dangerous than any blade in the night. Cecil isn’t just Elizabeth I’s spymaster—he’s the spider at the centre of the web, pulling the st...2025-06-0747 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesNicholas Flamel: The Immortal AlchemistSend us a textThey say he died in the fourteenth century. But his tomb was empty. No body. No bones. Just silence.Nicholas Flamel—a name etched into dusty grimoires and whispered in secret circles. A medieval scribe who, legend claims, unlocked the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone. Gold from lead. Life from death. Immortality.For over six centuries, he’s been spotted across Europe—unchanged. Ageless. Watching. Join Keith as he opens the ancient doors and steps into the shadows, where fact and fable bleed together. Was Flamel just a clever m...2025-04-1640 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesThrones of Blood: Rome’s Darkest EmperorsSend us a textHow monstrous were Rome’s emperors? Was Caligula truly mad enough to declare war on the sea? Did Nero really watch Rome burn while playing his lyre? And were these men depraved by nature—or crafted that way by the sharpened pen of Suetonius?In his Lives of the Caesars, written in 121 AD, Suetonius offers a series of intimate autopsies on power—twelve rulers, stripped bare. From Julius Caesar to the tyrant Domitian, we’re shown men unhinged by absolute control, consumed by paranoia, cruelty, lust, and madness. But how much of it wa...2025-04-0130 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesMalta - The Greatest Siege in HistorySend us a textPicture this: A sun-scorched island in the heart of the Mediterranean. A desperate band of knights, vastly outnumbered, stands against the might of an empire. It is the year 1565, and the Ottoman war machine—30,000 strong—has arrived on the shores of Malta, determined to wipe the Knights of St. John off the face of the earth. But what follows is not just a battle—it is one of the most ferocious and awe-inspiring sieges in history. For four months, against impossible odds, the defenders of Malta held firm, fighting tooth and nail for surviv...2025-03-0647 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesBanking Collapses: When Empires Eat ThemselvesSend us a textMoney builds empires. But when it dies, it drags entire civilizations down with it.From the marble halls of ancient Rome to the glass towers of modern Wall Street, financial collapse has haunted humanity like a recurring nightmare. In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we open the vault on three devastating meltdowns: a liquidity crisis in 33 AD that brought the Roman elite to their knees, the South Sea Bubble of 1720 that turned speculation into madness, and the 2008 fall of Lehman Brothers—the spark that set the global economy on fire....2025-02-1835 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesThe Madman’s Library: Bound in Flesh, Written in BloodSend us a textWelcome to the Madman’s Library—a place not of learning, but of unraveling.Here, books do not enlighten. They whisper. They bleed. They rot. Grimoires etched in rust-black ink speak in tongues never meant for human mouths. Manuscripts stitched from flayed skin stare back with hollowed faces. Blood-written ravings of prophets long dead pulse with delusion, disease, and dread.This is a collection shaped not by reason, but by obsession. By the need to conjure, to control, to curse. Each spine cracked open reveals anot...2025-02-1145 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesPanama Canal: A Corridor of CorpsesSend us a textThe Panama Canal wasn't built, it was bled into existence.What began in the 1880s as a grand French dream quickly unraveled into a nightmare. Led by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who conquered the Suez, workers fell by the thousands, claimed by malaria, yellow fever, and the jungle itself. The earth collapsed. The money vanished. And the dream rotted in the heat.Then came the Americans. But they didn’t just dig—they schemed. With silent backing, Panama was carved off from Colombia in a staged revolution. In 1904, with...2025-02-0134 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesGreatness Demands BloodSend us a textWhat does it mean to be great—truly great? Once, the title was thundered through history: Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great. It meant something vast, undeniable—power, vision, audacity, and impact that bent the world.But today? The word feels… dusty. Loaded. Hesitant.In this episode, Keith asks the uncomfortable questions: What really defines greatness? Is it conquest, cultural legacy, or something deeper? Have we moved beyond the age of towering individuals—or are we simply afraid to name greatness when we see it?From a...2025-01-3031 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesAlexander: The Shadow Before the Storm – Part TwoSend us a textAs Alexander the Great marched into the scorched lands of India, his ambition had become something more than hunger, it was obsession. At the banks of the Hydaspes, he faced King Porus and a wall of war elephants, beasts bred for terror and destruction. The battle was brutal, primal—thunder, blood, and chaos. But Alexander won. He always won.Porus, broken but unbent, became his ally. Yet even as Alexander looked east, dreaming of the Ganges and empires beyond, his men—worn, blood-soaked, and hollowed by years of conquest, refused to go a...2025-01-2455 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesThe Great Fire of London - The Ashes of 1666Send us a textIn the early hours of September 1666, a single spark in a baker’s shop ignited an unstoppable force—one that would consume the very soul of London. Within days, fire swallowed over 13,000 homes, St. Paul’s Cathedral crumbled in flames, and the sky above the Thames burned red.But this was more than a fire. It was judgment. It was reckoning. It was rebirth.What began in the glow of a dying oven became a storm of smoke and terror—panic in the streets, whispers of conspiracy, and the collapse...2025-01-0440 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesChristmas: A Spell Cast in TimeSend us a textFrom humble beginnings in a Bethlehem stable to the firelit pages of Dickensian London… from the legend of a gift-giving bishop who became Santa Claus to the thunderous silence of the trenches on Christmas Day 1914, where enemies became men and played football in no-man’s-land—we uncover the heart of a holiday that refuses to be forgotten.We'll delve into sacred stories, centuries-old traditions, and the bold reforms that tried to reshape them. Discover how a single ghost story reignited the spirit of giving, and how myth, memory, and meaning turned Decemb...2024-12-2734 minRearview Mirror ChroniclesKipling’s Shadow: The Dark Wisdom of 'If—' and 'The Two-Sided ManSend us a textRudyard Kipling’s If— and The Two-Sided Man aren’t just poems—they’re survival guides wrapped in verse. Fierce, honest, and deeply human, they capture the struggle to stay balanced in a world constantly pulling us apart.In this episode, Keith dives into the raw beauty of these two masterworks—and shares why they’ve stayed with him through life’s storms. These aren’t just words on a page; they’re mirrors, provocations, and quiet companions for when the world gets loud.Join him for a deeply personal journey int...2024-12-0408 min