Legacy

What turned America's most famous British loyalist into its most dangerous revolutionary? What does a public humiliation in a Whitehall chamber have to do with the Declaration of Independence? And, if the man who designed the American constitution believed men were angels, would he have bothered?
Peter and Afua trace how a candle-maker's son who pulled lightning from the sky and a sickly scholar obsessed with the fall of Rome built the architecture of the most powerful republic in history.

0:00 Franklin: the 18th century's global multimedia superstar
6:10 Poor Richard's Almanac and the art of building a platform from scratch
9:45 From kite and key to the Royal Society — Franklin's lightning moment
13:20 A proud Briton in London: the comfortable life that couldn't last
16:00 The Hutchinson letters, a Whitehall ambush, and an hour of public savaging
18:30 The moment Franklin stopped thinking of himself as British
21:00 Enter James Madison: the smallest man in public life and the biggest thinker
24:30 Two thousand years of history as a laboratory of political failure
28:00 Taxation without representation, the Intolerable Acts, and the radicalisation of Madison
31:30 'If men were angels, no government would be necessary'

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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Stay connected with Legacy:
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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How did a collection of desperate survivors, religious outcasts, and petty criminals become the architects of the world's most powerful nation? What does it mean to build a society on the language of liberty when that society is entirely dependent on enslaved labour? And are Americans still reckoning with a founding story that was never quite what it seemed?

Peter and Afua go back to the very beginning — from the disaster of Roanoke and the brutal early years at Jamestown, to the transatlantic slave economy that quietly powered the rise of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

00:00 Introduction — what America actually means
03:00 Roanoke and Jamestown — England's catastrophic first attempts
08:00 The colonial economy — slavery, sugar, and the triangle trade
14:00 New York's hidden history — one in five New Yorkers were enslaved
19:00 The contradiction at America's heart — liberty built on unfreedom
25:00 Who were the Founding Fathers — and who was left out?
32:00 Preview — Franklin and Madison up next

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Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How does a Siberian peasant mystic end up controlling the most powerful empire in Europe? Could the rumours that destroyed a dynasty have been entirely false — and did they matter anyway? And, without Rasputin, would there have been no Lenin — and would the 20th century have looked completely different? Peter sits down with Sir Antony Beevor — bestselling author of Stalingrad, Berlin, and D-Day — to dig into his new book on one of history's most mythologised figures: Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian wanderer who charmed the Tsarina, antagonised everyone else, and whose murder was so catastrophically bungled it reads like black farce.

0:00 From Siberia to the Imperial court — how a peasant mystic reached the centre of power
5:30 Holy fools, wandering pilgrims, and why Russia was always fertile ground for figures like Rasputin
10:00 The voice, the eyes, and the seduction: how Rasputin actually worked on people
13:00 The Tsarina's obsession — and why Antony Beevor is certain the rumours were fake news
17:30 How Rasputin's ministerial choices set the railways on fire and sparked a revolution
24:00 Rasputin was right about the war — and then made everything worse anyway
27:30 The assassination: poisoned cakes, Yankee Doodle, and a murder plot of spectacular incompetence
32:00 Putin, Nicholas II, and why historians should be wary of historical parallels
36:00 Without Rasputin, no Lenin? The counterfactuals Antony loves but won't fully follow

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Stay connected with Legacy: Instagram: @originallegacypodcast TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What did it take for human beings to start controlling what they ate — and why did "health" so quickly become a cover
story for something else? How did a Venetian nobleman's wine-heavy calorie restriction become a blueprint for the
modern diet industry? And, when tobacco companies, Hollywood, and the beauty industry all decided women's body
anxiety was a market opportunity — who, exactly, was the diet really for?

Peter and Afua trace the history of the human body as a commercial battleground: from the first diet books in 1558,
through the birth of the calorie and the explosion of Weight Watchers, to the heroin chic 90s and the disordered eating
it left behind.

0:00 The Venetian nobleman who invented calorie restriction — and still drank 14oz of wine a day
7:30 George Cheyne: 32 stone, no meat, no alcohol, and a bestselling book in 1740
14:00 Empire, refrigeration, and why cheap food created the first diet industry
21:30 The discovery of the calorie — the invention Afua still resents
25:30 Freud's nephew, cigarettes, and the moment thinness became a product to sell
31:00 Weight Watchers, zero-fat yoghurt, and the 80s: cottage cheese as cultural trauma
36:30 The 90s: heroin chic, cellulite alerts, and the era that hospitalised a generation
40:00 Keto, Atkins, and the diet that keeps reinventing itself

Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A;'s, fewer adverts and more.
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Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions
Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What did Vogue actually recommend women eat in 1977 — and why did it make one food writer cry in the
bathroom? How did the Greeks turn a six-pack into a moral argument? And, has the human obsession with
controlling what we eat ever really been about health at all?
Peter and Afua trace the long, strange history of dieting — from ancient Greek athletics and Roman
feast-and-purge excess, to medieval starvation saints who turned self-denial into a radical act of female agency.

0:00 Vogue’s 1977 Wine and Egg Diet — and what happened when someone actually tried it
6:30 The diet industry’s dirty secret: it was never about nutrition
9:00 Peter on fasting, cranky emails, and what not eating teaches you about your relationship with food
14:30 Ancient Greece: when abs were a moral statement, not just an aesthetic one
19:30 The manosphere’s Spartan fantasy — and what the Greeks would actually make of it
23:00 Rome: the inventors of binge and purge culture
24:30 When Christianity enters the chat — and fasting becomes holy
26:00 Catherine of Siena: the medieval starvation saint who used hunger as protest
30:00 Anorexia mirabilis — holy anorexia, and why Peter is wary of projecting modern diagnoses onto the past
32:00 Why medieval peasants weren’t dieting — they were just trying to stay alive

Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A’s, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions
Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.