The Golden One - August 17, 2021


Afghanistan. Central Asian History Month – Book Recommendations

Topics
Taliban success in Afghanistan rejection
Hosted by
Marcus Follin
Mentioned
Genghis Khan Timur Lenk Alex Rutherford Peter Hopkirk Legio Gloria Babur Khan
Christopher Da Gama's Expedition 1542： Age of Empires 3 – Also, A Note on Portuguese Courage Archetypes

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

155.63

Word count

914

Sentence count

61

Harmful content

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of the Wild Hunt challenge, I discuss the recent Taliban victory over the Western Empire in Afghanistan, and offer some historical fiction and non-fiction recommendations for the time period. I also suggest a Central Asian History Month in which I encourage you to read two books and listen to one historical fiction book.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.880 Greetings, Laddingtons! I'm checking in with a recommendation.
00:00:04.560 I actually thought about making this video in September or October, but due to recent developments in Afghanistan
00:00:11.020 I thought to make it now instead, and I'm sure this will be of interest to many of you.
00:00:16.020 Now, first and foremost, a message to any liberal, to any
00:00:20.620 admirer, to any enjoyer of the current
00:00:24.160 Western regime, the American Empire, or whatever we shall call it, the
00:00:30.000 neoliberal empire.
00:00:32.560 You might wonder, why did the Taliban have so much success in retaking Afghanistan?
00:00:39.620 Why did many, most perhaps, of the Afghan people, why did they reject
00:00:46.880 Western liberal democracy?
00:00:49.420 Yes, I hate to break it to you. I don't really, but anyway.
00:00:53.020 Anyway, the Western culture, the Western modern culture, that is, is supremely unattractive. 0.89
00:01:02.300 If you truly believe that a people will want to have a rainbow flag and McDonald's as the ultimate sign of culture, you are wrong.
00:01:12.860 So, it's simply not the case.
00:01:14.860 Compare it to when the British were colonizing India, at least they brought something worthwhile with them. 0.99
00:01:21.500 Railroads and infrastructure.
00:01:23.500 When the French occupied and colonized certain countries, they brought with them 1.00
00:01:28.140 some nice architecture and some art, etc.
00:01:31.420 In this case, again, McDonald's and rainbow flags, not particularly appealing to any decent individual, to be perfectly honest. 0.98
00:01:40.620 So, no, imagine my shock, it doesn't come to, it doesn't come as a surprise in the least that people would reject it.
00:01:48.700 So, there you have it, my brief analysis of the, of the situation.
00:01:53.980 So, anyway, speaking of Afghanistan, I wanted to issue a Central Asian history month.
00:02:00.060 I thought it would be a fun thing.
00:02:02.060 So, in my latest Wild Hunt challenge video, I encouraged you to read a book.
00:02:07.340 And I will actually encourage you to read two books for Central Asian history month.
00:02:11.740 Now, of course, we can place that particular month in September.
00:02:15.020 Um, and, uh, it's simply to read two books.
00:02:18.940 You can read one historical fiction book and one non-fiction book.
00:02:22.780 And I have, and I have two recommendations.
00:02:25.420 First and foremost, as I've talked about before on numerous occasions,
00:02:29.900 The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk.
00:02:31.660 Now, this takes place during the 1800s and it's about the struggle between
00:02:37.500 the British and the Russians, the Russians under the Tsar.
00:02:42.140 Now, if you have begun the Wild Hunt challenge, you will probably already have read my short book
00:02:46.940 review of this.
00:02:47.820 But to recap, the British, of course, they wanted to protect their prized jewel, India.
00:02:53.660 And Russia, of course, they wanted to expand into Central Asia as well.
00:02:57.900 Now, important to read this to understand the current situation in Afghanistan is that
00:03:03.260 the rivalry between Tsarist Russia and Great Britain in the 1800s, they were, um,
00:03:09.900 the successors of them.
00:03:11.260 The Americans, they took the place of the British and the Soviets took the place of the Tsarist Russians. 0.78
00:03:17.820 And also, if you look on certain films from the 80s, you will see the Taliban as being the good guys. 0.99
00:03:24.060 They were actually funded also by the Western powers to fight the Soviets.
00:03:28.780 And yeah, of course, now they are the bad guys since they are against the Western regimes.
00:03:34.940 Anyway, a recommended book.
00:03:36.460 It's quite thick, but it's worthwhile anyway, especially if you're interested in the time period.
00:03:42.860 Now, I also have a historical fiction recommendation, Empire of the Mughal.
00:03:49.180 It's set in the early 1500s and it follows Babur Khan, the founder of the Mughal Empire.
00:03:56.780 So this is also quite good to, yeah, get a feel of the Central Asian dynasties.
00:04:02.860 So I remember I read this many years ago.
00:04:05.580 I will probably reread it before I read the second and third books.
00:04:09.820 Something I remember was that they talked about who the most glorious ancestor was.
00:04:15.500 Was it Genghis Khan or was it Timur Lenk?
00:04:17.980 So they claimed to be descendants of those that people might make Let's Plays in Age of Empires 2.
00:04:25.740 There are campaigns for both Genghis Khan and Timur Lenk.
00:04:29.020 Anyway, that's a side note.
00:04:30.300 I can definitely recommend it.
00:04:31.740 And then you might say, isn't it better to only read nonfiction?
00:04:34.940 But keep in mind that most historical fiction authors, they go to great lengths to, you know,
00:04:41.980 do the research to portray the events and the setting in a good way.
00:04:45.820 So this fine man, Alex Rutherford, he traveled to Central Asia to, yeah, to study as well, to study the time period.
00:04:54.860 So you will get a lot of historical insights by reading it as well.
00:04:59.420 So for me, if I participate in this Central Asian History Month myself, I will first and foremost read this book,
00:05:06.060 The Silk Roads, to gain additional inspiration for Legi Gloria clothing, rocking this fine organic cotton polo now,
00:05:16.620 looking absolutely juicy, if I may be so bold.
00:05:19.260 So I will read this, gain some additional inspiration, and then I will read, I will first reread this and then read the second book.
00:05:27.020 So those are my two books in this fine challenge, as it were.
00:05:32.060 So anyway, I just thought to check in.
00:05:33.980 I encourage you to read up on some Central Asian history.
00:05:37.020 It's deeply interesting and it can be good to know what is going on in Afghanistan at the moment.
00:05:43.580 So now we'll hit the gym.
00:05:45.180 Thank you for watching and check out all links in the description box below.
00:05:50.380 XOXO BOOM!