The Movements: A Podcast History of the Masses

The Movements introduces itself on air as a leftist history and politics podcast, and both halves of that label shape the feed. The history episodes are scripted and narrated, closer to an audiobook than a conversation. They quote their sources directly, flagging where quotations begin and end. The work comes in numbered, multi-part series. One follows the Russian Revolution into civil war: a Red Army raised to defend the new state, famine pressing on the cities, and grain requisitioned by Reds and Whites alike. Admiral Kolchak's Whites get no cover. The narration sets their pledge to found law on the rights of private property beside mass desertions, public floggings, burned villages and conscription at gunpoint. A second series, on Guatemala and Cuba, moves to the Americas. Its material runs from United Fruit Company lobbying of both U.S. parties, through CIA operations authorized under Truman and Eisenhower, to the fall of Arbenz after his generals refused his late order to arm workers. A young Che Guevara appears among the civilians who asked for weapons. The teaser for part three, ¡Patria o Muerte!, turns to November 1960, when junior officers commanding nearly a third of Guatemala's army occupied key positions in hopes of a popular uprising. The narration takes sides without apology; the CIA's chosen commander, Castillo Armas, is simply called incompetent. The host is frank about the labour behind the scripts, describing months spent on a single one. Alongside the histories sits Stallin' For Time, which the host presents as the show's discussion program, put out while the next history installment is still underway. There the register loosens into casual, opinionated talk with guests. Adam Patterson, introduced as a friend of the show who has been on many times, turns up in two guest episodes. One, under the Stallin' For Time banner, asks how people are readied to commit atrocities, drawing on a private Facebook group of current and former CBP agents that a reporter disclosed. The other gives historical background to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, taking in NATO, Russia in the 1990s and the rise of Putinism. A Puerto Rico episode has a guest walking through a Telegram chat that linked government insiders with lobbyists and people holding government contracts. Occasionally the feed steps outside both formats, as with a recorded reading of Amilcar Cabral's The Weapon of Theory, a 1966 speech delivered in Havana at the Tri-Continental Conference. Its closing cry, patria o muerte, venceremos, echoes the title of the Guatemala and Cuba series' third part. Several episodes open with the host's relaxed 'Ahoy there, comrades,' a small sign of how informal the show gets once the script is set aside.