Gladio Free Europe

⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

---

In 1549, a Portuguese priest and a Japanese pirate disembarked on the port of Kagoshima with one purpose: to bring Christianity to the islands of Japan. They would be remarkably successful. Within 50 years, hundreds of thousands of Japanese people had been baptized, from lowly fishermen and merchants to powerful noblemen at the center of the shogun's circle...

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

---

England has a new king, and the realm has come down with a terrible case of coronation fever. You may have seen the ridiculous merchandise, the extravagant robes, or the swords and other odd utensils used in the ceremony, but you asking yourself — what does this all mean?

Well, Liam and Russian Sam sat through the coronation of Charles III so you don't have to...

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠

---

After a couple weeks of adventuring across Japan and the Caucasus, the hosts of Gladio Free Europe are back in the States. Liam shares his experiences seeing the traces of the violent Sengoku period all across Japan's main island Honshu, and explains how this trip finally brought him to his "white guy into Buddhism" phase...

In 2011, the US National Archives released 12,000 pages of documents relating to the activities of the Public Health Service in 1940s Guatemala. This report conclusively proved that a team of doctors led by John Charles Cutler, previously involved in the notorious Tuskegee Experiment, knowingly infected patients in Guatemala with syphilis and other venereal diseases...

⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠

---

This week, we talk about centaurs, demons, and self-filling pots of food. That's right, we're talking about saints and their hagiographies! This unusual genre stands at the crossroads between the Late Antique and Medieval worlds, and despite their often strange contents, they have a lot to tell us about the world in which they were written...

⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠

---

With Argentina, 1985 having been in the running for Best Foreign Language Film, we are joined by our good friend Kevin as we delve into the history of the Argentinian Junta and its genocidal campaign of disappearances, extrajudicial murder, torture, and the kidnapping of children...

Gladio Free Europe received a frosty transmission this week from the icy waters of the Bering Sea. Writer, prophet, and friend of the pod Jon called in to talk about life in Alaska. We run through the past 300 years of the 49th state, beginning with initial bloody encounters between indigenous Yupik and Inuit peoples and the Russian Empire and the ensuing colonial contest with Britain, the United States, and even Spain...

Support us on Patreon

--- 

More and more people are talking about bog bodies! Due to great feedback on our most recent episode we're following up our bog talk with an overview of recent developments in wetland archaeology and an overview of some of the most interesting bog sites in Europe. We dive into our favorite finds that we didn't have time to cover in our last episode, like the morbid battlefield of Alken Enge and the beautiful bog dog of Saxony...

Support us on Patreon

---

We get knee-deep in the peat this week to examine the bog body phenomenon. Due to their unusually anaerobic nature, bogs across the world have a remarkable ability to preserve any animal matter that falls into them. The cold and wet climate of Northern Europe has proven especially fruitful for the preservation of human corpses, many of which date back to the iron age and beyond...

We are now on Patreon! We are not setting up a paywall, but if you would like to support Gladio Free Europe, we'll be thankful for your contribution.

---

The Golden Age of Hollywood was a rough time to be an actor. Overdoses, suicides, and secret abortions were routine, but always escaped the papers thanks to the hard work of the studio fixers...