We Didn't Start the Fire: The History...

This brand new pop culture history podcast is nothing like anything you've heard before, and it's everything you need to understand the modern world. Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce, an American pop culture buff and a British music lover, have taken the smash-hit song by Billy Joel and turned it into a podcast. Billy lists 120 people, places, and things in 'We Didn't Start The Fire', and Katie and Tom will do an episode on every single one to create the most fascinating, random and original history of the post-war world. Over the next two and a half years, we're going to learn about politics, rock 'n' roll, sport, space, television, the Cold War, guided along the way by historians, eyewitnesses, and mega-fans. Billy started it. We're going to finish it. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @spreadthatfire, email us at fire@crowdnetwork.co.uk, and go to spreadthatfire.com to buy merch.

History
Arts
TV & Film
126
Studebaker
Studebaker: a central cog in 20th century America's booming automobile industry, or just a punchy rhyme? There's something romantic about the story of this small company from South Bend Indiana that was a symbol of innovation and uniqueness f...
28 min
127
Richard Nixon
"A mystery wrapped in an enigma." Episode nine is the first of three that will follow Nixon's rise from his poor Quaker roots in rural California, to the White House and Watergate. The fantastic Dr Rivers Gambrell brings alive Nixon...
41 min
128
Joe McCarthy
Billy's eighth lyric invites Katie, Tom and UCL's Josh Hollands into the world of the Red Scare, the crippling anticommunist conspiracy that shrouded America in the '40s and '50s. Thousands of teachers, artists, army officials, and ...
38 min
129
Joe DiMaggio
Katie and Tom's romp through the 20th century meets baseball, and there's a darkness behind one of the greatest players of all time. From TV advert appearances and Simon and Garfunkel songs, to an obsessive and abusive marriage with Marilyn M...
36 min
130
Walter Winchell
Sixth lyric, sixth topic. Katie and Tom are joined by historian of the popular press Dr Chris Shoop-Worrall, and together they delve into the dark world of the man who made gossip a currency: widely-loved and intensely-disliked columnist and broadcaste...
43 min
131
South Pacific
We're five lyrics in, and Katie and Tom are getting musical. Literally, if you make it to the end. Dr Cara Rodway (Chair of the British Association for American Studies by day, musical nerd by night) gives a pretty convincing case for why the soun...
39 min
132
Johnnie Ray
Deaf in one ear, shy, bisexual, sensitive - are these the reasons Johnnie Ray isn't worshipped as the Father of Rock and Roll? Katie, Tom and author Cathi Unsworth delve into the world of the man who gave way to Elvis, the Beatles, Morrissey. It...
30 min
133
Red China
It's episode 3 and Billy's transported us back to post-1949 Communist China. Katie and Tom talk to Prof. Yangwen Zheng about her childhood under the regime, and she's got a fascinating story to tell. It's one of stolen pencil cases,...
39 min
134
Doris Day
36 min
135
Harry Truman
35 min
136
Trailer
A modern history podcast inspired by the lyrics of Billy Joel. Billy didn’t just write an unforgettable smash-hit with ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, he also created the most fascinating, random and original history of the post-war world. Each episode, a ...
6 min