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  • The Northern Network Strasser Built That Made Him Disposable

    The Northern Network Strasser Built That Made Him Disposable
    2026/09/07
    The Northern Network Strasser Built That Made Him Disposable

    Fifty-four rooms and ninety-five staff, housed inside the Nazi Party's own headquarters in Munich — the administrative engine of a movement that had once existed only in a single Bavarian city. The man who built it had appointed the regional chiefs, opened the branch offices, and trained the men who ran it all, then walked away from politics entirely, retreating to a pharmaceutical directorship under an explicit agreement to stay silent. What made that retreat insufficient?

    In this episode, we trace how Gregor Strasser assembled the NSDAP's national organization from nothing, clashed with Hitler over its direction, and then abandoned it altogether, asking what makes the architect of a system become a target of it long after he has surrendered every lever of control.

    Person: Gregor Strasser
    Location: Berlin, Germany
    Date: June 30, 1934
    Case: the killing of Gregor Strasser during the Night of the Long Knives
    Status: shot on Gestapo authority and left to bleed to death in custody

    - Strasser's tours through northern and western Germany, using his free Reichstag rail passes, expanded NSDAP local chapters from 71 to 272 by the end of 1925
    - By June 1932, as Reichsorganisationsleiter, he oversaw 95 staff across 54 rooms in the Brown House in Munich
    - At the February 1926 Bamberg Conference, Hitler rejected the Strasser Program and pulled Joseph Goebbels, Strasser's own appointee, to his side
    - On December 8, 1932, Strasser resigned every party office after Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher offered him the Vice-Chancellorship and the Minister Presidency of Prussia
    - On June 30, 1934, shot once from

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    20 分
  • The two-fingered sign that he kept refuting cost him his life

    The two-fingered sign that he kept refuting cost him his life
    2026/09/07
    The two-fingered sign that he kept refuting cost him his life

    A man lived for about six years in a dugout pressed into the frozen ground above the Arctic Circle, on bread and water, and finished a book there that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky would later read. He had already been exiled once, beaten, shipwrecked in Siberian rapids, and formally declared separated from the body of Christ by the assembled patriarchs of the Orthodox world — and he answered by anathematizing them back. What could the state possibly still be waiting for, all those years later, before it finally decided his words could not be allowed to exist?

    In this episode, we follow Avvakum Petrov from a provincial Russian priesthood through Siberian exile, a council trial, and years of imprisonment in an Arctic pit, asking what made a single hand gesture and the sentences one man wrote about it dangerous enough for an empire to burn him for.

    Person: Avvakum Petrov
    Location: Pustozersk, on the Pechora River, above the Arctic Circle
    Date: April 14, 1682
    Case: the dvoeperstie, the two-fingered sign of the cross
    Status: burned alive at Pustozersk

    - Nikon became Patriarch of Moscow in 1652 and, between 1653 and 1656, replaced the two-fingered cross with the three-fingered troeperstie, along with new vestments and revised liturgical texts
    - Avvakum was exiled to Tobolsk and then to Dauria near the Chinese border in 1653, not returning to Moscow for eleven years; two of his sons died on that journey
    - In 1666, the Great Moscow Synod anathematized Avvakum after he denounced the reforms before the Ecumenical Council of Patriarchs
    - From 1667 he was held at Pustozersk with three companions, Lazar, Fyodor, and Epifany, whose tongues and fingers were reportedly cut off to stop them from speaking
    - Between 1669 and 1675, on bread and water, Avvakum wrote The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself, which circulated in handwritten copies for 179 years before its first printing in 1861
    - The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia canonized Avvakum as a saint in 1981; the official Russian Orthodox Church has not

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    23 分
  • The Rack That Tore Her Joints and Sent Him to the Stake

    The Rack That Tore Her Joints and Sent Him to the Stake
    2026/09/07
    The Rack That Tore Her Joints and Sent Him to the Stake

    A chain circles her waist, not her wrists, because her shoulders have already been pulled from their sockets and she cannot stand. Beside her at Smithfield burns a man whose entire presence in the historical record amounts to little more than his name. Why does one death survive in exhaustive detail while the other all but vanishes?

    In this episode, we lay out the events that put both Anne Askew and John Adams at Smithfield and the political strategy that engineered their deaths, asking what the traditionalist faction at Henry VIII's court hoped to gain by torturing minor evangelicals and how far up the chain of power that scheme was meant to reach.

    Person: Anne Askew and John Adams
    Location: Smithfield, London
    Date: 16 July 1546
    Case: conviction for heresy over the doctrine of the Eucharist
    Status: executed by burning at the stake alongside two other condemned men

    - Anne Askew was twenty-five years old when she was executed on 16 July 1546.
    - Four people were burned at three stakes at Smithfield that morning: Anne Askew, John Adams, John Lassells, and Nicholas Belenian (also recorded as John Hemsley).
    - Askew was examined on 19 June 1546 by Thomas Kyme, Stephen Gardiner, John Dudley, and Sir William Paget, and was racked in the White Tower by Kyme and Sir Richard Rich after Lieutenant Anthony Knyvett refused to continue.
    - She was convicted of heresy on 18 June 1546 and, according to John Foxe's account, was secured upright at the stake with a chain because her shoulders, elbows, and knees had been dislocated.
    - Askew's own account, smuggled from Newgate Prison, reached the exiled writer John Bale, who published it, and it was later drawn on by John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments of 1563.

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    24 分