September 1, 2022 • 17 mins
Popular struggles in the 19th century led to national level democracies with more equality and justice. Imagine what a similar struggle on the global level could do in the 21st century.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
We are passionate thatwhat the world needs is global democracy.
But we have heard that many peopleare disillusioned with democracy and think that it doesn’t work.
While other people very much supportthe importance of democracy at the national level,
but think that it is impossible at the global level.
In this talk I’m going to have a look at the history of democracy,and the possible futures of democracy,
(00:32):
and try to answer both these points.
So, if we look at the political systemsof most European countries at the start of the 19th century,
we see that they had a system of decision-making
where the wealthy, land-owning elitegot to make decisions for the whole of society,
a kind of ‘democracy of the elite’ if you will.
There were governments and parliaments,
(00:52):
but on average only 2% of the adult male population had a vote.
Eligibility to vote was basedon how much land, or how much wealth, one had.
So the landed gentry, the small minority of 2%,who lived in great opulence and in large mansions, they got to vote,
while the vast majority of the people,the serfs and workers and farmers, the 98%,
(01:19):
those who were living in shocking poverty,they had no vote and absolutely no say in how their society was governed.
And so it is not surprising that the elite decision-makersmade decisions and policies which benefited the elite,
and which were not good at all for the masses.
And thus the rich got richer and the poor got poorer,and rates of inequality soared.
(01:43):
Things only began to change with the industrial revolution.
First of all, serfs and farmers started to move away from the countrysideto become factory workers in the towns.
Here conditions were often even worseand people began to agitate for improvements.
In the towns they met other people from different areasand began to develop a national identity
(02:05):
rather than a purely local one based on their village.
They began to think of their society on a larger scale,not just of the feudal manor.
And they began to want a say in how this society was run.
Secondly, the new industrial entrepreneurs who were running the factoriesand making lots of money, were often not from the landed gentry,
(02:28):
and thus even though they began to become very wealthymost of them were not eligible to vote because they did not own land.
And they too, wanted a say in the running of society.
But why should the landed elite listen to either of these two groups?
They had all the power and hadabsolutely nothing to gain by sharing it with anyone else.
(02:50):
And thus throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century
there were strikes and protests and demonstrations and even violent revolutions in virtually every European country.
The primary call was for democracy, for the right to vote.
This was seen as the key to improving all the other problems in society.
(03:13):
And over the course of this 100 to 150 years
government after government lowered the threshold of how much land you had to own,
or how much money you had to have,in order to be eligible for the vote.
This carried on, step by step by step,
until by the end of the 19th century the vast majorityof European countries now let all males over the age of 18 vote.
(03:38):
A subsequent struggle, of course, continued by the women, as they too, demanded the right to vote.
The suffragettes tied themselves to railings,ran in front of race horses, blew up post-boxes
and used all sorts of techniques to get their voice heard.
And eventually they too were successful.
And by the middle of the 20th century the impossible had happened,
(04:00):
the elite had given the vote to everyone,and there was universal suffrage in virtually every European country.
The struggle had been long, but it was successful.
The disenfranchised 98% now got their right to vote.
And indeed, in the years after World War 2,most of them voted for Labour governments,
(04:22):
with leaders from the Trade Unionswho represented the workers,
and who put in policies that led to the creation of much more just and equal societies.
They institutionalised the welfare state which provided free education and healthcare to everyone,
which improved public infrastructure and public services,
and which stepped up welfare servicesto the unemployed and disabled.
(04:46):
And as an indicator of how much better society got now that there was democracy
let’s look at this graph of income inequality during the 20th century, produced by French economist Thomas Piketty.
The graph starts on the left hand side in 1910
and we can see that there is a very high degree of inequality.
But as we go forward in time the degree of inequality goes down,
(05:11):
as the degree of democracy increases.
And in most of the lines there is a quite dramatic decrease in inequality
in the late 1940s, after the Second World War.
So we can see that during the middle part of the 20th century,
up until around 1980,
there is a really quite low degree of economic inequality,
during this period that democracy prevails.
(05:32):
But then things start to change,
and we see a sharp increase in inequality going up to 2010,
where the graph ends, but indeed this increase continues until today.
Before we consider why that is,let’s just reflect on what happened in the 19th century.
Workers and farmers managed to unite together in a common protest against the elite.
(05:55):
This may sound simple, but at the beginning of this period these people were very diverse and separate
and knew little about each otherand had no sense of themselves as a common group,
as ‘workers’ or ‘the proletariat’ or what have you.
A coal miner from the north of England, say,did not feel any sense of unity
with a machine worker from the west of England.
(06:15):
And neither of them would have considered that they hadanything in common with a seamstress from anywhere in England.
But during the course of the 19th centurythese disparate groups came together, learnt about each other,
and began to see, that despite their differences, they were indeed positioned in a similar way in the national economic system.
(06:35):
Their differences, of trade, of gender, of location, or whatever else,
became largely irrelevant in their common struggle.
And by recognising their unity,and coming together in joint political action,
they succeeded in bringing aboutwhat many people would have said was impossible.
If you were a serf living at the beginning of the 19th century,working the lands of your feudal master,
(07:00):
while he enjoyed a life of luxury and opulence, and got to vote in a parliament which kept things as they were,
and some visionary came up and told youthat in the future everybody would be able to vote,
and that there would be a democratically elected governmentthat would make a more just and fair society,
that would lower rates of inequality,and would provide free education and free healthcare to everyone.
(07:26):
Well, you would probably have laughedand called that person a naive idealist.
‘The elites won’t give up their power’, you’d say,
‘it’s not possible’. ‘It’s just a fantasy’.
And indeed, that sounds quite reasonable.
But if everyone had thought like that, nothing would have changed.
But instead a few brave souls started to imagine a better society,and started to share this vision with others.
(07:53):
And as the vision inspired people, they began to get active.
Leaders emerged to help organise them. They used the new technologies of the day.
They were creative. They were determined. And eventually, they were successful.
The situation is in many ways rather similarto the situation today regarding global democracy.
(08:14):
To many people global democracy seems like a great idea,
but a kind of idealist and impossible fantasy.
‘The global masses are too diverse and separated,’ you say,
‘What does a factory worker in Bangladeshhave in common with a agricultural worker in Kenya?
Or with indigenous peoples in Latin America?
How could they possibly all come together in a common struggle?’
(08:36):
Well, its already starting to happen.
‘And in any case', you argue,'how could we create a unified global society, when we’re all just too diverse?’
Well, history is the story of diverse people recognising their unity and coming together.
In the age of the internet and mobile technology,surely we can do it too.
‘Oh but the elites will never give up their power,’ you say.
(09:00):
Well, they won’t voluntarily.
But they have given up power before,and there is no reason why they won’t do it again.
It’s up to us to create the right conditionsso that they choose to do so.
Right now the path to success is not clear or obvious,
but neither was it at the beginning of the 19th century.
It’s up to us to start and work it outas we go along, just as they did.
(09:24):
So, this is what the history of democracy tells usabout the possibility of democracy at the global level.
It is possible, if we want it,and if we are prepared to struggle for it.
But what about the other question that I mentioned at the beginning?
Is democracy any good?
Many think it doesn’t seem to be working very well now,even at the national level.
(09:45):
Do we actually want global democracy?
So let’s go back to the graph of economic inequality.
Why were things so good between, say 1950 and 1980,and why did things start to get worse after that?
There’s been democracy throughout all this period, right?So why did it stop working?
Well, the question of whether there has been democracythrough all this period is actually a bit complicated.
(10:08):
The answer is kind of yes and no.
You see, in the period between roughly 1950 and the early 1980s,each country had its own economy
and the economies of different countries were only slightly interconnected.
There was trade between countries, of course, but at quite low levels.
Most businesses operated in just one country.And they were regulated by the government of that country.
(10:34):
So essentially in this period the government and the economy overlapped,
they were at the same scale.
And thus the democratically elected governmentcould regulate the economy so that it functioned for the benefit of everyone.
So this was the time of real democracy, and of relative equality within states.
Now while this situation was very good for most people,it wasn’t so great for the elite.
(10:59):
They had to pay taxes, and follow regulations, and they foundthat this began to limit the amount of profit that they could make.
In 1975 a group of elites from Europe, America and Japan,called the Trilateral Commission,
wrote a report called ‘The Crisis of Democracy’.
The crisis, they argued, was thatthere was too much democracy,
(11:22):
or in their words,‘an excess of democracy’.
Citizens were beginning to participate too activelyand were demanding too many government services.
And this was making it all rather difficult to do business profitably.
The solution, they argued,was therefore to limit democracy.
The report didn’t specify exactly how democracy should be limited,
(11:45):
but the elites could draw some ideas from the work of British-Austrian economist, Friedrich Hayek.
Hayek had written quite explicitly that democracy needed to be limitedin order for the economy to function optimally,
or as we might say,so that the elites could make big profits.
He argued that while a certain amountof democracy was a good thing for society,
(12:05):
most economic matters shouldbe carefully bracketed out of democratic control.
He contended, in particular, that governments should not have the right to raise taxes for the purpose of redistribution
and he argued strongly against any notion of ‘social justice’.
Hayek, and other neoliberal economists, figured out severalclever ways to bring economic matters out of democratic control,
(12:30):
while still leaving the structures of democracy in place.
The most fundamental way was to expandthe economy beyond the borders to the state.
In a globalised economy no statewould be able to control and regulate the economy,
and thus much of the economy would effectively escape democratic control.
(12:51):
And indeed, since around the beginning of the 1980s,
Western governments have implemented policiesto enable economic globalisation.
They have removed capital controlsand tariffs and duties and made it easier and easier
for capital to flow across bordersand for national economies to integrate into one big global economy.
(13:11):
This is what we generally call globalisation,or more precisely, neo-liberal globalisation.
And at the same time that the economy has globalised,government and regulation has remained at the state level,
and thus much of the economyhas now indeed escaped democratic control.
Governments now find it very hardto tax elites or big corporations, for example,
(13:34):
because they can simply move their money outside of the country,ideally to a tax haven, where it can sit in secret.
This has greatly helped the elite to make big profits.
And there are a whole load of other ways that parts of the economy have been quietly removed from democratic control.
Central banks have been given independence to make monetary policy,
in many cases outside of democratic government control.
(13:57):
And in many countries round the world the World Bank and the IMFhave encouraged governments to draft new constitutions
which insulate certain key economicand financial matters away from parliamentary control.
And a whole raft of undemocraticglobal governance arrangements have been created,
not by coincidence, mainly in the economic and financial spheres,
(14:17):
which govern key areas of the global economywithout any input from democratically elected parliamentarians
and without the majority of the worlds’ peopleseven knowing anything about them.
Put all these things together,
and you will see that there has been a process of economic de-democratisation taking place since the 1980s.
The structures of democracy still exist, political parties,elections, and so on, but it has been hollowed out.
(14:43):
Economic matters, in particular, have been largely removed.
And this explains two things.
Firstly, it explains why that graph of economic inequalitystarts changing direction around 1980,
and why inequality starts rising after that.
The economy was taken largely out of democratic control.
Most of the regulatory tools that governments can use to limit inequality,
(15:05):
such as taxation and redistribution, became ineffective,
or much, much less effectivethan they had been in the previous years.
And this also explains the sense that many people have these days that democracy is somehow not working.
That’s because in certain key areas, it’s not.
But that doesn’t mean that democracy as a system of governance is no good.
(15:28):
On the contrary, it shows that neoliberal economic globalisationhas undermined national democracy.
If we have a global economy,but national level democracy,
then that national level democracywill not be able to function properly,
at least in respect to economic matters.
So what to do?
If we want democracy, proper democracy,then we have to organise things
(15:52):
so that democratic governmentand the economy are on the same scale.
Only in that way can the economy come under democratic control.
So there are two options:
Either we reduce the scale of the economy back to the national level,
or we expand the scale of democratic government up to the global scale.
Or in other words, we can choose between de-globalisation or global democracy.
(16:18):
In our high-tech worldof every-increasing internet connectivity
I don’t think that retracting back intoour small nation states is a serious option.
The world is interconnected, people are interconnected,
the ecology is interconnected, the climate is interconnected.
What we need now is political interconnection,
a way in which the voice of the people can be heard,
(16:40):
a way in which the many can govern the world, and its resources, for the benefit of everyone,
a way in which we can come together to solve global problems.
If we want to do all this,and save our national democracies,
then we need global democracy.
It is the best option, and I believe, it is possible.
(17:01):
This, is the future of democracy.
We are passionate thatwhat the world needs is global democracy.
But we have heard that many peopleare disillusioned with democracy and think that it doesn’t work.
While other people very much supportthe importance of democracy at the national level,
but think that it is impossible at the global level.
In this talk I’m going to have a look at the history of democracy,and the possible futures of democracy,
(00:32):
and try to answer both these points.
So, if we look at the political systemsof most European countries at the start of the 19th century,
we see that they had a system of decision-making
where the wealthy, land-owning elitegot to make decisions for the whole of society,
a kind of ‘democracy of the elite’ if you will.
There were governments and parliaments,
(00:52):
but on average only 2% of the adult male population had a vote.
Eligibility to vote was basedon how much land, or how much wealth, one had.
So the landed gentry, the small minority of 2%,who lived in great opulence and in large mansions, they got to vote,
while the vast majority of the people,the serfs and workers and farmers, the 98%,
(01:19):
those who were living in shocking poverty,they had no vote and absolutely no say in how their society was governed.
And so it is not surprising that the elite decision-makersmade decisions and policies which benefited the elite,
and which were not good at all for the masses.
And thus the rich got richer and the poor got poorer,and rates of inequality soared.
(01:43):
Things only began to change with the industrial revolution.
First of all, serfs and farmers started to move away from the countrysideto become factory workers in the towns.
Here conditions were often even worseand people began to agitate for improvements.
In the towns they met other people from different areasand began to develop a national identity
(02:05):
rather than a purely local one based on their village.
They began to think of their society on a larger scale,not just of the feudal manor.
And they began to want a say in how this society was run.
Secondly, the new industrial entrepreneurs who were running the factoriesand making lots of money, were often not from the landed gentry,
(02:28):
and thus even though they began to become very wealthymost of them were not eligible to vote because they did not own land.
And they too, wanted a say in the running of society.
But why should the landed elite listen to either of these two groups?
They had all the power and hadabsolutely nothing to gain by sharing it with anyone else.
(02:50):
And thus throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century
there were strikes and protests and demonstrations and even violent revolutions in virtually every European country.
The primary call was for democracy, for the right to vote.
This was seen as the key to improving all the other problems in society.
(03:13):
And over the course of this 100 to 150 years
government after government lowered the threshold of how much land you had to own,
or how much money you had to have,in order to be eligible for the vote.
This carried on, step by step by step,
until by the end of the 19th century the vast majorityof European countries now let all males over the age of 18 vote.
(03:38):
A subsequent struggle, of course, continued by the women, as they too, demanded the right to vote.
The suffragettes tied themselves to railings,ran in front of race horses, blew up post-boxes
and used all sorts of techniques to get their voice heard.
And eventually they too were successful.
And by the middle of the 20th century the impossible had happened,
(04:00):
the elite had given the vote to everyone,and there was universal suffrage in virtually every European country.
The struggle had been long, but it was successful.
The disenfranchised 98% now got their right to vote.
And indeed, in the years after World War 2,most of them voted for Labour governments,
(04:22):
with leaders from the Trade Unionswho represented the workers,
and who put in policies that led to the creation of much more just and equal societies.
They institutionalised the welfare state which provided free education and healthcare to everyone,
which improved public infrastructure and public services,
and which stepped up welfare servicesto the unemployed and disabled.
(04:46):
And as an indicator of how much better society got now that there was democracy
let’s look at this graph of income inequality during the 20th century, produced by French economist Thomas Piketty.
The graph starts on the left hand side in 1910
and we can see that there is a very high degree of inequality.
But as we go forward in time the degree of inequality goes down,
(05:11):
as the degree of democracy increases.
And in most of the lines there is a quite dramatic decrease in inequality
in the late 1940s, after the Second World War.
So we can see that during the middle part of the 20th century,
up until around 1980,
there is a really quite low degree of economic inequality,
during this period that democracy prevails.
(05:32):
But then things start to change,
and we see a sharp increase in inequality going up to 2010,
where the graph ends, but indeed this increase continues until today.
Before we consider why that is,let’s just reflect on what happened in the 19th century.
Workers and farmers managed to unite together in a common protest against the elite.
(05:55):
This may sound simple, but at the beginning of this period these people were very diverse and separate
and knew little about each otherand had no sense of themselves as a common group,
as ‘workers’ or ‘the proletariat’ or what have you.
A coal miner from the north of England, say,did not feel any sense of unity
with a machine worker from the west of England.
(06:15):
And neither of them would have considered that they hadanything in common with a seamstress from anywhere in England.
But during the course of the 19th centurythese disparate groups came together, learnt about each other,
and began to see, that despite their differences, they were indeed positioned in a similar way in the national economic system.
(06:35):
Their differences, of trade, of gender, of location, or whatever else,
became largely irrelevant in their common struggle.
And by recognising their unity,and coming together in joint political action,
they succeeded in bringing aboutwhat many people would have said was impossible.
If you were a serf living at the beginning of the 19th century,working the lands of your feudal master,
(07:00):
while he enjoyed a life of luxury and opulence, and got to vote in a parliament which kept things as they were,
and some visionary came up and told youthat in the future everybody would be able to vote,
and that there would be a democratically elected governmentthat would make a more just and fair society,
that would lower rates of inequality,and would provide free education and free healthcare to everyone.
(07:26):
Well, you would probably have laughedand called that person a naive idealist.
‘The elites won’t give up their power’, you’d say,
‘it’s not possible’. ‘It’s just a fantasy’.
And indeed, that sounds quite reasonable.
But if everyone had thought like that, nothing would have changed.
But instead a few brave souls started to imagine a better society,and started to share this vision with others.
(07:53):
And as the vision inspired people, they began to get active.
Leaders emerged to help organise them. They used the new technologies of the day.
They were creative. They were determined. And eventually, they were successful.
The situation is in many ways rather similarto the situation today regarding global democracy.
(08:14):
To many people global democracy seems like a great idea,
but a kind of idealist and impossible fantasy.
‘The global masses are too diverse and separated,’ you say,
‘What does a factory worker in Bangladeshhave in common with a agricultural worker in Kenya?
Or with indigenous peoples in Latin America?
How could they possibly all come together in a common struggle?’
(08:36):
Well, its already starting to happen.
‘And in any case', you argue,'how could we create a unified global society, when we’re all just too diverse?’
Well, history is the story of diverse people recognising their unity and coming together.
In the age of the internet and mobile technology,surely we can do it too.
‘Oh but the elites will never give up their power,’ you say.
(09:00):
Well, they won’t voluntarily.
But they have given up power before,and there is no reason why they won’t do it again.
It’s up to us to create the right conditionsso that they choose to do so.
Right now the path to success is not clear or obvious,
but neither was it at the beginning of the 19th century.
It’s up to us to start and work it outas we go along, just as they did.
(09:24):
So, this is what the history of democracy tells usabout the possibility of democracy at the global level.
It is possible, if we want it,and if we are prepared to struggle for it.
But what about the other question that I mentioned at the beginning?
Is democracy any good?
Many think it doesn’t seem to be working very well now,even at the national level.
(09:45):
Do we actually want global democracy?
So let’s go back to the graph of economic inequality.
Why were things so good between, say 1950 and 1980,and why did things start to get worse after that?
There’s been democracy throughout all this period, right?So why did it stop working?
Well, the question of whether there has been democracythrough all this period is actually a bit complicated.
(10:08):
The answer is kind of yes and no.
You see, in the period between roughly 1950 and the early 1980s,each country had its own economy
and the economies of different countries were only slightly interconnected.
There was trade between countries, of course, but at quite low levels.
Most businesses operated in just one country.And they were regulated by the government of that country.
(10:34):
So essentially in this period the government and the economy overlapped,
they were at the same scale.
And thus the democratically elected governmentcould regulate the economy so that it functioned for the benefit of everyone.
So this was the time of real democracy, and of relative equality within states.
Now while this situation was very good for most people,it wasn’t so great for the elite.
(10:59):
They had to pay taxes, and follow regulations, and they foundthat this began to limit the amount of profit that they could make.
In 1975 a group of elites from Europe, America and Japan,called the Trilateral Commission,
wrote a report called ‘The Crisis of Democracy’.
The crisis, they argued, was thatthere was too much democracy,
(11:22):
or in their words,‘an excess of democracy’.
Citizens were beginning to participate too activelyand were demanding too many government services.
And this was making it all rather difficult to do business profitably.
The solution, they argued,was therefore to limit democracy.
The report didn’t specify exactly how democracy should be limited,
(11:45):
but the elites could draw some ideas from the work of British-Austrian economist, Friedrich Hayek.
Hayek had written quite explicitly that democracy needed to be limitedin order for the economy to function optimally,
or as we might say,so that the elites could make big profits.
He argued that while a certain amountof democracy was a good thing for society,
(12:05):
most economic matters shouldbe carefully bracketed out of democratic control.
He contended, in particular, that governments should not have the right to raise taxes for the purpose of redistribution
and he argued strongly against any notion of ‘social justice’.
Hayek, and other neoliberal economists, figured out severalclever ways to bring economic matters out of democratic control,
(12:30):
while still leaving the structures of democracy in place.
The most fundamental way was to expandthe economy beyond the borders to the state.
In a globalised economy no statewould be able to control and regulate the economy,
and thus much of the economy would effectively escape democratic control.
(12:51):
And indeed, since around the beginning of the 1980s,
Western governments have implemented policiesto enable economic globalisation.
They have removed capital controlsand tariffs and duties and made it easier and easier
for capital to flow across bordersand for national economies to integrate into one big global economy.
(13:11):
This is what we generally call globalisation,or more precisely, neo-liberal globalisation.
And at the same time that the economy has globalised,government and regulation has remained at the state level,
and thus much of the economyhas now indeed escaped democratic control.
Governments now find it very hardto tax elites or big corporations, for example,
(13:34):
because they can simply move their money outside of the country,ideally to a tax haven, where it can sit in secret.
This has greatly helped the elite to make big profits.
And there are a whole load of other ways that parts of the economy have been quietly removed from democratic control.
Central banks have been given independence to make monetary policy,
in many cases outside of democratic government control.
(13:57):
And in many countries round the world the World Bank and the IMFhave encouraged governments to draft new constitutions
which insulate certain key economicand financial matters away from parliamentary control.
And a whole raft of undemocraticglobal governance arrangements have been created,
not by coincidence, mainly in the economic and financial spheres,
(14:17):
which govern key areas of the global economywithout any input from democratically elected parliamentarians
and without the majority of the worlds’ peopleseven knowing anything about them.
Put all these things together,
and you will see that there has been a process of economic de-democratisation taking place since the 1980s.
The structures of democracy still exist, political parties,elections, and so on, but it has been hollowed out.
(14:43):
Economic matters, in particular, have been largely removed.
And this explains two things.
Firstly, it explains why that graph of economic inequalitystarts changing direction around 1980,
and why inequality starts rising after that.
The economy was taken largely out of democratic control.
Most of the regulatory tools that governments can use to limit inequality,
(15:05):
such as taxation and redistribution, became ineffective,
or much, much less effectivethan they had been in the previous years.
And this also explains the sense that many people have these days that democracy is somehow not working.
That’s because in certain key areas, it’s not.
But that doesn’t mean that democracy as a system of governance is no good.
(15:28):
On the contrary, it shows that neoliberal economic globalisationhas undermined national democracy.
If we have a global economy,but national level democracy,
then that national level democracywill not be able to function properly,
at least in respect to economic matters.
So what to do?
If we want democracy, proper democracy,then we have to organise things
(15:52):
so that democratic governmentand the economy are on the same scale.
Only in that way can the economy come under democratic control.
So there are two options:
Either we reduce the scale of the economy back to the national level,
or we expand the scale of democratic government up to the global scale.
Or in other words, we can choose between de-globalisation or global democracy.
(16:18):
In our high-tech worldof every-increasing internet connectivity
I don’t think that retracting back intoour small nation states is a serious option.
The world is interconnected, people are interconnected,
the ecology is interconnected, the climate is interconnected.
What we need now is political interconnection,
a way in which the voice of the people can be heard,
(16:40):
a way in which the many can govern the world, and its resources, for the benefit of everyone,
a way in which we can come together to solve global problems.
If we want to do all this,and save our national democracies,
then we need global democracy.
It is the best option, and I believe, it is possible.
(17:01):
This, is the future of democracy.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.