Speaker
Fin Taylor
Appearances over time
8 episodes
Episodes
8
What You Do In Your Own Home Is All Of My Business | East Germany & The Stasi
I Prefer El Alamein’s Early Stuff (with Pierre Novellie) | Monty vs Rommel (Part 3/4)
Italy’s Greatest Weapon Is Surrender | Monty vs Rommel (Part 2/4)
Nazis Are No Match For Knobbly Knees | Monty vs Rommel (Part 1/4)
Cuckolded by Mr Tumble | Claudius (Part 2)
Not All Roman Emperors Are Visible | Claudius (Part 1)
Hanging Out The Blatter it | The History of The World Cup (Part 4/4)
First Port Stanley, Now This?? (with The Upshot!) | The History of The World Cup (Part 3/4)
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Italy invaded Egypt from Libya with nearly a quarter of a million men, yet this force was effectively neutralised by around 36,000 British troops due to poor planning and disconnected camps.
Claudius bribed the Praetorian Guard with 15,000 sesterces each to be declared emperor, implying he was complicit in Caligula's assassination.
The North African desert campaign is the only theatre of World War II where Britain defeats the enemy without American assistance.
Colombian defender Andrés Escobar was shot dead after scoring an own goal at the 1994 World Cup, with his killers reportedly shouting 'Gol!' after each shot.
The Second Battle of El Alamein marked the first time German forces were defeated in World War II, a turning point Churchill immortalised with a famous quote.
Claudius was born on August 1st, 10 BC in what is now Lyon, France — making him the first Roman Emperor born outside Italy.
Stalin extracted roughly $10 billion worth of agricultural and industrial products from East Germany in its first years, crippling its economy from the start.
Claudius's own mother described him as 'an abortion of a man that had only been begun but never finished by nature.'
Bernard Montgomery was born in 1887 and Erwin Rommel in 1891, both professional soldiers long before the world wars began.
In 1976, a bomb went off in Buenos Aires on average every 3 hours, and there was a political assassination every 5 hours.
After the First Battle of El Alamein, Churchill ordered a complete overhaul of Allied desert leadership, leading to Montgomery's appointment.
Claudius sent 40,000 soldiers across the English Channel to conquer Britain in 43 AD, led by general Aulus Plautius.
Operation Compass resulted in the capture of 130,000 Italian prisoners of war, creating a logistical burden greater than the Italians' fighting force.
Eleven British tribes surrendered to Claudius, and Colchester (Camulodunum) became the first Roman capital in Britain.
Montgomery took command of the Eighth Army on 13 August 1942 and immediately ordered a no-withdrawal policy, burning all retreat pamphlets.
Monty is the ultimate autistic planner: teetotal, bed at 9:30, big knobbly knees, hates small talk. Rommel is pure ADHD: impulsive, drugs, pints, tail. Their contrasting personalities didn't just shape their commands — they shaped the entire desert war.
Rommel's 7th Panzer Division earned the nickname 'Ghost Division' because it moved through France so fast that nobody — not even German high command — could keep track of where they were. He ignored orders, spotted gaps, and kept going. That's not just Blitzkrieg; that's more Blitzkrieg than Blitzkrieg.
In October 1917, Rommel captured 81 guns and 9,000 Italian prisoners at Caporetto. As the hosts note, this wasn't that hard — Italian military incompetence is basically a constant throughout this story. The real logistical nightmare was figuring out what to do with 9,000 Italians who were immediately hungry, bored, and tired.
At Meteren in October 1914, Monty was shot in the right lung. British forces thought he was dead. A comrade then lay on top of him for hours absorbing sniper fire. He survived. This experience — lying helpless under bodies while the war calamity unfolded around him — is thought to have made Monty obsessively cautious about casualties for the rest of his career.
Mussolini declared war on June 10, 1940, believing France had already fallen and Britain was next — he wanted a seat at the peace table. His grand strategy for North Africa: build a road, ride into Cairo bareback on a white horse like Napoleon. He genuinely didn't understand what a war was.
The North African Desert campaign is the closest World War II ever gets to football: expansive play across a pitch, tactical overloads, breaking lines, beating the offside trap. Monty is the methodical manager; Rommel is the free-wheeling genius. The hosts debate whether it's Cruyff vs Mourinho or Arteta vs Luis Enrique.
There's a popular revisionist view that Rommel was 'not really a Nazi' — just a military professional whose heart wasn't in it. Fin disagrees. Rommel oversaw Hitler Youth training, commanded his personal escort battalion, and was a senior Nazi general. Measured against all of human history, he's still one of the most Nazi people who ever lived.
Before any major engagement, Monty ran a 100,000-troop exercise called Exercise Tiger to rehearse his tactics. His entire philosophy was simple: only attack when you know you're going to win. That obsession with preparation came directly from his WWI experience of lying in a ditch wondering what could be done differently.
While the British Army ran on regimented chain-of-command bureaucracy, the German military gave individual commanders freedom to exploit chaos on the ground. Rommel was the ultimate expression of this — he yes-anded his way across France, breaking lines, going in behind, and turning improvisation into an art form.
Monty's father became Bishop of Tasmania and moved the family to Australia. His mother Maud beat the children to stop them developing Australian accents — which Fin finds entirely reasonable. Back in London at 13, nicknamed Monkey for mischief, Monty tattooed both forearms to fit in and later hid them in shame.
Surfshark is the show's most loyal sponsor, and the hosts have never really worked out what a VPN is. Horatio claims to actually use it to pretend he's still in Britain while on holiday. Fin wants to use it to fool his wife's Find My Friends. Neither of these are what VPNs do.
Claudius had cash ready the moment Caligula was assassinated — 15,000 sesterces per Praetorian Guard soldier. That kind of liquidity doesn't happen by accident. The hosts argue this single detail all but proves Claudius was complicit in the murder of his own nephew.
In 43 AD, Claudius sent 40,000 soldiers across the Channel to conquer Britain, then personally showed up at the Thames with a herd of war elephants for the final march on Colchester. Eleven tribes surrendered. Colchester — Camulodunum — became Rome's first British capital.
The Romans were genuinely terrified of ancient Britons — not because of their military prowess but because they wore trousers (unprecedented to Romans in skirts), had blue tattoos, and bleached their hair blond. Trousers, it turns out, date back to at least 600 BC.
The North African Desert campaign is the only part of World War II where Britain beats the enemy without American help. The Americans arrive in 1943 and immediately render everything Monty achieved largely irrelevant — which is probably why no one else talks about it.
Analysis
What they talk about
- History 72%
- Sports 10%
- Comedy 7%
- Society & Culture 7%
- Education 2%
- Leisure 2%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
