Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 226, Alfred

and Legitimacy, the first steps to war. This show is ad-free due to members of

Hort and as a way of thanking members for keeping the show independent, I offer members

only content including extra episodes and rough transcripts and right now the members are

listening to a shop talk episode that discusses Alfred's tactics, how he was using discursive

clusters to hack the minds of his subjects and we even made time to talk about the worst

Dungeons & Dragons game of all time. And you can get instant access to that and all the

other members episodes by signing up for membership at the British History Podcast.com,

for only about the price of a latte per month. And thank you very much to Jennifer, Walter,

and Cameron for signing up already. Also, it's that time of year again and if you would

like to give a BHP membership to the history nerd in your life, you can now do it directly

from the site. Just go to the British History Podcast.com, look under membership and select

gift certificates. Oh, and members, make sure you log into your account page first because

you'll find a 10% off coupon in there just for you. Okay, I'm with the show.

All my life, I've had issues with my eyes. However, whenever I went to get checked, I'd

be told that my eyes were fine and that I had 2020 vision. And yet, despite what the

doctors said, I always had a hard time seeing clearly and would often be found hunched over

books reading closer to them than any of my peers. Eventually, age settled in in my 2020

vision weakened, but even with glasses, I still had a hard time seeing things well. Reading

was difficult. I loved it, so I persisted, but it wasn't easy. And then last month,

a doctor finally had an answer for me. He put a few lenses into some huge test frames

and said, this might blow your mind. And he was right. A headache that I had for my whole

...