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We Are History

Albania: Communism, capitalism, chaos

We Are History

Angela Barnes and John O'Farrell

History

4.9802 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Angela Barnes and John O’Farrell bring us more ridiculous history facts and a less-than serious romp through an event from the past. This time: How one small country in Europe lurched suddenly from hardline Stalinism to Disaster Capitalism, and then gave everyone guns and said ‘Oh sort it out yourselves’. Albania has suffered a stormy history of dictatorships, a king called Zog and being economically choked by the iron grip of mass pyramids schemes which provided false hope to millions. Get all episodes a week early – when you support We Are History on Patreon: https://patreon.com/WeAreHistory “King Zog wasn’t royal he just decided to be king” – Angela Barnes “None of the books I read have any of these titbits” – John O’Farrell “Albania had the illusion of democracy, the homeopathy of democracy” – Angela Barnes “This is the biggest understatement you've ever written in your notes, John; ‘not an ideal situation” – Angela Barnes Reading List: Free by Lea Ypi  A Concise History of Albania by Bernd J. Fischer and Oliver Jens Schmitt Modern Albania From Dictatorship To Democracy in Europe by Fred C Abrahams. We Are History is written and presented by Angela Barnes and John O’Farrell. Audio production by Simon Williams and artwork by James Parrett. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor is Andrew Harrison. We Are History is a Podmasters Production. https://twitter.com/wearehistorypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome back to another episode of We Are History. I'm Angela Barnes.

0:09.0

I'm John O'Farrell and we've got some exciting news, haven't we, Angela?

0:13.0

We have John, go on.

0:14.0

If you want to support us, we now have a brand new membership club.

0:18.0

Say what?

0:19.0

Yeah, no, by joining with a small donation. It means we can make

0:23.0

more episodes and release them more regularly, and it's a nice way of making sure we can keep

0:27.1

delivering the weird history and the wonderful history that you know and love us for. Yeah,

0:31.5

this small pledge every month means that you get every episode of We Are History a week early

0:36.3

and ad free.

0:38.3

Ooh.

0:38.8

Oh, that's exciting.

0:40.1

Plus, you'll be able to suggest topics for us to dive into in the next series.

0:44.7

Donate a little bit more and you'll be sent unique.

0:46.9

We Are History merchandise and exclusive access to our Zoom live events and much more.

0:52.5

So to find out more, just click the link in the bio or visit

0:55.5

podmasters.com.com.uk slash we are history for more information. Fantastic. You can of course

1:01.5

continue to listen for free as you always have done, but we will judge you, won't we, Angela?

1:06.1

We might judge you a little bit. We might read names out of mean people. Look, we know there's

1:09.6

a cost of living crisis. You do what you've got to do.

1:11.5

But if you can sponsor us so that we can keep making this podcast that we love doing,

1:15.6

but we do have mortgages to pay, then please go ahead and do so.

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