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Rearview Mirror Chronicles

Keith Hockton

Keith Hockton, FRAS, is a writer, publisher, and award-winning podcaster based in Penang, Malaysia, with a deep passion for uncovering the stories that shaped our world. As the Southeast Asia Editor for International Living magazine, Keith explores the intersections of history, culture, and modern life across the region.

A dynamic lecturer and storyteller, he speaks internationally on Southeast Asian politics, economics, and history—bringing the past to life with clarity, wit, and insight. Keith is also a proud Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and is on a mission to make history not only accessible but genuinely entertaining for everyone.

His published books include:

• Atlas of Australian Dive Sites - Travellers Edition (Harper Collins Australia, 2003).

• Penang - An inside guide to its historic homes, buildings, monuments and parks (MPH Publishing, 2012; 2nd Edition 2014; 3rd Edition 2017).

• Festivals of Malaysia (Trafalgar Publishing, 2015).

• The Habitat Penang Hill: A pocket history (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)

• Alana and the Secret Life of Trees at Night (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)

• Penang Then & Now: A Century of Change in Pictures (Entrepot Publishing, 2019; 2nd Edition 2021
• Bersama Lima - Five Together (Entrepot Publishing, 2022)

www.entrepotpublishing.com

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37 episodes
Avg 38 min
English

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Episodes 37

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S1 · E95
August 9 · 1 hr 3 min
La Belle Époque - An Age of Opulence and Illusion
Send us Fan Mail Paris, 1900. The city glows with electric light. Jazz drips from gramophones. The Moulin Rouge spins like a carousel possessed. In the cafés of Montmartre, Picasso sketches with fevered hands. Toulouse-Lautrec drinks, draws, and watches the night unravel. It is an age of opulence and illusion. Gilded carriages and motorcars jostle on cobbled streets. Art Nouveau winds its way through every iron gate, every whispered conversation. But beneath the beauty, the city is cracking. Bombs explode in cafés. Anarchists lurk in shadowed rooms. The ghosts of the Paris Commune haven’t left—they’re just quieter now. Revolution lingers like smoke in the air. La Belle Époque. A time of elegance, excess—and unease. The world is dancing, blindfolded, toward the abyss. Welcome to Paris, on the edge of the modern world. referred Links: La Belle Époque Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E174
August 1 · 46 min
The Odyssey Explained: Why Homer's Epic Still Matters
Send us Fan Mail For nearly three thousand years, Homer's Odyssey has captivated audiences with its unforgettable monsters, legendary heroes, and epic adventures. But beneath the Cyclops, the Sirens, and the wrath of the gods lies a far deeper story—one about family, loyalty, temptation, pride, and the universal longing to return home. In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, Keith Hockton takes you on an extraordinary journey through one of history's greatest masterpieces, revealing why The Odyssey became the blueprint for countless stories that followed, from The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars to modern cinema. Along the way, you'll discover the hidden meanings behind Odysseus's trials, the remarkable intelligence of Penelope, the tragic misunderstandings surrounding Calypso, and how centuries of translation have subtly reshaped the women of both Greek mythology and the Bible. This isn't simply the story of a hero battling monsters. It's the story that taught the Western world how to tell stories, and why, after 3,000 years, Homer's timeless masterpiece still speaks directly to us today. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E77
July 30 · 45 min
The Madman’s Library: Bound in Flesh, Written in Blood
Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the Madman’s Library—a place not of learning, but of unraveling. Here, books do not enlighten. They whisper. They bleed. They rot. Grimoires etched in rust-black ink speak in tongues never meant for human mouths. Manuscripts stitched from flayed skin stare back with hollowed faces. Blood-written ravings of prophets long dead pulse with delusion, disease, and dread. This is a collection shaped not by reason, but by obsession. By the need to conjure, to control, to curse. Each spine cracked open reveals another step down, into the occult, the forbidden, the grotesque theater of human thought gone feral. These are not books. They are relics of ruin. Join Keith as he unlocks the vaults of the Madman’s Library, a curated descent into the psychosis of print, where knowledge cuts deeper than any blade, and reading is not an act of curiosity…but a pact with darkness. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E173
July 27 · 32 min
The Quiet Revolutionary: Vermeer, Pearls, and the Company That Bought the World
Send us Fan Mail What if one of history's greatest painters wasn't simply creating beautiful pictures, but quietly capturing the birth of the modern world? In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, Keith explores the extraordinary life of Johannes Vermeer, the elusive Dutch master who painted fewer than forty works before dying in debt. Journey from the luminous mystery of Girl with a Pearl Earring to the quiet dignity of The Milkmaid, discovering why these seemingly ordinary paintings continue to captivate millions. But this is more than the story of an artist. It is also the story of the Dutch East India Company, the world's first multinational corporation, whose vast trading empire transformed a small nation into the richest on Earth and created the remarkable world in which Vermeer painted. Along the way, uncover the truth behind the famous pearl, the forgotten genius rediscovered centuries later, the astonishing forgeries that fooled the world's experts, and the hidden cost of the Dutch Golden Age. It's a fascinating journey through art, commerce, empire and humanity, revealing why a man who painted only thirty-five pictures still has the power to change the way we see the world. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E172
July 24 · 47 min
They Took the Children: How a Nation Tried to Erase a People
Send us Fan Mail For more than a century, one of the world's most admired democracies carried out a policy that sought to erase Indigenous cultures by removing their children. More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit boys and girls were taken from their families, stripped of their language, traditions and identity, and sent to residential schools where many endured hunger, abuse, neglect and unimaginable loneliness. In this deeply moving episode, Keith traces the origins of Canada's residential school system, reveals the political thinking that created it, and explores the devastating human cost that continues to echo through generations. Drawing on survivor testimony, historical records and the remarkable story of Kamloops, he examines one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history with honesty, compassion and historical perspective. Yet this is not simply a story of tragedy. It is also a story of extraordinary courage. Despite everything that was done to them, Indigenous children whispered their languages in secret, protected their traditions, and carried their cultures forward against overwhelming odds. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E171
July 20 · 48 min
The Elephant in the Nursery: What Children's Books Really Tell Us
Send us Fan Mail There are books that shape our childhood, and then there are books that quietly shape the way we see the world. In this fascinating episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, Keith Hockton takes a fresh look at some of the most beloved children's classics ever written. From the tragic bedside story that gave the world Babar the Elephant, to the immigrant creators who invented France's greatest comic hero, Asterix, this is a journey through history, culture and the hidden messages tucked between the pages of our favourite bedtime stories. Why did a gentle elephant in a green suit become the centre of fierce debates about colonialism? How did two outsiders create the most patriotic French comic of the twentieth century? And what should we do when cherished childhood books contain ideas that modern readers find deeply uncomfortable? Warm, thought-provoking and often surprising, this episode explores the remarkable lives of the authors behind these timeless stories while asking a bigger question: are children's books ever really just for children? You'll never look at your childhood bookshelf in quite the same way again. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
July 17 · 8 min
History’s Strangest Questions: Who Was The Man Who Accidentally Poisoned the Planet?
Send us Fan Mail What if the person who caused the greatest environmental damage in human history wasn't a dictator, a conqueror, or a ruthless industrialist... but a brilliant engineer trying to make the world a better place? In this episode of History's Strangest Questions, we uncover the extraordinary and deeply ironic story the man whose inventions transformed modern life while unintentionally poisoning millions of people and then helped destroy something very important to our planet. It's a story of innovation, unintended consequences, and one of the most astonishing twists of fate in history. Sometimes, the people who change the world the most are the ones you've never even heard of. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E170
July 17 · 25 min
The Bill of Rights: The Shield Against Tyranny (Part Three)
Send us Fan Mail The American Revolution had been won. The Constitution had been written. But for millions of Americans, one vital question remained unanswered: who would protect the people from their own government? In this concluding chapter of our three part series on America's founding documents, we explore the remarkable story behind the Bill of Rights, ten amendments born not from certainty, but from fear, compromise, and political necessity. Discover why James Madison, a man who initially believed such a document was unnecessary, became its reluctant author, and how these ten amendments transformed the Constitution from a blueprint for government into a shield for individual liberty. From freedom of speech and religion to the right to bear arms, trial by jury, privacy, and the limits of government power, we examine the origins of each amendment and why they remain at the centre of America's fiercest constitutional battles. More than two centuries later, the questions they raise are as urgent and divisive as ever. The Bill of Rights was written to guard against tyranny. Whether it still does so, and what tyranny looks like in the twenty first century, is a debate that has never truly ended. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E169
July 16 · 25 min
The Constitution: The Blueprint That Built America (Part Two)
Send us Fan Mail The Declaration of Independence gave America its ideals. The Constitution gave it something just as important: a way to survive. In Part Two of this special series, Keith explores the remarkable story behind the world's oldest written national constitution still in force. Why did the Articles of Confederation fail? How did fifty-five delegates in a sweltering Philadelphia summer create a system of government that has endured for nearly 240 years? And did the Founding Fathers ever expect it to last this long? From the opening words, "We the People," to the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, the slavery compromises, the Supreme Court, and the extraordinary debate between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison over whether a constitution should expire every generation, this episode uncovers not only how America was governed, but why its Constitution remains one of the most influential, and controversial, documents ever written. More than two centuries later, it continues to shape not just the United States, but the future of democracy itself. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E169
July 15 · 38 min
The Declaration of Independence: The Dream That Changed the World (Part One)
Send us Fan Mail For nearly 250 years, the Declaration of Independence has inspired revolutions, shaped constitutions, and become one of the most influential political documents ever written. But how did thirteen reluctant colonies reach the point of declaring independence? Why did the famous words "all men are created equal" outlive the men who wrote them? And how did a document born in war become a universal call for liberty across the world? In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, Keith traces the remarkable story behind America's founding document, from the failed Olive Branch Petition and Thomas Paine's Common Sense to the debates inside Philadelphia, the edits made by Congress, and the extraordinary legacy that stretched from Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. to the streets of Hanoi. This is not just the story of how America declared its independence. It's the story of how a single document changed the world. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E168
July 8 · 54 min
The Opium Wars — The Garden of Perfect Brightness (Part Two)
Send us Fan Mail The fleet has arrived. Now two empires that barely understand each other are about to find out just how differently they've spent the last fifty years. In this episode: the strange iron ship that broke the rules of naval warfare, a Chinese defence built on assumptions the Industrial Revolution simply erased, and the palace complex so beautiful it took a century to build — and a single order to destroy. We follow the war to its end, through treaties, indemnities, and a fresh conflict a generation later, all the way to a five-year-old emperor, a five-year-old's mother who quietly seized an empire, and a phrase every Chinese schoolchild still learns today: the century of humiliation. This is the story of how a trade dispute over tea and opium ended with smoke over Beijing — and why the bill for it is still being paid. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E167
July 6 · 57 min
The Opium Wars - A Habit Becomes an Empire (Part One)
Send us Fan Mail Walk into a chemist's shop in Victorian Britain and you could buy opium over the counter, no questions asked. It was in the medicine cabinet, the nursery, the labourer's cottage, as ordinary as tea or gin. So how did a drug Britain barely thought twice about at home become the trigger for one of the most consequential wars of the nineteenth century? In this first episode, we trace opium's journey from the "joy plant" of ancient Mesopotamia to the poppy fields of British Bengal — and follow the money as Britain's insatiable thirst for Chinese tea creates a trade problem that opium, smuggled by the shipload, conveniently solves. Along the way: the East India Company's carefully deniable supply chain, the "fast crabs" running chests ashore under cover of darkness, a Chinese court torn between legalising the drug and stamping it out, and the incorruptible Commissioner Lin Zexu, whose letter of conscience to Queen Victoria vanished into the machinery of empire. Then one besieged British official makes an unauthorised promise worth twenty thousand chests of opium — and two empires that barely understand each other begin their slide toward war. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E166
June 27 · 8 min
History’s Strangest Questions: Where does the name America come from?
Send us Fan Mail Everyone knows America was named after Amerigo Vespucci. The Italian explorer. The New World. The map. Case closed. Except it isn't. Current research points to someone else entirely. Someone hiding in plain sight for five hundred years. Someone the history books never mention. The answer, when it comes, is not what you'd expect. And once you hear it — you won't easily unhear it. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E165
June 27 · 52 min
The Dutch East India Company — Every Port Has a Price (Part Three)
Send us Fan Mail The VOC was dissolved on the thirty-first of December, 1799. But empires don't simply end. They leave things behind. In the third and final part of this series, we sail into the aftermath. The ports your ship is passing through, Semarang, Bali, Lombok, Malacca were not merely trading posts. They were the architecture of a system. A system designed to extract, to control, and to profit at any human cost necessary. What does that legacy look like today? Who inherited the model the Dutch pioneered? And what does it mean to stand in these harbours, two centuries later, knowing what happened here? From the ruins of Batavia to the rise of the modern corporation, from the islands where nutmeg once cost more than gold to the city-state that turned colonial infrastructure into a miracle of self-invention — this is the story of what the VOC left behind. Every port has a price. The question is — who paid it? Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E162
June 21 · 49 min
The Dutch East India Company — Spies, Spices and the Birth of the Stock Market (Part One)
Send us Fan Mail One man. A stolen map. The birth of modern capitalism. In 1583, a young Dutchman talked his way into the heart of Portugal's Asian empire — and spent six years quietly copying its most jealously guarded secrets. Routes. Charts. The knowledge that underpinned a century of Portuguese dominance over the world's most lucrative trade. When he sailed home, everything changed. Within two decades, the Dutch had smashed the Portuguese monopoly, invented the tradeable share, built the world's first stock exchange — and accidentally created the world's first financial scandal in the process. The Dutch East India Company didn't just dominate global trade. It rewrote the rules of money itself. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E163
June 21 · 1 hr 4 min
The Dutch East India Company —Nutmeg: The Spice They Traded Manhattan For (Part Two)
Send us Fan Mail What if the most valuable commodity on earth — more precious than gold, more coveted than silk — grew in just one place? Six tiny volcanic islands in the middle of the Indonesian sea, surrounded by reefs, monsoons, and men willing to kill to keep it that way. This is the story of nutmeg. The spice in your kitchen cupboard that once drove empires to war, sent Samuel Pepys to the docks at midnight to buy from black-market sailors, and inspired the Dutch East India Company to commit atrocities so complete they nearly wiped an entire people from the earth. And at the end of it all? The English walked away with one small island. The Dutch handed them something else in return — a modest patch of land on the eastern seaboard of North America. You may have heard of it. They called it Manhattan. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com
S1 · E164
June 20 · 27 min
The Flying Tigers, CAT, Air America — An Unbroken Thread: The Legacy (Part Three)
Send us Fan Mail They flew wars that officially never happened. They built a nation that might not exist without them. They were civilians on paper and combat veterans in reality — and most of them came home to silence. This is the final chapter of the trilogy that began with the Flying Tigers and the Hump crews, and continued through the collapse of Nationalist China, the birth of Civil Air Transport, and the long secret war stretching from Korea to the fall of Saigon. Now we ask the question those two episodes were always building toward: what is the legacy? From the Taiwan economic miracle that CAT helped make possible, to the veterans and families still fighting for recognition decades later. From the wreckage still emerging from Himalayan glaciers, to the Civil Air Transport Association — the organisation that refused to let this history disappear, and who honoured me with Honorary Membership to help tell their story. Nearly forty years. One unbroken thread. Men who kept going when everything argued for stopping. This is what they left behind. Support the show For books written and published by Keith Hocton www.entrepotpublishing.com

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