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Episode 249

War is usually the domain of the young — quick feet, steady aim, and lungs strong enough for shouting charges. But in the spring of 1775, on a quiet road outside Boston, history pauses for someone else.
He is nearly eighty. A farmer. A grandfather. A man who has already lived the life most people hope to reach in peace.
Yet when soldiers enter his town, he does not flee.
His name is Samuel Whittemore — and in the space of a few violent minutes, he will perform an act so defiant that even his enemies will struggle to believe what they have seen.
This is not a tale of armies.
It is the story of a single man who refuses to step aside when history arrives at his door.

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Episode 248

Before the noise and chaos, there was simply a boy called Richard.

Born in 1958 in Harlow, Essex, he grew up in a house full of drama — his parents were teachers of it. Voices, characters and imagination were normal life, and he learned early that attention wasn’t something you waited for. You grabbed it.

At school he pushed limits, chasing laughter that felt slightly dangerous. Not neat jokes, but reactions — big ones. When he reached the University of Manchester in the late 1970s, Britain’s comedy scene was ready to change, and Rik didn’t tell jokes so much as launch himself at them, turning his body and face into the punchline.

People didn’t know exactly what it was yet.

They just knew it wasn’t ordinary.

And that was the beginning of Rik Mayall.

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Episode 247

Before treaties were signed and borders were fixed on maps, power in Aotearoa was measured in mana — authority earned, defended, and sometimes taken by force. Few figures embodied that struggle more clearly than Hōne Heke.

Born into a high-ranking Ngāpuhi family in the early nineteenth century, Hōne Heke came of age during a time of enormous change. Muskets were reshaping warfare, missionaries were reshaping belief, and the British Empire was beginning to reshape the future of Māori land and leadership. Heke was intelligent, restless, and deeply political. He understood the new world arriving on New Zealand’s shores better than many of the men who claimed to rule it.

To some, he was a rebel. To others, a patriot. Hōne Heke believed that sovereignty — real power — was slipping away from Māori chiefs under British control. His response was symbolic, dramatic, and unforgettable: the repeated cutting down of the flagstaff at Kororāreka. Each strike was a message, not just of resistance, but of warning.

This is the story of a man who challenged an empire, not because he rejected change, but because he refused submission. A leader driven by pride, principle, and an unshakable belief in Māori authority — and one of the first to test the limits of British power in New Zealand.

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Insta@justpassingthroughpodcast
Contact:justpassingthroughpodcast@gmail.com