The podcast that explores postwar history and the reasons why the world is the way it is today, all done through the lyrics of the number one smash hit by the legend that is Billy Joel.
Katie, introducing the second episode
We Didn't Start the Fire is a modern history podcast produced by Crowd Network that ran for 123 weekly episodes between January 2021 and June 2023. Presented by American broadcaster Katie Puckrik and British sportswriter Tom Fordyce (one of the other guys from That Peter Crouch Podcast), its premise is that it takes an episode to explain each of the people, places, events and other things mentioned in Billy Joel's 1989 hit "We Didn't Start the Fire" (hence the name). In order.
Tropes:
- The Ace: Plenty — Joe DiMaggio, Rocky Marciano, Liberace, etc.
- Alliterative Name: Discussed during the Marilyn Monroe episode, given that the lady originally known as Norma Jeane Mortenson used her mother's maiden name (Monroe) as a stage name and wanted to combine that with her actual first names, but was persuaded to go with Marilyn due to this trope.
- Argentina Is Nazi Land: Discussed in the Juan Perón episode, as Perón was the Argentine leader who allowed several prominent Nazis to take refuge there in the late 1940s.
- Author Appeal: Often discussed, as Katie and Tom spend a part of each episode speculating on what led Billy to include each subject in the song.
- Baseball Episode: Several, given that the song has quite a few references to baseball (Joe DiMaggio, "Brooklyn's got a winning team", etc). Despite being American, Katie is unimpressed with the emphasis on "sportsball", whereas Tom — a sports journalist by profession — rather likes these references even though he, being British, knew little of the sport while growing up.Tom: Billy likes his baseball.
- Berserk Button: Katie really hates Donald Trump. Who crops up more often than you might think, even before they get to Roy Cohn.
- The Bus Came Back: Since he was mentioned twice in the song, Richard Nixon gets two episodes, in addition to which, there's a separate episode for the Watergate scandal.
- The Cameo: They take a break from the list for the fortieth episode because Billy Joel himself agrees to appear on the pod.
- Celebrity Crush: Katie definitely has a thing about James Dean.
- Connected All Along: Everything, in some way or another, is linked. For example, Marilyn Monroe was briefly married to Joe DiMaggio, good friends with Marlon Brando and supposedly had a fling with JFK — that's four people mentioned in the song right there!Tom: There's so many connections, Katie. The weird thing about this podcast is that we think these things are only linked by Billy Joel's imagination, and then you see these little tendrils and things like that.
- Cool Car: The Studebaker Avanti. Billy later revealed that he included Studebaker in the song purely because of this trope.
- Cover Version: The theme tune is a kazoo version of the song the podcast is named after, performed by Katie and Tom. Who sing parts of the song at the start of each episode, alternating with each subject.
- Crossover: Occasionally discussed in relation to the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Madonna song "Vogue", as some of the subjects covered by "We Didn't Start the Fire" also appear in one or the other of these. Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando are the only people to be in all three.
- First-Name Basis: Many of the (human) subjects, and Billy Joel himself, get referred to by their first names.
- Foreshadowing: Unavoidable, given how some of the subjects in the song tie in with each other. In the first episode, for example, Tom remarks that Presidency of Harry S. Truman (the subject of the first episode), "pretty much tees up the rest of what is to come in Billy's song", and several topics for future episodes are indeed referred to if not directly mentioned.Tom: All these different places that we're going to go, Katie, in the next hundred-and-twenty episodes, Harry is taking our hand and leading us some of the way there.
- Godwin's Law: Alluded to in the Juan Perón episode when Tom attempts to compare the Perón government allowing various Nazis (Josef Mengele
, etc) to live in Argentina after the war with the USA doing likewise with Operation Paperclip, which he admits ends up degenerating into a game of "Nazi Top Trumps". - Insistent Terminology: In the South Korea episode, Katie and Tom learn that to Koreans, there is no "North" or "South" when describing the place — it's just Korea.
- Jump Cut: Discussed more than once, as the song (and therefore the podcast) jumps from subject to subject.Katie: There's no rhyme or reason, it's almost like it's a crazy dream that doesn't make any sense. These images come floating in and floating out again, and before you know it, you kind of have an understanding of the history of the entire universe!
- Knight of Cerebus: Roy Cohn, so very much.Tom: Mass-murderers aside, he might well be the biggest bastard in the song.
- Meaningful Name: Discussed in relation to some subjects. At the end of the first episode, Tom concludes that the understated and unassuming Harry Truman was indeed "a true man", while Katie remarks that Doris Day's "sunny smile and sunny name" had "a little bit of darkness underneath".
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Method Acting: Discussed, especially in relation to Marlon Brando and James Dean. - Product Placement: Numerous plugs for other podcasts abound.
- Really Gets Around: Combined with Latin Lover in the case of Arturo Toscanini.
- Recurring Character: Some of the special guests appear more than once.
- Josh Hollands, a lecturer in U.S. history at University College London, is in the Joseph McCarthy episode and returns for the Rosenbergs one.
- History professor Margaret MacMillan is the expert called in for the H-bomb and "England's got a new queen".
- Boxing journalist Steve Bunce is the one to discuss Sugar Ray and Marciano.
- The first one to make three appearances is Cara Rodway, an expert on US cultural history who discusses South Pacific, The King and I and, err, Dacron.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Katie and Tom theorise that Billy included The King and I in the song because he wanted something to rhyme with The Catcher in the Rye. Billy later states that he included Roy Cohn because he wanted something to rhyme with Dacron.
- Shout-Out: A fair chunk of the episode on Malenkov involves talking about The Death of Stalin. In a similar vein, the Juan Perón episode has a lengthy digression about Evita, including Katie's anecdote about how she met Madonna at a party after the film's London premiere.
- Special Guest: One per episode, usually — and very much justified, given the diverse specialist subject knowledge required to examine each subject that was mentioned in the song. The first episode, which was about Harry S. Truman, featured American political journalist Eleanor Clift. The second, about Doris Day, featured Tamar Jeffers-McDonald, Professor in Film History at the University of Brighton.
- Small Reference Pools: Tom reveals that he first heard of Doris Day (the subject of the second episode) due to her being mentioned by name in a Wham! song ("Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" note ). He later reveals that he first heard of Johnnie Ray (the subject of the fourth episode) due to him being mentioned by name in a Dexys Midnight Runners song ("Come on Eileen" note ). And (later still) that he first heard of Joe DiMaggio (the subject of the seventh episode) due to him being mentioned by name in a Simon & Garfunkel song ("Mrs. Robinson" note ).Katie: Oh, come on, Fordyce!
- Tongue Twister: "Dien Bien Phu falls". Also, Polyethylene terephthalate — which, thankfully, is known commercially in the US as Dacron.
- Transparent Closet: Discussed, especially in the episode on Liberace, and to a lesser extent in the one on Roy Cohn.
- Underdogs Never Lose: Discussed when they get to "Brooklyn's got a winning team", given that the Brooklyn Dodgers, the baseball team Billy supported as a kid, were in fact quite successful — they made it to the World Series five times in the fourteen years before they actually won it. They just suffered in comparison to their (much) more successful neighbours, the New York Yankees — who beat them in all five of those World Series before the Dodgers finally beat them in 1955.
- Undignified Death: Elvis, most definitely.
- Urban Legends: Occasionally discussed.
- In the Juan Perón episode, Katie brings up some stories about what happened to Eva Perón's body after her death; the reaction of the expert (a university lecturer who is not just a specialist in Argentinian political history, but actually from Argentina) suggests that those stories are an example of this.
- In the Elvis Presley episodes note , expert guest Sally Hoedel takes down several of these that relate to Elvis. She takes some time to explain that stories of his drug dependency originated in his taking prescription medication for long-term health issues, in addition to which she explains the story behind the Fool's Gold Loaf; the log kept by his personal pilot indicates that, contrary to popular belief, he did not fly to Denver just so he could eat this rather calorific sandwich.
- Vindicated by History: In-universe; discussed in the first episode with regards to Harry Truman, who was unpopular when he was president but has since undergone this.
- What Could Have Been: In-universe; the Doris Day episode includes a discussion of this in relation to The Graduate and The Sound of Music, both of which could have starred Doris Day. It gets really dark when Tamar Jeffers-McDonald (that episode's Special Guest) reveals a Real Life example of this to a clearly surprised Katie and Tom — Doris Day's son, music producer Terry Melcher, was reckoned to have been the intended victim of Charles Manson and his followers (Manson having auditioned for Melcher, who rejected him), and had actually lived in the house on Cielo Drive prior to Roman Polański and Sharon Tate note .
- Word of God: In-universe; the fortieth episode takes a break from the usual format for an interview with Billy himself, who explains his thinking behind some of the people/events/things he included in the song. Studebaker got in there because he thought they were cool when he was a kid (while his parents didn't have one, a neighbour did), while the member of the Rockefeller family he was thinking of was Nelson, not Winthrop who was the one Katie and Tom made the subject of the thirty-second episode. They subsequently reflect that Nelson should've been the obvious choice, as he was governor of the state Billy's from (New York).
