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Rearview Mirror Chronicles
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
Episodes
179 episodes
The Penang Riots of 1867 - George Town at War
George Town, 1867.Beneath the British flag, another power ruled the streets.Secret societies commanded thousands of men. Money flowed through opium, gambling and the revenue farms. Loyalties ran deeper than the law, and behind the...
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The Wrath of Khan: When Hell Rode West (Part Two)
Genghis Khan didn't want the war that would become the most devastating campaign of his life.It began with a trade caravan, the murder of hundreds of merchants, and one spectacularly arrogant decision by a ruler who had no idea who he wa...
The Wrath of Khan - The Making of Genghis Khan (Part One)
A boy abandoned on the frozen Mongolian steppe should have died there. Instead, he survived to become Genghis Khan, the ruler who would unleash the most formidable war machine the medieval world had ever seen.In Part One of The Wrath...
La Belle Époque - An Age of Opulence and Illusion
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 nig...
The Odyssey Explained: Why Homer's Epic Still Matters
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—on...
The Madman’s Library: Bound in Flesh, Written in Blood
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...
The Quiet Revolutionary: Vermeer, Pearls, and the Company That Bought the World
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 Jo...
They Took the Children: How a Nation Tried to Erase a People
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...
The Elephant in the Nursery: What Children's Books Really Tell Us
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 belov...
History’s Strangest Questions: Who Was The Man Who Accidentally Poisoned the Planet?
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 Histor...
The Bill of Rights: The Shield Against Tyranny (Part Three)
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 thre...
The Constitution: The Blueprint That Built America (Part Two)
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 nat...
The Declaration of Independence: The Dream That Changed the World (Part One)
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 ...
The Opium Wars — The Garden of Perfect Brightness (Part Two)
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 Chines...
The Opium Wars - A Habit Becomes an Empire (Part One)
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 thoug...
History’s Strangest Questions: Where does the name America come from?
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 ye...
The Dutch East India Company — Every Port Has a Price (Part Three)
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,...
The Dutch East India Company —Nutmeg: The Spice They Traded Manhattan For (Part Two)
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 ke...
The Dutch East India Company — Spies, Spices and the Birth of the Stock Market (Part One)
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 knowle...
The Flying Tigers, CAT, Air America — An Unbroken Thread: The Legacy (Part Three)
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 tr...
From The Hump to Saigon: The Extraordinary Story of CAT, Air America and Air Asia (Part Two)
What happened to the legendary pilots of The Hump after the Second World War ended?The answer is one of the most extraordinary and least known stories in aviation history.From the battlefields of China to the jungles of Laos and V...
The Flying Tigers - The Hump Crews (Part One)
The Flying Tigers became legends. The shark mouths. The dogfights. The mythology of fearless American pilots diving through the skies above China and Burma. But behind the glamour lay another war almost nobody remembers.This is the story...
History’s Strangest Questions: The Most Extreme Psychological Warfare Ever Recorded
What is the most extreme act of psychological warfare in history?In 496 BC, the Chinese ruler King Goujian unveiled a tactic so shocking that it still resonates more than 2,500 years later. In this episode of History’s St...
Bloody Mary - The Real Mary Tudor
For nearly five centuries she has been remembered by a nickname: Bloody Mary. But was Mary Tudor really the monster history made her out to be? In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we look beyond the propaganda and mee...
History’s Strangest Questions: Was The Great Stink of 1858 Real?
In the boiling summer of 1858 London nearly collapsed under the weight of its own filth. The Thames became an open sewer, Parliament could barely function through the stench, and thousands had already died from cholera. Out of this ...