Dig: A History Podcast
Four women historians explore a wide range of historical topics, unearthing fascinating stories from the past. Each episode delves into different eras and events, offering fresh perspectives and in-depth analysis. The podcast aims to make history engaging and accessible to a broad audience.
Episodes
The Women and the King: Scottish Witch Hunts Under James VI
Women's History Series, #2 of 4. In 1590, the king of Scotland fomented a witch hunt in North Berwick, implicating as many as 200 people, convicting 70, and executing as many as 50. He participated in the “questioning” of the accused, tearing confessions of treason and weather magic from their trembling lips. He sent those whom he “believed” conspired against him to their deaths. Why? Reading his
Lesbian Volunteerism in the AIDS Epidemic: A Story We Almost Lost
Women Series. Episode #1 of 4.
When we tell the story of AIDS— and we tell it more often now, in films and museums and classrooms— we tend to tell it as a story about gay men. And of course it was, overwhelmingly, a catastrophe that fell on gay men. But standing right beside those men, and very often holding them as they died, were lesbians. They organized. They protested. They gave blood. They
The Rise of the American Right During the Cold War: Anti-Communism, Suburban Women, and a Grassroots Revolution
Cold War #4 of 4. Today, in our last episode of our Cold War series, we are exploring the Cold War roots of the modern conservative movement. We’ll trace the arc of the grassroots movement from the 1950s up to the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982, getting a glimpse at how the conservative movement began to move away from moderate, mainstream Republicanism. And we will see how women wer
Project MK Ultra: The CIA's Harmful, Pointless Quest for Mind Control
Cold War Series. Episode #3 of 4. The Allied victory in World War II meant an end to war with the fascists in Germany, Japan, and Italy, but it did not mean an end to war. In fact, the war just shifted into something more shadowy and covert, where secret weapons, sleight of hand, and leveraging information could be more important than guns and bombs. Desperate to develop tactics and secret weapons
The KGB’s Queer Honeypots and the Cold War
Cold War Series, #2 of 4. During the Lavender Scare, the US government fired hundreds (but possibly thousands) of civil servants for being gay or lesbian, ostensibly because of a Communist-panic in which Americans were convinced a homosexual could be blackmailed into giving up state secrets to those rascally Soviets. Turns out, though they weren’t particularly successful at it, the Soviets did tr
American Idealist in Stalin's City of Steel: A Pre-History of the Cold War
Cold War Series. Episode #1 of 4. In this episode, we uncover the extraordinary story of John Scott, a twenty-year-old American idealist who abandoned the University of Wisconsin during the Great Depression, taught himself to weld, and boarded a train for the Soviet Union. He would spend nearly a decade in Magnitogorsk, Stalin's new “City of Steel” in the Urals, building blast furnaces, marrying a
Love Canal, or How Toxic Capitalism Poisoned a Neighborhood and How "Housewives" Fought Back
Environmental History #3 of 4. In the mid-1970s, parents in Niagara Falls, New York were struggling to figure out why their children were getting mysteriously ill. For two years, officials from the state had been investigating the environment in Niagara Falls For years, residents had been complaining about “the odors of chemicals and fumes.” By the mid-70s, officials had determined that the smells
Rachel Carson and a Spring Without Nature: Science, Love, and Politics
Environmentalism Series #4 of 4. Rachel Carson is often touted as inspiring the modern global environmental movement. In 1962, when Carson’s book Silent Spring was published, she was a fifty-five-year-old former government employee and an award-winning writer of oceanography books. She did not hold a university position, had no PhD, nor was she affiliated with any political organization. She did n
Gwich’in, Food Sovereignty, and Environmental Justice in the Arctic Coastal Plain
Environmental History, #2 of 4. Many of the conservationists who’ve defended the Arctic heralded it as the “last great wilderness,” an ecosystem and landscape unmarred by corporate greed and violence, a place that needs to be preserved because of its “pristine” and “untouched” beauty. While well-intentioned, this narrative is, of course, problematic, because the absence of white settler colonial d
Bonus: Conversation with Amplified Podcast
Bonus! Marissa and Averill chat with Stacey and Hannah of the Amplify Podcast Network about podcasting and teaching, the realities of funding and institutional recognition, and what it means to do feminist history that "matters" in a shifting political landscape.
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Save it for the Rag-and-Bone Man: The Premodern History of Recycling, Salvage, and Reuse
Environmental Series. Episode #1 of 4.
In 1851, a journalist named Henry Mayhew set out to document the lives of London's working poor. What he found was astonishing. In the richest city in the world, thousands of people made their living by picking through other people's trash. There were the bone-grubbers, who scavenged bones from gutters to sell to soap manufacturers. There were the mudlarks,
The Constitutional Convention of 1787
Bonus Episode: This year, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the moment when American patriots pledged their lives and their sacred honor to declare the American colonies independent of the British crown. By the time the Continental Congress signed that document, American blood had already been shed and the colonies were already fighting the war that would ultima
Bonus Episode: Best of 2025, What's Coming in 2026!
Trying something we've never done before - an end-of-year wrap up in which we discuss our favorite episodes to write and be co-hosts on from the 2025 season, and a little sneaky preview of what is coming in 2026!
Happy New Year, all, and thank you for being supporters of this show! xoxox Ave, Marissa, Sarah and Elizabeth
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Orange Slices, Simmer Pots, and Naked Dancing: A Brief and Incomplete History of Modern Witchcraft
A Bonus Episode! Yule logs, dried orange slices strung across your windows, decorated trees and simmer pots - all the marks of a neopagan holiday season! Wait, that's Christmas, you say? Well, can't it be both? A brief history of modern witchcraft, just in time for the winter solstice celebration.
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Re-Release: A Ghost Story for Christmas!
We're on a little break, getting our stocking stuffers and Yule logs together, so to tide you over until our next new release, here's an oldie but goodie (with a little remixing - though unfortunately there is no fixing our singing) about the history of ghost stories at Christmas time!
Original transcript at: https://digpodcast.org/2017/12/22/christmas-ghost-dickens/
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Martian Visitors in the Gilded Age
Spooky Series, Episode #4 of 4. Over an eight-month period in 1896-1897, thousands of people across North America reported seeing mysterious ships in the air or lights in the sky. There were over 12,000 newspaper accounts published about the phenomenon in 408 different newspapers in 41 American states and six Canadian provinces. The airships were usually described as oblong, cigar-shaped objects,
Beasts and Believers: A History of Werewolf Trials in Early Modern Europe
Spooky Series. Episode #3 of 4. In 1220 CE, St. Francis of Assisi tamed a ferocious werewolf terrorizing Gubbio, Italy—transforming "Brother Wolf" from savage beast to peaceful townsperson. But why did Christianity need to conquer the wolf? For millennia, werewolves have stalked the boundaries between civilization and savagery, humanity and monstrosity. From ancient Mesopotamian curses to Greek my
You're Bound to Die: The Long History of the American Murder Ballad
Spooky Series. Episode # 2 of 4. If you look through recordings of country, western, and folk music ranging from the 1920s and 1930s through to present, you’ll notice a theme: songs about crime, murder, and executions are ever-present. From Grayson & Whittier’s recording of the centuries-old ballad “Rose Connelly” in 1927, to Lloyd Wilson’s “Stagger Lee”recorded in the 1950s, Bob Dylan’s “The Lone
Suffer a Witch to Live? Religious Conflict and Witchcraft Persecutions; or, No One Expects the Inquisition
Spooky Szn Episode #1 of 4. How would you expect the Spanish Inquisition to treat a confessed witch? Does the suggestion conjure visions of fire, torture, and lots of murdered women? You aren’t alone - but this is a history we definitely need to unpack.
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Yellow Rose of Texas: Myth-making and Race in the 19th Century
Women's History, Episode #4 of 4. Today we're exploring one of Texas's most enduring legends - the story of the "Yellow Rose of Texas" and her supposed role in the Battle of San Jacinto. We are going to unravel the myth of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” We will explore the woman at the heart of the tale, Emily D. West, who was a free woman of color working in Texas, and untangle her real life from th
Whispers and Wives' Tales: A History of Women & Gossip in Premodern Society
Women Series. Episode #3 of 4. Dale Spender, a feminist literary scholar, wrote in 1980: “It is not surprising to find that there are no terms for man talk that are equivalent to chatter, natter, prattle, nag, bitch, whine, and of course, gossip, and I am not so naive as to assume that this is because men do not engage in these activities. It is because when they do, it is called something differ
Women and Slavery: How Harriet Jacobs Revealed Women's Experience of American Enslavement
Women Series. Episode #2 of 4.
In 1861, one of the most powerful slave narratives in American history was published under the title, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Jacobs and edited by the famous abolitionist, Lydia Maria Child. The memoir unflinchingly recounts the unique experience that enslaved women faced in the American system of Black chattel slavery - to put it
Sati: The Virtuous Woman, the Chaste Wife, and the Immolated Widow in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Women's History, Episode #1 of 4. In 1987, the last reported instance of sati threw India into a maelstrom of furious debate and conflict following the ritual suicide of Roop Kanwar after her young husband’s death. Nearly 150 years earlier, British colonial officer Lord William Bentinck passed a prohibition on sati in British India. As Roop Kanwar’s death suggests, British colonial rule did not en
The Pansy Craze
Love in the Lav series. Episode #4 of 4. The late 1920s birthed what would become a defining cultural phenomenon—the "pansy craze"—when LGBTQ+ culture burst into mainstream American entertainment from the late 1920s through the early 1930s. The smoky haze of Prohibition-era speakeasies provided the perfect backdrop for drag queens, called "pansy performers,” to be catapulted into underground stard
Anne Lister's Search for a "Great Love": Reading the Diaries of the First Modern Lesbian
Love in the Lav Series. Episode #4 of 4. Today, we’re telling the story of Anne Lister’s life in her own words with a special emphasis on her search for a “great love.” But along the way, we’ll also try to give you some examples of why her diaries have been deemed the most important documents in LGBTQ+ history.
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Female Husbands, or People Have Always Transed Gender
Averill's Book, Love in the Lav Series, Episode #2 of 4. In 1746, Charles Hamilton, a doctor, married Mary Price in Wells, England. Hamilton was a traveling doctor, selling patent medicines and dubious medical advice, and had met Mary when staying in a rented room. After the wedding, Mary joined Charles in traveling and selling cures for a couple of months until suddenly, she decided she no longe
Just Friends: The Ladies of Llangollen
Love in the Lav Series, Episode # 1 of 4. Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler, colloquially known as the Ladies of Llangollen, lived together in North Wales for 51 years in a cottage that they renovated and designed to suit their tastes, on an estate where they built gravel footpaths wending through perfectly lush gardens planted with all manner of shrubs, flowers, fruit trees and bushes, and vegeta
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Medical Ethics & Race
Disability Series, #4 of 4. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was an ethically problematic, to say the least, medical research project conducted in Alabama. Officially titled “The Effects of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” this government-sponsored research project was conducted by the United States Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama, between 1932 and 1972. For four decades, research
Cripping Contagion: A Long History of Epidemics as Mass-Disabling Events
Disability Series. Episode #3 of 4. Since the advent of epidemiology (the study of infectious disease, its spread and prevention), humanists and scientists have been able to study mass-disabling events related to epidemic disease, especially prior to widespread vaccination. For example, the WHO has estimated that more than 20 million people who would otherwise be disabled are typically-abled today
The Section 504 Sit-In: The Protest that Demanded Civil Rights for Disabled Americans
Disability Series. Episode #2 of 4. In 1973, Richard Nixon signed the Rehabilitation Act, a bill intended to increasing hiring, extend rehabilitation services and increase assistance programs for Americans with disabilities. In the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, politicians and activists discussed the bill in explicitly civil rights terms, arguing that as the f
Sexuality and Psychiatry
Disability Series, Episode #1 of 4. How and when scientists, doctors, and society started conceiving of the physical and emotional components of same-sex desire as a psychiatric condition of the mind? This was neither an ancient belief nor a postmodern (aka, post-1950) one, and it wasn’t an exclusively American phenomenon either. Rather, the classification of same-sex desire as a “disorder” had it
Executive Orders, Dog Whistles, and the Lavender Scare
Crime & Punishment Episode #4 of 4. In the late 1940s and 1950s, alongside the better known “Red Scare” that targeted alleged internal political enemies - American Communists - the US government led a crusade against gay men and women in the military and civil service. During the “Lavender Scare,” thousands of people were fired or forced from their jobs, dishonorably discharged from the military,
The Sleepy Lagoon Trial and Zoot Suit Riots: Los Angeles's Season of Violence During WWII
Crime and Punishment Series. Episode #3 of 4. In the summer of 1943 the city of Los Angeles erupted into what has become known as the Zoot Suit Riots, where roving bands of white servicemen beat and stripped Mexican American youth of their distinctive zoot suits. The riots took place amidst the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial- a case characterized by the press as a crackdown on Mexican American juveni
The Unjust Execution of the Dakota 38
Crime & Punishment, Episode #2 of 4. In 1862, as the Civil War raged across the fields of the south, another American war was coming to an end: the Dakota War, a conflict between the Dakota people and American settlers in Minnesota. Though the United States military won a decisive and punishing victory over the Dakota, they weren’t satisfied: Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley wanted the Dakota warrior
From Respectability to Ruin to Ripper Victim: The Whitechapel Murders and the Precarity of Poverty in Victorian London
FIXED! Crime and Punishment Series. Episode #1 of 4. In 1850, a bright-eyed eight-year-old girl walked across London Bridge in her carefully maintained school uniform. Her teachers called her promising; her siblings found her delightful. No one could have predicted that decades later, she would die violently in Mitre Square, known to history only as one of Jack the Ripper's victims. But this isn't
Ghosting the Patriarchy: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Women’s Rights Movement
Spiritualism's Place. Episode #4 of 4. In honor of our new book, Spiritualism's Place, we're re-releasing one of our favorite episodes about Lily Dale. Today we're revisiting our exploration of the close association of Spiritualism and the women’s rights movement of the nineteenth century.
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Plastic Shamans and Spiritual Hucksters: A History of Peddling and Protecting Native American Spirituality Re-Release
Spiritualism's Place. Episode #3 of 4. In honor of our new book, Spiritualism's Place, we're re-releasing one of our favorite episodes about Lily Dale. In the late 20th century, white Americans flocked to New Age spirituality, collecting crystals, hugging trees, and finding their places in the great Medicine Wheel. Many didn’t realize - or didn’t care - that much of this spirituality was based on
Julia’s Bureau: The Temperance Virtuoso, the Father of Journalism, and Life after Death in the Spiritualist Anglo-Atlantic Re-Release
Spiritualism's Place. Episode #2 of 4. Enjoy this re-release of one of our favorite episodes in celebration of our newly released book: Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Seances in Lily Dale.
For three years before his untimely death on the Titanic, British newspaper man W. T. Stead gathered the bereaved and curious in a room in Cambridge House so they could communicate with the dead.
Spiritualism's Beginning: Kate and Maggie Fox
Spiritualism's Place, Episode #1 of 4: Enjoy this re-release of our episode on Kate and Maggie Fox, the "founders" of Spiritualism. Averill wrote this episode in preparation for writing about the Fox sisters in Chapters 2 & 3 of Spiritualism's Place. This time around, you can listen for the context and history that didn't make it into the book!
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Kitsune and Kitsunetsuki: A History of Japanese Fox-Witches and Fox Possession
Witches Series. Episode #4 of 4. This episode tells te story of one of Japanese folklore’s most infamous yokai (supernatural beings). The kitsune, “fox-spirit” or “fox-witch” has deep roots, millennias-old, in central Japan. The use of the word spirit conjures ghosts to western minds but the Japanese are using it to mean “supernatural or enlightened being”. This is why kitsune is also translated t
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692
Witches, Episode #3 of 4. The Salem witch trials lasted from late February 1692 to May 1693 in eastern Massachusetts Bay Province. This event resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of at least 155 individuals. Of these people, thirty were found guilty, with nineteen meeting their end by hanging. One man suffered a gruesome death by crushing under stones, while five others perished in jail due to
Spectral Evidence, Floating Witches, and Angry Neighbors: The Other Witch Panic of 1692
Witches Series. Episode # 2 of 4. In 1692, the unusual behavior of a young girl was explained as the result of the evil trickery of a witch. Soon, people were naming culprits, and those accused were on trial for their very lives. You’re all familiar with the story, right? But today we’re not talking about the famed witch panic that gripped Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 - no, we’re talking about the
Love and Magic: A History of Violence
Witches III, Episode #1 of 4. Magic practitioners - both real and fictional, historical and contemporary - wield many different kinds of magic. Blood and bone magic, necromancy, divination, cleansing magic, manifestation, earth and elemental magic; the list is extensive. But wherever there is magic use, you are likely to find love magic. Spells and incantations to entrap a lover, potions and drugs
History of Thin: The Changing Meaning of Thinness in the Modern World
Bodies Series. Episode #3 of 3. The modern history of the body is marked by the coinciding pathologization of fatness AND the elevation of a new thin ideal. But one can make the argument that even after fatness was pathologized (deemed medically or psychologically abnormal), it was not necessarily stigmatized in any systematic way UNTIL its opposite quality- thinness-- took on new and important me
The Battle for Deaf Education: Clashing Methods, Minds, and Cultures in the Nineteenth Century United States
Body Series. Episode #2 of 3. In the mid-nineteenth century, a feud erupted between two camps of prominent public intellectuals and thought-leaders in the United States. The results of this feud affected the education, culture, and lives of generations of Americans. And yet, you have probably never heard of it. One the one side, the manualists, who believed that deaf people should be educated in m
One-Sex, Two-Sex, or …?: Thinking About the Sexed Body in History
Bodies, Episode #1 of 3. Historian Thomas Lacquer’s 1992 Making Sex argues that the one sex model dominated ancient and medieval medicine and popular ideas of sex, until, approximately, the Enlightenment, which gradually dispelled the one sex model in favor of the two-sex model--the strict dimorphic binary of sex, male and female, that most people are probably familiar with today. While numerous h
Bonus Episode: The Nineteenth-Century Feminist and Writer that You’ve Probably Never Heard Of: Elizabeth Oakes Smith
Bonus Episode: We're diving into the biography and the life and times of a woman named Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Elizabeth Oakes Smith was a household name in the mid- nineteenth century. She was a journalist, she was a women's rights activist, she traveled across the country speaking on the lyceum circuit, and she was also a well-known published author. Famous writers such as Edgar Allan Poe reviewe
La Mutine: Gender and France's Forced Migration Schemes
EMG's Book Sentimental State. Episode #4 of 4. In this episode, Marissa and Averill uncover the harrowing real story behind a wave of forced migration from early 18th century Paris to the struggling French territories along the Gulf Coast. Driven by underpopulation woes and a charlatan's get-rich-quick scheme, over 100 women were quite literally rounded up from prisons and poorhouses under dubious
Red Power Progressivism: A Biography of American Indian Rights Activist Zitkala Ša
EGM's Book The Sentimental State. Episode #3 of 4. In 1923, Zitkala-Ša, a Dakota woman, wrote an unpublished essay titled "Our Sioux People," tracing the U.S. government's relationship with the tribe. She described a scene where delegates from the Pine Ridge reservation met with Mr. E. B. Merritt of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC. Zitkala-Ša quoted: "through all the pathos of their
“Came home in our droves for you”: Abortion in Ireland
Elizabeth's Book, The Sentimental State #2 of 4. We’re talking about abortion and Ireland today. It’s hard for a lot of reasons. People shouldn’t have to fight so hard to make decisions for their own bodies. An unborn fetus should not have the same legal status as an adult woman. But we’re honoring Elizabeth’s book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State, with
The Sentimental State: Book Talk
Celebrating Elizabeth's Book: Episode #1 of 4. Dear listener, we’ve got a special episode for you today. Our producer, Elizabeth Garner Masarik, just published her first book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State. You can buy it on any major booksellers website as a paperback or ebook. So we are starting a series of women’s history episodes to celebrate the
The Leaky Body: Fluids, Disease, and the Millennias-Long Endurance of Humoral Medicine
5 Cs, No 6 Cs of History Series. Continuity. Episode #4 of 4. Pretend it’s 500 BCE and you know nothing about modern, scientific medicine. You know nothing about anatomy or biochemistry or microbes. How would you approach the art of healing your loved ones when they became ill? How would you identify what’s wrong with them and offer them the supportive care they needed, their best chance of surviv
Continuity & the Gender Wage Gap: Or, How Patriarchy Ruins Everything Part II
The 6 Cs of History: Continuity, Episode #3 of 4. Starting in the late 1990s, historians like Deborah Simonton and Judith Bennett argued that if we take a step back a look at the longue duree of women’s history, the evidence suggests that even as Europe’s economies transformed from market places to market economies, women’s work--and the value placed on gendered labor--was and continues to be rema
From Slave Patrol to Street Patrol: Police Brutality in America
The 6 Cs of History, Continuity: Episode #2 of 4. In this final series on the 5- nope, 6 - C’s of historical thinking, we’re considering the concept of continuity. We’re much more accustomed to thinking about history as the study of change over time, but we must also consider the ways in which things do not change, or maybe, how they shift and morph in their details while staying, largely, consist
The Invisible Engine: Capitalism's Reliance on Reproductive Labor and a Gendered Wage
The 6 C's of History, Continuity: Episode #1 of 4. Reproductive labor is the labor or work of creating and maintaining the next generation of workers. This is the work of birth, breastfeeding or bottle feeding, washing dirty butts and wiping runny noses, nursing those who unable to care for themselves, keeping living areas habitable by washing and getting rid of refuse- and figuring out how to get
Islam and the Frankish “Wall of Ice”: Contingency and the Battle of Tours, or Poitiers, or Whatever…
5 Cs of History. Contingency. Episode #4 of 4. It’s October 10, 732 and the Umayyad armies commanded by Abd al-Rahman are facing the Franks led by Charles Martel. The battle is bloody and chaotic. When the fog clears, the Umayyad Muslim invasion is halted, and the Frankish Kingdom under Charles Martel emerges as a powerful force in Christendom. Historian Edward Gibbon writes that Tours was one of
How the Homophile Movement Could Have Been Intersectional and Antiracist, But Wasn’t: Magnus Hirschfeld and Li Shui Tong’s Love and Loss Story
5 Cs of History: Contingency #3 of 4. In spring 1931, Li Shui Tong [Lee Jow Tong] met Magnus Hirschfeld when the latter was giving a public lecture in Shanghai. Li was a medical student with a deep--and vested--interest in the exciting new field of sexology. Hirschfeld’s work and ideas would go on to shape modern ideas about “homosexuality” in clear and often problematic ways. The theory of homose
Rise and Fall in the Queen City: Contingent Moments in Buffalo, New York
Five Cs of History. Contingency. Episode #2 of 4. At the turn of the 20th century, Buffalo was - to borrow a phrase from historian Mark Goldman - a city on the edge. Perfectly situated on Lake Erie and a hub for railroads, Buffalo was a critical part of the country’s trade infrastructure. It was an ideal spot to unload cereal crops from the midwest, for instance, to be stored in the city’s many gr
Crappy Healthcare is Not Natural: the U.S. Health System is Contingent on a Lot of Bad Decisions
5 Cs of History, Contingency #1 of 4. The U.S. healthcare system is the way it is because of decisions made by people at various points in the last century. America’s healthcare issue is the result of a series of interconnected decisions and events and catastrophes. This episode is a part of our 5 c’s of history episode and today we are exploring contingency. Contingency is “The idea that every hi
Chinese Medicine: The Complex Balance of Individual, State, and Cosmos
5Cs of History, Complexity: #4 of 4. During the Tang dynasty in the mid 8th century, a military leader named Li Baozhen was frustrated with his aging body. He had achieved much military glory and material wealth in his life, but he was aging and facing the fact that death was approaching. But he had also had dreams that he was riding triumphantly through the sky on a crane. Surely this was an omen
Puerto Rican Citizenship: A Complex Status
5 Cs of History. Complexity. Episode #3 of 4. Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, and its residents are considered United States citizens. However the island’s political status remains a subject of debate and discussion. Some Puerto Ricans advocate for independence, while others support maintaining the current status as a territory, pursuing statehood, or seeking other forms of self-d
Vaudevillian, Countess, Spy, Activist: The Complicated Life of Josephine Baker
5 Cs of History: Complexity, #2 of 4. Josephine Baker’s life story - both what we know and what we don’t/can’t know - is fascinating. For our purposes today, her life story is a perfect case study for complexity in historical thinking. Not only was she an icon of contradictions, but the way she lived and interacted with the world has allowed historians and feminist scholars to really tease out the
The History of Fat: The Complex Attitudes Toward Fatness in the Pre-Modern West
Complexity Series. Five Cs of History. Episode #1 of 4. The dominant narrative- and the story that many of you expect to hear today- is that fatness used to be less stigmatized; that plump women were beautiful and plump men regarded as wealthy and important but that somewhere along the way, thinness became associated with beauty and fatness became medicalized as obesity and stigmatized as disgusti
From Orality to Literacy: A Global History of Writing
5 Cs of History: Change Over Time, Episode #4 of 4. Written and spoken language are separate things. Languages that are connected to a written script change more slowly and last longer than those that don’t. Writing acts as an anchor to humans’ ever-changing speech sounds. But these two aspects of language (speech and writing) did not always go hand in hand. Today we dive into the history of the w
Feminisms: The Interconnected Rights Revolution
Change over Time Series. The Five Cs of History. Episode #3 of 4. The Rights Revolution movements of the twentieth century were deeply connected to one another, with activists known for their work in one movement having cut their teeth in the others. These movements were also profoundly influenced and connected to struggles of the past, with older movements having either been where activists began
The History of America's Changing Political Parties
5 Cs of History. Change over Time. Episode #2 of 4. In recent years, America’s two party system has seemed more intractable than ever: Democrats vs. Republicans. Now, we have a clear idea of each party’s location on the political map: Democrats are liberal, Republicans conservative; Democrats are left-leaning, Republicans right-leaning. Right now, those truths seems so deeply entrenched that they
Irish Hero, Queer Traitor, Gay Icon: Roger Casement Over Time
Five Cs of History. Change Over Time #1 of 4. Roger Casement has been a subject of fascination - and controversy - for over a century. During his lifetime, he was an internationally-recognized champion for human rights, and was instrumental in exposing the horrors surrounding the rubber industry in the Belgian Congo and Peruvian Putumayo. Significantly, he spent his life striving to do more than j
The Equal Rights Amendment: Gender Equality? Nah...
5 Cs of History. Causality Series #4 of 4. Despite the fact that eighty percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, it does not. That is because the Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified. Despite being introduced in 1923, the ERA was not passed by Congress until 1972. However, the amendment failed to be ratified by the required number o
Irrepressible Conflict, or Failure to Compromise? The Causes of the American Civil War
5 C's of History: Causality, #3 of 4. In 2017, White House chief of staff John Kelly, then serving Donald Trump, was interviewed by Fox New’s Laura Ingraham, who asked about Kelly’s thoughts on a church in Virginia that had recently taken down a statue to Robert E. Lee. Kelly responded that Robert E. Lee had been a “honorable man” who “gave up his country to fight for his state,” and claimed that
The Fall of Rome: Debating Causality and the Collapse of the Western Empire
5 Cs of History: Causality Series. Episode #2 of 4. There was a sense, among very learned folks, that Rome had been something great that had been lost. In their grief, Renaissance scholars pored over classical manuscripts, attempting to build a picture of Rome’s greatness and, perhaps, find a reason for its disintegration. Rome’s fall was bemoaned, even resented by some but the mechanics of its de
For King, Country, and… Opium?: Thinking About Causality, Empire, and Historiography in the First Opium War, 1839-42
The 5 C's of History: Causality Series, #1 of 4. According to the website of Britain’s National Army Museum, the first Opium War started when, “In May 1839, Chinese officials demanded that Charles Elliot, the British Chief Superintendent of Trade in China, hand over their stocks of opium at Canton for destruction. This outraged the British, and was the incident that sparked conflict.” In popular c
For F*ck’s Sake: A History of English-Language Swearing
Context Series. Episode #4 of 4. Swear words shock and offend. They also have a physiological impact on us: we blush, our heart races, and our brain is stimulated. The words that have this power vary over time and space. The history of swear words really drives home the idea that the past is a foreign country. The most offensive and shocking thing someone could say in 11th century England was “God
The Controversial Life and Legacy of Margaret Sanger
The 5 Cs of History: Context, Episode #3 of 4. There are few individuals in American history with as divided a legacy as Margaret Sanger. For many, she was a pioneer of women’s health, an important birth control activist, and founder of Planned Parenthood. For others, Sanger represents the immorality of feminism and insidious evil of reproductive choice. Yet others see Sanger as a eugenicist orche
Anne Moody: Context and Conflict in Coming of Age in Mississippi
Context Series. Episode #2 of 4. Published in 1968, Anne Moody’s autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi details her journey from a cotton plantation in the deep south to becoming a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. At times heartbreaking and other times inspiring, Moody’s memoir explores how an individual faced with enormous-- and seemingly insurmountable --obstacles can become a person tha
The Women’s War of 1929: Igbo and Ibibio Resistance to British Colonialism
5 C's of History: Context Series, #1 of 4. On December 16th, 1929, thousands of Igbo [ee-bo or ibo] women gathered outside the colonial government compound in Opobo. They were there to demand the end of British imperialism in Eastern Nigeria, though the British seemed oblivious to the intention and motivations of these women. What they saw were erratic, reactive women wielding sticks and stones, b
Race and Nation in Latin America: Whitening, Browning, and the Failures of Mestizaje
Producer's Choice series. #4 of 4. Justiniano Durán had carefully painted Colombian President Nieto Gil’s official presidential portrait from life some time around 1861. After Nieto’s death in 1866, his portrait was sent to Paris for an alteration, intended to make it look more “distinguished.” This is where his face acquired the strange whitish-blue tint observed by historian Fals Borda over 100
Nina Otero-Warren: Suffrage and Strategy in New Mexico
Surprise Series! #3 of 4. Spanish American Nina Otero-Warren (1881-1965) was a suffragist, Progressive educator, woman's club member, public health and social welfare board member, and writer. She worked for formal and informal mediation between Hispanos, Anglo Americans, and Indians. She was instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, was the first Hispanic woman to run for United St
Little Laborers: Child Indenture in 18th- and 19th- Century America
Surprise Series. Episode #2 of 4. There was once a young, deaf Black man, and I’m not going to tell you his real name because those records are private, so we’ll just call him Levi. Levi lived on a farm in the Hudson Valley region of New York State. According to his patient case file, he was incarcerated at the Matteawan State Hospital because he murdered his white “master” in 1870. A quick google
A Spot of Tea: Empire, Commodities, and the Opportunities in Britain’s Tea Trade
Guess the Theme Series, #1 of 4. Tea, it turns out, is a bottomless commodity history. As historian Erika Rappaport notes, at various times over the last two thousands years, “In Asia, the Near East, Europe, and North America, tea was a powerful medicine, a dangerous drug, a religious and artistic practice, a status symbol, an aspect of urban leisure, and a sign of respectability and virtue.” As a
Omm Sety and Bridey Murphy: A History of Reincarnation and Past Lives in Britain and America
Spiritualism Series. Episode #4 of 4. You might think that the story of Pharaoh Sety I of Egypt's 19th Dynasty ends with his death. But you’d be wrong, at least according to one 20th-century British woman, Dorothy Eady. Dorothy, who believed herself to be the reincarnation of Sety's lover Bentreshyt, is the only reason we know about this story at all. Dorothy Eady’s past life, which she discovered
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