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, sometimes with wings that would flap up and down. What was going on that would have inspired so many unidentified flying object sightings? And why did they seem to cluster around an eight month period in 1896-1897? Today, in the last installment of our 2025 spooky series, we are going to dive into this late nineteenth century UFO-sighting phenomenon and perhaps figure out what was going on.

For the complete bibliography, visit digpodcast.org

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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 myths of divine punishment, from medieval theology to early modern courtrooms where hundreds died in werewolf trials, the shape-shifter has embodied our deepest anxieties about human nature itself. Join Marissa and Elizabeth as they uncover the forgotten history of werewolf prosecutions that claimed real lives, explore how economic crises and religious upheaval sparked lycanthropy panics, and trace the transformation of the werewolf from genuine judicial threat to Hollywood monster. This third episode in our Spooky series reveals how the figure of the werewolf has shaped—and been shaped by—Western culture's evolving understanding of violence, identity, and the wild within us all.

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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 Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”in the 1960s, to Johnny Cash’s “Delia’s Gone”in the 1990s, to Jason Isbell’s “Live Oak” or “Yvette”or Zach Bryan’s “Birmingham” in more recent years, songs about the murder are a staple of the American musical tradition. How did songs about violence and crime become so central?  Today, we’ll take a closer look at the murder ballad tradition, tracing them back to the real crimes that inspired them but also considering what they might teach us about race, gender, and American culture.

Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org

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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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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 the Texan myth. We will also unravel how Emily’s tale was erroneously tied to the song, “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

Select Bibliography

Jeffrey D. Dunn, “‘To the Devil with your Glorious History!’: Women and the Battle of San Jacinto” in Women and the Texas Revolution, edited by Mary L. Scheer. (UNT Press, 2012).

Obiagele Lake, Blue Veins and Kinky Hair: Naming and Color Consciousness in African America (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003)

Randolph B. Campbell,  An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821—1865. (LSU Press, 1991). 

Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850. (UNC Press, 2018). 

Emily Clark, The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of Color in the Revolutionary Atlantic World, (UNC Press, 2013).

Daniel Livesay, Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833 (UNC Press, 2018).

Frances Edward Abernethy, 2001: A Texas Odyssey (UNT Press, 2001).

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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 different, something more flattering and more appropriate to their place in the world. This double standard is of great value in the maintenance of patriarchal order.” From the feminist perspective, dismissing women’s talk as “gossip” was a useful tool to reinforce the patriarchy. Punishing women who were known “gossips” was a strategy devised by men to neutralize the threat of gossip to their authority whether that be in the home or in the community. This is an important thread in the history but, as always, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Join us as we explore the history of gossip in the Western (primarily English-speaking) world.

Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org

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Women Series. Episode #2 of 4.

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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 end the practice of sati in India - not at the time of that prohibition, not in the 30 years that followed as the British East India Company tried to expand their influence into the subcontinent Rajputs that were nominally autonomous, and not before, during, or after Indian independence. Widowed girls and women (and yes, we’ll come back to the specificity of girls and women later) continued to climb onto their dead husband’s funeral pyres and burn alive, whether because they believed it was their duty, because they felt they had no other choice, because they couldn’t face a future where their widowhood would be socially and culturally enforced until they died anyway, or because their religious fervor and/or grief moved them to suicide by fire. The history - and experience - of sati in India is complicated, made more so by the ham-fisted intervention of British colonialism, the rise of Hindu nationalism in the late nineteenth century, and the growth of a feminist movement - involving both European and Indian women - in the twentieth century.

Visit our website for the full bibliography

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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 stardom, with major cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami serving as epicenters of this unprecedented visibility and acceptance. As illegal liquor flowed freely, patrons witnessed titillating new performances by gender nonconforming entertainers that challenged social conventions. Elaborate gowns and carefully applied makeup caught the dim lights as "pansies" mesmerized audiences with their wit, sensuality, and gender rebellion.

Find transcripts and show notes here: www.digpodcast.org

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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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