Dig: A History Podcast

Dig: A History Podcast episodes:

• 03.25.2024

  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...

  
• 03.18.2024

  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...

  
• 03.11.2024

  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...

  
• 03.04.2024

  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...

  
• 11.27.2023

  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...

  
• 11.20.2023

  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...

  
• 11.13.2023

  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...

  
• 11.06.2023

  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...

  
• 09.25.2023

  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,...

  
• 09.18.2023

  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...

  
• 09.11.2023

  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...

  
• 09.04.2023

  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...

  
• 07.23.2023

  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...

  
• 07.17.2023

  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...

  
• 07.10.2023

  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...

  
• 07.03.2023

  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...

  
• 05.29.2023

  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...

  
• 05.22.2023

  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...

  
• 05.15.2023

  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...

  
• 05.08.2023

  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...

  
• 03.26.2023

  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....

  
• 03.20.2023

  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...

  
• 03.13.2023

  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...

  
• 03.06.2023

  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...

  
• 12.05.2022

  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...

  
• 11.21.2022

  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....

  
• 11.14.2022

  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...

  
• 11.07.2022

  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...

  
• 09.26.2022

  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...

  
• 09.19.2022

  Anna Howard Shaw: Doctor, Reverend, Suffragist Leader

  Spiritualism Series. Episode #2 of 4. The years 1896-1910 of the American woman’s suffrage movement are sometimes referred to as the doldrums because of an apparent lack of progress during the years. However, revised scholarship has shown that these were...

  
• 09.13.2022

  The Kingdom of Matthias: Sex, Gender and Alternative Belief in the Second Great Awakening

  Spiritualism Series. Episode #2 of 4. Elijah Pierson was the embodiment of early 19th century Christian masculinity. So how did he end up, just a few years later, shambling along the streets of New York City with a scruffy beard,...

  
• 09.05.2022

  Spectacle and Spiritualism in the Lives of Maggie and Kate Fox

  Spiritualism Series, #1 of 4. The Fox sister’s story has been told hundreds of times, in autobiography, newspaper stories, biographies, histories of Spiritualism, Victorian entertainment, women’s rights movements, and many other contexts. Today we’re going to share some insights into...

  
• 08.01.2022

  Ghosting the Patriarchy: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Women’s Rights Movement

  Spiritualism Series, Episode # 4 of 4. When Ann Braude published her groundbreaking book Radical Spirits in 1989, critics did not like that Braude prominently linked the women’s rights movement, particularly during the antebellum period, with Spiritualism. And even now, thirty...

  
• 07.25.2022

  Plastic Shamans and Spiritual Hucksters: A History of Peddling and Protecting Native American Spirituality

  Spiritualism, Episode #3 of 4. 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...

  
• 07.11.2022

  Julia’s Bureau: The Temperance Virtuoso, the Father of Journalism, and Life after Death in the Spiritualist Anglo-Atlantic

  Spiritualism Series. Episode #2 of 4. 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....

  
• 07.04.2022

  Cheesecloth, Spiritualism, and State Secrets: Helen Duncan’s Famous Witchcraft Trial

  Spiritualism Series, #1 of 4. Helen Duncan was charged under the 1735 Witchcraft Act, but her case was no eighteenth-century sensation: she was arrested, charged, and ultimately imprisoned in 1944. Of course, in 1944, Britain was at war, fighting fascism...

  
• 06.27.2022

  Domesticity and Depression: Kentucky Coal Mining, Song, and Organizing During Bloody Harlan

  This is a special episode researched and written by one of our interns, Olivia Langa. Intern Episode! #2 of .... To find out more about the everyday lives of women in coal mining families we must look at the songs of...

  
• 05.23.2022

  One Medicine: Animal Experiments and the Making of Modern Medical Science

  Animals Series. Episode #4 of 4. The interplay between human and veterinary medicine was incredibly common by the second half of the 19th century. While human medicine and veterinary medicine were distinct professions, they were inextricably linked in the latest...

  
• 05.16.2022

  Canary in a Coal Mine - Literally

  Animals Series. Episode #3 of 4. The term “canary in a coal mine” is ubiquitous for any early warning signal. Like our fictional vignette of a miner carrying a canary into the coal mine, canaries were often taken into mines...

  
• 05.09.2022

  Remember Rutterkin? Witch’s Familiars, Religious Reformation, and Sexy Beasts in Early Modern Europe

  Animals, Episode #2 of 4. Toads, dogs, cats, ferrets, rats, and occasionally even butterflies were depicted in the 16th and 17th centuries as “witch’s familiars” throughout Europe. A servant of the witches, whose purpose was to help them stir up...

  
• 05.02.2022

  War Elephants from Ancient India to World War II

  Animals Series, #1 of 4. In mid-March of 2022, a video spread virally across social media platforms: an elephant with its trunk wrapped around the top bar of its enclosure, its eye casting an anxious look out. A keeper pats...

  
• 03.28.2022

  Race in 1920s America: Hellfighters, Red Summer, and Restrictive Immigration

  Race Series. Episode #4 of 4. In today’s episode we’re going to explore race in the 1920s and dig into a few key moments and movements to see how race and ethnicity played a key role in shaping the American...

  
• 03.21.2022

  Apartheid in South Africa: A History

  Race Series. Episode #3 of 4. During WWII, South Africa's United Party failed to enforce segregation laws with the vigor that most Afrikaners thought was necessary. As a result, war time was accompanied by growing fears of racial mixing and...

  
• 03.14.2022

  The Long History of Abolition in America

  Race #2 of 4. We’ve discussed the end of American slavery many, many times here on DIG. We’ve talked about abolition in the context of Reconstruction, in the context of refugees sometimes called “contraband,” in the context of Black military...

  
• 03.07.2022

  The Windrush Generation and the Mystique of British Anti-Racism

  Race #1 of 4. Over the last five years the British government has been reckoning with more recent expressions of the anti-immigration and anti-Black sentiments among its elected officials. The “Windrush scandal” broke in 2017, revealing that the British Home...

  
• 12.26.2021

  Rosa Parks: Myth & Memory in the American Civil Rights Movement

  Bad Women Series, #4 of 4. The popular image of Parks is one of quiet, and demure respectability. When we were in elementary school, we were taught that Parks was a tired old woman, whose feet hurt after a long...

  
• 12.20.2021

  Tituba, The "Black Witch" of Salem

  Bad Women Series. Episode #3 of 4. Anyone who's read or seen Arthur Miller's play The Crucible likely remembers Tituba, the enslaved woman who sets off the 1692 witch panic in Salem, Massachusetts. In literature and history, she's been depicted...

  
• 12.14.2021

  “La lengua”: Malintzin, the Spanish Conquest of Mesoamerica, and the Legacy of the Translator in Mexico

  Bad Women Series #2 of 4. Malintzin is by far the most controversial figure of the 1519 Mexican invasion. Was she a traitor, or a feminist national hero? Was she the mother of Mexico, or the Eve-like bringer of Mexico’s...

  
• 12.07.2021

  Dragon Lady of the South China Sea: Cheng I Sao, Woman Commander of China's Pirate Confederacy

  Bad Women Series in collaboration with Hallie Rubenhold's new podcast Bad Women: The Ripper Retold . Episode #1 of 4. The life story of Shih Yang, known to history by her married name Cheng I Sao (the wife of Cheng...

  
• 11.14.2021

  Aunt Jemima: American Racism on Your Grocery Shelf

  BONUS EPISODE! Tuck into this episode by our badass intern Carly Bagley, a student at St. Mary's University in Texas. She wrote, recorded and produced this episode as a companion episode to Sarah's Slavery and Soul Food and Elizabeth's Birth...