Join us to explore feelings, thoughts, culty mobs, angry people, and how our brain can deceive us, while our reflective mind can save us. Featured guest is therapist, author, and mental health educator Hannah Smith, MA, LMHC, CGP,  founder of Potential-Finders Network and its education branch, The Village Education & Growth Collective. Hannah is also the author Lasting Change: Overcoming the Grip of Anxiety, Depression, & Trauma with "User-Friendly" Neuroscience.

Theme Music: Kelly Dwyer. Logo Design: Mary Birdsong. Producer/Editor: Joshua Dudley.

The day after what was already being called "The Massacre Place" riots, people in New York City were mad as hell and nervous as hell. City elites and authorities convened juries and extracted verdicts with lightning speed. It seemed like civil war would break out in Manhattan. All this, plus: Mary does some great imitations, while Andy does a cringe-tastic take on Butt-Head. Join us as we do the aftermath of the deadly Astor Place Theatre Riot of 1849.

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Theme Music: Kelly Dwyer. Logo Design: Mary Birdsong. Producer/Editor: Joshua Dudley.

Talked into continuing his run of the Scottish Play by kid-gloved New Yorkers, William Charles Macready and his fellow thespians manage a remarkable rendering of Shakespeare—sometimes in mime—as rowdies loyal to Ned Forrest try to shut the whole damn thing down. Things get ugly. Then they get uglier. Then the army decides it's time to enter the fray. When has this ever worked out well?

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Theme Music: Kelly Dwyer. Logo Design: Mary Birdsong. Producer/Editor: Joshua Dudley.

British actor William Charles Macready inks a deal to do Macbeth at the Astor Place Opera House. It gets off to a rocky, smelly start. He's not sure what to do. Meanwhile, a buncha Bowery B'Hoys try to lay their mitts on some muskets, while Washington Irving undertakes verily to crush "the mob." And gee, book titles were so very loooooooooooong back then.

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Theme Music: Kelly Dwyer. Logo Design: Mary Birdsong. Producer/Editor: Joshua Dudley.

Edwin "Ned" Forrest came from humble beginnings to become a megastar of the American stage by the 1820s. Heroic, demonstrative, and patriotic, he is the darling of Bowery B'hoys' subculture. Over time, Forrest grows to resent William Charles Macready, a British actor who rises to eminence for a naturalistic style. New York's wealthier classes love Macready. Forrest imagines the Brit is conspiring against him. Charges are made! Hisses are hissed! Sheep carcasses are thrown! 

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Theme Music: Kelly Dwyer. Logo Design: Mary Birdsong. Producer/Editor: Joshua Dudley.

New York City in the 1840s is a vital, bustling, and deeply divided place. Cultural and political beliefs related to race, gender, and class animate different groups to hate certain celebrities and worship others. The nativist Bowery B'hoys love an actor named Edwin "Ned" Forrest, while the kid-gloved "Upper Ten" worship British tragedian William Charles Macready. Neither group is as noble as it would like to believe it is: both are racist, reactive, and possessed of strong, if divergent, notions of proper "manhood." Young men among the Bowery B'hoys are getting agitated about what they claim is an insult to their identity: New York's wealthy classes supporting a tour of William Macready as Macbeth at the fancy Astor Place Opera House. 

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Theme Music: Kelly Dwyer. Logo Design: Mary Birdsong. Producer/Editor: Joshua Dudley.

"Feel Familiar? Emotionally Intelligent History" explores crucial, though sometimes overlooked, people and events from the past to gain a better understanding of current events. It links macro-level developments in politics and society to relatable, individual feelings and thoughts. Season One focuses on the Astor Place Theatre Riot of 1849 in which two groups—those supporting "patriotic" American-born actor Edwin Forrest and fans of British stage legend William Charles Macready, respectively—came to blows in an early "culture war." Things turned violent when the army opened fire on a crowd outside the Astor Place Opera House in lower Manhattan, killing dozens, mostly innocent bystanders. It was rightly labeled as a massacre and a crucial moment in American history. The show's host and creator, Andrew L. Erdman, is an historian and psychotherapist. To help him unpack this disturbing and curiously foreshadowing event is actor-comedian Mary Birdsong ("Reno 911," "Succession.)

To sign up for Andrew L. Erdman's newsletter, nERDism, click here. 

Theme Music: Kelly Dwyer. Logo Design: Mary Birdsong. Producer/Editor: Joshua Dudley.