Historians At The Movies

This week we talk about the life and legacy of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 mission. Joining us is Jim Hansen, who wrote the book First Man and served as a consultant on the film, along with HATM space expert Kevin Rusnak. We talk about the Armstrong's inward journey into outer space, his relationships with his fellow astronauts, and the role his wife Janet played in Armstrong's journey. We also get some inside details on the making of the film, including Ryan Gosling and Damien Chazelle's work to get this movie made. This is a podcast on NASA, Neil Armstrong, and an absolutely brilliant film unlike any you've heard before.

About our guests:
James R. Hansen is a professor emeritus of history at Auburn University. A former historian for NASA, Hansen is the author of twelve books on the history of aerospace and a two-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in History. His 1995 book Spaceflight Revolution was nominated for the Pulitzer by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the only time NASA ever nominated a book for the prize. He serves as coproducer for the motion picture First Man, which is based on his New York Times bestselling biography of Neil Armstrong.

Kevin J. Rusnak is the Chief Historian of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio.  He is responsible for leading the professional research, collection, preservation, analysis, writing, and dissemination of AFLCMC's history and heritage to the organization’s leadership and workforce, as well as to a public audience.

Mr. Rusnak graduated with a degree in History from the University of Dayton, Ohio, in 1995, and subsequently entered the History of Technology graduate program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.  His thesis focused on the production of B-29 bombers in Marietta, Georgia, during World War II, while his dissertation explored the development of Air Force and NASA pressure suits and space suits from the 1930s through the 1960s.  He spent over four years as a historian at the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where he researched and interviewed dozens of pioneering engineers, managers, and astronauts from the early years of human spaceflight.

Mr. Rusnak joined the Air Force History and Museums program in 2002 as the Senior Historian for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson AFB.  Over the next 18 years, he researched and wrote numerous annual histories, biographies, reports, heritage products, and special studies.  In 2017, he was the primary author for AFRL’s award-winning 100-year history compendium, Aiming Higher: A Century of Research in Science and Technology by the Air Force Research Laboratory and its Predecessors, as well as for its companion photo essay volume.  He also pioneered AFRL’s leveraging of history on modern platforms, such as social media, to provide a broader audience with access to AFRL’s significant legacy. 

Any Given Sunday turns 25 this year and it may have predicted the modern football era whether the NFL liked it or not. Sports historian Lou Moore stops in to talk about the rise of Black quarterbacks, CTE, social media in sports, malevolent owners, and his new book The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback.

About our guest:
Louis Moore is a Professor of History at Grand Valley State University. He teaches African American History, Civil Rights, Sports History, and US History. His research and writing examines the interconnections between race and sports.  He is the author of two other books, I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915 and We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality, and has an audible lecture, African American Athletes Who Made History. In addition, he has two audible lectures, African American Athletes Who Made History and A Pastime of Their Own: The Story of Negro League Baseball. He has also written for various online outlets including The New York Daily News, Vox, The Global Sports Institute, First and Pen, and the African American Intellectual Historical Society, and he has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, and BBC Sports. He is als the co-host of the Black Athlete Podcast.

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Colin Farrell is back as the boss of Gotham City. This week Blake Scott Ball, author of the forthcoming book Batman: The Making of an American Myth joins in to talk about Batman, the Penguin, and whether or not you should check out the show.

It's Talk Like A Pirate Day and that makes it the perfect time to invite pirate historians Jamie Goodall and Rebecca Simon to talk about pirate mythology, superstitions at sea, and our favorite books and movies about swashbucklers.

About our guests:
Jamie Goodall is  a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C.  She also teaches part-time at Southern New Hampshire University in their College of Online & Continuing Education. She is the author of Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2020), National Geographic’s Pirates: Shipwrecks, Conquests, and their Lasting Legacy (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2021), Pirates and Privateers from Long Island Sound to Delaware Bay (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2022), and The Daring Exploits of Black Sam Bellamy: From Cape Cod to the Caribbean (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2023).

Rebecca Simon is a historian of early modern piracy, Colonial America, the Atlantic World, and maritime history. She earned her PhD from King’s College London in 2017. My dissertation, entitled: “The Crimes of Piracy and its Punishment: The Performance of Maritime Supremacy in the British Atlantic World, 1670 – 1830,” examines British maritime and legal supremacy in its early American colonies in regards to maritime piracy. She uses the public executions of pirates in London and the Americas as my narrative to see how the colonists reacted to increased legal restrictions by British authorities, which ultimately led to new ideas of autonomy.

This week Zach Schonfeld drops in to talk about his new book detailing Nicolas Cage's origin story. We dive into how Nicolas Coppola grew up in the shadow of his famous uncle, his struggles to break into Hollywood, and the highs and lows of Nicolas Cage's filmography. This pod is the first of its kind and I think you're gonna dig it.

We lost James Earl Jones today. Thomas Lecaque joins me to remember the man and what he meant to all of us.

This week Kellie Carter Jackson drops in to talk about The Help. We get into Black representations in film, white savior tropes, and what more nuanced discussions of the lived experiences of Black workers in the Civil Rights era look like. Kellie is a freaking powerhouse. Expect her to be back.

About our guest:
Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen 68’ Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She studies the lived experiences of Black people with a focus on slavery, abolitionism, the Civil War, political violence, Black women’s history, and film. She is the author of the award-winning book, Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence, which won the SHEAR James H. Broussard Best First Book Prize. Force and Freedom was also a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, a finalist for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Prize, and listed among 13 books to read on African American History by the Washington Post. Carter Jackson is also co-editor of Reconsidering Roots: Race, Politics, & Memory. Her essays have been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, and other outlets. She has also been interviewed for her expertise on Netflix, Apple TV, Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, MSNBC, PBS, Vox, CNN, the BBC, the History Channel, Al Jazeera, Slate, and a host of documentaries. 

Carter Jackson is also a Historian-in-Residence for the Museum of African American History in Boston. She also serves as a commissioner for the Massachusetts Historical Commission, where she represents the Museum of African American History in Boston.

Carter Jackson's latest book, We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (Seal Press), examines a radical reframing of the past and present of Black resistance—both nonviolent and violent—to white supremacy. She is also working on the story of the only Black passenger on the Titanic which examines the unexplored aspect of race, migration, and our obsession with one ship thought to be supreme.

Lastly, Carter Jackson loves a good podcast! She is the co-host of the podcast, “This Day in Esoteric Political History” with Jody Avirgan and Niki Hemmer and serves as the Executive Producer and host of "You Get a Podcast" formerly known as "Oprahdemics: The Study of the Queen of Talk" by Radiotopia with Leah Wright Rigeuer. You can follow her on Twitter @kcarterjackson. She currently resides in the suburbs of Boston with her husband and three children. 

This week Nancy MacDonell makes her debut on HATM Podcast to talk about Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Anna Wintour, and her book, Empresses of Seventh Avenue, which tells the history of the women who built New York into a fashion powerhouse in the years after World War II. This is a blast, and for me, and eye opening conversation. Hope you enjoy.

About our guest:
Nancy MacDonell is a fashion journalist and fashion historian. She writes the Wall Street Journal column "Fashion with a Past," in which she explores the historic roots of current fashion trends. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Elle, Vogue, and many other publications. She is the author of five books, including The Classic Ten: The True Story of the Little Black Dress and Nine Other Fashion Favorites. Nancy is an adjunct lecturer in fashion history at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was born in Montréal and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

This week Kate Sheppard, John Wyatt Greenlee take a look at the newest edition of the Alien franchise to see what it has to say about capitalism, colonialism, and whether or not the series still has legs after 45 years. Jump in with us on this one.

About our guests:
 Dr. Kathleen Sheppard earned her PhD in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. After a post-doctoral teaching fellowship at the American University in Cairo, she arrived at Missouri S&T in the fall of 2011. She teaches mainly survey courses on modern Western Civilizations, which is arguably one of the most important courses students in 21st century America can take. Her main focus is on the history of science from the ancient Near East to present day Europe, United States, and Latin America. She has taught courses on the history of European science and Latin American science, as well as a seminar on women in the history of science.

Dr. John Wyatt Greenlee is a medievalist and a cartographic historian, as well as a historian of roads and pathways and pilgrimage. But he is best well known for his work on the role of eels in pre-modern England from the tenth through the seventeenth centuries. He is heavily engaged in outreach and public engagement to make the eel history more widely known, and to raise awareness for the role of eels as an endangered species. His work with eels and eel history has been profiled in TIME, The Guardian, Atlas Obscura, Hakai Magazine, and The New Yorker  (click here for a full list of earned media)

This week sociologist Jessica Calarco drops in to talk about the magificent 9 to 5, the changing and sometimes unchanging roles of women in the workplace, her work examining the role of women as America's social safety net, and the one and only Dolly Parton. Let's go.

About our guest:
 A Sociologist and Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jessica is an award-winning teacher, a leading expert on inequalities in family life and education, and the author of Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Social Safety Net (Portfolio/Penguin, 2024). Her previous books include Qualitative Literacy: A Guide to Evaluating Ethnographic and Interview Research (with Mario Small; University of California Press, 2022), Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (Oxford University Press, 2018), and A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum (Princeton University Press, 2020).