History Talk, the history podcast from Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective

Few place names in American history produce such a visceral response as Pearl Harbor, the Hawaiian bay that housed the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1941.

Written by Greg Hope. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/december-2016-pearl-harbor. Video production by Laura Seeger, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Katherine Weiss.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

On July 28, 1951, representatives of 26 states, meeting in Geneva under the auspices of the United Nations, signed the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Written by Eric H. Limbach. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/defining-refugees-1921-and-1951. Video production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger.

Rosetta Tharpe crossed many boundaries: of genre (playing both gospel and secular music), of gender (playing in a “male” style on a “male” instrument), and even of sexuality.

Written by Delano Lopez. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/march-2015-mother-rock-and-roll. Audio production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

On July 1, 1927, the Nicaraguan revolutionary leader Augusto Nicolás Calderón de Sandino, a.k.a. Augusto “César” Sandino, proclaimed his manifesto extolling continued Nicaraguan resistance against U.S. intervention in his country.

Written by Craig Verniest. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/read/sandino-manifesto-nicaraguan-revolution. Production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

Besides the Wilsonian internationalists, who wanted the Treaty and Covenant ratified unchanged, there were those who wanted to add so-called reservations to the treaties: conditions to U.S. acceptance and participation in the League that the other signatories would have to accept.

Written by Thomas W. Bottelier. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Textual and audio versions of this video are available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/treaty-of-versailles-us-ratification-fight. Audio production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

On Sunday, 18 March 1962 the Algerian War for Independence came to an end. At least, on paper. That paper, simply entitled “Declarations Drawn up in Common Agreement,” was signed in a town on the French side of Lake Geneva better known for its bottled water than its role in diplomatic history: Evian-les-Bains.

Written by Andrew H. Bellisari. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/march-2017-evian-accords-uncertain-peace. Video production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

Facing the harrowing task of rebuilding a life in the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors, community and religious leaders, and Allied soldiers viewed marriage between Jewish women and military personnel as a way to move forward after unspeakable loss. Proponents believed that these unions were more than just a ticket out of war-torn Europe: they would help the Jewish people repopulate after the attempted annihilation of European Jewry.

Historian Robin Judd, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust and married an American soldier after liberation, introduces us to the Jewish women who lived through genocide and went on to wed American, Canadian, and British military personnel after the war. She offers an intimate portrait of how these unions emerged and developed—from meeting and courtship to marriage and immigration to life in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—and shows how they helped shape the postwar world by touching thousands of lives, including those of the chaplains who officiated their weddings, the Allied authorities whose policy decisions structured the couples' fates, and the bureaucrats involved in immigration and acculturation. The stories Judd tells are at once heartbreaking and restorative, and she vividly captures how the exhilaration of the brides' early romances coexisted with survivor's guilt, grief, and apprehension at the challenges of starting a new life of starting a new life in a new land.

Robin E. Judd is an Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University, Director of the Hoffman Leaders and Leadership in History Program, and President of the Association for Jewish Studies.

Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator) is an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching at The Ohio State University.

On March 9, 1848, the twenty-three members of the Hanau People’s Commission—leading citizens of the small German city on the Main River, upstream from Frankfurt—declared their participation in the quickly-spreading upheaval of the March Revolutions of 1848.

Written by Eric H. Limbach. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/read/march-1848-german-revolutions.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

Conflict has defined Arab-Israeli relationships for many decades, with the interstate warfare of the 1940s-1980s giving way in the 1990s and after to a roiling confrontation between the State of Israel and the Palestinian people of the Israeli-occupied territories.

Since the 1940s, the United States has striven to contain, manage, or resolve the conflict, with some notable successes and numerous pronounced failures. While not without precedent, the crisis that erupted in early October 2023 marks an especially difficult, deadly and portentous phase of conflict, and thus poses acute policy dilemmas for U.S. officials who seek to achieve stability and peace in the region.

In this webinar, Professor Peter L. Hahn analyzes the complicated situation in Gaza in its historical and contemporary contexts, focusing on the American role and aiming to bring clarity and balanced perspective about this difficult and dangerous moment in the Middle East.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

Here, David Harmon offers ten “Moments of Insight” that he has had in the parks over the years. The list should be understood as a representative sample of the kinds of introspective experiences the parks offer, rather than as a ranking of the best—something that really is impossible, since all of us bring different sets of values and expectations to our national park experiences.

(Author’s Note, November 2023: My essay was originally written for Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective in 2016. Were I writing it today, I would include an important addition to the segment that describes Eero Saarinen’s central role in creating the Gateway Arch at Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. In 2018, the Memorial was redesignated as Gateway Arch National Park. As part of the relaunch, the park’s museum, which is located beneath the Arch, was completely redesigned to acknowledge the growing consensus that the Arch "honors historical events that are now understood as deeply problematic within the larger trajectory of American history, including the dispossession of Native American land, cultural genocide, the extension of slavery, centuries of conflict and ill will with Mexico, environmental degradation and the emergence of a myth of American exceptionalism,” as an article in the Washington Post put it at the time. While Saarinen’s remarkable architectural genius is in the spotlight in the video essay presented here, I ask viewers to keep this more complex and troubling context in mind as well.)

Written by David Harmon. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video production by Laura Seeger, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Katherine Weiss.

A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/connecting-history/top-ten-origins-moments-insight-america-s-national-parks

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.