Reckoning with Jason Herbert

Today on the podcast, we’re stepping inside The Gray House—not just the story you see on screen, but the one behind it. This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at how this series came to life: how it was conceived, how it was built, and why it mattered enough to tell it this way.

I’m joined by executive producers Lori McCreary and Leslie Greif, along with director Roland Joffé. Together, they walk us through the creative choices, the production challenges, and the larger questions they were wrestling with as they made The Gray House. What did they want this series to say—not just about the past, but about the moment we’re living in now? And what do they hope stays with viewers long after the final scene fades to black?

This is a conversation about storytelling, history, collaboration, and intent—and about why some stories demand to be told as more than just entertainment. Let’s get into it.

In this episode, I sit down with cultural geographer Rashad Shabazz to dissect the 1984 classic starring Prince — and ask the uncomfortable questions.

Is The Kid a tortured genius… or a young man replaying generational trauma?
Is the final performance redemption — or dominance?
And what does Minneapolis represent in a film about Black masculinity, ambition, and control?

We unpack race, space, violence, desire, artistic genius, and the myth of upward mobility — all through the lens of one of the most iconic soundtracks of the 1980s.

This is Purple Rain as you’ve never heard it discussed before.

🎧 Press play.

In Episode 183 of Reckoning with Jason Herbert, historian Heather Cox Richardson joins the show for a lively and surprisingly sharp conversation about the film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter—and what it reveals about American mythmaking.

What happens when we place a fantastical, axe-wielding Abraham Lincoln alongside the real political crises of the 1860s—and our own? We explore the Civil War, Reconstruction, the endurance of the “Lost Cause,” and the power of storytelling in shaping national memory. Along the way, we ask whether some myths refuse to die… and whether that might be the point.

Smart, funny, and unexpectedly timely, this episode blends pop culture with serious history—reminding us that the stories we tell about the past often say more about the present than we realize.

In this episode of Reckoning, historian Andrew Wehrman, author of Contagion of Liberty, explores how smallpox and inoculation shaped the American founding—and ignited some of the earliest debates over liberty, risk, and public health.

Long before COVID-19, Americans wrestled with questions of bodily autonomy, religious belief, communal obligation, and government authority, all in the shadow of a deadly disease and without modern medical knowledge. From local resistance to inoculation to George Washington’s controversial decision to mandate it in the Continental Army, this conversation places early American public health in its full moral and political context.

By looking closely at how Americans responded to smallpox, this episode shows why vaccine controversy is not a modern anomaly—but a recurring feature of American life—and what our past can (and cannot) teach us about navigating public health crises today.

In this episode of Reckoning, we speak with author and journalist Jack El-Hai about the new film Nuremberg and the deeper questions it raises about justice, memory, and moral responsibility.

Drawing on his book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, El-Hai examines the relationship between Hermann Göring and Dr. Douglas Kelley during the Nuremberg Trials, and what it reveals about psychology, power, and the human impulse to explain evil. The conversation considers how early efforts to diagnose Nazism continue to shape the way we understand perpetrators—and the limits of that understanding.

This episode asks what it means to reckon with history honestly, without turning the past into either monsters or myths.

About our guest:

Jack El-Hai is an author and journalist whose work explores psychology, history, and the moral complexities of the twentieth century. He is the author of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, which examines the psychological interrogation of Nazi leaders during the Nuremberg Trials and the uneasy questions those encounters raised about evil, responsibility, and human nature.

El-Hai’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and other publications, and he is known for bringing rigorous historical research together with narrative clarity and ethical depth.

In this episode, I’m joined by Cherokee scholar and author Julie Reed to talk about her powerful book Land, Language, and Women: A Cherokee and American Educational History.

We explore how Cherokee women have shaped—and continue to sustain—relationships to land, community, and language in the face of colonial violence and dispossession. Reed shows how land is not simply territory, language is not merely words, and women are not peripheral to history, but are instead central to cultural survival and meaning.

Our conversation moves between history, storytelling, gender, and Indigenous knowledge systems, asking what it really means to belong to a place—and what is lost when those relationships are broken. This is a conversation about memory, resistance, responsibility, and the enduring power of women to carry culture forward.

About our guest:

Julie L. Reed is an associate professor in history at the University of Tulsa. She is a historian of Native American history, with an emphasis on Southeastern Indians and Cherokee history, and American education. She is also a member of the Cherokee Nation.

There is probably no historian working today more influential in shaping how we think about the way in which humans and animals engage with each other and the environment than Dan Flores. Today, Dan joins in to talk about his epic work, Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History, on the eve of its 10th anniversary release, along with discussions on wolf reintroduction, bison on the plains, the American Serengeti, and his relationship with Steven Rinella and the crew over at Meateater. 

About our guest:

New York Times best-selling author Dan Flores is one of America’s most celebrated historians, renowned for his deep explorations of the country’s landscapes and the remarkable figures who shaped them. While he has 11 acclaimed books to his name, Flores is first and foremost a teacher. He served as Professor Emeritus of Western History at the University of Montana. This year, Flores brings a lifetime of expertise and storytelling to the MeatEater Podcast Network with his new podcast, The American West with Dan Flores.

This week Jason Socrates Bardi joins in to talk about about the rivalry between three mathematicians that defined the fifty years surrounding World War I.

About our guest:

Jason Socrates Bardi is an award-winning journalist in DC who has written two books about the history of math: The Calculus Wars and The Fifth Postulate. He has published hundreds of articles about modern science and medicine in outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle, Good Morning America, US News & World Report, and The Lancet. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

This week Dr. Zackary Graham drops in to talk about one of America's most important environmental stewards--the crawfish--and why their disappearance should worry us all.

About our guest:

Zack is an evolutionary and behavioral ecologist who studies crayfish diversity. The goal of his research is to untangle the ecological and evolutionary complexities that have led crayfishes to be amongst the most successful freshwater animals within the Eastern United States and beyond.
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He is the author of an upcoming popular science book (available 1/6/26) on crayfish entitled Crayfish, Crawfish, Crawdad: The Biology and Conservation of North America's Favorite Crustaceans published by UNC Press.

Egyptologists Dr. Julia Troche and Matt Szafran join in this week to talk about the history behind The Fifth Element and how the anxieties of the 90s are reflected in Luc Besson's campy space opera.

About our guests:

Dr. Julia Troche is an Egyptologist and Associate Professor of History. In 2022 she was awarded her university's highest teaching award followed by the Missouri Governor's Award for Education Excellence. She is committed to advocating for students, early career scholars, and contingent faculty, and fostering inclusive spaces for learning about the ancient world. She is dedicated to the university Public Affairs mission, evinced by her numerous Service-Learning courses, public lectures, and community engagements, such as co-curating with Bryan Brinkman and student input an exhibition of antiquities at the Springfield Art Museum (Ancient Artifacts Abroad, spring 2024).

Julia's areas of instruction and research include social history, religion, archaeology, digital humanities, and reception studies of antiquity. Julia received her PhD from Brown University's Department of in Egyptology & Assyriology in 2015, and her BA in History from UCLA in 2008. She serves as Committee Chair (2024-2027) for her field’s annual, international conference (the American Research Center in Egypt Annual Meeting) and as co-chair (2023-2026) for the Archaeology of Egypt sessions at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Overseas Research.

Julia is an active member of her field, sitting on numerous international, national, and regional Boards and committees. Since 2022, she is a membership-elected Governor on the American Research Center in Egypt’s Board of Governors (a 501c3 non-profit, cultural institution in Egypt; www.arce.org). She co-founded both the ARCE, Missouri Chapter (Past President and Vice President, current Director focusing on Finance) and the annual Missouri Egyptological Symposium. She attended the HERS Leadership Institute in 2024 for women leaders in higher education (hersnetwork.org). She has served her campus community since arriving here in 2017 as a Bear Bridge mentor (2023, Outstanding Bear Bridge Faculty Mentor award), Safe-Zone Faculty Advisor, Advisor for the Ancient Worlds Club, Co-Advisor for History Club, and supporting her department through extensive service, including—at various times—chairing Undergraduate Committee and Personnel Committee, sitting on about three-dozen MA committees, serving on five search committees (chairing two), and serving as a past Faculty Senate and College Council department representative.

Matt Szafran is an independent researcher specialising in the study of ancient tools and technologies. He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Trustee of the Friends of the Petrie Museum. His current research focusses on the manufacture and use of stone palettes in Predynastic Egypt, using experimental archaeology and advanced imaging technologies, such as microscopy and Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to complement textual studies. Matt has published and lectured on this topic, and is currently incorporating this research into a book discussing the design, manufacture, and possible uses of Predynastic palettes. His research interests also include the popular perception, reception, and representation of Egypt depicted in mass media, in particular late 20th and 21st century movies and television.