Nationalism. Emerging technology. Militarization. Destroyed bodies. Total war. In this episode, three historians reconsider the dominant themes of the First World War—which are as relevant today as they were a century ago.

Cheyenne Pettit studies Canadian and British conflicts over the treatment of venereal disease during World War One. Matthew Hershey's research explores meanings and experiences of soldiers’ suicide in the First World War. And Lediona Shahollari focuses on the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange during the partition of those two states in the aftermath of the Great War. Join them in a conversation reflecting on the legacy of that conflict.

Archives are central to the work of historians. But they are not just for scholars. In this episode, we talk with an archivist, an archival theorist, and a historian, all working to democratize these spaces, what they hold, and who can access them. 

Professor Patricia Garcia will help us think about the archives through a critical lens. Archivist Brian Williams will help us understand how to build an archive essentially from scratch. And Professor Stephen Berrey will help us understand what role the public can play in archival endeavors.

One person, missionary EW McDowell, influenced the fate of Syriac Christians ahead of the US Immigration Act of 1924. In this episode, Hannah Roussel interviews James Wolfe about McDowell, whose writings and testimony before Congress opened up the dialectics about the nature of the category “Asiatic.”

Alexander McConnell talks with Olga Medvedkova, a Soviet antiwar activist whose arrest garnered worldwide attention in 1983. In light of the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, what can we learn from Medvedkova and the Soviet peace movement?

Join Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1777 as he waits, in an aristocrat’s antechamber in Munich, for a conversation that could change his life. What did it mean to wait in the past? Who waited? How did it shape society and culture, and how did it define social interactions?

In this episode, Paige Newhouse interviews Jason Young, co-curator of Hear Me Now: the Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, a traveling exhibit housed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art centering enslaved artisans and the stoneware they produced.

The funerary inscription of Clesippus tells an impressive story of illustrious honors and administrative achievements in Ancient Rome. But there is another story, one of a man who navigated slavery, disability, and the sexual advances of the woman who owned him.

In 1911, a contested horse race sparked one of the largest movements by Black South Africans to reclaim colonized land. How does the history of the Native Farmers Association offer a glimpse into alternate futures of property ownership in South Africa?

What happens when ten Puerto Rican men try to register to vote in 1950s Connecticut? Their eligibility is contested, and Democrats and Republicans become embroiled in a heated debate that ends at the Connecticut Superior Court. The ten Puerto Rican men, however, get lost at the wayside … we don’t even know all ten of their names. How much of their story can we uncover?

In this episode, public historian Elena Marie Rosario sifts through archival records to recreate the story of these ten men, while also paying attention to how underlying themes of colonialism, ethnicity, and politics direct their story. 

In 1836, two tailors transformed the fashion industry forever when they opened the first chemiserie, a shirt store, in Paris. Their radical feat? They tailored a shirt.

In this episode, John Finkelberg tells the story of how Monsieurs Pierret and Lami-Housset essentially invented the precursor to the modern button-down shirt. Within a few years, these garments were one of the most sought-after luxury goods. Created by expert men, these revolutionary new products embodied new notions of masculinity developing in nineteenth century Paris.

Except one of the tailors, Monsieur Pierret, was actually a woman.