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These days, psychiatrist Judith Joseph knows joy. It’s the feeling she has after eating a delicious meal, celebrating the completion of a successful study in her lab, or watching her children play happily together. But just a few years ago, things looked different. Or rather, felt different. On the outside, everything looked as it should, and that was the problem. On today’s episode: the masks we wear to hide how we feel inside.

If you or someone you love is struggling with depression, help is available. Call 1-800-950-6264 for free, confidential support and resources. More information available at nami.org.

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Joseph speaks to Michael Bobbitt, a former FBI official who worked directly on Operation Trojan Shield. In this operation the FBI secretly ran its own encrypted phone company for organized crime, backdoored the phone, and collected tens of millions of messages. Michael and Joseph discuss how Michael handled intelligence sourced from the phones, how to navigate an operation that complex, and its fallout.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/bLeueG5V4QY

Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever

Podcast: Signal's President Meredith Whittaker on Backdoors and AI

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He was brash. Politically incorrect. An “outsider” political candidate who rose to the White House, out of nowhere, with a reputation as a “counter-puncher.” But Vice President Spiro Agnew was also something else… an active criminal whose secrets were about to be exposed. What happens when a “counter-puncher” in the White House suddenly sees his political future directly threatened by investigators inside his own Justice Department?

Kevin's childhood was a hard one. But it was made bearable by his neighborhood friends, Jason and Gerald. Then, one afternoon, the boys just vanished. Over thirty years later, Kevin still hasn't forgotten them.

Get ad-free episodes of Heavyweight by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. You'll also get an exclusive bonus episode where Jonathan, Stevie, and Kalila remember how the beloved Jackie calls came to be and share a never-before-aired opening that could have started the show in an alternate Heavyweight universe. Thanks for your support—and be sure to check out the other offerings available to Pushkin+ subscribers, including ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive binges of other podcasts throughout the year.

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Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation, is an eye-opening account of the forces that led to the worst financial crisis in history and the lessons that disaster can teach us about today’s economy.

(7:09) Life before the crash

(8:58) How Americans developed a taste for leverage

(17:10) What happened on Black Thursday

(20:05) Why so few people saw the crash coming

(26:23) Could the crash have been averted?

(37:13) Andrew’s fascination with money

(39:22) What if financial bubbles are a feature, not a bug?

(41:35) Could we be headed for another 1929?

(45:00) The dangers of leverage

(53:16) How the blockchain will revolutionzie finance

When director Guillermo del Toro asked Tamara Deverell to be the production designer on his film adaptation of Frankenstein, she had a good idea of what he wanted. Del Toro had been dreaming of making a Frankenstein movie for years, and she had worked with him on several projects before. She told me they’re so much sync, “I find with Guillermo, it’s not speaking in words, it’s speaking with images.” But that didn’t make the production design any less challenging. We discuss where Tamara looked for inspiration, why it’s important for her to build physical sets no matter the size, and how she reimagined the signature set piece of every Frankenstein adaptation -- the lab where The Creature comes to life.

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Beneath the waters of the Great Lakes, thousands of shipwrecks, hulking carcasses of a bygone era, have been hiding for generations, just waiting to be revealed. Once someone stumbles upon one of these sunken treasures in Lake Michigan or Lake Superior, Tamara Thomsen gets a call.

Thomsen is a maritime archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Maritime Preservation and Archaeology program. Her job is to investigate and survey shipwreck sites. Over the years, Thomsen has added some of these ships to the ​​National Register of Historic Places. And she and her colleagues have also unearthed dugout canoes that were fashioned thousands of years old by the Indigenous people who lived on this land.

In this episode, host Ari Daniel speaks with Thomsen about how she took up this profession, why she views shipwrecks as time capsules, why so many vessels met their watery grave on the Great Lakes, and how one stays warm at depth when diving for these wrecks for hours at a time.

To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, the return of a set of important belongings to the Lakota community and a baseball field resurrected in a World War II-era Japanese internment camp, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. 

“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. 

From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Ali Budner, Cleo Levin, Genevieve Sponsler, Sandra Lopez-Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson.

Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz / Images by Zach Whitrock / Wisconsin Historical Society and public domain.

Everyone loves a good Renaissance man or woman, but it’s hard to do it all with tenacity and verve. There’s also the constant balance between perfectionism and dilettantism — how long should you keep refining a project versus just bringing it to a close? For those of us prone to procrastination, even asking that question might prompt a delay.That’s why I am excited to bring my good friend Uri Bram on the podcast this week. He’s written a book on Bayes’ theory, has been a publisher of a very successful online newsletter, has hosted olfactory gallery parties, and he just published his first party game called Person Do Thing inspired by trying to order vegan food at a restaurant in Thailand. In short, he’s constantly experimenting with new forms of media and ways to bring people together.Together with host Danny Crichton, we talk about perfectionism and whether it helps or hurts creativity; Uri’s experience playing Riskgaming; his new game; communications and the curse of knowledge problems; using Amazon as a social networking tool; and his recent viral blog post, “21 Facts About Hosting Parties.”

Summary

In this episode, we spend our time thinking about the Roman Empire. Cliche, but fun. Anyway, Sarah and Prof. Gabriele discuss how we can hear from the 98.5% of Rome that wasn’t an emperor (or a dude), and then try to unpack why Americans are so freaking obsessed with comparing themselves to Romans and why it always seems like the “Fall of Rome” (which isn’t really a thing) is just around the corner. 

Guest

Sarah E. Bond is an associate professor in the Department of HIstory at the University of Iowa, and her interests extend beyond late Roman history, epigraphy, late antique law, Roman topography, Digital Humanities, and the socio-legal experience of ancient marginal peoples. She’s the author of Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professionals in the Roman Mediterranean (Univ Michigan Press, 2016), and Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire (Yale UP, 2025). Additionally, Bond is a regular contributor at Hyperallergic, a former columnist at the Los Angeles Review of Books, and a section editor at Public Books. She has written for The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Washington Post. Learn more at sarahemilybond.com. 

Credits

• Host & Executive Producer: Matthew Gabriele. Find him on Bluesky @profgabriele.com or his homepage profgabriele.com 
• Editor: Julia Schifini
• Music: “Sleeping Bags” by OTE
• Art: Ulysses Gabriele
• Multitude: https://multitude.productions 

Find American Medieval Online

• Website: AmericanMedieval.com 
• Patreon: patreon.com/AmericanMedieval 
• Insta: instagram.com/americanmedieval 
• TikTok: tiktok.com/@americanmedieval 
• YouTube: youtube.com/@AmericanMedieval 
• Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/americanmedieval.bsky.social 

About Us

American Medieval is a podcast about the Middle Ages, but with an American twist. Each week, joined by expert guests, we’ll explore either some fascinating part of the medieval world, or some way Americans have used this period to help them understand themselves. 

After all, if America has never been modern, it’s because we’ve always been slightly medieval.

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