Ken Strange is a native New Yorker and former FBI agent who has written travel articles for local US and international newspapers and magazines. His recent book It’s Your Camino: One Couple’s 500-mile Pilgrimage Across Spain recounts his journey across northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago.

A Spanish speaker, Ken has traveled extensively around the world to more than 65 countries, walking the paths of his characters and assimilating geographical venues; he has lived and worked in Saudi Arabia, Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica and El Salvador.

You can read more on his website here.

 

Read Ken's Book:

It's Your Camino: One Couple's 500-mile Pilgrimage Across Spain

Some Highlights:

Walking the Camino after age 50

The history of the Way of St. James - The Camino de Santiago

Ken's global experience in Spain, the Middle East, and the United States

The people who you meet on the Camino (from all over the world)

Martin Sheen's iconic Camino Movie - "The Way"

Preparing for the Camino - Equipment, practice, athleticism

Walking 500 miles

Getting lost on the way to Santiago

"Authenticity" on the Camino

What "you Camino means"

Local Pilgrims on the Camino organizations such as American Pilgrims on the Camino

Suggestions: 

Ken: James Michener - Iberia

Steven: Walter Starkie - The Road to Santiago (Read more Camino book suggestions HERE)

https://youtu.be/VvSI_KIaA60

 

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John Farndon is a bestselling nonfiction author, playwright, poet, composer, and translator of literary works. Through collaboration with native speakers and global writers he has introduced the Western World to the great minds and voices of Central Asia. His latest collaboration released in September 2019, is The Dead Wander in the Desert written by Rollan Seisenbayev and translated by John Farndon and Olga Nakston. He plays an important role in bringing literature from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and other post-Soviet cultures to the English speaking world with careful attention to literary themes and the poetry of the original writing.

Read John's Work:

(2019 EBRD Literature Prize Winner)

Some Highlights:

Rollan Seisenbayev's shaman and John's entry into this project

The Eurasian Creative Guild - Central Asian culture in the west

The process of translation through collaboration

The work of Hamid Ismailov including Devil's Dance

Environmental degradation in Kazakhstan during the Soviet period

Soviet Natural Disasters - looking back after the fact

Kazakh film "The Golden Throne" 

American Natural Disasters - no chance to look back?

Where does truth come from?

A journey around Kazakhstan with Rollan

Oral Traditions - Kazakh returns to the horse

Kazakh Poetry by Galymkair Mutanov

Male macho culture in Kazakhstan and how women are changing the future

The disappearance of the Aral Sea

Environmentalism as a crisis of spirituality

Some information on emerging environmental movements

Insta' poetry and rap poetry as modern entries into the art

Suggestions:

John: Extinction Rebellion - using peaceful protest to promote changes that can prevent environmental disaster and Ravil Bukharaev - Letters to another Room

Steven: Dombra music from Kazakhstan

 

https://youtu.be/h1h4IE-q6ug

 

Additional Great Suggestions courtesy of John:

The Eagle Huntress - Documentary about a girl attempting to be the first female eagle hunter.

The music of Dimash Kudaibergen - a rising star in Central Asia

https://youtu.be/AvBRJyBAiBw

 

Watch John Farndon's Poetry at Extinction Rebellion’s April Uprising

https://youtu.be/AbvxPc_Sl6c

Thanks for watching, as always - reach out if you have suggestions and please subscribe!

Dr. Joel Breakstone is an expert on history education and directs the Stanford History Education Group. He received his Ph.D. from the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Along with Mark Smith and Sam Wineburg, he led the development of SHEG's assessment website, Beyond the Bubble. He received the Larry Metcalf Exemplary Dissertation Award from the National Council for the Social Studies in 2014. He holds a B.A. in history from Brown University and a M.A. in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College. After college, he taught high school history in Thetford, Vermont. His research focuses on how teachers use assessment data to inform instruction. You can follow him on Twitter @JoelBreakstone and read more at SHEG.

Some Highlights: 

The Stanford History Education Group

Reading like a Historian

How do we teach history?

Un-leveled classes, individualized education plans, and advanced students

How do you create inquiry based materials?

Sam Wineburg and the origins of the Stanford History Education Group

Historical Thinking aligned with content standards

Using technology to evaluate online information

Beyond the Bubble and creating assessments for measuring growth as a historian

Using short responses to measure learning

Connection between the academy and the classroom

Structured Academic Controversy rather than debate

Scaffolds for learners of all abilities and global audiences of SHEG

Suggestions: 

Joel: Chronicling America - Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. Learn more here.

Steven: Columbia University's Asia for Educators  - An initiative of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, Asia for Educators is designed to serve faculty and students in world history, culture, geography, art, and literature at the undergraduate and pre-college levels.

Thanks for listening, for more great content please subscribe. Let us know how we are doing in the comments section and suggest guests you'd like to hear at our contact page.

Dr. Bret Devereaux is an expert in Roman history. He earned his my Ph.D. at the Department of History at UNC-Chapel Hill and currently teaches there as a visiting lecturer.  He is an ancient historian who works on the intersection of the Roman economy and the Roman military in the Middle Republic (c. 290 to 101 B.C.E.), with a focus on using material culture to examine the impact of technology and the economy on the military activity of the period (and vice versa). You can follow Dr. Devereaux on twitter here and see his blog:A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry here.

 

Episode Highlights:

Regularity of War in Ancient Rome

Roman pressure for oppression

The Cost of Warfare between 264-101 BCE

Expending troops and Roman manpower thesis

Invisible Romans - Those who aren't written into history

Thucydides, Herodotus, Polybius

Language mastery and studying ancient History

Loeb Classical Library, The complete Greek and Latin heritage collection

Aristocracy, Peasant farmers, and war

Forever Wars

How Roman history is written, sources, methods, and knowledge

Social Institutions and Policy in Ancient Rome

Suggestions:

Bret: Bryan Ward-Perkins - The Fall of Rome and End of Civilization

Steven: Rome: Total War (NB: Bret suggests Europa Universalis for an even more intense strategy game)

 

https://youtu.be/8a_UqsX36Xk

 

Dr. Matthew Avery Sutton is Edward R. Meyer distinguished professor of history at Washington State University. His latest book, which will be released later this September, is Double Crossed: The Missionaries who Spied for the United States in the Second World War (Basic 2019). He is also the author of a number of other excellent books including American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Harvard 2014), Jerry Falwell and the Rise of the Religious Right: A Brief History with Documents (MacMillan 2013), Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Harvard 2009). You can follow him on Twitter here.

 

 

Read Matt's work: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Episode Highlights:

Matt's background as a historian of religion

Making each project a bit more ambitious as a historian

Using biographical sketches for missionary history

William Eddy, Christianity, and Military service

Working with the United States government to win World War II

Missionary spies as advocates for the local populations

Deception and double-dealing, espionage

Recently declassified information as sources

Challenging historians of foreign policy to consider religion more seriously

William Donovan, John Birch, Stephen Penrose, Stewart Herman

Morality and trust in spying

Double-Crossed review on Christianity Today (written by Andrew Preston)

Suggestion: 

Matt: Use history as a way to think about ethical questions, history can give us an opportunity to challenge ourselves with questions of ethics.

https://youtu.be/uXsbU8ADP4A

 

Banner Photo:The U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with King Ibn Saud, of Saudi Arabia, on board the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Quincy (CA-71) in the Great Bitter Lake, Egypt, on 14 February 1945. The King is speaking to the interpreter (missionary OSS), Colonel William A. Eddy, USMC.

 

Dr. Ming-sho Ho is a Professor at National Taiwan University where he received his Ph.D. in Sociology (2000). Ming-sho’s research interests include social movements, labor and environmental issues. He published Working Class Formation in Taiwan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and most recently Challenging Beijing's Mandate of Heaven: Taiwan's Sunflower Movement and Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement (Temple University Press, 2019). Currently, he is also researching the grassroots initiatives in promoting renewable energy across East Asian nations and how these bottom-up campaigns affect the energy transition.

Read Ho's Books:

Some Highlights:

Protest activism and the origins of protest in Taiwan and Hong Kong

Youthful protesters, unanticipated and anticipated emergence

2014 Sunflower Movement in Taiwan

2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong

2019 Anti-extradition Bill Protests in Hong Kong

Protest approaches - being like water in 2019

Six Puzzles of Dr. Ho's new book

Student Leadership in activism

Radicalism in Conservative Societies

Indigenous identities and the Refugee Mentality

Sources of unsolicited contribution in protest

Solidarity and Schism

The future of rule from Beijing and China's Periphery

Suggestions:

Ming-Sho: Pay attention to the people on the ground - often analysis is from the top down and high level politics, but we can see from his book that civil society and people with seemingly less power can make significant contributions to societal change.

Steven: Check out some of the soft power, cultural contributions made by people from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Dr. Hope Bastian is currently the Associate Director for the Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad/Cuba Divisional Cente and a professor at the Colegio Universitario San Gerónimo de La Habana, Universidad de La Habana. Her research looks at social capital, social networks and social mobility and economic and social inequalities in contemporary Havana. As an anthropologist she has done research in Cuba since 2012. Hope's new book is Everyday Adjustments in Havana: Economic Reforms, Mobility, and Emerging Inequalities (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018).

 

Read Hope's Book:

Some Highlights: 

Post-Soviet Cuba

Surviving in the "Special Period"

How Cubans rely on community to solve problems

Anthropological approaches to contemporary issues

Changes in Cuba during the Presidency of Barack Obama

The different economies under Raul and Fidel Castro

Emerging inequalities in Cuban society

Suggestions for further reading: 

https://youtu.be/5_aMde4YWoM

 

NB: This episode first aired in June 2018 as "Everyday Adjustments in Havana"

This week Patrick Egan (Pádraig Mac Aodhgáin) joins us on the Hour of History Podcast. He an expert musician who works in the digital humanities, ethnomusicology, and web development. He is currently fellow in digital studies at the Kluge Center (Library of Congress, Washington DC) and also a Fulbright scholar (2019). He recently completed his PhD at University College Cork, Ireland where he focused on exploring the “Seán Ó Riada Collection” at University College Cork in Ireland.

You can read more at his website patrickegan.org and follow him on twitter @mrpatrickegan. You can take his survey here: Irish Music in America Survey

Some Highlights:

Pádraig's background, growing up in Co. Wicklow

Survey and research with the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress

What is Irish Traditional Music?

Voices and Music of Irish Migration with Sara Goek

LITMUS Project  - Linked open data framework for Irish Traditional Music

Library of Congress Folk Life Center

Ethnomusicology and IT

The Story of John Harrington

Fulbright Tech Impact Scholarship

Force 11 - a community of scholars working to share knowledge

IrishTune.info

thesession.org

Connecting the Treasures of Irish Music to the Library of Congress

Irish Traditional Music Archive Dublin

Philadelphia Ceili Group Archive Villanova

Suggestions:

Pádraig: Jaron Lanier- How to remake the Internet

Steven: Spend time on YouTube and find some find some less-watched gems this.

 

Featured Image: 

Irish Folk session, The Old Dubliner Irish Pub, Hamburg-Harburg by Hinnerk Rümenapf

Dr. Anthony Kronman is the author of the new book, The Assault on Excellence (Free Press, 2019). He is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School and served as the Dean of Yale Law School from 1994-2004. Professor Kronman teaches in the Law School and the College in areas from contracts to philosophy. He has written a number of interesting books including Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (Yale, 2008) , Max Weber, Contracts: Cases and Materials (Stanford, 1983), and Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan (Yale, 2016). Professor Kronman received his B.A. from Williams College, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy and J.D. from Yale.

Read Tony's Work:

Some Highlights: 

Tony's background and history in education

Tony's recent Wall Street Journal Essay: "The Downside of Diversity"

New York Times on Kronman

Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America

Truth in education

The definition of "American Excellence"

What is the "Assault" and who is carrying it out?

The topography of American Universities

Weekly Suggestions:

Steven: Read great literature - check out Oxford World's Classics, or one of my favorites in the collection, Stendhal's The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford World's Classics)

Tony: 

Research Yale's Curriculum for Directed Studies - Online Syllabi will direct you to the works that Yale Freshmen read with. 

Read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855 Edition) Availble from the Internet Archive, free and online

Pick some fruit and make a cobbler! Nothing brings people together like a peach cobbler in the middle of the table.

 

https://youtu.be/SQBrjuOEi3A

 

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David Kent brings years of experience in the classroom to the Hour of History Podcast this week. Kent has taught Social Studies in a number of settings and neighborhoods in New York City for over five years. He graduated cum laude from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts with a B.A. in Geography, holds a Masters in Public Administration from New York University and a Masters of Science in Education from St. John’s University in Queens, NY. You can visit his blog, Get Lost Mr. Kent, to contact him and find out more.

Highlights:

Alternative certification programs

New York City Teaching Collaborative

Public Schools and the NYC Department of Education

Independent Charter Schools

Teaching Content

Pedagogy in Urban Schools

Middle School and High School Social Studies

Why you should teach in New York City, or anywhere

Suggestions:

David:

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville 

Steven: 

Teacher Man: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

https://youtu.be/Zz55DuG8VUk

 

 

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