Dig: A History Podcast

Supreme Court Cases Series. Episode #3 of 4. In 1830, afraid that white missionaries were aiding the Cherokee in their effort to resist giving up their lands, the Georgia state government made it illegal for white people to live within Cherokee Nation  territory without a license from the government.  Samuel Austin Worcester - raised in Vermont and trained as a Congregationalist minister - had lived for years with the Cherokee and became close with the Cherokee leadership. In March 1831, the Georgia Guard arrested Worcester and fellow missionaries under the new residency law. Most of the arrested missionaries agreed to leave the state in exchange for having their charges dropped - but not Samuel Worcester. With the Cherokee leadership, Worcester instead decided to use the charges against him as an opportunity to appeal to the United States Supreme Court. The resulting case, Worcester v. Georgia, was a critical win for the Cherokee Nation, and to this day, remains one of the most important cases in establishing our modern understanding of tribal sovereignty. And yet, despite the legal win, the actual aftermath of the case was the theft of Cherokee land and the forcible removal of the Cherokee from Georgia, resulting in the death of thousands of people. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Supreme Court Decisions That Sucked Episode #2 of 4. In 1942, the U.S. government rounded up citizens and forced them into concentration camps. Between the two countries, over 140,000 people were removed from their home and interned without legal recourse. In many cases, their captors--the U.S. military--sold off their houses, businesses, and belongings for a fraction of their worth, or their former neighbors simply took what they wanted. Many, many scholars have demonstrated that the forced internment of Japanese American internment camps was racially motivated. That wasn’t a secret. Lawyers and activists were writing about the injustices of Japanese internment at the time it was happening. And that racism was made precedent in 1944, when the US Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Fred Korematsu, a birthright American citizen, who tried to remain in his home in the months after General John L. De Witt declared that people of Japanese descent were to be shipped to a holding center. In today’s episode, the USSC decision that sucked is Korematsu vs. United States 323 U.S. 214. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part 2! SCOTUS Series. Episode #2 of 5. In August 1895, a ship docks in San Francisco carrying a cook named Wong Kim Ark — born in that very city, armed with an airtight certificate proving it. The customs collector refuses to let him off anyway. What follows is a four-month standoff in the harbor, a Supreme Court case that will define what "American" means, and a legal argument that never really died. This episode traces Wong Kim Ark's fight for the citizenship he was already owed — from Chinese Exclusion to Angel Island interrogations to the Supreme Court's 2026 ruling that cited his case by name. Some questions, it turns out, don't stay settled. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Supreme Court Cases Series. Episode # 1 of 5. This is Part 1 of a 2-part episode! In August 1895, a ship docks in San Francisco carrying a cook named Wong Kim Ark — born in that very city, armed with an airtight certificate proving it. The customs collector refuses to let him off anyway. What follows is a four-month standoff in the harbor, a Supreme Court case that will define what "American" means, and a legal argument that never really died. This episode traces Wong Kim Ark's fight for the citizenship he was already owed — from Chinese Exclusion to Angel Island interrogations to the Supreme Court's 2026 ruling that cited his case by name. Some questions, it turns out, don't stay settled. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Note: The version of this episode originally released contains an error. Marissa erroneously stated that Charles Sumner eventually became a Supreme Court Justice. The error has been edited out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women's History, Episode #4 of 4. In the spring of 1966, inside a rented office space in New York City that smelled like cigarette smoke and mimeograph ink, a cadre of people worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), pronounced “snick.” SNCC was one of many organizations, such as CORE, the SCLC, the NAACP, and others, working for the Civil Right Movement in the South. It had been a harrowing few years. 1964’s Freedom Summer had been successful in rallying more Americans to support Civil Rights but also sparked extreme backlash that resulted in volunteers being beaten, harassed, and even killed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women Series. Episode #3 of 4. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court released one of its most important and revolutionary rulings: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, usually better known as Brown v. Board. The ruling overturned the infamous ruling in Plessy v Ferguson, the 1896 ruling that established the ‘separate but equal’ precedent that made Jim Crow discrimination legal. The Brown ruling required that the federal government integrate public schools, bringing white and Black children together to receive equal education. While this story is often told as one part of a progressive and inspiring story about the Civil Rights Movement, a movement for rights that we now sort of all agree was good. But in reality, Brown v Board and the wider movement were met with extreme resistance from white supremacists. While white male politicians like George Wallace got the most attention, they were riding a wave of racism and resistance created and kept alive by white women. Today, for this episode of our latest women’s history series, we’re talking about the white women who fought back against the Civil Rights Movement. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women's History Series, #2 of 4. In 1590, the king of Scotland fomented a witch hunt in North Berwick, implicating as many as 200 people, convicting 70, and executing as many as 50. He participated in the “questioning” of the accused, tearing confessions of treason and weather magic from their trembling lips. He sent those whom he “believed” conspired against him to their deaths. Why? Reading his witch-hunting treatise, Demonologie, one might assume it was because he feared the threat that magic-users posed to his country. But perhaps the shrewd and savvy king had other, more earthly reasons to stir up a panic that destroyed those who moved against him. Bibliography Katherine Brice, The Early Stuarts 1603–1640 (1994) Ed. Julian Goodare, The Scottish Witch-hunt in Context (Manchester University Press, 2002).  Julian Goodare, “Frameworks for Scottish Witch Hunting in the 1590s,” The Scottish Historical Review Oct 2002) Julian Goodare, “Witchcraft in Scotland,” The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian Levack, 300-317 Christina Larner, Enemies of God (1981) Brian Levack, “State Building and Witch Hunting in Early Modern England,” in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (2010) 213-226 Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland, Tamara Wallace, “The Witch-Finder King: A Study of James I of England and his Relationship to Witchcraft,” Undergraduate Thesis, University of Victoria (2023) Liv Helene Willumsen, “WITCHCRAFT AGAINST ROYAL DANISH SHIPS IN 1589 AND THE TRANSNATIONAL TRANSFER OF IDEAS,” IRSS 45 (2020) Jenny Wormald, “The Witches, the Devil, and the King,” in Freedom and Authority: Scotland c. 1050-1650 (2000) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women Series. Episode #1 of 4.  When we tell the story of AIDS— and we tell it more often now, in films and museums and classrooms— we tend to tell it as a story about gay men. And of course it was, overwhelmingly, a catastrophe that fell on gay men. But standing right beside those men, and very often holding them as they died, were lesbians. They organized. They protested. They gave blood. They emptied bedpans and changed sheets and sat through long nights in hospital rooms that nurses were afraid to enter. To some people listening it may seem only natural that lesbians stood in solidarity with gay men but to historians of queer history, this turn of events is surprising; these were, in many cases, women who had spent the entire previous decade in open political conflict with gay men. The 1970s gay and lesbian movement was not one big happy family. It was torn by a deep and sometimes bitter rift between gay men and lesbian feminists. And yet, when the crisis came, the women showed up. As part of our 2026 Women series, and in honor of Pride month, we’re going to tell their stories. Find show notes and transcripts at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cold War #4 of 4. Today, in our last episode of our Cold War series, we are exploring the Cold War roots of the modern conservative movement. We’ll trace the arc of the grassroots movement from the 1950s up to the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982, getting a glimpse at how the conservative movement began to move away from moderate, mainstream Republicanism. And we will see how women were central to the movement's organizational and political success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cold War Series. Episode #3 of 4. The Allied victory in World War II meant an end to war with the fascists in Germany, Japan, and Italy, but it did not mean an end to war. In fact, the war just shifted into something more shadowy and covert, where secret weapons, sleight of hand, and leveraging information could be more important than guns and bombs. Desperate to develop tactics and secret weapons that might give them an upper hand over their new Soviet enemies, the United States began to experiment on drugs like LSD, hoping that they might give them the power to control minds, get fodder for blackmail, or extract information from captured spies. The project, run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from roughly 1953-1973, cost thousands of dollars, hundreds of deaths, and inflicted innumerable human rights violations and ended in complete and utter failure. It did not result in a single piece of useful information. Today, as part of our series on the Cold War, we’re talking about project MK Ultra. Find show notes and transcripts at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cold War Series, #2 of 4.  During the Lavender Scare, the US government fired hundreds (but possibly thousands) of civil servants for being gay or lesbian, ostensibly because of a Communist-panic in which Americans were convinced a homosexual could be blackmailed into giving up state secrets to those rascally Soviets. Turns out, though they weren’t particularly successful at it, the Soviets did try to use sex scandals of all kinds to cultivate spies from the “West” -- including, but not limited to, queer Westerners traveling or working in the USSR. The “honeypot” entrapment was a coercive measure used on all sides of the Iron Curtain to try and get state secrets. And while there’s no morality in spy games, the true story of the men used by the KGB to try and tip the scales in the information race of the Cold War is pretty sad--but also a useful window onto the Soviet attitudes toward same-sex desire, the unique relationships of queer citizens to their respective countries, and the messed-up games that characterized the US-USSR struggle for world dominance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cold War Series. Episode #1 of 4. In this episode, we uncover the extraordinary story of John Scott, a twenty-year-old American idealist who abandoned the University of Wisconsin during the Great Depression, taught himself to weld, and boarded a train for the Soviet Union. He would spend nearly a decade in Magnitogorsk, Stalin's new “City of Steel” in the Urals, building blast furnaces, marrying a Russian woman, and slowly, painfully watching his idealism curdle under the pressure of Stalinist terror. His memoir, Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel, is one of the most remarkable eyewitness accounts of Soviet industrialization ever written— and it tells us as much about the seductive power of Cold War ideology as it does about steel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Environmentalism Series #4 of 4. Rachel Carson is often touted as inspiring the modern global environmental movement. In 1962, when Carson’s book Silent Spring was published, she was a fifty-five-year-old former government employee and an award-winning writer of oceanography books. She did not hold a university position, had no PhD, nor was she affiliated with any political organization. She did not consider herself a feminist, and by most accounts she had little taste for public controversy. Unbeknownst to most people, she was also living with advancing breast cancer, a fact she kept largely hidden from the public while she faced down the combined fury of the American chemical industry, the Department of Agriculture, and a scientific establishment that was furious with her. Carson was, as historian Linda Lear puts it, "an improbable revolutionary," yet she changed the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Environmental History #3 of 4. In the mid-1970s, parents in Niagara Falls, New York were struggling to figure out why their children were getting mysteriously ill. For two years, officials from the state had been investigating the environment in Niagara Falls For years, residents had been complaining about “the odors of chemicals and fumes.” By the mid-70s, officials had determined that the smells emanated from an old ditch-turned-toxic waste dump. But while everyone could agree the dump was stinky, no one really seemed to believe it was actually pressing public concern. But then children started to get sick. For this episode of our Environmental History series, we're telling the story of Love Canal — one of the most consequential environmental disasters in American history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Environmental History, #2 of 4. Many of the conservationists who’ve defended the Arctic heralded it as the “last great wilderness,” an ecosystem and landscape unmarred by corporate greed and violence, a place that needs to be preserved because of its “pristine” and “untouched” beauty. While well-intentioned, this narrative is, of course, problematic, because the absence of white settler colonial development is not the same thing as “pristine” or “untouched.” Entire communities of people call the arctic home. The Gwich’in and Inuit nations live on and have stewarded the northernmost reaches of this continent for some 24,000 years. At every imperialist and capitalist effort to destroy those lands with their greed, the Gwich’in and (some) Inuit have shown up to protest, testify, and speak out against those violences. Bibliography “Legal Action Challenges Arctic Refuge Drilling Plan,” Center for Biological Diversity, (15 Jan 2026) H.R.1 - An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018. Congress.gov. (2017) Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Status of Oil and Gas Program. Congress.gov. (Updated 4 Feb 2026) Lenny Kohm and the Last Great Wilderness Tour (1995) Part 4 The Wilderness Act (1964) Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (1980) “The Inuit and Northern Experience,” Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 2 (2015) Thomas Berger, “Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland,”  THE REPORT OF THE MACKENZIE VALLEY PIPELINE INQUIRY: VOLUME ONE Finis Dunaway, Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice (UNC Press, 2021) Donella Meadows, “National Energy Policy,” The Donella Meadows Project (Sep 1991) Elizabeth Manning, “Trump Administration Opens the Entire Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Oil and Gas Leasing,” (23 Oct 2025) Brian Palmer and Anna Greenfield, “The Long, Long Battle for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” Natural Resources Defense Council (Oct 24, 2025) Kyle Whyte, “Indigenous Climate Change Studies : Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene,” English Language Notes, Volume 55, Number 1-2, Spring/Fall 2017, pp. 153-162 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bonus! Marissa and Averill chat with Stacey and Hannah of the Amplify Podcast Network about podcasting and teaching, the realities of funding and institutional recognition, and what it means to do feminist history that "matters" in a shifting political landscape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Environmental Series. Episode #1 of 4. In 1851, a journalist named Henry Mayhew set out to document the lives of London's working poor. What he found was astonishing. In the richest city in the world, thousands of people made their living by picking through other people's trash. There were the bone-grubbers, who scavenged bones from gutters to sell to soap manufacturers. There were the mudlarks, mostly children, who waded through the filthy banks of the Thames searching for coal, rope, and bits of metal. And then there were the pure-finders. What’s “pure” you ask? Well, "pure" was a Victorian euphemism for dog excrement. Pure-finders, mostly elderly women, spent their days scouring the streets of London for dog droppings, which they then sold by the pailful to tanneries in Bermondsey. The tanners used it to purify leather. Hence the name. We tend to think of recycling as a modern invention, something that started with the environmental movement of the 1970s. Blue bins, sorting instructions, that kind of thing. But as brilliant historians have uncovered, the story of how humans have dealt with their discarded materials stretches back millennia. For most of human history, the concept of "throwing something away" barely existed. To begin our series on environmental history, we're tackling the premodern history of recycling. Or as pre-WWII people would have called it: reclamation, salvage, scrapping, repair, and reuse. We'll meet rag-and-bone men and dustmen, shoddy masters and mudlarks. We'll discover how rags became paper, how old wool became new cloth, and how virtually nothing in the premodern world was ever truly waste. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bonus Episode: This year, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the moment when American patriots pledged their lives and their sacred honor to declare the American colonies independent of the British crown. By the time the Continental Congress signed that document, American blood had already been shed and the colonies were already fighting the war that would ultimately lead to the birth of the United States as an independent nation. As momentous as this revolution was, it wasn’t until over 10 years after the Declaration was signed that the revolutionary act that truly founded the nation took place: the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It’s one thing to declare your independence and earn that freedom with spilt blood and military victory; it’s quite another to make that independence meaningful and real in the form of a meaningful, functional and enduring government. And in a moment when the meaning of that government, and indeed the integrity of the the central document of the founding - the Constitution - itself, is as imperiled as it has ever been, it’s the Constitutional Convention, not the Declaration of Independence, that has real resonance for us in the ‘now.’ On this special bonus episode of Dig, join us in a little deep dive into the United States Constitutional Convention. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trying something we've never done before - an end-of-year wrap up in which we discuss our favorite episodes to write and be co-hosts on from the 2025 season, and a little sneaky preview of what is coming in 2026! Happy New Year, all, and thank you for being supporters of this show! xoxox Ave, Marissa, Sarah and Elizabeth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A Bonus Episode! Yule logs, dried orange slices strung across your windows, decorated trees and simmer pots - all the marks of a neopagan holiday season! Wait, that's Christmas, you say? Well, can't it be both? A brief history of modern witchcraft, just in time for the winter solstice celebration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're on a little break, getting our stocking stuffers and Yule logs together, so to tide you over until our next new release, here's an oldie but goodie (with a little remixing - though unfortunately there is no fixing our singing) about the history of ghost stories at Christmas time! Original transcript at: https://digpodcast.org/2017/12/22/christmas-ghost-dickens/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spooky Series, Episode #4 of 4. Over an eight-month period in 1896-1897, thousands of people across North America reported seeing mysterious ships in the air or lights in the sky. There were over 12,000 newspaper accounts published about the phenomenon in 408 different newspapers in 41 American states and six Canadian provinces. The airships were usually described as oblong, cigar-shaped objects, sometimes with wings that would flap up and down. What was going on that would have inspired so many unidentified flying object sightings? And why did they seem to cluster around an eight month period in 1896-1897? Today, in the last installment of our 2025 spooky series, we are going to dive into this late nineteenth century UFO-sighting phenomenon and perhaps figure out what was going on. For the complete bibliography, visit digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spooky Series. Episode #3 of 4. In 1220 CE, St. Francis of Assisi tamed a ferocious werewolf terrorizing Gubbio, Italy—transforming "Brother Wolf" from savage beast to peaceful townsperson. But why did Christianity need to conquer the wolf? For millennia, werewolves have stalked the boundaries between civilization and savagery, humanity and monstrosity. From ancient Mesopotamian curses to Greek myths of divine punishment, from medieval theology to early modern courtrooms where hundreds died in werewolf trials, the shape-shifter has embodied our deepest anxieties about human nature itself. Join Marissa and Elizabeth as they uncover the forgotten history of werewolf prosecutions that claimed real lives, explore how economic crises and religious upheaval sparked lycanthropy panics, and trace the transformation of the werewolf from genuine judicial threat to Hollywood monster. This third episode in our Spooky series reveals how the figure of the werewolf has shaped—and been shaped by—Western culture's evolving understanding of violence, identity, and the wild within us all. NOTE: This episode contains references to sexual assault, violence against children, and descriptions of gruesome gore. Listen/read with extreme caution. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spooky Series. Episode # 2 of 4. If you look through recordings of country, western, and folk music ranging from the 1920s and 1930s through to present, you’ll notice a theme: songs about crime, murder, and executions are ever-present. From Grayson & Whittier’s recording of the centuries-old ballad “Rose Connelly” in 1927, to Lloyd Wilson’s “Stagger Lee”recorded in the 1950s, Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”in the 1960s, to Johnny Cash’s “Delia’s Gone”in the 1990s, to Jason Isbell’s “Live Oak” or “Yvette”or Zach Bryan’s “Birmingham” in more recent years, songs about the murder are a staple of the American musical tradition. How did songs about violence and crime become so central?  Today, we’ll take a closer look at the murder ballad tradition, tracing them back to the real crimes that inspired them but also considering what they might teach us about race, gender, and American culture. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spooky Szn Episode #1 of 4. How would you expect the Spanish Inquisition to treat a confessed witch? Does the suggestion conjure visions of fire, torture, and lots of murdered women? You aren’t alone - but this is a history we definitely need to unpack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women's History, Episode #4 of 4. Today we're exploring one of Texas's most enduring legends - the story of the "Yellow Rose of Texas" and her supposed role in the Battle of San Jacinto. We are going to unravel the myth of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” We will explore the woman at the heart of the tale, Emily D. West, who was a free woman of color working in Texas, and untangle her real life from the Texan myth. We will also unravel how Emily’s tale was erroneously tied to the song, “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Select Bibliography Jeffrey D. Dunn, “‘To the Devil with your Glorious History!’: Women and the Battle of San Jacinto” in Women and the Texas Revolution, edited by Mary L. Scheer. (UNT Press, 2012). Obiagele Lake, Blue Veins and Kinky Hair: Naming and Color Consciousness in African America (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003) Randolph B. Campbell,  An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821—1865. (LSU Press, 1991).  Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850. (UNC Press, 2018).  Emily Clark, The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of Color in the Revolutionary Atlantic World, (UNC Press, 2013). Daniel Livesay, Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833 (UNC Press, 2018). Frances Edward Abernethy, 2001: A Texas Odyssey (UNT Press, 2001). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women Series. Episode #3 of 4. Dale Spender, a feminist literary scholar, wrote in 1980: “It is not surprising to find that there are no terms for man talk that are equivalent to chatter, natter, prattle, nag, bitch, whine, and of course, gossip, and I am not so naive as to assume that this is because men do not engage in these activities. It is because when they do, it is called something different, something more flattering and more appropriate to their place in the world. This double standard is of great value in the maintenance of patriarchal order.” From the feminist perspective, dismissing women’s talk as “gossip” was a useful tool to reinforce the patriarchy. Punishing women who were known “gossips” was a strategy devised by men to neutralize the threat of gossip to their authority whether that be in the home or in the community. This is an important thread in the history but, as always, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Join us as we explore the history of gossip in the Western (primarily English-speaking) world. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women Series. Episode #2 of 4. In 1861, one of the most powerful slave narratives in American history was published under the title, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Jacobs and edited by the famous abolitionist, Lydia Maria Child. The memoir unflinchingly recounts the unique experience that enslaved women faced in the American system of Black chattel slavery - to put it bluntly, Jacobs describes the years of grooming, manipulation, sexual harassment, and threats of rape that she faced at the hands of her master, Dr. Flint, and the abuse she took from her mistress, Mrs. Flint. Jacobs’ memoir painted a picture of slavery that had all the brutality that we’re familiar with learning about - backbreaking work, horrific physical punishments, tearing families apart, inhuman treatment. But it also added a new layer - that enslavement was a different experience for women, for whom sexual terror was a constant, pregnancy was profitable, rape was often unavoidable, and childbirth and wet nursing were part of their labor. For this episode in our latest series on women’s history, we’re talking about women and American slavery. Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women's History, Episode #1 of 4. In 1987, the last reported instance of sati threw India into a maelstrom of furious debate and conflict following the ritual suicide of Roop Kanwar after her young husband’s death. Nearly 150 years earlier, British colonial officer Lord William Bentinck passed a prohibition on sati in British India. As Roop Kanwar’s death suggests, British colonial rule did not end the practice of sati in India - not at the time of that prohibition, not in the 30 years that followed as the British East India Company tried to expand their influence into the subcontinent Rajputs that were nominally autonomous, and not before, during, or after Indian independence. Widowed girls and women (and yes, we’ll come back to the specificity of girls and women later) continued to climb onto their dead husband’s funeral pyres and burn alive, whether because they believed it was their duty, because they felt they had no other choice, because they couldn’t face a future where their widowhood would be socially and culturally enforced until they died anyway, or because their religious fervor and/or grief moved them to suicide by fire. The history - and experience - of sati in India is complicated, made more so by the ham-fisted intervention of British colonialism, the rise of Hindu nationalism in the late nineteenth century, and the growth of a feminist movement - involving both European and Indian women - in the twentieth century. Visit our website for the full bibliography Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Love in the Lav series. Episode #4 of 4. The late 1920s birthed what would become a defining cultural phenomenon—the "pansy craze"—when LGBTQ+ culture burst into mainstream American entertainment from the late 1920s through the early 1930s. The smoky haze of Prohibition-era speakeasies provided the perfect backdrop for drag queens, called "pansy performers,” to be catapulted into underground stardom, with major cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami serving as epicenters of this unprecedented visibility and acceptance. As illegal liquor flowed freely, patrons witnessed titillating new performances by gender nonconforming entertainers that challenged social conventions. Elaborate gowns and carefully applied makeup caught the dim lights as "pansies" mesmerized audiences with their wit, sensuality, and gender rebellion. Find transcripts and show notes here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Love in the Lav Series. Episode #4 of 4. Today, we’re telling the story of Anne Lister’s life in her own words with a special emphasis on her search for a “great love.” But along the way, we’ll also try to give you some examples of why her diaries have been deemed the most important documents in LGBTQ+ history.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Averill's Book, Love in the Lav Series, Episode #2 of 4. In 1746, Charles Hamilton, a doctor, married Mary Price in Wells, England. Hamilton was a traveling doctor, selling patent medicines and dubious medical advice, and had met Mary when staying in a rented room. After the wedding, Mary joined Charles in traveling and selling cures for a couple of months until suddenly, she decided she no longer wanted to be married – and to get out of the relationship, Mary went to the local court and reported that her husband Charles Hamilton was, in fact, a woman. The revelation that Hamilton was assigned female at birth but lived their life as a man enchanted the public, and, as much as something could in the 18th century, went viral. Hamilton’s story was then immortalized in a fictionalized story called The Female Husband. Thus, the concept of a “female husband,” or a person assigned female at birth but living as a man, including serving as a husband, entered into the consciousness of the Anglo-American world. The history of female husbands like Charles Hamilton and many others prove not only that queerness has always existed, but that gender itself has always has been messy, flexible, and contested. Bibliography Manion, Jen. Female Husbands: A Trans History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Love in the Lav Series, Episode # 1 of 4. Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler, colloquially known as the Ladies of Llangollen, lived together in North Wales for 51 years in a cottage that they renovated and designed to suit their tastes, on an estate where they built gravel footpaths wending through perfectly lush gardens planted with all manner of shrubs, flowers, fruit trees and bushes, and vegetables. They embraced the “rural retirement” so admired and extolled by eighteenth century philosophers, poets, and artists; and presented their domestic arrangement as the rare but mostly acceptable “romantic friendship” written about in novels and poems. The inscription on Sarah Ponsonby’s tomb is no accident. The Ladies of Llangollen were a queer couple who dedicated their lives to one another, and to the home they built and shared in North Wales - and this month we’re lifting up stories of queer and trans folks in history, beginning with these two reclusive (but bizarrely public) Irish women who eloped to Wales together. Bibliography Averill Earls, Love in the Lav: A Social Biography of Same-Sex Desire in Ireland, 1922-72, Temple University Press, 2025.  Fiona Brideoake, The Ladies of Llangollen: Desire, Indeterminacy, and the Legacies of Criticism (Bucknell University Press, 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Disability Series, #4 of 4. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was an ethically problematic, to say the least, medical research project conducted in Alabama. Officially titled “The Effects of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” this government-sponsored research project was conducted by the United States Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama, between 1932 and 1972. For four decades, researchers observed the progression of untreated syphilis in approximately 399 African American men without their informed consent. Many of the men thought they were being treated for “bad blood,” which had a variety of connotations. They were not aware that they were being actively blocked from receiving effective treatment, even after penicillin became the recognized standard of care for syphilis in the 1940s. Rather than viewing the study as an isolated event, we’ll see how the Tuskegee study fits into a broader framework of American medical and disability history and racial discrimination.  Select Bibliography Jones, James H. Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. (Simon and Schuster, 1993).  Lederer, Susan. “Experimentation on Human Beings.” OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 19, No. 5, Medicine and History (Sep., 2005), pp. 20-22. Reverby,  Susan Mokotoff. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy. (University of North Carolina Press, 2009).  Sharma, Alankaar. “Diseased Race, Racialized Disease: The Story of the Negro Project of American Social Hygiene Association Against the Backdrop of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.” Journal of African American Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 247-262.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Disability Series. Episode #3 of 4. Since the advent of epidemiology (the study of infectious disease, its spread and prevention), humanists and scientists have been able to study mass-disabling events related to epidemic disease, especially prior to widespread vaccination. For example, the WHO has estimated that more than 20 million people who would otherwise be disabled are typically-abled today because of the poliomyelitis vaccine. The data from the pre-vaccine era is poor so it’s difficult to make such a precise claim but it’s still possible to look at historical “mass-disabling events” and to explore the ways that such events impacted society as a whole and disabled people specifically. That’s what we’re doing today. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Disability Series. Episode #2 of 4. In 1973, Richard Nixon signed the Rehabilitation Act, a bill intended to increasing hiring, extend rehabilitation services and increase assistance programs for Americans with disabilities. In the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, politicians and activists discussed the bill in explicitly civil rights terms, arguing that as the federal government had protected the civil rights of Black Americans and women, it must also protect the rights of disabled people. While there had been other bills focused on rehabilitation and services before, the Rehabilitation Act stood out to disabled Americans for one reason: one sentence in Section 504 of the bill. While other bills had appropriated money for services or called for programs, they didn’t include a provision for enforcement – but Section 504 did exactly that. Disabled people saw an opportunity: Section 504 could radically change life for disabled people in the United States. And when the federal government failed to fully enforce Section 504 in the years after its passage, disabled people took matters into their own hands. Find show notes and transcripts at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Disability Series, Episode #1 of 4. How and when scientists, doctors, and society started conceiving of the physical and emotional components of same-sex desire as a psychiatric condition of the mind? This was neither an ancient belief nor a postmodern (aka, post-1950) one, and it wasn’t an exclusively American phenomenon either. Rather, the classification of same-sex desire as a “disorder” had its roots in the foundations of psychiatry as a profession in the 19th century. Over the last 100+ years, that classification impacted individuals all across the world. You’ve heard of Sigmund Freud, whose work in the 1920s standardized a form of talk therapy that sought to interpret actions, thoughts, and desires through a particular lens of analysis. “Psychoanalysis,” though short-lived as a psychiatric practice, was certainly part of the longer-term framing of queerness and transness as “mental illness.” But Freud is just the tip of the iceberg. Today we’re digging into the history and relationship between psychiatry and sexuality; the scientific theories of sexuality that helped shape modern ideas about the relations between gender, genitals, desire, and identity; and the consequences of the medicalization of sexuality. Bibliography Adriaens, Pieter R., and Block, Andreas De. Of Maybugs and Men : A History and Philosophy of the Sciences of Homosexuality, University of Chicago Press, 2022. James E. Bennett and Chris Brickell, "Surveilling the Mind and Body: Medicalising and De-medicalising Homosexuality in 1970s New Zealand," Medical History 62, no. 2 (2018): 199-216. Ross Brooks, “Transforming Sexuality: The Medical Sources of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) and the Origins of the Theory of Bisexuality,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 67 (2010) 177–216. Maurice Casey, “‘I want to be to Ireland what Walt Whitman was to America’: Esotericism and Queer Sexuality in an Irish Social Circle, 1890s–1920s,” History Workshop Journal, 00 (2025), 1–22. Mian Chen, "Homo(sexual) socialist: Psychiatry and homosexuality in China in the Mao and early Deng eras," Gender & History 36 (2024): 657-672. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis (1894) Harry Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature (2000) John Stuart Miller, "Trip Away the Gay? LSD's Journey from Antihomosexual Psychiatry to Gay Liberationist Toy, 1955-1980," Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 33, no. 2 (May 2024) Lamia Moghnieh, "The Broken Promise of Institutional Psychiatry: Sexuality, Women and Mental Illness in 1950s Lebanon," Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 47 (2023): 82-98 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crime & Punishment Episode #4 of 4.  In the late 1940s and 1950s, alongside the better known “Red Scare” that targeted alleged internal political enemies - American Communists - the US government led a crusade against gay men and women in the military and civil service. During the “Lavender Scare,” thousands of people were fired or forced from their jobs, dishonorably discharged from the military, and denied positions in the US government because of their sexuality. And those policies were enforced for decades - through “liberal” administrations, and the federal decriminalization of same-sex sex in 2003 - with life-ruining, and life-ending consequences for tens of thousands of Americans. And since we’re basically reliving this awful period in history because Republicans believe that a time of queer persecution, women as second class citizens, and segregation and racism is America’s “great” era, we better know the history so we can know how to fight.  Bibliography Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).  Julian Carter, The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–1940 (Duke University Press, 2007).  Josh Howard, The Lavender Scare, (Alexander Street Films). John Howard, Men Like That: Southern Queer History, (University of Chicago Press, 1999). David K. Johnson, “The Lavender Scare: Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Civil Service,” PhD Diss, (Northwestern University, 2000). E. Patrick Johnson, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South (University of North Carolina Press, 2008) Elizabeth L. Kennedy and Madeline Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (Routledge, 1993). Anna Lvovsky, Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life before Stonewall, (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crime and Punishment Series. Episode #3 of 4. In the summer of 1943 the city of Los Angeles erupted into what has become known as the Zoot Suit Riots, where roving bands of white servicemen beat and stripped Mexican American youth of their distinctive zoot suits. The riots took place amidst the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial- a case characterized by the press as a crackdown on Mexican American juvenile “delinquency.” In today’s episode, part of our Crime and Punishment series, we’re exploring the tender box that was Los Angeles during World War II.  Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crime & Punishment, Episode #2 of 4. In 1862, as the Civil War raged across the fields of the south, another American war was coming to an end: the Dakota War, a conflict between the Dakota people and American settlers in Minnesota. Though the United States military won a decisive and punishing victory over the Dakota, they weren’t satisfied: Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley wanted the Dakota warriors left alive at the end of the war put on trial in a military tribunal. The trials were a farce of justice, with sometimes over 40 Dakota men convicted every day between September and November, 1862. At the conclusion of the trials, 392 Dakota men were found guilty and sentenced to death. President Abraham Lincoln reviewed each of the convictions and ultimately commuted the sentences of 264 of the men - and upheld the death sentences of 38. This is the history of the largest mass hanging in United States history, the execution of the Dakota warriors in Mankato, Minnesota, in 1862. For transcript, bibliography, and show notes, visit digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

FIXED! Crime and Punishment Series. Episode #1 of 4. In 1850, a bright-eyed eight-year-old girl walked across London Bridge in her carefully maintained school uniform. Her teachers called her promising; her siblings found her delightful. No one could have predicted that decades later, she would die violently in Mitre Square, known to history only as one of Jack the Ripper's victims. But this isn't another story about Victorian London's most notorious killer. Instead, we're exploring the lives of five women – Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate, and Mary Jane – before they became infamous crime statistics. Their stories reveal a London where respectability and ruin balanced on a knife's edge, where one misfortune could send a family spiraling into poverty. Join us as we peel back the sensational headlines to discover the real women of Victorian London's East End, their dreams, their struggles, and the system that failed them. This isn't a story about how these women died – it's a story about how they lived. This episode is based on Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five which you can buy at your local bookstore today! Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism's Place. Episode #4 of 4. In honor of our new book, Spiritualism's Place, we're re-releasing one of our favorite episodes about Lily Dale. Today we're revisiting our exploration of the close association of Spiritualism and the women’s rights movement of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism's Place. Episode #3 of 4. In honor of our new book, Spiritualism's Place, we're re-releasing one of our favorite episodes about Lily Dale. In the late 20th century, white Americans flocked to New Age spirituality, collecting crystals, hugging trees, and finding their places in the great Medicine Wheel. Many didn’t realize - or didn’t care - that much of this spirituality was based on the spiritual faiths and practices of Native American tribes. Frustrated with what they called “spiritual hucksterism,” members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) began protesting - and have never stopped. Who were these ‘plastic shamans,’ and how did the spiritual services they sold become so popular? Listen to find out!  Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism's Place. Episode #2 of 4. Enjoy this re-release of one of our favorite episodes in celebration of our newly released book: Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Seances in Lily Dale. For three years before his untimely death on the Titanic, British newspaper man W. T. Stead gathered the bereaved and curious in a room in Cambridge House so they could communicate with the dead. Several psychics, including the blind medium Cecil Husk and materialization medium J. B. Jonson, worked these sessions which had become known as Julia’s Bureau. After Stead’s death, Detroit medium Mrs. Etta Wriedt sought to channel the dead newspaper man. Wriedt was also known to channel a Glasgow-born, eighteenth-century apothecary farmer named Dr. John Sharp. Other frequent visitors include an American Indian medicine chief named Grayfeather, the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan, and a female Seminole Indian named Blossom who died in the Florida everglades as a young child. But the bureau’s most important spirit visitor can also be said to have been the founder of the bureau, Julia herself. Who was Julia? And how do these seances fit into the long history of Spiritualism? Find out today! Find transcripts and show notes here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism's Place, Episode #1 of 4: Enjoy this re-release of our episode on Kate and Maggie Fox, the "founders" of Spiritualism. Averill wrote this episode in preparation for writing about the Fox sisters in Chapters 2 & 3 of Spiritualism's Place. This time around, you can listen for the context and history that didn't make it into the book! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Witches Series. Episode #4 of 4. This episode tells te story of one of Japanese folklore’s most infamous yokai (supernatural beings). The kitsune, “fox-spirit” or “fox-witch” has deep roots, millennias-old, in central Japan. The use of the word spirit conjures ghosts to western minds but the Japanese are using it to mean “supernatural or enlightened being”. This is why kitsune is also translated to fox-witch and, in many ways, this is a more accurate name within the western context. This shapeshifting spirit was believed to be the most cunning of yokais, its abilities only increasing with age. For centuries, kitsune have been suspected of performing kitsune-tsuki or “fox possession,” which were made easier by its ability to shapeshift into the form of a human woman. For this last episode on our 2024 Witches series, we’re tracing the history of Japanese fox-witches and the phenomenon of fox possession. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Witches, Episode #3 of 4. The Salem witch trials lasted from late February 1692 to May 1693 in eastern Massachusetts Bay Province. This event resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of at least 155 individuals. Of these people, thirty were found guilty, with nineteen meeting their end by hanging. One man suffered a gruesome death by crushing under stones, while five others perished in jail due to harsh conditions. Although modest in scale compared to the extensive witch-hunts in 17th-century Europe, the Salem episode stands as the most severe witch-hunt in American history. It surpassed all previous New England witchcraft trials in terms of accusations and executions. The aftermath of the Salem trials marked a turning point. No further witchcraft convictions occurred in New England after this event. Moreover, the Salem crisis ultimately contributed to the downfall of the Puritan government in Massachusetts, signaling a significant shift in the region's political and social landscape. Bibliography Kamensky, Jane. Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England. Oxford University Press. 1997. Moyer, Paul. Detestable and Wicked Arts: New England and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Cornell University Press. 2020. Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Vintage Books. 2003. Ray, Benjamin C. Satan and Salem : The Witch-Hunt Crisis Of 1692. University of Virginia Press, 2015. Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. Oxford University Press. 1980. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Witches Series. Episode # 2 of 4. In 1692, the unusual behavior of a young girl was explained as the result of the evil trickery of a witch. Soon, people were naming culprits, and those accused were on trial for their very lives. You’re all familiar with the story, right? But today we’re not talking about the famed witch panic that gripped Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 - no, we’re talking about the other witch panic that took place that very same year, 200 miles away in Stamford, Connecticut. What can this concurrent, but very different, witch panic teach us about ideas about witchcraft in colonial New England? Find transcripts and show notes at: www.dogpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Witches III, Episode #1 of 4. Magic practitioners - both real and fictional, historical and contemporary - wield many different kinds of magic. Blood and bone magic, necromancy, divination, cleansing magic, manifestation, earth and elemental magic; the list is extensive. But wherever there is magic use, you are likely to find love magic. Spells and incantations to entrap a lover, potions and drugs to enthrall or make one feel amorous - love magic is ubiquitous in our current cultural representations of magic, especially (but not exclusively) when there are women magic-users involved. Curiously, while love magic has been around for millenia, love magic was not always so firmly feminized. And that seems worth digging into. Bibliography Laine Doggett, Love Cures: Healing and Love Magic in Old French Romance. (Pennsylvania State UP, 2009). Christopher Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, (Harvard UP, 2009) Gyorgy Endre Szonyi, John Dee's occultism : magical exaltation through powerful signs Jeffrey Watt, “Love Magic and the Inquisition: A Case from Seventeenth-Century Italy,” The Sixteenth Century Journal , Fall 2010, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2010), 675-689. Benjamin R. Foster, From Distant Days: myths, tales and poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia, (CDL Press, Maryland, 1995) Corinne Wieben, “The Charms of Women and Priests: Sex, Magic, Gender and Public Order in Late Medieval Italy,” Gender and History Vol.29 No.1 April 2017, 141–157. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bodies Series. Episode #3 of 3. The modern history of the body is marked by the coinciding pathologization of fatness AND the elevation of a new thin ideal. But one can make the argument that even after fatness was pathologized (deemed medically or psychologically abnormal), it was not necessarily stigmatized in any systematic way UNTIL its opposite quality- thinness-- took on new and important meanings of its own. In this sense, it’s not fatness whose meaning changes with time so much as that of THINNESS. As was made clear in this episode’s prequel, The History of Fat: The Complex Attitudes Toward Fatness in the Pre-Modern West, fatness has always been complicated- at some times accepted, even admired, and at other times criticized and a source of revulsion. In response to gender crises, technological advancement, and anxieties about modernity, twentieth-century beauty standards came to worship thinness in ways that were completely unheard of in premodern times. Today we tackle the History of Thin. Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Body Series. Episode #2 of 3. In the mid-nineteenth century, a feud erupted between two camps of prominent public intellectuals and thought-leaders in the United States. The results of this feud affected the education, culture, and lives of generations of Americans. And yet, you have probably never heard of it. One the one side, the manualists, who believed that deaf people should be educated in manual methods in the form of sign language. On the other side, the oralists, who believed that deaf people should not use sign, but instead be educated in how to read lips and vocalize spoken English. It might be easy to see this as a just a schism between two pedagogical perspectives - is it better to teach using this method or that method? But this was about much more than educational approaches - instead, it became about the very place of deaf people in United States society. Thinkers and educators had spent decades of the nineteenth century debating the nature of deafness and the deaf mind: could deaf people think and reason without formalized language? Could they tell right from wrong, or were they animal-like? How might deaf people exist in a civil society if they did not share a common language? Were deaf people a distinct cultural group, or disabled individuals who could be assimilated? Today, we’re talking about the history of deaf people in the United States. Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bodies, Episode #1 of 3. Historian Thomas Lacquer’s 1992 Making Sex argues that the one sex model dominated ancient and medieval medicine and popular ideas of sex, until, approximately, the Enlightenment, which gradually dispelled the one sex model in favor of the two-sex model--the strict dimorphic binary of sex, male and female, that most people are probably familiar with today. While numerous historians, and particularly historians of the ancient and medieval periods, have challenged the scope and specifics of Lacquer’s thesis, the revolution in gender history that his work prompted is undeniable. To kick off this series on Bodies, we’re going to talk about the history of how sex - or the meaning and value ascribed to genitals - was socially and scientifically constructed and reconstructed in Europe over the last two thousand years. For a full transcript, bibliography, and more, visit digpodcast.org Select Bibliography Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1990).  Joan Cadden, The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1995) Helen King, The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence (Routledge, 2013).  Thomas Lacquer, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Harvard University Press, 1992) Elizabeth Reis, Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex (John Hopkins Press, 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bonus Episode: We're diving into the biography and the life and times of a woman named Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Elizabeth Oakes Smith was a household name in the mid- nineteenth century. She was a journalist, she was a women's rights activist, she traveled across the country speaking on the lyceum circuit, and she was also a well-known published author. Famous writers such as Edgar Allan Poe reviewed her written work and gave her raving reviews. But something happened. Elizabeth Oakes Smith was essentially erased from history. Bibliography Baym, Nina. Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870. University of Illinois Press, 1993. Patterson, Cynthia. "Illustration of a Picture": Nineteenth-Century Writers and the Philadelphia Pictorials, American Periodicals, Vol. 19, No. 2 (2009):136-164 Reed, Ashley. Heaven's Interpreters: Women Writers and Religious Agency in Nineteenth-Century America. Cornell University Press, 2020.  Scherman, Timothy, ed.. Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Selected Writings, Volume I: Emergence and Fame, 1831-1849. Mercer University Press, 2023. Scherman, Timothy, ed.. Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Selected Writings, Volume II: Feminist Journalism and Public Activism, 1850-1854. Mercer University Press, 2024. Tuchinsky, Adam. “‘Woman and Her Needs’: Elizabeth Oakes Smith and the Divorce Question.” Journal of Women’s History 28, no. 1 (2016): 38–59. Woidot, Caroline M., ed. The Western Captive and Other Indian Stories by Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Broadview Editions, 2015. Wyman, Mary Alice. Two American Pioneers: Seba Smith and Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Columbia University Press, 1927. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

EMG's Book Sentimental State. Episode #4 of 4. In this episode, Marissa and Averill uncover the harrowing real story behind a wave of forced migration from early 18th century Paris to the struggling French territories along the Gulf Coast. Driven by underpopulation woes and a charlatan's get-rich-quick scheme, over 100 women were quite literally rounded up from prisons and poorhouses under dubious accusations of "debauchery" and "prostitution." Their journey into this cruel human trafficking operation is laid bare through the meticulous research of historian Joan DeJean. You'll hear how an ambitious and ruthless warden conspired with corrupt officials to clear Paris' streets by falsifying charges against poor servant girls, foreigners, and even women simply deemed "inconvenient" by their own families. Branded as criminals but guilty of little more than poverty, these so-called "corrections girls" were then abandoned in hellish conditions at the Crown's fledgling outposts with no provisions. Yet many survived through grit and resilience, going on to become founders of New Orleans' aristocracy. Find transcripts and show notes at: digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

EGM's Book The Sentimental State. Episode #3 of 4. In 1923, Zitkala-Ša, a Dakota woman, wrote an unpublished essay titled "Our Sioux People," tracing the U.S. government's relationship with the tribe. She described a scene where delegates from the Pine Ridge reservation met with Mr. E. B. Merritt of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC. Zitkala-Ša quoted: "through all the pathos of their sad story, the sight of thier gaunt faces, their cheap and shabby civilian clothes which bespoke their poverty more than words, Mr. E. B. Merritt, Assistant Commissioner sat unmoved in his luxurious office, where walls were hung with bright colored paintings of primitive Indian folk and their teepees." Zitkala-Ša's complex political writing and activism added American Indian perspectives to women's political activism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We do this episode in honor of Elizabeth's new book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State. Find transcripts here show notes: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elizabeth's Book, The Sentimental State #2 of 4. We’re talking about abortion and Ireland today. It’s hard for a lot of reasons. People shouldn’t have to fight so hard to make decisions for their own bodies. An unborn fetus should not have the same legal status as an adult woman. But we’re honoring Elizabeth’s book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State, with this series about women, activism, and reform. Elizabeth tells the history of American women, Black and white, who took the anxieties and ideals of the Progressive era and mobilized them to exact political change. Reading Elizabeth’s book reveals a lot about the welfare state today, but also, I think, is a kind of roadmap for collective action. For Irish women, and all people with uteruses, unwanted pregnancies left one with few choices until it was finally decriminalized in 2018. Two-thousand-and-eighteen. Barely six years ago. Today we’re looking at 100 years of Irish history, inclusive of both the north and south. And most of that history, and most of this episode, is painful. But from that pain came people, mostly women, taking care of each other and fighting for change. And from that collective action came reform. Today, women in both Northern Ireland and the Republic can legally obtain an abortion up to twelve weeks in their own country. Is it perfect? No, of course not. As Elizabeth’s book reminds us, reform never is. But it’s leaps and bounds better than it was. For our listeners in Texas, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and 18 other US states, this episode will hit too close to home. But I hope it’s also a reminder that collective action works. We can have something, and lose it, and then get it back. We just need to fight for each other. So chin up. We can do this together. Select Bibliography Fran Amery, Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: The Changing Politics of Abortion in Britain (Bristol University Press, 2020). Lindsay Earner-Byrne and Diane Urquhart, The Irish Abortion Journey, 1920-2018, (Palgrave Macmillian, 2019). Jennifer Thompson, Abortion Law and Political Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Fiona Bloomer and Emma Campbell, Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland (Bloomsbury, 2023) Begoña Aretxaga, Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland (Princeton University Press, 1997) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Celebrating Elizabeth's Book: Episode #1 of 4. Dear listener, we’ve got a special episode for you today. Our producer, Elizabeth Garner Masarik, just published her first book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State. You can buy it on any major booksellers website as a paperback or ebook. So we are starting a series of women’s history episodes to celebrate the publication of her book. Today we’ll begin with an in-depth discussion of her book and its dominant themes. So sit back and enjoy our deep dive into Elizabeth’s book, The Sentimental State.  Bibliography Elizabeth Garner Masarik, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State (University of Georgia Press, 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs, No 6 Cs of History Series. Continuity. Episode #4 of 4. Pretend it’s 500 BCE and you know nothing about modern, scientific medicine. You know nothing about anatomy or biochemistry or microbes. How would you approach the art of healing your loved ones when they became ill? How would you identify what’s wrong with them and offer them the supportive care they needed, their best chance of survival? You'd probably keep track of any events like vomiting, diarrhea, urination, wounds that are weeping or orifices that are secreting. Is pus or wax flowing out of their ear? Are they urinating way more or way less than normal? Is their urine super dark or smelly? Is that cut on their ankle looking crusty and gooey? Note your experience of trying to heal this loved one is shaped entirely by fluids. This is one of the reasons why, for millennia, the practice of healing followed a comprehensive, rational, and holistic explanation for disease based on vital fluids (or humors). This week, for the last episode in our Continuity series, we are discussing the millennias-long strangle-hold humoral medicine had on natural philosophy and medicinal healing. And… plot twist… we may be head back in this direction. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 6 Cs of History: Continuity, Episode #3 of 4. Starting in the late 1990s, historians like Deborah Simonton and Judith Bennett argued that if we take a step back a look at the longue duree of women’s history, the evidence suggests that even as Europe’s economies transformed from market places to market economies, women’s work--and the value placed on gendered labor--was and continues to be remarkably (and frustratingly) consistent. There was not, in fact, a transformative moment ushered in by capitalism, industrialization, or post-industrialization for women. Even when factoring in race, urban/rural divides, and class, European (and American) women’s labor was always valued less than men’s, whether in the “household economies” or guilds of the medieval period, on the factory floors of the industrial era, or in the office cubicles of our more recent history. Today we’re going to take a step back and look at the longer history of the gender wage gap, where we can see the continuity in women’s work from the 14th century to the present. For show notes and a transcript, visit digpodcast.org Select Bibliography Judith Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Deborah Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work:1700 to the Present (London, Routledge, 1998).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 6 Cs of History, Continuity: Episode #2 of 4. In this final series on the 5- nope, 6 - C’s of historical thinking, we’re considering the concept of continuity. We’re much more accustomed to thinking about history as the study of change over time, but we must also consider the ways in which things do not change, or maybe, how they shift and morph in their details while staying, largely, consistent. In the United States, police brutality is, unfortunately, a constant. The contours and context change, extralegal violence at the hands of law enforcement does not. Today, we’re talking about long and in many ways unchanging history of police brutality in the United States. Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 6 C's of History, Continuity: Episode #1 of 4. Reproductive labor is the labor or work of creating and maintaining the next generation of workers. This is the work of birth, breastfeeding or bottle feeding, washing dirty butts and wiping runny noses, nursing those who unable to care for themselves, keeping living areas habitable by washing and getting rid of refuse- and figuring out how to get water or where to put trash if not living with modern conveniences, cooking- including the sourcing, storing, and knowledge of food production to not make people ill. All of the things that humans rely on but that either through biology or through gendered norms, are the domain of women. Today we’re discussing the history of how reproductive labor was gendered as women’s work, the continuity of the undervaluation of reproductive labor within capitalism, and how this undervaluing contributes to the implications of gendered labor. Put more bluntly, capitalism is dependent on undervalued reproductive and gendered labor, and we’re gonna explore that history a bit in this episode. Find the transcript, full bibliography, our swag store, and other resources at digpodcast.org Select Bibliography Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1884. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman. Slavery's Capitalism : A New History of American Economic Development. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2016. Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Caitlin Rosenthal. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management. (Harvard University Press, 2018). Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2012). Lauel thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History. Contingency. Episode #4 of 4. It’s October 10, 732 and the Umayyad armies commanded by Abd al-Rahman are facing the Franks led by Charles Martel. The battle is bloody and chaotic. When the fog clears, the Umayyad Muslim invasion is halted, and the Frankish Kingdom under Charles Martel emerges as a powerful force in Christendom. Historian Edward Gibbon writes that Tours was one of “the events that rescued our ancestors of Britain, and our neighbors of Gaul, from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran.” He continues, saying that if it weren’t for the Battle of Tours, “Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomat.” This week we are finishing our series on the last of the five Cs, contingency, by exploring the Battle of Tours, also called the Battle of Poitiers, which has been remembered as the only event preventing the Islamization of Western civilization. But, as always, it’s so much more complicated than that. Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History: Contingency #3 of 4. In spring 1931, Li Shui Tong [Lee Jow Tong] met Magnus Hirschfeld when the latter was giving a public lecture in Shanghai. Li was a medical student with a deep--and vested--interest in the exciting new field of sexology. Hirschfeld’s work and ideas would go on to shape modern ideas about “homosexuality” in clear and often problematic ways. The theory of homosexuality that Hirschfeld built in the early decades of his research was built on ideas about biological race, empire, and a white male subjectivity. His work shaped the way people talked about sexuality for decades after his death. The white European, and male-centricness of sexology, gay rights, and gay rights movements came as a result of Hirschfeld’s fusion of his early work with a theory about “the races,” and the imperialist presumptions of his early work that assumed a white, cis male body to be the standard around which rights needed to be procured and sexuality needed to be understood. To examine Li and Hirschfeld’s story is to grapple with the contingency of history. Individual choices matter, and outcomes are the result of the confluence of events, disasters, and decisions. As historians Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke argued, “the world is a magnificently interconnected place. Change a single prior condition, and any historical outcome could have turned out differently.” Bibliography Heike Bauer, The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture (Temple University Press, 2017).  Ed. Heike Bauer, Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World (Temple University Press, 2015). Howard Chiang, After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018). Howard Chiang, Sexuality in China: HIstories of Power and Pleasure (University of Washington Press, 2018).  Laurie Marhoefer, Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love (University of Toronto Press, 2022).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Five Cs of History. Contingency. Episode #2 of 4. At the turn of the 20th century, Buffalo was - to borrow a phrase from historian Mark Goldman - a city on the edge. Perfectly situated on Lake Erie and a hub for railroads, Buffalo was a critical part of the country’s trade infrastructure. It was an ideal spot to unload cereal crops from the midwest, for instance, to be stored in the city’s many grain elevators until it could be moved along by rail or transferred to waterfront mills for processing. It had a booming ship building industry for lake-going schooners and steamers. It was close to the incredible power generating potential of Niagara Falls, the leader in mass produced energy in the newly electrified United States. It had a small but growing steel industry and was looking for ways to rival Pittsburgh as America’s steel city. The future, it seemed, was bright, glowing with electric potential. But no one could predict what would go wrong. Join us as we discuss the historical concept of contingency using NY state's Queen City. Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History, Contingency #1 of 4. The U.S. healthcare system is the way it is because of decisions made by people at various points in the last century. America’s healthcare issue is the result of a series of interconnected decisions and events and catastrophes. This episode is a part of our 5 c’s of history episode and today we are exploring contingency. Contingency is “The idea that every historical outcome depends on a multitude of prior conditions; that each of these prior conditions depends, in turn, upon still other conditions; and so on. The core insight of contingency is that the world is a magnificently interconnected place. Change a single prior condition, and any historical outcome could have turned out differently.” So we’re going to do an overview of the American health insurance system and touch on some key points along the way. For the script and resources, visit digpodcast.org Bibliography Conn, Steven. ed. To Promote the General Welfare: The Case for Big Government. Oxford UP, 2012. Gerber, David A. Disabled Veterans in History. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan, 2012. Hoffman, Beatrix. Healthcare for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States Since 1930. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. Klein, Jennifer. For All these Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State. Princeton University Press, 2006. Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Harvard University Press, 2000. Starr, Paul. Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform. New Haven, Connecticut; London: Yale University Press, 2011. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5Cs of History, Complexity: #4 of 4. During the Tang dynasty in the mid 8th century, a military leader named Li Baozhen was frustrated with his aging body. He had achieved much military glory and material wealth in his life, but he was aging and facing the fact that death was approaching. But he had also had dreams that he was riding triumphantly through the sky on a crane. Surely this was an omen! At the same time, Li Baozhen met Sun Jichang, who was a fangshi - a word that can be translated as alchemist, wizard, magician, and also doctor or physician. Sun Jichang offered Li Baozhen a concoction that he promised would allow him to “transcend” death. Inspired by his dreams of slipping away from earth on the back of a crane, Li Baozhen took the elixir - only to become incredibly sick. Li Baozhen’s experience captures something of the complexity of Chinese medicine: competing ideas of how to heal, the use of various powerful medicines in careful (and not so careful) doses, the intermingling of spiritual and medicial philosophies, and the quest for health and power, even immortality. For this installment in our series on the five C’s of historical thinking, we’re contemplating the historical concept of complexity through an exploration of Chinese medicine. Bibliography Andrews, Bridie. The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850-1960. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014.  Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: The Song Dynasty, 960-1200. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009.  Goldschmidt, Asaf. “Epidemics and Medicine during the Northern Song Dynasty: The Revival of Cold Damage Disorders,” T’oung Pao 93 (2007): 53-109.  Liu, Yan. Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021.  Lo, Vivienne and Michael Stanley-Baker, “Chinese Medicine,” in A Global History of Medicine, ed., Mark Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.  The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, trans. Maoshing Ni. Boston: Shambhala Press, 1995. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History. Complexity. Episode #3 of 4. Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, and its residents are considered United States citizens. However the island’s political status remains a subject of debate and discussion. Some Puerto Ricans advocate for independence, while others support maintaining the current status as a territory, pursuing statehood, or seeking other forms of self-determination for the island. The political status of Puerto Rico remains a complex and ongoing issue. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History: Complexity, #2 of 4. Josephine Baker’s life story - both what we know and what we don’t/can’t know - is fascinating. For our purposes today, her life story is a perfect case study for complexity in historical thinking. Not only was she an icon of contradictions, but the way she lived and interacted with the world has allowed historians and feminist scholars to really tease out the complexity of her lifetime. Josephine Baker lived from 1906 until 1975. She was both a Civil Rights activist and a performer who used blackface and racialized tropes to entertain. She was both a woman who had intimate (probably sexual) relationships with other women, and exiled an adopted son when he came out to her as gay. She was both a deeply private woman and opened her home to the public like an amusement park. And for most of her life she lived in France, which was both deeply enamored with Black American culture and music and deeply racist. As Josephine Baker shows us, historical moments, like life stories, are rarely simple. Bibliography Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase, Josephine: The Hungry Heart, (Random House New York, 1993).  Peggy Caravantes, The Many Faces of Josephine Baker: Dancer, Singer, Activist, Spy (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2015) 151. Luca Cerchiari, Laurent Cugny, and Franz Kerschbaumer, Eurojazzland (Boston: Northwestern University Press, 2012) Ed. Mae G. Henderson and Charlene B. Register, The Josephine Baker Critical Reader FBI Records: The Vault — Josephine Baker Patrick O’Connor. “Josephine Baker.” American National Biography Online Mary McAuliffe, When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s paris of hemingway, chanel, cocteau, cole porter, josephine baker, and their friends (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated, 2016) Alan Schroeder and Heather Lehr Wagner, Josephine Baker: Entertainer (New York: Chelsea House, 2006) Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007). Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time, (DoubleDay, 1989).  Jennifer Sweeney-Risko, “Fashionable ‘Formation’: Reclaiming the Sartorial Politics of Josephine Baker,” Australian Feminist Studies 2018, VOL. 33, NO. 98, 498–514 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Complexity Series. Five Cs of History. Episode #1 of 4. The dominant narrative- and the story that many of you expect to hear today- is that fatness used to be less stigmatized; that plump women were beautiful and plump men regarded as wealthy and important but that somewhere along the way, thinness became associated with beauty and fatness became medicalized as obesity and stigmatized as disgusting, leading to today’s skinny-loving, fat-phobic culture. There are, of course, elements of truth to this story but… it’s also way more COMPLEX than this. This week for our Complexity series, we’re covering the complex history of fatness in the premodern West. Find transcripts and show notes here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History: Change Over Time, Episode #4 of 4. Written and spoken language are separate things. Languages that are connected to a written script change more slowly and last longer than those that don’t. Writing acts as an anchor to humans’ ever-changing speech sounds. But these two aspects of language (speech and writing) did not always go hand in hand. Today we dive into the history of the written word. Bibliography Fischer, Steven R. A History of Writing New ed. London: Reaktion Books. 2021. Gabrial, Brian. “History of Writing Technologies,” in Bazerman Charles. 2008. Handbook of Research on Writing : History Society School Individual Text. New York: L. Erlbaum Associates. Powell Barry B. Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 2012. Stanlaw, James. The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology. Hoboken NJ: Wiley Blackwell. 2021. Stroud, Kevin. https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/ “The Evolution of Writing.” Published in James Wright, ed., INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Elsevier, 2014 https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Change over Time Series. The Five Cs of History. Episode #3 of 4. The Rights Revolution movements of the twentieth century were deeply connected to one another, with activists known for their work in one movement having cut their teeth in the others. These movements were also profoundly influenced and connected to struggles of the past, with older movements having either been where activists began their activism or were mentored by senior members in the struggle. Additionally, many historians and sociologists are tweaking the narrative of “feminisms” by displaying how the feminist movement has been a continual movement and how many different feminisms have co-existed throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Feminism did not “go silent” at times but has always been present in different ways. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History. Change over Time. Episode #2 of 4. In recent years, America’s two party system has seemed more intractable than ever: Democrats vs. Republicans. Now, we have a clear idea of each party’s location on the political map: Democrats are liberal, Republicans conservative; Democrats are left-leaning, Republicans right-leaning. Right now, those truths seems so deeply entrenched that they seem almost natural - it’s always been this way and always will be. But if historians know anything it’s this: things change. In this episode, we’re thinking about change over time by looking at the long history of America’s political parties. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Five Cs of History. Change Over Time #1 of 4. Roger Casement has been a subject of fascination - and controversy - for over a century. During his lifetime, he was an internationally-recognized champion for human rights, and was instrumental in exposing the horrors surrounding the rubber industry in the Belgian Congo and Peruvian Putumayo. Significantly, he spent his life striving to do more than just expose the injustices of the Congo and Putumayo - he built a network of activists and leaders willing to intercede, push for reform, and demand change for the indigenous peoples who suffered under European occupation. After years working within the British Empire, he was radicalized in his Irish nationalist beliefs, and spent the last two years of his life working to fight for Ireland’s independence from Britain. After his execution, some held on to the memory of him as a humanitarian hero, others claimed he was another martyr of the Irish nationalist cause, and still others distanced themselves from his evident homosexuality. The question of his sexuality determined whether or not he could be counted among the ‘real’ Irish heroes. Find the transcript and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History. Causality Series #4 of 4. Despite the fact that eighty percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, it does not. That is because the Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified. Despite being introduced in 1923, the ERA was not passed by Congress until 1972. However, the amendment failed to be ratified by the required number of states before the deadline set by Congress, and therefore did not become part of the Constitution. Since then, efforts to pass the ERA have continued but legal and political obstacles remain, and the ERA has yet to be officially added to the U.S. Constitution. We are in the process of exploring the 5 C’s of history on the podcast this year and in this series we are exploring causality, meaning how historians evaluate multiple factors that shape past events. Today we will look at the Equal Rights Amendment and the reasons that --so far-- it has not become law. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 C's of History: Causality, #3 of 4. In 2017, White House chief of staff John Kelly, then serving Donald Trump, was interviewed by Fox New’s Laura Ingraham, who asked about Kelly’s thoughts on a church in Virginia that had recently taken down a statue to Robert E. Lee. Kelly responded that Robert E. Lee had been a “honorable man” who “gave up his country to fight for his state,” and claimed that the war had been caused by a “lack of ability to compromise.” Today, when asked the reason for the Civil War, most of us would immediately- and correctly -  say slavery. And nearly all historians would support that. But still, the question nags. What about slavery caused a violent, protracted civil war? What event or issue or Supreme Court case or compromise was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Or was it the competing cultures of North and South that did it, both created and exacerbated by the existence of Black chattel slavery? Today, as we continue to explore the concept of causality as a historical thinking skill, we’re talking about the causes of the American Civil War. Select Bibliography Astor, Aaron, Judith Giesberg, Kellie Carter Jackson, Martha S. Jones, Brian Matthew Jordan, James Oakes, Jason Phillips, Angela M. Riotto, Anne Sarah Rubin, Manisha Sinha. “Forum on Eric Foner’s “The Causes of the American Civil War: Recent Interpretations and New Directions.” Civil War History 69 (2023): 60-86.  Blight, David. Was the Civil War Inevitable? The New York Times Magazine. December 21, 2022.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History: Causality Series. Episode #2 of 4. There was a sense, among very learned folks, that Rome had been something great that had been lost. In their grief, Renaissance scholars pored over classical manuscripts, attempting to build a picture of Rome’s greatness and, perhaps, find a reason for its disintegration. Rome’s fall was bemoaned, even resented by some but the mechanics of its demise were still a bit of a mystery. Fifth century Roman manuscripts were few and far between. Renaissance scholars were forced to piece together scraps of information and tie them together with incredible amounts of conjecture. That is, until 1665 when a French legal scholar named Jacques Godefroy used a very old document in very new ways and revolutionized what we knew about the Roman Empire’s fifth-century demise. Godefroy’s work launched what is perhaps the most contentious academic debate in the Western Hemisphere. Yes, listeners, for this week’s episode on causation, we are tackling the Fall of Rome. Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 5 C's of History: Causality Series, #1 of 4. According to the website of Britain’s National Army Museum, the first Opium War started when, “In May 1839, Chinese officials demanded that Charles Elliot, the British Chief Superintendent of Trade in China, hand over their stocks of opium at Canton for destruction. This outraged the British, and was the incident that sparked conflict.” In popular culture, and especially among European and American historians, the “Opium Wars” have long been framed as a conflict between the powerful/domineering British and the weak/insular Chinese, in which the British exploited China by getting the Chinese people addicted to opium and then went to war when the Chinese government finally tried to stop them, and the British used their military might to then extract punishing and unequal trade relationships with the Chinese for the next 100 years. Certainly elements of this framework, of this cause and effect, are true. There was a confrontation in May of 1839, and the Nanking Treaty absolutely created an exploitative and unequal trade relationship between the British and Chinese. And yet, unsurprisingly, this is far from the whole story - and far from the only way historians have interpreted the “Opium Wars”. Today we’re going to discuss the causes of the first Opium War, and the different - sometimes problematic - ways historians have framed the 1839-42 Anglo-Sino conflict.  Select Bibliography Transcribed Qianlong emperor’s letter to King George III - in Chinese, and in English Song-Chuan Chen, Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War (Oxford University Press, 2017) Paul French, Through the Looking Glass: China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao (Hong Kong University Press, 2009).  Henrietta Harrison, “The Qianlong Emperor’s Letter to George III and the Early-Twentieth-Century Origins of IDeas about Traditional China’s Foreign Relations,” American Historical Association (2017).  Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War And The End Of China's Last Golden Age (Penguin, 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Context Series. Episode #4 of 4. Swear words shock and offend. They also have a physiological impact on us: we blush, our heart races, and our brain is stimulated. The words that have this power vary over time and space. The history of swear words really drives home the idea that the past is a foreign country. The most offensive and shocking thing someone could say in 11th century England was “God’s bones” but that phrase no longer holds much power over us. During the Victorian age of euphemism, “leg” was so highly charged that it was often replaced with the word “limb” in polite conversation. Today we’re living through another linguistic shift that places racial epithets- like the n-word- at the top of the profane hierarchy. Swearing is almost entirely context-dependent; swears are constantly being invented, downgraded, or escalated in our collective mind. Thousands of English-language swear words are even lost to history; they’re extinct and meaningless to us now. Still more have the same meaning but have entirely lost their power. So what sweeping, historical trends undergird the ebb and flow of obscenity? We’re here to find out. This episode belongs in our series about context, which is part of our year-long mega series about the 5 Cs of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 5 Cs of History: Context, Episode #3 of 4. There are few individuals in American history with as divided a legacy as Margaret Sanger. For many, she was a pioneer of women’s health, an important birth control activist, and founder of Planned Parenthood. For others, Sanger represents the immorality of feminism and insidious evil of reproductive choice. Yet others see Sanger as a eugenicist orchestrating a genocide against the Black American population. Radical, unconventional, and outspoken, Sanger is an endlessly useful character for modern day political ends. Which is it? Was Margaret Sanger good or evil? If we slow down, think like historians, and examine Sanger’s beliefs and actions within their historical context, we can get a bit closer to the reality. For the transcript and access to our resources for educators, visit digpodcast.org Bibliography Baker, Jean H. Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.  Lamp, Sharon. “‘It is For the Mother:’ Feminist Rhetorics of Disability During the American Eugenics Period.” Disability Studies Quarterly 26 (2006).  Ordover, Nancy. American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.  Sanger, Margaret. My Fight for Birth Control. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931.  Thompson, Lauren MacIvor. “The Offspring of Drunkards: Gender, Welfare, and the Eugenic Politics of Birth Control and Alcohol Reform in the United States.” The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 49 (2021): 357-364.  Weingarten, Karen. “The Inadvertant Alliance of Anthony Comstock and Margaret Sanger: Abortion, Freedom, and Class in Modern America.” Feminist Formations 22 (Summer 2010): 42-59.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Context Series. Episode #2 of 4. Published in 1968, Anne Moody’s autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi details her journey from a cotton plantation in the deep south to becoming a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. At times heartbreaking and other times inspiring, Moody’s memoir explores how an individual faced with enormous-- and seemingly insurmountable --obstacles can become a person that shapes history. Moody’s autobiography gives context to the mid to late 20th century Civil Rights movement in a way that still resonates with young people today. This is why her autobiography is a staple text in many advanced high school and college-level history courses, as well as other humanities and social science courses. Hundreds of thousands of students have read her memoir over the last half century, allowing readers to witness history happening on the level of the individual alongside historical forces operating in the larger economy and society. Coming of Age in Mississippi not only allows us to witness an individual coming of age but also how a subject can forge historical change. Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 C's of History: Context Series, #1 of 4. On December 16th, 1929, thousands of Igbo [ee-bo or ibo] women gathered outside the colonial government compound in Opobo. They were there to demand the end of British imperialism in Eastern Nigeria, though the British seemed oblivious to the intention and motivations of these women. What they saw were erratic, reactive women wielding sticks and stones, bearing down on the post office, Native Court, and dispensary. The women pressed against the bamboo fence surrounding the compound, demanding change. They believed the British wouldn’t fire on a group of women. In Igbo society, men did not attack women, and the women believed that the British operated under the same code of cultural conduct. But the British didn’t believe that women were capable of making war, of organizing sophisticated networks of protest, or that women could destroy government buildings with nothing more than their hands, sticks, and stones. When the women refused to back down, the lieutenant in charge ordered his soldiers to open fire. They shot 67 bullets into the crowd, and each found a victim. At least 31 women died that day from bullet wounds; perhaps eight more drowned when the crowd pushed them into the nearby river as they tried to escape the gunfire. Blood-splattered, women screamed and cried, and the smoking guns cleared. The Igbo Women’s War of 1929 came to a violent end. Transcript, complete bibliography, and resources for teachers at digpodcast.org Select Bibliography Nwando Achebe, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960, (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 2005).  Toyin Faola and Adam Paddock, editors, The Women’s War of 1929: A History of Anti-Colonial Resistance in Eastern Nigeria (Carolina Academic Press, 2011) David Pratten, The Man-leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Producer's Choice series. #4 of 4. Justiniano Durán had carefully painted Colombian President Nieto Gil’s official presidential portrait from life some time around 1861. After Nieto’s death in 1866, his portrait was sent to Paris for an alteration, intended to make it look more “distinguished.” This is where his face acquired the strange whitish-blue tint observed by historian Fals Borda over 100 years later. Once the portrait was returned to Colombia, there was very little interest in it. Eventually, it ended up being abandoned in the Inquisition Palace. Just as his dark-faced portrait was lightened, the reality of Nieto’s African ancestry was obscured and lost to history. Fals Borda was intent on rectifying this wrong. He had the portrait restored, that is re-darkened, that year. It wasn’t until 2018, however, that the restored portrait and Nieto’s black ancestry, was recognized and celebrated by the Colombian state. In August of that year, former president Juan Manuel Santos presided over the installation of a replica of Nieto’s original portrait to the presidential palace in Bogata. Perhaps the 19th-century Colombian authorities’ effort to erase the African roots of its fourteenth president is unsurprising to those who know Latin American history. But the story of race and nationalism in Latin America is much more complicated than meets the eye. Join us as we dig in. Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Surprise Series! #3 of 4. Spanish American Nina Otero-Warren (1881-1965) was a suffragist, Progressive educator, woman's club member, public health and social welfare board member, and writer. She worked for formal and informal mediation between Hispanos, Anglo Americans, and Indians. She was instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, was the first Hispanic woman to run for United States Congress, and she was the superintendent of the Santa Fe school system for many years. Get the transcript and full bibliography at digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Surprise Series. Episode #2 of 4. There was once a young, deaf Black man, and I’m not going to tell you his real name because those records are private, so we’ll just call him Levi. Levi lived on a farm in the Hudson Valley region of New York State. According to his patient case file, he was incarcerated at the Matteawan State Hospital because he murdered his white “master” in 1870. A quick google search - let’s face it, that’s often our first research step! - on Levi brought me to an index on Deaf Americans maintained by Gallaudet University that claimed that he was an enslaved farm worker who killed his white master, David Hasbrouck. On this episode, we won’t be talking about Levi’s murder case and all the issues it raised - you’ll have to read my future article for more on that. But instead, we’ll learn more about one of the things that made his murderous act possible. Today, we’re talking about the history of poor relief and child welfare in the United States. Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guess the Theme Series, #1 of 4. Tea, it turns out, is a bottomless commodity history. As historian Erika Rappaport notes, at various times over the last two thousands years, “In Asia, the Near East, Europe, and North America, tea was a powerful medicine, a dangerous drug, a religious and artistic practice, a status symbol, an aspect of urban leisure, and a sign of respectability and virtue.” As a product of empire, cultural exchange, medicinal application, immense profitability, social imagination, and agricultural innovation, the history of tea is also the history of millions of intersecting individual lives. Some, like Catherine of Braganza, were elite women who made tea-drinking fashionable in 17th century Britain. Some, like Mary Tuke of England, were entrepreneurs who built a business and reputation on the products of the 18th century imperial markets. And yet others, like Anandaram Dhekial Phukan of Assam, were hopeful subjects of British imperialism who believed the 19th century empire could improve the lives of his people. The British thirst for tea altered economies and ecologies, started wars, underwrote individual fortunes and spectacular falls from grace. The simplicity and ubiquitousness of tea in British culture today belies its deep history. Today we’re going to spill a little tea, and see what we find out. Select Bibliography Markman Ellis, Richard Coulton, Matthew Mauger, Empire of Tea : The Asian Leaf That Conquered the World (London : Reaktion Books, 2015) Erika Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press; 2017) Jayeeta Sharma, Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Duke University press, 2011) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism Series. Episode #4 of 4. You might think that the story of Pharaoh Sety I of Egypt's 19th Dynasty ends with his death. But you’d be wrong, at least according to one 20th-century British woman, Dorothy Eady. Dorothy, who believed herself to be the reincarnation of Sety's lover Bentreshyt, is the only reason we know about this story at all. Dorothy Eady’s past life, which she discovered piecemeal over time, became her obsession. It shaped everything about her. She spent the first half of her life searching for her spiritual home, Abydos, and the second half making amends for Bentrshyt’s sin. Perhaps most shockingly, Dorothy, now called Omm Sety, would resume Bentreshyt’s sexual love affair with King Sety 3200 years after their deaths! More on that in a bit. Today we’re using the story of Omm Sety as a gateway into the history of past lives in Britain and America. Find transcripts and show notes here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism Series. Episode #2 of 4. The years 1896-1910 of the American woman’s suffrage movement are sometimes referred to as the doldrums because of an apparent lack of progress during the years. However, revised scholarship has shown that these were in fact the years where a lot of uncelebrated work was done for the cause. Today we will focus on the life of Anna Howard Shaw, who was the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1904-1915. Shaw oversaw the transition of NAWSA from a volunteer-based organization to a professional entity with headquarters in New York City and a paid staff. You'll find show notes and a transcript at digpodcast.org Bibliography Trisha Franzen, Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage (Uni. of Illinois Press, 2014).  Ellen Carol DuBois, Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote (Simon & Schuster, 2021). Wendy L. Rouse, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement (NYU Press, 2022).  Anna Howard Shaw, The Story of a Pioneer (New York: Kraus Reprint Co, 1970). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism Series. Episode #2 of 4. Elijah Pierson was the embodiment of early 19th century Christian masculinity. So how did he end up, just a few years later, shambling along the streets of New York City with a scruffy beard, long hair, and dirty fingernails, following a wild eyed prophet? And - perhaps more disturbing - how did he end up at the center of a sensational murder trial? (And we mean literally at the center: he was the dead guy.) If you’re a historian of the United States, you’ve probably already guessed what we’re talking about. And chances are, if you ever had to take an American religious history class, or even an early America or Jacksonian America class, you may have read it. Those of you who haven’t, gee whiz, you’re in for a wild ride. Today, we’re talking about a book that is a true classic in the field of American religious history: Sean Wilentz and Paul Johnson’s 1994 book, The Kingdom of Matthias. Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism Series, #1 of 4. The Fox sister’s story has been told hundreds of times, in autobiography, newspaper stories, biographies, histories of Spiritualism, Victorian entertainment, women’s rights movements, and many other contexts. Today we’re going to share some insights into Maggie and Kate Fox’s life, how their stories have been told, and why the way we tell these kinds of histories matter. For a complete bibliography and a transcript, visit digpodcast.org Select Bibliography Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth Century America (1989) Simone Natalie, Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture (Penn State University, 2016) Barbara Weisberg, Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism Series, Episode # 4 of 4. When Ann Braude published her groundbreaking book Radical Spirits in 1989, critics did not like that Braude prominently linked the women’s rights movement, particularly during the antebellum period, with Spiritualism. And even now, thirty years on, many histories still gloss over these important connections. So today we are exploring the close association of Spiritualism and the women’s rights movement of the nineteenth century. Bibliography Braude, Ann. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Second Edition. Indiana University Press, 2001. Cox, Robert S. Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism. University of Virginia Press, Reprint 2017.  Franzen, Trisha. Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage. University of Illinois Press, 2014.  Hewitt, Nancy A. Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds. The University of North Carolina Press, 2018.  McGarry, Molly. Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America. University of California Press, 2008.  Seeman, Erik R. Speaking with the Dead in Early America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism, Episode #3 of 4. In the late 20th century, white Americans flocked to New Age spirituality, collecting crystals, hugging trees, and finding their places in the great Medicine Wheel. Many didn’t realize - or didn’t care - that much of this spirituality was based on the spiritual faiths and practices of Native American tribes. Frustrated with what they called “spiritual hucksterism,” members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) began protesting - and have never stopped. Who were these ‘plastic shamans,’ and how did the spiritual services they sold become so popular? Listen to find out! Get the transcript and other resources at digpodcast.org Bibliography Irwin, Lee. “Freedom Law, and Prophecy: A Brief History of Native American Religious Resistance,” American Indian Quarterly 21 (Winter 1997): 35-55. McNally, Michael D. Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom Beyond the First Amendment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. Owen, Suzanne. The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. Urban, Hugh. New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America. Berkley: University of California Press, 2015. Bowman, Marion. “Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem, Heart Chakra of Planet Earth: The Local and the Global in Glastonbury,” Numen 52 (2005): 157-190. Amy Wallace, Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda. Berkley: North Atlantic Books, 2013.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism Series. Episode #2 of 4. For three years before his untimely death on the Titanic, British newspaper man W. T. Stead gathered the bereaved and curious in a room in Cambridge House so they could communicate with the dead. Several psychics, including the blind medium Cecil Husk and materialization medium J. B. Jonson, worked these sessions which had become known as Julia’s Bureau. After Stead’s death, Detroit medium Mrs. Etta Wriedt sought to channel the dead newspaper man. Wriedt was also known to channel a Glasgow-born, eighteenth-century apothecary farmer named Dr. John Sharp. Other frequent visitors include an American Indian medicine chief named Grayfeather, the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan, and a female Seminole Indian named Blossom who died in the Florida everglades as a young child. But the bureau’s most important spirit visitor can also be said to have been the founder of the bureau, Julia herself. Who was Julia? And how do these seances fit into the long history of Spiritualism? Find out today! Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism Series, #1 of 4. Helen Duncan was charged under the 1735 Witchcraft Act, but her case was no eighteenth-century sensation: she was arrested, charged, and ultimately imprisoned in 1944. Of course, in 1944, Britain was at war, fighting fascism by day on the continent and hiding in air raid shelters by night at home. The spectacle of a Spiritualist medium on trial for witchcraft seemed out of place. What possessed the Home Secretary to allow this trial to make headlines all across the UK in 1944? That’s what we’re here to find out. Get the full transcript, bibliography, and resources for educators at digpodcast.org Select Bibliograph Lisa Morton, Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Nina Shandler, The Strange Case of Hellish Nell, (Da Capo Press, 2006) Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, (Oxford University Press, 1997) Malcolm Gaskill, Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2002) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is a special episode researched and written by one of our interns, Olivia Langa. Intern Episode! #2 of .... To find out more about the everyday lives of women in coal mining families we must look at the songs of less popular female Appalachian singers from the 1930s. One such place to look is in Depression-era Harlan County, located in the southeast corner of Kentucky, situated within a valley between the Pine and Black Mountains on the Kentucky/Virginia border. Most of the folklore that came out of Harlan County tell stories of the horror faced by the miners under the foot of the elite. However, three women, Aunt Molly Jackson, Florence Reece, and Sarah Ogan Gunning, wrote songs in response to the Harlan County upheaval and about the lives of coal mining families. Their work differs from that of the coal mining men because they were not directly involved in coal mining as their occupation. Instead, they occupied spaces within the home and family unit, bearing the responsibility of domesticity. However, with no money, no food, and the constant threat from outside forces, they carried a tremendous burden. Looking at their songs provides a look into their lives as coal miners’ wives and daughters and gives us a look into the devastation they witnessed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Animals Series. Episode #4 of 4. The interplay between human and veterinary medicine was incredibly common by the second half of the 19th century. While human medicine and veterinary medicine were distinct professions, they were inextricably linked in the latest experimental turn. Not only were animals involved in the experiments that led to medical breakthroughs, they were crucial to the ethical, and public health policies that shape modern medicine. Today we’re exploring the history of animals and medical science but we'll start at the beginning.  For transcripts and show notes visit www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Animals Series. Episode #3 of 4. The term “canary in a coal mine” is ubiquitous for any early warning signal. Like our fictional vignette of a miner carrying a canary into the coal mine, canaries were often taken into mines during the first part of the 20th century to test the air for poisonous gasses. The practice was so commonplace that it's become a cliché. Metaphors aside, canaries are a sentinel species, used by humans to detect environmental risks by providing advance warning of a danger. Often animals are used as sentinels because they are more susceptible to environmental hazards that humans may be in the same environment. In the case of coal mining, canaries -- or really any small bird -- are very susceptible to changes in air quality because of their rate of respiration, anatomy, and small size. Contrary to popular belief, canaries in coal mines do not have a very long history. They were only used as sentinel animals in British and American coal mines for roughly 100 years. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a long time at all. Yet, canaries have become ubiquitous with mining in general and as a figure of speech. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Animals, Episode #2 of 4. Toads, dogs, cats, ferrets, rats, and occasionally even butterflies were depicted in the 16th and 17th centuries as “witch’s familiars” throughout Europe. A servant of the witches, whose purpose was to help them stir up trouble and cause harm in their enemies, familiars were particularly important in English witch lore. Some were conjured by witches, some sent by the Devil to tempt a woman into maleficence, some were supposed to be the Devil himself in the form of a common black dog. Whatever their origin and intent, familiars were not just background characters in English witch trials. They were presented as evidence and used to sentence hundreds, probably thousands, of people to death for witchcraft - in England. Not so in France or Denmark or Italy. It was only in England that the familiar’s significance was codified in law. Why, you ask? Great question. Let’s find out. For a complete transcript and bibliography, visit digpodcast.org Bibliography Maeve Brigid Callan, The Templars, the Witch, and the Wild Irish (Cornell University Press, 2017) Alan Dures and Francis Young, English Catholicism, 1558-1642 (Taylor and Francis, 2021) Elizabeth Ezra, “Becoming Familiar: Witches and Companion Animals in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials,” Children’s Literature, 47 (2019) 175-196 Erica Fudge, Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes: People and Their Animals in Early Modern England (Cornell University Press, 2018). Charlotte Rose Millar, “The Witch’s Familiar in Sixteenth-Century England,” Melbourne Historical Journal 38 (2010) 113-130. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Animals Series, #1 of 4. In mid-March of 2022, a video spread virally across social media platforms: an elephant with its trunk wrapped around the top bar of its enclosure, its eye casting an anxious look out. A keeper pats his cheek and holds an apple, trying to comfort the distressed animal. The elephant was trapped in his enclosure in a zoo during the Russian bombardment of Kyiv. Animals are victims, transportation, weapons, mascots, heroes, and soldiers in human conflicts – and have been for as long as humans have made war. But perhaps the most dramatic has been the elephant, the massive, intimidating, trumpeting beast of ancient warfare. Elephants are the largest land animals on earth, but not only are they huge and powerful, they have experience human-like emotions, are extremely intelligent, and have long memories. The combination of their extreme power and deep intelligence have long made them valuable to humans, especially as military machines. Today, we’re talking about the history of war elephants in ancient and modern warfare. For the complete transcript and bibliography, visit digpodcast.org Select Bibliography Thomas Trautmann, Elephants & Kings: An Environmental History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015) Konstantin Nossov, War Elephants (Bloomsbury, 2012) Vicki Constantine Croke, Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of An Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II (New York: Random House, 2014) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Race Series. Episode #4 of 4. In today’s episode we’re going to explore race in the 1920s and dig into a few key moments and movements to see how race and ethnicity played a key role in shaping the American interwar years. Find transcripts and shownotes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices