Oct 7, 2016

Freedmanspatrol discusses the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave us "Bloody Kansas" and paved the way to the Civil War. The focus is on the political (and geographic) landscape as well as the Washington DC wrangling over the deal. Along the way we also discuss the transcontinental railroad, the Second Party System...

Sep 25, 2016

DryLaw discusses the society of early Colonial Mexico (aka New Spain), particularly the interrelations between American and European peoples. The focus is primarily on the historical writings produced by Nahua and Mestizo writers producing histories of thier own societies and lineages, as well as those works by...

Sep 9, 2016

SunshineBag discusses the intersection of sport and nationalism, as we cover both the rise of Mussolini's Fascists and the growth of the sport of calcio in Italy. The ways the Fascists attempted to use football as a medium for building a national spirit and demonstrate Italian strength on the world stage is discussed,...

Aug 26, 2016

Alvise Falier discusses medieval communes, a term for a complicated and heterogeneous system of local rule in the 11th through 13th centuries. The focus is on the city of Milan, and northern Italy in particular, under the dominion of the Holy Roman Empire, but with a distinct political and cultural difference from that...

Aug 12, 2016

Historian of nuclear weapons and secrecy, Dr. Alex Wellerstein, discusses the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Specifically, the conversation focuses on the high level, and highly classified, debates over how best to employ these new weapons. From there, the episode segues into the inherent difficulties of...