Historically Thinking Podcast
1) Phantom Fleet: U-Boats, Codebreakers, and the Daring Capture of U-505, with Alexander Rose
There is a U-boat in the middle of Chicago. It’s attached to the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park. Generations of Chicagolanders, and their cousins from far away, have walked through U-505,...Show More
2) Inventing the Future: Bruno Carvalho on Cities, Planning, and the History of Urban Imagination
On November 1, 1755, the city of Lisbon was devastated by a terrible earthquake, and a new era of urban planning began. The reconstruction of Lisbon was, more or less, the first time that modern plann...Show More
3) Lady Frances Berkeley/Amy Stallings: Bacon’s Rebellion, Colonial Virginia, and First-person Historical Interpretation
In this episode of Historically Thinking, we begin not with a historian’s voice, but with the voice of a seventeenth-century woman.Lady Frances Culpeper Berkeley—born in England, twice widowed, and ma...Show More
4) The Party's Interests Come First: Joseph Torigian on the Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping
According to Chinese Communist official Xi Zhongxun, his first revolutionary act was an attempt to poison one of his school’s administrators when he was 14. He was faithful to the revolution, and the ...Show More
5) Poinsettia Man: Lindsay Schakenbach Regele on Joel Roberts Poinsett, Adventures, Diplomacy, Espionage, Trade, Self-Dealing, South Carolina, and the Paradoxes of American Patriotism
The red flowered plant that shows up everywhere at this time of year–I saw a forest of them in Wegman’s this morning– is called in Mexico the cuetlaxochitl, or the noche buena; but Americans know it b...Show More
6) Poinsettia Man: Lindsay Schakenbach Regele on Joel Roberts Poinsett, Adventures, Diplomacy, Espionage, Trade, Self-Dealing, South Carolina, and the Paradoxes of American Patriotism
The red flowered plant that shows up everywhere at this time of year–I saw a forest of them in Wegman’s this morning– is called in Mexico the cuetlaxochitl, or the noche buena; but Americans know it b...Show More
7) Plato's Letters: Ariel Helfer on the Political Challenges of the Philosophic Life
The Greek philosopher Plato is famous for writing his teachings in the form of dialogues. But there are additionally a series of seven letters attributed to Plato. Over the centuries much ink has been...Show More
8) Vector: Robyn Arianrohd on the Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation
On October 16, 1843, William Rowan Hamilton was taking a walk with his wife Helen. He was on his way to preside over a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy. As Hamilton came to Broome Bridge, over the R...Show More
9) Oral History: Douglas A. Boyd explains the basics of the oldest—and newest—historical method
“Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving, and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events.” That is the definition provi...Show More
10) Love, War, and Diplomacy: Eric H. Cline on the Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed
“Two years and a half years ago, when coming down the Nile in a dahabiah, I stopped at . . . Tel el-Amarna. In the course of my exploration, I noticed . . . the foundations of a large building, which ...Show More