Episodes
Within the Declaration of Independence, the founders of the United States present twenty-seven grievances against King George III as they declare their reasons for why the thirteen British North American colonies sought their independence from Great Britain. Their twenty-fifth grievance declares that King George III “is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat [sic] the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun.”
What do we know about the “Armies...
Published 04/16/24
The vast and varied landscapes of Texas loom large in our American imaginations. As does Texas culture with its BBQ, cowboys, and larger-than-life personality. But before Texas was a place that embraced ranching, space flight, and country music, Texas was a place with rich and vibrant Indigenous cultures and traditions and with Spanish and Mexican cultures and traditions.
Martha Menchaca, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin, is a scholar of Texas history and United...
Published 04/02/24
The American Revolution was a movement that divided British Americans. Americans did not universally agree on the Revolution’s ideas about governance and independence. And the movement’s War for Independence was a bloody civil war that not only pitted brother against brother and fathers against sons; it also pitted wives against husbands.
Cynthia A. Kierner is a professor of history at George Mason University and the author of the book The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary...
Published 03/19/24
Women make up eight out of every ten healthcare workers in the United States. Yet they lag behind men when it comes to working in the roles of medical doctors and surgeons.
Why has healthcare become a professional field dominated by women, and yet women represent a minority of physicians and doctors who serve at the top of the healthcare field?
Susan H. Brandt, a historian and lecturer at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, seeks to find answers to these questions. In doing so,...
Published 03/05/24
When we study the history of Black Americans, especially in the early American period, we tend to focus on slavery and the slave trades. But focusing solely on slavery can hinder our ability to see that, like all early Americans, Black Americans were multi-dimensional people who led complicated lives and lived a full range of experiences that were worth living and talking about.
Tara Bynum, an Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and the...
Published 02/20/24
2023 marked the 250th anniversary of the arrival of Phillis Wheatley's published book of poetry in the British American colonies.
Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved African woman who, as a teenager, became the first published African author of a book of poetry written in English.
Ade Solanke, an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, has written two plays about Phillis Wheatley’s life to commemorate the semiquincentennial of Wheatley’s literary accomplishments. She joins us to not only...
Published 02/06/24
Colonial America was born in a world of religious alliances and rivalries. Missionary efforts in the colonial Americas allow us to see how some of these religious alliances and rivalries played out. Spain, and later France, sent Catholic priests and friars to North and South America, and the Caribbean, purportedly to save the souls of Indigenous Americans by converting them to Catholicism. We also know that Protestants did similar work to help counteract this Catholic work in the Americas.
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Published 01/23/24
Over the past decade, we’ve heard a lot about “fake news” and “misinformation.” And as 2024 is an election year, it’s likely we’re going to hear even more about these terms.
So what is the origin of misinformation in the American press? When did Americans decide that they needed to be concerned with figuring out whether the information they heard or read was truthful or fake?
Jordan E. Taylor joins us to find answers to these questions. Jordan is a historian who studies the history of media...
Published 01/09/24
The American Revolution and its War for Independence comprised the United States’ founding movement. The War for Independence also served as the fifth major war for European empire in North America.
The fourth war for European empire, the Seven Years’ War, reshaped and redefined Europe’s worldwide colonial landscape in Great Britain’s favor. The American Revolutionary War presented Britain’s European rivals with an opportunity to regain some of the territory they had lost. An opportunity we...
Published 12/26/23
The so-called “March to the American Revolution” comprised many more events than just the Stamp Act Riots, the Boston Massacre, and the Tea Crisis. One event we often overlook played an essential and direct role in the events needed to draw the thirteen rebellious British North American colonies into a union of coordinated response. That event was the Gaspee Affair in 1772.
Adrian Weimer, a professor of history at Providence College, has been researching the Gaspee Affair and what it can...
Published 12/12/23
Early America was a diverse place. A significant part of this diversity came from the fact that there were at least 1,000 different Indigenous tribes and nations living in different areas of North America before the Spanish and other European empires arrived on the continent’s shores.
Diane Hunter and John Bickers join us to investigate the history and culture of one of these distinct Indigenous tribes: the Myaamia. At the time of this recording, Diane Hunter was the Tribal Historic...
Published 11/28/23
Long before European arrival in the Americas, Indigenous people and nations practiced enslavement. Their version of enslavement looked different from the version Christopher Columbus and his fellow Europeans practiced, but Indigenous slavery also shared many similarities with the Euro-American practice of African Chattel Slavery.
While there is no way to measure the exact impact of slavery upon the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, we do know the practice involved many millions of...
Published 11/14/23
Happy Halloween! In honor of the 31st of October and All Hallows Eve, we investigate a historical incident of witches and witchcraft in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651.
Malcolm Gaskill, Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and one of the leading experts in the history of witchcraft, joins us to discuss details from his new book, The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World.
Show...
Published 10/31/23
Establishing colonies in North America took an astonishing amount of work. Colonists had to clear trees, eventually remove stumps from newly cleared fields, plant crops to eat and sell, weed and tend those crops, and then they had to harvest crops, and get the crops they intended to sell to the nearest market town, and that was just some of the work involved to establish colonial farms.
Colonists did not often perform this work on their own. They enlisted the help of children and neighbors,...
Published 10/24/23
The Brafferton Indian School has a long and complicated legacy. Chartered with the College of William & Mary in 1693, the Brafferton Indian School’s purpose was to educate young Indigenous boys in the ways of English religion, language, and culture. The Brafferton performed this work for more than 70 years, between the arrival of its first students in 1702 and when the last documented student left the school in 1778.
This second episode in our 2-episode series about the Brafferton...
Published 10/10/23
In 1693, King William III and Queen Mary II of England granted a royal charter for two institutions of higher education in the Colony of Virginia. The first institution was the College of William & Mary. The second institution was the Indian School at William & Mary, known from 1723 to the present as the Brafferton Indian School.
The history of the Brafferton Indian School is a story of power, trade, land, and culture. It’s an Indigenous story. It’s also a story of English, later...
Published 09/26/23
On September 17, 1787, the members of the Constitutional Convention concluded their work by signing the final draft of their new proposed government. The document they signed was the United States Constitution, which is why the United States marks Constitution Day each year on September 17.
In honor of Constitution Day, we explore the life of a Founder who played a large role in the creation and shaping of the United States Constitution: James Wilson.
Michael H. Taylor, Professor of United...
Published 09/12/23
2020 commemorated the 300th anniversary of French presence on Prince Edward Island. Like much of North America, the Canadian Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, and Prince Edward Island were highly contested regions. In fact, the way France and Great Britain fought for presence and control of this region places the Canadian Maritimes among the most contested regions in eighteenth-century North America.
Anne Marie Lane Jonah, a historian with the Parks...
Published 08/29/23
The Mississippi Gulf Coast was the home of many different peoples, cultures, and empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to some historians, the Gulf Coast region may have been the most diverse region in early North America.
Matthew Powell, a historian of slavery and southern history and the Executive Director of the La Pointe-Krebs House & Museum in Pascagoula, Mississippi, joins us to investigate and explore the Mississippi Gulf Coast and a prominent family...
Published 08/15/23
About 620 miles north of New Orleans and 62 miles south of St. Louis, sits the town of Ste. Geneviéve, Missouri.
Established in 1750 by the French, Ste. Geneviéve reveals much about what it was like to establish a colony in the heartland of North America and what it was like for colonists to live so far removed from seats of imperial power.
Claire Casey, a National Park Service interpretative ranger at the Ste. Geneviéve National Historical Park, joins us to explore the early American...
Published 08/01/23
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian has an exhibit called Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States & American Indian Nations. This exhibit allows you to see treaties the United States has made with American Indian nations and learn more about those treaties and their outcomes.
David W. Penney is the Associate Director of Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He’s also an...
Published 07/18/23
July 4, 2023 marks the 247th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States. In three short years, we will be marking the 250th anniversary of these events.
How are historians thinking about the American Revolution for 2026? What are they discussing when it comes to the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding?
Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Ronald Angelo Johnson, and Kariann Akemi Yokota join us to answer these questions. All three guests are historians...
Published 07/04/23
Juneteenth is a holiday that celebrates and commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. We choose to reflect on the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, because, on June 19, 1865, United States General Gordon Granger issued his General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, informing Texans that all slaves are free.
Juneteenth may feel like it is a mid-19th-century moment, but the end of slavery didn’t just occur on one day or at one time. And it didn’t just occur in the...
Published 06/20/23
“People are complicated” is a truism that holds in the past and the present. Seldom do we find a person where all of their actions and thoughts are black and white. What we see instead is that people are colorful because they aren’t just one thing and they don’t think and act in one way.
Human identities are one area where we find a lot of colorfulness and complexity. Most humans have multiple Identities based in geography, nationality, religious affiliation, race and ethnicity, and also...
Published 06/06/23