Jaws is back in cinemas this week, so I wanted to do two things. First, re-release our 2020 episode on Jaws as a distinctly New England story; and second, let you know that Iconography is returning with a new miniseries this fall - five episodes looking at Jaws through the lens of its most iconic character (okay it’s most iconic human character), the sea-shanty singing, saltine chomping, Narragansett swilling, shark hunter with a grudge, Quint.
Sep 05, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 42
For Iconography’s fifth anniversary we’re remastering episodes from season one. This is a remastered 2nd edition of Iconography’s first Christmas episode, from December 2016, with a new afterward looking at the 2017 film The Man Who Invented Christmas. You can access the original episode here . Every day of the holiday season, there is probably someone in your neighborhood watching or reading some version of A Christmas Carol. If you think about it, that means we probably see early Victorian Eng...
Dec 24, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 41
It’s Iconography’s fifth birthday this month, and to celebrate the anniversary, we're announcing a series of remastered 2nd editions of episodes from season 1 of Iconography.
Dec 19, 2021•6 min•Ep. 40
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, and Iconography ringing in its fifth birthday, it seemed like a great time to bring up a gem from the archives, out episode on Squanto from 2018. As an icon, Squanto is known, but he isn’t really known . What Santa is to Christmas and the Easter Bunny is to Easter, Squanto is to Thanksgiving. He is a sense memory from childhood. He’s more than a man, or really much less than a man, now. He is a symbol. There he is smudged into the paint of the handprint ...
Nov 23, 2021•58 min•Ep. 39
As we hunker down for what will be a very unconventional Thanksgiving, it seemed like the right time to re-release our 2018 episode exploring how the holiday is actually a strange mashup of two distinct celebrations. Whether you're spending this holiday longing for Thanksgivings of old or wondering why on earth this holiday matters so much, this episode is worth checking out. Sarah Josepha Hale, editress of Godey's Lady's Book, dedicated years of her life to the crusade to make Thanksgiving a na...
Nov 25, 2020•39 min•Ep. 38
This episode, a deep dive into the 45 year old proto-blockbuster that has dominated the conversation in this lost pandemic summer - Jaws. That deep dive takes us to the island where Jaws was shot, Martha's Vineyard, as well as Nantucket, the nearby island where Jaws might have been shot if snow hadn't forced the ferry Production Designer Joe Alves was on to turn back towards the mainland. Along the way, we'll meet father and son authors who both turned their off-islander experiences into hit Hol...
Sep 30, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 37
Iconography started three years ago with an episode about two neighboring bridges in the heart of London. Now, for our third birthday, Wade Roush of fellow Hub & Spoke show Sooinsh brings us the story of two Boston bridges that share a similar story, though that story has a very different ending. Stick around after Wade's story to hear him and me chat about what makes bridges so iconic and what Spider-Man, Magneto, and Godzilla have to do with it....
Dec 15, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 36
How does a group of people hold onto an icon when… well, when that icon can no longer be held? In 2003, New Hampshire's state emblem, the Old Man of the Mountain, a massive granite face on a mountainside, crumbled 198 years after he had been discovered. This is his story in five pieces.
Nov 15, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 35
In this bonus interview episode, Brian Logan, Communications Director for the Plymouth 400 organization gives us insight into what goes into planning a quadricentenary commemoration. Transcript here: https://iconographypodcast.com/articles/interview-w-brian-logan-communications-director-s1!677ae
Aug 28, 2019•37 min•Ep. 34
Visitors to Plymouth Rock tend to find the icon... underwhelming - a small, scarred rock in a cage. Maybe the reason Plymouth Rock is so frequently seen as underwhelming is because all the fascinating stories of how people who love the Rock have hurt it aren’t well known enough. People love telling stories about cool scars! Maybe if we all knew more of Plymouth Rock’s scar stories, visitors would be appropriately whelmed. Our guest Matt Villamaino certainly thinks so, and so we put on a little h...
Jul 19, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 33
In the 1950s, something must have been in the water, because all of a sudden, there was a movement afoot to put a replica of the Mayflower in the water. For one man to become obsessed with the idea of rebuilding the Pilgrim's famed ship, to throw all his time and money into that single-minded pursuit, well you could just chalk that up as weird, but weird in the way most things are weird. But for two men born during the last year of World War I to determine, at the same time but from opposite sid...
Mar 28, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 32
The Mayflower is a foundational icon of the United States, but it was a British ship carrying British subjects to a British colony. So how does the UK plan to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's journey from one Plymouth to another? This episode, Dr. Anna Scott and Jo Loosemore of Mayflower 400 ring in Forefathers' Day with their thoughts on how we connect with the Pilgrims in 2020. Transcript here: https://iconographypodcast.com/articles/the-mayflower-episode-transcript-s1!12d4...
Dec 22, 2018•58 min•Ep. 31
Sarah Josepha Hale, editress of Godey's Lady's Book, dedicated years of her life to the crusade to make Thanksgiving a national holiday - she was successful. And yet, Reverend Alexander Young wrote one footnote about Thanksgiving, and he may have inadvertently done more to change the history of the holiday (and the history of the Pilgrims). This is the story of the "First" Thanksgiving.
Nov 22, 2018•39 min•Ep. 30
The Witchfinder General of Salem, Eric Dwinnells leads us on a Halloween journey to the heart of Salem, Massachusetts. Find it questionable that the Salem Witch Trials and The Crucible would be covered in a Halloween episode at all? That friction - the friction that defines Salem - is precisely the thing that this episode is about.
Oct 30, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 29
Can a witch hunt narrative be effective if it includes actual witches? In part one of a two part series on Salem and its Witch Trials, Iconography uses Hocus Pocus , Scooby Doo , and The Blair Witch Project to see how the bad witch stands in for the unknowable wilderness; then Sabrina, Bewitched , I Married a Witch , and Bell, Book, and Candle tell the story of how the witch was domesticated.
Oct 21, 2018•45 min•Ep. 28
As an icon, Squanto is known, but he isn’t really known . What Santa is to Christmas and the Easter Bunny is to Easter, Squanto is to Thanksgiving. He is a sense memory from childhood. He’s more than a man, or really much less than a man, now. He is a symbol. There he is smudged into the paint of the handprint turkey you made in kindergarten. You don’t need to go visit Squanto – have kids and at some point when they’re in elementary school, he’ll come to you in the form of Timmy with the gap in ...
Aug 15, 2018•58 min•Ep. 27
Look up. This month, July 2018, Mars is as close as he'll get for another 17 years. On a recent trip to Houston and the Johnson Space Center, this struck as deeply moving, inspiring, and a bit sad. It also reminded me of the first episode of scripted audio I ever produced, about The Martian and Martians. I hope you enjoy this little interruption from our regularly scheduled programming, and it inspires you to do a bit of star/planet-gazing.
Jul 18, 2018•43 min•Ep. 26
The story of how John Smith made New England, and how New England destroyed John Smith.
Jul 04, 2018•56 min•Ep. 25
Season 2 of Iconography begins with a look at the relationship between two New England icons - a marathon that's become not just the definitive marathon experience but perhaps the definitive Boston experience, and an advertisement that's transcended its commercial beginnings to become a symbol of civic pride. In our attempt to figure out how the Citgo Sign was saved, we're joined by first-time Boston Marathon runner Andy Luce.
Jun 20, 2018•43 min•Ep. 24
From England to New England. No I didn't move from London to Boston so I could have that catchy tagline, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Heck no, I'm going to ride that horse all the way from Charlestown to Cambridge shouting "Season 2 is coming! Season 2 is coming!"
Jun 02, 2018•7 min•Ep. 23
Revisit 2015, when the most recent Bond film came out on the tails of a series of revelatory spy films - and world events - that argued for 007's irrelevance. This episode: How the NSA shows up in mainstream entertainment So many Bond themes Melissa McCarthy showing the men (mostly Statham) how it’s done Kingsman’s scathing class critique Ilya Kuryakin and the demonized other Bridge of Spies and the reality of spy craft The wonders of Ilsa Faust The murky waters of Sicario A cameo appearance fro...
Feb 28, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 22
There are very few things in life that are truly once in a lifetime experiences. If you had picked up the New York Times on August 6, 1975 you would have experienced one of them. “Hercule Poirot Is Dead; Famed Belgian Detective.” It would have been the first time you had ever seen the Times honor a fictional person with an obituary, let alone on the front page. It would be the last time you would see it as well. This episode, we consider what factored into the Queen of Crime's decision to kill o...
Feb 12, 2018•50 min•Ep. 21
This is the story of Guy Fawkes, but it's also the story of the comic book that forever gave him rosy cheeks and a smile that taunts authority.
Nov 16, 2017•52 min•Ep. 20
You never know what your legacy is going to be. There once was a scholar at Cambridge who dedicated probably 90% of his adult waking hours to scholarship - cataloging dusty old manuscripts, caring for fragile old artifacts, studying creaky old churches. He never married, never had children, never retired. In the other 10% of his time, for kicks, he wrote and recited stories… stories about bachelor scholars went looking for dusty old manuscripts, found fragile old artifacts, and poked around crea...
Oct 23, 2017•35 min•Ep. 19
How does one map onto our world a fantasy world that rides around on the back of a turtle, where there is no London or England - or, to be more precise, where those places exist, but only in a magicless round world that’s kept in a glass sphere at Unseen University? I went to the HisWorld exhibition at the Salisbury Museum to find out.
Oct 01, 2017•42 min•Ep. 18
What started as the second half of a series on Dunkirk turned into a meditation on Charlottesville, Nazis, statues, and symbols.
Sep 03, 2017•1 hr•Ep. 17
It all feels immersive, especially in IMAX. But I’m having a wider screen experience when I watch Dunkirk. I imagine what’s just on the periphery; who else, besides Mr. Dawson, is setting off from England in a little dinghy? Who is up in the air monitoring fuel readings alongside the self-assured RAF Pilot Farrier? Who else, besides the baby-faced private Tommy is ducking the Luftwaffe amidst the dunes of Dunkirk?
Aug 13, 2017•59 min•Ep. 16
An episode dedicated to Michael Bond, and his little bear from Darkest Peru.
Jul 23, 2017•39 min•Ep. 15
To wrap up our three-part series on the turn of the 13th century, we take a look at King John - no longer a petulant prince - and how he transformed England for the best by being the absolute worst.
Jul 02, 2017•38 min•Ep. 14
This episode we consider the legacy of Richard the Lionheart - was he a disobedient son, a bad governor, a harbinger of death? This far out from the 1190s, does it matter anymore who he was, or does it matter who he's become?
Jun 11, 2017•59 min•Ep. 13
