Show notes and more at historian.live! I recorded this way back in September when I had ambitious dreams of doing a whole series on the history of British social clubs, but I’ve been unfortunately wiped with work and with the emotional toll of American politics lately, so I was never able to get the series off the ground. But what we have is a fantastic conversation with my colleague, Seth Thévoz, talking about his research on clubs in 19th Century Britain. Seth is the author of a really wonderf...
Nov 10, 2020•48 min
You really need to check out show notes at historian.live for this episode. We have so many videos, images and book recommendations for this one. Also check out the mailing list at makingofahistorian.substack.com and you can get an email whenever I make a thing. This week I’m joined by my colleague, Dr. Andrea Horbinski, a PhD from Berkeley who now works for Netflix. We talk about a part of her dissertation. First I should say that her dissertation is fantastic, and in the next few years it’s li...
Aug 31, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Show notes at historian.live
Aug 25, 2020•47 min
For show notes, check the website historian.live. Get email reminders of when I make stuff: makingofahistorian.substack.com So this episode is an absolute blast. I talk with my old friend Brendan McElmeel—yes, another Brendan M—about his dissertation research on love during the thaw years of the USSR. But before I gush to you about how good the interview is, I have to offer a bit of a mea culpa. I ended the interview too soon! Brendan’s research delves into the limits of the Soviet sexual revolu...
Aug 18, 2020•50 min
This week I talk with Susan Lanzoni who talks about her book tracing the history of empathy. Empathy has, over the past 100 years, changed a lot in meaning. It started out as one of these untranslatable weird German words that art historians would throw around to discuss the mystical depths of aesthetic experience: einfühlung. This was the ability to literally feel into a thing—usually an object—when you were moved by it. When you were aesthetically moved by a painting of a mountain, you imagine...
Aug 11, 2020•48 min
Our website, historian.live, has links, book lists, and more! So if you’re like me, you’ve used the phrase ‘object lesson’ to mean some kind of telling real-world example of something. The new parent waking up at 4:30 in the morning to get work done, for example, is an object lesson about the current childcare crisis. But the phrase used to mean something concrete itself: a particular kind of educational practice that put at its center a student's concrete and systematized appreciation of a phys...
Aug 05, 2020•34 min
For show notes, links, and book lists, check out our website at historian.live. Today I talk with Professor Michael Schoeppner, Assistant Professor of History at University of Maine, Farmington, about his book Moral Contagion: Black Atlantic Sailors, Citizenship and Diplomacy in Antebellum America. I was initially drawn to talk with Professor Schoeppner simply because he wrote a book about something I knew nothing about: between the early 1820s and the Civil War, many Southern States had rules t...
Jul 30, 2020•45 min
Full show notes, including pictures, further reading, and my PATREON are available at the website, historian.live. I’m honored to have Professor David Beerling on the podcast this week, to talk about his book Making Eden, which is a deep history of the evolution of land plants. We’ve talked a bit about environmental history in the past, but I’ve been curious about the longer history of the planet. Professor Beerling’s book is a fantastic look into one of the greatest stories of this history: how...
Jul 21, 2020•44 min
Check out full show notes--including book lists on our website at historian.live This week we discuss Tom Almeroth-Williams’ book, City of Beasts—now out in a reasonably priced paperback—which looks at how people and animals worked together in 18th century London. We talk about cows, horses, the great geese herds of Christmastime, and why people in London sometimes just wanted to spend some time outside on their horses. The conversation is really fun—as is Almeroth-Williams’ book. But it’s serio...
Jul 14, 2020•49 min
For show notes, and information on supporting the show, check out our website at historian.live The Nestucca River has been home to salmon and salmon fishers for thousands of years. In this summer-vacation themed episode, I talk with Professor Joseph E Taylor about the 19th and 20th century history of this unique salmon fishery. Combining labor history, environmental history, local history, and a history of recreation, Professor Taylor’s book, Persistent Callings is a deft illustration of how fi...
Jul 07, 2020•1 hr 9 min
In this episode I talk with Professor Brent Sirota about church history in the long 18th century. People have portrayed religion in the long 18th century as a little boring and staid. In the 17th century you had a civil war over religion in Britain. In the 19th century you had evangelicals, Darwin, and the Oxford Movement. But in the 18th century you have almost a cease fire. Professor Sirota's work looks at the process of how that ceasefire came about, and how it was less about religious tolera...
Jun 16, 2020•49 min
In this episode I talk with Stanford Professor Kathryn Olivarius about her research on Yellow Fever in antebellum New Orleans. Yellow Fever was bad. It killed around half of all the people who caught it. Why then did young immigrants to New Orleans seeking to make their fortune sometimes willingly infect themselves with the disease? Olivarius’ research shows that immunity to Yellow Fever became a kind of human capital. People who could demonstrate that they were ‘acclimated’ to Yellow Fever were...
Jun 02, 2020•44 min
If you like the show, give us money on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/makingofahistorian In this episode, I sit down with Craig Johnson, “the most returningest” guest in the history of this podcast. I ask him to talk about historical parallels to our current quarantine, and the conversation quickly goes in a direction I didn’t expect. Listen! It’s probably the most political episode we’ve done yet. You can find Craig on Twitter @HistOfTheRight. if you want to hear more from Craig (and you shou...
May 12, 2020•54 min
If you like the show can now support us on Patreon! (patreon.com/makingofahistorian) This week we have returning guest Kyle Jackson—who last came on to tell us about the Panama Canal. Today he’s coming on to practice his orals. I ask him to tell us to give us three different dates when we could start the beginning of US history. It’s a great discussion. You’ll learn a lot. Both about US history, and also about how historians think about history. Can’t get enough of Kyle? (We can’t.) In his other...
May 06, 2020•45 min
We're inaugurating a new podcast interview series during this weird time of isolation with recurring guest, Varsha Venkatasubramanian. Varsha is studying for her comprehensive exams in like TWO WEEKS and she was gracious enough to join us to talk about what it's like to read a thousand books when you don't have library access. We discuss the history of decolonization, which Varsha masterfully guides us from the ideological origins in the American Revolution, through the Haitian Revolution, to Wo...
Apr 28, 2020•51 min
This is the last (or next-to-last!) episode in the series, and we talk about something that can be both work AND play: sex. We look at sex within marriage, masturbation, and prostitution, paying special attention to prostitution as a form of lower-classed labor.
Apr 20, 2020•36 min
Work And Play 11: Sports by Making of a Historian
Apr 13, 2020•23 min
This episode, we talk about beer. Beer isn’t just an enjoyable beverage. You’ll learn: How beer started off as part of a complete breakfast How capitalist brewers destroyed the way of life of the village alewife How IPA became cool for 19th century hipsters And more! Check out show notes at historian.live and we now have a Patreon at patreon.com/makingofahistorian
Apr 06, 2020•37 min
In this episode, I talk about clubs, the topic of my dissertation research.
Apr 03, 2020•19 min
Work And Play 8: The Problem of Child Unemployment by Making of a Historian
Mar 29, 2020•20 min
In this--another short episode!--we talk about a group of workers who are often written out of the story of the Industrial Revolution. The mostly female ranks of domestic servants, who cleaned houses, made food, educated children, made medicine, and generally made the home a homey place to be. When historians usually deal with servants, they treat them like holdovers of an old regime--their work never really gets mechanized, and they seem to slowly fade away over the 20th century. But I argue he...
Mar 26, 2020•17 min
A tired Brendan talks about the history of vacations, briefly! We discuss how Romantic poets helped make the wilderness beautiful, rather than scary, and about how capitalist entrepreneurs got rich off of a new consumer society devoted to vacationing.
Mar 25, 2020•18 min
We're been on a bit of a hiatus in this series. Who knew it'd be hard to juggle teaching, raising a kid, and writing a dissertation? But given the shelter in place of COVID-19, I thought it would be a good time to resume the podcast and try to get through the rest of the episodes in this series. Warning: I'm joined in this podcast by a special guest, my three month old daughter Bina! She has a lot of opinions in the early minutes of this episode, and kinda gets her dad off of his game a little b...
Mar 24, 2020•24 min
In this episode, we talk sleepily about two parts of labor in the Industrial Revolution that tend not to get a ton of love: craft labor and the professions. We usually think of the image of the factory, but only a very small portion of work was factory work. Many more people worked with their hands. At the same time, there was an expansion in the number of professions. That's it!
Feb 11, 2020•26 min
This episode we talk about the history of the experience of time. Yes, even our experience of time itself changed during the Industrial Revolution. The big change we can think of as a change from task-orientation—where we think of our days as devoted to particular things—to time-orientation—where we think of our days as cut up into particular buckets like work-time, play-time and sleep-time. We talk about this change, and how our current experience of time might be changing yet again as new tech...
Feb 05, 2020•26 min
For the seven-hundreth time, we talk about the Industrial Revolution.
Jan 27, 2020•23 min
In this new season, we will be following along with the class I am teaching this semester on Work and Play in the Industrial Revolution. In this episode, we go through the rationale for the course, and we talk about the before part of the story: the popular culture of the long 18th century, filled with drinking, maypoles, and seasonal work. Check out the website at historian.live for images and book-lists!
Jan 22, 2020•40 min
For more detailed shownotes, go to our website at historian.live This episode is a co-production with the Journal of History of Ideas Blog’s podcast, In Theory. If you like this show’s format, you’ll love In Theory. Also be sure to check out the JHI Blog itself, which consistently produces some of the best academic writing for a general audience out there. If you dig through the archives, you might even find some of my essays! This episode I’m joined by Joshua Fogel, Professor at York University...
Dec 10, 2019•52 min
We're back after an extended break with a great episode. In this episode I walk with my colleague Christopher Lawson about two really big things that happen in the 20th century: deindustrialisation and neoliberalism. These are hard topics to deal with on their own, and Christopher tells the story of how they both interact by telling the story of Scottish steel plants. The big question: should Britain's industry be efficient and globally competitive? or should it build local communities? We talk ...
Oct 08, 2019•1 hr 3 min
In this episode I speak with PhD Candidate Soufu Yin about Chinese political culture. If you're anything like me, your idea of China is pretty monolithic: politics is all about emperors, bureaucrats, and the civil service examination. But Shoufu argues that much of this is a trick of perspective, and that when we look at Chinese political culture we find lots of examples of a very different kind of politics. In this episode we talk about medieval public opinion polls, and female military command...
May 24, 2019•43 min
