Reckoning with Jason Herbert is a long-form conversation podcast about history, the outdoors, and the stories that shape who we are.
Each episode features historians, writers, scientists, and thinkers in wide-ranging conversations about wild places, forgotten pasts, cultural memory, and the forces—human and natural—that continue to shape our lives.
This isn’t a news cycle show or a debate podcast. It’s a space for reflection, curiosity, and serious conversation—meant to be listened to slowly.
If you’re interested in history beyond textbooks, the outdoors beyond recreation, and stories that linger long after they’re told, this show is for you.
Talking about my weekend trip with Comanche youths, along with some of my experiences with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, the Kiowa Tribe, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.
This week John Wyatt Greenlee returns as guest host and he’s looking for a six fingered man.
This week, our friend Dr Lou Moore drops in to talk about Diggstown and his work tracing black boxing from the end of the Civil War into the 20th century.
This week Dr. Paul Thomas Chamberlin drops in to talk about the history behind Operation Overlord and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. About our guest: Paul Chamberlin specializes in twentieth century international history with a focus on U.S. foreign relations and the Middle East. His first book, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (Oxford, 2012), is an international history of the Palestinian liberatio...
Today neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Kieran Fox joins in to talk about the spiritual journey of Albert Einstein. About our guest: Dr. Kieran Fox is a neuroscientist (PhD 2016) and doctor (MD 2023), currently training to be a psychiatrist in the Research Resident Training Program at the University of California San Francisco. His research over the next few years will focus on the neural mechanisms and clinical potential of psychedelic medicines. During medical school, he used intracranial el...
This week Justin Rawlins and Craig Bruce Smith drop in to talk about Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning and their thoughts on the MI franchise.
Writer and filmmaker Kevin Smokler returns to the pod to talk about his discussions with 25 different women filmmakers. About our guest: Kevin Smokler is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host focused on our relationship as human beings with pop culture. His most recent book BREAK THE FRAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN FILMMAKERS contains 24 career-retrospective conversations with directors behind box office phenomenon like Captain Marvel , Oscar winners like Free Solo and the filmmakers wh...
Today Rachel McCarthy James drops in to talk about the development of the axe and the myriad of ways it has been used to dispatch people and empires over the years. About our guest: Rachel McCarthy James was born and raised in Kansas, the daughter of baseball’s Bill James and artist Susan McCarthy. She graduated from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA, where she studied writing and politics. Her first nonfiction book, The Man from the Train , was written in collaboration with her father and publi...
It's a new day here at the podcast. Historians At The Movies Podcast is now Reckoning with Jason Herbert. We're opening up our focus and the things we talk about here.
Andor is the greatest Star Wars we've ever seen on any screen and it's not close. My close friend Alan Malfavon joins in to talk about the brilliance of this show, what it means to us, and what we hope to see next. About our guest: Alan Malfavon resituates Mexico’s socio-political, cultural, and economic networks with the Atlantic World and the Greater Caribbean, and it dissects and problematizes those networks by centering the Black and Afro-Mexican experience. His research interrogates and sub...
This week Dr. Amy S. Kaufman drops in to talk about our favorite representations of Robin Hood, how he has changed through history, and her new novel, The Traitor of Sherwood Forest. About our guest: Amy S. Kaufman is the author of The Traitor of Sherwood Forest , a Robin Hood retelling based on the medieval ballads (Penguin Books, 2025). Amy holds a PhD in medieval literature and has written about the Middle Ages for both academic journals and popular websites, including The Washington Post . S...
This week Dr. Waitman Beorn drops in to talk about Defiance (2008) and his work researching the Holocaust in Europe during World War II. About our guest: Dr. Waitman Wade Beorn is an associate professor in History at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Dr. Beorn was previously the Director of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, VA and the inaugural Blumkin Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. His first book, Marching Into Darkness...
This week Bible scholar and TikTok superstar Dr. Dan McClellan drops in to talk about Ken Smith's 1999 thought piece on Catholicism and Dan's new book, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) about Scripture's Most Controversial Issues.
Today Dr. Scott Spillman joins in to talk about how historians have conceptualized slavery and its role in the development of the United States. Get ready for a history of the history of slavery. About our guest: Scott Spillman is an American historian and the author of the book Making Sense of Slavery: America’s Long Reckoning, from the Founding Era to Today (2025). His essays and reviews have appeared in The Point , Liberties , The New Yorker , The New Republic , n+1 , the Chronicle Review , a...
Today Dr. Zandria Robinson drops in to talk about Sinners and why it might be the best movie of the 21st century. We have a spoiler free introduction, a pause, and then a spoiler filled conversation about the Jim Crow South, the Great Migration, WWI, Chicago, Mississippi, the Ku Klux Klan, sex, music, and of course THAT SCENE. This conversation is almost as amazing as this film. Share it widely. About our guest: Dr. Zandria F. Robinson is a writer and ethnographer working on race, gender, sound,...
News broke yesterday of Pope Francis' death at the age of 88. Matt Gabriele joins in to talk about the man, the history of the papacy, and what comes next. About our guest: Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. His research and teaching generally explore religion, violence, nostalgia, and apocalypse, whether manifested in the Middle Ages or the modern world. This includes events and ideas such as the Crusades, the so-calle...
Today astrophysicist Dr. Mario Livio and Nobel-winning chemist Dr. Jack Szostak drop in to talk about the search for extraterrestrial life. About our guests: Dr. Mario Livio is an internationally known astrophysicist, best-selling author, and popular speaker. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Livio has published more than 500 scientific articles. He has made significant theoretical contributions to topics ranging from cosmology, supernova explosions,...
We're a couple days removed from yet another on campus shooting. Sasha, Cari, and I ask what the hell is wrong with America and how did we get here. About our guests: Sasha Abramsky is The Nation 's Western correspondent. He is the author of several books, including The American Way of Poverty , The House of Twenty Thousand Books , Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World's First Female Sports Superstar , and most recently Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right T...
Talking about Bobby Sands, the Troubles, the Irish Republican Army, and the Good Friday Agreement with John M. Burney and Andrew J. Auge.
Today Sasha Abramsky joins in for the first time to talk about why small towns are so susceptible to far right rhetoric and if there is hope for the future. About our guest: Sasha Abramsky is The Nation 's Western correspondent. He is the author of several books, including The American Way of Poverty , The House of Twenty Thousand Books , Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World's First Female Sports Superstar , and most recently Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-...
The gang is back together as we return to Indiana Jones franchise to talk about archaeology, British imperialism, representation of India on film, and why Harrison Ford never looked cooler than he did on the bridge.
Physicist Matt Strassler drops in to talk about the origins of the universe and how we how what we know. About our guest: Dr. Matt Strassler is a theoretical physicist and writer. His research over the past thirty years has mainly been related mainly to the Large Hadron Collider , though he has written many papers on a wide variety of topics in string theory, quantum field theory and particle physics. He has recently completed a new book, called “Waves in an Impossible Sea“ , in which, without a...
This week Kevin Smokler drops in to talk about The Breakfast Club, the Brat Pack, John Hughes, and the legacy of 80s teen movies. About our guest: Kevin Smokler is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host focused on our relationship as human beings with pop culture. His most recent book BREAK THE FRAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN FILMMAKERS contains 24 career-retrospective conversations with directors behind box office phenomenon like Captain Marvel , Oscar winners like Free Solo and the fil...
April 1 marks the beginning of Autism Awareness Month in the U.S. and the U.K. so I invited neuroscientist Dr. Gina Rippon on the pod to talk about what autism is, the history of its diagnosis, and how women and girls have been overlooked in autism research. About our guest: Professor Gina Rippon is Professor Emeritus of Cognitive NeuroImaging at Aston University in the UK. Her research involves the use of state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to investigate developmental disorders such as a...
Talking today about why we have to keep fighting and why we must move forward. Because it's not about us.
This week Dr. Kit Heyem visits from across the Pond to talk about their new book, Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender . This was an awesome conversation to talk nonbinary histories through time and why that is relevant today. About our guest: Dr Kit Heyam (they/them or he/him) is a Leeds-based freelance writer, heritage practitioner, trans awareness trainer and academic. You can find them on Blue Sky at: https://bsky.app/profile/krheyam.bsky.social...
In 1992 Bill Duke teamed up with Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum to create one of the best film noirs ever made and a masterpiece of Black cinema. Walter Greason and Tim Fielder join in to talk about it, the rise of hip hop, and the early 90s. About our guests: A native of Mississippi, Tim Fielder is an illustrator, cartoonist, animator and OG Afrofuturist. He is the founder of Dieselfunk Studios, an intermedia storytelling company, and is an educator for institutions such as the New York F...
In the early 20th century, the New York Times dubbed French philosopher Henri Bergson as "the most dangerous man in the world." Bergson scared a lot of people in how he brought philosophy to the masses but he also won critical acclaim, receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature and France's highest honor, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur . Surprisingly, no English language biography exists of him. Until now. This week, Dr. Emily Herring joins in to talk about Bergson's rise to fame, his influ...
Imagine John Wick. Only instead of losing his puppy, he's lost his entire family because the British let them freeze to death. And imagine now that they're all in Ireland and it's the middle of the Famine. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Black '47 . Joining us to talk about this film and the misconceptions around the Irish Potato Famine is Padraic Scanlan, author of the new book Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine . This movie is bonkers and actually has a lot to say on Irish history. ...
Let’s talk about sex, baby. And food too. And while we’re at it, let’s talk with Dr. Rachel Hope Cleves about how conceptions of food and sex informed one another in the minds of Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries. Plus, we get into the ideas of food tourism, appropriation vs. appreciation, and our favorite food scenes in movies. About our guest: Hungry historian and novelist. Professor at the University of Victoria. Rachel Hope Cleves is the author of four award-winning works of history: ...
