We're washing some men right out of hair on this week's episode, as we cover the 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific ! Based on a short story from a collection of the same name and the musical adaptation, PhD candidate in American History at the University of Cambridge Samantha Lane joins to discuss the history behind Rodgers and Hammerstein's depiction of racial relations in the WW2 Pacific. We discuss the movie's place in commenting on racial relations back home in the mid-centu...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're going back to the West! This week we examine the 2015 survival thriller The Revenant. Associate Professor of Modern US History at St Peter's College and the University of Oxford Stephen Tuffnell joins to talk about Alejandro Iñárritu's tense and violent tale of the Western frontier where one man is pushed to the extreme in order to survive. (Does this movie do for bears that Jaws did for sharks?) We're talking all things Western on this episode — the Revenant’s relationship...
Jan 27, 2025•1 hr 25 min•Transcript available on Metacast And...Action! This week Flashback jumps to the more-recent past to discuss (for the first time!) Hollywood history. Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Manchester Naomi Sutton joins to discuss Robert Altman's 1992 film, The Player. This meta, Hollywood thriller-satire follows an anxious studio executive trying to a: save his job and b: get away with murder. Naomi and I discuss how his attempts at both reflect the changing dynamics of the movie business in the 1980s and 90s, Altman'...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Flashback has RETURNED from a thesis-finishing hiatus and bringing with it our first full-fledged Western episode: 1966’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, directed by Sergio Leone. Associate Professor of American History at the University of Durham Kevin Waite joins us to unpack the epic and legendary Spaghetti Western which follows three rapscallions as they search for lost Confederate gold at the height of the American Civil War. We discuss the film’s context next to other Westerns, older and ...
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast We will post no podcasts before their time...lucky for us this week's episode on Fast Times at Ridgemont High is ready for your ears! Lecturer in American and Media Studies at the University of Sussex Dr Charlie Jeffries joins to discuss Amy Heckerling's teen comedy cult classic about the lives of six teenagers growing up in southern California in the 1980s. We dive into the history of teenage sexuality, of abortion on screen, the story of the movie's source material (hello, Cameron ...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Pack your bags, because this week on Flashback we're going transnational with 1956's Around the World in Eighty Days, the Best Picture-winning adaptation of Jules Verne's 1872 novel which took audience members around the world in a mere three hours. DPhil student at the University of Oxford Neil Suchak joins to tackle this globe-trotting epic that has as many historical layers as it does minutes. We discuss why peace activists don't make for good cinema (the answer may surprise y...
Jun 12, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Something is afoot at the Watergate Comp– wait do you hear Bobby Sherman and giggling? In what is sure to be the first of many, Flashback covers its first Nixon movie with 1999's Dick, Andrew Fleming's Watergate scandal comedy which asks "what if two teenage girls were at the heart of the biggest scandal of the American presidency?" Presidential historian and Rothermere American Institute Research Fellow Rivers Gambrell joins to discuss this riotous but forgotten send-up of Wat...
May 29, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Well you can tell by the way we talk and talk...this week we're covering Saturday Night Fever, the 1977 dance-drama that took the world by storm with the story of one man's life as it revolves between the struggles of his working class Brooklyn neighborhood and his passion for disco. University of Oxford Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History Bruce Schulman joins to discuss this landmark movie which features a sparkling breakout performance from John Travolta and spawned one o...
May 15, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Do you hear...drumming? Must be the start of a new season of Flashback ! We start off the third season by covering Martin Scorsese's 2002 epic historical drama Gangs of New York, taking us to the streets of Five Points in the mid-nineteenth century and amidst rising tensions stemming from the Civil War. Junior Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute Mark Power Smith joins to discuss the role of party politics in the formation of American nationalism in the nineteenth century, Da...
May 01, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lord almighty, we feel out temperatures rising! Things are heating up this week on Flashback as we cover 2022's Elvis, director Baz Luhrmann's epic biopic (epi-io-pic?) following the career of musical legend Elvis Presley through his relationship with longtime manager Colonel Tom Parker. Dr Tyina Steptoe, Associate Professor of History at the University of Arizona and musical history expert, joins as we delve into the ways in which this bombastic film portrays Presley's relationships with rhythm...
Dec 05, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Flashback covers its first World War II film as we take a look at David Ayer's tank film Fury . Ruth Lawlor, postdoctoral research fellow at Cornell University, joins to help dissect this 2014 war blockbuster. We discuss the WWII as a film genre, the aesthetics of war films, sexual violence on the front, and whether Fury's historical grounding impeded its ability to be a good movie. This episode contains frank discussion of sexual violence, assault, and contains strong language. ...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast And we're live with a Flashback foray into the history of television. Historian of television and the Civil Rights Movement Sage Goodwin joins and offers her expert thoughts on 2005's Good Night and Good Luck, George Clooney's look at Edward R Murrow's and Fred Friendly's coverage of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communism hearings. Topics include the history of television finding its footing in the 1950s, the careers of Murrow and Friendly, the movie's commentary on the War on Terror, and more...
Nov 07, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Cue "Battle Hymn of the Republic", it's time for the Lincoln episode. Edward Osborn Professor of US Politics and Political History, host of The Last Best Hope? podcast, and Director of the RAI himself Adam Smith joins to talk Steven Spielberg's monumental 2012 biopic of the 16th president. We talk once again about the historical chameleon himself, Daniel Day Lewis, Lincoln the man (versus giant marble statue), congressional politics surrounding the Thirteenth Amendment, historical criticism of t...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Near...far...this podcast will go on! Welcome back to Flashback and our season two premiere, Titanic. Temporary Assistant Professor of American History at Cambridge Lewis Defrates joins as we tackle one of Hollywood's biggest films ever, James Cameron's 1997 romance-disaster epic that follows the lives of two star-crossed lovers aboard the infamous ship on its maiden and final voyage. We talk transatlantic crossings, class aboard the Titanic, and the long legacy of the disaster in media both bef...
Oct 10, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast TOONS! We're taking our first dive into animation with 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Robert Zemeckis's comedy-noir pastiche, inspired in parts by the novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, the Hollywood Studio system, and the decline of the Pacific Electric Railway Company. Surprised? Don't be! DPhil Josh Lappen joins to unpack why this family comedy where cartoons live amongst us actually draws from the rich history of Los Angeles. Along the way we also talk 1974's Chinatown and the grip it has o...
Aug 15, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's true, it's true – our episode on Jackie is here! DPhil student and resident RAI First Lady expert Liz Rees joins to discuss Pablo Larrain's Jackie, the 2016 microbiopic that follows (former) First Lady Jackie Kennedy in the days after the assassination of her husband, John F. Kennedy. We dive into first ladies in the popular psyche, the women of the East Wing who help transformed the role of the First Lady, and the relationship between legacy and the Kennedy Administration. Liz also makes t...
Aug 01, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast It had to happen eventually – this week we take our first foray into the world of Civil War film with 1989's Glory, Ed Zwick's epic about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first African American regiments to serve in the conflict. Joining us is Professor Jay Sexton, the Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair in Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. We talk reenactments, James Horner's score, the long trend of Civil War on film, and the film's continuing legacy, and much...
Jul 18, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast I drink your…podcast? This week we venture back to the American West as DPhil student and expert in the American missionary movement Gwion Wyn Jones joins to talk Paul Thomas Anderson’s sweeping 2007 epic about two men struggling to make their mark through oil or god at the turn of the century. Talk ranges from score composer Johnny Greenwood, the ties between religion and capital, evangelicalism in the American West, and of course, milkshakes. Follow us on twitter @Flshbckhistopod Flashback is ...
Jul 04, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to Flashback: American Historians on Movies ! We’re kicking things off with perhaps the biggest piece of history on film (and stage!) of our times – 2020’s filmed version of the 2015 stage musical Hamilton. Grace Mallon of the Conventions podcast joins and offers her excellent insights. Were early cabinet debates just like rap battles? Does Hamilton actually obscure the diversity of early America? Is it aware that the city of Philadelphia exists? We discuss all this and more in this firs...
Jun 20, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast 
