As human beings, our privacy is one of our most basic needs and most sacred rights. However, in the modern information age, these rights are constantly under attack. How does the American federal government collect our data and what happens when the institutions meant to protect our privacy opts to instead use that information for their gain? On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Victor Ye interviews Robert Scheer to discuss how we can best protect ourselves in an era where the U.S. governme...
Dec 08, 2022•41 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast Technology plays a vital role in our society day-to-day, but what exactly is our role when it comes to managing our tech? How do our internal biases impact the products we create? Can technological advances actually be “neutral” as a product of human imagination? These are all questions to consider as we take a look at how human and computational infrastructures overlap. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Caroline Somers interviews Professor Thomas S. Mullaney to discuss the impact of tec...
Dec 01, 2022•32 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast The gay bar has long since been a locale of sexual expression, community, and most importantly, identity. If the gay bar was what Atherton Lin describes as, “a place where we hoped we could find ourselves,” what does it mean for queer identity when the spaces that once shaped and defined it are steadily vanishing in urban centers world-wide? In his wistful personal and cultural memoir, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out (named one of the best books of 2021 by the New York Times, NPR, and Vogue), essayist ...
Nov 24, 2022•29 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast More American residents are behind bars than any other nation. While the U.S. Criminal Justice System was established to regulate peace and order, it has since become the catalyst for criminalizing of people of color. Fueled by initiatives like Nixon’s “War on Drugs” campaign, which unfairly targeted communities of color, mass incarceration has steadily been on the rise. Despite the staggering amount of people behind bars, the crime rates haven’t exactly been on the decline, raising the question...
Nov 17, 2022•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has roots in strong firearm regulation and gun safety policy, but over the years, it’s become a mantra for gun rights advocates. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Ellie Carver-Horner interviews Professor Adam Winkler about how over time, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the right to bear arms) historically caused a major divide in the United States and the impact of that extreme split today. BOOK: Gunfight: The Battle Over the R...
Nov 10, 2022•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast The first amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that everyone has the right to practice his or her own religion or no religion at all. A similar guarantee exists in Canada under its Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, this right to religious freedom hasn’t necessarily been assured for practitioners of traditional African religions throughout history in North America and beyond. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Jordan Pettiford interviews Dr. Danielle Boaz to discus...
Nov 03, 2022•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast There are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations in the United States today, nearly three million people, but their stories have largely been omitted from the nation’s history. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Gavin Scott interviews acclaimed historian and activist, Professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and takes a look at U.S. History through the lens of Indigenous Peoples and unpacks what we’ve been missing as a nation without their perspective. BOOK: An Indigenous Pe...
Oct 27, 2022•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Throughout the world, democratic progress has not only halted, but receded over the past few years and the United States has been one of the main perpetrators. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Oliver Wang interviews Former Deputy National Security Advisor of the United States (Obama Administration), Ben Rhodes to discover who is to blame for the global fall of democracy and how we might return to a truly democratic identity. BOOK: After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the Worl...
Oct 20, 2022•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Untextbooked is a movement of curious students from around the world -- and we are BACK with new episodes and new questions. What perspectives do we miss in history class? What historical forces shape our lives today? We study up on topics that interest us -- indigenous history, the status of democracy, future of technology -- and then reach out to scholars to have a conversation for the podcast. Listen every Thursday wherever you listen to podcasts. Hit the follow button on Spotify or the littl...
Oct 20, 2022•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’ve completed our second season of UnTextbooked! Our team of young producers have done phenomenal work exploring topics and questions that really matter, including episodes about the War on Terror, Native American boarding schools, population control, and much more. In this episode our editor Bethany Denton shares excerpts from four of her favorite Season 2 episodes: Is every presidency doomed to fail? Can the War on Terror ever truly end? Does population control work? Why were Native American...
Mar 10, 2022•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Cold War was a decades-long military conflict that dominated geopolitics in the latter half of the 20th century. And as Americans, we often see it framed as a binary conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union; one that ended around the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. But historian Odd Arne Westad, author of The Global Cold War, thinks that version of the story is incomplete. The US and USSR never engaged in direct combat with one another, so the Cold War was fought indir...
Dec 07, 2021•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast The United States is still reckoning with its history of racism. For a century after slavery ended, US businesses, banks, schools, and neighborhoods were segregated by race. It took a series of Supreme Court cases and acts of Congress to legally ban discrimination based on race, but discrimination isn’t just a switch that can be turned from “on” to “off.” The legacy of these unfair laws still affect Black Americans today. One example of this is is a method of housing discrimination called “redli...
Dec 02, 2021•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast There is a fundamental duality in how Asian Americans are perceived in our country. They’ve at times been held up as the “model minority”, affirming this idea that the American Dream is alive and well if only immigrants could work harder. At other times they’ve been regarded as threatening and perpetually foreign. A recent example of this is the dramatic rise in anti-Asian violence in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Victor Ye interviews Dr. Erika Lee,...
Nov 29, 2021•27 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast American food is unlike anything else in the world. And it goes a lot deeper than hamburgers and pizza. The thing that makes American food special is the stunning variety of options and how accessible it is to the average consumer. Also some regional American dishes that are impossible to find anywhere else on the planet Dr. Paul Freedman is a historian who thinks that all of these factors--standardization, variety, and regionality--can tell us a lot about American culture and identity. On this ...
Nov 25, 2021•25 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast It’s no secret that society will eventually have to transition away from fossil fuels. Some governments and businesses think the answer is biofuels,like ethanol. Ethanol is a type of alcohol—the same type of alcohol that humans have been producing for millenia. And so, in much of the world, the techniques to produce ethanol are already known and exploited. All it takes is the fermentation of sugary crop, like potatoes, corn, or sugarcane. The result is a clear liquid fuel that can power engines,...
Nov 22, 2021•23 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast For centuries, Iran had a strict social hierarchy that prevented women—particularly upper class women—from participating in public life. This started to change in the early 20th century when Iranians became disillusioned with the ruling class and had a constitutional revolution. This new constitution established a parliament, public schools, and also opened the door for women to start asserting their own rights to education and employment. Following the constitutional revolution was a period of ...
Nov 18, 2021•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s a lot of evidence that America is more divided than ever. Our politics, media, and ideologies are so polarized that it puts a stress on our unity as a country. But Dr. Denis Lacorne says that, in spite of that tension, America’s strength comes from our nation’s commitment to tolerance. The trick is figuring out the balance of tolerating the intolerant. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Karly Shepherd interviews Dr. Lacorne about his book The Limits of Tolerance. They explore the ...
Nov 15, 2021•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Founders of the United States envisioned the presidency as an office that would be minimal in reach. They didn’t want the USA to be a monarchy. But incrementally, the executive branch has expanded. And now, scholars like Dr. Jeremi Suri argue that the modern presidency is crushed by its own power and unable to be fully wielded by the President, leading to decades of broken promises and deep disillusionment amongst citizens. On this episode, UnTextbooked producer Lap Nguyen interviews Profess...
Nov 11, 2021•25 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast UnTextbooked producer Sydne Clarke thinks that African American history is often oversimplified or overlooked. Often that history is taught as things that happened to African Americans. We don’t often hear about the ways in which African Americans fought for and took care of themselves. Dr. Leslie Alexander studies Black resistance movements, particularly in America. In her research Dr. Alexander has discovered communities and people who were vital to Black activism, but are often forgotten in r...
Nov 08, 2021•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Greek poet Archilochus said “a fox knows many things, a hedgehog knows one big thing.” This phrase inspired a famous essay by a 20th century philosopher named Isaiah Berlin, who said that pretty much all people can be categorized as either “foxes” or “hedgehogs”. Foxes tend to be agile and perceptive, whereas hedgehogs tend to be resolute and hyper-focused on their end goal. Historian John Lewis Gaddis took Berlin’s framework one step further. In his book On Grand Strategy, Dr. Gaddis catego...
Nov 04, 2021•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast With a name like “The United States of America”, it can be easy to forget that this country’s borders extend well beyond the fifty states of the union. In fact, millions of American citizens live on US territory well outside those borders. It’s not just Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the North Mariana Islands, but the many military bases we occupy across the globe too. “Empire” might not always be a word associated with the USA, but some historians think the label ...
Nov 01, 2021•22 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast A hundred years ago, there were roughly 2 billion people in the world. Today, there are almost 8 billion. This rapid quadrupling of the world’s population has people asking, is the planet overpopulated? Some say, yes. Others say that it’s not so simple. This isn’t a new question. Researchers in the 19th and 20th centuries warned that unfettered population growth would lead to famine, poverty, and climate destruction. Some governments and aid agencies took those warnings to heart, and implemented...
Oct 28, 2021•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the spring of 2021, UnTextbooked producer Gavin Scott read a headline that made his heart sink. The remains of 215 indigenous children were discovered buried in a mass grave near the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia. Over the next few months, more mass graves were found outside of other Canadian residential schools. Before they died, these children had been part of a program of forced assimilation. For more than a century, thousands of indigenous children in Ca...
Oct 25, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast One morning in 1991, Senator Jesse Helms’ house was covered with a giant fake condom in an act of protest. Helms had been a vocal opponent of funding AIDS research and he had introduced an infamous and popular bill amendment that prevented federal money from being spent on AIDS research. There were few treatments available at the time, and with no help from the government, HIV was actively spreading across the country. In 1991 alone, nearly 30,000 American died of AIDS, and the numbers would kee...
Oct 21, 2021•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast The War On Terror is the longest foreign war the United States has ever fought. So long that many of the soldiers fighting weren’t even alive when it started. But the WoT seems unusual for another reason—it’s not a war on a nation, or even an organization—it’s a war against a concept. September 11, 2001 was the alleged start date of this conflict, after the Twin Towers fell. President George W. Bush stood before congress announcing, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end th...
Oct 18, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Season 2 of UnTextbooked is near! New episodes starting Monday, Octoberr 18th, 2021. Join us for 15 more interviews where young people ask historians the questions that matter most. Watch the video trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB46hxDFQ58 And come to our launch party: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkcO6vqTkiGdRvraFhbERExj8gxGWbW2DR
Oct 11, 2021•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’ve wrapped our first season of UnTextbooked! Our producers have explored race, food, piracy, gender, medicine and so much more. In this episode, UnTextbooked editor Bethany Denton shares five of her favorite moments from the season: How a Black teenager and his young lawyer changed America's criminal justice system. Most Americans eat like kings without realizing it. Damnation to the governor and confusion to the colony. Germany addressed its racist past. Can America do the same? History fail...
Feb 04, 2021•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Throughout this series, we’ve heard historians say that the way Americans think about race is changing, as evidenced by the unprecedented numbers of Americans marching after George Floyd’s death. And along with this surge in action are critical conversations about what it means to be an ally, and what it means to “perform” allyship. UnTextbooked producer Daniel Ardity noticed what he thought to be a lot of empty support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020--particularly when...
Dec 03, 2020•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast People in the West have many harmful perceptions about Muslim women being submissive or oppressed. In fact, a study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that only 19% of Americans believed that Islam is respectful of women. These beliefs have been reinforced for centuries through media portrayals and stereotypes. One of those persistent stereotypes is that Muslim women are forced against their will to wear hijab, and as a result the veil has come to symbolize women’s oppression. These misc...
Nov 30, 2020•16 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast It’s undeniable that the way people eat has changed drastically in the last century. It took thousands of years for human societies to transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers. By contrast, it’s only been in the last hundred years or so that people have moved away from growing their own crops and raising their own livestock to getting most of their food from a restaurant or store. Food historian Rachel Laudan thinks that this recent and rapid transition is ultimately a good thing. She takes i...
Nov 26, 2020•29 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast 
