Everything is a Primary Source Eric Paul

S3E34: "Lucky to Be There"Season FinaleWhat a way to cap off season 3 of the Everything is a Primary Source podcast; it was an absolute honor and pleasure to speak with storied 60s photographer Rowland Scherman and his friend, Michael E Jones, two makers and stewards of historical documents.  This podcast is a bit different from most EPS episodes in that we don't dissect a single piece of media, but rather get the behind the lens story behind the making of countless photographs.  Michael Jones is, among many things, a lawyer and expert on Art and Entertainment law.  He joined the interview to shed light on the fact that Rowland's work had been published without credit for years, keeping at least a generation of people in the dark about who was there, shooting photos, for some many pivotal moments in 1960s America.

 Today we’re headed to the public library where, after 1994, you could borrow a copy of both Forrest Gump the novel and Forrest Gump the movie. Plenty of people, including my first guest, did not realize that the 1994 Robert Zemeckis film began life as a book by celebrated writer Winston Groom, published in 1986. That’s a tendency credited to the positive critical and popular response the Tom Hanks movie received. In fact, if the book was translated to film verbatim, there’s a good chance it would be considered one of the wackiest movies ever made, instead of the sweeping baby-boomer epic that we got.I was so happy to collect the first part of this episode in Portsmouth, NH; it certainly provided great perspectives and new ideas. But who better to discuss a story which is very specific to Alabama society and culture than a trio of teachers from Alabama for the second part? 

S3E32: "The Flowers are Still Standing!" Today’s episode has us going back forty years to talk about one of the first–and one of the biggest—blockbuster movies of its era, 1984’s Ghostbusters. I spoke with Michael, a native New Yorker who now lives and teaches in Minnesota, and we chatted about some of the analytical questions needed to define Ghostbusters as a document of its time and place—the early 1980s in New York City--but not all of the questions were covered. If you and / or your class would like to add to the talk, just visit the Classroom section over at everything-history.com and see what’s available.

S3E31: "At Large"2004 fits into a rather brief era when documentary films were marketed on the same level as other theater-bound movies.  It is also a time period where more and more people were becoming acutely aware of counting calories and organic choices at the grocery store.  This was a perfect recipe for "Super Size Me," Morgan Spurlock's hands-on experiment with fast food and its ill health effects.Find the entry on it at everything-history.com/classroom to see how you can add to the conversation.

S3E30: "Dawning of a New Era"Twenty years ago saw the Internet evolving in ways unimagined just a few years before.  Mike, a fellow teacher, joins the EPS Podcast to dissect Eve Online, the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, which could be the best example of the radical changes taking place at the time on the World Wide Web.

S3E29: "Not as a 'Was', but an 'Is'" This episode touches on the Civil War’s presence in American popular culture by way of two artifacts-- Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, published in 1885, and the National Civil War Wax Museum which opened in Gettysburg Pennsylvania in April 1962—with a pair of interviews that were recorded on the same day last summer. I’m not exactly sure why these artifacts connected to the Civil War were selected from my assortment of pop culture memorabilia back to back like that; maybe it’s a testament to how the War is always with us.