300 episodes

We believe that when people think historically, they are engaging in a disciplined way of thinking about the world and its past. We believe it gives thinkers a knack for recognizing nonsense; and that it cultivates not only intellectual curiosity and rigor, but also intellectual humility. Join Al Zambone, author of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life, as he talks with historians and other professionals who cultivate the craft of historical thinking.

Historically Thinking Al Zambone

    • History
    • 4.9 • 79 Ratings

We believe that when people think historically, they are engaging in a disciplined way of thinking about the world and its past. We believe it gives thinkers a knack for recognizing nonsense; and that it cultivates not only intellectual curiosity and rigor, but also intellectual humility. Join Al Zambone, author of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life, as he talks with historians and other professionals who cultivate the craft of historical thinking.

    Intellectual Humility and Historical Thinking: Mark Carnes

    Intellectual Humility and Historical Thinking: Mark Carnes

    Today’s guest is Mark Carnes, Professor of History at Barnard College. His academic speciality is modern American history and pedagogy. Among his many books are an edited volume, Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America (University of Chicago Press, 1992), and Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (Yale University Press, 1989). An interest in how history appears in things other than histories led him to edit Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, and Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America's Past (and Each Other)—both of which have a dazzlingly impressive array of contributors. In 1995 Mark Carnes pioneered a new pedagogy, a role-playing pedagogy—now known as Reacting to the Past— which placed students and their efforts to understand the past in the center of the classroom experience. He has written several games in the Reacting to the Past series, as well as Minds on Fire: How Role-Immersion Games Transform College, which he and I discussed way back in Episode 16. (I also discussed RTP in Episode 77 with historian Nick Proctor; and the philosophy of educational games with Kellian Adams in Episode 18.) 



    As is always the case with these conversations, and unlike more typical conversations on the podcast, we will be following a set format of questions…though we reserve the right to wander off the set path.

    • 51 min
    351: Pox Romana

    351: Pox Romana

    By the reign of Marcus Arelius, Rome seems to be unquestioned in its reach of its power, its wealth, and its cultural and intellectual sophistication. The Pax Romana stretched from Britain and Portugal to Syria and Egypt. Yet at the moment of its seemingly greatest achievements, Rome was struck by a disease that annihilated its legions and ravaged its cities. This was the Antonine plague, perhaps history's first pandemic. Its origins and its diagnosis remain a mystery. But my guest Colin Elliott argues that it was both the cause and effect of the empire's decline, a disease which both exposed the crumbling foundations of the empire and then accelerated that crumbling.



    Colin Elliott is Associate Professor of History at Indiana University. His most recent book is Pox Romana: The Plague that Shook the Roman World, and it is the subject of our conversation today.



    For Further Investigation



    * Colin Elliot's podcast is The Pax Romana Podcast

    * If you've missed it, go back and listen to Tom Holland explain how The Romans Were Not Like Us in Episode 335

    * This podcast loves a good pandemic, so long as it is at a great historical distance. We've talked about the immediate consequences of the Black Death with Professor Mark Bailey in Episode 207, and the long term consequences of the Black Death with Jamie Belich in Episode 275

    * For more on historical disaster, see the conversation with David Potter on disruption in Episode 224

    • 1 hr 9 min
    Episode 350: Revolutionary Age

    Episode 350: Revolutionary Age

    From the 1760s into the 1830s, waves of revolutions rolled up upon the shores of the Atlantic World, confusing or destroying entrenched political and social hierarchies, and ushering in a new era of democratic rule. These of course were headlined by the American and French Revolutions, but there were no less important ones that quickly followed: not only the Haitian revolution, but in the Andes, in Italy, and eventually throughout the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas. It was a period of unprecedented and–perhaps–unmatched political, economic, social, and artistic upheaval. 



    This is the canvas for Nathan Perl-Rosenthal in his new book The Age of Revolutions: And the Generations Who Made It. It spans multiple continents, touching on both familiar and very unfamiliar people and places. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal is Professor of History at the University of Southern California. His previous book was Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution. 



    For Further Investigation



    As I said at the beginning of the conversation, this is one of a series on the revolutionary connections of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For an intro, see my conversation with David Bell in Episode 176. Micah Alpaugh described how certain means were adopted and adapted by revolutionary movements in that era. And Episode 288 with Jonathan Singerton was about the influence of the American Revolution on the Hapsburg Empire.

    • 1 hr 9 min
    Intellectual Humility and Historical Thinking: Leah Shopkow

    Intellectual Humility and Historical Thinking: Leah Shopkow

    Today’s guest in our series of conversations on intellectual humility and historical thinking is Leah Shopkow, Professor of History at Indiana University in Bloomington. She is a historian of the Middle Ages, specifically of medieval France, and she began her career by studying the history written by medieval chroniclers, which led to her book History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. Since then she has also edited one of those historical texts, William of Andres' The Chronicle of Andres.  Interest in medieval historiography morphed, naturally or unnaturally depending on your point of view, into an interest in the pedagogy of history. She has written numerous articles on the topic, and was the founding co-director and the principal investigator of the History Learning Project at Indiana University. Most recently she has combined both of these interests in her book The Saint and the Count: A Case Study for Reading Like a Historian, which she and I discussed in Episode 203 of this podcast.



     



    For Further Investigation



    For more on the moves–or dispositions–of historical thinking, go to our series on historical thinking.

    • 42 min
    Episode 349: Fallingwater

    Episode 349: Fallingwater

    Fallingwater, perched above Bear Run in southwestern Pennsylvania is Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece, a house perhaps as recognizable as any other in the United States–and it's not even on the nickel. Less known is that it was designed and built at the end of decades of despair and seeming futility in the architect's life, a series of circumstances that would have broken nearly anyone else. Fallingwater is not only an instantiation of Wright’s developing philosophy of architecture, but of his near fanatical determination to prevail against all enemies — often, most notably, himself.  But Fallingwater is also a monument to the Depression era, even though it seems very far removed from our mental images of what "the Depression" was like.



    With me today is Catherine W. Zipf, an award-winning architectural historian. She is executive Director of the Bristol, historical and preservation Society in Bristol, Rhode Island, and author of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: American Architecture in the Depression Era, which is the subject of our conversation today



    For Further Investigation



    * Fallingwater

    * Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin: the one in Wisconsin

    * Midway Gardens

    * Wingspread

    * The classic book to read about Chicago and its hinterland is William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

    * William R. Drennan, Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders

    * Wright in Los Angeles, and his "California Romanza": The Hollyhock House, and the Ennis House

    * This 1996 Library of Congress exhibit, "Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape, 1922-1932", covers one of the decades that Catherine Zipf and I talked about. It is full of beautiful designs, none of which were ever built. Some of the most impressive things in the exhibit are the meticulous models of the landscape in which Wright proposes to build.

    * Catherine briefly mentioned that many houses of the 1920s, most of which are in revival style. For proof of this, see the architectural plans sold by Dover Publications

    * Frank Lloyd Wright explains why he wrote his Autobiography

    * Lincoln Logs and the Hollywood Bowl

    * Listeners to recent podcasts will note some resonance with aspects of my recent conversation about Henry Wallace; but attentive long-time listeners will also note some curious resonance over the question of what is natural with Episode 222, about the career and views of Harvey Wiley.

    • 1 hr 19 min
    Episode 348: Nasty Little War

    Episode 348: Nasty Little War

    In the summer of 1918, hoping to somehow re engage the Russians in the First World War as the Allied offensive on the western front began, thousands of Allied troops began to land in ports in Russia’s far north, far east, and far south. It was the beginning of one of the most ambitious military ventures of the twentieth century. Following the armistice with Germany, Allied forces in Russian not only remained, but expanded. Eventually 180,000 troops from fifteen different countries would participate. As either a means of bringing Russian into the war, or strangling the Bolshevik regime in its crib, the intervention was a failure, and quickly forgotten in those nations who had participated in it. But it was a long-cherished memory in the Soviet Union, it arguably stoked global turmoil for decades to come, and it remains firmly a part of the “pick-n’-mix, might-is-right narrative” of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. 



    Anna Reid was the Kyiv correspondent for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, from 1993 to 1995. She has written about Ukraine for Foreign Affairs, the Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. Her books include The Shaman’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia; Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II; and Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. Her most recent book is A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention into the Russian Civil War, which is the subject of our conversation today.



    For Further Investigation



    * There are numerous podcasts in the Historically Thinking archive that relate to this one. You might begin with Episode 65: The First Year of the Russian Revolution, before moving on to Episode 193: The Plot to Bring Down the Soviet Revolution, which covers some of the same territory as this conversation.

    * We talk a little about Siberia; you might also be interested in listening to Episode 212: The Perennial Russian Pivot to Asia

    • 1 hr 12 min

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5
79 Ratings

79 Ratings

orthoagnostic ,

A Window more people need to look through

Brings the past to life and reveals complexities, subtleties, and understandings that broad brushes almost always miss.

IkeM96 ,

Thoughtful and Interesting

This is a really interesting podcast. Hosted by a historian, it is a great resource for anyone wanting to engage in history on a deeper level. As a high school history teacher, I have learned a great deal not just about particular topics but about how to think and ask questions like a historian. Highly recommended.

Nosuch11 ,

Great for history lovers

Great guests, a well-prepared interviewer, good topics. Home run.

Top Podcasts In History

The Rest Is History
Goalhanger Podcasts
Throughline
NPR
American Scandal
Wondery
American History Tellers
Wondery
You're Wrong About
Sarah Marshall
Lore
Aaron Mahnke

You Might Also Like

Disorder
Goalhanger & Global Enduring Disorder Ltd
In Our Time
BBC Radio 4
Behind The Lines with Arthur Snell
Arthur Snell
History Extra podcast
Immediate Media
The Last Best Hope?
Adam Smith
Booknotes+
C-SPAN