Armchair Historians

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Armchair Historians,  Anne Marie talks to Dr. Tara Green. Dr. Green has recently published not on but two books, See Me Naked and Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. See Me Naked: takes a look at the lives of noted black women, including actress, singer, and activist Lena Horne, stand-up comedian Moms Mabley, teacher and Harlem Renna...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Anne Marie interviews memoirist and award-winning poet Jason Sommer. Jason is the author of five poetry collections: most recently, Portulans in the University of Chicago’s Phoenix Poets Series. His two other Phoenix books are Other People’s Troubles , which won the Society of Midland Authors Award and was a finalist for the PEN/USA West Award, and The Man Who Sle...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Armchair Historians, Anne Marie talks to Jeannie Barbour. Jeannie is the Content Producer of the recently released film, Montford: The Chickasaw Rancher starring Martin Sensmeier, Tommy Flanagan, Dermot Mulroney, and Grace Montie. The movie brings to life the true rags to riches story of Montford T. Johnson who built a cattle ranching empire on the Western plain...

Send us Fan Mail Anne Marie talks to  American politician, criminal justice professor and author of the first red flag gun law in the nation, Mike Lawlor about the Sandy Hook Shooting and the history of gun legislation. Trigger warning. We talk about gun violence and mass shootings in this episode. This episode is being released on the 9-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting. Resources: Mike...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Armchair Historians, Anne Marie talks to Kevin Kuharic about his recently published book, A Clutter of Patchwork Squares: A Chronicle of Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery. For those of you who have been following us from the beginning, you may remember that my first episode was a three-part series in which Mr. Kuharic shared the history of famous hotelier and French ch...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode , Anne Marie talks to Jeffrey H. Jackson, historian and author of the book Paper Bullets which captures the riveting and courageous story of Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, two gender norm-defying artists better known as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who undertook a dangerous years-long anti-propaganda campaign, which used art to demoralize the Nazis. Paper Bull...

Send us Fan Mail It's literally sickening. In this episode Lindsay Valenty talks to Anne Marie about how deadly it was to live during the Victorian era. From toxic Scheele's Green to ballerinas on fire...literally, find out some of the many ways the Victorians were hell bent on destroying themselves on this Lindsay Valenty is the host of "Ye Olde Crime" podcast, where she and h...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Anne Marie talks to DC By Foot tour guide Melissa Gilbert. Melissa specializes in the Ghosts of Georgetown and shares some of the DC neighborhood's scary tales with us today. Originally from Bullhead City, Arizona, the unceded lands of the Pipa Aha Macav, Melissa Leigh Gilbert has spent her career working in Theater Arts and Education but a lifetime of pursui...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to episode five of our 2021 Halloween Season Series! This one promises to scare the living daylights out of you.  In this episode,  Anne Marie talks to fellow history podcaster Craig Baird who tells us the tail of the Valley of the Headless Men. Steeped in lore and legend, this isolated valley is situated in Nahani National Park Reserve along the Nahanni River in the North...

Send us Fan Mail This is the fourth episode of our 2021 Halloween Season series 👻🧛‍♀️ In this episode, Lauren McDonough, cohost of Operation History,  tells us about the nineteenth-century vampire scare of Rhode Island. Yep, you heard me right, vampire scare! Lauren describes herself as a 20-something corn miller with a master's in colonial American history. She is one of four cohosts of th...

Send us Fan Mail This episode has it all! Several weeks back we put out a call for spooky stories on Twitter. The response was incredible!! This is one of the Halloween season episodes that resulted. Brenda Ganske has crafted a truly horrifying history that has everything, horse hauntings, successful squatters, angry town's people, murders, and much more. Sit back fellow Armchair Historians a...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Anne Marie talks to Amanda Woods, cohost of Encounters: A Paranormal Experience. You guessed it, a podcast about the paranormal. Amanda chose to talk about a haunting in the United States that began a movie franchise, but more than that, it is the haunting that helped to launch the paranormal into the mainstream. Whether you believe in ghosts or not this episode h...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Anne Marie chats with Ethan Healey about Mary Todd Lincoln and her desire to connect with the spirits of her loved ones, including two children who died in childhood, through seances and spiritualism. Ethan Healey is a BA History student at New England College in Henniker, NH. His thesis is on John Adams during retirement and how Adams views the legacy he left beh...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode Anne Marie is doing something a little bit different. You may recall that she  interviewed her great nephew Finley for Armchair Historian's New Year’s 2021 episode. If you haven’t done so we highly recommend listening to that episode (it’s one of our favorites) Well Finley and Anne Marie talked about a lot of things, some of which did not make into the final c...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Anne Marie talks to history geek, storyteller, and tour operator, Chris Albrecht about Golden Colorado's history, The town that almost became the capital of Colorado. Chris says, "there’s no better way to get to know a city than having a local teach you about it through stories.  You can also get great recommendations for things to do, when to do them, a...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Anne Marie talks to Caroline Welling VanDeusen. Caroline is the author of Diary of Elizabeth Dixon, 1845-47 published in White House History, Issue 33, by the White House Historical Association. You may wonder who Elizabeth Dixon is because Elizabeth actually worked hard to erase herself from history. She went so far as to pay off reporters not to write about her....

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Anne Marie talks to The Slave Dwelling Project founder Joe McGill. Joe shares his journey and passion project. According to theslavedwellingproject.com , The Slave Dwelling Project envisions a future in which the hearts and minds of Americans acknowledge a more truthful and inclusive narrative of the history of The Nation, one that honors the contributions of all...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode Anne Marie talks  to La Percée du Bocage museum president, Billy Leblond and Men in the Shed Blogger, Colin Foster about Operation Bluecoat and the story behind Men in the Shed. Men in the Shed tells the story of 18 Allied POWs who literally left their mark on the wall of a wooden shed owned by a French baker in Normandy. The shed (commandeered by the German milita...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Anne Marie talks to Living London History blogger Jack Cheser about her most favorite place in the world, London. Like many history lovers, Jack is interested in the tangible, liveable and breathable history we are surrounded by as we go about our everyday lives.  He started his blog so that he could share his journey discovering London’s fascinating and vibrant p...

Send us Fan Mail WARNING: The subject matter in this episode might be too disturbing for some people as it contains details of a holocaust survivors story. In this episode, Rebecca Goos tells the story of her beloved grandfather, Sol Liber. Sol's story is a harrowing one of survival through one of our histories darkest events, the holocaust. Rebecca shares Saul's story through the filter...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode Anne Marie talks to do-gooder Corinna Bellizzi, host and producer of care more. be better podcast. Corinna reaches back to her anthropology roots and shares her take on the archaic human species Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, better known as Neanderthal, how the species has been misinterpreted and misrepresented by the academic gatekeepers of anthropological and ar...

Send us Fan Mail Anne Marie talks to Impressions of America (IA) podcast co-host Tobi Olowe. Tobi talks about the Human Potential Movement of the 1960s, who were its proponents, where do we see its effects today and the magnificent pop culture that came out of it. Tobi is a London based History Graduate with a deep and evolving interest in American History and popular culture. He is particularly f...

Send us Fan Mail James McKissic shares the legacy of his great great-great-grandfather, Wilson Woods, who was born into slavery in Meigs County, Tennessee during the 1820's. Wilson's mother was a slave named Mary, his father was also his owner. When Mr. Mckissic's mother shared his ancestor's 1862 bill of sale (between his two white half brothers), with James, he shared it with...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Armchair Historians, Anne Marie talks to Impressions of America podcast co-host, Simon Heptinstall. You may remember a couple weeks back we talked to another of the Impressions of America co-host, Vaughn Joy, about how American culture is reflected in Christmas films during the Cold War period. If you haven’t done so already, I strongly recommend that episode. ...

Send us Fan Mail Anne Marie chats with comedian, actor and TEDx Talk presenter Erik Escobar. They compare notes on the 1980's, she having lived it from the inside and he having admired the decade from the outside. Can a millennial teach a baby boomer something new about the decade of decadence? Eric has appeared on Fox's I Can See Your Voice, BuzzFeed, NBC's Last Comic Standing (Sea...