Dig: A History Podcast

Frontiers, Episodes #4 of 4. Find the transcript and complete show notes at digpodcast.org. Victorian-era European imperialism was facilitated by the thousands of missionaries, businessmen, soldiers, and private police forces employed by the religious, economic, and military institutions of “civilized” Europe, but there were also individuals that facilitated this process, such as Henry Morton Stan...

Frontiers #3 of 4. Black cowboys made up at least one third of the cowhands that drove cattle along the long trails from Texas to mid-western and northern points in the middle of the 19th century. But you’d never know that from the images of the “cowboy” in popular culture. Contrary to popular media depictions, black cowboys were integral to the transformation of the West. They joined the round-up...

Frontiers Series, Episode #2 of 4. Is space the new frontier? What are the links between the so-called “age of exploration,” the conquering of the American West, and the United States space program? We will be covering those questions and others in today's podcast, The Final Frontier: History, Science, and Space Exploration. Bibliography and transcript at digpodcast.org. Show Notes Howard McCurdy,...

Frontiers #1 of 4. Fur trading and frontier life in French Canada. As frontiers typically are, the story of the French Canadian wilderness has been a gendered one since its earliest iterations. If it ever existed in reality, this straightforward, masculine escape was complicated by complex alliances with matrilineal aboriginals and state-sponsored waves of immigration that brought radical women, a...

Creepy, Occult, and Otherworldly Episode #4 of 4. Get a complete transcript of this episode at digpodcast.org. Today we are discussing the bone-chilling fear that comes from knowing that all hope is gone, and your death – from the cold, or from a slow moving disease, or from starvation – is only a matter of time. We’re talking about the quest to explore the Arctic. Sources: George Lippard. The Gre...

Creepy, Occult, and Otherworldly Episode #3 of 4. Get a complete transcript of this episode at digpodcast.org. The Lalaurie Mansion in New Orleans, Louisiana, is said to be one of the most haunted houses in the French Quarter. The extreme and shocking stories that are told about the Lalaurie house are egregiously exaggerated and overwhelmingly gloss over the real issues of race, gender, and violen...

Creepy, Occult, and Otherworldly Episode #2 of 4. Get a complete transcript and the show notes for this episode at digpodcast.org. An old woman with a pointy hat, cauldron, broom, cat, and smelly brew? Why, she must be a witch! This tableau has titillated and thrilled and terrified Europeans and Americans for centuries. But this woman is not communing with the devil or cursing her neighbors. She’s...

Creepy, Occult, and Otherworldly Episode #1 of 4. Get a complete transcript and sources for this episode at digpodcast.org. Instagram accounts like @Mrs_Angemi and @CrimeSceneCleanersInc boast hundreds of thousands of followers, all hoping to catch a glimpse of morbid pathology and the biohazardous remnants of foul play. This is obviously not a niche thing. We are just as much fascinated by violen...

Slavery #4 of 4. complicated story. Enslaved people in the Caribbean resorted to active resistance much more often than their North American and South American counterparts. Haiti (known then as St. Domingue), Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dutch Guianas were particularly prone to slave revolts, averaging one major revolt every two years between 1731 and 1832. No other slave societies have quite so co...

Slavery #3 of 4. Show Notes and a complete transcript available at digpodcast.org. Today, we’re really excited to have an extra special episode for you. We’re honored to present this episode in conjunction with the PBS series, Secrets of the Dead. Coming up this October, Secrets of the Dead will be airing the story of the Woman in the Iron Coffin, in which a team of death detectives will reconstru...

Slavery #2 of 4. In today’s episode we are discussing some laws in the United States that governed the bodies and lives of enslaved people and follow how those laws changed, or didn’t change, through emancipation and into the late twentieth century. So buckle up for a long look at Slave Codes, Black Codes, and Jim Crow laws in America. Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your a...

Slavery #1 of 4. Get the Show Notes or read the full transcript at digpodcast.org. Between 1522 and 1536, the second most powerful man in the Ottoman empire was Ibrahim Pasha. The most surprising thing about Ibrahim Pasha is not his diplomatic successes or his untimely demise. What is most surprising about Ibrahim Pasha, the second most powerful man in the Ottoman Empire between 1522-36, is that h...

Original Research #4 of 4. Get a complete transcript and see the show notes at digpodcast.org The nation first had to truly grapple with the extraordinary expenses of war was after the American Civil War. As part of our series highlighting our own research fields, today we’re talking about Civil War veterans and disability, trauma, gore, crime, and extraordinary federal expenditures. Learn more ab...

 The death of a young child was a very real and emotional experience for many families during the American Progressive Era. However, at the dawn of the twentieth century many Americans came to expect a better outcome in the life expectancy of their children. In the new age of industrial capitalism with rapidly changing technology, medical professionalization, and increasing wealth, America could h...

Original Research #2 of 4. Get Show Notes and Transcripts at digpodcast.org. The case of the Dublin Castle Scandal was no ordinary trial, because this one included sex between men. Like most crimes, sodomy was usually a case of men caught in the act by patrolling policemen, or was otherwise uncovered by normal police work. The discovery of this particular government sex scandal, however, was the w...

Original Work #1 of 4. Employment agencies and classified job ads have a much longer history than you might think. Join us for a brief history of early modern employment agencies. Stick around for a preview of how Marissa is using this fascinating history in her dissertation about wet nursing in London and Philadelphia in the eighteenth century. Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more ab...

Fashion #4 of 4. Underwear, the unseen garments which sit in close proximity to genitals, skin, and all sorts of unmentionable orifices, are the most poorly-documented garments in history yet they shaped bodies, minds, and societies in complex and interesting ways. Sometimes we do really tight, analytical episodes. This is not one of those episodes. The history of underwear does not lend itself to...

Fashion #3 of 4. Get Show Notes & a complete transcript at digpodcast.org. Who wears the pants in this relationship? If someone asks you this question, you probably understand what they mean. Who is the dominant one in the relationship? Who holds the power, the influence, the final say? From its earliest utterances, it was intended to challenge women who dared to seize too much autonomy in social...

 Fashion #2 of 4. The suit has been the standard of Western men’s fashion, with some slight alterations, since at least the late 1600s. Not only that, but since the 1970s, even women, when they need to signal their professionalism, are expected to wear a feminized version of the suit. Why has the suit become the standard for professional wear? How have suits changed over the centuries? And what do...

Fashion #1 of 4. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire is one of the most horrendous industrial catastrophes in American history. In all, 146 people, mostly women and children, died in the fire. It shocked New York City and the nation and led to some of the most sweeping labor and safety reforms in history. In this episode we explore the labor conditions that led to the Triangle Fire as well as the fashion...

Fashion Re-Release. Marissa and Sarah discuss Georgians’ and Victorians’ love affair with Tuberculosis and the tuberculean aesthetic in fashion and art. In Georgian London, some diseases started to seem fashionable, desirable even. Gambling was popular, elites were using snuff and drinking spirits, powdering their hair, whitening their faces with toxic creams, damaging their bodies with restrictiv...

Environmentalism #4 of 4. Shinto - In Japan, recognizing the spirit of all things - from trees to mountains to interestingly shaped rocks - is part of Shinto. Older than writing in Japan, Shinto is the root of Japanese values and ways of thinking. Shinto is why the concepts of purity and impurity govern daily life, in the simple acts of gargling, hand washing, and removing shoes upon entry to a ho...

Environmental history #3 of 4. The 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora changed history. The year following the eruption, 1816 was known in England as the “Year without a Summer,” in New England as 18-hundred-and-froze-to-death, and “L’annee de la misere” or “Das Hungerhjar” in Switzerland. Germans dubbed 1817 as “the year of the beggar.” The Chinese and Indians had no name for it but the years...

Environmental History, #2 of 4. Sarah and Elizabeth discuss the conservation movement and the creation of Americas National Parks in the late 19th and early 20th century. Find the Show Notes and a complete transcript at digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Environment #1 of 4. Many natural history museums, in America and in the western world, were developed during the nineteenth century. These museums are both places to view and understand nature, they are also places that have a history in themselves. Museum goers look at dioramas of rare or extinct taxidermied animals, perhaps realizing that some of those animals behind glass were among the last o...