Reckoning with Jason Herbert

Did you know where the largest collection of Sherlock Holmes ephemera is located? This answer is elementary, my dear listeners--or maybe not. It's actually the University of Minnesota Special Collections. And this week's guest is one of the foremost experts in all things Sherlock Holmes, my good friend Tim Johnson. We jump in on Guy Ritchie's 2009 adaption as well as talk about othe...

When Charlie Pierce messages and asks to do a pod, you say yes. And that's exactly what happened. This week, one of the best and funniest political commentators in America drops by to talk about Deadline USA- the 1952 classic starring Humphrey Bogart as the editor of a newspaper trying to get out one last story before their lights are turned out for good.  This is such a revealing film and Ch...

I don't usually shy away from asking guests to be on the podcast, but this week's guest is an exception. You know Alexis Coe from her two books, Alice+Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis and You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George of Washington. Or you've seen her on tv or on twitter or tiktok talking about presidential history. But today you get to hear her talk about Dav...

We talk a lot on the podcast about film as historical artifacts- depictions of moments in time that can tell us as much about the audience as the topics themselves. This week is no exception as we dive into 1982's Tootsie , starring Dustin Hoffman. However, what makes this episode unique is that we are joined by Justin Rawlins to talk about the craft of filmmaking, particularly method acting....

I think a lot of us are familiar with stories of bomber pilots and fighter pilots during World War II. And we're probably familiar with the lives of many of the women who actually built those planes, made famous by Rosie the Riveter. But how many of us know about the Women's Air Service Pilots or about their fight for veteran recognition after the war was over? Sarah Myers joins in to ta...

This week historian Leah Lagrone drops by the HATM studios to talk about 1990's Pretty Woman . We get into a ton of topics including the history of prostitution, sexual norms regarding its policing, the tropes behind books and films about the world's oldest profession, and whether or not Vivian and Richard are still together after all these years. We had a blast with this talk and I hope...

1991's Black Robe is probably a movie you've never heard of, but maybe you should. It's one of the rare films that travel back to 17th Century New France to allow us to witness interactions between Indigenous communities and Jesuit missionaries. I watched this film in college and it made an impression on me. So I asked Michael Oberg to come on the pod to talk not only about this fil...

A lot of you love Legally Blonde. I mean really love Legally Blonde. So it was probably inevitable that two of my closest friends in the profession, Kristalyn Shefveland and Jennifer McCutchen, requested to do a pod on this film if only to torment me. This movie is so much more than I ever gave it credit for. We get into this film as a historical artifact, perhaps the last film of the 90s, it has...

Every now and then we get the chance to talk to a scholar with a little extra knowledge on a particular subject. In this case, Dr. Waitman Beorn drops in to talk about Brad Pitt's tank film, Fury. Waitman knows the film well, especially since he commanded a tank prior to becoming a historian. Listen in now to hear him talk not only about WWII, but his experiences serving in the Tank Corps and...

1994’s Legends of the Fall was one of a string of new age American western epics, featuring an ascendant Brad Pitt alongside Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Henry Thomas, and a stunning Julia Ormond. It’s not a perfect film, but like a lot helmed by Edward Zwick, gives us a ton to talk about: American wars Indigenous people, the Gilded Age & Progressive Era, WWI, PTSD, Prohibition, and the West....

It is hard to find someone with a greater impact on American music and whose life demonstrates the complexities of the human experience than Ray Charles. This week we are joined by Michael Hattem to talk about one of the best biopics and performances I've ever seen with Ray (2004). This episode features candid discussions about the ups and downs of Ray Charles' life, how both his life an...

This week we have a guest with a keen understanding of a film: Dr. Tyler Anbinder joins us to talk about Gangs of New York , Martin Scorsese's 2002 epic that about the rise of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Tyler is not only an expert on the histories of New York City and of immigration, but served as an advisor for the film. He was, in this case, an actual historian at the...

2015's The Witch is in my mind about as scary as they come. It's also an incredible foray into the world of 17th century New England colonists and the chance to see how their fears manifested themselves in the world around them. Our guest, Mikki Brock, is no stranger to fear. She researches and teaches on the supernatural, plagues, and worst of all, the British (WOO HOO AMERICA). We talk...

2016's Live By Night was a rare miss by star and director Ben Affleck. On paper, it had everything you'd think it needed to be successful: great cast (Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Chris Messina, Elle Fanning, Sienna Miller), a cool premise (mob sets up new scene during Prohibition), and a director in Affleck who has emerged as one of Hollywood's best. But it didn't quite hit. But...

You've been asking for this film ever since I announced there would be a Historians At The Movies Podcast. Today we jump in head first to the Director's Cut of Ridley Scott's 2005 epic, Kingdom of Heaven . This is a beautiful and seriously flawed film, but it is fun to watch. I decided that a film this big needed an army of historians, so I invited back HATM Podcast alums David Perr...

It's summertime and that means busting out those beach bodies! This week Natalia Mehlman Petrzela drops in to talk about the creation of the modern fitness world beginning in the early 1980s and seen onscreen with the John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis film, Perfect (1985). Natalia and I talk about her new book FIT NATION: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession along with how soc...

This week Lindsay Marshall jumps in to talk about the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman epic-that-wasn't: Far and Away (1992). This is an awesome talk. We talk about the process of interviewing and getting hired at a university, the myth of Irish slavery, the West on film. Lindsay is a former high school teacher so we get into the difficulties of teaching at that level and why AP US History is an...

This week marks the return of Michael Keaton to the big screen as Batman in The Flash. So I thought it was an opportune time to revisit Batman (1989) with Blake Scott Ball. This is a large episode--the longest we've released yet, and for good measure. We get into why Batman is a necessary addition to the superhero pantheon, what happens if Gotham is in Mississippi, and finally, we rank all of...

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Jurassic Park , a movie that both plays with history and made history. Like Jaws and Star Wars before it, Jurassic Park changed what we thought was possible in movie theaters while commenting on our fascination with the pre-human past. I asked Dr. Elizabeth Jones, author of Ancient DNA: The Making of a Celebrity Science (on sale from Amazon ri...

This episode may be the very epitome of why I started this podcast. This week I'm joined by my friend Jeff Melnick to talk about an absolutely batshit film called Once Upon a Time in Hollywood . Jeff is the perfect guy to talk about this movie; he wrote a terrific book about the Manson murders called Charles Manson's Creepy Crawl: Inside the Lives of America's Most Infamous Family ....

This week Kathleen Belew joins us to talk about maybe the most '90s action movie ever made, Con Air. We get into everything on this film, including Kathleen's work on white power and paramilitary movements in the United States, the cultural production of the South, Nicolas Cage as an action star, and yes, maybe the worst Southern accent in history. This movie has it all. About our guest:...

For our 25th episode, we have only one question: IS THERE A CAVE? This week we are joined by two scholars ready to get medieval on us all: Thomas Lecaque and John Wyatt Greenlee.  We're celebrating the great epic that wasn't: The 13th Warrior . This movie is so good and so bad at the same time that it's hard to quantify. But we're gonna do it anyway. We're talking Vikings,...

This week Lauren Lassabe Shepherd swings by to talk about why we love college and why some of us just can't seem to grow up. We get into the production of her forthcoming book, the process of creating oral histories, and perhaps surprising roles that Greek life now perform in the lives of college students. She's got a new book coming out this summer about the campus wars in the United St...

This week Historians At The Movies Podcasts welcomes Dr. Rob Thompson to the show to talk about Oliver Stone's Platoon, the legacy of the Vietnam War in the United States, and the best movies about the conflict. Rob's a cool dude and we had a great discussion. About our guest: Rob has  a Ph. D. in American history from the University of Southern Mississippi. He specializes in the study o...

This week we are joined by Robert Greene II and Eric Leonard to do a deep dive into Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . We'll get into what the film has to say about the end of the Cold War, the process of aging, and the rivalry between the OG and Next Generation crews. Plus, we rank the best and worst of all things Star Trek. Rob and Eric are two of the historians who know Star Trek bet...