UnTextbooked | A history podcast for the future

Is our democracy in danger? In the years after Trump’s presidency, it’s tempting to say “not anymore,” but nowadays threats to democracy are no longer as obvious as a military coup or revolution. Instead, a democracy in danger manifests in much more subtle ways including: the steady decline of longstanding political norms and weakening of essential institutions such as the United States press and...

Although the American Civil War ended many years ago, the fight for “a more perfect union” never quite did. A few months after the union army’s victory, confederate-style, white supremacist resistance emerged even stronger than before.    On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Arya Barkesseh interviews Dr. Jeremi Suri, who argues that opposition to the union army’s victory started almost immedi...

The Cold War was marked by a bitter rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Although former WWII NATO allies, what emerged was an atmosphere of constant fear for national security and a dangerous nuclear arms race.   On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Lap Nguyen and Professor Susan Colbourn unpack the power of citizen protest and the crucial factors that eventually brought t...

In the 1930s, six naval powers roamed the world’s oceans: Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan. Each nation was subject to the Washington Naval Treaty, which granted 60% of the world’s battleships to the Royal and US Navy, 20% to Japan, and 20% to France and Italy. However by 1945, the United States Navy had expanded to a fleet larger than that of all the great power...

By 1945, the Soviet Union was a founding member of the United Nations and a  global superpower controlling half of Europe. By 1991, with five thousand nuclear missiles at its disposal and an army four million strong, the USSR was a formidable rival for the United States. But by the end of the year, the union would meet its untimely demise.   Most historians have argued that the fall of the USSR wa...

As human beings, our privacy is one of our most basic needs and most sacred rights. However, in the modern information age, these rights are constantly under attack. How does the American federal government collect our data and what happens when the institutions meant to protect our privacy opts to instead use that information for their gain?    On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Victor Ye...

Technology plays a vital role in our society day-to-day, but what exactly is our role when it comes to managing our tech? How do our internal biases impact the products we create? Can technological advances actually be “neutral” as a product of human imagination? These are all questions to consider as we take a look at how human and computational infrastructures overlap.   On this episode of UnTex...

The gay bar has long since been a locale of sexual expression, community, and most importantly, identity. If the gay bar was what Atherton Lin describes as, “a place where we hoped we could find ourselves,” what does it mean for queer identity when the spaces that once shaped and defined it are steadily vanishing in urban centers world-wide?  In his wistful personal and cultural memoir, Gay Bar: W...

More American residents are behind bars than any other nation. While the U.S. Criminal Justice System was established to regulate peace and order, it has since become the catalyst for criminalizing of people of color. Fueled by initiatives like Nixon’s “War on Drugs” campaign, which unfairly targeted communities of color, mass incarceration has steadily been on the rise. Despite the staggering amo...

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has roots in strong firearm regulation and gun safety policy, but over the years, it’s become a mantra for gun rights advocates.   On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Ellie Carver-Horner interviews Professor Adam Winkler about how over time, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the right to bear arms) historically caused a major divide...

The first amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that everyone has the right to practice his or her own religion or no religion at all. A similar guarantee exists in Canada under its Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, this right to religious freedom hasn’t necessarily been assured for practitioners of traditional African religions throughout history in North America and beyon...

There are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations in the United States today, nearly three million people, but their stories have largely been omitted from the nation’s history.    On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Gavin Scott  interviews acclaimed historian and activist, Professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and takes a look at U.S. History through the lens of Indigenous P...

Throughout the world, democratic progress has not only halted, but receded over the past few years and the United States has been one of the main perpetrators. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Oliver Wang interviews Former Deputy National Security Advisor of the United States (Obama Administration), Ben Rhodes to discover who is to blame for the global fall of democracy and how we might r...

Untextbooked is a movement of curious students from around the world -- and we are BACK with new episodes and new questions. What perspectives do we miss in history class? What historical forces shape our lives today? We study up on topics that interest us -- indigenous history, the status of democracy, future of technology -- and then reach out to scholars to have a conversation for the podcast. ...

We’ve completed our second season of UnTextbooked! Our team of young producers have done phenomenal work exploring topics and questions that really matter, including episodes about the War on Terror, Native American boarding schools, population control, and much more. In this episode our editor Bethany Denton shares excerpts from four of her favorite Season 2 episodes: Is every presidency doomed t...

The Cold War was a decades-long military conflict that dominated geopolitics in the latter half of the 20th century. And as Americans, we often see it framed as a binary conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union; one that ended around the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.  But historian Odd Arne Westad, author of The Global Cold War, thinks that version of the story is incomple...

The United States is still reckoning with its history of racism. For a century after slavery ended, US businesses, banks, schools, and neighborhoods were segregated by race. It took a series of Supreme Court cases and acts of Congress to legally ban discrimination based on race, but discrimination isn’t just a switch that can be turned from “on” to “off.”  The legacy of these unfair laws still aff...

There is a fundamental duality in how Asian Americans are perceived in our country. They’ve at times been held up as the “model minority”, affirming this idea that the American Dream is alive and well if only immigrants could work harder.  At other times they’ve been regarded as threatening and perpetually foreign. A recent example of this is the dramatic rise in anti-Asian violence in the wake of...

American food is unlike anything else in the world. And it goes a lot deeper than hamburgers and pizza. The thing that makes American food special is the stunning variety of options and how accessible it is to the average consumer. Also some regional American dishes that are impossible to find anywhere else on the planet Dr. Paul Freedman is a historian who thinks that all of these factors--standa...

It’s no secret that society will eventually have to transition away from fossil fuels. Some governments and businesses think the answer is biofuels,like ethanol.  Ethanol is a type of alcohol—the same type of alcohol that humans have been producing for millenia.  And so, in much of the world, the techniques to produce ethanol are already known and exploited.  All it takes is the fermentation of su...

For centuries, Iran had a strict social hierarchy that prevented women—particularly upper class women—from participating in public life. This started to change in the early 20th century when Iranians became disillusioned with the ruling class and had a constitutional revolution. This new constitution established a parliament, public schools, and also opened the door for women to start asserting th...

There’s a lot of evidence that America is more divided than ever. Our politics, media, and ideologies are so polarized that it puts a stress on our unity as a country. But Dr. Denis Lacorne says that, in spite of that tension, America’s strength comes from our nation’s commitment to tolerance. The trick is figuring out the balance of tolerating the intolerant. On this episode of UnTextbooked, prod...

The Founders of the United States envisioned the presidency as an office that would be minimal in reach.  They didn’t want the USA to be a monarchy.  But incrementally, the executive branch has expanded.  And now, scholars like Dr. Jeremi Suri argue that the modern presidency is crushed by its own power and unable to be fully wielded by the President, leading to decades of broken promises and deep...

UnTextbooked producer Sydne Clarke thinks that African American history is often oversimplified or overlooked. Often that history is taught as things that happened to African Americans. We don’t often hear about the ways in which African Americans fought for and took care of themselves.  Dr. Leslie Alexander studies Black resistance movements, particularly in America. In her research Dr. Alexander...

The Greek poet Archilochus said “a fox knows many things, a hedgehog knows one big thing.”  This phrase inspired a famous essay by a 20th century philosopher named Isaiah Berlin, who said that pretty much all people can be categorized as either “foxes” or “hedgehogs”. Foxes tend to be agile and perceptive, whereas hedgehogs tend to be resolute and hyper-focused on their end goal.  Historian John L...