Historically Thinking

Historically Thinking


Latest Episodes

Episode 337: Disorder
October 10, 2023

"Todays international system is like a ship adrift during a pandemic. With the captain lost to the virus, and the most capable and conscientious members of the crew self-isolating in their cabins, th

Episode 336: Tory’s Wife
October 02, 2023

In 1785, Jane Welborn Spurgin of Abbots Creek in Rowan County, North Carolina petititioned the North Carolina Legislature, attesting her right to 704 acres of land so that she might provide for her fa

Intellectual Humility Series: What’s Historical Thinking Got to Do With It?
September 28, 2023

Way back in April, I dropped the first two podcasts in what are intended to be a series on historical thinking and intellectual humility. They were designed to introduce the concept to an audience who

Episode 335: PAX
September 25, 2023

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed

Episode 334: Civic Bargain
September 18, 2023

In 2016, Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk published a chilling essay based on extensive survey data in the Journal of Democracy. It discovered that there was a growing desire for non-democratic alternativ

Episode 333: City of Echoes
September 11, 2023

An Ambassador from the Kingdom of the Kongo to the Papal Court - On July 20, 817, Pope Paschal began a project to transform the Church of Santa Prassede, the resting place of the sisters and martyrs,

Episode 332: Rome v. Persia
September 05, 2023

A Sassanid cataphract in Oxfordfortunately a re-enactor - From the Ionian revolt of the 490s, through the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, the vastAchaemenid Persian Empire wa

Episode 331: Red Hotel
August 28, 2023

From 1941 to 1945, a platoon of Anglo-American reporters (and one or two Australians and Canadians) were housed in Moscows Metropol Hotel. They were there to report on the defense of the Soviet Union

Episode 330: His Majesty’s Airship
August 21, 2023

Hello, at 2:09 in the morning on October 5th, 1930, the British airship R-101 crashed some 90 miles northwest of Paris. It was just a few hours into a journey that was supposed to take it to Karachi,

Episode 329: Nature’s Messenger
August 14, 2023

On two separate trips, he traveled throughout the southeastern corner of the North American continent. He collected plants, and seeds, which he sent to interested amateur plantsmen and gardeners, as w