Historically Thinking
We believe that when people think historically, they are engaging in a disciplined way of thinking about the world and its past. We believe it gives thinkers a knack for recognizing nonsense; and that it cultivates not only intellectual curiosity and rigor, but also intellectual humility. Join Al Zambone, author of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life, as he talks with historians and other professionals who cultivate the craft of historical thinking.
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 62 minutes
- Episodes
- 312
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
Episode 287: The Hessians are Coming!
In 1776 a massive British fleet of more than 400 ships carrying tens of thousands of soldiers arrived outside New York Harbor. Many of these soldiers were German, hired from their princes by the Brit…
01:12:49 |
Mon 17 Oct 2022
Episode 286: Weavers, Scribes, and Kings
The history of the ancient Near East can seem like staring down a deep, deep well of time, so deep that it gives one vertigo. It stretches back to 3,500 BC: that is, I’ll do the math for you, 5,522 y…
01:19:13 |
Thu 13 Oct 2022
Episode 285: Finding Agatha Christie
At her 80th birthday party Agatha Christie described a conversation she had once overheard about herself. She had been on
a train, and there listened to two ladies talking about her, copies of her la…
01:03:12 |
Mon 10 Oct 2022
Episode 284: The Greatest Russian General, in War and Peace
If we know Mikhail Ilarionovich Golenischev-Kutuzov, we know him as Tolstoy imagined him, as an old man, before Austerlitz, “with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over his collar if…
01:08:00 |
Mon 03 Oct 2022
Episode 283: Two Houses, Two Kingdoms
For centuries the Kingdom of England faced northeast, across the northern seas towards Scandinavia. Indeed, under King Canute, England was part of Scandinavia. But with the Norman invasion–even thoug…
01:10:46 |
Thu 29 Sep 2022
Episode 282: Griffins, Greek Fire, and Ancient Poisons
For thousands of years humans have in war and peace attempted to poison one another—or, perhaps for variety, burn each other to death. We might think of poison gas, biological weapons, or the use of…
00:50:39 |
Mon 26 Sep 2022
Episode 281: The Great Atlantic Freedom Conspiracy
In 1815, John Adams wrote to a correspondent of the importance, of all things, of the Boston Committee of Correspondence in the 1760s:
…I never belonged to any of these Committees and have never Seen…
01:04:20 |
Fri 16 Sep 2022
Episode 280: Thinking about Historically Thinking
Well, this is something new. After 279 podcasts, someone is asking Al Zambone questions about the podcast. Carol Adrienne, recently heard talking on Episode 278 about her book Healing a Divided Natio…
01:06:58 |
Wed 14 Sep 2022
Episode 279: Count the Dead
Stephen Berry begins his new book Count the Dead: Coroners, Quants, and the Birth of Death as We Know It with these two paragraphs:
This is a book about death and data or, more specifically, about t…
00:59:45 |
Thu 08 Sep 2022
Episode 278: Healing a Divided Nation
When Confederate cannons fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, the United States Army was comprised of only 16,000 soldiers. Its medical staff was numbered just 113 doctors. And here’s another fun fact…
00:58:54 |
Mon 05 Sep 2022
Episode 277: Saving Freud
On March 15, 1938, Adolf Hitler addressed 250,000 Austrians in Vienna, announcing the end of the Austrian state. Close by on that same day, Nazis entered the apartment of Dr. Sigmund Freud and his fa…
01:03:53 |
Mon 29 Aug 2022
Episode 276: The Secret Syllabus
New college students usually get lots of advice. “Go to office hours.” “Ask good questions.” “Declare a major as soon as you can.” “Take some time to figure out who you are.” “Get some research expe…
01:05:30 |
Mon 22 Aug 2022
Episode 275: The World the Plague Made
The pandemic of 1346–the Black Death–in some areas of Europe killed as much as 50% of the population. But this first outbreak, while the worst, was not the last. For three centuries it persisted, wi…
01:04:50 |
Mon 08 Aug 2022
Episode 274: Afghan Crucible
In December 24, 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. They entered a country already engaged in a civil war. Figuratively, Afghans had been engaged in a war for nearly 100 years over their identit…
01:09:39 |
Mon 01 Aug 2022
Episode 273: Founder of Modern Poland
The Dictator and His Daughter (c. 1934)
On the morning of November 10, 1918, the overnight train from Berlin arrived in Warsaw station. One of its passengers was Josef Pilsudski. For twenty-six year…
01:50:25 |
Mon 25 Jul 2022
Episode 272: Germans without Borders
When the Bavarian naturalist Moritz Wagner travelled in the kingdom of Georgia, in 1819, he encountered there thousands of Germans, some of them living in what he described as a “ganz deutscher Bauar…
01:03:48 |
Mon 18 Jul 2022
Episode 271: The Man at the Center of Two Revolutions
My guest today is Martin Clagget, author of A Spark of Revolution: William Small, Thomas Jefferson, and James Watt; The Curious Connection Between the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolutio…
01:10:49 |
Mon 04 Jul 2022
Episode 270: Great Tomatoes of World History
Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson of Salem County, New Jersey
Joseph T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier in the 1830s, had a way with invective:
The mere fungus of an offensive plant which one …
01:13:17 |
Mon 27 Jun 2022
Episode 269: Free People of Color
By 1861, there were 250,000 free people of color living in the American South. They were signs of contradiction amidst a slave society built upon the concept of white supremacy in a racial hierarchy.…
00:47:03 |
Mon 20 Jun 2022
Episode 268: Feeding Washington’s Army
In early December, 1777, Joseph Plumb Martin and his comrades in the Continental Army sat down to feast upon a
Our Hero: Rhode Island Quaker ironworker turned Major General and logistician
Thanksgi…
01:13:42 |
Mon 13 Jun 2022
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