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 267: African Founders
In 1609 a free man of African and European ancestry, Juan Rodriguez, left the Dutch ship Jonge Tobias anchored off Manhattan Island with “eighty hatchets and some knives” to set himself up in trading…
00:53:20 |
Mon 06 Jun 2022
Episode 266: Happy Dreams of Liberty
Hello, when Samuel Townsend died in 1856 near Huntsville, Alabama, he was the era’s equivalent of a multimillionaire. He had thousands of acres of cotton-land, and hundreds of enslaved people who pla…
01:02:21 |
Mon 30 May 2022
Episode 265: How to Win a Power Struggle
You might as well admit it; you’ve always wondered how you would do in a vicious struggle for power. Those thoughts might be prompted by an over-long project planning meeting for a new software produ…
01:01:51 |
Mon 23 May 2022
Episode 264: The Persian Version
Some 5,000 years ago nomadic peoples of central Asia settled on the Iranian plateau. Their descendants would be the nucleus of an extraordinary empire that reached north to the lands of their ancesto…
01:14:10 |
Mon 16 May 2022
Episode 263: The Man Who Understood Democracy (Part Two)
This is the second and final part of my conversation with Olivier Zunz about his new biography of Alexis de Tocqueville, The Man Who Understood Democracy, just published by Princeton University Press…
01:18:20 |
Mon 09 May 2022
Episode 262: The Man Who Understood Democracy (Part One)
In 1835 a young French author on the verge of publishing his first book wrote “the best thing that can happen to me is if no one read my book, and I have not yet lost hope that this happiness will be…
01:11:42 |
Mon 02 May 2022
Episode 261: The Long Land War
For most of human history, the wealthy of any given society have been those who owned land. Therefore to change concepts of property ownership has been to change concepts of society itself.
In her n…
01:06:36 |
Mon 25 Apr 2022
Episode 260: The Making of History
Richard Cohen begins his new book Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past with two particularly appropriate epigrams. First, from the historian E.H. Carr: “Before you study history, stud…
01:07:27 |
Mon 18 Apr 2022
Episode 259: In Praise of Good Bookstores
The sociologist Edward Shils said or wrote somewhere that one of the three principle means of education were
bookstores—preferably a used bookstore. Shils, for two generations a student and then facu…
01:05:12 |
Mon 11 Apr 2022
Episode 258: The Pursuit of Perfection
Britain in the 1840s should have been, observes Simon Heffer, a time of great social improvement. Instead it was a country that was beset by poverty, unrest, assassination attempts on young Queen Vic…
01:09:21 |
Mon 04 Apr 2022
Episode 257: Inventing a New World Order
In 1814, representatives of the grand coalition that had defeated Napoleon gathered in Vienna. There in meetings and balls–interrupted only by Napoleon’s 100 days after his return from exile on Elba–…
00:57:54 |
Mon 28 Mar 2022
Episode 256: The War That Made the Roman Empire
On the coast of Greece there is an ancient monument that no-one pays very much attention to; and yet it marks one of the most consequential battles in the history of Rome, or really all of Europe. It…
00:54:46 |
Mon 21 Mar 2022
Episode 255: Denmark Vesey’s Bible
On July 2, 1822, Denmark Vesey was hung for attempting to lead a slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina. Also executed that day were five of his supporters. Over the next month, a total of 35 men…
01:02:25 |
Mon 14 Mar 2022
Episode 254: Saving Yellowstone
In 1871 an expedition entered the territory now encompassed by Yellowstone National Park. Led by doctor and self-taught geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, it was to be the first scientific expedit…
01:07:26 |
Mon 07 Mar 2022
Episode 253: Beer!
“The story of beer,” writes John Arthur, “is a chronicle about how we as a species have interacted with each other, created prosperous societies, survived difficult and challenging times, and ended u…
01:01:53 |
Thu 03 Mar 2022
Episode 252: The Great War and Modern Medicine
From the first weeks of the Great War, in August 1914, medical practice was overwhelmed, not simply by the mass casualties produced by the war, but the types of trauma to which human bodies were bein…
01:07:15 |
Mon 28 Feb 2022
Episode 251: The History of Technology, from Leonardo to the Internet
“My underlying goal,” writes my guest Tom Misa, “has been to display the variety of technologies, to describe how they changed across time, and to understand how they interacted with diverse societie…
01:11:24 |
Thu 24 Feb 2022
Episode 250: Amber Waves of Grain
Grain traders wandering across the steppe; boulevard barons and wheat futures; railroads; the first fast food breakfast; and war socialism. It's all crammed into this discussion of wheat, and what it…
01:09:58 |
Mon 21 Feb 2022
Behind the Book: The Family That Lost America
The Howe famly was at the heart of Britain’s long eighteenth century. Connected to the Hanoverian ruling family by blood, they were addicted to Whig politics, high society, warfare and statecraft, an…
01:20:52 |
Thu 17 Feb 2022
Episode 249: Postcards from the Past
“Postcards,” writes today’s guest Lydia Pyne, “have left an indelible imprint on the history of human communication,
unmatched by any other material medium. They owe their success to the decentraliza…
00:44:03 |
Mon 14 Feb 2022
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are the property of Al Zambone. This content is not affiliated with or endorsed by eachpod.com.