Latest Buzzkill Podcast Episodes
Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from 19th Century France
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - June 25, 2024 07:31 - 37 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsProfessor Rachel Mesch guides us through three compelling lives and careers in 19th-century France. The lives of French writers, Jane Dieulafoy (1850–1916), Rachilde (1860–1953), and Marc de Montifaud (1845–1912), did not conform to nineteenth-century notions of femininity. In their work, they co...
Juneteenth and the End of Slavery in the US: What’s in a Date? 2024 Encore
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - June 18, 2024 07:30 - 15 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratings"Juneteenth" (June 19th) is now widely regarded as marking the end of slavery in the United States. Professor Buzzkill examines the many dates related to the abolition of human enslavement in the US. And he pleads for more holidays observing this moral advance! Encore Episode!
Loving Day: 2024 Encore
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - June 12, 2024 07:30 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsIt’s June 12th! Loving Day! Loving Day is being celebrated worldwide. You might think that Loving Day is Valentine’s Day, February 14th, but it’s not, it’s today, June 12th. If you don’t know what Loving Day is, listen to the story we tell you in this brief, special episode. And go to lovingday.o...
Heather Haley: Historian for the US Navy
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - June 11, 2024 07:15 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsHeather Haley, a civilian historian for the United States Navy, enlightens us about the work of a historian outside traditional academic institutions. She works for the US Naval History and Heritage Command, doing naval history research, finding and preserving historical records related the the N...
Coming Out Republican: a History of the Gay Right
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - June 04, 2024 07:15 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsDr. Neil Young helps us understand how and why gay Republicans regularly faced condemnation from both the LGBTQ+ community and their own political party. They’ve been active and influential for decades, however. Gay conservatives were instrumental, for example, in ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” a...
Malcolm Browne and the Self Immolation of Thích Quảng Đức
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - May 28, 2024 07:15 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsRay Boomhower joins us to discuss how the most unlikely of war correspondents, Malcolm W. Browne, became the only Western reporter to capture Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức's horrific self-immolation on June 11, 1963. Thích Quảng Đức made his ultimate sacrifice to protest the perceived anti-Buddhi...
Churchill’s Wartime Speeches: the Untold Story
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - May 21, 2024 08:30 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsProfessor Richard Toye explains the background and context of Winston Churchill's famous World War II speeches, from how they were written, to how they were delivered, to how the public reacted. Not only is it much more complex than the legend has it, the full history provides us with a much grea...
Was the Wild West as Wild as the Myths Say?
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - May 14, 2024 08:00 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratings“The Wild West,” is one of the strongest conceptions in American history. But “where” was the west? How “wild” was it? “Who” settled it? Did settlers build the west with their hands? How many of the stories about settlers and Native Americans are myths or misconceptions? Professor Edward O’Donnel...
The Myth of Colorblind Christians
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - May 07, 2024 08:30 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsDr. Jesse Curtis shows us how white evangelicals in the 20th century US grew their own institutions and created an evangelical form of whiteness, infusing the politics of colorblindness with sacred fervor. They deployed a Christian brand of colorblindness to protect new investments in whiteness. ...
Americans Bailing Out the French
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - April 30, 2024 07:10 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsDonald Trump talks about Americans being "suckers" to their allies. Is Uncle Sam really "Uncle Sucker"? Did the United States really “bail the French out in two world wars,” or is it a blustering, bigoted myth? Professor Philip Nash joins us to discuss what happened in World Wars I and II, and wh...
British Dandies: Engendering Scandal and Fashioning a Nation
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - April 23, 2024 07:15 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsWell-dressed men have played a distinctive part in the cultural and political life of Britain over several centuries. But unlike the twenty-first-century hipster, the British dandies provoked intense degrees of fascination and horror in their homeland and played an important role in British socie...
Once a King: The Lost Memoir of Edward VIII
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - April 16, 2024 07:29 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsJane Marguerite Tippett discusses her new book about Edward VIII, the English king who abdicated the throne in 1936 for the woman he loved, the American socialite Wallis Simpson. She describes the complexity of his life and the almost innumerable myths about his political views, his hopes for the...
Hitler's Rise to Power: History and Myth
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - April 02, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsWe examine the many myths surrounding Adolf Hitler’s rise from Chancellor to the outbreak of World War II. These include: how Nazi Germany functioned; the myth of his purely tyrannical dictatorship; and the myth of an efficient, orderly dictatorship. We also explore Hitler’s genuine popularity, a...
The "Princess Qajar" Meme: Junk History and Conceptions of Beauty
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - March 19, 2024 16:42 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsDr. Victoria Martinez joins to debunk and explain Junk history is embodied a viral meme that portrays a nineteenth-century Persian princess with facial hair, alongside the claim that 13 men killed themselves over their unrequited love for her. While it fails miserably at historical accuracy, the ...
Irish America: Race and Politics
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - March 12, 2024 11:33 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsProfessor Mary Burke destroys the myths and caricatures of Irish Americans as a monolithic cultural, racial, and political group. Figures from the Scots-Irish Andrew Jackson to the Caribbean-Irish Rihanna, as well as literature, film, caricature, and beauty discourse, convey how the Irish raciall...
Green Book Sites: Local History and Architecture
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - March 05, 2024 06:33 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsWe've already learned about the importance of "The Negro Motorist Green Book" from our previous show. Here, historians Catherine Zipf and Susan Hellman discuss their project on the architecture of the sites found in the Green Book and what various efforts are being made to locate more Green Book ...
Traveling While Black: The Green Book Guides to African-American Motoring - Encore!
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - February 26, 2024 03:22 - 39 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratings20th-century automobile travel was supposed to represent freedom, but what else did it represent? Professor Cotten Seiler from Dickinson College joins us to discuss the difficulties and hazards of traveling in the United States faced by African-American motorists in the 20th Century, especially d...
Henry Kissinger Part 2: Perpetual Power?
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - February 20, 2024 12:05 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsProfessor Philip Nash joins us for Part 2 of our examination of the life and loves of Henry Kissinger, perhaps the most influential American foreign policy figure of the later Cold War. This episode discusses his time in power in the Nixon administration, his carefully crafted public image, and h...
Henry Kissinger Part 1: Meteoric Rise
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - February 06, 2024 11:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsProfessor Philip Nash joins us for Part 1 of our examination of the life and loves of Henry Kissinger, perhaps the most influential American foreign policy figure of the later Cold War. We look at his origins, his education, his move into governing circles, and his meteoric rise to power in the 1...
Ben Franklin, "A Republic, if You Can Keep It" - Quote or No Quote? Encore
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - January 30, 2024 12:52 - 13 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsAt the end of this month of asking "what is America," we give you a show on this famous Ben Franklin quote. Franklin supposedly said this after the Founding Fathers had agreed on the broad nature of the new U.S. government in 1787. But is the quote genuine? We explain it all, and the wider contex...
Lies of the Land: Rural America in History and Myth
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - January 23, 2024 08:10 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsProfessor Steven Conn shows us that rural America—so often characterized as in crisis or in danger of being left behind—has actually been at the center of modern American history, shaped by the same forces as everywhere else in the country: militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and ...
America a Continental History
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - January 16, 2024 08:50 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratings“Forging America” speaks to both the complexities of historical experience and the meanings of the past for our present-day lives. Warning against the assumption of preordained outcomes, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Steve Hahn focuses the reader's attention on those moments when historical ch...
The Unknown Martin Luther King: 2024 MLK Encore!
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - January 15, 2024 08:50 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsMartin Luther King did so much more for American society, and wanted so much more from the US government and US elite than most people realize. Popular history has airbrushed out far too much about his life and work. Professor Phil Nash reminds us of the importance of King’s work, especially duri...
America's Origin Stories and Myths
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - January 09, 2024 08:45 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsDr. Brian Regal joins us to discuss some of the stories and myths about who “discovered” America, and what the continued popularity of those myths tell us about American culture. From Irish saints to marauding Vikings to Chinese admirals to African explorers, people from almost every culture on e...
America: What's in a Name?
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - January 02, 2024 08:30 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsThe Professor starts off his January 2024 "What is America" series of shows with a short episode that looks at the naming of "America" and the naming of the "United States of America." Was America named after Amerigo Vespucci, as we were all taught in school? Why was it named after him? And when ...
New Year's Eve and New Year's Day
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - December 29, 2023 08:40 - 3 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsHow did New Year’s Day end up in the middle of winter in the northern hemisphere (and the middle of summer in the southern hemisphere)? Wouldn’t a day in spring be more fitting? Find out how people celebrated New Year's in past centuries and why things turned out the way they did. Encore Episode.
Auld Lang Syne: an Appreciation
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - December 28, 2023 08:30 - 15 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsShould old acquaintance be forgot? What? Should we forget old friends? Should we sing about remembering them. What does Auld Lang Syne actually mean? Why do we sing it every New Year’s Eve? Join the Professor as he waxes lyrical and sentimentally about Auld Lang Syne, Scotland, and good auld Robe...
12 Days of Christmas: a Coded Song?
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - December 25, 2023 08:15 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsWere there special, secret meanings behind the lyrics in the famous Christmas song, The 12 Days of Christmas? Ten Lords a Leaping and Nine Ladies Dancing sounds like a pretty good party! But why wasn’t Professor Buzzkill invited? We explain it all and wish all you Buzzkillers out there a happy ho...
Candy Cane Myths! Encore!
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - December 21, 2023 08:10 - 5 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsCandy canes are a well-known symbol of the holiday season, but what is the origin and meaning of this peculiar candy? Some say it was invented by a German choirmaster in the 17th century. Others say it was invented by an Indiana confectioner in the 19th century. Or maybe it was a Catholic priest?...
The Mozart-Saleri Feud: Did “Amadeus” Tell the Real Story?
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast - December 19, 2023 08:10 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 180 ratingsThe film “Amadeus” was a huge hit in the mid-1980s. It depicted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri as musical rivals in the Austrian court in the late 18th century, which ultimately ends with Mozart's early death. But was anything in the film accurate? Did Salieri plot to kill Mozart? Wa...
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