15 Minute History
The University of Texas at Austin
15 Minute History is a history podcast designed for historians, enthusiasts, and newbies alike. This is a joint project of Hemispheres, the international outreach consortium at the University of Texas at Austin, and Not Even Past, a website with articles on a wide variety of historical issues, produced by the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin.
This podcast series is devoted to short, accessible discussions of important topics in world history, United States history, and Texas history with the award winning faculty and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin, and distinguished visitors to our campus. They are meant to be a resource for both teachers and students, and can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in history.
For more information and to hear our complete back catalog of episodes, visit our website!
Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.
This podcast series is devoted to short, accessible discussions of important topics in world history, United States history, and Texas history with the award winning faculty and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin, and distinguished visitors to our campus. They are meant to be a resource for both teachers and students, and can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in history.
For more information and to hear our complete back catalog of episodes, visit our website!
Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Feb 26, 2014 • 0sec
Episode 44: Climate Change and World History
What do a failed war by the Ottomans against the Hapsburg Empire, a rural rebellion in eastern Anatolia, the disappearance of the Roanoke colony, and near starvation at Jamestown, Santa Fe, and Quebec City have in common? They all take place during a period of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age, which brought extreme climate conditions, drought, heavy winters, and contributed to rising fuel prices, failing crops and massive civil unrest in places as diverse as North America and the Middle East.
Guest Sam White from Ohio State University makes the convincing argument that environmental and climactic factors are as influential in human history as economic, social, political, and cultural factors, and suggests a cautionary tale for human history as it enters another period of climate change.
Feb 19, 2014 • 0sec
Episode 43: Segregating Pop Music
Anyone who’s been to the music store lately (or shopped for digital downloads) is probably familiar with the concept of music categorized not only by genre, but also more subtler categorizations that might make us think of country music as “white” or hip-hop as “black.” It might be surprising that such categorizations were a deliberate mechanism of the music industry and that, even at a time when American society was as racially divided as the late 19th century, such distinctions were usually neither considered nor proscribed onto genres of music.
Guest Karl Hagstrom Miller has spent a career using popular music to explore the economic, social, legal, and political history of the United States. In this episode, he helps us understand how popular music came to be segregated as artists negotiated the restrictions known as the “Jim Crow” laws.
Feb 12, 2014 • 16min
Episode 42: The Senses of Slavery
Slavery marks an important era in the history of the United States, one that is often discussed in terms of numbers and dates, human rights abuses, and its lasting impact on society. To be sure, these are all important aspects to understand, but one thing that is often given relatively short shrift is what it was like to actually be a slave. What were the sensory experiences of slaves on a daily basis? How can we dig deeper into understanding the lives of slaves and understand the institution as a whole?
Guest Daina Ramey Berry has given this question serious thought. In this episode, she discusses teaching the “senses of slavery,” a teaching tool that taps into the senses in order to connect to one of the most important eras in US history and bring it to the present.
Feb 5, 2014 • 0sec
Episode 41: The Myth of Race in America
There is no question that the idea of race has been a powerful driving force in American history since colonial times, but what exactly is race? How did it become the basis for the institution of slavery and the uneven power structure that in some ways still exists? How has the idea of what constitutes race changed over time, and how have whites, blacks (and others) adapted and reacted to such fluid definitions?
Guest Jacqueline Jones, one of the foremost experts on the history of racial history in the United States, helps us understand race and race relations by exposing some of its astonishing paradoxes from the earliest day to Obama’s America.
Jan 29, 2014 • 0sec
Episode 40: Developing the Amazon
During World War II, the governments of Brazil and the United States made an unprecedented level of joint investment in the economy and infrastructure of the Amazon region. The dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1937-45) trumpeted the colonization and development of the Amazon (christened the “March to the West”) as a nationalist imperative to defend a sparsely settled frontier covering some sixty percent of Brazilian territory.
Guest Seth Garfield shows how a little-known chapter of World War II history illuminates the ways outsiders’ very understandings and representations of the nature of the Amazon have evolved over the course of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Jan 22, 2014 • 0sec
Episode 39: The Royal Proclamation of 1763
Between 1754 and 1763, Great Britain, France, and a collection of French-allied Native American tribes fought a brutal war over trading rights in colonial North America. This war, generally called the “French and Indian War,” or “The Seven Years’ War,” resulted in a British victory and a large acquisition of French territory across the eastern half of North America. So, faced with the task of how colonists would settle all of this land, King George III issued a Royal Proclamation in 1763 which attempted to reorganize the boundaries of colonial America, as well as the lives of its inhabitants.
Guest Robert Olwell describes the proclamation, its effects on the history of colonial North America, and ponders whether the Royal Proclamation is really the smoking gun that caused the American Revolution as some have claimed.
Jan 15, 2014 • 0sec
Episode 38: The International Energy Crisis of 1973
Most Americans probably associate the 1973 oil crisis with long lines at their neighborhood gas stations, but those lines were caused by a complex patchwork of international relationships and negotiations that stretched around the globe.
Jan 8, 2014 • 0sec
Episode 37: The Ottoman Balkans
Southeastern Europe, or the Balkans, grabbed headlines in the 1990s after the collapse of communism with the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the bloody conflicts that followed. At the time, much was made of the region’s unique history, having been separated from Europe and languishing under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for centuries. But, was this really the cause of the conflict in the 20th century? What was life in southeastern Europe like under the Ottomans?
Guest Mary Neuburger walks us through current historical thinking about the five hundred year legacy of Ottoman rule in southeastern Europe, and gives us an alternate explanation for the turbulence of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Dec 18, 2013 • 0sec
Episode 36: Apartheid
With the death of Nelson Mandela in December 2013, attention turned once again to the conditions that brought him international acclaim as the first black president of South Africa, and overseer of a process of national reconciliation that kept the country from falling into bloodshed. But what was the system of apartheid that he and millions of other South Africans had rallied against for so long? Where did it come from? How was it enforced? And what brought it to an end? Guest Joseph Parrott helps us understand the system of “separateness” that dominated the lives of South Africans of all races for so long, and introduces us to the key organizations and players that fought against it and finally dismantled it.
Dec 11, 2013 • 0sec
Episode 35: The Egyptian Revolution
The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 captivated the imagination of pro-democracy activists worldwide and turned the name of Cairo’s Tahrir Square into a buzzword for freedom and popular resistance. However, since the February 11, 2011 deposition of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s road to democracy has been marred by two miitary coups, a decrease in government transparency, and the erratic reign of a democratically elected president-turned-authoritarian who wasn’t even his own party’s first choice nominee for office. Guest Sahar F. Aziz helps us understand the political earthquakes in Egypt’s bumpy transition from authoritarian rule to what comes next, and sheds light on what it might take for the country to arrive at the democracy its people demanded in the streets.
