Dig: A History Podcast

Elections Series. Episode #3 of 4. 1968 was an extremely turbulent and painful year in the United States of America. The Vietnam War was in full swing, as well as the protest movement against it. Gallup Poll results in February of 1968 showed that fully half of the American populace disapproved of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s (LBJ) handling of the war in Vietnam. By March of 1968, LBJ notified his party and the nation that he would not run for a second full term in office. In April of 1968, beloved civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In June of the same year, popular NY Senator and former Attorney General Robert Kennedy (RFK) was assassinated. Then, the August Democratic National Convention in Chicago erupted in protests and police violence, the likes of which many in the U.S. had never seen. Needless to say, 1968 was a traumatizing year for the U.S and I’ve just mentioned the high points! Today as an addition to our series about important elections, we’ll be discussing the American presidential election of 1968 within the context of the larger political and social upheaval happening in the U.S. during that time.Find show notes and transcript at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Election Series, Episode #2 of 4. The consequences of 1876 were enormous. To end the the election limbo, Democratic and Republican politicians worked out a shadowy deal in which Rutherford Hayes was declared the president (by one electoral vote!) and the Republicans agreed to end Reconstruction in the former Confederacy. The results of the “Compromise of 1877” were a total abandonment of the process of reforming the South from a land ruled by white supremacy and defined by slavery to one of freedom and equal rights. The federal government effectively washed its hands of Reconstruction and left the South to its own devices. The result was … not good. As one freedman, Henry Adams, described it: “The whole South – every state in the South – had got into the hands of the very men that held us as slaves.” Today, as part of our series on elections, we’re talking about 1876, the election that ended Reconstruction, upended the accomplishments of the Civil War era, derailed civil rights, and allowed for the reign of Jim Crow. BibliographyDuBois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. New York: The Free Press, 1998. Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction. New York: Harper Collins, 1990. Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1865-1877. New York: Harper Collins, 1988. Holt, Michael F. By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876. Lawrence: Kansas State University Press, 2008. Rehnquist, William H. Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876. New York: Knopf, 2004. Woodward, C. Vann. Reunion & Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1951.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elections Series. Episode #1 of 4. On the morning of August 11, 1492, Rodrigo Borgia was elected Pope, taking the name Alexander VI and yelling “I am Pope! I am Pope!” The throngs of Romans in the Piazza di San Pietro shared in his excitement. But for some, the Papal Election of 1492 seemed to indicate the downfall of the papacy, if not the end of days. Giovanni de Medici is recorded as saying, “Now we are in the power of a wolf, the most rapacious, perhaps that this world has ever seen; and if we do not flee, he will infallibly devour us.” Gian Andrea Boccaccio wrote in a letter to the Duke of Ferrara, “ten Papacies would not suffice to satisfy the greed of all his kindred.” Ferrante, King of Naples, purportedly told his wife, “This election will not only undermine the peace of Italy, but that of the whole of Christendom.” The priest and prognosticator Girolamo Savonarola would spend the last year of his life trying to render the 1492 Papal election void due to simony, a campaign that resulted in his excommunication, torture, and execution. What was it about the Papal Election of 1492 and its resultant Pontiff, Alexander VI, that elicited such a dramatic range of reactions? As it turns out, this question is difficult to answer but it involves assassination, simony, nepotism, accusations of poison, coercion, abuse, incest, wildly debauched orgies, and political corruption.Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drugs Episode #4 of 4. For centuries, psychiatrists searched for the cure to mental illness, frustrated that medical doctors seemed to be able to find the “magic bullet” medications to fight disease and infection. In the mid 20th century, though, a series of new major and minor tranquilizers revolutionized the world of psychiatry. Doctors doled out Miltown, Librium, and Valium to stressed businessmen and frazzled housewives, using ad men to market these psychiatric wonder drugs to just about every ailment imaginable. In the process, psychopharmaceuticals became intertwined with the women’s rights movement, enflamed mid-century gender politics, and changed the way Americans thought about mental illness. Get the transcript at digpodcast.orgBibliography & Further ReadingDavid Herzberg, Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and teh Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.David Healy, The Creation of Psychopharmacology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.Jonathan Metzl, Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drugs Series. Episode #3 of 4. Tobacco smoking is definitely the default way to consume tobacco. But in certain times and places, smokeless tobacco- such as snuff, chew, or tobacco tea- have found niches. Yes, snuff was practical for some, a pop phenomenon to others, but many of these historical niches for smokeless tobacco were medicinal. It’s difficult to imagine now, in a society raised on the message of “smoking kills” but tobacco’s introduction onto the world stage in the 1500s can be traced primarily to its supposed medicinal properties. This is especially true of smokeless tobacco. But smokeless tobacco’s story doesn't end there. Get ready for a wild ride, this is the global history of smokeless tobacco. Find transcript and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drugs Series. Episode #2 of 4. Today we’re going to discuss alcohol consumption in early America. Alcohol was very important to early Americans and it flowed freely through the colonies. Adults and children alike drank alcoholic beverages for a variety of reasons. One being that it was one of the few things that were safe to drink at the time. However, by the time of the Early Republic period, roughly 1790 to 1830, Americans were consuming more hard liquor per capita than any other country in the world. So today we’ll explore drinking in early America, ask why Americans drank so much, and how such drinking affected the new republic.Find transcript and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drugs, Episode 1 of 4. Quinine, the alkaline derived from the bark of the quina-quina tree, would prove the most effective treatment for malarial fever and infection in human history. In the decades after the bark of the tree was exported to Europe, every state with imperialist aspirations wanted access to quinine. The Spanish Crown, recognizing quina bark for its power and lucrativeness, monopolized the harvest and export of the medicament. By the beginning of the 19th century, the imperialist aspirations of Europeans required an effective malaria treatment. The quest for quinine led to a robust smuggling ring empowered by the Age of Revolutions, Italian social welfare, and the invention of the British Empire’s cocktail of choice. Quinine’s role in reshaping the world is immeasurable… but we’re going to give it the old college try! For the complete transcript and full bibliography, visit digpodcast.orgSelect BibliographyLucile H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens (Yale University Press, 2002)Matthew Crawford, The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016)Stefanie Gänger, A Singular Remedy: Cinchona Across the Atlantic World, 1751–1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2020)Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, (Oxford University Press, 1981).Andreas-Holger Maehle, Drugs on Trial: Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutic Innovation in the Eighteenth Century (Rodopi, 1999)Clements Markham,Travels in Peru and India, (London: John Murray, 1862). Digitized by Project Gutenberg.Frank M. Snowden, The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962, (Yale University Press, 2006). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Witches Series. Episode #4 of 4. On a brisk autumn day in New York City, 1968, roughly 13 women spent the morning of October 31st dressing in black cloaks and dresses. They stuck feathers, leaves, and furs in their long hair. One woman grabbed her enormous hat, roughly in the shape of a costume witch hat, but instead of a pointy top, it sported a paper mache pig’s head on a plate surrounded by dollar bills. These women were members of W.I.T.C.H., the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell and they were about to jump on their broomsticks and fly into the history books.Find show notes and transcripts at: digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Witches Series, #3 of 4. In 1618, the Earl of Rutland and his wife accused three women of bewitching their family. They believed that bewitchment was the cause of death of their first son, and the long-term illness of their second. The women in question were former servants of their household at Belvoir (or Beaver) Castle near Bottesford, England: Joan Flower, a Bottesford cunning woman, and her two daughters, Margaret and Phillipa. Joan Flower died while being transported to the prison at Lincoln; her two daughters were interrogated mercilessly by the Earl and several other noblemen who also served as magistrates in Lincoln County until they confessed. The jury found both guilty, and the judge sentenced them to death. Less than a year later, the Earl’s second son succumbed to his long-term illness. The Earl had his family tomb inscribed with these words: “In 1608 he married ye lady Cecila Hungerford, daughter to ye Honorable Knight Sir John Tufton, by whom he had two sons, both of which died in their infancy by wicked practises and sorcerye.”[1] Francis Manners and his wife, Cecily, were convinced that their family had been cursed by a witch. Historian Tracy Borman suspects foul play of a non-magical sort. Ultimately, the motive mattered little to the Flower women. Their accusers were too powerful to be denied a conviction, and they were too inconsequential, with too few friends in Bottesford or Lincoln, to survive a witch hunt. Full transcript and bibliography at digpodcast.orgSelect BibliographyBibliographyMichael D. Bailey, Magic and Superstition in Europe, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006).Tracy Borman, Witches: James I and the English Witch-Hunts,(London: Vintage, 2014).Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Witches Series. Episode #2 of 4. Since at least the 1970s, academic histories of witches and witchcraft have enjoyed a rare level of visibility in popular culture. Feminist, literary, and historical scholarship about witches has shaped popular culture to such a degree that the discipline has become more about unlearning everything we thought we knew about witches. Though historians have continued to investigate and re-interpret witch history, the general public remains fixated on the compelling, feminist narrative of the vulnerable women hanged and burned at the stake for upsetting the patriarchy. While this part of the story can be true, especially in certain contexts, it’s only part of the story, and frankly, not even the most interesting part. Today we tackle male witches in early modern Eurasia and North America!Find Show Notes and Transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices