Dig: A History Podcast

Secret Clubs and Societies. 1 of 4. Deadpool, Boba Fet, James Bond, Jason Bourne, Winter Soldier and Kill Bill... from the Assassin's Creed video game to the John Wick series, professional assassins are vilified and valorized in equal measure. Why do some assassins earn our admiration, even affection, while others remain defamed and deviant in the popular imagination? This episode tells the story of the Hashshashin, as one Ismaili Shia sect became known when word of their purported use of hashish and opium circulated around the Mediterranean. Etymologists tell us that the work "assassin" is derived from "Hashshashin" because the group became so universally defamed for their targeted killings that their name became synonymous with political murder. This episode will sort through the most enduring legends of the Hashshashin, establish their accuracy, and demonstrate how the sensationalized stories of one medieval Ismaili sect shaped the "Western" consciousness forever.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eugenics, Episode #4 of 4. At the beginning of the 20th century, eugenics - the belief that the human population could be manipulated through selective breeding - was on the cutting-edge of modern science. Following the example set by American eugenic sterilization and anti-miscegenation laws, and empowered by the rise of the ultra ethno-nationalist Nazi party, German scientists helped Third Reich officials to implement a series of eugenic laws designed to craft the ideal German 'Volk.' But within a few years, these eugenic programs became far more radical, intent on the liquidation of the disabled population of Germany. Transcript of the episode is available at digpodcast.orgSources for this episode include: Henry Friedlander, The Origins of the Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995) Patricia Heberer, "The Nazi Euthanasia Program," in The Routledge History of the Holocaust, ed. Jonathan Friedman (London" Routledge, 2011)Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors (New York: Basic Books, 1988)Sheila Faith-Weiss, The Nazi Symbiosis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)Edith Sheffer, Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi, Vienna (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2018) Susan Bachrach and Dieter Kunz, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race (Charlottesville: University at Virginia, 2008) Special thanks to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's Hess Seminar.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eugenics 3 of 4. In 1968, researchers found that one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age were surgically sterilized. This ignited the U.S. reproductive rights movement and the political demand to end forced sterilization in Puerto Rico. However, Puerto Rican women's reproduction has been tied to identity and nationalism since the United States assumed governance of Puerto Rico in 1898. Latin-x have a long and complex history with birth control and surgical sterilization. Chicanas and puertorriquenas have been subjected episodically to unwanted sterilizations in state institutions and public clinics while also struggling to access safe and affordable birth control, including surgical sterilization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eugenics #2 of 4. If you are stumbling on this episode because you are someone obsessed with Japanese culture, then you probably already know about the blood-type fad that leaves poor Type-Bs at the bottom of the dating pool. What you may not already know, however, is how Japan developed that particular discrimination premise -- after all, knowledge about "blood types" is not ancient. It's not even particularly old! Indeed, the "science" and superstition that shapes the blood-type fad today is rooted in the crossroads of Japanese "modernity": Western science, Japanese nationalism, and a heaving effort to get people to stop marrying their damn cousins. Get the transcript and full bibliography at digpodcast.org. Key texts for this episode include: Rachel Nuwer, "You are what you Bleed: In Japan and other east Asian countries some believe blood type dictates personality," Scientific American (11 Feb 2011)Sumiko Otsubo, “Eugenics in Imperial Japan: Some Ironies of Modernity, 1883-1945,” Dissertation School of the Ohio State University (1998)Jennifer Robertson, “Blood Talks: Eugenic Modernity and the Creation of New Japanese,” History and Anthropology 13:3 (2002) 191-216 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By the 19th Century, the European public had been engaging in scientific debate for decades, gathering exotic curiosities, and energetically pursuing the secrets of life. At the same time, they enslaved millions of Africans, profited from the exploitation of their labor, along with that of American Indians and Chinese coolies, and built a hierarchy of human biology, putting themselves at the top. This episode demonstrates how fuzzy the line was, and still is, between science and sexuality, classification and domination, investigation and exploitation, public health policy and genocidal violence. This week, in episode one of our Eugenics series, we will identify 18c antecedents to eugenics such as public sanitation, population hygiene, hereditary science, and human typologies in order to understand the powerful impulses under-girding modern eugenics.Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Georgian London was the epicenter of urban pleasure culture. Harlots leveraged their assets, rakes indulged in licentious sex, and brothels, molly-houses, taverns and bawdy houses were scattered all over the city. Behind all this reckless abandon lay a milieu of misery. Between 1756 and 1760, the Foundling Hospital of London admitted 15,000 infants. This amounts to 10% of all the births in London for those years. This week’s episode addresses the trope of seduction, the realities of prostitution, and the ways that rapidly rising illegitimacy ratios stimulated child abandonment in eighteenth-century London.Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sex 2.0: Episode #3 of 4. Today’s episode is part of our sex series 2.0 and  a continuation of one of our earliest episodes, Selling Sex: 19th Century New York City Prostitution and Brothels. In that episode, Sarah and Elizabeth discussed the vibrant sexual culture in New York City during the Gilded Age, roughly 1870 to 1890. Today Elizabeth and Ave are going to do a deep dive on the most famous antagonists of that sexual culture: anti-vice crusader, Anthony Comstock. A complete bibliography and transcript can be found at digpodcast.org. Some of they key texts for this episode include: Amy Werbel, Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (Columbia University Press, 2018).David Pivar, Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868-1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

 In the age of #MeToo, rape and sexual assault have been consistently in the news. Debates abound about what counts as rape, whose testimony we should believe, and too often, men with power and privilege get away with it. But though it feels pressing right now, none of those debates are new. Join Sarah and Marissa as they look for context for today’s debates in Sharon Block’s important book, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America. Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sex Series #1 of 4. Have you been tested? Averill and Elizabeth take a look at the long history of Europeans blaming women for sexual transmitted diseases, and the gendered and racially charged British imperial policies for locking up women to protect the penises of imperial men. A complete transcript and the full list of sources and further reading are available at digpodcast.org. Some of the key sources for this episode include: ed. Kevin Siena, Sins of the Flesh: Responding to Sexual Disease in Early Modern Europe; Philippa Levine,Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire; Alain Corbin, Women for hire: Prostitution and sexuality in France after 1850 ; Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris; and LOTS of articles - check out the Bibliography for all of them! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bodies Episode #4 of 4. Shannon Withycombe's <em>Lost: Miscarriage in Nineteenth-Century America</em> puts miscarriage at the center of the study of nineteenth-century science, medicine, and women’s experience with their reproductive bodies. You may be surprised by the range of responses to pregnancy loss, motherhood, and reproduction in the 19th century. Get the transcript and complete bibliography at digpodcast.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices