Dig: A History Podcast

Creepy, Occult, and Otherworldly Episode #1 of 4. Get a complete transcript and sources for this episode at digpodcast.org. Instagram accounts like @Mrs_Angemi and @CrimeSceneCleanersInc boast hundreds of thousands of followers, all hoping to catch a glimpse of morbid pathology and the biohazardous remnants of foul play. This is obviously not a niche thing. We are just as much fascinated by violent death as we are scared by it. There is something about violence and death that is captivating to us. When violent death is combined with high-tech gadgets, police procedures, and super cool forensic testing, you get true crime, one of the most popular genres worldwide. Marissa is a true crime junkie. But she's also a social historian of medicine and the body, so today’s episode is a combination of her most favorite things. This episode weaves together three largely unrelated narratives: medical pathology has its own history; death investigation does too; and to make things more complicated, there’s a whole medico-legal infrastructure whose history we have to tell. Select Sources:Jentzen, Jeffrey M. Death Investigation in America Coroners, Medical Examiners, and the Pursuit of Medical Certainty. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009.Hanzlick, Randy, and Debra Combs. 1998. “Medical Examiner and Coroner Systems: History and Trends”. JAMA. 279, no. 11: 870-874.Simmons, John G. Doctors and Discoveries: Lives That Created Today’s Medicine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.Kevin Siena, "Searchers of the Dead"in Worth and Repute: Valuing Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 123. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Slavery #4 of 4. complicated story. Enslaved people in the Caribbean resorted to active resistance much more often than their North American and South American counterparts. Haiti (known then as St. Domingue), Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dutch Guianas were particularly prone to slave revolts, averaging one major revolt every two years between 1731 and 1832. No other slave societies have quite so complex a history of resistance as those in the Caribbean. Historian Sir Hilary Beckles has said, “the many slave revolts and plots... between 1638 and 1838 could be conceived of as the '200 Years' War'-- one protracted struggle launched by Africans and their Afro-West Indian progeny against slave owners.” In this week’s episode, we’ll cover the middle half of this 200-year long struggle. We’ll talk about enslaved Caribbeans’ suffering, their achievements, and their alliances with free people of color. But we will also discuss the realities of their violence, and their complicated legacies in revolutionary politics, race relations, and international diplomacy.Find transcripts and show notes here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Slavery #3 of 4. Show Notes and a complete transcript available at digpodcast.org. Today, we’re really excited to have an extra special episode for you. We’re honored to present this episode in conjunction with the PBS series, Secrets of the Dead. Coming up this October, Secrets of the Dead will be airing the story of the Woman in the Iron Coffin, in which a team of death detectives will reconstruct the Woman’s life. We’ve been lucky enough to see a preview, and let us assure you – you need to see this! But in the meantime, we’re here to offer a little extra context to everything you’ll learn from the experts on the show. "The Woman in the Iron Coffin" is a great opportunity to talk about so many things, but because the Woman was a free black woman living in New York City in the 1850s, we’re going to spend this installment of our slavery series talking about slavery in the Northern United States, how it came to an end, and the lives of free black folks in the North. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Slavery #2 of 4. In today’s episode we are discussing some laws in the United States that governed the bodies and lives of enslaved people and follow how those laws changed, or didn’t change, through emancipation and into the late twentieth century. So buckle up for a long look at Slave Codes, Black Codes, and Jim Crow laws in America. Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Slavery #1 of 4. Get the Show Notes or read the full transcript at digpodcast.org. Between 1522 and 1536, the second most powerful man in the Ottoman empire was Ibrahim Pasha.The most surprising thing about Ibrahim Pasha is not his diplomatic successes or his untimely demise. What is most surprising about Ibrahim Pasha, the second most powerful man in the Ottoman Empire between 1522-36, is that he was a devsirme slave. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Original Research #4 of 4. Get a complete transcript and see the show notes at digpodcast.org The nation first had to truly grapple with the extraordinary expenses of war was after the American Civil War. As part of our series highlighting our own research fields, today we’re talking about Civil War veterans and disability, trauma, gore, crime, and extraordinary federal expenditures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

 The death of a young child was a very real and emotional experience for many families during the American Progressive Era. However, at the dawn of the twentieth century many Americans came to expect a better outcome in the life expectancy of their children. In the new age of industrial capitalism with rapidly changing technology, medical professionalization, and increasing wealth, America could have had the lowest percentages of child and infant deaths out of all industrializing nations. This was not the case, however. In 1900 America ranked 10th among principle nations in infant mortality. The estimated national infant mortality rate was 100 per 1,000 live births resulting in over 230,000 infant deaths per year. The maternal mortality rate was 15,000 per year. The actual numbers were probably much higher as official data was never exact. The United States did not have a uniform system in place to register births. And just to put this in perspective, in 1900 there were 76 million people in the United States, now we have 323 million people living in the U.S. So these infant mortality numbers were significant in 1900. Subsequently, the pain of the loss of a child was an element that touched almost every American living in the early 20th century. Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Original Research #2 of 4. Get Show Notes and Transcripts at digpodcast.org. The case of the Dublin Castle Scandal was no ordinary trial, because this one included sex between men. Like most crimes, sodomy was usually a case of men caught in the act by patrolling policemen, or was otherwise uncovered by normal police work. The discovery of this particular government sex scandal, however, was the work not of the police, but of journalists. An examination of the Dublin Castle Scandal of 1884 sheds light on the Home Rule movement and queer history in 19th century Ireland. Listen as Averill Earls shares her original research on queer history and politics in 19th century Ireland.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Original Work #1 of 4. Employment agencies and classified job ads have a much longer history than you might think. Join us for a brief history of early modern employment agencies. Stick around for a preview of how Marissa is using this fascinating history in her dissertation about wet nursing in London and Philadelphia in the eighteenth century. Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fashion #4 of 4. Underwear, the unseen garments which sit in close proximity to genitals, skin, and all sorts of unmentionable orifices, are the most poorly-documented garments in history yet they shaped bodies, minds, and societies in complex and interesting ways. Sometimes we do really tight, analytical episodes. This is not one of those episodes. The history of underwear does not lend itself to that kind of treatment. It’s long, uneven, and extremely hard to get at because of poor documentation. So get ready for a wild and rambling adventure. Today we take on the global history of underwear from 3,000 BCE to the 20th century.Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices