Dig: A History Podcast

5Cs of History, Complexity: #4 of 4. During the Tang dynasty in the mid 8th century, a military leader named Li Baozhen was frustrated with his aging body. He had achieved much military glory and material wealth in his life, but he was aging and facing the fact that death was approaching. But he had also had dreams that he was riding triumphantly through the sky on a crane. Surely this was an omen! At the same time, Li Baozhen met Sun Jichang, who was a fangshi - a word that can be translated as alchemist, wizard, magician, and also doctor or physician. Sun Jichang offered Li Baozhen a concoction that he promised would allow him to “transcend” death. Inspired by his dreams of slipping away from earth on the back of a crane, Li Baozhen took the elixir - only to become incredibly sick. Li Baozhen’s experience captures something of the complexity of Chinese medicine: competing ideas of how to heal, the use of various powerful medicines in careful (and not so careful) doses, the intermingling of spiritual and medicial philosophies, and the quest for health and power, even immortality. For this installment in our series on the five C’s of historical thinking, we’re contemplating the historical concept of complexity through an exploration of Chinese medicine.BibliographyAndrews, Bridie. The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850-1960. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014. Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: The Song Dynasty, 960-1200. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. Goldschmidt, Asaf. “Epidemics and Medicine during the Northern Song Dynasty: The Revival of Cold Damage Disorders,” T’oung Pao 93 (2007): 53-109. Liu, Yan. Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021. Lo, Vivienne and Michael Stanley-Baker, “Chinese Medicine,” in A Global History of Medicine, ed., Mark Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, trans. Maoshing Ni. Boston: Shambhala Press, 1995. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History. Complexity. Episode #3 of 4. Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, and its residents are considered United States citizens. However the island’s political status remains a subject of debate and discussion. Some Puerto Ricans advocate for independence, while others support maintaining the current status as a territory, pursuing statehood, or seeking other forms of self-determination for the island. The political status of Puerto Rico remains a complex and ongoing issue.Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History: Complexity, #2 of 4. Josephine Baker’s life story - both what we know and what we don’t/can’t know - is fascinating. For our purposes today, her life story is a perfect case study for complexity in historical thinking. Not only was she an icon of contradictions, but the way she lived and interacted with the world has allowed historians and feminist scholars to really tease out the complexity of her lifetime. Josephine Baker lived from 1906 until 1975. She was both a Civil Rights activist and a performer who used blackface and racialized tropes to entertain. She was both a woman who had intimate (probably sexual) relationships with other women, and exiled an adopted son when he came out to her as gay. She was both a deeply private woman and opened her home to the public like an amusement park. And for most of her life she lived in France, which was both deeply enamored with Black American culture and music and deeply racist. As Josephine Baker shows us, historical moments, like life stories, are rarely simple.BibliographyJean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase, Josephine: The Hungry Heart, (Random House New York, 1993). Peggy Caravantes, The Many Faces of Josephine Baker: Dancer, Singer, Activist, Spy (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2015) 151.Luca Cerchiari, Laurent Cugny, and Franz Kerschbaumer, Eurojazzland (Boston: Northwestern University Press, 2012)Ed. Mae G. Henderson and Charlene B. Register, The Josephine Baker Critical ReaderFBI Records: The Vault — Josephine BakerPatrick O’Connor. “Josephine Baker.” American National Biography OnlineMary McAuliffe, When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s paris of hemingway, chanel, cocteau, cole porter, josephine baker, and their friends (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated, 2016)Alan Schroeder and Heather Lehr Wagner, Josephine Baker: Entertainer (New York: Chelsea House, 2006)Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007).Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time, (DoubleDay, 1989). Jennifer Sweeney-Risko, “Fashionable ‘Formation’: Reclaiming the Sartorial Politics of Josephine Baker,” Australian Feminist Studies 2018, VOL. 33, NO. 98, 498–514 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Explore the complex history of fatness in the pre-modern West and challenge common narratives. Discover contrasting views in ancient Greece and Rome where fatness was considered disgraceful. Delve into the Renaissance depiction of women's bodies in art and the connection between fatness and intemperate behavior in the pre-modern West. Learn about the host's social media handles, educator resources, and discussions on topics such as women's bosoms and fatness in soldiers. Find out about the ad for flu vaccines at Baker's pharmacy.

5 Cs of History: Change Over Time, Episode #4 of 4. Written and spoken language are separate things. Languages that are connected to a written script change more slowly and last longer than those that don’t. Writing acts as an anchor to humans’ ever-changing speech sounds. But these two aspects of language (speech and writing) did not always go hand in hand. Today we dive into the history of the written word.BibliographyFischer, Steven R. A History of Writing New ed. London: Reaktion Books. 2021.Gabrial, Brian. “History of Writing Technologies,” in Bazerman Charles. 2008. Handbook of Research on Writing : History Society School Individual Text. New York: L. Erlbaum Associates.Powell Barry B. Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 2012.Stanlaw, James. The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology. Hoboken NJ: Wiley Blackwell. 2021.Stroud, Kevin. https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/“The Evolution of Writing.” Published in James Wright, ed., INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Elsevier, 2014 https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Change over Time Series. The Five Cs of History. Episode #3 of 4. The Rights Revolution movements of the twentieth century were deeply connected to one another, with activists known for their work in one movement having cut their teeth in the others. These movements were also profoundly influenced and connected to struggles of the past, with older movements having either been where activists began their activism or were mentored by senior members in the struggle. Additionally, many historians and sociologists are tweaking the narrative of “feminisms” by displaying how the feminist movement has been a continual movement and how many different feminisms have co-existed throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Feminism did not “go silent” at times but has always been present in different ways.Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History. Change over Time. Episode #2 of 4. In recent years, America’s two party system has seemed more intractable than ever: Democrats vs. Republicans. Now, we have a clear idea of each party’s location on the political map: Democrats are liberal, Republicans conservative; Democrats are left-leaning, Republicans right-leaning. Right now, those truths seems so deeply entrenched that they seem almost natural - it’s always been this way and always will be. But if historians know anything it’s this: things change. In this episode, we’re thinking about change over time by looking at the long history of America’s political parties.Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Five Cs of History. Change Over Time #1 of 4. Roger Casement has been a subject of fascination - and controversy - for over a century. During his lifetime, he was an internationally-recognized champion for human rights, and was instrumental in exposing the horrors surrounding the rubber industry in the Belgian Congo and Peruvian Putumayo. Significantly, he spent his life striving to do more than just expose the injustices of the Congo and Putumayo - he built a network of activists and leaders willing to intercede, push for reform, and demand change for the indigenous peoples who suffered under European occupation. After years working within the British Empire, he was radicalized in his Irish nationalist beliefs, and spent the last two years of his life working to fight for Ireland’s independence from Britain. After his execution, some held on to the memory of him as a humanitarian hero, others claimed he was another martyr of the Irish nationalist cause, and still others distanced themselves from his evident homosexuality. The question of his sexuality determined whether or not he could be counted among the ‘real’ Irish heroes.Find the transcript and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Cs of History. Causality Series #4 of 4. Despite the fact that eighty percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, it does not. That is because the Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified. Despite being introduced in 1923, the ERA was not passed by Congress until 1972. However, the amendment failed to be ratified by the required number of states before the deadline set by Congress, and therefore did not become part of the Constitution. Since then, efforts to pass the ERA have continued but legal and political obstacles remain, and the ERA has yet to be officially added to the U.S. Constitution. We are in the process of exploring the 5 C’s of history on the podcast this year and in this series we are exploring causality, meaning how historians evaluate multiple factors that shape past events. Today we will look at the Equal Rights Amendment and the reasons that --so far-- it has not become law.Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 C's of History: Causality, #3 of 4. In 2017, White House chief of staff John Kelly, then serving Donald Trump, was interviewed by Fox New’s Laura Ingraham, who asked about Kelly’s thoughts on a church in Virginia that had recently taken down a statue to Robert E. Lee. Kelly responded that Robert E. Lee had been a “honorable man” who “gave up his country to fight for his state,” and claimed that the war had been caused by a “lack of ability to compromise.” Today, when asked the reason for the Civil War, most of us would immediately- and correctly -  say slavery. And nearly all historians would support that. But still, the question nags. What about slavery caused a violent, protracted civil war? What event or issue or Supreme Court case or compromise was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Or was it the competing cultures of North and South that did it, both created and exacerbated by the existence of Black chattel slavery? Today, as we continue to explore the concept of causality as a historical thinking skill, we’re talking about the causes of the American Civil War.Select BibliographyAstor, Aaron, Judith Giesberg, Kellie Carter Jackson, Martha S. Jones, Brian Matthew Jordan, James Oakes, Jason Phillips, Angela M. Riotto, Anne Sarah Rubin, Manisha Sinha. “Forum on Eric Foner’s “The Causes of the American Civil War: Recent Interpretations and New Directions.” Civil War History 69 (2023): 60-86. Blight, David. Was the Civil War Inevitable? The New York Times Magazine. December 21, 2022.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices