Reckoning with Jason Herbert

This week Liz Covart drops in to talk with Kelsa and I about the final episode of Franklin, along with her thoughts on the show as it was. We get into the diplomatic manuevering at Paris, Liz's Codfish moment, the brigand that was William Augustus Bowles and ask if the French lost the American Revolution.About our guest:Liz Covart is a historian of early America who practices scholarly history, public history, and digital humanities, primarily as the Founding Director of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. She is the creator and host of the incredible history podcast, Ben Franklin's World.

This week marine biologist and world reknowned shark expert Melissa Cristina Márquez dives in to talk all things Jaws. We talk about her career as a scientist, the role of sharks in the ecosystem, and the impact the book and film had on global shark populations. This is a different look for HATM and a lot of fun talking to an inspiring scholar. We're gonna need a bigger pod.About our guest:Known as the "Mother of Sharks," Melissa Cristina Márquez is a Latina marine biologist and conservationist who studies sharks and their relatives (the skates, rays, and chimaeras- collectively, this groups of animals are known as 'Chondrichthyans'). Márquezspecifically studies their habitat use (why they are where they are) and how their portrayal in the media influences attitudes towards marine predators and conservation initiatives. She founded The Fins United Initiative (TFUI; www.finsunited.co.nz) a program that introduces audiences worldwide to the diverse sharks and scientists who study them. You may have seen her on Shark Week or watched her TEDx talk on Youtube, "Sharks & Female Scientists: More Alike Than You Think." She is also a freelance wildlife writer and regularly covers marine science in regards to sharks as a Forbes contributor. You can follow Melissa's worldwide science communication efforts on her Twitter (@mcmsharksxx) or Instagram (@melissacristinamarquez) and learn more about her research and outreach there.  

Listen. You don't need to have watched the Franklin series at this point. Listen to THIS POD. This one. Everything you need is here. We've got Kelsa Pellettiere. We have Michael Hattem. We have JOANNE FREEMAN. We have colonial ideologies and diatribes on where an American Revolution series should go. We have disappointment in Michael Douglas. We have fart jokes. We have codfish (you'll see). Easily one of the most fun conversations of my life. Enjoy.About our guests:Kelsa Pelletiere is the guest host for the duration of the Franklin podcast miniseries. I sought out someone who is an absolute expert on the man and his life and seemingly everyone came back with Kelsa. She is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Mississippi. Her research focuses on early diplomatic history in the United States, specifically Benjamin Franklin and the American Revolution. Her teaching interests include eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth-century American history; Revolutionary America; U.S. diplomacy; and the Atlantic world.Michael Hattem is an American historian, with interests in early America, the American Revolution, and historical memory. He received his PhD in History at Yale University and am the author of Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2020) and The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History (Yale University Press, 2024). He has taught History and American Studies courses at The New School and Knox College.Joanne Freeman specializes in the politics and political culture of the revolutionary and early national periods of American History.  She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia.  Her most recent book, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (Yale University Press), won the Best Book award from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, and her edited volume, Alexander Hamilton: Writings (Library of America) was one of the Atlantic Monthly’s “best books” of 2001.  Her current project, The Field of Blood: Congressional Violence in Antebellum America, explores physical violence in the U.S. Congress between 1830 and the Civil War, and what it suggests about the institution of Congress, the nature of American sectionalism, the challenges of a young nation’s developing democracy, and the longstanding roots of the Civil War.

This week Kelsa and I ask the tough questions about the series: Are they spending too much time on Temple? Is Lafayette the best character? How will they resolve the series? Which Founding Father would have had an OnlyFans account? Stick around for the wildest discussion on the American Revolution you've ever heard.

This week we are joined Bathsheba Demuth to talk about the Chris Hemsworth-led In The Heart of the Sea. Bathsheba is the author of one of my favorite books,  Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait and we talk about the history of whaling, her work with Indigenous communities in the Yukon, and of course, Moby Dick. This is one of the most fun conversations I've had on this podcast and I hope you enjoy.About our guest:Bathsheba Demuth is writer and environmental historian specializing in the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic. Her interest in northern places and cultures began when she was 18 and moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon, where she trained huskies for several years. From the archive to the dog sled, she is interested in how the histories of people, ideas, and ecologies intersect. In addition to her prize-winning book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, her writing has appeared in publications from The American Historical Review to The New Yorker and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. She is currently the Dean’s Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University. 

This week my good friend and native Coloradan Kathleen Belew drops in to talk about the movie that etched the word "wolverines" into our lives forever: Red Dawn. We talk about how Red Dawn depicts Cold War fears on the big screen, and how it has been perceived in the *checks notes* forty years since its release. As usual, Kathleen and I talk about where to get the best food in Colorado, skiing, and god knows what else. This is a pod you've been asking for. I hope you like it.About our guest:Kathleen Belew is a historian, author, and teacher. She specializes in the history of the present. She spent ten years researching and writing her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard, 2018, paperback 2019). In it, she explores how white power activists created a social movement through a common story about betrayal by the government, war, and its weapons, uniforms, and technologies. By uniting Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead, and other groups, the movement mobilized and carried out escalating acts of violence that reached a crescendo in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City. This movement was never adequately confronted, and remains a threat to American democracy. Her next book, Home at the End of the World, illuminates our era of apocalypse through a history focused on her native Colorado where, in the 1990s, high-profile kidnappings and murders, right-wing religious ideology, and a mass shooting exposed rents in America’s social fabric, and dramatically changed our relationship with place, violence, and politics (Random House).Belew has spoken about Bring the War Home in a wide variety of places, including The Rachel Maddow Show, The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, AC 360 with Anderson Cooper, Frontline, Fresh Air, and All Things Considered. Her work has featured prominently in documentaries such as Homegrown Hate: The War Among Us (ABC) and Documenting Hate: New American Nazis (Frontline). Belew is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University. She earned tenure at the University of Chicago in 2021, where she spent seven years. Her research has received the support of the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Jacob K. Javits Foundation. Belew earned her BA in the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington, where she was named Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities. She earned a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University.

This week the legendary Seth Cotlar joins in with Kelsa and me to talk about Episode 5 of Franklin. We get into the dynamics between John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, talk about the need for more meat some of these storylines, and address the needs of the colonies to those of Ukraine in the present day. It's another great trip to the 18th century.

This week Agnes Arnold-Forster jumps in to talk about the emotional roller coaster that is Pixar's Inside Out. We talk about how historians have conceptualized emotions, their role in the human experience, and Agnes' new book which charts the history of nostalgia. This is such a cool pod because we go places we rarely get to visit. I hope you dig it.About our guest:Agnes Arnold-Forster is a writer; researcher; and historian. She has written, researched, and presented on everything from women's health in today's Britain to the history of cancer; from the 1918 flu pandemic to the well-being of surgeons in twenty-first-century America. She is an expert in the history of Europe, the USA, and Canada, and my research spans the eighteenth century to the present day. She explores societies, cultures, medicine, science, technology, emotions, and the world of work. She is currently writing a book about the history of nostalgia, due to be published by Picador in April 2024.

This week HATM friend Lindsay Chervinsky drops in to talk about Episode 4 of Franklin. We talk about the very real possibility all of this could fail, spies galore, a young Louis XVI (with a head!) and a villainous John Adams? Join in with us now!About our guest: Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a presidential historian. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, co-editor of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, and the forthcoming book, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic. She regularly writes for public audiences in the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Bulwark, Time Magazine, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post. 

This week Elsa Devienne drops in to talk about Gidget and the history and transformation of the California beach. We get into the fascination with the US and the environment, as well as the influence of Hawaii on California beach culture. We also jump into issues of body image, gender dynamics, and queer representation in beach movies and the global trasnformation of surf culture post Gidget. This is a fun talk.About our guest: Elsa Devienne joined Northumbria University in 2019, having previously taught at Princeton University, Université Paris Nanterre, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Her research lies at the intersection of urban history, environmental history, and the history of gender, body, and sexuality, with a focus on the 20th century. She is particularly interested in the history of Americans’ intense engagement with their coastlines, from the 19th-century beach-bathing boom until today’s climate crisis and its catastrophic consequences for coastal communities.Her first book, La ruée vers le sable: une histoire environnementale des plages de Los Angeles (Sorbonne Editions, 2020), won the 2021 Willi Paul Adams Award awarded by the Organization of American Historians for the best book on American history published in a language other than English. A translated and updated version with a new epilogue is coming out with Oxford University Press in 2024 under the title Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles. She is also the author of several articles published in academic journals in the US and Europe, including in The Journal of Urban History, The European Journal of American Studies, California History, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire and Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales.