Reckoning with Jason Herbert

This morning I talk about why Hoosiers has been banned from HATM and why as a Kentuckian I am legally required to hate Indiana.

This week Dr. Surekha Davies joins in to talk about a different way of seeing human history--through monsters. According to her, Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. So our conversation reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. And to do so, we are talking about one of the very best Pixar films ever made: Monsters, Inc. This episode is so good that it's scary.About our guest:Dr. Surekha Davies is a British author, speaker, and historian of science, art, and ideas. Her first book, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human, won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best first book in intellectual history from the Journal of the History of Ideas and the Roland H. Bainton Prize in History and Theology. She has written essays and reviews about the histories of biology, anthropology, and monsters in the Times Literary Supplement, Nature, Science, and Aeon.

This week Dr. Will Tosh drops in to talk about the many complexities of Shakespeare's relationships, Shakespeare's role as a working writer, and the competitive landscape of playwrights of the time, along with Will's new book, Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare.About our guest:Dr. Will Tosh is interim Director of Education (Higher Education and Research) at Shakespeare’s Globe, where he is responsible for undergraduate and postgraduate course, events for adult learners, and the Globe’s scholarly research programme. Will researches and writes about the literature and culture of Shakespeare’s England, and his work at the Globe includes dramaturgy, new writing development, and public engagement in person, in the media and online.Will holds degrees from the University of Oxford and Queen Mary University of London, and has worked at Shakespeare’s Globe since 2014. He developed the Research in Action format of public scholarly workshops, and helped to curate the Antiracist Shakespeare webinar series from 2021-24. He is the host of ‘That Is The Question’, the Globe’s award-winning YouTube series. Will is the co-director of the Shakespeare Centre London (based jointly at the Globe and King’s College London), and a mentor for the Early Modern Scholars of Colour network. He has served on the programme committee for the Shakespeare Association of America.Will is the author of Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (2018), and Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare’s England (2016), which revealed the intimate social circle of the Elizabethan spy Anthony Bacon. His most recent book is Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare, which was published to wide acclaim in 2024. Will writes and reviews regularly for academic journals as well as the Times Literary Supplement and other news publications.

Happy birthday Mr. President! Today for George Washington's birthday we invited Washington scholar Craig Bruce Smith to talk about why we still don't have a biopic of the First American, plus Craig's top five presidents ever.About our guest:Craig Bruce Smith is an associate professor of history at National Defense University in the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) in Norfolk, VA. He authored American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era and co-authored George Washington’s Lessons in Ethical Leadership.Smith earned his PhD in American history from Brandeis University. Previously, he was an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), an assistant professor of history, and the director of the history program at William Woods University, and he has taught at additional colleges, including Tufts University. He specializes in American Revolutionary and early American history, specifically focusing on George Washington, honor, ethics, war, the founders, transnational ideas, and national identity. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, and early American cultural, intellectual, and political history. 

This week Dr. Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Dr. Derek Silva drop in to talk about 1993's The Program, starring James Caan, Omar Epps, and Halle Berry. This movie was way ahead of its time in its discussions of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), concussions, and race and sexual dynamics on campus. We talk about all of this and the cost to college athletes to play the game. About our guests:Nathan Kalman-Lamb's  scholarly work sits at the intersection of social theory and the sociology of sport, with a particular focus on labor, racism, and exploitation. His most recent book Game Misconduct: Injury, Fandom, and the Business of Sport, based on qualitative interviews with former professional hockey players and fans of the sport, uses Marxist-Feminist social reproduction theory to explore how the political economy of sports like hockey is predicated on an affective transfer from athletic workers to fans through the physical sacrifice that is fundamental to these 'games.'Derek Silva's areas of interest include sociocultural studies of sport, critical sociology and criminology, labour, racism, and inequality. My work can be found in the peer-reviewed journals Critical Sociology, Punishment and Society, Crime, Media, Culture, Sociology of Sport Journal, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, Policing & Society, Annals of Leisure Research, Social Science & Medicine – Qualitative Research in Health, Sociological Forum, Race & Class, Educational Gerontology, and in media outlets such as TIME Magazine, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Chronicle of Higher Education, ​Jacobin Magazine, and The Baffler Magazine. 

Forester Dr. Lauren Oakes joins in today to talk about the urgent need for effective reforestation efforts and the complexities of understanding the state of the world's forests. Plus, we talk about the dual narrative of loss and growth in forest ecosystems, emphasizing the importance of preserving existing forests while also working on reforestation efforts. About our guest:Dr. Lauren Oakes makes environmental science accessible to non-scientists. She writes about forests, climate, and our complex relationships with nature. Her craft blends science communications and reporting through narrative.She earned her Ph.D. from the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program for Environment and Resources at Stanford University. By training, she is an ecologist and land change scientist, committed to facilitating more sustainable land use practices in communities across the world. She has always been intrigued by our human footprint on the natural world and concerned about the ways environmental degradation affects the lives of people and other species.Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, Emergence Magazine, Nautilus and other media outlets. Her first book, In Search of the Canary Tree, was selected as one of Science Friday’s Best Science Books of 2018. In 2019, it won second place for the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award and was a finalist for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Communication Award. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation supported research and reporting for Treekeepers, her most recent book about the global reforestation movement.

This week we dive headfirst into discussions over the Fourteenth Amendment, birthright citizenship, racial discrimination, families, hope, and love with Dr. Kathryn Schumaker as we talk about 2016's Loving and her new book Tangled Fortunes: The Hidden History of Interracial Marriage in the Segregated South.About our guest:Dr. Kathryn Schumaker's scholarship is focused on intersections of race, gender, and American law. Her new book, Tangled Fortunes: The Hidden History of Interracial Marriage in the Segregated South (Basic Books, January 2025), explores how interracial families survived in the hostile political, social, and legal environment of Jim Crow Mississippi. She is also the author of Troublemakers: Students’ Rights and Racial Justice in the Long Twentieth Century (NYU Press, 2019). She has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation, the American Historical Association, and the American Society for Legal History. 

Columbia University clinical psychologist drops in to talk about his research on resilience, PTSD, the importance of understanding resilience in the face of trauma, the biological responses to traumatic events, and the misconceptions surrounding PTSD.About our guest:George Bonanno is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College and internationally recognized for his pioneering research on human resilience in the face of loss and potential trauma. He is recognized by the Web of Science as among the top one percent most cited scientists in the world, and has been honored with lifetime achievement awards by the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS), and the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA). In addition to the books, The End of Trauma and The Other Side of Sadness, George has published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles, many appearing in leading journals such as Nature, JAMA, American Psychologist, and the Annual Review of Psychology. He is also an avid painter (when he has time), reads widely, and loves music.

This week Jeff Melnick, Akrobatik, and Dart Adams join in to talk about Beastie Boys’ revolutionary debut album, License to Ill as well as explore the roots of hip hop, it’s tied to urban communities, the evolution of Beastie Boys as people, and the album’s legacy nearly 40 years later. 

Ed Zwick is the man behind many of the movies and tv series you know by heart: Glory, Legends of the Fall, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, Shakespeare in Love, thirtysomething, My So Called Life, and more. And this week, he stops in to talk about his 40+ years of working in Hollywood- the hits, the flops, and everything in between. We talk about our mutual love of history, as well as his thoughts on how history informs his storytelling. There's so much in this conversation and I am so excited to bring it to you.About our guest:Ed Zwick is an Academy Award– and Emmy Award–winning director, writer, and producer of film and television. A graduate of Harvard and the AFI Conservatory, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Liberty Godshall.