Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong

In this first installment on the great Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20, we consider the staggering scope and deep reach of the viral disease that swept the world three times, infecting one third of humankind and killing more people than the World War that nonetheless overshadowed it in the public mind. The second installment will consider the lingering impacts of the pandemic, its enduring mysteries, and the possible reasons it has been forgotten. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- https://www.lyceum.fm/ Suggested further reading: Laura Spinney, "Pale Rider"; Alfred Crosby, "America's Forgotten Pandemic." image: Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Spanish Flu, 1919

What can I say? I'm alive and well, how are you? Image: bronze statue of the Archangel Michael, atop the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, commemorating the end of a plague.

What is with the spate of 1980s themes on current "prestige" television? Is it Gen. X. nostalgia for their youthful days in suburban malls? Or something more? Television critic Sonia Saraiya discusses how our unresolved identity crises seem to have led us into a fascination with the last years of the Cold War, and with the secret mistakes and machinations that took place on both sides of the old Iron Curtain. please support this podcast! -- https://www.patreon.com/creator-home The pledges for this installment will be split evenly between the two collaborators. Television series discussed: "The Americans," "Stranger Things," "When They See Us," "Chernobyl," "Leaving Neverland" Correction: The famous quote that nuclear power is "a hell of a way to boil water" comes from journalist Karl Grossman's 1980 book, "Cover Up."

What did people do when the Roman empire fell apart around them? Recent scholarship, based on new archeological discoveries and techniques, argues that in the "dark" centuries between 450 and 750 AD, the people of western Europe, from conquering kings to ordinary peasants, improvised new political alliances, maintained law and order, improved the productivity of their land, and invented new crafts and art forms, building a resilient and inventive society on the foundations (often literally) of the old. Please support this podcast -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested further reading: Peter Wells, "Barbarians to Angels" Cover image: Visigothic bronze belt buckle with garnet and glass inlays, belonging to a woman in Spain, mid-6th century AD; image provided by Cleveland Museum of Art.

Unlocked for all listeners after one year for patrons only: -about 10 ft. long -made in France, ca. 1540s -lost in shipwreck, ca. 1562-5 -located on bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Canaveral We examine the mysteries surrounding a French bronze cannon recently discovered on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near Florida, amidst the wreckage of an unidentified sixteenth-century fleet. The cannon and other artifacts are rare, priceless remnants of French Protestants’ ill-fated attempts to colonize North America before the Spanish, and their discovery sparked a heated international legal dispute. The mysterious shipwreck gives us a window into a rare moment when Europe’s vicious religious wars spilled over into the Americas. Image courtesy of Bobby Pritchett., Pres., Global Marine Exploration Inc. Introductory music: Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D, played by Wanda Landowska on harpsichord. Please sign up as a patron to hear all patron-only lectres, including the next installment in this series -- "History of the United States in 100 Objects -- 7: The Dorion Mission Seal, ca. 1680s" -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/27011706

Anticipating the 400th anniversary of the foundation of Plymouth colony, Michael J. Simpson and I discuss the deep background of the creation of "New England" -- the long history of contact, exchange, violence, disease, and acculturation among indigenous and European peoples, both before and after 1620, that created a complex creolized world before any Puritans were even on the scene. Michael's instagram: @hiddenhistoryri Please support this podcast in order to keep the lectures coming and make them regular and dependable! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 (Payment for this installment will be split between the two collaborators)

Could it be that "Shakespeare" wasn't Shakespeare? -- that someone else, perhaps a highly-educated aristocrat, actually wrote the works attributed to the actor from Stratford? Am I a crackpot for even entertaining such a ridiculous idea? We consider the evidence. This is the last installment in my series about William Shakespeare. Become a patron to hear the whole discussion: https://www.patreon.com/posts/32922586

Unlocked after one year for patrons only, a discussion of our fixation with organizing political views into an axis "left" against "right": As new political parties -- left-populists, neo-fascists, and secessionists -- rapidly rise and fall across Europe and other Western countries, and spontaneous protests blur partisan boundaries in the streets of Paris, the old left-to-right scale of political ideology is just not working. What value does this one-dimensional model of politics have, and where did it come from? In fact, it has to do with where you sit at a formal dinner party. Please sign up as a patron to hear patron-only lectures -- including the next "Myth of the Month," on the historical, political, and psychological meanings of "Game of Thrones" -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/25597371 Suggested further reading: Yuval Levin, "The Great Debate"; Jonathan Haidt, "The Righteous Mind"

How could Shakespeare have possibly allowed his sonnets -- personal, sexual, and often scandalous -- to be published? I advance my own theory to account for the printing of the most shocking book of poetry in the history of literature, and discuss the possibilities as to the identities of the alluring Young Man and Dark Lady. Finally, we consider the light that the Sonnets shed upon Shakespeare's plays, particularly his obsession with gender ambiguity and androgyny. Become a patron to hear my upcoming discussion of the Shakespeare authorship controversy (the notion that somebody else wrote the works of Shakespeare) www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 CORRECTION: In thanking my patrons at the end of this episode, I mistakenly referred to "Christopher Grant" instead of "Christopher Grady." Apologies and thanks. Poems analyzed in this lecture: 17, 20, 135, 136, 138, 144 Full text of Shakespeare's sonnets, searchable: www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Archive/allsonn.htm Suggested further reading: Katherine Duncan-Jones, ed., "Shakespeare's Sonnets"; Joseph Pequigney, "Such Is My Love"; Lynn Magnusson, "A Modern Perspective" in Folger Shakespeare Library's edition of Shakespeare's Poems; Don Paterson, "Shakespeare's Sonnets," (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/16/shakespeare-sonnets-don-paterson); Saul Frampton, "In Search of Shakespeare's Dark Lady" (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/10/search-shakespeares-dark-lady-florio); Macd. P. Jackson, "The Authorship of 'A Lover's Complaint,'" The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Sep. 2008

What do Shakespeare's sonnets actually say? What can they tell us about the life or character of the man who penned them? Not only romantic and philosophical, the sonnets are erotic, desperate, and often angry, laced with shocking sexual imagery and emotional confession; as a group, they break all conventions of Elizabethan poetry, and trace the ghostly outline of two passionate affairs -- one a brief, tawdry fling with a mature voluptuous woman, and one a long, fraught relationship with an androgynous young man. This will be followed by a discussion of the publication of the sonnets, the possible identities of the "Dark Lady" and "Fair Youth," and their relation to the plays; and then by a discussion for patrons only of the "authorship controversy." Please support this podcast in order to keep the lectures coming and make them regular and dependable! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Poems analyzed in this lecture: 1, 18, 20, 27, 33, 50, 52, 80, 86, 116, 127, 128, 129, 144 Full text of Shakespeare's sonnets, searchable: http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Archive/allsonn.htm Suggested further reading: Katherine Duncan-Jones, ed., "Shakespeare's Sonnets"; Joseph Pequigney, "Such Is My Love"; Lynn Magnusson, "A Modern Perspective" in Folger Shakespeare Library's edition of Shakespeare's Poems.