MHIS Humanities: Recent Episodes

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"The Great War" was not inevitable.  There were people in position to halt the gears of war from turning out of control, but even their efforts descended into conflict.  

This episode are the attempts by students to turn the Willy-Nicky Telegrams, telegrams sent between Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhelm days before WWI began, into Whatsapp voice messages.

This forces students to understand the context, emotions, and inherent threats prevalent in these famous last ditch attempts to avoid catastrophic war.  It is an empathy exercise as well as a relevance exercise, as the students see firsthand and in terms that they understand just how quickly relations between world powers can deteriorate into conflict.  

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The Korean Conflict is one of the major world events since the end of WWII.  The peninsula remains bitterly divided despite numerous attempts to reconcile and find peace.  

In Leadership class we were tasked with solving the Korean Conflict in a way that most benefits our assigned country (a big reason why this issue has never been solved is the tug-of-war between countries vying for advantages in this conflict)

This episode is split in two sections: Interviews and Reflections

The interview section is DURING the simulation, when students are in the thick of the negotiations.  These interviews were done during a time where espionage was at its height, and control of the peace talks was in flux.

The Reflections section is AFTER the simulation has concluded with the winning country being Taiwan (huge underdogs).  Several countries are asked to reflect on their experience as well as things they wish they had done better or differently.  

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Who is the GREATEST LEADER of ALL TIME!?!? More important may be the question "what makes a person a great leader, and how do we compare leaders?  

Leadership class aims to create leaders.  In that endeavor we have embarked on a journey to crown the greatest leader of all time.  

Each group was given 8 historical leaders and tasked with analyzing them fully, comparing/contrasting head-to-head matchups, and concluding which leader is greater.

This episode is a selection of two groups justifying their round one winners.

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We all agree laws are good.  We all agree laws keep us safe.  And yet we romanticize criminals, we enshrine them in movies and television, and we immortalize them. Why?

Crime, Criminals, and Lawmen is a class specifically designed to analyze the social contract concept and how it relates to our obsession with criminals.  

Students are broken up into pairs and assigned a crime (murder, money laundering, etc).  They are then tasked with becoming experts on this crime, the historical record and trends of the crime, its prevalence around the world, and efforts to combat it.

This episode is the initial check-in with most of the groups.  In each clip we talk about their initial research, interest levels, and future plans for the project.

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Here we have two more exceptional philosophy students battling in a debate regarding the death penalty

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These two exceptional philosophy students put their wits to the test in a battle over the death penalty.  The room full of judges had difficulty deciding the winner.

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This episode comes from Philosophy class, as student groups were assigned philosophical disciplines and tasked with teaching the class the key beliefs.  The podcasts were recorded after their presentation.

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This is a discussion with four students from WWI class.

The discussion is centered around two key questions

1. What is Total War, and what do countries need in order to be prepared for one?

2. In the years leading up to WWI, which major countries involved in WWI are actually prepared for a Total War?

Students analyzed primary source documents regarding each country and used that information to inform their conclusion of Total War Readiness