Skipped History: Recent Episodes
Ben Tumin
A comedic podcast exploring overlooked ideas, people, and events that still shape the US today. Presented by historical satirist Ben Tumin.
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Today, writer and critic Vicky Osterweil explains how Disney didn't just make movies — it built the intellectual property regime that now shapes our economy, our culture, and, as it turns out, global vaccine access.
In The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World, Osterweil argues that Disney's business has never really been about movies. It's been about owning them and using the power of the state to protect that ownership at any cost. The animator who drew Mickey Mouse worked behind a literal curtain. The actress who voiced Snow White was informally blacklisted and never worked again. In 1976, Disney lobbied Congress to extend copyright law for everyone, slamming the door on the public domain that had given them Snow White, Cinderella, and The Three Little Pigs in the first place. Her argument? That IP protection (not magic, not imagination) is what Disney actually sells. And that it now shapes the entire economy. “I think we need to want more for ourselves,” she concludes.
Vicky Osterweil is a Philadelphia-based writer, agitator, and worker, and the author of In Defense of Looting.
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Today, historian Dylan Gottlieb explains how yuppies conquered New York, and why that conquest still shapes everything from your rent to our national politics.
In Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York, Gottlieb traces how Wall Street went from employing 3% of Ivy League graduates in the 1970s to 35% by the end of the ‘80s. Landlords burned down buildings to clear space for them. The New York City Marathon (which I’ve long been a hater of—come for me!) was invented to market the city to them. And Democratic politicians, beginning with Gary Hart, quietly replaced their working-class base with them. Gottlieb helps explain how we got here—that is, when we’re not both losing our minds talking about the Knicks leading the NBA Finals.
Dylan Gottlieb is an assistant professor of history at Bentley University.
Today, Jamie Holmes explains how Andrew Jackson launched America’s longest war before Vietnam—with almost no understanding of what he was getting into.
In The Free and the Dead: The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and America’s Forgotten War, Holmes traces the Second Seminole War (1835-1842). Jackson invaded Florida knowing Black Seminoles were free and armed. When war broke out, he kept saying: why isn’t it over? What’s the problem? The war ended up costing up to $40 million (over $1 billion today), killing more soldiers from disease than combat, and could have been avoided entirely. Holmes sees a pattern echoing today: leaders imposing their will by force alone, denying realities they can’t defend on paper, while the media shapes our understanding of wars in real time.
Jamie Holmes is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.
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Today, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi explains how great replacement theory is an update on Nazi ideology—and why the struggle today is between anti-racist democracy and racist dictatorship.
In Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age, Dr. Kendi argues that what we call “neo-Nazism” isn’t new at all—it’s a renovation of Nazi theory with the same bones, just updated for 2026. Instead of Jews as replacers, it’s Muslims or Black people. Instead of “international Jewry,” it’s “globalists.” The book also introduces a distinction between privilege and power. In Dr. Kendi’s view, most people in positions of privilege are, whether they know it or not, dominated by oligarchs who provide those privileges in exchange for submission.
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is Professor of History and founding director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study. He is the author of Stamped from the Beginning, which won the National Book Award, and How to Be an Antiracist.
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Today, Scott Anderson explains how Eisenhower got addicted to regime change—and why Trump is following the same pattern.
In a recent New York Times Magazine piece, Anderson traces how two early Cold War coups created a dangerous template. In 1953, the CIA overthrew Iran’s Prime Minister Mosaddegh by basically renting a mob. The following year, a ragtag mercenary army and a fake radio broadcast toppled Guatemala’s president. Two victories by bluff, costing little money and no American lives. Then Eisenhower tried the same playbook in various other countries—catastrophic failures nearly across the board. As Anderson shows, regime change becomes addictive: each intervention produces the crisis that justifies the next. And now Trump, having grabbed Maduro in Venezuela, has his sights on Iran and Cuba. Anderson also discusses his book King of Kings, about the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution that swept the Shah from power—a direct consequence of that 1953 American coup.
Scott Anderson is a veteran war correspondent and contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution, A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation won the 2025 Kirkus Prize for nonfiction.
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Today, Jon Meacham explains why American history is a perennial struggle—and why that struggle is not the work of a day (though it’d be really nice if it were).
In American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union, Meacham assembles what he calls “the Star Wars bar scene of American History”: an anthology of documents from Fr…
Today, Professor Heather Ann Thompson explains how a subway shooting in 1984 became the blueprint for vigilante violence in America, from George Zimmerman to Kyle Rittenhouse to ICE.
In Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage, Professor Thompson traces how Bernie Goetz shot four Black teenagers on a New York subway in late 1984—then became a hero. Goetz confessed to the shootings on tape, eyewitnesses corroborated his account, and a jury let him off anyway. Professor Thompson’s argument? To understand Goetz’s acquittal, you have to understand Reagan’s deliberate gutting of the safety net, the rise of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, and a cultural shift from empathy to criminalization. As she shows, Goetz’s case is “ground zero” for a landscape where the president, the right-wing media, and, sometimes, The New York Times say up is down.
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Today, Doug Gordon explains how America almost stopped cars in their tracks.
In Life After Cars: A Guide to Getting Around Without Driving, Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear (along with Aaron Naparstek)—hosts of The War On Cars podcast—trace the automobile’s rise from the first car death in 1899 through the 1920s, when mothers built plaster reliefs of mangled children’s bodies to protest “murder machines.” Doug’s argument? That we came close to stopping cars—until “Motordom” (automakers, dealers, parts manufacturers) began to fight back, and the country chose speed over safety.
Doug also connects this history to the present, showing how a Prohibition-era Supreme Court case gave cops unchecked power to approach and search cars—a ruling that directly enables the pretextual stops and violence we still see today. I can’t help but note that the murder of Renee Good occurred in a car, a detail that’s gone far too unmentioned.
And yet, as Doug insists, there’s life after cars. The conversation shouldn’t be about taking cars away, he says. It should be about what we actually want: choices, freedom, and places built for humans, not just machines. (Also, vape pens. I talk about vape pens a lot.)
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Today, Professor Miguel Tinker Salas explains how oil transformed Venezuela from a fractured agricultural economy into a nation vulnerable to foreign manipulation—and how the U.S. just attempted regime change “on the cheap.”
In our conversation, Professor Tinker Salas traces Venezuela’s history from 1922, when a gusher shot oil 200 feet into the air and American companies rushed in to write the country’s petroleum laws, through the “gentlemanly” nationalization of 1976 (which left former oil executives in charge), to Hugo Chávez’s attempts to redirect oil wealth toward social programs. His argument? That Venezuela’s century-long dependence on oil made it uniquely vulnerable to economic warfare. When the Trump administration imposed sanctions and the Biden administration continued them, they targeted the country’s singular weakness. And when the U.S. kidnapped Nicolás Maduro on January 3rd, 2025, it was an attempt at “nation-building from afar”—empire on the cheap, without boots on the ground. But as Professor Tinker Salas warns, you can’t reimagine a national project with a gun or by kidnapping a leader. That has to be done by Venezuelans themselves.
Professor Tinker Salas is an emeritus professor of history at Pomona College and one of the foremost experts on Venezuelan history. He’s the author of Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know and The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture and Society in Venezuela, among other books.
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Today, Professor Benjamin Wilson reveals how “arms control” became a euphemism for endless weapons development—and how the scientists who claimed to oppose the arms race often profited from it.
In Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended Up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex, Professor Wilson traces the origins of “strategic stability,” a term security experts still use today, invented in the 1950s by people with no training in nuclear strategy. Professor Wilson argues that “stability” was conceptual shrink wrap borrowed from other fields and bolted onto nuclear strategy to justify whatever weapons systems the military-industrial complex wanted to build. The ideology it produced—that the best way to prevent nuclear war is to keep developing better weapons—is still at the heart of nuclear debates today, and we still prepare for peace “by preparing for war.”
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Today, Dr. Vanessa S. Williamson dismantles some myths about taxes—and reveals how they’ve been weaponized throughout U.S. history.
In The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History, Dr. Williamson takes us from the Boston Tea Party (which wasn’t about high taxes) through Reconstruction (where tax rhetoric masked racial terror) to today’s anti-government movements. Her argument? That the familiar story—Americans hate taxes, taxation equals tyranny—is not only wrong, but dangerous. And the real history reveals something far more interesting: democracies are good at raising taxes because citizens consent to them, while authoritarians struggle precisely because they can’t govern by consent. And when politicians declare all taxation illegitimate, they’re not defending liberty—they’re laying the groundwork for authoritarianism.
Dr. Williamson is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, and more.
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Today, Jelani Cobb teases out the through lines of his celebrated commentary in The New Yorker—and warns us about some patterns we might’ve been ignoring.
In his new essay collection, Dr. Cobb moves from a 1986 shooting at Jamaica High School to the Obama-era contradictions of Trayvon Martin’s death, from the architectural grandeur we once built for public education to the messaging of “defund the police.” His argument? That America keeps cycling between hope and cynicism, between shared reality and fractured perception—and that understanding where we’ve been is the only way to see where we’re headed. The events he chronicles in Three’s A Riot aren’t just historical footnotes. They’re “notes on how we got here.”
Jelani Cobb is the current Dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. He’s a Peabody Award winner and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. Dr. Cobb is also a staff writer at The New Yorker.
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Today, Dr. Brian Jones reframes some stories we thought we knew—and reveals a few others we were never taught.
In Black History Is for Everyone, Dr. Jones takes us through Bacon’s Rebellion, the Haitian Revolution, and Reconstruction, connecting centuries-old curricular bans to today’s battles over standardized testing. His argument? That students deserve complexity, not sanitized myths, and that flattening history does us all a disservice. Moreover, black history isn’t a niche subject. It’s the story of how America actually works.
Dr. Jones has taught many ages and grades in New York City’s public schools and at the City University of New York. He served as the inaugural director of the Center for Education and Schools at the New York Public Library and as the associate director of education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. I spoke with him a couple of years back about another book he wrote, The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History.
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Today, a dose of Malcolm X and a timeless critique of our troubling times.
In Nobody Can Give You Freedom: The Political Life of Malcolm X, Professor Kehinde Andrews pushes back on myths spread by The Autobiography of Malcolm X—which he calls “a great story, but a terrible book.” Those myths include that Malcolm thought white people were devils, that armed insurrection was the answer, and that he didn’t offer a coherent political program. To the contrary, Malcolm developed a sophisticated critique of “whiteness” as an ideology and believed it was pointless to accept reform within a fundamentally violent system still in place today.
Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, where he founded and directs the Centre for Critical Social Research. Professor Andrews regularly writes for The Guardian, The Independent, Ebony Magazine, and CNN.
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Another week, another late night show host gone: first Stephen Colbert, now Jimmy Kimmel. I think it’s fair to be shocked, but not surprised by Kimmel’s dismissal. As Professor Fara Dabhoiwala told me, there’s long been “blatant hypocrisy” on the part of powerful, “supposed free speech champions.” In fact, the very notion of free speech as we know it today was created by self-serving scoundrels. He advises a more balanced approach to ideas of free speech, even if, in our current, fraying democracy, our problems go “well beyond” free speech alone.
Professor Dabhoiwala is a Senior Research Scholar at Princeton and writes about social, cultural, and intellectual history from the Middle Ages to the present. He previously taught at Oxford and has made radio and TV for the BBC and other channels. His writing appears in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, and The Shanghai Review of Books, among other places. Most recently, he’s the author of What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea.
We recorded our interview before ABC pulled Kimmel’s show. I asked Professor Dabhoiwala for his thoughts after the news broke, which he kindly shared, and you’ll see those reflections italicized and woven into our conversation.
As for me, I’ll have more takes on the shifting media landscape. It’s clearly a precarious time to be a late night host on TV. It is, however, still a good time to be doing live comedy about history, and the theater where I perform asked me to do another run of Part One of my series on The Power Broker on Saturday, 10/4 at 4 PM. I hope to see some of you there. Thank you all for supporting history and laughter during these uncertain times!
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For anyone in NYC, the encore of my live, comedic show about Robert Moses is Monday (9/8) at 7 PM at Caveat (on the Lower East Side). In today’s video, I talk about why I’m doing this project now. Would love to see you there! Tickets here:
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Y'all, this week we have a doozy. We're talking about "the I word"—insurance—and how insurance companies not only profited from, but actively spurred, the burning of American cities in the 1970s.
My guest is Professor Bench Ansfield (Temple University), author of Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City. I am obsessed with this book. It's an astounding exposé of how the insurance industry abandoned entire neighborhoods, then benefited as those areas burned—and hid their complicity through financial mechanisms that will sound awfully familiar.
The conversation, I think, gives you a taste of the headspinning narrative Professor Ansfield weaves about "the fierce churn of racial capitalism,” showing how insurance companies have systematically extracted wealth from vulnerable communities and how tenant organizing is so often at the heart of fighting back.
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As summer reaches its peak, I spoke with Aquinnah Wampanoag author Joseph Lee about tribal history on Martha’s Vineyard. We discussed the challenges of maintaining Indigenous identity amid tourism and displacement and what “green colonialism” looks like today. Joseph also shared how time abroad reshaped his understanding of sovereignty—and who gets to define what being Indigenous means.
Joseph Lee teaches creative writing at Mercy University, and his writing has been published in The Guardian, Vox, High Country News, and more. He has won multiple awards from the Indigenous Journalists Association, and most recently, he’s the author of Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity.
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With conspiracy theories (one in particular) dominating headlines, I spoke with Professor Philip Kadish about how conspiracies have evolved. We traced the history of racist hoaxes dating back to the mid-1800s and explored how shifts in the media landscape during the mid-1900s helped set the stage for today’s conspiratorial age. Through it all, Professor Kadish argues, one tool has remained essential for separating fact from fiction: evidence.
Philip Kadish is a professor of American Studies at Pace University. His op-eds, which connect contemporary racial issues to their roots in nineteenth-century American culture, have appeared on CNN.com and NBC.com. Most recently, he’s the author of The Great White Hoax: Two Centuries of Selling Racism in America.
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Evening, y’all! Before sending out an interview on conspiracy theories, I wanted to share a few thoughts on the Epstein files. I’ve been frustrated by the media coverage and by Democrats’ ongoing refusal to engage with the deeper roots of these kinds of conspiracy theories.
The full video is for paying Skippies. See you with more history for everyone to…
As we approach our nation’s 250th anniversary (our Semiquincentennial), I’m speaking with some of the country’s most prominent historians, all published by W. W. Norton, to ask them five questions about the founding and the sweep of American history since.
Norton will publish video clips from the interviews, but with their blessing, I’m also posting the first full conversation here. Because, y’all, how could I not share a conversation with Jill Lepore, one of the sharpest historical thinkers working today?
In our conversation, Professor Lepore reflects on what the founders thought they were doing in 1776 (spoiler: they weren’t planning a national holiday), why Benjamin Franklin’s sister deserves a place in the canon, and how arguing about dishes is, in fact, a form of historical thinking. She also gets into how historical thinking can help you find your bearings, even if you’re not pursuing a PhD or planning to start a republic.
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and professor of law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her many books include the international bestseller These Truths: A History of the United States.
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A fight for equality with long odds. An entrenched, bigoted, and powerful right wing. Liberals resistant to critiques from the left. The year wasn’t 2025, but 1963.
In Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution, Professor Peniel E. Joseph traces the ups and downs of that pivotal year through the eyes of James Baldwin and other key figures. Baldwin was on a mission to find out “what really got us where we are,” so we could chart a new path forward. Professor Joseph and I explore what lessons Baldwin’s push for a national reckoning—and the initial reluctance of leading Democrats to join him—can offer us today.
Professor Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values, founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and distinguished service leadership professor and professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author and editor of eight award-winning books.
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This week, I spoke with one of my favorite authors, Professor Greg Grandin. In his new book, America, América: A New History of the New World, Professor Grandin dives into what ties the Americas together and drives us apart.
We explored how radical opposition to conquest in Latin America guided independence leaders toward a pursuit of harmony, while denial and evasion pushed the U.S. toward conquest. The history of the Americas is, in many ways, a tension between those two fundamentally different, still-unfolding paths. It’s also a history of the rise of social rights—and of what follows when genocide is acknowledged, or too long ignored.
Greg is the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale. He’s the author of eight books, including The End of the Myth, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction in 2020. He has published widely, including in The Nation, where he’s a member of the editorial board, and he’s a regular guest on Democracy Now! His new book, America, América, is a New York Times bestseller.
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In The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, the Visionary of Weimar Berlin, Daniel Brook revives the life story of an influential German thinker far ahead of his time.
More than a century ago, Magnus Hirschfeld argued that gender and sexuality are fluid—and later, that race is a social construct. As you might expect, the Nazis weren’t fans, but they didn’t write Hirschfeld out of history. That erasure happened in the U.S., even though, as Daniel and I discuss, it was Hirschfeld’s books destroyed at the infamous book burning in 1933. In a time of resurgent fascist politics, Daniel told me, “It’s high time” we learned about Magnus.
Daniel Brook is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. He’s now the author of four books.
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InLand Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, Professor Michael Albertus (University of Chicago) explores how land has changed hands since the French Revolution. In places like the U.S., Canada, and Brazil, this “reshuffling” has shaped social hierarchies and the climate (spoiler: not in a good way). Today, signs point to us entering a new period of reshuffling. While there are risks of inequality deepening, Professor Albertus also sees opportunities to correct the mistakes of the past.
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Today, my guest offers an account of Native boarding schools and justice long overdue.
In Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools, Mary Annette Pember shares her mother’s experience at a Catholic boarding school in northern Wisconsin. The story offers a glimpse into what those schools were like and how their legacy continues to shape Native life today. As Mary told me, both the government and the Church “need to be called out” as the U.S. finally begins to reckon with this chapter of its history.
Mary is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of the Wisconsin Ojibwe and national correspondent for ICT News (formerly Indian Country Today). Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and many other outlets. She’s also a past president of the Native American Journalists’ Association.
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I’m so excited to share today’s interview with Professor Deborah N. Archer about transportation history—my favorite subject! Professor Archer details how highways are a visceral emblem of white supremacy. We may often forget their origins, but as she reminds us in her new book, Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality, “with transportation infrastructure, history is the present.”
Professor Archer is Associate Dean and Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, and she currently serves as President of the ACLU. Her scholarship has appeared in leading law reviews, and she’s offered commentary for numerous outlets, including MSNBC, NPR, CBS, The Atlantic, and The New York Times.
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I spoke with author Malcolm Harris about his new book, What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis. We explored three strategies that have a chance of staving off climate change before it’s too late. Malcolm demonstrates—compellingly, I think—how and why the left needs to unite ASAP.
Malcolm is a journalist, writer, and critic.
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If you missed it, the Trump administration took aim at the Smithsonian. As stated in an executive order, their goal is to end the “revisionist moment” carried out by historians.
It goes without saying, but to be clear, I don’t support that executive order. On the contrary, I’m proud that this newsletter is part of the “revisionist moment.” The study of slavery, the subject of my interview today, demonstrates why revisionist history is so integral in moving us toward justice.
In Making Sense of Slavery: America’s Long Reckoning, from the Founding Era to Today, historian Scott Spillman traces historians’ evolving interpretations of slavery since the 1700s. In tracking these debates, he helps frame “the troubling new realm” we’ve entered and the challenging questions at the heart of American history.
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Today, we’re talking about the Red Scare: a time of black-and-white politics when people could be arrested just for their political views. Granted, ICE wasn’t abducting people with visas off the street, but I think you’ll find today’s interview relevant nonetheless. Among other things, Clay Risen helps draw a clear throughline from Joseph McCarthy to Donald Trump and shares some valuable takeaways for combating fascism today.
Clay is a reporter and editor at The New York Times. He’s the author of several books on American history (and American whiskey). In our conversation, we explored his latest book: Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America.
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My guest today is Dr. Edna Bonhomme, author of A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19. I don’t think Dr. Bonhomme wrote her book knowing there’d be a resurgence of measles, but here we are!
I asked Dr. Bonhomme about the history of epidemics and pandemics, both in the U.S. and around the world. Exploring earlier outbreaks sets us up to talk about measles and vaccine skepticism today. These are troubling times, and Dr. Bonhomme pushes us to go deeper and examine the inequities that link official responses to contagion over centuries.
Dr. Bonhomme is a historian of science, a culture writer, and a journalist based in Berlin. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, and many other outlets.
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Today, I want to share something a little different: a personal story from “one of our country’s greatest historians.”
In The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, Professor Martha S. Jones unearths her family’s history, dating back to when her great-great-great-grandmother survived enslavement. Over the generations—from Kentucky to North Carolina to Long Island—Professor Jones’s forebears challenged “the notion that there is a straight, clear, bright color line.” The story is at once unique to her family and quintessentially American. All of us, Professor Jones told me, have records that historians treasure (so don’t throw them out!).
Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, and Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She has contributed to The New York Times, TheAtlantic, and many other publications and is the prizewinning author and editor of five books.
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Given how personal this story is, I’m sharing the podcast version first, which I think best captures the depth, emotion, and nuance of Professor Jones’ words. You can also read a transcript, edited for clarity, here:
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In Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America, Russell Shorto brings to life the English takeover of New Amsterdam. The city that emerged from a dramatic standoff stood in stark contrast to Boston—with one place more globally minded and another more inward-looking. Russell argues that the unreconciled differences between “the two ideological centers of the colonies” spread outward and are still with us today.
Russell is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New York Historical and senior scholar at the New Netherland Institute. He’s the bestselling author of eight books.
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My guest today is Professor Brad Snyder, author of You Can't Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads: Angelo Herndon's Fight for Free Speech. Herndon was a Black Communist Party organizer who found himself at the center of a landmark court case in the 1930s. The case made him one of the most famous people in the country, and generations of protesters have “stood on his shoulders.” Yet today, he's often forgotten. Professor Snyder helped me bring his legacy back to life.
Professor Snyder teaches constitutional law and 20th-century American legal history at Georgetown. He’s written for Politico, Slate, and The Washington Post and has made numerous radio and TV appearances.
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Today, we dive into a forgotten episode where the government did everything it could to help the worst people.
In The Price They Paid: Slavery, Shipwrecks, and Reparations Before the Civil War, Professor Jeff Forret (Lamar University) explores shipwrecks in the 1830s. On board were hundreds of enslaved captives. All of them survived, and almost all of them were soon free in British colonies. Afterward, the U.S. government worked really hard to make sure that enslavers received reparations for their lost “human property.”
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The Trump administration is poised to try and close the Department of Education. For Professor Eve L. Ewing, “it’s an open question” whether we should abolish schools altogether, albeit for very different reasons. Professor Ewing argues that the pillars of American racism are reinforced in schools. She’s conflicted about whether we need to rebuild schools from the ground up, but there’s no doubt we need to reclaim “ancient ways of knowing.”
Professor Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, and cultural organizer from Chicago. She’s an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other outlets. Most recently, she’s the author of Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism.
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To say there’s a lot going on right now is an understatement. One area where I can offer some clarity, thanks to Professor Julie Greene, is Panama.
Professor Greene, a labor historian at the University of Maryland, is the author of The Canal Builders, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2009, and most recently, Box 25: Archival Secrets, Caribbean Workers, and the Panama Canal. She details the experiences of the people who built the Panama Canal and how American officials, despite enforcing a system of racial segregation and exploitation, draped the project in triumphant imagery. “More than any other project in U.S. history,” Professor Greene told me, “the canal symbolized American beneficence, a selfless gift to world civilization.” That perception still shapes how the canal is remembered today.
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My guest today is Peter Beinart, author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. It’s hard to improve on his book title for summing up our conversation, where we explored some of the history of American Jewish identity, the possibility that what we dubbed the “American solution” might succeed, and how, in Peter’s estimation, we can and must hold competing truths in pursuit of collective safety and liberation.
Peter is a contributing opinion writer to The New York Times, the Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents, an MSNBC Contributor, and a journalism and political science professor at CUNY. He also writes TheBeinart Notebookon Substack.
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Earlier this week, I spoke with journalist and critic Kyle Paoletta about the history of major cities in the Southwest. In his new book, American Oasis: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest, he writes, “To see where America is going we have to look at where the Southwest has already been.” So we traced where the Southwest has been, from hundreds of years ago to the present day, before I asked Kyle about the future of our relationship to fire and water—a conversation that felt way, way too topical amid the devastation in L.A. I also got really hung up on Phoenix almost having a different, far superior name.
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Here and there over the last few years, I’ve come across references to the Freedman’s Savings Bank, an institution formed after the Civil War—which then collapsed nine years later. When I saw that Professor Justene Hill Edwards had written Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank, I jumped at the opportunity to bring her on Skipped History.
Professor Hill Edwards (University of Virginia) and I discussed the good intentions that led to the bank’s founding, and how those good intentions were soon corrupted by, in my estimation, the equivalent of 1870s tech bros. We also explored the continued ramifications of the bank’s demise and how, if you want to get to the heart of “the fraught relationship between African Americans and the financial services industry today,” you have to discuss the Freedman’s Bank.
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A few weeks ago, I sent out a poll asking what kind of history would be most helpful to learn about as we enter another Trump era. Over half of respondents answered “activism we can emulate.” (Shoutout to the 8% of you who selected “quit crying and entertain me!”)
In light of the survey results, I thought I’d share a more recent, grassroots history lesson, courtesy of New Yorker cartoonist Sofia Warren. Sofia is the author of Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator, a graphic memoir about her experience embedded with New York State Senator Julia Salazar during the previous Trump presidency. I found Sofia’s takeaways about the importance of organizing and community action, not to mention the difficulty of drawing Andrew Cuomo’s face, very relatable, and I hope they resonate with you, too.
In addition to her work for The New Yorker, Sofia is a visiting professor at Wesleyan University and the author of You’re Doing Great, an advice column on Substack.
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Earlier this week, I spoke with Professor David Greenberg about his new biography, John Lewis: A Life. I was curious about lesser-known sides of the iconic activist, whose steadfast commitment to nonviolence was both admired and critiqued during the Civil Rights Movement. Lewis “wasn’t without his flaws,” Professor Greenberg told me, but he grew into “a reminder that America had been through worse and not only survived but improved.” I’ll be drawing on that lesson more than ever in the months and years ahead—that is, as you’ll see, when I’m not politely vandalizing right-wing politicians’ cars.
David Greenberg is a professor of history, journalism, and media studies at Rutgers. He writes regularly for Politico, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
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Dr. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd (University of New Orleans) is the author of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America. She’s also the host of the American Campus Podcast. Her work, which has appeared in various national publications, traces the modern conservative movement to campus wars in the late 1960s. In her estimation, neither Trump nor the conservative agenda is actually very popular. The question is how we can advance policies that are.
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In our last interview before the election, I spoke with Professor Elizabeth Hinton, whose work has been instrumental in shaping my understanding of inequality and urban violence. Professor Hinton highlights how leaders of both political parties have long known “what’s required to meaningfully address the problems of poverty and racism,” but time after time, have opted for more politically palatable short-term solutions. The result? Continued over-policing and stratification.
In Professor Hinton’s mind, Kamala Harris doesn’t offer the kind of structural transformation we need, but in a choice between her and Donald Trump—well, let’s just say Professor Hinton advises voting “like your life depends on it.”
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My guest today is Rebecca Nagle, an award-winning journalist and citizen of Cherokee Nation, and the author of By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land. Rebecca details the history of violence, dispossession, and resistance behind a monumental Supreme Court case decided in 2020. The case resulted in the restoration of tribal land, but it’s not exactly all unicorns and rainbows now. Rather, in Rebecca’s words, the victory reveals “what can happen when the U.S. government follows the law, even though it has a tendency not to.”
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Amid the anxious wait for Hurricane Milton last week, I asked Professor Jack E. Davis if he’d come back on Skipped History to review some storm history. In The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, Professor Davis explores how and why Americans began to build on the Gulf Coast. The aftermath of one hurricane in particular generated a practice of trying to overcome, rather than retreat from, extreme weather. Over 120 years later, Professor Davis insists we need a moratorium on building near the water.
Jack is a history professor at the University of Florida specializing in environmental history and sustainability studies. He’s the author or editor of ten books, including The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird, which we discussed last year, and The Gulf, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2018.
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In our latest interview on the election, I spoke to Professor Drew McKevitt about guns. The gun problem feels insurmountable—in just one example, a new report from Everytown found that “the number of gun violence incidents on school grounds in 2024 so far has outpaced the total number of incidents in all of 2023.”
But as Drew recounts, the feeling that g…
In The Burning Earth, Professor Sunil Amrith delivers a global, history-spanning account of our planet’s environment. One subject he comes back to over and over again is food: rice, sugar, wheat, meat, and more. I asked him about the societal impact of each crop and why he believes there’s no faster way to slow the climate crisis “than changing food systems and agriculture.”
Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History and professor in the School of the Environment at Yale University. He’s the author of five books and a recipient of multiple awards including a MacArthur “Genius” fellowship.
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The timing for today’s interview, I think, needs no introduction. Professor Rashid Khalidi details Israel’s long history of relying on outside powers to build a Jewish state: first, the British, and now, of course, the U.S. That record reveals the sizable influence outside forces have today to end the violence unfolding in Palestine (and now Lebanon). P…
Why are conservatives so hellbent on dismantling public education? Project 2025 calls for the Department of Education to be eliminated. It further suggests that education policy should “follow the path outlined by Milton Friedman in 1955, wherein education is publicly funded but education decisions are made by families.”
As Jennifer C. Berkshire and Jack Schneider reveal, the assault on public schools “has never been just about education.” Rather, it connects back to resistance to the integration of schools and a long-running war on unions. And in our interview, Jennifer and Jack examine how the attempted privatization of schools would essentially mean returning to an unequal education system from hundreds of years ago.
Jennifer is the Bloch Lecturer in Education Journalism and a lecturer in Education Studies at Yale. Jack is the Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Individually, Jennifer and Jack’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications. Together, they’re the co-hosts of the education policy podcast, Have You Heard, and the coauthors of two books, including most recently, The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual.
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In our latest interview about the 2024 election, I welcomed Professor Kellie Carter Jackson back to Skipped History. In past conversations, Professor Carter Jackson and I explored lessons from Black abolitionists and the effectiveness of violent resistance. Both topics came up again as we discussed Professor Carter Jackson’s excitement over Kamala Harri…
As conversations about Latino voters heat up, I spoke with Marie Arana about her book,LatinoLand: A Portrait of America's Largest and Least Understood Minority. Marie details the centrality of Latinos to the economy, how Republicans are making inroads courting Latino communities, and how the “government has often treated Latinos as an afterthought.”
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Soon after it ended, I debriefed the DNC with Kevin Kruse, a history professor at Princeton. We discussed the evident joy of the convention, why speakers went light on policy, and heavy on Trump attacks. We also explored the inroads the left has made on the Democratic agenda—with glaring exceptions like Gaza. Overall, I was maybe more skeptical of how m…
With the DNC coming up in Chicago next week, I thought it’d be fun to dive into the Windy City’s history. I spoke with Professor Scott Berg about one of Chicago’s defining events: the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Professor Berg (George Mason University) is the author of The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City's Soul. We discussed how Chicago was in its adolescence heading into the fire—and how, when immigrants were scapegoated in the resulting chaos, the working class pushed back, forming “a lasting political sensibility... that has never died.”
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In our latest interview with a historian about the 2024 election, I welcomed Professor Mehrsa Baradaran back to Skipped History. An authority on inequality and banking history, I asked for her thoughts on Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and what she sees at stake in the election. For Professor Baradaran, it’s about more than policy—“it’s about whether we trust…
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In the first of our series of interviews with historians about the 2024 election, I spoke with Professor Matt Dallek, author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. Professor Dallek examines how the John Birch Society (JBS), a far-right group active in the 1960s, came to shape Republican politics today.
Professor Dallek a…
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The Olympics officially start tonight! To learn about the origins of the games — and their forgotten history of exclusion — I spoke with Michael Waters, author of The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports.
In his book and in conversation, Michael explores a handful of athletes whose transitions made headlines in the 1930s. …
Amid the political headlines over the last few weeks, one piece of news went under the radar: how freaking hot it’s been. To bring us back to earth, I thought I’d share a recent conversation with journalist Boyce Upholt about the Mississippi River.
In The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi, Boyce delivers a winding history of the “chaos” of the river, and American efforts to tame it. In conversation, we discussed the ever-changing nature of the Mississippi and the transformation of surrounding areas from Indigenous homeland into private property. There are lessons to learn, Boyce says, by not fighting against the river.
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A Democratic Party in crisis during an election year. A Republican candidate who believed the president was above the law. Police crackdowns on protests over American imperialism. Surprisingly, I’m not talking about 2024, but 1968, another time that Democrats held the DNC in Chicago.
To learn more about that summer’s convention, and how infighting tanke…
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Earlier today, I spoke with Dr. Carly Goodman about last night’s presidential debate. We tried to make some sense of the madness together.
Dr. Goodman is a historian, editor, and the award-winning author of Dreamland: America’s Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction. Her expertise in immigration history helped us get to a question at the core of th…
Previously, we’ve explored Native history on national and regional levels. Professor Ryan E. Emanuel’s book, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice, offers a chance to take a more granular view.
In his book, and in conversation, Professor Emanuel traces the history of his tribe, the Lumbee, in Eastern North Carolina. He reveals how the colonial project that began hundreds of years ago continues. If the Lumbee are to survive, he concludes, “We've got to figure out a way to continue to belong to our homelands.”
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In We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance, and in conversation, Professor Kellie Carter Jackson highlights stories of Black refusal. Sometimes, refusal takes the form of violent resistance. Other times, it’s an impromptu electric slide in the middle of a protest. Either way, Professor Carter Jackson moves us away “from the rightness or wrongn…
Earlier this week, President Biden closed the border to asylum seekers, many of whom are Salvadoran. To learn about their history and how it “ties into a bigger picture of U.S. imperialism in the hemisphere,” I spoke with Daniel Alvarenga, a Salvadoran journalist and the host of HUMO: Murder and Silence in El Salvador. As Daniel reveals, the U.S. doesn’t have the best track record of dealing with the problems it helped create in Central America.
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Chances are you’ve seen the DARE logo — on a t-shirt, a bumper sticker, a license plate, or maybe a street sign. In DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools, and in conversation, Professor Max Felker-Kantor (Ball State University) traces the history of the ubiquitous tough-on-drugs program. It's almost too easy to make fun of DARE (almost), but as Professor Felker-Kantor reveals, law enforcement had a very serious goal: to legitimize a deeper police presence in schools, and by and large, they succeeded.
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To contextualize conversations about antisemitism today, I spoke with Daniel Schulman, a bestselling author and Mother Jones' deputy editor for news and politics.
In The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America, and in conversation, Dan explores various figures who unleashed antisemitism …
Whoa, Nelly — one of my favorite authors, Mehrsa Baradaran, just published a new book, The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America. In The Quiet Coup, and in conversation, Professor Baradaran (UC Irvine Law) traces how backlash to integrating schools led to the rise of neoliberal economic theory — which was essentially one giant excuse to maintain the status quo. As neoliberals accrued more power, they eradicated check after check on capitalism, ultimately leading to a quiet, legal coup and the growth of a cancerous war machine.
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As college administrators call the police on pro-Palestinian protestors around the country, I asked Dr. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd if she’d explore some of the history behind crackdowns on students. Dr. Shepherd, a historian and teacher at the University of New Orleans, kindly agreed.
In her book, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America, and in conversation, Dr. Shepherd examines waves of student protests in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Echoing what we’re seeing today, some of the biggest standoffs occurred at Columbia. Then, and now, administrators took an increasingly punitive stance toward students, not wanting the “power structure uprooted or shaken up in any way.”
We recorded our conversation this morning (twice actually, when the first take didn’t save!), so today I’m just sharing the audio. If you’d like to learn more from Dr. Shepherd, paying subscribers can listen to / re-read our interview from last summer, and free subscribers can read a preview, too:
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Growing up, we’re often taught that there’s a natural societal progression from hunting and gathering, to farming, and then to towns and cities. But as Professor Kathleen DuVal (UNC-Chapel Hill) illuminates in Native Nations, and in conversation, that conception is very Eurocentric. It obscures, among many things, the vast landscape of Native American c…
Here in the States, Monday is Tax Day. I haven’t filed mine yet, partly because if you wait till the last minute, it only takes a minute, and also because I recently spoke with Michael J. Graetz about the history of Americans paying their taxes.
In The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America, and in conversation, Professor Graetz traces the rise of the antitax movement to 1978, when a “perfect storm” led to a tax revolt still unfolding today. Professor Graetz is a professor emeritus of law at Columbia and Yale law schools.
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If you think there’s a strong American liberal tradition, wait till you hear about the other side of the coin from Professor Steven Hahn. In Illiberal America, and in conversation, Professor Hahn traces illiberal ideas and political currents from hundreds of years ago through the present day. His recasting of history shows, in his words, “what we're up …
Immigration has been in the news week after week after week… after week after week after week. As a point of comparison, I thought we’d explore the history of U.S. humanitarian assistance, not at the border but in the countries immigrants often leave. In conversation, and in Catastrophic Diplomacy, Professor Julia Irwin (LSU) reveals that our government’s treatment of foreign citizens, even in their home countries, has rarely been motivated by a pure desire to help.
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In Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother, and in conversation, Professor Peggy O’Donnell Heffington traces the collapse of once-common communal methods of childrearing. Her words contextualize why having kids — or choosing not to — feels so challenging for Americans in particular.
Professor Heffington teaches gender and women’s history…
In conversation, and in Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel that Survived the CIA, investigative journalist Patrick Winn traces the history of Wa State. For decades, Patrick reveals, the CIA worked with the Wa, turning a small, little-known Indigenous group in Southeast Asia into one of the most powerful and least understood drug producers in the world.
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With the CDC set to end the 5-day isolation period for Covid, as well as rates of disease transmission spiking in Ukraine and Gaza, I thought it a poignant time to explore the history of one of the world’s most infectious diseases: tuberculosis.
In her book, The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis, and in conversation, author Maria Smilios traces the twists and turns of the journey to curing TB, and why too many people still go without treatment today.
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With attacks on LGBTQ+ rights exploding, I spoke to Professor Joanna Wuest about scapegoating of the LGBTQ+ community over the years and how science has helped hasten reform — even if, sometimes, the science hasn’t been so sound.
Joanna Wuest is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College and a sociolegal scholar specializing in LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, religion, and health. Professor Wuest is the author of Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement.
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With guns in the news a lot of late — Wayne LaPierre recently announced his resignation from the NRA and, yesterday, the DOJ concluded an investigation that found “unimaginable failure” with police in Uvalde — I spoke with Professor Andrew C. McKevitt of Louisiana Tech.
In Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America, Professor McKevitt traces many of the origins of our gun culture to the years following World War II. Then, one entrepreneur made a lot of money flooding the market with guns, and Congress arrived at arguably its most consequential crossroads in addressing our gun problem.
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To prepare for the tumultuous year ahead, I asked Heather Cox Richardson about the rise of fascism in the U.S. and how Americans have resisted it in the past. In her words, “We are living in another time of testing.” Her advice? Stay focused and get creative.
Heather is a professor of U.S. history at Boston College. She’s the author of Letters from an American, the most popular Substack newsletter, which chronicles current events in the larger context of American history. Heather has also written seven books on history and politics, including most recently, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, the subject of our conversation today.
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With New York Mayor Eric Adams deploying discriminatory police tactics — not to mention insisting that asylum seekers “will destroy New York City” — it felt like a good time to explore the early history of the NYPD. In his new book, Police and the Empire City, and in conversation, Dr. Matthew Guariglia reveals how biased perceptions of race and ethnicity shaped policing in New York (and beyond) from the outset.
Dr. Guariglia is an Affiliated Scholar at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, and a Senior Policy Analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His bylines have appeared in NBC News, The Washington Post, and Slate, among others.
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Ahead of Thanksgiving, I spoke with Professor Anne Blue Wills about the invention of the holiday as we know it today. In her article, “Pilgrims and Progress: How Magazines Made Thanksgiving,” and in conversation, Professor Wills chronicles how nineteenth-century women’s magazines —and one magazine editor in particular — created contemporary Thanksgiving.
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As the U.S. enters a “fourth wave” of the opioid crisis, I spoke with journalist and author Donovan X. Ramsey about the crack epidemic. In his book, When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era, and in conversation, Donovan details how the epidemic began, why government policies were ineffective, and how lessons from the crack era are fading from memory.
Donovan’s reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, GQ, WSJ Magazine, Ebony, and Essence, among other outlets. He has been a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, NewsOne, and theGrio. He has also served as an editor at The Marshall Project and Complex.
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Not long ago, I interviewed reporters Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson of The Wall Street Journal about their new book, American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15. I hoped a topical moment to share our interview, which traces how the gun came to be used in mass shootings, wouldn’t arrive for a long time. Alas, a gunman in Maine thought otherwise.
I’ll note that, while the search for the gunman continues, it’s unclear exactly what kind of semi-automatic rifle he used.
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In Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution, Professor Marlene Daut traces the modern understanding of freedom and equality to Haiti. I thought today would be a good time to share a conversation I had with her. Haiti has low-key been in the news of late, with yet another foreign “security mission” arriving. Further, many of the dynamics Haitians fought against are, sadly, on full display on the global stage today.
Professor Daut is a professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale. She writes about the history of the Haitian Revolution, literary cultures of the greater Caribbean, and racial politics in global media. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Essence Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Conversation, among others.
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In If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, journalist Vincent Bevins chronicles recent uprisings around the world—and why so many of them went awry. In his book, and in conversation, we trace some of the lessons that the next generation of protesters in the US can draw from their peers’ efforts around the world. Vincent also details why the best time to get involved in changing the world is now.
Note: the late Senator Dianne Feinstein comes up briefly toward the end of our conversation as part of a broader point about the pros and cons of imperfect government representation. I apologize for the light tone I take — we recorded our conversation many weeks before she passed away.
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In Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance, Professor Nikki M. Taylor (Howard University) tells seven different stories about enslaved women who refused to tolerate injustice any longer. In her book, and in conversation, Professor Taylor sheds light on why these women committed lethal acts of resistance and how women trafficked today sometimes resort to the same.
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In this week’s interview, commentator Michael Harriot delivers a reframing of U.S. history centered around the Black experience. The title of his forthcoming book, Black AF History, The Un-Whitewashed Story of America, gives you a sense of his approach to investigating the past.
Michael is a columnist at theGrio.com where he covers the intersection of race, politics, and culture. Michael’s work has appeared in TheWashington Post, The Atlantic, NBC, and BET. Michael is a political commentator on MSNBC and CNN and has been honored by the National Association of Black Journalists. He’s also the host of Drapetomaniax: Unshackled History, a collaboration between Sony Music and OTHERTone, with Pharrell Williams serving as executive producer.
In conversation, Mike resurrected the stories of many forgotten figures and pushed back on oversimplified narratives surrounding Black resistance. For more from Mike, check out his podcast episodes on Forest Joe and Charley Case:
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With Labor Day around the corner, and 2023 on pace to be one of the most significant years for work stoppages in recent history, I spoke to Kim Kelly, an independent journalist, author, and organizer. Kim has been a regular labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018, and her writing on labor, class, politics, and culture has appeared in The New Republic, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, among many others.
Kim is also the author of Fight Like Hell, a book of intersectional labor history (now in paperback!). In her book, and in conversation, Kim chronicles the ups and downs of labor movements over the course of hundreds of years. A third-generation union member herself, Kim is an elected councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, and she also provides some helpful context on the ongoing writers and actors strike.
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Amid a growing body of scholarship revealing that Native peoples didn’t simply vanish from their homelands, as the old stereotype suggests, I spoke to Michael John Witgen, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and the author of Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America.
Michael is a professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia. Seeing Red was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. In the book, and in conversation, Professor Witgen explores the “political economy of plunder” in the Old Northwest, some ways that the Anishinaabeg (including the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Mississaugas, Nipissing, and Algonquin peoples) resisted it, and the plunder’s legacy today.
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I’ve been inclined to steer clear of Ukraine in our interviews. This is a U.S. history newsletter, after all. But Eastern Europe has come up repeatedly in our explorations (for example, on Israel and the Diversity Visa), and I seized the chance to read Goodbye, Eastern Europe by Jacob Mikanowski to learn more. Truth be told, I was blown away, and I hope you find our conversation as enjoyable and educational as I did.
Jacob is a historian, journalist, and critic. He’s written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The New York Times. He’s also appeared on radio stations like NPR and the BBC. Goodbye, Eastern Europe was published just ten days ago, and it transformed my perspective of the region. Turns out there’s a lot more than sauerkraut! Specifically, Jacob’s focus on the diversity of the region contextualizes the ongoing war in Ukraine and a whole lot more.
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Professor Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is a historian of contemporary American politics and culture at the New School. She’s the co-producer and host of the acclaimed podcast Welcome to Your Fantasy and the co-host of the Past Present podcast. She’s also a frequent media guest expert, public speaker, and contributor to outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and the Atlantic. She’s the author of Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture, and Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession, the subject of our conversation today.
In conversation, Professor Petrzela revealed the changing perceptions of fitness over the last hundred years, morphing from a sideshow to an integral part of many people’s everyday lives—and why some people can work out when it’s sweltering, while many others cannot.
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I’m excited to share a conversation with Professor Kathryn Cramer Brownell. Professor Brownell teaches history at Purdue and is the author of 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. In conversation, we explored the origins of cable TV and cable news, dating back to the 1950s. I only watch the likes of M…
Jack is a history professor at the University of Florida and the Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities, specializing in environmental history and sustainability studies. He’s the author or editor of ten books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea. His latest book, The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and chosen by the LA Times as one of the top five nonfiction books of 2022. Amazon and Apple also selected The Bald Eagle as one of the best nonfiction books of 2022.
In conversation, Professor Davis and I traced the rollercoaster history of bald eagles from abundance to near extinction (twice) and back again.
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With Super Tuesday coming up and Trump’s nomination all but secured, I thought I’d share a relevant interview that paying subscribers had early access to last year. In his book, Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, and in conversation, Professor Matthew Dallek illuminates the ongoing influence of a far-right group in the ‘60s called the John Birch Society.
Professor Dallek is a historian at George Washington University. He’s a frequent national commentator and his articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications.
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I’ve long been interested in tracing food history, and Anne Mendelson’s book, Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood, offered an excellent opportunity.
Anne is a food journalist and culinary historian. She was a contributing editor at Gourmet Magazine and has written for the New York Times Dining Section and the Los Angeles Times Food Section. She’s also…
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Sathnam Sanghera is an award-winning journalist, historian, and writer for The Times in London. Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, his third book, earned a variety of accolades, including being named a Book of the Year at the 2022 British Books Awards. Just before we spoke, Sathnam learned that he’s also now a fellow of the Royal His…
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I spoke with Josh Mitchell, author of The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe, to learn the history behind Joe Biden’s decision to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt—and why, even in the unlikely chance that SCOTUS upholds Biden’s action, student debt will continue to rise.
Josh writes about banking and finance …
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Dr. Carly Goodman revealed the 150-year-old history behind the Biden Administration’s restrictionist stance on immigration.
Dr. Goodman explored this history through the lens of Diversity Lottery: a rare, effective, positive US immigration policy that allows people from around the world to migrate here. Not by coincidence, Dr. Goodman is the author of Dr…
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Professor Bart Elmore (the Ohio State University) traced the environmental history of five southern companies—Coke, Walmart, FedEx, Delta, and Bank of America—before reflecting on how they’ve come to shape consumer expectations today.
Professor Elmore is the award-winning author of Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism; Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future; and coming very soon, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet. Professor Elmore’s newest book was the subject of our conversation.
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Professor Naomi Oreskes is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard. Dr. Erik M. Conway is a historian of science and technology at Caltech. Together, they’re the bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from To…
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Professor Melanie Newport (UConn) is the award-winning author of This Is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration. As Professor Newport and I discussed, much of jailing history is rooted in kind of good intentions, and she uses Chicago as a case study to illuminate how would-be jail reformers have done more harm than good over the last…
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Malcolm Harris is a freelance writer and the author of Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials, St is Fucked Up and B*t: History Since the End of History, and most recently, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World*. This last, wonderfully comprehensive, and chilling book is the subject of our conversation today.
Malcolm and…
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A pivotal Supreme Court case that we’re likely to hear a decision on soon, Haaland v. Brackeen, centers on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), landmark legislation passed in 1978.
To learn more about ICWA, I spoke with Matthew L.M. Fletcher, the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at Michigan Law. Professor Fletcher teaches and writes in t…
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Professor Lillian Faderman (emeritus at Fresno State University) is an internationally known scholar of lesbian and LGBT history and literature. The Times named three of her books on its "Notable Books of the Year" list and Kirkus Reviews named Woman: the History of an American Idea one of the best U.S. History Books of 2022.
Woman is a sweeping work of …
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Gerald Horne is the Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in labor, politics, civil rights, international relations, and war. He’s the author of more than thirty books (!), including most recently, The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the…
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Matthew Connelly is a professor of international and global history at Columbia, co-director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and principal investigator of History Lab, a project that applies data science to the problem of preserving the public record and accelerating its release. Related, his most recent book is called The …
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In The Tuskegee Student Uprising: a History, Dr. Brian Jones illuminates how “the contradictions of Tuskegee Institute’s history are bound up with the contradictions of Black history.” I spoke with Dr. Jones about these contradictions and the lasting influence of Black student activism in the 60s. We also discussed Brian and his dad’s personal connectio…
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In light of ongoing protests against a new police training facility in Atlanta, and the police killing of activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, aka Tortuguita, I spoke to Sierra Pettengill and Profesor Stuart Schrader, two experts on the history of police training.
Professor Schrader, aka Stuart, is an Associate Research Professor of Africana Studies at Jo…
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Professor Edward J. Larson is the author of fifteen books on science, history, and law including most recently, American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795, and earlier, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Professor Larson and I d…
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In a new book called Myth America, top historians (including many who’ve appeared on Skipped History!) set the record straight on some of the most pernicious myths about US history. When reading, I was particularly intrigued by Professor Michael Kazin’s chapter about the history of socialism in the US. He kindly agreed to chat further with me for today’…
To learn more about the holiday season’s jolliest, most iconic figure—Santa!—I spoke to Stephen Nissenbaum, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Professor Nissenbaum specializes in early US history. His book, The Battle for Christmas, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
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In the past six months, over a dozen states have passed new restrictive voting laws meant to favor Republicans. If you follow the money, the original source of these efforts to undermine democracy becomes clear. Cat lovers, rejoice: it all dates back to a couple of pooch-lovers...
Today’s story comes from Dark Money by Jane Mayer, as well as a recent investigation of hers called “The Big Money Behind the Big Lie.”
For audio versions of this week’s episode, a transcript, and more Skipped History, check out the full post: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/blame-two-old-dog-dads-for-claims
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Have you ever wondered how elected officials became so beholden to money? Well, look no further than the Powell Memo, a confidential document from 1971 that inspired corporations to take over US politics.
Today’s story comes from "We, the Corporations" by Adam Winkler, and "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer.
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/the-secret-genesis-of-corporations
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In the 1940s and 50s, "Christian libertarians" hoped spiritual arguments would convince US citizens to oppose business regulations and big government. Although their efforts backfired (how delicious), we investigate why US students have pledged allegiance to a nation "under God" ever since.
Today's story comes from "One Nation Under God" by Kevin Kruse
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/how-corporate-execs-quietly-shaped
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In 1953, Senator Arthur Watkins, a devout Mormon, thought it was time for native peoples to become “white and delightsome.” Guided by the Book of Mormon, he helped engineer a policy called "Termination." As we explore, it didn’t end well.
Today's story comes from "The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee" by David Treuer
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/how-the-book-of-mormon-inspired-the?s=w
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We left off in September of 1971 when tensions at Attica State Prison had reached a boiling point. After demanding improved conditions, prisoners rebelled. New York State, however, would have the final say. The state’s lies helped spark mass incarceration.
Also- shoutout to my family cat for making his first cameo on Skipped 😽
Today's story comes from "Blood in the Water" by Heather Ann Thompson.
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/how-ny-covered-up-a-massacreand-sparked
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In September 1971, over 1,000 incarcerated people at Attica State Prison rebelled. Here's the first of a two-part series exploring why and how tensions at Attica reached a boiling point.
Today's story comes from "Blood in the Water" by Heather Ann Thompson.
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/the-attica-prison-uprising-50-years
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This season on Skipped History, we’ve explored a lottt of destructive US interventions abroad. One of the most misguided wars of all—the War in Afghanistan—is still going on. Today we unearth where the rationale for US interventions was born. It all dates back to a self-flattering presentation by Frederick Jackson Turner at a history conference in 1893.
Today's story comes from "The End of the Myth" by Greg Grandin; "How the South Won the Civil War" by Heather Cox Richardson; and The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock.
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/the-historian-who-inspired-justifications
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We explore how a war-hungry faction in the Reagan administration called “the cowboys” secretly funded white supremacist mercenaries to fight leftists in Nicaragua. And though they got caught, pretty much everyone involved in the outrageous affair was let off the hook, with consequences for people all over the world to this day.
Today's story comes from "Bring the War Home" by Kathleen Belew; "The End of the Myth" and the updated, expanded version of "Empire’s Workshop" by Greg Grandin; and "Landslide" by Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus.
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/how-the-us-began-funding-white-supremacist
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Nowadays, images of people on the far right sporting both swastikas and confederate flags are ubiquitous. But neo-Nazis and neo-confederates weren't always pals. So when and why did they unite? The answer dates back to an event in 1979 North Carolina.
Today's story comes from "Bring the War Home" by Kathleen Belew.
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/how-the-alliance-that-fuels-the-far
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Today, we explore the Berkeley Mafia, a group of Indonesian economists who, with US support, laid an economic blueprint for Indonesia still in place to this day. In the process, a lotttt of people died—and yes, contrary to what US officials said, it was all bad.
Today's story comes from "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein and "The Jarkarta Method" by Vincent Bevins
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/the-us-most-violent-cookbook-inspired
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We explore how the relationship between the US and Iran became so cantankerous in the first place—in other words, we travel to Tehran, where in 1953, the US conducted one of its most consequential coups abroad.
Today's story comes from "All the Shah’s Men" and "The Brothers" by Stephen Kinzer
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/the-1953-us-led-coup-in-iran
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This time out, we cut Teddy Roosevelt down to size jusssst a hair and explore a very juicy scandal from 1905. Turns out our beloved 26th president may not have been such a “trustbuster” after all…
Today's story comes from "We, the Corporations" by Adam Winkler and "Stamped from the Beginning" by Ibram Kendi.
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/the-great-wall-street-scandal-of
We explore the origins of the racist precedent that still prevents people in US territories from having any voting rights. Plot twist: it has to do with the Philippines.
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We explore the US-backed coup in Guatemala, engineered by the Dulles Bros. As it turns out, they weren’t the only people (or dogs) in the US government keen to help the United Fruit Company and depose Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz.
Today's story comes from "Bitter Fruit" by Stephen Kinzer and Stephen Schlesinger; "The Jakarta Method" by Vincent Bevins; and "Empire’s Workshop" by Greg Grandin
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/the-1954-us-backed-coup-in-guatemala
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The first episode of Season 2 investigates how brothers Allen and John Foster Dulles, director of the CIA and secretary of state in the 1950s, led one of the largest and most foolish covert operations in US history.
Today's story comes from "The Jakarta Method" by Vincent Bevins; and "The Brothers" by Stephen Kinzer.
Learn more here: https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/how-two-brothers-tried-to-start-a