Dr. Sam welcomes fellow historians to delve into their latest original ground-breaking research, plus conversations with the hosts of other inquisitive podcasts, inspecting the old and new together…
Each Full-Episode Details page links to the specific recordings on Apple, SoundCloud, Patreon, Spotify and several other major podcast platforms.
Featured Playlist Episode:
Uncovering the Medieval Slave Trade –
A Conversation with Hannah Barker
Before Columbus had even set foot in America, medieval Europe and the Islamic Middle East already had a long history in trading and exploiting slaves. An important branch of the slave trade involved buying captives from the shores of the Black Sea and trafficking them through the Mediterranean to the commercial cities of Italy or to Egypt, where many of them became slave soldiers or even rulers (called “Mamluks”). We discuss the history of the trade, who these thousands of slaves were and what became of them with Hannah Barker of Arizona State University, author of “That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500.” More…
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Special Guest Conversations and Interview Episodes
The center of every sacred mystery, the Temple at Jerusalem is the most famous building on earth, even though it has not existed for almost 2000 years and no one knows precisely what it looked like. We join with Michael of the Xai, How Are You podcast to discuss Solomon’s Temple – both the real historical building as it can be reconstructed from ancient texts and archaeology, and the symbol that has been endlessly appropriated to represent humankind’s relationship to the cosmos, from Jewish mysticism, to Christian theology, to early Islam, to medieval magic, to Renaissance humanism, to the rituals of Freemasonry, to modern Jewish and evangelical fundamentalism.
Also see:
- The other installments on Judaism and Jewish History – 8 Episodes
- The Middle Ages: Freemasonry – Its Origins, Its Myths, and Its Rituals
- Freemasonry — Its Growth and Spread Before 1789
- And more from the entire Guest Conversations and Interviews Playlist
Suggested further reading: Hamblin & Seely, “Solomon’s Temple: Myth and History”
Image: page of the “Perpignan Bible,” France, 1299, depicting ritual objects in the Temple, including the Menorah
I speak with historian Tobias Harper about about the evolving and growing role of the British crown as the head of the voluntary sector in a neoliberal, atomizing, and celebrity-driven society. We examine both the “magic of the royal touch” and the hard-nosed bureaucratic calculations that it can serve to obscure, as captured in Toby’s book, “From Servants of the Empire to Everyday Heroes: The British Honours System in the Twentieth Century.”
Toby’s recent article on the current challenges to the monarchy: https://theconversation.com/charles-iii-faces-challenges-at-home-abroad-and-even-in-defining-what-it-means-to-be-king-190339
Also see:
- Emergency Podcast: The Royal Crisis in Historical Context
- The other installments in Imbalances of Power: 11 Episodes on English Political Revolution and Evolution
- And more from the entire Guest Conversations and Interviews Playlist
Image: Bono holding up the medal recognizing his honorary knighthood, 2007
Sam interviews historian Margarita Fajardo, a professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College, about her new book, “The World That Latin America Created,” which traces how a movement of scholars and statesmen centering around CEPAL, a UN economic commission based in Santiago, Chile, formulated a new world-view and far-reaching agenda to foster unity and development in Latin America; the so-called “Capalinos” rose to dominance and set the policy agenda in Brazil and other countries in the 1950s and â60s and then set the stage for dependency theory, which took the world by storm in the 1970s. We also discuss how the travails of the Cepalinos might shed light on the transformations currently happening in Chile, Colombia, and other Latin American nations and the horizons that they might open up.
Also see:
I join with Geoff Shullenberger of “Outsider Theory” to discuss the sweeping and challenging new book, “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. We consider the book’s marshalling of new archaeological evidence to debunk mechanistic and deterministic assumptions about the rise of civilization, its deep rejection of Marxism, and its insistence on the human ability to imagine and create an infinite range of social and political futures. We examine the weaknesses and limitations of the book, including its over-emphasis on personal freedom, its gross inaccuracy with regard to the eighteenth century, and its blindspot regarding the profound powers of myth, ritual, and the natural environment, all of which deeply guide and shape societies in ways that Graeber & Wengrow ignore or casually discount.
Also see:
Before Columbus had even set foot in America, medieval Europe and the Islamic Middle East already had a long history in trading and exploiting slaves. An important branch of the slave trade involved buying captives from the shores of the Black Sea and trafficking them through the Mediterranean to the commercial cities of Italy or to Egypt, where many of them became slave soldiers or even rulers (called “Mamluks”). We discuss the history of the trade, who these thousands of slaves were and what became of them with Hannah Barker of Arizona State University, author of “That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500.”
Also see:
- Violent Metamorphosis: The Americas before, during, and after European Colonization
- More from the entire Guest Conversations and Interviews Playlist
Image: Pillar capital with sculpted faces of foreign peoples, including Turk and Tatar, Doge’s Palace, Venice.
Other books & authors mentioned:
Marshall Sahlins, “The Original Affluent Society”
Yuval Noah Harari, “Sapiens”
James C. Scott, “Against the Grain”
Claude Levi-Strauss, “The Savage Mind”
Victor Turner, “The Ritual Process”
Karl Wittfogel, “Oriental Despotism”
John Rawls, “A Theory of Justice”
Francoise de Graffigny, “Letters of a Peruvian Woman”
Niccolo Machiavelli, “Discourses on Livy”
Jared Diamond, “Guns, Germs, and Steel”
JN Heard, “The Assimilation of Captives on the American Frontier in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” LSU thesis
David Graeber, “On Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit,” “Debt: The First 5000 Years”
Karl Polanyi, “The Great Transformation”
Mark Fisher, “Capitalist Realism”
Orlando Patterson, “Slavery and Social Death”
Bruno Latour, “We Have Never Been Modern”
Roberto Calasso, “The Ruin of Kasch”
Ivan Illich
Rene Girard
Richard Wolff
Thomas Sowell
Divya Cherian
Michael of “Xai How Are You” and I discuss the history of the Chasidic / Hasidic movement, a Jewish lay mystical and pietistic movement, which originated among Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe in the 1700s, flourished in the 1800s, survived the pogroms and world wars, and in recent years has been reborn as both a pillar of Orthodox Judaism and a bridge to the Reform and secular worlds.
Also see:
- The other installments on Judaism and Jewish History – 8 Episodes
- More from the entire Guest Conversations and Interviews Playlist
Suggested further reading: “Hasidism: A New History,” by Biale, Assaf, Brown, Gellman, Heilman, Rosman, Sagiv, and Wodzinski.
Michael of “Xai How Are You” and I discuss the different ways that Jews have distinguished themselves into groups and sub-groups, from the Biblical tribes to the Sephardic and Ashkenazi ethnic groups to the modern Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative movements. We lay the groundwork for an upcoming discussion of the origins and character of Chasidic Judaism.
Also see:
How did the early colonists in Virginia know that they could profitably grow a species of tobacco from South America? They learned about it from the series of mostly short-lived English, French, and Dutch colonies and outposts in tropical South America, between the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, in the area called “Guiana.” We discuss with historian Melissa Morris of U. of Wyoming how these early colonies, despite being almost totally forgotten by historians, left a lasting imprint on the Americas, and reveal the haphazard and unpredictable nature of early global empires.
Also see:
Were the Dutch proto-capitalists? Were they Americans before America? What was the Dutch West India Company, and how did it work? I talk to Deborah Hamer — historian, research associate at the Omohundro Institute, and associate editor of the New York history blog Gotham — to discuss her work on marriage and gender in the early Dutch colony in Batavia (as they called the conquered city of Jakarta), how it illuminates the Netherlands’ obsessive efforts to create a stratified, orderly, and moral Protestant society in Southeast Asia, and what it reveals about the wider European colonial mindset.
Also see:
I discuss, with Michael of “Xai, how are you?”, the life and times of Sabbatai Zvi, the purported messiah of the 1660s, and the massive messianic awakening that he sparked and that swept across the entire Jewish diaspora in 1666, drawing in men and women, wealthy and poor, clergy and laity, Sephardic and Ashkenazi, and even Jews and gentiles. We consider the development of messianic theology and kabbalah that paved the way for the Sabbatian movement, as well as the lasting imprint that it left on Judaism in the modern era.
Also see:
Why did the US government support and supply substantial aid to a left-wing revolutionary government in Bolivia in the 1950s, at the same time that it was undermining or overthrowing similar regimes in other nations? What does this striking but forgotten incident reveal about American ambitions in Latin America? And what light does it shed on the strife engulfing Bolivia today, after yet another elected leader has been forced out of power? We discuss and find context with Oliver Rhodes Murphey, whose dissertation seeks to solve the puzzle of American involvement in the heart of Andean South America.
Also see:
- The other installments in Violent Metamorphosis: The Americas before, during, and after European Colonization
- More from the entire Guest Conversations and Interviews Playlist
Suggested further reading: “A Bond that will Permanently Endure: The Eisenhower administration, the Bolivian revolution and Latin American leftist nationalism” — academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D87D30RB
What’s 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. (Also listen for contributions from Kali the cat.)
The pledges for this instalment 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.”
Also see:
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 (Payment for this installment will be split between the two collaborators)
Also see:
Things You Don’t Know
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