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Myth of the Month 22: Culture

What is “culture”? And how did a metaphor from gardening invade social-science discourse in 19th-century Germany and America and then take the world by storm? Am I doing “podcast culture” right now?

However you define it, I make the case that it is the defining myth of our time, and that we should get rid of it.

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Doorways in Time: The Great Archaeological Discoveries #6: Early Audio Recordings

In the second half of the nineteenth century, many of the most brilliant and ambitious minds in both Europe and America were bent upon solving the problem of capturing sound waves from the air and playing them back. Most of their efforts, including the earliest “phonautograms” from more than a decade before Edison’s invention of the phonograph, were either forgotten or lost to decay and degradation. In the past fifteen years, however, scientists and engineers, including the First Sounds collective, have located the surviving remnants of early sound recordings and devised ways to optically scan them and reproduce the sounds that they captured, revealing much of the auditory world of the nineteenth century and the pathways by which the now-ubiquitous technology of audio recording came into being.

Special thanks to the First Sounds collective, for recovering long-lost audio recordings and sharing their files freely with the global public, at www.firstsounds.org. All audio files used in this lecture are courtesy of First Sounds, except for the Edison/Wangemann cylinder recording from 1889, which is courtesy of the National Park Service and the Cylinder Archive.

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History of the United States in 100 Objects # 20: Silver Beaker with Devil & Pope Figures, 1750

A silver beaker engraved with figures of Satan, the Pope, and the “Young Pretender” (also known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie”) shows how French, Dutch, German, and English colonists in colonial New York united around fear of Catholicism and the Jacobite menace.

Special thanks to the Collections Team at Museum of the City of New York.

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Myth of the Month 20: Conspiracy Theories

Where do conspiracy theories come from? Why do people believe them? What do they mean? Did the CIA drug people with LSD against their will? Is Queen Elizabeth a reptilian? We consider the merits and pitfalls of conspiracy theories, trace the history and evolution of the conspiratorial tradition from rumors about lepers in the 1300s to Alex Jones and Q-Anon, and examine the biases and double standards built into the very concept of “conspiracy theories.” This is it: the most thorough, fair, and impartial examination of conspiracy theories that you will ever find anywhere.

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From the Cotswolds to Cool Britannia – observations on a trip through England

I recently returned from a family trip through Great Britain, and want to share with my patrons the sights that we saw in England, arranged chronologically, from Stonehenge to the “Crystal Phallus.” The layered remains of Britain’s past ages – Roman, Gothic, Georgian, Victorian – encode their builders’ vastly different hopes and visions for the island kingdom. The country is full of extraordinary scenery, but the attempt to “see England,” even in such a simple act as boarding a train, entangles us in the unending struggles over who defines such a complicated nation. Next installment: Scotland.

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Becoming Modern: Islam 2 – From the “Golden Age” to the Fundamentalist Reaction

We trace the tortured path of Islam over the past 1,000 years, from the “Golden Age” of art, philosophy, and interreligious tolerance under the Abbasid empire to the rise of oppositional movements like sufi mysticism and finally, the Mongols’ sudden rain of destruction. We follow the return to power of new Muslim empires, the deepening of the Shiah-Sunni split, and finally, the emergence of an intolerant modern fundamentalism in reaction to the insidious and seductive influence of “the great Satan.” We trace the tortured path of Islam over the past 1,000 years, from the “Golden Age” of art, philosophy, and interreligious tolerance under the Abbasid empire to the rise of oppositional movements like sufi mysticism and finally, the Mongols’ sudden rain of destruction. We follow the return to power of new Muslim empires, the deepening of the Shiah-Sunni split, and finally, the emergence of an intolerant modern fundamentalism in reaction to the insidious and seductive influence of “the great Satan.”

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Also see Roots of Religion: Islam 1 – Muhammad, the first Caliphate, and the core teachings

The Middle Ages: The Jews of Europe, from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution

We trace the winding paths by which Jews, after the diaspora, sought out social and economic niches in which they were able to survive within European Christian society. We uncover the origins of the two main Jewish groups in Europe — the Sephardic and Ashkenazi — and consider how they adapted to changing conditions, including the increasing assimilation of German Jews in the 1700s, which led on the one hand to the beginnings of Jewish reform and on the other to the appearance of Hasidism, a mystical renewal movement. Most importantly, we consider the deep and long-denied influence of the messianic fervor that swept over Europe in the 1660s surrounding the mercurial and mischievous Greek rabbi, Sabbatai Zvi.

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Also see all 7 episodes On Judaism and Jewish History

Jim Crow’s America, 1880-1960

We examine the three pillars of Jim Crow civilization — segregation, disfranchisement, and terroristic violence — and their roots in the corrupt bargain of 1877 that ended Reconstruction and the climate of racial pseudoscience that pervaded the late 1800s. We consider the different ways that Jim Crow was enforced in different parts of the country — in the South, with state action and paramilitary repression, and in the North, through exclusion from the labor movement. Finally, we consider how World War II and the integration of unions helped to bring about the collapse of Jim Crow society.

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Roots of Religion: Who Wrote the Bible? – New Testament

We consider the long ideological struggles in the early church that led to the gradual collection of a canon of Christian writings that we now call the New Testament. We trace when, where, and why the various gospels and letters in the New Testament were written (hint: Matthew was not the first, not even close) and how they present different theological views. All in all, though, the New Testament writings were created to respond to the dilemma that as the years dragged on and Jesus’ disciples died off, the Second Coming that early Christians anticipated simply wasn’t happening.

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Also see all 8 episodes On the History of Christianity

Middle Ages 10: Sex and Sexuality in the Middle Ages

We examine the ways that medieval people described, displayed, and generally failed to control their sexual appetites. While theologians sermonized on the dangers of carnal lust, parishioners surreptitiously met in churches and stables, kept themselves amused with dildoes, or luxuriated in brothels all over Europe. We also trace how medievals categorized one another’s sexual “orientations” using the complex concept of sodomy, and briefly consider the intense scholarly debate over the nature of same-sex bonding ceremonies in the Middle Ages.

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Middle Ages 8: The Knights Templar

We examine the true history of the first brotherhood of warrior-monks, who rose to extraordinary power in the High Middle Ages, functioned as a shadow empire reaching from Jerusalem to the far corners of Europe, and then fell to their ruin amidst lurid accusations of religious and sexual crimes. Apart from the endless myths and conspiracy theories, the Templars left a lasting mark on Western society through their militarization of Christianity.

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Related content: 8 episodes On the History of Christianity

Middle Ages 6: The First Crusade

We follow the bloody deeds and improbable victories of the first crusading army, as it slogs its way through Syria toward the ultimate prize.

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Related content: 8 episodes On the History of Christianity

Middle Ages 4: The Late Middle Ages

We discuss how the civilization of the High Middle Ages broke down under the onslaught of the Black Death, peasant uprisings, and the gunpowder revolution.

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Middle Ages 2: The Dark Age — The Beginning of the Medieval World

How Europeans picked up the pieces in the wake of the breakup of the Roman Empire, created a new society that briefly flourished in the spectacular reign of Charlemagne, and then were plunged back into chaos at the hands of the Vikings.

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Things You Don’t Know

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Did Columbus really think that he was going to reach Asia?