Born in the USA: A History of Birth [rebroadcast]
It’s BackStory’s birthday! To celebrate our first year as a weekly show, the American History Guys are going back to where it all begins: birth. From midwives to maternity wards, ideas of sin, and of citizenship, this episode explores what it means to be “Born in the USA.”
Rinse and Repeat: Cleanliness in America
Cleanliness is next to godliness, we say, and Americans have long associated good hygiene with moral and spiritual purity. On this episode, we dig into the changing ways we’ve defined what it is to be clean. We’ll meet an 18th-century Pennsylvania woman who didn’t immerse herself in water for 28 years, and ask how Americans [...]
Weathering the Storm
This week on BackStory, we tackle extreme weather: how we’ve tried to predict it, control it, make sense of it. Along the way, we discover that our responses to wind, sleet, and rain have said as much about us as about the natural world.
In the Beginning: Science and Religion in America
The “Scopes Monkey Trial” has come to symbolize the fundamental conflict between science and religion… but are the two necessarily opposed?
Born in the USA
To mark the rebirth of BackStory as a weekly program, the History Guys set out to explore the earliest stages of life in America. They begin with a few of the basic assumptions we have about birth in America today, and spend the hour exploring how those assumptions came into being.
Weathering the Storm
In New England, 1816 was “The Year Without a Summer.” Snow fell throughout June and July. According to one diarist, the 4th of July saw “ice as thick as window glass” as far south as Pennsylvania. This week on BackStory, we tackle weather in its strangest and scariest permutations.
Energy Gluttons
The following audio clip is excerpted from the BackStory episode “From Whales to Wind: A History of Energy.” You can listen to the entire episode here. Historian David Nye discusses the origins of Americans’ ample appetites for energy. Excerpted from: From Whales to Wind: A History of Energy
The Age of Horses
The following audio clip is excerpted from the BackStory episode “From Whales to Wind: A History of Energy.” You can listen to the entire episode here. Historian Ann Norton Greene explains why the “Age of Steam” was also the Age of Horses. Excerpted from: From Whales to Wind: A History of Energy
Slavery & Science
The following audio clip is excerpted from the BackStory episode “Black & White: The Idea of Racial Purity.” You can listen to the entire episode here. Historian Daryl Scott discusses rise of scientific racism and how race has evolved–and not evolved–in the 19th and 20th centuries. Excerpted from: Black & White: The Idea of Racial [...]
Heathen Health
The following audio clip is excerpted from the BackStory episode “Body Politics: A History of Health Care.” You can listen to the entire episode here. The Memory Palace‘s Nate DiMeo tells the story of how inoculation first came to the New World. Excerpted from: Body Politics: A History of Health Care
