The Most Powerful Women in the Middle Ages, Part 1: Queens, Empresses, and Viking Slayers
The idea of a powerful woman in the Middle Ages seems like an oxymoron. Females in this time are imagined to be damsels in distress, trapped in a high tower, and waiting for knights to rescue them, al...
21 Aug 20181h 7min
How the Vicksburg Siege May Have Turned the Tide of the Civil War—Samuel Mitcham
“Traitor!” “Failure!” “Bungling fool!”Southern newspapers hurled these sentiments at Confederate General John C. Pemberton after he surrendered the fortress of Vicksburg—the key to controlling the Mis...
16 Aug 201855min
The Story of Malaria, The Killer of Half of Humanity
Long before Thanos snapped his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War, another villain successfully killed half of humanity.Malaria is a simple parasite, transmitted by a mosquito bite. But this deadly dis...
14 Aug 20181h 26min
An Archeologist Talks About the Discovery of a Civil War Surgeon's Burial Pit at Manassas Field
In August 1862, two Union soldiers were gravely wounded at the Battle of Second Manassas. They were brought to a field hospital, though both died as a result of their injuries. Their bodies were laid ...
9 Aug 201856min
Why U.S. Political Elections Have Always Been Chaotic—David Severa from the Early and Often Podcast
You've heard it before: American politics have never been nastier or more divisive than they are today. Just witness the recent words of one recent front-runner candidate, who told told the media his ...
7 Aug 201843min
The History of Slavery, Part 5: The Road to Abolition
Slavery died a long death in the Western World. Abolitionists began mobilizing in the 1700s (chief among them Quakers and other Protestant sects) but the movement took decades of activism, bookmaking,...
2 Aug 20181h 14min
The History of Slavery, Part 4: African Slavery in the New World, 1500-1865
Slavery predates European entry into the Atlantic world in the Age of Exploration, but the system that developed during the 16th and 17th centuries was arguably a more inhumane and racially tinged ins...
31 Jul 20181h 21min
The History of Slavery, Part 3: Christian Slaves and Muslim Masters—Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean, 1500-1800
As the trans-Atlantic slave trade from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas began to grow in the 1500s, there was another slave trade that operated on an even larger scale in the same time period. It wa...
26 Jul 20181h
