Walt Whitman, Poet of Democracy

Tracy and Holly talk about the use and misuse of tear gas, and then a theory that links L. Frank Baum's work "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" to Coxey's Army. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://...

14 Aug 202010min

Jacob Sechler Coxey led the first protest march on Washington, D.C. in the 1890s, with a plan to create jobs for the nation's unemployed population with projects that would build the country's infrast...

12 Aug 202035min

Tear gasses, or lachrymator agents, are named for the lachrymal glands, which secrete tears. But tears are just one part of it. It was developed for WWI, but of course continues to be used today. Lea...

10 Aug 202045min

This 2011 episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina examines Fritz Haber's mixed legacy. The Nobel-Prize-winning Father of Chemical Warfare was responsible for fertilizers that fed billions, as we...

8 Aug 202022min

Holly and Tracy discuss the complexities of Isabella Bird's story, as well as the similarities between the pneumonic plague in Wu Lien-Teh's story and what we're living through in 2020. Learn more ab...

7 Aug 202013min

Wu Lien-Teh was a doctor who’s most well known for his public health work and the pneumonic plague epidemic in the early 20th century. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnet...

5 Aug 202040min

Bird is celebrated as a world traveler, though she didn’t really come into her own as a traveler until she was in her 40s. Her books about her journeys were wildly popular. There are also some pretty ...

3 Aug 202041min

The second episode in our revisit of the Irish Famine covers the mid-1800s, when the poorest people in Ireland ate almost nothing but potatoes, saving other crops for selling. So a blight, plus politi...

1 Aug 202019min