China's Foot Binding Tradition

The declaration that rinderpest had been eradicated was less than 10 years, but rinderpest’s history goes back much farther than that. And the process of eradicating the disease really illustrates how...

8 Apr 202035min

Annie Londonderry gained fame for being the first woman cyclist to circumnavigate the globe. Sort of. In the 1890s, she DID circle the globe, but there are a LOT of inconsistencies in the details of h...

6 Apr 202037min

We're jumping back just a couple of years to an episode on Ignaz Semmelweis made a connection between hand hygiene and the prevention of childbed fever in the 19th century. Learn more about your ad-c...

4 Apr 202032min

Holly and Tracy talk about selecting subjects for the show while living in strange times, and venture into talk about Emily Dickinson. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastne...

3 Apr 202011min

Ida Lewis lived most of her life fairly isolated on a tiny island off the coast Rhode Island. But it was a life she deeply loved. In her words, “I could not be contented elsewhere.” Learn more about ...

1 Apr 202038min

Tracy and Holly discuss what it feels like, as people who study history, to live through an event that you know will be historically significant. To all of our listeners: Please stay safe, and thank y...

30 Mars 202038min

This 2014 episode coverts he 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, which killed somewhere between 20 million and 50 million people. Nobody cured it, or really successfully treated it. A fifth of the people in th...

28 Mars 202029min

Holly and Tracy discuss the advance casualness of recording entirely from home, as well as Max von Pettenkofer's psyche, and the fairly recent rise of the poison control hotline. Learn more about you...

27 Mars 202012min