The Great Vowel Shift, or A Brief History of English

For Christmas Eve, we’re sharing our 2016 episode about holiday figures from around the world. This one features the Mari Lwyd, which came up on a recent episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

24 Dec 202328min

This 2019 episode covers John Wilkins who planned out what he thought it would take for humans to travel to the moon In the 1600s. Wilkins managed to ride out a rocky time in England's history comfortably.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

23 Dec 202327min

Tracy talks about not seeing a frozen body of water that could support a person as a kid. Holly discusses how difficult it is to pare down Hedda Hopper's life into an episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

22 Dec 202321min

Though she started out acting, what really made Hedda Hopper famous was her work in newspapers. For several decades, she could make or break a movie career with her gossip column, sending statements to print regardless of whether there was any actual proof of what she claimed. Research:  Collins, Amy Fine. “The Powerful Rivalry of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.” Vanity Fair. April 1997. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/02/rivalry-hedda-hopper-louella-parsons-gossip-columnists Eells, George. “Hedda and Louella.” W.H. Allen. Virgin Books. 1972. Ephron, Nora. “Hedda and Louella.” New York Times. April 23, 1972. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/23/archives/hedda-and-louella-by-george-eells-illustrated-360-pp-new-york-g-p-p.html FROST, JENNIFER. “‘GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD COMPANY’: HEDDA HOPPER, HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP, AND THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST CHARLIE CHAPLIN, 1940-1952.” Australasian Journal of American Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 2007, pp. 74–88. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41054077 “Hedda Hopper, Columnist, Dies; Chronicled Gossip of Hollywood.” New York Times. Feb. 2, 1966. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/02/02/79310265.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 “Hollywood’s Godmother to Give Views on Past, Present, Future.” The Tampa Tribune. Jan. 10, 1960. https://www.newspapers.com/image/329731973/?terms=hedda%20hopper&match=1 Hopper, Hedda. “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood.” The Shreveport Journal. October 4, 1938. https://www.newspapers.com/image/600365053/?terms=hedda%20hopper&match=1 Peak, Mamie Ober. “Social Butterfly of Screen a Different Person at Home.” Hartford Courant. Jan 10, 1932. https://www.newspapers.com/image/369469825/?terms=hedda%20hopper&match=1 Sbardellati, John and Tony Shaw. “Booting a Tramp: Charlie Chaplin, the FBI, and the Construction of the Subversive Image in Red Scare America.” The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Nov., 2003), pp. 495-530. University of California Press. https://web.viu.ca/davies/H323Vietnam/CharlieChaplin.McCarthyism.pdf “William Randolph Hearst’s Campaign to Suppress Citizen Kane.” American Experience. PBS. April 30, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/kane-william-randolph-hearst-campaign-suppress-citizen-kane/  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

20 Dec 202335min

The London Frost Fairs, were festivals held out on the ice when the River Thames froze over. Most of these fairs were in January or February, and the last of them took place in 1814. Research: Andrews, William. “Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs in Great Britain: Chronicled from the Earliest to the Present Time.” G. Redway. 1887. https://archive.org/details/famousfrostsand00andrgoog Davis, George. “Frostiana: Or a History of the River Thames in a Frozen State.” London, 1814. Evelyn, John. “The Diary of John Evelyn (Volume 2 of 2).” Edited by William Bray. 1901. Holman, Martin. “Frost fairs and the frozen Thames.” Art UK. 1/11/2017. https://artuk.org/discover/stories/frost-fairs-and-the-frozen-thames Johnson, Ben. “The Thames Frost Fairs.” Historic UK. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Thames-Frost-Fairs/ Magdalen College. “An Historical Account of the Late Great Frost.” https://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/blog/an-historical-account-of-the-late-great-frost/ Marchant, Katrina. “Frost Fairs: Fun on the Frozen Thames.” Reading the Past. 11/25/2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq-ZZ9CdsDk Melhuish, Fiona. “’Carnival on the Water’: The Thames Frost Fairs.” 1/16/2017. https://collections.reading.ac.uk/special-collections/2017/01/16/carnivals-on-the-water-the-thames-frost-fairs/ Nelson, Jessica. “Frost Fairs on the Thames.” 1/31/2018. https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/frost-fairs-thames/ Selli, Fabrizio. “All the fun of the Frost Fair: why, when and how did Londoners party on the ice?” Museum of London. 11/27/2018. https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/frost-fairs Shaull-Thompson, Remi. “’Frost Fairs,’ the Little Ice Age and Climate Change.” 5/7/2019. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/frost-fairs-the-little-ice-age-and-climate-change/ Srigley, Michael. “The Great Frost Fair of 1683-4.” History Today. 12/12/1960. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/great-frost-fair-1683-4 Staveley-Wadham, Rose. “‘The Thames is Now Both a Fair and Market Too’ – Discovering the Frost Fair of 1814.” British Newspaper Archive. 1/21/2019. https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2019/01/21/discovering-the-frost-fair-of-1814/ “The great frost. cold doings in London, except it be at the lotterie. With newes out of the country. A familiar talke betwene a country-man and a citizen touching this terrible frost and the great lotterie, and the effects of them. the description of the Thames frozen over.” https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/B07684.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext The History Press. “The last Thames frost fair.” https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-last-thames-frost-fair/ Ward, Jospeh P. “The Taming of the Thames: Reading the River in the Seventeenth Century.” Huntington Library Quarterly , Vol. 71, No. 1 (March 2008). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/hlq.2008.71.1.55 “Broadside ballad, 1684, describing a Frost Fair on the frozen Thames at Temple.” https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/records/broadside-ballad-1684-describing-a-frost-fair-on-the-frozen-thames-at-temple See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

18 Dec 202337min

This 2016 episode was inspired by our trip to the Royall House & Slave Quarters. It's about Belinda Sutton and her petitions to be compensated for her enslavement to the Royall family. Here is the link to the video we recorded for HowStuffWorks at Royall House & Slave Quarters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdE7ravZvas&list=PLNrBwGzpymDJwMDZeUI939TpVViLOKHpySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

16 Dec 202325min

Holly and Tracy share formative experiences with math classes. Then Tracy discusses a spinning bee, Lafayette in Medford, and her historical fanfiction.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

15 Dec 202327min

Sarah Bradlee Fulton is sometimes called the Mother of the Boston Tea Party. But available information about her is basically a series of anecdotes, and can’t really be corroborated. Research: "The Boston Tea Party, 1773," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2002). “Boston Gazette Account.” http://www.boston-tea-party.org/account-boston-gazette.html Albus, Brenda Ely. “’A Woman Fearing Nothing’: The Story of Sarah Bradlee Fulton: A Revolutionary War Heroine.” Lulu.com. 2014. American Battlefield Trust. “Sarah Bradlee Fulton.” https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/sarah-bradlee-fulton Bell, J.L. “Inspecting the Tea Party House.”11/21/2019. https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2019/11/inspecting-tea-party-house.html Bell, J.L. “The Legends of Sarah Bradlee Fulton.” Boston 1775. 11/20/2019. https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-legends-of-sarah-bradlee-fulton.html Boston Globe. “Helen T. Wild.” Obituary. 7/27/1948. https://www.newspapers.com/image/433376820/?terms=%22Helen%20T.%20Wild%22&match=1 Boston Globe. “Painted Him For the Tea Party.” 12/17/1896. https://www.newspapers.com/image/430805744/ Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. “Sarah Bradlee Fulton.” https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/sarah-bradlee-fulton Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice. “The Daughters of Liberty: Who Were They and What Did They Do?” History of Massachusetts Blog. https://historyofmassachusetts.org/who-were-the-daughters-of-liberty/ Dorchester Athenaeum. “Sarah Bradlee Fulton.” https://www.dorchesteratheneum.org/project/sarah-bradlee-fulton/ Grinde, Donald A. “Exemplar of liberty : native America and the evolution of democracy.” American Indian Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles. 1991. Gruber, Kate Egner. “The Daughters of Liberty.” American Battlefield Trust. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/daughters-liberty Hewes, George R. T. “A Retrospect of the Boston Tea-party, with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes” (New York: 1834), 37-41. https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-american-revolution/george-r-t-hewes-a-retrospect-of-the-boston-tea-party-1834/ New England Historical Society. “How the Daughters of Liberty Fought for Independence.” 2022. https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/daughters-liberty-fought-independence/ Norton, Mary Beth. “Liberty's daughters : the Revolutionary experience of American women, 1750-1800.” Harper Collins. 1990. Reed, Esther. “Sentiments of An American Woman, 1780.” https://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-Sentiments%20of%20An%20American%20Woman.htm The Freedom Trail. “Old South meeting House.” https://www.thefreedomtrail.org/trail-sites/old-south-meeting-house Tryon, Rolla Milton. “Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640-1860.” University of Chicago. January 1917. https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=xwNOAAAAMAAJ&rdid=book-xwNOAAAAMAAJ&rdot=1 Wild, Helen T. “Sarah Bradlee Fulton. Dorchester, 1740. Medford, 1835.” American Monthly, Washington, D. C. Via Medford Historical Society: Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 1. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2005.05.0001%3Achapter%3D18%3Asection%3Dc.18.19%3Apage%3D53#note1 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

13 Dec 202334min