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From Cold War to War on Terror (a History Talk podcast)

The September 11th attacks put terrorism in the forefront of American consciousness. Since then, the U.S. has waged a nearly ubiquitous global war on terror, that now reaches 76 countries and seems far from over. Although American thought on terrorism persistently goes back to 9/11 and 2001, U.S. interest and rhetoric on terrorism dates back well into the Cold War. How did terrorism become a focal point of U.S. foreign policy? How did earlier precedents shape how the U.S. fights terrorism and its response to 9/11?

From Romanovs to Reds: Russia's Revolutions at 100 (a History Talk podcast)

In February 1917, the 300-year reign of the Romanov dynasty ended. Eight months later in October, Bolshevik forces led by Vladimir Lenin seized power, establishing the world's first state operated on Marxist principles. In the aftermath, a myriad of political, economic, social, and cultural changes reshaped life inside Russia as the establishment of the Soviet Union upended the global order. To mark the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolutions, hosts Brenna Miller and Jessica Viñas-Nelson interview expert guests Drs. Angela Brintlinger, Nicholas Breyfogle, and Stephen Norris.

From the History of Refugees to Refugee History

The plight of refugees has again become a dominant focus of public debate as it was in the aftermath of the two world wars. It seems to speak to the desperation of displaced people and the intransigent stance adopted by many governments. In reflecting on the stance and role of historians, this talk proposes a history of population displacement that is attentive to the circumstances, actions and trajectories of refugees in different times and places, and what it means for refugees to encounter government officials and aid agencies, and to interact with one another as well as with people who had not been displaced. In thinking about refugees as agents rather than as flotsam and jetsam, the talk considers how refugees have expressed themselves, including as historians of their own predicament.

From the Transatlantic Telephone to the iPhone

The real origins of the iPhone’s power stems from the pioneering efforts of communication innovators that preceded the AT&T engineers of the 1920s. The story of wired long-distance communication really begins with the Western Union post-diggers who laid the first American transcontinental telegraph in 1861 and the Atlantic Telegraph Company that dropped the first transatlantic telegraph cable into the Atlantic Ocean in 1858.

Go to Your Gawd Like a Soldier: Understanding the Experience of Wars in Afghanistan from Malalai to the Mujahideen

This video examines the experience of war through four key themes: the appropriation of memory, the trauma of war, the ambiguity of victory, and the soldier experience. It offers insights into the political, cultural, economic, social, ideological, psychological, and geographical factors that characterized conflict in Afghanistan across the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Presented by Dr.

Going Viral: COVID Conspiracies in Historical Perspective

As national governments and the global scientific community struggle to contain the spread of the coronavirus, they have also spent the last few months confronting a different type of outbreak. Misinformation about the current public health crisis—which has either denied the existence of the virus entirely or framed it as an intentional product—has proliferated at an alarming rate. It has also enjoyed the most mainstream attention of any conspiracy theory since the 9/11 truther movement.
 
Written by Cameron Givens. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B.

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