Historically Thinking
Al Zambone
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Suitable: Chloe Chapin on the Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men
At his first inauguration, George Washington made a very carefully calibrated political statement: he wore a brown suit. It was tailored from a weave of superfine wool made in Hartford, Connecticut,…
Contested Continent: Peter Mancall on the Struggle for North America, c. 1000–1680
My guest Peter C. Mancall’s new book is Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000–1680. It is, now, the first volume in the Oxford History of the United States, an ongoing…
Stalin's Apostles: Antonia Senior on the Cambridge Five and their Service to the Soviet Empire
In the 1930s, five young men at Cambridge University became members of the Communist Party. This is not too surprising, in retrospect; many others were doing so as well. But these five men were…
The First Ghetto: Alexander Lee on Venice and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism
“It was a cold January afternoon when I first came to the ghetto. I got there much later than I’d hoped. I’d spent much of the day elsewhere and had just lost track of time. It was already beginning…
Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece
The story of classical Greece is often told, rightly or wrongly, as the story of the alliance, competition, and eventual war between Athens and Sparta. Even in antiquity, each city fascinated the…
1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople
On May 29, 1453, the city of Constantine—Constantinople—ceased to exist. For over a millennium it had stood as a center of Roman political power, Greek learning, and the Christian faith. Now its…
Nuclear Weapons: An International History
For four years—from July 16, 1945, the date of the first atomic test, to August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device—the history of nuclear weapons might appear to be an…
Europe: A New History
At the very beginning of his forthcoming book Europe: A New History, my guest Roderick Beaton asks a simple but disarming set of questions: Why a “new” history of Europe? Why might we need one? And…
Terrible Intimacy: Melvin Patrick Ely on Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South
“In the generation just before the Civil War, something like one-quarter of America’s enslaved people lived on large plantations with fifty or more forced laborers—in essence, work camps, where…
The Firearm Revolution: Catherine Fletcher on how the firearm changed society
“Over the course of the sixteenth century,” writes my guest Catherine Fletcher, “the handgun made a transition from a novel and decisive military technology to become an everyday object, in use…
Syria: Daniel Neep on the Modern History of a Very Old Place
The history of modern Syria is usually reduced to a story of autocracy, repression, and occasional revolt. And it is a short story, stretching back only to the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire, or…
The Great Historian: Andrew Meyer on Sima Qian and the invention of history
About a century before the birth of Jesus, during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, a remarkable man began a nearly unprecedented intellectual endeavor. Sima Qian, like his father before…
Introducing Historically Thinking Field Guides
In this short episode, Al introduces a new feature of the Historically Thinking podcast: the Historically Thinking Field Guides. Drawing on nearly 450 past episodes, these guides gather conversations…
Picky: Helen Zoe Veit on How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History
Apology: Helen Veit’s audio has a lot of “ducking”, in which a word or multiple words were clipped. This happened during the recording, and cannot be fixed in the audio edit. We'll work hard to make…
Worse Than Hell: W. Fitzhugh Brundage on Prisoners of War and Prison Camps of the American Civil War
During the American Civil War an estimated 194,000 Union soldiers and 214,000 Confederate soldiers became prisoners of war. No prior or subsequent American conflict has seen such numbers. During the…
Civil War Religion: Timothy D. Grundmeier on Lutheranism, the Civil War Era, and American Culture
Lutherans are a strange denomination in American religious history and culture. For Catholics they are certainly Protestants. For Protestants they are crypto-Catholics. While they have been around…
To Rule All Under Heaven: Andrew Seth Meyer on the Revolution of Classical China, and How It Changed Human History
The two hundred and eighty years between the death of the philosopher Confucius and the reign of the first Emperor of China saw one of the most profound revolutions in human history. Not only did it…
Historically Thinking Roundtable: Historians, Historical Thinking, Civic Trust, and America at 250
This is the first ever Historically Thinking Roundtable. Given that it's 2026, it’s appropriate that this roundtable focus on the 250th anniversary of the United States, and how historians can be…
Caesar Augustus: Adrian Goldsworthy on the First Emperor of Rome
He was at various times in his life known as Gaius Octavius Thurinus; Gaius Julius Caesar; and Caesar Augustus. He called himself Princeps, the first man in Rome; the Roman Senate would eventually…
The Great Shadow: Susan Wise Bauer on the History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy
For a very long time humans have been getting sick. Sometimes we have gotten sick more easily than at other times. From time to time we get sick from things a human body has never before encountered.…
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Historically Thinking has published 300 episodes since July 2020, covering topics in Documentary, History.
Historically Thinking is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 1h.
