History Matters Podcast

Keith and Patrick chat with economist Marshall Steinbaum of the Roosevelt Institute on ideology and history.

Keith and Patrick are finally back together after a hiatus, and the topic is narratives in history: how to write them, why they matter, and how much we should be using them to understand the past. We dig into two specific examples, the fall of the Roman Empire and the crisis of the 17th century, to tell us more.

In May 2016, the Federal Reserve reported that 46% of Americans would struggle to find $400 for an emergency expense. Debt and precarity have become increasingly important political issues recently but middle-class financial uncertainty has a long history. In this episode of History Matters, Keith talks with Dr. Tawny Paul about debtors' prisons in 18th century Britain, which are at the intersection of two huge issue--debt and mass incarceration.

During this past election many pundits claimed that Donald Trump's victory in the Republican primary meant the end of the religious right. Those predictions turned out to be wrong. In this episode, Keith interviews PhD candidate Christina Copland, who studies the rise of fundamentalist Christianity in Southern California.

Economic inequality is an increasingly major topic of discussion. Patrick and Keith discuss an excellent book on the topic, "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century," by the eminent historian Walter Scheidel.

Globalization is one of the defining issues of our time, and it's often presented as an unalloyed positive. That's not the case. There are serious downsides as well, and in this episode, Keith and Patrick explore those negative manifestations.

Globalization, the ever-increasing flows of money, goods, and people on a worldwide level, is one of the defining characteristics of our modern world. Where did it come from, how do historians talk about it, and why does it matter? Keith and Patrick talk about the positive sides of globalization in this first installment.

Patrick and Keith are joined by their friend Stefan Smith (The_SAlexander on Twitter), a historian of scandal in the early modern period, to discuss scandal in the age of Trump and why he seems so immune to the kinds of issues that have brought down so many politicians over the years.

Keith and Patrick break down the concept of settlement patterns, or how people sort themselves into communities of various size and scale, and why that matters to the economy, politics, and culture.

The United States is at a point of long-term political breakdown, as the paralysis of the legislative branch and hyper-partisanship combine to create an increasingly unworkable system. In this episode, Keith and Patrick look at the fall of the Roman Republic and the English Civil War for parallels to present-day political gridlock and crisis.

Historians Keith Pluymers and Patrick Wyman break down the narrative of progress, the idea that technology and social justice are bending toward improvement, from its origins to its function in President Obama's rhetoric in the present day. The reality is far more complicated, as the examples of the Fall of the Roman Empire, the Black Death, and American Indians show.