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History Against the GrainWe Are[n't] the WorldChris and Josh discuss living in an age of pandemic, play a game of Love/Hate, and Josh explains the need to decolonize world history.
Contact us at historyagainstthegrain@gmail.com
Website: Historyagainstthegrain.com
References in this Episode: Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction, An Unnatural History, https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250062185 Jill Lepore, "What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About," https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/30/what-our-contagion-fables-are-really-about Carl Zimmer, "Welcome to the Virosphere," https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/science/viruses-coranavirus-biology.html Aimé Césaire, Discourses on Colonialism, https://nyupress.org/9781583670255/discourse-on-colonialism/ Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture, http...2025-03-2859 minHistory Against the GrainShifting SovereigntiesWelcome to the age of discourse dumping, are you dizzy? Do you study emoji eyes to find your facial recognition? Does the world look like a Cubist painting? Is the phrase ‘rubber baby buggy bumper’ starting to make sense? Not to worry. We are here to reassure you that the White Knight is, in fact, talking backwards and the inmates are indeed running the asylum. Our prescription: put the lime in the coconut and drink them both together, listen to Episode 72, and then you’ll feel better. HAG is, after all, the Harry Nilsson of history podcasts, and our very s...2025-03-211h 58History Against the GrainMyths and NationsIs the strange truer than fiction, and are nations weirder than their staid mythologies? This episode we put that question to the test by considering some of the mind-bendingly strange truths of the more distant past, as well as the nutty history happening in real time right outside our windows. So who you calling strange anyway? You better take a good look in history’s mirror with your HAG hosts and our very special guest this episode, to see how it all reflects. Sarah Schneewind, distinguished scholar of Chinese history at UC San Diego, joins us to chat about he...2025-03-201h 43
Marching to MadnessEpisode 1,010: Mississippi State assistant coach Scott PadgettCoach Padgett joins “Marching to Madness” actually on the Friday before the Oklahoma game and talks about the Bulldogs who have won three of its last five. Coach Padgett played on Kentucky’s national championship team in 1997. He was first-team all-America in ’97 and a first-round pick of the Utah Jazz in 1998, soending the next eight seasons in the NBA. Bulldogs head coach Chris Jans brought Coach Padgett with him as his assistant three season ago when he took over the program. According to kenpom.com, the Bulldogs are rated No. 29 and are in the top one-tenth in CBB in o...2025-02-2412 minHistory Against the GrainA Story ToldLike rock climbers scaling a big wall, Josh and Chris take on the towering crag of higher education. Josh finds perspective on this adventure in tackling a monumental read, Peter Heather’s Christendom, a story of how paradise was lost in the orthodoxies and power drive of the hulking monolith known as the Roman Catholic Church. Wary of such heights, Chris stays closer to ground and belays the discussion, releasing the climber’s narrative rope with the story of David Walker’s Appeal, a saga from the early days of the radical freedom movement. In this episode, tall tales that m...2024-10-181h 47History Against the GrainAI Needs CopperAI needs copper. Yes. Sure. Okay. But what happens next? We live in a world of banal narrative - news media, politics, advertising - wherein our lives are curated with messages and stories of progress and performative empathy (think “thoughts and prayers” or “appreciate your patience and understanding”). Much of this gospel of progress and toxic positivity contradicts our own lived experiences - we know things don’t work, and the system sets up to screw us. History narratives often work that way too, with big national stories of shiny continuity and advancement, where the occasional “road bumps” — say, environmental de...2024-07-191h 25History Against the GrainThe Narcissism of PowerWhen is a war not a war, but a police action? When is killing not killing but a “pragmatic, managerial militarism”? If you guessed, when the war criminal represents a liberal democracy, you win the cheese! If you simply said, “Henry Kissinger,” you win the whole wheel of cheese! “A perfect expression of American militarism’s merry-go-round” is what historian Greg Grandin calls Kissinger’s tautology of justifying wars in the present by appealing to wars in the past. And here at HAG, we have our own name for it. We call it, the narcissism of power. With narcissists of power, it can...2024-03-191h 23History Against the GrainThe Banality of NationalitySell the story and people will buy the product, so goes a hallowed principle of marketing. It works so well in advertising that corporations will spend 7 million dollars on a 30-second Super Bowl commercial, peppered up with shilling celebrities, just to sell a donut. And what works for donut companies works for nations. Wrap the story in enough celebrity mythology - let’s call it history - and a nation can sell almost anything: bad deeds become star-spangled reveries, while the supposedly sacred symbols veil the product’s toxic contents.
Join us with our special guest Ricardo Cató...2024-02-142h 02History Against the GrainConstructed out of Terrible MisfortuneHaving tried and failed (repeatedly) in their anger management counseling, and with league fines no longer an effective deterrent, Josh and Chris decided to give history one more try. And in this holiday season of miracles, what they delivered in shiny holiday packaging is a brand new episode of History Against the Grain. Clio the gift-giving muse has come through once again: their indefinite suspension for repeated instances of unsportsmanlike podcasting is lifted, and both of your favorite HAG hosts are back on the court, in their old school shorts and Converse All Stars, podcasting with the same reckless...2023-12-151h 47History Against the GrainCatastrophic Damage and Progressive CollapseWe may experience life in the eternal present, but history rides along with us. And the history inside our classrooms this semester at American River College was suddenly and without warning upended by the history under our feet: our primary classroom building, Davies Hall, was shuttered upon being declared a seismic risk. As mismanagement and managerial hubris combine to drive us deeper into an unthinkable administrative boondoggle, we once again pause to take ground readings, and assess the risks of collapse in the histories so often told. Concerned for the well-being of our students, we have declared several of...2023-10-281h 44History Against the GrainLiberating Narratives w/Bram HubbellHey Florida, oh well, whatever never mind - you take the leprosy we’ll take the truth. Here on HAG we got the narratives that liberate, you dig? A good for what ails you cure for the summertime blues, wherever you may be in the thermal dome. Tune in, turn on, and get ready for a cool refreshing dip in history with a very special guest to quench your summer thirst with stories that matter. Special guest Bram Hubbell of Liberating Narratives 2023-08-041h 51History Against the GrainSkeleton KeyAnother trip around the school year calendar, another teacher cycle complete. They say the students never get older, but neither do their teachers, they just get on an airplane to Anaheim and fly off into the eternal languor of another summer. And our fountain of youth? It’s the history that keeps us young. And the trick is to find yourself a skeleton key to unlock all the hidden stories that you never knew were there all along waiting for you to tell. Speaking of which, have we told you the one about the…2023-05-262h 23History Against the GrainExperts in a Dying FieldWhat do you do when it’s raining at the beach? Throw on your swim suit, grab a beach towel, a pair of flip flops, and have a lovely refreshing swim with HAG - Spring Break edition. Think of us as your history lifeguards, keeping you safe from the currents of bad history and the culture war undertow. History may be facing an existential crisis, but not to fear. Just tune in, turn on, and hang loose with your HAG hosts as we break it all down and build it back better. Just in the nick of time too...2023-03-171h 41History Against the GrainLive from AHA '23Join us for Episode 61 as HAG takes the show on the road with a live recording at the 136th annual meeting of the American Historical Association, held in Philadelphia. The AHA is the biggest and oldest of our professional associations, and is doing its best to stay young and in the game. But the history game in the U.S. today is in the full throes of a 21st century identity crisis, as many, including state legislatures and even some historians, cling to 19th century self-identities. The remedy? Your HAG doctors prescribe a dose of reality: look out the...2023-01-101h 35History Against the GrainToxic SoilGlad tidings to all our friends of HAG, as we wrap up 2022 and another eventful year in history. Predicting the future of the past is not for the squeamish, and once again we take our listeners into the breach where stories get made and stories are told, and as always, we are searching for a history we can trust. Take the American freedom story that gets constantly recycled, where great ideas come from the pens of great men, and freedom is bestowed as a gift by founding fathers. Have you heard it? It’s in all the textbooks. We’re g...2022-12-172h 15History Against the GrainThe Best of All Possible Worlds“It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right,” said Dr. Pangloss. "Oh, Pangloss!" cried Candide, "what a strange genealogy! Is not the Devil the original stock of it?”
With earthquakes and a bit of light editing, we cast off with Voltaire and Episode 59 in search of the stories that do not make us sick. It is not so easy as one might imagine, harried as we are by zombie narratives that refuse to die, textbook deadlines, and paeans to liberal democracy proclaiming the end of history. If man really did invent...2022-10-281h 45History Against the GrainThe Present is Always in the PastYou’ve heard the one about how the Past, Present, and Future walk into a bar? It was tense (pause for mandatory eye-roll). Well, speaking of tense, things are a little frosty these days in the U.S. culture wars over history. It’s getting so you can’t tell your friends from your frenemies. The profit-maximizers over at the College Board announced a new AP African American History course, so good, right? Sure, but what took so long? AHA president James Sweet got into hot water over some goofy comments on presentism, African American history, and the Supreme Court...2022-09-022h 11History Against the GrainCounterstoriesWhether we regale you with tales of an early morning fishing trip or a relaxing solstice sound bath, we at HAG are here to help you find an escape from the summertime blues. If you are feeling a certain dreadful deja vu, and find it hard to tell the difference between real world war crimes and aging actor fighter pilots, or decide which is scarier, special effects dinosaurs or black robed Supreme Court Inquisitors, you’re not crazy, summertime surreal is here and history really is in retrograde. But don’t believe them when they say there ain’t no cure...2022-07-111h 45
History Against the GrainCounterstoriesWhether we regale you with tales of an early morning fishing trip or a relaxing solstice sound bath, we at HAG are here to help you find an escape from the summertime blues. If you are feeling a certain dreadful deja vu, and find it hard to tell the difference between real world war crimes and aging actor fighter pilots, or decide which is scarier, special effects dinosaurs or black robed Supreme Court Inquisitors, you’re not crazy, summertime surreal is here and history really is in retrograde. But don’t believe them when they say there ain’t no cure...2022-07-011h 45History Against the GrainDesigner Memory“Stories are wondrous things,” says the writer Thomas King, “And they are dangerous, for once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world. So you have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories you are told.”
Another mass killing of innocent people in America has been perpetrated with an appeal to history. Touting an idea called ‘Replacement Theory,” right-wing political pundits, politicians, and now, again, domestic terrorists have loosed the poisonous story of white nationalism to violently project who they say...2022-05-202h 03History Against the Grain...And No Lessons Were LearnedWe invite you to listen in with Episode 55, and celebrate the 2-year anniversary of History Against the Grain. It’s been quite a trip, from quarantine beards to creeping agoraphobia, and through it all a real time accounting of life in the apocalypse. We may look a little scruffier after all this, but that’s just because we have saved our straight razors for the shaving of bad history. And in this episode we reflect on the many lessons unlearned as the world once again plays host to another state-sponsored war of destruction. Heart wrenching scenes of humanity bleed into...2022-03-251h 36History Against the GrainMake the Ritual Last ForeverViolence has been central to the national and imperial projects of the modern age. State-sponsored violence has often targeted peoples deemed as subaltern and subordinate, especially dispossessed peoples, native peoples, enslaved peoples, and colonized peoples. Not that you would necessarily get that from the national and imperial history narratives that modern states cultivate, narratives that bewilder and obscure the true costs of such violence in deference to claims of progress. Even when inflicted tragedies are acknowledged, and sins confessed, a certain historical narcissism may redirect the focus away from the true human costs to the supposedly magnanimous quality of t...2022-02-111h 51History Against the GrainSecular, Sacred, and ProfaneAttention class, today we are having a quiz. It is a winner-take-all-quiz, so that if you answer the question correctly you’ll pass the podcast with a perfect grade. If, however, you should select the wrong answer then you will fail and be condemned to live out the remainder of your days listening exclusively to self-help podcasts. Don’t worry, it’s multiple choice so you have a decent 1 in 4 chance of guessing correctly.
The question is: Which of the following correctly describes an essential element of virtually any imperial or national history?
A. Secular.
B. Sacred.
C. Profane.
D. All of...2022-01-072h 06History Against the GrainWalking the Dog86 years ago the Black activist and historian W.E.B. Du Bois published a breakthrough work of historical scholarship called Black Reconstruction, which set about demolishing the reigning story of white nationalist nostalgia framed around the storytelling conceit called the Old South. Black Reconstruction was a righteous call for America to acknowledge its great historical debt to Black Lives, and published at a time of racial violence and rigid segregation. Today, our episode, records on the occasion of yet another breakthrough publication in historical storytelling called The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. Arguably the greatest effort to tell the “bi...2021-11-191h 50History Against the GrainInterrogating HistoryHere at HAG we have to stay light on our feet, in tip-top shape, because those public statues of anointed heroes which stand frozen to time and analysis, are never more difficult to pin down and even harder to catch, then when they are just standing still. You wouldn’t think so. After all, challenge a statue to a blinking contest, and you’re bound to lose. Challenge it to a game of tag and you are bound to win. So unkinetic are they, that pigeons always know just where to find them. So unchanging are they, that passersby bare...2021-10-291h 44History Against the GrainEpistemesWhen we tell a story about the past are we liberating our understandings or building a set of prison walls to keep our understandings captive? Does historical knowledge become our passport to explore or, like a bad 007 plot, serve as our license to kill. And if we build up a set of institutions and systems to enshrine and police that knowledge and codify its ways of storytelling, how do we prevent it from becoming a Frankenstein’s monster of the same stories repeated in a cycle of self-enforcing orthodoxy? Well, for starters, open the windows and unlock the doors, and...2021-10-081h 33History Against the GrainEscaping the Sovereignty TrapIf a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is the only item on the menu, and you know a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is not going to do you any good, what are your options? Do you just keep pretending that this is the best of all possible meals? Or do you dress it up with lots of tasty add-ons, like maybe some pepperoni and curry? Or, and here’s what we are thinking, maybe you create a new menu entirely, one that addresses our nutritional needs and culinary tastes.
So it is with history. We’ve been...2021-08-131h 45History Against the GrainThe Province of MutinyJoin us for Episode 48 The Province of Mutiny. In a week where the Olympic Games play out like the Age of Empire’s hangover, we here at History Against the Grain offer you a tonic of truth. With every medal ceremony the Olympics remind us just how ingrained the performance of nationalism is in modern life. So it is in history as well. Yet if national histories have been the standard template, they have most often told self-justifying stories of sovereignty with the emphasis on power and those who wield it. And much like one too many medley relays or...2021-07-301h 40History Against the GrainSummer Replay--The Anarchy of History 7/24/20Summer travel got in the way of recording a new episode this week so as a placeholder we are reposting one of our favorite episodes from last summer. In Episode 18 we talked with University of California Davis professor Ali Anooshahr about his books Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires: A Study of Politics and Invented Traditions; and The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam. Not only did this episode release almost exactly a year ago, but the ideas that we discuss with Ali tie in very nicely with the sorts of conversations we have been having in...2021-07-161h 23History Against the GrainTime's MonsterTrue crime TV shows back in the day offered sober disclaimers assuring anxious listeners that “names have been changed to protect the innocent.” As our listeners know, here on HAG we prefer calling things by their true names, and those who commit the crimes, are most definitely getting called out. That guarantee holds true even when the criminal accomplices are historians. Our guest this week is the distinguished Stanford University professor, Priya Satia, whose extraordinary book Time’s Monster makes the case that “historians were, for a long time, not only the scribes of empire but also its architects.” Historical...2021-07-021h 23History Against the GrainWhat Happened Was...This week the HAG news team covers the latest staged performance of the long-running tragicomedy known as U.S. History. We watch as historical veracity gets bum-rushed by the flag waving drugstore cowboys of the Arizona legislature. These dude ranch dudes down in the Valley of the Sun are threatening a $5,000 fine for any public school teacher willing to teach the truth about the bloody and racist past of American history. “Out damned spot! Out, I say!” cry the history sanitizers. Sorry dudes, but you gotta know, that whether or not you can keep it out of the official dude...2021-06-181h 26History Against the GrainThe Good, Bad, EverythingWhere do hidden things get found, where does the margin become the center, and where does the light shine in the dark? In Episode 45 that’s where! From Tulsa to Tiananmen, from Timbuktu to Trinidad, your HAG history team has got the good, the bad, everything. So throw on your favorite I❤️Diouboye t-shirt, grab some popcorn, and settle in as we lay down the history gauntlet to all the memory goons and nostalgia narcissists who want to induce you into historical coma. Because you know...here at HAG...our eyes are always wide open.2021-06-041h 31History Against the GrainTruth Without Meaning"What is the meaning of this?!" Not simply a question for the affronted patriarch anymore, but a question we should be more often asking of the histories we tell. Or in the words of filmmaker Raoul Peck, “we search for truth when we should search for meaning.” We are too often poorly served by histories that hang on claims of truth but offer only confused, distorted, or dishonest meanings. Take the familiar story from the U.S. standard version history of the enslaver who famously wrote that all men are created equal. Truth or falsity is not at issue here...2021-05-281h 43History Against the GrainWho and What We Are"We birthed a nation from nothing,” says Rick Santorum, the goggle-eyed Christian nut job and former U.S. Senator. For Santorum’s audience it is all too clear who he means by “we” - an imagined nation of white Christian people hermetically sealed in time and exclusively responsible for the authentic American identity. Well, from the nothingness of Rick Santorum’s historical mind to the machinations of China’s language authorities, the history police never tire of telling us who and what we really are. According to historian Prasenjit Duara, the nation-state “stakes its claim to sovereign authority, in part, as custo...2021-05-211h 35History Against the GrainThe Human SystemDuring a week when a murder trial featuring a notorious police officer as defendant rendered its verdict, another broader verdict hung in the balance over the American justice system itself. Like all governing institutions, America’s policing and justice systems are products of a historical evolution , one that has defined the ongoing development of centralized states since the dawn of human governance just over five thousand years ago. Our guest this week is the distinguished historian Patrick Manning, whose recent book, A History of Humanity: The Evolution of the Human System, makes the case for seeing such institutions in th...2021-04-231h 51History Against the GrainPentimentoOnce again bigotry is in vogue, and red state minions without shame are tripping all over one another to pass shamefaced voter suppression laws. Even Major League Baseball, no slouch itself in the annals of Jim Crow, has taken action in protest of Georgia’s recent effort to disenfranchise Black voters. Un-ironically, all of this plays out as the George Floyd murder trial is held in Minnesota, which has us thinking once again just how poorly suited are the standard version histories for explaining the enduring traditions of racial segregation, voter suppression, and police violence against Black bodies. You ju...2021-04-091h 40History Against the GrainBetter HistoriesAs the United States once again sees the dreadful legacy of a gun culture reap its deadly toll on the living, we pause to consider how the histories we inherit condition us to mis-remember the violence of the past. Often presented in the narrative guise of a patriotic nostalgia and exceptionalism, the historical violence of empire and nation building translates into the adoration of certain iconic ‘great men of history.’ These same men were themselves the chief architects of those violent projects, and yet within the nostalgic national and imperial narratives, they are imagined to be the personified ‘soul’ of the n...2021-03-261h 31History Against the GrainOur Year of Living HistoricallyIn March of 2020, a year ago, we started a podcast, intending to capture and build upon a discussion of history we’d been having for years. It was a discussion mostly in short bursts, often in passing, outside our classrooms, in the doorways of our offices, and frequently in the hallways and stairwells of the building where we teach. Our intent was to use the calmer space afforded us by a podcast to discuss what Hayden White called in his seminal 1973 book Metahistory, the “nature and function of historical knowledge.” Apparently the podcast gods had another design, and calm would...2021-03-121h 33History Against the GrainThe Knowledge Producers"And how does one tell impossible stories?” A question well placed for our time, and one confronted by the scholar Saidiya Hartman, who has journeyed through the heart of darkness of slavery’s archives in search of Black lives past. Yet in their efforts to recover those stories, scholars like Hartman and professional historians compete in a broader marketplace of historical knowledge, where our public memories are fed, constructed, and often distorted by public memorials and statuary, patriotic commemorations and school namings, and even the archives themselves, only to serve patriotic narratives that erase the past lives and histories that...2021-02-261h 53History Against the GrainA Toxic BrandIt’s angry. It’s fragile. It’s toxic. And it’s trending. Like history itself was trademarked. That’s why we here at HAG call it:
History ™
When is history not about the past?When it becomes a toxic brand. This toxic history brand comes straight from the syrup factory and it seems to be everywhere these days, from rural backwaters like Harrison, Arkansas to leafy suburbs like North Ogden, Utah; from the wine country of Bordeaux, France, to the historic port city of Bristol, England. According to the corporate marketers at Jeep, it is even cent...2021-02-121h 34History Against the GrainFatherlands‘Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today’
Marvin Gaye had it right, but too many who are invoking historical fathers lately sound more like the racist apostles of white nationalism from the salad days of Nazism and Fascism a century ago. Join us for Episode 36 Fatherlands as we discuss the dangers and deceits of ‘patriotic history,’ and welcome our special guest, I...2021-01-291h 42History Against the GrainMy Hair's in the SoupIt goes like this: mostly you stand on a level platform and the history lays out before you like a Bierstadt mountain landscape, cool, daunting, and full of color. But on the rare occasion the history blows right up your back, hot and gnarly like a Santa Ana wind. The level platform turns over as you watch your hat blow away in the dust. You forget which part is the history and which part was your hat. After the last couple of weeks, on top of the last 10 months, driven by the last four years, guess which one we...2021-01-221h 17History Against the GrainThis Is Who We AreHate to say we told you so, but....
On Wednesday, January 6 the coup plotters from the firm of Trump, Hawley, Giuliani, and Cruz made their bid, and like a scene from a horror movie, sent a horde of angry villagers up the hill to attack the castle. Adrenalized by a go-get-em speech from America’s grifter-in-chief, the MAGA maulers might have pulled it off, might have prevented the transfer of power with their wrestlemania cum kristalnacht autogolpe madness, if they’d only not stopped to take so many dang selfies in the Rotunda. Before the smoke had even...2021-01-151h 18History Against the GrainDesolation RowOn a day when the U.S. capitol plays host to an armed standoff with insurrectionists relentlessly egged on by the criminal-in-chief, it pays to remember that the whole world is watching. When modern liberal capitalist systems fracture, all pretense and condescension goes out the window. And the reality of force and violence that has so long been visited upon the disenfranchised peoples of the world, now ignores borders and turns its ugly face toward inward, like the Frankenstein’s monster whose creators could no longer control the forces they unleashed. Join the Josh and Chris for a discussion of...2021-01-061h 24History Against the GrainOccidentosisHave you been feeling a little hollowed out lately? Listless? Not much appetite? Everything starting to taste like a badly overcooked Trump steak marinated in yesterday’s bathtub water? Well, you might just have a case of occidentosis. But not to worry friends, the semester is almost over and the saucy boys are making a history house call. Our diagnosis? You’re just a little queasy from the rollicking Matterhorn ride known as Western Civilization with cheap thrills that fail to deliver. Seems we’ve all been binge eating too much bad amusement park food served up western style, full o...2020-12-181h 37History Against the GrainEssential WorkersStill sleepy from their socially distanced tryptophan turkey fiesta, the Saucy Boys awaken in Episode 31 to the lies, damn lies, and sketchy statistics of capitalism’s pandemic chicanery. Essential workers may keep us fed in the time of COVID, but cold hearted capitalism won’t budge a federal minimum wage off its 2007 level of $7.50/hour. Starvation wages for essential workers. What gives? Is it really the iron law of wages, or just patriarchy, racism, and lowdown greed once again gaming a system that’s been ripping people off since the Pilgrim’s hustled their first free dinner from their Wampanoa...2020-12-041h 17History Against the GrainSomething Profoundly WrongJoin us as we celebrate HAG’s pearl milestone: Episode 30, with a chorus of global voices. We are a podcast born of pandemic, now eight months into the deep, fired by an ongoing interrogation of the history outside our windows. True to our promise, HAG has jettisoned the borders, and explored the wider world, both the roads less traveled and with the main thoroughfares revisited. With Episode 30 we find ourselves arrived at a great public crossroads plaza where all those journeys converge, where all of us now stand, knowing that “something is profoundly wrong.” Not to worry friends, we haven’...2020-11-201h 26History Against the GrainDefective KnowledgeThe results are in, the car horns have all honked, and by the width of a pencil thin mustache, the competent stewards of a failed system have defeated the real estate grifter and his racist minions. Sort of. On November 3, voters said the name: Rumpelstiltskin! all right, but to no one’s surprise, that short-fingered vulgarian refuses to leave the Tower, and instead soils the presidential bedsheets while gorging on filet-o-fish sandwiches. And for the next four years? The soul of America will dad dance to the unlistenable schlock of Hall and Oates 80s studio pop. Yeah, say the Sa...2020-11-131h 23History Against the GrainAmerican AmnesiaFew things can lift the spirits of the Saucy boys like a hard hittin’ vigorous round of Beefin’ with Meacham, and once again Jon “Soul of America” Meacham earns every haymaker we dish out. Our special guest this week is Gregory Downs, co-editor of the Civil War Era journal and history professor extraordinaire at UC Davis, who was recently featured in a New York Times story on the “monument wars.” Greg explains how he joined a group of colleagues to meet America’s amnesia head-on by staging coordinated history demonstrations on actual sites of the nation’s bloodiest war. From Gettysburg...2020-10-301h 29History Against the GrainSchizophrenic HistoryDo you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded slave? Ouch! No, say the saucy boys, you wanna get hitched? Go to Reno and the Silver Bells Wedding Chappel, but under no circumstances should anyone get married on an Old South plantation. As a wedding destination, a former slave labor camp just has no merit! And speaking of merit, Josh explains that when it comes to so-called meritocracies, the deck is too often stacked in favor of the privileged and the vile. Our interview guest this week is an old friend, Jordan McGowan, who is a Sacramento educator...2020-10-231h 32History Against the GrainAmerican BaroqueSocrates said it best, “Hey, ho, Western Civ. has got to go!” Well, maybe that was the Saucy boys of HAG, but either way, tune in to Episode 26 to find out why it’s time to put that hot mess of Eurocentric nonsense called the Western Civilization course out to pasture. And that’s only the appetizer, as you’ll be hungry for our main course interview with the brilliant Molly Warsh, the University of Pittsburgh scholar and author of American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire. Sail along with us on a high seas global adventure as Molly reco...2020-10-161h 42History Against the GrainDeadwoodWelcome to episode 25, the silver jubilee edition of History Against the Grain. We’re podcasting from the Truman Balcony, steroid free, speaking truth to power, and not even a little winded. Think of HAG as the podcast equivalent of Deadwood, a wild west roaring camp of a podcast, where an uncompromising saloonkeeper and brothel owner is the standard bearer of every episode’s conscience, and a hustler like Donald Trump ain’t fooling anyone. Just ask our special interview guests, a couple of HAG alums, Elise Robison and Kyle Fitzpatrick, who by day are high school history and government teache...2020-10-091h 34History Against the GrainPolyrhythmic HistoryThis week join the HAG team and their very special guest, University of Pittsburgh historian and Pernille Røge, as we take a look at what was cookin’ in empire’s crazy kitchen known as the Early Modern era.This history moves in mysterious ways, but it’s all right, because the saucy boys offer a polyrhythmic take on modernity, and ask the question: can you really fix a system that never worked in the first place? From Ghana to Guadeloupe, from slavers to sugar traders, we hope it’s not too late to come clean with the Early Modern Er...2020-10-021h 37History Against the GrainDoomscrolling with MulanWas Mulan even Chinese? Has Tr**p ever read a book? Does the Apocalypse got ya down? Never fear, the saucy boys are back and we’re throwing haymakers straight to the jaw of every history zombie. Josh has got his groove in a synchronous fall semester season, and he’s asking students to question every premise. Howard Zinn drops by with a plea for the people, as we pull backthe curtain on the boogeyman of patriotic history, from the U.S.A. to the P.R.C. And that includes you Walt Disney: Leave those kids alone! Rest assur...2020-09-251h 20History Against the GrainFools and KnavesIt’s a Back-to-School hellscape edition. Whether we are teaching remotely or not remotely teaching is hard to tell, but either way there’s no holding back the circus of another election. As we tumble into a fall season full of political [bleep], the saucy boys get their footing, rare back, and throw a country hard ball right into the face of all the fools and knaves clamoring for our votes. Is Joe really decent, or is the bar just really low? Will the Republicans cook a puppy on stage?And just when we could use a strong serving of t...2020-08-281h 03History Against the GrainListen to HaitiJoin us this week for an all Haiti episode. Rather than go postal on the blah blah blah of corporate conventions and platitudinous political campaigning, the saucy boys turn up the volume on voices that matter. Our special guest is André Juste, a Brooklyn- based Haitian native, artist, writer, and global observer of all things vital. In a wide ranging discussion with Josh, Andre expounds on his own personal transformation, from a Haitian immigrant kid in New York City of the late 60s, to an intellectually hungry student at Brooklyn College, where he devoured works on the African diaspora a...2020-08-211h 40History Against the GrainWeaponizing HistoryIt’s back to school time for the saucy boys as we spotlight a new school year, pandemic edition. Coronavirus politics seem to infect everything, including the school reopenings in Georgia, where craven meets crazy as admin and parents conspire to keep the masks off and the kids in the crowded classrooms. With infection rates up, it’s all part of the real time biology lab experiment known as Covid-19 American style. When the kids go to school and get infected, well the governing powers of the Georgia school districts say it’s all just hands-on learning. Speaking of power...2020-08-141h 43History Against the GrainYosemiteWe welcome Josh back from his errand in the wilderness and catch up with the drunken frat party known as America. The frat prez took a cognitive test and couldn’t pronounce Yosemite. While frat brother Tom Cotton, Senator from Arkansas, initiated pledge week hazing with a bill to ban history teachers from discussing slavery. If you wanna pledge this frat, bro Tom will make you sing the song of American exceptionalism while they pour beer on your head. But the saucy boys aren’t buying it, we’re not pledging, and we’re not wasting a single craft brew on...2020-08-071h 15History Against the GrainThe Anarchy of HistorySovereignty makes its own claims, enforces its own reality, and as we learn in this week’s episode, writes its own history. Our special guest, Professor Ali Anooshahr of UC Davis joins us to discuss his research on the history claims made by the great sovereign empires of Eurasia. He explains how Persian, Indian, and Turkish chroniclers invented genealogies for the ruling dynasties they served, to cloak them in the mythic glory of an invented Turco-Mongol past, and thereby provide them with suitable claims of legitimate authority. To avoid being trapped by such invented claims, Dr. Anooshahr suggests we mu...2020-07-241h 19History Against the GrainThe Imaginaries of PowerJustice might be blind, as the saying goes, but according to the saucy boys, the laws too often see color. Join us this week for the second of our two-part discussion of power, and how historically those in power have designed the laws to protect the privileges of the governing and propertied elites. Claims of impartial justice and equal rights under the law represent just two of the high-sounding “imaginaries of power” that lie at the heart of oppressive systems. Our special guest is the lawyer extraordinaire Asha Wilkerson, who shares from her work as an attorney, professor, and worl...2020-07-171h 42History Against the GrainA World Steeped in ViolenceAmerica’s Fourth of July holiday left the H A G team feeling flat, but not to worry, you’ll find all your favorite fireworks lighting up this episode. The saucy boys take a roman candle to the patriotic nonsense of a president’s July 4th speech, and place firecrackers under the feet of a corporate media still playing the awful charade of both side-sides-ism. And with a huge assist from Frantz Fanon and Michel Foucault, Chris drops a cherry bomb on the New York Times, and says we must ditch the media’s fake narratives about protest ‘violence.’ It’s time to...2020-07-101h 21History Against the GrainThere's Something About KarenAfter a stop in St. Louis to discuss everyone's new favorite muzzle-challenged avatars of racial panic, the saucy boys turn to the main topic of the week: the "Karen Phenomenon". First, Chris interviews educator -- and partner-in-quarantine -- Jenny Padgett about the necessity of self-reflection, education, and listening for those who wish to de-Karenize themselves and then Josh attempts to historicize the phenomenon with a look into the "colonial Karens" of the imperial past. In the end, Karens existed in the colonies and continue to exist now because they serve the interests of a patriarchal, racialized power structure that r...2020-07-031h 16History Against the GrainA World Cut in TwoAs the history of now adds fresh new pages with each passing day, your H A G team hosts new voices and shares historical insights to help make sense of it all. For episode 14, Josh and Chris welcome to the podcast Sacramento educator and activist, Jordan McGowan. With great relevance for the unfolding drama of our day, Jordan discusses the decolonizing of the classroom and the need to liberate education from the broad design of systemic racism. In the history of racist systems, segregated schools represent just one sphere of control enforced by the established ruling powers. Josh and...2020-06-261h 37History Against the GrainAlternative HistoryStatues are falling like bowling pins and the saucy boys are here to pick up the pieces. The past is a living breathing thing so why should we mark it with static icons of Confederates, slave dealers, and imperialists? Tear them all down we say. Continuing on, we ruminate on the recent emergence of the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle leading into a broader discussion of alternative social and political spaces in history. By telling stories of ancient communities in southern Mesopotamia, the Paris Commune, the maroon societies of the Americas, and the Pueblo People of the American...2020-06-191h 29History Against the GrainOriginal SinJosh and Chris once again devote the episode to the history unfolding all around us, and why moral clarity and truth are better agents for justice than mere objectivity. The guys also discuss why racism is now at a moment of historical reckoning. Taking on the ‘original sin’ of slavery in world history, Josh considers how racism became the illegitimate offspring of emergent global capitalism in the age of the Atlantic Slave Trade, while Chris follows racism's destructive path through America’s past and the violent policing of the black body, and reminds us of the courageous efforts to combat...2020-06-121h 22History Against the GrainThe History of NowThis episode is dedicated to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the many others murdered by those who were supposed to protect them. Killer Mike opens the episode with a poignant bolt of truth, while Josh and Chris take a knee in honor of those confronting injustice through mass protest, and turn to history as a means of making sense of the now. As our special guest this week, history professor Ricardo Catón makes the case for better stories elsewhere in history, by explaining why Latino and Chicano voices deserve full historical recognition as well. Josh & Chris finish with final t...2020-06-051h 20History Against the GrainRevising HistoryIt's HAG's Aluminum anniversary episode and tis the season for revision! For Episode 10 Chris and Josh dig into their own back stories by discussing how seminal moments in their lives and teaching had them seeing history from new perspectives. Speaking of new perspectives, Chris offers some fresh picked and refreshing history reads to get you through a social distanced summer, and Josh tackles the myth of the White God and explains why ‘revision’ is not a four letter word.2020-05-291h 18History Against the GrainRescuing History from the ShadowsAfter rapping out all the HAG news that’s fit to print, Chris and Josh dive into the recently aired ESPN doc “The Last Dance” and suggest that Michael Jordan’s story fits the traditional hero’s journey. Like Jordan, the heroes of history are often complex and multi-dimensional figures, except when it comes to certain officially approved national heroes, who by comparison seem one-dimensional and stiff as statues. What gives? Chris pulls Thomas Jefferson out of the shadows of national myth to reveal a more complex, contradictory, and uncomfortable version of the Sage of Monticello. Pulling the borders off the Je...2020-05-221h 03History Against the GrainLiving with HistoryOn Episode 8 of History Against the Grain, Chris and Josh explore what’s live and what’s lazy in today’s New York Times. The latter we consider in another segment of Beefin' with Meacham™ and for the live and living history we discuss Nikole Hannah-Jones and her amazing 1619 Project. Chris interviews two public school educators, Elise Robison and Kyle Fitzpatrick, from Cupertino High School about how they use the 1619 Project in the classroom and why exploring the darker legacies and tougher stories of American History is so vital and necessary. We dedicate Episode 8: Living With History to the life and...2020-05-151h 15History Against the GrainThe Past is PoliticalHeads up Vanuatu, History Against the Grain is on its way! Chris and Josh play a very special game of Love/Love, Chris discusses the massive impact of intellectual historian Hayden White on how we think about and engage with the past, and Josh interviews Lingnan University's Vincent Leung about his remarkable and extremely relevant book, The Politics of the Past in Early China.2020-05-081h 14History Against the GrainHidden in Plain SightIt's on! The History Against the Grain boys are officially Beefin' with Meacham™, Josh talks about the limitations and dangers of comparative history, and Chris provides a different answer to the question "Who Freed the Slaves?" [Spoiler alert: Enslaved people freed themselves]2020-05-011h 02History Against the GrainThe Sparks of Hope in the PastChris and Josh step aside a bit to give space to two guests: Carnegie Mellon professor Benno Weiner discusses nationalism, identity, and his forthcoming book The Chinese Revolution on the Chinese Frontier while Adam Hatch comes to us from Taiwan to talk about the relationship between Taiwan and China, Taiwan's history as a crossroads of East Asia, and the weirdness and wonder of Taipei's night markets.
Contact Us: Historyagainstthegrain@gmail.com
Website: Historyagainstthegrain.com2020-04-241h 13History Against the GrainYou Say You Want a[n Industrial] RevolutionChris and Josh reveal the new History Against the Grain website, play a game of Love & Hate, Chris riffs on his favorite target of American exceptionalism by reconsidering the mythic “West” of popular imagination laid bare by the Industrial Revolution, and Josh cuts through European exceptionalism and revolution in an epic drum solo played on the stage of world history.
Contact us at: Historyagainstthegrain@gmail.com
Website: Historyagainstthegrain.com2020-04-171h 10History Against the GrainBorders? We Don't Need No Stinking Borders...Chris and Josh discuss why History Against the Grain is set to dominate your podcast feed, play a game of Love/Hate with an extra dose of hate, and Chris rips the borders off of U.S. History like a band-aid.
Contact us at: Historyagainstthegrain@gmail.com
Website: Historyagainstthegrain.com
Sources cited in show: Michael McDonnell, Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America 2020-04-101h 10History Against the GrainWhy the U.S. History survey must die!Chris and Josh introduce themselves, play a game of Love and Hate, and Chris explains why the usefulness of the U.S. History survey has come to an end.
Contact us: Historyagainstthegrain@gmail.com
Website: Historyagainstthegrain.com
Program notes: To follow up on some of the key sources cited in the episode, check out...
1. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens (https://books.google.com/books/about/Sapiens.html?id=FmyBAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button)
2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities https://books.google.com/books/about/Imagined_Communities.html?id=nQ9...2020-03-261h 04
WWE Monday Night Raw Reviews and After Show - AfterBuzz TVWWE’s Monday Night Raw | Interview with Chris Masters – March 27th, 2013 | AfterBuzz TV AfterShowAFTERBUZZ TV – WWE’s Monday Night Raw edition, is a weekly “after show” for fans of USA’s WWE’s Monday Night Raw. In this very special episode, hosts Christian Rosenberg, Josh Padgett, Cathy Kelley, and Kaori Takee interview special guest Chris Masters. It’s AfterBuzz TV’s Monday Night Raw aftershow "Interview with Chris Masters - March 27th, 2013"!
Follow us on http://www.Twitter.com/AfterBuzzTV
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This episode is sponsored by
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The Unofficial WWE RAW After ShowWWE’s Monday Night Raw | Interview with Chris Masters – March 27th, 2013 | AfterBuzz TV AfterShowAFTERBUZZ TV – WWE’s Monday Night Raw edition, is a weekly “after show” for fans of USA’s WWE’s Monday Night Raw. In this very special episode, hosts Christian Rosenberg, Josh Padgett, Cathy Kelley, and Kaori Takee interview special guest Chris Masters. It’s AfterBuzz TV’s Monday Night Raw aftershow "Interview with Chris Masters - March 27th, 2013"!
Follow us on http://www.Twitter.com/AfterBuzzTV
"Like" Us on http://www.Facebook.com/AfterBuzzTV
Buy Merch at http://shop.spreadshirt.com/AfterbuzzTV/
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This episode is sponsored by
· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https...2013-03-271h 04
The Unofficial WWE RAW After ShowWWE’s Monday Night Raw | Interview with Chris Jericho – February 19th, 2013 | AfterBuzz TV AfterShowAFTERBUZZ TV – WWE’s Monday Night Raw edition, is a weekly “after show” for fans of USA’s WWE’s Monday Night Raw. In this very special episode, hosts Ryan Katz, Ryan Clum, Josh Padgett and Cathy Kelley interview special guest Chris Jericho. Christopher Keith Irvine (born November 9, 1970), best known by his ring name, Chris Jericho, is an American-born Canadian professional wrestler, musician, media personality, actor, author, and businessman. He is currently signed to WWE, and is also well known for his time in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), and internationally in Canadian, Mexican and Japanese promotions...2013-02-191h 01
WWE Monday Night Raw Reviews and After Show - AfterBuzz TVWWE’s Monday Night Raw | Interview with Chris Jericho – February 19th, 2013 | AfterBuzz TV AfterShowAFTERBUZZ TV – WWE’s Monday Night Raw edition, is a weekly “after show” for fans of USA’s WWE’s Monday Night Raw. In this very special episode, hosts Ryan Katz, Ryan Clum, Josh Padgett and Cathy Kelley interview special guest Chris Jericho. Christopher Keith Irvine (born November 9, 1970), best known by his ring name, Chris Jericho, is an American-born Canadian professional wrestler, musician, media personality, actor, author, and businessman. He is currently signed to WWE, and is also well known for his time in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), and internationally in Canadian, Mexican and Japanese promotions...2013-02-191h 01