Happy Halloween! In honor of the 31st of October and All Hallows Eve, we investigate a historical incident of witches and witchcraft in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651. Malcolm Gaskill, Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University...
History tells us who we are and how we came to be who we are. It also allows us to look back and see how far we’ve come as people and societies. Of course, history also has the power to show us how little has changed over time. John Wood Sweet, a...
How did Indigenous people adapt and survive the onslaught of Indigenous warfare, European diseases, and population loss between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries? How did past generations of Indigenous women ensure that their culture would live...
Between May 25 and September 17, 1787, delegates from each of the United States’ thirteen states assembled in Philadelphia for an event we now call the Constitutional Convention. What do we know about the moment of the United States Constitution’s...
Is there anything more we can know about well-researched and reported events like the Boston Massacre? Are there new ways of looking at oft-taught events that can help us see new details about them, even 250 years after they happened? Serena Zabin...
How do you uncover the life of an enslaved person who left no paper trail? What can the everyday life of an enslaved person tell us about slavery, how it was practiced, and how some enslaved people made the transition from slavery to freedom? We...
What was everyday life like for average men and women in early America? Listeners ask this question more than any other question and today we continue to try to answer it. Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, author of One Colonial Woman's World: The Life...
There’s an old saying that tells us we should walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. It’s a reminder that we should practice empathy and try to understand people before we cast judgement. As it happens, this expression is right on the mark because it...
Have you ever had one of those really interesting conversations where the person was so fascinating that you wished the conversation didn’t have to end? Flora Fraser joins us for one of those conversations. We’ll talk about biography, and in doing...
Mother’s Day became a national holiday on May 9, 1914 to honor all of the work mothers do to raise children. But what precisely is the work that mothers do to raise children? Has the nature of mothers, motherhood, and the work mothers do changed...