The Moon Landing’s 50th Anniversary, “Go Back to Where You Came From,” and Air Conditioning

Past Present Episode 189

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Fifty years ago, the world watched as Americans walked on the moon. Natalia recommended this New Yorker republication of the 1969 “Talk of the Town” covering how New Yorkers watched the moon landing. Niki referred to this Scientific American interview with Nikita Khrushchev’s son about how the event was ...
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Make Rome Great Again

Populism in the Late Roman Republic

Nearly every Roman leader revered the wisdom and the virtue of their forefathers. They were traditionalists, primarily interested in maintaining the status quo of the Roman state. If we understand the term “conservatism” to mean a school of thought that is heavily interested in preserving traditional values and is typically ...
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Women’s World Cup, Ross Perot, and Jeffrey Epstein

Past Present Episode 188

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Women’s soccer is getting more attention than ever in the United States, thanks in part to star player Megan Rapinoe. Niki referred to Lindsay Parks Pieper and Tate Royer’s Washington Post article about the fight for pay equity waged by women’s soccer players, and ...
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The Scholarly Reach of Popular History

Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization

The full eleven volumes of The Story of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant’s popular history of (mostly) the “Western world,” take up exactly 22” of shelf space, fitting perfectly on the top shelf of one of a couple of unfinished pine bookcases I recently bought to accommodate the spillover from my ...
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Why Intellectual Property Rights Matter

A review of Roberto Unger’s ‘The Knowledge Economy’

The structure of The Knowledge Economy roughly mirrors this dual ambition. The 287-page work of pure theory is organized into digestible, cumulative micro-chapters. The first seven theorize the structure of the knowledge economy. Chapters eight and nine turn to the issues of inequality and precarity. The following eight chapters look at ...
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Why Are American Military Bases Still Named After Confederate Soldiers?

In failing to realize that individuals are the sum of their actions — all of their actions — the Army is perpetuating hate, subjugation, and inequality.

The great irony is that many of these lieutenants will serve at bases named after Confederate leaders. As of this writing, there are 10 bases on American soil named in honor of men who betrayed their oath to protect the United States Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic — ...
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School Busing, Girlboss, and Lil Nas X

Past Present Episode 187

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: After Senators Joe Biden and Kamala Harris clashed at the Democratic debate, school busing is back in the news. Niki referred to historian Matt Delmont’s book on busing and to her own column at Australia’s The Age about the intergenerational dynamics of the Democratic debates. Natalia recommended Ansley ...
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Banner Tales

Material culture and the making of solidarity

The miners’ strike workshops were developed alongside an ongoing project called Banner Tales, which is a collaboration between geographers and Glasgow Museums staff. This work has encouraged us to reflect on the relationship between material cultures and the makings of solidarity. In both projects we have been involved in using banners ...
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The Unemployment Rate Is Not a Fact

Our country’s most trusted economic metric is only a political artifact.

The year was 1875 and Carrol Wright was upset. The mustached state senator from Massachusetts thought that American workers had a problem. Just not the problem that the workers thought they had. Following the financial Panic of 1873 and nosediving wages, Americans were launching wildcat strikes, torching railroad stations, and fighting ...
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Thoughts on Donald Trump, George Wallace, Frederick Douglass, and the Meaning of the Fourth of July

Only we can save ourselves

Donald Trump has decided to make this year’s July Fourth his own, complete with a nationally televised address in front of the Lincoln Memorial backed by a display of military force. As the Washington Post reports, “plans by President Trump to reshape Washington’s Independence Day celebration now include an area ...
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Did Naomi Wolf’s ‘Outrages’ Really Deserve to Be Met With Such… Outrage?

Despite the backlash, Wolf’s story of how love and words are silenced is an important account of the misery institutionalized homophobia causes.

When the BBC’s Matthew Sweet called out Naomi Wolf mid-interview, some listeners would not have been hugely surprised. It appeared to be just another manifestation of what Casper Schoemaker, writing on the bestselling Beauty Myth in 2004, called “Wolf’s Overdo and Lie Factor (WOLF),” this time surfacing in Wolf’s new book,Outrages: Sex, Censorship, ...
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