In this episode, Marissa and Averill uncover the harrowing real story behind a wave of forced migration from early 18th century Paris to the struggling French territories along the Gulf Coast. Driven by underpopulation woes and a charlatan’s get-rich-quick scheme, over 100 women were quite literally rounded up from prisons Read more
A content warning… more feelings content than gory content, but nonetheless: We’re talking about abortion and Ireland today. It’s hard for a lot of reasons. People shouldn’t have to fight so hard to make decisions for their own bodies. An unborn fetus should not have the same legal status as Read more
Pretend it’s 500 BCE and you know nothing about modern, scientific medicine. You know nothing about anatomy or biochemistry or microbes. How would you approach the art of healing your loved ones when they became ill? How would you identify what’s wrong with them and offer them the supportive care Read more
Starting in the late 1990s, historians like Deborah Simonton and Judith Bennett argued that if we take a step back a look at the longue duree of women’s history, the evidence suggests that even as Europe’s economies transformed from market places to market economies, women’s work–and the value placed on Read more
Reproductive labor is the labor or work of creating and maintaining the next generation of workers. This is the work of birth, breastfeeding or bottle feeding, washing dirty butts and wiping runny noses, nursing those who unable to care for themselves, keeping living areas habitable by washing and getting rid Read more
Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, and its residents are considered United States citizens. However the island’s political status remains a subject of debate and discussion. Some Puerto Ricans advocate for independence, while others support maintaining the current status as a territory, pursuing statehood, or seeking other Read more
The dominant narrative- and the story that many of you expect to hear today- is that fatness used to be less stigmatized; that plump women were beautiful and plump men regarded as wealthy and important but that somewhere along the way, thinness became associated with beauty and fatness became medicalized Read more
Written and spoken language are separate things. Languages that are connected to a written script change more slowly and last longer than those that don’t. Writing acts as an anchor to humans’ ever-changing speech sounds. But these two aspects of language (speech and writing) did not always go hand in Read more
Roger Casement has been a subject of fascination – and controversy – for over a century. During his lifetime, he was an internationally-recognized champion for human rights, and was instrumental in exposing the horrors surrounding the rubber industry in the Belgian Congo and Peruvian Putumayo. Significantly, he spent his life Read more
There was a sense, among very learned folks, that Rome had been something great that had been lost. In their grief, Renaissance scholars pored over classical manuscripts, attempting to build a picture of Rome’s greatness and, perhaps, find a reason for its disintegration. Rome’s fall was bemoaned, even resented by Read more