Historically Thinking

We believe that when people think historically, they are engaging in a disciplined way of thinking about the world and its past. We believe it gives thinkers a knack for recognizing nonsense; and that it cultivates not only intellectual curiosity and rigo

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Recent Episodes

Episode 271: The Man at the Center of Two Revolutions

Posted July 4, 2022 • 01:10:49

My guest today is Martin Clagget, author of A Spark of Revolution: William Small, Thomas Jefferson, and James Watt; The Curious Connection Between...

Episode 270: Great Tomatoes of World History

Posted June 27, 2022 • 01:13:17

Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson of Salem County, New Jersey Joseph T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier in the 1830s, had a way with invective: The...

Episode 269: Free People of Color

Posted June 20, 2022 • 00:47:03

By 1861, there were 250,000 free people of color living in the American South. They were signs of contradiction amidst a slave society built upon the...

Episode 268: Feeding Washington’s Army

Posted June 13, 2022 • 01:13:42

In early December, 1777, Joseph Plumb Martin and his comrades in the Continental Army sat down to feast upon a Our Hero: Rhode Island Quaker ironworker...

Episode 267: African Founders

Posted June 6, 2022 • 00:53:20

In 1609 a free man of African and European ancestry, Juan Rodriguez, left the Dutch ship Jonge Tobias anchored off Manhattan Island with “eighty hatchets...