Stay ConnectedBob Crawford (The Avett Brothers) & Dr. Ben Sawyer (MTSU History) share conversations with great thinkers from a variety of backgrounds – historians, artists, legal scholars, political figures and more –who help us uncover the many roads that run between past and present.
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In this episode, recorded live from the 2019 convention of the Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) in San Francisco, Ben chairs a panel featuring scholars who are working on new, exciting and very important digital humanities projects that bring together scholars from different fields, and connect those inside the university to communities outside of academia.
Our guests Anasttasia Bonch-Osmolovskaya (Russian Higher School of Economics) and Mikhail Melnichenko are Russian scholars currently working on Prozhito, which collects and digitizes diaries and other personal primary sources from the Soviet period, many of which were previously unavailable to anyone except family members and other holders of these sources. Our other guest Kelly O'Neill, oversees The Imperiia Project at Harvard University, which creates maps that connect people to history by creating a visual record of the lives and events of those who otherwise left few visual records of their own. Collectively, these scholars are breaking new ground, creating new and innovative ways of engaging others, and providing the sources that historians of the future can use to understand the past, so we are excited to share this work with our listeners.
A special thanks to Andy Janco (who joins Ben in the intro) and Svetlana Rasmussen for the many hours of work that they invested to make this roundtable a success. We are also grateful to ASEEES for allowing us to record this panel and share this important work with our listeners.
Links: The Imperiia Project
-The Imperiia Project at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
-Link to the map Kelly O'Neill discusses in this episode
-The Imperiia Project on Twitter
Prozhitto
Pete Souza (photographer for Barack Obama/Ronald Reagan) and Erin Welsh (epidemiologist/cohost of This Podcast Will Kill You) joined Bob and Ben for a live episode in Chicago to discuss history, photography, politics, and what their fields have to teach each other.
The images that we discussed in this episode are available on our episode page- click here to see them.
If you enjoy this episode and want to hear more, you can hear another 16 minutes of Q&A w/ Pete & Erin, by supporting us on Patreon. Click here to join!
Thanks to everyone who came to our live show and to the good people at Beverly Arts Center for their help in making this event happen!
Tickets are on sale for our upcoming shows in Charlotte (Jan 24) and Carrboro, NC (Jan 25)! For tickets to these and all future live shows are available at our website by clicking here.
Pete Souza's Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents and all of his other books are available at his website: www.PeteSouza.com.
Erin Welsh's This Podcast Will Kill You is available anywhere you get this podcast, or at their website: www.ThisPodcastWillKillYou.com.
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
It's our sesquicentennial episode, so Bob and Ben thought it was time to catch up and talk about all the great things that have been happening in the last few months. The conversation covers The Avett Brothers' new album, the books they've been reading, and the questions about history that have kept them going. They also talk about the upcoming RTN live recordings and the plans they've laid out for the shows (hope to see you there)!
We really appreciate everyone who has listened and showed us the love that has gotten RTN all the way to episode 150. Thank you for joining us on the road!
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
The protests that swept through the streets of Hong Kong beginning in the summer of 2019 highlighted the tension that exists between the residents of the region and China's political leadership. The politics of the region have also made their way into American popular culture through public disputes within the NBA, controversy over Blizzard's decision to ban a prominent Hong Kong gamer, and a South Park episode critical of Chinese censorship that led to the series being completely banned in the country.
In this episode, Bob and Ben speak with Mindy Smith to learn about the history of Hong Kong, its special status as a distinct region within China, and the forces that pushed the people of Hong Kong into the streets. We also talk about how Hong Kong's distinct history has led to a clash in historical narratives, and what US policy toward the region can tell us about US foreign policy under recent presidents.
Dr. Aminda Smith is an Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University who specializes in modern Chinese history with a particular interest in the social and cultural history of Chinese Communism. Her first book, Thought Reform and China's Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance, and the People was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2012. She also serves as co-director of the PRC History Group and editor for H-PRC. You can follow her on twitter at @AmindaASmith.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher. The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network.
Death is something that everyone has in common, yet most of us spend our lives trying not to think about it. Even as we buy our decorations and costumes for Halloween, we rarely consider that witches, skeleton and other symbols associated with the holiday have their own histories. In this episode, Caitlin Doughty takes Ben, Bob & Guest co-host Tanya Marsh on a conversational haunted trail that covers the history of witch hunts, the disposal of dead bodies, and how social norms surrounding death have come to shape the world around us.
Caitlin Doughty is a Los Angeles-based mortician, activist, and funeral industry rabble-rouser. Her books Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity were both New York Times bestsellers. Her newest book Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death was released in September 2019. For more on Caitlin, check out caitlindoughty.com and visit her YouTube channel, Ask a Mortician.
All three of Caitlin's books (read by Caitlin herself!) are available on audiobook through Libro.fm. Click here and use promo code RTN to get 3 months of Libro.fm membership for just $15!
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
The Road to Now is hosted by Ben Sawyer and Bob Crawford. A member of the Osiris Podcast Network.
In 2015, the New Orleans City Council voted to remove four Confederate monuments from the city. Immediately following that vote, the monuments' defenders sought to use the courts to prevent their removal. In the end, the city prevailed, and the last of the monuments came down in May of 2017. In this episode, Ben and guest co-host Tanya Marsh speak with lawyer Adam Swensek, who led the New Orleans City Council's legal team as they defended the city's right to remove these public monuments. The conversation covers the history of the monuments, the arguments that both sides used in court, and what monuments can (and can't) tell us about the history.
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
With the current impeachment inquiry underway, there has been a lot of talk about government information, where it is stored, and who has the right to access these records. In this episode, Ben speaks with archive and information policy expert Stacy Woods, to get the answers to a lot of the questions surrounding impeachment past and present. They also discuss Presidential authority regarding documents, the state of government transparency, and the relationship of government secrecy to conspiracy theories.
Dr. Stacy Wood is Assistant Professor at the School of Computing and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a critical scholar of archives, information policy and information studies who engages with the legal and cultural aspects of records and technology. You can find out more about her at her personal website, StacyEWood.com and follow her on twitter at @StacyEWood.
To hear our first interview w/ Stacy Wood in RTN #12, join us on Patreon. You'll get episodes 1-75, extra episodes, bonus content and more, and you'll be an essential part of keeping The Road to Now going! Click here to join!
The Road to Now is a member of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Right now an average of one person dies about every 11 minutes from an opioid overdose in the United States. The staggering number of lives ruined by opioid addiction has finally gotten public attention in recent years, but the origins of the crisis goes back to 1996, when Purdue Pharma began selling Oxycontin through a misleading marketing campaign that claimed it was unlikely to cause addiction. In this episode, Ben speaks with journalist Beth Macy, who chronicled the lives of those affected by opioid addiction in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and across the country. Her book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America tells the history of the opioid crisis through the deeply intimate stories of the people and communities that were hit hard by addiction, but never stopped fighting the companies who placed profit over humanity.
Beth Macy is a journalist and author of three books, the most recent of which, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America (Little, Brown & Company, 2018), was an instant NY Times Best Seller. Her audio documentary Finding Tess: A Mother's Search for Answers in a Dopesick America was released on October 3, 2019 is and is available by clicking here. For more on Beth Macy, visit her personal website- intrepidpapergirl.com- and follow her on twitter at @papergirlmacy.
You can get Dopesick and two additional audiobooks for just $15 from Libro.fm. Just click here and enter promo code RTN at checkout!
The Road to Now is a member of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Tom Shadyac will be our guest for a live recording at TPAC's Polk Theater as part of the Nashville Comedy Festival on April 18th, 2020! Click here for tickets!
This is a rebroadcast of RTN #34 with an update on Tom's work since we spoke with him in December of 2016.
Tom Shadyac has probably made you laugh. He was the youngest ever staff joke writer for Bob Hope and he directed some of the biggest comedy films in recent memory, including Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Nutty Professor. A lot of people would say Tom has "made it." Tom would disagree.
Tom joins Ben and Bob for a conversation about his life and the path that led him to abandon the pursuit of fame and material abundance to focus on helping others. He tells of his 11-year period of unemployment as he struggled to find success in the Los Angeles comedy scene, his relationship with Jim Carrey and how following his own passions led him to take a risk with Ace Ventura. Tom also talks of his approach to teaching film, and explains why he defines success as a state of mind. Other topics of conversation include the LA comedy scene, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and Tom's deep commitment to the people of Memphis.
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. This rebroadcast was edited by Gary Fletcher.
The recent drone strike on Saudi oil fields has implications for the entire world, but we remain uncertain who is responsible for the attack. Yemen's Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility, but Trump claims it was actually Iran. There's a lot at stake here, so Ben sat down with his MTSU colleague Sean Foley to learn about the history of the conflict and how that might inform policy moving forward.
In the second part of the episode, Bob and Ben talk about Bob's research and what he's learned about Monsanto since our last episode. We also share an exciting announcement about upcoming plans for the podcast!
Dr. Sean Foley is a Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University, where he specializes in the contemporary history and politics of the Middle East and the wider Islamic world. He frequently visits Asia and the Middle East, follows events in both regions closely, and speaks Arabic and Bahasa Malaysian. Dr. Foley has held Fulbright fellowships in Syria, Turkey, and Malaysia, and lived in Saudi Arabia from April 2013 until January 2014. His most recent book is Changing Saudi Arabia: Art, Culture, and Society in the Kingdom (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2019). You can follow him on twitter at @foleyse.
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