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UnTextbooked | A history podcast for the future — History
UnTextbooked | A history podcast for the future

UnTextbooked is brought to you by teen change-makers who are looking for answers to big questions. Have you ever wondered if protests really can save lives, why assimilation required Native American kids to attend boarding schools, how Black-led organizations for mutual aid began, how the fear of communism led the United States to plan the overthrows of many leaders in Latin America, or why Brazilian cars run on sugar? Or maybe you’ve questioned when Asian Americans will stop being seen as “perpetual foreigners,” how African heritage influences Black activism, or what resilience looks like for Iranian women?

Your textbooks probably didn’t teach you how American Jews were an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement, if history’s greatest leaders were generalists or specialists, how a Black teenager and his young lawyer changed America’s criminal justice system, or if either the US or the USSR won the Cold War. Did you know some of the forgotten BIPOC women of history were spying in aid of the French Resistance, that there’s more to being a leader than going down with your battleship, or that there is a long history of gender expression in Native American cultures that goes beyond the male/female binary? Listen in as we interview famous authors and historians who have the answers.

Context is the key to understanding topics like British imperialism, segregation, racism, criminal justice, identifying as non-binary and so much more. These intergenerational conversations bring the full power of history to you with the depth and vividness that most textbooks lack. Real history, to help you find answers to your big questions. UnTextbooked makes history unboring forever.

Copyright: © Copyright 2020-2023 The History Co:Lab. All Rights Reserved.

Latest Episodes:

Is there an American Empire? Nov 01, 2021

Show notes

With a name like “The United States of America”, it can be easy to forget that this country’s borders extend well beyond the fifty states of the union. In fact, millions of American citizens live on US territory well outside those borders. It’s not just Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the North Mariana Islands, but the many military bases we occupy across the globe too.

“Empire” might not always be a word associated with the USA, but some historians think the label fits. Dr. Daniel Immerwahr is one of them, and he thinks that the country’s trajectory in capturing new territory bears a striking resemblance to the British Empire—the same one that the country’s architects were so often critical of.

Book: How to Hide an Empire: a History of the Greater United States

Guest: Dr. Daniel Immerwahr, Professor of history at Northwestern University

Producer: Elliot Smith

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

Does population control work? Oct 28, 2021

Show notes

A hundred years ago, there were roughly 2 billion people in the world. Today, there are almost 8 billion.

This rapid quadrupling of the world’s population has people asking, is the planet overpopulated? Some say, yes. Others say that it’s not so simple.

This isn’t a new question. Researchers in the 19th and 20th centuries warned that unfettered population growth would lead to famine, poverty, and climate destruction. Some governments and aid agencies took those warnings to heart, and implemented programs to try and lower fertility rates. These programs were sometimes coercive, often incentivizing poor people to be sterilized or have abortions they didn’t want. Some societies are still living with unintended consequences of these efforts to control population. Still, the question of whether the earth is overpopulated is still contested

UnTextbooked producer Oliver Wang had always been curious about population control. He’s Chinese American, and his family had been shaped by the One-Child policy. So he read the book Fatal Misconception by Dr. Matthew Connelly to learn more. On this episode of UnTextbooked, Oliver and Dr. Connelly explore the origin and impact of population control efforts.

Book: Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population

Guest: Dr. Matthew Connelly

Producer: Oliver Wang

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

Why were Native American kids required to attend boarding schools? Oct 25, 2021

Show notes

In the spring of 2021, UnTextbooked producer Gavin Scott read a headline that made his heart sink. The remains of 215 indigenous children were discovered buried in a mass grave near the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia. Over the next few months, more mass graves were found outside of other Canadian residential schools.

Before they died, these children had been part of a program of forced assimilation. For more than a century, thousands of indigenous children in Canada were required to attend residential schools. The purpose of these schools was to teach them English and encourage them to behave more like white settlers. Survivors of the residential school system say the environment was often harsh. Lots of kids ran away, and some didn’t survive their time at school.

Producer Gavin Scott is Native American, and even though he didn’t have a personal connection to the Canadian residential schools, he knew that the United States had also operated boarding schools with similar intentions. But Gavin didn’t really learn much about this history when he was in school. He wanted to know how these schools operated and how they affected the lives of students that attended them.

In this episode of UnTextbooked, Gavin interviews Dr. Brenda Child. Dr. Child is a scholar of American Indian studies, and she wrote the book Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families 1900-1940 after reading hundreds of letters written by students, families, and administrators at the Flandreau Indian School and the Haskell Institute. Gavin also interviews his Great Aunt, Babe, about her experiences attending Haskell and the Concho Indian School as a child.

Book: Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families 1900-1940

Guest: Dr. Brenda Child, Professor of American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota

Producer: Gavin Scott

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

Can protests save lives? How ACT UP helped tame the AIDS crisis. Oct 21, 2021

Show notes

One morning in 1991, Senator Jesse Helms’ house was covered with a giant fake condom in an act of protest. Helms had been a vocal opponent of funding AIDS research and he had introduced an infamous and popular bill amendment that prevented federal money from being spent on AIDS research. There were few treatments available at the time, and with no help from the government, HIV was actively spreading across the country. In 1991 alone, nearly 30,000 American died of AIDS, and the numbers would keep rising until the late nineties.

The condom on Helms’ house was courtesy of the protest group ACT UP, which led a number of high profile direct actions meant to call attention to the AIDS crisis and get people angry.

UnTextbooked’s Jordan Pettiford was curious about queer history. She came out to her family around the same time the Covid-19 pandemic began. While the context of Covid felt different, she noticed some strange similarities between the present day and the history of AIDS—especially the way in which viruses become political.

In this episode, Jordan interviews David France, author of How to Survive a Plague. David France was a first-hand witness to the AIDS epidemic in New York City. He covered the unique actions of the protest movement that called out the government’s inaction and discrimination.

Book: How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed Aids

Guest: David France, writer and filmmaker

Producer: Jordan Pettiford

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

Can the War on Terror ever truly end? Oct 18, 2021

Show notes

The War On Terror is the longest foreign war the United States has ever fought. So long that many of the soldiers fighting weren’t even alive when it started. But the WoT seems unusual for another reason—it’s not a war on a nation, or even an organization—it’s a war against a concept.

September 11, 2001 was the alleged start date of this conflict, after the Twin Towers fell. President George W. Bush stood before congress announcing, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

For many young people, the WoT is all they’ve ever known, and it can be hard to imagine a time before the United States fought this kind of war. But Dr. Alex Lubin counters this idea in his book: Never-Ending War on Terror. He argues that the United States often prefers this kind of conceptual warfare, and those examples can be seen in the American Indian Wars and the response to movements such as the Black Panthers.

In this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Ruba Memon talks to Dr. Lubin about living with the casual Islamophobia that’s permeated her entire life, the true meaning of the word “terrorist,” and the story of Malik Jalal, a Pakistani villager who petitioned to have his name removed from the United States’ drone-strike kill-list.

Book: Never-Ending War on Terror

Guest: Dr. Alex Lubin, Professor of African American Studies at Penn State

Producer: Ruba Memon

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

Season 2 is coming soon! Oct 11, 2021

Show notes

Season 2 of UnTextbooked is near! New episodes starting Monday, Octoberr 18th, 2021.

Join us for 15 more interviews where young people ask historians the questions that matter most.

Watch the video trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB46hxDFQ58

And come to our launch party: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkcO6vqTkiGdRvraFhbERExj8gxGWbW2DR

Best of Season 1 Feb 04, 2021

Show notes

We’ve wrapped our first season of UnTextbooked! Our producers have explored race, food, piracy, gender, medicine and so much more.

In this episode, UnTextbooked editor Bethany Denton shares five of her favorite moments from the season:

How a Black teenager and his young lawyer changed America's criminal justice system.

Most Americans eat like kings without realizing it.

Damnation to the governor and confusion to the colony.

Germany addressed its racist past. Can America do the same?

History fails when it ignores the BIPOC women who made it.

Would you like to be on UnTextbooked Season 2? https://www.untextbooked.org/apply

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

Why did American Jews march for Black equality? Dec 03, 2020

Show notes

Throughout this series, we’ve heard historians say that the way Americans think about race is changing, as evidenced by the unprecedented numbers of Americans marching after George Floyd’s death. And along with this surge in action are critical conversations about what it means to be an ally, and what it means to “perform” allyship.

UnTextbooked producer Daniel Ardity noticed what he thought to be a lot of empty support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020--particularly when his Instagram feed was full of black squares one day in June. It made him wonder how he and other non-Black allies could meaningfully contribute to the movement without just adding to the noise.

These questions reminded him of a lecture he’d heard about the Black-Jewish alliance during the Civil Rights Movement. Daniel is Jewish himself, and was inspired by the activism of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and his contemporaries. For many American Jews, supporting Black liberation was an expression of tikkun olam, Hebrew for “heal the world”. According to historian Cheryl Greenberg, author of Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century, support for the Civil Rights Movement was integral to the American Jewish identity. She says this was, at least in part, because both groups are vulnerable to white supremacist violence.

On this episode of UnTextbooked, Daniel interviews Cheryl Greenberg about how the Black-Jewish alliance evolved, and how it was effective even when it was not perfectly harmonious.

Guest: Dr. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg

Book: Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century

Producer: Daniel Ardity

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

Why do so many Westerners fear the veil? Nov 30, 2020

Show notes

People in the West have many harmful perceptions about Muslim women being submissive or oppressed. In fact, a study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that only 19% of Americans believed that Islam is respectful of women. These beliefs have been reinforced for centuries through media portrayals and stereotypes. One of those persistent stereotypes is that Muslim women are forced against their will to wear hijab, and as a result the veil has come to symbolize women’s oppression. These misconceptions have led to some countries to ban or restrict hijab.

UnTextbooked producer Jana Amin grew up in Egypt, and never thought much about women around her wearing veils. It wasn’t until she moved to the United States that she started hearing about what Americans believed about Muslims wearing hijab. It wasn’t her experience that women in Egypt were forced to veil, and she wanted to understand why so many non-Muslims had such strong opinions about Muslim women’s expression of faith and identity.

Jana found the work of historian Leila Ahmed, author of A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America. The book explores not only the evolution of the veil’s popularity throughout history, but also contends that Western misconceptions of the veil’s symbolism are a vestige of British colonialism. And from that perspective, donning the veil could be understood as an act of resistance.

Book: A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America

Guest: Dr. Leila Ahmed

Producer: Jana Amin

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

Most Americans eat like kings without realizing it. Nov 26, 2020

Show notes

It’s undeniable that the way people eat has changed drastically in the last century. It took thousands of years for human societies to transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers. By contrast, it’s only been in the last hundred years or so that people have moved away from growing their own crops and raising their own livestock to getting most of their food from a restaurant or store.

Food historian Rachel Laudan thinks that this recent and rapid transition is ultimately a good thing. She takes issue with the conventional wisdom that industrialized food is a blight. In her book Cuisine and Empire, she details the rise of “middling cuisine”—the food of the middle class. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Grace Davis interviews Rachel Laudan about how greater access to a wide variety of food is a marker of social equality.

Book: Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History and “A Plea for Culinary Modernism”

Guest: Dr. Rachel Laudan

Producer: Grace Davis

Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton

Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

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