Dig: A History Podcast

Bonus! Marissa and Averill chat with Stacey and Hannah of the Amplify Podcast Network about podcasting and teaching, the realities of funding and institutional recognition, and what it means to do feminist history that "matters" in a shifting political landscape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Environmental Series. Episode #1 of 4. In 1851, a journalist named Henry Mayhew set out to document the lives of London's working poor. What he found was astonishing. In the richest city in the world, thousands of people made their living by picking through other people's trash. There were the bone-grubbers, who scavenged bones from gutters to sell to soap manufacturers. There were the mudlarks, mostly children, who waded through the filthy banks of the Thames searching for coal, rope, and bits of metal. And then there were the pure-finders. What’s “pure” you ask? Well, "pure" was a Victorian euphemism for dog excrement. Pure-finders, mostly elderly women, spent their days scouring the streets of London for dog droppings, which they then sold by the pailful to tanneries in Bermondsey. The tanners used it to purify leather. Hence the name. We tend to think of recycling as a modern invention, something that started with the environmental movement of the 1970s. Blue bins, sorting instructions, that kind of thing. But as brilliant historians have uncovered, the story of how humans have dealt with their discarded materials stretches back millennia. For most of human history, the concept of "throwing something away" barely existed. To begin our series on environmental history, we're tackling the premodern history of recycling. Or as pre-WWII people would have called it: reclamation, salvage, scrapping, repair, and reuse. We'll meet rag-and-bone men and dustmen, shoddy masters and mudlarks. We'll discover how rags became paper, how old wool became new cloth, and how virtually nothing in the premodern world was ever truly waste. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bonus Episode: This year, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the moment when American patriots pledged their lives and their sacred honor to declare the American colonies independent of the British crown. By the time the Continental Congress signed that document, American blood had already been shed and the colonies were already fighting the war that would ultimately lead to the birth of the United States as an independent nation. As momentous as this revolution was, it wasn’t until over 10 years after the Declaration was signed that the revolutionary act that truly founded the nation took place: the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It’s one thing to declare your independence and earn that freedom with spilt blood and military victory; it’s quite another to make that independence meaningful and real in the form of a meaningful, functional and enduring government. And in a moment when the meaning of that government, and indeed the integrity of the the central document of the founding - the Constitution - itself, is as imperiled as it has ever been, it’s the Constitutional Convention, not the Declaration of Independence, that has real resonance for us in the ‘now.’ On this special bonus episode of Dig, join us in a little deep dive into the United States Constitutional Convention. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trying something we've never done before - an end-of-year wrap up in which we discuss our favorite episodes to write and be co-hosts on from the 2025 season, and a little sneaky preview of what is coming in 2026! Happy New Year, all, and thank you for being supporters of this show! xoxox Ave, Marissa, Sarah and Elizabeth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A Bonus Episode! Yule logs, dried orange slices strung across your windows, decorated trees and simmer pots - all the marks of a neopagan holiday season! Wait, that's Christmas, you say? Well, can't it be both? A brief history of modern witchcraft, just in time for the winter solstice celebration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're on a little break, getting our stocking stuffers and Yule logs together, so to tide you over until our next new release, here's an oldie but goodie (with a little remixing - though unfortunately there is no fixing our singing) about the history of ghost stories at Christmas time! Original transcript at: https://digpodcast.org/2017/12/22/christmas-ghost-dickens/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spooky Series, Episode #4 of 4. Over an eight-month period in 1896-1897, thousands of people across North America reported seeing mysterious ships in the air or lights in the sky. There were over 12,000 newspaper accounts published about the phenomenon in 408 different newspapers in 41 American states and six Canadian provinces. The airships were usually described as oblong, cigar-shaped objects, sometimes with wings that would flap up and down. What was going on that would have inspired so many unidentified flying object sightings? And why did they seem to cluster around an eight month period in 1896-1897? Today, in the last installment of our 2025 spooky series, we are going to dive into this late nineteenth century UFO-sighting phenomenon and perhaps figure out what was going on. For the complete bibliography, visit digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spooky Series. Episode #3 of 4. In 1220 CE, St. Francis of Assisi tamed a ferocious werewolf terrorizing Gubbio, Italy—transforming "Brother Wolf" from savage beast to peaceful townsperson. But why did Christianity need to conquer the wolf? For millennia, werewolves have stalked the boundaries between civilization and savagery, humanity and monstrosity. From ancient Mesopotamian curses to Greek myths of divine punishment, from medieval theology to early modern courtrooms where hundreds died in werewolf trials, the shape-shifter has embodied our deepest anxieties about human nature itself. Join Marissa and Elizabeth as they uncover the forgotten history of werewolf prosecutions that claimed real lives, explore how economic crises and religious upheaval sparked lycanthropy panics, and trace the transformation of the werewolf from genuine judicial threat to Hollywood monster. This third episode in our Spooky series reveals how the figure of the werewolf has shaped—and been shaped by—Western culture's evolving understanding of violence, identity, and the wild within us all. NOTE: This episode contains references to sexual assault, violence against children, and descriptions of gruesome gore. Listen/read with extreme caution. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spooky Series. Episode # 2 of 4. If you look through recordings of country, western, and folk music ranging from the 1920s and 1930s through to present, you’ll notice a theme: songs about crime, murder, and executions are ever-present. From Grayson & Whittier’s recording of the centuries-old ballad “Rose Connelly” in 1927, to Lloyd Wilson’s “Stagger Lee”recorded in the 1950s, Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”in the 1960s, to Johnny Cash’s “Delia’s Gone”in the 1990s, to Jason Isbell’s “Live Oak” or “Yvette”or Zach Bryan’s “Birmingham” in more recent years, songs about the murder are a staple of the American musical tradition. How did songs about violence and crime become so central?  Today, we’ll take a closer look at the murder ballad tradition, tracing them back to the real crimes that inspired them but also considering what they might teach us about race, gender, and American culture. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spooky Szn Episode #1 of 4. How would you expect the Spanish Inquisition to treat a confessed witch? Does the suggestion conjure visions of fire, torture, and lots of murdered women? You aren’t alone - but this is a history we definitely need to unpack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women's History, Episode #4 of 4. Today we're exploring one of Texas's most enduring legends - the story of the "Yellow Rose of Texas" and her supposed role in the Battle of San Jacinto. We are going to unravel the myth of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” We will explore the woman at the heart of the tale, Emily D. West, who was a free woman of color working in Texas, and untangle her real life from the Texan myth. We will also unravel how Emily’s tale was erroneously tied to the song, “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Select Bibliography Jeffrey D. Dunn, “‘To the Devil with your Glorious History!’: Women and the Battle of San Jacinto” in Women and the Texas Revolution, edited by Mary L. Scheer. (UNT Press, 2012). Obiagele Lake, Blue Veins and Kinky Hair: Naming and Color Consciousness in African America (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003) Randolph B. Campbell,  An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821—1865. (LSU Press, 1991).  Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850. (UNC Press, 2018).  Emily Clark, The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of Color in the Revolutionary Atlantic World, (UNC Press, 2013). Daniel Livesay, Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833 (UNC Press, 2018). Frances Edward Abernethy, 2001: A Texas Odyssey (UNT Press, 2001). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women Series. Episode #3 of 4. Dale Spender, a feminist literary scholar, wrote in 1980: “It is not surprising to find that there are no terms for man talk that are equivalent to chatter, natter, prattle, nag, bitch, whine, and of course, gossip, and I am not so naive as to assume that this is because men do not engage in these activities. It is because when they do, it is called something different, something more flattering and more appropriate to their place in the world. This double standard is of great value in the maintenance of patriarchal order.” From the feminist perspective, dismissing women’s talk as “gossip” was a useful tool to reinforce the patriarchy. Punishing women who were known “gossips” was a strategy devised by men to neutralize the threat of gossip to their authority whether that be in the home or in the community. This is an important thread in the history but, as always, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Join us as we explore the history of gossip in the Western (primarily English-speaking) world. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women Series. Episode #2 of 4. In 1861, one of the most powerful slave narratives in American history was published under the title, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Jacobs and edited by the famous abolitionist, Lydia Maria Child. The memoir unflinchingly recounts the unique experience that enslaved women faced in the American system of Black chattel slavery - to put it bluntly, Jacobs describes the years of grooming, manipulation, sexual harassment, and threats of rape that she faced at the hands of her master, Dr. Flint, and the abuse she took from her mistress, Mrs. Flint. Jacobs’ memoir painted a picture of slavery that had all the brutality that we’re familiar with learning about - backbreaking work, horrific physical punishments, tearing families apart, inhuman treatment. But it also added a new layer - that enslavement was a different experience for women, for whom sexual terror was a constant, pregnancy was profitable, rape was often unavoidable, and childbirth and wet nursing were part of their labor. For this episode in our latest series on women’s history, we’re talking about women and American slavery. Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Women's History, Episode #1 of 4. In 1987, the last reported instance of sati threw India into a maelstrom of furious debate and conflict following the ritual suicide of Roop Kanwar after her young husband’s death. Nearly 150 years earlier, British colonial officer Lord William Bentinck passed a prohibition on sati in British India. As Roop Kanwar’s death suggests, British colonial rule did not end the practice of sati in India - not at the time of that prohibition, not in the 30 years that followed as the British East India Company tried to expand their influence into the subcontinent Rajputs that were nominally autonomous, and not before, during, or after Indian independence. Widowed girls and women (and yes, we’ll come back to the specificity of girls and women later) continued to climb onto their dead husband’s funeral pyres and burn alive, whether because they believed it was their duty, because they felt they had no other choice, because they couldn’t face a future where their widowhood would be socially and culturally enforced until they died anyway, or because their religious fervor and/or grief moved them to suicide by fire. The history - and experience - of sati in India is complicated, made more so by the ham-fisted intervention of British colonialism, the rise of Hindu nationalism in the late nineteenth century, and the growth of a feminist movement - involving both European and Indian women - in the twentieth century. Visit our website for the full bibliography Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Love in the Lav series. Episode #4 of 4. The late 1920s birthed what would become a defining cultural phenomenon—the "pansy craze"—when LGBTQ+ culture burst into mainstream American entertainment from the late 1920s through the early 1930s. The smoky haze of Prohibition-era speakeasies provided the perfect backdrop for drag queens, called "pansy performers,” to be catapulted into underground stardom, with major cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami serving as epicenters of this unprecedented visibility and acceptance. As illegal liquor flowed freely, patrons witnessed titillating new performances by gender nonconforming entertainers that challenged social conventions. Elaborate gowns and carefully applied makeup caught the dim lights as "pansies" mesmerized audiences with their wit, sensuality, and gender rebellion. Find transcripts and show notes here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Love in the Lav Series. Episode #4 of 4. Today, we’re telling the story of Anne Lister’s life in her own words with a special emphasis on her search for a “great love.” But along the way, we’ll also try to give you some examples of why her diaries have been deemed the most important documents in LGBTQ+ history.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Averill's Book, Love in the Lav Series, Episode #2 of 4. In 1746, Charles Hamilton, a doctor, married Mary Price in Wells, England. Hamilton was a traveling doctor, selling patent medicines and dubious medical advice, and had met Mary when staying in a rented room. After the wedding, Mary joined Charles in traveling and selling cures for a couple of months until suddenly, she decided she no longer wanted to be married – and to get out of the relationship, Mary went to the local court and reported that her husband Charles Hamilton was, in fact, a woman. The revelation that Hamilton was assigned female at birth but lived their life as a man enchanted the public, and, as much as something could in the 18th century, went viral. Hamilton’s story was then immortalized in a fictionalized story called The Female Husband. Thus, the concept of a “female husband,” or a person assigned female at birth but living as a man, including serving as a husband, entered into the consciousness of the Anglo-American world. The history of female husbands like Charles Hamilton and many others prove not only that queerness has always existed, but that gender itself has always has been messy, flexible, and contested. Bibliography Manion, Jen. Female Husbands: A Trans History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Love in the Lav Series, Episode # 1 of 4. Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler, colloquially known as the Ladies of Llangollen, lived together in North Wales for 51 years in a cottage that they renovated and designed to suit their tastes, on an estate where they built gravel footpaths wending through perfectly lush gardens planted with all manner of shrubs, flowers, fruit trees and bushes, and vegetables. They embraced the “rural retirement” so admired and extolled by eighteenth century philosophers, poets, and artists; and presented their domestic arrangement as the rare but mostly acceptable “romantic friendship” written about in novels and poems. The inscription on Sarah Ponsonby’s tomb is no accident. The Ladies of Llangollen were a queer couple who dedicated their lives to one another, and to the home they built and shared in North Wales - and this month we’re lifting up stories of queer and trans folks in history, beginning with these two reclusive (but bizarrely public) Irish women who eloped to Wales together. Bibliography Averill Earls, Love in the Lav: A Social Biography of Same-Sex Desire in Ireland, 1922-72, Temple University Press, 2025.  Fiona Brideoake, The Ladies of Llangollen: Desire, Indeterminacy, and the Legacies of Criticism (Bucknell University Press, 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Disability Series, #4 of 4. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was an ethically problematic, to say the least, medical research project conducted in Alabama. Officially titled “The Effects of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” this government-sponsored research project was conducted by the United States Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama, between 1932 and 1972. For four decades, researchers observed the progression of untreated syphilis in approximately 399 African American men without their informed consent. Many of the men thought they were being treated for “bad blood,” which had a variety of connotations. They were not aware that they were being actively blocked from receiving effective treatment, even after penicillin became the recognized standard of care for syphilis in the 1940s. Rather than viewing the study as an isolated event, we’ll see how the Tuskegee study fits into a broader framework of American medical and disability history and racial discrimination.  Select Bibliography Jones, James H. Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. (Simon and Schuster, 1993).  Lederer, Susan. “Experimentation on Human Beings.” OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 19, No. 5, Medicine and History (Sep., 2005), pp. 20-22. Reverby,  Susan Mokotoff. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy. (University of North Carolina Press, 2009).  Sharma, Alankaar. “Diseased Race, Racialized Disease: The Story of the Negro Project of American Social Hygiene Association Against the Backdrop of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.” Journal of African American Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 247-262.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Disability Series. Episode #3 of 4. Since the advent of epidemiology (the study of infectious disease, its spread and prevention), humanists and scientists have been able to study mass-disabling events related to epidemic disease, especially prior to widespread vaccination. For example, the WHO has estimated that more than 20 million people who would otherwise be disabled are typically-abled today because of the poliomyelitis vaccine. The data from the pre-vaccine era is poor so it’s difficult to make such a precise claim but it’s still possible to look at historical “mass-disabling events” and to explore the ways that such events impacted society as a whole and disabled people specifically. That’s what we’re doing today. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices