Dig: A History Podcast

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

Disability Series. Episode #2 of 4. In 1973, Richard Nixon signed the Rehabilitation Act, a bill intended to increasing hiring, extend rehabilitation services and increase assistance programs for Americans with disabilities. In the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, politicians and activists discussed the bill in explicitly civil rights terms, arguing that as the federal government had protected the civil rights of Black Americans and women, it must also protect the rights of disabled people. While there had been other bills focused on rehabilitation and services before, the Rehabilitation Act stood out to disabled Americans for one reason: one sentence in Section 504 of the bill. While other bills had appropriated money for services or called for programs, they didn’t include a provision for enforcement – but Section 504 did exactly that. Disabled people saw an opportunity: Section 504 could radically change life for disabled people in the United States. And when the federal government failed to fully enforce Section 504 in the years after its passage, disabled people took matters into their own hands. Find show notes and transcripts at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Disability Series, Episode #1 of 4. How and when scientists, doctors, and society started conceiving of the physical and emotional components of same-sex desire as a psychiatric condition of the mind? This was neither an ancient belief nor a postmodern (aka, post-1950) one, and it wasn’t an exclusively American phenomenon either. Rather, the classification of same-sex desire as a “disorder” had its roots in the foundations of psychiatry as a profession in the 19th century. Over the last 100+ years, that classification impacted individuals all across the world. You’ve heard of Sigmund Freud, whose work in the 1920s standardized a form of talk therapy that sought to interpret actions, thoughts, and desires through a particular lens of analysis. “Psychoanalysis,” though short-lived as a psychiatric practice, was certainly part of the longer-term framing of queerness and transness as “mental illness.” But Freud is just the tip of the iceberg. Today we’re digging into the history and relationship between psychiatry and sexuality; the scientific theories of sexuality that helped shape modern ideas about the relations between gender, genitals, desire, and identity; and the consequences of the medicalization of sexuality. Bibliography Adriaens, Pieter R., and Block, Andreas De. Of Maybugs and Men : A History and Philosophy of the Sciences of Homosexuality, University of Chicago Press, 2022. James E. Bennett and Chris Brickell, "Surveilling the Mind and Body: Medicalising and De-medicalising Homosexuality in 1970s New Zealand," Medical History 62, no. 2 (2018): 199-216. Ross Brooks, “Transforming Sexuality: The Medical Sources of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) and the Origins of the Theory of Bisexuality,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 67 (2010) 177–216. Maurice Casey, “‘I want to be to Ireland what Walt Whitman was to America’: Esotericism and Queer Sexuality in an Irish Social Circle, 1890s–1920s,” History Workshop Journal, 00 (2025), 1–22. Mian Chen, "Homo(sexual) socialist: Psychiatry and homosexuality in China in the Mao and early Deng eras," Gender & History 36 (2024): 657-672. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis (1894) Harry Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature (2000) John Stuart Miller, "Trip Away the Gay? LSD's Journey from Antihomosexual Psychiatry to Gay Liberationist Toy, 1955-1980," Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 33, no. 2 (May 2024) Lamia Moghnieh, "The Broken Promise of Institutional Psychiatry: Sexuality, Women and Mental Illness in 1950s Lebanon," Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 47 (2023): 82-98 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crime & Punishment Episode #4 of 4.  In the late 1940s and 1950s, alongside the better known “Red Scare” that targeted alleged internal political enemies - American Communists - the US government led a crusade against gay men and women in the military and civil service. During the “Lavender Scare,” thousands of people were fired or forced from their jobs, dishonorably discharged from the military, and denied positions in the US government because of their sexuality. And those policies were enforced for decades - through “liberal” administrations, and the federal decriminalization of same-sex sex in 2003 - with life-ruining, and life-ending consequences for tens of thousands of Americans. And since we’re basically reliving this awful period in history because Republicans believe that a time of queer persecution, women as second class citizens, and segregation and racism is America’s “great” era, we better know the history so we can know how to fight.  Bibliography Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).  Julian Carter, The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–1940 (Duke University Press, 2007).  Josh Howard, The Lavender Scare, (Alexander Street Films). John Howard, Men Like That: Southern Queer History, (University of Chicago Press, 1999). David K. Johnson, “The Lavender Scare: Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Civil Service,” PhD Diss, (Northwestern University, 2000). E. Patrick Johnson, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South (University of North Carolina Press, 2008) Elizabeth L. Kennedy and Madeline Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (Routledge, 1993). Anna Lvovsky, Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life before Stonewall, (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crime and Punishment Series. Episode #3 of 4. In the summer of 1943 the city of Los Angeles erupted into what has become known as the Zoot Suit Riots, where roving bands of white servicemen beat and stripped Mexican American youth of their distinctive zoot suits. The riots took place amidst the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial- a case characterized by the press as a crackdown on Mexican American juvenile “delinquency.” In today’s episode, part of our Crime and Punishment series, we’re exploring the tender box that was Los Angeles during World War II.  Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crime & Punishment, Episode #2 of 4. In 1862, as the Civil War raged across the fields of the south, another American war was coming to an end: the Dakota War, a conflict between the Dakota people and American settlers in Minnesota. Though the United States military won a decisive and punishing victory over the Dakota, they weren’t satisfied: Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley wanted the Dakota warriors left alive at the end of the war put on trial in a military tribunal. The trials were a farce of justice, with sometimes over 40 Dakota men convicted every day between September and November, 1862. At the conclusion of the trials, 392 Dakota men were found guilty and sentenced to death. President Abraham Lincoln reviewed each of the convictions and ultimately commuted the sentences of 264 of the men - and upheld the death sentences of 38. This is the history of the largest mass hanging in United States history, the execution of the Dakota warriors in Mankato, Minnesota, in 1862. For transcript, bibliography, and show notes, visit digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

FIXED! Crime and Punishment Series. Episode #1 of 4. In 1850, a bright-eyed eight-year-old girl walked across London Bridge in her carefully maintained school uniform. Her teachers called her promising; her siblings found her delightful. No one could have predicted that decades later, she would die violently in Mitre Square, known to history only as one of Jack the Ripper's victims. But this isn't another story about Victorian London's most notorious killer. Instead, we're exploring the lives of five women – Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate, and Mary Jane – before they became infamous crime statistics. Their stories reveal a London where respectability and ruin balanced on a knife's edge, where one misfortune could send a family spiraling into poverty. Join us as we peel back the sensational headlines to discover the real women of Victorian London's East End, their dreams, their struggles, and the system that failed them. This isn't a story about how these women died – it's a story about how they lived. This episode is based on Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five which you can buy at your local bookstore today! Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism's Place. Episode #4 of 4. In honor of our new book, Spiritualism's Place, we're re-releasing one of our favorite episodes about Lily Dale. Today we're revisiting our exploration of the close association of Spiritualism and the women’s rights movement of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism's Place. Episode #3 of 4. In honor of our new book, Spiritualism's Place, we're re-releasing one of our favorite episodes about Lily Dale. In the late 20th century, white Americans flocked to New Age spirituality, collecting crystals, hugging trees, and finding their places in the great Medicine Wheel. Many didn’t realize - or didn’t care - that much of this spirituality was based on the spiritual faiths and practices of Native American tribes. Frustrated with what they called “spiritual hucksterism,” members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) began protesting - and have never stopped. Who were these ‘plastic shamans,’ and how did the spiritual services they sold become so popular? Listen to find out!  Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism's Place. Episode #2 of 4. Enjoy this re-release of one of our favorite episodes in celebration of our newly released book: Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Seances in Lily Dale. For three years before his untimely death on the Titanic, British newspaper man W. T. Stead gathered the bereaved and curious in a room in Cambridge House so they could communicate with the dead. Several psychics, including the blind medium Cecil Husk and materialization medium J. B. Jonson, worked these sessions which had become known as Julia’s Bureau. After Stead’s death, Detroit medium Mrs. Etta Wriedt sought to channel the dead newspaper man. Wriedt was also known to channel a Glasgow-born, eighteenth-century apothecary farmer named Dr. John Sharp. Other frequent visitors include an American Indian medicine chief named Grayfeather, the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan, and a female Seminole Indian named Blossom who died in the Florida everglades as a young child. But the bureau’s most important spirit visitor can also be said to have been the founder of the bureau, Julia herself. Who was Julia? And how do these seances fit into the long history of Spiritualism? Find out today! Find transcripts and show notes here: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spiritualism's Place, Episode #1 of 4: Enjoy this re-release of our episode on Kate and Maggie Fox, the "founders" of Spiritualism. Averill wrote this episode in preparation for writing about the Fox sisters in Chapters 2 & 3 of Spiritualism's Place. This time around, you can listen for the context and history that didn't make it into the book! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Witches Series. Episode #4 of 4. This episode tells te story of one of Japanese folklore’s most infamous yokai (supernatural beings). The kitsune, “fox-spirit” or “fox-witch” has deep roots, millennias-old, in central Japan. The use of the word spirit conjures ghosts to western minds but the Japanese are using it to mean “supernatural or enlightened being”. This is why kitsune is also translated to fox-witch and, in many ways, this is a more accurate name within the western context. This shapeshifting spirit was believed to be the most cunning of yokais, its abilities only increasing with age. For centuries, kitsune have been suspected of performing kitsune-tsuki or “fox possession,” which were made easier by its ability to shapeshift into the form of a human woman. For this last episode on our 2024 Witches series, we’re tracing the history of Japanese fox-witches and the phenomenon of fox possession. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices