From Double Indemnity to The Godfather, the stories behind some of the greatest films ever made pale beside the story of the studio that made them. In the golden age of Hollywood, Paramount was one of the Big Five studios. Gulf + Western's 1966 takeover of the studio signaled the end of one era and heralded the arrival of a new way of doing business in Holly ... Show More
Mar 2025
Tom Lynch, "Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
People make sense of the world through stories, and stories about places inevitably shape how we treat, live on, and use those places. In Outback and Out West: The Settler Colonial Environmental Imaginary (U Nebraska Press, 2022), emeritus professor of English at the University o ... Show More
1h 4m
Oct 22
Becky M. Nicolaides, "The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The adoption of the Hart-Celler Act in 1965, triggered a wave of immigration to the U.S. not seen since before the First World War. But these newcomers were now far less likely to have come from Europe than Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. And they were far more likely to s ... Show More
38m 43s
Sep 30
Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Anita Huízar-Hernández eds., "meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
Community voices are often an underrepresented aspect of our historical and cultural knowledge of the U.S. Southwest. In this episode, we sit down with Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Anita Huízar-Hernández, editors of meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts ... Show More
22 m
Nov 2023
Michael Newton, "It's a Wonderful Life" (British Film Institute, 2023)
Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that rem ... Show More
1h 5m
Jul 2021
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, "Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that “the silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in wa ... Show More
1h 10m
Dec 2022
Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)
In this episode I got to chat about two of my favorite things: the history of imperialism and Star Wars with Daniel Immerwahr, Professor of History at Northwestern University. Our conversation focused on his recent article “The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Emp ... Show More
1h 4m
Sep 2024
Why Tupac was fired from Menace II Society
In 1993, a gritty and unflinching crime movie called Menace II Society was released to huge acclaim.The debut picture from the teenage directors, Allen and Albert Hughes, provided a deep dive into the harsh realities faced by many young African Americans growing up in Los Angeles ... Show More
8m 58s
Jul 2024
Introducing Hollywood Exiles
History remembers Charlie Chaplin as Hollywood’s first superstar. At the height of his career, the FBI considered him and other figures from the film industry something else: a threat to the United States. His granddaughter, Oona Chaplin, tells the story of how Hollywood became a ... Show More
27m 15s
Oct 2023
Stephen B. Armstrong, "I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock 'n' Roll High School" (Backbeat Books, 2023)
Stephen Armstrong's new book I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock-n-Roll High School (Backbeat Books, 2023), provides a detailed production history of this beloved film that draws upon extensive interviews the author has conducted with many of the people who cont ... Show More
1h 11m
Jan 2025
State of the Union
Mike Rowe is an Emmy award-winning TV host, producer, narrator, podcaster, spokesman, bestselling author, and advocate for the skilled trades. As the creator and host of DIRTY JOBS, he explored over 350 vocations across all 50 states, celebrating the grit and ingenuity of the Ame ... Show More
2h 37m