Victory gardens are perhaps the U.S. government’s most successful and long-lasting propaganda campaign. It began during World War One, when the War Garden Commission offered free handbooks for garden tips and published stories in newspapers to...
Yesterday
How Soccer Created African and Latin American Nations
National pride often comes from shared heritage—like a common language or ethnic background. Religious Nationalism can be seen in historical Russia, where being part of the Orthodox Church was considered key to being Russian, even if you spoke a different language, whereas Ethnic ... Show More
46m 32s
Jan 22
The Sawmill – Along With Gunpowder and the Printing Press – Created the Modern World
The wind-powered sawmill was invented around 1592 in the Netherlands, immediately transforming the nature of labor and industry. This mechanical marvel replaced slow, muscle-powered sawyers, allowing timber to be cut for shipbuilding and construction up to 30 times faster than ma ... Show More
34m 13s
Jan 20
Gears, Gold, and Global Peace: A Steampunk Bitcoin Journey Through an Alternate 20th Century
We have paper money today because it functioned as an IOU, certifying that the holder could redeem it for an equivalent amount of physical gold or silver from the bank's vault. That’s where the English pound got its name as it matched a specific weight of gold (or silver). This w ... Show More
1h 5m
May 2020
The Kitchen Front: How wartime food strategies influenced our eating ethos
Making do, digging for victory, the hedgerow harvest, the garden front: food and farming was front and centre during the Second World War, with hearty phrases like these encouraging the population to pull together and do their bit for the national diet.Now, 75 years after Victory ... Show More
28m 25s
Sep 2020
Victory Gardens and Better Days Ahead
In early March, slim pickings on grocery store shelves, news of meat plant shutdowns, skyrocketing demand for food bank services, predictions of supply chain breakdown and food shortages drove many Americans to do what we haven't collectively done since WWII: plant home gardens. ... Show More
21m 46s
Nov 2018
Erin Stewart Mauldin, “Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South” (Oxford UP, 2018)
The antebellum South was on the road to agricultural ruin, and the Civil War put a brick on the gas pedal. In Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South (Oxford University Press, 2018), a sweeping reassessment of some of the oldest ... Show More
58m 11s