Chris and Josh discuss living in an age of pandemic, play a game of Love/Hate, and Josh explains the need to decolonize world history.

Contact us at historyagainstthegrain@gmail.com

Website: Historyagainstthegrain.com

References in this Episode: Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction, An Unnatural History, https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250062185 Jill Lepore, "What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About," https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/30/what-our-contagion-fables-are-really-about Carl Zimmer, "Welcome to the Virosphere," https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/science/viruses-coranavirus-biology.html Aimé Césaire, Discourses on Colonialism, https://nyupress.org/9781583670255/discourse-on-colonialism/ Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture, https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691037318/colonialisms-culture

Welcome to the age of discourse dumping, are you dizzy? Do you study emoji eyes to find your facial recognition? Does the world look like a Cubist painting? Is the phrase ‘rubber baby buggy bumper’ starting to make sense? Not to worry. We are here to reassure you that the White Knight is, in fact, talking backwards and the inmates are indeed running the asylum. Our prescription: put the lime in the coconut and drink them both together, listen to Episode 72, and then you’ll feel better. HAG is, after all, the Harry Nilsson of history podcasts, and our very special guest today is Moritz Mihatsch, Cambridge scholar and co-author (with Michael Mulligan) of Shifting Sovereignties (available now). Their terrific new book offers an illuminating journey through the global history of what power has forever wanted you to believe, i.e. that the right folks are in charge. Excavating the meaning of sovereignty from the sedimentary layers of the human past, our guest explains why governing has always relied on a Wizard of Oz-like control over sound and color, equal parts legal pretense and quasi-religious authority, to create cover for whatever power wishes to do. So click your heels twice, repeat “there’s no home like HAG, there’s no home like HAG,” and settle in for more therapeutic historical analysis of a world trying to make us crazy.

Website: History Against the Grain

Opening Theme by Jessie DeCarlo

Music Interludes:

Gil Scott Heron and Makaya McCraven: "Running"

Darkside: "American References"

Is the strange truer than fiction, and are nations weirder than their staid mythologies? This episode we put that question to the test by considering some of the mind-bendingly strange truths of the more distant past, as well as the nutty history happening in real time right outside our windows. So who you calling strange anyway? You better take a good look in history’s mirror with your HAG hosts and our very special guest this episode, to see how it all reflects. Sarah Schneewind, distinguished scholar of Chinese history at UC San Diego, joins us to chat about her textbook, and why preparing students to confront the very strange in history builds empathy and bolsters critical thinking, altogether a good skill set for managing the strangeness of our contemporary world.

History Against the Grain

Opening Theme by Jesse DeCarlo

Music Interludes:

Nick Shoulders, "All Bad"

Cindy Lee, "Diamond Jubilee"