Dig: A History Podcast

Feb 23 2025 206 ep. 59 mins 2.8k

Dig: A History Podcast artwork

Four women historians, a world of history to unearth. Can you dig it?

Society & Culture History

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Executive Orders, Dog Whistles, and the Lavender Scare

Feb 23 2025 64 mins

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 discha

The Sleepy Lagoon Trial and Zoot Suit Riots: Los Angeles's Season of Violence During WWII

Feb 16 2025 43 mins

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

The Unjust Execution of the Dakota 38

Feb 09 2025 58 mins

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

From Respectability to Ruin to Ripper Victim: The Whitechapel Murders and the Precarity of Poverty in Victorian London

Feb 03 2025 58 mins

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

Ghosting the Patriarchy: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Women’s Rights Movement

Nov 24 2024 48 mins

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

Plastic Shamans and Spiritual Hucksters: A History of Peddling and Protecting Native American Spirituality Re-Release

Nov 17 2024 72 mins

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 spirit

Julia’s Bureau: The Temperance Virtuoso, the Father of Journalism, and Life after Death in the Spiritualist Anglo-Atlantic Re-Release

Nov 10 2024 55 mins

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

Spiritualism's Beginning: Kate and Maggie Fox

Nov 03 2024 47 mins

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. Vi

Kitsune and Kitsunetsuki: A History of Japanese Fox-Witches and Fox Possession

Sep 29 2024 58 mins

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 wh

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692

Sep 22 2024 55 mins

Witches, Episode #3 of 4. The Salem witch trials lasted from late February 1692 to May 1693 in eastern Massachusetts Bay Province. This event resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of at least 155 individuals. Of these people, thirty were found guilty, with nineteen meeting their end by hanging. One man suffered a gruesome death by crushing under stones, while five others perished