Culture & Society Episodes

In this episode, historian Felicity Turner joins The Clio Dialogues host Jennifer Robin Terry to discuss 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘺: 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳, 𝘓𝘢𝘸, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘒𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘕𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘩-𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘺 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢. They talk about nineteenth-century infanticide investigations in which women’s experience, expertise, and testimony regarding pregnancy and childbirth, before all-male juries, was key to the process. But as medicine professionalized, authority shifted toward licensed male physicians, and with it, women los...

Historian Geoffrey Plank joins Jennifer Robin Terry to discuss his new book, The Last Place in Europe: A History of Gibraltar, and how one tiny territory became a crossroads of empires, cultures, commerce, and contested borders. Gibraltar has almost no natural resources, yet empires have fought over this tiny territory for centuries. Its importance lies in its geography, where Europe meets Africa and the Mediterranean opens into the Atlantic. Geoffrey Plank traces this contested crossroads fr...

Historians Sergio M. González and Lloyd D. Barba join Jennifer Robin Terry on The Clio Dialogues to discuss their book, Sanctuary in America: How Activists Defied the Government and Defended Immigrants—And Why It Still Matters. They explore how an ancient tradition of sacred refuge became a modern movement challenging state power. In 1982, congregations began opening their doors to Salvadorans and Guatemalans fleeing political violence, even as the U.S. government denied them asylum. Facing a...

Historian Megan Kate Nelson joins Jennifer Robin Terry to discuss The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier and how the complicated lives of the people who inhabited the American West challenge one of the nation’s most enduring myths. The popular story of the American West is deceptively simple: white settlers in wagons moving steadily toward the Pacific. The historical reality, however, was a vast network of competing ambitions, shared spaces, and multi-directional jo...

Acclaimed historian Mary Beth Norton joins host Jennifer Robin Terry to discuss her book, I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer: Letters on Love & Marriage from the World's First Personal Advice Column, and the surprisingly modern history of relationship advice, courtship, heartbreak, and ghosting. In 1691, London printer John Dunton launched the Athenian Mercury—a broadsheet originally intended as a 17th-century version of "Google" or "Wikipedia" for coffeehouse patrons. But before long, readers b...

Today, our hair is often a means of self-expression. But what if you had no control over what your hair expressed? And I’m not just talking about a bad hair day! In nineteenth-century America, hair conveyed something very different than what it does today. In this episode of The Clio Dialogues, I am joined by my friend and former classmate (Go Bears!), historian Dr. Sarah Gold McBride to discuss the surprising American cultural history of hair. She explains that by taki...

Wine with dinner. A beer after work. A whiskey to seal the deal. These rituals feel timeless, but they are far more recent than most Americans realize. In this episode of The Clio Dialogues, historian Lisa Jacobson explains how the repeal of Prohibition did not automatically restore alcohol's place in American life. Instead, breweries, wineries, distillers, advertisers, cookbook authors, physicians, government officials, and even Hollywood spent decades reshaping ...

Episode Description What if one of the world's most influential cultural industries wasn't built by publishers or artists alone? Today, manga is a global phenomenon. It has inspired blockbuster films, anime, video games, conventions, cosplay, and a multibillion-dollar merchandise industry. But according to historian Andrea Horbinski, manga's remarkable success cannot be understood simply by studying famous creators or bestselling titles. Its history is also the story of ordinary readers who r...

𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐮𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐥. The modern business suit may seem timeless and practical, but its history reveals how clothing came to shape our ideas about power, respectability, and political authority. Drawing on her unique perspective as both a designer and historian, she explains how the Founding Fathers helped revolutionize men's fashion and how the plain dark suit evolved into the global uniform of presidents, executives, and diplomats 𝐈𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 Why does the suit signal authority? When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared before world leaders without wearing one, his clothing becam...