90 Second Narratives
90 Second Narratives is a podcast featuring engaging true stories told by trained historians. Each episode includes a short story interwoven with expert analysis of the story’s historical significance. The concise length and storytelling format of the episodes make history accessible, dynamic, and entertaining. The subjects of the stories are diverse—spanning the globe and ranging from the pre-historic to the modern age. While individual stories stand alone, the episodes in each season are linked thematically and combine to offer comparative perspectives that illuminate connections from across the human experience. Every episode also includes recommendations for further reading. 90 Second Narratives provides a novel way to hear historians share the wonders of the past in their own voices.
Episodes
94 episodes
A Season of Stories 10: Seeking Justice
This special episode combines all the stories from Season 10…“The Cepalinos’ Global Fight against Inequality” – Dr. Margarita Fajardo, Alice Stone Ilchman Chair in Comparative and International Studies, Sarah Lawrence College“Addr...
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Season 10
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Episode 6
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17:29
Creative Community Responses to Climate Change in New England
“In the spring of 1816, the weather in New England turned suddenly chilly. A distant volcanic eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 had expelled sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere in such quantity that they reduced the amount o...
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Season 10
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Episode 5
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3:37
The Cepalinos’ Global Fight against Inequality
“In mid-twentieth-century Latin America, an intellectual movement that changed the region, the world, and the global economy emerged. The members of the movement were called cepalinos…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Margarita ...
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Season 10
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Episode 4
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3:59
The Perseverance of Menominee Women
“On November 20, 1955, David Ames, an anthropologist and research associate with the Wisconsin Legislative Council’s Menominee Indian Study Committee spoke with Phebe Nichols Jewell the wife of Angus Lookaround at their home on the Menominee re...
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Season 10
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Episode 3
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4:15
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Harlem
“Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the most significant theologians of the twentieth century. To this day, large audiences are still drawn to his important writings including The Cost of Discipleship, Life Together, and Ethic...
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Season 10
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Episode 2
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3:55
Addressing Slavery in the Museum
“In the past three decades black social actors, committed curators, public historians, and academics have pushed western museums to examine slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in their exhibition spaces. But the introduction of slavery in the ...
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Season 10
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Episode 1
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4:25
A Season of Stories 9: Friendship
This special episode combines all the stories from Season 9…“Becoming a Friend of God in Eighteenth-Century North Africa” – Dr. Zachary Wright, Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies at Northwestern University in Qatar<...
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Season 9
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Episode 9
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28:45
Posthumous Friendships between Jesuit Brothers
“Today a flight from Prague to Guam covers an aerial distance of over 7,100 miles and takes about 15 hours. The journey may seem far, long, and cumbersome to many travelers. Yet today’s challenges pale when compared to those faced in 1678 by Au...
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Season 9
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Episode 8
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5:00
On the Doors of the U.S. Supreme Court, Part II
“As enshrined on the door of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in bronze, John Marshall and Joseph Story were friends. But what was it that earned this pair of friends the most prominent place on these monumental seventeen-foot doors? It was this...
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Season 9
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Episode 7
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3:35
On the Doors of the U.S. Supreme Court, Part I
“During a recent visit to Washington D.C. with my family, we visited the United States’ Supreme Court Building. It was a quiet Monday afternoon without a cloud in the sky…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.For ...
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Season 9
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Episode 6
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3:45
Life’s Seasons and the Friendships of Frederick the Great
“Many long-term friendships change over time with the seasons of life. This was certainly true in the case of Frederick II, King of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.For f...
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Season 9
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Episode 5
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2:55
The Friendship that Introduced a Heroine of Mexican Independence to the World
“I want to tell you about the friendship between two women, nearly two centuries ago, that’s had a very long tail in Mexican history. On February first, 1840, shortly after arriving in Mexico City, Fanny Calderón de la Barca – the Scottish wife...
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Season 9
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Episode 4
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5:00
Becoming a Friend of God in Eighteenth-Century North Africa
“‘The true scholar,’ the 18th-century North African Sufi master Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani told his disciples, ‘is the one who gives form to what is clear, and clarifies what is ambiguous, and this from the strength of his knowledge, the breadth of...
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Season 9
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Episode 3
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4:15
Narragansett Friendship, Roger Williams, and Religious Freedom in America
“Historians point to the year 1648 as a watershed moment in the development of religious tolerance in Europe. In that year, the Peace of Westphalia brought an end to the Thirty Year’s War—one of Europe’s grimmest chapters of religiously-inflect...
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Season 9
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Episode 2
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3:50
Otto von Bismarck’s Four-Legged Friends
“Historians like to say, everything has a history. Recently, the history of animals, has seen some development. The history of dogs, living closely beside humans for millennia as guards, workers, hunting aids and companions, illustrates a relat...
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Season 9
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Episode 1
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8:15
A Season of Stories 8: Journeys
This special episode combines all the stories from Season 8…“A Black Woman’s Spiritual Journey to the City” – Dr. J. T. Roane, Assistant Professor of African & African American Studies at Arizona State University“Cotton: Conne...
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Season 8
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Episode 10
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31:20
Using Astrology to Plan Journeys
"What factors do you take into consideration before going on a journey? Do you have any sense of when is a good time for a journey? Or, a good time for a specific type of journey? In sixteenth-century Germany, people had a way of systematizing ...
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Season 8
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Episode 9
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2:30
The “Conflict Thesis”: A Resilient Idea’s Journey
“When historians of science and religion write about the ‘conflict thesis,’ what are they talking about?”So begins today’s story from Dr. James C. Ungureanu. For further reading:
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Season 8
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Episode 8
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6:30
Hotel Owners and the Shape of Japanese Transpacific Migration
“At the turn of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Japanese migrants left their island nation, landed in Hawai’i, only to depart for Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, or Victoria…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Yukari Takai.<...
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Season 8
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Episode 7
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3:55
The Columbian Exchange
“One of the most famous, and consequential, journeys in the history of humanity was Christopher Columbus’ fateful journey across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.For further reading...
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Season 8
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Episode 6
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2:45
A US Consul on the Road to a Coup
“When American soldier William Eaton started his search for Hamet Karamanli in late 1804, he had an audacious plan…So begins today’s story from Dr. Abby Mullen.For more, listen to the
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Season 8
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Episode 5
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2:30
Cotton: Connecting the Atlantic World
“I am looking at a square cotton canvas about 10 cm by 10 cm. A grid of black and white tiles – they look like domino counters - have been painted on it in alternating patterns. This canvas was given to me by the wonderful artist and Turner Pri...
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Season 8
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Episode 4
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7:00
A Black Woman’s Spiritual Journey to the City
“Crossing the thresholds between worlds…”So begins today’s story from Dr. J. T. Roane.For further reading:“A Totally Different Form of Living: On the Legacies of Displacement an...
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Season 8
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Episode 3
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5:00
Chinese Migration and the Shaping of Costa Rica
“On November 20, 1930 the Ulúa arrived in Limón, Costa Rica with four Chinese passengers carrying Costa Rican passports…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Benjamín Narváez. For further reading:“
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Season 8
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Episode 2
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3:40
Soju: A Liquor’s Global Journey
“For those who have not yet tasted soju, or heard about it, soju is the distinctive national spirit of Korea, a clear and colorless distilled liquor similar to vodka. It was only available inside Korea in the twentieth century, but soju is now ...
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Season 8
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Episode 1
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4:25