Imaginary Histories

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Imaginary Histories is your personal audio tour through the tangled-up world of history, memory, truth, and fiction, specializing in the strange, the fascinating, the forgotten, and the unexpected.

Ryan Hendrickson


    • May 17, 2019 LATEST EPISODE
    • infrequent NEW EPISODES
    • 1h 5m AVG DURATION
    • 8 EPISODES


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    Latest episodes from Imaginary Histories

    Episode 07: Doctors Against Humanity: A Genealogy of Eugenics

    Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2019 142:04


    A tour through the roots, history, and legacy of eugenics and race science, from the Beehive Riots of 1820s Boston through physical anthropology, Francis Galton, Ellis Island, the American Plan, the Tuskegee experiments, the Nazis, through to the present. Note: some of this episode deals with human sexuality, and some of it is disturbing.

    Episode 06: Memento Mori

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2018 85:02


    A look at some of the ends of the world: The Great Flood; the Permian Extinction; the triumph of Ahura Mazda; Ragnarok; and the coming climate crisis.

    Episode 05: Sowers of Hate -- the First Generation of American Fascism

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2018 98:16


    A year after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a timely look back at the context and legacy of the "Great Sedition Trial of 1944" and a deep dive into some of the most influential (and strangest) figures in American far-right history: Joe McWilliams, George Sylvester Viereck, William Dudley Pelley, Gerald Burton Winrod, and Elizabeth Dilling.

    Episode 04: The Incredible Year 1848

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 16, 2018 69:12


    Prologue. -- Gold! Gold! -- A Procrastinated Manifesto -- Spirits of the Age -- Complex Marriages -- the Leviathan of Parsontown -- Changes in Space and Time -- A Convention of Women -- A Convention of Free Persons -- Sea Serpent -- The Man Who Should Be Dead -- Marble Palace -- Escape from Bondage, Right Under Their Noses! -- Postscript.

    Episode 03: Five Labyrinths

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 4, 2017 37:42


    Theseus and the Minotaur; Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria; the Winchester Mystery House; Halcyon House; and the Collyer Brothers. Five labyrinths in myth, in the mind, and in reality.

    Episode 02: Under an Evil Hand, Part Two

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 23, 2017 47:07


    Just in time for Samhain: The climax, conclusion, and aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials. Also: the life and times of Cotton Mather, Puritan witch-hunter; the Kissing Bug apocalypse; the conspiracy to burn down Manhattan; and the return and eventual triumph of mass psychogenic illness, starting in upstate New York.

    Episode 01: Under an Evil Hand, Part One

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2017 44:30


    The Salem Witchcraft Trials examined, along with some historical context about the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And don't forget the creepy clowns, Satanic cults, and flying saucers. Part one of two.

    Ep 00: Introduction

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2017 1:00


    A short, short introduction to the Imaginary Histories podcast. Our first full episode will be on the Salem Witch Trials and a history of mass hysteria in America (and the sound quality will be much better than this, I promise). I hope you join me!The song in the background is "Burning Van," by Big Mean Sound Machine, performed live on WFMU's Transpacific Sound Paradise, September 19, 2015; licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license.

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