“There’s a great category of history books that simply refresh our memory” -Clay Risen

If you went to high school in the United States and took an American history class, chances are at the end of the school year you learned about Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, readers of a certain age lived through the scare and, perhaps, have some memories of it.

But that’s the irony of such a consequential period in the American past, which began roughly 80 years ago; the memories of it have come down to us as a sort of décollage, short fragments of stories ripped and unstuck from their original time and place, and pieced back together as fragments in textbooks and movies. Alger Hiss, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Robert J. Oppenheimer… our collective memory knows some of the names affected by the inquisition. In reality, there were thousands of American lives destroyed by a hysteria that swept through government and the broader American public during the early years of the Cold War.

A new book by Clay Risen, a journalist at the New York Times, seeks to refresh our memories on the wide panoply of Americans whose lives were forever changed by the actions of their own government and their peers. They included:

• The executive secretary of a small, New York–based charity that raised funds for victims of the Spanish Civil War;

• A screenwriter who had worked the night shift at a commercial bakery for eight years;

• A government scientist who was the director of the National Bureau of Standards at the U.S. Department of Commerce;

• An openly gay man who served in both the U.S. Department of State and CIA—one of thousands of gay men and women removed from federal service under the pretense of being a “security risk”;

• A China scholar at Johns Hopkins University;

• A medical doctor who devoted part of his career to humanitarian work overseas;

• One of the best math teachers in the U.S., along with his wife.

While Americans from numerous walks of life were targeted, government employees were a particular focus. Thousands of government employees alleged of having ties to the Communist party, accused of being a security threat, or suspected of being homosexuals were fired or forced to resign as part of a sweeping effort to secure “loyalty” throughout the federal workforce.

A select few individuals inside government and broader American society were, actually, Soviet spies. The vast majority were not; they were activists, journalists, academics, educators, librarians and government workers who lost their jobs, lost their licenses, were blacklisted from their professions and, in some cases, sentenced to prison. They were targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) in the U.S. Senate, both of whom aggressively investigated alleged, perceived or imagined threats while simultaneously advancing their own careers.

While the investigations were led by Congress, the affected individuals were largely penalized by their own peers. Hollywood executives who feared or sympathized with the witch-hunts prevented their colleagues from landing work; school boards or teachers unions barred their fellow educators from teaching or renewing their licenses; and government agencies preemptively fired their employees whenever they drew the attention of investigators. The tragedy of the Red Scare was that the fear of being in the crosshairs of government became more powerful than the government itself.

In my conversation with Clay, presented above as a podcast, we talked about some of the Americans whose lives were forever changed by the Red Scare, and the resonances with what is happening today around the world as educators, scholars, journalists, government employees and activists are, again, being labeled as “dangerous” and “subversive.” We also talked about efforts during the 1940s and 1950s to ban and burn books at schools and libraries. At one point, Senator McCarthy targeted overseas libraries run by the U.S. Department of State, which were intended to showcase America’s commitment to free speech. McCarthy alleged these libraries contained thousands of “dangerous” books by individuals aligned with Progressive causes or the political Left. Books were removed and library directors were forced to resign. Similar scenes unfolded in schools nationwide, with books banned in Georgia and books burned in Oklahoma. Thousands of teachers left the profession, and others were scared into silence. As Clay recounts:

“Far more to be feared than any radicalism in our schools is the tyranny that would force education into a straight-jacket of regimented conformity,” said Reverend Walter Tunks, the rector of St. Paul’s Church in Akron, Ohio, at the National Education Association’s 1953 convention in Miami Beach. “That is the real threat to our American way of life.”

The book is titled Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America and more information about Clay Risen is on his website. I hope you’ll listen to our conversation, and that it might offer some food for thought on our current times.

Have a good week,

-JS

Defector

Five years ago, the writers at Deadspin quit in solidarity after a private equity takeover and launched their own collaborative, self-owned sports and culture website called Defector.

Part of the Defector team includes columnist Drew Magary and editor David Roth. They co-host Defector’s flagship podcast, “The Distraction,” and this week they were kind enough to invite me onto the show to talk about rising authoritarianism around the world, the role of tech in contributing to that authoritarian future, and the nostalgia of a Knicks v. Pacers Eastern Conference Finals (that’s NBA playoff basketball, for those unfamiliar).

Politicon

A few weeks earlier hosts Nayyera Haq and Jamal Simmons invited me onto the “Trailblaze” podcast to discuss the current battles over history in the United States. On social media and in politics, from libraries to museums, efforts are underway to try and dictate what histories get told and which are removed from public view.

Politicon is a non-partisan podcast and live event network that has been in existence for ten years. They have an array of podcasts and shows, including those hosted by former White House staffers such as Haq and Simmons, as well as those hosted by political commentator James Carville.

Real Clear Politics

Finally, I was invited recently onto the Real Clear Politics podcast to talk about the U.S. Library of Congress. The impetus for the conversation was the dismissal by President Trump of the most recent Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden.

Long-time readers of this newsletter know that I used to work at the Library of Congress. It is an institution that I cherish for its non-partisan work to continually provide wisdom and knowledge to Congress, the American public and people around the world. Whatever the motives for the dismissal, I told my friend and host Carl Cannon that ensuring the Library of Congress remains an open and welcoming site for everyone should be an imperative that we all share.

*Note: the YouTube link below is to the entire RCP episode; my segment begins at 22:45

More to come in the weeks ahead. Until then, have a wonderful weekend and a meaningful Memorial Day here in the U.S.

-JS

This week’s newsletter marked the five-year anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic that killed 1.2 million Americans. To-date, there have been several grassroots efforts to memorialize the victims, but no federally-sponsored initiative.

For this podcast, I spoke with artist Suzanne Brennan Fi…

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Movies have a long tradition of drawing on history for their subject matter, and, arguably, no history has been drawn upon more for dramatization on screen than that of World War II. From The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen, to Saving Private Ryan and Oppenheimer, WWII has inspired numerous cinematic classics.

World War II dramatizations have also spawned a generation of content consumers, in particular men of a certain vintage whose parents served in the war and who, even today, continue to embrace the dramatic depictions of heroism and sacrifice made by their parents, dubbed “The Greatest Generation.”

So, what happens when you satirize that obsession with WWII and turn it into its own genre of comedy? That is the question behind a new film project by Hollywood filmmaker and former Netflix screenwriter Adam Lederer.

Adam’s grandfather served in WWII, and his father is an avid consumer of WWII-themed entertainment and history. During the pandemic, when Band of Brothers and The Pacific were re-airing on streaming services, Adam asked: What would happen if these WWII-loving dads suddenly got hold of a time machine and were thrust back into the actual conflict?

That’s the premise behind his new movie currently in production, Dad Company. In this podcast episode, we take a comedic digression that explores what happens when history and entertainment collide in a zany, cinematic experiment… and how historical scholarship can (or cannot) inform that process.

Adam is a funny guy, a good friend, and as you’ll hear in our the interview, very thoughtful and analytical about history, filmmaking and the current state of Hollywood today post writer-and-actor strikes. Join us for a fun conversation by listening to the podcast above.

And if you want to see the trailer for Dad Company, you can watch it here.

Happy listening,

-JS

At the time I knew little about Unfinished, the nonprofit entity hosting the event. But at the conference, which occurred on the far west side of Manhattan in a venue called “The Shed,” I got a glimpse into what they were building.

Unfinished was, then, a nascent community of practitioners and scholars interested in fixing what they termed a “broken” Internet. The very architecture of our digital world needed mending, the argument went, and Unfinished would take the lead in mending it. At the heart of the effort was an initiative called Project Liberty.

Fast-forward 2.5 years, and Unfinished has been fully rebranded into Project Liberty. Project Liberty seeks to build a new infrastructure for the Web where users are in control, not corporations. The crux of the new architecture is a protocol called DSNP, which stands for Distributed Social Networking Protocol. This new protocol envisions us connecting to each other through social networks that run on an open-sourced Internet not owned by companies such as Facebook or Google. Currently these companies use our data and interactions online to serve us ads and keep us hooked to our devices. Project Liberty, via DSNP, aims to give us a nearly identical social networking experience without the constant digital surveillance, removing the incentive to use our personal data as a commodity.

It’s a promising concept. Will it work in the real world? That remains a far more vexing question. Like any new product, the technical efforts are half the battle; the other half will be getting users to use the platform and stick with it. DSNP has been in development for several years, as has Project Liberty / Unfinished. Millions of dollars have been invested, with millions more committed.

That said, I’ve been impressed with Unfinished / Project Liberty since I first met the team back in 2021. I’ve been so impressed, my History Communication Institute has joined with more than 70 organizations that are part of the Project Liberty Alliance. Last year, we partnered with Project Liberty on an off-the-record briefing about artificial intelligence, and I was interviewed by Project Liberty / Unfinished in 2022 when my book, History, Disrupted, was released. The organization has been a great supporter of our efforts to make the Web and social media better places for accurate historical information.

So, when Project Liberty founder and benefactor Frank McCourt released his new book, Our Biggest Fight, it was only fitting for me to interview him. Frank used to own the Los Angeles Dodgers, a storied Major League Baseball franchise here in the U.S. He took some of the proceeds from his sale of the Dodgers and created the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. (He talked a bit about that in our interview, including one revealing anecdote that inspired Project Liberty). We also talked about history, in particular Thomas Paine, who Frank has looked to for inspiration. I found Frank to be candid and heartfelt, and we had a very earnest conversation about the issues we are facing and the challenges to fix them.

Will Frank’s plan for a new Internet succeed? I encourage you to listen to our conversation and decide for yourself. After all, billionaires at the helm of social media companies led us into this messy and exploitative social networking world we now operate within in. Maybe a billionaire can help lead us out of it?

Enjoy the interview — and have a good week.

-JS

Americans will likely be familiar with C-SPAN and its origins. For international readers, C-SPAN is an American television network created as a non-profit in 1979, and which began by airing unedited coverage of the U.S. Congress. Over the years it has expanded to include a wide range of programming on public policy, politics and history, as well as radio, podcasts and online content.

Today, C-SPAN remains unique among American TV stations: a non-partisan cable news outlet funded as a public service from cable and satellite TV providers. It receives no financial assistance from the federal government or from taxpayers. C-SPAN is a gem, in my humble opinion, worthy of our collective support.

I was grateful, then, when the producers invited me on air. They had read my column on the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, and thought it might make for an interesting conversation to put the Israel-Hamas conflict into a historical perspective.

The episode is now online, and so I thought I’d use this week’s newsletter to share it with you ⬇️

The host, Kimberly Adams, asked great questions, and we covered a wide range of subjects.

We also took calls from viewers live on the air, answering their questions as best as I could.

Here’s the official description from the C-SPAN website:

Public historian & author Jason Steinhauer discusses the historical roots of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

I hope you’ll watch / listen, and I hope you’ll let me know your thoughts.

Speak to you next week,

-JS

A few weeks ago, I was invited to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. to sit for an interview with podcast host Caitlin Chin.

Readers may recall that Caitlin and I met when we were panelists at the Tech & Democracy Summit in March at the Consulate General of Canada in New York. We became instant friends, mutually interested in questions around disinformation, privacy, democratic backsliding and digital repression.

We thought it would be instructive (and fun) to have a conversation about where our research and ideas intersected, touching on disinformation, artificial intelligence, the decline of history and the humanities, and the effects on democracy.

That podcast episode was released this week, and so I thought I’d use this week’s newsletter to share it with you ⬇️

The episode came out well, and is worth a listen (if I do say so myself). Caitlin asked great questions, and we covered a wide range of subjects, including:

• My recent 5-week, 6-country tour with the U.S. Department of State, and how that intersected with questions of disinformation, digital repression and democracy;

• How lawmakers should think about regulating Artificial Intelligence, including building in counter-weights to manage seismic changes to society;

• Why historians and humanities scholars are critical to tech conversations, and why we need to create a culture of historical thinking within tech and policy worlds;

• What is a “public historian,” and what it’s like to have a career that operates at the intersection of public history, policy, media and tech.

Here’s the official episode description:

In this episode, Caitlin Chin sits with Jason Steinhauer, a public historian and bestselling author of "History, Disrupted: How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past." Caitlin and Jason discuss how policymakers and technology companies can incorporate lessons from history to address modern challenges like artificial intelligence, online disinformation narratives, and more.

The episode is also available on:

• Apple

• Google

• TuneIn

• Stitcher

• CSIS website

I hope you’ll listen, and I hope you’ll let me know your thoughts—either in the comments or through my website.

Enjoy,

-JS

One of those smart people is Jeremi Suri, who teaches at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Whereas I am very proud of myself for having written one book, Jeremi has written and edited eleven books. His most recent book is called Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long & Unfinished Fight for Democracy.

Jeremi also co-hosts a podcast with his son, Zachary, called This is Democracy. With the upcoming summit on Tech & Democracy happening this week in New York, it seemed like a good time to sit down with Jeremi and talk about the current state of American democracy, both the positives and negatives. Jeremi also has some suggestions for strengthening American democracy, which I’ll get to in a moment…

But first:

• A reminder that on Wednesday, March 1st, I’ll be speaking at the Consulate General of Canada in New York as part of All Tech is Human’s Tech & Democracy Summit. The event is sold out, but you can still sign up for the live-stream. YouTube videos should be available in the days and weeks ahead.

• This week I also announced that I’m now a contributing writer to Devex. For those unfamiliar, Devex is a global media company devoted to issues of development, humanitarian aid and foreign policy. Its read by more than 1 million people worldwide. My first article traces the recent history of Chinese humanitarian aid in the Pacific, and what it portends for U.S. foreign policy.

• Finally, in a very cool surprise, this week the popular food magazine Epicurious cited by book History, Disrupted in an article about vintage food recipes going viral on social media. These online videos tap into the on-demand nostalgia that works so effectively for e-history content. It was nice to see how my analysis of social media is being applied to different contexts, a reminder of how relevant and timely this conversation is about tech and history. *Fun fact: many years ago, I interned for Epicurious.com during a summer home from college.

Now, back to the podcast…

In our conversation, Jeremi suggests three ways to strengthen American democracy:

• Ratify a constitutional amendment that guarantees all citizens the right to vote

• Eliminate gerrymandering and allow disinterested panels of demographers to create Congressional districts

• Allow people to vote at a younger age and reduce the age of voting

Whether you agree, disagree or are on the fence about Jeremi’s suggestions, the conversation is worth a listen to hear how his historical perspective informs these ideas.

How do you think we can strengthen American democracy—and democracy around the world? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. I’ll share my thoughts after this week’s summit.

P.S. - Can’t tune into the summit but still want to talk about these issues? Join the conversation on March 9th with me, the Internet Archive, and Claire Woodcock from VICE. Register here.

P.P.S. - Jeremi and I recorded our conversation via Zoom for potential release as a YouTube video. That may happen, I just need to edit some of the audio drops. In the meantime, here’s a photo of us enjoying each other’s company.

Enjoy the episode. Speak to you once I’m back from New York,

-JS

I’ve written about artificial intelligence before in this post from April 2022:

History Club

AI at SxSW

Author’s note: This is the first of several pieces on artificial intelligence that I plan to write over the coming months. I have a chapter in my book on how this relates to history, called “History.AI.” Read that, then read this. History Club members know that I recently spoke about…

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4 years ago · 3 likes · Jason Steinhauer

And in this chapter of my book, which I titled “History.AI”:

I’ll have more to say about artificial intelligence in the months ahead.

In this event, we convened speakers from the U.S., Canada and Europe to provide insights into what these A.I tools do well and where they fall short.

Specifically, ChatGPT can:

• Take a complicated block of text and make it simple and easy to understand;

• Help overcome writer’s block by using a prompt to create a first draft that can be refined and edited;

• Speed up the writing of repetitive texts that have standardized, boiler plate language such as press releases, form letters, syllabi or social media posts;

• Help people with dyslexia, for whom writing can sometimes be difficult and painstaking.

But the wide-spread use and availability of ChatGPT raises numerous ethical, pedagogical and epistemological questions, including:

• Can GPT distinguish between authoritative sources and non-authoritative sources? ChatGPT continually delivers wrong answers and false information, and seems to not be able to discern one source from another. GPT is a large language model (LLM), meaning that it crawls trillions of pieces of data from across the Web—including Wikipedia and Reddit—and figures out what words tend to appear in specific orders. It doesn’t think critically and it doesn’t know anything about the world. It certainly doesn’t know anything about history. If you ask it historical questions, particularly about local or niche subjects, you’ll receive a litany of fictitious answers and be told about people who never existed. This leads to question number two, namely:

• What do people think that they can do with history when they use ChatGPT? This question was posed by author and historian Steve Minniear during our event. Historians may instantly recognize that GPT is terrible at answering historical questions, but do non-historians know that? Will non-historians recognize that the answers to their questions are wrong, false, fictitious or nonsensical? Will they care? A real-world example was provided by Johanna Porr Yaun, a state historian in Orange County, N.Y., when she used ChatGPT to generate a short paragraph about the O&W Railroad for a newsletter and fundraising appeal. ChatGPT generated a text that claimed the O&W was the first railroad to use electric locomotives—a sentence that sounds plausible but which is categorically false. As a professional historian, Johanna caught the error before it was printed and distributed. But what if she was a student? Or an advertising firm? Or an elected official? If A.I. tools are able to quickly generate answers that seem plausible, and advance a particular agenda, what’s to prevent them from being accepted and circulated widely? This leads to a third question:

• If students use ChatGPT to generate essay responses and exam answers, is that cheating? Plagiarism? A learning opportunity? Something else entirely? At heart, historians are educators, and many educators—in high school and in college—are now debating difficult questions about how to respond to open A.I. tools. For example, Dr. Jimena Perry teaches in a small history department at Iona University where the professors know the students quite well. She mentioned during our event that her students, who were fearful of writing and not strong writers, have suddenly been turning in beautiful essays. Jimena also said that the students don’t actually know what they’re turning in; they are handing in well-written essays but don’t understand what’s on the page and don’t grasp the concepts. What should professors do? Grade harder? Grade tougher? Ban GPT? Change the assignments? Reconfigure the learning outcomes entirely? Kim Fortney, Deputy Director of National History Day, raised a similar question. If students use ChatGPT to compete in National History Day, is that permissible? Ethical? Are there detection tools that can tell when text has been generated by A.I.? (Spoiler alert: there are, but according to Nathan Lachenmyer they are quite terrible. They work less than 25 percent of the time and generate false positives more than 10 percent of the time.)

These questions just scratch the surface of the much deeper existential issues behind these technologies, questions the History Communication Institute will be grappling with in the months and years ahead.

It’s conceivable that a sizable portion of future history writing, journalistic writing, science writing, marketing copy, advertising, social media, even government and think tank reports, will be produced by machines, drawing on the petabytes of data already on the Web. As these technologies improve, the speed and quantity of machine-generated texts has the capacity to overwhelm what any humans can do. A.I. could produce thousands of press releases in the time it takes a PR professional to write a few dozen. A.I. could generate thousands of news articles in the time it takes journalists to write a handful. A.I. already generates some of the financial and weather-related news stories that appear across the Web. Will these texts be useful? Credible? High quality? High fidelity? Will any of that matter?

The futures of history, journalism, science, writers, researchers—even newsletter writers (!)—face many existential questions in this reality. It’s part of the reason why I wrote History, Disrupted and founded the History Communication Institute. The technologies we use profoundly reorganize and reorder our world, and what they mean for history, the humanities, education, the arts, journalism and our very concepts of knowledge and creativity—and how those are measured, evaluated, disseminated and compensated—feels like they are undergoing seismic disruptions. To be sure, this has been a process decades in the making, foreshadowed by many previous innovations. Now, it is confronting us head-on.

My contention has been that we need historians, ethicists, philosophers, journalists and concerned citizens actively involved in these conversations around A.I. with technologists, engineers, developers, investors, entrepreneurs and lawmakers. These technological advancements may enrich the pocket books of the select few who develop and market them, but will they deliver lasting benefits to society? As Nathan Lachenmyer asked during our event, what are the true social costs of these new tools? These questions do not currently have answers, nor are any meaningful regulations in place to ensure A.I. is utilized responsibly and ethically, however those terms are defined. Open A.I. tools may solve some existing problems, but they also may create newer, far worse problems.

If these questions and concerns resonate with you, I encourage you to get involved with the History Communication Institute (HCI). You can sign up for our email list; apply to join our Slack community; or make a donation to support our work.

Finally, if you have thoughts about ChatGPT, or have experimented with it to either positive or negative outcomes, could you leave a comment in the chat below? We want to hear about your experiences.

Enjoy the conversation—listenable as a podcast above or watchable as a video below.

Have a good week.

-JS

Our guest was Dr. Mary Panzer, writer, historian and former curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

This episode was sponsored by Flipboard. Links to photographs by women photographers are posted on the History Club’s Flipboard storyboard.

History Club meets Thursdays at 10 PM ET on Clubhouse. Not yet on our newsletter? Join here.

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Our guests were Dr. Martha Bouyer, director of the “Stony the Road We Trod” project, and Steven Murray, director of the Alabama Department of Archives & History.

This episode was sponsored by Flipboard. Links to collections photographs are posted on the History Club’s Flipboard storyboard.

History Club meets Thursdays at 10 PM ET on Clubhouse. Not yet on our newsletter? Join here.

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So, here’s a bonus podcast featuring history communicator Torri Yates-Orr.

Torri is a television host, actress and social media content creator who makes videos on YouTube and Instagram related to Black history and other subjects.

We talked about how she documents the struggles and the joys of the African-American experience; the possibilities and limitations of short-form history content; and how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson became her biggest fan.

Happy listening. Speak to you next week.

History Club meets Thursdays at 10 pm ET exclusively on Clubhouse. Want to participate? Download the app and join the club. You can also suggest a topic.

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Our guest was Michael Glickman, founder of JMuse and former CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

This episode was sponsored by Flipboard. In the episode, Michael talks about several photograph collections held in museums around the world. Links to those collections are posted on the History Club’s Flipboard storyboard.

History Club meets Thursdays at 10 PM ET on Clubhouse. Not yet on our newsletter? Join here.

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Preview the book on Amazon »

This week in History Club we talked about the best-selling book, A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

A People's History of the United States is arguably the most influential history book of the past 40 years. It’s sold more than 2 million copies and inspired the Zinn Education Project, which has shaped history curricula in high schools and colleges across the U.S.

Zinn’s work and ideas have also been at the heart of the American culture wars, lauded by Progressives activists and Hollywood icons (such as Matt Damon), and criticized by Conservative pundits and politicians (including former President Donald Trump).

Who was Howard Zinn? Why did his book and ideas become so popular? What influence has Zinn had on American education?

On Clubhouse we talked about how Zinn’s visibility during the anti-Vietnam protests; his personal connections with Matt Damon’s family; and the Progressive opposition to George W. Bush and the Iraq War in the 2000s contributed to making Zinn a larger-than-life figure.

Zinn’s work challenged us to think about why some people are included in the story and why others are forgotten. We can also ask those questions about Zinn; why has Zinn’s legacy endured while so many other historians of his generation remain unknown?

Listen to the conversation exclusively in this newsletter.

The History Club meets Thursdays at 10 PM ET only on Clubhouse.

Crypto for History

History Club follower Bill Thomason asked me this week, why do you have your own cryptocurrency?

I’ve been asked this several times, and here’s what I told Bill:

The current funding models for public history are under severe strain, if not broken. State budgets have been cut for years, history departments face reduced enrollments and budget shortages, and salaries for public historians remain low—if full-time work is even available.

It’s time to build a new economy to support public history, and I think cryptocurrency can be one solution.

My plan is to use my cryptocurrency to offer grants and fellowships to public historians doing public-facing history work. Through cryptocurrencies we can support museum educators, curators, archivists, park rangers, tour guides, historic preservationists and others who bring history to life for public audiences.

I’ll be writing more about this in the weeks ahead, as well as hosting a Clubhouse room about it. In the meantime, check out my cryptocurrency, $JASON coin, on the Rally network, and if you agree that accessible history matters to our communities, consider buying some coins.

No History Club this coming week, Thursday, April 29. I’ll be getting my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. Be on the lookout for a special midweek blog post in lieu of an event, and we’ll reconnect on Clubhouse on Thursday, May 6.

Enjoying History Club?

Consider supporting the club with a donation via Venmo or PayPal.

OR: purchase our cryptocurrency, $JASON.

You can also donate on Clubhouse using the “send money” feature.

The filibuster is once again a partisan talking point and a major news story (see here, here, here, here and here).

What is the filibuster? What role has it played in American democracy? Is it a “racist relic” of the American past, as some allege? Is it necessary, or should it be eliminated?

This short podcast by Jason Steinhauer explains the filibuster’s origins and uses. The content was recorded live on Clubhouse as part of the opening remarks to our April 1st event. More than 2,000 people eventually participated in the conversation, debating how and if the filibuster is helpful or hurtful to American democracy.

Listen to the opening remarks exclusively in this newsletter.

The History Club meets Thursdays at 10 PM ET only on Clubhouse.

This week’s History Club saw several hundred of us come together to read and reflect on the writings of Lonn Taylor and his poignant “The Rambling Boy” columns.

We also listened to Lonn’s appearance on “The Colbert Report” in September 2014. Some History Club listeners asked for a video link to the show, and here it is.

Some also asked to read more of Lonn’s writings, which are online at Marfa public radio.

Thanks to Nathalia Ramos, Funa Maduka, Jonathan Fowler, Affan Imran, Rhian Beutler, Ian Davis and Minh Do for their beautiful readings of Lonn’s words.

History Club continues this week, Thursday, April 15. Topic and special guest to be announced.

Enjoying History Club?

Consider supporting the club with a $5 donation via Venmo or PayPal.

OR: purchase $5 of our cryptocurrency, $JASON.

You can also donate on Clubhouse using the “send money” feature.

Share The History Club

We suggest a $5 donation via Venmo or PayPal to access this podcast.

OR: invest in our community with a $5 purchase of our cryptocurrency, $JASON.

Thank you!

The first History Club podcast is here.

This week the History Club hosted author and journalist Josh Rogin and CEO and Co-Founder Roger Huang to discuss U.S.-China relations in historical perspective.

The conversation occurred live on Clubhouse on Thursday, March 11. More than 8,300 people attended.

Topics included:

• Biases in the foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C.

• The politics of the U.S.-China relationship during the Trump Administration

• Cold War analogies and their usefulness / pitfalls

• Differing interpretations of history in China v. the U.S., and the consequences

• The effects of political rhetoric on Asian Americans and the Chinese diaspora

Listen to the recording exclusively here in our newsletter.

The History Club meets every Thursday at 10 PM ET only on Clubhouse.

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