HeyJaredHistorically Thinking
We believe that when people think historically, they are engaging in a disciplined way of thinking about the world and its past.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 16, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 3, 2026
Latest episodes
Justice for Jehanne: Sara McDougall on a medieval survivor, a criminal investigation, and the limits of justice (opens the original)
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Content Warning: This episode contains frank discussions of rape, sexual assault, and physical violence and is not suitable for children. On a winter morning in 1472, an investigator arrived at a poor widow’s home in the St. Nicholas district of the city of Dijon. He was there to interview a tenant, a pregnant woman named Jehanne, an immigrant from the county of Lorraine. She had reportedly been abducted and sexually assaulted by several men, and Jacques Borestal--the substitute prosecutor of Di
Pericles of Athens: Paul Cartledge on the statesman, demagogue, and eccentric (opens the original)
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Pericles of Athens was a complicated man, a man of twists and turns. Born into a lineage of Athenian aristocrats, he became a champion of democracy and indeed a masterful demagogue. A teenager by the end of the Persian Wars, he was one of the architects of an Athenian empire designed to ensure that Persia never again advanced westward. Possibly his earliest public act as an Athenian citizen was to sponsor four plays by Aeschylus, beginning a lifelong association with the artistic life of the cit
Out of Chaos: Jon Wilson on how the Second World War led to the Nation-State (opens the original)
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At the beginning of the twentieth century many thinkers, activists, and politicians would have been astonished if you told them that at the end of that century the nation-state would be the prevalent form of government throughout the world. After all, the previous fifty years had seen a revival of empires, and by 1900 everyone was living in a world of empires. The nation-state was not an obvious next step. But following 1945, argues my guest Jon Wilson in his new book Out of Chaos: How the Natio
Ortiz's War: Nicholas Reynolds on the exploits of Peter J. Ortiz, a US Marine in occupied France (opens the original)
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Peter J. Ortiz was one of the most decorated United States Marines of the Second World War—and he served in the European Theater. In fact, his service was almost entirely within occupied France, where he worked for the Office of Strategic Services as the manager of a resistance network and later as the leader of a (sort of) Jedburgh Team. The stories of his exploits are legendary, though admittedly legendary among a much smaller circle of people than they deserve to be. One that can be verified
Trojan War: Barry Strauss on the history behind the epic poetry (opens the original)
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Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the house of death so many sturdy souls, great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. Those were of course the opening lines of the Illiad, written by someone who we might as well call
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