HeyJaredHistory that You can Read and why it Matters
My Substack explores pivotal moments in our history, highlighting how the past continually shapes the present. Through these connections, I emphasize why understanding and learning from history is essential to navigating our world today.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 13
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 13, 2026
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The Lusitania’s Long Wake (opens the original)
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The statements arrive with numbing regularity now. A strike near a populated area. Reports of civilian deaths — children, teachers, families gathered in the wrong place at the wrong moment. An investigation promised. Compliance with international law asserted. Then, the phrase that has become the load-bearing wall of modern military accountability:“We, of course, never target civilian sites.”Those were the precise words of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on March 4, 2026, when journalists pressed
THE UNFINISHED EXPERIMENT: DEMOCRACY’S LONG WAR WITH ITSELF (opens the original)
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THE UNFINISHED EXPERIMENT: DEMOCRACY’S LONG WAR WITH ITSELFThe Majority MethodAlso in this series: The Capture Method · The Emergency Method · The Legitimacy MethodParts 1 & 2 may be read here:---Democracy’s deepest problem is not its enemies. Its deepest problem is a contradiction built into its own foundation.The contradiction goes like this: democracy derives its authority from the consent
Through the Dust of Thermopylae (opens the original)
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Also part of this series:The world is noise first.The screaming comes before I can focus my eyes—not human screaming, but the high-pitched wail of fifty thousand men pressing through a mountain pass, the sound distorted by stone walls that echo every voice back double, triple, a chaos that makes my ears ring. I’m packed so tightly against the men ahead that I cannot see my own feet. The pass narrows, the Hot Gates they call it, and I see the flicker of bronze helmets and raised spears silhouette
Why Middle-earth Felt Like Something I Already Knew (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="977" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2fE_!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F58e02aed-9025-4271-b566-3f2b9e7cdf54_2528x1696.pn
Two Kinds of Human, One Grammar of Death (opens the original)
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This piece stands alone, but readers may find the rest of the series a rewarding companion to it.---What follows is less a history lesson than a meditation on the oldest human problem, and on what archaeology, physics, and consciousness studies can honestly contribute to it.Part one of this series may be read here: ---The CavePicture the inside of a cave in what is now central Israel, roughly a hundred thousand years ago. The air is cool and mineral. Som
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