Podcasts by 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.
Further podcasts by Sky Michael Johnston
Podcast on the topic Geschichte
All episodes
A Marriage at the Nexus of Religious Communities from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“In 1843, the Protestant community in Ottoman Syria faced a challenge…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Christine B. Lindner.For further reading:Christine B. Lindner. “Syrian Protestant Marriages i...
Listen
A Father Fights for His Boy, a Soldier from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“In August 1861, a fourteen-year old Pennsylvania boy named Oram Gregg joined a Union cavalry regiment…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Rebecca Jo Plant. For further reading:Of Age: Boy Soldiers, ...
Listen
Motherhood and Adoption in Precolonial Uganda from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Motherhood took different forms in the communities that lived on the north-west shores of Lake Victoria and in its littoral from around the eighth century…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Rhianno...
Listen
Father and Son Pastors Interpret an Earthquake from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“This is a story about how people reacted to an earthquake that occurred in 1601 in the German region of Württemberg. Our guides for the story are two Lutheran pastors who were also father and son,...
Listen
Paternity, Immigration, and Legal Definitions of Family from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“This is a story about three young siblings, the Lees. In June 1952, the Lees, ages 11, 13, and 21, left China and arrived in the United States…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Nara Milanich.For f...
Listen
A Mother Shapes the Mongol Empire from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“In 1204 on the East Asian steppe, Genghis Khan’s Mongol soldiers defeated enemies known as the Merkits, killed the Merkit princes, and took their wives and families as spoils. One of these wives w...
Listen
Challenging the "Family Values Economy" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“In July of 1999, a coalition of activists from LGBT groups and from Local 11 of the Association of Flight Attendants, AFL-CIO, dressed up as the Teletubbies character Tinky Winky and stormed the U...
Listen
Family, Mission, and Early Civil Rights Activism from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Many graduates of historically black colleges and universities committed their lives to helping their communities thrive in the midst of daunting circumstances…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Ki...
Listen
A Season of Stories 2: Cities from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This special episode combines all the stories from Season 2…“Baltimore: Housing Exclusion in Action” - Dr. Paige Glotzer, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisco...
Listen
Connecting Distant Cities: Camels as Transportation from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Of the world’s camels, 90% are dromedaries…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Matthew Herbst.For further reading:The Camel and the Wheel by Richard W. Bulliet (Columbia University Press, 1990)
Listen
Ulm/Jakarta: Bringing Civic Identity Abroad from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Jakarta in late July, 1681…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Philip Hahn.For further reading:Philip Hahn, “‘Rather Back to Ceylon than to Swabia’: Global Sensory Experiences of Swabian Artisans in...
Listen
Kirkuk: A Highway to Expulsion from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“In the 1970s, Iraq’s Ba‘th government escalated a campaign to ethnically cleanse the northern provincial city of Kirkuk, a multilingual town that had long been the hub of Iraq’s oil industry…”So b...
Listen
Port-au-Prince: Occupation and Solidarity from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“On July 28, 1915, under the authority of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, USS Washington entered the harbor at Port-au-Prince…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Brandon R. Byrd.For further reading:Th...
Listen
Detroit: Urban Gardening for Sustainability from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“If you imagine residents of American cities at the turn of the twentieth century, you probably picture them working in factories, not vegetable gardens…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Joseph S. ...
Listen
Berlin: Little Neighborhood, Big Politics from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Tucked away in northwest Berlin, the quiet residential streets of Moabit’s Beusselkiez belie the drama they witnessed in the early twentieth century…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Teresa Walch....
Listen
Atlantis: Plato, Myth, and History from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“I’d like to talk about the lost city of Atlantis. Well, it is not lost. It is simply missing…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Benjamin B. Olshin.For further reading:Lost Knowledge: The Concept of...
Listen
Hargeisa: Anticolonialism from the Countryside to the City from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“On February 1, 1956, the British Somaliland Protectorate’s Radio Somali carried the voice of nationalist Michael Mariano across the northern Somali territories…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Sa...
Listen
Baltimore: Housing Exclusion in Action from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“On January 10, 1928 Assistant City Solicitor William Laukaitis told a real estate salesman he wanted to buy an expensive lot in the suburban Baltimore neighborhood of Homeland…” So begins today’s ...
Listen
A Season of Stories 1: Looking the Part from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This special episode combines all ten stories from Season 1…“Schoolgirl Activism in French Mandate Lebanon” - Johanna Peterson, PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Calif...
Listen
Missionaries Try to Convert a Desert from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“In the mid-eighteenth century, a group of German Jesuit missionaries tried to convert the desert landscape of Baja California.”So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.For further rea...
Listen
The Answered Prayer of Wang Mingdao from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“If you have heard of the Chinese Christian preacher Wang Mingdao…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Amy O’Keefe.For further reading:Amy O’Keefe, “Walking the Enlightened Path: Wang Mingdao’s Road t...
Listen
Race and Violence in Early Modern Spain from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“On Holy Thursday in the year 1604 in the city of Seville, Spain, a bloody fight broke out between two confraternities on the Plaza of San Salvador…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Erin Kathleen R...
Listen
Two Doctors, Two Paths in Cold War Brazil from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“How does a story about two doctors reveal the social, political, and ethical divisions that typified Brazil during the Cold War?”So begins today’s story from Dr. Eyal Weinberg.For further reading:...
Listen
A Catholic in Confucian Robes from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“What in the world was a Jesuit priest doing in Beijing’s Forbidden City dressed like a Confucian?”So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.For further reading:The Memory Palace of Mat...
Listen
A Puritan Tells Ghost Stories from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Do you believe in the immortality of your soul? If not, the colonial New England Puritan minister Cotton Mather would like to tell you some ghost stories…”So begins today’s story from Ryan Hoselto...
Listen
Lawmakers in the Spanish Empire from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Pedro Rengifo was a part-Indian, part-Spanish man from the La Paz area of what is today Bolivia, who around 1583 sailed from Lima for Madrid. He had an important message for King Philip the Second...
Listen
Martin Luther Goes Undercover from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“You know Martin Luther, as the German monk who challenged the teaching of the Roman Church and sparked the Protestant Reformation. In late 1521, however, Luther was hiding for his life…”So begins ...
Listen
Schoolgirl Activism in French Mandate Lebanon from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“On December 1, 1924, French High Commissioner Maxime Weygand closed Ahliah Girls’ School…”So begins today’s story from Johanna Peterson.For further reading:A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Wo...
Listen
Making Cow Brains Your Oyster from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“About one hundred and fifty years ago, ‘looking the part’ of being middle class in German lands, involved eating organs…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Claudia Kreklau.For further reading:Beyond...
Listen
Menopause and the Mongols from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Genghis Khan’s mother was abandoned by her clan with seven small children in 1170. Her husband was dead. Her oldest son, who would go on to conquer much of Asia, was nine…”So begins today’s story ...
Listen
"Do you Bant?" Diet and Deafness in Victorian England from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“William Banting was a British funeral director who, at age 66, was obese, weighing 202 pounds at 5'5", and needed a truss to hold an umbilical rupture in place. His weight was so troublesome that ...
Listen
Intimate Exchanges and Public Health in Colonial Mexico from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the Spanish Crown developed a policy of strict quarantine whenever an epidemic broke out in its American colonies…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Paul R...
Listen
Finding Lu Gwei-djen in the Archive of Chinese Medical Science from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Malta was warm. The afternoon sun stretched across the island as Lu Gwei-djen walked ahead…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Lan A. Li.For further reading:“Escaping Immortality: Science, Civilizat...
Listen
A Season of Stories 3: Family from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This special episode combines all the stories from Season 3…“Motherhood and Adoption in Precolonial Uganda” - Dr. Rhiannon Stephens, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Columbia Uni...
Listen
Renaissance Women as Frontline Healers from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Bubonic plague ravaged Italy in the summer of 1630. Household healers scurried to make preventive remedies that would ward off this dread disease…”So begins today’s story from Dr. Sharon T. Strocc...
Listen
90secNARRATIVES Promo from 2020-03-21T12:00
Hello and welcome to 90 Second Narratives, a new weekly podcast featuring "little stories with BIG historical significance." In each episode, a trained historian shares an engaging tru...
Listen
90secNARRATIVES Promo from 2020-03-21T12:00
Hello and welcome to 90 Second Narratives, a new weekly podcast featuring "little stories with BIG historical significance." In each episode, a trained historian shares an engaging tru...
Listen