We are back! Here is our 58 episode. We promise to get new epsiodes out at least every other week. This week we're discussing the 14th Amendement. It has been in the news lately and we felt everyone could benefit from a bit of context.Par Geoffrey West and Hilary Coulson

Brown v Board of Education, Roe v Wade, Loving v Virginia - Supreme Court decisions in the 20th century have affected the lives of Americans in a myriad of ways. There were repudiations of prior decisions and expansions of how Constitutional protections were understood. There were unanimous decisions and ones more fraught with dissension in the cou…

Welcome to part two of our three-part series on the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. In this episode we discuss the Taney court (1836-1864) through the Fuller court (1888-1910). We break down two of the most landmark decisions of these courts with a discussion of Dred Scott vs. Sandford (1857) and Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896). Join us for a discuss…

The justices that sit on the US Supreme Court may be nine of the most powerful unelected officials in the world. Join us for the first of a multi-part deep dive into the story of the US Supreme. We'll cover that origins of the court as well as critical people and cases that fundamentally shaped the contemporary legal, political, economic, and socia…

Join us as we kick off An Incomplete History season 3 with a discussion of presentism. This week, we do a deep dive into the divisive debate happening within the field of history as the result of the American Historical Association’s president who wrote an opinion piece regarding our role as historians. The piece received extreme backlash leading t…

The current conflict in Ukraine has raised a lot of questions about Post-World War II Europe, the creation of strategic alliances in the second-half of the twentieth century, and the collpase of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the effect it had on those relationships. At the center of many of these discussions sits NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty…

We continue our series on the history of the news and journalism in the United States with a look at the CNN Effect and the emergence of the 24-hour news cycle. How has it changed the way American's receive and respond to the news? Join us this week to find out.Par Geoffrey West and Hilary Coulson

Politicians and journalists alike often claim Americans are more divided now than at any point in the nation's past. Pundits and commentators point to the stark divisions in the news media we voraciously consume. MSNBC and Fox present strikingly different views on almost every subject. But is this really something new? Join us as we take a dive int…

In this episode Hilary and Geoff discuss common misconceptions about medicine during the Civil War. They also talk about key advances that take place in medical professionalization, surgergy, the treatement of diseases, and even the expanding role of women.Par Geoffrey West and Hilary Coulson

So, this week we start an extended series about the history of medicine. We start in Ancient Egypt and move around the Mediterranean finally ending up in Colonial America. Along the way we discuss the idea of bodily humors, the principal of extractive therapy, as well as the naissance of scientific approaches to medicine. We also discuss the critic…

In this week's episode we look back on the events of September 11, 2001, and ask how we grapple with memory and recounting historical events. This is a unique episode because Geoff was there! he provides his own narrative of the day's events and readily admits his own recollections are incomplete.Par Geoffrey West and Hilary Coulson

On June 28, 1969, what would normally have been a rather routine police bust of an unlicensed bar on New York City's west side, sparked a series a riots and protests that birthed the modern Gay Pride movement. Who was there, who started the riot, who did the police target and many other details surrounding the night of the 28th as well as the subse…

This week we delve into a topic we've been promising to cover for some time, the Second Great Awakening. This was the religious movement in the United States that spawned the Mormons and Adventists as well as the evangelical factions of more mainline churches. It truly was a time when American Christianity came into its own. As always, though, we'l…

This week we wrap up a very brief introductory history of Mormonism in America. We continue the story from the previous episode with the church's reaction to the murder of Joseph Smith. We trace the rise of Brigham Young and the infamous Utah War. We end with the twentieth century church and its transition from fringe group to conservative religion…

Join us for the first in a two-part series about a uniquely American religion, the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, or Mormonism. In this episode we discuss the origins of the religion and the competing threads of official church history, non-official folklore, personal accounts, and governmental records and interactions to construct a mor…

We continue our exploration of the history of cults in America this week with a discussion of two infamous groups from the 1990s: The Branch Davidians and Heaven's Gate. Both cults ended in the deaths of their charismatic leaders, but the trajectories were quite different. If you're interested in the militia movement, UFOs, Nike sneakers, Star Trek…

This week we continue the discussion we started last time about utopian experiments and cults by covering two of the most fascinating and disturbing figures of the twentieth century, Jim Jones and Charles Manson. What made these two men turn to violence and how did their lives and the people they convinced to do unspeakable things reveal deep fissu…

So, this week we start a little series about cults in American history, but this first episode took a slight detour into a more general discussion of utopian communities in America, particularly in the nineteenth century. We discuss Oneida, Harmony, and New Harmony, among others. We also trace the way religion and the Second Great Awakening shaped …

To celebrate spring and the return of America's pastime, we're delving into the history of baseball this week. From its origins as a children's game in England to a powerful tool of imperialism, baseball has it all.Par Geoffrey West and Hilary Coulson

Death and Taxes. Is that all we can be sure of? In honor of traditional Tax Day (April 15), we present a history of taxes in the United States. Tariffs, excises, income taxes, anti-government movements, rebellions, paying for the military and infrastructure, they're all on the list of topics we cover in this week's episode.…

Join us for a deep dive into the causes and effects of the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War from 1954 to 1975. Along the way we'll discuss the aftermath of WWII and French attempts at renewing their empire in Southeast Asia. We'll also talk about what Dwight Eisenhower defined as the Military Industrial Complex and how the machine of w…

When people are asked to comment on the most famous figures of the American Revolution, the list is almost entirely men, with a few notable exceptions. Join us this week as we talk about the well-known women who participated and often literally fought during the American Revolution as well as some lesser-known women whose real stories are more fant…

Margaret Sanger founded the organization that later became Planned Pioneer. She has been widely lauded as a staunch advocate of women's reproductive rights, but there's more to the story. Join us this week as we delve into Sanger's story as well as the simultaneous rise of eugenics. The United States in general and California pioneered the field of…

What is Second Wave Feminism? How does it differ from the First Wave? Join us as we do a deep dive into the ins and outs of Second Wave Feminism and its connections with Mary Wollstonecraft, Lucretia Mott, Simone de Beauvoir, and Betty Friedan. How did the Roe v Wade and Griswold v Connecticut change everything? And was the Houston Conference in 19…

This week we return to an often-requested topic - conspiracy theories. We discuss George Washington, QANON, COVID-19, HIV/AIDS, Henrietta Lacks, and Pearl Harbor. Why are Americans so obsessed with conspiracy theories? What happens when there is some truth to a particular theory? Join us this week to find out!…