Godzilla Minus One
Did That Really Happen?
This week we're going back to postwar Tokyo with Godzilla Minus One! Join us as we learn about the rebuilding of Ginza, war orphans, sea mine removal, how Godzilla stands upright in the water, and more! Sources: "Ginza," Tokyo Official Website: https://www.ginza.jp/en/history/2#:~:text=As%20early%20as%20April%2C%201946,Ginza%20%2Ddori%20during%20this%20festival.&text=In%20addition%20to%20the%20regular,goods%20to%20the%20US%20troops. "Post-war Ginza," Old Tokyo, available at https://www.oldtokyo.com/post-war-ginza-1945/ "The Lost Metropolis: 1930s Tokyo Street Life in Pictures," The...
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The Siege of Jadotville
Did That Really Happen?
This week we're traveling back to 1960s Congo with The Siege of Jadotville! Join us as we learn about General Tshombe, Dag Hammarsjkold, UN forces in Jadotville, uranium mining, and more! Sources: Frank Swain, "The forgotten mine that built the atomic bomb," BBC (2020). https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200803-the-forgotten-mine-that-built-the-atomic-bomb Moore, W. Robert. "White Magic in the Belgian Congo: Tribesmen Mine Uranium, Run Machines, Study Modern Medicine as Booming Trade Opens Up the Vast Colony's Resources." National Geographic Magazine, March 1952, [321]+. National...
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A Haunting in Venice
Did That Really Happen?
This week we're traveling back to 1940s Venice with A Haunting in Venice! Join us as we learn about mad honey, When the Lights Go On Again, the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Meet Me In St. Louis, and more! Sources: Gunduz, Abdülkadir;Şimşek, Perihan;Ayaz, Faik Ahmet, "Worldwide Distribution and Clinical Characteristics of Mad Honey Poisoning Cases," Central European Journal of Public Health (March 2023) Niko Vorobyov, "What It's Like Tripping on Mad Honey, the Hallucinogen That is (Maybe) an Aphrodisiac," Salon, 2022, available at...
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The Endless Trench
Did That Really Happen?
This week we're going back to 1930s-1950s Spain with The Endless Trench! Join us as we learn about Franco on the radio, attacks on hermitages during the Spanish Civil War, Eisenhower's visits to Spain, and more! Sources: Christy Lemire review, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/saltburn-movie-review-2023 Julius Ruiz, The 'Red Terror' and the Spanish Civil War: Revolutionary Violence in Madrid (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Julian Casanova, The Spanish Republic and Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Raymond Carr, Spain: A History (Oxford University Press,...
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Saltburn
Did That Really Happen?
This week we're traveling back to the long-ago days of 2006 with Saltburn! Join us as we reminisce about Juicy tracksuits, Jagerbombs, Livestrong wristbands, and other artifacts of our misspent youth. Sources: Christy Lemire review, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/saltburn-movie-review-2023 Nicholas Barber, "Saltburn film review: 'Lurid' comedy skewers Britain's super-rich," BBC 5 October 2023, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20231005-saltburn-film-review-lurid-comedy-skewers-britains-super-rich David Rooney, "‘Saltburn’ Review: Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi in...
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The Holdovers
Did That Really Happen?
This week we're going back to 1970 with a patron-requested episode on The Holdovers! Join us as we learn about The Newlywed Game, helicopters, Librium, race and class in the Vietnam War, the surprisingly heated controversies over men with long hair, and more! Sources: IMDB trivia page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14849194/goofs/ US Centennial Flight Commission, History of Private Helicopters: https://www.centennialofflight.net/essay/Rotary/Private_heli/HE15.htm Civil and Commercial Helicopter Use: https://www.century-of-flight.net/civil-and-commercial-helicopter-use/ Leigh H. Edwards,...
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Devil in a Blue Dress
Did That Really Happen?
This week we're going back to 1940s LA with Devil in a Blue Dress! Join us as we learn about Black homeownership in midcentury Los Angeles, Charlotta Bass and The Eagle, postwar jobs, and more! Sources: Kelly Simpson, "The Great Migration: Creating a New Black Identity in Los Angeles," PBS, available at https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/the-great-migration-creating-a-new-black-identity-in-los-angeles Marques Augusta Vestal, "Black Housing Politics in 1940s South Los Angeles," MA Thesis, 2014, UCLA. Available at...
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The Northman
Did That Really Happen?
This week we become Robert Eggers completists with an episode on The Northman! Join us as we learn about berserkers, slavery in the Viking era, textiles, and more! Sources: Ben Cartwright, "Making the cloth that binds us. The role of textile production in producing Viking-Age identities," in Viking Worlds: Things, Spaces, and Movement eds. Marianne Hem Eriksen, Unn Pedersen, Bernt Rundberget, Irmelin Axelsen, and Heidi Lund Berg (Oxbow Books), https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh1dgwk.15 Marie Louise Stig Sørensen, "Gender, Material Culture, and Identity in the Viking Diaspora," Viking...
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Charlie Wilson's War
Did That Really Happen?
This week we're going back to the 1980s with Charlie Wilson's War! Join us as we learn about the horrific things people used to do with safety pins, Soviet ambitions in the Persian Gulf, Gust Avrokotos, refugees from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and more! Sources: "Advertisement: Maybelline." Seventeen, 07, 1982, 18-19 "Mascara Magic." Seventeen, 05, 1981 "Advertisement: Maybelline." Cosmopolitan, 11, 1978, 117 "Dear Beauty Editor." Seventeen, 02, 1978, 10 The Wilson Center Digital Archive, Sources available at https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/topics/soviet-invasion-afghanistan ...
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If Beale Street Could Talk
Did That Really Happen?
This week we're going back to the 1970s with If Beale Street Could Talk! Join us as we learn about the Rockefeller Drug Laws, New York jails, the term "Holy Roller", and more! Source Brian Mann, "The Drug Laws That Changed How We Punished," NPR, available at https://www.npr.org/2013/02/14/171822608/the-drug-laws-that-changed-how-we-punish Fodei Batty, "How to Understand the Complicated History of 'Go Back to Africa'" Washington Post, available at...
info_outlineThis week we're going back to the 1960s with Boston Strangler! Join us as we learn about the Boston PD's bad advice to women, raids on queer communities, the death of Albert DeSalvo, and more!
Sources:
James H. Hammond, "Boston 'Strangler' Flees Hospital; Women Are Told to Lock Doors," The Washington Post (25 Feb 1967): 1.
Douglas Crocket, "What Did the Five Strangle Victims Have in Common?" Boston Globe (24 Aug 1962): 4.
Charles Claffey, "9 Stranglings Still Unsolved--And Circle of Fear Widens," Boston Globe (15 Sep 1963): 38.
"Police Working Without Result on Stranglings," Boston Globe (8 July 1962): 6.
Douglas Crocket, "Police Have Queried 3000 Persons in Strangling Case," Boston Globe (20 Jan 1963): 9.
Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 09 Dec. 1962. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1962-12-09/ed-1/seq-7/
"What Police Say: 'Women Too Trusting.. Careless'." Boston Globe (1960-), Sep 19, 1965.
"Public Faces/Private Lives," The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ Boston, https://www.historyproject.org/exhibition/public-faces-private-lives
Robert B. Kenney, "South Cove Branded Degenerates' Hangout," Boston Globe (8 July 1965): 1.
Joseph Keblinsky, "The Dapper Strikes Out," Boston Globe (11 Jly 1965): A4.
"Remember Scollay Square?" Boston Globe (2 November 1963): 4.
"Rowdy Ways of Scollay Sq. Soon Will Go: Proper Boston Stands the Death Watch," Chicago Daily Tribune (11 March 1962): B8.
Anthony J. Yudis, "Renewal to Oust 28 Liquor Spots: Battle for South Cove," Boston Globe (30 May 1965): 11.
Sixtieth Annual Report of the Police Commissioner for the City of Boston for the Year Ending December 31, 1965. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hl2k7i?urlappend=%3Bseq=33%3Bownerid=116415389-37
Blackwood, Harold. "What People Talk about: Boston Revisited After 20 Years, Ex-Navy Man Likes what He Sees." Boston Globe (1960-), Apr 14 1963, p. 1. ProQuest.
Jan Brogan, The Combat Zone: Murder, Race, and Boston's Struggle for Justice (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021). https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv29g2gxr.6
Anne Gray Fischer, "Boston: The Place is Gone! Policing Black Women to Redevelop Downtown," in The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469665061_fischer.8
"DeSalvo, Confessed Boston Strangler, Found Stabbed to Death in Prison Cell," New York Times, 11/27/1973, available at https://www.nytimes.com/1973/11/27/archives/desalvo-confessed-boston-strangler-found-stabbed-to-death-in-prison.html
Susan Kelly, "The Boston Stranglers," Kensington, 2013.
Nathan Smith, "The Tenacious Woman Reporters Who Helped Expose the Boston Strangler," Smithsonian, available at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-tenacious-women-reporters-who-helped-expose-the-boston-strangler-180981786/
Kevin Slane, "Separating Fact From Fiction in the Boston Strangler Movie," Boston.com, available at https://www.boston.com/culture/movies/2023/03/17/boston-strangler-movie-whats-real-not/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Strangler_(film)