Feel Familiar? Emotionally Intelligent History
"Feel Familiar? Emotionally Intelligent History" explores important but sometimes overlooked events from the past to gain a clearer understanding of the present day. It connects broad, macro-level developments in politics and society to relatable, individual feelings and thoughts.
Episodes
15 episodes
Parlor Games, Journeymen, and Jilted Brides (and Seances!): The Roots of Womanless Weddings
No one's really sure where Womanless Weddings came from. They seem to have sprung into existence in the mid-1910s in the South. But other amusements, from rowdy Medieval rituals, to vaudeville songs about cheating spouses, to peculiar goings-on...
Elks, Freemasons, and Knights of Pythias: Womanless Weddings and the Golden Age of Fraternal Orders
There was a time when millions of men across America joined frats for (kind-of) grownups: Elks, Knights of Pythias, and scores of others. What helped them bond with and bromance one another? You guessed it: impersonating women. Lodges totally e...
Varsity Athletes and War Heroes: Drag on Campus and in the Trenches in the Time of World War One
Starting in the 1890s, American college students formed all-male clubs to put on elaborate drag plays and musicals. Harvard had Hasty Pudding, the University of Michigan had the Mimes, and the University of Pennsylvania, Mask & Wig. Luminar...
Thank You, God, We’ll Take it From Here: How Doctors and Scientists Put Themselves in Charge of Sex and Gender, and What it Meant for Drag
Beginning in the 1800s, doctors, researchers, and men of science decided sex and gender was suddenly in their wheelhouse, not the church's. Now if you were queer or cross-dressed, you weren't a sinner, just sick or "inverted." Havelock Ellis, R...
Dames, Wenches, and “High Yallers”: From Camp Queens to the Minstrel Show’s Tragic Divas
With women playing women onstage, female impersonation took a turn for the comical, the campy, and the cartoonish. Legendary "dames" like Dan Leno and Bert Savoy pioneered the art of "false disguise." During the late 1800s, that most troublingl...
Shakespeare, the Restoration, and the Rise of the Actress: Men Insisting They Make Better Women Than Women
Juliet, Ophelia, and Lady Macbeth were all originally written for and played by men. Then women broke onto the scene and, for a time, theatre bros around London argued that drag artists were better than actual women onstage. We also talk about ...
Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire… and Sweet Home Alabama: How Men Use Drag to Show Their Power
You thought drag and female impersonation was something subversive and perverse? Think again! In Golden Age Greece 2,500 years ago, then later in Roman times, men dressed up as women onstage to enjoy power and prestige, and to show what a woman...
Season Two: Trailer
Welcome to Season Two of "Feel Familiar? Emotionally Intelligent History." We're looking at how drag has served men, boys, dudes, patriarchs, generals, politicians, and businessmen very nicely from olden days to the twentieth century. Our guest...
BONUS: A Conversation with Hannah Smith
Join us to explore feelings, thoughts, culty mobs, angry people, and how our brain can deceive us, while our reflective mind can save us. Featured guest is therapist, author, and mental health educator Hannah Smith, MA, LMHC, CGP, ...
The Day(s) After: Finger-Pointing, the Blame Game, and the Official Story
The day after what was already being called "The Massacre Place" riots, people in New York City were mad as hell and nervous as hell. City elites and authorities convened juries and extracted verdicts with lightning speed. It seemed like civil ...
"Fire Low."
Talked into continuing his run of the Scottish Play by kid-gloved New Yorkers, William Charles Macready and his fellow thespians manage a remarkable rendering of Shakespeare—sometimes in mime—as rowdies loyal to Ned Forrest try to shut the whol...
Macready Wonders: Should I Stay or Should I Go?!
British actor William Charles Macready inks a deal to do Macbeth at the Astor Place Opera House. It gets off to a rocky, smelly start. He's not sure what to do. Meanwhile, a buncha Bowery B'Hoys try to lay their mitts on some muskets, ...
Ned Forrest Gets His Grudge On
Edwin "Ned" Forrest came from humble beginnings to become a megastar of the American stage by the 1820s. Heroic, demonstrative, and patriotic, he is the darling of Bowery B'hoys' subculture. Over time, Forrest grows to resent William Charles Ma...
New York, 1849: The “Upper Ten” & The Bowery B’hoys
New York City in the 1840s is a vital, bustling, and deeply divided place. Cultural and political beliefs related to race, gender, and class animate different groups to hate certain celebrities and worship others. The nativist Bowery B'hoys lov...