Nope.

When you're parents to a combined 4 teenagers, the best thing is sleeping late into the morning, in our case almost to 8 am. And folks, it was GLORIOUS. Well, it was glorious for me, less so for Amy who had to deal with my snoring, which I'm certain was reminiscent of a songbird.

Our plan was to settle in and take it easy today. I rose quickly, ready for a meal, while she made her way down for Pilates, which is apparently an exercise routine named after the guy who killed Jesus. Or something. I just know there's a lot of stretching.

I made my way to the breakfast area here at Calabash, where I got my second history lesson of the island, this time on a plate. Breakfast was something called saltfish souse, which is flaked dried cod mixed with onions and peppers and served with pickled cucumbers and onions. It has its roots in darker days, when slaveowners looked to cheap foods to feed the human beings they kept in bondage. One of these was cured fish from the North Atlantic. It actually speaks to the focus on sugar, spices, and other products that plantation owners actually imported fish to an island. But they did. Of course the folks here in Grenada eventually put their own spin on the dish and now it is a bit of a source of cultural pride on the island. It was served with a really dense sort of biscuit, which I assume also had its roots in the 17th century, since getting the maximum amount of calories into bodies was paramount. Today, it was on my plate as a sign of welcome, and I really enjoyed it. I'll have it again if I can.

I met up with Amy after breakfast and we left for Grand Anse Beach, one of the jewels of the island. It's long and filled with the kind of crystal clear water people dream about so we jumped in and frolicked. I think we frolicked. We're both almost 50. Perhaps we just waded. I can't remember. Again, almost 50.

We made our way back to Calabash where we tried to play shuffleboard. We didn't really know how, so we decided that the most American thing we could do would be to make up the rules as we went and then declare ourselves the winners. Obviously.

Night fell and we were treated to yet another tremendous meal here. Here's a fun thing- the whole staff apparently reads this substack now, so HI GUYS!!! 👋 😊

But I say this because everyone brought it up and that made me smile. I had this really great burrata (apparently I like tomatoes now) and a slow cooked braised short rib. Amy had tofu and I'm wondering how this woman loves my carnivorous tendencies.

Today was a needed quiet day as we settled into our week here. We're loving Grenada so far. Big day planned tomorrow so I'll leave you with a few uncaptioned photos from the day.

See ya soon.

Jason

Alright, let’s answer the first question right off the bat- why Grenada? It seems like the most unlikely of choices. And that, my friends, is exactly why we chose Grenada. As y’all know, I moved to Colorado from Florida. But Amy moved here from Hawai’i. One of the things we share is a deep communion with the water, something that you definitely miss in the mountains. She had never been to the Caribbean, so we quickly decided on the region as our destination. But Grenadia took a bit more work. We wanted a place that wasn’t touristy, where we could get down to the business of being a couple with the rare moment without kids. I really had no desires other than seeing the Lesser Antilles, having previously visited Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Bahamas while I was living in Florida. The Keys, too, were an option, though I think Amy worried by Jimmy Buffett and Ernest Hemingway affections might distract me. We circled Belize for a long time, and thought heavily about Turks and Caicos. The Bahamas briefly surfaced as an option, but we worried there would be too many people. We simply did not want to go to a heavily Americanized place.

But lurking out there was Grenada. It’s a small island deep in the Caribbean, just off of Venezuela. I really didn’t know much about the island. I even had to research how to say it—it’s GrenAda, with a hard A. I remembered briefly that Reagan ordered an invasion of the island back in 1983 or so, but that was it. Some quick online research revealed that people spoke English here, the beaches are excellent, and there’s monkeys in Grand Etang National Park. Plus, the offshore fishing here is world class, though unfortunately, that was out of the budget for this trip. Still, it looked amazing. So we made the call. Let’s go to Grenada.

But how to actually get there? Living in Colorado, we often fly United because of their hub in Denver, but they don’t fly to the island. But American does, so we’d need to fly to Miami, stay overnight, and then catch a flight to Grenada the next day. This was a bit of a blessing since we could see some of my best friends Bart and Karina and their daughters (I’m godfather to their youngest) and they could meet Amy. Even with the single night in Florida, Amy caught me staring at the moon over the water. She knows.

The flight to Grenada from Miami was actually longer than the one from Denver to Miami. Grenada is way down there, y’all. There was a quick moment of panic when we could not find my passport, though fortunately Amy checked the one suitcase pocket I swore it could not be in. Customs was easy, and the familiar humidity of South Florida was present here, too, though the leeward winds have mitigated that. It’s actually really pleasant.

We had heard the island was very welcoming to Americans, and thus far, that has proven to be the case. Our cab ride to the hotel took about 15 minutes and the driver gave us a quick rundown of the island’s history that I’ll divulge to you later.

Now to the digs.

We’re staying at the Calabash Resort. I keep calling it a hotel, but that’s because when you grow up poor sometimes you still wrestle with talking about nice things. This is one of those cases. This place is spectacular, as evidenced by this picture that I took right after I wrote this sentence:

We’re actually in the off season for tourism and the staff at the hotel tells us that it’s pretty quiet around here right now. We were greeted by some incredibly friendly staff who offered us this lemongrass tea. And folks, after drinking it, I’ve renounced all claims to the South. This stuff is better than what my mom keeps in the orange pitcher back home in Kentucky. My goodness.

We were excited to be here but also pretty tired from two days of travel, along with herding kids and pets to their respective places. So we made a quick tour of the grounds, got cleaned up, and took some naps before making it to dinner, which was of course phenomenal. Being in Colorado, we’re making sure to get as much seafood as possible. We both had variations of locally-caught red snapper and I followed with a cheesecake that was far more savory than I’d ever had before. We closed the night with a game of chess that Amy quickly won because she’s way smarter than me and maybe I’m a bit impulsive sometimes.

I’m going to document this trip over the next eight days. There’s a lot of history here. Different culture. All sorts of experiences. And I figure that maybe that might be a good distraction for my readers, so I hope you dig it. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my thoughts right now are in Colorado. We’ve got some big fires going on back there, and I’m eager to get back and help out. But for now, rest. The work will come later.

I want to close this post with the thoughts of a buddy of mine, who is an elder in the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. I told him of my trip and he responded as follows: “Its about time you leave the craziness in Colorado…LOL. And just let the Creator lead you to comforting waters…including the rum. Take care, recharge, & enjoy the time.”

Already ahead of you.

Jason

If you enjoy these posts and want to support a different kind of history, please become a paid subscriber. It helps to keep these coming. Monthly subsriptions are $6; a year is $48. Click the button to join in. And thank you for being here.

I'd love to say that we are coming back bigger and better than ever, but right now I don't know that to be the case. We started the pod three years ago as a logical continuation of Historians At The Movies, and while it has proven incredibly popular among our niche, we simply haven't broken into the mainstream as we hoped.

We tried tinkering a year or so ago by switching to Reckoning with Jason Herbert and opening up the dialogue beyond history or film. We've also tried to spotlight Native stories and public lands as much as possible. And we've landed some HUGE guests. But we can't seem to break beyond our own little (but rabid) fan base. For that, you need to have a ton of seed money and a reliable backer (I don't), some claim to fame or a crazy inventive idea (not entirely), or look like a Greek god (alas, sexual comeliness never quite came to me). Oh, and a crap ton of time.

I've had Matthew McConaughey in my head lately. In his memoir Green Lights he talks about having too much on his plate and doing three things ok simply wasn't good enough for him. He made a tough decision to cut one loose. Well, I have my commitments at the Forest Service, this substack, and the pod, along with the obligations of being a fairly average single dad to two teens and a partner to Amy. Then there's the emails. Presses, unsolicited guests, and the occasional tech genius who hasn't figured out how to unsubscribe. Hundreds per week.

Each episode takes about 15-20 hours to produce, especially since I actually read the books before an author comes on. It's a lot. And since the podcast costs over a thousand dollars to produce each month (tech and labor), the reality is that right now I have a really expensive hobby.

And that got me to thinking- don't I have other hobbies? Fishing, hiking, reading what I want. I miss the gym. If I don't get active again I'll wither to the point that I look like I teach Civil War memory at some university in Alabama. And no one wants to be that guy. Plus, we have fire season coming on. And that demands a lot of attention.

Oh, and a vacation. I desperately need one of those, which I'm starting tomorrow with Amy (more on that later).

I am a little hesitant to let go completely. We've built HATM into the epicenter of history and film over the last eight years and I'm not about to cede that ground.

So for now, I'm taking a little break. We may be back in the fall. We may not. I haven't decided. And that, in and of itself, is quite liberating.

But in the meantime, what should you listen to? As always, I have thoughts. Here are a few history pods that you might not know but are absolutely worth checking out:

The American West with Dan Flores. Its a pod that fuses environmental history into the iconic American landscape to talk about how we got here and where we are going.

American Medieval with Matthew Gabriele. It's a podcast about the Middle Ages, but with an American twist. Each week, expert guests explore either some fascinating part of the medieval world, or some way Americans have used this period to help them understand themselves.

American Campus Podcast with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd. Confused about higher education? This is a social and political history of academia.

Drafting the Past with Kate Carpenter. Each episode features a new historian talking about how they create history. You get to see the sausage being made.

This Guy Sucked with Claire Aubin. Every historian finds douchebags in their research. Claire's pod outs them in fun ways. Brilliant idea and well executed.

OK, so there's your quick news. And please don’t take this as some end of the world- I'm just taking a bit to recharge and maybe reconceptualize what this space is and can be. I want the pod to continue. I think it's a smart show- we just gotta figure out how to blow it up. In the meantime, this substack will continue. So stay tuned for more here.

Jason

The American Experiment is a new six part documentary on the foundation of the Republic, totally not taking advantage of next week's 250th birthday. But it gives us the opportunity to not only talk about the origins of the nation, but how it is being remembered. And yes, we're bringing the snark. Here's the trailer:

The series is filled with #HATM regulars and Reckoning guests including not only Sara, but also Joanne Freeman, Lindsay Chervinsky, Alexis Coe, Jelani Cobb, and Ben Carp. And just in case Netflix threatened to make their series a little too legitimate, The American Experiment also features such, uh, intellectual heavyweights like Ted Cruz, Jeff Flake, and Mike Pence. So bring the popcorn.

So tonight we’re gonna watch the first episode of the series. Playing along is easy. Just follow me on Blue Sky (herberthistory) or the #HATM hashtag. Then press play on The American Experiment at exactly 8pm eastern. Then just tag your posts with #HATM so everyone can follow along.

See you tonight.

Jason

Hey, wanna support what we are doing here? We've recently lowered subscription prices to $6 per month and $48 per year. It's the best way to keep the discussions coming on public lands, my work with Tribes, movies, pop culture, and all the snark. Subscribe now. Or I'll start an OnlyFans. And no one wants that.

This last bit is important because learning the histories out here has been at times like drinking from a fire hose. As a historian, I'm trained in the Native South. I can talk Seminole, Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw history all day. But the Tribes out here have wildly different histories and relationships to the land, and while I was nominally aware of sone of it, I'd generally categorize my knowledge of the West as wholly ignorant before I arrived in Colorado.

This has also been a blessing because I can show up, be humble, and listen. And Crystal, along with my pal Fred in the Southern Arapaho Tribe, have been wonderful in sharing what I should know. You can learn a bit of their history by visiting the websites of both Tribes here:

https://northernarapaho.com/157/History

https://www.cheyenneandarapaho-nsn.gov/language-culture

Our days were spent on Arapaho homelands in San Isabel National Forest, working in concert with our archaeologists, leadership, and colleagues from the National Forest Foundation. I can't really share a lot about what we discussed, other than to share how important our work is to not only the Arapaho people, but all the Tribes we serve. I can, however, share with you a few pics from the field so you can see this amazing landscape here in Colorado and my even more amazing colleagues in the Forest Service and the Northern Arapaho Tribe:

So that's a quick little bit on more of the work we are doing. It may seem simple, but I reminded everyone that three years ago these collaborations simply didn't happen out here. We've made a lot of progress.

-Jason

Two weeks ago we welcomed Comanche and Southern Ute teens to Pike National Forest for our second annual Tribal Youth Encampment. This is a big deal for me, and the highlight of my year working for the Forest Service. The idea originated a couple years ago when I met with the Comanche Business Council in Lawton, Oklahoma and an elder told me of his desire for Comanche kids to know that their homeland was far more than south central Oklahoma. I told him that we could do that and working closely with the Comanche National Tribal Historic Preservation Office, we hosted our first encampment in 2025. It was a huge success.

This year, as we planned another camping trip, my friend Martina, the director of the Tribal Historic Preservation Office, said she wanted to invite the Southern Ute Indian Tribe to camp with them, so I jumped at the chance to expand upon last year’s event.

Bringing both Tribes together is a big deal. Most everyone out here knows everyone else. But Comanche Nation and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe have a special relationship when it comes to Colorado. Both nations share interconnected histories filled at times with peace, trade, warfare, but most especially an affinity for the spaces out here in the West. Plus, next year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Comanche-Ute Peace Treaty of 1977, so we all thought this would be a cool oppotunity to work towards that.

I myself have a great affinity for both nations. Folks at the Southern Ute Indian Tribe were really the first to welcome me out here once I moved to Colorado, and I relish every chance I get to visit with them out in Ignacio. And Comanche Nation has been just as welcoming. I know a lot of the elders there and Chairman Tahdooahnippah was even kind enough to come on the podcast and talk some Comanche history with me. So I was excited to see my friends.

Working with our staff, we identified a great campsite at Manitou Lake, which is west of Colorado Springs, and near the town of Woodland Park. It’s probably a good time to, yes, hit you with some history. (This is just a quick one, though.) Colorado, especially what we call the Front Range, is home to a LOT of Tribes. In addition to Ute and Comanche peoples, folks in the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Pawnee, Jicarilla Apache, and number of Puebloan communities have ties to the region. That makes it a special place.

Okay, nerdy history stuff over. Let’s talk camping. I was being a social butterfly helping to get everyone situated so it was exciting to see that the Comanche campers brought with them two tipis that they set up. I got to help put one up, filling the role of “rope man” in which I generally ran around the tipi poles with a rope and tried not to make the whole thing collapse. Miraculously, I did not screw up.

All kidding aside, this was an awesome opportunity for community building (have you ever helped put up a tipi?) and more importantly, for the youths to learn really important aspects of their culture. And seeing it come together was really cool.

Morning rose, and after breakfast we all make our way to Crags Trail, one of my favorite in Colorado. This was an opporunity for the teens of both Tribes to get to know one another a little bit and to get to see some of these amazing spaces here in Colorado, some for the first time. Crags can be a challenge for people. There’s some serious elevation gain, but both Ute and Comanche teens handled it like champs. And we, along with my friend Jenn from the National Forest Foundation, enjoyed the trail, talking with Southern Ute THPO Deputy Director Isabella Cloud about the importance of protecting these spaces. And the pics, as always, just don’t do these places justice.

The next day we decided to go even higher to Pikes Peak, which is always a highlight of the trip. The road was under refurbishment so they weren’t letting any drivers up there, but the management on the mountain really cares about their relationships with the Tribes, so they made an exception for us. That meant that the teens were able to be among the only people on the peak, and got see the world from a pretty sacred place.

I had also worked with the Comanche Nation Language Department in the previous year to get the Comanche name of the mountain up there, so we stopped to take a pic of our work:

Aftwards, we made to the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum how the three Ute tribes (Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation) worked with the museum to tell their stories and then on to Garden of the Gods for some spectacular scenery. But by the evening, we were all gassed.

My favorite part is always back at the camp. I must admit that I worried about visiting with either Tribe too much because I love both of them dearly. But I reminded myself to get out of my own head and just enjoy listening to the young folk practice their language, singing, sharing food, and playing hand game.

There’s so much here I’m not telling you, mostly because those memories get to stay with us and between us. But the story here that I want to continue to tell you, is about working with Tribes and being part of something larger than yourself.

I hope most of all the kids and adults took away new friendships and memories that will stay with them well past this summer. And hopefully the affection I have for all of them.

Amy saw the pictures I sent her while I was with the Tribes. She had a single thought:

“So there’s your smile.”

From the ancient world of the Northern Paiute and migrating Wilson’s phalaropes to the rise of Los Angeles water politics and the ecological battles that inspired comparisons to Chinatown, this conversation explores how humans transformed one of North America’s most unique ecosystems. Along the way, we discuss deep time, environmental history, Western water wars, Indigenous knowledge, climate resilience, the Great Basin, Mono Lake’s famous alkali flies, and why saline lakes may hold clues to our environmental future.

If you enjoy environmental history, the American West, climate history, Indigenous history, or conversations in the spirit of Dan Flores and Donald Worster, this episode is for you.

About our guest

Robert B. Marks is Professor Emeritus of History and Environmental Studies at Whittier College, where he spent 41 years researching how human societies and natural environments shape each other across time and geography. His forthcoming book on the Mono Lake Basin applies this deep expertise to California's Eastern Sierra, tracing 10,000 years of geological forces, Indigenous stewardship, water politics, and ecological restoration. A resident of the region, he brings both scholarly rigor and intimate knowledge to the complex history of this ancient landscape.

Get the book

Get Deep Time in the Mono Lake Basin here or wherever you get your books.

The Podcast

Find my conversation with Robert Marks below or wherever you listen to your podcasts

Reckoning with Jason Herbert is a reader- and listener-supported publication. Conversations like this one — with scholars doing the work that helps us understand where we came from and where we’re headed — are exactly why this community exists. If you value deep dives into environmental history, the American West, and the stories that actually explain our world, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support keeps these conversations happening.

Become a paid subscriber →

When you're a father who lives across the country, you live and breathe with the clock.

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The restaurant came highly billed. The chef, a guy named Brother Luck, once beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America. This was reassuring since reality show stars have been so successful lately. The name was a play on its gimmick: its menu was is based on the four providers (hunter, gatherer, fisher, farmer). This also helps to explain why the restaurant was named named “Flavor” or “Taste.” But more on that in a bit.

Four is also supposed to represent the Four Corners region, which makes sense since mostly what Colorado's food scene tries to do is rip off pay homage to New Mexico. I've always found this odd since Colorado has its own version of New Mexico called the city of Pueblo, but that would require Jared Polis to recognize anything south of Denver (assuming he ever got out of camera view).1

But we arrived with high hopes and were immediately seated…and waited. And waited. And waited.

The fun thing about poor service is the conversation that emerges from it. We got to ask each other thought provoking questions like “Are you thirsty thirsty? I could use some water,” “do you think they know we are here?” and “should I say something?” After about ten minutes without so much as eye contact, I gave up and went to the hostess and asked if someone would help us. I guess thankfully our waiter was there talking to her the whole time and he came to help.

Amy chose a white wine to start and I ordered a Dark ‘n Stormy that looked and tasted like the bartender found the recipe on Chat GPT. To the restaurant's credit, they offered oysters at $18 for a half dozen. These were good and going with the teeming we imagined they came from the deep seas of Utah.

I continued on with some mussels after briefly considering some kind of duck with green chile. (For those of you new to Colorado, there are exactly two condiments: green chile and honey. And they put them on EVERYTHING here.)

The mussels were fine except some sort of white glop they dropped in the bowl for decorative purposes. I wouldn't eat anything they touched. Fortunately Amy had no aversion to it, so she chowed down.

For our main courses, Amy ordered lamb while I settled on filet. I'm not a filet guy; it’s not the best cut of beef (I prefer strip). Some of the other options looked good, but since I don't like mushrooms or aioli, I had to rule those out.

I have to admit that I was a bit underwhelmed by the steak. I ordered medium rare but I had to double check with Amy that I didn't say medium well on accident. It was overcooked (easy to do on filet), but kind of hard to see based on the lack of light in the room (seriously, what is it with these dungeonesque concepts).

The big issue with my steak, and with Amy's lamb chops, was the lack of seasoning. There was just no flavor at all. And this has been a consistent problem with restaurants here in Colorado: the food is almost always underseasoned, especially at the higher end places. It's baffling. I've been trying to understand it. It's easy to point to the lack of diversity in this state, and that may have something to with it.2 But I don't know. There's a huge salt mine in Kansas, but none of it seems to have made its way west. So I had a dry and kind of tasteless filet in the dark. No dessert necessary.

We were left wanting at Four by Brother Luck. Maybe it was an off night. It happens. I’d probably give them another shot sometime. But I know this guy Luck is supposed to be really good, which makes me wonder: was the food bad? Or has he simply adapted to the local palates?

I wonder which is worse.

Jason

If you missed the 1980s (either you're too young or you discovered cocaine sometime around the Challenger explosion), Masters of the Universe is based on a cartoon of the same name quite literally designed to sell toys made by Mattel. Here, Prince Adam (alter ego: He-Man) and his allies fight against the evil Skeletor for control of Eternia. There's lots of quirky named heroes and villains, which are explained in the film to a pretty funny effect. This is a strength of the movie—there are several laugh out loud moments along the way. There's also way more sexual innuendos than I expected. Be prepared.

There's plenty of throwbacks to both the show and the previous film, which I won't ruin here. But they're fun.

Creature design is superb; I thought Trap-Jaw and Beast Man were done particularly well. Skeleton was nicely constructed too. Jared Leto, despite his reputation of late as box office poison, is a damn fine voice actor.

Nicholas Galitzine is alright in the lead. I don'tknow that he has the charisma required for the part I preferred Camila Mendes as Teela. Sir Idris Elba shows up with an amalgamation of his characters from Thor and Pacific Rim.

MAGA is probably going to hate this film. Adam isn't a coward, but he's definitely awkward. There's a feminine quality to his masculinity (and a masculinity to Teela's feminity), but that was always the case. Even in 1984 Prince Adam wore pink and sported a bob haircut. Here it gets blown out like Farrah Fawcett when Adam transitions to He-Man.

For all its references to the original series, the film that I kept thinking of was 1985's Teen Wolf, starring Michael J. Fox. Then, as now, an awkward young man is granted superhuman powers but must grapple with what defines him as a man. Teen Wolf did this better, but the relationship between Adam and Teela is a rarity. Here, the good guy does not get the girl. She is not is prize; she is his equal. The real masculinity of the film is Adam's acknowledgement and immediate acceptance of this.

The film's weakness is the runtime: 2 hours and 22 minutes. Factor in trailers and your commute and you've committed 3.5 hours to a movie. It's a lot. Thankfully, the editing works well which helps to mitigate the film's length. Some of the jokes fall flat and there's a sense that they tried a bit too hard to get laughs. The final battle is anticlimactic and there's no real sense of danger, though this is based on a cartoon with a bumbling villain with a skull for a face.

There's a question of who this film is for. Is it for my generation that played with the toys? Is it for Gen Z? It seems the latter, but its heavy reliance on a 40 year-old cartoon may not get butts in the seats.

I wanted to like this film and found myself actively rooting for it. But it's probably best used as background noise while you lay on your couch and doomscroll on your phone.

Unless you are a fan of the franchise, you can probably wait on this one.

Jason

Big changes are coming to Lake Buena Vista, Florida, and they might just alter how we think about the past…and the future.

In less than a month, the Carousel of Progress in Magic Kingdom will halt its operations in preparation for a major update, the first in over three decades. For those of you unfamiliar, the Carousel of Progress is one of the mainstays in Disney lore. For those of you unfamiliar with the attraction, it is unlike anything else in the Disney Parks lineup. It is a rotating theater with four animatronic presentations following a family through four decades: the turn of the twentieth century, the 1920s, the 1940s, and the new millenium. It made its debut at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair and Disney proudly boasts that it is the most watched stage production in history. Walt loved it and it remained one of his favorite attractions until the day he died.

The House of Mouse plans to radically update the show, featuring an introduction by an animated Walt Disney, then proceeding through four new decades: the 1960s, the 1980s, the new millenium, and a possible future with the family on a space colony.

The announcement comes among a flurry of new innovations inside Disney Parks. Disney has been steadily updating and adding on to the four theme parks in the last few years, adding Toy Story Land and Galaxy’s Edge and moving the Muppets to the former Rock n Roller Coaster at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, revitalizing Future World at EPCOT along with adding the Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, closing Dinoland U.S.A. in favor of a new pavilion called Tropical Americas (with an Indiana Jones attraction) at Disney’s Animal Kingdom1, and perhaps most famously, reconceptualizing Splash Mountain into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at Magic Kingdom.

Disney has also been busy expanding and even creating new parks globally, but to the frustration of many (including yours truly), the last new park in Florida was Disney’s Animal Kingdom, which opened almost three decades ago on April 22, 1998. More on that in another post.

I’ve maintained a love affair with Carousel of Progress for almost thirty years. I was a proud Disney’s College Program Cast Member in Spring and Summer of 1998. Spending so much time at the parks, you got to know them intimately. You learned the rhythms of the parks, when each would get busy, where certain groups would go (ex.: Brazilian tour groups LOVED World Showcase in EPCOT) and why.2 One of the things we loved to do was identify the hidden gems of the park system and tell guests where they could REALLY enjoy the park.

For me, that was always Carousel of Progress. Perhaps it signaled to me the historian that I would eventually become, but the mix of nostalgia and futurism was a tonic that I could not deny. I’d always advise parents with young children to look to Carousel on hot days when the kids were tired and cranky. Carousel of Progress was a 25-minute reprieve from the Florida heat and humidity. There was almost never a line, meaning you could walk right up and in. And thankfully, it was air-conditioned. The kids never had a chance. Most were asleep before we ever got to the 1920s. And in the 28 years since my time at the Parks, I have continually returned to pay my respects to one of my favorite attractions at my favorite place on the planet. I even have the poster for the attraction on the wall in my office.

So how do I feel about the changes? I’m actually excited. Change is almost constant at Walt Disney World, even with the core attractions at Magic Kingdom of The Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and the former Splash Mountain. I remember the fuss over Splash Mountain, with people’s complaints of wokeness designed to hide their casual racism. But for me, my love of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was sealed when I saw a young African American girl of no more than 12 years of age squeal in delight at the construction signs saying the ride was coming. And later, my first ride on the flume was sitting in the front row in front of an African American mother and her child (I offered my seat but they said I could block the water for them). I’ll never forget how the little girl screamed out “Mama Odie!”3 So my point is that change in the parks should be welcomed. And as a historian, I’d like to assert that the present is part of history, too. In other words, those changes become part of a person, place, or thing’s story.

But still, I do feel like I’m losing an old friend. I’d give almost anything to get there one more time before it shutters on July 6. But I work for the federal government, and last minute escapes aren’t exactly a thing I can afford. However, if any of you want to send me on this adventure, I promise my ego will shut the heck up.

I think this is a wonderful time to perhaps reimagine what the American family looks like. The family in Carousel of Progress has always been white—does it need to be? Could Disney do for other families what it did with Tiana’s Bayou Adventure? Perhaps a mixed-race family that more resembles our own changing America. Or maybe the family ages, with an infant in the 1960s becoming the Great Grandparent in the future. (As I say to Tribal Members, we’re all in the business of raising elders.)

I think it’s natural to be nervous and excited about the future all at once. That certainly describes how I feel, and ultimately part of the human condition that Walt was trying to get at 62 years ago. So let’s embrace it.

After all….

(wait for it)

There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day. See you in line.

Jason

Hey, thanks for being here. Wanna help out? Monthly subscriptions are now $5- that’s less than a Coca-Cola at Walt Disney World. Ok, it’s less than anything at Walt Disney World. But you get the idea. Click on the link.

That would have been a mistake.

Pressure is the rare film underpromises and overdelivers, and does so in several ways.

I’m not going to spoil the film for you, but I do want to encourage you to see it for the reasons I’ll list below. I have some critiques as well, but let’s get into it.

First of all, despite its marketing, the movie is not about General Eisenhower at all. It is certainly about his decision on when to launch Operation Overlord, but the film actually stars Andrew Scott as Group Captain James Stagg, the meteorologist tasked with predicting the elements on the planned invasion day. That’s right. This is a movie about…weather. As I watched, I found this to be a brilliant take on WWII history films reminiscent of the history writing process. How many times do we as historians start taking on a task that has been written about over and over again and bring something new to the conversation? Certainly WWII films have been told from every which way you can think of. But telling the story of the weatherman and making it compelling? That’s something new. And I have to tell you, the screenwriters, editor, and director Anthony Maras did a Hell of a job adapting playwright David Haig’s work. And for you history nerds (and I assume most of you are), there’s a really cool subplot about the use of historical weather reports and when to privilege sources. The movie delivers a really fresh take on the war.

Director Anthony Maras does some really interesting stuff. He’s got to get into the heads of both Stagg and Eisenhower, while moving the film from planning rooms to battlefields. His use of archival footage works well. And I don’t think it will spoil the film to say that there is a beach landing scene that is right there with Saving Private Ryan.

I found Scott to be outstanding in the lead role. You’ve probably seen him in half a dozen performances by now, but never as the guy. He’s particularly good bonding with Kerry Condon or sparring with Chris Messina, both of whom deliver in this film. Damian Lewis of Band of Brothers fame is back in the war, this time as Bernard Montgomery and he clearly enjoys annoying his fellow commanders and generally coming off as a gleaming jerk during his screentime.

I suppose my big critique is that as much as I like the guy on a personal level, I don’t know if Brendan Fraser was the right guy for Ike. At 57, Fraser is actually about 3 years older than the General in 1944, but I feel like Fraser’s too big and bulky of a guy to pull off Eisenhower’s physique. Fraser doesn’t sound like Eisenhower, either, though I suppose this isn’t all that important. I kept wondering who might do a better job, but couldn’t really think of anyone. Perhaps Ethan Hawke? But now I’m a bit sad thinking that Ethan Hawke is well into his fifties. Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts on who you’d cast in the role. Oh, and as a sidenote, I was curious to see if the movie would depict Ike’s chainsmoking. I’ll let you see if/how they handle that.

That said, there’s a real strength in the movie, and that’s in showing just how much Allied Command did not know in the hours leading to D-Day. There was just so much at risk in either rushing the attack or in delaying it. I do want to share that I think Fraser did really well in showing how much this decision weighed on Abilene, Kansas’ finest.

I also want to share something a bit peripheral. I was lucky enough to sit next to a woman and her brother, both in their 70s, whose father, Frank Lucero was a ranger on D-Day. He survived the battle and later suffered a bullet wound that sidelined him for a bit before being sent back to the front lines. He continued on in the war, before being gravely injured by grenade shrapnel that sent him home. Apparently, Mr. Lucero was too young and too underweight to enlist. But he lied about his age and ate a bunch of bananas before stepping on the scale. I listened to Mr. Lucero’s daughter cry during the invasion scene, no doubt reliving her father’s day.

I kept thinking about Mr. Lucero’s heroism, along with that of General Eisenhower, along with the men and women who fought against fascism during the war. We use the term Greatest Generation with such ease, but I truly wonder if that was not the case. These men and women—both home and abroad—confronted the threat of fascism and German and Japanese imperialism in ways that are hard to fully conceptualize now.

All of that makes me appreciate films like Pressure that much more. To learn of how a number of meteorologists helped change the fate of the war in such a compelling way reminds me of the excitement of the archive, the importance of telling stories. This movie reminded me of why I love history.

I’m not often surprised by movies, but this one got me. Go see it.

Finally, a quick word. If you’ve been opening these emails and reading this Substack, clearly it has some value to you. I looked at the subscription prices and came to a conclusion: they’re too much. So I lowered the subscription rates to the lowest number Substack would allow: $5 per month and $48 per year. If you’ve enjoyed this mix of history, pop culture, my work in Indian Country, life as a single father, and the occasional use of the word bazootyhead, now is the time to help out. Subscribing literally costs less than anything else you’ll buy this month, and the autopay features mean you can fill this out faster than drinking your coffee. All y’all pitching in means I can do even more here. And I’d greatly appreciate your support. You can click the button and it’ll do the rest. Thank you. Truly.

About our Guest:

James Verini is an award-winning journalist and contributing writer for The New Yorker whose reporting has focused on war, conflict, geopolitics, and human survival in some of the world’s most dangerous places. His work has appeared in publications including National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair, where he has covered conflicts in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and beyond.

Verini is the author of The Theater, a powerful account of the bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theater during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Blending immersive reporting with historical analysis, the book explores the human cost of war, the rise of authoritarianism, and the struggle for Ukrainian identity in the face of Russian aggression.

Known for combining literary storytelling with deeply researched journalism, Verini’s work often examines how ordinary people endure extraordinary historical moments.

The Theater

Get The Theater: Courage and Survival in the Defining Atrocity of the Ukraine War here or wherever you buy your books.

The Podcast

Listen to my conversation in full here on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Jason

This conversation is for paid subscribers because these are the discussions that matter most: war, democracy, propaganda, history, and the people trapped inside world-changing events. Paid subscribers help keep Reckoning with Jason Herbert independent and allow me to continue bringing historians, journalists, filmmakers, and writers onto the show for conversations that go beyond headlines and algorithms.

If you value long-form historical conversations like this one with James Verini, consider becoming a paid subscriber today. Your support helps fund the podcast, the writing, and the work behind it all.

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All but one of my earliest memories are from Louisiana, and it was there that a child named Jason Herbert quickly became Jason Hebert. Like most of the kids in St. Martin Parish, I grew up speaking (though not quite perfecting) the patois that is Cajun French. I remember catching sac-a-lait (crappie) in the bayous and trying to release as many crawfish as I could before they ended up in a boil. On occasions we'd visit with friends who had a pet alligator that we'd swim with.

We had a babysitter. I asked my mother her name once, but she couldn’t recall. All we knew was that we called her Mom Da. Mom Dah watched six or seven of us, all around four or five years old. When we misbehaved, she’d make stand on our knees behind the couch and stick our tongues out. Then she’d put a spoonful of her homemade hot sauce on them. We did not misbehave often. I remember it was with Mom Dah that I killed my first chicken. I was five. She told me to go and catch one in the backyard and hold it upside down until it stopped moving. I watched her dispatch that bird, pluck it, and cook it. This was life in Louisiana in 1982.

Mom’s maiden name was Chadwick, so combined with my father’s Herbert meant that I was pretty much the most English-descended kid roaming the bayous. But our neighbors’ names told different stories. We were enveloped by folks named Guidry, Thibodeaux, Boudreaux, LeBlanc, and Fontenot. My first crush was my childhood friend, Schlacey Broussard.

Those names told of a different time, a different origin. Because like me, true Cajuns came from someplace else once upon a time. But their world—the accordions playing Zydeco, the crawfish boils, the kitchens that smelled of a brick roux and cayenne—might be the most American of them all.

If you haven’t picked up on it by now, Heather Cox Richardson and her team are producing small snippets of Americana in celebration of this country’s enduring history. Some are about people, other are places. Some you know of, others maybe you should know. In fact, let me let Heather tell you more about it:

So when Heather asked me if I’d want to contribute a little something on my adopted home, I said mais oui! And well, here you go:

If you click on either video, you’ll get the chance to watch others like them from such people as Pete Buttigieg, Jon Tester, Ariana DeBose, Jelani Cobb, and others, with even more to come. Check it out, because I think it’s a really cool project and I’m glad to have a little part in it.

Here’s a link to follow along on Substack:

250 to 250

Introducing: 250 to 250

From the time of our country’s founding 250 years ago, the story of America has been one of the constant efforts of Americans—from all races, ethnicities, genders, and abilities—to make real the belief that we are all created equal and have a right to have a say in our democracy. We will be telling their stories over the next several weeks because now, …

Read more

a month ago · 329 likes · 15 comments · 250 to 250

You can also follow along across all the social media platforms by searching for 250to250 or the hashtag #WeAreAmerica250.

Oh, and I’ll pop back in with some more stuff on the Cajuns a bit later, but for now, take a look at some of those videos and lemme what you think.

Jason

And hey- if you enjoy pieces like this—stories about memory, history, identity, film, the outdoors, and the strange paths that make us who we are—consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscriptions help support the writing, the podcast, Historians At The Movies, and the time it takes to keep telling these stories. Plus, you’ll get access to subscriber chats, watch parties, and the deeper dives that don’t always make it onto the public page. Merci, y’all.

History is filled with these stories, and I know more than a few. But I had never heard of the Battle of Saragarhi, in which 21 Sikh soldiers of the British Indian Empire faced off against 12,000-24,000 Afghan tribesmen in 1897. Fortunately in our case, there is Netflix.

This week’s Historians At The Movies film choice is Kesari, which dramatizes the battle. The film itself is an Indian production, and it is in Hindi with English subtitles. I wanted to do this film for a couple reasons. First, it offers us the opportunity to step outside traditional English-language offerings, and (I’m assuming) give our audience the chance to learn about an event few of us are familiar with. Second, it’s a great chance to revisit Indian cinema. We’ve shown RRR before, but this is only the second film from the subcontinent we’ve seen. Considering the large population of Indians and Indian Americans living here in the States, this is a cool way of getting to see some of their history before us.

So I’m hoping that you’ll join in with us on Blue Sky this Sunday, May 31 at 8pm eastern to watch Kesari (available on Netflix) and join in on the fun. You can find me over there by searching for my name, my handle (HerbertHistory) or just search for #HATM. Link to the trailer below, and folks, it looks pretty damn cool.

Thanks for reading this and thanks for being part of this community. If you enjoy posts like this—where history, film, and storytelling collide in ways you probably won’t find anywhere else—consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid support helps keep Historians At The Movies, the podcast, and this whole strange little operation running. It also helps me keep digging up forgotten stories, watching questionable cinema so you don’t have to, and building a community of people who still think history is worth talking about. Join us.

Jason

I usually try to spend a little time in Florida. I've written about this before, but being so far from the ocean here in Colorado is difficult for me. For all its problems, Florida is home. But this was a quick trip- just two full days and then zipping back to the western Great Plains mountains. Still, I had a bunch of side quests lined up: eat a sub from Publix, see some gopher tortoises, get real Cuban coffee, and see the ocean.

Now, I did have a bit of a dilemma here. This would be the first year I missed Bear Dance at the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. I feel a real obligation to be present for the Tribes I work with. It's one thing to say you care, but the best way is to show it by showing up. Besides, I have friends that I wanted to see. But an elder told me that if I missed Ben's graduation for Bear Dance then she would skin me alive, so that was that. Still, I hated missing it.

Sidebar: You know what's fun about being divorced? Asking your ex wife to pick you up ftom the airport at 1am, and then driving you back to her place where you'll crash for a few days. It's the little things in life that keeps me going.

I got up Thursday morning after only about three hours of sleep, but was able to survive since my older son also maintains an addiction to Cuban coffee, so I was able to make some first thing. My side quests had to wait though. Benjamin had an orthodontist appointment and his mom asked if I'd handle it. Of course, I jumped at the chance. One of the things you miss out here is the opportunity to do the mundane tasks of parenthood. I miss that stuff. So we proceeded to the orthodontist, and I was able to get a free toothbrush because I'd left mine in Colorado.

That didn't leave much time for touring. I needed to get back to the house to prep the car for something called a “clapout” which is where all the students and teachers applaud their friends for graduating while the adults drive by decorated cars. All this is foreign to me. As a member of Gen X, all we got when we graduated 8th grade was a carton of Marlboro Reds from the school principal.

But I was able to grab that Pub Sub and we decorated his mom's Mazda accordingly. Not too bad if I say so myself.

But Ben wasn't off the hook. I needed to see my gopher tortoises. Longtime followers will know this, but I lived out in the middle of nowhere in Highlands County, Florida while writing my dissertation on early Florida history. Pretty much my only companions were the vast numbers of tortoises in the area, and I used to post pictures of the ones I'd encounter. They're a keystone species and protected in the state, though overdevelopment of their habitat under Ron DeSantis has not helped their recovery. Anyway, I drove about an hour to a place where I knew could find some, and Ben and I were lucky enough to see five up close.

The next day we woke and all proceeded together to Ben's graduation. This is a big deal for Christine and I. We're divorced, yes, but it's good for the kids to see this from their parents. It doesn't have to be toxic.2

Ben attended a Catholic school but I was pretty happy to see that there was an image of his namesake, Obi-Wan Kenobi, in the stained glass window over the altar.3

And like that, my dude was ready for high school.

But I still had work to do. I jetted my way over to Honeymoon Beach for some long overdue communion with the water. I think most people are either mountain people or beach people. Try as I might, the mountains don't sing to me the way the water does. Besides, Hemingway never wrote much about mountains or the tiny fish in these creeks.

I've been joking a bit in this post, but i knew going to the water was a dangerous proposition. I knew how homesick it would make me. I understood that if I stood on the beach with my feet in the water, I would flirt with depression. I called Amy. Vented. Worried about the time I have remaining. Wondered if I'd ever make my mark on the world or if I should stop busting my ass and just settle in for the last 30 years. Her response was half listening and half tough love, both of which I needed.

I made it back in time to give my older boy Jackson some impromptu fishing lessons, working with him on casting and retrieving but also how to spot alligators in the water.4 He was less enthusiastic after the latter lesson.

I awoke the next morning at 3am to catch my flight back to Colorado, again asking Christine to bring Ben and I to the airport.5 And wouldn't you know it, the Cuban place in the airport was open. The lady behind the counter even complimented my Spanish.

I fought coming back to Colorado. I've made my peace with the place, but I don't know that I'll ever love it, and certainly not like I love Florida. I miss the humidity. The bugs. Disney. Publix. The Keys. And my tortoises. But Amy is here. And so are the Tribes and my work. Tomorrow we'll be back at it.

Jason

In this episode, we discuss the origins of brewing in the ancient world, the rise of lager and Pilsner in Central Europe, German immigration and American beer culture, the globalization of brands like Heineken and Corona, and the explosion of craft brewing in the United States. Along the way, we dive into Czech beer halls, IPAs, bourbon barrel stouts, the politics of drinking, and why beer has always been about more than what’s in the glass.

In the clip below, Jeffrey talks about how ancient beers actually tasted:

And later on, we get into Corona's unlikely marketing explosion on the world stage:

If you love history, food culture, globalization, craft beer, or simply a great conversation about the human need for community and connection, this episode is for you.

About our guest

Jeffrey Pilcher has been a leading figure in the emerging scholarly field of food history. From an early research focus on Mexico and Latin America, he has expanded his scope to food in world history. He is the author of ¡Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (1998), The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City (2006), and Food in World History (2006). His book, Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (2012), seeks to historicize authenticity and show how Mexico’s national cuisine developed through global interactions, particularly with Mexican American cooks.

Professor Pilcher is the articles editor for a new, peer-reviewed journal called Global Food History, which is published by Bloomsbury. He also edited the Oxford Handbook of Food History (2012) and a four-volume anthology from Bloomsbury entitled Food History: Critical and Primary Sources (2014).

His current book project examines the world history of beer over the past two hundred years, following the spread of European lager through networks of trade, migration, and empire. The research moves between the global and the local to explore how European brews became situated within the drinking cultures of Mexican pulque, Japanese sake, and South African sorghum beer, among others.

At the University of Toronto, Professor Pilcher teaches classes on the history of food and drink as well as Mexico, Latin America, and pirates of the Caribbean. He has a BS in mathematics and computer science from the University of Illinois, an MA in Mexican history from New Mexico State University, and a PhD in Mexican cultural history from Texas Christian University. He has taught at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy.

Get his book

Get Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity here on Amazon or wherever you get your books.

Without further ado, check out my conversation with Jeffrey Pilcher on Spotify below or find Reckoning with Jason Herbert wherever you listen to your podcasts:

That episode was a lot of fun. Thanks for reading this and thanks for being here. If you like the different form of history that I do, throw in on a monthly or yearly subscription. Cheers.

You may remember the former Real World contestant who somehow channeled that experience to becoming the 14th person in line for the Presidency, which absolutely makes sense in 2026. Duffy has been hard at work addressing the nation’s infrastructure needs since taking office, offering edicts like “dress better at the airport” and also “airports need to have gyms,” and one can one assume “airports need to have showers since everyone is bringing a suit and tie and gym clothes and towels before they catch their flights to Des Moines.”

More recently Duffy made waves with his plan to promote travel by engaging on a whirlwind roadtrip with his family across the nation. Now, we don’t need to worry about costs on this, since it was sponsored by corporations such as United Airlines, Toyota, Shell, Enterprise, Royal Caribbean, and America’s friendliest defense contractor, Boeing.

One might stop to think that there might be a slight conflict of interest between these travel companies and the Secretary of Transportation. One might forgive this lapse of judgment, though the bigger lapse in judgment might be that quite literally anyone be inspired to do literally anything by Sean Duffy.

I thought about Duffy’s on the job performance as I pumped my 85 octane gas to the tune of $4.997 per gallon in Colorado Springs, wondering exactly how anyone could actually afford a road trip right now.1 I thought about the crumbling state of infrastructure and how China recently constructed a new mammoth high speed rail facility in only three years. I thought about the price gouging at every airport in this country. And I wondered exactly what Duffy was doing to make moving around any better in the United States.

There has to be a word for Duffy. Inept? Yeah, sure. Lacks imagination. Incompetent? Nah, he’s doing…something. Corrupt? I don’t think so.2 I genuinely don’t think he saw the corporate sponsorship of his family vacation as a conflict of interest. So what word describes the Secretary of Transportation? And then I remembered.

Bazootyhead.

Sean Duffy is a Bazootyhead.

To be fair, I’m stealing this word from Dave Barry, but hopefully he won’t mind. But I can’t find anything evil about the man. I’d probably have a $37 lager in Newark with the man while wearing our finest Brioni sweatpants.

It’s hard to take his antics seriously. There’s a wonderful lack of selfawareness to Duffy that is kind of endearing. Bless your heart, might be an expression given to the man by my people in the South, were they not living in daily fear that their bridges might collapse a la the Eggners Ferry Bridge over Kentucky Lake. But don’t worry—all those constructions of the time are only another 14 years older!

But as I prepare to fly to Florida tonight to see my boys, I’m thinking about the sheer costs of getting to the airport, of parking at the airport, of actually having to use air instead of rail for most travel (though this one is an air travel necessity).

As a historian, we are maybe the most prone to fits of nostalgia. But so be it. I imagine the potential of Duffy’s Department to be this grand agent of change. We could use the government in the way that FDR did—put young men and women to work quite literally rebuilding this country. Better roads. New railways. Higher standards.

If Duffy were serious about drawing people together, he’d ditch his head nods to the Golden Age of Travel and get his hands dirty building the infrastructure that would make that a reality.

Jason

Prepping for this piece, I was reminded that Duffy had previously served as Acting NASA Administrator. Makes sense; the man does not live on this planet.

Thursday offered the rare opportunity to get back out into the woods with my colleagues to work on a project several years in the making. Our mission that day was to get out and inspect some of the extant trail signs at some of the Colorado 14ers (the 58 mountains over 14,000 feet tall). These trails are important because due to their size, these mountains attract a lot of attention from hikers, tourists, and people from Texas.2 That means good signs are important to advise people about where they are, what precautions to take (always pack water and layers in Colorado), what not to do (please, please, please don’t start fires where they are not allowed), and what animals visitors might see, like black bears, elk, bighorn sheep, and mountain lions.3

For me, this is an opportunity to help educate people on Colorado’s Indigenous heritage and continuity. As a historian, one of the things particularly important to me is telling better stories here in our forests. That doesn’t mean not telling the histories of settlers and other folks—they’re important too—I just want to make sure that the Tribes I know and love are being represented out here.

This can be tricky. There’s the whole thing about what stories do we tell? Whose stories do we tell? Who is telling them? Where do the signs go?

There’s some debate among academics about telling Native stories. And from my experience, there’s a whole cadre of professors out there willing to self-flagellate by calling themselves “settler scholars” in hopes of performing for some audience out there. That was in my mind for a long time too, until I had enough elders tell me not to worry about that stuff and just speak from the heart about what I knew to be true. Besides, I’m not an academic anymore. I’m just a guy with a Ph.D. and a hunting license.

We spent Thursday out near the town of Leadville, the highest city in the country—no not that kind. I mean elevation. Leadville stands at 10,154’ up in the air, meaning that the mountain trails were also way high up. For me, I have to physically see a space in order to understand it. It’s one thing to look at an image online or sit in on a virtual meeting, but I need to be physically present in order to conceptualize it.

If you haven’t been to this part of Colorado before, well, you should come out here and see it for yourself. It’s a mix of mountains, high plains, forests, streams, and marshlands. And every time I’m here I’m kind of blown away by it.4 In fact, I usually have to add time to my drive because I know I’m going to stop somewhere and take pictures. This was the case as I emerged from the Wilkerson Pass summit to see this landscape laid out before me:

Proceeding on with my colleagues in Leadville, we visited three sites to talk about what kinds of signs would best work there and what kind of information should be present. Colorado is home to a number of Tribes, which requires a balancing act of how I do my work. I never ever want to show favoritism or anything like that, and I am hyper aware of ensuring that every Tribe is included where they should be. Fortunately for me, Thursday’s destination was pretty solidly in Ute Country (though other peoples have a presence there too), so I was thinking about the conversations I’d had with Tribal Members about what they wanted me to say about them and their history. The big thing that continues to come up is reinforcing that Tribal Members are still here, and that they welcome outsiders to visit and commune respectfully with their homelands. So when I think about what to write, it’s with this in mind. And by the way, if you don’t know, traditional Ute lands are HUGE. Take a look at this map from the Golden History Museum:

They’re also pretty damn beautiful, as witnessed in a few of these photos we took in the field:

And along the way, the four of us talked about why we worked for the Forest Service. The common bond was that we liked the idea of giving back to our society and that there was a sense of pride when we wore that shield on our chests. Working here means belonging to something we feel is important.

And then we also found sticks, meaning that for a moment, we could imagine we were not just Forest Service employees, but also Jedi. I sent these images on to my boss in unending attempt to make him question exactly what the heck it is I do with my free time.

So there you go. A short (and not Forest Service endorsed) visit to see your public lands in public hands. Every day is a good day to learn a little more about Native history out here.

Jason

Hey thanks for reading this and thanks for being here. If you like these takes on history, pop culture, and public lands, become a paid subscriber. Buttons below.

But I didn’t actually know Bill Brands, the dude who writes all these books and teaches at the University of Texas. So when my friend Sara Hayet over at Penguin Random House reached out about him coming on the podcast, I jumped at the opportunity. Now here’s a little inside baseball on doing these pods: usually I request the press to put me in direct contact with the guest. It helps to build rapport ahead of time and I can also make sure the guest knows what to expect so that they have a great experience. But sometimes, the guests are big names in their respective professions and the press kind of acts as liaisons between them and media. I get it. Guys like Bill or Jelani Cobb write their books and then need to go on tour. Doing all of these emails is time consuming—trust me I know. But if I really want the guest, I’ll agree and hope for the best, which is what happened in this particular episode.2

Bill’s episode was a bit different than most. If you’ve listened to the podcast before, you’ll know that there’s usually a bit of banter that goes on before we ever start recording. I like to bullshit with the guest. Make them feel at ease. And if I’m friends with them, there’s usually juicy stories that don’t make it on the air. But Bill didn’t know me, and I can only assume I was one of several episodes that he was recording that day and I think I hit record within two minutes of logging on. That meant that I needed to talk to the man about his work while getting to know the guy, and building a relationship while discussing the minutiae of the Seven Years’ War can be a bit challenging.

I had finished the book a day earlier so I had a sense of Bill’s thoughts, so in prepping this episode, I had a single question in mind: who was George Washington as a person? What made this guy tick? And also, who the Hell was H.W. Brands as a person?3

Now look, I don’t want to give away Bill’s book here. He’s trying to sell the damn thing. And I don’t want to give away my podcast conversation, either. I want you to listen to the damn thing. But I’ve had a few things in my head since we recorded that I wanted to share with you.

First, Bill Brands is a really freaking cool dude. It took the better part of 90 seconds to decide I liked the guy, and as our producer noted, you could hear him and I really open up and riff as the conversation got going. There’s a reason he’s been on television so much- the man is a hell of a storyteller. But there were a couple moments early on when I knew that this was my kind of guy, especially when we talked about writing yet another book on George Washington. I asked Bill if that got in his head, worrying about being another take on this larger than life human. He told me that he actually read very little secondary sources on Washington, doing his best to construct his own opinion via the primary sources.

Good god I loved that.

As a historian, you spend hours and hours and hours in graduate school learning not about the past but about historiography, which is where other historians talk more about still other historians more than the actual past. It turns into a grand case of name dropping and a self congratulations that always annoyed me. Frankly I have never been interested in comparing my work to someone else’s work—I just want to lay out my ideas on a particular subject matter. Hearing Bill say something very similar was like breathing fresh air.

Plus, Bill was interested in the same questions as me- who was George Washington the human being? So our conversation ran the gamut of his life—boyhood, the French and Indian War, his relationship to Martha, his time as a planter, the War, the Presidency, and a lengthy discussion on George Washington the enslaver. I asked Bill some bigger questions about whether the United States would have happened without Washington, along with which Presidents the man himself would have admired.

In the clip below, Bill talks about something that often gets overlooked: Washington’s brilliant political acumen:

And here’s more inside baseball: I prepped Bill to expect a 90 minute conversation, but we easily could have talked for double that time. It was a enjoyable as it was informative. And I’m excited for you to hear it.

About our guest

Dr. H. W. Brands was born in Portland, Oregon, where he lived until he went to California for college. He attended Stanford University and studied history and mathematics. After graduating he became a traveling salesman, with a territory that spanned the West from the Pacific to Colorado. His wanderlust diminished after several trips across the Great Basin, and he turned to sales of a different sort, namely teaching.

For nine years he taught mathematics and history in high school and community college. Meanwhile he resumed his formal education, earning graduate degrees in mathematics and history, concluding with a doctorate in history from the University of Texas at Austin. He worked as an oral historian at the University of Texas Law School for a year, then became a visiting professor of history at Vanderbilt University. In 1987 he joined the history faculty at Texas A&M University, where he taught for seventeen years. In 2005 he returned to the University of Texas, where he holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History.

He has written thirty books, coauthored or edited five others, and published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic Monthly, the Smithsonian, the National Interest, the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, the Political Science Quarterly, American History, and many other newspapers, magazines and journals. His writings have received critical and popular acclaim. The First American and Traitor to His Class were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize. Several of his books have been bestsellers.

Brands is a member of various honorary societies, including the Society of American Historians and the Philosophical Society of Texas. He is a regular guest on national radio and television programs, and is frequently interviewed by the American and foreign press. His writings have been published in several countries and translated into German, French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Find his new book:

Get American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington at the link or wherever you get your books.

And at the risk of giving you yet another substack to read, Bill has a new substack that I subscribe to and you might want to as well.

Alright, that was a lot of writing to get you to listen to something. But hopefully you’ll check it out, but this is like having your own conversation with a guy you’ve almost known for thirty years. Links below. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

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Jason