Recapping the move to Blusky

Well folks, we made it. After waiting and waiting and hoping things would improve over on twitter, we finally made the move to Blusky for the Sunday night watch party. And I am so glad we did.

Last night’s viewing of Bob Marley: One Love may have shattered our participation records (if we kept them). HATM has trended on twitter a lot over the last six years and maybe the only night that rivaled last night in terms of engagement and enthusiasm was when we did Hamilton way back when. Last night was huge.

One thing became apparent in the days leading up to Sunday, and that’s that a considerable amount of the community had left twitter and were just waiting for us to come to Blusky. I always talk about how Elon ruined twitter and took the wind from our sails but I don’t think I actually internalized just how much he hurt this community. Last night felt like getting all our friends back together after a long time away. And I am so glad.

A special thanks to Rachel Gunter for putting together some instructions on social media about the move and helping to teach folks how to engage with the community. I put this on the Historians At The Movies Instagram post tonight, but if I am the Captain, then Rachel is certainly the Executive Officer of HATM. I hope she gets to see Montana one day.

Sorry, Rachel.

There were also a LOT of new faces in the crowd last night and maybe some of you are reading this this morning. I don’t often do recaps, but last night’s movie felt like maybe it deserved one. Thank you so much for being there and being here right now.

In some ways, last night felt like a reboot of sorts. We like to say that every film is a history movie around here, but our audience clearly wants more straight forward “history movies” in the rotation with maybe some esoteric choices here and there. So between last week’s 1917 and last night’s Bob Marley: One Love and this week’s choice (more on that in a bit), I feel like we are back on that path.

Some of y’all are finding the podcast for the first time. I’m flattered at the response. The pod operates a bit differently. They are deeper dives using movies to get at the histories behind them. Sometimes they are serious, sometimes they are silly. But it’s always between friends. And I think that’s what makes us different. Anyway, if you’d like to hear three badass scholars of archaeology talk about Raiders of the Lost Ark, do I have an episode for you. See the links below. And you might want to subscribe because 9 to 5 drops later this week.

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That said, this week we are going to spend some time with Winston Churchill and how he reckoned with the start of WWII. So join us on Blusky and Netflix this Sunday August 18th at 8pm eastern for Darkest Hour. Trailer below.

It’s a big week and I’ve a lot more to share with you later on, so with that, thanks for being part of the community. I hope wherever you are that you are doing well.

J