Dark Myths Show of the Month: A New Winter

In the mood for an unnerving, fast-paced, Serial-esque show set in the UK? A New Winter, the Dark Myths show of the month for June, might just be what you’re looking for.  If you haven’t visited the Dark Myths page in a while, pay us a visit — we’ve added a number of fantastic shows over the last few months.

In the words of the creator:

“It’s the winter of 2000 in a small village in the UK and a family have been brutally murdered in suspicious circumstances. The only evidence is one set of footprints in the snow leading to the murder scene – but nothing leaving it. This is a man’s first hand account of what happened in this brutal winter where over 25 people were murdered or had disappeared.”

Dark Myths Show of the Month (May 2017): Bohemican

Pete Collman’s Bohemican is a podcast about something I know almost nothing about: Czech history. I say “almost nothing” because I’ve listened to a few of his fascinating and well-delivered episodes and now I want to learn more! Bohemican covers a huge array of Czech topics across several centuries, including food, culture, and history ranging from medieval castles to Czech involvement in the World Wars. Highly recommended. You can Czech it out (sorry) at http://darkmyths.org/bohemican/.

 

 

Dark Myths Show of the Month: Rumor Flies

Been a while since we did one of these! While you’re waiting for the next episode, be sure to give these guys a listen. Rumor Flies is a very entertaining conversational show that tackles all kinds of topics from history to urban legends. The hosts have phenomenal rapport and I learn something new every episode. Check it out at http://www.rumorfliespodcast.com or at http://darkmyths.org/rumor-flies.

The Hiatus Continues

Dear listeners,

As the semester at grad school becomes ever more crowded, I realize that there’s no way I can realistically produce another episode before school ends in late April. I’m sorry to tell those of you who have been anticipating another episode that you’ll have to wait for a while longer, but for the sake of my own sanity, that’s the way it has to be for the next couple of months before I can start producing again. In the meantime, I’ll be more active on Twitter and will be posting the occasional blog entry on WordPress.

Thanks for your patience. Inward Empire will return as soon as possible.

All the best,

SD

Episode 6: 1877: The Great Strike and the Red Specter of the Commune (Part Two)

Stream or download it for free on iTunes, Stitcher, or Podomatic.

When a railroad employee walks off the job in Baltimore, it triggers a violent chain of events that engulfs the industrialized North. From Pittsburgh to San Francisco, city after city erupts in rioting and street battles as railroad men, factory workers, and the unemployed take on militias, paramilitary groups, and the US Army in a spontaneous revolt against the new industrial order. Railyards burn and urban neighborhoods become battlegrounds. Pundits, politicians, corporate leaders, socialists, and union leaders hail the birth of an exterminationist class war. And through the smoke, the dawn of a new era can be glimpsed…

Music: “Fratres (for violin and piano)” by Arvo Part, from the album Tabula Rasa (ECM Records, 1984).

Bibliography

SECONDARY SOURCES

Michael Bellesiles, 1877: America’s Year of Living Violently. New York: The New Press, 2010.

Jeremy Brecher, Strike! Revised, Expanded, and Updated Edition. Oakland: PM Press, 2014.

Robert Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1959.

Philip Foner, The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1977.

Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era. New York: Norton, 1987.

Heather Cox Richardson, West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War. New Haven & London, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.

Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture & Society in the Gilded Age. New York: Hill & Wang, 1982.

PRIMARY SOURCES

Joseph Dacus, Annals of the Great Strike. Chicago: L.T. Palmer & Co, 1877.

Rutherford B Hayes, The Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes, Nineteenth President of the United States, edited by Charles Richard Williams.Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society 1922

Allan Pinkerton, Strikers, Communists, Tramps, and Detectives. New York: GW Carleton, 1878.

Images for 1877: The Great Strike and the Red Specter of the Commune (Part Two)

Ambrose Bierce and Ernst Junger on the Fascination of Wartime Death

Ambrose Bierce, What I Saw of Shiloh, 1881:

“I obtained leave to go down into the valley of death and gratify a reprehensible curiosity. …

“The fire had swept every superficial foot of [the battlefield], and at every step I sank into ashes to the ankle. … Along a line … lay the bodies, half buried in ashes; some in the unlovely looseness of attitude denoting sudden death by the bullet, but by far the greater number in postures of agony that told of the tormenting flame. Their clothing was half burnt away – their hair and beard entirely; the rain had come too late to save their nails. Some were swollen to double girth; others shriveled to manikins. According to degree of exposure, their faces were bloated and black or yellow and shrunken. The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands had cursed each countenance with a hideous grin. Faugh! I cannot catalogue the charms of these gallant gentlemen who had got what they enlisted for.”

Ernst Junger, The Storm of Steel, 1920:

“[I would] like to say a word or two about this first glimpse of horrors. It is a moment so important in the experience of war. The horrible was undoubtedly a part of that irresistible attraction that drew us into the war. A long period of law and order, such as our generation had behind it, produces a real craving for the abnormal … Among other questions that occupied us was this: what does it look like when there are dead lying about? …

“And now at our first glance of horror we had a feeling that is difficult to describe … In the case of something quite unknown the eye alone can make nothing of it. So it was that we had to stare again and again at these things that we had never seen before, without being able to give them any meaning. It was too entirely unfamiliar. We looked at all these dead with dislocated limbs, distorted faces, and the hideous colours of decay, as though we walked in a dream through a garden full of strange plants, and we could not realize at first what we had all round us.”