Reckoning with Jason Herbert

• Episode 171: Sahara: The Franchise That Wasn’t

  Sahara had everything going for it: a big cast led by ultra hot actors Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz, a devoted fan base of author Clive Cussler’s novels, and a big budget courtesy of Disney. And then it came out and flopped. But that doesn’t mean it’s still not fun and it doesn’t mean that we can’t have real  conversations about history. In fact, the movie gives us the perfect opportunity to talk about artifact recovery and repatriation. Joining me today are Colin Colbourn and Derek Abbey from Project Recover, a nonprofit group dedicated to searching for and locating American MIAs and POWs from conflicts around the world. this is a cool conversation about both the movie and the process of bringing American soldiers home. 

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• Episode 170: The Founder of the American West You've Never Heard Of

  This week Max Perry Mueller drops in to talk about Wakara, a Ute man who shaped the modern American West. We also talk about the complexities of Native American identity, the impact of Manifest Destiny, and the ethical considerations in writing Native history. Max also highlights the importance of cultural exchange, environmental stewardship, and the ongoing struggles for repatriation and rematriation of Indigenous remains.About our guest:Max Perry Mueller (PhD, Harvard University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies. He is also a fellow at the Center for Great Plains Studies and teaches in the Department of History, the Honors Program, and the Global Studies program.Mueller is a theorist and historian of race and religion in American history, with particular interest in Indigenous and African-American religious experiences, epistemologies, and cosmologies. The central animating question of his scholarship is how the act of writing—especially the writing of historical narratives—has affected the creation and contestation of "race" as a category of political and religious division in American history.His first book, Race and the Making of the Mormon People (The University of North Carolina Press, 2017), examines how the three original American races—"red," "black," and "white"—were constructed as literary projects before these racial categories were read onto bodies of Americans of Native, African, and European descent. Choice described Race and the Making of the Mormon People as an "outstanding analysis of the role of race among Mormons." The book was featured in The Atlantic and Harvard Divinity School Bulletin and has been taught at, among others, Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford Universities. His next book, Wakara's America, will be the first full-length biography of the complex and often paradoxical Ute warrior chief, horse thief, slave trader, settler colonist, one-time Mormon, and Indian resistance leader.Mueller's research and teaching also connect with his public scholarship. Mueller has written on religion, race, and politics for outlets including Slate, The New Republic, and The Atlantic. He also co-founded Religion & Politics, the online journal of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, whose mission is to bring the best scholarship on religion and American public life to audiences beyond the academy.

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• Episode 169: Is Pompeii the best bad movie/good history ever made?

  2014's Pompeii is all over the place. Designed to be a Roman apocalypse story with a star making turn by Game of Thrones' Kit Harrington, Pompeii fizzled at the box office. But strangely, it's a phenomenal film to talk about the Roman empire and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Historian and archaeologist Dr. Steven Tuck joins in to talk everything this film gets right and wrong about Roman history. Easily one of our best episodes ever.About our guest:Steven L. Tuck is a professor of classics, who is currently head of classics at Miami University. He teaches many classics courses at Miami University, especially those relating to the arts.He received a Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from University of Michigan in 1997, and he is the author of the textbook A History of Roman Art. In addition to his teaching, he has lectured the general public at Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder, Yale University, the University of Puget Sound, Baylor University and for the Getty Villa. He has also appeared in the media discussing classics, including in a 2019 feature for Atlas Obscura on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. and its impact on refugees and migration in the ancient world. For the Vergilian Society, he managed the Villa Vergiliana in Cumae, and organized educational programs there. He is also the author of the brand new book Escape from Pompeii: The Great Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and Its Survivors.

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• Episode 168: How Colorado Springs became the epicenter of evangelical capitalism with Will Schultz

  How did a small town south of Denver emerge as the center of evangelical capitalism after World War II? Historian Dr. William Schultz explains how evangelicals' faith intertwined with a specific interpretation of Americanism, especially during the Cold War era, and how this allowed them to transition from the margins of society to the epicenter of conservative dialogue.About our guest:William Schultz is a historian of American religion with an interest in the intersection of religion, politics, and capitalism.  Schultz is currently finishing his first book, Jesus Springs: Evangelical Capitalism and the Fate of an American City (under contract with UNC Press), which explains how the confluence of evangelical Christianity and free-market capitalism transformed the city of Colorado Springs into an epicenter of American conservatism. His next project, The Wages of Sin: Faith, Fraud, and Religious Freedom in Modern America, uses cases of financial fraud between the 1920s and 1990s to explore how Americans have struggled with questions of religious authority and authenticity. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, Schultz was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a faculty fellow at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. 

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• Episode 167: Ken Burns' The American Revolution (Historians' Commentary)

  It's a special podcast here at Reckoning. Early American historians Dr. Liz Covart, Dr. Michael Hattem, and Dr. Craig Bruce Smith joined me to live stream Ken Burns' new series The American Revolution and answer questions from people around the world. It's kind of like a Director's Commentary, only if the director was actually four people with degrees in history. This was a blast.About our guest:Dr. Liz Covart is a historian of the American Revolution, and the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Ben Franklin’s World.  In 2022, she co-founded Clio Digital Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that uses digital media to foster better, more robust understandings of history. And in 2026, she will launch Scholar.DIY, a public benefit company that empowers scholars to transform their expertise into compelling digital stories— building trust, promoting media literacy, and strengthening democracy along the way.Dr. Michael Hattem is an American historian, with interests in early America, the American Revolution, and historical memory. He received his PhD in History at Yale University and has taught at The New School and Knox College. He is the author of The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History (Yale University Press, 2024), which was a finalist for the 2025 George Washington Prize, and Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2020). He is currently the Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.Hattem’s work has been featured or mentioned in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post, as well as many other mainstream media publications and outlets. He has served as a historical consultant or contributor for a number of projects and organizations, curated historical exhibitions, appeared in television documentaries, and authenticated and written catalogue essays for historical document auctions.Dr. Craig Bruce Smith  is a professor of history at National Defense University in the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) in Norfolk, VA. He authored American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era, Securing Victory 1781-1783 (out soon), and co-authored George Washington’s Lessons in Ethical Leadership. Smith earned his PhD in American history from Brandeis University. Previously, he was an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), an assistant professor of history, and the director of the history program at William Woods University, and he has taught at additional colleges, including Tufts University.He specializes in American Revolutionary and early American and military history, specifically focusing on George Washington, honor, ethics, war, the founders, transnational ideas, and national identity. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, and early American cultural, intellectual, and political history. Smith was named a Jack Miller Center Scholar in 2025 and also serves as a member of their History Advisory Council. He is also the co-host of National Defense University's JAWbone podcast. 

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