Across human history and throughout this very diverse planet, water has defined every aspect of human life: from the molecular, biological and ecological to the cultural, religious, economic and political. Water stands at the foundation of most of what we do as humans. At the same time, water resources — the need for clean and accessible water supplies for drinking, agriculture and power production — will likely represent one of the most complicated dilemmas of the twenty-first century.

In this presentation, Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching at Ohio State University speaks on the history of water. The talk is moderated by Bart Elmore, Associate Professor of Environmental History and Core Faculty, Sustainability Institute, Ohio State University.

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley talks about his new book, "Silent Spring Revolution," which chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.  

With the detonation of the Trinity explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945, the United States took control of Earth’s destiny for the first time. After the Truman administration dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, a grim new epoch had arrived. During the early Cold War years, the federal government routinely detonated nuclear devices in the Nevada desert and the Marshall Islands. Not only was nuclear fallout a public health menace, but entire ecosystems were contaminated with radioactive materials. During the 1950s, an unprecedented postwar economic boom took hold, with America becoming the world’s leading hyperindustrial and military giant. But with this historic prosperity came a heavy cost: oceans began to die, wilderness vanished, the insecticide DDT poisoned ecosystems, wildlife perished, and chronic smog blighted major cities.  

In "Silent Spring Revolution," Douglas Brinkley pays tribute to those who combated the mauling of the natural world in the Long Sixties: Rachel Carson (a marine biologist and author), David Brower (director of the Sierra Club), Barry Commoner (an environmental justice advocate), Coretta Scott King (an antinuclear activist), Stewart Udall (the secretary of the interior), William O. Douglas (Supreme Court justice), Cesar Chavez (a labor organizer), and other crusaders are profiled with verve and insight.  

Carson’s book "Silent Spring," published in 1962, depicted how detrimental DDT was to living creatures. The exposé launched an ecological revolution that inspired such landmark legislation as the Wilderness Act (1964), the Clean Air Acts (1963 and 1970), and the Endangered Species Acts (1966, 1969, and 1973). In intimate detail, Brinkley extrapolates on such epic events as the Donora (Pennsylvania) smog incident, JFK’s Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Great Lakes preservation, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the first Earth Day.  

With the United States grappling with climate change and resource exhaustion, Douglas Brinkley’s meticulously researched and deftly written "Silent Spring Revolution" reminds us that a new generation of twenty-first-century environmentalists can save the planet from ruin.

This is a production of the College of Arts & Sciences and Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit http://origins.osu.edu.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone to extraordinary lengths to commemorate the Second World War. Even though the war ended over 77 years ago, Putin has made World War II memory central to contemporary Russian national identity.  This talk will explore how war remembrance serves Putin’s interests, including with regard to his war in Ukraine.  

Panelists:  David L. Hoffmann, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, Department of History, The Ohio State University  and Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator), Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching, The Ohio State University  

This talk is a presentation by the Clio Society in the Ohio State University Department of History.

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/listen/history-talk/world-war-ii-memory-putins-russia

The United States was a nation forged in the ideological fires of a democratic revolution to overturn monarchy and imperial control. Yet many American leaders and citizens ever since have denied or rejected a foreign policy guided by ideology.

Why? If ideas and ideologies help us to order and explain the world, often serving as rationales for (in)action as well as explanations for success or failure, how does the history of U.S. foreign relations appear differently when viewed through the lens of ideology? In short, how has and does ideology drive U.S foreign relations?

Panelists:

• Christopher McKnight Nichols, Professor of History and Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies at The Ohio State University.  An Andrew Carnegie Fellowship Award winner and Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, Nichols is a frequent public commentator on U.S. politics and foreign policy. Nichols is the author or editor of six books, including most recently Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories (2022).
• Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator), Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching, The Ohio State University.

A in-text version of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/watch/transatlantic-telephone-iphone

As the hazards of carbon emissions increase and governments around the world seek to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, the search for clean and affordable alternate energies has become an increasing priority in the twenty-first century. However, one nation has already been producing such a fuel for almost a century: Brazil. Its sugarcane-based ethanol is the most efficient biofuel on the global fuel market, and the South American nation is the largest biofuel exporter in the world.

In this talk, Jennifer Eaglin discusses her new book and offers a historical account of the industry's origins. The Brazilian government mandated a mixture of ethanol in the national fuel supply in the 1930s, and the success of the program led the military dictatorship to expand the industry and create the national program Proálcool in 1975. Private businessmen, politicians, and national and international automobile manufacturers together leveraged national interests to support this program. By 1985, over 95% of all new cars in the country ran exclusively on ethanol, and, after consumers turned away from them when oil was cheap, the government successfully promoted flex fuel cars instead. Yet, as she shows, the growth of this “green energy” came with associated environmental and social costs in the form of water pollution from liquid waste generated during ethanol distillation and exploitative rural labor practices that reshaped Brazil's countryside.

Speakers:

Jennifer Eaglin, Assistant Professor of History and Sustainability Institute Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator), Associate Professor of History, Director, Goldberg Center

Co-sponsors of this episode: 

The Center for Latin American Studies, https://clas.osu.edu/ The Sustainability Institute, https://si.osu.edu/

Connect with us! Email: Origins@osu.eduTwitter: @OriginsOSU Instagram: @OriginsOSU Facebook: @OriginsOSU Find transcripts, background reading, and more at origins.osu.edu

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/listen/history-talk/sweet-fuel-remarkable-story-brazilian-ethanol

...And Water For All is an educational documentary about water affordability in Ohio. The film aims to amplify the voices of those who work toward providing clean, affordable water for all. Even though the movie is set in Ohio, many of its lessons will be relevant for those concerned with water affordability in other places. 

This project was made possible by the support of the School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Ohio Water Resources Center  at The Ohio State University.

Ohio State University History Professor David Hoffmann examines some key moments in recent Russian and Ukrainian history, with particular attention to the breakup of the Soviet Union, Putin’s rise to power in Russia, and the 2014 Revolution in Ukraine. 

Speaker | David L. Hoffmann, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History. Professor Hoffmann is a specialist in Russian and Soviet history, with a particular focus on the political, social, and cultural history of Stalinism.  

Moderator | Angela Brintlinger, Professor and Interim Department Chair of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures and Director of the Center for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies' "Understanding the War in Ukraine: Weekly Wednesday Speaker Series."

Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit http://origins.osu.edu.

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/listen/history-talk/understanding-war-ukraine-insights-recent-past-1991-present

Bart Elmore takes us on an authoritative and eye-opening journey into how the company Monsanto came to have outsized influence over our food system. Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds, merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018―but its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us. Elmore examines Monsanto’s astounding evolution from a scrappy chemical startup to a global agribusiness powerhouse. Monsanto used seed money derived from toxic products―including PCBs and Agent Orange―to build an agricultural empire, promising endless bounty through its genetically engineered technology.

Bart Elmore is Associate Professor of Environmental History at The Ohio State University.

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/listen/history-talk/seed-money-monsantos-past-and-our-food-future

Learn about an exciting new collaboration that marries photographs and words to bring Black history to life. Picturing Black History (https://www.picturingblackhistory.org/) is a collaborative project between Getty Images and Ohio State’s Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective (http://origins.osu.edu) that contributes to the ongoing public dialogue on the significance of Black history and Black life. The project embraces the power of images to capture stories of oppression and resistance, perseverance and resilience, freedom dreams, imagination, and joy within the United States and around the globe.

To view the photographs in this podcast, please view the video version which is available at https://youtu.be/L2rfMgk6Abg.

Participants:

- Bob Ahern | Director of Archive Photography for Getty Images

- Dawn Chitty, (Ed.D.) | Director of Education at the African American Civil War Museum

- Daniela Edmeier (Moderator) | Ph.D. Candidate History, Ohio State, and Managing Editor of Picturing Black History

- Damarius Johnson | Ph.D. student History, Ohio State, and Associate Editor of Picturing Black History

- James Morgan | Programming Consultant with the African American Civil War Museum

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/listen/history-talk/picturing-black-history

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been described as a “a crime against peace” and “Europe’s Darkest Hour” since World War II. It is an attack that is sure to restructure the international order along with the lives of all Ukrainian citizens. Our panelists assist us in understanding these tragic and world-changing events.

This webinar addresses the following questions:

Why has Russia invaded and why now?

How have Ukrainians responded to the threat of war and to the pressures from Russia over the years?

What role does Russian and Ukrainian nationalism play in this crisis?

What are long-term patterns of Russian-Ukrainian relations? What should the rest of the world do in the world do in the face of this crisis?

Panelists:

· Angela Brintlinger (Moderator), Director, Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, The Ohio State University

· Shawn Conroy, PhD Candidate, History, The Ohio State University

· Marianna Klochko, Associate Professor of Sociology, The Ohio State University

· Philip Kopatz, Graduate Student, Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, The Ohio State University

· Myroslava Mudrak, Professor Emeritus, Department of History of Art, The Ohio State University

· Mykyta Tyshchenko, Graduate Student, Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, The Ohio State University

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/listen/history-talk/russian-invasion-ukraine