In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, police killed unarmed 17-year-old Bobby Hutton, and Aaron Dixon decided it was time to join the Black Panther Party.

Thousands of protestors joined Indigenous activists at Standing Rock to fight for clean drinking water. At its core, this fight echoes the legacy of broken treaties and settler industrialization. Producer Lily Sones talks with Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) about how industrialization halted traditional indigenous food ways and how extractive industries cause health effects across today’s indigenous communities.

The clothes we wear say a lot about how we express ourselves. But an investigation into how these clothes ended up in our closets reveals a complex history dating back 400 years ago at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Producer Ashley Kim sits down with Sofi Thanhauser, the author of Worn: A People’s History of Clothing to learn how clothing can teach us about economics, gender and imperialism.

Spoken word poetry is an oral tradition dating back centuries. So why is this form of poetry not always taken seriously? Producer Sydne Clarke sits down with Dr. Joshua Bennett, the author of Spoken Word: A Cultural History. His nonfiction debut is a personal investigation into the history of spoken word, specifically the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. This is a cultural hub that started in the Lower East Side living room of Miguel Algarin.

In World War One, millions of soldiers saw industrial warfare unlike anything they’ve seen before: artillery shells, flame throwers, poison gas. Those who saw the war on the frontlines came home with psychological wounds the world had never quite seen before. At one military hospital in Scotland named Craiglockhart, early psychiatrists treat PTSD and soldiers turn to poetry and brotherhood to heal.

Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and products like Chat GPT have been fueled by Venture Capital. In fact, some argue that Venture Capital has shaped our modern technology more than any other entity. But what is Venture Capital and what makes it unique?

J. Edgar Hoover was a man of contradictions. As the Director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, he spearheaded homophobic, racist, and anti-communist policies – which arguably shaped half a century of the United States. But he also had an intimate personal relationship with a man and he believed in the role of government to support social conservatism.

Women including Ida B. Wells and Nellie Bly were on the front edge of investigative journalism in the 1800s. But even with these historical trailblazers, why were women excluded from reporting hard news until recent history?

From banned books to freedom of speech in academic settings, censorship is a topic that affects the everyday lives of young people.

UnTextbooked heads to sunny San Diego, California, for the ASU+GSV Summit and we brought our microphones with us! Host Gabe Hostin and founding producer Victor Ye talked to innovative EdTech leaders, teachers and social entrepreneurs to discuss how we can collaboratively write a new chapter in the history of education. Plus, they ask the question, what else do we need to unlearn?

In this episode, our host Gabe Hostin and our Program Coordinator CeCe Payne discuss excerpts from episodes we couldn’t stop thinking about this season:

Did the American Civil War ever truly end?

Is the U.S. government spying on its own citizens?

How do democracies die?

In 2020, the Supreme Court was on the verge of transformation. Seismic events like the death of former Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the appointment of conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett, and a polarizing presidential election laid the groundwork for major changes in decision-making seen today.

Is our democracy in danger? In the years after Trump’s presidency, it’s tempting to say “not anymore,” but nowadays threats to democracy are no longer as obvious as a military coup or revolution. Instead, a democracy in danger manifests in much more subtle ways including: the steady decline of longstanding political norms and weakening of essential institutions such as the United States press and its courts system, both of which are already in jeopardy.

Although the American Civil War ended many years ago, the fight for “a more perfect union” never quite did. A few months after the union army’s victory, confederate-style, white supremacist resistance emerged even stronger than before.

The Cold War was marked by a bitter rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Although former WWII NATO allies, what emerged was an atmosphere of constant fear for national security and a dangerous nuclear arms race.

In the 1930s, six naval powers roamed the world’s oceans: Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan. Each nation was subject to the Washington Naval Treaty, which granted 60% of the world’s battleships to the Royal and US Navy, 20% to Japan, and 20% to France and Italy. However by 1945, the United States Navy had expanded to a fleet larger than that of all the great powers. What exactly did that mean in the wake of WWII?

By 1945, the Soviet Union was a founding member of the United Nations and a lobal superpower controlling half of Europe. By 1991, with five thousand nuclear missiles at its disposal and an army four million strong, the USSR was a formidable rival for the United States. But by the end of the year, the union would meet its untimely demise.

As human beings, our privacy is one of our most basic needs and most sacred rights. However, in the modern information age, these rights are constantly under attack. How does the American federal government collect our data and what happens when the institutions meant to protect our privacy opts to instead use that information for their gain?