Then and Now: Global History and Culture
"Then and Now" connects events from the past with today's news headlines. Current episodes are history topics from my global culture and history course. In 2006, the podcast started with students in my introductory global history and culture course at the Univ of Minn. Previous episodes reviewed history topics, special music episodes connecting a country's culture with its music, interviews with voices of students and community members as they were part of historical events, and other topics. Episodes featured independent music artists. Share comments about the podcast with David Arendale, arendale@umn.edu
Episodes
(Bonus) The Day After is an American television film that first aired on November 20, 1983 on the ABC television network. The film postulates a fictional war between the NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact over Germany that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas; Kansas City, Missouri; and several family farms ne...
(Bonus) The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), nicknamed the "Star Wars program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). The concept was announced on March 23, 1983, by President Ronald Reagan,[1] a voc...
(Bonus) The post–Cold War era is a period of history that follows the end of the Cold War, which represents history after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. This period saw many former Soviet republics become sovereign nations, as well as the introduction of market economies in eastern Europe. This period also marked the United States becoming the world's s...
S16-E01 Topics: Strategic Defense Initiative, The Day After movie, Eastern Europe Collapse, Post Cold War Era.
(Bonus) The Korean conflict is an ongoing conflict based on the division of Korea between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and South Korea (Republic of Korea), both of which claim to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea. During the Cold War, North Korea was backed by the Soviet Union, China, and other allies, while South Korea was backed by the United States, United Kingdom, and other Western allies.
...(Bonus) The domino theory is a geopolitical theory which posits that increases or decreases in democracy in one country tend to spread to neighboring countries in a domino effect.[1] It was prominent in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s in the context of the Cold War, suggesting that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countr...
(Bonus) The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur Ba...
S16-E05 Topics: Korean Conflict, Domino Theory of Communist Conquest, Cuban Missile Crisis, Israel Established, Arab-Israel Wars.
(Bonus) The Truman Doctrine is an American foreign policy that pledges American "support for democracies against authoritarian threats."[1] The doctrine originated with the primary goal of countering the growth of the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It was announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947,[2] and furt...
(Bonus) The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred $13.3 billion (equivalent to $173 billion in 2023) in economic recovery programs to Western European economies after the end of World War II. Replacing an earlier proposal for a Morgenthau Plan, it operated for four years beginning on April 3, 19...
(Bonus) During the Cold War, the Iron Curtain is a political metaphor used to describe the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West, its allies and neutral states. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the...
(Bonus) The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berli...
S16-E04 Topics: Marshall Plan for Western Europe, Truman Doctrine to protect democracies, Berlin Airlift to Avoid Russian Blockade.
(Bonus) The Warsaw Pact (WP),[d] formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA),[e] was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The term "Warsaw Pact" commonly re...
(Bonus) The Cold War originated in the breakdown of relations between the two main victors in World War II: United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, in the years 1945–1949. The origins derive from diplomatic (and occasional military) confrontations stretching back decades, followed by the issue of political boundaries in Central Europe and non-democratic control of the ...
(Bonus) The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc, the Socialist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was the coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism, in opposition to the capitalist Western Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was often called the "Second ...
S16-E03 Topics: Arming of the East and the West, formation of NATO pact, formation of the WARSAW pact.
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(Bonus) On the Beach is a 1959 American post-apocalyptic science fiction drama film from United Artists starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins. Produced and directed by Stanley Kramer,[2] it is based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel On the Beach depicting the aftermath of a nuclear war.[3]
(Bonus) Fail Safe is a 1964 Cold War thriller film directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. The film follows a crisis caused by a critical error that sends a group of U.S. bombers to destroy Moscow, and the ensuing attempts to stop the bomber group before it can deploy a nuclear first strike. The film features performances by actors Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, Walter M...
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