The Past and Stuff
An irreverent, geeky, and occasionally gory History podcast where we discuss the past and the stuff that made it. Mixing material culture, microhistory, and storytelling, we find new angles from which to examine world history through strange and interesting objects. We are two history professors from different cultures and a generation apart in age. Join us as we laugh and learn together.
Episodes
October 6, 2024 • 123 mins
Check us out at thepastandstuff.com for images of the historical artifacts we discuss and our blog.
In this first episode of Season two, we are gearing up to Halloween. In Stuff in the News this week Ashley talks about NYC Mayor Eric Adams taking bribes from Turkey to not acknowledge the Armenian Holocaust. While, Tracey's Stuff in the News concerns mummies and skeletons, not the Halloween yard decorations, but actual...
In this first episode of Season two, we are gearing up to Halloween. In Stuff in the News this week Ashley talks about NYC Mayor Eric Adams taking bribes from Turkey to not acknowledge the Armenian Holocaust. While, Tracey's Stuff in the News concerns mummies and skeletons, not the Halloween yard decorations, but actual...
Mark as Played
December 25, 2023 • 145 mins
In this episode, Tracey talks us through the science behind some of the new news about why olive oil is good for you and why ultra processed foods are bad for you. Ashley, meanwhile, tells us about the plight of Jerusalem’s ancient Armenian Christian quarter that is currently the subject of a seriously dodgy and illegal land grab. Tracey’s Piece of Stuff returns to the theme of figurines with nails coming out of them that are ...
Mark as Played
December 25, 2023 • 145 mins
In this episode Ashley talks about the disgusting way that Citigroup was denying Armenian credit applicants based on their last names. In her Stuff in the News, Tracey talks about new research that suggests an early Jewish Temple in Egypt had priestesses who issued curses. We are exploring possibilities for a Citigroup Defixio (curse). Ashley’s Piece of Stuff is the creepiest Thanksgiving clown ever to terrorize the children o...
Mark as Played
December 6, 2023 • 129 mins
Episode 17: Eighth Century Sweet Treats and Mysterious Retreats
In this week’s Stuff in the News, Ashley discusses a new database of searchable information about medieval murders…go waste time. Right now! Tracey’s stuff in the news concerns the ongoing plight of the Uighurs in the Xinjiang province of China, where over a million of them are thought to be kept in prison camps making cheap manufactured goods for Western...
In this week’s Stuff in the News, Ashley discusses a new database of searchable information about medieval murders…go waste time. Right now! Tracey’s stuff in the news concerns the ongoing plight of the Uighurs in the Xinjiang province of China, where over a million of them are thought to be kept in prison camps making cheap manufactured goods for Western...
Mark as Played
November 30, 2023 • 70 mins
Episode 16: Clockwork Computers, Ice Age Americans and Big Foot
In this episode Tracey discusses a new sighting of Bigfoot in Colorado, why Sasquatch is interesting to a cultural historian and could such a creature possibly exist, while Ashley is shocked to discover that new entry requirements for Americans traveling abroad are close to what America has been doing to its own visitors. Tracey’s Piece of Stuff this week...
In this episode Tracey discusses a new sighting of Bigfoot in Colorado, why Sasquatch is interesting to a cultural historian and could such a creature possibly exist, while Ashley is shocked to discover that new entry requirements for Americans traveling abroad are close to what America has been doing to its own visitors. Tracey’s Piece of Stuff this week...
Mark as Played
November 11, 2023 • 150 mins
In this episode Tracey will terrify you all with her Stuff in News, that new footprint evidence that shows that those 10ft tall, 30 mph, huge beaked ‘terror birds’ had another deadly weapon in their arsenal - deadly sharp killer claws. Meanwhile, by our usual neat unplanned synchronicity, Ashley’s Stuff in the News reveals that experts have found that to animals in South Africa the sound of our voices are more terrifying than ...
Mark as Played
November 3, 2023 • 114 mins
In this episode Ashley’s traditionally disturbing Stuff in the News concerns the billion-dollar international trade in monkey skulls and other bits of dead animals you can buy on ebay. Tracey’s traditionally earnest Stuff in the News focuses on a paradigm changing archaeological find from Africa - a nearly half-a-million-year-old, pre-homo sapien, wooden structure that has been unearthed in Zambia. Sticking with African artifa...
Mark as Played
October 29, 2023 • 145 mins
In this week’s episode Tracey talks about the Mexican Congressional Hearing into UFO’s and some pretty fake looking alien corpses, while Ashley tells us all about the upsurge of syphilis cases in Texas. Tracey’s piece of stuff this week continues the fakery theme with part of two episodes she will be doing on the infamous Piltdown Man hoax of a 500,000 year old hominid in Sussex. Ashley reveals a bronze object used for divinat...
Mark as Played
September 23, 2023 • 96 mins
In this episode Ashley talks about the news of the shrinking human brain and Tracey thinks about how we should warn people tens of thousands of years in the future about our buried nuclear waste (when we get around to burying it. Tracey’s Piece of Stuff is a Cypriot seal, only an inch high but tells a tall tale of a mythology shared around the Pan-Mediterranean world from Egypt to Mesopotamia. Ashley’s piece this week is the s...
Mark as Played
September 12, 2023 • 122 mins
In this week’s Stuff in the News Tracey talks about a potential future apocalypse if we don’t work out how to label our nuclear waste for 100,000 years and Ashley talks about an apocalypse past, and a cataclysm 930,00 years ago that brought humanity down to just 1,300 people. Tracey’s Piece of Stuff is a ‘living person’ totem pole stolen from indigenous people British Columbia in 1929 and bought by the Scots, and Ashley’s is a...
Mark as Played
September 2, 2023 • 107 mins
In this episode’s Stuff in the News we talk about Eminem asking a certain GOP candidate not to use his music, and a five thousand year old dragon made of mussel shells that has just been discovered in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. Staying in China, Ashley’s Piece of Stuff this week, was actually five tiny pieces of stuff, tiny tea buds found in the tomb of the Jing Emperor, Liu Qi: the world’s oldest tea. Sticking wit...
Mark as Played
August 23, 2023 • 129 mins
In this week’s episode, Ashley shares news of the possible recovery of an ancient herb, long thought lost, called Silphion, which in its day was worth its weight in silver for culinary, medicinal, and abortifacient properties, and Tracey has a 3-for-1 special on art conservation news involving an organogel, a hydrogel and a scoundrel. Tracey’s Piece of Stuff is an aniconic/anthropomorphic goddess stele from the ancient caravan...
Mark as Played
August 15, 2023 • 125 mins
In this episode, we discuss important stuff in the news such as a doggy surfing competition in California and a seventeenth-century child’s anti-vampire grave that has been discovered in Poland (no stereotypes there!). For her Piece of Stuff, Ashley closely examines a set of eighteenth-century Samurai armor and the accompanying helmet and reveals clues that indicate that it may have been used more for swaggering than for battl...
Mark as Played
August 9, 2023 • 105 mins
In this episode Tracey talks about news of missing Icelandic skulls and Ashley is extraordinarily happy about a giant, space disco-ball. Tracey's piece of stuff discusses the plant datura (or devil's trumpet) and people trippin' balls globally on it for recreational or religious purposes, while Ashley examines the transregional phenomena of snake deities being depicted as women. Strap in we are in for a bumpy ride!
Tr...
Tr...
Mark as Played
August 1, 2023 • 106 mins
In this episode Ashley shares the news of over-the-counter birth control in the US and Tracey responds to another dumbass - this time explaining why it is inappropriate to say the Jews survived in the Holocaust if they were useful. Ashley’s piece of stuff is a glorious Sicán funerary mask (a culture that precedes the Inca in Peru) and Tracey talks about a Shang period bronze owl-shaped ritual vessel used in ancestor worship an...
Mark as Played
July 25, 2023 • 100 mins
In this episode we talk about why we think it is wrong to teach children that slaves were able to parlay skills they were taught for their “personal benefit” “later in life,” and what is going on with Northern California’s plague of penis fish. Our pieces of stuff this week involve evidence of necromancy in Israel of the second to fourth century CE and evidence of genuine affection between an Ottoman Sultan and his slave/concu...
Mark as Played
July 17, 2023 • 85 mins
In this episode we talk about impact we have had on our planet in the Anthropocene, moves to end child marriage in the US, an Egyptian monkey that smelled really good and aristocratic ladies and sex workers both going to the theater with a full face covering.
Tracey’s Stuff in the News
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/12/michigan-child-marriage-law-signed
https://michiganadvance.com/2023/07/11...
Tracey’s Stuff in the News
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/12/michigan-child-marriage-law-signed
https://michiganadvance.com/2023/07/11...
Mark as Played
July 11, 2023 • 79 mins
Tracey’s Stuff in the News
https://www.medievalists.net/2023/07/how-criminals-new-names-medieval-england/
Ashley’s Stuff in the News
Al Jazeera, “Japan May Start Controversial Fukushima Water Release Next Month,” July 5, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/5/japan-may-start-controversial-fukushima-water-release-next-month.
Al Jazeera, “Why is Japan’s Fukushima Water Release So Contr...
https://www.medievalists.net/2023/07/how-criminals-new-names-medieval-england/
Ashley’s Stuff in the News
Al Jazeera, “Japan May Start Controversial Fukushima Water Release Next Month,” July 5, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/5/japan-may-start-controversial-fukushima-water-release-next-month.
Al Jazeera, “Why is Japan’s Fukushima Water Release So Contr...
Mark as Played
July 4, 2023 • 68 mins
In this episode Ashley Bozian and Tracey Cooper delve into whether or not cut marks on prehistoric bone are evidence of cannibalism, explode the myth of man the hunter and woman the gatherer, explore the earliest known winery and think long and hard about the earliest (42,000-yearr-old) anatomically accurate penis pendant.
Show Notes Episode Two: Prehistoric Pee Pee and Pinot
Tracey’s Stuff in the News
<...
Show Notes Episode Two: Prehistoric Pee Pee and Pinot
Tracey’s Stuff in the News
<...
Mark as Played
June 27, 2023 • 39 mins
In episode number one Ashley discusses the history of a common bathroom item and Tracey discusses the trade networks behind the discovery of hoard of medieval gaming pieces.
Sources:
From Tracey’s Stuff in the News.
Owen Jarus, “2,700-year-old Petroglyphs Depicting People, Ships, and Animals Discovered in Sweden,”Livescience.com, accessed on June 20, 2023 at https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/27...
Sources:
From Tracey’s Stuff in the News.
Owen Jarus, “2,700-year-old Petroglyphs Depicting People, Ships, and Animals Discovered in Sweden,”Livescience.com, accessed on June 20, 2023 at https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/27...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!