Attention Surplus

A podcast about the history of New York City.

Episodes

Jewish New York, Part III: Sweatshops, Settlement Houses, Secularism, and Socialism

March 5, 2022 • 62 mins

The mass migration from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the slums of New York uprooted centuries-old patterns of Jewish life, so it's only natural that Jewish culture also underwent a massive shift. As young Jews left the tight-knit communities of the shtetls behind for the great big world of the cities, Orthodox Judaism faded away and secular Yiddish culture blossomed. As Jews confronted the harsh realities of industrial capitali...

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Jewish New York, Part II: The Refugee Crisis

January 18, 2022 • 55 mins

For centuries, the majority of the world's Jews had lived in small towns called shtetls in the countryside of Eastern Europe. These were isolated, tight-knit communities where the Torah reigned supreme. By the late 19th century, dissatisfaction had been growing among younger Jews about the poverty, the antisemitism, the lack of opporunity, and the narrow-mindedness of the shtetls. Then, in 1881, a series of violent pogroms broke ou...

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Jewish New York, Part I: Birth of an Aristocracy

December 3, 2021 • 27 mins

This is part one of a series about the incredibly multifacted history of Jewish immigration to NYC, each episode focusing on a different facet. In this episode, I talk about the oldest and most successful part of America's Jewish population: German Jews who immigrated in the mid-19th century. Join me as I follow these immigrants from the ghettos of Germany to the tenements of Little Germany to the luxurious apartments of the Upper ...

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Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part IV)

November 25, 2021 • 42 mins

By the turn of the 20th century, the New York Irish still formed a clear underclass, but they started to have a few things going for them: their power in Tammany Hall, their dominance of the skilled building trades, and their social advantage over the Italian, Jewish, and especially African-American migrants who had began pouring into the city. In the final episode of this four-part series, I talk about how they used these advantag...

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Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part III)

November 2, 2021 • 26 mins

In this episode, I discuss the impact the Irish had on the politics of NYC, their role in the Civil War, and why, in 1863, they carried out the worst race riot in our country's history.

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Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part II)

November 2, 2021 • 31 mins

In part two of my four-part series on the history of Irish New York, I talk in detail about the Great Hunger, the journey of the million people who fled it, and the lives they then established in New York City.

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Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part I)

October 2, 2021 • 46 mins

Since the 18th century, around four million people have immigrated from Ireland to New York City. At one point, around half of all the city's residents were Irish, giving it a larger Irish population than any other city in the world. The housing these immigrants lived in was shabby, the jobs they worked were awful, and mainstream American society wasn't particularly fond of them. Fast forward 150 years, and the descendants of these...

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How Slavery Built New York City

September 26, 2021 • 44 mins

When we think of American slavery, New York is hardly the first place that comes to mind. But there was a time when nearly half of white families in NYC owned another human being--more than any other city in the Thirteen Colonies with the exception of Charleston, South Carolina. Not only did it rely on enslaved people for manual labor, New York was also a city built on the Triangle Trade. It grew rich largely thanks to its economic...

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Attention Surplus

Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Jewish New York, Part III: Sweatshops, Settlement Houses, Secularism, and Socialism

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Jewish New York, Part II: The Refugee Crisis

Jewish New York, Part I: Birth of an Aristocracy

Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part IV)

Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part III)

Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part II)

Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part I)

How Slavery Built New York City

Popular Podcasts

Jewish New York, Part III: Sweatshops, Settlement Houses, Secularism, and Socialism

Jewish New York, Part II: The Refugee Crisis