Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:01 Hello listeners. It is January, 2020 and we're back, uh, an incomplete history. We took a little bit of a break. Uh, you know, Hillary and I are both active educators at universities and, uh, the end of the fall quarter or semester is a lot of grading and gnashing of teeth and litigation involving grades and performance or lack of thereof. But we're back. Um, and today we have a special episode. We're going to look back on 2019 and we're going to try to do something as story don't really do, which is predict the future. We're going to get 2019 with the critical iron and try to figure out what are the most important events that happen in 2019 that historians will talk about decades or centuries from now. Moments that they'll say, well, this happened and what does that mean? Uh, it should be fun. Um, we look forward to having this discussion and welcome to today's episode of an incomplete history.
Speaker 1 00:59 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 01:19 hello and welcome to an incomplete history.
Speaker 3 01:22 I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff, where are your hosts for this weekly history podcast?
Speaker 0 01:29 So it's 20, 20.
Speaker 3 01:31 Yeah, I can't believe it. I've been having to write the date a couple of times on things and I haven't messed up yet, but I mean, I really do think about it every time I write it and I go, Oh my gosh, it's 2020
Speaker 0 01:44 2020. Who would have thought? Who'd have thought that after 2019 2020 would come? I know, right? Totally unexpected. I mean, it's as we're pretty funny about like periodization. Um, I mean it's kind of one thing about historians, the public's obsessed with these things. Historians, we kind of like cringe a little bit at it, right?
Speaker 3 02:08 Yeah. Because I don't think that there's any one year that's more important than the other or the passing of time. Right? I mean, you're right. It is. It's just kind of silly. But it is how we Mark things. So,
Speaker 0 02:20 but if people think it's important, could it therefore be important if it gets culturally ascribed to meaning?
Speaker 3 02:27 Well, yeah. And we ended up, um, setting things by year, right? So right now we're in an election year and right. So 2020 is important and it is important this year has passed and most permanently it's important. Well, think about Y two K do you know, 20 years ago and we thought the world was gonna end. We did. We thought planes were going to fall out of the sky. We thought Bay the banking system would collapse. It'd be chaos. Cats and dogs living together. Yeah. Well we thought the internet was going to collapse, right, because the computer wasn't going to know how to throw it through the year.
Speaker 0 03:00 Right. Well, and we also thought all our home computers would collapse and anything that was kind of run by computers, which you know, in 2000 increasingly people were fearful of everything being run by these computers that had this fatal flaw. Spoiler alert.
Speaker 3 03:16 Well, I think we have our computer at home. When I was parents, like they listened to the local news and they said you have to unplug the computer in the modem and the or the, you know, the dial up or whatever it was at the time. And I think that we did, I think we unplugged everything. And when we plugged it back in, I think we were a little scared.
Speaker 0 03:35 Oh, I mean it's funny cause we didn't like didn't care. It was like I, I knew it wasn't gonna be a big deal. I had worked with, you know, this was back when I was in New York. Um, it guys, and they were like, now it's like some older systems aren't gonna do well, but anything we rely on it's going to do just fine. But I mean, culturally it was an important thing and I think 2020 I already see people posting things on social media that, you know, I think we're going to have a lot of corrective work to do this year. About what the 1920s were like because people are looking back a hundred years ago and looking, well the 1920s were like this, therefore maybe the 20 20th will be alive. Well, the roaring twenties, I mean, it's amazing how good people think things were back then.
Speaker 3 04:30 Yeah. They, they think that it was like a giant party and everyone read the group at one time in high school or didn't really read it. Understood that it was a party and they knew it was in the 20s and yeah, you're right. I mean people do. But you know what I, I like that energy. I like that positive interview. I do. I do like that.
Speaker 0 04:51 I think we have to be a wet blanket on some of that. That's my job is to be the wet blanket. Okay. Well today, so today we're doing something historians, we, we had talked about right at the beginning, I think a story is we don't like to do counterfactuals so we don't like to talk about what F's and this is neither of those things. But it's kind of another thing we don't like to do, which is kind of prognosticate the future. Like talk about what people are going to be talking about in the future. And it's hard, right? It's hard to look at something that's just happened and decide does this have the longterm historical relevance or not? And so Hillary and I discussed doing this and, and we've both come with kind of a list of things we think may be historically relevant in the longterm, either for U S history or global history or kind of alien explorers as they reconstruct the history of, of the earth or something. I don't know. What do you think?
Speaker 3 05:51 Well, what I think is interesting cause I, I like the opportunity to do something like this and what we think is important in the year. But what I always laugh about is people always say things like, Oh, I wonder what historians of the future will say about this. And they'll be talking about a major news story or something. It's like, well there are historians right now and we can comment on things and talk about trends. And I think that we're not brought into the conversation enough to discuss thematic trends of current events.
Speaker 0 06:23 Right, right. I, it is kind of odd, right, that they ignore that there are stories around them, but I mean we are kind of professionally trained that this is something we're a little squeamish about. Right. Um, I mean, when I teach us history, especially when we get up past the Vietnam war, I start to get very antsy. Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, personally for me, I just feel recently we've gotten to the point we can ask historians, discuss the Vietnam war because there's been enough separation. But even then, I, you know,
Speaker 3 07:01 well, I haven't felt all the repercussions and we're still, we're still things that are unraveling as a result of that conflict. And, um, I mean, we can see that right now, but it is uncomfortable to talk about things and say, well, what, what is the impact when we're just not quite sure yet? And we still, I mean, there are people who are alive who fought in the war, many people, right? And they're struggling right now with healthcare and, um, post traumatic stress disorder and homelessness. Drug addiction is something, you know, some of them
Speaker 0 07:37 homeless homelessness per se, particularly, right.
Speaker 3 07:40 And, and so that's one of the major repercussions, but it's like this is a current event that's a result of a historical event of being the war. And so it is tough to really flesh out all the complexities of the impact of that conflict on our society.
Speaker 5 07:56 Right, right.
Speaker 0 07:59 Well, so let's, let's, um, I mean, I know people are going to get upset or if I don't ask, what's the weather like?
Speaker 3 08:05 Oh, um, it's beautiful. Sunny, nice day. Went to the park all morning. It's nice.
Speaker 0 08:12 It's pretty nice here too. It's like high sixties, clear skies, no wind. Um, yeah, it's a nice little breather from our inundation of rain we've been getting, so let's, yeah, yeah. Dope. So let's jump into it. Let's talk about the elephant in the room first. Um, so impeachment, um, remember I said it would happen before Chris. It happened. It happened. You were right. You are right. Um, I mean there are some twists that have happened that I don't think we anticipated, uh, like Nancy Pelosi not sending the articles to the Senate yet. Um, I was, I was surprised that that happened. Um, but I mean, let's wake up the one thing clear. Donald Trump has been impeached. Yes.
Speaker 0 09:06 Um, full stop. Um, go back to our impeachment episode if you want to kind of a deeper history of this. But he has been impeached and I know some apologists for the president have tried to argue he hasn't been impeached. It's not impeachment till the articles get sent to the Senate. I don't know where they're getting that from. That's not what the constitution says. Um, now what has not happened while the Senate has not voted on the articles, nor has he been removed from office at the direction of the Senate. Those haven't happened. But you know, bill Clinton was impeached. Eventually the Senate acquitted him. He was not removed from office. Andrew Johnson, you know, um, was impeached when the articles were voted on in the house. Um, so, I mean, are we going to talk about this impeachment particularly longterm in the future?
Speaker 3 10:06 Um, I think that it will be discussed, yes, longterm in the future as part of a larger trend. Uh, I don't think that it's going to be, you know, this is going to be like a big moment that everyone's gonna discuss as like, Oh, the impeachment itself, but more the era. And I think I'm going to be a little repetitive today because I, that's kind of what I came to the conclusion of when I was researching for this episode and thinking it over is you know, we're in an era right now that it's not specific to the 365 days that just passed. Right. And I think that the impeachment is one of many thematic moments of an era that will be discussed. But I don't think it's the most important thing that happened in the last year. And I don't think it's going to be the most important thing for the next 100 years. But it most certainly will be mentioned most mostly because he's kind of joined this elite club of, of the very few people who have been impeached, cause we're still talking about Andrew Johnson and not many people know much about Andrew Johnson. And so we'll be, it will be on the lips of historians. Um, maybe in some dissertations people will know that it happened. It'll be a jeopardy question if jeopardy is still around, like it will be known fact. But I don't, wouldn't say it's the most important or relevant thing that occurred in the past year.
Speaker 0 11:30 I completely agree. I would add a foot note that says, however, if he gets removed from office, then suddenly it becomes a really important moment in the history of us. Right.
Speaker 5 11:45 Cool.
Speaker 0 11:46 I don't think it is either, but if it was to happen then I think it then I, yeah, then I would think then I think it would be part of one of the biggest political stories of, of a pretty substantial period, right. That the idea that, you know, the, the impeachment provisions in the constitution were carried out to their fullest extent, which is the removal of the president from office. Um, I don't think that's going to happen either. Um, I'll be very surprised if that's how it plays out. Um, but it, you know, I wanted to start with that because it's the thing people still ask about and I'm glad we've kind of, we kind of agree on that and then we can kind of move on to some more interesting things. So, so give me one of your, one of your five, your top five kind of things people might be discussing in the future.
Speaker 3 12:39 I think going back to me saying I'm going to be repetitive is I'm thinking a broader trend and I think that a P and Teachman is a part of this, but I saw in the last year with various elections globally that there has been somewhat of a rejection of the direction we thought things were going to be taking. Um, I, I've see a lot of isolationism happening with countries. I'm thinking Brexit and I think this is part of a broader trend of people rejecting a lot of more liberal ideas, policy, um, globalization. I, I've seen an outright rejection of those things within the past year and I think that Brexit is going to be on, you know, the lips of everybody for a very long time. I mean, I think that 2019 marks, this pivotal moment in history of we're kind of breaking down cooperation amongst nations and we're seeing, I mean to me it feels very much like the 1930s in the lead up to the second world war.
Speaker 0 13:58 Well that or it's maybe it's right. I think that's one way to approach it, but what about if it's just a reshuffling of postwar relations,
Speaker 3 14:08 but everything's postwar relations right then, so like we would call it post war right now. I mean of course it's after the war.
Speaker 0 14:19 Well, the right, I would say the EU is definitely a postwar development, right? EU is EU comes out of the European economic community, which is, which comes out of an of a, of an industrial association between France and Germany. That's what was really designed to be between. So they would not go to war again, it was, it was designed to tie their economies so closely together that another world war would not happen because these two countries are fighting. And I think what we're seeing maybe is a reshuffling of all that and a re analysis of it as it kind fades into the past. People kind of forget maybe why these organizations were founded. But I think this, this, this theme you're pointing to, I think it's good and I think Brexit's a good place to put it. It's on my list, right? Um, Brexit is because we just, before the end of the year, we had a vote in England and the United Kingdom where the, the, the public voted to keep Boris Johnson's Tories in power. Um, and now he has the votes to push Brexit through. Assuming everybody in his party tows the line, Brexit will proceed. And that's a little surprising.
Speaker 3 15:28 I don't think it is surprising when you look at the 2016 election, when you look at elections in Italy, um, I think that we're seeing just a real push to the right, a real push towards nationalism, a rejection of political correctness. And I think that we are shocked by it because we don't, we're shocked by at Barna personal level, but I just, I don't think that, um, I don't think it was that surprising at all. And I remember when the first Brexit vote happened, um, and it happened the same election year that Donald Trump was elected. Right. Um, so this has been going on for a while. That's another thing. It's part of an era. But when that first vote happened, and I think it was in the summer or something, I said, you know, Donald Trump's going to be elected to be president. Right,
Speaker 0 16:24 right. I mean, I think it's, it's, it is part of a broader trend. I would say this. So Brexit, if you've, and there's a couple of things to unpack here. If you look at who voted to to put the, keep the Tories in power, uh, who voted for labor, who's for Brexit, who's against Brexit, it's very, um, age is a really good indicator of where people stand on this, right? So the older the population is, the more likely they're to the, for Brexit and for the Tories. And the younger the population, the more likely they were to vote for labor,
Speaker 3 17:01 but they have the same problem that we do is where they're voting population, um, more older folks vote than younger. Right,
Speaker 0 17:10 right, right, right. And I, and I, I mean Brexit's interesting cause I know we joked and I joked with colleagues when it looked like Brexit would never actually really happen, but it would always kind of be in the background that it would become, uh, an English national, a British national house, right. Every year they would have the, the official extension of Brexit holiday and they would kind of vote to punt the ball a year down the road and say, Oh, we'll deal with this a year later. And it would kind of become this kind of festival, um, of British independence from the EU. But that something was never carried out. But I think you're right. I think it is kind of nationalist moment, this kind of rejection of globalism and all those things, these things. And I would point listeners to, um, I'll put in the show notes, the link for this.
Speaker 0 17:59 I saw a really interesting interview with lek Lenza the other day, select will Enza, was the leader of the, um, uh, solidarity, which was a union and Poland and solidarity was really at the forefront of tearing down communist regimes in Eastern Europe and, you know, will Lanza he won the Nobel peace prize. He won a lot of other awards. Um, he is of the opinion that the EU should just be dissolved. He said it should just be dissolved, which surprised me. And then he goes on and he said, in its place, then we need to build a new one where everybody who's part of it is part of the conversation about what we put into it. Um, I mean, he says, one of the biggest problems with the EU is it grew rapidly, um, and brought in a lot of countries that weren't part of the initial negotiations of what it would be.
Speaker 0 18:56 And you know, he specifically called out Poland, Hungary, um, as these places where you've got increasingly right-wing leaders. And he said, you know, we have to reject this. And you know, it was, he said, we have to reject nationalism. We have to reject isolationism. We have to reject tribalism. We have to reject these old things because it's not going to help us in the future. Um, it's going to keep us back. It's going to lead to conflict and all these things. But I thought there was an interesting thing as maybe we should just, you know, let the EU die and then form a new thing in its place. Um, and, and it's an interesting idea. Um, but I mean, Brexit, it's interesting on a podcast where we've done mostly U S history, Brexit would be, this would both be, are pretty high on our list of, of like indicative of something big going on, right?
Speaker 3 19:59 Yeah, for sure. I mean that was one of the first things that came to my mind. It wasn't necessarily the first time I list, but I thought it was good to bring up first because I thought it was a nice addendum to the impeachment discussion of like, this is part of a broader era of pushed to the right, not just for the United States, but for globally. There's been a push to the right and I think there's just been, there's a lot of tension. It's not just in our, there's not just civil unrest. I mean there's like global on intention and I don't think that you can pinpoint it to say, Oh, it's because of 2019 but there were a lot of signposts and events that happened in 2019 that I could most certainly see on a timeline leading up to another war. You know, like when I said this is so many times, but when I do world war two, I mean I always started at 1931 because there's a timeline of events that lead up to the major world war. And I think that 2019 there's definitely some markers that would be on that timeline, on a histories in a history class, right. On a, there's no chalkboards anymore, but you know, board or something. You're drawing out a timeline. I could see there's some major moments in this year that would be on that timeline.
Speaker 0 21:18 Right. Well, I mean, I think another thing that ended up on my list that's related to this is the U S moved to remove itself from the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty this year. And as, and as someone who was in high school in the late eighties or the mid eighties, um, and remembers when this treaty was signed, this is kind of chilling to me.
Speaker 6 21:45 Mmm.
Speaker 0 21:45 So this is a treaty that was signed in 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed, it went into effect in 88 and it really dialed down the heat of the cold war. Right. The cold war was, a lot of people don't realize this, but the mid eighties was a really dire time, first U S Soviet relations and these intermediate range nuclear forces, these, these weapons were developed that would only give about a five minute warning
Speaker 6 22:17 Mmm.
Speaker 0 22:20 In Europe if they were launched and this terrified people. And there was kind of a discussion of what should you do? Should we kind of do this? Um, do an arms race. Um, there were initial negotiations that took place in the early eighties.
Speaker 6 22:35 Mmm.
Speaker 0 22:37 And then you had all these protests that take place across Europe throughout the 80s, and finally from 1985 to 1987
Speaker 6 22:44 Mmm.
Speaker 0 22:45 Negotiates and to restart it. And what's key here is the person who was the key broker and getting the treaty talks restarted was Margaret Thatcher.
Speaker 3 22:56 Oh, interesting. And see that's a, that's a point here. Like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, right? Like they're very liberal these days.
Speaker 0 23:06 They're neoliberal, they're Neo and they're neoliberal, right? They're globalists, they're neoliberal. They're all of these things that we seem to be seeing an unraveling of. Um, I don't think it's a stretch to say the signing of this treaty was indicative of the, of the not imminent end of the cold war, but something changed substantially. The U S and the USSR kind of mutually decided this is not anything we need to be doing. Um, this is not good. Right?
Speaker 6 23:41 Mmm.
Speaker 0 23:42 And the treaty held, um, until 20 2018 is when, um, the United States first to says it's going to withdraw. And then 2019 is when we do withdraw. Um, now the U S the argument coming out of the white house was that the Russians had been violating this treaty for many years. Um, you know, it kind of became a, he said, she said moment, but, but we're no longer part of the treaty. Um, and a lot of people are worried, does this mean we're going to have a renewed arms race? Um, now that China's in a position to kind of really participate in an arms race, you know, is there going to be this three-way arms race? Um, politically, I would argue 2019 from glow for global relations is kind of a little frightening in some ways. Big, right? And, and obviously things happen in early 2020 we won't talk about today, but we may talk about later on.
Speaker 0 24:46 Um, there's a funny meme going around with Joey from friends, if you've seen him where he's like, Hey, yeah, where he's like, I can't wait for 2019 to end. And then it's like, you know, first, you know, first day or third day of 2020 a world war three. Um, but yeah, I think this the U S and the world, the international relations, kind of a dialing back of global engagement or rejection of neoliberal policies or rejection of, of things that have really colored the way the last three decades have played out, are being dismantled. And you know, maybe this is 2019 may be bed does become the year people look at and say, look, this is when it kind of reached a crescendo. Um, I think it, it kind of, I hope that was the crescendo. I don't know. I mean Nick could get worse. I mean, maybe it's just the prelude, we just got like just a taste of things to come. Well, so guess what my number one discuss, you know, me topic wise, it doesn't have to be a specific event, just a general topic. Something to do with the military. I dunno.
Speaker 0 26:07 Well, so, um, we'll circle back to this, but Miriam Webster's word of the year was they, and we'll talk about that later. But Oxford dictionary is word of the year was not actually a word, but a phrase. Climate. Urgency. Climate emergency. Yeah. And, and I think it's interesting. Uh, so Oxford, Miriam Webster doesn't really give a methodology for how they discuss it. Um, Oxford gives like this great methodology and they track how often the words been mentioned and things like that. And this has become a ubiquitous phrase for 20, and I don't think anyone read presents it better than time's person of the year, right? Credit fund Berg. I want to play a quick flip of Gretta. <inaudible>
Speaker 7 26:58 my message is that we'll be watching you
Speaker 5 27:02 <inaudible>
Speaker 7 27:10 this is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us, young people for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying and tired. Ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is the money in fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you
Speaker 5 27:55 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 27:59 so that was her 2019 September, 23rd address at the UN. Um, this is kind of what gets her the, the time person of the year award. Right?
Speaker 3 28:09 Yeah. And that was the number one thing on my list, not hers. Particularly this to me this year has been the moment of we're like, Oh wow, okay,
Speaker 0 28:24 that's real.
Speaker 3 28:25 That's real. Yeah. I mean, and it's, I'm not even trying to make light of it or joke. I mean I'm, I'm making light of the fact that we have ignored this for so long and I mean, poor Al Gore was, he was ringing the emergency bell 20 years ago and nobody's listened. I mean, I think this is the first year that people are like, wow, things aren't right. And I mean, even people I talked to who I've, you know, kind of considered to be more like conservative or who have not been interested in environmental, um, impacts or anything like that even may have been like, wow, you know, things just are kind of different now. You know, whole state's on fire these days, you know, at like, people really starting to notice because their lives are finally being inconvenienced by it. Whereas other people who've been impacted by it for a much longer time. But yeah, this, this is the moment and this,
Speaker 0 29:15 yeah. Wow. Well, I mean, let's look at things that happened this year that I was going through trying to parse out kind of substantial events that, and granted there's a difference between weather and climate. Climate is a longterm thing, whether it's an immediate thing. And a lot of, most of these things are weather events. However, the sheer number of them seem to indicate something happening. So in March, 2019, we had this huge winter cyclone that affected the South central and the South Western United States. This kind of unprecedented storm. July 20, 19 hottest month globally on record. It was 1.71 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, uh, August, um, of 2019, uh, ice loss accelerated in Greenland, uh, in a single day in July of 2019 11 billion tons of ice melted in Greenland. Uh, the, uh, average throughout or the total throughout the whole month. And it's a number I can't even fathom.
Speaker 0 30:24 197 gigatons. Um, August. Amazon rain forest fires. Uh, we had, uh, 36,000 fires burning the Amazon this year. We had hurricane Dorian that basically scoured The Bahamas with 185 mile an hour. Sustained winds, not top winds, sustained winds. That's, that's tornado speed when now at that point, um, Lorenzo hurricane Lorenzo became the Northern most category five hurricane on record category five hurricanes usually Peter out. Once they get into colder water, well there was warm enough water. This thing could go pretty far North. And then the world meteorological organization reported that levels of heat trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had reached another record high of 407.8 parts per million. And they said there were quote, no signs of a slowdown, let alone a decline.
Speaker 3 31:26 Well, and right now of course, Australia's fires are dwarfing anything that happened in the Amazon or anything that happened in California, and I'm not even trying to downplay those things. It's like the entire continent basically of Australia,
Speaker 0 31:42 we'll say they had to in Australia, whether reporters had to invent, had to develop a new color to represent temperatures, they've never had to regularly put on maps.
Speaker 3 31:51 Well and, and the entire continents impacted. And even New Zealand has been impacted. The sky New Zealand or orange and this is happening right now, but this fires have been raging for more than a month in Australia. And this, I think that being number one for me and for you is interesting because it's, it's an era thing. Again, it's part of a larger trend, but there were many markers in 2019 that were sort of terrifying, um, looking at what was happening globally to our day to day. I mean it's, it's just been a, a year of one thing after another.
Speaker 0 32:35 Well, it's interesting is this, you know, are historians going to look back on this and say this is the year that scared the crap out of humans and in 2020 they actually started doing something about it or, or are they going to look back on and say this is the year things kind of went over. This was the year they jumped the shark. This is the year that they crossed a threshold. There was no coming back.
Speaker 3 33:00 It's going to be looked at over many years. Right? Th this climate emergency 2019 isn't going to play a major role in the telling of the history of it other than we started maybe paying attention. But I think it's part of a larger discussion of like, well for the past several decades this had been happening and humans ignored it and ignored it and ignored it. And perhaps if there's a discussion about when we stopped ignoring it, 2019 may come to the discussion. But what's really sad, and I'm, I'm always the pessimist, although I said that it was your job today, but I tend to just think this way, but it's like, are there going to be people around even tell the story? I mean, this is what we mean by emergency. And this is what her speech was at the UN Gretta thunbergii is that
Speaker 5 33:54 <inaudible>
Speaker 3 33:55 entire ecosystems are dying, right? I mean, it's the truth. I don't know. I've read several articles and I hate the clickbait kind of thing, but several articles came out in 2019 saying it's irreversible at this point. It's irreversible. And so what does that mean, humanity?
Speaker 0 34:15 Well, let me, let me be the positive, the, the optimist here briefly. So in the 1980s, um, in 1982, NASA discovered this massive ozone hole over Antarctica. Um, and research was done to figure out why this happened. And it turns out it was caused by a halo carbon refrigerants, solvents, propellant, and chlorofluorocarbons. So all the hairspray people had been using in the 70s and sixties, you know, it was, I'm being a little glib here, kind of caused this massive hole in the ozone. And ozone is really critical because it helps shield the earth from some really awful cosmic rays. Um, and there was a general panic and I remember, you know, once the hole was discovered, everybody started worrying about what's gonna happen because you know, the ozone layer prevents UV, kind of the worst of the ultraviolet light for coming in. And if this spread, if our entire ozone layer collapsed globally, we'd all get skin cancer or some burn or cataracts, it would just be awful.
Speaker 0 35:31 Um, not to mention what it would do to plants and animals. And in 1987 created this Montreal product protocol on that band, the production of CFCs, halolens and other ozone-depleting chemicals. So 1987, they record this. Now the band comes into effect in 89. By the mid nineties, the whole stops growing. And by the early two thousands, the whole right, the whole starts shrinking. And now, uh, NASA scientists predict that by 2075, unless we reintroduced these substances, the ozone hole will be back to pre 1980 levels. And in fact, this last year, 2019, the ozone hole is at its smallest level ever since it was discovered in 1982. So the hole is smaller than it when it was discovered. And I think that that's a hope. That's a sign of hope, right? That humans can actually see something and figure out this is a problem. How do we globally come to some agreement about what to do with it and how do we do it? I think it's assigned for it. Here's the problem
Speaker 3 36:47 and here's pessimists me.
Speaker 0 36:50 <inaudible>
Speaker 3 36:50 we've discussed this prior to talking about the climate emergency, is that globally there's been a trend where we have been more nationalistic trying to get away from treaties, trying to get away from global cooperation. There's been a push back against that and now more than ever, we need to come together. But the United States is trying to get out of the Paris.
Speaker 0 37:15 Sure. With 2019 2019 is the year the United States tells them
Speaker 3 37:20 exactly. If you can't leave technically right until 2020 November, 2020,
Speaker 0 37:25 it'll be 2020. But uh, yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's this thing of we have the best evidence we've ever had that we can actually do things to repair environmental damage. This, this, the fact that we've helped the ozone layer and not incur a decrease even further, but we've actually helped this hole start to fill itself back in. We have this great evidence at the same moment that we seem increasingly unwilling to work with one another.
Speaker 3 37:57 Yeah. And I mean, we're unwilling to work with one another about most things. We're actually becoming aggressive towards one another.
Speaker 0 38:05 <inaudible>
Speaker 3 38:06 and it's not just a cold war situation at this point. Like there's actual aggression. So it's like, it's not just that we won't work together and that we're being isolationists, but we won't work together and we're actively working against one another. And
Speaker 0 38:21 yeah,
Speaker 3 38:21 it's kind of, it's terrifying. I mean, we know that it's an emergency. We've, we've figured that out finally, I would say by this year. And that's why it's on the list. But I just don't know if we're going to be able to come together and do anything about it based on grace on global relations at the moment. We're not kumbaya right now, you know?
Speaker 0 38:42 Right. So let me, so let me ask you this, is, do you think it's many, many nations that are moving towards this or do you think it's just a few,
Speaker 3 38:50 I'm sorry. Moving towards what? Towards whore
Speaker 0 38:53 towards, towards increased isolation, increased aggression, increased nationalism. Do you think it's, it's globally a trend across many, many nations or do you think there are just a few key nations that are kind of doing it and giving tacit permission to other countries that maybe wouldn't do it to do it as well?
Speaker 3 39:13 I think it's, yeah. I mean, yeah, I think that there's some trendsetters most certainly that are doing it, but I also think that, uh,
Speaker 8 39:24 <inaudible>
Speaker 3 39:24 there's unrest in places just all over that that happened. Nothing really well, I mean, everything's interconnected, but I think there's just unrest everywhere. I mean, I think South America is a good example of that. There are a lot of countries in South America right now, and that was the big story in 2019 but it didn't even get a lot of, um, press necessarily was, was all of the unrest in Venezuela. I mean, I, I think that they're just a lot of countries that there's a lot of shuffling around. There's a lot of push back against neo-liberalism. There's pushback against the globalization. Uh, there's, there's just a lot of, uh, civil unrest within many countries. But then that of course translates to a more to a global scale. And so then we see big take downs going on, like, you know, like the United States versus Russia again. Right. And we see right now, China, Russia and Iran doing military exercises together. But then that sort of trickles down to lots of other countries. And I don't, I guess the way I'm talking about it as a little uncomfortable, like, Oh, there's bigger, better countries than others, but you know what I mean? I mean they're, they're economically speaking, there are global powers that are acting, behaving poorly right now and not setting a good example every other country. Right,
Speaker 0 40:48 right. I think that's the, that's kind of what I was getting at is I think the United States, Russia and China particularly have been bad actors in this. And, and I think if these three nations actually got their acts together and behaves global kind of globally mind that ed really took the initiative, right. That I think other nations would follow. And I think what it does is seeing these kind of big nations do this, it gives permission to smaller nations.
Speaker 3 41:20 Yeah. Ends up being an every man for himself situation. Again, the increase in nationalism and isolationism, not just on behalf of these larger powers, but just everybody else. I mean it's kind of a dog eat dog world right now. I mean I think there's a lot of hostility, fear and it all could be stemming from there is like this existential crisis happening. Right?
Speaker 5 41:48 Right.
Speaker 3 41:49 This isn't, this isn't a fun episode.
Speaker 0 41:53 Well, I mean it's, it's, I mean I've got some positive things up my sleeve. Um, and you know, when it gets a little too dark, I'll kind of pull those out and say, well, this happened. Um, I mean, I'll give us a little bit of positive stuff. March 5th, 2019 second recorded case of full remission of Asia.
Speaker 3 42:17 That's incredible. There's been some incredible advancements in medicine. Yes.
Speaker 0 42:22 Again, a sign of global cooperation to combat something and it turns out when people work together to do something globally, they can actually accomplish some pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 5 42:33 Love it.
Speaker 0 42:34 I mean, that's good news.
Speaker 3 42:35 Yeah, it totally is. And that, that's good news for so many different epidemics or viruses or things that, um, cause that's another thing I'm scared of happening, right. Is I'm like a posh and that was in 1920. Oh my gosh. Anyway. Um, but yeah, that's, that's a great example. And medicine is always one of those things. Um, I'd like to have an episode one day where we talk about, um, exchange of ideas in the medical community during the revolutionary war because that was a really big thing, right? Where there's a lot of, you know, of course fighting between the United States and great Britain, but there was still an exchange of ideas, medical ideas. And that is one thing is the medical community. The doesn't work with borders necessarily. And oftentimes academics don't either. And when you see that large scale cooperation that can actually help everyday people on the ground, right. That, well, the medical community still continues to work together. And I hope that that stays, I hope that that is a trend. I hope that we do continue to work toward combating these, these illnesses. And that's a good one. I love it.
Speaker 0 43:47 Yeah, it's a good one. So give me, give me something else on your list.
Speaker 3 43:51 Well, I don't have any good ones.
Speaker 0 43:54 Well, no, give us a battle.
Speaker 3 44:00 Okay. So I don't, let's see. I had the climate, I had an impeachment, Brexit, uh, the fires.
Speaker 5 44:12 Wow.
Speaker 3 44:14 I think that was my list, I think. I think we went through my list already.
Speaker 0 44:19 Okay. Well let me, let me add one up there. And I hope this doesn't get us awful comments cause they do what are, talk about it. Uh, June, 2019, uh, Hong Kong starts to experience these massive protests due to antibiotics. These are anti extradition, they'll protest. Right? Um, and these protests have persisted and are
Speaker 3 44:39 that's all part of the larger trend of what we've been discussing or the unrest?
Speaker 0 44:44 Well, yes, yes, it's definitely unrest, but it's different, right? There's something different. This isn't, um, these aren't protesters kind of far. Right? Protesters protesting again protesting for kind of nationalists ideas. These are protesters saying this new law impinges on their freedom. Right. Which is a little bit different. And there are, and I would say Hong Kong is not the only place. I mean a lot of the protests that have happened in Latin America over the last six to nine months have not been right-wing protest. Right. So I think there is kind of this, there is a, a response to kind of these far right movements, these kind of isolationist nationalist. Um, I would not use the word fascist. Um, and you know, we could have some specialists in European history who had, I think backed me up about why that might not be the best word to use for what we've seen in some countries. But, you know, we've got plenty of examples of, again, right-wing violence happening, kind of two substantial incidents. In 2019 there was the Christchurch attack, right? Um, in March of 2019 and this was on a mosque and in Islamic center in Christchurch, New Zealand. And then we had the Walmart mass shooting. You know,
Speaker 3 46:14 how'd that on my list? I had had, you know, shootings on my list and I cross it off and not because I don't think it's important, but because I think that these had been going on for years now, every year there's a mass shooting. And so there's nothing that, to me, there was nothing about 2019 that stood out different than 2018 or 2017 or 2012. Right. I mean,
Speaker 0 46:37 well, even, even going back, right? Even going back to somebody like Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma city bombing, right? I mean, I think you could mention the Walmart mass shooting in the same breath that you talk about that kind of violence. Um, but I think there is this, there is a ratcheting up of the tension between far left.
Speaker 3 46:59 Yeah. And so extreme, so extreme, so prone to violence on both sides. And I thought, gosh, I don't, I just had a Donald Trump quote and I absolutely did not mean that.
Speaker 9 47:13 Yeah.
Speaker 0 47:15 Well, here's the thing that we're talking about extremists, right? We're talking about extremists who kind of self avowed say violence is permissible to get to where we need to go. And you know, be true though. I mean
Speaker 3 47:29 I think there's certainly a debate to be had about that. I mean, some, some of the best things that have happened happened through violence. And I mean I, that's a scary discussion I guess. But we could talk about that. I mean, revolution, right? And we, I think we've touched on this a little bit. What's the difference between revolution and violence? I mean we, we are applauding certain violent revolutionary acts because they got us to a point we wanted to be at. And I think that we're quick to say that something's bad when it's violent and we don't see the light at the end of the tunnel perhaps. But that's a full episode right there. It's just talking about violence, violent revolutionary moments and, and how we, how we parse,
Speaker 0 48:19 well, I think it's right. I think there are three revolutions you can talk about as historians in a row. You could talk about the American revolution, the French revolution, and the Haitian revolution. How the language of violence is deployed. Yeah, right. I mean, fewer people die in that, in the French revolution or the American revolution, but it's always portrayed as the most violent of the three. And I think that's indicative of, of where we draw the lines of what violence is and was, what is it? Um,
Speaker 3 48:52 it's drawn on a binary racial binary also. And we'll really,
Speaker 0 48:57 yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. Um, May 1st, uh, Russia, uh, Putin signs Russia sovereign internet bill. So this is Russia formerly creating this kind of very policed internet that will be used in the country. And again, I think this is part of that kind of nationalist isolationist trend. Um, what else did I have up here that was interesting? Uh, another good, well good or bad. I don't know. Another good cause it's good. Uh, April 10th, the event horizon telescope got the first image of a <inaudible>.
Speaker 3 49:32 That was really incredible. Well, the Chinese made it to the dark side of the moon.
Speaker 0 49:41 The Chinese dark mayors that are excited of the moon. Uh, Karen Lynn Beck becomes the, uh, when's the highest prize in mathematics? The Abel prize. She's the first woman to do so. We had two women astronauts who did, uh, extra vehicular, um, walks the international space station. I mean, there is, there's a lot of good stuff that actually happened, right? Um, I don't know. W w winning if any of those things will be discussed in the future. Uh, but you know, when I was getting my depressing list and like boring down deep into the environment, I was like, Oh, I've got to get something good here. Um, but let's, I mean, I said we were going to talk about this later and I want to circle back to this. So Merian Webster's word of the year is they, what do you think,
Speaker 3 50:36 what did you want to talk about about it? I don't want to fall into a trap.
Speaker 0 50:41 It's not a trap. Um, so grammatically there's a, and it's interesting because I know you used to teach in the same writing program I teach at at UCLA and you know, for several years now more than I would say more than three years. We've had, every year we have this meeting before instruction begins where we kind of debate some things and they always comes up and we've kind of got multiple camps. We've got the camp that no languages fixed and we can't change what we do. And then we've got the camp that's like, no, language is fluid and things change. Um, and I used to be on one side of this debate and I've kind of moved to the other. Um, they is just sounds grammatically really wrong to me, but at the same time after kind of doing some reading about how the English language has changed, um, I'm, you know, I'm okay with it.
Speaker 3 51:45 Are they all the time when we're talking about people that are ambiguous to us. So, um, if somebody calls on the telephone for example, and you can't hear the other side of the conversation and the person off the phone and you say, you'd be like, who? Who was that? Oh, it was the phone company. Well what did they say? We use, we use it all the time and,
Speaker 0 52:11 well it's cause it's cause English lacks a gender neutral pronoun.
Speaker 3 52:16 And so we're finally just decided, well we're going to use a general neutral <inaudible> Bay. And, and I mean I F I use it all the time now. And I mean I, I've started realizing the context in which I use it without even thinking about it, but it's become like people, it's like a rallying point. Like all of a sudden they're great, you know, uh, you know, their study grammar, all of a sudden everybody thinks they do and they're like, well, that's not grammatically correct. It's like, you know, I've seen you use the wrong, they're about 90 times in the past year, suddenly you're upset about VA. um, well, I, I am very interested in, uh, people who discuss it that do study language. Uh, and I think most of the people who study language and discuss it are on the same page of like, yeah, it does language changes and evolves and it changes and evolves based on circumstances. And this is just another one of those moments. And who cares.
Speaker 5 53:10 Okay.
Speaker 0 53:11 Right. Well, and sometimes it can change rapidly, right? You know, we think, well, it must change very slowly, but there are S there are things where you can go. I mean, I read some of my primary sources I read from the early 19th century are, it's, they're constructing sentences in ways that we would never do today. And, and it's not like these are kind of barely literate people that are writing either. These are well educated people who just, there's a different way they used to write and speak and you know, it's interesting how my thinking has changed on this and I'm not implying that anyone needs my permission to do this. However, if they are in my writing course, um, you know, they do need to do things a certain way and you know, um, I invite all my students, you know, particularly if, um, if they feel gender neutral pronouns is something they want to kind of use, start using because college students do get some more freedom than high school students.
Speaker 0 54:19 I welcomed them to come have conversations about it and we can talk about it and we can talk about, you know, why does English, lack of gender neutral pronoun, um, how did that happen or, and what kind of weekend can we do to fix that? My only guideline I give my students is if you're going to use day to refer to a singular person, you need to conjugate the verb in the singular. You need to make sure you conjugate those verbs singular. Don't conjugate them plural. And I said, I'm fine with that. I just want to see that you're kind of consciously doing stuff. Um, you know, I, again, I don't think that's anything that's going to be debated in the future. They're not going to be like, Oh, 2019 Merriam Webster said they was the word of the year. That's when kind of things changed. But I just thought it was an interesting kind of thing because I, I, I, part of me feels Merriam Webster's really late to this party.
Speaker 3 55:09 Yeah. It's like, Oh, well they're late to the woke party. Like they woke up.
Speaker 0 55:14 Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I'm glad you decided this was the word of the year. But I mean, yeah. You know, it's, I think Oxford hit it much the nail much more on the head when they said climate emergency than, than they. Um, but yeah, I mean I think this was an interesting conversation and it's, you know, I know we only had a couple of themes that kind of really came out of this, but I think, you know, it shows the difficulty in trying to analyze contemporary historical events and try to figure out what's the long relative.
Speaker 3 55:47 Well, and one thing I'd like to say cause I kept going back and forth on making a list, not making lesson a lot is I would ask anybody who's listening or to you Jeff too, it's just like, tell me five interesting things that happened in 1819 you know, <inaudible> and then I can ask you five interesting things that happened in 1919 and I know, you know, because we did an episode on 1919 anybody they could do that. But typically we can't pinpoint a specific year and say, Oh, these five things or these 10 or whatever happened in that specific year. Because although we think that yours are important and they Mark time and of course they're, they have their importance. Like we don't really pinpoint things. I mean there, there are very few events in history that people can always say the year that it happened, the panic of 18.
Speaker 3 56:42 Yeah. Well, and we know of course name for other things, right? Like, you know, we know like 1776 is important and we know, you know, September 11th happened in 2001 even though one of my students said it happened in 2006 and that has always blown my mind. Um, you know, typically we know specific years for really pivotal events, but we don't really look. And so I think that it was great, a great conversation today, but, um, more more so about talking about the trends and that's what we ended up doing. And that's what historians do. We talk about trends, we talk about arrows, we talk about, um,
Speaker 0 57:25 well we talk about events to talk about. Yeah.
Speaker 3 57:27 Yes. So I think that what has Koreans will do.
Speaker 0 57:33 Yeah. Well, I kind of want to end today's episode, um, by thanking all our listeners for listening to us since we started the podcast back at the beginning of October. Um, we are back from our break now. Look for new episodes every week. Uh, we are going to be investigating the 1920s, um, here at least, you know, some topics related to that. Um, over the next kind of several months. Uh, always, uh, uh, drop us a comment on our website or, um, if you're listening to us via Apple podcast, give us a review. Give us a rating. We love to hear from our listeners. We now have listeners, uh, in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea. Um, so we have some increased global presence. We also have some listers in Germany. I'd like to thank all of them for listening as we close in on 3000 unique listers every week to our episodes.
Speaker 0 58:34 Uh, also if you have suggestions for episodes, we'd love to hear those. I know a Lister of ours in Delaware, she wants us to do an episode on secret college societies. We are working on that. We're going to discuss maybe the history of fraternities and sororities in college, uh, secret societies on college campuses. Um, that's, that's a little heavy research for both of us because neither of us are really specialist in that. Um, so we're having to kind of do some research on that. Um, but thank you for joining us this week and I want to end with us little song clip from somebody we lost in 2019. You know, they do these kinds of people. We lost episodes and I'm trying to butter Hillary up to do some music episodes. Um, this song from the cars and it's called touch and go, ah, Riko Casick died this year, the songs from 1980.
Speaker 0 59:28 Um, and you know, I love new wave music. Um, and this is kind of indicative of this. And what's really great about this song is in John Lennon's last interview before he was killed, uh, this was in an interview he gave on December 8th, 1980. He actually praised the song and said, uh, compared it to his own work. And he said, I think the car's touching goes right out of the 50s. Uh, a lot of it is 50 stuff, but with 80 styling. But, and that's what I think starting over is, and this was Landon's last song album. It's a 50 song made with an eighties approach. So kind of get a, comparing this song to his own work. John Lennon kind of gave his seal of approval, so I just want to end with that. Um, I'm Jeff. Hilary, thanks for joining us on an incomplete history.
Speaker 5 00:33 <inaudible> <inaudible> <inaudible> <inaudible> <inaudible>.
