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PODCAST

MakingHistory

Making History is the top-level thing I do, as a historian, teacher, and writer. I create content, based on either original primary research or to present the findings of other historians to my students. This channel will cover several topics I am researching or teaching, and reflections on the ways that history helps us understand our current world. danallosso.substack.com

history self-improvement

All Episodes

10:42

How Can I Believe You?

MakingHistory ·

2024/08/02

This is an essay and a video I created right after the first meeting of my book club. I think it raises some interesting issues regarding the “authority” of authors, where people get their history, and how historians ought to work. I think it’s particularly relevant now, as I’m beginning to think about post-academic lifelong learning communities. Kathleen, a finance executive from a global corporation, asked an interesting question in the first Book Club Zoom meeting. She said that because the

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19:33

My Notes on Dawn of Everything Beginning

MakingHistory ·

2024/08/02

David Graeber and David Wengrow’s recent book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, was the first title we read in my “Obsidian Book Club” which has been meeting regularly for the past couple of years (we’re currently on our 20th iteration and have read about two dozen books, because sometimes we read a couple at once). I was very impressed with the ideas the book contained, although I thought it should probably have been edited into a couple of separate books (which it might have

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5:38

Filling Empty Nodes

MakingHistory ·

2024/08/01

This was a video I made a while back to demonstrate how I regularly return to the empty nodes in my Obsidian graph and decide whether I want to add information. One thing I didn’t mention in this video, I think, is that sometimes when I’m reviewing these, I decide they’re not really relevant to anything that interests me, and I remove the double-brackets that had made them a node in the first place. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to

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5:57

Fasting Update

MakingHistory ·

2024/08/01

At the beginning of May I announced I was going to try to get into better shape and become a bit more metabolically healthy this summer. I had been a bit alarmed by the results of routine blood tests I had taken in preparation for a colonoscopy. I decided I was too young to be basically pre-diabetic and I would put what I had learned in books like Outlive, The Obesity Code, and The Diabetes Code to work. So, how has that been going?I'll be spending most of my time in Saint Paul beginning next week,

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19:27

Peppermint Kings

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/31

As many of my readers probably know, I discovered the peppermint oil business in Ashfield Massachusetts accidentally, as I was researching Dr. Charles Knowlton and his fellow secular radicals. First, I uncovered Samuel Ranney’s letter to the Ashfield Congregationalists, preemptively excommunicating them from his fellowship and support, and noticed a link in the language Ranney used to the ideas Knowlton had elaborated in his book, Elements of Modern Materialism. Then I discovered the Ranney Letters,

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9:20

"Making History"

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/31

This was a video I made in the fall of 2021, when I began thinking about consolidating several projects I was working on, under a single banner. At the time I was still much more focused on YouTube, despite having had a Substack since 2020 that I occasionally dropped a blog post into. I had had Wordpress blogs off and on as well, and in 2020-21 Substack seemed to me like just another Wordpress. A lot has changed since then, but reviewing this, it seems to me I’m still working toward the same general

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5:34

Research Rabbit Zotero Integration

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/30

Mike and the Research Rabbit guys gave me a preview of this, so I was very excited to talk about it when it was released. I still think it’s one of the coolest tools. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danallosso.substack.com/subscribe

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4:09

Maps and Bias

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/30

This was one of the earliest videos I made, originally for the American Environmental History class I taught (remotely) at UMass while I was still an ABD grad student, just about a decade ago. It was also one of the first videos I ever posted to YouTube, in an account that no longer even exists. I wanted to insert it into the second chapter of my new text/course, which I’m getting ready to drop in the next few days (sorry for the delay! Once I’m in my new living space I’ll be able to focus much more

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14:30

People's History, Chapter 1

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/28

In this review of the first chapter of Howard Zinn’s 1980 book, A People’s History of the United States, I have some things to say about the impact of Columbus in the Caribbean. And about Zinn’s comments on the ways historians choose which elements of the “territory” to include on their “maps”. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danallosso.substack.com/subscribe

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4:36

Selectivity of Readwise "Sweep"

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/26

It turns out the Readwise “sweep” of Hypothesis annotations from a socially-annotated document only grabs my own annotations and inserts them into my Obsidian vault. I discovered this after a student asked about it. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danallosso.substack.com/subscribe

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2:59

Hypothesis pdf Highlights to Obsidian Notes

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/25

A short video reiterating my satisfaction with the way Hypothesis and Readwise combine to “sweep” my highlights and notes on pdfs I read, into Obsidian where I can process them into Notes. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danallosso.substack.com/subscribe

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7:14

Vaccines?

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/24

In September 2021 I made this video about articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal that had both used the historical example of George Washington’s 1775 forced smallpox inoculation of his troops to advance an argument about COVID shots. I think my reaction has stood up fairly well, given what we’ve learned in subsequent years. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danallosso.substack.com/subscribe

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5:38

Research Rabbit and Taleb on Bitcoin

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/24

In this video I talked about how Research Rabbit’s new feature had alerted me about a recent article by Nassim Taleb about Bitcoin, which I then read, highlighted using Hypothesis, and processed into notes in Obsidian. My office kitten, Satoshi, also makes an appearance. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danallosso.substack.com/subscribe

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9:59

The Continuing Popularity of Zinn

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/23

A couple of years ago, I made a plan to begin a chapter-by-chapter review of Howard Zinn’s extremely popular but extremely controversial book, A People’s History of the United States, first published in 1980. I’d like to get back to this, if I can make some time for it and if people are interested. Here’s my introductory post for the project. The next installment, on Chapter 1, will drop next Monday morning. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get

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4:47

Research Rabbit for Class

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/23

In this short video I documented some of my preparations for using Research Rabbit in a historiography course I was preparing for undergrad History majors at Bemidji State. The course went well and I think the students got some value from being able to see the “lineage” of ideas generated by some of the articles I had them read. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danallosso.substack.com/subscribe

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130:21

Science of Reading, Meeting 1

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/20

After a couple weeks break while I moved into my apartment in Saint Paul, the Saturday Book Club reconvened to begin discussing Adrian Johns’ 2023 book, The Science of Reading: Information, Media & Mind in Modern America. Although I had originally been a bit skeptical, I’m enjoying this book. We discussed languages and reading, the particularity of the reading experience, a bit of book history, the fact that this was a COVID book, Jacques Barzun, Eric Weinstein, Richard Dawkins, Thomas Kuhn, Michio

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109:17

Edited Discussion of my Book

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/17

A while back, my book club took a break from reading books from people like David Graeber, and the members kindly read and commented on my revised writing manual, How to Make Notes and Write. I’ve been playing around with AI-based editing tools that allow you to clip a video by editing the transcript. I had been using this tool in a new app called Descript, which was fairly powerful but also not cheap. Then, as I was updating my subscription to Vimeo so I could upload more videos, I discovered that

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4:40

Readwise to Obsidian Automation

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/15

Although I resist automating my Obsidian vault to allow me to focus on my own note-making and idea development, I have been very happy with the Readwise plugin that sweeps my Kindle highlights and Hypothesis annotations into an inbox in my vault so I can process them into notes. Here’s a look at me installing the plugin and first using it a couple of years ago. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

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6:21

4 Apps for Students

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/14

While I was still working at Bemidji State, I made this video about how I planned to use Obsidian, Hypothesis, Zotero, and Research Rabbit in my upper-level classes. I won’t be teaching juniors and seniors as much this year, since all but one of my courses are going to be at community colleges in the system, and the university course will be a survey. But I’ll be incorporating these tools into the online courses I offer, so I think this experimentation I did will continue to be relevant. This is a

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19:49

Dunning-Kruger: Tyson on Rogan

MakingHistory ·

2024/07/13

Recently, Neil deGrasse Tyson went viral with a video criticizing Terrence Howard for falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which was first described in 1999 as a mismatch between actual competence and self-confidence. As Eric Weinstein observed, this may be the ultimate insult that one theorist could throw at another. This is not to say that it’s an inaccurate assessment of Howard; but it’s always interesting to me when people’s assessments of others seem to approach projection. To illustrate

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