This week John Wyatt Greenlee returns as guest host and he’s looking for a six fingered man.

This week, our friend Dr Lou Moore drops in to talk about Diggstown and his work tracing black boxing from the end of the Civil War into the 20th century.

This week Dr. Paul Thomas Chamberlin drops in to talk about the history behind Operation Overlord and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.

About our guest:

Paul Chamberlin specializes in twentieth century international history with a focus on U.S. foreign relations and the Middle East. His first book, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (Oxford, 2012), is an international history of the Palestinian liberation struggle. His next book, The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace (HarperCollins, 2018), is a global history of the bloodiest encounters of the Cold War.

Today neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Kieran Fox joins in to talk about the spiritual journey of Albert Einstein.

About our guest:

Dr. Kieran Fox is a neuroscientist (PhD 2016) and doctor (MD 2023), currently training to be a psychiatrist in the Research Resident Training Program at the University of California San Francisco. His research over the next few years will focus on the neural mechanisms and clinical potential of psychedelic medicines. During medical school, he used intracranial electrical stimulation (neuromodulation) of the human brain to research cognition and emotion in epilepsy patients.

This week Justin Rawlins and Craig Bruce Smith drop in to talk about Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning and their thoughts on the MI franchise.

Writer and filmmaker Kevin Smokler returns to the pod to talk about his discussions with 25 different women filmmakers.

About our guest:

Kevin Smokler is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host focused on our relationship as human beings with pop culture. His most recent book BREAK THE FRAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN FILMMAKERS contains 24 career-retrospective conversations with directors behind box office phenomenon like Captain Marvel, Oscar winners like Free Solo and the filmmakers who launched actors such as America Ferrera, Paul Rudd, Ryan Gosling and Jennifer Lawrence. His previous books, BRAT PACK AMERICA is a love letter to teen movies of the 1980s. His 2013 essay collection PRACTICAL CLASSICS is a 50 book attempt to reread one’s high school reading list as an adult.

His feature length documentary film VINYL NATION on the American renaissance of the vinyl record, won ten awards and screened at 50 film festivals worldwide. His new documentary MIDDLE GROUNDS, about coffee shops and civic dialogue will be released this year.

Today Rachel McCarthy James drops in to talk about the development of the axe and the myriad of ways it has been used to dispatch people and empires over the years.

About our guest:

Rachel McCarthy James was born and raised in Kansas, the daughter of baseball’s Bill James and artist Susan McCarthy. She graduated from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA, where she studied writing and politics. Her first nonfiction book, The Man from the Train, was written in collaboration with her father and published in 2017. She lives with her husband Jason and pets in Lawrence, KS.

It's a new day here at the podcast. Historians At The Movies Podcast is now Reckoning with Jason Herbert. We're opening up our focus and the things we talk about here.