It was the shot heard around the world….or at least in cinemas in the summer of 2000. This week on the podcast we’re covering The Patriot, the historical epic starring Mel Gibson brought to us by the master of disaster himself, Roland Emmerich. Dr Krysten Blackstone joins to dive deep into examining this movie’s relationship to the conflict it depicts, the American Revolutionary War. We get into it all: soldiers’ morale, the beef between the Continental Army and state militias, Jason Issac’s villainy, and of course the eternal question — where are all the movies about the Revolution?

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Flashback is graciously supported by the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute

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Hold onto your hats cause this episode is about to be a...blast! Join us as we talk Blast from the Past, a zany 1999 sci-fi/rom-com about a man raised in a nuclear bunker emerging in (the post-apocalyptic world of) 1990s Los Angeles. Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Lincoln Tom Bishop joins to talk all things fallout shelters (and bunkers, vaults, etcetera). We talk about domesticity in the Cold War, the late century's nostalgia for the 50s and 60s, and, of course, Brendan Fraser. All this and more on today's episode!

You can find Tom's work wherever fine academic monographs are sold near you.

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Flashback is graciously supported by the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute

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Flashback is back from the DEAD (or at least a season break) in order to cover 2012's most infamous Lincoln movie...Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. DPhil student Ben Willis joins to talk about this infamous piece of cinematic history which dared to ask the question: what if vampires were the secret malevolent force behind major events of American History, and what if Abraham Lincoln hunted them? We discuss Lincoln as an abolitionist, the idea behind the slave power, the ethics of vampires, how many horses could have possibly existed in central Illinois, and more!

Follow us on bluesky at @flashbackhistory.bsky.social

Flashback is graciously supported by the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute

Enjoy the show? Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast provider of choice.