Andrew Wehrman

Stay tuned...that's the next project! Thanks for listening!

You should go ahead and subscribe to The Reckoning podcast now and let my episode (#182) be the appetizer to your main course (episode #183) of Lincoln, vampires, and HCR!

It’s my favorite shirt. I haven’t been to a game yet but I’m hoping to the next time I’m back in my hometown!

Episode 182: Contagion of Liberty: Smallpox, Freedom, and America's First Culture War with Andrew Wehrman Podcast Episode · Reckoning with Jason Herbert · 02/09/2026 · 1h 11m

Find it on Apple Podcasts:
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

My 12 year old “So first they have Green Day playing songs from the 90s and 2000s and now the anthem from the War of 1812. Old guys like you must be happy, right dad?”

Coming to Reckoning with Jason Herbert tomorrow- @profwehrman.bsky.social drops in to talk about how debates over smallpox and public health worked to forge a national identity in the early Republic

Thanks, Jason! It was fun!

This is the story the viruses don’t want you to hear. You can tell by the lingering effects of Ramsay Hunt Syndrome (varicella zoster) paralyzing the side of my face, but the viruses couldn’t keep me from sharing this history. Get vaccinated and have a listen.

Opinion | ‘The Lowest White Man’ (Published 2018)

I keep coming back to Charles Blow’s “The Lowest White Man,” From 2018, because Trump proves Blow was right on a near daily basis. www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/o...

Medgar Evers’ killer was a Klansman, but Trump administration says stop calling him a racist - Mississippi Today Among anticipated changes to a new visitor brochure for the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument is no longer using "racist" to describe the killer of the civil rights leader.

I am speechless.

"The National Park Service has removed visitor brochures from the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument. Among the anticipated changes? No longer calling his murderer a 'racist.'" 🗃️ mississippitoday.org/2026/02/05/m...

I met Josh way back in 2002 when we were in honors geology together at the University of Arkansas. I invited him to join the UofA's quizbowl team, and now he's a 7-time Jeopardy champ (ok, maybe I can't take all the credit), and he will be back on the show next week for the Invitational Tournament!

My son Charles, the geographer, narrowly topped you, but you’re in great company! (I was a respectable 952 today). www.maptap.gg February 4
99🎯 99🎯 98🔥 99🎯 96🔥
Final score: 979

Reminder that no one knows what Christopher Columbus even looked like (all portraits are guesses by the artists long after he died), so besides being awful statues of Columbus are also extra dumb.

Thank you, Kate! I was giving a talk at Auburn yesterday and another historian said “Oh! I thought I recognized your voice, I heard you on Drafting the Past! You told a story that stuck with me…” So your fans are not only listening, they’re remembering and learning from the pod.

She was very helpful with my book as well, giving me a very positive review despite the fact that my book is at times critical of hers. Mostly though, I hope people read them together!

You can get 30% off the book at the link above from JHUPress by using the code HFEB26

Andrew's book is amazing, btw. Smallpox and efforts to curb smallpox are woven into the very fabric of our country and the very concept of "liberty."

Ooh, I’ll have to check that out! Congratulations!

Thank you! There’s a lot on Salem in there! When I started the project I wondered why there was so little written on what Salem and Marblehead (the 2nd and 3rd largest cities in Mass.) were up to during the Revolution.

The Contagion of Liberty The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution

Today is the paperback release day for my book The Contagion of Liberty! It’s about how Americans demanded that their governments provide inoculations for smallpox to the public as their right and also to affirm that public health is a foremost duty of government. www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

the literal easiest way to have rural healthcare and get more doctors is to create a federal program where people get their med school paid for and then have to “serve” in rural or urban hospitals for 4-6 years for a reasonable wage. i’ve been wondering why this doesn’t seem to exist since 2008.

Thanks for getting my family hooked on this. I had a good one today: www.maptap.gg February 1
100🎯 98🎯 98🎯 97🔥 94🏅
Final score: 967

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:
1. Microbiology
2. Comparative Slaveries
3. The Early Middle Ages
4. History of Arkansas and the Southwest
5. Urban Geography
(And so many more)

Why did you do this to me? To us?

Auburn speaker series continues dialogue about importance of humanities in health care The Medical and Health Humanities Speaker Series brings together faculty, staff, students and community members to introduce the importance of the humanities in health care.

Im excited to visit Auburn University next week to give a lecture on the public health legacy of the American Revolution as part of both their Humanities and Healthcare speaker series and their RevolutionaryLegacies speaker series for the 250th. cla.auburn.edu/news/article...

Leave it to MAGA and MAHA to bring us back to the measles outbreaks of the Roaring 20s.

CDC Stopped Updating Key Vaccine, Infectious Disease Databases in 2025 The inaction 'demonstrates a profound disregard for human life,' says IDSA leader

Infectious diseases do not magically disappear just because you stop tracking and reporting. This is dangerous.
When diseases spread in silence, outbreaks go undetected for much longer and containment is more difficult.
All of this means more avoidable deaths.
www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdi...

Excellent article, combining real reporting and information with the intellectual training to give shape and meaning to events. Exactly what such writing should do, and exactly what both-sidesism and vapid op-eds don't do.

Two years after the Boston Massacre a lantern in a balcony near the site illuminated a painting of the shooting with the words “The fatal effect of a standing army posted in a free city.”

And you’ve got Benjamin Church in there too