The Rest is History with Dr. Paula Hinton

Join Kosta and his guest: Dr. Paula Hinton, Professor at Tennessee Technological University and Historian.

In this episode: It’s no secret we love true crime. It’s one of the fastest growing genres of film, television and podcasts. What is it about listening to the gruesome details of how people were killed that we want to hear? They say those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. In your opinion, as a historian and professor, do you believe we have enough of an understanding of history to not repeat it? As someone who knows what scares us, and has extensive knowledge of history in the United States, how much of what scares us is actually real?

Find out more about Dr. Paula Hinton and TN Tech:
https://www.tntech.edu/
https://www.tntech.edu/directory/cas/history/paula-hinton.php

Better Together with Kosta Yepifantsev is a product of Morgan Franklin Media and recorded in Cookeville, TN.

This episode of Better Together with Kosta Yepifantsev is made possible by our partners at Miss Sallie's Market.

Find out more about Miss Sallie's Market:
https://www.misssallies.com/

Transcript

Kosta Yepifantsev: 0:01

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Dr. Paula Hinton: 0:51

Because otherwise, history then is just a laundry list. And that's why people hate history I'd find because they're thinking of the laundry list. They have to memorize these dates, these things happen. And that's not history. I mean, it's part of it. But that's like the skeleton that you hang everything else on.

Morgan Franklin: 1:08

Welcome to Better Together with Kosta Yepifantsev, a podcast on parenting business and living life intentionally. We're here every week to bring you thoughtful conversation, making your own path to success, challenging the status quo, and finding all the ways we're better together. Here's your host, Kosta Yepifantsev.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 1:27

Hey, y'all, it's Kosta. Today I'm here with my guest, Dr. Paula Hinton, historian and professor of history at Tennessee Technological University. Dr. Hinton, as today's episode is a bit different from our normal episodes, would you start us off with a bit of information about how you became a historian? And what a historian really is?

Dr. Paula Hinton: 1:49

So I'll start with the second part of your question. First, a historian gathers primary sources. So this is diaries, letters, you know, any kind of resource from the time period, it can even be a vase, it can be architecture, whatever it is, that tells you about that time period, and then they, you know, research them, interpret them, analyze them, and then they put that together into a narrative. And that's the history then. So they might go through 20 boxes of documents from the federal government that have to do with the attack on Pearl Harbor, let's say, and then they'll analyze them and give you their interpretation then of what happened. You know, what the government knew when they knew it? If they knew anything, that kind of thing? How'd you get into this, I started out as a business major, actually, Oh, wow. And dropped accounting three different times, I'm still angry about that double entry thing. Makes no sense to me. I just don't get it. So I did that. And then I switched to literature. But always love to read. So I thought that would be interesting. And I was surprisingly bored with that. And so this is back in the days when they would actually print out a list of the classes being offered the next semester. So I got my highlighter out. And I went through the entire booklet, and highlighted anything and everything that sounded remotely interesting. And when I got done, it was all grouped in history, right. So I thought, Okay, then I'll be a history major. And so that's what I started to do them. And then I took a trip with one of my classes. I was taking a history of the Soviet Union class, and we went to the Soviet Union. This is in 1991. Wow.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 3:38

Oh, my gosh, you were in the Soviet Union in 91. That was like the last year. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. That was an absolute disarray. Yeah. What was that? Like?

Dr. Paula Hinton: 3:48

It was very chaotic. Yes, we were there in January. And we were there for just a couple of weeks. But we ended up in Lithuania. And while we were there, they declared their independence. And so they were invaded. And so we were trapped there. And what struck me was I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know who to root for, you know, I mean, I had a feeling I should root for the Lithuanians. But I didn't know why, you know, and it really bothered me that I was in the middle of this huge historical event. And I didn't know the significance of it. I didn't know what came before. You know, I just didn't know anything really about it. And that was really, really frustrating to me, and just made me feel real powerless and what was going on. And so it's when I really got interested then in really delving into history kind of comes out of that you cannot understand the world around you and your place in it unless you know the facts of the past, you know, and

Kosta Yepifantsev: 4:50

if you aren't willing to find out and learn those facts, I think that's when people default to anger and frustration. confusion. So as you're talking, I completely resonate with what you're saying, if you don't understand your past, you're never going to be able to reconcile what's happening right now in the present. Right. So I totally get that the fact that you were there at 91. That was, my goodness,

Dr. Paula Hinton: 5:15

it was we, we went down to the square, we our hotel was right on Red Square. And we went down there, and there was a big TV screen. And Ronald Reagan came on to wish the Soviets a merry Christmas or a happy, happy new years. Yeah. Because their calendars different from ours. I mean, it was just there was just all kinds of historical things happening, you know, and some of it I recognized because I was taking a history of the Soviet Union class, but we hadn't gotten to the more modern stuff. So you know, it was again, but I completely agree. And that's why in my classes, you know, I talk about, you know, presidents, not all of them, but most of them, and I talk about wars, I don't get into a lot of battles and things. But I spend most of my time talking about why things happened. And the significance of them, you know, are they the product of something else? Did they help to cause something else does it exemplify something else? Because otherwise, history then is just a laundry list. And that's why people hate history, I find, because they're thinking of the laundry list, they have to memorize these dates, these things happen. And that's not history, right? I mean, it's part of it. But that's like the skeleton that you hang everything else on?

Kosta Yepifantsev: 6:26

Well, I think you also have to be able to open your mind, if you're not open minded to see that, you know, there's a much bigger picture to be painted, than you will only focus on the laundry list, you also have to be curious, you know, and you also have to have time to be curious. So, you know, all those history majors, I applaud you, I really do. Now, you teach a variety of courses at TTU. From the history of horror films, to ghosts, myths and legends, to the history of crime in America. As someone who knows what scares us and has extensive knowledge of history in the United States, how much of what scares us is actually real? So

Dr. Paula Hinton: 7:10

that's kind of a difficult question to answer, but I'll give you my take on it. If we're looking at the history of crime, and answering that question, research shows that the majority of people believe that there's much more crime than there actually is. And a lot of it has to do with all the media that's available now, and how aware we are of everything that's going on. And in some cases, you know, that play out, you know, week by week in the media. But there are still some dangers there. There are real dangers that you need to be aware of. So that stuff is real, there are really seriously bad people. I mean, there's some people that are misunderstood, but I'm talking to really bad people. They're not misunderstood. They're not confused. They don't wish. Yes, yeah, yes, they're just evil. I've just come to that conclusion. You're just people who are evil, so you have to look out for them. If you look at the ghosts, myths and legends history of horror films side of that, and you know, what scares us what is what is real about that, that goes to some of the topics that I teach. One of my favorites in the ghost myths and legends class I talked about. And most people have never heard of this, there was a vampire scare in the New England area in the 1890s. And I mean, they were decentering bodies, and taking the hearts out and burning them on a rock and then feeding them to people they thought were victims of vampires. I'm talking serious here, now, not Dracula vampire, but they believed that the dead were somehow coming back to feast off of family members. And what was going on was tuberculosis. That's what they were seeing in it, you know, the you look at the names for tuberculosis, one of them is consumption is consuming you. And there is a galloping version of tuberculosis that goes very quickly. But most the time you have tuberculosis for a very long time. I always sort of refer to it as the Edgar Allan Poe, tuberculosis, where you cough very delicately into your little white hanky and that kind of thing. And so it's this slow wasting away. So when people were just searching, you know, for some kind of an answer to what's going on, and how can I save my family? Most of them weren't sure it would really work, but they're up for anything at that point. So these were God fearing really solid citizens that were doing this, you know, this wasn't, you know, some crazy cult or something. And it didn't happen all over the place. But that was fascinating to me. And that tells us again, we can talk about vampires, but underneath that vampire scare is a real disease or real sickness. If you look at the Salem Witch Trials again, there is so much going on underneath the surface of that I mean, just complete disorder in the Puritan world and they're just reacting to that and then you mix in a few very bad girls and a really bad Reverend and you know, Things can get out of control very easily.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 10:02

I am curious, though. So these are things that happened in the 19th century. But the same themes continued to recur. I mean, obviously, we live in a community that has a majority perspective on how things are, and what the outcomes and consequences of those things are. Is there any way to look at how people feel right now, in the end, the decisions that they make, or the excuses that they say, or the things that they pick to justify, I hear a lot of like, you know, it's the end of the world, the Second Coming all that stuff. And this may be too large of a question to answer all at once, we may need to cut it up and digest it one at a time. But quick summary question, what do you think is causing everybody to think it's n times, it's

Dr. Paula Hinton: 10:58

fear of the unknown, and change that feels like it's happening too fast, okay. And if we do see that pattern through history, you know, with the turn of the century that you know, the 1900s, you have tremendous change happening. And you have, you know, people living in urban areas, you know, in record numbers, and they're living, you know, in places they've never lived before, a lot of them are from rural areas, and there's just this sense of things are happening too quickly, I don't feel comfortable in the world that I'm in. And so this can't be the way life is supposed to be, there must be something bigger going on, and it's

Kosta Yepifantsev: 11:38

potentially tarnishing the world as we know it. So it must end all in a big crash.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 11:44

Correct. And again, we've seen that too, throughout history where literally people think it's the end of the world. Um, the best example, if your listeners get a chance, if they're not already familiar with this, if you go on YouTube, and you search for the Dust Bowl, and the dust storms, it'll blow your mind that looks like the end of the world. I mean, this is not a little tornado of dust. It's the complete horizon, and it's coming slowly towards you like some big blob of a monster. You know, there were many people who thought it was the end of the world and a couple of incidents where they actually killed their children and spouse because they didn't want them to suffer. You know, I think in today's world is just the sense that technology is moving really quickly.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 12:31

I mean, AI, oh, it's disrupting so many professions. And

Dr. Paula Hinton: 12:36

that has been, you know, the focus of a lot of sci fi films and short films for a long time. Yeah. And now we're living it. So it's pretty spooky, scary stuff, you know?

Kosta Yepifantsev: 12:46

So Elon Musk said, in three years, we will have AI that is more intelligent than the most intelligent human. And I'll be honest with you, I pull out chat GPT. I did it. We had some we had dinner with some friends last night, and they've never used Chad GPT. Or he'd never he had never used GPT. And I said, bro, like, what do you want to say, you know, and we and I asked him to write a letter about taxes and hotels and all this other stuff. And literally, within seconds, wrote an entire letter that was coherent that somebody would take, and they'd be like, yes, makes sense. We can we can base an argument and create a conversation around it. So people should be in terms of being scared. They may have not they may not have been scared or not had a necessity to be scared, but just computers, but AI is something that will transform our world. Oh, yeah.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 13:35

It's already starting to transform education. Really? I'm beginning to catch students who are using that for their papers. How can you tell though we have a program, okay, that Tech has purchased, but it's not ironclad, right? Even the program says now you have to kind of take this with a grain of salt, you know, and so it's a little wishy washy, but yeah, it's it's frustrating, and I think too, and maybe this is the old lady in me, but I feel like it's dumbing us down. I just feel like we're getting dumber and dumber. It started with you know, we had spellcheck so people stopped learning how to spell correctly. What's the point then they took cursive out of the schools which blows my mind. And now this one

Kosta Yepifantsev: 14:21

before that, Grammarly? Yeah, I use it all the time. And I'm terrible at grammar. Like when I say I'm terrible at grammar. I could write you a novel. The grammar on that novel would be awful. And that's what I always got dinged on because I just I guess, you know, I'm from out of town, so I never really learned

Dr. Paula Hinton: 14:39

but you know, Grammarly today I was looking at it because one of my students was using it. And I went on there and you can actually change the tone Yes, of what you're writing, right. So if you wanted it to be snarky, or if you wanted it to be cute if you want it to be angry. That is just that just blows my mind,

Kosta Yepifantsev: 14:57

business, business style or Prag. Matic and it gives you a little smiley face too if you're if you're sounding cheerful. Oh my goodness. Let's talk about your course ghosts, myths and legends. What's your favorite lesson from this course? And currently as a collective? Are there ghosts myths and legends we still believe in? Yes, there

Dr. Paula Hinton: 15:19

are. So I'll start with my favorite lesson is really, when I talk about spiritualism with my class. And I'm really looking at modern spiritualism that came out in New York, actually, in the 1840s, with these two young girls who told their parents that they were communicating with a ghost, the neighbors heard and they came over to see and it just kind of grew and they they worked out this sort of Morse code kind of system with the ghost. And so people came to listen and watch and of course, PT Barnum popped up his head and said, Hey, is there money to be made here? You know, and when you mean oh, that wouldn't be bad. So yeah, and and it very quickly turned into then mediums started popping up everywhere, seances and then they start to use, you know, more and more technologies starts with spirit cabinets, and then it's going to spirit photography and all this kinds of stuff. And it's just a lot of fun to talk about. But it also reveals so much about what's going on in the country at the time and in people's lives. And I should say Spiritualism is is the belief that there is an afterlife, it's it's Christianity. It's not devil worship or anything like that. It's the belief that there's an afterlife, but that there is maybe proof of it. And that's what they're focused on how to be real world. Yes, yeah. How can we prove that there's an afterlife? So that's what the seances are for, or spirit photography of all those things. And so we see a spike in spirit and spiritualism then, during and after the Civil War during and after World War One. This is when people are desperate to get in touch with loved ones who have passed, they want to know that they're okay. That's usually the first question they'll ask, Is he okay? You know, and they liked the idea that someday they'll see him again. And so there's a lot of that, you know, going on. It's so

Kosta Yepifantsev: 17:14

is it real, though? Um,

Dr. Paula Hinton: 17:17

I would say that I am a real skeptic, meaning I'm not convinced of anything yet. But I'm open to it.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 17:24

And here's the thing My house is haunted. And so I mean, you know, I don't know, I don't it seems like a pretty friendly ghost. I've talked about him before on the show. We call him Casper. You know, he's just things happen. You know, weird things happen. Probably short circuits and electricity, but we think it's a ghost. Like I said, very friendly. Very nice. And, you know, what? Not? Well, jive. Yeah, exactly. So I am curious, with regards to the spiritualism in with it having such a close component to Christianity. Does the whole the the notion of the Holy Spirit, does that, like become developed through this spiritualism? Or is that a totally different aspect of Christianity?

Dr. Paula Hinton: 18:07

That's something that at least with my understanding of spiritualism, that I've not seen, Spiritualism is sort of broken off into into other streams. And I'm not familiar with every one of them, but it's really looking at this is a modern world. And surely, with all the things that we're inventing, we can come up with a way to prove that there's a heaven and a hell. I mean, Edison was working on a telephone to the other world. He worked on that for years and years, he thought we can communicate with them just like we do with the telephone. And so when you have, you know, people like that, that are taking it seriously, it's fascinating. And of course, then you've got the whole Harry Houdini, part of it, versus Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Kosta Yepifantsev: 18:49

was the significance in those two,

Dr. Paula Hinton: 18:51

Harry Houdini again, desperate to believe in it, especially after his mother died. He just really wanted to know that she was okay that there was an afterlife, but he spent most of his time revealing the fakers out there and so he would go to seances. And after a while, he had to start to disguise himself because as soon as they saw him, they would shut everything down, but he would expose them. And then he became friends with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle completely embraced spiritualism to the point where he got caught up in an incident that kind of turned embarrassing, not for him because he refused to acknowledge that something had happened. But there were these little girls who claimed that they had photographs of fairies that were in their backyard, and he saw them and said, these are absolutely real. This is amazing. And he was so excited. And other people looked at him and said, Dude, you know, is this is not Yeah. And this is the guy who writes Sherlock Holmes, you know? Yeah. And so it's just interesting then to see the clashes between the As to Worlds then between the people who want to believe the people who do believe the people who don't I mean, it all kind of comes together. So

Kosta Yepifantsev: 20:09

not to take it too deep. But I just want to just one more rung down. Sure. What is it about this fight between reality and what people make up into perceived reality that feeds your love of history, like, why choose Why choose that dynamic to talk about?

Dr. Paula Hinton: 20:28

Well, think of an example, I just got done teaching Civil War to my students in the survey class. And one of the themes that I talked to them about weeks before we even start the material is this idea of reality versus perception. And if you look at a lot of the bigger incidents that sort of drive us toward the Civil War, it has to do with misinterpretations of things, people believing that something bigger and more horrible is going on. So you have something like the Nat Turner slave revolt. And so this is a slave revolt. And there were, I think, don't quote me on this, but something like 70 or 80 Whites who were killed. It wasn't ultimately successful, but it was the most successful slave revolt in the United States. And so then you look at, you know, the the state, you know, legislature gets together just weeks later, and you can read it, and they're trying to figure out what's to blame, who's to blame. And they don't say Nat Turner, they don't say slavery, they say, northern white abolitionist, and that's just ridiculous. Northern White abolitionist had zero to do with it. Some of them were cheering it on. But but they didn't plot this, but they believed they did. And so you see that in just, you know, time after time, and the same is happening with northerners who are perceiving things like Uncle Tom's Cabin as being nonfiction. Like there really is, you know, the these characters really do exist. Now, of course, they're based on real people, of course, but their belief is that there is a Simon lagree Somewhere living in Kentucky, you know, and that every southern white male is just like him. And so that's where I think there is this collision between the two. And oftentimes we see people acting upon misperceptions, what they think is going on instead of what really is going on. So a lot of history is that

Kosta Yepifantsev: 22:23

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Dr. Paula Hinton: 23:45

I think there are a handful of people who are looking for information, but I think most people are looking to justify their own beliefs. Okay. And so they're turning to people who already agree with them. I'm trying to think we've really broken down into this us versus them. There's no gray area, everything's black and white. If you disagree with me, then you are a bad person. You are a dangerous person. You are a stupid person. And so why would you listen to a bad dangerous, stupid person, so you don't. And so everybody stays stuck in their own beliefs and doesn't even listen to the other side of of an issue. It's sad, but and we're all doing it, though. I mean, yes. Oh, yeah, I'm not I'm not talking. I've grown to hate both parties. The beach party. So yeah, I'm not I'm not going on one side or the other here. I just feel like it's really sad that we just kind of spend most of our time reacting and reacting to what somebody else has said about what we believe instead of looking into things and listening to other people. I'm happy to listen to somebody who disagrees with me. And I've changed my views on things before. Yeah. And I think you have to do that. If you want to keep growing, you know, the

Kosta Yepifantsev: 24:58

other guy may be right, right? Right. No, ever No. You're writing a book about serial killer Belle gunness who lived in Indiana and was reported to have murdered more than 40 people between 1884 and 1908. Of all the women serial killers, you've studied what stood out about Belle story?

Dr. Paula Hinton: 25:18

First of all, I think that numbers probably exaggerated. It could be as many as 40. But we know for certain there were 12 Okay, which is a lot. Yeah. Okay. What stands out about her, there's a lot of things. First of all, most female serial killers aren't even recognized as such, because we think of serial killers as hunting for victims. And so you know, I would include a female serial killer who kills every one of her children, you know, one year at a time or something or marries and kills her husband and remarries kills him. That's a serial killer, but they're not hunting like a Ted Bundy or something and so people don't recognize them as being the same thing. Aileen Wuornos, and Florida popped up, she was said to be and I think the FBI even said at the time that she was the first female serial killer because she was out hunting for victims. And that just threw people off. But Belle gunness isn't hunting for them. But she's luring them, which to me is virtually the same thing. Yeah. So she's just not, you know, going to go out and get in a vehicle and go find them herself. She just advertised and had them come to her, and literally would tell them in letters to liquidate their assets and bring all the cash with them. Wow. So that's what's interesting about her. The story itself is just incredible. It begins with a fire at her farm, and the neighbors and the town all come and they find an adult female body with three children's bodies. By this time they fallen down through the basement, the whole house is is destroyed. And these four bodies are found. And she's this harrowing, because it looked like she had tried to protect them. They were all grouped together. And then a couple of days later, this man shows up and he's looking for his brother, his brother had gone to visit with her and maybe marry her. And he hadn't heard from him for a couple of months. And he had been, you know, corresponding with Bill and she was being very evasive. So he says, you know, I'm just wondering, you know, if have you seen him around, he goes out to the farm where they're still cleaning up. And he says, Do you mind if I just start digging around? And one of the guys said, well, there were some soft spots over there. And he digs and he literally uncovers his brother in like 20 minutes. So they call for the sheriff. And they come and then they start digging, and it's one body after another. And it just keeps unwinding from there until, you know, I could go on and on and on. There's all these twists and turns. And then it becomes about partway through the story. They start to wonder if she was even the female body in the basement. Did she get away? And so even 10 or 20 years later, there was a woman in California who was arrested. And some people who lived there saw her mugshot and said that spelt gunness and they actually sent a couple of people from Laporte, Indiana where this happened to go out and look at her. So you know, this is a huge story, and there's no little tidy ending to it. It's just kind of incredible.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 28:20

And you teach a course called why women kill it's women who kill women who kill Okay. Okay. So typically, it would never, I mean, because you don't really talk about a lot of female serial killers, right? Mostly, they're white men, correct in their 20s and 30s. So why do women end up becoming serial killers,

Dr. Paula Hinton: 28:42

um, just for some of the same reasons, others, you know, it's oftentimes about money, it's oftentimes about wanting freedom. So you get rid of your kids, you get rid of your husband, you know, a lot of the same reasons, you just don't see the sexual predators, like you would see with a lot of male serial killers. So that's probably the biggest difference there. And the course itself, if I'm being honest, is really a woman's history course. But it's like spoonful of sugar, you know? Yeah. So we'll talk about the crimes. But as we're talking about the deviant women, we have to talk about, well, what's the accepted norm? Right. So it's a woman's history course.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 29:24

I love it. Maybe I'll take it. Yeah. It's no secret. We love true crime. It's one of the fastest growing genres of film, television and podcasts. What is it about listening to the gruesome details of how people were killed that we want to hear?

Dr. Paula Hinton: 29:40

There's a lot of theories on that. One of the ones that I find the most fascinating is that it's an actual biological kind of urge that it comes from that sort of, you know, hunt, be hunted kind of instinct. And so there's this sense that we want to inform ourselves on who we should be Be afraid of and why and what situations to avoid, or even how to protect our family, you know, if we're looking at it from from that point of view, and how victims have escaped, and we may not even recognize that's what we're doing. But they think that that's kind of, you know, underlying all of it. It's also a great detective story. We're seeing now a rise in these, you know, Facebook, you know, sites and things where they're trying to solve cold cases, right? Even contemporary cases, and they're doing it seriously. They're not just goofing around, and they're taking it very seriously. And so for a lot of people, it's it's playing detective. And I don't mean that to diminish it. I didn't mean that in the sense that they're just, I

Kosta Yepifantsev: 30:39

mean, some of them have been successful in overturning and catching like, killers from cases that have been close since like the 80s. Yes.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 30:46

And even if they just reopen a case, that's a success, sometimes if you just get people to reinvestigate or to look at things again, you know, so that's been great. I think there's also more access, like you said, there's more of it out there. But I think too, it's just, there are some just fascinating cases out there. If I just think of the last few months, we're talking Alex Murtaugh, I mean, talk about your twists and turns. Literally, if I saw that in the film, I would just shake my head and go, Oh, please, you know, this would not happen in real life. But it did. There's a case out of Florida, the eighth Wilson family that is starting to open up now. They've already convicted 1234 People for the murder of one man, and now they're bringing in his mother in law and some other people. It's really complicated, but the one of the guys is a dentist, and it's just this crazy case. And then you have the Chad daybell and Lori vallow daybell, the doomsday cult folks. So she's had her trial recently. Chad de belles trial is probably going to start in, I don't know, six months or so. The Idaho

Kosta Yepifantsev: 31:54

murders. Yes, that is that is something that I am so intrigued about. And I

Dr. Paula Hinton: 31:59

watched her trial. And it's fascinating. And they're not even trying the cases in Las Vegas. There's other stuff that happened in Las Vegas to I mean, that's not even the complete story. Wow, it just again, it's like the Alex Murdock case. He just keeps opening up, you know, and they just keep adding more and more victims to the list. You

Kosta Yepifantsev: 32:18

think that he killed his wife and son? Yes.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 32:21

Okay. I do. I didn't at first, but I watched the whole trial. And yeah,

Kosta Yepifantsev: 32:28

I mean, he was like, he admitted that he was an opioid addict. Yeah. And I don't know, do you believe that that's true, or he might

Dr. Paula Hinton: 32:36

have dabbled in it. And it looks like he probably did, but I don't think he's anywhere near the addict that he pretends to be. I don't know how you spend millions of dollars anyway, he would have he would have dropped dead by that point, you know, so,

Kosta Yepifantsev: 32:49

I mean, I'm assuming you watch and listen to true crime. Yes. Okay. All right. So since you've been researching what is probably your most fascinating, fine, like what has been something that stuck in your craw and just kept you up at night like, Man, I wish somebody would solve this.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 33:06

I think the old standby and I hate to be a cliche, but Jack the Ripper, you know, it's never gonna get solved. They've already tried the DNA and all that and there's just a lot of the evidence that they had is walked away when people retire. They took little bits and bobs them, you know, but I would love to see that. One of my favorite cases that I teach my women who killed class is the Lizzie Borden case. And she totally did it or at least knows who did it. But she walked away. They found her not guilty. But I would love for there to be sort of a some kind of, you know, find her diary or something. You know, that would be awesome. And what was Lizzie Borden? She's the one who took an axe gave her father 40 wax, you know that O'Brien? Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't really 40. But, and it's actually I always thought it was a really old case. And it is from the late 1800s. But there are crime scene photographs and stuff that'll blow your mind. It was it was a messy crime. Yes.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 34:03

And here's the thing, I gotta say, I don't know a whole lot about Jack the Ripper. Other than that he killed women in London. And people were trying to solve who he was correct. Okay, so nobody knows who this serial killer was. And he was essentially the first serial killer in recorded history.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 34:18

He's not the first that ever existed. But he's the first in modern history with modern newspapers that were priced, where the average person was, could afford them and buy them. And because it remained a mystery, it just spread. And you know, I could bring in 30 experts on Jack the Ripper, and they will tell you that it's 30 different people. And if you listen to their arguments, you would believe just about every one of them too. They all make sense to a certain degree.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 34:46

I mean, I just feel like it could be it is extremely difficult to be a serial killer in 2023. Like yeah, because I mean, you are literally you've got your tract, everywhere you go. There's a camera on every single corner license plate readers, I mean everything. There's no possible way that you could bounce around, you know, city to city across the United States killing people.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 35:09

Oh, yeah. Alex Murdock, what did him in? Really, I think what was pivotal where people started to think maybe, is his son literally minutes before he shot and they kind of know when he shot literally minutes before that is recording a dog in their kennel who belongs to a friend of theirs, because he thinks there's something wrong with a tail. And so he's filming it so his friend can see. And they're trying to think, is there something wrong? Do we need to do something and you can hear him in the background talking? And he said he wasn't there? And

Kosta Yepifantsev: 35:38

there you go, technology saving the day? Yeah.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 35:42

So yeah, if I was going to kill somebody, I would get a time machine. And I would also maybe go to Canada or England where they don't punish you as much as we do here. So

Kosta Yepifantsev: 35:55

before we wrap up, I want to ask you a serious question. They say those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. In your opinion, as a historian, and Professor, do you believe we have enough of an understanding of history to not repeat it? No.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 36:13

And I don't mean to be negative Nancy, and I think I really am becoming so negative. So I really try to watch myself. But no, we're just doing the same stupid stuff again, and again, and again. And I've come to believe, and this will never happen. But it would be wonderful if we required every politician at every level, to master American history, constitutional history, political science, foreign policy, those kinds of things, and to understand what has happened in the past and why, you know, and it can be done. And it's been done. World War Two, as soon as you know, it looked like that was starting to percolate. Congress got together and said, Okay, we got pulled into World War One. Let's look at how that happened. And let's try to avoid it. And so you get all the neutrality acts, again, didn't work in the end, because you've got a Hitler and some big, you know, horrible people. But again, they they did learn from the past, but overall, we just don't do it. And it's kind of sad. You

Kosta Yepifantsev: 37:19

know, what's interesting about history is it allows us to have a conversation in the gray. It allows us to look at where we are now from different angles. And I talk about my experience with African American Studies, often because it was so impactful was life changing for me. But it applies to so many different aspects, not just to the history of African Americans, meaning like the stuff actually studying the history of how events occurred. I have been trying to reconcile this. And I've been spending a lot of time in urban areas, trying to understand it from from people that lived their perspective. Was the civil rights, actually a good thing for the African American community? Oh, and was desegregation actually a good thing for the African American because if you if you take the perspective of Booker T, Washington, there would have been more benefit in the fact that African Americans were segregated and one segregation was lifted, there was a lot of African American teachers that lost positions, African American schools, that, you know, popular belief is that they're terrible, but they were actually excellent, they created what's known as the talented 10th. In those environment. So if we look back to the history of civil rights, maybe it was just unfinished is why we feel like we have the opportunity to look at is maybe a negative or maybe just like an unfinished work. Am I on the right track?

Dr. Paula Hinton: 39:00

I would, I would say definitely was unfinished, didn't accomplish everything that it could have, and that people wanted it to, as far as whether it, you know, went in the wrong direction or not was actually a negative. People been talking about that since you know, like around 1900, where you've got a Booker T Washington versus a W. EB Dubois, and they have very opposite views. And they are both logical. They both make sense. I think that's just something that people have to decide for themselves. I don't know that there's an answer to that. And I don't feel like I have the background to to even theorize more than I already have. But that is a huge, huge question. Yeah.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 39:45

It's been on my mind a lot lately and really, for the last year, it has been. Second question is, was the election of Donald Trump the popular media has said that it was because of the fact that two thirds So Americans do not have a college degree. And again, these are statistics so that I hear. So if I'm wrong, you need to correct me. Two thirds of Americans do not have a college degree. So they have a high school diploma or lower. And specifically, the white male, non college educated vote is what sort of put Trump in the position that he was. My question is, is, why have we as a country in the 70s, and 80s, done everything in our power to lower the labor participation rate by taking away jobs through globalization and continuing to propagate that by essentially eliminating what was the golden age of the 50s and 60s for white men essentially, being able to earn and have a single income family, all of the things that we see in popular culture? Why did we choose policy positions that destroyed it, and essentially has led us into this chaotic environment where we're choosing the person that doesn't have any political background? And we're just going, yes, that guy is the loudest. And he's the most controversial, and I believe he'll have my back. So we're going there.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 41:09

That's a huge question. Um, I think that in a lot of ways, you had politicians who were talking to a larger audience, and who were serving them.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 41:21

By larger audience, you mean the globe? Like the world? Yeah. Okay.

Dr. Paula Hinton: 41:24

But also just even the voters in America. I think that, you know, by the time we get to the 70s, and 80s, unions were losing a lot of their power and influence. And I don't think they were listened to as much the thing with with Trump, I think, again, I'm not a political scientist, and I'm a historian. So to me, this is history. But my gut has always been that people are completely missing the boat on this. And it's kind of insulting to say, and I don't know about the statistics, if they're correct or not. But it seems dismissive to me. What they're missing is, I think that was happening in both parties. With Bernie. Yeah, yeah. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, they were both so similar. Both out of the party. Really? Yeah. They're both loud. They're both opinionated. They both are driven. I thought they were very similar in a lot of ways, not their politics, certainly. But these were ground up movements on both sides. And the Democrats, I think were able to maneuver older politicians in and move him out of the way. And the Republicans couldn't do it. But I think there was a bigger movement going on, where I think Americans in general, were saying, We're sick of all these politicians, and we want something different. And I think that's what was, you know, maybe really, something that drew people to him is that he's not the same old thing, right? Because we've had the same old thing again, and again and again. And it doesn't seem to be working. You know,

Kosta Yepifantsev: 42:58

when did it stop working? Go golly, I know, I'm asking you a lot of questions that may be outside of your scope, but just just bear with me. I talk about inflection points all the time. So when do you think was America's inflection point?

Dr. Paula Hinton: 43:13

I keep thinking of different points and then thinking No. I have this feeling that it's early 20th century,

Kosta Yepifantsev: 43:21

the recoil from the progressive movement? I

Dr. Paula Hinton: 43:25

think that's part of it. Okay. I think that's a big part of it. I think the Great Depression played a big role. I think we also keep forgetting. And here we are, again, forgetting the past, the the 1918 flu pandemic, on top of the war, that was the last year of the war, you know, you're talking about millions and millions of people who disappear from the planet within a four year period of time. And I think people don't recognize what an impact that had. I just feel like there's something happening around there. And again, this is beyond my scope of knowledge here.

Kosta Yepifantsev: 44:01

No, I believe me, I love it. Yeah, I could sit here and talk to you for three hours. Oh,

Dr. Paula Hinton: 44:06

thank you. But I will say to that, that's when I see just my own opinion, where I find fewer and fewer politicians that I find readable, where they're writing things, or giving speeches that I think are profound, the numbers start to dwindle. At the end. That's just my own personal opinion. I was talking earlier about Thomas Paine, I was reading something from the American crisis to my students. And I thought nobody writes like this anymore. You know, nobody's got this passion. Nobody believes these kinds of things. You know, nobody's able to use rhetoric in the same way for the same purpose. But again, that's just my personal opinion. So

Kosta Yepifantsev: 44:47

we always like to end the show on a high note, who is someone that makes you better when you're together? Well,

Dr. Paula Hinton: 44:56

that would definitely be my mother. She has been an example too. me my whole life, even today still, you know, here I am Negative Nancy and I'll go and see her. She brought me chilly this morning by the way, she made it at home and brought it over this morning. So, but if I were to, you know, spend some time with her this afternoon My mood would shift, I would start to see the world as a much kinder world, a world where there's more morality than I think there is where things are a little better than they are. She always puts other people before herself and she does things for other people silently and happily. They never know she's done it. She doesn't need to pat on the back, which I find really admirable. And I wish I could do I always sort of need that little thank you from people. That's terrible, but it's true. So I would say my mom

Kosta Yepifantsev: 45:47

Thank you to our partners Miss Sallie’s Market for presenting this episode. I hope it’s no secret by now, I don’t know my way around the kitchen. However, I do know my way to the kitchen. That’s where Miss Sallie’s Market comes in. With fresh, locally sourced to-go meals made daily, I don’t have to worry about my cooking skills getting in the way of our eating skills. Open 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM Tuesday through Saturday, Miss Sallie’s Market is located in the heart of Downtown Gainesboro with free community tastings every Thursday from 4-6. Find out more about vendors, offerings

and weekly specials at: 46:27

www.misssallies.com

Morgan Franklin: 46:33

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Better Together with Kosta Yepifantsev. If you've enjoyed listening and you want to hear more, make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. Leave us a review or better yet, share this episode with a friend. Today's episode was written and produced by Morgan Franklin post production mixing and editing by Mike Franklin. Want to know more about Kosta visit us at kostayepifantsev.com. We're better together. We'd like to remind our listeners that the views and opinions expressed during this episode are those of the individual speakers and do not necessarily represent or reflect the official policy or position of this show its producers or any related entities or advertisers. While our discussions may touch on various topics of interest, please note that the content is intended to inspire thought provoking dialogue and should not be used for a substitute for professional advice.Specifically, nothing heard on this podcast should be construed as financial, legal, medical or any other kind of professional advice. We encourage our listeners to consult with a professional in these areas for guidance tailored to their specific circumstances.