Welcome to The United States of Amnesia, a podcast bringing history to the present!
The United States of Amnesia
The United States of Amnesia
Welcome to The United States of Amnesia, a podcast exploring the lessons we’ve forgotten, misunderstood, or never learned. As the saying goes, history repeats itself. Mark Twain allegedly refined this: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” But Ecclesiastes said it best: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Yet over time, history, politics, and religion have been distorted by bias, oversimplification, and myth. Misunderstanding the past means misreading the present and misstepping into the future. This podcast aims to cut through the fog, reconnecting past and present to help us think more clearly about the world we’re in, and the one we're heading toward. Join us as we delve into the great struggle of humanity: to reconcile who we were with who we are becoming.
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The United States of Amnesia

The United States of Amnesia

Welcome to The United States of Amnesia, a podcast exploring the lessons we’ve forgotten, misunderstood, or never learned. Over time, history, politics, and religion have been distorted by bias, oversimplification, and myth. This podcast aims to cut through the fog, reconnecting past and present to help us think more clearly about the world we’re in, and the one we're heading toward. Join us as we delve into the great struggle of humanity: to reconcile who we were with who we are becoming.

We post new episodes every other Wednesday. Please explore our website for more information about us, to listen to our episodes, catch up on our blog (we post pictures and sources relevant to different episodes as well as news about upcoming episodes), leave a review, and more!

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205: Tea, Drugs, and Jesus - The Soong Dynasty

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Upcoming Episodes!
Feb. 18, 2026

Upcoming Episodes!

Episode 206 (coming March 4!): Mike leads our discussion of the American experience in China during the first half of World War II. Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin Roosevelt, and General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell are the central figures in t…
205: Tea, Drugs, and Jesus - The Soong Dynasty
Feb. 17, 2026

205: Tea, Drugs, and Jesus - The Soong Dynasty

Marshall, Blake, and Mike discuss America’s view of China from the 1920s through the early 1940s and the strong influence Americans raised by missionaries in China, notably Henry Luce and Pearl Buck, had on that view. Chiang ...
204: Tea, Drugs, and Jesus - The Harmonious Fists
Feb. 3, 2026

204: Tea, Drugs, and Jesus - The Harmonious Fists

Mike walks us through the events of the Boxer Rebellion, a conflict in which Chinese rebels attempted to slaughter all foreigners and Chinese Christians in China. Marshall then explains how this drove missionaries into isolat...
Map of China
Jan. 21, 2026

Map of China

Many people may wonder about the location of various cities referred to in our series "Tea, Drugs, and Jesus" on the United Sates and China.  Where is Canton or Shanghai or Nanking?  Please check out the link to this map to get a better se…
203: Tea, Drugs, and Jesus - Rebellion Follows Faith
Jan. 20, 2026

203: Tea, Drugs, and Jesus - Rebellion Follows Faith

As the Manchu dynasty weakens during the 19th century, U.S. missionaries arrive. Christian evangelization leads to the outbreak of the long, bloody, brutal, and genocidal Taiping Rebellion, whose leader claims to be the young...
The Soong Sisters
Jan. 18, 2026

The Soong Sisters

Few families in the history of China have exercised such wide-ranging influence as the Soong dynasty in the 20th century. The three famous Soong sisters married well.  According to one saying, one loved money (Ai-Ling), one loved power (Mei-Lin…
Old Man Trump
Jan. 18, 2026

Old Man Trump

There have been some questions involving the arrest of Fred Trump at the Klu Klux Klan rally in 1927 (see Episode 102). Could he have been there to protest the Klan?  Did his presence really imply an acceptance of the Klan's doctrine of white r…
Theodore R. Johnson's Washington Post Column on the Fragility of U.S. Citizenship
Jan. 15, 2026

Theodore R. Johnson's Washington Post Column on the Fragility of U.S. Citizenship

Theodore R. Johnson's Washington Post column of January 14, 2026, discusses the "fragility" of U.S. citizenship in which he describes the injustice and danger of allowing the United States Government to decide capriciously who does and does not belo…