PODCAST · history
Iconography
by Charles Gustine
How do we understand the places we visit (and even the places we’ve never been)? As a shorthand, we use agreed-upon touchstones - famous places, famous people famous foods, and, of course, dreams. Dreamed-up people and dreamed-up places and dreamed-up things. This podcast looks at a culture's icons - real and imagined - to see what they say about the culture itself, as well as the outsiders who've elevated those icons above all others.
Episodes
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Miniseries Preview and Re-Release - Jaws: Amity Island Welcomes You
Jaws is back in cinemas this week, so I wanted to do two things. First, re-release our 2020 episode on Jaws as a distinctly New England story; and second, let you know that Iconography is returning with a new miniseries this fall - five episodes looking at Jaws through the lens of its most iconic...
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Ebenezer Scrooge (Fifth Anniversary 2nd Edition)
For Iconography’s fifth anniversary we’re remastering episodes from season one. This is a remastered 2nd edition of Iconography’s first Christmas episode, from December 2016, with a new afterward looking at the 2017 film The Man Who Invented Christmas. You can access the original episode here....
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Fifth Anniversary Announcement: Season 1 Remastered
It’s Iconography’s fifth birthday this month, and to celebrate the anniversary, we're announcing a series of remastered 2nd editions of episodes from season 1 of Iconography.
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Re-Release: Squanto
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, and Iconography ringing in its fifth birthday, it seemed like a great time to bring up a gem from the archives, out episode on Squanto from 2018. As an icon, Squanto is known, but he isn’t really known. What Santa is to Christmas and the Easter Bunny is…
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Re-Release: The First Thanksgiving
As we hunker down for what will be a very unconventional Thanksgiving, it seemed like the right time to re-release our 2018 episode exploring how the holiday is actually a strange mashup of two distinct celebrations. Whether you're spending this holiday longing for Thanksgivings of old or…
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Jaws: Amity Island Welcomes You
This episode, a deep dive into the 45 year old proto-blockbuster that has dominated the conversation in this lost pandemic summer - Jaws. That deep dive takes us to the island where Jaws was shot, Martha's Vineyard, as well as Nantucket, the nearby island where Jaws might have been shot if snow...
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A Tale of Two Bridges (3rd Birthday Special w/ Wade Roush of Soonish)
Iconography started three years ago with an episode about two neighboring bridges in the heart of London. Now, for our third birthday, Wade Roush of fellow Hub & Spoke show Sooinsh brings us the story of two Boston bridges that share a similar story, though that story has a very different ending....
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The Old Man of the Mountain: A Story in Five Pieces
How does a group of people hold onto an icon when… well, when that icon can no longer be held? In 2003, New Hampshire's state emblem, the Old Man of the Mountain, a massive granite face on a mountainside, crumbled 198 years after he had been discovered. This is his story in five pieces.
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Interview w/ Brian Logan, Communications Director of Plymouth 400
In this bonus interview episode, Brian Logan, Communications Director for the Plymouth 400 organization gives us insight into what goes into planning a quadricentenary commemoration. Transcript here: https://iconographypodcast.com/articles/interview-w-brian-logan-communications-director-s1!677ae
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Plymouth Rock: A Pageant
Visitors to Plymouth Rock tend to find the icon... underwhelming - a small, scarred rock in a cage. Maybe the reason Plymouth Rock is so frequently seen as underwhelming is because all the fascinating stories of how people who love the Rock have hurt it aren’t well known enough. People love…
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Mayflower II
In the 1950s, something must have been in the water, because all of a sudden, there was a movement afoot to put a replica of the Mayflower in the water. For one man to become obsessed with the idea of rebuilding the Pilgrim's famed ship, to throw all his time and money into that single-minded...
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The Mayflower
The Mayflower is a foundational icon of the United States, but it was a British ship carrying British subjects to a British colony. So how does the UK plan to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's journey from one Plymouth to another? This episode, Dr. Anna Scott and Jo Loosemore…
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The First Thanksgiving
Sarah Josepha Hale, editress of Godey's Lady's Book, dedicated years of her life to the crusade to make Thanksgiving a national holiday - she was successful. And yet, Reverend Alexander Young wrote one footnote about Thanksgiving, and he may have inadvertently done more to change the history of…
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The Crucible of Modern Salem
The Witchfinder General of Salem, Eric Dwinnells leads us on a Halloween journey to the heart of Salem, Massachusetts. Find it questionable that the Salem Witch Trials and The Crucible would be covered in a Halloween episode at all? That friction - the friction that defines Salem - is precisely…
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The Witch Hunt
Can a witch hunt narrative be effective if it includes actual witches? In part one of a two part series on Salem and its Witch Trials, Iconography uses Hocus Pocus, Scooby Doo, and The Blair Witch Project to see how the bad witch stands in for the unknowable wilderness; then Sabrina, Bewitched, I...
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Squanto
As an icon, Squanto is known, but he isn’t really known. What Santa is to Christmas and the Easter Bunny is to Easter, Squanto is to Thanksgiving. He is a sense memory from childhood. He’s more than a man, or really much less than a man, now. He is a symbol. There he is smudged into the paint of...
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Special Episode: Reaching Mars
Look up. This month, July 2018, Mars is as close as he'll get for another 17 years. On a recent trip to Houston and the Johnson Space Center, this struck as deeply moving, inspiring, and a bit sad. It also reminded me of the first episode of scripted audio I ever produced, about The Martian and...
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John Smith, Admiral of New England
The story of how John Smith made New England, and how New England destroyed John Smith.
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The Citgo Sign and the Boston Marathon
Season 2 of Iconography begins with a look at the relationship between two New England icons - a marathon that's become not just the definitive marathon experience but perhaps the definitive Boston experience, and an advertisement that's transcended its commercial beginnings to become a symbol of...
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Season 2 Preview
From England to New England. No I didn't move from London to Boston so I could have that catchy tagline, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Heck no, I'm going to ride that horse all the way from Charlestown to Cambridge shouting "Season 2 is coming! Season 2 is coming!"
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James Bond in 2015
Revisit 2015, when the most recent Bond film came out on the tails of a series of revelatory spy films - and world events - that argued for 007's irrelevance. This episode: How the NSA shows up in mainstream entertainment So many Bond themes Melissa McCarthy showing the men (mostly Statham) how...
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The Death of Hercule Poirot
There are very few things in life that are truly once in a lifetime experiences. If you had picked up the New York Times on August 6, 1975 you would have experienced one of them. “Hercule Poirot Is Dead; Famed Belgian Detective.” It would have been the first time you had ever seen the Times honor…
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The Guy Fawkes Mask
This is the story of Guy Fawkes, but it's also the story of the comic book that forever gave him rosy cheeks and a smile that taunts authority.
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The Ghost Stories of M.R. James
You never know what your legacy is going to be. There once was a scholar at Cambridge who dedicated probably 90% of his adult waking hours to scholarship - cataloging dusty old manuscripts, caring for fragile old artifacts, studying creaky old churches. He never married, never had children, never...
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Terry Pratchett's Discworld
How does one map onto our world a fantasy world that rides around on the back of a turtle, where there is no London or England - or, to be more precise, where those places exist, but only in a magicless round world that’s kept in a glass sphere at Unseen University? I went to the HisWorld...
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The Legacy of Dunkirk
What started as the second half of a series on Dunkirk turned into a meditation on Charlottesville, Nazis, statues, and symbols.
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A Tapestry of Dunkirk
It all feels immersive, especially in IMAX. But I’m having a wider screen experience when I watch Dunkirk. I imagine what’s just on the periphery; who else, besides Mr. Dawson, is setting off from England in a little dinghy? Who is up in the air monitoring fuel readings alongside the self-assured...
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Paddington
An episode dedicated to Michael Bond, and his little bear from Darkest Peru.
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King John and the Magna Carta
To wrap up our three-part series on the turn of the 13th century, we take a look at King John - no longer a petulant prince - and how he transformed England for the best by being the absolute worst.
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Richard the Lionheart
This episode we consider the legacy of Richard the Lionheart - was he a disobedient son, a bad governor, a harbinger of death? This far out from the 1190s, does it matter anymore who he was, or does it matter who he's become?
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Robin Hood
It might surprise you how much Robin Hood has been transformed by the way we want to see history; and by how much the way we see history has been transformed by Robin Hood.
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The Full English Breakfast
This week, our first culinary icon. The Full English. The fry-up. What does it mean for a national cuisine - one that finds itself frequently derided for its blandness - to be tied so obviously to a meal as fickle - as subject to trends, whims, diets, advertising forces, and let’s be honest…
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Spice Girls (Part 2)
This episode: why Britpop orphaned the very British, very popular Spice Girls, and why feminists refused to adopt them.
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Spice Girls (Part 1)
20 years ago, in March 1997, our world was in truth, a Spice World. Revisit those heady days as we look back at Girl Power and its influence today.
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Piccadilly Circus
The lights are out in Piccadilly Circus, just the latest change for an icon that's characterized by change. We look to a lot of icons to tell us about the past - Piccadilly Circus is that rare icon we want to look like the future, right down to the simplest of questions: what will I be buying...
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Crimson Peak and British Gothic
This is the iTunes debut of the podcast that inspired Iconography. In this episode, I considered Crimson Peak within the context of American vs. British ghost stories, and within the context of Gothic Romance.
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Four Weddings and a Funeral
In 1994, it became the highest grossing British film of all time. How Four Weddings and a Funeral changed Richard Curtis's career - for better and worse.
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Twelfth Night
What happens when an icon dies? It's not just people that pass away, or buildings that get demolished... ideas to can be weathered away by time. Twelfth Night, as it was celebrated in England for centuries - as Shakespeare knew it when he wrote a comedy named after it - is but a ghost of its…
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George Michael's Leather Jacket
This is a special in memoriam episode of the podcast, dedicated to one the brightest stars in the constellation of British music, George Michael. And specifically, dedicated to his fascinating relationship with his most iconic of totems - the leather jacket.
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Ebenezer Scrooge (Remastered 2nd Edition)
Every day of the holiday season, there is probably someone in your neighborhood watching or reading some version of A Christmas Carol. If you think about it, that means we probably see early Victorian England as often as any other time period. What has kept the story so vital? And how did a young...
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The Remembrance Poppy
The poppy is an elegant symbol of remembrance - for soldiers who died and for those who came back; but there's a lot of conflict behind the story of its creation - the war that inspired a poem, and the two women who fought to be the true Poppy Lady.
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The Many London Bridges
The London Bridge you cross today may not be anything to write home about, but there have been many London Bridges, going back to Roman Times.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
How do we understand the places we visit (and even the places we’ve never been)? As a shorthand, we use agreed-upon touchstones - famous places, famous people famous foods, and, of course, dreams. Dreamed-up people and dreamed-up places and dreamed-up things. This podcast looks at a culture's icons - real and imagined - to see what they say about the culture itself, as well as the outsiders who've elevated those icons above all others.
HOSTED BY
Charles Gustine
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Iconography have?
Iconography currently has 42 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Iconography about?
How do we understand the places we visit (and even the places we’ve never been)? As a shorthand, we use agreed-upon touchstones - famous places, famous people famous foods, and, of course, dreams. Dreamed-up people and dreamed-up places and dreamed-up things. This podcast looks at a culture's icons...
How often does Iconography release new episodes?
Iconography has 42 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Iconography?
You can listen to Iconography on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Iconography?
Iconography is created and hosted by Charles Gustine.
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