Introducing Worlds Turned Upside Down
Introducing Worlds Turned Upside Down, a podcast about the history of the American Revolution. Coming fall 2023 from R2 Studios.
Introducing Worlds Turned Upside Down, a podcast about the history of the American Revolution. Coming fall 2023 from R2 Studios. Learn more at www.r2studios.org.
Worlds Turned Upside Down tells the story of the American Revolution as a transatlantic crisis and imperial civil war through the lives of people who experienced it. For many modern citizens of the United States, “the cause of America” that gave birth to a new nation in 1776 and the heroic stories we tell ourselves about its founding remains “in great measure the cause of all mankind.”
But for the people who lived through it, the revolutionary era upended their lives in ways they could have never imagined. The crisis that engulfed the Atlantic world in the late eighteenth century inspired British Americans, Indigenous nations, enslaved Africans and African Americans, Europeans, and other peoples to question their loyalties, challenge authority, seek freedom, and resist revolutionary change.
Narrated by Jim Ambuske.
Worlds Turned Upside Down
Teaser Trailer
Published July 12, 2023
[Music Begins]
JIM AMBUSKE: You think you know the history of the American Revolution.
ANNE FERTIG (Abigail Adams): “the decisive Day is come on which the fate of America depends”
AMBUSKE: Think Again.
MILLS KELLY (Thomas Jefferson): "We might have been a free & great people together."
AMBER PELHAM (Phillis Wheatley): "No more, America, in mournful strain, Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain."
BRANDON TACHCO (Joseph Brandt): "The Disturbances in America give great trouble to all our Nations."
NATE SLEETER (George III): “Many of Our Subjects in….Our Colonies and Plantations in North America, misled by dangerous and ill-designing Men, ……have at length proceeded to an open and avowed Rebellion."
ALISON LANGFORD (Ann Hulton): “Government is exterminated and it is quite a state of anarchy."
DOUGLAS MACRAE (William Franklin): "You have now pointed out to you…two Roads -- one…leading to Peace, Happiness and a Restoration of the public Tranquility -- the other inevitably conducting you to Anarchy, Misery, and all the Horrors of a Civil War."
SLEETER (George III): "[B]lows must decide whether they are subject to this country or independent."
AMBUSKE: I’m Jim Ambuske, and this is Worlds Turned Upside Down, a podcast on the history of the American Revolution. Coming this fall from R2 Studios. Subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Learn more at R2studios.org.
[Music Ends]
Music Credits:
Matthias Förster, Conquerors - Instrumental Version via Artlist.io.
Further Reading:
Abigail Adams to John Adams, 18 June 1775, The Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17750618aa.
Thomas Jefferson, Draft of the Declaration of Independence, 1776, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html
Phillis Wheatley, “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth,” Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=821&img_step=1&mode=transcript#page1.
Joseph Brandt to Lord George Germain, 1776, George Mason University, https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/8071/.
George III, "By the King, a Proclamation for suppressing Rebellion and Sedition," August 23, 1775, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=818&pid=2.
Ann Hulton to Henry Hulton, June 30, 1768, quoted in George Kotlik, "William Taylor: Loyalist Refugee in East Florida, Journal of the American Revolution (2018): https://allthingsliberty.com/2018/05/william-taylor-loyalist-refugee-in-east-florida/
William Franklin to New Jersey Provincial Assembly, 13 January 1775, New Jersey State Library, https://www.njstatelib.org/wp-content/uploads/slic_files/imported/NJ_Information/Digital_Collections/NJInTheAmericanRevolution1763-1783/4.2.pdf.
Bridget Bukovich
Community Engagement Coordinator
Bridget Bukovich is the Community Engagement Coordinator for the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and R2 Studios. Bridget has an M.A. in Applied History and a graduate certificate in Digital Public Humanities from George Mason University. She is an expert in strategic social media management and digital marketing, with extensive experience in marketing management, community engagement, and outreach. Combining her professional experience in marketing with her education in history, she leads efforts to identify audiences for the resources created by RRCHNM and R2 Studios historians.
Hayley Madl
Graduate Research Assistant
Hayley Madl is a Ph.D. student at George Mason University. She currently works as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and as a Podcast Producer at R2 Studios whose credits include The Green Tunnel podcast. Hayley’s past work has centered on Indigenous expressions of sovereignty in treaty councils during the eighteenth century, particularly among the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations). Her current research focuses on the applications of 3D modeling and digital reconstruction to community memory and lost landscapes, especially within Indigenous communities.