What is this?
Today In History is a newsletter that celebrates cultural anniversaries.
Can you be more specific?
If you subscribe to this newsletter, you will receive an email every day, or thereabouts, that contains one brief cultural historical remembrance.
And what pray tell is a cultural historical remembrance?
Something that happened exactly 20... 50... 800 years ago today. Often, it is a movie, book, series, or song, but it also might be a notable historical event.
That’s all?
No. It’s also a time machine for exploring the role of memory, nostalgia, and narrative in modern media. But would you subscribe if I said that?
Where did this idea come from?
Many years ago, back when I worked in newspapers, a mentor figure told me that the cheapest content the media produces is the Today In History / Celebrity Birthdays junk in the back pages. You know, the filler. Ever since then, I have been obsessed with the question, What would it mean to create good filler content?
Why would someone want to do that?
I’m not sure! But I also wrote an entire encyclopedia, so maybe reviving moribund forms of media has become an impractical obsession. Perhaps horoscopes will be my next project.
Will you continue this project?
My momma di’n’t raise no quitter.
Who are you?
Hi, I’m Rex. Nice to meet you.
