Past Present

On this week’s Past Present podcast, Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, and Neil Young discuss Jeb Bush and the history of frontrunners, the modern period, and trigger warnings.  Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Jeb Bush was the presumed frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president in 2016, but he’s quickly lost the top spot in the campaign. Frontrunners have often been unable to secure their party’s nomination. Neil tracked “frontrunner” on Google’s Ngram Viewer and found it was first used in 1924, but until 1960 it was mostly used in the context of horseracing. Niki noted that the jump of “frontrunner” language from horseracing to politics after 1960 was in keeping with what a 2012 Atlantic article had called the “Sports Center-ization” of political journalism.Menstruation has a long history. Some women are practicing “free bleeding” as a feminist project to reclaim the period from its history of shame and taboo. Natalia recommended Lara Freidenfelds’ h