Iconography

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 character (okay it’s most iconic human character), the sea-shanty singing, saltine chomping, Narragansett swilling, shark hunter with a grudge, Quint.

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 [https://iconographypodcast.com/articles/ebenezer-scrooge-original-edition-s1!47ae0]. 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 Charles Dickens engender so much empathy for such a miserable man?

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.

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 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 the handprint turkey you made in kindergarten. You don’t need to go visit Squanto – have kids and at some point when they’re in elementary school, he’ll come to you in the form of Timmy with the gap in his front teeth dressed in a fringe vest and a feather headband. We’re going to spend the next few episodes of the podcast in Plymouth, thinking about the icons the Pilgrims have left behind leading up to their ultimate legacy, Thanksgiving and those handprint turkeys. As a first step, let’s exhume Squanto from the smudged paint, and restore to him not just some dignity but some agency.

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 wondering why on earth this holiday matters so much, this episode is worth checking out. 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 the holiday (and the history of the Pilgrims). This is the story of the "First" Thanksgiving.