Episode 70: Munich with Dr. Jeffrey Melnick and Dr. Erik M. Baker

This week Jeff Melnick and Erik Baker jump in to talk about Steven Spielberg's Munich. We talk about the history behind the attacks in 1972, why they were relevant in 2005, and why they remain relevant today. And yes, we absolutely discuss the warfare and attempted genocide in Palestine today. This is a really important conversation and I hope that it helps to illustrate how movies can be part of historical dialogue. I learned a lot from these guys and I hope you will too.

Jeffrey Melnick is a professor at University of Massachusetts Boston and the author of 9/11 Culture: America Under Construction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), Black-Jewish Relations on Trial (University Press of Mississippi, 2000), and A Right to Sing the Blues (Harvard University Press, 1999).

Dr. Erik M. Baker is currently a lecturer in the History of Science department at Harvard University and oversee the senior thesis program for undergraduates. He is also a senior editor at The Drift, where he has been involved since its inception. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in May 2022, and his dissertation won the 2023 Leo P. Ribuffo Prize from the Society for U.S. Intellectual History as well as the 2024 Forum for History of Human Science Biennial Dissertation Prize.

His research explores the culture of work in the modern United States. In his new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, he explores how social scientists and management intellectuals reshaped the American work ethic during the turbulence of twentieth-century U.S. capitalism. He has contributed articles on labor, politics, and American history to publications such as The New Yorker, Harper’s, n+1, The Nation, and more.