Hi everyone and happy Monday. If you’re paying even the slightest attention (this may be difficult before your coffee) you probably noticed a change to the name of this substack. It is no longer Historians At The Movies, but now Reckoning with Jason Herbert. And it’s been a long time coming.

And I think that since many of you have started reading me in the last few months coming largely from referrals from other sites, it was probably best to lay all this out for everyone. First, how we got here:

I’m probably best known for Historians At The Movies, which started as a watch party in 2018 when I assembled a whole bunch of scholars, movie lovers, and even the writers of the film to watch National Treasure. It was a big night and one that has continued for almost eight years (we just watched Dazed and Confused together last night). Two and half years ago we launched the Historians At The Movies Podcast and it has been amazing. We’ve had Pulitzer winners and Nobel winners and Oscar winners on the podcast. Our numbers continue to climb.

So why rebrand?

The easy answer is that I am just too damn curious about the world and limiting what I talk about to either history or movies is just too damn, well, limiting. I want to talk about so much more stuff. I see a lot of things going on in the world and I wanna talk about it. I want to talk about history and movies but also science and public lands, and parenthood and cooking and things relating to my work with Tribes, and everything else under the sun. So here we are.

Why Reckoning?

I know. Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? And some of that is by design. It’s easy to look around the world and be pissed off at what you see. I loathe liars. And I hate bullies. And it’s definitely time that another voice joined the fray. But more than that, when he was deep in thought about something, my grandfather would announce his conclusion by starting with “I reckon.” When you’re from the South, reckoning is how you make your way through things. And I figure that’s what we’re doing here.

But for new audiences, we needed something that was even more inclusive. Something that said anything and everything was on the table. This substack and the podcast will continue to be first and foremost about community and fun. So Reckoning it is.

What about Historians At The Movies?

The community that began with HATM will continue. The watch parties on Sunday nights will continue. And our episodes about movies will continue to drop on Thursdays, just under the Reckoning banner. Nothing on that end changes. We’re just thinking our way through movies and history the way we always have. We’re reckoning with them, if you will.

Wait, who the heck are you anyway?

You know what? It’s probably time for a good introduction since so many of y’all arrived here from other places.

About me.

Hi. I’m Jason Herbert. I’m the product of two teenage high school dropouts in Kentucky. I grew up all over the South—Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky again—and we were POOR. Like poor poor.

I come from a family of catfish anglers. My ancestors have been catching whiskerfish from the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers for generations. The Kennedy Administration made us leave the land in the mid 20th century to create Land Between the Lakes, something that many of my kin still hold a grudge for (not me, I like electricity).

There’s even a story about a magical catfish named Ekenhammer in our family. And even I have a kinship with the fish. My second book will be a cultural history of the catfish in the United States.

But like the rest of my family, I grew up in the woods and waterways of the South. It continues to inform who I am and how I operate. And ultimately it led me to Colorado, where I live now. More on that in a bit.

I famously flunked out of college twice before starting all over again at Tallahassee Community College at the age of 31. I finished a Ph.D. in American history with a focus on Indigenous and environmental history at the University of Minnesota while going through a divorce and spent part of that time relatively homeless while living in my friends’ kids’ toyroom.1

While writing my dissertation I taught school in Florida for three years before serving the Seminole Tribe of Florida as an ethnographer for about three years. Still love all my students and the Tribal Members I worked with there. Both were amazing experiences but difficult in their own ways. Proud to have them under my belt.

My first book, based on my dissertation, is an early history of Florida that ties together Native people, free and enslaved Black folk, and poor white settlers called Crackers from the 1600s to the mid 1800s. I focus on how each group of people used cattle to make those spaces their own and how cattle changed the landscape of Florida itself. I’m in the process of writing this book now.

These days, I work for the United States Forest Service as a Tribal liaison in Colorado. I’m the first person to do it at this forest and I love the job. I love my role of serving both Indigenous communities and the American public at large. I like to think I’m giving back to both. I should probably say that no opinions expressed by me here or anywhere else represent those of the United States federal government, nor of the Tribes I work with.

But man I love working with these folks. I’ve learned so much. And Tribal Members out here have welcomed this hillbilly with open arms. I’ll share what I feel is appropriate when I can but the big takeaway I hope you’ll remember is that Native folks are still here, we have treaty and trust obligations that we need to honor, and that doing so is a real privilege on my part. I see what I do now as a different path for most historians that is based on service and commitment that hopefully has a real impact on lives.

When I’m not writing this substack or recording podcasts, you’ll usually find me cooking or playing outdoors. I still hunt and I fish. I kayak and I hike. I’ve got a young dog and an old cat, both named after pirates. Hemingway is my favorite author and my favorite song is “A Pirate Looks At Forty.” My sons are my world. And yeah, I like turtles.

So what next?

Alright, we’ve made it back to base. We’ve completed our reset. The rest is up to us, I suppose. Thanks for reading this much and sharing these posts. And thanks for listening to the podcast. I’d be thankful if you shared it. We’ve got a really cool episode about the history of axe murder coming tomorrow so if you haven’t subscribed, you can do so below.

And if you want to help support this mission and build it, the best way to do so is by offering a paid subscription, which you can do on the button below. Thanks for being here. And thanks for being part of this new reckoning.

Jason