How Did New Orleans Become New Orleans? (Part Two) with Dr. Kathryn Olivarius

Getting Better with Jonathan Van Ness

Sony Music

Comedy, Society & Culture, Education, Self-improvement

4.9 • 21.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2023

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

New Orleans was one of America’s most important cities in the early 1800s. It was also one of the most deadly. This week, to mark the new season of Queer Eye, we’re exploring New Orleans history with Dr. Kathryn Olivarius in a special two-part episode. Today, we’re learning about yellow fever’s grip on the city—and what this illness revealed about power and politics in New Orleans. Haven’t listened to part one yet? Check it out here to learn more about New Orleans history. A note from the team: this episode discusses enslavement and graphic descriptions of illness. Kathryn Olivarius is a prizewinning historian of slavery, medicine, and disease. She is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. Her book Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom, published by Harvard University Press, was recently awarded the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize. You can follow Dr. Olivarius on Twitter @katolivarius. Harvard University Press is on Twitter @Harvard_Press. If you’re new to Getting Curious, here are some episodes that are relevant to today’s discussion: When Viruses Spread, Who’s Most Vulnerable? What’s The Sordid History Of U.S. Trash Collection? Who Does America’s “Child Welfare System” Serve? Who Built The Panama Canal? How F$^*#d Up Is Fatphobia? Follow us on Instagram @CuriousWithJVN to join the conversation. Jonathan is on Instagram @JVN. Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com. Find books from past Getting Curious guests at bookshop.org/shop/curiouswithjvn; we’ll be updating it soon with more releases! Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our editor is Andrew Carson. Production support from Julie Carrillo, Chris McClure, and Emily Bossak. Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIÑ; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Getting Curious. I'm Jonathan Van Ness and every week I sit down for a gorgeous
0:04.2	conversation with a Borrillion expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.
0:09.4	This is part two of our conversation with Dr. Catherine Oliveiraus, all about New Orleans
0:15.1	history. Honey, in part one, we covered the basics on the Louisiana purchase, New Orleans
0:20.6	Statehood and New Orleans politics and power in the early 1800s. Today, we're getting into
0:26.4	Catherine's area of expertise, yellow fever. Now, I did not even know that yellow fever was
0:32.3	such a huge deal, but honey was it ever. As we learned yesterday, every second or third summer
0:38.8	in the 1800s, yellow fever became epidemic in New Orleans. And this disease could kill between
0:44.8	eight and ten percent of the population each summer. As Catherine's about to share with us,
0:50.8	the story of yellow fever is the story of New Orleans and people in the city are still feeling
0:55.4	the effects of these epidemics. Did you know you were curious about yellow fever? Neither did we,
1:01.0	but this is one conversation you don't want to miss. What was the first historical example that
1:07.9	you came across from who were like this fucking yellow fever? Like when did they name it that?
1:12.2	Like when did they start clocking it? Nobody outside of Africa or West Africa knew that yellow
1:16.5	fever existed until the 17th century. In the mid-seminine century, you see these massive epidemics
1:22.4	explode in the Caribbean. So in Barbados in the late 1640s, an epidemic kills like 14% of the
1:30.0	island. You know, this is just huge and it sort of spreads across the Caribbean,
1:34.5	gradually, you could turn all over. And so you see yellow fever has this very dramatic burst onto
1:39.3	the scene in the mid-17th century. And by the 19th century, this is a disease every single person
1:45.8	in the Atlantic world would have known about and they would have feared it. And they, you know,
1:50.7	hoped either to never come in contact with it or else if they had come in contact with it,
1:54.7	that they were survivors of it because survivor is gained lifetime immunity. And how did they
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