In 50 or 500 years, historians will pour over the millions of documents of the Epstein files – a bounty of investigative material, photos and private correspondence between the elites of their day, on which entire academic careers will be built – and they will try to infer from them something of early 21st-century society.

When they do, they will not hear the voices of women. Women in Epstein's world do not have voices. They are not people. They are not even bodies. They are a single body part. The researchers will come to understand the letter "p" as a wonderfully compact innovation of language, signifying all at once women's (or I should say girls') most grab-able anatomy, by extension women and girls themselves, the hatred and contempt they inspire, and the partially realised shame of men just aware enough of their failings that they dare not spell the word fully. Was language ever that devastatingly efficient? *

The historians will see powerful men introducing their friends to other powerful men. I can see them beaming, pencil in hand in that 26th-century archive room, as they jot down full government names and job titles like so many tangible research avenues to go down. They will see women identified only by a first name or a moniker ("that b*tch") set up as decor and party favours around the same dinner tables. They will see men profess devotion and yearning for one another, “miss you”s sprinkled through the correspondence like through a teenager’s notebook, and they will ponder at their inner lives. They will see a life partner of 26 years described as a “miserable c*nt.” 

I wonder if the historians of 2526 will read the Epstein files the way we read the 1486 demonology treatise Malleus Maleficarum, a sort of Mein Kampf of women-hating that fed the witch hunts of early modern Europe. Will they reassure themselves that it's only an archaic artefact before current events rob them, as they've robbed us, of comforting delusions? Will the Epstein files pass for representative of our time? After all, they feature a cross-section of business titans, artists, public intellectuals and government officials from across the political spectrum and from multiple nations. Should we take this opportunity to telegraph a Not All Men disclaimer to future researchers?

Whatever the era, it's never long before you trip on vile misogyny when you study history. It's upfront and almost laudable in its honesty – misogyny with big dumb fists and words sharpened like axes. It's unthinking and absurd. It would be laughable but it's killing us so it's not funny. Writing about this kind of misogyny was never my project and won’t happen often in this newsletter. I hesitate even now to hit publish; I don’t want Broad History in its first missive to be associated with anger or grievance. It’s so much more interesting than that. Misogyny is uninteresting. There is nothing to explore or debate, no asperities for the mind to grab onto. It's 100% smooth stupidity. But it's good to remind ourselves it's there.

More often in history, you encounter only silence. Women are absent from much of the past. They were there, of course. It's safe to assume women were just around half of humanity for as long there's been a humanity. It's just that we haven't kept track of them as well. We will wonder why in future newsletters (sign up!), but the tl;dr is: 

1. Women don’t show up in the records. 
2. We haven’t bothered to look. 
3. We’ve made very wrong assumptions about them this whole time. 

As a result, there is plenty we don't know and – possibly worse – plenty we think we know and are quite wrong about. If we put women back into history, would it look different? It’s not just an academic debate. My first guest on the podcast (available now to founding members so sign up to listen) is economic historian Victoria Bateman. She brings receipts from the Stone Age to the Industrial Revolution. Her work demonstrates how women's labor was, time and time again, central to the rise of civilisations and how their collapse is often preceded by a retreat of women's rights and economic autonomy. Maybe if we understood women's historical contributions better, she argues, we wouldn't be so quick even now to dismiss them as mere background actors. Or body parts.

*For the language nerds, by my count that's an abbreviation, a synecdoche, an allegory and a euphemism, all packed in a single letter. Who said these jerks weren't clever?

Hey, wasn't this supposed to be a podcast?

And you bet it is. The first episode is available now to founding members without whom Broad History could not exist. So sign up now to support this project and listen to my conversation with Victoria Bateman... or wait just a little while longer.

I'm aiming to release a weekly episode eventually, but making a show on my own with that amount of research, storytelling, and production, and then making it every single week is a mammoth task. I didn't want to wait forever to launch because what matters right now, and you'll know if you've ever built independent media, is finding out if there's an audience for this, pivoting until there is, and gathering enough momentum and evidence of momentum to secure funding and partners for the next step.

So I'm starting smaller with a bunch of experiments, mostly in writing and around this newsletter. And I'm betting on my community to help make this happen because well, you have in the past. I have loved building in public with you, whether LinkedIn's Daily Rundown or the Borderline podcast (different resources, same vibes and I know some of you were there for both), and I'm very excited to do it again. I truly believe community is where the future of good media lies. Again, to let me know what you think, just hit reply. I look forward to your emails.