Don Wildman

From Wall Street to Main Street, from farm fields to factories, Americans are worn thin without jobs or savings or the means to build their futures.

This is the Great Depression.

Hey, everybody.

Nice to be with you.

I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit.

Hard to believe we made it to the fourth year of this podcast series without exploring our subject today in real detail.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was the backdrop, if not motivating cause, of so much of what happened in the 20th century.

It was an economic catastrophe that triggered political, military, and cultural shifts in America and around the world.

When exploring America's darkest hours, as we're doing this month, the Great Depression is the stroke of midnight.

To help us understand how and why it all happened, we're joined by historian and professor John E. Moser, a specialist in American and global history whose work focuses on how economic crisis reshapes politics, power, and international relations.

He is the chair of the Department of History and Political Science at Ashland University in Ohio.

Fly, Tuffy, fly.

and is the author of a list of books, including, usefully for today, The Global Great Depression and the Coming of World War II, published in 2015.

Greetings, Professor Moser.

John, nice to meet you.

Very nice to be here.

Thank you.

Dark days indeed.

I'm the son of Depression-era parents born in the 1920s.

They were youngsters through that time.