Bleeding Kansas | The Raid on Harpers Ferry | 3
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In December 1858, John Brown was back in Kansas and Missouri, making headlines for dramatic and dead...
Bleeding Kansas | The Pottawatomie Massacre | 2
21 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On the night of May 24th, 1856, radical abolitionist John Brown and seven of his followers crept alo...
Bleeding Kansas | John Brown's Crusade | 1
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1850s, the United States was lurching toward a crisis over slavery -- and abolitionist John B...
America's Monuments | The Trouble With Confederate Statues | 7
07 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, there’s been a movement to remove statues of Confederate leaders and other monume...
America's Monuments | 58,000 Names | 6
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Vietnam War was one of the most divisive conflicts in American history. Over 58,000 Americans di...
America's Monuments | The Mansion of the King | 5
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few historic residences are more synonymous with their owners than Graceland. Purchased by Elvis Pre...
America's Monuments | The Longest Bridge | 4
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1920s, San Francisco was a picturesque city on a narrow, isolated peninsula. Known for ...
America's Monuments | Four Faces | 3
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1927, workers began blasting granite rock off a towering cliff in South Dakota’s Black Hills. I...
America’s Monuments | A Passage Through Panama | 2
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, sailors and merchants dreamed of finding a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific O...
America’s Monuments | The Colossus of New York Harbor | 1
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s perhaps the most iconic of American monuments -- the Statue of Liberty. A towering 305-foot s...
Great Chicago Fire | Out of the Ashes | 4
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After the 1871 fire destroyed a third of their city, Chicagoans wanted to do more than rebuild. They...
Great Chicago Fire | The Great Rebuilding | 3
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As dawn broke on October 10, 1871, the dazed survivors of the Great Chicago Fire stumbled through th...
Great Chicago Fire | Fleeing the Flames | 2
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Just before midnight on October 8, 1871, the inferno that had ravaged Chicago’s West Side leapt th...
Great Chicago Fire | We Are Going to Have a Burn | 1
27 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1871, Chicago was the fastest growing city in the world. Built almost entirely of wood, it was al...
Presidential Inaugurations: Traditions, Crisis, and Unity | 1
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As America prepares to swear in a new president, we’ll look back to the inaugurations of the past....
Coal Wars | Charles Keeney on Restoring His Great Grandfather’s Legacy | 5
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Once the coal miners lost the Battle of Blair Mountain, the story of their uprising was suppressed, ...
Coal Wars | The Battle of Blair Mountain | 4
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Coal Wars reached an explosive climax in August 1921, as thousands of miners furious over the de...
Coal Wars | Bloody Mingo | 3
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In May 1920, Sheriff Sid Hatfield won the loyalty of Mingo County’s miners after a deadly gun batt...
Coal Wars | The Matewan Massacre | 2
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1913, famed labor activist Mother Jones was locked up in a shack in Pratt, West Virginia, s...
Coal Wars | The Most Dangerous Woman in America | 1
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 20th century, coal was the fuel that powered the nation. But the men who mined it in th...
Supreme Court Landmarks | The Outsize Power of the Supreme Court Today | 8
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout our series, we've seen how social movements and partisan politics helped influence the de...
Supreme Court Landmarks | Jane Roe | 7
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1970, a 22-year-old woman in Texas named Norma McCorvey tried and failed to get an abortion from ...
Supreme Court Landmarks | A Recount in Florida | 6
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The morning of Nov. 8, 2000, Americans woke up to an undecided election. Pollsters had predicted a c...
Supreme Court Landmarks | The Warren Court | 5
18 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Before the 1950s, the Supreme Court was best known as an institution that adhered to the status quo....
Supreme Court Landmarks | Loaded Weapon | 4
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Through most of 1941, as fighting raged across Europe, the United States held back from entering the...
Supreme Court Landmarks | Separate and Unequal | 3
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After the Civil War, America began to rebuild a shattered nation. For the first time, the country co...
Supreme Court Landmarks | The Cherokee Cases | 2
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1800s, the United States was growing rapidly, seeking land and resources for its expand...
Supreme Court Landmarks | The Predicament of John Marshall | 1
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After the War of Independence, the new American government created the Supreme Court to be have the ...
Encore: Political Parties | The Reagan Revolution | 6
14 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The year 1968 marked a watershed in American politics. Anti-war protests were roiling the country. C...
Encore: Political Parties | The New Deal Coalition | 5
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 1929 stock market crash saw 14 billion dollars vanish in a matter of hours — and with it, the ...
Encore: Political Parties | The Golden Age of the GOP | 4
30 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As the Civil War came to a close, the government set its sights once again on the future of the Unit...
Encore: Political Parties | The Turbulent 1850s | 3
23 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The United States won the The Mexican–American War in the 1840s, and with it vast new stretches of...
Encore: Political Parties | Jacksonian Democracy | 2
16 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Jackson lost the 1824 presidential election to John Quincy Adams through what some called a “...
Encore: Political Parties | A Tale of Two Parties | 1
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the earliest days of the United States, there was no such thing as an organized political party. ...
The Gilded Age | What America Failed to Learn from the Gilded Age | 7
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout our series, corporate giants and their exploitation of workers was disturbing evidence of...
The Gilded Age | Cross of Gold | 6
26 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the spring of 1894, hundreds of unemployed workers trudged through rain and snow on a 400-mile tr...
The Gilded Age | Workers Revolt! | 5
19 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As the century came to a close, labor unrest reached explosive new heights. Industrial expansion mad...
The Gilded Age | Exclusion | 4
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Amid the glamor and growth of the Gilded Age, racism and anti-immigrant hostility swept the nation. ...
The Gilded Age | How the Other Half Lives | 3
05 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the spring of 1883, Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt threw the grandest party New York had ever seen, claimin...
The Gilded Age | Rise of the Robber Barons | 2
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1870s and 1880s, businessmen clawed their way to the top of the new industrial economy, accum...
The Gilded Age | Carnival of Corruption | 1
22 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1869, America connected its vast, sprawling territory with its most ambitious project to date: th...
Stonewall | Eric Marcus Remembers the Voices of Stonewall | 5
15 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When the events of Stonewall happened in 1969, Eric Marcus was just a boy away at a New Jersey summe...
Stonewall | Pride | 4
08 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After a late-night police raid on the Stonewall Inn in June 1969, the LGBTQ community fought back in...
Stonewall | Why Don’t You Do Something? | 3
01 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Resistance at restaurants in San Francisco and Philadelphia showcased the building tension as trans ...
Stonewall | Turbulence | 2
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As the 1960s dawned, LGBTQ activists began to voice frustration with the gradual approach to civil r...
Stonewall | Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary | 1
17 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1969, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn sparked a riot on the streets of Greenwich...
Encore: The Space Race | Photo Finish | 4
10 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
JFK said that nothing in the 1960s was "...more impressive to mankind, or more important for the lon...
Encore: The Space Race | Taking the Lead | 3
03 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In times of crisis, Americans had always put their confidence in their country’s superiority in po...
Encore: The Space Race | Playing Catch Up | 2
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Information sharing was normal in the global scientific community, but when it came to rockets, norm...
Encore: The Space Race | Starting Gun | 1
20 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Remember Werner von Braun? We talked a little bit about him in our Cold War series. He was in charge...
The WWII Home Front | United We Win | 2
13 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As the nation’s factories and shipyards ramped up production for the war, the demand for labor exp...
The WWII Home Front - Arsenal of Democracy | 1
06 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese warplanes rained death and destruction down on the U.S. na...
Rebellion in the Early Republic - How Early American Revolts Shaped Today’s Protests | 7
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1799, the U.S. government imposed a new tax on houses, land, and slaves to fund an expanded milit...
Rebellion in the Early Republic - Nat Turner’s Rebellion | 6
22 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In February 1831, a solar eclipse caused the skies to darken over the isolated backwater of Southamp...
Rebellion in the Early Republic - Gabriel’s Rebellion | 5
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As a new century dawned on the United States, an enslaved blacksmith named Gabriel began planning a ...
Rebellion in the Early Republic - Crisis in the West | 4
08 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1794, anti-government protests grew into an all-out rebellion, and President Washington faced his...
Rebellion in the Early Republic - The Whiskey Rebellion | 3
01 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Only a few years after Shays’ Rebellion was suppressed, a new revolt broke out in western Pennsylv...
Rebellion in the Early Republic - A Constitution Shaped by Revolt | 2
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tensions reached a climax in the freezing winter of 1787, as Daniel Shays and 1,500 rebel soldiers s...
Rebellion in the Early Republic - Farmer Uprising | 1
18 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The dust had barely settled on the American Revolution when new unrest erupted in western Massachuse...
Encore: What We Learned from Fighting the Spanish Flu | 1
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In light of growing concerns about the coronavirus, we’re revisiting an episode we ran last spring...
Tulsa Race Massacre Update: Excavating Mass Graves | 7
04 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
New archaeological evidence suggests mass graves holding the remains of victims of the Tulsa Race Ma...
California Water Wars - Los Angeles and the Future of Water | 6
26 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
UCLA environmental historian Jon Christensen discusses Los Angeles, its never-quenched thirst for wa...
California Water Wars - Collapse | 5
19 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With the failure of the Watterson brothers’ banks, the Owens Valley community was forced to abando...
California Water Wars - We Who Are About to Die Salute You | 4
12 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After years of letting their water be used by the city of Los Angeles, the farmers and ranchers of t...
California Water Wars - “There It Is—Take It” | 3
05 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
By 1912, the Los Angeles aqueduct project was nearing completion. But as it approached the finish li...
California Water Wars - Building the Dream | 2
29 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
By 1907, the city of Los Angeles had found a solution to its water problem. Two hundred miles north ...
California Water Wars - A River in the Desert | 1
22 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
By the turn of the twentieth century, Los Angeles had grown from a dusty, crime-ridden pueblo into a...
Kentucky Blood Feud - The Revenge of Bad Tom Baker | 2
18 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Civil War forced the warring families of Clay County into an uneasy truce. The Garrards, Whites,...
Kentucky Blood Feud - The Murder of Daniel Bates | 1
11 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The longest and bloodiest feud in American history erupted in the 1840s in Clay County, Kentucky —...
The Legacy of The Triangle Fire | 5
20 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In September 2019 Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren invoked the memory ...
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - In America They Don’t Let You Burn | 4
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the biggest workplace catastrophe in the city of New York, the survivors of the Trian...
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Sixteen Minutes | 3
06 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Two years after the labor strikes that shook the city of New York, the workers of Triangle factory r...
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Revolt of the Girls | 2
30 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by the labor strikes at Triangle and other factories in Lower Manhattan, more than 30,000 g...
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Wildcat | 1
23 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan, claiming the li...
Dutch Manhattan - The Dutch Influence Today | 7
16 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
New York City was founded on the Dutch principles of tolerance and capitalism, both of which were ne...
Dutch Manhattan - New York | 6
09 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the years after Adrian Van der Donck won a municipal charter for New Amsterdam, and under Peter S...
Dutch Manhattan - The One-Legged Soldier | 5
02 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Stuyvesant was fresh from losing a leg in battle against the Spanish when he arrived in Manhat...
Dutch Manhattan - The Sheriff Comes to Town | 4
25 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Just as it was becoming a New World success story, disaster came to New Amsterdam. Willem Kieft, the...
Dutch Manhattan - Pirates and Prostitutes | 3
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
New Amsterdam was a desperate place. For the first decade of its existence, the Dutch city on the ti...
Dutch Manhattan - Buying Manhattan | 2
11 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Twelve years after Henry Hudson's 1609 trip charting the Hudson River, the Dutch used his voyage as ...
Dutch Manhattan - Henry Hudson’s Big Mistake | 1
04 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1609, a headstrong English sea captain named Henry Hudson set out on behalf of the Dutch East Ind...
Remembering Emmett Till | 7
28 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The murder of Emmett Till galvanized the nascent civil rights movement. But the full story of what h...
The Bastard Brigade - Showdown in the Alps | 6
21 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Alsos mission had a hard-charging leader in Boris Pash and an eccentric band of recruits. But if...
The Bastard Brigade - The Most Wanted Men | 5
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As the Nazis inched closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon, panic grew among the Allied forces. The Al...
The Bastard Brigade - The Strangest Man | 4
07 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
By mid-1944, the Allies’ fight to track down and stop the Nazi atomic program had met with failure...
The Bastard Brigade - The Kennedy Curse | 3
31 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In early 1944, the Allies developed a desperate plan to destroy several massive bunkers in Nazi-cont...
The Bastard Brigade - The Juice | 2
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The discovery of uranium fission in Nazi Germany in 1938 terrified Allied nuclear scientists—espec...
The Bastard Brigade - The Accidental A-Bomb | 1
17 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Second World War ended with two black mushroom clouds rising over the scorched remains of Hirosh...
The Statue of Liberty | 6
03 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Statue of Liberty is one of America’s most iconic monuments to freedom. As we head into the Fo...
Tulsa Race Massacre - Legacy and Lessons | 5
26 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly a century after a white mob leveled the affluent Tulsa district known as Black Wall Street, h...
Tulsa Race Massacre - Rebirth | 4
19 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On June 2, 1921, thousands of black Tulsans interned at the Tulsa Fairgrounds woke under armed guard...
Tulsa Race Massacre - The Invasion | 3
12 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
By midnight on Tuesday, May 31, 1921, some Greenwood residents assumed the riot was calming down. Ma...
Tulsa Race Massacre - The Powder Keg | 2
05 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As Dick Rowland sat in a jail cell at the Tulsa courthouse on Tuesday, the news of his arrest and ru...
Tulsa Race Massacre - The Promised Land | 1
29 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1838 and 1890, thousands of African Americans moved to Oklahoma, brought there as Cherokee s...
Sponsored | American Epidemics - Dark Days In Dallas | 2
24 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with National Geographic in anticipation of...
Sponsored | American Epidemics - The Great Pandemic | 1
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with National Geographic in anticipation of...
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Humanizing History with David McCullough | 7
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Pulitzer Prize winner. National Book Award winner. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Today Da...
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Citizens Resistance | 6
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On March 8, 1971, seven ordinary Americans broke into a poorly guarded FBI regional office in Media,...
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Black Bag Job | 5
08 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI carried out more than 2,000 top secret spying operations aimed at Ame...
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Controlling the Message | 4
01 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The rise of fascism and World War II shifted the FBI’s focus in the 1940s from fighting midwestern...