In light of growing concerns about the coronavirus, we’re revisiting an episode we ran last spring. One hundred years ago, the Spanish flu pandemic forever reshaped the way the United States responds to public health crises. At a time when people around the world were already dying on an unprecedented scale due to World War I, Spanish flu devastated American cities, killing more than 675,000 people in the U.S. alone. The virus had a profound effect on impact on medicine, politics, and the ...
Mar 11, 2020•48 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast New archaeological evidence suggests mass graves holding the remains of victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre may exist on two sites in Tulsa. And now scientists plan to excavate portions of those sites to try and uncover the truth. Residents for years had asked the city to take similar steps but until now it hasn’t happened. On this episode we get an update on these developments from Hannibal B. Johnson, an attorney and historian who has written several books on the Massacre. He joins us from...
Mar 04, 2020•37 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast UCLA environmental historian Jon Christensen discusses Los Angeles, its never-quenched thirst for water, and what that means for the future. Support us by supporting our sponsors! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Feb 26, 2020•40 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast With the failure of the Watterson brothers’ banks, the Owens Valley community was forced to abandon its fight for water rights against the city of Los Angeles. William Mulholland, the Los Angeles water department superintendent, could finally breathe a little easier. The city now had full control over its water supply for the foreseeable future. But he would discover that some things can’t be foreseen. Construction had finished in 1926 on the last of the nineteen dams that lined the aquedu...
Feb 19, 2020•38 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast After years of letting their water be used by the city of Los Angeles, the farmers and ranchers of the Owens River Valley decided to fight back. What would come to be known as California’s Civil War would mark the 1920s with a series of attacks and reprisals between the valley and the city two hundred miles south. With Los Angeles sending agents north to buy more land and secure yet more water rights, valley residents decided to take matters into their own hands. After several attacks dama...
Feb 12, 2020•37 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast By 1912, the Los Angeles aqueduct project was nearing completion. But as it approached the finish line, fears were growing among the public of a vast conspiracy, fanned by socialist Job Harriman. With the formation of the Aqueduct Investigation Board, engineer William Mulholland found his methods and his purpose suddenly under a microscope. Land deals from nearly a decade ago would threaten to derail the entire project, just a year shy of its completion. As the roaring Twenties loomed, Los Angel...
Feb 05, 2020•37 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast By 1907, the city of Los Angeles had found a solution to its water problem. Two hundred miles north in the Owens River Valley was a never-ending source of water. Los Angeles Water Department superintendent William Mulholland set about constructing one of the largest public works projects the state of California has ever seen. But first, he would have to convince the voters of Los Angeles to approve the project. And then, he would have to build it himself. For five years construction crews ...
Jan 29, 2020•37 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast By the turn of the twentieth century, Los Angeles had grown from a dusty, crime-ridden pueblo into a thriving metropolis. The only problem was that it was growing too fast. With no consistently reliable water source and a desert climate leading to a decade-long drought, the city would have to begin looking elsewhere. In the Owens River Valley, over two hundred miles north of the city, a vast, rushing river, fed by Sierra mountain snow, lay the solution. But how to get the water from the Owens Va...
Jan 22, 2020•37 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast The Civil War forced the warring families of Clay County into an uneasy truce. The Garrards, Whites, Howards, and Bakers found themselves allied as they fought for the Union. But the war brought new challenges: the Northern army destroyed Clay County’s salt mines in order to keep them out of the hands of the South, and the Emancipation Proclamation brought an end to slavery, which had helped make salt mining so profitable. The Garrards and the Whites were so rich that they were able to withstand...
Dec 18, 2019•38 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast The longest and bloodiest feud in American history erupted in the 1840s in Clay County, Kentucky — where it raged for nearly a century and ultimately claimed more than 150 lives. The Clay County War, also known as the Baker-Howard Feud, pitted four families against each other: the powerful Garrads and Whites, who assembled vast wealth mining salt, and the less influential Bakers and Howards. In time, the Garrards would align with the Bakers, and the Whites with the Howards. At first, the f...
Dec 11, 2019•35 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast In September 2019 Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren invoked the memory of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire at a campaign rally just a few blocks from the site of fire in Manhattan. It was a powerful reminder of just how deep the legacy of the disaster runs. Organized labor and workplace safety have come a long way since the fire but after years of political opposition, unions and worker rights are on the decline. In the U.S., unions represent 6.4 percent of priva...
Nov 20, 2019•40 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast In the wake of the biggest workplace catastrophe in the city of New York, the survivors of the Triangle fire and the families of the victims could only watch from the sidelines as the case against the Triangle bosses went to trial. The 146 deaths resulting from the fire had been sifted through the state’s legal machine and condensed into a single woman: a 24-year-old sewing machine operator named Margaret Schwartz. In December 1911, the general sessions court presided over by Judge Thomas ...
Nov 13, 2019•41 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast Two years after the labor strikes that shook the city of New York, the workers of Triangle factory returned to better wages and lower hours. But when a fire broke out near closing time on a Saturday afternoon, these same workers found themselves swept up in a catastrophe. Some would escape, but many would not. In the weeks that followed, a city mourned and began to wrestle with questions of responsibility. Where did the blame for the tragedy lie? With the city? With the factory owners? Or ...
Nov 06, 2019•38 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast Inspired by the labor strikes at Triangle and other factories in Lower Manhattan, more than 30,000 garment workers took to the streets of New York in protest in late 1909. For the first time, an industry of women sought not to just halt production at one factory — they wanted to put the brakes on an entire trade. With over four hundred garment factories shut down, factory owners banded together with police and the courts to fight the striking workers. But as the labor movement attracted ne...
Oct 30, 2019•39 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan, claiming the lives of 146 garment workers — mostly women and girls. It was one of the deadliest workplace disasters in American history. Caused by a combination of carelessness and poor safety measures, the fire eventually set off a wave of workplace reforms that changed industry in America and sent New York party politics in a totally different direction. But in the years before the fire, the workers of the Tri...
Oct 23, 2019•40 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast New York City was founded on the Dutch principles of tolerance and capitalism, both of which were new ideas at the time. But much of the city's early history was lost until the 1970s, when a renewed interest in the Dutch period led to the founding of the New Netherland Center. Here, thousands of previously untranslated records shed new light on this crucial moment in Gotham’s history. Our guest today is Greg Young, who co-hosts the Bowery Boys, a popular podcast about all things New York Ci...
Oct 16, 2019•50 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast In the years after Adrian Van der Donck won a municipal charter for New Amsterdam, and under Peter Stuyvesant's stern but capable rule, the city flourished. Even English residents of New England and Virginia sent their goods to Europe via the future New York Harbor, because the Dutch were so good at the business of shipping. Dutch features that would become part of American culture — from cookies and cole slaw to Santa Claus — became ingrained. Most importantly, the Dutch notions of tolerance, w...
Oct 09, 2019•38 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast Peter Stuyvesant was fresh from losing a leg in battle against the Spanish when he arrived in Manhattan in 1647. He was a tough soldier who was ready to take charge of the unruly population of New Amsterdam. He soon clashed with Adrian Van der Donck, the leader of the opposition, who was secretly crafting a formal legal complaint that would compel the Dutch government to give the colony a form of representative government. When Stuyvesant discovered that Van der Donck had been spearheading an ef...
Oct 02, 2019•36 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast Just as it was becoming a New World success story, disaster came to New Amsterdam. Willem Kieft, the Dutch leader appointed by the West India Trading Company, declared war on local tribes, sending soldiers to slaughter them in their villages. The tribes responded with waves of death and destruction that would set the European settlers back decades in their development. A new colonist named Adriaen Van der Donck arrived to find the place in chaos. The colonists were furious at Kieft for end...
Sep 25, 2019•38 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast New Amsterdam was a desperate place. For the first decade of its existence, the Dutch city on the tip of Manhattan Island served as a haven for pirates, prostitutes and smugglers. That was because the West India Company, which ran New Amsterdam, insisted on controlling all trade — something it simply couldn't manage effectively. Finally, in 1640, the Company gave up its monopoly, and what had been a rag-tag, Wild West kind of town quickly took on the hallmarks of Dutch capitalism. Trading ...
Sep 18, 2019•36 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast Twelve years after Henry Hudson's 1609 trip charting the Hudson River, the Dutch used his voyage as the basis for a new colony, which would be wedged between the English colonies in New England and Virginia. New Netherland began with tiny numbers of people from different backgrounds. They settled the entire region that Hudson had traveled, from Delaware to New York to Connecticut. But being spread out so thinly exposed them to danger. In 1626, in the area around the future Albany, New York, a sm...
Sep 11, 2019•36 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast In 1609, a headstrong English sea captain named Henry Hudson set out on behalf of the Dutch East India Company to find a trade route to Asia — and promptly found himself and his crew stranded in icy waters off the coast of Norway. As supplies dwindled, Hudson announced to his frostbitten crew that the ship would change course. They set off across the Atlantic Ocean in search of an alternative route through the North American continent. Hudson never found the Northwest Passage, but he did come ac...
Sep 04, 2019•35 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast The murder of Emmett Till galvanized the nascent civil rights movement. But the full story of what happened in Money, Miss., on August 28, 1955, is significantly different than the narrative that emerged at the time. A new app developed by scholars at Florida State University now seeks to give a fuller picture of Till’s lynching by taking users on a GPS guided tour around the Mississippi Delta and the important sites related to the case. Davis Houck, a professor of rhetorical studies at FSU, dev...
Aug 28, 2019•38 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast The Alsos mission had a hard-charging leader in Boris Pash and an eccentric band of recruits. But if the so-called Bastard Brigade was going to track down the Nazi atomic bomb, they would also need scientific expertise. For that, they turned to the Dutch-American physicist Samuel Goudsmit. Goudsmit wasn’t the brigade’s first choice—far from it. He was considered weak and timid, and even Goudsmit himself worried he lacked the courage for the mission. But the scientist had been friends with ...
Aug 21, 2019•40 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast As the Nazis inched closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon, panic grew among the Allied forces. The Alsos Mission — otherwise known as the Bastard Brigade — was put in charge of gathering intelligence on Hitler’s bomb project, seizing stores of Nazi uranium, and hunting down members of the Uranium Club. The first atomic spy outfit in history was underway. Their mission was led by the American-born son of a Russian Orthodox bishop, Colonel Boris Pash — a high school teacher, irreverent pranks...
Aug 14, 2019•40 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast By mid-1944, the Allies’ fight to track down and stop the Nazi atomic program had met with failure and disappointment. And so the Manhattan Project took a new tack by recruiting and developing atomic spies — including a backup catcher for the Boston Red Sox named Moe Berg. Although little known today, Berg was one of the most famous athletes of his day, and a certified genius. He could charm sports writers and fans alike with his tales of palling around with Babe Ruth and other celebrities...
Aug 07, 2019•39 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast In early 1944, the Allies developed a desperate plan to destroy several massive bunkers in Nazi-controlled France—bunkers that reportedly housed atomic missiles. The plan called for filling up airplanes with napalm, flying them over to France via remote control, and ramming them into the bunkers, blowing them sky-high. But the military still needed pilots to get the napalm-filled planes off the ground and pointed in the right direction. It was dangerous in the extreme. But one of the first volun...
Jul 31, 2019•35 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast The discovery of uranium fission in Nazi Germany in 1938 terrified Allied nuclear scientists—especially since the Nazi atomic bomb project, the dreaded Uranium Club, had a two-year head start on the Manhattan Project. So the Allies decided to strike back. They couldn’t prevent Germany from acquiring uranium, but they could disrupt access to another key ingredient in atomic research—heavy water. Only one company in the world produced heavy water at the time, an isolated plant in Norway, so the Al...
Jul 24, 2019•39 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast The Second World War ended with two black mushroom clouds rising over the scorched remains of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But most people don’t realize how easily the war could have ended not with an American atomic bomb but a German one, obliterating not a Japanese city but Paris, London, or even New York. As the war began, all the pieces were in place for the Germans to develop an atomic weapon. They had scientific visionaries like Werner Heisenberg, a manufacturing base committed to total war—and...
Jul 17, 2019•36 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast The Statue of Liberty is one of America’s most iconic monuments to freedom. As we head into the Fourth of July holiday, we’ll look back on the amazing effort it took to get Lady Liberty built. Beckett Graham is co-host of The History Chicks podcast, a show that explores the legacies of women throughout history. Beckett joins us to talk about her approach to telling women’s stories and we’ll also play a portion of The History Chicks podcast episode on how the Statue of Liberty came to be. It’s a ...
Jul 03, 2019•41 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast 
