On Andrew Jackson’s inauguration day, citizens mobbed the White House, breaking furniture and fine china. It was a sign of troubles to come. Elected as a populist president, Jackson was dogged by chaos and controversy from his first days in office. But a sex scandal known as “The Petticoat Affair” was minor compared to the challenges that lay ahead for America’s seventh president. Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available i...
Jun 22, 2022•33 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast In the summer of 1817, President James Monroe toured the country in an effort to unify the ever-growing United States. His optimistic presidency ushered in what became known as “The Era of Good Feelings.” But in reality, it was barely an era at all. The facade of political unity had already begun to crack by 1819, when Monroe faced his first serious political crisis: the Missouri Controversy, which brought the issue of slavery into the national spotlight. Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wonde...
Jun 15, 2022•32 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast In 1814, British troops burned down the White House. That fire would be extinguished, and the Executive Mansion would be rebuilt. But another fire smoldered on – a fire that would eventually consume the United States. This is Antebellum America: the decades leading up to the Civil War. This was America’s adolescence. The young nation was growing at tremendous speed, forcing its leaders to address fundamental questions about their country’s identity and values. Could the individual states put asi...
Jun 08, 2022•35 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast In 1927, a slow-moving catastrophe like the Great Mississippi Flood was perfect material for a relatively new medium: radio. Over the airwaves, the flood became the first natural disaster that Americans could follow almost in real time, day by day, as the rising river waters swept away one town after another. In this episode, Lindsay talks with Susan Scott Parrish, author of The Flood Year 1927: A Cultural History, about the ways Americans far from the Mississippi River experienced the disaster ...
Jun 01, 2022•41 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast Herbert Hoover’s management of the flood relief garnered widespread praise and put him in position to secure the Republican nomination for President. But the African-American press told a different story, one of rampant racial abuse in Red Cross camps throughout the flood zone. In Greenville, Mississippi, the exploitation of Black workers was especially persistent. In the summer, tensions rose to new heights, and soon, a fatal shooting would tear the battered town apart. Listen ad free with Wond...
May 25, 2022•39 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast Early in the morning on April 22nd, 1927, flood waters from a break in the Mound Landing levee entered the town of Greenville, Mississippi. Within hours, the town was submerged in 10 feet of water. Thousands of residents fought to reach higher ground, desperately clinging to tree tops and floating houses. The flood inundated 27,000 square miles in seven states. Soon, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover to manage relief efforts for the Red Cross. But Hoover’s dec...
May 18, 2022•39 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast In the winter and spring of 1927, record-setting rain fell across the central United States. The Mississippi River swelled to capacity, and by April, the water breached major levees. It was the start of the most catastrophic river flood in American history. When the flood threatened the town of Greenville in the Mississippi Delta, white plantation owners pulled tens of thousands of Black workers from the cotton fields and sent them to the river. An army of hundreds of men worked day and night, p...
May 11, 2022•39 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast The Lewis and Clark expedition changed the course of American history. But after its bold, charismatic leader, Meriwether Lewis, ended his life in an apparent suicide, the expedition was largely forgotten. Not until the 20th century would the exploits of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery recapture the imaginations of historians and the general public. In this episode, Lindsay speaks with Clay S. Jenkinson, an author, historian, and host of acclaimed public radio show and podcast The Thomas Je...
May 04, 2022•38 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast After 18 months and over two thousand miles, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery had reached the Pacific Ocean. Now, they would have to find their way back. And in a last-ditch bid for glory, they would split up the Corps into smaller groups, hoping to map more river routes and make contact with more Native American tribes. But the plan would backfire, putting the entire expedition at risk, even as the end of their journey was finally within reach. Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ fo...
Apr 27, 2022•37 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast In the spring of 1805, Lewis and Clark resumed their journey up the Missouri River in search of the Pacific. But to reach the ocean, they would have to cross the towering Rocky Mountains. It was a forbidding task, and one they couldn’t achieve alone. They would need the help of their young interpreter, Sacagawea, and her tribe, the Shoshone. But first, they had to locate the elusive Shoshone – and with winter fast approaching, time was running out. Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for...
Apr 20, 2022•37 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast In 1803, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began a westward journey that would transform America. Their mission was to head up the Missouri River and find a route through the uncharted west to the Pacific Ocean. The journey was full of risk. But no danger loomed larger in their minds than the Sioux – the powerful Native American confederacy of the plains. And it wouldn't be long before the two crossed paths. Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early acce...
Apr 13, 2022•40 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast For Alice Paul and other leading white suffragists, image was important. They published their own newspapers and staged dramatic public protests to gain press attention and shape public opinion. But all too often, white suffrage activists refused to make room for Black allies in their idealized image of a woman voter. In this episode, Lindsay speaks with Dr. Allison Lange, a historian who focuses on the intersection of gender and power, and how visual imagery shaped the battle for women’s suffra...
Apr 06, 2022•37 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast As America entered World War I, the suffrage movement split into a two-pronged attack. Alice Paul and her National Woman’s Party took their protests to the White House gates. Meanwhile, Carrie Chapman Catt and her group, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, lobbied to prove the loyalty and patriotism of American women, hoping they would be rewarded with the ballot. Together, these two groups would finally succeed in pushing a new amendment through Congress, granting women the right ...
Mar 30, 2022•42 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast In March 1913, thousands of suffrage activists converged on Washington, D.C. for a new form of protest. They were going to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to demand an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote. Their leader, Alice Paul, was a young rising star in the movement. Her dramatic protests outside the White House would grab headlines across America. But they would also spark fierce and sometimes violent resistance. Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery...
Mar 23, 2022•41 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast As the 20th century dawned, a new generation of women rose to take control of the suffrage cause. These young activists were going to college, delaying marriage, and pursuing careers. Their political savvy helped the movement win victories at the state level in the West. But new leaders like Carrie Chapman Catt also shunned Black activists. Facing discrimination within their own movement, Black suffrage leaders like Ida B. Wells forged their own path, fighting racism and sexism on their own term...
Mar 16, 2022•41 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast On Election Day 1872, Susan B. Anthony walked into a polling place in Rochester, New York and boldly cast her ballot. Her action was an escalation in women’s fight for the vote. Days later, she was arrested for voting illegally. It was all part of a daring new strategy for suffrage called the “New Departure.” At first, the strategy found a charismatic champion in a new women’s rights advocate, Victoria Woodhull. But Woodhull’s penchant for controversy would soon jeopardize the entire suffrage ca...
Mar 09, 2022•39 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast On July 19th, 1848, 300 female and male delegates gathered in a church in Seneca Falls, New York for America’s first women’s rights convention. After two days, 100 of the attendees signed the Declaration of Sentiments, a radical manifesto affirming the equality of men and women. It was the start of the women’s rights revolution. Over the next two decades, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony built a movement to push for women’s suffrage. They worked side by side with abolitionists, certai...
Mar 02, 2022•42 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast By 1876, criminal boss Big Jim Kennally was ready to put his Lincoln body-snatching plan into motion. But his gang of thieves needed one more member before they could attempt the heist. Soon, they found their new recruit: a former horse thief from Wisconsin named Lewis Swegles. But what the gang didn’t know was that Swegles was a “roper” – an undercover informant, employed by Secret Service agent Patrick Tyrrell to bring down Kennally’s counterfeiting ring. When Swegles revealed the Lincoln plot...
Feb 23, 2022•34 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast By 1876, criminal boss Big Jim Kennally was ready to put his Lincoln body-snatching plan into motion. But his gang of thieves needed one more member before they could attempt the heist. Soon, they found their new recruit: a former horse thief from Wisconsin named Lewis Swegles. But what the gang didn’t know was that Swegles was a “roper” – an undercover informant, employed by Secret Service agent Patrick Tyrrell to bring down Kennally’s counterfeiting ring. When Swegles revealed the Lincoln plot...
Feb 16, 2022•32 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast In the 1870s, a gang from Chicago hatched one of the most audacious criminal plots in American history. They planned to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln from his tomb in Springfield, Illinois, then hold the president’s corpse for ransom. The brazen plot began in an unlikely place – the murky world of fake money. In the mid-1800s, counterfeiting was so rampant in the United States that it threatened the financial stability of the entire nation. One especially notorious counterfeiting...
Feb 09, 2022•36 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast Billy the Kid has become one of the most iconic figures of the American West. But many details of his life remain unknown or heavily debated among scholars and historians, from his childhood prior to his arrival in New Mexico, to the circumstances surrounding his death. On this episode, Lindsay speaks with Chris Wimmer, creator and host of Legends of the Old West, a podcast about the outlaws, gunslingers and lawmen who shaped the American frontier. Chris and Lindsay dive deep into the Billy the ...
Feb 02, 2022•43 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast With the bloody Lincoln County War finally over, Billy the Kid tried to make a truce with his arch enemy, Jimmy Dolan. But his plan backfired, and he wound up forced to go on the run, implicated in a murder Dolan committed. Billy’s charm and quick wits kept him just outside the reach of law. But he would soon meet his match. A former bartender turned lawman, Pat Garrett, vowed to capture and kill the Kid at any cost. Garrett’s epic pursuit of Billy the Kid took him through the hills and villages...
Jan 26, 2022•39 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast In 1877, Billy the Kid was saved from a life of crime by a wealthy Englishman named John Tunstall, who saw potential in the teenage outlaw. Soon, however, Billy was drawn into a vicious war between Tunstall and a rival cattle baron, one that would force him to return to his gunslinging ways. When Tunstall himself was murdered in the escalating Lincoln County War, Billy swore he would get revenge. The violence that followed was shocking even by the standards of the Wild West. The Kid would become...
Jan 19, 2022•37 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast Henry McCarty was born in an Irish slum in New York City in 1859. By the time he died from a lawman’s bullet twenty-one years later in New Mexico, he was notorious throughout the world under a different name: Billy the Kid. Born to a single, loving mother, young Henry was smart, charming and polite. But he soon faced tragic, devastating setbacks that sent him on a path from robbery to murder. Orphaned at 15, Henry was forced to survive on the western frontier, an unforgiving place where life was...
Jan 12, 2022•36 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast The Philippine-American War marked the emergence of America as a global power. But what has been the legacy of the war in the country in which it was fought? How did the war set the stage for Philippine independence, and pave the way for generations of Filipino immigration to the U.S.? In this episode, Lindsay speaks with Dr. Vicente Rafael, a historian whose work focuses on the colonial and post-colonial Philippines and the country’s relationship with the United States. They’ll discuss the hist...
Jan 05, 2022•50 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast With the war officially over, William Howard Taft took over authority as the Governor of the Philippines. Taft was a deep believer in the U.S. policy of “benevolent assimilation” and turned to schooling and political attraction to draw Filipinos to his mission. But he continued to struggle with pockets of armed resistance and challenges to American rule, including a series of “seditious” plays that hit Manila’s thriving theater scene. Filipinos were caught in a country broken by war, and in the ...
Dec 29, 2021•41 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast In March 1901, American forces launched a daring raid to capture the Filipino revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo. Head of U.S. Philippine forces, General Arthur MacArthur, hoped that his surrender would finally break the resistance and bring the war to an end. But fighting soon expanded to remote areas of the country. Frustrated with the stubborn resistance, America’s military leaders turned to increasingly harsher measures to crush the enemy. But accounts of atrocities by U.S. soldiers soon ...
Dec 22, 2021•37 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast In 1898, America’s victory over Spanish forces in the Philippines suddenly thrust the United States onto the global stage. It also drew the country into a more complicated conflict with the very people it claimed to be liberating. As the U.S. expanded its occupation of the Philippines, American soldiers drove Filipino rebels deeper into the countryside. Some rebels began to question the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, the face of the Philippine independence movement. In response, Aguinaldo attem...
Dec 15, 2021•42 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast On February 4th, 1899, war broke out between the United States and the Philippines. The two nations had begun as allies against Spain the previous year, during the Spanish-American War. The Spanish had occupied the Philippines for three centuries, and the U.S. arrived promising to drive out the European colonial power. But after the Spanish left, the Americans stayed, in defiance of widespread calls for Philippine independence. America’s bloody war in the Philippines was the nation’s first major...
Dec 08, 2021•41 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast Not every case of treason is open and shut. With some accused traitors, questions of their guilt or innocence can linger for generations. That’s certainly the case with Mary Surratt. Even before she was hanged in 1865 for her alleged role in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, many argued that she was an innocent widow convicted on false testimony. After her death, she became a martyr to the Confederate cause. To this day, Civil War scholars are divided on whether or not she was an active p...
Dec 01, 2021•45 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast 
