Prohibition - We Want Beer | 6
The people had spoken: They wanted beer, and they wanted it now, but not just for drinking. Protestors wanted the jobs that came with breweries, and the country was desperate from the money that could...
14 Mar 201834min
Prohibition - Down and Out | 5
Closing Time by Daniel Francis provides a good account of the border wars and smuggling across the northern border. Robert Rockaway’s article “The Notorious Purple Gang” details the gang’s origin as w...
7 Mar 201833min
Prohibition - Poisoning the Well | 4
The rise of the speakeasy was one of many unintended consequences of Prohibition - and others were much deadlier.Not coincidentally, at the same time Prohibition was taking effect, the Klu Klux Klan r...
28 Feb 201831min
Prohibition - Speakeasy | 3
While Prohibition was successful in closing the saloon, it didn’t quench America’s thirst. Enterprising bootleggers found more ways to provide more alcohol to parched Americans – so much that there wa...
21 Feb 201830min
Prohibition - Drying Out | 2
When a German U-boat torpedoed the RMS Lusitania on Friday, May 7th, 1915, Americans found two new enemies: Germany and the beer it was so associated with. Anti-German sentiment grew, and with it host...
14 Feb 201829min
Prohibition - Closing Time | 1
On January 17, 1920, the United States passed the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, ushering in a 13-year dry spell known as Prohibition. But how did a country that loved to drink turn its back o...
7 Feb 201837min
The Cold War - Interview with Audra Wolfe and Patrick Wyman | 7
We’re closing out our series on the Cold War with two interviews with fascinating historians. First, we’re talking with Audra Wolfe, the author of Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and ...
31 Jan 201844min
The Cold War - Last Man Standing | 6
In the early 1970s, while trying to wind down the war in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon made overtures to Moscow and Beijing that would usher in a new era of the Cold War: Detente. But the thaw in r...
24 Jan 201840min
