143 The Making of the United States Constitution

How did Indigenous people adapt to and survive the onslaught of Indigenous warfare, European diseases, and population loss between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries? How did past generations of I...

14 Mar 202357min

People of African descent have made great contributions to the United States and its history. Think about all of the food, music, dance, medicine, farming and religious practices that people of Africa...

28 Feb 202349min

African chattel slavery, the predominant type of slavery practiced in colonial North America and the early United States, did not represent one monolithic practice of slavery. Practices of slavery var...

14 Feb 202352min

Before the American Revolution became a war and a fight for independence, the Revolution was a movement and protest for more local control of government. So how did the American Revolution get started...

31 Jan 20231h 2min

There are a lot of books about Benjamin Franklin. They tell us about his youth and accomplishments in business, politics, and diplomacy. They tell us about his serious interest in electricity and scie...

17 Jan 20231h 5min

On December 19, 1777, George Washington marched his Continental Army into its winter encampment at Valley Forge. In school we learned this was a hard, cold winter that saw the soldiers so ill-supplied...

3 Jan 20231h 6min

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of African and African American music to the United States’ musical traditions. Steven Lewis, a Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian, not...

20 Des 202259min

How did everyday Americans in the early United States use and enjoy music? How did they create and circulate new songs and musical lyrics? Our five-episode series about music in early America conti...

13 Des 202245min