058 Fighting over the Founders: How We Remember the American Revolution

Before Common Sense could ignite a revolution, colonists had to be convinced they shared a cause worth fighting for. So how did Revolutionary leaders turn thirteen very different colonies into “Americ...

20 Jan 58min

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense turned a colonial rebellion into a full-blown revolution. But how did one pamphlet move so many minds in 1776—and why does it still matter 250 years later? To commemorate ...

13 Jan 1h 14min

Common Sense didn’t just make an argument for independence—it moved through a world of newspapers, pamphlets, and personal networks that carried revolutionary ideas from one doorstep to the next. So h...

6 Jan 1h 24min

Benjamin Rush was one of early America’s most fascinating figures. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a leading Philadelphia physician, and a thinker who believed that a healthy body ...

30 Des 20251h

British officials had a problem: Their American colonists wouldn't stop smuggling. Even after Parliament slashed tea prices and passed laws to make legal imports cheaper, colonists kept buying Dutch a...

23 Des 20251h 24min

Think the Boston Tea Party made America a coffee-drinking nation? Historian Michelle McDonald reveals the truth: colonists were already choosing coffee over tea because it was cheaper. Michelle Craig...

16 Des 20251h 3min

In the 1820s, American entrepreneurs, engineers, and politicians dared to dream big. They believed they could cut a canal, not through Panama, but through the wild, rain-soaked terrain of Nicaragua. T...

9 Des 20251h 1min

As we look ahead to the 250th anniversary—the semiquincentennial—of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, communities and commissions across the United States are asking big questions: How should w...

2 Des 202551min