America’s Monuments | A Passage Through Panama | 2
For centuries, sailors and merchants dreamed of finding a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across the narrow isthmus of Central America. But no natural passage existed. To get ships acr...
3 Mar 202138min
America’s Monuments | The Colossus of New York Harbor | 1
It’s perhaps the most iconic of American monuments -- the Statue of Liberty. A towering 305-foot sculpture of copper and steel that is synonymous with American values of liberty, freedom and self-dete...
24 Feb 202139min
Great Chicago Fire | Out of the Ashes | 4
After the 1871 fire destroyed a third of their city, Chicagoans wanted to do more than rebuild. They wanted to envision a new kind of American city. That included everything from changes to fire codes...
17 Feb 202132min
Great Chicago Fire | The Great Rebuilding | 3
As dawn broke on October 10, 1871, the dazed survivors of the Great Chicago Fire stumbled through their burned and battered city. A 30-hour inferno had reduced Chicago to ashes.Homes and business were...
10 Feb 202140min
Great Chicago Fire | Fleeing the Flames | 2
Just before midnight on October 8, 1871, the inferno that had ravaged Chicago’s West Side leapt the Chicago River. A wall of flames surged toward downtown, threatening to devour Chicago’s most magnifi...
3 Feb 202135min
Great Chicago Fire | We Are Going to Have a Burn | 1
In 1871, Chicago was the fastest growing city in the world. Built almost entirely of wood, it was also a tinderbox. That October, a severe drought ravaged the city. Fires ignited constantly, and Chica...
27 Jan 202135min
Presidential Inaugurations: Traditions, Crisis, and Unity | 1
As America prepares to swear in a new president, we’ll look back to the inaugurations of the past. Jim Bendat, author of Democracy's Big Day: The Inauguration of Our President, 1789-2013, joins us as ...
20 Jan 202135min
Coal Wars | Charles Keeney on Restoring His Great Grandfather’s Legacy | 5
Once the coal miners lost the Battle of Blair Mountain, the story of their uprising was suppressed, and their leader Frank Keeney eventually faded into obscurity—even among members of his own family. ...
13 Jan 202145min
