The First Department of Education
Whose job is it to educate Americans? Congress created the first Department of Education just after the Civil War as a way to help reunify a broken country. A year later, it was basically shut down. B...
12 Jun 202548min
The Woman Behind The New Deal
From Social Security and the minimum wage to exit signs and fire escapes, Frances Perkins transformed how people in the U.S. lived and worked. Today on the show: how a middle class do-gooder became on...
5 Jun 202548min
We the People: Search and Seizure
The Fourth Amendment is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures." But — what's unreasonable? That question has fueled a century's worth of court rulings that ...
29 Mai 202548min
War Crimes
On today's episode, we travel from the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War, through the rubble of two world wars, to the hallways of the Hague, to see how the modern world has tried to define — and pro...
22 Mai 202551min
The Tax Collector
Gangsters, banksters, and politicians. Today on the show, how the hunt for Al Capone helped turn the IRS into one of the U.S. government's most powerful tools — and most effective weapons.To access bo...
15 Mai 202551min
California's 'Bum Blockade'
The story of the Los Angeles police chief who, faced with one of the largest internal migrations in American history, tried to close California's borders to stop it.To access bonus episodes and listen...
8 Mai 202551min
Motherhood
Baby bonuses, childless cat ladies: the rhetoric around motherhood is politically charged right now. And the fantasy of an ideal mother remains powerful, even as real-life parents struggle to reconcil...
1 Mai 202550min
The Deadly Story of the U.S. Civil Service
When James Garfield won the Presidency in 1880, Charles Guiteau got ready to accept his new government job. No one had actually offered him a job – but he'd campaigned for Garfield, so he assumed he'd...
24 Apr 202549min
