Ed Ayers

The hosts discuss the transformation of milk from a dangerous, marginalized 19th Century dairy product, to a 20th Century superfood.

The story of author L. Frank Baum’s very successful career creating other fantasy lands—department store windows.

Why Pilgrims would be stunned by our "traditional" Thanksgiving table, and other surprising truths about the invention of our national holiday.

On the Oneida Community, a radical religious organization practicing “Bible communism,” and eventually, manufacturing silverware.

In the 1820s, Sarah Hale, a New England widow and the editor of Godey’s Ladies Book made it her mission to get Thanksgiving recognized as a national holiday.

In the 1930s, 16 African-American families from the South rejected the American experiment and looked to Communist Uzbekistan for a chance to build a new world.

On the Loyalists who fled during the Revolutionary War – like Jacob Bailey, who saw freedom from tyranny with the British in Nova Scotia.

Looking for an easy buck, con artists in the early 1900s infamously "sold" the Brooklyn Bridge to immigrants fresh off the boat.

The story of America's oldest counterfeiters and why the Civil War spurred the Secret Service into hunting them down.

Senator Fred Harris describes his experience on the Kerner Commission, tasked with explaining the causes of urban riots in 1967.

The story of an unofficial, integrated delegation from Mississippi that attempted to claim seats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention and was denied.

On the first political convention in support of the Anti-Masonic Party, in reaction to the number of political elites involved in the secretive Masonic society.

Before there was Vegas, there was Elkton, Maryland. Let's take a trip to this tiny town and tell the story of its former life as elopement capital of the US.

On the links between the rise of marriage counseling and the scientific embrace of eugenics.

Historian Isaac Campos traces the origins of the idea that marijuana causes violent madness…and finds the trail leads south, to Mexico.

How prior generations of Americans responded to the threat of infectious disease.

How disease devastated populations of escaped slaves in contraband camps behind Union lines during and after the Civil War.

How soldiers returning from World War I brought the Spanish flu back with them.

On John Winthrop’s oft-misunderstood use of the phrase “a city upon a hill” to describe the New World.

The 19th century recovery of John Winthrop's sermon, "A City on a Hill."