American History Tellers

By Wondery

Society & Culture History Kids & Family

What's American History Tellers about?

The words you speak. The ideas you share. The freedoms you defend. Every part of your life can be traced to our shared history, but how well do you really know the stories that made America? We’ll take you to the events, the times and the people that shaped our nation and Americans. And we’ll show you how our history affected them, their families and affects you today.

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The Bastard Brigade - Showd...

08.21.2019

The Alsos mission had a hard-charging leader in Boris Pash and an eccentric band of recruits. But if the so-called Bastard Brigade was going to track down the Nazi atomic bomb, they would also need scientific expertise. For that, they ...

American History Tellers episodes:

08.21.2019 The Bastard Brigade - Showdown in the Alps \| 6 The Alsos mission had a hard-charging leader in Boris Pash and an eccentric band of recruits. But if the so-called Bastard Brigade was going to track down the Nazi atomic bomb, they would also need scientific expertise. For that, they ...
08.14.2019 The Bastard Brigade - The Most Wanted Men \| 5 As the Nazis inched closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon, panic grew among the Allied forces. The Alsos Mission — otherwise known as the Bastard Brigade — was put in charge of gathering intelligence on Hitler’s bomb project, seizing stores ...
08.07.2019 The Bastard Brigade - The Strangest Man \| 4 By mid-1944, the Allies’ fight to track down and stop the Nazi atomic program had met with failure and disappointment. And so the Manhattan Project took a new tack by recruiting and developing atomic spies — including a backup catcher ...
08.05.2019 Introducing Sean Carroll's Mindscape How big is our galaxy? Why do certain movies make us cry? And what exactly is string theory? Join Sean Carroll's Mindscape to dive deep into the biggest ideas in science, philosophy, culture and much more. Start listening today at ...
07.31.2019 The Bastard Brigade - The Kennedy Curse \| 3 In early 1944, the Allies developed a desperate plan to destroy several massive bunkers in Nazi-controlled France—bunkers that reportedly housed atomic missiles. The plan called for filling up airplanes with napalm, flying them over to France via remote control, and ...
07.30.2019 Introducing Room 20 For more than 15 years, a man named Sixty-Six Garage would lay in a nursing home bed, unidentified and unconscious. Or so everyone believed. Join reporter and host Joanne Faryon across borders and through the twists and turns of the ...
07.24.2019 The Bastard Brigade - The Juice \| 2 The discovery of uranium fission in Nazi Germany in 1938 terrified Allied nuclear scientists—especially since the Nazi atomic bomb project, the dreaded Uranium Club, had a two-year head start on the Manhattan Project. So the Allies decided to strike back. ...
07.17.2019 The Bastard Brigade - The Accidental A-Bomb \| 1 The Second World War ended with two black mushroom clouds rising over the scorched remains of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But most people don’t realize how easily the war could have ended not with an American atomic bomb but a German ...
07.09.2019 Introducing Larger Than Life In 1960s Los Angeles, after the catastrophic Watts riots, an outsized character emerged — one who found an unexpected way to unite people across race and class. Odds are you’ve never heard of him—but his name, was Big Willie. Reported, ...
07.03.2019 The Statue of Liberty \| 6 The Statue of Liberty is one of America’s most iconic monuments to freedom. As we head into the Fourth of July holiday, we’ll look back on the amazing effort it took to get Lady Liberty built. Beckett Graham is co-host ...
06.26.2019 Tulsa Race Massacre - Legacy and Lessons \| 5 Nearly a century after a white mob leveled the affluent Tulsa district known as Black Wall Street, how is Greenwood faring? Mechelle Brown is the program coordinator for the Greenwood Cultural Center, which seeks to educate people about the rich ...
06.19.2019 Tulsa Race Massacre - Rebirth \| 4 On June 2, 1921, thousands of black Tulsans interned at the Tulsa Fairgrounds woke under armed guard. Many had no idea where their loved ones were or if they were still alive; they didn’t know whether their homes were still ...
06.18.2019 New Show From Lindsay Graham: 1865 1865 starts with the moment Lincoln got shot and follows the journey of the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, as he continues to push through Lincoln’s progressive agenda while dealing with the nuances and scandal around Lincoln’s assassination. In pursuit ...
06.12.2019 Tulsa Race Massacre - The Invasion \| 3 By midnight on Tuesday, May 31, 1921, some Greenwood residents assumed the riot was calming down. Many families, far away from the action at the courthouse, hadn’t even heard about the violence, and went to bed as usual. But as ...
06.05.2019 Tulsa Race Massacre - The Powder Keg \| 2 As Dick Rowland sat in a jail cell at the Tulsa courthouse on Tuesday, the news of his arrest and rumors about his alleged rape of Sarah Page flew through town. Egged on by an inflammatory op-ed in the Tulsa ...
05.30.2019 Introducing Inside Star Wars Heroes, villains, action... all set in a galaxy far, far away. Join Inside Star Wars and go behind the camera and find out how one of the most iconic series in film history came to be. Listen now at: http://wondery.fm/ISWED
05.29.2019 Tulsa Race Massacre - The Promised Land \| 1 Between 1838 and 1890, thousands of African Americans moved to Oklahoma, brought there as Cherokee slaves or drawn there by the promise of free land. Black pioneers established towns where African Americans could govern themselves and thrive in community together, ...
05.24.2019 Sponsored \| American Epidemics - Dark Days In Dallas \| 3 This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with National Geographic in anticipation of their new series, The Hot Zone. In 2014, Ebola is tearing through Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but the deadly disease hasn’t yet made ...
05.22.2019 J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI - Humanizing History with David McCullough \| 7 Pulitzer Prize winner. National Book Award winner. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Today David McCullough, one of America’s greatest living historians, joins us to discuss his new book, The Pioneers, about the heroic men and women who shaped the Northwest ...
05.17.2019 Sponsored \| American Epidemics - 1989 and The Hot Zone \| 2 This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with National Geographic in anticipation of their new series, The Hot Zone. The three-night limited series is inspired by true events surrounding the origins of the Ebola virus and its ...
05.15.2019 J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Citizens Resistance \| 6 On March 8, 1971, seven ordinary Americans broke into a poorly guarded FBI regional office in Media, Pennsylvania. They called themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, and they had one purpose: to gather evidence that would prove the ...
05.13.2019 Actor Justin Long Gets Personal on "Life is Short" Life is Short with Justin Long finds the actor sitting down with some of the funniest and most intriguing people of today, like Dax Shepard, Olivia Wilde and Neil Patrick Harris. No topics are out of bounds, and no questions ...
05.10.2019 Sponsored \| American Epidemics - The Great Pandemic \| 1 This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with National Geographic in anticipation of their new series, The Hot Zone. The three-night limited series is inspired by true events surrounding the origins of the Ebola virus and its ...
05.08.2019 J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI - Black Bag Job \| 5 Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI carried out more than 2,000 top secret spying operations aimed at American citizens. Their target? The so-called Fifth Column, a network of undercover Soviet agents allegedly working to destroy the American government from within. ...
05.01.2019 J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI - Controlling the Message \| 4 The rise of fascism and World War II shifted the FBI’s focus in the 1940s from fighting midwestern outlaws to catching Communists. To Hoover and the FBI, nearly anyone on the political left was suspect, potentially part of a Soviet ...
04.24.2019 J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI - The Bobby Sox Bandit Queen \| 3 During the mid-1930s, the FBI’s public relations department had effectively changed the image of its agents from accountants into action heroes; and its director, from a bureaucrat into an American icon. They pushed stories about heroic G-men facing off against ...
04.17.2019 J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Giant Among G-Men \| 2 J. Edgar Hoover became director of the FBI when he was just 29 years old. His orders? Clean up the Bureau. At first, he proved to be a brilliant and innovative leader, setting new standards for education, physical fitness, and ...
04.10.2019 J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI - The Department of Easy Virtues \| 1 By the turn of the century, radical anarchists were becoming a growing -- and volatile -- political movement. As shifting workplace conditions exploited and endangered American workers, anarchists increasingly turned to violence to spur everyday citizens to upend the capitalist ...
04.03.2019 America's Anthem \| 7 “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord.” That’s the opening line of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” written by Julie Ward Howe in 1861. Over the years, it’s become something of an unofficial national ...
03.27.2019 The Great Depression: Justice and Infamy \| 6 As legal challenges to his New Deal programs mounted, President Roosevelt and his attorney general devised dramatic reforms to the Supreme Court’s structure. The proposed changes would open new rifts between the president and conservative members of his own party. ...
03.20.2019 The Great Depression - Progress and Pushback \| 5 After two of President Roosevelt’s closest advisors competed to create a new federal jobs program, the White House launched one of Roosevelt's keystone initiatives: the Works Progress Administration. Under this program, millions of Americans earned government salaries at a wide ...
03.13.2019 The Great Depression - Dust \| 4 The Great Depression wasn’t the only crisis facing the country when Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933. Following a decade-long drought that had shriveled crops, massive dust storms were pummeling huge swaths of the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the ...
03.08.2019 Introducing Unknown History: 75 Years Since D-Day This year marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the longest day in military history. For the first time, you can hear perspectives on the conflict from all sides on the podcast Unknown History. Bestselling historian Giles Milton shares stories from ...
03.06.2019 The Great Depression - A New Deal \| 3 With the country was still hobbled by the Depression, New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised a “New Deal” for the American people. That vow handed Roosevelt a contested Democratic nomination and helped him crush Hoover in the general election. ...
02.27.2019 The Great Depression - Brother, Can You Spare a Dime \| 2 Factories have shut down, banks have failed, and millions are out of work. As the Depression worsens, public opinion sours toward President Hoover. Hoover’s allies attempt to counter criticism of the President by galvanizing anti-foreigner attitudes. They devise a scheme ...
02.20.2019 The Great Depression - The Crash \| 1 The Roaring Twenties came to a screeching halt on October 29, 1929, with the collapse of the U.S. stock market. A year earlier, president Herbert Hoover had coasted to victory by promising the American people “a chicken for every pot” ...
02.13.2019 Does History Repeat Itself? \| 4 "Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it." On today’s show, we’ll consider what lessons we can draw from history, and what lessons we can’t. David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University, ...
02.06.2019 The 1968 Chicago Protests - I Regret Nothing \| 3 A special series with Legal Wars. The whole world was watching, and that’s exactly what the defendants wanted. As the end of 1969 approached, the Chicago 8 had become the Chicago 7. Bobby Seale, a Black Panther, had been removed ...
01.30.2019 The 1968 Chicago Protests - The Trial of the Chicago 8 \| 2 A special series with Legal Wars. In 1969, the war in the streets became a war in the courtroom. The trial of the Chicago 8 pitted the federal government against eight prominent anti-war activists. The charges: Conspiracy to incite a ...
01.23.2019 The 1968 Chicago Protests - The Battle of Michigan Avenue \| 1 A special series with our sibling show Legal Wars. The 1968 Democratic National Convention attracted demonstrators from all over the country. Thousands of students, Yippies, Peaceniks, and other protestors converged in Chicago to push for an end to the Vietnam ...
01.02.2019 1865 versus 2018 and Why History Matters \| 7 We live in historic times, but how do they compare to that other tumultuous era of American history — 1865 and the years following President Lincoln’s death and the end of The Civil War? Steven Walters, writer of Lindsay Graham’s ...
12.26.2018 Political Parties - The Reagan Revolution \| 6 The year 1968 marked a watershed in American politics. Anti-war protests were roiling the country. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead in Memphis. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s approval rating was plummeting. The assassination of Democratic presidential ...
12.19.2018 Political Parties - The New Deal Coalition \| 5 The 1929 stock market crash saw 14 billion dollars vanish in a matter of hours — and with it, the Republican party’s decades-long grip on American politics. As Americans lost their livelihoods, they turned to President Herbert Hoover for relief. ...
12.12.2018 Political Parties - The Golden Age of the GOP \| 4 As the Civil War came to a close, the government set its sights once again on the future of the United States. Working closely with a Republican President, the Republican Congress expected a swift and peaceful road to Reconstruction. But ...
12.05.2018 Political Parties - The Turbulent 1850s \| 3 The United States won the The Mexican–American War in the 1840s, and with it vast new stretches of western land. But in the 1850s, the question of what to do with this land – and whether to allow slavery in ...
12.03.2018 Lindsay Graham's Newest Podcast: 1865 April 15, 1865. President Lincoln is dead and the country in turmoil. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton takes control, determined to bring the assassin to justice. Heavily researched, this historical political thriller is an audio drama that explores America’s darkest ...
12.01.2018 History of the Lincoln Motor Company \| 9 Named after one of the greatest U.S. presidents, the Lincoln Motor Company has become as ingrained in American culture as the Statue of Liberty. Founded by Henry Leland to produce plane engines during World War I, Lincoln became a key ...
11.28.2018 Political Parties - Jacksonian Democracy \| 2 Andrew Jackson lost the 1824 presidential election to John Quincy Adams through what some called a “corrupt bargain” in the House of Representatives. The maneuver was masterminded by hot-headed but politically savvy Henry Clay, who with Adams, announced their intent ...
11.21.2018 Political Parties - A Tale of Two Parties \| 1 In the earliest days of the United States, there was no such thing as an organized political party. George Washington, elected twice to the presidency unanimously in the Electoral College, warned the new nation against political factions, writing that organized ...
11.14.2018 Civil Rights - Interview with Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely \| 7 We conclude our series on the American Civil Right Movement with an interview with a woman who was there, on the front lines of the fight. Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely is longtime civil rights activist and artist. She was a ...

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