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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California Water Wars - A R...

01.22.2020

By the turn of the twentieth century, Los Angeles had grown from a dusty, crime-ridden pueblo into a thriving metropolis. The only problem was that it was growing too fast. With no consistently reliable water source and a desert climate ...

American History Tellers episodes:

01.22.2020 California Water Wars - A River in the Desert \| 1 By the turn of the twentieth century, Los Angeles had grown from a dusty, crime-ridden pueblo into a thriving metropolis. The only problem was that it was growing too fast. With no consistently reliable water source and a desert climate ...
12.18.2019 Kentucky Blood Feud - The Revenge of Bad Tom Baker \| 2 The Civil War forced the warring families of Clay County into an uneasy truce. The Garrards, Whites, Howards, and Bakers found themselves allied as they fought for the Union. But the war brought new challenges: the Northern army destroyed Clay ...
12.11.2019 Kentucky Blood Feud - The Murder of Daniel Bates \| 1 The longest and bloodiest feud in American history erupted in the 1840s in Clay County, Kentucky — where it raged for nearly a century and ultimately claimed more than 150 lives. The Clay County War, also known as the Baker-Howard ...
12.04.2019 A Look Back at The Newspaper Industry \| 10 On Dec. 4, 1881 the Los Angeles Times published its very first edition. And while the paper ran into severe financial trouble just a year after its founding, it nevertheless survived and over its 138 year lifespan has been at ...
11.27.2019 American Elections Then and Now: Wicked Game \| 1 With the 2020 election looming, Many Americans are wondering how it got this bad, how we succumbed to rancor and invective, fake news and talking points. But maybe it's always been this way? American Elections: Wicked Game is a new ...
11.20.2019 The Legacy of The Triangle Fire \| 5 In September 2019 Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren invoked the memory of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire at a campaign rally just a few blocks from the site of fire in Manhattan. It was a powerful reminder of ...
11.13.2019 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - In America They Don’t Let You Burn \| 4 In the wake of the biggest workplace catastrophe in the city of New York, the survivors of the Triangle fire and the families of the victims could only watch from the sidelines as the case against the Triangle bosses went ...
11.11.2019 Rethink Presidential Politics with American Elections: Wicked Game American Elections: Wicked Game is a new podcast from Lindsay Graham that will explore all 58 presidential elections, leading up to the big day in November 2020. From the inevitable election of George Washington in 1789, to Donald Trump’s surprise ...
11.06.2019 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Sixteen Minutes \| 3 Two years after the labor strikes that shook the city of New York, the workers of Triangle factory returned to better wages and lower hours. But when a fire broke out near closing time on a Saturday afternoon, these same ...
10.30.2019 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Revolt of the Girls \| 2 Inspired by the labor strikes at Triangle and other factories in Lower Manhattan, more than 30,000 garment workers took to the streets of New York in protest in late 1909. For the first time, an industry of women sought not ...
10.23.2019 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Wildcat \| 1 On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan, claiming the lives of 146 garment workers — mostly women and girls. It was one of the deadliest workplace disasters in American history. Caused by ...
10.16.2019 Dutch Manhattan - The Dutch Influence Today \| 7 New York City was founded on the Dutch principles of tolerance and capitalism, both of which were new ideas at the time. But much of the city's early history was lost until the 1970s, when a renewed interest in the ...
10.15.2019 Introducing The Next Big Idea Ideas are coming at you every day from all directions. How can you process it all? You can start with The Next Big Idea. Host Rufus Griscom and legendary thought leaders Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Dan Pink, and Susan Cain, ...
10.09.2019 Dutch Manhattan - New York \| 6 In the years after Adrian Van der Donck won a municipal charter for New Amsterdam, and under Peter Stuyvesant's stern but capable rule, the city flourished. Even English residents of New England and Virginia sent their goods to Europe via ...
10.02.2019 Dutch Manhattan - The One-Legged Soldier \| 5 Peter Stuyvesant was fresh from losing a leg in battle against the Spanish when he arrived in Manhattan in 1647. He was a tough soldier who was ready to take charge of the unruly population of New Amsterdam. He soon ...
09.25.2019 Dutch Manhattan - The Sheriff Comes to Town \| 4 Just as it was becoming a New World success story, disaster came to New Amsterdam. Willem Kieft, the Dutch leader appointed by the West India Trading Company, declared war on local tribes, sending soldiers to slaughter them in their villages. ...
09.18.2019 Dutch Manhattan - Pirates and Prostitutes \| 3 New Amsterdam was a desperate place. For the first decade of its existence, the Dutch city on the tip of Manhattan Island served as a haven for pirates, prostitutes and smugglers. That was because the West India Company, which ran ...
09.11.2019 Dutch Manhattan - Buying Manhattan \| 2 Twelve years after Henry Hudson's 1609 trip charting the Hudson River, the Dutch used his voyage as the basis for a new colony, which would be wedged between the English colonies in New England and Virginia. New Netherland began with ...
09.04.2019 Dutch Manhattan - Henry Hudson’s Big Mistake \| 1 In 1609, a headstrong English sea captain named Henry Hudson set out on behalf of the Dutch East India Company to find a trade route to Asia — and promptly found himself and his crew stranded in icy waters off ...
08.28.2019 Remembering Emmett Till \| 7 The murder of Emmett Till galvanized the nascent civil rights movement. But the full story of what happened in Money, Miss., on August 28, 1955, is significantly different than the narrative that emerged at the time. A new app developed ...
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 ...
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 ...
07.24.2019 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 ...
07.03.2019 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 ...
06.12.2019 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 ...
05.29.2019 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 ...
05.15.2019 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 ...
05.10.2019 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 ...
03.06.2019 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 ...

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