American Origin Stories with Matthew Cooke

The battle between slavers, anti-slavers and opportunists drove the geographic borders of the nation, its economy and its culture.

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We'd consider it tyranny to let one person decide who we see and what we do in in Boston Common. Why is it ok in our digital common? What if social media platforms were standardized to enable inter-network communication? Like our cell phones?

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MLK was a founding father of American freedom. Prior to the late 1960s, not all citizens could vote. His voting rights act was to be just the beginning... King described the social acceptance of poverty "as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism" and called for America to "civilize itself" by redistributing economic and political power more equitably. King made clear that a moral society should abolish poverty, and make reparations to the descendants of American slavery, to provide the same economic base that was given to European peasants. He described this mandate as the teachings of the original Christianity. His position was that any American political movement that honors those basic universal values, and liberty and justice for all, would adopt that agenda.

Victor Ochoa was a gunslinger, an inventor of airplanes, a wind turbine, and the pocket protector. He was a revolutionary, a friend of President Teddy Roosevelt, and wanted by the Mexican government, dead or alive. Ochoa's ancestors came from Texas when it was Mexican territory, overrun by illegal Anglo immigrants. Victor lived through the Civil War, World War 1, and the industrial revolution. The path of his extraordinary life teaches us much about America, its people, and human nature itself.

To the vast majority of America, the identity of the 35 year old man who wrote the U.S. constitution is a secret, hidden in plain sight. Knowing the identity of "The Ghost" changes the entire way we understand the nation and its character, both past and present. Find more at survivorsguidetoearth.com