BackStory

Join award-winning game designer Jackson Tegu on a meandering chat through envelopes, CDs, and posters on telephone poles.

BackStory features a guest podcast this week, from Reply All. The episode, Man of the People, first aired on January 19, 2017.  It’s about the rise and fall of an American demagogue. 

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Archaeologist and professional GM Daniel Kwan talks holiday games, Dramatic Managers, and building social skills through role-play.

In this week’s roundtable conversation, Ed, Joanne, Nathan and Brian focus on three stories in the news: famous men apologizing (or not) for bad behavior,  the Alabama Senate race between Roy Moore and Doug Jones, and the FCC’s plans to repeal net neutrality.

In this episode, Brian mentions Richard Nixon's "Checkers" speech. View the full speech (with transcript) via the Miller Center. And to hear the segment of Brian interviewing Tyrone Jones, a Black Santa, check out "Being Santa."












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With allegations of corruption flying on both sides of the aisle in Washington, Brian, Joanne, and Nathan return to our episode on how Americans have wrestled with political corruption.



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Bait Byout co-founder Fatima Abdul Karim on the birth of larp in the Arab world.

Brian sits down with Ed to talk about a project of his that’s been twenty-five years in the making. We’re talking about Ed’s series on the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The first volume, In The Presence of Mine Enemies came out in 2003, and won the Bancroft Prize.  It opened with John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, and ended just before the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. 

Ed has just published the second volume in the series: The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America. He picks up the story in 1863, and continues through 1870 and the ratification of the 15th Amendment. 








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One hundred years ago, Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party seized power in a revolution that would change the world. They would establish the world’s first Marxist state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a few years later. As the 20th century wore on, the USSR became the United States’s chief military and ideological foe. On this episode of BackStory, Brian, Joanne, and Nathan explore how that distant revolution had an immediate impact in the United States. 

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Award-winning RPG designer Aleksandra Sontowska on sex, horror, and unsettling self-knowledge in games.

An estimated 200 American volunteer soldiers have joined the fight against the Islamic State. They’re part of a much longer tradition of freelance fighters, like early 19th century American privateers who fought in Latin America’s wars of independence and those who participated in the Spanish Civil War. On this episode, Ed, Brian and Joanne explore when and why Americans signed up to fight for other countries’ causes.

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