Today we've got a little something special for you- something we're calling "Crossroads." From time to time, on weekends, Bob and I will be sharing episodes of podcasts that we think our audience might enjoy, and our first ever featured podcast is History Daily.

History Daily is hosted by our friend and podcaster extraordinaire, Lindsay Graham. You might know Lindsay from some of the biggest podcasts in the country, including American Scandal and American History Tellers. Lindsay's newest endeavor, History Daily, drops new episodes every weekday featuring stories of events that happened on that date in the past. The episodes run about 20 minutes and are well produced, so they're interesting gateways into bigger topics in history and they're pleasant listens.

For today's episode, Ben picked wpisodes that work well together- the story of Laika the Soviet space dog's Nov. 3, 1957 launch into space and the story of Apollo 8- which sent the first crewed spacecraft to orbit the moon on Dec. 21, 1968. They're both great on their own, but together they illustrate the firm lead that the Soviets had early in the space race, and the incredible effort NASA put into surpassing the Soviets by the end of the 1960s.

If you enjoy these episodes, you can follow History Daily anywhere you get the Road to Now.