Amid predictions that a recession is possible next year, Hoosier History Live will time travel to the Great Depression and explore one of the two most consequential governors in Indiana history. Paul V. McNutt, who was elected in 1932 (the same year that Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency), was even considered as a possible Democratic nominee eight years later for the nation's top office if FDR had decided not to seek an unprecedented third term.

During the early 1930s, McNutt spoke out early on in support of Jews during rise to power of Nazis in Germany, notes our guest, Justin Clark of the Indiana Historical Bureau. Not only will Justin share insights about that during our show, he also will discuss McNutt's lifelong rivalry with Hoosier Wendell Willkie (who, coincidentally, became the Republican nominee for president in 1940) as well as criticisms that McNutt filled state government jobs only with Democrats while governor and clashed with organized labor.

McNutt (1891-1955), who also served as the country's first ambassador to the Philippines after World War II, was named one of the two most consequential governors in Indiana's history by Linda Gugin and James St. Clair, authors of "The Governors of Indiana" when they were Hoosier History Live guests . We explored the life of the other "most consequential" governor, Oliver P. Morton, a Republican who held the state's top office during the Civil War, during a Hoosier History Live show in 2019. And we put the spotlight on Willkie when his grandson, David Willkie, was our guest in 2015.