Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, Jeremiah Castille grew up surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, drugs, and violence. At 13 years old, he found the Christian faith and began imagining a different life for himself. He set his sights on one goal: earn a football scholarship to the University of Alabama, get an education, and someday give his own family the life he never had.

Castille made it to Alabama and played for the legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant during the coach's final season. He shares how a few words from Bryant changed the way he saw himself, the lessons about character and excellence that stayed with him long after football, and the final game when Castille got the chance to thank the coach who had helped him become the man he hoped to be.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, for more than two centuries, Americans who agreed on almost nothing have found something to admire in Thomas Jefferson. Presidents, abolitionists, liberals, and conservatives have all claimed the man who wrote that “all men are created equal” while holding hundreds of people in slavery. He's a complicated figure, and that might say something about all of us.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Sphinx, shares why Jefferson remains one of the most fascinating and contradictory figures in the American story, and why those contradictions make him America's first true "everyman." We'd like to thank the U.S. Library of Congress for providing this audio to the American public.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, why do we say a married couple "tied the knot"? How did rejecting someone become known as "blackballing" them? And what do sailing ships have to do with being "under the weather" or finding yourself in a "touch and go" situation?

Andrew Thompson, author of Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town Red: The Curious Origins of Everyday Sayings and Fun Phrases, returns with the surprising stories behind some of the expressions we use every day, from "double cross" and "turn a blind eye" to "turn the tables," "two-faced," and more.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. James Madison became known as the Father of the Constitution. But the man who gave the Constitution much of its final language, including the famous words “We the People of the United States,” is largely forgotten. His name was Gouverneur Morris.

Dennis C. Rasmussen, author of The Constitution's Penman and a Jack Miller Center Fellow, shares the extraordinary story of the Founding Father who spoke more often than anyone else at the Constitutional Convention, helped shape the document's final form, and delivered one of its fiercest attacks on slavery.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, before Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court, he was wrestling with a question that would define his career: What is a judge supposed to do when the law produces a result he doesn't personally like? Scalia's answer was that judges should follow the law rather than their own preferences, an idea that helped shape his growing commitment to textualism and originalism.

James Rosen, author of Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936–1986, continues Scalia's story through his years as a lawyer, professor, government official, and federal judge. He also shares the story of Scalia's marriage to Maureen, his friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the ideas about law that would make him a distinctive figure on the bench.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, before Antonin Scalia became the first Italian American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, he was "Nino," the only child of an Italian American family growing up in Queens. His father had arrived from Sicily as a teenager, speaking no English, and worked his way through school to become a professor of Romance languages. His mother, the daughter of Italian immigrants, became a schoolteacher. Together, they filled their son's childhood with books, high expectations, family, and a deeply rooted Catholic faith.

James Rosen, author of Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936–1986, shares how that upbringing helped shape the future justice.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1630, John Winthrop and hundreds of Puritan settlers crossed the Atlantic hoping to build a new community in New England. Before they arrived, Winthrop delivered a warning. Their success or failure would not go unnoticed. Drawing on the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, he told his fellow settlers, “We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Robert J. Morgan, author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America, shares how a biblical image carried across the Atlantic became one of the most enduring phrases in American life.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, when the Constitutional Convention opened in 1787, the United States was less than a decade old and already struggling. The Articles of Confederation had created a loose union of states with a Congress that lacked the power to tax, enforce laws, or stabilize the economy. By 1787, many leaders believed the country could not continue as it was.

The men who met in Philadelphia were not unanimous in their views, but they shared a belief that reform was necessary. What began as a plan to amend the existing system became an effort to draft an entirely new Constitution. As part of our ongoing Story of Us—Story of America series, Bill McClay, the author of Land of Hope, shares the riveting story of the start of the Constitutional Convention and how the men there set out to create a document meant to last

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On this episode of Our American Stories, when the Founding Fathers set out to shape a new nation, they looked to Scripture for wisdom. Many were not traditional churchgoers, but nearly all believed that moral order came from faith.

Robert Morgan, author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America, shares the story of how biblical teaching influenced America’s earliest leaders and how those ideas became part of the nation’s identity.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, The American Revolution had created an independent country. It had not yet created a government capable of holding that country together. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress struggled to raise money, regulate commerce, enforce its decisions, or settle disputes among the states. By the 1780s, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and others feared the young republic might not survive unless something changed.

Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College and author of The Founders' Key, shares the story of how that crisis led delegates to Philadelphia in 1787, intending to repair the Articles and ultimately convinced them to replace them. At the heart of their work was a difficult question: How do you create a government strong enough to govern without making it powerful enough to threaten the liberty it exists to protect?

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