On this episode of Our American Stories, Dave Cobb grew up in Savannah, Georgia, listening to everything from church hymns to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. He didn't discover country music until moving to California and working with Shooter Jennings, which introduced him to the music of Waylon Jennings and eventually led him to Nashville. There, Cobb became one of the most acclaimed producers in country music.

In this conversation recorded in 2018, Cobb sits down with our host, Lee Habeeb, to share the stories behind Chris Stapleton's breakthrough album Traveller, Jason Isbell's Southeastern, and some of the other records that defined his career.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1940, 26-year-old Roswell and Marjorie McClelland put aside the academic and professional lives they had planned and sailed for Europe with the Quakers' American Friends Service Committee. War had already engulfed the continent, and the young American couple soon found themselves helping Jewish and political refugees fleeing the Nazis.

For our ongoing series The Six Percent, Deborah Dwork, author of Saints and Liars, shares the story of the McClellands and the agonizing decisions that came with trying to save lives during the Holocaust. Marjorie was eventually given an especially difficult task: choosing which refugee children would be evacuated to the United States. Every name she selected meant a chance at safety for one child, while countless others would remain behind.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, on May 12, 1864, a large oak tree stood in the middle of some of the fiercest fighting of the Civil War. For nearly 20 hours, Union and Confederate soldiers battled at close range at the Bloody Angle during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Thousands of bullets ripped through the air, and so many struck the oak that they eventually cut through its trunk and brought the tree crashing down. What remained was a shattered, bullet-riddled stump.

In this installment of our American Objects series, Ashley Hlebinsky shares the story of the Spotsylvania Stump.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, before PEZ dispensers came topped with Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus, and superheroes, PEZ was a benign Austrian peppermint marketed to adults as an alternative to smoking. Then PEZ came to America and flopped. Instead of giving up, the company decided to change course, and a candy once meant for adults found an entirely new audience in American children.

Shawn Peterson, author of PEZ: From Austrian Invention to American Icon, shares the surprising story of how a failed product launch transformed PEZ into one of the world's most recognizable candies and an icon of American pop culture.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, at 11 years old, Victoria Arlen's body began shutting down. Eventually, she lost the ability to move or communicate and spent nearly four years in a vegetative state while doctors told her family she would never recover. What they didn't know was that Victoria was still there. She could hear them, understand them, and remember everything. Then one day, she blinked twice for her mother and proved she had been there all along.

Victoria would go on to win Paralympic gold, become a world record holder and broadcaster, learn to walk after a decade in a wheelchair, and compete on Dancing with the Stars. But behind those extraordinary accomplishments, she was still carrying years of unaddressed trauma. Victoria, author of The View Is Worth It, shares how a devastating breaking point forced her to confront her past, rediscover her faith, find forgiveness, and turn her pain into a purpose of helping others.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, a century ago, Tampa, Florida, was "Cigar City." Some 150 factories filled the city, where workers rolled more than 500 million cigars by hand each year. One by one, those factories disappeared as the industry changed and production moved overseas. Today, only one remains. The J.C. Newman Cigar Company still makes cigars in Tampa using many of the same methods that helped make the city famous.

Drew Newman, the great-grandson of company founder Julius Caesar Newman, takes us inside the last cigar factory in Tampa and into a craft that begins years before a cigar is ever rolled. Tobacco must be grown, harvested, naturally fermented, aged, blended, and finally rolled by hand. A single cigar can take three years and pass through some 300 pairs of hands before it is finished. Drew shares the history behind an American industry and how his family is working to keep its traditions alive for another generation.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in February 2021, a historic winter storm brought much of Texas to a standstill. Tim Hennessey and his wife, Debbie, braved the icy roads to pick up groceries for themselves and some friends. Then, while they were shopping at their local H-E-B, the power went out. The checkout lines quickly filled, but instead of asking customers to wait, employees began waving them toward the doors. Take your groceries. Get home safely. Don't worry about paying.

Tim couldn't stop thinking about what he had witnessed. When he got home, he wrote about it on Facebook in a post he and Debbie called "The Heart of America." Within days, tens of thousands of people had shared it. Tim Hennessey shares how a grocery store, a winter storm, and a simple act of generosity reminded him of the kindness happening every day across America.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1852, Constantino Brumidi arrived in New York as a refugee from Rome. He was already an accomplished artist, but in America, he found the work that would consume the rest of his life. For the next twenty-five years, Brumidi climbed scaffolds, painted ceilings, and covered the halls of the U.S. Capitol with scenes drawn from American history and the ideals of his adopted country.

His greatest work waited 180 feet above the Rotunda floor. There, inside the Capitol dome, Brumidi painted George Washington, known to many as "America's Indispensable Man," rising into the heavens surrounded by Liberty, Victory, Fame, and figures representing the original thirteen states. Our own Lee Habeeb shares how an Italian immigrant came to paint The Apotheosis of Washington, earning a remarkable nickname of his own in the process: “America’s Michelangelo.”

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Horst Schulze, co-founder of Ritz-Carlton and author of Excellence Wins, built his career around a simple idea: every employee has the power to define an entire organization in the eyes of a customer. Years ago, before speaking to hundreds of managers at a Chicago bank, Schulze decided to experience the bank's heavily advertised customer service for himself. One encounter with a teller gave him a lesson he would repeat for the next fifteen years.

Schulze shares his simple formula for service excellence, explains the difference between merely completing a transaction and earning a customer's loyalty, and shows why leaders can't afford to let even one employee define their organization through poor service.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1890, Nellie Bly completed a journey that seemed almost impossible, circling the globe in just 72 days. Inspired by Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, Bly traveled by ship, train, horse, rickshaw, and more, even stopping in France to meet Verne himself. But her famous race around the world was only one chapter in the remarkable life of one of America's most fearless journalists.

Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Pennsylvania, Bly challenged expectations about what women could do, reported on the lives of factory workers, confronted political repression in Mexico, and famously went undercover inside a New York City mental asylum to expose the horrific treatment of its patients. Our own Lee Habeeb shares the story of the pioneering reporter, adventurer, inventor, and businesswoman who refused to accept the limits placed on women in her time.

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