Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, John Newton lived one of the most extraordinary lives of the 18th century. He was a rebellious sailor, a slave trader, a slave ship captain, a pastor, a mentor to William Wilberforce, and the author of one of the world's most beloved hymns, "Amazing Grace."

Drawing on the work of biographers Brian H. Edwards, Jonathan Aitken, and Tony Baker, our own Greg Hengler shares the remarkable redemption story of Newton's dramatic conversion, his role in the movement to abolish the British slave trade, and how a hymn that was largely overlooked in England became an American gospel standard. We'd like to thank Vision Video for access to much of this terrific audio, originally a part of their documentary John Newton.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, for all 11 seasons of M*A*S*H, Alan Alda wore the same set of military dog tags as Captain Hawkeye Pierce. Most viewers assumed they were Hollywood props. They weren't.

Journalist Andy Lewis shares the remarkable true story of the two World War II veterans whose names appeared on those dog tags, revealing how a Black engineer from Mississippi and the son of Jewish immigrants from Brooklyn became forever connected through one of television's most beloved shows.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Nathaniel Gordon of Portland, Maine, holds the distinction of being the only American ever executed for the crime of slave trading. Although many were caught in the act, sentences were often lenient, and most slave traders believed they had little to fear until Abraham Lincoln.

Jonathan W. White, a regular contributor on Our American Stories, a fellow at the Jack Miller Center, and the author of Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade, shares the story of the man Lincoln refused to pardon and explains why. Special thanks to the U.S. National Archives for this audio, taken from an online lecture Dr. White gave.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, inside the Los Angeles Police Museum sits a collection of worn photo albums that once served as one of the LAPD's most valuable crime-fighting tools. Filled with mugshots, notes, aliases, and criminal networks, these "mug books" belonged to the department's legendary Hat Squad, an elite unit created in 1946 to keep organized crime from taking over Los Angeles.

Our regular contributor, Ashley Hlebinsky, shares another installment of our ongoing Display Cases series, exploring how a handful of battered photo albums reveal the rise of postwar organized crime, the controversial tactics of the LAPD's original Gangster Squad, and the evolution of modern policing.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, when General Motors shifted to remote work in 2020, Emma McCormick realized she could work from anywhere. Instead of renting another apartment, the recent Hillsdale College graduate bought a 25-foot sailboat, moved to a marina in Florida, and made the sea her home.

Emma shares how an Idaho native with no sailing background learned to navigate life afloat, why she embraced an unconventional version of the American Dream, and what it's really like balancing a corporate career with life on a sailboat.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, before Mary Kay became one of the most recognizable names in American business, she was a divorced mother, a widow, a lifelong saleswoman repeatedly passed over for promotion, and a woman who wasn't even allowed to open a bank account without her husband's permission. At 45, after losing her job and her husband just weeks before launching a new venture, she bet everything she had on a company of her own.

Mary Lisa Gavenas, author of Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay, shares the remarkable story of faith, perseverance, and entrepreneurial vision behind the woman who built one of America's most iconic companies and forever changed opportunities for women in business.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in March 1944, Lt. Bill Owen's crew wasn't supposed to make history. Flying one of the Eighth Air Force's secret radar-equipped Pathfinder B-17s, they pressed on toward Berlin after the rest of the bomber stream received a recall order. Through a remarkable twist of circumstance, their Flying Fortress became the first American Flying Fortress to bomb the heart of the Third Reich during WWII.

John O'Neil, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, shares the extraordinary story as first told by his father, John J. O'Neil Jr., the tail and waist gunner aboard that historic mission.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, when 16-year-old Hector Boiardi arrived at Ellis Island from Italy in 1914, he couldn't have imagined that his face would one day appear on supermarket shelves across America. After becoming a celebrated chef, he turned his restaurant's most popular takeout meals into one of the country's most recognizable food brands, forever changing the way Americans ate Italian food.

During World War II, Chef Boyardee's factories stopped making food for grocery stores and began producing military rations around the clock, making his company one of the largest suppliers of meals to American and Allied troops. Greg Hengler shares the remarkable story of the real man behind one of America's most familiar brands.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1968, at the height of the Cold War, the USS Pueblo sat in international waters off the coast of North Korea. Then six North Korean vessels and two MiG fighters closed in. Outgunned and unable to escape, the U.S. Navy intelligence ship was captured, and its crew began eleven months of imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and defiance.

James Duermeyer, author of The Capture of the USS Pueblo shares the remarkable story of one of the Cold War’s most infamous international incidents and explains why the Pueblo remains the only commissioned U.S. Navy ship held by a foreign nation.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in the early 1980s, nearly everyone in the oil and gas industry believed producing natural gas from shale was a waste of time and money. George Mitchell disagreed. For 17 years, he poured hundreds of millions of dollars into an idea that even his own executives wanted to abandon, convinced it would secure America's energy future.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel Yergin, author of The New Map, joins Dan Steward, Kent Bowker, and others to tell the remarkable story of George Mitchell's persistence and the shale revolution it unleashed.

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