Podcast – American Countryside

On this edition of The Scenic Route, Andrew talks to Paula Neuman Gris, who was just three years old when her family was broken up at the beginning of the Holocaust. She tells her story of survival in a half-hour interview. Thanks to the Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum in Atlanta for arranging the interview.

It all began with a lumber yard in Indianola, Iowa.  Of course, today you don’t know this company for its lumber.  You instead know it for the ingenuity that came from learning to sell that product…..

The next 40 years are predicted to bring an ever increasing population both here and around the world.  Food needs will rise and agricultural jobs will become increasingly important.  However, despite those trends, some say there is little future for American kids who hail from small to mid-size farms.  This professor is out to prove, it just isn’t true…..

It used to be that controversies in agriculture revolved around which color of tractor to buy or what kind of seed to plant.  Those debates still exist, but these days, some of those debates have wound up at the ballot box in a number of states.  How should those in agriculture engage consumers in these issues?  It’s all a part of this professor’s class…..

If you’ve ever flown into the Las Vegas airport, you may have noticed a colorful Cessna airplane hanging from the ceiling over the baggage claim area.  Most people think it’s just an interesting prop.  However, it’s actually a world record holder, for no other manned airplane has ever remained aloft for more continuous days that this one…..

You may recall we recently discussed a pair of brothers in Mississippi who in 1935 set a record by keeping an airplane in flight for 27 straight days.  It’s an impressive feat, but in 1959, two other men more than doubled that feat…..

The longest nonstop commercial flight in the world is currently a Singapore Airlines route from Newark to Singapore.  It’s in the air over 18 hours and covers over 10,000 miles.  That’s nothing compared to this flight that took off from Meridian, Mississippi in 1935.  The flight was measured in days, but you could say, the flight never went anywhere…..

For the past few days we,ve been in Greenfield, Iowa, home to the Iowa Aviation Museum.  You probably never realized how many aviation firsts are tied to Iowa, including a car company that decided to try its hand at making airplanes.  Its unique vision is preserved here…..

Chalres Lindburgh was the first person to fly an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean.  But lost in our history books in the name of a man who would most likely have beaten Lindburgh to the prize, if not for a court case that kept his plane from taking off from the very same airport……

Today, aircraft carriers and the planes they transport play a vital role in country’s military might.   However, have you ever given any thought to the first brave soul that attempted to take off and land a plane aboard a boat?  It takes a courageous or perhaps very crazy individual to try it…..