Vaccines have been in the news recently. Over the last few weeks, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed vaccination recommendations and gutted an influential committee that recommends which shots Americans should get. Some experts worry that these changes could lead to outbreaks of diseases the US has long had under control.

So this week, we're revisiting a story we made a few years ago about the world's very first vaccine, and the disease it helped eradicate: smallpox.

Smallpox was around for more than 3,000 years and killed at least 300 million people in the 20th century. Then, by 1980, it was gone.

Rahima Banu was the last person in the world to have the deadliest form of smallpox. In 1975, Banu was a toddler growing up in a remote village in Bangladesh when she developed the telltale bumpy rash. Soon, public health workers from around the world showed up at her home to try to keep the virus from spreading. This is her story.

To justify mass deportations, President Trump has invoked an old wartime law: the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.   

The Alien Enemies Act was last used after America’s entry into World War II. In response to the Axis countries’ detainment of Americans who were deemed potential spies, the Roosevelt Administration came up with an elaborate plan: find and arrest Germans, Japanese and Italians living in Latin America and detain them in camps in the U.S.  The government would use them to exchange for American prisoners of war.

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It's been 50 years since the end of the Vietnam war. In honor of the anniversary, we're revisiting a story about a notorious American military prison on the outskirts of Saigon, called Long Binh Jail.  

LBJ wasn’t for captured enemy fighters—it was for American soldiers. These were men who had broken military law. And there were a lot of them. As the unpopular war dragged on, discipline frayed and soldiers started to rebel.

By the summer of 1968, over half the men in Long Binh Jail were locked up on AWOL charges. Some were there for more serious crimes, others for small stuff, like refusing to get a haircut. The stockade had become extremely overcrowded. Originally built to house 400 inmates, it became crammed with over 700 men, more than half African American. On August 29th, 1968, the situation erupted.

Author James Baldwin once wrote, "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

On this episode, we go back to 1932 when a group of World War I veterans set up an encampment in Washington, D.C., and vowed to stay until their voices were heard. It was a remarkable chapter in American history, and a demonstration of the power of citizens to come together for a cause. This is the story of the Bonus Army.

On July 19, 1963, at least 15 Black girls were arrested while marching to protest segregation in Americus, Georgia. After spending a night in jail, they were transferred to the one-room Leesburg Stockade and imprisoned for the next 45 days.

Only twenty miles away, the girls' parents had no knowledge of their location. A month into their confinement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) heard rumors of the girls' detention and sent photographer Danny Lyon, who took pictures of them through barred windows. Within days, these photographs appeared in publications around the country.

As the girls' ordeal gained national attention, they were released without charges. This is the story of the 'Stolen Girls.' 

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To see more photos by Danny Lyon, visit bleakbeauty.com and Instagram.

This week we're featuring a story from a brand new audio magazine we've been listening to called Signal Hill.

"Pie Down Here" features oral history interviews with farmworkers and Communist Party members who organized a sharecroppers' union in Alabama during the Great Depression. The interviews were recorded by historian Robin Kelley for his book, Hammer and Hoe.

You can learn more about Signal Hill and check out the rest of their first issue—eight original stories—at signalhill.fm.

In 1939, Time Magazine called Dorothy Thompson a woman who “thinks, talks and sleeps world problems — and scares men half to death.”  They weren’t wrong. 

Thompson was a foreign correspondent in Germany in the years leading up to World War 2, and she broadcast to millions of listeners around the world. She became known for her bold commentaries on the rise of Hitler. The Nazis even created a “Dorothy Thompson Emergency Squad” to monitor her work. She was an eloquent and opinionated advocate for the principles of democracy. But by the end of the war, those strong opinions put her career in jeopardy. 

This is the story of the woman who tried to warn the world. 

These days, we’re used to media that thrives on conflict and amplifies the most outrageous voices in the room. It's something we often trace back to shock jocks, like Howard Stern, and in-your-face talk show hosts like Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh. But before all those guys, there was Joe Pyne.

At the height of his career in the 1960s, the New York Times called him “The ranking nuisance of broadcasting.” Today, episode two of our series Making Waves: The Original Angry Talker. 

In 1934, the Washington Post called Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux, the “best known colored man in America.” He was known as the Happy-Am-I Preacher. His Sunday services were broadcast to over 25 million listeners on CBS radio. Black America saw Michaux as a leader for racial harmony and progress. But during the civil rights movement, his reputation took an unlikely turn.

This is episode 1 of our new miniseries Making Waves, three profiles of people who pushed the boundaries of radio. They used the microphone in different ways: one to warn, one to rile, one to preach. What they had in common is they were all controversial, they spoke to huge audiences in their time, and today, they’re largely forgotten.

From ancient myths of sea monsters lurking below to Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the ocean has long been both a source of fear and fascination. For Captain George Bond, a Navy medical officer in the 1960s, the deep sea was humanity’s next frontier. Undersea agriculture, deep sea mining, and human colonies on the ocean floor made up his dream for the future.

Today we bring you the story of the U.S. Navy’s little-known experiment building homes on the ocean floor. They called it, Sealab.