We're taking a little break over the holidays to look back on some of the best Retropod episodes from 2018. Today, Ida B. Wells, who was an investigative journalist, an anti-lynching activist, a suffragette and a teacher.

We're taking a little break over the holidays to look back on some of the best Retropod episodes from 2018. Today, the story of Caroll Spinney and his iconic character Big Bird.

In the 1950s, a child trying to call Santa Claus accidentally called NORAD and changed Christmas Eve forever.

During the first Christmas of World War I, a miracle took place all along the Europe’s Western Front.

A new punctuation mark called the interrobang found its way onto some typewriters in the 1960s, but it never caught on.

In 1875, Ulysses S. Grant hired a special prosecutor to investigate the Whiskey Ring scandal. Furious with his findings, Grant had him fired.

Before 1913, the presidential press conference didn’t exist. But a president who liked reporters changed that.

After being fired from his job for being gay, Frank Kameny took his battle for equality to the nation’s highest court.

After receiving complaints about carriages driving too fast, Washington D.C. policeman William H. West arrested a presidential speed demon.

In 1859, the House went to war over Rep. John Sherman’s bid for leadership.