The Detroit History Podcast

The Michigan Central Station reopening has given Detroit a great story to tell, specifically: how we took a wreck of a building and turned it into something glorious. The Detroit History Podcast takes a dive into how the place slid into such disrepair. Spoiler alert: maybe the station is a symbol of something bigger. Times changed. Automobiles and planes obliterated the railroad industry’s vaunted position of getting people and things from here to there. A story with many moving parts, and that includes an explanation as to why only Ford Motor Company could have taken on such a vast project. Looking for more Michigan history to dive into? Managing Editor Eric Kiska is releasing a new YouTube series called "Tales of the Great Lakes." This docuseries will cover Great Lakes history such as "The Great Lakes Stonehenge," the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the creation of Thousand Island Dressing, and the haunting of the Fort Gratiot Lighthouse. The first episode is out now at: https://www.youtube.com/@FirelakeMedia

As a child growing up in metro Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s, Curtis Chin watched the world go by from an unusual vantage point. His family owned Chung’s, a popular Chinese restaurant in the Cass Corridor, which enjoyed a 60-year run before closing in 2000. Chin, now a nationally recognized author, has written about that experience in his memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant.” He explains the pep talk he got from the late Coleman A. Young about the importance of anger. As Chin recalls the conversation: “Coleman Young, challenged me and said, ‘there's nothing wrong with being angry.' It’s a motivator. It gets you to do things, and it forces you to ask questions.” 

The Ford Motor Company had momentum going into the mid-1950s: a young Henry Ford II, who inherited the CEO job from his grandfather roughly a decade earlier, was reversing the company’s fortunes. But then, the company laid the biggest egg in automotive history. It introduced the Edsel in 1957. Despite working with the best brains in the country, the project flopped and was scotched in 1960 costing nearly $2.6 billion in present-day dollars. Worse yet, it became a symbol for a badly-designed product. So what happened? Our analysts say the unusual front grille was the least of the problems facing the company.

On a fall day in 1830, convicted wife killer Stephen Simmons was hung in downtown Detroit. His execution was as public as anything could be. Bleachers were set up on three sides of the scaffold, as people came from miles around to witness the execution. Maybe they didn’t like what they saw, because Michigan soon became the first English-speaking government to outlaw the death penalty.

We speak with legal scholar David Chardavoyne, author of A Hanging In Detroit: Stephen Gifford Simmons and the Last Execution Under Michigan Law. Lawyer Eugene Wanger tells us how the ban on capital punishment went through when the state’s constitution was rewritten in the early 1960s. And historian Matthew Daley, of Grand Valley State University, explains why it never took hold in the state’s early days.

Explicit content warning: audio of an execution.

Here’s where Detroit was, art-wise, in 1917: a middling art museum on the east edge of downtown Detroit, with little to attract notice. We tell the story of the next 10 years, when the entire world began to pay attention. The magnificent Detroit Institute of Arts building on Woodward went up, with paintings by the yet-to-be-discovered Vincent Van Gogh. How did this happen? We tell that story by looking at Ralph Booth, the publishing scion who had a passion for art; and William Valentiner, the esteemed German art historian who oversaw the acquisitions. Marsha Battle Philpot, an arts aficionado and D.I.A. board member, tells us about Detroit’s vibrant 20s. 

Interviews:

Jeffrey Abt, author of A Museum on the Verge: A Socioeconomic History of the Detroit Institute of Arts."

William Peck, author of "The Detroit Institute of Arts, A Brief History."

The Blue Bird Inn was a cathedral of musical wonder in 1950s-era Detroit. This now-defunct west side club featured bebop jazz, featuring musicians such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Barry Harris, Thad Jones, and a longer list of jazz masters. The place was pretty much abandoned a few decades ago, but a local preservation group is taking up its cause, with some help from City Hall. We tell the story of a jazz club, including from the point of view of an archeologist who conducted a dig, yielding curious results.

Songs: Wardell Gray- Blue Gray

Charles McPherson- Nostalgia

Charlie Parker- Blue Bird

Miles Davis- Rocker

Wardell Gray- A Sinner Kissed an Angel

Wardell Gray- Twisted

A group of soldiers from metro Detroit and Michigan boarded a trip ship bound for war-torn Europe during the closing months of World War I. Instead, they were diverted to Russia, just south of the Arctic Circle. They battled the Bolsheviks, who had just deposed Russia’s Czar. They fought in temperatures as low as 40-below zero, and continued fighting even after World War I came to an end in November 1918. Mike Grobbel, grandson of one of the members of the “Polar Bear Expedition,” tells their story. And George Baier recreates their mutiny. 

The Sheik (real name: Edward Farhat) was the most feared bad guy in Detroit wrestling during the 1960s and 1970s. He threw fire. He cut his opponent. He bit them, often winning with his “camel clutch.” His business model was simple: to behave in such a vile manner that people would pay money to watch him battle at air-conditioned Cobo Arena. We look at The Sheik’s impact on the world of wrestling, and how some of his innovations are being copied two decades after his death. And we have a bonus track: a poem by Mark James Andrews about The Sheik’s “good guy” nemesis, Bobo Brazil.

It's been 5 years since the Detroit History Podcast originally released their podcast on the 1957 NFL champion Detroit Lions. Much has changed with Lions brass in the past few years, and it has finally led to post-season success in the Motor City. The Detroit History Podcast revisits the improbable run the 1957 team made to the championship, a run that was led by a first year coach and a backup quarterback. Was grit always in the Lions DNA?  Managing editor Eric Kiska shares an updated essay on what has led to the Lions recent post-season success. 

Ketamine has found wide uses since the 1960s: As a painkiller, an anesthetic, a street drug consumed at raves, and -- now -- considered by many to be an exciting new treatment for depression. We explore how ketamine was developed here in Detroit, at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company, with help from a Wayne State University chemistry professor, and later tested at the now-closed Lafayette Clinic facility in Detroit. Credit to: The BBC and The Tim Ferriss Show.