This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we take a close look at America’s early colonial origins. Most Americans tend to think of their nation as beginning in Massachusetts with the 1620 establishment of a colony at Plymouth by the Pilgrims. But this view overlooks Jamestown, Virginia which had been established 13 years earlier in 1607. Why? Because, apart from periodic wars with local Native Americans, Massachusetts thrived, while further south in Virginia the Jamestown colony suffered through several periods of starvation and near extinction. And then in 1619 – 400 years ..read more

This week In The Past Lane, the American history podcast, looks into the little known and yet hugely significant development of the ice and refrigeration industries in US history. 1) first we tell the story of the Frederick Tudor, The "Ice King," who single-handedly invented the ice industry way back in 1806. This development radically redefined the American life, especially the American diet. 2) Then we check in with historian Jonathan Rees, the nation's leading authority on all things related refrigeration, to learn how mechanical refrigeration and machine-made ice accelerated this transform ..read more

This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we look at the largely unknown story of Black nationalist women in the struggle for freedom, equality, and justice in the mid-20th century. To explain this history, I speak with historian Keisha N. Blain about her new book, “Set The World On Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom.” As she explains, in the 30+ years before the emergence of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, women like Amy Jacques Garvey. Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, Celia Jane Allen, and Audley "Queen Mother" Moore kept alive and broadened the r ..read more

This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we look at a #MeToo incident from the Gilded Age. It involved a powerful congressman and a mistress he kept for ten years. But when he broke his promise to marry her, she did the unthinkable – she sued him for “breach of promise.” The scandal and subsequent trial captivated the nation. To explain how this young women took down a congressman, I speak with Patricia Miller about her new book, “Bringing Down The Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the ‘Powerless’ Woman Who Took on Washington.” The #MeToo movement originated in ..read more

This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we look at the decades following World War II when the federal government passed civil rights laws and enacted social programs concerning public health, housing, education, transportation, and anti-poverty initiatives that aimed to provide opportunity and spread prosperity to the greatest number of citizens. To explain how this era of activist government succeeded – and then how it was scaled back after 1980, I speak with historian David Goldfield about his new book, The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good. For the past few d ..read more

This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we explore the fascinating backstory of the most popular Christmas song of all time, “White Christmas.” Did you know that this song, which topped the charts more than 75 years ago in late 1942, was in many ways a war song?  It’s true—and it has everything to do with the context in which it was released. In fact, the connection between “White Christmas” and World War II is but one of several surprising details related to the song’s origins.  Take for example, the fact that it was written by a Jewish songwriter. Remarkably, t ..read more

This week at In The Past Lane, the American history podcast, we bring you Part 2 of our commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of WW1. Our previous episode explored the history of the great influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 that swept the world in the wake of the war, killing tens of millions. In this episode, we turn our attention to the question of how Americans responded to the nation’s participation in the Great War. Joining me in this discussion is Andrew Huebner. He is an associate professor of history at the University of Alabama whose work focuses on American military his ..read more

This week at In The Past Lane, the history podcast, I speak with historian Nancy K. Bristow about her book, American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. In November 1918, even as millions of Americans and Europeans celebrated the end of World War I, their communities were being ravaged by a global influenza pandemic.  Over the course of almost three years, somewhere between 50 and 100 million people were killed in the pandemic, including nearly 700,000 Americans. Nancy Bristow takes us back in time to explain the origins of the pandemic and how public health official ..read more

This week at In The Past Lane, the history podcast, I speak with historian Craig Bruce Smith talks about his new book, American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era. Throughout the era of the American Revolution, Americans spoke of honor all the time, most famously in the Declaration of Independence, the last sentence of which reads, “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” But what did the Founders mean by “honor”? Craig Bruce Smith explains that honor was a crucial concept that shaped the way Americans came to underst ..read more

This week at In The Past Lane, the American history podcast, I speak with documentary filmmaker, Michelle Ferrari, writer and producer of “The Eugenics Crusade,” which airs on PBS’s American Experience series on October 16, 2018. These days, eugenics is a discredited pseudoscience, one associated with deeply racist ideas and social policies, and the genocidal, master race ideology of Nazi Germany. But back in the early 20th century, eugenics was viewed by many Americans as a respectable, legitimate branch a biological science – one that had great potential for human betterment. In its most bas ..read more