There’s a scene in the show Mad Men that shook me up the first time I saw it. It’s probably not the one you think. In the very first episode, the Draper family picnics along the interstate. The grass is green, the birds are o...
One of my favorite movies as a kid was The Lorax. When I first saw The Lorax, I had some sense that it was about protecting the environment. But it’s more than a cartoon. It’s a thinly veiled environmental manifesto. I didn’t...
Have you ever heard the saying that “Life imitates art”? The person who coined this phrase was Oscar Wilde, the 19th century poet. Some say he was the first modern celebrity. What Wilde meant was simply that art often shows u...
There’s not much in life you can understand without context. When it comes to the systematic destruction of our planet during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, the context is this – for the first 300,000 years of human histo...
In my opinion, the single best online resource for visiting America’s national parks, or even appreciating them from afar, is a site called More Than Just Parks. You can find it at morethanjustparks.com . This site is run by ...
Before we jump back into the story of the Levi and Catharine Coffin, the so-called “President” and first-lady of the Underground Railroad, I thought it’d be helpful to review some of the code words common to the movement. Mos...
Central Region Director of the Indiana State Museum system. Joanna also manages the Levi & Catharine Coffin State Historic Site, which is where we are today. This small brick home has been called the Underground Railroad's "G...
If you were with us last episode you’ll recognize the voice of Erin Adams, Director of Education at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage, the former home of our 7th President, and current museum dedicated to preserving his life story. ...
What’s the first step in becoming the most powerful man in America? For our 7th president, Andrew Jackson, the first step in his journey to prominence began with the purchase of his first slave. I sat down with Erin Adams, Di...
I’d like to introduce one of my favorite voices among anyone I’ve ever interviewed. Parker's Crossroads, Tennessee is a small town of about 284 people, but it has a big history. This place factored in the life of one of the m...
When you think of Ancient Greece, what images pop into your head? You probably think of the Olympics and philosophers like Plato and Socrates. You might think of stories like the Odyssey and the Iliad that you were forced to ...
That’s the voice of Dewey Phillips hosting his radio show called “Red, Hot & Blue,” on WHBQ, a Memphis station. In the 1950s, more than 100,000 people listened to his primetime slot every day. If you couldn’t make out what De...
In 2015, musical artist Jack White paid $300,000 for a 78-rpm record at auction. The record was of Elvis Presley singing the songs “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.” It was the first record Elvis ever mad...
You’re hearing the song “Rocket 88,” widely considered to be the first rock and roll song ever recorded. It was recorded here, at Sun Studio, by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. The Delta Cats included Ike Turner, just one...
In December 1864, Confederate troops were moving toward Nashville with a plan. Union troops had occupied this southern city for the last two years, and Lieutenant General John Bell Hood wanted to take it back. Luckily, the Un...
Those are a few lines from a song called “Beale Street Blues.” The most famous performance of that song came from Louis Armstrong, but it was written by a man named W.C. Handy, who called himself the “Father of the Blues.” Be...
It was raining on the day of the execution. As Fletcher described it, The rain during the forenoon had the effect of making the streets and almost every other place exceedingly sloppy and muddy. The ground having recently bee...
Before it was called Richvalley, the community the French family was living in was known as Keller Station. Isaac Keller and his brother owned large tracts of land in this area, as well a popular Inn and Tavern that was the s...
Aaron French moved in from Cincinnati. He had only been here approximately 6 Months. So he himself was a transient character, he had attempted to be a businessman in Cincinnati, involved in the meat packing industry and went ...
I remember the first time I tried to visit the French family grave, just outside of Wabash, Indiana. It was a Sunday, in the middle of the winter, one day before the mini-blizzard that closed county schools and buried every c...
The sky to the west of the small town of Peshtigo (PESH-ti-go [not pesh-TEE-go]), Wisconsin glowed red before the sunrise, on the morning of October 8th, 1871. It was Sunday, and when the local priest stepped out of his churc...
The day after leaving Copper County, I took the obligatory cruise of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. It might be the one thing up here that people from outside the UP are likely to have heard of. And these open cliff f...
That sound you hear in the background is the hoist control of the Quincy Mine just outside Hancock, Michigan, where we’re heading today. Quincy is sort of the Madison Square Garden of the northern Michigan ghost mining world....
