New weapons, new opponents, new technology - as warfare evolves, armies need generals able to evolve with it. In this episode, Don is joined by Cecily Zander to discuss the most innovative generals...
In July 1776, a group of men in Philadelphia committed an unthinkable act: they challenged one of the most powerful empires in the world by signing what became known as the American Declaration of ...
Ruthless tactics. Extreme violence. The loss of huge numbers of their own troops. The deaths of the most opposing troops. What makes a general 'bloody'? And who fits that description best?In this f...
From the 1830s until the arrival of the transcontinental railroad, hundreds of thousands of people packed their possessions into wagons and headed west, seeking land and opportunity. Following in t...
Ever since independence, a question has hovered over the government of the United States. How much power should the President have? Not too much, lest they become a monarch. But not too little, the...
When fossils were discovered in the US during the 19th Century, it altered American understandings of science, religion, race and more. So what was the Hadrosaurus Foulkii, and why did it have such...
Today we're delving into the archives and revisiting Don and Michael Kauffman's conversation on the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln...On the evening of 14th April, 1865, the Union was celebrating ...
Today we're delving into our back catalogue and revisiting the topic of the Boston Tea Party...On December 16th 1773, Bostonian colonists took a stand against the British Crown in the Boston Tea Pa...
It's one of the most iconic symbols of early Americana; it conjures up images of bustling saloon bars and Mark Twain. But as glamorous as they may seem, there's a dark side the history of the Steam...
Reunion with the dead. The return of lands, food supplies and buffalo. The disappearance of white settlers.By the end of the 19th Century, the forced assimilation of Native American people was offi...
What would you do if you discovered that members of your family had spied for the Japanese at Pearl Harbor? When this happened to Christine Kuehn, she wanted to find out more.Alongside her husband,...
How could walking naked through town be seen as religious? What about digging up a corpse? Or bursting into church services to cause mayhem?In this episode, Dr Erica Canela takes Don back to the fi...
For thousands of years, North America was a frozen frontier buried beneath miles-deep ice... How did the first people reach the Americas live here? What was it like to share the land with mammoths,...
In the fall of 1621, a year after the pilgrim ship the Mayflower landed on the coast of New England, the settlers of the Plymouth Colony celebrated their first successful harvest. Joining them at t...
The Lindbergh Kidnapping is one of the most influential crimes in American history; it plunged a national hero into an investigation which changed the way America thought about law, justice, and “c...
Why were more than 12 thousand cases of satanic abuse brought in the 1980s? Was the Prince of Darkness walking among us then? Or did something else cause the panic?Joseph Laycock joins Don for this...
In 1845, the Republic of Texas stood at a crossroads. In our history, they chose to join the USA… but what if they chose another path? Was this even possible? What impact would this have had on lif...
Did New Orleans' officials bomb the levees protecting the Lower Ninth Ward in 1965?When Hurricane Betsy swept through the Atlantic Basin, it killed at least 76 people, led to a 10 foot storm surge,...
A Supreme Court decision that sent shockwaves across America. Dred Scott v Sandford, 1857. Who was the Chief Justice responsible for the decision? On what grounds did he rule that Dred Scott, and b...
Why not have a go at understanding one of the most famous conspiracies of the 20th Century?We will probably never get an answer for what really happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963. But in this ...
