Ed Ayers

In the 1930s, 16 African-American families from the South rejected the American experiment and looked to Communist Uzbekistan for a chance to build a new world.

On the Loyalists who fled during the Revolutionary War – like Jacob Bailey, who saw freedom from tyranny with the British in Nova Scotia.

Looking for an easy buck, con artists in the early 1900s infamously "sold" the Brooklyn Bridge to immigrants fresh off the boat.

The story of America's oldest counterfeiters and why the Civil War spurred the Secret Service into hunting them down.

Senator Fred Harris describes his experience on the Kerner Commission, tasked with explaining the causes of urban riots in 1967.

The story of an unofficial, integrated delegation from Mississippi that attempted to claim seats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention and was denied.

Historian Isaac Campos traces the origins of the idea that marijuana causes violent madness…and finds the trail leads south, to Mexico.

How prior generations of Americans responded to the threat of infectious disease.

On John Winthrop’s oft-misunderstood use of the phrase “a city upon a hill” to describe the New World.

The 19th century recovery of John Winthrop's sermon, "A City on a Hill."

A perusal of Benjamin Franklin’s "Drinker’s Dictionary," and a chat about how the drink of choice in revolutionary America switched from cider to rum.

American Indians and the tumult in their cultures precipitated by the arrival of alcohol.

What does it mean to be Muslim in America? And how has the practice of Islam in the U.S. changed over time?

On the occasion of Halloween, an exploration of previous generations' fascination with ghosts, spirits, and witches.

The legacy of Operation Pedro Pan, a plan to save Cuban children from communist indoctrination by leaving their families and resettling in the United States.

A brief discussion of the fierce 19th century debates over beards, and how booming American cities created the perfect climate for all that facial hair to grow.

A discussion of the patriotic attempt to spurn European fashion and spin cloth at home in the time leading up to the Revolutionary War.

Nasology was a 19th century pseudoscience which claimed to explain personality traits based on the shape of a person’s nose.

On the 1870s skirmish between John D. Rockefeller and the upstart competitors who built the country’s first long-distance oil pipeline.

How the mythologizing of the Union Army’s Irish Brigade helped dispel anti-Irish sentiment.