Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1918, influenza swept across the world with terrifying speed, killing millions. Doctors were desperate to stop it, but there was a fundamental problem: they didn't even know what caused the flu. Patients were subjected to bloodletting and enemas, prescribed whiskey, and even exposed to toxic factory gases, while scientists pursued theories involving bact...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when the HMS Birkenhead struck rocks off the coast of South Africa in 1852, chaos should have followed. Instead, what happened that night became one of history’s clearest displays of courage and order in the face of disaster. With lifeboats too few for the hundreds aboard, British soldiers stood their ground so that women and children could be saved....

On this episode of Our American Stories, before “Smokin’” Ed Currie became famous for breeding the Carolina Reaper and Pepper X, he nearly destroyed his life with addiction. Recovery gave Ed a second chance, but it didn't erase the guilt he carried over the person he had once been. Years later, after he and his wife, Linda, endured miscarriage after miscarriage, they finally acce...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Ted Godlove was only months out of high school in Milo, Iowa, when he volunteered for the United States Marine Corps. Before long, he was serving with a reconnaissance unit deep in the jungles of Vietnam, where small teams of Marines operated dangerously close to much larger enemy forces. Godlove survived firefights, desperate escapes, and one helicopter ex...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1966, Twister looked like a flop. Retailers thought Milton Bradley's new game was too risqué, Sears refused to put it in its Christmas catalog, and the company was preparing to pull it from stores. Then Johnny Carson spread the colorful mat across the stage of The Tonight Show and invited actress Eva Gabor to play. Our Ameican Stories regular cont...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Benjamin Franklin rarely attended church and questioned some of Christianity's central doctrines. Yet he never abandoned belief in God. He believed in Providence, immortality, moral accountability, and the importance of religion to a healthy society. Franklin's faith never fit neatly into a single category, and he spent much of his long life thinking, quest...

On this episode of Our American Stories, for nearly a decade, the Secret Service couldn't catch one of America's most persistent counterfeiters. The strange thing was that he wasn't very good at counterfeiting. Mister 880 produced only one-dollar bills, printed them on the wrong paper, drew a lousy George Washington, and occasionally even misspelled Washington's name. Still, the phony dollars kept...

On this episode of Our American Stories, James Madison rarely chased the spotlight, and he knew his character flaws. He was short, balding, awkward, and didn’t always play well in group settings. Yet despite his stature, his big ideas built and shaped America. He drafted the Bill of Rights, argued for ratification in The Federalist Papers, and turned quiet conviction into lasting policy thro...

On this episode of Our American Stories, on June 17, 1775, Abigail Adams climbed Penn's Hill with her seven-year-old son, John Quincy. Across the water, British and American soldiers were fighting the Battle of Bunker Hill. Cannon fire echoed in the distance, smoke rose over the battlefield, and Charlestown burned before their eyes. The American Revolution was no longer something happening somewhe...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Jeremiah Castille grew up surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, drugs, and violence. At 13 years old, he found the Christian faith and began imagining a different life for himself. He set his sights on one goal: earn a football scholarship to the University of Alabama, get an education, and someday give his own family the life he never had. Castille made it to...

On this episode of Our American Stories, for more than two centuries, Americans who agreed on almost nothing have found something to admire in Thomas Jefferson. Presidents, abolitionists, liberals, and conservatives have all claimed the man who wrote that “all men are created equal” while holding hundreds of people in slavery. He's a complicated figure, and that might say something abo...

On this episode of Our American Stories, why do we say a married couple "tied the knot"? How did rejecting someone become known as "blackballing" them? And what do sailing ships have to do with being "under the weather" or finding yourself in a "touch and go" situation? Andrew Thompson, author of Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town Red: The Curious Origins of Everyday Sayings and Fun Phrases , retur...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. James Madison became known as the Father of the Constitution. But the man who gave the Constitution much of its final language, including the famous words “We the People of the United States,” is largely forgotten. His name was Gouverneur Morris. Dennis C. Rasmussen, author of The Constitut...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court, he was wrestling with a question that would define his career: What is a judge supposed to do when the law produces a result he doesn't personally like? Scalia's answer was that judges should follow the law rather than their own preferences, an idea that helped shape his growing commitment to textualism and or...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Antonin Scalia became the first Italian American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, he was "Nino," the only child of an Italian American family growing up in Queens. His father had arrived from Sicily as a teenager, speaking no English, and worked his way through school to become a professor of Romance languages. His mother, the daughter of Italian...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1630, John Winthrop and hundreds of Puritan settlers crossed the Atlantic hoping to build a new community in New England. Before they arrived, Winthrop delivered a warning. Their success or failure would not go unnoticed. Drawing on the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, he told his fellow settlers, “We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eye...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when the Constitutional Convention opened in 1787, the United States was less than a decade old and already struggling. The Articles of Confederation had created a loose union of states with a Congress that lacked the power to tax, enforce laws, or stabilize the economy. By 1787, many leaders believed the country could not continue as it was. The men who me...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when the Founding Fathers set out to shape a new nation, they looked to Scripture for wisdom. Many were not traditional churchgoers, but nearly all believed that moral order came from faith. Robert Morgan, author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America , shares the story of how biblical teaching influenced America’s earliest leaders and how those ideas...

On this episode of Our American Stories, The American Revolution had created an independent country. It had not yet created a government capable of holding that country together. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress struggled to raise money, regulate commerce, enforce its decisions, or settle disputes among the states. By the 1780s, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, an...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before the United States had a flag or a White House, it had George Washington. He led a band of farmers and tradesmen against the most powerful empire on earth and earned their loyalty by sharing in their struggle and fighting by their sides. When the war was won, the world waited for him to take the throne they assumed was his. Instead, he laid down his s...

On this episode of Our American Stories, a constitution can promise its people all kinds of rights. But what happens when the government becomes powerful enough to ignore them? For Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the Constitution protected liberty not simply by guaranteeing rights, but by dividing power so that no person or institution could easily control the government. In a 2011 appearanc...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when America's Founders set out to build a republic, they looked backward for guidance. Ancient Greece and Rome offered lessons in democracy, republican government, citizenship, and the dangers that had caused free governments to collapse. The Founders studied those successes and failures carefully as they wrestled with how political power could be divided,...

On this episode of Our American Stories, The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution can both be read in just a few minutes, but together they transformed the course of history. Dr. Larry P. Arnn explains why America's founding documents were unlike anything the world had ever seen and why they still matter today. Dr. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College and author of The Founders' Key ,...

On this episode of Our American Stories, a century ago, professional football was a gamble few people believed would pay off. Players worked factory jobs during the week and battered one another on dirt fields on the weekend. Teams appeared and disappeared, crowds were small, and owners sometimes risked everything they had just to make it to the next game. Somehow, out of that chaos, the National...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Japanese forces invaded the Philippines during World War II, a group of American nurses found themselves caught in the fighting on Bataan. Evacuation was still possible, but they chose to stay. In makeshift hospitals carved out of the jungle, they cared for wounded soldiers through heat, bombardment, and disease. Supplies disappeared. Food ran out. Sti...