Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Jeff Katz wrote a birthday note to his daughter Julia, he was marking a moment she would not recognize. Julia lives with global developmental delays, and her days move with a rhythm that has stayed the same for years. Still, the note gave Jeff a place to set down what life with her has looked like, from the small routines she loves to the concerns he q...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Scot Bertram and Christian Schneider have spent years tracing the unlikely beginnings of  Saturday Night Live , and they return to share how the show first took shape. They follow its earliest days, when a quiet Canadian named Lorne Michaels gathered a scattered group of young performers and tried to build something that didn’t exist yet. What em...

On this episode of Our American Stories, back when Lorna Jean was struggling through the darkest stretch of her life, she didn’t expect anyone to come close. Then Allison, the wife of her doctor, paused on her rounds one afternoon and stepped into Lorna’s room. What started as a hesitant conversation slowly turned into a place Lorna could trust. Over the years, that friendship helped h...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when immigrant Osiris Hoil lost his construction job during the economic downturn of 2008, it felt like the kind of setback that ends a dream. He had left Mexico with hope for something better, only to find himself caught in the same financial crisis that pushed so many families to the brink. What he still had was his cooking, his mother’s standards,...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in September 1813, Oliver Hazard Perry sailed into the Battle of Lake Erie carrying a flag stitched with a promise not to give up the ship. He was young, outmatched on paper, and facing a British fleet that had dominated the early naval battles of the War of 1812. What followed was a decisive victory that reshaped the conflict and secured Perry’s plac...

On this episode of Our American Stories, for a brief moment, Iowa found itself on the map of professional basketball. The Waterloo Hawks arrived with modest expectations and ended up claiming a win that still startles anyone who follows the early years of the league. They beat the Boston Celtics, then faded from view as quickly as they appeared. Tim Harwood, author of Ball Hawks: The Arrival and D...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Tom Zoellner found himself holding a diamond engagement ring with no wedding ahead of it, he began to wonder how a single piece of jewelry had come to carry so much weight. That question sent him far from the jewelry counters where most people shop for engagement rings and deep into the long history behind them. His search led to Victorian engagement t...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Kent Nerburn became known for his reflections on manhood and love, he was a young man circling the edges of his own life. That changed during a quiet afternoon in graduate school, when his friend Craig offered a gentle observation that revealed more about human nature than any book ever could. Craig understood what many struggle to see: people respon...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the turbulent years after the Revolution, settlers west of the mountains felt the weight of distance from the governments that claimed them. Their answer was to imagine a new state named Franklin, a place shaped not by polished politics but by the realities of frontier life. The Appalachian Storyteller traces how this fragile experiment rose and unravele...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Maurice Sendak had a rare ability to look at childhood without sentimentality. He understood its private fears and its unruly joys, and he tried to give those feelings a place to live on the page. That effort shaped the work that made him, for many, the defining children’s book artist of the twentieth century. Our own Greg Hengler traces how Sendak&rs...

On this episode of Our American Stories, The Indian Wars did not begin with a single event or a single clash. They formed slowly along the edges of a growing nation, where unfamiliar customs and competing claims to land created a series of misunderstandings that deepened over time. But why did Native Americans and settlers enter into a conflict that lasted for centuries? Here to tell the story is...

On this episode of Our American Stories, candy corn, black licorice, and circus peanuts have been on American shelves for generations, and whether you love them or hate them, they're here to stay. But their longevity is more curious than their questionable (or delicious!) taste. Each came from a different corner of early candy history, shaped by manufacturing experiments and changing ideas about w...

On this episode of Our American Stories, the Allied invasion of Normandy depended on more than military force. It required convincing Germany that the real attack would land somewhere else, and that task fell to one man working deep inside a world of fragile alliances and invented identities. Juan Pujol García, known to British intelligence as Agent Garbo, built an entire network of fictiti...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when crowds wandered through Coney Island in the early twentieth century, they expected oddities, tricks, and performers who lived on the edge of spectacle. What they did not expect were rows of premature infants resting inside newly designed infant incubators. The exhibit belonged to Dr. Martin Couney, a man who operated far from traditional medical circle...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Jim Johnson has a habit of meeting people who stay with him long after the moment has passed. Everett Motl was one of those people—the kind you remember because something about their presence settles in and refuses to fade. What began as a small acquaintance turned into a story Johnson now carries into the holiday season, a reminder that the most...

On this episode of Our American Stories, every Sunday, Our American Stories  host Lee Habeeb speaks with Mitchel “Big Mitch” Rutledge, who has spent more than forty years serving a life sentence in Alabama. Each call traces the shape of faith, regret, and forgiveness inside a place built for punishment. Today’s conversation starts with a different kind of introduction. Lee b...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Jimmy Hawkins began acting when television was still defining itself, moving from show to show with the ease of a child who learned the business early. Viewers eventually recognized him from programs that shaped mid-century entertainment, but one of his first roles connected him to a film that would outgrow its modest beginnings. In 1946, Hawkins playe...

On this episode of Our American Stories, pinball’s story winds back to a quiet corner of European parlor culture, where small tabletop games offered a brief challenge to anyone willing to try their luck. Those early ideas eventually migrated to America, where the game weathered citywide crackdowns and the tests of time. As the tables grew more complex, the machines slipped into public rooms...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the early 1920s, WSM filled its schedule with whatever talent it could gather, and one night a fiddler stepped into the studio with a tune that settled easily across the airwaves. The reaction from listeners changed the station’s direction. The music felt local in the best sense of the word, and the signal carried it into homes that had never heard...

On this episode of Our American Stories, what does it mean when a highway that no longer exists still carries more recognition than the roads that replaced it? Route 66 was born out of a practical need to move people across long distances, yet it quickly grew into something else entirely. Its motels, garages, and storefronts formed a line of small anchors through the heart of the country, each one...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Andrew Thompson shares another slice of his guide to understanding the baffling mini-mysteries of the English language—this time diving into how the phrases "in a nutshell" and "in the doghouse" came to be. His book,  Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town Red: The Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions and Fun Phrases , is a must-read. Be sure to...

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before travelers drove the Pike’s Peak Highway or stood at the summit that rises more than fourteen thousand feet above Colorado, a determined young officer named Zebulon Pike set out to understand the far edge of a country still finding its shape. Craig Du Mez of the Grateful Nation Project traces how Pike’s early failures, his encounters...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Stephen Ambrose spent his life showing readers that the heart of history lives in the people who shape it. His gift for storytelling made complex events feel personal, and that gift continues to resonate long after his passing in 2002. Thanks to the stewardship of his estate, his work can now be heard here at  Our American Stories . In this installment...

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before Hollywood gave the Lone Ranger his mask and his horse, the Old West was full of riders and lawmen whose real stories were far more compelling. The History Guy shares the life of Bass Reeves, an African American Deputy U.S. Marshal who kept order across a violent and rapidly changing frontier. His work as a tracker and lawman became part of the f...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when the war in Afghanistan was still unfolding, many Americans only saw brief clips on the news. Peter Braxton lived it at twenty-two years old. His first combat mission came with no slow introduction. He lifted off, crossed into Afghan airspace, and heard the words that still stay with him: “You are getting shot at.” His story offers a grounde...