Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Hollywood became the world’s movie capital, one man was already imagining films on a scale no one had ever seen. Cecil B. DeMille brought spectacle to the screen with epics like The Ten Commandments and The King of Kings, setting the standard for what cinema could be. Known as a master showman and a visionary director, DeMille helped transform...

On this episode of Our American Stories, for Lawson Bader, one teacher changed everything. Erika, his German instructor, wasn’t content to simply drill vocabulary. She wanted her students to see history with their own eyes. That meant taking Lawson to Berlin when the Wall still loomed large, dividing families and a nation. Standing at the Cold War’s most visible fault line, he learned...

On this episode of Our American Stories, James King was just a 21-year-old college student walking to work in Grand Rapids when two men suddenly threw him to the ground. Thinking he was being mugged, he fought back until he realized his attackers were undercover law enforcement officers who had mistaken him for someone else. What followed were years of court battles, with King refusing to let the...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Alonzo Cushing was just 22 years old when he fell at Gettysburg, standing firm as Confederate troops charged across the field. His courage earned him the respect of his men, but not the honor he deserved. More than 150 years later, advocates carried his name all the way to the White House to secure the Medal of Honor. Support the show ( https://www.ourameri...

On this episode of Our American Stories, for Karen Olson, the ache of missing her father began at a school dance where other girls stood beside their dads while she stood alone. Her mother had told her he was dead, and Karen believed it for decades. But the truth was far more complicated. A long-lost family connection surfaced years later and changed everything she thought she knew about her child...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Robert Redford took on the role of Jeremiah Johnson in 1972, audiences fell in love with the image of a rugged mountain man who carved out a life in the wilderness. But the real Johnson lived a life far stranger and harsher than Hollywood ever showed. Historian Ashley Hlebinsky joins us to pull apart fact from folklore and reveal what Hollywood got rig...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Edie Hand remembers an Alabama childhood filled with mud pies, Shetland ponies, and afternoons in the barn where she could dream freely. Her mother kept a perfect home and often reminded her that she was strong, like her grandmother Alice. But while her brothers drew their mother’s attention, Edie was left to prove that strength on her own. Now in her...

On this episode of Our American Stories, on November 10, 1975, the freighter  Edmund Fitzgerald  vanished beneath the stormy waters of Lake Superior, taking all 29 crew members with her. The tragedy became one of the most famous Great Lakes shipwrecks, inspiring Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting ballad The Wreck of the  Edmund Fitzgerald . Historian Ric Mixter — a shipwreck di...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1790, George Washington answered a letter from the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. His reply carried words that still echo today: America would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” It was a radical promise for its time, a vision of a nation where faith and government would remain separate and all people w...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the late 1980s, Panama was at the center of global attention as strongman Manuel Noriega tightened his grip on power. Known for his brutality and ties to the drug trade, he seemed untouchable. But when a hairdresser unknowingly welcomed Noriega’s daughter into her chair, an unlikely chain of events began. That meeting opened the door to the dictato...

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before billion-dollar stadiums and television contracts, professional football was played on dirt lots by men who worked factory shifts by day and risked their bodies by night. Owners mortgaged their futures to keep teams alive, and few believed the sport would last more than a season or two. John Eisenberg, author of The League , traces how those unce...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the summer of 1833, Lexington, Kentucky, was brought to its knees by a cholera outbreak. Entire families were lost in a matter of days, and fear spread faster than the disease itself. When the dead outnumbered the living willing to bury them, one man stepped forward. His name was Solomon. Most people in town dismissed him as a drunk gravedigger. But in t...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the weeks after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, authorities hunted not only John Wilkes Booth but also anyone suspected of aiding him. Among the accused was Mary Surratt, a widowed boardinghouse owner in Washington. Investigators claimed her home was the meeting place where the plan to kill the president took shape. The evidence was thin, the publ...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before it became the fourth Thursday in November, Thanksgiving was just one of many autumn celebrations scattered across the country. In the mid-1800s, Sarah Josepha Hale, already known for writing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” saw an opportunity to unite the nation around a shared tradition. For decades, she wrote to governors, editors, and finally...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before 1987, Greg LeMond was already a champion. After 1987, no one expected him to race again. A near-fatal hunting accident left him with life-threatening injuries and months of painful recovery. But in 1989, he returned to the Tour de France, determined to reclaim his place at the top. What followed was a nail-biting battle to the finish line, and a vict...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the tense years before the Civil War, Joshua Glover — a man who had escaped slavery — was captured in Wisconsin under the Fugitive Slave Act. His fate seemed sealed until local abolitionists staged a daring public rescue that defied federal law in broad daylight, breaking down the doors of a jail to save him from bondage. That single moment o...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1926, two men set their sights on the same prize: the North Pole. Roald Amundsen took to the air in the Norge, a giant hydrogen airship, while Richard Byrd climbed into a Fokker trimotor and gambled on speed. Both faced bitter cold, unreliable machines, and a wilderness with no safe landing. What happened over those icebound miles changed the future of e...

On this episode of Our American Stories, We Were Soldiers  is a motion picture about the Vietnam War, written and directed by Randall Wallace and starring Mel Gibson. Based on the book  We Were Soldiers Once...and Young  by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and journalist Joseph L. Galloway, the film tells the story of the Battle of Ia Drang, one of the first major conflicts between American and N...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Wild Bill Hickok’s life was built on bold choices and bigger risks. As a U.S. Marshal and sheriff, he kept order in towns others had given up on, earning a name as one of the fastest guns in the West. He walked into danger more than once, and just as easily stepped into a card game or a saloon when the work was done. By the time he sat at his last pok...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before the war, Oskar Schindler was a businessman chasing opportunity, even if it meant joining the Nazi Party. But when he witnessed the brutality unfolding around him in occupied Poland, he made a choice that would define his life. Through cunning, bribery, and sheer nerve, Schindler used his factory to protect over 1,200 Jews from deportation to Nazi dea...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1943, the Allied victory in North Africa opened the door to the next move against the Axis. American and British leaders debated their best path forward. Some wanted a direct invasion of France, while others argued for a southern push through Italy to weaken German defenses and knock Italy out of the war. The result was a compromise: prepare for a massiv...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Michael Jackson’s career made him one of the most recognizable and most scrutinized people on the planet. As his fame grew, so did the attention on his appearance, especially his skin color. What the public saw was a dramatic lightening over time. What they didn’t know was that Jackson was living with vitiligo, a medical condition that stri...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Pearl Harbor marked America’s entry into World War II, but the road to that day was lined with warning signs. Intelligence reports pointed to Japanese aggression, yet many leaders dismissed the possibility of an attack and even the possibility that the Japanese could fly airplanes. In the twelve days leading up to December 7, flawed assessments a...

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before Harvard became a global symbol of academic achievement, it began as a school to train Puritan ministers. The Bible was at the center of its curriculum, guiding the values and vision of its founders. As part of our ongoing series, Robert Morgan, author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America , shares the story of how Harvard’s divinity roots...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1848, William and Ellen Craft were enslaved in Georgia and knew they could not start a family until they were free. Their escape plan was as risky as it was brilliant. Ellen, who was light-skinned, disguised herself as a wealthy white man traveling with an enslaved servant — her husband, William. Together they moved openly through hostile territory...