Our American Stories

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...

On this episode of Our American Stories, John Adams carried the weight of a nation that was still fragile and untested. He was the second president of the United States, a man caught between loyalty to his principles and the demands of politics. The late historian David McCullough shares Adams’ story not as a list of accomplishments—but as the life of a husband, father, and revolutiona...

On this episode of Our American Stories, at 19 years old, Donna Martin had a plan. She was going to leave Forest, Mississippi, spend the summer working as a lifeguard in Yosemite, and use her days off to drive over to Hollywood and become a movie star. It sounded simple enough. Then she got to California and discovered that Yosemite wasn't exactly next door to Hollywood, her summer job involved mo...

On this episode of Our American Stories, on the night of March 21, 1984, the  USS Kitty Hawk  was cutting through the Sea of Japan when a Soviet submarine suddenly surfaced directly in its path. For days, the nuclear-powered  K-314  had been stalking the American carrier group. Then, somehow, they lost track of the  Kitty Hawk . By the time she surfaced and spotted the 80,...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Mike and Deborah Bailey lost their daughter Ashlynn to a fentanyl overdose, their world stopped. For months, they wrestled with heartbreak and rage, knowing the man who sold her the drugs was still alive. Then their son came to them with a quiet conviction: he wanted to forgive the dealer. What began as an act of faith became a family’s path to h...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the mid-20th century, families desperate for answers turned to a radical procedure known as the lobotomy. It was sold as a cure for everything from depression to schizophrenia, but its brutal methods left thousands of patients permanently damaged. At the center was Dr. Walter Freeman, a man whose name became synonymous with transorbital lobotomy and the...

On this episode of Our American Stories, growing up across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, Richard Herzog found refuge from a troubled home on the playing field. Sports gave him confidence and a place to belong. Then a trusted teacher abused that trust, leaving Herzog with wounds he would spend decades trying to understand. Herzog, author of  Paydirt , shares how football eventually b...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Christopher Columbus sailed west in 1492, convinced he could reach Asia across the Atlantic. He was wrong about where he was going, wrong about the size of the world, and yet skilled and determined enough to complete a voyage that would change it forever. Over four expeditions, Columbus explored the Caribbean, encountered peoples unknown to Europeans, pursu...

On this episode of Our American Stories, for years, Lowell Lytle put on a captain's uniform and portrayed Edward J. Smith at Titanic exhibits around the country. The ship became an obsession, but Lytle never imagined it would take him to the place where its story ended. Then, at 68 years old, he climbed inside a Russian submersible and descended two and a half miles into the Atlantic. Waiting for...

On this episode of Our American Stories, David Klein loved candy so much that he studied candy bars as a kid, sold popcorn out of the back of his car, and eventually walked away from a career in law to make sweets his life. Then, in 1976, with just $800 to his name, Klein had an idea: reinvent the ordinary jelly bean. He dreamed up unusual flavors, found a manufacturer willing to make them, and ga...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Edie Hand grew up on 40 acres of rolling hills in Burnout, Alabama, where some of her happiest memories were made inside an old family barn. There were horses to ride, mud pies to make, sweet potatoes waiting after school, and brothers to run around with. Her beloved grandmother Alice was never far away. To Edie, the barn was more than a building. It was th...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Lori Coan was on her second date with a boy she wasn’t sure about when something happened that would change her mind and her life. A group of troublemakers tripped a girl with polio, sending her sprawling in front of everyone. Most of the students laughed or looked away. Lori’s date didn’t. He jumped up, helped the girl to her feet, and ga...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Abraham Lincoln entered the Civil War with no military experience and no blueprint for putting down a rebellion of eleven states. The Union had more men, more factories, more railroads, and a powerful navy. But none of those advantages guaranteed victory. After the disaster at Bull Run, Lincoln had to build an army almost from scratch, find generals willing...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when George Washington took the oath of office in 1789, his hand rested on a Bible that would become one of America’s most treasured artifacts. That same Bible was on loan to Fraunces Tavern, a Revolutionary War landmark near the World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001. After the towers fell, the search for survivors gave way to the search for the d...

On this episode of Our American Stories, William M. "Bill" Feehan spent his life fighting fires in New York City. He rose through every uniformed rank in the FDNY, survived the department's brutal "War Years" of the 1970s, and became one of its most respected leaders. Firefighting was also a family tradition. For four generations, the Feehans had answered the same call, building a legacy of servic...

On this episode of Our American Stories, on September 11, 2001, hundreds of thousands of people reached the southern tip of Manhattan and found themselves trapped between a city under attack and New York Harbor. Then a call went out over the radio: "All available boats." Ferries, tugboats, fireboats, and private vessels converged on the waterfront and began taking people aboard. By day's end, an e...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when the planes struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald was left devastated. The investment firm’s offices spanned the upper floors of the North Tower, leaving no chance of escape. In less than an hour, 658 employees were gone—more lives than any other company lost that day. Among them was the brother of CEO Howard...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Tony Dolan was inside the Pentagon when American Airlines Flight 77 struck on September 11, 2001. In the years that followed, he met young servicemen returning from Iraq and Afghanistan without arms or legs, some of them determined to recover so they could rejoin their units. He watched generals address wounded enlisted men as "sir" and met families carryin...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Jocelyn Green didn’t lose anyone on September 11, but she still felt the weight of that day in ways she couldn’t have predicted. Living just a few miles from the Pentagon, she saw how quickly fear moved through a neighborhood. What surprised her was what came next: people showing up for each other in quiet, steady ways. Over time, she found hers...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Noah Webster believed winning the Revolution was only the beginning. If Americans were going to become a truly independent people, he thought they needed to stop speaking, spelling, and learning like the British. So the stubborn and obsessive Connecticut writer set out to give the new nation a language of its own. His schoolbooks taught generations of Ameri...

On this episode of Our American Stories, during the height of the Cold War, the United States worked tirelessly to stay ahead of the Soviet Union in the global arms race. Safeguards were put in place to prevent the accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons, including special systems known as Permissive Action Links, or PAL codes. But for almost two decades, the launch code for America&rsqu...