All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

BBB:LHWS #061   EARLY RELEASE Horses and foxhunting... ... can be traced from medieval hunting forests to the horse country of Philadelphia’s Main Line. Discover how hounds, riders, breeders, and civic-minded families shaped the Devon Horse Show and the region’s enduring equestrian culture. Along the way, meet the Laurel Hill figures whose stories connect centuries of sport, society, and stewardsh...

ABC:LHS 091-5    Frank Reed Whiteside... ...was an artist and instructor at PAFA who was inexplicably assassinated when he answered his front door one evening. Despite many maddeningly tempting clues, his case remains unsolved nearly a century later.

ABC:LHS 091-4    Jacqueline Powell... ...was only 10 years old when her mother Emily Lippincott Powell shot her in sleep and then tried to take her own life. Emily spent the rest of her life in Friends Hospital. 

ABC:LHS 091-3    George Boehm... ...was a workman on the Baldwin floor in 1870 when a quarrel with a co-worker led to his own death from a crushed skull and his assailant's trial and imprisonment. This segment walks you through the justice system of 1870s Philadelphia. 

ABC:LHS #091-2    Roy Wilson White... ...was a gifted young UPenn law instructor who in 1900 was robbed and killed near the campus. Drawing on contemporary newspapers and archival research, the podcast traces how racial panic, sensational reporting, coercive interrogation, and institutional pressure shaped the cases against Henry Ivory, Charles Perry, and Amos Stirling. The result is both a portra...

ABC:LHS 091-1     Samuel Morris Waln... ...was a wealthy Philadelphian who spent his free time in the "wild west" each summer until he and his companion were murdered in their sleep by their cook and guide. A cross stands in his memory in Wyoming.

ABC:LHS #091   Murder was part of the background noise in some areas of Philadelphia.  S. Morris Waln, born into one of Philadelphia’s founding families, was murdered by his guide and cook during an annual journey west. His stone at Laurel Hill is melting, while a monument in his honor still rises from the Wyoming plains.  Roy Wilson White, a promising Penn Law scholar, was robbed and killed after...

Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences... ...was open to anyone who wished to meet dinosaurs, birds, shells, fossils and the people who studied them. Now its public doors are closed, and I have come to Laurel Hill East to break that news to more than 50 of the founders, presidents, curators, collectors and supporters buried here. As we walk from grave to grave, we will follow the Academy from...

BBB:LHWS 060    Edward G. Budd and Rupen Eksergian... ...were design and structural engineers who forced the Age of Steam into the Modern Era with their iconic Silver Zephyr Diesel Electric car in 1934. Eksergian took his skills further during the Cold War when he was one of the people behind Atomic Annie, a mobile artillery piece with a nuclear warhead. Both men rest at Laurel Hill West. 

ABC:LHS 090-5     Thomas E. Murphy ... ... knew virtually nothing about baseball, but found himself owning hundreds of shares of the Phillies during their horrible years of the 1920s and 1930s. He is remembered more as a yachtsman and a co-founder of Jupiter Island, Florida. 

ABC:LHS #090-6    Many early baseball players ... ... were given nicknames that would never be tolerated today. We can never know how these players felt about being saddled with monikers like Chief, Three-Finger, Chico, Dummy, and Richie, based on being "othered."

ABC:LHS #90-4    Joseph Howard Berry, Jr. .... ...excelled at baseball, football, track and field, and life. He is in two Halls of Fame. He is little remembered today, partially because of a vile nickname that he carried from his days at Wharton through the rest of his life. His interment location is well hidden.

ABC:LHS 090-3    Frank Bettger... (by guest host Rich Wilhelm) ...was a mediocre infielder for the Cardinals who blew out his shoulder and took to selling insurance, at which he was initially less than mediocre. He rebuilt his personality and his life to become one of the best motivational speakers of his day, often compared to Dale Carnegie. 

ABC:LHS #090-2    Frank Fleer... ...did not invent the gum that today carries his name, but his name has become synonymous with the pink chewy glob coveted by children of all ages worldwide.  

ABC:LHS #090-1     Francis Richter ... ...was a sportswriter who championed the new game through his newspaper work and the ubiquitous weekly Sporting Life, which was an essential read in the early 20th century. Richter is in the Baseball Hall of Fame ... sort of. 

ABC:LHS #090    We start with three ballpark Franks... ...Francis Richter, whose writing helped to make the game respectable; he is in the Baseball Hall of Hame. ...Frank Fleer, the man who ALMOST invented the pink gum that's accompanied baseball cards for nearly a century. ...Frank Bettger, who went from failure to success after he blew out his throwing arm in Chicago (prepared and presented by f...

BBB 059, part 3    Jáni Szántó... ...was a masterful violinist and instructor who escaped the Nazis with the help of Pope Pius XII and settled in Philadelphia as instructor. One of his old instruments was the "Lord Borwick" Stradivarius, built in 1702.

BBB:LHWS 059-2    Wilhelm von Wymetal ... ... was an Austrian emigree with a dueling scar who took his expertise with opera to Hollywood, where he directed stars like Nelson Eddy & Jeannette McDonald, and to Pittsburgh, where he shepherded the Civic Light Opera through its early days of success. 

BBB:LHWS 059-1    Oscar "Papa" Schwar ... ... was a German timpanist whom Leopold Stokowski praised as the best in the business. His rumblings and poundings on kettle drums kept the Philadelphia Orchestra on its toes for more than 40 years. You'll hear lots of drumming in this one. 

BBB:LHWS 059    An estimated 1500 musicians ... ...fled central Europe's political turmoil in the 1930s and 1940s.  Tympani player Oscar “Papa” Schwar came from Germany; Leopold Stokowski considered him the best kettledrum player he had ever heard. Wilhelm von Wymetal came from Austro-Hungary, dueling scar and all, to New York City, where he introduced and produced more than a dozen new operas at...

ABC:LHS #089-6 OPTIONAL COUNTERFACTUAL... ...history of the United States when I asked CoPilot to create a country that abolished slavery at its beginning and then limited immigration. It gave me a startling picture of an unrecognizable country.    This section is almost exclusively generated by CoPilot.

ABC:LHS 089-4 Robert Stewart Ralston... ...was attacked and severely wounded by his servant who had been his enslaved valet. The result was destruction of Black neighborhoods.

ABC:LHS 089-3 Stephen Duncan... ...was a Pennsylvanian who became a Natchez planter. Over a 50-year career, he accumulated tens of thousands of acres of land and more than 2200 enslaved human beings. But he firmly believed that slavery worked best under the US legal system and would only be destroyed by secession. 

ABC:LHS 089-2   John Bohlen... ...and his brother Bohl made a world for themselves in the colonies as merchants whose offerings including liquor and people. German-speaking immigrants were common in the colonies, but especially in Pennsylvania.  

ABC:LHS 089-1   More than 1500 enslaved people... ...lived in Philadelphia at the time the colonies declared their independence from England. Enslaved people shared the streets with indentured servants, freed Blacks, immigrants, visitors, and more than 50 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Slavery was essential to the economy.    This segment was released early as a separate podcast but i...