Eyewitness History

Benjamin Sledge is a wounded combat veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, serving most of his time under Special Operations (Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command). He is the recipient of the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and two Army Commendation Medals for his actions overseas. Upon returning home from war, he began work in mental health and addiction recovery. A prolific communi...

Jim DeFede joined CBS4 News in January 2006 and serves as an investigative reporter for the station, as well as host of its Sunday morning public affairs program "Facing South Florida." Between 2002 and 2005, DeFede was a metro columnist for The Miami Herald. His first book, "The Day The World Came To Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland," was published in 2002 by HarperCollins and was recognized wi...

Dallas native Jenyce Gush was only 14 years old when President John F. Kennedy was killed. Although she was too young to vote, she was nonetheless an admirer of the handsome, young president and his glamorous, socialite wife. On the morning of the presidential entourage's arrival, Gush and a friend were so determined to see JFK and Jackie, they skipped school. Positioning themselves along the para...

Mr. Paoletta served for a decade as Chief Counsel for Oversight and Investigations for the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the U.S. House of Representatives. During his tenure, Mr. Paoletta managed nearly 200 investigative hearings, many of which involved high-profile issues and investigating some of the largest U.S. corporations. Many of those investigations led to substantial revisions to fe...

In the crush of chaos after two planes hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Michael O’Connell raced from his home on Long Island in New York to his firehouse in Queens, where he was training as a probationary fireman for the FDNY. From there the then 25-year-old joined a busload of firefighters to the burning buildings. During the trip, their chief announced that the World Trade Center’s...

Thorne Dreyer, a political activist and progressive journalist most of his life, was a pioneer of the ‘60s-70s underground press. He was a founding editor of The Rag in Austin and Space City! in Houston, two of the most influential of the era’s underground newspapers. Dreyer is a director of the New Journalism Project, is editor of The Rag Blog, and has hosted Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin f...

Many people learn about history as a collection of names, dates, and places. History is so much more interesting than that. It is the stories of the men and women who made those places and events matter. It is the story of the private soldier as much as it is the story of the great general. It is the story of the farmer in the field as much as it is the story of the man in the Oval office. Join ou...

Mr. Scruggs is a United States Army veteran who served in the Vietnam War and later founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Scruggs was the President of the foundation until 2015 when he retired. Scruggs continues to monitor the societal, spiritual, and other impacts of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washing...

Spike Edney has numerous links to Queen, to the extent that he was often described as the fifth member. Born on 11 December 1951, he has worked with Ben E King, Edwin Starr, The Boomtown Rats, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Duran Duran, Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Ian Hunter, Manic Street Preachers, Beautiful South, Gary Barlow, Peter Green, Joe Cocker, 10CC, and countless more. Spike's...

I am very happy to present a special roundtable discussion I had with fellow members of the Parthenon podcast network. We discuss what event from history we would delete or remove and it was pretty fascinating. We find out what would have happened if we didn’t have the shot fired at Fort Sumter, as well as what would happen if we prevented the Bronze Age collapse. We're also going to stop Saddam H...

Eric Alper is a Canadian music correspondent, blogger, radio host and former director of media relations, at eOne Music Canada based in Toronto, Ontario. Since 2016, Alper has run a music public relations company, That Eric Alper, and is the host of @ThatEricAlper show on SiriusXM. From 1998 till 2016, Alper was the director of media relations for eOne Music Canada working with Bob Geldof, Natalie...

Mike Croissant is a retired CIA officer, historian, and author. Prior to his retirement from the CIA in 2021 after a nearly 22-year career, Mike served as a political analyst in the Directorate of Analysis and as a targeting officer in the Directorate of Operations. He served multiple tours of duty in the Middle East and South Asia, and his work in counterterrorism focused on every major foreign t...

War Isn’t the Natural State of Human Affairs: It Shouldn’t Happen, and Most of the Time It Doesn't." War is assumed to be one of the chief features of human history. Plenty of ancient and modern writers back up this perspective (Plato said that only the dead have seen the end of war; John Steinbeck said all war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal, suggesting it was hard-wired into o...

Frank DeAngelis was a staff member at Columbine High School in the Jeffco School District in Littleton Colorado, since 1979, starting as a Social Studies teacher and filling the roles of Head Baseball Coach, Assistant Football Coach, Dean of Students, and Assistant Principal, before becoming the Principal in 1996. Frank is a Colorado native, completing his K-12 education in Denver-area schools, pr...

Jordan Harbinger, once referred to as “The Larry King of podcasting,” is a Wall Street lawyer turned interview talk-show host, and a communications and social dynamics expert. He has hosted a Top 50 iTunes podcast for over 14 years and receives over eleven million downloads per month, making The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the most popular podcasts in the world. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, he d...

In this second interview, we discuss what it was like being liberated by the Red Army in 1945, as well as how the Holocaust has affected his faith, and what it was like being reunited with his family. It was quite a pleasure. Once again, more of an honor than anything else. And I hope you find it fascinating. I know I did. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the spring of 1944, a teenage Gene Klein and his family were taken from their village in Hungary and thrown into the infamous Nazi extermination camp known as Auschwitz. His father was taken straight to the gas chamber. Klein was forced into slave labor until liberated in the spring of 1945, and he spent two years as a refugee before his and other family members were allowed to immigrate to the...

This episode we hear from David Paventi. David Paventi was in a conference room on the 82nd floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower when the first plane struck the 93rd floor. “After that kind of thing happens to you, you focus on some things differently,” he told the Weekly in 2005. By then, he had opened Paventi's Pizza and was about to start a wealth management company with his former bos...

Col Anderson is a WWII Triple Ace fighter pilot and a veteran military experimental test pilot. During WW II he served two combat tours in Europe in the P-51 Mustang, Nov 1943 through Jan 1945. He flew 116 combat missions (480 hrs) and destroyed over 16 enemy aircraft in aerial combat and another one on the ground. Bud was the highest scoring ace in the 363rd Fighter Squadron. Col Anderson was dec...

This episode we hear from Professor Hope Harrison, Professor Harrison was in the air on her way to Berlin when the Berlin Wall fell, and she spent 10 days thereafter in the city, absorbing the experience. She has since become professor at George Washington University, teaching history. And she's written a number of books, including After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1...

Today’s guest is Bill Taylor, author of On Full Automatic: Surviving 13 Months in Vietnam. In the book, eighteen-year-old Marine recruit William V. Taylor Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little...

Welcome to Eyewitness History, where we collect stories of people who encountered history's most important events firsthand. The stories that you will hear on this podcast will take one of two forms: 1) They will be a long-form interview or 2) They will be recording oral history testimonials! Do you have a story from history that you want to share? Go to https://www.speakpipe.com/EyewitnessHistory...

Introducing Eyewitness History with Josh Cohen! Tune in to hear eyewitness accounts from citizens across the globe on all thing history, ranging from Holocaust survivors and war veterans to Saturday Night Live writers and Grammy-winning music producers! Don't know where to start? Check out one of these killer episodes: Queen Keyboardist Spike Edney: https://apple.co/3Ocx6dR / https://spoti.fi/3OhX...