Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the spring of 1961, McDonald County opened its highway map and discovered that it had simply vanished. The resort towns that depended on summer travelers were nowhere to be found, and what looked like a clerical mistake carried real consequences for the people who lived there. County leaders announced that McDonald County would symbolically secede from M...

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before Glory  brought the 54th Massachusetts to modern audiences, Robert Gould Shaw felt the pull of a story that had already begun to shape him. A quiet moment with  Uncle Tom’s Cabin  set him on a path that would place him at the head of one of the first Black Civil War regiments to see combat. The challenges he faced, the men wh...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Dr. David Berry lost his newborn daughter, the world around him narrowed until grief became the only thing he could feel. What began as an attempt to quiet that pain led him first to alcohol, then to cough syrup, and eventually to the stolen prescriptions that pushed him out of his home, his marriage, and the profession he loved. Dr. Berry shares how h...

On this episode of Our American Stories, as part of his ongoing series on the origins of everyday expressions, Andrew Thompson—author of  Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town Red —shares the fascinating backstory behind the phrase “apple of your eye” and several others we still use without thinking. These familiar sayings carry histories shaped by religion, literature, an...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Ralphie’s fantasy villain in  A Christmas Story  came from a dime novel that turned a real outlaw into a cartoon desperado. The actual Black Bart was nothing like the character on screen. In the 1870s, he robbed stagecoaches with a courtesy that puzzled sheriffs and captivated the public, leaving polite poems instead of violence. Roger McGra...

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...