Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, when the Cabbage Patch Kids hit store shelves in 1983, parents felt a pull they hadn’t sensed from a toy before. Crowds formed before sunrise, and the pressure inside those shops grew in a way that felt unfamiliar for the holiday season. What started as a rush for one doll ended up reshaping the way Americans braced for the day after Thanksgiving. Toy...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when a group of refugees from Bosnia arrived at her Iowa church, Joy Neal Kidney watched them step carefully into a world that felt nothing like the one they had escaped. One family in particular carried the quiet weariness of people shaped by war, and Joy’s family decided to give them something familiar to hold onto: a Thanksgiving dinner. Joy joins...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before he ever wore his trademark hat on the sidelines, Tom Landry was a young man trying to build a future during the hard years of the Depression. He joined the University of Texas football team, flew combat missions in World War Two, and returned home to begin a professional career that brought both recognition and pressure. But even as the wins piled up...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Tony Sarg never set out to become the quiet genius behind one of America’s most cherished traditions, yet his imagination is the reason Thanksgiving morning feels like magic. Long before millions tuned in to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Sarg was busy turning puppetry, engineering, and whimsy into something completely new. His early...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Heidi Viars spent her days juggling kids and household chaos, convinced she didn’t have room for much else. Her neighbor, Tom, kept mostly to himself after retiring from the Chicago police force, and the two lived side by side without knowing each other for years. Things shifted the day Heidi slowed down enough to notice he was slipping. One small act...

On this episode of Our American Stories, most Americans grew up thinking Thanksgiving had always fallen on the same Thursday in November. In Lincoln’s time, it was set on the last Thursday of November, and that habit settled in for generations. Then Franklin D. Roosevelt shifted the holiday earlier, hoping that a longer shopping season would lift a struggling Depression-era economy. The chan...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Donna’s daughter Cassie was diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia, everyday life became harder to manage. Donna realized their family needed a different way to live, something that gave Cassie steady structure and gave others with special needs a place to belong. So they opened a resale shop and built it around employment opportunities fo...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Eisenhower’s name sits on the interstate signs, but Charles Zug wanted to understand whether he truly deserved that place in history. His work traces the creation of the Federal Highway Act and shows how the idea of national road building developed long before Eisenhower reached the White House. Zug explains the moment when the plan finally gained mom...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the early years of the war, the United States was preparing its soldiers and building an army that was not yet ready for a direct fight in Europe. Britain, still recovering from being pushed off the continent, knew it could not return to France without risking another disaster. Both nations wanted to stop Germany, yet neither could strike at its center....

On this episode of Our American Stories, Tom Waits has a voice and style that feel carved out of another world, yet many people first meet his work through other artists. One of his earliest songs, “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You,” is a perfect example. It drifted from Waits’ small club beginnings to the radio through bands like 10,000 Maniacs, much like “D...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Chuck Colson once operated at the center of Washington power as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon. Watergate brought that world crashing down, sending him into a federal prison and into a reckoning he never expected. In this final interview before his passing, Colson looks back on the scandal, the time behind bars, and the shift in faith that shape...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Joy Neal Kidney has always loved Thanksgiving, and it makes perfect sense why. Her family was there at the first one. One branch survived a fall from the Mayflower in the middle of the ocean, and another began with a child who lost both parents before being taken in by a family whose story led straight to that early gathering. Joy shares why the holiday has...

On this episode of Our American Stories, for years, Heather McPherson knew only fragments about her great-uncle, a young officer who served with the 29th Division during World War II. His name was Ralph Ferguson, and he was among the Allied troops who landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He died soon after during the push inland, one soldier among many lost during the invasion of Europe. When Heather s...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Abigail Adams was raising her children near Boston when the first major clash of the American Revolution exploded across the harbor. She brought seven-year-old John Quincy to the top of Penn Hill, and they watched the Battle of Bunker Hill in real time. They saw Charlestown burn, heard the cannon fire roll across the water, and felt the fear that swept thro...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, but he did something far more lasting. He took a rough idea and turned it into a tool that ordinary families could afford and understand. Historian Richard Snow tells the story from its beginning in a small woodshed, where Ford worked through long nights trying to build a machine that could move under its own power....

On this episode of Our American Stories, before audiences knew him from Green Acres ,  Roman Holiday , or  The Heartbreak Kid , Eddie Albert had already survived one of the most brutal battles of World War Two. Historian and Our American Stories regular contributor, Roger McGrath, shares the story of the young actor who paused his rising Hollywood career, joined the Navy, and found himse...

On this episode of Our American Stories, by the final year of World War Two, American forces were closing in on Nazi Germany, and General George Patton stood at the center of that push. Historian Victor Davis Hanson, author of  The Soul of Battle , discusses why Patton’s approach to leadership was shaped by his belief that the slow use of power in a conflict of that scale cost more live...

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before Jackie Robinson changed Major League Baseball, a group of long-haired ballplayers from a religious commune in Michigan stepped onto fields where others weren’t welcome. Formed at the House of David in Benton Harbor, the team barnstormed the country and played with anyone who loved the game, including talented Black players shut out of the...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before most American women could vote, Belva Lockwood stepped into a legal world that never intended to make room for her. Born on a small farm in 1830, she pushed her way into the courtroom and became the first woman in the United States permitted to argue before the Supreme Court. Her work reshaped American law and challenged long-standing assumptions abo...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when the First Continental Congress gathered in Philadelphia, the delegates arrived anxious about what Britain might do next and unsure of what they themselves should do. Before they argued or planned, they asked for prayer. The passage read that morning landed with surprising force and settled the room in a way no debate could have. Here to tell the story...

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. In our fifth installment, Mitch reflects on the faith that steadied him through deca...

On this episode of Our American Stories, R.A. Dickey’s rise to a Cy Young Award made him the face of the modern knuckleball, but the story that shaped him started long before baseball noticed his talent. As a kid, he carried trauma he didn’t have words for and a silence that followed him well into adulthood. That silence eventually caught up to him, nearly costing him everything he had...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Jay Moore was known for his local history work, he was a grandson trying to finish something his grandmother could not. Her story of an infant buried long ago sent him looking for a cemetery she feared she would never see again. When he finally uncovered the grave, he helped give her the closure she had been missing for decades. Support the show ( ht...

On this episode of Our American Stories, at the center of JT Olson's Both Hands ministry is a straightforward mission: service and charity. Provide a widow with the repairs she needs and use that same project to help a family offset the cost of adoption. Volunteers spend a day painting, cleaning, repairing, and restoring, and donors support the effort, knowing every dollar moves a child closer to...

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before the Beatles caused a stir, another British act crossed the Atlantic and changed American culture in its own quiet way. In 1868, a troupe of burlesque performers arrived onstage with a style that felt modern to a growing middle class and unsettling to the critics who expected theater to stay in its place. Our regular contributor, Ashley Hlebinsky...