Raspberry: History with Flavor

As we near the Super Bowl, we present a special episode with Ken Belson, author of the bestselling new book, Every Day is Sunday. We have a fun and insightful conversation about how the NFL, starting in 1993, launched itself from a successful sports league into a cultural and financial juggernaut.

September 24-30, 1942 - World War II. History books of this week will focus on the huge battles taking place in Stalingrad and Guadalcanal. The newspapers, on the other hand, were way more focused on the home front. The one or two stories about these very famous battles were overshadowed by the endless stories of new rationing at home and the latest scrap metal drive. For soldiers at the front, li...

July 20-26 1980 - A New Chapter. The summer of great movies was a cover to distract the country from the horrible economy. Amidst the cratering economy, the country was deciding between the moralizing and sweater-wearing world of Jimmy Carter, or the unlimited and mythical world of Ronald Reagan. Smalls cars against gas guzzlers. We know how that contest turned out. Hijacking to Cuba, East German...

July 12-18, 1925 - The Scopes Trial. In this special episode we are joined with Professor Edward Larson who wrote the definitive book on the famous trial, The Summer For the Gods, about the prosecution of John Scopes for the teaching of evolution. With Prof. Larson we discuss his Pulitzer-prize winning book, the shocking details of the trial, highlighting the two main characters, William Jennings...

April 30-May 6, 1945. Europe. In this special episode we discuss the final week of World War 2 in Europe with best-selling author Lynne Olson. We focus on the incredible story of Ravensbruck, an all female concentration camp in Germany, which is at the center of her new book, The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck. As we discuss in the podcast, WW2 is long over, but the war is not truly dead.

We are having another special episode of the Raspberry Podcast , this time with the writer Kevin Baker. He has written numerous history books and novels. His latest is The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City . We are talking sports and specifically a week in 1921 when boxer Jack Dempsey became a superstar, later teaming up with newly minted New York baseball legend Babe Ruth. The er...

A US nuclear test in the Bikini atoll went horribly awry in early March. The explosion was much bigger than anticipated - whoops! and fallout rained down on a Japanese fishing boat - Lucky Dragon 5.  Not so lucky for them it turns out. It gave rise to the story behind Godzilla, released later that year.  The terrible monster from the deep created by nuclear radiation. Like the errant nuclear test...

In February 1978 the good old USA had big problems, inflation was high and also unemployment was high.  This was stagflation and it was raging.  No one seemed to have a handle on how to address these multiple issues. Jimmy Carter was the serious president attempting to deal these issues in a serious way, as an adult president. 1978 was the final year of the era when you could be a president lookin...

Today we are looking at the week of December 25 to December 31, 1941.  The start of the US involvement in World War 2.   It was a surprisingly smooth transition from the chaos of December 7, where no one had any idea what was happening either in Hawaii or Washington. World War 2 was 3 weeks old and already we knew the outcome.  It was assumed that we would win. Where and when this ultimate victory...

Welcome to a special episode of the Raspberry Podcast, where we welcome our first guest author, Adam Hochschild, the author of American Midnight; The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis .   American Midnight is about the crisis of democracy that was precipitated when the United States joined The Great War on April, 2 1917. The Great War, which ended up costing the United S...

Kennedy, Castro.  Khrushchev and nuclear missiles.  It’s October 1962 and the world is on the brink of nuclear war over Cuba.  The funny thing is that no one knows.  The world churned on as Nobel prizes were announced and the junior league set their annual luncheon date (watercress sandwiches again) .  Meanwhile, beneath this surface of calm and normal, the world teetered on a razor’s edge.  Throu...

September 5 through September 11, 1952.  A week we call Peak - If this Ain’t Peak, you don’t know Peak. This was the Great Times people want to go back to…The Good Old Days, if this is not the great time, then there is no great time.   The late summer of 1952 saw the US at the peak of its powers, the undisputed kings of the post-war world.  The economy was roaring, we were fighting a huge war in K...

The 70s were crazy.  And they still aren’t over.  We are in this episode looking at August 29 - September 4, 1973.   This week was the culture war kickoff.  The Vietnam War was still raging despite the US combat troops all leaving in March 1973. The biggest war was now being fought in Washington DC - Watergate.  On one side was good old Tricky Dick “I am not a crook” Nixon who was holding out from...

August 22-August 28, 1947. Two years after the US and its allies, Britain, France, Canada and Australia had won the war.  Peace and prosperity has arrived, or so everyone had hoped.  The US had dropped 2 atomic bombs on Japan to win the war.  The country and the world celebrated the end. But the reality of winning the war was proving to be quite different than imagined. In 1947 the real result was...

August 15-21, 1930. Who was Van Lear Black?  And what was he a harbinger of?  He wasn’t just a man with three middle names, he was the very wealthy owner of the Baltimore Sun back when newspapers were the only media that mattered. His demise tells us about 1930, the year the depression really started to bite. While times were bad and getting worse, people were still obsessed with two things:  keep...

August 8-14, 1982. Midnight in America. Two years before there was Ronald Reagan's Morning in America, we had 1982, what we call Midnight in America. It was anything but the roaring 1980s from popular memory.  This week was like an alternative universe in many ways to the 1920s.   Brand new President Ronald Reagan was heading up to Capitol Hill to stump for a tax increase of all things.  The t...

August 1-7, 1925. The Roaring Twenties. 1925 was the heart of the Roaring Twenties and they were roaring.  "The Great Gatsby" came out that year, the famous novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald which perfectly captured the flavor of the year.  Jimmy Walker was the flamboyant mayor of New York City.  Mayor Walker perfectly epitomized the ethos of the Roaring Twenties.  He was nominated this week...

The last week of July.  1933.  Turns out this was one exciting week.   FDR and Adolf Hitler both came to power in 1933 and what they were doing dominated the news just about every day.  And as a surprise, perhaps the biggest story of the week was the happenings of the long-distance flying couple of Amy and Captain Jim Mollision "The Flying Mollisons" as they failed in their attempt to fl...

Raspberry Podcast is History with Flavor. In our book, Stupid Wars, we broke new ground integrating history and humor, while shining a light onto some of the most ridiculous and hidden corners of world history. We are now turning to the headlines of the 20th Century, that bloody, crazy and amazing century - encompassing some of the highest highs and lowest lows of human achievement. We went to the...