Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, for thousands of years, human mobility depended on our own legs and the animals we could harness. By the early 20th century, millions of working horses powered American cities, hauling goods, carrying people, and creating problems of congestion, sanitation, and safety that the new automobile promised to solve. Miles C. Collier, founder of the Revs Institute...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Vince Lombardi transformed the Green Bay Packers into a dynasty and helped turn football into a symbol of discipline, leadership, and the American experience. But behind the championships, the famous speeches, and the legendary Green Bay sweep was a far more complicated man shaped by faith, family, ambition, and struggle. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist D...

On this episode of Our American Stories, few television comedies have had the lasting impact of I Love Lucy. When the show debuted in the early 1950s, Lucille Ball quickly became one of the most recognizable performers in American entertainment. Her success did not arrive quickly. For years, Ball struggled to find a role that truly fit her talent, moving through small film parts and studio setback...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Amelia Earhart had already crossed the Atlantic by airplane, but in 1928 she had done so as a passenger. Four years later, she climbed into a single-engine Lockheed Vega in Newfoundland and set out alone, battling storms and mechanical trouble before landing in a pasture in Northern Ireland nearly 15 hours later. The flight made Earhart the first woman to f...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Brent Timmons traveled to Louisville to spend a final few days with his Uncle Bud, who had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Brent arrived hoping to help his uncle and wondering what they could possibly say to each other with so little time left. Instead, the two spent hours talking about fathers, family, inherited traits, old wounds, and the...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1852, Constantino Brumidi arrived in New York as a refugee from Rome. He was already an accomplished artist, but in America, he found the work that would consume the rest of his life. For the next twenty-five years, Brumidi climbed scaffolds, painted ceilings, and covered the halls of the U.S. Capitol with scenes drawn from American history and the ideal...

On this episode of Our American Stories, LAPD Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph walked into a juvenile detention center expecting the kids there to distrust him. Instead of leading with his badge, he told them something they did not expect to hear from a police officer: “I love you.” He kept returning, shared his own story, brought in mentors, and slowly began earning their trust. Joseph...

On this episode of Our American Stories, America was woefully unprepared for World War II. Our army was about the size of Portugal's, our navy was outdated, and our "air force" was roughly equivalent to what the German Luftwaffe flew on a near-daily basis across Europe. Not only that, but nobody in America wanted war, or expected it to come to us. FDR was under no such delusion. We needed weapons,...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Titanic Thompson could hustle almost anyone. He beat gamblers at cards and dice, golfers on the course, pool players in smoky halls, and even fooled Al Capone with a rigged lemon toss. Born Alvin Clarence Thomas in rural Missouri, he spent decades crisscrossing America in search of bets he already knew how to win. The History Guy tells the story of the lege...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Burt Young grew up in Queens, the son of a working-class family, and spent his early years far from the world of film. He boxed professionally, served in the Marine Corps, and worked a series of jobs before ever thinking about acting. That changed when he began studying under Lee Strasberg and started to take the craft seriously. Not long after, he came acr...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Christopher Columbus sailed west in 1492, convinced he could reach Asia across the Atlantic. He was wrong about where he was going, wrong about the size of the world, and yet skilled and determined enough to complete a voyage that would change it forever. Over four expeditions, Columbus explored the Caribbean, encountered peoples unknown to Europeans, pursu...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Yogi Berra became one of the greatest catchers in baseball history, he was an 18-year-old U.S. Navy sailor headed toward Omaha Beach on D-Day. After World War II, the son of Italian immigrants from St. Louis helped build one of the greatest careers in American sports, winning 10 World Series championships with the New York Yankees and becoming one of...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Andrea Ludden’s mother was an archaeologist who began collecting salt and pepper shakers after moving to the United States in the 1980s. What started with a search for pepper mills grew into a collection of thousands as she realized that these ordinary household objects could reveal changing fashions, technology, travel, manufacturing, and everyday li...

On this episode of Our American Stories, at 17 years old, Pino Lella was helping Jewish families escape Nazi-occupied Italy by guiding them across the Alps into Switzerland. A year later, after being drafted into the German military, he found himself assigned as the personal driver to one of the most powerful Nazi commanders in Italy. Secretly working for the Italian resistance and the Allies, Pin...

On this episode of Our American Stories, The Age of Discovery launched European exploration across the Atlantic, but Columbus’s motivations were more complicated than simple curiosity or greed. He wrote about prophecy, Christian expansion, and the belief that history was moving toward a final reckoning. George Grant, author of The Last Crusader: The Untold Story of Christopher Columbus , sha...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Dick Erickson was a young Marine helicopter pilot flying over Vietnam when everything went quiet. His radio was dead, his instruments were failing, and the jungle below offered no clear place to land. Alone in the cockpit, he began to pray. What happened next stayed with him for life. In that silence, he felt a calm that didn’t come from training or i...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before haunted houses filled October nights, Halloween in America was a mess. In the early twentieth century, it was less about candy and costumes and more about broken fences, stolen gates, and angry neighbors. Communities were desperate for order, and their answer came from an unexpected place. Schools, churches, and civic clubs began creating haunted att...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1846, a group of pioneers set out for California with dreams of a better life. Known as the Donner Party, they fell behind on the trail, took a disastrous shortcut, and became trapped in the Sierra Nevada as winter storms closed in. With supplies gone and snow piling up, survival came at a great cost. Here’s their remarkable and tragic story. Suppo...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Frankie Avalon became a household name before he turned twenty. With hits like “Venus” and “Why,” he dominated the Billboard charts during the golden age of American pop. But while many teen idols faded, Avalon evolved. He starred alongside Annette Funicello in a string of beach party films that captured the imagination of a generati...

On this episode of Our American Stories, along the shores of Lake Michigan is a story stranger than fiction: a man preserved in a glass coffin. He was part of the House of David, a communal religious group whose followers built amusement parks, baseball teams, and their own legends. Visitors came from across the country to see him, but not all of them came with good intentions. Thieves once tried...

On this episode of Our American Stories, most people know the story of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Fewer know what happened next. After flames destroyed the heart of the city and left more than 100,000 people homeless, Chicago didn’t collapse. It rebuilt faster and bigger than anyone thought possible. Businesses reopened while the rubble was still smoking. New buildings rose within month...

On this episode of Our American Stories, it began with a few rare bottles and a collector who thought he’d found perfection. But what looked like the discovery of a lifetime turned out to be one of the most elaborate wine scams in modern history. Billionaire Bill Koch, known for his meticulous taste and love of authenticity, discovered that his prized collection included counterfeits, some o...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before the Pink Panther ever tiptoed across a screen, Henry Mancini was a steelworker’s son from Pennsylvania with a trumpet and a dream. Music took him from Army bands during World War II to the backlots of Hollywood, where he helped shape the sound of American film. Through works like Peter Gunn and “Moon River,” Mancini turned simple th...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Dominico Canale arrived in America from Italy in 1859 and eventually settled in Memphis, Tennessee. He began with a fruit cart and built it into a thriving business, one that eventually included a whiskey bearing his name. Then Prohibition shut that part of the family business down, and Old Dominick disappeared from Memphis. The Canales kept the name and th...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Edgar Allan Poe is best known for his dark tales and haunting poems, yet his imagination stretched far beyond the macabre. Behind the tragedies that shaped his life was a writer who helped define Gothic literature, pioneered detective fiction, and even ventured into early science fiction. Chris Semtner, curator at the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, revea...