Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, Dr. Seuss believed children could spot a sermon coming from a mile away. That's why the author behind  How the Grinch Stole Christmas!  and  The Lorax  worked so carefully to give his stories moral weight without talking down to his young readers.  The Grinch  reflected Seuss's own complicated relationship with consumerism afte...

On this episode of Our American Stories, the summer of 1941 belonged to two of baseball's greatest hitters. Ted Williams entered the final day of the season batting .39955. Rather than protect a mark that would have rounded to .400, he played both games of a doubleheader, went six for eight, and finished at .406. No major leaguer has hit .400 since. Yet even Williams' season was overshadowed by wh...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Christine Handy had spent most of her life in front of a camera. She began modeling at 11 and eventually landed campaigns with Pepsi, J.Crew, Petco, and Target. But as her career grew, Christine's sense of worth became tied almost entirely to how she looked. Then a routine wrist surgery went terribly wrong. A missed infection left the bones in her wrist des...

On this episode of Our American Stories, he helped fight for America’s freedom, then shaped the city that would represent it. Pierre Charles L’Enfant designed Washington, D.C. with intention: circles, lines, and avenues that all meant something. But what began as a grand commission ended in conflict. L’Enfant’s refusal to give up control led to his removal. The plan moved o...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Andrew Thompson returns with more from his guide to the baffling mini-mysteries of the English language, this time diving into how phrases like "gung-ho" and "cheesy smile" came to be. His book,  Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town Red: The Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions and Fun Phrases , is full of these fascinating stories. Be sure to check...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Art Rooney, Sr., the founding owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, believed that the measure of a man was often found in the quiet things he chose to do. Jim O'Brien, who came to see Rooney as the grandfather he had been missing, remembers one moment that revealed exactly who Rooney was. Rooney attended the funeral of a man he hardly knew because he believed s...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Andrew Jackson arrived in Washington for his inauguration in 1829, thousands of Americans came with him. He was unlike the presidents who had come before, an orphan from the frontier who had risen from humble beginnings to become a general and the self-proclaimed champion of the common man. To his supporters, his election represented a changing of the...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Dawn Newland watched helplessly as her husband took his own life. Army veteran William Lambert came home from three deployments carrying the guilt of surviving when 15 men from his unit did not. Both were living with PTSD, and both reached points where moving forward seemed almost impossible. Dawn found an unexpected refuge in wild mustangs. Caring for them...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1949, Bill Ruger and Alexander Sturm started a firearms company with a $50,000 investment and a new .22-caliber pistol. Within months, orders were coming in faster than their small operation could fill them. Then, just as the company was taking off, Sturm died unexpectedly at only 28 years old. Ruger pressed ahead. He expanded into revolvers and rifles,...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Quentin Wedan was barely out of fifth grade when some friends told him about a summer job at the Lazy B Chuckwagon and Show in Estes Park, Colorado. The pay was $10 a night, the work was hard, and Quentin loved it. He spent the next ten summers there, earning enough to cover much of his college tuition while learning from owner Tom Justin that doing a job w...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Benjamin Rush signed the Declaration of Independence, but politics was only one part of his extraordinary life. A physician by profession and reformer by temperament, Rush treated Philadelphia's poor when other doctors wouldn't, demanded humane treatment for the mentally ill, fought slavery, championed public education, and followed George Washington's army...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Sage Hellstern was the fastest runner on his middle school cross-country team. In his final meet that year, he finished 12th out of 169 runners, with everyone ahead of him a year older. Then doctors found a tumor in the back of his brain. After surgery, a year and a half of radiation and chemotherapy, and months of physical therapy, Sage returned to the tra...

On this episode of Our American Stories, when  All in the Family  premiered in 1971, even its stars didn't think it would last. The show was abrasive, political, and unlike nearly anything Americans had seen on television. CBS was so nervous about offending viewers that it opened the first six episodes with a warning. Then America discovered Archie Bunker. Soon, Norman Lear's unlikely si...

On this episode of Our American Stories, for five years, the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, had been one of Tyler Spady's favorite places to hang out. But on November 7, 2018, as he stood on the dance floor thinking life couldn't get much better, he heard the gunshots that would change his life forever. Spady escaped through a packed kitchen as bullets struck the walls ar...

On this episode of Our American Stories, on Easter Sunday 1972, 53-year-old Air Force navigator Gene Hambleton was shot out of the sky over Vietnam. He landed wounded and alone in the middle of the North Vietnamese Army's massive Easter Offensive, surrounded by tens of thousands of enemy troops. Worse, Hambleton possessed some of America's most sensitive knowledge of missiles, electronic warfare,...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Richard Muniz never imagined himself as a cop. He had a degree in astrophysics and considered himself an intellectual, not the kind of guy who wrestled criminals or rushed toward danger. But when he needed a job, law enforcement unexpectedly became his career. Then, two days after Christmas, Muniz was called to a horrific wreck outside Antonito, Colorado. A...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in November 1913, Great Lakes captains were racing to make their final runs before winter shut down the shipping season. Coal, iron ore, and grain still had to move, and the promise of bonuses gave crews another reason to push their luck. Then the weather turned. For days, hurricane-force winds, blinding snow, ice, and waves reaching 35 feet battered ships...

On this episode of Our American Stories, few figures loomed larger on the seas than Black Sam Bellamy. He was young, charismatic, and ruthless enough to seize more ships and gold than nearly any pirate in history. His black flag struck fear into sailors from the Caribbean to the coast of New England. But his success was short-lived. In 1717, the richest pirate of his age went down in a wreck that...

On this episode of Our American Stories, as a teenager walking to school in Manhattan, Theodore Schwartz stopped to help a stranger whose car was trapped in the snow. The feeling he got from helping someone who could offer him nothing in return stayed with him. He decided he wanted to spend his life doing exactly that. He eventually became one of America's leading neurosurgeons, operating on thous...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Wendy Steele kept meeting women who wanted to help their communities but believed they didn't have enough time, money, or experience to make a difference. Then the Cincinnati banker had an idea: What if 100 women each gave $1,000, pooled the money, and together chose a local nonprofit to receive one transformational $100,000 grant? 123 women took a chance o...

On this episode of Our American Stories, by 1926, explorers had spent decades risking their lives trying to conquer the world's most hostile places. Now, two of the greatest were racing toward the North Pole in radically different machines. American naval aviator Richard Byrd bet on the speed of a Fokker trimotor airplane. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen put his faith in the  Norge , a mass...

On this episode of Our American Stories, they were Americans by birth but treated as outsiders when the war began. After Pearl Harbor, many Japanese Americans were sent to camps under suspicion of aiding the enemy. Yet from those same camps came volunteers who joined the U.S. Army, determined to prove their loyalty. Known as the Nisei, these second-generation Japanese Americans fought in Europe's...

On this episode of Our American Stories, as a boy, Bob McClellan walked through Golden Gate National Cemetery on his way into town. Years later, he returned as a father, bringing his own children to place flags beside the graves on Memorial Day and visit the resting place of their grandfather, a Marine who fought at Guadalcanal. But their walks through the cemetery became about much more than reme...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1909, William Boeing watched an airplane fly for the first time and became fascinated by a machine many Americans still regarded as little more than an expensive toy. The wealthy timberman learned to fly, built his own seaplane, and became convinced that aviation was going to change the world. When World War I ended and the young aircraft industry nearly...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before the Civil War, thousands of Southern men joined a secret society complete with castles, passwords, elaborate oaths, medieval costumes, and dreams of conquest. They called themselves the Knights of the Golden Circle, and beneath all the pageantry was a serious ambition: expand slavery by building a vast new empire across Mexico, Central America, and t...