History That Doesn't Suck
HTDS is a bi-weekly podcast, delivering a legit, seriously researched, hard-hitting survey of American history through entertaining stories. To keep up with History That Doesn’t Suck news, check us out on Facebook and Instagram: @Historythatdoesntsuck; on Twitter: @HTDSpod; or online at htdspodcast.com. Support the podcast at Patreon.com/historythatdoesntsuck.
Episodes
September 9, 2024 • 64 mins
“Harlem is the queen of the black belts, drawing Aframericans together in a vast humming hive . . . from the different states, from the islands of the Caribbean, and from Africa . . . It is the Negro capital of the world.”
This is the story of the Harlem Renaissance.
In the early twentieth century, many Black families and individuals down South are finding that the only way out is up—to the North. Driven by Jim Crow discriminat...
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August 26, 2024 • 61 mins
“Miller, Lyles, and I were standing near the exit door . . . Blake stuck out there in front, leading the orchestra—his bald head would get the brunt of the tomatoes and rotten eggs.”
This is the story of American musical theater and the dawn of modern Broadway.
Popular entertainment is evolving fast in the early twentieth century. Minstrel shows just aren’t drawing the same numbers anymore (for good reason), and burlesque and va...
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August 12, 2024 • 64 mins
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothing yet!”
This is the story of the silver screen.
In the late nineteenth century, technology is advancing rapidly. Eadweard Muybridge’s trip-wire camera work, made famous by a “motion study” of a galloping horse, is giving way to smoother and longer projections. Some see these short films simply as a curiosity, an “invention without a future” as early filmmaker Louis Lumière fam...
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July 29, 2024 • 39 mins
Cheers to Professor Jackson’s post Prohibition conversation with distinguished author Daniel Okrent! Dan is the the author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, winner of the American Historical Association’s prize for the year’s best book of American History when it was published in 2011. Last Call was a go-to book in the HTDS bibliography for episodes 157-160 as we researched and selected the stories to tell in these fo...
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July 22, 2024 • 23 mins
From Airship, the studio behind American Scandal, American History Tellers, and History Daily, comes a new true crime history podcast that takes you inside the minds of some of our most notorious felons and outlaws, exploring the dark side to the American dream.
In this new show, host Jeremy Schwartz will introduce you to the picture-perfect brothers who teamed up to kill their parents; the thief who stole babies and ruined countl...
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July 15, 2024 • 65 mins
“Only Capone kills like that.”
This is the story of the rise and fall of Al Capone, and the last gasps of Prohibition.
No other gangster compares to Scarface. He’s remained prominent in the American consciousness for 100 years due to his overt violence and lavish lifestyle, funded by *ahem* unsavory business practices. He brazenly orders murders like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but he also doesn’t hesitate to get his own h...
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July 1, 2024 • 61 mins
“Don’t ask me nothin’! You hear me? Don’t ask! And don’t bring anybody in here for me to identify. I won’t identify them even if I know they did it!”
This is the story of the nation’s up-and-coming criminal underground.
By 1920, with few exceptions, producing, buying, and selling alcohol is outlawed, but that doesn’t stop enterprising Americans. Many feel perfectly comfortable flouting the law and continuing to drink at their le...
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June 17, 2024 • 58 mins
“You’re Bill McCoy.” “Never heard of him.”
This is the story of a crazy decade-plus when America outlawed booze…but the liquor kept flowing.
The Prohibition era marks a partial return to the Golden Age of Piracy, with bootleggers frequenting old haunts in the Caribbean, including Nassau, capital of The Bahamas. These sailors are also buying, selling, and drinking copious amounts of—you guessed it—rum. But how does all this booze...
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June 3, 2024 • 62 mins
Episode Description:
“Farewell, you good-for-nothing, God-forsaken, iniquitous, bleary-eyed, bloated-faced old imp of perdition, farewell!”
This is the story of the path to prohibition.
Early America drinks a lot – I mean, A LOT. Alcohol doesn’t give you dysentery, it’s used as a medicine, and in the first decades of the Republic, whiskey is cheaper than coffee or tea. But some are starting to think that maybe Uncle Sam needs an ...
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May 20, 2024 • 63 mins
“I believe I can swing it.”
This is the story of the Coolidge Administration.
Calvin Coolidge isn’t the most talkative guy–he’s painfully shy, to be frank–but “Silent Cal” does care deeply about public service. Over the years, the thrifty, hard-working New Englander moves up the ranks, from municipal offices to state offices, until, as Massachusetts Governor, he’s asked to join Warren G. Harding’s run for the White House. When th...
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May 6, 2024 • 69 mins
“If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?”
This is the story of a brilliant man’s presidency and the greatest presidential scandal to precede Watergate. This is the story of Warren G. Harding and the Teapot Dome Scandal.
Growing up in Ohio, Warren–or little “Winnie,” as his mom calls him–shows his brilliance from day one. Th...
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April 22, 2024 • 63 mins
The Prof. sits down with fellow Prof. Ben Sawyer of the Road to Now Podcast and Middle Tennessee State University to chat through the last volume episodes. Russia, the Red Scare, the second Klan, and more, while Ben gets Greg to share behind-the-scenes details on the writing process. Enjoy!
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April 8, 2024 • 64 mins
“I want to say make no settlement until they sign up that every bloody murderer of a guard has got to go.”
This is the story of the largest uprising in the United States since the Civil War.
As unions spread across the Progressive-Era United States, West Virginia mine owners manage to keep them out. They have some good reasons (tough margins) and some less savory ones … like their preference for an oppressive “mine guard system” ...
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March 25, 2024 • 64 mins
“Every official except one elected yesterday at the first municipal election of this borough had been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.”
This is the story of the Second Ku Klux Klan.
It’s been nearly half a century since the Third Enforcement Act killed off the Klan in 1871. But amid Jim Crow segregation in 1915, the lynching of a Jewish Georgian Leo Frank, coupled with a new film, The Birth of a Nation, inspires William Simmons to r...
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March 11, 2024 • 64 mins
“Palmer, do not let this country see red.”
This is the story of America’s First Red Scare. On June 2, 1919, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer is just going to bed when the first floor of his home is blown apart. It was a bomb, and part of a larger plot to attack several national leaders. It’s the work of anarchists.
Shaken to the core, Mitch is determined to use his position as AG to rid the nation of such extremist, violent lefti...
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February 26, 2024 • 66 mins
“I keep wondering if the Unknown Soldier is one of my men.”
This is the story of the United States coping with and facing the aftermath of World War I.
The American Expeditionary Force in France is breaking up but that means a lot of different things as doughboys occupy Germany, go fight in Russia, convalesce, or just head home. If only going home was so easy–for many, it’s a hard transition back to civilian life. One of the few ...
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January 1, 2024 • 52 mins
The Episode to end all … World War I episodes. Professor Jackson sits down with Kelsi Dynes to talk through all the things that didn’t make it into the final Great War episodes and go big picture on the Meuse-Argonne, Armistice, and Treaty of Versailles.
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December 4, 2023 • 38 mins
“The circumstances under which we are spending this particular Christmas are unusual.”
This is the story of the Christmases of World War I.
Germans and British troops, singing carols together. French and German troops, kicking, playing sports and exchanging treats. It may not last, but for a brief moment–for Christmas of 1914–these opposing armies refuse the orders of their superiors as they temporarily “beat their swords into pl...
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November 20, 2023 • 69 mins
“A Peace which cannot be defended in the name of justice before the whole world would continually call forth fresh resistance”
This is the story of peacemaking in 1919–a fraught peacemaking.
With the Armistice signed, some 30 nations (led by the major Allied Powers) are gathering in Paris, France, to deliberate on the terms they’ll give to Germany. But the conference is beset with conflicting views. Not only do these various nati...
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November 6, 2023 • 67 mins
“The German delegation has come to receive the proposals of the Allied Powers looking to an armistice.”
This is the story of guns falling silent across war-ravaged fronts–the story of the Great War’s armistice between Germany and the Allied Powers.
Sailors are mutinying. Soldiers are breaking. A revolution–possibly a Bolshevist revolution–is knocking on the Second Reich’s door. German leaders are coming to accept a painful reali...
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