Land of Laura: the Podcast about Laura Ingalls Wilder

Peter Bagge has written graphic novels/biographies about three free-thinking, independent women living in the early to mid-twentieth century: birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston ... and Rose Wilder Lane.

Peter describes the release of his book on Rose Wilder Lane,called CREDO, with one word: crickets. It just didn’t sell well. Even Land of Laura host Sandra Hume had dismissed the ...

We've all been anticipating the launch of the first season of the 2026 version of Little House on the Prairie on Netflix. Was it going to be like the 1970s Michael Landon show? Would it adhere closely to the book series, or would it deviate? How would they depict the Osage Native Americans? What would be added — or subtracted — to complete their vision?

Land of Laura invited Laura Ingalls Wilder biographer Pamela Smith ...

In 1974, Ed Friendly created the Little House on the Prairie TV show with Michael Landon. Creative differences spurred Ed to leave the show early on, though he still produced it.

This July, a new Little House on the Prairie comes to the small screen. It's executive produced by Friendly Family Productions, where Ed's son, Trip, is the CEO. Today Trip is our guest on Land of Laura, along with his daughter, Rebecca, COO of the company....

Author Nancy McCabe listened to several episodes of Land of Laura and heard the guests share their origin stories. She thought: what about Sandra Hume's origin story?

In this episode Nancy turns the tables on Sandra and asks what brought the podcast host into the world of Little House. Sandra shares her history with creating the Homesteader newsletter, co-founding the Laura Ingalls Wilder Legacy and Research Association and its Lau...

Historian Michelle Marie Martin, PhD, was with the Little House on the Prairie Museum at Independence, Kansas from2008-2015, the last four years as executive director of the site.

In this episode Dr. Martin shares the history of the site, the complicated history of the Osage land, how living history can be a tool for learning, and why the African American doctor who cared for the Ingalls family, George Tann, is so darn interesting....

Erin Blakemore is a journalist, historian, and author of the book The Heroine's Bookshelf. Here's part 2 of her interview where she details the magic of listening to the Little House books on audiobook for the first time.

Erin shares several of her revelations, including how she feels Laura Ingalls Wilder used horses as a vehicle to communicate sensuality and sexuality when she didn't have the words to do it otherwise. Also, in the...

Erin Blakemore is a journalist, historian, and author of the book The Heroine's Bookshelf. Recently after brain surgery she turned to the the comfort of her beloved Little House books in a way she never had before: by listening to them on audio. Erin's first time listening to Cherry Jones' masterful narration of the entire Little House series was transformative. In the first of two episodes, Erin shares that experience with Land of...

With fully half of the books taking place there, De Smet, Dakota Territory — South Dakota today — is the pinnacle of Little House homesites. By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, and These Happy Golden Years are all grounded in the tiny town of De Smet.

From the Surveyors' House to the house Pa built on Third Street to a robust collection of Ingalls and Wilder artifacts, the Laura Ing...

What Laura Ingalls Wilder fan among us hasn't dreamed of living in De Smet, South Dakota? Eric Fairchild actually made that a reality when he and his partner took over Prairie House Manor Bed and Breakfast, a longtime staple of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Dakota Territory hometown.

On this week's Land of Laura podcast, Eric tells us all about his career change from retail lifer to innkeeper, the experience of trading urban Colorado for ...

Have you ever looked at one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's manuscripts? Or dug into Rose Wilder Lane's journal entries? Or read the letters Rose exchanged with her beloved "Mama Bess"? The largest collection of Laura Ingalls Wilder/Rose Wilder Lane research materials is in West Branch, Iowa, at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. This week Land of Laura talks to Hoover archivist Spencer Howard as well as researcher Eddie...

This week Land of Laura is thrilled to talk with ‪@LauraIngallsGunn‬. In the past few years, the interior designer has found herself increasingly seated behind her sewing machine. She has been recreating clothing based on descriptions found on the pages of the Little House® books as well as from the Little House on the Prairie television series. Her lovingly handcrafted garments have been displayed at Little House celebrations and ...

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2018. Before writing Prairie Fires, author Caroline Fraser was selected to edit the Library of America's official two-volume set of the Little House® books. Back in the early 90s, her extensive review of William Holtz's Ghost in the Little House was featured in the New York Review of Books. Her latest book, Murderland, looks at enviro...

Scholars have wondered for years about what happened to Rose Wilder Lane's "lost" Armenian book. Thanks to historian and author Ginger Pedersen, now they know.

Dr. Mabel Elliott worked tirelessly in early-1920s Europe to help thousands of Armenian women and orphans in the aftermath of the horrific Armenian genocide. She subsequently wrote a book about that work.

A hundred years later, Ginger Pederson was in the thick of research for...

What is a peplum — and could you have worn one in the 1980s? How many undergarments might a woman wear in the nineteenth century? What kind of a dress was Ma's delaine? How fashionable was Caroline Ingalls? Does the dress she wore in Little House in the Big Woods show up in other books in the Little House® series? Answers to these questions and more in tomorrow's episode of Land of Laura, when historic interpreter Laura Keyes...

Who's planning a trip to Pepin?

One of the many homesites Laura Ingalls Wilder fans can visit is Laura's birthplace of Pepin, Wisconsin, a charming artistic town on the Great River Road on the Minnesota border. Kitty Latané is a longtime Pepin resident who has been deeply involved with the village of Pepin and Laura Ingalls Wilder's connection there for decades. She even wrote the foreword for the Land of Laura travel guide to Pepi...

Dr. Beth Tarini was a medical school student when talk turned to scarlet fever. Scarlet fever — that's what made Mary Ingalls go blind, she thought. But her medical training had already taught her that wasn't possible. She started to wonder — what did cause Mary's blindness? As she became a doctor, the question stayed in her mind.

It would take another decade, but in 2012, working with research assistant Sarah Allexan &m...

Some of us are scholars, some of us are creative, and some of us are both. Julia Park Tracey, Writer incorporated her Laura Ingalls Wilder scholarship into her latest book, the adult novel WHOA, NELLY: A LOVE STORY WITH FOOTNOTES. What happens when an introverted librarian boards a train in California to meet up with like-minded fans in De Smet, South Dakota? On episode 19 author, journalist, and poet Julia Park Tracey tells us wha...