Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, John and Ashley Marsh once stood on the edge of collapse. Addiction, infidelity, and financial ruin had left their marriage shattered and their lives without direction. John was preparing to end it all when an unexpected moment of faith interrupted his plans. That turning point marked the beginning of a long journey of recovery and forgiveness. Together, the couple rebuilt what was broken an...

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before mass production and freeways, the automobile was an invention still finding its way. The Duryea brothers were among its pioneers, and in 1901, they built something unique: a car made to glorify God. More than a century later, that car still exists. Barry Meguiar shares the story of how he came to own it.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, when a young Iowa farmer named Cecil Wax was drafted into World War II, he never imagined his survival would hinge on a frozen mountain road in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge. Driving a supply truck loaded with gasoline and ammunition, Cecil fought ice, darkness, and the fear of ambush at every turn. What happened next left him convinced for the rest of his life that God had reached d...

On this episode of Our American Stories, she was called the most beautiful woman in the world, yet Hedy Lamarr’s greatest gift had little to do with her looks. During World War II, she and George Antheil sketched out a way to keep military communications secure by sending signals across multiple frequencies. Their work was shelved and forgotten at the time, but the principles behind it power nearly every wireless connection t...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Aron Marquez’s American Dream began with dirt under his fingernails and sweat in the fields. The work was grueling, but it taught him lessons he never forgot: discipline, endurance, and responsibility. Those same lessons paved the way for him to enter the oil industry, where he founded a company (Wildcat Oil Tools) that today generates over $100 million in annual revenue.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Cuba’s 1959 revolution brought Fidel Castro to power and forced countless families to make an impossible choice: stay under a communist regime or flee their homeland. Mike Gonzalez’s father once called Castro a friend, but soon discovered the price of living under his rule. With freedoms stripped away and fear taking hold, escape became the only option. Mike shares his famil...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1890, Nellie Bly set out to do what seemed impossible: circle the globe in less than eighty days. Known to her readers as a bold reporter who once went undercover in a mental asylum, Bly was already a household name. But this journey, inspired by Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, would make her a legend. Traveling by ship, train, and carriage, she raced against tim...

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Hollywood became the world’s movie capital, one man was already imagining films on a scale no one had ever seen. Cecil B. DeMille brought spectacle to the screen with epics like The Ten Commandments and The King of Kings, setting the standard for what cinema could be. Known as a master showman and a visionary director, DeMille helped transform Los Angeles into the heart of Ameri...

On this episode of Our American Stories, for Lawson Bader, one teacher changed everything. Erika, his German instructor, wasn’t content to simply drill vocabulary. She wanted her students to see history with their own eyes. That meant taking Lawson to Berlin when the Wall still loomed large, dividing families and a nation. Standing at the Cold War’s most visible fault line, he learned more than any textbook could teach:...

On this episode of Our American Stories, James King was just a 21-year-old college student walking to work in Grand Rapids when two men suddenly threw him to the ground. Thinking he was being mugged, he fought back until he realized his attackers were undercover law enforcement officers who had mistaken him for someone else. What followed were years of court battles, with King refusing to let the assault be swept aside. Backed by t...

On this episode of Our American Stories, Alonzo Cushing was just 22 years old when he fell at Gettysburg, standing firm as Confederate troops charged across the field. His courage earned him the respect of his men, but not the honor he deserved. More than 150 years later, advocates carried his name all the way to the White House to secure the Medal of Honor.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, for Karen Olson, the ache of missing her father began at a school dance where other girls stood beside their dads while she stood alone. Her mother had told her he was dead, and Karen believed it for decades. But the truth was far more complicated. A long-lost family connection surfaced years later and changed everything she thought she knew about her childhood.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, when Robert Redford took on the role of Jeremiah Johnson in 1972, audiences fell in love with the image of a rugged mountain man who carved out a life in the wilderness. But the real Johnson lived a life far stranger and harsher than Hollywood ever showed. Historian Ashley Hlebinsky joins us to pull apart fact from folklore and reveal what Hollywood got right—or wrong.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Edie Hand remembers an Alabama childhood filled with mud pies, Shetland ponies, and afternoons in the barn where she could dream freely. Her mother kept a perfect home and often reminded her that she was strong, like her grandmother Alice. But while her brothers drew their mother’s attention, Edie was left to prove that strength on her own. Now in her seventies, she looks back on a gir...

On this episode of Our American Stories, on November 10, 1975, the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald vanished beneath the stormy waters of Lake Superior, taking all 29 crew members with her. The tragedy became one of the most famous Great Lakes shipwrecks, inspiring Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting ballad The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Historian Ric Mixter — a shipwreck diver and documentarian who has actually ...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1790, George Washington answered a letter from the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. His reply carried words that still echo today: America would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” It was a radical promise for its time, a vision of a nation where faith and government would remain separate and all people would be free to worship as they cho...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the late 1980s, Panama was at the center of global attention as strongman Manuel Noriega tightened his grip on power. Known for his brutality and ties to the drug trade, he seemed untouchable. But when a hairdresser unknowingly welcomed Noriega’s daughter into her chair, an unlikely chain of events began. That meeting opened the door to the dictator himself, leading to a story of fa...

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before billion-dollar stadiums and television contracts, professional football was played on dirt lots by men who worked factory shifts by day and risked their bodies by night. Owners mortgaged their futures to keep teams alive, and few believed the sport would last more than a season or two. John Eisenberg, author of The League, traces how those uncertain beginnings gave birth to the N...

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the summer of 1833, Lexington, Kentucky, was brought to its knees by a cholera outbreak. Entire families were lost in a matter of days, and fear spread faster than the disease itself. When the dead outnumbered the living willing to bury them, one man stepped forward. His name was Solomon. Most people in town dismissed him as a drunk gravedigger. But in the middle of the crisis, he dug wit...