HISTORY This Week

Malcolm Gladwell and President Barack Obama introduce us to one of the most chaotic,

complicated, and fascinating times in American history, revealing why Reconstruction still

defines our country today.

Listen to Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise on Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Reconstruction begins where, for most Americans, the story of the Civil War ends: The North is

victorious and slavery is abolished. But what ...

June 15, 1865. German-American statesman Carl Schurz is traveling to Washington to meet with President Andrew Johnson when he stops at a friend’s home in Philadelphia. That night, during a séance, a teenage medium claims to summon the spirit of Abraham Lincoln… and delivers Schurz a mysterious command from beyond the grave.

Soon, Johnson sends Schurz on a fact-finding mission through the defeated South. What he discover...

June 8, 1191. The Crusaders and Muslim forces are locked in battle over the city of Acre. On one side is Saladin, the great Muslim leader who has already recaptured Jerusalem. On the other, an armada arrives carrying England’s king: Richard the Lionheart.

The Crusades will become one of the defining conflicts of the Middle Ages. But for centuries, their history fades into legend… until a Scottish writer named Walter Sco...

June 6, 1944. As thousands of Allied soldiers prepare to storm the beaches of Normandy, they climb down rope nets into small wooden landing craft bobbing in the dark waters of the English Channel. Within hours, these boats will carry them into the largest amphibious invasion in history.

The craft are known as Higgins boats, named for their inventor, Andrew Higgins: a hard-driving New Orleans boatbuilder who built his reputation desi...

Search "World War II with Tom Hanks" wherever you get your podcasts! New episodes drop every Tuesday.

World War II with Tom Hanks reexamines history’s most devastating conflict for a new century. Across twenty hours, the series traces the war’s full arc–from the rise of fascism to Hiroshima–uncovering the decisions, hidden networks, and lasting consequences that continue to shape our world.

Episode 1 –...

May 30, 1945. In Washington, Secretary of War Henry Stimson calls General Leslie Groves to his office and demands answers: which Japanese cities are about to become targets for the atomic bomb? What follows will pull Stimson—a deeply religious statesman who believed in restraint, but also in overwhelming force—into a profound crisis over morality, destruction, and what modern war is becoming. 

How did Henry Stimson...

May 23, 1934. On a muggy Louisiana morning, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow speed toward the Texas border. They’ve been on the run for over a year—wanted for robbery and murder—and the lurid news accounts of their exploits have made them famous. But today, Bonnie and Clyde’s legendary crime spree comes to an end … in a hail of bullets.

Why did some come to view these Depression Era outlaws as agents o...

May 12, 1949. After eleven months under Soviet blockade, the people of West Berlin flood into the streets to celebrate. The lights are back on. The autobahn is open. The siege is over.

But just months earlier, West Berlin seemed doomed.

Surrounded deep inside Soviet-controlled territory, more than two million Berliners are suddenly cut off from food, fuel, electricity, and supplies after Joseph Stalin seals the city’s borders...

May 9th, 1942. In the Lustgarten, a sprawling park in the center of Berlin, a strange new attraction opens to the public. It’s a maze of tents, glowing under red lightbulbs. Inside: a staged vision of the Soviet Union. Filthy streets, starving children, torture chambers. A horror show.

The man behind it all is Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, and the most powerful figure in Berlin. Posters, radio broadc...

April 25, 1859. About 150 people have gathered on the shores of Lake Manzala in Egypt. And one of them, a mustachioed, retired French diplomat, steps forward. He raises his pickaxe and strikes a ceremonial blow.

The audacious goal is to cut through the desert to connect the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, creating a new trade route between the East and the West. Changing global trade and geopolitics forever. Today: the Suez Ca...

April 20th, 2004. A quiet suburban development outside Seattle. Brand-new homes. Fresh lawns not yet grown in.

Then, in the middle of the night—sirens. Flames ripping through two houses.

Investigators quickly find the cause: homemade incendiary devices. And a message, left behind at another site: “urban sprawl has become a central issue in the struggle to protect the earth.” Signed, the Earth Liberation Front.

The...

April 18, 1806. In his study, President Thomas Jefferson signs a law that doesn’t look like an act of war. It bans imports. Leather. Silk. Glass. Playing cards. A strange list. A quiet move. But Jefferson is trying to confront one of the most powerful empires in the world, without firing a shot.

Britain is stopping American ships at sea. Boarding them. Taking sailors by force. The country is furious. War feels close.

Jefferso...

This episode comes from Points North, a podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. You can listen to Points North wherever you get your podcasts.

Lake Champlain is more than 16 times smaller than Lake Ontario, the smallest Great Lake. But in 1998, Congress designated Lake Champlain as the sixth Great Lake, teeing off a historical and cultural fight over which lakes can really call themselves Great.

Radio ex...

April 7, 1922. A cabinet secretary signs a secret deal and locks it in his desk.

The land in question holds one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the country. Officially, it belongs to the U.S. Navy. Unofficially, it’s just been handed to a private oilman – no bidding, no oversight, no witnesses.

For Albert Fall, it’s a win-win. For the oil industry, it’s a jackpot. But big money is hard to hide.

Withi...

April 3, 1851. A man who escaped slavery is grabbed off the streets of Boston and thrown into a carriage. He fights back, shouting to the crowd, but it doesn’t matter. Under a new federal law, even the North isn’t safe.

The Fugitive Slave Act has turned cities like Boston into hunting grounds. Freedom seekers are being captured, and ordinary citizens are being forced to help.

But across the North, resistance is growing....

March 29th, 1923. A new play opens in Berlin, and quietly changes the future. Onstage are workers who never tire, never complain, and never stop. They’re faster, stronger, and more efficient than humans in every way. They’re called robots.

A sci-fi play born out of war and industrialization sparks a global obsession and a lasting fear. Because from the very beginning, the robot wasn’t just a technological breakthr...

March 18, 1879. A crowd gathers around an indoor track in Brooklyn, NY, as an Irish immigrant named Bartholomew O’Donnell attempts a strange feat: walking 80 miles in 26 hours. Newspapers claim he’s eighty years old. Lap after lap, he circles the track: smoking a pipe, sipping hot tea, and pushing through the night.

O’Donnell came to New York thirty years earlier, fleeing the Great Potato Famine. Like many Irish i...