This Day

It's Week 1 of "50 Weeks That Shaped America," and we're headed to 1976 to look at how America's last big birthday came together. In part one, Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how the country was in a deep malaise headed into the bicentennial, and the shambolic planning of the festivities reflected the larger distrust and dysfunction of government.

Join our America250 newsletter community! Subscribe for free to get the latest...

2026 is here! As is America250. On Tuesday, we're launching our 50 Weeks That Shaped America series, but today we get together to ring in the new year with a few "predictions and provocation."

Note: The full version of this episode, with video, is available for paying subscribers to our newsletter. Our America250 series will always be free in the regular podcast feed, but throughout the year we will be bringing our newslett...

We're bringing you some of our favorite episodes of 2025 while we get a holiday break -- and prepare for our big America250 series. See you in 2026!

It's March 23rd. This day in 1775, Patrick Henry of Virginia gave a speech in which he (maybe) uttered one of the more famous phrases in American political history.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how Henry came to give such a fiery speech, the reaction from those in the room -- ...

We're bringing you some of our favorite episodes of 2025 while we get a holiday break -- and prepare for our big America250 series. See you in 2026!

It's June 24th. In 2003, Jimmy Wales, the owner of Wikipedia, made the decision to put the site under the ownership of a non-profit company.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why this decision made a huge difference for the site, and reflected a lot of the ways that the Internet ha...

We're bringing you some of our favorite episodes of 2025 while we get a holiday break -- and prepare for our big America250 series. See you in 2026!

It's March 25th. This day in 1980, a church in Tucson announces that it will provide sanctuary to immigrants -- in open defiance of US law.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss the roots of the church sanctuary movement, the conviction of eight leaders including Reverand John Fife, an...

We're bringing you some of our favorite episodes of 2025 while we get a holiday break -- and prepare for our big America250 series. See you in 2026!

It's March 27th. This day in 1976, Schoolhouse Rock premieres the song "I'm Just A Bill," an animated look at the process by which legislation gets passed -- or languishes in the halls of Congress.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie talk about how the song came together, the legislation at ...

We're bringing you some of our favorite episodes of 2025 while we get a holiday break -- and prepare for our big America250 series. See you in 2026!

It's April 3rd. In 2015, Starbucks announces that it is bringing its "Race Together" initiative to a close, after it was relentlessly mocked and critced online and in stores.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie look back at the very-Obama-era effort by the coffee chain to spark conversations...

It's December 17th. This day in 1947, the US and UK film industries are in a trade war -- a couple years after the two countries fought together in an actual war.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie talk about the year-long battle over taking the film industries, how Britain tried to protect its domestic industry from US dominance -- and the various ripple effects for the cultural dominance of the two countries.

Sign up for our newslette...

It's December 15th. This winter, 1971, the first season of "All In The Family" is coming to a close, and it's already the biggest show in America. It's a total sensation, in part because of its willingness to dive into the cultural and political battles of the age.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Oscar Winberg to discuss the way All In The Family captured a fractured country, and in particular how the character of Arch...

It's December 11th. This day in 1971, Representative Charles C Diggs of Michigan resigned from a UN delegation in order to protest the US stance towards South Africa's apartheid regime.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie are joined by Dr. Marion Orr of Brown University to discuss Diggs's decades-long fight to oppose apartheid, and his long tenure in Congress, where he built bridges and worked the halls of power. He was also brought dow...

It's December 8th. This day in 1952, the New York Daily News runs a feature on Christine Jorgensen headlined "Ex-GI Becomes Blond Beauty." 

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the life and legacy of Christine Jorgensen, who became the first transgender celebrity -- and how her story reflected sexual and cultural norms of the era.

Sign up for our newsletter! We’ll be sending out links to all the stuff we recommended later this wee...

Welcome to Some Sunday Context, where we bring you new conversations and archival episodes to provide some context on the stories playing out in the news today. This week, we just wrapped up our two-part series on early vaccine skeptics from the 1890s through the 1920s. We discussed how a lot of the skepticism began to fade away in mid-century, in part because of the success of vaccines. Perhaps the biggest win was the arr...

It's December 1st. This week, a two-part look at the roots of vaccine skepticism and anti-vaccine activism in the United States. First we look at the early legal battles of the 1860s-1900s, then discuss how anti-vaccine activists found more purchase in the cultural and political spheres going into the first half of the 20th century.

Sign up for our newsletter! We’ll be sending out links to all the stuff we recommended later...

It's December 1st. This week, a two-part look at the roots of vaccine skepticism and anti-vaccine activism in the United States. First we look at the early legal battles of the 1860s-1900s, then discuss how anti-vaccine activists found more purchase in the cultural and political spheres going into the first half of the 20th century.

Sign up for our newsletter! We’ll be sending out links to all the stuff we recommended later...

This Thanksgiving Week, some episodes favorite about community, what binds us -- and food!

It’s April 2nd. This day in 1910, a Louisiana senator proposes allocating a quarter of a million dollars to import hippos from Africa and grow them in American swamps, then harvest them for food.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Dan Pashman of The Sporkful to talk about how the hippo plan was intended to solve a hunger and ecologic...

This Thanksgiving Week, some episodes favorite about community, what binds us -- and food!

It’s May 2nd. In 1847, a US military ship, the USS Jamestown, was loaded up with food and other relief to sail to Ireland and help with the famine in that country.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how disparate communities in the US rallied around the cause, and how the Jamestown represented one of the first moments of international cama...

The new Netflix series "Death By Lightning" focuses on the unexpected rise of James Garfield in the 1880 election, and his assassination by Charles Guiteau. It also features Nick Offerman as Chester Arthur, a product of machine politics who ends up as Garfield's VP and then as president. So, today, some Sunday context in the form of an episode we recorded a few years ago about Chester Arthur and how he took control when he...

It's the last week in November -- on November 25th, 1783, British troops finally left New York City, which had suffered a brutal two years since the formal end of the Revolutionary War.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss what life was like in the period when British troops were occupying the city, what Evacuation Day was actually like -- and why the commemoration of that day was eventually overshadowed by Thanksgiving.

Sign up f...

It's November 18th. This day in 1805, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark have returned back east to report on their trip to President Jefferson. It hasn't been very successful.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how their names faded into relative obscurity in the years after they returned, and how the myth of Lewis and Clark has been revived -- often to fit the myths of the era -- in the decades and centuries since.

S...