This Day

It's October 28th. This day in 1964, the presidential election is in the home stretch, with candidates like Lyndon B Johnson, Barry Goldwater -- and Dizzy Gillespie?

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss the only-half-joking candidacy of the legendary jazz trumpeter, and the intersection of entertainment and politics in that era. Plus: the power of great merch.

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This Sunday, we are convening a teach-in in Washington DC with our friend Nate DiMeo of The Memory Palace. Here is Nate's latest episode, where he discusses the path to this event and the need to defend the work of history and museums.

Find out more information about the teach in here.

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It's October 22nd. This day in 1999, in Annapolis, MD, the last of the so-called "Liberty Trees" was cut down.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the original liberty trees that served as gathering spots for political ideas to be shared -- and political violence to play out -- during the American revolution. And they make the case for bringing back gatherings-under-trees as a political act.

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It's October 21st. This day in 1982, residents of Warren County, NC are fighting back against plans to dump tons of PCB-laden dirt in their local landfill.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss how Warren County came to be a target of this environmental disaster, how residents banded together, and the legacy of "environmental racism."

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It's 1903. This day, Teddy Roosevelt is visiting Ellis Island amid a fierce conversation about American immigration policy.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Andrew Porwancher of Arizona State to discuss how Roosevelt's views on immigration were always shifting, from a humanitarian instinct to electoral concerns to scientific ideas about racial superiority. They also discuss the blunt language used around race and immigr...

It's October 13th. This day in 2013, the healthcare.gov website is a total fiasco. It had launched a couple weeks earlier and was immediately unusable, with only six people being able to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges on the first day.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why the website was so broken, the blame game that ensued, and the lessons about implementation found in the website's sordid tale. You can create great poli...

It's October 9th. Today, we look back at the first "teach-ins" at the University of Michigan in 1965, and discuss the power of gathering together to learn and teach. Plus, we announce our very own teach-in, taking place in Washington DC on October 26th!

Jody, NIki, and Kellie are joined by Nate DiMeo, host of our fellow Radiotopia show "The Memory Palace," who is co-organizing the upcoming teach-in. Find more information ab...

Today, we look back an episode we did about October 2013, when the United States government shut down after the Congress was unable to agree to a new budget proposal, that had been saddled with provisions that would have defunded Obamacare.

Jody and Niki are joined by NBC/MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki to discuss the shutdown, how Ted Cruz used it to increase his profile, and why we may be suffering from shutdown fatigu...

On Sundays, we try to bring you new conversations and episodes from the archives that provide a little context for the news of 2025. Today: a look back at the very first government shutdown, and how shutdowns have wrapped up budget fights and larger ideological battles before.

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It's October 2nd. This day in 1989, Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire," which name-checks a ton of events that took place from the 50s through the 80s, is rocketing up the charts.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why Joel felt compelled to write the song, some of the more obscure references in the song -- and whether they are buying Joel's historical argument presented in the song.

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It's September 30th. This day in 1919, a bloody racial conflict is breaking out in the Arkansas Delta.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how a push to organize sharecroppers, combined with rumors and a frenzied media led to possibly hundreds of Black residents being killed by white mobs.

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This week, we're bringing you two episodes that highlight periods in American history where political speech was being policied, repressed, and persecuted -- much like it is today.

Today: A look back at the way speech was policed in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. Bill Maher lost his job, professors were fired, Clear Channel removed songs that mentioned airplane crashes... and the Bush White House told people to "watch what t...

It's September 22nd. This week, we're bringing you two episodes that highlight periods in American history where political speech was being policied, repressed, and persecuted -- much like it is today.

Today: A look back at "Red Channels," an anti-Communist newsletter that started to create lists, mostly in the entertainment industry, of suspected Communist sympathizers. Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss who funded Red Channel...

It's Sunday, and on Sundays we like to bring you new conversations and conversations from the archives that help provide a little context for the stories playing out today. Today, as we see a chilling effect on free speech around the country, we revisit part of our conversation on the history of universities and government funding, and how a lot of pressure was applied during the Cold War era for academics to pledge loyalt...

It's September 17th. This day in 1793, President Washington visits a site where construction is beginning on what would be the Capitol.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss how the ceremony around the laying of the cornerstone was shot through with Masonic symbolism and pageantry --- and some of the many conspiracy theories that surround the cornerstone.

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It's September 16th. This day in 1896, a railroad executive named William Crush (really) has a brilliant idea: take two trains and hurtle them towards each other in the middle of the Texas prairie.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why Crush had this idea, the incredible hype around the event -- and how it went exactly the way you'd expect.

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On Sundays, we try to bring you fresh conversations and stories from the archives that give you a little context on the news playing out in front of us. Today, Jody and Niki discuss the very dish-y news that Oliver North secretly married Fawn Hall, 40 years after they worked together and testified during the Iran-Contra scandal. Then, we rerun our episode from 2021 about North running for Senate in 1994.

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It's 1847. This day, a battalion of Irish immigrants are hung by the U.S. Army for deserting to the Mexican side in the Mexican-American War.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how the "San Patricios Battallion" was formed, why Irish immigrants might feel more allegiance to Mexico than the United States, and how this group became martyrs in both Mexico and Ireland.

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It's September 9th. This day in 2001, a nationwide advertising campaign is underway for The Hummer truck, which has recently been taken over by GM and is poised to be everywhere.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how the Hummer moved from the Gulf War to US streets, was all over hip-hop videos, and how it came to define a form of agressive American masculinity that is resurging today.

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