This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & RadiotopiaThis Day in Esoteric Political History
We’re living in unprecedented times. Maybe. In this show, Jody Avirgan (538, 30for30, TED) and historians Nicole Hemmer (Vanderbilt) and Kellie Carter Jackson (Wellesley) take one moment, big or small, from that day in U.S. political history and explore how it might inform our present –– all in about fifteen minutes.
New episodes release Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Sign up for the newsletter and more at ThisDayPod.com. We’re also posting about moments from the past @thisdaypod on Threads and Instagram. If you have a suggestion for a topic, get in touch.
This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of the Radiotopia podcast network from PRX.
We’re living in unprecedented times. Maybe. In this show, Jody Avirgan (538, 30for30, TED) and historians Nicole Hemmer (Vanderbilt) and Kellie Carter Jackson (Wellesley) take one moment, big or small, from that day in U.S. political history and explore how it might inform our present –– all in about fifteen minutes.
New episodes release Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Sign up for the newsletter and more at ThisDayPod.com. We’re also posting about moments from the past @thisdaypod on Threads and Instagram. If you have a suggestion for a topic, get in touch.
This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of the Radiotopia podcast network from PRX.
An emboldened president tries to get rid of a major obstacle
A sitting Democratic president bows out in the spring before an election
A very rare case of accountability
A lobbying campaign blossoms
Lincoln's ultimate avenger
A constitutional convention locks in some key provisions
Government funding gets held hostage
US-Canada relations are helped out by Irish bonds
A new president prioritizes low ABV
An ambitious plan to rebuild a critical region falls flat
The top G-Man almost takes over the top sport
How modern primaries exacerbate the divide
Direct access to the President - via 900 number
A party remakes itself
A rainbow coalition emerges
Our look at some early failed candidates who nevertheless set the template for Trump
The policy warriors, punchlines, media hounds and more who just stick around...
A seemingly inevitable event unfolds in Harlem
A hunting accident turns into a punchline and scandal
The law codifies the harsh reality on the ground
A true sliding doors moment
A South African leader emerges
A new supposedly more humane method of killing
A bribery scandal during an era of corporate malfeasance
The real corrupt bargain ends reconstruction.
The elixir of life - but only for Phil
An early incident of political violence
The Cold War superpowers lower the temperature in space
How we got our voting day
A day to commemorate a disability rights pioneer
DC's Beloved Mayor gets stung
The military industrial complex gets a new home
Charles Deslondes leads a revolt in Orleans
Why it took almost 20 years to get a federal holiday
A deadly storm changes weather forecasting forever
A phrase appears in a fateful letter
Statistical analysis uncovers a problem with huge consequences
Ike's very twisted war on squirrels
The only possible solution to the beaver re-location problem
11 killed and 74 injured when a bomb goes off in the baggage claim
Two early civil rights activists are killed on Christmas Day
The NYT finally enters the crossword craze
A puzzle craze takes off
A book of aphorisms that (largely) stand the test of time
How deregulation undermined the glamour of travel
Alaskan tribes have to embrace, and contend, with American-style economics
New context for the strikes and tragedies of garment fire
A Canadian fighter seeks the U.S. President's assistance
What does independence mean, exactly, for the Hawaiian islands?
A leading thinker makes a late-in-life proclamation
President Hayes embraces a new technology
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A 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island begins
A group of men is detained
Our favorite food, drink and dessert stories
An attempt on the President-elect's life
Jody finally gets to talk about his undergraduate thesis!
A theater becomes a moment of political confrontation
A businessman tries politics
A town decides on the worst way to get rid of a beached whale
General Wirz, the only Confederate commander executed for war crimes
A little-known resistance group plants a bomb
Gladys Spellman wins re-election while in a life-ending coma
NYC's mass burial site is opening up
The Lincoln Brigade joins the fight
A factory town suffers the consequences
A new women's right's org takes a stand
Why Colin Powell rebuked his own party
America's movie industry becomes a political force
An early tease at a political career
Did Jefferson Davis even want this?!
A British letter-writing campaign steps into US politics
A Mississippi county rebels against the confederacy
Inferior stock goes on trial
Poisoned medicine and a crisis for J&J
Fault lines emerge as Mussolini makes a move against Ethiopia
A group of women injured in the Hiroshima bombing come to the U.S.
The Russian PM is... indisposed
A clever comeback goes wrong
A major infrastructure project goes oh so wrong
Mutually assured destruction almost happens
A show sets a political and cultural template
Trying to codify interracial relationship
Lots of great stories of history from our listeners
Milton Friedman pens the shareholder theory
A prime-time address to push Just Say No
An activist tries to make labels more helpful
A muckraker turns to politics
A special episode about our various historical travels
Adam McKay's big breakthrough
Lincoln's ultimate avenger
A battle over racist internment
A frontier state goes rogue on the slavery question
An Alaskan infrastructure project becomes a pork-barrel controversy
The untold story of Nat Turner's rebellion
A troubled kid becomes a media and moral panic sensation
The political process that led to our greatest institution
George Allen's racist quip causes an early viral moment.
An incredibly fraught sporting dustup
A fascinating rock leads to a big announcement
Alex Haley's sprawling epic causes a sensation
Hey, you, clean up after your dog!
A flashpoint in NYC safety
The Fort Worth Five and the US-IRA nexus
The speaker of the house demands bean soup
A Nazi plot to bomb American infrastructure
A cold one to help solve race relations
A petition tries to raise the moral alarm about nuclear deployment
The only group of refugees to make it to US soil
100 years after his death, Congress rescues Robert E Lee
A young mayor takes a stand on civil rights
You have one bad day...
The city of brotherly shove
How the city got its layout
The first ever napalm test, right on campus
The highway system connects America
A push to legalize the abortion pill
The very rocky process of bringing southern states back into the fold
A landmark free speech case
The Clan of the Fiery Cross
Some thoughts on nighttime ambulation
The Black national anthem's winding road
Antisemitism explodes in high society
A commission identifies technical and bureaucratic roots of failure
The first Black Oscar winner, and the burgeoning civil rights movement
How labor unions in Hollywood were corrupted and smeared
A big new project that our very own Nicole Hemmer worked on
A great obit is a great profile
Kellie's Oprah show is back, here's a taste of the first episode!
An NYC child goes missing, and panic over childhood abductions sweeps the country
Our look at the Vietnam memorial's design and controversy
A deep dive into what Addy meant
What the American Girl Doll line says about American history
America's Sherlock Holmes
A massacre at a Michigan school
An occupation as part of the modern civil rights movement
A critical Civil Rights meeting in the wake of the Birmingham campaign
A critical spring in the civil rights movement
Biden gaffes his way into civil rights
MTV plays politics
An early scandal journalist and common scold
A US ship brings food to a famished Ireland
An American is punished in Singapore
Photos of abuse by American troops cause a scandal
She could have been Paul Revere
Finding space for Black intellectuals during the Civil War
Franklin, the first Francophile
A strange plot to kill JFK
How DC came together in a kind of weird spot
A cruel stunt in response to civil rights activism
Florida begins to reckon with what happened in Rosewood
A massive industrial disaster
Arizona's very sketchy governor is impeached
The plan to solve a food shortage by importing hippos
Oyster wars on the Chesapeake
How the US responded to a pandemic in 2009
The mix of religion and the cause of war
The origins of Uncle Sam
A anti-slavery book becomes a massive best-seller
A sex scandal takes down a NY Governor
A very Boston holiday
President Eisenhower tries everything to protect his putting green
A woman confronts gender problems within the civil rights movement
How Nixon's monumental trip came together
Johnson pardon's a Lincoln would-be assassin
Superman, an IP cautionary tale
Two soul-mates meet for the first time
Bill Clinton offers bland - but pointed - remarks on Quebec's looming independence vote
Another sample from Jody's new series
A taste of the new series Good Sport
We re-air our episode on Mardis Gras integration
Why in the world is Rush on ESPN
The story of a Native Alaskan activist
A delegation from the US visits India to discuss non-violent resistance
Utah's suffrage give and take
What Black vets faced when they came home
Thousands of farmers descend on DC
Happy breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany day
The first celebrity presidential pet
Jimmy Carter plays the new caucus game perfectly
A Cuban boy becomes a flashpoint
Free breakfast is everything
Taft and his people try to do for possums what Roosevelt did for bears
What went down at the battle of Hayes Pond
Where the mascots came from
An elephant is executed, evoking questions of bloodlust and spectacle
A political tradeoff reframes the narrative around the civil war
Part one of our four-part series on the Church Committee findings
A fake nation gets official recognition
We bring you the first episode of a great new series from our friends at On The Media
A favorite episode from a favorite show
Your questions, answered
Your questions, our thoughts
A look at popular works of history from this year that changed our thinking
A look at academic work from this year that changed our thinking
An astrology scandal
The death of an IT guru
Six words, still panned
An attempt on the President-elect's life
The financial collapse causes a Ponzi collapse
Alex Jones and the awful conspiracies around
The video game freakout
The nullification crisis brings the country to the brink
An important space for Black intellectuals
The first email, and the burden of the inbox
A plan to take in refugees in a moment of crisis
We continue our celebration of 400 episodes
We mark 400 episodes by talking to producer Jacob
A group of bankers retreats to fix the economy
An attempt to claim the streets for cars
An Oval Office showdown over Jim Crow
Denver says the cost of the games isn't worth it.
After an underwhelming election, the GOP takes stock
A critical space for Black intellectuals
A brief history of how we convey election results
A New Jersey race gets ugly
A rebuke of John Quincy Adams nationalizes mid-term elections
A midterm election brings a close to the
A Tea Party candidate has to issue a strange clarification
A look at the fundamental forces in midterms, and ways to measure them
The GOP takes back the house for the first time in 40 years
A big polling miss with lots of lessons
A California anti-tax revolt
North Dakota takes a big anti-corruption step
Direct democracy, through the years
Murkowski wins on a write-in surprise
A beloved progressive dies just before the midterms
The GOP sets a winning agneda
A new country tries to tax its citizens
Franklin lives it up, and secures some support
A cynical free speech battle in which everyone wins
The USPS reaches the farms of America
An NBA star tries to make his mark
The legendary activist nominates her self for SCOTUS
Two speeches, eight years apart, use dogs as deflection
The city of Cleveland tries to rehabilitate its image. Whoops.
A fundraiser appeal gets leaked
A showdown over fugitive slaves
Clinton tries to make a nuanced argument, and it doesn't work
A viral documentary launches conspiracies about the Clintons
The border arrives as a massive, divisive issue
Ruby Ridge, black helicopters, and conspiracy theories in the halls of congress
A batch of mysterious ballots tips a senate election in LBJ's favor.
George Bush shows empathy to the wrong person
The man who killed the man who killed Lincoln
Plagiarism sinks Biden's '88 campaign
A work stoppage after a massive military disaster
The progressive drift towards autocrats
"Food will win the war"
Alex Haley's sprawling epic causes a sensation
An unlikely civil rights trailblazer
The roots of the Benghazi attack
The Fort Worth Five and the US-IRA nexus
Nixon forges some very weird ties with musical icons
A breakaway state tells us a lot about TN's place in history
What Dolly Parton means to TN and America
The dumbest, most perfect, question in modern political journalism
The French government sinks an environmental group's ship
Adam McKay's big breakthrough
A former president's fishing trip goes haywire
A decades long fight leads to passage of the American with Disabilities Act
Washington DC explodes into radicalized violence
An early gun massacre raises key questions
Truman almost wasn't president
A fugitive slave doesn't find refuge in Canada
A railroad strike kicks off an era of mass labor protest
The city of brotherly shove
The memoir of a formerly enslaved woman paints a vivid picture
Texas decides to not go it alone, for now
The national highway system connects and reshapes America
The Wright Brothers test out a military vehicle
A massive scandal exposes politics as usual
Why we've had the same number of Congressional representatives for almost a century
A short-lived green energy project at the White House
Hamilton and Madison hash it out
The San Juan Islands skirmish
The important space created by HBCUs, with our friends from The Stoop
Two looks at two prison uprisings from 1971
Two takes on the Barbara Johns story
Two Radiotopia takes on nuclear mishaps
Oprahdemics dives into the Mehmet Oz controversy.
A former NFL player gets in touch with his feelings
A fake nation gets official recognition
A wall of water takes out a working class region
A group of formerly-enslaved Virginians settle in Ohio
Obama visits Hiroshima
The White House loses a key voice
Beetle mania comes to Germany
Why the evolution ban lasted into the late 60s
The shameful Tuskegee studies
The cozy relationship between the press and the intelligence community
MKULTRA and the government's human Guinea pigs
COINTELPRO and domestic spying
Part one of our four-part series on the Church Committee findings
An informational pamphlet turns into an influential book
Where we got May Day
Eleanor Roosevelt takes control
A joke candidate ends up being seriously effective
An early and largely forgotten case for reparations
A school strike in Virginia lights a spark that leads to Brown v Board
The great flood of 1927 reshapes the south
The murky origins and interesting future of 420
The Japanese program to float bombs over the ocean to U.S. soil
A socialist leader is sent to prison, where he still runs for president
Eleanor Roosevelt takes an airplane ride with a Black pilot
The social connector behind much of the civil rights movement
A forgotten prison massacre
Richard Nixon’s great White House uniform experiment is coming to an end
A string of murders leads to a community conversation
Celebrating with something new...
President Washington draws a line
Sacheen Littlefeather speaks out on Brando's beahalf
The first crazy election district.
Monopoly was originally an anti-capitalist teaching tool
Curbing Russian ambitions
A speech that laid out slavery's central role
A young girls death and the roots of the LA riots
Wilson sends 6,000 troops into Mexico
Lorraine Hansberry makes her Broadway debut
Every big music star gets in a room... but did it help?
Why New York's mayor destroyed pinball machines
Frances Perkins breaks through
A city law tries to integrate a longtime tradition
Lincoln announces himself as a viable candidate and intellectual giant
What trouble means through history.
Is the peace symbol hopelessly uncool?
A 5,000 word missive makes the case for containment
A series of debates over black life and the American dream
The shifting language from colored to negro to African-American to black...
Where Black History Month came from
An attempt to take out Chicago's elite, with soup
A huge film casts a long shadow
Federal health mandates try to curb cigarette use
A big strike in a meat-packing town tears a town apart
The most American of brands lands behind the iron curtain
A legendary Black sorority gets its start
A very early prohibition law, and the legacy of weird liquor laws
Two nuclear bombs come down over North Carolina
Carter makes an impossible decision on day one
"Two candidates, one governor"
A plot to drive up the price of silver comes crashing down
A deadly flood of sticky substance
A false missile alert sends Hawaii into a panic
A catholic priest and his plot to kidnap Kissinger
Does the language of war help in policy fights?
How history can help us understand the events of JAN6
Jesse Ventura's outrageous campaign
Andrew Jackson's parrot can't keep it together
A group of enslaved New Yorkers fight back
The zoot suit riots bring LA to the brink
The deep roots of the War on Xmas
The modern era of America's favorite war.
A tragedy at a union hall on Christmas Eve
General grant expels Jews from a large swath of the south
An Iraqi journalist hurls two shoes at an American president
Jeanette Rankin dissents
An influential group gets its start
A biracial government is overthrown
A comedian crosses the line
A plot to burn NYC down at the end of the Civil War
The WTO protests announce a new era of activism
The confederate constitution remains largely the same
When Oprah went up against big meat
How Oklahoma City sprung out of nowhere
The Kerner commission sounds the alarm
What's on that missing tape?!
A write-in campaign pushes back against the Tea Party
Sherman's March in myth and memory
The Southern Illinois liquor wars go to a whole new level
An expose of forced sterilizations in Native American clinics
A hare-brained scheme goes wrong
A Chicago senator blazes a trail
The history, and stalled history, or raising the minimum wage
A jungle primary leads to bungled spying
A NC Senate attack ad goes too far
The forgotten community that was removed to make way for Central Park
Lennon mixes the political and personal
The black sheep of the Carter family snags an endorsment
Bombings and shootings in West Virginia
The most charming letter ever
The pandemic that wasn't
The first three-way debate in modern history
A Ghanaian diplomat encounters American racism
Trump brags about assault on tape
How "borking" became misremembered
The secrety of agriculture gets weirdly racist
Mark Foley resigns after slipping into the DMs
A notable spiritualist stumps for Lincoln
A Chicago politician sets a bounty.
Political violence in the New South
Obama repeals Clinton's triangulation
The government goes after Chaplin
The lost eleven days
How the Attica story was manipulated
A ship will millions goes down
Gary Hart can't come clean
The third presidential assassination.
ACT UP protects Helms
A mother protests the Iraq War
A battle over racist internment
A program to reinvigorate excitement about space ends in tragedy
The small town of Brookeville, MD is U.S. Capitol for a day
Bombs are dropped on the largest labor movement in American history
The untold story of Nat Turner's rebellion
Banneker tries to convince Jefferson of slavery's moral corruption
An anti-Semitic attack in Atlanta
A pledge protest, Elvis's death, and aliens?
Why the Lizzie Borden case continues to fascinate us
George Allen's racist quip causes an early viral moment.
Al-Qaeda makes a major strike
Ronald Reagan's showdown with a major federal worker's union
A massive pan-African convention
A massive explosion in New York Harbor
The U.S. intervenes in Haiti, for the first of many times
Hard truths from a commission on American violence
A sit-down over race relations
100 years after his death, Congress rescues Robert E Lee
A moral panic over some racy photos
America's former fourth-largest city runs out of money
Mary Lincoln gets a pension for her husband's death
Further complicating the story of the Civil War
FDR works the angles to run again
A weather balloon sets off UFO fever
A gay rights icon dies, but her legacy lives on
How abolitionists saw the 4th
The fight to lower the voting age
Candidates start to raise massive amounts online
The first presidential candidate to be assassinated in the United States
A new euphemism enters the political lexicon
Why MA held a special place for Nelson Mandela
An athlete's death plays into a moral and political panic
The exhumation of Zachary Taylor
A Russian propagandist helps see the U.S. for what it is
A shooting at a GOP congressional baseball practice
A foul-mouthed parrot interrupts Andrew Jackson's funeral
The Fenians attack Canada to establish a free Irish republic
Oliver North tries to get back into politics
The zoot suit riots and clothing as resistance
Harriet Tubman leads Union soldiers on a night-time raid
What was lost during the burning of "Black Wall Street"
The US rejects a ship of Jewish refugees
Where the UNABOMBER came from
Texas Dems plant the seeds
The first auto speed limit kicks in
The culture wars of the 90s heat up
Dewey defeats Stassen
A firebombing in a Philly neighborhood
The country gets the Dust Bowl Blues
Sitting Bull flees to Canada for protection
JFK wins a Pulitzer and launches a brand
The Navy SEALS kill bin Laden
Bush's Mission Accomplished speech backfires
The rise of HBCUs
Hinckley and mental health in the 1980s
Who gets to check books out of the Library of Congress?
How Oklahoma City became an instant city
The country's first cent
An enslaved person in the White House makes an appeal
How Oprah turned getting sued into ratings gold
The CIA looks into mind control
How we treat animals, and how we treat people
Mayor Eastwood installs bathrooms
A slave rebellion in New York City
MLK's Beyond Vietnam speech at Riverside
Cigarette ads leave the airways
The Rosenbergs are convicted of spying
How miscommunication made Three Mile Island even worse
The long and weird history of presidential boats
Why Illinois was so far ahead of other states when it came to women's rights
A violent moment in Puerto Rico's history
A right to life and right to die issue
Troops on the ground in Honduras
George Washington talks his way out of a possible coup attempt
The Confederate State of America does a constitutional do-over
A doctor gunned down by an anti-abortion protester
Vandals steal a part of the Washington Monument
A famous nurse makes a compelling data case
A leftist bombing in DC
The very strange life of Daniel Sickles
Did fake tears doom Muskie?
Salk's vaccine miracle
A book launches second wave feminism
Chippendale's scrambles the norms around strip clubs
A brief history of the Barbary Wars
A possible fascist coup
How much did Eisenhower set the Vietnam War on an inevitable path?
A mob descend on Chinese immgrants.
The "reverse Middle Passage" and the tension between anti-slavery and abolitionists
Richard Nixon, secret environmentalist?
Warren G Harding and his mistress try to break it off
What did the 13th amendment actually do?
Did the Compromise of 1850 do its job?
Margaret Chase Smith makes a serious bid for the GOP nomination
A Michigan town gets better teeth
A dramatic speech from Jefferson Davis
Does Inauguration Day actually matter?
The day the sock puppet got thrown under the bust
Sara Jane Moore misses Ford's head by five inches
Meat extension helps fight WWII
117 years of Catholic skepticism begins to thaw
George HW Bush takes ill at a state dinner
When Richard Nixon questioned the outcome of an election he'd lost
A husband pens a letter to his wife, asking her to give up politics
Dukakis gets in a tank, blows up his candidacy
Why western states were often so progressive
When Obama's suit caused a big (big?) controversy.
The surprising roots of the war on Christmas
A short history of the War on Xmas
Why the bus boycott ended
Ellis Island opens its doors
Things start to turn for NYC's biggest power broker
Trump almost moderated a debate
Ohio and Michigan have beef
The debate for the right to vote, among women
How the attempt to ban Ulysses backfired
The US decides to join the UN
The death and legend of abolitionist John Brown
Harvey Milk's death galvanizes the gay rights movement
When FDR tried to mess with Thanksgiving
A 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island begins
Grace Hopper, myth and legacy
Why the US rejected the Treaty of Versailles
When Arnold became governor.
The encampment at Zuccotti Park is cleared.
The Vietnam Memorial opens
How the Bush-Obama transition went down
The history of the GOP courting Latino voters
What historical moment are you thinking about in this moment?
A quick update on how we're covering this election result
The New Deal seals the modern democratic coalition
A brief history of reporting election results
What the Salem witch trials were really about
Ronald Reagan makes a name for himself
The political legacy Paul Wellstone left behind
When the president is sick.
When red-baiting turned to Hollywood
The story behind Smith and Carlos's podium protest
Not a million, but still a massive march
Roosevelt gets shot, gives speech.
Why Anita Hill's testimony still matters
The mystery of the anthrax letters
JFK orders Americans to prepare for nuclear fallout
What makes for a debate zinger
Re-posting our episode about a president getting sick
A Cruz filibuster caps a shutdown fight over Obamacare
An amendment to scrap the Electoral College comes close to passing
Newt Gingrich and the new Republicans arrive
A very-short-lived republic, if you can keep it.
A young Abe Lincoln gets out of a sword fight.
Jimmy Carter tells playboy he "lusts in his heart."
The Soviet premier visits the United States.
When a candidate dies the day before election day.
When a photo op goes wrong.
A president goes to war with the country's official bank.
How a Star Trek casting may have led to Obama's rise.
How the national anthem, sports, and militarism merged.
An early civil rights case and Rosa Parks' forgotten roots.
When the idea of progressive taxation arrived in America
Jimmy Carter takes on a swamp rabbit.
A sartorial scandal for Barack Obama
How the 19th Amendment actually got passed.
A showdown between a Civil Rights icon and President Johnson at the 1964 convention
Ford tries to heal by picking a moderate VP
Why the Dakota War is largely written out of history.
Adlai Stevenson and other candidates who just keep running for president
The last big outbreak scare.
RBG goes from incrementalist to meme
The Free Soil Party was short-lived but influential
A powerful judge disappears in Tammany Hall NYC.
A Mexican worker program in the mid-40s.
Ronald Reagans kicks off his 1980 campaign with a dog whistle.
The US gets a godly motto
A House committee votes to impeach Nixon on obstruction
Did Ted Kennedy pay the price for Chappaquidick?
Women's voting rights on the frontier.
Why don't we go to the moon anymore?
Our first Sunday show talks about what makes a great convention speech.
Riots sweep through NYC
The Hong Kong Flu killed over a million worldwide.
How Al Gore became VP
How to become a state.
The man who abstained from history.
Millions of people don't get their paper.
Civil War vets get together to swap stories and rewrite history.
A protest movement that set up camp.
Juneteenth's long path to holiday.
The New Deal was just a bunch of legislation.
Four massive events on the same day
Neo-nazi David Duke tries to find a home in the Democratic party.
Shirley Chisholm makes history, again
A massive strike puts Truman on the ropes.
A famous speech with a line that was never uttered.
Would you hold hands with 5 million strangers?
Aaron Burr goes rogue, and goes on trial for treason
One of the more notorious moments in political history
Ron Paul was the right's Bernie
A group of TX legislators flees to OK
A husband demands his US Representative leave office
How an economic shock ushered in a new political era
An unknown independent from Vermont enters the Democratic primary
A collective effort that you may not have heard about.
When Howard Stern was nominee for NY Governor
The very first Vice President complained from day one.
MLK rejects appeasement
What history doesn't remember about the Lincoln assasination.
How the 17th amendment changed our democracy, for better and worse.
Before the 2008 Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama gets caught on tape.
On his way to negotiate the end of World War I, President Wilson becomes sick.
President Johnson tells the country he won't be seeking re-election.
Jody Avirgan welcomes you to his latest podcast
FDR's Court-Packing Plan Backfires (1937)
February 6, 202422min 3sec
It’s February 6th. This day in 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announces a plan to reforming the judiciary, most notably forcing older members of the Supreme Court to retire, and expand the number of justices.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why FDR felt that he had a mandate after the previous fall’s election, and why he felt that expanding the court was a key step to passing many of his reforms. Ultimately, the plan backfired and helped close the window for FDR’s reform efforts.
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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia