Axelbank Reports History and Today
"Axelbank Reports History and Today: Conversations with America’s top non-fiction authors and why their books matter right now" approaches our past and present in a way that makes anyone want to listen. National-award winning TV news reporter Evan Axelbank interviews writers of history and current events to explore how America works and how it has been shaped by both the powerful and the powerless. In conversational and engaging fashion, listeners learn about the most important events, themes and figures in American history. This podcast shows why we have no choice but to understand where we have been, to know where we are going.
Podcasting since 2020 • 175 episodes
Axelbank Reports History and Today
Latest Episodes
#174: Judith Giesberg - "Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families"
Perhaps the worst punishment that can be inflicted on someone is to be forced away from one's own family. When the slave trade was active in the United States, potentially a million people were sold away from their families either for punishmen...
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57:06
#173: Clay Risen - "Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America"
In "Red Scare," Clay Risen traces the cultural differences in contemporary America to McCarthyism and the disagreements in the 1940s and 50s over how the United States should respond to Russian efforts to influence American society. He shows ho...
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1:01:30
#172: Rebecca Brenner Graham - "Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany"
As Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham shows us in this episode, the story of the first cabinet secretary who was a woman - Frances Perkins - has been missing its most consequential chapter. Dr. Graham discovered the story of how Frances Perkins organiz...
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58:48
#171: Ronald Gruner - COVID Wars: America's Struggle Over Public Health and Personal Freedom
America's fight against COVID felt like a never ending battle over who had a right to be safe, to get a vaccine, to work at their place of employment and to visit places of entertainment. Rules around vaccines, restaurants, schools and business...
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49:31
#170: Steve Gillon - "Presidents at War: How World War II Shaped a Generation of Presidents, from Eisenhower and JFK through Reagan and Bush"
Nearly eighty million were killed. Seventy countries were involed. Two nuclear bombs were dropped. The world was reshaped in its aftermath. World War II wasn't just an event in the lives of seven future presidents, it was the ...
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