Roundup

New WWII exhibition opens [video 3 min 31 sec]

It is 70 years since the outbreak of World War II and to mark the occasion London's Imperial War Museum is hosting a new exhibition. Outbreak 1939 explores the build-up to and preparations for war. As Colette McBeth explains, among the items on display for the first time is then Prime Minister Neville's Chamberlain's brief diary account of the day.

500lb WWII bomb detonated [video 37 sec]

A 500lb WWII bomb discovered near Allerston and Ebberston in North Yorkshire has been detonated in a controlled blast by the RAF.

Penn Museum Assisting on Cultural Heritage Project in Iraq [video 7 minutes 18 seconds]

In April 2009, Dr. Brian Rose, Deputy Director of the Penn Museum was invited by the State Department to help coordinate cultural preservation efforts in Iraq. Along with a team of army specialists and other cultural experts, Dr. Rose visited several cultural heritage sites across the country that experienced significant damage during the past wars. Among these sites was the ancient city of Ur, known as the cradle of civilization and the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. Here, we are guided t

"The history of the US health insurance industry" [podcast 6 min 16 sec]

The conversation around health care has heated up in recent weeks, especially at town hall meetings. Lawmakers have faced heckling, booing and constituents fighting with each other. Today, President Obama held the second of his forums. He spoke from an airplane hangar in Belgrade, Montana. Obama's town hall meeting earlier this week in Portsmouth, N.H drew attention due to a protester wearing a gun. He was also carrying a sign that included part of the Thomas Jefferson quote:"The tree of libe

"Uncommon Knowledge: Christopher Hitchens & Robert Service" [video 35 min 55 sec]

Leon Trotsky, one of the leading figures of the Russian October Revolution, remains a controversial figure. For many, Trotsky's assassination in Mexico marked a tragedy in Soviet history, cutting off the possibility of a humane version of communism taking hold in Russia, with Trotsky himself arguing that he would have held back the tides of arbitrary rule and terror. But is that so? In answering this question and others about Trotsky's ideas, political defeat, and exile, Hitchens and Service spe

"Remembering The Construction Of The Berlin Wall" [podcast 3 min 27 sec]

In the early hours of Aug. 13, 1961, I was called in my Berlin hotel room to come and see what was happening at the border between East and West Berlin. We had been expecting some move to stem the exodus of people from East Germany that was threatening the viability of the communist state. What I saw was East German police sealing the sector border with rolls of barbed wire that would soon be replaced by a masonry wall. West Berliners gathered nearby in anger and anguish. For East

"The Orphan Train" [podcast]

"The Orphan Train" is an unnarrated documentary about one of the least known and yet most significant social experiments in American history. In September 1854, the first "orphan train" carried 46 homeless children from New York City to far off homes to become laborers in the pioneer West. It was the first step in what was to become the emigration of as many as 250,000 orphan children to new homes throughout the entire United States. Some children found kind homes and familie

Sotomayor Confirmed as First Hispanic on Supreme Court [video 15 min 27 sec]

The U.S. Senate voted 68-31 Thursday to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, making her the first Hispanic and third woman to serve as a justice. Jeffrey Brown talks to legal experts about what this means for the Hispanic community and beyond.

WWI veteran laid to rest [video 2 min 50 sec]

The funeral service for Britain's last surviving World War I veteran has taken place at Wells Cathedral in Somerset. Thousands of people lined the streets of Wells to pay tribute to Harry Patch, who died at the age of 111. At the end of the service bugles sounded the Last Post.

Confronting Race At The White House In 1929 [podcast 1 min 38 sec]

This week's scene of the president, vice president, a Harvard professor and Cambridge policeman meeting so civilly over beers might be an occasion to note how much history can change. Host Scott Simon takes a moment to note that back in 1929, Lou Hoover, the wife of President Herbert Hoover, used an event at the White House as an opportunity to confront the race issue by inviting the wife of a newly-elected African-American congressman to tea.

Harry Jaffa: Crisis of the House Divided [video 25 min 4 sec]

In 1959, Harry Jaffa published Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Four hundred pages of close textual analysis, biography and political philosophy, the book transformed the scholarly understanding of Lincoln, placing the prairie lawyer on a level with Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton and the other Founders. Marking the 50th anniversary of the book's appearance, the University of Chicago Press has just published a new edition. "

Looking for Work: A History of Unemployment [podcast 53 min]

With the unemployment rate at a 25-year high, BackStory is exploring the phenomenon of joblessness throughout American history. How has the changing nature of employment shaped the experience of not having a job? Have the moral connotations of work evolved? What has it meant for American workers that there are always new immigrants – or poor migrants – who are willing to work for less? Over the course of the hour, the History Guys speak with historian Alex Keyssar, take calls from

Segments 2 & 4: "Sam Adams Darcy on the San Francisco Strike of 1934." [two part podcast 19 min 56 sec; 25 min 17 sec]

Here is an edited selection from talks delivered by former U.S. Communist Party activist and leader Samuel Adams Darcy (1905-2005) at Cornell University in November of 1975. The talks were delivered to students in Professors Roger Keeran's and Cletus Daniels' classes. The tapes of the talks are now part of a collection of scores of recordings that are currently being digitized and processed by the Sam Darcy Aural History Project (a project of Talking History/University at Albany). We thank the D

Segment 1: "The San Francisco General Strike, 1934." [Rebroadcast] [podcast 8 min 10 sec]

Marking the 75th anniversary of the San Francisco General Strike of 1934, we bring you this selection from a Pacifica Radio Archives 1964 documentary on the San Francisco Waterfront strike. That strike grew out of broader West Coast initiatives by longshoremen and sailors seeking union recognition, a general labor contract, and union-run hiring halls. It lasted 83 days and, after bloody confrontations with police, led to a four day general strike. For more information about the strike, see Davi

Anti-Americanism vs. American Ignorance [video 1 hr 17 min 17 sec]

From the early 19th century onwards, American politicians and the American people have frequently been seen as culturally and intellectually inferior by outsiders. Should these claims be seen as anti-American stereotypes and prejudices or is there reasonable evidence to support such conclusions? Brendon O'Connor, Associate Professor in American Politics at the University of Sydney, explores the historical origins of a set of powerful tropes and stereotypes that emerged describing th

Segment 3: "John Kelly on The Black Death and the Irish Famine. (2009)" [podcast 20 in 39 sec]

John Kelly is the author of The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (2005) and, most recently, has completed a work focusing on the Irish famine of the mid-19th century: The Graves Were Walking (2009). Kelly is also author of more than ten books on science. This talk by him, presented in association with the academic conference "Rhetorics of Plague: Early/Modern Trajectories of Biohazard," and sponsored by the University at A

Segment 1: Alexandros Mallias on the Greek Classics." [podcast 27 min 50 sec]

George Liston Seay interviews Alexandros Mallias, Greek Ambassador to the United States, in this segment, from Dialogue. The two discuss the influence of the classics on past and contemporary politics: "The history of the Peloponnesian Wars and the works of Plato, Aristotle and Homer have guided the actions of Western statesmen for ages. The plays of Sophocles and other Greek playwrights influenced the leadership philosophy of Martin Luther King. The classic texts of ancient Greece have en

60 years of Commonwealth in Royal exhibition [video 4 min 58 sec]

A special exhibition celebrating 60 years of the Commonwealth is being held at Buckingham Palace, as part of the annual summer opening.

Film about composer Holst found [video 2 min 34 sec]

Rare film giving a unique insight into the life of Cheltenham-born composer Gustav Holst has been discovered by producers at BBC Gloucestershire.

Charting NASA's Future: To The Moon And Beyond [podcast 7 min 47 sec]

Forty years after a small, spidery-looking spaceship carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the surface of the moon, NASA is working toward another moon shot. But this time around, the reasons to go to the moon are much more complex than in the days of the space race. The Cold War loomed large on May 25, 1961, when President John F. Kennedy spoke before a special joint session of Congress and declared, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achievi