Roundup

Historian John Demos revisits last witch trial in America [audio 4min]

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the last witch trial held in North America. Yale history professor John Demos tells Liane Hansen about the circumstances surrounding the last witch trial.

Jerry Lee Lewis: 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On' [audio 7min]

Recorded in only one take at the Sun Studio in Memphis, Jerry Lee Lewis's original recording of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" propelled the rock legend to instant fame. In 2005, the Library of Congress selected the song for the National Recording Registry. After 50 years of igniting keyboards, audiences and scandals, you'd think Jerry Lee Lewis might want to take a break. But "The Killer" is still rocking. ~Webpage includes extended report, music and video clips, photos.

The Encyclopedie: The great project of the Enlightenment [audio 45min]

This week we explore the mammoth undertaking that was the Encyclopédie -- one of its editors, D’Alembert, described its mission as giving an overview of knowledge, as if gazing down on a vast labyrinth of all the branches of human knowledge, observing where they separate or unite and even catching sight of the secret routes between them. It was a project that attracted some of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment -- Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot -- striving to bring together all that was

Hungary's celebrations overshadowed by controversy [audio 4min]

Sean Whelan, Europe Editor, reports from Budapest on the anti-government protests that highlighted the anniversary of the 1956 uprising.

True crime from the 1820s: Shades of Capote [audio 6min]

In Cold Blood wasn't the first book to turn true crime into literature. Consider the work of London journalist James Curtis. In 1828 Curtis detailed her brutal murder of Maria Marten by her lover, William Corder. Curtis -- foreshadowing the approach later taken by Truman Capote -- threw himself into the story. He interviewed members of Corder's family during the trial, and even slept in Corder's bed. Paul Collins, a professor of writing at Portland State University, delves into every deta

After 50 years, Ginsberg's 'Howl' still resonates [audio 8min]

When poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti heard Howl in 1955, he sent a telegram to Alan Ginsberg."I greet you at the beginning of a great career," he wrote. (He was borrowing from what he remembered as Emerson's words to Walt Whitman upon receiving one of the first copies of Leaves of Grass.) Ferlinghetti recognized that Ginsberg's work had the potential to reshape the dominant poetic tradition. Fifty years later, the poem stands as a watershed. ~Webpage includes extended repo

Taking the boring out of George Washington [audio 8min]

Outside George Washington's Mount Vernon home in Virginia, we asked visitors to take out a dollar bill and tell us their impression of the first president. We heard "leader," "sleepy-eyed" and "lawyerly." These words are daggers to the heart of Jim Rees, executive director of Mount Vernon. "There are some people who've commented that Washington must have been born old," Rees says. "Occasionally, they use the word 'boring.' And that really hurts us.&qu

Global Hit -- John Peel [audio 8min]

The late British disc jockey John Peel first attracted a British audience as a DJ on the pirate radio station Radio London. When such rouge stations were outlawed in 1967, Peel made a final broadcast of his program, called "The Perfumed Garden." Anchor Ken Bader speaks with BBC producers Hermeet Chadha and Tom Ravenscroft, who've reconstructed that final broadcast.

A short history of Daylight Saving Time [audio 4min]

Commentator S. Pearl Sharp breaks down the history of Daylight Saving Time and why it can be hazardous to your health. Sharp is writer, actress and filmmaker living in Los Angeles.

Old East Berlin fades away amid renovations [audio 4min]

The German capital, Berlin, is in the middle of a makeover. After decades of being split between East and West, it was united when the Berlin Wall fell 17 years ago. The East is being renovated or rebuilt. Berliners say that's not just a physical change, but a political and emotional one, too. City planners say Berlin, where the two sides of the Cold War rubbed up against each other, is hard to knit together precisely because of history and emotions. ~Webpage includes extended report by Emily Ha

British Communist Party existed from 1920 to 1991 [audio 30min]

Ivor Gaber recounts the history of the British Communist Party, from the appeal of Communism in the 1930s to the gradual disillusionment that led to the Party's collapse.

History of perfume dates back to Theophratus [audio 6min]

When it came to perfume, the Greek philosopher Theophratus was in no doubt what men and women should be wearing. Men, he advised should wear something light: lily or rose perhaps. Women, being constituted of a much baser and thus a more pungent nature, were advised to use something stronger to mask their natural scent: myrhh, burnt resin, cinnamon or marjoram were all"hard to disperse" and thus thought more likely to be up to the job. In the next in our series on the history of cosmetics, our re

The Long War, Part I [audio 13min]

Boston Globe reporter Charles Sennott was in Afghanistan when US planes attacked in 2001. He recently returned to Afghanistan and Pakistan and took along a microphone. He revisited places where al Qaeda remains active, and where anger against America is rallying young militants. Today, he reports on the growing Islamic militancy in Pakistan. ~Webpage links to transcript, reporter's notebook.

Charles Gati re-examines Hungary's 'Failed Illusions' [audio 7min]

In his new book Failed Illusions, scholar Charles Gati offers a new assessment of the Hungarian anticommunist uprising of 1956. Gati argues that the failure was widespread. He says Hungary's leaders failed to lead; Soviet reformers seriously considered compromise, but in the end rejected it; and Washington did nothing for the rebels, despite its professed anticommunism. The Eisenhower administration talked about the liberation of Eastern Europe and the rollback of Soviet power -- and broa

Childhood in British Empire was time of great changes [audio 15min]

"Invention of Childhood" is major 30-part narrative history series exploring British childhood and the experience of British children over the last thousand years, with one 15-minute programme each weekday from Mon 25th Sept for 6 weeks. Each programme may be streamed online for 7 days after broadcast. Week Five -- 23 to 27 Oct: Children of the Empire and the Early 20th Century. Episode 21: What Is the Meaning of Empire Day? The novels of G.A. Henty and maps on the schoolroom wall were

Edward Perkins was African American ambassador to Apartheid South Africa [audio 8min]

Juan Williams begins a series of profiles of American pioneers with the story of Edward Perkins, the first black U.S. ambassador to South Africa and to the United Nations. ~Website offers Williams's extended report, phots, book excerpt.

On 1956 anniversary, unrest rattles Hungary [audio 3min]

Hungarians on Monday commemorated the beginning of the 1956 uprising that was crushed by Soviet tanks. But there were also contemporary anti-government protests. The protests have continued on and off since September, after it was discovered that the prime minister lied about the economy to win an election. Report by Emily Harris.

What went before the Enlightenment? [audio 30min]

The Enlightenment is one of the most dramatic periods in Scottish history, which witnessed the birth of New Knowledge that shaped the modern world. What went before? Dr Fiona Watson looks into intense civil discontent, economic hardship and the serious questioning of Great Britain's 1707 Act of Union.

South Africa still affected by Britain's post-Napoleonic emigration policy [audio 1st 9min]

Nick Baker and the "Making History" team examine listeners' historical queries and get to the bottom of historical mysteries, local legends, family curiosities and architectural oddities. Listener Joan Mason has an ancestor who emigrated to the Eastern Cape of Southern Africa in 1820. It was a scheme sponsored by the British government to escape the poverty of post-Napoleonic Britain, but what Joan (and many others) didn't realise was that this was a underhand way of creating a human s

Survivor of Lodz Ghetto recounts Holocaust atrocities [audio 6min @16:00]

In the spring of 1940, the German forces occupying Poland drove the Jews of Lodz into the Holocaust's second-largest and most hermetically-sealed ghetto. It functioned both as a sweatshop serving the German war effort, and a prison for Jews en route to the death camps of Chelmno and Auschwitz. Henryk Ross was a photographer employed by the ghetto's Department of Statistics who kept a clandestine diary of ghetto life in powerful and often brilliant images. When the ghetto's liquidation began, he