April 18, 1806. In his study, President Thomas Jefferson signs a law that doesn’t look like an act of war. It bans imports. Leather. Silk. Glass. Playing cards. A strange list. A quiet move. But Jefferson is trying to confront one of the most powerful empires in the world, without firing a shot.

Britain is stopping American ships at sea. Boarding them. Taking sailors by force. The country is furious. War feels close.

Jefferson has another idea.

How did Jefferson—an avatar of individual liberty—become the president who suspended due process, militarized the coastline, and nearly tore his country apart? And what can his legacy teach us about the prevailing winds of global trade?

Special thanks to Harvey Strum, professor of History and Political Science at Russell Sage College in Albany and Troy, New York; and Lawrence Hatter,  associate professor of Early American History at Washington State University.

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This episode comes from Points North, a podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. You can listen to Points North wherever you get your podcasts.

Lake Champlain is more than 16 times smaller than Lake Ontario, the smallest Great Lake. But in 1998, Congress designated Lake Champlain as the sixth Great Lake, teeing off a historical and cultural fight over which lakes can really call themselves Great.

Radio excerpts in this episode were originally broadcast on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Weekend Edition”. TV excerpts from “NBC Nightly News”.

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April 7, 1922. A cabinet secretary signs a secret deal and locks it in his desk.

The land in question holds one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the country. Officially, it belongs to the U.S. Navy. Unofficially, it’s just been handed to a private oilman – no bidding, no oversight, no witnesses.

For Albert Fall, it’s a win-win. For the oil industry, it’s a jackpot. But big money is hard to hide.

Within days, the deal leaks. At first, no one seems to care. The economy is booming. The president is popular. Washington shrugs. Then, investigators start asking a simple question: where did Albert Fall get all of this new money?

Before Watergate, there was Teapot Dome.

How did a secret oil deal become the biggest political scandal of its time? And how did it change the way the U.S. government polices itself?

Special thanks to Joshua Kastenberg,  professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law; and Jack McElroy, author of  Citizen Carl: The Editor Who Cracked Teapot Dome, Shot a Judge, and Invented the Parking Meter. 

Other sources include: The Teapot Dome Scandal by Laton McCartney, Tempest Over Teapot Dome by David Stratton, and Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana by J. Leonard Bates.

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April 3, 1851. A man who escaped slavery is grabbed off the streets of Boston and thrown into a carriage. He fights back, shouting to the crowd, but it doesn’t matter. Under a new federal law, even the North isn’t safe.

The Fugitive Slave Act has turned cities like Boston into hunting grounds. Freedom seekers are being captured, and ordinary citizens are being forced to help.

But across the North, resistance is growing. In Pennsylvania, a man named William Parker is building a network to fight back. When slavecatchers come to his door, that resistance explodes into violence.

How did one law push the country dramatically closer to war? And what happens when the people targeted by this law refuse to surrender?

Special thanks to  Dr. Iris Leigh Barnes, director of the Hosanna School Museum; Christy Coleman, public historian and museum executive; Kellie Carter Jackson,  chair of the Africana Studies Department at Wellesley College; and Jamahl Wimberley, who provided the voice of William Parker.

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March 29th, 1923. A new play opens in Berlin, and quietly changes the future. Onstage are workers who never tire, never complain, and never stop. They’re faster, stronger, and more efficient than humans in every way. They’re called robots.

A sci-fi play born out of war and industrialization sparks a global obsession and a lasting fear. Because from the very beginning, the robot wasn’t just a technological breakthrough. It was a rebellion waiting to happen.

How did a playwright invent the robot? Why did his idea spread so quickly? And what does it reveal about the way we think about the future of science?

Special thanks to Dennis Jerz, Professor of English and Media at Seton Hill University; John Jordan, author of Robots; and Jitke Cejkova, editor of R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life.

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March 18, 1879. A crowd gathers around an indoor track in Brooklyn, NY, as an Irish immigrant named Bartholomew O’Donnell attempts a strange feat: walking 80 miles in 26 hours. Newspapers claim he’s eighty years old. Lap after lap, he circles the track: smoking a pipe, sipping hot tea, and pushing through the night.

O’Donnell came to New York thirty years earlier, fleeing the Great Potato Famine. Like many Irish immigrants, he spent decades doing manual labor and trying to get ahead in a city that often viewed newcomers with suspicion.

For generations, stories like his shaped how historians understood famine-era Irish immigrants.

In this special live episode recorded at the Tenement Museum ahead of St. Patrick’s Day, Sally speaks with historian Tyler Anbinder, author of Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York, about what new research reveals about the lives of Irish immigrants in America, and what their story can tell us about immigration today.

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Why did Orson Welles take on a murder mystery? Listen for yourself.

This week, we're sharing a special preview of Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier from the podcast Radio Diaries. In this series, we learn how Welles used his platform to shed light on a crime in a small, southern town. A crime that became a spark for the budding Civil Rights movement.

For more, visit radiodiaries.org

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March 10, 1949. Defendant Mildred Gillars arrives at a courthouse to hear her verdict. To trial-watchers, she’s known as Axis Sally—the American woman who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Berlin during World War II. In taunting tones, she spent years pushing anti-Semitic and anti-Allies messages aimed at weakening the morale of American soldiers. But Gillars insists that she’s misunderstood, even innocent. That she’s an artist, she loves her country, and was forced to do what she did… or die. How did a struggling actress from Maine become a potent weapon of the Nazis? And is there a way to understand the choices that she made?

Special thanks to our guests, Richard Lucas, author of Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany, and Michael Flamm, professor of history at Ohio Wesleyan University. Thanks also to the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.

** This episode originally aired March 6, 2023.

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March 5, 1953. The Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, is on his deathbed, and he’s turning blue. At the end of his life, Stalin is surrounded by his closest advisors, but these comrades aren’t hoping for his quick recovery. For days, they’ve been sneaking away from their vigil, plotting. The moment Stalin’s heart stops, they leap into action. What happens when a tyrant falls? And what role did the inner circle play in bringing an end to Stalin? 

Special thanks to our guest, Sheila Fitzpatrick, historian and author of The Death of Stalin.

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March 1, 1951. Two Texas horse trainers sit down to lunch with Walt Disney. They assume he wants to use their animals in a movie. Instead, Walt leans in and tells them about something that doesn’t exist yet. Not a carnival. Not an amusement park. Something movie-like in the real world. And if he’s going to build it, he’ll need horses.

At that moment, Disneyland is just an idea in Walt’s head. But within a few years, he’ll clear 160 acres of orange groves in Anaheim and attempt to build that dream in barely twelve months. The budget will balloon. The rivers will drain into the soil. The rides will be welded together overnight. And Walt will stake his company — and his personal fortune — on opening the gates on time.

Why was Disneyland such a gamble? And how did Walt essentially invent a whole new form of live entertainment?  

Special thanks to our guests: Leslie Iwerks,  director of Disneyland Handcrafted; Mark Catalina, producer of Disneyland Handcrafted;  Becky Cline, director of the Walt Disney Archives; and Tom Fitzgerald, chief storytelling executive and senior creative executive  at Walt Disney Imagineering.

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February 14, 1905. A stick of dynamite detonates under the Hudson River — and the ground above swallows a locomotive whole. It's the latest setback in an audacious plan to tunnel beneath the river and bring trains into Manhattan. The Pennsylvania Railroad is the largest corporation in the world, but the goopy riverbed keeps fighting back. How did they finally make it across? And why are these 115-year-old tunnels still the most critical infrastructure in America today?

Special thanks to our guests: Polly Desjarlais, content and research manager at the New York Transit Museum; Jill Jonnes, author of Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels; and Andy Sparberg, former LIRR manager, transit historian, and author of From a Nickel to a Token: The Journey from Board of Transportation to MTA.

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