This week at In The Past Lane, the history podcast, I speak with documentary filmmaker, Michelle Ferrari, writer and producer of “The Eugenics Crusade,” which airs on PBS’s American Experience series on October 16, 2018. These days, eugenics is a discredited pseudoscience, one associated with … [Read more...]
Episode 100 The Eugenics Movement: The Effort to Create a Pure American Race
Episode 077 Legacy of Conquest and the Reshaping of the History of the American West
This week at In The Past Lane, the history podcast, I speak with historian Patricia Nelson Limerick about her iconic book, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. When this work was first published 30 years ago in 1987, it sent shock waves through the community of historians … [Read more...]
Episode 074 The Second Coming of the KKK in the 1920s
This week at In The Past Lane, the history podcast, I speak with historian Linda Gordon about her new book, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (Liveright, 2018). Most Americans are familiar with the first version of the KKK, the one that … [Read more...]
Episode 062 Bunk! Hoaxes, Humbug, Flim Flam, and Fake News in US History
This week at In The Past Lane, the history podcast, we explore the rise of hoaxes, humbug, plagiarists, phonies, post-facts, and fake news, beginning in the early 19th century. All societies are susceptible to hoaxes and scams, but there seems to be something about America’s culture of striving and … [Read more...]
Episode 056 Two Strange Tales of Irish America: Lord Haw Haw and Bridey Murphy
This week at In The Past Lane, the history podcast, It’s our annual St Patrick’s Day episode. In this episode, we explore the stories of two Irish Americans very few people remember, but who in their day were quite famous. One is William Joyce, who was known during World War II as Lord Haw Haw. He … [Read more...]