Segment 2: "Thomas Hobbes: The Leviathan, 1651 (Reading from LibriVox, 2008)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:40.
From LibriVox, we bring you this reading of a short selection from the Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, written in 1651 by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). The Leviathan is one of the foundational books of political and social philosophy. In it, Hobbes explores the nature of the "social contract" and the rights of individuals and the commonwealth as they pertain to balancing social order and individual freedom. For more information on Hobbes and The Leviathan, see: Thomas Hobbes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

November 11, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "History Under Siege, Episode 4: Battles Over the Past in Argentina" (2008).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 25:05
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:28
Our thanks again to producer Michelle Rayner, Executive Producer of Radio National's (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) history-focused radio show, Hindsight, for this week's look at contested history in Argentina. This is the fourth and final segment of a 4-part series that explored "history wars" as waged in four nations: Japan, France, Australia, and Argentina. Here's Hindsight's summary of this segment: "How does a country deal with the painful and divisive memory of state sanctioned terror, which turned the foundatons of civil society upside down, and saw the loss of a whole generation? This is what Argentina is still grappling with, thirty years on from the military dictatorship which came to be known as the country's 'Dirty War'. After the demise of the junta in 1983, and as the Falklands War continued to drag on in a remote part of South America, Argentina began the slow and traumatic task of accounting for the terrible cost of the seven-year dictatorship upon the very fabric of society. Human rights organisations estimate that, across the military junta's reign, from 1976 to 1983, up to 30,000 people were 'disappeared', possibly dead, many of them having been detained in hundreds of cladestine centres which the regime set up across Argentina. Trade unions, religous orders, militant and non-militant student activist groups�the dictatorship was indiscriminate in its application of terror, repression and control. But the traumatic legacies of the dictatorship did not diminish once democracy had been restored; those Argentineans who survived the terror, as well as the post-dictatorship generation, would continue to live with the deep scars of this history. The Argentinean phrase 'the past is a predator' is particularly apt when exploring the nexus between memory and traumatic collective history. But there's also a fierce determination inside Argentina today, to account for the existence of the 'predator', and to find a way in which the history of the dictatorship can be both articulated, and atoned for. From truth commissions to retrospective justice and reparation, the overwhelming sentiment driving this task of memorialising Argentina's dirty war is epitomised in another collective official creed: Nunca Mas, or 'never again'."
For more information about his program and about Hindsight's other offerings, check out their Web site at: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight.

Segment 2: "From the Archives: Contract With America ~ Newt Gingrich Speaks in April, 1994."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 12:27.
Hopeful of a Republican Party sweep of the November 1994 elections -- which took place -- Georgia Republican congressman Newt Gingrich began to lay out in public some of the policies he hoped would be implemented upon his party's victory. The Party's program came to be known as the "Contract With America," and Gingrich, along with Larry Hunter, Robert Walker, Richard Armey, Bill Paxon, Tom DeLay, John Boehner and Jim Nussle were major architects of that plan. Inlcuded in the "Contract With America," were such political and fiscal reforms as: no more exclusions for Congress from the laws of the land; the employment of an independent auditing firm to audit Congress for waste and fiscal abuse; reduction of Congressional committees; limitation of committee chair terms; elimination of proxy voting in committees; public meetings for all committees (except on issues of security); 3/5 vote required to pass all tax increases; and the adoption of annual zero base-line budgeting. Here is an excerpt of one of several press conferences Gingrich held during 1994 addressing his Party's planned reforms. For an excellent investigative biography of Gingrich, produced back in 1996 by PBS's Frontline, see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/.

November 4, 2010
[REPEAT PROGRAM - INTERNET BROADCAST ONLY THIS WEEK} Segments 1 and 3: "King and Gandhi's Nonviolence."
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 26:34.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 22:54.
This program comes to us from Pacifica's Against the Grain. Stanford University Professor of History and Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project editor Dr. Clayborne Carson and Barnard College Professor and Gandhi expert Dennis Dalton discuss ideas about nonviolence as promoted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. They note that both men's notions of nonviolent resistance did not simply involve an advocacy of avoidance of violence, but something far more sophisticated and carefully considered. [Originally broadcast by Against the Grain on 1-16-2006].

Segment 3: "From the Archives: The HUAC Testimony of Bertolt Brecht (1947)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 4:36.
This is a selection from Bertolt Brecht's October 30, 1947 testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Brecht's full testimony lasted around an hour and he willingly asnwered all questions put to him by the Committee, carefully noting that because he was a "guest" of the United States, he did not feel that he could avail himself of the constitutional protections that other non-cooperative witnesses claimed. Still, his "ccoperation" was carefully orchestrated by him and his friend Hermann Budzislawski, who helped him rehearse for his Committee appearance and come up with seemingly honest though quite imprecise answers to Committee members' probing questions. The following day, Brecht left the U.S. for Europe; he never came back. For more about Brecht and his American years, see: http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/arc/libraries/feuchtwanger/exhibits/Brecht/.

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October 28, 2010
"Law, Race, and Slavery in American History: An Interview with Annette Gordon-Reed." [TALKING HISTORY WAS NOT BROADCAST TODAY. WE BRING YOU THIS EPISODE FROM OUR ARCHIVE, ORIGINALLY BROADCAST ON APRIL 24, 2003.]
Part 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 22:21.
Part 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 23:49.
Prof. Richard Hamm of the University at Albany interviews New York University Law School professor Annette Gordon-Reed, author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, co-author with Vernon Jordan of Vernon Can Read: A Memoir and and the editor of Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History. The interview focuses on law, racism, and slavery in American history.

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Oct. 21, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "History Under Siege, Episode 3: Battles Over the Past in Australia" (2008).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 33:47
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 20:24
We continue with Hindsight's series, "History Under Seige," examing contestations over national identity and diverging national historical narratives in four countries: Japan, France, Australia, and Argentina. Today we focus on Australia: "While Australia has witnessed its own sustained ideological battles over the interpretation of its national history, the issues and politics which have framed these debates have rarely been scrutinized against comparable experiences in other countries around the world. The recent focus in Australia on the teaching of national history, amid concerns over historical literacy, was played out in the United States in the early 1990s, and the experience in both countries was mirrored by similar sets of anxieties and arguments regarding historical understanding, citizenship and national identity. And like the United States, and countries in Asia and Europe, Australia has also seen the increasing politicisation of the past -- as politicians invoke history to serve present day interests. What can be learned from more careful scrutiny of the political use of the past, or particular aspects of the past, in the process of governance and policy making? And is there a link between the political use of the past, and the popular interest in one area of history over another? Why, for example, do young people in Australia today say they prefer to learn about the Anzac legend rather than the history of Indigenous Australia?" For more information on this and other Hindsight programs, go to [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight].

Segment 2: "From the Archives: The Nixon-Kennedy Debates (selection), 1960."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 6:22.
In late September and into October of 1960 four debates were held between Massachusetts Senator John Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon. The debates inaugurated a new era in presidential elections -- one increasingly dominated by television. Over 70 million tuned into these four debates, which focused on domestic issues and foreign policy. The fourth debate, which took place on October 21, centered on relations with Cuba amd Castro. Here we present most of Kennedy's opening statement at that debate. Most commentators and historians focus on the demeanor and physical appearance of the candidates at these debates -- noting that "the visual contrast was dramatic" -- hence acknowledging the importance of visual elements in political campaigning in the new era of television. lit. For more information on the Kennedy-Nixon debates, see: http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=kennedy-nixon. Complete copies of the debates are available on www.archive.org and elsewhere on line.

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October 14, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Kennedy and the Peace Corps" (2010).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3 Unavailable by request of producers.
Time: 33:42
PART 2: Real Media. MP3 Unavailable by request of producers.
Time: 15:34
From producer Lester Graham, we bring you this documentary examining the early history of the Peace Corps -- now fifty years old: "During the 1960 Nixon and Kennedy campaigns for president, John F. Kennedy made a late-night stop at the University of Michigan and challenged students to take their skills to the developing world to help others. The students embraced that challenge and proposed a program that Kennedy would call the Peace Corps. This documentary examines Kennedy's motivation and the students stories as the idea was developed. It also tracks the obstacles, including a reluctant Congress and the CIA which tried to infiltrate the ranks of the Peace Corps."

Segment 2: "From the Archives: A LibriVox Reading of Louisa May Alcott's Work: A Story of Experience."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:41.
Popular American novelist, essayist, and short story writer Louisa May Alcott is best known for her nineteenth-century domestic novels, Little Women (1868-69) and Little Men (1871), but she wrote many serious adult novels -- heavily based, like her other works, on her own life experiences. Among these novels was Work: A Story of Experience, published in 1872. The book explored issues of social justice and women's engagement with roles beyond the family. Here is a short selection from the novel, read by Wendy Belcher for LibriVox. For the full novel, see: (http://librivox.org/work-a-story-of-experience-by-louisa-may-alcott/). From more information about Alcott, check out the resources at the Web site for the film Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind 'Little Women' at: Louisa May Alcott The Woman Behind 'Little Women'.

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Oct. 7, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "History Under Siege, Episode 2: Battles Over the Past in France" (2008).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 29:28
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 24:06
We continue with Hindsight's series, "History Under Seige," this time focusing on France: "The spectre of colonialism hangs over many of the fundamental issues faced by contemporary French society. Whether it be violent riots in Paris's housing estates, or debates about immigration, religion, the state, and whether or not French national identity can be mandated by the government, the legacies of colonialism lie at the heart of all these simmering current tensions. When France reluctantly withdrew from one of its last external possessions, Algeria, it would take more than twenty years for the nation to fully acknowledge the terrible cost incurred as a result of the violent war that it waged, from 1954 to 1962, with its former colony. Ingrained Gallic intransigence over the process of de-colonisation which began in earnest throughout the world after the second world war, meant that the struggle over Algeria's desire for independence would take a terrible and enduring toll on mainland France. At the end of the war in 1962, more than one million French Algerians, or 'pied-noirs', were repatriated to France, along with scores of 'harkis', those Algerians who fought on the side of the French during the war of independence. For nearly thirty years, the French embodied what some historians have described as a state of amnesia in response to the history and legacy of the Algerian war. History textbooks only made reference to the war as 'the events', and the study of colonialism has emerged relatively recently as a sub-discipline of history. But if the French chose to 'forget' the history of Algeria, and of colonialism more generally for so long, then the 1990s was the decade which saw memories, and debates about this history, come flooding back into the public arena. The presence of former president Jacques Chirac is central to the emergence of interest in France's colonial history. From the creation of museums and memorials, to attempts the rewrite the school history books with a more romantic version of the Algerian war, Chirac turned the focus upon the history which French society had tried, for so long, to elide from national memory. Now the French 'history wars' cannot be extinguished, as France grapples with the notion of a post-colonial identity in a rapidly convergent Europe." For more information on this and other Hindsight programs, go to [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight].

Segment 2: "From the Archives: Melina Mercouri, 1968."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 3:57.
From Pacifica Radio Archives, we offer you this brief 1968 archival segment featuring Melina Mercouri speaking at the New School in New York City in 1968: "In April 1967, a group of Greek military colonels forged a right-wing military junta and successfully lead a coup d'etat that remained in power until 1974. In 1968 Greek actress Melina Mercouri was thrown into the political battle when she was stripped of her Greek citizenship. Pacifica Radio was there to record her outrage not only at the Greek Military junta but at the United States government for being the third nation to recognize the junta leaders. When democracy returned to Greece, Melina Mercouri became the first member of parliament for the Panhellenic Socialist Movement and in 1981 became the first female minister of culture in Greece. Mercouri died in 1994."

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Sept. 30, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Polk Street Stories" (2010).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3 Unavailable by request of producers.
Time: 33:42
PART 2: Real Media. MP3 Unavailable by request of producers.
Time: 15:34
From transom.org, we bring you this documentary by Public Historian Joey Plaster who spent a year gathering more than seventy oral interviews from people who witnessed San Francisco's Polk Street�s transition from a working class queer neighborhood to an upscale entertainment district. Here is Plaster's description of the documentary and its subject: "For decades, the street had been a national destination for queer youth and transgender women, many of them fleeing abusive or unwelcoming homes. But by the mid-1990s, the last of the working class bars that formed the backbone of the Polk community were being replaced by a new bloc of mid-income businesses and residents. Long-term Polk residents were incredibly emotional about these changes. Many considered the neighborhood to be their first real home. Now they saw their family�s gathering places evaporating. The conflict was sometimes dramatic: owners of one gay bar claimed that the new business association forced them off the street. A gay activist group made national news when they plastered the street with �wanted� posters featuring a photo of the new association�s president. These intense reactions suggested a rich history, but I found that it had not been recorded. I feared it would be lost with the scene. I had prior experience as an oral historian. This was my first effort to find overlap with radio, which I�ve long felt is the best medium for broadcasting intimate, personal stories from �marginal� populations."

Segment 2: "From the Archives: The Townsend Plan, 1935."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:41.
Dr. Francis Everett Townsend (January 13, 1867�September 1, 1960) was an American physician who was known for his radical suggestions for an economic stimulant and old age security plan during the Great Depression. He formulated what he called an "Old Age Revolving Pension Plan" that came to be known as the "Townsend Plan." It was so pupular, it probably influenced the establishment of the Roosevelt administration's Social Security system -- a far less radical system than what Townsend had in mind. Here is a short selection of the audio track of a March of Time newsreel on the plan (due to fair use copyright restrictions, this has been heavily edited and cut). For more information on the Townsend Plan, see: http://www.ssa.gov/history/towns5.html, as well as Edwin Amenta, When Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).

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Sept. 23, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "History Under Siege, Episode 1: Battles Over the Past in Japan" (2008).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 25:05
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:28
Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) Radio National broadcasts dozens of radio programs focusing on science and the humanities. One of them is Hindsight [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight], produced by Radio National's Social History and Features Unit. Michelle Rayner, Executive producer of Hindsight, put together the series we begin today. Here, from Hindsight's Web page, is a description of the series and the specific segment we aired: "History, like politics, is about national identity. So the work of historians frequently comes under attack, amid calls for the refurbishment or restoration of national identity. From the United States to the decolonised countries in Africa and South East Asia, the trend towards historical revisionism has been surprising in its breadth, scale and diversity of argument. History under siege: battles over the past surveys the tensions and debates around history, identity and contemporary society in four countries around the world. It features interviews with historians, as well as oral history and testimony, and archival material. . . . The shadow of the past continues to haunt contemporary Japan, through the complex and often conflicting interplay of history, politics and national identity. The enduring legacies of Japan's imperial history lay at the heart of simmering tensions with its Asian neighbours, South Korea and China, and the debate over the recent 70th anniversary of the 1937 invasion of Nanjing demonstrated how the wounds of the past are still palpably borne out in the present day. And the bitter memory of the Second World War still casts a shadow over contemporary Japan. Those demanding retrospective justice for war crimes perpetrated by the Japanese military refuse to disappear. Adding to the noisy jostle of conflicting positions over history in Japan are a powerful group of neo-nationalists, who claim that the country's post-war incarnation, including its pacifist constitution, has led to a sense of national self-loathing and a crisis in identity. The struggle over interpretation of the country's 20th century history has become the battleground for these differing ideologies of nationhood."

Segment 2: "From the Archives: Why We Fight: The Battle of China (sound track excerpt, 1944)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 12:27.
Here is a segment of the audio track form one of film director Frank Capra's "WHY WE FIGHT" series. Capra, while serving as a major in the US Army Signal Corps, was specficially asked by Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, to produce a series of films to explain the historical and contemporary context of America's war with Japan and Germany. Putting together an outstanding team of filmmakers that included John and Walter Huston, Robert Flaherty, Carl Foreman, Lloyd Nolan, James Hilton, George Stevens and William Wyler, and obtaining help from several major Hollywood studies (MGM, Paramount, and Twentieth Century Fox), Capra and his team put together seven films that were widely shown and widely lauded. The series is widely available on line. See, for example, http://www.archive.org/details/PreludeToWar.

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Sept. 16, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Theodore W. Allen Interview on the Invention of the White Race." [RE-BROADCAST]
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 31:37
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:34
Chad Pearson of the University at Albany, SUNY, interviews Marxist historian Theodore W. Allen (August 23, 1919 – January 19, 2005), author of the The Invention of the White Race: Vol. 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control (London: Verso, 1994) and The Invention of the White Race: Vol. 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America (London: Verso, 1997). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_W._Allen for more information on Allen.

Segment 2: "From the Archives: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1954)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 1:00.
The fifty-seven day Battle of Dien Bien Phu, fought between Ho Chi Minh's Việt Minh and the French Union (March 13 to May 7, 1954) marked the last major engagement in the "first" Vietnam War. Ho Chi Minh's French defeat ended French involvement in Indochina and led to the partitioning of Vietnam into North and South. The French were soon replaced by the U.S. and the "second" Vietnam War began. The Universal Newsreel segment featured here describes the siege from the U.S. (pro-French) perspective. For more information .about the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. see: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/dien_bien_phu.htm

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Sept. 9, 2010
Segment 1 & 3: "The Lemon Tree (1998) & The Imaginary Village (2004)."
The Lemon Tree: Real Media. MP3. Time: 37:19.
The Imaginary Village: Real Media. MP3. Time: 18:41.
Today we offer two superb documentaries on the human toll of the tragic Palestinian/Israeli conflict that has plagued the Middle East for so very long. The first one, The Lemon Tree, originally aired on WHYY's Fresh Air in 1998, and won the Overseas Press Club Award for radio. It "explores the human side of what many consider the world's most intractable conflict. The documentary [. . . ] tells the story through a remarkable relationship between two families, one Arab, one Jewish, amid the fraught modern history of the region. It explores how the 1948 war, known to Israelis as the War of Independence, is, to Palestinians, the Nakba, or Catastrophe. In his childhood home, in the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard, Palestinian Bashir Khairi sees dispossession and occupation; Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, who arrived in Israel as an infant in 1948 with her family from Bulgaria, and moved into the same house, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. As both are swept up in the fates of their people, and Bashir is jailed for his alleged part in a supermarket bombing, the friends do not speak for years. They finally reconcile and convert the house in Ramle into a day-care center for Arab children of Israel, and a center for dialogue between Arabs and Jews. The stories of Dalia and Bashir form a personal microcosm of the last sixty years of Israeli-Palestinian history. In a region that seems ever more divided, The Lemon Tree is a reminder of all that is at stake, and of all that is still possible. The documentary is told almost entirely through the voices of Bashir and Dalia, interwoven with archival tape from the era. There is a new postscript updating the story of Dalia and Bashir." This documentary was the seed for Sandy Tolan's book: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East ( 2006, Bloomsbury), which won numerous literary nonfiction awards. The second documentary featured here, The Imaginary Village, was produced by Tolan and Melissa Robbins in 2004 and released through Transom.org. It "explores an untold aspect of the much-chronicled Israeli-Arab dispute: The longing for land and home by Palestinian refugees."

Segment 2: "From the Archives: The 1967 Mideast War ~ Universal Newsreel Audio (1967)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 4:54.
In keeping with the theme of the Arab-Israeli conflict, we bring to you the sound track of a Universal Newsreel focusing on the Six-Day War, fought between June 5 and June 10, 1967, between Israel and Egypt (UAR), Jordan, and Syria. The Newsreel was distributed on June 13, 1967, only days after Israel had completed its final offensive in the Golan Heights and signed a ceasefire agreement with Jordan, Syria, and Egypt -- having successfuly seized the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the West Bank. For details on the war and its aftermath, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War. There are many, many additional sources widely available on the Internet as well -- and several excellent monographs that offer background and analysis of the conflict (many are cited in the aformentioned encyclopedia article).

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Sept. 2, 2010
Segment 1: "Working Series: Iceberg Wrangler (2008)."
Real Media. MP3 unavailable by request of the producer.
Time: 6:59.
With Labor Day around the corner, we bring you three profiles from Homeland Productions' series, WORKING. We start wtth this profile of an "iceberg wrangler," produced by Janna Graham: "Whyman Richards says he'll give anything a try. A lifelong fisherman from a tiny town in northern Newfoundland, he has worked hard to make ends meet since the cod fishery collapsed in the early 1990s. So when a local businessman asked him if he'd be willing to steer his homemade boat toward the mountains of ice that break off the Greenland ice sheet every summer, he said why not. Whyman and his brother Dale snag chunks of ice with a giant net, haul them on board with a hydraulic lift, and chop them up with axes. Hours later the water is in plastic bottles, heading for Texas."

Segment 2: "Working Series: Miner (2009)."
Real Media. MP3 unavailable by request of the producer.
Time: 7:51.
See above. We continue with Gregory Warner's profile of a miner in the Democratic Republic of Congo: "Your cell phone or your laptop wouldn't work without a mineral called coltan. The Democratic Republic of Congo has about 80 percent of the world's coltan reserves, and that has spawned a corrupt and violent industry. Military factions vie for control of the mines, earning millions of dollars while the miners themselves barely scrape by. One of those miners is Fidele Musafiri, a small man with a hammer, a spike, and a dream of striking it rich. But the soldiers are never far away."

Segment 3: "Working Series: Labor Inspector (2009)."
Real Media. MP3 unavailable by request of the producer.
Time: 7:58.
See above. We complete our three profiles of workers around the world with this piece, produced by Sandy Tolan -- a profile of a labor inspector in Brazil: "In the mid-1990s, journalists and human rights groups began to uncover a web of slave labor linked to some of Brazil's biggest export industries: cattle, soy, sugar cane, and pig iron (used in making steel for automobiles). The Brazilian government responded, setting up rapid-response teams to find and liberate victims of forced labor. Since 2000, more than 30,000 slaves have been freed. Leandro Carvalho had a comfortable job as an insurance agent on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach when he decided to join the force. Now he says he doesn't want to quit until every last slave is freed."

Segment 4: "Hold the Fort ~ From Gospel Hymn to Labor Anthem" (Philip P. Bliss, 1870; recordings 1899 and 1991).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 4:48.
Here are selections from two recordings of this very famous song -- one close to its original form, the other in its modified labor-centered form performed by Joe Ueline. Originally a Civil War-inspired gospel hymn, written by Philip P. Bliss -- with its title derived from a supposed 1864 military order by General William Sherman to General John M. Corse at Allatoona during the Civil War. The song became -- after some creative lyrical manipulation -- one of the core labor songs of the Knights of Labor. It remained a popular labor song until well into the 20th century. For more information about the history of the song, see:http://unionsong.com/u511.html

Segment 5: "Hollister" (2004).
Real Media. MP3 Unavailabe by request of the producer.
Time: 28:37.
Here's another historical piece from producer Helen Borten, focusing on a motorcycle rally and "riot" that tool place in Hollister, California between July 4 and July 6, 1947 -- the event that inspired the film "The Wild One." As described by Borten: "thousands of bikers roared into a small California town and changed our assumptions about America. A new investigation raises provocative questions about the influence of media on history and culture." For additional eyewitness accounts of what went on in Holister back in 1947, see: http://www.salinasramblersmc.org/history/Classic_Bike_Article.htm.

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August 26, 2010 [Talking History was pre-empted this week. We feature this previous (2004) broadcast for those who might have missed it.]
Segment 1: "The Nights of Edith Piaf" (1994).
Real Media. MP3 Unavailable. Time: 29:06
"She rose every day at dusk and sang, rehearsed, performed, ate and drank and sang until dawn. Then she slept all day and began to create and unravel again as the sun went down. Nearly every song Edith Piaf sang, and she recorded over 400 of them, was a moment taken from her life in Paris. Piaf would tell her composers a story, or describe a feeling or show them a gesture. And they would put music and lyrics to her pain and passion, giving her back her own musical autobiography. Charles Aznavour, Francis Lai, Georges Moustaki, Henri Contet -- some of France's greatest musicians and composers recall their nights with the 'the Little Sparrow'." First produced by The Kitchen Sisters for Soundprint in 1994.

Segment 2: From the Archives: "John Steinbeck interview. (Feb. 11, 1952)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 11:57.
A selection from an interview with John Steinbeck conducted on February 11, 1952. The interviewer is not identified. Steinbeck talks about the setting of his novel The Grapes of Wrath, the dust bowl of the 1930s, the Great Depression, Federal Government aid for farmers, and comparisons of migrant farmers in the 1930s and the 1950s. For more information on this audio recording, contact Talking History/University at Albany, or the National Archives' Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Records LICON, Special Media Archives Services Division, College Park, MD.

Segment 3: "Frederick Douglas."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 15:41
This examination of Frederick Douglas� autobiography was produced as a segment of "The Teacher as Historian," at WNYE�FM in New York City. William L. Andrews, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, examines Frederick Douglas� Autobiography as a source of information on the man, the institution of slavery, and the abolitionist movement. Prepared by Talking History/OAH.

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August 19, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Lincoln'd Music" (2009).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 31:58
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 26:47
From Central Illinois and WUIS, we bring you this exploration of Abraham Lincoln's musical tastes, as a window into mid-19th century popular musical tastes in general. As described by the producers, it's an exploration of "the music Lincoln loved along with the music he heard throughout his life stretching from childhood through presidency � and ultimately assassination. We�ll hear some of the musical anecdotes that have been passed down through the years. And we�ll also find out more about period instruments and the origins of mid-nineteenth century popular songs."

Segment 2: "A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" (1896; 1927 performance).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 3:20
Sometimes songs that have nothing to do with war become associated with it. Soldiers pick up tunes and lyrics that resonate in a particular way that seems somehow appropriate for the battlefield. Such was the case with this ragtime tune, composed in 1896, the year of the great heat wave that took the lives of close to 1500 people in New York City (see Edward P. Kohn's recent book, Hot Time in the Old Town (Basic Books, 2010). Composed by August Metz, with lyrics by Joe Hayden, the song became, two years later, one of the most popular battle songs of the Spanish American War, especially among Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. This version was performed many years afterwards, by Bessie Smith, in 1927.

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Aug. 5, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster" (2010).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 25:20
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 19:48
Greg Hooker and Spencer Smith produced this adaptation of journalist Svetlana Alexievich's book, Voices from Chernobyl, an oral history of the worst nuclear power plant disaster in human history that took place in Chernobyl, Ukraine, on April 26, 1986. The production utilizes six dramatic actors reading the English translations of oral testimonies of survivors of Chernobyl. The piece was produced at WGDR, Goddard College in Plainview, Vermont, with permission of Salkey Archive Press. It is narrated by Greg Hooker and the testmonies of Lyudmilla, Valentin, Vasily, Sergei, Anna, and Larysa are performed by Deborah Bremer, Bob Carmody, Roman Kokodiniak, Brooke Pearson, Mary Wheeler, and Elizabeth Wilcox. WGDR, For more information about Chernobyl and Svetlana Alexievich's book, see: http://chernobyl.info/ and http://www.alexievich.info/indexEN.html.

Segment 2: "Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground (1864; 1972 reading ~ partial)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 21:50
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was one of the greatest and most prominent 19th century Russian authors and essayists. His many novels -- including The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Poor Folk, The Double, and others, explored the depths of social, political, and existential crises in a rapidly modernizing Russia. One of his works, Notes from Underground, prublished in 1864, is widely considered the greatest literary expression -- and anticipation of -- existentialism. Here we present a 1972 reading of Doestoevsky's Notes from Underground, compliments of Pacifica Radio Archives. The reading was produced by Kathy Dobkin as the "3rd annual WBAI reading of a classic novel." This excerpt from the first of four parts is read by stage and film actor Morris Carnovsky. To access the full reading, go to: http://fromthevaultradio.org/home/2010/06/18/1135/. Readings of the rest of the novel are accessible through links on that site.

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July 29, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "The Frankfurt School" (2010).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 22:39
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 18:29
From Against the Grain, we offer this piece examining the history of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. ATG host and co-producer C.S. Soong interviews Thomas Wheatland, author of The Frankfurt School in Exile (U. of Minnesota Press, 2009). Program summary: "Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer: tremendously influential thinkers all, and all part of a grouping of German scholars called the Frankfurt School. A new book by Thomas Wheatland examines the Frankfurt School's interactions with US intellectuals in New York City. It also contests conventional understandings of the impact of Marcuse's ideas on the New Left."

Segment 2: "Erich Fromm on 'The Automaton Citizen and Human Rights.' 1966."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 10:04
The Frankfurt School drew scholars from various social science and humanities disciplines -- sociology, economics, history, political science, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. One of the most influential psychologists associated with the group was Erich Fromm. Fromm was heavily engaged in pushing his discipline into a socially transformative mode. Here, in this selection of a talk he delivered at the American Orthopsychiatry Association's 43rd Annual Meeting in San Francisco on April 13, 1966, he offers some of his views on "The Automaton Citizen and Human Rights." For the full talk, go to the Google Video site: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-385174775844362652.

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July 22, 2010
Segment 1: "Nell Painter on the History of White People (2010)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 35:51.
On July 18th, 2010, Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University, read from and discussed her recent book, The History of White People. Her presentation took place in the evening at the Old County Courthouse in Elizabethtown, New York. Former Princeton colleague and novelist Russell Banks introduced Painter. This talk was part of a series sponsored by John Brown Lives! and John Brown Coming Home. For more information about Painter and her recent book, see: www.nellpainter.com and NYT Review of A History of White People.

Segment 2: "Ku Klux Klan 1950s Leader Eldon Edwards (1957)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:01
In the mid-1950s, reacting to civil rights progress in the courts, Eldon Edwards, an automobile paint sprayer from Georgia, founded a modern reincarnation of the 19th century Ku Klux Klan, "U.S. Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan." The organization ultimately drew 15,000 members and spread to nine states. For more information on Eldon and his organization, see: www.adl.org/issue_combating_hate/uka/rise.asp. In 1957, Edwards was a guest of Mike Wallace on the ABC's 1957-58 "The Mike Wallace Interview" television series. This is a very brief, edited selection from that interview. The full interview is available at the Harry Ransom Center's Web site devoted to the series: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/film/holdings/wallace/.

Segment 3: "Black Pirates (2010)"
Real Media. MP3. Time: 8:30
From Virginia Foundation of the Humanities' (VFH) With Good Reason, we continue with part two of a broadcast we aired several weeks ago. Part one focused on the "Secession Showdown" in Virginia in 1860; this segment focuses on "Black Pirates" and features an interview by show host Sarah McConnell with historian Cassandra Newby-Alexander of Norfork State University, who "argues these black pirates experienced more freedom on their outlaw ships than on 'civilized' dry land. . . . Historians estimate that of the nearly 5,000 pirates who terrorized America�s Atlantic coast in the early 1700s, twenty-five to thirty percent were of African descent, many of them freed slaves."

Segment 4: "Historian Henry Steele Commager (1954)"
Real Media. MP3. Time: 11:46
Former NYU, Columbia University, and Amherst College historian Henry Steele Commager was interviewed by Larry Lesueur and August Heckscher in this November 1954 edition of the Longines Chronoscope (this is the audio from the original television broadcast). The discussion touched on a number of issues, including an examination of free speech and tolerance in the 1950s in comparison to earlier periods in the U.S. and relative to European nations. Original broadcasts of the Longines Chronoscope are all availabel at the National Archives (Archives II) in College Park, Maryland. They are now in the public domain and no longer copyright restricted. For more information on Commager, see: http://www.commager.org/biography.asp

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July 15, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Rocketing Ahead" (2010).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 34:02
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 16:24
Richard Paul with Soundprint produced a series, Out of This World, exploring the history of the U.S. space program. We've aired two other segments from this series. Here, we present the earliest of the three segments in the series. It explores "how the Democrats rode Sputnik to the White House in a campaign that forever changed science, technology and academia in America."

Segment 2: "Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865)" ~ A LibriVox Reading ~ selection.
Real Media. MP3. Time: 10:12
French writer Jules Verne is widely considered the originator of the modern science fiction genre. His From the Earth to the Moon (De la Terre � la Lune) was published in 1865 and predicted an era in which space travel was possible. Though the mechanisms for space flight were somewhat poorly conjectured by Verne, there were some uncanny similarities in Verne's novel to the U.S. Apollo program of the 1960s (actually, the program ran from 1961 to 1975): Verne's cannon -- the instrument that projected Verne's manned capsule -- was called Columbiad and the Apollo 11 command module was named Columbia; in Verne's novel -- as on the first successful Apollo moon launch -- the astronaut crew numbered three; the journey in both cases began in Florida. There were still other similarities. For the full text of Verne's novel, see: http://jv.gilead.org.il/pg/moon/. Copies are also available on Google Books at: http://books.google.com/. For other information on Verne, see: http://www.julesverne.ca/index.html. For the full LibriVox reading of the entire book (from which we took this selection), go to: http://librivox.org/from-the-earth-to-the-moon-by-jules-verne/.

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July 8, 2010
Segment 1: "John C. Greene on 'Science in the Time of Thomas Jefferson' (1963)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:04.
Broadcast initially by the Voice of America (VOA) in 1963, as part of a VOA series on the history of science, here's a talk by John C. Greene, a major historian of U.S. science who taught at the University of Connecticut for decades. He is the author of The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (1959), Science, Ideology and World View: Essays in the History of evolutionary Ideas (1981), and American Science in the Age of Jefferson (1984). For a short biography and overview of his work, see the introductory sections of the finding aid to his papers, deposited at the Univ. of Connecticut - Storrs: http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/findaids/Greene/MSS19960008.html.

Segment 2: "Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (1791) ~ a LibriVox Reading (2007)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 31:16
Founding father, inventor, diplomat, scientist, writer, publisher, and philosopher: Benjamin Franklin was known for all these things. He left quite a legacy, and part of that legacy is very familiar to U.S. history students: his Autobiography. It has become an iconic text, used widely in survey courses in U.S. history. Perhaps little know by students and the general public, however, is the fact that Franklin's autobiography first appeared posthumously in France and in French -- back in 1791 (as Memoires De La Vie Privee). It took another two years before the first English translation was produced, published in London in 1793 as The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. Originally Written By Himself, And Now Translated From The French. Here -- from LibriVox (www.librvox.org, is a reading of chapter 9 of Franklin's autobiography. For the full text of the Autobiography, see: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/franklin-home.html.

Segment 3: "Virginia's Secession Movement (2010)"
Real Media. MP3. Time: 18:00
From Virginia Foundation of the Humanities' (VFH) With Good Reason, we bring you this recent segment on the "Secession Showdown" of 1860 in Virginia. Civil War author Bill Freehling offers his views on "turning points in one state's months-long, bitter battle over whether to secede from the Union." Freehling is Senior Fellow with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and author of Prelude to the Civil War, The Road to Disunion, The South vs. The South, and most recently, edited, along with Craig M. Simpson, Showdown in Virginia: The 1861 Convention and the Fate of the Union (Univ. of Virginia Press, 2010).

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July 1, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Sheila Rowbotham: Feminist Visionaries."
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 29:21
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 22:24
Sasha Lilley talks with historian Sheila Rowbotham about her latest work, Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century. From Against the Grain: "They were socialists, free love advocates, birth control campaigners, and trade unionists. Feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham describes the women who transformed gender relations in the US and the UK at the turn of the last century..."

Segment 2: "Herland: Chapter 11, 'Difficulties'"
Real Media. MP3. Time: 08:27
In segment 1 Sheila Rowbotham discusses the writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, perhaps best know for her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," and her treatise Women and Economics. Here, from LibriVox, is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of Gilman's Herland, a 1915 utopian novel that portrays an ideal, isolated society of women and the three male explorers who enter their world. Audio readings of the entire work, are available at http://librivox.org/herland-by-charlotte-perkins-gilman .

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