The History of the Americans

In this episode we tell the story of Jean Nicolet, one of Samuel de Champlain’s embedded interpreters. In the summer of 1634, Champlain sent Nicolet to negotiate a treaty with a tribe known to eat th...

Roger Williams has fled into the freezing New England winter of 1636, steps ahead of the law. He makes his way from Salem to Narragansett Bay, spending fourteen weeks schlepping from one Indian villa...

It is the summer of 1634. When last we were with Roger Williams – helpfully, just the last episode – he was living in Salem, keeping his head down, and paddling around Massachusetts learning the local...

First off, a brief item of business for those of you listening in close to real time – on April 11, 2023, I’ll be in Washington with some free time in the evening.  If Washington area listeners want t...

Our guest today is Kenny Ryan, host of another great history pod, Abridged Presidential Histories with Kenny Ryan. Abridged Presidential Histories Podcast with Kenny Ryan launched its first episode at...

This is the first of several non-consecutive episodes about Roger Williams, whom we have teased a few times already.  Williams was one of early New England’s immensely consequential figures, perhaps i...

The Winthrop Fleet has arrived, but Salem is not what they had expected. John Winthrop leads an expedition to explore Massachusetts Bay, meets Samuel Maverick – whose descendants would be consequenti...

This episode is a backgrounder, an overview of the Puritan society, culture, and economy in New England during the seventeenth century. The objective is to set all y’all listeners up for more traditi...

We have arrived at the Great Migration of the Puritans to Massachusetts, which effectively began in 1628 and would continue until 1640 or so, and then abruptly end. The result would be that for almost...

This episode looks at the collapse of trust between Charles I and anti-Puritan royalists and clerics, on the one hand, and Parliament, Puritans, anti-Catholic Anglicans, and lawyers and others concern...