American History Hit

From suspicion, to siege, to collaboration, to all out war - in this episode we uncover the complex reality of the Jamestown colonists' relationship with the Indigenous peoples of the East Coast. What...

Born enslaved in 1818, by the time of the Civil War Frederick Douglass was famous around the United States and Europe for his work in the abolition movement. So how did this famous orator learn his tr...

In May 1607, over 100 English settlers arrived at Chesapeake Bay on the East Coast of North America. Traveling 50 miles inland along the James River, they established what would become the first perma...

FDR and Winston Churchill spent 113 days in each others' company during WWII. FDR even saw Churchill naked. But how close were the pair in personality and in strategy? How did the personal relationshi...

In the 19th Century, a war on the boundary between Europe and Asia had an unexpected effect. It caused the American public to re-examine one of the terms with which they described race: Caucasian. Don...

They say that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, but did that apply to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Soviet counterpart, Joseph Stalin, during the Second World War? Despite their ideolo...

Why was there once a fashion for styling your hair like Brutus, the most famous of Julius Caesar's assassins? Why are there so many neoclassical buildings in the United States? And how was the Ancient...

The leaders of the two most powerful nations fighting in the Second World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler, never met. They never even spoke. In this episode, we explore the war o...

Sitting Bull, Jumping Badger, Slow - what do we know about the man who went by each of these names? How did he earn them and what was his role in the changing United States of the late 19th century? D...

In 1932, amidst the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected the 32nd President of the United States. He was more than a leader; he was a beacon of hope, steering the nation through its dar...