HISTORY This Week

We have been told the American Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But that's not what the Declaration of Independence says. According to our founders, in their own words, what they were most upset about was Native Americans. How does a whole country miss a point of its own founding document? That's the question at the heart of a new podcast called First America. Hosted and reported by Rebecca Nagle, an Indigenous author and the former host of Crooked’s This Land podcast, and featuring leading Native historians, First America unveils how our current political moment was 250 years in the making and how the founders’ treatment of Indigenous nations—and their resistance—shaped US democracy. Here’s the first episode. Find First America wherever you get podcasts.

July 14, 1850. At a swanky hotel in Apalachicola, Florida, the French consul is throwing a Bastille Day party, and he's promised his guests ice-cold champagne. There's just one problem: the town's ice shipment is delayed, and in 1850, you can't simply make ice. Or can you? Enter Dr. John Gorrie, a country physician who's spent years waging a private war against heat itself, convinced that cooling the air could stop the deadly fevers ravaging his town.
How did a doctor on the Florida frontier invent artificial cooling and take on the "Ice King" of New England? And why has history nearly erased his name?
Special thanks to Bern Nagengast, technology historian and author; and Linda Thompson, docent at the Raney House Museum in Apalachicola, Florida.
You can find all the books we’ve used to make recent HISTORY This Week episodes at historythisweekpodcast.com.

July, 1845. Dr. Smith Boughton, the man behind the mask of "Big Thunder," is sitting in a Hudson jail after a trial that ended in a hung jury.
The Anti-Renters had to celebrate Independence Day with cannon fire and readings of the Declaration, but without their leader.
The rebellion across Upstate New York is escalating: an undersheriff with a bully's reputation is terrorizing farm families in the Catskills, masked Calico Indians are massing at rent sales, and before summer's end, a lawman will lie dying in a tenant farmer's bed. New York now has to decide: are these rebels murderers, or is the system they're fighting the real crime?
What happens when the Anti-Renters trade their tin horns for the ballot box? And how does a local revolt over rent end up shaping the politics of a nation?
Special thanks Reeve Huston, emeritus associate professor of history at Duke University and author of Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York; Victoria Kupchinetsky and Misha Gutkin, director and producer of the film Calico Rebellion; David Fleming, the town supervisor of Nassau, NY; Nancy Newman, professor at SUNY Albany and author of the book Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York; and the Association of Public Historians of New York State.
You can find all the books we’ve used to make recent HISTORY This Week episodes at historythisweekpodcast.com.

Today, to celebrate America's 250th birthday, we have a special announcement: we are launching HISTORY This Week+ to all of our followers! (historythisweekpodcast.com/subscribe)
This is something we’ve wanted to do for a while… we’ve been listening to your feedback: you don’t love the ads, you want more history. Well, HTW+ solves both of those problems.
We are offering two tiers of our premium subscription, allowing you to unlock ad-free listening and gain access to bonus content, especially extended cuts of our interviews.
When producing these episodes, the majority of our interview tape is left on the cutting room floor, and our interview with Ken Burns is no exception. We spent over an hour with Ken and his producing partner, Sarah Botstein, discussing the launch of their documentary, The American Revolution.
As a preview of what you’ll get with an HTW+ subscription, we’re bringing you this interview in its (mostly) original form. Enjoy Sally’s conversation with Ken and Sarah, and sign up for HTW+ at historythisweekpodcast.com/subscribe.
Reach out with any questions at historythisweek@history.com.

July 4, 1839. Sixty-three years after 1776—and centuries after the medieval period—feudalism is alive and well in the United States.
High on a rocky plain in upstate New York, a crowd of tenant farmers gathers in the village of Berne to read aloud a declaration of independence… but not the one you're thinking of. These families are still bound to a landlord by perpetual leases their grandfathers signed, owing bushels of wheat and a share of every sale for as long as the land exists.
Today they're done. They call their leases "voluntary slavery" and vow to "take up the ball of the Revolution where our fathers stopped it." It's the opening shot of the Anti-Rent War, a revolt that will pit disguised farmers against sheriffs and posses across the Hudson Valley, and force New York to ask whether a feudal bargain has any place in a republic.
How did manor lords survive the Revolution? And what would it finally take to break their grip?
Special thanks Reeve Huston, emeritus associate professor of history at Duke University and author of Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York; Victoria Kupchinetsky and Misha Gutkin, director and producer of the film Calico Rebellion; David Fleming, the town supervisor of Nassau, NY; Nancy Newman, professor at SUNY Albany and author of Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York; and the Association of Public Historians of New York State.
You can find all the books we’ve used to make recent HISTORY This Week episodes at historythisweekpodcast.com.