Retropod

It doesn't seem like a big deal today, but 1930s America lived in fear of the male nipple.

John Calhoun’s rodent experiments revolutionized the way we think about social behavior and the impact of growing populations.

Nancy Grace Roman was one of NASA’s first female astronomers and was a key figure in the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

At 112-years-old, Richard Overton was the oldest living World War II veteran.

Throughout American history, speakers of the House have pounded their gavels so hard in search of order that they wind up smashing the gavel itself into smithereens.

Dorothy Kenyon was an early leader in the legal fight for women's rights.

We're taking a little break over the holidays to look back on some of the best Retropod episodes from 2018. Today, we look back on the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

We're taking a little break over the holidays to look back on some of the best Retropod episodes from 2018. Today, an episode co-hosted by Madeline Daly, who won our Retropod trivia contest at the 2018 National Book Festival.

We're taking a little break over the holidays to look back on some of the best Retropod episodes from 2018. Today, our episode marking the date Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, 50 years ago this April.

We're taking a little break over the holidays to look back on some of the best Retropod episodes from 2018. Today, doughnuts. They aren’t just delicious. They also helped America win a war.

We're taking a little break over the holidays to look back on some of the best Retropod episodes from 2018. Today, Ida B. Wells, who was an investigative journalist, an anti-lynching activist, a suffragette and a teacher.

We're taking a little break over the holidays to look back on some of the best Retropod episodes from 2018. Today, the story of Caroll Spinney and his iconic character Big Bird.

In the 1950s, a child trying to call Santa Claus accidentally called NORAD and changed Christmas Eve forever.

During the first Christmas of World War I, a miracle took place all along the Europe’s Western Front.

A new punctuation mark called the interrobang found its way onto some typewriters in the 1960s, but it never caught on.

In 1875, Ulysses S. Grant hired a special prosecutor to investigate the Whiskey Ring scandal. Furious with his findings, Grant had him fired.

Before 1913, the presidential press conference didn’t exist. But a president who liked reporters changed that.

After being fired from his job for being gay, Frank Kameny took his battle for equality to the nation’s highest court.

After receiving complaints about carriages driving too fast, Washington D.C. policeman William H. West arrested a presidential speed demon.

In 1859, the House went to war over Rep. John Sherman’s bid for leadership.

In Houston, Ray Hill was a colossal character. He even adopted "citizen provocateur" as a formal title.

Fritz Kuhn was the leader of the pro-Nazi group known as the German American Bund. He was a hero to his audience, and a scourge on the world to most others.

Weeks before Thanksgiving, 1959, cranberries were declared unsafe to eat. The race was on to save America’s favorite holiday side dish.

Toys R Us founder Charles Lazarus had no idea how big the toy industry would become.

Augustus Tolton’s miraculous life took him from slavery to the brink of sainthood.

News traveled so slowly in 1826 that the former president was buried days before his son, sitting president John Quincy Adams, got word of his death.

Bush, who died last week, is being fondly remembered for his cool demeanor and a boundless sense of humor.

George H.W. Bush had a lot of humility. So much that he developed a friendship with the comedian who impersonated him on SNL, Dana Carvey.

White House maid Elizabeth Jaffray not only cleaned up after presidents, she had an amazing insight into their appetites.

One of the grandest events the president presides over every year is the lighting of the National Christmas Tree.

Cats have endured some really mean stuff throughout history. Dogs should be thankful.

Martin Niemoller's simple and haunting words are often quoted in moments of intolerance. The story behind them is much more complicated.

Presidents throughout history have visited battlefields to better grasp conditions, reverse public doubt and signal that the country took war efforts seriously.

Benjamin Franklin, the most colorful of America's Founding Fathers, had a misunderstood, electrical and ultimately homicidal relationship with turkeys.

In the 1930s, traveling the nation's highways while black was fraught with peril. One postal worker, Victor Green, wrote a guidebook for African Americans after he faced discrimination on a road trip.

The story of how the anonymous soldier came to rest inside the famous tomb is almost as unknown as his identity.

Mark Twain first laid eyes on a “newfangled typing machine,” as he called it, sometime in the early 1870s.

The idea of food stamps was born out of a complicated paradox.

Rehnquist proposed. O'Connor said no.

Julia Grant didn't a have particularly good experience in the world of publishing. In fact, her memoir wasn’t even published in her lifetime.

Ronneberg started speaking about his experience in history in recent years.

Along with staggering death tolls, the "Great War" generated memorable literature, geopolitical upheaval, hope, disillusion, the Russian Revolution and the seeds of World War II.

In 1895, the United States tried to deny an American citizen entry to the country even though he was born on U.S. soil.

Some believed that a lottery was more democratic than a vote.

Gerrymandering became a real electoral cudgel with a project called REDMAP.

Rahm Emanuel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, had two different approaches to taking back the House of Representatives. Their feud wasn't pretty.

Why, oh, why is daylight savings a thing? It's because for roughly two decades after World War II, no one had any clue what time it was.

Van Hoof said she also has seen George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Joan of Arc.

From the mid-1800s to well into the 20th century, the Capitol’s Demon Cat was the top dog of Washington ghost stories.

Mister Rogers’s approach to dealing with grief began with an American tragedy.