Past Cast

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Today we hear from Theodore Roosevelt, the man who defined and dominated early 20th Century America like no one else. Unfortunately, there are apparently no recordings of Roosevelt from his time as president, only before and after, but we must be content with what we have. Today’s selection of Roosevelt speeches can be found, among other places, at the University of Michigan’s Vincent Voice Library, and we also drew from American Memory and the Cylinder Digitization Project.

Today we’ve also added comments, so feel free to ask questions, make comments or give suggestions.

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[Oops–I forgot to enclose the file, so apologies to those who have subscribed.]

Monday marked the second anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s death. Regardless of any particular opinion of the man or his policies, few in history have provided as much fodder for this sort of podcast than Ronald Reagan. I expect we’ll get at least two more podcasts out of Reagan before we’re done with him, but this one focuses on that which he is most known for: his foreign policy during the Cold War, from his entry onto the political scene in 1964 to his prescient demand that Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall.

The vast majority of today’s audio is from the wonderful and indispensible American Rhetoric site. There is no better site to find famous American speeches, and some not so famous. There is also audio from NPR’s obituary audio archive and CNN’s political ad archive.

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Today’s Past Cast examines the songs on both sides of the Vietnam Debate, both the protest songs and the more patriotic, supportive songs by the “silent majority” as Nixon called them.

The protest songs in todays episode come from a 2003 concert “Songs of Protest: The Vietnam Songbook.” The Nixon speech is from American Rhetoric.

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So, we’ve been a while, for which we apologize. With a bit of luck, we’ll be back on our regular Monday schedule after this.

Sunday was the anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s touchdown in Paris, France after the first transatlantic flight. Lindbergh went on to lead a controversial, but today we’ll be focusing almost exclusively on the flight.

Big thanks are owed to the site CharlesLindbergh.com, the source for much of the audio for today. The invaluable Authentic History Center provided Lindbergh’s speech and one of the songs, and Dismuke’s Hit of the Week, a gem of a site I just discovered, provided the final song.

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Today is the 46th anniversary of the downing of Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane over the USSR, provoking “The U-2 Incident.” (It’s called that because, incidentally, it has nothing to do with the rock band U2.) This significantly increased Cold War tensions with Russia, and was quickly followed by the Bay of Pigs (Episode 10) and the Cuban Missile Crisis (which will be an episode soon enough), all of which helped make the early sixties a rather tense time to live.

Much of today’s audio is from the History Channel audio & video repository. There is also audio from the BBC’s very good “This Day in History” section, the Cold War Museum (a project of Powers’ son Francid Gary Powers, Jr.) and the YouTube public video repository. Our thanks to all of them.

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On this day in 1953, Winston Churchill became Sir Winston Churchill, becing conducted into the Order of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth. In his honor, we’re listening to Churchill’s most famous speeches, most of which came in a four month period in 1940.

The text of many of Churchill’s speeches can be found at the Churchill Centre, a marvelous site. EarthStation1.com, as usual, has a great collection of Churchill speeches, though the audio on some of them is questionable. Other audio came from History and Politics Out Loud and FiftiesWeb.com.

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Your hosts are on vacation this weekend, so the Past Cast is a little shorter, and a little later than usual. That’s just as well, because it turns out that there’s not that much audio available for today’s topic, the Bay of Pigs invasion, which started 45 years ago today. There’s not that much audio available for major embarassments of the American government–go figure.

The audio we did find comes from the History Channel, the JFK Library, the Internet Archive and the National Security Archive. The latter provided one of the most unique recordings we’ve used so far. Most of what we use was designed to be listened to–speeches, songs, newscasts and so forth–but this is the first recorded phone call we’ve had. So, listen to the Past Cast and listen in on a private convorsation between Jack and Bobby Kennedy, like we’ve all dreamed of.

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Last week saw the start of baseball season, and thus it’s only fitting that we honor today the most historically significant baseball player of them all, Jackie Robinson. 59 years ago today, he became the first African American on a major league baseball team.

Today’s audio came from all over the place. Major League Baseball has a nice site, as do the Los Angeles Dodgers, which provided the bulk of it. The History Channel helped a bit, as did this interview from just after his hall of fame induction. The fine Baseball Almanac provided our music and a bit more. There is not, I’m afraid, nearly enough baseball audio freely available online.

What is freely available, however, is the movie The Jackie Robinson Story, starring Jackie as himself. It was made in 1950, which is incredibly considering the honesty and disdain with which it treats racism. Rent it, buy it, Netflix it or watch the free stream provided above, but you have no excuse for not watching this movie. Or, for that matter, for listening to the Past Cast.

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This weekend was the 24th anniversary of the invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentina, and that’s today’s topic. The Falkland War lends itself very well to the Past Cast format–it’s a short, concrete event and just about everything that was recorded for posterity in some manner. Hopefully, you’ll agree.

The vast majority of the audio for today comes directly from the source, the BBC–both its “This Day In History” site, and their “Fight for the Falklands” 20-year anniversary page. The British Library’s “Voices of History” page provided on piece as well.

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Today’s episode looks at life on the homefront during the early years of World War II, as heard through the radios of the era, with songs, speeches, a baseball game and more. We’ll follow this on eup at osme point with a simiilar episode examining the last years of the war. Today’s media comes from the Voices of World War II collection at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, so special thanks to them.

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