I was delighted to be joined by Caleb McDaniel, History professor and author of the Pulitzer prizewinning book, “Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America”. He told me the remarkable story of Henrietta Wood. Born into slavery in Kentucky, she was freed as an adult and worked as domestic worker. In 1853, her employers conspired to trick her into crossing the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, where she was recaptured and taken to work in the harrowing conditions of the Mississippi cotton fields. At the end of the Civil War, Wood was freed for the second time, where she sued her kidnapper for $20,000. Although she only received $2,500 (more than $60,000 today) it allowed her son, Arthur H. Simms, to buy a house in Chicago, and attend Union College of Law, now Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
We were delighted to have comedy royalty on the podcast. Omid Djalili talked to me about one of his earliest stage creations, first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1993. Over the next four years it was performed 109 times in 10 different countries. The backdrop of this epic storytel...
A. C. Grayling discusses the complete history of philosophy, whether it is still possible to ask questions about our existence, and how we should frame those questions in light of those thinkers who have gone before. Producer: Peter Curry
Adam Frankel worked in the Obama White House administration as a speech writer. His grandparents were holocaust survivors from eastern Europe. His mother had profound mental health problems and he discovered that his father was not his father. in an effort to understand the roots of this he learn...
