Richard T Greener and the White Problem (episode 217)

Professor Richard T Greener grew up in Boston in the shadow of the abolition movement, graduated from Harvard, and became one of the foremost Black intellectuals of his era.  However, soon after publishing his most influential work, when it seemed like he would take up the mantle of Frederick Douglass, he instead sank into obscurity.  He was nearly forgotten for over a century, until his legacy was rediscovered in 2009 in a discarded steamer trunk in a dusty attic on the South Side of Chicago.


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Demanding Satisfaction: Dueling in Boston (episode 216)

A little more than three years ago, cohost emerita Nikki and I were on our way to see the Hamilton musical for the first time.  In our excitement, we decided to record an episode about an 1806 political duel in Boston that had a lot of parallels with the Hamilton-Burr duel.  We dug into the history of dueling in Boston, how dueling laws evolved in response to the duels that were fought here, and why a young Boston Democratic-Republican and a young Boston Federalist decided they had to fight each other to the death in Rhode Island.  Unfortunately, we also peppered samples from the Hamilton soundtrack throughout the episode in our excitement, stomping all over Lin Manuel’s intellectual property.  The unlicensed music even got the episode pulled from at least one podcast app.  This week, I went back to our original recording and re-edited it to clean it up and remove all the Hamiltunes.  So get ready to meet Charles Sumner’s dad and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s dad, sail on the USS Constitution, and Alexander Hamilton himself will even put in a brief appearance.  Plus, we’ll learn why fighting a duel in Massachusetts could get you buried at a crossroads with a stake driven through your heart. 


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Literal Nazis (episode 215)

They stockpiled guns and ammunition.  They built homemade bombs.  They had a hit list of a dozen members of Congress who were targeted for assassination.  They believed themselves to be patriots, with soldiers and police officers among their ranks.  They rallied under the motto of America First, but they planned to overthrow our Constitutional government and install a fascist dictatorship.  Believe it or not, I’m not talking about the insurrection on January 6, 2021, but instead a plot that the FBI uncovered in January 1940.  The subsequent investigation threw a spotlight on a group called the Christian Front that made its headquarters at Boston’s Copley Plaza hotel, promoting violent attacks on Jewish Bostonians while accepting covert funding and support from a Nazi spymaster who flew the swastika proudly from his home on Beacon Hill.


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All the Bells and Whistles (episode 214)

The first commercially viable telephone network was created by a Boston inventor and entrepreneur.  Not Alexander Graham Bell, who is credited with inventing the telephone, but Edwin Thomas Holmes.  Starting in the 1850s, his father Edwin Holmes created the first burglar alarm company here in Boston, then Edwin Thomas Holmes adapted the alarm company’s network of telegraph wires in the 1870s to work with the telephone switchboard he invented.  Working with Alexander Graham Bell, the Holmes company turned his invention into a business and helped him build the Bell Telephone Company.


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The Lighthouse Tragedy (episode 213)

In November 1718, a tragedy on Boston Harbor cut short the lives of six people, including the first keeper of Boston Light and four members of his household.  To find out what happened that morning, we’re going to look at what Boston Harbor was like before the construction of Boston Light, why Boston Harbor needed a lighthouse, how it got built, and who was chosen as the first keeper.  We’ll also look at the founding father who was moved to poetry by the tragedy, as well as the centuries long search for Ben Franklin’s lost verses and a 20th century hoax that got repeated as truth.  Then we’ll close out the show with a quick look at the present and future of Boston Light on Little Brewster Island.

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The Original War on Christmas (episode 212)

The Puritan dissenters who founded the town of Boston are remembered as a deeply religious society, so you might think that Christmas in Puritan Boston would be a big deal.  You’d be wrong though.  Celebrating Christmas was against the law for decades, and it was against cultural norms for a century or more.  What were the Puritans’ theological misgivings about Christmas?  What were the practices of misrule, mummery, and wassailing with which Christmas was celebrated in the 17th century?  And why did the Puritans literally erase Christmas from their calendars?   


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The Ice King of Boston (episode 211)

Ice seems like such a simple thing today, when I can just go to my freezer and grab a few cubes to cool down my drink.  But before artificial refrigeration, New Englanders would cut and store ice during the long winter to keep their food fresh and their drinks cold during the summer.  That was all well and good for people who lived near an ice pond anyway, but what about people in the faraway tropics who might want to get their hands on some ice?  Until the early 1800s, the idea of shipping ice to the tropics was seen as a crazy pipe dream, but then along came Frederic Tudor, the Boston entrepreneur who built a fortune and a global reputation as the Ice King!


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Lost Wonderland, with Stephen Wilk (episode 210)

The show this week is all about Wonderland, the early 20th century amusement park at Revere Beach.  Dr. Stephen Wilk has deeply researched the investors and entrepreneurs who bought 27 acres of land along Revere Beach Boulevard and opened the park; the inventors behind rides like Shoot the Chutes, Hell’s Gate, and Love’s Journey; and the people who ran attractions like a firefighting demonstration, a wild west show, and a model Japanese village.  His new book Lost Wonderland: The brief and brilliant life of Boston’s million dollar amusement park reveals all of that, as well as changes in the broader economy that doomed Wonderland nearly from the beginning.  After opening in 1906, the park went through periods of success and bankruptcy in a meteoric run that lasted just four short years, while leaving a major cultural impression on the Boston area, and Revere in particular.


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A Shooting at the State House (episode 209)

From our viewpoint in modern Massachusetts, with stringent gun licensing and background check laws, it’s hard to imagine how a young man with an extensive criminal record who had been involuntarily committed to multiple mental health institutions could walk into a store and walk back out with a shiny new handgun.  And from a post-9/11 point of view, with security at the forefront of every public space, it’s hard to imagine how an uninvited visitor could walk right into the governor’s State House office and open fire.  But on December 5, 1907, that’s exactly what happened, when a disturbed man with a gun and a grudge decided to pay a visit to our seat of government.


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Ghost Stories (episode 208)

In honor of Halloween, I’m going to be sharing eight of my favorite Boston ghost stories this week.  From haunted houses and inexplicable premonitions recorded by Cotton and Increase Mather in the years leading up to the Salem Witch hysteria, to Nathaniel Hawthorne encountering his friend in the reading room at the Athenaeum for weeks after the friend’s death, to the apparition that only seems to appear in Boston’s most venerable gay bar when only one person is there to see it, we’ll cover nearly four hundred years of paranormal claims. And if you’re wondering why parts of the recording aren’t up to our usual standards, it’s because I was recording this after midnight, and I fell asleep in the middle of recording multiple times.


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