This week, Aaron Stark joins the show to discuss his new book Disrupting Time: Industrial Combat, Espionage, and the Downfall of a Great American Company, which chronicles an attempt by a foreign power to infiltrate, emulate, and eventually annihilate a great American company. In the late 19th century, watches were at the forefront of technological innovation, and the Waltham Watch Company made some of the finest watches in the world. Unlike their Swiss competitors, whose products were fancy, handcrafted works of art, the Watham company specialized in mass produced, affordable, and reliable watches for the masses. At an 1876 Worldâs Fair, they announced their arrival on the worldâs stage, and the world took notice. The Swiss, in particular, took notice, and they took it by sending spies to steal the secrets of Walthamâs success.
Category: Episodes
The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin (episode 283)
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, sheâs best known as the namesake of an art museum in Bostonâs Fenway neighborhood (and if weâre being honest, the museum is probably best known for a famous 1990 heist). This week, Jake interviews author Emily Franklin, whose new novel The Lioness of Boston explores the person behind the Gardner fortune. They discuss the great romance, tragedy, and scandal of Isabellaâs life, the different personas she tried on throughout different eras of her life, and her obsession with the idea of a legacy. Emily will tell us why Boston at first turned up its nose at wealthy young Isabella, but later came to embrace the flamboyant and eccentric Mrs Jack as one of our most colorful and generous characters. Emily will also describe what makes historical fiction different from biography, and the freedom and limitations that the genre brings. Â
Continue reading The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin (episode 283)
Disasters and Disaster Response (episode 282)
Enjoy two classic stories this week. First up is the story of the Cocoanut Grove fire. In November 1942, Boston was on a wartime footing, business was booming, and the streets were packed with soldiers and sailors on their way to fronts around the world. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a fire broke out at the popular Cocoanut Grove nightclub, and in the moments that followed, 492 people were killed, making it Bostonâs most deadly disaster. After that, the podcast visits December 1917, when another world war raged in Europe. When confusing reports of a disaster to the north reached Boston, the city sprang into action, loading a special train with doctors, nurses, and medical supplies. After the most massive explosion before the advent of the atom bomb, Boston rushed relief to the town of Halifax. In return, they send us a Christmas tree each year.
We have disasters on the mind because of the terrible, deadly fires on Maui. We just replayed a story about how deeply connected Boston is to Lahaina in episode 280, but if you want to hear it on its own, you can go back to episode 220 to learn how the ancient royal dynasty of Maui had its seat in Lahaina, how King Kamehameha moved his royal court to Lahaina after conquering Maui, and how whalers, merchants, and Congregational missionaries from Boston gathered there during the colonial era. The survivors need food, clean water, and housing in the immediate short term, and they will have to rebuild their lives from scratch in one of the most expensive places in the country. Please consider donating toward Maui relief. I would recommend the Maui Food Bank, to help families in need, or the Maui Humane Society, who are reuniting lost pets with their families, feeding homeless animals, and providing veterinary care. Continue reading Disasters and Disaster Response (episode 282)
JFK and PT-109, 80 years later
80 years ago this month, on a tiny Pacific island, a legend was born. In the darkness before dawn on August 2, 1943, a Japanese destroyer rammed and sank a small, plywood boat commanded by a 26 year old Lieutenant Junior Grade named John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In the hours and days that followed, young Jack Kennedy would prove to be a true American hero, swimming mile after mile through shark and crocodile infested waters, while towing an injured crew member by a strap clenched in his teeth. In the ensuing decades, PT-109 has become one of the most famous small craft in US Navy history, largely due to Kennedy’s actions. However, it also became a craven political ploy, when JFK and his father Joseph Kennedy used the story of PT-109 to launch a political career that would carry Jack Kennedy to the Oval Office.
Bostonians on the Pacific (episode 280)
This week, enjoy three classic stories about Bostonians and their adventures on the Pacific Ocean. First, weâll hear about the voyages of the Columbia to the Pacific Northwest starting in 1787, then weâll move on to the Congregational missionaries who descended on Hawaii in 1823, and finally, weâll talk about the Boston whaler who brought the industrial revolution to Spanish California. While you’re listening to these three classic stories, see if you can figure out what Iâm working on that would involve a Brookline native on a small boat in the Solomon Islands in August 1943!
Granite, Glass, and the Construction of Kingâs Chapel (episode 279)
This week’s story ties one of modern Bostonâs iconic Freedom Trail sites to the earliest days of English settlement in the Shawmut Peninsula. Itâs a story that ties the first Puritan to die in Boston to the hated Royal governor Edmund Andros, and it ties some of the earliest non-English immigrants in Boston to Ben Franklin and Abigail Adams through the invention of two local industries. Kingâs Chapel is beloved in Boston today, but it was seen as an unwelcome invasion when it was first proposed in 1686. In this weekâs show, weâll look at how Boston found room for an unwanted church, how the church was reinvented three times, and how it launched local glassmaking and founded the granite industry in Quincy. Weâll also see where you can still find the last traces of the original, wooden Kingâs Chapel hiding inside the walls of a more modern church, but not here in Boston.
Continue reading Granite, Glass, and the Construction of Kingâs Chapel (episode 279)
The Adamses Declare Independence (episode 278)
Between the John Adams miniseries on HBO and the musical 1776, everyone knows that John Adams was one of the leading voices for independence in the Continental Congress. And along with negotiating the treaty of Paris and keeping the US out of the Quasi War, Adams always considered the Declaration one of his chief accomplishments. 50 years after Congress adopted it, John Adams remembered it on the morning of July 4, 1826, remarking âit is a great day. It is a good day.â That evening, he died, with many sources reporting that his last words were âJefferson still lives.â He was wrong, though. Earlier that day, Jefferson had woken briefly, asked âis it the fourthâ and then declined further medical treatment before slipping into a coma and himself dying. For someone who was so closely associated with Americaâs founding document, why did John Adams believe we should celebrate it on July 2nd? And how did his closest and most trusted advisor, his wife Abigail, urge him on toward independence in a letter that history remembers for other reasons? Let’s find out!
Continue reading The Adamses Declare Independence (episode 278)
Thomas Jefferson in Boston (episode 277)
Thomas Jefferson visited Boston in 1784, arriving in town on June 18th. That also happened to be the same day when Abigail Adams left her home in Quincy to start making her way to France to join John at his diplomatic posting, though her ship didnât actually leave Boston until the next day. In this episode, weâll explore how the friendship that was kindled during their single day together in Boston carried on through their shared months in France, their decades of correspondence, and even through the years when Jefferson and John Adams were feuding. Weâll also examine Thomas Jefferson as an early New England tourist, who explored not only Boston, but also New Haven, Portsmouth, and other key regional population centers, as well as taking a fun look at his epic Boston shopping spree just days before he too boarded a boat to Europe.
Revolution’s Edge, with Patrick Gabridge and Nikki Stewart (episode 276)
The new play “Revolutionâs Edge” will debut at Old North Church in June 2023. It tells the story of three Bostonians and their families on the eve of the Revolution. Mather Byles is the Loyalist rector of Old North Church, Cato is an African American man whoâs enslaved by Byles, and John Pulling is a whiggish shipâs captain and member of the Old North vestry. The three men have very different stations in life, but they all have young families with intertwined lives, and on April 18, 1775, they all had very different decisions to make about those lives. My guests this week are Patrick Gabridge, producing artistic director of the Plays in Place theater company, and Nikki Stewart, executive director of Old North Illuminated. Together, they’ll tell us how this, um, revolutionary new drama came to be.
Continue reading Revolution’s Edge, with Patrick Gabridge and Nikki Stewart (episode 276)
The Lost Viking City on the Charles (episode 275)
If you walk down Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, you might notice a small stone marker that states, âon this spot in the year 1000, Leif Erikson built his house in Vineland.â You might be surprised to learn that Leif Erikson had a house in Cambridge, and if so, youâll be even more surprised to learn that the lower Charles River was the seat of a thriving Norse city around the turn of the first millennium. Learn about Harvard professor Eben Norton Horsford’s theory that the legendary Viking city of Norumbega was situated along the Charles River in this week’s podcast!
Continue reading The Lost Viking City on the Charles (episode 275)