America's 250th Special, Ep 2: The Locked Rooms and Who Was Left Outside Liberty?

America's 250th Special, Ep 2: The Locked Rooms and Who Was Left Outside Liberty?

In Episode 2 of Naked History’s 250th special, we move deeper into the haunted house of the American Experiment and open the locked rooms of the Revolution. The Declaration promised liberty, but not everyone was invited into that promise. This episode looks at the people whose stories complicate the clean patriotic version of 1776: enslaved people who used revolutionary language to pursue freedom, Indigenous nations facing settler expansion, women whose labor helped sustain resistance while their authority remained limited, Loyalists whose choices were more human than cartoon history allows, and poor soldiers and veterans who fought for independence only to come home to debt, taxes, and hardship. This is the Revolution with the doors open: messier, sharper, more honest, and far more interesting than the birthday-card version. Music Credit: * "In The West" Kevin MacLeod (⁠⁠⁠incompetech.com⁠⁠⁠)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/⁠⁠ * Music track: lavender by massobeats Source: ⁠⁠⁠https://freetouse.com/music ⁠⁠⁠Royalty Free Music for Video (Safe) * Sound effects courtesy of freesound__community, Trygve Larsen, Jurji, Gavin Mogensen, Darina Evstafeva, Moniker_Subriquet, Richard Multimedia, Soul Serenity Sounds, and Wulangjia from Pixabay,com

America's 250th Special, Ep 1: The Front Door: Revolution, Treason, and the Myth of the Beginning

America’s birthday starts at the front door. In the first episode of the Naked History 250th Special, we step inside the American Experiment and ask what was actually being born in 1776: a nation, a rebellion, a political argument, or a very expensive group project with muskets? This episode looks at the Revolution before it became marble statues and schoolhouse mythology. The colonies were not one big liberty-loving family reunion. They were divided, angry, indebted, suspicious, smuggling, printing, protesting, and slowly pressurizing into something dangerous. We’ll walk through the printing room, where the Declaration became more than a document. It became a political weapon. We’ll sit at the treason table, where founding a country also meant risking a noose. And then we’ll meet the first ghost in the house: the word “all.” Because “all men are created equal” was beautiful. It was also haunted from the beginning. Welcome to the American Experiment. Please wipe your feet. Music Credit: * "In The West" Kevin MacLeod (⁠⁠⁠incompetech.com⁠⁠⁠)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/⁠⁠ * Music track: lavender by massobeats Source: ⁠⁠⁠https://freetouse.com/music ⁠⁠⁠Royalty Free Music for Video (Safe) * Sound effects courtesy of freesound__community, Trygve Larsen, Jurji, Gavin Mogensen, Darina Evstafeva, Moniker_Subriquet, Richard Multimedia, Soul Serenity Sounds, and Wulangjia from Pixabay,com

Ep26: The 250th Preamble: The Fourth Before It Was the Fourth

America’s birthday has a footnote. This week on Naked History, we’re warming up for the big July 4th special with a short episode about why the Fourth of July was not always destined to be the Fourth of July. The vote for independence happened on July 2nd, 1776. The Declaration was adopted on July 4th. And somehow, because history loves branding almost as much as it loves paperwork, the press release got the holiday. In this episode, we look at the Fourth before it was the Fourth: John Adams’s wrong-but-understandable prediction, the difference between declaring independence and explaining it, and how America’s birthday became a memory machine full of fireworks, contradictions, mythology, and potato salad. Because July 4th is not just a celebration. It is a story America tells about itself. And next week, we’re going much deeper. Music Credit: * "In The West" Kevin MacLeod (⁠⁠⁠incompetech.com⁠⁠⁠)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/⁠⁠ * Music track: lavender by massobeats Source: ⁠⁠⁠https://freetouse.com/music ⁠⁠⁠Royalty Free Music for Video (Safe)

Ep 25 Debrief: The Radium Girls: The Afterglow, Corporate Denial, and What's Beneath

The Radium Girls story is already horrifying: young women told to paint glow-in-the-dark watch dials with radioactive paint, sharpen their brushes with their lips, and trust the companies that swore everything was safe. But the main episode only scratches the glowing surface. In this Naked History: Debrief, we’re opening the drawer of radioactive footnotes: what got left out, how corporate denial kept dragging on, why the Radium Girls’ fight still matters, and how their bones became evidence when the companies tried to bury the truth. We’ll also step into This Week in History for the week of June 15th, because history never takes a week off from being dramatic, weird, and deeply inconvenient. This is the after-party for The Radium Girls: Corporate Denial with a Glow, a story about workplace lies, radioactive bodies, women refusing to disappear quietly, and the long shadow of companies choosing profit over people. Because sometimes the past does not whisper. Sometimes it glows in the dark. Music Credit: * "In The West" Kevin MacLeod (⁠⁠⁠incompetech.com⁠⁠⁠) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/⁠⁠ * Music by Ievgen Poltavskyi from Pixabay * Music by FreeMusicForVideo from Pixabay * Music track: lavender by massobeats Source: https://freetouse.com/music

Ep 25: The Radium Girls: Corporate Denial with a Glow

Podcast Description In this episode of Naked History, we’re turning off the lights and following the glow straight into one of the most horrifying workplace scandals of the twentieth century. The Radium Girls were young women hired to paint glow-in-the-dark watch and instrument dials with radium-laced paint. They were told the work was safe. They were taught to sharpen their brushes with their lips. Dip. Lip. Paint. Over and over again. But the glow that made the dials useful also settled into their bones. As workers began losing teeth, suffering horrific injuries, and dying from radiation poisoning, the companies behind the luminous paint denied responsibility, delayed justice, blamed the women, and protected profits over people. But the Radium Girls fought back from sickbeds, courtrooms, and bodies that had been turned into evidence. This is a story about science, labor, corporate denial, women’s pain being dismissed, and the workers who helped change the future of workplace safety. Because sometimes the past does not whisper. Sometimes it glows in the dark. Music Credit: * "In The West" Kevin MacLeod (⁠⁠⁠incompetech.com⁠⁠⁠)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/⁠⁠ * Music track: lavender by massobeats Source: ⁠⁠⁠https://freetouse.com/music ⁠⁠⁠Royalty Free Music for Video (Safe)