The war between the US Army and the Native American confederation during the war of 1812 is a buried story in an often-overlooked event, yet its impact on the history of North America is profound. The leading figures on both sides of the war, Shawnee Chief Tecumseh and US Army General William Henry Harrison, had come of age in the struggles over what is today called the Midwest United States, and both understood that losing the war would mean losing the future they imagined for their people. In this episode, Ben & Bob do a deep dive on the story behind that war with Peter Stark, author of the incredibly accessible book, Gallop Toward The Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison’s Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation (Random House, 2023).

Peter Stark is an adventure and exploration writer and historian who was previously a correspondent for Outsidemagazine. His previous book, Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father, was named a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize in 2019. You can follow him on Instagram at @peterstark_adventure_historian.

This is a rebroadcast of episode #383, which originally aired on August 28, 2023. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.

The affordable housing shortage in many American cities is making urban life more difficult for all of us. But the problem of housing is not a new one, and history has some valuable lessons for those looking for solutions. In this episode, historian Tom Hanchett joins us to talk about his new book, Affordable Housing in Charlotte: What One City’s History Tells Us About America’s Pressing Problem and the truths, myths, and ironies of government subsidized housing in the United States.

If you enjoy this episode, check out Tom’s previous appearances on our show in episode 159 and episode 4.

This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.

In the late 18th century, tens of millions of buffalo lived in North America. By the mid-1880s, they were on the brink of extinction. For the white settlers who sought to “conquer” the American west, and the Native people whose way of life depended on them, the plight of the American Buffalo was more than a story of one species of animal. As Dayton Duncan writes in the prologue of his new book Blood Memory, the buffalo has “emerged as an embodiment of the nation’s contradictory relationship with the natural world: venerated and mercilessly destroyed, a symbol of both a romanticized frontier and the callous conquest of a continent.” In this episode, Dayton joins us for a conversation about the Buffalo (aka American Bison) and how the story of one animal can tell us so much about American history.

Dayton Duncan is an Emmy award-winning writer whose most recent collaborations with filmmaker Ken Burns are the book Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo (Alfred A. Knopf, 2023)and the new documentary The American Buffalo (2023) which is available right now at pbs.org.

If you enjoyed this episode, check out our previous conversation with Dayton Duncan in RTN #229 on Benjamin Franklin.

This episode originally aired as episode 285 on October 2, 2023. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.