Laughing Histories

In 1692, it did not pay to be a nonconformist in Salem Village, Massachusetts. This was especially true if the nonconformist just happened to be an elderly, improvised widow. Susannah Martin found this out the hard way. Susannah Martin stood trial, received a conviction, and suffered hanging for bewitching some of the good folk of Salem, Massachusetts and the surrounding area. More than two dozen persons related the crimes Martin committed. It seems that Susannah Martin’s most heinous crime may have been that she had a sense of humor. When she heard the ridiculous accusations made against...

Still Laughing features never-before-told stories from the creation of one of the most groundbreaking shows in television history.

Told through intimate diary entries, this historical fiction series unfurls the extraordinary sagas of the Bible's best-known characters through the eyes of ordinary girls. In The Laughing Princess of the Desert, the second book of The Promised Land Diaries, Rhoda is orphaned and brought into Abram's household to help his beautiful wife, Sarai. Getting used to the nomadic life of camels and goat-hair tents, Rhoda must exercise courage as she serves the remarkable woman who will one day become matriarch of the Jews.

The peril of paper money was seen in 1782 when Josiah Quincy wrote George Washington "that there never was a paper pound, a paper dollar, or a paper promise of any kind, that ever obtained a general currency but by force or fraud, generally by both." Are you interested in preserving your hard-earned purchasing power for the future beyond banksters' manipulation and their illness, inflation? There are only two ways to save for the future in our modern society: intrusive banks or stacking precious metals. The outcome of both choices is the antithesis of each other. The former system leads to ...

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.