We look at how the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts submerged four towns, literally removing them from the map. It's a story of politics, power, and loss that changed Massachusetts. And it's a familiar story that resonates with how communities have been displaced or threatened by projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline and th…

We examine the Boston busing crisis of the 1970s. Although school segregation in the South gets most of the attention in the history books, integrating Boston's schools triggered violence and protests in a city that considered itself a role model. Featuring interviews with a former headmaster of the Boston Latin School, scholars, and people who liv…

For a while, Lowell, Massachusetts, was one of the most prosperous manufacturing towns in the world. Today, its wealth has faded. But it leaves behind the story of its "mill girls", the women and girls who worked in its textiles factories and organized for a better world. Hell, it turns out, hath no fury like a woman scorned by capitalism. From the…

Presenting Absalom Boston, the first African-American whaling captain to lead an all African-American crew and a man who founded one of the first Black institutions in the United States. And he did it someplace you wouldn't expect: Nantucket, Massachusetts. We explore how Nantucket went from a multiracial colony to an almost exclusively White encla…

The classic New England film Jaws explores a town terrorized by a murderous, stealthy shark. These days, another threat lurks in the water--but it isn't a shark. We travel to Newburyport, a coastal paradise slowly losing its bid for survival. Climate change and rising water levels have a devastating effect on the town and the solutions in place rig…

The Cold War brought an ever-present fear of ultimate death and destruction by nuclear weapons. Over time, the era of schools holding nuclear weapons drills faded into the past with the end of the Cold War. But nuclear weapons are still found all over the world today. Are nuclear weapons still a threat to Massachusetts? Does anyone care? In this ep…

What if we told you the end of the world already happened? What if we told you it happens all the time? No, we’re not talking about a meteor impact or zombie apocalypse, but that moment when a movement fails and leaves its followers devastated. In this podcast, we compare two world-ending events: the religious world of the Millerites that was smash…

We explore how the discovery of a set of bones in Canton, Massachusetts in 1969 led to the rediscovery of the 17th century Praying Indians in Massachusetts. In the midst of violent colonization and devastating epidemics, one man’s effort to Christianize the area's Native populations by putting them into "praying towns" ultimately contributed to the…