Added 10.2.18. Dating to not later than the mid-90s, this episode focuses on archaeology tied to the biblical lands and times. With eminent experts rich in field-dig experience and historical perspective, Milt explores whether, in fact, the walls of Jericho really may have come tumbling down as Joshua led the attack. Or does the evidence suggest otherwise? And what about Baby Jesus? Was he really born in a manger? The larger framework around which this episode is centered is the fascinating and painstaking process by which archaeology reveals – confirms, alters, denies – historical or allegorical tales which may have been taken as truth, if not always “gospel truth.” Milt’s guests included Dennis Groh, then a Professor of the History of Christianity at Garrett Theological Seminary; and Walter Rast, then a Professor of Old Testament and Palestinian Archaeology at Valparaiso University.

Added 9/4/18. Milt in this October, 1997 episode interviews noted historian Michael Beschloss on what he learned writing the first of two volumes based on once-secret White House tapes made by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the first two years of his presidency – starting with the hurried taking of office by the former Vice President after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November, 1963. The episode also includes the playing of some fascinating excerpts from the LBJ White House audio cache utilized by Beschloss. Listeners will gain insider insights to LBJ’s relationship with Lady Bird, as well as big topics faced by the administration such as civil rights, poverty, Vietnam and LBJ’s impending challenge from Republican Barry Goldwater.

Added 7.26.18. Milt is joined in this 2010 conversation by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, who had just authored “The Warmth Of Other Suns: The Epic Story Of America’s Great Migration.” It brings to life the travails, hopes and dreams of more than six million African-Americans who moved from the U.S. South to the cities of the north between 1915 and 1970. Wilkerson calls it one of the most under-reported stories of all time. She earlier won the Pulitzer while serving as the Chicago bureau chief for The New York Times, for feature articles on the great Midwest floods of 1993, and one about a 10-year-old boy who had to take a single-parent role to care for his four siblings.

Added 7.26.18. To preserve big game animals being hunted to extinction, legendary explorer and taxidermist Carl Akeley embarked time and again on perilous expeditions in the wilds of Africa. This champion of conservation created the African Hall at the New York Museum of Natural History and cavorted with outsize personalities of the times, such as Teddy Roosevelt and P.T. Barnum. His story is told by biographer Jay Kirk in “Kingdom Under Glass.” Milt in 2010 interviews Kirk about the life and times of Akeley. Publisher’s Weekly called Greene’s book, “a rollicking biography” and “epic adventure…a beguiling novelistic portrait of a man and an era straining to hear the call of the wild.”

Added 7.10.18. Everything you thought you knew about the history of baseball – our “national pastime” – is wrong. Or, at least, quite a bit of it. That is the upshot of a close look at the sport’s long arc in U.S. popular history by Mitchell Nathanson, a professor at the Villanova University School of Law, and author of “A People’s History Of Baseball.” For more of the play-by-play and color commentary, dig in to this 2012 interview of Nathanson, by Milt.