PRX - Pieces for Topic: Historical

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Before the launch of the Voyager probes, Carl Sagan was given the daunting task of assembling a guide to all things human. Something that would fit...

  • Added: Sep 10, 2013
  • Length: 01:44
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Roller coasters are the workhorse of the modern theme park, but their rise to popularity has been long and strange.

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Sep 10, 2013
  • Length: 01:43
  • Purchases: 1
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Aaron J. Brown is an author and community college instructor from the Iron Range. He writes MinnesotaBrown.com and hosts Northern Community Radio's...

  • Added: Sep 10, 2013
  • Length: 02:25
Caption: The Gatling Gun patent drawing (1865). The gun was patented on May 9, 1865, and was officially adopted by the U.S. Army on August 21, 1866. , Credit: National Archives
Reports that chemical weapons have been used in Syria raise important questions about what is—and is not—an appropriate means of waging war. This w...

Bought by XRAY.fm, KBRP Community Radio, KFOK-LPFM, WCAI / WNAN Cape & Islands, Mass., KSVR Studios: Skagit Valley Radio and more


  • Added: Aug 30, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 6
Caption: Depiction of the 1833 Leonid meteor storm, in Bible Readings for the Home Circle (1889).
On this episode of BackStory, we’re examining Americans’ ongoing fascination with the skies above us. How have people made sense of comets, eclipse...

Bought by KSVR Studios: Skagit Valley Radio, WABE, KBRP Community Radio, KREV-LP, and WCAI / WNAN Cape & Islands, Mass.


  • Added: Aug 09, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 5
Caption: Depiction of the 1833 Leonid meteor storm, in Bible Readings for the Home Circle (1889).
30-second promo for "Starry Eyed: A History of the Heavens," with a 5 second hole for station-specific time/date tag.

Bought by Radio Newark and Troy Public Radio


  • Added: Aug 07, 2013
  • Length: :30
  • Purchases: 2
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Maybe pay phones really do encourage time travel.

Bought by XRAY.fm and WJCT


  • Added: Jul 31, 2013
  • Length: 13:54
  • Purchases: 2
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Host Brian Balogh talks with historian Beverly Gage about the breakthrough technological innovation J. Edgar Hoover brought to his work at the FBI:...

Bought by Radio Newark, KFAI Minneapolis, and PRX Remix


  • Added: Jul 22, 2013
  • Length: 07:35
  • Purchases: 3
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Private investigator Ron Brown walks hosts Brian Balogh and Ed Ayers through the process of tracking people down, how technology has dramatically r...

Bought by Radio Newark, Louisville Public Media, PRX Remix, and KFAI Minneapolis


  • Added: Jul 22, 2013
  • Length: 06:48
  • Purchases: 4
Caption: An enumerator interviews a woman for the 1940 census, Credit: National Archives
In June, Americans learned that the NSA has been collecting data on millions of American’s phone calls, and tapping into data gathered by tech comp...

Bought by KSVR Studios: Skagit Valley Radio, WUFT, KBRP Community Radio, KREV-LP, WRPI and more


  • Added: Jul 19, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 8
Caption: Central Telegraph Office in Kolkata, Credit: Sandip Roy
The telegram was 163 years old in India, and only recently has the reliable old machine been put away.

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Jul 16, 2013
  • Length: 04:30
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: This is a look up from the 86th Street Station construction site.
The New York City Subway is a complex system that keeps NYC running and it is still being built. Hear the reasons for the initial construction, the...

Bought by Hark!, WRST-FM Oshkosh, KFAI Minneapolis, WTIP, and PRX Remix


  • Added: Jul 14, 2013
  • Length: 08:43
  • Purchases: 5
Caption: Martha Lillard, 65, uses her iron lung to breathe at night., Credit: Julia Scott
Sixty years after polio was eradicated in America, a dozen survivors still rely on their iron lungs to breathe. Come inside the machine Martha Lill...

Bought by KPIK-LP, New Hampshire Public Radio, KUOW, KOSU, Hark! and more


  • Added: Jul 11, 2013
  • Length: 06:30
  • Purchases: 14
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BackStory Producer Jess Engebretson brings us the story of the Effie Afton disaster – an 1856 steamboat crash that led to a legal showdown between ...

Bought by WOUB, KBRP Community Radio, KFAI Minneapolis, Radio Newark, Louisville Public Media and more


  • Added: Jun 17, 2013
  • Length: 06:34
  • Purchases: 6
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Host Ed Ayers talks with historian Walter Johnson about the rise of steamboats in the 19th Century, and how the cotton economy fueled an ever more ...

Bought by Radio Newark, KHNS, and PRX Remix


  • Added: Jun 17, 2013
  • Length: 08:58
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: The city of New Orleans (detail), c1885, Credit: Library of Congress
The Mississippi River is central to the American landscape and imagination. And for centuries, it has served as a battlefield in which our most com...

Bought by WUFT, KSVR Studios: Skagit Valley Radio, XRAY.fm, KBRP Community Radio, KUOW and more


  • Added: Jun 14, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 10
Caption: 1814 wood engraving of two types of locking mechanisms., Credit: (Library of Congress).
Can genes be patented? Are downloaders inhibiting musical creativity – or enhancing it? This week’s BackStory explores how Americans have viewed “i...

Bought by WUFT, XRAY.fm, WSKG, KUOW, WRPI and more


  • Added: May 17, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 12
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In this episode we look at the modern power grid, which is on the brink of important changes. First, why the smart grid matters. Then, the critical...

Bought by WTJU


  • Added: May 15, 2013
  • Length: 17:06
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Meredith Axelrod
Singer and early vocal recordings champion Meredith Axelrod chats about the vocalists who pioneered recorded sound technologies in the early twenti...

  • Added: Apr 30, 2013
  • Length: 58:59
Caption: Groks Science Radio Show
Humans have wanted to know tomorrow's weather for as long as there have been todays. Only in the last few centuries, however, have we begun making...

Bought by KKWE Niijii Radio and KPVL


  • Added: Mar 21, 2013
  • Length: 30:45
  • Purchases: 2
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Rubber Duckies aren't just an old fashioned bathtub toy.

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Feb 22, 2013
  • Length: 01:54
  • Purchases: 1
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The rise and fall of Henry Ford's Fordlandia, a rubber plantation and American colony in the Amazon.

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Feb 14, 2013
  • Length: 01:52
  • Purchases: 1
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This week on Into It, Andrew Bales explores space dives, an extreme jump that tests the limits of technology and the wills of dare devils.

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Jan 18, 2013
  • Length: 01:44
  • Purchases: 1
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The microphone has changed the entire world into everything we know and love today, so it only makes sense that there's a museum for it.

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Jan 17, 2013
  • Length: 20:26
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Groks Science Radio Show
Dr. Jason MacLean joined us to discuss this Hebbian plasticity and the past, present, and future of research on neuronal networks.

Bought by KKWE Niijii Radio, KMXT, WRNC-LP, and KPVL


  • Added: Jan 02, 2013
  • Length: 27:21
  • Purchases: 4