Obscure Presidential History with Jeremy Deut...

Team Simon here! While A Bit of Optimism is on a short break, we’re revisiting a few episodes you helped make some of our favorites. We’ll be back with brand-new conversations next week, on March 24th, 2026. In the meantime, we’re bringing back an episode that explores a word mos ...  Show more

Hello from Team Simon! We’re taking a short hiatus, but A Bit of Optimism will return with brand-new episodes March 24th. In the meantime, we’re revisiting some of our favorite episodes. Episodes that many of you who listened, shared them, and told us what resonated. This week, w ...  Show more

How did a president lose his entire cabinet so soon after taking office? What was his role in the Westward expansion of the United States? And where did the name Millard come from?

From teaching himself to read to becoming President of the United States, today we are ...

<span class="s2"><span class="s1"><span style= "font-size: 14pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true">>> Get my new course: The</span><span data-preserver-spaces= "true"> </span>

FINALLY! IT'S KENNEDY! It’s 1960 and JFK has been elected president, having beaten Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century. He becomes the youngest and first Catholic president in US history, and would come to face many critics and juicy rumours ove ...  Show more

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, so how did it work out when he became the leader of this nation that he was so instrumental in founding?

For the third episode in American History Hit's special series about the Presidents, ...