Episode 5: Austin

Steven Monacelli, a journalist in Texas focused on politics and extremism, and Dr. Michael Phillips, a historian of racism and eugenics in Texas, team up to explain the apocalyptic religious belief that shapes politics in Texas — and in turn, the nation and world.See omnystudio.c ...  Show more

Ask anyone outside of Austin what they know about the city and chances are the first thing they'll mention is the music. While the Armadillo Era has been well-chronicled, there is no book about Austin music in the 90s. In their new book, A Curious Mix of People: The Underground S ...  Show more

Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some twenty-eight thousand people located sixty miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley. Like many other similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few o ...  Show more

By the 1850s, Los Angeles was one of the most dangerous places to live in the West. Extrajudicial killings, unchecked racial violence, and vigilante groups like the Los Angeles Rangers prevailed. This “Wild West” culture seeped into and was propagated by the Sheriff’s Department ...  Show more

In 1985, Greg Mack, a DJ working for Los Angeles radio station KDAY, played a song that sounded like nothing else on West Coast airwaves: Toddy Tee’s “The Batteram,” a hip hop track that reflected the experiences of a young man growing up in 1980s Compton. The song tells about th ...  Show more