A Teenage Girl Saves France

March 18, 1879. A crowd gathers around an indoor track in Brooklyn, NY, as an Irish immigrant named Bartholomew O’Donnell attempts a strange feat: walking 80 miles in 26 hours. Newspapers claim he’s eighty years old. Lap after lap, he circles the track: smoking a pipe, sipping ho ...  Show more

Why did Orson Welles take on a murder mystery? Listen for yourself. This week, we're sharing a special preview of Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier from the podcast Radio Diaries. In this series, we learn how Welles used his platform to shed light on a crime in a small, southern ...  Show more

In the early 15th century, a French village girl became a heroine for her role in the French victory during the Lancastrian phase of the 100 Years War. But it took 600 years before Joan of Arc was canonised as a Roman Catholic Saint. How did she become such a famous name in histo ...  Show more

The story of how Joan of Arc, an unassuming peasant girl, became the leader of French armies is one of the most dramatic in all of European history. In many ways Joan's biography can read like a fairytale, or like the classic hero's journey. As you might imagine it is a story tha ...  Show more

If Joan of Arc's rise to fame was unexpected, then her success on the battlefield was completely flabbergasting. Joan would score a series of impressive victories over the English and clear a path to Rheims so her Dauphin could become King of France. But what's a girl to do when ...  Show more

Joan of Arc is a historical superstar, a peasant who rose above her rank and gender to help free France from foreign occupation. Claiming to be acting under the orders of saints and angels, she became a symbol of national freedom. But how did a near-illiterate teenage girl win th ...  Show more