Prohibition - We Want Beer | 6

Do you know the record for the longest ratification period of any constitutional amendment? Lillian Cunningham did. She’s an editor with the Washington Post, host of two outstanding American History podcasts, Presidential and Constitutional, and she’s our guest today. 

In August 1814, the White House burned. A fire that would eventually consume the entire nation in Civil War was already burning. This is Antebellum America.

This is the adolescence of the United States, when the country grew at tremendous speed, and when fundamental ques ...

Most people have heard of Prohibition, the time when America decided drinking was bad. But how much do we really know? Because it wasn’t just the speakeasies that were hidden. We’re talking about Mafia turf wars and government poisoning alcohol for years. And that’s just the star ...  Show more

For thirteen years from 1920, the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic drinks was banned in the USA. The age of prohibition was a rowdy time: enlivened by jazz and wild parties; darkened by violence and lawlessness. But how did it come about? Who were its heroes and ...  Show more

On 17 January 1920, the 18th Amendment came into effect in the United States. It made the manufacture, sale and transportation of 'intoxicating liquor' illegal.

Sarah Churchwell is BACK to explore the realities of the roaring twenties with Don. Why was alcohol banned ...

Is alcohol a universal feature of human society? Why is problematic in some countries and not others? How was alcohol helped build the modern state? These are just a few of the questions that sociologist John O'Brien addresses in States of Intoxication: The Place of Alcohol in Ci ...  Show more