Our Episodes
Season 4 – Episode 8: Hammerin’ Hank Greenberg, How a Jewish Kid from the Bronx became a Detroit Tiger Great
Hank Greenberg, who entered the Hall of Fame as one of the greatest hitters in the game’s history, was the first Jewish star in team sports. He interrupted his...
Season 4 – Episode 7: The 1960s and General Motors: Consumerism Hits The Big Three
GM spied on a gadfly and got caught. It was the ’60s, and it changed the auto industry forever. When consumer advocate Ralph Nader began hounding Detroit to produce...
Season 4 – Episode 6: No-No Boy and the Japanese-American Migration to Detroit
Barely two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order #9066. Some 120,000 Japanese Americans in this country’s western states were ordered into internment...
Season 4 – Episode 5: Vernors, The Nectar of the Gods
James Vernor invented his ginger ale in downtown Detroit just after the Civil War. More than 15 decades later, we’re still fans. The Detroit History Podcast tells the story...
Season 4 – Episode 4: Black Bottom: The Rise, the Fall, and the Rise of a Detroit Neighborhood
For decades, segregation forced African-Americans migrating from the South to Detroit into one neighborhood: “Black “Bottom,” an area just east of downtown, which is now Lafayette Park. Urban renewal...
Season 4 – Episode 3: The Haunting of The Whitney
Waiter, is there a ghost in my soup? The Whitney, one of Detroit’s great restaurants, began life as a grand 19th Century mansion. David Whitney, one of Michigan’s richest...
Season 4 – Episode 2: The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, The Sub-Aquatic Ambassador
An underwater tale of two cities. With the auto industry booming and with Detroit’s population surging in the 1920s, we needed a way to get people and car parts...
Season 4 – Episode 1: The Scene, The Hippest Show in Detroit in the 70s and 80s
Black Detroiters were invisible on local TV then . . . ‘The Scene’ changed it all The low-budget, upstart and, to some, shocking dance show on a pioneering...
Special Edition- The Polio Outbreak
With a terrible virus sweeping the nation, the word “vaccine” dominated headlines for months. Not COVID-19, but polio. Not now, but the 1950s. Elder generations remember it well. But...
Season 3 Finale: The Deindustrialization of Detroit
Some look at Detroit today and wonder how the abandoned buildings got here. What happened between The Arsenal of Democracy and now? How did a city of nearly 2...
Season 3 – Episode 09: Lottie The Body, The Burlesque Queen of Detroit
Burlesque legend Lottie Graves-Claiborne wowed ’em on several continents, sharing the stage with numerous worldwide stars. But throughout her celebrated 90 years, Lottie insisted on highlighting the art of the tease. This...
Season 3 – Episode 08: Birds of a Feather- Bowling, Belgians, Beer, Pigeons, and the Cadieux Cafe
A historic cafe has morphed its way through generations of change, and still … still … there is the feather bowling. Feather bowling? Yes, feather bowling. One man, born in...