Best Detroit History Podcasts (2024)

1
Season 6 Finale- Michigan Central Station, The Ellis Island of Detroit 29:17

5M ago29:17

29:17

The Michigan Central Station reopening has given Detroit a great story to tell, specifically: how we took a wreck of a building and turned it into something glorious. The Detroit History Podcast takes a dive into how the place slid into such disrepair. Spoiler alert: maybe the station is a symbol of something bigger. Times changed. Automobiles and …

1
Season 6, Episode 7- Chung's and Detroit's Chinatown 24:40

5M ago24:40

24:40

As a child growing up in metro Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s, Curtis Chin watched the world go by from an unusual vantage point. His family owned Chung’s, a popular Chinese restaurant in the Cass Corridor, which enjoyed a 60-year run before closing in 2000. Chin, now a nationally recognized author, has written about that experience in his memo…

1
Season 6, Episode 6- The Edsel: The Road to Lemonville 25:08

5M ago25:08

25:08

The Ford Motor Company had momentum going into the mid-1950s: a young Henry Ford II, who inherited the CEO job from his grandfather roughly a decade earlier, was reversing the company’s fortunes. But then, the company laid the biggest egg in automotive history. It introduced the Edsel in 1957. Despite working with the best brains in the country, th…

1
Season 6, Episode 5- The Last Hanging in Detroit 23:51

6M ago23:51

23:51

On a fall day in 1830, convicted wife killer Stephen Simmons was hung in downtown Detroit. His execution was as public as anything could be. Bleachers were set up on three sides of the scaffold, as people came from miles around to witness the execution. Maybe they didn’t like what they saw, because Michigan soon became the first English-speaking go…

1
Season 6, Episode 4- How the DIA Turned From a Private Art Collection Into a World-Renowned Museum 30:22

6M ago30:22

30:22

Here’s where Detroit was, art-wise, in 1917: a middling art museum on the east edge of downtown Detroit, with little to attract notice. We tell the story of the next 10 years, when the entire world began to pay attention. The magnificent Detroit Institute of Arts building on Woodward went up, with paintings by the yet-to-be-discovered Vincent Van G…

1
Season 6, Episode 3- Bird, Barry and Miles: The Blue Bird Inn during the 1950s 24:29

6M ago24:29

24:29

The Blue Bird Inn was a cathedral of musical wonder in 1950s-era Detroit. This now-defunct west side club featured bebop jazz, featuring musicians such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Barry Harris, Thad Jones, and a longer list of jazz masters. The place was pretty much abandoned a few decades ago, but a local preservation group is taking up its cau…

1
Season 6, Episode 2- The Polar Bears of World War 1 24:41

6M ago24:41

24:41

A group of soldiers from metro Detroit and Michigan boarded a trip ship bound for war-torn Europe during the closing months of World War I. Instead, they were diverted to Russia, just south of the Arctic Circle. They battled the Bolsheviks, who had just deposed Russia’s Czar. They fought in temperatures as low as 40-below zero, and continued fighti…

1
Season 6, Episode 1- The Sheik and Big Time Wrestling 33:25

6M ago33:25

33:25

The Sheik (real name: Edward Farhat) was the most feared bad guy in Detroit wrestling during the 1960s and 1970s. He threw fire. He cut his opponent. He bit them, often winning with his “camel clutch.” His business model was simple: to behave in such a vile manner that people would pay money to watch him battle at air-conditioned Cobo Arena. We loo…

1
The 1957 NFL Champion Detroit Lions Revisited 29:46

9M ago29:46

29:46

It's been 5 years since the Detroit History Podcast originally released their podcast on the 1957 NFL champion Detroit Lions. Much has changed with Lions brass in the past few years, and it has finally led to post-season success in the Motor City. The Detroit History Podcast revisits the improbable run the 1957 team made to the championship, a run …

1
Season 5 Finale- The Development of PCP and Ketamine 21:49

2y ago21:49

21:49

Ketamine has found wide uses since the 1960s: As a painkiller, an anesthetic, a street drug consumed at raves, and -- now -- considered by many to be an exciting new treatment for depression. We explore how ketamine was developed here in Detroit, at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company, with help from a Wayne State University chemistry professor,…

1
Season 5, Episode 9- Fran Harris, The First Female Newscaster in Michigan 21:09

2y ago21:09

21:09

Broadcaster Fran Harris's life was a lifetime of firsts. She was the first woman newscaster in Detroit radio during World War II, persuading her bosses at WWJ to abandon its "guys only" tradition. And when television came along in Detroit on Channel 4 in 1946, she was on the air for that, too. When she retired from the station in 1974, some 200 wom…

1
Season 5, Episode 8- A Century of Mexicantown 21:32

2y ago21:32

21:32

A longstanding community called Mexicantown on Detroit's southwest side has persevered for around a century. The area of restaurants, shops, and bakeries anchors a key ethnic community in Detroit. For many, the journey here was prompted by a search for jobs. We explore the rise of the community, and the decline when Depression-era policies due to r…

1
Season 5, Episode 7- The Biography of a Rumor: The "Paul McCartney is Dead" Hoax 26:24

2y ago26:24

26:24

Thousands of phonograph records were destroyed, as were thousands of needles used on the old-style record players. Teenage sleuths were conducting their own investigations in the great conspiracy theory of the fall of 1969: Beatle Paul McCartney had died, but that his death was covered up. However, as the theory went, clues could be found in the ob…

1
Season 5, Episode 6- The Origins of Detroit Style Pizza 22:06

2y ago22:06

22:06

Sometime in the mid-1940s, an Italian immigrant bar owner by the name of Gus Guerra started making pizzas in his joint to bring in a few extra dollars. Decades later, Gus’s creation is big business, and world-renowned. Detroit Style Pizza is being served up in uber hip places in Brooklyn. The big chains are in on it. And we’re giving Chicago a run.…

1
Season 5, Episode 5- The Michigan Democratic Social Club Triple Beheading 25:53

2y ago25:53

25:53

It was horrific, even by the low standards of the urban drug trade. Three dead bodies found in a van on Detroit's east side one night in 1979. All three had been decapitated. We explore the street politics that led to the massacre. And we tell the story of Frank "Nitti" Usher, a crime lord of the era. Former Detroit Free Press reporter Joe Swickard…

1
Season 5, Episode 4- The Native American Origins of Detroit 28:25

2y ago28:25

28:25

The beginnings of Detroit are inaccurately pinned to the arrival of Cadillac on these shores in 1701, but there were various Native American tribes in the area for centuries before that. Thousands of years ago, people came over on a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. The earliest indigenous people around Detroit were suspected to have come here fo…

1
Season 5, Episode 3- The 1863 Civil War Riot 24:31

2y ago24:31

24:31

Smack in the middle of the Civil War, Detroit experienced a riot that was characterized as "the most brutal and bloody riot that ever disgraced any community." A local bar owner, Thomas Faulkner, who was thought to be African-American (he wasn't) went to trial in March, 1863 on sexual assault charges. The accuser was a 10-year-old white girl who la…

1
Season 5, Episode 2- The Ford Hunger March 26:17

2y ago26:17

26:17

On a cold winter day in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, some 3,000 or more people met at a park on Detroit's southwest side. They hoped to march to Ford Motor Company's Rouge Plant to present a list of demands to Henry Ford. By modern day standards, those demands weren't all that extravagant. A few demands they asked for: the right to …

1
Season 5, Episode 1- Joe Louis, The Punch of Detroit 34:49

2y ago34:49

34:49

Joe Louis may have been the most famous person to come out of Detroit. He arrived here in the mid-1920s as part of the Great Migration, that influx of African-Americans who came north to escape the Jim Crow South. When he took up boxing as a teenager, there was no stopping him. He became heavyweight boxing champion of the world for 12 years, from 1…

1
Season 4 Finale- Jeff Montgomery, Detroit's Fierce LGBTQ+ Rights Activist 24:50

3y ago24:50

24:50

Jeff Montgomery was a born activist who played an important role in saving Orchestra Hall. When a hate crime brought tragedy to his personal life, he channeled his talent and drive to working on behalf of the LBGTQ+ community. His stellar career and sad decline are documented in America You Kill Me, which lost its major debut to COVID, but is set t…

1
Season 4, Episode 9- When The Cold War Seemed Hot: Nike Missiles Around Metro Detroit, And A Nuclear Warhead On Belle Isle 23:58

3y ago23:58

23:58

Between 1955 and 1974, a nuclear war with the Soviet Union seemed like a possibility. We armed ourselves by placing Nike Missiles around many major cities across the U.S. -- including 16 in and around metro Detroit. Six of them -- including one on Belle Isle -- were outfitted with nuclear warheads. A nuke on Belle Isle? We hear from historians Mel …

1
Season 4, Episode 8- Hammerin' Hank Greenberg, How a Jewish Kid from the Bronx became a Detroit Tiger Great 23:33

3y ago23:33

23:33

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 baseball career to serve longer in World War II than any other major league player, and led the Tigers to World Series championships before and after the war. So why did the Tigers sell him …

1
Season 4, Episode 7- The 1960s and General Motors: Consumerism Hits The Big Three 24:24

3y ago24:24

24:24

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 safer cars, the world's largest corporation took affront and went snooping. Its chairman, James Roche, had to apologize in the U.S. Senate chambers. Ralph Nader's rise from obscure auth…

1
Season 4, Episode 6- No-No Boy and the Japanese-American Migration to Detroit 27:19

3y ago27:19

27:19

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 camps. We report on the order, and the post-war period. When the camps were finally emptied out after the war, some 1,000 came to Detroit. We tal…

1
Season 4, Episode 5- Vernors, The Nectar of the Gods 24:03

3y ago24:03

24:03

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 of this enduringly popular soft drink. You thought Vernor Highway in southwest Detroit was named after the drink? Actually (spoiler alert), it was his work in City Hall. We expl…

1
Season 4, Episode 4- Black Bottom: The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise of a Detroit Neighborhood 28:35

3y ago28:35

28:35

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 plowed the neighborhood under in the 1950s, destroying what had been a thriving place that gave the world Joe Louis and Coleman Young. But the memory …

1
Season 4, Episode 3- The Haunting of The Whitney 25:28

3y ago25:28

25:28

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 lumber barons, would be startled to learn not only that the public is dining on Faroe Island salmon and shrimp and scallop sauté in his Woodward Avenue manor, but tales of paranor…

1
Season 4, Episode 2- The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, The Sub-Aquatic Ambassador 21:33

3y ago21:33

21:33

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 back and forth between Detroit and Windsor. The solution: dig a massive trench beneath the Detroit River current, drop massive concrete tubes into the trench, and drain 'them. What could pos…

1
Season 4, Episode 1- The Scene, the Hippest Detroit TV show of the 70s and 80s 22:55

3y ago22:55

22:55

The low-budget, upstart and, to some, shocking dance show on a pioneering African-American-owned TV station put a screenful of Detroit teenagers on the air every day. If you were of an age in the 1970s and 1980s, you watched. Today's Detroit History Podcast gives the back story of a most unlikely -- and important -- piece of the city's cultural his…

1
Special Edition- The Polio Outbreak 31:35

3+ y ago31:35

31:35

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 almost all have forgotten, if they ever knew, that Detroit suffered a polio epidemic three years after Dr. Jonas Salk's "miracle drug" quelled America's fear of a crip…

1
Season 3 Finale- The Deindustrialization of Detroit 30:37

4y ago30:37

30:37

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 million people dwindle down to around 650,000? There are people that blame the 1967 rebellion for the urban decay the city has seen, others blame longtime mayor Coleman Young. In our Season 3…

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Season 3, Episode 9- Lottie The Body, The Burlesque Queen of Detroit 24:20

4+ y ago24:20

24:20

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 week's Detroit History Podcast focuses on a long life well-lived, and how Lottie the Body's discretion painted a fine line betwe…

1
Season 3, Episode 8- Birds of a Feather- Bowling, Belgians, Beer, Pigeons, and the Cadieux Cafe 25:01

4+ y ago25:01

25:01

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 Detroit, found an important piece of his identity playing this unusual game of his forebears on the court at the Cadieux Cafe and he is an important reason the game appears …

1
Season 3, Episode 7- The Politics of Fear 21:46

4+ y ago21:46

21:46

In 1952, famed historian David Maraniss's father, Elliott Maraniss, was fired by the Detroit Times, the city's Hearst daily newspaper. This happened on the very day congressional witch hunters showed up in the newsroom with a subpoena demanding he testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The family's ensuing odyssey in search of a…

1
Season 3, Episode 6- The Evangelista Occult Murders 23:17

4+ y ago23:17

23:17

Benny Evangelista found Detroit's near East Side fertile territory for dispensing pay-as-you-go insights into the lives of his working-class clientele. He was known in the neighborhood as a "divine prophet," which is how the banner headline of the Detroit Free Press described him after his decapitated body and the hacked remains of his wife and fou…

1
Season 3, Episode 5- Far from New Orleans, Long Before Motown, Jazz Became Detroit's Pulse 28:36

4+ y ago28:36

28:36

The magnet of good-paying factory jobs and the nurturing influence of an excellent public school music program helped make Detroit a hotbed of jazz and the hometown of many internationally famous musicians. This edition of Detroit History Podcast takes a look at when and how and why Detroit's music began to swing, and how generations of jazz stylis…

1
Season 3, Episode 4- They Sat Down and Rocked The Boat: Walter Reuther's Blue-Collar Revolution 30:23

4+ y ago30:23

30:23

He came to Detroit as a high-school dropout raised in hardscrabble West Virginia. The career arc that followed -- from diemaker at Henry Ford's Ford Rouge Plant to confidant of American presidents -- marks Walter Reuther as a singular figure in in the U.S. labor movement. His vision of power-sharing and social progressivism drew the template for a …

1
Season 3, Episode 3- From Midnight to Windsor, Detroit's Underground Railroad 27:56

4+ y ago27:56

27:56

From Dr. King’s march on Woodward to Cobo Hall where he delivered an early version of his “I Have a Dream” speech, to Coleman Young’s election in 1973, to Malcolm X’s days of activism in the city, to the protests of police brutality this past week, Detroit has always been a hotbed for civil rights. In the 1800s, it was no different. Thousands of fr…

1
Season 3, Episode 2- How WABX Radio and Plum Street Put the Counter in Counter-Culture 26:58

4+ y ago26:58

26:58

In the late 60s, a thunderously enduring upheaval occurred in the musical and cultural landscape. Young Americans, knowingly or not, were overdue for something other than Top 40 music and crewcuts. The Detroit radio station WABX, ignoring old norms of pop music content and airing songs that lasted seven minutes or more, was the crucible for what be…

1
Season 3, Episode 1- How The Spotlight Found Coleman Young 24:44

4+ y ago24:44

24:44

If anybody was taking bets in the early 1960s, Coleman A. Young would have been a true longshot for getting himself elected to just about anything. He held any number of jobs from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, and ran unsuccessfully for public office on three occasions. But his fortunes changed. His dogged determination, refusal to bow to a Ho…

1
Special Edition- Detroit's Response to the 1918 Spanish Flu 23:49

4+ y ago23:49

23:49

When COVID-19 began to ravage the world, many health experts compared it to the 1918 Spanish Flu. What are the similarities? Nearly 100 years ago, the United States was nearing the end of the First World War. A strange illness appeared overseas that took out soldiers. Not long after, it came to America and created a pandemic the likes of which hadn…

1
Season 2, Episode 10- How The Klan Almost Elected A Mayor 21:25

5+ y ago21:25

21:25

Detroit was becoming an eclectic mix of cultures during the 1920s -- African-Americans from the south, immigrants from southern Europe, and a growing Catholic population. The Ku Klux Klan exploited the fear of outsiders and almost elected a Detroit lawyer named Charles Bowles during that decade. He ran again and won the Detroit mayoral seat in 1929…

1
Season 2, Episode 9- The Legend Of The Nain Rouge 22:07

5+ y ago22:07

22:07

There must be some reason behind Detroit's bad luck in the last three-plus centuries. We have the explanation: Du Nain Rouge in French, or the Red Dwarf in English. Legend has it the creature has been spotted whenever something really awful happens. And now, some fun-loving creative types in this city have turned it into a Mardi Gras-like celebrati…

1
Season 2, Episode 8- General Motors in the 1920s: How A Struggling Company Became the Chrome Colossus 21:28

5+ y ago21:28

21:28

In 1920, General Motors was a company in trouble. Its founder was fired- for a second time. Henry Ford was eating G.M.'s lunch with his Model T. But a decade later, G.M. had revamped itself into the model of a big business, and would remain so for decades, largely following the same playbook written by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. in the 1920s. We'll follo…

1
Season 2, Episode 7- Milliken v. Bradley, The Case Of Cross-District Busing 25:39

5+ y ago25:39

25:39

The topic of busing proved to be one of the most volatile issues in metro Detroit during the early 1970s. This came to a head in the case of Milliken v. Bradley. Two federal court orders mandated the forced busing of children to remedy segregation in metro Detroit. The reaction: The KKK dynamited buses in Pontiac. Thousands took to the streets. The…

1
Season 2, Episode 6- The 1957 NFL Champion Detroit Lions 26:34

5+ y ago26:34

26:34

It's been more than 60 years since the Detroit Lions won an NFL Championship. In the 50s, the Lions were one of the most dominant dynasties in the league, winning three championships in six years. It was a season of comebacks with their coach quitting weeks before the season and star QB Bobby Layne going down with a broken ankle. Their backup QB To…

1
Season 2 Episode 5- John Lee Hooker And The Blues On Hastings Street 22:20

5+ y ago22:20

22:20

Bluesman John Lee Hooker's recording career spanned more than 40 years -- from his hit record, Boogie Chillen', which was recorded in a Detroit basement in 1948, to his Grammy Award-winning LP The Healer. Hooker is a total product of Detroit's Black Bottom, the city's African-American neighborhood. We track his career, with help from John Lee Hooke…

1
Season 2, Episode 4- 1943, Detroit's Forgotten Riot 29:12

5+ y ago29:12

29:12

For two days in 1943, Detroit erupted into a flat-out race war. Thirty-four people died as whites and African-Americans battled each other in the streets. People were ripped from street cars and beaten senseless. Of the 25 deceased African-Americans, 17 were killed by police. It ended only as the U.S. Army came in with rifles and bayonets. Two hist…

1
Season 2, Episode 3- The Last Days Of Harry Houdini 26:11

5+ y ago26:11

26:11

Before radio, TV, and the internet magician Harry Houdini was described as the world's first rock star. So when he died in Detroit after a performance here in 1926, people around the world took note. We unspool Houdini's death, and his various Detroit connections. That includes his 1906 leap off the Belle Isle Bridge. Veteran newsman Joe Donovan, a…

1
Season 2, Episode 2- Remembering The Anchor, Detroit's Most Famous Newspaper Bar 25:02

5+ y ago25:02

25:02

The Anchor Bar, situated on the western end of downtown Detroit, was once one of the country's best-known newspaper bars. As one of the city's most notorious watering holes, it was also the site of a federal raid because the feds thought one of its patrons was running a $15 million-a-year bookie operation (uh, it did have four telephones). After 60…

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Detroit History Podcasts

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