Best Kelly Therese Pollock Podcasts (2024)

1
Doug Williams, Vince Evans & the History of Black Quarterbacks in the NFL 43:20

1h ago43:20

43:20

In 1946, the National Football League began the process of reintegration after a “gentleman’s agreement” had stopped teams from hiring Black players for over a decade. Even as the NFL began to re-integrate, though, racist stereotypes kept teams from drafting Black players into so-called “thinking” positions like quarterback. Black players who start…

1
“Work doesn’t feel like work when it’s fun.” (WCID Jr. w/ Joan Galat, author of Make Your Mark, Make a Difference) 25:11

2d ago25:11

25:11

It’s a special episode of What Can I Do Junior, hosted by Teddy and Arthur! Are you a young person looking to make a difference? Do you have kids in your life who are eager to make their voices heard? This week we spoke to Joan Galat, author of Make Your Mark, Make a Difference—A Kid’s Guide to Standing Up For People, Animals, and the Planet, about…

1
Jewish Patriots in the American Revolution 44:27

4d ago44:27

44:27

In the Continental Army, one company of patriots in Charleston, South Carolina, was a majority Jewish, and at least fifteen Jewish soldiers in the Army achieved the rank of officer during the American Revolution, something unheard of in European armies at the time. Though their numbers were small (in proportion with their population in the colonies…

1
"Find the joy in today." (w/ Dr. Deborah Vinall, psychologist, Author of Gaslighting and the Trauma Recovery Workbook for Teens) 26:38

12d ago26:38

26:38

Wondering how to protect your mental health during this election season? This week we spoke to Dr. Deborah Vinall, a psychologist and author based in Southern California, about how to engage in the political process in a way that’s both productive and protective of your mental health. She shared tips for how to check in with yourself as you do poli…

1
Abigail Adams 53:27

11d ago53:27

53:27

Abigail Smith Adams, wife to the second U.S. president and mother of the sixth U.S. president, may be best known for exhorting her husband to “remember the ladies” as he worked with his colleagues to form a new government, but that was just one of her many strongly-held political views. Adams, who lacked formed education and whose legal status was …

1
Hair and the American Presidency 36:24

18d ago36:24

36:24

In March 1778, while he was camped at Valley Forge, Commander in Chief George Washington sent a lock of his hair to the daughter of the New Jersey Governor. It wasn’t a romantic gift; rather, Washington was responding to a common request made to celebrities of his time, similar to the autographed photo one might request today. Because hair is so lo…

1
“In order to get there, you have to build out infrastructure.” (w/ Jane Kleeb, Chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, author, and Climate Breakthrough Awardee) 31:31

22d ago31:31

31:31

Wondering how to do effective Democratic organizing in rural red states? This week we spoke to Jane Kleeb, the Chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, about the innovative work she and the Nebraska Dems are doing to bring Democratic victories to supposedly deep red, rural states. We talked about how Democrats can reach out to rural voters, the simi…

1
Margaret Chase Smith 51:36

25d ago51:36

51:36

At the Republican National Convention in July 1964, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s name was placed in nomination for the presidency, and she received votes from 27 delegates, the first time a woman was placed in nomination at a major party’s presidential convention in the United States. It was only one of many firsts Smith would achieve in he…

1
“I listen to the people that these elections are truly life and death for.” (w/ Maggie O’Keefe, Chicago 40th Ward Committeeperson, community organizer.) 35:10

30d ago35:10

35:10

Wondering what canvassing for a candidate and organizing in-person voter outreach actually involves? This week we spoke to Maggie O’Keefe, a community activist who is part of a new generation of Democratic Committee members organizing the vote in Chicago. Have you been thinking of volunteering for a candidate but are nervous about the idea of knock…

1
The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago 52:07

1M ago52:07

52:07

Even before Democrats met in Chicago in August to choose their presidential nominee, the year 1968 had been a turbulent, and often violent, time in the United States. In Chicago, the tumult of an open convention inside the International Amphitheatre was matched by the huge anti-war protests downtown. While the Democrats inside the convention hall v…

1
“Words mean things” (w/ Anat Shenker-Osorio, Host of Words to Win By, Principal of ASO Communications) 43:05

1M ago43:05

43:05

This week we spoke to Anat Shenker-Osorio, Democratic campaign consultant, messaging researcher, founder of ASO Communications, and host of the excellent podcast Words to Win By. In this episode Anat shares crucial wisdom on how to have meaningful conversations about our political future in real life and on social media. She examines common campaig…

1
Sigrid Schultz 42:55

1M ago42:55

42:55

In 1926, American Sigrid Schultz became one of the first women to head a foreign bureau for a US newspaper when she was named the chief correspondent for the Berlin bureau of the Chicago Tribune. In her 26 years with the Tribune, Schultz, using her command of German and French, her knowledge of German politics and history, and her wide range of con…

1
The History of Synchronized Swimming 44:20

2M ago44:20

44:20

When the 1934 World’s Fair in Chicago was looking for an aquatic act to complement their new underwater lights, organizers turned to physical educator Katherine Curtis, who put together a wildly popular show called the Modern Mermaids. No one could quite figure out what to call it, trying out water ballet and figure swimming until a radio announcer…

1
The FTA & Antiwar Protests in 1971 (Cross-Post from Unsung History) 47:31

2M ago47:31

47:31

While we gear up to bring you Season 3 of What Can I Do, focused on how to take action in a presidential election year, please enjoy this episode of Unsung History focused on antiwar activism. In 1971, a group of performers calling themselves the Free Theatre Associates (FTA), including Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, began putting on popular ant…

1
The FTA & Antiwar Protests in 1971 46:03

2M ago46:03

46:03

In 1971, a group of performers calling themselves the Free Theatre Associates (FTA), including Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, began putting on popular antiwar shows for audiences of active-duty GIs. Over 10 months they performed near military bases all over the United States and in the Pacific Rim. The Pacific Rim tour led to a documentary, whic…

1
The Incorruptibles & Organized Jewish Crime in New York City in the Early 20th Century 45:25

2M ago45:25

45:25

In 1912, a group of wealthy and influential German Jews in uptown New York funded an effort to root out organized crime on the lower East Side, then the most densely populated neighborhood on Earth, home to half a million people, many of them recent Jewish Russian immigrants. As a result, a Jewish investigator and a Jewish lawyer joined the NYPD an…

1
Dr. Claudia Hampton & the History of Affirmative Action in California 46:28

2M ago46:28

46:28

In 1974, Republican governor Ronald Reagan appointed educator Dr. Claudia Hampton, a Democrat active in her local NAACP, as the first Black woman trustee to the board of California State University. For the next twenty years Hampton would be known as the affirmative action trustee as she advocated for policies and budgets that would help support an…

1
Josephine McCarty: Mother, Lobbyist, Spy & Abortionist 58:00

3M ago58:00

58:00

Josephine McCarty, née Fagan, aka Mrs. Virginia S. Seymour, dba Emma Burleigh. M.D., was many things: mother, teacher, saleswoman, spy, lobbyist, and abortionist. And in 1872 she was also an accused murderer, after eyewitnesses saw her fire a pistol on a public streetcar in Utica, New York, killing one man and wounding another. Historian R.E. Fulto…

1
The Auburn Prison System & the Case of William Freeman 54:09

3M ago54:09

54:09

In 1817, the second state prison in New York opened in Auburn, situated on a fast-flowing river so waterpower could be used to run machinery in the factories that would be housed in the prison. In a new practice of incarceration that would come to be known as the Auburn System, the prisoners labored in silence during the day for the profit of the p…

1
Quilting & the New Deal 41:51

3M ago41:51

41:51

As part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), so-called “unskilled” women were put to work in over 10,000 sewing rooms across the country, producing both garments and home goods for people in need. Those home goods included quilts, sometimes quickly-made utilitarian bedcoverings, but also artistic quilts worthy of exhibition. Quilts were feat…

1
The Federal Theatre Project 45:43

3M ago45:43

45:43

Between 1935 and 1939, the Federal Theatre Project, part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), employed over 12,000 actors and put on over 1200 productions in 29 states. Led by Hallie Flanagan, the FTP, using only a small fraction of the total WPA budget, employed theater professionals; entertained audiences, some two-third of whom had never …

1
The Red Summer of 1919 & Black Resistance 44:28

4M ago44:28

44:28

In 1919, racial tensions in the US, exacerbated by changes brought about by the first wave of the Great Migration and by the return of Black soldiers who demanded equal citizenship from the country they’d fought for, boiled over into a summer of violence. In Washington, DC, 39 people died after days of fighting between white mobs and Black citizens…

1
The Reconstruction Era & its Aftermath 50:25

4M ago50:25

50:25

As the Civil War was drawing to a close, President Lincoln was preparing for what came after, with plans for reunification of the country, and he began to advocate for limited suffrage for Black Americans. John Wilkes Booth’s bullet cut short those plans, and Southerner Andrew Johnson, who was much more sympathetic to the former Confederacy, succee…

1
The Southern Plantation System 46:56

4M ago46:56

46:56

Fictional depictions of Southern plantations often present romanticized visions of genteel country life, but for the people enslaved on plantations the reality was that of a forced labor camp. At the same time the plantation was also their home. And although they had no choice in where or how they lived, enslaved people did work to make their resid…

1
Slavery & Incarceration in New Orleans 41:33

4M ago41:33

41:33

Shortly after New Orleans became a US city (via the Louisiana Purchase), the municipal council established one of the country’s first professional salaried police forces and began operation of Police Jail, both efforts aimed at the capture and control of enslaved people who had run away from or otherwise disobeyed their enslavers. The history of Ne…

1
The Jazz Maestros of Jim Crow America 45:19

4M ago45:19

45:19

Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie came of age in a deeply segregated country, battling racism to become celebrated musicians, composers, and band leaders whose music lives on. Joining me this week to discuss the lives and careers of these three musical geniuses is writer and journalist Larry Tye, author of The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellin…

1
Negro League Baseball 46:18

5M ago46:18

46:18

In its earliest years, the National League was not segregated, and a few teams included Black ballplayers, but in 1887 major and minor league owners adopted a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” that no new contracts would be given to Black players. In 1920, pitcher and manager Rube Foster founded the first of the Negro Leagues, the Negro National Le…

1
Log Cabin Republicans and the Gay Right 45:34

5M ago45:34

45:34

In 1977, a California state senator named John Briggs took to the steps of City Hall in San Francisco to announce a ballot initiative that would empower school boards to fire gay teachers based only on their sexual orientation. In response, gay activists around California mobilized, including gay Republicans, who formed among the first gay Republic…

1
American Posture Panic 47:52

5M ago47:52

47:52

For several decades in the 20th Century, American universities, including elite institutions, took nude photos of their students, sometimes as often as twice a year, in order to evaluate their posture. In some cases students had to achieve a minimum posture grade in order to graduate. How did that practice develop, and how did it end? This week we’…

1
The History of DARE 44:36

5M ago44:36

44:36

In the fall of 1983, the LAPD, under Chief of Police Darryl Gates and in collaboration with the LA Unified School District, launched Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), sending 10 police officers into 50 elementary schools to teach kids how to say no to drugs. By the time DARE celebrated its 10-year anniversary, there were DARE officers…

1
Alice Roosevelt Longworth 45:08

6M ago45:08

45:08

When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, his eldest child, 17-year-old Alice, rose quickly to celebrity status. The public loved hearing about the exploits of the poker-playing, gum-chewing “Princess Alice,” who kept a small green snake in her purse. By the time she died at age 96, Alice, whose Dupont Circle home included an embroidered pi…

1
Eleanor Roosevelt's Visit to the Pacific Theatre during World War II 42:01

6M ago42:01

42:01

In August 1943, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt set off in secrecy from San Francisco on a military transport plane, flying across the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t until she showed up in New Zealand 10 days later that the public learned about her trip, a mission to the frontlines of the Pacific Theater in World War II to serve as "the President's eyes, ea…

1
Eliza Scidmore 43:27

6M ago43:27

43:27

Journalist Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore traveled the world in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, writing books and hundreds of articles about such places as Alaska, Japan, China, India, and helping shape the journal of the National Geographic Society into the photograph-heavy magazine it is today. Scidmore is perhaps best known today for her long-ru…

1
Foreign Missionaries & American Diplomacy in the 19th Century 43:16

6M ago43:16

43:16

In 1812, when the United States was still a young nation and its State Department was tiny, American citizens began heading around the world as Christian missionaries. Early in the 19th Century, the US government often saw missionaries as experts on the politics, culture, and language of regions like China and the Sandwich Islands, but as the State…

1
Tammany Hall, FDR & the Murder of Vivian Gordon 40:06

7M ago40:06

40:06

In 1931, Judge Samuel Seabury was leading an investigation for Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt into corruption in New York’s magistrate courts when a witness in the investigation named Vivian Gordon was found murdered in the Bronx. Because of the public demand for answers in this high-profile murder case, FDR could no longer keep his uneasy peace wi…

1
The Combahee River Raid of 1863 46:07

7M ago46:07

46:07

Starting in November 1861, the Union Army held the city of Beaufort, South Carolina, using the Sea Islands as a southern base of operations in the Civil War. Harriet Tubman joined the Army there, debriefing freedom seekers who fled enslavement in nearby regions and ran to seek the Union Army’s protection in Beaufort. With the intelligence Tubman ga…

1
The History of Ice in the United States 43:19

7M ago43:19

43:19

Today, Americans consume 400 pounds of ice a year, each. That would have been unfathomable to people in the 18th century, but a number of innovators and ice barons in the 19th and 20th centuries changed the way we think about the slippery substance. Joining me in this episode is writer Dr. Amy Brady, author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rink…

1
The History of Blue Jeans 41:26

7M ago41:26

41:26

If you’re like most Americans – or most people on earth – you have a pair of jeans, or maybe five, in your wardrobe. There’s a decent chance you’re wearing jeans right now. These humble pants were invented by a Reno tailor in the 1870s in response to a frustrated customer whose husband kept wearing through his pants too quickly. How, then, did they…

1
The History of Pinball 51:07

7M ago51:07

51:07

In January 1942, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia sent New York City police out on an important mission; their objective: to find and destroy tens of thousands of pinball machines. But some of pinball’s most important innovations, including the development of flippers, happened in the decades that it was banned in New York and many other US cities. This w…

1
The History of US Foreign Disaster Relief 42:43

8M ago42:43

42:43

In 1812, the United States Congress voted to provide $50,000 to assist victims of a horrific earthquake in the far-away country of Venezuela. It would be another nine decades before the US again provided aid for recovery efforts after a foreign rapid-onset natural disaster, but over time it became much more common for the US to help in such emergen…

1
LSD, the CIA & the History of Psychedelic Science 43:37

8M ago43:37

43:37

In 1938, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally developed the potent psychedelic LSD, although it would be several years before Hofmann realized what he’d created. During the Cold War, the CIA launched a top-secret mind control project, code-named MKUltra, experimenting with LSD and other psychedelic substances, drugging military personnel, CIA …

1
Clotilda: The Last U.S. Slave Ship 41:44

8M ago41:44

41:44

In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the last slave ship landed in the United States from Africa. The transatlantic slave trade had been illegal in the US since 1808, but Alabama enslaver Timothy Meaher and his friends were so sure they could get away with it that they made a bet and hired Meaher’s neighbor, William Foster, to captain a voyage to …

1
The History of Mormonism 44:50

8M ago44:50

44:50

In 1830, amid the Second Great Awakening in the burned-over district of New York State, Joseph Smith, Jr., and Oliver Cowdery ordained each other as the first two elders in what they then called the Church of Christ. Within eight years, the Governor of Missouri issued an executive order that members of the church, by then known as The Church of Jes…

1
The History of College Radio 45:42

9M ago45:42

45:42

Almost as soon as there were radio stations, there were college radio stations. In 1948, to popularize FM radio, the FCC introduced class D non commercial education licenses for low-watt college radio stations. By 1967, 326 FM radio signals in the United States operated as “educational radio,” 220 of which were owned and operated by colleges and un…

1
Love Actually & the Healing Power of Christmas Films 44:52

9M ago44:52

44:52

What makes a Christmas movie a Christmas movie? How do Christmas movies react to – and help us heal from – collective trauma? How can a British Christmas movie feel quintessentially American? We discuss all that and more this week at the 20th Anniversary of Love Actually, with G. Vaughn Joy, a film historian, writer, podcast host, and PhD candidate…

1
Mollie Moon 45:57

9M ago45:57

45:57

Stories of the Civil Rights Movement don’t often center the fundraisers, often Black women, whose tireless efforts made the movement possible; today we’re featuring one of those women. Mollie Moon, born in 1907, the founder and first chairperson of the National Council of Urban League Guilds, raised millions of dollars for the Civil Rights Movement…

1
“What can we do as community to protect each other?” (w/ Angela Ferrell-Zabala, ED of Mom’s Demand Action) 30:17

9M ago30:17

30:17

Are you looking for some hope and next steps when it comes to combatting gun violence in your community and nationally?This week we spoke to Angela Ferrell-Zabala from Mom’s Demand Action to dig into the seemingly intractable issue of gun violence and learn about how Mom’s Demand Action, their affiliated organization Students Demand Action, and the…

1
Jewish War Brides of World War II 46:02

9M ago46:02

46:02

In the ravages of post-World War II Europe, some Jewish women survivors of the Holocaust found the beginnings of a new life when they met – and married – American (and Canadian and British) men serving with the Allied forces. These women were part of a much larger group of war brides, who came to the United States in such large numbers that they re…

1
Merze Tate 47:23

10M ago47:23

47:23

Scholar Merze Tate, born in Michigan in 1905, overcame the odds in what she called a “sex and race discriminating world,” to earn graduate degrees from Oxford University and Harvard University on her way to becoming the first Black woman to teach in the History Department at Howard University. During her long career, Tate published 5 books, 34 jour…

1
Black Civil Rights before the Civil Rights Movement 48:15

10M ago48:15

48:15

The beginning of the Civil Rights Movement is often dated to sometime in the middle of the 1950s, but the roots of it stretch back much further. The NAACP, which calls itself “the nation's largest and most widely recognized civil rights organization,” was founded near the beginning of the 20th Century, on February 12, 1909. As today’s guest demonst…

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