It's Not History

In this episode, I follow a pencil-scrawled telegram from a burning harbor in Havana straight into the offices of two warring newspaper tycoons and the clubroom of a future president who'd been dreaming of exactly this fight since college.
It's a story that involves yellow journalism, a Confederate uncle, a diary entry with a single black X on the page, and a Dakota cattle ranch that turned an exiled East Coast aristocrat into an unrepentant evangelist for American empire.

In this episode, I sail in a small boat to a remote string of islands and the largest brick fortress in the Americas, one which began sinking into the sand the moment it was finished. 
It's a story that involves Cuban revolutionaries, Spanish silver mines and how a pile of wet coal in the wrong place can sink a battleship and an empire.
And how the truth about what actually happened took almost a century to float to the surface.

In this series we discover how a bizarre, beautiful, steampunk hybrid called USS Olympia, a ship I first came to know as a kid, destroyed one empire, birthed another. Then had breakfast.
It’s a story that involves a (literal) mountain of silver, how Hoagies came to be and why coal, battleships and revolutions are a terrible combination.
And how America first tried on becoming an empire. And decided it didn’t fit.

In this episode, recorded before a live audience in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we look at Conestoga Town through a different lens: the challenge of historic preservation without physical artifacts. Looking for inspiration, we discover 27 miles of fabric and cans of red spray paint. What happens next is up to you.

In this, the final episode of this series, my family discovers a new war and a new fortress in the fields of Negiuchi. The B-29 Super Fortress. Much is lost. But some things are found. And saved.