History

Celebrating the history of American music in 24 Hours

4:06pm July 10, 2023

The performance artist Taylor Mac is the feature of a new documentary. When we spoke to him in 2016, he had just completed a 24-hour show covering 24 decades of American popular music.

Kansas City Monarchs pitching great Satchel Paige warms up at New York's Yankee Stadium Aug. 2, 1942 for a Negro League game between the Monarchs and the New York Cuban Stars.

Sports
Arts

The Negro League revolutionized baseball – MLB's new rules are part of its legacy

2:23pm July 10, 2023

by Dave Davies

In his film The League, Sam Pollard tells the story of the Negro National League: "They brought a different kind of style ... a kind of baseball which Major League Baseball is trying to bring back."

Queue Listen Now

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., departs from the U.S. Capitol following a vote, on May 11, as she returned to Washington, D.C., after having being absent from the Senate for months due to illness.

Politics & Government

Feinstein's return to the Senate recalls its past heroics and persistent problems

5:01am July 08, 2023

by Ron Elving

The 90-year-old Californian's long absence and current condition raise questions about the institution's ability to deal with its internal issues of aging or disability.

Dvorak's beloved 'New World' symphony was an anthem to what American music could be

5:05pm July 07, 2023

by Tom Huizenga

Antonin Dvorak's "New World Symphony" is an anthem to American roots. It was written by a foreigner and required white classical musicians to respect Black spirituals and Native American music.

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Louis Armstrong's dazzling archive has a new home — his

4:29pm July 06, 2023

by Nate Chinen

Across the street from the jazz icon's home in Queens, a site of pilgrimage for fans from around the world, sits the new Louis Armstrong Center, which brings his 60,000-item archive back to the block.

This image from Mordechai Bernstein's "In the Labyrinth of Times" exhibit shows the Munich synagogue on the eve of its destruction in June 1938.

Parts of a Munich synagogue demolished by Nazis are found in a river 85 years later

7:03am July 06, 2023

by Rachel Treisman

Munich's main synagogue was one of the first to be destroyed in Nazi Germany, under Hitler's orders. No one knew what had become of the rubble — until construction workers made a discovery last week.

National

A fan is reviving Orson Welles' poorly edited 'lost masterpiece' through animation

4:55pm July 05, 2023

by Neda Ulaby

The Magnificent Ambersons has been called Orson Welles' "lost masterpiece." The studio cut more than 40 minutes from the movie, but a filmmaker has used animation to recreate lost footage.

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A short history of the American tradition of competitive eating

5:08pm July 04, 2023

The 4th of July traditional hotdog eating contest got us thinking about why food and the holiday are so intertwined. Some experts have gone deep on the subject of competitive eating.

A new free play at Federal Hall reveals the bumpy early days of the government

4:28pm July 04, 2023

by Jennifer Vanasco

Democracy is messy. A new free play for visitors to the Federal Hall National Monument in New York shows just how messy the early days of the federal government were.

National

Frederick Douglass' descendants read 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?'

4:10pm July 04, 2023

Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Douglass gave this speech to a group of abolitionists 170 years ago.