Episodes

A century ago, the birds at your feeder were fair game. Egrets were shot for their breeding plumes, passenger pigeons were shipped to city markets by the barrel, and fashionable women wore hats topped with whole stuffed birds, sometimes with...

Step inside the Tudor court with bestselling historian and novelist Alison Weir as she joins Blaine DeSantis to discuss her new historical novel, The Boleyn Secret. The story follows Catherine Carey, niece of Anne Boleyn, from the shadow of her...

What if the Lewis and Clark story you learned in school got almost everything wrong? On this episode of Books and Looks, Blaine DeSantis sits down with Craig Fehrman, author of the bestselling book This Vast Enterprise, to reexamine one of the...

Before the Hearsts and the Pulitzers, before the front page as we know it, the American newspaper was built by teenagers covered in soot, women who risked hanging, and editors who settled arguments with pistols. Alex Wright joins Blaine DeSantis to...

In July 1831, the whaleship Mentor sailed out of New Bedford Harbor with 22 men aboard, hoping to strike it rich hunting sperm whales in the Pacific. They never made it. Caught in a raging storm, the ship smashed into the remote island chain of...

Did you know Theodore Roosevelt’s most trusted advisors weren’t traditional politicians, but a diverse group of tennis-playing frontiersmen, foreign ambassadors, and bankers? In this episode of Books and Looks, Blaine DeSantis sits down...

The odds of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams dying on the exact same day—exactly fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence—were estimated at one in 1.2 billion. In this episode of Books and Looks, Blaine DeSantis sits down with...

What if you had to tell the time without glancing at a watch, phone, or screen? In this episode of Books & Looks, host Blaine DeSantis sits down with best-selling author Cathy Haynes to explore the forgotten ways humanity once used the natural...

Discover the wild true story of the 1909 transcontinental auto race! Author Eric Moskowitz reveals how Henry Ford cheated to win The Hardest, Longest Race. Episode Resources: “The Hardest, Longest Race” by Eric Moskowitz University of...

Before Dancing with the Stars or modern dance marathons, 19th-century America was captivated by a cutthroat, highly competitive sporting event: challenge dancing. In this episode of Books & Looks, Blaine sits down with historian Dr. April F...