HeyJaredAmerican History Hotline
Bob Crawford searches for the best historians and experts to answer listener questions about American history — from the Revolutionary War to rock & roll feuds. Got a question? Send it to AmericanHistoryHotline@gmail.com.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 23, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 8, 2026
Latest episodes
How Accurate Was The Oregon Trail Game? The Real History Behind America's Most Famous Video Game | Sarah Keyes (opens the original)
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Millions of Americans grew up playing The Oregon Trail, trying to avoid dysentery, survive dangerous river crossings, and make it west in one piece. But how accurate was the famous video game? In this episode of American History Hotline, host Bob Crawford talks with Yale historian Sarah Keyes, author of American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail, to separate fact from fiction. Together they explore: • How realistic The Oregon Trail video game really was • Did people actually die
25 Years After 9/11: What Did America Learn from the War on Terror? | Peter Bergen (opens the original)
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Twenty-five years after 9/11, America is once again at war in the Middle East. So what—if anything—have we learned? This week on American History Hotline , Bob Crawford talks with Peter Bergen , one of the country's leading experts on Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and America's post-9/11 wars. Bergen is the New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt and the new book All the President's Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America's War on Terror . Bergen takes us inside the warning signs before September 11
Trump Ranked the Presidents. A Historian Responds (opens the original)
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President Donald Trump recently released his own ranking of America's presidents—placing himself at the top while labeling figures such as Barack Obama and Ulysses S. Grant failures. But how does his list hold up to history? Presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky joins Bob Crawford to examine Trump's rankings, identify their biggest surprises and omissions, and reveal her own five greatest presidents. She explains why George Washington and Abraham Lincoln belong at the top, why Grant deserves
Why Does America Have the Electoral College? Peter Sagal Explains (opens the original)
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Why does the United States use the Electoral College instead of a national popular vote? Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me! Or, actually, DO tell me. To get answers, Bob calls up Peter Sagal, longtime host of NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! and host of the PBS series Constitution USA, to unpack what some have called "America's Worst Idea." Where did the Electoral College come from? Why did the Founding Fathers create it? How did slavery, the Three-Fifths Clause, and the political compromises of the
Why Did the U.S. Army Keep Disbanding the Rangers? (opens the original)
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The history of the Army Rangers isn't one continuous story, it's a cycle of creation, disbandment, and revival that stretches back before the United States even existed. In this episode of Bob calls up Brian Halstead, President of the U.S. Army Ranger Association, about the remarkable history of the Rangers. Together they trace their evolution from frontier scouts during the French and Indian War to George Washington's reconnaissance units, the Civil War, World War II's legendary D-Day assault a
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