Tag: ttp

  • The Cheesy Results of WW II

    The Cheesy Results of WW II

    One of the greatest products of World War II was “cheesy”.  And it’s all Wisconsin’s fault. In fact it’s possible that without WW2 three of the greatest things in your daily life just wouldn’t be there. In today’s episode we cross paths with FDR, Ricos Nachos, Jean Nicolet, Cheetos, Fritos, Kraft, and would you believe…

  • Every Episode Has 4

    Every Episode Has 4

    This is episode 61, the end of the first era and beginning of the second. In fielding your hundreds of ideas for shows, we decided to go over the 4 actual requirement that every story must have before becoming an episode of Tracing The Path. We look at old episodes and how they meet the…

  • Roald Dahl: The Real Chocolate Spy

    Roald Dahl: The Real Chocolate Spy

    The fact that our most beloved children’s author was a spy for the British isn’t the twist. The twist comes when his greatest enemy becomes an important advisor. Along the way we run into Ian Fleming, FDR, Cadbury, Quaker Oats, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Beatrix Potter, the Sopwith Camel Ace Flyer and C.S. Forrester

  • Amalia or Bob’s Candy Canes?

    Amalia or Bob’s Candy Canes?

    Did you know that if it weren’t for the Mexicans and the Swedes, our Christmas would look substantially different? Yep, today we trace the world of Peppermint back to Santa Anna, Bob, Amalia Erickson, William Wrigley, the American Chicle Company, the Erie Canal, some French cellophane and maybe even Elvis

  • Who Killed the American Dream?

    Who Killed the American Dream?

    The “American Dream” was first coined in 1931. In 1971 two things happened on exactly the same day . . . the world’s biggest song was released lamenting the end of the American Dream. And the world’s biggest dreamer opened the most amazing American institution. In today’s episode we cross paths with Apple Pie, James…

  • 1848: The Year Halloween Began

    1848: The Year Halloween Began

    Have you ever heard the origin of Halloween? Perhaps you’ve heard about the Irish holiday Samhain, but there’s more. And all of it converges on one year, 1848. In this episode learn about Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, the most powerful volcano ever recorded, Yellow Fever, premature…

  • Criminals, Oak Trees & The Resolute Desk

    Criminals, Oak Trees & The Resolute Desk

    The Resolute Desk was a gift to the President as the movie National Treasure says. But did you know it involved Tasmania, Van Diemen’s Land, Explorer John Franklin, Maritime Salvage Laws, Senator Lawrence S Foster, Abel Tasman, Anthony Van Diemen, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the HMS Resolute, Sweden’s 300,000 oak trees, Rutherford B Hayes…

  • Is Crayola Responsible for American Gothic

    Is Crayola Responsible for American Gothic

    When the Industrial Revolution came to town, it inspired an opposite movement that may have changed the world. It certainly inspired a construction style and a whole bunch more.  Today we rub elbow’s with Teddy Roosevelt, David Sedaris, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia O’Keefe, the Carnegies, Crayola Crayons, Edgar Allen Poe, Chicago Academy of…

  • When Rural America Was Cancelled

    When Rural America Was Cancelled

    The Louisiana Purchase kicked off Westward Expansion in the United States. Then came the transcontinental railroad, Homesteading and factory towns.  Even the Industrial Revolution aided rural communities with new farming technology and access to bigger markets. But one day in 1971, Rural America was cancelled. In today’s episode we cross paths with Arthur Nielsen, UNIVAC…

  • Robert Smalls & The Death of Lincoln: A Civil War Story

    Robert Smalls & The Death of Lincoln: A Civil War Story

    Robert Smalls was the defiant slave who decided freedom was a better choice. That is when his and President Abraham Lincoln’s lives would be intertwined, from the Civil War all the way through death. In this episode we discover Lydia Polite, Harriet Buss, Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, the Freedsman Bureau, Parris…