Reframing America Painted Sky Podcasts

Abraham Lincoln's face is universally recognizable, but do we really know him? His speeches are immortalized, but do we really understand his mind? On the Season 2 finale, Ryan Rasmussen and Tony Rydberg unpack the man, the myth, and the legend known as "Honest Abe" Lincoln. From his birth in a Kentucky log cabin to his assassination in Ford's Theatre, Ryan and Tony tackle the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Illinois Rail-splitter.

What events led to the Civil War? How could America's leaders have allowed things get so out of control? Tony Rydberg and Ryan Rasmussen explore 1853-1861, the eight years immediately preceding America's Civil War, to determine the cause of America's bloodiest crisis. How much blame can be attributed to Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, two of America's most obscure presidents (and two of the worst)? Were they the cause, or was the country's course already so derailed that no engineer would have been able to steer us back onto the tracks?

Despite having next to nothing in common, Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore rose through the American political system to become President and Vice President in 1849. Upon Taylor's untimely death in 1850, Fillmore took the reins of power himself. Overseeing massive migration due to the California Gold Rush and trying to mitigate hostilities between Northern and Southern factions, Taylor and Fillmore rumble, bumble, and stumble their way through a four-year winter of American discontent. Tony Rydberg and Ryan Rasmussen explore this odd pair of presidents to see what good they did - if any at all.

In four short years, James K. Polk transformed the United States into a coast-to-coast behemoth. Through diplomacy, war, and relentlessness, Polk achieved every major agenda item he set out to accomplish, and yet somehow he has fallen short of the mythical status of other presidents -- even less accomplished ones. Tony Rydberg and Ryan Rasmussen explore the administration of James K. Polk, a president who, more than any other, embodies the American obsession with stretching itself from sea to shining sea: an obsession named "Manifest Destiny."

Just when America began to expect eight-year presidencies, the country stumbles from 1837 to 1845 with not one, not two, but three presidents. In quick succession, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, and John Tyler took their shot at the top spot -- and if you think they came out of it battered and bruised, you should see what they did with the nation.

He was a self-made American hero. He was also the catalyst for one of the nation's greatest sins. A beacon for the common man, he was also an owner of enslaved people. Andrew Jackson's life of polarizing contradictions comes into focus as Tony Rydberg and Ryan Rasmussen tackle eight of the most tumultuous years in American history: the reign of "Old Hickory."