53 episodes

Season Five is Here.

Season Five of the Detroit History Podcast will explore the life and career of boxing icon, Joe Louis. We’ll jump into the true crime genre, digging into the story of a brutal triple-beheading on Detroit’s east side, in which three people were found in a van, their heads and hands hacked off. We’ll go further back in time, telling the story of a Native American Burial Mound on Detroit’s Southwest side. And we’ll delve into the history of Detroit Style Pizza.

The Detroit History Podcast The Detroit History Podcast

    • History
    • 4.7 • 196 Ratings

Season Five is Here.

Season Five of the Detroit History Podcast will explore the life and career of boxing icon, Joe Louis. We’ll jump into the true crime genre, digging into the story of a brutal triple-beheading on Detroit’s east side, in which three people were found in a van, their heads and hands hacked off. We’ll go further back in time, telling the story of a Native American Burial Mound on Detroit’s Southwest side. And we’ll delve into the history of Detroit Style Pizza.

    The 1957 NFL Champion Detroit Lions Revisited

    The 1957 NFL Champion Detroit Lions Revisited

    It's been 5 years since the Detroit History Podcast originally released their podcast on the 1957 NFL champion Detroit Lions. Much has changed with Lions brass in the past few years, and it has finally led to post-season success in the Motor City. The Detroit History Podcast revisits the improbable run the 1957 team made to the championship, a run that was led by a first year coach and a backup quarterback. Was grit always in the Lions DNA?  Managing editor Eric Kiska shares an updated essay on what has led to the Lions recent post-season success. 

    • 29 min
    Season 5 Finale- The Development of PCP and Ketamine

    Season 5 Finale- The Development of PCP and Ketamine

    Ketamine has found wide uses since the 1960s: As a painkiller, an anesthetic, a street drug consumed at raves, and -- now -- considered by many to be an exciting new treatment for depression. We explore how ketamine was developed here in Detroit, at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company, with help from a Wayne State University chemistry professor, and later tested at the now-closed Lafayette Clinic facility in Detroit. Credit to: The BBC and The Tim Ferriss Show.

    • 21 min
    Season 5, Episode 9- Fran Harris, The First Female Newscaster in Michigan

    Season 5, Episode 9- Fran Harris, The First Female Newscaster in Michigan

    Broadcaster Fran Harris's life was a lifetime of firsts. She was the first woman newscaster in Detroit radio during World War II, persuading her bosses at WWJ to abandon its "guys only" tradition. And when television came along in Detroit on Channel 4 in 1946, she was on the air for that, too. When she retired from the station in 1974, some 200 women showed up at her goodbye party, grateful to Harris for the barriers she broke. We have a tape of a 1989 Harris interview, and talk with Michigan State University professor emerita Sue Carter. Former Channel 4 newswoman Betty Carrier Newman describes life in the newsroom when she arrived in 1969.

    • 21 min
    Season 5, Episode 8- A Century of Mexicantown

    Season 5, Episode 8- A Century of Mexicantown

    A longstanding community called Mexicantown on Detroit's southwest side has persevered for around a century. The area of restaurants, shops, and bakeries anchors a key ethnic community in Detroit. For many, the journey here was prompted by a search for jobs. We explore the rise of the community, and the decline when Depression-era policies due to racism sent many Mexican-Americans packing for Mexico. We talk with Maria Elena Rodriguez and Elena Herrada and explore how this neighborhood came to be. 

    • 21 min
    Season 5, Episode 7- The Biography of a Rumor: The "Paul McCartney is Dead" Hoax

    Season 5, Episode 7- The Biography of a Rumor: The "Paul McCartney is Dead" Hoax

    Thousands of phonograph records were destroyed, as were thousands of needles used on the old-style record players. Teenage sleuths were conducting their own investigations in the great conspiracy theory of the fall of 1969: Beatle Paul McCartney had died, but that his death was covered up. However, as the theory went, clues could be found in the obscure nooks and crannies of Beatle records.  Weird? The rumor took root at WKNR-FM in Dearborn, and The Michigan Daily, the University of Michigan's student newspaper. Both carried "Paul Is Dead" stories. From there, the theory went out in waves, We wanted to know: how could anybody take this as seriously as they did? We talk with Fred LaBour, the young Michigan Daily staffer who wrote the story that helped ignite the hysteria. He's now a member of the award-winning band Riders In the Sky. 
     
    Interviews: Fred LaBour, M.L. Liebler
     
    Photo: Russ Gibb, courtesy of the Detroit Free Press, Ira Rosenberg
     
    Music: The Beatles: Revolution 9, The Tempations: I Can't Get Next To You, The Stooges: 1969, The Beatles: Strawberry Fields Forever, Riders in the Sky: Clarinet Polka. 

    • 26 min
    Season 5, Episode 6- The Origins of Detroit Style Pizza

    Season 5, Episode 6- The Origins of Detroit Style Pizza

    Sometime in the mid-1940s, an Italian immigrant bar owner by the name of Gus Guerra started making pizzas in his joint to bring in a few extra dollars. Decades later, Gus’s creation is big business, and world-renowned. Detroit Style Pizza is being served up in uber hip places in Brooklyn. The big chains are in on it. And we’re giving Chicago a run. We trace the history of the various players as Guerra’s creation morphed with the times. 

    Interviews with Wes Pikula, Steve Dolinsky, Marie Guerra, and Karen Dybis. Audio from the https://www.detroitstylepizza.co/ youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/DSPCtv). 

    • 22 min

Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5
196 Ratings

196 Ratings

Ewweeeezzzyyyyy ,

Great Detroit history

Overall great show but the highlight for me is the fact based research regarding the rise and fall of Detroit.

ddrrttff ,

Great Show

I initially thought this would be a short lived podcast due to the topic. But, they keep delivering interesting episodes that grab my attention.

slit lip ,

The best podcast around!

Joltin’ Joe

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