October 12, 1820. John James Audubon—a failed shopkeeper, grist miller, and steamboat investor—sets off from Cincinnati on a flatboat down the Ohio River. He is bankrupt. The bank has taken everything except his clothes, his gun, and a portfolio of 62 bird drawings. His plan is to float south, paint every bird in America at life size, and sell the results. Somehow, it works. The Birds of America becomes one of the most valuable books ever printed, and Audubon’s name becomes shorthand for loving nature.

But the man behind the myth is harder to pin down. He hid where he was born. He invented a species to impress European investors, took credit for scientific firsts he never did, and publicly argued against the abolition of slavery. Decades after his death, a former student of his widow’s founded a conservation society in his name, and the legend of the gentle naturalist grew. Today, the Audubon Society is fighting over whether to keep that name.

How did John James Audubon build his own legend? And what happens when it comes home to roost?

Special thanks to our guests: Robert Francis, author of the upcoming book Republic of Feathers (find him at birdhistory.substack.com), and 12-year-old bird-call prodigy Samuel Henderson (on Instagram with his mom Lori at @lorisamuelsmom).

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October 7, 1827. A body washes up on the shore of Lake Ontario. A Rochester newspaperman named Thurlow Weed believes he knows whose it is: William Morgan, a down-on-his-luck ex-Freemason who threatened to publish the order's secrets. He was pulled from a jail in Canandaigua a year earlier, and never seen again.

How does one man's disappearance set off a panic about secret societies, gut Freemasonry in America, and build the country's first third party? And why do the Anti-Masons, who vanish almost as fast as they rose, leave behind a playbook that shapes American politics for a century?

Special thanks to our guests: Mark Schmeller, Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University and author of the forthcoming A Man Cried Murder: The Masonic Conspiracy That Transformed American Politics; and Joshua Kastenberg, Professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law.

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A 5-min sample of our full interview about who Blackbeard really was, and the truth behind his pirate friends. Subscribe to HTW+ at htwpod.com or in your Apple Podcasts app to unlock full behind-the-scenes episodes.

Eric Jay Dolin is the author of Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates.