As we near the Super Bowl, we present a special episode with Ken Belson, author of the bestselling new book, Every Day is Sunday. We have a fun and insightful conversation about how the NFL, starting in 1993, launched itself from a successful sports league into a cultural and financial juggernaut.

September 24-30, 1942 - World War II. History books of this week will focus on the huge battles taking place in Stalingrad and Guadalcanal. The newspapers, on the other hand, were way more focused on the home front. The one or two stories about these very famous battles were overshadowed by the endless stories of new rationing at home and the latest scrap metal drive. For soldiers at the front, life was hard. For those at home, life had become very annoying.

July 20-26 1980 - A New Chapter. The summer of great movies was a cover to distract the country from the horrible economy. Amidst the cratering economy, the country was deciding between the moralizing and sweater-wearing world of Jimmy Carter, or the unlimited and mythical world of Ronald Reagan. Smalls cars against gas guzzlers. We know how that contest turned out.

Hijacking to Cuba, East German women on steroids, and scientists telling use all about global warming but we refused to listen.

July 12-18, 1925 - The Scopes Trial. In this special episode we are joined with Professor Edward Larson who wrote the definitive book on the famous trial, The Summer For the Gods, about the prosecution of John Scopes for the teaching of evolution. With Prof. Larson we discuss his Pulitzer-prize winning book, the shocking details of the trial, highlighting the two main characters, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, along with what this "Trial of the Century" means one hundred years later.

April 30-May 6, 1945. Europe. In this special episode we discuss the final week of World War 2 in Europe with best-selling author Lynne Olson. We focus on the incredible story of Ravensbruck, an all female concentration camp in Germany, which is at the center of her new book, The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck.

As we discuss in the podcast, WW2 is long over, but the war is not truly dead.

We are having another special episode of the Raspberry Podcast , this time with the writer Kevin Baker. He has written numerous history books and novels. His latest is The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City. We are talking sports and specifically a week in 1921 when boxer Jack Dempsey became a superstar, later teaming up with newly minted New York baseball legend Babe Ruth. The era of the superstar athlete was born, which along with the rise of a new media - radio - would turn local heroes into international celebrities.

A US nuclear test in the Bikini atoll went horribly awry in early March. The explosion was much bigger than anticipated - whoops! and fallout rained down on a Japanese fishing boat - Lucky Dragon 5. Not so lucky for them it turns out. It gave rise to the story behind Godzilla, released later that year. The terrible monster from the deep created by nuclear radiation.

Like the errant nuclear test in Bikini, the rapidly expanding power of the USA - dueling with the Soviet Union around the world in a Cold War while also on an epic tear of economic growth - was transforming into a world-crushing monster like the one that that emerged from the deep.

The USA had its own monsters - including Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the famous drunken, redhunter. Another lurking monster was the US involvement with the French as our ally tried to hold onto its colonial vanity while slowly losing its final battle in Vietnam at a place called Dien Bien Phu.

Doomed French paratroopers, Communist ghosts, tail gunners and monsters, and lots of nuclear fallout. This is the Raspberry Podcast looking at the week of March 20-26, 1954.

In February 1978 the good old USA had big problems, inflation was high and also unemployment was high. This was stagflation and it was raging. No one seemed to have a handle on how to address these multiple issues.

Jimmy Carter was the serious president attempting to deal these issues in a serious way, as an adult president.

1978 was the final year of the era when you could be a president looking to solve problems. From 1979, with the start of the "Killer Rabbit" fake scandal, the right-wing attack machine found its stride and has not let up since then. In fact, you can draw direct line to Joe Biden stealing the 2020 election.