Journey Through Time – Details, episodes & analysis

Join historians Sarah Churchwell and David Olusoga on Journey Through Time, as they expose forgotten history, and bring to light extraordinary events you should have heard of. Journey through Time, a new show from Goalhanger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

New York harbour erupts with an explosion as Black Tom island is ripped apart. The shock waves ripple out around Manhattan and New Jersey, shattering windows miles away and even registering on the Richter scale. However, despite the widespread destruction, the attack was downplayed as an accident by the US authorities and it was only years later that the truth of the event came to light.  Despite its absence from public knowledge, the explosion at Black Tom island has a seismic legacy. It played a part in the rise of the Nazis, the brutal internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, and the creation of America’s counterintelligence operations. Join Sarah Churchwell and David Olusoga on Journey Through Time to explore how this explosion reverberated throughout the 20th century.  To find out more about Find My Past visit: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/journey-through-time Email: journeythroughtime@goalhanger.com  X: @ThroughTimePod Blue Sky: @ThroughTimePod Instagram: @ThroughTimePod Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

New York, 1916. America is supposedly neutral in the war but they are shipping huge quantities of supplies to the allies. However, it being a nation of immigrants means loyalties across the United States are divided and members of the German-American community are causing trouble. Led by Franz von Papen and funded from Berlin, a ring of spies and saboteurs are trying to disrupt these arms shipments any way they can.  Soon their eyes will turn to Black Tom Island, America’s largest arms depot, which sits in the Hudson. Join David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell in the first episode of Journey Through Time to hear about the forgotten terror attack that shocked America to its core. To find out more about Find My Past visit: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/journey-through-time Email: journeythroughtime@goalhanger.com  X: @ThroughTimePod Blue Sky: @ThroughTimePod Instagram: @ThroughTimePod Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The American public is outraged by the announcement of a woman running for president. The year is 1872 and the candidate is Victoria Woodhull.  Victoria Woodhull’s fascinating life started in a rural frontier town in Ohio. By age twelve she had become her family’s main breadwinner, working as a travelling spiritual medium and faith healer. Her eccentric yet poor beginnings provided no clues that she would end up the first woman to run for president of the United States.  After a marriage breakdown, Victoria used her spiritual healing and beguiling charm to ascend the social ladder of America’s gilded age high society. And, on the way, she found time to become the first woman to open a brokerage on Wall Street.  Join Sarah Churchwell and David Olusoga on Journey Through Time as we delve into the extraordinary and controversial story of Victoria Woodhull, the "future president” , and explore how her groundbreaking, and some might say unbelievable, bid for the White House reverberated through the fight for equality in America. To find out more about Find My Past visit: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/journey-through-time Email: journeythroughtime@goalhanger.com  X: @ThroughTimePod Blue Sky: @ThroughTimePod Instagram: @ThroughTimePod Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the trading floor of Wall Street to the campaign trail, Victoria Woodhull was a force to be reckoned with. Sadly, her scandalous presidential campaign ends in disaster, and she spends election night in a cell. She’s been arrested for trying to expose the hypocrisy of one of America's most revered figures, the preacher Henry Ward Beecher, and his secret affair.  Victoria Woodhull’s explosive confrontation with societal hypocrisy caused her downfall and eventual departure for England. Discover the surprising and complex final chapter of her life, as this former champion of radical freedoms embraced the controversial pseudoscience of eugenics. How should we remember the "future president" – as a pioneering feminist or a figure whose legacy is deeply complicated by her later views? Join David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell to explore the full, contradictory life of a woman who dared to defy every expectation. To find out more about Find My Past visit: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/journey-through-time Email: journeythroughtime@goalhanger.com  X: @ThroughTimePod Blue Sky: @ThroughTimePod Instagram: @ThroughTimePod Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Great Exhibition is to open in May 1851 and millions of people will descend on the capital to marvel at exhibitions of culture and industry. Victorian engineering and determination will transform one million square feet of glass into the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park in just five months, ready to house the wares of the world.  However, this celebration of progress also exposed the stark inequalities of Victorian society, as the wealthy of West London contemplated the arrival of vast crowds from the impoverished East End. Fears of social upheaval stirred, echoing the anxieties surrounding the Chartist movement and the revolutions sweeping Europe. Discover the extraordinary measures taken to manage these anxieties, from the deployment of an additional thousand police officers to the subtle surveillance by specially appointed guides.  Join Sarah Churchwell and David Olusoga to discuss the Great Exhibition, and whether it was a unifying moment for the nation, or did it serve to highlight the chasm between the privileged and the poor? To find out more about Find My Past visit: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/journey-through-time Email: journeythroughtime@goalhanger.com  X: @ThroughTimePod Blue Sky: @ThroughTimePod Instagram: @ThroughTimePod Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Paranoid predictions of crime fill the newspapers - so how will the well-to-do react to the incoming crowds of the working-class? From Harrods to the Eiffel Tower, what iconic attractions do we have The Great Exhibition to thank for?  Did this 'Peace Festival' unite a nation or expose the deep-seated class divisions of Victorian society?  Join Sarah Churchwell and David Olusoga on Journey Through Time as they delve into the surprising reality of the Great Exhibition's success. To find out more about Find My Past visit: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/journey-through-time Email: journeythroughtime@goalhanger.com  X: @ThroughTimePod Blue Sky: @ThroughTimePod Instagram: @ThroughTimePod Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why did Iva Toguri get branded America’s first female traitor, despite there being no evidence to convict her? How did her case become important to President Harry Truman’s re-election campaign?  And, after decades, how did Iva and her supporters finally clear her name?  Join Sarah Churchwell and David Olusoga on Journey Through Time as they delve into the sad story behind the scandalous myth of Tokyo Rose. To find out more about Find My Past visit: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/journey-through-time Email: journeythroughtime@goalhanger.com  X: @ThroughTimePod Blue Sky: @ThroughTimePod Instagram: @ThroughTimePod Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How did Tokyo Rose, a woman who never existed, become one of WWII’s most well known Japanese figures?  Who was Iva Toguri, the American citizen caught up in the myth?  How did sensationalist journalists weaponise the story of Tokyo Rose to create a vicious narrative about post war Japan?  To find out more about Find My Past visit: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/journey-through-time Email: journeythroughtime@goalhanger.com  X: @ThroughTimePod Blue Sky: @ThroughTimePod Instagram: @ThroughTimePod Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why was the world so close to the brink of nuclear war in November 1983?  What tactics were the Americans employing to play high stakes mind games with the Soviets?  And, what made the Soviets so exceptionally paranoid? Join David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell on Journey Through Time as they discuss how a routine military training exercise in November 1983 nearly had cataclysmic effects.  To find out more about Find My Past visit: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/journey-through-time Email: journeythroughtime@goalhanger.com  X: @ThroughTimePod Blue Sky: @ThroughTimePod Instagram: @ThroughTimePod Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices