In this episode, Andrew and Will talk with historian Phil Spaugy about four terms used for long arms during the Civil War. They look at the definition of these terms, the evolution from one to the next, and a bit of the history to tie it all together. Enjoy this program in it's expanded form, giv...

This documentary provides a detailed look at silver mining in the Cobalt, Ontario area. The work of an underground miner is shown in some detail. The film captures some of the environmental impact that mining had on the area. The inclusion of the value of what is mined reflects the enormous wealt...

The Borscht Belt was a thriving vacation destination in New York's Catskill Mountains. Dozens of grand resorts, bustling summer camps, and packed nightclubs created a cultural hub that shaped comedy, music, and American Jewish life. Today, most of those legendary hotels sit abandoned - crumbling ...

This is quite an epic, running nearly an hour and a half for both parts. Considerable time is given to a description of Russia and its many peoples, and its implacable resistance to previous invaders through history. Wartime politics being what they were, such things as Stalin’s nonaggression pac...

Like the Russian installment, we are given a good deal of information about the vastness and complexity of China and the character of its people. Much of the emphasis is on the brutality of the Japanese invasion. One of the few major inaccuracies in this series is the emphasis in the so-called “T...

Using herring as bait, fishers catch halibut in a large region off the coast of British Columbia, from the Strait of Juan de Fuca all way to Kodiak Island to the north. Fishers, in boats of 6 to 20 men then bring their haul on a larger “mothership” to be processed in factories in Prince Rupert. A...

Digitally remastered in HD; Photographic Intelligence for Bombardment Aviation (1943) was produced by the U.S. Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit, and was designed to demystify a then rapidly evolving technique.
The present 24 minute film relies a little heavily on jargon and abbreviation...

Director Ford and his regular camera man Joseph August, who had worked on many Hollywood features with Ford, were assigned to Midway Island in 1942 to document, for the Navy, the work of guerrillas and resistance fighters in the Pacific. Two days before the battle of Midway, he learned that the J...

Tunisian Victory (1944) was an Anglo-American film which follows British and American armies from the planning of Operation Torch and Operation Acrobat (the latter subsequently canceled) in summer of 1942 to the liberation of Tunisia in May 1943.
The principal narrator is velvety voiced British a...

Tommy takes us on a deep dive of fighting knives issued to and used by Marines in WWII. In addition to looking at them, he introduces us to some of the men and lets them speak again through voiceover so you hear the words and thoughts of veterans and journalists from the front lines. Come explore...

The Pictorial Record of Man’s Conquest of the Colorado River, this program documents the building of the Hoover Dam, one of the engineering marvels of its day, begun in 1931 and completed in 1936. It was the largest dam in the world for many years. It cost 50 million dollars (800 million in today...

Venezuela’s Air Force, the Aviación Militar Bolivariana, is a complex regional force shaped by decades of shifting alliances, sanctions, and modernization. Formerly among the strongest in Latin America, it now relies on Russian-built Su-30MK2 "Flanker" fighters and a dense, mobile air defense net...

The footage is first-rate, taken by hundreds of battle cameramen and expertly edited into a fast-moving account of an immensely complex and dramatic story. There is some narration, principally by Leslie Banks, but the story is told mostly in the words of ordinary soldiers who were there.
Much of ...

The Spanish Civil War, erupting in July 1936, was a ferocious conflict that claimed over half a million lives and reshaped Spain for decades. For nearly three years, the leftist Second Republic battled a right-wing Nationalist uprising led by General Francisco Franco. More than a domestic strugg...

The Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider is the United States’ first new bomber in over three decades—a next-generation, long-range stealth aircraft designed to penetrate advanced air defenses and strike global targets with precision. In this documentary, we explore the B-21’s origins, lineage, developme...

Dr Arnold Toynbee, the great 20th Century historian, observed that the breakdown and eventual disintegration of civilizations, for the most part, follow a common pattern. The ruling class, who once were able to creatively respond to challenges on behalf of the masses, lose their ability to inspir...

Report from the Aleutians (1943) is a 46 minute documentary directed
by John Huston, an iconic (and frequently iconoclastic) director of
some 40 feature films, many regarded as classics, over a 45 year
career. During World War II he served in the Army Signal Corps with the rank
of Captain, making...

Andrew has a discussion on the evolution of the Springfield musket with historian Phil Spaugy. They take a look at how the Springfield evolved from the model 1855 to the 1863 model. The fun does not stop with the history because they take an original and a reproduction Springfield out on the range!

This documentary explores the extraordinary history of America’s airborne command posts—better known as “doomsday planes.” From the Cold War’s Operation Looking Glass EC-135s, which maintained an unbroken 24/7 airborne alert for three decades, to the E-4 Nightwatch 747s designed to safeguard pres...

The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star marked a turning point in American aviation—the U.S. Army Air Forces’ first operational jet fighter, designed and flown within a staggering 143 days in 1943. But how did it truly compare to its contemporaries, like Germany’s Me 262 and Britain’s Gloster Meteor? And...

December 7th (made in 1943) is a striking manifestation of its time, a feature-length docudrama about the bombing of Pearl Harbor that is often at cross purposes with itself in the message it means to convey.
Gregg Toland, the brilliant cinematographer fresh off of Citizen Kane, The Little Foxes ...

The location of the story is the Postal Service, at the central sorting station at the foot of Bay Street in Toronto. Conveyors are featured assisting the sorting and movement of mail, with the employees working to the pace of the conveyors. The implication is that this technology might have broa...