We will relive important parts of the first major league baseball game that was played in Ft. Wayne, Indiana on May 4th 1871. 94 years later another baseball game on May 4th, 1965 will surprise and amaze you with what happened on that cool spring day between two Minnesota high school baseball teams.

You will hear amazing selections of music that are unique to baseball as well as some aspects of baseball that make it such a distinctive sport when compared to all others. 

The baseball humor will leave you smiling for the rest of the week.

The month of April brings the Old Ranger back to the microphone to discuss another Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson. It was argued in April 1897—what some historians call the “worst decision in Supreme Court history. 

We’ll hear how the Plessy Case made both segregation and discrimination “perfectly legal and enforceable” in this Country; how Southern States passed Jim Crow laws, that continued to discriminate against black people for the next 70 years. The result was an assault on voting rights in the form of poll taxes, literacy tests, voter ID laws and redistricting maps. The Old Ranger assures us we’ll all be on the edge of our seats. 

And to top it off there will be quality music selections followed by some below average humor.

This podcast is about the cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney. We will discuss the impact of that labor saving device on the history of the United States including the timing of the civil war and the role that it played in extending the scourge of enslavement of black people in America. Eli Whitney thought his invention would help end that era.

In fact, it strengthened the grip of slavery because the South believed it could not continue benefiting from its primary cash crop, cotton, without subjugating people to do the work. The civil war was not about states’ rights as many Florida students believe, it was about the South’s desire to continue their economic way of life based on enslaved labor.

Is their inability to give up slavery because of its economic benefit comparable to our addiction to fossil fuel that is destroying our planet?

This podcast describes the worst decision made by the US Supreme Court in March of 1857 where they decided that slaves were property. It describes the heart breaking history of Dred Scott who lived for 10 years as a free man at Fort Snelling in present day Minnesota. Only later to become a slave again in Missouri.

The second section of the podcast laments the actions taken by states such as Florida that are trying to prevent this painful and sad history from being taught in our schools. "Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it." (George Santayana)

The music describes how it helped Harriet Tubman lead slaves to freedom.

But saving the best for last, some blue humor for St. Patrick's Day.