I had the pleasure of doing a guest spot on the Amateur Traveler podcast recently, where I got to talk about the joys of traveling along the Mississippi River. Host Chris Christensen prefers to cover an itinerary of a week or so for the podcast, which is challenging when there are so many great
In 1964 Mississippi, civil rights activists were fighting to dismantle deeply entrenched legal segregation and racism and the defenders of segregation were fighting back. On April 24, the Ku Klux Klan flexed its muscles by setting 61 crosses on fire around the state. By the time summer was over, Klan members had burned 20 black
Hull Rust Mahoning Mine; Hibbing, Minnesota I was lucky enough to spend much of the summer of 2011 in northern Minnesota, getting to know the region where the Mississippi begins. Of all the places I went, there were few that grabbed my attention more so than the Iron Range. The unforgiving climate and
Robert Johnson is a mythical character in blues history, in large part because so little is really known about him, which leaves plenty of room for invention. In his short career (he probably died in 1938 when he was in his late 20s, poisoned by the husband of a woman he had been having an
If you've never listened to the show Radiolab, now is a good time to start. Most of their shows focus on emerging topics in science, which may sound dry, but they present their topics with very engaging storytelling. The most recent episode is a great example of this. Robert Johnson is a legendary, nearly mythical
