Forgotten History

13 The Last Plague

When the Spanish Flu hit Philadelphia in 1918, it first overwhelmed the hospitals, then the morgues, then the gravediggers. The disaster was the fault of one man, public health director Wilmer Krusen, who allowed a Liberty Bond parade that spread the disease at a catastrophic rate. But was Krusen really at fault? We speak with James Higgins, a history professor at Rider University whose research challenges the commonly told story.

12 New Jersey's Bermuda Triangle

In the mid-1800s, the isolation of the Sourlands region made it a refuge for some, and was a place where black people could own land and establish their own communities. (See Episode 2) But the isolation also meant that the mountains could be lawless. Historian Jim Davidson, in his talk, "The Dark Side of the Sourlands" discusses the mayhem, murder, and disappearances that made this region "New Jersey's Bermuda Triangle."

11 Hellfighter

Needham Roberts, a porter from Trenton, went to fight in WW1 and returned home decorated and victorious after a bloody hand-to-hand battle against impossible odds. But he and many other black veterans would find that America in the era of Jim Crow could be almost as hostile as the trenches of the Argonne. Algernon Ward, Jr., a re-enactor, tells the story of this brave but flawed war hero.

10 The Cloudbuster Part 2

In Part 2 of our two-part series on Wilhelm Reich, we examine the ongoing legacy of his work, a college in Princeton that carries on his research into “orgone energy,” and Diccon Hyatt interviews a man who was given Reichian therapy as a child. Please note there is potentially disturbing material in this episode.

9 The Cloudbuster Part 1

In Part 1 of a two-part series, we discuss the life of Wilhelm Reich, one of the most controversial figures of 20th century science. Reich claimed to have discovered a new form of energy called “orgone” which was responsible for everything from the human libido to the movements of the planets in the Solar System. In 1940 he visited Albert Einstein at his Princeton home to prove once and for all that orgone energy was real. Many of the details of Reich's life used in this episode came from Christopher Turner's biography Adventures in the Orgasmatron.