logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2023
43m 12s

Callings

Pushkin Industries
About this episode

In the 1940s, a freelance wiretapper named Big Jim Vaus got mixed up with the cops, the mob, and the most famous evangelist in America. This week on The Last Archive: The ballad of Big Jim and what the intersections of telephone history and American spirituality reveal about how we understand the phone. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Up next
Oct 30
From Revisionist History: The Alabama Murders
Here's a preview of a podcast we think you'll enjoy. It's from the new season of Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast, The Alabama Murders. Florence, Alabama. 1988. A preacher has an affair. A woman is murdered. One death cascades into more, stretching across decades an ... Show More
32m 36s
Oct 13
From College Matters: Mr. Varsity Blues Claps Back
We're sharing a preview of College Matters from The Chronicle, a podcast from The Chronicle of Higher Education. After 16 months in a federal prison camp, William (Rick) Singer has had time to reflect on his role as the architect of a college-admissions bribery scheme that became ... Show More
43m 33s
Jun 2025
People Are the Problem | Preview Douglas Adams: The Ends of the Earth
We’re sharing a preview of a new audiobook, Douglas Adams: The Ends of the Earth, which celebrates the wit and wisdom of the legendary science fiction author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Twenty-five years after his death, Ad ... Show More
45m 16s
Recommended Episodes
May 2022
EP291: The Tale of the Stolen Texas Confederate Locomotive and The Opportunistic Patriot
<p>On this episode of <em>Our American Stories</em>, <strong>Jackson McQuigg&nbsp;</strong>of the <em><strong><a href="https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/">Atlanta History Center</a></strong></em>&nbsp;tells the story of the principle pursuit&nbsp;locomotive of the Great Railro ... Show More
38m 17s
Nov 2018
SYMHC Live: The USO and Bob Hope
This show, performed live at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, covers a brief overview of USO history, and then delves into Bob Hope's involvement with the organization, which started in the early 1940s and continued for 50 years.  Learn more about your ad-choic ... Show More
43 m
Mar 2023
The Great Train Robbery | Interview | 4
<p>Alice and Matt speak to Colin Mackenzie, the tenacious reporter who managed to track down train robber, Ronnie Biggs, after he escaped prison. A Fleet Street veteran, he takes us back to a golden era in British journalism, and into the whirlwind 48 hours he spent with Biggs in ... Show More
35m 25s
Jul 2021
EP38: Summer Days with Dad, Fighting Founding Fathers, and The Pittsburgh Pirates' Dream
On this episode of the Our American Stories podcast, Randall Haley reminisces about the yearly Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi; also, Dr. Adam Carrington of Hillsdale College tells the story of The Alien and Sedition Acts, some one of America's most controversial l ... Show More
39m 3s
Sep 2020
The Hidden History of Hollerin'
Back in the days before electricity, a peculiar tradition rose out of southeastern North Carolina. Over vast swaths of farmland, voices would ring out to say good morning, ask for help, or just to share a ditty. The old timers called this tradition “hollerin’.” Part singing and p ... Show More
21m 47s
Jan 2022
EP174: Crocodiles and Cannibals, The Religious Magna Carta of the New World and The Man Who Played with Trains
On this episode of Our American Stories, Bob McLalan is back with The McLalan Files and today he takes us on his scuba diving adventure to Guadalcanal. Larry Reed of FEE tells the story of the Flushing Remonstrance, a pivotal document, and moment, that established a precedent of ... Show More
38m 15s
Feb 2022
EP186: An Ordinary Cloth With An Extraordinary Story, Route 66: The Most Famous Highway In The World, The German Immigrant Who Gave Us Banquet Beer and “The NOT So Wild, Wild West”
On this episode of Our American Stories, Chris Graham of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia tells the story of one of their objects on display with an extraordinary story we're just now finding out. Jim Hinckley tells the story of Route 66 starting from its incep ... Show More
38m 16s
Jan 2023
Second Place Finishers: Larry Doby, Judith Resnik & The Dave Clark Five
We love historical “Firsts” so much that we end up ignoring the people who come right after them. But without these runners-up, the trailblazers are just one-offs or oddities––instead of the beginning of big change. Mo celebrates the Black baseball great who joined the major leag ... Show More
47m 1s
Jul 2023
Christianity and Marginalized People: Part 7.1
There is a long and complex history around queer people and Western Christianity. We trace that history, and talk about how it's being weaponized in our current political environment. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 
42m 55s
Jul 2022
The Story of America's Pastor, Billy Graham
<p>On this episode of <em>Our American Stories</em>, <strong>Billy Graham</strong> took the role of evangelist to a new level, lifting it from the sawdust floors of canvas tents in small-town America to the podiums of packed stadiums in the world’s major cities.</p> <p><a href="h ... Show More
38m 16s