50 episodes listed below
North Carolina's past, told from the documents up.
Built on holdings of the State Archives of North Carolina, Connecting the Docs turns wartime letters, camp newspapers and a 1942 home-front poster into true stories from the state's past. John Horan hosts, and the documents are read aloud, then talked through with other voices in an easy, curious register.
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Connecting the Docs treats the archive as the starting point rather than the footnote. Its true stories are built from materials held in the State Archives of North Carolina, and the show quotes those materials directly: a health bulletin, a wartime letter, a hospital newspaper, a wartime poster. John Horan hosts. Other voices join him, and the conversation that follows is easygoing and curious, full of small questions about what a detail might mean. World War II is the subject that surfaces most often. 'With Liberty and Rations for All: Managing Food During WWII' quotes a 1943 Health Bulletin describing American food as potentially the deadliest weapon of all. It also discusses a 1942 Office of War Information poster, the homemaker's war guide, which called hoarding unpatriotic and featured a meal plan. One detail catches the group's attention: butter and spreads were recommended at every meal. 'Love Letters in Wartime' begins with a familiar modern anxiety, the ten-minute wait for a text reply, and stretches it to ten days without word during a world war. A letter signed James is read aloud, and the talk turns practical. Soldiers moved constantly, sometimes within their own base, and getting mail to them is described as a logistical nightmare. 'Treating the Total War: Women and the Nursing Corps' starts from the image of Rosie the Riveter and turns to the women who became nurses, including the insistence on proper training even when the work was not necessarily paid. 'V-J Day: The 80th Anniversary of the End of World War II' reads from At Ease, the newspaper of the Asheville Naval Convalescent Hospital, and from Camp Butner News, which reported that hospital patients favored technical books, some of them brushing up for civilian jobs. That episode opens with an advisory about outdated language and descriptions of racism and violence. Outside the war years, the range widens. 'Black Mountain College: Experimental Education in the Mountains of North Carolina' sets a 1936 Eleanor Roosevelt quotation beside Albers, who had worked at the Bauhaus before the Nazis closed it, arguing for a democratic education that weighs character as heavily as intellect. 'Unto These Hills: Behind the Scenes', credited as the idea of spring 2025 intern Chris Deitner, hears from inside the production about Cherokee language and the return of the traditional Eagle dance. Judy Allen Dodson is the voice at the start and finish of each episode, and each closing points toward the blog History for All the People. For a listener who likes history anchored to a specific document, it offers North Carolina's past one document at a time.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes history anchored to real documents and wants North Carolina stories, from Black Mountain College to the World War II home front, told through letters, posters and camp newspapers.
What sets it apart: Each story is tied to specific items in the State Archives of North Carolina, which are quoted aloud and then talked over by the host and other voices, so the source material itself sits at the center of every episode.
Connecting the Docs is a podcast from the State Archives of North Carolina where archivists connect documents from our collection to fascinating, true stories from the past. Sometimes the documents solve a puzzle; other times, they lead to one.
The mystery box contains folders; if that raises your pulse, you've found your history podcast.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A small western North Carolina college becomes a sharp case study in education, individuality, and democracy.
Black Mountain College emerges here as a small western North Carolina school with an outsized afterlife. Few students graduated, yet many people tied to the place later became famous, a legacy that still seemed to puzzle those figures and their peers long after the college…
A 75th-anniversary look at Unto These Hills, the Eagle Dance, and a long-running production's relationship to Cherokee history.
Connecting the Docs marks the 75th anniversary of Unto These Hills by following the people rethinking how the production is staged. Host John Horan presents the episode as the brainchild of spring 2025 intern Chris Deitner, whose theater background sets up a focused interview…
A kitchen-table history of WWII rationing, where meal plans and victory gardens reveal the home front's daily obligations.
Food turns into wartime infrastructure as host John Horan and team members Katie Crickmore, Erin Templeton, and Chris Deitner follow how rationing reshaped home-front life during World War II. The episode links the need to feed U.S.
Wartime letters turn distance, delay, and devotion into intimate archival history.
Waiting gives this single episode its pulse. Ten days in wartime could make silence feel heavy, and Connecting the Docs stays close to that strain through letters between couples separated during World War II.
A North Carolina nursing registry reveals how wartime service could stumble before reaching the front.
World War II nursing comes through as a practical home-front story in North Carolina, where women moved into unfamiliar work, trained for demanding service, and met a war effort that kept changing around them.
Black Hills history, told on location.
Vegas history with a barstool pulse.
Connecticut history with national echoes.
Texas history, sourced and road-tested.
Maine history, widened through public talks.
["Black Mountain College ran from 1933 to 1956 in the western mountains of North Carolina, and Amelia Gant says only a handful of students graduated even as the school connected to many famous avant-garde artists and educators.", "Host John Horan, Annabeth Poe, Aaron Templeton, and Amelia Gant focus on Lewis Ademic's 1936 Harper's article \"Education on a Mountain\" and the college's idea that art, labor, and schooling should work together.", "The episode traces progressive education's rejection of rote memorization, the 48-student and 20-professor campus Ademic saw, and the Board of Fellows model that gave students a real voice.", "Wartime pressure, Gisela Cronenberg's letters, Eleanor Roosevelt's March 1936 praise, and Charles P.
Unto These Hills: Behind the Scenes traces how Cherokee Historical Association built a 1950 outdoor drama from the Lost Colony model and kept revising it over 75 seasons.
Connecting the Docs opens with a 1943 Health Bulletin line calling American food 'the deadliest weapon of all,' then traces World War II rationing through State Archives of North Carolina materials.
Connecting the Docs uses World War II letters from the State Archives of North Carolina to compare early courtship, wartime separation, and married correspondence.
North Carolina's World War II nursing story is built from State Archives posters, Fort Bragg newsletters, and North Carolina Nursing Association letters.
Connecting the Docs examines V-J Day through At Ease, Camp Butner News, and Camp Lejeune Globe, three military publications from North Carolina installations.
Connecting the Docs: True Stories from the Old North State examines 1839 letters from Melinda Rex and Sarah Capehart about formerly enslaved North Carolinians sent to Liberia.
Connecting the Docs examines Black Mountain College near Asheville through State Archives of North Carolina materials, covering education, visual arts, music, and poetry.
Connecting the Docs: True Stories from the Old North State examines North Carolina’s War of Regulation, a movement of central Piedmont farmers seeking reforms over taxation, currency, voting rights, and property rights from the mid-1760s to May 16, 1771.
Josh Hager leads Shanakar, Annabeth Poe, and Katie Crickmore through a random Department of Cultural Resources box from the America's 400th Anniversary Commission.
This episode explores the Year of the Trail campaign celebrating North Carolina's state trails, featuring an interview with the Secretary of Natural and Cultural Resources.
This episode showcases the work of an oral history intern and features an interview about Abraham Galloway, a former slave and Union spy during the Civil War.