Visitors ask. Lincoln's Cottage goes and finds out.
Made by President Lincoln's Cottage, Q & Abe builds each main episode around one real question a visitor asked on a tour, from whether the house is haunted to which chimney Santa would have used. Outside researchers help answer it, and bonus episodes share the expert material that did not fit.
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Q & Abe is a podcast by President Lincoln's Cottage, and every main episode starts with something a visitor actually asked. Staff at the cottage talk with visitors about grief, slavery and American identity, and now and then a question on a tour stops them in their tracks. Those are the ones that end up here. The show takes one question at a time and answers it more fully than any tour could, calling on researchers and on the cottage's own staff. Many of the questions look innocent. 'Which chimney did Santa come down?' becomes a genuine puzzle once Jeff Larry, the cottage's director of preservation, points out that the house has 16 chimneys. He sets modern Santa aside, since many of the fireplaces are now blocked off, and asks which ones would have sat cold through a Lincoln-era winter while the rest burned for heat. 'Is the house haunted?' takes another route, tracing how ghosts shifted from Christian-oriented visions toward something looser, a visible remnant of the past with no apparent purpose. It also hears from Tommy Griffiths, who still has audio from a 2013 investigation of the cottage by ghost hunters working with a television show. Heavier questions get the same patience. 'Weren't they friends?' weighs the bond between Lincoln and Frederick Douglass with John White, whose book with a co-author, 'Measuring the Man', gathers what Douglass said about Lincoln between 1858 and 1894. The episode lands on a detail tied to this very house: a fourth meeting between the two would likely have happened at the cottage, but Douglass could not accept Lincoln's invitation, and they were still choosing another date when Lincoln was killed. A companion bonus episode stays with Douglass for a surprising turn. Within days of the assassination, he told a British abolitionist that Andrew Johnson would be a better president for Black Americans than Lincoln would have been, reasoning that the very qualities that held the loyal public together through the war would hinder Lincoln in what came next. The bonus episodes deserve attention in their own right, since each carries expert material that did not fit the main story. Michelle Hanks, who researches ghost hunting and ghost tourism, describes a ghost walk at the Peterborough Museum in Cambridgeshire whose organiser stepped in whenever participants' stories strayed past what was possible. Ken Torino, who researches Victorian Christmases, finds stockings by the fireplace in accounts from the 1820s on, along with children who misbehaved getting coal or a switch. Throughout, the tone is curious and careful with evidence, even with ghosts on the table. For a first listen, try a main episode and then its bonus companion, the order the bonus episodes themselves recommend.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes history reached through small, oddly specific questions, and who enjoys hearing researchers and the cottage's own staff explain how they know what they know.
What sets it apart: Real questions from visitors to President Lincoln's Cottage set its agenda, so it can move from Santa's route down a chimney to Douglass's view of Andrew Johnson with no fixed beat. Bonus episodes pass along the expert material that did not fit the main story.
Come on down the rabbit hole with us as we answer real questions from visitors to President Lincoln's Cottage that we wish we could spend a half hour answering. We always start with Lincoln and the Cottage, but we often end up in unexpected places… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A haunted-house question at Lincoln's Cottage becomes your invitation to reconsider what ghosts mean.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A haunted-house question opens into history, reported evidence, and the limits of what a place can explain.
President Lincoln's Cottage shapes a familiar visitor question into the episode's main thread: is the house haunted? Q&A follows that curiosity from children and adults into the cottage itself, including the staircase banister, then opens out into the more flexible ways people…
A question about friendship opens into how Frederick Douglass used Lincoln's example during the Jim Crow era.
Q&A starts with a visitor's plain question: were Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass friends? From there, the episode follows the harder history behind that wish.
A Santa question opens into a practical look at Lincoln's Cottage, its fireplaces, and the safest chimney.
A child's Santa question at President Lincoln's Cottage turns into a quietly absorbing look at fireplaces, seasonal habits, and Gothic Revival architecture.
A live question about Willie Lincoln becomes a thoughtful conversation about vaccines, grief, and community health.
Willie Lincoln's death gives this live conversation its emotional pull, turning a question of preventability into a wider look at medicine, vaccine development, and community health.
A college student's question opens a compact, thoughtful look at Lincoln's labor politics and the uneasy pull between past language and modern values.
A college student's question about whether Lincoln would have been a social democrat leads into a thoughtful look at labor, capital, and the language of free labor.
A question about heat opens into a history of climate, racial hierarchy, and responsibility.
A visitor's overheated question about heat becomes a careful history of how weather was once used to explain character, labor, temperament, and racial hierarchy.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Curious facts, kid-sized and quiz-ready.
Joan and Callie from President Lincoln's Cottage share a bonus interview with researcher Michelle Hanks about ethical ghost tours, using the Peterborough Museum as a model.
Q&A's 'Is the house haunted?' opens at President Lincoln's Cottage with a visitor asking, 'How many ghosts are here?
A bonus episode exploring Frederick Douglass's surprising private remarks about Andrew Johnson being potentially better for Black Americans than Lincoln after the Civil War.
Q&A from President Lincoln's Cottage asks whether Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were friends, then answers the question through three White House meetings.
A bonus episode from Q & Abe discussing Victorian Christmas traditions, including stockings and Santa Claus, based on research by Ken Torino.
Q & Abe opens with an elementary student's question at President Lincoln's Cottage: which chimney did Santa come down?
Q & Abe's live episode, "LIVE: Was Willie's death preventable?," asks whether Willie Lincoln's 1862 death from typhoid could have been prevented.
Callie Hawkins and Joan Cummins ask whether Abraham Lincoln would have been a social democrat, using Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Democratic Socialists of America as reference points.
Q&A hosts Callie Hawkins and Joan Cummins investigate whether Washington, D.C., was as hot during Abraham Lincoln’s era as it is now.
Q&A hosts Callie Hawkins and Joan Cummins investigate whether Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter can contribute to historical understanding despite replacing Nancy Lincoln’s documented death from contaminated milk with a vampire attack.
Q&A examines when Washington, D.C., was unhealthiest by comparing Willie Lincoln’s 1862 typhoid death with present-day chronic disease and public-health risks.
Q&A examines whether Abraham Lincoln attended church, identifying March 10, 1861, as the first Sunday when Lincoln and his family attended New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Historians at President Lincoln's Cottage explore the question of whether Abraham Lincoln was gay, examining historical evidence and visitor inquiries.
A podcast that explores real visitor questions about Lincoln and the Cottage, delving into historical and leadership insights.
Historians explore a third-grader's question about why slavery wasn't stopped when it began, focusing on the arrival of enslaved Africans in Jamestown in 1619.