https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1 daily 0.75 2020-07-15 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-1-the-clue-of-the-blue-bottle monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1588813052651-6S91M682J2MANEK2R5U9/pasted+image+0.png Season 1 - Episode 1: The Clue of the Blue Bottle - On a spring day in 1919… The tracks left at the scene of the murder https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-2-detection-of-deception monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1590021437476-M44EWE7FLZO8XJAXFGMN/TLA_e2_FryeTestimony_page_1.jpg Season 1 - Episode 2: Detection of Deception https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1590021728430-G5PSF9X1U5L4ZOLU5EVD/TLA_e2_FryeTestimony_page_2.jpg Season 1 - Episode 2: Detection of Deception https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1590021742312-EV41Q7YKM7HUQHV07XV6/TLA_e2_FryeTestimony_page_3.jpg Season 1 - Episode 2: Detection of Deception https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1590021437476-9RN21EDMCPY2J48IR70W/TLA_e2_FryeTestimony_page_4.jpg Season 1 - Episode 2: Detection of Deception https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1590021438681-E6FKMOVEBPNDW5Z8O1B5/TLA_e2_FryeTestimony_page_5.jpg Season 1 - Episode 2: Detection of Deception https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1590021438684-QOGSEB4V8M7XQZHW64E5/TLA_e2_FryeTestimony_page_6.jpg Season 1 - Episode 2: Detection of Deception https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1590019927083-BZCM7WX2ENG5QTS78IDY/GettyImages-3320551.jpg Season 1 - Episode 2: Detection of Deception - When James Frye, a young black man, is charged with murder… under unusual circumstances in 1922, he trusts his fate to a strange new machine: The lie detector. Why did the lie detector’s inventor, William Moulton Marston, a psychology professor and lawyer, think a machine could tell if a human being is lying better than a jury? And what does it all have to do with Wonder Woman? Image: Psychologists and lawyers conducting a lie detector test on James Frye, a murder suspect. (Getty Images) https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-3-the-invisible-lady monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1590528965964-Y564IFQGYOEYM8HZL7NC/invisible-lady.png Season 1 - Episode 3: The Invisible Lady Onlookers listen to the Invisible Lady through a speaking trumpet while peering into a seemingly empty box. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1590528717346-M3APU7G72JNXMAX3B7XF/TLA_e3_YoungJillAsTheINVISIBLEGIRL.jpg Season 1 - Episode 3: The Invisible Lady - In 1804, an Invisible Lady arrived in New York City. She went on to become the most popular attraction in the country. But why? And who was she? In this episode, we chase her through time, finding invisible women everywhere, wondering: What is the relationship between keeping women invisible and the histories of privacy, and of knowledge? Image: Jill Lepore, The Invisible Girl, age 5 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-4-unheard monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1591203799652-2SKS8ZFU08437UKLDOBP/ralph-ellison.gif Season 1 - Episode 4: Unheard In 1945, Ralph Ellison went to a barn in Vermont and began to write Invisible Man. He wrote it in the voice of a black man from the south, a voice that changed American literature. Invisible Man is a novel made up of black voices that had been excluded from the historical record until, decades earlier, he’d helped record them with the WPA’s Federal Writers Project. What is the evidence of a voice? How can we truly know history without everyone’s voices? This episode traces those questions — from the quest to record oral histories of formerly enslaved people, to Black Lives Matter and the effort to record the evidence of police brutality. Image: Ralph Ellison outside with his typewriter. Credit: Library of Congress. https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-5-project-x monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1591791197321-TNMKO416W4E4ZI7TYGXF/GettyImages-1180861140.jpg Season 1 - Episode 5: Project X - The election of 1952… brought all kinds of new technology into the political sphere. The Eisenhower campaign experimented with the first television ads to feature an American presidential candidate. And on election night, CBS News premiered the first computer to predict an American election — the UNIVAC. Safe to say, that part didn’t go according to plan. But election night 1952 is ground zero for our current, political post-truth moment. If a computer and a targeted advertisement can both use heaps data to predict every citizen’s every decision, can voters really know things for themselves after all? Image: CBS Correspondent Charles Collingwood reads the predictions coming in from the UNIVAC in 1952. (Getty Images) https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-6-cell-strain monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1592482587617-VQG0818MQZO7Y4K96A1B/GettyImages-50358317.jpg Season 1 - Episode 6: Cell Strain - In the 1950s, polio spread throughout the United States. Heartbreakingly, it affected mainly children. Thousands died. Thousands more were paralyzed. Many ended up surviving only in iron lungs, a machine that breathed for polio victims, sometimes for years. Scientists raced to find a vaccine. After a few hard years of widespread quarantine and isolation, the scientists succeeded. The discovery of the polio vaccine was one of the brightest moments in public health history. But a vaccine required Americans to believe in a truth they couldn’t see with their own eyes. It also raised questions of access, of racial equity, and of the federal government’s role in healthcare, questions whose legacy we’re living with today. Image: Vials of the polio vaccine are prepared to be shipped across the country and the world (Getty Images). https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-7-the-computermen monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1593041012865-B0UJ6QCZD7ZBE721004W/Arpanet_1972_Map_Tall.png Season 1 - Episode 7: The Computermen - In 1966, just as the foundations of the Internet were getting dreamed up… the federal government considered building a National Data Center. It would be a centralized federal facility to hold computer records from each federal agency, in the same way that the Library of Congress holds books and the National Archives holds manuscripts. Proponents argued that it would help regulate and compile the vast quantities of data the government was collecting. Quickly, though, fears about privacy, government conspiracies, and government ineptitude buried the idea. But now, that National Data Center looks like a missed opportunity to create rules about data and privacy before the Internet took off. And in the absence of government action, corporations have made those rules themselves. Image credit: UCLA and BBN https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-8-she-said-she-said monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1593546416142-SI5EL0GFR8TDU963PTBT/GettyImages-515449502.jpg Season 1 - Episode 8: She Said, She Said - In 1969, radical feminists known as the Redstockings… gathered in a church in Lower Manhattan, and spoke about their experiences with abortion. They called this ‘consciousness-raising’ or ‘speaking bitterness,’ and it changed the history of women’s rights, all the way down to the 1977 National Women’s Convention and, really, down to the present. This idea of ‘speaking bitterness’, which came from a Maoist practice, is foundational to both the #MeToo movement and the conservative Victim’s Rights movement. But at what cost? Image: The 1977 National Women’s conference in Houston, Texas. (Getty Images) https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-9-for-the-birds monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1594210083576-3F50GKAWMYAR234WC5HZ/GettyImages-455251748.jpg Season 1 - Episode 9: For The Birds - What can the evidence of birds tell us about climate change? In the spring of 1958, when the winter snow melted and the warm sun returned, the birds did not. Birdwatchers, ordinary people, everyone wondered where the birds had gone. Rachel Carson, a journalist and early environmentalist, figured it out — they’d been poisoned by DDT, a pesticide that towns all over the country had been spraying. Rachel Carson wrote a book about it, Silent Spring. It succeeded in stopping DDT, and it launched the modern environmental movement. But now, more than 60 years later, birds are dying off en masse again. Our question is simple: What are the birds trying to tell us this time, and why can’t we hear their message any more? Image: Rachel Carson, out in the nature she helped preserve. (Getty Images) https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-10-tomorrowland monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1594840936919-0H8ZF638Z5FZIOUJKDPQ/GettyImages-1092673630.jpg Season 1 - Episode 10: Tomorrowland - All season long, we’ve been asking a big question: Who killed truth? The answer has to do with a change in the elemental unit of knowledge: the fall of the fact, and the rise of data. So, for the last chapter in our investigation, we rented a cherry red convertible, and went to the place all the data goes: Silicon Valley. In our season finale, we reckon with a weird foreshortening of history, the fussiness of old punch cards, the unreality of simulation, and the difficulty of recording audio with the top down on the 101. Hop in. Image: Two men examine the Westinghouse Time Capsule set to be buried at the 1939 World’s Fair. Getty Images. https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2 daily 0.75 2021-06-23 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-1-monkey-business monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1619366902128-A87FCTLTDOAZADTDPFMF/GettyImages-613509764.jpg Season 2 - Episode 1: Monkey Business - In 1925, John Scopes, a high school teacher from Dayton, Tennessee was put on trial for teaching evolution in what came to be called the monkey trial, a landmark in the history of doubt. All over the country, Americans tuned in on their radios as science and faith battled in the courtroom. But the nation also witnessed something else: the beginnings of a culture war that’s been waged ever since. This season on The Last Archive, a skeptical chronicle of an early battle in that war. Image: Hulton Deutsch / Corbis Historical via Getty Images https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-2-believe-it monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1619367718347-34Z3D81QZPHQSDXZ30X0/GettyImages-603216380.jpg Season 2 - Episode 2: Believe It - Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! was… one of the most popular radio shows of the 1930s, and for good reason: early radio, not unlike the Internet of nearly a century later, was obsessed with doubt about belief. On this episode of The Last Archive, Jill Lepore spins the dial and takes a tour of 1930s radio — from Robert Ripley to Charlie Chan, from Mexican broadcaster Pedro González to the shows of Orson Welles: the full spectrum of fakery on the air. Image: CBS Photo Archive/CBS via Getty Images https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-3-the-inner-front monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1620861721247-FOUX49KMCF1LEMIASVAL/lossy-page1-484px-Correspondents_interview__Tokyo_Rose.__Iva_Toguri%2C_American-born_Japanese._-_NARA_-_520994.tif.jpg Season 2 - Episode 3: The Inner Front - During World War II, Nazi radio broadcast… the voice of an American woman who came to be known as Axis Sally. She spoke, via shortwave radio, to American women, attempting to turn them against their country and the American war effort. She was waging a battle on what came to be called the Inner Front, the war of public opinion. Propaganda by radio was new then; so was psychological warfare. Writers, poets, psychologists, propagandists, and broadcasters all took to the airwaves in the 1930s and 1940s in a pitched battle of words and sound. After the war, two American women who had broadcast for Axis powers, Germany and Japan, were prosecuted for treason. How did the courts measure the power of words, over radio, to change minds? Image: National Archives at College Park, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-4-repeat-after-me monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1621464331834-B2AETJ81G42CNLFXH6Q0/image+%285%29+%281%29.png Season 2 - Episode 4: Repeat After Me - One night in 1952, a Coloradan businessman hypnotized a local housewife. Under his spell, she began to recount her past life as a 19th century Irish woman. He caught it on tape. The story of her reincarnation tore out of their Colorado town and across the world. It spawned major motion pictures, an international bestselling book, and a national hypnosis craze. But beneath all the uproar lay a set of questions that revealed a deep worry about the nature of self in the 1950s, the decade’s mishmash of psychology and spiritualism, and an anxiety about gender. This episode of The Last Archive: Who are you, really? Image: Denver Library https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-5-remote-control monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1622084614502-9CXN7YLH8JFG1SW89EAM/39526.jpg Season 2 - Episode 5: Remote Control - In 1961, President Kennedy announced … that the United States would go to the moon. Eight years later, the Apollo 11 astronauts set foot upon its surface. Millions of Americans watched live on their televisions as it happened, but somehow the pinnacle of man’s achievement became a wellspring of conspiracy theories. In this first episode of a two-part series on the moon landing, Jill Lepore traces the explosion of conspiratorial thinking that began with Apollo 11’s lift off — a path winding from awe of science, to the unshakeable faith that everything is a conspiracy. The more extraordinary scientific research and technology got, the more difficult it became to keep sight of the line between fact and fiction, and between the believable and the unbelievable. Photo: National Aeronautics and Space Administration https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-6-it-came-from-outer-space monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1622715203192-SCDUOQZO16SBQX8OEHTF/tla.jpeg Season 2 - Episode 6: It Came From Outer Space - A fake moon landing… Astronauts carrying space pathogens back to earth. Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain. HIV manufactured in a government laboratory. COVID-19 vaccines killing millions. In this episode, Jill Lepore follows a trail of disease stories and conspiracies from Apollo 11 to COVID-19. In part two of our series about the moon landing: Apollo’s splashdown, and the tidal wave of doubt it set off. Photo: National Museum of the U.S. Navy https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-7-children-of-zorin monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1623278283522-SAZXETZSF4EQY2WGB2XE/B9DBPX.jpg Season 2 - Episode 7: Children of Zorin - In the 1970s, a Soviet journalist… named Valentin Zorin made a series of documentary films about the United States. At a time when few Russian journalists came to the U.S., Zorin traveled all across the country, and gained access few American journalists had. The Cold War was a battle of ideas, and Zorin saw himself on the frontlines. He was on a quest to unmask the United States by spreading doubt, conspiracy theories, and a strange cocktail of truth and misinformation. Photo: SPUTNIK / Alamy Stock Photo https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-8-hush-rush monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1623883984936-V43NH8OHQ0URJ8DEIFE4/1024px-Rush_Limbaugh_At_The_Phil_Donahue_Show_%282972311063%29.jpeg Season 2 - Episode 8: Hush Rush - In the 1980s, Rush Limbaugh transformed… talk radio. In the process, he radicalized his listeners and the conservative movement. Limbaugh’s talk radio style became a staple of the modern right. Then, the left joined the fray. This week: partisan loudmouth versus partisan loudmouth, and the shifting media landscape that helped create modern political warfare. Image Author: Eddie~S This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-9-epiphany monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1624488794619-4UVWSOSKC3SYWURY5USE/1552px-2021_storming_of_the_United_States_Capitol_DSC09048_%2850827411286%29.jpg Season 2 - Episode 9: Epiphany - This season has chronicled… a long, dark century of lies, fakes, frauds, and hoaxes. In the season 2 finale, Jill Lepore draws that history all the way down to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. This week: the winding path from the little-known Iron Mountain hoax of the late-1960s to the Capitol insurrection on January 6th, 2021. Image: By Tyler Merbler from USA. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3 daily 0.75 2022-11-10 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3/episode-one-information-please monthly 0.5 2022-10-27 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3/episode-two-trial-teenager-part-1 monthly 0.5 2022-11-03 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3/episode-three-trial-teenager-pt-2 monthly 0.5 2022-11-03 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3/episode-four-the-tree-branch monthly 0.5 2022-11-17 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3/episode-five-farming-game monthly 0.5 2022-11-24 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3/episode-six-good-boy monthly 0.5 2022-12-01 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3/episode-seven-weather-vane monthly 0.5 2022-12-08 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3/episode-eight-lost-archive monthly 0.5 2022-12-08 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-4 daily 0.75 2023-07-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1687425793222-ZUTIP21QN7GB0812ZIZ6/TLA_PUSHKIN_BANNER_1200x628.png Season 4 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-4/episode-one-piano-player monthly 0.5 2023-07-28 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-4/episode-2-the-word-for-man-is-ishi monthly 0.5 2023-06-29 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-4/episode-3-parakeet-panic monthly 0.5 2023-07-06 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-4/episode-4-acting-out monthly 0.5 2023-07-13 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-4/episode-5-callings monthly 0.5 2023-07-20 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-4/episode-6-the-krononauts monthly 0.5 2023-07-28 https://www.thelastarchive.com/home daily 1.0 2023-06-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/8da93519-4880-45b2-be9e-0a0b7cdf424a/TLA-Square-Web.jpg Home - Season 4 In season 4 of The Last Archive, host Ben Naddaff-Hafrey digs into the history of truth in 20th century America. These six stories trace a history of how we know what we know, and why it seems sometimes lately as if we don’t know anything at all. Through gripping narratives about the history of automation, the forgotten origins of social network theory, invasive species panics, freelance wiretappers, sci-fi family histories, and time travel, The Last Archive Season 4 is a thrilling look at the history of knowledge. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1586468811288-NKL7MLU80H6ND68XGZVO/rsz_100318leporejill136.jpg Home - Jill Lepore Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper Professor of American History and Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University and a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she writes about politics, history, law, and literature. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, her dozen books include These Truths: A History of the United States, cited as “nothing short of a masterpiece” by NPR, and, her latest, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future, longlisted for the National Book Award. Photo credit: Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University https://www.thelastarchive.com/making-the-last-archive daily 0.75 2021-04-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1589326508179-QNTXK5TEFRYOQWTJTO5Y/recording.png Making The Last Archive Our Foolpoof Players, recording at the Bridge Sound & Stage, directed by producers Ben Naddaff-Hafrey and Sophie McKibben. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1589332989833-ZR7DRHY2ETE2GJGBEFFU/birdsong.jpg Making The Last Archive A reel of 35 mm footage of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker from our episode 9 trip to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1589326906730-6WOMKH8EU60ZH5TINVGF/cutting-wood.png Making The Last Archive Harry Gennett, Jr. cutting wood for an effect. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1589326789234-G3C825YP6CPQ63L1NXZC/airplane-sounds.png Making The Last Archive Harry Gennett Jr. recording airplane sounds in 1933. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1589326825456-HH4JTK4RNPWOFW89I83G/recording-lab-train.png Making The Last Archive The Gennett recording laboratory traveling, by train, on a recording trip. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1589326866363-AUIHXRYIXY76C62HOQWR/burlington-zephyr.png Making The Last Archive Recording the Burlington Zephyr in Illinois. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1589330099590-SDX61RYLFIZKI51URDMZ/interrogation.png Making The Last Archive Photograph of James Frye’s interrogation. Equity Case No. 40432; "Equity Case Files, 1863–1938," A1 Entry 69; Record Group 21, Records of District Courts of the United States; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e88c2ae99bce503300dc34b/1589326749432-WLYDRUWUY9RTAYPG1LO8/portable-recording-lab.png Making The Last Archive The sound effects team and their portable recording laboratory. https://www.thelastarchive.com/teaching-the-last-archive daily 0.75 2020-08-24 https://www.thelastarchive.com/qa-for-students daily 0.75 2020-05-22 https://www.thelastarchive.com/tips-for-teachers daily 0.75 2020-05-13 https://www.thelastarchive.com/guiding-questions daily 0.75 2023-07-28 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1-episodes daily 0.75 2020-05-21 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2-episodes daily 0.75 2021-04-29 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-3-1 daily 0.75 2023-07-28 https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-4-1 daily 0.75 2023-07-28