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About This Podcast
The Last Archive is a show about the history of truth, and the historical context for our current fake news, post-truth moment. It’s a show about how we know what we know, and why it seems, these days, as if we don’t know anything at all anymore. The show is written & hosted by Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, and was created by the historian Jill Lepore. iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.
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Recent Episodes
S6 Twas the Night Before Christmas from Revisionist History
For nearly 200 years, we have credited the most famous poem of the Christmas season to Clement Clarke Moore. But what if we got the wrong man? This holiday season: A centuries old family feud, a bold…
S6 How to Experience the Joy of Giving Right Now: A Giving Tuesday Special from The Happiness Lab
According to the science, it really is better to give than receive. Donating a dollar; sharing a kind word or lending someone a hand changes lives, but can also hugely boost your happiness. So we're…
S6 The Terminator from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
Elon Musk has claimed that AI is humanity’s “biggest existential threat.” Paradoxically, Musk is also working to create artificial intelligence. Why? Jill Lepore tours through a century of imagined…
S6 Body Snatchers from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, and renamed it X. When asked why he wanted to own the social media network, Musk talked a lot about something he called the “woke mind virus.” Where…
S6 Baby X from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
The science fiction that Silicon Valley techno-billionaires like Elon Musk adore concerns gleaming futures in which fantastically powerful, immensely rich men colonize other planets. In this episode,…
S6 The Dogefather from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
In 2021, Elon Musk started calling himself The Dogefather to signal his support for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on a joke meme about a dog. That dog is now wagging the tail of the world’s…
S1E4 Iron Man from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
In 2008 Tesla Motors launched its first car, the completely electric Roadster. Tesla was a great story — something genuinely new, an engineering marvel. Musk became a media darling, on the cover of…
S6 Planet B from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
Elon Musk is a rocket man. He wants humans to become ‘a multi-planetary species’ and talks about establishing human settlements on Mars. As President Trump talks up the Mars program while dismantling…
S6 Dimension X from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
Elon Musk is reinventing himself as a kingmaker for the United States and the world. He wants to shape the future. But in this episode, Jill Lepore goes back to his past — to his childhood, his…
S6 The Dark Knight from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
Elon Musk’s origin story keeps changing. First, he was Tony Stark, or Iron Man. Not too long ago, he compared himself to Batman. Arguments started online over whether or not Musk is a real-life Bruce…
S6 John Birch vs. the PTA
In the 1960s, a right-wing organization led by a former candy tycoon rose to fame in America for their anti-communist campaigns. They called themselves the John Birch Society. Then, they tried to…
S6E9 Part 2: Long Jump, Tall Tale
Jesse Owens spent the rest of his life retelling the story of the 1936 games and his encounter with Luz Long. We trace the evolution of a tall tale, discovering the hidden life of one of America’s…
S6E8 Part 1: The Jiggle & the Giddy Up
The most famous athlete in 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany was the American sprinter Jesse Owens, and one of the most famous stories from those Games was the unexpected, heartwarming encounter Owens…
S6E7 70 Years of Brown v. Board of Education
Jill Lepore returns to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education with a special episode of The Last Archive. She and Ben Naddaff-Hafrey explore the amazing new…
S5E4 The Returns: A Conversation with Jill Lepore
In a special, all-new episode of ‘The Returns,’ host emerita Jill Lepore returns to talk about the post-truth moment we find ourselves in and what it means for the 2024 election.See…
S5E3 The Returns: Epiphany
Each week on ‘The Returns,’ we pull a different episode from our own archive to help put our present politics into historical context. This episode, Epiphany, first ran in 2021, as the finale to…
S5E2 The Returns: Hush Rush
Each week on ‘The Returns,’ we pull a different episode from our archive to help put our present politics into historical context. In the 1980s, Rush Limbaugh transformed talk radio. In the process,…
S5E1 The Returns: Project X
Each week on ‘The Returns,’ we pull a different episode from our archive to put our present politics into historical context. The election of 1952 brought all kinds of new technology into the…
S5 The Returns: An Election Mini-Series from The Last Archive
Election Year 2024 is upon us. And it promises to be a bit of a mess. But where did all this mess come from? In a 4-episode mini-series drawing from our own archive, Jill Lepore and Ben…
S4 The Unmarked Graveyard from Radio Diaries
This is the first episode in Radio Diaries’ new series The Unmarked Graveyard, untangling mysteries from America’s largest public cemetery. Each week, they’re bringing you stories of how people ended…
Frequently Asked Questions
The Last Archive has published 65 episodes since April 2020, covering topics in History, Society & Culture.
The Last Archive is currently dormant with new episodes every few days. Average episode length is 37m.
Sign up on Grep.FM to access contact details for The Last Archive, including email and social media links.
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