Host Diana Korte speaks with historian and University of Georgia professor Daniel Rood, author of 2 books. His newest title is “IN THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT HOUSE. A History of the Plantation in America.”

In a narrative that sweeps across 400 years of American history, Rood reveals that the plantation did not die after the Civil War. It metastasized.

From the advent of sharecropping in the late 19th century to the rise of cotton in mid-20th century California to today’s chicken processing plants which sit on the same land once occupied by plantations and staffed largely by migrant workers, the plantation has cast a long shadow over American life.

Dan Rood specializes in the history of Atlantic slavery and its intersections with the histories of technology, agriculture, and capitalism.

Host Diana Korte speaks with science writer Helen Pearson, author of 2 books and editor for England’s prestigious Nature Journal. Her newest title is, “BEYOND BELIEF: How Evidence Shows What Really Works.”

In an age of alternative facts, today more people around the globe are using scientific evidence to figure out what works in health and medicine, government, business, as well as conservation, schools and parenting.

This wasn’t always the case. For many years, most medical advice was based on doctors’ opinions and conventional wisdom, not solid science.

Pearson describes how evidence-based medicine swept the world in the 1990s and how the idea that evidence should guide decisions is quietly transforming a host of other fields as well.

Host Diana Korte speaks with historian Craig Fehrman whose newest title, THIS VAST ENTERPRISE, is a major revisionist history of the Lewis and Clark years-long expedition that began in 1804.

Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson who fought bitter Congressional unrest to get the funding for it, this group of 45 or so traveled up the Missouri River from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean in Oregon.

Each chapter moves to a different person’s point of view, showcasing the many characters beyond the two leaders who flesh out the story of this expedition.

Among the many research innovations the author brings to this book are lost documents, Native perspectives, and oral history passed down over centuries.