PODCAST · history
Dave Does History
by Dave Bowman
Dave Does History explores American history, military history, the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, liberty, and the events that shaped the modern world. Historian and broadcaster Dave Bowman brings historical figures, battles, ideas, and turning points to life through engaging storytelling, analysis, and perspective.
Episodes
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The Last Offramp
On September 11, 1776, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge crossed to Staten Island under a flag of truce. They came seeking the limits of Britain’s peace offer and discovered there was no offer at all, only pardons in exchange for submission. The Staten Island Peace Conference...
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The American Crises
In September 1776, New York newspapers carried a mocking letter from a supposed eyewitness who claimed that George Washington and his “dirty pack of New England long faces” were losing the war. The author did not exist. The letter was British propaganda, part of an organized effort to ridicule…
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Camp Fortunate: When Lewis and Clark Changed the Method but Kept the Mission
What happens when the map is wrong, the river runs out, and the plan that brought you across a continent can take you no farther? In August 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Continental Divide expecting to find a practical water route leading west toward the Columbia River and the...
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Fall Back
American independence was declared in the summer of 1776.Whether the new nation could survive long enough to make that declaration mean anything was another matter entirely. By the autumn of that year, George Washington's ContinentalArmy had suffered a succession of defeats around New York. The...
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Benedict Arnold Saves The American Revolution
Everyone remembers Benedict Arnold the traitor. Far fewer remember Benedict Arnold the hero. This week on Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, we explore the Battle of Valcour Island, where Arnold built a navy from scratch, took on the greatest naval power in the world, and lost a battle that may...
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The Great New York Fire of 1776
For most Americans, the story of September 1776 begins andends with Nathan Hale. We remember the young schoolteacher turned patriot spy,the gallows, and the words that have echoed through American history: "Ionly regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." But Hale's final days...
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Patriot, Prisoner and Grandson
What happens when the greatest legacy of a Founding Father isn't his own life, but the life of a grandson he never knew? In this episode of Dave Does History, we celebrate the 280th birthday of Thomas Heyward Jr., one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence whose story deserves far more...
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The Empire Strikes Back
While the nation celebrates Independence, the British move on New York City. Washington is out numbered, and basically trapped because of a political decision to hold the city. And in the first real standup fight between the Continental Army and the British, things go disastrously for the...
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How the French Revolution Created American Politics | DDH
Welcome to Dave Does History with Dave Bowman and Bill Mick! On this July 14th, as France celebrates the iconic flyovers and parades of Bastille Day, we are diving deep into a history that is far more complex than the legends in our schoolbooks. Most of us recognize the storming of the Bastille…
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Start Spreading the News - The First Independence Day | Liberty 250
For an entire year, Liberty 250 has followed the road to American independence. We have walked the streets of Boston during the Stamp Act crisis. We have stood beside Patrick Henry as he challenged imperial authority. We have watched the Sons of Liberty organize resistance, followed Benjamin...
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The Revolution They Still Don’t Understand | Liberty 250
It Was An Idea that Changed the World... For 250 years, Americans have been told that the Revolution was about taxes, tea, and a war for independence. British historians often describe it as little more than a colonial breakup. Increasingly, Americans judge it solely by the imperfections of the…
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Out On Sullivan's Island | Liberty 250
The American Revolution was only days away from declaring independence when one of the most important battles of the war took place on a sandy island outside Charleston, South Carolina. It is a battle that many Americans have never heard of, yet its consequences helped shape the future of the...
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The Apple of Gold | Liberty 250
Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was approved, Americans still argue about a single sentence. Thirty-five words, written by a 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson, have shaped political debates, inspired reform movements, launched revolutions, and challenged generations…
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"...With a Firm Reliance..." | Liberty 250
For this week's Liberty 250 episode, we meet one of the most fascinating and overlooked men of the American founding. While names like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Washington dominate the story of independence, Francis Hopkinson quietly helped shape the nation in ways that most Americans never...
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“One of the Great Worthies of the Revolution” | Liberty 250
John Dickinson is one of the most misunderstood FoundingFathers in American history. While Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin are remembered as champions of independence, Dickinson is often remembered as the man who opposed the Declaration of Independence. Yet thatsimple...
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The Battle of Trois-Rivière
Most Americans can tell you about Saratoga. Many know the story of Yorktown. Far fewer remember that before the Declaration of Independence was even signed, the Continental Army launched an ambitious invasion of Canada in hopes of making it the fourteenth colony. In this episode of Liberty 250,...
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DDH - Ride, Rodney, Ride!
Here is a podcast introduction optimized for search terms related to Caesar Rodney, the Ride to Philadelphia, July 2, 1776, Independence Day, the Continental Congress, and the American Revolution. The episode content is based on the material in your draft and radio transcript. As Americans, we...
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DDH - An Appeal to Heaven
The old pine tree flag has suddenly become controversial again, which tells us less about the American Revolution than it does about how badly modern Americans have forgotten their own history. In this episode, we trace the true origins of the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, from the towering white…
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Liberty 250 - The Music(al) Volume 2
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a handful of farmers, merchants, lawyers, preachers, smugglers, and stubborn troublemakers looked at the most powerful empire on earth and quietly began asking a dangerous question: what if government exists to serve the people, instead of the people existing to...
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DDH - By Your Command
On September 17, 1978, millions of Americans sat down to watch a brand-new science fiction series called "Battlestar Galactica." They expected spaceships, laser battles, strange planets, and chrome-plated robots marching under the chilling phrase, “By your command.” What they probably did not...
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DDH - It's Not Us, It's You...
The Declaration of Independence is usually remembered as a thunderbolt, a bold declaration hurled across the Atlantic at a king and an empire. But near the end of the document, the tone changes in a way most people barely notice. The accusations stop. The anger softens. And suddenly the colonies...
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DDH - Safety & Happiness
May 10, 1776 is not a date most people remember. It does not come with fireworks or famous signatures. If you read the Congressional Journal for that day, it looks like business as usual. Letters, supplies, committee work. The kind of record you would skip past without a second thought. That is…
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Liberty 250 - The Music(al)
History rarely announces itself with a drumroll. More often, it builds in the background… in conversations, in arguments, in moments people don’t yet recognize as turning points. This episode brings that process to life. What you’re about to hear is not just a retelling of the road to July 4…
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DDH - Independence Seems to be the Word
By April of 1776, something had shifted in the American colonies, and it was not subtle. The arguments were no longer about rights within the empire. The question had become far more dangerous. Should there be an empire at all? In this episode of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, we step into...
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Vis Tacitis
There are days in history that arrive like a bell tolling in the distance. You hear them before you fully understand them. They carry weight, memory, and sometimes… a truth that never quite sits comfortably. This is one of those days. In this episode, we step into the silent world beneath the...
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DDH - Oh... Canada...
Some moments in history shout. Others whisper, and those are the ones that tend to matter most. In this episode of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, we step away from the familiar noise of tea taxes and marching redcoats and take a hard look at a quieter threat, one that struck fear deep into...
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Charles of Carrollton
There is a certain kind of Founder we tend to forget. Not the loud ones. Not the ones who seem born for statues and schoolhouse walls. The quieter ones. The ones who understood power not because they held it, but because they had lived without it. Charles Carroll of Carrollton was one of those…
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Ginger or Mary Ann?
Here is the thing about history. It does not disappear all at once. It fades, quietly, in the spaces between what we recognize and what we no longer notice. Tonight, we start with a question that feels harmless. Mary Ann or Ginger? It sounds like pop culture nostalgia, the kind of debate that...
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DDH - The Perect Villian
What if the villain in our story never knew he was the villain? In this episode of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, we take a hard look at King George III, not as the caricature we learned in school, but as the man he believed himself to be. Dutiful. Serious. Burdened with holding together a...
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Evacuation Day
March 17, 1776. Nearly a year into open rebellion, the British still hold Boston, and the American cause hangs in that uneasy space between bold talk and hard reality. In this episode of Dave Does History, we step into a siege that should have failed, led by an army that, on paper, had no…
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Standing Armies
On this week’s segment of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, we take up one of the most overlooked, and most explosive, phrases in the Declaration of Independence: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” It is easy to skim past those...
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The Cork Expedition (Old Mother Covington Part II)
Last time, we stood at Moore’s Creek Bridge and listened to Old Mother Covington speak. In three violent minutes, a Loyalist rising collapsed and Governor Josiah Martin’s promise of ten thousand men dissolved into smoke and swamp water. But that battle was only half the story. Three thousand…
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DDH - Old Mother Convington
We tend to remember the American Revolution as a clean fight. Patriots in homespun. Redcoats in formation. Muskets cracking across open fields. But that is not how it felt in North Carolina in 1776. Before there was Saratoga. Before there was Yorktown. Before Jefferson put ink to parchment and...
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Delivering Democracy
Before there was a telegraph wire humming across the plains, before railroads stitched steel across the continent, before the internet convinced us that information travels at the speed of light, there was a rider on a muddy road with a leather satchel and a republic in his saddlebag. In this...
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DDH - Roll the Guns!
We love to talk about the giants of the American Revolution. Washington in command. Jefferson at his desk. Adams on his feet. But revolutions are not won by speeches alone. They are won by men who move iron in the dark. This week on Dave Does History, we step back into the winter of 1775 and meet…
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Books Are The Keys
A random encounter while reading a book has Dave contemplating the reason why books remain so important...
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DDH - Common Sense Was In The Air
Here is the thing. Independence did not begin with a vote. It did not begin with Jefferson’s pen scratching across parchment. It began earlier, colder, louder, and far less polite. In the winter of 1776, Americans were not celebrating. They were arguing. In taverns where the ale was thin. In...
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DDH - The Theater of War
This week on Dave Does History, the American Revolution is stripped of its romance and examined where wars are actually won or lost: logistics. Picking up in the brutal winter of 1775–1776, Dave Bowman walks listeners into British-occupied Boston, a city encircled, frozen, and starving. What...
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The Trouble with Truth
Thomas Paine did not arrive in history as a marble statue ora finished idea. He arrived tired, broke, and angry, with ink on his fingersand a habit of saying the quiet part out loud. When Americans remember theRevolution, they tend to remember generals on horseback and signatures onparchment.…
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The Rocky Mountain Submarine
It sounds like a tall tale told too late at night. A submarine in the Rocky Mountains, sitting on a frozen lake nearly nine thousandfeet above sea level, more than a thousand miles from the nearest ocean. But this story is not folklore. It is documented, photographed, and quietly stubborn in its...
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DDH - March of the Mercenaries
"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny." With these words, the Declaration of Independence transformed a political dispute into an existential struggle for survival. To the American Patriots, the arrival of…
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History and the Supreme Court
I do not usually stop what I am doing to listen to Supreme Court oral arguments. That is lawyer country. Necessary work, important work, but not usually where historians spend their time. But this week, something in one of those arguments stopped me cold. Not because of the outcome, which we do…
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An Instrument of Arbitrary Power
Before the first shots were fired, before tea hit the water,the American Revolution was already underway, quietly, methodically, and with paperwork. This episode begins in places that do not make it ontocommemorative mugs. Courtrooms. Docks. Ledger books. It begins with a simple realization that...
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Underway on Nuclear Power
On January 17, 1955, there was no cheering crowd, no grand speech echoing across the harbor, and no sense that history was demanding attention. There was only a submarine easing away from a pier in Groton, Connecticut, and a short signal sent by flashing light. Underway on nuclear power. Ten…
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Religious Freedom
In January of 1786, a quiet vote in the Virginia General Assembly changed the way the modern world understands belief, power, and conscience. There were no parades, no ringing bells, and no sense that history had just pivoted. Yet with the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,...
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Vermont
January in the Green Mountains has never been gentle. It strips away comfort, soft thinking, and easy assumptions. In that kind of cold, people tend to tell the truth, or at least the version of it they are willing to live with. On January 15, 1777, a group of settlers gathered in a small...
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DDH - It's Just Common Sense (Video)
Philadelphia did not merely witness rebellion. It engineered amplification. This episode opens in a city that understood a hard, unfashionable truth. Ideas do not change history because they are elegant. They change history because they are repeated until they feel unavoidable. Philadelphia was…
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DDH - It's Just Common Sense
Philadelphia did not just host a revolution. It operated one. This episode begins in a city that understood something the textbooks tend to skip over. Ideas do not change the world because they are true. They change the world because they move. Because someone prints them, stacks them, sells…
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Ink, Mittens and Treason
January 1776 is usually remembered as a moment of clarity. Common Sense appears, the fog lifts, and independence suddenly feels inevitable. But that is not how it actually happened. This episode tells the messier story, the human one. A story about cold winters and empty pockets. About a radical...
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Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton is one of the most argued over figures in American history, and that alone tells you something important. He was never comfortable, never easy, and never interested in applause. Born illegitimate in the Caribbean, raised amid loss and instability, Hamilton arrived in America…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Dave Does History explores American history, military history, the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, liberty, and the events that shaped the modern world. Historian and broadcaster Dave Bowman brings historical figures, battles, ideas, and turning points to life through engaging storytelling, analysis, and perspective.
HOSTED BY
Dave Bowman
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Dave Does History have?
Dave Does History currently has 652 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Dave Does History about?
Dave Does History explores American history, military history, the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, liberty, and the events that shaped the modern world. Historian and broadcaster Dave Bowman brings historical figures, battles, ideas, and turning points to life through...
How often does Dave Does History release new episodes?
Dave Does History releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 652 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
Where can I listen to Dave Does History?
You can listen to Dave Does History on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Dave Does History?
Dave Does History is created and hosted by Dave Bowman.
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