Here's Where It Gets Interesting
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Here's Where It Gets Interesting
The world feels complicated. The Preamble is where it starts to make sense. Hosted by Sharon McMahon — known for making sense of complex issues — she and her guests dive deep into the stories and ideas driving our future, bringing clarity and honesty to every headline. If you want real ins...
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Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 10
A religious leader with a raging drug addiction who led his following to a tragic end. A President with the hope of finding peace between Israel and E...
Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 9
Did you know that Star Wars almost started a war in real life, over a sand crawler model? Would the film have been so wildly successful if someone els...
Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 8
A happenstance introduction to Charles Manson. Assassination attempts against President Ford, a man who was never elected to the vice presidency or pr...
Introducing Family Lore
Family Lore is a weekly narrative podcast that celebrates and investigates ancestral mystique. Each episode begins with a guest sharing a fascinating...
Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 7
Draft dodging. When did the draft lottery begin for the war in Vietnam, and who among America’s youth was hit the hardest? It was an unwinnable war, a...
Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 6
A cover up that cost Nixon's presidency, a pardon that cost Gerald R. Ford his election, and a friendship dating back to the 1940s. It was the first t...
Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 5
The right to privacy, a 22-year-old who went by the pseudonym “Jane Roe,” and one of the most famous court cases in United States history. Join us as...
Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 4
Deep Throat, Operation Gemstone, two valiant reporters, and a secret 30 years in the making. Watergate was not a single scandal, but rather an avalanc...
Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 3
"The week that changed the world.” Was it a chance encounter at the World Tennis Championship in 1971, “Panda diplomacy” between the U.S. and Communis...
Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 2
Secret Police, CIA operatives, The Pentagon Papers, and The Most Dangerous Man in America. There was a time in the not-so-distant past, when the night...
Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 1
As the decade devolved into war at home and abroad, Apollo 13 flew high above Earth with the hope of landing safely on the surface of the moon. But th...
Growing Hope: What Depression-Era Gardens and Rainn Wilson Teach Us About Hard Times
During the Great Depression, Detroit officials carved up vacant lots and handed exhausted families seeds and tools. It wasn't a hobby — it was surviva...
America at 250: Staying Hopeful, plus Saying No in a World That Demands Yes
Are we heading toward a second civil war? No, but what might happen could still be unsettling. Sharon has an honest conversation with YouTube civics c...
Welcome to Becoming You with Suzy Welch
Here on The Preamble, we look for the historical context and the factual clarity behind the headlines because we know that understanding the "why" hel...
Condoleezza Rice on Democracy, Patriotism, and Why She Still Has Hope
Sharon tells us why sugarcoating history doesn’t help any of us. Truly loving your country means acknowledging the not-so-great and even horrible mome...
Learning From Our Differences and the Antidote to Doomscrolling Anxiety
Did you know that only 4% of new marriages in America happen between Democrats and Republicans? Or that three quarters of white Americans don't have a...
The Long History of Demonizing Immigrants: From the Great Depression to Today
Before ICE raids, there were pamphlets warning Americans about immigrant "peasants" stealing their jobs and "hell ships" dumping people into the Mexic...
Elyse Myers’ New Book and Harriet Tubman’s Faith
You might know her as the woman who got dragged to a taco bell where her date ordered one hundred tacos and she got stuck paying for them. Elyse Myers...
The State of Black History and Journalism in 2026
Simply teaching the facts in and out of the classroom has become an act of courage, and sometimes, real risk. Former history teacher Ernest Crim joins...
If Court Orders Don’t Matter, Nothing Does, Banning Books, and How to Find Hope
Americans are being offered a false choice: safety or rights, as though “law and order” means obedience from citizens and exceptions for the governmen...
How ICE Is Mimicking 19th Century Slave Patrols, and What AI Tech Billionaires Really Want
Gen Z Historian Kahlil Greene explains how today’s ICE enforcement has chilling parallels to the slave patrols of the 19th Century, designed to hunt h...
Inside ICE: Recruitment, Congressional Accountability, and Absolute Immunity
This episode was recorded before Border Patrol agents shot and killed Twin Cities nurse Alex Pretti.
What happens when the people...
The War on Drugs, and the Truth Behind the Viral Claims of Fraud at Minnesota Daycares
The War on Drugs is being used to justify U.S. military actions, including a covert operation in Venezuela, but is that going to have an effect on the...
The Pentagon Papers, Why Nobody Wants Venezuelan Oil, and Answers to Your Questions
The story you didn’t know: The Pentagon Papers. Politics Professor Casey Burgat tells us about the government lies, coverup, and the reporters who exp...
Margaret Taylor, From Army Wife to Reluctant First Lady
Margaret “Peggy” Taylor was a true pioneer woman, so the White House was never the life she wanted. She spent decades roughing it at remote army posts...
Sarah Polk’s Power Behind the Presidency
Sarah Polk was one of the most politically powerful women of her era. From running her husband’s political operation behind the scenes to mastering th...
America’s Most Overlooked First Lady, Anna Harrison
America’s shortest presidency produced one of its most overlooked First Ladies. Anna Harrison didn’t even make it to the White House before William He...
The Chains We Forge In Life, How Religious Is the US, and Hanukkah at the White House
A warning to anyone engaged in demeaning rhetoric: How do you want to be remembered after you’re gone? Like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, it’...
How Beavers Built America, The 5 Habits of Hope, And Jackie Kennedy’s Christmas Legacy
Before railroads, revolutions, or even the idea of America itself, one animal with a grudge against running water built the foundations of our country...
America’s Rising Sun Moment, Why You’re More Powerful Than You Think, And Memorable Moments of White House Holidays
Even the Founding Fathers had their doubts about the future of the country, but Benjamin Franklin chose to see its promise. We’ll explain how one chai...
The Most Chaotic Election in American History Was Saved by an Irish Immigrant, and a Conversation with Congressman James Clyburn
Meet the Irish immigrant who used fireplace tongs to fight a member of Congress, was thrown in jail for insulting a president, and ultimately changed...
Presenting unPAUSED with Dr. Mary Claire Haver
Welcome to unPAUSED, the podcast where bold, unfiltered conversations take place about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of...
How Hard Can It Be, Boys Do It? Plus, Fighting for Equal Rights After the Civil War, and Answers to Your Questions
It’s not something you’ll read about in most history books. Sharon tells the remarkable story of Florence Hall and her Women’s Land Army: the women wh...
A Stranger Saved My Husband’s Life, Why You Think the Way You Do, and Answers to Your Questions
A shocking phone call after a routine medical exam. Despite no symptoms, Sharon’s husband had advanced kidney disease and he would die without a trans...
From the Printing Press to AI, Why Fascists Fear Teachers, and Answering Your Questions
Five centuries ago, Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press shattered the barriers to knowledge. Today, AI is doing the same. Sharon takes you on a journe...
Government Shutdown, White House Renovations, and Stoic Virtues
Welcome to the very first episode of The Preamble!
Sharon kicks things off with a conversation with New York Times bestselling aut...
The Preamble Trailer
The world feels complicated. The Preamble is where it starts to make sense. Hosted by Sharon McMahon — known for making sense of complex issues — she...
Hannah Van Buren’s Journey from Dutch Heritage to American History
Though Hannah Van Buren died nearly twenty years before her husband’s presidency, her life reflected the sweeping historical forces of early America....
The Scandalous Second Marriage of Rachel Jackson
Despite being one of Sharon’s least-favorite Presidents, she explores the lifelong, and at times scandalous, love and devotion between President Andre...
The Diplomatic Prowess of Louisa Adams
Stepping into the White House at the close of the Founding Fathers’ era, London-born Louisa Adams became the nation’s first foreign-born First Lady. I...