Fifteen years ago today, the first episode of The Mason Minute debuted. I hung up my headphones after leaving the radio business in 2006. But I never imagined taking on a project like a podcast. And most podcasts only last a few years. And I think about that fact often. But in all honesty, I…
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Let me pose a question. Are nostalgia and history exclusive of one another? No, I’m not talking about feeling nostalgic, I’m talking about nostalgia, the love of things that are old. If people love nostalgia, do they also love history? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that most people who don’t like…
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Today is a significant anniversary for an event that most of us would never know about if it weren’t for a song. A song that talks about the gales of November, about how the Chippewa called Lake Superior Gitche Gumee. Of course, I’m talking about The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which happened 50 years…
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We live in a world where there’s a lot of sameness. There are very few local or regional businesses anymore. These days, you can find the same gas stations and stores like Walmart or Target in nearly every city. And most of the places to eat, whether they’re fast food or you can sit down,…
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On Mother’s Day, it goes without saying that we make sure to honor our mother, the mother of our children, perhaps a mother-in-law, a stepmother, and even our grandmothers. But there’s someone else we should acknowledge today: Anna Jarvis. She is the woman who created Mother’s Day. Anna’s mother was a community organizer who worked…
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Growing up, I loved amusement parks. And having lived in numerous states, I’ve visited dozens. I even had the chance to enjoy the park in Chicago, where my father grew up before it closed in the late 1960s. I saw the news the other day that Six Flags America outside of Washington DC was closing…
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Today is Earth Day. And while many people know that it is, they don’t know what it means. Earth Day was an idea that started in the late 1960s. With all the issues we faced back then, the Vietnam War and race relations, the people who came up with the idea had the vision for…
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I read some sad news last week. Warner Discovery, the owners of HBO and the Max app, announced that they are opting to cease the production of Sesame Street. The long-running children’s show has been a part of our world since 1969 and touched the lives of millions upon millions of children; the show that…
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This may sound like an odd question, but are we losing history? I read a story recently that upset me. It said that 20% of people recently surveyed had no knowledge of the Holocaust. This statistic touches on a subject I think about often. When we teach history in school, how do we determine how…
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The discovery of fire and the origin of the wheel are two of the most important things to happen in the history of the world. For many years, people thought the wheel dated back roughly 6,000 years. In 4000 BC, it was used to make pottery in Mesopotamia. Then, 500 years later, it was adapted…
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