Best Grant Rothberg Podcasts (2025)

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A Houston Football Story: The Gamblers (Bonus) 22:37

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2M ago22:37

22:37

In the early 1980s, as the oil bust plunged Houston into a quiet depression and the Oilers played boring, lifeless football, a new team exploded into the Astrodome. They were the Houston Gamblers of the upstart USFL, and for two glorious seasons, they were the greatest show in town. This is the story of a team that was a generation ahead of its tim…

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A Houston Football Story: Houston Rises Again (4/4) 12:32

3M ago12:32

12:32

For the first time in forty years, Sundays in Houston were quiet. The Oilers were gone, having taken the team, the colors, and even the city's history with them to Tennessee. But a quiet, determined, self-made billionaire named Bob McNair refused to let that betrayal be the final word. This is the story of Houston's comeback. Learn how McNair, the …

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A Houston Football Story: Betrayal (3/4) 15:46

3M ago15:46

15:46

The party was over. The shocking firing of beloved coach Bum Phillips ripped the soul out of the Houston Oilers, just as the oil bust of the 1980s ripped the economic heart out of the city. But just as the city began to find its footing, a new star rose in the Astrodome: Warren Moon. A legend in Canada, Moon came to Houston to prove the NFL wrong f…

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A Houston Football Story: Luv Ya Blue (2/4) 16:55

3M ago16:55

16:55

By Grant Rothberg

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A Houston Football Story: The AFL Years (1/4) 18:11

3M ago18:11

18:11

By Grant Rothberg

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Dodge City: Queen of the Cowtowns 35:48

5M ago35:48

35:48

In today's episode, the legendary Dodge City. Everyone knows the phrase “gettin’ outta Dodge.” But how did this small Kansas town become a global symbol for frontier violence? This story separates myth from reality, revealing how the “Wickedest Little City in America” was less a hotbed of daily gunfights and more a masterclass in managing chaos for…

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Fort Larned National Historic Site 30:22

5M ago30:22

30:22

In today's episode: Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. On the vast Kansas prairie, Fort Larned stood as a monument to America's conflicted soul. It was a fortress built to project military power and conquer the Plains tribes , yet it was also tasked with keeping peace by distributing food and supplies to them. This episode explores the fort's par…

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Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve 34:57

5M ago34:57

34:57

In today's episode: Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Once, a sea of grass covered 170 million acres of North America, only to be nearly erased in a single generation. Today, less than 4% remains. We journey to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, a landscape saved not by wisdom, but by a geological accident that defeated the plow. Here, we …

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National World War One Memorial (1/6) 27:14

5M ago27:14

27:14

Part One of our six-part series on the history that led to the National World War One Memorial. In nineteen-fourteen, the great powers of Europe believed they were at the height of civilization. Yet a web of alliances, a relentless arms race, and simmering nationalism created a powder keg. We explore how the assassination of a single archduke in Sa…

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George Washington Carver National Historic Site 10:32

5M ago10:32

10:32

From a boy born into slavery and kidnapped by raiders , George Washington Carver rose to become a world-famous scientist. This single episode chronicles his entire journey: his youth as the "Plant Doctor," his revolutionary work at Tuskegee helping farmers escape the debt of the sharecropping system, and the painful paradox of his fame in a segrega…

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Pea Ridge: The Unraveling (3/3) 14:14

5M ago14:14

14:14

Part three of our series on Pea Ridge National Military Park. As dawn breaks on the second day, the tide turns. While the victorious Confederates at Elkhorn Tavern find themselves starving and out of ammunition, the Union army, consolidated and resupplied, unleashes the war's largest artillery bombardment. We witness how a gambler's desperate plan …

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Pea Ridge: A Tale of Two Fields (2/3) 17:03

5M ago17:03

17:03

Part two of our series on Pea Ridge National Military Park. The battle for Pea Ridge erupts in chaos. With the Confederate army split by a mountain, two separate battles rage simultaneously. On one front, a shocking series of battlefield deaths decapitates the Confederate command, turning victory into a rout. Just miles away at Elkhorn Tavern, the …

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Pea Ridge: The Gamble (1/3) 19:42

5M ago19:42

19:42

Part one of our series on Pea Ridge National Military Park. In the winter of eighteen sixty-two, the fate of Missouri hangs in the balance. The Union sends a methodical engineer, Samuel Curtis, to crush the rebellion. He faces a fractured Confederate command led by the flamboyant Earl Van Dorn, who launches an audacious gamble: a forced march throu…

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Fort Smith: Lawmen and Legends (3/3) 14:26

5M ago14:26

14:26

Part three of our series on Fort Smith National Historic Site. This episode opens the case files of Judge Parker's court, where the line between history and myth was often blurred. We explore how the press transformed a convicted horse thief like Belle Starr into the romantic "Bandit Queen," and contrast her manufactured fame with the brutal realit…

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Fort Smith: The Judge and the Gallows (2/3) 16:20

5M ago16:20

16:20

Part two of our series on Fort Smith National Historic Site. After the military departs, Fort Smith becomes home to a federal court with an impossible mission: bring law to the 74,000 square miles of "Hell on the Border" known as Indian Territory. This episode introduces the relentless Judge Isaac C. Parker, the man sent to tame the chaos , and leg…

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Fort Smith: A Double-Edged Sword (1/3) 19:28

5M ago19:28

19:28

Part one of our series on Fort Smith National Historic Site. This episode explores the birth of Fort Smith, an outpost built on the American frontier to manage a violent conflict the U.S. government itself created. The story follows the fort from its origins as a lonely stockade to its role as a tragic witness to the Trail of Tears, and finally, as…

1
Spindletop: The Oil Strike that Fueled Houston 26:28

5M ago26:28

26:28

In 1900, as the city of Galveston was being washed from the earth by a monster hurricane, a one-armed prophet named Pattillo Higgins was chasing a fool's dream on a stinking mound of dirt near Beaumont. While the undisputed queen of Texas saw its future end, Higgins promised a new world would erupt from beneath his feet. This is the incredible stor…

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Ellington Field and the Infinite Sky (1/3) 26:23

5M ago26:23

26:23

By Grant Rothberg

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Galveston: The Queen and the Great Storm (4/4) 12:53

5M ago12:53

12:53

The sun rose on Sunday, September 9th, to a clear sky and a city that was gone. In its place was a graveyard, a three-mile-long mountain of debris, and the sickening smell of death that hung over the island for weeks. The survivors faced an unthinkable task: disposing of thousands of victims, a horror compounded when the sea rejected the dead, wash…

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Galveston: The Queen and the Great Storm (3/4) 11:03

5M ago11:03

11:03

On Saturday, September 8, 1900, the show began. What started as a "grand sight" for curious onlookers quickly turned into a fight for survival as the bridges to the mainland were destroyed, trapping nearly 40,000 souls on the island. As darkness fell, the city was assaulted by winds so powerful they ripped the Weather Bureau's measuring instruments…

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Galveston: The Queen and the Great Storm (2/4) 14:58

5M ago14:58

14:58

In a city that had dismantled its own natural defenses for the sake of progress, there was one man whose words sealed its fate. Isaac Monroe Cline, the chief of the local U.S. Weather Bureau, declared the idea of a catastrophic hurricane hitting Galveston "an absurd delusion". His scientific certainty provided the ultimate justification for the cit…

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Galveston: The Queen and the Great Storm (1/4) 20:36

5M ago20:36

20:36

Before the storm, there was the Queen. In the final years of the 19th century, Galveston wasn't just a city; it was the "Wall Street of the Southwest," a beacon of wealth, culture, and unstoppable progress. From its bustling, magnificent commercial district known as The Strand to its grand Victorian mansions lit by the state's first electric lights…

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Houston's Smoke Ring - The Feud, the Fire, and the Birth of the World's Biggest Barbecue Contest 20:55

5M ago20:55

20:55

It was February 1974 in Houston, a city on a rocket ride of oil-fueled ambition. Inside the Astrodome, Elvis Presley was commanding the stage of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, creating a cultural earthquake. But the real story wasn't under the spotlights. It was outside, in a cold, muddy parking lot. There, on a rusty flatbed trailer, an Osc…

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The Skin of a King: How a Patch of Stone in the Montana Dirt Sparked a Revolution in a Houston Museum 23:37

6M ago23:37

23:37

The chance discovery of a Tyrannosaurus rex with its skin miraculously preserved, unearthed not by a paleontologist but by a Montana rancher, ignites a Houston museum president's audacious dream. This launches a high-stakes, multi-million-dollar quest for money and scientific innovation, culminating in a revolutionary exhibit at the Houston Museum …

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Be Someone: The Rise of a Bayou City Icon 20:35

6M ago20:35

20:35

You’re one of millions, a single drop in a river of steel and glass, heading into the heart of the city. You look up at the familiar, grimy railroad bridge you pass under every single day. But this time, something is different. Two words, painted in giant letters, simple and clean, seem to speak directly to you: BE SOMEONE. The story of those lette…

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The Final Straw: The Unlikely Birth of the Houston Rodeo 18:34

6M ago18:34

18:34

A dismissive glance across a dusty arena that told a group of proud Houston area cattlemen everything they needed to know: they weren't welcome. And that insult ignited a flame that grew into the largest livestock show and rodeo mankind has ever seen, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.By Grant Rothberg

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The Texas City Disaster: The Reckoning (part 3) 13:51

6M ago13:51

13:51

How did a cargo of peace become a weapon of mass destruction? The search for that answer would pit a group of grieving citizens against the full power of the United States government. Join us for the final installment of our special three part series on the Texas City Disaster.By Grant Rothberg

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The Texas City Disaster: The Day the Sky Fell (part 2) 19:52

6M ago19:52

19:52

They stood on the deck of a burning ship, heroes facing a fire. They had no way of knowing their fight was already lost...that beneath their feet, 2,300 tons of fertilizer were turning into a bomb. Their world, and the world of Texas City would vanish in a flash of light and a roar that would echo through history. Part two of our special three part…

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The Texas City Disaster: The Gathering Storm (part 1) 15:22

6M ago15:22

15:22

The story of how a ship on a mission of peace, carrying a cargo meant to heal the scars of war, became the instrument of the deadliest industrial disaster in American history...this is part one of our special three part series on the Texas City Disaster of 1947.By Grant Rothberg

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The Paper City: How a Swampy Dream and a Will of Iron Forged a Metropolis 18:14

6M ago18:14

18:14

Before the skyscrapers, before the traffic, before the very idea of Houston existed, there was a lie. In today's episode, how the Allen Brothers and the unsung "Mother of Houston" birthed a city.By Grant Rothberg

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The Gun that Won the Game: How the Colt .45s Brought the Big Leagues to Houston 19:37

6M ago19:37

19:37

In business, science, and industry, Houston was already playing in the major leagues. But in the one arena that often defined a great American city, the world of professional sports, Houston was still stuck in the minors. Today, how Houston gained a Major League Baseball franchise that became the beloved Houston Astros.…

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The Field of Dreams: How a Patch of Prairie Became Houston's Gateway to the World 16:14

6M ago16:14

16:14

Before the roar of jet engines, there was just the lowing of cattle and the whisper of prairie grass. The story of Hobby Airport begins not with a grand design, but with a muddy field, a handful of believers, and a city so desperate for a future in the clouds, it was willing to bet its very name on a living legend.…

Grant Rothberg Podcasts

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Houston in Story

Grant Rothberg

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Road Trip Stories: The History

Grant Rothberg

1
A Houston Football Story: The Gamblers (Bonus) 22:37

1
A Houston Football Story: Houston Rises Again (4/4) 12:32

1
A Houston Football Story: Betrayal (3/4) 15:46

1
A Houston Football Story: Luv Ya Blue (2/4) 16:55

1
A Houston Football Story: The AFL Years (1/4) 18:11

1
Dodge City: Queen of the Cowtowns 35:48

1
Fort Larned National Historic Site 30:22

1
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve 34:57

1
National World War One Memorial (1/6) 27:14

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George Washington Carver National Historic Site 10:32

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Pea Ridge: The Unraveling (3/3) 14:14

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Pea Ridge: A Tale of Two Fields (2/3) 17:03

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Pea Ridge: The Gamble (1/3) 19:42

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Fort Smith: Lawmen and Legends (3/3) 14:26

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Fort Smith: The Judge and the Gallows (2/3) 16:20

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Fort Smith: A Double-Edged Sword (1/3) 19:28

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Spindletop: The Oil Strike that Fueled Houston 26:28

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Ellington Field and the Infinite Sky (1/3) 26:23

1
Galveston: The Queen and the Great Storm (4/4) 12:53

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Galveston: The Queen and the Great Storm (3/4) 11:03

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Galveston: The Queen and the Great Storm (2/4) 14:58

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Galveston: The Queen and the Great Storm (1/4) 20:36

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Houston's Smoke Ring - The Feud, the Fire, and the Birth of the World's Biggest Barbecue Contest 20:55

1
The Skin of a King: How a Patch of Stone in the Montana Dirt Sparked a Revolution in a Houston Museum 23:37

1
Be Someone: The Rise of a Bayou City Icon 20:35

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The Final Straw: The Unlikely Birth of the Houston Rodeo 18:34

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The Texas City Disaster: The Reckoning (part 3) 13:51

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The Texas City Disaster: The Day the Sky Fell (part 2) 19:52

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The Texas City Disaster: The Gathering Storm (part 1) 15:22

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The Paper City: How a Swampy Dream and a Will of Iron Forged a Metropolis 18:14

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The Gun that Won the Game: How the Colt .45s Brought the Big Leagues to Houston 19:37

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The Field of Dreams: How a Patch of Prairie Became Houston's Gateway to the World 16:14