Radioactive

Oct 15 2024 11 ep. 578

Radioactive Podcast artwork

Before CNN and Fox News, before shock jocks and powerful pundits, there was Father Charles Coughlin, an ambitious priest who invented political talk radio as we know it, brought down one president and crowned another, and was at one point considered the most powerful man in America. He was also a rabid antisemite who wrote fan mail to Mussolini and cheered on Hitler, and who used his enormous platform to spread hate.

In this 8-part podcast, Detroit journalist Andrew Lapin weaves together archival materials and incisive interviews to tell the story of Father Coughlin's alarming rise and dramatic fall. It’s a cautionary tale of how an unscrupulous bigot can manipulate mass media to spread hate and gather far too much political power. Radioactive is produced by Tablet Studios, with support from Maimonides Fund, and in association with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative, Exploring Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and Extremism.

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Introducing Dreyfus: A Very Modern Affair

Oct 15 2024 14 mins

Dreyfus: A Very Modern Affair is an October 7th story, but one that begins not in 2023, but in October of 1894 with the arrest of French military officer Alfred Dreyfus, who also happened to be a Jew. The implications of his framing, arrest, incarceration and the fallout of his eventual exoneration reverberate today. Over this five-episode series, we examine how these events unfold

Introducing: Covering Their Tracks

Jan 30 2024 6 mins

Covering Their Tracks is the extraordinary story of a young man’s escape from a moving train bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust, and his fight to hold the French national rail company, the SNCF, accountable for their actions as they later bid for lucrative high-speed rail contracts in the United States. For more information visit http://tabletmag.com

Introducing: Gatecrashers

Sep 18 2022 3 mins

What topic is more controversial, sensational, and endlessly captivating than college admissions? It’s a billion-dollar industry. It sends celebrities to jail. The Supreme Court is weighing in on who gets in and why. We might think we have read all there is to read on the issue, and heard all there is to hear. But if you want to understand everything that’s going on with colleg

Episode 8: The Ghost of Royal Oak

Nov 22 2021 36 mins

In the final chapter of this series, Father Coughlin disappears from the public eye, but his legacy lives on. When Coughlin stages a high-profile protest episode, and the church finally gives him an ultimatum: his radio career or the priesthood. The FBI closes in on Coughlin, but an unlikely figure steps in to save him from prosecution. Coughlin finally abdicates his on-air pulpit.

Episode 7: Sedition

Nov 15 2021 57 mins

Faced with political defeat, Father Coughlin drops all pretense of diplomacy. He plagiarizes Joseph Goebbels in his Social Justice magazine and writes fan letters to Mussolini. His Kristallnacht broadcast gets him kicked off major radio stations. He incites his followers in a paramilitary organization known as the Christian Front to undertake violence in the streets. The FBI raids

Episode 6: Social Justice

Nov 08 2021 34 mins

Huey Long’s folksy populism wins over Louisiana voters and becomes darkly demagogic. Picking up where Long leaves off, Father Coughlin and his National Union for Social Justice energize the anti-FDR base at massive political rallies across the country. The Social Justice party runs a candidate for president in the 1936 election, and Coughlin blatantly solicits campaign funds on h

Episode 5: His Cross to Bear

Nov 01 2021 27 mins

President Roosevelt embraces radio while distancing himself from Father Coughlin, whose broadcasts are becoming increasingly antisemitic. Coughlin rants about the Rothschilds and singles out Roosevelt’s Jewish secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., while the Jewish community debates how to respond. Turning on Roosevelt, Coughlin starts his own political movement. Meanwh

Episode 4: Driving the Money Changers from the Temple

Oct 25 2021 22 mins

Father Coughlin responds to the chaos of the Great Depression by creating a clear villain for his audiences: President Hoover, of course, but also the bankers he claimed controlled politicians and the communists he said were secretly infiltrating the country’s labor leadership. Any shred of subtlety evaporates as he rants on air about the Old Testament and the “atheist Jew Karl

Episode 3: The Sound of America

Oct 18 2021 18 mins

Father Coughlin’s decision to broadcast his sermons over the radio scandalizes the American listening public, with angry letters pouring in to radio stations and politicians. Preaching on the dial next to Amos ’n’ Andy was sacrilegious, inappropriate, crass. But soon listeners were hooked by the radio priest's sonorous voice, and his deliberately targeted messaging. Radioac

Episode 2: Radio Days

Oct 11 2021 23 mins

Father Coughlin builds his church, with a little help from famous friends. The ambitious priest embraces the airwaves and becomes America’s first talk radio celebrity. Radioactive is hosted by Detroit journalist Andrew Lapin and produced by Tablet Studios, with support from Maimonides Fund, and in association with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative, Exploring Hate: Antisem