Special Episode- The Michigan Murders, a Conversation with Documentary Filmmaker Andrew Templeton, & a DHP Update
In this special episode, we give an update on The Detroit History Podcast and tell you what we've been working on lately. And as a special bonus: Managing Editor Eric Kiska interviews documentary filmmaker Andrew Templeton who is screening his new film "1969: Killers, Freaks, and Radicals," a movie that covers "The Michigan Murders" (aka The Co-Ed Killings) in the late 60s. Up to today, most have attributed the crimes to one lone serial killer named John Norman Collins, but Templeton (and interviewees) propose that others may have been involved after investigating the case. Templeton brings us through what Michiganders were feeling like in the late 60s as the homicides unfolded, and how the crimes (along with everything else going on in the late 60s) created a feeling of mayhem in the region. We also discuss how the police made several mishaps that gave Collins time to destroy evidence, and how ignorance towards the serial killer psychological profile led to Collins (wrongly) being an unlikely suspect. Find the video form of this interview here: https://youtu.be/Yxyt_qcJo9A?si=pmJjiv3nv0SMMTEk Find upcoming screenings for "1969: Killers, Freaks, and Radicals" here: https://www.1969doc.com/
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Season 6 Finale- Michigan Central Station, The Ellis Island of Detroit
The Michigan Central Station reopening has given Detroit a great story to tell, specifically: how we took a wreck of a building and turned it into something glorious. The Detroit History Podcast takes a dive into how the place slid into such disrepair. Spoiler alert: maybe the station is a symbol of something bigger. Times changed. Automobiles and planes obliterated the railroad industry’s vaunted position of getting people and things from here to there. A story with many moving parts, and that includes an explanation as to why only Ford Motor Company could have taken on such a vast project. Looking for more Michigan history to dive into? Managing Editor Eric Kiska is releasing a new YouTube series called "Tales of the Great Lakes." This docuseries will cover Great Lakes history such as "The Great Lakes Stonehenge," the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the creation of Thousand Island Dressing, and the haunting of the Fort Gratiot Lighthouse. The first episode is out now at: https://www.youtube.com/@FirelakeMedia
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Season 6, Episode 7- Chung's and Detroit's Chinatown
As a child growing up in metro Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s, Curtis Chin watched the world go by from an unusual vantage point. His family owned Chung’s, a popular Chinese restaurant in the Cass Corridor, which enjoyed a 60-year run before closing in 2000. Chin, now a nationally recognized author, has written about that experience in his memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant.” He explains the pep talk he got from the late Coleman A. Young about the importance of anger. As Chin recalls the conversation: “Coleman Young, challenged me and said, ‘there's nothing wrong with being angry.' It’s a motivator. It gets you to do things, and it forces you to ask questions.”
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Season 6, Episode 6- The Edsel: The Road to Lemonville
The Ford Motor Company had momentum going into the mid-1950s: a young Henry Ford II, who inherited the CEO job from his grandfather roughly a decade earlier, was reversing the company’s fortunes. But then, the company laid the biggest egg in automotive history. It introduced the Edsel in 1957. Despite working with the best brains in the country, the project flopped and was scotched in 1960 costing nearly $2.6 billion in present-day dollars. Worse yet, it became a symbol for a badly-designed product. So what happened? Our analysts say the unusual front grille was the least of the problems facing the company.
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Season 6, Episode 5- The Last Hanging in Detroit
On a fall day in 1830, convicted wife killer Stephen Simmons was hung in downtown Detroit. His execution was as public as anything could be. Bleachers were set up on three sides of the scaffold, as people came from miles around to witness the execution. Maybe they didn’t like what they saw, because Michigan soon became the first English-speaking government to outlaw the death penalty. We speak with legal scholar David Chardavoyne, author of A Hanging In Detroit: Stephen Gifford Simmons and the Last Execution Under Michigan Law. Lawyer Eugene Wanger tells us how the ban on capital punishment went through when the state’s constitution was rewritten in the early 1960s. And historian Matthew Daley, of Grand Valley State University, explains why it never took hold in the state’s early days. Explicit content warning: audio of an execution.
The Detroit History Podcast returns for Season Six with a menu of programs as diverse as wrestling, bebop jazz, and a failed automobile. We'll look at the life of The Sheik, who threw fire and terrorized fellow grapplers during his wrestling career, which peaked in the 1960s and beyond. We saw something different on the road while we prepped for Season Six: an Edsel, which was the biggest flop in automotive history when it was introduced in 1957. We wanted to know: how could the smart people at Ford Motor Company fail in such a big way? We'll hear about the Bluebird Inn, a west side jazz club where Miles Davis played in 1953 and 1954. And we'll explain how the Detroit Institute of Arts grew in the 1920s, acquiring priceless Van Gogh paintings at a time when nobody knew who he was. New episodes drop every Sunday night at 8.
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