Now I MUST watch this movie again!

. . . the voices of grandparents and parents. Mom’s family stayed in Indianola, Iowa. Dad’s moved to the Idaho panhandle and picked apples, but returned to the family farm in central SD in 1941. The experience left scars on them all. I’m 73 and live in Minnesota now. Used to teach . History to high schoolers. Thank you for reading my four comments.

. . . who took advantage of the buyers ignorance and gullibility. Today there are few remnants of ”soddies”, mostly humps on the Plains, and some wells that now water cattle or sheep, the major inhabitants. In northwest South Dakota population density is measured by square miles per person. Western North Dakota used to be the same before the Bakken Oil Field was discovered. Overall, I enjoy your history stories, but the Dust Bowl is one i know intimately through (cont)

. . . the myth that ”rain follows the plow.” Many, if not most of the new farmers had no experience on a farm, but the speculators, railroads and equipment dealers assured them that farming was easy, that the virgin soil would spring to life under the least care. Western South and North Dakota are more akin to desert than capable of growing crops, yet today they are pockmarked with the pitiful leftovers of optimistically platted towns that quickly folded when the lies of those (cont)

The federal govt had a bigger role than you indicated. (My father was a child on a farm in central South Dakota in the 30s, while mom lived in Iowa at the same time.) There was an eager desire to get the empty Plains settled, hence Congress quickly passed the Homestead Act with Pres Hoover ready to sign it. The govt promoted opportunities for sweat shop wage slaves to be their own man on their own land on the Great Plains. They did nothing to regulate land speculators who created (cont)

Love the podcast, have you considered the Exodus of the Hebrews out of Egypt.

Incredible achievement, both getting to 2001 episodes and consistently keeping up the amazing range of topics and quality of the podcast. Respect and congrats, Gary!

FRUN-teer, Gary, not FRAWN-teer! Fruhn, not frawn. Rhymes with fun, now fawn!

Thank you, Gary, for giving props to vaccines!! There are far too many medically illiterate antivaxxers today who don’t understand immunology nor medical science in general.

There is a warning in here for the cult of personality with the current fascist leader of the US, for anyone wise enough to see it!!!

Thank you, Gary, for mentioning vaccines. Too many idiots today have no clue how important vaccines are and how many young lives, especially, would be snuffed out without them.

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Hey Gary, great episode on Bhutan. I had no idea about its history. Did you visit Bhutan when you were travelling?

There it is again, Gary, the mispronunciation of frontier. It is frun-TEER, not FRAWN-teer.

History is on the side of good men like John Brown. Racist red states to this day have not learned the lesson.

well done

Excellent! Love the new collective terms for contemporary groups of people :)

Gary, frontier is pronounced frun-TEER, not FRAWN-teer!

Perhaps Trump is the return of Nero! 🤯He’s a tyrant who seemed to disappear and returned to inflict even more malevolent tyranny! 😖🤪

Yes, Gary has a great voice, but at times also uses some bewildering pronunciations. The one that immediately comes to mind that sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me, is his pronunciation of “frontier.” Gary pronounces it FRAWN-teer instead of frun-TEER, like everyone else. There are other odd pronunciations as well.