We’re celebrating our first “podcastversary” with a look back at our favorite episodes so far, some reflections on podcast production, and our plans for switching things up in the year ahead. Stay tuned for the end, where we ask our listeners an important question about the future of the show.
Episodes Discussed
- Episode 22: Brooke Barbier, author of Boston in the American Revolution
- Episode 23: The Groundbreaking Grimke Sisters
- Episode 34 and Episode 36: Pirates on Boston Harbor.
- Episode 27: Burned at the Stake
- Episode 39: Tragedy at Cocoanut Grove
- Episode 28: The 1919 Boston Police Strike
- Episode 1: Remember, Remember the Fifth of November
- Episode 3: Slower than Molasses
By the Numbers
- 37283 total downloads.
- 300-500 downloads for each episode within the first month.
- The median podcast gets 192 downloads in the first month, putting us in the top 50%
- The vast majority of podcasts get fewer than 3 downloads per month, skewing the median low. Throwing out those and the top 1/2% results in an adjusted mean of 2620 per month, so we have a long way to go…
- Most downloads: Episode 2: How Cotton Mather saved Boston (1802)
- Fewest downloads: Episode 50: The Great Brinks Caper (375… but give it time)
This Week in Boston History
- October 30, 1770: On his 35th birthday, John Adams successfully defends Captain Thomas Preston, accused of ordering the Boston Massacre.
- October 31, 1768: Private Richard Ames is executed by a firing squad on Boston Common and buried where he falls.
- November 1, 1848: Advertisements for the new Female Medical College. Listen to our show about graduate Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler, the first African American woman to become a doctor in the US.
- November 2, 1647: After he’s caught committing voter fraud, Mighill Smith’s fine is suspended.
- November 3, 1675: Having already ordered that the “Praying Indians” of Massachusetts should be put into internment camps on the Boston Harbor Islands, Massachusetts makes leaving the islands a capital crime and authorizes any white resident to “destroy” an Indian seen leaving the camps.
- November 4, 1631: Reverend John Eliot and Governor John Winthrop’s wife and children arrive in Boston, sparking a celebration and feast among the Boston settlers, who were otherwise nearly starving.
- November 5, 1775: George Washington orders an end to the practice of burning effigies of the Pope and the devil, a traditional celebration of Pope’s Night in Boston, as heard in our very first episode.