Skip to main content

All Alone With The Microphone

March 2023
1min read

The distinguished author and lecturer, and moderator of The People’s Platform and Invitation to Learning , recalls a terrifying experience for a tyro political analyst back when radio was young.

For those who are interested in the development of radio, I think this incident will be amusing. Once in the early days I was in the studio talking into the microphone. There was only one other person, the engineer, placed so that I could hear anything he said. Things were extremely primitive; it was in an old hotel. Somebody came in and said to the engineer, “Bill, do you know that you’ve forgotten about your car? You know, the last time you parked it down there, you got a ticket. You better move it.”

And Bill said, “Well, I’ve got this man on the air; I can’t go down there and move my car, it might take me quite a little while.”

He said, “Aw, go on, you can move it. How much time has Bryson got left?” And they figured I had seven minutes, so he disappeared. I was alone in the studio facing an open mike and it certainly is a contrast to today—there was absolutely nobody else around but me and an open mike. Well, seven minutes went by and no Bill and I ad-libbed for three more minutes and no Bill, and I recapitulated for about seven more minutes and no Bill! I stood there with the sweat pouring down my face for something like twelve minutes ad-libbing after I’d exhausted all my material, keeping that mike going. Then Bill got his car parked and came back.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "August 1955"

Authored by: Ruth Painter Randall

New light on the tragic case of a President’s widow who saw her own son as a hated enemy

Authored by: The Editors

Newspaper ads from occupied New York illumine Revolutionary War loyalties

Authored by: Louis Morton

Military science was very rigid in the 1600’s. It quickly changed when Americans began to fight Indians

Authored by: Bernard A. Weisberger

Calling millions to repentance, Moody and Sankey devised a new method of spreading the gospel

Authored by: The Editors

Never before printed, the headquarters record of the British conqueror of New York illuminates crucial events of the American Revolution.

Authored by: Victor W. Von Hagen

Some men see the beginnings. The conquistador who first saw the Mississippi also took the Inca highway to fabulous Cuzco.

Authored by: Daniel O’flaherty

Not until the Civil War was about over did the U.S. Navy manage to put a halt to the South’s imports

Authored by: William Brandon

The imagined liberty of Rousseau’s primitive individual was actually attained by the free trappers who helped America gain a continent

Authored by: Rudolph Marx, M.d.

Stalwart as he was, the general was often ill. A doctor studies his record and notes shortcomings in Eighteenth-Century medical care.

Authored by: Ruth B. Davidson

Distant lands supplied patriotic tableware to the new Republic

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.