Each week, the show chooses a topic and tells stories, conducts interviews, and shares insight on how that topic has played out through American history. From time to time, we’ll also include radio features by outside producers. Here’s what we’re looking for in these features:

First, a historical angle (the “back” part of BackStory).  We want to get inside the ways that Americans from earlier eras experienced their world.  Your angle can be environmental, social, political, economic — we’re open to pretty much anything as long as it illuminates something fascinating about the past.   Please note that stories set wholly in the present day (or the past five to ten years) aren’t going to work for us.  We get a lot of 20th century pitches, so we’re especially eager for stories from earlier eras.

Second, a story (the “story” part of BackStory). Your characters might be alive, or they might be long dead. Either way, you should still have some character(s) with something at stake. Second, when pitching your story, think about ways to bring these characters to life. We’re open to re-enactments, experts telling the story second hand, oral histories, all the typical stuff. But don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Questions we’re always going to ask are: Why did this happen when it happened? What does this reveal about America at the time? Why should we care about that now? In general, we are open to pieces between three and ten minutes in length.

Audio Postcards

We’re also looking for short pieces (no more than two minutes) that pair a strong sense of place with a historical perspective. “Historical perspective” can be interpreted broadly — it could entail visiting the site of a famous battle or speech, but it could also deal with family stories, local lore, a quirky tradition, etc. The postcard should be driven by the sounds of the place, though narration is certainly also fine. We’d be especially interested in postcards from areas outside the east coast.

To Pitch

Email Associate Producer Jess Engebretson at <jengebretson at virginia dot edu>, with the word “PITCH:” in your title. The more concise your pitch, the better. Include what, if any, sources you would use in your story and how you would produce them. Also give us an idea about what you imagine your piece would sound like (field tape, scoring, effects, readings, etc.). We understand we’re a new show, so we won’t be offended if you compare it to something you might hear on another radio show. We’re open to non-narrated features, written essays, and reported pieces. You don’t need to have worked in radio or history to pitch, but if you can give us a sense of your experience (radio or otherwise), please do, and if you can include a couple of links to your best stuff, so much the better.

Topics (Updated 3/28/13)

BackStory has a rolling schedule of topics. We always strive to make our shows relevant, and so in our show production process, are always paying attention to the news-of-the-day, as well as to our general sense of “what people are talking about.” Below is a list of topics we’re actively considering, though feel free to pitch either a new show topic or a story that is just so good we might be able to build a show around it. The list will be updated every couple of weeks, so be sure to keep checking back.

The Mississippi River

The Mississippi River is a sort of timeline of American history. From the earliest settlers to the modern day Army Corps of Engineers, Americans have both survived on and been consumed by the river’s size a power. There have been attempts to control it, to escape by way of it – the river can be seen as a sort of canvas on which many of America’s most important internal struggles have played out. We want stories about how the river has both changed and been changed by Americans over time. Remember, we’re a history show. As much as we love stories of people who are threatened by the river today, we need to know why this matters in the greater context of American history. We would love some placed-based material (maybe a really great story happened at this one point in the river nobody talks about). This show may also be a good candidate for some family history. There are a lot of stories to be told about the southern portions of the river, so stories from the northern regions would be most welcomed.

The End of War

One thing we’ve been puzzling over is how we decide that wars are officially “over.” Who makes that decision? And on what basis? Under what conditions? It’s the 10th anniversary of President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, and we’re looking for stories about the end of American wars. We’re not so much looking for stories about how war “never really ends,” because, yes, we know, war lingers. But, “officially”, most wars end. We want the interesting stories that led to those moments – the official proclamations, the laying down of the guns, the speeches on the aircraft carrier. Maybe there’s a story about how not a proclamation, but an image signaled a war was over. So few things in history actually have “endings,” and we’re interested in why we try to impose that on wartime.

Emigration

With lawmakers again taking up the subject of immigration, we’re devoting a show to its flip-side — emigration. From the Late Loyalists who fled to Canada after the Revolution in search of tax-free living, to the free blacks who sailed to Liberia in search of liberty (and a spot at the top of the racial hierarchy), to the thousands of defeated Confederates who set out for lands where slavery was still legal, we’ll consider the stories of people who left the U.S. in search of a better life elsewhere… but took some part of America with them.  We’re more interested in groups of people who left the US en masse, but if we’d consider a great story about a particular individual too.  Give us a sense of what how these people saw America, and what they thought they stood to gain by leaving.

Utopias

America is all about new beginnings – the chance to press the reset button and start afresh. On this episode we want to look at groups of people who tried (and maybe succeeded) in separating themselves from the rest of America, to create what they saw as a perfect society. These could be stories about Mormons or Quakers, or smaller groups lost to history. Maybe you had family or friends who lived on a hippie commune or something. Like all of our shows, context is important – we want to know what makes one utopian society different from other utopian societies throughout history.

The Right to Privacy

With Google and Facebook modifying their privacy policies in very particular ways as of late, a lot of Americans have claimed a “fundamental right to privacy” in their Internet dealings. Yet the word “privacy” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, and legal scholars still haven’t been able to agree on what, exactly, the word means. So what does this “fundamental right” actually amount to, why is it so difficult to define, and how did it come to represent so much that we Americans hold dear? We want stories of people throughout American history grappling with this dilemma, challenging it, and maybe even pushing it to whole new levels.

Corporations

What are these things? Are they people or aren’t they? Do they have certain rights endowed by their creator(s)? People seem to think that corporations today are more influential than they have ever been, but that may not be the case. Give us your best stories on corporate greed, corporate welfare, corporate charity… whatever you’ve got. We want to know how the public has felt about corporations over the years, and if/how corporations have dealt with public pressure. Think politics, think power, think influence, but also think about America as the largest economy in the world with one the highest standards of living.

A History of “Scandal!”

E! TV’s got nothing on American history. We want stories that show what it took for something to be scandalous in the 1780s, what our scandals today would have looked like back then, and stories of the biggest scandals nobody has ever heard of. Something to think about with all these stories: Why do we care? This should lend some insight as to what Americans valued in their own time and how easy it was to tread on those values.