Episode Description
In our very first episode, Nick and Liam kick off EPOCH: American History Stories with a simple idea: if you want to understand America, start with the places that tell its story.
From a house built on top of a waterfall, to a California “castle” where Hollywood and politics mixed by the pool, to a theme park that’s secretly a city with tunnels — these locations reveal something bigger than architecture: ambition, conflict, reinvention, spectacle, and the stories America tells about itself.
Featured places in this episode
- Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) — the battle that became a turning point in the Civil War, and a landscape that still feels like a national argument made physical.
- Fallingwater (Pennsylvania) — Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece that doesn’t just frame nature… it moves in with it.
- Hearst Castle (California) — William Randolph Hearst’s hilltop fantasy built over decades, part museum, part movie set, part power statement.
- Sunnylands Estate (Rancho Mirage, California) — a mid-century modern “Camp David of the West,” where global leaders met in the desert.
- St. Augustine (Florida) — the oldest continuously occupied European-established city in what is now the U.S., where empires (and tourist myths) collide.
- Walt Disney World (Florida) — a world built on storytelling… and a hidden logistics system that keeps the illusion intact.
Moments you’ll hear
- Why Gettysburg still feels like history with the volume turned up
- The “waterfall view” request that became “let’s build the house on the waterfall”
- Hearst Castle as a monument to media power, collecting, and pure excess
- How Sunnylands quietly became a backdrop for real diplomacy
- St. Augustine’s surprisingly layered story: Spain, forts, Florida, and folklore
- The Disney World detail that makes you realize: this isn’t a park — it’s infrastructure wearing a costume
About the show
EPOCH: American History Stories is a light, conversational history podcast where we pull big American moments into the present through places, people, and pop-culture-scale storytelling. One of us is a history buff, one of us is… asking the questions you’re thinking.
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Hosted by Nick Rogers and Liam Rogers
Produced by Story Circle