Hey everyone, Jody Avergan here. Welcome to This Day and welcome to our Some Sunday context series, which is where we are bringing you conversations new and from the archives that try and give you a little context for what we are up to here in 2026 with our 50 weeks that shaped America series.

This past week, as part of that series, we ran a couple episodes about the gold rush

in California.

And while we focused more on the way that it transformed California and the way that in many

ways it invented modern American capitalism, there were also obviously huge political implications,

as California went very quickly from

contested land to territory to state, which put political pressure on the country as a whole,

as the question of whether new territories would have slavery became central in the decades

leading up to the Civil War. You heard Kelly mentioned the compromise of 1850 in our conversation?

Well, turns out we have done an episode on that. We did it a couple years ago. So we're going to run it

for you today. It's a short one. I don't know if you remember, but we used to do some episodes in

just like 10 minutes or so, remember those days? But it does add a political element to the

California story. And I will also

say that as I learn more and more about those decades before the Civil War, I have come to

understand how nuanced and complex all the dynamics were. Of course, slavery was the central issue,

the heart of it all, but there was just so much the country was juggling from

territorial expansion to political realignments, which would then all run through the lens

of the slavery question. Anyway, hopefully this episode adds some of that nuance and context.

Now, a quick reminder for everyone listening that you should join our newsletter community.

Every Thursday afternoon, we send out a

newsletter to all our subscribers with lots of great information about the 250th anniversary. And then every

Sunday, we send out full ad-free episodes with video and a special private podcast feed for our

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