Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Quick, what's the longest running television show in American history?

Here's a hint.

That's Meet the Press.

For 71 years now, Meet the Press has been appointment viewing on Sunday mornings.

Politics, big ideas, controversy, agenda setting interviews.

The show began on November 6, 1947.

The first guest was a retired postmaster general.

It got better.

The show that popped up that day on the boxy black and white sets that were just beginning

to appear in American living rooms would go on to host every president since John F. Kennedy.

The show also had on world leaders from India's Indira Gandhi to Zimbabwe's

Robert Mugabe, cabinet members, presidential candidates, and members of Congress also graced

the set. Meet the press came to define public affairs shows. The show itself was born of an

unlikely radio show called Leave It to the Girls,

which was a weekly roundtable on women's issues with an all-female panel,

plus one guy to provide a gender counterpoint.

That show was created by Martha Roundtree,

a hard-charging reporter and a producer with a South Carolina drawl.

She persuaded magazine publisher Lawrence Spivak, who had appeared on her show in the man's seat

to pitch the idea of a similar live radio press conference in which a newsmaker would face a panel of journalists.

They launched Meet the Press in 1945 on the Mutual Radio Network, and two years later, they talked their way onto NBC with a television show.

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