This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the

American people. Up next, the story of a truly iconic name in American broadcasting and a

personal hero of mine, and we're talking about Paul Harvey. Here to tell the story is Stephen

Mansfield, author of Paul Harvey's America.

Now let's get into it, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.

The breadth of the history that he interacted with is one of the pillars of greatness of Paul Harvey's life.

He's born in 1918. Now that's the year World War

1 ended. He doesn't die until 2009 at the age of 90. Think about the fact that he was on the air

almost every day from 1945 until the end of his life. He would have talked about, and this was a major part of his rise,

would have talked about the returning GIs and their need to get jobs.

He would have talked about the rise of communism

and the Whitaker Chambers case.

During the Vietnam era, he would have commented daily on the Milai massacre, on the Vietnam

war on every presidential campaign. He was on the air and gave beautiful monologues around the time

of the Kennedy assassination, with riots, with the rise of the civil rights movement, and certainly with Watergate,

he was commenting every day, comforting the country, chastising the evil-doers every single day

for almost 70 years of American history and a time of great change in upheaval. Paul Harvey is

commenting on everything from technology to politics, to trends, to religious

themes. And again, think about this every single day. This was just what people looked

Paul Harvey to do. And, you know, he was opinionated, just like the old man sitting in the town

square, giving his opinions and whittling and smoking his pipe. You know, he wasn't big on hippies, he was a conservative,

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