Hi there, we are waking up this feed because you have been a history lover before,

and I thought this would be a good way to give you an exciting heads up.

The Washington Post is relaunching the written history column called Ritropolis,

and I'm going to be its new writer.

My name is Petula Dvorak.

I'll tell you a little bit more about me in a moment.

And then after that, I'm going to read you my first Rotopoulos column,

a story about a mysterious illness that overshadowed a U.S. presidential inauguration a long time ago.

I hope that you'll enjoy it so much that you go to the Washington Post

and be on the lookout for my column each week.

And if you enjoy listening to this, by the way, let me know.

I'll tell you at the end how you can reach me.

All right, before I get to the column, here's a little more of my own history.

I just marked a quarter century at the Washington Post, where I've been your metro

columnist for the last 15 years. So I know this city where so much American history was born.

Before I came to D.C., I was a street reporter all over the country, L.A., New Jersey, New Orleans,

and I spent some time covering wars and political upheaval in my parents' homeland.

It was called Czechoslovakia back then. And in all of those places, after a day in the field,

I headed to the archives, usually badly lit, smelling of old paper, you know, a little musty.

That place was called the morgue. And the stuff in the morgue made every news story richer.

So I'm coming to Retropolis as a denizen of the morgue, as a reporter, and more importantly as a

curious citizen like you. Because here at Rotropolis, we're on a mission to look at history.

...