Imagine a single small town where the “shot heard ’round the world” sparked a military revolution – followed decades later by a literary one. Concord, Massachusetts, is not just a scenic New England village; it is the cradle of the American mind. In History Hit’s special seasonal film, Big Stories from a Small Town: The Real Lives Behind Little Women and Walden, Dan Snow explores the extraordinary heritage of this remarkable town that nurtured a cluster of great American writers and thinkers, particularly in the 19th century, including literary giants like Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. In an age of rapid industrialisation, these thinkers turned inward – engaging with the era’s most pressing questions around female independence, civil liberties, and harmony with nature. Dan discovers the special places where their famous words were penned, which collectively helped shape the American identity – themes of the past that still inspire today. Sign up to watch Inside Orchard House: the heart of ‘Little Women’ Dan’s journey begins at Orchard House, the weathered brown home where Louisa May Alcott lived with her parents and sisters in 1858. Here, he sits at the simple semi-circular desk where Louisa May wrote her compelling, quintessential American coming-of-age story: ‘Little Women’. While the March sisters of fiction are beloved worldwide, the reality of the Alcott family was even more compelling. Guided by Executive Director Jan Turnquist, Dan gets a personal insight into Orchard House where he explores rooms preserved in time and filled with original intimate artefacts that reveal insights into the family’s life. Some of these include a whimsical hidden inkwell within an owl’s head (reflecting Louisa’s personal tastes), and the poignant keyboard belonging to Lizzie Alcott (the sister immortalised as the gentle, tragic Beth). Even the walls tell a story, adorned with the original sketches and paintings of the youngest sister, May. Owl inkwell given to Louisa May AlcottImage Credit: History Hit Orchard House served as the model for the March family home in ‘Little Women’, a novel that famously champions a household fuelled by  love, creativity and tireless endeavour. At the centre of this world, Louisa placed a character mirroring herself: Jo March, the quintessential image of a strong-willed, independent, and creative young woman. In the film, Jan explains to Dan how the real Alcotts were radical egalitarians. In an era defined by rigid social hierarchies, they held a steadfast belief in the absolute equality of all people, regardless of gender or race. This revolutionary spirit led Louisa’s father, Bronson, to found the Concord School of Philosophy, one of America’s first adult education programs, hosted right in the family living room. Concord’s radical spirit Concord’s reputation for independent thinking was forged long before the Alcotts arrived. In 1775, at the Old North Bridge, local militia faced British troops in the opening clash of the Revolutionary War – the “shot heard ’round the world.” By the mid-19th century, that spirit had evolved into the Abolitionist Movement. The Alcotts didn’t just talk about freedom; they lived it. While residing at Hillside (now known as The Wayside), the family operated as a secret safehouse for the Underground Railroad, sheltering those escaping slavery on their perilous journey toward Canada. Ellen Garrison: A civil rights pioneer Concord was more than a literary hub; it was a sanctuary where previously enslaved people could find both community and a voice. Outside the historic Robbins House, Dan meets museum president Nikki Turpin to uncover the legacy of Ellen Garrison, an African American educator whose fight for equality predated the modern Civil Rights Movement by a century. Growing up in the Concord School District, Ellen was a brilliant student, yet was not immune to the sting of prejudice. Aged 12, she was nearly forced out of a local town parade, only for a white friend to grab her hand so they could walk together in a defiant display of racial harmony, realised long before Martin Luther King Jr’s “dream” was ever spoken. In 1866, Ellen took her activism to the national stage. Testing the new Civil Rights Act, she took a seat in a “whites-only” waiting area at a Baltimore train station. Decades before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, Ellen was forcibly removed for daring to claim her legal rights. Her story, preserved at the Robbins House, serves as a powerful reminder that Concord’s literary greatness was inextricably linked to its moral courage. Dan meets with the Robbins House museum’s president Nikki Turpin outside Ellen Garrison’s house. Living deliberately No pilgrimage to Concord is complete without a visit to the tranquil shores of Walden Pond. In 1845, a 27-year-old Harvard graduate named Henry David Thoreau embarked on a radical experiment in self-reliance, moving into the woods to “live deliberately” and strip life down to its barest essentials. Dan visits a precise replica of Thoreau’s 10-by-15-foot cabin. Contrary to the myth of the lonely hermit, Thoreau famously enjoyed “solitude but not isolation.” With the railroad only 300 yards away and a steady stream of visitors (including the Alcott family), Thoreau’s retreat was less about escaping society and more about finding a new way to inhabit it. Over the course of 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days, he observed the natural world with a unique blend of scientific precision and spiritual awe. Walden Pond, ConcordImage Credit: History Hit His masterpiece, ‘Walden, Or Life In The Woods’, wasn’t just a book about trees; it was a manifesto for the individual soul. Dan speaks with local expert Richard Smith to learn how Thoreau’s nature excursions with a young Louisa May Alcott provided her with the sense of escape and independence she so deeply craved. To truly step into Thoreau’s world, Dan even takes a bracing, chilly dip in Walden pond, experiencing firsthand the ‘refreshing’ morning ritual that Thoreau used to do. A legacy for today The authors of Concord were concerned with the questions that still haunt us: What does it mean to be genuinely free? How do we connect with a world that is moving too fast? Whether it is the domestic warmth of Little Women or the transcendental silence of Walden, these “small town” stories contain the biggest ideas in history. Step back in time this season. Watch Big Stories from a Small Town: The Real Lives Behind Little Women and Walden on History Hit. Sign up to watch

Bear of Little Brains: Yo, Parents! Have New Years 'Safe' Space for Kids Cuz It Ain't the City

While the leftist media scramble to retain whatever illusory credibility they think they have over their eroding predictions of a Trumpian economic disaster, CNN tour de force Scott Jennings took to ABC’s This Week to list off some of the president’s W’s. Jennings told ABC co-anchor and anti-Trump fanatic Jonathan Karl December 28, “Look at GDP growth. Look at the stock market. Inflation is coming down. Growth is going up.” He also pointed to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s estimation that “we're going to have a boom in 2026 because of the long-term reengineering of the U.S. economy they have employed on the back of tariffs.” Karl attempted to get Jennings to make Trump out to be a whiny child if the Supreme Court ultimately decides that his reciprocal tariffs were unconstitutional. But Jennings came with receipts: “The President would tell you it's not just an economic tool. It's a diplomatic tool. He thinks a lot of the conflicts that he's solved this year -- which he's very proud of -- some of it, maybe more than half of them, were because he had the power to threaten these people with tariffs.” .@ScottJenningsKY to ABC's @JonKarl on tariffs: "Well, as you'll read in my book 'A Revolution of Common Sense'...he will be apoplectic because he believes that the tariff strategy is working. Look at GDP growth. Look at the stock market. Inflation is coming down. Growth is going… pic.twitter.com/0QLZChemzo — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 28, 2025 Jennings and the Trump administration are not the only ones optimistic about the near-future U.S. economy because of the president’s agenda. Anti-trump publication Forbes magazine wrote in a December 28 story headlined, “Strong GDP And Rising Profits Set Up A Resilient US Economy For 2026,” that “Despite low consumer confidence, a softening labor market, and tariffs, the US economy has been shockingly resilient in 2025 and should enter 2026 with reasonable momentum.”  But that’s not all. Banking giant Goldman Sachs now projects that the U.S. economy will grow “at a faster rate in 2026 with the firm forecasting 2.6% real GDP growth, above the Bloomberg consensus of 2%,” according to Fox Business. “The tax cuts and reforms included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) are” one of the primary factors “expected to drive faster economic growth in 2026.” Go figure. All of these changes in perspectives came on the heels of U.S. GDP growth blowing away expectations in the 3rd quarter with a 4.3 percent growth rate, further solidifying that much of the media recession scare-mongering over Trump supposedly steering the U.S. over the financial cliff was a load of malarkey. The stock market has also been hovering around record highs the past few days as well. What does all of this mean? Well, it’s very simple actually. No one should ever take the media’s economic coverage on Trump’s policies seriously ever again.

For the fact-checking websites, 2025 marked the end of an era. Back in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was ending their partnership with websites such as PolitiFact. However, one cannot be 100 percent certain Zuckerberg’s reversal is a purely principled one given President Trump’s return to the White House, so it can be good to remember the worst ten fact-checks of the year just in case Zuckerberg decides to reverse himself in a few years if a Democrat retakes the presidency. 10. Snopes on Jay Jones’s Violent Text Messages (November 11) Democratic Virginia Attorney General-elect Jay Jones was able to win in November despite a scandal where it was revealed he had sent text messages where he fantasized about killing the Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates, wished violence on his family, and discussed urinating on the graves of other GOP state lawmakers. Snopes managed to correctly give the scandal a “true” rating, but not until one week after the election, by which point it was too late. 9. PolitiFact’s Questionable Climate Science (January 21) When Donald Trump Jr. claimed the California wildfires had nothing to do with climate change, PolitiFact slapped him with a “false” rating. However, in the study PolitiFact itself cited, it was claimed that “Further research is needed to understand how the factors above combined to produce the observed behavior of the January 2025 fires, including the overall contribution of the factors’ climate-change components.” Additionally, back in 2021, Science Magazine wrote, “One hundred percent of [Santa Ana winds] fires were human caused, and in the past decade, powerline failures have been the dominant cause.” 8. PolitiFact Rates Energy Department ‘False’ For Agreeing With It (September 9) PolitiFact asserted that an Energy Department X post was “false” for claiming, “Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it is dark outside, and the wind is not blowing.” Deputy editor Louis Jacobson tried to rebut, “Once produced, energy generated from wind and solar can be stored in batteries or in larger pieces of infrastructure such as reservoirs.” The problem for Jacobson was that the X post linked to a Washington Examiner article where it was clear that the Energy Department agreed, “the secretary claimed that, without proper battery technology, wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially ‘worthless’ when it is dark and when the wind isn’t blowing [emphasis added].” 7. PolitiFact’s Mathematically-Challenged Government Spending Charts (February 25) When Washington Sen. Patty Murray claimed that GOP tax cuts were the primary driver of the national debt, PolitiFact gave her a “half-true” because she and Democrats voted to extend them. However, the reason why she was not given a full false was because PolitiFact’s pie chart claimed tax cuts were the biggest contributor despite it lumping “five tax cut bills enacted since 2001” together while separating recession responses, new discretionary spending, and Medicare expansions into three separate categories. If PolitiFact treated the two equally, it would have been $13.8 trillion in new spending (62 percent) versus $8.4 trillion in tax cuts (38 percent). 6. PolitiFact’s Double Standards on Political Labeling (June 26) One of PolitiFact’s most annoying features is its double standards when it comes to political labeling. This time, President Trump was given a “false” label for calling Zohran Mamdani a communist despite his inglorious social media history of praising communists and calling to seize the means of production. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for any liberal to be given a “false” label for calling any Republican a fascist or a Nazi. 5. Associated Press Quibbles with Trump’s True Statement About Crime (August 11) President Trump defended his decision to send the National Guard to D.C. by comparing the city’s crime rate to other cities, but the AP wasn’t happy, “It’s true, but Trump isn’t telling the whole story. Washington does have a higher homicide rate than many other global cities, including some that have historically been considered unsafe by many Americans. But Trump is leaving out important context: the U.S. in general sees higher violent crime rates than many other countries.” 4. Factcheck.org’s Operation Midnight Hammer Dud (June 24) After the B-2 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, factcheck.org claimed, “People familiar with the report told CNN the facilities’ centrifuges, which enrich uranium, remained largely ‘intact.’” It also cited “David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told NPR, ‘I think you have to assume that significant amounts of this enriched uranium still exist, so this is not over by any means.’” However, Albright also told NPR, “I think the purpose of the attack was to take out centrifuges and infrastructure and they feel they accomplished that." Albright also posted on X, “The time Iran would need to build even a non-missile deliverable nuclear weapon has increased significantly.” That makes sense considering the U.S. dropped 360,000 pounds of bombs on those centrifuges and they are extremely sensitive. 3. CNN’s Daniel Dale Tries To Defend CNN (June 26) In more bad judgment regarding Iranian centrifuges, CNN’s Natasha Bertrand falsely said that CNN had reported all along that the underwhelming Defense Intelligence Assessment was “low confidence,” which led to a rebuke from Secretary Pete Hegseth. Dale eventually came in to claim “The Secretary referred to Fake News CNN and then immediately proceeded to effectively confirm CNN's reporting."   CNN’s 'Fact Checker’ finds that CNN’s reporting was vindicated by Hegseth: "The Secretary referred to Fake News CNN and then immediately proceeded to effectively confirm CNN's reporting." So, a CNN employee reports that CNN reporting was accurate. Just incredible. pic.twitter.com/LajaRxKCBy — Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) June 26, 2025   2. Snopes Gives Cover to Rep. Tlaib Speaking At Pro-Hamas Conference (December 3) According to Snopes, it is false to say “that Tlaib had called on supporters of Hamas, a Palestinian militant group that the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization, to 'mobilize and take over America.'" Except the People’s Conference for Palestine featured several pro-Hamas speakers and Tlaib musing about “seizing power.” 1. Factcheck.org On Sex and Gender (April 7) When Trump issued an executive order, Factcheck.org objected, “The definition in the executive order ‘should not and cannot apply’ to people with a [Differences of Sex Development], according to a statement from the [Pediatric Endocrine Society]. That’s because some people with a DSD, which is also called intersex, don’t produce sperm or eggs, produce both of them, or produce a reproductive cell that doesn’t match their biological sex development.” Intersex is not a third sex. Reasonable people can understand that intersex people exist and are separate from the transgender debate, but this has nothing to do with the executive order. It also lamented the “erasure of gender and gender identity” and suggested the administration was making mountains out of molehills when it comes to so-called “gender-affirming care.”

After the Allied forces successfully stormed Normandy, France, on D-Day, the German army launched a 200,000-strong counteroffensive on December 18, 1944, in the Ardennes region in Eastern Belgium. The attack marked the beginning of World War II's Battle of the Bulge.Over 700,000 Allied troops, including Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr.'s Third Army, were involved in the combat that lasted 41 days.This December, Walk Among Heroes brought U.S. Army veteran John "Jack" Moran to Bastogne, Belgium, for the 81st anniversary of the start of the battle.'To me, just seeing the reactions of the Belgian people, thanking Jack over and over again, makes it all worthwhile.'Moran, a former Army staff sergeant and member of Patton's Third Army, joined the military at the age of 18 and fought in the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne. Moran shared his firsthand account with Walk Among Heroes about crossing the Rhine River, the final major natural barrier for Allied forces advancing into Nazi Germany. The effort to cross the river, known as Operation Plunder, began in March 1945. "There's no way in the world that 142 men can do anything and keep quiet," Moran explained. "They can't. It's an impossible possibility."RELATED: WWII veteran honors Gen. Patton’s legacy with touching gravesite tribute alongside renowned general’s granddaughter A local Belgian girl takes a photo with Jack Moran. Image source: Walk Among Heroes"So we slowly slip our paddles into the water, start paddling out into the middle of the … river. All of the sudden, the Germans light it up, just like this room — even brighter than this room," he continued. "And here we are, sitting right there.""They opened up on us with five heavy machine guns," Moran said. "Chopping us up badly. We lost half our men."During the trip, Moran met Bill White, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, who presented the WWII veteran with the Victory in Europe Medal at the 101st Airborne Museum. Walk Among Heroes reported that the crowd was “very emotional” when Moran received the medal.RELATED: What we owe our veterans this D-Day U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg Stacey Feinberg meets Jack Moran. Image source: Walk Among Heroes"In recognition of your military service during the Second World War, this is to certify the award of the Victory in Europe Medal to Staff Sergeant John Moran," the announcer stated. "Your fight for freedom and democracy is in keeping with the finest traditions of military service and reflects great credit upon yourself, the 87th Infantry Division, and the United States Army."“To me, just seeing the reactions of the Belgian people, thanking Jack over and over again, makes it all worthwhile,” Walk Among Heroes president and founder Jeff Wells told Blaze News.Wells explained that Moran had plans to visit Patton’s grave at the Luxembourg American Cemetery. He noted that Moran would be accompanied by Patton’s granddaughter, Helen Patton.“General Patton was Jack’s commander, so we are very excited to visit with him,” Wells said. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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