Category Archives: United States history

NEW! Oh, Those Medicare Advantage TV Commercials (from One Not a Fan of Medicare Advantage)!

Audio narration, United States history

This opinion piece on Medicare Advantage concerns the “hard-sell” that private insurance companies make this time of year on behalf of “Medicare Advantage,” the private insurance alternative to Original Medicare.  I record this podcast episode to warn seniors to do their homework, and ask the question, why are insurance companies so anxious to sell their Medicare Advantage plans and not the Supplement plans that offer the insurance companies so little of a profit margin? Hmm…maybe the question answers itself.  TV commercials give only one side of the story, the private insurance companies’ side.  They don’t lie, but they leave out much that seniors need to know before making what could be a very bad choice.

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NEW! 2024 Repeats the 1963 Calendar: JFK, Oswald and Veterans Day Weekend, From Sunday, November 10 to Tuesday, November 12

American HIstory, JFK Assassination, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Memory, Oswald, United States history, Warren Commission

Today, Sunday, November 10, 2023, I reflect on the events of Veterans Day Weekend 1963, when JFK and Oswald lived out their last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, November 10-12, 1963. We review what we know of those fateful days. Next, I talk about the events of Wednesday, November 13 through Friday, November 22, 1963, to be published here on Audibly Speaking before Friday, November 22, 2024.

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NEW! About the Part D Madness in Medicare this Annual Election Period for 2025

Audio narration, Uncategorized, United States history

In this final episode about my opinions and experience with learning Medicare for retirement, I spread the word that many people are talking about:  Medicare Advantage plans and Part D Prescription Drug plans are undergoing big changes, premium hikes and in some cases disappearing acts during this Annual Election Period between October 15 and December 7. If you are on Medicare Advantage OR a Part D prescription drug plan (you can’t be on both) you need to research Medicare.gov to see if you have a plan that will continue to have the same benefits and premiums as in 2024. In most cases, benefits are going down, premiums are going up and some plans are actually shutting down.  Watch the Youtube videos by Mathew Claassen on Medicare for expert and accurate advice to follow. This episode is only my opinion and personal experience. It may not be yours.

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Medicare Musings, Part Three: Myths about Medicare Advantage and Part B

American HIstory, United States history, Work

In this third part of my series on what I have learned, or thought I have learned, about Medicare I talk about some myths I have discovered about Medicare Advantage and Part B.  While Medicare Advantage may be the right choice for some people, I cringe when I watch the commercials during this Annual Election Period and see the slick pitch that insurance companies make to see the cash cow (for them) of MA.  Here are the realities that I see from behind just some of the myths about both Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part B.

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NEW! My Experience Learning about Medicare’s Part D Prescription Drug Coverage

Uncategorized, United States history

What in the world is Part D?  My personal experience learning what I appreciated to find out about Medicare Part D coverage is the subject of this this brief podcast episode. Disclaimer: These are my opinions and what my impressions were. This is no substitute or necessarily as accurate as your doing your own research on Medicare.  It is just an opinion piece on my reflections of my own experience.

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NEW! Rick Reiman Narrates Chapter 6, “The New Nation,” from “The American Yawp,” a Free OER American History Textbook

American HIstory, Politics, Revolutions, U.S. Constitution, United States history

In many ways, I regard this as my best recording of a chapter from “The American Yawp” yet.  I have deleted nothing from the text edited by its editors, Joseph Locke and Ben Wright.  I have added passages of my own where I think additions were needed to clarify what the original authors were trying to say. I have also added passages that connect the era of “The New Nation” with the trials and tensions America is experiencing today.  For example I connect the majesty of America’s example in displaying the peaceful transition of power in the “revolution of 1800” which saw the Democratic-Republican Party receive power in 1800 from the Federalist Party without violence, and the more than 200 years of like examples to follow, with the disgrace of January 6, 2021, when President Donald Trump despoiled this legacy and broke that legacy so important not only to the United States but the whole world.  These allusions between past and present are mine, and they are also true.

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NEW! Rick Reiman Narrates Chapter 13, “The Sectional Crisis,” from the Open Source History Textbook, “The American Yawp”

American HIstory, Audio narration, Civil War, Politics, United States history

In the course that covers the first half of American History, the chapter on the Sectional Crisis of the Union, also sometimes called “The Impending Crisis,” leading to the American Civil War, is the penultimate such chapter.  Next to the magisterial, Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the crisis written by the great historian David Potter, that one audio narrated by Eric Martin, this chapter from the Open Educational Source textbook, “The American Yawp,” narrated by me, Dr. Rick Reiman, surveys the crisis well in capturing succinctly its fateful highlights. Listen, learn and enjoy. An historian myself I have added a few sentences of my own to improve, I firmly believe, on the chapter’s effort to make the Sectional Crisis more understandable.

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Audio Narration of Chapter Two, “Colliding Cultures,” From “The American Yawp,” Narrated by Dr. Rick Reiman

American HIstory, Audio narration, United States history

Here is my audio narration of “Colliding Cultures,” a history of European and English colonization of early colonial America, a clash of cultures indeed.  This is from the Open Source textbook, “The American Yawp,” free to anyone interested, as we all should be, in American history.

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NEW! Audio Narration of “The Great Depression” from the Free Open Educational Resource, “The American Yawp”

American HIstory, Audio narration, FDR, Politics, United States history

History Speaks again!  My audio narration of “The Great Depression,” chapter twenty-three from the blockbuster Open Resource textbook, The American Yawp, is now out. As an historian myself, I have enhanced this recording and narrative by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright with a few additions of my own, in keeping with the democratic principles of Open Educational Resources (OER), which this document is.  My contributions to this document, freely distributed as all OER are, are dedicated to the preservation of democracy in these United States, a dedication here that is mine and mine alone, not to be confused with the purposes of the authors of this textbook.  My hope and my contributions to this recording, including my edits and narration, represent a plea that all listeners vote for the Democratic nominee for President this November, to save our splendid Democracy. America… to thee, I sing.

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NEW! Summary of Chapter Six of “The Warren Report:” “Investigation Into Possible Conspiracy”

JFK Assassination, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Memory, United States history, Warren Commission, Zapruder

This chapter may be seen as the Big Enchilada of the Report.  Did the Warren Commission provide a credible investigation of the possibility of conspiracy in the crime?  The staff wracked its collective brains to see where any possible conspiracy might have emerged given the facts in the case. It also tracked down leads offered by private citizens that seemed the least bit credible.  This chapter of more than 130 pages, the longest in the Report, is the fruit of their work.  One thing seems clear from this chapter and this podcast episode: Jack Ruby’s shooting of Oswald either was not premeditated or was reached just seconds before he rushed up to Oswald in the basement of the Dallas city jail and set countless conspiracy theories into motion.

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Announcing a New Series on my YouTube Channel, “JFK Demystified”

American HIstory, JFK Assassination, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Memory, Oswald, Politics, United States history, Zapruder

This is your host, historian Rick Reiman.  Go to my YouTube Channel, “JFK Demystified,” to view the first episode of a series of short videos called “On Background: Seeking the Hidden JFK Assassination.”  The series is on the evidence that is hiding in plain sight, namely the factors that block our view from the evidence that makes the assassination a simple thing to understand.  We look at the confusion regarding standards of evidence and proof, the con-men- conspiracy theories that lead people astray, the historical context that sends us back to the real world, and the accumulated evidence confirmed again and again by a series of investigation, each one clearing up the few original questions that arose from a legitimate concern that some of the evidence was hidden. It was, but it is hidden no more, a simple fact that speaks volumes about how history really works. Join me on YouTube for this series, “On Background.”  See you there.

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“Into the Mind of the Assassin: Oswald’s Last Month, October-November 1963”

American HIstory, Books of the Times, JFK Assassination, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Memory, Oswald, Politics, United States history, Warren Commission, Zapruder

Continuing the series of JFK assassination episodes in this, the 60th year since the assassination, we look not at the thinking of the CIA, FBI, Warren Commission, Mob, Cuba, Russia or any of the other institutions that have been falsely imagined as being behind it, but inside the mind of the man who actually did it, and did it alone: Lee Harvey Oswald.  It may not be the most popular theory, but facts don’t have to be popular. They only need to be true.  This is an essay by myself, Rick Reiman, and narrated by myself, in response to the excellent insights of Burt Griffin, who wrote the new book, JFK, Oswald, Ruby: Politics, Prejudice and Truth. A staff member on the Warren Commission (1963-1964). Griffin challenges historians to take the assassination seriously as history, something that is simple to understand once contextualized in history.  Frankly, historians have not recognized their responsibility in this regard.  Historians, when are you going to do your jobs, and take this intersection of the Cold War and cvil rights, which is what the assassination was, seriously as history?  Until they do, this will continue to be a blot, a stain and a disgrace for the historical profession, as it has been for sixty years.

Photo taken by Marina Oswald.

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Coming in March 2019: A 4-Part Podcast Series, “The Politics of Disbelief,” on “Hijacking History”

Holocaust, United States history, World War II,

   Watch for my 4-part podcast series on “The Politics of Disbelief: America’s Response to the Holocaust, 1929-1945,” coming in March 2019.  They will be the best episodes I have created thus far.

Here is a trailer for the podcast series coming in March.

Topics covered in trailer:

  • What are the difficulties in understanding America’s role in the Holocaust?
  • How do we analyze what knowing and not knowing means in the face of the Holocaust?
  • Why will four episodes suffice to tell this story?
  • What is the thesis of David Wyman and why might the truth be different than his view?

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