Professor Mitchell Zuckoff follows the life of Italian immigrant Charles Ponzi (1882-1949), legendary con man who set up the Securities Exchange Company, which promised investors massive returns on their investments based on the buying and trading of international postal reply coupons. The scheme, begun around 1918, collapsed in 1920 after the Boston Post revealed it to the public. The presentation includes slides.

Audio and video options are available.

Preservation consultant Pamela Wilkinson Fox discusses historic country houses and mansions outlying the Boston area. Fox follows the trend of the rich and famous building country homes and communities along Massachusett's North Shore (Essex County), beginning in the 19th century. Her presentation includes slides.

Audio and video options are available.

Crime historian Karen Elizabeth Chaney examines the case of Lizzie Bordan, accused of killing her father and stepmother with an ax in Fall River, MA, on August 4, 1892. Chaney focuses on the journalistic coverage of the case and the gender issues and sensationalism it dealt in.

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Ray Raphael discusses whether or not Samuel Adams really gave a "signal" for the Boston Tea Party, the real story of Paul Revere's ride, and the role of the average person in the events leading up to the American Revolution. Raphael focuses on the overlap of history and storytelling, and the creation of history-based mythology.

Audio and video options are available.

Author John Hanson Mitchell outlines his discovery of 2,000 antique glass plate negatives by a previously unknown 19th-century African-American landscape photographer, Robert Alexander Gilbert. Mitchell presents slides of Gilbert's work, and discusses what is known of Gilbert's life.

Writer Carol Bundy talks about the life of her great-great-great uncle, Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., a Boston abolitionist and industrialist eventually killed in the Civil War. The presentation includes slides.

Audio and video options are available.

A panel of scholars responds to the second part of the PBS miniseries Slavery and the Making of America, which focuses on the Northeast, and includes the story of Mum Bett, who sued for her freedom in Massachusetts and whose victory led to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1783.