Podcast Description

The program began on Mutual in 1945 as American Mercury Presents: Meet the Press, a program to promote The American Mercury, a magazine that Lawrence E. Spivak, an American publisher and journalist, purchased in 1935. Before the program aired, Spivak asked journalist Martha Rountree, who had worked in radio and had been employed by Spivak as a roving editor for the magazine, to critique the plans for the new radio show. Based on her advice, Mrs. Rountree created the program that she called The American Mercury, on October 5, 1945. On November 6, 1947, while still on the Mutual Broadcasting Sy