Rust Belt Startup

 I can say, without exaggeration, this is one of the most extraordinary stories that I’ve ever heard. and maybe one of the most important, so my guest today is Max Smith. He’s a historian, a storyteller, and a lifelong steward of the history of Peterborough New York. So this is a tiny village in Madison County that most people have never heard of, but that quietly shaped the course of American history. So what you’re about to hear. Is the story of how the abolitionist movement functioned in many ways, like an early startup, so a small group of people that had an idea that was considered radical, dangerous, and disruptive, and the epicenters of that abolitionist movement. it wasn’t Boston or Washington. it was right here in upstate New York. The story starts with the drunken mob shutting down an abolitionist meeting in Utica and how that meeting was reborn the next day in Peterborough. And hundreds of people walked miles overnight to continue that work, and t