Matthew Spolar

After Napster, many consumers got used to entertainment on demand. There was no turning back.

In 1976, Ronald Reagan found owning the soul of a party isn’t the same as taking home its nomination.

How can a president continue to govern with an impeachment trial looming? President Clinton and President Trump adopted very different strategies.

Sometimes the most important speech at the convention isn’t delivered by the nominee.

In the heat of the Cold War, Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade became a media sensation.

DNA information that is available on genealogy websites is doing more than satisfying curiosity – it’s solving crimes.

As America’s jazz icon, Louis Armstrong was seen as a smiling, easygoing entertainer. But in 1957, he invited controversy by speaking forcefully on behalf of his fellow African Americans, putting him in a position familiar to many Black athletes today.

Perhaps the most famous political ad of all time, this early television spot ran on air just once, but generated enough media coverage to become a real factor in the 1964 presidential election.

For many boxers, once the punches stop, the real fight starts.

There are important lessons to be learned from the Democrats’ 1968 Chicago convention.

In 1831, a radical third party had a new idea for selecting a presidential candidate, and it’s still in use today: the national nominating convention.

In this Emmy Award-nominated film, top national political reporters admit mistakes in their reporting on the 2016 election campaign.

Russia’s recent nuclear threats have revived Cold War animosity with roots in the Cuban missile crisis. During ​a standoff in 1962, a tense confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union nearly resulted in a nuclear war.

He’s been called the most dangerous man in football. Not for what he’s doing on the field – but what he’s saying off of it. A new series of original Retro Report short docs produced for Facebook.

This Emmy Award-nominated film explores tensions between the press and presidents, charges of liberal media bias and the decline in public trust in journalism. Watch the documentary.

Some issues are too fundamental for a party to withstand, and the consequences can last for a generation.

Donald Trump’s candidacy wasn’t the first time the Republican Party was split by an outsider declaring war on the establishment elite.

The infamous Willie Horton ad placed a nail in the coffin of Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential run.

Southern voters, once loyal to the Democratic Party, elected Republican candidates in 1966 as the two parties began to sort themselves into distinctly partisan camps.

When N.F.L. players, starting with Colin Kaepernick, took a knee during the National Anthem to protest they ignited an uproar over injecting politics onto the playing field.

In this Emmy Award-nominated film, journalists who covered the 2016 presidential campaign now offer a candid analysis of their role in President Trump’s rise to power.

In 2003, a blackout crippled areas of the U.S. and Canada, leaving some 50 million people in the dark. Years later, we are still grappling with concerns over the vulnerability of our power grid.

This Emmy Award-nominated film looks at how the journalistic instinct for “balanced” reporting on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 played out.

The animosity between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt changed the primary process forever.

Two territories, two wildly different outcomes as a pandemic terrorized the world.

Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, and Louisiana’s troubled housing recovery has shaped the response to every major disaster since, including Hurricane Sandy.

Midterm elections, often a referendum on the sitting president’s agenda, can set the stage for future policy debates. Economic and social issues with roots in the 1994 midterms are still being debated today.

After the 1998 NFL draft produced one of the greatest busts in history, what have we learned about the science of evaluating human talent – on and off the field?

NFL players have been derided for injecting politics into the country’s favorite sport. But, when convenient, America has also celebrated black athletes for acting as political emissaries.

Immigration has been a defining issue in a campaign before, and the consequences transformed the Democratic Party.

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are the icons of an ideological split among today’s Democrats, echoing a similar split in the Republican party of 1964.

In 1997, Scottish scientists announced they had cloned a sheep and named her Dolly, and sent waves of future shock around the world that continue to shape frontiers of science today.

In this Emmy Award-nominated film, CEO Jeff Zucker acknowledges missteps in CNN’s 2016 campaign coverage, when many media outlets covered Donald Trump’s campaign as a spectacle.

As concussions plague football, are there lessons from earlier concerns about boxing?

In 2007, long-shot Democratic candidate Mike Gravel released one of the strangest ads in political history.

In the 1990s, a bunch of gene jockeys brought the first genetically engineered food to market. The business crashed but biotech science has flourished far beyond the produce aisle.

After a string of critical losses in the 2008 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton’s campaign put out a hard-hitting ad that questioned Barack Obama’s readiness for the White House.

The drama of modern free agency has become as much a part of professional sports as the games themselves. But it wasn’t always that way. Today’s free agents owe a big debt of gratitude to Curt Flood.

In the 2012 Republican primary, Herman Cain’s campaign produced an unusual video featuring Cain’s chief of staff, Mark Block, giving a pep talk while smoking a cigarette.

Political memes are being deployed to share opinions, similar to how editorial cartoons were used in the past – but with one important difference.

Future “warm and fuzzy” ads can trace their lineage to this one. For his reelection campaign, Ronald Reagan employed a team of advertising all-stars, resulting in one of the most famous catchphrases in American politics.