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Scandals have shaped America since its founding. American Scandal takes you deep into the heart of America's dark side to look at what drives someone to break the rules and what happens when they're caught.

Every weekday beginning November 1st, Host Lindsay Graham (American Scandal, American History Tellers) takes you back in time to explore a momentous moment that happened 'on this day' in history.

The Cold War, Prohibition, the Gold Rush, the Space Race. Every part of your life -the words you speak, the ideas you share- can be traced to our history, but how well do you really know the stories that made America?

A college dropout with no background in science turns himself into an expert on performance enhancing drugs. Soon he attracts some of the world's best athletes-along with the attention of a determined federal agent.

Track star Marion Jones gets caught in the middle of an Olympic steroid scandal and turns to Victor Conte for help. In baseball, Barry Bonds is fed up watching other players beat records and garner fame. He teams up with a trainer who sets him on a path that will have unexpected results.

A syringe with a mysterious substance sets off a race to save the Olympics from a doping scandal. Backstabbing, recriminations and a dedicated team of investigators threaten to destroy everything Victor Conte has created. And agent Novitzky plants an undercover agent to try to bring down Barry Bonds.

The raid on BALCO succeeds beyond Agent Novitzky's wildest dreams. He gets all the evidence he needs to prove that some of the top athletes in the world have cheated their way to records and medals. But Barry Bonds isn't going down without a fight and neither is Marion Jones. And when confidential testimony gets leaked to the press, all hell breaks loose.

Victor Conte loses his battle when he's sentenced to prison. Marion Jones' carefully crafted defense threatens to collapse because of a bitter divorce. And agent Novitzky's case hits some snags as Barry Bonds fights for his reputation. After investigating for eleven years at a cost of a hundred million dollars, can agent Novitzky claim victory? Or has Victor Conte won the war?

Host Lindsay Graham talks with the journalists who broke the BALCO scandal and almost went to jail. Mark Fainaru Wada and Lance Williams are the authors of "Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports."

For nearly 50 years, the United States and Soviet Union waged a global war of ideas fueled by politics, intrigue, and nuclear weapons.

Forget trenches, infantry and tanks. The United States and Soviet Union fought the Cold War with ideas and information. The United States adapted those techniques for their own purposes, broadcasting an image of the nation as a beacon of hope and freedom through covert ops and jazz concerts alike even if those at home were hurting or oppressed.

What is the United States to do when direct conflict with the Soviet Union promises almost certain annihilation? They turned to proxy wars and psychological warfare with the threat of nuclear weapons keeping both countries in check.

Americans were desperate to find hope in the shadow of the bomb. Miracle cures, cheap energy, and even brand new atomic gardens: the wonders of the atom to discover. Right? Eager to explore nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes, Americans instead found the resulting radioactive fallout too dangerous.

America sent a man to the moon in 1969, and with Neil Armstrong's first steps, the United States projected to the world an image of American power, wealth and achievement. But it was hardly just for bragging rights. The space race started under Kennedy to compete with the Soviets on a global stage, but it was under Johnson that its goals became domestic. NASA, Head Start, Medicaid and even the war in Vietnam were domestic social programs, used at least in part to alleviate poverty, provide jobs and desegregate the country.

In the early 1970s, while trying to wind down the war in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon made overtures to Moscow and Beijing that would usher in a new era of the Cold War: Detente. But the thaw in relations didn't last long the Iran Hostage Crisis and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan set the old adversaries against each other once again. Throughout the Eighties, President Reagan took a hard line against the "Evil Empire," ramping up military spending and rhetoric, and Americans were once again tense with nuclear anxiety.

Talking with Audra Wolfe, the author of Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America and Patrick Wyman, host of the hit podcasts Fall of Rome and Tides of History. Investigate how the Cold War standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union compares to another much earlier rivalry between ancient Rome and the Sassanid Persians.

On January 17, 1920, the United States passed the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, ushering in a 13-year dry spell known as Prohibition. But how did a country that loved to drink turn its back on alcohol? How did two-thirds of both the House and Senate and three-fourths of State legislatures all agree that going dry was the way to get the country going forward? It had always been a long, uphill battle for the temperance movement, but towards the end of the nineteenth century, certain forces aligned: fears of industrialization, urbanization and immigration.

When a German U-boat torpedoed the RMS Lusitania on Friday, May 7th, 1915, Americans found two new enemies: Germany and the beer it was so associated with. Anti-German sentiment grew, and with it hostility to the breweries founded in the 19th century by German immigrants. Soon, the war effort and the temperance movement were linked: it was patriotic to abstain, and Prohibition became law.

While Prohibition was successful in closing the saloon, it didn't quench America's thirst. Enterprising bootleggers found more ways to provide more alcohol to parched Americans so much that there was finally enough supply to meet demand. New drinking establishments popped up across the nation: speakeasies.

The rise of the speakeasy was one of many unintended consequences of Prohibition and others were much deadlier. Not coincidentally, at the same time Prohibition was taking effect, the Klu Klux Klan rose to power. They combined Prohibition's anti-immigrant rhetoric with violence.

Closing Time by Daniel Francis provides a good account of the border wars and smuggling across the northern border. Robert Rockaway's article "The Notorious Purple Gang" details the gang's origin as well as the Cleaners and Dyers War.

The people had spoken: They wanted beer, and they wanted it now, but not just for drinking. Protestors wanted the jobs that came with breweries, and the country was desperate from the money that could come from alcohol taxes. As quickly as temperance organizations sprang up in the decade before, anti-Prohibition organizations appeared in every city. But, a constitutional amendment had never been repealed before. The anti-Prohibition leagues realized they needed someone bigger than a governor or mayor to repeal this. They went after the Presidency.

The record for the longest ratification period of any constitutional amendment? Lillian Cunningham did. She's an editor with the Washington Post, host of two outstanding American History podcasts, Presidential and Constitutional, and she's guest today to talk about amendments, those presidents you can never remember.

In August 1814, the White House burned. A fire that would eventually consume the entire nation in Civil War was already burning. This is Antebellum America. This is the adolescence of the United States, when the country grew at tremendous speed, and when fundamental questions about the kind of place it would be were being asked.

In the summer of 1817, President James Monroe toured the country in an effort to unite the ever growing United States, torn between bitter political battles that overshadowed national conflict. To Monroe, the nation seemed ready "to get back into the great family of the union." And based on reactions to his speech, he was right. A Federalist newspaper hailed Monroe's visit, and his message of togetherness, as a success.