pplpod Episode 72 follows Franklin D. Roosevelt’s long arc—from Hyde Park heir turned reform-minded politician to the only four-term president who steered America through depression and world war. We trace the polio that remade his empathy and grit, the 1932 mandate, and a first-hundred-days blitz that reset the federal toolkit: bank holiday and FDIC, CCC, TVA, WPA, Social Security, and the fireside chats that made policy feel personal. Then the pivot to a dangerous world—Neutrality Acts to Lend-Lease, the Arsenal of Democracy, Atlantic Charter principles, and a commander-in-chief balancing Churchill, Stalin, home-front production, and civil liberties under strain. Inside the fights: court-packing, recession within the Depression, labor’s rise, and the political coalition that redefined the map. We close at Yalta and Warm Springs—legacy, limits,  ...