Last week I discussed The King’s Best Highway with Mark Lynch for his “Inquiry” program on WICN New England. You can download the 30-minute interview or listen to it online.

Mark has a soft spot for the canal craze that swept across New England in the early 19th century—in particular, the disastrous Blackstone canal that connected Worcester and Providence—so a lot of our chat is about Nathan Hale’s successful mission to convince Boston to embrace an alternative, frightening, then-unproven form of transportation: the railroad.

Well played, Nathan.