The Road to Now

Bob and Ben speak with Jeffrey Engel about the history of Presidential impeachment and how understanding the past can inform the debates surrounding the impeachment of current and future Presidents. Jeff explains the reasons the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 chose to enshrine impeachment in the Constitution, how the process works, and what they meant by "other high Crimes and Mi...

Henry & Rupert Stansall (aka The Ruen Brothers ) began their musical careers playing in the Working Men's clubs of Scunthorpe in Northern England at a time in life when most of us were only beginning to discover music. In the almost two decades since, their road has led them to London, Los Angeles, and finally to Brooklyn, NY, where they currently reside. In between, the duo now known as The Ruen...

Bob and Ben speak with Jon Waterlow about his new book It's Only a Joke Comrade! Humor, Trust and Everyday Life Under Stalin and the role humor plays in helping humans make sense of the world in even the darkest times. Jon also shares his take on humor's role in politics under Stalin and today, the process he went through to uncover these jokes, and how the artistic technique of crosshatching help...

National Voter Registration Day is Tuesday, September 25th, and Bob and Ben are doing their part to get the word out. In this episode we speak with HeadCount Executive Director Andy Bernstein to talk about the work HeadCount has been doing to get people registered to vote, the importance of staying on top of local and national politics, and why your vote counts. Since 2004, HeadCount has registere...

This week we take a deep dive into the upcoming Midterm Elections with Editor and Publisher of The Cook Political Report , and NBC News political analyst, Charlie Cook. Since 1984 Charlie has been the preeminent election forecaster for politicians, pundits, and political junkies alike. This week Charlie joins Bob for a one on one interview and helps to bring a historical perspective to the current...

Veteran journalists Bill Plante & Olivier Knox join Bob & Ben for a conversation about the press and how journalism has changed in recent years. Bill Plante covered politics for CBS News from 1964 until 2016, and had a front row seat to some of the most significant events in the last half century, including the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. Olivier Knox is the President of the White H...

"Make American Great Again" is not a precise slogan, but it did capture the sense of anxiety many Americans feel about work in the 21st century. The "gig economy," in which more and more American workers rely on multiple jobs, is certainly different from the job market just three generations ago, when employers offered the stability of life-long employment and the promise of a pension-funded retir...

Ben talks with Sociologist Pat Reilly, whose research examines the organization and economics of stand up comedy in Los Angeles. Pat explains what makes stand up a unique form of entertainment, the ways stand up has changed since it began, and how comics deal with issues such as joke theft. Ben and Pat also talk about their own experiences as stand up comics, and the challenges of joining, being p...

Bob & Ben speak with Syracuse University's Dr. David Bennett to learn more about the history of nativism in the United States. Dr. Bennett discusses his book The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Penguin, 1995, 2nd ed.) , and how that book might look if a new edition were published today. The Road to Now is a member of the Osiris Podcast Network. For more...

A lot has changed since the first episode of The Road to Now launched in May 2016, so Bob and Ben decided to spend some time reflecting on the podcast, the state of politics, and what they've learned about history. Bob explains what he thinks most people get wrong about history and the way that hosting RTN and beginning graduate studies have changed his relationship to history, Ben gives his insig...

RTN Theology now is now on its own podcast feed! Subscribe anywhere you get The Road to Now for RTN Theology episodes 12-19 and more! In this episode of RTN Theology, Bob talks to Fuller Theological Seminary Assistant Professor Kutter Callaway about his new book, Breaking the Marriage Idol: Reconstructing Our Cultural and Spiritual Norms (InterVarsity Press, 2018) and the need to change the existi...

Last fall, our good friend and fellow podcaster Bruce Carlson invited Ben to join him for a conversation about Elvis Presley and his impact on American society. During the conversation, Bob told an epic story about his Elvis Presley t-shirt that has never been told on The Road to Now.....until now (and Ben thinks it's one of the best stories Bob's ever told)! We'll be back next week with an all-ne...

The 2018 FIFA World Cup is underway in Russia, so Ben sat down with soccer historian Alex Galarza and RTN favorite Matt Negrin to talk about the history of the World Cup. We discuss the corruption that has plagued FIFA, the controversy surrounding FIFA's decision to award the World Cup to Qatar, and what factors helped propel soccer into the world's most popular sport. We also share some of our fa...

There's a good chance you don't appreciate how engrained professional wrestling is in American history and culture, and this episode is about to change that. We didn't know all this either until wrestling legend Jim Cornette was kind enough to spend an hour taking us from wrestling's origins in the late 19th century up to the sport as it exists today. Jim knows the sport like no other- he's been p...

The world we live in today has Dwight Eisenhower's fingerprints all over it. When Dwight Eisenhower gave his farewell address on January 17, 1960, he warned the American people of the growing influence of a "military-industrial complex." What few people remember is that it was Eisenhower who oversaw the transformation of the American military into the large-scale force that spans the globe. "Ike"...

In this episode of The Road to Now , recorded live at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service , Governor Martin O'Malley join Bob & Ben for a conversation about history, music and politics. We discuss the history of immigration, how Gov. O'Malley's Catholic faith influenced his political views, and Gov. O'Malley shares (and plays) some of the songs that have had the strong...

For the third installment of our Music May series, Ben caught up with Tyler Mahan Coe whose podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones dives into some of the most famous stories in the history of country music. As a musician and son of country legend David Allan Coe, Tyler's own history is part of that story, but his ability to take the best of his own experiences while remaining objective in the subjects he c...

You may have heard Tom Marshall's words even if you've never heard him speak. For the last four decades Tom has been the chief lyricist for the band Phish, which is one of the most successful touring bands in the world. Tom, however, does not tour with the band, and his position as the mysterious wordsmith for the band has spawned several online myths about Tom's origins and his life accomplishmen...

Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" is one of the well-known tunes in the United States, but the song, and the man who wrote it, are far more complex and fascinating than most folks realize. Born in Oklahoma in 1912, Woody moved west during the Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s and witnessed first-hand the tragedy that was the Great Depression. A self-proclaimed "common-ist," Woody dedicated his lif...

On The Road to Now, we talk a lot about how understanding history is essential to making informed political decisions. In today's episode, Patricia O'Toole joins us to talk about what happened when a historian got control of the White House. O'Toole's new biography The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made (Simon & Schuster, 2018 ) examines the life of a President whose policy was guided...

In episode 53, we spoke with Sean Foley about Syria and the historic forces at work in the Syrian Civil War. A lot has changed since we first spoke with Sean in April of 2017, so we asked him to come back to catch us up on the Syrian Civil War, where Isis, Assad and other players currently stand, and the implications of Donald Trump's sudden reversal on American intervention in the conflict. The l...

The Armenian genocide was one of the most tragic events in the 20th century. The Ottoman government's deliberate attempt to purge Armenians during World War I led to the elimination of approximately 1.5 million of the 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire just a few years earlier. While some families were able to escape the country and emigrate elsewhere, approximately eight hundred tho...

In this episode of The Road to Now, Richard Samuel West joins Bob and Ben for a conversation on the history of political cartoons in the United States. West tells of how political cartoonists went from independent artists in the early 19th century who sold their work on the streets to become powerful actors in American politics just a few decades later. He also explains how technological and socia...

Note: We are aware of the controversy surrounding this book and are currently working to bring voices to the table to discuss this further. Native Americans are one of the most significant, yet overlooked, groups in American history. Their story challenges America's often-prideful narrative of the United States as a force for good in the world, and even when Natives are included in this history, t...

April 4, 2018 marks 50 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In honor or Dr. King's legacy, this week we are re-airing our interview w/ Dr. Clayborne Carson. On August 28th, 1963 Clayborne Carson was a 19 year-old attending his first civil rights demonstration. That demonstration was the historic March on Washington, and what he remembers most about that day isn't Dr. King's...