Searching for America with Robyn Curnow

Christmas Cheer (and Fear) this happy Yuletide! Greetings from the American South where the inflatable Santas are bigger and better and BBQ pork is a seasonal delicacy. Robyn Curnow is hopeful that the Trump team's better angels will sing this time around. She's hoping the push and pull between his Disrupters and his Enforcers will create a less chaotic Presidency and lessen the worst instincts of...

Gorani Street, Aleppo, Syria is where Hala Gorani's family lived for generations. As an American-born child of Syrian immigrant parents she and her extended family across the world are watching what is happening in Syria with a personal interest. As a journalist, Hala is reluctant to make predictions on how a post-Assad Syria will play out because she says disappointment is baked into the Syria ex...

Is there going to be a Balkanization of Syria after the fall of Assad? Robyn Curnow, who has covered Syria since the rise of ISIS, argues that even though President Trump doesn't want America to get involved there are opportunities for the US and allies like Israel, the Kurds etc in a post-Assad vacuum. Will the country break up and how will fragmentation play out? How many backchannel conversatio...

Robyn Curnow covered all the previous US President's trips to Africa. She says Joe Biden's sleepy, whistle-stop trip to Angola is symbolic of U.S. weakness on the continent during his presidency. She interviewed President George W. Bush in Zambia, President's Carter and Clinton in South Africa and First Lady Michelle Obama in Botswana. She was there when President Obama attended Nelson Mandela's m...

War photographer Lynsey Addario captures moments in history that are difficult to witness. She talks to Robyn Curnow about being an American during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and what it is like to face danger head-on. Her path to the frontlines was an unlikely one; her parents were hairdressers and she grew up in a small Connecticut town in a large Italian-American family. http://www.robyncurn...

Robyn Curnow covered Fidel Castro's funeral from Havana and was in Cuba when President Obama made an historic visit to the island. Patrick Oppmann has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in Cuba for over a decade. Talking to Robyn from his home in Havana, Patrick weighs up what the appointment of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. As the son of Cuban exiles, Rubio has always taken a hardli...

The electoral map is red, red, red. Across America, folks decided that they preferred Donald Trump to Kamala Harris. Why did the Democrats lose so badly? How did Trump get such a wide, and deep, mandate from the American public? A South African living in the American South, Robyn Curnow brings her outsider perspective to the conversation about why Trump won (which did not surprise her in the least...

As Donald Trump prepares to take control again - with a huge mandate from the American public - Robyn Curnow unpacks the result with her frank outsider perspective. While she's spent time trying to understand why so many of her neighbors voted for Trump, she is also clear that this is not a race the Democrats should have lost. Why? Joe Biden made a decision to run for a second term. If he had not,...

Early European map makers drew dragons and wrote ‘Here Be Dragons’ on areas of the world that were still undiscovered or unknown. It is an HBD week in America. We are about to sail into uncharted waters, and it’s totally and utterly unclear what the waves will reveal after the election. In the first ten episodes of Searching for America, Robyn Curnow asked her guests to give her three words to des...

Ben Jealous is one of America's civil rights leaders. He's worked with Kamala Harris in San Francisco and heads up the country's largest and oldest environmental group. Robyn Curnow talks to him about black men being 'Trump-curious,' white poverty and his personal story as the son of a mixed-race marriage that was illegal at the time.   http://www.x.com/benjealous   http://www.x.com/robyncurnow ht...

Ben Jealous has given thousands of speeches as an American civil rights leader but few would guess that he had a childhood stutter that still defines his patterns of speech. As a surfer, he says he tends to ride his words and sentences like a wave. When he was a kid, Bill Cosby humiliated his stammer which left Ben's family stunned at the contrast between Cosby's public and personal behavior. Take...

The son of a rabbi and a renowned sociologist, Julian Zelizer is a Princeton historian who studies modern American politics in a clear, cool way. Robyn Curnow - who has covered elections around the worlld wanted to know why the politics of Donald Trump has taken so firmly root in American life and why Americans get so amped up over single issues. And, Robyn (who was in the 'belly of the beast' at...

What are the current American leaders like? Princeton historian Julian Zelizer tells Robyn Curnow his perceptions of Trump, Biden, Vance, Harris and other leaders he's interviewed. Three words to describe America right now? Fractured, divided and fragile. Time travel? Oval Office, 1960's during Lyndon Johnson Presidency Music? Grateful Dead Ideal dinner guests? Ella Backer, Martin Luther King, FDR...

Two of America's high-level intelligence officers join Searching for America for a wide-ranging conversation about what might happen if Donald Trump becomes President again? Ex-CIA Station Chiefs John Sipher and Jerry O'Shea who have 60 years experience between them operating in hostile environments across the world but they agree that trying to understand America right now is "befuddling.&qu...

Fun questions for two former CIA Station Chiefs. Where would you time travel to in American history? John Sipher - 1950's post-war John O'Shea - he wants to go 50 years into the future. "It's my time machine I can do what I want with it!" Favorite American landscape? Jerry O'Shea - Hawaii (and Zimbabwe and South Africa globally.) John Sipher - New England Dream dinner party guests Jerry...

Leyla Santiago, a proud Latina with Puerto Rican roots, lives in Trump turf, as she calls it. “My neighbor has a big sign that says Farmers for Trump. There's a huge sign downtown that basically says F@#k Joe Biden right across from the church, by the way.” For many Americans, the rural countryside is the 'real' America. Trump and his team have been hugely successful in crafting the image of rural...

Leyla Santiago answers Robyn's questionnaire that she sends to all her guests before the show. Three words to describe America? AT A CROSSROADS Where did you grow up? I'm an Army brat, so I moved around quite a bit. Born in Puerto Rico, moved to Panama during the Noriega conflict, then moved to South Carolina when my dad was stationed at Ft. Jackson If you could time travel, which era in American...

"I think the race is a toss up," says Kevin Sullivan, "Trump has really captured the Republican Party." In this episode of Searching for America, Robyn Curnow talks with Washington Post journalist Kevin Sullivan about all the president's he has interviewed. They discuss the enduring influence of Donald Trump, the dynamics of the Biden administration, and the role of Kamala Harr...

Every week Robyn Curnow asks her guest the same questions in this bonus episode. Where would you go if you could time travel? Dream Thanksgiving dinner guest (dead or alive)? What does it mean to be an American? Why is the country polarized? Favorite movie? Kevin Sullivan lists his favorite things  02:49 Time Traveling 06:09 The Role of Social Media in Polarization "It's amplified the worst o...

Unlike other Western democracies, America's politics are infused with religion. Why is God part of the get-out-and-vote plans? Republican strategist Doug Heye says Republicans and Democrats have used religion to attract voters in the past but evangelical fervor for Donald Trump has turbo-charged the Republican ticket in different ways. FOR MORE BONUS CONTENT FROM ROBYN, SIGN UP TO  http://www.sear...

In this bonus episode, Republican strategist Doug Heye shows his foodie side by listing his favorite restaurants and imagining his dream dinner party with Julia Child, Thomas Jefferson and Hank Aaron. When Robyn Curnow asks him about his favorite Presidents, Doug Heye gives a surprising answer.   Favorite piece of music or movie: Frank Sinatra singing What makes him cry? Maybe a few tears were she...

Sarah Smarsh's grandmother had dentures in her twenties, after her teeth were pulled out due to poverty. Robyn Curnow asks why good or bad teeth explain whether America is a meritocracy? Smarsh's new book is called Bone of Bone; Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class. Robyn wanted to talk to Sarah because she's rare commodity in America - a whisperer or translator of two Americas; ru...

Even though her family says American politicians 'are all crooks,' Sarah Smarsh was asked to run for Senate after she became a rare voice of an ignored part of America; the white, poor, rural working class. She choose not to go to run for office but instead wrote another book about her life in Kansas while working to save the prairies and fight against the stereotypes that paint her people as back...

We need to immerse kids in more ambiguity, says headteacher Josh Clark, who is also on the board of the National Association of Independent Schools. How do the divisions in America manifest in schools? Is pressure to say the right thing and give the 'correct answer' stifling debate and critical thinking in classrooms? Why have kids lost the ability to put themselves in another person's shoes? Does...

Josh Clark would love to time travel to the 1850's just before the Civil War when the country was dealing with what it meant to be an American. As a Southerner, who grew up Mississippi, he is intrigued by a country that was grappling with itself and at the same time embracing transcendentalism. He lists his favorite books from the pre-Civil War days, written during an time of national tension. Lea...