The Road to Now

Baseball is part of America's cultural fabric, and few people know the game and its place in society as well as Jayson Stark. As a celebrated sportswriter, Jayson has witnessed baseball's transformation for more than four decades, and has had a front-row seat to some of the biggest moments in the sport's history. In this episode, Bob & Ben talk with Jayson about baseball's place in American cultur...

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched an attack on the USSR that caught Soviet leaders completely off guard. Over the next four years, the Red Army was transformed, as were the lives of more than 34 million men and women who served in its ranks. In this episode, Ben speaks with Brandon Schechter about his new book The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (...

The Kinks are one of the great rock bands of the 20th century, and like all artists, they reflect the times and places they've inhabited. In this episode, we speak with Mark Doyle about his excellent new book The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached (Reaktion Books, 2020) and how the band, their origins, and Ray Davies' lyrics can teach us a lot about both the real and imagined spaces of mid-20th Cen...

This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired on March 20, 2017 Note: Given that we are relying more than ever on technology to communicate and work during this epidemic, we thought it was a good time to share our interview w/ Nicholas Carr. The internet has revolutionized the human experience in the 21st century. Our ability to communicate with others, find locations in unfamiliar pla...

As people try to make sense of the Coronavirus epidemic, some have unfortunately turned to conspiracy theories linking Covid-19 to the installation of 5G networks. In this episode, Bob and Ben speak with Stacy Wood about her research on conspiracy theories, the past conspiracy theories that have converged in the 5G theory, and the reasons some people are willing to accept these explanations of the...

When we think of epidemics, we often imagine the central struggle as between microbe and epidemiologist. But as the coronavirus outbreak has reminded us, our individual actions can compound in ways that have a very real implications for any epidemic. The narrative we adopt to understand these events- ie the story we tell ourselves about who is responsible, who can save us, and what power we have i...

Based on what you've told us on social media, it's time for a break from the outbreak. So in this episode, Bob and Ben talk about the French Revolution, nationalism and colonization (aka the books assigned for Bob's Graduate European History Seminar). They also talk about the art of teaching and Ben's approach to transitioning to teaching his history classes online (which he recently had to do for...

Note: Bob and Ben start off talking about the Covid-19 outbreak and plans for upcoming episodes of this podcast. We shift to our discussion with Dr. Cohen at about 10:30. The suburbanization of the American landscape after World War II left the country's older urban centers in crisis. Revitalizing cities was no easy task, and many of the most inspiring plans for reconstructing America's urban spac...

Disasters abound, and what comes next is all about making good decisions. Ben talks about the Nashville tornado of 1998, the Nashville tornado of 2020, and the coronavirus, and Dr. Andy Bruno shares his expertise on the origins of natural disasters and what we can learn from studying them in history.

Bob and Ben speak with Dr. Chuck Keeney about the history of coal in the United States. Chuck explains the ways that the coal industry has shaped not only the physical landscape of mining towns, but also, through lobbying efforts and information campaigns, the way we understand our nation's history. Chuck is uniquely qualified to tell the story of coal; not only does he hold a PhD in history from...

For many years now, Tim Mossberger has been building an incredible collection of material objects, music, and information on Bob's band The Avett Brothers . In this episode, Bob and Ben talk with Tim about how he became the Avett Archivist, where he gets his rare items, and how he processes, preserves, and organizes the massive amount of material he's acquired over the years. Bob and Tim also talk...

The Road to Now is celebrating our fourth Presidents' Day by launching our first Presidents' Day episode! To mark this momentous occasion, Bob and Ben both sat down with a list of three significant moments in presidential history and discussed how they changed the country. Are there Roosevelts? Yes. Are there presidents born in three different centuries? Yes. Should you listen instead of asking an...

When it comes to food, knowing what you're getting can be tricky. On the surface, words such as "pure" and "natural" seem straightforward, yet defining them in the modern world has required experts, laws, and administrative structures. In this episode, Bob & Ben speak with Lafayette College's Benjamin Cohen about the pure food crusades of the late nineteenth century, the origins of the Pure Food A...

In the last few decades, NASCAR has taken stock car racing from a regional sport anchored in the south, to the national level. Though NASCAR has a reputation as a family-friendly organization, its history is inseparable from the moonshining and bootlegging of the prohibition era. And while the cars on today's tracks have little in common with their mid-20th century predecessors, many of the sports...

Charlotte, NC has grown tremendously in the last half-century, yet it still lacks a clear national identity. While many know it today for its professional sports franchises or its prominence as a banking hub, the city was once recognized for its leadership in school integration following the 1971 Supreme Court ruling in Swann vs Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education . Bob and Ben both spent piv...

Dr. Molly Worthen (Department of History, UNC-Chapel Hill), Doug Heye (CNN/former RNC Communication Director) & Rufus Edmisten (Deputy Chief Council, Senate Watergate Committee/ former NC Secretary of State & Attorney General) join Bob & Ben for a conversation about charisma in American politics and society. Recorded live at the legendary Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC on January 25, 2020. Our grati...

After our last episode on the separation of powers in the Constitution, we heard from several listeners who said they wished we'd spent more time on the topic. The people have spoken, so we're following up with another episode on modern politics and the Constitution with special guest, RTN-favorite Matt Negrin! Matt Negrin holds the record for most appearances on RTN. He is also Senior Producer fo...

2020 begins with an Impeachment Trial in the Senate and will end with a Presidential election, so Bob and Ben are kicking off the year discussing the relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government. Their conversation covers the articles of impeachment against Trump, the gap between the modern Presidency and the Executive imagined by the founders, and the prob...

In our final episode of 2019, Bob & Ben speak w/ historian Carson Hudson, whose program "Uncivil Christmas" tells of life in Williamsburg, Virginia during the years of the Civil War. Carson explains the politics and culture of the era, the major role that music played in uniting (and dividing) Americans during the war, the challenges of understanding how people in the past experienced war, and the...

On December 25, 1776, George Washington and his men celebrated their first post-Declaration of Independence Christmas by crossing a freezing river to mount a surprise attack against their enemies. The plan worked, but almost 250 years later the story of Washington crossing the Delaware might surprise you too. In this episode, RTN favorite Bruce Carlson of My History Can Beat Up Your Politics joins...

In 1848, New England ships crossed the Bering Strait in pursuit of the bowhead whales that provided their income. In the years since, the activity of outsiders- from hunters, to government bureaucrats, to consumers of energy who never set foot in the region- has had a deep impact on the region, but the environment of Beringia has made the place itself an active participant in this process. About a...

In this episode, recorded live from the 2019 convention of the Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) in San Francisco, Ben chairs a panel featuring scholars who are working on new, exciting and very important digital humanities projects that bring together scholars from different fields, and connect those inside the university to communities outside of academia.   Our...

Pete Souza (photographer for Barack Obama/Ronald Reagan) and Erin Welsh (epidemiologist/cohost of This Podcast Will Kill You) joined Bob and Ben for a live episode in Chicago to discuss history, photography, politics, and what their fields have to teach each other. The images that we discussed in this episode are available on our episode page- click here to see them. If you enjoy this episode and...

It's our sesquicentennial episode, so Bob and Ben thought it was time to catch up and talk about all the great things that have been happening in the last few months. The conversation covers The Avett Brothers ' new album, the books they've been reading, and the questions about history that have kept them going. They also talk about the upcoming RTN live recordings and the plans they've laid out f...

The protests that swept through the streets of Hong Kong beginning in the summer of 2019 highlighted the tension that exists between the residents of the region and China's political leadership. The politics of the region have also made their way into American popular culture through public disputes within the NBA, controversy over Blizzard's decision to ban a prominent Hong Kong gamer , and a Sou...