The Road to Now

Creating games that are both fun and educational takes a lot of work, but Digitalmill's Ben Sawyer has been doing it successfully for more than two decades. In this episode we speak with Ben about the art of creating serious games and his work on the American Revolution-based game "Revolutionary Choices." Just to clarify: Yes, there are two Ben Sawyers on this episode. People have confused them be...

When the city of Apex, NC was founded in 1873, it was little more than a railroad stop with a tiny rural population. In the last half-century, however, the development of the Research Triangle Park has thrust the town into the 21st century with tremendous force, with the population increasing more than tenfold in the last three decades. In spite of all this change, Apex has retained its historic b...

When the city of Apex, NC was founded in 1873, it was little more than a railroad stop with a tiny rural population. In the last half-century, however, the development of the Research Triangle Park has thrust the town into the 21st century with tremendous force, with the population increasing more than tenfold in the last three decades. In spite of all this change, Apex has retained its historic b...

Robert E. Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865 marked the end of the American Civil War, but it was just one of many times that officers and soldiers faced the reality of surrender. In fact, throughout the four years of the war, approximately one in four soldiers surrendered to the opposing army. In this episode, David Silkenat explains how looking at surrender as both an e...

Is the United States an empire? US citizens have struggled with this question for a long time. Though our historical narrative traces our origins to the war for independence against the British Empire, we often forget that the US has presided over territories since the very beginning. Today about 4 million people in the territories of American Samoa, the Northern Marinara Islands, Guam, Puerto Ric...

RTN Theology now is now on its own podcast feed! Subscribe to RTN Theology anywhere you get The Road to Now for episodes 12-19 and more! This episode of RTN Theology centers on the life, thought, and legacy of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bob Crawford talks with professor Stephen Haynes, author of The Battle for Bonhoeffer about how Bonhoeffer has become a cultural Rorschach test, often...

This is a rebroadcast of episode #6, which originally aired in July of 2016. In this episode of  The Road to Now , we speak with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper about his new memoir  The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics  and the ways that his peculiar & fascinating life interact with the greater history of our country. Gov. Hickenlooper shares his family history, which he traces b...

In 2002, Ashley Capps took a gamble- he rented hundreds of acres in rural Tennessee and put on a music festival. Coming on the heels of the infamous Lollapalooza '99 and an unsuccessful festival at the same site two years earlier, few thought Ashley could pull it off. As you (and the 80,000 people who attended the festival this year) know, Ashley and his partners proved the doubters wrong and crea...

On August 15, 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette arrived in the United States to say farewell to the country whose independence he helped secure more than four decades earlier. Over the next 15 months, Lafayette visited all 24 states, meeting with old friends and attending celebrations hosted by Americans who flocked to see the last-living Major General of the Revolutionary War whose close friendship...

As the person responsible for documenting the Obama Administration, Pete Souza spent more time with Barack Obama than almost anyone else, which left him with some deep in sights on Obama and the office of the Presidency. In this episode, Pete joins Bob for a conversation about his work as Chief Official White House Photographer, the state of American politics, and the power of photography. Pete's...

Bob speaks with The Washington Post's Robert Costa about the methods used by reporters covering the White House and Capitol Hill. Costa talks about how journalists build and maintain trust with confidential sources inside of the White House, how an article is constructed when multiple reporters share a byline, and everything else that goes into writing the first draft of history. Bob and Robert al...

On May 18 2016, Ben and Bob launched the first three episodes of their new podcast called  The Road To Now . One of the guests in those episodes was a young journalist named Matt Negrin, who Bob met during a visit to the set of Bloomberg's With All Due Respect . In the three years since, Matt Negrin has moved from Bloomberg Politics to Comedy Central, where he is currently Senior Producer at The D...

In 1776, the US declared independence. Eleven years later, in 1787, delegates from 12 states (we're looking at YOU Rhode Island) got together in Philadelphia and wrote the Constitution. In between those triumphant moments, there was the Articles of Confederation , that "firm league of friendship" that most Americans probably know primarily as something they had to memorize for a history test. HOWE...

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 with Christian social ethicist-activist, author, and Professor at Iliff School of Theology, Dr. Miguel De La Torre . Bob and Miguel discuss liberation theology and the connection between the theology shared by slaveholders...

The data collection practices of companies such as facebook, google and amazon have led many Americans to wonder if privacy is dead. Though these companies are relatively new, this is far from the first time that Americans have felt their privacy to be under attack. In this episode, we speak with Vanderbilt University's Sarah Igo to learn about the ways that Americans have understood privacy from...

Hidetaka Hirota joins Bob and Ben for a conversation about the history of immigration law in the United States and the ways that government officials have decided who could and could not enter the United States. Hidetaka discusses the creation of Federal immigration law and the ways that looking at state immigration policies in the early to mid-19th century can help us understand the Immigration a...

This episode launched April 1, 2019. It's an April Fools trick, but we hope you enjoy it anyway! Rufus Allan Sevier was born on December 7, 1916 in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. More than a century later Rufus is in incredible health and is one of the few people alive today who vividly remembers life before the Great Depression. His personal story, however, diverges in significant ways from...

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! Bob speaks with Arizona State University Associate Professor of History Catherine O'Donnell about the prejudice Catholics endured in the years leading up to the American Revolution and how they gained the respect of George Washington as he sought French assistance i...

In 1866, the Fenian Brotherhood, comprised primarily of Irish Civil War veterans, led a series of attacks on Canadian provinces just across the border from the United States. Their goal: seize Canadian territory and exchange it for Irish independence. Similar raids continued until 1871, and although they were ultimately unsuccessful, they are part of a greater story of the American Civil War, Iris...

Amy Walter has been covering Congress and Congressional races since the early 1990s. In this episode, Amy joins Bob to talk about the political issues and strategies that took us from the era of Bill Clinton & Newt Gingrich to today, the reasons that modern politics is so divisive, and the potential coalitions that could impact the 2020 elections and beyond. Bob and then follow up with a conversat...

Jakob Lewis knows how to tell a good story. As the host and producer of the podcast Neighbors , Jakob built a nation-wide audience by talking to those around him and turning them into compelling stories that captured the essence of daily life. In his newest venture, Vox Familia , he is taking his skills to help families tell their own stories. In this episode of The Road to Now, Ben sits down with...

When most of us think of the earth, we imagine going "north" as going "up." Modern maps, however, obscure many geographic realities, including the existence of an Arctic world, which unites the US, Canada, Russia, Norway, Greenland and other countries into a distinct geographic sphere. In this episode, Bob and Ben are joined by historians Heidi Bohaker and Alison Smith to discuss their work develo...

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 hosts Bob Crawford and Keith Larson share personal reflections on the life of North Carolina 3rd District Congressman Walter B. Jones who passed away on February 10th, 2019. Jones served Eastern North Carolina in Congress and the Stat...

Bob and Ben talk with Lisa Fine about the ways that viewing history through the lens of gender can help us understand the past. Lisa explains the origins of women's history, the impact that gender theory had on the field of history, and why it's important to think about both masculinity and femininity when considering gender. This is the third installment in our methodology series, which also incl...

The influenza strain that hit the world in 1918 killed between 50 and 100 million people. It was not the first flu to have such an impact on humanity, and it also may not be the last. In this episode we talk with John Barry about his research on the history of influenza, the current state of preparedness, and the unexpected ways that influenza has shaped modern history. John Barry is the author of...