The Road to Now

The Trump administration's decision to depose Nicolas Maduro and take control of Venezuela's natural resources may have been rash, but to those familiar with the history of US-Latin American relations, it looks familiar. In this episode, Naval War College Associate Professor of Strategy & Policy, Michelle Paranzino , joins us to break dow n the greater history of US foreign policy in Latin America...

The Monroe Doctrine has provided Presidents and foreign policy leaders with the rhetorical justification for their actions going back as far as James K. Polk, but the symbolic power attributed to the doctrine is far more substantial than the impact it had when it was published in 1823. In this episode, historian Jay Sexton walks us through the evolution of the Monroe Doctrine in political rhetoric...

Worried about money in American politics? We are too, and Jeff Clements is offering up a solution. Jeff is CEO of American Promise , a non-partisan organization dedicated to passing the For Our Freedom amendment to the Constitution, which would differentiate between people and corporations, and allow states to pass their own campaign finance laws. In this episode, he breaks down the history of cam...

  Anita McBride is one of the foremost experts on the legacy of American first ladies. Colleen Shogan served as the 11 th Archivist of the United States. Together, they're bringing forward a new project called In Pursuit , which offers up a series of essays on Presidents and First Ladies by some of today's most accomplished historians and political leaders. In this episode, Anita and Colleen join...

John Adams' single term as President has long been cast as a low point in his political career, but Lindsay Chervinsky sees it differently. "George Washington created the Presidency," she writes in her new book Making the Presidency, "but John Adams defined it."   In this episode, Lindsay joins us to share why she sees Adams as a crucial figure in transforming an office that had been established f...

What is Americana music? Is it a genre? A community? A refuge? Twenty four years after the founding of the Americana Music Association and thirteen years since the first Grammy was awarded for Best Americana Album, defining "Americana" remains tricky. In our experience, the most common answer has been "you know it when you hear it."   However you define it, however, there is one thing everyone agr...

A decade after Ken Burns decided it was time to take on the American Revolution, the film is finished and premieres on your local PBS station on Sunday, November 16! In this episode, we talk with Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt , who directed the six-part series alongside Burns, to find out more about the stories and process that they used to construct this remarkable look at one of history's mos...

Wakara was a Ute leader whose power stretched across western North America long before the US claimed the land on which he lived. In this episode, Max Perry Mueller joins us to discuss his new book, Wakara's America: The Life & Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West , and how a story of the west that excludes Native peoples leaves us with an incomplete and often dishonest account of US hi...

America's bookstores have always been about more than just books, but the role they play in American society has changed over the years. In this episode, Evan Friss joins us for a conversation about his New York Times Bestseller, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore (Viking, 2023), and the unique place that bookstores – and those who operate them – have held in American society from t...

National Constitution Center President & CEO Jeffrey Rosen returns to the show to discuss his new book The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America , and the ways that the contrasting visions of the founders live on in our political debates today.   Make sure to check out the National Constitution Center's website for links to the Interactive...

Teaching history to a middle schooler is a very different task than teaching a university student, but those doing the teaching have a lot in common (and could probably learn a lot from each other). In this episode, recorded as part of a live event sponsored by the Tennessee Council for History Education , Ben is joined by his MTSU colleague (and friend of the show) Andy Polk, 6 th grade teacher R...

The War on Terror that followed the 9/11 attacks took place on battlefields across the globe, but it also took place in our legal system. In this episode, CNN's Jake Tapper joins us to discuss his new book, Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War , and how dedicated public servants saved countless lives by bringing a terrorist to justice.   This episode was e...

The American Civil War and the end of slavery in the US may seem like one and the same from our modern perspective, but for those living through the conflict, the abolition of human bondage was anything but certain. Even into the last days of the war, slave traders in Confederate-held cities continued to auction off human beings, realizing handsome profits as they imposed violence and family separ...

Guerilla violence in the American Civil War was once considered a fringe topic of study, but the scale of the violence and its impact on society had a tremendous impact on the US during and after the conflict. In this episode, we speak with historian Andrew Fialka and illustrator Anderson Carmen about their new book, Hope Never to See It: A Graphic History of Guerilla Violence during the American...

Chinese immigrants helped establish America's foothold on the western coast, yet few of us know what life looked like for those Chinese people who came to live in the US. In this episode, Beth Lew-Williams joins us to discuss her new book, John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law , which blends extensive archival research with new technologies to illuminate...

Washington Post Global Economics Correspondent David J. Lynch joins Ben & Bob for a discussion about his new book The World's Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (and What Would Make it Right ) (Public Affairs, 2025). David has a unique perspective on globalization; first as a journalist who has spent the last four decades covering the global economy for some of America's most influ...

It's Labor Day, so we're sharing one of our favorite conversations on the history of labor in the US- our 2018 conversation with Louis Hyman on his book Temp: The Real Story of What Happened to Your Salary, Benefits & Job Security . We hope you have a great holiday!   This episode originally aired as episode 103 on August 18, 2018. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.

Joe Lockhart served as White House Press Secretary for President Bill Clinton from 1998-2000, and played central roles in Presidential campaigns from Walter Mondale to John Kerry. In this episode, Joe joins us to recap how the political landscape has changed since the 1980s and the paths that Democrats might pursue in their efforts to escape the political wilderness.   This episode was edited by G...

A Presidency is defined by the decisions that a person makes while serving as Executive, but a Presidential legacy is about much more than that. In Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture , (UVA Press, 2023) Lindsay Chervinsky and Matthew Costello have brought together a collection of chapters that explore the ways that mourning ceremonies, causes of death, and moments of pass...

The war between the US Army and the Native American confederation during the war of 1812 is a buried story in an often-overlooked event, yet its impact on the history of North America is profound. The leading figures on both sides of the war, Shawnee Chief Tecumseh and US Army General William Henry Harrison, had come of age in the struggles over what is today called the Midwest United States, and...

The affordable housing shortage in many American cities is making urban life more difficult for all of us. But the problem of housing is not a new one, and history has some valuable lessons for those looking for solutions. In this episode, historian Tom Hanchett joins us to talk about his new book, Affordable Housing in Charlotte: What One City's History Tells Us About America's Pressing Problem a...

In the late 18 th century, tens of millions of buffalo lived in North America. By the mid-1880s, they were on the brink of extinction. For the white settlers who sought to "conquer" the American west, and the Native people whose way of life depended on them, the plight of the American Buffalo was more than a story of one species of animal. As Dayton Duncan writes in the prologue of his new book Bl...

Jon Grinspan has done something remarkable: in his new book, Wide Awake , he tells a thoroughly researched and brilliantly crafted story that may change your understanding of the origins of the American Civil War. In this episode, Jon joins us for a conversation about the Wide Awakes, the anti-slavery youth movement that played an instrumental role in electing Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and took part...

For half a century, the US-Soviet rivalry pitted the two most powerful nations in human history against one another other in a conflict that had the potential to end civilization. The fact that the Cold War ended without the doomsday scenarios so many had predicted is testament to the power of good diplomacy, and good diplomacy only happens when you have good diplomats.   In this episode we speak...

FBI agent Robert Hanssen was one of the most damaging spies in US history. From 1979 to 2001, Hanssen delivered some of the United States governments' most sensitive secrets to Soviet and Russian agents, who used them to not only undermine US national security, but to identify and execute individuals who were working with the FBI. And despite an awareness of spies working within the FBI, Hanssen m...