The Road to Now

Can learning the skills required to do good history serve as an antidote to conspiracy theory? Cathy Gorn & Don Wildman think so, and in this episode they join us to discuss their work to teach those skills in the 6 th -12 th grade classroom through National History Day, a program that reaches more than half a million students and tens of thousands of teachers each year. We agree with them and thi...

Ben and Bob are heading to Tallahassee on April 27 for a live recording at Word of South Festival and the show is free! Click here for details. The Harlem Globetrotters are one of those great parts of American culture that almost everyone knows and loves. For most of us today, the Globetrotters are outstanding entertainers. But did you know that in the mid-20th century the Globetrotters were proba...

The election of 2016 was a lot of things. It was a showdown between two candidates who had been household names for decades. It was the second time in five elections where the winning candidate lost the popular vote. And, most relevant here, it was eight years ago and one of the candidates in that election is running again in 2024, so we've still got a long time before we can see the full impact i...

Hear the extended version of this episode by supporting The Road to Now on Patreon! Click here to join.   On December 13, 2000, Democratic Candidate Al Gore conceded that year's Presidential Election to Republican George W. Bush. Gore's concession speech marked a dramatic conclusion to an election that had been contested for more than a month, with partisans from both major parties flocking to Flo...

In 1992, President George Bush's bid for a second term did not go well. Despite taking 79% of the electoral vote in 1988, holding office during the collapse of communism in Europe, and serving as commander-in-chief during the US victory in the first Iraq War, Bush found himself flanked by a smooth talking former Arkansas governor and a Texas businessman armed with a personal fortune and a lot of c...

On November 4, 1980, California Republican Ronald Reagan trounced Jimmy Carter at the polls, beating the incumbent by almost 10 percentage points in the popular election and winning 489 of 538 electors. That type of victory combined with Reagan's larger than life place in modern political history might lead you to believe the 1980 campaign was never in doubt. But it was. And in early 1980, both me...

The famous image of a victorious Harry Truman holding up a newspaper headlined "Dewey defeats Truman" is clear evidence that the 1948 Presidential election did not turn out the way many people had expected. That April, Truman's approval rating had sunk to 37%, causing even many in his party to consider dumping him from the ballot. That summer, a rebellion by southern Democrats led by South Carolin...

The Presidential election of 1912 was an unusual moment in American history. It featured an embattled incumbent President facing criticism from his former allies. It offered voters a choice between the sitting President and his predecessor. And when it was all done, the two men who had previously won the Presidency found themselves bested by a college professor with just a few years of experience...

The Presidential election of 1860 is one we Americans know well. That election sent  Abraham Lincoln to the White House, southern enslavers to the exit door, and the United States into a bloody Civil War. Lincoln's leadership in those years and his tragic assassination in the last days of the war propelled the railsplitter into the pantheon of American Presidents. But sometimes we forget that just...

The Election of 1824 was a turning point in American history. Long before the fall of 1824, Americans understood that the winner would be the first in America's second generation to hold the Presidency. When the election began, all four viable candidates were technically from the same party. By the time it was over, the election had generated the rivalries and passions that formed the groundwork f...

The inalienable right to "the pursuit of happiness" is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, but what exactly does that phrase mean? While Americans today may associate it with the right to own land, opulence or some other act of acquisition, many prominent founders understood it to mean something quite different. In this episode National Constitution Center President & CEO Jeffrey Rosen r...

One episode. Two historians/podcasters. Four stories from American history that you've probably never heard. And an unknown number of listeners that we hope will find these stories as fascinating and surprising as we do.   Greg Jackson is the creator of History That Doesn't Suck and a Professor at Utah Valley University . Ben Sawyer hosts this podcast and has been teaching history at the universit...

The FBI has been the subject of criticism and concern since it was founded in 1908, but it has nevertheless become one of the most powerful, stable, and mythologized branches of the Executive Branch of the US government. In this episode, Steve Underhill joins us to discuss the origins of the FBI, the role J. Edgar Hoover played in making the modern Brueau, and how that greater history of the FBI c...

Stephen Foster was America's first great published musician. He wrote some of America's great folk songs, including "Oh, Suzanna," "Camptown Races" and "Hard Times Come Again No More," and his music was the inspiration for Paul Green's play "The Stephen Foster Story," which is performed every summer in Bardstown, Kentucky. In this episode we speak with two of the artists involved in that play- Don...

Ben & Bob kick off the new year with a conversation over some current events, including the history of New Year's Resolutions (and why Bob doesn't make them) and the 14 th Amendment, and Ben shares what he learned about North Carolina history during his holiday road trip from Nashville, TN to Concord, NC to visit his family. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.   Relevant links: -"Swept Away...

Dr. Eric Smoodin , film historian at the University of California- Davis and author of Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity and American Film Studies, 1930-1960 , joins Bob and Ben for the history of the people, the industry, and law that made Frank Capra's 1946 film It's A Wonderful Life into one of America's quintessential Christmas films. Ben & Bob are taking a few weeks off for the holid...

The suburbs have long been a symbol of American prosperity in the post-WWII era. Yet the contrast between suburban wealth and "inner city" poverty overlooks the stories of those living in suburbia who were unable to reach "the good life." In this episode Ben & Bob talk with Tim Keogh, whose new book In Levittown's Shadow: Poverty in America's Wealthiest Suburb (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2023), explo...

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...

Faith has played an important role in American history, but not always in the ways we'd expect. In this episode, Andy Polk joins Bob and Ben to explain how politicians, advertising executives and public relations experts bypassed America's religious leaders, ignored theological debates, and dismissed historical evidence to fabricate and sell a story of America's religious origins that served their...

Bob welcomes Mark McKinnon for an exit interview about his work as co-producer and co-host of The Circus . Showtime announced last week that after eight seasons and 130 episodes this would be the final season of the political docuseries.   Mark reflects on chronicling American political history as it happened from 2016 to 2023, during a turbulent period in American history that includes the rise o...

Monsanto's Past, Our Future w/ Bart Elmore   The Monsanto Company officially ceased to exist when it was acquired by Bayer in 2018, but its legacy lives on in courtrooms, factory towns and farms across the globe. Today the company's name is most associated with the herbicide Roundup and genetically modified seeds, but Monsanto also served as a leading producer of Agent Orange during the Vietnam Wa...

Two things you probably don't know: 1) your favorite museum probably holds human remains and 2) it's completely legal to sell human bones on the internet. Not surprisingly, those two things have caused a lot of controversy. In this episode, Tanya Marsh joins Ben for a conversation about recent developments in the legal-social-political nexus of dead bodies; the controversy surrounding the acquisit...

When Vladimir Putin ordered Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, he and many others assumed that Russia's "special operation" would end in a quick victory. Eighteen months later, an independent Ukraine stands strong, while Russia's position has grown so weak that Putin has begun working to develop closer ties with North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Why has Ukraine been so resilient, and why h...

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...

From its founding in 1970, Rounder Records was different. What started as the passion project for three New England music lovers who wanted to preserve and proselytize folk and roots music, eventually grew into a record label with an eclectic catalogue featuring long-forgotten bands, promising musicians such as George Thorogood and Allison Krauss, and even an album just called "Hollerin'" (which i...