The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.

In her new book Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History, historian Katherine Carte offers a major reassessment of the relationship between Christianity and the American Revolution. She argues that religion helped set the terms by which Anglo-Americans encountered the imperial crisis and the war and how Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic imagined the possibilities of a post...

In this episode we introduce Current, a new online platform of commentary and opinion that provides daily reflection on contemporary culture, politics, and ideas. Editor Eric Miller talks aboutCurrent's vision, some of his favorite articles, and the history of the "little magazine" in American literary culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Historian Karen Cox argues that "when it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground." In this episode, we talk with Cox about the history of Confederate monuments and how the recent racial unrest in the United States have made these monuments a subject of national conversation. Her book is titled No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice. Learn...

What can a medieval historian teach us about the role of women in twenty-first century evangelicalism? A lot! In this episode we talk to historian Beth Allison Barr about her book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Join us for a wide-ranging conversation on historical thinking, biblical interpretation, the Protestant Reformation, the Southern Baptis...

In this episode we talk with Carolyn Eastman, author of The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States' First Forgotten Celebrity. Eastman chronicles the life of James Ogilvie, an itinerant orator who became one of the most famous men in America in the years between 1809 and 1817. Ogilvie's career features many of the hallmarks of celebrity we recognize from later eras: glamorous frie...

Ice hockey is now a global sport. Even Brazil, Mexico, Jamaica, and Australia have national teams. The National Hockey League has teams in Miami, Tampa Bay, Dallas, Nashville, and Phoenix. Junior league hockey is played in Shreveport and Amarillo. Anyone who wants to understand hockey today must not only tell a story about skates, rinks, sticks and goals, but must also tell a story about televisio...

On June 1, 2020, Donald Trump declared himself a "law and order" president and marched to historic St. John's Church for a photo-op with a Bible. Our guest in this episode, historian Aaron Griffith, helps us understand why evangelicals cheered this moment. Join us for a conversation on evangelicalism, crime, and mass incarceration with the author of the fascinating new book, God's Law and Order: T...

Our guest in this episode is historian and public intellectual Claire Potter, author of Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy. She helps us make sense of the current state of alternative media and how it has hooked Americans on politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we talk about the connections between liberal Protestantism, American foreign policy, and the Cold War in mid-20th-century America. We discuss these themes through an examination of the life of former U.S. Secretary of State (1953-1959) John Foster Dulles. Our guest is John Wilsey, author of God' Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles. Learn more about your ad choic...

Our guest in this episode is Abram Van Engen, author of City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism. He helps us make sense of the phrase "city on a hill" in John Winthrop's famous 1630 sermon, both in its 17th-century context and today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How shall we live? Where do we find the resources for living well? In this episode, historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn examines the reappearance of ancient philosophical thought in contemporary American culture. She argues that we need to take back philosophy as part of our everyday lives as a means for piecing together a coherent moral framework for democratic life. Learn more about your ad choices....

Howard Thurman was a mid-20th century theologian, writer, activist, and mystic who had a profound influence on the leaders of the Civil Rights movement. Thurman's writings--especially his 1949 work Jesus and the Disinherited--provided an intellectual and spiritual guide to those trying to make sense of an era of racial and social unrest. Our guest in this episode is historian Paul Harvey, the auth...

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson edited a copy of the Christian gospels? In this episode, Smithsonian curator and author Peter Manseau joins us to talk about the so-called "Jefferson Bible" or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. We explore Jefferson's religious beliefs and how his "Bible" was appropriated by later generations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adch...

In this episode we talk with historian Lorri Glover about Eliza Lucas Pinckney, a South Carolina woman who lived through the American Revolution in South Carolina. Pinckney's story sheds light on gender, agriculture, politics, and slavery in this era and unsettles many common assumptions regarding the place and power of women in the eighteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...

What does it mean to be a man in white evangelical Christianity? In this episode we talk with historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. We discuss definitions of masculinity, the Gospel Coalition, Beth Moore, Donald Trump, the 2016 election, the differences between White and Black views of Christian manhood, and...

In this episode we talk with Daniel Feller, the editor of The Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. We discuss his work as a documentary editor, the uses of Andrew Jackson in the age of Trump, and a controversial paper he recently delivered at the annual meeting of the Society for the Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR). Learn more about your ad choices....

Have you ever wanted to write a children's, middle-grade, or young adult history book? How do you get started? What is the process like? Do I need an agent? In this episode, we talk about writing history for young readers with former Smithsonian educator and author Tim Grove. Tim is the author, most recently, of Star Spangled: The Story of a Flag, a Battle, and the American Anthem. Learn more abou...

If our mailbox in the wake of the death of George Floyd is any indication, many listeners of this podcast and readers of The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog are making honest efforts to understand the meaning of phrases like “systemic racism” and “white privilege.” Can racism in America be solved by a simple change of individual character? Or does it require much deeper shifts in the ways we or...

Did you watch "The Last Dance," the ESPN documentary on Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls? In this episode of the podcast, Baylor University sports historian Paul Putz helps us make sense of it. Join us for a conversation about Jordan's place in NBA history, the role of the black athlete in American culture, and some thoughts on how the stories of athletes like Jordan provide a window int...

The members of Donald Trump's controversial cabinet are regular features of the 24-hour news cycle. He has fired members of his cabinet who challenge his thinking on a host of foreign and domestic issues. Just ask Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and Jeff Sessions. But how did our first president, George Washington, imagine the role of the cabinet? In this episode, we think historically about this imp...

We are back! COVID-19 forced us to make some changes to our production, but the podcast is ready to forge ahead into the Summer. Since many Americans are still stuck at home playing games with their families to bide the time, we thought it would be fun to devote an entire episode to your favorite childhood toys and playthings. Public historian Susan Fletcher, author of the recently released Explor...

What happened when British soldiers and their families arrived in Boston in 1768? In Episode 66, we talk with Carleton College history professor Serena Zabin about her new book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History. Zabin's close reading of everyday life in revolutionary Boston will forever shape how we understand this important moment in our shared past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...

The American historian and cultural critic Christopher Lasch (1932-1994) had a powerful influence on the world of ideas. What would the author of the best-selling Culture of Narcissism (1979) have to say about Donald Trump and his particular brand of populism? In this episode we talk about Lasch, Trump, populism, progress, and "evangelical elitism" with intellectual historian Eric Miller, author o...

Is the Christian Right conservative? In this episode we talk with Grove City College history professor Gillis Harp about the relationship between Protestantism and American conservatism. Harp puts conservatism in the context of American history from the colonial period to the present and offers a sympathetic, if sharply critical, view of religious conservatives. Harp is the author of Protestants a...

In August 2019, The New York Times Magazine published The 1619 Project, an attempt to reframe American history by "placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative." American historians have praised and criticized the project. In this episode we talk with Thomas Mackaman, a history professor at Kings University in Wilkes-Barr...