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Monticello guide Kyle Chattleton takes us through the decades-long effort to establish the University of Virginia, which Jefferson considered one of three accomplishments for which he most wished to be remembered.

In the 1790s, Thomas Jefferson and much of the country faced a significant crisis caused by a tiny insect. Monticello Guide Kyle Chattleton reads from an article prepared in 1991 by Lucia "Cinder" Stanton, Monticello's Shannon Senior Historian, focusing on the infamous Hessian fly.

You're listening to this show thanks to high speed internet. And as awesome as this podcast may be, there's a whole lot more that makes high speed internet indispensable for modern life. During the pandemic, school, work, health, and social life all moved online. Access to the internet was, and still is, a must. That made life awfully challenging for families where high-speed internet was not avai...

Monticello guide Olivia Brown looks at Thomas Jefferson's earliest education and his lifelong promotion of learning, including his efforts to establish a system of public schools and the founding of the University of Virginia.

Monticello guide Kyle Chattleton looks at the extremely close relationship of Monticello's enslaved joiner John Hemmings and his wife, Priscilla, an enslaved domestic servant owned by Jefferson's son-in-law, and at the couple's complex relationship with the Jefferson family.

The high court’s conservatives insist that strict readings of the U.S. Constitution have compelled them to strike down popular policies like abortion rights and campaign finance limits. Well, legal expert Christopher Sprigman has some news for these robed rogues. Buried in the law of the land is the key to reining in the federal judiciary. All Congress has to do is act, he says. And all the people...

This time of year, climate change is particularly hard to ignore. We’ve just made it through another scorching summer. Virginia’s coastal regions are grappling with sea water rise. And on some days, that haze covering the Blue Ridge is smoke from California wildfires. Despite this, the U.S. government’s response to climate change has long been… tepid. Years of kicking the can down the road or in s...

Just what you need after a horrible day.

A collection of the promos for our 2022 Jazz Marathon.

A collection of the promos for our 2022 Jazz Marathon.

A collection of the promos for our 2022 Jazz Marathon.

A collection of the promos for our 2022 Jazz Marathon.

A collection of the promos for our 2022 Jazz Marathon.

A collection of the promos for our 2022 Jazz Marathon.

In January 2017, millions of women marched in solidarity to oppose Donald Trump’s inauguration. But in a small Texas county, a growing network of like-minded ladies found each other — and began meeting in secret. Communications scholar Emily Van Duyn followed these women as they became improbable, undercover champions of civic engagement while keeping their activism hidden, from their husbands, fa...

We’re back! Legal scholar Jedediah Purdy joins Will and Siva to help launch a new season focused on democracy, law and the people. Can Americans transcend gross inequality, neoliberal ideology, and the “politics of nihilism” taking root among their leaders? Looking to Frederick Douglass for inspiration, Purdy thinks so. His new book urges readers to reimagine and rebuild their body politic — to ru...

Coming to you live this week from the American Political History conference at Purdue University, it’s our season finale. Will and Siva speak with three historians — Liette Gidlow, Derek Musgrove and Thomas Zimmer — about the past, present and future of government by the people. Our guests ponder the Jan. 6 hearings, D.C. statehood, social mobilization and the structural problems of the Constituti...

In recent years, American politicians seem to be getting tougher about internet oversight. But it remains unclear whether Washington has the will to regulate big tech companies and the platforms they control. This week we hear from Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, and former Rep. Barbara Comstock, a Republican, live from the University of Virginia’s celebrated dome room. They see hope for bipartisan...

Russian forces have pulled back from around the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. They’ve left the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv. But farther east and south, the fighting has intensified, and the civilian death toll is mounting. How will this war end? What will remain of Ukraine? And are European powers doing enough to punish Russia for its devastating invasion? Journalist Peter Pomerantsev — rece...

Newsrooms are shrinking, hedge funds are buying up local papers and clickbait is shaping more and more what you know about the world. What the heck is happening to the news business — and what does this spell for the future of democracy? Journalism professors Jay Rosen and Nikki Usher say the internet isn’t all to blame: Journalists, they argue, need to get more creative about who they reach, what...

Entering the United States without permission is a crime. But should it be? This time on the show, we hear from a couple of lawyers who have been fighting to decriminalize unauthorized immigration. They say federal law unfairly targets Latin Americans — locking up hundreds of thousands of migrants who cross America’s southern border, costing billions of dollars each year. Plus, Will speaks with a...

Education is our subject this week. You’ve heard all about attacks on the teaching of racism and slavery, about the banning of books on the Holocaust and gender identity, about Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill. Public schools are ground zero in the battle over American civic life. But this is nothing new, historian Natalia Petrzela says. She locates the roots of such controversies in the cultural up...

A critical Supreme Court decision in the early 1970s galvanized white evangelicals and set them on a path to outsized political influence in America. Roe v. Wade? Nope: Green v. Connally. This more obscure ruling two years before, in 1971, really got the religious right fired up, says historian Anthea Butler. That case stripped segregated academies — often religious schools — of their tax-exempt s...

When Evan Mawarire draped himself in his country’s flag six years ago, he didn’t know the video he was about to make would put his life in danger — and help topple a dictator. His forefathers had fought for Zimbabwe and for that flag. But now, Mawarire says, it “felt like a fraud.” Over four decades, Zimbabweans had suffered crushing economic woes and political oppression under President Robert Mu...

During the Cold War, U.S. taxpayers funded the huge investments that gave Big Tech its jump-start. And so Silicon Valley was born amid a peculiar blend of hypermasculine, militaristic libertarianism and 1960s countercultural values. Now the titans of the tech industry seem enthralled with visions of a post-democratic society driven by algorithms more than actual human connection. Historian Margare...