The Last Best Hope?: Understanding America from the Outside In

In this special episode of The Last Best Hope, we bring you a recording of a live event at the Rothermere American Institute in Oxford on Thursday, November 7. Adam Smith and guests discussed why the election turned out the way it did. The panellists are:Jason Casellas ABC News election decision desk. Jason Casellas is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. He is an expert in Latino politics and has published widely on state and local politics.Clare Malone New Yorker staff writer. Clare Malone reports on politics, media, and journalism for the New Yorker. She previously covered both the 2016 and 2020 Presidential campaigns as a senior political writer for FiveThirtyEight.Mike Murphy Republican political strategist and media consultant. Mike Murphy has worked on the presidential campaigns of George H.W. Bush and John McCain. He also co-hosts the popular politics podcast Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod.Kimberley Johnson John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government. Kimberley Johnson is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and an expert on racial and ethnic, and suburban and urban politics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid, and presidents sometimes won massive landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently nail-bitingly close. How did this happen? In this special series, we examine the campaigns and characters of the last 30 years and trace the emergence of the partisan alignment and bitter polarisation we see today. In this episode, the election of 2016. The shocking victory of Donald Trump and the final emergence, perhaps, of a new partisan alignment.Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American InstituteGuests:Patrick Andelic of the University of Northumbria, author of Donkey Work: Congressional Democrats in Conservative America, 1974-1994, now out in paperbackUrsula Hackett, Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, author of America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the StateThe Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming, go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/eventsProducer: Emily Williams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When the media talks about the evangelical vote today, what or to whom are they referring? Who are the people who self-identify in this way? Should we understand them as a group defined by their faith, their style of worship, by distinctive theological positions – or has the term evangelical itself become so politicised that in practice it is now most meaningfully understood as shorthand for a group of mainly white voters characterised by their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights?Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American InstituteGuests: EJ Dionne, is a distinguished journalist and author, political commentator, and longtime op-ed columnist for the Washington Post. He is also a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a government professor at Georgetown University, and co-author of the recent New York Times bestseller One Nation Under Trump, author of ­Souled Out, and Why the Right Went Wrong, among others. His most recent book, released last year, is Code Red: How Progressives And Moderates Can Unite To Save Our Country.David Campbell is the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame and the director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative. His research focuses on civic and political engagement, with particular attention to religion and young people. Campbell's most recent book is Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics (with Geoff Layman and John Green), which received the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Among his other books is American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (with Robert Putnam), winner of the award from the American Political Science Association for the best book on government, politics, or international affairsKristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets. Her most recent book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.ukProducer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AGE OF POLARIZATION ELECTION SPECIAL PART 3: 2008The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid, and presidents sometimes won massive landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently nail-bitingly close. How did this happen? In this special series, we examine the campaigns and characters of the last 30 years and trace the emergence of the partisan alignment and bitter polarisation we see today. In this episode: The Election of 2008. The election of the first black president of the United States, which seemed at the time to be an utterly transformative moment, but which also fuelled deep currents of racial animosity; the success of a Democratic winning coalition that looked quite different from that which had elected previous Democrats.Presenter: Adam SmithGuests:Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston UniversityDan Rowe, Director of Academic Programmes, Rothermere American InstituteThe Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.ukProducer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AGE OF POLARIZATION ELECTION SPECIAL (PART 2)The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid and presidents sometimes won huge landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently nail-bitingly close. How did this happen? In this special series, we'll be examining the campaigns and characters of the last 30 years and tracing the emergence of the partisan alignment and bitter polarisation we see today. In this episode: 2000 – the election in which Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the presidency after the Supreme Court stopped ongoing recounts in Florida and awarded the electoral college votes to the Republican. A tight but relatively bland election campaign was followed by a bitter aftermath, destroying many people's faith in the electoral process, generating surging conspiracy theories – a loss of basic trust that Donald Trump would later exploit.Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American InstituteGuests:Patrick Andelicby of the University of Northumbria, author of Donkey Work: Congressional Democrats in Conservative America, 1974-1994, now out in paperbackUrsula Hackett, Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, author of America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the StateThe Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.ukProducer: Emily Williams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eugene V. Debs is a reminder of the possibility of a different kind of American politics. Five times the Socialist Party's candidate for president in the first two decades of the twentieth century, Debs argued that the promise of America -- the last best hope of earth -- could be fulfilled only through socialism. Debs lived in an era that, like our own, was characterised by dramatic economic dislocation, extremes of wealth and poverty, and high rates of immigration. So what is his legacy, and why does he still matter? Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American InstituteGuests:Michael Kazin, Professor of History U of Georgetown, the author of War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918 (2017), American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (2011),The Life of Wm Jennings Bryan (2006), and most recently What it took to win: A history of the Democratic party (2022).Allison Duerk, Director of the Eugene V. Debs Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana.The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.ukProducer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ELECTION SPECIAL (PART 1)The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid and presidents sometimes won huge landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently nail-bitingly close. How did this happen? In this special series, we'll be examining the campaigns and characters of the last 30 years and tracing the emergence of the partisan alignment and bitter polarisation we see today. We begin in this episode in 1992 – the first post- Cold War election, the first to be won by a Democrat since 76, the passing of a generational torch to the 46-year old Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and the ringing declaration on the right that America was now convulsed in a culture war. Presenter: Adam SmithGuests: Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntingdon Professor of History at Boston UniversityDan Rowe, Director of Academic Programmes, Rothermere American InstituteThe Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.ukProducer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a special 4-part series for The Last Best Hope? will take a deep dive into the 4 key US elections that have shaped the 2024 race:Bill Clinton's generational-shift victory in 1992,the drama of 2000 in which Bush beat Gore even while losing the popular vote,the election of the nation's first black president in 2008,and the norm-shattering rise of reality TV star Donald Trump in 2016 one of the biggest political upsets in US historyWe'll explore the campaigns and the characters and the underlying political dynamics which has created our contemporary age of polarization. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wealthy Americans have always found ways of spending money on political campaigns in the presumed expectation of a return on their investment. But in 2010, the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision ruled that legislation that restricted how much money could be spent on influencing elections was unconstitutional, opening up vast new possibilities for wealthy individuals and corporations to support candidates. The Court's argument was that to stop someone spending as much as they liked to push an agenda or a candidate was a violation of the first amendment right to free speech. The official campaigns still have to be transparent about how much money they're raising and from whom, but there are now effectively no limits at all on what people can spend trying to influence the outcome of an election in indirect ways. That's where so-called “Super PACs” come in (the PACs is an acronym standing for Political Action Committee). It turns out that it's really easy to hide a political donation by giving it a Super PAC rather than directly to a candidate. So the problem today – in the post-Citizens United world -- is not only the amount of money being spent but that we no longer know who's spending it.Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American Institute.Guests:Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Brennan Center fellow and professor of law at Stetson University College of Law, where she teaches courses in election law. Her book Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians Hardcover – published by NYU Press- is out in November.Brody Mullins, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. He spent nearly two decades covering the intersection of business and politics for The Wall Street Journal. He's the co-author of The Wolves of K Street The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big GovernmentThe Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.ukProducer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For as long as there have been elections, there have been those who've refused to trust them. But anxiety about elections has peaked at particular moments in American history – in the run-up the Civil War, in the late nineteenth century, in the Civil Rights era, and again today. All periods when sections of the population became convinced that the rules were being bent in ways that robbed ordinary Americans of their political power – by new immigrants, African Americans, or liberal elites. At each moment of anxiety, attempts have been made to purify the electoral process, and all have had mixed and unintended consequences. In this episode, Adam discusses the long history of anxiety about election rigging with Frank Towers of the University of Calgary, an expert on electoral history, and Sarah Henry, the Chief Curator of the Museum of the City of New York, with whom Adam discussed a curious glass ballot box.Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith. The Last Best Hope? podcast is a production of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1787, the year of the Constitutional Convention, Thomas Jefferson wrote that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”. Easy for him to say – but in reality, US presidents and the press have always been locked in an embrace fusing mutual respect and mistrust, cosiness and outright conflict. Both feed off each other, but who's in charge? But who has the power in that relationship? How does it work and how has it changed? From Woodrow Wilson, the first president to hold proper press conferences, to the present day, this is a story of how presidents sought to project themselves as presidential, using charm, threats and distraction techniques. Adam talks to Kathryn McGarr, author of City of Newsmen: Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington. And to Nick Bryant, former BBC correspondent in the US and author of multiple books including The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with itself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the heart of the "promise" of the American Revolution and the new republic's claim to be the last, best hope of earth, is the assertion in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal". How did Black Americans react to the Declaration? How did they seek to shape the character of the new Republic? And what was the relationship between the Black struggle for freedom and equality and the American Revolution? To examine this once-hidden history of Black Americans in the founding era, Adam is joined by Professor James Basker, the President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College. Jim is the editor, with Nicole Seary, of a remarkable new collection published by the Library of America called “Black Writers of the Founding Era” which contains texts – most previously unpublished – by more than 120 Black Americans.Readings in this episode were performed by Chelsi Campbell and Darius Jackson. Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Forty years ago, a twinkly-eyed incumbent president ran for re-election despite concerns about his age. He did so by running a campaign steeped in the idea that America was the last, best hope of earth. Ronald Reagan was no Joe Biden, and no one today expects a landslide victory. Yet there are echoes in today's divided politics in the 1984 election, especially within the Democratic Party, which, back then, just as now, was struggling to keep together its warring constituencies. And might there be lessons for today's fractious politics from Reagan's famous campaign ad, "It's morning again in America"? Adam talks to Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor at Boston University who was the Harmsworth Professor of American history at Oxford last year and the author of many books on twentieth-century America including a forthcoming volume of the Oxford History of the United States – and Dan Rowe, lecturer in American history at the Rothermere American Institute and the author of the forthcoming, State of Development: Preserving the American Economic Century in an Era of Anxious Capitalism to be published by Columbia University Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cricket was once the most popular summer game in the United States – the first ever international match was played not, as you might expect between England and one of its colonies, but between Canada and the United States, in 1844. The first overseas England tour was to the US in 1859. The professional players earned the unheard-of sum of 90 pounds – America then, just as now, was an El Dorado of sporting riches. Yet just ten years later, after four years of civil war and the rebirth of a newly consolidated United States, the new sport of baseball had all but erased cricket from the New York sporting press. The prize money and betting markets that were once drawn to the cricket field now turned to the baseball diamond. As one old American cricketer sadly observed in his memoirs, “We had a large number of good young men playing the game up to the time when the war fever took hold of them. When hostility between North and South broke out, away went our players to the front and the cricket field was deserted. Those that returned from the war never took up the game again.” So, what went wrong? How can we explain the strange death of American cricket, and how should we explain its present-day partial revival? Adam talks to Ed Smith, former England cricketer and an award-winning journalist and to Joe Lynn Curator at The C. Christopher Morris Cricket Library at Haverford College. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Presidential primaries – the circus that has traditionally wended its way from Iowa to New Hampshire and beyond every four years -- is one of the most distinctive features of American political life. From the insurgent campaigns of Jimmy Carter in 1976 to Barack Obama in 2008 and even Donald Trump in 2016, primaries have enabled the rise of politicians who could never have succeeded under the old boss-controlled system. US political parties are private organisations albeit without the formal membership of parties in other countries, yet their candidate nomination process is regulated by state law. So, how, why, and when did US political parties come to choose their presidential candidates in this way? How have primaries shaped elections and the trajectory of politics? And in a year in which both parties appear set to nominate unpopular candidates, does this reflect the failure of this system for presidential candidate selection? Adam talks about these issues with the leading historian of modern US politics, Professor Julian Zelizer of Princeton University, a CNN contributor and author or editor of fifteen books on political history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, Mexicans and people from Latin America make up about half of the total immigrant population and Latinos are now the single largest “non-white” block in the electorate – if, that is, they can be considered a coherent “block” at all. In the early years of the twenty-first century one of the axioms of American politics was that the ever-rising share of Latinos in the electorate would deliver Democratic majorities. That's not exactly how things have panned out. So, who are we really talking about when we talk about Latino voters, what binds these 60 million people who are from, such different experience and such different histories together? How has their vote mattered in the past and how does it matter now? Joining Adam to discuss these issues are Jason Casellas of the University of Houston, currently Winant Professor of American government at Oxford, and Anna Sampaio, Santa Clara University.The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Insitute at the University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1930s America, fascism was on the march – not just right-wing politicians who might be pejoratively described like that, but actual fascists who embraced the title. And the core claim they made was that fascism was as American as motherhood, apple pie, and George Washington himself. Yet the US eventually entered the war against Naziism because fascism and Americanism were antithetical. To explore the fraught relationship and enduring appeal of fascist ideas in America, Adam talks to Sarah Churchwell, author of Behold America: A History of America First, and Will Hitchcock, host of the Democracy in Danger podcast who's working on a book on the fascist threat and America's path to World War II.The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Insitute at the University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first episode of Series 11 of The Last Best Hope drops on Wednesday January 24. We discuss the history and appeal of Fascism in the United States, the power of Latino voters, the history of presidential primaries and the strange death and rebirth of American cricket. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two hundred and Fifty years ago, a group of men boarded three ships in Boston harbour and dumped their cargo of East Indian Company tea overboard. It was a dramatic defiance of the royal government in Massachusetts and of ministers in London who had levied a duty on the tea. Within eighteen months, the revolt against taxes imposed by a distant and unresponsive government had spiralled into armed rebellion. What is the long-term legacy for American political culture of this mass destruction of private property? Joining Adam to discuss the events originally known as "the destruction of the tea" and later re-named the "Tea Party", are acclaimed historian Benjamin Carp and Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. It was quickly mythologised as an end-of-innocence moment, the death of "Camelot". It is natural to believe that big events must have big causes. Could such a shattering, shocking event really have been triggered--figuratively as well as literally--by one troubled man? The historians Phil Tinline and Steve Gillon join Adam to discuss how the assassination spawned the mother of all conspiracy theories and what that tells us about America.Producer: Emily Williams; Presenter: Adam Smith Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You cannot begin to understand US politics without encountering the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War. On the surface, the Amendment seems straightforward: it guarantees the equal rights of citizens. But does that mean that race cannot be taken into account even in order to help ensure equality? In his concurring opinion in the affirmative action cases this year, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to create a “colorblind” constitution. Any policy that took race into account – even if well-intentioned – was therefore unconstitutional. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Jackson took a very different view, arguing that the 14th Amendment justified programmes that gave Black people the leg up they needed to be truly equal. As so often in America, an argument about current politics is also an argument about history. Adam is joined by Professor Liz Varon, this year's Harmsworth Visiting Professor at Oxford, and Emily Bazelon, staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest.The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Insitute at the University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1963, the historian Richard Hofstadter gave a famous lecture at Oxford (later an essay in Harper's) arguing that a “paranoid style” was a recurrent strain in American politics. Hofstadter cited examples ranging from the Anti-Masons of the 1830s to MCarthyism. Today, pundits often turn to the concept of a “paranoid style” when trying to explain Trumpism. Why has Hofstadter's idea been so influential? And does it really explain anything at all? Adam discusses these questions with Nick Witham, the author of Popularizing the Past, a brilliant new study of Cold War-era historians who shaped an understanding of American history far beyond the groves of academia. The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Half a million Northumbrians, the proud people of the English-Scottish border region, settled in the Appalachian mountains in the eighteenth century. And they left their mark in the song, speech and maybe even politics. Geordie culture: the often overlooked element in the forging of the American South. Adam talks to Dan Jackson, author of The Northumbrians: Northeast England and its People, and Ted Olson, Professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is one of America's most powerful founding myths – the pilgrims on an errand into the wilderness to create a new model society– “we shall be like a city upon the hill,” Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Winthrop was supposed to have said in 1630, “the eyes of the world upon us”. Separated, yet visible – just like the ark, the responsibilities of such a community were awesome, the prospect of failure terrifying. What does the enduring power of this phrase tell us about American political culture? Adam is joined by Sam Haselby, a historian of religion and American nationalism, and senior editor at Aeon, and David Frum, Atlantic columnist, senior editor at Atlantic, and former speechwriter for George W. Bush. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does the United States' support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion tell us about the state of America today? Former President Trump, who has a long track record of admiring Vladimir Putin, boasts he could end the war in a day, presumably not in a manner that would satisfy the Ukrainians. President Biden, and many Republican leaders, think that if America doesn't stand firm in opposition to militarised autocracy, then who will? Is this the latest manifestation of an old tension between a vision of America as engaged in the World, as “the last Best Hope” – or as a citadel apart from the world, the debate that roiled the US after the First World War? A debate about whether American freedom is best preserved by being isolated or involved? Adam talks to Phillips O'Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews, one of the most influential analysts of the Russian invasion, and Julie Norman, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for US Politics at UCL. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The country is deeply polarised. Each party believes the other not just to be wrong on public policy questions but a profound threat to the nation. At stake are the most fundamental of questions about the values that underpin society. The US today? But also the US in the 1850s. Culture Wars are nothing new. In this episode Adam talks to two historians who have broken the mould of how to think about the Civil War era by recognising how cultural issues like gender could shape every other political issue: Lauren Haumesser, author of The Democratic Collapse: How Gender Politics Broke a Party and a Nation, 1856-1861, and Mark Power Smith, a Research Fellow at the RAI, and the author of Young America: The Transformation of Nationalism before the Civil War. So, how do culture wars start, why are they fought... and how do they end? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1968, an elderly Democrat President, with major legislative achievements behind him, who had served as Vice President to younger, more charismatic man, decided he could not win a second election. What lessons are there for Joe Biden from the troubled, truncated presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson? Adam talks to Kevin Kruse, the eminent Princeton historian, author of many books on postwar US political history, including most recently Myth America and Mark Lawrence, the Director of the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, and author of The End of Ambition: The US and the Third World. Together they discuss how LBJ's legacy should be assessed today, and why he decided -- unlike President Biden -- not to seek a second full term. Leave us your best reviews wherever you get your podcast and please subscribe for more forward-thinking discussions of the American past. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The speech that triggered the Civil War? In a speech in the State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln warned that a "house divided against itself cannot stand" and that the nation, like a house divided, could not remain "half slave and half free" but would have to become all one thing or all the other. The crisis had arrived; the choice was between complete freedom and complete slavery. Why did Lincoln say this, and what were the consequences? Adam travels to Springfield to find out. Featuring Professor Graham Peck, Distinguished Professor of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and Christian McWhirter, Lincoln Historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is gun control so hard to accomplish in American politics, despite the number of mass shootings now averaging one a week? Adam talks to Saul Cornell, the leading historian of the Second Amendment, about how the Constitution shapes the politics and culture of guns in the United States. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the 1853, the closed society of Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate was suddenly confronted by the naval reach of the “last best hope of earth” – Commodore Perry's naval expedition to “open up” Japan to American trade. The Americans were, of course, as alien to the Japanese as the Japanese were, to the Americans. Adam talks to historians Brian Rouleau and Robert Hellyer about how each side saw the other, and what happened next. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is Gettysburg the Civil War battle that everyone remembers? How did it come to be seen as the “turning point” of the war? Adam goes to the battlefield to find out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is conventional to say that the US is more polarised now than ever before – at least since the Civil War. But intense partisanship has been a feature of American politics since the Revolution. So what is different about polarisation today? And if there is a “cold civil war” in America at the moment, how will it end? Adam talks about this with the political scientist James Morone, one of the shrewdest observers of America's ever-divided soul. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is 'fake news' new? Or have we always lived in a world of 'alternative facts'? Adam talks to John Maxwell Hamilton, who has written a book arguing that government propaganda started not in the age of social media or Donald Trump but with American entry into the First World War in 1917. Also joining Adam at the British Library's Breaking the News exhibition are curator Tamara Tubb and Professor Jo Fox from the University of London and one of the world's leading historians of propaganda. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the deaths of over one million Americans to date. How have people memorialised their dead through grassroots memorials and how do we memorialise something that has affected different groups of people in vastly unequal ways? Should there be a national COVID memorial in the US and what form would it take? In this episode, RAI Fellow Dr Alice Kelly speaks to Professor Marianne Hirsch and Professor James Young about the challenges of a national memorial, the idea of ‘reparative memory', and how we remember separately and together.

In Manchester on new year's eve 1862, thousands turned out for a public meeting to congratulate President Abraham Lincoln for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. What motivated these people to come along on a wet Wednesday night to listen to fiery speeches about a foreign war? Especially since the most obvious impact of the American Civil War on Lancashire was that the supply of raw cotton was cut off – the so-called ‘cotton famine' – causing huge economic distress in the textile mill towns. The answer seems to lie in the faith that – somehow – the US represented the last, best hope of earth. Even to people in Lancashire. In this episode, Adam talks to David Brown of the University of Manchester and Richard Blackett of Vanderbilt, to find out about the impact of the cotton famine and what it tells us about the meaning of America in mid-Victorian Britain. 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is simultaneously the most American and the most 'un-American' of projects. Out of the intense religious revival of the 'burned-over district' of New York in the 1820s, "Mormonism" made the astonishing claim that the Risen Christ had literally walked on American soil. They were thus the first truly homegrown American religious movement even as they were reviled for being an alien threat to the Republic. In this episode, Adam talks to Laurie Maffly-Kipp and Rick Turley to find out how Mormonism related to the American nation, why they attracted so much opprobrium, and why, against all the odds, they succeeded. 

Has the Russian invasion of Ukraine restored America's role as the leader of the 'free world'? What are the challenges for US diplomats and politicians in trying to advance American interests while also speaking about universal values like democracy? In this episode, Adam explores these issues with  Ambassador Philip T. Reeker, who served as the chargé d'affaires at the US Embassy in London. Reeker was present when the Berlin Wall came down, and his career -- mostly in Europe -- has spanned the post-Cold War decades. As the Russian tanks rolled into a European country in 2022, did he feel that the world has come full circle? 

The Dust Bowl: the ecological disaster within the larger disaster of the Great Depression. It's a story that generations of Americans have come to know through John Steinbeck's classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath and Dorothea Lange's unforgettable photos of migrant families struggling on the road to make a living in Depression-torn California.  In this episode, Adam talks to two prize-winning historians, Linda Gordon, author of a biography of Dorothea Lange, and Sarah Phillips, an expert on the environment and politics in the twentieth century and asks what the dust bowl tells us about the American Dream. 

The Battle Hymn of the Republic is one of the most recognisable songs in the world. Easy to sing, and to march to, its words are stirring and optimistic, and filled with vivid images: trumpets that never call retreat, watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, trampling of the grapes of wrath, loosing of the fateful lightning of the terrible swift sword, burnished rows of steel, lilies in whose beauty Christ was born across the sea. It contains the frisson of redemptive violence, too: as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. It is, in fact, the most perfect musical expression of the idea that America is peculiarly blessed by God -- the last best hope of earth. Adam talks to John Stauffer and Richard Carwardine to find out more about the song's origins.

Was Richard Nixon responsible for the rightward turn of the Republican Party, or was he in fact the “the last liberal Republican”? John R. Price, who worked on social policy in Nixon's White House, has written a book making the case that Nixon has been misunderstood, pointing to plans to reform welfare to introduce something like a universal basic income and expand health insurance. Rick Perlstein, author of four prize-winning books on the rise of the Right is unconvinced. So, was Nixon the first of a new breed of right-wing populist Republicans, or the last of an old liberal tribe?  Adam talks to Rick Perlstein and John Price to find out. 

Billy Graham, with his film star good looks and his baritone voice, seemed to be everywhere in postwar America – the confidante of presidents, and the closest the nation came to having a national pastor.  At a time when we often think of religion as in decline in the West, Billy Graham embodied a self-confident, even glamorous Christian faith. He sold Jesus as other people sold vacuum cleaners. And for him, a Christian faith fed the wells of his boundless patriotism and anti-communism. So who was Billy Graham and how should we assess his legacy? In this episode, Adam talks to Uta Balbier and Grant Wacker to find out. 

How did the Declaration of Independence come to be the signature document of the American nation? What was its role in forging Americans' conception of themselves as somehow exceptional – the last best hope of earth? Adam talks to Professor Patrick Griffin to find out how a manifesto signed by rebellious colonists --most of them doing so several weeks after July 4 -- somehow became a pseudo-sacred text.

Since the founding of the United States, Americans have been arguing about the correct balance of power between the federal government and the governments of the individual states. Many today still invoke the idea of 'states' rights' as they claim that state governments should retain exclusive power over numerous aspects of public policy, from gun control, to same-sex marriage, to healthcare. The call for 'states' rights' has also infiltrated the bitter debate over abortion and reproductive healthcare in twenty-first century America. In this episode, guest presenter Grace Mallon talks to Gary Gerstle (Cambridge) and Mary Ziegler (Florida State) about where the call for 'states' rights' came from, why it persists, and how the activities of the state governments continue to shape American lives today. The Producer is Emily Williams.

From the 1980s until quite recently, the mood music of American politics was to “roll back” the public programmes created during Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Now, taxes and spending are rising and the New Deal – maybe in the guise of the “Green New Deal” – is cool again. Maybe government is seen, once again, as the solution to our problems rather than the problem itself. And yet polls show that faith in government remains low while vicious polarisation stymies any 1930s-style attempt to use government to bring the country together. So, can government once again be the solution? Adam discusses these issues with Eric Rauchway and Sid Milkis. The Producer is Emily Williams

The American Civil War did not end ambiguously – it ended in complete military defeat for the South. And yet for a century and a half, it is the losers – the men who took up arms against the United States to defend the cause of human enslavement – were honoured as American heroes. None more so than Robert E. Lee. Now the immense statue of Lee that stood on Monument Avenue in Richmond has been removed. Why now? And why was it there so long? Adam talks to Ty Seidule, Emeritus Professor of History at West Point, retired Brigadier General in the US Army, about what Lee meant to him as a white boy growing up in Virginia -- and what Lee means to him now.  

The shocking attacks of September 11, 2001, were one of those "wake up" moments for the US, raising troubling questions about the nation's place in the world, how it could defend itself and what kind of a country it wanted to be. Looking back with Adam at how 9/11 changed America are Prof Nazita Lajevardi (Michigan State and Oxford), an expert in the experiences of the Muslim American community, and Prof Peter Feaver (Duke), who worked on the national security council staff in the Bush White House. 

At the close of the First World War, the U.S. Government gave the American people a choice unlike that of any other nation: to leave their dead loved ones where they fell, or repatriate them to the US for burial at home. Of the 116 000 dead, over 45 000 families made the choice to bring their dead home. In this episode, RAI Fellow Dr. Alice Kelly speaks to Dr. Lisa Budreau, Kevin Fitzpatrick and Professor Steven Trout about how and why the Americans did this. What impact did this homecoming have on the ways Americans remember the First World War today? Is WWI really a ‘forgotten' war in the US?

Why does Joe Biden often refer to his mother's Irish ancestry but not his father's English roots? Why does being "Irish" in America have such cachet? In this episode, Adam talks to Professors Kevin Kenny of New York University and David Gleeson from Northumbria University to explore the complex history of Irishness in American culture. From the "wild Irish" of the southern backcountry, through to the political fixers of Tammany Hall and the challenges that John F. Kennedy's (Irish) Catholicism caused him, Adam and his guests talk about how a community that was once so reviled came to embody key aspects of what it means to be an American. 

Has the "American Dream" died? If the "dream" is one of a confident expectation of increasing affluence across generations, then perhaps it has. While politicians in both parties talk about a crisis of the "middle class", young people in America now find it harder to get on the property ladder, to go to College, and even to make ends meet week by week, without falling into a debt trap. Adam talks to Devin Fergus, author of "Land of the Fee," and  Jacob Hacker, co-author of  Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. 

What are we to make of the most famous of American Paradoxes: that Thomas Jefferson, who claimed as a "self-evident truth" the principle that "all men are created equal" was a slaveholder? In this episode, Adam discusses this problem with Pullitzer prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed.  With the US undergoing one of the most profound racial reckonings for decades, how should the morally ambiguous legacy of the Founders be understood?