Stay ConnectedBob Crawford (The Avett Brothers) & Dr. Ben Sawyer (MTSU History) share conversations with great thinkers from a variety of backgrounds – historians, artists, legal scholars, political figures and more –who help us uncover the many roads that run between past and present.
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Today's Republican party looks a lot different than it did just a few decades ago, but it rests on many of the same organizations and ideologies that formed the modern conservative movement in the 1970s. In this episode, Rick Perlstein joins us for a conversation about his newest book Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976-1980 and how Ronald Reagan, Orrin Hatch and other prominent Republicans were able to harness the social and political forces of the 1970s to form the modern GOP.
Rick Perlstein is the award-winning author of multiple New York Times bestsellers, including Reaganland (Simon & Schuster, 2020), Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Scribner, 2009) and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (Bold Type Books, 2009), as well as a board member at InTheseTimes.com. You can follow him on twitter at @RickPerlstein.
In this conversation we also discussed Rick's recent article "This Is Us: Why the Trump Era Ended in Violence," The New Republic, January 20, 2021.
This is an edited rebroadcast of RTN #199, which originally aired on June 14, 2021. Both the original episode and this rebroadcast were edited by Gary Fletcher.
In 2021, Neil King Jr. threw a few basic items into a backpack and walked from his home in Washington, DC to New York City. Along the way he met new people, uncovered forgotten moments of history, and spent many days thinking about America. In this episode, Neil joins Ben and Bob to discuss his new book, American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal, and the lessons he learned along the way.
Before walking from his house in DC to New York City, Neil King Jr. worked as a journalist for outlets across the globe, including The Tampa Tribune, The Prague Post, and The Wall Street Journal. American Ramble is his first book, but we hope there are many more to come. You can follow Neil on twitter at @NKingofDC.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers' is a historian whose work has shed new light on the roles that women played in American slavery. In this episode, she joins Ben and Bob to share some of the significant findings of her work, the sources she's used to learn more about enslaved people and female slaveowners, and her new project, which reorients our understanding of the British Atlantic slave trade by centering the story on the lives of both free and captive women.
Dr. Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is Associate Professor of History at the University California, Berkeley and the author of the award-winning book They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (Yale University Press, 2019). She is also one of the recipients of the 2023 Dan Davis Prize, which recognizes outstanding scholarship that illuminates the past and seeks to anchor public discourse in a deeper understanding of history.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
For most of us, dust is a surface-level annoyance. For Anita Radini, it is a fountain of information about the past. In this episode, Anita joins us to share the fascinating new details about the lives of Medieval women that she discovered in the tiny remains of dust that collected in their dental plaque, and how her interdisciplinary work in archaeological science and paleoecology is reshaping the way we understand human history.
Dr. Anita Radini is an Assistant Professor at the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, and a recipient of the 2023 Dan David Prize.
The Dan David Prize recognizes outstanding scholarship that illuminates the past and seeks to anchor public discourse in a deeper understanding of history. For more on the prize and the research its funding, visit dandavidprize.org.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
On Thursday, April 13th, the first episode of Bob's new audio documentary Founding Son: John Quincy's America premieres (on all podcast platforms), so Ben & Bob decided to celebrate the occasion by talking Adams' life, his place in American history, and inspiration behind Bob's decision to create the series.
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This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer
On September 11, 2012, al-Qaeda-affiliated militants attacked a US mission in Benghazi, Libya and killed four Americans. That tragic loss of life abroad turned into a political fiasco at home, as the story of the attack became interpreted within the context of a Presidential election and a widening ideological gap between America's two major political parties. In this episode, we speak with Ethan Chorin, who has years of experience on the ground in Libya, was in Benghazi the day of the attack, and whose new book, Benghazi! A New History of the Political Fiasco the Pushed American and its World to the Brink, examines the Benghazi attack and what we might learn from it.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Ken Burns joins Bob and Ben for a conversation about American history and the themes he sees playing out in the US today. Ken shares his process for selecting subjects for his films and explains how his new 3-part film Hemingway (co-directed w/ Lynn Novick) highlights Ernest Hemingway's individual genius while also revealing the universal aspects of life that we all share. We also discuss how our time and place influence the way we view the past, the importance of acknowledging both the light and dark in American history, and why Ken argues that much of life's meaning comes from the struggle.
Ken Burns' new film Hemingway, which he co-directed with Lynn Novick, premieres April 5-7 on PBS. For more on the series visit https://kenburns.com/hemingway/
UNUM is a new site by Ken Burns and PBS that allows users "a new way to explore American history through select scenes from across our over 40 films" with the goal of "providing historical context for the conversations we are having today." You can visit UNUM at: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unum
You can follow Ken Burns on twitter at @KenBurns
This episode is a rebroadcast of RTN #191, which originally aired on February 15, 2021.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
We're happy to share a clip from our friends at Southern Songs and Stories!
This episode of The Road to Now features a clip from Southern Songs and Stories, a podcast hosted by our friend Joe Kendrick at WNCW. Listen after the credits to hear a portion of "The Shelton Laurel Massacre, Part One: The Past That Would not Die." You can hear the full episode on Apple Music, Spotify, or on any podcast player where you get The Road to Now.
The Athletic's Dana O'Neil joins Bob & Ben for a conversation about the history of the NCAA tournament, how college basketball built the fan base it has today, and how rule changes have changed the sport from the 3-point line to the more recent Name, Image & License (NIL) contracts that allow college athletes to receive compensation for playing.
Dana O'Neil is a Senior Writer for The Athletic, and one of the country's foremost experts on college basketball.
You can hear the uncut version of this conversation and many more by supporting us on Patreon. Click here for more info!
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Jimmy Carter only served four years as President (1977-1981) but his approach to foreign policy produced big results, including the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, a strategic nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union (SALT-II), and US formal recognition of the People's Republic of China. In this episode we welcome Nancy Mitchell back to the show to discuss the key moments in Carter's Presidency and how his administration's decisions look from the perspective of 2023.
Dr. Nancy Mitchell is Professor of History at North Carolina State University, where she specializes in the history of US foreign policy. Her most recent book, Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War (Stanford University Press, 2016) won the Douglas Dillon Award in 2016 and the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize in 2017. You can hear our previous conversation w/ Nancy in episode #35 "Reassessing Jimmy Carter" (Dec. 2016).
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Andrew Young was already an iconic civil rights leader and sitting Congressman from Georgia's 5th District when a dark horse candidate named Jimmy Carter asked for his support in the 1976 Presidential election. Young found Carter to be an honest man and spoke highly of him. Carter, in turn, appointed Young as the US Ambassador to the United Nations and tasked him with reshaping American foreign policy.
In this episode, Andrew Young joins Bob for a conversation about his work in the Carter administration, the shared vision of US foreign policy in Africa that strengthened their relationship, and the mutual trust that developed from their time working together.
This conversation was recorded on May 11, 2021 as part of the audio docu-series Concerts of Change: The Soundtrack of Human Rights, which Bob produced with SiriusXM in 2022. You can hear that series on the SiriusXM app and learn more about it in RTN #228.
This episode was edited by Bob Crawford and Ben Sawyer.
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