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How have presidential primaries shaped modern US politics?
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 Ca
How are Latino voters changing America?
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. I
American Fascism
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 motherh
The Destruction of the Tea, 250 Years On.
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 Londo
The Kennedy Assassination and Conspiracy Culture
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
What is a “Colorblind Constitution"?
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 tha
Is there a Paranoid Style in American Politics?
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 th
The Geordie South: How Northumbrians shaped Appalachia
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
A City on a Hill: The exceptional history of a powerful metaphor
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
Was there a Culture War in nineteenth century America?
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 U
Are there lessons for Biden from the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson?
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
Lincoln's "House Divided" speech and the Coming of the Civil War
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
The Second Amendment, with Saul Cornell
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 p
Gettysburg and the "last best hope"
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 https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Polarisation in American History, with James Morone
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 toda
Propaganda and the American Dream
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 Am
The Cotton Famine and the "last best hope"
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 liste
Mormons and the "last best hope"
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 as
The Dust Bowl and the American Dream
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 unforge
The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the "last best hope"
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 hundr
Richard Nixon and the fate of American Liberalism
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 Ni
Billy Graham and the "last best hope"
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 rel
What are "State's Rights"?
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 the
The role of Government and the last best hope of earth
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
The Rise and Fall of Robert E. Lee
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 enslav
How 9/11 changed America
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 ba
Irish Americans and the "last best hope"
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 Gle
The "Crisis" of the Middle Class
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 Am
Thomas Jefferson and the American Paradox, with Annette Gordon-Reed
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 P
Is America no longer the "last best hope"? With Nick Bryant
Has America lost its allure to the rest of the world? Has it lost its confidence, its optimism, its sense of openness? In this episode, Adam talks to Nick Bryant, the BBC correspondent in New York and author of When America Stopped Being Gr
