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 c...
Oct 29, 2021•41 min•Season 5Ep. 1
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 Politic...
Jun 11, 2021•29 min•Season 4Ep. 6
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? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informat...
May 28, 2021•31 min•Season 4Ep. 5
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 Great about the changing image of the US between the 1980s and the present. The two discuss whether America still has the capacity to solve its own problems – or to believe that it can. And Adam asks if the BLM protests have created a new progressive image of a ...
May 21, 2021•37 min•Season 4Ep. 4
The soap opera of Meghan and Harry, the deploying of Prince Philip in America's culture wars: why does the British royal family exerted so strong an appeal in republican America ? This is not a new phenomenon. Queen Victoria's son, later Edward VII, toured America on the eve of the Civil War and was greeted with adulation. What's going on? Adam talks to Arianne Chernock and Frank Prochaska to find out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
May 14, 2021•35 min•Season 4Ep. 3
In 1980, Jimmy Carter's administration leaned on the US Olympic Committee to boycott the Moscow Games. Today, there are calls for the US to once again boycott the Olympics -- this time in Beijing. What are the lessons of the 1980 boycott? Can sport ever be an effective instrument of foreign policy? And does the US any longer have the credibility as the "leader of the free world" to take a stance on human rights. Adam talks to Joe Onek, Deputy Counsel to President Carter who managed the White Hou...
May 07, 2021•24 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale": a soprano who made strong men weep with the beauty of her voice. In this episode, Adam explores the Nightingale's sensational tour of the US in 1850-52. She was described as the "most famous woman in the world" by her promoter, the never-knowingly-unselling impresario P T Barnum. Her reputation for virtue did much to make theatre and performance respectable, but as Lind travelled across America, the country was riven by slavery. How would she navigate those...
Apr 30, 2021•32 min•Season 4Ep. 1
Throughout the Victorian period, Black abolitionists toured the British Isles. In an effort to enlist British support for ending slavery in America--and later to enlist support for black rights--African Americans spoke not just in London or Leeds but in small towns and villages from the north of Scotland to the foot of Snowdonia and beyond. In this episode, Adam talks to Hannah-Rose Murray to ask why they came and how they were received. Abraham Lincoln may have thought America was the "last bes...
Feb 11, 2021•35 min•Season 3Ep. 6
After their own successful secession from the British Empire in the War of Independence, Americans cheered on other plucky nations attempting to wrest themselves from the yoke of others. Whether in Latin America, Hungary, Poland, Ireland or Italy, Americans mostly thought that national self-determination was a good thing. So naturally, when they created the Confederacy, Southerners--some of them at least--hoped that the rest of the world would think them as heroic as Garibaldi. They were to be s...
Feb 04, 2021•33 min•Season 3Ep. 5
In this episode Adam talks to Eric Foner, the pre-eminent historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction, about the resonances of the Reconstruction era in the present day. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the US had to deal with a recalcitrant white population in the South who rejected the legitimacy of the Federal government's attempt to give political rights to Black people and who used political violence to achieve their aims. What lessons are there for the present day in an America that is...
Jan 27, 2021•49 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Adam talks to Mitch Robertson and Kate Guy about Joe Biden's inaugural address and the prospects for his administration. Is this a “new page in America’s story” as Joe Biden says? Adam and guests discuss the new president's appeal to his understanding of the "American tradition" and whether it will work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 24, 2021•55 min•Season 3Ep. 3
When Trump supporters invaded the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2020, in an attempt to prevent the ratification of the election of Joe Biden, the immediate response of many in the American media was that it was "not who we are". But in this episode, Adam talks to Bruce Baker from the University of Newcastle and Grace Mallon from Oxford, who explain that in fact there is a long American tradition of insurrection. When groups of people who feel entitled to be in control feel like they’ve lost control, atte...
Jan 21, 2021•38 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Why did the framers of the American constitution invest the President with so many of the powers and trapping of a king? Why does he have the power to pardon felons (including his friends), to command the army and to veto legislation? More to the point why did the framers end up creating a Presidency that although elected nevertheless wields more power than did King George III, or any British monarch since the reign of James II? Adam talks to Steve Sarson, Professor of American Civilisation at U...
Jan 14, 2021•46 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was an outsized media event. No one in America in the 1850s could avoid knowing something of its characters and themes. It brought into the homes and hearts of millions of Americans a dramatic and heartrending story about an enslaved family. White people who wanted to avoid thinking about the reality of human enslavement found it harder to avoid. Uncle Tom reached places that nothing else had -- but did it really play a role in bringing about the C...
Nov 19, 2020•33 min•Season 2Ep. 6
A week after election day in 2020, Joe Biden has won the election with a margin of at least 5 million votes but President Trump hasn't conceded and may never do so. A defeated incumbent, an election that underlined the deep partisan polarisation of the American nation and a President-Elect who appealed in his acceptance speech to the "better angels" of the country -- quoting, once again, who else but Abraham Lincoln. In this episode, Adam talks to Mitch Robertson and Kate Guy about what the elec...
Nov 10, 2020•48 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In September 1960 Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban revolution and hipster lodestar for the countercultural left visited the belly of the beast, New York City, to attend the UN General Assembly. It was a visit that exposed the contradictions and tensions within the United States' efforts to present itself as the last best hope for the free world at the height of the Cold War. Adam talks to Simon Hall about this extraordinary event and what it tells us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for ...
Nov 05, 2020•37 min•Season 2Ep. 4
In this special episode, Oxford historian Charlotte Moberly tells the story of how the French intellectual and pioneer of second-wave feminism, Simone de Beauvoir was personally and intellectually transformed by her visit to America in 1947. This is the first of a new occasional series of short podcasts exploring individuals' encounters with America -- both the idea and the reality. In this episode Simone de Beauvoir was played by Olivia Marshall. Izzy Collie-Cousins was Janet Flanner, and Alex ...
Oct 27, 2020•19 min•Season 2Ep. 3
We can't imagine a political campaign without music -- whether it's an election rally, a protest movement or a TV ad, music is essential. In this episode, Adam talks to Billy Coleman, author of a recent book about music and politics in the nineteenth century United States and asks him what music brings to politics and what we can learn from it about how politics works. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Oct 15, 2020•31 min•Season 2Ep. 2
In this episode Adam talks to Heather Cox Richardson about how the values the South fought for -- oligarchy, and racial and gender inequality -- outlived the Confederacy. Heather argues that American history can be understood as a conflict between oligarchs and masses. Adam asks her why that is. How does a "democracy" become an oligarchy? And is the politics of today an echo of the politics of 150 years ago? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Oct 07, 2020•41 min•Season 2Ep. 1
"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth" -- Abraham Lincoln's phrase in his message to Congress in December 1862. What did he mean? In this episode, Adam talks to Rachel Shelden of the Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State. They talked about Lincoln, his opposition to slavery, his vastly more complex view of racial equality... and why he coined that memorable phrase. If Lincoln thought America had a "mission", the Last Best Hope? podcast has a mission too: to unde...
Jun 21, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Does America and the world need a new New Deal? If so, what lessons can we learn from how old orthodoxies in economic policy-making were challenged in the interwar period? In this episode, Adam talks to Eric Rauchway about the year 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office and immediately set a course that challenged some of the sacred shibboleths of economic policy-making. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jun 01, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Is a country that’s had a successful revolution doomed to endlessly re-enact it? In this episode, Adam talks to Professor Margaret Weir (Brown University and Oxford) about why anti-lockdown protests take the form they do in America: armed men entering legislatures and the waving of flags with the slogan "Don't Tread on Me". Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 08, 2020•33 min•Season 1Ep. 3
What is the difference between a "crisis" and a "not-crisis"? How do crises happen and how have they shaped history? Adam talks to Jay Sexton of the University of Missouri, author of "A Nation Shaped by Crisis: A New American History" who thinks we're now in a crisis that, unlike previous crises, will leave the United States weaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 02, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Dividing power between the Federal government and the states may have seemed a good idea in theory to the founding fathers but in practice it's led to confusion and conflict. Donald Trump claims that his power is "total". State governors -- and constitutional experts -- beg to differ. In this episode, Adam talks to Grace Mallon of Oxford University, an expert in the reality of Federal-state relations in the early republic who tells us that's it's always been like this. Hosted on Acast. See acast...
May 02, 2020•33 min•Season 1Ep. 2
