The recent drone strike on Saudi oil fields has implications for the entire world, but we remain uncertain who is responsible for the attack. Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility, but Trump claims it was actually Iran. There’s a lot at stake here, so Ben sat down with his MTSU colleague Sean Foley to learn about the history of the conflict and how that might inform policy moving forward. In the second part of the episode, Bob and Ben talk about Bob’s research and what he’s learned a...
Sep 23, 2019•51 min•Ep. 144
Bob and Ben talk about some of the incredible resources that are now available electronically and how they have opened up new opportunities for historians. Bob talks about how his research on Monsanto, which he’s conducting for his US business history seminar, is adding to his greater project on the history of the Research Triangle Park and Apex, NC. Ben also talks about some of his interesting finds working in Russian archives and how publicly-accessible databases have provided some valuable ma...
Sep 16, 2019•36 min•Ep. 143
Brian Rosenwald joins Ben and Bob to discuss his new book Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took Over A Party That Took Over the United States , which traces the emergence of talk radio as a major powerhouse in shaping the Republican Party. Brian explains how conservative talk radio and hosts such as Rush Limbaugh came to have tremendous influence over the GOP’s policy agenda, ultimately laying the groundwork for Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 Republican Primary. Brian also discusses how...
Sep 09, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 142
The Netflix series The Last Czars and HBO’s Chernobyl have (in very different ways) brought Russian & Soviet history to televisions across the world. In this episode, Ben sits down with fellow Russian historians Philippa Hetherington and Jonathan Waterlow to discuss their opinions on the two series, what they think they got right, and ways that producers and scholars might benefit most from collaboration on future projects. Philippa, who is a featured scholar in The Last Czars , shares her e...
Sep 02, 2019•57 min•Ep. 141
Coca-Cola is one of the most well-known products on planet earth, but did you ever wonder how a brown fizzy drink fueled the rise of a corporate juggernaut? The answer, says Ohio State historian Bartow Elmore, has everything to do with its business structure. In this episode, Bart offers his take on how Coke went from Atlanta soda parlors in the late 19th century to markets across the globe in less than a century, all along reaping tremendous benefits from public infrastructure while passing the...
Aug 26, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 140
Technology is transforming the production & availability of knowledge. Many experts predict AI & nanotechnology will soon bring about a fundamental change in the ways we work, relate to one another, and are known, while skeptics point to the industrial revolution to dismiss these concerns. In this episode Ben speaks with Roy Wyman, who specializes in healthcare law and the relationship of technology to medicine, to find out how recent innovations are already affecting our lives, and wher...
Aug 19, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 139
We make sense of our place in the world through stories. Our history as individuals & communities is always present, but the parts of the story we emphasize, as well as those we forget, are crucial in understanding the world today and in shaping the decisions we make going forward. In this episode, Bob, Ben and professional storyteller Donna Washington speak about the power of story and its potential for helping inspire action in a live forum hosted by National Conference for State Legislatu...
Aug 12, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 138
RTN Theology now is now on its own podcast feed! Subscribe anywhere you get The Road to Now for RTN Theology episodes 12-19 and more! RTN Theology #11 features “America’s Best Theologian” (according to Time Magazine), Stanley Hauerwas. Chris Breslin brings an intimate conversation from Dr. Hauerwas’ office at Duke Divinity School that touches on the recent passing of his friend, Jean Vanier, the life of the church in the era of Trump, and what it means to become people of virtue and character. P...
Jul 29, 2019•1 hr 22 min
Creating games that are both fun and educational takes a lot of work, but Digitalmill’s Ben Sawyer has been doing it successfully for more than two decades. In this episode we speak with Ben about the art of creating serious games and his work on the American Revolution-based game “Revolutionary Choices.” Just to clarify: Yes, there are two Ben Sawyers on this episode. People have confused them before, which is how they met. But we promise you’ll be able to tell them apart on this episode. To fi...
Jul 22, 2019•57 min•Ep. 137
When the city of Apex, NC was founded in 1873, it was little more than a railroad stop with a tiny rural population. In the last half-century, however, the development of the Research Triangle Park has thrust the town into the 21st century with tremendous force, with the population increasing more than tenfold in the last three decades. In spite of all this change, Apex has retained its historic beauty and continues to be a highly-desirable place to live. In this episode, Bob talks about his res...
Jul 15, 2019•40 min•Ep. 136
Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865 marked the end of the American Civil War, but it was just one of many times that officers and soldiers faced the reality of surrender. In fact, throughout the four years of the war, approximately one in four soldiers surrendered to the opposing army. In this episode, David Silkenat explains how looking at surrender as both an experience and a set of codes offers a new and insightful perspective on the Civil War and those who ...
Jul 08, 2019•46 min•Ep. 135
Is the United States an empire? US citizens have struggled with this question for a long time. Though our historical narrative traces our origins to the war for independence against the British Empire, we often forget that the US has presided over territories since the very beginning. Today about 4 million people in the territories of American Samoa, the Northern Marinara Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are subject to the US government, yet cannot vote for President and have...
Jul 01, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 134
RTN Theology now is now on its own podcast feed! Subscribe to RTN Theology anywhere you get The Road to Now for episodes 12-19 and more! This episode of RTN Theology centers on the life, thought, and legacy of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bob Crawford talks with professor Stephen Haynes, author of The Battle for Bonhoeffer about how Bonhoeffer has become a cultural Rorschach test, often coopted and reflecting his interpreters, but also how his life and work can be relevant and transfor...
Jun 24, 2019•1 hr 5 min
This is a rebroadcast of episode #6, which originally aired in July of 2016. In this episode of The Road to Now , we speak with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper about his new memoir The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics and the ways that his peculiar & fascinating life interact with the greater history of our country. Gov. Hickenlooper shares his family history, which he traces back to the earliest settlers of the Pennsylvania colony in the 1680s, and talks about a wide variet...
Jun 21, 2019•45 min
In 2002, Ashley Capps took a gamble- he rented hundreds of acres in rural Tennessee and put on a music festival. Coming on the heels of the infamous Lollapalooza ’99 and an unsuccessful festival at the same site two years earlier, few thought Ashley could pull it off. As you (and the 80,000 people who attended the festival this year) know, Ashley and his partners proved the doubters wrong and created one of the most iconic festivals in modern America. Bob and Ben caught up with Ashley Capps back...
Jun 16, 2019•51 min•Ep. 133
On August 15, 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette arrived in the United States to say farewell to the country whose independence he helped secure more than four decades earlier. Over the next 15 months, Lafayette visited all 24 states, meeting with old friends and attending celebrations hosted by Americans who flocked to see the last-living Major General of the Revolutionary War whose close friendship with George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson Jefferson shaped both the American a...
Jun 10, 2019•52 min•Ep. 132
As the person responsible for documenting the Obama Administration, Pete Souza spent more time with Barack Obama than almost anyone else, which left him with some deep in sights on Obama and the office of the Presidency. In this episode, Pete joins Bob for a conversation about his work as Chief Official White House Photographer, the state of American politics, and the power of photography. Pete’s most recent book, Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents (Little, Brown, & Co, 2018) uses photography t...
Jun 03, 2019•47 min•Ep. 131
Bob speaks with The Washington Post’s Robert Costa about the methods used by reporters covering the White House and Capitol Hill. Costa talks about how journalists build and maintain trust with confidential sources inside of the White House, how an article is constructed when multiple reporters share a byline, and everything else that goes into writing the first draft of history. Bob and Robert also talk about music, Robert’s early years working in the music industry, and their shared love of Ph...
May 28, 2019•59 min•Ep. 130
On May 18 2016, Ben and Bob launched the first three episodes of their new podcast called The Road To Now . One of the guests in those episodes was a young journalist named Matt Negrin, who Bob met during a visit to the set of Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect . In the three years since, Matt Negrin has moved from Bloomberg Politics to Comedy Central, where he is currently Senior Producer at The Daily Show . Even more impressive, Matt has become the all-time record holder for appearances on RTN a...
May 20, 2019•38 min•Ep. 129
In 1776, the US declared independence. Eleven years later, in 1787, delegates from 12 states (we’re looking at YOU Rhode Island) got together in Philadelphia and wrote the Constitution. In between those triumphant moments, there was the Articles of Confederation , that “firm league of friendship” that most Americans probably know primarily as something they had to memorize for a history test. HOWEVER The Articles of Confederation, while certainly not a highlight of the American experiment, expla...
May 06, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 128
RTN Theology now is now on its own podcast feed! Subscribe anywhere you get The Road to Now for RTN Theology episodes 12-19 and more! In this episode of RTN Theology, Bob talks with Christian social ethicist-activist, author, and Professor at Iliff School of Theology, Dr. Miguel De La Torre . Bob and Miguel discuss liberation theology and the connection between the theology shared by slaveholders during the antebellum and Civil War periods with the theology professed by many prominent evangelica...
Apr 29, 2019•37 min
The data collection practices of companies such as facebook, google and amazon have led many Americans to wonder if privacy is dead. Though these companies are relatively new, this is far from the first time that Americans have felt their privacy to be under attack. In this episode, we speak with Vanderbilt University’s Sarah Igo to learn about the ways that Americans have understood privacy from the advent of “instant photography” in the 1890s to the rise of the internet in the 21st century. Dr...
Apr 22, 2019•52 min•Ep. 127
Hidetaka Hirota joins Bob and Ben for a conversation about the history of immigration law in the United States and the ways that government officials have decided who could and could not enter the United States. Hidetaka discusses the creation of Federal immigration law and the ways that looking at state immigration policies in the early to mid-19th century can help us understand the Immigration and Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882. Dr. Hidetaka Hirota is Assistant Professor of History at the Inst...
Apr 08, 2019•48 min•Ep. 126
This episode launched April 1, 2019. It's an April Fools trick, but we hope you enjoy it anyway! Rufus Allan Sevier was born on December 7, 1916 in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. More than a century later Rufus is in incredible health and is one of the few people alive today who vividly remembers life before the Great Depression. His personal story, however, diverges in significant ways from the historical narrative most of us learned in history class, and provides new insights into America...
Apr 01, 2019•25 min
RTN Theology now is now on its own podcast feed! Subscribe anywhere you get The Road to Now for RTN Theology episodes 12-19 and more! Bob speaks with Arizona State University Associate Professor of History Catherine O’Donnell about the prejudice Catholics endured in the years leading up to the American Revolution and how they gained the respect of George Washington as he sought French assistance in the cause. Catherine also discusses her recent work Elizabeth Seton: American Saint (Cornell Unive...
Mar 25, 2019•1 hr 1 min
In 1866, the Fenian Brotherhood, comprised primarily of Irish Civil War veterans, led a series of attacks on Canadian provinces just across the border from the United States. Their goal: seize Canadian territory and exchange it for Irish independence. Similar raids continued until 1871, and although they were ultimately unsuccessful, they are part of a greater story of the American Civil War, Irish Independence, and trans-Atlantic immigration to the United States in the mid-19th Century. In this...
Mar 18, 2019•47 min•Ep. 125
Amy Walter has been covering Congress and Congressional races since the early 1990s. In this episode, Amy joins Bob to talk about the political issues and strategies that took us from the era of Bill Clinton & Newt Gingrich to today, the reasons that modern politics is so divisive, and the potential coalitions that could impact the 2020 elections and beyond. Bob and then follow up with a conversation about what Amy taught them and what they see as the biggest issues that our leaders need to ...
Mar 11, 2019•56 min•Ep. 124
Jakob Lewis knows how to tell a good story. As the host and producer of the podcast Neighbors , Jakob built a nation-wide audience by talking to those around him and turning them into compelling stories that captured the essence of daily life. In his newest venture, Vox Familia , he is taking his skills to help families tell their own stories. In this episode of The Road to Now, Ben sits down with Jakob to talk about what he’s learned about the ways that the personal narrative intersects with th...
Mar 04, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 123
When most of us think of the earth, we imagine going “north” as going “up.” Modern maps, however, obscure many geographic realities, including the existence of an Arctic world, which unites the US, Canada, Russia, Norway, Greenland and other countries into a distinct geographic sphere. In this episode, Bob and Ben are joined by historians Heidi Bohaker and Alison Smith to discuss their work developing a course on the history of the Arctic at the University of Toronto. The conversation covers the...
Feb 25, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 122
RTN Theology now is now on its own podcast feed! Subscribe anywhere you get The Road to Now for RTN Theology episodes 12-19 and more! In this episode of RTN Theology hosts Bob Crawford and Keith Larson share personal reflections on the life of North Carolina 3rd District Congressman Walter B. Jones who passed away on February 10th, 2019. Jones served Eastern North Carolina in Congress and the State Legislature for over 34 years. He became a household name in the run up to the war in Iraq when he...
Feb 18, 2019•52 min
