It’s Christmas time and this week we’re resharing the original RTN Christmas Classic! Christmas expert James Cooper joins Bob and Ben to explain how Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and other Christmas traditions made their way into popular culture. He also shares stories of lesser known traditions, such as setting fire to the giant Swedish straw goat known as the Gävlebocken! You can find out more about the history of Santa Claus and Christmas at James Cooper’s website WhyChristmas.com This is a r...
Dec 23, 2024•32 min
Dr. Eric Smoodin , film historian at the University of California- Davis and author of Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity and American Film Studies, 1930-1960 , joins Bob and Ben for the history of the people, the industry, and law that made Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s A Wonderful Life into one of America’s quintessential Christmas films. This is a rebroadcast of episode 292 which originally aired on December 11, 2023. This reair was edited by Ben Sawyer....
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr 6 min
Journalist Michael Tackett joins Ben & Bob to discuss his new book The Price of Power: How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America and Lost his Party (Simon & Schuster, 2024). Tackett, who wrote the biography with McConnell’s consent, was granted unprecedented access to McConnell’s vast personal archives, his staff, and even the Senator himself, who sat for about 50 hours of interviews. If you’ve ever wondered how Mitch McConnell rose to power, how he's stayed there despite ...
Dec 09, 2024•53 min•Ep. 322
Mark McKinnon is former chief media advisor to George W. Bush & John McCain, cocreator of Showtime’s The Circus , and current writer at Vanity Fair . In this episode, he joins Ben & Bob to recap the 2024 election and what they think might come next. Click here to read Mark’s “An Open Letter to My Daughter,” published November 6, 2024 in Vanity Fair. This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer....
Dec 03, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 321
James Armistead Lafayette lived a remarkable life. After being granted permission by his enslaver to enlist in the cause, James joined up with the Marquis de Lafayette and served as one of the most important spies in the Revolutionary war. After many years of petitioning for his freedom, James eventually gained his freedom and officially changed his last name to Lafayette after the Frenchman with which he served and who later petitioned Congress for James’ freedom. In this episode, we learn more...
Nov 18, 2024•55 min•Ep. 320
Did you know that Woodrow Wilson didn’t have a regular job until he was 28 years old? Or that he didn’t complete all the requirements for a PhD? After retiring from politics in 2009, former Congressman and Securities & Exchange Commission Chair Christopher Cox decided to turn to history. The result is his new book, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn , which gives special attention to Wilson's views on race and women's rights, presenting the 28thPresident as “a man superbly unsuited to the m...
Nov 11, 2024•51 min•Ep. 319
Most Americans are aware of Colombia’s role in the international drug trade, but we know less about the role that Americans played in the story as consumers, smuggling pioneers, and practitioners of a foreign policy that facilitated the rise of Colombian drug production. In this episode, journalist and historian Lina Britto shares the fascinating story of how Colombia emerged as a major supplier of drugs to American consumers and how this relationship affected people in both countries. She also ...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 318
US immigration policy has become one of the most contentious issues in American politics, but there is one point on which most of us agree: our immigration policy is broken. And while the sheer number of interests involved mean that an easy fix is unlikely, the best place to start is with a sound understanding of how we got the immigration system we have today. As a historian of immigration who currently serves as Director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, Yael Schacher has ...
Oct 28, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 317
It’s flu season, so this week on the show, we’re bringing you something seasonal: a history of epidemics in two parts. In part 1, we talk about the 1918 influenza outbreak with John Barry, author of the NY Times Best-seller Seller The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (Penguin, 2005). And in part 2 we dig into the history of infectious disease with epidemiologist Erin Welsh, co-host of This Podcast Will Kill You . This episode is a supercut of #120 The History of In...
Oct 21, 2024•56 min
The Constitution empowers the electoral college to select the President, but the process for counting electors’ votes remains in the hands of Congress. In this episode, Constitutional Law Professor Edward Foley explains the origins of the electoral college, how and why the 12th Amendment changed the process for electing Presidents, and the concerns that led Congress to codify the procedure for counting electors’ votes in 1887. Edward also offers some specific ways that updating the Electoral Cou...
Oct 14, 2024•53 min
Most accounts of women in mid-20th century American politics highlight trailblazers such as Frances Perkins or the handful of women elected to Congress in those years. But women’s participation in politics- both as voters and as party activists- was far more significant than most Americans realize, elevating a group of white middle-class women into positions of influence over Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower. Melissa Blair joins Ben & Bob to talk about how and why thes...
Oct 07, 2024•52 min•Ep. 316
On the surface, the election of 1872 might seem insignificant in US history; Ulysses Grant easily won reelection to the White House and his Republican Party maintained their dominance in both houses of Congress. In the south, however, the violence that followed the election at the state and local level was an ominous sign that the era of Reconstruction might soon be over. And, according to Dana Bash and her co-author David Fischer, nowhere saw more violence than Louisiana. In this episode, Dana ...
Sep 30, 2024•53 min•Ep. 315
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. Over the next 26 days/330 miles, 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 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 journalis...
Sep 23, 2024•51 min
For a long time, it seemed like not much happened in the 1970s. Today it seems like so much of what’s happening can be traced back to those same years. The 1970s was a pivotal decade in American history. In a ten-year span, the United States admitted defeat in Vietnam, saw a President (and Vice President) resign in shame, and came face to face with its leaders’ abuse of power at home and abroad. At the same time, American citizens directly experienced a score of problems, including “stagflation,...
Sep 16, 2024•53 min
The debates over school curricula, banned books, and what educators can teach in their classes have become increasingly polarizing in recent years, but they are nothing new in the US. For those who researched, wrote and taught about the Soviet Union under Stalin during the Cold War, following the evidence to a conclusion that challenged America’s established narrative could lead to denunciations and accusations of disloyalty. Despite this challenge, a generation of scholars dedicated their profe...
Sep 09, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 314
John Adams’ single term as President has long been cast as a low point in his political career, but Lindsay Chervinsky sees it differently. "George Washington created the Presidency,” she writes in her new book Making the Presidency, “but John Adams defined it.” In this episode, Lindsay joins us to share why she sees Adams as a crucial figure in transforming an office that had been established for, and created by, George Washington, into a position with the customs and practices that could be pa...
Sep 02, 2024•55 min•Ep. 313
The 2024 Presidential election is in full swing and so is the parade of personal attacks, appeals to emotion and (most important for us) grandiose and unsubstantiated claims about history. And of the many statements that fall in that last category, one stands out as both exceptionally ridiculous and a perfect setup to connect today’s politics to the past: Donald Trump’s claim that Kamala Harris is “considered the worst Vice President in history.” Much like Trump himself, who followed by saying “...
Aug 26, 2024•58 min•Ep. 312
With a sitting VP running for President for the first time since Al Gore’s failed bid for the White House in 2000, there’s been a lot of talk about the role the VP plays in government, the impact a VP pick has on a Presidential campaign, and just how much Kamala Harris’ record as VP/relationship to President Joe Biden can show us about her own agenda, should she win the White House. So today we begin a three-episode run focused on the Vice Presidency and those who have held the office with a co...
Aug 19, 2024•55 min
On August 15th, 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette returned to the United States for a grand farewell tour. It was his first visit since leaving the US in the late 1780s. The tour was a unifying moment for a deeply divided country. In the wake of a crippling economic downturn, and a fracturing over the Missouri question and the issue of slavery, the nation was in the midst of a bitter Presidential election. The first without a political or military hero of the American Revolution on the ballot. Lafa...
Aug 12, 2024•51 min•Ep. 311
Journalist David Menconi has documented the people and sounds of North Carolina’s music scene for almost three decades. In this episode, Ben and guest co-host Dolph Ramseur speak with David about his book Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk , and how the music of “The Old North State” is both reflected in, and a reflection of, its people. David Menconi spent 28 years writing for the Raleigh News & Ob...
Aug 05, 2024•50 min
The Stone Pony and its hometown of Asbury Park, New Jersey are iconic settings in the story of some of America’s greatest rock musicians, including Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt, and Southside Johnny Lyon. The Pony’s path from high-risk passion project to iconic venue was, however, anything but direct; from its founding in 1974, the club was caught in the greater forces at work in late-20th century America. So how did the Stone Pony thrive when so many other venues closed? And what set Asb...
Jul 29, 2024•52 min•Ep. 310
Joe Biden has decided to decline the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 2024 so today we take a look back at Biden’s path to seek the nomination in 2020 and Ben shares his thoughts on why July 21, 2024 might be the day that secures Biden’s legacy in American history. Our conversation with Robert Costa on his book Peril , which he co-authored with Robert Woodward, originally aired as RTN episode 213 on November 15, 2021. This episode includes an edited version of that conversation with a...
Jul 22, 2024•58 min
When the Erie Canal opened in the 1820s, it brought with it an industrial system that radically transformed the daily lives of the American farmers who lived in the region. Out of this disruption came some of America’s earliest labor actions, the rise of new Christian sects, and America’s first daredevil, Sam Patch, who dazzled the masses and offended the powers that be simply by jumping off higher and higher things into water. Why did Sam Patch become a national figure whose actions drew acclai...
Jul 15, 2024•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 309
Patricia O’Toole’s The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made (Simon & Schuster, 2018) examines the life of a President whose policy was guided by his personal sense of morality. From today’s perspective, Woodrow Wilson’s time in the White House (1913-1921) seems full of contradictions. He supported a constitutional amendment to ensure women’s suffrage, but oversaw the re-segregation of America’s civil service. He championed national self-determination for the people of Europe, but r...
Jul 08, 2024•53 min
On July 4th, we celebrate American Independence. But, as Ben argues in his new intro to this episode, the real gift of the founding generation was more than that: it’s the inheritance of the revolution. George Washington is one of the most revered figures in American history. As Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, Washington led his troops to one of the most unlikely and world-shaking victories in modern history, and his selection as President of both the Constitutional Convention and th...
Jul 01, 2024•35 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...
Jun 24, 2024•43 min
The American Civil War and the end of slavery in the US may seem like one and the same from our modern perspective, but for those living through the conflict, the abolition of human bondage was anything but certain. Even into the last days of the war, slave traders in Confederate-held cities continued to auction off human beings, realizing handsome profits as they imposed violence and family separation on their subjects. In his new book, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South , ...
Jun 17, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 308
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 10, 2024•52 min
In this episode, music writer Michaelangelo Matos joins Bob and Ben to discuss why 1984 was a pivotal year in music history. Michaelangelo also shares why he loves books about a single year. Michaelangelos’ book, Can't Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop's Blockbuster Year (Hachette Books) was selected as a Rolling Stone-Kirkus Best Music Book of 2020. You can follow him on substack at @michaelangelomatos. Love a good trivia night? Want to support The Road to Now? You can do both at the same time by ...
Jun 03, 2024•50 min
We guarantee you will feel better after listening to the Road to Now this week. We are joined by world-renowned soprano and arts/health advocate Renée Fleming and neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist and the best sell author of This is Your Brain on Music, Dan Levitin. We are discussing Renée’s new book Music and Mind about how to harness the arts to improve health and wellness. The book is a collection of essays from leading Doctors, scientists, researchers, as well as artists Yo-Yo-Ma, Rhian...
May 27, 2024•49 min•Ep. 307
