Conversations: Why the Scopes Trial Still Matters Today, w/ Brenda Wineapple

In this episode, we sit down with Brenda Wineapple, acclaimed historian and author of The Impeachers and Ecstatic Nation, to discuss her latest work: Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation. At the center of this riveting new book is the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925, where a Dayton, Tennessee courtroom became the stage for a dramatic clash between science and religion, modernism and fundamentalism, and democracy and mob rule.

Wineapple brings to life the drama, the contradictions, and the enduring stakes of the trial that pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan, turning what was supposed to be a test case into a national spectacle. But she also peels back the mythology to show how much more was at play: race, power, populism, and the meaning of American identity.

We explore what the trial tells us not just about the 1920s, but about our own age of cultural division and constitutional conflict. Is the fight over what we teach in schools ever really about education? And what does it mean to “keep the faith” in a pluralistic democracy?

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