Are We Reliving the 1850s?
The violent decade before the Civil War serves as a warning about the perils of political polarization and the ways we may rationalize violence when it fits our purposes. Americans in 2021 are not car...
29 Jul 202132min
Religion and the American Revolution
Few aspects of the American Revolution are as misunderstood as the role of religion. Current debates usually focus on whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation and, if true, what tha...
27 Jul 202134min
Understanding Populism
Similar to fascism or socialism, the political ideology of populism has meant different things to different people at different times in history. Figures as diverse as Huey Long, William Jennings Brya...
22 Jul 202132min
Vietnam Redux
If a key lesson of the Vietnam War was the United States should avoid fighting guerrilla wars in faraway countries of little strategic importance, whose people, histories, and cultures we do not under...
20 Jul 202140min
Violence of the American Revolution
The date upon which Americans celebrate their nation's independence helps explain a curious act of forgetting, a whitewashing of a complicated past in favor of a mythic narrative of heroism and unity....
15 Jul 202144min
Emulating Mao
As the Chinese Communist Party marks its 100th anniversary, its leaders are using history to explain where the nation has been and where it intends to go. President Xi Jinping, eager to consolidate hi...
13 Jul 202136min
Black Activism and the Olympics
It is an iconic Olympic moment that resonates in our current climate of racial activism. At the summer games in Mexico City in 1968, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists ...
8 Jul 202142min
The Folly of American Empire
It is time for fresh thinking about America's place in the world and the meaning of national security. As 2021 reaches its midway point, Americans are still clearing the wreckage of the past year -- a...
6 Jul 202139min
