The Last Best Hope?

Why the Declaration of Independence said what it did, Episode 2

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 06:00:00 GMT

To its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, it was “an expression of the American mind”; to the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, it was "absurd and visionary". The Declaration of Independence, written 250 years ago, is so layered in myth, so foundational to the idea of America as the last best hope of earth, that it is a challenge, now, to put it into its gritty historical context -- a document that served to justify an act of rebellion, to garner support for it by listing grievances, but which also embedded, perhaps inintentionally, some powerful emancipatory claims. In this two-part episode of The Last Best Hope, Adam asks why the Declaration of Independence said what it did and why it mattered.

Contributors: Professor Lige Gould (University of New Hampshire), author of Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire; Professor Steven Sarson (Jean Moulin University Lyon 3) author of The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States; the intellectual historian, biographer of James Harrington, Professor Rachel Hammersley (Newcastle University); Dr Grace Mallon (University of Oxford), Clive Holmes Fellow in History at Lady Margaret Hall; and Bradford Skow, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT, author of American Independence in Verse.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why the Declaration of Independence said what it did, Episode 1

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:08:27 GMT

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can federalism save American liberalism?

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 06:00:00 GMT

For much of the twentieth century, progressives in America wanted to expand the Federal Government. They created regulation, bureaucracy, and agencies capable of managing a complex industrial society. And often state governments were the obstacles they had to flatten – that was most obviously true of the movement for racial equality: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 empowered the Federal government to step in and override the racist laws and practices that state governments implemented or failed to prevent. The working assumption of liberal politicians was that rights should be equally protected everywhere – from women’s access to abortion, to criminal justice, to the right to vote – and that idea even justified Federal government action in areas like education, which were otherwise clearly the preserve of the states.

But today, things look different. The right is in control in Washington; maybe the states and state courts provide alternative pathways for liberals, in the way that they once were for conservatives? Can states not only resist federal power but also pioneer new forms of governance? Adam is joined by Emily Zackin, Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Johns Hopkins and currently the Winant Professor of American Government at Oxford. And by Judge Daniel Korobkin, who sits on the Michigan Court of Appeals.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hillary Rodham Clinton on how America can save itself

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 07:00:00 GMT

Hillary Rodham Clinton has been at the centre of American public life for thirty years. She has exercised more power from more senior positions than any other woman in American history. Clinton has just co-edited a new book Inside the Situation Room: The Theory and Practice of Crisis Decision-making. and in this special episode, she discusses with Adam a key case study in that book -- the raid in which Bin Laden was killed -- and in doing so, reflects on her idea of what America is and can be.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New Series Trailer: What’s Coming Next

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 06:00:00 GMT

In the new series beginning on the 11th of February 2026, Adam speaks to Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her vision of America and its place in the world and considers whether “states’ rights” should now become the battle cry of progressives. And this year of course marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in special two-part documentary, The Last Best Hope explores why the authors chose to use write it in the way they did, and why that matters.

"The Last Best Hope is an absolutely brilliant podcast. Thoughtful, clever, engaging and accessible, Adam Smith always gets the best out of his guests, and I’ve learned an enormous amount from every episode. I love it."

Dominic Sandbrook, Historian and co-host of The Rest is History

“The must-listen US podcast”

Nick Bryant, former BBC Correspondent in New York

The Last Best Hope is a podcast produced by the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. The presenter is Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Politics and Political History, and the Producer is Emily Williams.

For more information about the Rothermere American Institute and our programme of events visit https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/home

The RAI achieves all it does through the generosity of individual benefactors, trusts, and foundations who share the Institute's commitment to world-class research on the United States. If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

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Why the Gettysburg Address Matters, Part 2

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 09:41:44 GMT

It is one of the most famous speeches in the English language and one of the most consequential. In this special two-part documentary, we explore Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address – why he gave it, what it meant, and its impact at the time and ever since. From the rolling fields of Pennsylvania to Parliament Square in London and the dust of Havana, Cuba, Adam Smith follows the path of the Gettysburg Address and asks why it is has mattered.

Contributors: Steve Scafidi, a poet and the author of To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014); Richard Carwardine, Rhodes Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford and author of Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union (Knopf, 2024); Elizabeth Varon, Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and author of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2019); Martin P. Johnson, Associate Professor of History at Miami University in Ohio and author of Writing the Gettysburg Address (University Press of Kansas, 2013); and Dr Jared Peatman, George Washington University, and author of The Long Shadow of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (Illinois University Press, 2013).

Adam's latest book is Gettysburg (Oxford University Press, 2025)

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why the Gettysburg Address Matters, Part 1

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 06:00:00 GMT

Adam's latest book is Gettysburg (Oxford University Press, 2025)

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How Will History Judge Joe Biden?

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 06:00:00 GMT

A year on, what does Trump’s comeback say about Biden’s understanding of the country he led? Was his vision of America already obsolete — a relic of the bipartisan consensus forged in the 1950s when young Joe was coming of age?

In this episode, we trace Biden’s life through the long arc of American politics over the last 80 years, examining the forces that shaped him and the decisions that defined his time in office, his personal story—tragedy, perseverance, and decades of political ambition—and his commitment to a particular vision of America, as the last best hope of earth.

In the end, what do Biden’s undoubted successes and ultimate, era-defining failure tell us about that optimistic, exceptionalist vision of America in which he so passionately believed?

Adam Smith is joined by Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future. And Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University, and pre-eminent scholar of American political history.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Myth of the Frontier

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 06:00:00 GMT

If America is the last, best hope of earth, one reason is the frontier. The frontier has been imagined as the place—or perhaps the process—through which the American character is forged—rugged individualism, the possibility of acquiring land and wealth, where happiness is pursued. For the historian Frederick Jackson Turner in the 1890s, the frontier was what made Americans different. Democracy was not born of a theorists dream, Turner said, nor was freedom something transplanted by Puritans from England, it was forged every time Americans found new frontiers. The frontier gave Americans a restless, nervous energy, a sense of purpose and direction. The frontier was, perhaps above all, a way that Americans, uniquely, could escape the bounds of history, the constraints of resources, of space of land that hampered less favoured nations – it was therefore a way of talking about the future and the endless barrelling forward of their raucous, capitalist, populist society.

But where did the myth of the frontier come from? How does it relate to the reality of western expansion, if it does at all? And what of today? How does the optimistic myth of a frontier as a place of possibility fare in a world of ICE agents and border walls. Rather than the endless expansion promised by the myth of the frontier, is America closing in?

Adam Smith is joined by two great historians: Patrician Nelson Limerick, professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder, one of the founders of the “New Western History” and author of Legacy of Conquest: the unbroken past of the American West. And Greg Grandin, Professor of History at Yale, and the author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2020.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trump’s Second Term Foreign Policy in Historical Context

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Beneath the chaos of Donald Trump’s second term foreign policy—the bluster, bravado, back-handers and backdowns—is there something else going on? Has the United States reached a turning point in its relationship to the rest of the world?

The era in which the United States constructed multilateral alliances to defend western Europe and advance a global free trade agenda appears to be over. Listen to the people around Trump and you will hear them talking in quite different ways – contempt for Western Europe, admiration for the audacity of Putin in reasserting Russia’s regional sphere of influence. It is as if the United States has decided to retrench geopolitically – controlling Greenland, fantasising about annexing Canada, realising total domination of the northern part of the western hemisphere with all its mineral wealth and, with climate change, new strategically vital sea-lanes?

But if this is a new American foreign policy, is it one that has more than an echo of the pre-Second World War past? After all, it was a commonplace of nineteenth-century US politicians to make fiery speeches threatening to annexe Canada, and they actually did annexe half of Mexico and threaten much more.

So, are there ways in which pre-1941 ideas about the US’s role in the world are relevant to understanding the US’s current geopolitical choices? And what does that tell us about the future?

Adam Smith speaks to Daniel Drezner, Distinguished Professor of International Politics and Academic Dean at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University., prolific writer and author, among many other books and article, of The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump teaches us about the modern presidency and to Jay Sexton, President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair of Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri, also a prolific writer, among his influential books is The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth Century America

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Journalism and Democracy: Lessons from Walter Lippmann

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 05:00:00 GMT

A hundred years ago, Walter Lippmann, one of the great analysts of democratic life, wrote that the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in journalism. Press barons, Lippmann feared, were so powerful that government based on the consent of the governed was under threat if unregulated media owners could manufacture consent. If the facts were not being made available to the public, how could the public make proper democratic choices? Today, those words ring as true as they ever did. In place of press barons like William Randolph Hearst are corporations that curry favour with an administration that has no compunction about making regulatory decisions based on who the President thinks are his friends. TV networks remove comedians who offend the President for fear of retribution. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon billionaire owner of the Washington Post, a newspaper that for a while adopted the slogan “democracy dies in darkness”, prevented the Post from endorsing Kamala Harris and subsequently announced that the opinions page would henceforth only carry pieces that supported free markets and personal liberties. And in an age when most people get their news in two-second bites from social media, how can the governed give meaningful consent?

These are of course age-old questions about democracy: what does government of the people, by the people look like? How do we have a functioning democracy if we agree on a common set of facts – and how can journalists do their work if people don’t believe they’re pursuing the truth?

Each generation wrestles with these kinds of questions in new ways, not least in the face of new media technology—whether the spread of the millionaire-owned popular press in the early twentieth century, the rise of radio or cable TV or the internet.

In this episode, we draw on Walter Lippmann’s 20th-century warnings about the vulnerability of democracy to propaganda, misinformation, and public disengagement, to assess the challenges facing journalism in 2025.

Adam Smith speaks to Marty Baron, former Washington Post executive editor between 2013 and 2021 and to Dr Tom Arnold Forster, author of Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography, published by Princeton University Press.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What just happened?

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 12:24:22 GMT

In this special episode of The Last Best Hope, we bring you a recording of a live event at the Rothermere American Institute in Oxford on Thursday, November 7. Adam Smith and guests discussed why the election turned out the way it did.

The panellists are:

Jason Casellas ABC News election decision desk. Jason Casellas is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. He is an expert in Latino politics and has published widely on state and local politics.

Clare Malone New Yorker staff writer. Clare Malone reports on politics, media, and journalism for the New Yorker. She previously covered both the 2016 and 2020 Presidential campaigns as a senior political writer for FiveThirtyEight.

Mike Murphy Republican political strategist and media consultant. Mike Murphy has worked on the presidential campaigns of George H.W. Bush and John McCain. He also co-hosts the popular politics podcast Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod.

Kimberley Johnson John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government. Kimberley Johnson is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and an expert on racial and ethnic, and suburban and urban politics.

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The Age of Polarization Election Special Part 4: 2016

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 10:49:09 GMT

The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid, and presidents sometimes won massive landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently nail-bitingly close. How did this happen? In this special series, we examine the campaigns and characters of the last 30 years and trace the emergence of the partisan alignment and bitter polarisation we see today.

In this episode, the election of 2016. The shocking victory of Donald Trump and the final emergence, perhaps, of a new partisan alignment.

Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American Institute

Guests:

Patrick Andelic of the University of Northumbria, author of Donkey Work: Congressional Democrats in Conservative America, 1974-1994, now out in paperback

Ursula Hackett, Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, author of America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming, go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/events

Producer: Emily Williams.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

God and Trump: Evangelicals and Politics in today's America

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 09:37:52 GMT

When the media talks about the evangelical vote today, what or to whom are they referring? Who are the people who self-identify in this way? Should we understand them as a group defined by their faith, their style of worship, by distinctive theological positions – or has the term evangelical itself become so politicised that in practice it is now most meaningfully understood as shorthand for a group of mainly white voters characterised by their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights?

Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American Institute

Guests:

EJ Dionne, is a distinguished journalist and author, political commentator, and longtime op-ed columnist for the Washington Post. He is also a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a government professor at Georgetown University, and co-author of the recent New York Times bestseller One Nation Under Trump, author of Souled Out, and Why the Right Went Wrong, among others. His most recent book, released last year, is Code Red: How Progressives And Moderates Can Unite To Save Our Country.

David Campbell is the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame and the director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative. His research focuses on civic and political engagement, with particular attention to religion and young people. Campbell’s most recent book is Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics (with Geoff Layman and John Green), which received the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Among his other books is American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (with Robert Putnam), winner of the award from the American Political Science Association for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets. Her most recent book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Age of Polarization Election Special Part 3: 2008

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 12:10:25 GMT

AGE OF POLARIZATION ELECTION SPECIAL PART 3: 2008

In this episode: The Election of 2008. The election of the first black president of the United States, which seemed at the time to be an utterly transformative moment, but which also fuelled deep currents of racial animosity; the success of a Democratic winning coalition that looked quite different from that which had elected previous Democrats.

Presenter: Adam Smith

Guests:

Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University

Dan Rowe, Director of Academic Programmes, Rothermere American Institute

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Age of Polarization Election Special Part 2: 2000

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 05:35:42 GMT

AGE OF POLARIZATION ELECTION SPECIAL (PART 2)

The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid and presidents sometimes won huge landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently nail-bitingly close. How did this happen? In this special series, we’ll be examining the campaigns and characters of the last 30 years and tracing the emergence of the partisan alignment and bitter polarisation we see today.

In this episode: 2000 – the election in which Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the presidency after the Supreme Court stopped ongoing recounts in Florida and awarded the electoral college votes to the Republican. A tight but relatively bland election campaign was followed by a bitter aftermath, destroying many people’s faith in the electoral process, generating surging conspiracy theories – a loss of basic trust that Donald Trump would later exploit.

Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American Institute

Guests:

Patrick Andelicby of the University of Northumbria, author of Donkey Work: Congressional Democrats in Conservative America, 1974-1994, now out in paperback

Ursula Hackett, Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, author of America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eugene V. Debs and America as the last, best hope for socialism?

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 06:33:14 GMT

Eugene V. Debs is a reminder of the possibility of a different kind of American politics. Five times the Socialist Party's candidate for president in the first two decades of the twentieth century, Debs argued that the promise of America -- the last best hope of earth -- could be fulfilled only through socialism. Debs lived in an era that, like our own, was characterised by dramatic economic dislocation, extremes of wealth and poverty, and high rates of immigration. So what is his legacy, and why does he still matter?

Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American Institute

Guests:

Michael Kazin, Professor of History U of Georgetown, the author of War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918 (2017), American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (2011),The Life of Wm Jennings Bryan (2006), and most recently What it took to win: A history of the Democratic party (2022).

Allison Duerk, Director of the Eugene V. Debs Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Age of Polarization Election Special Part 1: 1992

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 06:00:41 GMT

ELECTION SPECIAL (PART 1)

We begin in this episode in 1992 – the first post- Cold War election, the first to be won by a Democrat since 76, the passing of a generational torch to the 46-year old Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and the ringing declaration on the right that America was now convulsed in a culture war.

Presenter: Adam Smith

Guests:

Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University

Dan Rowe, Director of Academic Programmes, Rothermere American Institute

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dark Money: Can billionaires buy elections in America?

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 06:00:09 GMT

Wealthy Americans have always found ways of spending money on political campaigns in the presumed expectation of a return on their investment. But in 2010, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision ruled that legislation that restricted how much money could be spent on influencing elections was unconstitutional, opening up vast new possibilities for wealthy individuals and corporations to support candidates. The Court's argument was that to stop someone spending as much as they liked to push an agenda or a candidate was a violation of the first amendment right to free speech. The official campaigns still have to be transparent about how much money they’re raising and from whom, but there are now effectively no limits at all on what people can spend trying to influence the outcome of an election in indirect ways. That’s where so-called “Super PACs” come in (the PACs is an acronym standing for Political Action Committee). It turns out that it’s really easy to hide a political donation by giving it a Super PAC rather than directly to a candidate. So the problem today – in the post-Citizens United world -- is not only the amount of money being spent but that we no longer know who’s spending it.

Presenter: Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Political History at Oxford and Director of the Rothermere American Institute.

Guests:

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Brennan Center fellow and professor of law at Stetson University College of Law, where she teaches courses in election law. Her book Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians Hardcover – published by NYU Press- is out in November.

Brody Mullins, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. He spent nearly two decades covering the intersection of business and politics for The Wall Street Journal. He’s the co-author of The Wolves of K Street The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rigged! Anxiety about election integrity in America

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 04:11:58 GMT

For as long as there have been elections, there have been those who’ve refused to trust them. But anxiety about elections has peaked at particular moments in American history – in the run-up the Civil War, in the late nineteenth century, in the Civil Rights era, and again today. All periods when sections of the population became convinced that the rules were being bent in ways that robbed ordinary Americans of their political power – by new immigrants, African Americans, or liberal elites. At each moment of anxiety, attempts have been made to purify the electoral process, and all have had mixed and unintended consequences. In this episode, Adam discusses the long history of anxiety about election rigging with Frank Towers of the University of Calgary, an expert on electoral history, and Sarah Henry, the Chief Curator of the Museum of the City of New York, with whom Adam discussed a curious glass ballot box.

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith. The Last Best Hope? podcast is a production of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford.

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Presidents and the Press

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 05:30:59 GMT

In 1787, the year of the Constitutional Convention, Thomas Jefferson wrote that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”. Easy for him to say – but in reality, US presidents and the press have always been locked in an embrace fusing mutual respect and mistrust, cosiness and outright conflict. Both feed off each other, but who’s in charge? But who has the power in that relationship? How does it work and how has it changed? From Woodrow Wilson, the first president to hold proper press conferences, to the present day, this is a story of how presidents sought to project themselves as presidential, using charm, threats and distraction techniques. Adam talks to Kathryn McGarr, author of City of Newsmen: Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington. And to Nick Bryant, former BBC correspondent in the US and author of multiple books including The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with itself.

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The Black Founders, America and the Claim of Equality

Wed, 22 May 2024 06:01:47 GMT

At the heart of the "promise" of the American Revolution and the new republic's claim to be the last, best hope of earth, is the assertion in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal". How did Black Americans react to the Declaration? How did they seek to shape the character of the new Republic? And what was the relationship between the Black struggle for freedom and equality and the American Revolution? To examine this once-hidden history of Black Americans in the founding era, Adam is joined by Professor James Basker, the President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College. Jim is the editor, with Nicole Seary, of a remarkable new collection published by the Library of America called “Black Writers of the Founding Era” which contains texts – most previously unpublished – by more than 120 Black Americans.

Readings in this episode were performed by Chelsi Campbell and Darius Jackson. Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith.

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Morning Again in America: The 1984 Election forty years on.

Wed, 08 May 2024 05:18:06 GMT

Forty years ago, a twinkly-eyed incumbent president ran for re-election despite concerns about his age. He did so by running a campaign steeped in the idea that America was the last, best hope of earth. Ronald Reagan was no Joe Biden, and no one today expects a landslide victory. Yet there are echoes in today's divided politics in the 1984 election, especially within the Democratic Party, which, back then, just as now, was struggling to keep together its warring constituencies. And might there be lessons for today's fractious politics from Reagan's famous campaign ad, "It’s morning again in America"? Adam talks to Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor at Boston University who was the Harmsworth Professor of American history at Oxford last year and the author of many books on twentieth-century America including a forthcoming volume of the Oxford History of the United States – and Dan Rowe, lecturer in American history at the Rothermere American Institute and the author of the forthcoming, State of Development: Preserving the American Economic Century in an Era of Anxious Capitalism to be published by Columbia University Press.

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The strange death and curious rebirth of American cricket

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 07:18:52 GMT

Cricket was once the most popular summer game in the United States – the first ever international match was played not, as you might expect between England and one of its colonies, but between Canada and the United States, in 1844. The first overseas England tour was to the US in 1859. The professional players earned the unheard-of sum of 90 pounds – America then, just as now, was an El Dorado of sporting riches. Yet just ten years later, after four years of civil war and the rebirth of a newly consolidated United States, the new sport of baseball had all but erased cricket from the New York sporting press. The prize money and betting markets that were once drawn to the cricket field now turned to the baseball diamond. As one old American cricketer sadly observed in his memoirs, “We had a large number of good young men playing the game up to the time when the war fever took hold of them. When hostility between North and South broke out, away went our players to the front and the cricket field was deserted. Those that returned from the war never took up the game again.” So, what went wrong? How can we explain the strange death of American cricket, and how should we explain its present-day partial revival? Adam talks to Ed Smith, former England cricketer and an award-winning journalist and to Joe Lynn Curator at The C. Christopher Morris Cricket Library at Haverford College.

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How have presidential primaries shaped modern US politics?

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 05:45:31 GMT

Presidential primaries – the circus that has traditionally wended its way from Iowa to New Hampshire and beyond every four years -- is one of the most distinctive features of American political life. From the insurgent campaigns of Jimmy Carter in 1976 to Barack Obama in 2008 and even Donald Trump in 2016, primaries have enabled the rise of politicians who could never have succeeded under the old boss-controlled system. US political parties are private organisations albeit without the formal membership of parties in other countries, yet their candidate nomination process is regulated by state law. So, how, why, and when did US political parties come to choose their presidential candidates in this way? How have primaries shaped elections and the trajectory of politics? And in a year in which both parties appear set to nominate unpopular candidates, does this reflect the failure of this system for presidential candidate selection? Adam talks about these issues with the leading historian of modern US politics, Professor Julian Zelizer of Princeton University, a CNN contributor and author or editor of fifteen books on political history.

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How are Latino voters changing America?

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 06:00:27 GMT

Today, Mexicans and people from Latin America make up about half of the total immigrant population and Latinos are now the single largest “non-white” block in the electorate – if, that is, they can be considered a coherent “block” at all. In the early years of the twenty-first century one of the axioms of American politics was that the ever-rising share of Latinos in the electorate would deliver Democratic majorities. That’s not exactly how things have panned out. So, who are we really talking about when we talk about Latino voters, what binds these 60 million people who are from, such different experience and such different histories together? How has their vote mattered in the past and how does it matter now? Joining Adam to discuss these issues are Jason Casellas of the University of Houston, currently Winant Professor of American government at Oxford, and Anna Sampaio, Santa Clara University.

The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Insitute at the University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams.

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American Fascism

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 06:33:42 GMT

In 1930s America, fascism was on the march – not just right-wing politicians who might be pejoratively described like that, but actual fascists who embraced the title. And the core claim they made was that fascism was as American as motherhood, apple pie, and George Washington himself. Yet the US eventually entered the war against Naziism because fascism and Americanism were antithetical. To explore the fraught relationship and enduring appeal of fascist ideas in America, Adam talks to Sarah Churchwell, author of Behold America: A History of America First, and Will Hitchcock, host of the Democracy in Danger podcast who’s working on a book on the fascist threat and America’s path to World War II.

The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Insitute at the University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams.

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The Last Best Hope? Season 11 Trailer

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 17:47:25 GMT

The first episode of Series 11 of The Last Best Hope drops on Wednesday January 24. We discuss the history and appeal of Fascism in the United States, the power of Latino voters, the history of presidential primaries and the strange death and rebirth of American cricket.

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The Destruction of the Tea, 250 Years On.

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 07:51:56 GMT

Two hundred and Fifty years ago, a group of men boarded three ships in Boston harbour and dumped their cargo of East Indian Company tea overboard. It was a dramatic defiance of the royal government in Massachusetts and of ministers in London who had levied a duty on the tea. Within eighteen months, the revolt against taxes imposed by a distant and unresponsive government had spiralled into armed rebellion. What is the long-term legacy for American political culture of this mass destruction of private property? Joining Adam to discuss the events originally known as "the destruction of the tea" and later re-named the "Tea Party", are acclaimed historian Benjamin Carp and Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff.

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The Kennedy Assassination and Conspiracy Culture

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 06:41:58 GMT

Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. It was quickly mythologised as an end-of-innocence moment, the death of "Camelot". It is natural to believe that big events must have big causes. Could such a shattering, shocking event really have been triggered--figuratively as well as literally--by one troubled man? The historians Phil Tinline and Steve Gillon join Adam to discuss how the assassination spawned the mother of all conspiracy theories and what that tells us about America.

The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Insitute at the University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams.

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What is a “Colorblind Constitution"?

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 07:34:18 GMT

You cannot begin to understand US politics without encountering the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War. On the surface, the Amendment seems straightforward: it guarantees the equal rights of citizens. But does that mean that race cannot be taken into account even in order to help ensure equality? In his concurring opinion in the affirmative action cases this year, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to create a “colorblind” constitution. Any policy that took race into account – even if well-intentioned – was therefore unconstitutional. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Jackson took a very different view, arguing that the 14th Amendment justified programmes that gave Black people the leg up they needed to be truly equal. As so often in America, an argument about current politics is also an argument about history. Adam is joined by Professor Liz Varon, this year’s Harmsworth Visiting Professor at Oxford, and Emily Bazelon, staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest.

The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Insitute at the University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams.

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Is there a Paranoid Style in American Politics?

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 06:31:58 GMT

In 1963, the historian Richard Hofstadter gave a famous lecture at Oxford (later an essay in Harper’s) arguing that a “paranoid style” was a recurrent strain in American politics. Hofstadter cited examples ranging from the Anti-Masons of the 1830s to MCarthyism. Today, pundits often turn to the concept of a “paranoid style” when trying to explain Trumpism. Why has Hofstadter’s idea been so influential? And does it really explain anything at all? Adam discusses these questions with Nick Witham, the author of Popularizing the Past, a brilliant new study of Cold War-era historians who shaped an understanding of American history far beyond the groves of academia.

The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams.

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The Last Best Hope? Season 10

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 16:08:17 GMT

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The Geordie South: How Northumbrians shaped Appalachia

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 06:02:41 GMT

Half a million Northumbrians, the proud people of the English-Scottish border region, settled in the Appalachian mountains in the eighteenth century. And they left their mark in the song, speech and maybe even politics. Geordie culture: the often overlooked element in the forging of the American South. Adam talks to Dan Jackson, author of The Northumbrians: Northeast England and its People, and Ted Olson, Professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University.

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A City on a Hill: The exceptional history of a powerful metaphor

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 06:56:22 GMT

It is one of America’s most powerful founding myths – the pilgrims on an errand into the wilderness to create a new model society– “we shall be like a city upon the hill,” Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Winthrop was supposed to have said in 1630, “the eyes of the world upon us”. Separated, yet visible – just like the ark, the responsibilities of such a community were awesome, the prospect of failure terrifying. What does the enduring power of this phrase tell us about American political culture? Adam is joined by Sam Haselby, a historian of religion and American nationalism, and senior editor at Aeon, and David Frum, Atlantic columnist, senior editor at Atlantic, and former speechwriter for George W. Bush.

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America's role in Ukraine: a return to the last, best hope?

Fri, 26 May 2023 06:50:01 GMT

What does the United States' support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion tell us about the state of America today? Former President Trump, who has a long track record of admiring Vladimir Putin, boasts he could end the war in a day, presumably not in a manner that would satisfy the Ukrainians. President Biden, and many Republican leaders, think that if America doesn't stand firm in opposition to militarised autocracy, then who will? Is this the latest manifestation of an old tension between a vision of America as engaged in the World, as “the last Best Hope” – or as a citadel apart from the world, the debate that roiled the US after the First World War? A debate about whether American freedom is best preserved by being isolated or involved? Adam talks to Phillips O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews, one of the most influential analysts of the Russian invasion, and Julie Norman, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for US Politics at UCL.

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Was there a Culture War in nineteenth century America?

Fri, 19 May 2023 05:29:02 GMT

The country is deeply polarised. Each party believes the other not just to be wrong on public policy questions but a profound threat to the nation. At stake are the most fundamental of questions about the values that underpin society. The US today? But also the US in the 1850s. Culture Wars are nothing new. In this episode Adam talks to two historians who have broken the mould of how to think about the Civil War era by recognising how cultural issues like gender could shape every other political issue: Lauren Haumesser, author of The Democratic Collapse: How Gender Politics Broke a Party and a Nation, 1856-1861, and Mark Power Smith, a Research Fellow at the RAI, and the author of Young America: The Transformation of Nationalism before the Civil War. So, how do culture wars start, why are they fought... and how do they end?

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Are there lessons for Biden from the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson?

Fri, 12 May 2023 07:02:32 GMT

In 1968, an elderly Democrat President, with major legislative achievements behind him, who had served as Vice President to younger, more charismatic man, decided he could not win a second election. What lessons are there for Joe Biden from the troubled, truncated presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson? Adam talks to Kevin Kruse, the eminent Princeton historian, author of many books on postwar US political history, including most recently Myth America and Mark Lawrence, the Director of the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, and author of The End of Ambition: The US and the Third World. Together they discuss how LBJ's legacy should be assessed today, and why he decided -- unlike President Biden -- not to seek a second full term.

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The House Divided Episode

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 09:00:31 GMT

The speech that triggered the Civil War? In a speech in the State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln warned that a "house divided against itself cannot stand" and that the nation, like a house divided, could not remain "half slave and half free" but would have to become all one thing or all the other. The crisis had arrived; the choice was between complete freedom and complete slavery. Why did Lincoln say this, and what were the consequences? Adam travels to Springfield to find out. Featuring Professor Graham Peck, Distinguished Professor of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and Christian McWhirter, Lincoln Historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

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The Second Amendment Episode

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 06:00:32 GMT

Why is gun control so hard to accomplish in American politics, despite the number of mass shootings now averaging one a week? Adam talks to Saul Cornell, the leading historian of the Second Amendment, about how the Constitution shapes the politics and culture of guns in the United States.

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The Black Ships Episode

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 09:00:46 GMT

In the 1853, the closed society of Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate was suddenly confronted by the naval reach of the “last best hope of earth” – Commodore Perry’s naval expedition to “open up” Japan to American trade. The Americans were, of course, as alien to the Japanese as the Japanese were, to the Americans. Adam talks to historians Brian Rouleau and Robert Hellyer about how each side saw the other, and what happened next.

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The Gettysburg Episode

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 07:02:29 GMT

Why is Gettysburg the Civil War battle that everyone remembers? How did it come to be seen as the “turning point” of the war? Adam goes to the battlefield to find out.

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The Polarisation Episode

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:01:58 GMT

It is conventional to say that the US is more polarised now than ever before – at least since the Civil War. But intense partisanship has been a feature of American politics since the Revolution. So what is different about polarisation today? And if there is a “cold civil war” in America at the moment, how will it end? Adam talks about this with the political scientist James Morone, one of the shrewdest observers of America’s ever-divided soul.

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The Propaganda Episode

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 14:02:59 GMT

Is 'fake news' new? Or have we always lived in a world of 'alternative facts'? Adam talks to John Maxwell Hamilton, who has written a book arguing that government propaganda started not in the age of social media or Donald Trump but with American entry into the First World War in 1917. Also joining Adam at the British Library's Breaking the News exhibition are curator Tamara Tubb and Professor Jo Fox from the University of London and one of the world's leading historians of propaganda.

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The Memorialising Covid Episode

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 07:00:00 GMT

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the deaths of over one million Americans to date. How have people memorialised their dead through grassroots memorials and how do we memorialise something that has affected different groups of people in vastly unequal ways? Should there be a national COVID memorial in the US and what form would it take? In this episode, RAI Fellow Dr Alice Kelly speaks to Professor Marianne Hirsch and Professor James Young about the challenges of a national memorial, the idea of ‘reparative memory’, and how we remember separately and together.

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The Cotton Famine Episode

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 05:00:00 GMT

In Manchester on new year’s eve 1862, thousands turned out for a public meeting to congratulate President Abraham Lincoln for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. What motivated these people to come along on a wet Wednesday night to listen to fiery speeches about a foreign war? Especially since the most obvious impact of the American Civil War on Lancashire was that the supply of raw cotton was cut off – the so-called ‘cotton famine’ – causing huge economic distress in the textile mill towns. The answer seems to lie in the faith that – somehow – the US represented the last, best hope of earth. Even to people in Lancashire. In this episode, Adam talks to David Brown of the University of Manchester and Richard Blackett of Vanderbilt, to find out about the impact of the cotton famine and what it tells us about the meaning of America in mid-Victorian Britain.

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The Book of Mormon Episode

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 05:00:00 GMT

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is simultaneously the most American and the most 'un-American' of projects. Out of the intense religious revival of the 'burned-over district' of New York in the 1820s, "Mormonism" made the astonishing claim that the Risen Christ had literally walked on American soil. They were thus the first truly homegrown American religious movement even as they were reviled for being an alien threat to the Republic. In this episode, Adam talks to Laurie Maffly-Kipp and Rick Turley to find out how Mormonism related to the American nation, why they attracted so much opprobrium, and why, against all the odds, they succeeded.

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The Free World Episode

Mon, 23 May 2022 23:00:00 GMT

Has the Russian invasion of Ukraine restored America's role as the leader of the 'free world'? What are the challenges for US diplomats and politicians in trying to advance American interests while also speaking about universal values like democracy? In this episode, Adam explores these issues with Ambassador Philip T. Reeker, who served as the chargé d'affaires at the US Embassy in London. Reeker was present when the Berlin Wall came down, and his career -- mostly in Europe -- has spanned the post-Cold War decades. As the Russian tanks rolled into a European country in 2022, did he feel that the world has come full circle?

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The Dust Bowl Episode

Tue, 17 May 2022 05:00:00 GMT

The Dust Bowl: the ecological disaster within the larger disaster of the Great Depression. It’s a story that generations of Americans have come to know through John Steinbeck's classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath and Dorothea Lange's unforgettable photos of migrant families struggling on the road to make a living in Depression-torn California. In this episode, Adam talks to two prize-winning historians, Linda Gordon, author of a biography of Dorothea Lange, and Sarah Phillips, an expert on the environment and politics in the twentieth century and asks what the dust bowl tells us about the American Dream.

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The Battle Hymn of the Republic Episode

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 04:00:00 GMT

The Battle Hymn of the Republic is one of the most recognisable songs in the world. Easy to sing, and to march to, its words are stirring and optimistic, and filled with vivid images: trumpets that never call retreat, watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, trampling of the grapes of wrath, loosing of the fateful lightning of the terrible swift sword, burnished rows of steel, lilies in whose beauty Christ was born across the sea. It contains the frisson of redemptive violence, too: as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. It is, in fact, the most perfect musical expression of the idea that America is peculiarly blessed by God -- the last best hope of earth. Adam talks to John Stauffer and Richard Carwardine to find out more about the song's origins.

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The Nixon's the One Episode

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 07:00:00 GMT

Was Richard Nixon responsible for the rightward turn of the Republican Party, or was he in fact the “the last liberal Republican”? John R. Price, who worked on social policy in Nixon’s White House, has written a book making the case that Nixon has been misunderstood, pointing to plans to reform welfare to introduce something like a universal basic income and expand health insurance. Rick Perlstein, author of four prize-winning books on the rise of the Right is unconvinced. So, was Nixon the first of a new breed of right-wing populist Republicans, or the last of an old liberal tribe? Adam talks to Rick Perlstein and John Price to find out.

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The Billy Graham Episode

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 09:00:00 GMT

Billy Graham, with his film star good looks and his baritone voice, seemed to be everywhere in postwar America – the confidante of presidents, and the closest the nation came to having a national pastor. At a time when we often think of religion as in decline in the West, Billy Graham embodied a self-confident, even glamorous Christian faith. He sold Jesus as other people sold vacuum cleaners. And for him, a Christian faith fed the wells of his boundless patriotism and anti-communism. So who was Billy Graham and how should we assess his legacy? In this episode, Adam talks to Uta Balbier and Grant Wacker to find out.

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The 1776 Episode

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 09:00:00 GMT

How did the Declaration of Independence come to be the signature document of the American nation? What was its role in forging Americans’ conception of themselves as somehow exceptional – the last best hope of earth? Adam talks to Professor Patrick Griffin to find out how a manifesto signed by rebellious colonists --most of them doing so several weeks after July 4 -- somehow became a pseudo-sacred text.

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The State's Rights Episode

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 09:00:00 GMT

Since the founding of the United States, Americans have been arguing about the correct balance of power between the federal government and the governments of the individual states. Many today still invoke the idea of 'states' rights' as they claim that state governments should retain exclusive power over numerous aspects of public policy, from gun control, to same-sex marriage, to healthcare. The call for 'states' rights' has also infiltrated the bitter debate over abortion and reproductive healthcare in twenty-first century America. In this episode, guest presenter Grace Mallon talks to Gary Gerstle (Cambridge) and Mary Ziegler (Florida State) about where the call for 'states' rights' came from, why it persists, and how the activities of the state governments continue to shape American lives today. The Producer is Emily Williams.

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The Government is the Solution Episode

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 05:00:00 GMT

From the 1980s until quite recently, the mood music of American politics was to “roll back” the public programmes created during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Now, taxes and spending are rising and the New Deal – maybe in the guise of the “Green New Deal” – is cool again. Maybe government is seen, once again, as the solution to our problems rather than the problem itself. And yet polls show that faith in government remains low while vicious polarisation stymies any 1930s-style attempt to use government to bring the country together. So, can government once again be the solution? Adam discusses these issues with Eric Rauchway and Sid Milkis.
The Producer is Emily Williams

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The Robert E. Lee Episode

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:00:00 GMT

The American Civil War did not end ambiguously – it ended in complete military defeat for the South. And yet for a century and a half, it is the losers – the men who took up arms against the United States to defend the cause of human enslavement – were honoured as American heroes. None more so than Robert E. Lee. Now the immense statue of Lee that stood on Monument Avenue in Richmond has been removed. Why now? And why was it there so long? Adam talks to Ty Seidule, Emeritus Professor of History at West Point, retired Brigadier General in the US Army, about what Lee meant to him as a white boy growing up in Virginia -- and what Lee means to him now.

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The 9/11 Episode

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 10:00:00 GMT

The shocking attacks of September 11, 2001, were one of those "wake up" moments for the US, raising troubling questions about the nation's place in the world, how it could defend itself and what kind of a country it wanted to be. Looking back with Adam at how 9/11 changed America are Prof Nazita Lajevardi (Michigan State and Oxford), an expert in the experiences of the Muslim American community, and Prof Peter Feaver (Duke), who worked on the national security council staff in the Bush White House.

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The Homecoming Episode

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 18:00:00 GMT

At the close of the First World War, the U.S. Government gave the American people a choice unlike that of any other nation: to leave their dead loved ones where they fell, or repatriate them to the US for burial at home. Of the 116 000 dead, over 45 000 families made the choice to bring their dead home. In this episode, RAI Fellow Dr. Alice Kelly speaks to Dr. Lisa Budreau, Kevin Fitzpatrick and Professor Steven Trout about how and why the Americans did this. What impact did this homecoming have on the ways Americans remember the First World War today? Is WWI really a ‘forgotten’ war in the US?

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The Irish America Episode

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 08:00:00 GMT

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 caused him, Adam and his guests talk about how a community that was once so reviled came to embody key aspects of what it means to be an American.

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The "Crisis" of the Middle Class Episode

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 06:00:00 GMT

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 Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.

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The American Dilemma Episode

Fri, 28 May 2021 07:00:00 GMT

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?

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The What's Wrong With America Episode

Fri, 21 May 2021 08:00:00 GMT

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 US counterculture that is, once again, drawing idealistic young people towards a different kind of American dream?

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The Royal America Episode

Fri, 14 May 2021 06:00:00 GMT

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.

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The Boycott Episode

Fri, 07 May 2021 06:00:00 GMT

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 House's efforts to boycott the Olympics, and the historians Nicholas Sarantakes and Patrick Andelic.

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The Swedish Nightingale Episode

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 08:00:00 GMT

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 divisions while retaining her reputation, and making money? The guests are Robert Wilson, author of Barnum: An American Life, and the music historian Katherine Preston. Reader: Dane Udenberg. Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith.

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The From Slavery to Snowdonia Episode

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 20:00:00 GMT

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 best hope" but at least strategically, abolitionists proclaimed Britain to be the land of the free and America to be a land of barbarism and hypocrisy.

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The Confederates who wanted to be Garibaldi Episode

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 17:00:00 GMT

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 sorely disappointed. In this episode, Adam talks to Ann Tucker, author of a recent book about how the Confederates channelled the spirit of those European freedom struggles. What, after all, was the difference between the struggle for Southern independence and the Risorgimento? The answer is quite a bit...

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The Reconstruction Episode

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:00:00 GMT

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 once again profoundly divided over questions of racial justice and about the basic rules of the political game.

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The My Whole Soul Episode

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 17:00:00 GMT

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.

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The Insurrection Episode

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 16:00:00 GMT

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, attempts at insurrection have often been the result. And the example of the Revolution is always there to serve as a justification.

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The Elected King Episode

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 18:00:00 GMT

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 Université Jean Moulin in Lyon, and Nicholas Cole, Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford, to ask if the American constitution created an elected king?

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The Uncle Tom Episode

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 09:00:00 GMT

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 Civil War? To find out, Adam talks to John Brooke, a historian at Ohio State University who thinks it did. The reader in this episode is Olivia Marshall.

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The Better Angels Episode

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 22:00:00 GMT

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 election means for the US and its place in the world. Does Biden want to restore the "last best hope"?

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The Viva La Revolución Episode

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 12:00:00 GMT

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.

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The Last Best Hope Shorts: Simone de Beauvoir

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 17:00:00 GMT

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 Hancock was Nelson Algren.

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The Harmonious Episode

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 17:00:00 GMT

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.

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The Did the South Win the Civil War After All Episode

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 12:00:00 GMT

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?

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The Last Best Hope Episode

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 22:00:00 GMT

"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 understand why people thought, and many still think, that America has a mission. (The podcast features a special guest appearance from Barack Obama).

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The new New Deal Episode

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 08:00:00 GMT

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.

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The "Don't Tread on Me" Episode

Fri, 08 May 2020 11:00:00 GMT

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".

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The Crisis Episode

Sat, 02 May 2020 15:00:00 GMT

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.

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The Federalism Episode

Sat, 02 May 2020 15:00:00 GMT

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.

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