The Road to Now

The war between the US Army and the Native American confederation during the war of 1812 is a buried story in an often-overlooked event, yet its impact on the history of North America is profound. The leading figures on both sides of the war, Shawnee Chief Tecumseh and US Army General William Henry Harrison, had come of age in the struggles over what is today called the Midwest United States, and both understood that losing the war would mean losing the future they imagined for their people. In this episode, Ben & Bob do a deep dive on the story behind that war with Peter Stark, author of the incredibly accessible new book, Gallop Toward The Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison’s Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation (Random House, 2023). Peter Stark is an adventure and exploration writer and historian who was previously a correspondent for Outside magazine. His previous book, Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father, was named a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize in 2019. You can follow him on Instagram at @peterstark_adventure_historian. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher. We’re excited to announce that Ben & Bob will be recording a live episode of RTN on the history of Americana music in Nashville on September 18, 2023 w/ guests Emmy Lou Harris, Rodney Crowell and Jefferson Cowie! Click here for tickets. Hope to see you there!

Washington D.C. in the 1850s was a tale of two cities. It was the Capitol city of a rapidly expanding new nation while at the same time ground zero for a politically fractured and divided nation hurtling toward disunion. Standing in the middle of it all was Montgomery C. Meigs, a military engineer who led the construction of two massive public works projects at the same time: the expansion of the Capitol building and an aqueduct to provide water to the residents growing city. Meigs would go on to serve as Quartermaster for the Union Army under Abraham Lincoln. Meigs was an innovator, public servant, and one of the most important patriots of the nineteenth century. This week Bob welcomes author and journalist Robert O’Harrow Jr. to discuss his 2016 book, The Quartermaster: Montgomery C. Meigs, Lincoln's General, Master Builder of the Union Army. For thirty years Robert O'Harrow Jr. was an investigative journalist and contributing writer at The Washington Post and was among the first national journalists to cover cybersecurity. In 2017, he part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of notorious Alabama political Roy Moore. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.

The recent changes to Florida’s education system have gotten nationwide attention, with similar stories playing out across the US. In this episode, Ben & Bob investigate the nature of these reforms, who is behind them, and how they may impact the students and teachers whose daily lives are directly affected by these changes. They are joined by Ana Goñi-Lessan, a Tallahassee-based journalist who covers the Florida legislature for USA Today and Dr. Andrew Polk, a history professor and former high school teacher who directs the history and social studies education initiatives for the Department of History at Middle Tennessee State University.   This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher

Ben & Bob have been on the road for most of the summer, so in this episode they catch up to talk about the 100th anniversary of the death of Warren G. Harding, the feedback they got from their conversation on ai, chat gpt and the future of tech w/ Roger McNamee, and their responses to the recent Congressional hearings on UAP (formerly known as UFO) sightings. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher. Warren G. Harding Sources: Jordyn Phelps, “Ex-President Warren Harding’s Love Child Confirmed Through DNA Testing,” ABCNews.com, August 13, 2015. “President Warren Harding's Love Letters Open to the Public,” News from the Library of Congress, July 29, 2014. Megan Gambino, “Warren Harding’s Love Letters Finally Give Us Something to Remember Him For,” Smithsonian.com, August 29, 2014. Daniel McCarthy, “Warren Harding’s Read Scandal was his Conservatism,” New York Post, August 1, 2023. Bryan Pietsch, “Exhume the Body of Warren G. Harding? A Judge Says that Won’t be Necessary,” New York Times, Dec. 1, 2020. Jordan Michael Smith, “The Letters that Warren G. Harding’s Family Didn’t Want You to See,” New York Times Magazine, July 7, 2014.

Slavery was an integral part of the American republic from the moment of independence until the abolition of the so-called “peculiar institution” with the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865. The social and economic impact of the slave system, however, are much larger in terms of both time and geography. In this episode, Bob and Ben speak with Edward Baptist about slavery’s origins, its evolution, and how enslaved people’s work laid the foundation for modern capitalism. He also shares stories of the people who suffered under- and those who profited from- the inhumane system of American slavery. Dr. Edward E. Baptist is Professor of History at Cornell University and author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books, 2014), which won the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians and the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize. This is an enhanced rebroadcast of RTN #117, which originally aired on January 14, 2019. This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.

George Carlin had a comedy career that spanned half a century, and his take on the US remains relevant more than a decade after his death in 2008. The new HBO documentary George Carlin’s American Dream tells Carlin’s story as he evolved from a clean-cut comic in the 1950s into the edgy critic who remains one of the most influential comedians of all time. In this episode, Michael Bonfiglio, who directed the film (along with Judd Apatow) and Kliph Nesteroff, a historian of comedy who is featured in the film, join Bob & Ben for a conversation about the life and times of George Carlin. If you enjoy this episode, check out our previous conversation w/ Michael Bonfiglio in RTN #174 Direction w/ Michael Bonfiglio. This is a rebroadcast of RTN #237. This rebroadcast was edited by Bob Crawford. 

Roger McNamee has spent decades helping American tech companies secure financing. In the last few years, however, he’s become well-known for helping American citizens secure themselves against tech companies. After helping convince Mark Zuckerberg to retain control over Facebook, Roger documented social media’s role in amplifying social division in his 2019 New York Times Best Seller Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. Recently he’s turned his attention to AI, and he has a warning for us: don’t believe the hype. In this conversation Roger joins Bob and Ben to discuss Artificial Intelligence, why he says it’s far from the disruptor its proponents have claimed it to be, and how our current assessment of AI actually causes many of the problems that will likely come from this new technology. Roger also shares his solution to better tech regulation, why he’s more hopeful about the future of the US than he has been in decades, and his second career in his band Moonalice (click here for music and tour dates).  If you enjoy this conversation, you can hear our uncut conversation, which includes almost 30 minutes of additional audio, but joining us on Patreon at Patreon.com/TheRoadToNow. Already a Patron? Click here to listen to the uncut episode! You can hear our previous conversation w/ Roger in RTN #178 “The Facebook Catastrophe w/ Roger McNamee.”  This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.

In the years after World War II, Americans moved to the suburbs in search of the peace and safety that many came to equate with the “American Dream.” By the end of the 1970s, however, suburbanites had come sense that their privileged was under siege from satanic cults, drug dealers and kidnappers. In this episode, Bob and Ben talk w/ Kyle Riismandel whose new book Neighborhood of Fear examines how Americans responded to the real and perceived threats of suburban life and in doing so, shaped American society and politics in the late-20th Century and beyond. Dr. Kyle Riismandel is Senior University Lecturer and Interim Director of the Law, Technology, and Culture Program in the Federated Department of History at the New Jersey Institute of Technology/Rutgers-Newark and Director of the Graduate Program in American Studies. His book Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975-2001 was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2020. This is a rebroadcast of RTN #194, which originally aired on April 12, 2021. This episode was oroginally edited by Gary Fletcher. This reair was edited by Ben Sawyer.  

It’s difficult to fathom how Benjamin Franklin accomplished so much in a single lifetime. It’s equally difficult to imagine how to take such an incredible life and consolidate it into four hours of documentary film. In this episode, we cover both feats with writer Dayton Duncan and producer David Schmidt, two of the great minds behind Ken Burns' documentary on Benjamin Franklin. Dayton and David discuss Franklin’s life, the work that goes into creating a historical documentary film, and their process for deciding the best way to tell an American icon’s story in a pair of two-hour episodes. If you enjoy this episode, check out Ben and Bob’s conversation with Ken Burns in episode #191. If you want to learn more about American indepenence and the July 4th holiday, check out Ben's curated list on Hark audio! If you want to catch Bob or Ben live, check out The Avett Brothers tour dates here and Ben's standup comedy schedule here! This is a rebroadcast of RTN #229, which originally aired on April 4, 2022. 

The Allman Brothers’ 1971 album At Fillmore East features one of the era’s great rock bands at its prime, selling over a million copies despite not producing a single “hit” song. It is also the last album produced by the Allman Brothers prior to the death of the band’s founder, Duane Allman. In this episode we speak with Bob Beatty, whose new book Play All Night!: Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East, tells the story behind the creation of the album and how the Allman Brothers pioneered a style that continues to influence rock music today. Dr. Bob Beatty is a historian and musician who has worked in museums and nonprofits for more than 25 years. You can follow him on twitter and Instagram at @longlivetheabb. This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.