The Last Best Hope?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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