Henry Louis Gates Jr. has helped reshape the nation’s collective understanding of the legacy of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the ongoing struggle for racial equality. The storied filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder discusses this important history and how his scholarly work has developed how we learn about and understand the American story. 
Recorded on January 22, 2021

A Conversation with Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Explore the rich and complex history of the United States and beyond. Produced by the New-York Historical Society, host David M. Rubenstein engages the nation’s foremost historians and creative thinkers on a wide range of topics, including presidential biography, the nation’s founding, and the people who have shaped the American story. Learn more at nyhistory.org.

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In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” However journalist and author Jonathan Darman argues that this political acumen was the hard-earned result of Roosevelt’s seven-year journey through illness and recovery from polio. In that decade of adapting to the stark new reality of his life, he discovered how to find hope in a seemingly hopeless situation—a skill that he employed to motivate Americans through the Great Depression and World War II. In conversation with David M. Rubenstein, Darman underscores the link between Roosevelt’s struggles with polio and his growth as both a man and leader, drawing attention to the shrewdness and compassion that made Roosevelt so effective. 
Recorded on March 28, 2023

Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made a President

In 1991, a crew of New York City construction workers found the remains of a massive burial ground under twenty feet of rubble, just blocks from City Hall. The forgotten cemetery contained the remains of as many as 20,000 African Americans, and pointed to the countless untold stories of the enslaved and free people who lived, labored, and died in New York. Historian Leslie M. Harris joins David M. Rubenstein to shine a light on these stories, tracing the early African American experience in New York from the arrival of the first slaves into the city in 1629 to the devastating racial violence of the New York City Draft Riots in 1863. 
Recorded on April 10, 2023

In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863

The discovery of the cell in the 17th century caused a paradigm shift in medicine, with the human body coming to be seen as something never before imagined: an ecosystem in and of itself; a collection of innumerable organic parts working in tandem to fulfill our biological functions. Physician and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee sits down with David M. Rubenstein to explore how this watershed moment came about and how its effects are still playing out in the form of radical medical advancements that draw into sharper relief what it means to be human.  
Recorded on December 13, 2022

The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

Throughout history, Americans have looked to their president for guidance, seeking leadership from the nation’s highest office during times of turbulence. Historian and lawyer Talmage Boston speaks with David M. Rubenstein to discuss the leadership lessons that can be learned from America’s most effective presidents—from Washington’s precipitous rise to power to Reagan’s ability to motivate and inspire optimism—and how they can be instructive to today’s leaders. 
Recorded on February 12, 2024

How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons from Our Top Presidents

J. Edgar Hoover was not only the inaugural director of the FBI, but the architect of modern American law enforcement. Hoover’s stewardship over America’s justice system was as robust as it was ruthless, while his connections to white supremacists and the religious right spun a complex web between policing, politics, and race. Historian Beverly Gage sits down with David M. Rubenstein to discuss her Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Hoover, tracing the lawman’s decades-long career shaping the American legal and political landscape, a period of immense influence that would span eight presidencies. 
Recorded on March 8, 2023

A Conversation with Henry Louis Gates Jr.

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