The next three episodes of Bright Minds are all about the U.S. presidential elections. America journalist Laila Frank, specialized in politics and change in the U.S., will bring you conversations with remarkable American political thinkers about their hopes, fears and expectations for this election cycle.

First up is professor of African-American studies and author Carol Anderson. She is a renowned speaker and has written several books on race, systemic inequality and power structures. All are extremely relevant for the upcoming elections.

Carol Anderson’s Book Picks:
Tyranny of the Minority by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Minority Rule by Ari Berman

In 2022, Carol Anderson took to the John Adams stage to talk about voting rights and the 2nd Amendment. Click here to watch the video.

Become a member and support us! The John Adams is an independent foundation without structural subsidy.

Want to find out more about the John Adams Institute? Check out our website and socials or subscribe to our newsletter.

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Support the show

This fourth episode of the Future 400 podcast is all about theater and dance. Battery Dance, New York City's longest running public dance festival, is hosting the Dutch-Turkish choreographer Rutkay Özpinar from Korzo Theater as part of the Future 400 exchange. And the Dutch theater director Ira Kip is working on her new play, Kings… Come Home, a reflection the impact of being uprooted, which will go to the National Black Theater and the Apollo Theater in New York. Both Kip and Özpinar are searching for a global conversation that brings disparate cultures and histories together on the stage. “The reason why we dance is not just the music,” says Rutkay. “In every culture you can find dance, from a prayer to a celebration.”

This is the final episode of the Future 400 podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York, created and presented by John Adams Institute director Tracy Metz. It marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. Each episode highlights a selection of the creative collaborations between artists, communities and institutions in both the Netherlands and the United States. For the full Future 400 cultural exchange program see www.dutchcultureusa.com. 

Support the show

Design your look, design your life. Rambler Studios is a creative platform for raw talent. It offers young people a safe space where they can discover what they’re good at and find a sense of belonging – and maybe a career in street fashion. Started by Carmen van der Vecht in Amsterdam in 2010, it has branched out to New York’s Lower East Side. It operates there under the wings of the Henry Street Settlement, a philanthropic institution dating back to the late 1800’s. In the same basement in a social housing project where he himself learned to sew, fashion coach Andres Biel helps kids create and market their own ideas – “with some help from TikTok!”. On both sides of the Atlantic, the young people in the program say: “The most important thing I’m getting here are life skills.”

 This is the third episode of the four-part bi-weekly Future 400 podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York, created and presented by John Adams Institute director Tracy Metz. It marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. Each episode highlights a selection of the creative collaborations between artists, communities and institutions in both the Netherlands and the United States. For the full Future 400 cultural exchange program see www.dutchcultureusa.com. 

Support the show

This second episode of the Future 400 podcast looks at work by Dutch and American photographers who are part of the annual international photo festival Photoville in Lower Manhattan. Dutch photographer Ernst Coppejans delves deep into the lives of LGBTQIA+ people living on the streets in New York. Kennedi Carter, a young Black photographer from the South, dresses people of color in a combination of garb from colonial times and contemporary streetwear. Photoville’s founder Sam Barzilay says: “Even though they are an Atlantic apart, there is a shared sensibility here.”

 Future 400 is a bi-weekly four-part podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York, created and presented by John Adams Institute director Tracy Metz. It marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. Each episode highlights a selection of the creative collaborations between artists, communities and institutions in both the Netherlands and the United States. Learn more about the whole two-year Future 400 program at dutchcultureusa.com.

Support the show

Future 400 is a bi-weekly four-part podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York. It is part of the two-year cultural program of the same name, marking the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. Each episode highlights a selection of the creative collaborations between artists, communities and institutions in both the Netherlands and the United States. 

Want to learn more about Future 400? The Dutch Consulate in New York City made a site for that! Just go to dutchcultureusa.com

 Presenter: Tracy Metz,  producers: Tracy Metz and Jonathan Groubert

Episode 1: New York Before New York

 When the Dutch colonists set foot on the island of Manhattan, four hundred years ago, there were already people living there: the Lenape. Historian Russell Shorto curated an exhibition for the New York Historical Society to tell the other stories about the town of New Amsterdam - and invited the Lenape to react with a powerful letter to an Unknown Ancestor, read by Brent Stonefish. And Pauline Toole, New York’s Commissioner of Records, tells us about the wonderful stories of real live people of many faiths and nationalities living in New Amsterdam that can be found in the 17th century archives. 

 John Adams Institute

 A video animation of the 1660 Castello Plan was made which you can rent online here:
Castello Plan

Support the show

Andrea Elliot’s 2022 Pulitzer winning book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, follows eight dramatic years in the life of a young woman named Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As she grows up, moving with her tight-knit family from shelter to shelter, this story goes back to trace the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time she comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding as the chasm deepens between rich and poor. 

Dasani’s family have become emblematic of one of America’s most wicked problems: homelessness.  Andrea Elliott's  Pulitzer Prize winning story is a powerful expose on just how the disparity between those with wealth, and power, and those without, is rapidly growing.

Support the show

2024 is an election year. And in his book Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal', George Packer makes the case for why this may be the most important election since the civil war.

Packer accepts that America may be “a failed state”. A state that is in a “cold civil war” between four incompatible versions of the US: the Free America of libertarian Reagan, the Smart America of Clinton-era technocrats, the quote Real America quote of the bottom-feeding demagogue Donald Trump, and the Just America of #MeToo and BLM. Packer says this cold civil war has made Americans profoundly unreal to one another: they lack a shared reality, have burrowed into partisan encampments or sealed themselves in digital echo chambers of angry prejudice. But as Mr. Packer told our Amsterdam audience back in April of 2022, it isn’t all bad news. After all, America has had many such crises and has recovered from them all. And he offers a solution. The creation of a fifth version of the US: the “Equal America” – which involves extending the New Deal to Americans in more areas of their lives, from affordable and universal health care to a living minimum wage and beyond.

Want to find out more about the John Adams Institute? Check out our website: www.john-adams.nl.

Support the show

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 project has inspired both throngs of like-minded people as well as a severe backlash. This hasn’t stopped her from devoting her career to exposing systemic and institutional racism in the United States. The 1619 Project WAS published in New York Times Magazine—and is now a successful podcast and television series.

So, why 1619? That was the year an English ship carrying enslaved Africans and flying the Dutch flag appeared on the horizon of Point Comfort, Virginia. It ushered in the beginning of slavery in what would become the continental U.S., bringing unprecedented anguish and hardship to the generations that followed. No aspect of American society is untouched by the centuries of slavery that ensued. From the contemporary economy to American popular music, 1619 implores us to radically rethink America as we know it.

Want to learn more about the John Adams Institute? Check out our website: www.john-adams.nl

Support the show

2024 is an election year and Donald Trump is running again. This makes journalist and political commentator Mark Leibovich’s second nonfiction blockbuster Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission, particularly timely. Mr. Leibovich sketches the political landscape of Washington during the Trump presidency. We all know how Mr. Trump bent the Republican party to his will. But instead of focusing on the former President, Leibovich centers his narrative on the people and mechanisms that enabled his meteoric rise to power.

Want to find out more about the John Adams Institute? Check out our website: 

Website - https://www.john-adams.nl/

Support the show

From Hollywood to Hanoi, Jane Fonda has endeared and enraged Americans for decades with her sparkling performances and outspoken views. Following an eclectic career as an actress, activist and fitness guru plus a string of high-profile husbands, the acclaimed Fonda tells all in her autobiography My Life So Far.

In this episode of Bright Minds, Jane Fonda reveals intimate details and universal truths that she hopes ‘can provide a lens through which others can see their lives and how they can live them a little differently.’

Support the show