While American presidents are only eligible to serve two terms in office and are beholden to protect the peaceful transfer of power to their successors, their influence in politics and public service can span decades following their presidency. Douglas Brinkley joins David M. Rubenstein to look at the post-presidential lives of the commander-in-chief from George Washington to Donald Trump, some establishing presidential libraries and others playing a powerful role in foreign policy.
Recorded on August 18, 2023 

Although Jimmy Carter left the White House in January 1981 following a failed bid for reelection, his career in public service was far from over. Outside the boundaries of the Oval Office, he dedicated himself to finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts and fighting for human rights. Award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley explores the lessons of Carter’s life and legacy, drawing from his unprecedented access to the 39th president.
Recorded on August 18, 2023 

Making up the earliest class of United States presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe were all born and raised within the same sixty-mile circle east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, making up a “Virginia Dynasty” that came to shape America during the formative decades following the revolution. Author Lynne Cheney examines the friendships and rivalries within this “Virginia Dynasty,” and the contradiction between their espoused ideals of American liberty and prosperity and their status as slaveholders.
Recorded on December 3, 2020 

Historian Alan Shaw Taylor continues his conversation with David M. Rubenstein on the decades that followed the American Revolution. This defining era saw Native Americans seeking to defend their homes from a flood of American settlers, the intertwining of slavery in American politics, economics, and daily life, and an emerging expansionist vision pushing the country westward. Alongside these character-defining evolutions in the young country’s economy and geopolitics, this era also saw America’s cultural and religious identity begin to take shape.
Recorded on June 13, 2023 

Contrary to the popular narrative of a confident and stable young republic, the United States emerged from its constitution as a fragile, internally divided union of states still contending with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and the author of American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850, Alan Shaw Taylor joins David M. Rubenstein in this first of two conversations on the early decades of the American republic, exploring the limits of its physical and ideological borders.
Recorded on June 13, 2023 

Hailed as the founding father of America’s conservation movement, President Theodore Roosevelt championed the protection of the nation's natural treasures and embarked on visionary initiatives to preserve 234 million acres of wilderness for posterity. In conversation with David M. Rubenstein, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley explores Theodore Roosevelt’s complex legacy as one of America’s first environmentalist presidents.
Recorded on March 17, 2023

In 1961, as the Cold War cast a shadow across the globe, John F. Kennedy inspired Americans to look up to the sky as he announced his goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley dives into the history of the unprecedented expansion of the American space program under President Kennedy, and how the project aimed to promote science, exploration, and the spreading of democratic ideals back on Earth.
Recorded on March 17, 2023

Flora MacDonald’s life continued to be marked by dramatic political upheaval following her involvement in the escape of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. In this second conversation with David M. Rubenstein, Flora Fraser details Flora MacDonald’s marriage, her move to the American colonies, and how her family was eventually swept up in the Revolutionary War before she finally returned to the Isle of Skye.
Recorded on March 17, 2023

Biographer Flora Fraser tells the thrilling story of the young Scotswoman who helped Prince Charles Edward Stuart evade capture following the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden, Scotland, which marked the end of the House of Stuarts’ attempts to reclaim the British throne. While the story of Flora MacDonald has become the subject of songs, storybooks, and films in the two centuries that have since passed, in this first of two conversations, Fraser dives into the details of how and why Flora MacDonald helped “Bonnie” Prince Charlie make his midnight escape by sea, disguised as an Irish maid.
Recorded on March 17, 2023

World War II in the Pacific entered its endgame in June 1944, after the U.S. waged a crushing assault on the Japanese navy in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. In a conversation that explores the conflict’s harrowing final year—from the maritime war front to the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo—historian Ian W. Toll illuminates the grand strategic decisions and naval operations that allowed the Allies to emerge victorious.
Recorded on February 8, 2022