History As It Happens

Enjoy this entire 49-minute bonus episode!

To listen to future bonus content and get early access to ad-free episodes, become a subscriber today. History As It Happens Premium costs $5 per month.

****

On June 7, 2026, the historian Gordon Wood died at 92. He was one of the greatest scholars of the American Revolution and early Republic, who did "as much as anyone to deepen understanding and change perceptions of the forces and events that led to the birth of the United States," according to The New York Times.

In this episode, three historians talk about why Gordon Wood's scholarship was so influential, and why his vision of the American founding remains valuable as the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches.

Daniel Gullotta teaches American religious history, with a focus on Christianity in Early America, at Ohio State University.

Michael Hattem is a historian of the American Revolution specializing in historical memory, political culture, and intellectual history at Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.

Craig Bruce Smith is a professor of history at National Defense University in Norfolk, Va. (The views he expresses here are his and his alone.)

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content.

Chuck Todd is our special guest in this episode. He explains how changes in mass media and the journalism business led to the Trump presidency, and how Trump himself exploited the new media landscape to achieve power.

Chuck Todd hosts The Chuck ToddCast on YouTube. He is the former NBC News political director and moderator of "Meet the Press."

Further reading:

The 24/7 Presidency (The Miller Center at the University of Virginia)

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Never listen to ads again! Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content.

Our memories of D-Day usually center on the courage and grit of the infantrymen who stormed the Normandy beaches under German fire. We don't talk much about the weatherman. But without Group Captain James Stagg's forecast, there would have been few heroes to remember from June 6, 1944. In this episode, historian William Hitchcock discusses the riveting new film "Pressure," about the excruciating hours before General Eisenhower greenlit Operation Overlord.

Audio excerpts of "Pressure" are from Focus Features.

Recommended reading:

The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe by William Hitchcock

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content!

President Donald Trump's corruption and abuse of power are staggering. In his second term, he has prioritized enriching himself and his family in broad daylight, while weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after his enemies. In this episode, historian Ken Hughes, an expert on Nixon's secret White House tapes and Watergate, compares and contrasts how America's constitutional system responded to each president's rogue behavior.

Recommended reading:

By Ken Hughes

Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate

Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War and the Casualties of Reelection

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content!

What was Cold War liberalism? What is its lasting significance? Does it live on as a zombie ideology?

In this episode, historians Daniel Bessner and Michael Brenes trace the origins of this powerful ideology to the 1930s and 40s. It soon reached the apogee of its influence, only to decline after the tragedy of Vietnam. As Americans today grapple with the disastrous consequences of decades of military adventurism, they might find some answers in Cold War liberalism, which shaped U.S. foreign policy as the country emerged from the Second World War a superpower.

Daniel Bessner teaches history at the University of Washington and cohosts American Prestige podcast.

Michael Brenes is Co-Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at Yale University.

Recommended reading:

Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time of Emergency edited by Daniel Bessner and Michael Brenes

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Enjoy this entire 30-minute bonus episode! To listen to future bonus content and get early access to ad-free episodes, become a subscriber today. History As It Happens Premium costs $5 per month.

Why do some opponents of the abandoned JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, continue to lie about it? Many of these critics are now the most vocal backers of President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fiasco of a war against the Islamic Republic, which has failed in all its main objectives while leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

What was actually in the JCPOA? What did it really accomplish? And why is President Trump reluctant to agree to something similar, or possibly a little better, than what President Obama came up with a decade ago? A negotiated settlement is the only way out of this war. Nuclear arms expert Joe Cirincione is our guest.

Further reading:

Dollars For Dust by Joe Cirincione (Strategy & History newsletter)

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content!

This is the fifth episode in an occasional series for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America's semiquincentennial.

Americans have always contested the meanings and purpose of the Revolution. During the 1850s, both unionists and secessionists, the anti-slavery movement and pro-slavery stalwarts, cited the Declaration of Independence to defend their positions. How could Americans who were on opposite sides of the all-important slavery conflict cite the same document invoking fundamental human equality? In this episode, historian James Oakes takes us into the mind of Abraham Lincoln, who reached back to 1776 to denounce the South's peculiar institution.

Recommended reading:

The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics by James Oakes

Further listening (America250 series):

Episode 1 w/ Lindsay Chervinsky Episode 2 w/ Kate Carté Episode 3 w/ Alan Taylor Episode 4 w/ Lindsay Chervinsky

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content!

Every May, Israelis celebrate the anniversary of their independence. For Palestinians, their memories are of dispossession and displacement.

Beginning in late 1947, months before the official creation of the Jewish state, Jewish forces expelled Palestinian Arabs and destroyed their homes and villages. By the time the Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, was over, some 750,000 Palestinians had been expelled in one of the first ethnic cleansing operations of the post-WWII era.

Yet it took generations for this story to receive the attention it deserves — an alarming erasure because today's conflict cannot be understood without this "other half" of Israel's origin story. Historian Mark LeVine of the University of California-Irvine is our guest.

Further reading:

Art Beyond the Edge: Creativity and Conflict in the World on Fire by Mark LeVine

Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948 by Mark LeVine

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content!

This is the fourth episode in an occasional series for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America's semiquincentennial.

What if we approached this coming Fourth of July not as a single day to celebrate a special national birthday, but as the start of a decade-long commitment to a "civic renaissance"? The story of the founding of the United States didn't end on July 4, 1776 — it remains a work in progress (with plenty of setbacks, too). Indeed, a question people pondered at the time remains important today: What does it mean to be a republican citizen? Historian Lindsay Chervinsky, the executive director of the George Washington Library at Mount Vernon, is our guest.

Further reading:

A Bold Civic Renaissance for America's 250th by Lindsay Chervinsky and Julie Silverbrook (National Constitution Center)

Further listening:

Episode 1 w/ Lindsay Chervinsky Episode 2 w/ Kate Carté Episode 3 w/ Alan Taylor

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Keep the narrative flow going! Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content!

In the history of the long, misbegotten American project in Vietnam, an episode that pulled the country deeper into the quagmire deserves more attention. In 1963, the Kennedy administration green-lit a coup to topple the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Diem was an ardent anti-Communist who lost U.S. support after a cascade of missteps in his war against the Viet Cong and his crackdown on the majority Buddhists. As "regime change" dominates today's headlines, the historian-journalist Jack Cheevers explains why the attempt to control South Vietnam ended in ruin — and with Diem murdered.

History As It Happens Premium costs $5/month or $50/year. 10-day free trial, cancel any time. Subscribe here: https://historyasithappens.supercast.com/

Go to historyasithappens.com to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.