History As It Happens

The civilian toll of America's endless wars in the Greater Middle East is receiving fresh scrutiny. Reports detailing systemic weaknesses in the targeting of suspected militants spurred Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to order the Pentagon to improve its protections for the ordinary people who have died by the thousands in U.S. airstrikes since September 11, 2001. A series of reports by the New York Times documented several cases in which military officials covered up the unintentional slaughter of civilians. These tragedies, which are only sporadically noticed by ordinary Americans in the ongoing global war on terrorism, raise a deeper question: why does the public seem so indifferent to the deaths of others? In this episode, historian John Tirman explains the reasons why Americans have mostly ignored, downplayed, or even justified the deaths of civilians in the nation's post-WWII conflicts starting with the Korean War, when the U.S. military carpet bombed North Korea, up to and including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Can a generation gap help explain our problems? Among our seemingly intractable, even existential, dilemmas is the lack of trust among Americans toward our institutions and toward one another. Thanks to internet algorithms and hyper-partisan television channels and radio programs, it is possible to consume information 24/7 that only confirms, rather than challenges, one's political views or conceptions of science. This media landscape did not exist in the 1960s, when a generation gap was at the center of the nation's upheavals, when many Baby Boomers rejected the values of their parent's generation – the age cohort Tom Brokaw in 1989 dubbed the Greatest Generation. In this episode, historian Paul McBride takes us on a trip from the nineteen thirties to the sixties, explaining how events and movements shaped the different attitudes and outlooks of two distinct generations.

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In the two years since the first known COVID-related death occurred in the United States, Americans have relentlessly argued about masks, school closings, business restrictions, and vaccinations, with personal politics often determining where one stands. The most important constant, however, has been a virus that pays no heed to political bickering or anti-vaccine fanaticism. Two years into the deadliest pandemic in a century, more than 2,200 Americans are dying daily from COVID-19, giving the United States a sharply higher death rate than other wealthy nations. The overwhelming majority of the deaths were unvaccinated people. In this episode, historian John Barry discusses what Americans, from political leaders to public health authorities and ordinary citizens, got right and what they got wrong about the pandemic, as the spread of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant begins to subside in some parts of the country.

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This is the first episode in an occasional series that will focus on slavery, the Constitution, and the ongoing debate over the meaning of the American founding. Each new episode will feature an interview with a different historian whose expertise covers the early Republic.

In a sense it may seem odd that Americans continue to argue over what the Constitution says about slavery. After all, the South's "peculiar institution" was forever abolished in 1865. But we know this is not merely an academic issue or legalistic debate. The racism that underpinned human chattel slavery in the antebellum United States persisted in new forms after the Civil War. New interpretations, from The 1619 Project on the left to 1776 Unites on the right, have emerged amid a tumultuous reckoning with the nation's past, forcing us to revisit the morally unresolvable contradictions of the founding generation. In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis discusses the deliberately ambiguous manner in which the Constitution was written, so it would reflect a series of compromises over, not an immediate solution to, slavery.

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Thomas Hoenig has been worried about the Fed's easy money policies and inflation since the 1970s, the last time rising prices seriously ate into Americans' earnings before now. The former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Hoenig was known for his lone dissenting votes against Ben Bernanke's money-printing policies in 2010. Price inflation -- what you pay for groceries or gasoline -- was not Hoenig's sole concern. All along he has cautioned against fueling asset bubbles -- real estate, stock, houses -- by pumping too much money into the economy in the name of fighting unemployment and increasing demand. Now, as inflation spikes, Hoenig explains how to escape the inflationary disaster.

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From the Erie Canal to the intercontinental railroad, from rural electrification projects to the interstate highway system, Americans built the massive infrastructure befitting a modern, wealthy nation. The benefits are undeniable, although dams and highways have complicated legacies of environmental degradation and urban displacement. Moreover, over the past several decades the old infrastructure has absorbed enormous sums just to maintain it, and the nation's new infrastructure plans have shrunk. In this episode, transportation historian Jonathan English discusses why it has become so difficult for American to build big anymore.

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Why do serious historians fear American democracy is hanging by a thread, with parallels to the fall of the Weimar Republic? In this episode, Christopher Browning, an expert on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, argues eerie similarities exist between our current problems and the hyper-polarized environment of 1920s-30s Germany. The gravediggers of the Weimar Republic used the levers of power to undermine a system they despised, leading to the rise of Adolph Hitler. The United States today faces no such future, but Browning says Republicans loyal to Donald Trump are attacking the legitimacy of American elections while running for key local and state offices that oversee voting -- a kind of legal revolution to disadvantage their electoral opponents.

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Formed by treaty in 1949 to defend Western Europe against the threat, real or perceived, of Soviet aggression, NATO has become the de facto defender of Ukraine's territorial integrity 30 years after the end of the Cold War. In this episode, historian Andrew Bacevich, the president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, discusses NATO's strategic drift and the folly of its eastward expansion. The alliance's mission evolved from the containment of the USSR to humanitarian interventions and fighting terrorism, first in the Balkans and then in Afghanistan and Libya. And now, as Russia threatens to invade Ukraine, fundamental questions surround NATO's ultimate purpose. Bacevich says the U.S. should leave the alliance, recognizing that Ukraine's territorial integrity is not a vital national security interest.

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After The 1619 Project sparked a scholarly uproar over its provocative reinterpretation of U.S. history, the longtime activist and social conservative Bob Woodson decided it was time for the public to hear from Black scholars, intellectuals, and activists who rejected The New York Times' controversial arguments. So he created the '1776 Unites' initiative. In this episode, Woodson discusses his approaches to activism, the study of history, and navigating America's relentless culture wars and racial antagonisms. Instead of rejecting the nation's founders and its founding principles because they were denied to generations of Americans, Woodson says we must unify around them to battle oppression.

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On December 8, 1953, President Eisenhower laid the groundwork for the international diplomacy that would create Iran's nuclear program. In his "Atoms for Peace" speech before the U.N. General Assembly, Eisenhower said the U.S. should lead the way in helping the poorer nations of the world develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, at a time when the Cold War had many fearing the possibility of nuclear war. Nearly 70 years later, Iran and the U.S. are once again arguing over nuclear power, as the parties to the JCPOA are meeting in Vienna to attempt to restore the 2015 Obama-era accord. In this episode, historian John Ghazvinian explains why the 2015 deal may be dead, and how Atoms for Peace remains at the core of this international dispute.

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