Now It's History

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video with Alexis Coe! It was fascinating to get the perspective of one of the most insightful authors of presidential history. We’re approaching the 250th birthday of the United States and marking the 100th day of the second Donald Trump presidency.

Alexis is the author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington. Her next book, Young Jack: A Biography of John F. Kennedy, 1917-1957, will be published in 2026.

I hope you enjoy the conversation.

A four-story-tall statue in front of Rockefeller Center’s International Building depicts Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders.

The burden carried by the figure from Greek mythology must have resonated with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He had to shoulder a crushing degree of responsibility after Nazi Germany conquered much of Western Europe and the U.K. had to fight Adolf Hitler on its own.

In his determination to enlist American support, Churchill took the extraordinary step of creating a secret intelligence operation based on the 36th floor of the International Building, a short distance from Rockefeller Center’s famous Christmas tree and skating rink.

My guest on episode 5 of the Now It’s History podcast is Thomas Maier, the author of a fascinating new book about that British operation and the American who helped make it happen. It’s called The Invisible Spy: Churchill’s Rockefeller Center Spy Ring and the First American Agent of World War II.

Maier tells the story of the largest foreign spy operation in U.S. history, operating in the heart of Manhattan at a time when Nazi spies were walking through Times Square and landing on Long Island’s beaches. Britain’s intelligence agents used deception, break-ins and sex to infiltrate and expose German agents as well as to compromise others who opposed U.S. entry into World War II.

In the middle of it all was “the invisible spy,” Ernest Cuneo, a former college football star and NFL player who developed the key personal relationships behind one of the most far-reaching intelligence operations of World War II, including a close friendship with the creator of James Bond, the British spy Ian Fleming. One of the James Bond books is dedicated to Cuneo, who Fleming called “my muse,” and another has a character named Ernest Cunio.

Tom Maier and I worked together years ago at Newsday, where he was a first-rate investigative reporter. While Tom was breaking award-winning stories in his day job at Newsday, he was also starting to write the first few of his seven books.

They cover topics as varied as the Kennedy and Newhouse families, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the sex experts Masters and Johnson, and the ties between mafia bosses and the CIA in the 1960s.

Tom's career took on a new dimension when Showtime turned his Masters and Johnson book into the widely praised series Masters of Sex, and last year he registered another success with Paramount and Showtime's docuseries Mafia Spies based on Tom's book.

Star player goes behind the scenes

“I always liked to keep out of sight. Anonymity is freedom.” — Ernest Cuneo

Ernest Cuneo was a football star at Columbia University who went on to play for an NFL team, the now-defunct Brooklyn Dodgers. But his professional football career fizzled, and the disappointing brush with fame convinced him that he could be more effective as a behind-the-scenes player.

He studied law and got involved in politics, becoming an ally of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Cuneo helped build support for the idea of Roosevelt running for an unprecedented third term.

Meanwhile he made connections to powerful figures in the media, including the influential columnist Walter Winchell and Washington reporter Drew Pearson. At fashionable New York night spots like the Stork Club and 21, Cuneo also developed ties to politicos and power brokers, including FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

And when Churchill’s government established the Rockefeller Center office, Cuneo became a key supporter and liaison. He palled around with Ian Fleming and William Stephenson, the Canadian who headed the British spy office.

Shaken, not stirred

“Over time and over drinks,” Maier wrote, “Cuneo would become close friends with Stephenson and Fleming. He liked to share caviar, cocktails and confidential information with these undercover British agents while they sat beside the fireplace inside Stephenson’s posh Midtown duplex.”

“Fleming, ever the wartime sophisticate, made sure the gin and dry vermouth he poured into his glass at their clubby meetings was prepared carefully, with what Cuneo described as the skill of a brain surgeon.”

“Fleming preferred martinis — shaken, not stirred.”

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. entered the war. Cuneo played a key role in the creation of the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime spy agency that was the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Following the death of Roosevelt and the allies’ victory in World War II in 1945, Cuneo lost some of his political influence, but remained plugged in to the U.S. government’s power centers, including the CIA.

He married a Canadian member of the British spy operation, Margaret Watson, and they had two children.

Cuneo and Fleming became business associates, and Cuneo helped introduce the future novelist to the locales and personalities that would help shape the early James Bond novels and movies.

Cuneo never published the memoir he wrote, but Maier was able to use it along with Cuneo’s papers, which are at the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidential library, to paint a portrait of this influential behind-the-scenes figure.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books about the great leaders of the war years, including Churchill and Roosevelt. But it’s a service when a writer delves deeper and tells the story of hidden power brokers like Ernest Cuneo.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Thomas Maier.

Thanks for reading Now It's History! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.

John Hancock's bold and elegant signature on the Declaration of Independence is so famous that his name became a synonym for a signature.

Put your John Hancock right there!

But in many ways, it's one of the least significant things about his life. Hancock bore the title of president years before there were American presidents, when he became head of the Continental Congress. He was so reviled by the British and venerated by the Americans that they both called him King Hancock.

He walked a narrow and perilous line between rebellion and conformity with British rule. But at a host of key moments in the years leading up to the revolution, Hancock wound up picking the side that would ultimately win — and he helped build not only the revolution, but the state of Massachusetts, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

My guest on episode four of the Now It’s History podcast is the author of King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father, a critically acclaimed biography of John Hancock.

Brooke Barbier is a public historian who received her PhD in American History from Boston College and taught for six years in college. She grew up on the West Coast but became fascinated with the history of the American Revolution, and that led her to Boston. Her first book was Boston in the American Revolution, a Town Versus an Empire.

King Hancock is Brooke's second book. But she is not only a history scholar. Eleven years ago, she founded Ye Olde Tavern Tours, which offers tours of Boston's historic sites and taverns. And you'll be happy to know that beer is included.

In this podcast, Brooke not only tells the story of John Hancock’s role in the fateful events that created the United State of America, but also explains why his role in history has relevance for our lives today.

With the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord coming next spring, it’s an especially appropriate time to examine the life of John Hancock.

Thanks for reading Now It's History! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.

In 2016, Donald Trump narrowly beat Hillary Clinton in America's suburbs and won the White House. In 2020, Joe Biden turned that around. He captured 54 % of suburban voters, an improvement of nine percentage points over Clinton's performance. And that was key to putting Biden in the White House.

This year, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are battling for that crucial suburban support. And there are reasons to think that, for Harris, the suburbs are a land of opportunity. You can see the struggle playing out in competing lawn signs in the front yards of America's suburban neighborhoods.

Thanks for reading Now It's History! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.

As Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, told me in episode three of the Now It’s History podcast, those voters have moved to the suburbs because they “want better schools for their kids. They want more space. They own their own little plot, their own portion of the suburban dream. And they’re optimistic…they tend to shy away from extremism of any stripe. So the party and the candidates that come across as a little too far out there make them nervous.”

Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden Sunday gave a platform to extreme voices. The New York Times piece on the event was headlined, “Trump Rally Opens With Insults Aimed at Latino, Black, Jewish and Arab American Voters.”

Harris leads Trump by seven percentage points in suburban areas, according to a Wall Street Journal poll of seven battleground states. The Journal’s John McCormick reported last week from Mequon, Wisconsin that “Trump has alienated a sizable share of college-educated suburban voters who help decide presidential elections, accelerating their drift from the Republican Party. Harris needs them to counteract softness in her support among Black and Hispanic men…

As McCormick wrote, “The country’s political fault line was once the cleave between Democratic cities and Republican suburbs. That division now increasingly runs through the suburbs themselves, with inner-ring enclaves like this one turning purple or blue and outer ones—and rural areas—remaining red.”

The shift away from Trump in the suburbs was “fairly dramatic” in the 2020 election, Levy noted. It came about “because Trump began to be seen not as a wealthy businessman who could help turn the economy around but as an extremist who frightened them.”

In this podcast episode, Levy also describes the strategies that can win votes in the suburbs. He discusses the surprising importance of New York State’s competitive congressional races in potentially determining which party controls the House in the next Congress and explains why people from around the world are paying attention to what happens.

Hillary Clinton got nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump in 2016. Why didn’t she become President of the United States?

Four years later, Trump’s backers tried to alter the vote counting process in several states when they sought to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.

And in 2024, if the election is as close as the polls say it is, the popular vote winner may not be elected President.

When we think of democracy, we assume that whoever gets the most votes will win an election. But it doesn’t work exactly that way.  

In the United States, the real winner is determined by an 18th century contraption called the Electoral College. There’s no one better at understanding and explaining the elector system than Robert Alexander, who literally wrote the book on it. I was delighted to welcome Rob to the second episode of our “Now It’s History” podcast.

Thanks for reading Now It's History! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Robert Alexander is a professor of political science and the Founding Director of the Bowling Green State University Democracy and Public Policy Research Network. He is the author of the definitive study, Representation and the Electoral College, published in 2019 by Oxford University Press.  His research on electors was cited during arguments before the Supreme Court in 2020, and he has appeared as an expert on the Electoral College throughout the media.

If we’re lucky, the popular vote margin of this year’s election will be big enough that we won’t have a “misfire” election like 2016, when Donald Trump’s strength in the Electoral College made Hillary Clinton’s popular vote edge essentially irrelevant.

Or like 2000, when Al Gore beat George W. Bush by half a million popular votes only to lose in the Electoral College, with an assist by the US Supreme Court that put an end to a recount in Florida.

But the incredibly close polls this year may well mean we’re headed back to Electoral College hell for the third time this century. We could even see a tie vote in the Electoral College, which would cause all kinds of mischief.

In our conversation, Rob talks about how the electors are chosen, how they cast their votes, the problem of “faithless electors,” the many proposals to reform the Electoral College — and the music he listened to while writing his book.

A president botches a key debate. His rival survives an assassination attempt. A vice president steps in to replace the incumbent. Hasn’t Election 2024 already brought us enough political upheavals?

Like it or not, with one month to go in the contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, there’s still the possibility of another surprise — an “October surprise” — that could sway undecided voters.

In this episode, host Richard Galant chats with Princeton historian Julian Zelizer on the origin of the October surprise concept, the history of late-breaking election developments and the chances this month’s events could sway the Harris-Trump election. You’ll learn who coined the phrase “October surprise” and how it played a role in the 1980 race between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.

This is Episode 1 of the “Now It’s History” podcast. We’ll be exploring the dividing line between the present and the past, speaking with people who have deeply studied history and have thoughts on how it shapes our world today.

Please subscribe to the Now It’s History podcast on your favorite platform. If you like what you hear, please rate it.

Sign up for regular updates at www.nowitshistory.com

And thanks for listening!

Now It’s History explores the roots of today’s political and social turmoil by examining the past. Hosted by journalist Richard Galant, each episode uncovers the hidden patterns behind revolutions, protests, and power struggles, showing how events like President Richard Nixon’s resignation, the rise of social media and the election of Barack Obama  continue to shape our world.