The rebels who tried to break up the United States in the 1860s thought of themselves as the rightful heirs to the spirit of 1776. The South Carolina Declaration of the Causes of Secession took the Declaration of Independence as its template. Washington’s face appeared on Confederate banknotes and the Confederacy’s Great Seal. Many of the leaders of the Revolution of the 1860s were the literal grandsons of the men who had made the Revolution of the 1770s.

In this episode, Adam explores an alternative legacy of 1776. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence launched the United States. It also licensed the greatest-ever effort to break it up. In conversation with Caroline E. Janney of the University of Virginia and Robert Hancock, Senior Curator at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Adam discusses how the Confederacy built a national identity in four short years out of the material the Founding had left lying around: the flags, the seals, the songs, the textbooks, the sermons, the fast days and the inaugurations.

A century and a half later, as the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Confederates remain among that document’s most committed readers.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

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For 250 years, the idea of America and the fact of American power have unsettled British politics. Is America of us, or apart from us? Rival or special friend? In the British political imagination, America has provoked envy, resentment, condescension, and neediness. It has also divided us, because America has so often illuminated or distorted our understanding of ourselves. Since the radical Whigs of the 1770s, one strand of the British left has looked to the United States for democratic inspiration. Another has seen America as a plutocratic, imperialist hegemon. Conservatives, meanwhile, have alternately recoiled from America in horror and embraced its go-getting freedom.

In this episode of The Last Best Hope?, Adam discusses the place of the US in the British political imagination with the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland. He reported from Washington early in his career and now presents the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast. 

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui.

For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the US gears up for the 250th anniversary celebrations of the Declaration of Independence on 4 July, the RAI’s podcast, The Last Best Hope?, returns for our 16th series on 13 May. As always, each episode uses history to explore what makes America different

“The must-listen US podcast” Nick Bryant, former BBC Correspondent in New York

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, it was “an expression of the American mind”; to the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, it was "absurd and visionary". The Declaration of Independence, written 250 years ago, is so layered in myth, so foundational to the idea of America as the last best hope of earth, that it is a challenge, now, to put it into its gritty historical context -- a document that served to justify an act of rebellion, to garner support for it by listing grievances, but which also embedded, perhaps inintentionally, some powerful emancipatory claims. In this two-part episode of The Last Best Hope, Adam asks why the Declaration of Independence said what it did and why it mattered. 

Contributors: Professor Lige Gould (University of New Hampshire), author of Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire; Professor Steven Sarson (Jean Moulin University Lyon 3) author of The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States; the intellectual historian, biographer of James Harrington, Professor Rachel Hammersley (Newcastle University); Dr Grace Mallon (University of Oxford), Clive Holmes Fellow in History at Lady Margaret Hall; and Bradford Skow, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT, author of American Independence in Verse.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, it was “an expression of the American mind”; to the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, it was "absurd and visionary". The Declaration of Independence, written 250 years ago, is so layered in myth, so foundational to the idea of America as the last best hope of earth, that it is a challenge, now, to put it into its gritty historical context -- a document that served to justify an act of rebellion, to garner support for it by listing grievances, but which also embedded, perhaps inintentionally, some powerful emancipatory claims. In this two-part episode of The Last Best Hope, Adam asks why the Declaration of Independence said what it did and why it mattered. 

Contributors: Professor Lige Gould (University of New Hampshire), author of Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire; Professor Steven Sarson (Jean Moulin University Lyon 3) author of The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States; the intellectual historian, biographer of James Harrington, Professor Rachel Hammersley (Newcastle University); Dr Grace Mallon (University of Oxford), Clive Holmes Fellow in History at Lady Margaret Hall; and Bradford Skow, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT, author of American Independence in Verse.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For much of the twentieth century, progressives in America wanted to expand the Federal Government. They created regulation, bureaucracy, and agencies capable of managing a complex industrial society. And often state governments were the obstacles they had to flatten – that was most obviously true of the movement for racial equality: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 empowered the Federal government to step in and override the racist laws and practices that state governments implemented or failed to prevent. The working assumption of liberal politicians was that rights should be equally protected everywhere – from women’s access to abortion, to criminal justice, to the right to vote – and that idea even justified Federal government action in areas like education, which were otherwise clearly the preserve of the states.

But today, things look different. The right is in control in Washington; maybe the states and state courts provide alternative pathways for liberals, in the way that they once were for conservatives? Can states not only resist federal power but also pioneer new forms of governance? Adam is joined by Emily Zackin, Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Johns Hopkins and currently the Winant Professor of American Government at Oxford. And by Judge Daniel Korobkin, who sits on the Michigan Court of Appeals.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has been at the centre of American public life for thirty years. She has exercised more power from more senior positions than any other woman in American history. Clinton has just co-edited a new book Inside the Situation Room: The Theory and Practice of Crisis Decision-making. and in this special episode, she discusses with Adam a key case study in that book -- the raid in which Bin Laden was killed -- and in doing so, reflects on her idea of what America is and can be. 

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.uk

If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the new series beginning on the 11th of February 2026, Adam speaks to Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her vision of America and its place in the world and considers whether “states’ rights” should now become the battle cry of progressives.  And this year of course marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in special two-part documentary, The Last Best Hope explores why the authors chose to use write it in the way they did, and why that matters.

"The Last Best Hope is an absolutely brilliant podcast. Thoughtful, clever, engaging and accessible, Adam Smith always gets the best out of his guests, and I’ve learned an enormous amount from every episode. I love it."

Dominic Sandbrook, Historian and co-host of The Rest is History

“The must-listen US podcast”

Nick Bryant, former BBC Correspondent in New York

The Last Best Hope is a podcast produced by the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. The presenter is Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Politics and Political History, and the Producer is Emily Williams.

For more information about the Rothermere American Institute and our programme of events visit https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/home

The RAI achieves all it does through the generosity of individual benefactors, trusts, and foundations who share the Institute's commitment to world-class research on the United States. If you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/giving

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is one of the most famous speeches in the English language and one of the most consequential. In this special two-part documentary, we explore Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address – why he gave it, what it meant, and its impact at the time and ever since. From the rolling fields of Pennsylvania to Parliament Square in London and the dust of Havana, Cuba, Adam Smith follows the path of the Gettysburg Address and asks why it is has mattered.

Contributors: Steve Scafidi, a poet and the author of  To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014); Richard Carwardine, Rhodes Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford and author of Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union (Knopf, 2024); Elizabeth Varon, Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and author of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2019); Martin P. Johnson, Associate Professor of History at Miami University in Ohio and author of Writing the Gettysburg Address (University Press of Kansas, 2013); and Dr Jared Peatman, George Washington University, and author of The Long Shadow of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (Illinois University Press, 2013).

Adam's latest book is Gettysburg (Oxford University Press, 2025)

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is one of the most famous speeches in the English language and one of the most consequential. In this special two-part documentary, we explore Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address – why he gave it, what it meant, and its impact at the time and ever since. From the rolling fields of Pennsylvania to Parliament Square in London and the dust of Havana, Cuba, Adam Smith follows the path of the Gettysburg Address and asks why it is has mattered.

Contributors: Steve Scafidi, a poet and the author of  To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014); Richard Carwardine, Rhodes Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford and author of Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union (Knopf, 2024); Elizabeth Varon, Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and author of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2019); Martin P. Johnson, Associate Professor of History at Miami University in Ohio and author of Writing the Gettysburg Address (University Press of Kansas, 2013); and Dr Jared Peatman, George Washington University, and author of The Long Shadow of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (Illinois University Press, 2013).

Adam's latest book is Gettysburg (Oxford University Press, 2025)

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.