What are we to make of the most famous of American Paradoxes: that Thomas Jefferson, who claimed as a "self-evident truth" the principle that "all men are created equal" was a slaveholder? In this episode, Adam discusses this problem with Pullitzer prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed.  With the US undergoing one of the most profound racial reckonings for decades, how should the morally ambiguous legacy of the Founders be understood? 

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Has America lost its allure to the rest of the world? Has it lost its confidence, its optimism, its sense of openness?  In this episode, Adam talks to Nick Bryant, the BBC correspondent in New York and author of  When America Stopped Being Great about the changing image of the US between the 1980s and the present. The two discuss whether America still has the capacity to solve its own problems – or to believe that it can. And Adam asks if the BLM protests have created a new progressive image of a US counterculture that is, once again, drawing idealistic young people towards a different kind of American dream? 

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The soap opera of Meghan and Harry, the deploying of Prince Philip in America's culture wars: why does  the British royal family exerted so strong an appeal in republican America ? This is not a new phenomenon. Queen Victoria's son, later Edward VII, toured America on the eve of the Civil War and was greeted with adulation. What's going on?  Adam talks to Arianne Chernock and Frank Prochaska to find out. 

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In 1980, Jimmy Carter's administration leaned on the US Olympic Committee to boycott the Moscow Games.  Today, there are calls for the US to once again boycott the Olympics -- this time in Beijing. What are the lessons of the 1980 boycott? Can sport ever be an effective instrument of foreign policy? And does the US any longer have the credibility as the "leader of the free world" to take a stance on human rights. Adam talks to Joe Onek, Deputy Counsel to President Carter who managed the White House's efforts to boycott the Olympics, and the historians Nicholas Sarantakes and Patrick Andelic. 

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Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale": a soprano who made strong men weep with the beauty of her voice. In this episode, Adam explores the Nightingale's sensational tour of the US in 1850-52. She was described as the "most famous woman in the world" by her promoter, the never-knowingly-unselling impresario P T Barnum. Her reputation for virtue did much to make theatre and performance respectable, but as Lind travelled across America, the country was riven by slavery. How would she navigate those divisions while retaining her reputation, and making money? The guests are Robert Wilson, author of Barnum: An American Life, and the music historian Katherine Preston. Reader: Dane Udenberg. Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith. 

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Throughout the Victorian period, Black abolitionists toured the British Isles. In an effort to enlist British support for ending slavery in America--and later to enlist support for black rights--African Americans spoke not just in London or Leeds but in small towns and villages from the north of Scotland to the foot of Snowdonia and beyond. In this episode, Adam talks to Hannah-Rose Murray to ask why they came and how they were received. Abraham Lincoln may have thought America was the "last best hope" but at least strategically, abolitionists proclaimed Britain to be the land of the free and America to be a land of barbarism and hypocrisy.

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After their own successful secession from the British Empire in the War of Independence, Americans cheered on other plucky nations attempting to wrest themselves from the yoke of others. Whether in Latin America, Hungary, Poland, Ireland or Italy, Americans mostly thought that national self-determination was a good thing. So naturally, when they created the Confederacy,  Southerners--some of them at least--hoped that the rest of the world would think them as heroic as Garibaldi. They were to be sorely disappointed. In this episode, Adam talks to Ann Tucker, author of a recent book about how the Confederates channelled the spirit of those European freedom struggles. What, after all, was the difference between the struggle for Southern independence and the Risorgimento? The answer is quite a bit...

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In this episode Adam talks to Eric Foner, the pre-eminent historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction, about the resonances of the Reconstruction era in the present day.  In the aftermath of the Civil War, the US had to deal with a recalcitrant white population in the South who rejected the legitimacy of the Federal government's attempt to give political rights to Black people and who used political violence to achieve their aims. What lessons are there for the present day in an America that is once again profoundly divided over questions of racial justice and about the basic rules of the political game. 

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Adam talks to Mitch Robertson and Kate Guy about Joe Biden's inaugural address and the prospects for his administration. Is this a “new page in America’s story” as Joe Biden says? Adam and guests discuss the new president's appeal to his understanding of the "American tradition" and whether it will work.

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When Trump supporters invaded the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2020, in an attempt to prevent the ratification of the election of Joe Biden, the immediate response of many in the American media was that it was "not who we are". But in this episode, Adam talks to Bruce Baker from the University of Newcastle and Grace Mallon from Oxford, who explain that in fact there is a long American tradition of insurrection. When groups of people who feel entitled to be in control feel like they’ve lost control, attempts at insurrection have often been the result. And the example of the Revolution is always there to serve as a justification. 

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