Americans finish a chaotic year with a contentious election, which threatens to tear the country apart. A pompous, bombastic president storms the country and is willing to win at any cost. The year is ... 1898!

On the eve of the 2020 election, we are looking back to one of the most significant Midterms in US history. In 1898, future-president Theodore Roosevelt became a national celebrity in Cuba and the Spanish American War. As the US Military conquered Caribbean and Pacific islands, the Fall election became a referendum on 'Expansionism.' Author Stephen Kinzer joins the show for Part 1 of 2 about Anti-Imperialism and a fight for "The Soul of the Nation."

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire.

In 2006 Kinzer published Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.  It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments.  Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been.  In 2017 Kinzer published The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire.  It describes America’s first great debate over military intervention abroad.

Filipinos threw off the Spanish empire at the end of the 1800s... only to be faced with an even more powerful colonial power. In honor of Philippine-American Heritage Month, Professor Luis Francia discusses Filipino revolutionary and reformist movements at the very turn of the century. Francia shares how war and upheaval in 1899 has affected the Philippines for over a hundred years.

Luis Francia was born in the Philippines and earned his BA from Ateneo de Manila University. He immigrated to the US after college, moving to New York City. In the 1970s, he began working for the Village Voice, a newspaper he was associated with for more than 20 years. A journalist, an editor, and a teacher, Francia began to write poetry in workshops with famed Filipino writer Jose Garcia Villa at the New School. His collections include The Arctic Archipelago (1992), Museum of Absences (2004), The Beauty of Ghosts (2010), and Tattered Boat (2014). His memoir Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago (2001) won a PEN Open Book Award and an Asian American Literary Award. Francia has published numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Memories of Overdevelopment: Reviews and Essays of Two Decades (1998), A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos (2010), and RE: Reflections, Reviews, and Recollections (2015). Francia teaches at New York University and writes an online column for the Manila paper Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Music sources:

Intro: Dill Pickles Rag

Outro: Scott Joplin “The Entertainer” Classic Rag piano

10/15/2020

Welcome to our pilot episode! Where our host Joe Hawthorne and our producer Jordan Hawthorne (no relation) sit down and give you a brief overview of what's to come!

Turn of the century is a show all about the turn of the 20th century! We focus on what launched the modern world, as we know it today. Every two weeks we will bring you in-depth interviews with historians, writers, or anyone else with a unique view on this exciting time period.

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Music sources:

Intro: Dill Pickles Rag

Outro: Scott Joplin “The Entertainer” Classic Rag piano