The Last Best Hope?

Oct 31 2024 71 ep. 38 mins 447

The Last Best Hope? Podcast artwork

Historian and broadcaster Professor Adam Smith explores the America of today through the lens of the past. Is America - as Abraham Lincoln once claimed - the last best hope of Earth?

Produced by Oxford University’s world-leading Rothermere American Institute, each story-filled episode looks at the US from the outside in – delving into the political events, conflicts, speeches and songs that have shaped and embodied the soul of a nation.

From the bloody battlefields of Gettysburg to fake news and gun control, Professor Smith takes you back in time (and sometimes on location) to uncover fresh insights and commentary from award-winning academics and prominent public figures.

Join us as we ask: what does the US stand for – and what does this mean for us all?

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The Age of Polarization Election Special Part 4: 2016

Oct 31 2024 41 mins

The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid, and presidents sometimes won massive landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently nail-bitingly close. How did this happen? In this s

God and Trump: Evangelicals and Politics in today's America

Oct 30 2024 56 mins

When the media talks about the evangelical vote today, what or to whom are they referring? Who are the people who self-identify in this way? Should we understand them as a group defined by their faith, their style of worship, by distinctive theological positions – or has the term evangelical itself become so politicised that in practice it is now most meaningfully understood as s

The Age of Polarization Election Special Part 3: 2008

Oct 29 2024 44 mins

AGE OF POLARIZATION ELECTION SPECIAL PART 3: 2008The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid, and presidents sometimes won massive landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently na

The Age of Polarization Election Special Part 2: 2000

Oct 24 2024 37 mins

AGE OF POLARIZATION ELECTION SPECIAL (PART 2)The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid and presidents sometimes won huge landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently nail-bitin

Eugene V. Debs and America as the last, best hope for socialism?

Oct 22 2024 39 mins

Eugene V. Debs is a reminder of the possibility of a different kind of American politics. Five times the Socialist Party's candidate for president in the first two decades of the twentieth century, Debs argued that the promise of America -- the last best hope of earth -- could be fulfilled only through socialism. Debs lived in an era that, like our own, was characterised by dramati

The Age of Polarization Election Special Part 1: 1992

Oct 17 2024 45 mins

ELECTION SPECIAL (PART 1)The US is in an Age of Polarization. From the 1930s to the 1980s, voter allegiances were more fluid and presidents sometimes won huge landslides (think Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972). But for the last thirty years, a huge gulf between the parties -- at least rhetorically -- has opened up, and elections have been persistently nail-bitingly close. How did t

The Age of Polarization: Election Specials

Oct 17 2024 1 mins

In a special 4-part series for The Last Best Hope? will take a deep dive into the 4 key US elections that have shaped the 2024 race:Bill Clinton’s generational-shift victory in 1992,the drama of 2000 in which Bush beat Gore even while losing the popular vote,the election of the nation’s first black president in 2008,and the norm-shattering rise of reality TV star Donald Trump i

Dark Money: Can billionaires buy elections in America?

Oct 15 2024 44 mins

Wealthy Americans have always found ways of spending money on political campaigns in the presumed expectation of a return on their investment. But in 2010, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision ruled that legislation that restricted how much money could be spent on influencing elections was unconstitutional, opening up vast new possibilities for wealthy individuals and cor

Rigged! Anxiety about election integrity in America

Jun 18 2024 49 mins

For as long as there have been elections, there have been those who’ve refused to trust them. But anxiety about elections has peaked at particular moments in American history – in the run-up the Civil War, in the late nineteenth century, in the Civil Rights era, and again today. All periods when sections of the population became convinced that the rules were being bent in ways

Presidents and the Press

Jun 04 2024 46 mins

In 1787, the year of the Constitutional Convention, Thomas Jefferson wrote that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”. Easy for him to say – but in reality, US presidents and the press have always been locked in an embrace fusing mutual respect and mistrust, cosines