With the Bark Off: Conversations on the American Presidency

Mar 07 2024 104 ep. 43 mins 443

With the Bark Off: Conversations on the American Presidency Podcast artwork

When President Lyndon Baines Johnson dedicated his presidential library in 1971, he declared, "It's all here, the story of our time—with the bark off." Since then, in keeping with his vision, the LBJ Library has been a forum for the biggest names and best minds of our day to address the issues of our time. This season of With the Bark Off offers a critical examination of the 45 men who have led our nation and the evolution of America’s highest office. Preeminent historians and authors take us behind-the-scenes and share revealing insights on presidents from George Washington to Joe Biden. With the Bark Off is a production of the LBJ Foundation and each biweekly episode will be hosted by Mark A. Lawrence, Director of the LBJ Presidential Library, author, and prominent scholar on American politics and foreign policy; or Mark K. Updegrove, President and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, author, and ABC News presidential historian.

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"Dewey Defeats Truman" A conversation about the election of 1948 with A.J. Baime

Mar 07 2024 55 mins

New York Times bestselling author A.J. Baime joined us to discuss the famous outcome of the presidential election of 1948. Baime is the author of The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World (2017), The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War (2014), Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Spee

Previewing the 2024 Presidential Election with Richard Hasen & Joshua Sellers

Jan 18 2024 61 mins

Last month, Mark Updegrove moderated a discussion at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, at Rice University, entitled "A presidential election with legal issues like no other." There, he interviewed two legal experts about the legal challenges faced by the GOP's leading presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, one of the many unprecedented aspects of our presidenti

A Conversation With Secretary Robert Gates

Nov 30 2023 62 mins

Robert Gates served in public life for over 50 years. In 2006, he was named Secretary of Defense by President George W. Bush as our nation waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq. He would retain the position for President Barack Obama until 2011. Mark Updegrove talked to him recently before a full house at the LBJ Library, where he offered his reflections on an increasingly chaotic worl

A Conversation with Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 26 2023 58 mins

Heather Cox Richardson is professor of history at Boston College, and author of six major books about US history in the 19th Century. She also publishes the daily newsletter Letters From An American, which reaches nearly 2 million daily subscribers. She joined us at the LBJ Library to discuss her new book, and how she views our current political moment.

A Conversation with Jake Tapper

Oct 13 2023 51 mins

Jake Tapper is the chief Washington anchor for CNN, whose shows “The Lead with Jake Tapper” and “State of the Union” are fixtures of broadcast news. He joined us at the LBJ Library to share his reflections on the state of our democracy, the media landscape, President Joe Biden, and Biden’s presumptive Republican challenger in next year’s presidential election: former Pr

"He becomes a genuine believer" A conversation about Abraham Lincoln with Josh Zeitz

Sep 28 2023 48 mins

Joshua Zeitz joins us to talk about the inner religious life of Abraham Lincoln, a subject of continued fascination to historians and biographers 150 years after his death.

"A key moment of our civil rights narrative that's never gotten its due" A conversation about Hubert Humphrey with Samuel Freedman

Sep 14 2023 52 mins

Samuel Freedman is a Professor at Columbia University and the award-winning author of ten books. In Into the Bright Sunshine he looks at the life of Hubert Humphrey, who would become Senator from Minnesota, Vice President to Lyndon Johnson, and the Democratic presidential nominee in 1968, who lost his bid for the presidency to Richard Nixon by less than one percentage point. But i

"A pathologically reasonable person in power" A Conversation about President Garfield with C.W. Goodyear

Aug 31 2023 40 mins

C.W. Goodyear is a writer and historian based in Washington, D.C. Earlier this year, he published his first book, President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier, which has earned effusive praise for meticulous research and eloquent writing about a president who has often flow under the radar. Goodyear shines a light on James Garfield’s presidency but also dwells on his earlier care

Best of With the Bark Off 2023 (Part 1)

Aug 17 2023 32 mins

Given the popularity of our year-end “best of” episode, we have curated seven especially enlightening, entertaining, or surprising vignettes from the last six months. You’ll learn about Reagan’s novel approach to the Cold War; how Edith Wilson took the reins of executive power when her husband, Woodrow Wilson, suffered a stroke; what drew Jackie Bouvier to John F. Kennedy;

"Like all great leaders, he's learning and changing" A Conversation about MLK Jr. With Jonathan Eig (Pt 2)

Aug 03 2023 24 mins

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a giant of American history, a figure celebrated in classrooms and public discourse for his towering contributions to the struggle for civil rights. And yet Jonathan Eig's biography, King: A Life, rooted in abundant newly available sources, is the first full-fledged study of King to be published in decades. Eig joins us for an enlightening co