The affordable housing shortage in many American cities is making urban life more difficult for all of us. But the problem of housing is not a new one, and history has some valuable lessons for those looking for solutions. In this episode, historian Tom Hanchett joins us to talk about his new book, Affordable Housing in Charlotte: What One City’s History Tells Us About America’s Pressing Problem and the truths, myths, and ironies of government subsidized housing in the United States.

If you enjoy this episode, check out Tom’s previous appearances on our show in episode 159 and episode 4.

This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.

In the late 18th century, tens of millions of buffalo lived in North America. By the mid-1880s, they were on the brink of extinction. For the white settlers who sought to “conquer” the American west, and the Native people whose way of life depended on them, the plight of the American Buffalo was more than a story of one species of animal. As Dayton Duncan writes in the prologue of his new book Blood Memory, the buffalo has “emerged as an embodiment of the nation’s contradictory relationship with the natural world: venerated and mercilessly destroyed, a symbol of both a romanticized frontier and the callous conquest of a continent.” In this episode, Dayton joins us for a conversation about the Buffalo (aka American Bison) and how the story of one animal can tell us so much about American history.

Dayton Duncan is an Emmy award-winning writer whose most recent collaborations with filmmaker Ken Burns are the book Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo (Alfred A. Knopf, 2023)and the new documentary The American Buffalo (2023) which is available right now at pbs.org.

If you enjoyed this episode, check out our previous conversation with Dayton Duncan in RTN #229 on Benjamin Franklin.

This episode originally aired as episode 285 on October 2, 2023. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.

Jon Grinspan has done something remarkable: in his new book, Wide Awake, he tells a thoroughly researched and brilliantly crafted story that may change your understanding of the origins of the American Civil War. In this episode, Jon joins us for a conversation about the Wide Awakes, the anti-slavery youth movement that played an instrumental role in electing Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and took part in some of the first acts of violence between pro and anti-slavery Americans in 1861. Jon also discusses the ways that the past and present interact in powerful ways, and how politics can evolve, step-by-step, into violence.

To quote Jon’s recent article in The Smithsonian: “The most consequential political organization in American history….began when a few working-class kids designed a costume, which grew into a movement and ultimately an army. And it ended with a civil war.”

Dr. Jon Grinspan is a curator of political and military history at the National Museum of American History. His book Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War was released on May 14, 2024 from Bloomsbury Press. Click here to order your copy!

You can hear Jon’s previous appearance on The Road to Now in episode #220 Processing the Past w/ John Grinspan.

This is a rebroadcast of RTN #306, which originally aired on May 13, 2024. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.