The Road to Now

Fixing the American healthcare system has been one of the most difficult and divisive problems in modern US history. The Affordable Care Act has helped more Americans than ever gain insurance, yet the remaining problems have led the Republican-controlled Congress to put "repeal and replace" at the top of their legislative agenda in 2017. Why has health insurance been such a tricky issue in the United States? Why did our insurance model develop differently than in other industrialized countries, and how can understanding this help us overcome the problems we face today? In this episode of The Road to Now, Dr. Melissa Thomasson helps us answer these questions by taking us through the history of the American health insurance system. We also offer up another installment of Path to the Present (the podcast within a podcast) in which Matt Negrin and Alex Trowbridge provide a concise history of the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Believe me- this episode is YOUGE! Melissa Thomasson is Julian Lange Professor of Economics at the University of Miami and an expert on the economic history of the American health care system. For more on this episode can be found at our website: www.theroadtonow.com

On August 28th,1963 Clayborne Carson was a 19 year-old attending his first civil rights demonstration. That demonstration was the historic March on Washington, and what he remembers most about that day isn't Dr. King's historic speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, but the people he met. Hitchhiking back home to Los Alamos, New Mexico, Carson couldn't have known that 22 years later Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, would ask him to edit her husband's papers. Today Dr. Clayborne Carson is Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor of History and Ronnie Lott Founding Director of the Martin Luther King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1975. As someone whose life and research are intertwined with the work and legacy of Dr. King, Dr. Carson is uniquely qualified to explain the importance of King's leadership and his place within the greater struggle for justice in the US and abroad. We are thus honored to have Dr. Carson as our guest on The Road to Now as we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. You can find more information on this episode and The Road to Now at our website: www.theroadtonow.com

Most people agree that the 2016 election marked a turning point for the Republican Party. Whatever the impact of this election in the long term, the changes we're seeing today are part of a longer historical trajectory that took the GOP from the party of Abraham Lincoln to the party of Donald Trump. So how did this happen? How did a party that was despised in the American south in the 1940s come to dominate the region a few decades later? And where do great Presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan fit within this story. In today's episode, we're joined by Dr. Heather Cox Richardson to get the answer. Heather Cox Richardson is a Professor of History at Boston College and co-editor at We're History. Her most recent book, To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party, was published by Basic Books in 2014. For more on this episode and The Road to Now: www.theroadtonow.com.

In the last few weeks, our listeners have submitted some great questions about the history of NASA, Presidential corruption, daylight saving time, & more. We've been working hard to get you the answers to these questions, so to kick off 2017, we offer you a Q & A extravaganza with an all-star team of historians featuring Heather Cox Richardson of Boston College, Bruce Carlson of My History Can Beat Up Your Politics, & Brian Odom of NASA! Thanks to everyone who sent us the questions for today's episode. Please keep sending your questions to roadtonowcast@gmail.com and we'll continue to answer them as they come in! For more on this and every episode on The Road to Now, visit our website: www.theroadtonow.com.

In episode 36 of The Road to Now, Bob and guest co-host Keith Larson speak with Turner Simkins about his new book Possibilities. Turner tells of the struggles his family went through after his son Brennan was diagnosed with a rare subtype of Leukemia on his 7th birthday, and what they learned as Brennan went from a dismal prognosis to a remarkable recovery. Turner also explains how the inspiration that Brennan took from Band of Brothers inspired him to wake up every day with the will to fight, and shows how the lessons of history can be a powerful force in our everyday lives. More on this episode and The Road to Now can be found at our website: www.theroadtonow.com.

Jimmy Carter's Presidency is one few Americans remember fondly. In a 2013 ranking created by statistician Nate Silver, Carter took the #26 spot, right between William Howard Taft and Calvin Coolidge. The economic crises Carter inherited upon taking office in 1977 plagued his administration, and his perceived weakness in fighting the Cold War only added to the sense of unease created by America's loss in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. But is it possible that Americans' perceptions of Carter don't match the reality? Dr. Nancy Mitchell says that's the case, and she joins Bob and Ben to explain why. She explains Jimmy Carter's Presidency through the lens of his foreign policy in Africa, and argues that Carter was not an ideologue, but a full-fledged Cold Warrior who was committed to maintaining US influence abroad. Nancy also discusses the legacy of Carter's Presidency today, and applies her expertise on US Foreign Policy to assess Barack Obama and Donald Trump's approach to diplomacy. Dr. Nancy Mitchell is a Professor of US Diplomatic History at North Carolina State University. She has published extensively in her field of expertise, and her most recent book, Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War (Stanford University Press, 2016) recently won the American Academy of Diplomacy's Douglas Dillon Award for Distinction on the Practice of American Diplomacy. More on this episode and The Road to Now is available at our website: www.theroadtonow.com

Tom Shadyac has probably made you laugh. He was the youngest ever staff joke writer for Bob Hope and he directed some of the biggest comedy films in recent memory, including Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Nutty Professor. A lot of people would say Tom has "made it." Tom would disagree. Tom joins Ben and Bob for a conversation about his life and the path that led him to abandon the pursuit of fame and material abundance to focus on helping others. He tells of his 11 year period of unemployment as he struggled to find success in the Los Angeles comedy scene, his relationship with Jim Carrey, and how following his own passions led him to take a risk with Ace Ventura. Tom also talks of his approach to teaching film, and explains why he defines success as a state of mind. You can find out more about Tom's story and philosophy in his book Life's Operating Manual and his documentary film I Am (which we highly recommend!). More on this episode and The Road to Now podcast can be found at our website: www.theroadtonow.com

There's a good chance you don't appreciate how engrained professional wrestling is in American history and culture, and this episode is about to change that. We didn't know all this either until wrestling legend Jim Cornette was kind enough to spend an hour taking us from wrestling's origins in the late 19th century up to the sport as it exists today. Jim knows the sport like no other- he's been part of the professional wrestling scene since the 1970s, and currently hosts the tremendously popular podcast The Jim Cornette Experience. Jim has also been ringside (and sometimes in the ring) for some of wrestling's greatest moments, including the April 5, 1982 showdown between Andy Kaufman & Jerry "The King" Lawler (that was his first time on national television), and his storytelling is second-to-none. This episode also features wrestling aficionado Jon Burr making a special appearance as guest co-host. Jon is the host of the NBA podcast Fastbreak Breakfast, the front man for the band How I Became the Bomb, and Ben's friend & neighbor. More on this episode and The Road to Now can be found at our website: www.TheRoadToNow.com.

American politics has changed a lot in the last few decades. Jimmy Williams, has observed this from inside the beltway, and has made a few changes himself. When he first arrived in DC in 1992, he was a Republican working for the George H.W. Bush's reelection campaign. A few years later he was a Democrat working on the staff of Democratic Senator Dick Durban. Since then he has been a lobbyist, a contributor at MSNBC, the founder of his own online media outlet and, most recently, the host of the political podcast Decode DC. In our interview, Jimmy tells Bob and Ben of the road that led him through all of these career changes, and the path that led him from a Republican to a self-professed "progressive Democrat who owns guns." Jimmy discusses his experience of coming out as gay in the 1990s and the ways his faith have informed his political views. We also discuss HB2 in North Carolina and the greater history of discrimination and inclusion in American politics. Jimmy Williams is a political commentator and the host of the Decode DC podcast, which explains how politics in Washington, DC affects Americans' daily lives. More on this episode and The Road to Now can be found at our website: www.TheRoadToNow.com

The 2016 election is over and many Americans are trying to understand how Donald Trump was able to defeat the political establishment and reveal major flaws in the ways experts assess public opinion. To help us understand this election, Bob and Ben speak with Dr. Brian Rosenwald about his research on the history of conservative talk radio. Brian traces the rise of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative radio hosts in the 1980s, and the ways they have both reflected and shaped their listeners' views. He also explains why there is truth to claims of liberal bias in the mainstream media, but not for the reasons most critics assume. Our conversation with Brian also provided an excellent opportunity for Bob and Ben to discuss the 2016 election and our take on the best ways to move forward. Dr. Brian Rosenwald is a fellow at the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently converting his doctoral dissertation, "Mount Rushmore: The Rise of Talk Radio and its Impact on Politics and Public Policy," into a book for Harvard University Press. Brian also conducts research for the Slate podcast Whistlestop. For more on this and many other episodes of The Road to Now, check out our website: www.theroadtonow.com