The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.
A biweekly discussion dedicated to American History, historical thinking, and the role of history in our every day lives. Hosted by historian John Fea
Episodes
February 9, 2026 • 65 mins
What is the difference between "fortress thinking" and "pilgrimage thinking"? How do these modes of thinking shape the academy today? In this episode, Rhonda and Douglas Jacobsen present a new approach to the Christian intellectual life. They are the authors of Christianity and Intellectual Inquiry: Thinking as Pilgrimage.
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January 27, 2026 • 84 mins
What is a “white liberal” and why do people hate them so much? Conservatives hate them for being so tolerant. Libertarians hate them for believing that the government might have a role to play in advancing a good society. Socialists and others on the left blame white liberalism for promoting capitalism. Our guest on this episode is Kevin Schultz, author of Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History.
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January 13, 2026 • 72 mins
Our guest in this episode, historian Andrew Hartman, writes, "Americans are thinking about [Karl] Marx to a degree not matched since the 1960s, or perhaps even the 1930s." Join us for a discussion of Hartman's new book, Karl Marx in America.
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December 16, 2025 • 54 mins
Our guest on this episode of the podcast is Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. He is with us to talk about his more recent book, The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America. In the wake of the American Revolution, Hamilton and Jefferson developed contrasting, often clashing visions for balancing liberty and power in the new republ...
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December 2, 2025 • 46 mins
Most of the stories we will tell about the American Revolution during the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026 will take on a feel of American exceptionalism. They will come mostly from within the geographical bounds of what today is the United States, and most of those stories will concentrate on the eastern seaboard—the so-called "13 colonies." Our guest in this episode, University of Maryland historian Richard Bell, encourages us ...
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November 18, 2025 • 59 mins
Many Americans have heard of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. But did you know that her father was a famous evangelist, her brother was "the most famous man in America," and her sister founded the home economics movement? In this episode, we talk with author Obbie Tyler Todd about the Beecher family, one of the most important families in 19th-century America. Todd is the author of The Beechers: America's Most...
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November 3, 2025 • 54 mins
In this episode, we talk with David Waldstreicher, author of the George Washington Prize-winning The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence. We discuss early American poetry as the eighteenth-century equivalent of pop music and tweeting, the influence of evangelical Christianity on Wheatley's poetry, and the tension between slavery and the American Revolution in colonial Boston.
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October 20, 2025 • 57 mins
In this episode we talk with historian Paul Putz about the history of Christianity and sports in America. This episode is for sports fans, history buffs, and anyone interested in how sports ministries like Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action navigated some of the major social, cultural, and political events of post-World War II America.
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October 7, 2025 • 49 mins
What does it mean to be Black and evangelical—and why has that story been so often overlooked?
In this episode, John Fea sits down with Vincent Bacote, co-creator and host of the new documentary Black and Evangelical. They explore the history of Black evangelicals in America, from the Nottage Brothers and the Great Migration to the founding of the National Black Evangelical Association and the unforgettable moment Tom Skinner took...
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December 12, 2023 • 54 mins
In this episode we talk with Wesleyan University historian Joseph Slaughter, author of Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in Early America. He offers a new account of the interplay between religion and capitalism in early American history by focusing on 19th-century Protestant entrepreneurs and how they infused faith into their business and, in turn, how those businesses shaped our capitalist economy today.
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December 3, 2023 • 44 mins
She was a privileged baby boomer who grew up on a horse farm in segregated Virginia. By her 21st birthday she had worked for peace in Communist Europe, traveled the country in the cause of racial justice, marched for voting rights in Selma, and led anti-Vietnam protests at Bryn Mawr College. Our guest in this episode is distinguished American historian and former Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust. She talks about her m...
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November 7, 2023 • 52 mins
In his new book Bridge & Tunnel Boys, historian Jim Cullen discusses how Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen represented what he calls "the metropolitan sound of the American century." In this episode of the podcast, we talk with Cullen about how Joel and Springsteen were shaped by their lives on the periphery of New York City. Our conversation ranges across several subjects, including politics, cosmopolitanism, history, the culture o...
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October 30, 2023 • 54 mins
How did Ronald Reagan use the media to shape his evangelical vision for America, a vision rooted in political freedom, economic freedom, and religious freedom that is still with us today and continues to define the discourse of both of our political parties? In this episode we talk to Diane Winston, the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the University of Southern California, about her new book Righting the American Dream: How t...
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October 16, 2023 • 63 mins
Should professional historians write for the general public? If so, who is the "public" they are trying to reach? And when historians do write for the public how do they manage to make their work readable and accessible without sacrificing scholarly integrity? What role does politics, and even activism, play in popular history writing? These are questions that the historical profession, and in some respects, the nation, are current...
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October 9, 2023 • 58 mins
There was a profound difference between Christian Socialism and the so-called "Social Gospel." Janine Giordano Drake explains these differences in her new book The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement. Drake argues that Protestant reformers associated with Mainline Protestantism and the Federal Council of Churches undermined workers' efforts to bring about social d...
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October 2, 2023 • 57 mins
Most Americans probably think of conservative evangelicals as climate change deniers who believe global warming is a hoax. If this is you, you would not be entirely wrong. But our guest today, Neill Pogue, author of The Nature of the Religious Right: The Struggle Between Conservative Evangelicals and the Environmental Movement, suggests that this story is much more complicated. We discuss how evangelicals moved from environmental s...
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September 25, 2023 • 50 mins
What is fraternity? Our guest today, political scientist Susan McWilliams Barndt, discusses her father's 1973 magnum opus The Idea of Fraternity in America. We talk about the work of Wilson Carey McWilliams, the historical context in which he wrote his magisterial work of political theory and history, and why we still need his ideas today. The Idea of Fraternity was just re-released in a 50th anniversary edition with an introductio...
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August 21, 2023 • 51 mins
If you've listened to this podcast over the years you know that we champion "historical thinking" as one of our best hopes for sustaining and preserving American democratic life. In this episode we talk with Zachary Cote, the Executive Director of THINKING NATION, a non-profit organization devoted to helping K-12 social studies students mature into citizens who are empowered to analyze information effectively, think historically, a...
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August 14, 2023 • 48 mins
What is American evangelicalism? In her new book The Evangelical Imagination, Karen Swallow Prior, one of the most careful observers of, and participants in, evangelical life, analyses the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded the movement and unpacks some of its most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices. Our conversation revolves around topics such as revivalism, wokeness, self-improvement, domesti...
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August 7, 2023 • 46 mins
Did you know the Jesuits were some of the largest slaveholders in colonial America? Our guest in this episode is Rachel L. Swarns, author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved And Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. We discuss the Jesuit's 1838 sale of 272 men, women and children for the purpose of saving Georgetown University and the implications of this sale for one enslaved family.
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