Videos

BackStory hosts Brian Balogh and Nathan Connolly gave a behind-the-scenes look at their weekly podcast. They were joined by a former staff member and a regular guest. This was part of a two-…

Authors David Goldfield, The Gifted Generation, and Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains, talked about the good and bad aspects of American democracy. They spoke at the Virginia Festival of th…

Representatives from a variety of museums and history and public policy centers discussed the importance of these institutions and their methods for educating and offering information to the…

Historians talked about American motivations for entering World War I, how the country mobilized for war, and government restrictions on free speech and the press in response to protests.

Joanne Freeman and Brian Balogh talked about the history of political parties and partisanship from the founding era to the 21st century.

The Smithsonian Institution hosted the “BackStory with the American History Guys” radio program as they examined D.W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation, originally released in 1915

Andy Card, Jeffrey Engel, and others talked about Mr. Engel’s book, When the World Seemed New: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War. They spoke about President Bush’s foreign policy …

Presidential scholars and others talked about the intersection between popular and scholarly history, including the narrative approach of authors David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin, a…

Scholars talked about presidents and the economy, including whether a president’s policies can unilaterally affect the economy, and whether their programs continue to reverberate after they …

Historians Brian Balogh, Ed Ayers, and Peter Onuf recorded their weekly radio program, BackStory with the American History Guys, sin the Flag Hall of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Ame…

University of Virginia professor Brian Balogh talked about his book, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America. The interview, part of Book T…

Historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf and Brian Balogh host the public radio show and podcast “BackStory with the American History Guys.” This weekend, we’ll simulcast the show live from Wisconsin…

Historian Alan Brinkley discussed the crises President Kennedy faced in 1961, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Berlin Crisis, and the lessons he learned from those events. He is th…

The BackStory Guys, Ed Ayers, Brian Balogh, and Peter Onuf, talked about the history and mythos of the Thanksgiving holiday.

An episode of the radio program “BackStory with the American History Guys” focused on Secession and the Civil War and its reverberations through history. The hosts discussed the secession de…