American History Hotline

John Quincy Adams may have been a failed one-term president, but he had one of the most amazing second acts in American political history. From the House of Representatives, he steered our new nation through one of its most tumultuous eras ... carrying the torch of American democracy from the Founding Fathers to Abraham Lincoln.
In this special episode, Robert Costa interviews Bob about his new book: America’s Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick. It's an amazing conversation recorded live in D.C. at Politics and Prose.
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And everywhere that Mary went, the typhoid was sure to go.
The story of Mary Mallon (AKA Typhoid Mary) is one we're living every day to a small degree: the balance between public safety and personal liberty. Luckily for us, we'll never be imprisoned for being an symptomatic carrier of a disease. Well, never say never.
To learn more about the life of Mary Mallon we call up author Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America). Why was Mary's story so popular in the early 1900s? And why is her name so familiar even today?

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It can be scary to learn how much our democracy relies on norms and convention when the rule of law is put to the test. But, at least our Founding Fathers had an excellent understanding of authoritarianism when they drafted the U.S. Constitution. Are the guardrails they created enough to prevent a dictator, though?
Bob calls up Jeffrey Rosen (former President and CEO of the National Constitution Center) to answer this question.
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During the Great Depression, millions of Americans were out of work, but they still managed to make it to the movies. In fact, Hollywood didn't just survive one of our country's greatest economic downturns, it thrived.
So how did movie studios stay afloat when audiences could barely afford food? And why did people keep buying movie tickets during one of the darkest economic periods in U.S. history?
We dial up Rotten Tomatoes correspondent Mark Ellis to explore how Hollywood weathered the Great Depression and how this period changed filmmaking for rest of the 20th century. From the rise of sound films and lavish musicals to monster movies, gangster films, and sweeping epics like The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, film became a national escape during a difficult decade.
It’s a historical look at Hollywood that resonates today with new threats (like AI and consolidation) constantly emerging.
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She was just 16 years old when she rode nearly 40 miles through the night rallying the militia as the British attacked during the American Revolution.
Bob calls up Karen Romano Young (Sybil Ludington: Revolutionary War Hero) to get the story of Sybil Ludington. They explore what parts of her story are fact or fiction, and why she was nearly forgotten.
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