In addition to being America’s first vice president and second president, Founding Father John Adams was a diplomat, the father of another president, and an avid diarist. In this conversation with David M. Rubenstein, Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Revolutionary era, tackles this multifaceted figure, from his role in the birth of our nation to the precedents he set for all those who followed him. Recorded on September 4, 2025

For generations, the teaching of American history has often glossed over the important role Native communities have played in shaping the nation, but contemporary historians are reframing the conversation. In a discussion that spans five centuries, scholar Ned Blackhawk illuminates how the history of the Indigenous peoples of North America is an essential component to telling a more complete American story—and how, despite many obstacles, Native communities have persevered. Recorded on Januar...

If ever there was proof that opposites attract, it was the friendship between the personally and politically conservative Edmund Burke and the liberal-leaning libertine Charles Fox, who formed a united front in 18-century British politics for a quarter of a century. Biographer James Grant joins David M. Rubenstein to demonstrate how, despite their many differences, Fox and Burke remained friends and political allies through the American Revolution and the dramatic impeachment of East India Co...

Shaped by crises at home and abroad, John Adams’s presidency became a proving ground for the nation’s fragile new government. Historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky sits down with David Rubenstein to reveal how Adams managed partisan conflict, foreign dangers, and a skeptical public, ultimately forging precedents for executive authority and democratic stability that secured the republic’s future. Recorded on April 29, 2024

Irrevocably tied to the tragedy of the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson’s political legacy is also marked by his radical push to reimagine American life. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Caro, author of The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson, explores how Johnson pushed Congress to establish Medicare, Medicaid, and historic civil rights and reform legislation. Recorded on April 6, 2024

Please enjoy this re-release of a past episode of For the Ages. New episodes will return Fall 2025. The women’s suffrage movement was a hard-fought, decades-long campaign to extend that most essential of democratic rights to all Americans regardless of sex. That protracted struggle would rapidly come to a head in August of 1920 in Tennessee, the final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment. Author and journalist Elaine Weiss talks with David Rubenstein about the struggles of the suff...

Please enjoy this re-release of a past episode of For the Ages. New episodes will return Fall 2025. While the Supreme Court is often presented in American history as a protector of civil liberties, its record across the centuries provides a more complex picture. While the short period of the 1930s to the 1970s saw the Court end segregation and safeguard both free speech and the vote, during the preceding period, the Court largely ignored or suppressed basic rights for many Americans. Th...

Please enjoy this re-release of a past episode of For the Ages. New episodes will return Fall 2025. Bestselling author Walter Isaacson, in conversation with David M. Rubenstein, discusses the life and work of the Nobel Prize-winning Jennifer Doudna who, with her collaborators, created a DNA-editing tool with the power to revolutionize human health. Recorded on February 19, 2021

Please enjoy this re-release of a past episode of For the Ages. New episodes will return Fall 2025. Enshrined in our Constitution and etched into our currency, religion is inextricable from the fabric of American political and social life. The ubiquity of religion in our national history has also made it an elusive, at times contradictory, force in this country’s growth—one that is associated with freedom and tolerance as often as it is with censure and control. Catherine Brekus, profes...

Lasting from 1865 to 1877, Reconstruction in the American South was an aspirational endeavor that brought with it newly enshrined rights for Black Americans, including Black male suffrage, birthright citizenship, and equal protection under the law, as well as the hope of national reconciliation. Despite early progress in education and government, lack of support and Southern resistance led to setbacks. In this conversation, Selwyn Vickers joins David M. Rubenstein to discuss how challenges to...

As the man who led the effort to create the most violent weapon in the history of mankind with the invention of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer is a divisive figure in American history. From his childhood in New York City to his career as a physicist through World War II and the Cold War, Kai Bird offers a riveting account of Oppenheimer’s life and how he weighed the complex moral implications of his life’s work. Recorded on April 3, 2024

John F. Kennedy advised Americans to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country. Scholar Danielle Allen argues that civic engagement such as Kennedy was suggesting is the only true path to a just society—a framework she refers to as “power-sharing liberalism.” While liberalism more generally is the idea that a government should be based on rights that both protect and empower individuals, Allen’s proposed framework calls for a country in which no si...

Samuel Adams was called “the most elegant writer, the most sagacious politician, and celebrated patriot” by John Adams, his second cousin, and was applauded by other colleagues such as Thomas Jefferson. A mastermind behind the Boston Tea Party who helped mobilize the colonies to revolution, he is nonetheless an often overlooked figure amongst the Founding Fathers. Historian Stacy Schiff examines his transformation from the listless, failing son of a wealthy family into the tireless, silver-to...

In a time when crossing political party lines can seem as treacherous as crossing a fault line during an earthquake, it could be difficult to believe that Abraham Lincoln, in a country even more divided than our contentious present-day one, repeatedly worked with those who disagreed with him. But Lincoln understood that as a politician it was his duty to do whatever was necessary for the betterment of the country, even if that meant reaching across a very perilous aisle. Steve Inskeep demonst...

What did “the pursuit of happiness” mean to our nation’s Founders, and why was it included in the Declaration of Independence? Listed as one of America’s unalienable rights, this phrase finds its roots in the classical works of the Greek and Roman moral philosophers which would have made up our Founders’ libraries. Speaking to the moral character that the Founders hoped to imbue in the new American citizen, it also exemplified a dedication to the idea of personal self-government. Yet like so ...

Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, oppressive voter registration literacy tests disenfranchised Black voters across the United States. In direct response to these restrictions, community organizers and activists launched an underground Citizenship Schools project that helped tens of thousands of Black citizens not only learn to read and write, but how to navigate Jim Crow literacy tests and demand their right to vote. In this conversation with David M. Rubenstein, Elaine Weiss takes a de...

Seeking to wrest control of New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the English King Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, appointed Richard Nicolls to lead a flotilla to conquer Manhattan Island. Nicolls, with a blend of might and diplomatic tact, would make the integration of Dutch colonists a vital part of his takeover, birthing what was in many ways the blueprint of the modern city. Russell Shorto joins David M. Rubenstein to discuss New York’s origins and how a period of 17th-centu...

James Patterson is one of the most popular storytellers of our time. The creator of some of the most popular characters and series in fiction, including Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Jane Smith, and Maximum Ride, he has also written on fascinating true stories from the lives of the Kennedys, John Lennon, and Tiger Woods. As a co-author, he has also written bestselling novels with Bill Clinton, Dolly Parton, and Michael Crichton. In this conversation with David M. Rubenstein, he speaks ...

President Theodore Roosevelt is often described as an icon of American masculinity. From his military past as a Rough Rider to his history of undertaking dangerous wilderness expeditions, Roosevelt’s image has been associated with rugged bravery and steely determination. Behind this persona, however, were the women—family members, friends, and wives—upon whom he relied and who guided Roosevelt in matters both personal and political. Author Edward O’Keefe joins David M. Rubenstein to trace the...

When President James Garfield assumed the office of the presidency in March 1881, he stood at the helm of a deeply polarized and fragmented nation. Known as a reformer as well as a broker of compromise during his time in Congress, Garfield would scarcely have time to implement change as president before being assassinated only four months into his term. In this talk with David M. Rubenstein, biographer C.W. Goodyear discusses the life and legacy of President Garfield, a complex and often cont...