For the Ages: A History Podcast New-York Historical Society

Historian Alan Shaw Taylor continues his conversation with David M. Rubenstein on the decades that followed the American Revolution. This defining era saw Native Americans seeking to defend their homes from a flood of American settlers, the intertwining of slavery in American politics, economics, and daily life, and an emerging expansionist vision pushing the country westward. Alongside these character-defining evolutions in the young country’s economy and geopolitics, this era also saw America’s cultural and religious identity begin to take shape.
Recorded on June 13, 2023 

Contrary to the popular narrative of a confident and stable young republic, the United States emerged from its constitution as a fragile, internally divided union of states still contending with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and the author of American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850, Alan Shaw Taylor joins David M. Rubenstein in this first of two conversations on the early decades of the American republic, exploring the limits of its physical and ideological borders.
Recorded on June 13, 2023 

Hailed as the founding father of America’s conservation movement, President Theodore Roosevelt championed the protection of the nation's natural treasures and embarked on visionary initiatives to preserve 234 million acres of wilderness for posterity. In conversation with David M. Rubenstein, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley explores Theodore Roosevelt’s complex legacy as one of America’s first environmentalist presidents.
Recorded on March 17, 2023

In 1961, as the Cold War cast a shadow across the globe, John F. Kennedy inspired Americans to look up to the sky as he announced his goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley dives into the history of the unprecedented expansion of the American space program under President Kennedy, and how the project aimed to promote science, exploration, and the spreading of democratic ideals back on Earth.
Recorded on March 17, 2023

Flora MacDonald’s life continued to be marked by dramatic political upheaval following her involvement in the escape of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. In this second conversation with David M. Rubenstein, Flora Fraser details Flora MacDonald’s marriage, her move to the American colonies, and how her family was eventually swept up in the Revolutionary War before she finally returned to the Isle of Skye.
Recorded on March 17, 2023

Biographer Flora Fraser tells the thrilling story of the young Scotswoman who helped Prince Charles Edward Stuart evade capture following the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden, Scotland, which marked the end of the House of Stuarts’ attempts to reclaim the British throne. While the story of Flora MacDonald has become the subject of songs, storybooks, and films in the two centuries that have since passed, in this first of two conversations, Fraser dives into the details of how and why Flora MacDonald helped “Bonnie” Prince Charlie make his midnight escape by sea, disguised as an Irish maid.
Recorded on March 17, 2023