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The Last Best Hope?Understanding America from the Outside In Author: Adam Smith
Historian and broadcaster Professor Adam Smith explores the America of today through the lens of the past. Is America - as Abraham Lincoln once claimed - the last best hope of Earth?Produced by Oxford Universitys world-leading Rothermere American Institute, each story-filled episode looks at the US from the outside in delving into the political events, conflicts, speeches and songs that have shaped and embodied the soul of a nation.From the bloody battlefields of Gettysburg to fake news and gun control, Professor Smith takes you back in time (and sometimes on location) to uncover fresh insights and commentary from award-winning academics and prominent public figures.Join us as we ask: what does the US stand for and what does this mean for us all? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Language: en Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Why the Declaration of Independence said what it did, Episode 2
Episode 4
Tuesday, 3 March, 2026
To its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, it was “an expression of the American mind”; to the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, it was "absurd and visionary". The Declaration of Independence, written 250 years ago, is so layered in myth, so foundational to the idea of America as the last best hope of earth, that it is a challenge, now, to put it into its gritty historical context -- a document that served to justify an act of rebellion, to garner support for it by listing grievances, but which also embedded, perhaps inintentionally, some powerful emancipatory claims. In this two-part episode of The Last Best Hope, Adam asks why the Declaration of Independence said what it did and why it mattered. Contributors: Professor Lige Gould (University of New Hampshire), author of Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire; Professor Steven Sarson (Jean Moulin University Lyon 3) author of The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States; the intellectual historian, biographer of James Harrington, Professor Rachel Hammersley (Newcastle University); Dr Grace Mallon (University of Oxford), Clive Holmes Fellow in History at Lady Margaret Hall; and Bradford Skow, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT, author of American Independence in Verse.The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and is kindly supported by Tom Amraoui. For details of our programming, go to rai.ox.ac.ukIf you would like to support us by making a donation go to https://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/givingProducer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
