For the Ages: A History Podcast
Explore the rich and complex history of the United States and beyond. Produced by The New York Historical, host David M. Rubenstein engages the nation’s foremost historians and creative thinkers on a wide range of topics, including presidential biography, the nation’s founding, and the people who have shaped the American story. Learn more at nyhistory.org.
Episodes
127 episodes
The British Are Coming
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Rick Atkinson joins David Rubenstein to uncover the untold stories and moral conflicts—from both the American and British perspective—of the first 21 months of the Revolutionary War. Through the lens ...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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34:08
The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
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, ...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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27:13
The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future
Joe Biden’s legacy as America’s 46th president is still in the making. President Biden took office shortly after the attempted coup on January 6th, during the cresting of one of the most fatal waves of COVID-19, and in a period of severe econom...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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27:01
One Nation Under God: A History of Religion in America
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, fo...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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26:48
Under the Dome: Politics, Crisis, and Architecture at the United States Capitol
The US Capitol building is a powerful physical symbol of representative democracy, with its famous dome one of America’s most iconic architectural feats. The solidity and dependability of that symbol, however, belie the dynamic history of the e...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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31:28
A Conversation with Henry Louis Gates Jr. (RE-RELEASE)
Please enjoy this re-release of a past episode of For the Ages. New episodes will return Fall 2024. Henry Louis Gates Jr. has helped reshape the nation’s collective understanding of the legacy of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction...
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43:15
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 (RE-RELEASE)
Please enjoy this re-release of a past episode of For the Ages. New episodes will return Fall 2024. In 1924, Congress put in place strict quotas that impacted national immigration policy for decades. Interweaving her own family’s story, New...
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27:18
A Conversation with Walter Isaacson (RE-RELEASE)
Please enjoy this re-release of a past episode of For the Ages. New episodes will return Fall 2024. Walter Isaacson discusses his career as a preeminent historian and biographer, how he chooses the people he writes about, and why he is f...
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27:14
The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (RE-RELEASE)
Please enjoy this re-release of a past episode of For the Ages. New episodes will return Fall 2024. The fight for LGBTQ civil rights is long and hard-fought—and it still continues today. Award-winning author and renowned scholar Lillian ...
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27:18
The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens
Of all the threats facing the country today, perhaps the most critical are those coming from within. In the face of rising apathy, anger, division, and disinformation, how can U.S. citizens ensure the survival of the American experiment? Richar...
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Season 3
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Episode 37
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32:22
The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America
While institutional and systemic racism is well documented in the Postbellum and Reconstruction South, its effects on African Americans in the Northern United States, as well as how those practices have shaped contemporary society, is often les...
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Season 3
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Episode 36
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33:40
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President
Marking one of the shortest presidencies in American history, James A. Garfield died less than seven months after inauguration due to a bullet wound sustained during an attempted assassination. A Civil War hero born into abject poverty, Preside...
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Season 3
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Episode 35
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27:11
The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man
After serving for three months as vice president, Harry S. Truman, at age 60, suddenly inherited the White House. The nearly eight years that followed were unusually turbulent—marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan, the first u...
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Season 3
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Episode 34
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27:12
Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay
Following America’s violent entrance into World War II with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States needed to swiftly mobilize for its fight in the Pacific Theater. In those tense days following the attack, President Roosevelt tapped Ches...
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Season 3
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Episode 33
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27:05
JFK and the Promise of Democracy
John F. Kennedy was one of the most iconic political figures of the 20th century, a man known universally by his initials. From his college days to the end in Dallas, he was fascinated by the nature of political courage and its relationship to ...
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Season 3
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Episode 32
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27:10
LatinoLand: A Portrait of America's Largest and Least Understood Minority
Today, Latinos represent 20% of the US population, with census reports projecting that one-third of Americans will identify as having Latino heritage by 2050. Exploring the complex history of immigration across the Americas, demographic diversi...
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Season 3
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Episode 31
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27:02
Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made a President
In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” However journalist and author Jonathan Darman argues that this political acumen was the hard-earned result of Roosevelt’s seven-year journey through illnes...
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Season 3
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Episode 30
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27:13
In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863
In 1991, a crew of New York City construction workers found the remains of a massive burial ground under twenty feet of rubble, just blocks from City Hall. The forgotten cemetery contained the remains of as many as 20,000 African Americans, and...
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Season 3
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Episode 29
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27:14
The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
The discovery of the cell in the 17th century caused a paradigm shift in medicine, with the human body coming to be seen as something never before imagined: an ecosystem in and of itself; a collection of innumerable organic parts working in tan...
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Season 3
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Episode 28
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27:06
How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons from Our Top Presidents
Throughout history, Americans have looked to their president for guidance, seeking leadership from the nation’s highest office during times of turbulence. Historian and lawyer Talmage Boston speaks with David M. Rubenstein to discuss the leader...
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Season 3
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Episode 27
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31:34
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
J. Edgar Hoover was not only the inaugural director of the FBI, but the architect of modern American law enforcement. Hoover’s stewardship over America’s justice system was as robust as it was ruthless, while his connections to white supremacis...
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Season 3
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Episode 26
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27:09
Hitler’s American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War
In December 1941, Nazi Germany controlled much of Europe, Japan was fighting a brutal campaign in China, and the United States had yet to enter into combat on either front. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, however, changed everything. ...
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Season 3
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Episode 25
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31:06
River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile
In an exhilarating and, at times, harrowing account of exploration, survival, and betrayal, author and journalist Candice Millard joins David M. Rubenstein to discuss the story of two men’s search for the headwaters of the Nile River. Richard B...
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Season 3
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Episode 24
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38:29
Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon, Part Two
Author and journalist Kate Andersen Brower rejoins David M. Rubenstein to continue their conversation on the legacy of the great Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor’s triumphs––her precocious rise to megastardom, her fight for fair and equal pay despite t...
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Season 3
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Episode 23
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24:19
Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon, Part One
Elizabeth Taylor, a legend of cinema known across the world, was one of the last great Classical Hollywood stars whose talent and beauty led her to universal renown. Beyond the artist, though, Taylor was a feminist trailblazer, a human rights a...
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Season 3
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Episode 22
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31:40