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Why Study History?: A conversation with the guys on the Re-Integrate Podcast

John Fea   |  March 15, 2025

Listen here. Here is the episode description: Both David and Bob are history buffs. But studying history is not as simple as watching a documentary, a biopic, or reading a bestselling narrative history. We need to be aware of how […]

Talking evangelicalism and race with Edward Carson

John Fea   |  May 29, 2024

It’s not often I get to talk with a Black ex-evangelical who is a history teacher, DEI specialist, and member of the Communist Party USA. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with Eddie Carson on WJOP radio (Newburyport, Massachusetts). We talk […]

Warren Throckmorton is now fact-checking David Barton on a podcast

John Fea   |  December 12, 2023

The new edition of Warren Throckmorton’s Getting Jefferson Right is here! Current managing editor Jay Green offers a blurb: In Getting Jefferson Right, Throckmorton and Coulter provide a valuable public service to readers in at least two important respects.  First, they expose some […]

Episode 124: “Christian Capitalism in Early America”

John Fea   |  December 12, 2023

In this episode we talk with Wesleyan University historian Joseph Slaughter, author of Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in Early America. He offers a new account of the interplay between religion and capitalism in early American history by focusing on 19th-century […]

Episode 123: “Drew Gilpin Faust on Growing-Up at Midcentury”

John Fea   |  December 3, 2023

She was a privileged baby boomer who grew up on a horse farm in segregated Virginia. By her twenty-first birthday she had worked for peace in Communist Europe, traveled the country in the cause of racial justice, marched for voting rights […]

“I began to feel like there’s a lot that not’s being said and a lot that’s not being written”

John Fea   |  November 27, 2023

The one thing that I did start doing that year (2020) was talk on the phone. I’ve never been a phone talker, but, of course, that’s all you had for a while. And I would have long conversations on the […]

Are you listening to The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast?

John Fea   |  November 15, 2023

We have had a jam-packed Summer-Fall 2023 season at the podcast that included: Theresa Runstedlter on the American Basketball Association and race. Daniel Hummel on dispensationalism Stephen Prothero on mid-20th-century religious publishing. Larry Eskridge on the Jesus People Rachel Swarns […]

Episode 122: “Springsteen, Joel, and the American Century”

John Fea   |  November 7, 2023

In his new book Bridge & Tunnel Boys, historian Jim Cullen discusses how Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen represented what he calls “the metropolitan sound of the American century.” In this episode of the podcast, we talk with Cullen about how Joel […]

Episode 121: “Reagan’s Evangelical Vision for America”

John Fea   |  October 30, 2023

How did Ronald Reagan use the media to shape his evangelical vision for America, a vision rooted in political freedom, economic freedom, and religious freedom that is still with us today and continues to define the discourse of both of […]

Episode 120: “Popular Historians in Post-War America”

John Fea   |  October 16, 2023

Should professional historians write for the general public? If so, who is the “public” they are trying to reach? And when historians do write for the public how do they manage to make their work readable and accessible without sacrificing […]

Episode 119: “How the Social Gospel Undermined Social Democracy”

John Fea   |  October 9, 2023

There was a profound difference between Christian Socialism and the so-called “Social Gospel.” Janine Giordano Drake explains these differences in her new book The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement. Drake argues that […]

NBC News tackles Seven Mountain Dominionism

John Fea   |  October 4, 2023

Here is NBC News’s Grapevine Podcast. You might hear a familiar voice 🙂

Episode 117: “The Idea of Fraternity in America”

John Fea   |  September 25, 2023

What is fraternity? Our guest in this episode of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast, political scientist Susan McWilliams Barndt, discusses her father’s 1973 magnum opus The Idea of Fraternity in America. We talk about the work of Wilson Carey […]

Are you listening to The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast?

John Fea   |  August 20, 2023

We talk to authors, teachers, museum professionals, and historians. Over the years we have interviewed Jim Grossman, Daniel K. Williams, Yoni Appelbaum, Sam Wineburg, Tim Grove, Nate DiMeo, Paul Lukas, Annette Gordon-Reed, Peter Onuf, Marc Dolan, Steve Edenbo, Ann Little, […]

Episode 115: “Evangelicalism: Its Metaphors and Stories”

John Fea   |  August 14, 2023

What is American evangelicalism? In her new book The Evangelical Imagination, Karen Swallow Prior, one of the most careful observers of, and participants in, evangelical life, analyzes the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded the movement and unpacks some of […]

Episode 114: “How Slavery Helped Grow the American Catholic Church”

John Fea   |  August 7, 2023

Did you know the Jesuits were some of the largest slaveholders in colonial America? Our guest in this episode is Rachel L. Swarns, author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved And Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. We […]

Episode 113: The “Jesus Revolution”

John Fea   |  June 25, 2023

In this episode we talk to historian Larry Eskridge about the film “Jesus Revolution.” Eskridge, the author of God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America, places the film in context, discusses the legacy of the Jesus People Movement for […]

Episode 111: “The Evangelical Battle Over the End Times”

John Fea   |  June 11, 2023

If you want to learn more about the evangelical fascination with the rapture, Israel, the antichrist, and the prophetic books of the Bible you will enjoy this episode. Our guest is Daniel Hummel, author of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: […]

Episode 110: “How Black Ball Saved the Soul of the NBA”

John Fea   |  June 5, 2023

The National Basketball Association is a multi-billion-dollar industry driven by Black athletes with global influence. But as our guest Theresa Runstedtler argues, the success of today’s NBA players rests on the labor activism of 1970s NBA stars who fought with […]

The Avett Brothers’ bass player has started a podcast on John Quincy Adams

John Fea   |  April 14, 2023

Longtime listeners of the The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast will remember our interview with Bob Crawford, the bass player of the folk-rock band the Avett Brothers. Listen here. I have long appreciated Bob’s support for our work at […]

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