Listener supported WNYC Studios.

It's the Brian Laira Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC

Centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. Today for this post-election moment, it's thing number 37,

100 years of presidential election concession speeches. We'll play clips spanning from 1960 to yesterday afternoon.

We'll reference the missing concession speech from 2020

and talk about ways to concede while continuing to fight

for what the losing candidate thinks is right.

With us for this, we're so happy to have once again,

Alexis Coe, presidential historian so happy to have once again,

Alexis Coe, presidential historian, New America Think Tank Fellow, and author of You Never Forget Your First, a biography of George Washington, for which he was on the show,

and the forthcoming Young Jack, John F. Kennedy, 1917 to 1957. Alexis, thanks for joining our 100 Years of 100 Things Series.

Welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you for having me.

And before we get to the Archive of Soundbites, plus one or two from yesterday,

I gather you would like to go back more like 150 years and start with a concession speech. We definitely have no audio of,

audio of, because the technology didn't exist yet, from 1876?

I would. I think the first audio was in 1928, and I mentioned that because it's from a New Yorker.

The New York governor and Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith

gave the first public concession speech on the radio. But what strikes me is really interesting

about Samuel Tilden in 1876, who also played a huge role in the development of New York,

is that he won the popular vote by a quarter of a million votes. And at the same time,

he said, I'm unwilling to, you know, plunge the nation back into a conflict. We were, you know,

...