#220 Processing the Past w/ Jon Grinspan
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jon Grinspan is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian Museum of American History and a frequent contributor to The New York Times. In this episode, Jon explains how his work with historical objects has informed his understanding of the past, the reasons he thinks that American politics in recent years is less of an aberration than many of us would like to believe, and his thoughts on the many ways Americans might look back on the January 6th insurrection in the future. Jon also shares the process he and his colleagues at The Smithsonian follow in selecting objects from today that will be preserved for future generations.
Dr. Jon Grinspan's newest book is The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915 (Bloomsbury, 2021). For more on his work, visit his bio page at the Smithsonian or link directly to one of the articles listed below.
Jon Grinspan, "What We Did the Last Time We Broke America," The New York Times, Oct. 29, 2021.
Jon Grinspan, "How to Steal An Election," The New York Times, Oct. 24, 2020.
For Bob and Ben's conversation in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 attack on the capitol, check out RTN #187 The Insurrection Episode.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Bob Crawford. |
| 0:06.1 | I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:07.3 | This is The Road to Now. |
| 0:09.1 | Yes, it is, The Road to Now. |
| 0:11.2 | And man, the road for the last year, Bob, you remember last year we recorded the Insurrection |
| 0:16.6 | episode. |
| 0:18.1 | How could I forget? |
| 0:19.3 | That a lot of people listen to that episode. It was, I think, |
| 0:23.0 | when, of the, of the episodes you and I did, I think it was my favorite. I mean, certainly |
| 0:27.9 | heartbreaking thing that we were responding to. But overall, I think that there was so much |
| 0:32.8 | there and we were able to get out. And we're now a little over a year out from that. And there's been a lot |
| 0:40.2 | of talk about how we remember it. And we're already seeing two completely different narratives |
| 0:45.6 | just diverge on this. And so today's guest is the perfect person to speak to about this topic. Bob, you want to tell him who our guest is today? |
| 0:56.7 | Historian from the American History Museum at the Smithsonian, John Grinspan. |
| 1:01.8 | Yes, and he spends a lot of time thinking about these things, thinking about the way we've reflected over time. |
| 1:10.3 | And so we're really excited to have |
| 1:11.7 | him here. John Grimspan, welcome to The Road to Now. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of the show. |
| 1:16.0 | So I'm happy to be on to talk, even if it's about a, you know, unfortunate topic. Well, John, |
| 1:21.3 | I had the honor of meeting you a few weeks ago at the Smithsonian. And what's really exciting about your work is that you deal with history, but you deal with |
| 1:32.5 | the artifacts of history. |
| 1:34.8 | And the artifacts that you're surrounded by every day in your work, you're completely |
| 1:40.8 | surrounded by all these artifacts of history. |
... |
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