#354 In Pursuit w/Anita McBride & Colleen Shogan
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anita McBride is one of the foremost experts on the legacy of American first ladies. Colleen Shogan served as the 11thArchivist of the United States. Together, they're bringing forward a new project called In Pursuit, which offers up a series of essays on Presidents and First Ladies by some of today's most accomplished historians and political leaders. In this episode, Anita and Colleen join Ben and Bob for a discussion about how the project came together, the exciting (and surprising) list of authors and subjects they've assembled, and why the format they envision holds a lot of promise for public engagement.
In Pursuit's first essay- a piece on George Washington written by George W. Bush – will launch on substack on February 16, 2026. Make sure to sign up by clicking here!
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:05.8 | I'm Bob Crawford, and this is the road to now. |
| 0:09.0 | Yes, it is. |
| 0:10.0 | And we are on the road right now with some people who are doing great things. |
| 0:16.0 | It's perfectly in line with what we care about here at the show, and we're very excited to welcome our two guests. |
| 0:20.9 | I'll introduce them in alphabetical order. |
| 0:23.3 | We have with us today, Anita McBride, an expert on the legacies of First Ladies. |
| 0:29.0 | She leads the First Ladies Institute at American Center, University Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. |
| 0:34.6 | And my favorite small fact was that you consulted on VEP. |
| 0:38.6 | Welcome, Anita McBride. |
| 0:39.8 | The best gig ever. |
| 0:42.1 | And our second guest today, she's the 11th archivist of the United States. |
| 0:47.0 | But beyond that has an incredibly deep history of working with nonpartisan initiatives |
| 0:52.0 | within the federal government. |
| 0:53.9 | Welcome, Colleen Shogun. |
| 0:55.7 | Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. We're happy to have you because you're here to talk about |
| 0:59.7 | your new project, as if you didn't have enough, the two of you already. You're working on this |
| 1:05.2 | incredible initiative to try to make history accessible to people, to bring new perspectives |
| 1:10.2 | on leadership in American history. |
| 1:12.0 | It is called In Pursuit. |
| 1:14.5 | And let's just start this conversation. |
| 1:16.5 | Could you tell us what you're working on |
... |
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