Hello and welcome. Today we're going to tell you about another goal hangar podcast, Journey Through Time, which is hosted by David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell. The podcast tells history from the bottom up by trying to understand pivotal moments through the eyes of those who lived them.

We're joined by Sarah today to discuss the podcast and their new series, which is on the history of the National Rifle Association.

So Sarah, start by talking a little bit about the National Rifle Association. For those who don't know it, this very important gun lobby group in the United States

and why you wanted to focus on the history of the NRA.

Yeah, thanks very much. So the NRA is the National Rifle Association, and it is the gun lobby.

It is an incredibly powerful political lobbying organization

that over the last 50 years has been arguing

for gun rights in America. And it's done so with such success that I think most people around

the world, and correct me, you know, if you see this differently, but I think that most people

around the world now assume that the idea of gun rights is so entrenched in American culture

that gun regulation is just not possible. It's never happened. It's never going to happen.

But the fact is, is the history of the NRA shows that that is categorically not true. And in fact,

the National Rifle Association in the United States began as a gun safety

organization. It was established for gun regulation. It was set up in order to promote the safe

handling and storage and use of guns. And what's really interesting at is it was actually

modeled on the National Rifle Association of the UK, which it's safe to say has not become a massive gun lobby. And so

what we're doing in this series really is telling the story of that reversal of how it came to take

180 degree turn and start promoting gun rights rather than gun safety.

It's interesting that you talk about that switch in what it was designed for and then what

it became when I first moved to the United States in the mid-1990s, of course, there was an

assault weapons ban in place. There was a 10-year assault weapons ban that came into effect during

President Clinton's time. And for me living in America now, that just seems like a pipe dream that you could ever have an assault

...