Live Special: Another American Civil War?

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

Politics, News, Philosophy, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2026

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode, which was recorded in front of students, parents and teachers from three schools in Oxford, David talks to historian of America Adam Smith about whether the US might be drifting into another civil war. Are the circumstances of today in any way comparable to the 1860s? What are the faultlines in 2026 that might see America tear itself apart? If division doesn’t lead to widespread violence, how else might the federal government fail? What would it mean for the rest of us? Out tomorrow on PPF+: a bonus episode in which David explores the myth of the 1945 general election. Why does this event still exert such a grip on the political imagination of Labour politicians? What do they get wrong about how it really happened and what it really meant? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus merch, events and full lists of all episodes and PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com Next Time: Political Conversions – Going Fascist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:23.0	Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you.
0:27.4	Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello, my name's David Ronsermanman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas
0:43.4	podcast. Today's episode is another live recording, this time in front of an audience of students
0:50.5	from three schools in Oxford, Derverbrooks, Cheney School and Swan School, 16, 17 and 18-year-olds and a few of their teachers,
0:58.0	but you'll hear the voices of the students in the questions at the end. In this episode, I'm talking to the
1:03.8	historian of the United States, Adam Smith, about a question that often rears its head. Is America on the brink of another civil war? More specifically,
1:14.5	does the original American Civil War give us any guide to the conflicts of the present? And if we're
1:20.5	not looking at another civil war, what are we looking at?
1:35.8	Thank you. What are we looking at? The subject of this discussion is another civil war question mark.
1:41.5	Partly because people do bandy around the idea of American Civil War, I sometimes feel
1:47.4	as though they think it's the sort of thing that Americans do, because the phrase American Civil
1:52.0	War trips off the tongue.
1:53.6	And so there's a feeling they did one, they might do another one, rather than thinking,
1:57.5	well, they did one, but there has only been one, and it was 160 years
2:01.6	ago. You might say the English do civil war. We did one as well, even longer ago.
2:06.5	We're going to talk about the original American Civil War, and then we're going to get on
2:10.1	to talking about the politics of now, but this is partly to think about the past and the
2:14.3	present alongside each other. And I wanted to start, Adam, by asking you
	...

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