National History Day w/ Cathy Gorn & Don Wildman
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last week the Trump Administration announced it would be cutting more than a thousand grants to the National Endowment for the Humanities, including grants for every state humanities council. In a letter the administration stated that the NEH would be "repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of President Trump's agenda."
One major organization suffering from these cuts is National History Day, a brilliant program that has inspired young Americans for decades. To remind folks what we stand to lose, we're sharing our 2024 conversation on National History Day with Executive Director Cathy Gorman and podcaster Don Wildman, along with a new introduction in which Ben gives an overview of the cuts and the widespread consequences they'll have across the country.
Can learning the skills required to do good history serve as an antidote to conspiracy theory? Cathy Gorn & Don Wildman think so, and in this episode they join us to discuss their work to teach those skills in the 6th-12th grade classroom through National History Day, a program that reaches more than half a million students and tens of thousands of teachers each year. We agree with them and think National History Day is an American treasure, so we hope you enjoy this conversation about what goes into creating good history, how we can better teach that to the public, and how your kids can get involved in National History Day.
Click here to learn more about National History Day programs for students & teachers.
Dr. Cathy Gorn has spent more than four decades working with National History Day and currently serves as NHD's Executive Director.
Don Wildman is a podcast & documentary host whose projects include Mysteries at the Museum (Travel Channel) & the podcast American History Hit. He currently serves as Co-Chair of National History Day's Development Committee.
Sources:
This is a rebroadcast of #330 which originally aired on April 22, 2024, along with a new introduction. The original episode was edited by Gary Fletcher. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:10.1 | Tariffs, you've got them. |
| 0:12.7 | If you can keep them. |
| 0:14.2 | Maybe we can't. |
| 0:15.7 | Oh, guys, it's been another fun week of discovering just what's changed. |
| 0:24.7 | Well, tariffs everywhere, but also some other issues that have gotten a bit less coverage that matter a lot to us. A big one this week, |
| 0:30.2 | Trump administration announced that it is cutting back on the National Endowment for the |
| 0:34.8 | humanities. More than a thousand grants were cut last week by the Trump administration, including grants |
| 0:41.2 | provided to every state humanities council. |
| 0:43.6 | It's been going there for decades. |
| 0:45.3 | In the middle of last week, counsel's got letters. |
| 0:48.5 | This is coming from reporting from the New York Times and from other sources. |
| 0:52.8 | According to those sources, the letter said, |
| 0:55.2 | quote, your grant's immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal |
| 1:00.3 | government, including its fiscal priorities. The termination of your grant represents an |
| 1:05.0 | urgent priority for the administration, and due to exceptional circumstances, adherence to the |
| 1:10.5 | traditional notification process is not possible. |
| 1:13.9 | The letter went on to say the NEH is, quote, repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in |
| 1:19.9 | furtherance of President Trump's agenda. |
| 1:22.3 | What does that mean? |
| 1:24.0 | Well, according to Jennifer Schlusser of the New York Times, employees at a meeting with the acting NEH director said that he, quote, suggested that going forward the agency would focus on patriotic programming. That's according to the employees. |
| 1:38.6 | Several people have already said this is probably illegal because the creation and funding of state humanities councils |
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