S360 Extra: Nixon at War - Ep 1 October Surprise

Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

PRX

Arts

4.6 • 675 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hello Studio 360 fans!

We're sharing the first episode of a new podcast project, Nixon at War, hosted by Studio 360's Kurt Andersen. Nixon at War is a seven-episode history, a fresh new kind of chronicle about how Richard Nixon turned Vietnam into a war at home… that we’re still fighting today.

Most accounts of the collapse of Richard Nixon’s presidency begin with Watergate - the now iconic tale of a bungled break-in and the misbegotten cover-up that followed. But what led to Watergate? How - and more puzzlingly, why - did one of the shrewdest, most gifted political figures of his time become embroiled in so manifestly lunatic an enterprise in the first place?

Intrigued by that question, novelist and historian Kurt Andersen takes a deep dive into the vast archives at the Nixon Library and emerges with an answer he wasn’t expecting: While Watergate doubtless accelerated Nixon’s spectacular fall, it was the Vietnam War that led inexorably to the break-in, and from there to the sinking of his presidency.

At the heart of the series are hundreds of tape recordings from the time. Buried, never before heard, confidential conversations that play like dark drama. To listen to the new series, visit NixonAtWar.org, or search "Nixon at War" wherever you’re listening.

Transcript

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0:00.0	from PRX.
0:06.7	Hi, this is Kurt Anderson, the host of Studio 360.
0:10.5	We wrapped up production of Studio 360 in 2020, but since then, I've been working on a brand
0:17.0	new podcast. It's called Nixon at War, and it's a seven-episode series that we've just
0:22.9	finished, which is why, thanks to my old Studio 360 colleagues at PRX, the first episode has popped
0:30.5	up right here. If you're interested in modern history, especially in America's big cultural and
0:37.2	political turning point of the late
0:38.6	1960s and 70s, or if you're a fan of documentaries that play like noir drama, Nixon at war is for you.
0:48.4	It's an inside chronicle of a presidency gone horribly wrong, how Richard Nixon extended the war in Southeast Asia for his own
0:56.5	political purposes, and how his resentments and paranoia turned it into a tragic war at home,
1:04.2	a war that America is still fighting a half century later. The heart of the series is an amazing collection of tape recordings we've
1:12.8	unearthed and pieced together to tell this story in a fresh, riveting new way. Never before heard
1:18.9	and often shocking conversations that put you in the room where it happens as history is made,
1:24.8	along with my debriefings of some of the players and experts. By the way,
1:29.6	like Studio 360's American Icons series, Nixon at War was underwritten by the National Endowment
1:35.5	for the Humanities. So I hope you'll keep listening and enjoy what you hear. And then immediately
1:43.5	subscribe to our whole Nixon at War series on this
1:47.5	or any other podcast player. Thanks very much. I just start right at the top and fire some people.
1:56.3	The best politician of all is Nixon. But boy, when you get in tight and close and he's under attack.
2:02.6	President Nixon heard today the voice of the campus in a massive appeal.
2:06.7	He was known as the Madman Theory.
2:08.4	Make those North Vietnamese think that he was just crazy.
	...

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