The Great American Story: Introduction
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan introduce the course "The Great American Story: A Land of Hope".
Americans have overcome many challenges throughout our history, including the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the Cold War. Studying the great stories from our past inspires us to preserve the blessings of liberty in our day. Now you can study these stories with Hillsdale College.
Hillsdale’s free online course, “The Great American Story: A Land of Hope,” explores the history of America as a land of hope founded on high principles. In presenting the great triumphs and achievements of our nation’s past, as well as the shortcomings and failures, it offers a broad and unbiased study of the kind essential to the cultivation of intelligent patriotism.
Good history presents an accurate picture of what happened in the past with a sympathy for those who lived before us. Studying the birth, growth, and survival of America—one of the most significant events in human history—provides foundational knowledge that we can apply to the challenges of our day.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. |
| 0:11.2 | I'm Jeremiah Regan and I'm Juan Davalo. |
| 0:13.6 | We are back with a new course today. |
| 0:15.8 | We're going to be starting the Great American Story, A Land of Hope. |
| 0:19.8 | This is a wonderful course taught by our wonderful professor, Dr. Wilfred Bill McLeigh. |
| 0:25.5 | And a fun fact is he was a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma at the time of this |
| 0:30.6 | course is recording, but he is now the Victor Davis-Hanson chair in classical history and Western |
| 0:35.3 | Civilization at Hillsdale College, and we're very happy to have him. |
| 0:38.8 | And we love having Dr. McLeigh because he is obviously an expert in history, specifically American history. |
| 0:46.0 | But what the course will do, and you'll hear a little bit about this from Dr. Arne in the introduction to the course, |
| 0:52.7 | is Dr. McLean wrote a book called Land of Hope, |
| 0:55.8 | and it's an invitation to the Great American Story. It's a textbook that we use in our K-12 |
| 1:01.1 | curriculum for high school students that walk them through the Great American Story, |
| 1:07.2 | through the story of America, all the way from the the beginning from, you know, the first settlers |
| 1:11.0 | here in America to the present day. Dr. McLeay is an expert historian, and he provides an expert |
| 1:17.8 | history. He doesn't do what many modern historians do, which is pick apart the founding and |
| 1:22.5 | discredit it. He takes a critical view. He criticizes the founding in American history where necessary, |
| 1:28.9 | but he comes out with the clear view that our nation is good. It is a land of hope, and it has a |
| 1:35.0 | great story that's in the title of his book. So you can read this book, you can listen to these |
| 1:40.4 | podcasts, you can take this course knowing that you will get a fair view of America's |
| 1:45.6 | history, but as you know, America is a great nation, and that is the way Dr. McLeigh portrays it. |
| 1:50.4 | And it's a perfect time to start this course because we are ramping up our celebrations |
... |
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