The “real” America at 250

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

News Commentary, Philosophy, Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

Who are America’s heroes? Who deserves our admiration and a place in our nation’s story? In today’s episode, guest host Jonquilyn Hill talks with constitutional law professor Kermit Roosevelt about his book The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story, which argues that America’s most important ancestors are not the founding fathers but the heroes of Reconstruction. The two discuss the importance of founding myths, why Americans are constantly fighting over “the real America,” and what it means to be American. Guest Host: Jonquilyn Hill, Host of Vox’s Explain It To Me podcast Guest: Kermit Roosevelt, constitutional law professor and author of The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for the show comes from Service Now. AI is moving fast across the enterprise. But without
0:07.1	visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in
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0:29.0	for people, visit servicenow.com. Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their news show, Stateside, where journalists
0:41.7	Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow
0:47.5	down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's actually happening in the world.
0:53.5	Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources the Guardian
0:58.0	has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and much, much more.
1:04.4	Go to The Guardian.com slash stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or
1:10.0	watch on YouTube.
1:11.6	That's theguardian.com slash stateside. I'm John Glenn Hill, host of Explain It to Me, and I'm filling in for Sean.
1:40.4	Today, I'll be talking with Kermit Roosevelt III.
1:43.5	He's a constitutional law professor at the
1:45.6	University of Pennsylvania, and author of the book The Nation That Never Was, Reconstructing America's
1:51.7	Story. The stories we tell ourselves shape the way we live. They tell us who we are. So what's
1:58.5	our collective story as a country? I think that's a really important question to ask
2:03.2	ourselves. There's this big question mark over who we are as a country, if we even have a single
2:09.6	identity, especially as we inch closer to the 250th anniversary of America's founding. In my conversation
2:16.1	with Kermit, we talk about the narrative we've
2:18.3	told ourselves through the years, alternative ways of thinking of our identity, and whether a
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