Rothermere American Institute

To mark the Rothermere American Institute’s 25th anniversary, members of the RAI community, past and present, reflect on what this unique research institute means to them. Watch full video at the link in our bio!

New episode of the Last Best Hope? out today! To discuss whether there is any chance of a consensual 250th celebration in such a polarised environment, Adam is joined by James Morone, the John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Brown University and a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He’s the author, among other books, of Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History. And by Frank Cogliano, Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh. His most recent book, A Revolutionary Friendship: Washington, Jefferson and the American Republic, came out last year. He is also editor of a new collection, The American Revolution at 250: Twenty-Four Historians Reflect on the Founding, published this spring.

Is there anything more distinctively American than its sports culture? As the 2026 World Cup kicks off in the US Adam asks why a sport that took over the world has been so marginal for so long in America – and wonders if that’s finally changing. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a form of football that had begun in English public schools became a global phenomenon, played almost everywhere except in the United States.

Guests on this episode: Frank Guridy, Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies and Professor of History at Columbia and Uta Balbier, Professor of US History at Oxford.

In this episode, Adam explores an alternative legacy of 1776. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence launched the United States. It also licensed the greatest-ever effort to break it up. In conversation with Caroline E. Janney of the University of Virginia and Robert Hancock, Senior Curator at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Adam discusses how the Confederacy built a national identity in four short years out of the material the Founding had left lying around: the flags, the seals, the songs, the textbooks, the sermons, the fast days and the inaugurations. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. podcast

The newest episode of our podcast The Last Best Hope? is out today. In this episode Adam sits down with Hilary Rodham Clinton to discuss her views on if America is the Last Best Hope for the world. The episode is out today and launches our next series. Listen wherever you get your podcasts!