In this week’s episode of then & now, David Myers moderates a panel discussion from the recent Urban History Association meeting in Los Angeles. The panel discussed two important questions: What is distinctive about Los Angeles as an urban experience and experiment? And what does L.A. tell us or teach us about urban life at this critical moment in U.S. history? Panelists included a mix of distinguished experts and commentators: historian Becky Nicolaides, L.A. Times journalist Gusta...

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In this week’s episode of then & now, guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic is joined by Dr. Jennifer Klein, the Bradford Durfee Professor of History at Yale University, to explore Cancer Alley, the stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. Spanning roughly one hundred miles, Cancer Alley is densely packed with chemical plants, hazardous waste sites, and prisons, resulting in some of the highest rates of pollution in the country. Drawing together questions ...

In this week’s episode of then & now, LCHP Director Professor David N. Myers is joined by Dr. Ben Zdencanovic to discuss their collaborative work on a new LCHP report, The Challenge to University Autonomy in an Illiberal Age: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Compiled over the past year as higher education in the U.S. faces heightened scrutiny and mounting political pressures from the U.S. government, this report situates present debates within a longue durée of institutional vulne...

In this week’s episode of then & now, LCHP Assistant Director Dr. Rose Campbell is joined by historian Dr. Neil J. Young to examine the evolution and ongoing influence of conservative Christian family values in contemporary U.S. political discourse. Neil offers a nuanced account of how ideals such as monogamy, cisgender heterosexual marriage, and rigid gender roles within a patriarchal framework became central both to conservative grassroots activism and to the ideological messaging of th...

In this episode of then & now, guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic welcomes Professor Josh Shepperd, Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and Director of the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF). Josh, acclaimed author of Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting (University of Illinois Press, 2023), discusses the complex historical development of NPR and PBS—two cornerstones of American public broadcasting. The convers...

In this week’s episode of then & now, we’re joined by Benjamin Nathans, Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, to talk about his recent book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press, 2024)—which was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 2025 Pushkin House Book Prize. Ben offers an in-depth analysis of the Soviet dissident movement, fore...

In this episode of then & now, we are joined by Dr. Jamaal Muwwakkil, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA and incoming Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington, to discuss the recent rollback of affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in American universities. Jamaal examines how these changes—set in motion by the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to end race-conscious admissions, alongside a rising political backlash against D...

In this week’s episode of then & now, LCHP Assistant Director Dr. Rose Campbell is joined by Dr. Neil J. Young—historian, podcaster, and author of Coming Out Republican (The University of Chicago Press, 2024), which traces the history of conservative and libertarian gay figures in United States history and their influence on the modern Republican Party. In this episode, Neil examines the evolving relationship between these members of the LGBTQ community—predominantly white gay men–and the...

In this week’s episode of then & now, guest host Professor Fernando Pérez-Montesinos is joined by Carlos Pérez Ricart, Assistant Professor in International Relations at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico City, to discuss Mexico’s Dirty War—an internal conflict from the 1960s to the 1980s between the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-ruled government and left-wing student and guerrilla groups. As one of the four members of Mexico’s truth commission from 20...

In this week’s episode of then & now, we present a recording of a recent panel discussion focusing on L.A. wildfires past, present, and future. This program is part of the “Why History Matters” series presented by the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History—a series dedicated to the belief that historical knowledge is an indispensable, and often missing, ingredient in public debate. ”Why History Matters: L.A. Wildfires Past, Present, and Future,” brought experts together to exp...

In this week’s episode of then & now, we are joined by John Mikhail, Carroll Professor of Jurisprudence at Georgetown University Law Center, for a deep dive into the controversial theory of the unitary executive. Rooted in the Constitution’s Vesting Clause, this theory asserts that the president holds centralized control over the executive branch. While the theory has longstanding roots in constitutional debates, the Trump administration has embraced and expanded this interpretation in un...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of an occasional series exploring the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign policy and the U.S.-led international order. Guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic is joined by Bruce Schulman, Professor of History at Boston University, to discuss the Trump administration’s selective use of history, especially its nods to the McKinley era’s embrace of tariffs and imperialism. President Trump’s invocation of slogans like "Make America Great Again" reflects ...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of a series co-sponsored by the L.A. History Collaborative, in which we explore the impact of the catastrophic wildfires that affected Los Angeles in early 2025. We are joined by Amy Green, Principal of Silverlake Conservation and one of Los Angeles’ most seasoned historical conservators. She discusses her efforts to preserve intricately crafted tiles from the early 20th century that have been salvaged from homes in Altadena impacted by the fires ...

In this week’s episode of then & now, we present a recording of a recent event co-sponsored by the Wende Museum and the Luskin Center for History and Policy. This event launched the Meyer and Renee Luskin Public History Program at the Wende Museum, a series made possible through the extraordinary generosity of Meyer and Renee Luskin, with a thought-provoking conversation on the role of history in shaping how we address today’s most urgent problems. Wende Museum Founder and Executive Dire...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of a series co-sponsored by the L.A. History Collaborative, in which we examine the effects of the devastating Los Angeles Wildfires in early 2025. Dr. Daisy Ocampo Diaz joins LCHP Assistant Director Dr. Rose Campbell to discuss the Fowler Museum’s exhibition Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art, one of the exhibitions associated with the Pacific Standard Time (PST) Art Initiative. The L.A. Wildfires highlighted the urgent need...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of a series examining the effects of one of the most powerful and destructive natural disasters in U.S. history: the Los Angeles Wildfires. Co-sponsored by the L.A. History Collaborative— a new consortium of cultural institutions and historians committed to using the tools of history to assist in the reconstruction of the lives and stories of those deeply affected by the L.A. Wildfires—we sit down with E. Randol Schoenberg, an LA-based lawyer and ...

This week’s episode of then & now is part of an occasional series exploring the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign policy and the U.S.-led international order with guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic. Joined by Dr. Stephen Wertheim, Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, we critically examine the far-reaching implications for U.S. foreign policy during the second Trump administration. Stephen characterizes Trump's foreign poli...

In this week’s episode of then & now, we are joined by Dr. Isaac Stanley-Becker, a reporter on intelligence and national security issues for The Washington Post, to examine the rise and partial fall of the Schengen Zone amid ongoing and polarizing debates regarding immigration policy. Through the lens of his dual expertise as a journalist and a historian, Isaac explores the origins and historical progression of the Schengen Zone in his recent publication, Europe Without Borders. Establish...

This week’s episode of then & now is the first in a series examining one of the most powerful and destructive natural disasters in U.S. history, the Los Angeles wildfires. Joined by Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University Stephen Pyne, one of the country’s leading thinkers about fire, we discuss the history of urban fire to understand what is unfolding in Los Angeles—where lives, communities, histories, and large swaths of nature are being destroyed before our eyes. Informed ...