The World in Time

Ben Jealous

Friday, March 10, 2023

Boats, by William H. Johnson, c. 1933. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.

“They say we’re headed toward a civil war,” writes Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club and former president of the NAACP, in Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing. “Who is they? Historians, sociologists, television pundits, and the last guy with whom I had a real conversation at my favorite Jimmy Buffett-style waterside bar. He was an amiable older man wearing a T-shirt that celebrated his status as a veteran. Just past seventy, he’d spent half a century moving up the ranks in a grocery store. He and his wife approached where we were sitting before paying my date and I a compliment. We quickly fell into a warm conversation about life, kids, whiskey, and boats. As we were preparing to leave, the conversation paused. The man looked at me and said, ‘You know, this country we both love so much? It’s headed toward a civil war or a revolution, I don’t know which.’ The only difference between the two, of course, is who wins. I honestly don’t know what to make of it all.”

 

This week on the podcast, Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Ben Jealous, author of Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing, about Jealous’ personal history and his career, and how both inform what he makes of our current moment.

 

Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Discussed in this episode

More Podcasts

The Country School, by Winslow Homer, 1871.

November 13, 2020

The World in Time:

Derek W. Black

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy. More

Rehab Hiding the Spies in Jericho, c. 1405. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

July 13, 2018

The World in Time:

Roland Philipps

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Roland Philipps, author of A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean. More

July 27, 2018

The World in Time:

Steven Ujifusa

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Steven Ujifusa, author of Barons of the Sea: And Their Race to Build the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship. More

June 29, 2018

The World in Time:

Catherine Nixey

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Catherine Nixey, author of The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World. More

May 27, 2022

The World in Time:

Eric Jay Dolin

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. More

“Cremorne Gardens, No. 2,” by James McNeill Whistler, c. 1870. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1912.

April 20, 2018

The World in Time:

David Cannadine

Lewis H. Lapham talks with David Cannadine, author of Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800–1906. More