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Marshall, Mike, and Blake explore the conception and evolution of the phrase 'America First' and its surrounding ideology through American history. While the phrase seems to be innocent enough, emphasizing patriotism and community, it has never truly been what its proponents have portrayed it as. Travel through time with us back to late-19th-century America as we learn the context in which the phrase was born, and follow its journey through World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, numerous election campaigns, and America's entry into World War II.

Benjamin Franklin got China wrong, and America still does today! Marshall leads the discussion in the “Tea, Drugs, and Jesus” series, dissecting the complex relationship and persistent misunderstanding between the United States and China over the last few hundred years. We discuss how the United States continues to misunderstand China today, and how it similarly misjudges the motivations, behaviors, and actions of many other countries, leading to mistakes and failure. This can be traced all the way back to America's incuriosity about the world, its resulting lack of cultural literacy, and its propensity to ignore or terminate experts who tell American leaders (and often the American public) things they do not want to hear about the world around them. This is a lesson to be more open-minded regarding other countries and cultures, and how ignoring facts because you don't like them doesn't make them change or go away; it only hinders progress.

Was America founded as a Christian nation? Some say yes, some say no, and the real answer is more complex than you might think. Blake takes the reins as the leader of this series, discussing the role (or in some cases, perhaps, the lack thereof) of Christianity in the establishment of the colonies, the founding of the nation, and the early evolution of the United States. In this series, we ask and answer these questions and more: Did the Founders "design" America as a Christian country? If the United States had an official church, which denominations would qualify as "Christian"? How would the official church function within civic life in matters of law, public policy, voting, and taxation? Would non-Christians be suppressed? This is a study on the danger Christian Nationalism poses to the US, as well as a deeper look at pieces of our country's founding that are often overlooked, rewritten, or completely ignored to serve someone's agenda.

What happens when a young nation has the resources to prosper, but lacks the roads, canals, railroads, financial institutions, and political will to connect them? Internal Improvements follows America's long struggle to answer that question. From John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay's controversial vision of the 1820s to Abraham Lincoln's sweeping reforms during the Civil War, the series examines the fight over federal power, economic development, westward expansion, slavery, and states' rights. The infrastructure we now take for granted was once a radical proposition. This is the story of how that proposition helped reshape the United States.

The United States and Iran have been at odds for decades. But at one time, Iranians viewed the United States as a refreshing and inspiring alternative to both their own corrupt and incompetent ruling dynasty and the predatory imperial powers that tried to subjugate them -- and Iranians even viewed Americans as heroes who tried to help Iran liberate itself and modernize. In this series, we delve into the history of the United States and Iran from the 19th century to today and trace how a once-positive relationship went so wrong.