Welcome to The United States of Amnesia, a podcast bringing history to the present!
The United States of Amnesia
The United States of Amnesia
Welcome to The United States of Amnesia, a podcast exploring the lessons we’ve forgotten, misunderstood, or never learned. As the saying goes, history repeats itself. Mark Twain allegedly refined this: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” But Ecclesiastes said it best: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Yet over time, history, politics, and religion have been distorted by bias, oversimplification, and myth. Misunderstanding the past means misreading the present and misstepping into the future. This podcast aims to cut through the fog, reconnecting past and present to help us think more clearly about the world we’re in, and the one we're heading toward. Join us as we delve into the great struggle of humanity: to reconcile who we were with who we are becoming.
Sept. 15, 2026

403: Internal Improvements - Enter Lincoln

403: Internal Improvements - Enter Lincoln
403: Internal Improvements - Enter Lincoln
The United States of Amnesia
403: Internal Improvements - Enter Lincoln

For obvious reasons, Abraham Lincoln's presidency is best remembered for his emancipation of America's slaves, determination to preserve the Union in the face of Southern secession, and leadership in the American Civil War. But an often-overlooked aspect of his administration was its promotion of the United States Government as an active, positive actor in such matters as infrastructure improvement and economic affairs. In this conclusion to the series, Marshall leads our discussion of how the first four years of Lincoln’s presidency in the 1860s were among the most consequential in U.S. history for civic infrastructure and economic reform, rivaling the achievements of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society of the 1960s.