BackStory

The following are individual show segments included in the BackStory episode “City Upon a Hill” broadcast in July of 2012. You can listen to the entire episode here.

Running Themes

The History Guys take a look at how the 2012 presidential candidates have claimed American Exceptionalism as a campaign mantra.

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Seeing Red

Peter, Ed, and Brian riff on what exceptionalism has meant through the centuries, and share a little-known story about that time Stalin coined the term “American Exceptionalism.”

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Invisible Cities

Peter talks with historian Mark Peterson about John Winthrop’s oft-misunderstood sermon, “A Modell [sic] of Christian Charity,” in which the phrase “a city upon a hill” was first used to describe the New World.

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Listener Calls

For Purple Mountain Tragedy?