American Oral History Project: LBJ's Great Society & Richard Nixon's War

FAIN: TR-261123-18

Public Radio International (Minneapolis, MN 55401-2097)
Melinda Ward (Project Director: January 2018 to October 2019)
John Barth (Project Director: October 2019 to present)

Production of two radio documentaries and twelve podcasts exploring the Johnson and Nixon presidencies from 1963 to mid-1975.

PRI requests NEH support for the production of a two-part audio documentary project exploring the transformative changes—political, social, and economic—that swept the US during the successive presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. LBJ’s Great Society and Richard Nixon’s Vietnam will join LBJ’s War, PRI’s previous NEH-funded audio project, within the larger tent of the American Oral History Project, an ambitious new effort to use the unique narrative power of oral history to provide new perspectives on the central figures and seminal events of the 1960s and 70s. Each of the new topics will be explored through a six-episode podcast series constructed from archival material such as interviews, White House recordings and phone calls, as well as narration and commentary from a distinguished historian. PRI will also create a landing page within its web site, PRI.org, where visitors can access audio segments on demand along with additional visual and text materials.

Associated Products

LBJ and the Great Society (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: LBJ and the Great Society
Writer: Steve Atlas
Director: Steve Alas, Executive Producer and Writer
Producer: Steve Atlas
Abstract: While President Lyndon B. Johnson is remembered today largely for his failure in Vietnam, this podcast tells a different story, revealing his unprecedented success in shaping domestic politics. Medicare, civil and voting rights, clean air and water, Head Start, immigration reform, public broadcasting — how did Lyndon Johnson pull it off? That’s the question we’ll be exploring through the recorded recollections of those who were there when this history was being made, and who had a hand in its making. Hosted by Melody Barnes
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://radiopublic.com/lbj-and-the-great-society-WYBYnO/s1!8c09d
Primary URL Description: RadioPublic Podcast aggregator
Secondary URL: https://lbjsgreatsociety.org/episodes
Secondary URL Description: LBJ and the Great Society web site
Access Model: Open access
Format: Digital File
Format: Web

Nixon at War (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Nixon at War
Writer: Steve Atlas
Producer: Steve Atlas
Abstract: Most accounts of the collapse of Richard Nixon’s presidency begin with Watergate — the now iconic tale of a bungled break-in and the misbegotten cover-up that followed. But what led to Watergate? How — and more puzzlingly, why — did one of the shrewdest, most gifted political figures of his time become embroiled in so manifestly lunatic an enterprise in the first place? Intrigued by that question, writer/journalist Kurt Andersen takes a deep dive into the vast archives at the Nixon Library and emerges with an answer he wasn’t expecting: While Watergate doubtless accelerated Nixon’s spectacular fall, it was the Vietnam War that led inexorably to the break-in, and from there to the sinking of his presidency. For Andersen, who came of age in the Vietnam era, that answer in turn begs another, larger question: How did Richard Nixon, with all his foreign policy savvy, allow himself to get trapped in the same quagmire he had watched engulf his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson? These questions are the central concerns of Nixon at War. Over the course of seven episodes, Andersen peels back the onion and emerges with a new and deeper understanding of both the man and the war, and of the complex linkage between them.
Date: 06/11/2021
Primary URL: https://www.nixonatwar.org/
Primary URL Description: web site that provides background on the series and its production team, where/how to listen, links to audio and full transcripts, funding credits, and links to the previous series on LBJ's War and LBJ and the Great Society
Format: Digital File
Format: Web

---