What did the United States look like before canals, factories, and cash wages rewired everyday life? In this episode, John explores Chapter 1 of Charles G. Sellers’s The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846, reconstructing a largely cashless “subsistence” order where independence meant owning land, bartering with neighbors, and avoiding debt. We trace why profit was suspect, how reciprocity bound communities, and why patriarchal households sat uneasily beside republican talk of equality.

This episode is something different. After a year of tracing U.S. history from the pre-Columbian period through the War of 1812, I wanted to step back and talk about why I’m doing this — and what I think history can actually teach us about the world we’re living in now.

In this manifesto, I lay out the purpose behind How the Hell Did We Get Here?: to cut through the noise of hot takes and partisan shouting, and use history to make sense of the present. From Vietnam to Iraq, from Reconstruction to the Gilded Age, I explore how the pendulum of American politics keeps swinging — and what those patterns might tell us about where we’re headed next.

If you’re tired of volume over substance and want a deeper conversation about how we got here — and what “here” even means — this one’s for you.

🎧 New to the show? Start here. It’s the heart of what this project is all about.

In this episode, John discusses the social, political and economic evolution of the United States from the late 1700s to the end of the War of 1812. John talks about the evolution of the U.S. from a limited democracy with a decidedly agricultural bent toward a bustling trade hub and nascent manufacturing sector with a huge middle class that starts to flex its political muscle. This episode serves as an explanatory bridge between how the high-minded and elite-controlled economic and political institutions of the late 18th century gave way to a much more democratized and practical ethos that would drive how the United States developed in the early to mid 19th century.

John explains the expansion of infrastructure, education, trade and industry in the early 1800s and how almost all of it was driven by commerce in a way that many of the founders would have found trivial or even distasteful. He breaks down how a new generation of leaders, like John Calhoun, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, worked to knit the country together and forge a new identity for the young republic as a rising economic powerhouse. John contrasts the new society emerging in the U.S., contrasts it with what existed in Europe and explains just how revolutionary what Americans were building was--decades after the revolutionary war had ended.

John gives everyone an update about what's been going on and what they can expect from the next season of How the Hell Did We Get Here?

In this episode, John discusses how the War of 1812 continued and ultimately came to a conclusion. John talks about the campaigns of 1813 and the British offensives of 1814, how things continued to linger in a position of stalemate and how the U.S. managed to survive despite a serious financial crisis and the capital city of Washington D.C. being burned to the ground by the British. John covers the American triumphs at Fort McHenry and Lake Champlain, as well the resounding victory of the United States against British forces at the Battle of New Orleans that actually took place after the war was technically over!

Also in this episode, John talks about the revolt of the Federalists against the war and how it manifested in the Hartford Convention and why that proved to be political suicide for the Federalist Party. John goes through the peace negotiations and how the American representatives at the meetings in Ghent managed to get fairly favorable terms from Great Britain. Finally, John closes by discussing the legacy of the War of 1812 on the United States for the next generation of Americans who would continue to build the country up in its aftermath.

In this episode, John covers the first year of the War of 1812 and why it was such a struggle for the United States. John begins by talking about how the Madison Administration and the Congress prepared—or rather, did not—for the war against Great Britain. John discusses the state of the land and sea forces as the U.S. went to war, what Madison and Congress chose to do to prosecute the war and why they made the choices that they did.

John goes on to break down the planned invasion of Canada in 1812, how those who planned it and executed it conceived of it, why everyone was so convinced it would be so easy and why they were all very, very wrong. John goes through the war at sea as well, including surprising American victories against the vaunted British Royal Navy and the ways in which the blockade the British attempted to institute was ineffective. John further discusses the war on the frontier against Native Americans, and the severe difficulties that the U.S. had in financing the war. Finally, John discusses the Baltimore riots of 1812 and the presidential election that took place that year, in spite of the war.

In this episode, John explains how it is that the United States, less than 30 years after fighting Great Britain to become and independent country, wound up fighting the British once again. John begins by discussing James Madison as a presidential figure: how he became president, what he wanted to achieve and how he differed from the first three presidents. John also breaks down the issues that Madison had to deal with during his term that didn’t involve Great Britain and France messing with American shipping and trade, including the annexation of Florida, congressional and party factionalism and maintaining national unity in the face of growing sectionalism.

John then concentrates on the titanic struggle between Great Britain and France and how the United States found itself caught in the middle. He covers the ways that the U.S. tried to stand up for itself as a sovereign country, short of war, what was entailed in the so-called “restrictive regime”, and why it was so difficult for the American government to control its destiny in the early 1800s. Finally, John details how it was the U.S. came to declare war against Great Britain in the summer of 1812, despite the fact that the British really did not want war and attempted to placate the U.S. in a number of ways in the weeks and months before the declaration was issued.

In this episode, John stacks up the lives and careers of two of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. John goes into a lot of detail about the endeavors and accomplishments that make both men the legendary historical heavyweights that they are. He talks about their impact on American governance, American economics, American culture, American religion and the trajectory of American society from independence onward.

But John also deals with the many shortcomings and foibles of both men. John explains why he is more “Team Hamilton” than “Team Jefferson” because of they way that they each felt and wrote and talked about human nature, the purpose and operation of government and how they envisioned the future of the United States. John confesses why he sympathizes so much more with Hamilton than with Jefferson, despite both men being titans of American history who have a great many character flaws between them.