Press Release

Contact:
Tony Field, BackStory Producer
tfield@virginia.edu
434-924-8922 (work)
917-607-1053 (cell)
For immediate release June 4, 2008

Public Radio’s Only Call-in Show Dedicated to Unraveling History Debuts

Charlottesville, VA – As America continues to debate the effectiveness of the War in Iraq, public radio’s newest call-in show pauses to ask, ‘Have any American wars NOT been controversial? Does popular support always wane as wars drag on?’

‘BackStory with the American History Guys’ has just started airing, becoming the only call-in public radio program focused on American History. Each week, three Virginia-based historians-turned-radio hosts tear a topic from the headlines and plumb its historical depths. Fellow scholars, newsmakers, and callers join Ed Ayers of the University of Richmond, and Brian Balogh and Peter Onuf of the University of Virginia for passionate and irreverent on-air conversations that explore the historical roots of America’s most important contemporary issues.

On this weekend’s broadcast, the American History Guys look at what happens at home when America goes to war. They ask whether previous wars have united the nation in a common cause as much as we think they did. Was the Greatest Generation all on board with World War II? Author Nicholson Baker (Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization) joins the conversation to discuss pacifism in the lead up to World War II. And retired Marine General Paul Van Riper tells the Guys that it is vital that the military be accountable to civilian authority.

The depth of analysis in each BackStory episode is rare, even for public radio, but the American History Guys manage to keep the show’s tone gregarious and playful, reflecting long-term friendships between the show’s co-hosts. Undergirding their on-air antics is a serious conviction that history should be accessible and is essential to public debate. "If you only know what's on the front page, if you have no idea what the backstory is,” says co-host Ed Ayers, “you're like flotsam, just pushed by whatever currents come along. The conversations on BackStory are one way of giving depth and perspective to contemporary concerns."

‘BackStory with the American History Guys’ can be heard Saturdays at 3:00 pm on WMRA of Central Virginia (local frequencies available at www.wmra.org) and Sundays at 3:00 pm on RADIO IQ in Central and Western Virginia (local frequencies available at www.radioiq.org). Broadcasts in additional markets will be added throughout the summer and fall and national public radio networks are reviewing the show for national distribution. Anyone anywhere can be part of the BackStory conversation online at www.backstoryradio.org, by listening to past episodes or subscribing to the podcast. Research for all of the programs begins long before the broadcast through online discussions that shape future episodes. In upcoming episodes, the BackStory hosts get to the bottom of what exactly happened on July the Fourth 1776 (and why we celebrate it with explosions, hot dogs, and mattress sales), mull over the contradictions in the American prison system and look into America’s changing views toward nature.

The American History Guys together offer comprehensive perspectives on American history. Edward Ayers, President of the University of Richmond and a scholar of 19th-century U.S. history, was the former Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History and dean of the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences. Brian Balogh, Associate Professor of History at U.Va., studies the 20th-century experience in America and is Co-chair of the Governing America in a Global Era Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor of history at U.Va., researches the federal period.

BackStory is produced by VFH Radio, a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH), on the internet at www.virginiafoundation.org. The VFH, based in Charlottesville, is a statewide non-profit organization that works to make scholarship accessible; to promote understanding and discussion of enduring and contemporary issues; and to broaden the range of educational opportunities available available to all Virginians.