Understand Folgen

The story of how reading made us and what might happen if we stop - with James Marriott.

As James Naughtie concludes his series about the ideas tying America's birth 250 years ago to the United States today, he examines freedom, asking whose freedom, and what kind?He begins in Gettysburg, attending a re-enactment on the battlefield made famous by an address from President Abraham Lincoln in which he asked whether the United States "could long endure". That question is being asked again now, as Americans experience profound disagreements over many of the ideas in this series - economic opportunity, justice, freedom; even what it means to be an American. As he hears, American history itself has become a battlefield. And so speaking to historians with different perspectives, and senior political leaders from both parties, James assesses how dangerous this moment is for United States.Producer: Giles Edwards

James Naughtie continues his look at the ideas tying America's founding to the modern United States, asking how 'justice' has been understood by different generations of Americans.In this third episode, James travels to Alabama in the American South, to understand how the Civil Rights movement sought to connect American reality with the promises in its founding documents. He hears from people in Texas on both sides of the debate about abortion, revealing how a movement built to oppose abortion rights brought millions of Christians into politics and dramatically shifted the politics of America's highest court. And in Midwestern Wisconsin, he hears how political division has come to the administration of justice itself.Producer: Giles Edwards