In The Future of America’s Past Ed Ayers, award-winning historian and co-host of the hit podcast BackStory, as he travels to places that define the most misunderstood parts of America’s past.

Editor, School Interrupted (PBS, March 2020) In the rural district of Prince Edward County, Virginia, young people staged a strike in 1951—an effort that culminated in the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board that outlawed segregated schools. Ed meets participants of that strike, as well as a museum educator, author, and librarian. He learns about the resilience of local black families when segregationists closed public schools for five years.

Editor, Transcontinental (PBS, March 2020) High in the Utah desert in 1869, a ceremonial golden spike marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. On the 150th anniversary of this feat, Ed speaks with a National Park Service ranger, a poet, a descendant of a Chinese American railroad builder, and a Native American tribal leader. Together, they paint a portrait of technological triumph—and its human and environmental costs.