The John Batchelor Show

1923 TOKYO
Atomic Decisions Shape End of War — Part One
Evan Thomas, author of Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II, discusses American wartime decision-makers such as Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Facing Japan’s ongoing refusal to surrender, officials debated target selection, ethical qualms over firebombing, and nuclear weapon deployment, while Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo navigated deadly military pressures within Japan’s government. (1)

1889 COUNTY TIPPERARY
Irish Immigrants Excel Across Civil War — Part Two
Tyler Anbinder, author of Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York, traces Irish-American contributions during the Civil War, including the Fighting 69th Regiment’s battlefield heroism. He details how former famine refugees moved westward to build productive farms, establish enclaves in Minnesota, pursue enterprises in California, launch iconic businesses, and rise in political and economic life. (6)

1900 IRELAND
Famine Irish Migration Transforms New York — Part One
Tyler Anbinder, author of Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York, examines Irish refugees escaping the catastrophic potato crop failures of mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. Relying on newly analyzed records from Manhattan’s Emigrant Savings Bank, Anbinder highlights early tenement struggles in Five Points, backbreaking construction labor, and the rapid upward mobility these determined immigrants achieved. (5)

1636 NEW AMSTERDAM
Bloodless Capitulation Shapes Modern New York — Part Two
Russell Shorto, author of Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America, details the bloodless transition of New Amsterdam into New York through articles of transfer negotiated between Richard Nicolls and Peter Stuyvesant. The discussion tracks colonial boundary disputes, the Anglo-Dutch wars, and the ultimate irony of the 1688 Glorious Revolution carrying Dutch financial systems into England. (4)

NEW  AMSTERDAM
English Expeditions Challenge Dutch New Amsterdam — Part One
Russell Shorto, author of Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America, explores how Colonel Richard Nicolls led a powerful English fleet to seize Dutch New Netherland in 1664. Shorto re-examines Director-General Peter Stuyvesant’s governance, the colony’s multi-ethnic trade culture, early free African landholders like Dorothe Angola, and the nuanced realities behind Dutch land transactions with local Native Americans. (3)