Who knew that the discharge petition—signed by members of the House of Representatives to bring a bill from committee to the floor—could be good material for a Tony Award-winning play and HBO feature film?
In this episode, Professors Julian Zelizer and Sam Wang interview Robert Schenkkan whose play “All the Way” about Lyndon B. Johnson has been brought from the stage to the screen. “All the Way” is a play and film depicting LBJ’s efforts to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his re-election victory against Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.
Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has been one of the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He is the author of several books including, most recently, "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." Zelizer is a frequent commentator in the international and national media on political history and contemporary politics. He has published more than 600 hundred op-eds, including his weekly column on CNN.com.
Wang is professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton University. He is known for his books "Welcome to Your Brain" and "Welcome to Your Child's Brain" and for his founding role at the Princeton Election Consortium, a blog providing U.S. election analyses. In 2004, Wang was one of the first to aggregate U.S. presidential polls using probabilistic methods. In 2012, his statistical analysis correctly predicted the presidential vote outcome in 49 of 50 states. He has also developed new statistical standards for partisan gerrymandering. A neuroscientist, Wang's academic research focuses on the neuroscience of learning, the cerebellum and autism.