{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"#1691 Was it Shakespearean Tragedy or Greek Tragedy?","description":"Clay interviews the award-winning historian Joe Ellis about America\u2019s tragic legacy of slavery, and about the dispossession of American Indians from their sovereign homelands. Professor Ellis has often argued that what happened with respect to African Americans was Shakespearean tragedy \u2014 in other words, if the better angels of American life had prevailed, things might have turned out differently; but that the dispossession and cultural genocide America wrought with Native Americans was probably inevitable. Clay has repeatedly challenged that view, and Joe Ellis suggested that Listening to America feature a serious discussion of how things might have turned out differently in both cultural intersections. The problem of what Clay calls \u201cthe Myth of Inevitability\u201d is that it lets white America off the hook. If it could not have turned out any other way, perhaps we don't need to wring our hands too much. It\u2019s a critical discussion of agency and complicity in America\u2019s problematic history. This episode was recorded on December 15, 2025. ","author_name":"Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson","author_url":"https:\/\/ltamerica.org\/","html":"