America Revisited: The East

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2016

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michelle Fleury and Ben Crighton travel from Louisville in Kentucky to New York on the East Coast. Along the way they speak to miners, environmentalists, food bank volunteers, drug addicts and former school students about President Obama’s legacy. Although the economy seems to have recovered from the global financial crisis, they encounter anger and disillusionment, and find that much of the optimism that swept Obama into office in 2008 has been replaced by division in Washington and across the country.

In the weeks before the 2008 US election, the BBC drove a bus coast to coast across the US asking people about their lives and their hopes and fears for the future. In the four-part series America Revisited we meet some of those same people again to find out why the country seems more divided than ever.

Picture: Billy and Doug are retired miners who are worried about their pensions, Credit: BBC

Transcript

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0:00.0	While this nation has been tested by war and it's been tested by recession and all manner of challenges.
0:13.3	I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you
0:20.4	I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.
0:27.0	President Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in August, preparing to hand over to the 45th President of the United States of America.
0:41.0	Rewined to 2008, when Obama was elected and the BBC drove coast to coast, speaking to Americans
0:49.2	about their lives and dreams for the future. Now the BBC is retracing that journey to find out
0:56.6	if the first mixed-race president has lived up to his promises of change and hope.
1:07.4	You can listen to the first two parts of that road trip
1:10.3	from California to Tennessee with reporters Philipp Thomas and Chloe Hadgy Mathio in
1:16.4	episodes 1 and 2 of America revisited.
1:22.2	I'm Michelle Flurry and today producer Ben Crichton and I are on the final leg
1:27.0	beginning here in Louisville, Kentucky will be pushing on through West Virginia and Ohio before finishing in New York. While the rest of the country and much of the world has an eye on the presidential race,
1:49.0	we've got ours on an old-fashioned horse race at Churchill Downs in Louisville, home of the famous annual
1:56.1	Kentucky Derby.
2:02.1	Eight years ago when the BBC was last here, the country was reeling from the
2:06.6	financial crisis and the horse racing industry was far from immune. But like the
2:11.7	rest of the economy, things have started to pick up again.
2:15.1	There in the gate and there off.
2:19.1	Bossy B veered to the far outside suit after the break part of the veers off. From his cramped glass booth overlooking the one mile dirt oval
2:27.6	racetrack announcer Travis Stone enjoys what he calls the greatest view in horse racing.
2:34.0	Run along back into second, late run from Morgan's Ruby on the outside, but Paravir's the winner
2:39.0	by one on the wire.
	...

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