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The Documentary Podcast

America Revisited: The West

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2016

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

BBC World Service drives across the United States to find out why Americans seem more divided than ever.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes we can to opportunity. Yes we can

0:21.6

prepare this world. Yes we can prepare this world.

0:23.0

Yes we can.

0:24.0

Yes we can.

0:27.0

Yes we can.

0:28.0

Yes we can, he said and millions of Americans wanted to believe him.

0:36.0

The year Barack Obama was elected US President, America was staggering.

0:40.8

It was a year into the great global recession that saw banks crash jobs disappear house

0:46.7

prices slump business prospects evaporate even the US auto industry teetered on the brink of collapse.

0:55.0

But candidate Obama spoke about hope, offering recovery at home, respite from America's

1:01.3

wars abroad, and an historic first as he became America's first black president.

1:07.0

In that year 2008, the BBC drove coast to coast across the United States to ask people what's life like for you today

1:18.5

Starting here in the West where I am now on the beach in Los Angeles

1:22.1

BBC reporters drove inland from California,

1:25.5

dipped south towards Texas, then up the east coast

1:28.6

to New York, hearing personal stories.

1:41.0

So here we are, toes in the Pacific Ocean, which is really very cold. Standing on Venice Beach, ready to take our own road trip.

1:45.0

We'll revisit some of the people who opened up their lives to the BBC eight years ago.

1:50.0

And we're looking for new stories about how things have changed in America's Obama years.

1:56.0

For the first part of the road trip, that's me, Philippa Thomas and producer Charlotte Pritchard.

2:01.0

So Charlotte, where do we head after LA?

2:03.0

Next we're going to Las Vegas in Nevada, and then we'll go down to Phoenix, Arizona,

...

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