Why do so few Americans remember John Quincy Adams? Bob Crawford, bassist for The Avett Brothers and author of America's Founding Son, argues Adams may not have been America's best president, but he just might have been the greatest ex-president. He describes the election of 1824, with its accusations of corruption bringing rise to a populist leader. And he lays out how Adams' real story began after the White House, when the former president did the unthinkable: he ran for Congress. It was there that this relentless public servant truly shone, fighting for free speech and striking the first major blow against slavery.

Find him at: bobcrawford.komi.io

For more, visit goodcitizenpodcast.com.

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Good Citizen is hosted by Ted Roosevelt V and produced by The Future of StoryTelling in collaboration with Charts & Leisure, on behalf of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. Learn more about T.R.’s presidential library at www.trlibrary.com.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation

350 Third Avenue

Medora, North Dakota 58645

Future of StoryTelling

Founder and CEO, Charles Melcher

Director, Carolyn Merriman

Producer, Alison Byrne

Assistant Producer, Madison Brown

Production Assistant, Tsuki Carlson

Charts & Leisure

Executive Producer, Jason Oberholtzer

Producer, Meghal Janardan

Editor, Garrett Crowe

Mix, Andrew Atkin

Music and Final Assembly, Michael Simonelli

With special thanks to Katrina Tiktinsky, Sam Mitchell, Edward F. O’Keefe, Robbie Lauf, Courtland Miller, and Matt Briney.
Bob Crawford photo credit: Crackerfarm

Ted comes to this conversation not just as a host, but as a Roosevelt. And he’s sitting down with two people he’s worked alongside for years: Edward O’Keefe, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, and Charlie Melcher, CEO of the Future of Storytelling, as they reflect on what they’ve built together.

The Library opens its doors on July 4th, 2026, the nation’s 250th birthday, and these two men are most responsible for bringing it to life. Together they trace the arc from vision to reality, including the moment on a snowy Badlands butte when everything clicked. This conversation includes a candid look at how far they’ve come and a preview of what awaits visitors. At the heart of it all is a radical proposition: that TR’s story exists not to glorify one man, but to ignite something in the rest of us.

Learn more at TRLibrary.com and futureofstorytelling.org

For more, visit goodcitizenpodcast.com.

Follow us on Facebook @TRPresidentialLibrary

Instagram @trlibrary

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And sign up for our newsletter at trlibrary.com/newsletter to stay up-to-date on the TRPL!

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Good Citizen is hosted by Ted Roosevelt V and produced by The Future of StoryTelling in collaboration with Charts & Leisure, on behalf of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. Learn more about T.R.’s presidential library at www.trlibrary.com.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation

350 Third Avenue

Medora, North Dakota 58645

Future of StoryTelling

Founder and CEO, Charles Melcher

Director, Carolyn Merriman

Producer, Alison Byrne

Assistant Producer, Madison Brown

Production Assistant, Tsuki Carlson

Charts & Leisure

Executive Producer, Jason Oberholtzer

Producer, Meghal Janardan

Editor, Garrett Crowe

Mix, Andrew Atkin

Music and Final Assembly, Michael Simonelli

With special thanks to Lor Simpson, Nicole Turchin, WTF Media Studios, Robbie Lauf, Courtland Miller, and Matt Briney.

Lucas St. Clair grew up off the grid in the woods of northern Maine, with a front-row seat to one of the great entrepreneurial origin stories of our time: his mother’s chance encounter with the beekeeper Burt Shavitz, which grew into Burt’s Bees. With his good friend Ted, Lucas traces that story of selling honey out of pickle jars to building a multi-million dollar company, and his mom’s vision to donate tens of thousands of acres of Maine timberland to create a national park. What followed for Lucas was years of backlash, door-to-door discussions, and a humbling reckoning with the Wabanaki Nations, whose history had long been left out of the story of this land.

Learn more about the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument at www.nps.gov/kaww

For more, visit goodcitizenpodcast.com.

Follow us on Facebook @TRPresidentialLibrary

Instagram @trlibrary

X @TRPresLibrary.

And sign up for our newsletter at trlibrary.com/newsletter to stay up-to-date on the TRPL!

--

Good Citizen is hosted by Ted Roosevelt V and produced by The Future of StoryTelling in collaboration with Charts & Leisure, on behalf of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. Learn more about T.R.’s upcoming presidential library at www.trlibrary.com.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation

350 Third Avenue

Medora, North Dakota 58645

Future of StoryTelling

Founder and CEO, Charles Melcher

Director, Carolyn Merriman

Producer, Alison Byrne

Assistant Producer, Madison Brown

Production Assistant, Tsuki Carlson

Charts & Leisure

Executive Producer, Jason Oberholtzer

Producer, Meghal Janardan

Editor, Garrett Crowe

Mix, Andrew Atkin

Music and Final Assembly, Michael Simonelli

With special thanks to Miriam Deauseault, Edward F. O’Keefe, Robbie Lauf, Courtland Miller, and Matt Briney.

Admiral James Stavridis is a retired four-star U.S. Navy admiral and prolific nonfiction author, but it's his newest work of fiction that cuts the deepest. 2084, co-written with former Marine Elliot Ackerman, imagines a world ravaged by climate change and torn apart by a global war orchestrated by A.I. Yet beneath the chaos are difficult human choices and the kinds of love and loss that remind us what's ultimately at stake. It serves as a warning designed to spur action.

But Ted can't stay in the future for too long, not with the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO sitting across from him. Their conversation moves between reality and story, from NATO’s global composition and the international order today to that world of 2084. Without giving too much away, the Admiral describes a future that feels distant enough to be fiction but close enough to be uncomfortable.

Find him at admiralstav.com

For more, visit goodcitizenpodcast.com.

Follow us on Facebook @TRPresidentialLibrary

Instagram @trlibrary

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And sign up for our newsletter at trlibrary.com/newsletter to stay up-to-date on the TRPL!

--

Good Citizen is hosted by Ted Roosevelt V and produced by The Future of StoryTelling in collaboration with Charts & Leisure, on behalf of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. Learn more about T.R.’s upcoming presidential library at www.trlibrary.com.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation

350 Third Avenue

Medora, North Dakota 58645

Future of StoryTelling

Founder and CEO, Charles Melcher

Director, Carolyn Merriman

Producer, Alison Byrne

Assistant Producer, Madison Brown

Production Assistant, Tsuki Carlson

Charts & Leisure

Executive Producer, Jason Oberholtzer

Producer, Meghal Janardan

Editor, Garrett Crowe

Mix, Andrew Atkin

Music and Final Assembly, Michael Simonelli

With special thanks to Paulette Folkins, Julia Stavridis, Edward F. O’Keefe, Robbie Lauf, Courtland Miller, and Matt Briney.

Dana Milbank traded the outrage cycle of politics for 60 acres of overgrown Virginia farmland. And as he changed the land, the land changed him. Dana is a political columnist for NOTUS (soon to be “The Star”). He spent 26 years as an op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, where he also wrote about our attempts to "rehumanize" during a time of anxiety and isolation.

He describes to Ted his unlikely journey from suburban kid and political columnist to hunter and land steward, and how even brief moments outdoors can give back what screens have stripped away. Dana makes the case that spending time in nature and with our neighbors, like restoring degraded land, is sometimes unglamorous, Sisyphean work that just so happens to be essential.

Find him at notus.org/dana-milbank

For more, visit goodcitizenpodcast.com.

Follow us on Facebook @TRPresidentialLibrary

Instagram @trlibrary

X @TRPresLibrary.

And sign up for our newsletter at trlibrary.com/newsletter to stay up-to-date on the TRPL!

--

Good Citizen is hosted by Ted Roosevelt V and produced by The Future of StoryTelling in collaboration with Charts & Leisure, on behalf of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. Learn more about T.R.’s upcoming presidential library at www.trlibrary.com.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation

350 Third Avenue

Medora, North Dakota 58645

Future of StoryTelling

Founder and CEO, Charles Melcher

Director, Carolyn Merriman

Producer, Alison Byrne

Assistant Producer, Madison Brown

Production Assistant, Tsuki Carlson

Charts & Leisure

Executive Producer, Jason Oberholtzer

Producer, Meghal Janardan

Editor, Garrett Crowe

Mix, Andrew Atkin

Music and Final Assembly, Michael Simonelli

With special thanks to Edward F. O’Keefe, Robbie Lauf, Courtland Miller, and Matt Briney.

What allows a politician to hold to his principles when almost every incentive pulls the other way? In this memorable conversation with Ted, Senator Mitt Romney traces the formative moments with his father that shaped his moral compass, and the specific ways he guards against self-rationalization. Senator Romney also speaks to the outsized power of presidential leadership, and why his legacy won’t rest on any single vote he cast. Plus, he offers a surprisingly simple framework for rediscovering the values most Americans already share.

For more, visit goodcitizenpodcast.com.

Follow us on Facebook @TRPresidentialLibrary

Instagram @trlibrary

X @TRPresLibrary.

And sign up for our newsletter at trlibrary.com/newsletter to stay up-to-date on the TRPL!

--

Good Citizen is hosted by Ted Roosevelt V and produced by The Future of StoryTelling in collaboration with Charts & Leisure, on behalf of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. Learn more about T.R.’s upcoming presidential library at www.trlibrary.com.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation

350 Third Avenue

Medora, North Dakota 58645

Future of StoryTelling

Founder and CEO, Charles Melcher

Director, Carolyn Merriman

Producer, Alison Byrne

Assistant Producer, Madison Brown

Production Assistant, Tsuki Carlson

Charts & Leisure

Executive Producer, Jason Oberholtzer

Producer, Meghal Janardan

Editor, Garrett Crowe

Mix, Andrew Atkin

Music and Final Assembly, Michael Simonelli

With special thanks to Leah von Schaumburg, Liz Johnson, Edward F. O’Keefe, Robbie Lauf, Courtland Miller, and Matt Briney.

What if we prioritized relationships over the chase for success? What if we ignored the siren call of social media in exchange for cultivating a sense of purpose? Dr. Vivek Murthy, the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States, has made it his mission to sound the alarm on one of the defining public health crises of our time: loneliness. In his conversation with Ted, Murthy makes the case for a fundamental reordering of what we value, describing a "triad of fulfillment" that's the path to real flourishing. He also reveals his next chapter: a new podcast called Staying Human.

Find him at vivekmurthy.substack.com

For more, visit goodcitizenpodcast.com.

Follow us on Facebook @TRPresidentialLibrary

Instagram @trlibrary

X @TRPresLibrary.

And sign up for our newsletter at trlibrary.com/newsletter to stay up-to-date on the TRPL!

--

Good Citizen is hosted by Ted Roosevelt V and produced by The Future of StoryTelling in collaboration with Charts & Leisure, on behalf of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. Learn more about T.R.’s upcoming presidential library at www.trlibrary.com.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation

350 Third Avenue

Medora, North Dakota 58645

Future of StoryTelling

Founder and CEO, Charles Melcher

Director, Carolyn Merriman

Producer, Alison Byrne

Production Assistant, Tsuki Carlson

Charts & Leisure

Executive Producer, Jason Oberholtzer

Producer, Meghal Janardan

Editor, Garrett Crowe

Mix, Andrew Atkin

Music and Final Assembly, Michael Simonelli

With special thanks to Lizzie Fishman, Edward F. O’Keefe, Robbie Lauf, Courtland Miller, and Matt Briney.

What's really at stake when a community loses its local newspaper? Civic engagement drops, polarization rises, and corruption goes unchecked. But Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project, is working to reverse that. Sarabeth believes local journalism should be treated like an essential public good, similar to a museum or a food bank. And with the AJP, the first venture philanthropy dedicated to local news, news organizations are rooted in and supported by the communities they serve. In this conversation, she and Ted dig into the research, the AJP model, and what it will actually take to rebuild local news across the entire country.

Find her work at theajp.org.

For more, visit goodcitizenpodcast.com.

Follow us on Facebook @TRPresidentialLibrary

Instagram @trlibrary

X @TRPresLibrary.

And sign up for our newsletter at trlibrary.com/newsletter to stay up-to-date on the TRPL!

--

Good Citizen is hosted by Ted Roosevelt V and produced by The Future of StoryTelling in collaboration with Charts & Leisure, on behalf of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. Learn more about T.R.’s upcoming presidential library at www.trlibrary.com.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation

350 Third Avenue

Medora, North Dakota 58645

Future of StoryTelling

Founder and CEO, Charles Melcher

Director, Carolyn Merriman

Producer, Alison Byrne

Assistant Producer, Madison Brown

Production Assistant, Tsuki Carlson

Charts & Leisure

Executive Producer, Jason Oberholtzer

Producer, Meghal Janardan

Editor, Garrett Crowe

Mix, Andrew Atkin

Music and Final Assembly, Michael Simonelli

With special thanks to Roshni Neslage, Christy Johnson, Edward F. O’Keefe, Robbie Lauf, Courtland Miller, and Matt Briney.