Past Present

On this week’s Past Present podcast, Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, and Neil Young discuss Pope Francis’ visit to the US, the “quit lit” phenomenon, and Donald Trump. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The papal visit of Pope Francis marks the tenth time a pope has come to the United States. In his new book, We Gather Together, Neil writes about how Pope John Paul II’s papal visits in the 1980s strengthened the American pro-life movement and deepened evangelical-Catholic relations. The rise of “quit lit” from professors announcing their departure from academia in written form found its most recent example in an essay for the website Vox. But the fantasy of quitting one’s job has been a frequent theme in American pop culture, from Johnny Paycheck’s country hit, “Take This Job and Shove It,” to the twentieth-century novels Babbitt and Revolutionary Road. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to intrigue and puzzle political commentators. Historians have loo