The idea behind this show is pretty simple: We invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Bob Schmuhl, now a professor emeritus at Notre Dame, joined the university’s faculty in 1980. He was the founding director of Notre Dame’s Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy and was later named the inaugural Walter H. Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Professor of American Studies and Journalism. His areas of expertise include the modern American presidency and the relationship between American politics and the media.

Bob is the author or editor of some 15 books, the most recent of which prompted the conversation here. In The Glory and the Burden: The American Presidency from FDR to Trump, published in 2019 by the University of Notre Dame Press, he examines the institution that is the presidency rather than focusing on the individual occupants of the White House.

He and host Ted Fox discussed potential reforms to how Americans elect the president, including the idea of regional primaries, as well as the path to the present state of our politics and the sense of possibility Bob believes the presidency should represent.

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Bob’s latest book: The Glory and the Burden: The American Presidency from FDR to Trump