The Roger Retrospective connects the dots between history and today's headlines — because the past isn't prologue, it's a playbook. Each episode takes a pivotal moment from world history and traces its arc into the present, revealing the patterns, miscalculations, and ironies that keep repeating. Hosted by Roger Horn, a veteran emerging markets strategist with 20+ years on the front lines of global finance and a passport stamped in 50+ countries.
Who Killed the American Work Ethic? — From Henry Ford to TikTok (#21)
Who Killed the American Work Ethic?
Whatever happened to getting a good job, working hard, and building a career? Why does it seem like so many young Americans would rather become TikTok stars or YouTube influencers than follow the traditional path to success?
In this episode of The Roger Retrospective, Roger Horn explores how America's relationship with work has evolved over 250 years — from Benjamin Franklin's gospel of thrift and hard work to Henry Ford's assembly lines, the California Gold Rush, Wall Street's Gordon Gekko, Silicon Valley's billionaires, and today's social media celebrities.
Along the way, we discover that Americans have always dreamed of getting rich without spending forty years working for somebody else. But something has changed: the traditional bargain between hard work and financial security isn't what it used to be.
So have younger generations really abandoned the American work ethic? Or are they simply redefining what success looks like?
From factory floors to TikTok fame, it's a story about ambition, money, and the changing American Dream.
The Roger Retrospective — Today's world, through the lens of history.
17 Oct 2026
Can the United States Just Grab a Foreign President? (#20)
January 3rd has a habit of being a rough day for Latin American strongmen. In 1990, Manuel Noriega walked out of the Vatican embassy in Panama City after ten days of nonstop rock music and surrendered to U.S. forces. In 2026, on the same date, helicopters hit Caracas and Nicolás Maduro ended up aboard the USS *Iwo Jima*.
This week on *The Roger Retrospective*, we follow Maduro into a Manhattan courtroom—beige prison clothes, new torture charges, and a pending fight over whether a sitting head of state can be tried in a foreign court at all. To make sense of it, we look at four different doors into the courtroom: Noriega (the template), Saddam Hussein (the one we handed back), Juan Orlando Hernández (the clean extradition that ended in a pardon), and Maduro (the sequel).
Along the way: head-of-state immunity, the strange Ker-Frisbie rule that U.S. courts mostly don’t care how you got there, the power of non-recognition, and the uncomfortable question of what happens when the rule we wrote gets used by someone else. Same night, same helicopters—three different words for what happened.
10 Oct 2026
Why Presidents Can Pick Supreme Court Justices — But Can’t Control Them (Episode 19)
A president gets to nominate a Supreme Court justice. The Senate confirms them. And then something remarkable happens: the justice never has to answer to that president again.
Donald Trump has publicly expressed frustration with Supreme Court justices he appointed after they ruled against positions he supported. But presidential disappointment with “their” justices is hardly new.
More than a century ago, Theodore Roosevelt was furious when his own appointee, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., went against him in one of the great trust-busting battles of the Progressive Era. Dwight Eisenhower would later regret two of the most consequential appointments of his presidency. Richard Nixon discovered that even a Court reshaped by Republican presidents could ultimately help bring down a Republican president.
In this episode of The Roger Retrospective, we travel from Teddy Roosevelt to Eisenhower, Nixon and Trump to explore one of the ingenious—and occasionally infuriating—features of the American constitutional system: presidents choose Supreme Court justices, but once those justices put on the robe, the president loses control.
And that may be exactly what the Founders intended.
Today’s world, through the lens of history.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
37 ratings
Host of Roger Retrospective?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
