Professors David Thorburn, Thomas Pettitt, Lewis Hyde, and S. Craig Watkins discuss the present-day phenomena of media editing and remixing. Following Thorburn's main lecture on current examples, Hyde presents Benjamin Franklin as an early "intellectual pirate," through his bringing export-forbidden printing technology from England; and Watkins discusses the oral history and exchange tradition in African American music, relating it to voice-sampling in modern rap and hip-hop.

Scholar Alexander S. Belenky examines the presidential election process and the institution of the Electoral College. He looks at the form of the Electoral College as defined in the U.S. Constitution, the application of this form, and the possible imbalances and stalemates that can result in elections due to this institution. He also suggests changes in the system that might guard against such stalemates and imbalances.

In this lecture from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, "historians James and Lois Horton cover 200 years of African American history from the colonial slave trade through the American Revolution to, finally, the Civil War."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:

Historian Philip D. Morgan explores the core experiences of slavery itself, including life on the African coast and on sugar plantations in the new world. He discusses the wide range of experiences that an enslaved person might experience in different countries during the height of the transatlantic slave trade.

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis explores the life of George Washington. He discusses the difficulties of writing about Washington due to his well known aversion to revealing his personal thoughts. He presents theories about Washington's personality based on what has been documented about his early life.

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:

Elliott West, Distinguished Professor of the American West and the American Indian at the University of Arkansas, describes how guns and horses changed Native American culture, while European diseases ravaged the indigenous people of the New World who had no inherent immunity to them.

In this lecture originally given at the New-York Historical Society, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich discusses her book The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. Thatcher provides an overview of her research process and discusses the material artifacts she selected to include in her book.