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The Irish Are Coming
The stories, struggles, and influence of the Irish in America
BUILDING AMERICA · THE SLUM THAT CHANGED IRISH LIVES · 1820 - 1850·
Inside New York's Most Notorious Slum
What did Abraham Lincoln see when he toured Five Points in 1860 — and why did the visit move him so deeply?
Historian Dr. Tyler Anbinder takes us inside Five Points, nineteenth-century New York's most infamous immigrant neighborhood — revealing that the Irish who settled there were not simply the poorest of the poor, but workers, artisans, servants, and voters who reshaped the city's labor, politics, and streets.
ABOUT THE GUEST
The historian Martin Scorsese called when he needed to get Irish New York right on the big screen.
Tyler Anbinder, Ph.D., studied at Wesleyan and Columbia, taught at George Washington University for over two decades, and is now professor emeritus of history there. His research sits at the intersection of immigration, politics, and New York City — how nineteenth-century newcomers built lives, neighborhoods, and political power from the ground up.
EPISODE RESOURCES
"Poor people can't afford to emigrate to the United States… the ship's not giving you any food. Zero. Nothing. And no water. You have to bring your water, you have to bring your food — five weeks' worth." — Dr. Tyler Anbinder
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ABOUT THE GUEST
His ancestors came to America from four countries — and he spent over thirty years writing the history of the immigrants who made the same journey.
Tyler Anbinder, Ph.D., taught at George Washington University for over two decades, and is now professor emeritus of history there. He follows immigrants into New York City's most crowded neighborhoods and roughest political machines — tracing how people who arrived with nothing built homes, communities, and real political power from the ground up. He also served as historical consultant to Martin Scorsese on Gangs of New York, the film set in the very neighborhood he's spent his career uncovering.
EPISODE RESOURCES
PUBLISHED WORKS
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Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York (Little, Brown and Company, 2024)
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Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum (Free Press / Simon & Schuster, 2001)
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City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)
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​Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (Oxford University Press, 1992)
"Poor people can't afford to emigrate to the United States… the ship's not giving you any food. Zero. Nothing. And no water. You have to bring your water, you have to bring your food — five weeks' worth." — Dr. Tyler Anbinder
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