I'm Kywright and this is the United States of anxiety, a show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future.

We cry wolf a lot and say every two years this is the most important election of our lifetimes.

I hope folks believe us when we say it this time.

First time voter!

Wighten

Warnings from people like former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder who is now bluntly warning American

voters that it is now too late to rely on the mail to get your ballot in.

I'm terrified at the moral apathy it's happening in my country. They have become in themselves moral monsters.

Walmart say it now.

Walmart has taken all firearms and ammunition off its store shelves as a precautionary

measure in the face of potential civil unrest. I felt very powerful in that I did matter.

So I do realize that every four years the presidential election comes right after Halloween.

That's how the calendar works, but that sequence seems so much more notable this year.

National Fright just before we tally the votes.

And there are already at least 93 million votes to be tallied, a record early turnout.

In Texas, more people have already voted than in all of 2016.

Several other states are also pretty

close to that marker. But the counting that will start Tuesday and maybe we'll have

an outcome right away. Or maybe we're going to linger in yet another weird liminal state

waiting days or weeks for the results. And so this week we figured let's just

take a deep breath and use the waiting period to spend a moment in our imaginations,

facing our fears and finding our way to some kind of hope for the future.

...