And the Hi and welcome to belabering the Point. I'm your host Kate Riga. Today I'm here with

TPM's own Josh Marshall. We just wrapped up a conversation with Professor Heather Cox Richardson about the state of America, how we got here, some

of the historical roots, and I thought the conversation much like her book was so fascinating.

What do you think, Josh?

Yeah, no, I both.

I thought, you know, we initially, we were scheduled

to just talk for a half hour, we ended up doing you know I think a

touch shorter than an hour but there was just so much to talk about and you know her

book is a lot of it is history but it is very much about explaining the current moment in our

history and it's very elucidating and as I think you mentioned at one point towards the end of the conversation

ended up being more kind of uplifting than maybe we thought it would you know maybe we

thought it would be because there's obviously a lot of storm clouds on the political

horizon right now. But it was very interesting and it was also interesting to me because it gave me

a lot to think about about the interplay of

being a scholar and also being a writer in the public you know in the public

space which is something that she has managed to excel at both which is A very

impressive but it was interesting to me to think about how the two kinds of work play off each other and to some extent how they you know there's

only so much only so many hours in a day but also how they kind of you know

nourish each other in a in a basic way so it was I thought it was a really

interesting conversation and a really good book which which I really recommend you pick up a copy of it and

I assume many of our many of our listeners are also subscribers to Heather

Substacks so you yeah in some cases you know about the book but if you don't you should

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