Welcome to Democracy Ish.

And I'm with Jhoutali.

And we are very excited to be joined by a guest, which we haven't had a guest in a few weeks. So I'm very excited

to be joined by Heather Cox Richardson, who is a noted historian, author of the upcoming book,

Democracy Awakening, Notes on the State of America, and author of the newsletter, Letters from an American.

I'm going to turn it over to Wage, Heather, so that you can hear his very famous movie phone

introduction.

It's been a while since I've done this, so I'm really excited.

Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches

courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains

Indians. As Daniel has mentioned, her substack, letters from an American, is one of the most

popular substacks, and her book, Democracy Awakening, is out on September 26 and it has received

a Kirkus starred review. Welcome, Heather. Sorry, I'm a child. I have to say, I sort of feel like now

there's nothing we can possibly follow that up with. I mean, maybe we should just call the

interview off right now. If she dropped the mic and walk with. I mean, maybe we should just call the interview off right now.

She just dropped the mic and walk away. You know, Heather, we've been wanting to have you on the show

for a long time. And congratulations on the book, which I read. It's out next week. Everyone should

read it and all your work. And the fact that you have such a huge audience also gives me hope and comfort in the age of

the Ben Shapiro's and the Joe Rogans, that a historian who has been at the forefront of warning

about the rise of authoritarianism and right-wick radicalization has such a loyal, educated, informed audience. And, you know,

usually when we start off this conversation, we talk about the litany of shit that we have to deal

with. But I want to flip it for a second because, you know, reading your book, the title is

...