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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.

Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution has been a familiar name for decades to other scholars and policymakers who study Russia and Eastern Europe.

The rest of the world learned of her when she testified before the first house impeachment hearings of Donald Trump.

As a senior director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council under Trump, Hill participated in a White House meeting with representatives from Ukraine that was at the core of the impeachment inquiry.

And her testimony was central to the case against Trump.

A native of a down on its luck mining and industrial town in Britain, Hill also has a remarkable and enlightening personal story,

which she tells in a great new memoir, there is nothing for you here.

I sat down with her this week to talk about that, about Trump and what her life's experience and history tells her about populous movements and the threats to our democracy.

Here's that conversation.

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Fiona Hill, it's so good to see you. I can't think of a more timely conversation than one with you right now.

Not just because you've written this splendid book, there is nothing for you here, but because of what the book is about.

And it's about more than you. So first of all, welcome. Good to see you.

Thanks so much, David. It's great to be with you.

So striking about the book is it's a memoir, but it's a memoir with a purpose. You tell your own story as a kind of microcosm about what's happened in these industrial societies in our democracies.

So we should really start there. And your own upbringing in Bishop Auckland, which is a small industrial mining town in the northeast of England.

Well, it was a small industrial mining town in the northeast of England. One point certainly at the peak of the industrial revolution like many towns, you know, frankly in the Midwest, in Illinois and you know, anywhere else for that.

I said before there was the rust belt, but was actually production manufacturing and you know all kinds of big factories and steelworks, you know, et cetera.

And that was the same in the northeast of England. There was a kind of a peak immediately after World War II was, you know, the United Kingdom got back on its feet again.

That's a period when all of heavy industry in the UK was nationalized. I think people forget that fast forward to the period when I'm born in the mid 60s.

Those industries are no longer competitive. They need a lot of infusions of cash to modernize. A lot of those industries are, you know, already with through the pressures of globalization, you know, finding it hard to compete with other production around the world.

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