in the early 19th century before we had social media and ways to get information quickly,

one of the best ways to win an election was to spread the rumor that your opponent was dead.

And that's really hard to push back on. You know, no, I'm alive. Well, you approve

you're alive, right? So it's not like this is anything new, but one of the things that fascinates

me in this moment is we know that political theorists very deliberately came up with a theory

for how you get people to abandon democracy. And you do it by the creation of virtual politics

or political technology, which is literally a blueprint for creating a false reality

that make people think they're voting for things they are not. False candidates, disinformation,

throw shit at the wall, the way Steve Bannon talked about. There's these steps to make this happen.

But there was never a theoretical framework for what happens when people recognize what has been

done to them. And that I think we have seen before and I think we're seeing it now. And that is that

once you've used those tools of technology against a population, they reclaim them for themselves.

I'm John Favreau. Welcome to offline.

That was Heather Cox Richardson, historian and writer of Letters from an American,

the most read and subscribed newsletter on Substack, reaching over a million readers every day.

She stopped by for a fantastic conversation about her new book Democracy Awakening.

We also talked about why authoritarianism is appealing and why she's still hopeful about the future

of American democracy. Spoiler. One reason is, of course, Taylor Swift. You'll hear that conversation

a little bit later. But first, Max and I are going to talk about our favorite topics, social media

and Matt Gaetz. Our boy, this is what we talk about when the mics are off, you know, just

for me, the Matt Gaetz. We're just sending each other gates tweets all days. I'd say, did you see this

one? He's got it. He got a good one off. He got a good misinformation off today. I was really

...