We turn now to our PBS video podcast, Settle In, at an episode with Pulitzer Prize winning

presidential historian and best-selling author John Meacham. We talked about his latest book,

American Struggle, which looks back at historical texts to tell us more about who we are today

and why he still has hope in the state of our democracy. Here's part of that conversation.

There's a difference between optimism and hope, right? Hope is the opposite of fear. I am still

full of hope that we can construct a present and a future commensurate with the aspirations of the Declaration

of Independence and the country that abolished slavery and preserve the Union and extended

suffrage and did away with Jim Crow.

But the same country that did away with Jim Crow created Jim Crow, right?

The same country that extended suffrage, denied suffrage.

The same country that abolished slavery, protected slavery.

So it's never fully light versus dark.

I thought after Charlott's Fool, after the tone and the chaos of the first Trump term,

I thought the country would say, you know what, we wanted to send a message to the establishment,

the world as it's taken shape since,

really since the mid-1960s,

has not been commensurate with our cares and concerns.

So get it together.

I thought that message had been sent

and that people having sent it would realize that the messenger

was now actually causing more harm than good. And in 2020, that was proven right. President

Biden's been elected. There's a certain return of gravity. As ever, history confounds us. Human

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