Welcome to Positively Dreadful. I'm your host, Brian Boyler. You probably know that this

is going to be a show about anxiety inducing trends in so many realms of American life.

That includes law, media, tech, and culture. And in the political realm, the most alarming

up in our faces trend is this relentless assault on representative democracy. Now, that's

not just an American problem. It's happening basically everywhere democracy has taken

root. But the authoritarian movement here is very mature. The pro-democracy forces in

this country are kind of unsure of themselves and frankly exhausted. And of course, the

United States is the most powerful country on earth. So if politics is your thing, it's

honestly pretty hard to think about much else. And often that means shouting into avoid,

hoping to get people to wake up to what's at stake.

So there are a lot of people we could have invited on the show who could speak eloquently

in with authority about the democracy crisis in America. But we reached out to Congressman

Jamie Raskin because he has, I think, a really unique vantage point on it. He's a former

constitutional law professor, which means he's sort of mastered the game board, the Donald

Trump and the Republican Party, are trying to overturn. He led the second impeachment

of Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection. And he now sits on the House January 6th

Committee, which I think puts him high in the running for knowing the most that can be

known about efforts to steal the 2020 election. And he's also just written a really moving

new book called Unthinkable, which weaves together his experiences of the assault on the

Capitol and the death of his son, Tommy. And if you read it, you'll see those experiences

made him question some foundational things about himself and his colleagues and the country.

But it's also a story about how grappling with big human and civic traumas in a spirit

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