It's like TikTok. It's like the Commit-a-Hate Crank Challenge.

Welcome to You Wrong About the Show where sometimes we talk about things that happened before the Reagan administration.

With me today is my wonderful guest, Jim Elboui. Hello, Jim El. Hello, Sarah. How are you? I am doing all right. I'm doing okay.

You were on a wonderful, harrowing episode just over a year ago. Now, last November, we talked about the

Electoral College. That's one of my favorites that we've done and I feel like this one is just as

topical. Yes, for this go-around, we talked about Reconstruction, the time after the end of the

Civil War. I'll be spoke about its consequences for the country, about its relevance for us.

Talked to a wide-to-even-worth discussing Reconstruction, 150 years after the fact. I just always

want to make everything that happens in December somehow holiday-related. It's a compulsion, so I hope

that this is a good holiday gift to everyone. Because I do think that the end of the year is when we

think about what we've just experienced and think about time and history and what we want to let go of

and bring forward. This feels like a good time for talking about all of this. I think that's a great

way to put it because it is a period of American history where that forces you to think and reflect

very deeply about the big picture questions of this country's history and of this country's present

in the end of its future. But it's certainly the case that there remain unresolved issues and

questions coming out of that war and coming out of its aftermath. And speaking of moral panics,

which I always like to be only a few yards away from, are we engaging in this episode in

the moral panic of our moment, critical race theory? Yes, I mean, that's...

When we recorded this, I think this was still just kind of bubbling up, but then it really exploded

with the Virginia Goobin editorial election in November. But when you look at the laws being passed

in states across the country, there are laws that very straightforwardly outlaw any teaching

that gets into the issues and questions posed by reconstruction. There's no way to talk about

...