The country came together, the United States,

and through an accident of history, right?

There was a shared threat in the 1770s

to the way that all of these separate nations,

if you will, or regional cultures had governed themselves.

They all had their own ways of doing things,

and London wanted to centralize and standardize the empire.

So they rose up to defend their own ways,

lo and behold, they won, and that meant

that they were inside something called the United States,

and nobody was quite sure what that was.

This is Sarah Stewart Holland and this is Beth Silverce.

Thank you for joining us for Pantsy Politics.

Hello, and thank you so much for joining us

for our new episode of Pantsy Politics.

Today we're going to talk about the redistricting process

happening around the country in advance of this year's

congressional midterms.

As part of that conversation,

we are really excited to have author and journalist Colin

Woodard here.

He's done some fascinating work

...