Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge.

We are fewer than six weeks out from the U.S. election, so our topic is timely.

We're talking about covert interference with elections.

My guest is the author of a really fascinating new book, Rigged, America, Russia, and 100 years of covert elections. My guest is the author of a really fascinating new book,

Rigged, America, Russia, and 100 years of covert electoral interference. David Shimer,

the author is a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs.

Unbelievably enough, he produced this exhaustively researched book

while simultaneously working on his doctorate at Modlin College

at Oxford University in England.

David, I know you've been in great demand for the past few months,

given the quality and timeliness of this book,

so thanks so much for making time to speak with me.

Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

David, you've described this problem as an evolution, not an episode. It didn't begin in

2016 and certainly. Can you walk us through that?

That's part of why I wrote this book, because I was so alarmed by the broad treatment of

Russian interference in America's 2016 election is somehow unprecedented or without any sort

of history behind it because when something's treated as unprecedented, that's dangerous because

it makes it easier to create lies or myths about something if it exists in itself.

So what I do in my book is I restore history

...