And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined again by the

distinguished history professor at Princeton University, Sean Relence.

We had a good discussion in July on sort of using this our peg, I guess, the debates

about the monuments, the renaming of the military bases that had been named after Confederates and so forth, on the use and abuse of history, I guess, in our time.

And I thought we should follow up because that was such a good discussion and discuss something you've particularly focused on in some of your work.

You recently edited a Library of America edition of Richard Hofstadter, the work of Richard Hofstadter, the great historian who died a long time ago, died young in 1970.

And you also went introduction before that to his volume, the paranoid style in American politics.

And that seems awfully relevant today in an age where conspiracy theorizing and

extremism of various kinds has come back.

So I thought we could use that as a basis for a broader

discussion, obviously, of what to make of the current moment in light of American history. So Sean,

thanks for joining me again.

My pleasure, Bill.

Always wonderful to be here.

And it's just for the record in case something huge happens

in the week or two or three

before we release this conversation,

this is what, December 21st, so you have to say that these days in the

era of Trump because God knows where we'll be by you know whenever whenever this

becomes public which we pretty soon but so let me begin with this I'm I was

struck I think an introduction to Hofstadder's paranoid style, you make the point that he was influenced by all kinds of social science figures, but is in a way what he wanted to really argue is that McCarthyism and Goldwaterism, which he was so interested in,

were American phenomena, that studying American history helped you understand them.

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