How often have you seen something on the news recently and found yourself thinking,

man, this is crazy. This is unprecedented. I don't think anything like this has ever happened

before. It can be overwhelming, right? Feeling like we're grappling with some brand new thing.

But what if that's wrong? What if, in fact, we have contented with something like this before?

Is that helpful to know? Can't it at least give us better ways to describe what we're facing?

And maybe better understanding of what might happen next. I'm Rachel Maddo.

I'm Isaac Davey Aronson. Isaac you and I have known each other how long now?

20 years. We started off making radio together a million years ago. We've made lots of TV together.

And now our brand new podcast Rachel Maddo presents Deja News. Each week we'll dive into a story

from history that has uncanny resonance with something in the headlines today.

I watched the recount very closely and from what I saw I know that a court of law would throw out

hundreds and hundreds of ballots that were counted. Similar fears that have gripped us in the past.

It seems to a lot of people on both sides of the Atlantic at this moment that liberal democracy

has run its course. It didn't work. Political playbooks that have been used before.

The challenging effort was designed to reduce the number of black and Hispanic voters by

confrontation and intimidation. Can history help us better understand and grapple with what is

happening now? On January 6th I was like oh god this metaphor and you guys are taking this way too far.

And for the people who live the history what's it like to see it all coming around again?

You know at my age you know not again. More often than you'd think we are not the first

generation of people to confront the situations that we're facing today.

We're just the first generation to make a podcast about it. Rachel Maddo presents

deja news with Isaac Davie Aronson, a new MSNBC podcast on the heels of the char-topping

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