The Bulwark Podcast
Heather Cox Richardson: The Reality Show-ification of the Government
Thu, 19 Dec 2024
We are seeing in real time what it looks like to turn a democracy over to an oligarch, namely the unstable guy from South Africa who thinks he's going to be emperor of the universe. It's also authoritarian for that one unstable guy to threaten members of congress with job loss if they vote to provide hurricane relief or to rebuild part of the interstate highway system. Plus, the need for a pro-democracy media ecosystem, the difference between liberal and left, and the terribleness of the William McKinley era. Heather Cox Richardson joins Tim Miller. show notes Some of Heather's books: “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America" "Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre" "West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War"
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I couldn't be more delighted to welcome to the Bulwark the professor of history at Boston College, teaching 19th century American history. She also writes the newsletter Letters from an American on Substack with over 1.8 million subscribers. Her books include Democracy Awakening, Notes on the State of America.
It's Heather Cox Richardson. How are you doing?
I'm good and I'm so pleased to be here.
So delightful. Obviously, given the fact that lots of people are reading your newsletter, many are familiar with you. But I kind of just wanted to start, for those who aren't, a little bit about your backstory. And then we'll get into the Elon of it all and what's our new... you know, kind of deputy shadow president. And we'll talk a little bit about that and historical parallels.
But, you know, you, at least to me, I just emerged from the ether, right? It's like, hey, there's this professor that has a newsletter everybody reads. And I'm just curious, like how that kind of came to pass and what, you know, got you into all this.
So it's funny because I shouldn't maybe use the past tense, but I will. I was a pretty well-known American history professor. I had a number of books out, very well-received books out in American political and economic history. But you know, in many ways in our country, our different professions are siloed.
So while I think you would have been hard-pressed to find an academic historian who didn't know who I was, the crossover to the popular audience had been, you know, the Washington Post, the Guardian, places like that, where again, I wrote a lot. I even had a column for Salon years ago under Dave Daly, which was, you know, a really interesting experience. Yeah, he was a great, really great editor.
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