How did we get *here*?
Announcing the second season of LONG SHADOW, coming April 12th
I often say that my work focuses on using history to explain the story of today, illuminating where we’ve been as a country and where we’re headed as a world. A more pejorative version is that I write histories that shouldn’t be current events, but are.
That’s how I found myself in November standing here, looking at the church that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones built—the church that began his transformation from a local Austin public access host to national ringmaster of the far-right. It stands today on the site of Mount Carmel, the former location of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, which burned thirty years ago on April 19, 1993, killing 76 Davidians, at the end of a 51-day siege with federal agents that began as a disastrous raid by the ATF that killed six Davidians and four federal agents—the largest shoot-out in US law enforcement history.
You’ll notice the red Trump 2024 flag flying outside the church in the picture above, a campaign flag flying despite the fact that when I visited in November Donald Trump hadn’t even declared he was running for president.
Over the weekend, though, Donald Trump held his kick-off campaign rally began in Waco, Texas—and these two facts are not a coincidence. His choice of Waco was a not-very-subtle message to a certain corner of the far-right. But what, exactly, was that message?
As it turns out, in the latest example of history-that-shouldn’t-be-current-events-but-is, I’ve spent the last six months working on answering that precise question: I’m excited to share today the trailer for the second season of LONG SHADOW, the history-focused podcast I host.
In the first season, we tackled the lingering questions of 9/11, and now this new season focuses on the 40-year rise of the American far-right, how a fringe movement with its roots in the Ku Klux Klan moved to become the mainstream of the modern GOP. Through much of that history, it turns out, looms Alex Jones and the rise of conspiracy theorists in our politics, as conservative talk radio and Fox News shifts the center of gravity of the GOP from politics and policy to people motivated primarily by profit.
The seven episodes begin to launch on April 12th, but as of this morning you can listen here to the trailer:
You can subscribe here on Apple Podcasts to get upcoming episodes, or wherever you normally find your podcasts. (And if you haven’t listened to the first season, now’s a great time to listen.)
In the coming weeks, I hope you’ll join me for a fascinating—and worrisome—journey from Ruby Ridge to Waco to Oklahoma City to, ultimately, the streets of Charlottesville and the steps of the US Capitol on January 6th. It’s a movement that’s far more unified and ideologically consistent over 40 years than you probably realize.
This is incredibly important history for us to understand together as a nation.
GMG
PS: By the way, two notes on book-writing. I’m in California for a week of hardship conferences—first, the kick-off Silverado Summit, in Napa, put together by Dmitri Alperovich and Maureen Hinman, that focused on the intersection of cybersecurity, climate, and national security (including particularly a look at the future of semiconductor chip manufacturing) and then a conference jointly organized by the Hewlett Foundation and my Aspen Institute team, looking at cybersecurity, emerging tech, and geopolitics. Driving between the two yesterday, amid another of California’s “atmospheric river” storms, I stopped at Book Passage in Corte Madera, one of the Bay Area’s best independent bookstores.
It’s always a joy to visit and explore new indy bookstores—last year, on this same trip, I stopped at Point Reyes Books and loaded up on some great titles—and the thrill of seeing my own books on the shelves far from home never lessens. I was so surprised and thrilled to find yesterday that the new paperback of WATERGATE was sitting on the front nonfiction table at Book Passage, and had a delightful conversation with the store manager as I autographed them. Indy bookstores are such incredible community institutions.
Excitingly, I also turned in this week the draft of my next book, UFO, which will be coming out in November. I’ll have a lot more to say about it in the months ahead, but as a little behind-the-scenes for you, I got a very exciting photo below from my editor this morning as she sat down to read it and edit it for the first time.
Even as super duper rough draft, editors will get the manuscript bound up with its cover to help provide the sense of reading a “book.”
So here’s a window in what the start of a book-editing process looks like:
