Pushkin.

It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?

Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.

In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examine an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.

So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This is The Broken Constitution, a mini-series for unknown history from quick and dirty tips,

and deep background from Pushkin Industries. Over three episodes, I'm going to talk about Abraham Lincoln

and how he needed to break the American Constitution in order to remake it. It's all based on my

new book, The Broken Constitution, Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America, out November

2. If you're listening to this podcast, you already know that one of the most important

and pressing questions facing the United States today is whether racism and slavery

are encoded into the DNA of our nation by virtue of being encoded into the U.S.

Constitution.

This question is behind debates about who we are, what we should teach, and what the possibilities

are for our nation going into the future, especially with respect to racial equality.

I wrote this book because I wanted to know the answer.

I've devoted most of my professional life to thinking about the U.S. Constitution and about other

constitutions, whether in Iraq or Tunisia or anywhere else around the world.

I'd written books about James Madison and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution as well as its ratification.

And I'd also written a book about the interpretation of the Constitution in the modern period,

starting with the justices appointed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s and going all the way up into the 1960s.

That study gave me a foundation in trying to answer the question, but I must tell you that I was

...