A content warning, this episode includes the sound of police brutality that a lot of people will find hard to listen to.

Change, we are not a news podcast.

No, we're not.

We very consciously take a longer view.

You know, we try to get it truths about who and what we are as a society that are more evergreen.

But man.

Woo!

So this is a series about democracy in America, right?

And we posted the first episode as Trump's impeachment trial was getting started.

And now here we are in June 2020, recording the last episode of our season, and there's a major protest movement.

I mean, you could even say a rebellion happening across the country.

We asked at the beginning of season four, hasn't American democracy always been in crisis?

And I think our series has shown the answer is yes, but it's sort of like with medical conditions, right?

There are chronic crises and acute crises.

And right now we've got several immediate emergencies, any one of them historic layered on top of each other.

And I think the police are a really good example of that, right?

You know, policing is an institution that has been involved in racist violence from its inception.

But the acute problem is the latest murder of an unarmed black man by a white police officer, George Floyd in Minneapolis.

And that sparked a powerful uprising across the country and even across the world.

But of course this uprising is about more than just a killing of one man.

It's about countless murders of black people over generations either committed or condoned by this country, including Breonna Taylor and Amada Arbery just in the past few weeks.

And it's actually about even more than this kind of murder, right?

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