Democracy Works host Candis Watts Smith joins Cara Santa Maria on the Talk Nerdy podcast to discuss her new book, Black Evidence: A History and a Warning.

From Reconstruction to Redemption, from the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation to the execution of the Southern strategy, from 2020’s multiracial protests to the swift elimination of policies etching out a more inclusive society, Americans regularly experience periods of racial reckoning followed by walloping retrenchment.

In Black Evidence, Smith shows that this pattern is the result of an American habit: denying the truths about our society that Black people experience and remember. Smith then delivers a warning: the effects of this habit ripple out, dulling our ability to identify the signs of authoritarianism and heightening our tolerance for cruelty. Still, she shows how these same truths offer models to overcome our repeated predicament.

Talk Nerdy host Cara Santa Maria is a clinical health psychologist, science communicator, podcaster, and Emmy Award-winning journalist. In addition to Talk Nerdy, she co-hosts the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast and coauthored Skeptics Guide to the Universe book.

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