Ben Marsh is a pastor at First Alliance Church Winston-Salem. He's an advocate for the maligned, lonely, afraid, and harmed. Deeply suspect of the rising linkage of Christianity and partisanship, he aims to disentangle awful social and theological ties that have created *where we are now.* He has particular interests in the areas of Christian Nationalism, sexual abuse, and mental healthcare. You may have seen him on CNN (2024, 2021), Al-Jazeera, World Relief, or other news outlets. Previously he worked in DC as a human rights advocate for Dalits.

Ben and I talk about Christian nationalism, the rise of the New Apostolic Reformation, the differences between some of these groups, and, most importantly, how he thinks people can heal. It's a great conversation.

You can find him on his Substack "It's Me Ben Marsh" and Bluesky with the handle itsmebenmarsh.

Benjamin Carter Hett is Professor of History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at City University of New York. He specializes in German history, and his books include The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic; The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War; and more.

He is one of my favorite historians, and I was really excited to get to have him on the show. We dive into the parallels he thinks do and don't exist between today and the 1920s and 1930s. We also spend some time on the f-word debate and whether he thinks fascism is the best term to describe what we're facing in Trump 2.0. Then we get into contemporary politics in Germany and the strength of the AfD ahead of the upcoming elections.

Franziska Wagner studied comparative political sciences at the University of Mannheim and at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, Sciences Po. Her research interests lie in party politics, far-right politics, social media, and computational approaches to social sciences. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D in Political Sciences at the Central European University, where she works on party communication on social media, and the role of discourse and emotions. Franziska is a researcher at the AUTHLIB project (Neo-authoritarianisms in Europe and the liberal democratic response) that aims at exploring the varieties of neo-authoritarian, illiberal ideologies in Europe and their political implications.

You can read her piece here: https://www.authlib.eu/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2024.1390587/full

Today, I'm talking with Dr. Keri Leigh Merritt about her recent piece in Aeon Magazine, entitled "The southern gap." The piece explores the roots of economic underdevelopment in the American South, a problem that still plagues the region. From there, we talk more broadly about the politics of the South and what it means to be a Southerner today.

Keri Leigh Merritt works as a historian and writer in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her B.A. from Emory University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Her first book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (Cambridge University Press, 2017), won both the Bennett Wall Award from the Southern Historical Association, honoring the best book in Southern economic or business history published in the previous two years, as well as the President’s Book Award from the Social Science History Association.

Keri's piece at aeon: https://aeon.co/essays/capitalism-and-underdevelopment-in-the-american-south

Keri's website: https://kerileighmerritt.com/

Dr. Kristin Lunz Trujillo from the University of South Carolina joins to discuss ruralness and identity in America. We talk about the new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, as well as some of the broader ideas about who is rural and what that means for the people living in those places.

You can read Kristin's Newsweek response to White Rural Rage here: 'White Rural Rage' Cites My Research. It Gets Everything About Rural America Wrong

Pulaski fellow Bailey Fairbanks joins to talk about the potential for a mifepristone ban and the practice of judge shopping.

Bailey Fairbanks joins Alan to talk about the Supreme Court's temporary hold on Texas's SB4. We also chat about a story featured in one of this week's Headlines from the Heartlands, concerning Russian Orthodoxy and American neo-Confederates.

Find the link to our new home for Headlines from the Heartlands here: https://alanelrod.substack.com?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web

Dr. Alex Middlewood of Wichita State University joins to talk about her new venture, IKE Lab. At IKE Lab, Alex and Brian Amos are building data and analysis of Kansas elections down to the most local level.

We also talk about a new anti-DEI bill in Kansas, the challenges of brain drain, and crackdowns on local authority in red states. Read Dr. Middlewood's previous essay for Pulaski's 50 Takes on Democracy series here.