Welcome to another episode of the Willoughby Hills podcast!
On today’s episode, I welcome back to the show author Sarah Kendzior.
Sarah last joined me on this podcast in August, 2020, when we were both still quarantined at home to avoid the pandemic. Despite the threats from COVID though, the summer of 2020 was also a time of great promise, where Americans turned out in vast numbers to protest racial injustice after the police murder of George Floyd.
It’s now five years later. Donald Trump is president again and the authoritarian tendencies that Sarah warned of during his first term have now become American policy. In her previous works (The View From Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight, and They Knew), Sarah made the case for how rich autocrats were masquerading as a government to strip our country and sell it for parts. That is still very much the through line of this conversation, but today we also dig deeper.
Sarah’s new book is The Last American Road Trip, a chronicle of trips that she and her family have made across the vast U.S. beginning in 2016 and continuing through 2024. It’s an examination of American identity, the changes that the last decade have brought to our soil, how Americans retell our history, and how 2020 became the clarifying dividing line of our modern era.
The book travels to towns along the Mississippi River, to the Ozarks, Route 66, the desert Southwest, underground caves, outlaw hideouts, and countless National Parks, all with the goal of taking an honest look at where we are as a nation.
In addition, today’s conversation also touches on the role technology has played in isolating and dividing us and how crafting and working with our hands can be a form of resistance.
Related Episodes:
26. Author and Podcaster Sarah Kendzior (Quarantine Creatives)
119. Richard Frishman and B. Brian Foster on Ghosts of Segregation
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