“When you start looking at deeper, more accurate history,” writer Jared Yates Sexton says in this episode of The World in Time, “you start to realize that a lot of what we have learned through conventional history—and this is in public education, best sellers, documentaries, and television shows—a lot of the history that we have gotten is actually mythology. Take a look at the American Revolution. One of the things that you have been taught for all this time is that it was some sort of spontaneous passion of liberty and freedom in which all Americans turned against Great Britain. And, of course, this is not true.”

This week on the podcast, Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Jared Yates Sexton, author of The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis, about why mythologies have been branded as history since the Roman Empire, and what that means for our present moment.

Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.