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'Our Malady': Historian Timothy Snyder On America's Health Care Problem

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A nurse checks vitals from a Navajo Indian woman complaining of virus symptoms, at a COVID-19 testing center at the Navajo Nation town of Monument Valley in Arizona on May 21, 2020. (MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)
A nurse checks vitals from a Navajo Indian woman complaining of virus symptoms, at a COVID-19 testing center at the Navajo Nation town of Monument Valley in Arizona on May 21, 2020. (MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

In December 2019, historian Tim Snyder got so sick he almost died. Snyder says his hospital experience taught him about the powerful relationship between health and liberty in the United States.  

Guest

Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale. Author of several books, including "Our Malady" and "The Road to Unfreedom." (@TimothyDSnyder)

From The Reading List

Excerpt from "Our Malady" by Timothy Snyder

New York Review of Books: "What Ails America" — "I was in Germany when I got sick. Late at night in Munich on December 3, 2019, I was admitted to a hospital with abdominal pain and then released the next morning."

Washington Post: "What Americans should learn from Belarus" — "Those Americans who believe that the Democrats are their best hope for thwarting the rise of authoritarianism must confront a basic question: Given that President Trump intends to spoil the elections if he can’t win them, how do citizens ensure that November’s victors take office?"

Chronicle of Higher Education: "The Bleak Prophecy of Timothy Snyder" — "In a brisk, mist-filled October night, a middle-aged couple were begging to be let into an event just up the street from Columbia University, at the International House."

Foreign Policy: "America’s Social Contract Is Still Built on Racial Hostility" — "The killing of George Floyd presents Americans with an image that has become almost banal by its repeated rendering: yet another victim of a system of criminal justice tasked with protecting white Americans from their black fellow citizens."

This program aired on September 8, 2020.

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