Episode 183: Heather Cox Richardson on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

In Episode 183 of Reckoning with Jason Herbert, historian Heather Cox Richardson joins the show for a lively and surprisingly sharp conversation about the film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter—and what it reveals about American mythmaking.

What happens when we place a fantastical, axe-wielding Abraham Lincoln alongside the real political crises of the 1860s—and our own? We explore the Civil War, Reconstruction, the endurance of the “Lost Cause,” and the power of storytelling in shaping national memory. Along the way, we ask whether some myths refuse to die… and whether that might be the point.

Smart, funny, and unexpectedly timely, this episode blends pop culture with serious history—reminding us that the stories we tell about the past often say more about the present than we realize.

Heather Cox Richardson is a political historian who uses facts and history to make observations about contemporary American politics. She has written about the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the American West in award-winning books whose subjects stretch from the European settlement of the North American continent to the history of the Republican Party through the Trump administration. She is the author, most recently, of the best-selling Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.