Civil wars are anything but spontaneous, and though they are often decades in the making, they remain challenging to identify before they explode into violence. We interview Barbara F Walter, a world renown expert on political violence and what it portends about her new book How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them, in hopes of answering a dark question: How close is the U.S. to civil war? Also, we wonder how effective protests around the world will be. And why we pay more for products with “9”s in their prices.

Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara

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