I'm supposed to either be laughing or going, ah, so I've now done that, that my job has been accomplished. Well, it was not, it wasn't actually not intentional. So for those of you who are coming in now, which is fun, cause I know you're all here, but my number still shows zero. So I get just you and me, Joanne. Just, you know, one of the things that we, that Joanne and I are not good about is sort of self-advertising and actually explaining what we're doing. And just to be clear, Here, Joanne Freeman, the Yale professor who's sitting on the other side of the screen, is not my guest. She and I do this show together, usually on Saturdays, but on the weekends where we take a look at what's happening in the world around us and try to put it into historical context. And the idea behind this actually has a long history, but where it really comes from is that this is how, we're friends, and this is how we talk when we are by ourselves. And it just, every once in a while, we get deep into something and think, hmm, you know, people might want to hear this. And so on Saturdays, we just started chatting in public. And that's what's going on here. And Joanne is a revolution and early republic at yale and she's all over social medias um um youtube um blue sky of course um joanne come on help me out here you're just looking here like this is a quiz a little bit of instagram blue sky and threads a lot on youtube uh yeah and at night she does a show called um a few thoughts for those who can't sleep which is irreverently or perhaps reverently known by certain people as freemen after dark and certain people are on this side of the screen you know when i when i briefly broadcast from your guest room which didn't have big overhead lighting they were calling it freemen in the dark well that works too actually well no that actually i don't like the connotations well getting us out of the dark I suppose so listen um you and I were starting out today by talking about just how heavy everything is and that we're we're weighted and one of the things that um I read this morning was somebody speculating about American history in this moment and saying you know Americans have become accustomed to think you know the good guys always win and everything is working towards something great and we have a pretty sunny disposition and now we're learning the opposite is true. And that really, or I shouldn't say the opposite is true, now we are really recognizing that bad things happen. And that really jumped out to me because it always strikes me that the vast majority of Americans have never believed that everything was fine and dandy and have always recognized that their personal constraints, either family or financial or gender or race or ethnicity or religion, whatever, their personal restraints have always made the United States of America a struggle to get to a place where people have more rights. And that idea of everything's just great and the good guys always win quickly and easily, like at the end of Bonanza, that just struck me as being honestly quite gendered uh sort of a the end of bonanza you you lost me what what you're not what did you not watch bonanza did i find what does that have to do with what we're talking about well i always think of that image as being a western you know the image of the tv western but okay there's a problem with the sitcom but there's the problem like if the guys come in on their horses you know right no i got you i just first of all you are not normally the popular culture reference person and secondly that came so far out of left field i'm like sitting here and i'm i know where we're going let me run with this because for once i have a popular culture reference that you don't have what is the first western that is broadcast across the world in color it's i'm gathering it bonanza i'm guessing it's bonanza but i'm thinking of all like what was the other one the the rifleman the do do do because of course i have the theme in my head i'm sorry we're getting way down a rabbit hole but okay bonanza is actually quite interesting because they have the you know pa has those four kids those four boys all boys it's just this total bromance world and all of the boys are from a different mother and that part i don't remember i am i am having it like whoa like how do you know all these things because because i study um images of the american west and i'm talking about images the american West and actually this is a really interesting topic because the themes of the American West run through American popular film and i believe me i can talk westerns till the cows come home but oh i never even thought of that and in fact and in effect you know they're they're talking about making a new version of lonesome dove huh yeah that's not good no i didn't watch the old version i just read the book you should watch the you should actually you should go right now and watch okay no but the the um the book was great i read it a long time ago oh my god look we came full circle because there you go that book is about american history and the contrast between that idea of the western where everything works out great you know the the guys put their the theoretically the white guys put their shoulders to the wheel and they overcome an obstacle and everybody rides happily into the sunset and Lonesome Dove is really the inversion of that. And, and very human related to that grounded in, in real humanness as a part of it. Which is what I was arguing about American history, but that's the, that's American history, not the image. Yes. Well, right. And when, so when we started out one of the things I threw into the mix was and I think that's right that that you know that what you're saying is you know Americans have long assumed that everything is going okay and now you know we don't and in part that 9-11 helped um but we are where we are now because of that but something I threw in the mix because I think it's not the same is at the same time I think Americans unthinkingly have a have a an idea of exceptionalism we can't I don't think we can I'm sure some people do we cannot anymore believe that we are an exception to all rules and that bad things don't happen here like we're just on a certain level can't believe that but I still think because I constantly feel like I bang up against it that people believe that in the end and it's all okay. And not that it isn't, we just don't know. But your point, when we were talking about this just before coming on, is that the people who can afford to think that it's going to be okay are largely white men. And if you go all the way back to the beginning of the republic, those white men didn't assume that. They didn't assume that. And that's one of the supreme ironies about the way that we think about the founding era. To me, we make it golden and, you know, they sort of beamed in great wisdom and created things that they knew would last forever and et cetera, et cetera. And that is about as far removed as we can be from how they experienced what they were doing. And granted, yes, elite white men assumed that elite white men would remain in power. But even with that assumption, they didn't think it was all smooth sailing. They didn't. They thought, I mean, in the early period, inthe 1790s, they thought it could collapse at any moment. They thought that anything could wipe it off the map. And, of course, that was partly because it was new. But that idea goes on. that there's never an assumption that it's all hunky-dory. Actually, here's an interesting question. When do you think people really start believing that it is all hunkydory? I believe it's 1950s because in the post-World War II period, not only had the United States beaten down fascism and was making a strong stand against communism, you get the rise of where I was trained that school of the study of American civilization, the history of American civilization. And the premise of that school was to try and figure out why the United States did not become either fascist or communist. And that idea coming at the same time that we had such extraordinary economic growth when, you know, because the rest of the world basically was wiped out or still developing. I think it made Americans and our economy was great. You know, you really could be a worker in Detroit and go on vacation for a couple of weeks in Maine, which is I always think about because they used to come camp near us. And that, you know, I think you can see that starting to crumble in the 1970s. And one of the things that's so interesting to me about the 1970s is that, you know, everybody goes, oh, Carter, oh the OPEC, oh this, oh that. What really happens in the 1970's is that Europe and Asia rebuilds their economies and they start to compete with the United States again. And that loss of economic power and thereby, you know, sort of global power, you know, I think that's what led to the rot we're seeing now where the, you know, the radical right turned Americans against each other to say, oh, it's not the problem is not that, you know, Japan is now building car factories that are automated and cheap and producing these great cars. The problem is women and people of color are demanding political power and you need to hate them. And I think what we're seeing now is the sort of poison of that having spread throughout our entire system and really threatening to bring us down. Think about, based on what you just said, think about the fragility of that kind of white male confidence in superiority grounded on, the way that you just described it in the 50s, grounded on the fact that they compared themselves and decided that they were superior. here. Based on comparison, not based on an internal evaluation, but based on comparison with others. And now that we're in a moment where there's a different kind of other that actually is here and present and strong and in the moment and deserves some of the power, that comparison is terrifying. It's interesting to me just to think about the 1950s as a moment when all of this confidence in what America was, was not grounded on necessarily something inherently American, but was grounded on feeling like on the world stage, we were the best, we weren't the strongest. And, and, you know, that's something I'm curious to hear what you have to say about this because I've been thinking about this for in one way or another for weeks. Why do we have to believe we're the best? Like just as a nation, why isn't it enough to believe we're good? We're a great nation. Why is it not? Why do We have to be the best because that's not as long standing as my time period. But if you think about it, if you pause to think about it it's a little bit bonkers um i actually have thoughts about that but people are asking i am not drinking wine i drink i drink uh both diet pepsi and diet and this should not be an advertisement by the way i drink diet soda out of a wine glass for explain why there you go old habit because I get every stomach bug under the universe. I have a really weak stomach and I have three children who are now grown adults. But when they were little, you know how little kids are always putting their hands on your food? And anytime they got anything, I got the same illness. And there was one thing I could keep my children from touching and that was a wine glass. And so this was always a thing and if you ever come to my if you came to my house you would see as joanne will tell you there are wine glasses everywhere and and i always forget that people because you are the people who are going is she drinking wine are not the you know i once had a no no no it's the anti-kid glass although i love courtney 5150 says i thought hey it's early but it's a sunday fun day so no shade of course i'm sitting here saying i can't imagine drinking wine at this hour. On the other hand, some of my older relatives are like, how can you drink diet soda at, well, actually it was nine o'clock. I started at nine o'thers this morning. Anyway, that's that. But so there are a number of theories about why Americans care about their place in the universe. And there's one that I think is really interesting. And I don't buy it entirely for the post-World War II period. But, you know, the Puritans who were some of the first, not the first but some of the first Europeans to establish colonies on the North American continent really believed that they were doing God's will. And, you know, when we think about that expression, being a city on a hill, the expression that President Ronald Reagan used to be like, we're going to be a shining example to mankind. In fact, when the Puritans talked about that, they meant it the other way around, that we're going to be so visible we can't screw up, that the whole world is going to be watching us, and we have to live in such a way that we demonstrate that we are God's chosen people. And within about 20 years, I mean, there's a very famous sermon in the mid-1600s where this minister says, you know, we have fallen away from that. We're clearly no longer God's people. And there's a lot of work, including Sackman Berkovich, did a lot of work on this idea that this was the idea that you were God's people was this sign that you should impose your will on everybody else. But he recognized the other side of it, which was if we are not the best in the world, then we're nobody. That worse than God's wrath would be God's unconcern. You people don't matter. And that idea that somehow we always have to be better, we always have to improving, has had some enormously negative effects on the United States. But I'm also really interested in the positive effects, in the sense that Americans, you go back to exceptionalism and all the negative connotations of that, there is within American exceptionalism the idea that we can do better tomorrow, that we are not locked forever in a caste system or a system of racial hierarchy or gender hierarchy, or we are caught forever in an economic system that leaves most people behind. That dynamism is, I think, a part of American exceptionalism, and it has a positive side as well. It's true, but I think it's easy to forget that part, right? I think it's easy to sit smugly in self-satisfaction and say, yeah, you know, whatever false connotation to a city on a hill and where the best, and to forget the roots of it, the grounding of it. Which is, you have to do something to be in that place and that you can be better. You can deserve, You have to deserve that position, and you have to work to deserve that kind of position. You have work to serve any kind of gift and status. It's not granted. You know, certainly the Puritans weren't assuming that they were granted anything as far as, you know, gifts and anything else. They assumed, and the founders did, and everybody else did, That you have to work for and merit and deserve what you have and that nothing is static. Nothing stays precisely the same. And that in that sense, I can't remember now if you said this while we've been talking or before we were talking, but you do have some effect over your own destiny in that way. that we, the big we, all of us, the we, yes, we live in a nation. The nation often believes it needs to be or is the best in an unthinking, ungrounded kind of a way. But in this nation, grounded on rights, which is where you started, right? If you're a nation grounded on rights, that means by definition, there's going to be a struggle. if you're a nation grounded on rights it means some people will have more than others and there will be a struggle to make those rights real well but that's but that sort of where i started with this is that this idea that somehow we believe we doing a lot of work there we believe that it's all going to turn out right in the end And it's this neat little struggle and we can all be, you know, riding alongside Pa and Bonanza seems to me to be a very specific group of Americans in a very specific period. And the vast majority of us recognize that, you know, we don't have that kind of freedom in our lives, as I say, either. I mean, I always think back to the if you look at the enslaved Americans who self-emancipated before the Civil War, changes during the Civil War. They're overwhelmingly young men. Why? Because young women had had babies and they couldn't drag their babies with them, both because of the difficulty of that, but also because the kids could make noise and also because they desperately needed their kinship ties. So it's not just a question of having money or education or whatever. Sometimes it's our family obligations that keep us within a system that limits our free choice. And those people who do have free choice tend to be people with money and privilege and so on. But that's a really specific group. And I'm sort of the bigger question or the bigger piece here is about our history and who we are. But I also wonder if what we are seeing now in this extraordinary MAGA meltdown run by, after all, a person who grew up in that period, we just identified the post-World War II period as being, you know, this Halcyon moment, I wonder if what we're really seeing now is sort of a recognition that that idea of, you now, American exceptionalism, America's great, and so on, was itself a specific historical moment for a certain group of historical people. And that's never been who we were. No, that's true. But I think related to that, bring it down to its absolute base in every sense of the word, sensibility, to the very bottom of what that assumption, oh, no, was it real, that belief? what's threatening that belief in the minds of people who are not thinking very deeply very clearly or in a very sophisticated manner is the fact that people who Are not white men now have rights that they didn't have as publicly as and as powerfully as they do now. So part of what we're watching in action is people who in a more sweeping way can white men who can feel that what they believed was always true might not be true. And they're just absolutely blaming the reality on the fact that there are people around them who are not them, who appear to have rights and some degree of power. And because in their mind, it's an all or nothing game. It's winner takes all. That's how they're dealing with this moment is the most simplistic way of dealing with Well, it's all your fault. You're taking it from us. We always deserve, we white men always deserve to be the most powerful, the most important. We always have been. And why aren't we now? And if we're not, it'S the fault of everybody else. And so we're going to, we're going to quash you down, so that we can then compare ourselves with you and know that we're the top. But you know, you said something really key there. And that's that, you know it's a closed system. The way they're looking at it is a closed system and rights are not a closed system. And economic growth is not a closed system, but if you make it a closed system, then you are able to monopolize it. And that, you know, this really jumps out to me. I've been spending a lot of time studying the 1970s and, you know, in that moment when you do get OPEC in 73 and you do gets that economic recession from which the country really never recovers its manufacturing base, in that moment, Republicans could have said, oh, wow, we're going to have to do something to make up for the fact our plants are so old. And the fact that we're using airplanes now instead of trains, because that's going to take a lot of manufacturing jobs as well. And, you know, we're gonna need less coal and so on. They could have done that, as in fact, the Democrats did. But instead, they went with Reagan and that cowboy. No, no, no. We're we're the bonanza guys. I don't mean to pick on Bonanza, by the way, which was in many ways a really interesting show, but we can do whatever we want because we are the most powerful, you know, doubling down on that post-World War II. We are the most powerful. We are the best. We're the strongest. We are above everybody else. Right. That is actually a really important point that there were so many moments when there would have been an opportunity rather than just frantically comparing and so that you could convince yourself you're on the top and actually glancing down to see that the roots beneath your feet were decaying realistic like like in a grounded, realistic way and otherwise, that as you're saying, that the planes are old and the infrastructure is old and all of these other things that they're not sexy and they're not the things that people claiming power want to really focus on. They want to focus on looking up always and don't want to focused on the ground beneath their feet. And you're absolutely right that this idea that we're exceptional and the strongest is also kind of grounded on a refusal or neglect of dealing with all of the ways in which you need to be working and building yourself up. If you really believe that you're that high in the sky, intellectually even, you're never going to acknowledge all of The Ways in Which Things Are Not Hunky-Dory. And I don't even mean on an ideological level. I just mean, as you were just saying, infrastructure, technology, all of these ways in which, you know, it's infrastructure week again, like we were joking about that during, you Know, Trump's first term, like suddenly everyone, there was an acknowledgement, oh, wow, our infrastructure is kind of bad. Well, that wasn't new. At that moment, it was sort of a huh, wow. We haven't thought about this. And some things are breaking down. Maybe we better at least acknowledge that this problem exists. So that's one of the prices. That's a penalty of unthinkingly believing that you're just coasting along up here. It's irresponsible. And that's, to go back to the founders, they believed it was irresponsible. Again, they're talking largely about white men, also about white women, I would say. It's irresponsible in a democratic republic not to be an engaged citizen, because that kind of a country can't run of itself. it doesn't have the power of that kind of a country is the people so the only way that that continues the energy of that is engaged people who are willing to put in the work and are not assuming they can coast along we got little peeps happening over there um go ahead do you know i just i think about it and i think of jimmy carter trying to turn the country toward renewable energy in the 70s. And of course, Reagan ripping down the solar panels off the White House and saying, no, no. We have all the oil we need. We're going to marry oil. And one of the reasons that I'm sort of beside myself this week is the destruction of the pipeline that crosses Saudi Arabia and the closure for the Saudi ships of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which means that oil from saudi arabia which you know is central to the global economy ain't coming out and you just sit here and you think well we're really stuck going into winter here in the u.s and literally in the 1970s we could have taken the responsible route and we decided not to and and the 70s was when you had the the fuel shortage and the lines right was when you visibly could see the problem with that kind of reliance. I was a kid, but I remember the long lines to get gas. Yeah, gas lines. Yeah. And you could only have, according to the number on your license plate, there were some even days and odd days where you could get gas, and anyway, I just, I don't know how, though, in our system the way it is, you convince people to empower. I think ordinary people recognize that this is going to be a long, hard slog. And it's always been a lot of work for people to get rights that they didn't have in the past. And this idea, again, it really hit me this person saying you know it's we're used to working out and i'm like like i don't want to like throw you back on your heels fella but um the american uh people lost the right to abortion care four years ago now i believe it was uh dobbs was 2022 we lost a right that had been recognized as a constitutional right and this you know things have not always been great for a lot of people. And this idea that somehow this is news just struck me as being like, that's really never been the story of the United States. And those people who think it was maybe are just a certain group of people from a certain time. I think that's true. But I think related to that, and you just used the key word, right, we lost the right. Because one of the most powerful ways of combating what we're seeing around us right now is remembering the fact, and it's always been in American history, it's people feeling, and I think I mentioned this maybe last time we talked when I talked about John Quincy Adams. I think that was here. At this point, I'm forgetting where I mentioned it, but I might have mentioned here that John Quincey Adams understood that people didn't profoundly care as much about slavery as they did about losing their right to petition, right, and that he knew if he focused on the fact that they lost a right, that would matter to them. That's powerful. If people, and so voting rights have always had that power. Abortion rights has that power, people understanding, and the important first half of that is people understanding they have rights. They have a right to protest. They They have a right to free speech. They have rights, constitutional rights, rights in the Bill of Rights that are ours, that we have to know about and that we have to understand, because then we understand the need to stand up and defend those rights. But, you know, Joanne, that maybe is where we were going here. In this moment, and we certainly have seen it in the past, what we are seeing is an extraordinarily undemocratic group of people who are trying to destroy our country. And that's, you know, and trying to destroy our voting rights and trying, you know, certainly threatening our upcoming elections and threatening right of free speech and threatening, you know, we're learning more and more about what the administration has been doing to spy on people and so on. And I guess this moment of trying to protect democracy, again, just feels incredibly heavy. But, of course, we've been doing this for 250 years. We have. It feels incredibly heavy, I think, because probably for many people, it feels more real. They can see it. They can hear it in a way that not everyone could see it and hear it before. Any marginalized group could, but not everybody could or would see it before, and I also don't want to talk about 9-11 today, but that was a moment of several moments in which part of the shock of that moment was the pulling away of the mask, of the veil, was the fact that suddenly you could see things that you hadn't been willing to see before. This is a heavy moment because we can see lots of things that we haven't necessarily wanted to see. before. We have a president who in doing whatever the hell it is he's doing, keeps pointing to those things. Here I am not knowing what I'm doing. See, I'm messing this up too. So that we, and we can see it, we can understand it. So, you know, in a sense by pretending that, you know, only I can fix it, he's exposing the problems and the flaws and the risks and the threats in a way that at least if nothing else was more hidden before now it's out in the open he doesn't even try you know that's part of this moment no one even trying to mask some of what in the past people weren't willing to admit not it's not better that they're not that it was masked before but there are certain things I think we're living in this moment that you can't deny anymore so it's funny you say that because one of the things there are many things that the president says that are like fingernails down a chalkboard to me but the one that always jumps out is when he says oh it's going to work out it always does because every time i hear that and i've gotten it in at least two places as quotes oh don't worry it's gonna work out at all It always does. The people who can say that are the people who have secretaries, wives, aides, underlings, daddies with money, you know, that can make it work out. It doesn't work out, people work it out. And somebody who's like, oh, it'll work out it always does, is almost never somebody who is there putting the work in to make it happen. And that idea that, you know, we don't actually have to nurture our democracy. We don't actually have worry about foreign affairs. We don't have to be concerned about the economy, any number of things to be able to say, oh, it's just going to work out because it always does. You know, I think you can do that while you have that cushion of people around you to say oh, really? You know he had a car accident. I'll just write a check. Oh, wait a minute. You didn't actually do the filing. We'll get 17 workers to work all night. Those are the, those can make it work until you get rid of the daddy with the check and you get red of the 17 workers and you rid of secretarial help and you rid of all those people. And then you sit there and say, it'll work out. It always does. And what I hear is delusion. Yeah, no. And it true that it's, it's delusion and it's it's not, it'S not, although it's not blind delusion, it's targeted delusion. It's don't pay attention to the fact that it might not work out and that we might be screwing this up. And it's grounded on the most superficial understanding of history, right? If you believe that all of American history is flags and flowers and butterflies, then you're going to believe it's always going to be okay if you understand the depth of any history but let's say our history if you understand that it has always been a struggle you're going to see the fact that it doesn't necessarily always end up okay and that there's action and that it's dynamic and that nothing is automatically stable and that is precisely the history that this regime is trying to trim off of our awareness, right? That we won't know about the bad things of the past. We won't really study the bad Things about slavery, that we won t understand the struggle, that we won T acknowledge the struggle. That we will just see ourselves as always at the top. And the assumption is we ll just happily go coasting along believing that that s where we ve always been and that s we re are. And not understanding that where we ve always been and where we are is where we need to be now, which is understanding the threats ahead of us and acting in this moment to defend our rights and democracy itself. But so I would push that even further. I think in the case of someone like Trump or some of those people that we are describing, and actually I was thinking about somebody else also in the news when I talked about how it's always going to be okay um um is i think that the next step of that is and if it isn't it's their fault right like trump is very clearly right right right he is destroying the economy pretty clearly i mean we're in the the economy with the tariffs and the oil shocks is in trouble and now with this this big fight over ai and the you know this idea that maybe we should slow it down and it's overcapitalized and all that um and the the infrastructure and you know i think in many ways what happened with the reflecting pool is kind of a symbol of that he got in there he screwed it up it is now a complete disaster he's blaming everybody everybody which is what he does right yeah which is What he does is blame everybody Joe Biden at the top of the list if he can manage it Obama too right is that it's always everybody else but you're right on a more broader level it's the democrats it's his opponents it's people who don't like him enough they're the people who are making everything bad so he's wrecking everything and then pushing this story that the reason it's not working is because of everyone else else yeah yeah that yes and that's not a surprise that's what he's always done but well it's what narcissists do right yes well yes um but you're right but that's that's precisely where we are now and as we who are not fans are watching all of this happen um i know i'm always like hyper diplomatic um are watching how this happened and we actually are the ones who can see it and who understand the implications of it and and there's a non-reality factor at play going on with the regime in a very deliberate, strategic way. Let me ask you a question. This just popped into my head. Is it possible, because people are asking why did some of these AI people, the oligarch people, suddenly this week step up and say, oh, wait a minute, maybe we need to rein it in. Can that be in part because they could see something bad coming and they don't want to be blamed for it? They want to sound like the voices of responsibility. Oh, no, no. See, we saw it and we stepped forward. So I don't know. I have no connections in that. I've read it, been reading a lot. There have been a number of alarming instances in which AI agents sort of swarm together and pack things and what the the some of the ai leaders are saying is that this could bring down the entire you know the entire internet and um but before everyone's like oh my god and and that's definitely a thing and they do need to slow it down we do also or should also be aware of the fact that ai has not been producing the kinds of um economic benefits or the the kinds of profits it has been producing some economic benefits but american ai that's not true of chinese ai to the same degree i don't think has been um way way way heavily invested in and it's not producing the profits they promised so if they say now oh we got to back off right it might give them a lot of time yeah i think that's true i think the back of that But that's actually sort of an interesting, another interesting thing. But I guess the reason that, you know, my takeaway from to go back to where we were with this idea of American exceptionalism and rah-rah and how, you know, all of a sudden people are recognizing this is not true. I mean, I guess my takeaway from it is most of us have known all along that this was never America. And we recognized all along that what did make the nation powerful and perhaps different than some other nations was that we had the power to change it because of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the rule of law that has defined we, right? I'm going to be really me right now. We have the power to change it. And that's we in all capital letters. Yeah. We the people. We the people that that's at the heart of everything in ways now that certainly the elite white founders didn't necessarily see it. But yes, that gets back to it not being static. And it's not being unchanging, that it that being dynamic and able to be changed means it can change in ways both good and bad. but that's the key is that we can change it well they offer oh go ahead well and to go back to the the ai thing you know i i i also think you have to throw into the mix that there has been this bipartisan uprising against the data centers and that came that was that is absolutely organic and it is non-partisan and the american people are like wtf we don't like this product and now you're just throwing a wall in our heat. That's how the people have accomplished things is bottom up responding to something. And in a sense, there's a right inherent in that as to your living conditions in your community. Yes, absolutely. I want to add something here at the end. I mentioned it when you and I were chatting beforehand because last week was my first week back at school and um every year i feel like i'm 14 years old when i go back to school because some part of me is saying i don't want to go to school but what happened this week is what i always said new shoes i wore my new shoes school shoes i did and wore them like one should i love the fact that you love that so much but that's how i knew it was time to go back to school that's it right I got a pair of new shoes that's it I got I got and I usually got a new outfit to wear to school on the first day that usually often that went together but my point was going to be as much as I was like oh well the semester's starting again I'm teaching two undergraduate courses and what I saw in my two courses was a lot of young people who are really excited to be there, who are really excited, who have all kinds of questions, who came up to me after class with questions, and my teaching fellow said, they're so engaged. And I wanted to offer that because obviously that's the future, but it's also there are people, there are young people who still are shining and bright in that way and are stepping forward and want to and believe that being in this moment and doing what they can in this moment makes a difference. And I take heart from that. I take a heart from the hope and the brightness and the light that I see coming from my students. And I wanted to share that because that's not visible necessarily if you're not in a classroom, but it's there and it's a beautiful thing to see well and it reminds me of lincoln's lyceum speech where he talks about the utter joy of creation and that if you can't create if that creation has already happened in the case of the u.s government people decide to get fame by destruction and as we are looking at this extraordinary destruction around us yes there is going to have to be creation on the other side of it and what what an exciting place to be to be the people who are going to be able to recreate it right right that that's the the upside is the space for creativity and creation and birth that can come out of ugliness what a perfect segue because i'm on my way to a baby shower oh very nice um i am not on my way to the baby shower i am going to do i'm going to do various apartment cleaning ish things today oh crap i never cleaned i'm sorry i'm sorry that's good it's good for you i'm sorry about that you can clean joey and when you're done there you should come here oh i'll be on the next plane yeah is it right well you know you could still make it yeah it's kind of rainy and yucky outside i'm not leaving my apartment today um yeah it we we're having rain for the first time all summer and we need it so badly oh man we need It badly um but so no gary the apple guy that was yesterday oh today's sunday oh you're just ruining me on every front i know i am and i will say to everybody happy happy new year to everyone uh whether you celebrate or not happy new year well and you dutifully ate apples and honey i did it let's let's all say a prayer that this year is going to be sweeter than the last year was that we that we are written into the book of life for a sweet year yes i'll take it boy yes yes love you joanne thanks for spending some of your sunday hanging out with me love you too, Heather. Always a pleasure. Thank you, everybody, for being here. And are we on next week? I think I'm back on the road, but we can make it work. We can talk after this. All right. Okay. Thanks for being everybody. We'll talk to you soon. Bye, everybody.