 Hello. My name is Seth Manukin. I am the director of the communications forum at Yale. And hi, students. I'm not going to actually say hello individually to everyone I know in the crowd, but it's delightful to see you all. And I am thrilled to welcome Sarah Vowell here. Before we start, we will post a video of this online. So please do not take pictures or videos or record this while you're here. Just enjoy being here. And you can relive it later if you want. Sarah Vowell is a historian, author, and radio personality. She's written seven nonfiction books, many of which have been New York Times bestsellers. They have covered everything from cranky cartographers and religious zealots to overthrow Hawaiian queens and presidential assassins. And they seek to explore America's past in a way that create a framework for understanding our modern day values. She is a contributing editor for This American Life. Nope, she is not a contributing editor for This American Life. And she's written for a whole mess of places. You might recognize her voice from Violet in The Incredibles or Next Year, right? 2018? Incredibles 2. Incredibles 2. And I would also like to thank the DeFluores Fund for Humor for sponsoring tonight's talk and allowing us to bring Sarah here. The way this will work is the way all conforms work. Sarah and I will talk for a while, and then we will do Q&A for a while. We are also selling books in the back, and there will be a book signing afterwards. It will take place up here, I believe. So the Red Sox are losing five to two. Yes, I know. I apologize for that. Wait, what? OK, so how are you? Hi. Good to see you. Uh-huh. Yeah, the last time we saw each other was when you were on tour for a lot of time. A lot of years ago. Feedback? I guess. So I wanted to start by talking about how you got started, your career. OK. We both, I think. When Seth poured me in this water, I just asked if it is still water because I once. Oh, this is a story you said you're not going to tell me until we. Yeah, because I let this be a lesson to you if you're doing public speaking. But I used to put on a lot of events in New York City, like benefits and stuff. And one of them was where Steve Buscemi was supposed to read a bunch of short stories. And I only provided sparkling water backstage. And he drank a bunch of it, and he burped through the whole evening. And he kept burping through this Tobias Wolf story and blaming me. So that's why I was just checking because that live and learn. I feel like if you go away tonight having learned anything, that would be the most valuable thing is to stay away from carbonation and public speaking. I don't want to excuse your behavior in any way. But I do feel like at that point in his career, Steve should have known his own body well enough to. He didn't. Right. Maybe he thought that it would add dramatic effect. I did. OK. So. What was your question? You started out writing about music. Seth and I, can I just say first, Seth and I have known each other a long time. So I don't remember when I stopped being nice to you, but that chip has been old. It was a long time ago. So I want you to know that I'm generally a nice person, just not to him. Go ahead. What was your question again? So hi. Hi. You started out writing about music. True or false? Sort of. I mean, that's definitely I made part of my loving doing that in the 90s. I really started as a writer writing about art, visual art, because that's what I studied in school. And I started writing for my college paper about art. And then I wrote for some art magazines right out of college. And then I quickly started writing for weekly newspapers. Do they still have those? Our audience might not know what weekly newspapers are. So I wrote for the Minneapolis City Pages, the Chicago Reader, the San Francisco Weekly, and eventually the Village Voice. And then I was writing about music for those places. And so did you know before you got out of college that you wanted to be a writer? I did, but I didn't know any writers. So I didn't know that that was necessarily possible. So I just thought I would be an art history professor who wrote on the side. And then when I was in graduate school for art history, they made us teach freshman art history, which is what you do when you become an art history professor. And I did not enjoy that experience trying to talk to 18-year-olds about Vermeer and whatnot. And I thought, that's no way to live a life. Talking to 18-year-olds about Vermeer. And then by that point in school, I was kind of already out of that. I mean, I was already writing my first book, which was about radio and writing for the papers and stuff while I was in art history graduate school. So I was just kind of, I think I did art history graduate school because I was afraid to be an adult. But I'm sure those of you who are in graduate school, you have better reasons than me. And probably for some of these engineering-type things, I think for those of us who drive on bridges and stuff, we want you to have as much education as possible. In the liberal arts sometimes, you know. You're not at risk. MIT is known for many things. But it's art history graduate program is not one of them. So you're not at huge risk of a thing being a large segment of the audience. I mean, I did learn. I'd still like, I basically think I write like an art historian in a lot of ways because, I mean, the prime thing you do is the compare and contrast. And that's actually how I started writing and started thinking of myself as a writer was taking essay exams in art history. And I remember once in undergraduate school doing an essay exam about Greek and Etruscan art. And I remember writing my blue book. And something made me laugh. And I started laughing in the middle of this exam. And I remember everyone looking over at me like, this is not supposed to be fun. Or I was writing this for like, because she cracked up. Yeah. Or I remember writing, I went to the Netherlands to do a project on Dutch modernism. And I remember I was supposed to be finished with my paper. And my boyfriend at the time was waiting for me to finish because then we were going to backpacker on Europe. So he's just standing there waiting for me to finish. And he's outside the door and he hears me giggling because something is making me laugh about writing about red, yellow and blue paintings. And he comes in and he's kind of irked because we're supposed to leave already. But he's like, wow, you sure enjoy writing those papers. And that was the moment I thought, I sure do. And also, if you ever have to write a 40-page paper about red, yellow and blue squares, you can kind of write anything. So were you laughing at your own quip? Or were you laughing because there was some absurd? I think I was supposed to. So there was this one guy. And he was Hungarian. And he was hanging out in Holland. Wait, there was this one guy? There was this one guy in his Hungarian. Not in the exam room. No, in the Dutch modernist movement of the style. OK. And his big innovation, so they would, some of them were painters, but some of them made environments, which were like rooms, basically. And his big innovation was there was a corner. And he continued his rectangular, his rectangle of red, yellow, or blue. Those were the only allowed colors across a corner. And it blew everyone's mind for some reason. That always crashed me up. So he took the color past the right angle. It's like he had the rectangle, but then it was the corner of a room. And so the rectangle continued across the corner. And everyone just thought, what an innovation. And now known as that Hungarian guy. Yeah, his name was Vilmos Hujar. I was going to say, do you remember who it is? Totally, I do. And so I can teach this stuff. I just wouldn't want to. You choose not to. So how did you go? I don't know how you put up with it. I mean, sometimes the teenagers are, I mean, maybe here, they're all excited to be here. The teenagers? Yeah. But I remember at one point when we got to the 60s in the performance era, I do remember I did this thing where I had this huge rope, this really long rope. And I don't remember what point I was making, but I tied them all to each other. This is a class you're teaching as a graduate student. Yes. I'm just showing that. I tied them all up with the rope. We were in a hotel room with your boyfriend. Oh, I'm sorry. I tied the students up with a rope and left. As one done. And left. And I never came back. How are your evaluations at semester? I mean, they were uneven. Some appreciated it. It seems like you did have a fair amount of fun teaching. I should try that tactic with my students. So how did you go from, because your first book was about listening to the radio. So how did you go from rectangles of color traversing walls to listening to the radio for a year and writing about it? Well, I went from writing the papers and doing the essay exams to writing for the school paper about art. And then out of school, I wrote for a little art magazines and stuff. And then, oh, I know, I was about to start graduate school. And I was 1994. And the Republicans took over the Congress, remember that? Yes, I do. And they called themselves the ditto head caucus because they all thought that Rush Limbaugh was responsible for their election, which was generally true. And I had never heard Rush Limbaugh. And I thought that radio was having this huge effect on the country. And then, as now, people have their own listening habits. And I had never listened to these top radio hosts and these shows. Most of them still around, including Rush Limbaugh. And Alex Jones, Alex Jones around then, also? I don't remember him. Maybe. Maybe. So I decided I should dig into this. And I just ended up keeping it. It ended up being a diary of listening, which was actually horrible. The book itself or the listening to the? Both. But I mean, it's a very young, angry person's book. But also, the listening to them made me a little crazy. I mean, it was really horrifying because I was a nice person. And they were saying some really, really murderous, literally murderous things. I mean, it was also before Littleton. This was basically the year 1995. It was the year of the Patriot movement was really outed culturally because of the Oklahoma City bombing. The first day, I think I turned on the radio. And there was a kid calling in a conservative talk show saying that he had a paper route. And this other kid was horning it on his paper route. And what should he do? And the host advised him to get a gun. Or I remember visiting my parents in Montana. And there was a big snowstorm. And it was at night. And it was really beautiful. And I dug out my old cross-country skis. And I went cross-country skiing through the streets. And it was very beautiful. And I came back and I turned on the radio. And one of these hosts was saying that one way to employ all the welfare mothers was to line them up at the border and have them gun down all the illegal immigrants. And so we listened to that kind of thing. Have women on welfare be responsible for murdering? Incoming illegal immigrants across the southern border. So if you listen to stuff like this every day for a year, it really gets to you. Or it didn't me. So it was, I mean, the one thing I think there is value in just documenting all of that. It's kind of an historical document at this point. And so that was my first book. And so after that somewhat poisonous experience. But it was like one great thing that came out of it was there was this one guy doing this weird local show in Chicago where I was living. And that man was Ira Glass. And he was starting this American life. And right after that, I started working for him. And that was because he read part of the book. He read one of the episodes in the book. Because I actually, one of the things in the book is right towards the end they were starting this American life. And I went and hung out with them for a day as they were making it. And then I just kind of became friends with him and was having dinner with him not long after that and telling him this one story. And he was like, oh, great. Can I give you a microphone? So that's how that started. I was in the embryonic stage when Ira was trying on his Rush Limbaugh personality. Yeah, I mean, he had this crazy local show called The Wild Room where he and this other kind of unhinged guy would. I mean, it's an interesting, there are some interesting stuff in that book because it's where I first heard of the internet. And it was when they were. When did it come out? It was documenting the year 1995. And I remember they did a show devoted to this thing called America Online. And I was like, what? These people are talking to each other, but not on the phone. I mean, there's a lot of stuff where it's happening when you first find out about something, you know? Right. 1995, I thought the internet was more. I feel like 1995 had already. I mean, I was like kind of, I was never a forward thinking technologist. Let's put it that way. And so. But I mean, remember this thing with the rectangle? That's the kind of stuff I knew about. Right, right. So from there, you and immediately started doing things for Ira and for this American life. And were you surprised or how did you find that experience? I mean, it seems that writing for print or for a written medium is so different from writing for radio. Yeah, I mean, for one thing, the great thing about radio is you don't have to have transitions. You just say something, play some music, and then you can move on to the next thing. Right. So that's simpler. Although I always feel like that's what chapters are for, which you skip in your books. Yeah, I don't have chapters. But I do have breaks, which is basically the music of your books. Yeah. Why jumping around a little bit? But I've always been curious about that. Because I feel like chapters are so useful in order to give yourself an out for a transition and also to give readers a sign that they can take a break, sort of like recollect themselves. So why do you not have that? I don't care whether the reader takes a break or not. They do that. You know they do that when you're not looking, whatever. They could be in the middle of one of your chapters. And they could take a read anyway. And the dryer button you could like, and they're like, oh, I got to get that stuff out of the dryer. They're taking that break whether you're at the end of the chapter. I have trackers in my book. And I try to ensure that that's not happening. I think the chapters are why you have tenure. That you think that's it? Yeah. Like, tenure committees care about that. I think actually the footnotes are why I have tenure. Oh yeah, footnotes. Footnotes, you know, chapters. Footnotes, you're like a real, you're like a real writer. Right. I don't like chapters for me personally because I find them kind of constraining, but also like certain information sometime. Chapters tend to have a equal weight or something. And for me, certain things are only there's like a small thing and a big thing and then a medium-sized thing and then another small. Like, you know, I just like to do each discreet chunk, let it be what it is. Right, OK. And also, I mean, writing about American history, I feel like for the general reader is what I do. And I'm always trying to get away from that textbook mentality, you know? Is that something that you were worried about with radio on or with your just take the connolly? Well, that was a diary. So it was just every day or whatever. And then there were essay collections. So those were just specific, yeah. That was an essay collection. So what was your first? I also just don't want. I don't want the reader to like really stop. I just want it to all be one narrative or feel like it. I don't know. I just don't like chapters for me. Right. OK. I'm not going to force you to do chapters. It's a personal choice. What was your first book that was not a collection or not a diary? What was your first sort of history book? It was called Assassination Vacation. It was about the assassinations of President Slinken, Garfield, and McKinley. Or as my editor put it, all the ones except the one people care about. Right. I feel like people care about Lincoln. Yeah, they do. The other two, possibly not so much. Possibly not. And so that was, I mean, it's a fairly dramatic shift from writing sort of essay-sized chunks to writing essentially a book of history. What made you decide to make that shift? When I first started working on that radio show, I would do stories about whatever. And most of them were kind of arts related, like about songs or movies. They were personal or personal essays. And then there was this shift when I did, I made a documentary that was an hour long where my sister and I drove the Trail of Tears because our family is part Cherokee. And that really changed my life because I had never done anything like that. And I just loved the whole process. I loved the research. I loved going to the historic sites. And I also felt like it was interesting doing the research because it was not, even though I liked it, the reading, I never found any really pleasurable reading about the subject. What about the Trail of Tears? Yeah, it's a shocker. Yeah, no, but I mean, you can write about a bummer in a pleasant or in an entertaining way or a gripping way or just a way that makes you want to read for the heck of reading. And I thought, and I also never found a really coherent yet complicated version of the story because it is a very complicated story and there's a lot of, within the tribe itself, some betrayals. It's not necessarily an entirely heroes and villains kind of story. And there are a lot of intricacies. And I never found a story, a version of it that was coherent, but still complicated and that I enjoyed reading. And I was really proud of how we put that story together and explained things without dumbing it down. But still being coherent, you know? Right. So I felt like I, and then I got all this mail from people where they would say, I didn't know about this. Thank you for telling me about it. Or I sat down at the kitchen table with my children and talked about Indian genocide. And I felt like. We all had a good laugh. Yeah. I felt like it had a purpose and that people had this kind of hunger to learn about their past in a way that maybe they didn't all get from school. So when you say that you didn't find anything about Trail of Tears, it was enjoyable to read. Do you mean there wasn't like turgid and dense and felt like what? Yeah. I mean, like, you know, if you read Hannah Arendt talking about the Eichmann trial, that is a gripping book about a pretty grim subject. That's what I mean. I mean, there wasn't, it wasn't, I mean, I don't. It wasn't well crafted. Yes, that's what I meant. I mean, I find too, like one of the pitfalls of writing about history is when you do the research, there's so much and you learn so much and you go to so much trouble and expense to learn things that are, to other people, not interesting, not relevant. And sometimes with more proper historians, I feel like they're not as judicious about leaving some of that stuff out. They're like, I had to go to Germany to learn this and so you have to suffer too, you know? Like when I was working on that, the assassination book, the last chapter is on the Lincoln Memorial because it was sort of the culmination of what Theodore Roosevelt, who became the president after McKinley was assassinated. It was kind of the culmination of that whole generation and what they thought Lincoln and the Civil War was about. So the last chapter was on the Lincoln Memorial and it took decades for that to get built and in those decades, there were all these commissions because Washington loves a commission and all of these arguments about where should it be? What should it look like? Who should design it? And I knew the answers, like I knew about every single one of those commissions and read there, you know? And that chapter was when I first read it, it was so long and it was like all the commissions. Was Jeff your editor? Uh-huh, yeah. But I mean, one thing, here's another thing that I think is practical. I always read everything aloud and maybe it does come from starting in radio but when you read something aloud and that you've written and you yourself are bored, that's generally a good sign that other people will be and I remember, it reminded me of when I was in school at my college, one of the film students, his final film. It was a film of highway signs and it was just highway signs and I remember he showed it and the professor at the end was like, who is this film for? Other highway signs, you know? Like, and there's kind of that work. Like I had just devoted weeks and weeks to learning like all of the things the Lincoln Memorial could have been and then I realized like, oh, I have to just cut this down to maybe, you know, a paragraph or something or. There's maybe, there's a paragraph in that Lafayette book that I think the paragraph cost me $1,800. And you would like, that's a lot of money. Where did you get that out of? I don't wanna talk about it, I don't wanna talk about it. It was really stupid, some stupidity on my part and my friend. But yeah, the paragraph cost me $1,800. But you would think there's a part of me that wanted to maybe beef that up a little more just to make it a little more cost effective. But it's like, nothing happened and it cost $1,800 and I just have to suck it up. And you know, it's, you know, a paragraph. But I think sometimes other historians, they include everything because maybe that's their goal to be exhaustive. I think some of them that's the goal. But my goal is to be interesting. To be something that people want to read. Or like relevant or, it has to be relevant or interesting or useful or just or maybe sometimes fascinating. Like one of the things that, one of the downsides of working in radio and especially on this American life where it has a very strict format and they have a kind of very traditional kind of cinematic structure where stories have to go somewhere and make a point and have an epiphany and a conclusion. And sometimes there's just some weird thing you learn, you know, that's cool. And we always called the, when I was called those my shenanigans and I would just like put them into a story and Ira Glass and I would always have these negotiations where. Over the number of shenanigans? Yeah, he would be like, that's a shenanigan. I'm like, I know, isn't it interesting? And he would be like, you just had a shenanigan 40 seconds ago. You can't have two shenanigans. I'm like, okay. I need to, I'm gonna need to. You can't have two really interesting things side by side, but. But something has to like, a story has to be propelled forward or, you know, it just has to like move, everything has to keep moving. And one of the things I like about writing books is things don't have to keep moving in that direction. You can like veer off like a detour. And you can do that in books just by, by getting to the point. There's more room. Also, I think listener readers are just more, they're, they have more patience than listeners, you know, because a listener is kind of like a dog. They listen to sit there. Well, like a dog will be with you. And then it's like, what's that? And, and like, you know, or they're driving or they're doing chores or. We have very different thoughts. But like a reader, you have a reader's attention. And if you lose the reader's attention, she just goes back to where she lost her train of thought. So you can keep a reader. You can go a lot more places, I think, with a reader. Like a listener, you're just trying to like keep them with you, you know? Right. You can't, you can't go off. Somewhere. Yeah, no. I need to re, I've always used shenanigans as false. False? Like if I call shenanigans on someone, it means like I don't believe that. Oh. So I need to rethink my use of shenanigans. Yeah, no, it's just like a fun, fun thing. Right. Like in that book, there's a whole section that's supposed to be about the Battle of Brandywine, but I really like the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. OK. And I'm, and the Battle of Brandywine happened in the Brandywine Valley where Andrew Wyeth painted his paintings. And so sometimes I can, I can make, I can like weld those things together. But sometimes I'm just like literally playing hooky from researching the Battle of Brandywine to go look at paintings because they're interesting. And because the Battle of Brandywine is not as interesting. It's pretty interesting stuff. Right, no, I, yeah. Yeah. So. But I'm just saying like it's just something like it happened and it's interesting. And I feel like there's enough there to, for it to reason to be there. So you said that you like what you write to be relevant or useful or informative. And the subjects that you've chosen for your history books have been, I don't think that any of them are sort of obvious subjects if someone's thinking what's the most relevant or useful or informative part of American history like the Puritans or Lafayette. So, and yet these are things that you've obviously managed or the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. Well, I mean, let's see. I mean, I was writing about the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and how America took over the Sandwich Islands right at a moment where we were invading these countries in the Middle East and engaging in regime change. I'm, I'm sold. You don't need to convince me. All right. I'm not saying there's like a, there's like an equal value of relevance, but there are overtones that I generally, I like for things to somehow speak to the present moment. Like the Lafayette book, it started out as, it came from us, you know, just writing about not his service in the Revolutionary War, but when he came back in the 1820s. And he- 40,000 people greeted him? Is that right? In New York Harbor, I think it was something like 80,000. 80,000. Yeah. So it was like a really- 4,000 people came to greet the Beatles. Right. And so it was this really big deal when he came back in the 1820s. Thank you. Good job. And he, like, it was a party every night for 13 months. He went to every state and the whole country just fell back in love with him. And it was just, he was like this article of agreement. And I thought, oh, that'll be nice to work on a book about this guy, Everyone Like, which there aren't that many people in this country that, you know, everyone likes. And then I started researching it and basically at every point in the story, whether he's a young man in the war or when he comes back in the 1820s, all it is is Americans like bickering around him and like having these arguments and the Continental Congress is not getting along with the Continental Army. And when he comes back in the 1820s, it's during the election of 1824 where there wasn't a clear winner in the Electoral College and it was this big fight and the House of Representatives had to pick the president and it could have led to violence, but it didn't. But so the thing that seemed exotic about him, about writing about this person that all the Americans agreed on as a vacation from, you know, this country we live in where we, you know, can't agree on anything, it just brought me back to... We can't agree on anything. Yeah, and because our founders built this country to be that way. And so when you... As an argumentative, you know, as like the point of this country is that everyone has the right to argue and say what they think, believe what they want and how, like the way the country is founded, like that's how we turned out. Right, I mean there's something in all of your books. So I find that relevant. Yeah, I was not, I'm not, well, yes. There's something in all of your books that is kind of optimistic and hopeful. Oh, really? I think so, yeah. In the sense that you have a certain, in the way that you were just talking, that's animated sense of an animating sense of America as being a noble and worthwhile experiment. Sort of runs as a through line, even when you're talking about times in American history when we as a country or our leaders have not always behaved well. Is it, is that something you come to naturally? Is that something that you felt like has, as you learned more about history, you sort of came around more to that point of view? I mean, I've always had a kind of split version of the history because of who I am and my family and you know, the first American history I learned was the Trail of Tears. So the first American history I learned was about a constitutional failure and how the, you know, Jacksonian removal policies forced my ancestors at gunpoint to Oklahoma. And so that always shaded any gullible flag waving qualities I have. Like there's no getting around that. But I mean, one of the reasons, I mean, and that was because when I was a kid, there was, it was like the 70s and there used to be a big fat, some of them still exist for these outdoor amphitheater historical dramas. Like there's one down south about the Roanoke Colony. I think the Mormons have one and the Cherokee Nation had one where it was this big pageant. And every summer we would go to the Cherokee Nation Capitol in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and watch this being this theater version of the Trail of Tears. And it was very theatrical with like dance. It was the only theater I basically saw till I think I was, you know, 13 or something. So that was the first history I knew. I knew that I hated Andrew Jackson before I ever heard of George Washington. So that- The movie before you had heard of George Washington? Oh yeah. I mean, Andrew Jackson was the first president I ever heard of. It's kind of like, if you ever are in a conversation with an Irish person and there's a lull, just bring up Oliver Cromwell and they'll just, you know, they just can't shut up. It's like one of those kind of things where it's just your birthright to like- It's the set of how those party tips. Yeah. And so there is that. I've always had this like, there's like always gonna be an asterisk on the big American ideals. Right. But also, I don't know, like I was, I was also a kid during the bicentennial in 1976. 1976. And there was the freedom. I mean, around here, you must all take this for granted, but there was this thing called the Freedom Train and it had the declaration and the constitution like on a train and it went around the country. And I remember going to that and you were really, it was like one of those big indoctrinating years on all the like old fashioned American civic stuff. And I did, you know, lamp that stuff up and I still do believe, you know, like that idea, all men are created equal. I mean, I think, can you think of something more important that's been said? Like I can't. Then all men are created equal. Yeah. Sure, there's some edits I might make to this statement. Well, sure. Well, that idea, you know, is a pretty sound idea. Right. And I believe that. And so, I mean, that does animate how I write about the history. And also, and maybe more and more as I get older, I don't need everybody to be perfect. Right. I think, I mean, we were kind of talking about this earlier how every, I don't know. We were. You didn't miss part of the conversation. Yeah. And this isn't really an idea that I fully formed, but I kind of, it's sort of interesting to me how, especially online and in social media, not that I'm like terribly part of that world, but there's all this nitpicking at everybody. And people want, I guess, everyone to be these well-rounded, likable people all the time, you know? And I don't really need that. And like, we were specifically talking, I was reading the oral history of Monty Python. I was gonna find a way to get to that. Yeah, and on the plane here. And one of the undercurrents in the Monty Python story is that Graham Chapman was lazy and didn't, you know, he didn't do a lot of the real elbow grease on putting the shows together. Which Python was Graham Chapman? Like, he's Brian, he's Brian in life of Brian and he's the gay one, but he did, like, he would just sit there and the other pythons would do the work and he would just kind of be around and he was also an alcoholic, so he was drunk a lot, but there's this one. They died super young, right? Died of. Yeah, of cancer. He was the, he was the tall. He wasn't the tallest, I don't think, was he? I thought he was. We can, like, look that up later. But anyway, what happened was John Cleese had purchased a faulty toaster and he was really irked about it and he wrote this whole long, beautifully crafted sketch about trying to return this toaster that didn't work and Graham Chapman, who I guess always was smoking a pipe, he just, you know, read it and he's like, yeah, it's boring, it needs to be a parrot. And so that's all he contributed to the parrot sketch was the idea that was a parrot. It started out as basically a customer complaint of John Cleese. But my point is talking about, like, the country and the founders and everything, sure, they had flaws, you know, and they weren't perfect people and maybe they didn't write, like, perfect phrases. But, you know, they, there's still value there. Like, and I would hate to lose that. Like, I was writing an op-ed for The Times this summer about, you know, there was this guy running for president and he was picking on these people whose kids, kid had died in Iraq. He's now the president, but at the time it's, so the, what happened was the father of the slain soldier had pulled the Constitution out of his pocket at the Democratic National Convention. Anyway, I was writing this thing about George Washington and the founding of the country and how in this letter, I'm sure you all know it, that George Washington wrote to the synagogue in Newport after Rhode Island was the last state to ratify the Constitution. And one of the Jews of the synagogue wrote Washington in this letter saying basically, hooray, you know, about the Bill of Rights. I'm paraphrasing. And Washington writes this beautiful letter about, back about how this government that he and his friends are building is not about mere toleration. Like every, because he's implying like tolerance means, and he says like that means one people is putting up with another people because now we're all equal. And we can all believe what we want and sit under our own vine and fig tree. And specifically that piece was about the presidency and how the first president who invented the presidency was saying like he was literally making case for what the First Amendment was about. And it was about everyone is allowed to believe what they want. And I spent a whole day arguing with the editor who was passing on the feelings of the editorial board that I had not mentioned that Washington owned slaves. Right. I was like, first of all, I feel like if you're reading the New York Times opinion page, you probably know that. And second of all, it's like off the topic. Like he had a whole life. Yes, he did own slave, but he did some other stuff, you know? Right. And I had to like spend a whole day trying to figure out like how to like bend to their will without bending to their will. But it really. So how did you handle that? I think what happened was, I mentioned the thing about where he says everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree. And I said, pause here a century or two while everyone includes actually everyone or something like that. Right. So I sort of alluded to it without saying Andy owned slaves. But my point is he did own slaves, but he did some other worthwhile things. And I don't remember how we got off on that. Just like, oh, talking about the founding. Like. And how, I mean, how. There is real value in these people and what they did even if they were imperfect and they, you know, owned people. Right. I mean, we shouldn't forget either thing. We shouldn't forget they owned people, but it's like when I was writing about the Boston Puritans, which I found even people in Boston hate them, but one reason I wanted to write about them. They hated each other. I mean, you liked some of them like. Some of them liked some of each other. Yeah. But one of the things why I wanted to rescue them was because I found the word Puritan was kind of used as shorthand for idiot, probably because the Salem witch trials and all that, which came later and those were stupid. But I was like, yeah, they said and did unreasonable things, but they lived before the age of reason and they still were some of the most learned, bookish people of their time. And when they came here, they were only here for basically five minutes and they started building that other college down the street because they didn't want their ministers. They wanted their ministers to know Greek and Hebrew and they needed their clergymen to be learned. And a lot of them had theology degrees from Cambridge and they were thinkers and readers who are mainly focused on one book, but they had ideas and they weren't just idiots. Right, right. I mean, it's an interesting challenge today and it's certainly something that has come up a lot in the past several years, which is how do you fully take stock of historical figures while respecting both the realities of their time and our time? Yeah, I mean, it is always like, that is always a pickle, but I mean, I find one of the things that's just really useful in life in general is empathy and it can also just be really educational. I mean, sometimes writing nonfiction, sometimes the most basic instinct is to just find the truth. And sometimes that there's a lot to be learned and just trying to get to the facts. When I was writing about the American takeover of Hawaii, there's still a lot of acrimony in the Hawaiian Islands today and there's a whole sovereignty movement in which native Hawaiians are still protesting the overthrow of their queen in 1893 in the annexation of the islands by the United States in 1898. People are still upset about that and I understand why, but, and so the people who engineered that were the children and grandchildren of New England missionaries, like specifically these missionaries who came from Boston Harbor and sailed all the way to the Sandwich Islands and they, not just the Sandwich Islands, all over the world, these New England missionaries would show up in a place and tell people how wrong they were. So those people were actually idealistic in their way, but their children and grandchildren are the ones who started the sugar plantations and they ended up, by the end of the 19th century, white people owned like 90% of the land there. Yeah, and they're the ones who overthrew the Hawaiian queen and gave the islands to the United States and so amongst, especially the native population there, there's still a lot of anger toward the missionary boys as they're known and I understand that, but at some point in the research, I found the actual letter from Boston, all roads lead back here generally, where the mission HQ here in Boston sends them this letter, I think, 40 years into the mission and some of these people, they were born in Hawaii, they've never been anywhere else and they get this letter saying, we're cutting you off, good luck. And they're just stopped, they're not gonna fund the mission anymore and these people have never lived anywhere else and it's their home and they have kids and they live in these islands with a 365 day growing season so they start being farmers and they start growing sugar and that takes off and the sugar plantation just completely changed everything, they changed the politics, they changed the ecology, like growing sugar takes a lot of water and they changed the racial makeup of the islands because they bring in all these workers from all over the world, from Japan, the Philippines, Scandinavia, Portugal and everything changes because of these sugar plantations and every change affects the natives negatively but it just goes back to that letter saying, you're on your own and these people are stuck and they gotta make a living and that's how the plantations start and it's just, it's not this nefarious plan to take over the government and take over all the land, it's basically like each family deciding, oh my god, we gotta eat, what are we gonna do? And I think that's something anyone can identify with and so sometimes all of these big historical debates and problems and everything can always harken back to some small human moment. Okay. Thank you. There are a couple more things I wanna ask you about but why don't we open this up for a little while to questions? We have two microphones. If you are comfortable, please state your name so we know who you are when you ask a question. Where are the microphones? There's one there and one there. Oh. Sort of halfway up the stairs. So if people have questions, head over to the mics and ask and while you guys are screwing up your courage to do that, is there something you're working on now, a new project that you have in mind? I know earlier today you went out to Walden. I think there's some, I mean, I don't think it's my next book or anything but I have been thinking about Thoreau a lot and yeah, I did go to the pond and... It wasn't a Don Henley pilgrimage. It was a Thoreau thing. He's one of those people where I, he's one of those people I always wanna stick up for because every so often there's some, like maybe it was just in the New Yorker last year where someone was just like, I hate Thoreau and you should too and I get that he's a dented person and maybe not always a barrel of laughs but there are a lot of things worth admiring about him and what he did and that place and living there and I mean, I'm drawn to writing about people. Like one of my favorite Puritan was the guy who founded Rhode Island because the Boston, you know, booted him out of Massachusetts Bay was Roger Williams and I think I described him as someone who's hard to like but easy to love, you know? I think of like Thoreau in that collection of hard to like. He's not so bad, you know? Right, he did, right. A couple of really transcendent things. He has some good sentences and also he was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. I feel like that's a pretty good life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a lay-off, New Yorker magazine. Patrick Schultz, yeah. Hi, my name is Pete Riley. And hi, the question I have, I've listened to you, I was just thinking that, do you think you could write about Andrew Jackson? I mean, I have a little bit, when I was writing about the Trail of Tears and his part in it and one of the things that happened on that documentary was I went to the Hermitage, his house in Nashville and as my sister would tell you, I probably could have been a little better behaved when I was there. So I don't know if I have more to say about him. I mean, he is interesting to me too because even though like I'm part Cherokee but mainly I'm all riff-raff and so for the riff-raff side of me, like he's the guy that makes it possible for people like us, the nobodies, to think they can become president and there are things about him that I do like and admire and how he handled the nullification crisis and all that. And so I kind of think of myself as a Jacksonian Democrat who hates Andrew Jackson but I don't know if I have more there, more to say, I don't know. Thanks. So I have gotten a little bit of revenge on him and I'm really looking forward to him sharing his money with Harriet Tubman. Yes. Yes, Ken Oye from MIT. Did you say from MIT? Here. Okay. I loved Trail of Tears and I loved your early work on radio and I particularly loved your remark about how people are complex. There are many assets and faces to them. You mentioned Washington. We had a little challenge posed to you on Jackson. In my family history, I think about Franklin Roosevelt who did great things but also locked my parents up in prison camp. Yeah. The obvious question. Are you a Japanese-American? Yes, I am. Yeah. But the obvious question is that we have a current incumbent of the office of the president. Uh-huh. And I can see problematic aspects of his character and what he's been doing. Mm-hmm. That was nicely put. In 10 or 20 years when you're writing a book, looking back, when you become the historian looking upon the current period, what do you expect to be able to say that would offset some of the deficits that stare us squarely in the eye? Wow. No pressure. I mean, one thing I do no matter what I'm writing about is there's that saying that history is written by the winners, but it's not true. It's written by the writers. And one thing I always love when I'm delving into something and especially writing about American history, there are a lot of just mistakes and bad decisions. And that was obviously one of the big ones. There's always someone who's speaking out, like writing about the, I mean, one of the bees in my bonnet is always the Spanish-American War. And there's, and I remember when I was writing some op-eds for the times right after we invaded Iraq. And I would write my little, this is a bad idea, kind of op-eds. And I think like, this isn't doing anything. I should just be faxing them into the trash can under my desk, you know? But they're part of the record, just like Henry, not Henry James. What's his brother's name? William James. William James or Mark Twain, or people, you know, arguing like we should not be torturing the Filipinos. There's like this record. There's always a record of people who are standing up. There's always an argument. There's always a conversation. And I think it's valuable to go back and read those. As like what I could say about now, I don't know. I mean, it's pretty depressing. I mean, has anyone been watching the Ken Burns Vietnam War series? Exactly. Are you finding it, this is a terrible thing to say, but slightly comforting how stupid the leadership was throughout the war and how so much of it is the bad decisions and life and death decisions are being made because people don't want to be embarrassed. It's all about like most of history is the delicacy of the male ego, I find. And so, or like, you know, there's that Johnson, he's on tape talking about how like candidate Nixon is committing treason by going behind his back and back channeling with the Vietnamese and there's all this really evil, evil stuff going down. And it makes me feel less alone. So I mean, I guess the thing is always just tell the truth. I mean, I'm thinking about it lately because I noticed one thing I noticed watching Al Gore plug his movie recently or Tana Hasey Coates has his new book out and the interviewers and they're interviewing them about, you know, the racial situation in America or climate change. They always in like the TV journalists, like, can you give me some hope? And Gore does, Tana Hasey Coates is like, nope, but it's like, why do we need everybody to be hopeful? Sometimes you just want the person to say, like, here's the problem. Like, there's value in that, you know? So I don't see that I'm like, God, wouldn't that be the, I mean, one thing that happens is looking back is things all seem to always get worse in some ways in terms of public discourse. Like, I was working with these high school students this past year and they were having a hard time dealing with, you know, current events and I remembered being their age and I don't know if you remember this when President Reagan was trying to back, like it was during the Iran-Contra thing and President Reagan goes on TV and he says, so I told you that we did not trade arms for hostages. I believe that in my heart. Yeah, I believe that in my heart. Turns out not to be true, but I believe that it is true. He said something like, I believe in my heart but the facts say a different way. Yes, wait, hand me that. I think I like, I don't have glasses so you don't have to read it. I'll find it. So like, when I remember being appalled as a kid, like the President is coming on TV and saying he believes something in his heart. Like if I pulled that shit in a high school term paper, I would be like, that wouldn't, I would get a D, right? And so I just remember being like outrage. Like the President is coming on TV and saying he believes something in his heart but he did like say the truth. He did say like, it doesn't feel true but it's actually the truth. He said it was a few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true but the facts and evidence tell me it's not. Yeah, so I mean, at the time I was just outraged like what is this bullshit, this like, this is the President talking like this, like a nutcase. You said that saying a falsehood that felt true and his heart seemed less intellectually rigorous than the average wham song. Yes. But now like, looking- RIP George Michael. But yeah, but now it's like, well at least he like faced the fact even though he, you know, preceded it with a bunch of like fairy tale talk but now, I mean that sounding pretty good, right? Well, it's, I mean, it's an interesting question because I think that a lot of people feel right now that things are bad in a unique way and trying to frame that historically, certainly reading contemporaneous accounts of Nixon, you know, I think Hunter Thompson's view of Nixon could not have been any lower but it still seems like looking back, Nixon with several large steps ahead of Trump. Oh, what we wouldn't give for Nixon. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying like, that's what, not only am I not giving you hope, I'm saying like, what if 20 years from now we look back at this nostalgically? No, no, no. I'm waiting for you. I'm waiting for you to do- It's like the anti-John Lewis, right? Yeah. You said that like, you know, the march of history is towards progress. Yeah. What? You're saying the march of history is towards being fucked. I don't know. I mean, like I do remember even with George W. Bush during- Have a good night guys. Even with his, when he was inaugurated, I was there, theoretically to protest, but all I did was to stand there and cry, you know? Wait, in 2000? Yeah, in 2000. I was actually there at the inauguration. You were there? I was covering it. Oh, okay. I was just standing there crying. And, but later in his presidency when he actually did stuff, like, you know, invade Iraq and remember that whole Katrina thing and I was like, what was I crying about? I thought he would be bad for drinking water. Right. Like, or something. Like, I had- Again, now like what we would get for George W. Bush. It was like a failure of my imagination that I was crying for like, oh, I hope he doesn't ruin the drinking water and the economy. And like, all these people are gonna die. But Sarah and Seth, we now look back upon W. Mm-hmm. With a certain degree of nostalgia and appreciation. Yeah. For his commitment to human rights. Right. While he tortured. Sure. Can I imagine? There's that asterisk. He was good on AIDS. AIDS in Africa. Sort of. But- And also on- That's what I'm saying. Not persecuting Arabs and Muslims after 9-11. It was not perfect. Right. But the contrast with the current administration. Yeah. Striking. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying. Like, what if 20 years from now we'll look back on this and be finding things to like about it. That is frightening. Thank you. The thought of you visiting Trump Tower. That's my point. I mean, not everything has to be reassuring. Yes, you have made that clear. Thank you. Yes. Hi, my name is Renata. I actually had a similar question because I thought I found your writings very reassuring during the Bush years actually. Oh, thanks. And now I'm very depressed again, actually. So I would just like to pivot, I guess, away from talking about our current president. And I'm just genuinely curious if you've read any of Bill O'Reilly's books about various assassinations. And if you have any thoughts. Killing Phil in the Blank. Yes. I have not read any of them. Have you? That's probably good. She has. Yeah. I have. Yes, I actually have a podcast where we read like bad books and talk about them. Oh. So we read Killing Lincoln for that. Mm-hmm. It wasn't the worst book that we've read because we read other fuck news books that were worse, but it's not great. Have you ever picked a book that you think this is gonna be terrible and you're pleasantly surprised? Yeah. Oh. Like we thought Nora Roberts would be like really trashy and bad, but she's really great, really fun, much less depressing than Bill O'Reilly. That is a particular pleasure to like, I remember, you know how you heard the name Charlie Chan and it's, and I think mainly from the movies, it's this nefarious, he's this nefarious character, but if you actually read all the books, what he is is, he's a Chinese, a Chinese detective in the Honolulu police department and all he does is, you know, pretend to be this stereotypical Sneaky Asian. Yeah, but he is like a really smart sneaky Asian who's solving the crime and using all the white people's stereotypical ideas against them to get to the truth. And it was like pleasant to find like, oh, Charlie Chan is always the smartest guy there. He's just pretending to be a dummy because that's how he can get his information. Anywho. All right, well thank you. Yes. Yeah. Hi, so I'm James Wilson, MIT CMS. I'd love to move from bubbled water towards that sort of straight water you referenced earlier on. Wait, I'm sorry, is that, can you say that again? I'd love to move from the bubbled water towards that sort of straight water as you described earlier on. So right now, I'm a little bit. It's been too bubbly for us talking about like how shitty things are. Actually no, so the good news is the shittiness isn't the bubbles in my case. I'm hoping to move towards clarity. So maybe my metaphor is poorly applied. Core tension is earlier on when you mentioned the sort of pushing against nitpicking and highlighted Washington owning slaves as an example and sort of adjacent jazz with all men created equal, not just being rhetorically maybe a little outdated, but in the context of creation, not lived. You sort of seem to be marking these as background elements that we should sort of read the intent as more applicable today. Wait, say that, we can barely hear you. I don't know what you're doing over there. Is this better? Yes, it is. It looks really uncomfortable, but go on. We'll sort of work through it, team effort. So when we were exploring the conversation about Washington and all men created equal, those sort of contrary details, him owning slaves, many of the sort of folks writing the all men created equal narrative, also owning slaves, that seems like not nitpicking to call that out as maybe centrally problematic. As in, how do you interpret the messages when the lives seem to be so antagonistic to the message apparently woven? I mean, I think one thing about that affects me is having studied art history. You, I think this, yeah, remember that? The student of art history, like all you're presented with, you're studying humanity's great achievements and they're like the most beautiful things in places in the world. And they're almost always made by drunks, philanderers, drug addicts. Like, I mean, the most you can hope for is a guy who just cheats on his wife and does painting on the side. Like, all of the great, not all of them, I'm sure some of them were okay people, but mostly the great artists are always troubling or nefarious or not good people, necessarily. But they still make beautiful things. And so I think you just kind of get used to putting up with the other stuff. I mean, or in music, like, I remember when I was a kid, I played jazz and I also had this cousin who was a drug addict. And one of the things I would do in high school, I was like a real, I had a real truancy problem, but I would always go like skip class and go to the public library. And there was this one point where I was really into John Coltrane. And I remember skipping class and going to the library and reading about John Coltrane, who was a junkie. And sitting there and thinking about John Coltrane, who I just looked up to like crazy. And then my cousin Marty, who was the bane of the family existence because of what he put his parents through. And he was just this really talented person and he could never stay clean. And it was just this thing. I mean, it's still going on, honestly. And, but I was like super judgmental of Marty. But I, and I remember having this kind of a epiphany that, you know, you could have this big problem and whether you see it as a disease or a character flaw, it has, you know, I saw the beauty in John Coltrane and that made me like start trying to think of Marty in more human terms and like not just writing Marty off as a person. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Well, you know what I'm saying. But. I totally wrote Marty off. Yeah, totally. But like with the, these founders and they have these flaws are like owning people is like it's up there with flaws. But I don't think like, I mean, one of the things about being Cherokee specifically, I think that gives me maybe this perspective on humanity is that the Cherokee owned slaves and they brought their slaves with them on the trail of tears. So it's hard to completely identify with everything about them and, and you know, give them a break on everything because I mean, if you think it's bad to be this dispossessed Indian walking across country at gunpoint, it's worse to be one of their slaves. And there is especially, I think, among a lot of like white people to just see the American Indians and always take their side and always, you know, think they're like the good people but the good people were also the bad people. And I don't know, like, you can't, you just can't get rid of all this stuff. I can't make Jackson Pollock, you know, be a better person. I can't make Jefferson not own his slaves but that doesn't mean I can't still, like, learn from certain things or admire certain things about these people, you know? I think it, it, it, who are people? I don't, I'm, I certainly I want to put words in your mouth but it, it's sort of how when I read your work I think that it's very hard to paint someone as a hero or a villain or good or bad. It's almost always the complexity of the person. So in the same way that you acknowledge what Washington did, you also never sort of hold him up as like George Washington deity. Right. But I also don't completely write him off or even Lafayette who, his teenage wife was pregnant when he like leaves to go to America. He was also 17. He was 17 but she was probably like 16 and pregnant and he still leaves her to go toward like glory in America. I mean, I don't run away from that. It's still a kind of icky thing to do. It's not as bad as owning people. No. You're good though. We can all agree on that. But I mean that's what I'm talking about like with the, maybe with the, the empathy and like there are those nonfiction writers and usually their books are like the ones that are on the bestseller list for like weeks and weeks and weeks. They are so in love with their subjects. And I do envy that. They're like, oh my God, William Howard chaffed. Like let me give him a hug. And I mean that's not, those are not the people. I can't, I don't know if I just can't be like that. Like I feel like I'm capable of unconditional love but you know, not blind love but I don't ever see myself like writing some book because like, oh my God, I love this guy. It's like, he has some good qualities. That's more my take generally. Or even the bad people, you know. All right, let's do these two. If you can go up to one of them. So where I'm coming from is I think it's really uncomfortable, like just the way like humor is used to kind of be consistent with the past or the history and then understand kind of the need to like nuance and make fully complex the history of these people. But at the same time it's like very distance is when we're like, oh well, we did all these bad things and it's kind of like we privileged the things that they did better than the things that they did wrong. And then we're also not talking about just like the history of, like when you're talking about art history and the different people who you're studying. It's like, well there's many reasons why these white men are going to be able to have more, are going to be privileged in the knowledge and kind of the culture production process. So I guess for me, I just feel like, especially when, like when you make kind of like these quick asides, I feel really uncomfortable when it's like kind of like nervous laughter coming from the audience. When they're like responding to like kind of making comments about slavery or, you know, I just think that just like being conscious of like, are we reinscribing kind of the past and just continuing the same history of like, okay, we're making people feel uncomfortable but we're just going to laugh about it, you know? Cause like, I don't know, I just- I know what you mean. And I think there is a difference between like an event like this where, you know, we have whatever an hour and a half or versus a book, like their whole swaths of the book where it's way more meditative and there's like a section in there where I'm talking about, there's a moment when the British are ready to capitulate and they're ready to think the war is going so badly for them that they're ready to give the patriots everything they wanted before they, before the separation and there is a moment where I ponder like, what would have- Not everyone's going to read your book, right? So like you're sitting here in an audience and you have to just like kind of be mindful of the fact that when like, it's kind of like at different touch points, like you're reaching different audience and I understand like you're doing your thing and it's not necessarily a matter of like, oh, like I'm criticizing, but just criticizing you but just like keep in mind that there are going to be people who this is going to be their first time like interacting with history in this way. And so like when, if we're in a public space and we're talking about like history and like and using humor to like kind of like, like I don't know, it's just, it just makes me feel really uncomfortable because it's like, everyone's going to leave the space, right? And then it's just, we don't know how people are going to go and say, oh, it's okay that we're like, we're sugarcoating the past, but I think it's really important to be like, okay, we can nuance the past but we also need to just be very critical and like, and I just, I feel really like, I don't know, I just like, I feel really uncomfortable, like being someone who's a descendant of enslaved people and it's just kind of like, wow, like we can, I don't know, there's just a lot, there's just a lot. Well, it sounds like you have some things to say about this, so do more of that. But what I'm saying is, I mean, do you believe that everyone is created equal and should have equal protection under the law? But the intention versus like, what's the reality? The reality of the situation is that, it's just like, wait, no, no, no, hold on, but like, can I just like comment? Like, literally some people just literally left because they're like, I feel uncomfortable. I feel like we're doing the same thing over and over again. And I'm like sitting here like, okay, like, you know, like, predominantly white audience and like, when you make comments about like slavery, it's just kind of like, um, that's not, I'm sorry, I'm sorry about that. That's definitely not my intention. I mean, one of the things that I'm trying, I'm trying to like fit in a bunch of stuff. You know, I'm just kind of like, like, when the humor's used a lot, to just kind of be dismissive. And it's just, like when you're sitting here and you're just kind of like, Oh, I'm sorry. One of the things, I'm not being, I don't use humor to be dismissive. One of the things I think we use humor for is because life is painful and it's one of the ways to deal with that. But it's also sometimes it's just a shorthand to get to the truth. It's certainly like how I think, like, let me try to think of an example. Like, we were talking about the inauguration of President Bush in 2000. And one of the reasons that I went there supposedly to protest was I was really upset with the process of that election, right? Because the Supreme Court ended up choosing the president and it was, it seemed to me a pretty fishy process. And I had like a lot of anger about that. It seemed arbitrary and unfair. And but I'm a writer, so I can't just, there has to be some like artistry into the communication of my anger. And everyone, when I was writing about that experience, like everyone at the time, that's all we talked about and thought about and when I was writing about going to that inauguration because it was gonna be for a book, I still, sometimes I know like people read things years and years later. And I needed to somehow communicate that it had been this big like country-wide trauma of that election. And here's how I did it. Maybe you don't approve, but I was trying to refer to that when I was writing about that inauguration of the moment when President Bush finished his speech. And everyone was like walking out. And I was standing out on the mall and looking up at the Jumbotron. And I was watching them all like file out. And there was, you know, old President Bush and there was President Clinton and there was Al Gore. And then I saw Bob Dole. And I thought who I had always like grown up loathing as a person. And of course now I would give anything to have him running the Senate. But I saw him walk out of the dais and I said like I have developed a soft spot for Dole because he symbolizes a simpler, more innocent time in America when you could lose the presidential election and like not actually become the president. So instead of like spending five pages recapping everything that had happened, that was just like one quick way of saying, of communicating everything I felt about that election. And it's a joke and it's like quicker. And I would hope like a more entertaining way to say oh it was just like weeks and weeks and no one feels good about this outcome. So that's definitely how I write and think. And I think also one of the things when I was talking about my argument with the Times about like not mentioning Washington being a slave owner, that wasn't about diminishing his slave owning. That was about respecting the reader. That was about me thinking like the readers know who this guy is and I just wanna talk about this one letter that he wrote. And I don't need to do his whole biography every time I mentioned his name. And that was just about not dumbing it down for the readers. It wasn't about giving George Washington a pass on the worst thing he ever did. It was about respecting the reader and their intelligence. But like do the readers, like I guess this is the thing is like the way we're taught history is like the readers don't actually know. Because like a lot of readers don't like. You don't think that people are reading the opinion page of the New York Times that know that George Washington, how many people have just learned tonight that George Washington owned slaves? You just learned? Where are you from? England. He owned slaves, you should like look into it. It's a terrible pox on our country. Right, I know because you mainly talk about all of your conquests around the world. But that's all I'm saying. That wasn't about like giving Washington a pass. That was about like not dumbing it down for the reader. That's all. It's assuming the readers are at one place and a lot of times the readers aren't. Like it's kind of like, I just, I know it's just so important like context. Like even though you're saying like, oh I'm assuming that my readers are smart, but a lot of your readers aren't smart, right? Like a lot of your readers, like, or people don't know. The New York Times opinion page? They're pretty smart. Like think about like white liberals, right? A lot of white liberals, they're considered smart, but there are a lot of things that they don't know their own biases or they don't know their own privacy. And so it's just kind of like, that's just where I'm coming from. Yeah, but yeah, I'm human-bound, I guess. Yeah, I mean. No, it's worth talking about. I mean, yeah. Another thing though, like I find part of like our generation is we started school one way and then like multiculturalism happened and there was a lot of voices hadn't been heard, a lot of stories hadn't been told and it was like great getting to hear from those people and getting other sides of the story from like women, from like non-white men, from gay people, whatever, that was all good. But then there was also this like the, there was this whole period where it was like the dead white men and just because someone was a white guy, like they were no longer valuable and you know, they do get on our nerves, but like I thought it was really great recently, like my favorite book is Moby Dick. I just love Moby Dick. And I- A lot of shenanigans. There are so many shenanigans in Moby Dick and it's just this like so close to my heart that book. It's so strange. It's just the language of it and the descriptions and the ideas and I was like looking, I was trying to find out, I was trying to, I wanted to, I wanna write up something about how all these interviewers make certain writers and thinkers give them hope. And I happened to, I was looking at Ta-Nehisi Coates' Twitter feed trying to like see, does he ever address like, why do I have to be the hope guy? And there was just this whole part where he was talking about how much he loves Moby Dick and I don't know where I'm going with this. Just some of it comes from coming out of that and coming, being in academia at that time where a lot of like babies got thrown out with the back bathwater. And so I think what I meant to say and never got around to is because I believe inequality and I believe in religious freedom. Some of the things that disappoint us about our founders like is because I believe some of the things they said. It's because I believe in what George Washington was telling the Newport Jews about how like tolerance is a sham. We're all equal. I believe that or I do, I believe like all men are created equal. I believe that's the most important phrase because I think it's the most important idea. And the whole history of this country, which I have devoted my life to writing about is about like some of us trying to, there's always, there are always people who are trying to make those things come true. And even if like the people who said those words or made those laws didn't completely believe in them, that stuff is there. And it's always there for the people who want to claim that heritage and who always are trying to make those things come true. And I still think there's like, there's inherent value in the Declaration of Independence. There's inherent value in the letter to the Newport synagogue. And the fact that these thoughts and beliefs are communicated and made into laws by these incredibly imperfect people, there's still value. It's like what I was talking about with Thoreau, I mean, or when I was writing about the Boston Puritans. I mean, my favorite sermon was the one that Boston's founder, John Winthrop, gives either like back in England or on the boat, the one of the model of Christian charity where it's this, it's where we get the image of New England as a city on a hill. But there's, the part I love is where he's talking to his future neighbors. And he says, we must be as members of the same body and love together, mourn together, suffer together as members of the same body. Partly because he is a Christian and he believes in that as an ideal, but also practically because they're coming in 1630, they're coming 10 years after the Plymouth pilgrims and half the Plymouth pilgrims died. And he's telling them, we have to be together and be as members of the same body to survive. We have to take care of each other if we're going to actually live in this hellish place that we've decided to like move to. All right, settle down about that. But, and that image is my ideal, this idea of the body politic and that we're all supposed to be as members of the same body, suffering and mourning and rejoicing together. Even though when they got here and Winthrop became the governor and he was leading the government, anyone within the circle, within that Puritan circle, they were all rejoicing and mourning together and anyone who did not agree to agree with them got banished. Some of them, like Winthrop ordered, they would have their ears cut off. That's why Rhode Island came into being. All these people who keep getting kicked out of Massachusetts, some of them with their ears sliced off. And like across the river, these people, you know, Winthrop's government, they were hanging the Quakers on Boston Common. And so I still find a kind of spiritual loveliness about that sermon, even though the person who wrote that sermon did some really terrible things in the name of protecting that community that he's talking up. So I think with, especially with American history, it's different, I think, than a lot of other countries because they don't have this mantle of all of these ideals to live up to and we do. And often the people who are the most idealistic and the best at expressing those ideals are often the ones who come up short in living up to them. And it's just something that's over and over again true in this country and we have to come to terms with it. But I also think even if these people have done and said terrible, evil things, they've also done and said wonderful, idealistic, beautiful things that have actually made a lot of us want to become better people and better citizens. And so I won't completely disregard them or their efforts and their better angels, as Lincoln would say. I think this is a conversation that we could continue to have and should continue to have. It's a larger conversation than the constraints of the time and when we have this room, I mean we can't actually continue it now. But I hope that we do continue the conversation. You can find me or email me. It is an important conversation and it's one that we should have as a community, we should have as writers, we should have as people who think about and interpret both the past and current events. And I have one more thing to say about that which is like this being a college and one of the things, I mean I was a very an institute, sorry. One of the things, I mean I was a very fiery young person and I do go to a lot of colleges and I have one of the reasons like I bring stuff like this up is I remember like early on I had written this piece about my father who was a gunsmith and like I write about trying to come to terms with this because I always just hated guns and I remember speaking at this one college and the students came away really hating that story because part of it was about like how I hate this thing my father is obsessed with but I still love my father and I remember being incredibly surprised hearing I remember like a freshman class read this piece and they like couldn't understand like how I could love my father if I disapproved of the way he made a living and that has always stuck with me as maybe one of the purposes of speaking at institutes and what have you is just talking about like that is one of the like fundamentals of life is trying to come to terms with the people you disagree with or disapprove of but not completely writing off their humanity. Okay, I think we are unfortunately out of time, sorry Frankie, but please join me in thanking Sarah before you join me in thanking Sarah. Chris, we have email sheet up there. Okay, I think we have an email sheet if you'd like to find out about future events such as this, we have three semesters, six a year, give us your email, the only times we will email you is when there is another event. There are also books for sale up there and now you can join me in thanking Sarah and thank all of you for coming tonight.