Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Sharon McMahon (law and government teacher)

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Sharon McMahon (The Small and the Mighty) is a NYT bestselling author, podcast host, and known as America’s History Teacher. Sharon joins the Armchair Expert to discuss her favorite historical writers, how the government has been structurally set up, and what types of modern challenges the U.S. Supreme Court faces. Sharon and Dax talk about the different types of democracies, the importance of constructively challenging other’s ideas, and how dangerous it can be to have blind allegiance to a party. Sharon explains why some people may feel burned out by politics, the problems with proportional representation, and the value of having multiple political parties.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi.

Hi, we have one of the most likeable experts imaginable today. So fun. Sharon McMahon. I don't know, I'm gonna be honest. I would say McMahon, but there is an H in the middle and I'm very scared. Yeah. Yeah, McMahon.

McMahon. Yeah, McMahon. That's how Vince McMahon spells his last name. Vince McMahon, yeah, they have, I noticed that when we were interviewing because I just watched the Mr. McMahon. Yeah. I wonder if that's his.

Her dad. Yeah, her dad. It's not her dad. I know his daughter, she was in the doc. But anyways, Sharon is a podcast host, a bestselling author and a law and government teacher. She's known as America's history teacher. And this was great.

And we could have done six more hours. We get to like- We didn't get enough. Get a really like fundamental understanding of how the government works. And she's just great. She has a very, very nonpartisan approach to try and educate people on how all this works.

She has a new book out now called The Small and the Mighty, where she profiles 12 ordinary Americans who really changed the course of history. It's a very hopeful and encouraging book. And she has a great podcast, Here's Where It Gets Interesting.

So if you want more of her, go. She covers every topic you might be curious about as pertains to the US government. Someone posted something about her the other day and I was like, oh! She's huge. Yeah. Kristen was like, did you have Sharon today?

Like Kristen follows her and is a devotee. Well, also we should say we asked the armchairs who they wanted as experts on and she was the most requested. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's really relevant. Yeah. I almost forgot that. So congrats to you guys.

You were right. And you were right. Not shocked. And thank you. Thank you. And we'll do that again because you guys are a great source. Last thing I wanna say,

and we get into it a lot, she and I have a very similar objective of hoping to bridge this insurmountable gap between everyone. She has a great movement in this direction, and you can go to www.startswith.us. Not starts with us dot something, starts with dot US.

Oh, I like that. Yeah, sneaky and wonderful. That's sneaks. So go to www.startswith.us. Please enjoy Sharon McMann. We are supported by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.

We, of course course have a gorgeous website that we designed and by we I mean Rob. That's right. Squarespace using their great templates and it looks so beautiful and it functions. So official. Yeah. So whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell anything from products to content to time. All in one place, all on your terms. If it's your first time creating a website, no worries. Squarespace Blueprint is a new guided system that helps you build a unique online presence from the ground up. Your site will be perfectly

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We are supported by Airbnb. More space, more privacy, better locations. These are just a few of the reasons that some trips are better in an Airbnb. We're gonna tell you more about why you should choose Airbnb for your next trip later in the show. Stay tuned. He's an object expert.

He's an object expert. Did you guys hire a designer to like do all your shelves? Rob. Rob, you're a designer too? He has such an aesthetic. Isn't that impressive? He does. He was. Styling shelves is actually a pain in the ass. It's hard to do.

It's hard to do well. It just looks like cluttery junk. Tell me more. Cause you do video for your podcast. Yeah, I do. And I have shelves and I'm aware of what a pain in the ass it is. Yeah.

I like your sorting hat and your like- Little mice. A nice mix of tchotchkes and books. Yeah. So he did a perfect job. I like it. So blown away. And it's all Rob. He very thoughtfully thought of all these things behind us.

She has more than I do. What's not get hung up on that? Well. But some of the books we haven't read. Now I would have insisted that only the books that we've read have made it up onto the shelf. But they have to be color coordinated. Yeah, it's a color thing.

Yeah, you have to have the blues together, the reds together. Yeah, and those are obviously antiques. And I should just look at it as an opportunity to rise to the occasion. That's right, it's an opportunity to better yourself if ever you're bored. I'm sure you have, because you're a history nerd.

You have a fun term for yourselves, governards. Governards. That's really cute. Oh my God, that's so cute. But have you read The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich? Of course. Of course. Yeah, I think for people who don't love history,

the notion of reading that book is preposterous. I can recognize how silly it is, but what a book. It's not a book to read because you think it's gonna have good ideas. Right. But it's a book to read if you wanna understand your enemies. Yeah.

And that's actually an important part of being a good historian or an important part of understanding what's happening in the world, you have to understand what you're working with. What is your all-time favorite history book? Oh my gosh, that's like asking me to choose a favorite child.

It's so many, there's so many. Give me top three. Okay, I have so many friends who are history writers. Oh, it's getting personal. Okay, if any of your friends are listening, pause it or plug your ears. We commit to wrapping this up in 30 seconds. So you wanna run out in 30 seconds. Yep.

So you wanna, you know, 30 seconds. Okay, so David Grant is one of my favorite history writers. He wrote The Wager, and he also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, fantastic history writer. I'm embarrassed I've not read any. He's one of those people who, when one of his books comes out, it stays on the bestseller list for like,

oh, 17 weeks, 39 weeks, okay, great. It sounds like he deserves it if he's your favorite. He does deserve it. And he also wrote a blurb for the front cover of my book, which I feel extremely honored. That's awesome. Yes, if you're a favorite historical writer. That's right.

Yes, I also love Timothy Egan, who wrote a book called Fever in the Heartland. Did he write a blurb too? Yes. You got that pattern quick. You only needed one. That's right. I know, you're good at pattern recognition. That's why. Yes. You got that pattern quick. You only needed one. That's right. I know, you're good at pattern recognition.

I play connections, that's why. Yeah. Have you dabbled in Chernow? Is that too pedestrian for you? Chernow's great. He's a very serious historian. He doesn't write popular history, and there's a difference.

Tell me. Academic history has a different audience than popular history. So if you think about the book, Hidden Figures, that is a popular history book. It is meant for a broad general audience. It's meant for somebody to be able to pick up and read with their middle schooler or make a movie about. That's sort of the genre that David Grant and Timothy Egan work in.

I do love academic history though. And that's kind of where the Ron Chernow's and the David McCullers and people in that genre, the John Meachums, they write in of different style and for a different audience. And it's really important work, but it's a little less accessible for the average person. You have to really be into it to pick up a book this thick about the life of one dude.

You gotta be real into it. Or the building of a single bridge. Do you like reading books about people that you can sort of emulate or idolize? Almost the opposite. I really like reading books about people who are opposite of me. So George Washington, the fact that he never spoke.

All I do is speak. I'm trying to impress upon everyone at all times that I'm smart. He became viewed as really smart by not talking in a group of men who talk too much. But in some ways you do wanna emulate that. It's different from you, but you found that admirable. And super aspirational.

Yeah. Yeah, so it's almost like I wanna dive into something that's the opposite of me and maybe find purchase or a toehold. Maybe I could strive to be like. I'll tell you one thing about George Washington. Maybe you didn't know this. Maybe you did.

I bet I didn't. George Washington, this is something that fascinates me about him is that when he was appointed to be sort of the head of the army in the war against the British, he had never commanded a large army before he'd worked in the Virginia militia, but he didn't have any like big general nationwide experience, not even at like a lower level where you often sort of work your way up. And so on his way to fight in the Revolutionary War, he had to stop by a bookstore

and buy a book on how to be a general. And I was like, there's a lot to unpack there. George Washington had to buy a how-to book on how to be a general. There was such a thing back then. Yes, I mean, it wasn't like how to be a general for dummies, black and yellow. But if you think about it, he would have had to go into a small shop where all of the goods are kept behind the counter.

He would have had to ask for a specific book on how to become a general. And I think it's a great lesson for today in that how many of us feel like I'm not ready to get started because I don't know how to do that thing yet. Yeah. of us feel like I'm not ready to get started because I don't know how to do that thing yet. Yeah. Yeah. I'll wait till I'm ready. That's right.

I'll wait till I finish the degree or have worked at that company for five years when in fact history smiles the most kindly on people who just went for it. People who just tried stuff, who just did something no one else had done. Sometimes they fail at it. George Washington had failures. In fact, he was almost fired from being the head of the Revolutionary Army. History does not smile kindly on the timid or the critics.

Yes, which your book deals with exclusively. Or that's the paradigm we're looking at. All right, I'll add one. I like that he accepted that job and immediately bought a super fancy outfit. Yes. Out of his own pocket. He looked absurdly well dressed

compared to everyone else. He loved fancy outfits. He was like you Monica, he had a total shopping addiction with this place in England. Half of his correspondence he wrote were ordering this bolt of linen or something. Velvets. Yes.

He loved fancy wine, like Madeira wine. Is he me? I could have been the first president. Plus 250 slaves, but yes. Oh yeah, that part's not me. He had expensive taste. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, who's like, I grew up in a little log cabin and I had nothing

and my clothes are too small. You know, like he has this vibe. I taught myself how to read. Oh my God, Dad says that all the time. We both might've had, oh, what's the disease, morphins. Morphin syndrome, yes, it's true. I have the phenotype of someone with morphins. No, you don't have morphins.

I don't think you do. I don't think I do, but I am the phenotype of that. Really tall and lanky and gangly. Yeah, but you're not like excessively tall. That's only cause I've packed on some muscle. I think if you saw me in 11th grade, you'd be like, that boy's too tall and skinny. No, see, I wouldn't, I'm six feet tall. That's only because I've packed on some muscle. I think if you saw me in 11th grade, you'd be like, that boy's too tall in scheme of reasoning. No, see, I wouldn't, I'm six feet tall.

That's true, we would have been looking night eye. I would have been like, finally, there's one person taller than me in this entire school. Oh, man. At what age did you become six feet? 14, the best stage for any girl to be six feet tall. 14.

That's early, early, early, early. That's really. It's real rough, you guys. Even in Minnesota where people are above average. As Garrison would say. It's so rough. But of course George Washington was famously tall too. He was in a physical specimen.

It wasn't just that he was tall. It was the way he handled his horse. People would talk around the country of what a good horseman he was, like how athletic he was on a horse. That's you as well. That's also me. You're a great horse woman.

I can't really ride a bike, but that's fine. Well, what's great is you are going to educate us on a lot of things. We're gonna talk about the small and the mighty, but before we do that, we're gonna have some fun with all of the many lessons you're regularly giving out and are known to give out. I love it.

I think the timing is pretty perfect as we enter an election. Yes. I think there's a lot of things people know and they're not quite certain really how it works. Like everyone knows there's an electoral college, but do they really know what that means and how it came about and what it means to democracy and whatnot?

So you are our number one. We turned over to the armchairs who what expert they wanted to hear the most, and you are number one. That's incredible. You won a poll. That is huge. Your nickname is America's Government Teacher,

which is very endearing. Okay, so let's just get into your background a little bit. You're from Minnesota. I'm from Minnesota. I live on a dirt road. You still do? Yes, outside of a town of 80,000 people and 150 miles from the nearest Whole Foods.

Oh my god. Wow. So that means that at least the vaccine level is probably high where you're at. That's true. But you know, I grew up in a lower middle class family. My dad was a blue collar worker. What was his trade? He was a carpenter. He was a disabled Vietnam vet who later died of his war related injuries. Oh wow. Enough food to eat and things like that, but there were times where each

person got a $10 Christmas gift. So neither of my parents went to college. I certainly was not well positioned for this trajectory from my childhood. But what I did have was a library card and I did live one block from the library. And that was very instrumental in who I have become. The unfettered access to books has been super instrumental in what I do now. And then you ultimately became a teacher.

I did. Where did you teach and for how long? I taught for 12 years in California. I taught up in the Bay Area. Well, you did. I did, I did. How'd that happen? My husband's job and that was great.

I've taught in Minnesota, but I taught for the majority of my career out in the DC suburbs, which is very different animal than teaching in the Bay Area. When I was in the Bay Area, it was middle class high school. It was like a performing arts magnet. Great people.

I loved teaching there, but we had no hot water. We had no toilet paper or soap in the bathroom. Children carried around toilet paper in their backpacks. Wow. We had rolling blackouts all the time where the power would just go out. We did not have TVs in every classroom. The media center was closed

because there was nobody to work at it. We did not have even like whiteboards and overhead projectors. I wrote a grant proposal to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, seeing if I could get whiteboard screens, like the projector screens. Oh, sure, sure.

And the overhead projectors that people use these. You know, the wax pen. I love those. Me too. Like the transparencies. Yeah, just, I love- I'm so jealous of the teacher getting it right with the wax.

I have fantasies about transparencies. I discovered that 32 of the classrooms in my school did not have overhead projectors or the transparencies or the screens, nor did we have any of the other options to go along with it. Additionally, all of our textbooks had been destroyed in a water main break.

And then it swelled to like 10 times their normal size. Yes, and then it exploded into the hallway. There was no budget to buy new books. The icing on the cake, every teacher had a $15 a month copy budget. You could make $15 a month worth of copies, and if you wanted more than that, it literally came out of your paycheck. Oh, geez, Louise. So we had no materials.

Nice middle class area. Those were the conditions on the ground in the schools. Oh, moving to the suburbs of Washington, DC, where people are absolutely rabid about public education was very eye opening. They have $2 billion a year operating budgets. Whoa. Are you in Maryland or Virginia? Maryland. Every supply you could ever want. And of course the Maryland suburbs are very competitive with Virginia suburbs.

Everyone wants to see who has the better public schools. So there's this sort of competition between the two. The one school that I worked in had five computer labs. It was just such a different environment than DIY toilet paper. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, already you don't wanna go number two at school.

You wanna hold it till you get home. Oof. But the notion that you're carrying your own toilet, I just imagine even if I knew that was necessary, I'd be like, I can't blow up my spot. If I've got toilet paper, obviously I'm up to one business. Well, for boys it's different. Girls can get away. Yeah, you have a justified reason for toilet paper. obviously I'm up to one business. Well for boys it's different.

Girls can get away. Yeah, you have a justified reason for toilet paper. But you could have said like, oh it's for my girlfriends in case they forgot. Oh my girl, I can't carry a lot. Oh my girlfriends. Here in California they make you take this class about bloodborne pathogens

so that you don't contaminate the children when the kid's bleeding on the floor at the school. So you have to get this like certification in order to get a license to teach in California. And so I remember going to the bloodborne pathogens workshop. They're giving you this whole spiel about like, and then you run your hands under more hot water and soap 20 seconds and blah, blah, blah. And I raised my hand and I was like, what if we don't have hot water and soap? Yes.

Because we literally did not. All that to say, I've taught in a few different places and every spot in the country has their own educational vibe. Yeah, everything's got a culture. Okay, so in high school, you were teaching what? Government. History. History.

And is one of those interests you more than the other? They're very related. You can't learn government without learning the history of government. So in terms of like a class that I preferred to teach, government was always my preferred class. I also taught upper class electives in law. Those are also a big favorite of mine.

Let's quickly talk about how the government has been set up structurally. What's your understanding of it? Oh God. Scary. So I think we have three branches of government. We have the executive, that's the president, the judiciary, that's our judges, and the legislative, they're writing the laws.

And the way it's supposed to work is this group writes laws, this person enforces laws, and this group determines whether those laws are constitutional. So far so good. That's roughly right. The judicial branch does more than just constitutional challenges, but that is part of what they're doing, yes. Okay, great, they're interpreting the law. That's right.

I mean, they're still ultimately going, this is unconstitutional. Do they have another knockout punch than saying that? Well, yeah, they can determine whether or not a certain governmental action, for example, is in the confines of the way the law was written. Oh, okay. So it's not just, is this law constitutional?

It is the way the Voting Rights Act was implemented in Alabama in keeping with the original intent of the Voting Rights Act or things along those lines too. Interesting, so what percentage do you think is one of those two things? They hear far fewer constitutional challenges. Oh, they do. Because a lot of the constitutional challenges

have been adjudicated. We're still hearing new constitutional challenges. Right now, the Supreme Court is just coming back into session and they are hearing a case this term. They work in these terms. Really quick. Yeah. The terms, are they quarterly or are they semi-annually? They start in October and they end in June and then they're done from July to September. I didn't know that. Yeah.

I already didn't know. They are still hearing emergencies during the summer, but they're not hearing their regularly scheduled or what they call oral arguments. They get about 7,000 requests a year for oral arguments, like, please take my case. And of those 7,000 requests, they take about 80 of them. So it's a tiny percentage of the cases that make it to the Supreme Court. One of the big cases they're going to be hearing this term is about transgender medical care for minors and whether a state banning transgender medical care for minors and whether a state banning transgender medical care for minors violates their constitutional rights

be free from gender discrimination. So for example, if you are a teenage girl who wants to get a breast reduction surgery cause your back hurts and you have medical issues with the size, why is that permissible? But it's not permissible if you are a trans boy who wants to have surgery to be in alignment with your perceived gender, right?

Is one of those discriminating against somebody because of their gender. Of course, these are issues that the Supreme Court did not take up in 1792, right? So these are sort of like the new generation of constitutional challenges that are coming down the pike. Another case that they're hearing, the founders never would have seen this one coming, is

whether or not a state law in Texas that requires the operator of a porn site to verify the identity and age of the user in the state of Texas, whether that violates their First Amendment rights or not. Can I tell you the most crazy, this is such a sim moment. I was in Texas three days ago. I was with my best friend, Aaron Weekly. He would not mind me telling the story. We slept somewhere, the next day we're chatting, and he tells me he went to go on a pornographic website

to do his nightly exercising. No, so then it had this really lengthy verification of age thing, and then he just decided, I'll just watch TV. What? First of all, maybe that rule. And he's definitely of age. Yeah, yeah, he's nearing 50.

But I just found out that was a thing literally days ago because a friend tried to use a pornographic website in Texas. So that's already happening in Texas, Monica. Yes, it's already been implemented. And some people have sued the porn site operators, of course, are not into this because- Well, like Aaron, he watched TV instead. Watched TV instead.

But also your friend might not want his name to be recorded. You shouldn't necessarily have to give all of your documents to a website. But I understand the age component. Right. The other things like if you're going to purchase alcohol or you're going to purchase tobacco products, they have to verify your age. Yeah. They can't just be like, oh, First Amendment, right? So it's a unique question about how

do we enforce the law to keep certain materials out of the hands of minors, but yet not infringe on the rights of adults? That but yet not infringe on the rights of adults? That's a legit question. These are things that people have not thought of before that are finally getting to be decided by the Supreme Court this season. And would you say, because that right now, you've already brought up one that's really great and complicated and has merits on both sides. Do you think people's general stereotypical view of how the Supreme Court is being used is that it's solely political and in general anything coming before is really going to align with either the left or the right

and that we know how they'll line up. Do you think there's a perception that's maybe not entirely accurate? So many of the cases that make the headlines are these kind of very politicized issues. Some of them are like, yeah, new thing has arisen, very complicated arguments on both sides, let's figure this out. There is absolutely a perception that the Supreme Court has been overtly politicized. The number of people who think that they're doing a good job,

that everything's above board, non-biased, it's very low. This is one of the lowest points in US history in terms of perceived legitimacy of the Supreme Court. And some of that has to do with abortion. The majority of Americans are pro-choice in at least some circumstances. I think some people don't realize that if you believe that there should be exceptions for things like rape and incest, that that actually falls under the purview of being pro-choice, that there are some circumstances in which abortion should be legal. Overwhelming majority of Americans think that. And so some people, they really, really view the Supreme Court's recent actions on abortion as delegitimizing the

court. And then the other aspect of it is the ethics concerns related to a couple of the justices on the court now where they're taking all these trips with billionaires and they're not disclosing them and they're supposed to be disclosing them. And then they're like, Oh, my billionaires and they're not disclosing them and they're supposed to be disclosing them. And then they're like, oh, my bad. I didn't realize the form was supposed to be filled out that way. And it's a little bit like, but you're in charge

of determining if people fill out the forms right. Well, also one of the main things a court would point out is ignorance of the law is not a defense. Exactly. Yes, so that's kind of your job is pointing out that everyone's supposed to know. Right, and so one of the challenges there is pointing out that everyone's supposed to know. Right. And so one of the challenges there is people feel like I would never get away

with that at my job. Yes. If you are just a normal federal government employee, let's say you just work in a social security office helping people get social security cards, there are very strict ethics rules that do not allow you to accept gifts greater than $20. I cannot send you a copy of my book because it costs more than $20. I cannot send you a copy of my book because it costs more than $20. Right? And so there are very strict codes of ethics for federal employees. It's meant to make sure that things are transparent and above board and you can't just send gifts to grease the wheels and make things happen and that it's treating citizens

fairly. And so when you see that some Supreme Court members are taking trips with billionaires on private yachts and going to their private hunting, fishing, retreats and the private jet trips, and it seems like the rules are for thee, but not for me. It makes people feel salty about it. Like I would get fired if I let you take me out to lunch. It's easy for Chipotle to even cost more than $20. Yeah, exactly. If you just add on enough queso. Some Supreme Court justices have even talked openly

about that, that when they go out to lunch with friends, they insist on paying for themselves. They do not even allow themselves to be treated by a friend to lunch to keep things above board. But that has not been the case with a couple of justices on the court. So all that to say that there is a perceived imbalance in terms of how political they have become to where they're supposed to be.

The number of cases they hear that are unanimous. If you look at the number of cases they hear where at least one of the liberal justices is in the majority with the conservative justices. You look at the number of cases where one of the conservative justices finds with the liberals, you would find a different pattern. However, you would find a pattern in which their behavior overall is not as politicized

as the news would have us believe. Oh, that's really A, shocking and B, comforting. It's the big name cases. It's the heavy hitters. But it's the political cases. Yes. It is the ones that get the attention. Exactly. And this is the other thing that's true about the court is that they take the cases they want to hear. They get to choose which cases they want to hear. What consensus has to exist? Four people have to want to hear the case. Out of seven. Out of nine.

Just forgot my first big, no, keep it in. Wow, that was nice of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honest of you. Got my first F. Four people out of nine have to want to hear it. But here's the other thing is that there's no law that says four people have to want to hear it. They just decided that for themselves.

They could change that at any point. They make all of their own rules. So yes, the tradition of four out of nine have to want to hear the case is just a tradition. There's no external governing body that dictates these things to them. So four people have to want to hear it. And the fact that they have a six person ideological consensus means that they are more likely to take up political cases. And so even though the majority of the cases are not highly political, the majority of the cases are kind of boring. They're administrative. They're pertaining to one specific criminal. Doesn't extrapolate to the country at large necessarily.

Even though that is true, the willingness of the court to take on these highly politicized cases, like affirmative action, like abortion, like transgender medical care, because they now have a crucial majority who wants to hear a certain type of case. Meaning that six of the nine are conservative.

Yes, that's right. Two varying degrees. Even within the six, there's a spectrum. They'll shock you all the time. That's what's kind of fun. They feel empowered to take up cases that they maybe would not have felt empowered to take up before,

because they have a level of consensus amongst themselves that the case is going to be decided in a way that they feel is favorable. When it was 5-4 or when it was a more liberal swing to the court, the conservative members would not have advocated for taking up these cases because they know they're not gonna be decided in their favor.

And so now the opposite is true. The pendulum has swung to the right on the court. And am I right? I listened to More Perfect. Did you ever listen to that podcast? Yeah, oh yeah. So good. The Supreme Court's role has to that podcast? Yeah, oh yeah. So good. The Supreme Court's role has evolved over time.

Yes, it has. And as I understand it, they have gotten more overtly political, more about steering the direction we're going in as opposed to course correcting. I think that's absolutely true. The role of the court has evolved over time significantly. Members of the Supreme Court used to literally

ride around on horseback to hear cases. They didn't even have a building. They were in the basement of the Capitol. They didn't even have a building until the 1930s. And so if you think about the visibility of, or the optics of, we meet in the basement of the legislative branch, the optics are very different than the building they have now, which is like on the top of the steps with the big marble pillars and it seems very grandiose and official. Yeah. The way the court views its role is on a pendulum spectrum. If you think back to the 1950s during the time when we were making rulings about things like Brown v Board of Education, school integration, the person who was in charge of the Supreme Court at the time was a chief

justice named Earl Warren, who was actually formerly the Governor of California. He was also the only Governor of California to ever have won both the Democratic and the Republican primary elections to be the Governor. He won them both. Oh my God. So Earl Warren, very popular figure in California history at the time. He's a former prosecutor. Is the Warren commission his name? Yes, same guy. Earl Warren was not a judge

when he got appointed to the Supreme Court. He was the governor of California. Ah. Yeah. Was he a lawyer at least? You have to be a lawyer? You actually don't have to be a lawyer. I could be on the Supreme Court. You could be on the Supreme Court.

I like the time off. I like that there's a summer break. All three of us can be on the Supreme Court. There are literally no off. I like that there's a summer break still. All three of us can be on the Supreme Court. There are literally no constitutional requirements to be on the court. Even foreign born? No. Wow.

The constitutional requirement is you have to be able to get approved by the Senate. That's it. And so if the Senate says you're good, then you're golden. Okay. God. I gotta retract some statements, I think. It's too late for you. I think. It's too late for you. I know. I know. I know. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

We are supported by Airbnb. You know, some trips are just better in an Airbnb. When you've got a group together, especially when it's been like a while since you've seen your friends or your family, it's so nice to have that time at the end of the night to chat together in your Airbnb living room. You know, instead of going back to separate rooms, that's always that's half the trip.

I know. I totally agree with that. You know, one of my favorite trips I did was in an Airbnb. When I went home, I went to Athens to see a Georgia game with all my friends from college. What a blast. It was so, so fun. And it was so nice for all of us to be in an Airbnb over other options because we could all hang out in the living room.

Cook together. Yes, be in one spot. Just getting coffee in the morning all together is so fun. No matter what type of trip you're planning, whether it's seeing a football game with friends or a romantic getaway, you're sure to find a place that's perfect for you on Airbnb. Unlock new adventures, make lasting memories and get more out of your travels with Airbnb. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker.

Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murders. This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those who lives were in danger.

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Hey Armcherries, quick question for you. Have you ever stopped to wonder who came up with that bottle of Sriracha sitting in your fridge? Or why almost every house in America has a game of Monopoly stashed away somewhere. Well, this is Nick. And this is Jack. And we just launched a brand new podcast called The Best Idea Yet. It's all about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the people who brought them to life. Like Super Mario, the best selling video game character ever.

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right now by joining Wondery Plus. Anyway, Earl Warren gets on the Supreme Court, gets appointed by Dwight Eisenhower. Dwight Eisenhower kind of later regretted appointing Earl Warren because Earl Warren went about changing some stuff. He had been in charge of the state of California during the time period that the United States was actively incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II, where we rounded up more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry and moved them into incarceration camps away from the Pacific coast because of the attack on Pearl Harbor. And those people were by and large US citizens who had been accused of absolutely no crime. Many of them were children. They received no due process whatsoever. And Earl Warren cooperated with the Department of Justice

and cooperated with FDR in the removal orders to move Japanese Americans to these camps. Later, he wrote about in his autobiography, how deeply he regretted those actions. And then he spent the rest of his life on the Supreme Court trying to make up for the fact that he had deprived hundreds of thousands of people of their due process. And so he is the Supreme Court justice who comes into position during Brown v. Board of Education. He's the person who steers the court to making sure it's a unanimous decision. He's the person who oversees Miranda v. Arizona.

We've all heard of your Miranda rights. The right to remain silent. Everything you say can and will be used against you. That was a Supreme Court case under the Warren Court. He was also in charge of Gideon v. Wainwright, which says that people have the right to a court appointed attorney if they cannot afford one. So the courts saw a hard pendulum swing to the left

under Earl Warren in part because of his guilt over what he had done during World War II. Wow, talk about making the best of a terrible thing. Yeah. That's admirable. Earl Warren's father was also murdered. He was a prosecutor at the time up in the Bay Area. And he knows people that are investigating his own father's murder.

His dad was literally sitting in his house one night, and somebody broke into his house and hit him in the head with a pipe. And he was dead. And they get this line on, like, we think it might be be this guy and it's a guy who's already in prison. If you wanted, we could like put a wiretap in his cell and see if he's talking about it to anybody and gain evidence against this guy that way. And Earl Warren was like, no, we're going to play things above board. We're not gonna secretly wiretap anybody that's violating people's rights.

So he, even as a prosecutor, was somebody who wanted to play by the rules, so to speak, even if it meant not solving his own father's murder. I love that. Yeah, that's a level of integrity not seen often. His father's murder is still technically unsolved all of these years later, although people now feel like it's very likely this one guy. There's a good amount of evidence.

Like Hodel and the Black Dahlia murders. Yes. And it was the guy who was in prison who he could have wiretapped and didn't. He's the most likely suspect in having killed Earl Warren's dad. But again, if you believe in the principle that it would be better to have a guilty man free than an innocent man in prison, which I do and our system's built on, you gotta play by that. I think you're right that first of all,

it is better to have a guilty man free than an innocent man imprisoned. You might think to yourself, yeah, I agree with that. But I think in times like today, that's a big ask for some people. People would rather be safe. And if that means putting in some innocent people in prison, then that's the choice they're gonna make.

Do you agree? Do you see what I'm saying there? I 100% agree with you. And in fact, look, I'm a liberal, but I try to do my best to make a really strong case for the right as often as I can. And we had a guest on saying that for people who think that the canceling is gone too far,

he said, ultimately it's all worth it. Look how things have changed. And I'm like, that's fine. And I agree they've changed for good. But if you can anchor the opposition's belief in this premise of our judicial system, which I bet you can, can you yourself agree it's better to have an innocent man

out of incarceration than a guilty? Yes. So do you see that that premise applies to trying people in public and then they lose their thing and sometimes we get it wrong? Can you at least see that that's a defendable point of view, whether you ultimately agree with it or not? You see it's a substantive pushback. And yeah, I think people are having a really hard time making a good faith argument for the other side, or at least spending 10 minutes trying to figure out what point they're making and if it's on solid footing. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think it's really easy when you are operating from a position of fear, and in

some cases, a fear for their own safety, a fear for their own livelihood, their way of life or their religious whatever, they feel like, well, you know, sometimes that's the way it works. They don't extend that idea to its logical conclusion that sometimes in a system run by fallible humans, it does mean that guilty people will walk free, but that we have to err on the side of not incarcerating or putting to death somebody who there's even a small chance

of being innocent. When push comes to shove and it's your own family and it's your own community, people have a really hard time. Well, it works both ways. Both ways. Yeah. Yeah. My mom's murdered, but I can own that, right?

People go, oh, I'm not in favor of the death penalty. What if your children were raped or murdered? I'm like, yeah, I would want those people killed, but I shouldn't be a justice in that case. That's right. And I shouldn't be the police officer that arrests the people. I should have some distance. They think that's a gotcha.

And it's like, no, no, yes, I would want that, which is why I shouldn't be deciding it. It's your normal human instinct to be like, you should no longer walk the earth. If you did that to my children. And that is why we can't have laws based on our base instincts. Yeah, exactly. Right? That is why we need to have laws that are principled and not based on our base instincts. Yeah, exactly. Right? That is why we need to have laws that are principled and not based on the emotional anger

that somebody feels in a given moment. Also, those people don't think it's a possibility that they would be wrongly incarcerated. Right. They want to walk in the court being presumed innocent. Yeah, and they also think a group of people who is being incarcerated is much different from them. And maybe they did do something bad.

Maybe it wasn't this, but they probably, I mean, I've heard all this, right? Until they look down and they heard something in their front seat go on the floor and they look down at that and then they look up and they kill a pedestrian. Exactly, it's a lot of arrogance. I think you're right.

But that point we were just on is a great kind of segue into term limits or lack of term limits. Another job that the court has, as I understand it, is to be removed from the swell of emotions of pop culture, that we see things. Pearl Harbor would be a great example. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, we're going to make some really rash decisions. We're human, we're reactive, we're hurt. And so the cord is supposed to be semi-removed from the swell of popular outrage.

It's purposely slow, it's supposed to build in a little gap between. And so A, is that true? And B, is that where we get into life appointment so that there's no political pressure or daytime pressure to react in a certain way? Yeah, I mean, it is true that they're not supposed to be making decisions based on what is popular, which is what politicians often do. They make decisions that will help them

get reelected as opposed to principled decisions. So yes, that's the idea behind it, that we are removed from public opinion. That's why the members of the Supreme Court have lifetime appointments. And so there's almost always a gap between what happens theoretically and what happens on the ground. Theoretically, it insulates you from popular opinion so that you only make principle decisions. What it can also mean is that it allows people who potentially are corrupt

or people who potentially are not playing by the rules, it allows them to stay in power excessively because it's too difficult to get rid of them. So there's always a give and take when it comes to these issues. Yes, it's a good idea in theory, but in reality, it means the following things. But you're right that there's meant to be a lack of reactivity to public opinion on the part of the court system. And sometimes a court gets it wrong. Sometimes a court has gotten it wrong. They got it real wrong when it came to Plessy v. Ferguson saying that African Americans were not citizens of the United States, even if they were born here. They got it real wrong in the Korematsu

case, which is what found it constitutionally permissible to incarcerate Japanese Americans. The Supreme Court actually said it was fine that they did that. So you can look back and point to a variety of cases where you're like, oh hell no, that is messed up. Yeah. And again, I don't know, like years ago when the premise was explained to me, it made sense. And now that I find myself on the wrong side of the politics of the super majority or whatever we'd call what is existing now. I of course am seeing the fallibility of this.

And then I wonder, well, is it, if it's good for the goose, is it good for the gander? Why didn't that, you know, you're always trying to self-correct, like am I just caught in my own silo of opinion? Or do we think that these lifetime appointments are problematic? I also think, again, as the writers of the second amendment

couldn't anticipate AR-15s, we can't anticipate justices living to 94. That wasn't in the realm of what was going to happen. That's so true. You are absolutely right that if you are taking a principled look at this, if you dislike the conservative bent of the court today and you feel like, ah, it's just become so political. oh my gosh, and making so many decisions that impact some of people's lives, then you are feeling exactly

how conservatives felt during the 1950s and 60s, where they're like, what the F is this cart? And they felt like the court was radically reshaping American society during the 1950s. And they were. We just today feel like they were reshaping it in the right way. Right.

Right. To be fair, they were reshaping in the right way. Yeah. You know, like segregation was not acceptable. It's not okay. So it's easy for us to look back on that today and be like, yeah, sometimes the court should radically reshape society

because lawmakers who are concerned with consolidating and maintaining their own power care more about that than about doing the right thing, or lawmakers are themselves bigots. But then we feel really uncomfortable if the same principle is extended to its logical conclusion and it means that sometimes the court swings to the right. Yeah, exactly.

God, there's so many tasty things, and I feel like we're semi-aligned, which, yeah. Exactly. There's so many tasty things, and I feel like we're semi-aligned, which is really fun. I feel quite alone in screaming, like, a, democracy's first, forget whatever your issue is. You have an issue and it's legit, but it has to come second to democracy. I totally agree with you.

Principle over party, that's how I say it. The principles of democracy are more important than any party allegiance to somebody in my family. Or any of your single issues. Like we cannot have a minority of people running a majority of the country. And so with that said, I get in this argument sometimes, I sounded off the other day about it, and now I'm a little worried I might be actually wrong. So I'm going to ask you, and this does seem to be a favorite comment from people on the

far right, which is, it's not a democracy, it's a republic. My issue is like, yeah, motherfucker, that's a version of democracy. You could have direct democracy, you could have representative. So please just start with, are we a democracy? Jax, you're right. You are correct. Okay, thank God. It is both a democracy and a republic. A republic is a structure of government. A democracy is a government of the people. That's literally

what the word means in Greek. And there are different ways to structure democracies, direct democracies, constitutional republics, a variety of different kinds. You can have a figurehead, like a monarch, like they do in England. We don't have that here, but yet the UK is still a democracy. So there's more than one way to structure a democratic government, but democracy just means government of the people. And this far right talking point about like, it's not a democracy, it's a republic. My question to you is like, and what is your point?

Their point is that they're repeating a far right talking point from the 1950s. Oh, that starts in the 50s? Yes, in the 1950s. Oh, this is so fun to learn. It started with a far right group called the John Birch Society who wanted to put forward this idea that it's not a democracy because if you were going to have a democracy, that would mean that everyone, including people of color in the South, would have to have equal rights.

Yeah. And so this idea of like, it's a republic. So they're not defending democracy. They're saying it's not a democracy. It's not a democracy. So don't try to say it is, like don't try to get it. They don't like it when you say it's a democracy. They will try to correct you and say, it's not a democracy, it's a republic.

Oh, which is why we can have like electoral college and things like that, that aren't, it's not just a popular vote. Those terms aren't mutually exclusive. That's exactly right. It's like saying it's not a democracy because it's a communist. And it's like, no, that's an economic system.

So all constitutional republics are democracies, but not all democracies are constitutional republics. America is both of those things. It's both a Republican and democracy. And this is one of those things that gets under my skin. I'm always so curious what the point somebody is trying to make when they say that. Well, I have found that that comes as my skin. I'm always so curious what the point somebody is trying to make when they say that. Well, I have found that that comes as the last ditch.

I'm out. Generally for me, it's their point didn't hold up all that much. And then that comes in at the end is like, hopefully unravel everything we just covered. Well, you don't even understand it because it's not a democracy. It's not a democracy.

Oh, okay. So none of this stuff we just argued about is relevant now. Democracy is mob rule. This is another thing people will say. Democracy is like two wolves and a sheep trying to decide what to have for dinner. This is another thing that people will say. Oh my God.

First of all, I like that. That's pretty funny. Two wolves and a sheep trying to decide what to have for dinner. I mean, it's pretty good. I don't get it. Well, the two wolves are gonna vote to eat the sheep. The majority are gonna vote

to eat the sheep, so it's mob rule. So it's almost like implicit in a democracy is that. The majority will victimize the minority. That's right. This would be a great time to introduce baked intentions that are from our conceit. We have liberty and equality, and these often are in opposition to one another.

There are two ideals we're gonna try to juggle and get as close to both as we can without infringing on the other. The other is this union in this republic, the states' rights versus federal rights. And these are long standing tensions that the political parties tend to gravitate towards. That's absolutely true. Literally from the very beginning, before the modern Republican and Democratic parties, which have not existed in the format that they exist today for very long. You have the federalists and the anti-federalists,

which were very much this idea of how much should the federal government do versus how much should the state governments do? And obviously leading up to the Civil War, we have this continual tension between what states have the right to do and the federal government has the right to do. You see it with abortion today.

Another state's rights issue, what should the states have the right to do? Of course you understand Los Angeles needs different environmental rules than Northern Minnesota where I live, where we have too much water as opposed to not enough water, where we have almost nobody that lives there. Of course it makes sense that there are certain things that fall under the purview of states, but to what extent, to what end? Is it fair that women in one state should be able to receive a certain type of medical care

while somebody in another state should not be able to receive that kind of medical care? And so you're right that this is a continual balancing act that the federal government is trying to find the right happy medium. And right now with the more conservative leaning Supreme Court, they're tipping backs towards this sort of state's rights issues. And in general, we could probably say the modern left

and right. The right is about the individual and the left is about more about the collective. Yes. Both are really valid. I also want to scream that often. Yes. You know, who was the minority who was getting shit on by the majority were gay folks. Jews. We've had a lot of minority groups that were getting fucked by the majority. So it is a very good principle to be defending of, the individual's right to pursue their happiness here. I bring this point up all the time too, that we actually cannot have one political party.

We need multiple political parties. One political party is a dictatorship, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah? So we can't just be like, well, I hope the people I like get into power and screw the rest of y'all. That's actually not a healthy democracy. We're better off by having our ideas challenged and by having the best ideas rise to the top. We should have enough allegiance to the country and to the constitution to be willing to acknowledge when somebody who belongs to a party that we do not vote for, when they have a good idea. We should have enough humility to be able to be like, you know what, I didn't vote for

you, but I think that's a good idea. And integrity. Yes. Some of the best leaders from history have done that exact thing. I know you have Team of Rivals on your shelf right above your head. Just learning that book. Is that what I'm learning? I do? Team of Rivals on your shelf right above your head. Just learning that book. Is that what I'm learning? I do have a Team of Rivals.

The Doris Kearns Goodwin book, it's a great book about how some of the best leaders from history have brought people into their cabinets who some of them did not agree with them. They did not just hire a bunch of yes men who were like, whatever you think, great idea, of course. Wasn't Lincoln famous for this as well? Yes, yes. That's what this is about, team of rivals. So is George Washington.

George Washington hires both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson who hate each other. The thinking behind that is, I don't want you to just pat me on the head and tell me I'm pretty and I come up with all the good ideas. Yeah, this is important stuff. Right. And back to what you said 10 minutes ago

about theory versus practice, each side has a scorecard just riddled with failures and successes. Nobody has the lock on, we've historically had all the good ideas, that's ridiculous. My side's had a lot of well intentioned stuff that in practice split up families in the inner city,

that incarcerated people, we've done a lot of well intentioned things that in practice turned out terribly, that we got a course correct. That's right. And the right thing to do is to admit when you got it wrong, and to do what you can to make it right.

And I think too often our leaders today view admitting any kind of change in thinking, or any kind of, you know, like, I thought it was a good idea, and then ultimately it ended up not working out the way I thought. They're so penalized for admitting those kinds of things. When personally, if we're having an interaction together and you call me on the phone, you're

like, you know what? I really screwed that up. I am so sorry. I did not realize how it would impact you. I'm going to make changes. You would have respect for that person who did that to you personally, but yet on a broader political scale, we're like, oh my god, they're a flip-flopper. Yeah, it's the public's fault for doing this, for villainizing that type of behavior from a powerful person. Why can't they change their

mind? They should change their mind when presented with better information. That's what a person with intellectual integrity does. It was like with COVID, a bunch of people were very upset that the initial stuff that was coming out, they ended up being like, oh, actually now you don't need to probably Lysol your fruit. They're like, oh, you were wrong and so now we don't trust you at all.

It's like, well, they're just figuring it out. We probably don't need to put every book in an autoclave. Right, yeah. But yet the initial responses to a global pandemic were not perfect. Well, I think the more depressing is like, I'm not even sure how I feel about all this. Let me check in with my tribe

and see how they feel about it. And now I know that to me was the much more scary. And I think we have a similar concern, you and I, the notion that something like a global pandemic got funneled into one of two camps politically. It's like if the fucking aliens come up with the laser beams, are we gonna actually decide, is that gonna be political?

Like what would be the threat where we would stop? Where we would come together. Also, I just wanna say too, I think both sides were wrong about a bunch of stuff. Totally. Of course everyone was wrong. It was a brand new thing. Like that's the whole.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just the notion that anyone could come out of it and go like my side was vindicated, I also think it's a total fantasy. It's that's the whole- Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just the notion that anyone could come out of it and go like, my side was vindicated, I also think it's a total fantasy. It's like, they were right about some stuff, we were right about some stuff, we were wrong about some stuff, they were wrong about some stuff. I totally agree. And now we should be willing to do a post-mortem on that.

Kids should probably go to school if they're going to survive. That's something the left got completely wrong. Now we know the learning loss from not being in school was too great a burden to bear. But yet you can also understand how children are not the only people in the schools, right? That the adults that work in the schools also deserve a safe working environment. And that that's very tricky when you have small children who don't understand basic hygiene, who don't know how to cover their cough, who don't know how to wash their hands appropriately. What about the adults in the schools?

They deserve to not die from COVID? And also the kids that go home to environments where there's a lot of people in a small environment. Yes. A lot of adults, grandmothers, grandparents. Like, again, we don't live in that type of environment, so it's easy for us to forget that that exists, but that's a lot of people.

A lot of people. The black and white thinking, I don't think is particularly helpful here because yes, the children should be in school and also yes, the teachers should not die from COVID. Both of those things are true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the idea that only my side is the correct side

and if you don't agree with it, then you're a Satan worshiper or whatever it is. Again though, I don't think it's helpful to call it the other side's failures in some way. They're not listening to me. That's true. It's not fair because- You hate it, I don't think it's helpful to call it the other side's failures in some way. They're not listening to me. That's true. It's not fair because you actively say, I'm a centrist. You stopped saying you're a liberal.

So if you're a centrist, then you do need to call out both sides. It doesn't feel fair to me. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay. So on the right, it was insane. They're hosting COVID parties. They're intentionally endangering themselves to prove a point.

And there was no period where they could even wear a mask for five minutes to see where this goes. Like there was a lot of belligerence and insolence on that side for sure. But there was a bit of hypocrisy on our side, which was like service, what was the term we use? Essential workers. If I'm on the right, that's a total elitist bullshit thing.

So all the professionals with college degrees just didn't work and everyone else had to work. Somehow it was not unsafe for this whole section of our economy to be working every day. They never stopped. Everyone that I know stopped working and was in quarantine. Worked from Zoom. Yeah, relocate.

If you work at Chipotle, you there's no fucking work from home. So it was also very elitist in the way that it was executed. If I'm on the right, it's not hard to see that. And that's legit. Yes, and both of those things can be true at the same time. And people's weddedness to their political party of choice blinds them in some ways to the things

that their own party is getting wrong. And this blind allegiance has never led any civilization somewhere worth going. Blind allegiance to a party or blind allegiance to a leader that has always led to dehumanization, that has always led to dictatorships, that has always led to further marginalization of vulnerable groups.

Incarcerated opponents. Exactly, the idea of blind allegiance, no one deserves, not me, not any of y'all, nobody deserves your unexamined loyalty. Right? And I think we're seeing the effects today of some people who have unexamined loyalty to a party or a person and it's a dangerous direction to be headed in. If you want to paint yourself as a critical thinker and as an intellectually honest person, and I think most people would want to be labeled

a critical thinker, right? If I'm like, well, you don't know how to critically think, you'd be offended, right? We all wanna feel like we're good at critical thinking. If you want to be a critical thinker and you want to be intellectually mature and honest, you have to be willing to admit when your preferred ideology gets it wrong. You really do. And I think it's a failure, regardless

of what your preferred ideology is. And if you cannot listen to a single criticism of your preferred ideology, then you don't have the intellectual maturity enough to be able to say, yeah, you know what? We screwed that up. We should not do that again in the future. Yeah. And you're right. We admire people who do it so much. They've been showing clips of old debates. Yes, oh yes. Not old, old John Kerry. Yeah, Mitt Romney and Obama.

Yeah. And everyone's laughing and there's agreement. It's just normal. You have your ideas about how you want the country to go, but you just don't have to hate the opponent or it doesn't have to be so extreme. And ugh. Yeah, no, you're totally right.

It doesn't have to be this way. It's this way because, you're totally right. It doesn't have to be this way. It's this way because we're permitting it to be this way and we're participating in it. People don't realize how much money there is in producing outrage content on the internet. They do not realize how lucrative it is to create this kind of division. And I'm not somebody who's out here like,

oh, the media is ruining the world. The media has an important job. Press is an important role in society. But you don't have any idea how some of these people who have very popular YouTube channels are making $20 million a year, pumping out hate content. The idea that like it's somehow the media and what they mean by that is legacy media,

ABC News or whatever, that it's somehow their fault when in reality they are very willing to ignore the people who are getting paid $20 million a year to make fun of ABC News. This is somehow corrupt over here, but what you're doing is completely legit. Sure. Also the idea that some people are getting paid $20 million a year to like roll clip and then they watch President Biden like stumble on the steps of Air Force One and then they spend 15 minutes making fun of what an old guy he is. Those clips that go uber viral, that is a tremendously lucrative line of work if you have enough eyeballs on your content. And when you understand the business model behind the hate content that is online,

it's very, very eye opening. It pays far more to be a hyper partisan pundit. I could make so much more money than I make right now. Getting a gig on some news network and talking about how shitty XYZ person is, why this person's an idiot, et cetera. The amount of money that exists in that hyper partisan space is so much more than somebody who exists where common sense lives. There's not cash in common sense, right? And so if I have a choice between a giant check and having common sense, listen, it's very enticing

to be like, I'll take the cash and I'll buy the sweaters. Well, again, it doesn't even have to be personal to anyone. It's you're observing what the system creates and the incentive structure, and it's a system, and it produces a result. And it's producing the exact result it's designed. Precisely, it's producing the exact result that is designed to produce,

and everybody is willingly participating in it without even realizing what the incentive structure is. Yeah, exactly. And that's the problem. Okay, well, I have done a bad job because you're so interesting of mowing through a lot of these things I wanted to explain. I feel like we could do 20 hours together.

I would love to. But I think people would like to know too the difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives, right? That's a little confusing. Yeah, it is. So the legislative branch of the federal government is Congress.

Congress has two houses in it, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate has a six year term and they're meant to be slow and deliberate. Every state gets two senators. And so consequently, small states like Wyoming get exactly as much representation as giant states like California. And a lot of people feel like, how is that fair? Wyoming has less than 1 million people in it and they get two senators just like California does. This is something they argued about when they were writing the constitution. They fought like cats and dogs about this. And the House of Representatives has allegedly proportional representation where a state gets a certain number of representatives based on their population. And all of those representatives serve two year terms. So there's 100 senators and 435 representatives.

And together those 535 members make up the entirety of Congress. There are a few people, they have kind of more advisory jobs to Congress, they're delegates to Congress, and they represent places that are United States territories, places like Guam or Puerto Rico, Washington DC, places that are not states. They're allowed to

go to committee meetings and make their voice known, but they can't vote on legislation. So the problem with proportional representation is still that there is a finite pie that has to be divvied up. Every 10 years, they go through and redivvy up the pie again, these 435 seats. After the 2020 census, California actually lost a seat in the House of Representatives, even though California is bigger than it's ever been, of course, right? And that's because other places grew faster than California did. So the number of people that are being represented by one representative in Wyoming or North Dakota is much, much, much smaller than the number of people that are being represented by one representative in Wyoming or North Dakota is much, much, much smaller than the number of people that are being represented

by one representative in the state of California, for example. That's one of the big criticisms of Congress is that the way people are represented is not equal across the entire country. Yeah, it's okay if we have a representative democracy, assuming that each person is represented equally. Yes, or at least relatively equally. Nobody's saying it has to be perfect, but get us in

the ballpark here of one representative for every 500,000 people or whatever it is. So the way that it works is an actual commission that goes through and divvies up this pie of 435 people every 10 years. Inevitably, some states are gonna lose some people and some states are gonna gain some people. But together, those two houses of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives, some of the roles they have are very similar, but they each have some specific roles.

Like the Senate has to confirm the president's appointments. They have to confirm people to the Supreme Court. They're meant to act differently because the House of Representatives is being reelected every even year. Congress is on recess right now until after the election for six weeks, they're off of work because- Oh my God, maybe I'll be a congressperson. Yeah, yeah. Because they're all- I do that on my break from being a sister.

No, so you can't be in two branches of government at the same time. All right, that'd be a complicated- Hey, that's enough. They're all off because they're campaigning for re-election. Imagine having to campaign for re-election every other year. But also you don't have to do your job because you're campaigning, I don't like. Their term is only every two years. Two years.

It's meant to be more immediately responsive, thinking people have short memories. And if you screwed up last year, I'm gonna remember it this year. Yeah. I'm gonna vote remember it this year. Yeah. I'm going to vote you out. That's the thinking behind it. For legislation to become law that will be enforced by the president, the executive branch, it has to pass both.

Yep. It has to pass both. And then be signed off by the president. Yep. I won't go into the whole, like, how do committees work? The whole structure of how every aspect of Congress works. But the bottom line is yes, both the Senate and the House of Representatives has to pass identical versions of the same law to land on the president's desk for him or her. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. And if we want to change the Constitution, it requires a two-thirds vote? In both houses. In both houses.

Yes. But then it also has to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. Oh my God. When's the last time this has happened? The constitution has been amended 27 times. Okay, when was the last? In the 90s. Oh, what was the last amendment? The last amendment, it had to do with the way, like if Congress is going to adjust its own pay,

it said that the change in pay would not go into effect until after the next election. Okay, that's a pretty good, so it can't be self-serve. Right, so they can't be like, everyone gets $20 million and then they get a check tomorrow. They have to wait till after the next election. So it has not been amended since the nineties, but we have amended it 27 times.

And the framers of the constitution wrote two different ways to amend the constitution into the document itself. This is not Holy scripture. This is not Holy Scripture. This is not forever and ever amen. Thus saith the Lord. These are two different ways. Like, listen, if we got something wrong, here's two ways you might go about fixing it, but please do fix it in the future. They were at least smart enough to understand that they didn't know what was coming down the pike. They had no way of knowing that there's gonna be the internet and porn websites and transgender medical care for minors.

60 rounds a second guns. Yeah, exactly. Semi-automatic weapons that kill children in their classrooms in Texas. They had no way of anticipating these things. And so consequently, even though they did get a lot of things wrong by today's standards, namely the rights of women, the rights of people of color,

they got a lot wrong. They at least knew that they were fallible people. They did not view themselves as gods. And I think some people today hold up the framers of the constitution as like Thomas Jefferson. Yeah, like he's some kind of deity. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It is, it's biblical, the document. What's the second way to amend it? You can have a convention of states in which the states can decide to circumvent Congress and be like, forget you, we're gonna do it ourselves. And there actually is a movement on the political right right now to have a convention of states to amend the constitution and to sort of refashion portions of the constitution in the way that they view as preferable.

Interesting. And how many states would that require? Three quarters. Oh, still threeable. Interesting. And how many states would that require? Three quarters. Oh, still three quarters, okay. What's interesting too is how would states decide who gets to go to the convention of states? That's the million dollar question. Is it me, my friends?

Is it? The governor? Yeah, do they have to be elected? Who gets to choose? Because who shows up at that convention of states would be real, real important. Yeah. So it's never happened.

We've never used it, but it's there for the using. Oh, wow. Well, that kind of gets to one of my other questions is this gap between, there's a few examples of it. You've already brought up one of the most glaring at the moment. There's these times where the representatives do not reflect at all what the national consensus is that we find out in polling. Of course, Roe v. Wade is the most salient of those examples right now.

It's in the 70s or some crazy majority. Guns are another one. Not like abolishment of guns, but gun control. No one, even Kamala is like, I have a gun. I'm not trying to take anyone's guns away. No one's saying that. I mean, maybe like, there might be a teeny tiny percentage, but most-

But again, just like we respond to the ding baddiest on the right, they're responding to the ding baddiest on the left. So yeah, there are socialists, Democrats. There are no guns running. But the one who is representing this side, she's like no. For there's more guns than people in the United States.

You can say we need to get rid of all of the guns all day long, but practically, how does one do that? Right? I know. It's like saying we're going to deport 80 million immigrants. How does one do that? Practically, what does that even look like? Are the cops going door to door? No. Are the cops even going to cooperate with that? No. The idea that that's somebody's concept is like, come and take my guns. That's just silly. It's not even a real idea. There's no practical way to carry that out. But what the overwhelming majority of Americans want, 80 plus percent are just really common sense laws. How about we just do universal background checks to

make sure you are not a domestic abuser? How about we make sure that you haven't been flagged for being potential school shooter? How about we just have safe storage laws that require you to lock up your weapon and lock up your ammunition? If you are a law abiding citizen, you should want other people to be law abiding citizens. Just like when I am driving safely on the road, I don't want it to be permissible for drunk drivers. I want you to follow the rules of the road as well. Just like I want to follow the rules of the road as well. Right. Just like I want to follow the rules of the road. Normal firearms owners want other people

to be law abiding firearms owners. Yes. What about the rights of children to not be shot in their schools? It's not in the constitution. I mean most people agree with that, that's the thing. Exactly. So it shouldn't be an issue.

But that's why you can imagine maybe one of these state conventions rallying around one of these issues that is like a ubiquitous supermajority that everyone agrees with. Also that should be able to just get passed through Congress but then we can't because there are lobbies and things. To your point, if Congress is supposed to reflect generally speaking the will of the people and they are absolutely shirking that duty, it makes people feel like the government is not legitimate.

It makes people feel like I'm not going to listen to what they have to say. I'm just going to violate whatever rules they come up with because they're not a legitimate lawmaking group. This has been the least productive Congress in United States history. That's not my opinion. I mean, like in the number of laws that have been passed, the least productive Congress in US history. Again, that doesn't play well in Peoria.

If you're from a blue collar area like I am where people literally work on oarships or they mine iron ore or they work in healthcare, like they are working hard for their money, it seems really frustrating that I should pay you $170,000 plus a year plus great benefits to sit around and just do press conferences about how stupid your opponents are. You know, like that really sticks in people's crop where they're like, I'm working two jobs to put food on the table

and y'all are sitting around being shitty on television. Right, like that's not how it's supposed to work. Meanwhile, it's fine that the kids keep getting shot in the schools and we're not gonna do anything about it. We're gonna go on TV and say, well, it's just an unfortunate reality is how it is. We're not gonna do anything to fix it. That doesn't fly in any other line of work. If you just straight up refuse to do the job

that you were hired to do, you would soon find yourself out of a job. Yeah. Unless you had a lifetime appointment. Unless you have a lifetime appointment. Okay, last thing and then we're gonna talk about the book, which is so worthy of talking about on its own for two hours. But maybe another pet peeve of mine is,

do you think people in general exaggerate the role of the president? Oh my God, yes. This is also a pet peeve of mine, Dax. Okay, like we're crediting them with the economy, we're crediting them with supply chain, we're crediting them with the pandemic, we're crediting them, I mean,

it'd be great if one person could whip everyone into shape. The problem with it'd be great if everybody could do it is that they can also wield that power to do bad things, right? If that person has too much power, that's how we get dictatorships. They intentionally restrain the power of the president significantly on purpose because the framers of the constitution were all coming from monarchies where the governments were saying here's the religion you have to belong to. The idea that whatever I say, whatever whim that's at the top of my head,

we're just going to go with that thing. They intentionally created a system that constrained the power of the president. This is one of my pet peeves when a president is like, I've created 82 million jobs. Exactly. No, you didn't. How? Yeah.

You sure did not. You were sitting there when the tech boom happened. That was convenient. You were sitting there when this bad thing happened. That was inconvenient. Yes. You might have some ideas that can help promote job growth. Maybe you have some ideas and you can call up some of the people in Congress and be like, listen, we should pass the CHIPS Act.

We should start getting more microchips made in the United States. We should start passing some tax incentives so that people bring manufacturing back to the United States. Yes, you can do things like that, but the idea that you get like, oh, attaboy, pound on the back, you made all those jobs, that's really annoying to me. Also the same is true of the economy. The president gets a lot of blame or a lot of credit for how the economy overall is doing. When the economy is so multifactorial and so complicated, the factors that go into creating low unemployment reach so far beyond what a president has the power to do with his little pen.

It's so simplistic in that there would be a lever in this incredibly dynamic, multinational breathing organism. Pull it down and move it to the low position. We want low unemployment. And it undermines what the Fed is doing and the amount of power that they're wielding and how much they're in charge of all that. And we spent all this energy and all of our cultural capital fighting over this one role.

And I think you point out, your life is far more impacted by your state government. Totally, your state and local government has a lot more to do with your day to day. Because on a day to day basis, with the exception of a few big hot button issues, if you are in the military, sure, I'm willing to grant you that the federal government

has more impact on your life if you're in the military. Or if you're a federal employee, the things that they're doing impact you more. But if you just like live here in a normal neighborhood, you have a job, and you're not the recipient of government benefits by and large, and just working for a living, the things that are impacting your life are like, what kind of schools do my kids have to go to? How well are my streets cleaned? Do somebody pick up my trash? Do I have clean drinking water? Are we sending addicts in my community to rehab or are we...

Or just putting them in prison? Yeah, yeah. Do people have the ability to pursue an education if they can't pay for it? By and large, these are state schools, their state and local programs, their local school boards that are impacting our daily lives. And we get so hung up on who the president is. This is not to say they're not important because they are. That's not to say they don't set the tone because they do. And that's not to say you shouldn't vote for president because it does matter.

It's just about right sizing it. It's a very important role, arguably the most important role in the world, perhaps. I'd stand behind that. But also they can't do as much as you think they can do. No. If they could just like, oh, they lowered gas prices. Oh my God, oh my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You obviously don't know how gas is priced. Yeah, what affects gas prices is where you fucking live. Because in California, they're $6, and I was just in Tennessee and they're 280. That has nothing to do with the president. It's like 2X, and that's a state issue. I live near an oil refinery that gets its crude oil from a pipeline from Canada and they refine it

and then put it on trains and trucks put all over the world and gas is like 285 near my house. Yeah, exactly. And we don't have $4 in state taxes, but neither do we have 35 million people trying to occupy a very small area of environmentally fragile land. It's complicated. It's very complicated.

Anybody who tries to reduce the economy into the words a president speaks into a microphone or a telephone either does not have an understanding of how the economy actually works and thus we shouldn't be listening to you. Or they do understand how it works and they're lying, in which case we shouldn't listen to you. So that person should be regarded with suspicion if they're like, well such and such had low gas prices. Why?

Explain the mechanism by which gas prices were low under their presidency then. Okay, let's talk about the small and the mighty because we kind of just spoke about the big and who all gets the attention. But yeah, the book is about you single out 12 unsung Americans the small and the mighty because we kind of just spoke about the big and who all gets the attention. But yeah, the book is about you single out 12 unsung Americans who changed American history. And as you said earlier, these are doers and not the critics.

Why is that a distinction that we make? I think it's really easy to feel like on the internet criticizing people, it creates this heightened emotional state. A great example of this is Hurricane Helene, absolutely devastating to people in North Carolina in particular, Florida, Georgia, six states that have been affected by this hurricane. So many people have lost everything. And people look around and they see what they view as an inadequate female response, federal government emergency response to this natural disaster. And they feel like if I am mad about it and I'm posting about how mad I mad about it, and I'm posting about how

mad I am about it, or I'm posting about how they're not doing enough, that that is in some way activism. That being mad on the internet is activism. They feel like it is because they feel a heightened emotional response. They feel like by criticizing the federal government or criticizing the governor of such and such, blah, blah, blah, that they're doing something. I think it's worth remembering that there's nobody in our history book who went down as somebody who really changed the world. And that person was somebody who just wrote mean tweets or somebody who just wrote letters

being like, your response is terrible. I don't approve of anything you've done. The people who history smiles kindly upon are the people who actually did stuff. They're the doers. I think it's important for us to realize that, did anybody get clean drinking water because of my post on X today?

Does anybody go to bed with food tonight because I've left some mean comments on Facebook? Probably not. Nothing has changed. The only bad thing, I will just say one thing because I'm with you. Yeah. The only problem where it is effective is it can influence the news cycle. Back to what's fucked up about the media is, unfortunately, those dumb ground swells of outrage,

you see it on your mainstream media. They read these inane tweets, and then it starts to feel like it's consensus or it's majority. It does get really misleading. If I just look at the news cycle, it feels very led by the tail end of these reactions. I can see what you're saying, that there's enough social media outrage about something that can influence what's covered by the news.

I still don't think that person is an activist. That doesn't change anything, even though they're talking about it. Yeah, they would have to land on something that really everyone just felt by accident. Right now, just using the Helene response as another example, the news is spending an inordinate amount of time debunking lies on social media about how FEMA works and about what the actual response is. And that actually makes it so that resources are diverted away

from people who actually need help. If these organizations, instead of publicizing ways to get help, ways that FEMA can help you, where to go to apply for assistance, how to contact your homeowners insurance, et cetera. If they are spending all of their time being like, no, the hurricane wasn't manmade to try to win the election for Kamala Harris, that's literally what the New York Times is spending its time doing. That's a waste of resources. Yeah, exactly.

That's a waste of effing time. Let's focus on helping people who actually need it. There's a difference between raising awareness of something like these people really need our help. Over the last few days, I have personally raised a half a million dollars for people who are impacted by Hurricane Helene. I can simultaneously talk about, yeah, Congress isn't fun FEMA well enough to actually help all these people. I can say that thing as a true thing. It's my belief that Congress needs to get their rear in gear and stop spending

time arguing on TV cameras and actually do something on behalf of the American people. I can simultaneously hold that as true while also actually not just spending all my time running my mouth and actually move my hands and feet to do something to help. Can I do everything? No. Can I do something? Yes. I can leverage my platform to do something instead of just criticizing. I think we just feel like if we're angry, that will change things. And ultimately running your mouth doesn't produce the kind of change that you think it should.

But do those people even want change? I don't think they care. I think they just want to be loud and feel like they contributed their vote. It's like selfish and arrogant. It's the sweet, sweet hit of self-righteous indignation. It's talked about in AA a lot. We love self-righteous indignation. Yeah, the dopamine hate of as soon as I'm like, you know who is the worst? Femal. Yeah, I hate them too. Like you get this validation of like we both hate the same thing. And then

we feel like we're on the same team and it produced this feedback loop in our brains. You feel like you're making a difference because other people agree with you. Yes. How did you even begin to pick your 12? Well, you know, I've been teaching for a while. I teach on the internet now

and I used to teach in a classroom, obviously. And it's very apparent to me that people in this moment, they feel really hopeless. They feel like nothing they do matters. They feel like nothing they will ever do matters. They don't have billions of dollars. They don't have a weirdly shaped rocket ship to blast off into space with. They don't have millions of followers. They're not in movies. They don't have any kind of capital on which they can access the levers of power. They know those levers exist, but they feel like there's nothing they can ever do to be

able to move them themselves. And they feel like, I've written letters, I've voted, nothing has changed. And it feels really hopeless to people. And I hear that, you know, I get more than 10,000 DMs every day. And a huge amount of them are people who are like, I just feel like nothing will ever change for the better. And so I know from experience how meaningful it is to hear about people who have changed things without having access to the levers of power that we traditionally think you need to be able to make a difference.

And history is actually full of people who did such consequential things, not because they woke up in the morning and felt hope, but who chose to have hope. And I think that's a distinction that we really, really need today, that hope is a choice that we can make. It is not a feeling that we wait to feel. Our ancestors who did incredible things in this country, who built schools for children who had no access to them, who reformed prisons, people who wrote incredibly consequential words, people who were incredible philanthropists, people who changed the course of history without access to the levers of power, did not wake up in the morning and feel hope. Because the totality of their life circumstances in many cases were such that none of us would

ever want to trade places with them. We would never be like, yes, let me get her life instead. People who were falsely arrested or incarcerated, people who were fired from their jobs, who grew up in the segregated South, people whose parents were enslaved, people whose children died, people whose husbands were liars, who had second lives or married to another woman, had kids with those people. We would never look at the totality of their life circumstances and say, I would love your life.

Yeah, they were super well positioned to change the world around them. Right, no, we would never say that. Yeah, tell me about Inez. Inez was a suffrage worker, whose story is really remarkable. But one of the things that I find really amusing about her is that she used what she had,

and what she had was her beauty. And she also was very smart. She went to law school at a time when women did not go to law school. What year is it? 19 teens. 19 teens. Have you seen stuff?

I've not, but I want to. The producer reached out to me and was like, please come see it. We'll get you tickets. I'm going to, yes. It's a film or a show? It's a Broadway show. Broadway show. And Inez is a character in the Broadway show. Mill Holland? Mill to, yes. It's a film or a show? It's a Broadway show. Broadway show. It's called The Silence for Suffrage.

Inez is a character in the Broadway show. Mill Holland. Mill Holland, yes. She's very beautiful and also very smart. And she is somebody who really changed what suffrage meant in this country. Suddenly suffrage grew up with temperance movement. Let's just say suffrage is a movement to get women the right to vote. Yes, to enfranchise women.

And the temperance movement was the movement that led towards the fact that we made it illegal to sell alcohol in the United States for a period of time. And we quickly also amended the constitution to get rid of that amendment. But these are two branches of the same vine, temperance and suffrage. It was women who were working on this for decades, 30, 40 years. And so by the time we get to the 19 teens, many of these women are in their 40s and 50s. And here comes Inez, who newspaper reporters said things like, her white satin dress clings to her with the tenacity with which she clings to the suffrage cause. Suddenly, Suddenly suffrage became sexy.

Now I'm paying attention. Yeah, she was a very, very attractive woman who was willing to be at the front of every parade, who was willing to carry all the banners. She had a car and the idea that like women could drive. That is noteworthy. Look at Inez in her car. She was willing to use what she had.

And I know that there are a lot of feminists, myself included, who feel like women shouldn't have to trade on their looks in an effort to make change in society. But let's also be real, that is one of the levers of power that women have always had access to, right? Yes, absolutely. It is their ability to make themselves attractive in conventional sense. But Inez ultimately is a martyr for the cause of suffrage. And I won't give away how she goes about becoming a martyr for the cause of suffrage, but her

efforts are a precursor to the passage of the 19th Amendment. And I think one of the things that's worth remembering about Inez, of course, she martyrs herself and so her sacrifice is noteworthy. But ultimately, she dies before the 19th amendment is passed. And one of the things that people say about her after she's gone is that no work for liberty can be lost because it becomes part of the fabric of the nation. And I think that's really worth remembering that even if we don't see the ball make it into the end zone, whatever we're working for, even if we don't see the ultimate like, and the bill was passed and they all lived happily ever after.

Ultimately, the fabric of the country is changed because of your efforts. We are made incrementally better because of your efforts. And these are the kinds of messages that I think people need in this moment when it seems like the rich and powerful have usurped the reins of power for themselves. This is a phrase from George Washington in his farewell address. Beware excess partisanship and factionalism lest unscrupulous men usurp for

themselves the reins of government. And I think Americans, maybe they wouldn't say it in those words. Unscrupulous men usurp for themselves the reins of government, but they feel that sentiment. That unscrupulous men and women have stolen the reins of power from the American people. And the people in this book show what it means to be able to make change because you make the choice to have hope.

What about Claudette Colvin? Why don't I know her name, but I know Rosa Parks' name? That's a great question. Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the bus before Rosa Parks ever gave her seat up on the bus. And Claudette Colvin was a 15-year-old girl when she refused to give up her seat on the bus. And in the moment, these white law enforcement officers

get on the bus and are telling her to give up her seat. There's a white woman who wants not just her seat, but she wants all of the African Americans in that row to get up and exit the row because she refuses to sit even in the same row. That would mean they were equal if they could sit in the same row. And Claudette Colvin is like, I paid for this seat. I am sitting in the black section of the bus. I have every right to sit here. The white woman was trying to commandeer the, oh wow.

Yes, because the white section had filled up. Sure, sure, sure. The bus driver is yelling at everybody, move back, move back. We got more whites, everyone back. Precisely, exactly right. And Claudette says in that moment, she feels the hand of Harriet Tubman on one shoulder

and the hand of Sojourner Truth on the other. And she feels them sort of like pin her down in her seat. You know, if she had been alive today and she had seen Hamilton, she would know the phrase history has its eyes on you, that she refuses in that moment to get up. They actually pick her up and carry her off the bus and bring her to jail. They bring her to an adult jail. Again, she's 15 years old. She's sitting in the back seat of the police car while the two officers who are driving her, one wedges himself in the back seat next to her. They're having a conversation about her bra size

amongst themselves while she said she's riding in the back seat of the car, like pinning her knees together, repeating scripture to herself that she will not be sexually assaulted by these police officers. Because for hundreds of years, black women were sexually assaulted by these police officers. Because for hundreds of years, black women were sexually assaulted by white men and nothing ever happened as a result of it.

In fact, Rosa Parks was a rape investigator before she ever became the face of the civil rights movement. She worked for the NAACP investigating rapes. So eventually Claudette Colvin gets pregnant. And so she is a pregnant 16-year-old during the Montgomery bus boycott. And she is essentially excluded from being the face of the civil rights movement because she's a pregnant teenager and she's not the right one. And one of the reasons, right, the optics of it were important. They needed somebody who was regarded as quote unquote respectable.

And sympathetic. Yes. And pregnant teenagers of any race were not viewed as respectable people. We got to kick them to the curb. That's right. Yeah. We had to kick Claudette out of school, which is what they did. You weren't allowed to stay at school.

And Rosa Parks was viewed as, again, quote unquote respectable. She was a seamstress, a quiet, mild-mannered, pleasant looking mom figure who was not viewed as quote unquote problematic like perhaps a pregnant teenager would have been. But Claudette Colvin ultimately feels abandoned by the civil rights movement. Like they just cast her to the side. When she gives birth, nobody contacts her and tries to help her with her baby. Nobody sends her a welcome baby gift. Do we know the father, a much older person?

No, she has never publicized who the father of her baby was, but some people presumed that he was a white man with whom she had a consensual relationship. But yet Claudette talked openly about how she had absolutely no idea where babies came from. She was taken advantage of by an older man who was married, but we don't know his identity, we don't know for sure if he was white,

but she talked about how they had a consensual relationship with each other, but again, she's a teenager. How consensual can it be? That's what I'm saying, if you're a black girl in that era, in that place, it's not like she's safe when she got away from the police. Oh my God, you're just not safe. That's right. She gives birth and she raises her child and all of these things. And ultimately, Claudette Colvin was the party to an important civil rights lawsuit regarding the bus boycott,

Browder v. Gale. The Supreme Court ultimately declared segregation on Montgomery buses unconstitutional. And she has the courage, even though she's been abandoned by the civil rights movement, on the morning that this trial is starting, she's one of the witnesses on this trial, she has to like pump her breast milk because she has a new baby. With a 60s pump. Nothing fancy. So that she's not a breastfeeding teenager leaking milk everywhere in a courtroom where she knows that the opposing counsel is going to try to destroy her character. And she was smart enough to anticipate what

it was that they were trying to do to her. They kept trying to trip her up. They kept trying to get her to admit that Martin Luther King put her up to it. Kept trying to get her to admit that she was a pawn in this bigger party. A big conspiracy. Yes. And she's smart enough to know that she shouldn't take the bait. And ultimately, the lawsuit was successful. And she had an incredibly important role in the first domino that falls in segregation

in the United States. But because she was a pregnant teenager, she was relegated to the sidebars of history. She's actually convicted of multiple crimes as a result of refusing to get off of the bus. Clarence Colvin is still alive. It wasn't until recently that her criminal record was expunged that she filed a request with the state of Alabama. She's like, I did nothing wrong. Your laws were unconstitutional. And so within the last couple of years, she has had that conviction removed from her criminal record. Wow.

Yes. Wow. Oh my gosh. Okay. I guess the thing that I would maybe like to go out on, it's a very hopeful book. And I think it's good that you point out you got to kind of choose it. I wrestle with that all the time. Yeah, do you find yourself struggling with choosing to be hopeful? Do you find yourself struggling with cynicism? Yeah, I have these two voices in my head. One is I'm just a pessimist by default or who knows by nurture but then also I have Steven Pinker's long arc of history in my mind. So I know that the ideals of the Enlightenment are coming

true. I know life's getting better. I know society is getting better. I know that we have less infant mortality. I know we have less starving people. I know all the metrics are good. So I must always keep that in the back of my mind that it is getting better. But I get a little pessimistic about where everyone's at and I get pessimistic about the road out. Are you naturally cynical? That's a good question. No shade if you are. No, I know.

I think it's a very common way to be. I think I'm skeptical. Skeptical is healthy. I don't know if I'm cynical. What do you think? Do you think I am? No. I don't think I am.

You're not cynical. Actually, I do think that I am hopeful, even in the face of a lot of things that don't seem it. My pessimism stems from the fact that both sides have a winner-takes-all mentality. If you're on the left, the solution is for the left to win and dominate, and if you're on the right, the solution is for the right to win and dominate. And it scares me that you have a marriage. This is what no one wants to admit.

We are in a marriage in this country and we're not getting out. There's no way to end the marriage. We're not dividing up the country into the coast. That's not happening. So I look at it in a Gottman Institute way. It's like, okay, well we're married. How do we make the best out of this marriage?

And when I hear that both sides' opinion is how to make it better is winner takes all. Annihilation. Yeah, I get really hopeless. I'm like, the marriage will never get better if both people are still stuck on who's right. That's the truth. And so it's really hard for me

when I look through that lens to see who's going first, who's gonna have the first huge act of generous leap of faith, who's going to treat the other side with some respect. I just get scared, because as you see in marriages, back to Gottman, they can watch a one hour conversation between a couple and predict 96% if they'll get divorced.

They can watch five minutes and still be in the high 80s. And it's contempt. If you have contempt for your partner, the marriage is gonna fail. And the level of just ubiquitous contempt for each other is so disheartening to me. Yeah, you're not wrong that the level of contempt is very high.

I think where it might be helpful to you to think about this is we cannot wait for a person on a white horse to ride in and be the plan. The plan is not a dude with a scroll that arrives with a trumpet and is like, I have arrived and here is the plan. I've just spoken with God. Yeah, that's right.

By the way, if a dude does arrive with a scroll that says the plan, they want to be a dictator. Yeah, exactly. Like the dude with the plan is the dictator. Be scared of the dude with the plan. We cannot sit around waiting for someone to go first, for someone to come save us,

for a political figure to be the voice of reason, because we're the plan. The political party is not the plan. And if you are wedded to a political party being the plan, you are going to be disappointed and you are going to be cynical because that political party is going to fail over and over. They're going to fail if they compromise in your eyes.

We didn't get everything we wanted. When in reality, compromise is the only way anything gets done. Anybody who's ever been married will tell you that it can't be all your way and it can't be all their way. Sometimes we have to eat food we don't like. The compromise cannot be viewed as a failure. The change is going to come when we decide that that's how it's going to be. That's a tremendously freeing feeling because I am no longer subject to external

forces that I have no control over. I don't have to wait for the right person to get elected. The world's shittiest human can get elected and I can still do everything I can and I can still impact the world for good and I can still change the course of history despite my external circumstances and this book is full of people who prove exactly that. Most of the big and important things that have happened in this country, the lasting change that has been created, has come about from ordinary people, the pregnant teenagers of history, the people whose

parents were enslaved, the wrongfully accused, who just kept doing the next needed thing, the people who just kept trying things nobody else had ever done before, the people who were willing to let other people watch them fail, were afraid to let people watch us fail, but the great Americans of history have failed over and over and have set aside the fear of judgment of others and have just decided, I can work with my enemies because my enemies might have a change of heart

at any moment. And how will our enemies ever have a change of heart if we are not there to show them the light? How will our enemies ever change if we are not a force for good in their lives, if we have blocked, deleted, canceled, and unfriended the people who ideologically oppose us? So that orientation of your spirit does not come from a place of everything is going great, comes from the knowledge that things will improve when I choose to hope that they can. I love it, yeah.

I know the compromise is set up as this binary, compromise is failure versus the reality, which is compromise is you get some of the stuff you wanted. Yes, and then you can build on that from there. True binary is, or you get none of it. Or you get nothing. Or you get none of it. Or you get nothing. Or you get some of it for four years and then it goes away in the next administration.

It's really the choice between nothing and something. That's exactly right. And then you can build on something. That is how all long-term change happens. Anybody who is advocating for like a revolution, revolutions have happened infrequently. They are always bloody. They're always highly destructive.

The party that comes out on the other side of it generally fucks it up even worse for the next 15, 20 years. Complete unknown of what is gonna happen afterwards. We view the American Revolution as like the standard of which to judge all revolutions. Your enemies 3000 miles away by boat. Precisely, that's exactly right. And the British were like, you know what?

Fine. They were willing to let it go. Truly. We really rally around it and I'm grateful for it. But I mean, at any point they could have gone all in. I mean, we barely got through. Great. Well, and they tried to come back in the war of 1812 and then they tried to like let the

White House on fire and let the Capitol on fire. And eventually they were like, fine, you know what? Nevermind. We're better off as friends. Let's go okay, France. You know what I mean? They let it go. But the idea of a revolution within the confines of your own border is an entirely separate matter. Change in a pluralistic society should not be advocated for in a revolutionary sense. Change is incremental. You have these two forces of like this very progressive force that wants to have a trajectory of change at a rate that the conservative breaks

are not willing to tolerate. And ultimately the conservative breaks are an important component in this relationship because it's too easy to go quickly too far afield if you have nobody being like, slow down. Well, the only thing that left and right agrees on is social media is terrible. And that's something that had no breaks. Yeah, that's true.

I was just like, go, let's see. And now we're gonna do it again with AI. We'll see. Okay, go. Yeah. No breaks. Oh my Lord. Well, Sharon, you gotta come back.

I didn't get into- I would love to so much. I didn't get into the electoral college. I didn't get into function and structure. I will come back any old time. You just give me a jingle. Okay, everyone check out the small and mighty 12 unsung Americans who changed the course of history. Also listen to your great podcast,

here's where it gets interesting. You're over 400. 400 episodes, yep. Yeah. Yeah. You know what it's like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sharon, this has been so fun, and the small and mighty, I hope everyone checks it out.

And I hope everyone opens the door to 10% more hopefulness, myself included. Thank you. You're radical. I see why you have a huge following. Yeah. Thanks for inviting me, I loved it. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at. I said, I already had to start walking to work and can you please make sure that doesn't happen again? It's happened a few times where there's been a car right there. And she said I have workers in the building they will potentially be here tomorrow too. Like that's not the appropriate answer. They can't park there. Yeah, I know. Say, well the workers definitely can't park

behind our cars. What is wrong with everybody? I'm totally in a spiral right now myself. What the fuck is going on with the world? Something's going on, something's going on. You wanna hear this recent one? Yeah. I'm like, I'm having an oversized reaction, for sure.

I know it. Yeah. It's weirdly related to us talking about the cluster of OVL last episode. So, you know, I did another commercial and then as they do, they send out like a release for tattoos. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. And so I send it to her, she's, you know, last time she signed it. And so I send it to her, she, you know, last time she signed it.

And when I got them, I specifically said, you know, I would never wanna work with a tattoo artist that tries to get paid from their tattoos when you act. Like I don't wanna get tattoos that I can't act anymore, basically. So I send her a thing saying like, hey, would you sign this? Or do you want me to sign it?

Because she even said last time, just sign those. I'm like, cool, this is the vibe I'm looking for. So she sends me back a text that's like, yeah, literally a bunch of language that sounds so weird and legal. And I'm like, what is going on? First of all, you have a little sweat here and you'll regret it when you watch it.

Thanks for telling. Yeah, the wording is so weird. And immediately I'm like, what is going on? So then I call her and I go, hey, what does this text mean? And she's like, well, I am sick of people using my art and you were in a Super Bowl commercial. And I go, I was not in a Super Bowl commercial. And she goes, yes, you were.

And I go, I don't wanna say her name. Yeah. I was not in a Super Bowl commercial. And she goes, yes, you were. And I go, I don't wanna say her name. I was not in a Super Bowl. I know I'm not in a Super Bowl commercial. And she's like, this business should pay. And I'm like, listen, what you're doing right now is setting up that every time I ever work, cause they always ask, are you gonna be able to get those signed off on? And I say yes, because we have that arrangement,

and now I'm gonna say no, you'll have to negotiate with her. And they're gonna say you have to be in a long sleeve. So I just want you to know, what you're telling me is that sincerely, I can never do my job again in a t-shirt. That's like the fallout of what you're saying. But she had already agreed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The last go around of the commercials, that's like the fallout of what you're saying. But she had already agreed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The last go around of the commercials, it's signed. Oh my God. And in my mind, I'm like, okay. I'm trying to make a good argument. I'm like, how has she decided people are profiting from her work and she's not getting a kickback? Yeah, it's like one thing if you were doing

a tattoo commercial. Yeah, it'd be another thing about selling like an action figure of myself, and you could argue this is part of, you know. But I'm just either, so I'm having this very oversized reaction of like, I feel like I have to get my whole fucking arm lasered off, because I can't be held hostage. Yeah, well you won't have to do that.

I'm sure it'll get worked out, but like. I'm so, I'm just hurt by it. I know, I know. Like I finally texted her, I'm like, I'm just really hurt by this. Every time she ever gave me the bill, I promise you, I'm not bragging, this is just relevant. I always gave her twice what she ever asked for.

Like I was, I went out of my way to try to be. I am sorry, that's so annoying. It's so annoying and now I feel like I have this, like I'm overreacting, but I'm like, I'm gonna get them all lasered up and then I'm gonna have a different, you know, whatever. It's just a crazy, literally for the rest of my career, I have to wear.

But you don't. Or go through two hours of makeup and get it all covered. I mean, can't, is it, oh God, I guess like, it wasn't in writing from the beginning that you could. Yeah, I wish I would have known like, if I were gonna tattoo again, I'd be like, hey, I want a tattoo, but I need you to give me the rights, at least in my arm.

I'm not asking for the rights to reproduce the image and sell stills of it or sell anything. Just if it's on my body, I gotta be able to walk around and do things. Like how dare you, like, I feel like I got branded now. It's like, it feels violating. It does. Yeah. I'm sorry.

Yeah, it's a real, again, I know I'm, it just happened, so I'm really like hot about it. I feel so powerless. Like, okay, well that's a wrap on that. Oh my God. I hate people today. Yeah. I hate people today. I do, today. Today only. Well, I don't know how many more days,

but I don't know what's going on. Okay, well, I'm glad I vented. Yeah, that's very frustrating. People are, are we leaving that in? Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's very frustrating. People are, are we leaving that in? Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's what happened. Yeah, both of us are in the middle of some bureaucratic crises.

I don't like the way I'm being spoken to. Oh my God. At all. You're being talked to by a lawyer. I've read some of this stuff and I'm actually, I'm gonna applaud your restraint. Thank you. Because I have wanted to come unglued the way this lawyer is talking to you.

It's so disrespectful and condescending. Condescend, apex condescending. It's just gripping. Yes, yes. I will say this to anyone who's listening. This is a PSA. If you are being represented by someone, you really need to know how they're representing you.

Because during this process, a lot of what I've thought is, holy shit, I need to make sure no one on my behalf is ever speaking to anyone like this ever. Because even if I might not know, and this happens in this job too, with publicists and agents, and one time it happened, it was so rough,

the representative was so rough, that we were like, well, we're not gonna do it. And I know this person. And I was like, I need to tell this person because they don't- Did you? Yeah. Oh, and what was their response?

They were like, I had no idea and I'm so sorry that that happened. And like, I wonder how many other times this has happened. Right. Well, just to make one counterpoint, because I was privy to three and a half years ago, a ton of correspondence between lawyers, some that were representing me

and some that were representing another entity. And I will, I can admit, I was so much more agitated by the way the lawyers were talking than the lawyers were. I do think they have a really like weird baseline, aggressive condescending, like if anything, it just made me really happy. That's not my day to day drafting letters like that and stuff.

That seems, I just don't think I'd go down my lunch break and feel great. Yeah. Just being engaged in this like really sharp back and forth. Yeah, maybe you're right. I just think there's different levels of it. Like I know a lawyer well who I know doesn't- Max?

Yeah. Yeah. Me too, Tom Hanson. I mean, I know multiple lawyers and I think there's a scale of how they speak to people. Yeah. And I think a very good lawyer does not speak condescendingly.

They speak very directly. Sure. Yeah, yeah. That's all that's needed. I think the ones that long-term, I think you can get like little Purick victories along the way and be misled, but long-term, this is kind of similar, this is tangential, but related. Actors, there's a ton of them,

get away with horrendous behavior while their movies are working, and while their shows are working. And like, I have been given a lot of second chances in show business, for sure. Like so grateful for that. I had peers that all hit at the same time as I did. Some of them were really, really hard to deal with.

And when they had downturns, there was no second chance for them. You know? Kristen, she had like lows in movies after what's her name Sarah Marshall a Couple that just were okay financially. Yeah, but People stand in line to work with her. Yeah, if you're Easy to work with and good at your job Ultimately you long term. Yeah, it works out for you

But that's all to say I think think you really have to keep an eye on who's speaking for you because that can change the public opinion of you or the personal opinion of you. Like it's dicey. Anywho. Whew, I guess it's a ding ding ding cause this is for America's government teacher. Yes. Who we love.

That was so fun and we only got to like two or three things on my whole list. I know, we could have talked to her forever. I feel bad about being cranky on a fact check, but I guess it's okay. At least we're saying it. I was kidding. I just knew I couldn't get,

I knew that I was so upset when we sat down, that I feel like me hiding it would have, I'm not even sure I would have been able to hide it. It's not even, I on my walk, wait, when do we start recording? Did we talk, did we get on air that my car was blocked? No, no, you walked here. I walked here unexpectedly

because I went to my car and it was blocked. Yeah, someone's parked behind you. Yes. In your parking spot. Yes, and I couldn't back out and I just got my car fixed and I was like, I'm not like gonna attempt to try to- Oh, I guess I'm, now I have a grievance because I really wanted to see the door. You should be mad about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, and so I texted my landlord and I was like, somebody's parked here, can you ask them to leave? Yeah, and then I'm not hearing back. So I'm like, I gotta walk. So I started walking and then I got a text back that I did not like, that didn't feel. It's like, it's just easy to say, oh, I'm sorry that happened.

Yeah, we'll handle it or yes, I'm not there all the time, but we'll figure it out. It's easy, I don't understand what happens to people's brains when I guess they feel attacked, even though this has not, it wasn't like I was like, you did this. You son of a bitch. Yeah, anyway, so I had to walk here.

I'm gonna be 20 minutes late to work because of you. I walked here, I was itchy. Yeah, it's hot. It's hot, I put makeup on. You wore an outfit. I was like, my face is gonna break out because I'm wearing makeup and I'm walking. You wore an outfit for a car ride.

I did. Yeah, and you didn't have time to go in and change, put on shorts and a tank. No, I didn't. So on my walk, I planned on saying, I'm in a really bad mood. Oh, that's what you were gonna do. Yeah, I was gonna tell people I was in a bad mood.

And then you told me you were in a bad mood. Yeah, well, that's kinda nice. I like that we're both in a really bad mood. Oh, that's what you were gonna do. Yeah, I was gonna tell people I was in a bad mood, and then you told me you were in a bad mood. Yeah, well, that's kinda nice. I like that we're both in a bit. Too bad to make it good? Yeah, I'm already happier. Me too, me too. Yeah, this is a good venting session. I don't feel as alone in the thoughts.

That's why we have support systems. I started ruminating in the, you know, the examples are getting more and more dramatic in my head. It's gonna be okay. But I know, but it is blue. I'm gonna cut my arm off. No. By myself. We almost lost a finger this week and an arm.

And a toes on the way out. Oh yeah, how's the toe? A lot of people are really mad at me and I understand why. They're like, get to the fucking Dr. Shepherd. Yeah, and that's fair. That's really fair. They care about you. Yeah, it's really sweet.

Speaking of outfits, since I walked here in this outfit, I wanna shout out this sweatshirt. Okay, great. It's from Kristen Show. No, remember Kmart? Do you wanna tell people what happened to Kmart? I almost can't, especially with this other upset. I read an article that they closed the last Kmart.

I hated that. It's really sad. Also in the article, it said there was years where they were making 36 billion a year. Wow. How, like if you're sitting on top of a- That's before Walmart. Yeah, I think so.

But can you, you're sitting on a company that's making 36 billion a year. I don't know how you imagine like, well, we're gonna be completely bankrupt in a few years. Insulting. Yeah. How long, longer than a few years, right? Probably, I'm sure it was a gradual.

Yeah. Oof. Well, RIP Kmart. I know, I loved going to Kmart with Papa Bob, get those hot wheels, wake him up, put some washcloths on his face, get punched across the room, then go get the mongoose.

Head on to Kmart. Yeah, no. What Rob? There's apparently a couple of them in Guam and the US Virgin Islands if you wanna go. Remember I said that to you, I don't know if globally they're done. No, that was the last American one closed.

Last American one. So we gotta go to Guam. All right. I've never been to Guam. Neither, I would like to go. Okay, no, but this sweatshirt is not from Kmart. It is from Hey Gang. And it is from Kristin's show.

Her show, Nobody Wants This. Kristin in one of the episodes wears this sweatshirt. She says, oh, it's my favorite sweatshirt and I'm gonna ruin it for you, this dog. Yeah, yeah. And I obviously asked her where the sweatshirt was from. And that's the dog that looked weirdly like a two and a half times size whiskey.

It did. It was exactly like whiskey, but two and a half times. Yeah, I was triggered a little bit. Yeah. Because of the bite. PTSD. So I asked her and she was like, yes, get it, get it now, get two.

Oh, that's what she said. She told me to get two. And you did? Yeah, obviously I did. Okay, smart. So in case one goes, gets, you know, In case you find a dog. Life and maintaining it. Life and maintaining art. Okay, smart. So in case one gets, you know. In case you find a dog.

Life and art. Life and art. Yeah, life and art. So anyway, it's a great sweatshirt, highly recommend it. Get two. Okay, now I wanna say something that I know it's gonna make you really nervous, but I'll tell you why I really feel compelled, because I can relate.

So first of all, lots of people have been having fun with Two Minutes in the Archive. So it's going well for the most part, it really is. But a lot of people are really, really confused. And for those people, because I'm a bit this way, this is a bad characteristic of mine, it's not bad in them, but in me it's bad, is if I feel like I'm being manipulated or tricked,

or I don't like that. So when I, I heard enough of those words, like, you know, for the me's in the audience, I feel like I just't like that. Yeah. So when I heard enough of those words, like, you know, for the me's in the audience, I feel like I just wanna be honest. And this is also why I said we shouldn't be doing that bit. I know, but I've really thought this through and I think it's okay. So for those people, the long and the short of it,

I can't get into why we're in this situation, but I do wanna say that it's incredibly helpful to us if people check out the archive. Yeah. That's it. And no pressure. No pressure. No pressure. But we do have some good episodes in there.

Yeah, yeah. And also you can go to YouTube. Also watch us on YouTube. Watch the fact check on YouTube because it is fun. It's fun. Yeah, I enjoy it. Yeah. Okay.

I took a hike this morning. I had been feeling really rough for a week and really tired and sleeping every chance I could. And you had harness. And I had a, I had a harness. You had the bug I had, I think. I had the bug you had. But anyways, today I was like, I think I got it in me

and I did go for a hike and something happened about two thirds of the way through the hike on the way down. It kind of broke. I found myself dancing as I was coming down the hill. Yeah, I was skipping and I was listening to a great song. And I was really just dancing. I was feeling really good. Uh-oh.

Before you got the- Before the tattoo thing happened, yeah. So I was feeling really good. And then I got home and I was like, oh, I gotta get the trailer ready for the hayride because I'm going out of town tomorrow morning. And when I land, it's virtually Halloween. So I gotta be on it,

which meant I gotta take the razor out of the trailer. Of course, the battery in the razor is dead, as you would expect. Of course, of course. So that's a whole thing. And then this was the most non-linear little string of chores I've ever done. So I go to charge the battery, that's not working.

Then I realized I gotta jump the battery. Also, they've stacked so much stuff from the remodel of this garage for this studio on the trailer. So there's just trash everywhere. So I'm dealing with trash. And then I go in to get my leaf blower, because I want to blow out

all the crap of the thing and I see my chainsaw and I'm like, oh, I've been meaning to cut. Oh my God. That's so crazy. I'm like, oh fuck, I've been meaning to cut that branch off of that ficus that's by the sauna. And so I grabbed, now I have my chainsaw and my leaf blower and then, I mean, I'm doing way too many things at once

and I'm like, I gotta fill the tires with, and then I parked the razor, I get it going, I jump it, I gotta park the razor on the side of the yard where I realize there's too much junk in that side of the yard. I'm gonna start piling it up behind the garage. So I'm doing that and I keep moving the chainsaw. Then I go and I cut the tree limb down

and then I gotta take it to the drive and cut it into a bunch of small pieces to put in the thing. And when I came in, because I went right from my hike to starting this thing and I was in a little white tank top and my little blue hiking shorts. And by the time I came in,

Carly was inside and it looked like I had laid down in a pile of leaves and rolled around for 20 minutes because I was so sweaty before I started all this stuff. And my face was dripping with sweat. It was about an hour and 30 minutes of like me hustling and then looking at that, deciding to do that. Again, very scattered approach to all these tasks. So when I walked in, Carly looked at me,

she just goes, what happened to you? Yeah, that's a fair question. I guess it's time for me to remind you that last episode, you were very concerned about me using a very tiny tool to try to get my ring off. And here you are juggling chainsaws and leaf blowers and chopping and chopping. But I put the leaf blower down when I operated the chainsaw.

I mean, I'm just gonna say it feels a little lopsided. Okay. Okay, but if you saw me using the chainsaw and I was cutting the tree limb and I had my leg below the tree, well, in the path of the chainsaw, you would go, that's a bad game plan. And I just think a sharp knife trying to cut metal.

I was cutting away from my finger, FYI. But a sharp knife in it, under, you'd have to go under the ring. I was under, yeah. And then the finger is a water weenie, it's a big balloon. And so you're either going that way towards the balloon or you're coming this way towards your artery. Oh God.

Both of those are really. Okay, I don't like that. They're bad, bad game plans, I think. You're right. Okay. Now I probably did do some things along the way that you would have not liked. I certainly didn't put my safety goggles on

when I used the chainsaw. That's a no-no. That's not good. Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. Wear your safety goggles-no. That's not good. Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. Wear your safety goggles, folks. They're very good for you. Okay, there really are not that many facts

because she's a teacher. She has the facts. We talked about the different kinds of democracies. And there are so many. There's a direct democracy, a popular democracy, a representative democracy, a parliamentary democracy, Westminster democracy, Jacksonian democracy, oh, I'm sorry, parliamentary, Westminster, Jacksonian

are all types of representative democracies. Okay, what about dictatorship democracies? You don't see those? There's organic or authoritarian democracy. Ooh, how does that work? Democracy where the ruler holds a considerable amount of power, but their rule benefits the people. The term was first used by supporters of Bonaparte. Ah, Napoleon Bonaparte.

There's also a demarchi. It's a form of government where people are randomly selected from the citizenry through sortition to either act as general governmental representatives or to make decisions in specific areas of governance. That feels dicey. There's religious democracies, there's types based on location,

types based on ethnic influence. There's autocratic democracy, anticipatory democracy. There's so many. There's so many. Oh, there is democratic dictatorship. How does that work? You elect a dictator. People's democratic dictatorship,

ooh, is a phrase incorporated into the constitution of the People's Republic of China and the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party. The premise of the people's democratic dictatorship is that the CCP and state represent and act on behalf of the people, but in the preservation of the dictatorship of the proletariat,

possesses and may use powers against reactionary forces. What feels undemocratic about a dictatorship is I'm not aware of any dictatorship that had term limits. So like what you vote one time and then the person serves until they die. That seems to be how these dictatorships go or they hand it off to their son and then they die a couple of weeks later.

It seems kind of antithetical to democracy. I don't think it's for you. Yeah. And if you're a dictator, you could just end democracy the day you get elected. Well, exactly, or you just don't leave. Okay, the number, this was in 2023, but 87% of voters surveyed said they support

requiring criminal background checks for all gun buyers. Yeah, that's huge. That's overwhelming. I'm looking at a Gallup poll also on abortion and the amount of people who think, it's over 50% the amount of people who think it should be considered in certain circumstances. Just over 50. Why do of people who think it should be considered in certain circumstances. Just over 50.

Well. Why do I keep hearing like 70? But it says legal under any circumstances, the percentage is 35, which that's high, or I think sort of. Legal only under certain is 50. Okay. Illegal in all 12, no opinion three. So actually legal is very high.

Yeah, we're missing quite a bit of, to make 100 here. No, that is 35, 50, 12, three. 35, 50, 85, 12, 97, three, 100. So really- What was 12? Illegal in all. Oh. So really, if it's legal only under certain, that's 50, and legal under any being 35, that is really high. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

So yeah, so they're saying like 85% think that it should be legal under some situation or circumstance. Which is similar to the guns. Yeah. What's your graph? Oh, I just thought this was interesting. I read it this morning.

This was also in Malcolm's book, Revenge of the Tipping Point. There's very few social issues that change really rapidly. And one was gay marriage, as outlined in that wonderful episode I always encourage people to listen to when Will McGrace or something, Revisionist History. That changed in like 10 years, like radically changed.

So, US adults that supported legal marijuana use in 1970 was, from this graph, it looks like about 5%. Okay. In 2000, it was 31%, and now it's 70%. Wow, that's nuts. Yeah, it's like more Wow, that's nuts. Yeah, it's like more than 2X since 2000. Very few things do 70% of Americans support.

I know. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. I'm all for it. Alcohol use drops, generally, in all the states that legalize it. Yeah, I'm definitely for it. Yeah. I don't know if I love

that everywhere you walk in New York smells like weed. I mean, I can deal with it. I'm not for it. Yeah. I don't know if I love that everywhere you walk in New York smells like weed. I mean, I can deal with it. I'm not like, but it's just interesting. The whole city smells like weed now. Our city on the road smells like weed, as I always say. When I'm riding my motorcycle, I'm just in a constant cloud of weed.

I never smell it. Well, you're in your car driving next to one. I'm like blowing by a ton at lights with their windows down smoking or whatever. It's not for me, but it's great for. Have you done much pot smoking? How many times have you smoked pot? Not very many at all.

Every time I've done it, I don't like it. How many do you think? Did you smoke weed or? Did it in college a couple times. Smoked or ate something? No, bong. Yeah, that's smoking it. I never smoked a joint, I guess is my,

that's different, right? So you smoked a bong. Yeah, a couple times. And you coughed. If you weren't choking, you ain't smoking, did that happen? I guess I coughed. I don't know if I did it right.

I'm not very good at inhaling. Yeah, maybe you didn't inhale it. I don't know if I did that. Okay, and then have you ever had a gummy or anything? I've never had an edible, I don't think. Right. Never had a pot brownie? Mm-mm.

That's what you did before they were legal. Yeah, no, I don't like it. It's not for you. I think I've used the pen. The vape. The marijuana vape. Yeah. I have used that, it's not for me. You don't like it, I never liked itpe. Yeah. I have used that. It's not very nice.

You don't like it? I never liked it either. Yeah. Especially when I was drinking, it was a disaster. Right. Every time I smoked weed when I was drinking, I ended up throwing up, and I would convince myself like once every year.

To try it. Like, ah, just, that's not gonna happen this time. It always happened. I just don't think I felt like I got anything from it positively. Yeah, well what I always said is it made me inarticulate, which is the only thing I love about myself. I know, but I think booze can do that.

With enough of it, yeah, yeah. But I think I was pretty good at staying at the, like maybe I lost 8% of my verbal dexterity. I think it makes me smarter. Yes, I have 1000% of what I would like two drinks in, I'm like, I'm on fire. Yeah, I'm like, these thoughts are just coming. The brain is firing.

But I wonder if I was with sober people, if they would be like, no, you sound dumb. Well, this is very anecdotal, but I think people liked me more. Now look, there was a zone where people didn't like me as much, I don't think I'm completely unobjective about this, but I do think me and one through three drinks, people liked me more, because I'm just friendlier.

No, you're friendly, sober. Friendly enough. I doubt it, I doubt it. You doubt it. You smell a rat. If there was a pill that absolutely ensured that I would only have two drinks anytime I drank. Yeah.

That's a curious thought. Yeah, would you do it? I don't think you would do it. I mean, I wanna say no, cause my life's great. Yeah. Other than my tattoo issue, which will pass shortly. I'll be completely over it.

And I'll regret even bringing it up on this, but in fact, I think I already regret it. But, my life is so good. Why do I need anything more? Everything's fine. I have a great fucking life. And you don't miss it. Exactly, I'm not a wallflower.

I don't need it as a social lubricant. You know, married, I'm not out hitting on girls or any little courage. Exactly. Yeah. I don't see why you would. Yeah. Even as someone who likes it, I don't see why you would. I don't see why you would is certainly linked

to what we know about me, which is just like, it's too dangerous to ever play with. But you have to really believe this procedure makes me only drink. No, no, I am. I'm really thinking, like, I don't see why you would, because for one, you're like, you're also like, you have a really strict diet.

Like, it doesn't really make sense for you to incorporate it back in. It doesn't. Even if it was only two. Oh, hi. Who do we got there? Sorry. That's okay. Hi.

Hi. I've got the trailer, as you see see ready for you and I to belt. I ran home. You did? I'm worried about it's condition though. I just sat on it and. You worried about the condition of the trailer? You did a little integrity test and you think it's below.

I think it, I really hope this Halloween we don't have a broken leg in that. Ah. Okay, well I'll walk around on it and we might have to put some additional plywood or something down. Oh yes, I would love that. Oh, are you guys gonna go get hay and stuff?

No one's Suze, at least for the signs. Funny you'd say that. Yeah, very funny. We're gonna hire very nice lawyers to deal with whoever Suze us. Whoever Suze us. Yeah. All right, we'll get out of here so I can finish

and then we can go. We're almost done. Got it, okay. All right, I'll get out of here so I can finish and then we can go. We're almost done. All right, I love you. Bye, buddy. Welcome home. Bye, buddy. Okay, so. And then that happens.

And I go, I don't care about my tattoo thing. What do I? So you're gonna erase them? I caught my arm off. No. Just to prove to you I can. No, with your chainsaw. No, you know what I would do?

Do you know how they castrate bowls? What? No, of course I don't know that. Okay, they just put a rubber band around their balls and then they just fall off at some point. That's how they do it. It's literally what I was doing with my finger. Exactly. That's exactly the point I was trying to make.

So my idea would just be, I'll just tie a shoestring around my arm and cut off the circulation until one day it just falls off the ground. Oh my God. Oh my God. Listen, you're not gonna need to do that. I'll just say, I don't think you would drink again.

Yeah. I just think you would. I don't know that you'd like it anymore. One thing I would like it. That first two drinks. I love that. Windows down in Northern Michigan, Bob Seeger playing Camel White, a couple beers.

I mean, fuck that was good. You liked the feeling of it? Love. And it's the first two, feeling of it? Love. Oh, okay. And it's the first two, as we already now learned. Me too. It's dopamine. The rest is shitty.

I don't miss any of, I don't miss drinks four through 12. I just wonder now though, if like you're gonna wake up and you're gonna have a little bit of a headache. Like it's gonna, it's, your body's also different. Yeah, I'm old.

And you're probably gonna be like, oh boy, this isn't the same. Yeah, even two doesn't feel good. Two doesn't feel great. I don't wanna work out today. Yeah. My thing is more an ethical thing, or it's kind of like your ring where you consider

your, all your luck is gone. Yeah. Mine is like, that would feel greedy. Like I have such a good life. I have so many good friends and I have a great family and it feels a little greedy to want more. And I feel like if I had the pill, if I took the pill so I could do that and get more,

I would pay the price somehow. I just have this weird Cosmos-y feeling about that. Does that make any sense? Well, it makes sense, but I think- The gods would go, your life is good enough. You don't need more. Just focus on what you have. It's so great.

And by wanting more, I would somehow ruin something. But it's not wanting more if there is a pill that just is- Available. Available, it's not like you're like, I'm spending, I'm devoting some of my life, ew! Masquado? I think it was, yeah. Masascuados are hot right now.

Ah! My zapper's going off like crazy. Geez. Um. I, I hated that. Cause I'm already so itchy. Yeah. I'm very itchy.

I know, you had a, that walk was rough on you. That's so. I should have come and pick you up, I didn't see that text for a minute. Oh, that's fine. Okay. It's not like you had a, that walk was rough on you. I should have come and pick you up, I didn't see that text for a minute. Oh, that's fine. It's not like you're saying, I'm gonna devote two hours every day to figuring out a pill.

That is costing you, that's taking away from your good life. But if it's just available, why wouldn't you? It's gene editing or something. Unless, and if we knew for sure it wasn't gonna hurt you. But if you're saying, we don't know for sure if wasn't gonna hurt you. But if you're saying we don't know for sure if it's gonna hurt you, then you shouldn't do it. Well, but this is, we know.

Yeah, then I don't see how. It's been on the market for 20 years and everyone who's taken has never ever had a third drink or fourth, let's keep it at three. Okay. Then I don't see why there would ever be a problem. Well, right, it's just this weird feeling. It would feel like a lack of gratitude

for this great life I have. That's really warped, I think. It's not either or. You can be happy with your life and then also, then there's this other cool thing that I can have with no cost. Yeah, it just feels greedy. That's like saying like,

I shouldn't go to any parties because my life's so good. I shouldn't enjoy myself anymore. A really good time. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why I feel that way, but it's linked to that kinda. It's probably good you feel that way.

Maybe that's because of, maybe it's ingrained enough. I think, you know, it permanently, you know, even if they invented a pill, it's, I don't want to call it brainwashing, but it is brainwashing in a very productive way. Yeah. Well, it's retraining.

You really format your brain to think in a certain way. And I hear this from people all the time, like go back out. Even if they do it successfully, people certainly do. I'm not one to say that no one returns to it successfully, but even the ones that return to it successfully, and when I've talked to them and they're honest, they're like, it's still in there. They're like, even though it's fine,

the guilt and shame or I'm doing something I shouldn't do, that's kind of a wrap on that, I think. I don't think you ever get your head back into it not being a very loaded that, I think. I don't think you ever get your head back into it not being a very loaded thing, even if you succeed at doing it moderately or something. That makes sense. My thought, I do believe people do it.

Like I don't think they're lying to me when they say it's going fine. I can only imagine myself doing it, which would be, I could do it, but it would require so much agony to control it, that it just, I don't think it would be a net win. Like when I did drink for a week and without a paddle before the wheels came off, you know,

like when we were talking with Matt and Seth, like I drank a glass and a half of wine every night, or two glasses of wine for a week. And I can do that, but it's like, I'm laying in bed after two glasses, white knuckling it and going, you can have a third, don't have a third. If you have a third, you've broken your rule.

No, you can have a third. Who cares? Thirds, nothing. No, you gotta keep it at two. That was the rule. Like the madness of it is, it's so not worth the two glasses I was able to have.

And also wine, that was part of the strategy. I'm like, I don't like wine. I'll get wine. I should be able to resist having a third glass of wine. Wine's so good though. Well, it wasn't for me. You know how people have booze that they'll claim makes them mean?

Oh yeah. You know a lot of people have this, I don't drink wild turkey. They don't drink, a lot of people don't drink. Last time I did, I slapped my mother-in-law, it's like, okay. I don't drink tequila, it makes me angry. Yeah, a lot of people can't drink brown liquor.

That seems to be a thing. Which is racist. I know. All alcohols. But let me just say that my most embarrassing, regrettable nights of drinking, 90% were when I drank too much wine. Really?

Oh yeah. I mean, I have one in particular that is so humiliating. And I think about it probably once a month. You do? What happened? What kind of wine was it? Oh, fuck. A red. I always drank a red. You do? What happened? What kind of wine was it?

Oh, fuck. A red. I always drank a red. Sure. Like a cab or? Erin and I, I mean, I can't even believe, this is so embarrassing. By the way, I just want to add to, Erin is perfect. It's not like he doesn't correct my bad behavior.

We both have a huge tolerance for bad behavior with each other, but there is, we're also semi-responsible. So there's, we have gentle ways of going like, yeah, you're a little out of King, yeah. So I was doing a car show in Carmel at the, that famous golf course. Had something to do with the course d'oligons.

There was like a Buick car show, Pebble Beach. And we're at this hotel and my brother had just started drinking. He hadn't drank for like 15 years and he started drinking again. Proved to not be a great idea, but he was sweetly kind of excited to drink with his brother because I had been drinking that whole time.

So he's like, oh great, we're gonna drink. And I lost control, I drank a few bottles of red wine. By yourself. No, with Aaron and my brother. Oh, a few bottles split. No, no, I had a few bottles of wine. That was my ass, okay. And I think because we were close to wine country,

and we woke up in the morning, I was so hungover. And it was a total blackout. Like I was missing a couple hours of the night. Wow. And Erin gently said, do you know how many times you asked your brother if he knew what the starting point is? Oh my God.

I mean, I can't even say it out loud. You have told me this before. I have. Yeah, you have. I commend you that you talk about it. Oh, fuck. Yeah, that's when the monster in me would come out when I was really, really hammered.

Can you say it again? Because I'm not sure. I know, I know. I'm gonna say it again. Can you say it? I mean, it really still sears my soul. He said, do you know how many times you asked your brother if he knew the starting grade point average at UCLA. Oh my God.

It was funny as you're so embarrassed by that. Because I know what I was doing. I'm trying to self aggrandize myself. I'm like in that bad zone of drunk I would get sometimes where it was like I couldn't slake my ego's lust. Oh, interesting. I needed to like, like I needed to be important. I needed to be, yeah.

And I just, and I'm like, no, how many times? He goes, dude, I mean, oh my God, maybe 30 times. And I was like, oh my God, what was it like? D'Aleen was slurring me, oh fuck. But did Aaron, was he blackout too? Like I assume everyone was blackout. No, Aaron was drunk but he didn't blackout. Oh, and your brother also wasn't?

I could drink a fifth of Jack, no problem, and not blackout, but this wine got me as it often did. And then another time, I just took Nate to task one time on a balcony. What do you mean, what'd you ask him? In the most regrettable way imaginable. And I just, I woke up the next day, I was like, oh my God, I was saying things I don't even believe.

Right. You know what it really was? I was hurt I didn't have a bigger role in the movie he produced. That's what was really going on. Oh, cause you were a vomiteer. That's right, I was vomiteer at the party. And I think I wanted a character name.

And I was hammered on his ex-girlfriend's balcony with him on wine. Oh wow. And I just really started being horrendous. Oh no. Fuck, but I remembered that. I guess it wasn't a blackout, because the next morning I was like, I mean what were you saying to Nate?

The sweetest point. Did you apologize? Yes. I always apologized. That's like a lot of people, I've done it, like where I am like, I don't think that was like my best showing, but also, but if everyone else is drunk,

I do a bad job of not appalling. I'm just kinda like, let's just, no one needs to talk about anything anyone did because everyone did embarrassing shit. And that's a covenant. Like my friends in Detroit, who we all drank so hard. I mean, that's what we did. We all were, I'm not gonna call them anything,

but we were all fucking. Drinking to excess. Till six in the morning and you know, getting ugly. And we had a pact, yeah, you didn't really have to ever say sorry. But there were definitely incidents where I don't think there was any other option. Like I woke up in the morning,

I was like, well, that was damaging to our friendship. Like that was, if I just never say anything to Nate, that would have been, I think, very damaging to our friendship, because it was a very ugly side of myself that I, I don't, I mean, you could argue, well, it is a side of yourself because it came up, but I can't even really relate.

Sober, I don't even have those thoughts I was having. I don't think any of those things. That is what's interesting for me, I think, in these, when there's like scuffles or fights or arguments. Emotional stuff. Yeah, that happen. Sometimes I do apologize now, but it's tricky because often whatever is being said

and what's coming out, I do believe. Right. I want those things out there. Out there, right. And it's sometimes, it's not good that it takes the alcohol to say it. But you don't regret that it's not good that it takes the alcohol to say it. But you don't regret that it's known.

Exactly, so then it gets like, it's a little bit tricky. I mean, of course it's apologizing for the way it happened. But then you're sober and then you have to revisit it. I mean, my God, there is nothing like laying in your bed with a fucking pounding headache and just replaying all the events. I mean, it's so morbid. Yeah.

Well. Oh, I miss it so much. Yeah. This was a processing fact check. It was, it was, which is ding, ding, ding to the government. That's right, they process all this stuff. They process stuff. All right, well, I government. That's right, they process all this stuff. They process stuff. All right, well, I love you.

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