Bear Grease - Ep. 470: Render - Civil War Memory, Dr. Brooks Blevins, and Why We Remember

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Host Clay Newcomb along with Render crew members Dr. Misty Newcomb, Bear Newcomb and Josh "Landbridge" Spielmaker unpack Part 3 of the Civil War series with special guest Dr. Brooks Blevins. The conversation explores why people fought in the Civil War, how different generations have remembered the conflict, and what it means to discover your own family's connection to history. Along the way, the crew discusses Native American involvement in the war, the evolution of Civil War memory, family legacy, and the challenge of understanding the past without oversimplifying it. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. We're rolling. We're rolling. Here we are. We found ourselves on the third episode of Bear Grease's attempt to dip but a single pail of water out of the ocean of the Civil War. And Mai has it been fascinating. It really has.

And my, do we have an eclectic group of people here. and we're going to do the classic bear grease render introduce our guests last. With varying levels of facial hair right now. Yeah. Yes. They may not even be able to recognize me just by audio. You might want to tell everybody what your name is. My name is Clay Newcomb, and I work for Farm Bureau.

I'm a Farm Bureau insurance agent. I've shaved my beard. Misty always says I look like an insurance agent. Well, he just looks trustworthy. You know, he looks like... As opposed to how he looked before. Well, he didn't look trustworthy. Okay, listen.

Last week, I went to the pinnacle of social strata in Arkansas at the Little Rock Country Club. Oh. Your very Clay Newcomb was at the Little Rock Country Club. Okay, Brooks, you would understand that. Who have not yet to introduce? I'm waiting for him. More than one very well-respected, esteemed older. Older gentleman looked at me and instantaneously went,

you look great, way better than you used to. It's always a backhanded compliment. It was so immediate. Instinctive. Like these guys just couldn't help being. I mean, it was a compliment. They were like saying, hey, you look good. But really it was like, for the last 20 years, you have looked really rough.

Yeah. Oh, have you gotten yourself off? home now. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, so I took it. So anyway, I'm clean shave. That's, that's all we're going to say about it. You know, Jelly Roll the other day, there was, there was, there was, there was, there was, there was, there was, it came out in the media that Jelly Roll had divorced his wife, okay? Okay. And it was like, all over the media and everybody was like, oh no, jelly rolls left his wife. Jelly Roll didn't, in fact, leave his wife. And he spoke about it and he said, I'm going to say this one time and then we're going to be done. I'm still with my wife. Everything's okay. Fake media, you know, was promoting this

stuff. He said, this is the last time I will speak about it. This is the last time that I will speak about this shaved face, Josh. Well, is it going to stick around for a while? I'll be speaking about it. We have a great crew. Dr. Mystic Newcomb. Good to be here. So lovely to have you. Josh Lambridge, spill maker. Present. Bear John, the Bear John Newcomb. And in the, Nova's hot seat. What about, one of my favorite people, Dr. Brooks,

I understand why. Yes. I, when I was in Little Rock, the time before, Brooks, I told a very, a big crowd of people,

I said, if you want to be my friend, like if we officially engage in friendship, you know, there's like some paperwork you've got to go through and stuff. One of the required reading materials is Dr. Brooks Blevins book,

Arkansas, Arkansas. So this book is, what's this book about? It's about the history of the image of Arkansas, kind of the hillbilly image of Arkansas. Probably the funnest book I ever wrote. So you've written a ton of books. Several, yeah. So Brooks is known as, I mean, he's a historian and works, what university do you work for?

At Missouri State University. State. Yeah. In Springfield. In Springfield, yeah. But he's known as the the historian of the Ozarks. I mean, undisputable. You might not, I'm sure you don't know this, but when we first started at our school, we had a summer program. And I made all the middle schoolers read this. Really? Yeah. We did a whole summer program about Arkansas, and it was so fun. And I mean, it was, we went all over Arkansas and we, you know, saw all the things and we read all the, it was probably our second summer. we had the best time and the kids thought this was a real riot. You were a little young. You were not a middle schooler, but your sisters. Your sisters were in it. What I think is so great about this book is it really gives you the backstory of place.

And not everybody's from Arkansas and that's okay. But the name Arkansas is spelled the modern, correct way, and then the second Arkansas and the title is spelled with a W. because in like early frontier Arkansas, many people spelled it fanatically, I guess, and put a W at the end. And so, so Brooks point inside of this book is that there's,

there's kind of two Arkansases in a way. And some of it is kind of fictitious and it's kind of a stereotype that's stuck with us through the years, but it's all rooted in some element of truth that was amplified for all these different reasons. And, and it's a fascinating book, but to me the point is to just do your best to try to understand where you're from.

That's what it did for me. And I was an adult, an adult before I read this. And I ask, Brooks, would you say that we are Arkansasans or Arkansasers? I would say everyone gets to decide. And what does it say about you if you describe yourself as an Arkansason? It's, you're probably not too far from the Little Rock Country Club. A little hoity-toity. Yeah, I consider myself an Arkansas.

Wonderful people. Yeah. Yeah. I'm an Arkansasier. Okay. But I say, you know, not everyone's comfortable with that term Arkansaser because it does sound more country. Uh-huh. And so whatever people want to call themselves.

Can you make a switch for more? one to the other? Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit of paperwork. And I probably do myself just in different circumstances. You know, my Arkansas yourself might not go over as well teaching a graduate history course at Missouri State. You know, it's a little bit of code switching, I guess.

I get it. I get it. Yeah. But I'm, yeah, I say Arkansas. lawyer, but anyone who wants to say Arkansas, I don't have a problem with that, because that's, I think that's more the official, kind of the maybe unofficial, official way of addressing ourselves. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, no, I think this is a, this is a great, a great book. And anybody, if they had an author in their state or in their region that was doing what Brooks has done, for us, it's a, it's a grand feat. but so Brooks has also written a bunch of books of like deep dive history into the kind of the chronology of the Ozarks and and how how things kind of went down yeah and that one the middle schoolers there's a there are a couple instances of course language in that book which I wasn't going to bring it up okay the elephant in the room okay I should say it like this we went through it together okay that's how I should say it we went through it together Jeannie Wayne is that did I say your name? She came and spoke to the crew because it was just right down the street from the university of Arkansas. She came and spoke to him. We went through it together. It was like our Arkansas history.

And it was super. So you said the dirty words? It's nothing terribly bad. It's not, you know, they're lower on the rungs of bad language. And there are always quotes or almost always quotes. In general, I'm not a bad language type feller. but if I'm quoting somebody, let it fly.

I don't know if there's a more Arkansas phrase that I've ever heard. I'm not one of them bad, would you say bad? Did I say bad language? Bad language fellers. That's the feller that makes it. Bad language fellers. Yeah. No, we went through it together and it was just fun for the kids to kind of hear how people

proceed because, you know, they pick up on that stuff. And so we had a good time to go. We went to the Arkansas Post, which was a little bit we were expecting more. Yeah. Out of Arkansas Post. Not a lot to see there. Five hours. Oh, my goodness.

Unless you appreciate surveying. Yeah. You know, there's not just a whole lot. One of the worst field trips I'd ever planned. Your kids were on that trip. Well, the. Probably heard about it at the time. Here's the baseline.

So I told Brooks, we cited this book. in in in I'm making it a point to talk a little bit about my book on occasion just prime in the audience but we we we talk about Arkansas as the bear state in my book that's coming out in February so get ready get ready I can't wait yeah it's gonna be good yeah um bear yes sir what what's the latest bear grease YouTube video coming out uh well the one that kind of last week. I rafted a big flooded river, Ozark River, did some pretty rough rapids, and... Got left behind by your dad. You know, but you need to watch the video to figure that part out. I didn't know that until I watched the video. And we were watching it in the same room.

And I... that part comes and I said, because, you know, I was supposed to... I don't want to, like, spoiler alert here, but I was the one that was supposed to come get you. and I arranged it with two different men who were driving together. And I looked at Clay and I said, you forgot Bear? Hey, it's just a minor part of the film. I pulled up and my truck was sure enough not there. So Bear was rafting from one location to another

and I was supposed to go pick him up at the end. Drop my truck off. Just drop your truck off. Brooks, it was unbelievable how nonchalantly this, this very important detail was given to me. So I do accept responsibility for not picking up bear, but I think we should all share the load just a little bit. Well, I got the call as I was on my way out the door.

And I think really the person who, he had already floated halfway down the river when he thought, hmm, I need a ride. You didn't even know. You didn't even arrange the ride until you were already in the current. This is your fault. This is just like every other. other thing. My friend Malachi was going to pick me up because he was filming.

But then I get like a mile down the river, which is all we'd plan to do. And I was like, I think I need to float some more river. So Malachi, you don't need to pick me up anymore. And so he calls me and I'm walking out the door. I'd figure it out one way or another. See, and I knew you'd figure it out. Yeah. Like when I heard I need to pick up bear, I was like, I'll probably pick bear up.

Man, listen. Listen. Don't ask Clay to pick me up. is being fueled by this kind of energy. Me and Chris Roberts in 1999. Spring of 1999, one day we drive across Briar Creek swollen from a flash flood. Briar Creek, you could have waded across it and hardly got your feet wet, but in a flash flood, it just stormed up. We see that.

I call Chris on landline, no cell phones, and I say, hey, come to the house. We're floating Briar Creek. And he's like, I'll be there in 10 minutes. He comes over in his 1999-cavalier. He drives to my house. My brother-in-law had a 94 cavalier. Yeah. So we get the canoe we call Old Glory.

That was a Washhtaw River guide canoe that had cracks in it and leaked just a little bit. We put it in the bridge at Briar Creek, and we told Juju Nukem, we're going to call you from somewhere this afternoon. Yeah. We don't know where. We don't know who. We didn't have cell phones. Right. We're just going to call you when we decide that we floated far enough.

And we set off in the river. And people are crossing the bridges, like trucks are parked at the bridges not crossing it, and they're seeing them, and they're begging them, do not go. Excuse me. Yeah, it's a whole big story. I actually told this story on Meat Eater Campfire. stories because we ended up almost dying. But the point is, a new bear would be okay.

Because he has access to a cell phone. Well, we got out of the river after we lost the canoe, which was folded underwater. A snake? Yeah, I mean, I could go into the details. But there was the nearest death experience I've ever had in my life for no joke, no metaphor, no exaggeration. But we climbed out of the river. It became, well, Breyer meets Prairie and then turns into a really big creek.

And we walked to one of our old teacher's houses, like half a mile, knocked on the door. It's like, hey, can we use your phone? Sure. Called juju. Anyway, that's the way it is. So I knew bear would be okay. I love this story because you're saying I knew bear would be okay because I had a similar near-death experience. one.

And that's the same energy bear's ride. Question. Whenever you canoed, you got sucked under a log. Wasn't that what happened? Yes. We went floating the day after I hit that big river, and that happened to one of my buddies. And it just, like, crumbled the kayak.

Really? Yeah. And it was not, like, the flows were not that high. Like, it didn't feel that dangerous at all. But he went up to this log, and it just sucked it under. Did it tear the kayak up? Yeah.

Well, we were. able to like pull the dents out and finish the float was that my kayak no you don't have a kayak that's my it's in his junk pile so oh glory never never she never floated again she's still is Gary Newcom's backyard still yep yep yep well we're here today because we're discussing the civil war it's very serious So drop the energy, guys. Okay. Let's quit having fun, right? For the professor here.

That's right. Yeah, it's time for the lecture. Get this class and order. No fun allowed. Dr. Blevins, do you, are you, what's your reputation amongst the student body there at Missouri State? Well, I know you're not supposed to talk about yourself, but. Do you have a rate my professor score?

I guess I do. I've never looked. Don't do it. I don't think it would be worth. I feel like professors should never look at rate my professors, and no one should ever look at comments and news articles that have been written about them. Like, those are just rules that I live by. I've never looked, and I, you know, the thing is we've got, I think, around 26,000 students, and I have probably fewer than 100 per year. So whatever my reputation is, it's not very widespread.

Fred. I can assure you of that. No, I'm the guy, I'm the history professor who insists on using good grammar in your papers. So I probably am not terribly appreciated by some of the students who get in there and realize they've got an English, a history professor and an English professor in the second class. I respect that. What classes will you teach next year? Let's see. I'm teaching my undergraduate Ozark history class, which I do almost every year, but not quite every year. I'll teach a class on the history of American religious history, the history of religion in America.

and I'll do a regular U.S. history class, and I think I'm doing my intro to Ozarks Studies class, which we have a minor in Ozarks Studies at Missouri State. And the University of Arkansas is starting their minor in Ozark Studies this fall. So that'll be two schools, Missouri State and the U of A, both have that minor. and that's our sort of gateway course we just do a little bit of everything

in that class and it's meant to be kind of a fun course and hopefully it is for most of the students but most of the stuff I usually do has to do with the Ozarks but I I'd never had a class

on the Ozarks in my life so you know I you made it right well I I don't know that but I But, you know, all my academic background is in other regular U.S. history stuff. So, yeah, it's just kind of a, it's been a fun thing to be able to create, help create something a little new kind of subfield and teach a lot of classes about it. Yeah, yeah. Now, you have a, you have a podcast inside of the Ozark podcast.

So there's a podcast with some of our friends, Kyle and Kyle, that are, that's called the Ozark podcast. And they do a lot of hunting and fishing stuff and just Ozark outdoors stuff. You have your own podcast. Tell us, tell me about that. Yeah, it's called the old Ozarks. And it's just more or less a little vignettes of Ozarks. And we did a first season last year. year in 2025 of a dozen episodes and we're going to do a dozen more this year starting next month

July of 26 and and they're just things that usually what I try to do is you know I wrote a trilogy on the history of the Ozarks that came out a few years ago and as as you know having haven't just recently finished a book you leave a lot more stuff on the cutting room floor than you ever use in a book. You use just a small percentage of stuff. And so I try to use a lot of stuff that I've done research on in the past and make little stories out of that. But I usually end up doing some new research on all this stuff.

And just trying to do, I usually try to do a couple that have to do with hunting and fishing because I know that's kind of the built-in audience that the Ozark podcast has. but most of them aren't geared specifically for outdoors stuff. You know, I'll do. The one I just got through writing that I haven't recorded yet is basically the story of Albert Brumley, who is probably the most famous gospel music composer in history. And he wrote almost all of his songs here in the Ozarks. He lived up in McDonnell County, Missouri, a little place just across the state line.

And I'll fly away. Yeah. The most famous. I think I've seen his name on a. Yeah. Yeah. And just a little, you know, just be things like that, things that are related to the region that people might not know about or they probably heard about. They may just not have associated them with Arkansas or Missouri or Oklahoma.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. So the old Ozarks by Dr. Brooks Blavons. You can look it up on the Ozark. It's on their feed. Like you'd go to the Ozark podcast feed. Yeah. Starting in July.

You'd be able to find those. It's tucked in there. I think we did them every Friday last year. I guess they'll probably do that again this year. You know, every, I should say every other Friday once we started the season. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thanks. Okay. Good, good, good. Well, so if you're new to the Bear Grays Render podcast, what we do on these is we talk about the actual documentary style Bear Gris podcast from the week before. So we're three deep. We're naval deep in the water of the Civil War.

and this third episode was called the scalp soldiers and why they fought, which was, it was a good name, but we really weren't talking exactly about why the scalped soldiers fought. Yeah, it could be a little confusing. Yeah, it was a little Hollywooded up by my producer. Well, you know, you've got to keep the people interested. It should have been the scalp soldiers,

semi-colon why people fought in the Civil War. I mean, it wouldn't have worked as a title. I'm not saying that, Josh. I wanted to bring this up with you because I was, you know, titles. You weren't mad. You were just disappointed. No, but we... Stories are meant to convey meaning, not to relay precise facts, remember?

Exactly. Yeah. So it's fine. Yeah, it was good. good. No, thank you, Misty. But the whole premise of the episode was kind of exploring why people fought in the Civil War. And, you know, none of these have been exhaustive in detail or in research.

But they're, they've been interesting to me because on this episode, J.D. brings up my family's history in the Civil War, which was really cool. That was a shocker. Like, we weren't, I was in here when you guys were recording, and we weren't expecting that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was real sly about it, too. You know anything about your history? Oh, he set me up.

He's like, well, I do. Yeah. Yeah, what if I... What if I... Gotcha. What if I just made something up? And he'd have been like, that's not what I found out.

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Well, that's not really opening up the floor. I know, but it's a good entry point. So you're great, great. great, great grandfather. Yep. Thomas James, Newcomb. Oh, man. That's your history too now.

Okay. Did you just figure that out? Yep. Just connected. Put two together. Yep. What's that mean to you? Pretty much nothing.

It was interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. But it didn't really surprise me that much because it does seem like, I mean, it just seems like as wars are fought young men fighting the wars. And like you said, it's just like kind of your place and space and time really determines your life. And his place and space and time was he was 24 during the Civil War. So he was in it.

And so I wasn't terribly surprised. And he lived in Arkansas, which I did know that. But yeah, I thought it was a pretty interesting episode. one thing that did really surprise me was the part about Native Americans having slaves. That part I would have never known. So I thought that that was definitely not something I expected and kind of, I don't know,

that part really stuck out to me because it was just, I like the way J.D. said it. Usually, like we try to categorize things into the oppressed and the oppressors. But then when you have the oppressed, oppressing the oppressed, you just have a complex human, or just a human that is complex,

like every human. And it just kind of goes back to what we've been talking about this whole series, is that things aren't always understood at a glance. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Do you think I was fair in my assessment of thinking about the reasons

Thomas J. Nookam would have fought in the Civil War. I mean, I'm not looking to stir up controversy, but you could, somebody could say, Clay, you're casting a lot of shade on your, you know, ancestor that fought in the war. I mean, and I wasn't really trying to do that, but I just, I guess I could hear a voice saying that because I was like, I don't think he had, I don't think he had slaves. I don't know that, but I would say with almost certainty. he did not.

Because he lived in the washetadeh, right? He did, yeah. And just, they just didn't have a lot of money. Less likely. Anyway, any thoughts on that, bear? What was the exact question? Was it unjust the way that you described it? Oh, just like, I think a lot of people want to justify maybe the actions of their ancestors.

It's like you have some thoughts about this. well, I was just, I just, the whole thing was like, why do people fought? And I don't know why Thomas James Newcomb fought. I assumed it was just like civic duty. Do you think that's fair? Yeah, I thought you were fair. I mean, I thought, like, I think you were saying, hey, there's just because of the place that he was from. I kind of doubt some of this stuff.

But there's a, there's a book called Generations, and it's also by a lady. I think her first name is Jeannie as well. Anyway, but the biggest predictor of what people believe is the generation. they're born in. So we like to think that our family and our values and all sorts of things shape what we believe. But like Bear's generation is likely to believe stuff that his grandparents don't believe or, you know, perceive things as okay. I'm not saying you should.

I'm just saying it is, you're more likely to. And I think that there's a level of that inside of all of this. Like there is some part of this where, you know, whether you were born, in Pennsylvania or you were born in Georgia would have made a huge difference in what you thought about the institution of slavery and about and which side you fought on in the Civil War. I mean, there's just no way around that.

Yeah. And I think that you were, you know, for a gotcha journalist like JD. So just, I'm just kidding. I thought you, I thought it fit the way you, you've approached the whole thing. But just, I've just got questions and I'm trying to understand. earlier today, Brooks, we were talking about how the different generations have looked at the Civil War. And I think you said that today's generations would be maybe less interested in, or less, how did we say?

Excuse me. there would be less like bear saying maybe this doesn't mean that much to him that his ancestor fought in the war i don't know would that be characteristic of this generation maybe i think so you know i've i've been teaching long enough now to have you know encountered really truly different generations in the classroom and i i think just from my own personal experience, again, with my limited number of students that I encounter, I think there probably is less investment in civil war history now than there would have been 20, you know, back in the late 90s when I started teaching. I think there's probably maybe even less knowledge about what happened, less interest in it.

Again, I think the Civil War still occupies a place of real importance for a lot of people in the United States. But I don't get the sense that especially young men are in the South or growing up with that same sort of passion for studying the Civil War that you talked about having and talking about with your friends and that I had as a kid. And I think a lot of this is, as, you know, we've talked about, it's just getting farther and farther away from the event, that, you know, those memories recede. And, you know, for good and bad, they don't mean as much. They're not as relative. I mean, I was born long enough ago that I still well remember several people

who were born in the 19th century. And, you know, these were folks who were, may have been the children or at most grandchildren of Civil War veterans and people who lived through the Civil War. So, so as a kid, you know, 50 years ago, I was, I was closer to this. So it would only make sense that it would mean a little bit more and that it would be more part of, you know, the environment that I grew up in than it would be for somebody bears age. Mm-hmm. And also, whenever I say it doesn't mean anything to me. Like, I think it's interesting, but I think a lot of people would, like, hear that their great, great, great grandfather fought for the Confederacy and, like, feel some sort of guilt about it. That's what I meant.

Like, it doesn't, like, I feel no real connection to that. Like, I feel like a lot of people feel guilt for what their ancestors might have done people before them, but I don't personally feel connected to that at all. Yeah. Probably both ways, either guilt or identity from that. Do you feel like, you know, we were talking about this the other day, my ancestors came to the United States after the Civil War. Do you feel like you're more inclined to be interested in studying that, knowing that you're a seventh generation, Arkansason?

Well, I mean, it came out that I didn't really know the details. I did know that they fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy. That was just like the state one sentence that I knew. But it obviously didn't mean enough for me to go look it up. I mean, I tried a couple times. So I don't know. But I think what we talked about earlier today was that where you're from does kind of dictate your interest a lot of times. like. I mean, you know, it was discussed with J.D. about, do you think there were

northerners that still talk about their ancestors in the war and that kind of stuff? You know, I've got lots of family from up north, and I've never heard anybody talk about about the Civil War when I've been up there. You know, even people who had, who were from that area from generations back. I feel like that's much stronger in the South. Well, the war was fought here. Right. That's part of it. Right. Is that we're reminded of, I'm reminded of it basically daily driving into Fable, Arkansas, there's a sign that says Prairie Grove, Civil National Battlefield or something.

I mean, it's kind of subconscious you see the sign and you don't even think about it. But it's like there's memorials to the war all over the place. Which in of itself, I mean, if you step back and look at it in the context of the U.S. history, that is odd. You know, that is, that's unusual. Why do you say that? That you would have Confederate Memorial. Well, I think around here, well, around the South, I think you would have a lot of, or. There used to be, I feel like a lot of that stuff is fading.

Yeah, yeah, but there's still battle. But I'm just saying about our childhood and things like that. There would be, there's battlefield parks, but then there's also, there's, I think that there's a lot of, of symbolism that's, especially when we were growing up. I don't think Bear has seen as much of it. Like, I kind of grilled them after Clay. It kind of made me question. Like, I wonder, because I completely understood what Clay was saying on the first podcast, because I grew up in the same area and the same mindset.

And I asked Bear, and it was obvious to me. We did not bring that. And that was not passed on to our kids. And that was quite on purpose. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the influence that I had growing up could have been really negative. Yeah. I think it was negative for a lot of my friends.

just a irrelevant identity to something that would ultimately lead to a bunch of stuff. And so to me, it just became really interesting. And so when I hear about my ancestor, Thomas J. Newcomb, it's not interesting because I have some pride that he fought in the Confederacy or something. I mean, like, when you see what this was all about, it's like, man, this is not great the way this all went down. but I still am, it's very interesting to me just in that this guy has my same last name, what he went through, what he would have saw. And, you know, so that's to me why it's interesting, you know.

Yeah, and I do think it's, it is interesting to see where your ancestors came from because you kind of see how that shaped your life. A few years ago, my uncle, your brother, showed a video of Lewin-Newcomb talking about his life story. Yeah. And how he moved to California and then got saved and moved back to Arkansas. And I just thought about how different my life would have been if he didn't find God in California and moved back to Arkansas. And he stayed in California. Like, my life would be radically different. And so it is kind of interesting to hear about Thomas Newcomb.

potentially eating mule meat and rats there at the war it's just kind of interesting to think about that stuff and how it might shape my life way down the line. You don't really know it's hard to predict the impact of that but Lew and Nuckel, my grandfather, your great-grandfather, and that's what I said on the episode

you know, like how really recently this was. Like his great-grandfather who, you know, I went to I said it. Lew and Newcomb used to take me to Robert Newcomb's old home place. Thomas J. Newcomb was Robert Newcomb's dad. His dad fought in the Civil War. So Lewin Newcomb was heavily influenced by a man whose father fought in the Civil War.

And you don't know what... Did you ever mention that? No. No. But Lewin Newcomb also had a bronze star from World War II from shooting down Japanese planes that he never told us. We never knew until after he died. Yeah.

That's wild. I mean, so like these guys weren't interested. This wasn't, I guarantee you, most of those guys had no, I guarantee you, Thomas J. Newcomb was like, I bet he never breathed the word of the Civil War most the rest of his life. I just have a feeling. Like, they were just like, I mean, my dad's the same way. My dad was in Vietnam for a couple years. That's the last thing he wants to talk about.

Yeah. I mean, I pry stuff out of him. But I mean, you know, a couple generations later, it seems really interesting and cool and you want people to talk about it. But, I mean, most of those guys, when they got out of the war, they were like, that is not what we're going to talk about today. Which I respect, you know what I mean? There are guys that there are guys who spent time in wars who that's all they want to talk about because that's where they draw their identity from. And to me, it shows just a level of maturity that that's not the thing that you pull your identity from, but really it's the way you live. Well, and there's different levels of engagement. Gary Nukon would be the first to tell you that he was in the post office in Vietnam. That's different than being a Navy SEAL that went in and killed Osama bin Laden, not to bring up bin Laden. But, you know, I mean, like, that guy is probably different than most people in the military.

Not to say that you can't, you know, anybody that takes... Right. Yeah, I'm not trying to say that if you discuss that, you're immature, but I think just allowing your life to have, to find meaning in your life. And sometimes that meaning is what you sacrificed inside of that. But, you know, there's lots of sacrifices that happen off the battlefield that really define who people are. Yeah. Brooks, what do you think about people like the way... Any commentary on just what we're discussing, like, how stuff is maybe not talked about

or how people handle their history with this stuff? You know, one of the things that's happened in Civil War history is that, you know, we spent so many years writing stories about battles and, you know, generals and all that kind of stuff, writing kind of the big obvious stuff and a lot of the military history is that the way the academic world works is you know when you get you get a you get a you're working on a phd you've got to write a dissertation and you got it's got to be new research it's got to be something new or a reinterpretation of something else and so i i've noticed in the the last several years that that probably even more popular than that

than writing Civil War history is writing about the way we remember Civil War history. Now scholars write entire books about how the U.S. and how specific populations within the United States remembers the Civil War. I don't know that they've run out of stuff to write about the actual Civil War, but it is, you know, it's far enough. we're more than a century and a half separated from that event now. And so the way we remember it has changed over years. And it's even changed in the South.

You know, you don't have to go back too many years when groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the sons of the Confederacy and groups like that kind of dominated the rhetoric around how we remember the Civil War and sort of a celebratory kind of thing and the lost cause and, you know, that sort of thing.

And, you know, we don't really do that anymore. There are still people who probably have those ideas about what the Civil War means to them, but it's one of those things that it's become less acceptable, I guess, to, you know, to talk about that in a public forum and to celebrate. When was the climax of that? Well, and can you explain a little bit about what that is? Like the lost cause, I think that that's a really, that's something that my brother and are. We will be getting into that in later episodes.

Oh, okay, got you. No, no. It's okay if we say it, though. We've already talked about it. Just because we're talking about it, people might not be able to articulate what that is. Yeah, that's in the South, and it doesn't pop up immediately, but about a generation or so after the end of the Civil War, you have the rise of sort of the celebration. of this cause that has failed,

the lost cause of the South. You know, it's wrapped up around ideas of, you know, our love for the underdog. The South was certainly outnumbered and out-supplied and all that kind of stuff. So part of it's kind of an underdog story. But also it's this idea that Southerners rationalized their roles in the war

or told themselves as a kind of a, balm, you know, to ease the pain of suffering this defeat, that, that, that, that theirs was really a righteous cause, uh, that they were, uh, that they were, uh, morally superior, uh, to the, to the north in this, in this cause that they were fighting. And that it was only because there were, you know, almost three times as many northerners as there were southerners and they had more material and more money and all that kind of stuff that the that the south lost and so that that really takes root in the 1890s and early 1900s around the same time that that you're you know starting to see racial violence rack parts of the United States and the lynchings and

and things like that I mean it's all you know it's it's kind of a yeah it's a kind of a combo thing And that's when you start to see groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the sons of the Confederacy. And that's when you really start to see these big reunions of Confederate veterans. And Union veterans do this too. And on the union side, you had your bloody shirt, patriotism, as historians call it, and kind of waving the bloody flag in elections. So all this stuff is going on. It's kind of a first, they're far enough away from the Civil War by the end of the 19th century to sort of look back and start remembering things.

And, you know, it's not that immediate. And that's how these narratives get started about what the war was about. And so people in the North have their idea about what the war was about. People in the South, many of them, especially Confederates and their descendants, have their ideas of what the war. was about and that and that continues that's you know that's the beginning of Confederate monuments those though those will you know there's another flurry of monument building that happens during the civil rights movement which is more of sort of you know direct kind of in your face we're you know we're not we're not putting up with this and and we're going to kind of reinforce our

our, you know, supremacy here by, you know, recognizing our Confederate ancestors. But so, so that, the whole idea of, of how we remember how we craft the narrative of the Civil War and how we've been doing that, you know, for 120 or 130 years is, it's pretty fascinating. And we're, I mean, we're part of that right now. I mean, we're, we're sitting around 160-something years after the, Civil War talking about the Civil War. So, I mean, we're we're participating in that. And, you know, maybe we'll become part of somebody's research out there if a sociologist is researching a Civil War memory. You know, it's still going on. So it still means something, but it almost certainly means something different because of that whole, that whole, that whole, concept you were talking about with the generations

that these generations see it in a different way and I think Bear's generation has probably and hopefully not inherited as many of the negative things that can come up with celebrating the Civil War and remembering the Civil War as people from

our age I realize I'm quite a bit older than you guys. But, you know, from my age and from your age, and a lot of that is just, you know, the far that you get away from that, the more, I should say probably the less racist we become as a society, you know, the less we pass that on down to succeeding. So it gets, it gets diluted, you know, you kind of hope it doesn't necessarily have to work that way, but you hope that the more racist, you know, Confederate celebration part of that gets diluted every generation. And that's coming from, I mean, I'm a guy who most of my ancestors who fought in the Civil War were Confederates.

And I don't, and like I was telling Clay earlier, when I started reading about the Civil War in high school, I was pulling for the South. you know, as a white kid from Arkansas, I find myself, you know, well, if this would have happened at Shiloh, we would have won. You know, when the we was, for me, was the South. So, you know, I, I understand that, you know, that motivation. And I, and I also understand why, how you can look back, like Barr can look back and you don't have to be, I don't think you have to be, I don't think you have to be ashamed of your ancestors because they grew up in a completely different time that we can't understand. I mean, we weren't from that generation. And they were inculcated with certain ideas and taught certain things that we weren't taught. And we're, you know, we're so often

trapped in whatever our generation is. It's hard to, it's hard to get. beyond that and to expect our ancestors to have made decisions that we probably wouldn't have made either had we been raised the same way they were that's that's a little much what i what i prefer to focus on is is the ones who who kind of stepped outside of the rare ones who stepped outside of their worlds and and made decisions that now seem kind of heroic and and unusual to us. And most of us living today aren't going to make those decisions.

In our own day and time, we're going to sort of fall in lockstep and do what most other people do. So the whole, that whole idea of remembering the Civil War is, it's a complex thing and it's a, it's almost as important, I think, to Civil War historians now is the actual war itself.

Just how we remember it. Yeah. The war was only four years. We've been remembering that thing for a lot longer than that. My SUVs worth more than ever. Time to upgrade? There's never been a better time. At Plaza Auto Group locations get top value for your trade

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this connects to something misty and i've been talking about about how human communication are, well, how would I describe it? Are you talking about just how we are so unaware? Let me give an example. Our own cultural influence in our...

Yes, yes, that. But basically of how it's important, it's as important how we remember something is equally important to actually what happened. And it may even be more important how we remember it. and I was speaking with a guy the other day, an interview, a guest, and I told him that Barry Lopez's book about the Inuit, he described how the Inuit,

when they drew maps, they would make the topographic features that were important to them for hunting, much bigger than they actually were. And he described how, he said, oh, yeah, everybody does that. All the people that drew maps kind of in the old world did that.

he said, yeah, we now think about a map as a factual piece of information. Does it actually reflect the actual geography of that place and the facts are really important? But the idea of a map was actually to convey, who cares if the map is factually accurate? I'm a human and I want you to know where the hunting's good. I want my kids to know where the hunting's good. And like, so I'm, what I'm really trying to do by drawing a map is tell you where the hunting's good so that you can survive. You know, and so they had these maps that weren't accurate but showed the human emphasis in a certain place. And he, this guy, you'll hear him months from now on the episode.

He talked about how that's our, it's a pretty powerful way to communicate. But you see the connection between like how we think. think about the Civil War versus what actually happened, you know, because the way we talk about it is actually... It's essentially like a map of history. It's a mental map is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. And you're... Because the earth is round. So any map is going to have some assumptions and inaccuracies to make it flat. Right. And, I mean, that is... That's kind of a long-term historical issue.

that the people who are making maps, I mean, you can go down a rabbit trail on that. Yeah, yeah. But the point is the way we remember any kind of historical event is actually as important is actually what happened, you know, because it means something to us.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that it's, to me, you know, hearing you talk about PAPS and hearing Bear talk about it, just even today, I think about, I've had conversations with my family. My grandma had Alzheimer's, and it was one of those things that you kind of saw coming. Like it started, and so we wanted to, we kind of got into this thing of, oh, it's really interesting.

I learned a lot about our history. It was actually that same summer that we did the Arkansas study, and I wanted to find out, why did our people end up in Arkansas? And I went, and it wasn't great. It wasn't. I was like, oh, shoot, we're those people? people because they were the destitute, you know, they're the people that, and you hear all these stories and it's like, oh, you know, sometimes you hear stories about your family and some of those

stories are more recent. You know, not everyone has a PAPS who changed their lineage and shifted the way that things worked in their family. And I just think it's, it's what you're describing that those rare heroic people who step outside of their culture and who step outside of their experience and do something, that heroism, anybody can do that. I mean, anybody can do that at any time and change. Anyone has a capacity to do that. Yeah, anyone has, anyone can do that. Anyone can change the lineage of their future generations by stepping outside of what is familiar and what is cultural. And I think that's the power of personal transformation. And there were things that I saw my mom as an I was an adult when I saw her starting to change things. I was, I mean, a young adult. And it was

inspirational to me to say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to build some different things inside of our family. I want to, I want to do what she's doing. And it changed things about the way my kids think, and it changed things about their, and hopefully they'll take that even further. You know, that's the idea that you want your kids to take those things even further. But I think that's kind of part of the power of the story if you let it be. Like, there can be a very, version of the story where we're just mad at anyone. And that's where the simple storyline of oppressed and oppressors just is not ever going to work when you're looking at history.

It's always so much more complex than that. But, you know, that is part of the story. And I think sometimes, especially in recent history, there's been this trend to just kind of look so harshly at the past and at people in the past. And that, you know, they did things wrong. say that and we should learn from that. But I think it's really important that right now, while we can change things, that we also look at, at the familiar and the things that we need

to change, the things that we're not proud of in our own, in our own life, in our own lineage, and recognize that we can change, we can change things for generations down the, down the way. And I think that's, that's important and valuable, valuable thing, but it almost always requires you to step out of what is familiar to you. And that's, that's difficult, because it's very difficult to not think like everyone around you. And so if dysfunction is what's around you, I'm kind of going into like a personal growth and development here. Preach it girl. Kind of shifting from the Civil War. I just hear him Berzzi talk about that, made me think about that. Yeah. Josh, what's

that to you? Well, just the whole episode. Yeah, I think it was, you know, honestly, I don't, I don't know a lot about the Civil War. You didn't until now. I didn't until now. And I've gotten kind of the shotgun blast of the Civil War. And it's like just kind of tying in with what Misty's saying. You know, we have this phrase we talk about a lot in our group of friends. We say a backward glance for forward advance.

And I think it's been really good for me to learn about this. I think it's easy to just be oblivious and not care. But I think we have to care because I think if we don't know the past, we don't know how to be better in the future. So I, you know, just looking at this episode, there were some really interesting things in there. I didn't know that the Native Americans had slaves. I didn't know that there were Native American regiments in the Confederacy. I mean, that's fascinating. I mean, the cross-cultural, I actually got online and looked up Stan Wadi and just, you know, saw his picture and saw, you know what I mean, thinking about what was the motivation of this guy to fight.

And yeah, it really just makes you evaluate, you know, people's intentions and people's motives. And, you know, you try to put yourself in their position. And then once you do that, you have to figure out how to use. that to become better, you know? I guess that is a question, and I'll offer it to you, Brooks, like, what's the value inside of talking about this? I mean, there's part of me sometimes when I tell some stories, I have to ask myself that. You know, like, is some of this stuff just better, like, completely forgotten?

And obviously, I don't believe that, but sometimes I have a hard time articulating why it's valuable to look back and drag up some of this, you know, kind of rough history. Why is it valuable? I think specifically when you're talking about the Civil War and anything to do with the Civil War, because it is so fundamental to American history, it is so central to our identity still today, that somebody is going to be talking about it. You know, somebody, somebody's going to bring it up. And I think it's crucial that we try to understand it as clearly and objectively as we can.

Now, that's not always possible. And we all bring our own perspectives to everything. And even historians, university trained historians, their perspectives on the civil word change over generations and they look at different things, look at things in different ways. So I think that's part of it is, I mean, we're going to be talking about this, so we might as well try to get it right,

and we might as well try to let people know what really happened and why it happened. And I think for a historian, I know I guess I can only speak for myself. I have this compulsion, I guess you would call it, to get things

as close to exactly right, exactly factually correct as I possibly can because I think that's the only, it's the only responsible way you can do history. and about the only way you can do that is to do bottom-up history and to go back in and do things like you've been doing with that bear book is going back and doing this research that takes you right back to these primary sources and primary documents. That's why history professors are always talking about. You've got to go back to the sources. You've got to look at the primary sources and recreate.

history from from what we from what we have and and that you know that hopefully keeps us from lying off in all different directions taking a couple facts here and a couple of facts there and making these big sweeping generalizations about things that may not actually have happened and of course people are going to do that it's just that's kind of human nature to to make generalizations but I see it as the role of a of a historian is to just try to get the story right and even the word right is probably not even a usable word right there because uh you know what does that even mean but but you know I just and that's that's one of the things I you know I try to hammer into my students is is right you know bottom-up history and not top-down history, knowing what you want to say and then finding the facts to build this argument. You look at the stuff and then build your argument from that.

And hopefully, you know, hopefully that's a reasonable way to go about this. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, this, I was going to ask you, you listened to these episodes. I did. Did anything stand out to you? You told me you listened to all three of them. I did. I did.

One of the things that stood out to me was I wasn't surprised at all when I got to the end of episode three, and we weren't anywhere close to halfway as he was driving to my office. Right, yeah. And I thought, yeah, I mean, and that was a good thing for me. I mean, if you're going to, even, you know, using your phrase,

dipping the bucket into the ocean of, or whatever, however you phrased that of Civil War history, even doing that, you know, you couldn't do justice to any of this with even a three-episode arc. I mean, that just, you know, that you just couldn't do that. So I wasn't surprised at all that this thing just kind of got out of control. It's like a runaway snowball.

I didn't have to know anything that went on behind the scenes to realize you've grabbed something wild and crazy and you got to deal with it for a while. I mean, that's... Sorry, everybody. It's going to be interesting. So I was really, I was really glad about that because I think you've done a good job. And I think J.D. Hewitt, I don't know J.D. Hewitt, but I was really impressed with his contributions. And I'm sure he's going to keep, you know, contributing to this thing. I think you've done a good job of approaching the subject as objectively as you can,

not avoiding some difficult discussions that you have to have with a topic like the Civil War, but not going on tangents that take you way, you know, away from any sort of, you know, central focus that you got. So, yeah, I've really enjoyed it. And, you know, the thing about the Cherokees was, you know, that's just one of so many hundreds of really fascinating topics that you could take these little detours like that. I mean, the Civil War is just full of those stories. And I love that Cherokee story. And I would guess that J.D. got way more detailed with that than comes out in the episode because, you know,

that story is so nuanced. And I think that you guys did a good job with the nuances. Because, you know, you think about it. I was thinking about that, listening to it on the way over. If you're a Cherokee in 1861, you don't have a good relationship with the U.S. government. Yeah. At the same time, if you've allied yourself with the Confederate government, as the

Cherokee initially did, many of them reluctantly. So they didn't want to. They didn't want to be involved one way or another. Most of them didn't. Then you've allied yourself with someone who's just a slight offshoot of this crazy oppressive government you've been dealing with all these years. and it ran you, you know, out of your ancestral homeland in the South. And then you get to the Battle of Pea Ridge, and I can only imagine that some of that scalping was just an outgrowth of just sort of pure disillusionment with the whole thing.

You know, you've been sucked into this war that you don't want any part of. whatever happens, the outcome for you is probably not going to be all that great. And here you are fighting on the side of one group of, you know, these Americans against another group of Americans. And it's not that, you know, scalping is ever a great thing. But you can kind of see where this could be a manifestation of just this sort of madness that these. people find themselves in the middle of. And truly, by the end of the Civil War, most of those Cherokees have probably either switched sides to the union, because many of them later switched to the Union side, or they just sort of dropped out of the whole thing altogether, because

they were also products of their own civil war, as J.D. mentioned, that Cherokee Civil War had been going on for years. And so it's just such a complex thing and such an unexpected thing, like Josh said. If you're not privy to that little part of Civil War history, it's not something you would expect to hear at all, but it's a fascinating part. And I think you guys did a good job with that,

with those nuances. And that's what you have to dwell on. in telling any of these stories, the various perspectives and complexities of these stories. Yeah. I mean, it would be, think about taking today's modern issues and trying to distill it into, like, simple narratives, just about, like, pick, pick, pick your war of the last 20 years. I mean, it would be hard to, it'd be, it'd be hard. hard to simplify it in a way that would that would actually be accurate for the for the whole country. That's when I am reading McPherson's book, which is, you know, like we said, as thick as an Appalachian

Bible and there's this overview of the Civil War. I mean, you just realize, holy cow, there was so much stuff going on and so many motivations and so many political factions and so many economic factors and racial stuff going on with, uh, Jewish people in the South. I mean, like, yeah, you could have gone any direction. I mean, we could have had a whole, a whole segment. We could do a whole series on, you know, the black union armies. And then later, the Confederate black, you know, towards the end of the war,

they start recruiting the actual slaves that are still enslaved to fight. I mean, you know, there's point being there's just like a thousand different things that you could talk about. What was interesting, Brooks said this earlier to me. He said modern Civil War scholars have just continued to kind of narrow their focuses into like looking in really specific spots as the academic system makes people when they're getting their PhD thesis is they have to do something new. and it's not really a slight to the academic system it's just the way it works but like all the low-hanging fruits kind of been taken am I just saying it accurately

yeah yeah I think so and you just kind of and and what you find is when you just narrow in on one little spot there's a ton of stuff there and a lot of these modern civil war academics like know all the details of like one war or one one battle

or yeah it's just it's interesting But, no, I hope we come away with just a general understanding of the Civil War that, you know, you'd kind of, maybe by highlighting some of these little spots, you'd kind of get a sense by the time where we end, you know, you kind of have a sense of the Civil War. Yep. Yep. Yep. What else? Nothing. This is our hot seat guest. Ticova's hot seat. Oh, yes. I meant to say this earlier. You are in the Tukovas hot seat.

Did you see these boots on the chair? Yeah, yeah, I do. Okay, those are Takova's boots. Tikova's is they, of all the boot companies in the world, they're the ones that are the partners of the Bear Grees podcast. Right there, folks. Yeah. You are going to be given a gift certificate of a substantial amount that you'll be able to get a pair of Toccova's boots or anything in their store.

They have a full – they've got everything. Yep. Shirts. Hirts. Misty's wearing a Ticotas. You can get a blouse. Your wife might want a blouse. Long sleeves, short sleeves.

These are – these are Tocovas boots. But they also have some kind of boots. not kind of like that. Yeah, like a lace-up. Yeah, they have a lace-up. So because of your sacrifice of driving over here in the rain all the way across the Ozarks,

we're going to get you a Tukova's gift certificate. Well, I appreciate that. You know, I'll make an admission on film here. And I'm 56 years old, and I have never owned a pair of cowboy boots in my life. I don't know that I've ever had one had one own.

You know, it looked good. You lived through the 90s and you didn't have a pair of ropers? Yeah. You lived through the 90s and Arkansas didn't have the fringe on it. I'd say they've come back more in the style in the last 15 years. Just cowboy boots in general? Non-Cowboys wearing cowboy boots. Yeah.

I'm not a cowboy, but I sure like wearing the boots. Yeah. Yeah, I'll have to. Closer to a cowboy than most people in the, I mean, you grew up on a farm. Yeah, I grew up on a farm. But, you know, I didn't regularly ride horses or anything. We had a horse that I rode a couple times when I was a kid. But, but yeah, I just, I've been in boots all my life, work boots.

Well, they've got some nice lace-up work boots to you. But, I mean, this may be, this may be my chance to break into the cowboy boot. world. And I've never had a cowboy hat either. It's time to make a change. That's right. Time to step out of your comfort zone, out of your culture. I'm going to dood it up with my...

You could, you would, if you had a pair of, like Josh is wearing a nice pair of square-toed boots. Those are made of bisonal. And those are, you know, I could see you wearing those to a lecture. Yeah. You kind of getting just about that much more respect. than if you didn't. Yeah. You know?

Getting me up. I mean, you'd be a little tall. You'd be a little taller. He's a tall, lean guy anyway, putting boots on and make him imposing. Yeah, you would be imposing. Yeah. Especially with the hair. Right.

Yeah. He gets a haircut every six months. Wow. The hair is coming off Wednesday. Or a lot of the hair is coming off Wednesday. The first time that I introduced Brooks on the Bear Grease podcast, Do you remember how I introduced you? Misty said she feared I embarrassed you.

And I was like, I don't think I'm embarrassed Brooks. Did you mention my car? Yes. The duct tape? Yes. I'm okay with that. I'm okay as a serial duct taper. Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't, I've never said a single thing on this podcast that was meant to be derogatory. to a guest. I may have said something derogatory to like some villain or something. Bear to Misty. Or maybe the bear. No, it's all in love, all in love. But no, when I introduced Brooks, I said, I described this car. Right.

Which I thought was awesome because we were at Missouri State, and he would commute like hours from where you live in the Arkansas Ozarks to the Missouri State. And, I mean, he had a cheap car that had, you know, got good gas mileage. Yeah. And the, in the, in the, in the, the mirror was duct taped onto it. And I was like, and this, this guy's like a genius written books. Just this academic. And I just was like, I like this, I like this guy.

Yeah. You know? So now, now I come in as your fashion consultant. Yeah. You know? and some boots. I need it for sure. I'm not a fashion guy, but I appreciate it.

A fashion guy or a bad language feller. Yeah, I don't do either one of those. Bad word feller. Yeah, I respect it. I respect it. Yeah, I'm excited about this. And I, yeah, I appreciate Tocovus. Thank you.

Tocovus. Yeah. The gift certificate. I, yeah, I will be a, I'll have, here in about a week. I have short hair, cowboy boots. You could take on the world. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Run for Congress. That's right. I'll look like Tim McGraw. Also, tune in. Stay tuned this week. This week for a special episode. June 20s. Special episode of Bear Grease, starring a one Bear John Nucke.

them and a Josh Landbridge spillmaker. Is that coming after this render? Yep. Yep. Yeah. So I look forward to that. We take to the water. That's all I'm going to tell you. We take to the water.

Really looking forward to that. An extra drop on the bare grease channel. Yep. Coming straight from these guys. I have no idea what they did. I just know that it probably broke all the rules. You are correct. You are correct.

Yes. Host. The hostile takeover of Bear Grease. Wow. Wow. So tune in for that. That's going to be great. Well, thank you for driving over.

It's been great. And you're going to hear more from Brooks on the next episode of Bear Greas. Fantastic. So foreshadow. The shadow has been cast. Shadow has been Ford. And, man, we're going to just keep on this subject. We may do a break from the Civil War for one episode to give a little.

reprieve. Not, not, I mean, there's going to be four. Right. At least. But, yeah, we're just, we're just going to stomp through it until we figure it all out. That's right. See, what I like to do in the summertime, when the kids were little, and then when we started the school, just take a subject and just kind of immerse yourself in it.

And it was so fun at the school, we would take on topics, and we would just go crazy with it. And we'd do the art from that time period, and that was our summer. programs. And you know what? A whole bunch of those kids really liked history. You could just,

Bear's looking at me. I was about to say, I'll be darned. Bear was not one of those kids. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But that's what you should do. You should just advertise we're going to just spend a summer in the Civil War.

Summer in the Civil War. I like it. Civil War Summer. Civil War Summer. 2026. Civil War. summer. That's right. That's right. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Excuse me for my weird little cough. It's almost gone. For three weeks, I've had it. Keep the wild places wild. That's

where the bears live. Join me and follow the podcast conspiracy theories, where we explore what's really going on behind the official narrative. Like, what if the Loch Ness monster isn't a monster at all, but an elephant? What do the richest 1% know that we don't? Why are they building all those bunkers. And really, what the heck is going on with the Denver airport? Join me every week to see just how high up this goes on the Spotify podcast, conspiracy theories. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.