Here's Where It Gets Interesting - How to Train Kids in the Practice of Temperance

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

Today in our series about Prohibition, we learn more about the crusade to turn America into a dry nation. It may surprise you to learn that it wasn’t spearheaded by only white Christian women who disapproved of saloons and whiskey. Leaders in the growing civil rights movement also pushed for temperance, and one woman convinced the government that the path to prohibition was best paved through the public school system. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Buy from dysoncanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to episode two of our new series, From Hatchets to Hoods, The Mayhem of a Dry America. In the growing temperance movement that ushered in an era of prohibition in the United States, many white Christian women capitalized on their domestic roles as nurturers and moral leaders of the family in order to affect change. And if you listened to the first episode of this series, you know that one of these women, Carrie Nation, literally took matters into her own hands by using rocks and hatchets

as her tools of persuasion. So what came next? Who else was making waves in the temperance movement? Let's learn about the lesser known history of Black Prohibition, spearheaded by Black Americans like Frederick Douglass and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. But first, we'll talk about another larger-than-life woman and her singularly focused temperance tactics. Buckle up, because this episode is a doozy. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. While Carrie Nation's approach to temperance was destruction, most temperance leaders took a different approach.

In the 1870s, as the Women's Christian Temperance Union expanded in numbers and recognition, it appointed a new leader, Frances Willard, who believed it was her mission to ban booze in America. A lifelong champion for women's rights and education, Frances assumed leadership of the WCTU in 1879 and remained in charge for almost 20 years. During that time, Frances took the temperance message on the road. She traveled to over 1,000 towns in America and spoke to tens of thousands of its citizens. Where Carrie Nation was chaotic in her fight, Frances was strategic. She took a non-violent approach and soon had command of a quarter million American women who consistently participated in her cause. Her leadership was so impressive that women didn't come just once or twice to check things out, but fully committed themselves to showing up as often as possible. At the 1882 National WCTU Convention,

Francis's Do Everything initiative was passed. The WCTU was evolving. It may have begun as a way to work against the culture of alcohol in communities, but its social and political reform efforts expanded to things like equal pay for equal work, raising the age of consent, and advocating for free kindergarten for every child. The WCTU eventually expanded to more than 45 departments, and the program with the most impact was the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction. This was mostly due to the person who appointed herself as the woman in charge, Mary Hanchette Hunt. Over a century before Whitney Houston saying that children are our future, Mary Hanchett Hunt had a similar idea. To root out the problem of alcohol, the WCTU had to target kids and train them throughout childhood that alcohol was evil and should be eradicated. The only future Mary wanted was a dry one, and she knew just the way

to get it by using the public school system to radicalize children to avoid alcohol. If you're a teacher, you're going to find this very amusing. Much of Mary's early life is lost to history. And she only really became well known when she was in her 40s. So if you think it's too late to start your life's work by middle age, you would be wrong. We do know that Mary was raised in Connecticut and got married in 1852. Before she was married, Mary was a science teacher. And this part is important. She co-wrote a science textbook with her school's principal.

Because teaching was still mostly a career for unmarried women, once Mary got married, she left her position and her family settled in the Boston suburb of Hyde Park. And they had a son named Alfred who studied at MIT. And during one study session with him, Mary grew fascinated by information on how alcohol affects the body. It was the turning point in Mary's life and second career. Thinking scientifically about alcohol and physical health inspired Mary to step outside of her small domestic circle and do something. outside of her small domestic circle, and do something. She created lessons on alcohol and then convinced her local school board that they needed to be added to the curriculum. Once the Hyde Park schools agreed, Mary moved on to surrounding towns and found even more success. She was not satisfied with her small wins, so she decided to team up with the WCTU to expand her influence.

And here's where the question of agendas comes into play. The WCTU was an organization of white Christian women who believed that temperance would save their families. Their husbands, then fathers, would come home at night, wages in hand and not squandered on booze, and sober spouses would be kind and nonviolent. The nuclear family would remain intact, healthy, and happy. The Black Prohibition movement, which we'll talk more about shortly, focused less on the morality of drink than they did on the economics of the production and sale and how its ill effects disproportionately affected marginalized communities, dating back to when enslavers used alcohol as a means of controlling the humans they enslaved. Barry's agenda was

somewhere in between. She wanted to intervene before children grew into men who produced, sold, or abused alcohol. While we see differences in motives here, it's important to note that the people involved in the temperance movement and later prohibition were largely disenfranchised people. They were disenfranchised based on their gender and or their race. The WCTU was doing their temperance work throughout the country, specifically pleading with saloon owners and bartenders, please stop selling liquor and asking those who drank to reform by signing pledges promising to stop. But like I said, Mary had no interest in that or in reaching adults even. To her, they were a lost cause. She knew that pledges were worthless.

Saloon owners had a financial interest in slinging booze. She wanted to work with the kids, hopefully before they acquired the taste of alcohol or learned from their parents' example. In 1879, at the same WCTU convention when Francis Willard was appointed president, Mary spoke and presented her children's education pitch. She tried to persuade the audience that as a former teacher, she knew what she was talking about, and that the WCTU should move forward in a bold direction. They needed to impose a state of siege upon the United States school boards, insisting that every child receive education through a new program that scientific temperance instruction, or STI. No, not that STI. But pay attention to this part, okay? It was her work and only her work that would be in the

schools. And the WCTU needed ambassadors in the field, ascertaining that schools were teaching the material Mary designed. Think surprise inspections. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the equivalent of a non-profit organization writing a curriculum and then getting it implemented and then surprise they stop by to inspect how good of a job you're doing implementing their curriculum? It's ridiculous. It was ridiculous then and it's ridiculous now but that is what they were proposing. Frances Willard and the WCTU ended up agreeing to Mary's scheme, and Mary collected and sent out an army of women agitators to school boards across the country advocating that schools should have sufficient temperance education. The Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction eventually

became the most successful WCTU initiative of them all. But it was an uphill climb. The public school systems in the 1880s were not consistent. Do you remember watching Little House on the Prairie on TV? Are you old enough for that? First of all, there's no way that was filmed in Minnesota, as the show pretended. Sorry, that's not what it looks like. As someone from Minnesota, there's actually no prairie in Little House on the Prairie. It's just literally filmed in the foothills of California. That's not neither here nor there.

During that time period, you would have small rural schools with as few as 10 to 12 kids, ranging in grades from kindergarten to high school. And there were also urban systems with a larger umbrella of academic curriculum standards. The size, makeup, and curricula of schools varied widely because there just wasn't an overarching administrative system in place. This is still true, by the way. The education you receive in one state can be wildly different than the one you receive in another. It was the 1880s, though, and the country had just climbed its way out of reconstruction, and the public school systems were shaky, in addition to rural schools and urban schools were segregated. Each state had a board of education, and part of their job was to determine

standardized school curriculums. But some school districts within the state also had the power to add in other educational programs that would be signed off on by individual superintendents. So the grassroots organizing for temperance education was very difficult. Volunteers with the STI might be successful in persuading superintendents who didn't partake of alcohol, but they'd get the runaround from others who didn't support the temperance movement. Mary had had enough. She decided that it was time to get state governments involved. If STI were legislated as mandatory educational material, the children and the country would have a chance. Or so she thought. Mary traveled from one capital city to the next and wooed governors and state senators and other

state legislators at fancy receptions. She refused to leave the city until she could get the government to officially put STI education in the state curriculum. She was so effective that she was soon given the nickname Queen of the Lobby. Queen of the Lobby. In 1882, Vermont was the first to pass legislation requiring temperance education for children. New York and Pennsylvania quickly followed, with those two states also passing laws threatening to defund school systems that didn't do the required three days a week of anti-alcohol instruction. But while Mary's name may have been attached to the movement, she wasn't the sole factor in its success. Part of the reason these

bills passed is because of the short-lived Prohibition Party, one of the more successful third parties in our country's history. And it had done surprisingly well in the 1884 elections. Even though the Prohibition Party candidates didn't actually win, they gained enough votes to make people take notice and acknowledge their status going forward, including state politicians. You've heard me say this time and time again, the power you want to wield against others can and will be one day wielded against you. So be careful what you ask for. The legislators in office cared about keeping their jobs. So they played nice with those who could be a threat to their positions. But much like today, legislators were also beholden to various lobbies,

and in this case, they didn't want to anger the beer and liquor lobbies and risk them turning off the tap of monetary support. Since children couldn't buy alcohol, adding in temperance education was a way to appease the Prohibition Party and its supporters without losing the support of the liquor industry. In the words of Michael Scott, it was a win-win-win. Sometime in the 1880s, the WCTU and Mary had a little bit of a falling out, and the WCTU cooled in their ardent support of the SDI program. But Mary had earned enough cachet on her own to continue her crusade without their help. And again, never one to settle for small wins, Mary turned her sights on Washington, D.C. Mary turned her sights on Washington, D.C.

I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends, and together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every

Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Mary's lobbying efforts worked shockingly quickly by today's glacially slow legislative standards, and in 1886, a federal bill was passed that required all public schools to give students scientific temperance instruction at all grade levels. I mean, score for Mary, right? By 1901, STI legislation was officially adopted in every state. So you're probably wondering, what did this instruction actually look like? The word science usually indicates information that is fact-based and supported by evidence.

Sometimes it doesn't mean that to people, but that's what it's supposed to mean, right? That's like Science 101. But much of the curriculum that Mary was imposing was fact-based science coupled with personal opinion. The textbooks used in the STI program were pretty broad and included chapters about anatomy and exercise and nutrition and even information about avoiding condiments that do not aid in digestion. Ironically, there was also a lesson on wine and cider that described exactly how to make alcohol by explaining that while grape and apple juice are good, if you leave them to ferment, they will become wine and cider, and those are bad.

We all know teens are real good at resisting the urge to push boundaries, right? Especially when we're handing them instructions on how to rebel. The program also required younger children to memorize a chant, which invited them to shout, Tremble King alcohol, we shall grow up, you will die. I tried to figure out how you would make that like rhythmic. I and I can't, That's the best I can do. Tremble King alcohol, we shall grow up, you will die. That's just, I mean, that's just wholesome pedagogy right there. Unsurprisingly, Mary also had another goal, and this one was personally lucrative, though her supporters didn't know it at first. Once legislation requiring temperance education passed, it meant that nationwide schools needed new textbooks to meet federal requirements.

So Mary cranked out a petition that dictated that textbooks would only be acceptable under this federal mandate if they taught that alcohol was a poison, advocated for total abstinence, and avoided all references about the medicinal use of alcohol. Mary built one crucial stipulation into the legislation that got passed. The textbooks must be endorsed by an authority on the subject. And surprise, surprise, that authority needed to be her. Much like she did with the WCTU, she again appointed herself in charge. It was at this point that Mary acquired some detractors, educators and scientists who recognized that Mary's curriculum was pretty problematic. The alarm these folks sounded was echoed from leaders

at Columbia, Stanford and Yale who were particularly outspoken in their opposition to this education plan. And even the Committee of 50, a committee assembled by the federal government to determine whether temperance promoters were correct, said that Mary's textbooks were neither scientific, nor temperate, nor instructive. Mary's response was to publicly call her detractors drunk and pleasure-loving and self-gratifying. Much like today, teachers face more demands than resources, and many were not keen on the pressure placed on them by this new federal mandate requiring scientific temperance instruction. Some may not have felt educated on the matter. Others may not have agreed with it. It's a probable bet that the majority of their students weren't enthralled by

the subject either. And immigrant parents, particularly those from places where drinking was a common part of their culture, were not happy with his attack on them via their children's education. In the end, in the battle between teachers and parents and Mary's mission. Mary won. She was able to get yet another mandate passed that required prospective teachers to pass a test on temperance before receiving their overall certification. These mandates created quite a dilemma for teachers who lived and taught in wet or alcohol selling and drinking counties. They, too, were mandated to teach abstinence from alcohol, and yet they could be fired at will for any offense.

So, say the authority figures in their school were anti-temperance. Should the teacher ignore the mandates and risk getting fired, or teach the mandates and risk getting fired? fired, or teach the mandates and risk getting fired. They couldn't win. But you know who could and did win? Mary. By this time, Mary had amassed a collection of memorabilia in her Boston home, which she dubbed the Scientific Temperance Museum. She kept all sorts of anti-booze keepsakes in it, like pens that governors used to sign the legislation. And in the back, she ran her endorsement operations. She even had a staff that handled her correspondence and the day-to-day business of keeping things running. Why would she need such assistance? What was she doing exactly? Remember at the top of the show when I mentioned that Mary had worked on a science textbook with her principal back in her teaching days? And remember when Mary

decided that she needed to be involved in the creation of new textbooks with appropriate sections on temperance? All of those paths lead here. Mary's job was to endorse textbooks as appropriate for use in the classroom, and those deemed worthy would have her endorsement displayed prominently at the beginning of the book. By now, Mary had a board of her organization filled with doctors and ministers, so the government was under the assumption that this board would be the ones signing off on each textbook. But that was not the case. It was Mary and only Mary. And Mary wanted something for her endorsements. Professor Charles Stowell from the University of Michigan Medical School, the author of a series of health and anatomy books, had spent more than a year negotiating word-by-word changes with Mary before she agreed to sign off on his book.

Remember, Mary did not have any formal training as an editor. These were just inserting her own opinions. These kinds of negotiations generally centered on making the anti-alcohol content of the books harsher. Professor Stoll was actually pro-temperance, and he'd already included a lot of anti-liquor language, but it was strictly scientifically accurate language. Mary wanted him to specifically say unscientific things like how a single sip of booze could make you go blind. She relentlessly pushed for the required inclusion of anti-alcohol propaganda. It was a basic quid pro quo. In order to get her signature and begin the process of publication, distribution, and getting paid for their work, authors capitulated to her every linguistic whim, even when they knew it wasn't true. But Stowell stood his ground, and his publisher intervened in the hopes of getting

his book out. They gave in to Mary's demands. What she wanted was an all-expense-paid trip to Atlantic City. And so instead of requiring the author to make false claims about alcohol, she took the payoff. Because at this point, it wasn't about ethics, or the children, or the horror of booze anymore. It was about money. When it was time to publish Stoll's next book, his publisher again approached Mary for her signature. This time, a trip would not suffice, she decided. Mary wanted cash. Part of Mary's credibility as a moral crusader, a fighter for children and country, was that all her work was uncompensated. She was doing it, she said, because it was her calling from God. And yet, it appears that the

opportunity to profit proved irresistible. Stoll's publishing company reported Mary's demand for payment to the local legislature in New York, and in 1895, a member of her board was called in to explain Mary's actions in front of a special committee of the New York, and in 1895, a member of her board was called in to explain Mary's actions in front of a special committee of the New York Senate. He defended her, and the matter was dropped. Eleven years later, after Mary's death in 1906, the extent of her grift was discovered. For years, she had maintained a bank account under the name of the Scientific Temperance Association, a so-called charity organization that listed herself, her pastor, and a few of her friends as the only members. Into this charity account,

she had deposited the royalties on endorsed books from several publishers. The racket she pulled on Stowell's publishers, she had done the same for years with others. It was only because of his integrity and refusal to compromise his work for her payoff that anyone noticed something was amiss. Mary didn't leave history with any answers. Was it a scheme from the outset? Did she become disillusioned over time? Did the unilateral power she claimed for herself corrupt her? Nobody knows. We do know that because of her powers of persuasion and her zeal for propaganda, at the turn of the century, 22 million schoolchildren were subjected to unscientific anti-alcohol lessons three times a week for the duration of their education. And it doesn't take a sleuth to connect the dots.

doesn't take a sleuth to connect the dots. A whole generation of children grew up, and by the time they reached adulthood, prohibition had become the law of the land. Before we part for today, I want to talk about a part of the temperance movement that often gets glossed over. Black temperance looked a bit different from what Mary was doing with education and even from what the WCTU advocated, which was to create healthy, moral, white Christian family units. While both women and blacks were marginalized in 19th century America, the role of alcohol within enslavement greatly impacted the ways black temperance activists approached the movement. by the way, also abstained from alcohol. Douglas, who was a formerly enslaved person, became one of the most famous black men in America, in large part to his activism and authorship. His autobiography, published and revised multiple times, talks about the horrors of enslavement, and it showcases how enslavers used alcohol as a means of controlling the people

they enslaved. He wrote about enslavers and overseers who, under the influence, allowed their brutality against enslaved people to go unchecked. He wrote about enslavers demanding grueling physical labor day after day and rewarding enslaved laborers with cheap alcohol to keep them complacent. He wrote about alcohol offering a temporary escape from the hellish conditions of chattel slavery. And when Frederick Douglass began to speak in front of crowds as an activist, he spoke about his own alcoholism. While white temperance advocates focused on morality and families, their Black counterparts also rallied against the ways in which the traffic of alcohol replicated the economy of enslavement. Those who profited from the production and sale

of alcohol were not the same marginalized groups of people who experienced the devastating effects of alcoholism. The poor, the Black and Native populations, women, those without power, without a voice or a vote, were the ones most affected by the ills of alcohol abuse. So a circle of Black activists, including Frederick Douglass and a woman named Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, made it clear that progressive reform for abolition, for suffrage, and for temperance were all connected, and that their work on the various fronts intersected in interesting ways. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born in 1825 to free Black parents in Baltimore, Maryland. As an adult, Frances spent

many years moving around the United States delivering abolitionist speeches and writing essays and poems about her observations from traveling. She was one of the most prolific Black authors of the 19th century. Her essays and poems were widely circulated in Black journals, and she published a variety of novels, short stories, and poetry collections, most of which focused on the quality of life of Black Americans. Frances Allen also worked on behalf of the WCTU around the same time that Mary did. While she wasn't as extreme as Mary was with regard to alcohol, Frances Ellen did call slavery and intemperance the twin evils of the time.

She was happy to partner with the WCTU on what she considered important work. But it wasn't exactly like her experience with the WCTU was the same as that of her white counterparts. Frances Allen served as the superintendent of the quote-unquote colored section of the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia WCTUs in the late 1870s. And by 1883, she had moved into a similar role at the national level. Frances Ellen's work with the WCTU was extensive, but it was also underfunded, undervalued, and undermined by the group's commitment to appealing to white Southern women, potential members or supporters who wouldn't dream of working alongside Black activists. So the WCTU under Frances Willard's management continued to uphold segregation

and racist practices within the organization. In fact, Frances Ellen and Frances Willard were so at odds with each other that Willard removed Frances Ellen from leadership and reorganized her department, making it harder for Frances Ellen to do effective work. While Frances Ellen continued her WCTU membership, she did take a step back from it to work on something new. In 1896, she helped create the National Association of Colored Women, and the organization established its own department of temperance work. She spent the rest of her life working for equality and opportunities for Black women, saying, We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, And society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.

Meanwhile, the WCTU had shifted away from temperance reform through education and turned an eye toward another type of social reform, women's right to vote. Frances Willard led the alliance between the women's suffrage movement and the WCTU, and it created a powerful force in the struggle for the white women's vote. She called their combined effort home protection, a way for white women as the moral guardians of the home to work with the temperance movement and gain the right to vote as a weapon of protection from the tyranny of drink. Because it was white men they had to convince, it was white women who they appealed to. And they did so by stating that the right to vote would help women protect the purity of the home. It was similar to the way they began the temperance movement by praying in front of taverns and asking bartenders and saloon keepers to please stop selling alcohol to protect the sacredness of a moral family unit.

sacredness of a moral family unit. Black women, however, were active leaders in organizing and strategizing ways to gain the right for universal suffrage, gaining the right to vote for Black men and for Black and white women. They used the platforms available to them—churches, schools, newspapers, and community—to spread the word about the necessity of voting as a right of American citizenship. But Black women's activism efforts went overlooked. Media gave their full attention to prominent Black men like Frederick Douglass, and to white women like Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. In fact, the National American Women's Suffrage Association actually prevented Black women from attending their conventions. And despite inviting all women to join the 1913 women's suffrage procession down Pennsylvania Avenue

in Washington, D.C., the same Nassau leaders declared that Black women would have to march separately from white women because Southern delegations threatened to boycott the parade if they were made to walk with women of color. The fierce Ida B. Wells from Chicago was having none of that exclusionary nonsense, and even though she was told to go to the back of the parade, of that exclusionary nonsense. And even though she was told to go to the back of the parade, she waited until the Illinois chapter started to pass, and then she jumped into the parade line to march, leading her fellow home state suffragists unwilling to stay sidelined. Black women were what's been called doubly disenfranchised because of both their gender and their race. and they often found

themselves pulled in two different directions. Black men wanted their support in fighting racial discrimination and prejudice, and white women wanted them to help elevate the status of women in American society. But both groups dismissed the numerous challenges that Black women themselves faced. Where should their loyalties lie? Many Black women spoke out on the importance of recognizing that intersectionality, or how things work together, of gender and race. Intersectionality is a term that wouldn't be coined until like the late 1980s, but these were women like Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Nanny Helen Burroughs, and Harriet Tubman, who knew the reform work needed to overlap. Likewise, in the fights for temperance, civil rights, and suffrage,

there was another group that stands out, the Quakers. Many Quakers openly advocated for abolition, temperance, and women's suffrage. A progressive community of Quakers lived in Waterloo, New York. Just a hop, skip, and a jump from where the Seneca Falls Convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, and it was there that many of the convention's leaders met for planning sessions. Five out of the six of them, Lucretia Mott, Marianne McClintock, Jane Hunt, Martha Wright, and Susan B. Anthony, were Quakers. 23 Quakers signed the convention's Declaration of Sentiments, making them the largest group to do so. In the 19th century, Quakers saw the negative effects alcohol and drunkenness had in society and how it contributed to inequality and violence between men and women. And while

the Quakers supported the temperance movement in some pretty traditional ways, like organizing the Quaker action on alcohol and drugs, which called on Quakers to commit to total abstinence, they also supported it by doing something unusual. They began to trade chocolate. You heard me right. The Quakers, who thought cocoa had soothing medicinal properties, began to sell a chocolate drink as an alternative to alcohol. Back in Britain in the mid-1800s, there were three different Quaker chocolate drink as an alternative to alcohol. Back in Britain in the mid-1800s, there were three different Quaker chocolate drink manufacturers, and you have undoubtedly heard of one of them, Cadbury. Cadbury's under the direction of Quaker chocolatier John Cadbury started out selling tea, coffee, and drinking chocolate as alcohol alternatives.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The chocolate was the biggest hit. And as the company expanded, so did their offerings. In 1868, the company was the first to mass-produce chocolate boxes, little heart-shaped boxes full of chocolates that men would give to their sweethearts on Valentine's Day. And of course, we know them best here in the United States for their cream eggs, Cadbury cream eggs. I eat precisely one quarter of one each year on Easter. It's wild to think that in an effort to support temperance and lessen alcohol addiction, a company ended up revolutionizing both the chocolate and the holiday industries.

As the wheels of temperance and women's suffrage began to pick up speed at the turn of the century, both movements roped in major players. Activists, certainly, but also politicians and journalists, too, that would ultimately lead to the success of both the movements, for better or for worse. Join me next time as we continue our story about how prohibition became a thing in the United States and what it took to get there. I'll see you again soon. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon

McMahon. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button on the podcast platform of your choice. We also benefit so much from ratings, reviews, and sharing on social media. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you again soon.