Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - America is Deeply Broken (Here's How We Can Fix It) - Rye Barcott

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

What does real courage look like when the cameras stop rolling, and the tribe wants you to fall in line? On this episode of Open Book, I sit down with Rye Barcott, Marine, author, and founder of With Honor, to talk about his book "Courage to Save Us," and why the ten Americans he profiles just might be the antidote to everything that's broken in our politics right now. Rye Barcott is a Marine Corps veteran, social entrepreneur, investor, and New York Times-bestselling author. He is co-founder and CEO of With Honor, a cross-partisan organization that fights polarization by supporting principled veteran leadership in public office. His first book, It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace, juxtaposes humanitarian and military service in Kenya and Iraq. Dartmouth College awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. Learn more about his incredible organization With Honor here: https://withhonor.org/ Get a copy of Rye's important new book, Courage Can Save US: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future 📚Books mentioned in this episode: War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges It Happened On the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace by Rye Barcott The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education by Craig M. Mullaney Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://www.scaramucci.net/allthewrongmoves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

say they know courage matters. We know it. It matters not only in our leaders, but it also matters in our own lives. For sure, it matters in our kids' lives. This is a total mental health crisis that we're going through. I didn't even hear the word, you know, suicide when I was growing up in junior high or high school. It wasn't even in my consciousness. And now I got kids that are in middle school. One of my kids is in sixth grade, like the first two days, she comes home and she's like, daddy, this guy next to me who's like had a wrinkled up piece of paper and said that I feel like I can't, you know, go on with my life. And the teacher doesn't say anything in response to it. Courage is about service, service is about purpose, and I think that's why

people are hungry for a message like this. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Ray Barkott. He's the co-founder and CEO of With Honor, and he is a New York Times bestselling author. That's right, and it's about this book, actually. The title is Courage to Save Us, Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future. It's a brilliant title. Ryan, congratulations on the success of the book. It's well deserved. The book is amazing. I want to go to your career, if you don't mind. I want to go to the veteran that you are, why you decided to serve, and then how you started with honor and what with honor is about

before we get into this sensational book. Thanks so much, Anthony. Great to be on. We've known each other for almost 10 years. And I started with honor about 10 years ago. I co-founded it with the late David Gergen, who passed away one year and a day last year. So actually, his anniversary, the passing was, is tomorrow. So we're going to do a special posting on with honor for that. And another veteran that I'd served with in the Marine Corps. And this was 10 years ago. And what we saw was that there was a group of vets that had served in post 9-11 that were

eager to answer the call to serve again in another hardship post, which is our modern politics. And they actually were running across party lines. And so we decided to set up an organization called with honor. It's a nonprofit organization. It's got a political arm to get to it. Veterans who we support have to take a pledge to serve with integrity, civility,

and the courage to still work across party lines, which is hard to do. But vets in Congress used to be at a high watermark of 70%. It's down to about 20% now. We support not every veteran. Not all are sort of part of the solution. but as a group, veterans tend to act in a more cross-partisan way. We like to say cross-partisan because we support independence as well. And all the proceeds from this book, every dime that I bring in,

and fortunate that it's been on the list now for four weeks, goes to the organization. And what the organization does is it recruits, it trains, it then supports, and then it helps bring cohesion and have accountability to veterans across party lines, particularly in the U.S. Congress. They're about 50 of them. They still trust each other.

They often don't agree on issues, but they trust each other, and they're able to work on some difficult things. And frankly, they just treat each other with respect and dignity, which is in scarcer supply these days as a courage. Okay. I mean, listen, I think you came to the first salt conference in 2019. Is that correct? That's right. That's right. With Mikey Cheryl.

Mikey Cheryl was now the governor of New Jersey. I've had the chance to meet her at several conferences and love her. I mean, she's doing great work. You've got other, you obviously have her here in the book. You've got so many others. But I want to go to what it means to be a humanitarian. Because I think character does matter, right? You've got loads of it.

You've got buckets of it. And you write about character mattering in the book. But really, if you are a public, servant in the right kind of way, you've got to be a humanitarian. So define that for me. Tell me what that means. Well, thanks. I mean, I've got that principally or I think I try to aspire to humanitarianism thanks to my mother, who's a nurse. Nurses happen to be the one profession that ranks higher in trust than veterans in the United States. Almost everything else is in the gutter. But the commonality that they have is service. And, you know,

At its core, this is a book about courage, but it is about service because courage is service. Courage is the decision to take a risk, sometimes to face fear, but the decision to take a risk to serve the common good. It can be many things. It can be your family. It can be your friends. It can be the marine to your right or left. It can be your country. But it is fundamentally not yourself. Now, I believe that humans are self-interested. Don't give me wrong. But if you pursue a path of service, what you end up doing is you focus less on yourself, you find purpose, and that brings a lot of meaning to individual lives and frankly is better for the country. So right now, less than 2% of Americans serve in either military or in civilian capacities. It's a slightly larger percentage when you broaden out to some great ways of serving that are not in government, of course, nonprofits, you know, nursing,

I mentioned to teaching, et cetera. But fewer and fewer folks are serving, and more and more Americans, particularly younger Americans, which was the audience principally that I wrote this book for high school and college students, are finding paths of service. And listen, you can still find a path of service too while you're in a business. And frankly, business can be a great source of purpose. So don't give me wrong. I'm not like exclusionary to a piece.

But it is first and foremost, less of a worship of. of yourself, you know, we are in such like a me worship culture. And that is just, it's just toxic for everybody. It's toxic for yourself. It's toxic for everybody around you. So humanitarianism is about service, right? It can take many different forms, but it is, it is fundamentally saying, hey, listen, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to put myself at risk in order to assist

others. And at its core, that is, that is what the military, that is what the military, is about. You know, 18, 19 years old is when most folks are signing up and they are signing a piece of paper that says that if I'm so called, I will give my life. I will give my life. I may never have kids. I may never have a wife. I may give my life from my country. Thank you for tuning in an open book. And if you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week. We've got a lot more coming. And now back to the show. It's very, very compelling. You and I are at the 250th

anniversary of the founding of the nation. I feel like the book is well time. Before we started and went live on the show, you said that you had been working on the book for three years. And it seems like Kismet, like you've got the book launch right at the perfect time. So tell me what you think is going on in America right now as to why the book has been so well received, right? Well, I think there are two things. And first of all, I feel fortunate for it. You know, you just don't know. My first, I've only done one other book that I was 15 years ago called it Happen on

the Way to War. And my wife jokes that my, the years that I'm writing are the grumpiest year. The grumpiest shears around me, which is saying a lot. But I think, listen, this is a book about current. in different forms. First of all, it's where courage comes from. So I profile 10 Americans that I served with five Democrats, five Republicans. You know, hard to find. But we're actually working with them. And these are folks that I know. And so they opened up their lives. I went in many cases when their parents, their parents were still alive. I visited their parents.

I went to their hometowns. I met with their siblings. I got to really know them and built trust over years. And trust takes time to build. But it can be, of course, demolished very quickly. it. But the trust that we built enabled me to get real stories, real profiles that I think, you know, is written in such a way. My goal with the writing is that the pages move. And I'm specifically got high school and college students in mind. So the pages move. The stories are interesting. There's a narrative arc, but they are fundamentally true. They're not like just had geographies. They show that we're all flawed as human beings. Courage is not a static thing. You know, we aspire towards courage.

Most of our lives, we don't live with a lot of courage necessarily in your average, you know, life. And I differentiate between courage and bravery, where bravery is often what we train in the military. It can be instinctive. It can be self-serving. But courage is always a decision to serve that common good. But Marcus Aureli is called the common good. And so why is this connecting right now? Well, I think there are two things.

The first is the country, right? we are in this place of, you know, bitter division, but also like, it doesn't feel real, right? I mean, for a lot of Americans, it's like, okay, this place, D.C. doesn't work for me, but I'm still in my community, and we're still Americans, and we still believe in this country. And a lot of the polarization is actually driven by the algorithms that are feeding our, you know, brains and feeding the, you know, our kids' brains with outrage and nonsense, you know, I mean, just flat out lies. So I think Americans are eager to find some different path. And this is an example, I think a hopeful example, but also an honest one, that it's still

there. You know, the last place that you may think about for courage and it's understandable would be Congress, like the last. But what I show here is that here. 10 examples of people that are in the arena that have served before, that have put their lives on the line, that have served before, worn the cloth of the nation, and are continuing to serve with a different form of courage oftentimes than they face in the military. Because the military, it's often about physical courage.

You know, it's what you think about. You think about, you know, going into battles and risking your life. But the quire of form of courage, which can be just harder to much. muster for many, including myself, is moral courage. You know, when your friendships are on the line, your reputation's on the line. It's easy to go with the flow. It's hard to, like, break from the tribe. And so what I try to do is show, hey, where did that come from?

And then here are some specific moments, like, in it. I mean, we started with Mikey Cheryl. Mikey Cheryl is the first ever woman caught veteran to be elected governor. You know, the first ever won. and she was very shy growing up. I remember when I sat down with her father. Her father said, listen, she would not talk to kids. She was very anxious.

We were moving around from city to city. But then one day when in like third or fourth grade, she came home and she was like, Mommy, Daddy, I'm tired of being anxious. I'm just going to start smiling. And so she did. And then she decided that she was going to fly it because she had a hero in her grandfather who had flown in Nazi occupying, behind enemy lines in Nazi occupied Germany was shot down.

She says when she's like, I don't know, 10 years old, 11 years old, she's going to fly, she's going to go to the Naval Academy. She sets that as a goal, and she goes and does it. The first action that she took in Congress had guts because she said she wasn't going to vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. And that was like kind of popular on the campaign trail,

but it sure wasn't popular when she got in. And she stuck to her word. A lot of the others didn't, but she stuck to her word because it was her word. You know, that meant something. And that came with some cost. So there are many examples like that and they're across party lines, but that's fundamentally what this book's about. And I think Americans are really eager to say, they know courage matters.

We know it. It matters not only in our leaders, but it also matters in our own lives. And for sure, it matters in our kids' lives. I mean, it's crazy. This is a total mental health crisis that we're going through. You know, I mean, I didn't even hear the word, you know, suicide when I was growing up in junior high or high school. It wasn't even in my consciousness. And now I got kids that are in middle school.

Sixth grade, my kid, my, one of my kids is in sixth grade, like the first two days. She comes home and she's like, daddy, this this guy next to me who's like, you know, had a wrinkled up piece of paper and said that I don't feel I feel like I can't, you know, go on with my life. and the teacher doesn't say anything in response to it. So courage is about service, service is about purpose, and I think that's why people are hungry for a message like this. Yeah, Lucent, the message is very resonating. You know, Dick Gaphardt, I think he may remember him. He was a former Democratic Majority Leader in the House

from the great state of Missouri, lovely guy, 85 years old, was a bipartisan guy, got heavy criticism in the early 90s for his bipartisan cooperation. with George Herbert Walker Bush. He once said to me, and I want you to respond to it, the exact quote is, Anthony, we are in politics because politics is a substitution for warfare. In other words, meaning if we weren't political

and backstabbing each other and fighting with each other verbally, we'd be on the battlefield shooting at each other. We're going to react to that statement. What do you think of that? Because you've been in both places. You've been in the war. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting, too, coming from Gephard because he was somebody that would that would that stuck to his principles

and would fight but he also knew how to like actually get something done and like you know and and eventually say hey listen you know in order to get something durable done especially in a place like congress it's got to have bipartisan support otherwise it's just going to be you know sort of fleeting so what do i think about the actual the comment on this it reminds me of a great book called war is a force that gives us meaning by Chris Hedges. And I do think that there is like a natural pull from the human condition to conflict. And that's part of the reason why our algorithms are, you know, going nuts on the, on the conflict. Because it works, right?

It sells. But leadership is about being able to like rise above that. And frankly, especially for those that served in the military, there's this great study that's out there by a guy named Peter Fever. he's a professor of Duke. He looked at military members in decision-making positions in national security for the last 100 years. And basically what he found was that most military members

are less interested in using force to solve problems, especially those that are combat vets and have seen what happens when the dogs of war slip. You know, the cost to prevent violence is always easier to then, or it's always less than the actual costs to intervene. And we're certainly in a moment right now, with that where you know foreign escapades after going through these so-called forever wars are essentially an 80-20 issue in opposition to them. So I do think conflict human conflict is part of the

human condition and I also think that leadership is about being able to like recognize that, pick your battles and figure out how to frankly again put put the interests of something larger than yourself ahead of you. I think, you know, the thing that impressed me the most is the trueness of the stories. And so what do I mean by that? I've been in politics a long time and a lot of people fabricate their stories, right? And they inflate their resumes. They inflate their time on the battlefield or they'll say something about themselves that isn't frankly true.

And but, you know, you have picked people who are true blue. You know, you pick people to me who are the Eagle Scouts or the Eagle Girl or Boy Scouts of our society. And so how did that happen? What was the criteria? How did they find you? How did with honor find them? You know, give me a little bit of the back story. Well, it's, it's, thanks.

It's over nine years of working with these particular members. And they're 10 out of, you know, more than we've screamed more than 2,000. We've supported more than 100. So the commonality that they all have is that they're willing to lose. They're actually willing to lose their office. So it's not going to be, you know, and there are certain red lines that they'll cross in order to do so. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example that also speaks to your comment about, you know, not always being, you know, not inflating the resume and just speaking the truth.

Brian Fitzpatrick, who's a Republican from Philadelphia. He's the only member in this book that's not military. He was FBI, and he helped establish an anti-corruption unit in Ukraine in the FBI. He also served in Iraq in the FBI. And I had to like tease this story out that starts this chapter, but it is a crazy story. His first assignment in the FBI, he was given a case that was assumed to be a cold case. It was an anti-corruption case that went all the way up to the Speaker of the House in New York. but they had been working it for like five years.

They'd gone nowhere. Brian, it's an individual named Brian McLaughlin. He's a New York State Assemblyman at the time. He'd stolen millions from the government, but they couldn't bust them. Fitzpatrick spends three years on the case, is able to turn him, and he starts rolling up all of these different guys,

all the way up to the Speaker of the House eventually falls on these anti-corruption cases. Well, Fitzpatrick had never spoken publicly about this. He just hadn't spoken publicly about this. publicly about this. So I asked them for permission to talk to McLaughlin. And they met for the first time after 15 years. He put him away in jail for like eight years. But he maintained his humanity with him. I remember he told me that he went to his kids. One of his kids was eight years old when they went to prison. And he looked at the girl, the eight year old. And he said, you know what? Your dad has made

mistakes, but he's a good person. And one day he's going to walk you down the aisle. And McLaughlin never forgot that. And he has this amazing quote first time I met him at like 6.30 in a Starbucks of Manhattan. At the end of the meeting and I'm recording the meeting with his permission. He says, I got one hand. And on this hand

I got my mother, my father, my brother, my kids. And there's Brian Fitzpatrick. This is a guy that put him to jail. And he's never seen him. So they got together for the first time like three weeks, three months

ago when we were because of the book book project. So that speaks to his character. But Fitzpatrick has also taken real stands on political courage. You know, he was one of the only people in his party to vote against a signature bill. He was holding the line on on Ukraine issue in particular. Like I said, he served there. It's near and dear to his heart. It's part of the fight for freedom. He traveled with our organization with honor and bipartisan delegation to Ukraine, all the way out to Harkey, the front lines, like pretty dangerous place. And so he believed it. And the way that it works, as you know, because you've been in this business, is it starts with your friends.

And they're like, hey, Brian, what do you do it? And then it's the subcommittee chair. And then it's the committee chair. And then it's the deputy whip. And then it's the deputy speaker. Then it's the speaker. And then it's the president. And they're all on the phone.

And are you holding the line? It's hard to hold the line. And after that one particular vote, he doesn't show up to caucus meetings anymore. You know? But he took a stand. and he's taking other stands like that. And I just think that it's easy in the United States right now to rip people apart, right? Just rip them the shreds to not have heroes.

It's just like the natural instinct. And again, it's also what our algorithms are feeding us into. Algorithms that, by the way, are not just American like creations. I mean, they're foreign entities at work here as well, dividing us. That is happening. But here are 10 examples, again, not perfect people, but folks, that can be emulated. And certainly you can appreciate their service, their call to service,

and their ability to make an impact. I give you one other example. We're talking about mental health. The first bill that we really worked when we started this organization, we only had 20 veterans in the caucus eight years ago. And we teamed up with my friend Seth Moulin. Seth's the one in the book that I know the most because we went to the basic school together. He pulled four combat tours in Iraq.

And Seth's had the courage to say when he was in public office that, hey, I've needed help. You know, I've needed help. I've struggled with PTSD. I've needed help. And that takes guts to say. It's an important thing to say. And so that helped set the stage to initiate and pass the 988 national suicide hotline. He helped get it done.

We were there with him. It was across party lines. There was another veteran who's a, he's a Democrat. There's one who was a Republican that helped push it through. And that's another example of, you know, courage can take many different forms. And it's just it's just the essential of that virtue and value, I believe. There's something in the book that really reached me. And that was about isolation.

That was about loneliness. That was about what it really means to be a leader, the burden of responsibility, in politics, you and I both know this. I'm sure this is also true on the battlefield. You're making decisions, and some of these decisions are, wow, this is going to be really bad and this is going to be slightly less bad. It's not like, you know, so binary,

this is a great decision and that's a bad one, you know. And we'll talk just a little bit about that. Talk a little bit about how you and your friends and colleagues and the people you're writing about handle that type of stress and that type of decision made. Well, the worst moment, are the ones where your decision hurts somebody and you can't take it back. You know, Kipling wrote the poem, the unforgiving, or the, yeah, the unforgiving minute is from

Kipling's poem. It's a, it's a title of a friend of mine, Craig Mullaney's book. It's a beautiful book. And Craig talks about this moment. He's in an army, Afghanistan of that. And you make a decision. And that decision, you own it. There's nothing you can do to roll back.

And God forbid if somebody gets hurt, killed, and it was the wrong damn decision. And that's the type of stuff that is just, it's really, really hard to like go. It's just like a boulder that you carry along. Also causes some of the PTSD though as well, right? Big time. You know, you have a little bit of survivor guilt over things that go on. And unfortunately, a lot of those things are outside of your control, even though if you think they may be inside your control, you know.

Yeah. And listen, I mean, you know, the, it really is. I mean, I'm married to a child psychologist. So I have a benefit here of benefiting from her expertise. But it is essential to be able to have some outlet for that. I mean, it just is. Unless you're, you know, some people are able to really, you know, carry that boulder forever, but it's not the healthy thing.

Eventually it kind of comes out. And so loneliness is, the antidote to loneliness is to be able to actually have real conversations outside of the screens. and frankly, fundamentally, those conversations are easier if you're actually doing something, right? I mean, especially for guys. It's like, I don't want to just pick up the phone and talk to talk. We got to do something. So, you know, pick something.

Go do something. And preferably do something that's fun, but also maybe help somebody. You know, that can be a way to address things. And then, you know, just recognizing that. when people do a courageous act, that that can inspire others. I've got on my website for the book, Courage and Save Us, I've got a new kind of platform where folks can submit a moment of courage that inspired them. Not a single person has talked about their own moment of courage.

Every single person has talked about something that they observed. It's often from a parent or loved one. But sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's from a stranger. I had this student that wrote the other day and he said, hey, I am like physically large. I mean, I'm a freaking beast. I'm a linebacker.

I'm big. And this punk was picking on this kid that was smaller. And the kid that was, and there was this kid that was smaller that broke it up. And I, and I was sitting there and I wasn't doing anything about it. But this kid did. And that, that bothered me,

but it also inspired me. And so, you know, again, like, you know, the courage moments. can come in very different shapes and sizes, but seek them out because they make you better and they make the people around you better. You're going to run for office? You know, I'm not doing it for that. I get it asked a lot because it is in politics. It's kind of a nice way to, I find it's a nice way to frankly serve and do something worthwhile, running with honor, working with people that are in the arena. But frankly, also having the luxury.

of being able to be more entrepreneurial with my time. So I'm not planning to run for office. I'm probably unelectable. Like truly, as somebody that supports people from both tribes, that is not where the country is. But it's also like I'm not seeking that as a box of check or a sense of like self-validation. And I ended the book with two veterans that are leaving office.

Jared Golden and Don Bacon. And I mentioned earlier in the podcast. I think a commonality is just the healthiest thing with somebody that's not only an elected leadership, but in a leadership position is entrusted in a leadership position. Has that privilege, you know, whether it's running a company or a nonprofit or in government, it is a privilege to have responsibility and to be in a leadership position. Sure, it can be a burden as well, but it is fundamentally a privilege. But both of those guys are leaving office.

on their own fruition. And Jared Golden had this really powerful line I included in the chapter. He said, you know, the fear I have is not of losing. It's of winning. His house is like two minutes away from where a mass shooting happened in Maine. And he had the guts to take a change his position on an issue and say he was wrong after that happened. And he's also had been just both of them, both Don Bacon &, Jared Golden, like many of our elected folks these days, get a lot of threats. And increasingly,

they're not just directed at them. They're also at their kids. And so at any rate, they said, listen, I've served. They both served for eight, 10 years. There's a lot length of time. And they've done their part. And now they're going to serve in, you know, some other capacity or helping some other capacity in their communities. I think that's a very healthy thing and not something that we see a lot. Like I said, I admire you a great deal. I think what you're doing for the country is of great service. And I'm a proud donor. I guess I should tell everybody that.

I'm a proud donor to your organization. And I'm very proud to be part of it. Thank you. We get five words out of your book. My producer and I, I'm going to reach you the word. You give me like a one or two sentences on the word. Awesome. If I say the word veterans to you, you say what?

Service. Okay. What if I say service then? Let's go to service. The common good. And what is the common good? It is something that is larger than yourself. It can be your community, your family.

It can be your faith. You know, it can be a principle. But it is a very powerful idea and ideal. What about courage? You talked a little bit about it, but I want you to get it down to like a few words. Well, I'll show yourself it. Let me push my pup here.

by the way he's got a America 250 bow tie how about that all right there you go I'm loving that all right um I'm also loving how quiet the pup is

I'm looking at all the bobblehead presidents back there so you yep yep I got that they're all they're all veterans I um and uh you know two thirds of our presidents of that were vets but yeah like when I think about courage honestly this is the first thing I think about

because um it's it it it saved my dad's life So this is a smoke grenade that he was wearing on his flat jacket above his heart in Vietnam. And he got a shot in the face and developed this. He had a scar that kind of looked like Barnes and Platoon. But the bullet came here and then was blown out the end and did not, that did not harm him. But this inert smoke grenade that's now covered in wax, you know, saved his life and enabled mine. and that was I was 10 years old when he finally told me what had happened and I remember feeling just I became fascinated by the word courage at that point and the moment of courage I didn't realize this when I was 10th I thought that was the moment of courage but I don't actually see that as the moment of courage right now when he was shot and like returning fire in the moment he was brave but it wasn't courage the courage was that he could leave the front lines after he was shot in that way he was a recon officer

officer in 1965 and with his buddy Phil Caputo who just passed away, another great writer. And he could have left, but he decided to go back with his guys and serve out his additional six months. And that was the moment of courage. Again, right? Making a decision, it's his decision. He owns it. He understands the risk. By God, he understands the risk by that point. And he is serving the common good. Now, what was the common good in that case? A lot of people would say, oh, well, he was serving his country. Sure, he was serving his country. But first and foremost, it was his Marines to his left and his right. This is an amazing story.

You got an amazing story about yourself and your family, but also what you're doing for the country. And I predict you and I are going to be, God willing, we'll be sitting around 10 years of now talking about a much bigger group of people that are moving the country in the right direction. So my last word, right barcott, then I'm going to give you the last word, okay? I say the word America.

Yeah, I think optimistic. You know, I really believe this country, you just have to go outside of the country, particularly in difficult places that don't have the same levels of freedom, to recognize that for all our faults, this is such a godsend and a privilege to be born in this country, where you can still make something of it. If you had a grievance about something, you can try and do, You know, you can try to do something about it. I still believe that even when we feel certain dark forces that are coming at us.

So that's how I feel about America. I always think of Lincoln, you know. I always think of aspiring to the better angels of our nature, Ry Barkhart. That's what I think of. I think about how we can pull this thing together if we just think about the good in each other, you know. And that's something you've done here in this book. The title of the book is Courage Can Save Us, the Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future. Rye Barkott, the CEO with Honor.

Thank you so much for joining us today on Open Book. Thank you. Anthony, great to be here.