The Eric Metaxas Show - Melanie Kirkpatrick (Encore)

Episode Date: September 5, 2021

Melanie Kirkpatrick returns to the big show to share what she's discovered about Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday. (Encore Presentation)

to the Eric Metaxus show with your host, Eric Metaxus. Hey there, folks. It's here from The Texas Show. Every now and again, we have a special, fun, ask metaxus segment. Yeah. I get to play the role of Metaxus. You get to ask the questions. Yeah, thank you.

I'm going to play album today. Okay, here's the first question. How do you, how do I, and that would be everybody out there, how do I order, pre-order your Is Atheism Dead Book? All right, we're not supposed to have questions like this because this is kind of the question that it's embarrassing. It sounds like we included it just to plug my book. But since somebody asked the question, I'll answer it because I do want people to pre-order the book. You go to my website, Eric Mataxis.com.

While you're there, you sign up for the newsletter, just in case you haven't done that before. Shame on you. And then you click on books and you'll see how to pre-order. Next question. Okay. What would you say to a 13-year-old American boy today, as including, encouragement as advice, as wisdom. How about, hey, how about get a haircut and get a job and stop leaching off your parents?

What is wrong with you? Okay, no, the 13-year-old, I would say that, this is kind of tough to say, but you live in a culture now where it has gotten increasingly impossible to get to the truth. So one thing you need to do is understand that a lot of the stuff you're getting off of your phone has been filtered by people that I wouldn't trust to give you information. So I would say you need to make sure that you read things and follow sources that are going to give you truth. We've never been in a society where it's so easy for people to be propagandized by forces beyond their parents, beyond people who love them and care for them. So it's one of the reasons

I say to people, you know, sign up for my newsletter because I have guests on that I know I can trust. If you kind of flip on the TV or just look on the Internet or take, you know, Yahoo News or whatever, you're getting a lot of information that's not good and healthy. I would also say that I wish I could send you a copy of my Seven Men book and I wish I could send you a copy of my is, sorry, if you can keep it book, because understanding why you need to love America and love freedom and why you need to love God and serve him with your whole. whole heart and your whole life. That's, that's really the most important thing. But, yeah, I'll leave it at that. Man, that's such a serious question. I want to have, like, days to answer. Well, here's,

another serious one. What inspired you to write Bonhoeffer? Cash money. Yeah. When inspired me to write Bonhofer, well, nothing particularly inspired me to write Bonhofer. Bonhofer came to my attention when I was, just had my conversion in 1988. And I, um, My friend Ed Tuttle gave me a copy of cost of discipleship. He told me of Bonhoeffer. And I was like, what? A German pastor who stood up for the Jews? That's the kind of Christianity I could get behind.

And I kind of over the years thought about him. But after I wrote my amazing grace book on Wilberforce, which somebody had come to me and said, do you want to write a biography of Wilberforce? And I did. After that, I thought, you know what? Bonhofer would be an amazing hero to write about. But I had no clue at the time what I was getting into.

And I look back on it now. And it seems clear to me that God, inspired me to do that. So I'll say, God, and I'm not kidding. And that's the book for such a time as this. Would you ever get a master's or PhD in something? Absolutely not. I think, I don't know if I would get a BA at this point. I think most education, higher education, most, tends to be a waste of time. And I think all kinds of people are spending money or their parents' money taking classes that aren't, you know, like I think we should be much more careful, but before we like leap into a program.

But I personally, I'm a generalist, and I don't think that I need to be in an academic setting or that I ever did, certainly after graduating. So, yes, at age 20, I was done with my official education, and I'm far too busy even to consider this, so I'll have to say emphatically no. Okay, what are your top three daily habits? I don't know that I have habits.

That's the problem with me. Well, don't you jog every day or something? I always see you running around the reservoir in Manhattan. Not every day. Exercise is, I mean, what should my habits be daily? There you go. Flossing. Okay.

Very important. I was going to say shaving my back, but that would be a joke answer. Reading the Bible and praying, I think that's like the key. I also think exercise is. vital and if you don't exercise you're missing something a lot of people think yeah i don't do that it's really healthy to be healthy uh did i just say that you did um so i think that's really important um but in terms of habits i'm not a guy with habits and i'm not proud of that actually my life is kind of screwy so uh i i i'm not i'm not giving any kind of answer on that okay how pathetic

how about this one when is your addisies film coming out when is what Odysse's, Odys, Odissies, Desi? Odyssees, Desi. I don't know. How did you Greeks pronounce that? Odysseus. We call him Odysseus. Actually, it's Odysseus, and I know what you meant.

When is the Odysseus film coming out? I'm not sure. I have to write my book about it, but we are, a lot of people listening, don't know what we're talking about. The tomb of Odysseus was discovered on the Greek island of Cephalonia. I am very involved in trying to bring that to light. It is so fascinating. So I don't know. But I would guess within the next calendar year, almost certainly.

Oh, that's great. Yeah. And that's Morgan Friedman's production company, right? We've allied with Morgan Freeman's production company. That's right. He probably is going to do the voiceover. Wow, that's great. Well, what's your favorite BBQ in Kansas City?

I don't remember because I wasn't there long enough to get to go to different ones. but oh boy did I love it they have these things what do they call them ends I can't remember but oh it's so good if you go to Kansas City you got to get the barbecue okay how many languages do you speak do you speak fluent German and Greek I first of all I want to be very clear because people always get this wrong I speak one language at a time very important if you're mixing languages in it like a sentence that's called speaking macaronically mm-hmm that's macaronic speaking very good but I don't I tend not to do that I speak enough German and enough Greek that when I have my parents on the phone, I often speak

to them in those languages. But it's a very simple level of German and a simple level of Greek. I make basic mistakes. But I can get by in those languages. My pronunciation is excellent. Yeah. But so is my pronunciation in French, and I don't speak French. So basically, and I can get by in Spanish. Very good. But I'm not fluent in any of them. I am fluent in English. And if you're not fluent in English and that's your primary language, you need to read more. Yeah, well, I know two languages. American and English. Yes, excellent.

Yeah, very well. Is your YouTube channel backup? Boy, can I answer that? Yeah, no. Well, I want to be clear. Actually, that's a good question to answer. YouTube didn't cancel me on YouTube. They canceled the Eric Mataxis show.

So the Eric Mataxis show, our channel on YouTube was all of these shows, all of our interviews. We had 220,000 subscribers to the Erkmataxis show channel. So that was devastating, huge. So we post all of our stuff on Rumble. But videos of me speaking in churches or doing a lot of stuff, that is on my personal YouTube channel, which was not canceled. It's infinitely smaller than the Erkin Texas Show channel. But you should go to my personal channel on YouTube,

and maybe we can get those subscribers. up as well. Yeah, and go to Socrates and the city.com, too, for other interviews. And don't forget about that. Yeah, yeah. Would you consider a revival tour to England with Oz Guinness or Francis Chan or Franklin Graham? Would I consider a revival tour with Oz Guinness, Francis Chan or Francis Graham

Franklin Graham? Like, yes, absolutely. Next question. Of course. If you had to choose Warren Zevon or Doobie Brothers, which one? That is really tough. I'm not kidding. Warren Zevon doesn't have a lot of great songs, but the ones that are great are unbelievably great. Doobie brothers, awesome. No answer. No real answer.

Okay, let me jump to this next one here at the bottom. Do you have mosquitoes in New York? I think it's a good one. I think there's one of the studio right now. Of course we have mosquitoes in New York. But when I was in Birmingham recently, I got bitten like crazy. I never saw them. But yeah, of course we do.

Unfortunately, we do, yeah. Okay, real quick. I need a good news source. Where do I go for news? Besides here. Besides this program, I don't have an answer for that. I don't know. There's a lot.

You can go to the Gateway Pundit. There's a lot of conservative news sites out there. And Tucker Carlson, if you've got one show on Fox, it's Tucker. I would say so. Yeah. So that's another non-answer. We've been pathetic today. We're sorry.

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We get to have some fun. Isn't that nice? We get to talk to our friend Melanie Kirkpatrick, who just wrote a book. I just the title, Lady Editor, a biography of Sarah Josepha Hale. Melanie, this is a fun book. Tell us about it. Great to be with you again, Alvin. Excuse me, Eric.

The last time we spoke, it was about Thanksgiving, and this is how I learned. learned about Sarah Josepha Hale, who's known as the godmother of Thanksgiving. It was she who persuaded Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War to issue the first proclamation for a national Thanksgiving. So I got interested in her. And she was a celebrity in the 19th century, but she's virtually unknown in the 21st century. She was an author. She was the editor of the most popular magazine of the pre-Civil War period, Goody's Ladies' book.

She was a champion of rights for women. And she was a cultural unifier. She believed that America had been unified politically, but not culturally. And she set out to change that through the work of her magazine. That's an amazing point. I want to talk to you about that. in a moment, but I want to just keep hitting it here. You were with the Wall Street Journal.

You're with the Hudson Institute, and we did talk to you about Thanksgiving. But this woman, as you said, she was a major figure in the 19th century, gigantic name, but virtually forgotten, really. I mean, whoever talks about Sarah Josipa Hale. So just tell us about her, generally speaking, more about her life,

She is a hugely influential figure. It's hard for us to imagine how influential she was. I think she's one of the most influential women, if not the most influential woman in our history. She was, she grew up in a little town in New Hampshire. She was born in 1788. She was really a woman of the 18th century. And when her husband died, she was in her 30s with four children. The oldest was seven.

and a fifth on the way. She had to figure out a way to support herself. She liked to write. Her husband had told her she was good at it. So she got the Masons, the Freemasons. Her husband had been a Freemason. And she started to write, and the Freemasons published her first book, a book of poetry.

Then she wrote a novel, an anti-slavery novel, decades before Uncle Tom's cabin. And that caught the attention. It did well, and it caught the attention of an Episcopal priest in Boston who was starting a magazine for women. And he invited her to come there, was called the Ladies Magazine, and be the first editor. She did. And she turned it into a big success, so much so that Lewis Goody, a publishing magnet in Philadelphia, decided he, wanted her, his editor of his book called his magazine called The Ladies' Book. And she wanted to stay in Boston where her oldest son was in college at Harvard. But so what did Mr. Gody do? He bought her magazine so that he could get her. And that was the beginning of a beautiful partnership that lasted

until the, I think it was 1877. So for 50 years, until she was almost 90, Hale was this towering figure in American journalism. And her subjects, her passion was education for women. She began her career at a time when only half of American women were even literate. and there was no college that accepted women. And teaching was considered a man's profession. There were no women doctors, of course. And married women had no property rights. That is, the second they got married, anything they earned, anything they inherited,

went to their husbands to run. So Hale used her magazines to fight for, rights for women. At a time, I must say, this was 20 years ago when she started before the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. And I think the women's rights advocates who followed, even those in the 20th century and today stand on Hale's shoulders. Because without education, without education, women would have not gotten very far. And she through her advocacy, really and the power of her pen, was able to change the national conversation about why women should be educated. Was she a woman of any particular faith? She was. She started out

as a congregationalist, of course, because that's what people were in the little town in New Hampshire, where she was born in the 18th century. And she was a very faithful. faithful Christian. When she got to Philadelphia, however, in the 30s to run the ladies' book, there weren't any congregational churches. So she joined the Episcopal Church. Unclear why, but she was a member of a very famous Episcopal Church on Rittenhouse Square called the Church of the Holy Trinity. Philip Brooks was the priest there for a while, the rector there for a while. She was, you can see her faith in her writing. And she wrote a book about women of the Bible. That was one of her many books. But in her writing, you know, I, I read the Bible. So I would

be reading something that Hale wrote. And I would think, hmm, that sounds familiar. And so I'd Google it. And it would usually, it would often be something from the Bible. I'll give you one example. during the Civil War, she wrote about her magazine being a lodge in the wilderness for her readers. And the phrase sounded familiar, so I googled it, and it was from Psalm 55. So that's not unusual, I guess, for a writer of the pre-Civil War period to be so versed in the Bible, but she was. It's unusual if they weren't versed in the Bible. Yeah, yeah, that's probably right. I'm just thinking of the 19th century, it's just so fascinating again to think that Sarah Josepha Hale, hugely influential to the point where all of our lives have been affected by her and her writing and we don't know about her.

So I'm thrilled that you've written about her. Were you surprised that there were so little known about her or that somebody hadn't written a biography of her more recently? surprised and disappointed, I guess, Eric. I think there are a couple of reasons for it. One is that after she left as editors of a Gaudy's lady's book, the magazine turned kind of trivial. So for the last 20 years before it disbanded at the end of the 19th century, it wasn't the magazine that had been under her leadership.

So maybe I think her reputation suffered as a result of that. But perhaps more important, Although she was a champion of the rights for women that I mentioned, she did not believe women should get the vote. She was anti-suffrage. Like a majority of women in the middle of the 19th century, I hastened to add. And I think that probably disqualified her from consideration by a lot of the women that followed. That is very interesting. Suffrage became the issue. Right. Similarly, when we talk about Susan B. Anthony, she was very much against abortion. So it's interesting how things change and how certain people are lionized and others are forgotten.

I love the idea that you said that she was interested in culturally unifying the United States. Talk about that. I'm just amazed by that. Well, when she started her magazine, she announced that she, in 1828, she announced that she was going to publish American authors writing on American themes and American subjects. Now, from our perspective, this seems obvious. Of course, Americans want to read American writers on American topics. But back then, this was a radical idea because magazines usually cut and pasted articles

from British magazines or American newspapers or whatever. And she had the backing of the publisher. and then later of Lewis Goody to do this. So she was a really good literary scout, and she found some authors whose work she published repeatedly. One was Edgar Allan Poe, whom her son had met when Poe was briefly at West Point in the 1820s. And she thought he had a lot of potential. Another was Nathaniel Hawthorne whose work she published.

And then she discovered a lot of women writers. And women whose names are not necessarily well known today, but they're part of the renaissance of female writers that took place in that period, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, I should add. I want to come back to the conversation. We're going to go to a break. Folks, the book is called, lady editor, and we'll continue the conversation. Sticker around.

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A vertical quake this size could collapse half of dot up. Catch final frequency. Playing exclusively on SalemNow.com or download the mobile app. For more information, Visit final frequency film.com. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Melanie Kirkpatrick, who has written a book called Lady Editor

about the tremendously influential, but mostly forgotten, Sarah Josepha Hale. She lived to be 90, you said, Melanie. So she had a long period of influence. Is she most famous for bringing Thanksgiving into the cultural center? Yes, I think that's exactly right. But she is also famous for writing Mary Little, Mary had a little lamb. Surprise to me when I learned that. I thought Mother Goose had written it, but Sarah Hale had written it.

I mean, that's amazing. She wrote Mary had a little lamb. We all of us think of it as, you know, something that was in Mother Goose. But she wrote this. When did she write? And why did she write it? She wrote it in 1830. And she wrote a lot of children's books.

and for a couple of years, she was editor of a juvenile miscellany, which was a popular children's magazine of the period. And nobody remembers this anymore, but Mary had a little, we just remember the first verse of Mary had a little lamb, but the third verse had a moral in it. And Mrs. Hale believed that her children's work should carry morals. And the moral of Mary had a little lamb is to be kind to animals. So moving on, moving on to...

Follow her to school one day. It was against the rules. It made the children laugh and play. To see a lamb at school. To see a lamb at school. I'm just amazed by that. So tell us about Thanksgiving, because you and I talked about this

in a previous show a couple of years ago, but tell us about how she brought Thanksgiving. We all kind of think, oh, it goes all the way back to 1621, and yet not really. It was forgotten. Yeah. Well, Thanksgiving's in the late 18th and early 19th century were the decision of individual governors. And governors didn't coordinate. So you could have a Thanksgiving, you know, from between September and December. There was an old saying that if you planned your itinerary carefully enough, you could have a good Thanksgiving dinner between Election Day and Christmas every week.

So she thought that Thanksgiving was, oh, she kind of reinvented it into a quasi-patriotic holiday. She thought it was a quintessentially American idea to gather to give thanks once a year. And she thought that if Americans would gather together on the same day that maybe civil war could be prevented. And the closer it got to 1860, the more insistent she got about this. She wrote about Thanksgiving starting in, well, the novel I mentioned earlier before she became editor, there's a wonderful description of Thanksgiving dinner that sounds just like the Thanksgiving dinner. We all celebrate every November with a turkey and pumpkin pies and stuff. But then in the 1840, she began to call for a national thanks.

and as I say, for the purpose of bringing Americans together. She also thought, she said that she wanted it to be that wherever Americans gathered on Thanksgiving Day, they would celebrate and think about each other and the blessings of their country. It's amazing for most of us to think that there was a time when Thanksgiving was not what it is today. So we have her to thank for that. So when we talk about cultural unity, what else did she do to promote cultural unity and why?

Was it strictly because she wanted to prevent civil war? What was her different reason? No, no. She thought that America had been unified politically by the revolutionary war, but that we were not a unified country. And if we were going to succeed as a nation, we had to be culturally unified as well. I mentioned her interest in finding American literary talent. But she also helped to develop a cultural aesthetic. That is, she was kind of like the Martha Stewart of her day in that respect,

writing and publishing articles about cultural things like manners and child rearing and recipes. She was the first person to introduce a recipe section to a publication, if you can believe that. Yes, definitely. Pretty huge there. We kind of take that for granted. Was this the first, quote-unquote, women's magazine, the one that she edited? It was the first successful women's magazine. There had been a few before her, but they hadn't lasted very long. Sarah Josepha Hale. She wasn't related to Edward Everett Hale. No, she was not. Or Nathan Hale? No, not Nathan Hale, but they were from, they were from similar backgrounds.

He was from Vermont, I think. She was from New Hampshire. Mrs. Hale's family fought in the revolutionary war, and she grew up hearing tales of those courageous deeds. That was part of him. He was from Connecticut, but I mean, Hale's a pretty common name. You were talking about, again, this idea of her wanting to promote American cultural unity by publishing American authors.

Did she publish Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, for example? She did. She did. And she published Longfellow. And she also engaged in correspondence with him that was kind of interesting talking about placement of his article, which it was kind of fun. She was editor of a gift book and was persuading him to write an article for the gift book and promised him that would be the lead poet book. and promised him that would be the lead poem. And then it turned out it was not the first poem.

So she wrote to apologize for that. Unbelievable. We'll be right back, folks. We're talking to the author of Lady Editor, a new biography of Sarah Josie Pahel. Don't go away. It was a dark of the moon on the 6th of June and a Kenworth pulling logs.

Cab over Pete with a reefer on and a Jimmy hauling hugs. We is heading for bear on I-10, about a mile out of Shaky town. Hey there, parents. Have you been as frustrated as I've been with the messages our kids are being taught today in schools and in the media? Cancel culture, wokeism, victimhood, socialism, lots of bad ideas are bombarding our kids. If you're like me, you struggle to figure out how to teach your kids about good ideas like

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their activity workbooks for free. That's a huge deal. So if you've got kids and want to make sure they're not brainwashed with bad ideas, do your family a favor and get the Tuddle. Tuttle Twins books. Tuttle Twins.com use the coupon code Metaxus. Folks, I'm talking to the author of a new biography. Sarah Josepha Hale is the subject. The title of the book is Lady Editor. Melanie Kirkpatrick is my guest and the author.

So tell us more about Sarah Josepha Hale. Hale was a believer that women had a higher moral character than men, which is kind of interesting. And that was the reason she didn't want them to vote. She thought that they should advise the men and their family from a principled higher level. But she did have a lot of, she very much supported the idea of women as professionals, as teachers, as doctors, and other professionals and other jobs. and other jobs as well.

She encouraged the government to hire women after the Civil War, pointing out that there were lots of widows and women needed to support their families. But the one area that I'd like to mention where she, I don't think she did succeed, was she tried to professionalize the idea of women's work in the home. She wrote a book called The Good Housekeeper, which, again,

the point was to elevate the status of women who chose to be wives and mothers. I think there's something we could learn from that. We still haven't quite reached the point where our society gives women who work at home the same kind of respect that they deserve. Well, that's putting it mildly. It's interesting how, you know, when we talk about feminism and the women's movement, how complicated it is and how it's changed. Because you're right, in the 19th century,

you have folks like this who they're against women getting the vote. We assume that people who are part of any women's movement would be for the vote for women. But this issue also, how strange it is that this woman in the 19th century is trying to elevate the role of a woman in the home, which is, I mean, anybody who has seen the influence that a mother and a wife can have in the home,

in the institution of the home, it's an astonishingly important role. Feminists in the last 50 or so years have largely denigrated that. What did she have to say about this issue? She said that raising children was the most important role a woman would have in life. And that there was a quote about women, being the first school teacher of a child. And she also created the idea, the phrase home economics, I believe it was, which she tried to professionalize the idea of housekeeping and taking care of children.

She thought women needed to be educated in how to train their kids, how to run a home, and, of course, take care of them health-wise, too. And at the same time, she thought that women out in the professional world deserved respect. In one way, feminists would hate this, but one way she thought that it would add to the respect of women in the professional world was to use feminine names for their jobs. So, for example, she wanted female doctors to be called doctoress and female lawyers to be called lawyeress and even female teachers. She advocated for the use of the word teacheress. And now, of course, many people in our century want to get rid of all those words that identify people by gender,

saying that it's unfair to women. She says just the opposite, that it adds to their dignity. So that's another big difference between her and feminists today. So what's the last time somebody wrote about Sarah Josie Pahel? Is it safe to say that no one has written a biography about her in our lifetimes? She had a large role in a book on Thanksgiving that came out last year. But the last time a full biography came out was, well, the best biography, the most complete biography was written in the 18, in the 1920s, early 30s,

and there have been academic studies since then. But I think mine is the first full biography, and I aim it to a general audience. I, you know, without giving myself too much credit here, I'll say I think it's a very readable, a very engaging book because of my subject. She was so fascinating. I say the same thing about my own biography.

I think it's a laudable ambition to write a book that people want to read that's entertaining. And so I want to say it's one of the reasons that I enjoy having you on the program because an academic approaches things extremely differently, popular writer. And they often have either some ideological acts to grind or they have all kinds of, let's say, fears about saying things that they shouldn't. And so it's a completely different kind of book. And I think that she's such a central figure. I was just excited to know that you wrote about her. You said she lived to be 90. Tell us about the end of her life.

What was she doing at the end of her life? Well, she worked until she was 89. So she died about 16 months after she retired. And she was very active till the end of her life. Her mind was strong. right till the end. The last act of her working life was to write a letter to someone explaining why she was the true author of Mary had a little lamb, which I thought was amusing. And at the time of her death, Eric, it was interesting to look at the obituaries. They were so adulating. She was just so,

revered such a celebrity. And in that regard, I didn't mention earlier, and I should have, which is that she corresponded with presidents of the United States. And they wrote back amazingly. It's sort of hard to imagine today. But she was that big a figure. Yeah, she was a huge celebrity. There's just no question about it. Did her kids go on to do anything notable? We've just got 20 seconds, but let's end there. Her kids all did well. She was able to educate. educate them well. One went to West Point and sadly died fighting in the Great Lakes region. But they all became highly educated and very successful. Folks, the book is called Lady Editor about Sarah Josie for Hale. Melanie, thank you so much.

Great cute. Great to be here. Thank you, Eric. You know, I hate to interrupt folks, but it's my program. I know. And I can interrupt if I want to. So here's the issue. We're both on vacation right now. We are. So we're not really here. Yeah. We've just, well, we want to give you the illusion that we're here. But we're not really here. And we're not even together. No. And I'm not talking right now. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm certainly not talking. But I want to give you the illusion that I'm talking. And that's why you hear the sound of my voice. It's all very convincing, isn't it? Well, Albin, now that we're on vacation, we should probably. I don't know, encourage the folks with some silly fun.

I mean, here's what's not silly. God is on his throne, and apart from him, you can do nothing. Or Bubkis, as it says in the original Aramaic, you can do Bubkis apart from God. You've got to understand that you should worry about what he thinks, and you should understand that if you've got problems, he's the solution. That's the serious part of this segment. But the fun part of the segment will be coming up any second. You ready?

Go. Go. Go. Okay. What do we have to share that might be a music. The people listening. They're driving their cars. They're walking their dogs.

And they're listening to thinking, yeah, go ahead. Amuse me. Go ahead, funny man. I'm going to ask you a quick question. Okay. What famous person, okay, when he or she turned 50 said, and I'm paraphrasing because I didn't find the exact quote, but they said this. 50, wow, I can't believe my wife, my life is one third over. Who said that?

Already, already. Already, yeah. Do I have to help you read this? Already. Already. 50. Wow, I can't believe my life is one third over already. Okay.

Who said that? Yeah. Well, that's kind of funny because nobody lives to 150. Okay. Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Barbara Streisand, Clint Eastwood, or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Okay, we know it's not Mark Twain because in the 19th century men in particular, nobody really, but especially men, they didn't talk about their age, like, oh, I'm 50. Like, you know, we have a kind of contemporary obsession with youth, which is unhealthy and stupid.

But in the 19th century, Mark Twain wouldn't have said that. Same thing with Oscar Wilde. They just didn't think that way. Nobody would have said, oh, 50. They just didn't do that. Okay. Barbara Streisand, she could have said it. Clint Eastwood, I think he's too much of a man's man to worry about his age.

That's a good point. I just don't see him kind of worrying about his age. And he will reach 150. He's like 92 right now. Right. And then the last one is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Barbara Streisand, I don't think she's witty enough to say that. I'm going to go with Arnold Schwarzenegger and he would say, 50, wow, I can believe my life is once said over already.

That's exactly how he said it. You're very good. And there was Arnold Schwarzenegger? Yeah, it was. It was. He asked some other, I looked these up. He has some other very funny quotes. He said, money doesn't make you happy.

I now have $50 million, but I was. just as happy when I had $48 million. You know what? That's a good point. It is. So $2 million it means nothing. And he said, I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Wait, I don't believe he said that. He said that. He said that. I'm brainy quotes. Gay marriage should be between a man and a woman for life. Yeah. What a great idea.

I never thought of that. Okay. Well, we, have we amused you, folks? Do we amuse you? What are we, your clowns? No, no, no, you said it. You said it.

You said you're funny. That's a good fellow's reference. Don't watch that movie. It's way too violent. Do we have time for Boils My Potato really quickly? Oh, no, no, no. How about the origin of the word lunacy and lunatic? Let's leave people thinking about this.

We've just got seconds. Go ahead. Yeah, because we're living in lunatic times, but you know the word about, you know, when people say they howled at the moon, that's very close because in the Middle English, the old French, it's a Latin, It comes from the Latin, but it basically means moon struck.

So when you're howling at the moon, it's because you're a lunar, lunar, right, tick. Lunatic, yes, to be a lunatic, to be loony comes from, well, they used to believe that the moon caused madness. But people still talk about the full moon having a weird effect on people. I don't know what that's all about, but here's the bottom line. I'm a word guy, I'm a writer. The word lunatic comes from lunar. So moon madness. Unfortunately for you, folks, we're at a time.

I apologize. It won't happen again.