The Eric Metaxas Show - Nathaniel Philbrick

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Nathaniel Philbrick, his wife, and his dog traveled the same route that George Washington traveled to help unite the newly-founded America, and tells stories from "Travels with George."

to the Eric Mattaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks. You may have already heard. Today marks 25 days until the launch of my book is atheism dead. You're instructed to go to my website, Ericmetaxis.com. Please pre-order the book at one of the extremely low prices there. Speaking of books, in my hands, I hold the book. We've been talking about this.

The title is Endgame. The Church's Strategic Move to Save Feast. faith and family in America. The author, J.P. DeGans, he's the founder and president of Communio, and he designed and oversaw, are you ready for this? The largest privately funded community marriage project in U.S. history, which lowered the divorce rate in an entire U.S. city by 24% in just three years. J.P. DeGans, first of all, congratulations on the book and tell us this story.

This is so great. Oh, thank you so much, Eric. Yeah, we got started on a big, trying to answer a big question. Can churches act as cultural change agents in a big way at a citywide scale? And knowing and recognizing that marriage is the central piece for society and really for the faith, I get into it in the book, we were able to work with more than 50 churches moving 58, 912 folks through four-hour or longer relationship education and lowered the divorce rate in Jacksonville, Florida by 24 percent and had independent evaluation of our work by scholars out of

the University of Virginia and Florida State, confirmed there was no demographic explanation for that decline other than our intervention. And then the churches themselves grew in the process, a group of 33 churches who baseline their attendance and giving saw attendance grow by 23 percent. and give and grow by 28%. So even if you're doing this for utterly selfish reasons, you want to grow your church, you don't care about marriages, this will grow your church. On the other hand, if you care about marriages,

I mean, honestly, the fact that you did this in such a buttoned up way, and you had people from the outside come in to say, yes, in fact, and again, we're not talking about a little town. This is Jacksonville, Florida. This is a big city. Right. And you're telling me that citywide divorces went down by 20,000. 24% over the course of three years. Yeah.

I guess the idea is that the book Endgame will help folks do this in their churches. That's exactly right. Really, when we talk to pastors, the book is written for Christian leaders of all sorts. The reality is there's so many folks right now are concerned about the faith crisis and the collapse, or the perceived collapse of faith in the country, the rise of the so-called religious nuns. And what we do in the book is unpack the data that shows. shows that the collapse of the religious nuns and really the collapse of faith in the West and the United States in particular can be entirely explained through the drop in intact marriages. In fact, a millennial and a baby boomer goes to church at almost the exact

same rate every single week if I know one thing about both people. And that is if they grew up in a constantly married home, there's almost no statistical difference in how frequently they go to church. And this came from a large data set that we co-sponsored run out of, run by Dr. Mark Regnerous. And that data was run, that survey was run in 2014 and again in 2018. And the book unpacks the why in terms of the social science, why this is the case, why the collapse of marriage leads to the collapse of faith. And what we unpack psychologically is an unmarried dad, we know from the data, is generally an uninvolved dad. Now, there's many good single dads out there. And I'm not talking about anyone in particular, but in a general sense,

we know an unmarried father is an unengaged father. And the psychological sciences show that a failure to attach to a dad is one of the largest psychological impediments to belief in God. And the scholar and psychologist and former atheist Paul Vitz writes about this in his book, Faith of the Fatherless, And so we unpack all this, tying it all together, helping a church understand that if you care about evangelization, then you really need to care about saving marriage in our country. It's funny, isn't it? Because I talk about this a lot where when people can almost make an idol of evangelism at the expense of other things, and those other things, in fact, help evangelism. So if you forget about caring for the family as an expression of your faith and understanding that this goes hand in hand, hand with it, you'll be less effective. When you talk about, someplace in the book you talk about one of the problems that marriages have seen over the years is that it's been, marriage has been

decoupled, as you put it, from parenting. That to me is a classic way. You look at how the culture has shifted. There was a time when almost every young man knew, it's my job, to get a job, to get married, to have a family. That's my job. That's what I do. Once that goes away, you get the 60s and you get the extended adolescence, people are sort of looking for meaning in life. And they get married much later. Sometimes they don't have kids. But it's sort of about self-fulfillment.

And of course, ironically, you don't really get much self-fulfillment that way. You're more likely to get self-fulfillment in giving away of yourself to a spouse, to a family. But how did that happen, this decoupling so that people think, you know, even if I get married, I don't know about kids. that's like optional. Yeah, we talk about that in the book and go into, ultimately it starts with the decoupling of sex from marriage. So sex became more in the 60s, a recreational activity, essentially, for so many folks. Once you decouple sex for marriage, then you're going to start to decouple parenting,

the effect of sex, right, from marriage itself. So now you've decoupled sex for marriage and parenting from marriage. Or as my co-author sometimes says, we've, decoupled and disconnected partnering and parenting. So all of that is the fuel, right? That's the sexual revolution and the disconnection of these things has led to today. Only 46% of kids will reach their 17th birthday with a continuously married mom and dad. So that may, obviously, what we're facing is way more normative for a child.

to become an adult without continuously married home. This is tough stuff, and it's very important, which is why, of course, I'm excited to have you on JP and to tell folks about the book End Game, because it's not enough that you did this in Jacksonville. This needs to be happening all over America. People need to understand. You can't decouple any of these things from any of the other things.

God created us holistically, and all these things flow out of the other thing. We are living in a fractured culture where we have sort of divided everything out there. And this balkanization, which is ultimately solipsistic. It's selfish. When you think of sex outside of relationship, you're a sick person. You're a selfish sick person. It's got to be relational.

I assume you talk about that in endgame as well. That's right. We do. In fact, we go into an entire section of the book is on how to form healthy relationships and how to battle back against the cultural narrative on relationships and sex. But, you know, I think you pointed out a great element on focusing initially and discussing evangelization. You know, so many church leaders, all of us were concerned about the reduction in faith among our young people. And so we are focused frequently on that.

In the book I chronicle that we easily, in a very conservative estimate, $2 billion annually is spent on youth evangelization and youth discipleship that's, That number is an incredible undercount. That number is likely in the $4 to $6 billion range. And what we unpack in the book is the people who that ministry is intended to serve are the exact people who are leaving the church in droves. It's not working. And we need to be stewards of the good king's resources,

and we have to understand, are we getting leverage out of those dollars? And so I talk about a church, an analogy in the book, a cross-shaped church, an old-fashioned church, cross-shaped church, okay, the vertical nave, you open that architecturally. It's designed to raise your eyes above, okay? And that's what I call in the analogy, the Jesus door. Okay, the evangelization door. That's always the best door to enter.

The problem is the woundedness of our relationships has made it impossible for people frequently to hear and receive the message of Jesus. So we've got to go on the side door. We call the side door the relationship door. This is very important stuff, folks. The book is Endgame. The church's strategic move to, save faith and family in America. J.P. DeGance is the author. You can get a copy at

Endgamebook.org. And if you use the code Eric, you get 15% off. Hey, that's not nothing. Endgame is the book. J.P. DeGance. Thank you so much. Hey, folks. My friend Mike Lindell, the inventor and CEO of MyPillow wants to give back to our listeners. That's you. You can get great discounts on all my pillow products if you go to mypillow.com right now and click Click on the radio listener specials. Get deep discounts on MyPillow's mattress toppers, wow, towels and so much more. For example, Mike's offering a buy one, get one free offer on Giza sheets.

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800, 500, 8384. Relieffactor.com. I use it. It works. Hey, folks. I'm talking to Nathaniel Philbrick, celebrated author of many books. The new one is Travels with George in Search of Washington and his legacy. I just finished my third book about the revolution in which Washington obviously figures. But I still wanted to know what happened to him next.

I also had had enough of war and bloodshed. I needed to do something entirely different. And it was then that I learned about Washington's decision upon becoming president to head out on a road trip and to unite his already divided country. And to make it interesting, I thought, well, what if I followed Washington's footsteps as he toured the country at a time of deep political divisions and tried to find out how our first president tried to unite the country at the beginning? And so I set out with my wife, Melissa, and our dog Dora, doing my best John Steinbeck imitation and followed Washington across the country. Travels with Georgie. I get it. I get it now. This is wonderful. Well, first of all, um, So then we're talking about what year did he leave?

If he's inaugurated in 89, what was it, 97? I can't remember. He was inaugurated April 30th, 1789, and he quickly made the decision soon after that, that he needed to do something to get out of the office and see the people that was his job to lead. Oh, I'm during his presidency he did this. Okay, so to be clear, I thought that Washington went on this. journey immediately after the end of his second term. You're saying he did it as he became president. So this is in 1789, 90, he decides to go on a journey. I am fascinated that I've not even

heard this before. Is this common knowledge? And I just missed this part? It's an underreported part of Washington's presidency where, you know, people focus on the policies he created, how he created the presidency. But what's kind of forgotten is his initial. decision that he needed to get out of the office and see the people, it was his job to lead. This was a time of deep political division already. The Constitution had divided the country, to those who supported a strong government, those who wanted the power to be with the states. And so Washington set out. And yes, it's kind of slipped under the radar screen. It's fascinating to me to go back, because we all have the mythical view of how things started.

but obviously even the fact that they had to go back to the drawing board and create the Constitution. So when you say the country was divided then, what were the states that were particularly hostile to the idea of a strong federal government and who was in favor of it? Yeah. Well, when Washington was inaugurated, two states, North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet even ratified the Constitution. So they hadn't participated in his election. I mean, it was that close to not happening, really. And so Washington set out, said, wait a minute, we have to get people thinking of the country as the United States of America, not as each state, which is really where the power had been under the Articles of Confederation. So, you know, he went out on this road trip. Now, when we think of a road trip, of course, you know, we think of a motor home or we think of, we can think of a lot of things.

what did that mean? I mean, this is a road trip before there was such a thing as a road trip. So if you're the president of the United States in 1789, what did it mean for him to leave New York, I guess, and to go on a road trip? How did he do it? What did he do?

I mean, obviously that's what your book is about, but give us an idea. Yeah, well, he traveled in a horse-drawn carriage, pulled by four horses. There was an entourage of about a dozen people. Two of them is enslaved servants, Giles in Paris. He was accompanied by an aide and, you know, a retinue is what he called it. And so he was traveling in a horse-drawn carriage. There was a baggage wagon behind that.

And behind that was his white charger named Prescott. And Washington had a flare for the dramatic. And before he would come into a large town or city, he would step out of the carriage, dressed in his general's uniform from the revolution, mount that big white horse and ride into town. Isn't that just beautiful? There's something about, I mean, there's no question that Washington, he was a rare figure in having a really keen sense of the role that he was playing. He wasn't just some bureaucrat who happened to rise, you know, into that office. He was keenly aware that everything he did was setting a precedent for the future.

but the idea that he had that sense of theater and that he would ride into each town that way. Tell us more about that. I'm just fascinated. What a wonderful thing. Yeah, well, you know, he had a sense of theater. He loved going to plays. He was not, you know, one for small talk,

but he understood the dynamics of a room. He understood the dynamics of coming into a town or city. He had been doing it for eight years during the revolution. And so, yes, he would come in very dramatically, you know, with those gold epaulettes on his shoulders, the either side of the road crowded with citizens yelling their applause, and he would come on in. And for many people, this was their first glimpse of a national hero, but it was also, hey, we now have a president of the United States. It's not just our little town. It's just not just our state. There's a country here. and this is the leader. It's George Washington.

The more I looked into Washington's life over the years, the more I felt guilty, really, almost for not having appreciated him sufficiently. He really had a burden, a personal burden to bring the country together. He understood that that wasn't normal and that an effort had to be made. Obviously, he did that in part during the revolution. But the idea that he saw this as an important part of his presidency. He wasn't just an executive. He was actually a figurehead. He understood that role.

It's almost like the monarch. I guess there is something about him that seems monarchical slight less. Yes. And it worried Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of State, who accused the Washington administration of being monarchical.

And Washington understood that. But what made Washington different, he was not someone on an ego trip trying to, you know, turn himself into a dictator. He was trying to use his personal celebrity. I mean, he was the most popular man in the world at this point. He was trying to use that to create an office that would transcend the ego of any single person, you know, a country of laws. And so, you know, it's a fine line. Those who trusted him said, okay, that's great. But there are, you know, others on the other side, such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, saying, whoa, this is dangerous.

This is going the way of the British monarchy. And, you know, so already you're seeing, you know, those divisions in America as Washington tries to pull everybody together. It is interesting because you don't think of him as a showman. He was not a loudmouth, but he really did have that sense of the importance of, the importance of, presentation, just what you've said about the way he would ride in on that white charger. Now, are there paintings of that scene, I'm sure? I guess I've probably seen one. Right.

Well, there's a terrific painting by N.C. Wyeth, you know, the illustrator, Treasure Island, you know, just a wonderful painter of Washington riding on that great big white horse into Trenton, New Jersey. And it was there. It was an all-female group. greeting him and they're throwing rose petals in front of him. And it's just a wonderful painting that really captures the, you know, shock and awe of Washington writing, you know, in on Prescott. I love it. It is, it's interesting to me that after writing three books on the Revolution,

the carnage that you decided you wanted to, you wanted to keep going and, in a sense, enjoy the peace yourself since you'd had to go through this. That's a lot of books to write about, the revolution. And before we go to the next second, actually, we're going to go to a break right now. Folks, I've got the joy of speaking with Nathaniel Phil Brick. We've had him on the program before. I recommend almost all his books. The only ones I can't recommend are the ones I haven't read yet. We'll be right back. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Nathaniel Philbrick, celebrated author of many books. The new one is Travels with George in Search of Washington and his legacy. Now,

Now, this is a very clever cover. It shows George Washington looking in the rearview mirror of a car. Very clever, not just because it's funny, but because it says something that he's looking in the rearview mirror. He's wondering about his legacy. He was somebody who was also keenly aware of legacy. Not to a fault, I don't think, from what I have read. It wasn't about burnishing his credentials.

It was simply about understanding that idea. So talk a little bit about that. That had something to do with why he was making this trip. Yeah, he was deeply concerned about his legacy. He really wanted to be on the right side of history when people like us were looking back. And so he carefully scripted everything in his life as best he could. And just as he would script his entry into a town, he would receive addresses from the citizens of each town and city,

and he would respond with addresses, many of them ghostwritten by his staff. But, you know, he was laying the groundwork for how this would be remembered. And, you know, this is one of the reasons why he struggled so with the issue of slavery. You know, he was obviously a slave owner. And after, during the revolution, he came to begin to change his views from, being an unrepentant slaveholder from Virginia, he began to see that the future of the union might be imperiled by slavery. But he was hopelessly involved in it himself. And yet, you know, it was his legacy that caused him, I think, really to dwell on this issue. How should I make

my own feelings known if creating the union won't allow me to do it publicly as president? And so that's why he freed his enslaved workers upon his debt. Yeah, that's extraordinary. I guess my takeaway from what I have read about Washington is that he was humble in some ways. There was something about him a diffidence that I guess I pick up. I'm trying to think there's a two-volume biography of him that was written about 120 years ago. I can't remember who wrote it. But you almost felt like you were. there with him because there were letters of people that were with him. And he really just seemed like one of those figures that history throws up now and again, and you just think that they were, they were tailor made for that moment. I mean, his size, his physicality, a number of things just make him seem like an outsized figure actually, rather than just, you know, in how we remember. It's a fascinating combination. I mean, he really didn't want to be president. He, you know, in his

diary. It's the most miserable he's ever been. After achieving miracles in the revolution, he just sees the potential for throwing it all away as president because he knows how difficult a job it's going to be. And yet, combined with that diffidence, that lack of faith in himself, is this tremendous ambition and realization that he is the only one in the country who could serve as is present. And, you know, that, combining that, you know, often you say the best person for a job is someone who doesn't want it, you know, that's interested in something else. Washington is that perfect instance of that. Someone who had the skills, he really, he wasn't doing this because he had spent all his life yearning to be president. He was doing this because he felt he had no choice.

and so he had, you know, the charisma. He had the charisma. He had the talent for the small gesture that would completely win his stanchest critics to his side. You know, when he enters New York City during his, as he's making his way toward his inauguration, there's this huge crowd, and the leader of the militia comes up to him and says, can I escort you to your quarters? And he says, no need to. The people gathered around me are all the escort I need.

You know, this is an ability to hit that theatrical moment on the head that very few people have. Yeah, I was going to say, and of course we all remember the famous moment when he pulls out his glasses, giving his, the famous speech. I can't remember. Is that at Francis Tavern? or I don't remember where it was, no, or maybe this was the one up in Newburgh, New York. He says something, I've gone grain your service.

But that seems deliberately theatrical, too, even though it wasn't put on, but he seems to be aware of the effect. He's an extraordinary figure, obviously the father of our country who himself had no children. Who was with him during this time? You said he had ghostwriters, he had a retinue.

Was Martha with him during this season? No, Martha, you know, they had adopted her grandchildren, his step-grandchildren. They were eight and ten at the time. And so she stayed at the presidential mansion with the kids while he headed out on these road trips. And she was not happy about his becoming president, but like him, realized there was really no other choice. And it is funny. When you say that, it is true. I mean, I think of Moses, obviously, classic example, like, no, you know, I'm not, I'm, I'm so humble.

And it's like, yes, exactly, because of your humility, we're going to choose you, we meaning God. But it's kind of funny because you get that from, yeah. Well, if we hadn't had someone like Washington, who could it have been? I mean, you just look at the alternative. You don't want to think about it. We're going to go to a break here. Let's go. We'll review that list.

when we come back. Folks, I'm talking to Nathaniel Philbrick. Really excited. Brand new book, Travels with George. Hear the latest reporting and analysis on the big stories of the day. On the daybreak insider podcast, it's top-notch reporting from SRN News, along with the sharpest insight from Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Sebastian Gorka, and the voices of townhall.com. The Daybreak Insider podcast. It's your first look at today's top stories.

Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, and at Salem Podcast Network.com. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to the author Nathaniel Philbrick. The book has Travels with George in Search of Washington and his legacy. Nathaniel, you were just saying, if it hadn't been Washington to be the first president, who would it have been? And this is one of those things where it's almost impossible for us to reimagine it because he seems created. to be that, you know. It's like a great, a certain novel, a famous novel. You know, if Ahab hadn't been the captain, who would be the captain? You think, well, I can't answer that question.

Like, the whole thing is all baked together. They can be no. That's how I feel about Washington. I mean, who was around at the time? You know this better than anyone who might have been president. Well, the second vote getter in that first presidential election was John Adams. And of course, he would be the second president after Washington finished out his second term. And, you know, he was a quintet— Adams was a quintessential federalist, a New Englander.

The opposite kind of personality from Washington, no interest in those grand theatrical moves, you know, as he admitted to friends, you know, a introvert. Someone who just, you know, if he wasn't in the White House, he was back home in Massachusetts. In fact, he was probably in Massachusetts as much as he was in the White House when he became president. On the other side is Thomas Jefferson, you know, a better social person, but also not anyone interested in getting out there and mingling with the people. And Jefferson and Adams came from opposite sides of the political spectrum. What made Washington unique was that he was a southerner with the political views. big government, you know, taxation program of the northerner. And so he could, you know, before there was an aisle, he could reach across it because he embodied both sides.

He also strikes me as that kind of a figure that he, like being divisive, repelled him. He wanted to be a unifying figure. And of course, what you're describing in the book, he travels around the colonies specifically to unite the country. It's almost a calling that he had. and it's one of the reasons we call him the father of the country. Absolutely. And, you know, one of the things he, there would be virtual warfare within his own cabinet as Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton went at it, you know, because they were also

from the opposite ends. And there are these wonderful letters, Washington writes the two of them, saying, you know, as soon as you get this far from another person in your point of view, the thing you have to start wondering is maybe a middle. course better. You know, he's not the opposite of a dogmatist. He's saying, let's try to make it work rather than prove we are a writer than you are. And that really is a unique kind of position to be in. He didn't have to be right all the time. He was just trying to make it work. Well, I mean, that's a different kind of dogma, I guess, in a way that unity meant every.

He understood that if we don't hang together, we will hang separately, something along. those lines except a few years later, but it's a similar idea that he understood that that's the priority for the country. I like the phrase he called the country in 1789 the infant woody country. What a great phrase. It's such an 18th century phrase too, but I love that idea. And it's hard for us to imagine when you mention road trip, what were the roads like? And how far did he go? I mean, to what extent did he travel? Yeah.

Well, it was the infant woody country. You know, if you traveled from Mount Vernon to Baltimore, it looked like primeval forest in 1789 as he made his way to New York. The roads were terrible. The roads were terrible everywhere. But the public taverns, and Washington insisted in staying only in public taverns. He wanted to have no favorites on these tours. And these were like the roadside motels today. They were terrible beds, worse food, flees throughout.

But Washington felt that, you know, I am a leader of I am one of you. So he did this. And it was an arduous ordeal, particularly the longest tour of them all, the south, where he traveled from what was now the temporary capital of Philadelphia, all the way down to Savannah, inland to Augusta, and then back, more than almost 2,000 miles. It took him three months traveling by horse-drawn carriage. And it was, you know, while Congress was in recess,

this is what Washington was doing while all the other politicians were on vacation, trying to pull people together by actually going to a person's village or Hamlet. And did he get up to New Hampshire? How far north did he get? He got all the way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and then during a harbor tour, he stepped onto what's now Kiddery Point, Maine. It was then part of Massachusetts. And so that was as far north as he got.

So, you know, look at a map. From Portsmouth down to Savannah is a huge distance traveling. You know, he would average somewhere between 40 and 45 miles a day, stopping frequently to feed both the people and the horses. And, you know, so this was. This was not getting an Air Force one and virtually parachuting into a community. This was a real argument. It's fascinating to me that he stayed in public taverns.

That's a big thing. I guess I'm a little surprised by that. I would have expected him to stay at the homes of wealthy people in each town. This was a real issue for him to do this, to be a man of the people, so to speak. Yeah, and when he came to Boston, the then-governor, then-Governor, John Hancock sort of expected Washington to stay at his beautiful house on Beacon Hill. And Washington says, no, I've got a matter of policy, I'm not staying in private homes. And Hancock took such umbrage.

He didn't show up when Washington rode into Boston. And Washington's response to that was Hancock had invited Washington to dinner. had accepted, assuming Hancock would, you know, come to the festivities, he said, no, I am not coming to your dinner. I am the president. You see me first before I see you. And so Hancock, who, you know, was enormously popular in Massachusetts, has to suffer the indignity of apologizing, going to Washington's quarters saying, yes, I made a mistake here. Please come to my house for dinner. And he would. that's the other thing you get about Washington. This formality and a real sense of these kinds of things, of what is proper.

Propriety was a big thing for him. But I've never heard that story, and I'm sure I've never heard many of the stories in this book. I'm talking to Nathaniel Philbrick. The book is Travels with George. We'll be right back. Hey, there, folks. I'm talking to the author of Travels with George. Yes, it's Nathaniel Philbrick.

do you say, Nathaniel, how many books you've written? I can't even imagine, because you've been doing this for a little while. How many books officially do you admit to have written? I think this is my 13th book. Yeah, your books are, I mean, I think the reason you're a popular author is because you don't only write about interesting things, but you write interestingly, you write well, and I'm not just trying to butter you up. I think it's important.

People are, they don't like to trudge through prose. and this actually seems just like a fun thing to write about. What else do we need to know? I mean, actually, let's go back. You made the trip yourself with your wife, and you said with your dog as well. What kind of a dog do you have? We have a toller, a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever.

They look a lot like a fox and high energy. So, you know, we obviously had to stay in dog-friendly hotels, but I have to say Mount Vernon is dog friendly. So for us, it really sort of, to follow George this way, gave you a sense of just how hard he worked. You know, we all laugh about Washington slept here. We began after a year and a half of following Washington, we really began to understand the personal sacrifice,

the physical sacrifice that was involved. I was going to say this is, it's amazing that you did this. this. How long was his journey? Was it a year and a half on his side? It was, he broke them up into four different legs, but it was, he did them during the first two years of his first term. And so we spent about that much time following him. And, you know, one of the things that was, we were traveling in a car, obviously, but there were parts of the south, particularly between Charleston and Savannah, where the roads he traveled are still there. And since the I-95 was taken away the traffic,

you can drive down very much the way George did back in 1790. And it's just, you know, you're, you're, you're, you have the sense of channeling the past in a way that I've never experienced researching other books. That it just sounds wonderful. It sounds like a mini series or a reality show or something. really, I mean, what a great idea. But what a great idea for a book.

But it's just fascinating to me to think that he actually did this and that you figured it out. How did you do that? I mean, did he write about it in such a way that it was fairly easy to piece together? Where did you find, was it his diary? Where did you find this kind of information to know the details? But he kept a diary. And those papers had been published. and they're edited wonderfully.

And so, you know, you can really see the towns he went to. And one of the things I did with is before we even left, I made a list of all the towns and more than 100 of them, and reached out to all the libraries and historical societies of each town, and I mean, which is a big job, obviously, and ask them, you know, what memories do people have in your community of Washington's travels soon after? I was getting articles, newspaper articles, along with journals, diaries, local histories that were written in the 19th century.

And so even before we got hit the road, I had this whole archive formed and also contact, because many of the librarians and archivists volunteered to get in our car when we drove into town and show us around. So it was just a great way to experience history and the sky. country. It just sounds delightful. Great idea. Great idea for a book. Thank you, Nathaniel Philbrick. For all you write, and in this case, for all your traveling. The book is Travels with George. Thanks for being with us. Great to be with you, very.