Latest / Mom Wars / Fables for the American Republic

Transcript

Fables for the American Republic · Mom Wars

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: From the front lines of the mom Wars. Here's Bethany
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Mandel and Kara Kennedy.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to another episode of your most unreliable
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: favorite podcast. But good news for you is we're recording
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: a bunch of podcasts this week because my kids are
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: at camp, so it will soon be more reliable. I
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: am your co host, Bethany Mandel. Car I gave the
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: day off because she just had a baby or something whatever.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Who knows whatever, But I am joined by one of
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: my favorite people that I don't see that often. And
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I'll clue you guys in on a secret of why
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: I do this podcast. Because I do it for free.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: It's so that I can talk to people and give
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: them a reason to spend an hour doing that with me.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: So I'm doing that today with my friend, Professor Matt
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: me Hen. He's Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Government
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: of Hillsdale in DC. I want to send my kids
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: to Hillsdale all of you as well. He's the author
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: of three amazing children's books. We own two of them,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and I just added his new book into my cart
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: and I apologized to him before we started talking because
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I never ever do this I never not order it.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be honest with you. I was hoping
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: to attend one of your events and to get it
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: in person, and then I just wasn't able to make
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: it there. So anyway, he's the author of three wonderful books,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Me hands ma'am OL's Handsome Signette and The American Book
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: of Fables. And The American Book of Fables is really
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: what I wanted to talk to you about today. It
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: came out a month ago and I'm hearing amazing things,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: and you've done so many events, and I really wanted
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: to get one of those signed copies at one of
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: those events.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: We'll get that done.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: But you're doing a West coast tour, you told me.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, going out to the Mountain West, Yellowstone Glacier National Utah.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to Jackson Hole, Idaho, Colorado, just kind of
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I'm bringing the paintings with me, some of the big
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: three foot by five foot oil paintings with me.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: It's it's going to be trouble with that.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Very carefully. They're just in the back of my hatchback.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Are you driving?
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I am going to drive. Yeah, We're the whole family's
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: going out for a vacation, our first Western vacation for
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: a week. Then they're headed back and I'm going to
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: keep going. So we're going in two cars in a
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: kind of flotilla.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: So so okay, So I left off the most important
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: part of your biography. How many children do you have?
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I refer to it in my bio as a passel,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: which is an indeterminate number, although I think we're getting
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: close to determinate. We have eight children.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: I love it. Yeah, people always shirk that question because
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: it's like you're you're getting the evil eye, Like it's
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: like bad Mojo to say how many kids you have?
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Is that why you were shirking.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Me or you No, no, no, not shirking. I just
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I always laugh. It's sort of like they keep coming.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So it's sort of an indeterminate number. How many children
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: do you have? Like I'll let you know, you know,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: but yeah, no, we have eight. Our youngest Lilian, she
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: is turning six very soon. She was some of you
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: from Twitter might know she had was born with a
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: two chamber heart down syndrome and had very many struggles
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: at the beginning, but is now doing very well, happy
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and well.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I always joke when people ask, like why we had
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: six kids. I always say, well, we kept going until
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: we hit a dud. But I can't make that joke
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: anymore because my sixth is not a dud, neither is
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: your your eighth. But at some point you gotta just
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: kind of say.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I told. I told my children I
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: now have a favorite, like I'm sorry, Like it's she
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: is our she is my favorite, and she has to
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: be everyone's favorite now, So I love it.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: My kids really resent that I have a clear favorite. Actually,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: so now I can point to you and say, well,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: I'm not the only parent that has a favorite.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: My favorite does shift though, no, it hasn't in a
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: few years.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: For that's probably wise. That's good parenting, probably even if accidental.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: One of my favorite stories was there was a grandmother
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: who had a ranking board on her in her dining
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: room wall, and there was pegs and it had everyone's
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: name and it was ranked in order of favorites, and
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: she would move the names depending on like what's right.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: And I keep saying to my kids, I'm like, I
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: want to do that. I want to have a ranking system.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: And when you take me off, you get moved down.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: And when you're good to me. I'll move your name
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: up like it.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: I like it system.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah that didn't it all blow up in the faces
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: of you know, Joseph and his family.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: So playing favorites like Michelin stars for children.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Well, I feel like it would breed a healthy amount
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: of competitiveness of like I want to be the favorite today.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: You just have a series. It's sort of infinite right
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: to do Amazon reviews, you know, sort of five star,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: four star.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Speaking of Amazon reviews, the American Book of Fables, you
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: have seventy Amazon reviews. Are you paying people?
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: No? No? No, I mean well, I mean at the
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: beginning you send out some copies for the launch day,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: but no, they're they're they're rolling in. I mean we've
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: sold We've sold twelve thousand copies in like three weeks.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: So no, in a just world, I'd be a New
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: York Times bestseller. But this is not a just world.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: So I had the same experience. So what was the
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: So this book took you? You told me before we
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: started taping two years.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean years of research. I started writing draft
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: versions of these kinds of things long ago. But I've
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: been sort of diligently sort of pressing on it for
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: about two years, and the last year has been very intense,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: extremely intense, both for travel and research and for writing.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: So what was your impetus to do a book of fables?
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Obviously you did it. You pegged it for two fifty, right,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: like this was timed for two fifty.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, although I had I had a Men's Mammals when
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I first started conceiving of it was called mister Mehn's
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: mildly amusing mythical Mammals and an animalia attached as an addendum.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: But the publisher very wisely said, Matt, you have to
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: control yourself and your alliterative powers.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: So that also needed to control yourself with the size
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: of that book.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, precisely. So I basically cut out the plan to
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: do an animalia. And I always wanted to do a
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: fable book because I learned long ago from Frankly a
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: deep study of kind of the Great Books tradition, but
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: also the Book of Proverbs, and then studying Plato that
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: setting sort of little stories about animals was actually a
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: really important and visceral way to teach morals. And then
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: the longer I studied about republican self government and free society,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the more, I realized that the fable tradition is the
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: favorite of republics like Rome London when it was a republic.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: People don't know that internally it was a republic for
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: hundreds of years. The fable tradition is actually a kind
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: of like moral technology for being a witty, wise and
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: clever person who can kind of shift for oneself and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: govern and not be taken advantage of the sort of
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: clever and adroit citizen that's not going to get played
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: into subjection or slavery. And so then I got very
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: sort of keen to like, we're not doing that work.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: We've got lame Barnes and noble, you know, sort of
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: refried bean versions of these things coming out every year.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: But that's it's like they take they take the simple
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: ones and then they just repackage them a thousand times
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and those are great, they're good. But there's the real
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: tradition of fableedge is actually it goes it's for little's,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: middles and big which is why my book is not
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: for just kids. It's for all ages. And I wanted
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: to do that because it needed doing for our own
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: sort of moral acumen as.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Like people, So can I ask a little bit of
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: a personal question.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, please all kinds of things. My kids go to school, Yes,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: they go to so we homeschool for a while and
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: then we send them to prep schools where I taught
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: for many years. I taught it at the Heights.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Oh I love it. If my husband agree to the Heights,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: I would send to the Heights.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah right, But I send my boys there because I
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: taught there for twenty years and helped design some of
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the curriculums. So and my daughters go to the sister school,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: but when they're not there, they homeschool, and my wife
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and actually helps are We founded with two other families
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: a homeschool co op for our younger kids out in
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Resting called Mercer Hall.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: Do you know this?
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we started it. We're going into our third year now,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and we start We thought with ten families, fifteen kids
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: will start small. We started with like thirty eight families
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: and forty two kids. So it's like, oh my god,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the going concern out there.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: This is something that I've actually been interested in doing
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: myself out here in Maryland. So the reason I asked,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: but I want to rewind because this is very interesting,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: is what sort of homeschool philosophy. Do you guys follow
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Is it like Charlotte Mason or classical, because I'm hearing
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: a lot of both in your in your explanation of
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: the importance of fables.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think very safe to say we are
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: an eclectic. I'm a very wilful and experienced educator. My
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: wife's was a teacher for many years. My sister, who
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: helped found the homeschool co op, is classically trained. So
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: and then we've got a Montessori teacher who's a twenty
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: five year Montesssori master. So we're I wouldn't. I would
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: be very hesitant to give a name to what it
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: is we do. We're sort of like, if you know us,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: you know, we're pretty trustworthy people who care deeply about
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: these things. But the math is going to be slightly
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: different in philosophy than the reading, which is slightly different
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: than the grammar and literary studies different from the civics
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and history stuff, and you know, so it's it's I
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: would just I would not try to land on anything
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: other than eclecticism.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, So I have so many questions. This is why
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: I love doing this podcast, because I just want to
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: pick your brain for an hour and then put it
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: on the internet. So where where does this book fall
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: for like a homeschool family like us? Like your book?
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: How would you implement this in a homeschool setting? How
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: would you teach it to your five year old and
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: your fourteen year old?
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: So I think you can. There's two ways to do it. One,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: it's a big old book that a smart kid can
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: go just get lost in, you know, And I think
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: a kid needs to be sort of explained, like, Okay,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: it has a lower, middle, and upper register. They all
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: fit together and teach sort of themes and lessons. If
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: it gets too hard at the upper level, you can
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: just move on. But I mean, I have a very
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: bright sixth going into sixth grade kid, and he's on
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: page two hundred and fifty three, so he's just cranking.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: He said he kind of skipped one of George Washington's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: letters because he thought it was a little boring. I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, well, okay.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: As long as it wasn't the letter to the Jews,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: it's fine.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: That's right. It wasn't. Actually it was the one about
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: when he's fighting with George Mason. But he did read
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: mostes sexiests and I actually have that back and forth
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: in the book, but he yeah, so I think it
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: can just be like a free reading get Lost. But
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: I also think that a family can sit down and go, like,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: let's use this civically, let's just do it like because so,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: let me explain the structure briefly. There's thirteen chapters for
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: thirteen regions of the country. So it starts in the Everglades,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and then you meet Hugh the Manatee Humanity and he
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: goes on a journey, and he goes to the different
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: regions of the country, and each region has those nursery rhymes, fables,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: and then short stories and primary source materials.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: So I can road school with your book, is what
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: you're telling me.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, if you want to learn about the
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: geography and ecology and wildlife of different regions of the country,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: I have nursery rhymes and fables that use those places.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: That local history and those local animals are all kind
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: of woven into the architecture of the of those parts
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: of the story, and the primary sources are related to
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the themes. But all of that is paired to a sentence,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: a phrase, sometimes just a word of the Declaration of Independence.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: So there's thirteen parts of the declaration that walk through
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: thirteen regions of the country, using old and new nursery
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: rhymes and fables and primary sources and short stories that
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: explain the country. So it's this is a kind of
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: magnum opus, go big, go home for a two fifty
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: something old something new, something red, white and blue, like
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: So it's funny because I love to travel with my kids,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: and this year, because of honestly airplane fares, I was like,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: let's make this beric a year. Let's make this the
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: road school year. It's amazing.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: We're going, We're going. That's why we're going out to
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the Beartooth Mountains this summer. And I have a chapter
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: on the Upper Missouri and the bad Lands. I have
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: a chapter on Yellowstone. I've got a chapter on Glacier
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: National I have one on our West Coast, which for
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: all the sort of despairing COLLECTXIT type people, I'm like, no, no, no,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: this is our country. You gotta love California.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Is there a way that people can follow this journey? Like,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: are you gonna like post about this anywhere? Yeah?
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I will. I mean, I'm going to take a week
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: off where we go as a family for five days,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: has no Wi Fi. There is no starlink. It is
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: just like I'm actually going to go dark and rest
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: my weary soul from this book. But other than that,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: once we're off the Wi Fi, I'm going to be,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: you know, doing all kinds of cool events and sight
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: seeing and stuff. And there's going to be like that.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: So you can go to my Twitter and my Instagram
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and Facebook. Facebook's just Matthew Mehan or Matt Mehan, but
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: it's at MT mean is so mt m E h
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: A N one e on Twitter and on on Instagram.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: And as I warn everybody, you'll think less of me
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: on social media, but more often so it'll be good.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: How'd you hear? Because I saw your book release all
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: over the place and I kept thinking to myself, I
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: have to have him on and then eventually I got here.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Took me a month.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. That's just banging away just now. I
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna we're gonna do this thing. We're gonna the
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: line from the line from the Declaration Nature and Nature's God.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: So if people are traveling this summer every every week,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: we're going to have a competition with three winners. All
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: they have to do is basically like film themselves in
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: some gorgeous part of the country and just say nature
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and Nature's God, and I gift a book of the
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: American Book of Fables two and then name the person
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: you want to give it as a gift to. And
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: then the top three most beautiful scenes are gonna we
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: are gonna be able to win a gift for a
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: friend of the book. We're going to do that starting
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: after the fourth for basically the whole summer, every week.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to compete with all my children. I
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: love it. That's so wonderful. Hi.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: I'm Ben Soon and I'm Chris Steerwald. And this is
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: not dead yet.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: We're all dying, but some of us have been brought
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: face to face with that reality.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: However long each of us have to do it though.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: We all want to live a good life, one with meaning,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: love and joy, and our guests are here to help
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: us do exactly that.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Now available for download and streaming at ricochet dot com.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Ricochet. Yeah, join the conversation.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: So let me rewind a little bit to the homeschool
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: cop that you started, so you're still doing it you're
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: out in Virginia. What does that look like?
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: It looks like four days a week for half day wow.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: And then and then for the older girls we have
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: because our boys start in third grade at the heights,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: the older older girls they go for a few grades longer.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: They have an optional sort of go till I think
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: it's two o'clock, sort of A small cohort does a
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: little longer, so it's starts at around nine to thirty
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: and goes till twelve thirty. I think.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: So you like low key started a school.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Basically it's a co op, not a school that's literally
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: on a mug. But yeah, but no, but it is.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: It's it's much more relaxed. You know, it doesn't it
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: doesn't meet for as long a school year at all, right,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: and you know it's it is more flexible and families
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: love it. You're sort of yeah, it's just such a
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: great way to So.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I love about sort of
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: classical and Charlotte Mason education is this focus on things
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: like fables that I don't think that get enough attention.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: What are some of the things that you're teaching in
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: the co op and what are some of the things
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: that you're teaching at home that you feel like kids
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: are being ill served in sort of standard classrooms that
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: they really should be getting.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, we do do Esop's fables, for sure. We
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: do sort of the sort of more of the kind
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: of short set moralia Old Testament stories that kind of
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: teach a lesson. We do Greek myths that are more
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: sort of circumscribed that have that sort of moralia type notion.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I also think we do a lot of poetic memorization,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: which isn't quite the fable tradition, but it's it's the
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: kind of like beautiful sentiments usually about nature that you know,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: sort of fill the heart with both beautiful words, beautiful rhythms,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: but also beautiful images of the created world. And I
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: think that's very important and helpful and something that doesn't
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: get done as often as we'd like. And then we
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: also do a lot of music appreciation with the kids,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: which is not it's not directly moral, but I think
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: it gets underestimated how an esthetic sensibility about beauty is
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: a really important analogue to what is morally appropriate right,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: and so very often like you know something's wrong, not
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: because you have a clear ethical rule that you see broken,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: but you're sort of like that's inappropriate, Like that's not
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: fitting for a young, you know, person to do, Like
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: that's that's just not appropriate, and and that can become
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: you know, refined. I'm not worried about you or I
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: being too feet or refined, like you've got to cut
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: through the bowl too. But there's that wit and wisdom.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: But I do think that kind of thing is missing
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of times. It's that that kind of appreciation
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: of beauty and through music and art, those are I
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: don't know, those are things we do.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: So this this is so much of like why I
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: wanted to homeschool and what animates my my how we homeschool.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And this was part of why I loved your book,
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: the fact that it was about fables, because so much
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: of what the founders learned, like Plutarch, like fables, all
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: of these things that were the bedrock of their intellectual
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: academic you know, all those things, but also their moral
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: framework that was that was the foundation on which this
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: republic was built. And I love that your book, I
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: feel like gets to the heart of that and really
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: is is a throwback to that. Yes, can you speak
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: a little bit to that.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: And sort of take it's a throwback and update, like
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to do it both right, something
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: old and something new. Sorry if I interrupted you.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, I mean, I just I want to. I
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: mean the thing I love about this podcast is that
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: I get to pick the brain of brilliant people and
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: and I want to selfishly but also selfishly on behalf
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: of all my listeners like speak to that, but also
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: like how can we do that as parents?
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: So I won by Themerican Book of Fables, available on
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Amazon and anywhere you.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Buy books, but no, the and then but then how
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: do you implement like give me more?
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: So let me back up. In preparation for this, I
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: did conferences on the fable tradition with scholars to like
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: unpack it, to really see what's on the inside, so
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I could write beautiful ones myself that actually did the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: work as opposed to like what I thought the work
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: was doing right, which was important because the fable tradition,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: like I said, is multi layered, Like it's not as
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: simple as people think. It's geared towards an adult mind
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: in many respects, and so it's like there's a shallow
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: end for the kids. But then it has a depth
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: to it that can really help the full family think
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: morally and more carefully. But the thing I did too
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: is I actually researched the Founding imagination, like literally what
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: was in the storehouse of imagination on the theory that
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Seneca one of a favorite Roman philosopher of the Founding
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Washington's favorite writer from all time. Perhaps Seneca always says
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: that any prudent decision relies upon an imaginarium, like a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: pantry full of images of heroes, like you said, but
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: have also sort of moral images and tales, and that's
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: what you usually reach for, rather than some sort of long,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: kind of theoretical prudentializing. You actually most of the time
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: you're kind of like, no, it's like this, and it's
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: like that, and so I'm gonna do X. And if
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: you have a stale pantry or an empty if mother
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Hubbard's cupboard is bare, you are in trouble. And so
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I went back and looked at what did the Founding
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Imagination had, and I kind of I wrote a whole
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: white paper on this and published it, but kind of
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: in preparation sort of to think it through one it's biblical.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: They have all these biblical stories. They're alive in their imagination.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: They know who Jail is, they know who you know
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Esther is, they know who you know Nebukanezzer is, and
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: they know you know the story of David. They know
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: also it is somewhat it's naturalistic. They know their animals
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and animal behavior and Esop's fables, and those two things
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: are related and overlapped. Like you know how a busy
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: beaver will just keep digging building dams even when he shouldn't. Right,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: that's not an Estop's fable exactly, but it is a fable, right,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: it comes from nature itself. You know, badgers are hyper
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: protective of their layer. Right, there's like they'll chase you
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: a mile. Right, these sort of like you know, these
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: sort of animal habits and you reflect on them and
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: how they reflect on you, right, sort of how do
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: you govern your own passions? So they had that in
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the sort of naturalistic and esopic imagination. They had a
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Roman Republican imagination. They were naming their kids after Tully's
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Marcus Tullius Cicero, and after Camillis, this incredibly humane and
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: generous general. Their non diplumes are Publius public Cola. We
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: don't even know what that guy did anymore, right, and
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: we don't have a republic without Cincinnatus being a very present,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: living imagination, you know. Persona in Washington's mind is like,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I'm going to set down power and give it back
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: to the people and not become a tyrant, not be
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: an Alexander or a Julius Caesar or a Caesar Augustus
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: or Bonaparte. I'm going to become a Cincinnatis, right, the
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: guy who had all the power and gave it back
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: to the Roman people to continue the republic. These kinds
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: of heroes, and there's many more, Cato, Regulus, Fabeus, Conctator.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I try to actually bring them in in different subtle
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: ways inside the stories of the book and just kind
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: of like refamiliarize the American imagination with some of the romanity,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: this Roman republicanism, because what's filling our imagination now, God,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Emperor Trump, bloody Julius Caesar, memes, Alexander the Great. Yeah,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: well pop, yeah, that's like the innocent kind sort of
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: like saccharin. But like a young man's heroes are like Bonaparte,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Alexander and Achilles and Julius Caesar. People that aren't American traditions, like, no,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: those are the baddies, guys, those are the baddies.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Can I pick your brain? Also, so as an adult
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: who I don't feel like I got this education and
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: I'm playing catch up alongside my kids and teaching them,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: do you have a reading list for me about about
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: these heroes and sort of trying to rebuild my foundation
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: on steadier ground. You take my phone out and open Amazon,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: which your book is already in my cart.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Well, so what I was going to suggest is, first
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: of all Plutarch's Lives, which.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Is exactly we do that in our homeschool.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And there's like dumbed down versions of those two.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: So finding the sort of kids versions of Plutarch's Lives
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: can be very useful. An addition doesn't leap to mind.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I know they're out there, I've used them.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Annah White does a good job.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: That's one. Yeah, And I would recommend a podcast by
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a Hillsdale alum and former colleague of mine from the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Heights named Tom Cox on Plutarch's Lives. It's just a
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: podcast called Plutarch's Lives.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: You had no idea.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: It's lovely. You can listen to it in in the car,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: and it kind of is a nice prep for this,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: and you can just familiarize a kid with the hero
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: as a kind of like funny story time about the themes.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a summary. It's entertaining, pithy, and but
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: he's but it's just a very clear and very cogent
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: and interesting summary of Plutarch's lives. Now, Plutarch's a little
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: harsh on Cicero, which I think is a mistake. It's
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: one of his only errors. He misreads. He misreads Cicero.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: It's very sad. But but but other than that, he
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: does a great job with the Romans, the Roman lives.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I think Shakespeare's Julius Caesar can be fruitfully read by
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: a seventh or eighth grader, especially with a parent, and
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: then a high schooler. And that's that's Shakespeare's take on
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: what killed Roman republicanism. I think also looking at some
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: of the work of Mercy Otis Warren from the founding,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: she wrote a lot of beautiful things about the romanity
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: of the American experience. She wrote a play about recapturing
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: republicanism during the Empire of Rome as a kind of
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: image of us recapturing Republicanism in the middle of the
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: British Empire. That's an interesting place to go. And then
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: you know the I do, I heartily can mend my
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: own American book of Fables with regard to this kind
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: of thing. And then I think an adult who wants
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to homeschool and think these things through should read Cicero's
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: On Duties. Any high schooler can read it. It's it
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: was read by every American who was going to go
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: to college. They all knew it by heart. Literally, probably
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the most ubiquitous book of our republic for one hundred
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: and fifty years, Cicero's On Duties. And then I think
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: a teacher would do well to read Cicero's on the
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Ideal Order, which gives you all kinds of windows into
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: the different sorts of people you might want to feature
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and find a summary or find another history of, or
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: tell the story orally of sort of good people who
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: are good examples, but also kind of like what are
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the kinds of things that free peoples do to educate
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: their children? That book, The Dritory, is not understood anymore today,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: but it was. John Quincy Adams used to sing its
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: praises it's a kind of pidea for a free people.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: This is how you would structure an education for a
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: free citizen and leader. That book is very good for
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: homeschool parents to acquaint themselves with because it gives a
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: kind of layout of how history might be used, how
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: poetry might be used, how law might be used, how
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: fable and even humor. How do you integrate jokes and
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: wit and the funny business of life into an actual
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: thoughtful education. It turns out it's a fundamental part of
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: a Republican imagination. I call it Republican wit. And it
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: has a major play inside of the American Book of Fables,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: because we used to educate for wit, right, and now
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: we rely on families and cultures right, sort of like
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Irish gift of the gab, sort of you know, American Jewish,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Vaudevillian sort of quick wittedness. Like we have these sorts
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: of like butter over a hot skill at traditions, but
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: they're not being rejuvenated, they're not being educated and revivified.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: And that's one of the things I try to do
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: in this book is re the fi American wit.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: And that's something that I love about your book and
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: everything that Hillsdale does because it feels like the people
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: who care deeply about this republic are the ones who
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: are having children, Like we are invested, and we're we're
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: investing very heavily. Between the two of us, we have
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: fourteen children. But I think that my concern with the
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: growth of homeschooling recently in the last five or six
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: years is that there's not enough intentionality. It's just kind
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: of like people are buying a box curriculum.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: In schooling or a little just like school at home.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, and so one of the reasons why I wanted
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: to talk more about homeschooling on this podcast and on
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: my sub stack is to sort of give parents like
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: a toolbox of if you care about this republic. And
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: you know that famous Ronald Reagan quote. Remind me, I'm
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: like terrible at saying it off the top of my head,
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: but the loss of the republic is like one generation
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: generation away.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: It's only a generation away from being lost him.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: I quote it so often, you'd think I'd have it
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: off the top of my head, but I don't.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: No, it's actually a sign of familiarity that you just
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: use it like Plato. That's actually a good sign Oh, it's.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Yours, nown but I think about it a lot. I
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: think about this generation of kids that I don't feel
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: like has a grounding in these very fundamental stories of
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: that have lasted us hundreds thousands of years of humanity.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: And this was why I loved your books so much,
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: the fact that it really reacquaints an entire generation with
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: the stories that they have been denied. And a concern
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: that I have of like the homeschooling world is I
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: don't think that there's enough intentionality with how we're how
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: we're doing this and the resources that we're doing, but
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: not just the resources that we're using, but the why
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: and the why for me of why I I want
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: at homeschool is I feel like they're not getting this stuff.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Like I think about Alexander Hamilton and when he applied
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: to Princeton. The requirements to get into Princeton are more
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: rigorous than graduation requirements.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: They were applying, and they were applying when they were
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen years old. Yes, they were very young. Yeah, no,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I look, I agree. So this is why I actually
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I strongly recommend Cicero's Dratory as a kind of a
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: guide for a homeschool parent to just read it and
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: get a flavor of how people apply the various arts
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: and drive towards higher arts and drive towards a kind
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: of leading citizen type model, which leading citizens, like liberal
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: arts and classical education, actually has suffered from. This is
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a very idiosyncratic take, so hear me out. It's there's
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: a kind of panic about making sure that it's for
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: its own sake, it's liberal and free and not subject
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: to any kind of civic duty. And I actually and
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: that sounds like very liberal and philosophically free, but I
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: actually think ironically it's actually activist and kind of political
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: in a way that's not healthy, in that what they're
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: reacting against is the left sort of Marxist educational regime
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: of like everything in the curriculum is for the party,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: for the action, for you know, progress, you know, and
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: so no, no, no, it's not for any of that.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: It's like, no, no, that's an overreaction to fight a
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: war with the left. In fact, the mean is we're
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: trying to make good people who can get, you know,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: beyond this life and die well. But we're also trying
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: to get good citizens who are good leaders and can
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: maintain the republic, and I think that is where Cicero
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: is extremely helpful for setting a kind of curricular guidepost.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Another thing. I mean, you've all lived in and Mark
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Bauerlin and I and some other authors are putting together
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: a book on the Phoenix Declaration. Shools and some of
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: who's the other editor from the University of Florida are
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: organizing it. And it's ten principles of how to reform education.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: And it's not for homeschoolers exactly. It's sort of directed
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: at the public school people who need to basically pick
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: up themselves out of the dirt and compete with the homeschoolers,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: right because this public school system's not going away, but
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: they need to imitate something. So it's kind of like,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: here's how the public schools, according to the law and
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: with its all its institutional limitations, can sort of do
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: what we're doing in school choice, classical curriculum, and homeschool.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: And I have a chapter on character formation as a
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: fundamental goal. It kind of lays out the sort of
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: like what are the ends you're really trying to get
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: to And a lot of people don't like that, but
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I think that we finally won the conversation, and now
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: we're starting to fill out how you might do that
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: in correctulum. Yeah, because it used to be it's just
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: kind of to be liberal and free, and you're like, no, no, no,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: it's to have a clean conscience. Right to have the
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: joy of someone who knows their duties to their neighbor
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and to their God and to their family and does
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: them well and then rests on the Sabbath right and
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: is happy and pleased that they have done the right thing.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: That's a life right. That's what you're educating for. Once
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: you see that, your curricular choice, that start to change
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: and it makes for a much more interesting curriculum.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: If we've got conservative cross roads regulation of artificial intelligence
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: for AI, Jim Patakukas says, keep it light. The politics
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: of this country would be well served by a period
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: of far more rapid economic growth. Ryan Gerdsky says, make
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: it happy. We've seen technological tchnology companies defy their own
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: standards over and over again. Regulation of AI coming up
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: on conservative crossroads.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Ricochet join the conversation.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: That's always like sort of the first question that I
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: pose to people who are thinking about homeschooling is what's
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: what's the purpose. Why why do you why do you
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: want to give your children medication? What is your goal?
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Is it to produce someone who can go to Harvard
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: and who can go and take over Google one day?
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: What is your goal here? And I think that I
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: once I started thinking about it that way, and I
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: really centered it on moral formation and raising good people
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: who had an enthusiasm for important things like family, like
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: like self education, all of it. It really informed how
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: I homeschooled, and it's why my our homeschool is ninety
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: percent reading. It's just read narrate, read narrate, And this
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: this tradition of of you know, American stories, it's not
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: that deep. We've gone through like American Tall Tales and
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: all of those books and they're great and I recommend
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: them also, but we need like a healthy sense of
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: patriotism in our kids, and like, can you speak to
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit like how you're doing that in a
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: way that's not brainwashing like nor but is also sort
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: of you know, we have a very unique situation here
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: and I don't even in my homeschool, I don't feel
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: like my kids get enough of that until we have
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: a situation like we were in London, a year ago
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: and we met a guy at a Shabbat dinner who
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: he sent an angry Facebook message to a fellow Jew
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: and the police came knocking on his door and he
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: was arrested for being mean via Facebook messenger. And he
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: went through the saga of everything. And my kid said,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: how is that possible? And I said, well, kids, welcome
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: to the First Amendment. We have it and they don't.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: And those stories really do a lot to teach kids
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: like this is the importance of what we have here
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: and it is extremely unique.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's right. So yes. So one thing I'd
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: say about this book is it's a gratitude machine, right,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: because you have to feel grateful for things like the
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: First Amendment, and so you have to kind of see
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: their utility, see how hard it was to get it
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and to arrive at it, and then go wow, thank you,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: and that actually animates you in patriotism to defend these
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: liberties and to actually carry it forward to the next generation,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: sort of pay it forward. So I'm very keen to
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: get because the virtue of patriotism is in a certain sense,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: reverent gratitude. It's a revering in thanks for what you
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: did to those who came before. And that's something I
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: really try to highlight in the book in a lot
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: of different ways. And then the other way of sort
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: of teaching these things is just fables are incredibly useful
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: for sort of laying out funny, multi valent ways of
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: how people might fail in a rite or duty, corresponding
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: or secure or or kind of do it in the
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: middle somewhere and you kind of laugh at like, good,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: try right, like you did your best. A lot of
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: people wanted from me. In fact, the only negative views
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: I got on Amazon or some you know, some grumpy
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: old people who like I thought I was gonna get
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Paul Bunyan and pekoas Bill and the First Thanksgiving. And
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, first of all, if you'd kept reading,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: I do have the First Thanksgiving, but you didn't get
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: that far. But I didn't do Paul Bunyan and pekost Bill.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: I didn't do Rip Van Winkle. I think those stories
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: are well told, but they tend to be just sort
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: of more a little less directed yarns. They're just kind
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: of fun stories to sellary hours, and those are beautiful
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: and you can learn something from them, you know, there's
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: people then transmute them into sort of progress versus work ethic,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and there's they get moralized over time and retellings. But
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: but I'm actually the fable tradition is something more precise.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: It's like, what do you need as a citizen? And
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to kitch you out with a kind of
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: gymnastic exercise that's very pleasant and funny, but is also
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: basically laying out the kinds of things you need to
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: live well. And that's a much more directed and purposeful
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: kind of it does. The fable tradition has a little
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: more of a teacherly feel to it. There are morals,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: but the morals don't always match up with the story,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: and that's actually part of the fun. It's like you're like, Okay,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: I can see how that's the moral to this one,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: but I felt like there was a little more going
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: on in this story, and you're like, yes, look again,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: a witty, wise citizen, right, sort of there's that invitation
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: to sort of kitch you out, and so that's I
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: think missing in the American tradition that was not missing
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: at the founding. These were the New England Primer, the
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Colombian Orator, which was the most popular book for education
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: throughout the eighteen hundreds. It's the book that Frederick Douglass
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: found and when he read it, it said, he said,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: the dialogues, there are these funny dialogues that are sort
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: of crazy with the slaves in North Africa and mouthing
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: off to their master and eventually kind of winning their
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: freedom through these like funny, tricky arguments and guilting him.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: And he said, Frederick Douglas read it, and he said,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: it was from these weird and funny dialogues in the
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Columbian Order that I learned that I can free myself
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: from my slavery. And that's a very purposeful book that's
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: designed to transmit Ciceronian republicanism to the American people through stories, speeches,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and things. And that's what this book is. It's a
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: combination of Esop's fables, the New England Primer, and the
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Colombian Order, but packaged for the twenty first century with
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: American ecology and addressing some of our problems too. Social
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: media gets a kind of a fable in there about
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: how to govern your hearts and against the temptations of
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: fame and doom scrolling, and I even have a dialogue
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: between Hugh the manatee and a robotic elephant seal off
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: the coast near Silicon Valley, and I have Groc actually
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: voice the robot, and it's a dialogue about how you
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: should be careful with these chatbots kids, because it'll literally
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: dehumanize you while you dehumanize it because it pretends to
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: be human, but you know it's not. So you become
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: kind of wicked by treating it badly, but emotionally it's
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: like treating a house slave, and you're like, this is
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: not right.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: I know someone who He said that in the last
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: year and a half, his boss has gotten a lot
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: more rude, and it's because he's gotten accustomed to talking
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: to chat ept.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Like shut up, chat GPT, shut up Grock.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And he has seen his boss's demeanor change
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: drastically while encouraging the entire office to mass adopt AI.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: And he's like, right, but a I made you a jerk.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine that? Like when people are like I'm
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: gonna put Optimists in my home, can you imagine my
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: twelve year old son like optimist? You know, it's the worst.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: I try to say thank you to chat e EPT
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: every time it gives me a piece.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Of information exactly. I try to be nice. I try
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: to be nice.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: I love it. So we only have a few more minutes,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: but and I wanted to jump a little bit into
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: and this is like a preview into a future conversation
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: that I'm going to have with one of your colleagues
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: once I actually get it on my calendar, which you
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: know is hard to do. About sort of what Hillsdale
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: can offer a homeschool family or not just not necessarily
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: even a homeschool family, just a family that want to
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: home educate no matter you know, where their kids are
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: from eight to three every day. What are some of
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: the resources that you guys have on the K through
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: twelve level? Because I think a lot of people probably
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: think of you as Hillsdale College, which it's true, you're
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: a great college. But what else is there sort of
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: on the K through twelve front that you can speak to?
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I sit on the K twelve advisory board
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and I've helped out a great deal. In fact, my
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: first work with Hillsdale was counseling the charter school initiatives
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: from the Heights, like teaching them what we were teaching
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: to get get them started when they were starting from scratch.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: But they've come well beyond what I was doing. I mean,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: it's a fully developed K through twelve program and it's
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: all free and available online. So people don't know this,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: but the K twelve curriculum, you know, is all there
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: downloadable free of charge as a civic public service from Hillsdale.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: I have it printed and I have it spiralized.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, people do that. It is, and it's a
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: one stop shop. There's teachers, you know, manuals, there's all
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: the primary source adenda we have in it. There's curriculum
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: for almost every subject matter. But there's also the seventeen
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: seventy six curriculum, which is a kind of K through
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: twelve us his civics, but also poetry, images and artwork
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: for memorization and family participation. It's that kind of thing.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And then you know, we have charter schools all over
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: the country. Wherever charter schools are treated in a friendly
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: way by the state government. Here, yeah, this is the
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: iron wall.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: So it's funny because this conversation that you've had about
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: the colub actually has gotten my personal wheels turning of
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: I don't live in a place. I'm in Maryland, suburban Maryland,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: the what do we call it, the.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: The People's Republic of Maryland.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, the People's Republic of Montgomery County, which is even
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: worse where I have to register as a Democrat to
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: participate in the democratic process because all the elections happen
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: in the primaries, and so I have to be able
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: to vote in the Democratic primary. So I am a
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: registered Democrat and wearing my votering sticker today because I
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: voted in the Democratic primary. And do you know how
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: painful it was for me to go up and they
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: were like which ballot? And I was like, Democrat.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: This is merely a conventional identification system.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: This is me trying to bust the system and actually participate.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: But anyway, I'm rambling, But there's a there's not enough
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: education sort of choices where I live, and we could
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: never have a charter here. What advice would you give
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: people in my position? Were like, we want to like
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: have a group setting, Like what would you say to
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: someone like me and the People's Republic of Montgomery County.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: So we lived for nine years in Montgomery County and
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: we homeschooled during that time quite a bit and we
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: were part of a homeschool co op. It was a
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: loose network. They didn't meet together very often, but they
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: basically were like a support group interesting that traded kind
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: of curricular advice and had a kind of mentoring program
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: and a chat boarder whatever. I don't know what it
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: was exactly. Frankly I was not on it. My wife was.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: But and Emory County was fairly reasonable there. Their overwatch
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: was is this kid getting something of merit? And beyond that,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: they didn't press very hard.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: We still don't, actually, I will say that.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, that was my experience in MOCO was
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: you know, start trying to assemble like minded parents through
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: your church or synagogue, try to you know, get advice
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: from other homeschoolers and homeschool co ops and you know,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: support one another, and then try to meet when you can.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: And you know, a church undercroft with a happy pastor
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: or a priest or a rabbi or whatever, we let
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: you a little space. Yeah, we need to stay together again,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: and that's enough to get going. And that's what we've done.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Is that's that's kind of the way we've operated, and
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: it's it's a it's worth doing. I think.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I agree, I agree. We're we're about
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: to start our eighth year. I think homeschooling, and I
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: still feel like this organizational component is something that I'm
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: just I have ADHD and it's just like I want
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: to do all the things and I don't do all
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: of them.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Well, you need to find the mom who has an
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: engineering background or accounting.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: I think I know it.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Fund that person down and then say, you know, could
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: you maybe help with me? Do it? You she was
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: a lawyer.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: I think I got it.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we are not we are not meant. It's not
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: good for man to be alone, nor is it for
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: homeschool mom to be alone. You need multiple talent stacks
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: to success. For success of a co op.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: So I just talked to a fellow mom actually into homeschooling,
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: and maybe I'll like, you know, now that you're welcome
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: to the fold, I'm going to give you some some homework.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Now start this. I love it. Thank you so much
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: for taking the time. This was such a fun conversation
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: and exactly why I started this podcast again for purely
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: selfish reasons. Fact and you sold a book I was
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: I was going to try to get a free signed
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: copy from a Hillsdale event.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: But all right, thank you.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: It was not to be, so you have another Amazon purchase.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: It's beautiful. Is it also absurdly large? Like your other books?
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: It's large? Yeah, so all of them are the size
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: of my favorite book when I was a child, which
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: was Dallaire's Greek and Norse Myths.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, I love that foot I love those books.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: I love sort of like taking the big book and
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: going somewhere and reading it, and I'm like, I literally
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: put it in the contract. I want a book that's
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: hard backed to the size of Dallaire's. So this guy is,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: you know, a big fatty, He's not small.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: So I love it. Thank you so much. This was
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: so fun. So everyone can follow you on x and
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: Instagram at mt Mehan eh An.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Is there any like, are there any opportunities for local
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: DC people to like hear you speak or anything like
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: that on a regular basis. I'm speaking totally selfishly right
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: now about me. I'm an only child.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, I give talks here and there publicly around
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I'll be at the Heights School speaking. They have a
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: speaker's circuit, and I think I'm speaking. December seventh, there,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: so in Potomac and everyone's welcome to go.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: I didn't know the heights had a speakers circuit. That's
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: so interesting.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty neat. And then and I'm like the
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: least famous person they have, so hometown hero. But then
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: there's a if you if you want c SPAN two,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I think airs today maybe this morning, but it's reairing
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: and it's on the website. The book launch that you
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: missed at Kirby. Yeah, they have the recording, so does
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: DC dot Hillsdale dot e DU. If you go to
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: events previous events, we have a nice video version with
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: even better lighting and audio than c SPAN. But it's
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: on c SPAN. The whole talk I give with the
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: illustrations and the big three by five foot artwork is
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: behind me and I talk about the art and do
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a reading too.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: So I'm so excited.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: That's a fun thing people can say.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: I was really I was genuinely bummed to miss that event,
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: and not just because I thought I could snag myself
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: a free book.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah no, I I I didn't. I it was It's
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: an odd talk in that I just try to speak
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: very sincerely to my audience about why I wrote the book,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: and how I really want everyone in America to use
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: this book to reunite people. It's it's gloss is sort
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: of like C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity, but but it's
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: like the big house, the big American house that everyone's
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: welcome into, right, and it's and I think it's the
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: purpose of the book in one sense is to sort
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: of regentle our condition that we are Americans. We have
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: to sort of all love each other and work together
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: to be one nation again. And I do think that humanity,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: who Manitas is the ground right, why he is the
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: lead character, is we have to get back in touch
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: with that kind of humane treatment of one another as
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: brother and sister in the human community, equal under the law.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Because we are getting a little shaky, as I know
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: you feel too. We have to regentle our condition. And
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: that's part of what the book's designed to do.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I can't wait to read it.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: And I'm just going to make you come back and
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: do this again after I've read it.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, deal, love it.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: All right until next time. Everyone, don't forget to subscribe,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: and you know all the things. Leave reviews for both
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: my book and Chris and me hand's book. Until next time.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Saddle Upe
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Ricochet join the conversation.