Transcript

A New Chapter House · Mom Wars

0:01
Speaker 1: From the front lines of the mom Wars.
0:03
Speaker 2: Here's Bethany Mandel and Kara Kennedy.
0:08
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to another episode of your favorite reliable podcast.
0:13
Speaker 3: Notice how we've been reliable lately. I'm getting there. I'm
0:17
Speaker 3: getting there. I am not joined by my beautiful co host,
0:21
Speaker 3: Kara Kennedy. She's doing that whole baby thing. Still. We
0:25
Speaker 3: did have her back recently. We'll keep on having her on,
0:28
Speaker 3: but I'm trying to give her a break because she's
0:30
Speaker 3: still in the newborn trenches. But I am joined by
0:32
Speaker 3: two fabulous guests today that I'm really excited to talk to,
0:37
Speaker 3: Josh and Hannah, centers of a new imprint called Chapter
0:41
Speaker 3: House Books. So this conversation is based on a review
0:46
Speaker 3: that I did of this whole idea of Chapter House
0:49
Speaker 3: Books and the books themselves. It's at the Washington Examiner.
0:52
Speaker 3: It's going to be in the show notes, So if
0:54
Speaker 3: you want to, like, hit pause and read that review
0:57
Speaker 3: or not whatever, We're gonna hit on a lot of
0:59
Speaker 3: those themes. But this conversation was inspired by the fact
1:03
Speaker 3: that I reviewed their books for The Washington Examiner, which
1:06
Speaker 3: is a fantastic magazine, and it is in their summer
1:09
Speaker 3: books issue. So I highly recommend a subscription to The
1:12
Speaker 3: Washington Examiner. And I don't even have to say that
1:14
Speaker 3: anymore because I'm not married to the executive editor. I'm
1:17
Speaker 3: still married, but he's no longer the executive editor. But
1:20
Speaker 3: it is still a great magazine. So thank you guys
1:22
Speaker 3: both so much for joining me and for doing this
1:26
Speaker 3: crazy thing.
1:28
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, beth me.
1:31
Speaker 3: So I want to start with why did you do
1:34
Speaker 3: this crazy thing? And how did you do this crazy thing?
1:36
Speaker 3: Because like a lot of people are like, I would
1:40
Speaker 3: like to do this, but to actually manifest your idea
1:44
Speaker 3: into reality. Why and how did you do that?
1:47
Speaker 4: Well, one of the things we have learned from doing
1:50
Speaker 4: this is that every single person in the United States
1:52
Speaker 4: has written a children's book, and I've talked to all
1:55
Speaker 4: of them.
1:58
Speaker 3: So I used to run a children's book company and
1:59
Speaker 3: I can also.
2:00
Speaker 4: Confirm that, yeah, yeah, it's totally true. So, well, Hannah,
2:05
Speaker 4: do you want to kick this off? Since this is
2:06
Speaker 4: this is kind of your show, It's mom Wars, You're
2:08
Speaker 4: a mom.
2:09
Speaker 3: We haven't been on this show.
2:11
Speaker 5: Fair enough, So why did we do this? I am
2:16
Speaker 5: a former public school teacher thirteen years teaching eighth grade
2:20
Speaker 5: in high school, and in twenty twenty I became a
2:23
Speaker 5: full time homeschool mom.
2:25
Speaker 6: So I traded the yes.
2:28
Speaker 3: Or was it just like a COVID thing and it
2:30
Speaker 3: just happened?
2:30
Speaker 1: Or was it COVID was the excuse?
2:32
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, we had wanted for me to stay home
2:35
Speaker 5: for a long time, and we actually decided to homeschool
2:38
Speaker 5: our children while I was still teaching, which got me
2:41
Speaker 5: a lot of side eye. But in twenty twenty, when
2:45
Speaker 5: COVID happened and shut everything down, an opportunity came along
2:48
Speaker 5: for Josh to replace my income, and so there was
2:52
Speaker 5: really no reason for me to go back. And then
2:53
Speaker 5: I got pregnant and I was high risk and COVID
2:58
Speaker 5: was not a good environment for me to be out in.
3:01
Speaker 5: So we just kind of went with it, and I
3:04
Speaker 5: traded the classroom for the kitchen table and haven't looked back.
3:08
Speaker 6: In that time.
3:09
Speaker 5: I've learned a lot about children's books that I didn't
3:13
Speaker 5: already know. You know, I've been an avid reader my
3:15
Speaker 5: whole life, but I also found that there were a
3:19
Speaker 5: lot of really awesome children's books that A people didn't
3:22
Speaker 5: know about, and b if they did know about them,
3:25
Speaker 5: it was hard to get a really good copy. So,
3:27
Speaker 5: you know, I was reading a lot on Project Gutenberg
3:30
Speaker 5: or getting you know, glue bound copies with print that
3:33
Speaker 5: you needed a magnifying glass to see. And so I,
3:37
Speaker 5: you know, I really longed for beautiful editions of these
3:41
Speaker 5: classic books.
3:42
Speaker 4: And then Josh, yeah, So, I mean, long story short,
3:48
Speaker 4: I met a publisher who mixed great books and we
3:52
Speaker 4: got to talking. I just asked, have you ever considered
3:54
Speaker 4: the homeschool market? And we just went from there. I
3:57
Speaker 4: mean literally, So it's been nearly two years ago. It's
4:02
Speaker 4: been a lot of work, a lot of meetings, a
4:03
Speaker 4: lot of figure out, Okay, which titles do we do?
4:05
Speaker 4: Because we decided on four box sets twelve books, and
4:10
Speaker 4: we wanted to really try to cover as much as
4:12
Speaker 4: possible the Western canon for elementary to middle school, right,
4:18
Speaker 4: So I took a lot of care in that formatting manuscripts,
4:22
Speaker 4: you know, the whole print production process I've done. I've
4:24
Speaker 4: been publishing for a long time. I've been in ebooks,
4:27
Speaker 4: but print is a whole nother matter. It's like baking
4:30
Speaker 4: a cake because you don't know how it's going to
4:32
Speaker 4: turn out until it's done, until it's actually in your
4:34
Speaker 4: hands right.
4:35
Speaker 3: So I want to zero in on two words you
4:38
Speaker 3: just said, Western canon. That is pretty much like the
4:43
Speaker 3: two words that would describe my review of Chapter House.
4:47
Speaker 3: And one of the things that struck me when I
4:49
Speaker 3: was reading through So the books come with with pamphlets
4:54
Speaker 3: which I thought were really interesting, and they were about
4:57
Speaker 3: there's sort of an essay in the beginning that's about
4:59
Speaker 3: and you're holding it up for our sub Stack watchers
5:03
Speaker 3: exclusively available to watch this podcast on if you're a
5:06
Speaker 3: Substep sub Stack subscriber, so please do that. So it
5:09
Speaker 3: comes with a pamphlet and the first part is like
5:12
Speaker 3: an very interesting essay about homeschooling and about sort of
5:17
Speaker 3: the philosophy of education. And then the second part really
5:20
Speaker 3: is devoted to that specific box set that you have
5:23
Speaker 3: of all different books, and they sort of go in
5:25
Speaker 3: age order from early elementary all through middle school. Four
5:28
Speaker 3: box sets. And the thing that struck me reading through
5:33
Speaker 3: the titles was that this was sort of the bedrock
5:36
Speaker 3: of the Western canon, Like these were books that used
5:40
Speaker 3: to be you know, everyone knew these stories, everyone read
5:44
Speaker 3: these books, and it felt a lot like Johnny Carson,
5:49
Speaker 3: that how Johnny Carson used to be that everyone watched
5:52
Speaker 3: Johnny Carson, and you could stand around and talk about
5:56
Speaker 3: what happened. And I feel like that conversation has happened
6:00
Speaker 3: in the streaming era, but it hasn't happened on the
6:03
Speaker 3: literature side. And so I think not enough people are
6:06
Speaker 3: thinking critically about the fact that, like, there's a lot
6:10
Speaker 3: of stories that were the bedrock of our entire Western
6:13
Speaker 3: civilization and our nation that are no longer that bedrock
6:17
Speaker 3: because kids don't know these stories anymore.
6:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, That's what doctor John Senior would have called
6:24
Speaker 4: tilling the soil. And you know, he said one of
6:26
Speaker 4: the reasons the Great Books movement failed is because the
6:29
Speaker 4: soil just wasn't there. He didn't have that underlying knowledge.
6:33
Speaker 4: You know, for instance, one of the things you know,
6:34
Speaker 4: Hannah talks about this all the time. If you don't
6:37
Speaker 4: know mythology, then Shakespeare, so much of Shakespeare will go
6:40
Speaker 4: over your head, right, And there are so many things,
6:42
Speaker 4: you know, for instance, like Bible references that everyone used
6:45
Speaker 4: to know and deeply embedded in older stories and older movies,
6:48
Speaker 4: and people just don't have that shared language anymore, and
6:51
Speaker 4: so we have this sort of widespread cultural literacy or
6:56
Speaker 4: really like these days. I think we could agree that
6:58
Speaker 4: it's a fragmentation. Rights got their own little niche. We
7:01
Speaker 4: don't have a shared culture. We don't have a common culture.
7:05
Speaker 4: I think at least so much of the social conflict
7:07
Speaker 4: we see today, I.
7:09
Speaker 3: Could not agree more. I was talking via voice memo
7:13
Speaker 3: with one of my good friends, Don Duran about this
7:15
Speaker 3: today actually, and she pointed out to me something that
7:18
Speaker 3: I was unfamiliar with, that the Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's Julius
7:23
Speaker 3: Caesar is basically a retelling of something from Plutarch's lives.
7:27
Speaker 3: One of the stories of Plutarch's lives I was completely
7:30
Speaker 3: unaware of. But even just reading Shakespeare, Shakespeare is built
7:35
Speaker 3: on something, like everything is built on something. And I
7:40
Speaker 3: have found, as an adult forty years old, that my
7:44
Speaker 3: self education is not what it should be. I don't
7:46
Speaker 3: feel like my personal foundation is where it should be.
7:50
Speaker 5: I had the exact same experience coming into the homeschool world.
7:53
Speaker 6: I have two college degrees.
7:56
Speaker 5: I spent thirteen years in the classroom, and there was
7:59
Speaker 5: still so many books that I had never read, never
8:02
Speaker 5: heard of, stories that you know, I only knew in passing,
8:06
Speaker 5: you know, Greek mythology with something like, yeah, I know
8:09
Speaker 5: hercules Is and Zeus and Athena, but you know, beyond that,
8:13
Speaker 5: it was like, oh wow, there's really a lot more
8:16
Speaker 5: to this.
8:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, So how do you go from that to choosing
8:22
Speaker 3: the books that you think are part of the Western kenon?
8:25
Speaker 3: How did you choose these books? And where are you
8:29
Speaker 3: sort of where are you landing on your choices now?
8:32
Speaker 3: Because one of my biggest frustrations having written a book
8:36
Speaker 3: was reading it afterwards, like after it's in your hands
8:39
Speaker 3: and you're like, I really should have said that, I
8:41
Speaker 3: really should have read it differently. Yea. So how did
8:43
Speaker 3: you choose what went into these box sets? Because they're
8:47
Speaker 3: they're retellings of you know, Aesop's Fables are in the
8:50
Speaker 3: first box set. How did you choose them? And do
8:53
Speaker 3: you have regrets or as I like to say, regrets
8:58
Speaker 3: the tattoo.
8:59
Speaker 4: Nob Yeah, you know, I think honestly, like the one
9:04
Speaker 4: regret I have speaking of Plutarch, I do wish we
9:08
Speaker 4: had some sort of Plutarch in this. That's one thing
9:10
Speaker 4: I kind of feel as missing. We there's but there's
9:13
Speaker 4: as far as how we chose them, there was a
9:15
Speaker 4: lot of late nights and a lot of debates and
9:17
Speaker 4: just going through and well we had to choose the
9:19
Speaker 4: titles and also choose, okay, like what's what's the subject
9:22
Speaker 4: matter we need to cover, and then also like, well
9:24
Speaker 4: which edition right, because there's a lot of different editions
9:26
Speaker 4: of Aesop and uh, we picked the Jade Stickney one
9:31
Speaker 4: for this. You know, first of all, when we're looking
9:33
Speaker 4: primarily at public domain for a couple of reasons, one
9:36
Speaker 4: is more reliable, right, you don't have to worry about
9:39
Speaker 4: like these sort of modern things being inserted into those.
9:42
Speaker 4: But also you know, free to republish and restore. So
9:46
Speaker 4: I like, we like the Stickney one because it wasn't
9:48
Speaker 4: as didactic.
9:49
Speaker 5: Well, it doesn't spell the moral out most versions of
9:53
Speaker 5: ASoP at the end of the story, you know, oftimes
9:57
Speaker 5: set apart is the moral that you supposed to have learned.
10:00
Speaker 6: And I'll give you a great example.
10:02
Speaker 5: So just last week, my oldest child, who's twelve, we
10:07
Speaker 5: were reading in Aesop's fable. It was part of his
10:10
Speaker 5: writing curriculum, and the story was about the crow and
10:15
Speaker 5: the picture that has just a little bit of water
10:18
Speaker 5: at the bottom, and he has to drop the pebbles
10:20
Speaker 5: then in order to get the water to rise so
10:22
Speaker 5: that he can drink it. And you know, we get
10:26
Speaker 5: to the end and I.
10:27
Speaker 6: Said, well, you know, what did you learn from that?
10:30
Speaker 6: What do you take from that?
10:31
Speaker 5: And my oldest says, well, I think the most important
10:34
Speaker 5: thing that I learned was that you have to stay
10:36
Speaker 5: calm in a crisis.
10:38
Speaker 6: And that's totally not what would have been the moral.
10:41
Speaker 5: That was written in the book, but it's absolutely valid
10:46
Speaker 5: and a really great point. And so there I sat dumbfounded. Wow,
10:51
Speaker 5: look at this, Look at my kid.
10:52
Speaker 6: I'm so proud of him. Yeah.
10:55
Speaker 5: So I really feel like there's value in leaving things
10:58
Speaker 5: open ended for chill and letting them tell you what
11:01
Speaker 5: they've taken from it, Let them learn at the pace
11:05
Speaker 5: that's appropriate for them, you know, let things speak to
11:08
Speaker 5: them where they're at, instead of trying to tell them
11:11
Speaker 5: what they should get from a story that you've read
11:13
Speaker 5: to them.
11:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
11:14
Speaker 4: One of the great tricks of any sort of communication.
11:16
Speaker 4: Anyone's ever worked in an office knows this. Look, you
11:19
Speaker 4: got to make people think something's their idea, right, So
11:22
Speaker 4: you present this this sort of opened end the story
11:24
Speaker 4: to a child, and then you try to draw up
11:26
Speaker 4: try to get them to draw their own conclusions from it,
11:28
Speaker 4: and a lot of times they'll go, they'll go where
11:30
Speaker 4: you want them to, and sometimes they go in a
11:32
Speaker 4: different direction, but also a wonderful direction.
11:34
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I So. One of the things that we
11:37
Speaker 3: do in our homeschool is we read just a chapter
11:40
Speaker 3: of Psalms once a week, and I do it with
11:43
Speaker 3: my older four kids, who are all school aged. And
11:45
Speaker 3: so my oldest is almost thirteen, my youngest just turned
11:48
Speaker 3: seven a couple days ago, actually, and we always joke
11:52
Speaker 3: very lovingly about my now seven year old that she's
11:55
Speaker 3: a couple fries short of a happy meal. She makes
11:59
Speaker 3: interesting decision a lot, but of those four kids, of
12:03
Speaker 3: whom she's the youngest, she extrapolates the most interesting, thought
12:09
Speaker 3: provoking things from a chapter of Psalms. And so my
12:13
Speaker 3: older three kids, maybe it's because they're jaded, will just
12:16
Speaker 3: be like, God thinks that being lazy is bad. I'm like, yeah, yeah,
12:22
Speaker 3: that is in there. It's in there a lot. It's
12:24
Speaker 3: a recurring theme, and she will just like draw things out.
12:30
Speaker 3: She's like, I liked this word choice, and we all
12:33
Speaker 3: kind of me and my older three kids look at
12:35
Speaker 3: her and we're like, maybe she's got like too many fries.
12:38
Speaker 3: Maybe that's the problem. Maybe they're like overflowing from her
12:42
Speaker 3: box and it seems like she's running a little short,
12:46
Speaker 3: but she's actually running a little a little high.
12:49
Speaker 5: Yeah.
12:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's one of the I love that I
12:52
Speaker 3: love giving kids. You know, it's very you talk about
12:56
Speaker 3: Charlotte Mason in the in your essays. It's one of
12:59
Speaker 3: the thing you offer kids the feast, and they take
13:04
Speaker 3: from it different things. I'm not a purist. I'm not
13:09
Speaker 3: like perfect by any means, but I love lots of
13:13
Speaker 3: the things. But my reality is I work full time,
13:17
Speaker 3: my husband works full time, and we're homeschooling now five kids.
13:21
Speaker 3: And like, do we use work books? Yeah we do.
13:24
Speaker 3: I have them like in online classes. I do. But
13:28
Speaker 3: this is where my heart is is like, you know,
13:31
Speaker 3: if in a perfect world where I also wasn't too
13:34
Speaker 3: short of fries, like if I also didn't have raging ADHD,
13:38
Speaker 3: I want to do all the things. I want to
13:40
Speaker 3: have a podcast and a sub stack, and I want
13:41
Speaker 3: to be a columnist and I want to do that.
13:43
Speaker 3: I would be a very purist schooler.
13:47
Speaker 5: I totally get that that's exactly where I am.
13:50
Speaker 6: But to offer some encouragement, to all.
13:52
Speaker 5: Of the moms, including you, that feel like they're falling
13:56
Speaker 5: short of Charlotte Mason's ideal that it's just that it's
14:00
Speaker 5: an ideal. If we lived in a world where all
14:03
Speaker 5: of our children were, you know, perfect, and we were perfect,
14:07
Speaker 5: then this is what we could accomplish.
14:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
14:10
Speaker 5: But instead, you know, we have to say we're going
14:12
Speaker 5: to strive towards something, but we're not going to hold
14:16
Speaker 5: ourselves to a standard to the point that we feel
14:18
Speaker 5: like a failure when we don't get everything right.
14:21
Speaker 6: Yeah.
14:21
Speaker 3: And I felt like that. I felt like I don't
14:24
Speaker 3: let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That
14:27
Speaker 3: is my life mantra, And especially with home schooling, I
14:30
Speaker 3: know that I'm doing better by them than they would
14:33
Speaker 3: be getting elsewhere, and they're having a really interesting and
14:36
Speaker 3: eclectic I am offering them a feast just you know,
14:41
Speaker 3: it's an interesting, eclectic feast.
14:43
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I've done a lot of thinking about
14:46
Speaker 5: the feast lately, actually, and it's my opinion and this
14:52
Speaker 5: is totally just me. You know that the feast is
14:55
Speaker 5: going to be a little different for everyone. You know,
14:58
Speaker 5: I have gluten issue. So if I go to a
15:01
Speaker 5: feast and everything has bread, I'm not going to be able.
15:04
Speaker 6: To eat all of it, or I'll keep for it later.
15:06
Speaker 5: And I feel like intellectually, that's sort of the same
15:09
Speaker 5: place that some of our children are. You know, yes,
15:11
Speaker 5: there's some things they all absolutely need. Great literature is
15:14
Speaker 5: so important. But you know, when you expand out from there,
15:19
Speaker 5: you know you really can pick and choose based on
15:23
Speaker 5: what your child is inclined toward. Not to say that
15:26
Speaker 5: you can follow all of their delights and you don't
15:29
Speaker 5: teach them math because they don't like math.
15:31
Speaker 6: That's not what I'm saying at all. Yeah.
15:42
Speaker 2: This week on Conservative Crossroads, should there be fewer or
15:46
Speaker 2: more limits on foreign students and staff at American universities?
15:51
Speaker 2: Jay Green says there should be more limits.
15:54
Speaker 3: We have to think of foreign suits not simply as
15:57
Speaker 3: economic assets, but as political risks.
15:59
Speaker 2: As Daniel Dee Martine says, there should be fewer limits.
16:04
Speaker 3: It's about lifting restrictions on the good kind of people
16:07
Speaker 3: and imposing those on the wrong kind of people.
16:10
Speaker 2: The number of students and staff at American universities. Coming
16:14
Speaker 2: up on Conservative Crossroads.
16:16
Speaker 1: Ricochet join the conversation.
16:32
Speaker 3: So, one complaint that I have about your new company,
16:37
Speaker 3: which is brand new, and I want to talk about
16:39
Speaker 3: the fact that how brand new it is is that
16:42
Speaker 3: it has not been around long enough when I opened
16:45
Speaker 3: up the bundles that came with the books, because one
16:48
Speaker 3: of the cool things is you offer with every single
16:51
Speaker 3: box set. Let's take the first box set for example,
16:54
Speaker 3: you offer a kindergarten buddle, and you offer a first
16:57
Speaker 3: grade bundle, and the bundles come with wonderful additional books
17:02
Speaker 3: like make Way for Ducklings. And I own all of
17:06
Speaker 3: those books, and so my kryptonite is buying curriculum, but
17:10
Speaker 3: I can't buy the bundles because I own all of them.
17:15
Speaker 5: That's okay, though, that means that you're already tracking with us.
17:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're ahead of the game, I know.
17:20
Speaker 3: But I like shopping with small businesses and family owned businesses.
17:26
Speaker 3: I always buy my curriculum from Rainbow Resource because it's
17:30
Speaker 3: a wonderful small company who are very niche and are
17:33
Speaker 3: passionate about what they're doing. But tell me a little
17:36
Speaker 3: bit about Like, Okay, so you've started this crazy company, y'all,
17:39
Speaker 3: just like I had to make you overnight the books
17:42
Speaker 3: so that I could get my review in fast enough.
17:44
Speaker 3: Thank you for that. By the way, so tell me
17:48
Speaker 3: about like, Okay, your storefront is open, Like, are you bored?
17:52
Speaker 3: You have nothing to do now that you've opened the book.
17:54
Speaker 1: Oh I wish we're bored. No, we don't.
17:58
Speaker 4: We've had such a hard time keeping things in stock,
18:01
Speaker 4: which is a good problem to have, but still a problem.
18:04
Speaker 4: And we've also had so we have a warehouse, there's
18:07
Speaker 4: only a couple of people that work in it, and
18:09
Speaker 4: they've just been overloaded.
18:10
Speaker 1: Just totally.
18:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm half tempted to just fly out to the
18:14
Speaker 4: warehouse and start packing up boxes myself.
18:17
Speaker 1: I might, in fact, I might need to do that.
18:18
Speaker 1: Even so, it's been a challenge.
18:20
Speaker 4: And it's funny you talk about buying from the small
18:22
Speaker 4: businesses because selling so the original plan was just to
18:26
Speaker 4: sell these box sets, and then it was sort of
18:29
Speaker 4: a late addition to resell these other books as well
18:32
Speaker 4: and include these bundles. And once again, many late nights,
18:35
Speaker 4: Hannah spent months, like every night just going through booklists
18:40
Speaker 4: and also like because there's a challenge of here's the
18:42
Speaker 4: books we want, and then also there's a challenge of
18:45
Speaker 4: can we actually obtain those books throughout distributor, And that's
18:48
Speaker 4: been difficult, and you know, I'm getting a little conspiratorial
18:52
Speaker 4: because if you want slop, if you want direct, there's
18:56
Speaker 4: tons of it. There's tons of just crappy children's books.
18:59
Speaker 4: I could pack out ten thousand at my door tomorrow
19:02
Speaker 4: if you want something quality, like what's when we really
19:05
Speaker 4: had trouble with.
19:07
Speaker 3: A Children's Gardener versus That looks best and just so
19:11
Speaker 3: stories by Rudyard Kippen.
19:14
Speaker 5: That one's been really difficult to keep in stock for
19:17
Speaker 5: some reason.
19:18
Speaker 4: So well, that brings another issue we've had is, you know,
19:22
Speaker 4: we we've had to go through each book ourselves, like
19:24
Speaker 4: for instance, Child's Gardener Versus we ordered a few different
19:27
Speaker 4: copies and there's a lot of them were censored or altered,
19:30
Speaker 4: and so we're very much against that, very much against
19:33
Speaker 4: that sort of historical revisionism because we won't be about
19:36
Speaker 4: preservation here. So we've had like all of these books
19:39
Speaker 4: ourselves review them so and that also slowed things down.
19:43
Speaker 1: So anyway, sorry to interrupt, but I want to know.
19:45
Speaker 3: I mean, this is I always joke, and it's not
19:48
Speaker 3: a joke, and it's very much what you're saying. The
19:50
Speaker 3: best place to buy children's books is library discard sales
19:55
Speaker 3: because libraries are getting rid of every good book, and
19:59
Speaker 3: so like me personally, forty year old mom who's shopping
20:03
Speaker 3: right now, library discard sales are great, but I think
20:06
Speaker 3: about my kids and my grandkids and where are they
20:09
Speaker 3: going to buy their books. One of the most disturbing
20:12
Speaker 3: things that happened, I think in you know, the news
20:16
Speaker 3: and it was a blip for thirty seconds, was the
20:19
Speaker 3: disappearance of six Doctor Seuss books. Fact that the Sus Corporation,
20:27
Speaker 3: which is not run by people who care about him
20:29
Speaker 3: or his legacy. They're not his family, they're unconnected to him,
20:32
Speaker 3: but they run this company, they decided that six of
20:38
Speaker 3: the books were objectionable based on like a weird illustration
20:42
Speaker 3: or whatever. And I bought a lot of those books myself.
20:46
Speaker 3: As soon as it was announced. I was able to
20:48
Speaker 3: get a couple of those copies myself, and I looked
20:52
Speaker 3: through them with an eye of like I'm looking for
20:54
Speaker 3: something offensive. I know there's something offensive in it, and
20:57
Speaker 3: I was like, maybe it's this illustration. I'm not sure.
21:01
Speaker 3: It was nothing. And the creepy thing was they disappeared
21:06
Speaker 3: from from buying it, new buying it used. It just
21:12
Speaker 3: evaporated out of our cannon. And that is scary. That
21:18
Speaker 3: is really scary. And Role Doll that happened at the
21:20
Speaker 3: same time too. They decided to rewrite some of the
21:23
Speaker 3: roll Doll books and terribly actually, which was one that
21:28
Speaker 3: they butchered. And I think that they decided to back
21:33
Speaker 3: off some of those edits because the uproar was enough.
21:37
Speaker 3: But the fact that, like so many classic books through
21:41
Speaker 3: our modern lens, are being viewed as objectionable sorry another one.
21:45
Speaker 3: This is something that I'm very passionate about. The Little
21:51
Speaker 3: House books. They are also have been canceled as far
21:55
Speaker 3: as the world is concerned. And I've talked about this
21:57
Speaker 3: a lot, especially when I wrote my book that came
22:00
Speaker 3: out three years ago. They based it on how Ma
22:03
Speaker 3: talked about the Indians and she did not talk about
22:07
Speaker 3: Native Americans kindly. That was to me some of the
22:12
Speaker 3: best parts of that book because it elicited such a
22:15
Speaker 3: conversation about like, yeah, Ma hated those Native Americans? Why
22:20
Speaker 3: did she hate them? Was she justified? But what if
22:23
Speaker 3: they hadn't been there? Who would have warned them about
22:25
Speaker 3: the winter that was coming? Would they have survived without
22:28
Speaker 3: the Native Americans warning them? Right? That those throwaway, super
22:33
Speaker 3: racist lines led to the best conversations we had about
22:37
Speaker 3: the Little House books. And now now you know, the
22:41
Speaker 3: the nags are saying, don't read anything of Little House
22:44
Speaker 3: because there's racist books. I'm like, but that's the best part.
22:47
Speaker 3: The racism is the best part of that is going
22:55
Speaker 3: to go viral on Twitter.
22:56
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're all going to get canceled.
23:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't do that.
23:01
Speaker 3: Wait just right.
23:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is a tragedy that we feel like we
23:06
Speaker 5: have to tidy up things in the nature that we
23:11
Speaker 5: don't agree with.
23:13
Speaker 4: Well, part of what we do with Chapter House, as
23:15
Speaker 4: much as it is about children's literature and children's education,
23:18
Speaker 4: we also began to see it as a historical preservation project. Yes,
23:22
Speaker 4: so you know we did. I've had people ask, Okay,
23:25
Speaker 4: why exactly did you do the books? You know, we
23:27
Speaker 4: did some small like line ad. It's like there's one
23:31
Speaker 4: book in particular. Oh so Alfred Church. He wrote our
23:34
Speaker 4: version of the Ilien and our version of the Odyssey
23:36
Speaker 4: that will be in chapters three and four.
23:38
Speaker 1: And the dude just was in love with Semi Collins.
23:40
Speaker 4: Like literally every sentence was like five paragraphs long and
23:44
Speaker 4: separated by Simmy Collins, and it was just like this
23:47
Speaker 4: is insane.
23:47
Speaker 1: So I spent like two weeks per book.
23:50
Speaker 4: I think going through manually, like replacing semi collins, so
23:54
Speaker 4: stuff like that stuff you.
23:56
Speaker 6: Know, or like the dashes and fifty payments stories retold.
23:59
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so James Baldwin or someone after him thought
24:04
Speaker 5: that words needed to be broken up, I guess to
24:06
Speaker 5: help with pronunciation, so they would put a hyphen between
24:09
Speaker 5: the syllables and it almost made it unreadable.
24:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, it made it harder to pronounce it, at least
24:15
Speaker 1: for us.
24:15
Speaker 6: Yeah, we went it took that out.
24:18
Speaker 3: But I think what you've just done is sold listeners
24:22
Speaker 3: on buying the box sets, even if they own some
24:25
Speaker 3: of the books, because you just sold me that that
24:29
Speaker 3: just so stories thing drove me nuts. Drove me nuts,
24:33
Speaker 3: and I didn't even know the semi colon issues. So
24:35
Speaker 3: now you've you've got me. This is a good time
24:38
Speaker 3: to mention that in conjunction with this podcast, we're doing
24:43
Speaker 3: a giveaway between The Mom Wars and Chapter House. We
24:47
Speaker 3: are going to give away the first two box sets
24:49
Speaker 3: to listeners and subscribers of The Mom Wars and the
24:54
Speaker 3: email subscribers for Chapter House. The information on the giveaway
24:58
Speaker 3: is going to be on so social media. We're going
25:00
Speaker 3: to do a shared post and it will also be
25:02
Speaker 3: in the show notes, and so you can as listeners.
25:05
Speaker 3: If you've gone this far, you should enter the giveaway
25:09
Speaker 3: and enter to win the first two box sets. One
25:13
Speaker 3: of the things that I really liked about the box
25:15
Speaker 3: sets also was that they kind of have a theme.
25:18
Speaker 3: And so chapter one, which is like the first box set,
25:22
Speaker 3: is Heroes and Wonders, the second one is Warriors and Giants,
25:26
Speaker 3: the third is The Triumph of the West, which I love,
25:30
Speaker 3: and the fourth is the Odyssey of Europe. How did
25:33
Speaker 3: you like settle on those themes? Like, did you choose
25:35
Speaker 3: sort of the books first and then choose a shared theme?
25:39
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, we chose the books and then I mean, honestly,
25:43
Speaker 4: I mean, just to be perfectly honest, I just kind
25:45
Speaker 4: of sat around, just stared at the book titles. What's
25:47
Speaker 4: a cool theme here? What's a cool title for this that?
25:49
Speaker 4: Because you know, one of the things real white with
25:51
Speaker 4: Chapter House. You see this through through all the design
25:54
Speaker 4: and the way the book's fill in your hand, and
25:56
Speaker 4: the way the paper looks, you know, every bit of it.
25:59
Speaker 4: You know, we want we wanted to create something that's
26:01
Speaker 4: aspirational for children, because, like we said earlier, so much
26:05
Speaker 4: of modern children's lit is to slop. It's it's poorly constructed,
26:09
Speaker 4: it's poorly written, the images look terrible, the art is ugly,
26:13
Speaker 4: and so we wanted to be the opposite of that because, like,
26:15
Speaker 4: you know, I think one of the mistakes we've made
26:17
Speaker 4: is we keep lowering the bar trying to make things
26:20
Speaker 4: accessible for children, and really all we're doing is make
26:22
Speaker 4: it so reading it's completely uninteresting. Yeah, Hannah and I
26:26
Speaker 4: both when we were kids, we were drawn to things
26:28
Speaker 4: like the Harvard Classics and those readers digest editions of things,
26:31
Speaker 4: and was it the uh, what's.
26:33
Speaker 1: On the shelf?
26:34
Speaker 4: Oh, the Junior Classics we had look on the shelf
26:36
Speaker 4: back there, you know, because they looked they looked important,
26:39
Speaker 4: they felt regal. Right, So like all throughout Chapter House,
26:43
Speaker 4: and this is very important for me in terms of
26:46
Speaker 4: building the brand, is we wanted everything to feel you know,
26:49
Speaker 4: weighty and important and regal. And so I wanted to
26:51
Speaker 4: give these big, grandiose titles.
26:53
Speaker 1: To the box sets.
26:55
Speaker 5: Yeah, something else that was really important to me as
26:58
Speaker 5: a mom who's reading a lot allowed her children.
27:01
Speaker 6: I wanted it to be readable.
27:03
Speaker 5: I get really tired of typeface that's so small that
27:08
Speaker 5: you can't really see it, and pages that are so
27:11
Speaker 5: thin that you can see the backside through it and
27:14
Speaker 5: it's a distraction, or you know, images that bleed onto
27:18
Speaker 5: the words on the page behind it. It's just it's
27:22
Speaker 5: very frustrating, and it makes it just an unpleasant experience.
27:25
Speaker 5: We wanted this to be something that everyone would enjoy.
27:28
Speaker 5: The children would enjoy looking at them and reading them.
27:31
Speaker 6: It's so with the parents.
27:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I see like that theme of you know,
27:36
Speaker 3: the empty or you make something the less attractive it is.
27:39
Speaker 3: I see that also repeated in religion, and I see
27:43
Speaker 3: the response in sort of a religious revival that's happening
27:47
Speaker 3: across the West, whether it be Judaism or Christianity's Catholicism,
27:52
Speaker 3: all of those things. The only sectors of religion that
27:57
Speaker 3: are growing now are the most strident and meaty. They
28:02
Speaker 3: are like Latin Mass for Catholics, it's orthodox Judaism like
28:07
Speaker 3: that to me, like there's something there. I and you know,
28:11
Speaker 3: speaking of the Charlotte Mason Feast, Like if I'm gonna
28:14
Speaker 3: go out and spend my hard earned money on a meal,
28:16
Speaker 3: I'm on a feast. I'm not interested in fast food.
28:20
Speaker 3: And I think that that that thought really went through
28:23
Speaker 3: my mind as I was holding your books of like, man,
28:26
Speaker 3: this is like this is a nice throwback. There's so
28:29
Speaker 3: many books that I've just thrown away because they fell apart,
28:33
Speaker 3: like literally in our hands. And I I'm just gonna
28:36
Speaker 3: be honest with you. I forgot the books on the
28:39
Speaker 3: floor of my car because I brought them with me
28:42
Speaker 3: on a trip so that I could write the review.
28:45
Speaker 3: And there's they're holding up really well on the on
28:47
Speaker 3: the floor of my passenger side.
28:51
Speaker 1: Sorry, we're guilt.
28:52
Speaker 4: We're guilty of the same thing because right now we
28:55
Speaker 4: only have these to these sets right here.
28:57
Speaker 1: This is what we have in terms of our stock.
28:59
Speaker 4: Well, they just send us some more, but they're on loan. Yeah,
29:04
Speaker 4: so we've been lugging these around everywhere. They've been in
29:06
Speaker 4: the back of behind a pilot, we've had Yeah, we've
29:09
Speaker 4: ham in floorboards and everywhere else.
29:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. Suitcases, suitcases.
29:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, mine look no worse for the wear, having spent
29:16
Speaker 3: the last two weeks on the floor of my passenger side.
29:18
Speaker 5: You are doing a scientific stress test. Don't sell your short.
29:23
Speaker 3: My car is disgusting.
29:24
Speaker 1: Too.
29:25
Speaker 3: I have to say, it's really I mean that's.
29:29
Speaker 6: Mine.
29:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it's gross. And so they're they're really they're
29:33
Speaker 3: holding up. I'm going to bring them inside one of
29:35
Speaker 3: these days, but I wanted to. My idea was, I
29:39
Speaker 3: was like, I need to bring them to the lake
29:40
Speaker 3: so I can write this review and then we have
29:43
Speaker 3: this podcast, So they really need to you know, I
29:46
Speaker 3: know I need to know where they are, and I
29:48
Speaker 3: know where they are right now, but then I forgot
29:50
Speaker 3: to take them out for this podcast.
29:51
Speaker 4: So okay, but we should make that like the viral
29:56
Speaker 4: video of some kind. We stress test the chapter house
29:59
Speaker 4: books like you know, farm Office, skyscraing.
30:02
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, welcomer.
30:12
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Ben Sass and I'm Chris Steierwald. And this
30:15
Speaker 1: is not dead yet.
30:17
Speaker 2: We're all dying, but some of us have been brought
30:20
Speaker 2: face to face with that reality.
30:22
Speaker 1: However long each of us have to do it though.
30:24
Speaker 1: We all want to live a good life, one with meaning,
30:27
Speaker 1: love and joy, and our guests are here to help
30:30
Speaker 1: us do exactly that.
30:32
Speaker 2: Now available for download and streaming at ricochet dot com.
30:35
Speaker 1: Ricochet Join the conversation.
30:49
Speaker 3: So, speaking of a million people have messaged you to
30:52
Speaker 3: say I wrote a children's book. What's next for you, guys, Like,
30:56
Speaker 3: are you going to just try to keep your heads
30:59
Speaker 3: above water and sell the books that you have already produced,
31:03
Speaker 3: or are you thinking ahead to like what you want
31:05
Speaker 3: to do next.
31:06
Speaker 4: Well, that's a great question. Right now, we still have
31:09
Speaker 4: a lot of books still to sell. We have a
31:11
Speaker 4: store to restock and keep restocked. Right now, my main
31:15
Speaker 4: focus is trying to get the good word out about
31:17
Speaker 4: what we've done already. But we do have a lot
31:20
Speaker 4: of ideas for future sets and possibly individual titles as well.
31:25
Speaker 1: We have some thoughts around reading curriculum.
31:27
Speaker 4: We've been discussing that some a science curriculum, so yeah, that.
31:31
Speaker 1: Would be cool. We havent done much with that yet.
31:35
Speaker 1: One thing we've considered, I would love the audience. I
31:37
Speaker 1: would love your opinion in the audience's opinion on this too.
31:39
Speaker 1: So a couple of directions.
31:41
Speaker 4: We go with box sets, right, Like, we could do
31:43
Speaker 4: chapter five, chapter six, and keep going up through the
31:45
Speaker 4: grade levels, and that's an option and I think people
31:48
Speaker 4: would like that. But I've also considered doing like supplementary
31:51
Speaker 4: sets to go along with these four. Like, one thing
31:55
Speaker 4: we've considered is like a set for girls because my daughter,
31:57
Speaker 4: she's five.
31:59
Speaker 1: She loves the book and she wants a pink set.
32:01
Speaker 1: She wants a pink set of books.
32:02
Speaker 5: Specifically, she wants a pink Beowolf she loves.
32:08
Speaker 3: I don't think that's a good idea, but I think
32:10
Speaker 3: that you're onto something. So I have an Instagram account
32:14
Speaker 3: that I don't I don't update frequently enough. It's called
32:17
Speaker 3: right Books for Kids, right, like on the right books
32:22
Speaker 3: number four kids, And I mean it's like a play
32:26
Speaker 3: like it's the right books, but it's also like your
32:28
Speaker 3: right leaning and these are these books will be up
32:32
Speaker 3: your alley. And the number one question we get as moms,
32:37
Speaker 3: myself and Rachel Reeves, who runs it. She has another
32:40
Speaker 3: amazing Instagram account called here are the Headlines. The number
32:44
Speaker 3: one question we get on that account is I'm looking
32:48
Speaker 3: for books for boys.
32:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that was another inspiration for us too, because
32:55
Speaker 4: you know, the publishing industry just isn't interested in males
32:58
Speaker 4: at all. So you know, in these books, we have
33:00
Speaker 4: a lot of masculine stories. Right, we have bial Wolf,
33:03
Speaker 4: which have you seen the art in that? The art
33:06
Speaker 4: that t Shaw Taylor did for that, it's phenomenal. He
33:09
Speaker 4: specializes in like Old English and medieval art, and yeah,
33:14
Speaker 4: show the people on the camera. There for another reason
33:17
Speaker 4: to subscribe to the substack, y'all. You can see the art. Yeah,
33:21
Speaker 4: So I mean nothing, nothing dainty about that. But yeah,
33:26
Speaker 4: a lot of these stories are, you know, very appealing
33:29
Speaker 4: to boys.
33:30
Speaker 1: In fact.
33:31
Speaker 4: So we did a homeschool convention in Texas recently and
33:34
Speaker 4: one of my favorite things about that was interacting with
33:36
Speaker 4: the kids. And you know, these families had come up
33:38
Speaker 4: and they'd have, you know, the boys with them and
33:41
Speaker 4: they say, well, he doesn't really care about reading.
33:43
Speaker 1: I was like, let me show you something. And there
33:45
Speaker 1: was this one point in particular.
33:46
Speaker 4: I remember he had an iPad and he had like
33:48
Speaker 4: a death grip on the iPad.
33:49
Speaker 1: Right, let me show you something. So I took him over.
33:52
Speaker 1: I opened up Balo Wolf.
33:53
Speaker 4: I start telling him the story of Bale Wolf, and
33:55
Speaker 4: I started showing him the art and after a couple
33:57
Speaker 4: of the pictures, he actually.
33:58
Speaker 1: Set the iPad down reached for the book.
34:01
Speaker 4: I was like, ah, when a great victory of the
34:04
Speaker 4: weekend right there, like one box set I would love
34:07
Speaker 4: to do. We talked about this is I think I
34:10
Speaker 4: would call someone like Chapter House Adventures and it would
34:12
Speaker 4: just be like adventure stories, right, like, yeah, it's like
34:15
Speaker 4: a Treasure Island and then Robinson Crusoe and.
34:19
Speaker 1: Maybe like a mixed like that, something like that.
34:20
Speaker 4: I haven't got quite the same titles, but I would
34:22
Speaker 4: love to do instead of adventure stories a set for girls.
34:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have.
34:27
Speaker 4: I want to definitely do some kind of children's plutark
34:30
Speaker 4: at some point. So, yeah, we we have more ideas
34:33
Speaker 4: than we have shelf space in our warehouse.
34:35
Speaker 1: And that's the challenge for us right now.
34:38
Speaker 3: So if I'm going to make requests out of everything
34:40
Speaker 3: you just said the boys set, I'm sorry. You don't
34:44
Speaker 3: need to have a have a corresponding girls set. There's
34:46
Speaker 3: enough books out there for girls. I'm sick. I'll seak
34:49
Speaker 3: of it, though, I will. I will actually caveat what
34:52
Speaker 3: I just said, and also the plutarch. I want the
34:53
Speaker 3: children's to the tark, but I will caveat. One hole
34:57
Speaker 3: that I see in the in the girls marketplace is
35:02
Speaker 3: the idea that families are important and that you can
35:05
Speaker 3: and should want to be a mom. That is not
35:08
Speaker 3: a message that girls are getting now. They're getting the
35:10
Speaker 3: message that you can be anything, you can be a scientist.
35:14
Speaker 3: You can do this, Marie Curry. And it's a complete
35:19
Speaker 3: afterthought if anyone has a child, and it's not something
35:23
Speaker 3: that they're told like this is a great thing to be.
35:26
Speaker 3: Being a mom is great and fulfilling and empowering. That
35:31
Speaker 3: is a massive, massive hole in how we're talking to
35:35
Speaker 3: and about girls.
35:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean I was just going to say,
35:39
Speaker 5: I totally agree with you that most of the modern
35:43
Speaker 5: literature that's produced for girls is very you know, raw raw,
35:46
Speaker 5: girl boss. But if you're reading good quality literature from
35:52
Speaker 5: say more than fifty years ago, you're going to find that.
35:57
Speaker 3: But that's why you have to curate it.
35:59
Speaker 5: Yes, that's a matter of finding those books and circling
36:02
Speaker 5: back to what you said about the library sales. You know,
36:05
Speaker 5: libraries have checked a lot of those books. Yeah, and
36:09
Speaker 5: we're at the point now that like, when our library
36:12
Speaker 5: has a sale, it's the twaddle that they're they've already
36:16
Speaker 5: curated all the good stuff out and now they're curating
36:18
Speaker 5: the twattle out.
36:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, the book said the dog Man, that's falling apart.
36:22
Speaker 6: Right right, So you know, you really have to dig
36:26
Speaker 6: and you have to know where to.
36:27
Speaker 5: Look, and that's your job, right, exactly.
36:32
Speaker 6: I know, I know.
36:33
Speaker 1: And back to motherhoods.
36:34
Speaker 4: So you know, like I mentioned, we have a five
36:35
Speaker 4: year old girl effect you try to get on the
36:37
Speaker 4: camera here.
36:37
Speaker 3: Just yeah, I played that so well. I didn't even notice.
36:42
Speaker 6: I sucked my arm out, like stop there. Very impressive.
36:47
Speaker 4: But like to her, everything is a baby, like our
36:51
Speaker 4: boys Godzilla.
36:52
Speaker 1: Godzilla is a baby. You got to feed and change Godzilla.
36:55
Speaker 1: Everything's a baby. And that that's such a natural instinct
36:58
Speaker 1: for most.
36:59
Speaker 4: Young girls, most young women, and it gets just beaten
37:03
Speaker 4: now them by society, driven out of this, and they
37:06
Speaker 4: this is one of the tragedies of modernity, is they
37:08
Speaker 4: become adults, right, and they've they've had all these ideas
37:11
Speaker 4: shoving their head their contrary to what's actually in their cart,
37:14
Speaker 4: and then they just feel conflicted their whole life. And
37:18
Speaker 4: then and then maybe they missed that window of being
37:20
Speaker 4: a mother. And then you know, I see some of
37:22
Speaker 4: these stories now, these women who are in their forties
37:25
Speaker 4: and they're like, I'm so sad, I'm so.
37:27
Speaker 1: Alone, I'll never have a child, and it's just heartbreaking.
37:31
Speaker 3: Yeah. One of the things that I hear a lot
37:33
Speaker 3: from friends is I waited, not me, like I didn't.
37:37
Speaker 3: I'm just quoting them. I waited so long because I
37:41
Speaker 3: was told that this is a hard, really terrible thing,
37:45
Speaker 3: and I was like, I wanted it, but I like
37:46
Speaker 3: really kind of put it off because I wanted to
37:48
Speaker 3: accomplish what I wanted to accomplish before I threw my
37:52
Speaker 3: life away and had a baby. And then they had
37:55
Speaker 3: They decided it was time at thirty six, and they
37:58
Speaker 3: had that baby, and then they were like, wait a second,
38:01
Speaker 3: this is delightful. I really enjoy this a lot. But
38:05
Speaker 3: now they're thirty seven because they got pregnant at thirty six,
38:09
Speaker 3: and so then they're thirty seven, and so then they're like,
38:11
Speaker 3: I guess I'll have another one in a year or two.
38:13
Speaker 3: And then they have their second at thirty nine, and
38:16
Speaker 3: then you're staring down the barrel at like waning fertility
38:20
Speaker 3: at that point. And the number of women that I
38:22
Speaker 3: know who did that trajectory exactly. They had the first
38:26
Speaker 3: one at thirty six, thirty seven, the second one in
38:28
Speaker 3: thirty nine, and they want to have three four, five
38:32
Speaker 3: six kids, but they didn't realize it until they had
38:35
Speaker 3: their first. And this was sort of something that I
38:38
Speaker 3: told my husband. We had our first when I was
38:40
Speaker 3: twenty seven. But I only let us have a baby
38:43
Speaker 3: quote unquote that early, or pushed us to have a
38:46
Speaker 3: baby that early, because I assumed I was cursed because
38:50
Speaker 3: my parents died when I was like sixteen and nineteen,
38:52
Speaker 3: and so I assumed I was cursed and that I
38:54
Speaker 3: would like have infertility issues, and so I was like,
38:57
Speaker 3: if we start at twenty seven, maybe I'll have a
39:00
Speaker 3: baby in like five years. But thank God, it was
39:02
Speaker 3: not cursed, and I got pregnant instantly. And then though
39:06
Speaker 3: like three kids we thought we wanted to have turned
39:09
Speaker 3: into like, let's actually have four. Let's okay, let's have
39:12
Speaker 3: a fifth and then and then we got a sixth
39:15
Speaker 3: that was like a bonus baby because God decided we
39:17
Speaker 3: needed one more.
39:19
Speaker 1: We started thirty.
39:21
Speaker 6: You were thirty. I was twenty nine, and I.
39:23
Speaker 4: Think if we had met earlier, we have three kids.
39:26
Speaker 4: I think we met earlier, we'd probably have six by now.
39:28
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was our problem. We didn't meet. We met and.
39:32
Speaker 5: Were married within a year, and then we had our
39:35
Speaker 5: first child ten months to the day from the day
39:37
Speaker 5: that we got married. But he was a very spirited,
39:41
Speaker 5: spirited baby who did not believe in sleep and I
39:45
Speaker 5: lost izib.
39:47
Speaker 6: He is very smart.
39:48
Speaker 1: He is very smart, very athletic.
39:50
Speaker 5: I mean he's extremely athletic, which is hilarious considering.
39:54
Speaker 6: How nerdy Josh and I are.
39:56
Speaker 5: I mean really like, I never saw myself as being
39:59
Speaker 5: a bleacher, but here we are. Every season he finds
40:03
Speaker 5: something to play. It's fine. Yeah, And then I guess
40:08
Speaker 5: because he didn't sleep. We waited a bit, and then
40:10
Speaker 5: I had a miscarriage, which was horrible, and then we
40:14
Speaker 5: had two more in pretty short order, like they're only
40:17
Speaker 5: two years apart.
40:19
Speaker 4: And then your last last one, you were thirty seven,
40:23
Speaker 4: thirty seven, and the doctor told her she was geriatric,
40:26
Speaker 4: and she was deeply, deeply, but it was hilarious.
40:30
Speaker 3: I think seven is not geriatric. That's all I was
40:33
Speaker 3: with my last one also, and.
40:34
Speaker 4: Then like was it like I think, like three or
40:36
Speaker 4: four months later, you're like, yeah, this is geriatric.
40:41
Speaker 3: Well.
40:41
Speaker 5: I also had postpartum pre eclampsia and it took about
40:44
Speaker 5: eight months for my blood pressure.
40:45
Speaker 6: To level out. And my daughter had.
40:49
Speaker 5: Massive fading issues, like we had to do suction training
40:53
Speaker 5: and TI reversal and chiropractic visits, and I was having
40:58
Speaker 5: public floor issues and we were just.
41:00
Speaker 6: A mess for a minute. So after that, I was.
41:04
Speaker 5: Like, I just don't think I can do this again.
41:08
Speaker 5: But and now I'm not told for another baby, I'm
41:10
Speaker 5: told for another toddler.
41:12
Speaker 6: I'm tired.
41:13
Speaker 1: The babies are easy.
41:14
Speaker 4: It's the baby starts moving from climbing and get into
41:17
Speaker 4: the things. Maybe easy, just you know, give them, you
41:20
Speaker 4: put something in their mouth, you know, cool them a
41:21
Speaker 4: little bit. They're fine, lay them down. They're great once
41:24
Speaker 4: they start getting a mine of their own. Like, toddler
41:27
Speaker 4: is so dangerous because they can they can move around,
41:29
Speaker 4: they can manipulate, they can figure things out, but they
41:31
Speaker 4: have no wisdom, absolutely no wisdom, no learned experience, no
41:35
Speaker 4: common sense, and so it's just constantly pins and needles.
41:39
Speaker 3: True, yeah, true, I feel the same. Our youngest, my sixth,
41:44
Speaker 3: is the first of our children to ever go to
41:46
Speaker 3: a full day program of anything. We signed him up
41:49
Speaker 3: for preschool next year. I was like, oh, you are
41:53
Speaker 3: going to go to school. I've never done this before.
41:55
Speaker 3: And so when I toured the preschool, the director of
42:00
Speaker 3: the school looked at me, and I know her really well,
42:03
Speaker 3: and she's like, oh, this is like this is all
42:05
Speaker 3: an old information for you. And I was like I've
42:08
Speaker 3: never done this before. I'm really actually very nervous because
42:12
Speaker 3: I've never I've never sent a kid out of the
42:14
Speaker 3: house full time. So I was like standing there with
42:16
Speaker 3: like all of these first time parents, and my twelve
42:19
Speaker 3: year old came with me because she had to approve
42:22
Speaker 3: of it because she is our calm, that's her title
42:25
Speaker 3: mother co mom, and so she is very upset that
42:29
Speaker 3: we've signed him up and she had to just clear
42:33
Speaker 3: it that it was an acceptable place for us to
42:35
Speaker 3: send him before she would agree. And if we're just
42:38
Speaker 3: being honest, we did actually need her buy in.
42:40
Speaker 6: So well, that's really sweet that she cares so much.
42:44
Speaker 5: I know it can be a little frustrating though, dealing
42:47
Speaker 5: with that oldest child who feels like they're a co.
42:48
Speaker 1: Parent that's what we're doing.
42:50
Speaker 5: Wait, yeah, the oldest is five and a half years
42:53
Speaker 5: older than his next sibling, so he really does feel
42:56
Speaker 5: like he's a junior parent. And I'm like, okay, buddy,
42:59
Speaker 5: you're gonna have just down there, So maybe the par thing.
43:04
Speaker 3: A couple of years ago, I was on the Honestly
43:07
Speaker 3: podcast with Barry Weiss and she was sitting next to
43:10
Speaker 3: her wife, Nelly Bowls, and they asked me, because they
43:13
Speaker 3: were having their second how do we ensure that our
43:16
Speaker 3: oldest isn't bossy like Barry is with her younger siblings.
43:21
Speaker 3: And I was like, no, y'all lean into that. You
43:24
Speaker 3: have an assistant. I don't have to choose a couch
43:28
Speaker 3: because I just tell my oldest daughter to choose the couch.
43:31
Speaker 3: She does a great job, just and Barry. It's not
43:35
Speaker 3: like she's nobody, it's not like she's accomplished nothing.
43:38
Speaker 1: Pretty well for her.
43:39
Speaker 3: Lean into that oldest child bossiness, and I think it works.
43:46
Speaker 5: Well.
43:47
Speaker 1: You know, there are limits to that, I think.
43:49
Speaker 4: I think my oldest son, I think his ideal profession
43:51
Speaker 4: would be Marine Corps drill instructor possibly state trooper, some
43:57
Speaker 4: prison guard perhaps you know something along those lines.
44:00
Speaker 3: Yeah. So my last question for you is you're providing
44:04
Speaker 3: your children with this incredible education, bedrock of literature and homeschooling,
44:09
Speaker 3: all these things. What do we do with them? What
44:12
Speaker 3: do we encourage them to do at the end of this? Like,
44:15
Speaker 3: is my cell to them like you're going to college,
44:17
Speaker 3: is that you're going to open an HVAC company? Like,
44:20
Speaker 3: what what are we telling them to do at the end?
44:24
Speaker 4: That's a great question. It really just depends on the child.
44:27
Speaker 1: You know.
44:27
Speaker 4: Some of our children are more academic, some are definitely
44:31
Speaker 4: not academic, and so it just really depends on the child.
44:34
Speaker 4: You know, like for instance, our oldest you know, I've
44:37
Speaker 4: been working with you know, a family member, you know, Layingham,
44:40
Speaker 4: so he can help out on a construction site here
44:42
Speaker 4: and there and just get a taste of things, right
44:44
Speaker 4: because you know, it's we just did a substack about this.
44:47
Speaker 4: It's very important to have this grounding and reality right
44:49
Speaker 4: to go along with the literature. It's important to spend
44:52
Speaker 4: not just time outside that's also very important, but also
44:54
Speaker 4: like time, especially for the boys, time working with your hands,
44:58
Speaker 4: you know, you know, doing some carbon gree you do it,
45:00
Speaker 4: you know, turning a wrench, you know, just having that
45:02
Speaker 4: tactile experience. And you know, I think if you give
45:06
Speaker 4: them that that deep, literal, deep liberal arts foundation early
45:11
Speaker 4: on and you expand their mind in that way. So
45:14
Speaker 4: I think we do that all backwards. I think a
45:15
Speaker 4: lot of times we want to wait till college before
45:17
Speaker 4: we introduce that, and I think that's the wrong order
45:19
Speaker 4: of operations. Give it to them when they're young, expand
45:22
Speaker 4: their mind, give them that sense of wonder and still
45:25
Speaker 4: virtue in them and then see whether their aptitudes go
45:29
Speaker 4: and then just encourage them to go in that direction.
45:31
Speaker 4: I'm not all that hot in college for multiple reasons,
45:34
Speaker 4: like I mean, just primarily.
45:35
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a good value in these days.
45:38
Speaker 4: But you know, one of things, okay, like a great
45:40
Speaker 4: example of this is, you know, for years public schools
45:43
Speaker 4: have been stressing stem.
45:45
Speaker 1: Right, everything has to be stem is.
45:46
Speaker 4: This stem is a stem is, this robotics as this programming,
45:49
Speaker 4: And then here we are, you know, AI's here, and
45:52
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, all those skills are useless. Oh
45:54
Speaker 4: you know JavaScript, that's adorable. Claude wrote ten thousand lines
45:57
Speaker 4: of JavaScript just five minutes ago. And so now we
46:01
Speaker 4: do another substect about this. But was it the trivium
46:04
Speaker 4: will outlast the algorithm publish that way?
46:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did. That's it's been a minute. We've done
46:10
Speaker 1: We have done a lot, but you.
46:12
Speaker 4: Know, but now we're back to we're like reasoning, thinking, communication.
46:17
Speaker 4: That's actually a technical skill, right, because you have to
46:19
Speaker 4: be able, you know, if you're gonna use AI, you
46:21
Speaker 4: have to be able to tell the machine this is
46:23
Speaker 4: exactly what I want and what I don't want. And
46:25
Speaker 4: then you also have to be able to interpret what
46:27
Speaker 4: the machine gives you to make sure isn't nonsensical or inaccurate.
46:31
Speaker 4: So I, you know, my broadest advice, and I hate
46:34
Speaker 4: trying to give a child in kind career advice. I
46:36
Speaker 4: hate trying to be a boomer about that because I
46:38
Speaker 4: could say, go into this, and it doesn't exist in
46:40
Speaker 4: five years. The best advice I can give is, you know, first,
46:44
Speaker 4: I feel the best purpose of education, as many of
46:47
Speaker 4: the ancients taught, is instilling virtue. So give them those virtues,
46:51
Speaker 4: teach them the value of hard work and perseverance, and
46:54
Speaker 4: you know, give them that broad liberal arts foundation. And
46:57
Speaker 4: then yeah, just have them lean to their aptitudes and
46:59
Speaker 4: they will become adaptable to whatever happens in the market,
47:02
Speaker 4: no matter if it's AI or robots or you know,
47:05
Speaker 4: nuclear war, that they will figure out a way to
47:09
Speaker 4: make the survive and thrive.
47:10
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I could not agree more. That actually has been
47:13
Speaker 3: the theme basically of our last two podcasts. We had
47:15
Speaker 3: Glenn beck on last week and two weeks ago we
47:18
Speaker 3: had professor Matt Mehan from Hillsdale, and both of them
47:20
Speaker 3: said the exact same thing. So it's the theme.
47:23
Speaker 6: Now great, yeah, yeah, that's a good company.
47:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm in right. So where can folks follow you
47:31
Speaker 3: on social media and on substack? And then also where
47:33
Speaker 3: can they obviously buy the books?
47:36
Speaker 1: That's great question.
47:37
Speaker 4: So by the books at Chapter Dows there's no house
47:40
Speaker 4: is the Chapter Dows is the books you can subscribe
47:43
Speaker 4: to our substack. It's called Virtue and Wonder and that's
47:47
Speaker 4: Virtue and Wonder Dot.
47:48
Speaker 1: Simple enough. Everything else.
47:50
Speaker 4: I had to come with different handles for everything because
47:51
Speaker 4: there's so many chapter houses already. I think on X
47:54
Speaker 4: that's kind of our primary social I think I want.
47:56
Speaker 1: To say it's c H House Books. Yeah, that one,
48:00
Speaker 1: and then the rest.
48:01
Speaker 4: I don't know, just search and through out there.
48:03
Speaker 1: Amazing a substack. We have all the links there.
48:06
Speaker 3: So I'm going to recommend on the mom Wars substack.
48:09
Speaker 3: I'm going to recommend your substack in there. So folks,
48:13
Speaker 3: thank you so much, amazing, thank you so much for
48:16
Speaker 3: coming on and for taking on this incredible, crazy project.
48:19
Speaker 3: I think it was crazy of you, but I appreciate
48:21
Speaker 3: it personally apecially so I'm an only child, so everything
48:26
Speaker 3: is just about me and my needs and my wants.
48:29
Speaker 3: I had six kids. So until next time, folks, don't
48:32
Speaker 3: forget to subscribe and check out our giveaway. It's not
48:35
Speaker 3: going to be on our social media, and don't forget
48:38
Speaker 3: to subscribe and write us a review. And if it's mean,
48:42
Speaker 3: I'll read it on the on here to argue with you,
48:45
Speaker 3: and if it's nice, I'll just say thank you. I
48:48
Speaker 3: don't want to incentivize yeah, I mean, I don't want
48:51
Speaker 3: to incentivize mean reviews, but it will bother me for weeks.
48:55
Speaker 3: So if you could leave a nice one, that would
48:56
Speaker 3: be great. Until next time. Saddle up.
49:00
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