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Episode 60: When We Lose, We Win · Political Junkie Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: In 2016,
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  SPEAKER_02: white evangelical Christians showed up at the polls in force for Donald J.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Trump,
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  SPEAKER_02: part of a diverse movement that defied expectations to sweep him into the White House.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: In the past decade,
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  SPEAKER_02: scholars and journalists have spilled a lot of ink on what seemed initially like a
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: strange affinity of highly religious people for a base,
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  SPEAKER_02: immoral,
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: and violent man.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: But Trump's opportunism and libertarianism offered opportunities for policies on
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  SPEAKER_02: which establishment Republicans,
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  SPEAKER_02: even Ronald Reagan,
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  SPEAKER_02: had failed to deliver.
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  SPEAKER_02: One of those has been to fuel public morality by returning prayer and biblical
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: teachings to public school systems across the country.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Here's South Carolinian Shari Few,
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  SPEAKER_02: already a failed three-time candidate for state office,
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  SPEAKER_02: campaigning to become superintendent of education on May 30,
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  2014.
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  SPEAKER_01: In regard to the evolution issue,
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  SPEAKER_01: I have to say that that is one of the problems with our education system today,
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: and it's one of the problems that has been brought to light through the problems
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  SPEAKER_01: with the Common Core system.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: standards is that children are not receiving an objective education there was
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: plenty of science and research behind the theory of intelligent design but and yet
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  SPEAKER_01: it is not allowed in the classroom there is no reason why the theory the scientific
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: theory of intelligent design should not be taught in the classroom alongside the
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  SPEAKER_01: theory of evolution and that way children would receive an objective education and
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  SPEAKER_01: they could also for Christian children
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  SPEAKER_01: could point to their God through the theory of intelligent design.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: In case you wondered what intelligent design is,
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  SPEAKER_02: it is the theory that the world must have been created by an intelligent being.
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  SPEAKER_02: In other words, God.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Sherry was promoting creationism, rebranded as intelligent design to make it appear to be a science.
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  SPEAKER_02: In fact, evolution is a science.
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  SPEAKER_02: Intelligent design is a religious philosophy that has no basis in science.
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  SPEAKER_02: Other Republican candidates easily portrayed Sherry as a crank.
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  SPEAKER_02: She lost her primary and set out to change politics instead.
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  SPEAKER_02: She devoted herself to parental control of education,
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  SPEAKER_02: a cause that traces its history in southern states to white politicians and their
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  SPEAKER_02: constituents opposing,
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  SPEAKER_02: often violently,
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  SPEAKER_02: the integration of public schools after Supreme Court-ordered desegregation in 1954.
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  SPEAKER_02: Sherry had been president of South Carolina Parents Involved in Education since 2000.
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  SPEAKER_02: In 2014, it became United States Parents Involved in Education, or USPIE, as in apple pie.
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  SPEAKER_02: Today,
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  SPEAKER_02: PIE has chapters in 14 states and,
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  SPEAKER_02: like its more successful counterpart,
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  SPEAKER_02: Moms for Liberty,
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  SPEAKER_02: is engaged in a grassroots fight to end the teaching of race and sexuality and
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  SPEAKER_02: refuse federal dollars that mandate education standards and non-discrimination.
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  SPEAKER_02: PIE also wants to create education sanctuaries where,
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  SPEAKER_02: by refusing federal dollars,
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  SPEAKER_02: state systems can reorient school curricula to the traditional values of faith,
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  SPEAKER_02: family,
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  SPEAKER_02: and country.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's a quote.
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  SPEAKER_02: The movement to put Christian teachings back in public schools,
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  SPEAKER_02: which ended when the Supreme Court determined in the 1962 decision Engel v.
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  SPEAKER_02: Vitale that Christian prayer violated the Establishment Clause,
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  SPEAKER_02: has been a consistent goal of right-wing conservatism for the last 60 years.
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  SPEAKER_02: It has spurred the massive growth of homeschooling,
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  SPEAKER_02: Christian private schools,
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  SPEAKER_02: and the school voucher movement.
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  SPEAKER_02: But the MAGA movement has pushed Christian extremism into state and federal government too.
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  SPEAKER_02: Using a strategy of directly confronting federal law,
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  SPEAKER_02: these politicians and officials now see Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices as a
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  SPEAKER_02: route to religious control of the public sphere.
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  SPEAKER_02: Here is Oklahoma State Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters on June 27,
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  SPEAKER_02: 2024,
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  SPEAKER_02: announcing that all classrooms in his state would be supplied with a Bible and
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  SPEAKER_02: teachers of all subjects would be expected to use it in their lessons.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're going to make an important announcement today regarding the Bible and the Ten Commandments.
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  SPEAKER_00: My staff has been looking at Oklahoma statute, we've been looking at Oklahoma academic standards,
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's crystal clear to us that in the Oklahoma Academic Standards,
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  SPEAKER_00: under Title 70,
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  SPEAKER_00: multiple occasions,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of
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  SPEAKER_00: this country,
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  SPEAKER_00: to have a complete understanding of Western civilization,
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  SPEAKER_00: to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it's frankly,
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  SPEAKER_00: when we're talking about the Bible,
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  SPEAKER_00: one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth of
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  SPEAKER_00: our country.
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  SPEAKER_00: We also find major points in history that refer to the Bible, that reference the Bible.
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  SPEAKER_00: We see multiple figures,
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  SPEAKER_00: whether we're talking about the Federalist Papers,
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  SPEAKER_00: constitutional,
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  SPEAKER_00: conventional arguments,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Martin Luther King,
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  SPEAKER_00: Jr.,
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  SPEAKER_00: who use it as a tremendous impetus for the civil rights movement,
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  SPEAKER_00: and tie many of those arguments back to the Bible.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is essential that our kids have an understanding of the Bible and its historical context.
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  SPEAKER_00: So we will be issuing a memo today that every school district will adhere to,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is that every teacher,
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  SPEAKER_00: every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be
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  SPEAKER_00: teaching from the Bible in the classroom to ensure that this historical
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  SPEAKER_00: understanding is there for every student in the state of Oklahoma in accordance
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  SPEAKER_00: with our academic standards and state law.
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  SPEAKER_02: It is already legal in Oklahoma to teach the Bible as part of a humanities curriculum,
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  SPEAKER_02: but not as religious doctrine.
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  SPEAKER_02: However,
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  SPEAKER_02: a Bible lesson in a biology,
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  SPEAKER_02: physics,
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  SPEAKER_02: or chemistry class would be just that,
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  SPEAKER_02: a religious explanation for the creation of the earth and every living thing on it.
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  SPEAKER_02: This is why I asked my New School colleague,
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  SPEAKER_02: historian Brenda Wineapple,
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  SPEAKER_02: to come talk to me about her new book,
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  SPEAKER_02: Keeping the Faith,
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  SPEAKER_02: God,
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  SPEAKER_02: Democracy,
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  SPEAKER_02: and the Trial that Riveted a Nation,
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  SPEAKER_02: just out from Random House.
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  SPEAKER_02: It's a fresh take on the 1925 trial in which biology teacher John Thomas Scopes was
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  SPEAKER_02: charged with violating Tennessee's law that only evolution was to be taught in the
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  SPEAKER_02: state's public schools.
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  SPEAKER_02: a nationwide media spectacle the so-called monkey trial was not just a showdown
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  SPEAKER_02: between science and religion civil rights and censorship it was also an epic battle
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  SPEAKER_02: between two of the leading public figures of the day christian politician william
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  SPEAKER_02: jennings bryan and trial attorney clarence darrow
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  SPEAKER_02: Join Brenda and me for this episode of Why Now, where history and politics meet the challenge of today.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I'm your host,
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  SPEAKER_02: Claire Potter,
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  SPEAKER_02: professor of history emeritus at the New School for Social Research,
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  SPEAKER_02: a contributing editor at Public Seminar,
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  SPEAKER_02: and the author of The Political Junkie Substack.
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  SPEAKER_02: This is episode 60, When We Lose, We Win.
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  SPEAKER_02: Linda Wineapple, welcome to the show.
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  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
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  SPEAKER_02: Great to be here.
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  SPEAKER_02: Your new book is about the 1925 Scopes Trial,
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  SPEAKER_02: and I wonder if we could begin by you telling us what the Scopes Trial was and why
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  SPEAKER_02: it was significant at the time.
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  SPEAKER_03: The Scopes Trial grew out of legislation that was passed in Tennessee.
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  SPEAKER_03: The state of Tennessee passed something
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  SPEAKER_03: that we know is the Butler Act.
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  SPEAKER_03: And simply put,
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  SPEAKER_03: all it did was ban the teaching of evolution from any public school,
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  SPEAKER_03: state-sponsored school.
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  SPEAKER_03: So this really was shocking to a great many people.
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  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, there were many in the legislature who opposed it.
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  SPEAKER_03: The governor didn't really think it would go anywhere.
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  SPEAKER_03: He signed the bill anyway, thinking everything would just go away.
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  SPEAKER_03: But it didn't.
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  SPEAKER_03: And part of the reason it didn't was because the ACLU,
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  SPEAKER_03: the American Civil Liberties Union,
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  SPEAKER_03: which had only been founded five years before,
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  SPEAKER_03: they were looking for test cases which they could bring as high as the Supreme
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  SPEAKER_03: Court and test First Amendment violations as well as violations of civil rights.
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  SPEAKER_03: And when they heard about this legislation, they put an ad
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  SPEAKER_03: in two of the Tennessee papers actually saying they would like a test case.
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  SPEAKER_03: If somebody could volunteer to break or have broken the law, they would back this person in a trial.
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  SPEAKER_03: And in the town,
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  SPEAKER_03: small town of Dayton,
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  SPEAKER_03: Tennessee,
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  SPEAKER_03: there was a young biology teacher,
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  SPEAKER_03: actually a substitute teacher and a football coach,
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  SPEAKER_03: young biology teacher,
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  SPEAKER_03: who said, well, you can't teach biology without teaching evolution.
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  SPEAKER_03: And he volunteered to take on the case.
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  SPEAKER_03: So that's what happened.
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  SPEAKER_03: The ACLU was backing it.
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  SPEAKER_03: John Scopes was clearly, he'd broken the law.
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  SPEAKER_03: The law had been passed.
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  SPEAKER_03: But it became a big controversy for a couple of reasons.
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  SPEAKER_03: One is that prosecuting Scopes was William Jennings Bryon.
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  SPEAKER_03: who was William Jennings Bryan.
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  SPEAKER_03: He was a very big deal in 1925.
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  SPEAKER_03: He'd run for president on the Democratic ticket three times,
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  SPEAKER_03: and he was still a leader,
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  SPEAKER_03: a real force in the Democratic Party.
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  SPEAKER_03: He had been a progressive.
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  SPEAKER_03: I think it's important to note that.
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  SPEAKER_03: But by this particular time, 1925, he was an outspoken fundamentalist Christian.
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  SPEAKER_03: And a group of fundamentalist Christians
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  SPEAKER_03: asked him to prosecute Scopes.
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  SPEAKER_03: He was a lawyer, but he hadn't practiced in a long time, and he loved the idea.
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  SPEAKER_03: When the most famous lawyer of 1925,
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  SPEAKER_03: who had been a famous lawyer for at least 30 years,
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  SPEAKER_03: a labor lawyer,
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  SPEAKER_03: and then a criminal attorney,
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  SPEAKER_03: Clarence Darrow,
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  SPEAKER_03: when he heard that Brian was taking the case,
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  SPEAKER_03: He wanted in, and in fact, he actually volunteered to defend Scope.
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  SPEAKER_03: So he would be working with the American Civil Liberties Union.
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  SPEAKER_03: So given that you had at the time two huge figures,
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  SPEAKER_03: I'm trying to think offhand who they might be comparable to today,
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  SPEAKER_03: media celebrities.
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  SPEAKER_03: And so far as there was media then, there were a lot of newspapers, unlike today.
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  SPEAKER_03: And there was a lot of radio.
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  SPEAKER_03: But in any event, two huge figures who were going to go to Dayton.
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  SPEAKER_03: And Brian said,
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  SPEAKER_03: this is a duel to the death for Christianity because he thought Christianity was imperiled.
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  SPEAKER_03: So the coming of the trial got tremendous coverage.
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  SPEAKER_03: The fact that you had two media stars there and the fact that in 1925,
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  SPEAKER_03: the trial began or seemed to represent a lot of the controversies and tensions that
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  SPEAKER_03: of the time.
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  SPEAKER_02: The Butler Act is reminiscent of other kinds of laws that are being passed today to
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: prevent the teaching of race,
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  SPEAKER_02: to prevent the teaching of sexuality.
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  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
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  SPEAKER_02: So before we get into the nuts and bolts of this book,
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  SPEAKER_02: Brenda,
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  SPEAKER_02: I want to know how you pick topics that are so darn relevant.
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  SPEAKER_02: Your last book was about impeachment.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
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  SPEAKER_02: Andrew Johnson.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: You couldn't possibly have known that Trump was.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: I did not know.
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  SPEAKER_02: Did you know that a new book about the Scopes trial was going to have an eager
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: audience wanting to know about the history of this kind of legislation?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: No, of course I didn't.
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  SPEAKER_03: When I wrote the book about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson,
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  SPEAKER_03: the first president ever to be impeached,
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  SPEAKER_03: I had friends and certainly acquaintances who thought,
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  SPEAKER_03: what are you,
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  SPEAKER_03: crazy?
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  SPEAKER_03: Nobody's interested in that, which is precisely why I was interested in it.
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  SPEAKER_03: The Scopes trial had more traction in that people still remembered it.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: There was a very big movie, I think, came out in 1960, which I hadn't seen.
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  SPEAKER_03: But a lot of people have told me that they became lawyers because of that movie, Inherit the Wind.
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  SPEAKER_03: I took on the subject not because I thought or imagined there would be such
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: relevance to today,
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  SPEAKER_03: not only in terms of the things you cite.
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  SPEAKER_03: It's banned books, which is shocking.
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  SPEAKER_03: but because of censorship,
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  SPEAKER_03: because of violations,
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  SPEAKER_03: transgression of the First Amendment,
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  SPEAKER_03: because in fact,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: even more to the point,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: depending on your point of view,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: I guess it's all pretty bad.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: We have talked now of putting in place Christian theocracy,
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: depending on the outcome of the next election people have been talking about.
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  SPEAKER_03: And I think rightly, right in that Project 2025,
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: It said that we're a Christian nation and that we are here to inculcate Christian values,
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: whatever that is.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's not as good as be nice to your neighbor.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: There are code words there.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: So you're absolutely right.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: But I had no idea.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: I had absolutely no idea.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, you know, it's a terrible thing.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: But what's good for my books is bad for the world.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, two impeachments where the president was actually acquitted.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: And now where we're sitting and we don't really know how the election, all of this is going to pan out.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things I was thinking about as I was reading this book is if you're my age,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: you probably read the play Inherit the Wind that came out in 1955.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: And when that was written, it was it sort of.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: emerged in this Cold War liberal world in which it was understood that religion did
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: not belong in the public sphere.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: But in 1925, that was not altogether clear.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was a real debate as to whether religion belonged in the schools or not, right?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yes and no.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: The debate wasn't so much about religion per se.
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  SPEAKER_03: It was about one view of religion, which was
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: itself a kind of intolerance and bigotry because it suggests no other religion.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: Brian on the stand actually said,
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: He wasn't interested in other religions.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: He was only interested in the Christian religion.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: He was only interested in one Bible.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of Christian Bibles, as we all know.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also true that it wasn't just religion.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: I would say the inverse of religion.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: No religion was also a possibility.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: 1925 was fairly secular.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: It was in a way like the 1950s when Blay was written.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that's why it came as a real shock.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: But there was a group of fundamentalists
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: fundamentalist Christians who were gaining more and more support and traction.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: For someone like Darrow and for the whole defense team,
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: defensive scopes,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: what they believed is,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: of course,
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: that there isn't what's called a disestablishment clause in the Constitution.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: And what the Constitution actually says is that there shall be no established religion.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: And once you say Christians have a lock on anything,
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: then you've established a state religion in that particular way.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't that there was a conflict about religion or no religion.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Religion was actually,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: and I think I say this,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: and I'm glad it's not controversial in a way,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: but like religion and science both,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: which were the two points about the trial,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: evolution,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: evolution's been accepted for over 75 years.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: They were also symbols because nobody, I don't think, really understood the science.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: And religion is itself such a, it's a large subject and people have different views of it.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: So that the defense and in particular Deroids were arguing what was on Dero's
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: little lapel pin,
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: which is LLL.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: live and let live you know which is kind of like mind your own damn business it's
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: exactly like that it's exactly like that in 1925 there would be a lot less
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: profanity in the papers but it would be the same kind of thing exactly and he wore
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: that in the in the courtroom he had no problem with
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: And people thought, oh, my God, you're terrible.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: You're an atheist.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: And he would say, no, you know, it's fine if you believe in God.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: I just don't happen to.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm open.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, one of his great quotes, he had a lot of great quotes.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: He said, doubt is the beginning of wisdom.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: This book has an amazing cast of characters.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you really begin in the 19th century because both Clarence Darrow and William
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Jennings Bryan are 19th century men.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: And they begin, both of them, with an urge to help and protect the little guy.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: But then their paths diverge.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: So can you first tell us a little bit about William Jennings Bryan, the
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: he was called the Great Commoner because he seemed to stand for what FDR later
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: called the forgotten person.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: He got up, he was in his mid-30s, he was very young.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: He got up at the Democratic National Convention in 1896.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: He had been born in 1860, so he was 36.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: He got up and he gave.
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  SPEAKER_03: a speech that's still considered one of the best political speeches ever.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: And he was just riveting.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: When he finished, the people at the convention took him on their shoulders and they carried him around.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: And he came from nowhere, in a sense, to be the Democratic nominee.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: Because what he was standing for were the people who'd been suffering,
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: people on the plains,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: on the prairies,
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: people who didn't live in urban centers, people who had been flown over, but there were planes then.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he basically said, I'm against plutocracy.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm against robber barons.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm against monopolies.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm for you.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: I care about what you care about.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: I belong to the common people, hence the commoner.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: And he actually, at some point early on, started a newspaper where he stood for that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: So he was beloved, and it was a real change.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: in politics at the time, really.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: So that's where he started.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: And there was part of him that stayed progressive,
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: and that was the term that was used then,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: just like now.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: He backed women's right to vote, for example.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: He backed the idea that senators should be elected by popular vote rather than appointed by legislatures.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: He backed the nationalization, which never happened
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: of certain industries like the railroads or like electricity didn't happen that he
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: thought of as common natural sources.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: So that he was really,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: in many ways,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: considered a danger,
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: a danger to the Republicans and danger to the conservative Democrats.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: And in many ways, he stayed true to those principles.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: What happened to him?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard to know what happens to people over time.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: Disappointment, for sure.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: He'd always been a religious man, but his religion became hardened.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: And from Darrow's point of view,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: became the same,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: a kind of fanaticism where everybody had to believe as he believed.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: And you can see the seeds of it in his backing of prohibition.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: He was big prohibitionist.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: So that gives you a little sort of bird's eye view of Brian and where he went and how he evolved.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: And
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: And why is a sort of psychological question that I really can't answer.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: But it's interesting to think about because, as I say, he's complicated.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: He still had some of these good,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: what Mike considered good,
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: ideas,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: really,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: about preserving rights of people who don't have a voice.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: He wanted to give them a voice.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: Clarence Darrow was actually in Brian's camp.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: He worked for Brian in 1896 because he too was a professor.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I said he was a person who thought labor agitators or unions or anarchists got into trouble.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Who did they call?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: They called Clarence Darrow.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: And Clarence Darrow came and he fought hard for them.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so he was known for a very long time.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: as a labor lawyer, because he believed in labor unions.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: He was a big, big unionist.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: At a certain point early on,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: he felt that Brian was full of hot air,
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: that his views may be good,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: but they were bromides.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't have any real policies behind them, and that he was basically just
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: promoting himself.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: And Darrow wasn't quite like that,
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: even though he was a celebrity lawyer and he had no problem taking his trials into
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: the newspapers because it would get attention that way.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: His career is not without issues, we would say too, because when there was a bombing of the Los Angeles
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: newspaper,
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: the LA Times,
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: he took on the case for the two people who were accused of planting those bombs.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: I won't get into what happened with them.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: They eventually pled guilty.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's not as important as the fact that Darrow was indicted for bribery and he had
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: to go on trial for bribing a juror twice.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody really knows to this day whether or not he did it.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: There's reason to argue on either side.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: But at a certain point, he felt it was over for him.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: But he came back and he never really left because he was himself the commoner.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he became,
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: and it's an evolution,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: you can see it,
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: he became a criminal attorney who would take on really hopeless cases.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: Let me just name two.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: One is Leopold and Loeb.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: two teenagers who kill another teenager for no reason, really disgusting, awful crime and admitted it.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_03: So he takes on their case because he, but he hated capital punishment so much.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: And lo and behold, the shock is there was no death sentence that in fact, they got life in prison.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_03: It was amazing to be able to do that because the whole country wanted to kill
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: Leopold and Loeb and,
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: and,
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: and,
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: Darrow took on a very unusual defense.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: That was right before the Scopes trial, right after the Scopes trial.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: Darrow took on the defense of a Black family who had been attacked in their home by
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: a white mob,
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: probably Klansmen,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: who wanted them out of the neighborhood.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: And someone in the house shot one of the white men.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: So he took on this trial.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: It was in Detroit.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: And
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: Here was a trial of a black man.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very racist country.
• 24:19
  1925.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have to talk about now.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: He took on the trial.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, you think the jury is going to convict this guy.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: He actually killed someone.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: They don't.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: Daryl won.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_03: He said to the jurors,
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: His closing speeches are, to my mind, very moving.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: He basically said, put yourself into the position of these Black people.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: They know the history of what it is to be an African-American in America.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: Think of what that is.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: And they did.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: The jury thought of it.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: And that was the end of the problem.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Both these men are extraordinary.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And when they meet in their final struggle in Dayton, Tennessee, they're both old.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Brian, it seems, was a little more the worse for wear.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: He had diabetes.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: He was really failing.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: He died shortly after the trial.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Not for those of you who have seen Inherit the Wind.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't actually have the stroke on the witness stand.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: That happens a time later.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: But it's also this moment of culture clash in which Brian is defending a certain
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: kind of southern rural traditionalism.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: And Darrow and the ACLU team,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: which include a Jewish lawyer who is,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: made to understand that everybody knows he's a Jew all the time.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: They are sort of depicted as these outside forces.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a moment that you write about,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: which I think is very sad on a certain level,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: that the town sees itself as like the center of the United States at that moment.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: And they put up lights and they've got,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: all of these refreshments and all of rooms are filled everywhere and so on.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to then pull yourself back and say, OK, these people are also segregationists.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: These people.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think they were.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: They really weren't.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think, you know, I think they really wanted to learn something.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of the people around them may have been,
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: as you're saying,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: segregationists or the Klansmen,
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: but not in Dayton.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: It was a kind of benign small town,
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: mostly East Tennessee,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: which had been in the Union during the Civil War,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: as opposed to,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: you know.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: the rest of Tennessee.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: What you can say about them is that they're American in one way,
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: which is they want to make money out of the trial in that.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: So some of the lights being hung up and some of the hot dog stands and lemonade
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: that's being passed around has to do with them really capitalizing on the trial.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: But in terms of their points of view, they did see
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: Darrow and Fence,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: from the ACLU,
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: they did see them as foreigners to a certain extent,
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: but they welcomed them.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: They were charming to them.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: Even the acerbic and kind of nasty journalists, very funny though, H.L.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: Mencken was surprised at how welcoming and generous the people were,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: especially since he was,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: calling them boobs and idiots.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: So in a way, it was a
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: microcosm of America.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't the rabid clan, not just of the South, but of the North.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: They're all over New Jersey and they're all over the clan.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's all over Indiana at that particular time.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: In that summer,
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: the same summer,
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: there's a huge clan march on Washington with,
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: as many as 20,000 strong.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of them come from Pennsylvania.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_03: They
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: Indiana.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: Indiana.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm laughing because to a certain extent they come from the swing states.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: They come from everywhere.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the Klan is bursting at the seams.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: But not as many from the South because as Brian said,
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: you don't really need the Klan in the South because white supremacy rules there.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the good old Brian in that sense.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a kind of microcosm.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: So you have capitalism at work there.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: You have the kind of liberal faction or progressive faction,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: if you're Darrow of the ACLU,
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: trying to protect the Constitution,
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: their interpretation of the Constitution.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: You have the fundamentalists that are represented by Bryan.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: He's trying to stir up a kind of anger at the so-called outsiders.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: The Southern part that you're talking about, though,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: is definitely there because the judge keeps saying,
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: we welcome you foreigners as our guests,
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: foreigners.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: And Arthur Hayes stands up at one point,
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was he,
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: and he says,
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: we're not foreigners,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: we're lawyers.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: But the contest,
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: you're right though,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: you're right,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: because the contest is between urban and rural much more than I think people see.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: in the sense that these were,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: again,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: the trial lawyers,
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: prosecutors,
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: basically call Darrow and the others being from big cities with their big city
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: values in that sense,
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: as opposed to us who are represented by Brian,
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: who seem to be representing the good country folk with good country Christian values.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that's really, and that's very present, it seems to me today too.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Part of what,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: the trial marks as a sort of turning point in the Democratic Party,
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: which is becoming more like Clarence Darrow and less like William Jennings Bryan.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: But there's something else going on here too,
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: which is a kind of interesting comparison to today,
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: that very often the courts are used
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: in cases that seem sort of frivolous or that you know how they're going to turn out
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: in order to move an issue to the Supreme Court.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: And Clarence Darrow and the ACLU team know they're not going to win in Dayton.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: They know they have to put up a fight.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: They know they have to create a show.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: They know they have to get all the arguments on the table.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: But as Arthur Hayes says, when we lose, we win.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, that's so interesting, Claire.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not going to get into weeds.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: But yes,
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: Hayes said when we lose,
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: we win,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: partly because of the education and partly because we lose,
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: we go to the Supreme Court,
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: which is what?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: which is what the ACLU wanted.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's not what Darrell wanted, which is so interesting.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: he did want to raise the issues,
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: but if it didn't go to the Supreme Court,
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: even though he was fighting very hard for it,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: he wanted more to make sure that people understood the stakes.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: And he thought that the stakes were bigotry, fanaticism, intolerance, to put it in the simplest terms.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, as you know, that's why I won't get into the weeds,
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: But the ACLU,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: once Scopes lost and it would go first to the Tennessee Supreme Court,
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: the ACLU wanted to dump Darrow because they wanted to go to the Supreme Court,
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: which they thought they had a better chance of doing with very conservative state,
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: I should say,
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: buttoned up constitutional lawyers.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that Darrow was never,
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: which was literally buttoned up and he had his shirt open and it's,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: not open to his chest,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: but
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he'd roll up his sleeves and, you know, wore suspenders.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: And he was a much more folksy kind of lawyer without being anti-intellectual, which he wasn't at all.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: He was really folksy.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: And people liked him a lot.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: But the ACLU had real problems around him.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: So the ACLU wanted to take a test case and wanted to use this in a certain sense
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: because they thought the issues were important enough to get to the Supreme Court.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: And they are.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: And they were.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: Darrow was fine with that,
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: but he also felt that the issues have to be broadcast across the nation so people
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: see what's at stake.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: What's at stake for him were the ability to teach,
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: to think,
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: to be professional,
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: to be intellectual,
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_03: to know,
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: to read,
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: to learn.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: The whole host of them in that particular way.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: There was a struggle right within that, which is interesting.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: One thing about what you said about the Democratic
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: party changing.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: The only note I would make about that is that one of the ways it was changing was
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: not for the better,
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: because Brian was,
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: representing,
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: this is my contention now,
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: Brian was representing what we would later call the Southern strategy.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think he wanted to run for president again, believe it or not.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: But I know for sure he wanted to at least run for senator, U.S.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: senator, from the state of
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: wait for it, Florida, which is where he had moved.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so as a result,
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: he's pandering,
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: from my point of view,
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: to what he thinks of as the voters that he can appeal to in the South.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I find that very, very interesting because the sort of subtext
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: of trial, in addition to everything else we've both said, is race, of course.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: I shouldn't have said of course,
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: but the whole use of monkeys as an emblem,
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: and my ancestors aren't monkeys,
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: is chilling when you think about it from not just our perspective,
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: but actually from there.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then when you realize that part of the, I think, fearsomeness of evolution was the fact that
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: There aren't really hierarchies, racial hierarchy.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that was at stake, which you're implying also, is the value of science.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: World War I is that moment when science appears as something that is both fearsome and beneficial.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's a shift to science.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: And there's also this intrusion of the state into all kinds of rural areas,
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: through military bases,
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: through the draft and so on and so forth.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: So there's this clash.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me if I'm nuts,
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: but until I read this book,
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: I had not really imagined the similarities between the attractiveness of William
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: Jennings Bryan and the attractiveness of Donald Trump.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: William Jennings Bryan comes from a well-to-do family.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: When he becomes popular as a politician, he is able to give speeches all over the place.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: The Cross of Gold speech is a biggie.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: They sell tickets.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: He makes money.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: He becomes a real estate speculator in Florida.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't even thought of that, Clara.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he's also,
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: when he's on the stand,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: when Darrow is humiliating him,
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: he is revealed as kind of ignorant.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: And he also is basically saying, you know, this science stuff, don't believe what people tell you.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so,
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sort of wondering about whether someone like Brian,
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: part of his attractiveness in the 20th century is nostalgic.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, for one thing, as you said earlier, he represents the 19th century.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: He represents what I call rural values or whatever.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: coming from the place where he's been consistent in trying to represent the people
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: against moneyed interests.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: That can get twisted in many ways to mean Jews,
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: it could mean Blacks,
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: it could mean immigrants,
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: it could mean urbanites.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: So in that particular sense, absolutely, he's looking toward a time that
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: really was almost before the Civil War.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: one of the things I found interesting,
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: just because,
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm obsessed,
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: but he had idolized his father,
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: and his father was one of those old-fashioned peace Democrats.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he really thought Lincoln was terrible, and he really thought the abolitionists were awful.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, his whole view of the people is the people should decide things.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, the irony of that is the people should decide, but I'll tell you what to decide, you know.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: But you're right about the relation between him and Trump.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: He was a media star.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: That was another thing.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: He had money.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know, to put it in crass terms, it's not totally fair to him.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: He wanted power.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: He was in many, many ways.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: This is what Daryl
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: found repulsive, in many ways ignorant.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: He had certain positions, but he really didn't read or think about it.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: And also, he had a very, I would say, ambivalent relation to science.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, he wants help for his diabetes.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: Who doesn't want medical interventions?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: But to him,
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: science was,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: as you're suggesting,
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: it was technology,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: it was poison gas,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: it was aerial bombings.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_03: World War I was obviously something we've only read about,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: but the more I read about it,
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: the more it so shook people up.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: It was so devastating.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: And then you have that in Einstein's theory of relativity,
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: and you have the whole world seeming to change in terrible ways.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so you have this figure who seems to represent the past and good things and
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: good values without having to investigate it.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: And it's deeply anti-intellectual.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: And as a result,
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: too,
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: deeply,
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: and I'll put this in scare quotes,
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: deeply anti-elite as to what's assumed to be the elite.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: Scientists are the elite.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: Professors, teachers are the elite.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: Brian accused people of grooming people.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: atheists, you know, I mean, practically use that word.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, what are you talking about?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: You see this?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: So Brenda, our time has to draw to a close.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to ask you, alas, my final question, which is why should our listeners read this book now?
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's a hard question for me to answer, but I really do think it's important to stay vigilant and
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: One of the best ways I think we can stay vigilant is understanding that we live in
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: a place,
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: and you just alluded to this in terms of the similarities between then and now or
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: Brian and Trump.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: We live in a place where we can begin to see the darker strands of American life and culture.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I think if we understand them more,
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_03: we understand more of where they come from,
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: then we're better informed and we're better able
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: to understand our present,
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: and then to push back on the things that we feel are so damaging to individuals,
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: civil liberties,
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: groups,
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: what have you,
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_03: and to,
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: at the same time,
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: bring forward the elements that seem so powerful and strong and that we want to
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: fight for,
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: and to feel that there were always people who fought that fight and that we're not
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: alone in
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: And Brenda, let me ask you one more question.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: Has your book been banned yet?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it'd be like Mark Twain when he found out his books were banned.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: He said, great, banned in Boston.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: He said, great, they'll sell more copies.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's it for today's show.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
• 40:20
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• 40:24
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• 40:28
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• 41:15
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