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- [00:00]
Akilah Hughes
I want to take a minute to thank our exclusive sponsor for today's episode, Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Clean water, fresh air, our health, electricity. We tend to take for granted the things that matter most, like the separation of church and state. For more than 75 years, Americans United has been on the front lines defending your freedom to live and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. The same people and groups that backed Project 2025 are part of a larger shadow network that's relentless pushing to impose a Christian nationalist agenda on our laws and our lives. Most people don't see how church state separation impacts our daily life until that freedom is gone. Think marriage equality, ability to adopt a child, reproductive freedom, and more. And in today's episode, as we ask, how is this better? I can tell you now it's not. If you're listening to us, you already know. You're likely seeing the writing on the wall. We can, we must fight back. Join Americans United for Separation of Church and State in their growing movement because church state separation protects us all. Learn more and get involved@au.org courier.
- [01:15]
Heather Weaver
We.
- [01:15]
Akilah Hughes
Need to be the party of nationalism.
- [01:17]
Heather Weaver
And I'm a Christian and I say it proudly.
- [01:19]
Akilah Hughes
We should be Christian nationalists.
- [01:21]
Matthew Gabriel
So for this reason, as a service.
- [01:23]
Talia Lavin
To the next generation of Americans, every.
- [01:24]
Matthew Gabriel
Member of this body should strongly encourage the study of the Bible as an appropriate part of the program of education in our public and private schools all over this country. Some will say that I'm advocating Christian nationalism, and so I do.
- [01:41]
Akilah Hughes
The separation of church and state since the beginning of this country has been understood as a means to give citizens more freedom. Not just freedom to believe what they choose to believe, but also freedom from anyone else's beliefs infringing on their rights. But of course, since it's 2025 and everything is a little off, that hard line is beginning to blur. Now states are mandating the Ten Commandments be hung in classrooms, in state houses, and even suggesting that people of different faiths are unfit to lead simply because they grew up with different scripture. Today, we're examining the cultural, legal and historical implications of today's evangelical push to make the US A Capital C Christian Nation, and asking how is it better to shoehorn Jesus into everything? Matthew Gabriel is a professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech who has studied and taught at length about religion's role in society. And I asked him where this whole idea of separation of church and state came from. How did the idea of separating church and state actually emerge in American history. And what sort of misconceptions do you encounter most often about the founders intent?
- [02:59]
Matthew Gabriel
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's difficult sometimes because the way that people think about the separation of church and state nowadays is often filtered through the experiences of the 20th and especially the 21st century. And that, that's very normal. I mean, that's, that's how people look at history a lot of times. Right. But looking back at kind of what the founders were thinking when they were implementing that phrase into American constitutional history, it's a little bit different because we're, we're talking about people who lived really kind of in the middle or at the tail end of the Enlightenment itself. Their understanding of what church meant and what state meant was very different than ours. The idea that there should be kind of a hard wall between organized religion and the state is in part a product of the founders intent, but is also a part of, a product of kind of jurisprudence and legal decisions that happened over the course of, you know, 250 years since then. I think the vast majority of the founders themselves, they would have no problem with the free exercise of religion, but the problem that they were coming out of. Right. Was that they were all English subjects in which the monarch, the king of England at the time was himself the head of the church. And so they absolutely did not want it in any way, shape or form to, to have that present here as well. There was in some ways a recognition in the, you know, in the late 18th century that there were other religious traditions, though, you know, the, the number of people who were not Christian per se in that period was, you know, honestly very small. But there was an acknowledgement. I mean, there's, there's some famous stuff about, you know, George Washington visiting synagogues and, you know, talking to Jewish communities and things like that, and in recognition that these were part of the American experiment as well.
- [04:31]
Akilah Hughes
And that's actually super important to note. The founders themselves didn't all have the exact same Christian beliefs. So the idea that there was some consensus on how the nation should pray or believe falls a little flat. But that doesn't mean there weren't always people trying to say the United States of America is a Christian nation. I'm curious when the narrative of America as a Christian nation actually starts gaining traction. Because if this is something that is not baked into the Constitution, then why do people start saying it?
- [05:01]
Talia Lavin
And when.
- [05:02]
Matthew Gabriel
This is my own take on this. Right, but I think it's kind of baked into the founding, unfortunately. Because what I mean by unfortunately, is that there's a tension at the heart of the idea of the United States, because it's an idea. And what that idea means is that it's open to interpretation that the Founders may have had an idea, but they were very clear that the Constitution and, you know, the. The Democratic experiment was. Would be subject to change. That context would change along the way. And so when they were saying this is kind of what we envision this country to be. Preachers, for example, very conservative pastors, not exclusively, but. But in the American south, for example, understood it in a different kind of way that their job was to promote a Christian nation, the last great kind of hope on earth, a kind of almost apocalyptic understanding of what the Americas could be as a. As a new version of what would happen in Europe to them, which. The subjugation of black Americans or enslaved Americans. At the same time, that's the tension that's kind of danced within the.
- [06:01]
Akilah Hughes
The.
- [06:01]
Matthew Gabriel
The American experiment is that, you know, when people say the Founders meant this and the founders meant that, they're both kind of right when they're talking about religion, certainly, because there are traditions. And, I mean, and also the founders weren't a monolith for. For very. That very simple reason as well. And so you can see this thread of Christian nationalism running kind of parallel to a more secular understanding of what the United States should be throughout its entire history. And then it kind of erupts into kind of consciousness at very particular times. The US Civil War, for example, oftentimes framed as a secular war. But, you know, if you look at the actual documents, the language of religion pervades on both the Confederacy and on the Union about what. What America really means. And they were competing in some ways, not just about kind of what it means as a secular experiment, but what it means as a religious ideal as well, that Christianity could be mobilized as a force for abolition, or Christianity could be mobilized as a force for enslavement.
- [06:59]
Akilah Hughes
Religion has long been used to justify all kinds of acts. But now, in 2025, our current elected officials are pushing a very restrictive and downright harmful ideology, Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism has been a term that we've been hearing a lot about lately. There's figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia, Russell Vaught, you know, Trump's OMB secretary, openly saying they're Christian nationalists. House speake Mike Johnson saying things like Christian nation. How would you define Christian nationalism now? And do you think that it's the same movement that we're seeing, you know, that you're sort of talking about earlier in the history of the country.
- [07:36]
Matthew Gabriel
So I think it has, it has connections to something earlier, but it is really different than what's come before. And, you know, it's kind of a crutch or maybe a cliche to say this, but everything changed with Trump. I mean, it just. It just changed with Trump in the way that people understood that because they had an authoritarian figure that they could latch this idea of Christian nationalism onto. So what I think, you know, these guys nowadays, the, the kind of the Christian right in America, you know, as exemplified in those people that, that you mentioned, you know, Green and Mike Johnson, etc, the way that they're understanding is that America is fundamentally a Christian nation. It has always been. So other faiths or other traditions are here by our. In their mind, by our kind of tolerance, but that. That right could be revoked, and you're not really an American unless you're a Christian. The closest kind of analogy is to kind of the Jim Crow south, which of course ties back to kind of the slave society of the, the. The Confederacy in the American south beforehand. And I think you can kind of draw, like, you know, there's lots of twists and turns, but you can draw a straight line from that period in the late 18th, early 19th century all the way kind of to today. Because race is always a part of this as well. Because when they say Christian national, they mean white. They absolutely mean white.
- [08:51]
Akilah Hughes
Right.
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Matthew Gabriel
And, you know, there's always kind of, you know, exceptions to that rule for them, but they really mean white in these moments. The Civil War, the sabotage of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and now the similarities between those periods is the tension between that kind of secular idea of America and the religious idea is. Is absolutely in conflict. The secular idea says that everyone can be a part of that, America is an ideal, that everyone should be welcome, that everybody can be part of that. And Christian nationalism rejects that. It fundamentally rejects that. It says, basically, you need to be white, you need to be Christian. And there's a hint of masculinity or patriarchy within that as well.
- [09:30]
Akilah Hughes
Is anyone here surprised that it comes back to oppressive, regressive politics that put white men at the top of the hierarchy? When we come back, the state of the law and the lines the of being crossed. Thanks again to our sponsor for this episode, Americans United for Separation of Church and State. If you didn't already notice, and this podcast episode hasn't made it clear yet, there is a conscious effort by a powerful sector of the Christian right to impose a Christian nationalist agenda on our laws and lives. And that is very un American. Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting back. Find out how you can join their movement and get involved@au.org courier Christian nationalism might sound completely benign if you've never thought about it that critically. But now that we have proud Christian nationalists in power, it's evident that their view of Christ is far less about feeding the hungry, loving thy neighbor, and helping the poor, and they're legislating like it.
- [10:31]
Heather Weaver
I kind of want to specify what we're talking about when we're using the phrase Christian nationalism, because I think a lot of people actually don't know what that means. So we're not talking about all Christians, and I really want to be clear about that. We're talking about a specific religious political belief system, that the United States is a Christian nation, that our laws should reflect, align with, and even impose a certain type of Christian beliefs on everyone, primarily evangelical beliefs, and that the government should generally operate as a Christian entity. So it's not just about allowing government to promote or engage in religious activities. That is one goal, but it's about, like, radically reconstituting our government to operate fully within the confines of particular religious beliefs and turning our government into a religious entity of sorts.
- [11:15]
Akilah Hughes
This is Heather Weaver, Senior counsel with ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, and she works on religious freedom issues across the country, including the separation of church and state. How have you seen religious extremism creep into government at the local, state, and federal levels?
- [11:33]
Heather Weaver
Well, I think we've kind of moved beyond creeping in. At this point, it's more of a stampede. It's not veiled. It's pretty open out in the open. One trend that's very concerning is that there have been more and more religious extremists winning school board positions, for example, or otherwise asserting influence over school boards. And that's had a lot of troubling consequences across the board for students. Freedom to learn, for school districts, obligations to equally serve students from all backgrounds and all faiths. At the state level, what we're seeing is this deluge of state legislation supported by Christian religious extremists. And it's attacking basic rights and educational, education, health care. It's attacking the LGBT community. There are through lines to many other areas as well, immigration, voting rights, criminal justice, and other issues. Federal level, we're seeing that religious extremists are having influence at the highest level. So there's the officials themselves. Pete Hesgath, Christy Noem, House Speaker Mike Johnson. All everybody you would think of. And then, of course, there's also these groups behind the scenes that are working for this extremist Christian agenda. And, you know, they're highly influential as well. So those are the players, and those are some of the key problems we've been seeing at different levels of government.
- [12:44]
Akilah Hughes
And there are many ways to promote your faith in schools that don't gel with federal law. But one way that's been gaining traction is by simply banning books you or your faith allegedly disagree with.
- [12:55]
Heather Weaver
So, I mean, the school boards, for example, are setting the public policy in their area. And I think what we're seeing is this alarming embrace of policies that are meant to advance certain religious beliefs, either expressly, for example, posting the Ten Commandments in schools or allowing school chaplains or sort of indirectly. Right. These policies that are adopted by school boards that are censoring certain books, that some of the school board members feel conflict with their faith or religious values. So those are the types of fights that we're seeing kind of across the country. Again, it's not totally new. In, like 2004, for example, we sued a Pennsylvania school district. The school board had included religious extremists. They adopted a policy to promote intelligent design, creationism and science class. And we won. And the school board members were voted out, actually, because the community was so angry. Right? They were very angry about this.
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Talia Lavin
They were embarrassed.
- [13:48]
Heather Weaver
Probably that was rarer back then, that the school board is actually adopting this broad across the board policy. A lot of times the violations of separation of church and state in the school context were rogue teachers doing something to promote their faith. Yes, there were state laws that we also have challenged over the years. But in terms of school boards setting these types of policies, that was rare. And now we're seeing with a religious extremists gaining positions on school boards across the country, we're seeing them adopt these broader policies that speak directly to promoting religion in schools or sort of, like I said, indirectly promoting their religious beliefs in schools through censorship and other types and other types of policies that sort of undermine diversity and attack vulnerable students.
- [14:29]
Akilah Hughes
But it's not just happening at the local level. In state houses across the country, more and more religious zealots are pushing legislation and testing the boundaries.
- [14:39]
Heather Weaver
When you start to chip away at this secular public education where you deny students a religiously unbiased education, you're really undermining a precondition for a thriving democratic society. And so that is my strongest concern. And at the state level in particular, I Work on and monitor all basically religious freedom bills across the country. And we have seen a significant increase in the last couple of years, at least at the state legislative level, of bills that are attacking the separation of church and state and public schools. We have four cases now challenging state laws that require public schools to post the ten commandments in every single public school classroom. There have been laws that have passed that are allowing public schools to hire school chaplains. I mentioned the state departments of education. Ryan Walters in Oklahoma is the superintendent of education there. And he's been very busy with his religious extremist movement. Right. He has tried to use millions of dollars to purchase bibles to send to public school teachers. He's trying to inject religion into the public school curriculum through revisions to that. There's a very broad attack right now on our secular public education system, and that is going to have not only like, serious effects for the short term, but that is going to really undermine our democracy in the long term. So I'm very, very concerned about that. And like I said, we've been working to combat that. Through litigation, we were able to sue and stop, at least for that Bible plan that I mentioned. In Oklahoma, the public schools are really kind of the battleground for preserving our.
- [16:15]
Akilah Hughes
Democracy, I think, unless we forget the federal level.
- [16:18]
Heather Weaver
One thing that has been overlooked by the public is the fact that this most recent big beautiful budget bill that was signed included the first federal school voucher program. It's an opt in program for states. It gives a $1700 federal tax credit to any individual that donates to these school voucher programs. And what's going to happen is a lot of funding is going to end being diverted from public education for various reasons as to how these programs function. And again, like school voucher programs harm public education. They divert money to private religious schools. As I mentioned earlier, you know, we need a strong secular public education system in order to help preserve our democracy. So that's one thing that I think has really flown under the radar a little bit. Not in the education circles, but as far as the public goes, I don't think that they've realized that that's an issue. Earlier this year, one of the court cases kind of related to that issue that was really a threat to the separ separation of church and state was Oklahoma approved a religious charter school, a religious public charter school. And as we know, public schools cannot be religious and religious schools cannot be public schools. It's, you know, it's a constitutional oxymoron.
- [17:25]
Akilah Hughes
Right.
- [17:26]
Heather Weaver
So we challenged at the aclu, along with our partners, challenge that. And actually the Oklahoma Republican attorney general challenged it.
- [17:33]
Akilah Hughes
Wow, that's actually very surprising.
- [17:35]
Heather Weaver
It is surprising. And you know, to his credit, he challenged that. He saw that as a violation of the separation of church and state. He, he took it all the way to the state Supreme Court and won. Then the U.S. supreme Court stepped in and said, we're going to hear this case. Earlier this year, they did let that decision stand, that state Supreme Court decision decision stand by a vote of 4 to 4. But the fact that the Supreme Court even wanted to hear it was very troubling. The other thing at the federal level that I think is kind of more of an existential threat is, you know, we've seen like, there's the task force to combat anti Christian bias, the Religious Liberty Commission. These are things that President Trump has established through executive order. What they're really meant to do, I think, ultimately is to perpetuate this myth of Christian persecution, this narrative that a lot of the Christian nationalist movement is based on, that there's systemic discrimination against Christians, they're being persecuted. And that's just not true. But it's, again, it's the fuel for the fire of Christian nationalism. And so the anti Christian bias tax task force and the Religious Liberty Commission are really meant to promote that false narrative, which has been very successful. You know, the religious extremists who are promoting these Christian ideologies have been very successful in painting this picture of Christian persecution that actually doesn't match with reality at all. And so that's sort of like a broader, more environmental threat to the separation of church and state, sort of on a general level.
- [19:00]
Akilah Hughes
Next we talk to an author who's been following the rise of the far right from neo Nazis to edgelords to the radical Christian right.
- [19:08]
Talia Lavin
You know, people's belief in demons and how, you know, serious they are when they talk about demon crats and politics of spiritual warfare policy towards Israel being directed by, like a very literal belief in speeding the apocalypse and the return of Christ, that kind of thing, is that when people tell you what they believe, especially in the context of kind of inter community communication, things like books, sermons, believe them. You know what I mean? If people say, I think that demons are directing my political opponents and they're in league with Satan, like they mean it, and it may seem outlandish to us, grotesque or worthy of mockery. And I'm not saying that it's something that, you know, you need to believe, but that if you kind of dismiss it out of hand. You are unwittingly sort of playing into their hands in some way, like just in the sense that you've been drafted into a spiritual war like from when you were born. And just because you don't believe in its premises doesn't mean that other people aren't fighting it with everything they have and believe you're the enemy. And so you have to take it seriously on that basis.
- [20:13]
Akilah Hughes
This is Talia Lavin, a journalist and author of Wild how the Christian Right is Taking Over America. And she writes about. Well, I'll let her say it.
- [20:23]
Talia Lavin
I write about the online right, the far right, the Christian right, and every other piece of the voltron of madness that's overtaken our country.
- [20:34]
Akilah Hughes
I wanted to talk to her about this moment that we're in where extremists like extreme bigots are hiding behind Bibles and pushing a hateful agenda in the name of Jesus Christ and what their ultimate goals are.
- [20:47]
Talia Lavin
I would say their goals are broadly consonant. I think that the difference now is that we're seeing how they behave when they have a lot more power. The majority of Americans are Christian. Christianity sort of informs lots of cultural assumptions, informs our holidays and cultural references. And you know, if you're not a Christian, it's very blatantly obvious how much of our society is really influenced by, by Christianity. But that's not precisely that. That just like casual cultural hegemony is not what they want. It's, it's that they want laws and social norms to be explicitly guided by a very right wing and very narrow view of Christianity. And we're already seeing this all over the country in terms of these abortion laws that are explicitly Christian in nature. Laws about like protecting kids from abuse, being dismissed with quotes from Proverbs. You know, this happens all the time. I think the idea that there is kind of that firewall between church and state, that it's extent that it's pristine, is a little bit naive. I agree that it should exist. It just hasn't for a long time.
- [21:54]
Akilah Hughes
Yeah, not for a minute.
- [21:56]
Talia Lavin
Ask someone in Missouri, ask someone in Alabama. Ask someone in, you know, any red state. There's a firewall between church and state. Really pay attention to what they tell you. And that's, that's a pretty good indicator of where we are. People always talk about the states as laboratories for democracy. They're also laboratories for authoritarian activity. And more and more we see people in the President's orbit use Christianity, Christ, Jesus and their faith as their rationale.
- [22:25]
Akilah Hughes
Okay, so we have a President who's casually mulling a third term after he tried not to leave office at the end of his first term. It's safe to say we're in authoritarian territory. And the different sycophants in Trump's coalition aren't bumbling like the were before. They're in pretty strong lockstep.
- [22:42]
Talia Lavin
One of the things that really characterized the Trump 1.0 presidency was all this infighting, right? Constant shifting of staff and leaking and gossip and backstabbing, right? And it never really touched Trump, but it kind of made him look like the shabby, petty bitch he is. And what we're seeing in 2.0 is much more profound consolidation where even though you do have these disparate factions, right, like the young neo Nazis who came on board as Doge staffers or whatever, the tech barons and then the Christian right, you know, fanatics, you haven't seen the same kind of fractures and cracks in coalitions. And I, not being a self proclaimed prophet, don't make predictions. I'm not in the predictions game. I would have expected more turbulence, but then I sort of thought about it and I've been observing how it is, and essentially there's a lot of consonants here. If you look at the ultimate goals of philosophy, the Silicon Valley guys kind of have the Natalism stuff. This obsession with, you know, good genes and reproducing them, plus, you know, having an intimate knowledge of, like, what Neo Nazis want, what they think about, what their priorities are. There are a couple of things that really harmonize. I mean, there's more things that harmonize than don't. We're talking again about drumming queer people out of public life, and we see that in just increased persecution of trans people, recent arrests of people who were, you know, gay, cruising in the Penn Station bathroom, increased pressure on queer people, you know, drumming queerness out of U.S. culture and U.S. public life. A desire to keep women subservient and breeding, right, that's common across all of these subcultures and that is manifest in every law that requires a woman to breed or die.
- [24:35]
Akilah Hughes
So if all these factions of the right are getting what they want, will they all be on board with a full on overthrow of democracy? Surely not your average Sunday service going Christian family, right? Talia says they may be primed for.
- [24:48]
Talia Lavin
This, this structure of the authoritarian family, ultimately something the Christian right wants for every single family in the US this is a very effective way of creating people primed to accept and support authoritarianism. And so sort of from there, the, the book kind of coalesced around this idea of the authoritarian family. But also, you know, how the Christian right has sort of steadily, deliberately, and with a staggering variety of methods and a lot of creativity, amassed an extraordinary level of political power, which is sort of at its apogee that we're seeing now. The reason why I keep returning to it as the sort of nucleus of authoritarianism is because the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in miniature. You have the autocrat as the parent, you have the enforcer as the mom, and the child as the sort of cowed subject who, when the child breaks out of line like there's physical punishment. Generations of people who have been primed to view authority, authority in this way, to replicate it in their own family systems. And so when we wonder, why do so many of our fellow citizens embrace authoritarianism this way and don't question it, why do people, you know, come on Fox News and say, trump's like, you know, daddy's home, and he's right. Big belt to the nation. Like, that's a very direct view to people's psyche when they say that.
- [26:09]
Akilah Hughes
Ew. I couldn't end my conversation with Talia on that disturbing note, so I asked, what, if anything, we can do to combat this?
- [26:17]
Talia Lavin
Okay, so where's the hope coming from? How do we combat it? Right? And I think, you know, homogeneity and lockstep and these kinds of, like, absolutist beliefs, they are a strength. They have been a strength, but they can also be a weakness. And one thing that the sort of opposing coalition has, when we lean into it, when we don't kind of try to smooth out our edges and say, like, trans people should be less trans, and, you know, oh, like, maybe we can let a few immigrants be rounded up, right? You know, the sort of centrist, moderate position. I think we have to embrace our mess, right? We have to embrace the fact that. That we are a disparate coalition with a lot of different viewpoints, a lot of different priorities, a lot of different ways of expressing ourselves and kind of make that cacophony, drown out the goose step march. Like our battle cry of freedom is that we want to look and be and dress and love and parent in a lot of different ways. You want us all to be the same. And so we have to embrace art. Diversity is a coalition as a strength, because it is. And so I think, you know, we have to embrace our own wide variety of motivations, desires, and expressions of self and just sort of use that, that culmination, that sort of totality of different identities as the well of strength is, instead of trying to smooth it into something more palatable to people for whom smooth edged authoritarianism is always going to be more palatable.
- [27:48]
Akilah Hughes
The Christian nationalist project isn't subtle anymore. It's in our laws, our schools, our courts. And it's powered by people who think democracy is optional if it gets in the way of their faith. So how is that better? You already know. You can say it with me now. It's not. The separation of church and state is not about erasing faith. It's a about protecting freedom. Protecting anyone's freedom to worship the way they want. Protecting anyone's freedom to not worship anything at all. So it's up to us, the broad group that Talia described, to resist this. Because the wall between church and state only holds if we hold it. This episode was sponsored by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In today's episode we asked how how it would be better to live in a Christian nationalist state like some of those in the far right are trying to impose. And I think we definitively answered it's not. It wouldn't be. It'd be a lot worse. And the threat is present and growing increasingly dangerous. If you want to do something about it, visit au.orgcourier that's their website, au.orgcourier so they know that we sent you. Thanks for listening to or watching. How Is this Better? Make sure you're following, following or subscribing on your platform of choice, including our very own YouTube page@YouTube.com howis this better? And if you can leave a rating and review or comment on the episodes because all of it is super helpful in spreading the reach of the show and we appreciate you. How is this Better? Is written and hosted by me, Akilah Hughes. It's produced by Devin Maroney. Video editing is by Shane Verkust. Kevin Dreyfus is Courier's National Managing Director and Executive producer, RC Demezzo is their VP of Brand and Social and Charlotte Robertson is the Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Samantha Hollows is the YouTube and podcast growth marketer and Marianne Kuga is the Director of Marketing. Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and distribution and if you're interested in advertising or sponsoring, you can reach her@advertiseuriernewsroom.com show artwork is by Danielle Deplato and original theme music is by Used People.