Listener Mail

Summary

Not Dead Yet – Listener Mail (May 26, 2026)

Hosts: Ben Sasse & Chris Stirewalt
Episode Theme: Listener Mail – Reflections on Life, Learning, Parenting, and Principled Living

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Episode Overview

This special mailbag episode features hosts Ben Sasse and Chris Stirewalt answering listener questions on living well in the face of mortality, forming thoughtful citizens, parenting, handling fear, and holding both joy and humility amid life’s challenges. With their characteristic humor and warmth, the hosts offer practical wisdom, book recommendations, and memorable stories. The episode also includes a unique “lightning round” of rapid-fire, often-absurd either/or questions to close out.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. On Mortality, Humility, and the Purpose of the Show (00:00–05:25)

• Ben reflects on his growing awareness of personal fallibility, especially as he navigates his wife’s serious health issues. He shares how the podcast’s large and engaged audience pushed him to do this mailbag despite some reluctance.
• Chris introduces the mailbag format and notes that the questions were curated by James Wegman, a valued longtime colleague of Ben’s, who will also provide “false binary" questions for a lightning round.

“I resisted a mailbag episode because I'm kind of bored by me and, you know, a third bored by you. But it seems like the demand. We've had hundreds, a lot hundreds and hundreds of thousands of downloads now, and we get lots of requests.” – Ben (01:54)

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2. Civics Education & Anti-Majoritarianism (06:22–12:20)

Listener Question: If you had just one week to do civic education with high school students, what’s the one idea to impart?

• Ben lauds Boys State/Girls State as vital civic experiences, sharing personal stories from his teen years.
• He makes the case that every American should grapple with the Constitutional Convention of 1787, understanding its balancing act between totalitarianism and anarchy. The key lesson: America’s founders were deeply anti-majoritarian and anti-utopian.

“They're trying to figure out how to land in a place that says as much liberty as possible without getting to anarchy. And majoritarianism is a terrible thing.” – Ben (10:00)

• Chris echoes that the Constitution is meant to prevent the tyranny of pure majority rule and warns how forgetting this tendency can lead us to want our “preferred totalitarianism.”

“The American government is an answer to a problem, is a solution for a problem. It is not an end unto itself.” – Chris (12:20)

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3. Family Reading Canons & Raising Readers (12:34–21:21)

Listener Question: Book recommendations for strong young readers (~9th grade level) that are challenging yet age-appropriate.

• Ben and Chris advocate for blending age-appropriate yet stretching classics, and for reading aloud as a family. They run through classic novels (C.S. Lewis' Narnia, Dickens, Hardy Boys, Treasure Island, The Hobbit, Robinson Crusoe, Little House books), poetry, Greek myths, and biographies.
• They suggest adapting choices to the child's interests to maintain engagement and stress the importance of reading as a lifelong joy.

“Poetry memorization is another good one that your kids will hate, but you will love...” – Chris (19:33)

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4. Facing Fear & Doubt: Immediate Action Drills and Wisdom for the Young (21:21–30:31)

Listener Question: How do you respond to fear and doubt in practical terms? And what advice would you give to young men or parents?

• Chris introduces the practice of checking basic physical and emotional needs (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired – HALT) before tackling deeper worries.
• Ben shares his reliance on prayer (the Lord’s Prayer), physical activity, and breathing exercises to recentre himself. He reflects on how cancer has changed his routines but not his outlook on discipline and gratitude.
• Both reminisce about the fleeting nature of raising children, emphasizing presence, empathy, and honoring children as fully-formed people with valid emotions.

“If you want to spend time with your kids when they're little, you got to spend time with your kids when they're little.” – Ben (27:36)

“Small people are people too. And they have the same emotions and they have less context in which to put those things.” – Chris (29:12)

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5. Moderate Disposition With Clear Convictions (31:14–39:54)

Listener Question: How to remain dispositionally moderate while holding strong conservative views.

• Chris’s tip: Start from humility — acknowledge you might be wrong, even if just 2%. Conversation and persuasion require engaging as fellow learners, not as combatants.
• Ben offers his “numbered list” for meaningful interactions: intellectual humility, curiosity, recognition of universal human dignity, and skepticism toward political power as a catch-all solution.
• They discuss the “false binary” trap of instant polarization and the wisdom of debating with nuance and openness.

“...you want to actually hear them out because they really have dignity...it's like competitive advantage in trade. You may know more...but that doesn't mean you know everything.” – Ben (35:05)

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6. Sabbath, Work, and Idolatry (40:00–52:59)

Listener Question: How did you (Ben) learn to observe Sabbath, and how to distinguish urgent work from self-soothing overwork?

• Ben recounts his lifelong struggle with work as self-soothing idolatry—picking up emails on Sundays, rationalizing busyness, and football as a spiritual test case. He warns against over-inflating one’s personal importance at the expense of rest and family.
• Chris shares his own evolution—work can be virtuous, but all-consuming work is not faithful or healthy. He reflects on learning “it didn’t depend on me” and that faith means trusting God, not his own striving.

“I lacked a true enough faith that allowed me to trust that God was going to provide what I needed if I kept him in the top spot.” – Chris (51:26)

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7. Football, Civic Institutions, & Shared Culture (45:11–50:48)

• The hosts spar about football as America’s “last civic institution.” Chris mourns the loss of civic virtue on display at football games, contrasting the joys of shared moments with the downsides of declining public behavior.
• Ben acknowledges the same in Nebraska, defending football’s positive potential for “controlled violence” and as a therapeutic cultural ritual, but shares concerns of increasing incivility and loss of community.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Parenting and Time (28:56):
  “The days are long and the years are short, but man, the years are short.” – Ben

• Childhood and Wonder (30:31):
  “When you're four, summer is 7% of your life... It can't possibly make the same impression as those early ones do." – Ben

• On Persuasion vs. Argument (33:13):
  “No one has ever won an argument. ... But you can persuade. And the difference...is rooted...in humility.” – Chris

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Notable Segment Timestamps

• Mailbag Premise & James Wegman Context: 00:28–04:34
• Boys State & Civic Virtues: 06:22–12:20
• Family Reading Canon Discussion: 13:28–21:21
• Handling Fear & Parenting Wisdom: 21:21–30:31
• Moderation, Argument, and Humility: 31:14–39:54
• Sabbath, Work, and Faith: 40:00–52:59
• Football & Civic Life: 45:11–50:48

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Lightning Round: Wegman’s False Binaries (53:29–68:01)

A rapid-fire series of either/or questions, with both hosts offering quick, thoughtful, or humorously evasive responses. Sample highlights and answers:

• Reading or School?
  Both choose “reading” (53:40)
• Offense or Defense?
  “Offense” – both (54:39)
• Dynasty or Cinderella?
  “Sports, Cinderella is more fun” (55:37)
• Courage or Prudence?
  “Courage is a domain one virtue” (56:26)
• Bob Dylan or The Beatles?
  Split: Ben picks The Beatles; Chris, Dylan (57:10)
• Hemingway or Fitzgerald?
  Both pick Hemingway, especially for his short stories (58:49)
• Washington or Lincoln?
  Tie—both necessary, but growing appreciation for Washington (60:06)
• Mountain Cabin or Beachfront Home?
  Both prefer a mountain cabin (66:58)

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Tone & Style

The conversation is warm, often self-deprecating, and spiced with wit. Despite heavy topics (disease, mortality), both hosts return continually to humility, gratitude, and joy.

“Thank you for this. This was fun. Well, I'm curious what the feedback will be.” – Ben (68:01)
“Who cares?...That, my friend, is not dead yet.” – Chris (68:05)

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Takeaways for New Listeners

• This episode offers an intimate peek into the personal philosophies and family life of both hosts, blending faith, wisdom, and humor.
• Serious answers are always leavened by friendship and occasional mockery—these are conversations as much about how to live as how to think.
• The lightning round is a riotous, irreverent palate cleanser that underscores the hosts’ chemistry and the show’s theme of living life in full, even as time runs short.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Sass.

[B]

And I'm Chris Stirewald.

[A]

And this is not dead yet. We're all dying, but only some of us have been brought face to face with that reality.

[B]

However long each of us have to do it, though, we all want to

[A]

live a good life, one with meaning, love and joy. And our guests are here to help us do exactly that.

[B]

All right, professor, the guests are. We are our own guests this week. We are. I Am My Own grandpa, as the, as this, as the song went. We have been promising for a long time that we would do a mailbag episode and that we would do a little fan service here, and we are going to make good on that. We should explain. The premise is, and I want to

[A]

just say that I am doing this under half duress. Um, I don't like to be wrong, but in the last four or five months, it turns out I'm, I've, I've always been wrong a lot, but now I'm more aware of how often I'm wrong.

[B]

What? Explain.

[A]

My wife, as you know, struggles with seizures, so she often has short term memory issues. And so once upon a time, that was a sort of get out of jail free card. If we had a conversation and we later remembered it differently, you could sort of pat her on the head and say, well, you know, I don't think you had a seizure this week. But we couldn't dismiss the possibility that you just don't remember the whole dang conversation. Now the likelihood that I'm the one misremembering the conversation is up exponentially. And so that's, that's a place of error, erroneous on both counts, to quote Vince Vaughn. But you also have graded most of our podcasts super lazy, like college professors of the last 20 years. Everybody gets a participation a. A minus. And I've thought up, most of our episodes have been medium, like growable to good, but not great, and the feedback is dang great. So on that same vein of growing humility, I resisted a mailbag episode because I'm kind of bored by me and, you know, a third bored by you. But it seems like the demand. We've had hundreds, a lot hundreds and hundreds of thousands of downloads now, and we get lots of requests for a mailbag episode. And I'm like, I don't know that anybody cares. Those people can just skip ahead to next Tuesday. But I think you're right that there's audience demand. And it's odd to me, you're a

[B]

lot today and you're, you're you're powered. I, as the listening audience, will not know eating. Cup of Mac and cheese with tuna.

[A]

I've added my protein.

[B]

Ew, gross. Thanks. Thanks for making it gross for us to think about warm tuna. So that's, that's, that's. I guess if you're going to be nauseated, we should all be nauseated too. We should.

[A]

We're, it's, we're family on Not Dead Yet.

[B]

That's right. It's. It's like going to Medieval Times. We're all having the experience together in the room.

[A]

So no utensils.

[B]

No utensils. The premise of this show is that your. How do we describe James Wegman? What is the how? How would you like? I. I would say your. The capo master of sassness. He's my master. Your master?

[A]

James Wegman is. I'm 54. I don't know. Wegman's probably 37, I'm guessing. Yeah, maybe older. No, something like that. He feels 30 or 40 years older than I am. So I'm 54 right now. Acting 74. Wegman's. He's, he's in the Century Club, but he has worked with me on five teams now. Four or five teams. But he joined our campaign on the bus in late 2013 and he was, I don't know, 23. He was a press secretary for a house member from Indiana, a relatively recent Hillsdale grad. Anyway, Wegman is very, very kind that he is smarter than I am, and he regularly figures out what I'm trying to say and he says, dumbass, what if you said it like this? Like, shorter and more precise.

[B]

All right, that's enough smooching. James Wegman's patootie. We got, we got it. We got it.

[A]

Volume 100 is obviously sycophantic praise.

[B]

He's, he's, he's, he's cool. I got it. I got the. The premise here is that brother Wegman has gone through the mailbag and he has picked a number of questions that I will pose to you and that I, I will be the interlocutor for the audience. And then at the end there is. And this is where it is very much against my better judgment and wishes. There will be a lightning round at the end of this podcast and where we are. How did he say it? He said a lightning round of false binaries. So we will, we're going to do. We're going to do the mailbag, and then we will do the Wegmanian false binaries.

[A]

One more thing about that freak show Wegman, who I love, by the way, he's my friend. One time I was given a speech at a big campaign rally kind of thing. We were doing a fly in for some other candidates the night before election, and I had just given way too long a speech with nerdy Murray adjacencies and neighboring topics. And 15 disintermediated this, that and the other thing. And the. The folks organizing the rally were worried that I wasn't going to be punchy enough and they were trying to get me to do a little more red meat. And Wegman ginned the crowd up to start doing a chant, what do we want? And the crowd would respond, prudent change. When do we want it? In the fullness of time.

[B]

That's a 10 out of 10. All right. That's a 10 out of ten. Okay, are you ready to begin?

[A]

Nervous, but yes.

[B]

Well, we'll see what happens. Okay, we begin with a question from R.E.M. mayhem Works, who works with the Boys State program in Texas, a civics and leadership program for high school seniors. Did you do Boys State, by the way?

[A]

Hell yeah, dude. I was Boys State governor, boys nationwide dork. But when I got to Boys Nation, I realized you didn't want to spend like 10 days running for office. So I ran for office on the first day and got elected president pro tem, which, like the number three, something something. And then you could just screw around for the rest of the whole time. But I went back to. I still go to Boys State every year in Nebraska Boys State. I go as like an old man giving some civics and virtue lecture on the job market or something.

[B]

What was your. What was your Nebraska Boy State speech? The guy at West Virginia Boy State who played the guitar and had a song. That's how he won. What was your gimmick? How did you win the basketball estate? I'm.

[A]

I'm too embarrassed to talk about this.

[B]

Come on.

[A]

I realized that despite having a high nerd dork geek quotient, once you got to kind of semifinals round, I had the athlete normalcy thing going for me. So I was kind of a cynic who made fun of the people were taking it too seriously. And we had 409 Nebraska boys at our Boys State. And I think a good 250 of them wanted to mock the event a little bit. I love Boys State, to be clear, I think Girls State, Boys State. These are special things the American Legion American Legion Auxiliary make. But there was maybe a little too much earnest in some of us at 17. So I'm. I won by making fun of it a little bit. Cynicism. Sorry, it's drip, Drippy, Wrong.

[B]

Drippy, wrong. Okay, so here is the question. If you have just one week to do some civics education. Okay, so you've thought about this is with your attachment to Nebraska, Boys State, or what is the one idea about this country I should try to get across?

[A]

Oh, wow. I think every American should spend a lot of time studying and like trying to be transported across time and space to Philadelphia. 100 days, summer of 1787. Right. Like the Constitutional Convention is one of the most interesting moments in human history. And I think one of the ways to understand what those dudes are doing is the Articles of Confederation have failed. And they need a common currency and they need a common defense and they need everything else, but they're still sort of working out a public philosophy of what it means to be anti monarchical. But there's a continuum between totalitarianism and anarchy. And all wise people should understand that if you have to make a binary. Since Wegman's earlier joke about a false binary, if you had to make a binary choice, you'd rather live under totalitarianism than anarchy. Because under totalitarianism you can at least learn the rules over time and you could still have a family and there could be other spaces. Totalitarianism is wicked and evil, but it's less crazy than anarchy. And so they're moving anti monarchical in a certain degree. They're moving anti repres. No, you know, governance without representation, et cetera. So they're trying to move toward the side of more liberty, but they don't want to fall off a cliff all the way to anarchy. And so I think most Americans, you can have all the nerd debates about the definition of small D democracy versus small D republicanism, et cetera. But what people need to know is that we are anti majoritarianism.

[B]

There you go, there you go.

[A]

That's what you want people to take away from. They're trying to figure out how to land in a place that says as much liberty as possible without getting to anarchy. And majoritarianism is a terrible thing. So what you want is all these first principle assumptions about natural rights that are pre governmental. And that's what's happening in Philadelphia, summer 1787. Every American needs to go there.

[B]

What do you think? Anti majoritarianism. Amen. Yes. That the Constitution is an anti majoritarian document.

[A]

If all men were angels, we wouldn't need government. If governors were angels, we wouldn't need checks on government and balances.

[B]

That's right. And this, this hybrid is the key. I think the, the, the problem that we have increasingly is as people forget about that and we lose the grip on that working, when we disuse and abuse the Constitution and don't take advantage of it and people become disillusioned with it, they move to totalitarianism is inevitable. So I want to have the totalitarianism that I would prefer. Right. So it ceases to be about anti majoritarian cooperation, effective disagreement, and becomes picking which dystopian hellscape will suit you and your family best.

[A]

So well said. And another piece of it since you said dystopian is besides anti majoritarian, they're anti utopian. Right. Government is never going to bring you heaven. And so you have to, in any good system of governance, have the patience and prudence to say, I'm not only not going to get all that I want, I'm definitely not going to get most of what I want right now. So we debate economic conservatism versus the left end of the spectrum. You got social liberal versus social conservative. But the dimension of conservatism that the American founders were concerned with was sort of a dispositional conservatism to preserve the Constitution by only allowing slow change. Because these people were not thinking you'd ever want a populace to be whipped up to the idea that government should promise all sorts of great stuff really soon, really fast. Yeah.

[B]

The American government is an answer to a problem, is a solution for a problem. It is not an end unto itself. Okay.

[A]

Why do you, why do you get to say everything so succinctly when you say you didn't prep?

[B]

Because I'm only high on Dr. Pepper zero sugar creamy coconut, which I cannot recommend vigorously enough. I'm buying it on Amazon for $10 a 12 pack. I'm. Or $18 a 12 pack. I'm. It's. I'm. I'm in. Okay. Jared Phillips wants to know. Ben asked Justice Barrett about her family's required canon. I have an 11 year old who reads at a ninth grade level. He's just saying. Mr. Phillips is just saying. And a rising second grader who is catching up to his brother's reading skills quickly. I struggle to find books that challenge his reading and comprehension skills while keeping him engaged with age appropriate content. Would love to hear what books make up your family's canons to potentially add them to ours.

[A]

Will you help lead us to calibrate us to 9th grade level? Because what I don't remember. I Mean, I'm really. I think the list building project is fun. It's never done, it's never right, but it's a fun thing. In the Vanishing American Adult we took. I took a chapter and I did this thing called the five foot shelf of books, which is 60 inches is whatever around 60 books. And it's fun to think in subcategories. If you were going to make a list of 60 books that you're going to have with you on your bedside forever because you want them to. To be the rereadables. That was the project for me. But I've done this kind of exercise before of thinking about it by different ages, but I don't know that I can distinguish right now sixth grade versus ninth grade.

[B]

Well, I mean, I think when we talk about the canon. So if we have a sixth grader who's reading at a ninth grade level. So let's see, when you're in sixth grade, what are you? 12, 11.

[A]

You finished the year at 12. Yeah.

[B]

So you're 11 or 12. So you need books that are engaging and challenging but are appropriate for an 11 or 12 year old. And that there. I guess maybe the thing is, if we're talking about canon. So my answer, not that he's asking me, but my answer, yeah, no, these are our questions. My answer to Mr. Phillips would be good books that interest your child because every child is different are a great thing. Right. If you're. I have one son who will read almost anything about sports and he. If you can get the. If you can get a hold of the. Mariano Rivera's biography. I know, I know, yeah, that'd be great. It's a really well written book. It's really good. It's really interesting. So for the feedstock of keeping the furnace of reading interest going, I think it's great to match subject matter with. And then his brother, when he was in sixth grade wanted to read about Pliny's elder and younger and wanted to read about all kinds of things from antiquity and wanted to read about all that stuff. And so that it was. You could, you could match those. I think the fundamental question here are, is I'm going to reframe it using the idea of canon. What are the books that you think by age 13 that a kid should have read? Whether they, whether they like it or not, whether it interests them or not?

[A]

All right, that's super helpful. Let's also just add to the mix here. If you, if moms and dads listening think these aim too high at times, read Them aloud like that. That's a thing we did over and over and over in our house. I can't remember when we first said to the kids, read Chronicles of Narnia on your own, but we'd already been reading them aloud for a really long time, so let's do that. C.S. lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, Dickens, both Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations, the Hardy Boys. What?

[B]

Great Expectations.

[A]

I mean, that. That cemetery scene early on. Hardy Boys.

[B]

Yeah, Hardy Boys are. But that's not canon. Is that like.

[A]

I'm going broader.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I mean, you're right. I mean, Johnny Tremaine, Treasure Island.

[B]

Yeah. Treasure Island.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Oh, Treasure Island. Yes.

[A]

Robinson Crusoe, the Hobbit. I mean, like, if you're going a little younger, the Great Brain series. Do you ever read those?

[B]

No.

[A]

Oh. Or maybe seven. Seven books about this. You know, Catholic Family and Frontier Mormon, Salt Lake City. And one of them is just a complete swindler, just constantly running numbers games on all of his buddies. They're. They're great.

[B]

What do you. What do you recommend? Do you have any recommendations on. So I can't remember the name of the translation of the great Greek myths.

[A]

Young Readers treasury, something like that, but

[B]

it's somewhere in this room, I'm sure. But that was great. I read it, then my kids read it. It was a frequent. And that was a frequent and fond one. And also I'm helped because I am looking at the bookshelf where I never, of course, have gotten rid of a lot of the books that we read. And some of them are the same physical copies that I read. And I'm looking at the Phantom Tollbooth

[A]

and my girls read that. I've never read that.

[B]

Oh, it's a wonderful. It's a wonderful. Such. Such a wonderful book.

[A]

Kill a Mockingbird.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The whole Little House series.

[B]

Yes, Little House. The Little House books were a big part for my kids.

[A]

There's a Florida kind of version of the equivalency to Little House called.

[B]

They work at a gas station instead of being out.

[A]

No, it's not off. I. 10, seven years ago.

[B]

It's called. They're selling Trucker Speed at a. At a Citgo. I understand.

[A]

Introduce your kids to Shakespeare way before they're ready for it. So, like, I think, do read aloud of some of the greats, but then also the children's treasury versions where they can do their own and read the sonnet. Read sonnets aloud at your house after dinner.

[B]

Poetry memorization is another. Is another good one that your Kids will hate, but you will love because you. And if you do it over time they're. They're going to. I know that I think back on the stuff that I memorized the. That when I was a kid. And if you're. If your school is not doing that and having them memorize passages of Shakespeare or poems, I highly recommend that agree

[A]

on all that on memorization which isn't Mr. Phillips question. But we do a lot of. We do a lot of scripture memory at our house.

[B]

Narnia, Treasure. Oh, you always got it. You always. You're like the kid at Sunday school. You know the answer is always going to be Jesus. So you're just right in there ahead of me, making me look bad. That's fine. Narnia.

[A]

A lot of confusion about. About trinitarian infallibility when I was in about third grade because I wondered if Jesus ever got a math question wrong. School.

[B]

This is. These, these are the kind of. This you. You should send that into the mailbag for next time. So we got Narnia, Treasure island, the little house books. You want Dickens on your top five.

[A]

I don't know about top five.

[B]

I mean I.

[A]

If we were going to do this with prep. But you prohibited that. You're against that? You didn't get elected Bo State governor with no prep. In the Vanishing American Adult. There's a whole chapter on a family canon and most of it is beyond ninth grade. But like there's a lot of stuff that's grabbable off that and let's just. Let's just go. Let's just go real beach read to Mike Lupica. Oh really Hero. Just a whole bunch of 1011 year old kids and sports stories that are pretty great.

[B]

All right. Okay, now we're gonna go to James Ferguson who asks when the moments of fear and doubt creep in, how do you handle it? Practically speaking, what's your immediate action drill. Forgive me, I am a marine. He says, what would you say to young men wrestling with finding their place in the world, to those of us building up young families. What's the one thing you wish you knew sooner? So this is a compound question about what do you. What do you do when you're afraid? And then what? What do you wish that you knew? That you could tell a younger you?

[A]

Wow, dude, those are both really big and not really related. Mr. Ferguson, I. Does. Does he mean fear and doubt about anything or everything or about like the last four months cancer kind of stuff? What's he. I'm not help. Well, let's Tease out. Let's Phase one.

[B]

Well, let's, let's lock in on the immediate action drill part, right? So for me, I have to remember my physical circumstances. You've heard of halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. I'm not going to deal well with the emotional, with my emotions will not allow me to address the actual problem at hand or identify whether what's at hand is really a problem or not a problem if I am hungry, angry, lonely or tired. And so if that's where I am, I need to do something about those things in order to get to the right. So that would be my answer on the question of an immediate action drill is first, deal with the corporeal considerations to get yourself in the right space to determine if there is a problem. And, and that if there is really a problem and it's not just I'm having a bad feeling that I can, I can deal with it like a grownup. I think that's. So I've talked long enough now to buy you time so that you can answer the question about your action drill, about when you feel afraid, when you feel doubt.

[A]

So, so that you can mock me. I'll give a Jesus centric answer.

[B]

First, I've.

[A]

No, now you're making it sound like

[B]

I'm mocking your faith.

[A]

I mean, I, I pray the Lord's Prayer a lot. A lot of times when I'm in any of those categories of anxious, going through that slowly and the six big petitions inside their structure, a pretty good reframing. I think breathing exercises are pretty important. I, like you, have spoken in public a lot for over three decades and yet still randomly, one out of every, you know, 50 times or one out of every 300 times, you'll be about to get up to speak and you'll just feel like your heart's racing and you don't feel like you exactly want to be there. I think, you know, a handful of deep breaths resettle me. But for me, a lot of that stuff to your halt, which is not a category I had comes back to have I been working out enough the last few days? Like, you can't catch up on your hydration in an instant. You can't catch up on your sleep in an instant. But I just know that if I had a really good workout in the last 12 to 24 hours, everything else calms down really fast. Now, unfortunately, in my new world, I'm just becoming fat because I'm figuring out how to. I mean, I puke all the time. Five, five cycles of it. Yesterday But I can just eat my way through it now. I've figured out the kinds of foods.

[B]

Welcome to the club, brother.

[A]

Yeah. My answers would have been workout for 53 and a half of my 54 years. And now I'm like, how about more uncrustables, PB and J for you? How about a little.

[B]

How about a little sanguine? One thing that it took me a long time to realize, I had a immature understanding of my spiritual and emotional life in which my body was a jug that kept a soul in it. And then I was going to die. And like in the old cartoons, a spirit me was going to come out of my body playing a harp and go on up to its. To its great reward.

[A]

I'm gnostic of you.

[B]

Oh, yes, exactly. Over time I came to terms with the fact that I am a physical and a spiritual being and that those things are, they. They affect one another and sort of the Jewish concept about Sheol and your body and your spirit and all of that stuff. And I thought more about it, which made me realize very often the emotional and spiritual things that I'm dealing with are a consequence of my physical condition and that they're not separate things. And I know this sounds like a very elementary point of view, but I guess I would say to Mr. Ferguson, I. I have to deal. I. I want to make things philosophical problems or moral problems or whatever, but sometimes I need an app, sometimes I need. And oh, and the last thing, last two things, you reminded me of it when you talked about when you're going up to give a speech and all of a sudden you get so tight you couldn't pass a greased bb and you're like, where is this coming from? A tip that the late, great Susan Hogan gave me many, many, many years ago was take off your shoes and jump up and down one time. Like really jump up and down. And I rolled my eyes when she said it. And then one time I was so scared, I was so nervous I actually did it. And whether it's a placebo effect or whether it's real, it. It definitely helps. And I have done it. And I don't do it every time, but I've definitely done it since.

[A]

Really interesting. Yeah. All right, I'll pivot to his father question. I mean, if you want to spend time with your kids when they're little, you got to spend time with your kids when they're little. And I did. A lot. And I still feel ache about being 2/3 empty nester and wish I could have more of that time back, I jokingly say to my wife, I really thought that our kids were going to be between age 5 and age 15 for like 35 years. Like I didn't think it would be for an eternity, but I thought it'd be many, many, many decades of them being between 5 and 15. And it's pretty great to have your kids between 5 and 15. Old country music lyrics and every other aphorism. The days are long and the years are short, but man, the years are short. And so if you want to enjoy that stage of investing in your kids and not enjoy it just for your self satisfaction, because it's a vocation, because it's a calling and a duty and an opportunity and therefore a love and a joy, you, you got to figure out how you can get your calendar right, that you got the energy when you get home every day to dive right in. Think I need two hours to decompress. You needed to have done that work

[B]

on the way home and to buttress that point. One thing that time has taught me, I'm My eldest graduates from high school this coming Friday.

[A]

Congrats and condolences.

[B]

It's. It goes fast, right? It's like the they say about the roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes around. And the one thing that I had to remind myself a lot and very often failed to remember, small people are people too. And they have the same emotions and they have less context in which to put those things. And very often it's easy to be dismissive of the concerns and feelings of children as being silly or. Or you don't know how the world is, or you don't know what life's really like. If you're five, you don't have that much to compare it to. And it doesn't make your experience, your emotions any less valid, any less important than those of adults and remembering to honor them as full. They're. They're fully human people. And I know this sounds obvious, but to acknowledge them as fully human people and engage with their problems and concerns in the same way that you would different vocabulary, different solution sets. But to engage with them as full people, not pretend to people and the

[A]

French word impressions, just think about the way that things imprint on our brain and that endless summer feeling you have when you're four or five or six or seven, you know when you're four, summer is this the summer when you're four years old is 7% of your life exactly. The summer this year for me is going to be whatever 1 220th of my life. It can't possibly make the same impression as those early ones do. And so figuring out how to share in that joy and wonder of going slow and seeing all the diverse colors on your hike. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, okay. Jeffrey D. Asks about being dispositionally moderate. It looks like Wags has cut out a bunch and and picks up with Anyways, I loved what you said on one of the recent not dead yet episodes about having a very conserv about having very conservative political views but maintaining a moderate disposition. Sorry for the rough paraphrase. It's obviously something you are extremely good at. It's something I would love to become better at. Any advice on that front beyond simply loving one's neighbor? He's trying to short circuit your Sunday school answer.

[A]

Help me out. You lead with this one because I have a couple of thoughts, but I don't think they'll get at short circuit.

[B]

You might be open to the possibility that you could be wrong. A good place to start is having enough humility. There are many, and I think this takes us to the difference between faith and belief. There are many things that I believe, some things that I believe very strongly. But Even if it's just 2%, I should be open to the possibility that I might be wrong, because number one, I might be. And it would be helpful if I was corrected. But more importantly, if I want to engage with other people and talk about things that matter and things that are important and things that are hard, I can't come into a product. No conversation will be productive if I come into it saying I am 100% right and my job is to defeat you. Because no one has ever won an argument. No one has ever won an argument because no one has ever said, you know what? Now that you've hectored me for the past 30 minutes, I'm going to change my mind. I'm going to say that you're right and I'm going to give up the way that I think about this. You can't win an argument, but you can persuade. And the difference between argumentation and persuasion is rooted for me in humility and the acknowledgement that everybody has something to teach me. Everybody is right about something. Even the people who are very wrong about most things are still right about something. So I think humility is where you start on being a good neighbor.

[A]

So good. I don't think I'm adding anything to this, but just suffer your arrows of mockery again, I think in numbered lists. So I think there were Four different things inside there. I think there is intellectual. Shut up. When do we get a fist fight? I want to. Wait a minute. I'm weakened. I'm weakened.

[B]

I know now it's fine. Now I finally like my chances.

[A]

My 15 year old jokingly tells me regularly, you know, I could punch assassinate you, Dad, I know where the pancreas is. We do gallows humor. I don't know that we were doing death threats, but one, intellectual humility. Two, actual curiosity. Three, a recognition of dignity, universal human dignity, Imago day. And an acknowledgment that power isn't the most important thing. So I think all those were implicit in what you said. Humility is. I might be wrong.

[B]

Curiosity, dignity.

[A]

Yeah, I was changing the order now. But the universal human dignity is an acknowledgment of the other person's worth. And so you want to, you don't just want them to feel heard, you want to actually hear them out because they really have dignity. And that ties to curiosity, which is, it's like competitive advantage in trade. You may know more about a given topic than somebody, but that doesn't mean you know everything about what could be learned. And people who are situated in different places are wrestling with different problems. And it's like the, the false binary of so many debates where people act like there's extreme position A and there's extreme position Z and you have to have your hot take immediately. Is it A or Z? Well, usually it's that there was an A sub 1 and A sub 2 and A Z sub 1 and Z sub 2. And on the sub 1 dimension A has a better answer. But on the other dimension of sub 2, there was something that Z had to offer. And we've oversimplified the question by just framing it as this unidimensional binary. And so if you're actually curious teasing something apart, my shorthand for this, like if I'm teaching ninth graders to go back to the previous question, is in Atlanta, there might only be one word for cold, wet stuff that falls from the sky when it's precipitating below 32 degrees, it's just snow. And it's, it's all undifferentiated because it's so rare. And if you're in certain parts of Alaska, there are native languages that have 39 differentiated words for sleep versus this kind of fluffy snow versus that. And you probably can tease out some opportunity to learn if you're actually curious in this. But the fourth is there was a political question to which you and I responded. I forget who started the ping pong, but I landed at policy conservative tonal and dispositional moderate on the policy question. I prefer a conservative answer to a progressive answer on this policy question. But oftentimes as important is the political philosophical positioning to say, well, first of all, the Rumsfeld question from when he was in the House in Illinois a million years ago when he would, when his staff would make some recommendation that he should introduce a piece of legislation on something, he would say, well, first, are we sure that this is a governmental problem? Second, even if it's a governmental problem, is it a federal governmental problem? And only after you had solved for both of those things would he ever consider legislation. It isn't a question of whether or not it's more conservative or more progressive. The question is should the government really be dealing with and should the federal government be dealing with.

[B]

This is the, the Mitch Daniels Yellow Pages test. Remind me when he was governor of Indiana and there was a, a call for expanding or creating a new government entity, he would. And for younger listeners, Yellow Pages was a collection of phone numbers for businesses. He would say, okay, open up the Yellow Pages. And if there were three or more entities in the Indianapolis Yellow Pages to provide the service, he'd say I don't think that's us. I don't think that's us.

[A]

Really good.

[B]

So you're. So what's your, what's number four? Anti power.

[A]

So it's a humility point, a curiosity point, a universal human dignity point, and a skepticism of political power as the solution to most problems. I'd rather have plural voluntarized solutions than have compulsory governmental solutions.

[B]

Almost always as a. So yes. Which goes back to the question about the founding and what people should know about it, which is holding governmental domination as the. What's the Washington line, that it is a wonderful servant and a terrible master.

[A]

That's good.

[B]

So intellectual humility. Yay curiosity. The micro point, which is my big takeaway from micro human dignity, which is the Thompson point, which that I'm, I'm still thinking about stuff from the Thompson podcast that we did and number one was a. The number one thing I've thought about is how the, the Western Christian American idea about the value of individual human beings is not what takes us to selfishness, but in fact is what takes us to compassion and takes us to preserving a system that, that keeps that, that holds that in mind and anti power. Okay, I like it. That's a good four by four. We can in the next Mailbag. We'll expand it to a four by six and then we can plot. We can do a plot chart. It's going to be amazing. Okay.

[A]

For a new foundation below the freeze line, the 4 by 6 will need a 36 inch cubic pier.

[B]

Always I'm all about cubic peers. Okay, before we. This is our final question before we get to the lightning round of false binaries. Mary Lou Beaud I apologize ma' am for I'm sure butchering your eyes.

[A]

I knew so many Mary Lou in the late 70s. I don't know any Mary Lou's today. I bet she's not. I bet she's not under 20.

[B]

My oldest living relation is a Mary Lou. Mary Lou Storm, Lieutenant Colonel, USFA USAF retired. Mary Lou Stor Storm is in her late 90s out in, out in Sullivan, Illinois. Still keeping, keeping him in line.

[A]

Hang on, hang on. The Air force isn't until 1947 and she's in her 90s. How did this. We don't need to, we don't need to do the historical calendar.

[B]

She was a whack.

[A]

She might be exaggerating.

[B]

She was a. She was a whack before she was.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

Anyway, Mary Lou Beaudre writes, my primary reason for writing is to ask Ben to expand on his comments in the Ross Douthen interview about what he would tell his younger self to observe the Sabbath more faithfully. Did you have a time before you were sick when you were still busy with work where you prioritized Sabbath and how did you protect that time? What did it look like? What does it look like now? Do you have advice for how busy professionals can distinguish between a true ox in the ditch problem versus the ongoing requirements of demanding jobs?

[A]

Wolf, There are so many dimensions there.

[B]

Start for me with this question of the difference between this is what's your what would a good test be for the difference between this is too important and I must do it and I'm actually just soothing myself by working.

[A]

I mean can you really not delay doing it till sundown? Like, not to be legalistic about Saturday night at sundown to Sunday night at sundown, but if I'm get a voicemail, first question for me is do I really need to check my phone right after church? So the part we always got right is we never miss church. We've always been to church as the center of every Sunday morning. The question is when you check your phone right afterwards to her, her version of this, knowing whether it's really an ox in a pit, is do you really need to check your phone right after church because you probably don't, but I almost always did. And then when you'd see that thing and your verb is a good one in my mind to soothe yourself with work as a kind of self serving, idolatrous, self important, soothing. Could you really not say, oh, it's relatively urgent, relatively important. I'll pick it up in seven hours and I'll go back to the market day of the soul and read some really great stuff to my kids and try to over and over again die to self by saying I'm not going to actually build a storehouse that's going to outlast my mortality. Right. Like abject poverty throughout most of human history was do you have a being poor? 99 plus percent of people have always been poor. Was you didn't have a storehouse big enough to get through the winter if there was a bad harvest this fall. You didn't have a multi year insulation against starvation. I think we are emotionally, or at least I was always guilty of wanting to build a bigger and bigger and bigger storehouse as an idolatrous form of kind of functional deism. Yeah, God's there, but I'm not gonna rely on him. Think it's really a relationship with a personal God. And so I'd been in repentance to my family for three years, I think before my diagnosis, trying to get better at the Lord's day. But most of it is that idolatrous sense of self importance and soothing and escape. Also I got a specific football problem which is I really, really, really, really love football. And it's great therapy. But we get Monday night football, Thursday night football, high school on Friday, all day on Saturday and even on Sunday, my Sabbatarian commitments, I could still watch Sunday night football. So I didn't need to watch the 1 o' clock and the 4 o' clock game or the 10 or 111 o' clock and the 4, 4 o' clock games. What about you, brother?

[B]

And NFL is easy for me to pass on. That's an easy. That's it. That's, that's a no problem. I have definitely harmed my family and the people that I love for some West Virginia University Mountaineer college football. That, that, that is true. I have, I have made a false idol out of some Mountaineer games. But the NFL is easy for me to pass on because the NFL is mid. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's better than soccer. But it's, you know, whatever, it's fine.

[A]

Okay. Now we're going to go back to basic civics. Chris Stirewalt is a traitorous let. She should be tossed off of our shores. Equating real football with international football. All right, keep going. But you.

[B]

I. I have a. I have a beef with the football as America's last civic institution, simply because if that's what we've got, we're kind of screwed then, because most of what's going on in football as a culture is. Is. Is a real bum. It's a real bummer for me, and I don't know it.

[A]

It.

[B]

I. I appreciate football. I like the Mountaineers. I like college football. I enjoy.

[A]

I like singing in your stadium. It's a good. You guys have a good song.

[B]

Yeah, I. I love it. It's great. One of the first time I took my sons to a home game, which happened to be the. Actually, it's a. It's a good way to sum up how I feel about football. The first game I took both of my sons to was a. Was the pit game at home in Morgantown. And it will be a treasured lifetime moment for me. WVU won, arms around my son singing Country Roads. I'm getting choked up just thinking about it right now. It was a beautiful night, and Mountaineers rallied to win. And it was super. The conduct of the people at that game was horrifyingly bad. The spectacle of drunkenness, the constant profanity, the cruelty, the demand for violence, the. Just the awful way that people conducted themselves. And it was worse because it was a night game, so people had been getting drunk all day. And by the time we were making our way through the parking lot, it was really. And I don't know whether it's worse than when I was a young person or whether I was just drunk when I was a young person. So it didn't make any difference to me. But I. I do. I appreciate the fact that football is the last civic. The. The point of common civic engagement. And the thing about football games are always the most watched and that they dominate everything. And it's what we've got. If that's what we're. If that's what we're trying to rebuild the new Jerusalem on. I got. I got worries. I got a lot of worries.

[A]

I mean, the disintermediation of any shared news sources and pop culture and mass media stuff that a guy I know who wrote a book called Broken News knows way better than I do. But there's all sorts of reasons to talk about football, because it is the Only shared thing. But now you took us to a scarier, sad or darker place. I mean, I. Part of me kind of wonders how much of the particular game you're talking about is because it's pit. And if I remember my geography right, it's less than 90 minutes back to

[B]

Pittsburgh from Oregon Town. It's the worst. I erred as a parent in taking them to that game, but I was reaching for the brass ring of like, this is it. This is the ne plus ultra of Mountaineer football night game at home against Pitt. We would have been much better off for the first game to have been some Saturday afternoon game against some cream puff and go have pepperoni rolls and do it. And there would have been much less menace in it. But I'm so. I'm like, you're. I'm gonna say you're three tiers for football. I'm like a cheer and a half for football.

[A]

All right, we'll have to come back to this because I, I feel a lot of this ache too in Nebraska, where we have, you know, by miles along the sellout streak of any sporting event in. On the continent going back to. There hasn't been an unsold seat to a Nebraska football game since October of 1962. A was born. And so 64 years straight of 90,000 seat stadium never having a seat. I think Notre Dame is the second longest sellout streak and it's like 12 years. But we used to treat visiting fans like they were guests in your house and now they're. The crowd at Nebraska looks a lot like every other crowd that's really, you know, booing people when they arrive and assuming that every call the refs make is in bad faith. And I, I have angst about that crowd dynamic you're talking about, but I still think football has some real unique things about it because when a team is well coached, what you're doing is you're showing unbelievable restraint about the fact that the world, which is broken and therefore includes violence. There's not violence after the whistle. There's not violence bullying somebody in the locker room. There's not violence during a handshake afterwards. It's. It's controlled the best of masculinity for good as practice war without having to go and actually kill somebody and have PTSD and everything else. I think, I think football is the best Aristotelian therapeutic form of catharsis you can get. There's certain kinds of high theater and then there's football. But I, I have a lot of the worries you're talking about, about the migration of it to being more and more a televised spectacle as opposed to something that most people grew up at Friday nights cheering the high school kids.

[B]

And I think this goes. I think we can finish with Mary Lou's. Back to Mary Lou's original point, which is there's only one thing in my life that I should allow to be totalizing, right? The, the, the only, the only thing that I can freely allow to overrun its banks is Jesus, right? That's the one place that I should. That totalization is good. But what tends to happen and in my life, it's been work, right? Like you. Work feels virtuous because I am rewarded for work economically in encouragement and acknowledgement, in status, in all of these things. And this was true from the time that I was a child, which is if it's work, as my old daddy used to say, work first, which he meant not only work, just do the work before you do the fun. Get all your work done. So work first meant don't put off for tomorrow, which you can do today. But work first became for me, like totalizing. Okay, we gotta. Work has to come first. Work has to come first. Work has to come first. And I think when I was young, when I was a young person, especially a young father, I had a great permission structure for myself, which was, I have to do it. I have no choice. I've got to get ahead. I've got it. I'm behind, I'm behind, I'm behind everybody else. I've got to do it so that I can get ahead. And that that wasn't true. And I lacked. I'll end with Sunday school. I lacked a true enough faith that allowed me to trust that God was going to provide what I needed if I kept him in the top spot. And that if I would do that, that everything would be okay. And for a long time, I didn't think everything was going to be okay. For a long time I thought it depended on me, and it didn't.

[A]

Well, said imputation isn't just the imputation of forgiveness on the cross for the stuff we did wrong. It's also the positive imputation of 33 years of righteous living that Jesus did right for us, though I didn't do it. So just like the criminal on the cross who gets to heaven a couple hours later and gets to say, yeah, I closed, I clothed the naked, I. I fed the hungry, I visited the sick, because I did it in Christ, it's pretty freeing to then get to live life as Gratitud attitude as opposed to striving.

[B]

All right, you ready for lightning round the weg. The Wegman Arian false binaries. You ready? You ready?

[A]

Amen.

[B]

Okay. Reading or school?

[A]

Oh, we never introduced this segment yet, which is usually false binaries or false binaries, so you can rightly want to say both, but the people sending the questions want us to really answer this one isn't a false binary. It's true. Always reading. Very occasionally. School.

[B]

Okay, I guess, I guess if I had to choose between the two, if there was school with no reading or reading with no school, I guess I would choose reading, but I don't know.

[A]

School's a tool. You want to use it for a little while.

[B]

You're a tool.

[A]

Doing stuff yourself. You're a tool.

[B]

You're a tool. Offense or defense?

[A]

Oh, I mean, what a weird game to play with no bourbon. I mean, it depends on which sport. It depends on if we're talking as

[B]

a way of thinking, as a way of being. I don't even know what it means.

[A]

Let's. Let's be for something before we're defending. Offense. You.

[B]

Yeah, I'm offense. I think as, as I learned a long time ago, if you're not sending, you're receiving. Okay. Dynasty or Cinderella? Now, you can have this question as either the movie Cinderella, the story and movie Cinderella, or the television show Dynasty, or you can, you can interpret this as, would you rather see madness? Would you, would you rather see the Chicago Bull, the Jordan era Chicago Bulls, or the Cinderella story? Which do you prefer?

[A]

Indiana this year? Well, question one. Let's go with Dynasty, because I've never watched Cinderella and I've been thinking a lot about the Joan Collins quotes about death and beauty lately, so I'll go with Dynasty. But for sports, Cinderella, way more fun.

[B]

Yeah, I think we all, we all agree, everybody likes a Cinderella story. And I also agree with you that Dynasty is superior to Disney. Cinderella. Okay. Courage or prudence?

[A]

I mean, Wegman's game here is really strange without booze. I mean, to compare it, to tie it to our offense, defense question, you'd say courage. But when you think, who do you really want your next door neighbor to be? I'm going with prudence.

[B]

Well, yeah, I want you to be prudent. I want other people to be prudent before they're courageous. But the question is for you, if you had to choose, but maybe put it this way, if you had to err on the side of courage or err on the side of prudence, which which are you more tolerant for error?

[A]

Well, if you're thinking about what it looks like to be a man in full, then you want your. Your boy graduating high school this week to be able to go do courage. And again, courage is the Aristotelian midpoint between cowardice and recklessness. Courage is not the opposite of cowardice, therefore being reckless, it is itself a prudential stand. So courage is itself a subspecies of prudence. So we're gonna go. I think we're jointly agreeing. We're going with courage because it's a domain, one virtue.

[B]

Yeah. Get out there and make a few mistakes, see what happens. Okay. Bob Dylan or the Beatles?

[A]

Scott Immergut, who both of us love. Our producer is mad that this is a question. Why? Because he thinks it's like. It's a category error. You can't compare Dylan as a standalone to the Beatles as a global group. Moment, phenomenon, wave, whatever. I'm gonna pick the Beatles just kind of to make Scott mad.

[B]

I mean, I'll take Dylan, I guess. I don't know. It's. I don't know.

[A]

I don't. Could it be Dylan when he could still stand up?

[B]

Well, I mean, Dylan. When I think of Dylan, I always think of Nashville Skyline and I think of his stuff with Johnny Cash, and I think of that. I think the Beatles very successfully echoed back American music, particularly black American music, to Americans who allowed a racially obsessed mid-1960s America in the same way that Elvis had to listen and absorb black music that they would not have been able to absorb when it was coming from black Americans. And that's fine. Then they did a bunch of drugs and they did some good stuff, but a lot of their good stuff they were ripping off from the Beach Boys anyway. Like, I'm for the Beatles. It's fine. And I understand how for people of a certain age, they have a strong memory the way that their parents are slightly older than them did with Elvis. And I get it. It's fine. But I guess if I had to choose one of the two, I guess I'd choose Dylan. Okay, this is a tougher one. Hemingway or Fitzgerald?

[A]

I mean, I'm going to say Hemingway, but I romanticize lots of pieces of him that I think probably aren't true, but I still like those things. There are. There are museums you want to go to and see. Where did Hemingway actually write? And those things are probably not very central to much of his experience. But in the same way that you're saying there was a generation that romanticized the Beatles because It was them at 17. My ideas of what Hemingway as a writer was are deep. And I don't have the same attachment to Fitzgerald.

[B]

I think much of what Fitzgerald wrote, I think Fitzgerald at his very best and Gatsby is great, but also there are the. He's. He's more than just that. But for me, and looking again at my bookshelf, the bookshelf, the verdict of the bookshelf is Hemingway is going to be my answer. And the, the reason for that is that very little I have ever read surpasses his short stories. Very little. Okay, Washington or Lincoln?

[A]

I mean, it depends on for what. I don't think Lincoln would have been as good in Washington's moment, but I think Lincoln is a far more interesting figure.

[B]

I would say that the question is, as the greatest American president, I mean,

[A]

I probably always would have said Lincoln, but to our point about anti majoritarianism and you know, private sector before the public sector, states and locals over federal divided government and the equal. Separate but equal branches. But really the legislature is preeminent and we divide power again and again. I don't think America unfolds the way it unfolds if you don't have the farewell address of December 1796. So I don't think you get to have Lincoln fixing so much of what he's fixing. If Washington hadn't been so reticent about power, he created a cultural layer on top of the Constitution which reaffirmed this idea that government isn't central. So I'm going to try to go with a tie because I would have always said Lincoln in the past, in the last two or three years, my appreciation for Washington grows.

[B]

Yeah, you can't. There's no America without George Washington. Of course. There's no America without Abe Lincoln. So even though you can see the Abraham Lincoln standing behind me, I will, I will allow this as a tie. 30 days in a Viking longboat or an Apollo capsule.

[A]

Oh, the longboat moment.

[B]

I mean, they weren't literate.

[A]

The Vikings weren't literate. I mean, I don't know what the question. Well, what it was solving.

[B]

Which would you rather. Where would you rather spend a month on a Viking longboat or in an Apollo capsule?

[A]

Am I a hostage in both cases?

[B]

No, you're a Viking or you're an astronaut.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think I get claustrophobic at 30 days in an Apollo capsule. I also, I think the views would be awe inspiring. I don't know what day four gets me beyond day one. I, I think the Camaraderie of the Vikings if they weren't like raping, pillaging, evil and illiterate.

[B]

Good. The good part.

[A]

The good parts of the camaraderie of dominating 250 years of the coastline of three and a half continents. No, I'm gonna, I'm sticking. You're not gonna bully me. No, I believe it. Viking brothers are coming. I'm staying with the longboat.

[B]

Sounds like something an NFL fan would say. I'm, I'm of course going to go Apollo capsule. Athens or Rome?

[A]

I mean, it's. We gotta ask a more precise question about what we're solving for, but if we're going to debate ideas. Athens. But I mean, the empire standardized a lot of stuff that was civilizing. Yeah, for sure. Evil. The, the, the. The new stuff Tom Holland's done on how the Romans were just completely indifferent to the way they would terrorize people has caused me to rethink a little bit of. I would have always been agnostic on Rome, not zealously pro Rome, but now I'm more and more skeptical of the brutality. The Viking like behavior they exercised as well. Yeah.

[B]

Athens, Athens. Plato or Aristotle?

[A]

There's no question here. Plato hates nature. Aristotle all the way.

[B]

I've just finished a book about Plato and Aristotle that was really, really good and made me soften my feelings about Plato. But, yeah, I'm team Aristotle. Thomas Jefferson or James Madison?

[A]

Madison.

[B]

Madison. Easy. Tolkien or Lewis?

[A]

Lewis. The range of genres interests me more.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But I would love to have spent time at the Eagle and Child, at the Inklings Club of them and Dorothy Sayers.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. Another easy one. Springsteen or Cash?

[A]

Cash. Cash.

[B]

Not even the. Not even close.

[A]

I'm sad. I've never seen. I never saw Cash in concerts. Did you?

[B]

I did. I did. Wheeling, West Virginia, at the Jam. At the Jamboree usa, buddy.

[A]

Was he sober enough? No.

[B]

I mean, I was only born in 1975. My. I think I mentioned it when we're talking about country music, but my dad would take me down. I saw Willie Nelson, I saw Johnny Cash. I saw George Jones and Tammy Wynette. I, I, I seen them all. I seen them all, brother. Okay, another Easy for me. I don't know about you. Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky.

[A]

I mean, huge respect to both, but Michael Jordan is a goat in ways that. I mean, Gretzky, as Ovechkin's numbers have gone bigger and bigger, and you realize that he was chasing the numbers and Gretzky was being a hockey player and a team player. My Respect for Gretzky continues to grow. But, but huge respect. There's no, there's no way it rises to the level for me of what Jordan, the absolute goat, did.

[B]

I like Wayne Gretzky a lot and I like. He seems cool. He seems to have an understanding of himself. He seems like a kind of person you'd like to play around to golf with. But yeah, as an athlete. Michael Jordan. Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders?

[A]

Bo Jackson.

[B]

Bo Jackson.

[A]

Teammates liked him better.

[B]

Yeah, and he was funny. Joe Montana or Dan Marino?

[A]

Oh, I mean, I know Marino and I like Marino, but Nebraska kid, where. Roger Craig, who didn't even start at Nebraska, he's the backup to Mike Rogier and he goes and becomes the. I don't know what the right nouns are, but the, the running back that caught the most passes in NFL history at that point. He's a blocking back from Montana. Nebraskans just became very big 49ers fans for a while in the 80s because of Craig. But that, a lot of that transfers to Montana. So I have to go there.

[B]

Yeah, I got, I mean, same Joe Montana. It was, that was just. I think it's age based, but yeah, that was, that was an amazing thing to see.

[A]

And the West Virginia guy. Can't respect a pit guy, I assume.

[B]

I respect Dan Marino. A lot of respect for Dan Marino. And that's all, that's all fine. But, but the, but those, those 49ers Super bowl years were, were pretty cool. Okay, last one. Mountain cabin or beachfront home?

[A]

Well, mountain cabin. Yeah.

[B]

Not even.

[A]

Once upon a time, I would have thought the beach. And then you look at the data, you look at the data and people move to the beach and something like 60% of a move away 12 months later because the beach is fine. But it's fine once a year for 72 hours. You don't want to do the beach every day.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, if you, if, if I were given unlimited resources, would I want to have a beachfront home? Absolutely. But the, the farm, my wife's farm, I, I don't, I don't need anything. It's. It's a perfect rural retreat. It's quiet and lovely and there are chickens on it and it's got, it's got everything that I need to feel separated from Washington D.C. so I don't need anything else. But if I had to choose to live in a mountain cabin or a beachfront home, I would live in a mountain cabin. 10 out of 10 times.

[A]

Thank you for this. This was fun. Well, I'm curious what the feedback will be.

[B]

Who cares?

[A]

The stoic in my soul thinks that it was too much of us talking and not enough of our guest. But our guest didn't.

[B]

We've reached you. We've reached. You've reached a point in your progress where you are now able to eat Mac and cheese as an afternoon snack. You're able to see things much more clearly. And my hope and prayer for you is that you will reach the point of not caring what other people think. Because that, my friend,

[A]

is not dead yet.

[B]

That is really being not dead yet is not caring what other people think. But I did enjoy it. Thank you. Thank you for being so.

[A]

Thank you, brother. Good to be with you.

[B]

Good to be with you. All right, that is it for this week's episode. We hope you'll like. Review and subscribe and tell a friend. Feel free to email us with your thoughts, corrections, questions, or whatever else is on your mind. Write [e-mail] See, we really did respond. This podcast was produced by Scott, a immigrant, with the help of our colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute. The music is from Drew Holcomb and the neighbors. Thanks for listening and keep living the good life.

[A]

Sam.