Bethany Mandel | How do you pass American values to your kids?

Bethany Mandel joins Ken on the podcast to discuss the red flags in K-12 education, the stigma surrounding homeschooling, and the right way to teach our children about American values.

Mandel is an author,  a homeschooling mom of five children, and the editor of a children’s book series Heroes of Liberty that celebrates traditional values such as freedom, liberty, and family.

You can find her on:

Twitter: @BethanyShondark 

Instagram: @bethanyshondark/ @heroes_of_liberty

Buy the books at: heroesofliberty.com

To find Ken in the social world and watch the video version, click here: https://linktr.ee/KenLaCorte

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

I had a great conversation with Bethany Mandel. She's an op ed writer, the editor of a new children's book series called Heroes of liberty. And his homeschooling five kids, we talked about, thank you for taking the time, I know you are super, super busy person, I look at your byline, they all lead off with the number of children you have, which is an amazing number. And then I see you riding around a lot. So it's like, Okay, five kids homeschooling and seems to write an article multiple times a week, I guess, like time management? How does one do that without going crazy? Or do you just not say, See, I mean, he's, I don't sleep is the answer. So. So I, I try to think about what I'm going to write throughout the course of the day, and it helps keep me sane, because I don't have adults to talk to most of the story. I'm always sort of like brainstorming and writing notes and thinking, you know, what about this? What about that, and then, and then when I have kid free time, which is usually the evenings, that's when I really kind of try to bang things out. And if I've kind of storyboarded the piece in my brain, it's not that hard to sort of, so when you've done it out, when you've done that, how long does that then, because like, I'll sit down to try to write something, and a good Op Ed from me will take at least four hours. And it's just a massive amount of time. Now part of that is because I've been an editor my whole life. And so I've got this little devil on my shoulder that says, that sucks. That's the wrong word. And I'll sit there for an hour. And I'll have 16 words on the page and have to go for it don't do that. So once you do, don't let, don't let the good don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And trust in your editor. I I'm always you know, this is I think this is pretty good. And then I give it to I have an amazing editor at Deseret. And I've amazing editor of Fox News. And I hand it to them, and then they hand it back. Gosh, I sound smart. But it's my name on it. So it's the biggest scam on the planet. But But yeah, so I try to get all of that thinking done beforehand. And then and then you're gonna just you can get it out here real quick. Do you put an outline first? Or do you just kind of kind of go so I out. And like on in paper form, and then and then I just churn it out. And it's pretty easy to write once you've done all of that sort of brain research. And so I have like my notebook sort of, on the on the counter. And as I'm, as I'm, you know, making breakfast or whatever, I'm kind of going at it thinking like, Oh, I could put this here. I could put this here. And that eight o'clock at night when I have my kid free hour and a half or I crash. I actually write it. Well. I appreciate you give me some of that time. So my first introduction to you was a story about Rupert Murdoch. So now I've worked for Fox News for almost 20 years. I've been in well over 100 meetings with Rupert Murdoch is when I was heading up the.com And, and he became an active CEO after they bounced Roger Ailes. And you wrote that story. And I'll set it up because it was something I literally didn't know even though I worked for the company at the time. Elizabeth Holmes thoroughness. He put in $125 million, I believe of his personal money. In fact, now it was of his personal money. Yes. And he was the largest single share a shareholder and investor in Theranos. And I'll let you pick up the story from here because everybody always thinks of Rupert as, as some evil reptilian. And I think the story is, yeah, yeah. So I have no personal connection to Rupert outside of he accidentally called my husband, my husband used to work at the New York Post. And so his, his extension was switched with his bosses for a couple of weeks. The white wires literally, I think, got crossed. And so he would call, the assistant would call and say, Rupert's hold on Gruber. And my husband was like, yeah, no, I don't want to wait forever. I don't want to talk to him. So that's, that's the extent of my experience if I was, you know, a job ago, so I really have no, I have no gay I have no what's the word I'm looking for? No. No skin in the game skin in the game. That's the word. I don't know what that even means. skin in the game. That's the phrase. Yeah, I just I have no connection. So what was really interesting about the bad blood book from the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story, which was not covered at all in the press coverage, which I think we know why was that Rupert had this massive investment. And when, when the Wall Street Journal started sniffing around this story, Elizabeth Holmes got them on the phone and she was like, You got to you got to put the put the cap on this because this can't not be reported. And there were other investors in Toronto who when they got similar calls about other sort of issues, the whistleblower, the grandfather of the whistleblower, cut off his own grandson. So like, people took those calls very seriously. And Rupert was like, I trust my editors are trusted by reporters. And if there's no story, then there's no story. And then you have nothing to worry about. I've solved it for you, Elizabeth. And that was extensive him solving, it was him saying, I trust my writer. First, I trust my editors, and their story, it won't be reported. And I had nothing to do with it. And that was it. And he was knocked out. And then eventually, the Wall Street Journal, broke the story wide open, and sank his investment to the ground completely. He lit on fire $125 million. And there were a lot of puff pieces from serious magazines out and serious Publications at the same time, still, just, you know, she's blonde, and she has a turtleneck and she speaks deep. And she's this she's solving the world's problems. She's the I believe she was America's America's richest female or self made female. I mean, you know, for a while she was, and he didn't even try. I mean, I would have been, I know there would have been untapped potential, like, sell that sell off some of this stock to somebody else. See if you can dump some to John Malone or something and let it go. He eventually sold it back to the company at $1. So and I my experience with Rupert as an editor. I never got a call from him, or I never was in an editorial meeting of which I was for four years, four months, at least twice a day. I never got a we have a self interest in that. Don't Don't do that. Well, I got one from one of the kids. Yes, yeah, one of the kids, we went after some Hollywood guy who had invested in in, in Newscorp stuff, and one of the kids called up al screaming, you got to get that off. And that was something, something he would like that would happen maybe once every other year, where it's like, you can't go after this person cuz she has a show on Fox or something. But, but by and large, we did 1000s and 1000s of stories and maybe five of those calls, and none of them, none of them seem to come come from him. I mean, I asked my I used to ask my husband that all the time he was you know, he was the app editor at the New York Post nights. So what did you think about that story? And he his answer was like, I don't know. Yeah, published it. I was in near anybody meetings, and I never kind of really ever heard him, you know, he'd be like, Hey, we should be paying more attention. He was kind of like this guy who, who liked like, was seeing the world from 40,000 feet. I mean, he was just as comfortable talking about the British Sterling, as he was about about, you know, France, politics or what's going on. I mean, he was a very worldly, worldly guy on it. And interestingly, he was almost a savant with numbers. I mean, I mean, he was not a young guy. When I was hanging around him. He was he was, he was older and moving a little slow. But the poor guy who ran the business channel, if he ever screwed up on a number, it's like, oh, and the GDP last quarter grew by 1.37%. And it's like, 1.42. And it was just, and he was always right to Rupert was just good for him. So you wrote a story recently, or an op ed about about Disney. And you were talking about how you booked your families, you're going there, you decided not to it seemed like more because it was gonna cost like two grand to get your family in for four days, which, that's a long time to be at Disneyland. Tell me about Disney. I mean, Disney. So Disney is an interesting thing, because the mantle of free speech in the last 10 years, has left Democrats and has gone to Republicans now I'm not I'm not convinced that won't swap sides, right and change around as people's people's fortunes. And Disney Disneyland Disney, in a sense, got canceled a little bit by the right. They went too far. They brought kids in. And a lot of people justifiably freaked out and those on the left are like wait a second, you're supposed to love everybody's everybody's free speech. And now you're now you're going after Disney and criticizing Disney on this what happened to all your free speech model? But on the other hand, we know it was something really effective, something that that kind of stopped them overtly talking about, you know, the Gay Agenda and pushing it to kids and doing some of those. How do you feel about that tactic in a sense that was used by DeSantis and by Republicans? Do do conservatives need to put that kind of pressure on to put balance on the playing field or when it comes down to that? I think it's tough. I mean, the playing field is not fair. And and it never will be. Disney has a lot of cards that we can ever really take from them in a in a massive way. There are a lot of companies like mine, and here's liberty, you know, we're offering an alternative. But we're never going to be the size of Disney. The same is true of any media company on the right. So I think that DeSantis sees that fundamental unfairness, and they're sort of stranglehold on the marketplace. And they're trying to even the playing field a little bit. And I'm honestly and I'm torn, and I, you know, as a commentator, I should have a better answer for you. But I don't, I'm very torn about using the mechanisms of government to tip the scales one way or the other in the business realm, because, you know, today it's DeSantis and Disney. But I'm, I'm as uncomfortable with that as I am about the left doing it against, like the bathroom bill in North Carolina, for example. I think it's all really problematic. And I think that I think that it's it's a game of chicken. And, and it doesn't lead anywhere we really want to go. But the problem is this gamesmanship was started by the left. And so there's an argument that Abigail fryer recently made for her substack and also for the Barry Weiss AppStack. It was republished there. That's an interesting one. And it was a conversation about CPS and drag queen story hour, but it's really the same argument. And it's basically something that Andrew Breitbart used to promote. And it was this idea of like, you have to punch back. And when they punch at you, you have to punch back as hard. And it's a concept that I've always been uncomfortable with, but I don't think is wrong, but maybe I'm just a Willis. I don't know. But they definitely they started they started this fight for sure. San Francisco. San Francisco is officially boycotting most states of the Union. Like 28 states that they're they're boycotting, because of one thing or another. I mean, it's actually become a nightmare, right? It's like, you have to order buses from somewhere. All right, how's this gonna work? I'm sorry, keep going on the on the Breitbart stuff he was he was a friend and I love him. Ya know, so, I mean, that's the thing, like it sort of becomes this, like, inter woven nightmare. And you have to figure out how, how to operate in this constant state of war. And I don't know if there is a dial back, or if it's just, you know, mutually assured destruction. You know, I think we certainly have more of it in the in the media realm more and more. I mean, it's, every year, I opened my eye look at the media landscape, and everybody's gone to the mattresses, you know, the rights gone for the right, the left gone for the right. I mean, when I started at Fox News, it was like, we had Hannity and Colmes, a liberal and a conservative sitting next to each other now, you know, conservative was great looking. And the liberal was was was a nice guy, but what was it? I mean, so it was probably stacked in a little bit. But now you'd never see anything like that. And you don't kind of see anything like that at all, except on on like, long, long podcast, long format, podcasts are kind of an open sign. But, you know, recently so so the January 6 Commission's, I think are you know, from from somebody looking at it from a right of center, it's like they're very, very stacked when they said no, Republicans can't have the people who actually might function as a defense here. And so you ended up with Republicans who hated Trump and Democrats who hated Trump. It was it was to me fair to largely ignore that, because it was a political ad ongoing for days as opposed to something that was that was that was tasked with getting at the truth. Although a lot of truth would come from that, you know, you put somebody up, you talk to them, that is truth out there. It might be coming from an angle. But then I said, Okay, over the weekend, I want to deep dive and figure out what where do I look? And it was hard to say, how do I get all this information that I want to learn about the events here? But I don't want to you know, every time I read a political article, I read it and they say something, and then there's a link, and then I follow the link, and it's like, yeah, you guys really twisted that up. He didn't say it like that, or, you know, I read the transcript of the conversation that you're saying here. When you try to get to something serious if you wanted to, if you wanted to learn everything about or most things about January 6, where would you go? How would you do it? That's a good question, because I'm not interested in doing a deep dive in January 6, because it is such a sideshow at this point. Gosh, where would I go if I wanted to actually swap out you can swap out another another. Another issue on that. I mean, I think that there's there's a handful of reporters who I trust on specific issues that I kind of I go to and so one example is Steven gitau. Ski on guns. Whenever something happens with guns, I know that the TASKI he has a great substack. It's called the reload. And it's, it's fair and it's balanced. And he's not like he kind of he goes at the NRA and he, he's pretty honest about every player at hand. And he's, he's an honest reporter, I think you kind of have to, you have to go with the individual reporters that you trust. And I say this as an opinion writer and tune out the opposites. Yeah, I mean, they have a rule, right? I mean, there's a rule for somebody saying, I see the world this way. Here's the news. You know, you watch if you watch cable news, which, which I really don't watch too much. You know, when you get to the end of the day, it's like, okay, then the news has stopped bubbling out. Now here is, yeah, this person's putting putting his or her spin on it to, you know, to at least at least explain it to a different way. The person who I think I've trusted the most on her reporting with it with January 16, has been Dana Perino on Fox, watching her sort of talk about because she's, she's a very, the straight sort of anchors, and reporters on Fox, I find to be fantastic. Dana is one of them. And, and I always know I can trust her because she does her homework in such an incredible way. And I've seen that up close. And so you know, the stuff that I've seen from her, the five is, I think that the closest thing to what you're describing have like the left and the right, and the conversation and the back and forth, I find the five to be a really great resource to sort of do that deep dive, do they get enough time to I haven't watched it in two years? Did they get enough time to go after each other? Or is it just kind of like Twitter extended, they don't go after each other. And that's something that I like, it's like a really respectful conversation. And they usually have like, six segments, maybe five, and the last one sort of silly and fun. But you can tell they all kind of enjoy each other. And they all respect each other. And it's a it's a good solid conversation where they have stacks of paperwork in front of them, and I'd be terrified to ever do that show. Because the research that goes into it, I know, is really expensive. Or at least I have a big stack of papers and it looks good. So I mean, I know, I know, I know, people who have done the show and it's it's an undertaking, it's a real undertaking. So I mean, I I think that that's, you know, one of the places that I would go to for sure. You mentioned Andrew Breitbart, Andrew helped get Greg Gutfeld into Fox. Oh, I didn't know that. He called me up and Andrew would always call up and be like so excitable, you know, his add rice was usually going off the charts. But he never called up like asking for something for himself. When he called up it was you got to do this story or how can you not be talking about the Pigford clay, you know, and he was like, this, Greg Gutfeld guy is hilarious. He's outstanding. You have to have him he was fired from whatever he was working for a lad magazine, it was like a UK version of maximum or something. And he something about a midget stripper might have been the same person who got him fired. And and he called me up and I looked and got failed, had a blog. Remember when we were really going after al Zarqawi? The terrorist. He had a blog called Al Zarqawi, his mom's blog. And where he would pretend to come in like to Hollywood is Al Zarqawi. His mom and how he would get along so well, you know, they bond on anti semitism and this and that, and he had a picture of I think him in the burqa, it was that was and then I tossed it up to my boss. And eventually, it became that became red I actually before Oh, wow, the five Yeah, that's really neat. So um, so I want to talk about the homeschooling thing. So Keith Olbermann, who, who, you know, it's like, it's like punching kids coming off the short bus because he just is so but he's but he's an angry person. And he has a following. He literally said, because you put homeschool mom in your in your in your Twitter bio. Imagine putting homeschool mom in your bio and not understanding you've just ruined the lives of five innocent children. Do you get that kind of do you get that kind of hate a lot? Do you get that kind of just like, oh, yeah, that's a common thing. Oh, yeah, for sure. So I find it really funny and toothless in a post COVID era. And I think most people do too. Because, you know, three years ago, people used to say that and they had this picture in their mind of homeschoolers cloistered and unsocialized and weird and, you know, over the course of COVID First of all, everyone homeschooled one point or another. But now, I've heard from so many public schools, parents, who are saying, my kid was really screwed by the last two years, and they're in a really, really bad spot. And we're starting to see that bear out. And just the statistics of, you know, where I live in montgomery county. It used to be three years ago that 65 to 80% of middle schoolers were proficient in algebra. Now, it's about 15%. Yeah, it's really bad. And so most public school parents who care and who have been paying attention, wish that they could have been homeschooling instead, and wish that they could homeschool, because they see the injustice that has been done to their children over the course of the last few years at the hands of their schools, and in the hands of their teachers and the unions and everyone. And so that that attack has really lost a lot of its bite. And the the anger that people felt about school choice is pretty much gone. The the sort of sneering tone that people had about homeschooling is pretty much gone. And I think it's because Americans recognize that the public school system is just not serving kids and has not served kids and has really done them dirty in the last few years. But yeah, I mean, I get that for sure. I mean, I, I get it more from a misogynist point of view than you know, I'm doing an injustice to children, because it's like, Hush, Hush Little Mama, go back to your kitchen barefoot and make some, you know, sourdough bread? Not really, not really that I'm like doing an injustice to my children. Because I think people recognize that this point, that I'm not, but I think there's a lot of misogyny about the fact that I dare have a, an opinion while parenting. And so I get a lot of like, well, why aren't you with your kids right now? Why are you on Twitter? And that question is never posed to my husband who is editing in a weekly magazine. And sometimes I'm wondering, like, why are you on Twitter? Why? He never gets that question only I do. And it's it's rooted in misogyny. So what I always would see more is, you know, the homeschooling homeschooling things kind of grew out of out of out of religious movements that I saw, mostly, mostly in America. But let me come back to one thing that you said, because it was a little at odds with itself. And I know there's, there's an answer to that. On one hand, everybody started homeschooling their kids, because they wouldn't let them frickin go to school anymore. And then, on that same hand, you're saying everything, everything kind of sucked for these parents. So what were they doing different or wrong, that a homeschooling parent wouldn't, because we know the homeschooling kids always win the math contests, and especially the spelling bees. It's, yeah, it's almost so I wrote an op ed in April or May of 2020, where I said, and it was for the Atlantic, and I said, stop trying to do a zoom school, it's not going to work, give parents the tools to figure this out on their own, they're already on their own. But the problem was, they sat them down, and they tried to teach reading on Zoom. And they tried to teach chemistry on Zoom. And that's, that's not homeschooling. And what I argued in the Atlantic was teach people how to homeschool, basically, give them a crash course, give them a list of 15 books. And if they're too young to read, then read to them. And, you know, do it on a Sunday instead, like, anything is better than what you're doing. And the there was a lot of pushback saying, like, I have a full time job. But the problem was that these parents were already zoom Butler paying for their kids, if they were too young to be self sufficient. They were already here's my dog, they were already five kids, a husband and a dog and a job and a dog, and he's the best. They were already. They were already involved. And so why not give them the tools and work with parents one on one and say, you know, what are your strengths? And what are your weaknesses? And how can we make this experience work for you and your individual family and your individual circumstances. And so, you know, a family was to working parents, who has to be on their computers all day, are going to have different needs than, you know, a parent. And like, I'm thinking about people that I know, I knew a family where the the dad was a chef, he was out of work, because his restaurant shut down. And so, you know, I think that their kids, teachers should have had a meeting with them and said, Why don't you instead of doing XYZ read these four books with your kids. And also, what are your five, you know, easiest kid friendly dishes? I would love at the end of this semester, to see that your kids can prepare those meals. This is your expertise. Why don't you do that? And there it was just it was I mean this is which is which is really didn't comprehend some. It's math involved. It's It's It's problem solved hands. Yes. Yes. A lot of things. There's a lot of that. Yeah. And so I mean, this is sort of my issue with public education in general is that it was one size fits all. But there were a million situations on every end of that screen. And they didn't take that into consideration. And so, you know, a lot of people say, Well, I don't know how you homeschool and do this, because I did COVID. And like, we are not doing the same thing. My kids are playing most of the day, that it's a very different experience. So when I was younger, I really wanted to homeschool my kids. And it was Bates mainly because, you know, when you're 25, let's say, high school wasn't all that far in the rearview mirror. Right. And you saw and what I saw, you know, we didn't really have all that much work, because there was none of the political stuff. And even when my kids were growing up, I'd read their history books, just to make sure they actually talked about history. And they weren't, they were, they were pretty good. What it was, was jamming people into the convenient thing that a school could do, and teachers could do to deal with 800 kids or what? Yeah, so the concept of I mean, they ruined history for me, I mean, I'm a huge history buff, but coming out of high school, when the history is like, memorize these facts and figures, well, this the treaty a can't. And if they had literally showed me one, if we could just watch a three historical movies a week, you know, watch the Lincoln movie, and then talk about it, I would have, I would have known 15 times more about history, and I loved it and would have opened up in a way that was was just beautiful and brilliant. And and so I was like, oh, I want to do this different. But by the time it came around, it was just like, we can barely keep these kids from from, you know, burning the house down. And and now we're going to throw this extra thing on. Did you want to do that from the gecko? Or was it a COVID? thing? Or? Or was there what kind of got you into it? So we, we were homeschooling before COVID. Thank God. And I was thinking about homeschooling for several years prior to that. So my oldest is finishing second grade, second grade. Yeah, I always forget. And she gets mad at me. But she's finishing second grade. So this is our third year homeschooling, she also homeschooled in kindergarten. And, and I think I started thinking about it. So she's eight, I've probably been thinking about it, since she's two or three. And, you know, we had her and then very quickly, we had our second there 17 months apart. And then we had our third pretty quickly. Also, I had three, three and under for a while. And it was hard. But we were kind of like, you know, we were looking, we're thinking about school options. And I didn't really like any of the options, the public schools weren't very good. They were very politically charged. And, and the private schools we couldn't afford, and they also weren't really good. And they definitely weren't good enough for what we would have been paying. And we we kind of we thought, you know, I think we're stuck in the private school Jewish world. But we already can't afford it with three kids. And we don't want to just have three kids, we really liked this. And we wanted to have more. And so I followed a lot of sort of conservative moms and Christian, whatever on Instagram, and a lot of them homeschooled. And so I sort of started looking into it and paying attention more to their content. And, and really sort of trying to follow more of that kind of content and read more about educational philosophy. And it really sort of opened my eyes and and I convinced my husband. You know, let's just, let's try kindergarten. Let's just see how that goes. And it took a while to convince him and then he you know, we did kindergarten and he became an evangelist, he was so convinced that it was such a great move. Why would you what jumped out? So, you know, we would have sent our daughter on the school bus from like, eight to four. And instead, you know, we sat and we read right out of Psalms right out of Proverbs. We had conversations about it. We read pretty difficult books. I mean, we were reading, not just Charlotte's Web, but you know, I don't know if you've, if you've actually read Peter Pan like the original. It's really difficult. And so, you know, my, I think was last year I read with my then seven, six and four year old and of Green Gables, several of those books, which are also really difficult. And there were a number of times where I would come towards that I didn't even know how to pronounce because I've never said them out loud before. And and so we're sort of seeing, you know, the relationship that our children are forming, that they're not getting the nasty attitudes that they would have picked up from their peers at school, and the kind of education that they're getting is much more more individual and it's much more. It's much more challenging in some ways, but it's also two or three hours instead of eight or nine. And we're kind of, we're liking the lifestyle now, especially with I mean, cuz she was in kindergarten, that was our only real normal year, and then first grade and second grade. And I think it can enter kindergarten, year two, you know, she would have had a very different experience in the schools. And we were really disheartened by how little the schools seem to care about the kids well being even the private schools. There was so much consideration about well, you know, this would make the teachers feel better, and there was no sort of question well, what is this doing to the children though? The best example I can give is teaching them how to read. Can we teach a kindergartener or first grader? The difference between A B and A D? If they can't see our mouths? Is this the right way to teach phonics? There was never those conversations in public or private was like, well, we have the you know, this is this would make everyone feel better. And this, you go with the flow, and there was never sort of said that out loud. Yes, yes. Because that's the sound the inside and, and lie and say, you know, children, just I mean, that's shocking. They're resilient. And so there was never sort of a recognition that like, maybe, maybe we should do phonics outside. There was never those creative sort of solutions made because God forbid, you actually admit that the masks are inhibiting learning, emotional and phonics, everything. And so we sort of saw how little everyone seemed to care. And we obviously care about our children a lot more. And so we thought, you know, we were already sold on this beforehand. And now we're, we're extra sold. And now, if we were to put our kids in school post COVID, we're seeing that and there's an there's a funny, like, funny Not, not funny, haha, but funny, like duh, story and NPR, yesterday or the day before, where they talked about fourth graders who are now performing as second graders, because they've lost two years, obviously. And they treat it as a revelation. And so I think about, you know, my kids are now going into third and second and kindergarten, you know, my my oldest three, they would have a really hard time in a classroom because they're not behind. They've had a very normal last two years. And they've also learned different things have not yet learned different things, I'll be interested. I mean, I existed before standardized testing and after standardized testing, right for teaching. And and I understand why teachers hated it, because it was like, here's the rulebook that you have to know these kids need to know these 30 things. But I saw beforehand, it was just kind of a game of grab, ask the teachers would teach them anything they want, or might not. And that was kind of no way for. So I mean, in, in school changes, putting that to those tests that everybody everybody complains about. And I think with some justification, they really upped the teaching game that the teachers there were like, Oh, now I have a numeric thing that my kids, they test them coming in and test them going out, I can be evaluated on that. And it did actually raise at least the amount of stuff that they were putting them in. But your kids are now learning kind of a different world on that if they went back into that, or even if they take the LSAT, if SATs aren't aren't aren't completely banished for being racially insensitive? Do they think they have that overlap? And or it might not matter at all right? If your kids have a solid education, and it's not what, what the AP testing or some of those other things go it? Was that something you think about? So it isn't it isn't? So I mean, I think so we follow the education philosophy of a woman named Charlotte Mason, she was alive 100 years ago, and she was a British educator. She's a very popular sort of homeschool philosophy. And, you know, she would question What's the purpose of an education? What are we doing here? And I think that that's not a question that we really think about, and she won as, as a society. Are we trying to create compliant people? Are we trying to create cogs in a machine who work? You're trying to create a moral person who can operate in this world with integrity? Is that the role of a school or is that the parent? Like there's so many really sort of esoteric questions at play of that very simple question. What are we doing and what is the purpose of this education? And so, you know, my, my belief, as a homeschooling mother who follows this philosophy is that my job is to create good people, good moral people. But part of that education is teaching them about good moral people of the past and chewing on In these stories, it's very centered in literature. It's very literature based. And so, you know, we read a book about you know, we were talking about Anna Green Gables before, did that person you we have conversations did that person do the right thing? Was there a way that she could have done that better? You can have a lot of those conversations. You know, when we read CS Lewis Chronicles of Narnia, you know, can she forgive her brother Edward after he went in the in the chariot and ate the Turkish Delight? You know, that's, those are hard questions. What do you do with Hunter Biden your crackhead, crackhead son he ate the chicken delight, but ya know that those are excellent. Yeah. All right. And so sorry. So I'll finish on? No. So I mean, I think I mean, we're obviously we're still doing math on level and we're reading these really challenging books. And so the vocabulary is going to be there. And so I think, you know, in this hypothetical LSAT, question, I think they would actually perform very well. I'm trying to remember exactly how much they were pegged around certain facts versus how much it was logic it was it was x y&z It was a lot of vocabulary, and it was a lot of math. And so one thing I really liked about homeschooling also is that you can tailor an education towards the child. And so with math, all of our brains work in different ways. And the way they teach math is so convoluted and weird now that we can sort of choose math curriculum that makes sense. And that works for my kids individually. Do you use any online? What was that guy he shoot, you might know the name of it, he started an online math saying knock is a cool, it's not Kumaon. It's, it's a K word. Knocking Kaplan. Anyhow, it was an interesting concept of, you're never going to progress it because a lot of what would happen was if you'd miss a couple concepts, let's say an algebra, and you kind of didn't understand polynomial equations, then it built then you went on, right, the whole classroom and on the next day, and I know, that's kind of like, and so he did an online thing, which was, which was to supplement teachers, or really to teach the kids the basics of it, they're never allowing them to progress until they had mastered it. And basically, the kids would do their homework in the classes with teachers. I don't know if that, I don't know, whatever happened to that, or I thought it was a brilliant thing. Do you do any online thing like that, or so not with math we do we do a different online program for Jewish Studies. But not for math. I mean, we, as of now, there's still so young that we do math one on one. And the math curriculum that we use is brilliant and sort of spirals like that. And you know, sometimes sometimes, I mean, especially with one of my kids will do two or three lessons in a day. And then there's one lesson that he has a really hard time with, and we'll spend three days on it. And so that's something that you can do when it's much more individual and then you know, as they get older, I mean the sky's the limit on online classes. So one online thing I want you to consider in about five years or so now I know nothing about educational philosophy I'd never heard of Charlotte until you you mentioned her but online fail videos are are hugely important to young people. It's like you know the guy who sticks the fire the fireworks in his in his butt crack and lights it but it doesn't leave and so it puts the fire all in his ass and he's screaming and it explodes all over his head. Let your children watch those let them watch all the dumb fights all of those things because you know I had out of I have three children one is he would have put the firecracker in his okay and it will save him or her now pain suffered will be to be able to see what the other kids did know what could happen if he thinks he can get away with it well, but then at least he'd know I know what I know how to do it better. Now I can solve this problem but you know what? That's better than trial and error. But it will never go in his head to light a firecracker and has asked without that video. You know what? Children i There's no way I know this kid there's no way I'm just saying he's got enough dumb ideas. I don't need sitting at the top of a stair on a bicycle. You think I could probably write down that but what do you see a kid do it on there and how easy it is for them to flip out and look fun. Looks fun. Only if those fail videos have like the emergency room Gore afterwards. That's my only my mom used to thrive man. My mom used to threaten to to and I wasn't I wasn't one of those kids at all. But she would threaten to take me to the hospital ward where the kids who rode their bicycles dangerously were in getting operations. That was an ongoing threat. She was also a a hairdryer. Sir. And as a hairdresser, you talk with all of these these women when you're doing their hair, she was mainly that, and then you hear the stories. So she knew every story of the kid who lost his hand, when he stuck his finger out on the bus or got crushed by something, right? It was like, Oh, my dinners were a little bit of a nightmare. Nightmare thing for us. Okay, so you started to touch on something. And I really want to talk about this, because I think it is, I think it is a wonderful concept. And I want to hear how you started it, how it's going all of this. I'm a huge, huge believer that Americans are. And a lot of this comes out of the educational educational establishment, which is your right kind of run by by and for teachers. We are losing concepts of the values that made this country great the values upon which we were founded, which were rare in the world, they still are rare in the world, which is why I mean, like, when I went to Russia for a college thing in the 80s, they had huge fences to keep people in. I mean, this is one of the very, very few countries in the world that actually is talking about putting up a fence and debating that as a society. Because it's like, the whole world wants to live here, at least a big chunk of of the people and that's, that's part of that's because of our of our immigration in the past. But but it's the fundamental thing was, we had men and women with different values, that, that you can talk about a little bit and we're losing that we you know, it's like, oh, I mean, you read some things. All of these people had flaws in their, in their, in their past all of these people in the 1800s thought stupid shit, right? I mean, it was the by our standards, it's like, yes, you read some Lincoln. Like, it was like, you know, but we're not gonna let them marry white people. And we're not gonna let them vote, God forbid, and we're just gonna stop enslaving them. And you know, see read today, he's a horrible racist. But yeah, in the context of that, so you're doing something to bring some of that back? Tell me tell me how that started and how it's going? Yeah. So we started here as of liberty, like right before, basically Black Friday, November. And we sort of decided, you know, there's a lot of very good conversation happening about books that are bad. There has been a realization over the course of the last year that I think is still happening about just how rotten the the book industry is, in in total, but especially in a children's book industry, you walk into a bookstore into a library, the LGBTQ books that are written for toddlers on up babies on up anti racist baby board books. It's, it's getting more and more disturbing. And so I think that there's a lot of good conversation about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. But on the right, there hasn't been enough conversation about, you know, we're taking things out, we're taking the bad out. But our children will be empty shells unless we start putting things in. And we will only fill them with our values, if we teach them what they are. And they're absolutely not getting them in school. Ruin. So it used to be Yeah, I know. It's shocking, right? So it used to you never know, right? But, I mean, it used to be that you could like, sort of trust the autopilot, that your kids could learn to be a good person. And to, you know, treat everyone with kindness and respect. But the perception of what it means to be a good person, treat someone with kindness and respect is very different now than it used to be. And so kids are being taught that, you know, you have to always use someone's pronouns. And that's what love and kindness is. And I don't think that's necessarily the right thing to do to play into someone else's sort of beliefs instead of reality. So we decided, you know, our kids are not learning about, you know, one of one of our original three books was is about Amy Coney Barrett. And I think it's a great sort of picture into why we started heroes of liberty. And so, you know, you go into a bookstore, and there are 36 copies of different books for children about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, zero about Amy Kony Barrett. And it's obviously because of her politics. And what we wanted to write about wasn't just her life story, which we obviously do, but the underlying theme of that book is about motherhood. And that's, that's not a message that girls or boys are getting now but especially girls, and we talk a lot about, you know, the falling birth rate and a lot of it is because we're teaching girls and young women that motherhood is oppressive and terrible. And you know, it's really it's not a great sell the PR the PR on on family life is not great. And so and the PR guys asking girls out isn't great. Well, thankfully so because they get nailed for it. And so, you know, we wanted to have a book not just about Amy Coney Barrett but also celebrating motherhood because that isn't something that happens now. And so every one of our books sort of does that in different ways. And so the Yeah, so our Thomas soul book is, it's kind of we never say CRT, it's never about, you know, affirmative action or whatever. But it's, it's really about, you know, self it's, it's, we call him the self made man that's sort of the subtitle on the book. And it's about, you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and working hard and earning your, and earning everything you have. We have another book on John Wayne, that's about manhood and honor. And that's also not a message that young boys are getting about how to be a man. Our most recent book is about Rush Limbaugh. And it's about the First Amendment but it's, it's also about the importance of speaking your mind. And that sometimes you say things that people like, and some things you say, sometimes you say things that people don't like. But all of those conversations are valid and worth having, even if some people don't like it. And that's not a message that kids are getting now. Yeah, when I was in when I was in high school and junior high, it was all about Don't do drugs. I mean, they hammered that stuff into us every sometimes too young, you're like, why, you know, we didn't even like people are talking about injecting things. And then this and that, yeah, no, there was a little bit of that. And then by the time we were kind of in high school, they were a little little done with it, when you were when you were seeing it in my kids generation, and they're now in their in their low 20s. It was all about bullying. Don't be a Bully, bully. Once a month, they would have at least and the signs all over and they'd have the big, you know, everybody, and that helped fuel the oh, well, Ann Coulter is coming to campus. And she's a bully because she says some of the things that you just said he with more with more elbows on it. And those then we're the same kids that now our vice presidents at Facebook and Twitter. And that's how a lot of this censorship stuff kind of got so popular because and and and the victimhood it all kind of came out of the bullying movement, which, you know, bullying was no fun. I mean, you know, it was, that's, that's an unpleasant part of growing up. But a lot of parts of growing up are unpleasant. And a lot of times you kind of have to push through that and learn how to deal with it, because you're gonna deal with it at some point at some point in life. Hey, on those on those books, how do you deal with? Or have you had the conversation? I was thinking like, I'm a huge George Jordan Peterson fan, right? I just think he's got a message out there for young men. That is that primarily, not exclusively, but but but that's where it's resonated the most. And he's basically become, I think, a father or a surrogate father, to millions of young guys who haven't heard, stand up straight face of adversity, make your damn bed, get your life in order, you know, before, you know, before you go to other parts of parts of life. And I was like, you know, I would he deserves a statute somewhere I would pay for a chunk of a Jordan Peterson statue, but one of my sons made a point. And he was like, you know, be careful with doing that for people who are still alive. Because their story's not done yet. A they might just kind of never know what how. I mean, you know, some of our justices, Supreme Court justices, you know, radically changed a year or two after they've been on the Supreme Court. I mean, I saw suitors I remember when Republicans were were staunchly defending Souter. And the Democrats were calling him a weirdo because he still lived with his mom, and he didn't have purple hair and all that. And then he just kind of shifted off. Do you think about that when you're when you're, when you're looking at at elevating the theme and to an extent the life of a person who's still alive? Yeah, absolutely. So we have a pretty hard and fast rule that we will not do a book about someone who might run for office one day and so there's no trump book. There's no DeSantis book on the horizon. Most of the people that we've done with the exception of I'm kind of going back in my mind, I think everyone except Amy Coney Barrett and Thomas Sol are dead. Yeah. Thomas Thomas, though is so old. She didn't know in quantity, you know, she could turn herself into one of the one of the gals on the view. It's, it seems unlikely, probably. But I mean, the she's always going to be a mother of seven and that was really what we wanted to highlight. We don't really talk about her constitutional standing that like that's not something we really go into. You know, for the most part, everyone is dead. We are talking about doing any Elon Musk one, which, you know, that could be a little challenging, you know, with that question. But it's also to me important to teach kids about cars, people that they might not necessarily know about. And so I think it would actually be important for my kids to know about Elon Musk. Because he's in the news. Yeah, I was gonna say, but it's, you know, it's funny, as an adult, I also had history as a kid ruin for me as a kid in school. And as an adult, you know, I'm doing a lot more reading, and I'm much, much more history focused, and minded and interested. And I have found pretty much everyone to be a monstrosity of a disappointment, once you actually read about them. And this is the problem of, of sort of making everyone into a perfect person and expecting that because no one will ever stand up to that. And so don't look back. Look back on my own life, and it's like, Dick. Looks like yeah, how could you have done that? Or thought that or said that? You know, like, Yeah, well, I don't know, anymore. I mean, I had that experience reading about Benjamin Franklin and, and Frederick Douglass, especially those two men were pretty big disappointments. Alexander Hamilton, what are Franklin's what was Franklin's foibles he so hit he was off galavanting in France and flirting with women. And his wife was at home literally dying, writing him letters begging him to come home. And he was like, I'm having a really good time in France. And I've just, sorry, it's kind of a bummer in Philadelphia. And then she died. And he never He just abandoned her. And Alexander Hamilton humiliated Elisa with his affairs, Frederick Douglass did basically the same with his wife. I'm sorry, I'm sensing a theme here. I don't like men who treat their wives poorly. I think that it really says a lot about your character. When you treat the person who has born your children and to whom you have the biggest obligation when you treat them that way. It says a lot about you as a person. And so that's hard to read that about people that I admire Frederick valgus, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, because you have to grapple with, oh, he was not maybe that great. In fairness, though, you didn't know how how, how nice or nasty the wife was? Because you ever, ever is a long time? But yeah, it doesn't sound good, especially because a lot of times you can kind of see the letters back. It's like, you know, they didn't have they didn't have phones and what Yeah, yeah, so at least it did burn most of this stuff between her and Alexander. So. But anyway, tell me about the model on this. So you've got a subscription model. And and I'll put up links and all this stuff, that you'd prefer them to go to your website, I would assume that's where you you get the richest cut out of it versus I, I see them on Amazon, but they but sometimes they're not the easiest because easiest to find them. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But and some of them are written by not you. And I put your name in on that. And I'm the editor. I'm not the writer. So that is a tricky thing. So yeah, so I mean, subscription is your best bang for your buck. You can go to here as a liberty.com. And get you know, it's like automated and you don't have to think about it. And you get a book a month. I actually just got my Douglas MacArthur today, and I haven't opened it yet. I'm looking forward to it. Because I haven't seen it in person. I just saw the No, you print it out. And you haven't actually seen it person yet. How long does it How long does the artistic process take on them? I mean, this is this is something that we spend a lot of time and money on, you know, when we were thinking about our vision for what we wanted these books to be. It has to have engaging illustrations, you're just going to lose the kids, right? And so we decided, you know, it's worth it. And it was actually really interesting because on the first five or six books, we had a hard time finding illustrators who would work with us because they were afraid about getting cancelled. Because when they heard they were going to be illustrating books about Ronald Reagan and Amy Coney Barrett, they were like, Oh, I'm suddenly I suddenly have to shampoo my hair for the next three months. To get it off, it's better to get it at the beginning, then all of a sudden, you're looking it's like, did somebody draw sperm on that guy's face? Are you a little hidden things? You know, Disney has to do that for years. I mean, there's still a lot of you know, a lot of still shots of Disney's where you see a naked girl you see that you probably weren't supposed to see and Disney stuff so interesting, though. Yeah, I get you know, get it up. It's I don't want politics to control every part of my life. I really don't I want to go down and go to a restaurant and not think like about the politician and from my personal thing, and I live up in the bay area. So it's, you know, so it's all you know, it's all constantly opposite of what I have what I think now that said, I'm out in Sausalito. It's called We're down and most of it's fine. The question is always like, I'm a big believer, you know, this is America, you can you can be the biggest BLM supporter, you want to do what you want. And and I hope you're doing that out of love. And I think it's a mistake for the black community to try to accomplish the things that BLM was trying to accomplish. It had the reverse effect. Yeah. But it's like, but I don't want to not go to your restaurant in less. The big signs are outside or I mean, there were literally in Fairfax, which is like a hippie community up in Moran, it was like, You're not welcome here if you voted for Trump type. But that was just like that that kind of doesn't feel American to me. So but how do you? I don't know. Maybe? It's it's I wish we weren't in a period where every single thing seems to be all that politicized politicized. But yeah, I don't know if we have an option at this point. I don't think we do. I mean, I think that, I think that we all kind of have to just, we have to decide where our lines are. And, and take them in the sand. And so, I mean, I think that the real challenge isn't the restaurants. It's the family. That's that's really where it gets really tricky. My kids were family and friends. Right? Right. Oh, like your actual family? And yeah, yeah. I mean, family oriented things that you like, oh, no, sort of when it when it when it impacts your family relationships and your friend relationships. What's hardest for me is when it impacts my kids. And so there are like kids in the neighborhood, their parents don't like my politics and my politics are very public. And, you know, my kids stopped getting invited to their birthday parties. And, you know, when they were our literal neighbors, that was really hard to watch a birthday party in the backyard that my kid was not invited to. And they were invited last year. And I know it's because of my politics. And so that's, that's really painful and hard. I was at I was at a funeral today. And the priest said something to the effect of pray for the negative people and keep the positive people in your life. So when so I know that there are things that I don't get invited to. And I always look at that as a blessing in disguise. Yeah. If you're that fucked up, maybe my kid plane over to your house isn't. And that's that's honestly how I feel to to. My kids are getting older now. And they're starting to realize that. But it was very hard when they were three and four. Because that person, right, yeah, yeah. And now that, you know, my oldest is eight. My other one, my young, my second youngest is seven and or my second oldest is seven. And so I can kind of have those more frank conversations with them. You know, that their mom is not a nice mom. And therefore, the kid probably isn't that great either. And they've seen that bear out. Hate to see hate to have to say that. But yeah, yeah. But I mean, they've seen they've seen how the mean mom has a has a daughter who's a very into cliques and very, and so you know, we have a really nice homeschool community of people who are open and welcoming and wonderful. And, and my kids are coming to the conclusion that, that you're just not worth my time. Yeah, well, okay. Well, that's, that's good. I mean, I'm never kind of in your face arguing politics thing, you know, and especially surrounded by this. It's actually it's actually it's helped out a lot to have people who I love have very different political political thoughts from me. Because, you know, I'm, I hate Twitter, because it just brings out the just the evil part of me, it's like, yeah, even the ones that I read on there, there's, there's wonderful things on Twitter, there's just a lot of a lot of crap on it, but it's just, it just it just not enough. It's like, it's like, seeing a bad drunk on there. But in the real world, when you when you have people who you really really like and they just believe something that's fundamentally different, then it's kind of fun if you can just hang out with that person take the time and say what values do we agree on? Why are we disagreeing on this? How does that that come there I don't do it a lot. But when you do it that way, coming from a place of I really liked this person and and I at least want to explain so that he doesn't think that I'm, you know, I hate the environment, because I think the France accord the Paris Accords are wrong, and it's like, okay, well, and some people can't do it. And then it's just like, alright, you just, just just just talk about what Yeah, no, it's funny. I mean, my daughter, her best friend where we used to live. You know, most of my mom friends disengaged for me where we used to live. She was the exception and it was funny because all of them were white upper class liberals. Who like thought I was, you know, automatically racist and awful and everything. Meanwhile, I was way more broke than they were still be racist and broke? That's, I mean, no, but they like they kind of like had this like view like greedy capitalists. I'm like, I would love to be a greedy capitalist, where can I sign up while you're trying. And, you know, the one exception to the people who sort of shunned us, was my daughter's best friend, and the mom is Jamaican, and so she, she's dark, and, and she had way more money than we did. And she lived in this massive, massive house. And her husband is white. And so people thought of him as the man of the house. And all of these white, upper middle class, friends of our, like parents of our, of our kids friends all thought that she was to help, because she was Jamaican, and she lived in a really big mansion. And I never treated her like people, people thought that she was the nanny for a very long time. And, and I immediately recognized that she was obviously the Mama's mother. And, and so she got really indignant, and she was like, I vote the same way as all these jerks. I am more radical than they are. And yet, you're the only one who knew that I'm the mom and not the nanny, the Jamaican nanny. And so she kind of like really was enraged by the hypocrisy. And she, you know, over the course of our kids becoming friends, I mean, our kids were best friends. And people kept on telling her you have to you have, like, you can't be friends with Bethany Mandel. Like she know what she believes. And she's like, Yeah, we talk about it. Have you ever had a conversation with her? You're open minded, right? You're so open minded. You, you are so accepting and so loving? Why don't you have a conversation with Bethany Mandel. And she really defended me, and we're still very good friends, even though we moved three years ago, and our kids barely remember each other anymore, which is pretty sad. But, you know, you know, I almost view when, when I can, when I can be charitable view, people like that as the victims of kind of where our media and where our politics have become. I mean, 10 years ago, you didn't have to automatically say, if that person believes this, she's a bad person. She's evil. She doesn't like XY and Z, and all this. Between Twitter between, you know, whatever channel that you might be watching on cable news between between most of the kind of social and political inputs you have coming in your life. They, they push that notion they push us too much into, if you believe this, you're either a complete idiot, or you're, you're an evil person. And yeah, I just see that it's not. That's not an excuse for people treating each other like crap, but it's a reason why I see that going on more and more. Yeah, I guess I mean, I'm not sure because I think I've I mean, I'm 36 I think I've mostly lived in this ecosystem, unfortunately. So it's hard to know what before times was like, but I mean, I see these people and they're just lazy, angry people. And I think that they we would have had lazy angry people regardless. And this is just how they get out their feelings of superiority is, is through their politics, whereas they, you know, there's 100 years ago, yeah, 100 years ago, it might have been their finances or whatever. Yes. Or they would have been screaming at you because you were the wrong color. Or because you shouldn't have been you shouldn't be studying at this school with a vagina. No, I mean, they are. I mean, my you saw them. COVID right. Say it. You saw it when COVID came out. The The harpies had a reason to live. Oh, I had one day but that today, did you? I had one neighbor, it's just like, she she just needed drama in her life. Right? Yep. And and man, when COVID came, she got to put the cape on and and just became an insufferable. I tweeted today, I was like, what are the people doing? Who used to yell at me and my kids in the supermarket in the library, whatever. Like, there, we got yelled at all the time because I never wore my mask properly. I didn't care. My children never wore masks. And people used to yell at me and my children. And I'm like, how are you getting that out now? Because obviously, you had it really bottled up and you really need it to just like, rage at strangers and how are you getting it out? Now? If he comes back in November, if he had declared in November, like just on anger in public, not just you know, mad at Trump, but like, they had to yell at someone. Right? Where's that anger and outgoing? I'm curious. Yeah, well, we'll find out well, there'll be yelling at something. Or you don't have to yell at well, yeah, that. I mean, you see, you almost see sides of the political especially one side that seems to be especially angry these days. Go Long on from and I guess you would see it on the on the right as well. You know you have you know, I mean who was talking about about not strip shows what the drag queen, you know that wasn't a thing even though that was going on on for years it what do you stand on that? I mean, obviously I want to track let me let me let me make it particularly should I care on a governmental level or or kind of a more than just, you might be fucking up your kids. If somebody takes their nine year old to go to one of those over the top things. I mean, I mean, I wouldn't send my kid I think over sexualizing kids at a young age as a problem, whatever, wherever you're going with that. But on the other hand, if somebody thinks differently on that, and I have a pretty high bar of it's your child, and yeah, that is my budget. So I don't know, you know, so I see him saying, Okay, we might make that illegal in whatever state, probably Florida. What do you think about that? I'm very, very deeply uncomfortable with it on so many levels. weaponizing the state against parents rights is not a road, we want to go down. People, I think I maybe it's, I think there's there's some self protection. But if you're friends with enough foster parents, you've heard some stories. And the idea that this is child abuse is honestly really insulting to children who have experienced actual child abuse, because the stories that I've heard from friends that are foster parents are bone chilling, and we should not be using the precious resources of CPS to focus on people who are bringing their kids to questionable events. Because, you know, is someone going to call on me for bringing my kids to a gun range when they're 10? Where's where the sky's the limit? Right? Yeah, you got all sorts of problems. Yeah. Where? where's that going to religion, the guns, the homeschooling? Yeah, no. And so I mean, I've had people threaten to call CPS and, and I think, honestly, we've probably gotten calls. But CPS has never even bothered to call us let alone knock on our door because they're dealing with actual abuse. And we should leave them to deal with actual abuse. That makes a whole lot of sense. And I you know, you most screwed up kids. Their parents had a role in screwing that up. Not all Well, yeah, but they're screwed up because of our parents. Every single one of us has screwed up because of our parents. I just liked myself enough where I don't feel that but that could be my but maybe pride is my is my screw up your narcissism. I mean, I know I'm a narcissist. That's why we're doing this, like everybody is a little bit of a narcissist, when I think we're extra narcissists. Maybe, but you get a you get a sore tooth. And it's like, what are you thinking that children starving in South China or your sore tooth? I mean, we all we all kind of, kind of, you're right, I ran for office once, and, like 20 years ago, and and that's a big kind of psychological hurdle, that you have to kind of have, you got to really be be confident in yourself at a minimum and full of yourself at an average, to kind of say, you know, who should really be running this place? Me. So here's my name, I make it signs up. It's, it's, it was a good experience, but it was. But it was an interesting one. And it definitely was like, there was a great documentary, I think it was 20 feet to stardom, it was about the backup singers for for, for, for popular bands, right? And how different the lives of somebody who were 20, you know, 10 steps or whatnot behind the main singer singing that was a very, very different psychological jump to go up, you know, to go to that next stage of being the person in the arena with the spotlights on I mean, look, look what you face. Because you, you know, because you push out the thoughts that you do, look at how many negative and a lot of positive things come and come come from that obviously, for sure. But a lot of negative things come come from it as well. Which, which, that's not the easiest thing. Yeah, yeah. It was funny. I was having a conversation with somebody on Shabbat lunch last week, and they're like, great job. People pay you to write books and talk about things McKenna people also call CPS on on me for XYZ too. How did you? How did you find out? Because they said it? There was a whole there was a whole conversation on Facebook that it was people that with whom I have a lot of mutual friends in common. And there was a whole people sent me screenshots of it because they said Just FYI, I want you to know that these people are talking about how to report you to CPS, and what was their primary I don't want to dig into too much. But what was there what was their worst thing about you that they look so sad? I said, I'm okay with my kids getting COVID This was back in late 2020. I said, I'm looking at the psychological impact of what we're doing to Children and I'm looking at what we're seeing physically with this virus, and I'm gonna choose the virus. I'm not locking my kids down. I'm not making them wear masks. I'm giving them a normal childhood. And if they get COVID, that's okay. And yeah, no, I completely agree with that. I lost my dad to COVID. But he was nine years old, he was 90 years old. It's a different risk profile. It's a different risk profile. i If, if stores wanted me to wear masks, I would always wear a mask. I wasn't that kind of a guy. But I thought it was mainly theater. I mean, yes, I worked under my name is gonna, this is gonna get banned. By by, I mean, literally, YouTube has has the algorithms you see just today. They they pulled down some of the some of the nine, some of the one six hearings that the Democrats put up, because they had a clip of Trump saying that he felt the election was stolen from him. And they're like, so they pulled down the whole thing, because Trump was in there. And they were like, you can't even question that, which I just find that. It's crazy. That's how you break godersi. It's exactly how you how you break conspiracy. And look, you know, I don't want to belabor that thing. There was a lot of scary stuff that he did. And I think he would have been pretty happy with a coup. And I think he kind of did his ham handed way. But I have so ignored it for so long, because the media has cried wolf every third day that it's like, oh, you're impeaching him again, it's like the first one. It was just And as they have lost credibility when they're important things. I still don't trust them. And and, and that's not good. And that's why I spent the weekend kind of digging into that stuff. Because it's like, you know what, I've ignored this from the get go because I saw it live. And I saw enough and I don't trust the way these people spend things. But it's it's sad that we have such diminished expectations and for, for our public entities. Yeah. And you know, in the last couple years, it was the FBI and the health services we saw. Yeah. And that's good. I mean, we're also seeing it, you know, we're seeing this one six commission at the same time as people trying to just literally shut down the Supreme Court and kill Supreme Court justices. So it's a little bit hard to take it seriously. When when we're so breathlessly focused on something that happened six months ago, and completely ignoring what's happening right now. I mean, the fact that there hasn't been a serious look at how COVID started, is just mind blowing to me that a million Americans died of this thing. I mean, it was a real thing, right? Yeah, and Fauci in the sciences. There is a very good reason to believe that their funding went into that lab where at least from a lab, and that's my favorite, my favorite commentary on that was from John Stuart. Mill said think he was on I think he was on he was on some some humor show, I don't remember what it was. And he said thank God for science for saving us from science. And he just like he went over how absolutely ludicrous it is to think that this virus that originated in Wuhan is unrelated to Han. Winky deck Yeah, it's absurd then when we look at SAR and then when you looked at the the NGOs that were funneling money that we couldn't funnel straight from that to well, we're it's it's not we're not weaponizing it but we're making it more likely to kill and to spread. They don't want to they don't want to actually pin it down because then China will have to have consequences and that's going to be really painful or America will have consequences again, we I mean, we will feel we were working arm and arm with those guys to get that stuff done. And yeah, you know, the concept that it wasn't the very top the very top politicians at the at the health agencies. Yeah, probably probably not the case. I'd watch that. I'd watch that commission. I remember we might get it under President DeSantis and three years