0:01

This is Andrew. Welcome to

0:03

Keen on America. On

0:06

July 4, 2026, America will be 250 years

0:12

old. An anniversary that

0:14

will, no doubt, be

0:16

greeted with a mixture of

0:18

celebration, contemplation, and

0:21

resignation. In

0:24

Keen on America, we talk to

0:27

prominent US citizens, not just about

0:29

their country's past and present, but

0:32

also about its future. What,

0:35

I ask my American guests,

0:38

will be the 21st century fate

0:40

of their now venerable

0:43

republic. Hello,

0:46

everyone. Welcome to Keen on America,

0:48

where I talk to very, very

0:50

prominent Americans about themselves, their work,

0:53

their sense of their country's past

0:55

and future. We've had a very,

0:57

a couple of wonderful shows in

1:01

the last couple of weeks. One with

1:03

the UC Berkeley sociologist, Arlie Russell Hothchild.

1:05

Many of you will be familiar with

1:07

her book, Strangers in Their

1:09

Own Land, a very influential book

1:11

about how to breach the divides

1:13

in America between the coasts and

1:15

the interior. And then earlier

1:18

this week with Felton Henderson,

1:20

the first black judge in

1:22

California, an enormously influential figure

1:24

on legal history. And

1:27

what tied Arlie Hothchild and

1:29

Felton Henderson together, in my view, is

1:31

that they both articulated

1:34

their coming of age in the

1:36

1960s, during the civil

1:39

rights marches

1:41

and movements and politics

1:43

and indeed even violence.

1:45

And my guest today

1:47

is a particularly distinguished

1:49

American, Sarah Paretsky, doesn't

1:51

need much of an

1:53

introduction. She's one

1:55

of America's leading writers and arguably

1:58

it's leading crime writer. She's

2:00

the inventor, of course, of VI

2:02

Wachowski, the great

2:05

female detective. And

2:07

I was listening to Sarah on

2:10

another podcast on the Axe Files

2:12

with David Axelrod. And

2:15

in a wonderful conversation she

2:17

had with David, Sarah, like

2:20

Arlie Hochschild and Felton Henderson,

2:23

spoke about her coming of age in

2:25

the 1960s during civil

2:29

rights demonstrations in Chicago. So I thought that

2:31

might be a good place for us to

2:33

begin with, Sarah. Perhaps

2:35

you might talk a little bit about

2:37

that. I know you've already talked to

2:40

Axelrod on it, but you can, I'll

2:42

take you, you can enrich that conversation

2:44

with our audience. Thanks

2:46

very much, Andrew. Excuse

2:49

me. I came to Chicago. I

2:51

was 19. I had

2:53

grown up and lived in Kansas. Actually,

2:57

I grew up in the country. So

3:00

I was a rural person coming to

3:02

the big city for essentially the first

3:04

time. I answered a call

3:06

from the local civil rights leadership looking

3:08

for college students that they could embed in

3:10

neighborhoods and help respond to what they

3:12

knew was going to be a violent

3:15

summer. I don't think anyone knew that it would

3:17

be as violent as it became with white

3:20

riots, protesting any, any

3:24

expansion of the very limited rights that

3:26

African Americans had in the city. So

3:31

I worked for a man, a Presbyterian

3:33

minister named Tom Phillips, who was probably

3:35

the best manager I ever worked for

3:37

in the many years that I spent

3:39

in corporate life. And

3:42

he had us so involved in the

3:45

community, in the city that even

3:47

though I'm not sure we did much good

3:49

with our immediate, our

3:51

immediate charge, which

3:53

was to try to do

3:55

soft propaganda with some 60, 6 to 10

3:57

year olds in the city. the

4:00

neighborhood on alternatives

4:02

to diversity, and alternatives

4:05

to rock throwing as a way of

4:07

handling a diverse population. But

4:09

he got so involved in the city

4:11

that when I graduated from university, the

4:13

next year I came back and Chicago

4:15

became my home. In

4:19

our conversations with Ali and Sal and

4:21

others in this series, we focused on

4:24

that experience and the experience of what

4:26

it meant to be an American. Did

4:28

you define or redefine yourself

4:30

as an American in the 60s as

4:33

you went through the civil rights, both personally

4:35

and politically, you went through the civil

4:40

rights era? I

4:43

grew up, I'm the

4:45

grandchild of immigrants, not the

4:47

child of immigrants, but my

4:49

grandparents who were Eastern European

4:51

Jews, made it to

4:53

America by the skin of their teeth.

4:56

Everyone in their families who was behind

4:58

in Europe was murdered in

5:00

the Shoah. I

5:02

grew up with a particular vision

5:04

of America as this place,

5:07

this beacon

5:10

of hope, freedom,

5:14

liberty, and so on. I think

5:17

for me, the 60s were

5:19

both a time of incredible

5:21

hopefulness, seeing possibility and also

5:23

having to reorganize everything I

5:26

thought about this country. As

5:28

I began to see the

5:31

deep underlying inequities that

5:34

both racism coming

5:37

around as a result of slavery, but

5:40

also as a result

5:42

of European Americans treatment

5:44

of indigenous peoples. It

5:46

was really quite

5:50

unsettling. When you talk about a

5:52

divide between maybe right

5:54

and left in this country, I think

5:57

you could go either way if your

5:59

brain was... was being jumbled by

6:01

all these experiences that were unsettling

6:03

what your own childhood upbringing

6:06

had been teaching you about the country. I

6:09

can see you might easily go to the right

6:11

as well as to the left. Do

6:14

you think that... any

7:25

good result from anything you learned

7:29

whereas maybe coming as

7:32

I did even from a position of relative

7:35

privilege, I

7:39

still had grounds for hope maybe. Let

7:43

me sharpen that question. It was a bit vague at

7:45

first. You came from Kansas,

7:47

so the quintessential American

7:49

state right in the middle of the

7:52

country, presented in all sorts of different

7:54

ways throughout American culture. Was

7:57

That, and I'm using this word, maybe you'll correct

7:59

me, was the disappointment... Them with America that

8:01

you learned as you growing up did

8:03

not inform your work and particular your

8:05

your your your your writing. Eyes

8:08

darted my public writing career quite

8:10

a bit later, so I published my

8:12

first novel when I was in my

8:15

thirties and by then. I

8:18

was working at that time for

8:20

a multinational. Financial. Services

8:22

Company mostly where I was

8:24

where he was have insurance,

8:27

Property Casualty you mostly corporate

8:29

insurance and I started writing

8:31

at the end of the

8:33

Nixon era. So. I

8:36

went to work for this big company

8:38

of right in the wake of the

8:41

Watergate hearings. And that.

8:43

Was probably a more immediate.

8:46

Sharpening of how. I was looking at

8:48

both the corporate world and the way that.

8:51

That. Is played. On

8:53

and. New

8:56

to give you a specific

8:58

example: Workers' Compensation Insurance Companies

9:00

by it. So. That if

9:02

a worker gets injured on

9:05

the job, That insurance covers

9:07

hospitalization, rehab. All those things.

9:09

But nobody wants to pay

9:11

insurance. Claims in companies fight

9:13

them and insurers fight them.

9:16

So that this insurance which is supposed

9:18

to be for the benefit of people

9:20

working for a company is very hard

9:23

to get and often years will go

9:25

by before someone. Has been injured on

9:27

the job. can get insurance some. Seen

9:29

this from the inside out. And

9:32

that I don't know. I I mean you

9:34

have a. British. Accent.

9:37

So I'm not sure whether you broadcasting more

9:39

in the Uk are more here but if

9:41

you. If. You're new

9:43

If you're in America, is getting

9:45

health care? Is this really. Sorry

9:48

to get and it's really hard to pay for.

9:51

It much more so than it was four years ago.

9:53

But. who is still hard them

9:55

so one of our the companies

9:57

that we insured They

10:00

were a manufacturing company, and

10:03

one of the people who worked there was

10:05

a man whose daughter had a heart problem

10:07

and needed surgery that the family could not

10:09

afford and could not get insurance for. So

10:12

he cut off his fingers in

10:14

the table saw that he was using so that

10:18

he could get compensated for the loss

10:20

of his hand, and so that he

10:22

could afford to pay for his daughter's

10:25

surgery. My

10:27

company went and investigated

10:29

that, as the cat in the hat

10:31

said, with long rakes and red bats,

10:34

and found out that this was a

10:36

deliberate accent and denied coverage. So this

10:38

guy's daughter could die and

10:40

he could be out of work forever.

10:43

And so it was more experiences

10:45

like that, up close and personal,

10:48

that really began informing

10:50

my writing more

10:52

than meta concepts of

10:55

country and right, wrong,

10:57

justice, injustice. So

11:00

you've got a new VI Warshavski

11:02

or Warshavski, depends

11:05

whether I'm talking to Americans or Poles

11:07

or British people, a new

11:10

book coming out next week, Pay Dirt, which

11:12

in a sense in terms of its narrative

11:15

is a return to American history. Do

11:18

you think of it in that

11:20

way? A re-examination or a rethinking or

11:22

a reminder to your readers

11:24

of some of the

11:26

darker moments in American history? I

11:31

grew up in Kansas, as everyone knows by

11:34

now, and Kansas came into the Union as

11:36

a free state on January 29th, 1861. And

11:42

that was the ultimate trigger that caused

11:44

the South to fire on Fort Sumter

11:46

and secede from the Union. I

11:50

grew up thinking that we

11:52

had been so heroic and wonderful. I

11:55

was four years old when my family moved

11:57

to Kansas. We Celebrated the

11:59

centuries. Cameo of the town. We

12:01

acted out pro slavery forces controlled

12:04

access into Kansas Territory and we

12:06

girls acted out the anti slavery

12:08

women who silver bullets into their

12:10

petticoats to smuggle munitions pass the

12:13

slavery forces in into Kansas Territory.

12:15

My family stayed for the first

12:17

three nights we live there. We

12:19

stayed in the hotel that had

12:22

been the headquarters of the anti

12:24

slavery forces. Then.

12:27

So I'm a very smart partner and

12:29

seventy six now. so we're talking. You.

12:32

Know seventy years. I

12:35

read a book called i'm. A

12:39

this is not dixie by

12:41

a Brit camps knee and

12:43

in it he detailed. The.

12:46

Amount. Of linked scene and torture

12:49

and property Caesar and so on

12:51

that took place in Kansas in

12:53

the wake of the Civil. War

12:56

and. I think it

12:58

was just another one as it is

13:00

like Clinton's Samak. Awakenings.

13:03

Says I wish I knew that the town that I

13:05

grew up in. Was. Certainly.

13:07

Had it's racial. Divides,

13:10

There was not a very large African

13:12

American population there, but there were plenty

13:14

of. Plenty. Of battles

13:16

were fought over civil rights in

13:18

my home town. But.

13:21

This was. This

13:23

book just opened my eyes in

13:25

a. In. A painful way

13:27

and in a depressing way. To

13:30

to the reality on the ground throughout.

13:33

The country really throughout the upper. Midwest for

13:35

sure. Not so much. The. Western

13:37

States, but for sure the Midwestern states

13:40

and you know I thought this is.

13:42

I don't see how we're ever going

13:44

to move past this as a country

13:46

have were ever. Oh

13:50

I'm sorry I'm thinking things that the

13:52

going on my head for a long

13:54

time. If you're an African American, In

13:56

America. In Chicago, In anywhere in America, you're

13:58

going to pay a premium. of about 30% more

14:02

on a mortgage for a house than you will

14:04

for the same time. Yeah, we just did a

14:06

show on that actually yesterday. So, you know,

14:08

it's just one injustice

14:10

after another. And I'm thinking

14:14

too much of the country, too much of the

14:16

white part of the country grew up where this

14:19

kind of racial violence

14:21

was just normal. And how

14:24

are we ever going to move past it and

14:26

have a more equitable

14:29

country unless we really are – unless

14:32

we can really think about it and come

14:34

to terms with it? And so I suppose paid

14:37

– oh, God. Now I'm making it sound

14:39

like a really boring kind of sermon of

14:41

a novel, and I hope it's not. I

14:43

hope it's entertaining for people. No, I

14:46

think everyone knows you don't write boring sermon

14:48

like certainly detective novel. But

14:50

I got my first hate letter this morning.

14:52

Oh, you did? You've never had one before?

14:55

Oh, my God. No, I mean my first hate letter for

14:57

painters. And it hasn't

14:59

even hit the bookstore. What did they say?

15:03

They said, this

15:06

went straight into the garbage because it

15:08

is garbage. When

15:12

I read a mystery, I want to be entertained. I

15:14

don't want to lecture on wokeness. And

15:17

I thought, God, there's no wokeness in this book. In

15:19

fact, my one

15:21

school teacher gets fired or even

15:23

tiptoeing close to wokeness. He

15:26

should have been excited to be supporting her

15:28

local school board. Well,

15:30

I'm sure you're going to get – hate letters are

15:32

good. It shows that you're having an impact.

15:35

Sarah, I'm sure

15:37

you're horribly bored by comparisons

15:40

between yourself and VI Varshevsky

15:42

or alter ego. Varshevsky,

15:45

if you're in Poland. Oh, Varshevsky,

15:48

if we're in Poland. And

15:50

we do have some Polish listeners. You

15:53

know, you're alter ego or maybe you're her

15:55

alter ego or she's yours. But I

15:58

don't want to get into that. your

16:00

creation, do you think,

16:02

and she's known for being pretty

16:04

tough and unshockable, was

16:07

she shocked by some of these stories

16:09

from the Civil War that pay dirt

16:11

gets into? I

16:14

think she feels overwhelmed more

16:17

than shocked. I

16:20

think she's she's close to being

16:23

killed for her investigation. She's sitting

16:25

in a coal-fueled

16:31

power plant that was supposed to

16:33

be mothballed and is just coming

16:36

creakily back on the stream and

16:38

she's supposed to die there and

16:40

she's just

16:42

feeling overwhelmed and depressed more

16:44

than shocked. What

16:48

could shock her if she's not shocked

16:51

by this? I think

16:53

that what would shock her would

16:55

be so that

16:59

there's my stories often

17:02

very predictably have evil

17:05

billionaires in them and

17:07

then I'm thinking the governor of Illinois,

17:09

JB Pritzker, he's a billionaire and really

17:12

we're so in love with him we can't

17:14

believe what a good job he's doing, how

17:16

much he's doing for women and all these

17:18

things are like, is there a billionaire that

17:20

we really want to hug and kiss? But

17:23

in my books those are not the kind

17:25

of billionaires who show up and

17:28

what would shock her would be if

17:31

these billionaires would suddenly have a

17:33

so-called come-to-jesus moment and think, oh

17:36

my god we were doing

17:38

all these wicked things and now we're

17:40

going to stop because we

17:42

have all this money and we could do some good

17:44

with it instead of killing

17:47

more people to make ourselves even richer,

17:49

that would shock her. Well

17:51

I don't think that's gonna come is it? She's not

17:53

gonna be shocked. Probably not but you never know. Well

17:57

hopefully one day. Will

18:01

it ever end this history, Sarah? I mean, it's

18:03

been going on now for more than 200 years.

18:08

More, really, obviously, if you include the history

18:10

of slavery. Is

18:13

there any hope, not

18:15

only in the book, but in your

18:17

own reading of American history that we

18:19

can get beyond this, not

18:22

just this original sin, but this

18:24

terrible wound within the country? Well,

18:29

I think it's

18:31

possible, but you would have to have

18:33

people like the

18:35

so-called former guy stop

18:39

fomenting a sense

18:42

of grievance among

18:49

some of America's white

18:51

population. The

18:53

thing that gives me hope, if

18:55

I have to live without hope, I might as

18:57

well stop living. But when I

18:59

see the

19:02

amount of energy

19:04

that young people of all races

19:07

and genders and so on

19:09

are putting into working

19:12

for the country, trying to work on...

19:15

Some are working on healthcare, some are

19:18

working on climate, some are working on

19:21

just getting out the vote,

19:23

not just. But I

19:27

think there's a

19:29

tremendous amount of optimism, even

19:32

while they're scared about what the future is

19:35

holding for them. Tremendous amount of

19:37

energy. And I feel like that was kind

19:39

of my generation, too. It

19:42

was a very tall mountain to climb, but

19:46

we really thought that if we put enough

19:48

energy into it, we could climb that mountain,

19:50

we could make a difference. And I think

19:52

we did make a difference to some degree,

19:56

even if not as big a degree as is needed.

20:00

So yeah, I have

20:02

some hope, not, I

20:04

mean, I'm terrified actually, I'm terrified looking at

20:07

November, but if

20:09

we can get past November, I think

20:12

maybe we can start to rebuild. When

20:15

it comes to hope, do you think that your

20:18

dominant genre, the crime

20:20

novel, is

20:22

it a good vehicle or is it

20:25

a vehicle that's not really ideal for

20:27

hopeful messages and hopeful people?

20:30

You know,

20:33

there's a Mexican crime

20:35

writer, and I don't, I've lost touch

20:37

with him, so I have to say,

20:39

honestly, I don't know if he's still

20:41

alive, Paco Taibo, T-A-I-B-O, who

20:47

felt that in Mexico, the crime

20:50

novel was the only possible political

20:52

novel because it was the one

20:55

form of fiction that was, flew

20:57

below the radar, censors weren't interested

20:59

in it. And

21:01

I think in a broad

21:04

general way, the crime novel

21:06

can do things that general

21:08

fiction can't do. It can

21:11

talk to people about law

21:14

and justice because

21:16

that's where they naturally occur. They naturally

21:18

occur on the pages of a crime

21:20

novel. I'd say that way

21:23

too many crime novels are more

21:26

concerned with graphic sex and violence than

21:29

they are with actually even

21:31

telling much of a story, but

21:33

that if you're really trying to tell a good story,

21:36

then you're showing how people

21:38

are reacting in the

21:41

middle of the most extreme things that can

21:43

happen to them. If you're taking that seriously,

21:45

then the crime novel is the

21:48

best kind of book to write and to

21:50

read. I

21:52

mean, as you noted earlier, your good is a good

21:54

is, your bad is a bad is, but what about

21:56

in a book like Patricia

21:59

Highsmith's... Ripley series, I

22:01

was just watching the series on

22:03

Netflix this weekend when the

22:06

hero isn't really a hero. Right.

22:13

I think you're looking at someone who

22:15

is an extraordinarily gifted storyteller and she

22:17

could take us on a journey to

22:19

anywhere. What do you think

22:21

VI would think of Tom Ripley? Oh

22:25

gosh, I think VI, I

22:27

think Tom Ripley would look at her

22:30

and say, ìA petit bourgeois.î She

22:34

has such a middle class sense

22:36

of morality and right and wrong

22:39

and he was someone who could

22:41

certainly rise above all that. Words

22:43

sink below it, I'm not sure which. Anyway, sidestep

22:45

it. And I'm afraid that that's where

22:47

she and I are most alike. I

22:50

feel like I'm just specifically a victim

22:55

of middle class morality. What's

22:58

wrong with that? Well,

23:00

it's where I live so better be okay.

23:03

And what is middle class morality for

23:05

you? Knowing the difference between good and

23:07

evil? Say what? Knowing

23:10

the difference between good and evil? I

23:12

asked you what middle class morality or

23:14

what you call petit bourgeois morality? No,

23:17

I think I was thinking of Liza

23:20

Doolittle's father and his being a victim

23:22

of middle class morality

23:24

and being forced to get married, which

23:29

I think it used to have everything to

23:31

do with sex, but now today to

23:33

me it feels like more

23:36

like justice.

23:41

You know, so there's a passage and I think

23:44

it's the prophet's name as it

23:46

might be, Myca where it talks about

23:48

justice. Being

23:50

like a plumb line making the earth

23:53

lineup in

23:56

a straight way and that when you lose

23:58

that plumb line, you're

24:00

willing to do anything for

24:02

money or power, then you've

24:05

lost your sense of justice. And

24:09

the plumb line is no

24:11

longer holding the earth steady. And

24:14

to me, that's what real morality is,

24:16

is a commitment to justice,

24:19

but not justice without charity.

24:24

Another show I was watching or rewatching

24:26

recently with Ken Burns, his wonderful documentary

24:28

about the Jazz Age in which Kansas

24:32

really features centrally. Really,

24:35

I didn't watch it. You should see it, it's

24:37

really good. But now

24:40

when we read about Kansas, we

24:43

don't read about it as a cultural center. I

24:45

was there a few years ago at the Truman

24:47

Center to do some interviews, and

24:50

it struck me as a place without much of

24:52

a heart, literally, physically, at least the city. What

24:55

happened to Kansas, Sarah? What

24:59

happened? First of

25:01

all, I'm sorry to be a nitpicker, but the Truman

25:03

Center is in Missouri. I apologize.

25:06

Not in Kansas, we're too moral for the, no,

25:09

sorry. But

25:12

if you're in Kansas City, if

25:16

you're in Kansas City, Kansas, you

25:18

get one version of

25:20

the history of the Civil War. And

25:23

this is today, right now, 2024. If

25:25

you're in Kansas City, Missouri, you get a

25:28

very different version. And

25:30

those have to do with the

25:32

two states' histories as slave state

25:35

versus free state. So

25:38

as to what happened to Kansas,

25:43

I can't answer that question because I

25:45

don't know. But Kansas

25:49

had a pretty alt-right governor named

25:51

Brown Beck. And

25:54

I can't even remember how long ago, 15

25:57

years ago, something like that. I think it was during the

25:59

W years. It might

26:02

have been during the early Baroque years.

26:04

Anyway, every state

26:07

has the opportunity to

26:10

have a state arts

26:13

association, and Kansas did. And

26:16

if you have a state arts association, the federal

26:18

government will give you $8 for every dollar you

26:21

spend on the arts. So little

26:23

theaters, little music groups, every

26:25

kind of arts group you can imagine,

26:28

flourished in little Kansas towns

26:30

because we had this arts

26:32

council. I

26:35

was invited down, given an honor

26:38

of being an outstanding Kansas

26:40

writer, and the

26:43

same week that the governor decided

26:45

to close the Kansas Arts Council

26:47

so that we weren't beholden to the

26:49

federal government for money anymore. So

26:52

I was part of a lobbying effort

26:54

to try to get the legislature to

26:56

overturn this, and all

26:59

the people from the little towns who had

27:01

little theaters and all these things, were there

27:03

testifying in vain because

27:05

nothing was going to change either

27:08

the legislature or the governor. And

27:11

then they would go home and vote for

27:13

these people again and

27:15

not see the connection between

27:19

what they were depriving their town of

27:21

and what they were voting into office.

27:25

So I don't

27:27

know that, I

27:29

just think that operating

27:32

on people's fears has

27:37

proven so successful for

27:39

so many centuries, really, not

27:43

just in Kansas, but everywhere.

27:46

I think one of the

27:50

most depressing and

27:54

grief-inducing books I ever read

27:56

was Isabel Wilkerson's cast, talked

28:00

about how Hitler studied Jim Crow

28:02

laws as he was ramping

28:04

up for the final

28:07

solution and how you get,

28:10

how you can get an entire country on

28:12

board with something truly disgusting

28:16

and horrific just

28:19

by operating on their fears. And

28:23

so I don't know, now

28:26

I'm depressed. What time is

28:28

it? Is it time for me to jump out the window yet?

28:32

Don't do it on screen.

28:34

Yeah, I saw the, did

28:36

you see the Wilkerson, the film

28:38

about the Wilkerson book? No,

28:40

I haven't yet. Good. A

28:43

couple more questions and then we'll let you jump out the

28:45

window. It'll be your fault

28:47

too, Andrew, for sending you out. Yeah, I'd say

28:49

responsibility. Although I'm more like Rick Lee in that

28:51

sense. I won't really feel that bad. Yeah,

28:55

Petit-bourgeois, look at her, she can handle

28:57

the truth. Did

29:00

you ever read Thomas Frank's book about what's

29:02

the matter with Kansas? No, I can't explain.

29:05

Do you have any thoughts on his thesis?

29:08

I can't explain why I didn't read it.

29:11

Maybe I found it too threatening. I'm

29:13

certainly aware of it. Yeah,

29:15

it's an interesting book and Frank's been on the

29:17

show. One more question and then we'll end with

29:19

America. I'm not going to give away all the

29:22

plot because we want everyone to buy paid dirt

29:24

next week when it's out. But one

29:26

thing that I thought you're very pressured on

29:28

is one of the pieces

29:31

of the narrative features female

29:33

college basketball and of course last

29:35

weekend female college basketball broke all

29:37

the records. More people are watching

29:39

the girl basketball than the

29:41

boy basketball. Did you predict

29:44

that? Are you a sports person?

29:47

I follow women's

29:50

college basketball and

29:53

I've just been very excited to see these young women

29:56

come into their own. And

30:00

my University of Kansas team is kind of

30:03

in the middle of the pack, but I

30:05

have a brother who still lives in in Lawrence

30:08

in Lawrence, Kansas, where the university is and he

30:10

and his wife are big boosters. So I see

30:12

a lot of games for them. Did

30:14

you enjoy writing about college both you've

30:16

always paid her? Yes, I

30:18

did. And my detective V.I.

30:20

Orshovsky in America, Vashovsk in

30:22

Poland. Yeah. She

30:25

played high school basketball. And

30:28

for when she was growing up in

30:31

Chicago, and she went to

30:33

University of Chicago on a basketball scholarship.

30:37

Yeah, well, I have to introduce her to my

30:39

wife. She's a big basketball fan. Finally,

30:43

Sarah, don't need

30:45

me to remind you that in a couple

30:47

of years time, July, 2026, America will be 250

30:49

years old. So

30:54

a couple of easy questions

30:56

for you to answer. Firstly, will

30:59

you be celebrating in July

31:01

2026? This anniversary,

31:03

this birthday? I don't know. It

31:05

depends on where we are as a country then.

31:08

Yeah, it's hard to know that, of course.

31:10

And secondly, where

31:13

should America go for the next 50

31:15

years after 2026? Where's its unfinished business?

31:18

You write about a kind of unfinished

31:20

business in paid there. But two

31:22

simple questions to Amry. Oh,

31:26

yeah, that's easy. You

31:30

know, we have such a big footprint

31:32

in the world. It's

31:37

not an easy thing

31:40

to contemplate, I guess. So maybe

31:42

it would be nice if we put on

31:45

smaller shoes and

31:48

let other people walk around a little bit more.

31:53

Thank you. you