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What's up everybody? Welcome to another edition. This is Chris, your host. This week's guest

is Thaddeus Russell, truth teller extraordinaire of the highest order. He's a, you know, torpedoes

be damned full speed ahead conversationalists, which I really appreciate. I especially appreciate

it, given the fact that Thad is an untanured professor at Occidental College, which like virtually

all academic settings in the United States is a shark pool full of the easily offended and the

ideologically pure. And given that, you've got to give that a lot of credit for being the, you know,

balls to the wall, tell it like it is kind of guy that he is and that we all love him for that.

So make sure if you haven't read his book, a renegade history of the United States,

get that thing. It's full of amazing information that you would not learn otherwise. Like that,

for example, I've, it's been years since I read it, but I still remember being amazed at the

the picture of colonial America that he paints, which is so different from the conventional view,

you know, of the sort of, you know, hardworking Ben Franklin kind of

seen, you know, with Thad puts together and demonstrates quite clearly is that it was a very bohemian

scene, the, the blacks and the whites mixing freely in, especially in the northern colonies.

Lots of, I guess the thesis of the book really is that almost everything we appreciate most about

contemporary American culture came to us thanks to people who were at the time vilified,

the prostitutes, the blacks, the Indians, the poor Irish. They're the people who brought us the

things that today we celebrate as, you know, the best parts of American culture, whether it's jazz,

rock and roll, you know, racial harmony, all these different things that we consider to be

uniquely and wonderfully American, we're actually brought to us by criminals hookers and escape slaves.

I watched my buddy Joe Rogan last night, I was in a bar with a friend and the UFC fights were on,

...