Good Day, Thomas Jefferson, our podcast listeners.

And a couple of times during the program I noted today is April 15th,

and we needed to note Tax Day.

Not just because of taxes, but also because of a world tragedy as you put.

Though the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, I've been a couple of times David, it's

one of the world's great buildings and you said

Jefferson probably walked by there hundreds of times it was it's one any writings

that he you know he mentions it now and then but he doesn't you know he's not a big

cathedral guy he thinks the cathedral was a mistake of human enterprise, but we don't have to agree with that.

There are great cathedrals I've been to, I suppose, 20 in the course of my life. Dame is one of them not only that but it's

almost the cultural center of France. France is a highly secular culture. Napoleon saw

to that and France is not any longer a very serious spiritual culture

but Notre Dame is one of their treasures it's a world treasure and to see it

burning I mean it's this simple, David. You think in our time that could never happen. You actually

think no great building could burn any longer because of the advanced fire retardants that we use?

Well, and of course we don't know, but we know that there was some kind of renovation going on there.

Perhaps that was part of the renovation perhaps

that's how it started more in the next but a lot of it evidently is wood and that's

all that's the thing so if you've been in one of these cathedrals they're built of

stone that stone if it gets hot enough

well calcine will crumble. That's my fear. But even without that there are these

vaulted ceilings there's an enormous amount of woodwork in a cathedral, some of it holding up the ceiling,

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