If you like anything in popular music now, anything in popular music, and I'm talking

even easy listening, even very manalo, pretty much anything on the radio, okay?

The people you have to thank were once considered to be the absolute scum of the earth.

Baby, what's the big deal? Feel what you want to feel? Say what you want to say, you're gonna die one day.

For example, I could kiss you just because I want to. What's the difference if you turn away? I'm gonna die one day.

Why do you waste your time thinking about your reputation? Try to meet an expectation.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I stand before you today as a sinner.

But there's not a big problem with being a sinner in the United States because in fact, sinners are the ones who have really made this country interesting.

It's the horrors, the drunks, the fornicators, the troublemakers, the shit-rakers, the muck-rakers, the shit-sturs.

Those people are the ones that have really made this country interesting.

And today's guest is gonna tell us all about that. His name's Thaddeus Russell. He's a renegade historian.

He's, in fact, he wrote the renegade history of the United States.

Very interesting book. I read it a few years ago. As soon as I heard about it, I ordered it right away.

I think I was working on sex at dawn at the time and was looking for interesting tidbits to slip in there.

Then I'm sure I found something because the vision of particularly colonial America that Thaddeus lays out in his book is unlike the bullshit that you've heard.

And I've heard in school and on TV and, you know, the founding fathers were like sitting around with powdered wigs being, you know, fine, upstanding gentlemen,

except for all the horrors and the drinking and the drugs and everything else that was going on.

In other words, what you get with Thaddeus Russell is a full-bodied history of the United States.

You get, it's full of surprises, it's full of scandal and it's, you know, blood, shit, spit, all that stuff that mucus, the things that make the world go around.

So check out the interview. I hope you enjoy it. And if you're intrigued by his vision of things, I hope you pick up a copy of his book,

a renegade history of the United States. It's available on Amazon and wherever fine books are sold.

This episode of Ten Gently Speaking is brought to you by, of course, short design t-shirts. See, I'm not going to forget this week.

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