Welcome to another Thursdays with Mary Langston and episodic appearances by Trey.

Please try to hide your disappointment to your best to conceal your disappointment. Actually, I'm disappointed. In fact, I'm so disappointed. I may not even go through with it.

That's that's my boss telling me that I am to go through with it no matter what. Well, Mary Langston will not be joining us this week in her absence to the extent that anything can feel that absence. But in her absence, we will revisit.

A few of your fault-provoking questions and there are too many to choose from. But nonetheless, in the interest of time, we've chosen a few.

You've asked about the inner workings of our judicial and legislative systems. You have asked about what is the left of my golf game.

And there are moments when you just simply wanted and answered to my favorite question of all, which is why.

Regardless of the topic, why? So let's get started. Hope you have a great week and we'll be back with more questions next week.

We'll get started with our first question and it comes from David and Illinois and he writes, Trey, I understand the desire to stop crime before it happens.

But our entire system is built upon punishing those who commit crimes after they occur. The problem is with our culture. Do you believe laws can alter culture?

He also says that he loves your insight and explanations. So I'm not the only one.

No, I just I think it's really cool that my mom would send in a question under a nom to plume of David and Illinois. So thank you, mom.

David, those are great questions. And that's probably not the question for me to begin my new pursuit of pithiness.

Because that's a very thought provoking question and I would probably

I forget my answers this way. The law both alters our culture and reflects our culture. I mean, who says stealing is wrong?

We do. Who says driving at an unsafe speed is wrong? We do. Who says touching someone without their consent is wrong? We do.

We decide what's wrong. So from that standpoint, you know, the law is many things. It's structure, it's predictability, it's order, it's our way of defining what is just and what is fair.

But it is also our way of saying what is right and what is wrong. So ideally our law and our culture are in sync. That's the perfect world. They're in sync.

That's not always the case. Sometimes culture changes and then the law

changes afterward and reflects that cultural change. But in a perfect world.

The question is do you believe laws can alter culture? Yes. But the best laws reflect not just culture, but something broader than culture.

Like bordering on absolute truth. I mean, there's not a person in the world that thinks that stealing is right. Although you do get in, you know, what was that famous play that my wife drugged me to and made me see.

I mean, is it, yeah, miserable, less miserable? That may not be how you pronounce it. But is your own, Valigeon stole some bread, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's a debate for another segment. I think stealing is wrong. No matter why you do it, but the rationale behind the stealing could impact what the punishment is. If any.

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