Hi, I'm Benjamin from Brooklyn, New York. The Sound of Young America is an independent

production of supporters I look and are like you and me. If you'd like to donate to support

the show, visit MaximumFund.org and click on donate. Live on tape from my house in Los Angeles,

I'm Jesse Thorn and this is the Sound of Young America from MaximumFund.org.

It's the Sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorn, America's Radio Sweetheart. My guest on the program is

John Moe, in addition to being a contributor to American public media's weekend America. And

occasionally to the literary journal Mick Sweeney, he's also the author of,

can servitize me, a lifelong lefty's attempt to love God, guns, Reagan, and Toby Keith.

John, welcome to the Sound of Young America. Hello, Jesse. Hello, young America.

They have nothing to say to you, John. Okay. We don't speak anymore.

You know, this isn't, this isn't often a political program, but I want to set a picture of what

your life was like before you tried to conservatize yourself. Can you give a sort of a

capsule overview of, you know, where you worked, what kind of car you drove, that sort of thing?

Sure, I grew up in Seattle or in the greater Seattle area and I was the child of European

theater folk. And so really all my life was leftiness. It was just how I was raised. I then

went to college and got a degree in theater and then lived in Seattle and hung around theater folks.

Later going on to public radio. And so really I lived, I had a small apartment inside the bubble.

You see, you could say. So all about me was, was leftiness. And I kind of realized this as I

headed into my kind of mid to middle late-ish thirties, you know, had grown up, had left theater

thankfully, as all people really should. And gotten a mortgage, gotten a career going,

and kind of had a couple kids kind of thought about how I was looking at the world and whether

it was a product of, you know, whether my politics were a product of reasoning or a product of

...