Hi, this is Newt.

Do the virus.

I'm recording from home.

So you may notice a difference in audio quality.

In this episode of Newt's World, I want to talk about the triumph of the human spirit.

I just thought that coming to the end of 2020, many of us feel so battered by all the

different things, whether it's politics or it is COVID or it's the economy or it's the

lockdown, there's lots of good reasons to not be depressed, at least be confused.

Yet my whole life, I really believed that going all the way back to Edgar Rice Burrows,

who of course is famous for being written in Tarzan, but who also wrote a marvelous series

for young people about John Carter of Mars.

John Carter is a Virginian who somehow magically ends up on Mars and surrounded by the

civilization of Mars.

So Burrows has Carter saying, open over again, where there's life, there's hope.

Where there's life, there's hope.

I read that when I was probably eight or ninth grade, I fell in love with it.

And I lost my first election and I thought, well, whether there's life, there's hope.

I lost my second election, I thought, well, where there's life, there's hope.

I got to Congress and said, you know, we need to learn how to be a majority.

We haven't been a majority of 24 years.

And they asked me to share the planning committee to create a majority in December of 78, right

after I got elected.

...