I'm Amanda Knox, and you're listening to Hard Knocks.

On this episode of Hard Knocks, I interview Phil Kly, a great friend, a former U.S. Marine Corps person,

veteran, is what they're called, and a critically acclaimed essayist and author of a number of different fictional and non-fictional works.

He's so smart, so philosophical, a deeply thoughtful person who has seen the best and

worst of humanity. And I think this conversation veers into a lot of trying to make sense of

the bad things that not only happened to us, but that we may potentially participate in,

and how we still remain, you know, faithful to our ideals, even when we understand that we are

part of a humanity that is fragile and corrupt. Enjoy. Welcome to Hard Knocks. I'm really excited to speak with you, not just because

you're one of Chris's best friends, but also because you're an incredible writer about really

complex, difficult topics. So for those who don't know, Phil is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran.

So you've been in action.

You've seen some action.

You just called me a Marine Corps veteran.

I'm really bad at military.

What do we call that? How do you say that? Core. Core. Why do you

not pronounce the P and the S? Because then it would be corpse and that would be odd. Oh, is that,

no, it's not literally why it's pronounced that way, though, right? English doesn't make sense.

English doesn't make sense. English doesn't make sense.

I'm guessing it comes from the French and the French just like to put letters at the end of

words that you don't say for some reason.

Notional, notional letters.

Okay.

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