Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Muckrake podcast, the Weekender edition for our patrons.

By the way, thank you, everybody. You are showing up big to support the Munkerick podcast.

You're showing up to keep us editorially independent, ad free. But also, I got to tell you,

my colleague, Nick Housselman, is up to his eyeballs

in Ronald Reagan books.

He is prepping hard.

He is ready for the next episode of our Certain Route to Failure Audio Documentary.

How's that treating you, buddy?

You know, it's a fascinating experiment to read three books at the same time, like one chapter

and then one chapter and then one chapter and then kind of covering the same era or same section of time, but like from different perspectives, like Roshaman style.

It's fascinating and I think it'll, I hope I can sustain it.

I might end up having to just sort of stick with one for longer, but we'll find out.

But as a result, there's a lot of interesting things to, uh, to, to, to cold through as we

begin the process of making this, uh, this new show. You know, one of the things that really did it for me when I was like, I decided as I was like trying to understand modern politics, I was like, I really need to jump deep, deep into the Reagan mythology. and I don't know how you're feeling about it,

but it's just like total bullshit all the way up and down. And you just look at it and you're like, oh my God, like this rabbit hole never ends, like this absolute asshole of a person and this cult of personality that the right is built up around him. It's incredible. Well, you know, what's funny is I live you know, I lived through this and I was young, but I was like, I wanted to say I mean, I was in second grade, I think, when the inauguration happened in 1980. And I remember them showing it to us on the TV at school. And I also remember being really upset that Carter lost and that when they had the 21 gun salute or whatever, with the big tanks or the big, you know, big artillery shooting, I wanted them to turn the guns the other way, you know, I can remember. I have a memory of that, like, just being so upset. And it's interesting because I wonder if like going to the school I went to, which is a Hebrew day school, which obviously would talk like the propaganda of how Israel was formed. I wish I could

remember exactly what their take on it was because you have to remember Carter had tried to,

you know, actually successfully negotiated peace between Israel and like Egypt, for instance, in a way

that, you know, they should have been sympathetic to Carter as well, but I cannot remember how that worked.

But nonetheless, having lived through that through my, into my high school years,

it's a real trip through my youth in a way and touching upon all those feelings I had then,

really even unaware of like the political reality of what was going on,

but like sensing it somehow, right,

...