In the aftermath of the 2024 election, America is even more divided than before.

Half the country fears the end of democracy and the other half welcomes it.

As America inches toward the brink of authoritarian rule, now more than ever, we must force ourselves to have the necessary conversation.

Welcome to the necessary conversation.

I'm Chad Culking.

With me today is my sister Haley and no one else.

My parents are indisposed, shall we say.

My mom had to destroy their dog that they've had for 12 years or so this week.

14. 14 years. She had to do that a couple of days ago. Kitty now dances with the angels.

Kitty cat sugar bear. God rest her mortal soul. But my mom is not doing well with it. So she's taking this weekend off and my dad has fallen down. But he was able to get back up with some aid, I suppose. So he's resting as well. They're both in bad shape, both emotionally and physically banged up. And so it's just going to be me and Haley this week, which I think is going to be an interesting

episode.

I went back and listened to your very first episode in preparation for this, which was

aired on August 29th, 2002.

Mm-hmm.

Three years ago, over three years ago at this point.

I don't remember what I said.

Well, it was basically, I encourage everybody to go back and listen to the first three episodes of this podcast, by the way, that are only audio.

They are individual interviews with my mom, my dad, and Haley. And it kind of, all three of them talk about early political leanings, why we feel the way we do, why we think the way we do, and what we

kind of think about each other. And it really kind of laid out for me is it gave you and me an

interesting opportunity to talk about our relationship with mom and dad without them right

there in our face yelling at us. So hopefully we're going to get to a little bit of that today as well.

But I wanted to start off this show by asking you, how do you think the show is going?

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