Hey everyone, Jody Abergan here. Welcome to our Some Sunday context series, where we bring you

conversations new and from the archives that try and give you a little context for what we are up to

here in 2026. Now, this past week, we talked about Barack Obama's A More Perfect Union speech,

which was given

in response to the scandal over his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. That took place in March of 2008.

And today we're going to keep talking about the spring of 2008. There's another scandal that

Obama had to navigate just a few weeks later. That 2008 primary was quite the gauntlet, if you'll remember.

So up next is an episode about Barack Obama's comments about rural Americans, quote,

clinging to guns and religion. It got him in a lot of hot water, but it also revealed,

kind of like the Jeremiah Wright stuff, a lot about how Obama communicated and thought about

America's divisions and more. Also,

I kind of wanted to play this episode for you because it is from week two of this show,

way back in April of 2020. So it's kind of nice and a little weird to hear me and Nikki

way back in the day hold up during the heart of lockdown doing one of the first episodes ever

of this show. Now, also speaking of things that were made way back in the day, back in 2016,

I made an audio documentary when I was at 538 about Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

It's actually one of my favorite things I have ever made, and I found it sitting on my Dropbox,

and we posted it in our newsletter for paying subscribers this week.

So after we listen to this episode, I'm going to offer a teaser of that.

Just a teaser, though, because I hope it will entice you and remind you to join our newsletter

community, where you will get lots of bonus conversations and help support the show

and get early access, full access to all our America 250 stuff. So stick around for that teaser

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