History.

What does this make you think of?

Swords, armor, castles, cannons, trenches, tanks, tanks?

Or perhaps it makes you think of bravery, courage, resistance.

We shall fight on the beaches and in the streets.

Uncover a thousand years of incredible defensive stories.

A brand new series, defending Europe,

Mondays at nine on National Geographic.

I'm Barry Weiss, and this is honestly. The past month's news has not exactly been

relaxing to read. We have Iran shooting hundreds of rockets at Israel, we have

Ukraine at war and Russia looking like it's winning.

We have the prospect some say of World War 3.

Then there's Trump's ongoing criminal trial, a tick-talk ban.

And oh yeah, a lot of college students seem to be fans of Hamas. Do I need to go on?

Today's episode isn't about any of that, because sometimes we just need a breath of fresh air.

Enter the one and only David Sedaris, America's favorite

humorist, or if not America's certainly the favorite humorist of the free press.

You may know David from one of his best-selling books like Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denham, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Calypso. His words frequent The New Yorker, and he's just come out with a children's book called Pretty Ugly, which he says has no message at all.

David was on honestly a few years ago, and if you haven't heard that interview, check it out.

It was one of the highlights of what we've done on this show so far.

Today he's here to read an essay that he's written for the free press

where he imparts his thoughts on the underappreciated art of language learning

...