Hush you by, don't you cry, go to sleep a little baby.

When you wake, you shall have all the pretty little horses.

Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Learning

Curve podcast. I'm one of your co-host this week, Albert Chang, and my co-host is none other than

Helen Bexendale. Helen, what's up? Nice to have you on. Good to be with you again, Albert, and have you back in the driving

seat. Yes, that's right. And happy Thanksgiving to you as well as we maybe do a little bit of

a commemoration on this, though not entirely, but having Thanksgiving, nevertheless.

And to you too. We have an exciting show. We're going to have Professor Paul Andrew Hutton who's going to come talk to us about one of his many books now, The Undiscovered Country, Triumph, Tragedy, and the shaping of the American West.

And so we're not going to be talking about, I guess, colonial history and Thanksgiving, you know, the origins of Thanksgiving

this week. But nevertheless, we're going to talk about some of our country's history. And so

looking forward to this interview. Yeah, me too, Albert. It's as a now resident of the American

West, I'm very interested in hearing more from Professor Hutton. Before we get to him, though,

let's talk about some news.

And I guess we've been hitting on this theme of civic education and understanding our country's history.

And so I'd want to share one article that caught my eye.

It's entitled, The Role of Music in Civic Life.

Strengthening our shared American identity can be as simple as song. It's written by

Jacob Lute. And I don't know if anyone's pointed out, you know, how apropos his last name is,

Jacob Lute. But anyway, he's got a fascinating article, which, you know, kind of dabbles into something

I thought about off and on, but never very deeply.

And the role that music and a shared cultural repository, musically speaking, can bring civic unity and shape our life together.

You know, of course, he brings up the classic American tune to start his essay, Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

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