I was gambling in Havana.

I took a little risk.

Send lawyers guns and money.

Dad, get me out of this. Welcome everyone to episode 56 of the Matt Jones podcast. I'm of course Matt.

It is, it's actually a Saturday morning.

I think the first time I've done this on a Saturday morning,

but I'm doing it because that was when our guests could come on and I really wanted to have him on the

podcast. We're going to be joined by JD Vance who wrote a book that I am a big

fan of in part because it's a story you don't hear a lot called Hillbilly Elegi, which is really a memoir of his life.

And so what I wanted to do before I had him on because I have him for a limited time,

I didn't want to spend a ton of time just telling you what the book was if you haven't read it because I actually wanted to ask him

questions rather than have him just describe it. So the book is basically a memoir of his life and he's young. He's I think

31, 32, something like that.

Grew up in Middletown, Ohio,

but his family was from Brethick County, Kentucky.

And so most of what he writes is really sort of about what he calls the hillbilly mindset which is from

eastern Kentucky and from Middletown where he grew up and it's fascinating. I mean it's his life story and there's all kinds of

interesting anecdotes but basically he's sort of giving in some ways a cultural critique of those of us from Eastern Kentucky and I read it and a lot of what I read I found

very interesting and agreed with some of it it I did not, but it was interesting

to see someone write sympathetically

about the people I grew up around,

and people, you know, the place where my family is from and he then went from there he joined the

...