You wrote this book as I understand while you were in Ukraine.

And how was being there impacted, impact the writing of this book?

Because you were in an environment where a lot of what what you are writing about when you're talking about

the forms of freedom from sovereignty to solidarity, you're watching the deconstruction, if not

the destruction of a lot of that, at least the attempt to do that by an aggressive power.

How did that space, time, experience inform your writing here?

So I had this idea in general that, and it goes back to your question about solidarity and what I was trying to say about empathy. I had this feeling in general that and it goes back to your question about solidarity and what I was trying to say about empathy

I had this feeling in general that a book about freedom has to be personal but also interpersonal so like I

there were places where I feel like I had to rely on my own experience as an American. But at the same time, I thought,

I'm only going to be consistent with my own approach here if I listen to other people's experiences of being American.

And this is not what you asked about directly, but it's relevant, which is why I also taught the, taught the book a couple of semesters in a maximum security prison because I wanted I needed other

people's stories and then that was really helpful enough for for a hundred reasons but that was one of

them and with Ukraine that was also a kind of test right like I got out of America and into a country

where people were talking about freedom as much as we do or more.

But they generally meant what I'm calling positive freedom was my experience.

And the dramatic example would be Russian occupation, kind of what I said at the beginning,

where the Ukrainians sometimes make fun of Russians for using the word liberation.

There's a Russian word, a Swabijanya, which the Russians use all the time, but they often mean it in the sense of we completely destroyed the city and we killed everybody and now it's liberated. And so like that notion of liberation is something Ukrainians sometimes mock. And they have this word deoccupation, which is kind of humble and interesting because it suggests that removing the evil is necessary, but it's not the same thing as bringing back the good, which is so important, right?

So, so essential.

But then beyond that, there's the future part where, I think freedom is about the future.

Like, I don't think we can, we have to know the past, but we have to know the past so we can see the plausible lines that might lead into the future. One of the ways people keep us unfree is cutting us off from the past so we don't see those lines that could lead to a better place. But freedom is fundamentally about, you know, following those lines into a better future. And when Ukrainians talk about the Russians and like they don't, what they say is something like,

they're cutting, they cut us off from this better future we were getting to. And that for me is so

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