Welcome to the Eric Metaxa show.

They say it's a thin line between love and hate, but we're working every day to thicken that line, or at least to make it a double or triple line.

But now here's your line jumping

host, Eric Mattaxie.

Hey there, folks. Happy Thanksgiving weekend. Every year around this time, I want to talk to my

friend Bill Federer. I want to talk to him at other times of the year.

But for sure, when we're thinking about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims, I want to talk to

Bill Federer.

Bill, welcome.

Hey, great to be with you.

You really deliver in explaining the unique thing that happened when the pilgrims came to this country

and how it's just so extraordinary. And I think oftentimes we lose sight of it. So I want you to

refresh our memory of this wild thing that happened in 1620? Sure. Well, I actually wrote a book.

It's called The Treacherous World of the 16th Century and how the Pilgrims escaped it. And I give the

backstory how the Muslims were conquering the Mediterranean and the Battle of Lepanto, 1571, 230 Muslim ships. and it was stopped by the King of Spain's 200 ships.

But the next year, instead of cleaning up and freeing the Mediterranean from Ottoman control,

the King of Spain sends the Iron Duke of Alba to Antwerp, Belgium, and they killed 10,000 Dutch

reformed.

He wants to stop the Reformation. And then 1588,

King of Spain sends the Armada to England. Queen Elizabeth rallies them, Sir Francis Drake,

Hurricane. And so after Elizabeth, she was relatively tolerant. She went to Shakespeare's plays,

but then you get King James.

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