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Books, Empires, and Ideas Shaping Society

• Michele McAloon

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Join me as I engage with the esteemed Professor John M. Ellis, author of "A Short History of Relations Between Peoples: How the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism," to uncover profound insights into the evolution of human relations. The conversation kicks off with a journey back to the pivotal transformations around 1500, spurred by the Age of Discovery and Gutenberg's printing press. Discover how these monumental shifts in communication and exploration began to erode the barriers of tribalism, fostering a nascent global consciousness that all humans belong to one family.

Our discussion then transitions to the profound societal changes influenced by the British Empire. We explore how the rise of literacy in Britain ignited a public capable of championing moral causes, paving the way for the abolition of slavery. With intellectual heavyweights like John Locke and David Hume at the forefront, these concepts of equality and human rights spread across the English-speaking world, challenging outdated notions and misconceptions about race and human progress. Through this historical lens, we delve into the British Empire's role in the global dissemination of these progressive ideas, while also engaging with contemporary dialogues, such as critical race theory.

As the episode unfolds, we tackle the nuanced legacy of colonialism, with a particular focus on Africa. We examine the contrasting methods of past colonial powers and modern influences like China and Russia, while reflecting on the positive role of American multiculturalism and the impact of diverse communities in shaping contemporary society. Professor Ellis offers his perspectives on critical race theory, encouraging rich discussions that bridge cultural divides. Through engaging conversation and insightful analysis, this episode highlights the transformative power of books and dialogue in inspiring societal change.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word, and my name is Michelle McElhoun. And today we have the very distinguished Professor John M Ellis to talk to us about his very excellent book A Short History of Relations Between Peoples, how the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism, and it's put out by the one and only Encounter Books. Professor Ellis is a distinguished professor emeritus of German literature at the University of California, santa Cruz. Go banana slugs right.

Speaker 2:

Yes indeed.

Speaker 1:

He taught at universities in England, wales and Canada before joining Santa Cruz. He has served as the dean of the graduate division in 1987 to 1986. He's the author of multiple books. He founded the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics in 1993, served as their president and today continues on as chairman of its board. His articles on education reform have appeared in prominent national publications. Professor Ellis, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you, it's good to be with you.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about this book. You bring up so many good points in it and one of the reasons when I opened up this book why I decided, yes, I have to read this book. I live 20 minutes away from Mainz, where the original Gutenberg Press is in Germany. So I live in Germany, yes, and I live about. I really do. I live less than 10 miles away from the Gutenberg Press. It has such a impression upon me. So let's talk about your book Gens Unas Sumus. What does that mean?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's a Latin phrase. Most Latin phrases are very concise, you know, somehow you can say in Latin three words, what takes you 10 words in English. But what it means is we're all human beings, are members of one human family. So that you know, we may look different, we speak different, we dress different, we may have different color of skin, but underneath we're all brothers in one human family. We're all, in principle, similar and deserve equal dignity and respect.

Speaker 2:

And that's a sort of a modern attitude. It's not an attitude that ever happened before the modern world, at least one or two people might have held that view, even small numbers of people might have held that view, but today it's an orthodoxy. It's the attitude that we're all expected to bring to life, and anyone who says something that suggests that one group of us are inferior to the others is likely to be called a racist. And, as I say, that's an orthodoxy. Now, orthodoxies are things that you know. They're official positions, so to speak. Not everyone really underneath agrees with them, but they know they've got to look as if they agree with them and if they don't agree with that, if they publicly oppose them, they're going to suffer for it.

Speaker 1:

Your book. You start 500 years ago, in 1500, and you actually trace how literacy, prosperity and things like this gave rise to Jenna Unasumas. Why did you start with 1500? This is very important.

Speaker 2:

Well there are, I think, three really crucial events in world history that start off a complete change in attitudes. I mean, in 1500, we've got tribalism prevalent everywhere. Everyone distrusts everybody else, everyone fears everybody else. And the reason for that is pretty clear. First of all, the year 1500, we don't have any of the ways in which we know about the world at the moment. At the moment we know about the world because we travel to other places. Let's say we have cars, we have trains, we have airplanes. None of that in 1500.

Speaker 2:

You want to go somewhere, you walk in 1500. Or if you're wealthy, you go by horse, but even that that gets you a little bit more to make distance, but not a huge amount. In addition to that, at the moment we know about the world because we have newspapers, we have books, we have television, we have radio, we have the internet. So the average citizen can find out a great deal about the rest of the world through these things. None of that is there in 1500. So basically, what you have is a situation where individuals know very little about the world, they know very little about their neighbors, and when you don't know anything about other people, the natural human reaction is to be a little bit apprehensive. If you don't know what you're going to find, then you're a little bit negative already about the possibilities of danger. Now I add to that the fact that food supply was a little bit harder to maintain when you don't have trucks that deliver food to supermarkets, you don't have refrigeration, so your food is sort of hand-to-mouth you go find it and you eat it quickly because it'll spoil if you don't. So in a situation like that it's very prevalent that there are armies of people looking for sustenance. I mean, they might be starving In one area of the world there might be a drought. They're likely to invade you because they want to grab your food, because the choice between death and grabbing somebody else's food. So again, the tremendous insecurity of life in 1500, and that insecurity breeds a sense of hostility towards other peoples, because when you meet other peoples it's likely to be under very bad circumstances. So I chose 1500, because all of that which has been the case for thousands of years is about to change.

Speaker 2:

And the three things that really change it are first of all, you have the Age of Discovery, so that 1500, give or take a few years, is when Europeans start to get in boats they have by this point. They have magnetic compasses so they can figure out where they're going. They don't need to get blown off course by storms and not know where they are. They will know where they are. So they make long distances and they make contact with cultures they've never met before, they've never encountered before. So that's one thing that starts to have one culture meeting another culture.

Speaker 2:

The second thing really, I think, is the printing press, discovered in 1452 by Gutenberg. That begins the process of modern communications. I mean, in other words, now you're going to eventually, with the printing press, you're going to have books, pamphlets in growing numbers. You're going to eventually have newspapers, which you couldn't have before, magazines, periodicals. So a process of getting to know other peoples is accelerated by the modern means of communication which will eventually result in the internet and television and so on.

Speaker 2:

And the third thing, I think, is the breakup of the Christian church. I mean, the Northern Europe starts to go its own way, protestantism develops, england throws out the Catholic Church and as a result of that, one thing the Protestants did was they made it possible for their people to read the Bible in their native language. The Catholics of southern Europe had always been uneasy about this. They figured that only the clergy are going to be able to interpret the Bible to the people. They didn't want the people reading the Bible. They might get the wrong ideas. The Protestants immediately started to translate the Bible into the vernacular—English, dutch, french and so on and that meant there was a powerful incentive to literacy. I mean, if you could read the Bible, that was a motive for learning to read.

Speaker 2:

Literacy—so in other words, literacy starts to become a serious factor in human life after 1500. And what this really means is that the central gravity of European learning shifts to the north because of the Protestant church promoting literacy. So a literate population is going to be a more prosperous population. Obviously. I mean those people will have more things they can do with their lives if they can read and also they start to talk about human life with each other.

Speaker 2:

By the time you get newspapers which begins in England something like about 1660, but within about 50 years you've got dozens of newspapers and you've got half the population able to read, which is, I mean you go back to 1500, almost no one could read it outside monks and a few wealthy people. So you have public opinion developing as a result of that shift to Northern Europe and to the subsequent growth of literacy and public opinion is going to be what is decisive in moving the way from tribalism and fear of other peoples. Because literacy means that people can learn about the world. They can talk about human behavior, about rights and wrongs in human life. They can talk about morality in human life. They can talk about governments and what governments ought to be doing and ought not to be doing. Once public opinion becomes a big factor, then the way is open for the development of ideas like Gensunosumus, the anti-racist idea that we're all one people.

Speaker 1:

I never thought of literacy as being a really a stepping stone to developing public consciousness. And it really is, because, you know, here we are, generations and generations removed, can't even imagine a life without literacy. And maybe this is what the modern computer is doing too it's developing, taking us even another step further of this. We're all one family. You said that literacy provides a country with the means of being able to debate its values, and we just saw this. We just went through this election, the whole election cycle. It was about debating our country's values. And that is all because we read the newspapers, we read everything, we're on the Internet, and it really is true. I'm really appreciative of that.

Speaker 2:

Public opinion would be nothing to do with it. Whether the public sided with one army or the other was of no consequence. All that mattered was how many weapons one side had versus the other side could read and read newspapers and start to take part in campaigns and start to take part in, you know, manifestos, you know pamphlets and so on. By the time you get half the country able to do that, public opinion becomes a powerful force, Public opinion.

Speaker 1:

Which this is really interesting is how you bring this to slavery and public opinion. Once people start to develop a moral conscience, a societal conscience, slavery really doesn't have a chance anymore. Talk about that. That is really interesting.

Speaker 2:

Remember we start off with 1300. Everybody hates everybody else, basically, and slavery doesn't really matter, because if it's not your community we're talking about, who cares what other communities are doing? That's their business. That's the general attitude of the 1500.

Speaker 2:

Now in Britain, once literacy becomes widespread enough that people can write books and a lot of people are going to read them you get ideas. The first serious influence is John Locke, and John Locke starts to write about the dignity of every human being and he says that if you look at the nature of humanity, you have to conclude that every human being has his own rationale, every human life. It matters to that person and nobody should be on this earth to be under the subjection of another person. As I say, the dignity of the individual can't be annihilated by the fact that they have to be subservient to any other person. They're their own bosses. They're not made to be the servant of somebody else. Now, once John Locke started this, a whole train of British philosophers and writers started to write in that vein. The phrase that's well-known later on the greatest good of the greatest number. That really belongs in this vein. The phrase that's well known later on the greatest good of the greatest number that really belongs in this era. It's made famous by people like John Stuart Bell and so on, but really its origin is immediately after John Locke. By the time we get to David Hume, which is a few decades later, david Hume is, I think, the first one to make it clear the idea of gen sunafs namas we're all one family, david Hume says. When you look at human beings, they're all the same when born. It's only how they're socialized that makes them different. So if you grow up in China, you'll have one set of attitudes, if you grow up in England, you'll have another. But in principle there's no difference between people when they start. Well, again, that's the anti-racist idea, that's the idea that we all want people.

Speaker 2:

Now this goes on in England, and only in England, at the beginning, I mean. The reason is the prosperity of England, based on its liberalized political system. The Magna Carta back in the Middle Ages says the government can't act against an individual unless it can prove to people like him that what it is doing is reasonable. Now, that is an amazing thing. That's the beginning of limited government, which is what our Constitution is based upon, and within 100 years of that, the first parliament is founded by Simon de Montfort. So the great traditional British parliament exists by about 1300. And you get a series of liberalizing events after that, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, temporalizing events after that, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the last tyrannical king was booted out and in came a person who guaranteed to be a constitutional monarch.

Speaker 2:

So because you have greater political freedom for the individual in England, you have greater prosperity. I mean the people are free to do things, to think, to work, to plan. They're more productive people and that's why Britain is more prosperous by about 1700. And that is why there's a spread of literacy, because they're wealthy enough for it, they're prosperous enough to be able to learn, to be able to write and to be able to buy magazines and books. So that's why this whole movement, as you can locate it in history, it is Britain. It is nowhere else. To the extent it then becomes part of North America, it's because of British influence in North America. Now, yeah, it's very important to get hold of that fact, because the whole tradition that culminates in the modern world's philosophy, the official orthodoxy we live with now that we're all one family, it begins only in one place. And it begins because free markets in Britain create prosperity, and prosperity creates literacy, and literacy creates ideas about human life that then culminate in the modern world's orthodoxy. Now you know the reason.

Speaker 2:

I sort of stress that so much is that in our modern world, you know, we've got critical race theory telling us that there's something wrong with the white race, that they're all racists, the implication being, of course, that if you're not white it's okay, you're not a racist, other races are fine. Well, but history tells us exactly the opposite that the English-speaking world developed these modern ideas, and slowly. I mean, it took a while for them to really thoroughly get whole. But if you want to talk the language of critical race theory, the white race developed these wonderful progressive ideas. Other groups joined in along the way, but the notion that there's something wrong with the white race and that other races were all anti-racist all along is complete nonsense. In fact, the other races became anti-racist only to the extent they learned that from the English-speaking world.

Speaker 1:

And one of the points you bring out in your book it didn't happen because these people were white and it didn't happen by chance. It just happened that that is where it developed. If it had happened in Africa, it would have been different. If it had happened somewhere else, it would have been different. It wasn't based on because you didn't go out in the sun for generations. It was based on historical precedents and movements and to me that is, you know, that's really an honest assessment of what happened. It's just history. This wasn't a natural drift to you know, we're all one family. It was historical precedents and it was historical, not accidents but historical development that progressed it, and these people just happened to be white. Where it progressed, that's right.

Speaker 2:

I mean it could have happened somewhere else. I mean, you know, if you look at other developments in human history, agriculture developed somewhere in the Middle East Doesn't mean the Middle Easterners were better people than the rest of us were in the Middle East Doesn't mean the Middle Easterners were better people than the rest of us. It's just a fact that somehow, for some reason that we don't really understand, it happened there the building of monumental stone buildings. It seems to have happened somewhere in the Mediterranean. Again, not because they're better people, but because for reasons we don't fully understand. Because, for reasons we don't fully understand, that's where it began.

Speaker 2:

Now, in the case of this modern ideology of World War I family, we do know where it began. It began in Britain, and in that case we know why. Again, not because the white race is better than any other race, only because the liberalizing, politically liberalizing attitudes began with the Magna Carta and developed there. The greater political freedom of the average Englishman was what then led to prosperity, and prosperity leads to literacy, and literacy leads to the development of modern ideas about the human race. And that's the way it goes. Again, it doesn't mean whites are better than blacks or anything else silly like that. All it means is that there was a historical development in one particular place, namely Magna Carta, that kicked off a whole series of events that finally led to the modern world.

Speaker 1:

And that makes perfect sense. I mean, in how you put it, it actually does make good, perfect academic reasoning sense. So we go from that. But Britain does something that really kind of changes the world and it creates an empire. It's not the first empire, it's not the last empire. We have an empire today. We have Russia. It still considers itself an empire. It's not the first empire, it's not the last empire. We have an empire today. We have Russia. It still considers itself an empire. I think you said there's 270 empires in world history. There are more empires to come. There are more to come. We're just at a low point of empires right now. But tell us about how this empire, this British empire, helped develop the world, helped develop this. We are all one family.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, if you go back to the 15th century again, I mean again, remember you've got. Every person on earth is afraid of his neighbor because he doesn't know quite when his neighbor is going to rush in or do something bad to him, especially grab food, which means he'll starve of Russia, and do something bad to him, especially grab food, which means he'll starve. So initially what you want obviously is to be safer, and it soon seems to everybody that rather than fighting with your neighboring village, if you join together with it, you're a bigger unit and you're safer. So if you have a treaty with the towns nearest to you that you're all going to defend each other, you're better off. Now that leads in the direction of a nation state, I mean you get to the point where the neighboring town is part of your people. It's not, as in North America, for example, with Native American tribes. The next village over is potentially your enemy. If they're starving, then you better watch out. They might be if there's a drought on the plains, but some of the nation states have large units and you can rely on the fact that people who live 50 miles away from you are on your side. They're helping to defend you against foreigners. So the principle develops obviously out of this that bigger is better. The bigger the unit you have, the more people there are to defend you against marauders, against people invading you.

Speaker 2:

So empire is a good idea. The more territory you hold, I mean, the safer you are. So everyone in the world is trying to extend their territory because you're better off, you're safer, against the tyrant. And that's what the beginning of European empires is really about. I mean, the Spanish and the Portuguese started to investigate across the ocean new territories that was as yet unknown. You can bet that the British and the Dutch and the French get very uneasy about this, because this means they're getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And here you are, on an island like England, you know, and the Spanish are developing big navies and they're getting richer because of the gold in North America. So the Brits are scared by this and the British Empire is a response to fear. Basically, what they want is to develop greater strength in the world and if they do that they're safer. And the history of Britain shows it. I mean, britain was invaded in 1066. It was never invaded again. That's an amazing record, I mean.

Speaker 2:

That is an amazing record yes, yeah, I mean, you know. Take the Dutch, for example. The Dutch have been taken over by all kinds of peoples over those thousand years. French territory has been, you know, armies, agincourt, big wars between the English and the French. Almost any European country has been. Bits of it have been overrun by the peoples country, bits of it have been overrun by other peoples. For the Brits to have nobody invading them for a thousand years is an astonishing record of safety.

Speaker 2:

So you'd have to say the British Empire was a really good idea from the Brits' point of view. I mean, they never were invaded. That was the main point of empires. But once you get to this era where John Locke and David Hume are talking about the equality of all peoples, now you have a problem. Because if all peoples are one family, then all those peoples that you've conquered are your equals and they should have equal rights and they should be treated with equal dignity and so on. And the British are very aware of this and so they change their attitude to empires, no longer a thing to buttress British strength in the world. Brits start to take the attitude that it's their job to look after these subject peoples who are still in a primitive state. They don't have hundreds and thousands of years of European political systems behind them. They're in a very ancient state as far as weaponry, as far as social legislation, as far as food security and so on. So the Brits start to think okay, it's our job to bring these people into the modern world so they can survive for themselves, govern themselves, and we're giving them good government while they can't yet give it to themselves. And that becomes the ideology of the British Empire by the late 19th century. And the average British civil servant in Africa, for example, is doing all he can to prevent tribal wars between tribes that would otherwise massacre each other and in fact did massacre each other as soon as the colonial powers left. So it becomes a benevolent kind of thing, a kind of holding the fort as far as civil administration is concerned, until the people who live there can take that over for themselves. So that attitude really means the end of empires, because it says basically, the empire is only going to last a short time before we hand over to other peoples.

Speaker 2:

So the British Empire, which is criticized by radicals for this shocking imperial thing, is actually the other way around. It's the one empire that ended empires at least mostly ended empires. It's the one empire that developed the ideology that we should never have empires. And in the modern world if one country tries to take over another, there's an outcry. I mean when one country tries to take over Ukraine, there's an outcry. When Saddam Hussein tries to take over Kuwait, there's an outcry, and the outcry means we won't put up with empires anymore. Now that was the work of the British Empire that they developed that attitude and gave it to the world. So again the radicals had things backwards. The anti-empire attitude was developed by the British Empire and by nobody else. If you look around the rest of the world, what happened in Africa at that time? Tribalism. What happened in Asia at that time? Tribalism. It was uniquely the English-speaking world that spread the anti-racist idea.

Speaker 1:

It is. And, as you said, even as they started to retreat, as the British started to retreat from their colonial powers, what remained there was colonialism the structures. It's what they tried to emulate. They're sending their children to English schools, they're the technology, they're copying their bureaucracies.

Speaker 1:

So I know it's so easy now to disparage colonialism and I believe a lot of this has a Marxist undertone trying to create chaos by men like who's that guy? Yeah, erwin Kendi, right there. You know. The same thing with kind of the 1619 project. All of this is to create sort of a chaos, but it doesn't encourage inquiry. It doesn't encourage reason, inquiry, academic inquiry or historical inquiry into actually what happened and actually into the development. So a book like this really helps clarify what we need to be talking about, and I actually downloaded I think his name is Bruce Gilley and it was actually exactly what you were saying but he was vilified I mean, he was I don't even know where he is now, but I believe it came out in the early 2000s the essay and he was absolutely excoriated for saying much of what you are saying now and much of what you are writing about now much of what you are saying now and much of what you are writing about now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. And Bruce Gilley added to all of that one revolutionary idea, fascinating idea, which is that some of the countries that became independent and so you know, threw off their colonial systems. Some of those countries really could do with a reimposition of some colonial rule, which would, in effect, help them develop the government that they're no longer really quite ready for Now. That really angered the radicals. The notion that the European white world could provide critical, much-needed help to third world countries to help them develop into modern entities. That was anathema to the radicals, but it was. I mean it was a very courageous thing to say. I mean I've got to say that. For Bruce to say that put his head in the lion's mouth almost.

Speaker 1:

He did yeah.

Speaker 2:

But it was a very, very good suggestion. I think it really is true that when you look at some of the chaos in African countries right now, tribalism reigns supreme. One tribe tries to massacre the other. That's the way it was from the beginning of time. The European empires, especially the British, viewed it as their job to stop those tribal massacres. I mean, and they really did. They instituted peace between tribes and stamped out these vicious intertribal rivalries. Now, I mean, what Bruce is saying is a strain of opinion. It's so strong in Africa that what you needed was colonial government lasting 10, 20, 30 years longer to prepare those countries to become independent and have more modern you know attitudes and a decent, modern government. I think he's absolutely right. It was a very, very courageous thing to say.

Speaker 1:

It was courageous. And I tell you what's happened now. I talked to a lot of Catholic priests French Catholic priests that work in Africa now and one of the things they tell me is the Chinese have gone in there and they're basically setting up colonies in Africa and they do not have the same tradition of human rights that was brought forth by the British Empire. And you know what? Africa is a problem still. I mean, it's causing huge problems, huge exploitation of people. Russians are in there. The British Empire provided help where the Chinese and the Russians now are doing exploitive. So it's.

Speaker 2:

In other words, the purpose of the empire is to extract as much wealth and power from the territories as they can.

Speaker 2:

The more modern attitude of the British, which is they're there to protect and help those peoples to enter the modern world, which remember a lot of these countries were separated from the modern world, were separated from the modern world. I mean by that I mean that Europe, a big chunk of Asia, improvement spread across the whole territory. Once you get agriculture discovered in Mesopotamia, that spreads all the way across those countries that are in contact with each other, all the way across Europe, all the way across Asia. But if there's an island in the Pacific that no one knows about, it doesn't get those improvements and so there are places that are sitting there not knowing what's going on in the rest of the world. The rest of the world doesn't know about them and they don't get all the improvements in human life that have been spreading across a known area of the globe for thousands of years. So, basically, the British colonialists finally regarded it as their job to bring those people into the modern world, and that's not the attitude of the Chinese.

Speaker 1:

Couldn't help but wonder why, reading your book is you really show how modernity spreads human values, how human rights it really has? I wonder what our computer culture, our internet culture, our AI culture is going to bring to the world. Is this going to be a further extension of Jin's unisomas? Is there a point where we're going to break down back into a tribal attitude? A tribal attitude is maybe a first reaction that we have sometimes.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think, look, I mean all these modern developments, this anti-racist idea. I'll call it, for convenience, the anti-racist idea. It is the product of the English-speaking world. When you spread the English language and the internet does that, I mean English is the language of the internet. I mean an awful lot of people— Absolutely yeah, because otherwise they can't use the internet properly, so automatically. The internet is one of the means by which the philosophy of gens uno sumus is spread, and that's a good thing for the world.

Speaker 1:

Very good. Well, any concluding thoughts.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, with the election, you're going to see, hopefully, the power of the critical race theory people lessened, I mean diminished, and you're going to see, I hope, less of DEI, which is all part of critical race theory. It's kind of like a dissident strain within the English-speaking world, a strain that somehow pretends that actually was the rest of the world. You know the Africans and Asians. They're the nice, peaceful, sweet, anti-racist people and there's something wrong with the white race Again that has world history absolutely backwards. I mean everything critical race theory says. All you've got to do is reverse it and you've got the truth. So I'm hopeful that the Trump era is going to see a serious reduction in the power of critical race theory in our society and a lessening of the DEI nonsense.

Speaker 1:

I hope so too. I live here in Europe, I live in Germany, and, being an American, I mean there's some things that we really really get right, and that is the mixing of people we really do, and we are the leaders in the world for this. We shouldn't be beating ourselves up for it. Are we always going to have to fight some racism? Of course, because that's just a sin of nature. But we, you know, as a society, we have it right. We have it right, and we just went through this election where the minorities made the difference in the election. I don't know how more powerful that you can get than that. So I really do, really proud of the United States, proud of our country in that regard.

Speaker 1:

Folks, this is a great book. It is a short history of relations between peoples, how the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism. It's a short read, but it's a dense read and it really does bring you on the threshold of a lot of knowledge and a lot of history. In 100 pages you get a 500-year span. So it's really good. And it is by Professor John M Ellis, by Encounter Books, so I'm sure you can find it on Amazon or the Encounter website. So thank you, thank you, professor Ellis, and I really appreciate the time that you spent with us and hopefully maybe we'll get to talk again to see where critical race theory is in about six months. What do you think?

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. It's been a long time.

Speaker 1:

Hi, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. This is Michelle McAloon. You want to find out some more information about me? You can go to bookcluescom. I'm also on X, Michelle McAloune 1, Truth Social McElhune 1. And I hope with my podcast that people actually read the books and then it starts a discussion, a discussion amongst themselves. They recommend the book, they start discussing it with their friends because technology is great but actually our human-to-human contact is even better. Thank you, God bless. Have a good week.