Um, what did you feel like you had to let go of intellectually?

Yes.

So that was, you know, like I said, and, I mean, as we talked about, I had the sort of echoes of the new atheists in the back of my mind.

And, you know, I think about the figure of Christopher Hitchens, who was so cynical and dismissive.

Um, and I, you know, it, it is easy to think that people who are intelligent should be cynical, skeptical, dismissive, and that the most intelligent thing to do is to take experiences like that and diminish them completely.

Nothing happened.

I was just standing there.

Does-- uh, is this just something that happens, um, or, or do you think it can be resisted? I mean, it's just, is it maybe just combining religion and politics, uh, in that way is just the, the demise of both?

I mean, how, how do you frame him as a candidate and what he represents in kind of the spectrum that you were talking about?

Yeah, I think Talarico's a really interesting candidate.

He is, you know, not the furthest left Democrat that there is.

His, his d- platform is pretty similar to standard Democratic platform.

Uh, he supports what he calls Medicare for y'all, um, which is, you know, a, a Texan-tailored version of Medicare for all proposals that I think were first championed by Bernie.

And it's hard to predict how that's gonna shake out in a place like Texas, but I think the other thing that makes his campaign kind of unique for a Democrat is that he has really leaned into his Christian faith as the framing mechanism for his politics.

Texas is a religious place.

Liz, your turn.