Aug 18, 2026 · 1 hr 8 min · 12 segments
You write; they talk. Bicycle gangs are good, schools are overrated, chronological snobbery is bad, vocations are always plural, and Chris waxes poetic about his favorite hot dog.
Ben SasseHost
Chris StirewaltHost
We're all dying, but only some of us have been brought face-to-face with that reality.
The truth is that I say each week that you should write us at sassandsteyerwalt at gmail.com. And I say that thing and you make a liar of me.
We will not get to even a fraction of the, even a small fraction of the emails that we receive.
reluctant guest, and you agreed that if I did a letters episode, it could be six minutes tops.
What definitely did happen is that first ABLE research assistant, Stuart Baker, went through and chose his faves.
And then Your Man Friday, James Wegman went through and chose the questions, I assume, that are the most excruciating, the most brutal, the most difficult, the hardest to answer, and the most disobliging, or at least that's what I hope.
But I do know that my son has written us like four or five times wanting me to talk about.
And I know people sometimes complain that I use earthy language or we use earthy language.
Now that you've said that, maybe I'm subscribing to your point of view about this podcast.
And I don't listen, I don't listen to these episodes, but I assume that, and we have had emails from people who find the coarse language almost always yours to be disconcerting and unpleasant.
I assume that Scott bleeps out the actual, the seven, George Carlin's seven words, I assume, are bleeped out.
This is very disappointing, but I want the record to reflect that it's you, not me.
I think you're never going to let us come back to the topic, so I'm going to draw one, actually two tiny distinctions.
Distinction one, Never take God's name lightly, and we've never done that on the episode.
The other fork on that distinction is different levels of earthy language about cattle bodily functions is culturally constructed entirely, and different communities use different words for excrement, and that's not a moral right or wrong.
And so the place that I would like to one-third repent to our audience, because we have gotten quite a few letters about this, is a lot of people listen to this in their car, and they're okay with 14-year-olds hearing some range of words about cattle bodily functions, and they're less comfortable with that about 5- and 6-year-olds.
And I will try to self-edit better, presuming the audience includes more 6-year-olds, not only 14-year-olds with mom and dad.
You know, the thing we got to be honest about is six-year-olds do want to learn about disintermediation in the defense tech space, and you got to stop bleeping that out.
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We're all dying, but only some of us have been brought face-to-face with that reality.
The truth is that I say each week that you should write us at sassandsteyerwalt at gmail.com. And I say that thing and you make a liar of me.
We will not get to even a fraction of the, even a small fraction of the emails that we receive.
reluctant guest, and you agreed that if I did a letters episode, it could be six minutes tops.
What definitely did happen is that first ABLE research assistant, Stuart Baker, went through and chose his faves.
And then Your Man Friday, James Wegman went through and chose the questions, I assume, that are the most excruciating, the most brutal, the most difficult, the hardest to answer, and the most disobliging, or at least that's what I hope.
But I do know that my son has written us like four or five times wanting me to talk about.
And I know people sometimes complain that I use earthy language or we use earthy language.
Now that you've said that, maybe I'm subscribing to your point of view about this podcast.
And I don't listen, I don't listen to these episodes, but I assume that, and we have had emails from people who find the coarse language almost always yours to be disconcerting and unpleasant.
I assume that Scott bleeps out the actual, the seven, George Carlin's seven words, I assume, are bleeped out.
This is very disappointing, but I want the record to reflect that it's you, not me.
I think you're never going to let us come back to the topic, so I'm going to draw one, actually two tiny distinctions.
Distinction one, Never take God's name lightly, and we've never done that on the episode.
The other fork on that distinction is different levels of earthy language about cattle bodily functions is culturally constructed entirely, and different communities use different words for excrement, and that's not a moral right or wrong.
And so the place that I would like to one-third repent to our audience, because we have gotten quite a few letters about this, is a lot of people listen to this in their car, and they're okay with 14-year-olds hearing some range of words about cattle bodily functions, and they're less comfortable with that about 5- and 6-year-olds.
And I will try to self-edit better, presuming the audience includes more 6-year-olds, not only 14-year-olds with mom and dad.
You know, the thing we got to be honest about is six-year-olds do want to learn about disintermediation in the defense tech space, and you got to stop bleeping that out.