the dream the other night where I was on the other side of the veil. I was helping people who have already transitioned. My sister was there. She passed on in 2011. There's a lot of people that are waiting. They didn't go through that, the white light, the tunnel and all that stuff. They're on the other side of the veil waiting for us. They're going to be there too. Anybody that's passed on recently or at least since 2011, like Dolores Cannon and Masaru Emoto and all these people, Terrence McKenna. There's so many people out there that have passed that aren't with us in the physical. They're on the other side waiting for us. I was just helping them understand what this process is going on right now and to hang in there and it's going to be happening.


Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this virtual book talk with Denise Kearn and author of We Gather Together, a nation divided, a president in turmoil and a historic campaign to embrace gratitude and grace. Today's program is presented in partnership with the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, and we thank them for their support. Our annual Thanksgiving holiday is just two days away. This year will be very different from past years as we attempt to adapt to a national health crisis, but the core idea of a day of Thanksgiving remains the same, taking time to reflect and express gratitude. In her book, We Gather Together, Denise Kearnen looks back over centuries of the concept of showing gratitude as a community. In her own nation, presidents have declared national days of Thanksgiving, but not as a regular recurring holiday until President Abraham Lincoln. The National Archives holdings contain the first U.S. Thanksgiving proclamation by George Washington in 1789 and subsequent ones through the presidency of Barack Obama. Lincoln's 1863 proclamation is there as well and has a central role in the book about which we are about to hear. In the mid-19th century, Sarah Joseph Ahale campaigned for decades for an annual day of Thanksgiving observed throughout the United States. She finally had success with President Lincoln. His three-page proclamation written in the midst of the Civil War began with an expression of gratitude for a year filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and helpful skies and concluded with an appeal to God to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union. Since then, we have set aside a day of national Thanksgiving every November to stop and consider what makes us truly thankful. Now it is my pleasure to welcome our guest. Denise Kiernan is an author, journalist, and producer. Her best-selling books include The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City. She has also worked in television serving as head writer for ABC's Who Wants to be a Millionaire during its Emmy award-winning first season. Karen Abbott is the author of best-selling books including American Rose and The Ghosts of Eden Park. She has appeared on the History Channel, CBS Sunday Morning, and the Discovery Channel. Now let's turn to Denise Kiernan and Karen Abbott. Thank you for joining us today. And thank you for joining us during this holiday week. I'm very excited to be talking about Denise Kiernan's fantastic new book, We Gather Together. And we have a lot to talk about. It's going to be a fun time tonight. And Denise and I are all very good friends as well as longtime writing partners. And we always talk about the fact that the world in which we begin a book rarely resembles the world in which the book is published. And I don't think that that's as true for any other book as much as it is for We Gather Together. The world has changed drastically since you first began this book. I'd love for you to start out by talking about the germ of this idea and how the idea evolved and how did your work evolve as the world was really drastically changing around us. Thank you. That's a great question to start with. And thank you so much, David Ferriero. I've had the delight of meeting the Archivist of the United States on several occasions. And thanks to the National Archives for putting this together. And thanks to Abbott for joining in with me on what is the weirdest book tour I've ever had in my life. So yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times people don't realize that as writers, we come up with these germs of ideas, as you said, and we're not maybe sure it's going to be a book. So for me, I came across the story of Sarah Giuseppe Hale, this, you know, this woman, this 19th century media maven who campaigned for a national day of thanks. I came across her story years ago while I was working on another book. But as you know, and people who read my books, now I don't necessarily do straight up biographies. So I just, but I was so compelled by this woman's story. I did what I always do, which is start a file, right? I have written files, I have email files, post-its, running around the office. And I sort of set it aside. And, you know, I'm always, as a writer, kind of more interested in the intersection of stories and characters and events, as much or even more so than the individual characters and events themselves. And the intersection between Sarah Giuseppe Hale and Abraham Lincoln, certainly was fascinating to me. The intersection between the Civil War and the establishment of the American National Day of Thanks that has continued to what we know to be Thanksgiving today, that intersection was interesting. And the intersection between Sarah Giuseppe Hale and so many other writers and media personalities, that was interesting. But to me, there was still kind of something missing. And I wasn't quite ready to do this book. And on a personal level, and also as a researcher and someone interested in science, I have found the last decade or so, the research that's been done into gratitude and having a gratitude practice has been really fascinating to me. And the last self-care industry. Exactly. But you know, what's so interesting is that in the last decade or so, there is hard scientific research on a neurological level that looks at the mental, the emotional, and even the physical benefits to having a gratitude practice. And I thought, well, gosh, that's, I mean, that's what a Thanksgiving is. That's what a Thanksgiving has been since humans have walked the earth. The idea that we're going to take time to appreciate that which has been given to us. And to me, the whole the gratitude piece was kind of the linchpin for me. So I wanted to look at American history, in a sense, through the lens of our relationship to gratitude and giving thanks. And but, but still, even though once I decided that's how I wanted to do the book, you know, you do your outlines, I'm a big outliner. Some people are looking into the craft. Yeah, I'm a big outliner.   But oh my gosh, when I was proofing a book titled We Gather Together and the phrase social distancing was what's trending, I just thought, what, you know, what is going on? And yeah, it was, it was, it was pretty surreal. This has been a pretty surreal experience for me. We gather together for zoom. But that's kind of the point, right?  But Sarah just have a hail thought it would still be powerful and moving and unifying. If everybody just sort of knew on that one day, everybody in their country was going to get together and take a minute to just say thank you. Now, before we get into Sarah, because she's such a rich, fascinating, fabulous character, I just want to say that I some of my favorite parts of the book are your own first person experiences. You have such a witty, wonderful, funny voice, and really insightful anecdotes, I think that really sort of bolster the larger idea that you're presenting about a new kind of Thanksgiving story. If you could just tell some of your favorite experiences of celebrating Thanksgiving abroad, and that whole situation. Yes, you know, I love I love Thanksgiving. And I want to feel good about what Thanksgiving is, which was one of the impetuses for writing this book. But I've lived abroad a couple times in my life. I've lived in France briefly, and I've lived in Italy twice. And to me, it's always interesting how American I feel when I'm not in America, like how much of an American I feel when I'm not here. And I've lived in Rome twice, Rome, Italy. It's a very special place to me. And trying to have Thanksgiving, you want to go have it's Thanksgiving, and you think to yourself, Well, it's the end of November, I've got it. It's Thanksgiving, right? I've got to have Thanksgiving, and you get your ex Pat friends together. And then you realize, you know, when I lived in Rome, which is more years ago than I need to share. But the Oh, my gosh, cranberries, they don't get what are cranberries, they don't find cranberries. You're trying to contact people who know people at the food and agriculture organization. It's like an underground, it's like cranberry smuggling underground. But it was really it was it was a really unique moment. And then, you know, I remember having this very strange Thanksgiving in Paris, and at a French friends apartment. And we went looking for a turkey and le donned. And we found one. And we looked at this turkey. And I thought that is the smallest turkey I've ever seen in my life. And we get it all the way back to my friends apartment. And it won't fit in the oven. And so we have to cook this turkey and the oven door won't shut. And turkeys take long enough with like the oven door shut. Yeah, but it was just one of those things where you where you thought there is there is something about this holiday that that speaks to me and continues to. But I was really interested in it. You know, I've known for a while that the history we grew up with with Thanksgiving, right, odd as kids wasn't real and on point. And I wanted to I wanted to dig into that.  And in a sense, you know, the concept of and I get into this in the book, I talk about ancient Rome. I talk about all of these, you know, thanksgivings that, you know, by years and years and years predate anything we've conceived of on this continent. Right. You know, they're, they're meaningful. And you can kind of see that I kind of described it as an evolution. Yeah, well, let's talk about Sarah Giuseppe Hill. She's a huge part of this book, a fascinating woman, a flawed woman, a complicated woman. Tell me about a little bit about her origins. And how did the the idea for Thanksgiving become this driving force in her life? And how did she go about accomplishing this and, and you know, bringing it all the way to the to the Lincoln White House? So what's so you know, we have this, the word Thanksgiving, the practice of Thanksgiving, like I said, goes back, you know, almost till till since humans have walked the earth. Sarah Giuseppe Hill grew up in the early 19th century in in America. Her father was a Revolutionary War veteran. So she grew up with a very strong and he was injured during the Revolutionary War, she grew up with a very strong love of what it meant for the United States of America to exist. Yeah, she also, you know, she grew up, it was a difficult time. An older brother was lost at sea. She lost her mother and a sister, you know, at a young age. And, you know, she didn't have the benefit of what, you know, we would consider to be education. However, she did consider herself lucky to grow up in a house where they loved books and loved reading. And they did so voraciously. One of her older brothers had the benefit of going off to Dartmouth to study when he came home, he would share what he learned with his sister, Sarah. I thought that was really touching. He was invested in her education. It was so lovely. And you could really see how important those kinds of conversations and reading and discussion of all those things were in her life. And then she married a man, David Hale, who, you know, also saw in her this, this woman who loved to write, this woman who loved to read, they had study hour every night between eight and 10, they would sit in their parlor and they would talk about French or they would talk about botany or books they were interested in. And Sarah's husband, David, knew she wrote and didn't just encourage her to keep writing, encouraged her to put her work out into the world. And this is the 1820s. And she does. And she sadly loses him early on in their marriage. He got pneumonia, which was is still a killer, but was definitely a killer then. And she was a widowed mother of five and needed to make a living. And she started putting her work out into the world. And she wrote a novel in 1827 called Northwood that got enough attention to get her a position as the editor of a ladies magazine. And in that novel, she shares a scene, it's a fictional, it's a fictional book, but there is a scene almost an entire chapter dedicated to a Thanksgiving meal. And you can see through the experiences of her fictional characters, how meaningful this day of coming together was to her. And as she grew her influence as a magazine editor and and an author of her own right and a poetess and someone who anthologized other people's work and put them out in the world. You can see her dedication to that idea of a singular day of thanks because in the early 19th century, you would have, it seems so strange, actually, you know, when we think Thanksgiving is such a big part of America now, it seems strange to think about a time when, you know, Massachusetts might have Thanksgiving on one day and you were scared. Yeah, it might have it on another day and some places might not have it at all. And it was kind of all over the, you know, all over the map. And that just became one of her campaigns. And I say one because even though, you know, she was so influential when it came to the creation of our American National Day of Thanks, she also campaigned for women's education. Yeah, also campaigned to raise money for the widows of people lost at sea. She was always using this position that I think she felt lucky to have as someone with no education was editing on the scene to bring attention. And you know, I think if she was a literary influencer, I mean, mentioned some of the people that she published. Oh my gosh, yes, exactly. And you know, if you think about, you know, who she would be if she were around today, we would call her an influencer, right? She'd be one of the people who had a million Instagram followers. Exactly. Telling people what, but she wasn't only just trying to sell copies of her magazine, she was telling people how to take care of their kids, what kind of exercise they should have. But she was pushing all of the great male writers of that time period, you know, talk about any of them. Oh, yeah.  There were what they called scissor editors. People would clip out articles or pieces or essays from other magazines and kind of curate them and put them out in their own publication. And she, when she came on board with these ladies magazine, she was like, no, we're going to publish original, original stuff.  But he shows signs of genius and is, you know, could be no less a poet than Shelly. And this is what her magazine said. And it turns out this young writer went to West Point with her son, David. So David writes his mother, Sarah Hale, and says, I showed my classmate what your magazine said about his, about his writing. And, you know, so I told Edgar, Gerrall and Poe, yes, who would kick out of West Point eventually? But yeah, who would get kicked out of West Point because he wasn't too, this was the beginning. Nobody knew who Edgar Allen Poe was. Right. Beginning of a lifelong for Poe, lifelong relationship with writer-editor relationship with Sarah Giuseppe Hale, you know, the cast of a Montiado was published. Yeah, that's amazing. I love that. It cracks me up because you just imagine these ladies, you know, reading about patterns and, you know, how to set a table and then someone getting walled up in a crib. Exactly.  But she was so such a voracious reader and so interested in presenting unique ideas to the public that she recognized these things and she was willing to put them out there. And she also, in addition to supporting her five kids as a widow and running a magazine, created anthologies of women writers. I mean, yes, she was one of the first publishers of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving and Edgar Allen Poe and Ralph Waldo Emerson. But she also created anthologies that included people like Lydia Maria Child and, you know, Grace Greenwood and all these amazing women writers. And so, you know, influencers today, you know, might be selling a product, but she was actually in so many ways lifting up other people. And this, you know, was her passion, along with, you know, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was her big. Yeah. So let's get back to her crusade with Thanksgiving and bring it into the Civil War. I know we want to see the wonderful 1863 proclamation. If anybody can show that. Yeah. So, so Sarah Hale decided that, you know, we had all of these different kinds of thanksgivings were proclaimed on different days and different states in different years. And she wanted Thanksgiving to be in America to be one day, the same day every year. And everybody celebrated it on the same day. So she starts writing about it in her books.  And she starts writing governors and the heads of territories and, you know, ambassadors in other countries and saying, please, can't we all get on board and do this? And then she starts writing presidents, Taylor and Fillmore and Pierce and Buchanan, asking them to proclaim, you know, a national day of thanks. And they, they just, they didn't get on board. And then in 1863, she writes, not just Abraham Lincoln, she also writes his Secretary of State, Seward, which I think is a brilliant move. And, and Seward in his autobiography, you know, says he says to Lincoln, Hey, there's another, these states complain, we're taking away their rights. There's another right we can take away from them. And Lincoln says, Well, what's that? And he says the right to proclaim a national day of Thanksgiving. And so in 1863, Lincoln answers, Sarah Giuseppe Hale's plea to proclaim a national day of thanks throughout the United States of America. And yeah, we could see that because I think I mean, there were so many wonderful documents at the archives that I was able to look at so many presidential papers. And if we can share the, do we have the proclamation? I think it's up there. Or is everybody seeing it? And we're not. Yeah, I think I think everybody's seeing it. So right. Okay. So I'm waiting for it to be shown, but I can't. Okay, but you're looking at it. Okay. My favorite part of the book too, where if you could just talk about a little get a little bit more in depth on that first that first Civil War Thanksgiving as scattered as it was, there were so many wonderful things happening in little pockets of the country. Yeah, just to share a few of your favorite, favorite anecdotes there. One of the things that was interesting to me was the way that Thanksgiving served as, you know, kind of a lens through which to examine really American culture in the evolution of the American experience throughout the 19th and 20th century and even coming into the 21st. You know, the year before Lincoln agreed to proclaim a national Thanksgiving in 1862, there was a Thanksgiving dinner where the discussion of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment took place, the creation of the of the first all black regiment in the Civil War. If anybody saw the movie Glory, that was about the Massachusetts 54th, one of the seeds that created the Massachusetts 54th, that that came to be at a Thanksgiving dinner in Boston. The year that, you know, Lincoln proclaimed this National Day of Thanksgiving. And you think about that, I was talking before about the intersection of events and people, the idea that a unifying day of saying thank you finally came to pass in the middle of one of the most, you know, divisive times ever in this country to me is so powerful and interesting. And you have people like Sojourner Truth going door to door to raise money to be able to provide a Thanksgiving meal for troops in outside Bibelwacht, outside Detroit. That's one of my favorite story. That was amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Say again. Oh, Clara Barton is there. Yeah, Clara Clara Barton's Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving celebrated in the field with soldiers writing about either things were quiet and you have Confederate soldiers writing, you know, things were quiet because our enemy was celebrating Thanksgiving. And it's it's almost like everybody kind of just took a moment. They did what you're supposed to do in Thanksgiving and they chilled out for a day. Right. Yeah.  Thomas Nast was one of the, you know, illustrator who who who did so many, so many illustrations during this period in time. And his Thanksgiving illustrations captured a lot of this stuff, you know, people celebrating Thanksgiving in the field on ships at sea, you know, and and charity started to take hold of people raising money to so that people could have a Thanksgiving meal in hospitals. And all those sorts of things during the that that first that Civil War era of Thanksgiving, when our National Day of Thanks took root and, you know, the Thanksgiving we know began and continues on to today, they're really quite, you know, inspirational when you watch people find a way to be grateful in the midst of horrific times and bringing that back to what I considered to be like the linchpin of why I wanted to do this book, The Concept of Gratitude. You know, there's a lot of research that shows that the ability to maintain a sense of thankfulness and gratefulness, when things are going their worst, is incredibly important to the resilience of the human spirit. And I think what I was trying to do throughout this book was show that resilience and how it manifested in the Civil War into the 20th century. To that point, let's talk about for a minute about the Spanish flu. I mean, how are people celebrating Thanksgiving during the Spanish flu, which, you know, is very eerily similar to what we're going through this week? Okay, so that was one of those. We were talking at the top of the top of the conversation about how books land in worlds that are very different than the world in which you conceived them. And the Spanish flu of 1918 and Thanksgiving during the Spanish flu was one of those parts when we were going through and proofreading and getting and getting ready to put this book out into the world that I just we were all just looking thinking, oh my gosh, what? So, you know, there were there were a lot of similarities. People were the flu wasn't new. People were tired of it. They were tired of quarantine. They were tired of staying away from people, you know, on the tail end of armistice day and wanting to kind of revel in the in the fact that a war was over and be able to celebrate with loved ones. People wanted to be close with one another. They wanted to get together and the advice from health professionals and civic leaders was, please don't do that. Yes, answering a lot of and say yes, stay home where it is eerily similar and you see the advice and I love going back as I know you do and looking at old newspaper articles. Oh my gosh. There's no better window into a different era than that. Yeah. Oh my gosh, seeing what was on what was on the front page, what were people focusing on what we're concerned about. And so there were all of the this is canceled. That is canceled. You know, please don't attend any large gatherings. You know, celebrate your homes, keep the spirit of the holiday, etc, etc. And there was one article I came across that's that's in the book. And it was this and it's one of the ones that for me is most memorable and it was this one family dinner and not a big family dinner either. But people who didn't live in the same house and they came together for this Thanksgiving meal. And that one meal resulted in 27 severe cases of Spanish flu.  And then there was even an article about Santa you know, the Santa appearance in Minneapolis was going to be canceled because Santa got the flu.  But I mean, it was really quite quite eerie and quite telling to go back and look at that. But again, throughout that, you know, throughout rationing for World War One and throughout the Spanish flu, you see these moments of charity and of kind of, you know, figuring out a way to be thankful for for what you have.  It wasn't a congressionally established holiday. It was not a federal holiday until until World War Two. And I think it's just I just think it's so interesting that the the Thanksgiving we're familiar with, got it start during the Civil War, and was, you know, congressionally established during World War Two. So you see this ongoing evidence of, you know, a commitment to give thanks when things are going horribly. And that's the kind of message that even though I didn't know this book was going to land in this particular world, that's message that still feels just so incredibly relevant and poignant today. Definitely. So we have a couple of questions when it's start getting into the questions here. One of them one of them is is one I'm interested in as well because because it's such a beautifully researched book. So talk about some of the sources for your research and you and I and sort of a compound question, you and I always talk about world building and nonfiction. You know, we're not allowed to make up dialogue. We're not allowed to make up characters, not allowed to make up events. We can't combine anything we can't play with the timeline. It's a lot harder than just although fiction has its own challenges, but making things up in your mind, you know, and sometimes the dead people don't do what you want them to do. They don't tell you what you want them to tell you. They don't say what you want them to say. Yeah. So talk about your world building and your sources. People want to hear about your sources. Yeah. So, you know, world building often gets talked about a lot when we talk about science fiction and fantasy, you know, I mean, you have to really buy into Middle Earth if you're going to go on that adventure with Frodo, right? You've really got to feel Middle Earth.  So that I get that.  You want to feel like you're sinking into otherwise what's the point, right? Absolutely. And that's what takes you away. And in going away to that other moment in time, you're able to not only experience a different world, but I think you're also best able to recognize the similarities of the human experience in the 21st century versus in this case, the 19th century. There were many, many resources. Thank goodness for the National Archives. The presidential papers I get into George Washington's papers, John Adams papers, John Quincy Adams papers, Jefferson's papers, the Roosevelt's papers and all of those.  Then, of course, the, you know, the proclamations, Lincoln's papers, Hale's letter. Well, let me talk about Hale for a second. We also, since you and I write about women a lot, we talk about the difficulty in writing about women because their archives, their letters, their writings were often discarded or considered unimportant. And hers were too. They were. But talking about researching her. A lot of them were luckily she was interesting because sometimes she revealed the most about herself in her, in her magazine editorials and in the introductions to her various books. And she wrote a lot of books. She was one of these people where I was looking through everything she wrote. And all I could think was my God, what have I been doing with my time? She just kept going and going and going. So, for example, she put together a wonderful anthology called The Lady's Reef, which was an anthology of American poetesses. So she brought attention to all of these wonderful American writers, American female writers. And she wrote her own biography as as the editor of this book and shared how she felt about losing her husband and shared how she felt the first time she saw a woman author, a woman as the author of a book, how she felt as a kid reading that, talked about how important her kids were to her, how important education was because even though she wasn't left with a lot of money when her husband passed away and she talks about that, she wanted more than anything to make sure that they had an education because if they did not have that they would be poor indeed. So there were a lot of really wonderful insights that came from her actual writings. Luckily, blessedly, I'm sitting here and looking at the on the floor at the floor of I have a bound copy of Goaties Ladies magazine for all of 1863. I have an actual 1863 copy. That's amazing. And you should be framing that and hanging that on your wall. That's it. And I would get up and go get it. But I'm so deathly afraid of like dripping up her green lights and everything that goes on now in this crazy world that we're in. So many of the things that she published happily have been scanned in her case by places like happy trust, which is a really old resource. But when it came to, you know, proclamation presidential proclamations and presidential letters the National Archives was incredible. One of the things that I New York, New York Public Library, manuscripts and archives division where I've done research for every single book I've ever done, had wonderful files on the US Sanitary Commission, which was a really influential organization, volunteer organization during the Civil War. Parts of those holdings are the handwritten letter by Dr. Leo, who was the first doctor to come upon Lincoln when he was shot. Oh, yeah. The handwritten, the handwritten, yeah. Yeah, Lincoln's assassination is in my book. That was incredible. And when you see, I mean, to me, like to see handwriting is such a special thing. And you know, as I do, when you start researching people for a certain amount of time, when I was working on the last castle, for example, which was my last book about Biltmore Estate and the Vanderbilt Family, I could spot Edith Vanderbilt's handwriting in a second.  And then I think about, I don't know, this is a whole other conversation. But I think about archives now and emails, like archiving emails, there's just there's something, it's just something missing that's, you know, right I don't I don't stationary in my in my know, I don't envy the historians coming 150 years after us, I will say that I'm dealing with you know, we need to archives. Yeah. So we have another question here. Did Sarah receive much recognition in her life? No. No, she didn't. Not that I could not that I could come across not the kind of recognition, I think, in my opinion, no, some people I'm people might differ with me. Certainly not the kind of recognition we're familiar with today where I mean basically Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving and it wasn't Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving because of this amazing woman who did X, Y and Z. It was just Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving. Right. On and on it went. And she kept writing presidents because she knew and she said this in her in her magazine, we need this to be an actual law, we need this to be a congressional established. Otherwise, it's always going to be at the whim of a president and then governors of states and heads of territories to follow suit with whatever the president proclaimed. And, you know, she never she never saw that come to pass. So she kept writing presidents right up until, you know, Rutherford B. Hayes right up until the last president who was alive, you know, at the time of her death and years later, you would see and I get into this in the book a little, you would see how the I the further away we got from 1863, you could see how the media started to remember Thanksgiving and write about Thanksgiving. And there were a couple of places that mentioned hail, but a lot of places that that didn't. So she was a very influential editor during her time. When she died, I will say this when she died. The obituaries far and wide talked about what an incredible editor she was, how influential she was. Not all of them mentioned Thanksgiving, which is kind of astounding. It's really interesting. So, you know, it was interesting to see that. I don't I don't think she cared. I really don't think she was happy that it happened. She didn't need to hear anything else about it. She was good. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. You sort of paint a lovely and I, you know, people buy the book and see the scene, but this sort of nice picture of of content you her life sort of ends just the way you wish it would end for her. Yeah, it does. It does. And I'm not going to I think it's a real I think the end of her life is quite lovely. And I guess I'm not going to say that anymore. Well, we could talk about craft where there's there is a question. Is there anything else to share about the Sojourner Truth part of the story? Anything else you could share about her contributions during that there is, you know, and there's so many, you know, I get I get into some of the contributions of of Native Americans and Black Americans during the Civil War. Frederick Douglass and his sons are in my book. They they have a, you know, they come through during the Civil War, talked about the Massachusetts 54th Harriet Tubman. Yeah, also in the story because it, you know, essentially this was a holiday that was meant to, you know, unify everyone and certainly the Civil War and the impact that the outcome of that war had on the lives of enslaved people was significant. Sojourner Truth, you know, she or one of my favorite stories, one of my favorite anecdotes was she's literally going door to door and she's 60 something at this point to raise money for a regiment of all Black soldiers that have been whacked outside of Detroit so they can have a Thanksgiving meal. And the event itself gets shared in the newspaper and she gave a speech and it's really beautiful. But she goes to this, she goes to this, she writes in her autobiography that she goes to this one man's door and she didn't always get a lovely reception when she was going door to door.  And she said, well, you know, what is your name?  And she just looked at him and said, I'm glad there are no more and walk off. Brilliant, brilliant. But then, you know, she does raise money for the troops to have a lovely, a lovely Thanksgiving where they were, you know, as good as they could. And she gave a lovely speech and it was covered in the papers. So that was that was one of my one of my favorite Sojourner Truth stories.  So, you know, there's Frederick Douglas and Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman is a big part of this. Yeah. And and Sojourner Truth and Harry Tubman and all these folks. And and you kind of want to be able to just they're also amazing.  There's so many rich details and you sort of seamlessly we've got many. And, you know, that's, you know, writing is so much as you know, I mean, so much of writing is not necessarily what you what you put in, but what you what you leave out. And that's the hard part. But, you know, it's what you got to do. One more craft question. And then I just I just want to ask you this because I think it's always an interesting discussion. People often ask it for me. And it's it's I have a whole long story about why I do what I do. And I'm curious about your process. Do you research and write at the same time? Or are you separation of church and state? You must research and you must write or is it sort of an integral process that you sort of go into? It's it's for me. It happens at the same. I mean, it and it shifts. So like if this is the process. Yeah. At the beginning, this much is research and this much is writing. And then as you move on, like this much is writing and this much is because what happens and I'm a big I don't know if you or people watching are familiar with mind mapping, but I'm a big mind mapper. I'm not. I will have to I have to pick your mind about this later. So it's kind of a circular way of looking at ideas. So I get these giant whiteboards and I'm not talking about like the kinds of whiteboards you could buy at, you know, an office store that might be, you know, three by four, three by five.  And I will put a timeline across the top and then I'll put themes and characters. And then I just start drawing arrows and then you turn into John Nash. So and then you to connect people and events and things and you sort of start to see the connections that way. But I always start off with a skeletal. I always start off with an outline. The outline sometimes goes right at the window. But I do start out with one because I need to know I'm going to. I need to know there is a way to get where I want to go. But yeah, I never the thing is as you start looking into. Even after you started writing, even after a first draft or even a second draft, there are always things that kind of kind of tickle your brain and you I can't help but look into them and I'm horrible and, you know, I don't think editors love me for this. I'm always like, I got to squeeze this in. I got to squeeze this in. I got to find a place for this because you find all that makes you so good because the details are what make narrative nonfiction. So that's what makes narrative nonfiction come along. I mean, that's what makes you feel sort of like you're in a, you know, that world building thing we were talking about. But yeah, so I do a lot of outlining and but yeah, I write and research at the same time. But I definitely do. Well, even before I decide what book I'm going to do and I know you're the same way, you've got to know there's enough out there. Yeah, yeah. You've got to know the primary source materials. Yeah, you got to know there's enough source material or else you don't want to go down that road. So actually, before you've started writing the book, you've already done actually a lot of even before you propose the book to an editor, you've already done a lot of research. But so it's like the percentage kind of kind of ships. But I write in the morning.   I mean, there's so many wonderful archives. It's like you're on a detective on the search. It's so awesome. It's so wonderful. It's such a tremendous resource that we all have. And there's just no I think of all the stuff that I've come across. I think of all the stuff that you've come across and other writers we know. And then I think of all the papers and and records that nobody's looked at yet. And it's like there's this incredible. There's just this goldmine of wonderful stories about American experience that are just. I can tell you have things percolating already for your next couple to be continued. To be continued, yes. OK, one more question that we are going to close out. But I want everybody out there to know that Denise is not only a fantastic and brilliant writer. She is also an amazing cook. What is on your table this Thanksgiving? What are you doing? OK, so Thanksgiving is a big deal in this house. Normally. Well, the day is happening. Like I am cooking. I actually have two turkeys. I went to pick them up today. We get them from a local farmer. So literally I saw these turkeys were running around. And I make stuffing. I do my stuffing and muffin tins. I make stuffing that's fancy. OK, it's not actually the whole thing about the stuffing muffin because it's not yeast. So it doesn't rise. So you can just pack muffin tins really, really high. And then so much of it, you get this wonderful crispy to moist ratio when you do stuffing muffins that way. But the better part is I'm big into Thanksgiving leftovers and stuffing muffins in the fridge.  And so then the stuffing muffins actually become the bread for leftover turkey sandwiches. Usually we have a big Thanksgiving leftover party here at the house on Saturday. Families that we know come by with their kids and we have all kinds of leftovers and people have dropped in and we decorate. I start the tree on Saturday after Thanksgiving. That's not happening this year. It's just... Well, you can feel free to send me leftovers in New York. I will mail you. I'll mail you jam. I will mail you jam. That's right. So I will...  It's just going to be my husband and I. So goodness, I'm going to be eating Thanksgiving for like six weeks. But I have to do it. Well, everybody should buy your book. It's also a great holiday gift. Let's put that out there. Was there anything you wanted to plug your Zoomsgiving on your on your website? Oh, yes. For those of you who are doing what I'm doing, which is not traveling, you know, but connecting with people this way like we are now, I actually on my website, DeniseKiernan.com, I have a Zoomsgiving page and I have gratitude quotes and little gratitude conversation starters. And I actually have Thanksgiving inspired Zoom backgrounds if you want to have like a little seasonal. I think I need I need one of those. Yeah. Yeah. So I just I thought, let's let's let's do what we can. We'll all we'll all get through this. It'll be OK. It will be OK. That's on my site. So and I would love to hear from people, you know, via my website what they did this year because I actually do think they're going to be a lot of really interesting traditions that evolved out of need because of everything that's going on that might actually stick around the pandemic has gone. So well, I want to say thank you to the National Archives. Yes, thank you for this really enlightening and fun interview. Your book is amazing. And I'm really honored to have talked with you about it. And everybody should read it, I think. Thank you so much. Thanks, National Archives. Thanks, Abbott and happy holidays, everybody. Thank you so much. Yes, happy Thanksgiving.


The Craft Foods Company presents The Great Gilder Sleeve. It's The Great Gilder Sleeve starring Harold Perry, brought to you by The Craft Foods Company, makers of a complete line of famous quality food products. Now let's get on to Somerfield in the Gilder Sleeve house. It's a balmy spring evening and it seems to be whispering something to Gilder Sleeve. On the surface, he appears to be toying with his after-dinner coffee, but underneath. My George, I think I might circulate a little this evening. Yes, sir. It's time to get back into action. When do I just call up? What'd you say? Just talking to myself, Marjorie. Thinking of going out this evening. Why don't you call up Mrs. Ransom? Well, as always, Mrs. Ransom. You haven't seen her in quite a while. It's been a week or ten days. I feel like calling someone else, though. Let's see. Eve Goodwin, maybe. Haven't seen her in months. I might just give her a jingle. Friday night, she has teachers meeting. Oh. Well, who else do I know? Mrs. Ransom. Besides her. I give up. Who do you know? Nobody, I guess. Well, I'll give Lila a break. What the heck? You better call her. Call Lila? No, Lila's always available. That's one good thing about Lila. She's always handy, and she's always home. I'll just back the car out and take her to the movies. Lila, I'll buy seats in the Lodge and hold her hand. There's the light and the power. Well, no use being fancy about this. There she comes to the window. It's me. Put on your hat. We're going to the movies. What? Nuts. Looks like I'll have to be fancy after all. Oh, well. Who does she think she's pushing around? Playing hard to get at her age. I was only knocking. Come on, let's go to the movies. No, thank you. And for your further information, I am not particularly flattered by the style of your invitation, blowing your horn. Yeah, but Lila, I was just trying to save time. Come on, or we'll miss the newsreel. I'm not going with you, Trotmar. Oh, tell me you got a date. I'm afraid you've been taking me a little too much for granted. Me? I don't know how you could get an idea like that. I've been busy, of course. So have I. Huh? I've been busy too, Trotmar. Well, that's fine. Glad to hear it. But look, we don't have to be technical, Lila. We understand each other, and if you're not doing anything... I'm not, especially with you. Lila, let's talk this over. I don't want to sleep. A gentleman does not stick his foot in a lady's door. But we're old friends. Just let me come in for a minute. Of course it won't mean anything. Guys, just because I stay away a while and hurt your feelings, that's no reason... My feelings are not the questions, Trotmar. It happens I have a new interest. Should I, Mark? Thanks. What do you mean, a new interest? His name is Mark Wayes. He's a newspaper man. You don't want to have anything to do with a newspaper man, Lila? He probably drinks. Sure not. He's always been a perfect gentleman. That way, I mean. What do you mean? Well, I mean, in some ways, he's simply outrageous. I've never in my whole life had a man treat me the way he treats me, Trotmar. You know the first thing he told me. He said I had a funny nose. I don't think you have. Your nose is okay. As a matter of fact, I have a very cute nose. Oh, sure. Sure, your nose is swell. That's not the point. Somehow, Mark just says things to me no one else could say. That's all. Sounds fresh to me. Oh, he is. Like the way I met him. I was taking a little news item down to the indicator office. I always talked to Miss Clement, the society editor. And she introduced me to Mr. Wade. We talked down a minute, and then he said, Mr. Ryan Sim, I'm going to a fire. How'd you like to come along? Can you imagine? A fire is no place to take a girl. Well, of course I declined. But the next night, he phoned and asked me to dinner. He said he'd forgotten my nose, and he wanted to check it. Well, I suppose he took you to some cheap newspaper dive. I tried not to notice, but the dinner cost four dollars. And he left a 50-cent tip. Oh, well. Just trying to make an impression. Oh, Mark, Mark, he doesn't care what people think. It was an Italian restaurant. The doll in his little place. Oh, and Mark was so funny. He pretended to talk Italian to the waiter. Almost drove the poor man crazy. Doesn't sound very funny to me. Well, you have to hear him do it. We went to the movies afterwards, and he offered to wrestle me to see who paid for the tickets. What? It was only joking, of course.  Well, naturally, I wouldn't expect you to appreciate him, Throckmorton. He has such imagination. Everything he does is so unexpected. He calls me stinky. I never realized a Yankee could be charming before. I don't want to hear any more about this, fellow Leela. Can't we go to the movies? Oh, we had more fun last night. I didn't get home until four o'clock in the morning. Mark's car broke down. He's so cute. What's cute about having a bum car?  I should say not. He hired a milk wagon. What? A milk wagon was coming along and Mark talked to the man into taking us home. Did you ever hear anything so crazy? Leela, if you ask me, you're the one that's crazy. Are you serious about this cheap comedian? He's not a cheap comedian. Down underneath, he's a very fine person. You can't be serious about a newspaper man. Well, I don't know whether I am or not. I decided we shouldn't see each other for a week as a test. Oh, my goodness. It's been three days now, but Mark doesn't play fair. He sends me some kind of a present every day to keep his memory green, he says. This morning, he sent me a phonograph record. He's crazy about music with the craziest note. Something about, I hope this tender lyric will convey the passion seeping in my soul. But look at the record. This is Smith Mixer. Never heard of it. Oh, you. You're behind the time, Strock Martin. Well, anybody can send a girl a record. Can this fellow sing? No, at least I haven't heard him. Don't worry. If a fellow like that could sing, you'd know it. Would you like me to sing for you, Leela? Oh, come on. Mine is my heart alone. Much for that song. Well, some other song, then, huh, Leela? One of your favorites. Speak to me of love and... I just don't feel like playing, Strock Martin. Oh, come on, one song for old times' sake. Come on, Leela. Well, don't push me. Good. I know a nice song. I don't think I've ever sung it here, but it's nice. What is it? When day is done. Do you know it? That's the right key, too. We can serve food so that we can help hungry people in other parts of the world. So, homemakers, hold on to the leftovers. One of the cleverest ways to serve leftover vegetables or meat or seafood is in a rich, golden cheese sauce. Made the easy way with velveta. This cheese food with a rich yet mild cheddar flavor always melts smooth. Add such goodness and fine food values. As a matter of fact, when you glamorize leftovers with velveta sauce, you're adding high quality, complete protein, precious milk minerals, food energy, riboflavin and vitamin A. To make that rich, tasting, nutritious cheese sauce, just melt one half pound of velveta in the top of your double boiler. Then, gradually stir in one fourth cup of milk. Like magic, you have satin smooth cheese sauce, perfectly delicious on vegetables, eggs, fish, leftover ham, chicken, veal or what have you. Tomorrow, look for velveta at your food store. The name on the package tells you that you're getting the smooth-melting cheese food of craft quality. Faith, it seems, has pulled a knife on Gilder's sleeve. All winter, he lay dormant.  Now comes spring, and once again, the sap is stirring. He steps next door to pay his respects to his charming neighbor and finds that a stranger has stepped in ahead of him. That kind of thing can shake a man. It has shaken Gilder's sleeve. He comes home from his evening with Leela in a daze and wanders disconsolently off to bed, but not to sleep. Instead, he lies there tense and staring in the dark. Nuts. I'll try my stomach. I just won't think about it. How could you do this to me? I haven't been around much lately, but gee whiz. I thought we had an understanding, sort of. I mean, gosh, after all, we've been to each other, almost. Why, we were even engaged once. Have you forgotten that? Does that mean nothing to you? Newspaper man. I think I might at least have been notified. Might at least have been given first refusal. You're not listening to me. You don't care, that's why. You don't care what happens to me. You know what you are. You're hard-hearted. I don't like to say it, Leela, but you are. All you ever think about is yourself. Why don't you think about me for once? Oh, I don't think you're such a wonderful piano player, either. That's telling. Why didn't I say those things to her when I was over there? Why, I didn't think of men. I can't sleep.  Maybe if I read for a while, I might go down in the kitchen and look for a bite to eat. Might as well be eating, just lying awake. Yes, it's me. Go back to sleep, my dear, sorry if I disturbed you. What are you doing up? Are you all right? Oh, yes, yes, go back to bed. But what are you doing wandering around in the middle of the night? I couldn't sleep, that's all. Lucky, what's wrong? Nothing. Marjorie, as long as you're up, tell me something. And I want an honest answer. What is it? Do I seem old to you? How old are the news? Why? Go back to bed. Hello, Phoebe. What can I do for you this fine day morning? Lovely day, isn't it? I remarked to Mrs. Phoebe as I was leaving this morning. Well, what's happening, Mr. Jones? You look a little under the weather. No, I had a bad night last night. No sleep? Too bad. Something keep you awake? I guess so. Well, that kind of thing can tell on a man pretty quickly. Yes, I know. Under the eyes, particularly. Let's not dwell on it, shall we? Phoebe, have you got any kind of a tonic or anything? No, it's the only thing you'll come to the right place. That's why I came. Yes, I'm happy to say the tonics are coming through very nicely now. Not in great quantities, you understand. But enough to tone up our mood. Not in great quantities, you understand. But enough to tone up our regular customers, too. Well, that's good. During the war, you know, we weren't able to get a lot of them. I understand some of the materials were going into the atomic bomb. Oh. Well, I don't want anything like that. Just something to give me a little lift, Phoebe. I don't want to go up like a rocket. Mr. Gervis, may I suspect your joking business? Well, let me see. They have your standard remedies here. Moonage, cycle phosphate. Dodge, dragon patterns. Dr. Pagan, nature compound. Dr. Pagan, nature compound. Bill Bows, beef iron and wine. Bill Bows, beef iron and wine. Flood and liver extract. Flood and liver extract. Goodwin's household ammonia. Goodwin's household ammonia. Well, how did that get up there? How did that get up there? Long shelf! What would you say was the best, Pee-Vee? Which is the best? Yes. Well, they're all excellent, Mr. Gildersley, which, uh, matter of taste. Don't be silly. Nobody ever took a tonic for the taste, Pee-Vee. Which is the best? Well, I tell you, they're all excellent. How about that one there in the brown tissue paper wrapper? Oh, I've heard that's excellent. Excellent. Oh? What about that nasty-looking green one there? That? Excellent. You know what I think, Pee-Vee? I don't think you have any faith in any of them. I don't know. I wouldn't say that. Well, these are all nationally advertised brands. I'm told they do an excellent job. They do, eh? When properly administered? When properly under the guidance of a physician. Oh, I see. Of course I have one here, not quite so well known. Uh, this one only came in yesterday. It's just in the least by the Army. Oh? By the Army? Army surplus. I'm told it cost the Army eight dollars a bottle. We're disposing of it for thirty-nine cents. Is it any good? You know the Army meant to go to sleep. They demand the best. What's in it? Everything. Will it help me to sleep? It won't keep you away. All right, wrap it up. Well, here, gentlemen. Good morning, John. Gentlemen, gentlemen. Hello, Judge. I killed the old man. I know, I know. I had a bad night. Under the eyes there. Oh, yes. Yes, I know. Phoebe's giving me something for it. Why so pale and wand-found lover? Who told you? Tell me what? You've been talking to Lila. I haven't seen Lila in four or five days. What's she got to do with it anyway? Nothing. Lila keeping you awake nights, has she? None of your business?  I thought you'd sort of lost interest in Lila, Gilda. So did I, confounded. After all, you could have married her there once. I could again, if I wanted to. Well, now I don't know. You're not getting any younger, you know. Neither is she. Certainly. But does she know it? Why, you old goat? Sure, I'm an old goat. So is Phoebe, but we admitted, don't we, Phoebe? Ah, wouldn't say that. Another day, I might admit it, Judge, but this spring weather, I've got a half of mine to close up early. You do that, Phoebe.  But, Mr. Gildersleeve, what about your tonic? Don't you... Give it to the judge, Phoebe. I know something quicker. All right, Commissioner, your next plan right up in the chair there. Sorry to keep you waiting. That's all right, Floyd. Oh, thanks, Doc. Thanks a lot. See you around, regardless of the wife. Take care now. Cheap skate. Only guy in town that hasn't raised his tip since the war started. Well, how's it going, Commissioner? Been doing any... Commissioner, what happened? I had a bad night, Floyd. I'd rather not hear any more about it. Put them things under your eyes. Well, don't tell me about them. Do something about them. Okay, I'll try. I want you to give me the works, Floyd.  Well, that's quite an order, Commissioner. I ain't no miracle workie, you know. I ain't no Elizabeth Arden. All I claim to be is a darn good barber and a fair tenor. But I'll do what I can. Is that too tight for you? No, that's okay. I guess we better start with a massage, huh? Unless you want to go in for surgery. For what? Only joking, Commissioner. My surgery's unintentional, you might say. What do you think about my mustache, Floyd? Do you think that's a little droopy? No, why? Somebody been making cracks? No, I just wondered if it couldn't be a little more youthful. Well, we could heist it a little, maybe. You got a date or something, Commissioner? I just worried about holding out of your job. Well, I have a sort of a date. Sort of a date? What kind of a date is that? Well, this party, I won't mention her name, but she's gone and got some notions all of a sudden about youth. Oh. Afraid I'm going to have to do some missionary work there. Mrs. Ransom running around with some younger fellow, is she? Where did you get that idea? Well, what else?  There must be something behind it. It ain't so long it's getting in the soup. What makes you think it's Mrs. Ransom? Well, ain't it? This fellow's got the darndest line, Floyd. He insults her. Tells her she's funny looking and she loves it. Sure. It's them little attentions that get some. I swear, I think this guy is crazy. He took her for a ride in the milk wagon. Can you imagine that? I've seen a fellow do that in the movie once. Maybe he did, too. Only in the movies they usually bring the horse home to breakfast. But, Floyd, what way is that to behave with a lady? It's not so dumb. Women don't want a man who's faithful. They just want a man to be cute. Well, maybe. How do you think I and the wife have stuck it out all these years? I just let things go along and when I see they gone as far as they can and she's about ready to crown me, I'll pull something. He's cute, honor. You can't hit a guy when he's cute. I don't know, Floyd. It would just never occur to me to take Mrs. Ransom out in the milk wagon. Oh, you don't want to take her out in the milk wagon anyway. That's been done already. Be original. If you want to make a hit with her, take her out in something worse. What's worse than a milk wagon? I don't know. There must be something. How about a hearse? A hearse?  You know Fred Cyple? He's got a hearse. Is Cyple the undertaker? Who else?  You know, he don't let on when he's on a job, but he can laugh with the best of them. He'd lend you his hearse. Or rent it anyway. Oh, Floyd, I don't know, a hearse. What can you lose? You're not doing as hot as it is. Well, that's true, Floyd, but still. I ain't hot and never want any fair ladies, you know. How do I know she'd like it? Well, you already know she goes for that kind of stuff. I look, Commissioner, get the picture. She hears a horn blowing out front. She runs to the front door. She opens it.  How could she resist you? Floyd, do you expect me to be... Well, do you think maybe you'll be seeing Cyple in the next... Sure, obviously, and Fred. I'll see him today, probably. Be glad to take it up with him. Now, relax. Let me get on with this massage. Commissioner, relax, Floyd. You don't think maybe she'd feel squeamish? Why should she? You don't have to make a ride in back. Well, thanks a lot, Mr. Cyple. I'm certainly much obliged.  I'll be careful with it. You've driven pierce arrows before, have you? Oh, yes, yes. That is, they drive just like any other car, don't they? I guess so. I just keep her under 35, that's all. I have new rings installed, and they're not worked in yet. Oh, I will. Yes, indeed. Has a horn, has it? Right there. Fine horn. I don't have much call for it, actually. Well, good luck, Mr. Gillis, for you. Thanks again, Mr. Cyple. Hope I can do as much for you sometime. All clear there? All clear. There we go. Just wait until she sees me in this. Would she think I'm crazy? Where is she? Everybody will think I'm crazy if I have to keep this up. But Leela, I guess she didn't notice. Let's try again. Now what? All dressed up and no place to go. A smart lady I know has reduced all this nutrition business to its simplest terms. She says there are two kinds of foods, filler-uppers and builder-uppers. Of course, right now, many homemakers are having to use more of the filler-upper foods than they ordinarily would. But it's important that every meal includes some of the builder foods. Important that we remember which ones they are. Definitely in the builder-upper class is Kraft's famous cheese food, Valvita. For Valvita helps supply muscle-building protein, milk minerals to help maintain strong bones and teeth, food energy for working power, vitamin A and riboflavin. Remember all this when you see Valvita at the food store. When you buy, get genuine Valvita, the nutritious cheese food of Kraft quality. The Great Gilder Sleeve is played by Harold Perry. It is written by John Whedon and Sam Moore. The music is by Jack Meakin. This is John Lang speaking for the Kraft Foods Company and inviting you to listen in again next week for the further adventures of The Great Gilder Sleeve. Good night. If your family has been passing up fresh green salads, try serving them this appetizing new way. For a surprise touch of flavor, zip up your salad dressing with some tangy, golden Kraft salad mustard. Then watch them go for those fresh nourishing vegetables. And here's another suggestion. In serving hot, cooked vegetables, blend Kraft salad mustard into your favorite cream sauce for a zesty extra touch of flavor. And remember, there's another craft. Mustard with snappy horseladish added for sharper taste. Buy both of these delicious Kraft Mustards when you shop tomorrow.


We're in the car and we're just heading up to the venue for the 2017 ACIME Easter Conference We're on a bit of a road trip. It's time to see it today and we've stopped up here because it's just so cute Yeah, the town that we're that we're going to be going through right now We're going through to the venue, but we just wanted you to see how lovely it is. So how sweet It's an absolutely adorable little Swiss town in the mountains of Utah Not far from our center the Living Miracle Center, which is about what 15 or 20 minutes away Yeah, so we feel really honored to be able to be on the ground and just to be able to share some of this And we hope everybody will come and be with us during the Easter conference We're going to be going live and giving you a sneak preview of what the venue looks like. I haven't been there myself Yeah, it's the Zermans resort. It's a very very nice resort a Swiss resort and We'll be going there and we'll be calling in James Twyman And he'll be sharing a little bit about the conference with all of us And so we just want to invite you to come along You really felt like coming for like an extended time if this was your vacation your official one Then this would be a really good way to spend your money because there's a depth here Utah is very devotional. It's Easter. There's a reverence here and and it's very beautiful at that time of year It's beautiful. Oh, you're right actually Hi everybody We're live from the Zermatt resort, which is going to be the venue for the 2017 ACM Easter conference and Stephanie is showing us around. She's our angel today to take us around to show this beautiful venue So that everybody can start to get the vibe of what we're coming into for the Easter conference In April April 14th through 16th here in midway, Utah To open up their hearts and their minds and to go deeper into the experience of God's love I love these little places out here where everybody can sit and join and be together. Yeah, it's very very cozy Yeah, yeah, we've a great lineup for you as well We've got James Twyman David Hoffmeister John Mundy Michael Miradad Maria Felipe Lisa and Toley bill free Jennifer Hadley David a dove fisherman Tony Poncella and Vicky puppy and of course the blessing that you're going to bring for Easter yourself So here's James everybody Say hello James Hi everybody You guys are in the room. It looks like where we're going to be having this amazing Easter celebration In just a few months and it is going to be so exciting. I am so excited because This is about the experience of resurrection people are going to be dancing singing watching will be celebrating Because this is the moment it's time for us to step into The reality of this and that's what this conference is going to be So when I heard that these guys were going to actually be at the resort and be Sharing it with all of you. Well that got me super excited. So so maybe we could just talk together about the theme and And how this might be different than other conferences that they've attended in the past So, you know, I remember when when the inspiration began for this conference And it started off when we realized that our good friend Tony Poncello was not going to be doing one of his yearly conferences and It was a little sad because we we love the opportunity to come together and celebrate And I really want to put the focus on the celebration because that's what I was feeling What we need what we're feeling before calling forward is the opportunity to come together and to experience Resurrection and we just randomly picked a weekend and that's the weekend that worked for the hotel I think it was John Monday who said will you do realize that? Yeah, that's beautiful And at first we all thought oh, that's that's not good Then within about three seconds, we thought oh my gosh How amazing is that? The best weekend to come together to celebrate This then Easter to celebrate resurrection, right? It's tonight. What of course the miracles is all about It's about not only the resurrection of this man named Jesus It took place two thousand years ago, but about the resurrection is happening right now, right? Yeah, it's the resurrection of the heart isn't it it's like coming together in that celebration of truly awakening You know, we've all studied the course for so many years, and there's something happening There's a quickening happening And so there's a power when everybody comes together and so yeah So we get to just enjoy that heart-opening heart-expanding time for a whole weekend And then I shared a little bit about the after-conference retreat up at the monastery as well Which we have links for all of that So we just really wanted to extend our heartfelt Invitation to everybody to come and celebrate here in this amazing venue and Yeah, it just feels really like a time of awakening and being glad, you know being joyful Yeah, sure by singing and dancing and we're gonna be watching movies with David I think you guys yeah, that's gonna be fun and exciting And of course what better weekend is there for that than Easter, right?  So yeah, thank you for all you guys are doing And bless all of you and I'll see you in April


Good afternoon. For those who are new, I'm Dr. Theron Sherman, and in today's briefing, we will be discussing SCP-6653. There is no objectionable material in this document, so let's begin. Item Number SCP-6653 Object Class Safe Special Containment Procedures The building containing SCP-6653 has been purchased by the Foundation, and all remaining tenants evicted under the cover story of structural disrepair. Description SCP-6653 is the upstairs bedroom of a house in Richmond, Virginia. Objects within the bedroom are removable regardless of force exerted. Full details regarding SCP-6653 are pending exploration. Addendum 1 Objects within SCP-6653 On November 14, 2021, an exploratory team was ordered to investigate SCP-6653 to provide a full inventory of objects within. The following report was submitted. SCP-6653 Primary Exploration Object SCP-6653 Location Not Applicable Description Messy Chaotic Wrong Object T-Shirt Location Floor Description Ugly Plane Object Bed Location Corner of Room Description Unmade Disgusting Object Blinds Location Over Window Description Closed Safe Object Desk Location Underneath Window Description Cluttered Object Mirtazapine Location Desk Description Worthless Object Laptop Location Desk Description Good Object Pencil Case Location Desk Description Difficult Tiring Object Paper 53 Sheets Scrunched Up Location Bin Description Worthless Attempts to discern the contents of the paper have been deemed pointless by unanimous vote of the SCP-6653 exploratory team. Upon review by containment specialists, this report was deemed insufficient. Follow-up explorations produced identical reports. Change in the status of SCP-6653 is considered unlikely. Thank you for listening.  Please become a patron or visit our merch store at the link in our bio to support our work. Secure. Contain. Protect.


On April 14th, 2003, the founding directors of the National Human Genome Research Institute, Dr. James Watson and his successor, Dr. Francis Collins, declared during a press conference that the Human Genome Project had reached its goal of sequencing the first complete reference sequence of the human genome and that the project was officially over. At the same time, the genome institute published a strategic plan that laid out an ambitious research agenda for the field. My name is Larry Thompson and with me is Dr. Eric Green, the current director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and one of the co-authors of that research agenda, which was published in Nature. So Dr. Green, you know, a decade ago NHGRI laid out a lot of audacious big challenges for the whole field of genomics. So I'd like to ask you about some of those and how we've been doing now. Let's start with the really basic stuff, which is where the plan itself started. We wanted the field needed to sort of know, now that we've got the sequence, you know, what's in there? What are the parts of the genome and how do they work? Yeah, so the genome project, of course, just ordered the letters, but didn't tell us what their meaning was. Many efforts have been pursuing that for the past decade. At NHGRI, we launched the ENCODE project, Encyclopedia for DNA Elements Project. ENCODE has revealed over and over again many surprises, all sorts of information about how much of our genome actually gets made into RNA and lots of questions and some answers about what that RNA might be doing, lots of information about all the different parts of non-coding DNA that get bound by different proteins that are probably playing a role in choreographing the expression of genes in different tissues at different times and just remarkable insights about how complicated the human genome really is. Probably about one and a half percent of the genome accounts for the protein coding areas, but there's this other five to eight percent that's highly conserved. Across all mammals. So yeah, so what's going on with that? So that was a surprise, and when the insights originally came out on that, when we sequenced the mouse genome, immediately following sequence in the human genome, there were some that sort of almost couldn't believe what they were seeing, and then you added the rat genome and then the dog genome and others, and that number has held up, you know, something on the order of five to eight percent. Now we've done analyses of almost several dozen mammalian species, and there seems to be sort of a core set of sequences that are highly, highly conserved across virtually all mammals. And as you pointed out, the minority of those are protein coding regions, and many of those non-protein coding regions has been conserved through evolution as hard as tight, almost a grip on them as much as the protein coding sequence. We're at the, we're 10 years after the completion of the human genome. How many genes are there, and how has the definition of a gene evolved over this time? Ten years later, that number's pretty much settled down into about 20,000, and you know, their plus or minus, maybe a few hundred people argue around the edges. The other thing that I think has evolved over the past decade is the definition of a gene. What does a gene mean? Once upon a time, we believed in the central dogma, it was DNA made RNA and RNA made protein, and the definition of a gene was that segment of DNA that contained the information for making a protein. But that was before we realized that there's more complexity there, because DNA can make RNA and RNA can go off and do all sorts of important biological things other than making proteins. One of the other things that was really clear at the end of the human genome project was that there was this very small percentage of human variation, maybe about one-tenth of one-percent was the estimate, and it seemed clear that within that small amount was the key to understanding why some people are at risk to disease and other people are not. So what do we do to go about trying to understand that level of human variation and what do we know now? Well, and of course the reason we wanted to know about variation is we weren't just interested in a hypothetical human genome sequence that had been generated by the human genome project, but eventually we wanted to analyze individuals' genome sequences, eventually perhaps as part of clinical care, and we were most going to be interested in the differences. But while we knew a rough estimate of maybe one in a thousand bases individuals differed, we also recognized that it's not that each of us have unique differences, but in fact across groups of people there's a lot of common variants that reside out there. And that became a bit of a finite problem if you just started sequencing or analyzing enough individuals' genomes you could develop catalogs of those variants and those knowledge of those variants could then be useful tools for pursuing studies to figure out which of those variants are biologically relevant, which ones are not biologically relevant. How has the field gone from identifying these variants across these populations and applying it in the clinic? It was reassuring when about seven or eight years ago the first demonstrated success story of a genome-wide association study was published in Science describing not only, they actually were quite fortunate that study, they actually got down to the gene that had a variant in it conferring risk for age-related macular degeneration. And that was about 2005, that first example, and wow, all you have to do is follow the literature ever since. There's just been just an avalanche, if you will, of publications describing successful genome-wide association studies. Over 1,400 publications since that time have been implicating hundreds and hundreds of regions of the human genome, at least at a statistical association level, with literally hundreds of different diseases or traits of interests. There's been clearly an investment by the Institute in technology. How has that transformed how this work can be done? It's been remarkable, but I think what's happened in the arena of DNA sequencing technology development past 10 years, almost precisely the past 10 years, has been truly spectacular. And we just go back 10 years, just to generate that first sequence of the human genome. And the active sequencing part took about six to eight years, consumed about a billion dollars. That was about the cost for the actual act of organizing for sequence, actually doing the sequencing. You know, 10 years ago when the genome project ended, if those same groups immediately would have produced a second sequence of the human genome, hypothetically, they estimated it would probably take them maybe three to five months to do instead of six to eight years, but it would still cost about 10 to 50 million dollars. But now fast forward 10 years after these spectacular new technologies have been developed, and we're well under $10,000. In fact, the current estimates for getting a sequence of a human genome, something on the order of three, four, $5,000 in route to $1,000, I think, within a year or two. And remarkably, you could do it today in a couple of days and probably by the end of this calendar year on being told, probably within a day. What can we now say about the genetics of diseases? The real success stories in terms of really reaching the finish line with respect to understanding the genomic basis of disease so far have been limited almost exclusively to rare diseases, not the complex diseases that have multiple genetic components. But what's going on with rare genetic diseases has been truly remarkable. When the genome project began, we knew the genetic basis of maybe on the order of 60 diseases that were caused by defects in a single gene. The genome project accelerated the pace at which we were able to discover those genes and those mutations, so that by the time the genome project ended, that number was about 2,200. Over the last 10 years, it's been more than doubled. We're almost up to 5,000 disorders that we now know the genetic basis. And we are already seeing, like FDA, is using genetic information and it's advising doctors how to use certain prescriptions more than 100. More than 100 now when the genome project began, there were only about four where we thought genetics really was at all relevant for the decision making about what drugs to give patients. And we are very confident that list is going to grow. Two years ago, the institute created with the help of the community sort of a new strategic plan sort of looking forward. So what's the future vision of where the field is going? The strategic plan two years ago broadens that and gets much more specific and thinking much more critically about that logical progression going from understanding the genome structure and understanding genome biology, and then a heavy emphasis on then using genomic approaches and knowledge to understand human disease, and then using that information to advance medical science, but then not stopping, recognizing there's a responsibility to continue to do studies to then use that knowledge about advancing medical science and studying it when you actually go to deliver it in a healthcare system, which often gets very complicated. And so it's sort of now that full view everything from bases of the genome to actual healthcare implementation of genomic approaches that is articulated in this current strategic plan that, you know, everything we think about really hangs off of in some way. Thank you, Dr. Green. The Nobel Prize winner Walter Gilbert famously calculated that it would take 15 years to sequence the human genome for the first time, but predicted that it would take another 100 years of basic biological research to understand it. The first 10 years appeared to have gotten off to a pretty good start. I'm Larry Thompson at the National Human Genome Research Institute.


Good morning, cloud community, and welcome back to beautiful Paris. It's day three of KubeCon, cloud native con, here in fantastic Europe. My name's Savannah Peterson, joined by Rob Stoetsche and Dustin Kirkland. Gentlemen, what a week we have had. Here we are, it's Friday. Here we, yes, quite literally. Here we are, and it is Friday. Thank you for that in-depth analysis there. I'm here for the hard-headed news. We're bringing it home with that hard news. What is, okay, opening question for you. What's your favorite thing you've eaten so far this week? Rob, I'm going to start with you. Muscle's freaks, I just, I can't get enough of them. I had it twice now, and I'm at probably my muscle limit, but you know, they're going to break out. You have been a great Paris guide for all of us, by the way. I just want to say thank you. You've been awesome on the reservations and sharing things. What about you, Dustin? Oh my God. Crepes after midnight were pretty good.  I did. I did. The caramel sucre, biore, the caramel butter crepe was incredible. I love that. Yes. Some of the cheese we've had has just... Cheese has been great as well. The cheese is fantastic. And the wine, oh my goodness. So in non-Parisian news, keynote analysis, sounds like there was a bit of a trip down memory lane, if you will. This is a nostalgia morning for sure. I mean, it's 10 years of Kubernetes and CNCF celebrated that. And we heard a number of stories from, you know, some people who've been around the community for a very long time. Yeah, I mean, they're going to have a whole celebration.  We'll put it up there afterwards where you can go and sign up and they're going to sponsor parties in June for the 10-year anniversary. I thought that was interesting. I thought that could have been the trip down memory lane. I didn't know that we needed three trips down memory lane. I thought it was interesting. I liked when they got into some of the accessibility aspects, I know you have her on. And you're having her on later on today. I thought it was a very good, from that perspective, I just think they went overboard with the, you know, hour and a half of memory lane. It's just hard for some people to relate to that. And then, you know, over half of this. Now I was just going to bring it up, Dustin, exactly. Yeah. Half of this conference has never been to a cloud native or KubeCon ever before. Right.  Well, and I think as we've been talking about Kubernetes having its Linux moment, there's this ubiquity play happening, we're only just now seeing what Kubernetes is really going to do. Kubernetes has been a tool for 10 years, but it has not been deployed across verticals at scale until, honestly, like fairly recently, the last couple of years. And even the last couple of months in some cases. And with AI pushing some of that tech stack forward. So I think that, to your point, folks coming here, they need the excitement and the hype in the gateway. This is their first time. Teach me what's next. Or show me if we're going to do nostalgia, show me a bunch of really cool applications of Kubernetes at the edge and fun stuff and so that I can turn around and tell my friends and family or whatever, this is where Kubernetes is running. This is why I'm excited about this technology and why I'm proud to be a part of the cloud native community. Yeah, and I think again, you know, Heroku was up there as a sponsor and that was another trip down memory lane, but I think, you know, them being grounded on Kubernetes was like the takeaway from that. We had Oracle up there talking about their contributions. Again, where they have Kubernetes, the platform, they have open telemetry and a number of other projects that are developing on those free credits, the $3 million that they announced back in Chicago and they're continuing to do that.  So I think it'll be very interesting to get into that they're contributing to over 500 different projects. And I think, again, this whole community has been great this week. I agree. I think we should be also looking forward. This should have been, they had a moment to say, here's happy 10 years, here's where we go in the next 10 years and lay out the roadmap. And that's what I was wanting out of this morning and didn't get it. I think, again, we had Chris on last night, CTO, CNCF talking about the changes they made and they made those recognitions this morning. Yeah, he gave us a preview on the show on theCUBE last night and I think we saw that and what he announced there this morning in the keynote. And I thought he did a good job of pointing out to people in, I guess, blue jackets. I didn't realize they had blue jackets. I don't remember that from last night. But, so I think it was good, but I think, I thought his talk was excellent, but I thought you could have then gone into the roadmap and said, here's how we get these 180 projects to all go in the same direction to help cloud native. We were actually having a conversation earlier this morning too about, do some of the smaller projects combine forces if they're complimentary so that there's more contributors and more folks engaged and it is an interesting, you know, it's an interesting balance, right? Yeah, one thing we did get, literally, where we're going in the future, they announced the next two years worth of cube cons and those locations, Salt Lake City, I think we knew, but the next London, the next cube con EU in April, followed by Los Angeles, sorry, Atlanta in the US. We're going to Atlanta. Atlanta, back to Amsterdam after that. I think you may enjoy that. Yes. And then Los Angeles, so they announced. I like the comment of why they said we're going back to Amsterdam, which is after being in this building, the light that was in there and I just remembered the natural light coming in on us. I had my sunglasses on. Literally got to broadcast the shades on. So we just got to remember for that to bring our sunglasses to back to Amsterdam. Or to find some great swag vendors. There you go. I agree. With some awesome optical, I didn't realize they announced that. Normally, they're a little quiet about that. Two years out. Yeah, it's kind of nice actually to be able to, you know. So we're going to, are we going to London next year? Or is it? London next. Yeah, London and then Amsterdam. Wow. So hopefully we come back to Paris though. This has been. Be fun. This is a magical business trip. This is, we're talking about Kubernetes in Paris. Filing are things I did not anticipate in this wonderful wildlife we've designed. But I am grateful for it. That's for sure. Yeah. I think what was interesting, just tying it back to Paris was Solomon's discussion about, you know. Docker started in his mother's basement. Yeah, walking distance from here. Yeah. That was actually one of the cooler moments. So Solomon, founder of Docker and now dagger IO gave a keynote about kind of the history of Docker and the precedence that it set for Kubernetes. And I think Bob Wise, now the CEO of Heroku. Heroku being that pass that paved the way quite a bit. App Engine and Google's App Engine and Heroku. That sort of sets it up, right? And both of those paved the way for wanting and needing the open source infrastructure that is Kubernetes itself. Docker providing the better reinvention of Solaris containers, Linux containers to put it into this developer friendly Docker mindset. I thought Solomon actually did a really nice job of tying this back to AI, which he described. We haven't talked about that at all this week. Yeah, you're right. We should do a segment on AI, right? He brought it back to AI saying that, look, all of this was about building, all of the previous Docker work was about building factories to make software, cloud native applications, make those able to deploy. And then he kind of gave this hint that, guess what, artificial intelligence is just a better factory. It's really helping us make software faster, better, cheaper, more efficient in the long run. So anyway, I thought that was a nice way to sort of tie it all back together. There's a lot of love. I mean, Docker, Kubernetes, sometimes tools that companies use both. Sometimes there's a little bit of healthy competition there, but definitely a foundational and important component of this whole ecosystem. Yeah, I will say that even before Solaris, mainframes had containers as well. So I'm just not even going to go there because we didn't go that far back. But anyways, those of us who had to use green screens at one point in time in our life understood that. It's 3270s, maybe. Absolutely, so. But I thought it was good to- Now who's getting nostalgic?  But we're giving it for five minutes. Yeah, like I said, two minutes is a real- But where we're going, I thought the software factory aspect and tying that back into AI and what people are really looking to do is build cloud-native applications and AI is just going to be a cloud-native application. And I think some of the talks that we've had this week with people about AI being integrated in. And I think especially on the UX when we were talking to Moe from Red Hat, when she talked about that and I think she, you know, and her closing remarks really set a good direction of- I agree. Like, I look at it and go, I don't want to use a prompt all the time. I don't necessarily want to talk to my AI all the time. I want it to be there, like I don't even notice it's there. And I think that's where AI is going to go. And I think a lot of the developers here this week have been talking about that. Yeah, I think you're definitely right. I do love that one of the key themes of the show has really been the developer experience. And I mean, we've talked about platform engineering, but really the UX of all of this stuff, because decreasing complexity has been a component of Kubernetes, is a component of AI. Nobody wants things to be as hard as they are. No. No, so it's, yeah, I don't know. So I'm curious, are there any big surprises for you guys from the show? Or anything you expected to talk more about that didn't come up as much? Well, I think when we talked about this on Wednesday, I was hoping we'd talk a little more about security, but I think we had a solid, I do, I do, I do, I do. I come by it honestly. I think we had a good solid program all day yesterday on security, so I'm glad we kind of wet that appetite. I think again, they could have said, hey, by the way, join us at SecurityCon and other stuff. Because I think still to the discussion we had yesterday, pretty much everybody who was on talking about security also admitted that there wasn't a lot of security here. That's right. At the show, other than us. I think that shows an appetite for it. Yeah, I think the appetite is more than just me saving. Yeah.  Yeah, but when the EU puts out an AI act, a week and a half before, and a big piece of it is security, and making sure that we're- And security is really important. Yeah, it's very important. Especially to data and to AI and to all of that. And I think even in Salt Lake, I think they'll maybe arc a little bit back to that hopefully. We'll see. I mean, I think it's also an interesting demarcator of the talk tracks, right? So these proposals and the agendas set quite a bit in advance of these shows. So maybe that wasn't the hottest topic. I mean, this is our first European show since ChatGPT was released where the papers were actually representative of that. And I actually, I would say the biggest surprise for me now that I'm talking all out, and I'll ask myself this question, is, I have insights too, not just the pretty face here. Is, I'm surprised, I actually thought we would be talking about AI more. Okay. I genuinely did. I thought there would be some more large-scale examples or interesting, and it's come up, but it's been a subtle thread, not the main fabric of the show. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if within these next couple of conferences, the biggest booths right in the front center are the hyper-scale clouds. The Googles and the Microsofts and Oracle, Intel, all of which have an AI play. I think one or two of these AI startups are going to break through and become some of the biggest players in this space within the next six to 18 months. I like that hot take. Six is probably too short, but. Maybe by London. Yeah. I mean, I think you might be right. I think so. I agree with that. I think, again, where they retold the story of open AI running on Kubernetes and how they had really done a large cluster on it, people are looking at it and people aren't building open AI per se. So I think to your point, I expected to hear more about Kubeflow and some of the other in MLops and things in MLflow and things of that nature, but I do think there was a lot of undercurrents of it and a lot of different, especially on Tuesday in the days. Pretty much every session that I went to had some amount of AI in it on Tuesday. So I know it's being talked about out there. And it is. And how it's changing it. It just didn't make its way to this desk. It didn't make its way as obviously to here. So that was interesting though. I agree with your insight on that. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate the validation. No problem. I'm here for you. Last question before we wrap up this morning segment. What are you hoping we can say in London? That we can't say today. Oh, good question. I really think like if we take that AI and security and put those two together and really say that we've got secured tool chains, supply chains, models, the whole thing that we can deploy that at the edge in the back end infrastructure and know that our precious data that's being used to train those models is secured. I really hope that's a mostly solved problem by London. I agree. I think the security aspect of it and for me it's the data's not getting any smaller. And I think the operations aspect of it needs to get simpler and especially with still the overlap in some of the projects. I'm hoping that some of these projects come together and kind of put out joint roadmaps versus kind of operating in silos a little bit and almost competing with each other. I mean, competition is healthy, but at the same time it causes confusion, especially to the 51% of new people who are coming in here trying to figure out which part do I use to go and do that, so. Yeah, I hope I have a really good example to tell the people in my life that don't know anything about Kubernetes or this space, how it's transforming the world and either saving lives or improving the quality of life of everyday people and not just in our little geek silo. So there was, I mean, from the keynote, there was the discussion about the hackathon with the UN. They're going to do that again in Salt Lake or is it in London? I can't remember which one it was now. But, you know, I mean, again, it was around sustainability and parks. I thought they were interesting. I didn't quite get all the ties to sustainability for some of them. No, I definitely want to go and learn a bit more about those projects. I'm going to take in on that. It didn't get nearly enough airtime, I think actually in the keynote, but they awarded three prizes for second, third place for three different hackathon winners from five or six different countries. You know, it was all over the place. So that was pretty cool. Yeah. But that's something that can bring this back and make it, you know, more, make what we do more relatable to our friends and family who have no idea what a Kubernetes is. Exactly, exactly. I always love those real world stories and love sharing the nerdy stories with you both. So, Rob, Dustin, thank you both so much for being here this week. You've absolutely smashed it. It's a pleasure to work with all of you. And thank you for tuning in live for our wonderful Paris broadcast here at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.