WEBVTT - Ep. 102: Conman - The Education of Little Tree (Part 1) 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:08.600 And I sat down and read it, and I realized 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:11.440 I could see why it was so popular, but I 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:15.080 could also see the traces of the real author. 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:18.840 On this episode, we're going to learn about one of 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:23.560 the greatest American literary cons of all time, or was 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.640 it a con at all? The good news is that 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:30.800 at the Navigation Helm, we'll have author and Southern historian 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.720 doctor Dan T. Carter, Professor Emeritus at the University of 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.800 South Carolina, and New York Times bestselling author and crow 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:43.720 call extraordinaire Steve Runella of Meat Eater. These guys are 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.159 going to talk to us about a book called The 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:50.360 Education of Littletree and the wild life of its author. 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.240 There aren't any better guests on Planet Earth to tell 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:58.320 us the story of a double life lies in racism 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:02.240 that produced a brilliant piece of literature so rooted in 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:05.480 American wilderness and values it'll make you want to bard 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.480 owt hoot and kiss your mama after the trill. 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:11.479 I really doubt you're gonna want. 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.120 To miss this one. And Hey, I want to let 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:18.560 you know that my friend Brent Reeves has a new 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:23.440 podcast coming out on this feed starting on April twenty first, 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:29.119 called This Country life. It's incredibly fun and we're thrilled 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.080 to bring it to you on this bear Grease feed. 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.240 My name is Klay Nukem, and this is the bear 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:48.279 Grease podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:52.000 for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:56.160 story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:02.560 Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:06.400 fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place. 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:18.560 As we explore, Grandpa stopped and pointed by the side 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:23.000 of the trail. There she is, Turkey run see. I 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:25.480 dropped to my hands and knees and saw the tracks 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:29.440 little stick like impressions coming out of a center hub. Now, 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.440 Grandpa said, we'll fix the trap, and he moved off 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:36.480 the trail until he found a stump hole. We cleaned 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.440 it out, first the leaves, and then Grandpa pulled out 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.640 his long knife and cut into the spongy ground and 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:46.000 we scooped up the dirt, scattering it among the leaves. 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:48.560 When the hole was deep so that I couldn't see 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:51.640 over the rim, Grandpa pulled me out and we dragged 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:56.040 branches to cover it and over these spread armfuls of leaves. 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:59.760 Then with his long knife, Grandpa dug a trail sloping 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:03.440 down downward into the hole and back toward the Turkey run. 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:06.160 He took the grains of red Indian corn from his 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:09.240 pocket and scattered them down the trail and threw a 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:13.160 handful into the hole. Now we will go, he said, 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.440 and we set off again up the high trail. I 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:20.400 spewed from the earth like frosting, crackling under our feet. 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:24.040 The mountain opposite us moved closer as the hollow far 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:28.080 below became a narrow slit, showing the spring branch like 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:31.120 the edge of a steel knife sunk in the bottom 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.160 of its cleavage. We set down in the leaves off 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.720 the trail just as the first sun touched the top 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:40.440 of the mountain across the hollow. From his pocket, Grandpa 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:42.920 pulled out a sour biscuit and deer meat for me, 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:46.400 and we watched the mountain while we ate. The sun 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:50.040 hit the top like an explosion, sending showers of glitter 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:51.320 and sparkle. 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:51.480 Into the air. 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:54.520 The sparkling of the icy trees hurt my eyes to 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:56.840 look at it, and it moved down the mountain like 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:00.760 a wave. As the sun backed the night shadow down 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:05.440 and down, a crow sent three hard calls through the air, 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:08.840 warning we were there. And now the mountain popped and 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:13.080 gave breathing sighs that sent little puffs of steam into 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:16.880 the air. She pinged and murmured as the sun released 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:21.080 the trees from their death armor of ice. Grandpaul watched 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.159 same as me, and listened as the sounds grew with 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:26.680 the morning wind that set up a low whistle in 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:31.159 the trees. She's coming alive, he said, soft and low, 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.719 without taking his eyes from the mountain. Yes, sir, I said, 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.719 She's coming alive. And I knew right there that me 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:47.599 and Grandpa had an understanding that most folks didn't. Your 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:51.520 ears and the engine of your imagination have just partook 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.160 of the writings of Forest Carter. In the opening chapter 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:58.640 of his book called The Education of Little Tree, published 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:02.640 in nineteen seventy six, Carter identified himself to the world 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.200 as a Cherokee Indian raised in a cabin with his 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:08.880 grandparents in East Tennessee. This is the story he told 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:12.880 to Barbara Walters in nineteen seventy five on The Today Show. 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:16.239 It would be my guess that you've probably never heard 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.600 of this book, even though it became a New York 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:24.680 Times bestseller in nineteen ninety one, selling over one million copies, 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.479 and in the heyday of Oprah Winfrey's Book Club in 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:32.599 the late nineteen nineties, it made her list, staying there 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:35.240 until two thousand and seven, when she removed it. 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:37.839 And it isn't surprising because. 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:42.320 It's incredibly good, with descriptive prose, intriguing plot themes, and 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:46.880 brilliant displays of the beautiful and functional connection the protagonists 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:50.400 have to the natural world. That's why I was originally 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:54.080 interested in it. It's got some turkey trapping, fox hunting 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:59.039 with hounds, corn and watermelon planting, mules, moonshining, and some 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:03.440 insight on management. It even takes some big swings at 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:07.400 the establishment. It has a where the red fern grows 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:11.480 feel with a young orphaned boy learning moral and practical 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:14.880 lessons from his Cherokee grandfather in the Great Depression era 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:19.440 of the nineteen thirties. A big delivery of the book, however, 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:23.840 is a deep empathy for Native Americans and a display 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.440 of their wisdom and how they got a raw deal. 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:32.080 Remember that if something hadn't happened to this book. It 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:34.920 would have been an American classic like the Adventures of 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:39.479 Huckleberry Finn or Charlotte's Webb. But something did happen, and 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:44.279 I've got to fess up. You've already been misled. Forest 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.760 Carter wasn't a Cherokee Indian at all, and his name 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:49.279 wasn't even Forest Carter. 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:54.159 Here's my friend, Steve Ranella. He knows this book. 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:58.479 Steve, When is the first time that you read The 0:06:58.600 --> 0:06:59.640 Education of Littletree? 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.560 When you and I first started talking about this book 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:05.640 a while back, it forced me to try to recollect 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.000 how I became familiar with it. I know now, I 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:14.120 absolutely I became familiar with it when I was in college. 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.160 I was in a class called the Literature of Political 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:23.800 Rhetoric by taught by a guy named doctor Gillis, and 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:26.160 he gave us that book to read. In addition to 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:29.880 things like some of the works of Martin Luther King Junior, 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:36.200 writings of the Unibomber, writings of Camille Paglia, just wild 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:39.840 stuff all over the place, we read works from people 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:42.440 who had like an axe to grind, okay, and you 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:43.160 threw that in the. 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:47.000 Mix, people with an acts to grind. 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:50.000 I really wish We could have done this different, and 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:52.800 you could have read this book before you know what 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:56.760 you're about to know. But I wasn't afforded this privilege either. 0:07:57.400 --> 0:07:59.880 I read the book after I learned that Forrest Carter 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:04.280 wasn't Forrest Carter at all, but rather his name was 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:08.640 Asa Earl Carter. I'd be really impressed if you knew 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:14.240 that name from American Southern history, and you will. Doctor 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:18.040 Dan T. Carter, who is no relation to Asa Carter, 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:22.920 is a University of South Carolina professor emeritus and renowned 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:27.400 Southern historian and acclaimed author. He wrote a biography of 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:32.920 the Alabama governor George Wallace, who became famous for opposing desegregation. 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:37.679 Most recently, doctor Carter wrote a book called Unmasking the Clansman, 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:41.400 just published in April of twenty twenty three. More on 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.560 that in a minute, though, I wanted to ask doctor 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:48.840 Carter about the Education of Little Tree's unusual rise to 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:52.760 national fame after being published in nineteen seventy six but 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.440 not becoming a New York Times bestseller until nineteen ninety one. 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:01.600 This is an extremely rare thing. Here's doctor Carter. 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:09.640 That book was reissued in nineteen eighty eight, and then 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:13.079 it just by word of mouth. It had no advertising. 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:16.520 It was published by a University of New Mexico press. 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:19.960 It just kept picking up, picking up more and more 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:24.559 people reading it, and by the summer of nineteen ninety 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:27.559 one it had climbed on to the New York Times 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:32.800 bestseller list. Then I did become interested in it. And 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:37.319 as as it continued, I realized I'd never read the book, 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:40.959 and I knew about it, and I sat down and 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:46.040 read it, and I saw on one level why people 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:49.120 loved it so much. I think we love books about 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:55.640 coming of age. And as one agent said who represented Carter, 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.800 at one time, Indians were hot. By the nineteen eighties 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:04.520 and nineteen nineties, people were interested in Native Americans, and 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:09.200 particularly at a time when you're trying to develop broader 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:13.040 ranges of books for adolescents and young people, and the 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:15.920 education story seemed to fit right within this. You've got 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.240 a story about a young Native American growing up in 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:23.960 the mountains of East Tennessee, and it's an appealing story, 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:27.400 and it seems to have a kind of moral core 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:32.640 to it, because obviously he's learning moral lessons from his 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:37.200 Cherokee grandfather. And it's the kind of moral lessons that 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:40.400 you like to believe you'd teach your children or grandchildren. 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:44.320 But it's also embedded in what Americans were coming to, 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:47.880 if not revere, at least respect a lot more. And 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:54.559 that was the Native American frame of cosmic reference and morality. 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.439 And so it was just a winner all the way around. 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.960 And I realized as I read it carefully, I could 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:05.640 see why it was so popular, But I could also 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:08.480 see the traces of the real. 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:15.640 Author, traces of the real author. In storytelling, the listener 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:19.400 you have to be handled with great care, like a 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:22.400 little baby ducklin trying to jump out of your hands 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.880 while you're carrying it to the pond. The listener will 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.480 try to jump out of your hands if you don't 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.640 tell him the hook at just the right moment. They've 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:34.840 got to be intrigued enough by the unknown to keep 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:39.640 listening but not get bored. So get ready for the hook, 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.160 the down load, the dirty scoop, And here it is. 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.120 The author said his name was Forrest Carter, that he 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:49.160 was a Cherokee Indian, and that his story was semi 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:53.160 autobiographical of his upbringing Tennessee. But his real name was 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:56.040 Asa Carter. We know that he wasn't a Cherokee, we 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:59.120 know that he wasn't raised by his Cherokee grandfather. We 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:03.040 know that, But he was actually from Anniston, Alabama, and 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.600 he was a leader in his own strict sect of 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:11.160 the klu Klux Klan. He was a vehement segregationist and 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:15.240 an ardent prophet of the white supremacy movement, and his 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:19.800 message was carried by his successful print publication he founded 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:26.200 and his radio broadcast. Doctor Carter's book, Unmasking the Klansman 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:30.360 is the one and only biography on Asa Carter. Asa 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.240 Carter was the Klansman, and Doctor Carter, of no relation 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:39.000 to A. SA Carter, is undoubtedly the nation's expert on A. 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:41.360 SA Carter. The book is fascinating. 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.800 I wish I could have thrown all this information on 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:48.120 you at the end after we've learned about the education 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:52.800 of Littletree, because it's an amazing book, and it won't 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:56.040 make a lick of sense when you understand who this 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.600 man was. And as we understand what the book's about, 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:02.319 we're trying to understand how this dude wrote this book. 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.440 It just doesn't add up. And I haven't even told 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:09.160 you the wildest part. It involves a man by the 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:14.240 name of George Wallace, who, on January fourteenth, nineteen sixty three, 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.319 gave his inaugural speech on the steps of the state 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:23.160 capital of Alabama after being elected governor. Wallace would become 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:27.040 the face of opposition to the civil rights movement when 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:32.920 he delivered his infamous Segregation Forever speech in the name. 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:37.400 Of the greatest people that have ever tried this earth, I. 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.960 Draw the line in the dust and passed the gauntlet 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:45.280 before the feet of Tierney, and I say segregation now, 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:57.040 segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. Wallace's words segregation now, segregation tomorrow, 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:01.560 and segregation forever, would be an unforgetable moment in American history, 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:06.400 branding him is the face of racism. However, these weren't 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:11.720 his words. He had secretly hired Asa Carter to write 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:16.800 this speech. Those are Ace's words. How could this man 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:20.880 have written a book so brilliantly empathetic and authentic that 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:24.640 he fooled the world? And I can tell you We're 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:29.400 gonna have to guess. Because Asa Carter died unexpectedly and 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:33.040 tragically in nineteen seventy nine at the age of fifty 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.840 four years old. There is just drama stacked on top 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:39.960 of drama with this story and with this guy. And 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.720 I want to say up front that I am uninterested 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:47.400 in villainizing Asa Carter. He didn't need any help with that. 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.040 And I'd like to say that forty three years after 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.800 this man's death, we should not be affected or damaged 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:59.080 by the things he said or believed. However, we can 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:03.480 learn something about the extremes of human nature from his life. 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:07.680 Were in pursuit of uncovering the true identity of Asa 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:09.560 Carter and decide if he was a. 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:12.360 Changed man when he died or a con man. 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.600 Here's more from doctor Carter on how he learned about 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:21.720 the double life of Asa Carter. Your original interest in 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:26.680 Asa Carter was you were doing a biography on George Wallace, right, 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:30.880 and then you went to meet Seymour Trammel, who was 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:32.880 George Wallace's right hand man. 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:33.800 Right hand man. 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:37.800 Yeah, tell me about meeting him, but then him telling 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.520 you about about the book, and. 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:45.360 Well, of all the people, and I interviewed about forty 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:47.840 people for the bick But this I started this in 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:49.720 the late eighties, so there were still a lot of 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:52.480 these people around, manyrem long now. 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:54.200 Of all the people I. 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:59.720 Interviewed, by far the most interesting and insightful was Seymour Trammel. 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:03.680 He was a country boy from South Alabama who became 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:07.320 Wallace as a finance commissioner in his right hand man. 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.880 As smart as he was, really smart, got in trouble, 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:14.200 ended up in prison, and by the time I knew him, 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:18.280 he was a different person. He just prison had changed him. 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:22.560 He had had trouble drinking, he'd stopped all that, and 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:26.160 he was introspective in a way that he never was 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:28.880 as a young man, you know, looking back on his life. 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:31.320 He could see all the mistakes he had made and 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:33.680 all the things he said, I've done wrong, you know. 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:39.520 But he was the one that gave me insight when 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:40.680 I started talking to him. 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:41.120 One day. 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:45.680 We had several long conversations and I was talking to 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:50.520 him and I said something about this guy. He's a carter, 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:54.240 I said, I keep running into him. I said, was 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:58.520 he really George Wallace's speech writer for that famous segregation 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.760 Today's aiation? And he began laughing. He said, of course 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.679 he was. He said anything that was he said George 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.840 was good. But he said the best stuff was always 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.320 from Asa, you know. He said, you know he was 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.879 a real writer. And I knew that Asa had Carter, 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:19.479 who was a white supremacist and a radio announcer, had 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.560 written a bunch of radio programs in the fifties, published 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:26.640 a very slick magazine called The Southernert Southern, And he said, 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:29.919 you know, he wrote novels. He one of them was 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:34.480 made into a movie. I just thought, I think, Seymour, 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.360 he's not that old, but clearly his mind is slipping 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:42.240 away here. And because I didn't know about the Double Life, 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:45.520 you know, all I knew was Asa Carter had written 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:49.199 this and he was a writer. So that was in 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:53.000 nineteen ninety, I think it was. And it wasn't more 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:56.440 than about six months later that my son and I 0:17:56.520 --> 0:18:01.600 were watching a film called The Outlaw Josie Wales by 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:05.440 Clint Eastwood, sort of his breakthrough film. And I don't 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:07.679 know why. I came to the end of it it 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:10.639 said based on the book by Forrest Carter, and I 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:14.000 thought Forrest Carter. Didn't think about it. And the next 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:18.119 morning I woke up and I said, Forrest Carter, Asa 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:22.879 Carter worshiped Nathan Bedford, Forrest General Nathan, the Confederate General Nathan, 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:25.639 So I started. It didn't turn out to be hard 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:28.359 at all. It was like something that was in plain sight. There. 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:31.040 All you had to do was go back to the 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:34.159 original publication of the book, which was called Gone to 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.479 Texas but became The Outlaw jose Wells, and it had 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:40.640 the copyright. I went to the copyright thing in Washington 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:46.879 and there was his address, Asa Carter's address in Alabama, 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:50.960 the exact same address. He'll be ten Bears. 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:52.960 I am ten Bears. 0:18:57.960 --> 0:18:58.919 I'm Josie Wales. 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:05.400 I have heard you're the great writer. 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:08.080 You would not make peace with the Bluecoats. 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:13.120 You may go in peace. I reckon that. 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:20.040 Got nowhere to go. 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:23.720 Then you will die. 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:25.720 I came here to die with you. 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:29.040 I live, will you. 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:33.000 It's so hard for men like you and me. 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.480 It's living. It's hard, and all you've ever cared about 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:40.320 it's been butchered and raped. Asa Carter didn't just write 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:43.200 The Education of Little Tree. He wrote a book originally 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:46.919 called Gone to Texas, and Clint Eastwood turned it into 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:51.520 his breakout movie, The Outlaw Josee Wales. In this scene, 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:56.080 the Comanche ten Bears respects Josie Wales because he didn't 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:58.640 give in to the Union Army in the Civil War. 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.320 This is a good movie and it's hard not to 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:07.280 love the protagonist, Josie Wells, the Confederate soldier played by 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:12.880 Clint Eastwood. Asa was a prolific novelist. Here's more from 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:13.840 doctor Carter. 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:19.880 And then I began looking in this forest. Carter, operating 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:25.000 out of Applene, Texas, had written four books, The Outlaw 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:27.440 of Josie Wells, a Vengeance, Trail of Josie Wells, and 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:30.359 a book called A Watch Far Mail on the Mountain, 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:34.760 which is a fictional biography of Geronimo. 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:37.119 It's a really good book. 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:39.840 I mean, I think it's the best book he ever wrote, 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:45.560 and it's pretty accurate, but it's also is just powerfully written. 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:49.080 In fact, one of the major writers and reviewed it 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:50.760 in New York Times said this is the best book 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:52.360 ever written by a Native American. 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.360 And then they believed Forrest Carter was. 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:01.840 From from East Tennessee who had spent years as a 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.520 cowboy out in the way, moved out west and was 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:08.240 a cowboy out there, a Cherokee cowboy. 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:11.639 So if Seymour trammell knew this, yes, who would have 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:12.240 known this? 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:15.000 Lots of people, So all the people in Alabama. 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:17.160 Not all but his close friends knew. 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:19.720 Who knew that Asa Carter was Forest Carter? Yeah, yeah, 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:23.800 And I guess there wasn't they were They just kind 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.240 of why wouldn't they have brought that up? 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:29.400 Or was it just they thought it was his pen name. 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:31.920 They just didn't see any relevance to it. 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.000 A whole range of things. Sometimes some of them said, well, 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:38.119 you know, he'd never have gotten anything published as far 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:40.840 as Asa Carter because of all the trouble he got 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:43.960 into in the fifties as a white supremacist. A lot 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:47.760 of it though Clay was I'm going to show those 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:52.480 Yankee liberals. A lot of his close friends, I mean, 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:56.359 for example, as Forrest Carter, when the Outlaw Josie Wells 0:21:56.400 --> 0:22:01.159 came out, he was introduced and interviewed on The Today 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:04.359 Show with Barbara Walters, which is one of the most 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:09.879 watched television shows in America at the time, and he 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:13.119 told several people back in Alabama that he was going 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:17.440 to be on the Today Show, and his friends thought 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:22.600 it was hilarious that he was tricking this Yankee newspaper 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:25.280 order and it was kind of a big joke. 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:27.159 I mean, one of his closest friends. 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:30.840 Ray Andrews said, I literally lay down the floor laughing, 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:34.960 and another one of his friends kept saying, oh my god, 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:37.359 I hope she doesn't ask him about the Cuklut Slam, 0:22:37.600 --> 0:22:41.000 which he had a cuklut Slam group. So that was 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:43.280 part of it. But here's the other thing that's so 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:48.040 fascinating to me, Clay is when that show ran, the 0:22:48.160 --> 0:22:52.480 switchboard at the Today Show lit up with people from 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:56.480 Alabama who were not his friends, say, you people are stupid. 0:22:56.800 --> 0:23:01.000 This isn't Forrest Carter, it's Asa Carter. And they totally 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:06.560 ignored it. His editor said, this nonsense. You know I 0:23:06.600 --> 0:23:09.120 know him, I've known him for years. Of course he's 0:23:09.160 --> 0:23:14.879 an Indian. Absolutely, he's an Indian. His movie agent, she 0:23:15.240 --> 0:23:18.120 wrote a wire. She said, I couldn't believe that I'd 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:20.200 had him in my house. I knew he was an Indian. 0:23:20.280 --> 0:23:22.399 He looked like an Indian, he talked like an Indian, 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:25.919 he acted like an Indian. And it was just a 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:31.280 kind of to me. It's an example of how you 0:23:31.320 --> 0:23:34.080 get your mindset in a certain way and you just 0:23:34.160 --> 0:23:37.439 don't change it. The other thing that was critical, I 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:40.480 think you think about this now. This is the nineteen seventies. 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:42.800 There's no internet, no internet. 0:23:42.520 --> 0:23:45.560 And there's no way for social media to catch up 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:49.159 amplify any of this. This could never have happened in 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:53.040 after two thousand and five or twenty ten, you know. 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:57.840 But at that time it simply disappeared. The story simply disappeared. 0:23:58.080 --> 0:24:01.879 And the claims Wayne Greenhaw, his friend of mine, I 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:04.080 discovered and I didn't even know this at the time. 0:24:04.760 --> 0:24:08.920 He wrote a story in nineteen seventy five saying that 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:11.640 there are a lot of similarities he said, between Asa 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:14.640 Carter and Forrest Carter. This is when he was big 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:18.440 time with the movie with Clint Eastwood and everything, and 0:24:18.600 --> 0:24:21.280 he pitched it to the New York Times, and they 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:24.800 were so scared of being sued that they changed that 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:26.800 story and it appeared in the New York Times. But 0:24:26.840 --> 0:24:30.600 it was so ambivalent that you couldn't figure out whether. 0:24:30.359 --> 0:24:32.320 He really was or wasn't really. 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:37.640 So in nineteen seventy five, yeah, in New York Times said, yeah, 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:38.560 that Eric Carter. 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:41.080 There are a lot of similarities between the. 0:24:41.040 --> 0:24:46.440 Two, talk about pulling the wool over the eyes of America. 0:24:46.960 --> 0:24:50.640 And before he died he would outright deny that he 0:24:50.720 --> 0:24:55.280 was as of Carter. In part two of the series, 0:24:55.320 --> 0:24:57.960 We're going to learn a lot more about Ace's life 0:24:57.960 --> 0:25:00.520 and why he did what he did. Before we go 0:25:00.560 --> 0:25:04.600 any further, we've got to understand this book. The first 0:25:04.600 --> 0:25:07.040 thing we have to do is understand The Education of 0:25:07.119 --> 0:25:10.000 Little Tree, because it will show us a window into 0:25:10.040 --> 0:25:14.280 the mind of Ace of Carter. Here's Steve Ranella and I. 0:25:15.200 --> 0:25:17.679 The Education of Little Tree was written in nineteen seventy 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:20.919 six by a man who went by the name of. 0:25:20.960 --> 0:25:24.119 Forrest Carter, and it was initially understood to be a 0:25:25.400 --> 0:25:28.040 was taken to be autobiographic. 0:25:28.119 --> 0:25:34.480 Autobiographical of a young Cherokee Indian boy and his parents 0:25:34.560 --> 0:25:37.280 die and he goes to live with his grandparents in 0:25:37.320 --> 0:25:38.000 the mountains. 0:25:38.080 --> 0:25:40.879 Very late on backstory, I mean it opens with a 0:25:40.920 --> 0:25:43.720 collection of people trying to figure out what to do 0:25:43.760 --> 0:25:47.200 with an orphaned child. Yeah, he latches onto his grandpa's 0:25:47.280 --> 0:25:51.320 leg and stays there without saying anything, without crying, holding 0:25:51.359 --> 0:25:55.040 his legs so long that eventually it's just determined that 0:25:55.080 --> 0:25:56.200 the grandpa will bring him home. 0:25:56.240 --> 0:25:56.600 He's five. 0:25:56.720 --> 0:25:57.960 No one's got a better idea. 0:25:58.280 --> 0:25:59.360 The boys five years old. 0:26:00.359 --> 0:26:04.320 The story is this boy being leaving his mother and 0:26:04.359 --> 0:26:05.639 father who have died. 0:26:06.200 --> 0:26:09.040 I think it was just like out of let's agree 0:26:09.040 --> 0:26:11.320 to use the terminology used by the author. 0:26:11.640 --> 0:26:13.840 Okay, the boy is. 0:26:13.920 --> 0:26:16.639 It's clear up front the boy is regarded as a 0:26:16.680 --> 0:26:22.040 bastard child. Okay, he's but he's not. His parents were 0:26:22.040 --> 0:26:25.760 married in the Cherokee way, but there's a treatment of 0:26:25.840 --> 0:26:28.479 him as such. And he goes to live with his 0:26:29.200 --> 0:26:35.000 full Cherokee grandmother and his half Cherokee, half Waite grandfather, 0:26:35.040 --> 0:26:38.000 who is very much presented to be very much. 0:26:37.840 --> 0:26:38.399 Of the Cherokee. 0:26:38.440 --> 0:26:43.400 And so the book is basically just a few years 0:26:43.720 --> 0:26:46.080 of his of the boy's life. It's just it's a 0:26:46.119 --> 0:26:51.160 small sliver of time when his grandfather teaches him essentially 0:26:51.240 --> 0:26:53.239 how to how to be a man, and how to 0:26:53.240 --> 0:26:56.800 be a Cherokee, and how to survive in the modern 0:26:57.000 --> 0:27:00.120 modern world and time. The opening chapter of the book, 0:27:00.320 --> 0:27:04.080 they go and trap turkeys, They fox hunt with hounds. 0:27:04.680 --> 0:27:08.760 The grandfather in later chapters teaches the boy how to 0:27:08.800 --> 0:27:09.720 make moonshine. 0:27:10.000 --> 0:27:12.280 That's his trade. He's in the whiskey. 0:27:11.960 --> 0:27:16.080 Trade, right, And so the book is about the education 0:27:16.200 --> 0:27:18.680 of Little Tree because the boy quickly when he comes 0:27:18.680 --> 0:27:21.320 home with his grandfather, is named Little Tree. 0:27:21.520 --> 0:27:25.159 He's learning very practical skills, when to plant, how to 0:27:25.200 --> 0:27:28.200 fertilize soil, how to make whiskey, how to catch calffish, 0:27:28.280 --> 0:27:30.600 all these very practical skills. But what he's really getting 0:27:30.840 --> 0:27:32.480 the education is. 0:27:32.840 --> 0:27:33.320 How to be. 0:27:34.200 --> 0:27:36.760 What is your obligation to your family, what is your 0:27:36.800 --> 0:27:40.320 obligation to the natural world around you. He gets a 0:27:40.440 --> 0:27:46.280 moral a very pure moral education by doing very practical things. 0:27:46.720 --> 0:27:49.720 The book like from a literary perspective to me, the 0:27:49.760 --> 0:27:53.800 book just reeks of you feel like you're in western 0:27:53.800 --> 0:27:56.960 North Carolina. You feel like you're in the mountains. 0:27:57.119 --> 0:28:02.000 Oh, I feel it feels completely authentic. Yeah, well, let 0:28:02.040 --> 0:28:04.600 me say this. You know when you're watching some kind 0:28:04.600 --> 0:28:07.600 of poorly done show or movie and there's a scene 0:28:07.600 --> 0:28:12.760 that involves a contractor, okay, and the contractor is doing something, 0:28:13.760 --> 0:28:17.280 someone's doing a construction thing or preparing something, and you're 0:28:17.359 --> 0:28:20.320 watching it and you know that that actor has never 0:28:20.400 --> 0:28:23.240 repaired anything. Yeah, and you know that no one on 0:28:23.280 --> 0:28:27.720 that set has ever watched someone repair something, And it's 0:28:27.800 --> 0:28:31.159 all just a stab in the dark about how someone 0:28:31.240 --> 0:28:37.360 repairing something might approach that, and there's zero authenticity. I'm 0:28:37.400 --> 0:28:40.040 sensitive to that. I don't like to see that that'll 0:28:40.040 --> 0:28:42.880 make me turn something off when I see that. In 0:28:43.000 --> 0:28:47.000 reading this, and I have a lot of exposure, not 0:28:47.080 --> 0:28:48.840 as much in the South, I have a lot of 0:28:48.880 --> 0:28:54.080 exposure to rural culture all across America. In reading this, 0:28:54.800 --> 0:28:59.960 I would say that person knows what they're talking about. 0:29:00.440 --> 0:29:03.640 That person when it comes to the physical stuff, right, 0:29:04.160 --> 0:29:07.040 that person has fished, They've been there. That person has 0:29:07.080 --> 0:29:10.480 been to a still. That person has worked in corn patches. 0:29:10.960 --> 0:29:15.120 That person has raised melons, right, that person has dealt 0:29:15.120 --> 0:29:15.720 with dogs. 0:29:16.320 --> 0:29:19.360 Let me read you another section Steve about when he 0:29:19.480 --> 0:29:23.000 was out at night and as a coon hunter myself. 0:29:23.200 --> 0:29:26.080 When I read this, I was like, this guy has 0:29:26.160 --> 0:29:28.560 been in the mountains at night, because he described it 0:29:28.600 --> 0:29:32.000 better than I could. They were going fox hunting, and 0:29:32.360 --> 0:29:35.760 he said dark fell in close, and the mountains moved 0:29:35.800 --> 0:29:38.320 in on either side as we walked. Before long we 0:29:38.400 --> 0:29:41.080 came to win and the trail Grandpa had taken the left, 0:29:41.360 --> 0:29:43.960 and there was no more room in the trail except 0:29:43.960 --> 0:29:46.480 for right on the edge of the spring branch. Grandpa 0:29:46.600 --> 0:29:49.320 called this the narrows seemed like you could stretch out 0:29:49.360 --> 0:29:53.239 your arms on either side and touch the mountains straight up. 0:29:53.280 --> 0:29:56.880 They went dark and feathered with tree tops, which left 0:29:56.920 --> 0:30:00.760 a thin slice of stars above us. I love that 0:30:00.840 --> 0:30:03.680 when I read that, like a thin slice of stars 0:30:03.720 --> 0:30:07.760 above us. Now this author had been there. He went 0:30:07.800 --> 0:30:10.680 on to say, way off, a mourning dove called long 0:30:10.720 --> 0:30:12.880 and throaty, and the mountains picked it up and echoed 0:30:12.920 --> 0:30:15.600 the sound over and over, carrying it further and further away, 0:30:15.680 --> 0:30:18.600 until you wondered how many mountains and hollows that call 0:30:18.640 --> 0:30:21.800 would travel, And it died away so far it was 0:30:21.880 --> 0:30:27.880 more like a memory than a sound. He said that 0:30:27.920 --> 0:30:30.239 the call of a mourning dove was more like a 0:30:30.320 --> 0:30:33.800 memory than a sound. I mean that's some good writing. 0:30:34.000 --> 0:30:34.440 That's something. 0:30:34.520 --> 0:30:40.040 It's poetic without being pretentious. It's there's just great. All 0:30:40.080 --> 0:30:44.640 the metaphor is great. They hide their still so well. 0:30:44.720 --> 0:30:47.160 He says that a bird couldn't find it. I mean, 0:30:47.200 --> 0:30:50.600 it's just it's it just is good writing. Like it's 0:30:50.640 --> 0:30:51.160 good writing. 0:30:52.280 --> 0:30:58.400 Steve said he recognized authenticity in this author. I want 0:30:58.440 --> 0:31:01.959 to read an excerpt where Grandpa is telling a childhood 0:31:02.040 --> 0:31:05.520 story about a Civil War vet named Coonjack who gets 0:31:05.560 --> 0:31:11.800 offended in church. Coonjack stood up and said, I here 0:31:12.000 --> 0:31:14.600 tell the sum in here been talking about me behind 0:31:14.600 --> 0:31:17.600 my back, and I want you to know that I'm awares. 0:31:18.160 --> 0:31:21.400 I know what's the matter with you. You're jealous because the 0:31:21.480 --> 0:31:23.720 deacon board put me in charge of the key to 0:31:23.800 --> 0:31:26.480 the song box. Well, let me tell you, and if 0:31:26.480 --> 0:31:29.200 you don't like it, I got the difference right here 0:31:29.320 --> 0:31:33.640 in my pocket. Grandpa said, sure enough. Coonjack lifted his 0:31:33.800 --> 0:31:37.840 deer shirt and showed a pistol handle he was stomping. 0:31:38.000 --> 0:31:38.280 Mad. 0:31:38.760 --> 0:31:42.040 Grandpa said that church house was full of some hard men, 0:31:42.320 --> 0:31:45.640 including his Paul, who would soon as not shoot you 0:31:45.680 --> 0:31:49.560 if the weather changed. And nobody raised an eyebrow, he said, 0:31:49.560 --> 0:31:53.640 his pau stood up and said, Coonjack, every man here 0:31:53.840 --> 0:31:57.240 admires the way you've handled the key to the songbook box, 0:31:57.880 --> 0:32:02.000 best handling ever been done. If words have been mistook 0:32:02.080 --> 0:32:05.560 to cause you discomfort, I here and now state the 0:32:05.600 --> 0:32:11.360 sorrow of every man present. Konjack sat down, total mollified 0:32:11.400 --> 0:32:12.960 and contented, as. 0:32:12.840 --> 0:32:13.720 Was everybody else. 0:32:14.520 --> 0:32:17.960 On the way home, Grandpa asked his paw why Konjack 0:32:18.000 --> 0:32:20.880 could get away with such talk, and Grandpa said that 0:32:21.040 --> 0:32:25.000 he got to laughing about Konjack acting so important over 0:32:25.040 --> 0:32:28.120 the key to the songbook box, and he said his 0:32:28.240 --> 0:32:32.400 paw told him Son don't laugh at Coonjack. You see, 0:32:32.640 --> 0:32:34.920 when the Cherokee was forced to give up his home 0:32:35.080 --> 0:32:38.160 and go to the nations, Coonjack was young, and he 0:32:38.240 --> 0:32:40.640 hid out in the mountains, and he fought to hold on. 0:32:41.240 --> 0:32:44.400 When the war between the states come, he saw maybe 0:32:44.440 --> 0:32:47.440 he could fight that same government and get back the 0:32:47.560 --> 0:32:51.880 lands and home. He fought hard both times he lost. 0:32:52.440 --> 0:32:55.920 When the war ended, the politicians set in trying to 0:32:56.000 --> 0:32:59.160 get what was left of what he had. Koonjack fought 0:32:59.240 --> 0:33:02.680 him and run and hid and thought some more. You see, 0:33:03.040 --> 0:33:06.440 Coonjack came up in a time of fighting. All he's 0:33:06.520 --> 0:33:10.239 got now is the key to the songbook box. And 0:33:10.280 --> 0:33:14.880 if Konjack seems cantankerous, well there ain't nothing left for 0:33:15.000 --> 0:33:20.360 Coonjack to fight. He never knowed nothing else. Grandpa said, 0:33:20.520 --> 0:33:24.360 he come might near crying for old Coonjack. He said 0:33:24.360 --> 0:33:28.160 that after that, it didn't matter what Konjack said or did. 0:33:28.720 --> 0:33:36.160 He loved him because he understood him. He loved him 0:33:36.200 --> 0:33:41.160 because he understood that's powerful empathy and deep insight into 0:33:41.200 --> 0:33:45.040 human nature. When we heard Forrest Carter right about the 0:33:45.160 --> 0:33:49.320 natural world, it's clear he had experienced it. But also 0:33:49.560 --> 0:33:53.080 when I hear him talk about empathy and understanding people's issues. 0:33:53.480 --> 0:33:57.400 It feels just as authentic. I want to read you 0:33:57.480 --> 0:34:00.320 one more excerpt, and it's a window into the home 0:34:00.360 --> 0:34:05.080 of Little Tree's grandma and Grandpa. Will learn that Grandpa's 0:34:05.160 --> 0:34:11.080 name is Wales. Grandma's name was Bonnie B. I knew 0:34:11.120 --> 0:34:14.239 that when I heard him late at night say I 0:34:14.480 --> 0:34:17.840 ken ya, Bonnie B. He was saying I love you. 0:34:18.440 --> 0:34:20.799 When they would be talking, Grandma would say, do you 0:34:20.960 --> 0:34:24.560 kin me, Wales, and he would answer, I kenya. It 0:34:24.680 --> 0:34:29.480 meant I understand you. To them, love and understanding was 0:34:29.520 --> 0:34:33.239 the same thing. Grandma said. You couldn't love something you 0:34:33.320 --> 0:34:37.640 didn't understand, nor could you love people nor God if 0:34:37.719 --> 0:34:41.640 you didn't understand the people and God. Grandpa and Grandma 0:34:41.840 --> 0:34:45.320 had an understanding, and so they had a love. Grandma 0:34:45.400 --> 0:34:48.439 said the understanding run deeper as the years went by, 0:34:48.960 --> 0:34:52.600 and she reckoned it would get beyond anything mortal folks 0:34:52.680 --> 0:34:56.880 could think upon or explain, and so they called it ken. 0:34:57.800 --> 0:35:02.080 Grandpa said, back before his time, ken folks meant any 0:35:02.160 --> 0:35:06.520 folks that you understood and had an understanding with, so 0:35:06.640 --> 0:35:11.200 it meant loved folks. But people got selfish and brought 0:35:11.200 --> 0:35:14.880 it down to mean just blood relatives, but that actually 0:35:14.960 --> 0:35:20.120 it was never meant to mean that you can't love 0:35:20.239 --> 0:35:25.560 something you don't understand. These uneducated hill folks mapped out 0:35:25.719 --> 0:35:30.120 and functionalized love in a way they suspected mortal people 0:35:30.200 --> 0:35:34.640 couldn't understand or explain. They recognized that genuine love and 0:35:34.719 --> 0:35:39.239 understanding should be spread much wider than the rudimentary understanding 0:35:39.280 --> 0:35:43.000 of blood relatives. Ken folks are all the people that 0:35:43.080 --> 0:35:47.759 you truly understand and that understand you, and thus you 0:35:48.000 --> 0:35:53.239 love them. This is deeply philosophical, and it sprung from 0:35:53.280 --> 0:35:58.000 the creative loins of a racial supremacist. This would be 0:35:58.160 --> 0:36:01.799 the last thing that we think he'd under stand. Incredible 0:36:01.840 --> 0:36:06.120 writers usually have a uniquely comprehensive grasp on their topic 0:36:06.239 --> 0:36:11.160 of expertise, and in this situation, Asa Carter's expertise was 0:36:11.200 --> 0:36:15.880 on the inner gold and purest character of these marginalized people. 0:36:16.480 --> 0:36:21.400 This man seemed to truly understand love, which begs the 0:36:21.520 --> 0:36:25.560 question of where did he get access to this? We're 0:36:25.719 --> 0:36:30.279 roiling towards a deeper and more difficult question, though. Does 0:36:30.320 --> 0:36:34.040 the outside life of an author matter or should the 0:36:34.120 --> 0:36:38.080 content simply be taken for what it is? Can we 0:36:38.200 --> 0:36:41.880 draw meaningful ideas from a flawed source. 0:36:42.600 --> 0:36:44.440 I want you to be thinking about that. 0:36:44.960 --> 0:36:48.960 And doctor Carter has some ideas, and he's going to 0:36:49.040 --> 0:36:53.120 show us a place where ASA didn't get it quite right. 0:36:55.200 --> 0:36:59.919 Writers are not perfect people, and their backgrounds are off 0:37:00.040 --> 0:37:03.120 on things that make us cringe, and yet we can 0:37:03.160 --> 0:37:06.680 still look at their books and their works. Their writing 0:37:06.760 --> 0:37:10.680 works is great worthwhile we don't know. Shakespeare may have 0:37:10.719 --> 0:37:15.719 been a jerk, you know, for all we know. But 0:37:16.040 --> 0:37:18.279 the other thing I think it was mixed in with 0:37:18.320 --> 0:37:24.719 this Clay was having interviewed Native Americans who did know 0:37:24.880 --> 0:37:29.440 something about Cherokee culture, and they found the book some 0:37:29.600 --> 0:37:33.120 of it interesting. They didn't dislike the book at all, 0:37:33.719 --> 0:37:38.759 but they found it false in some respects, and they 0:37:38.880 --> 0:37:42.319 talked about how he got some of it right, but 0:37:42.400 --> 0:37:46.320 he got some of it fundamentally wrong, and they talked. 0:37:46.560 --> 0:37:51.799 I think the thing that they found most bewildering and 0:37:53.040 --> 0:37:58.680 they disliked the most, was that they felt reading it 0:37:59.120 --> 0:38:03.920 that it was more kind of New Age philosophy in 0:38:03.960 --> 0:38:10.200 which you're embracing Native American ideas but not really authentically capturing. 0:38:10.440 --> 0:38:13.160 I'll give you just one example. I mean, there's some examples. 0:38:13.160 --> 0:38:15.560 One of them is a language which was made up. 0:38:15.800 --> 0:38:19.000 It's not Cherokee. But that didn't that didn't bother them. 0:38:19.040 --> 0:38:24.120 You know, what bothered them, both of them, was that 0:38:24.560 --> 0:38:28.720 the ideas he expressed about the cosmos, about the world 0:38:28.840 --> 0:38:33.719 religious view of Cherokees tended to be vague earth mother, 0:38:34.160 --> 0:38:38.000 you know, this kind of thing. And what what both 0:38:38.040 --> 0:38:44.279 of them said is that Cherokee's ideas about God, the 0:38:44.320 --> 0:38:47.400 Great Spirit, whatever you want to call it, is very 0:38:47.440 --> 0:38:51.839 deeply rooted in specifics. And one of them was very 0:38:51.880 --> 0:38:56.239 eloquent talking about how he talks about how beautiful a 0:38:56.280 --> 0:38:58.640 mountain is, and he said, he's a good writer, you know, 0:38:58.680 --> 0:39:03.600 he can describe just but he said, a Cherokee would 0:39:03.640 --> 0:39:08.600 describe precisely the mountain, the name of it, the exact river. 0:39:09.080 --> 0:39:13.840 Everything has to be specific because it's very specific to 0:39:13.920 --> 0:39:17.040 their world view. And he said this does a site 0:39:17.040 --> 0:39:22.200 specific sites said yes, site specific religion, everything. And one 0:39:22.200 --> 0:39:24.400 of them said, very he grew up in an area 0:39:24.400 --> 0:39:27.399 where there were lots of whites as well as and 0:39:27.440 --> 0:39:31.399 he said, uh, it struck me reading it that it's 0:39:31.440 --> 0:39:36.759 this mixture of both Indian life and white rife. He said, 0:39:36.760 --> 0:39:43.440 for example, virtually no Indians made corn whiskey. Uh it 0:39:43.480 --> 0:39:45.839 was a white man's thing, and it was they didn't 0:39:45.880 --> 0:39:50.720 drink it. They did, but but he said, Scotch Irish 0:39:50.800 --> 0:39:54.160 were pretty tight about that, and you get into trouble 0:39:54.200 --> 0:39:57.240 if you started. They were the ones that controlled control 0:39:57.280 --> 0:39:58.560 of the whiskey making business. 0:39:59.080 --> 0:39:59.279 Uh. 0:39:59.320 --> 0:40:03.000 So it was also that they didn't think nullified the book. 0:40:03.400 --> 0:40:05.480 But and they wasn't quite consistent. 0:40:05.600 --> 0:40:08.480 But it's not really And so their whole thing was 0:40:08.760 --> 0:40:11.120 read it as a I saw it or a kind 0:40:11.120 --> 0:40:14.600 of novel, but don't give it out to students and 0:40:14.680 --> 0:40:18.520 say this is Cherokee life. 0:40:18.560 --> 0:40:23.080 Shakespeare may have been a jerk. That's funny, doctor Dan T. 0:40:23.320 --> 0:40:23.600 Carter. 0:40:24.160 --> 0:40:26.560 And the truth is we don't really know much about 0:40:26.640 --> 0:40:31.120 Shakespeare's private life. And if you remember, we've heard about 0:40:31.200 --> 0:40:35.600 site specific religions and our tacumpsas series Doctor Dave Edmunds 0:40:35.640 --> 0:40:39.120 said that that was part of why relocating Native Americans 0:40:39.200 --> 0:40:43.239 was so devastating to their culture. We're going to now 0:40:43.320 --> 0:40:46.160 get back into the fabric of this book with mister 0:40:46.239 --> 0:40:50.440 Steve Ranella. Did y'all hear that CBS called him the 0:40:50.640 --> 0:40:52.879 Julia Childs of the Campfire? 0:40:53.560 --> 0:40:55.600 That's funny. Here's Steve. 0:40:57.920 --> 0:41:00.560 Part of the education of Little Tree b on the 0:41:00.600 --> 0:41:04.560 things that we spoke about being how to utilize the 0:41:04.680 --> 0:41:09.640 landscape through hunting, fishing, agriculture, how to treat the landscape 0:41:09.760 --> 0:41:12.799 with respect, how to treat the people around you and 0:41:12.840 --> 0:41:17.480 the people you love with respect and empathy, and how 0:41:17.520 --> 0:41:21.760 to not be boastful or prideful, and how to behave 0:41:21.880 --> 0:41:25.880 in a discreete fashion. There is also another thing that 0:41:26.000 --> 0:41:30.720 little Tree is educated on are the evils of pretty 0:41:30.760 --> 0:41:35.760 much everything that is organized. He has taught to understand 0:41:35.960 --> 0:41:42.360 that politicians are by definition corrupt, that the education system 0:41:42.600 --> 0:41:47.960 is corrupt in and of itself, government is corrupt, organized 0:41:48.040 --> 0:41:53.319 religion is corrupt. You have your word, you have the 0:41:53.400 --> 0:41:57.280 promises of the people around you, but anything that comes 0:41:57.280 --> 0:42:00.880 from you that has been institutionalized you should be very 0:42:01.280 --> 0:42:05.160 suspicious of. And that is like a key part of 0:42:05.200 --> 0:42:05.840 the education. 0:42:06.920 --> 0:42:11.400 And it comes about in such natural ways inside the books, sure, 0:42:11.440 --> 0:42:14.640 like for instance, the grandfather is making whiskey and there's 0:42:14.640 --> 0:42:16.600 a whiskey tax, so they have to hide their still 0:42:16.680 --> 0:42:19.040 so they don't pay the tax. So in the book, 0:42:19.040 --> 0:42:23.160 the grandfather loves George Washington until he finds out that 0:42:23.280 --> 0:42:26.759 Washington is the one that instituted the whiskey tax, and 0:42:26.880 --> 0:42:31.640 then he really tries to justify, like, how could Washington 0:42:31.640 --> 0:42:32.040 have done? That? 0:42:32.120 --> 0:42:35.960 Must have been a mistake. Yeah, he seethes. He can't 0:42:35.960 --> 0:42:39.319 get it out of his head. He normally refuses, he 0:42:39.480 --> 0:42:42.080 likes to walk, refuses to be picked up by a car, 0:42:42.520 --> 0:42:45.200 allows himself to get picked up by a car just 0:42:45.239 --> 0:42:47.839 so he can ask the driver of the car what 0:42:47.880 --> 0:42:50.440 he thinks about what Washington did. He can't get it 0:42:50.440 --> 0:42:53.200 out of his head. Yeah, in his mind. If I 0:42:53.239 --> 0:42:56.480 grow corn on my land and I have a contraption 0:42:56.640 --> 0:42:58.880 I made on my land and I can take my 0:42:59.000 --> 0:43:01.319 corn and make a beverage with it, how in the 0:43:01.360 --> 0:43:02.680 world is this anything? 0:43:02.719 --> 0:43:04.680 How does this have anything to do with the government? 0:43:04.880 --> 0:43:08.960 Yeah, explain like what has gone bad? When I've done 0:43:08.960 --> 0:43:11.319 this all with my hands, so on my. 0:43:11.320 --> 0:43:15.279 Property, beautifully laid out. Because the grandfather, you trust him 0:43:15.320 --> 0:43:20.960 so much. He's so straightforward, he's so certain, he's so naive, 0:43:21.600 --> 0:43:25.320 but he's so honest, like you, just the writer wants 0:43:25.320 --> 0:43:28.759 you to think, this man sees the world in his 0:43:28.880 --> 0:43:34.840 most simplistic terms, but the right way. It's hard not 0:43:35.000 --> 0:43:38.759 to love Grandpa. He and little Tree once had to 0:43:38.760 --> 0:43:41.920 bury a fox dog named Ringer that had died on 0:43:41.960 --> 0:43:44.799 the hunt, and little Tree was very sad. This is 0:43:44.800 --> 0:43:48.000 what Grandpa said. And it's important to know that this 0:43:48.080 --> 0:43:51.799 book is written in dialect, so sometimes it sounds kind 0:43:51.800 --> 0:43:56.080 of funny when you take it out of context. Grandpa said, 0:43:56.120 --> 0:43:59.440 everything you lost which you had loved, give you that feeling. 0:44:00.120 --> 0:44:00.439 He said. 0:44:00.440 --> 0:44:02.800 The only way around it was to not love anything 0:44:02.840 --> 0:44:05.680 which was worse, because you would feel empty all the time. 0:44:06.400 --> 0:44:10.080 Grandpa said, supposing old Ringer had not been faithful, then 0:44:10.120 --> 0:44:12.719 we wouldn't be proud of him. That would be a 0:44:12.800 --> 0:44:16.640 worse feeling, which is right. Grandpa said, when I got old, 0:44:16.760 --> 0:44:19.080 I would remember old Ringer, and I would like it. 0:44:19.640 --> 0:44:21.920 He said. It was a funny thing. But when you got. 0:44:21.719 --> 0:44:25.280 Old and remember them you loved, you only remembered the good, 0:44:25.719 --> 0:44:29.320 never the bad, which proved the bad didn't count. 0:44:29.480 --> 0:44:34.400 Know how the bad didn't count. Know how. 0:44:35.080 --> 0:44:39.640 That's deeply philosophical too. It makes me wonder if Asa 0:44:39.760 --> 0:44:43.080 hoped his life would be judged by the same rules 0:44:43.160 --> 0:44:47.520 as Ringer. Here's more from Steve Ranella, and we're gonna 0:44:47.520 --> 0:44:50.360 get into something a bit more serious. 0:44:51.120 --> 0:44:55.319 There's a thing we haven't looked into which is the 0:44:55.320 --> 0:44:59.239 philosophy and viewpoints on poverty. Almost everybody in this book 0:44:59.280 --> 0:45:03.000 is exceptionally poor, very very poor, like cash economies of 0:45:03.719 --> 0:45:07.080 sub one thousand dollars annually. When Little Tree and his 0:45:07.120 --> 0:45:10.920 grandpa go to sell their bootleg whiskey as a store, 0:45:11.480 --> 0:45:14.440 the storekeeper will always have Little Tree do an errand 0:45:14.520 --> 0:45:17.800 for him. The storekeeper wants to reward Little Tree with 0:45:17.840 --> 0:45:20.880 a piece of candy, but he knows that he cannot 0:45:20.960 --> 0:45:23.759 give Little Tree a piece of candy for free, so 0:45:23.840 --> 0:45:25.440 he needs to put it to Little Tree that he 0:45:25.480 --> 0:45:29.960 has expired candy. He can't sell. It feels very wasteful 0:45:30.040 --> 0:45:32.520 throwing it out, and that Little Tree would be doing 0:45:32.600 --> 0:45:34.760 him a favor to take a piece of the candy. 0:45:35.520 --> 0:45:40.040 Under those conditions, Little Tree will eat that candy. Little 0:45:40.080 --> 0:45:43.080 Tree meets the daughter of a sharecropper at the store. 0:45:43.480 --> 0:45:46.640 She has no shoes. Little Tree's grandma makes her a 0:45:46.640 --> 0:45:49.520 pair of moccasins. He gives the girl a pair of 0:45:49.560 --> 0:45:52.359 moccasins the next time they go to the store. When 0:45:52.480 --> 0:45:55.799 the girl's sharecropper father sees her in the moccasins and 0:45:55.840 --> 0:45:58.400 sees how glad she is, he gets a stick and 0:45:58.440 --> 0:46:02.480 whips her until she bleeds, makes her give the moccasins 0:46:02.520 --> 0:46:04.960 back to little tree. You think the grandpa is going 0:46:05.000 --> 0:46:08.759 to condemn the man. The grandpa says, I understand, they 0:46:08.800 --> 0:46:12.040 can't get used to nice stuff. They'll never have nice stuff. 0:46:12.120 --> 0:46:15.480 There's no reason for her to want things she won't 0:46:15.520 --> 0:46:18.160 get them. So I understand why he had to do 0:46:18.200 --> 0:46:22.120 what he had to do, like a great reluctance to condemn. 0:46:22.680 --> 0:46:26.040 And then sometimes I'm like, it's like a vicious scene. Yeah, 0:46:26.080 --> 0:46:28.719 but he's like, I understand. He was not for me 0:46:28.760 --> 0:46:29.280 to judge. 0:46:29.600 --> 0:46:32.839 The grandfather was very empathetic towards people. And that's a 0:46:32.880 --> 0:46:36.560 word that will go back to because when you see 0:46:36.600 --> 0:46:39.920 that whoever wrote this book was trying to I mean, 0:46:39.960 --> 0:46:42.560 it feels like they were trying to promote a message 0:46:42.600 --> 0:46:43.239 of empathy. 0:46:43.400 --> 0:46:45.640 On the issue of empathy, and it is. There is 0:46:45.680 --> 0:46:50.360 a very strong environmental message, like a rigid, very strong 0:46:50.480 --> 0:46:53.040 environmental message. There's a lot of all empathy. 0:46:53.160 --> 0:46:56.560 Nowhere is there an environmental message in this The environmental 0:46:56.600 --> 0:47:02.600 message of that trees are sentient life forms, Okay, that 0:47:02.640 --> 0:47:04.400 you don't cut one down for no reason. 0:47:04.920 --> 0:47:05.520 Yeah. 0:47:05.560 --> 0:47:08.520 They would mostly try to only use trees that had 0:47:08.560 --> 0:47:12.080 been felled by lightning strucks, or that fell over. You 0:47:12.080 --> 0:47:16.399 could communicate through trees not to take more than your 0:47:16.440 --> 0:47:20.360 share of anything. That if you didn't love birds, birds 0:47:20.400 --> 0:47:23.880 won't show themselves to you. If you didn't love game animals, 0:47:23.920 --> 0:47:26.600 game animals won't come near you. They know that you 0:47:26.719 --> 0:47:29.440 love them, they want to be near you. It's a 0:47:29.480 --> 0:47:34.240 really strong environmental message, and it's got teeth right. Bad 0:47:34.280 --> 0:47:37.400 things can befall people that disrespect nature. It's not just 0:47:37.440 --> 0:47:40.759 appealing to emotion and beauty. It's like these are like 0:47:40.920 --> 0:47:44.520 real things with real implications, like you can cut yourself 0:47:44.600 --> 0:47:46.760 off from life by disrespecting nature. 0:47:47.160 --> 0:47:47.640 Yeah. 0:47:47.680 --> 0:47:51.160 But within all that, all the messages of empathy, there's 0:47:51.200 --> 0:47:53.960 another message there too, and it can be read in 0:47:54.000 --> 0:47:55.800 a way that reflects on what I said to you 0:47:55.880 --> 0:47:59.680 when I talked about institutions. It teaches empathy, but it 0:47:59.680 --> 0:48:02.880 teaches something else too. I mean it teaches distrust. 0:48:04.239 --> 0:48:08.440 Distrust for the organized systems of man, primarily the government, 0:48:08.719 --> 0:48:12.120 are strong themes of the book. However, they're presented in 0:48:12.239 --> 0:48:15.640 such conjunction with the lovable protagonists. I feel like it 0:48:15.680 --> 0:48:18.960 would be hard for anyone to disagree with its sentiment, 0:48:19.080 --> 0:48:22.400 as it's presented, and the fact that a Cherokee Indian 0:48:22.560 --> 0:48:25.600 is the one making the judgment, it feels very just 0:48:26.040 --> 0:48:29.360 like he's got the right to believe that, And in general, 0:48:29.800 --> 0:48:34.640 I'd say I feel the same way. Here's Steve bringing 0:48:34.800 --> 0:48:36.400 closure to this book. 0:48:37.800 --> 0:48:40.719 There's something that happens really interesting in the book. From 0:48:40.719 --> 0:48:46.359 a structural standpoint, the main plot point, the main conflict, 0:48:47.160 --> 0:48:50.799 isn't even introduced until the end of the book. There's 0:48:50.800 --> 0:48:53.799 a definition of story that goes that a story is 0:48:54.000 --> 0:48:58.359 someone or something wants something, but there are obstacles to 0:48:58.400 --> 0:49:02.879 them getting it. A story is someone or something overcoming 0:49:03.040 --> 0:49:06.799 obstacles to get what they want. Okay, that's true of 0:49:06.880 --> 0:49:10.200 The Tortoise and the Hair, It's true of Shakespeare's works, right, 0:49:10.400 --> 0:49:13.400 It's like, that's what story is. The conflict in this 0:49:13.400 --> 0:49:15.960 book only comes up in the end. The conflict, the 0:49:16.000 --> 0:49:18.040 real conflict in the book, comes up that eventually the 0:49:18.120 --> 0:49:21.960 institutions that little Tree has been trained to be suspicious 0:49:22.000 --> 0:49:25.359 of the institutions come for him. It emerges you don't 0:49:25.360 --> 0:49:28.759 even know who. It emerges that people have complained that 0:49:28.880 --> 0:49:32.239 this boy is being raised, this bastard child, is being 0:49:32.360 --> 0:49:36.040 raised by heathens and isn't going to get a formal education, 0:49:36.640 --> 0:49:39.759 and that they don't have formal custodial rights over him. 0:49:39.920 --> 0:49:42.600 They're just sort of they fell into being his caretakers. 0:49:42.800 --> 0:49:46.160 And all you've seen is the extremes the grandmother and 0:49:46.200 --> 0:49:49.960 grandfather have gone through to give him, like the best 0:49:49.960 --> 0:49:53.880 of everything, the best moral education, the best work education. 0:49:54.400 --> 0:49:57.319 He has a study from the dictionary. They have the 0:49:57.440 --> 0:50:01.480 librarian recommend books to bring home that neither of them 0:50:01.520 --> 0:50:03.759 can read, so that the grandma can read them the books. 0:50:03.760 --> 0:50:07.959 He's getting a formal education. And then the suits show 0:50:08.080 --> 0:50:11.520 up and say he's not being educated, and they take 0:50:11.560 --> 0:50:15.239 him away. No sooner does he go away though. That 0:50:15.360 --> 0:50:19.440 conflict is resolved and he's back home. It's like the 0:50:19.520 --> 0:50:21.880 thing you expect to be coming the whole time comes 0:50:21.880 --> 0:50:25.239 in the end and it gets resolved very quickly, but 0:50:25.280 --> 0:50:28.160 then you quickly launch into this this other thing, and 0:50:28.200 --> 0:50:32.560 then the heartbreak because then everyone he cares about dies. 0:50:33.760 --> 0:50:36.240 His friend that we haven't talked about, Willow John, dies, 0:50:36.360 --> 0:50:38.560 the grandpa dies, the grandma dies. 0:50:39.160 --> 0:50:40.240 Then you go through. 0:50:40.120 --> 0:50:43.760 All of the dogs dying one by one until he's alone. 0:50:44.360 --> 0:50:47.879 Then the book, without any the book just ends. He 0:50:47.920 --> 0:50:52.520 buries the last dog and it's done. There's not even 0:50:52.520 --> 0:50:57.319 the sentence the mule dies, So it's Southern literature. There's 0:50:57.320 --> 0:50:59.560 a dead mule, all the dogs die. 0:50:59.680 --> 0:51:03.879 It's yeah, and you have no idea like. 0:51:04.200 --> 0:51:06.960 Yeah, you're left. We don't know what happened. 0:51:06.960 --> 0:51:08.000 Only we don't even know. 0:51:08.800 --> 0:51:12.280 We don't know what kind of person he became, because 0:51:12.400 --> 0:51:14.879 even when you get into the end, when he leaves home, 0:51:15.280 --> 0:51:16.200 he just walks away. 0:51:16.680 --> 0:51:18.759 When he leaves, he walks out, shuts. 0:51:18.520 --> 0:51:20.719 The door behind him, and walks out, And we don't 0:51:20.719 --> 0:51:23.560 see him come up against anything moral. We don't see 0:51:23.600 --> 0:51:26.560 him come up against any conflict. We don't see him 0:51:26.600 --> 0:51:29.600 interact with any other human. We just see him go 0:51:29.719 --> 0:51:32.239 through the act of burying everything he loves in an 0:51:32.320 --> 0:51:36.080 areas alone. You assume that he carries with him this 0:51:36.160 --> 0:51:38.000 strong moral compass, but we don't see it. 0:51:40.200 --> 0:51:46.320 Spoiler alert, everything dies. If you choose to read this book, 0:51:46.440 --> 0:51:49.560 which I would recommend, you have to take the big 0:51:49.600 --> 0:51:53.120 boy approach, knowing all the while what's coming, while still 0:51:53.239 --> 0:51:56.040 allowing it to take you on a journey. It's a 0:51:56.160 --> 0:51:59.920 double whammy because you'll also know Asa Carter's story too. 0:52:01.360 --> 0:52:05.799 In this closing section, Steve asked me a very difficult 0:52:05.920 --> 0:52:09.680 question and then delves into a very serious topic in 0:52:09.760 --> 0:52:13.320 today's America. It's good insight from Steve. 0:52:15.440 --> 0:52:17.120 When you were working on this, I've spoke to you 0:52:17.200 --> 0:52:20.640 and you mentioned talking to an academic who said to you, 0:52:20.640 --> 0:52:26.440 you know that book's been blacklist blacklisted. I understand that, 0:52:26.600 --> 0:52:29.680 and I understand why I was given the book not 0:52:29.719 --> 0:52:32.000 as a kid, but as a student, as a college student, 0:52:32.080 --> 0:52:34.640 and I was very quickly after giving the book, I 0:52:34.680 --> 0:52:37.560 was invited to wrestle with the identity of the author. 0:52:38.360 --> 0:52:41.080 Here's a question for you. Do you read this to 0:52:41.120 --> 0:52:46.359 your kid? I can't decide. Hmmm, man, eight ten and twelve. 0:52:46.440 --> 0:52:48.200 My kids are eight ten and twelve. Do I read 0:52:48.239 --> 0:52:51.239 them that book and then say, let me tell you 0:52:51.239 --> 0:52:52.080 something about that person? 0:52:52.120 --> 0:52:52.840 A tough question. 0:52:53.120 --> 0:52:53.760 I haven't. 0:52:53.880 --> 0:52:57.040 But that is the biggest question here is that I 0:52:57.120 --> 0:53:00.359 read this book and was fascinated by it, not even 0:53:00.400 --> 0:53:02.520 looking at what we know about the author, but just 0:53:02.600 --> 0:53:07.879 the connection to nature. The way the grandfather presented the 0:53:07.920 --> 0:53:11.080 world to little Tree was just so interesting, and it 0:53:11.120 --> 0:53:13.120 would be hard to find fault with much of it, 0:53:13.160 --> 0:53:15.680 even the stuff about the government. I mean, a lot 0:53:15.680 --> 0:53:18.760 of people I think would read it and be like, yeah. 0:53:18.520 --> 0:53:22.240 After the fact, after the revelations came out, people came 0:53:22.360 --> 0:53:25.040 forward and like, well, you know, it is very stereotypical, 0:53:25.120 --> 0:53:26.880 and the characters very stereotypical. 0:53:27.120 --> 0:53:28.759 But go find me people that were saying that in 0:53:28.760 --> 0:53:29.280 the seventies. 0:53:29.360 --> 0:53:31.920 Yeah, they weren't. It's a full Oprah Winfrey. 0:53:32.160 --> 0:53:34.800 It's a real tough one. Once people were armed with 0:53:34.840 --> 0:53:36.799 the truth, then they found all kinds of things. Well, 0:53:36.920 --> 0:53:39.080 once they knew it, you know what, once they knew 0:53:39.080 --> 0:53:41.359 what they were looking for, they found it. But they 0:53:41.360 --> 0:53:42.480 didn't find it ahead of. 0:53:42.440 --> 0:53:45.840 Time, right, Steve, you tell me what you think happened here. 0:53:46.880 --> 0:53:51.000 I could not find an academic person. It's someone that 0:53:51.000 --> 0:53:55.040 worked for university literary professor that would talk to me 0:53:55.080 --> 0:53:58.720 about this book. And it wasn't necessary. At first, I thought, 0:53:58.920 --> 0:54:01.680 this book is well. The first person that did respond said, hey, 0:54:02.200 --> 0:54:05.600 you realize this book has been blacklisted. That was essentially 0:54:05.640 --> 0:54:08.960 his response, and I said, yeah, that's why I want 0:54:09.000 --> 0:54:11.040 to talk about it. And then I began to get 0:54:11.080 --> 0:54:14.360 the feeling that people didn't want to talk about it, yeah, 0:54:14.440 --> 0:54:18.600 because it's just like, hey, don't even go there. But 0:54:18.840 --> 0:54:22.279 I also think that I was sending emails out to 0:54:22.320 --> 0:54:24.959 a bunch of people in contacting a big, wide web 0:54:25.000 --> 0:54:27.319 of people, which we did, to which we had very 0:54:27.360 --> 0:54:30.759 little response, which is unusual. I've rarely been found a 0:54:30.800 --> 0:54:33.279 book that I couldn't find somebody willing to talk to 0:54:33.280 --> 0:54:36.560 me about. I think that might also be a response 0:54:36.600 --> 0:54:40.000 to the thing being blacklisted thirty years ago. Absolutely so, 0:54:40.120 --> 0:54:42.759 just nobody's read it, nobody's read it in thirty years, and. 0:54:42.840 --> 0:54:44.440 They're gonna be afraid to talk about it now. I 0:54:44.440 --> 0:54:46.680 know you don't like to get like overtly political. I'm 0:54:46.680 --> 0:54:47.960 not going to get political, but I'm going to make 0:54:47.960 --> 0:54:48.920 a point about something. 0:54:49.120 --> 0:54:49.440 Sure. 0:54:49.600 --> 0:54:53.600 At a time Republicans. At a time, the Republican Party 0:54:54.000 --> 0:54:58.040 was free trade in nation building. Okay, you just go 0:54:58.080 --> 0:55:00.799 back to the Neo kons free trade, nation building. It's 0:55:00.840 --> 0:55:05.759 now not right. So there's protectionism, not free trade, emerging 0:55:05.800 --> 0:55:10.480 as a pronomenant thing in the Republican Party. Protectionism and isolationism, 0:55:10.520 --> 0:55:14.880 not meddling and not meddling in foreign affairs. Okay, protecting 0:55:14.960 --> 0:55:17.560 our own trade, not meddling in foreign affairs. Had you 0:55:17.600 --> 0:55:20.080 said ten years ago what a Republican is, you'd have 0:55:20.120 --> 0:55:23.360 brought up nation building and free trade. So things change 0:55:23.920 --> 0:55:28.440 Universities used to be heralded as a place where there 0:55:28.440 --> 0:55:30.839 was a free exchange of ideas, where you could talk 0:55:30.880 --> 0:55:37.560 about dangerous stuff. They're not now, by and large, universities 0:55:37.600 --> 0:55:40.440 have become places where you need to tread very lightly. 0:55:40.960 --> 0:55:43.879 You do not talk about dangerous stuff because you will 0:55:43.880 --> 0:55:47.239 get reprimanded, and you'll get blacklisted, and you'll lose your job. 0:55:47.800 --> 0:55:53.480 Universities have somehow become somewhat anti intellectual, and they have 0:55:53.560 --> 0:55:57.239 become places where people are afraid of the exchange of ideas. 0:55:57.520 --> 0:55:59.000 So that you're now not going to be able to 0:55:59.040 --> 0:56:01.000 get someone to talk to you about this book. Is 0:56:01.040 --> 0:56:02.480 because they probably want to. 0:56:02.840 --> 0:56:03.360 They're scared. 0:56:03.480 --> 0:56:05.399 Yeah, because someone's going to come for them for talking 0:56:05.400 --> 0:56:06.480 about dangerous stuff. 0:56:06.560 --> 0:56:06.920 Yeah. 0:56:06.960 --> 0:56:09.360 I guess now, if you want to talk about dangerous 0:56:09.360 --> 0:56:10.920 stuff and free ideas, you got to listen to the 0:56:10.920 --> 0:56:11.760 bar Grease podcast. 0:56:11.920 --> 0:56:12.399 That's right. 0:56:13.200 --> 0:56:15.719 Steve Ranella, the old guy in the country that would 0:56:15.719 --> 0:56:23.960 talk to me about the education of Little Tree. We 0:56:24.239 --> 0:56:27.840 ended on a light note, but the content was very serious. 0:56:28.719 --> 0:56:32.319 Often it seems the people who demand tolerance in their 0:56:32.400 --> 0:56:37.000 pursuit of enforcing it are incredibly intolerant. We live in 0:56:37.080 --> 0:56:40.759 a messed up world, and the most powerful contribution we have, 0:56:41.360 --> 0:56:45.520 bigger than voting, bigger than shouting down the crazies, bigger 0:56:45.560 --> 0:56:49.880 than fighting foreign armies, bigger than our political doctrine, is 0:56:49.920 --> 0:56:57.120 to build our individual lives and families intentionally, introspectively, empathetically 0:56:57.560 --> 0:57:03.440 and with an unembittered, humble boldness towards truth. And it 0:57:03.560 --> 0:57:07.000 helps to have a macro perspective of history that shows 0:57:07.080 --> 0:57:10.400 us that life is short, and our lives are like 0:57:10.480 --> 0:57:11.799 the flowers. 0:57:11.280 --> 0:57:11.880 Of the field. 0:57:11.960 --> 0:57:15.440 We pop up, then fade away. And I believe with 0:57:15.560 --> 0:57:19.400 great certainty that will give account for our lives after 0:57:19.520 --> 0:57:23.320 our death, and that knowledge is a powerful driver in 0:57:23.440 --> 0:57:28.480 my life and actions here. I want to have integrity. 0:57:29.200 --> 0:57:32.720 That's why fearlessly looking back into our history at some 0:57:32.920 --> 0:57:36.480 bad stuff and sorting through it will help us navigate 0:57:36.640 --> 0:57:37.240 the future. 0:57:37.800 --> 0:57:39.320 I think this is powerful stuff. 0:57:40.080 --> 0:57:44.160 And man as crazy as Asa Carter was, I cannot 0:57:44.200 --> 0:57:48.880 lie my life was enriched by reading the Education of Littletree. 0:57:49.040 --> 0:57:50.480 I don't fully understand it. 0:57:50.960 --> 0:57:53.560 You have to make that decision for yourself if you'd 0:57:53.640 --> 0:57:57.360 read this book to your kids. On the next episode, 0:57:57.400 --> 0:58:00.440 we'll again have Steve Vanella and doctor Dan Carr, and 0:58:00.480 --> 0:58:03.480 we'll look even deeper into the double life of Asa 0:58:03.560 --> 0:58:06.200 Carter and try to make sense of his life to 0:58:06.320 --> 0:58:09.919 decide if he was a changed man, a con man, 0:58:10.600 --> 0:58:16.080 or a crazy man. It's gonna be really good. Thank 0:58:16.120 --> 0:58:19.280 you so much for listening to bear Grease, and don't 0:58:19.320 --> 0:58:22.720 forget our big news about my bro Brent Reeves and 0:58:22.760 --> 0:58:26.880 his new podcast, This Country Life that'll be on this 0:58:27.040 --> 0:58:30.480 Bear Grease podcast feed. I hope you have a great 0:58:30.520 --> 0:58:33.240 week and I look forward to discussing this with the 0:58:33.320 --> 0:58:35.760 crew next week on the Bear Grease Render.