The

The Today is a special episode because on this episode, I have an announcement to make.

And that announcement is basically about a dream that I've had for a long time. And it's a dream that

in order to explain, I'm going to have to go into a little bit of just my own personal history.

So many of our listeners might know that I've been a presidential

nerd, junkie, just obsessed with presidents, basically since I was eight years old. And if I do the

math, that's 33 years of, I mean, basically the bulk of 33 years that I've been obsessed with presidents. I had different phases where I was obsessed with this president and then I moved on to that president. The first president I was really obsessed with was John F. Kennedy because there were tons of documentaries about him whenever the anniversary of his assassination would come up.

And it's such a fascinating moment in history.

And then I got into FDR when I was in high school and I was obsessed with him and I was just fascinated by him.

And then when I went to college, I got obsessed with Abraham Lincoln. It's probably not surprising. I mean, those are some of the

big ones. But in 2007, I was in a trip. I was on vacation with my parents. It was actually a family

reunion. We went to China to visit my stepdad's side of the family and basically have a big

reunion with all sorts of cousins and great aunts and uncles that I had never met before. And we

were in Hainan, which is an island in the southern part of China. It's a beautiful island. And we were

getting to know relatives that I had never met before, many of whom were from China and

had lived their whole lives, didn't speak any English. They spoke Cantonese or Mandarin. And I don't

speak any Cantonese or Mandarin. But thankfully, my stepdad, he does speak it. So he speaks those

languages. So basically, I started having conversations with

them. And my dad would translate for both of us. He would translate what I was saying for them and

vice versa. And one of his relatives, I think it was my dad's cousin or, you know, who knows,

second cousin. But he didn't speak a lick of English. And we were talking to him and just getting to know him. And the conversation turned towards politics. And my dad's cousin, can't remember his name, but he started talking just about current events. And this was in 2006, 2007, I think 2007. And the conversation, he started talking about politics.

You know, one of the biggest things happening in the world at the time was the Iraq war, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and, you know, afterwards with the insurgency.

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