The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
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The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
Ep 1018 Meet Dem Candidate Dr. Cinde Wirth (IN-06)
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Episode 1018 features Driftglass in conversation with Dr. Cinde Wirth, the Democrat running to flip Indiana's 6th Congressional District. A seventh-generation Bartholomew County Hoosier, high school science teacher, and first-generation college graduate with a Ph.D. in cultural and educational policy, Wirth brings an unusual résumé to the race — including a stint as a congressional fellow writing science and education policy. The conversation covers what drove her to run for office, her priorities around working families, public education, healthcare access, and the environment, and what it takes to flip a seat in deep-red Indiana. It's a chance to hear directly from a candidate who says Hoosiers are worth the fight.
Her website: Wirth For Congress: https://wirth4congress.com/
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SPEAKER_00This is the podcast for the week of August 28th, 2026. It's safer for work than usual.
SPEAKER_06Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance, where yes, we are doing another interview. It's the Professional Left with Drift Glass and Bluegal.
SPEAKER_00It is true. The last time we talked to friend of the pod, Greg Bush, state representative for Missouri's 50th district, the fighting 50th. And fresh from the electoral battlefield, Representative Bush sat down with Drew Glass to talk about Missouri politics and what's happening in the country as a whole.
SPEAKER_06And this time we're talking Indiana politics. Specifically, the fascinating conversation I had today with Dr. Cindy Wirth, the Democrat who is running for Congress in Indiana's 6th Congressional District.
SPEAKER_00We'll be back next Tuesday with a show featuring both of us for the full hour. Now, here's Driftglass with Dr. Cindy Worth.
SPEAKER_06And today at the Professional Left Podcast, we're chatting with Dr. Cindy Worth, who is the Democratic candidate to be the U.S. Representative from Indiana's 6th Congressional District. And we welcome you, Dr. Wirth, to our little show. I hope you're doing okay today.
SPEAKER_03I am. It's a beautiful day here in Indiana. Um we can't always say that, but it is today. And so I'm happy to be here.
SPEAKER_06And your your district is is huge, isn't it? I mean, it it it runs several counties, is that right?
SPEAKER_03It's not the largest congressional district in Indiana geographically, but it is 3,000 square miles in 11 counties.
SPEAKER_06So when you when you run for office, you literally have to run for office.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for taking the time with us today, and thank Tyler for arranging all this. He seems like a good guy. Uh I I read your bio, and believe it or not, I watched your primary debate from four months ago. Um, and I must say you are ridiculously well qualified for the seat in the house. So um I wrote down all your credentials and I might read them aloud to you, but uh we only have an hour, so we'll have to touch on just a high few highlights of your credentials. However, my first question involves my dad, who passed away many years ago, and he was a high uh a grade school principal for many years and very good at his job. But before that, he was a science teacher. He was a science teacher in Burlington, Iowa, and he loved it. He absolutely loved it. He loved his students, loved turning them on to science, loved every bit of it. I think that was his best self when he was that person in that job. And um I think teaching science was his first love of educating, of opening students' minds up. So my first question is what got you hooked on science? And what does science, scientific method, trial and error, and so forth mean to you as a way of looking at the world and the world, especially that we're in right now?
SPEAKER_03I think I've always been a scientist from the moment I came out of the womb. Um some of my first memories are sitting in the backyard. We know live next to a cornfield. Um, this was in the early 70s, digging up worms and playing with them and um sitting out in the street. I could sit in the street because there weren't that many cars then. I we lived in a rural neighborhood. Um and I would take a hammer and I would pound the little rocks and stones I found in the street to see what was inside of them. I was always climbing trees and like, you know, looking at things. And um, so you know, I I think I happened upon a a mouse skeleton when I was a little kid. And of course, you know, my my dad sort of encouraged me. And um, so yeah, I've I've kind of always been fascinated by how things work, what things, what things are. My parents hid all the screwdrivers from me when I was a little kid because I took everything apart. Um, I later gave birth to a child who did the same thing. So I got my I got my comeuppance, but excellent.
SPEAKER_06So you yeah, you got the payback for for doing all that.
SPEAKER_03But I think it was just it's just that insane curiosity that just never ends. Like, how does this work? Well, well, well, why? Well, what does that do? And um, and I think that that led me to science of, you know, when I got to school, and I was like, wow, there's like this is a thing. Okay, this is cool. Um and and I always really liked it. I had really good science teachers growing up. Um, a lot of them were were outdoors people, which really that's where it resonated with me. Um so I ended up I was pre-med in college, but decided I didn't like to be inside or with sick people, and so I ended up a field scientist.
SPEAKER_06And and here you are.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_06Now my my my parents got us a rock tumbler. I was a member of the rock club, you know, go down to the local gym and then and fight over geodes and whatnot. Um there was always a microscope in our house because that and my dad would take us in for to show us how the labs worked and so forth. So I I'm I'm touched and thrilled to be talking to a fellow nerd. I'm a little intimidated because you are Dr. Worth, and I'm just a podcaster out here in the middle of middle America. But um, how does that method, that that scientific method, inform the way you look at the world? Look at policy, look at politics, look at the world around you, you know, trial and error, admitting you're wrong, uh, making mistakes and owning them and learning from them, moving on. How does that inform sort of how you approach policy decisions and political decisions, if it does?
SPEAKER_03It absolutely does. Um, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. The the scientific method is about discovery data, um, looking at what's happening, what's changing, you know, what may be different. Um, and the idea that failure isn't fatal and it doesn't mean that things are wrong. It just means that, you know, things things are changing or you have new information. And I think that is what we've seen on the national stage is that things get dismissed when it's actually just part of the process. Um, I it's exciting for me because what we know now is not what we're gonna know in 25 years, and I can't wait. Um, I mean, I it's it's so exciting. When I graduated from college, um I remember my genetics professor saying, wow, you know, we're never gonna sequence the human genome in my lifetime. And I think it was like done two years later. Um, you know, so so I think that kind of a perspective is is just a really healthy one to have to keep. And policy, I think, works the same way. You know, you can try something, um, you can have all of the the aspirations or the theory that you that you want, but until you put something into practice and see how it works and see what the data says and how it shakes out and how it really impacts people, you don't really know if it's gonna work. Um, you can have an idea, but then you you really need to go to that data and and see, is it is it working? Right now, what we're seeing is is our healthcare system working? I'm not getting data back that says it's working anywhere in the 11 counties that I'm traveling or across the nation when I talk to my friends who live in other places.
SPEAKER_06This is this is audio only. This goes out as audio only, but you can't, so they will not be able to see the expression on my face, which is you know, dumbfounded that you would even ask such a thing. Yeah, it's it's broken, it's bad, it's it's all bad. Now, um, I mentioned my dad. My dad was Catholic, and my mom was Protestant, and she was a teacher, and he was a principal, and they married, and he remarried a principal, and she married a teacher, and I swore on a stack of I would never teach school, and I ended up teaching some schools, so you know, fail. But the thing is, their faith never threatened their science. They never felt that what they believed in, you know, in their heart about the values and virtues and whether you believe or not had had anything to do with threatening science or vice versa. They thought they could coexist very happily with each other, and there was never an issue. And now you have, it appears to me, well, do you remember when when Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi sat on a bench together in front of the U.S. Capitol and talked about climate change? And we can all agree climate change is real, and we disagree on everything else, but we have to act on that fast. We've got to get it done, gotta get, you know, and Gingrich had his ideas and Pelosi had her ideas, but they all agreed the science was good, it was valid, and it was important, and they and now we have people who just want to roll back not just the New Deal, they want to roll back the Enlightenment. They're terrified of science. They're they're gutting science, they're firing scientists. And how do you operate politically and policy-wise and run for office in an environment where the people you're dealing with just operate in an almost medieval level of contempt for knowledge and expertise and science?
SPEAKER_03I think what's happened in the US is profit and extreme profit has gotten in the way of reality and what science really is and what science is really saying. Um, I was a fellow on Capitol Hill in 2018 and 2019, and in 2019 I joined a an office of the first chairwoman of the House Science Based Technology Committee. Um, and that was when the new Green Deal was rolled out. So I received um one of the first copies that was being circulated from the congresswoman that I was in her office, and it was Eddie Bernice Johnson. So um, so she handed it to me and she said, Here, take your red teacher pen to this. And I said, Well, I that's not how I teach, but okay. Um, I don't have a red pen, but um, and so I got to look at that, and and one of the things I think that um we know that this is real, we know why in the media it's been spun as not real. We know why there are politicians who say it's not real, and we know why there are a few. I think there's four or five out of all of the scientists in the world, there's four or five who are saying it's not real. Um, and that comes down to money and payoffs and profit and power. And and I think when we really remember that and we know that that's the the reality and the truth, um science can exist, I think, side by side with with anything, and it has for centuries. I mean, other than the few times where we saw religious institutions go after scientists. Um, but that was that's that's way in the history. Um yeah. And I think we've learned since then. So I think calling that out and calling out that hey, this is this is still there, whether you believe it or not, these floods that have happened in central Indiana over the last two and a half weeks, um, those are a direct result of our climate changing. What we saw with the the big um glacier burst that happened in Nepal yesterday, that is a direct result of glaciers melting and and losing their ability to hold back all of those mudslides and things like that. It's devastating. So we're seeing it across the world. We know what's causing it. We may not know every single thing, but we do know the major causes of it. We saw back in COVID when things were shut down in 2020 that things got better measurably.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, almost overnight. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Measurably. So we know what we know where we need to go, we know what we need to do, but we need people who are willing and able to stand up and say, hey, that's not right. That is that's BS. That's just because you want to profit. Um, that's just because you want your bottom line. So how so the question becomes how can we retool this so that people are on the winning, everyday people and the majority of people are on the winning end of policy decisions and not just a select few or major companies.
SPEAKER_06Well, I don't know if you remember, I think Paul Wellstone, many, many years ago, was in a debate with some guy who was looking down his nose at him for being a teacher. And Paul Wellstone practically came across the table and said, What the hell's wrong with being a teacher? I'm proud of being a teacher. What's wrong with you that you hate? And I guess what I I'm missing from, or I look for Democratic candidates are people who are proud to be experts and proud to be smart and proud to have a PhD. I mean, you have, I told you, I wrote them down. You had that your the fellowship you're talking about was the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_04Correct.
SPEAKER_06And you began teaching Spanish in 2009? I did. Is there these true facts? Can people look this up?
SPEAKER_03Yes, they can.
SPEAKER_06It's and you taught biology and environmental science, is that right?
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_06Anything else you want to add? Testimony? You taught, I mean, you did STEM stuff with students, you you did outdoor work, you did underwater things. I mean, I'm finding this all fascinating.
SPEAKER_03So before I taught high school, um, I was actually at Indiana University and I was doing, I was a research assistant, and I was teaching underwater science and scuba diving and um things like that. And so we did projects um through IU, and it became part of my master's program. Um, and I was the first, I think I was the very first graduate level underwater science graduate. Um that's kind of fun.
SPEAKER_04That's so cool.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, we we moved cannons and anchors and built parks and and did um little guides for people to to navigate with, and and then I needed health insurance, so I started teaching high school.
SPEAKER_06Smart move. And and you did um STEM-based stuff. I think you all also won some grants, some innovation grants, is that correct?
SPEAKER_03Right. So you well, I was told I couldn't have my kids eat in the classroom because we couldn't have food in the classroom. My my students were hungry, and so I found a way around it. And I was like, well, they didn't say I couldn't grow the food in the classroom. I wrote a grant and we got a growing mall and we planted all kinds of things in there. The only thing that really grew really well was the lettuce. Um, but I had kids that would go by, I said they were kind of like little goats that you'd go by and they'd kind of graze and you know, and kids who'd never eaten lettuce. But we also, with my co-teacher, um, he had started a garden the first year the school was was there. And so we just expanded the garden and I would regularly send the some of my hungrier children who had voracious appetites, because these are high schoolers. Um eaters are in a growth spurt, and they they some of them need to eat every two hours. So I'd send them out to the garden and they'd pick tomatoes and have pepper eating contests. And I think only twice did we have to go get cartons of milk from the um cafeteria to quench the the hot pepper.
SPEAKER_06You couldn't you couldn't raise cattle or cows in the classroom then. No. No, you can go that far. See, well, I must I must agree with you, but respectfully disagree. I I taught college students at Columbia College in Chicago. I taught them technology. I was also in charge of the tech side of the department, and I forbade food in the classrooms because when I showed up, I mean, we were using um um forceps to pull Doritos out of the floppy drive because they would shove them in there just for fun. And everything was sticky and awful. And so I would patrol the halls, peek in the doorway, there's a coke on that desk. I could I recognize it. And I got kind of a bad reputation for doing it, but the equipment ran 99% of the time efficiently for 13, 14 hours worth of class time every day, day after day after day. So eventually the teacher's like, okay, that's a fair point. I nothing, nothing's breaking down. However, I would never deny a high school student having raised three of them, um, deny the fact that high school students are bottomless pits of need to eat right now. Yeah. And I I think that's one of the coolest things I've ever heard. That you you you built a growing wall in your classroom as a loophole, which is kind of genius.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Well, excellent. Um, let me see. Now, um I do admire, we're gonna do politics. I'm checking all my notes. Um, I do admire your resilience because you're running in a district that's rated, I think, like R16 or something like that. Is that right? It's it's a pretty Republican district.
SPEAKER_03When I started, it was R plus 28, and then it went to R plus 22. It might have been 16 this spring. We got word a couple weeks ago that we're down to plus 13.
SPEAKER_06Oh, that's wonderful. And and the the last couple of times, you were the only person who would take on Republicans. Is that right?
SPEAKER_03That's right.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. And you just keep getting up and keep getting back in the arena, which I I think is admirable or or nuts. One of the two, I'm I'm pretty sure it's admirable. It's science. It's exactly you keep trial and error. Trial and error.
SPEAKER_03If you fail, you come back and you do it again.
SPEAKER_06Could you talk a little bit about issues that you think that maybe National Democrats are our friends at the coast or leadership or whatever, do not understand about rural and small town America, and vice versa, what you think maybe small town folks or rural folks. I I live just across the state line in Springfield, Illinois. So I I we're in the same zone of influence and type of voters, people we run into at the store. Um, I did want to ask whether your team uh Speedway or Casey's, but I'll save that for later.
SPEAKER_03Um I'm Team Wawa.
SPEAKER_06Oh, okay. All right. You're an independent vote. Okay, I got it. Third party, got it. Um, so what is it that we misunderstand about each other from leadership in the party or or people who are on the on the coast, let's say, about small town, and what do small town people misunderstand about how the Democratic Party works and who what we stand for?
SPEAKER_03The bulk of of the districts that I'm running for is cornfields and bean fields. And um I I got some grief from consultants one time that that didn't come back um about cornfields, because that's the reality is I know every I know just about every cornfield. I know which ones flooded um, you know, a couple weeks ago. I I know where the bridges are out, and I think people on the coasts um because I did live in DC, um, so I have lived outside of Indiana a little bit, um, I think that when you get outside of a big city and you get into the rural areas, the time it takes to get from wherever you live to somewhere where you can get health care or major shopping or um those things that if you're in a close metropolitan area and you're within 20, 30 minutes of, that's a huge, that's a huge difference. Um, in a lot of places, like in our district, you may have a town close by, but you still may be 45 minutes to up to an hour and a half in Indiana, away from you know, a major medical center where certain kinds of things that you would need are available. And I think that that is one of the difficulties when we're looking at health care, is that if you're on the coast, you got health care right there. If you're even in Indianapolis, you may not have health care right there. So Johnson County, which is just below Indianapolis, the county below Marion County, which is Indianapolis, just lost their last maternal health care ward. Okay, so that's literally a donut county of Indianapolis, so a fairly suburban um area. But you get down into the southern part of Johnson County, and if you need pregnancy care or maternal health care and you're down there, it could take you over an hour and then plus traffic, um, it could take you even longer if you're going to Indianapolis for that care, even though it's just over the county line. And I think those are some of the big things that people forget. Also, that we all live really close to each other with our neighbors. And so we can't really live in these so-called tribal warfare kind of scenarios, like um, you're this party, you're evil, you're this party, you're, you know, whatever, um, you're this party, you're a baby killer. Um that's that's really difficult when when that narrative comes out of wherever it's coming out of, um, for people in in small towns and and rural areas to to live with, because it it's very isolating if all of a sudden your friends are looking at you going, you're baby killer. Like what what are you supposed to do? Um, what you know, what what do you say? And so I think these culture wars that are put out really hit people in rural areas very hard. Um and we know our neighbors, you know, we we rely on our neighbors. If something happens, you know, that's that's who you go to here in you know where we live. I think what the only benefit I can see of the flood happening, because I survived the flood in 2008 and we lost everything. So I know what people are going through. And the one benefit that comes out of that is it does bring the community back together, and we are seeing that. And I hate that it takes a disaster for that to happen because it's happened to me. I know you know it impacted my health, it impacted um, we lost our business. Um, you know, we we were lucky that that we hung onto our house, but there are people who who don't have have those options right now, but they have their neighbors.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I I think that's the important thing to remember is that we are all here in this together. We're all in the same boat. And if somebody's drilling holes in the boat, we're all gonna sink.
SPEAKER_06Well, and and uh I don't know about where you are, I think it's probably similar. The a lot of the media you can get on the radio or what get comes through Sinclair or Fox or whatever, is heavily, heavily saturated towards conservative scare talk. You know, and when you listen to that, if you're out in the field, if you're on a tractor for six hours and that's what you're listening to, um, there's a woman who did a documentary called Brainwashing My Dad, uh Jen Senki. And she talked about how her father was a great guy, loved everybody, decent man, had never had a bad thing to say, very inclusive, until he took a job that required him to commute a long way away. And on his commute, he listened to radio. And he changed. He changed a lot because while he then he started hating people. He started blaming people, and black people and immigrants and you liberals and so on. And she just saw her dad just slip away from her. And it wasn't because of anything in her community that had changed or her family. It's because what he was putting in his head was messing him up and made it impossible for them to communicate, which is a tragedy. It is. And I do think, I do think disasters do bring us together. And unfortunately, it does come to that sometimes. But I guess what I'm I'm concerns me is that my Democrats, my Democratic friends, have nothing like that on their side. There is no liberal radio station blanketing the country. There is no Fox News liberal version blanketing the country that's that plays at the gas station, right? You know, and is playing at the bar and is in your ear all the time. We have basically two big radio stations in town, and you can get whichever conservative talk you want, you get on either either channel. And I'm wondering I assume you're doing a lot of retail politics to break through that because you do have to meet people because that dispels the rumor. But how would you recommend your Democratic friends try to beat that sort of propaganda machine that wants to drive us apart?
SPEAKER_03What we're seeing now is people are finally ready to have conversations with the neighbors they or friends or you know, people down the road, people at church that they might have been avoiding in the past because they just didn't want to, they didn't want to go there. And now they're like, okay, I'm gonna go there. This is this is crazy. You know, Sally was my best friend for 30 years. This is crazy that we haven't talked through the last 10 because you know, and I miss her. Um, and I think I think that's a big part of it. Um, it's funny that you mention that there's no Democrat sort of companion or piece to what's going on in the the media on on the um the conservative side.
SPEAKER_06Well, there's me, but that's it. That's all that's all that's all there is.
SPEAKER_03Well, when I was a fellow, um, I discovered pretty quick when I got to the hill. And at first I was in Jared Polis' office. He's now the governor of Colorado. And so when I was there, I was they were sort of bringing me up to speed of what Congress is, what they do, because I was a political novice. I'd I mean, I had high school government that was and I voted every year. That was about it. Um, in fact, I told the fellowship, I was like, Do I have to go to Capitol Hill? They said, it's either Capitol Hill or you go home. And I'm like, all right, I'll go, I'll do it. Um so I I learned about Congressional Research Service and and what it was, and I was like, Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait, you mean like there's experts in everything? And all I have to do is pick up the phone and ask them questions. So you can imagine for me it was like being in nerd heaven.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03And so finally when I was like, No, no, whoa, don't don't just call them and ask them every, you know, whatever. They're like, have some reason, you know. And so I was like, and this is a I was 49, and this was a 23-year-old telling me this. So it's like, hang on, lady, don't don't, don't, don't go crazy. But one of the things I did was I put together a request for them to um, it was sort of, I guess, precursor to AI, um, and this was in 2018. The the history of how Fox News did what it did, how they saturated, how they went through TV and radio, where did that come from? How did that arrive? What did it look like? What was the progression? Um, so I asked all of those questions, and what I got back just absolutely floored me. Um, and and I kept saying, if we could, if we could undo this, we might be okay.
SPEAKER_06You found you found the problem. You found the radioactive thing in the field that's messing everything else up. Yeah. Yeah. And and the story of that is, you know, it's it's in New York, it's it's Roger Ailes trying and failing and trying and failing and finally getting this thing off the ground. And then, as I recall, Rudy Giuliani intervening in the cable market in New York to knock out like one nature program to make room for this education program called Fox News or whatever it was, and that unlocked markets, it unlocked carriage fees, unlocked everything. But that's that's what made it all possible. Is this it? Well, actually, I hate to say this, it was the scientific method again. It was Roger Ailes trying and failing and trying and failing and trying and failing, and eventually finding a way in, and we're living in the sort of rubble of that decision.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um, and that's it's it's and I don't think it's replicable, uh, I don't think it's replicable by Democrats now to do that because cable news is on the way out in a lot of ways. But I I would love to hear ideas from my Democratic friends about okay, we live in a new world, it's an attention economy. How do we as a party get the attention of people who are feeling pain? This is not quite the a corn disaster, this isn't flooding, but people are feeling um gas prices in their pockets, and they're they're terrified of the next thing that might break in their home. They can't afford groceries, and there's this Iran war, and there are these Epstein files, and all these things are impinging on them. As I mentioned when we chatted before we started, my wife works at a call center at a clinic, and she gets calls from people who are concerned about making more than one trip to the doctor's, who's like 30, 40 miles away, because of gas prices. I cannot afford to make three trips to this clinic. You know, can you just do it all in one day? And so it looks like that's lowering the barrier of people willing to talk about maybe the system is screwed up and maybe it needs to be fixed. How do we Democrats get out there and find those people and have those conversations in a way that is competitive with the propaganda they've they've been hearing for 30 years now?
SPEAKER_03One thing that we notice is is is actually helping is t-shirts. And I know it sounds really sort of flippant, like a t-shirt, but t-shirts with messages on them, which growing up in the 70s I wasn't allowed to wear. Um, but so I have I still have a little trouble wearing a t-shirt that says something, um, just because what was ingrained from my mother. But when we wear t-shirts with certain messages like vote, or like um, you know, some of the the Democrat ones.
SPEAKER_06We've got a sign in our yard that our church produced that's uh hate divides, love unites.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_06So simple, simple, simple.
SPEAKER_03Those t-shirts, um, even campaign t-shirts, those are are making conversations happen. Um, I mean, I just had a conversation with a lady and her husband in the parking lot of a pharmacy. Um, and she has MS. And I said, Take your time, you know, don't hurry, you know, trust me, I've been there, I've counted every step I've taken. And she's like, Oh, what really? You know, and so we started talking. And um I said, Well, yeah, and she said, Well, my only hope is stem cells. Well, I had stem cells taken out of my hip and put in my feet, and that's why I walk now. But um, she's like, Oh my gosh, wow. And so I told her, I said, Well, yeah, I'm running for Congress, but I was outside the district and they were outside the county they lived in. And she said, Well, I'd love to vote for you, but I probably can't. I live in this county. And I was like, Oh, well, that's where I'm running. And she said, Well, I really hate liberals. She said, But I'm gonna vote for you.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So we didn't talk about why she hated liberals, but I said, you know, my concern is that we put money for research so that we can have medical advances, so that, you know, people can get care that they need and we can actually advance science and not just be stuck in whatever decade that we stopped the research in.
SPEAKER_06And I said, we haven't we're going backwards. I mean, rolling doge. I there's a gentleman who's, I believe, a meteorologist in Florida. This is last year, but he said we can't do predictions anymore.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_06Or they're not quite, they're not going to be accurate because all, and here's a chart. Instead of a weather chart, he showed a chart of all the cuts, the government, all the doge firings, all the retirements. Those are scientists, those are people who have devoted their whole lives to this profession, and making sure the best possible weather model, which is incredibly important for for everybody, you know, for for farmers and civilians and people on the wide open seas, uh, just broke it. They just broke it for no reason. And he's just saying, look, this is this is what we're dealing with, but it's that attack on science again.
SPEAKER_03Right. And attack on experts. So the anti-intellectualism is is just rampant. And and I think um, you know, we've seen anti-intellectualism through the ages in the past, um, and it usually does, you know, rebound and come back around. But what we're seeing now is with technology, um, people can stand on a platform that is that is just um, I guess, sort of like made of foam core board. It's not really solid because it's whatever was was on the internet. Um, and as we're finding out with AI, there's a lot of inaccuracies, hallucinations, things like that. Um, and and as somebody who has put a lot of time and and effort into looking into things very deeply, there's a difference um between you know a cursory glance at something. I wouldn't, I mean, yes, I'm I'm a doctor, I'm not that kind of doctor. Um, could have been, decided not to be. Um, and well, I don't know, I might not have made it through. Um, but I would never attempt brain surgery, even though I know how to read those papers, I know what all the words mean, I know what, you know, I know how the brain's structured, I know how the you know the brain works. I'm not gonna attempt brain surgery. Like that's not my not my thing. Um, and and I think there's there's too much of that put out there that everyday people are very intelligent and they are very smart and they are very capable of lots of things. But but we also do have experts. Um I know I was talking to a friend who's who's a pilot um that pilots a balloon. And try piloting a balloon with inaccurate weather forecasts, an inaccurate wind forecast. I mean, you have a little better chance in a plane, but um maybe not. But you know, balloons are literally at the whim of the winds, and you know, we're we're seeing this in real time, and um, it's um it it's crazy.
SPEAKER_06Well, okay. So speaking of of apparel, so we're gonna play a little game of let's pretend. Let's pretend you're driving down the road, and I'm I'm I'm out of gas by the side of the road, and you being a kind person, kindly Dr. Worth, will pick me up and drive me to the nearest. I want to go to Speedway, I don't care what your preferences are, but it's it's two miles away, it's three miles away to get more gas. And I'm wearing my MAGA hat. It's a little faded, you know, or wear my wearing my MAGA t-shirt. Now you've got about three minutes, maybe four minutes, to pitch me on maybe gas prices or maybe um Medicare for all or whatever it is, but you've got a few minutes to chat me up and tell me why I should vote for the baby killing, monstrous, evil communist liberal that you are. Um, and and you do in a kind act, you're you've you've all you've reached out, you've demonstrated that you do care about your neighbors. So, what what's your pitch to me as that person? Because that's the sort of voter I assume you're going after, a little bit who's who's who's dug in but has is experienced some pain and is thinking maybe they've been lied to a few times and maybe the system isn't working the way they're supposed to, and maybe the grocery prices aren't coming down. So, so you got me captive in your car for a few minutes. How do you pitch me?
SPEAKER_03Well, if they're if they're on the side of the road and they need gas, um probably they didn't fill all the way up because they couldn't afford it. So knowing that, I usually when I encounter someone, I just I have them tell me about themselves. Um, you know, what what what made you you know feel like like MAGA was your your thing? You know, what what appealed to you? What what was it there? You have to remember I'm also an anthropologist, so um just that that's that's I didn't read that one, but yes, that is correct. I can teach that that was a master's degree, it was anthropology. Um so so I do approach things that way, and and then the teacher in me is always like, well, tell me, you know, tell me why you're acting out in class. Um so it's the same kind of principle. And you know, tell me, tell me about this. Um what what is it? I was called a baby killer to my face in a library in one of the counties um at a community meeting, and I stood and talked to the people, and by the end, they were voting for me. Um so uh and I just said, Well, why do you think I kill babies? Um why, you know, and people really will tell you, and then and then they'll realize, oh, you're just a normal person. So I think just that that normal conversation. Um I actually have conversations at the gas station pumps all the time, usually about the price of gas.
SPEAKER_06Um it's right there. It's right there.
SPEAKER_03And one day the they were changing the sign or something, and and it said 1.00 on the the gas price. And so we are we were all laughing about it, right? There's like six of us at the gas pumps laughing about it. Turns out the guy behind me in a big MAGA shirt was from two counties over where I'm running in, and you know, we're at the same gas station, and we were laughing about it. And he saw at the time I had a my bumper sticker on my car, and he was like, Is that you? And I was like, Yeah, that's me. You know, and he's like, Well, tell me about yourself, you know, he's wearing a MAGA shirt. Um, and this was a couple years ago, and you know, we talked, and he's like, Well, I I you seem like a normal person, and I said, I am, I really am. Um, and I think that that's just it is engaging with people and letting them talk, tell you what they're concerned about. And and when they tell you what they're concerned about, it generally 99% of the time matches up with something that I'm already fighting for. Yeah, and I think when they realize that, they're like, oh, well, the media's maybe not telling me everything. So yeah.
SPEAKER_06And well, and and the problems that you're being spun up over aren't really problems that you need you need to concern yourself with. You don't need to really get angry about trans athletes because there's nine of them, and they seem like lovely people. You don't really need to, but but you do need to get concerned by the fact that, well, okay, for example, in Illinois, this is very similar. I'm sure the territories are like widely dispersed. Um, you have a lot of farmland and too few rural hospitals and too few rural doctors, and it's going down.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_06Um, we have uh an outfit here. I'm gonna go to the meeting tomorrow, actually, called the Citizens Club, which is a social group of people, community leaders and stuff, and they bring in experts and we talk about stuff. And last time it was about it was the CEOs or the directors of all three medical clinics or hospitals in the area, and they all told the same story, which is there are not enough doctors, our resources are strapped. If you want to know why you're paying X amount, that's insane for this, that's an insurance issue. We got no choice on that. But they all agreed that if you live 50 miles away, you're screwed. That that the cuts that are coming, the cuts that have already arrived, are just gonna shut this whole thing down. And if you live outside this area of of high coverage, you are in you're in real trouble. So if you could pass only one health care reform, realizing that when you win, knock on wood, when you win, you are one of a chorus. Um, and there's gonna be a person in the White House with a veto pen. But when you win, uh, what would one health care reform be that would directly help rural Indiana, like if you could just wish it into existence?
SPEAKER_03Single payer universal health care, Medicare for all, whatever we call it. I don't care what we call it, we can call it whatever we want. Um, we can literally we can call it whatever we want. But single payer universal health care that would cover um, because most states have a coverage from for children zero to 18.
SPEAKER_04That's right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Everyone is covered from age 65 on. Um, but that gap between 18 and 65 um to cover every person there would not only help rural areas, um, it will help urban areas, it will help everybody all across the United States, sort of equally, and give everyone a raise in income from the fact that our overhead for insurance and our administrative costs would drop from, I think 34% is one of the higher ones, um, down to about 4%. It might be as high as 5% when it's first rolled out to sort of catch everybody and get everybody enrolled and do all that. So it may go up, you know, slightly, like I think I read 1%. So maybe 5% when we first start. If we do it with a payroll tax, it does not add to the national deficit. Um, we're all paying in. When we all pay in, we can all get good care. Similar to why how we have post offices in every little tiny berg, we need the same kind of health care in every little tiny berg, too. Maybe, maybe not quite, but what we need a doctor's office. Maybe that doctor could travel around to a couple of those little bergs, but we do need rural health care. If we do the Medicare for All plan, not only do we we have everybody covered in the country, but we also will have money to put people through medical school. We have people who can um serve rural areas and not be penalized for serving rural areas. We can bring back that level of care that we need in rural areas. Plus, for farmers, the thing I'm hearing is my kids can't take over the farm because they don't have health insurance. And that's the biggest expense that we have. And I want my kids to have this farm, but they have to go work a job in the city and it's too far to commute. And so there we have a solution for small farms or family farms that can be passed down generationally, as you know, we've been doing for centuries, you know, a couple centuries.
SPEAKER_06And uh I worked with manufacturers in Chicago. I worked with a lot of manufacturers. I was public-private partnership. We got a high school set up. I'm very proud of the work. I worked for the city of Chicago for 10 years, focusing on manufacturing. Number one reason small manufacturers go out of business, no succession planning. Yeah, it's not China, it's not Mexico, it's just that I can't figure out a way to pass this to my kids, they don't want it. They're they're off being lawyers or running for Congress or whatever they're doing, um, and it just disappears. And 18 jobs here and 20 jobs there, and suddenly it's a crisis. Same thing with farms. Um, I did listen to your debate, um, at least parts of it. I thought it was very good. Now, is there I if I'm wrong, tell me, but there's like a $24,000 average burden lifted from the average family that would be resources freed up for you to use for other things. Is that about right?
SPEAKER_03That's that those are the numbers that that I have read. Again, I'm not an economist, so I'm I'm regurgitating the things that I've read that make sense to me that I think this is the way we should go because it makes financial sense and it makes good sense for people. And so, yeah, that's that's what I was talking about when everyone across the nation would sort of get a lift because we're all paying these insurance overheads. The other benefit is we can still employ all of the people employed by the insurance industry to still be managing all of this care that we have. What they won't have to do is denials. And imagine that you know you're somebody who has to deny things. If you have a heart and a soul, it's probably killing you, adding to your stress and making your heart unhealthy. Um, so it's a it that's another win, um, even for the people in that unfortunate position.
SPEAKER_06This I we were um I my wife became an expert in the Affordable Care Act when it was rolled out because we had three kids and we were on the exchange and they kept, you know, kept going up and down and up and down. She was reduced to tears a few times when it was John McCain's thumb, was the only thing keeping us from bankruptcy, basically. Um, but all of those arguments that you advanced were exactly the same arguments that the Obama administration used correctly, in my opinion, which is you have portability, you're no longer tied to a job you hate, you can open a small business without worrying about your overhead collapsing because somebody broke a leg or somebody got sick. You have much more freedom of movement, you have more resources to spend in the economy to do other things. So it has this knock-on effect. Uh, in manufacturing, it was the multiplier effect. A job in manufacturing equals three other jobs in the economy. So you want to get manufacturing jobs. In healthcare, it sounds like there's a knock-on effect for resources. It frees up so much time and energy and money to do so many other things that aren't getting done, that it's the single best way to move things forward quickly in a way that I think 70% of the people would agree with, more than that. It's not a fringe issue. No. This is something that I think everybody sort of is on board with, at least unconsciously. Now, unlike many first-time Congress people, you will have already been to Capitol Hill, and you've already seen how the machinery works and so on and so forth. Um, what one reform would you make to how Congress actually works to make it work better, if you could, or proposed?
SPEAKER_03Well, there's there's a couple. The biggest hasn't. Um there are a lot of bills that are put together in big packages, omnibus bills, things like that, that are a bunch of um things that all packaged together. I guess I could just say that twice. Um What I would want to do is I would want to see a lot of those separated because you end up with a bill being held hostage to some smaller little thing in there that either somebody just can't live with. And so you throw the baby out with the bathwater, um, and the either the whole thing gets tanked or the whole thing goes um in in this one little thing, and they always it's always some kind of a wedge issue.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03I think that really makes Congress not functional. And I think there are things like the farm bill. Um, you know, there are some big bills that that I think can be can be left and and that are valuable in that capacity. But I also think that we need to restructure the way that we look at these bills and and having been through the appropriation season and you know, all of that kind of stuff, it can make a big difference on how much we can help people and make Congress more efficient. And I know it sounds counterintuitive because you would have more bills, more bills to vote on, but then you also don't have these um delays. Poison pills, yeah. Yeah, the poison pills, the poison amendments, you know, all that stuff. Um to me, it just seems it seems like a fifth grader sort of design.
SPEAKER_06Every reasonably intelligent person understands that this is a terrible way to run a run a business, run a government.
SPEAKER_03It's sort of like, and and I mean, I guess, you know, you can say, well, both sides do it, and they do. Um but if we eliminate that and and really just leave things, you know, big things like the farm bill or, you know, whatever the healthcare bill might be, things like that. Um, there there may be big things we can package together as long as it's all sort of the same focused area agenda, um, and not these weird things put in there that just like the the the insider trading bill.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's I mean, that's a third grader. Even a third grader knows that it's the what do you what's wrong with you? Why can't we or just dump it all into a blind trust?
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_06Dump it all into a blind trust administered by some third party that you have no access to, and and they can do your trading for you if you really must do it.
SPEAKER_03But you have no well, I think everybody has to use the same blind trust, like we make it part of Congressional Research Service or something where every person dumps their stuff in and it's managed by this nonpartisan expert people, um, or or whatever. Yeah, I mean, because that way you don't have people sliding around the back door doing stuff. Um, because again, I'm you know, I found loopholes.
SPEAKER_04Um, you did.
SPEAKER_03But I was finding loopholes to feed kids, which I think is a little different.
SPEAKER_06Um yeah, uh and and the um I that was one of the things that I remember about the Obama administration doing healthcare, which was he said, I don't care. I don't care about the process. Tell me what I need to do to get you. Tell me. I we both agree this is broken. And actually, he went to um Baltimore, I think, for an hour and 10 minutes. He he he crashed their retreat and stood up there for an hour and 15 minutes taking all the questions and was very nice about it. Said, you know, Paul, we can talk about tort reform all day long, but that will not fix the cost curve. It will not make access easier. We can do all the things you want to do, but that won't get at the problem. Give me a bill. You know, it used to be called Romney Care. Give me a bill that will solve the problems that we've all identified, and I will sign it, and you can have credit for it. And they just wouldn't do it. They just wouldn't do it because it would give him a win, and they just hating him was sort of like political rocket fuel for them. I I I'm not sure what to do about that problem. That problem seems too large for me to undertake. But I would like to give you a dealer's choice. Uh, whatever you want to talk about, so because we're we're coming up on 40, 47, 48 minutes, which is I would like to talk about science fiction with you. I don't know if you're a science fiction fan.
SPEAKER_04A little bit.
SPEAKER_06Okay, all right. Then then we won't talk about that. We'll have a separate podcast. It'll just be you and me talking about politics, uh politics in science fiction. I'm a nerd, excuse me. But I know that um you talked about accountability, public education, data centers. There's a whole bunch of issues that you mentioned in your both in your your uh bio, campaign literature, and in the and so what would you like to talk about for the a little bit of the remaining time? And I'd like to talk about what we can do for you.
SPEAKER_03So you hit a couple of them. Um public schools need to be fully funded because at the front of the federal level, our title funds are what support our low-income students, our rural schools, our teachers, teacher preparation, things like that. In the states, um, states fund schools at the local level. Um, and in some states, like Indiana, that's broken. You know, we have a voucher system in Indiana that's out of control. That's not a federal issue, but um it's something that people need to be paying attention to because it's it's trickled up to the federal level to try to get rid of the Department of Education as bloat and overhead, which it's actually not. Um I think a lot of the things they're terming bloat and overhead are actually areas of expertise and people who know what they're doing who keep things running in a way that serves everyday people and not just really wealthy people. And that gets termed bloat. I saw the same thing happen um with people saying that the Red Cross was just full of bloat and overhead. It's like, no, really, they they know what they're doing. Let them let them do their job. Um, you know, you can safely donate. And um, so that's that's that's one thing.
SPEAKER_06Let me sidetrack you for one second that it has been my experience that people who are good at their job inside of government are terrible at telling people what a good job they're doing.
SPEAKER_03Yes. I think so. Yeah. And and the salaries that they make um in Indiana might seem really, you know, high, but in where they live, it's it's really not. Um comparably, they make teacher wages or less, and they're um if they went anywhere else in the world to work at a company, they would be making, you know, six, eight times whatever they're making.
SPEAKER_06As again, the a child of teachers, I can vouch for the fact that we never got rich from dad or mom or anybody else in the family, but they did it because they were called to do it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and the same with the government people that were considered wasted bloat. Um, you know, it and I think we're seeing the repercussions of that. Um, so public education data centers, we need a national moratorium on data centers that utilizes um the EPA and our regulations for the environment so that we can't build data centers or approve them even locally if they don't meet the stringent requirements set out for non-polluting, um, resource usage, resource overusage, things like that. Because once those resources are gone or destroyed, it's extremely difficult to bring those back. Um, when I would teach environmental science and I would show my students who were born in the late 1990s, early 2000s, um pictures of the Cuyahoga River on fire, they never believed me. They would always be like, that's not real. And I'm like, oh, this was real.
SPEAKER_06Oh, it's it. Oh boy, was it real, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um they didn't really grow up with water that you couldn't swim in everywhere. They, you know, um, they they there was no concept of that. Now they do, I mean, you know, after a few years, we're see we're seeing that come back. So data centers, I think, are a huge threat to our climate, our our local environment. Um, and we're gonna see some climate effects from them also, if they are gonna stay with the generator model. They're trying to push nuclear for that, but I just saw that there is a relaxing of some of the nuclear safety standards, which really is um um really has me worried because if we start relaxing um safety standards on nuclear um power, and uh that's that's very concerning. I remember Three Mile Island. I I remember.
SPEAKER_06I remember I yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I I remember those um those things.
SPEAKER_06So um how dare you?
SPEAKER_03There there are things that we're not looking at. Um, there are other other environmentally friendly sources of power that that we could use, like hydrogen. Um, you know, there's there's different different models that I think we need to be looking at. Again, we need experts to kind of uh you know guide us through that. Um hydrogen is one that I'm particularly interested in and have been for um a couple decades now, and I think it's being shelved for this small nuclear. But again, we're relaxing those nuclear standards, which is terrifying to me.
SPEAKER_06But but see, on the other hand, hydrogen is so scarce, you can hardly find it anywhere. I mean, who knows where hydrogen even comes from? Right.
SPEAKER_03Where would we get hydrogen?
SPEAKER_06Um, well, and every everybody goes, oh, but the Hindenburg, and it's like Yeah, big bags of hydrogen striking or being struck by lightning would be bad. You're right. That would be bad.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we're um we we we do have science. Um anyway, the rest of the world is moving on in that realm. We are we are not. Um so so I think um when we look at the way other people are are approaching data centers, and then also what are we using the data centers for? Because they're that's that's not transparent at all. Um, I think we actually what I've been reading is that the amount of data that we need for a data center is not a normal amount of data that we're using. So I think really being transparent in in that and and and calling out when when we're seeing things that are not quite what they should be.
SPEAKER_06Because that's that's uh that has confused me and and most everybody I know. What why are so many of them being built and why or attempted to be built and what the hell is going on inside of them that they need that amount of computing power cranking all day, every day, with those terabytes of data, just where's it coming from and what are they using it for? I and you know, right, I'm of a suspicious nature. I assume it's not for the public good.
SPEAKER_03Right. I mean, I visited our national supercomputer um at our national laboratory. So um I know I know what a I know what a building with a supercomputer in it looks like. I've toured it, been to it, got to touch Hal. They sent me home a little piece of it.
SPEAKER_06I am so envious right now.
SPEAKER_03You you would not So I was, yeah. I mean, I was so I and and that's the thing is we we have people who know all these things. We need we need our experts, we need our diplomatic core back. Um, that's another thing. Um, so you know, Medicare for all, public education, living wages. Um, I've taken some crap from people saying, oh, nail it down to a dollar. It's like you can't nail a living wage down to a particular dollar amount.
SPEAKER_06No, well, you're you're a union person too, right? You're AFL CIO, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so and I remember I'm still a member of the teachers union, the AFT, um, American Federation of Teachers, which is AFL CIO.
SPEAKER_06Oh my, so you're a union thug as well as a baby killer, is that right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, and um sorry, my phone's ringing. Um, but I think those living wages are are incredibly important. But at the same time that we address living wages, we've got to address housing. So if we start with healthcare, then we do living wages and housing, we've got to do those together. I think we're over 50 million um affordable housing units short in the United States. And um we've lost those programs, again, because it was bloat, it was whatever, we've lost those programs to help people who are building homes build affordable homes. What I object to as a child of the 70s, um, when we built a neighborhood in the 70s, whether it was affordable or whatever, um, there was land, it was developed, the lots were sold, people would come in, they would build houses, and then you had a neighborhood. The way it's working now is everything is single stream, it is all controlled by a few big conglomerates. And so you go, they go in, they develop the land to their specifications, so there's no one holding the developer accountable, where the home builders before would hold the developer accountable, you know, because they don't want to build a home where the basement walls are gonna fall in or it's gonna flood, or you know, the the um ground isn't quite packed enough to be able to, you know, when they grade it, um, the house isn't quite stable. So the developer is the builder, is the is the salesperson, or sometimes is the landlord. And so it's all single stream. And before each of those entities, when you would build a house, the plumber would would say, Well, okay, the framer didn't do this right, or the you know, the electrician would say, Well, you needed to do this. That's not done anymore, um, or rarely done. And so when we look at these affordable homes, we need to incentivize that we've got independent people making a living, small businesses, to build these affordable houses instead of these giant conglomerates that come in and they're ready to fall down after two years, or or maybe their plumbing wasn't done right and their wastewater wasn't hooked up right, or they're, you know, whatever. Um, there are communities having a lot of um structural and infrastructure issues with these big housing corporations that have come in to do the builder developer, you know, all that because there's no checks and balances on that. Um, so we do need um to find a way to incentivize people to build affordable housing again. First-time homebuyers. Um, we don't have those programs anymore. That's how I bought my house that I'm still in. Um, you know, we bought a $60,000 house from a church and used first-time homebuyers program and renovated it, and we're still there. Can't afford to move. Um, but yeah, now we don't we don't have those programs. Um so that's when I say we need we need housing and wages to to be addressed at the same time.
SPEAKER_06And and some of this stuff, I mean, I this is before my time, but some of the stuff we used to be good at.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_06We used to recognize that investing in GIs and the GI Bill, you know, and there was enormous discrimination and people got screwed, and and and there was a lot of racism involved in who got what, and there's no denying any of that. But we invested in people, we sent them to college, we they got educated, they were serious about it, they built homes for those folks, and those folks opened businesses, and those businesses were prosperous, and they built them in neighborhoods, and they hired people, and there is a virtuous cycle to all of that, which you begin by making it affordable, and you invest in human beings, you invest in the people that are around you who know what they're doing. And that's what's maddening. These are not impossible problems to solve, these are all man-made problems that we made for ourselves. And I'm delighted that there's somebody running for Congress in Illinois 6 who would like to fix some of them. Now, um, what can the good people of Illinois and the Midwest? I mean we have an international reach on the professional left, you know, we do get people listening to all over the all over the world, but what can people, us, our all of us blue dots in red areas, what can they do for you? What can how can they make it possible for you to be the outstanding Congress person we want you to be?
SPEAKER_03So right now our biggest hurdle is um fundraising, as you can imagine, because with over so eight of the 11 counties are considered FEMA disaster sites. Um, as you can imagine, we're not fundraising um in those counties. We are pushing resources into those counties instead. So if you're in a safe place and you're a blue dot and you want to throw a few bucks our way, um, that would be very much appreciated because as a woman running in a heavily red district against the richest man in Congress, um, who has either between 7.5 million 750 million and 1.1 billion somewhere in there, um, I can't compete with him dollar wise. But we do need dollars to get our message out digitally. So if you've got, you know, five bucks you can throw our way, every every dollar helps. We are grassroots small dollar donors. I don't have big donors. Um, I won't take big donors. Well, I'm limited anyway to 3,500. So if you got 3,500 and you want to send it our way, that's fine. Um, but you know, I can't take big money. Um, there is no pack in Indiana for um federal candidates for um that that you know helps me out. Um, I'm not a targeted race by the DCC, even though we're closing that gap every day. Um but talk to your friends. If you have friends in this area, let them know about us. Um, that's one of the biggest ways where we reach people. And um, I had an email the other day that said, Hey, I heard about you on this podcast, and they were talking about these these hidden races. Um, that actually that actually does help. Um, so and if you're in Indiana, you know, stop by and say hi. I'm usually at Costco. It's where you can find me because it's the cheapest place to shop.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. Well, uh you can come over here. I'll go over there. I'll take you to Harbor Freight and show you all the cheapest place to buy tools I know of.
SPEAKER_03I I know that as well.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03Well, remember that this is been we have screwdrivers there. I'm I I know that well, I know that well.
SPEAKER_06Okay, all right. So you're you're in are you uh now are you an inside track club member? Yes, you are okay. I knew I liked you. I knew I liked you. Yes, okay, science nerd, inside track person, uh going and touching computers that I'll never get to see with my in my life, which it makes me a little envious. Um, it has been an absolute delight having you on the Professional Lab podcast. I appreciate you taking the time. I really know how how tight candidates' time can be. So giving me an entire hour was incredibly generous of you. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to share with the good people of the professional left universe?
SPEAKER_03Yes, science is real. Science is real. Um, experts are not evil. As Dolly Parton said, you know, we just gotta love everybody.
SPEAKER_06And go bears. Go bears.
SPEAKER_03Whether they're in Illinois or Indiana, yes.
SPEAKER_06Oh, see? Now you're talking like a real politician.
SPEAKER_00Each week we post to our Patreon page and website an internet kitty sent in by you, the listeners. This week's internet kitty is two kittens. Aww. Their human rights after spending the last five years caring for and saying goodbye to three elderly cats. I decided shenanigans were in order. Because every cat needs a formal name. These are Isabelle, Izzy, and Jacques Jack Jack. They are a bonded pair, but no relation. Just two different litters in the same foster home, and they found each other. Aww. She's the fancy longer-haired white one, and she is the boss. He is her minion. She's super independent, Izzy is, and busy, while he, Jack Jack, is super cuddly. And of course, Izzy and Jack Jack eat freshly poured kitten food, our fake sponsor. Whether you serve Pet Store Perfection or Dollar Store Dreck, your kittens will sit there looking extremely cute because they know from a very early age that the food they eat is only freshly poured.
SPEAKER_01Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. That's the flavor they adore. One small scoop and hearts of sore. Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you can visit Izzy and Jack Jack at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash pro leftpod, or our website, prolefpod.com. And you can send your internet kitty dog or other pet to us at our email address, prolefpodcast at gmail.com, where you can also write to both of us. Feel very free to write to us. We do love hearing from you. Be aware that if you write to us at any of our addresses, we reserve the right to read your email or U.S. Postal Service Go Postal Unions letter on the air, unless you say otherwise.
SPEAKER_06And don't forget our gourmet coffee guidelines. If you can afford to buy an espresso-based beverage for yourself, consider buying one for us at patreon.com forward slash pro left pod. This is not charity. This is our job that we do every week with your help and support. You can also help us continue to grow by sharing our show on social media. It helps a bunch. So if you love this podcast, introduce it to a friend and thank you so much for helping us to spread the word.
SPEAKER_00Hey Driftglass, how are the Internet Kitties doing this week?
SPEAKER_06Well, Blue Gal, the Internet Kitties want to believe that the voters of the Indiana 6th can recognize quality when they see it.