Chicago Way w/John Kass: Kulturkampf in America

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who lives high on the hog, and he has this Tammany Hall style attitude to power. And it is, it's the Chicago Way, absolutely. The Chicago Way is a deep cultural phenomenon. It's the Chicago Way. The Chicago Way, that's the focus. In a tower by the river, there lived a man. There was a man who took a stand. With pen and paper in his hand. Defeating foes in every ward with a pen more mighty than the sword. No escape from his ink lasso in a tower by the river. Castle. Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife. You pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital. You say one of his to the morgue. That's the shanklew him. Well, as promised, our guest, Charles Lipson, the Peter Ritzma, Professor Emeritus from the University of Chicago, our good friend and Master Sage, we call upon to help us figure things out. The gulag is opened, and the teeth of the communists are devouring us, and what do we do, Charles? Well, it really is disturbing. And in a lot of ways, when I look at the rise of democratic socialism in America, the first thing I want to say is that pretty soon that kind of socialism isn't democratic anymore. The second thing is that they always cite the Scandinavian countries. But the Scandinavian countries are really capitalist. And they've moved back more in that direction. I should also say that with the exception of Norway, which has this huge benefit from discovered petroleum, there are a lot of problems. Where America gets rich is... with economic growth. And when we forget that, we ought to go back and look at what 1950s era's mid-income housing looked like compared to what we have today. We ought to recognize that those people didn't have air conditioning. And you'll never get. air conditioning in countries with government run. I'll tell you when I think of the benefits of this system is whenever I use a Ziploc bag, it's a minor thing.

But you would just never get that in a system that doesn't reward entrepreneurship. Why are there Ziplock bags? The answer is simple. Because after the original plastic bags became a mass commodity, the people who produced them were looking for some way to make more profit. And the best way to do that was to come up with some innovation that people wanted. and would pay a little extra for, and that was a Ziploc bag. And they've actually continued to improve them. But they make a profit, but you get a benefit. You don't have to buy them. You can buy the simple plastic ones that... that cost almost nothing. Or you can just use an old plastic bag. But if you want to, you can use this. So what's driving all of this? I think what's really driving it two things. One is anger. And that's especially the anger of younger people who see a very difficult job market right now. And the second thing is... the complete takeover of K-12 and many of the universities by teachers who are really indoctrinating them with sort of hate America propaganda. It's less that they like socialism and more that they dislike a lot of basic American values. And I would say to add to that. Yeah, Jeff Carlin here, check it in. Yeah, and I would add to that because you're being in the younger generation, you know, capitalism like any ism is not without its, it's foible. And I think we've seen. unbridled, unethical capitalism in a lot of forms in this country where people are like, oh, that whole wealth gap thing, right? We see lots of people getting richer, which again, you know, is, is the way better than the alternative because there's no option there. There's no, you know, there is rich, but that's, and people have seen that, you know, you've seen, like, you know, that whole idea of like, we're going to use this chemical and it's going to make a bunch of people sick. Oh, yeah. Well, we knew that was going to happen or cigarettes. We knew it was going to make people addicted. We knew it was going to ruin. Right. But we let them sell it anyway and we let them do this. And so there's a lot of that stuff has percolated and come to a head. And I think we're in that situation where, you know, it's hard to say, you know, for younger generation, when that's all they've seen, you know, they've seen all that kind of building. It's hard for them to see, oh, well, you know, my life is better because of this system. And it becomes, they become, once you leak it into schools and teachers become, you know, these prophetizers of, oh, America's done some bad things and capitalism has done some bad things. And let's ignore all the good things. It's almost impossible for them to see the forest for the trees. And I wonder, Charles, do we, is there a,

Should there be a push in education? Should it be a push to, you know, how there was kind of World War II, there was kind of that whole, well, we're going to teach. You know, the great history to teach, you know, kind of propaganda is not the word I want to use, but there was a shift towards super pro-American, even in past 9-11, you know, super pro-American, you know, all the greats we can do. Is there a way we can come back to that or teaching, you know, social studies in a way where it. reinforces all the good things that have come from this country comparatively to all the crap that has happened in the countries that are run in a socialist or communist fashion. The first thing you have to do is go back in time. and strangle Rousseau, okay, in the crib. And the second thing you have to do is identify that a screaming woman, what's her name, the American Federation of Teachers, what's her name who screams? Thank you. And then, and put the bell on her neck, around her neck so that all the parents. No, why is your kid a socialist because of Brandy Weingarten? Because of Zim and his idiocy. And remember this. Give the child to me until he is seven and I will show you the man. Who said that? Brent, this Xavier, I think. That's a great quote and I can't remember who said it. Where's Google when I need it? I think. that the solution to a lot of the educational problems is choice. If you let parents choose, they'll choose education that they think will help their kids. They're in a better position to make those choices than administrators sitting in a building in downtown Chicago or Boston. Or a teacher's union sitting in a fancy office somewhere. That's the issue, really. You won't get that choice across any of the blue states. But what you're seeing now, and you're definitely seeing it at the college level, is just a vast migration of students. to southern public universities coming from the north. Well, why is that? Because they think that those are normal places. It's not just that they're conservative. Actually, the faculty at most of those universities is very liberal. By the way, if you look at the voting...

for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, just a noxious candidate running for Senate and surrounded by even more noxious people. He barely won his primary, which was kind of unexpectedly close, against the establishment Democrat. But what was striking was that all his margin came from the counties surrounding Michigan State University and University of Michigan. Students aren't there. Students aren't there this summer. The voting was by the faculty and administrators and the people who depend on them. So these are, this is a... culture comf, as they said in 19th century Germany, a culture war. And it's important. People can fight in two ways. They can fight like you, like the three of us are doing by putting our ideas out. And they can fight with their feet. And if you look at which states are winning, And which states are losing, it's clear that people are voting with their feet for their children and for their own jobs. With over three decades of serving up streetwise insight and local perspective on page two, the voice of John Cass has a home at Johncastnews.com. There's a new sheriff in town. This will truly be the golden age of America. That's what we have to have. But as he settles in, can you deal with the hysteria, the meltdowns, the constant whining? I don't know what to do. You know what you need? you need a good cup of common sense. It's just common sense. Like the kind of common sense you get when you subscribe to johncastnews.com. I'm John Cass. 40 years a journalist in Chicago. That's the Chicago way. I opened this website, Johncast News, so that you could have a decent cup of common sense. This great country of ours was built on its entrepreneurial spirit. It's time that you join the frontier of independent journalism at Johncastnews.com. Subscribe today to get access to great columns from John Cass, Dan Proft, and others. Don't be a chum alone, and subscribe at Johncastnews.com. Yeah, I think it's two prong there, Charles, because I think the idea that draw is, you know, students are going to, you know, universities that may be less. overly liberal, but I think it's also that the idea that the states are coming from have been run by liberal policies that have just raised taxes and causes crushing welfare class. And not to say that I disagree with the fact that we need some sort of welfare state, but like, but the fact that it has become such a, in the same way capitalism when bridal is an issue, you know, being compassionate and bridal, you know, can result in the burning of your own house down. And, and I don't know.

if we're going to get to the point where people are going to see all the beds before too late. And it strikes me as... insane that you know my grandfather fought in world war two you know couldn't would never have even fathomed a day when there would be communism or you know socialism on the board in politics let alone you know being a frontrunner somehow for senate do you do you think we can can re-educate people i mean that's really the core because i don't i don't know that that choice is going to be that straightforward because most parents really just want their kids to go to the school. It's closest to them because it's the easiest thing for them because they've got all their other things they have to worry about. I think for elementary school, they really do prize that proximity. I think for high school, it depends on the nature of their kids. Whether if it's a very smart kid, they want to particularly, they want to send their kid to New Trir. And if the kid is a good athlete, there might be another school or whatever. Although New Trir is increasingly a problem of the sort that we have talked about. I think that when Republicans run, The issue to emphasize is not so much the socialism. versus capitalism, which is, by the way, it's very hard for politicians to make a strong case for capitalism. The case for socialism, the case against socialism is much easier to make. But the right thing is that a lot of the stuff is just anti-American. It just, there's a low thing. for our country and for its history. There was a leader in Britain in the mid-1600s. There was a short period in which the kings were overthrown. And a leader of parliament, Cromwell, was the leader. And he was having his portrait painted. And most of those portraits were painted. as if there were gauze covering your face, and you had already gone on a diet, and you looked great. Right. And the painter asked him... Early AI. Yes, early AI by a portrait painter. And by the way, I used to tell my students when I was showing pictures of these...

People from one particularly ugly princess in Spain who had been, who was a Habsburg, had been married to, you know, the product of four generations of cousins. And I told the class, I said, what I want you to understand is that as bad as she looks in this picture, that was as good as they could make her look. But in any event, Cromwell, the painter as Cromwell. How should I paint you? And he says, paint me Kevin Warsh and all. That's the origin of that phrase, Kevin Warsh and all. And I think an American history, Kevin Warsh and all is fine. It's just that it's not all Kevin Warsh. Did he keep his head, the painter? My question. That's a good. I have a question for you, John, and Charles kind of tipped a hat to this is that, you know, the, we're in a country where, you know, corporations and unions are classified as people somehow. You know, they have all the rights of the Constitution as every average person. I don't know how that happened. Right. Well, we got there. How do we fix that? Because it feels like the unions are so political, especially in Chicago. You know, the teachers, you know, just so political that they're politicians first and their teachers, educators, seconds. And how do we fix that? Well, currently in Chicago, there's a controversy or problem where... Brandon Johnson cannot even recover the debt owed the city. And that will just, it's in the news, and that will just magnify over time until it becomes uncontrollable. Like an uncontrollable debt. And then when the police officers and the firefighters realize they're not going to get their, pension benefits or they won't get they're now at 17 and 22 percent of the pension funding they're going to there's going to be a reaction and that is ultimate and there's not going to stop And so the people have to know what's coming, but they don't. Well, if there's a Democratic president and Democratic Congress, they'll bail out the big cities, won't they, John? Well, they did the last time, right? They did. There was a bailout of New York City, and I find I don't want people to suffer, but. The only way we're going to be free of these socialist, communist, whatever you want to call them, is to let their consequences...

Fair fruit, you know? Yeah, bitter fruit. Let me draw one distinction about the unions. I draw a sharp distinction, as Franklin Roosevelt did, between private unions dealing with private companies and public sector unions. And let me explain why. Let's talk about a private union, United Auto Workers or something, a union that deals with private companies. When they sit down to bargain, the people who are on the opposite side of the table from them have some interests that oppose the union and some interests that agree with the union. And the same is true for the union. The union doesn't want the company to go broke. And the company doesn't want to pay so little. not only in direct benefits, but also in health care and all the rest, doesn't want to pay so little that it can't attract the kind of workers, attract and keep the kind of workers that it wants, right? It doesn't want to suffer a strike, of course. But Henry Ford, in the early days, paid substantially more than other automobile companies paid for his workers. And the reason was it was harder to keep people as employees working on that assembly line. He was the one who invented the moving assembly line. He actually took it. from Chicago, where the moving assembly line was a disassembly line for meat products. They would take a cow up to the top of the building and butcher as it went down with all the butchers standing in one location as the cow, or used to be cow, moved past it. And Henry Ford did that for his automobiles. Those jobs were really unpleasant where you're sitting all day and screwing lug nuts on a tire. And so people ended up quitting those jobs in order to keep them in the jobs he paid more. So they have a kind of mixed interest. That's not true of public sector unions in the same way because who's sitting across the table from them. Well, in the worst case, it's Brandon Johnson, who used to be a member of that union and owes everything to them. But the main point is the unions themselves can help the politician get elected. And because the union can help the politician get elected, there's not this kind of...

a potential antagonism that there is in negotiation with private sector unions. That's why Franklin Roosevelt, who absolutely favored private sector unions, absolutely opposed public sector unions. And ideally, public sector unions would be illegal. They'll never be illegal in blue states. But they really ought to be illegal in other states. And the second thing is they ought not to have a monopoly over the provision of certain services, such as schooling. Well, they have a monopoly over the Democratic Party or what remains of it, don't they? Yeah. And they decide policy that benefits unions. My both sons are union men. And I love them dearly. One is electrician. Like as you were speaking of the private sector, they're not voting themselves benefits against the people or the government. I mean, the company. And that's a distinction that's important. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's scary because. You mentioned healthcare trials. That's another one of these systems where that has been, I want to say, picked over aggressively by capitalism and made into this, you know, beast where it's almost untenable, really, if we were talking long term. That's right. And it makes it to a point. I mean, I think it was my accuracy on this is probably 40%. But it was, he was Amazon talking about how, you know, they spent. a quarter of a million dollars on GLP1 medications alone last year for their employees. And they have an employee a lot of people. And it's a really, it's an amazing drug and it does great things. But that's, it's it, you know, it's untenable. You know, you can't keep forcing companies to spend that much money and why are they spending that much money. And it's kind of this unbridled capitalism thing. So I think, John, I think it comes back to kind of what you said. And Charles, you clarify is that this, this, this bitter fruit. is going to come, and it's going to come on hard, and it's the hopeful the other side, the Constitution can hold strong and we can rebuild into this, you know, what we do. Jeff, that's a lot of money for any company to spend on GLP1 weight loss drugs. But my question is, if they continue to do this, will the taxpayers be on the hook for the new kidney transplants that will be inevitable? When people begin to take this, you know, I want that piece of cake, I'll just shoot some, eat GLP 1 and then eat the cake. Well, I mean, somebody who's on a GLP 1, that's kind of a completely accurate description of it. I mean, and we don't need to get into because none of us are doctors, but, you know, it's, it's, you're looking at a different slice of this, but you're right. I mean,

What happens? Is there going to be a bail out of these companies? And they say, oh, no, we can't afford health care for our employees, which you have mandated we need to have. Right. By the way, let me say a few things about health care. On GLP-1s, I would just say it may be that that expenditure on GLP-1 actually saves money because to the extent that people... no longer have this serious morbidly obese physiques. They may actually use less. But do you know where a lot of this no taxes on your health care and all of that sort of thing? And HMOs, do you know how that all came in? I do not enlighten me. During World War II. And this is a sort of more broadly instructive about government regulations. The government set limits on what you could pay employees. And that was especially true in military, in defense contractors. And a guy named Kaiser, Willis Kaiser,

who was really an aluminum manufacturer in Seattle. Yeah, he was. He got into the business of producing boats for the military. It's really an extraordinary story. He'd never produced a boat before. And so he set up not only one in Seattle, but one in Oakland. And in fact, if you want to know why there are a lot of African Americans in the Oakland area, it's because they came in to work in the shipyards there. during World War II. But he got those two to compete with each other. And they started out. These were not warships. They were transport ships out to the Pacific taking supplies. And they got better and better and better. The early ships weren't very good. They were welded together and some of them split apart and so forth. But they got better and faster and all the rest. But he was limited in what he could pay, and that limited what he could do to attract workers. But it turned out he could give them free health care. And so he set up captive providers of health care for his workers. And that was the origin of what became Kaiser Permanente and HMOs in the whole country. Interesting. So it was an effort. to recruit employees in a competitive environment where they could go to other places. Now, let me just say in general about health care, which is now the largest employer in every city, no matter what city you go to, go to a city like Memphis or something. And all you see downtown are big hospitals. Looking downtown Chicago, where Water Tower Place is basically empty, and you've got, but you've got this huge Northwestern medical facility. But unlike people who are shopping at Water Tower Place, when you go into Northwestern or University of Chicago or any of the other health care facilities, you are not paying directly. for the service. And unlike a shirt or a coat that you buy, you can't tell whether the service is of the highest quality, right? You can tell if you like your newspaper. You can tell if it meets your needs, but you cannot tell, basically, whether you have a good surgeon. How do you pick those people? You have to rely on, so you're not paying for it. You're paying for insurance. The insurance is paying the doctor or the hospital. The hospital is picking the people who will provide for you, and you're relying on somebody else. So it's a complicated system.

That is very hard to fix. And I don't understand. And by the way, and a lot of the profits, the big profits come from medicine. But the medicine, there has to be a profit in coming up. Remember, these are not just GLP-1s. The GLP-1, Ozempic, was the first one. Then they came up with, in effect, a second one, Wagovi or Zebbound, which has two interactions. And now there's a third, yeah. Retra, which has a third component. Well, somebody is doing that research. And they're doing it because, in this case, it's Eli Lilly in Indianapolis. Eli Lilly is doing that research to come up with RETA and test it on thousands of people and all the rest in order to make a profit. Well, if you eliminate the profit, you know, you're back to penicillin. And it's the trickle down from that is that a lot of that research used to be done on university campuses, but universities have moved away from the science and focused more on the liberal arts or the history of women's studies or the colonialism in America and all that nonsense. That doesn't do anything to push us forward. That just really makes us stagnate and almost roll back like we're seeing today in Michigan. Yeah, if you go into a doctor and he prescribes He prescribes gender studies for you. You're going to get a different doctor. Well, I wouldn't want to upset anyone, but I think that this cultural reliance on GLP1 types of drugs will have a cost. And we have to, you don't want to be the Anthony Fauci like shutting me down and having me, you know. Be quiet because you offend me because I love my GOP1. I'm thinking of all the people who are, yes. I can see it happening. They're aggressively searching for it as a weight loss drug instead of, I, maybe I'm jealous, but I lost. 70 pounds the old-fashioned way by not eating carbs and having a quadruple bypass, which led me to a stroke. And that's how I had to lose the way. But if you could avoid the front end of that conversation. Yeah, is the gLP one. I'm going to try to avoid the quadruple bypass as a strategy as a weight loss strategy, John. You'll pardon me. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, you're not wrong, John. I mean, there's certainly obviously in anything there's people who are abusing things or going out the wrong way. I mean, like I said, I've gone it. I've been, I've been the type of person who eats healthy and works out five times a week. And my weight...

in fat ratio would stay at an unhealthy level. My blood pressure is up. I added a GLP1, and my weight has come down, and I'm off all my drugs. I've lost 70 pounds. Wonderful, Jeff. Do you know why you lose weight on GLP1? Well, I do because it slows the way my body processes carbohydrates and complex sugars. But they don't usually have a lot of those in my body to begin with because I know that I'm prone to those becoming fat and not being processed correctly. I think that's a crucial point. I think a lot of people who are on GLP1 don't use it as a way to eat more. they use it as part of a healthy food diet. And it just slows emptying. It doesn't actually burn more calories. I think some of the newer drugs may actually burn more calories. And the real danger of those drugs is muscle loss. Right. That when you lose weight, you want to lose fat, but not. not muscle. But the point is, these are miracle drugs. And you want there to be an incentive. Think about drugs that will deal with cancer. Well, this is an extremely expensive research project that... tens of thousands of PhD scholars and working both at universities and for private companies have been working on for decades after decades. You want them to have incentives to do that, but you are absolutely right, going back to the earlier things. You don't want a situation where all the, where the, Profits are all private. The costs are all public. or there are collateral negative consequences that are sloughed off on the public where somebody drills for oil, they get all the profits from the oil, but the water in the area is polluted. That would be a good example. You want them to have to take account of that. Here's going back to our earlier discussion of socialism. The enemy that is, excuse me, the alternative that is often positive is this magical world in which everything works right. But if you don't use prices, what you end up using,

are government regulations. Well, that was the problem with, and the second thing that happens with government regulations are slow. They're clumsy. They don't take into account a lot of the costs. And the next thing government bureaucrats want to do is wipe out alternative viewpoints. And that's exactly what Anthony Fauci and his team did. Yeah, right, right, right, right. We believe in free speech. Except for J. Bonachario, right. According to Anthony Fauci. Right, right, exactly. Exactly. John, to your point, I mean, the idea, like, and we're focusing on the GOP1, you know, a doctor just, you know, a blanket warning about people listening to this conversation. But you could make the, pardon me, you can make the argument that, you know, the fact that obesity levels are so high, the fact that heart disease is so high in this country, the fact that cancers are so high in this country, could be tied back to the idea that, you know, capitalism has, and mark through marketing has made foods. caloricly dense and fiber minimum and it made people sick people are sold on the idea things that are really great that they don't need like supplements or alcohol or lots of other things out there. You know, the rise of fast food, which is purely a marketing play. There's nothing. There's no benefit to fast food, you know, convenience. And it's all, it's all about selling. And so, right, exactly. So we're, you know, we're kind of, we are in this, this period where we're reaping this, this unfortunate bitter fruit that has been, and I think Charles, you nailed it earlier. And I, and I kind of tie back to my, you know, my grandfather fought World War II, who was, was very American. and thought, you know, I'm doing things in American way the best for us as an American. This un-Americanism that we've kind of fallen into this trap where capitalism is taking over this part of it. And now socialism is taking over education. And now we're like, they're coming to, you know, log our heads and we're going to be, you know, we're going to have to fix it on the back end, unfortunately. And I worry about what that's going to look like. Thank God I don't have children. But John, I know your sons are starting families now. And I pray for them every day. Well, I worry for the young people all the time. And what I worry about is the communists, and let's be clear about this, that's who they are, are selling envy. So a few of us have made fun of that envy, but really it destroys the culture. They think there are many, many in that group, Democrats, leftist, communist. They think that, oh, I studied gender studies. I have a master's in gender studies. Why can't I afford that six-bedroom home in Hinsdale?

And they're upset about it. That's right. That's exactly right, Chai. Envy and anger, but I don't think it's only on the left. I think you've got a lot of that on the right, especially the more extreme right. It's growing, and that's what it works. Yeah, and, you know, I find it very troubling. By the way, this woman who... is running for governor as a Democrat in in Wisconsin, a purple state. She's had to say how much she loves Thanksgiving now that she's on tape attacking Thanksgiving. Well, what's wrong with Thanksgiving? Well, it implies, you know, all of a sudden you're talking about Native Americans and then, oh, and we did terrible things. I mean, basically, every country that has settlers displaces nomadic peoples. That's not unusual. That's the way history operates. And then typically the nomadic or the people that are not sort of settled farmers often engage in raiding parties and so forth. That's what the Huns did and so forth. But that Charles did? Yeah. That standard applies to Zohran Mamdani himself here, because as or his people, because the Indians that Zohran Mamdani is represented by in Uganda came in and basically scarfed up all the, or a lot of the resources and food and wealth. And now he's a settler. He's a colonialist. Right. I mean, that's the, and this is what I always get, it drives me insane. Like, where do we draw the line? I mean, Homo erectus displaced Homo habilis. Are we going to start trying to fund raise for it? Not that there's anything wrong with Homo erectus. Exactly. Good job, Charles. I love that. If it wasn't for a homo erectus, none of us would be here. Exactly. Exactly. That's... Well, yeah. And now we have a drug so that if your homo is not erectus... There's a red pill. There we go. There we go. We've come full circle, and I think it's probably a good place to put in a button on this. I do have two points. Charles, you mentioned, you said, Willis Kaiser, it was Henry Kaiser. Henry Kaiser. Who was Willis? You're thinking of Willis, I think, Nudson, William Nutson, who was kind of his Big Bill Nudson, his counterpart. But there was a company, wasn't there, called Kaiser Willis? I think so, but that's beyond my... We're going down a rabbit hole. Yeah, and I just want to say if anybody's really curious to learn more, Freedom's Forge is a great book. Freedom's Forge by Arthur Herman lays it out beautifully about his impact. Good.

And then, too, Charles, I know before we got started, you had something you wanted to mention you saw online. John posted a wonderful picture of a young John Cass with two very young twin boys, one in each arm. No gray in my hair. John, I got to tell you, your twins are about eight years younger than my twins. We have a picture of this proud dad with a twin in each hand. And now I live 100 yards from one. In fact, I saw him and his wife and their dog this morning. And I had lunch with his brother and him, both of them with their spouses. yesterday. So when I saw your twins, I was happy for you and thought of my own twins. And it's not just Father's Day that you feel proud of your family. And I guess going back to the theme of the show, I just feel so damn fortunate to have been born and raised in America in a country that for all its uh Kevin Warsh and flaws uh has the right ideals and in fact almost all the criticism of what we do wrong comes from the highest american ideals embodied in our constitution and to which patriotic Americans can hold the rest of the country accountable for falling short. Amen. We're very lucky, Charles. You know, remember what Benjamin Netanyahu Franklin told the lady. If you can keep it. It's a famous way. He came out of, unlike today's Pentagon. There were no leaks from the Constitutional Convention. They met in that building in Philadelphia. They met day after day. George Washington was the presiding officer. They were trying to figure out how to remedy the problems of the Articles of Confederation. And what they did was write a new constitution. It turned out to be slightly incomplete. They had to add the first 10 amendments. to the Constitution afterwards. But when they completed their business and came out, a lady asked Benjamin Netanyahu Franklin what they had come up with. A republic, if you can keep it. Exactly. And that's our task. Thank you. Charles, thanks for being here. My pleasure, gentlemen.

I wanted to leave one more response, if I could, to everybody. And that is to the good people here at Powers Health who've been taking care of me and all the readers. who've been taking pictures of their no chumbalones on hats and sending them in. And some of those socks fans who sent me a message just this morning to Tom Serafin, I want to say everybody, I love Theodicy and I love Laertes because he was an old man and he still had spears to throw. And I still had spears to throw. So thank you, everybody. We love you, John. Be well soon. Love you, buddy. I'll throw some rolls your way. And thanks to Charles Lipson, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago, the Peter B. Ritzma chair, and to Jeff Carlin, executive producer, WGN Radio, friend of cats, baker of pies, as Jeff is known to be. And for me, John Cass, editor-in-chief of Johncastnews.com, and I'm still trying to get better every day dealing with these strokes and loving all you people who are supporting me. Thanks again, everybody, for listening and talk to you again next time on the next edition of the Chicago Way podcast on WGN Plus.