♪ ("LAST WEEK TONIGHT" THEME
PLAYS) ♪
Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns history.
A subject so fascinating,
we're sometimes willing to do
crazy experiments like this:
REPORTER: Scientists were able
 to mimic Nesyamun's voice
 by recreating his mouth
 and vocal chords
 with a 3-D printer.
 It allowed them to produce
 a single sound.
(MURMURING)
Excellent. Finally an answer
to the question
that scholars have asked
for ages,
"What would an ancient Egyptian
sound like,
if he orgasmed while taking
anti-depressants?"
But look, sadly, history
isn't always fun,
weird mummy ventriloquy.
It can be painful too.
As America, has recently been
reminded.
Because George Floyd's murder
has forced
a hard national conversation
about this country's present,
which is impossible to do
effectively
without reexamining it's past.
And unfortunately, that's not
a conversation
that all American's are
well-equipped to have.
Because there are some
embarrassing gaps
in many people's knowledge
of US history.
Just look what happened
a few weeks back
when the president,
in the midst of
nation-wide Black Lives Matter
protests,
announced plans to hold a rally
in Tulsa, on June 19th.
A decision, astonishingly
tone-deaf,
for two key reasons.
NBC REPORTER: Next Friday,
 June 19th, is Juneteenth,
an annual holiday commemorating
 the end of slavery in the US.
 As for Tulsa, 99 years ago
 this month, in 1921,
 the city witnessed
 the Tulsa Race Massacre.
 One of the nation's worst
 outbreaks of racial violence.
 Recently portrayed
 in HBO's Watchmen.
-(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
-(AIRPLANE ENGINE ROARING)
Now, the reason they're
mentioning Watchmen there,
is a lot of Americans learned
about the Tulsa Race Massacre
for the very first time,
nearly a century
after it happened,
from watching that show.
Basically, the night
that episode airs,
many white Americans went,
"Holy shit, I had no idea
this happened!" While,
many Black Americans went,
"Holy shit, white people are
gonna freak the fuck out
when they find out
this happened."
"Debbie at work, is gonna want
to have a conversation."
The coverage of that Trump rally
didn't just introduce
many Americans
to that massacre,
but also, to the very concept
of Juneteenth.
The day that commemorates
when Union troops informed Texas
that enslaved people there
must finally be freed,
two years after
the Emancipation Proclamation
by the way.
A recent poll shows that
a shocking 48 percent
of Americans were either
"Not at all" or,
"Not very aware" of Juneteenth,
which is not good!
I mean, it'd be fine if
nearly half of Americans were
unaware of Groundhog Day,
the meaningless date
when an idiot dressed like
goth Willy Wonka,
holds up a non-clairvoyant
woodchuck,
whose face, somehow screams,
"I have better things to do."
But Juneteenth actually means
something.
And that's just one of
many gaps in knowledge
that some are now realizing
that they have.
Just watch Joy Behar
try to explain
why statues of George Washington
should be left alone,
and in doing so, actually
learning something.
The George Washington,
besides being a founding father
and a great general
and somebody
who was so instrumental
in this union that we have,
in this republic,
also freed his slaves.
So, if you're gonna take
somebody down,
take down Thomas Jefferson,
who didn't free his slaves,
No? Sunny disagrees.
He didn't free his slaves.
He actually spent the last year
of his life,
relentlessly pursuing slaves
that tried to run away.
He was a horrible slave owner.
Yeah, he was. As usual,
Sunny Hostin is very right,
and Meghan McCain,
is very there.
Because, while Washington did
promise to free his slaves
in his will, it specified,
they wouldn't gain their freedom
until his wife's death. So,
only one person was freed
immediately after
Washington died,
out of a hundred. Also,
he actually became a slave owner
at just eleven years old.
A fact so horrifying,
it's kind of hard to know
what to do with it.
At the very least,
the story of him chopping down
a cherry tree as a child
and admitting it to his father
by saying "I cannot tell a lie,"
gets way less charming,
if the next part is
his parents saying, "Thank you
for being honest George.
As a reward, here are some
human beings to own."
And the thing is, Joy Behar's
version of history,
while distorted,
is definitely more palatable
especially for white people.
And seeking out
misleadingly comforting versions
of history, is a pattern
that we've seen again
and again this year.
From the number one movie
on Netflix
during the protests following
George Floyd's murder
being The Help, to just
last week
when Senator Tom Cotton said
schools should lose
federal funding if they teach
a curriculum based on
 The New York Times'
1619 Project,
which brings slavery into
the forefront
of American history. And perhaps
the most absurd disconnect was,
in the wake of President Obama's
eulogy for John Lewis this week,
in which Obama advocated for
abolishing the filibuster
if necessary to expand
voting rights,
Tucker Carlson had this to say.
Imagine if
some greasy politician showed up
at your loved one's funeral,
and started throwing around
stupid partisan talking points
about Senate procedure.
Can you imagine that?
You would be shocked
if that happened.
You'd probably walk out.
Desecrating a funeral
with campaign slogans?
What kind of person
would do that?
Wait, what kind of person
would honor a friend's legacy
by continuing to advocate
for voting rights?
You know what, I can think
of one.
John fucking Lewis would
do that.
And the truth is, with
so many people misunderstanding
our history, either by accident,
or, very much on purpose,
we thought tonight,
it might be a good idea
to talk about how the history
of race in America,
is currently taught in schools.
What some of the gaps are,
why they're there,
and how we can fill them.
And let's start with the fact,
that there are no national
standards for what topics
or figures, students must
learn about at school.
And state standards very widely.
When CBS looked into it
this year, it found
seven states do not directly
mention slavery
in their state standards,
only two mention white supremacy
while 16 list state's rights
as a cause of the Civil War.
And, we actually did a whole
21-minute piece about
what is wrong with that argument
but this clip explains it
significantly quicker.
NARRATOR: The root cause
 of the Civil War is clear.
-What caused the Civil War was--
-Slavery.
The main cause, and why
the South decided to secede
-was for--
-Slavery.
NARRATOR: So why do
 our history textbooks,
 get it so wrong?
Y'all don't wanna deal with
the (CENSORED) up (CENSORED)
that y'all ancestors did.
Yeah. I mean, that pretty much
sums it up.
And it can be hard to deal
with what your ancestors did.
Trust me, I'm British!
One of our most famous tourist
attractions is a castle
where we executed people
for centuries,
and is now filled with
stolen jewels,
like the Koh-I-Noor diamond,
which,
according to the Tower's website
was presented to Queen Victoria.
And that verb is doing
a lot of heavy lifting there.
It was "presented,"
in pretty much the same way
that India was,
in so much as it was present,
and Britain, fucking took it.
And for all the current
handwringing about how
any changes would politicize
US history,
it's worth remembering,
that the teaching of it
has always been political.
After the Civil War, the battle
over how history would be told
in textbooks was intense.
Because, you know the saying,
"History is written
by the winners"?
The South set out
to prove that wrong.
One organization, called
"The United Daughters
of the Confederacy," campaigned
for schools to adopt textbooks
that would
"accord full justice
to the South."
Telling librarians to write,
"Unjust to the South,"
on the ones that didn't.
Which is clearly absurd.
It would be like a librarian
writing, "Unjust to Voldemort,"
on Harry Potter one through
seven.
Or, "Unjust to whale,"
on Moby Dick.
Or, "Unjust to L. Ron Hubbard,"
on Leah Remini's
 Trouble Maker: Surviving
 Hollywood and Scientology.
But that impulse, to downplay
the horrors of slavery,
has marked how school children
have learned about it,
ever since. A Georgia textbook
from the fifties claimed,
"The master often had a barbecue
or a picnic for his slaves.
Then, they had a great frolic."
And look, every excuse
for slavery is shitty,
but, "We gave them sandwiches
sometimes,"
has to be one of the shittiest.
And some who learned history
from books like those,
couldn't believe what they were
being told at the time.
Just watch
this Alabama schoolteacher,
revisit her fourth grade
textbook, Know Alabama.
"Some slaves were good workers
and very obedient.
Many took pride
in what they did,
and loved their cabins
and the plantation."
As if they actually owned them.
"Others were lazy, disobedient,
and sometimes vicious."
I wonder what kind of slave
I would have been?
I wonder if I would have been
one of those lazy slaves
who just were not willing
to work for nothing.
Or disobedient because I just
didn't want to be a slave.
Yeah, that contempt,
is fully merited there.
Because among other things,
the idea that being
a "lazy slave," was
a character flaw,
as opposed to, a frequent act
of protest against
a brutally unjust system,
is infuriating.
And it makes Know Alabama sound
less like the title
of that textbook,
and more like something
you'd yell at it.
"No Alabama! Stop that!
Bad textbook, no!"
And those passages were in
the standard Alabama history
textbook, into the seventies.
So people who read them,
and may have been shaped by
their content,
are now in their fifties
doing things like
running businesses or,
I don't know,
holding elected office.
And while newer textbooks
may not be
quite that egregious,
there are still problems.
Earlier this year,
one historian flagged
a pretty remarkable euphemism,
in a current Texas schoolbook.
IBRAM KENDI: This is a picture
 and the caption says,
"Some US settlers brought slaves
 to Texas
 to help work the fields
 and do chores."
And, you know, I don't think
we should describe,
slave labor as chores.
Yeah, you're right,
we probably shouldn't.
Calling slave labor chores,
is a euphemism on par
with calling Hitler
a best-selling author
with a side hustle.
Or, JFK's assassination
a bad hair day, or this,
a comedy show.
And look, state standards
and textbooks are just
a baseline here. What happens
in a classroom largely depends
on teachers, who have
a very difficult job,
often working
with scant resources,
meaning that among other things,
they may not be able to get
updated versions of textbooks.
And some work really hard
to correct poor materials.
But others, can actually
make things even worse,
with tone-deaf assignments,
and classroom exercises
that you may be familiar with,
from seeing local news stories
like these.
REPORTER 2: This is
 the activity in question.
 It asks students to choose
to be a slave or a slave owner.
 And then a write-in journal
 entry
that describes daily activities
 before the Civil War.
REPORTER 3: The question
 about slavery read...
(READS PROMPT)
REPORTER 4: This North Carolina
 grandmother
couldn't believe the assignment
 given to her fourth grader.
GRANDMOTHER: And this game
is called "Escaping Slavery."
REPORTER 4: A slavery-themed
 Monopoly-like game
 students played
 in elementary school.
Children worked in small groups,
 got this freedom punch card
 if the group ran into trouble,
 the card said
 they'd be severely punished
 and sent back
 to the plantation
 to work as a slave.
GRANDMOTHER:
What, are they gonna hang 'em?
Are they gonna kill 'em?
What the fuck are you
doing there?
You can't reduce a person's
freedom from slavery
down to what is basically
a Jimmy Johns punch card.
And just imagine
what it would feel like
to be a Black kid
in that classroom.
Or, if you don't have
to imagine, remember.
Because it's not just
the history that hurts here.
It's how you've been made
to feel while you learn it.
And the frequency
to which stories like those
tend to crop up,
may have something
to do with the fact
that the overwhelming majority
of schoolteachers are white,
and many may have grown up
learning the same skewed version
of history
that they are now passing on.
And when you take all
of this together,
we're giving kids
incomplete educations
in history, while also
doing real harm.
Because those kids grow up.
Just listen to this guy
from Tulsa
explaining how he felt
when he finally found out
about that 1921 massacre
that happened where he lived.
When I went to OU in 1998,
I was sitting in a class
for African American History,
and the professor
was talking about this place
where Black people
had businesses, and had money,
and had doctors and lawyers,
and he said it was in Tulsa.
And I-- I raised my hand
and I said, "No,
I'm from Tulsa."
-(CROWD LAUGHING)
-"That's not accurate."
And he was talking about
this massacre, riots...
And man, what are you talking
about?
I said I went to school
on Greenwood,
I've never heard of this ever.
That's terrible.
And his school really
let him down there.
Think of the emotional whiplash
that man must have gone through.
He found out something
amazing that once existed,
right where he lived.
Something horrible had taken
it away,
and that the history had been
kept from him.
And all of this had happened
less than 100 years ago.
The dinosaurs died
65 million years ago,
and you would still be
absolutely floored
if someone only just told you
about them.
"I'm sorry, there were what?
Where?
What do you mean everywhere?
And they were how big?
Some of them could fly?
What happened to them?
Oh, no!
How the fuck is this
the first time someone's
mentioning this to me?!"
Look, it is pretty clear
that we need to upgrade
the way that we teach
our history.
And while I obviously
don't have time
to go through all
of that history right now,
it might be worth going slowly
through three big mistakes
that many historians believe
that we make,
and should correct,
in schools and beyond.
The first is that we don't
fully acknowledge
the history of white supremacy
in America.
From its founding
to the present day.
And I know that anytime
someone suggests
telling children anything less
than Jesus would have been
best friends
with Abraham Lincoln,
the push back is fierce.
Watch Laura Ingraham
take one school board's
discussion
of an anti-racist curriculum,
and spin it out
into a dystopian vision
designed to terrify her viewers.
Now every subject,
every extra-curricular activity
will be perverted
to turn your kids
into mini Ilhan Omars.
They're gonna learn
that capitalism is racist,
history,
as conventionally taught,
is racist.
Literature, most of that's
racist.
Patriotic songs, racist.
And the Declaration
and the Constitution,
of course they're racist.
Are you sensing a theme here?
Now, Laura Ingraham
might not seem like
someone capable
of following anything,
apart from Black teenagers
simply trying to shop at CVS.
But I think she actually
has picked up on a theme there.
Because seeing as
she brought up
the Constitution,
let's talk about it.
Because that document
is a lot of things,
genuinely revolutionary,
and the foundation
of an improbably long-lived
democracy.
But it's also infused with,
and inextricably linked
to slavery, and a legacy
of racial inequality.
From the three-fifths clause,
to the fugitive slave cause.
The constitution
both codified slavery,
and made it harder
for individuals to escape it.
And the fact the Constitution
is infused with racism
does not mean it's canceled.
It's not a YouTuber
who's just now realized
it was wrong to do black face
for 14 years.
And it definitely doesn't mean
that kids shouldn't learn
about it.
But they should be taught
to see it
as an imperfect document
with imperfect authors,
who both extolled
the ideas of freedom for all,
while at the same time,
codifying slavery.
And that is possible to do.
Kids can understand
that things can be racist
and also other things.
The Constitution can be
revolutionary, and also racist.
Movies can be romantic
and also racist.
Children's books
can be charming,
and also racist.
Broadcasters can be
incredibly successful
and also racist.
And if kids are taught
an incomplete history,
they'll either never get
the full story,
or when they do,
they don't have the framework
to understand how
the pieces fit together.
Here is one professor
explaining how hard
it can be for his students
learning the whole truth
about Thomas Jefferson.
What that child's then gonna do,
is say, "Wait a minute,
why didn't I know this before?
I've been running around here
singing Thomas Jefferson's
praises,
and I didn't realize
that he's the R. Kelly
of his time."
REPORTER 5: So while
 it may be uncomfortable,
 he says you have to be
 honest.
I-- I swear Ohio didn't suffer
from Underground Railroad-itis,
right?
You ask if--
Who would have been--
Who would have been
for the Underground Railroad,
right, in class?
And every-- every white hand
goes up.
I'm like, look,
if all of y'all would have
been down for
the Underground Railroad...
that (CENSORED) wouldn't
have been underground, right?
There would have been no need
for it.
Okay, first of all,
it says a lot about Jefferson
that if you went back in time,
explained to him
who R. Kelly was,
and told him he was being
compared to him,
the child pornography charges
would not be
the number one reason
that he'd be insulted
by the comparison.
But that professor
makes a really good point there.
The less you know
about history, the easier
that it is
to imagine you'd always be
on the right side of it.
Because the truth it,
the history of America
is a history of change
in America
that badly does not want
to be changed.
And that actually brings us
to the second common mistake
that we make...
Too often, U.S. History
is reduced
down to, there was slavery,
uh, then there was a Civil War,
then there wasn't slavery
anymore,
then there was
the Civil Rights movement,
then there wasn't racism
anymore.
Just a smooth, steady
upward arc.
But the moment on either side
of those landmark eras
complicate the hell
out of that arc.
Because they were filled
with white hostility,
and ugly backsliding.
Take the century between the end
of the Civil War,
and the Civil Rights act,
which is often glossed over,
which should probably
be taught a lot more thoroughly.
Begins with reconstruction,
a dozen or so years
of real promise
when very basically,
the South was forced
to redraw their constitutions
and permit the registration
of Black voters.
That's right, Black men
in the south
were voting in the 1860's
and '70s.
When they fought
for the voting rights act
in the 1960's,
they were fighting
to get back something
that they already had.
The effects of reconstruction
were almost immediate,
with an estimated
2,000 Black men
serving in elected office
during that era.
Including a number in Congress.
And just look at these guys.
A-plus achievements,
A-plus-plus facial hair there.
And sure, you might think
you can grow
your mustache into a beard,
try it.
You fucking can't.
But in response
to that progress,
white people pushed back
and pushed back hard.
The KKK was founded,
2,000 Black people were lynched,
and by 1877,
the South had regained
local control.
Here is a crazy story
that you might not know.
In 1898,
the multiracial city government
in Wilmington, North Carolina,
became the target of...
In which a mob
of up to 2,000 armed white men
killed at least
60 Black residents,
and replaced the city's alderman
with white supremacists.
And if this is the first time
that you are learning
about the only coup
on American soil,
you're not alone!
Because what happened there
is usually either not taught
at all,
or, as the author of a book
on that massacre points out,
taught very, very misleadingly.
Here's from a 1949 textbook.
Quote,
"A number of Blacks were jailed
for starting a riot
and a new white administration
took over
Wilmington's government,"
end quote.
Yeah, that's it.
And that is not just
denying what happened,
it's even worse,
it's placing the blame for it
on the victims.
Technically, you shouldn't
even call it a history book,
so much as...
And Wilmington wasn't even
the midpoint
of that century
of backsliding.
And the Laura Ingraham's
of the world
will probably say, "Yeah,
that's all ugly,
but, in a sign
of American exceptionalism,
the Civil Rights movement
ended all of that
when Martin Luther King's
dream came true."
And that is the version
that most Americans
are taught in school,
but it leaves a lot out.
In fact, take the March
on Washington.
That wasn't actually
its full name,
it was called the March
on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom.
And the economic justice
part of it was
front-and-center.
King actually grew
more outspoken about that issue
in the years that followed.
And King himself understood
why it was harder
to make progress on that front.
It didn't cost the nation
one penny
to integrate lunch counters.
(CROWD CHATTING IN AGREEMENT)
It didn't cost the nation
one penny to guarantee
the right to vote!
Now we are dealing with issues
that cannot be solved
without the nation spending
billions of dollars,
and undergoing a radical
redistribution
of economic power!
Yeah, it turns out
that Martin Luther King
had more than one dream.
And one of them
was about wealth redistribution.
So while I know
it's easy to distort
King's full legacy
down to that one
soaring speech,
point to the cast
of This is Us,
and say, "See,
we did it everyone,
everything is fixed now."
The truth is,
the Civil Rights Movement
was longer, messier,
more radical, and crucially,
was thwarted in more
of its aims
than many of us were taught
in school.
And that actually brings us
to the final point here,
which is that...
And those dots
are very much there.
Look at the black-white
wage and wealth gaps.
They are both larger now
than they were
when King gave that speech.
And our housing
and education systems
even in liberal cities,
like New York and L.A.
are still shamefully segregated.
And if you don't teach
history properly,
all you see is those effects,
and not the causes.
When the truth is,
you can draw a straight line
from the post-Civil War
return of plantation land
to former Confederates,
through the massive transfers
of land via
the Homestead Act,
mostly to white individuals,
through the growth
of the suburbs
in the 20th century, where,
redlining kept Black people
from moving
into white neighborhoods
throughout the country.
In fact, just listen
to this woman
in Levittown, Pennsylvania,
explain her objections
to a Black family
moving to town
in 1957,
with some real honesty.
We liked the advantages
that Levittown seem to offer
in comparison to other cities,
and we understood that
it was gonna be all white.
We're very happy to buy
a home here.
INTERVIEWER: Do you think
a negro family moving here
will affect the community
as a whole?
Definitely.
The whole trouble with
this integration business is
that in the end,
it probably will end up
with mixing socially.
And you will have--
Well, I think their aim
is mixed marriages
and becoming equal
with the whites.
Wow.
It is always weird
to hear someone,
whether or not they look like
summer casual Betty Crocker,
frame human beings being treated
equally as a negative.
It's like hearing someone say,
"The whole trouble with putting
graham crackers, chocolate bars,
and marshmallows together
is that we might end up
with s'mores." Yeah! Exactly.
That's a good thing.
Only a monster
wouldn't want that.
And it might not surprise you
to see that someone
was incredibly racist
in the 1950s.
But one of the problems with
the way that we teach history
is that too often it sort of
trails off
after the civil rights movement,
and when you skip over
the past half century,
you don't get to see
the protests by which
white supremacy,
instead of disappearing,
merely adapted.
And perhaps nobody made
that protest clearer than
Lee Atwater, a top Republican
campaign strategist
who worked for, among others,
Ronald Reagan
and George H.W. Bush.
Here he is spelling out
the whole game in 1981,
and I'm gonna warn you,
you're about to hear
the N-word a lot.
Holy shit.
Now, obviously he's a little
too comfortable with that word.
You tend to only hear it
come out that smoothly
in either Tarantino movies
or online forums in which
white children play
video games together.
But that is
a pretty concise history
of a certain thread in politics
for the past half century.
Which brings us all the way up
to the present day,
literally the present Wednesday
which is when
the president
of the United States,
in announcing a rollback
of an Obama era rule under
the Fair Housing Act,
sent a tweet in which
he informed...
And that is basically a campaign
promise crafted by Lee Atwater
and designed to win over
this woman who's probably dead
by now, and what's notable there
is not that Trump's being racist
which is not remotely
surprising.
It's how neatly he fits in
to a systemic racism
that's been baked into
this country from the beginning
and which will still be here
when he is gone.
And if kids aren't taught this,
what chance do they have
to understand what's happening
right now?
And obviously, you'd need to
calibrate to each age group.
No one is suggesting
playing that Lee Atwater tape
to third graders,
but it's a bit like sex ed.
You don't skip ahead
to ejaculation,
which, by the way,
is a pretty good sex tip
for anyone with a penis,
but we also don't spend
the first semester of sex ed
teaching kids
that we all dropped out
of the sky by fucking storks
because they'll later have to
unlearn that.
And I know that addressing
mistakes like these
will not be easy.
There'll be bad faith charges
that doing so is political,
although I would argue
no more political than
the choices we've made
to teach history
the way that we do now.
And, no doubt, some parents will
instinctively resist this.
Back in 2010 when Texas
was reviewing
its state's standards,
one parent made it very clear
that the main history he wanted
his kids taught
was that of
"American Exceptionalism."
The one thing I want
my kids to know
when they get out of school
about America
is that the worst day in America
beats the best day
in any other country.
(APPLAUSE)
That seems pretty easy.
It seems like it becomes
this great focus
on the negative history
of America.
Instead of saying,
okay for instance, slavery.
Instead of--
You know, looking at it
in a positive light
that Americans overcame
something as evil as slavery,
and that we're still
a great nation today
should be a testament
to the kind of American spirit
that exists in this country.
Okay. So, there's a lot
to unpack there.
First, you're worst day
in America really depends on
who you are and importantly
when you are.
There's a reason, for instance,
Marty McFly was white.
Because Black people
don't generally hang around
with John C. Calhoun look-alikes
who are obsessed with
going back to the 1950s.
And second, Americans did not
overcome slavery.
Certain Americans overcame
certain other Americans
and slavery was ended,
but whether it was overcome
is very much another matter.
And, look, while I understand
any parent wanting their kids
to be taught something
inspiring,
what he's essentially asking
for there
is for his kids
to be misinformed
and that's not gonna serve them
well when they grow up.
It's not gonna serve any of us
well
because ignoring the history
you don't like
is not a victimless act,
and a history of America
that ignores white supremacy
is a white supremacist history
of America which matters.
Because while it might seem
obvious, history isn't over yet.
It's still being written.
And you know
who understood that?
John Lewis. He's someone who's
very much a part of
American history, and he knew
the importance of
drawing a line from the past
through the present.
That might be why
one of the last things he did
before he died was visit
Black Lives Matter Plaza
in Washington.
He even wrote an op-ed
to be published posthumously,
which speaks directly to what
we've been talking about
tonight.
Just listen to this extract
read by Morgan Freeman.
MORGAN FREEMAN:
 You must also study and learn
 the lessons of history because
 humanity has been involved
 in this soul-wrenching
 existential struggle
 for a very long time.
 People on every continent
 has stood in your shoes.
 Through decades and centuries
 before you.
 The truth does not change,
 and that is why the answers
 worked out long ago
 can help you find solutions
 to the challenges of our time.
Exactly.
History, when taught well,
shows us how
to improve the world.
But history when taught poorly
falsely claims
there is nothing
to improve,
so we have to teach it better
and continue to learn it
because it's important
for all of us to listen to
the voices of history
whether they are
a call to action,
truly horrific,
or a sad mummy orgasm.
(MURMURING)
Still excellent.
That's our show.
Thank you so much for watching.
We're off next week.
Back August 16th. Good night.
