Voices In My Head (the Rick Lee James Podcast) Episode 547: A Life of John the Baptist with James F.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, and I am so glad for all of you who are listening today and who come back week after week. This is going to be a wonderful conversation today with my guest James F. McGrath, and, uh, I'm just going to give a quick intro before we get into our conversation today. He has a great new book out called Christmaker. A Life of John the Baptist. So here is a, a quick book description of this new book, which releases on June 11th, 2024. For many, John the Baptist is a footnote in the Gospels, Jesus' unkempt forerunner. But if we look closely, John emerges as a fascinating and influential religious leader in his own right. Esteemed New Testament scholar James F. McGrath turns his critical eye to overlooked details in scripture and long-neglected sources to discover who John the Baptist really was. McGrath covers the well-known events of John's life, from his miraculous conception to his execution at the hands of Herod Antipas. Along the way, he introduces key context about John's social and religious world that fleshes out John's character. John becomes a rebel son of a priest, an innovator of ritual, a mentor of Jesus. And there is far more in the book, but for right now, we're going to stop and just say Rick Lee James McGrath, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Thanks so much. You know, we've been connected online, but this is our first time having a face-to-face conversation.

Yes, for sure. So I'm very excited about that. And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make the music go on that long. I was— I hit the wrong thing this morning.

So, right. One of the reasons I think we've been connected and stayed connected is that we both don't mind there being more music at it.

Yes. Oh man, music is great. And, uh, bravo on your, your sort of, uh, song homage parody of, uh, Christmaker that to the, to the tune of Heartbreaker. Uh, that was pretty great. So, well, I, I'd love to just start today, uh, James, and just tell us a little bit about why, uh, John the Baptist inspired you to write this book. Because as we know, there are so many things that could be written about in the theology and biblical world But it takes something special for us to take the time to actually write a book about it. So just tell us some of the inspiration about this in the writing of this book.

Yeah, that probably says something about me. I like sort of underdog topics. I like underdog composers. I, you know, if it seems like somebody is doing something really interesting and important and not getting enough attention, then I like to see if I can figure out how to shine a spotlight over there. And yeah, John the Baptist in a sense is no exception. I mean, he certainly has name recognition, but I think along with that, there are lots of stereotypes and at the very least oversimplified caricatures of who he is, what he was like, things of that sort. There's a roundabout, potentially very long story of how I get interested in John the Baptist. My doctoral work was on the Gospel of John and didn't really spend a lot of time focused on John the Baptist. But he's there and very prominent. And one of the things that's striking is that you have this prologue that starts with, in the beginning was the word, right? Makes this gospel very distinctive. And I was at a point where I was trying to figure out, you know, well, why is this gospel so different, right? How do I make sense of its differentness related to the other gospels? And so was focused very much on the portrait of Jesus in that gospel. But John the Baptist is the first human being to appear, right? I mean, presumably Jesus enters into the picture as a historical individual in verse 14, right? The word became flesh. But John's already been mentioned, right? And so clearly between that and all the attention that the gospel gives to John, explaining for readers the relationship between John and Jesus was very important to this author. And that was there. It was on my radar, but not what I was focusing most of my attention on then. Also became aware, as one does when one does a deep dive into the Gospel of John, that in the history of scholarship on the Gospel of John, there was a time when texts from a group known as the Mandaeans were plugged in as background. And a lot of people today haven't heard of this group, but they are the last ancient Gnostic group to survive down to the present day continuously. And they consider themselves followers of John the Baptist, but not of Jesus. And so scholars have sometimes thought, well, these might be, you know, followers of John the Baptist, and it might be this group that authors like the Gospel of John— the author of the Gospel of John— were, you know, right? These are the kinds of things that they were writing against, potentially. And so they were plugged in as background but used uncritically. And then there was a a swing of the pendulum, a backlash against that and saying, no, these sources are too late. And we've gotten to the point where they're largely dismissed and ignored. And that also grabbed my interest. It was not something I focused on when I did my work on the Gospel of John, but it was there percolating and came back later and got my attention as a group that deserves a lot more attention than they get. And so in this project, my interest in who Jesus is and historical figure of Jesus and things like that and my interest in this group sort of converge because I think that those are our two most important sources about John that have been relatively neglected. On the one hand, we have these sources that are late enough that, you know, we need to use them critically. We need to ask, you know, questions about how much has changed over the centuries and things like that, but they shouldn't be ignored. And then we have Jesus and the close connection between John and Jesus means that I think we can use Jesus to fill in our portrait of John more than we have. And the immediate response to some will be like, well, we should be looking to John to fill in our portrait of Jesus, not, you know, vice versa. But I think that by not giving John the attention that he deserves as a figure in his own right, there's a real risk that we'll misunderstand Jesus, right? Because the way we understand the relationship between the two is crucial to understanding both of them together as well as separately.

Yeah, well, thank you for that explanation. Especially, I'm glad you mentioned the Mandaeans, which I kept confusing in my mind. I wanted to say Mandalorians, you know, of course. But, you know, it was, as I was reading through, that was, that was a new one to me. Like, I didn't realize that there was this group of people who were like followers of John the Baptist and not Jesus. So they come up multiple times in the book. So I think that readers are really going to find that to be not only interesting, but probably new information to lot of people because I'm, you know, I'm, I'm just about finished with a master's level course in theology and as a student. And as far as I remember, this is the first time I remember hearing about them. So, you know, I'm pretty sure that this is going to be something that's, that people find very interesting. So I appreciate you bringing them up. And again, they come up several times. And another thing that you write about, not necessarily related to this, but I really found it interesting, the comparison that you made between John the Baptist and a homeless man pretty early on in your book, uh, to highlight John's often overlooked significance. I, I wonder if for our listeners today, just to kind of bring them in a little bit more on this, can you elaborate on why you chose this comparison between John the Baptist and a homeless person and, and what some of its implications are?

Sure. First, I will just say very quickly, never apologize for mentioning Mandalorians.

Yeah, very good.

But, um, yeah, we might come back to them.

Okay, very good.

A Mandayan that I know actually say, hey, they're doing all this thing 'living water.' I bet you they know about our religion. That was just fascinating, the way they sort of find themselves in that. But yeah, so what I suggest is that, you know, precisely because John is often envisaged as this person who's dressed very shabbily, right, is, you know, and so looks like a derelict, you know, sort of individual that you might encounter on a street corner. Um, you know, I grew up in New York City, and, you know, that was a sort of And he's also familiar in the way that, you know, if there's somebody that we pass on the street every day, you know, they become familiar to us. And yet if that person suddenly vanished and the police were looking for them or something and they asked us, you know, can you describe the person, we might struggle, right? Because we were familiar because we passed them often, but we didn't pay them that much direct attention, didn't really look at the details of their facial features or things like that. And in the same way, I feel like John, we've, we've passed him a lot, right? We've, we, so we know he's there. We have a big impression, not always an accurate impression, but at least we have an impression. But if we're pressed to say, okay, so what's this guy like? You know, what do we really think he's like? You know, what's this person describe him to be? It would be at best, I think, some general generalities and stereotypes and not a lot of not a lot of meaningful detail. And so it's been suggested that it's not actually possible to really write a genuine biography of John the Baptist, at least in the sense that historians try to do that, right? Anyone can write a fictional biography of anybody, but I'm trying to do one that's actually engaging with historical sources and informed by them. And I think that we can figure out more about John than we have. We just haven't given him the attention that he's due.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate that so much, just your sharing that. And, and one thing that I like is the way that you challenge, like, common misconceptions about his appearance. And just thinking again, I want our listeners just to kind of ruminate on what you said for a moment about we, we may not recognize if we were to, like, have to describe a homeless person that we saw, because that's how little attention we pay in our minds. I think we just lump them all together. You know, like, I don't know, ratty coat, probably sitting by the roadside, whatever. And I think it's important for us to stop and think, not only for our purposes of John the Baptist, but also to think like, wow, how many times have I passed without giving detail or actively— where we might actively listen to other people in our lives, we don't stop to actively listen to them. So for me, that kind of just hit my heart, John the Baptist aside. So I appreciated that comparison that you made. But in the book, you also do— you challenge common misconceptions misconceptions about John's appearance, particularly regarding his clothing. And I wonder why you think that misconceptions persist and what you find to support like a reinterpretation. And maybe give us some of the misconceptions too, if you don't mind, because I, I know I always think of him, you know, in a certain sort of like furry vest or something, you know, in my mind, I always go there in some ways, but just I'd love to hear you elaborate a little bit more on that.

Yeah. And so you ask what people— if they don't think homeless person, they think hagrid, right?

Yeah.

You know, it's like— and the hair might be similar. We'll come back to that in a second. But we're told that he was dressed in clothing made of camel hair. Right. And I think already in the A to Z book, you know, I tried to use this image to start mentioning because I was already thinking ahead to the next book project at that point. The depictions you get, it's he's dressed in a camel hide, right? Yeah. And he's this big burly guy that looks like he's, you know, this— whether he found a dead camel and, you know, cut it to pieces, whether he wrestled the camel to death with his bare hands and tore it asunder. You know, there are some interesting Samson comparisons too, but he just has this thing wrapped around him. He looks like a caveman.. And so much so that, yeah, I can't even remember if I, you know, I know I've made this point in a talk I gave about John the Baptist not that long ago. I can't remember if I even worked this into the book or not, but was looking for stereotypical images in order to address this point in a talk. And so did a Google search for images of John the Baptist and got all these stereotypical images. But one of the images that Google gave me because it thought it looked similar was Michael York in One Million BC. Actually a caveman, right? So he's playing a caveman. And Google was saying, yeah, this is a similar image and probably belongs in this collection and is relevant to you. And so Google's AI algorithm says, yes, this is our stereotype. He looks like a caveman. And camel hair clothing means clothing made from that, right? You can still get camel hair suits. I think when I gave the talk and emphasized this, I think I had Remington Steele from back in the '80s dressed in a camel hair suit. Beige sort of thing. And not suggesting that he was wearing one of those, but camel hair clothing, you know, it's a coarser fabric. You know, it's— and I think he did this because there was this tradition of the Prophet Elijah in particular, but prophets in general wearing this rough clothing. Right. And so he was, you know, perhaps cosplaying, as I might put it, the Prophet Elijah, but at the very least signaling through his clothing, saying, I stand in this long line of prophets. And what I'm here to do, what I'm about, is what they were about. And if we look at those figures, particularly Elijah, but not just him, these are people who challenged rulers, who challenged religiosity, who made an impact, and who are in a lot of ways responsible for our understanding of and what the religion of ancient Israel, and then subsequently of Judaism, and then eventually Christianity influenced by these dreams. Comes to be, right? These are in many respects the driving force, the sort of poetic creative thinkers and feelers and emotional movers of this tradition. And John, I think, understood himself to be called to play a similar role in his time and signaled that even through his choice of clothing.

Yeah, well, and I love how you, you mentioned that about like Remington Steele, who maybe some of our younger listeners are not going to know who that is, but I remember watching it as a kid and And, you know, he's very, very suave, you know, debonair, you know, person that wears suits and things. And I appreciate the way that that— whether that's accurate to what John was wearing or not, I appreciate the way it challenges our notions of like, maybe we're thinking caveman, but maybe it wasn't, you know, and the idea that this is a very prophetic look. And I think about, too, all the ways that today, especially young preachers, I think when they're starting out, they're a little bit unsure about what their identity is. And sometimes one thing that they will do is, well, the person that I watched growing up, I dressed like them, you know, so I'll wear the suit and tie in the same way. And they may find that later on that doesn't suit them. But, but I do feel like there is a way that we, we do emulate those people that, that we respect, that we honor, and the ones whose voice that we're trying to speak in, we often try to emulate in that way. So I just really appreciate the way that you're helping us see that about John the Baptist. In this prophetic message. And, and going from that into Jesus, I, I just really think that the connection for a lot of our listeners, this is where it's going to really like, uh, just kind of hit their imagination and, and go with it. We often think about, uh, okay, Jesus and John were cousins, and then we stopped thinking a lot about it. But you really emphasize this, this interconnectedness of John and Jesus, and you suggest that understanding John is, is actually crucial in understanding who Jesus was, which makes those of us who follow Jesus— we really ought to perk our ears up at that because, okay, if it helps us to know Jesus more, this really is important. So could you just go a little deeper into that, um, maybe the relationships and their implications for interpreting Jesus's teachings and actions that are connected to John?

Yeah, so one of my previous books called What Jesus Learned from Women. And I remember giving an interview about that after it came out, and the person asked me, so what's next? What Jesus learned from men? And I was really looking ahead to this project. And so I said, well, actually, but there's a sense in which the doctrines of the person of Jesus often actually, despite having in the creeds, you know, fully human as an article of faith, Yeah, in practice, when the human mind doesn't know how to fit divinity and humanity together, lets the divinity completely overshadow and even nullify the human. And so there's a sense in which that too is a natural sort of precursor to this project, thinking about Jesus as someone who would have had to learn, you know, his native tongue from his mother and from his parents and have these kinds of human experiences. And so I think that once we get to Jesus as an adult, right, he goes and is baptized by John and spends time as part of his movement. One of the key bits of information that the Gospel of John gives us that the others don't is that there was a period of time when John was not imprisoned and was active when Jesus was also active and would have at least been perceived as part of that movement.

Hmm.

And when we consider baptism as this thing that becomes so much a part of the Christian tradition that's taken for granted that we never ask, how did anyone ever come up with the idea to do this?

Yeah.

The key emphases of Jesus' teaching, right, on, you know, everything from justice to, you know, judgment and being depicted in terms of, you know, holding accountable the tree that hasn't borne fruit, separating the wheat and the chaff. All of this imagery, right, finds at least some of its sort of seed in John the Baptist. Right. And we see it in him and in just those few little things that are attributed to him. We already see so much that Jesus then elaborates on. And so between that and the way that Jesus says, you know, among those born of women, there is none greater than John, I think we have a clear indication that John was the decisive influence on Jesus. At least on the human level. Right. And when Jesus challenge— sorry, when Jesus's authority is challenged by religious leaders of his time, he doesn't mention any other figure apart from John the Baptist. Right. Nobody is associated with Jesus in the way that John is. And so I think that Jesus's own words indicate that understanding him, understanding his mission, his teaching, bringing John into the picture will at the very least help. Right? It may be crucial and essential, but at the very least it will help.

Yeah, well, I think that's fascinating too. And I'm— this may be an incorrect way to state it, but it almost feels like there's this sense in which as, as Jesus discipled others, there was a sense in which Jesus was discipled by John, you know. I mean, it really does kind of have that, that sense and feel to me. And so I really appreciate it. Again, a lot of this is things that have probably been there so long, but we just, uh, sometimes we need someone like yourself to come and help us kind of look at it from a new angle and a new point of view and to try to see different things. Um, and again, I, I don't know how often, um, I have kind of, you know, once we get past the baptism, we just never think about John again, you know, the, the when he's in prison and beheaded and things like that. But I, I love the way that you brought things out. So there must have been things that in your research, insights that you found that, that maybe were surprising to you or maybe kind of were exciting to you. Um, I'm always interested to know from authors, you know, like, like, what is it that for you that you found in the writing of this book, maybe one or two things, it might just be one, it might be that in-depth, um, but something that for you was like, wow, this was a new insight that that for me, even approaching the text as many times as I have as a professor, as a Christian, like this was a new thing to me. I'd love to hear just a little bit of that from you today if you don't mind.

And actually this project, so I have a bigger book that's going into a lot more detail. It's not a book like Christmaker, but just a bigger, you know, more detailed, more footnoted version of it. But I knew that I was going to be doing some things in trying to depict the life of John the Baptist here, where even things like using Mandaean sources or some of my interpretations of some of the details, academics were going to want more detail than you give in a general audience biography.

Sure.

And so we'll have that sort of collection of studies. And there's so many things. There are things that I thought, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to end up, you know, I'm going to try and argue this case and ended up being persuaded that the reverse was true. You know, and things of that sort. And so it's hard to know which ones to pick, but one that is something that just— it's less that I discovered something that I'd never seen before, is that I saw something that I'd seen for a long time in a new light in light of the research. And that's the wider impact of John on others in that century. So after, after Jesus, right, we get the sense from, you know, not just from the Mandaeans, but also from Christians who— Christian authors who mention followers of John the Baptist, who view him as, you know, the only one that needs to be their focus of their attention, who don't have not become Christian and things like that, that there was a wider impact of John the Baptist than just what funneled into Christianity. And the Jewish historian Josephus mentions John the Baptist and Jesus, doesn't associate them, but gives us an impression of John as an influential figure in his time. And then also mentions these other prophets and, you know, or would-be prophets, figures who come along. And each of them echoes some, someone from the Jewish scriptures, you know, what Christians call the Old Testament. Each one predicts a sign that will accompany them. And historians for a long time have been comparing these figures with John the Baptist and with Jesus, especially with Jesus.

Mm-hmm.

And what surprises me with hindsight is that we've been satisfied with the suggestion that this was just the spirit of the age, right? And all these figures kind of look similar because that was just a thing in the first century or something like that. Mm-hmm. And the truth is, if we think about it, when figures are very, very similar, we usually find a connection. And historians at the very least will look for a connection. It's, you know, there was a spirit of the age when Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were practicing sort of nonviolent resistance to injustices in their societies. But if we actually turn to the sources and look at the history, we discover Oh, it's not just that there was a spirit of the age. Martin Luther King was influenced by what was going on in India and was taking that and was applying it to his own context.

Wow.

And so realizing that these figures whom Josephus says, you know, they were not violent revolutionaries, right? And yet he says they nonetheless, you know, they don't have clean hands when it comes to the war against Rome because they were part of this apocalyptic fervor, this expectation that God was going to deliver the people.. And so I became persuaded that the reason they're so similar is because John the Baptist was an influence on them. And that as some thought, Jesus having been crucified, and there being, you know, his followers were saying he's going to return and will carry out the things that were expected, but that hasn't happened yet, that others from that movement, others who are influenced by John, would have stepped into that role. And so realizing that John the Baptist has an influence on Jesus, and thus on Christianity, has an influence on Gnosticism, but also has an influence on the Judaism of his time beyond those two areas that have sometimes gotten attention. And so John was just such an influential figure in his time, and I don't think any historians previously have really done justice to that. And I'm not sure I've done justice to it, but I'm trying to in this project.

Yeah, well, it's, it's definitely a much deeper look than I've ever taken. At John the Baptist for sure. So, and maybe that's not saying much, but I have appreciated it and gleaned from, from your writing, and not just from in this book either. You, you always share so many incredible things, and I am definitely going to be thinking more deeply about John the Baptist and, and going to be considering him more as I look at these passages in scripture for sure. Um, we're starting to get to the end of our, our time together. Unfortunately, that, that half hour goes quickly every week, but, uh, I have a couple more questions. One of them is just going to be for fun, because I know that you and I share a love of geeky sci-fi things. So we're going to maybe talk about that a little bit as we end the podcast today. But I would love to know from you, just as the author, I think every author when they write, just like songwriters when they make songs, there's, there's something that they don't necessarily want to tell their readers and their listeners what they need to take from it. But I think that authors especially have something in mind that they hope people who read their material will come away from it. What is one thing that, that you really hope people who read this book will come away from it with?

Yeah, and I, I tried to, you know, I, I've long since left behind the idea that one can be sort of an impartial historian, you know. It could be you can come to these texts and be unbiased, as they say, right? We have biases, you know. If you are a Christian or you're you know, have an anti-Christian stance. You know, oftentimes people in either of those categories think that they're unbiased and the other folks are overly biased.

Right.

Those are biases.

Right.

And sometimes, you know, I mean, biases distort. Right. But you think about a magnifying glass.

Right.

Or a microscope. Right. It's a lens, you know, telescope, and it distorts. But sometimes it helps us bring some things into focus, even as it might also make us miss other things entirely. Right.. And so I have stopped pretending that I'm, you know, an unbiased observer of John the Baptist. Nonetheless, I always try to be fair and recognize that precisely because I have biases, I need to ask, what are my biases? Are they coloring things? And so I tried to be very skeptical of John as a figure who was treating the Bible in a very sort of selective way, recognizing that that, you know, there's, there's, there's a core that, you know, if some of the details don't fit with that core emphasis, then you, yeah, then you don't do the, those little detail things, right? Or you at least challenge them, maybe depart from them later on as you, you know, further explore these core values. And we get that in the teaching of Jesus, and I think it's something that goes back further to John. And so I do, towards the end of the book, I think right in the, just like the final page or two, try to suggest, you know, if we're thinking about John's impact and just how global it has been and continues to be, then what might, you know, what might it look like to try to not just study that historically, but think about, you know, what might John have wanted his impact to be? And I think that, you know, not, you know, not using the Bible as a basis for, you know, excluding, for injustice, for various other things, I think those kinds of things, even though they sound very modern, right, they, they've been coming to embrace those things has involved rediscovering things that we sometimes, you know, in our Christian and other traditions have neglected, you know, but that's been there. You read the prophets that inspired John and they're already talking about how the rich are treating the poor, about they're envisaging a time when people who are excluded, the Gentiles, the eunuchs, whoever it might be, would be welcomed into the people of you know, not perhaps into the people of God, but at the very least would come up and join in worshiping the God of Israel. And I think that John was that sort of figure for his time. And I think therefore his message, you know, is a timely one and one that will not just be of historical interest, you know, an antiquarian interest for people today.

Yeah, that's for sure. Well, as they say, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does echo, I think is what it is. Or it rhymes. Maybe that's what it is. Something like that. So I do think there is a— there is an importance to looking at the life of John the Baptist and maybe even what it looks like us for today, for the way that we engage the world and as, as followers of Christ. And, um, and, and he was the Christ follower, even though we see in this book that in many ways Christ followed him too, you know. So I, I really love, uh, your reflections and, and the insights that you have brought about in this book. So I just— first, before we go into our final just-for-fun question, I just want to applaud you one more time and congratulate you on, uh, release that's coming up on June 12. And I hope that a lot of people will gain new insight in the way I have through this book. And we'll look forward to the next one when it's coming out to the kind of companions along with it here for sure. And by the way, for all everybody listening, hopefully, if it works the way the technology is supposed to, from wherever you listen to this podcast, you should be able to go into the show notes and actually just click on a link that I'll have available there to go right to James's new book, Christmaker. So hopefully, that'll take some of the guesswork out of it. You won't even have to do it in the search bar. You can just push the button and go straight to the book. So, okay, so our final question today, James, you and I both, we kind of share a love for all things geeky and sci-fi comic booky type stuff. So this is kind of fun to get to just have a fun question today. And I know you've actually been known from time to time to give a lecture or presentation in a Star Trek uniform. So that already separates you from other theologians. Maybe you're, maybe you're a bit of of our John the Baptists today. You know, you're just taking it in a Trekkie route for that, for sure. I just love to know, you know, uh, the question that I sent you in advance is, what are you nerding out about currently? I just love to know if there's anything that you find, um, kind of fun and interesting that you're kind of into right now.

Yeah, uh, it's been fascinating. You know, I turn— I, I love what I do, as you could probably tell. You know, I find figures like John the Baptist interesting, Yeah. And I turn the things that I love into work, which is, you know, maybe not— it doesn't sound as fun and as nice, but it means I get to continue doing things, exploring things I find interesting.

Yeah.

And sci-fi is no exception, right? I've managed to teach classes on this and give talks about it, write, you know, books on this and articles and book chapters on the subject. And so that gives me a good excuse for trying to keep up with the latest sci-fi. Often that involves audiobooks. That's the way I've found get sort of novels and, you know, compendia, you know, anthologies and things like that into my reading when otherwise I might not make time for them. But in terms of watching, you know, I've been watching, you know, Doctor Who is back on, and so I'm watching that. I'm watching Star Trek: Discovery, which has taken a very interesting sort of spiritual turn in this latest season and is exploring some things along those lines, some big questions. They might still ruin it in the end. So we'll see what the payoff is always at the end of the season, how they conclude those things. But it's certainly been, been exploring in interesting ways, ways that can, I think, usefully generate conversations about important questions. And then I've started recently, got from the public library, wanted to watch the TV series Halo because I had students in my class who drew to my attention that there are some interesting religious themes in that game. And so don't I don't have time, the time to devote, you know, I gather it's a game that if I were to start playing it, I would be playing it for endless hours, uh, that I don't think I should devote to that. But I decided to get the TV show and start watching that. I've only watched one episode, but, um, yeah, uh, you'll probably see me posting online if it's, if I find it interesting.

Very good, very good. I, I too have seen that one, uh, advertised, but I haven't had a chance to dive in, and I've never played the game, so I'm a little bit behind on that. But that's great. So, well, you know, I've been watching, I think I have seen every episode of every Star Trek show of every series. And so I follow Discovery. But I find it very frustrating week after week. I affectionately say I hate watch it sometimes because I feel like they set up a very interesting premise. And as you said, sometimes at the end, it's like, ah, why did you go to that direction with it or whatever? But I do, I have always loved Star Trek and it's one of my, One of my things that usually on Thursday morning at breakfast, because it comes out, you know, usually Thursday, I try to find some time to sit down and watch the new Star Trek episode whenever I have a chance to do that. So it's always fun. But well, James McGrath, thank you so much for being one of the voices in my head this week. I really appreciate it. And I wish you all the best with your new book. Thank you so much for being here and taking the time this week. Week.

Oh, it's been a pleasure. It's always a pleasure when you get to interact online. It's been a pleasure actually having a face-to-face conversation finally. And so thank you for your interest in my book, for this chance to talk a bit about it. And I guess the one thing I— other thing I should say is live long and prosper.

Live long and prosper.