your support. without our loyal community of book lovers, authors like mike and alexis, we wouldn't be here today and we are so truly appreciative of all of you. we are thrilled to have mike duncan with the book, hero of two worlds. mike duncan is one of the most popular history podcasters in the world and author of the "new york times" best selling book, the storm before the storm. it rms a legendary landmark. duncan's ongoing series revolutions explores the great political revolution that have driven the course of modern history. joining make in conversation tonight is alexis coe, the presidential historian, "the new york times" best selling author of you never forget your first. and a murder in memphis, soon to be a motion picture. she appeared in the washington series on the history channel and she regularly appears on msnbc and cnn. she has contributed to the new yorker, "the new york times" and many others. without further ado, please join me in welcoming mike and alexis to the stage. >> i know all of have picked this up. if i can encourage you to overspend, i would recommend you buying a second copy or getting it from your library. one of the most rewarding things i've heard is that book on the topic can enable you to talk to family members and friends and other people who you haven't been able to connect with on american history. i joined a family book crew recently. i want to say congratulations on the book but also congratulations on finding one of the very few rich unproblematic white men. it is nearly impossible. so start out with well done, good choice. >> god bless you for having it mostly right. >> but he didn't die for having it mostly right. and so he's not a martyr and he's also, he hasn't disappeared into oblivion. i don't know what that's like because as was reviewed, i have written about a murderer and i have written about washington who is not an uncomplicated figure when you talk about, when you say hero. so what is that like to study someone who is almost like, you have to pull back a little bit. >> yeah. and i mean, in the course of doing both the history of rome and revolutions, i have met many, many different kinds of people, right? like julius caesar, augustus, these guys, they're great men in the sort of capital g, capital m mode. also did horrific things and were able to be personally cruel to even close family members in addition to committing acts of genocide as they were running around being capital g, capital m great men. i've written about napoleon. so one of the things that sort of low key drew me to lafayette and why i wanted to write about him more is that he seemed more like a good man than a great man. people have asked me, did you write a great man biography? i feel like i wrote a good man biography. he never quite got tom supreme level that even washington got to or napoleon got to or his contemporaries got to because he didn't have that really ruthless streak to be narcissistic or so blind to the sort of damage that he was causing by his actions that he could go out and do the kinds of things that are required to make your mark in history. so he made his mark in history. and i think he was a transformative figure. but along the way, he was mostly a good person who was trying to make the world he lived in a better place and i think that was one of my sort of thoughts about him going into it that was more or less confirmed as i went through the details. there's stuff in there, oh, man! you shouldn't have done that. but i think in the main, he comes out very, very well. >> that's a distinction when people go really far into the great man history, it is often because they feel its offensiveness and not something that i ever felt when i was reading this book. when you had something disappointing, you just delivered it straight. you weren't apologizing and you weren't aggrandizing him. what was your relationship with him like over the years? you spent so much time with him. >> he's my friend. i heard once before i sat down to write a biography, somebody said if you write a biography, you wind up either loving them or hating them. and i don't know how true that is. if it is one or the other, i basically like spending time with this guy. i've read. so of his correspondence. so much of the things said about him by people close to him, people far away from him. he had a self-deprecating sense of humor. he wanted to be taken seriously but never took himself too seriously. he was willing to have a little humility and admit his own mistakes. him having that personality, and having that character, it made it easy to describe the bat things about him. if he read the book that i wrote, the things that i said like this right here. i'm not too sure that you should have done this. or this is a sad ending to this story. this good thing you tried to do. i think he would have said, yeah, i know. i feel that myself. because nobody is going to be completely perfect. certainly, i haven't lived my life mistake-free. if anybody wrote a by aography of me, they would final things, oh, mike, really? so i think that's what it is. i spent so much time with him for three, three and a half years that i don't really, i'm not sick of him. i still enjoy reading about him. i still enjoy talking about him. i've loved talking about this book. so obviously, there is some through line to him that makes him an appealing person. it was very present in his life at the time and i think just has kind of continued on through the years. >> i think one of, it stays with you. it feels like what i would imagine sending a child off to college. they're out there in the world. you saw them living their lives. they look happy. they're meeting new people. but you are thinking about them and even evolving in your thinking about them and that's really interesting. something else i really like that, i don't think, i don't want to speak for you but i don't think you consciously followed or, i don't know. tried to portray the rules of biography when it came to great men. it seems like you naturally just told the story so you allowed yourself the freedom to engage with them as an actual person, a person in history but a person who was once a teen. no one wants to share their letters and diaries from when they were a teen. >> right. looking at it as a teenager, it's great. i would love to write a sitcom about him as a teenager. >> i was thinking -- hold that thought. i was thinking that you often sort of will use these metaphors and analogies that you don't find in traditional biograpies and people notice. there were moments like, i called the revolution washington's presidency and then he had to like take the baby to term. make sure that the baby lived to survive on its own and that's why he had to serve as president. was that natural to you? or did you think it's always been described like that but it seems to me to be more acceptable and make more sense the other way. >> when i sat down to write it, i did have, i did want to not just make it a sort of, how did i put it at the time? i didn't want to write a social studies report of lafayette. that's what i was actively avoiding trying to do. just deliver a social studies report about lafayette. that did the work and gave the facts and analyzed his place in history. then just leave it at that. and i've gotten a lot out of biographies that have been written in that style. in what i was trying to do, i did want to give it more of a literary quality. and aim for metaphors and i am a for ways of describing things or trying to turn phrases that you would expect to find, like a novel. or, a lot of the places i went to for inoperation is, there were a lot of things i was trying to grab. there are these gentlemen biographies that came out of like the 1910s and the 1920s. i read this one about jose antonio, one of the spanish american revolutionaries. and it was by this guy who was like a sometimes adventurer, like big game hunter/member of parliament/navigator who wrote books on the side. and the way that some of their language was used in those books. i kind of like it. like i'm not going on appropriate rate your attitudes necessarily. but the language and the way you're using language i thought was very lively and interesting. and trying to bring that into the book. and i think it succeeded for the most part in what i was attempting to do. i don't think it is a social studies report about lafayette. >> definitely not. wouldn't that be fun if that was a requirement of our social studies? okay. so now we need to hear a little about lafayette as a teen. and may i suggest that you write a group biography teens of the revolution. >> it's called the guillotines. of course it is. don't worry. it exists. >> beautiful, beautiful. with john quincy adams having all his adventures in europe while his dad is going alone, lafayette around versailles. give us the teen story. >> so lafayette comes, so his back story is that he is like this rustic noble, right? he's a rich orphan who grew up in what is the equivalent of the sticks. he was a lord. he lived in the manor house. he lived in the big house in a small village. but he's from just a small village, even today, not a particularly populated part of france. he moves to paris and winds up moving into one of the richest and most powerful families in france. they're basically second only to the bourbon dynasty, the royal family themselves in terms of the wealth and power and importance and place. and lafayette enters this world and it is just, he just doesn't quite fit in. his manners are a bit more bumbling. he very clearly went through a growth spurt where he was physically awkward as he's going through puberty and transitioning into someone -- he was kind of a bigger guy. and so he comes into this world and he has to hang with basically like the rich kids. like the rich click in school. this is kind of a tale that we're all very familiar with. it is somebody who has come into some rich high school and is now suddenly trying to hang out with the jockss and the head cheerleader, marie antoinette. he gets falling down drunk and becomes the focus of jokes. there are a couple sources where he does dance with marie antoinette and steps on her feet a couple times and she's laughing at him. he becomes this awkward laughing stock in this set of people. and you can imagine rich, super rich, super powerful teenagers have always, they're kind of the same wherever you find them. the meanness that goes along with that, the jibes and the gossip and all of that takes him down. it is part of what moves him out of that scene because of how uncomfortable he was. and it is very strange that when he finally feels like he's comfortable. it is in somewhat crummy valley forge is where he as a person finally begins to feel comfortable. even though he was living in probably the most comfortable place on earth in the 18th century, which is versailles and he didn't like it there. >> it's interesting. you bring up, washington, lafayette were good friends. almost family. and lafayette, of course, lived with washington for a while. sometimes though, they're so different. you talk about lafayette losing himself in public. washington would never. at the same time they have, and their thoughts on slavery, very different. but they do have a lot in common. which is that they both had to marry rich, fell in love with their partner, some good partners. and also, felt most at home in incredibly uncomfortable situations. >> yeah. and that's something that i do think is true of both of them. by the time they get together, washington, he does marry into money. and washington grew up very used to being in a rustic setting, right? he was comfortable tromping through woods and comfortable sort of enduring the hardships. what he was up to as a young militia officer before and during and after the french and indian war. we in europe would call the seven years war. but they both, and lafayette had that, too. had that ability. he grew up tromping around in woods and tromping around in the hills and forests and both of them had a kind of physical endurance and an ability, a willingness and a desire to put themselves in difficult circumstances and endure them. so even though washington winds up as like one of the richest people in the colonies. if he wanted to, washington could have spent his life enormously pampered, right? the same is true for lafayette. he could have spent his life enormously pampered and neither one ever wanted that. they wanted to go out on campaign. they preferred to be like, well, it's 20 below but i'll stand here in my coat and endure this. even though washington did it with stoicism. and even though washington wasn't able to project quite that level of stoicism, he still enjoyed being able to prove that he could do all this stuff. he maybe couldn't keep up guzzling wine with french aristocrats but he could absolutely keep one a frozen winter in valley forge and not really ever complain about it. that's a true thing about him. i think that he was much more comfortable enduring hardship than he was just sort of kicking around in a life of pleasure which i think is mostly true of washington, too. at least the things that they set out, the things that they kept aiming for always put them there. >> absolutely. washington was more, i think because they both needed money but lafayette had a bit more of the perks that washington felt were denied to him. a little more invested, let's say bigger, invested in his home and when your wealth is invested in people. before we go there, again, another thing they have in common is, no one is going to totally debate that with washington, that he was a hero. not considered a great statesman, not considered great thinkers, they're sort of, their contribution was to be born during the right time for their particular inclination. and that they worked hard. that's what they're celebrated for. i push back against that in my biography of washington because i feel like he was completely ruled by the public court of opinion is so important to him during the revolution. he's actively thinking about setting up america as a country to enter the scene and look stable. he is inventive, a quick thinker. i would argue he is a little better at all that, maybe he would be on this battlefield. do you think that's an unfair thing to put lafayette there as well? >> in the sense that lafayette and washington, too, were surrounded by some pretty genius level people, right? like is washington an intellect compared to like alexander hamilton or thomas jefferson? no. but that doesn't make george washington like a tree stump when it comes to like his intellectual capacity. and i think the same is true for lafayette. when you talk about the people who were running around late 18th century france, like -- this is the enlightenment. these are world historical geniuses that are operating at a very high intellectual level. and i think it is true that lafayette is not hanging up there, well, i don't know, maybe not mirabelle. but i don't think that means that he was a dunce or he constantly made mistakes or he was in over his head. i push back against the notion that lafayette was in over his head which is something that a lot of people say about him. was he in a situation where anybody would have been in over their head? yeah. i think mostly that's what it is. he's trying to accomplish something. if we move to the french revolution now. he's trying to maintain order in revolutionary paris in 1789, 1790, 1791. there are very few people who could have done that job and not wound up being ejected from the revolution the way lafayette was. so i think that he was, like lafayette was a very bright guy. a very nimble guy. he too was very aware of public symbols, of public perception of him, of how to present stuff. and lafayette is also underrated. he gives the tri-color, the flag, the uniforms, the national guard, all of these things become the permanent symbols of the revolution. lafayette is the one that gave this to everybody. so clearly he knew something was going on. so like, the thing that i will finish with this is that he doesn't write any great treaties. he doesn't write any great books. but you know, he mostly succeeded at what he was trying to accomplish. and that is not something that can be said for most people that he was also around. >> he survived many years in a french prison. i know, i love a period drama. i will watch the works, it doesn't matter. i will find something to engage with. and something to really take joy in even if i think it is terribly done. but is it a little bit hard that with the popularity of lafayette also come lynn manuel miranda's conception of him like lofty frenchman, like the jfk of frenchmen. he was a young man with a young wife. so break that down for us. what would you sort of tell us to be wary of while enjoying it? i think of that constantly. >> the thing about hamilton, just when it came time for me to pitch a biography of lafayette, the fact that hamilton existed made it very easy for people who were in the public. so the fact that shows us that it was such a cultural phenomena, that it brings people out into the forefront. when i said i'll writing a biography of lafayette, instead of who is that? i've never heard of that, people would say, lafayette from hamilton. i love that guy. he was great. that made my life very easy as a biographer. it still to this day does. so yeah. it's like an over the top exaggeration of what a french teenager would probably be acting like. but i have to tell you, you know, a lot of us didn't make it into the books. i was trying to move through his whole life instead of just dwelling on his exploits in the united states. lafayette did very well for himself in the united states. lafayette was a virile 19-year-old, 20-year-old, 21-year-old who was very far away from his wife. he was not particularly faithful to adrienne during the american independence. there are lots of anecdotes about him. he's at some boarding house. he come downstairs and you know, somebody is like, how did you sleep? and he said well, her bed was a bit short. when he gets caught out on baron hill, he almost gets captured by one a general in one of the first campaigns. he's in bed with a probably local prostitute is what he is doing at that point. so lafayette did quite well. he enjoyed his time in the united states as a dashing french officer and he made the most of it. so it's like, is what's going on in hamilton completely made up? was he some very reserved, like i'm super faith. >> no. he was a french teenager who looked awfully sharp in a uniform and knew it. >> and he's probably not wearing purple velvet but not far from it. >> yeah. he's often described as a clothes horse. he likes being, in terms the, when he got into frivolous spending, the big thing that he would frivolously spend on was his clothes. so even that is like, he doesn't look like the joker but he, you know, he looked good. >> that's the thing that we should emphasize. they loved being in their tents in the wilds of ohio, they very much loved to look good. and washington loved the black velvet suits and they were always bringing up, the biggest difference is they had their own stories with their rich wives and the suggestion it was unlikely. it's what so many presidential homes want their subject to be. he wasn't perfect. he wasn't an angel. talk to me about his evolution. this is probably one of the things that i changed the most in my thinking about him before i went into the book and as i was researching the book. the thing that is said about lafayette is the thing is he was consistent. he started believing one thing and he stuck with it his entire life. he identified with this word and this concept of liberty. that is consistent. he didn't start his life as an abolitionist. he didn't start his life in democracy and for most of his life he's not really ever like an out and out small d democrat. by the end of his life like in 1832 and 1833 he is giving speeches because i'm rich, that doesn't mean i should be allowed to vote. every step he's looking at the status quo and trying to figure out what here can be made better. what can we reform and what can we improve on. he was never going to -- i contrast you get to the end of the book who is like, for us an obscure french politician but was a major figure in french history who had a rigid idea of what things needed to be. he didn't want to go further than that. >> it's funny. complexity is not a liability. >> there's a great moment he's writing to john adams where he's the ambassador great britain it's like send me a crate of books. i kind of think that slavery is bad. send me every book that's been written because i want to read them all because i've got this suspicion in the back of my head that maybe slavery is something that's not compatible with liberty but i need to learn more about it. going around not burning and late at night with lafayette. he owns hundreds of people. it was his longest. think about what it would look like for america. maybe we'll go laugh on some property. washington writes back you're so tweet. i'd love it. you're such a good person. let's talk about this when you visit next time. how did he reconcile this great love and add ration he had for washington? it wasn't a deal breaker but he struggled. >> his relationship with those, like not just washington who is obviously the closest like washington is the most powerfully present. i actually wrote that lafayette is always trying to emulate washington in every day way. washington is sinking back and not following through on his moral duty as a human being. this is true of -- he's very close friends with jefferson. he's going to be close friends with madison. he's going be close friends with james monroe. it's one of those things where you've gone through a lot with people and you do form these very, very close connections that then your thinking goes off in a different direction from theirs and lafayette has spent his whole life hoping his friendship with these people and his connections to them would ultimately convince them to change their ways. i think some people could reasonably criticize him for that. slavery is an evil in the world. when they said no, you kept going to their house and hanging out with them and treating them like everything was fine. the thing that lafayette was getting from them is they would say yes, like this is you're obviously a great person for suggesting that we end slavery. we all know slavery is bad. believed about the country the same thing he believed about his friends there was something wrapped up in ideals and something wrapped up in the fact he was founded on these principles of liberty and equality that it was moving in the right direction even though they weren't moving as fast as he would like. ultimately, i'll keep pushing them and suggesting it. i'm not going to rock the boat too much. they are my friends and i don't want the country to fall apart but they will get there eventually. the social, political and economic reality of the united states at the time. they are weirdly obsessed with him. he left you. can dwruk about that? >> yeah. one of the other things, probably the first most interesting thing i ever discovered is the two different ways he's treated in the american revolution and the french revolution. i wrote a series for the pod cast about the american revolution. i knew he was going to show up in the third series i did which is all about the french revolution. we don't have to worry about him. i tried to create one single, continuous personality who progressed through the american revolution who didn't change dramatically. he never was incompetent. it's not because they are french and now their own history and they've got it right which is something i would feel when i would talk to them about this. it's more the case that the french have their own running battles about the french revolution that are ongoing to this very day like the french revolution continues to be a live thing in french politics. these other people have a home inside of that debate. he's trying to impose all these things on him but he's also running against the populist and he's against them. these heroes of the people of left wing historiography. he becomes homeless. he was popular through his life. when he died, hundreds of thousands of people turned out for his funeral. it wasn't he lost his popularity and wasn't treated as a serious person. it's over the years, he didn't real have an active party, an active faction inside of the french discourse. he's just fallen by the wayside. >> this happened to me a couple of times. i would go to a library. i'm here. i'm an american. i'm doing this in bad french. they would say, you're an american. it's about the marquee. you're the only people who ask for material about the marquee. >> i think it's frustrating because they get zero credit for ushering up towards yorktown. >> yeah, which they did do. >> okay. i will turn this over. this is from jewel. consider how fast everything moved during the french revolution. >> would it be possible to emulate? >> okay. there's a couple of questions in there. one of them is that i got to say by 1791, when lafayette is he's gone through this series of debacles as he's trying to be the commander of the national guard in late 1791. by this point, you really get the sense that he feels like it's not that he failed. it's that the people failed him. he was doing the right thing and they wouldn't get on board with it. he was being attacked by the right and the left. he was playing whack a mole with everything that was erupting through this time. you get the sense he dunl feel like he made mistakes. there were these rabble-rousers on both sides. he doesn't go too far down this track but i think that's his attitude toward it. the other question is could washington have succeeded in the french revolution the way washington succeeded in the american revolution. that kind of feels like no, i don't think that he is able to pull that off. there's a great quote that i did try -- that i jammed in there for sure which is bonaparte looking back saying when george washington was there, i would have been a george washington too. washington didn't have to deal with foreign invading armies and civil war and social unrest. did you ever read a single book about the american war of independence. it was a civil war. like people invading and people trying to undermine him. washington skdsed in the situation he had. i don't see him making it out of the french revolution in one piece. >> no. also he doesn't speak french. >> it really wasn't in many important ways, french people but not the stereotype. >> it's so noisy. i think this is interesting. because we brought this upon yourselves we have to talk about washington and slavery and conversations with him. could he have made a difference. do you have a sense what role lafayette could have excelled at if he stayed in america. was there potential for him to shape the u.s. and government either as a senator. >> he got a couple of offers along the way. from both sides. he asked to bring him over here and have you be the governor. we just inherited the crazy french catholics from the bayou and we don't know what to do with them. it sure would be nice if you were here. there were health reasons and personal reasons why he didn't want to leave france. his great role in american politics, general was as a unifying figure. we know that american politics, at the time, was incredibly fractional. it was very cut throat between the federalist, jefferson's party, whatever you want to call them, the democratic republicans and lafayette existed above all of that. 1824 was one of the most insane presidential elections in history. it was a four way race. it ends with nobody having secured the majority in the electoral college. he lands in the middle of it. all four of the presidential candidates, all of whom would love to stick a knife in each other's ribs are coming to dinner to share the table with this one guy. the thing is, when you then say what if you stayed, become a senator, try to run for president, done any of these things, i think what happened at this point if he loses that reputation, loses that role, no longer has the kind of moral authority, personality authority that he was able to -- that he was able to engender as this person coming in from far who was unifying everything and i think that then he winds up in the same kind of factional struggle he got caught up in france. probably trying to stay aloof from it and he winds up in retirement some place in ohio. i think if he tried to mix it up in american politics through those years, he would not have been as successful nor as beloved as he is today. >> washington didn't want to be president. when the revolution started, he was in philadelphia. he's like i couldn't be the general while wearing this uniform. i don't want to be president. >> i don't think he -- >> he was marching to his. he called the inauguration. he was universally loved. they weren't driven by pourer. >> i think that's part of what makes lafayette a good man more than a great man. he was not driven by a lust for power. he loved listening to a good speech. he loved all of that stuff. i think he wanted to be commander in chief of the army . that was his great dream. that's where he's a more appealing person to think about and talk about but also would have been one of his deep -- is a persistent defect is there's other political mistakes he made. up with of them is he's always kind of like, like if somebody offers him the presidency, he's like i don't want to be president. i don't want that job. he was not president in a way his old mentor failed. i've got a lot of incredibly nervous fans out there who don't know what i'm going to do next. i will continue to podcast. i'm leaving revolutions aside. i've got a very nice thing going here that i really love to do. i think there's a leader in the clubhouse in terms of what i'm going to do next. i'm not going to say what it is quite yet because if i change my mind, i don't want people to come back around and say you said that one time when you were at the strain that you were going to do that. i'm keeping it under wraps. the next book i'm less cagey about what the next book will be. i want to go back to this very particular period that i got out of the history of rome that's about the crisis of the third century and that centers around this emperor that's been on my mind for ten years and is a book i'm going to write. hopefully everybody pre-orders the book and bought the book so my publisher will be like you sold enough books so i'll write this book next. i'll go down to the library and read all about it. >> okay. there's also one more question and we'll go back to lafayette. people want to know coming back? >> yeah, i get that one a lot. i think the answer to that question is when the show ends, when ever it ends, anybody who is listening in realtime knows i'm marching revolution. there will probably be a big blow out fund-raiser to end the show. >> i don't like to talk about my next project, i feel like the more people talk about it, the slower it goes and the less likely it is to happen. also i'm not sure on everything. one person wants to know, originally the title was going to be citizen lafayette. >> yeah. never say the title of your book -- never. i made a huge mistake. >> you felt like your two revolutions is a better description of it? >> yeah. i think the two things happened simultaneously. like the marketing department came back and said we would prefer something like a little punchier. when the marketing department, sales and marketing said it's fine but can we think of something a bit punchier, something that jumps off the shelf as sales and markets departments are wanting to do. when they asked me that, i was not at all opposed to it. i named the book before i had done all the research on it. when i went back to -- even as i was writing the book, there's no time in lafayette's life where he's called citizen lafayette. when they move to that sort of nomanclature. he would have been citizen. there's no time when you combine it. one of them gets dropped. lafayette has been ejected from the revolution by that point because the people who were -- who were falling -- who were doing that in the french revolution were his eneenemies. i was feeling like i don't know this title fits with the book i'm writing nor the facts as i'm encountering them. i said we can change the title. >> it's very subtle. i like the color a lot. these titles and these books tend to look alike. >> yeah. >> the type face that they used. we wanted to give it like a more modern look. we were actively in the same way i wasn't trying to write a social studies report. we were not going to do this looks exactly like every other sort of founding father biography or great man biography that you'll see on the shelves out there. >> i'm going to combine two questions because we're running out of time. there's a lot of questions about your process and whether writing this book was different than the last. also, related to combining. when you were in france and going around to these places you talked about and written about, what was that like? there's two sort of questions. >> it happened with the revolution of rome. when dealing with roman history, you're dealing with a very small pile of fragments that you have to take these fragments and piece out of them information. you have to do so much reading between the lines. taking some inscription and trying to build a mosaic out of incredibly tiny amount of fragments. that's the great challenge of people who study ancient history. that's the challenge they are facing. when you move to the modern world, when you move to something like the french revolution, it's the opposite. there's just literally millions of pages of primary sources of documents about everything that happens and it's such an enormous pile of things to sift through. it's how can i figure out what i need to read, how i need to read it. what are the things i need to be bringing out of this to bring the story together. both of them are good and bad in their own ways. there's a nice thing about roman history, if you sit down and go for it, you can probably read everything we know about roman history, which you cannot do. it's insane. the other question. what was it like to be in france? this was the best. so i'm in paris, right, and link not far from the hotel du ville and i was able to take my laptop, sit, write chapters in the places that i was writing about. right? the atmosphere of it, feel of it. i'm a great believer in the power of inhabiting spaces, where history actually happened. i mean, we used to do tours, hopefully covid may go away at some point and we can do tours again, but i would take people out to the battlefield? italy, to be in the special place -- like, if i wrote the book in the united states it would have been very good. the fact i wrote in paris, gave me, the pros, there's me, the pros, there's sensuality to what i'm describes that existing if i'm not there. i love what i did. i still love paris. it's a lovely city. >> lovely city? i'm good. >> yeah. >> i want to go back to, here is a, famous in our world. an archivist at massachusetts. historical society. and expert on the adams family, john, abigail, quincy. >> the whole group, pugsley. >> all over it. her hand is all over it. talks about we know about the relationship between washington and lafayette and the hamiltons. she asks what are the other voices guiding him? who should we look at? what other relationships, people who haven't read the book. what other things should they really be looking out for to get away from the things that they know, the things you were really interested in? >> well, i think the first thing is, like, to -- it's almost impossible to overemphasize how much influence washington had on lafayette. absolutely was "the" most important always had washington had, lafayette was, in front of his mind. there were others. there was an enlightenment philosopher when very, very young. trying to pick through this obvious question difficult to answer but when does lafayette first latch on to the notion of liberty and equality given a thing somebody ought to strive for, fight for? when does he start getting these ideas maybe slavery is a bad thing? some comes from the man who wrote this huge thing called the history of the two indies, which is ostensibly about a very boring history of french colonial -- french colonies in the americas, but which he smuggled in, like, all of this incredibly seditious material, and he read as a young man and a lot went to the united states with ideas already formed in his mind. finds them -- obviously when he arrives in the united states, he didn't go as a mercenary trying to win battlefield glory for himself, like most of the other french officers who went over there were. he was idealistic from the start. i think he gets stuff out of masonic meetings he was going to. he wasn't a huge mason. like george washington was obviously a pretty big mason. super into it and inducted lafayette into his masonic lodge and part of what allowed them to become very close, but it's nice to look at -- another good person is condorce, early enlightenment social reformers before lafayette truly launched into his abolitionism writing criticism and critiques of washington's slavery lafayette ends up reading. a couple. renault, things in the -- getting it from france. not like he just went to the united states and learned all of these things. >> i want to ask you two questions, but one i'm going to ask you to tweet, because i think it's unfair not to follow-up. devon wants to know, said you mentioned in context adams, john adams. >> okay. >> only said anything bad about lafayette? what did he say? jealousy? 50 a day, tweet that out and believe was an were, positive note, for our time are the -- questions or takeaways from contemporary politics taken from lafayette? >> sure. >> still a question. >> yeah. just a very small thing, because we don't have much time. the thing about -- okay. i'm going off on a thing here. there is a tendency that people often have to subconsciously believe that things like progress and reform change for the better are just sort of things that happen. like, look back on history. history is a story of progress. so, like, don't worry about things. things will get better, because progress will take care of it, capital p progress or capital r reform. look back. aren't things better for this group and that group. yes. you want to know why? because people fought for it. people got out and did something about it. and the very people who -- you think are like -- are like radicals today, right? that you would say to them, like, why are you making a big deal? calm down. we will do incremental reform. it doesn't happen without lots of people making it happen. it is something that human beings do themselves. and lafayette was somebody who from the very beginning of his life to the very end of his life was constantly using his money. he was a very rich guy. constantly spending money what he considered to be good, noble, just causes. his time, his energy. he patronized writers, patronized, you know, printing presses. he's always trying to spread his ideas, if it got to the point where he believed that things were not progressing fast enough or well enough, he's willing to go into revolution to achieve his aims. so i think that really that lesson that you constantly look at the world you're living in. he always did, as i said. think about the things that can be made better, because there are always things that can be improved upon, and then work to improve them. don't just assume it's going to happen by some mystical force of history or mystical force of progress. i actually don't believe that those things exist. lafayette didn't believe they existed and to get back to something that we talked about earlier. like, did washington or lafayette really, like, write some groundbreaking philosophical treaties or write books that became very influential and changed everybody's thinking? no. these guys were men of action. right? and they believed that their actions were the things that were going to change the world, and both focused on their actions as things that were going to change the world. not mentalities. not, you know, dishing some witty barb in a salon setting, but to go out and do these things. and we have got a lot of problems right now. like, with humanity in 21st century is about to face a very trying and troubling time. if we're going to make it through this and succeed we have to do it. we cannot sit back and expect it to happen for us. >> i'm tempted to take control and keep going. for, like, another hour. >> the guy's not coming back. oh, there he is? >> can we kick him out? just kidding. thank you for this. every enjoyed. i enjoyed it, wonderful. congratulate you on the book. >> thank you very much. >> and talked about this, a great way to make these connections present. thank you. rebecca frankel recounts how a polish family invaded nazis living two years in the bialowieza forest and eventually saved and immigrated to the united states. the museum of jewish heritage in new york city, welcome to those of you joining us and online. i'm producer at the museum of jewish heritage living memorial. it's error a pleasure to welcome you to today's book launch for "into the forest: a holocaust story of survival, triumph, and love". this, by rebecca frankel. we first met rebecca here at the museum in january 2020 when she came to the museum to attend a reunion of the bielsky partisan fa,