I'm Christopher Lei. This is open source in a for fourth of July week and the pit of an presidential presidential campaign year 20 24. Welcome back John C, you write history with a philosophical flare John, never more colorful in this new account of American blood in your title. The un untapped dynasty that shaped a nation. It's a family saga in 3 centuries of frontier settlers and folk characters with the same name, blood. They've got 2 other strong links among them.
Generation after generation, these blood in embody in life. Some of the wilderness that wild streak in our history, and they grasp it as articulate as the giants of American thinking, notably Emerson, Thorough and William James. If I had to sum up, what they know it's this, There's a wolf watching us from the edge of a dark forest. You've seen the wolf sized, John and you've stared him down, perhaps We should start the conversation as you start your book with that wolf.
The story of American blood for me started in a field. In Carl, Massachusetts. That Henry David The once called the city in the woods. Carly is located a little beyond conquered to the north. I was and still am a long distance runner at sorts, and I was out on a run, and I was crossing Great meadow about 3 miles from my house. And I was... Just thinking to myself what a beautiful sort of area I lived in. It's still very wood, but it's kind of tame. Where at least I thought it was.
And I came into a meadow right on the edge of the top swamp and I saw a very large dog. What I thought was a very large dog at least that had slipped its collar, and it was right on the edge of a field. And I didn't pay it any mine and I kept running, and it followed me for 50 to a hundred yards. And I turned around again and it was very clear that this wasn't a dog. It was something else. I thought and still a part of me thinks. It was a wolf. It was certainly the largest coyote I ever
could imagine. It had that sort of he to its top. Half. It's sort of shoulders that is not customary of coyote. And so I ran. I ran really fast. I ran into the top swamp. And as I was running through the swamp away from this beast, I came across this outgrow of rocks. And almost ran right into it that evening.
And I got home to the house that my wife Kathleen and I had just purchased on the shores of the Concord river, it was built in 17 45, and I got inside, and I told Kathleen about this and she goes, you should be careful. You should find another running path that place that you came across was called Wolf f. And I didn't really believe it. It sort of
kept me up at night. And what I discovered, is that the house where we're living was once owned by this pioneer family, the blood, and the blood were 1 of the families that first named wolf fro. They had actually pushed back against the creatures of the region while the same time being the settle family through the sick seventies and 16 eighties that was encroaching on the wilderness of a new nation, And then the question always remains for us
Americans. It's... Who is the rightful owner of this land, who is... The tres and who is the wild 1. And when I discovered that we living in a blood house, it came with this sort of the long gene. American Blood is the story of American wild and American freedom, both its precarious, both its peril, but also its promise. Always the ambivalent 2 sided nature of American Liberty that it is both incredibly treacherous, dangerous, but at the same time, life giving and promising.
John, you go back as far as an English ancestor, Thomas blood a desperate character who played both sides of the English civil war in the seventeenth century from side to restoration, a failed jewel thief, almost a murderer. Do we need to know more about the notorious Thomas? I guess I should say that that night, that I came home after encountering the beast. I was unpacking boxes in our house. And I discovered a gene, a very thick gene sort of tucked in a back room. I'm
sitting right next to it actually. And it just looks like a closet, thick it's a room that goes back about 8 feet. And at the back of this room, was a chair and on that chair was a gene called the story of the blood. And from my philosophy study, I knew 2 blood. I knew t blood who was a close friend of The, and I knew benjamin blood, who was a very close friend to 1 of my Philosophical heroes, William James.
What I didn't know is that this family traced its origins back to the only gentleman who stole the British crown jewels. This individual that you just mentioned Thomas blood. And what I find very interesting about all of the blood is that they sort of reflect this willingness to live outside of what philosophers call the social contract. That is to say the agreement between governments and individuals.
Whereby individuals behave themselves and governments give them certain things that individuals need. Thomas blood, who basically came of age in the British Civil wars was the first of the blood to really push back against royal authority. He was 1 of Cro wells men for a time, and then he went directly against the crown, and entered the tower room in the tower of London, stole the crown jewels and almost made it out with his life. It kinda help thinking of King Charles
huge crown there. Could've have been Thomas Blood. Oh, it it definitely was for a second. Thomas Blood. Until he was captured.
What I think is very interesting about the way that we think about American independence is that we oftentimes forget that it originated in the civil wars of Britain and the way that the instability of the crown during the seventeenth century, even early seventeenth century, made way for our American political project, the pleasure of your book from me, John C is discovering sort of supporting cast in American history.
Bit players, local legends who confirm that there's something going on deeper than themselves. In the making of a country. In that case, they're bringing the Transcend sort of down to earth. These blood. This clan, you call them in applicable and un untapped beasts. They were odd, brave defiant principled in a lot of cases, contradictory to, But they faced their own wolves and they made our odd contradictory country. T blood was Ralph W Emerson emissions. Last eye witness
to the shot heard around the world. The line in wild is the preservation of the world was pure thorough it was Perez blood life, even more. Benjamin blood into the twentieth century anticipates, but William James interest in psychedelic potions, experimental jugs. Those are the key people I want you to reintroduce They're bridging gaps of all sorts. William James wrote to benjamin blood, for example that he was delighted to find that a
meta physician. A philosopher can be anything but a dis pep individual fit for no use. William James. Loved benjamin blood enthusiasm for expansive action. The blood in certain ways are more real than the famous guys who wrote the theory. That's a hundred percent right, Chris. I mean, these are folk intellectual heroes. In other words, they narrow the gap between normal everyday folks and these heroes of American intellectual life. Va blood,
it turns out lived in our house. He was born probably in the room where I am currently giving this moly. Invite us out, John. The house is built in 17 45. It's a salt box and the room where I'm sitting was most likely the kitchen, and t was born here. And he grew up into the last surviving member of the conquered fight, and he was the 1 who gave Ralph W Emerson, the interview that inspired
the conquered him. The famous shot heard around the world, What's interesting is that Emerson had just come back to concord in the early 18 thirties. And he was asked to give the sort of celebration, the independent state celebration or sort of the memorial of the conquered fight. And he in preparation for the comme and for the speech, took his close relation, Reverend Rip out to see t blood. Because he wanted to know what this fight
was really about. And what's interesting is that by that time, T was a very old man. You have to remember that many decades had separated the initial conquered fight that started the American revolution and when Emerson was interviewing him. And in the passage of years, fat his memory, I think had tempered. And he had the chance to reflect on what American freedom and what the American revolutionary project had met. When Emerson asks
t to talk about that fight. T is the first 1 to say, there were no f and drums. At that fight. He also goes on to say that the individuals standing on the hill up above old north bridge These individuals were many of them, loyal British subjects, and they didn't want to fight. They were scared. And there is the sense that when we have comme combinations for the country, oftentimes mil, comme examinations of the country. There is this pop in circumstance that forgets how terrifying.
How absolutely terrifying war is to have a gun shot at you. I mean, these men and women and dogs and children who are up on the hill. We're all scared So the ups shot of the interview with that blood is that freedom is very rare. And courage is even rarer and that what we oftentimes herald as revolutionary spirit today, was at the time of deep, something that bordered on a criminal activity, something like terrorism, something like tradition, something like trespassing.
And that really struck me. Because that's not what we talk about on April nineteenth when we celebrate the conquered fight today. We have... Pop in circumstance. So that is, I think gave Emerson a real sense of the dangers and promises of self reliance. Those sort of tenants that came out in his later philosophy through the 18... Late 18 thirties and into the 18 forties. But then, John, it turns out that T blood may well have fired the shot heard around the world. It may have been him.
Well, in his account. In both Emerson journals and also in the conquered him, a, quote, uncle blood shouted damn fire, and then there was a shot? T says. Now who was this uncle blood? It was probably general butt, a close relation to the blood. That's who Emerson certainly thought it was. But there is this trace that the blood were there at the very creation at the very inception of this pre precarious nation that John... If I have a favorite, it might be among the blood, it's might be perez
blood. He was an amateur scientist. He used what was left to his father's as a state to buy himself a telescope. He used it avid, a man sol, science, freedom, but the more 1 reads, the more you think of him as the real, Henry David T. He shared the inspiration of t walking, which happened to be t favorite of his essays. And you say it's no exaggeration to suggest that Perez blood helped Thor define his conception of human freedom. That's a big statement.
How do you do it? So pre blood was the son of T. T is represented with the philosopher Isaiah Berlin once called positive Liberty. Positive liberty is the ability to engage constructively in a social and political project to have the opportunities afforded to you by the social contract. That's part of positive liberty for Berlin. Perez represented what's known as negative liberty. And this negative liberty is the leave me alone type
of liberty. It's the ability to cast off a shackles of convention and societal constraint. And to basically walk up into the astro, which is a I'm looking at it right now. I'm far. Yes. I'm looking across the way into the astro woods, which is where Perez would live. And he would live by himself. He would never marry. He lived very close to his 2 sisters who sometimes lived with him. But what was curious about Perez is that, yes, he took his father's inheritance and bought a telescope.
But what is more significant to me is that he left his wood lot, largely uncut. And his woods shed largely empty and made his woods shed into an observatory deck for a telescope and Emerson and T went to visit fat as many times through the 18 thirties and into the 18 forties.
And they used the telescope multiple times, and there was 1 night where Emerson returned home and wrote, of the encounter with t so much better it is to look at the sky through a telescope or with your naked eye rather than worrying about all of the astronomical charts of the world while Whitman has a very beautiful poem called when I heard the learned astronomer, and this poem reflects so beautifully both the rowan and Emerson sentiment that what is important about experiencing nature cannot be
captured by any sort of chart or equation or algorithm, but rather it was experience. Experience was the key. It was better to walk out of a lecture hall where an astronomer gave a lecture about neptune, for example. And to walk outside and look up into the night air, far better than to sit and just simply think about the way that stars showed themselves on a blackboard. And this was a position that The reflected many times that he leaned directly from perez.
And if you think about the famous poem that Throw wrote called Carly Road or old Mar burr Road. It resonates so closely with his essay walking He basically says that we have to abandon conventional life, our family, the community. In order to simply go for a walk in order to see major as it is. That's what Perez represented to him. He he liken him to Ty Bra, the famous astronomer.
I think that the metaphor, the similarity is an apt 1. I love especially that line and throws walking If you are ready, he wrote to leave mother and father, and brother and sister and wife and child and friends and never see them again. If you have paid your debts, and made your will and settle all your affairs and are our free man, then you are ready for a walk. And think about that, Chris. I mean, think about... How revolutionary that
idea is. I mean, this is a place where political freedom was supposedly secured. And then the comes in. And decades later says, we still are not free enough, and we still need to have a little bit of space to go for a walk. And I think that that's such an appropriate reminder on independence stay I mean, what's this independence really mean for us. That's what T was asking us? John, that's your a great skill if I may say is spinning the thought. Out of these
cliches, otherwise, That's what Hannah Ara said. Think about things. That was her lesson from He for use today even in the 20 first century, think about it. But digress aggression, how does this blood brilliance challenged the notion rigid Hof status originally, but a lot of people have written about it. The notion of a deeply anti intellectual American tradition at the popular level.
We're finding just the opposite. I think that what hof center are Neglect is that philosophy springs from real life, And so it's not surprising that large swath of the population have philosophical inclination. And have deeply intellectual inclination.
Just because you're a plumber or in my mother's case substitute English teacher, doesn't mean you haven't thought about philosophy or my grandfather who worked in the mills and minds and then became a pharmacist this t too was philosophical in the end. He asked me questions like, is life worth living, and, you know who asked that question? William James. This I guess speaking of that, the person who most pushes back against the myth of American anti intellectual.
Is the character of benjamin blood. Well, let's talk about Benjamin about. He became not a close friend of william and James exactly, but a close correspondent and a kind of fix... Oh, I think that they were actually very close friends, maybe among the closest that James had. Oh, And I think William James owed him tremendously, both for directing him in times of real sorrow, but then also directing his philosophy, So Benjamin blood was a self described pug, sort of a strong man, sort of a
strong man... A handyman man inventor. A gardener, a farmer. It sounds almost t and how many different jobs he did. But what's interesting is that benjamin blood in all of his sort of mundane affairs. When I say that I'm not them. I'm simply saying, he did a lot of jobs in the world. In all of that, he also had deep thoughts about what the nature of reality is so deep that James took real interest in the 18 seventies, and then again, all the way through his life all the way to the very end.
Now what was the sort of insight that blood had that so interested James. It was that nature is wild. That reality always outs trips our abilities to understand and comprehend it that there's always a type of wild remainder left when we try to describe what's going on in the universe this famous quote. 1 of my favorite from James. He says that the universe is wild like a hawk swing.
This expression isn't James at all. It's benjamin blood and James is reading a book called the an aesthetic Revelation and the Gist of philosophy.
And this book was published, Well before James became famous, but Blood book, the an aesthetic revelation in the just philosophy, taught James, not to overstate what philosophy can actually achieve that our desires to make sense of the world, through philosophy can only go so far, and that life cannot be affirmed in thought, but rather in action and that's the basis of James p and it comes right out of benjamin and blood, largely neglected pamphlet.
You say he was fixed on benjamin blood to the end. Literally, on his deathbed, he was writing out of blood work, quoting and hearing, ever not quite. James says this seems to ring the very last pant word
out of philosophy mouth. There is no complete general, no total point of view, no all pervasive unity, but everywhere, some residual resistance to verbal, formulation and disc, some genius of reality that escapes from the pressure of the logical finger that says hands off and claims its privacy and means to be left to its own life. In every moment of immediate experience. It There is somewhat absolutely original and novel. There is no conclusion, and then he writes farewell well. And think
about that. James is writing that in a spa in Germany where he knows he's going to die. James is in very poor health. And James is talking about the open ended ness of the universe. And maintaining that there's no conclusion. I mean, think about what that means for someone on their deathbed that it's not the end that this is not the end. And what's interesting about James dedication to blood I don't know about you, but when I reach my last days, I'm gonna be very
careful about what I write down. In other words, I'm not gonna spend time. Writing things down that I don't find particularly meaningful. James penn a... 12000 word review and lau essay of Benjamin Blood in his last months. 12000 words. It went into the Hi journal. That's a very long review. It's entitled the plural mystic. Which James had promised benjamin blood to make him famous, and this was James attempt. I don't know if it ever made benjamin blood
famous, but James tried. Which because he thought that this... I mean, if you think about the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century and even into our own day, There is the sense of closure, the sense of being closed off that sort of threatens our existential. Promise. Our sense that life could be otherwise the
sense that we could still be free. And James aware that the sort of conventional life that we live can be very stu, very limiting that the life we live as just finite human beings can be very limiting. What he wants to do with blood at the very end of his own life is to say, not so fast. There's something remaining. There's something lasting. There's a trace. There's something wild out in the pastures out in the meadows out in the woods.
And I think that that's a beautiful and really essential message to hold on to. Think about this, John. The intellectual history used speak of unfolding here would be described in biology as epi. It's not at the cellular level. It's not in the academy. It's not formal peak We're calling at folk tradition, but it it works from generation to generation, century to Century. Again, not in the Dna, what is the importance in this case of family lineage in the history of ideas?
It's really good question. What I was not suggesting was that 1 single family, 1 dynasty, the blood is dynasty that shaped a nation. There were more important families. The Ast, the cabo, the roosevelt. The atoms is the exactly. But what I was interested in the blood was this continuity of action and thought between generations. That represented wild and represented a type of un, but also this beautiful thought that chances is always my chance.
And these unknown occurrences that then become incredibly important, both for the life of the family, but also for the life of the nation. The blood show up at crucial juncture in the life of our nation for And what I think is interesting is that they function to propel it in much the same way across generations to... Inspire the sense of both promise, but also fore voting when it comes to liberty and freedom.
And I think that it's necessary to remember that the families that we have on our fourth of July or are also carrying on a particular social and political lineage. And we are responsible for the stories we tell about our nation. We're responsible for the stories that we tell about ourselves. And that was at least in part what I'm trying to get across with American blood, gentlemen in an audience not. Too many days ago, said, these are not perfect people.
And he was surprised that I wanted to talk about imperfect people in this gene. And I just said history is not full of perfect people. It's fills with people like us. Speaking of imperfect people. We're up to our next now around the world in subtle colonialism How do we think of the blood family's roots inc colonialism? That's who they were. Frontiers who stayed. And how does the blood family story explain the inter of American achievements and disasters?
Oh, I mean, every single chapter I think is structured in such a way that you see both that, Thomas blood, for example, the jewel thief stole the crown jewels, but in the process, he also murdered in in in person.
Similarly, Robert Blood, the initial American settle or the initial colonial settle had a family bet defied British rule many decades before most colonists subjected to taxation, that might be hero ism, but they also treated the indigenous populations of Massachusetts, absolutely with a brutal fist, We haven't mentioned slavery or the blood who faced with severe illness and uncertain cure had his slave, take the cure. And philippe it worked for
him. I mean, this is the probably 1 of the saddest moments, which is G Massachusetts. At that time was a sort of settle outpost area. And it was right on the border of, at indigenous populations and really push the boundary. And when these indigenous populations push back we had what were called at the time the the Indian wars king Philips score, for example, in the last decades of the seventeenth century.
G was the site of many of those battles, and the blood were at the center of G. And a blood relation after the fighting was finished fell ill, but he knew that only native healer could actually bring him back to health. He went and fetched the medicine, but he was worried that it was poisoned because of the conflict that had happened before And so he asked or he didn't ask. He forced an African American slave or then slave.
To ingest the medicine, which then turned out to be poison and the slave dies. And it's this sense that there are untold casualties in the wake of American industry in the wake of American exploration and adventure. And the story of the blood is really the story of those casualties as well. The John 1 more philosophical question of this story. We love the idea of a nation of
immigrants. You paint a very different picture of the genius of the country coming through not only the p tradition in the beginning, but the single family tradition of the blood. Can we still have our nation of immigrants? They were immigrants too of course, but not into a melting pot. Their pot didn't melt at all. 1 of the issues with the blood family is I I was looking at a way of taking 1 family and investigating the American mythology around freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The book is structured in that way. There's life, liberty, pursuit and happiness, 4 parts. And I'm trying to problem ties or make more complicated that sort of heroic story that we like to tell ourselves. I think the blood allow us to see it at least in part because they came across as so un, so un yielding, so ambitious. They basically traverse the United States over the course of 2 centuries.
That type of ambition, I wanted to show as both part of what we regard as the American experience, but also as very blatant hub And so the choice for this 1 family wasn't necessarily to show us as a melting pot or the nation of immigrants or us. The type of plural that William James would later come to admire, but rather to show 1 family sort of quest to make themselves and make the nation and the repercussions associated with that quest. John,
sum it up. The whole book is a Marvelous is sort of him to wild in every form. How does it change our thinking about wild itself? And its connection to the philosophical literary tradition in this country. I hate to give away the ending of the book, but I'm going to have. Too. So I saw the beast at the beginning of the book. And we see the beast again at the end. We're, again, in the blood house, it was early morning my kids had just gotten up.
And my steps on Henry is about 07:30 in the morning, and he went running across the backyard, and I was making breakfast or cleaning dishes or something. And then I hear screaming from the backyard, and then, obviously, you know where my mind goes is and then I'm running down after Henry and he's standing at the top of a hill that sort of slopes down into the woods. We live budding the conquered river, but there's conservation land between. And he's pointing with his outs stretch finger,
and I run up next to him. He's not really upset. He's just screaming at me. And there's the beast. And it's standing right at the woods. On. And it turns around and it runs into the woods. Your question was, how does this make you rethink American wild, and I hope it's something like this. Because I looked down into his eyes after the beast is gone. I looked down into his eyes lovely, dark and deep. And I say, let's be careful. It lives in there. And the there is not the woods. It's in
us. It's in those eyes, lovely dark and deep. It's in each of us. And I think that the idea that I'm trying to sort of get across is that wild is not something that was extinguished. 400 years ago or 200 years ago or even a hundred years ago. It lives on, and its dangers and promises are in us. That's, I think the ups shot or 1 of the ups shots of the book. John, it's such a pleasure to hear you. I'm also learning...
Again, how you do it in a fashion, William James would be thrilled that you commit yourself to experience these things going to the mountain top. Where Niche nietzsche imagine confronted the abyss and feeling it yourself or finding this abandoned stone house in the woods near Cia corolla in New Hampshire and discovering the whole philosophical library of the hubbard faculty in the nineteenth century. You go out there and you listen, and then you think about it. It's a
pleasure to listen, John. It's Absolutely my pleasure to speak with you again. It's always a high point on my calendar. John Tag, author of American blood. The contained dynasty that shaped a nation. I've been looking up for those wolves all the way through this, John. So glad we did it. And happy fourth. Oh, happy for to you, Chris. Thanks so much.