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Saturday Q&A

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Twenty Questions

J.M. in Boulder, CO, asks: My daughter is a teacher at a very small private school for kids on the autism spectrum. She assigns a book per quarter for study and review. There are three classes—for grades 6-8, 9-10 and 11-12.

Several of her students have expressed an interest in studying a biography, possibly for one of our presidents. Can you suggest any good ones that would be accessible for them? She could use one book for each class, or the same one for multiple classes if that would work.

(Z) answers: I am not particularly equipped to align books with age groups, but these all strike me as being within reach for a high school senior, and most of them for someone younger:

The American presidents series. I have recommended this series before. The books are short, well written, and were produced by top scholars.

The Making of America series, all of which are by Teri Kanefield. There are six volumes so far, on Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thurgood Marshall, and the goal is to make those people's stories accessible to younger readers without whitewashing them.

The Life of Washington (1800), by Mason Locke Weems. It might be interesting for younger students to get an introduction to how history is distorted and mythologized.

Washington: A Life (2011) and Grant (2018), both by Ron Chernow. These books are also hefty, but Chernow knows how to write. They were both bestsellers, and the Washington book won the Pulitzer.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (1996), by Joseph J. Ellis. A character study of Jefferson, rather than a blow-by-blow account of his whole life.

Lincoln (1996), by David Herbert Donald. It's on the long side (720 pages), but was a bestseller and is probably the most accessible biography of the 16th president.

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship (2016), by Russell Freedman. This is probably most suited to the youngest of the three groups of students.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President (2012) and The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey (2006), both by Candice Millard. The former is 50% biography, 50% true crime, and is about the death of James A. Garfield. It was adapted into the miniseries Death by Lightning. The latter is 50% biography, 50% adventure book, and is about Theodore Roosevelt's expedition to map the last major unmapped river in South America, a challenge undertaken after his presidency.

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (2007), by Barack Obama. All of the books Obama wrote about his life were meant to be accessible to a broad audience.

K.W. in Albuquerque, NM, asks: Purely by coincidence, I was re-reading Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life the same day you quoted Plunkett on "honest graft." Hofstadter quotes Plunkett about the importance in politics of not being educated or appearing to be educated. "Tammany", he said, "might win an election every four thousand years" if its leaders were "bookworms" and the "dudes who put their name in the middle."

Hofstadter held that America goes through cycles where well-educated people are denigrated by politicians and are shut out from political power. If he is correct, where are we in that cycle? Donald Trump and MAGA did not spring from nowhere.

As an aside, what does the history profession think of Hofstadter all these years later?

(Z) answers: Broadly speaking, there are two demographics in America where anti-intellectual sentiment is most commonly found. The first is religious people, especially fundamentalists, who see science/education/reason as being in competition with/hostile to faith. The second is blue-collar people, who see science/education/reason as being in competition with/hostile to lived experience and practical approaches to problem-solving. This is not to say that all religious people, or all blue-collar people, are anti-intellectual, merely that these are the demographics where you are most likely to find that sentiment.

I would say, and Hofstadter would agree, that anti-intellectual feeling is present in every era of American history. That said, it becomes most profound when a politician or political party unifies both of these anti-intellectual-skewing demographics, as Donald Trump has with MAGA. It is probably least profound when there is a broad sense that educated people have something useful to offer the nation, as was the case during the Cold War (We need scientists!) or when Barack Obama rose to power (We need someone to clean up the mess made by George W. Bush and his crew!).

Hofstadter's book remains a towering work of political and intellectual history, and it would not be at all surprising for it to be assigned in a graduate-level course, even today.

J.S. in Durham, NC, asks: In your item on Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), you frame being an "intellectual" as a weakness. I am not necessarily disagreeing. However, I am wondering how you would define "intellectual." In discussing this with my husband, he referred to a friend of ours who is truly a genius, saying that "he is an intellectual." I stated that "while all geniuses are intellectuals, not all intellectuals are geniuses." I think I know what is meant by the word, however, I do not know where the line is or how to describe it. Can you help?

(Z) answers: When I was in—well, some grade before college, I can't remember which—I had a science teacher who said there are two basic approaches to scientific research. The first is to pick specific problems to tackle, and to direct research thusly. The second is to just study and think about things, with the notion that any insights gained might eventually come in handy (but also might not). I would say that this is about as close as I can come to describing the line between someone who is not an intellectual (first approach) and someone who is (second approach). Obviously, while the specific example here is science, the general philosophical divide can be applied to any subject.

J.G. in Covington, KY, asks: I recently finished Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, chronicling the rise and (partial) fall of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920s.

I was especially intrigued by two points I'd like to follow up on. The first was the women's auxiliary and the youth groups that were organized at that time. Egan mentioned them frequently, but given his focus, only touched on them lightly.

The other is the assertion he made that the KKK was initially against women's suffrage because it ran counter to their beliefs about a woman's "proper" place, but then began supporting suffrage with the idea of securing more votes in their political maneuvering.

Do you have any recommendations for well-researched, but approachable, works that address one or both of these topics?

(Z) answers: There isn't a lot of work in this area that is that highly specific, but take a look at The Secret Sisterhood How Women Powered the Rise of the Ku Klux Klan and Shaped American History and/or The Grey Eagles of Chippewa Falls: A Hidden History of a Women's Ku Klux Klan in Wisconsin.

W.R.S. in Tucson, AZ, asks: You wrote that the current president wants us to view the conflict earlier this year as "Iran War I" and the one going on now as "Iran War II," rather than as two separate wars. I'm sure he actually wants us to call it something other than a war, since he needs no congressional approval if it's just a "police action" or whatever. But it got me thinking: The names we in the U.S. use for wars can't possibly be the names that the other side uses for the same war, can they?

In high school I learned about the Vietnam War, but surely that can't be what the Vietnamese call it. I remember seeing on the news about the Gulf War, and when I was in college we started the Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan. Now we're in the midst of the Iran War. What do the residents of these regions and countries call these wars? Are there dozens of different wars out there that people educated in other countries call "the U.S. War"?

(Z) answers: The most famous example of this, I would say, comes from before American independence. The conflict known as the French and Indian War in the United States is just one part of the Seven Years' War elsewhere. Here's a rundown for the major American wars since independence:

The Revolutionary War is known by that name in the U.K., and also as the War of American Independence and the American Rebellion.

The War of 1812 is sometimes called by that name in the U.K., but is more commonly lumped in with the larger Napoleonic Wars.

The Mexican-American War is known in Mexico as the United States Intervention in Mexico, or the American Invasion. Sometimes, but less frequently, it is called the War of '47.

The Civil War is known in the South by a whole host of names, some of them more loaded than others. Among these are the Late Unpleasantness, the War of Secession, the War for Southern Independence and the War of Northern Aggression.

The Spanish-American War is known as the War of Cuba or the Disaster of 1898 in Spain, and as the Cuban War of Independence in Cuba.

The Philippine-American War is usually known by that name in the Philippines, though it is sometimes also called the Tagalog Insurgency.

World War I is known by that name in most of the world.

World War II is known by that name in most of the world

The Korean War is called the June 25th War in both Koreas, and sometimes the Fatherland Liberation War in North Korea.

The Vietnam War is known in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or the American War.

The Persian Gulf War is sometimes known as the Mother of all Battles in Iraq, but is more commonly called the First Gulf War.

The Iraq War is known in in Iraq as the Occupation or the Second Gulf War.

The Afghanistan War is usually called the Afghan Conflict in Afghanistan, and is lumped in with the other recent interventions in that country, particularly the Soviet invasion of the 1970s. The Taliban, for obvious reasons, like to call it the Jihad or the American Jihad.

Obviously, these are all translated into English.

M.A. in Albuquerque, NM, asks: This video has been sticking with me for some reason since I first saw it.

The gist of it is that Germany's inability to fight back against the Allies in World War II was a contributing factor to their defeat: They had the will, artillery, tanks, and planes, but lacked bullets, shells, V-2s, and other things to shoot at the allies. The parallel being drawn is that someone else more recently is burning through their ammo (specifically missiles) even though they have the ability to fire whatever they have.

The Defense Production Act provides an outlet for overcoming the shortage in an expedited way to produce things in a hurry as seen during the pandemic, but there seems to be a lack of will or urgency to do that, maybe because it would publicly affirm that yes, we're running low on ammo and God forbid there be an acknowledgment of a shortage of anything. Is this a correct understanding of what the Act is supposed to be for?

Any thoughts on the professor's (or "professor's") supposition?

(Z) answers: He makes two main points. The historical point is that a lack of supplies is the main reason the Germans lost World War II. The lack of supplies certainly didn't help Hitler, but it's too simple an explanation. By 1944, the Germans were surrounded by three mighty powers, plus key allies in supporting roles. The Nazis were going to lose no matter how well-supplied they were; all that more V-2s or gasoline might have done is drag things out a bit. Further, when you take on three industrial powers, of course you're eventually going to find yourself on the short end when it comes to trading missile for missile, tank for tank.

The modern-day point is that the U.S., because it's burning through its missile stockpile, is weakening itself around the world. This is unquestionably true; in particular, if China is ever going to take a shot at Taiwan, 2027 or 2028 would be the time to do it. This is because Donald Trump has no idea how to deal with such crises, and because the U.S. is not in a position to provide much in the way of advanced armaments (specifically, interceptor missiles) to Taiwan right now.

The Defense Production Act is not especially relevant here. If the U.S. had a sudden need for, say, lots of tanks, the president could invoke that act to force steel producers to sell their steel to the government, and perhaps to force automakers to re-tool their production lines to make tanks.

The problem with replacing the missiles really isn't that the supplies needed might otherwise go to civilian uses. It's that the U.S. uses a batch-production approach to making its advanced missiles. In other words, a contractor makes a whole bunch of, say, THAAD missiles at once, constructing each mostly by hand, and then doesn't make any more for 5 years. When it comes time for more, the knowledge of exactly how to build them has to be re-gained, in roughly the same way that a once-fluent speaker of a language needs a little practice if they don't use the language for 5 years. On top of that, the production process has to be updated, so as to account for what parts are currently available, as opposed to what parts were available 5 years ago. Let's say that the THAAD missiles of 2020 relied on AMD Ryzen 5000 chips. Well, you might not be able to get those anymore, and so you might have to adapt to AMD Ryzen 7 5700 chips, or maybe Ryzen 9 5950X chips. Those chips are faster and missiles are real-time systems, so other parts of the system would need to be adapted. They also consume more power than the old ones, which affects the power budget, and so on. Some redesign may be needed and the people who did the original design may no longer work at the company, so new people may need to be found, hired, and trained.

S.M. in Pepperell, MA, asks: I recently saw a television show about what are referred to as the World War II Japanese Imperial Navy "Hell Ships." They are cargo ships and other assorted merchant vessels that were used to transport Allied POWs out of the Philippines to forced labor camps in areas of Japanese control. The POWs were crammed into the cargo holds of these ships in appallingly cramped and unsanitary conditions. Allied forces seem to have been unaware of the true nature of these ships and whom they were carrying. Some of these Hell Ships were part of Japanese convoys that were legitimate military targets and were attacked by Allied forces and sunk.

I was shocked at the number of Hell Ships, over 100, and the number of POWs subjected to transport, over 125,000. The number of POWs who lost their lives on these Hell Ships was over 10,000. I am no World War II historian, so I hope the statistics I cited are accurate. If I have not overstated the magnitude, why have I never heard of these ships before? Was the embarrassment of the inadvertent sinking of these ships by Allied forces the sole reason that this chapter of World War II history is not more well known? Have I just been living under a rock? This seems to be too big a story to fly below the radar.

(Z) answers: There were many, many horrors during World War II. It is implausible to communicate them all to the average student, or the average person. And so, a handful of the very greatest horrors—the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the firebombing of Dresden, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and maybe a couple of others—stand in as representatives for the large collection of horrors.

S.D. in York, England, UK, asks: "Colour" has been in the U.K. news a lot recently, as a U.K. court just ruled that using the word "coloured" to describe someone may offend people of color, but it is not necessarily racist. The decision came in the case Amy Reeves v Kier Ltd., after Reeves, who is of mixed heritage, heard a colleague describe two people as "coloured" while working for the construction and housing company in Sheffield. The ruling distinguished between: (1) language that is outdated or offensive and (2) conduct that meets the legal threshold for racial harassment.

Meanwhile, (V) wrote: "Some day an exciting woman of color will make a serious run, but it is more likely to be Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) than Harris."

My question: Why is that sentence OK, but this one is not? "Some day an exciting colored woman will make a serious run, but it is more likely to be Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) than Harris."

The sentences are grammatically identical, but result in very differing emotional responses to separate target audiences. Why?

(Z) answers: You can make an argument that they are not grammatically identical, in that one version highlights an individual's personhood and the other highlights their physical/racial characteristics. But the main reason is that racists in past regularly used "colored" and "colored person," while they did not use "person of color."

S.S.L. in Battle Creek, MI, asks: I'll (hopefully) be recuperating from major surgery July 23rd onward. I'd appreciate a list of your favorite books. The more immersive, the better.

(L) answers: My favorite books tend to be non-fiction and mostly biographies. I'll give 5 so as not to overwhelm:

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies: Jared Diamond's seminal work on how civilizations rise.

Alone on the Wall: A riveting book about the famous solo climber with even more detail and insight than the movie Free Solo (though I highly recommend the film as well)

Sense and Sensibility: I had to have one classic in there.

Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas: An excellent chronicle of the rise of Clarence Thomas.

Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!: This makes me laugh out loud every time I read it; a really fun behind the scenes look at the making of this classic film and how the creators got their start.

(A) answers: I hate admitting this, but it's the truth—I never read anymore. I used to be a voracious reader, but somehow lost the momentum many years ago. Here are my favorite books, as far as I can recall (in no particular order):

The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific: The real, hilarious, sometimes terrifying adventures of a man who suddenly moved with his girlfriend from Washington, D.C., to the Republic of Kiribati ("KEE-ruh-bahs").

The Phantom Tollbooth: "[T]he closest thing we have to a modern Alice in Wonderland." — The Guardian. A bored boy goes through ~~the looking glass~~ a tollbooth, and on a grand adventure. This was probably the first novel I read, when my age was far from being in the double digits. Then, it helped me "think outside the box" and understand how different things could be from another's perspective. I read it again once a decade or so, and now it's simply a delight, despite being perfectly appropriate for young children.

The Vampire Armand: This was the last book of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles that I read (because when I read it, it was the last book in the series). My favorite thing about these books is the world-building, the extensive vampire history. It's been a long time since I read this, but I think this is the book that covers the most ancient vampire history. However, a reader may be lost if they don't start with the first, and unfortunately worst, book in the series—Interview with the Vampire—and read the series in order. Note: In case it isn't obvious, the series is categorized as horror. Also, many books in the series contain depictions of sexual violence.

The Tale of the Body Thief: One of the main vampire characters in the Vampire Chronicles switches his body with that of a regular human (mortal), to experience being human for the first time in centuries. But the human he switched with doesn't want to give his newfound immortal body back, forcing the vampire-mind-in-a-human-body, now relatively powerless, to track him down and steal his body back. This is more of a fun one in the series, but with the same warning as above.

(V) answers: I overlap some with (L).

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies: Why Europe dominated the world after 1500 or so.

The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal — An Iconoclastic Look at DNA, Genetics, and What Makes Us Unique: Another from Jared Diamond. Why people are different from bonobos.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: How civilizations destroy themselves.

The 100: A Ranking Of The Most Influential Persons In History: Exactly what the title says it is.

The Hunt for Red October: A thriller; I couldn't put it down.

(Z) answers: Like most of us here (with A the exception), I tend to gravitate toward non-fiction.

The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes: This is meant to be a reference work, along the lines of Bartlett's familiar quotations. However, I stumbled on a copy at a coffee shop that was on sale for $1, and I read the 751 pages cover to cover. I have since re-read it three times. It was published in 1991, so no anecdotes from the last 40 years, however.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything—A Groundbreaking Exploration of Hidden Incentives, Behavioral Economics, and Unconventional Wisdom: I read this book, and the several others in the series, and I listen to the weekly podcast. I am, of course, well versed in the historian's approach to research questions. It was, and is, very eye-opening to see the economist's approach in action. I also incorporated the general approach of the book chapters into my teaching—they start each chapter with a hook, like "How is a nun like Bo Jackson?" and then the answer is revealed as the co-authors outline the main argument of the chapter.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes: Every Sherlock Holmes collection is about the same, though I did link to the one I happen to have. In any event, it's some of the best world-building in western literature—so good that people rarely even refer to Arthur Conan Doyle's work in that way. Of course, he had the advantage of basically writing about the world in which he was living. I recommend pairing it with a book on "the game," an approach to Holmesian literature that presumes that Holmes and Watson are real people, and that Doyle was merely their literary agent, who thinly disguised details of their real-life adventures. My favorite is A Sherlock Holmes Commentary, which is out of print, but is available used and/or in eBook form. Read a Holmes story, then read the commentary on that story, which tries to figure out the exact timeline, the exact locations in the story, how inconsistencies with other works in the canon can be resolved, etc. Obviously, Holmes and Watson weren't actually real. However, I have no doubt that "the game" sheds light on the real-life inspirations for much of Doyle's storytelling.

Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations: I've been an Al Franken fan since I started watching old Saturday Night Live episodes in the late 1980s (they aired re-runs on my local UHF station). All of his books are good, and correlate well with my humor aesthetic, but this is the one I've re-read most frequently.

Catch-22: This also aligns with my humor aesthetic (Franken is sardonic, this book is surreal). Joseph Heller demands a lot of you, as a reader, but if you are up to it, it's a brilliant book.

Note that this was supposed to run last week, but did not, due to an error on the part of (Z). We did send it to S.S.L. in Battle Creek before the operation, and we've already had news that the procedure went well, and recovery is proceeding well.

T.M. in Downers Grove, IL, asks: You've written recently about why soccer has not caught on culturally in the United States. Why has it caught on in most of the rest of the world? Why have popular sports in the States such as baseball and gridiron football not caught on elsewhere (aside from some baseball-crazed nations)? Why is basketball king in the Philippines rather than soccer? Is it all mostly a question of required equipment and space?

(Z) answers: People play the sport that's available (in terms of equipment and playing space) and that other people are playing. Baseball and basketball caught on in the Philippines because they were an American colony for many years, and so had access to imported equipment. Baseball caught on in Japan because of a tour undertaken by pro baseball players a century ago, and because the ordered nature of baseball resonated with Japanese culture. It caught on in Latin America because elite members of those societies (particularly Cubans) went to the U.S. for their educations, and then brought the game home with them.

Association football caught on in much of the world because it could be played with a minimum of equipment, in many different kinds of spaces, without TOO much regard to weather. Gridiron football is close to being the opposite; it tends to require a very specific kind of space, and it requires very specialized equipment that is not widely available outside the United States. Further, nearly any body type can play association football, and there are really only three basic positions (or maybe only two basic positions, goalie and not goalie) in a pickup-level game. In gridiron football, you need to have people with different skill sets to mount a viable game—at least two people need to be able to throw the ball well, at least a few people need to be able to catch, at least a few need to be large enough to block, etc. It is also the case that, by and large, you can play association football every day if you want. If you try to play gridiron football every day (especially if you try it without equipment), you're eventually going to end up in the hospital.

F.S. in Cologne, Germany, asks: Will you be interested in professional soccer in the future? And what future do you see for soccer in the U.S. after the World Cup? And why is soccer so unpopular in the U.S.? I mean, most Americans have ancestors in Europe, Latin America or Africa, and soccer is (by far) the most popular sport in almost every country in Europe, Latin America or Africa, but somehow not in the United States. I don't understand it.

(Z) answers: I was already mildly interested; I supposed I might be a shade bit more so after the World Cup. That said, there's only so much time in the day, and to the extent I have time to devote to watching sports, it already goes mostly to gridiron football, baseball and basketball. Also, it's not particularly easy to watch key soccer games and leagues in the U.S., in part because of the time difference, and in part because those events are relegated to channels that are obscure or that you have to pay extra for.

I would not say soccer is unpopular in the U.S., per se. I would say that people only have so much time to play and/or watch sports, and once that time has been claimed, it's hard for competing sports to make headway. Modern association football was invented in 1863, and did not cross the pond until the late 1800s and early 1900s. That means that, by the time it arrived, baseball and boxing were already major American sports and football had gained a toehold. It is true that basketball, though invented in 1891, largely came after soccer did. However, basketball fills a niche that soccer does not (i.e., can be played indoors, in inclement weather).

On top of that, people tend to give their attention to sports and teams where a championship is possible. The U.S. is competitive in baseball and basketball and hockey internationally. It is not competitive in soccer. So, that also hurts the latter sport, at least some.

I also talked about some of the ways that soccer culture does not alight well with general American sports culture in the item linked in the previous question.

All of this said, youth soccer (especially AYSO) is very popular. That interest just doesn't extend as much to the professional product.

P.R. in Arvada, CO, asks: The thing I find really surprising in U.S. sports is the lack of promotion and relegation between divisions and the lack of knockout tournaments through the year that let people in the smallest leagues play the biggest teams.

These issues aren't unique to association football; think how much better the world would be if the Bears and the Browns got relegated. Is it really all about money or is there another reason why there is no incentive for teams to make sure they aren't the worst in the league for years? I'm looking at you, Pirates.

(Z) answers: It's about the money. If you relegate the Pirates, then all of a sudden, they don't have games against the Yankees, or against the Dodgers, or against the Cubs. How do they sell tickets? How do they attract TV viewers? How do they bring in enough income to support a team that could possibly be promoted? Even WITH the Yankees/Dodgers/Cubs games, the Pirates don't have the cash to put that kind of team together.

And then, the teams that are promoted, how do they keep up? Do they get a huge subsidy from the other teams? The other teams would not like that. And if a team is only in the top division for one year out of every five or seven or ten, then not only would their cashflow be wrecked, but so would their franchise valuation, which is where the REAL money is.

For these reasons, it is unlikely that relegation will ever come to U.S. sports. That said, the NFL does have something very much like the Segunda División in Spain or Serie B in Italy. It's called the AFC.

R.H.D. in Webster, NY, asks: One of the best features of the World Cup was hearing the different national anthems of the participating countries. I especially liked England's "God Save the King." But at the 2018 World Cup, England's anthem was "God Save the Queen." I know they use either term depending on the reigning monarch at the time.

So when will be the next time we hear "God Save the Queen?" for England at the World Cup, or the United Kingdom at the Olympics?

(Z) answers: Not in the lifetime of anyone reading this, most likely.

Charles III is the current king. When he leaves the throne, Prince William will succeed him. When William leaves the throne, Prince George will succeed him. George was born in 2013, and if he has a normal lifespan, adjusting a bit for the excellent Windsor genes and for the likelihood that medicine will improve, he won't end his time on the throne until somewhere around the year 2100. At that point, if she's still alive, Princess Charlotte (born 2015) would ascend, and you'd hear "God Save the Queen" again (not the Sex Pistols version).

The highest slot in the line of succession that a not-currently-born female could claim would be if George has children ("issue," to use the technical term), and his first child is a girl. However, she would just slot in right in front of Charlotte, and so would not change the above timeline in any way.

There are, of course, rare events that could take place. George could renounce the throne, for some reason (though wanting to marry an American divorcee is not enough to produce that result these days). Or he could get in some sort of scandal, and could be removed from the line of succession by Parliament, a fate that may well befall Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Or, George could die prematurely. These are all low-probability events, though.

H.M. in San Dimas, CA, asks: You can be transported in time to watch three sporting events, which three do you choose?

(L) answers: My three:

Any World Series of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

"The Miracle on Ice"—1980 Olympic semi-finals in hockey between U.S.S.R. and the U.S.

The 1999 Women's World Cup final between the U.S. and China

(Z) answers: My three:

1936 Berlin Olympics track and field, where Jesse Owens embarrassed the Nazis

Jackie Robinson's first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, on April 15, 1947

1973 NCAA Championship, UCLA vs. Memphis State, when Bill Walton scored 44 points on 21-of-22 shooting and UCLA won its ninth title

Of the four of us, (L) and (Z) are the only two sports fans.

J.E. in San Jose, CA, asks: (Z) wrote: "For what it's worth, punters tend to be pretty sharp, but kickers tend to be meatheads."

So what are your thoughts on the next generation of sports talk leaders, such as former punter Pat McAfee? And any observations on this week's ESPN layoffs?

(Z) answers: ESPN is in a time of transition right now. One might even say it's a crisis. They need to keep their current cash cow (cable TV) alive, but they also need to set themselves up for the future (all-streaming).

I personally can't stand Pat McAfee, and I positively loathe Stephen Smith (and I deliberately refuse to indulge Smith's branding, so that rendering of his name is NOT an error). However, ESPN obviously has data that says those two men (and the other professional loudmouths) attract young viewers and get people to click on YouTube links. Most of my sports consumption is actual sports anyhow, and if I want to hear people talk about sports, there are plenty of podcasts that aren't loudmouths offering up "hot takes." For example, I listen to local show "Mason & Ireland" quite a bit.

It's a shame that ESPN fired Ryan Clark, particularly in the manner they did (they literally canned him halfway through a show, such that he just disappeared). I thought he had some interesting things to say. I have no particular feelings about Karl Ravech, Stephania Bell, or the others who were let go.

I don't particularly understand the strange "retro" thing that ESPN is doing, in terms of bringing back former personalities. I never cared for Chris Berman's shtick, I very much dislike Skip Bayless, and I find Rich Eisen to be very, very boring. I think these people are supposed to keep old-school ESPN viewers like me on board. In my case, it won't have that effect. Unless they bring back Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick and "The Big Show," I have no use for ESPN nostalgia.

I am ultimately unpersuaded that ESPN's pivot will work. The sports leagues are moving toward selling their games to consumers directly and cutting out the middlemen. And without live sports, all the other ESPN programming is just filler. That filler that does not appeal to older sports fans, while younger people don't really watch TV. Who will be the audience in 10 years, assuming the network loses a bunch of its live sports properties?

D.H. in Boston, MA, asks: I am intrigued by your statement that "punters tend to be pretty sharp, but kickers tend to be meatheads." Can you give examples of prominent meathead kickers (beyond Jay Feely) and sharp punters? Can you speculate on why they tend to be like that? Are there any interesting counterexamples?

(Z) answers: Raiders kicker Sebastian Janikowski was the biggest meathead of a football player I think I have ever seen. Current Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker is another meathead. Former Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt was such a meathead, he was called out on national TV by his quarterback, Peyton Manning, who described Vanderjagt as an "idiot kicker."

I suspect that punters are more intellectual because their position is more tactical. They can't just haul off and kick the ball as hard as they can; they have to think about placement. By contrast, kicker is basically a power position. They have to kick the ball hard enough to make it through the uprights, or hard enough to go through the end zone on a kickoff. Much more rarely do they have to think tactically.

The best kicker counterexample I can think of is former Dolphin Garo Yepremian, who was a European immigrant to the United States. He made the NFL without ever having played college football (based on his experience as a soccer player), and had a long career in which he won two Super Bowls and made the NFL's all-1970s team. This despite the fact that he was author of one of the most godawful NFL plays of all time. After his playing days, Yepremian was an activist, an entrepreneur, a motivational speaker and an occasional actor. Quite a Renaissance man, really.

D.L. in Springfield, IL, asks: Do you know any reason why Electoral-Vote.com might not load in Windows 11?

I ask this because I usually read the day's posting before work, at home on Windows 10, but on those days when the post is late, I like to read it at work on my lunch break. They are just now starting to convert to Windows 11. When I tried to load the site from a Win 11 work station, it just wouldn't load. I got the error "The connection was reset" or "The connection timed out".

The same problem happens in both Edge and Chrome, so it's not a quirk of just one browser.

(Z) answers: We have no idea. But if we hear from readers who do, at comments@electoral-vote.com we will pass it along.

H.B. in Santiago, Chile, asks: I dreamt that (V) and (Z) slacked off one day. (L) wrote the post very late, doing a laudable job. Has this ever happened before?

(Z) answers: No. If both (V) and I are unavailable, we just go dark for the day.

Writing the site is like serving a tennis ball, or playing the piano, professionally. It takes a while to learn how to do it competently. And then, once you're competent, you have to be "in practice" to do it at the speed that is required. If we asked (L) or anyone else who can write in the correct fashion to take over for a day, and we gave them 48 hours' notice, then it would be doable. But if we dropped it on them at 10:00 p.m. PT, and said "you have 4-5 hours to crank out 5,000 words"—something that (V) and I do all the time—it would be asking too much.

K.S. in Harrisburg, PA, asks: I know you don't have contact information of all the readers of your site, but I assume you have a database of everyone who has ever written or guessed at the Friday puzzle, which may be in the thousands of people. I am also sure that you will allow an AI written story before you would ever sell your data base for marketing. My question is: based on your readership, if you were to sell your database, what type of company would be most interested in your demographic and do you have any idea of how much it would bring in? Also, just how big is your database?

(Z) answers: We only have a database in the loosest sense. That is to say, we keep all of the non-spam e-mails we get. And the primary thing we use that collection of e-mails for is to try to discern names and locations when a reader forgets to include that information. In other words, if we get an e-mail from abe_l@aol.com, and the name and location information is not included, we search all the e-mails we've gotten from abe_l@aol.com to see if abe remembered to include the information in an earlier e-mail. We have no idea how many different people for whom we have e-mails on file; all we can say for sure is that it's certainly in the four figures, and may be in the low five figures.

We would not sell people's e-mail addresses for any reason. However, the readership leans very educated, Democratic and well-off. There are certainly political organizations—activist groups, left-leaning PACs, Democratic party organs—that would be pleased to have the information. Among private entities, probably book publishers. We have no idea what amount of money we might realize, however, because we've never even come close to looking into it.

L.W. from Edina, MN, asks: I've been following Electoral-Vote.com for 20+ years. During that time, technology has changed at breakneck pace. This site, on the other hand, with the exception of adding contributors, has not, at least not outwardly. This includes not really embracing other mediums such as the socials or podcasts. Compared to 2004, has anything changed about the site—how it creates content, how it accesses external data, how it's managed, etc?

(Z) answers: The content has changed a lot. There is way more of it, and while it used to be nearly 100% short-form and 80% poll-focused, it's now nearly 100% medium- and long-form, and maybe 10% or 20% poll-focused.

The tech has not changed all that much. The site is built on the same basic programming that it has been for its entire run; it's easier to just tweak and patch than it is to start all over. We do use a little bit of social media, but that's just automated scripts that post each day's posting to places like eX-Twitter. We've been asked about a podcast, but the marketplace is crowded, and we already give most of the time and energy we have to spare to writing the site. Making podcasts would be a LOT of work. If you want to watch political podcasts, The Bulwark has plenty of them.

We do use a few secondary tools that we did not use, say, 10 years ago. For example, the subscription site Patreon. The survey site SurveyPlanet. But those are just secondary tools.

This item appeared on www.electoral-vote.com. Read it Monday through Friday for political and election news, Saturday for answers to reader's questions, and Sunday for letters from readers.

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