Hey there, Shankar here.
One lesson that 2020 has taught us over and over again is that it's very hard to predict the future.
We don't know what will happen tomorrow, much less what the world will look like in a month or a year from now.
But one thing we can do is to use the past to try to understand the present.
We've been thinking a lot in recent weeks about a conversation I had a while ago with historian Annette Gordon Reed.
Annette studies the life of Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved people who lived on his plantation.
Thomas Jefferson, of course, is the founding father who wrote the phrase all men are created equal in the declaration of independence.
The gulf between his professed values and his behavior is rich psychological terrain.
It also reveals something about the gap between our own professed values and our actions today.
Here's the show.
This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
All nations at the stroke of the midnight hour are built on stories.
India will awake to life and freedom.
Ensueno sakuba.
There are stories about ideals infinidade veses, the values around which a people stake their identity.
We shall fight on the beaches.
We shall fight on the landing grounds.
Mates helping mates.
That's what it means to be australian.