Harvey Newman and Gayatri Mathur

[00:04] HARVEY NEWMAN: Hi, my name is Harvey Newman. I'm age 79. This is Friday, December 10, 2021. I'm speaking from West Palm Beach, Florida, in the United States. I have a partner named Gayatri. I believe I pronounced that correctly, and she's my one story small step partner for the night.

[00:30] GAYATRI MATHUR: Hi, my name is Gayatri Mathur. I'm 56 years old. Today is Friday, December 10, 2021. I'm based in Chicago, and I'm here today with Harvey, and he is my one small step conversation partner.

[00:53] HARVEY NEWMAN: Well, when I received the email asking if I would be interested, I was very excited about the possibility of speaking with a total stranger and having a meaningful conversation, and so I signed up for this talk.

[01:12] GAYATRI MATHUR: I also had actually got this email, probably from NPR. And when I heard it, when I saw it, I felt at that time that we have so many differences that we are focusing on right now in the public sphere. And I thought this would be a fabulous opportunity to meet with somebody I didn't know at all, a stranger, as you mentioned, Harvey, and see what commonalities we have, even if we have differences, because I'm sure we have both. And I would love to make that connection with you today to see despite our differences, we have something in common, or despite commonalities, we have differences. Either ways, it'll be interesting to explore that with you.

[02:07] HARVEY NEWMAN: Gaya Tree says she's brown, an immigrant female living in the midwest for the past 30 years. She grew up in India, came to the US as a grad student, where she met her husband. She has two kids that have been raised in suburbia. Both of them are professionals, now, empty nesters, and she loves to travel and has really missed seeing her mom for the past year due to the pandemic. The country she came to 33 years ago is politically very different today, and she said that we can't talk to each other civilly to resolve our differences amicably.

[03:05] GAYATRI MATHUR: Harvey is 78 years old and is a full time caregiver for his wife with dementia. He has been a theocentric humanist since 1974 and was ordained as an interfaith minister in 1984 and was responsible for World Awake, an organization for interfaith and interspiritual ministers in 2005 after he retired from a marketing research firm. In 2004, he founded Circle of Life Mastery, a nonprofit to advance human consciousness.

[03:47] HARVEY NEWMAN: I'd like to know the name of Gayatri's husband and her children.

[03:55] GAYATRI MATHUR: Sure. My husband's name is Sharath, and my son is Pranay, and my daughter is Ishani.

[04:06] HARVEY NEWMAN: And how old are they?

[04:08] GAYATRI MATHUR: My older one is 29, and my younger one, my daughter, is 24. So they are grown out of the house. You know, they have finished their graduate school. They have their jobs. They're living their lives.

[04:24] HARVEY NEWMAN: Thank you.

[04:27] GAYATRI MATHUR: And I'd like to know what, before I read this, I didn't know what a theocentric humanist was. Harvey, I'd love to know more about that and how you came to be one.

[04:40] HARVEY NEWMAN: Oh, that's a wonderful story. I was looking for something to do on a Saturday night, and I went to the local paper to see what might be interesting to me. And there was only one thing that was interesting to me in that entire paper for that night. And that was a little thing that said the humanist foundation. And it had a small h with a beautiful arch, which had a. Since it was black and white, it just had three different shades of gray to black. And underneath there was a heart. And I said, this really looks like the right thing for me to do. And I went and I met the people who were part of this organization, and I immediately knew I was home. And later, when I discovered that this was a form of humanism that accepted the existence of God, I was very, very excited because I didn't want God left out of the way of living for people who were humanists. I felt that most humanists had a very secular way of looking at it, and many have actually been atheists and anti religious people. Although I have some problems with religion that wasn't. That has nothing to do with God as far as I'm concerned.

[06:15] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah, that's amazing, because actually that's. I believe that, too. There are many problems with religion, but God is not one of them. That was an interesting statement. I love that statement. Yeah. So being humanist really means what? Harvey

[06:38] HARVEY NEWMAN: Being a humanist is to embrace the idea of being the best human being you can be, serving others, having a sense of community, and learning how to, how shall I put it, transform your own life so that you can become the best human you can be.

[07:13] GAYATRI MATHUR: That's amazing.

[07:17] HARVEY NEWMAN: So I have to say that the most influential person in my life was the man who was the mentor that I studied with for the next two years in theocentric humanism. He and I together worked on a leadership program which involved reading books on humanist philosophy, psychology, theology and sexuality. All these things were included in this wonderful training program that we took for a year. And then I was ordained as a minister of the Church of Humanism, which was. And a facilitator of humanist groups and a counselor in humanist philosophy and psychology.

[08:17] GAYATRI MATHUR: And, you know, I don't know if there is a single person who has been the most influential in my life. I think for me, it feels like it's taken a village to have a lot of influences on me. Probably, you know, this is probably pretty standard. My parents have been a huge influence, a huge positive influence in my life. I think the women in my life when I was young, especially my grandmothers, my mothers, my mother, and even my mother in law, have been such strong women that that really gave me, you know, different role models to tackle different situations in life. And I had seen that through these various women, and I felt inspired. I still feel inspired by just these people who are so close to me. And in many ways, my spouse and my children have also taught me so much and shaped me to be the person that I am today in so many different big and small ways that I feel really, my family has probably been the biggest influential force in my life.

[09:42] HARVEY NEWMAN: Oh, his name was Joseph Ben David. He had come to the United. Actually, he came to the United States via first being born in Budapest, Hungary, and then spent many years in Jerusalem before it became Israel, and actually had worked with a number of people in Jerusalem who were attempting to create a state that would have enabled the people who were living there, the Arabs, to actually be part of the state of Israel. When things failed so badly, he came to the United States, and that's when he started to do his work in theocentric humanism. I am in many ways, an independent, but I am truly a liberal. I'm very open minded liberal, I would say. And although I am not terribly thrilled with the way politics are going today, I would definitely associate myself more with the democratic party than any other. For a period of time, I actually was a Green party member, but the Green party has been so badly cut down and not given an opportunity to have any real position in the United States. So as a second choice, I'm a Democrat.

[11:30] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah, I'm a Democrat as well, and have been ever since I can remember, since I formed my political views. There are many things I feel that I almost can't agree with on the right because of who I am. It just doesn't include me socially, economically, politically. I live my life, you know, in a way that just doesn't seem to resonate with half of what the political parties can offer. And it feels a little. It feels sad that I can't see myself, that I can't see myself as how half of America feels. That has been something that I've been, you know, thinking about a lot when I came here as a young person. I came for graduate school, so I was not so I think I was always a very, I had very strong political views, even as a young person, but they're not so formed, I guess. And at that time, George Bush was president number one. And I felt like, you know, he was, I could, I could see many of the positions that he held, and I could agree with them or certainly understand them. But if I fast forward to 30 years and I see the most powerful people in today's Republican Party, I just don't understand it at all. And that makes me sad. Makes me sad.

[13:23] HARVEY NEWMAN: So, Gayatri, since you came here during the Bush administration, how did you feel about the first war in Iraq?

[13:34] GAYATRI MATHUR: You know, I was in a graduate class when it actually started. Literally, I was in class. And our professor let us off early, and Wolf Blitzer was on tv, and he said, we have to disperse today because I want to go and watch what's going on. So it was all, it was, you know, that was the first time that we were seeing a war live on tv. It hadn't happened before that in itself. That newness was something. Oh, my gosh. And I remember all those card missiles and, you know, talking about all that. It took up the consciousness at that time right away. But I didn't think that there was, I was too young. I was busy with my graduate work. It was kind of on the sidelines of my consciousness. I wasn't thinking about, should we do it? Should we not do it? The appropriateness of it. To be honest, I didn't pay that much attention to it. It was just something that was there. It felt like it was the right thing to do because this was a dictator who had, you know, gassed his own people. And of course, we had to get rid of it. But it was almost like a fait accompli. I didn't think through that so much. What about you, Harvey? How did you think through that time?

[15:01] HARVEY NEWMAN: I would have to say that I kind of felt the same. I was glad that it didn't last very long, which was a good thing. But of course, in hindsight, I've come to realize the incorrectness of it. And it started me to think about our politics, and especially our war, I guess you could say, mongering approach to politics, world politics. I mean, I had also gone through, prior to that, the Vietnam War. In fact, I was drafted into the war.

[15:46] GAYATRI MATHUR: Oh, wow.

[15:47] HARVEY NEWMAN: Didn't have to serve, thank God. But in Vietnam, I should say. But I was always anti war, unless it was absolutely essential. I mean, the last war that I feel that the United States was in, that was essential, was World War Two. From that point on, we were really, how should I put it? Imperialist in our. In our. In our views about world politics. That was my.

[16:24] GAYATRI MATHUR: Did you have. Yeah, yeah, I understand that. Do you have friends or family who went to Vietnam and were you part of any protests at the time?

[16:35] HARVEY NEWMAN: I was a protester after I got out. I'm trying to think, was I a protester before I went in? No, I didn't. I didn't know. But when I got out, and, of course, had seen some of the things that had happened. As I said, I was drafted in. I had many friends in the army who did go. Some were badly wounded. One, actually, I stayed in touch with, and he eventually died of brain cancer, which probably caught, was caused by exposure to napalm in Vietnam. I mean, there were terrible tragedies that came out of it for every. Every soldier that went in. And the damage to their psyche was terrible.

[17:29] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah, that's true. You know, I have been watching band of brothers, which is on HBO. Max, I don't know if you saw that serial when it originally came out. It's really the book by Stephen Ambrose. I don't know if you read it called Band of Brothers. And then Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg did this ten part series about the 101st Airborne, Easy Company. So they followed Easy Company from 3D Day to going all the way to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. So they follow this one single company, and it's 100% based on the book. They did it early enough that there are some veterans who were able to talk about that time. Obviously, everybody's played by actors, but they had some veterans in that video, in the videos as well, and the show as well. And what I am struck by is the people who participated in the war did not have any desire to glamorize it. I think we almost, as a country, have started to glamorize World War Two. But the people who were in it didn't want that to happen at all. In fact, they wanted to have no wars because they understood the price. And it's very interesting that we celebrate them as heroes, but not this aspect of them, where they say, okay, maybe wars are necessary, but think really hard, because it chews and spits out the people that go to war. And it's interesting that you say that. It's sort of an imperialist view, which I had never thought of before. So that's piqued my interest, I recently read a book on the Korangal Valley in Afghanistan. It's written by this journalist called Stephen Anger. And he, I forget the exact name of the book, but anyway, he has written about this one particular valley in Afghanistan and it was written when the war was still going on. I read it now just as the pullout was, after the pullout actually happened. And the things that some of these soldiers were saying and doing is amazing to me that knew that in 2008 that it was unwinnable. It was unwinnable because the terrain, because of the so many factors, political factors, but also physical factors, the social factors. On the other side of Afghanistan, there were just so many issues. And I felt like, oh my gosh, we spent another twelve years after this happened. What I'm reading about how many lives, how much money. And the other side though, I wonder about is how would we have resolved this? What would have happened if we hadn't done it? That makes me think too.

[20:57] HARVEY NEWMAN: Well, that's an interesting question because I've done some research myself on this as a political activist and my particular take is we had no reason to go into, real good reason to go into Afghanistan at all. If you understand the Quran, the government and the people of Afghanistan as Muslims needed to have more proof that in fact what had happened in the United States was actually caused by the man who they say was harbor, they were harboring. And at that point there was not sufficient proof. And yet we went in. And my particular take on the whole thing, and it may sound like a radical take, but I personally think that what we went into Afghanistan was to build the pipeline before Russia did.

[22:11] GAYATRI MATHUR: I have never heard that before and never thought of that before either. But I felt, I mean, you know, I grew up in India, as I have said, and in the eighties, after, after Moscow pulled out of Afghanistan, there is a direct link between that and what happened in Kashmir because before that, in the sixties and seventies, there were always skirmishes and of course India had fought wars with Afghanistan, but Kashmir did not become this flaming issue till the eighties. And there is some, certainly some discussion that what happened was we had all these jihadist fighters, young men with guns, with nowhere to go. They got into Pakistan and therefore they turned their eyes towards Kashmir. That's certainly an indian view, obviously. And then, you know, it started becoming a problem. So doing something in one place has repercussions other places which we can't even anticipate. That's something that I don't think we think of when we go into a place where anyone, you know, goes into war. They think of immediate issues, and they don't think of the fallout, which is interesting.

[23:43] HARVEY NEWMAN: Well, I remember Bill Maher, and he was doing some interesting things during that time. And one of them was this cry out of the George W. Bush White house and many of the Republicans joining in. In this was, why do they hate us? Why do they hate Americans? And one of the things that he did was he showed a poster of vietnamese fishermen on the river and servicemen going by with water skiing and sending the waves up onto their boats. And I thought that was a beautiful depiction of why we could be seen as hateful to other cultures and other countries that, in other words, we go in and remember years ago reading a wonderful book called the Ugly American. And that fits into that basic idea. We have not been kind in many ways to people in the rest of the world. And so when we get bitten back, the first thing we do is we hit with more force than even the original force that started the whole thing. So there are experiments where they test a person's ability to know what it's like. So I'm trying to think of how it works. Okay, so they have this machine linked up that they can tell how much a person is putting force on someone's thumb, and then they measure that, and they ask the person to now do it back to the other person, and invariably they squeeze harder than the original one. And then if they go back and forth, eventually they're going to be actually causing pain to each other. And I think that's kind of how we approach world politics in many ways. Somebody does something bad to us, we're going to do twice as much worse back to them.

[26:11] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah, that's possibly true. And the interesting thing with Afghanistan is that we had all this technology. As I was reading in this book, I mentioned, they have every kind of modern gun that's available to mankind, but, you know, and they're using these guns and this ammo and all their technology to their limits. So these young men who are in their twenties, who are very efficient fighting machines, really young men, are, you know, using the guns at such a rate that the metal is melting because they have to shoot so much, they have to fight so much. It's nonstop. But they were defeated by an enemy, which is basically technologically in the Stone Age. They had nothing that technology is not enough to overcome. I don't know why they were fighting. Maybe they felt they were fighting for their homeland. Maybe nobody has defeated Afghanistan. It's called the graveyard of empires. For a reason. And it's amazing that we went in knowing that nobody has won. In Afghanistan. The terrain is just like being in Mars. It's so hard that you can't win. And technology hasn't solved that problem. And they all know their mountains better than anyone else will ever know. They know the conditions. But still we went in and I don't know what was the purpose. But now coming to today, I actually agreed with Mister Biden to pull out because it was never ending and it wasn't done prettily at all. But I don't know, somebody had to, you know, say the buck stops with me. Most people probably aren't happy with the way it happened, and I'm not either. But I felt it had to happen.

[28:12] HARVEY NEWMAN: Yeah. Gayatri. I don't agree though, that nobody won. I think that the corporations involved in petroleum definitely won. I think perhaps the drug people have won. I think that they've won at the expense of human life on both sides. So I wouldn't say nobody has won.

[28:41] GAYATRI MATHUR: How do you mean, Harvey, what do you mean by the drug companies and petroleum?

[28:45] HARVEY NEWMAN: Well, the pipeline made the ability to move petroleum through Afghanistan down to the coast where they were able to then load it onto ships. And so that's a win for the petroleum industry. In addition, from what I understand, the Taliban at that point. I mean, I don't agree with a lot of the things that the Taliban did do, but one of the things that they did accomplish during their reign prior to the war was to limit the amount of drug output from Afghanistan. They were actually going to the warlords and saying, you cannot have poppies on your land. So I think there are some winners. They're a small group of winners, but they're winners in any wars like that. In addition, the, the whole arms industry, I mean, there are industries that absolutely profit from war always.

[30:04] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah, yeah, you're right.

[30:07] HARVEY NEWMAN: Unfortunately, are the victims of the war.

[30:11] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah.

[30:12] HARVEY NEWMAN: Soldiers and the, and the, and the populace in the country.

[30:17] GAYATRI MATHUR: So what do you think is the solution, Harvey? How do we resolve differences?

[30:24] HARVEY NEWMAN: Wow, that's a, that's a big question. I don't know. I just know that we just have to, as people start to recognize how important it is who we vote for and holding their feet to the fire, making them accountable for the things that they do. And some of the accounting has to be in the, and the ballot box, and some of the accounting has to be in terms of protest and being out there, being an active person. I mean, I marched very with great solidarity with the people who were part of the Occupy Wall street in New York when that happened. And it was incredibly liberating to be able to say, we are the 99%. We are the people who want to get our rights, and our amount of the pie are part of the pie. That 1% is taking the hugest amount of the pie and then having us fight over the crumbs. And it creates an incredible, incredible thing. And I think that's what we're reaping the benefits of right now. Now is that.

[31:58] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah, I think certainly, you know, the country that I came to 33 years ago was more in fine, was more economically equitable. It may not have been socially equitable as we are today, or certainly we were not as socially aware as we are today, but economically, there was much more equity. I think people could change their I economic circumstances more easily. You could get an education more easily, you could get other kinds of jobs more easily. I think now that is getting harder and harder, and I see that around me. I practiced as a physical therapist in the US for 30 plus years, although now I'm in nonprofit work. But I've seen patients who had to choose between medicine and food. I've also worked with, you know, CEO's of Fortune 500 companies who had the best care and had no idea that there is this other side. And really, in America, people are choosing between food and medicine that exists. It's real. It's nothing. Just something that's once in a while, there are many people who are in that situation, and that has only gotten worse now in the past 1015 years, or maybe we're seeing it more. But I definitely feel that economic equity has gotten worse. And because of the economic problems, we have seen the rise of populism, because people want to hear quick solutions. They don't want to hear the hard work and the impossibility of a quick solution. They think we can go back to coal, they think we can go back to factories. We can't. We can't do that. It's over. But somebody showing them this vision of being back in the fifties, where everything was white and everything was, you know, ruled by a boss man, we can't do that. It's over demographically. But they want that because that felt like utopia to them or something. I don't know. But economically, there's very much a. There's an economic route to all this.

[34:24] HARVEY NEWMAN: Yeah, there definitely is. And the disparity, the economic disparity has grown tremendously over the years.

[34:38] GAYATRI MATHUR: Do you feel that?

[34:39] HARVEY NEWMAN: I wanted to get back to something else. When we talk about war, though, there's a war going on in this country that is also very disturbing, and that is the amount of guns that are available and the amount of killings that are going on in this country on a daily basis. And it's quite disturbing to me to see that mentality of, you know, when I was growing up, school bullies, the worst that you might do is you go out after school and they'll give you a bloody nose. Now they kill you. That's scary stuff for any child to have to go through. And adults seeing this happening, you know, you can't go to places and be sure that you're going to come home alive.

[35:31] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah, it's very scary. I worry for my children. Do you have children or grandchildren, Harvey?

[35:38] HARVEY NEWMAN: No, no children. No grandchildren. Yeah. And by the way, when you read my bio, my wife passed away about three months ago.

[35:46] GAYATRI MATHUR: So I'm so sorry.

[35:49] HARVEY NEWMAN: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, the dementia finally caught up with her. She was much older than I was, but we had a fabulous life up until the dementia started in. Well, it really started to get bad around 2016. So it's been about five years of going through a real caregiving experience, which was wonderful for me. I mean, really, I grew tremendous, tremendously as a result of that.

[36:23] GAYATRI MATHUR: Do you mind sharing how that happened? The growth?

[36:28] HARVEY NEWMAN: The growth. Well, again, all those years in human potential made me aware of what was going on, and I took some courses that the veterans administration gave me on being a caregiver. I loved her dearly, and so. And one of the things that I absolutely knew about her was she was never going to want to be put in a nursing home. And so I took it upon myself to bring her through this period, and I had no idea when she was going to pass. But as I said about three months ago, she passed.

[37:16] GAYATRI MATHUR: I'm so moved by your compassion and your generosity of spirit. It just comes through the way you're talking about her and your caregiving.

[37:31] HARVEY NEWMAN: Thank you. Thank you.

[37:37] GAYATRI MATHUR: It must have been nice to share that with or share your views with her, and you must miss that.

[37:44] HARVEY NEWMAN: Oh, sure. Sure. It's funny, though, she never really understood how she supported it. I mean, it was wonderful how she supported all the groups that I did, using the apartment for counseling. And I didn't mention it in my bio, but when we met, I was a street performer. I was singing in the streets of Manhattan. And she took me into her life as someone who really had no future, no plans, no nothing. And she made it possible for me to go for three years until I decided that I had to do something more in my life. And then. And then she helped. Helped me get into the whole field that I eventually got into. But, yeah, I was burned out of the corporate world, and I just. Those three years were really an exceptional experience, to sing and serve people and I. And just be a free spirit and then have a woman in my life during that time. And then once I got into the corporate world again and was doing something that I really loved, market research was really something that I really adored. And. And then when I retired, we. We just. And even before I retired, we were able to travel the world. We were able to do some wonderful things together and. Yeah, that's amazing.

[39:35] GAYATRI MATHUR: I know, and that's amazing. Well, you paid her forward from the time that she took care of you. You did the same for her at the end of her life.

[39:45] HARVEY NEWMAN: Yes, absolutely.

[39:47] GAYATRI MATHUR: That's amazing. Where was your favorite place to go?

[39:52] HARVEY NEWMAN: My favorite place was Costa Rica.

[39:55] GAYATRI MATHUR: Oh, wow. I've never been loved.

[39:58] HARVEY NEWMAN: Costa Rica, it's one of the few countries in the world that does not have a military.

[40:03] GAYATRI MATHUR: Oh, I didn't know that.

[40:05] HARVEY NEWMAN: Yes. And they use their resources and their money to create a relatively good community. I don't know if it's still like that. I haven't been in Costa Rica in many years, but they're aided by a lot of things, because one of the things that they're aided by is that they are in Central America and the drug trade runs through them. It helps their nation. By the way, there are some problems with criminality and all of that, but generally, it's a very nice and safe and beautiful place. A lot of Americans, when they retire, actually go to Costa Rica and live there. Wow.

[40:54] GAYATRI MATHUR: Do you think it's even possible for a big nation state like ours to not have a military?

[41:04] HARVEY NEWMAN: I don't think it's possible to not have a military, but I think that the amount of money and budget that we put into the military is extreme, over the top, and very likely unnecessary. And then if we're going to continue doing things like nation building and like that, I did hear something recently that will require at least our military and perhaps even NATO to be involved in, which is, I understand that Russia is starting to threaten the Ukraine, and I think we have to get the world involved in making sure that that doesn't happen.

[41:55] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah, I agree. But then again, I mean, you know, Ukraine's military generals are saying that if they don't have any help, external help, they will be crushed. And we can totally see that. Of course. That's so obvious. So there we come back again to a war. Come back to young men and women being put in these situations. So how do we get rid of that cannon fodder concept? Because literally that word also is so old, and we're still doing it.

[42:36] HARVEY NEWMAN: Well, I think as Gandhi put it, and he made it very clear he was definitely not for violence. But violence should never be taken off the table. There are times when violence is required. And, and if a situation like this is happening, there has to be some way to mitigate one country from taking over another country. I just don't think that's, I don't think that's a particularly good message to give any country. No, it's not going to be protected.

[43:12] GAYATRI MATHUR: Yeah, it's, it's not. Okay. And particularly from a big bully. I mean, anyone walking into another country is a bully by definition. And it's very, to me, it's a little alarming the extent to which non, well, I think Russia is a state actor, but it acts through all these different ways, and they're quite wily by provoking all kinds of issues in all kinds of places so that we get distracted. You know, the whole belarusian and I polish problem at the belarusian polish border, they say, is because Russia orchestrated it.

[43:54] HARVEY NEWMAN: And, and very likely so. But again, we have to look back at our own history and the way we have orchestrated these kinds of things. So two rights don't make a, two wrongs don't make a right. You say two rights don't make a wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right.

[44:12] GAYATRI MATHUR: That's also true.

[44:18] HARVEY NEWMAN: It's interesting. I didn't expect this kind of conversation to happen, but we agree so much.

[44:25] GAYATRI MATHUR: We do.

[44:26] HARVEY NEWMAN: Somewhat disappointed with not having the opportunity to see what would happen if we disagreed on it.

[44:35] GAYATRI MATHUR: Well, actually, I'm happy that, Harvey, you and I found so much commonality. I tell you, I grew up in India, and my dad and grandparents actually lived in what is now Pakistan, so it was undivided India. And then in 1947, the British drew a line and said, well, Pakistan is here and India is on this side. So they were Hindus on the Pakistan side, so they had to come over and they, it was a searing experience. I think. My dad was only, I know my dad was only 13, and I think it left my grandfather some permanent scars. He was a wonderful, jovial person, and on a daily basis, there was no difference for me. But when I was young, I would ask him about that time in his life, and he couldn't talk about it. Like many world War two vets, he couldn't talk about it at all. And my father, when he got older, I begged him to write it because I said, this is our history. This is the family history, that your grandchildren are young now, but if you write it down, they'll see it when they get older and process it in a different way. So he did write it down, and the process of writing, he wrote it when he was in my home. They would come and visit us in the summer and stay for two, three months, and he wrote it while he was visiting Chicago. He got the flashbacks of almost PTSD again while writing it.

[46:15] HARVEY NEWMAN: Sure.

[46:15] GAYATRI MATHUR: And he was not a soldier. He was part of the crowd that's moving. My grandpa was a very well to do person, so they had resources and they were never themselves in harm's way, but they witnessed many horrible things. And that really informed me. I could never have not been what I am in terms of my position to war and equity. It could never have been any other way, because that had a huge impression on my growing up years. So I'm actually glad that you and I could talk openly that I found another stranger in the United States, living in Florida, no less, who basically agrees with a lot of the premises that I hold important. And it gives me hope. I know you might have wanted to spar a little bit, but it gives me hope that maybe there are people that we can move something in the direction that we want.

[47:25] HARVEY NEWMAN: Sure. And I agree with that, too. I think it is wonderful how we found the commonalities and agreements, and you reminded me a little bit about what shaped me and what it was, was at the age of five, because I was a singer, I was discovered, and I started singing in the synagogues. Now five years old. That would make me. That would make that year about 1940, 719, 48. And I was singing to people who had been harmed by the Holocaust. I didn't know this as a child. I didn't know how wounded these people were, but I only knew how delighted they were to be able to be in the synagogue and hear us sing songs and praise to God and. But I couldn't understand this vibration that I got from them that was so confusing of this PTSD, if you will. Good way to describe it. These were all people who were suffering from PTSD, and I was a kid not understanding that. Later on I did. And it was. It was very, very informative to discover what. What I had been doing and what had happened to the jewish people during World War two Germany and other countries in Europe. So, anyway, Gayatri, it was a pleasure meeting you and talking with you. And you just brought up some wonderful things in myself, and I hope I was able to do the same for you.

[49:20] GAYATRI MATHUR: Absolutely. Harvey, it's been wonderful hearing your experience, and I know that I have really, really enjoyed it. And it'll stay with me. It will stay with me for a while, and I'll be thinking about you. Thank you so much for your time. And thank you for sharing this time with me.

[49:38] HARVEY NEWMAN: It's been my pleasure. Thank you.