Panagiotis Apostolellis and Liz Emrey

00:00 My name is Liz Emery and I'm 78 years old. Today's date is August 30, 2022 and we are recording a one small step conversation with the Karsch Institute of Democracy at WTJU studio in Charlottesville, Virginia. My partner's name is Panagiotis and my.

00:23 Name is Panagiotis Apostolellis and I'm 49 years old. Mail today's date is August 13 30th, 2022 and we're recording a one small step conversation with the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the WTJU studio in Charlottesville, Virginia. And my partner's name is Liz.

00:44 Great.

00:45 So how did you each find out about one small step and why did you decide to do this conversation?

00:52 My co pastor, Pastor Brenda Brown Grooms, has worked with one small step and she highly recommends recommended it to me.

01:01 Okay, I'm a faculty here and from my past eleven years of living in the states realized how important it is to bring people together from diverse cultures and backgrounds. So I've started a program to bring in students and help me do something digital because I'm in computer science that will help us do something like that. And I've been inspired by different documentaries and experiences over the past few years and during my research to find something similar. I heard about Storycorps and one step as implemented at UVA and I said this is a good opportunity for me to experience what these people are doing since I'm trying to do something similar but more interactive, more digital. One of the most important parts of this conversation is putting yourself in your partner's shoes, even for a moment before you. You have your partner's bio, which they wrote when they signed up for the conversation. I ask each of you to please read your partner's bio out loud. Once you've done this, feel free to ask any follow up questions about what they wrote.

02:12 I'm originally from Greece, born and raised on a beautiful greek island. Before starting my academic career, I studied in Greece, the UK and the US and graduated with a PhD degree in computer science. I've done my military service back home in between studies, worked for more than a decade there, and traveled quite a bit before settling to have a family in my early thirties, extending it beyond two people in my early forties. The major life changing event for me was a switch from the more conservative, traditional greek culture to the extreme western society of the USA. Cultural shock aside, it was and still is humbling to realize how many common things we share with other people who, in our own familiar environment, might consider us aliens. Similar to how I was a resident alien for many years in the US. This has made me pursue experiences that broaden my perspective of the world and the people that inhabit it. Part of this endeavor was winning the Meads Dream Idea award and currently working with students to help them identify their values and realize that their brain is very similar to a parachute. It only works when it's open.

03:36 And Liz wrote, as a female american Baptist pastor of an open and affirming church, which welcomes everyone, even sex offenders, I'm deeply concerned about social justice. Faced discrimination. Growing up in a lower middle class home, teaching fourth grade in newly integrated Evanston two, I helped write a curriculum on black self concept for the Ford foundation. My late husband and I served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, widening our understanding of racial relationships and living simply. All right, if you guys want to just go ahead and ask any questions you may have about your partner's bio, feel free to.

04:17 I'm interested in what the Mead Dream Idea award is.

04:22 Okay, so Mead is a deceased faculty who was very famous for student engagement. So he would walk around the gardens on grounds and engage with students about different topics outside of the discipline. And the endowment that he left is now being used for helping faculty engage with students, actually. And one of their initiatives is the Dream idea, where faculty from different departments propose, have a brief proposal about how they could engage students meaningfully outside of the classroom. And one faculty from every school is being selected every year. And my proposal was the winning one. A couple of years ago, during the pandemic, I didn't do anything. And now I implemented my idea last spring.

05:14 What was that idea?

05:17 The idea was what I very briefly described previously. How can we bring in people together based on their values, initially stripping away other parts of their identity that get in the way, like political affiliations, religions, color, culture, other things that I think they largely keep us apart than bring us together. So we investigated. We had a two day retreat with the students, and they did a value exploration activity first. And then in the second part, we did a gaming activity for designing some. Some system that will allow us to do that. Interactive system, computer system.

06:00 I mean, these were with computer science students.

06:03 They were engineering students. So the fund was for engineering students. So it was different engineering students, mostly computer science, because I think they know me, and it was more familiar for them to engage with someone that they know. And so, reading your bioliz, I was interested about your experience in Sierra Leone and how this fits in with your occupation. I guess as a pastor, this is something that you do for a living, right? Yeah. If you can explain a bit more, and especially the widening your understanding of racial relationships.

06:46 Well, Sierra Leone was an ex british colony, and it had only been free for about seven years when we went there in 1969. And it was really a wonderful experience for us. The people were so generous to us, and even though we were what they call Pumwee whites, they didn't hold it against us. They treated us so well. It was just life changing. And we thought we couldn't manage without air conditioning and a telephone and a radio or television or water in the house or toilet or whatever, but we managed just fine. We even fought off some army ants who invaded our hut and we just walked away and let them take it and then came back two days later when they had cleaned out every bug in the house and gone through everything and moved on. And we just learned from them what really mattered was not the things you had, but the relationships you had.

07:59 Okay, it's perfect. My whole idea is about relationships and building connections among people.

08:06 The motto of our church is not religion, but relationships.

08:11 Okay. I think that's what we need more of. May I ask a follow up question, or you want to ask something about me? So I will interpret and correct me if I'm wrong. The widening of your understanding of racial relationships. One of the things that you said is, although you were white, apparently right, you didn't fit too much in there. And from history, probably they would have every reason to potentially hate you or not go very alone with you. Your experience was completely different.

08:47 They were very gracious to us. In fact, some of the children would come up and ask me to open up my blouse to see if I was white all the way through, because they hadn't seen that many white people. And the women would try to plate my hair, but it's very straight. And after working on it for hours, they would just say, oh, Betty, which they called me Betty, just wear a head tie all the time. That'll solve the problem.

09:14 Right. Great. So I had similar experiences when I came here. I was brought up in, as I say, in Greece. And due to history, we have significant conflicts, even up to this day, with Turkey, which is across from the DNC. But I did a road trip in Turkey now 14 years ago, although everybody discouraged me to do so. And I realized how friendly people are, despite of the, I would say, projected animosity. I realized it's mostly a political motivation than anything to do with. With the people. So people kept saying, like, you use an expression from Sierra Leone. They said, komsu which means neighbors. And they kept doing that, and they were extremely hospitable, totally unexpected for me. So I wanted to ask, since you are brought up and raised here in this culture, how does your experience in Sierra Leone and the treatment you had from the people, how do you reconcile this with the interracial relationships here in the States?

10:23 Well, I was raised in San Francisco, and so San Francisco is a multiracial community, and so there wasn't that much overt racism. There wasn't Jim Crow or anything like that. And so. But I didn't have many friends who were black because it's mostly irish and french and chinese and asian and Hispanic in San Francisco. There aren't as many blacks there. And so when I went to Sierra Leone, I. I came back and I just felt the real tension of racism even in San Francisco. And it just galled me. I thought, how could they put up with this? How can they deal with this mistreatment and the microaggressions? And then when I moved to Chicago, I was just blown away with the racism there. I was a teacher then, and I helped integrate the Evanston school system. And, you know, I was just appalled. The teacher that had been before me misses Pope put on the board the black children's work, which was simple stuff. And then she had the white children use their books, and she said, but I'm not a racist. They just can't handle it. And, you know, that was one of the first things I got rid of when I took over her class. The kids had papered, spitballed the classroom and killed the fish and were fighting with each other every day. And, you know, it was just mayhem. And so one of my things was just to bring a calming influence into that group, and I encouraged them. I divided them up into groups of six and mixed them all up together and then gave them awards on their group award. So if your group, someone in your group talked out of turn or didn't do their work, your whole group suffered. And so that they really encouraged one another to do well, and they all had the same work. And I gave out discipline sheets every Friday, and if you got. If you did well, you got a discipline sheet with a gold medal on it and some red ribbon on it, and if you got three of those and you got a silver one. And I was amazed at how the children really responded to that. I would go to their homes and I would see some of my wildest kids with their discipline sheet on the living room wall, and so proud of it. And then we rewarded the best group every week with giving them the permission to chew gum in class, which was strictly forbidden. But they were able. That group that had the best discipline and the best work producing could chew gum, and they could also bring a treat for the rest of the glass. And they just loved being the ones who decide what the treat was. And then at the end of the year, the group with the greatest amount of silver and gold awards got to choose where we went on a field trip. So they chose the wax museum, which, fortunately, was right beside the Chicago Historical Society. So we got to go there. And I didn't have that much discipline problems with them at all. Okay.

14:11 I wish chewing gum in class would please my students. Call it. So that was when?

14:20 That was 19. 68. 69.

14:24 Okay, so that's, you know, 44 years from today.

14:28 It's over 50 years.

14:30 Yeah. 54, actually. How long have things changed from your experience? So you've been through that end of the spectrum. Have you seen significant change?

14:42 I've seen. I came to Charlottesville about 27 years ago when my husband got an offer he couldn't refuse from UVA. He got a chair in bioethics. And so I was really appalled at Charlottesville because it was such a community of communities with everyone suspicious of everyone else, and there was so much racism and sexism and classism. I've seen that maybe it's my perspective has changed, but also the community has changed, so that we're working on that more.

15:19 Okay. The reason I'm asking is, as someone who was kind of parachuted here in this culture eleven years ago, when I came to study, due to my color, right, it feels the privileged or the, you know, the dominant race, if I may say so. But being raised in a place where, you know, we don't have those, you know, issues of, you know, social injustice, at least between, you know, colors. I'm still trying to, you know, figure out what's permissible and what's not and what's what I can accept, basically. So what am I. What do I mean is I recently found out about the white supremacist values, and again, having no, you know, actual background, you know, experiential, like you do for so many years here, I personally find that offending. Right. Based on my race. Right. Although I'm from a different place altogether. Right. And I'm not part of this history now I have to defend myself against some other people. So, in other words, I am assumed to have those values because of my race. Right. Although they're not necessarily racial. So if you ask me by reading the list, they're mostly an outcome of a western and developed industrialized society, more than they have to do with the race itself.

16:54 Yeah.

16:54 So those same values you can find probably in Germany or in Sweden or other, you know, developed countries. And I'm trying to reconcile this, you know, inside me, because it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is largely divisive language. And I see my, you know, my purpose in this project and in life at this point, to try to bring people together. And using language like that, although there is a. There might be some background, does not help people to come together well, but.

17:26 I think that people who've experienced oppression and exclusion have to share that, that they have to. They can't just bury that if they've been discriminated against, they need to share that. And the best thing that I can do is just listen and accept their perspective and try not to mirror it and try to befriend them and show them that I don't have those values. But I know that often, you know, our church is 60% african american, and often I don't really understand because I wasn't raised that way and I wasn't discriminated against in that way. Although the town that I lived in used to have a law that was still on the books when I was growing up, that Irish couldn't sleep overnight in the town. And my grandfather was an irish chauffeur and he was discriminated against. And my mother went to the local public school and she was the class president, but never once in those nine years, from kindergarten through 8th grade, was she ever invited to a child's home because of her being irish. And so I know some of what they have experienced, but I haven't gone through everything that they've experienced. And so, you know, I need to be humble often and just listen and say, oh, it's terrible, you know, it is awful. And, you know, and if I make a mistake, if I say something that sounds racist or I white supremacist, just correct me. If you're my friend, correct me and help me to change, because it's part of our culture to think that whites are just take control people and we just move in. And I need to slow down and make room for people to take a place where they feel comfortable.

19:43 Okay, I'm all with you on that. I'm just wondering, isn't that the listening part and being empathetic, how we should treat all people in general?

19:52 Yes, it is, but particularly those who have been hurt, because it's sometimes hard to hear how someone has been discriminated against. It's painful to realize that someone who looks like you has mistreated someone else and that many people who look like us have mistreated different people just because of. On the basis of their skin color. And, you know, it wasn't me, but, you know, I can see how they would react to me that way because I remind them of that. It's just, as, you know, I was abused by my father. And so when older Mendez put their arm around me, I get chills, you know, because I'm afraid of them, and it's nothing to do with them. But it's the fact that my father was so abusive, and I just see older men like my father, and, you know, I have to just calm down and say, this isn't my father. This isn't someone who's going to hurt me, you know? But that takes a while.

21:07 Okay. I like that last part that you said, because it puts responsibility on you to identify that those people, right, because of their color or their age, are not like your father.

21:19 Yeah.

21:20 Right. And I think that takes courage and takes time and support very often. So I recognize that. Do you guys mind if I jump in really quickly? I have a question for both of you, just off the sheet. Who has been the most influential person in your life, and what did they teach you? I thought about the question, but I still felt prepared because I have the expected response of my parents or my mother. I would say my life experiences, it's hard to identify someone specific, but I would say, you know, my parents and all the good things and the bad things that they did, I think it made me who I am now, the inquisitive, strange, peculiar teaser that I am, and I'm trying to instill the values that I think they are the best in my own son now and see how my transformation can affect another human being in a positive way, hopefully.

22:27 And it was my husband, John Ayres, who most molded me. We were married for 47 years and were in love for 50 years. And he taught me to listen and to calm down, to give other people the benefit of the doubt, to really hang in there with everyone and not to react. And he was extraordinarily patient.

22:57 You make me feel bad now, Liz, because I forgot my wife. We've been together now for 24 years, and we have our anniversary in a week, and she's probably one of the most giving people that I've met, and I wasn't brought up to be very generous. So she has been extreme inspiration for me of how to. To truly care about other people and be selfless. So thank you for reminding me that.

23:27 Welcome.

23:32 I also wanted to ask, and you guys can feel free to actually, liz, do you want to read off the question number four? And you guys can.

23:41 Number four?

23:42 Yeah.

23:43 What is your first memory of politics?

23:50 I don't know. Probably thinking that there's no difference between different parties and everything is a theater, and I don't want to participate in that. Being completely disengaged because of seeing through the eyes of my, you know, my parents and the discussions that they had that it's all about, you know, arguing, no matter who is in governance, there's not no visible change for the people. But then I later found out that the word idiot comes from the greek word idiotis, which means private. Someone who only looks for their private interest, which was looked out upon in ancient Greek. If you were nothing interested in public affairs, you were an idiot. An idiot.

24:45 Right.

24:47 So that made me change a bit. I don't want to be an idiot. So, yeah, probably, I would say sometime in, you know, high school or something, I developed this appalling feeling for politics, you know?

25:04 Well, when I was in high school, my best friend, Diana Gaul, asked me to canvass for Leo Ryan. Now, Leo Ryan was the representative for Millbrae, California, and he actually went over to Jonestown and was murdered there in Guyana. And that really woke me up to politics and how much they matter, that he was willing to put his life on the line for the people in Guyana. Are you familiar with Jonestown?

25:36 No.

25:37 Well, 900 people took cyanide and killed themselves in the jungles of Guyana. They went over there because Jim Jones was a charismatic preacher, and he wanted to separate them from the evils of.

25:57 The house of Christ, something like that. Had a cult.

26:01 That was a cult. Yeah. People's temple.

26:04 Okay. Yeah. I forget about him. I didn't know the name. He convinced them to commit suicide because. Right.

26:10 They suspected that Leo Ryan and his group were going to go and. And bring the feds down on them, and so they went and they had them shot up at the airport, and then they went and took cyanide and kool aid.

26:25 I read the story. I just don't remember the name. Jim Jones was the name.

26:28 Yes. But I canvassed for Leo Ryan and helped him get elected to the House of Representatives.

26:40 And how old were you then?

26:42 Probably about 17.

26:46 Okay, so you were much more active during that age than I was. Shall we go off script now? Yeah. If you just want to keep going down the list, take it. Can we ask our questions or. Yeah, actually, do you mind answering first, if you could briefly each briefly describe in your own words your personal political values.

27:16 I think my personal value is that each person matters and that a democracy is made up when we listen to everyone, the minority view as well as the majority view, and that we need to work together as a community to respect one another and to make laws that don't tear our country apart and divide us, but unite us together. And our government is supposed to work for the people, by the people, and of the people, not against the people. And so my political values are all for keeping what is good, what is conservative, but being willing to change it if the situation changes.

28:07 I couldn't have said it better. I would say the same thing. I don't want to ascribe to a specific side, left, right, middle. I would say that we are so much alike as people, regardless of our differences, physical or otherwise. And to me, politics are very flawed because it feels to me, in my fifties almost, that it's more about divide and conquer, whatever conquer means, right? Whatever their agenda is. And I've lived in three countries up to now, and I see the same story. It's more like that than caring about the people deeply and honestly, and caring about the prosperity of the people. It was very disappointed to hear, even in Myanmar, when they had this gross happiness index instead of the GDP, they were not measuring the growth of the country by the economic growth, but rather by the happiness of the people. So I was so excited to find out about that. I attended a TED talk by their king a few years back, only to do some research because I said to my wife, let's go and live there. That seems like a paradise. To find out how this has been. This term has been abused largely, and people still were suffering despite how they propagated that, yes, we care about the happiness of the people more than their economic growth.

29:46 Yeah, Myanmar is all torn apart right now. Anyu sang Sing is just still in prison. And the people, the Karen people are being very much persecuted and the Rottiere people are just being genocide. And it's just such a mess right now.

30:16 Yeah. So again, it seems to me there's always an agenda which overlooks the people, does not care about people. So I don't care. What's your political affiliation? Not you in general. Anybody that I meet. That's why I don't like people when they try to put labels and say my best friends have to be democrats. So I met a lady the other day, which is an amazing individual, and she very proudly said, when I went to live in that apartment complex, my neighbors scanned me to make sure that I was a Democrat in order to live in this place.

30:47 Wow.

30:48 And she was very awful. Yeah. So I. When I hear things like that. Right. It really upsets me. And she's a wonderful lady otherwise. Right.

30:58 Yeah.

30:59 But what I'm trying to do with that project and with the help of the students is try to move those barriers aside, politics or otherwise, and, you know, get together in basic human values. Right. We want to be loved. We want to be, you know, adventurous. We want to be caring, affectionate, whatever that, you know, the deep emotions that we're going to feel every single day are, let's bring together over those. But it seems to me that those barriers are built up. Even in the young age of my students, in their twenties, they find very difficult to get along with, you know, someone of a different population. And I don't know, what's the recipe. Sharing stories is my idea. Identifying your values and sharing stories is also what I thought, which is also what you mentioned. And being able to listen without, you know, ascribing that story comes from a Democrat, a Greek, a black, or something else.

32:02 Yeah. In my family, one daughter is a really liberal Democrat, and all of her children are Democrats. And the other daughter is a conservative Republican and her husband is a Trump supporter, and most of her kids are Republican. The liberal Democrat is all for vaccines and boosting, and the Republican hasn't had any vaccines at all and is anti vax. And there's not much we can talk about politically that we can agree on. So we just don't talk about politics.

32:37 Interesting reunions. That's what I thought. Unions must be very festive.

32:42 Yeah. And we zoom every Sunday night, and we just avoid talking about politics because most of the family are liberal Democrats, and my younger daughter is married to a very conservative Republican, and she's also anti abortion. And my other daughter is pro choice, and most of the family is pro choice. And so we just pray through it and try to focus on what we have in common and share the joy.

33:19 Yeah. You know, I'm sorry you're in between that situation. That's something that, you know, I don't like. And I've been heavily researching the COVID situation for my own health and my families, and I realized how this has been very politicized.

33:41 Yeah.

33:42 Here. Extremely politicized, where science and common sense once, you know, goes to the rubbish. Basically, people are just ascribing on the other one side or the other and without using their discretion. Right. It's whatever they say, whatever the other side says, we're following them. And it was mostly, you know, for me, political response more than a public health response. In most of the places that I followed and that I have friends in Greece, in Germany, it seemed to be mostly about what was mostly about politics, honestly.

34:18 Yeah. Unfortunately it is, yeah. Is there something about your beliefs that you don't agree with but still respect? Are you orthodox? Greek orthodox?

34:31 That's how I was brought up, but I went through the phase probably still. I'm in the face of questioning religion in general. I'm inclining towards religion being yet one more mechanism for dividing people, unfortunately. And being in the US has been an enlightening experience because I talk with much more diverse crowd than I have access to in Greece. In Greece, you're either a christian orthodox, or you're an enemy. You're Muslim, a Turk, or, you know, something else. I still remember my conversation with my father, who died a couple of years ago while coming back to the states in our last lands. I asked him, is God a christian orthodox? And he looked at me very upset, and he said, no, he's unorthodox. And the conversation ended there. And unfortunately, I realized people who are, you know, radical on one side or the other tend to have views like.

35:41 That and that he's unorthodox. God is unorthodox.

35:46 Yeah. Yeah. So he's being ironic.

35:47 Oh, okay.

35:48 What else can God be? That's how he perceived his response.

35:52 Right.

35:52 I didn't even go into the trouble of fasting. Maybe he's Muslim, or maybe there's one God, and we don't have multiple gods.

35:58 There's just one God. There isn't a multiple of them.

36:01 But his response didn't leave much room for, you know, actually debating, and I didn't want to make him upset. Just before I went back to the state. And I've seen many people thinks like that. Right. They have this divisive attitude of it's us against us. Right? So our beliefs, our belief system against the others. And again, that's the attitude that I'm fed up with. Regardless if it's politics or religion or anything else.

36:26 We have a food pantry that we feed about 300 people every week, and our volunteers are unitarians, jewish people, other denominations, Catholics. We even have two schizophrenics who come every week and just love serving people and just say, how important they feel. And I belong to the clergy collective, the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, which is an interfaith group. It welcomes Muslims, Baha'I, Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, jewish people, whomevere. And we just focus on what we have in common, and we let go of what our differences are.

37:19 Okay, that's great. Maybe we can show up one day.

37:24 Yeah. It's been really a wonderful experience. I also belong to impact, which is our social justice network, and we work on affordable housing. We've gotten a women's treatment center here, gotten free dental care. We got a program for UVA to pay for people getting their LPN licensed, practical nurses and degrees, and we worked on bus routes and homelessness. And we're also working on getting full time daycare, because the daycare in the city and the county stops at 03:00 p.m. you know. And how many people can afford to just work till 03:00 p.m. you know? And so we've gotten them to expand it and to offer it to more people. And we're. We all are different groups. We're. There's the cantor athlete, Beth Israel, a congregation. Beth Israel is the president. Zakia, who's a Muslim, is the vice president. Josh, who's an evangelical Christian, is the lead organizer. We have Catholics in there and Buddhists and everyone in there, and we all work together, and we don't focus on any of our peculiarities other than enjoy them. Like, the cantor will sing for us, and Zakia will do a reading from the Quran, and we just all really appreciate one another.

39:14 That's great. I do want to ask, based on what you said before, about people being equal and connecting, you know, building those relationships, and I see how with your, you know, efforts, you're doing that. But I was amazed when I came here to see, you know, how the protestant church is broken down in so many denominations. And I was wondering, someone who is inside the church, like you, you're a pastor. How do you reconcile that within you? Why are those old denominations right needed?

39:49 Well, because we have so many unique people. Some people think things are really important, like Quakers really don't want to hear a sermon. They just want to be able to sit and enjoy the light of God's presence. And so they need their own denomination because they wouldn't enjoy the gospel music or the preaching or the loud praying that we Baptist do. Other people, like the Episcopalians, want to have a book to read, and we couldn't use a book because lots of our people are illiterate. In our church, and that would just shut them down and turn them off. And the Catholics have their own traditions. I was raised catholic, and I know the catholic traditions, and they're fine, but I just couldn't go with them anymore. But I really respect what they do and honor their social justice work, just as individual people have to express themselves individually. That's why we have denominations, because people feel strongly about something. Like our denomination was started out of the congregationalists, which were a break off from the Episcopalians, which were a break off from the Catholics. And we disagreed with the congregationalists about having a, the church and state being one, and infant baptism, and we disagreed with them about imposing a minister on us. And so we came to the US and were beaten. Actually, we were whipped and put in stocks for refusing to go to the congregational church on Sunday. And we weren't allowed to vote because all, only congregationalists could vote. Establishmentarianism was in the New England states. Massachusetts and Connecticut and several other New England states had established churches, and so we broke from that. And Roger Williams walked through the snows and went to Rhode island and founded the American Baptist churches, where he treated the Native Americans well and started an independent and affirming way.

42:18 Okay, I don't want to dominate the discussion with questions. Do you want to ask something so we can.

42:26 Is there anything you've learned from me today that surprised you.

42:32 So I have to bring an image of you before coming to the meeting in order to identify if something surprised me? I wouldn't say so. From your bio, I could build roughly an image of what I saw when I came here. So I expected a white female, calm, with good use of speech and good in conversation. And that's what I experienced. So I wouldn't say that I was surprised about something.

43:15 Well, I was a little surprised by your stance on the orthodox religion, but it's good to know that you're grappling with that. That is, you know, part of what we do as we grow older. We take first what we rejected so heartily that offended us, and then we look at it differently and see what of it we really value. And then we may not ever take it back, but we don't have so much disdain for it. And I see you going through that process of coming to terms with your greek orthodox background and dealing with it.

44:01 Yeah, honestly, it's something that, it was imposed to me, in a way, from my family. There's not much room to be anything else when it comes to life in Greece. And as I said, the eye opening experience for me is coming here and interacting with other people and trying to make them question their beliefs. Like, I had many muslim friends. They came to my place for dinner, and I offered wine, and they said, no. Why not? And I tried to understand why they're not drinking it. And a very good friend of mine said, I'm gonna get drunk. So I pour one 10th of an ounce, and I said, guaranteed, scientifically, you're not gonna get drunk with that amount. And then he smiles at me and says, yes. It's not just that, it's. And then he starts going into the beliefs that he was brought up with. And through that process, I started questioning my belief system. So the same friend told me Muhammad was an illiterate individual who got the word of God and transferred it to people who were the scholars. And they wrote it word by word. But he was literate. How can an illiterate person remember everything word by word? And discussing that with an american friend of mine, she very naturally tends and says, okay, so that's crazy for you, but lady, being, you know, pregnant from a flower seems very natural to you.

45:31 Mm hmm.

45:33 So she had a pointer, right, from a flower? Yeah, the Virgin Mary. Right.

45:38 From a flower.

45:39 That's what we say in Greece. I don't remember the flower's name in.

45:43 Oh, I thought it was the Holy Spirit.

45:46 Yeah, the spirit through the flower. That's what I don't remember the name of the flower. The white flower with the yellow stem in the middle.

45:53 The lily. I'm not familiar with that belief.

45:59 That's how we're being taught.

46:01 Oh, well.

46:03 In our religion. So, anyway, I was going to let you guys know, we're nearing the end of our conversation here, so I had one last question for you all, and then if you had any closing thoughts or final questions for each other after that, but I wanted to ask both of you if you ever feel misunderstood by people with different beliefs than you, and if so elaborate. And how so?

46:34 Well, I win. Sine versus the alt right won the court case in Charlottesville against the white nationalists. I texted my whole family and said, yay. Justice at last. And my son in law said, I'm tired of this political crap you're giving me. Yay. Who was the. Kyle Rittenhouse. Yay, Kyle Rittenhouse. And so I felt very misunderstood. And one of our church members saw this and said, you are a racist, young man, and just wrote him off. And I don't think he is. I just think he just knee jerk reacts to things.

47:33 Yeah, I would say it's very hard not to be misunderstood because our beliefs are so much ingrained in us since we were very, very young. And it's very hard, they're very hard to change. I wasn't planning to share a specific story, but you remind me with my best woman, I guess, or the godmother of my son. She's a wonderful person. She's a doctor. She's extremely caring. But every time I went back in Greece to visit, we would have those arguments about muslim people because she's been exposed to a different population of muslim people, the ones crossing illegally to Greece and causing many trouble. And also she treated those people in the hospital and with the help of the NGO's, they were extremely demanding and not appreciative of the treatment they were getting. And I was interacting with a completely different population, my colleagues at my university, right, as a graduate student, and these were very good friends of mine, I still have very strong relationships. So it was very hard to, you know, have an argument without being extremely passionate, which is also about our culture. Right. We have to be loud and aggressive at some point. So I still, up to this day, I kind of stopped having those conversations, like you said, you know, that gentleman wrote off your son in law. I kind of stopped having those discussions because I realized from our different experiences, we have different perspectives, largely different perspectives about, you know, a group of people. It's an ethnic group of people, but it's very hard to find common ground because I don't have the experiences she has from the hospital and she doesn't have the experience I have from, you know, the educated, you know, people that interact here in Muslims. So, yes, misunderstandings. I think it's very hard to avoid that. All right. And do either of you want to just briefly summarize your takeaways today before we close out this recording?

49:57 I just can't see that we're so different. I think we are more harmonious than different. I think that they mismatched us. I think that. I feel very comfortable with your point of view, and I think that we share a lot of the same values.

50:18 I would agree if I have a hint. I think maybe when I said probably, I'm inclined more on the conservative side and you seem to be on the other end of more democratic. Maybe that was the way the masters. But I'm trying to. To be open to listening to other, other people, and I don't have strong opinions. My opinions, I hope they're not politicized. They're coming out of my own experiences, even from back home, I was never on one side or the other. And as I said, and as you said, I tend to see people individually and what they have to, you know, offer and what they have in them much more than what I gauge from, you know, superficially, from the, from appearance. And it seems you're doing exactly the same thing.

51:12 Yeah. You know, people are just unique, each one. And nobody fits into a stereotype. When we stereotype people, that's when we get into trouble.

51:25 Well, thank you both very much. Thank you for your discussion.