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HANK: Good morning, John!
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I live in a city that most people would call a small town. Missoula, Montana has 70,000
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people in it when the students are here, and when they leave for the summer, the population
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declines significantly. Somehow, 70,000 people is considered to be a small number of people.
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It actually is quite a large number of people, but, I mean, after all there are some cities
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that have stadiums that hold more than 70,000 people, so.
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For some perspective, Missoula packs those 70,000 people into 2600 square miles. Manhattan
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has 22 times more people in 78 times less area. And, of course, there are many amazing
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things going on in Manhattan. It isn't just 1.3 million people. It's 1.3 million of the
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richest, most powerful, most influential people on the planet. Economic and cultural creation
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on the scale of Renaissance Italy.
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And that is an interesting comparison because Florence in 1500 contained some of the most
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powerful economic and cultural forces the world has ever known. The Medici bankers,
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Botticelli, Machiavelli, Michaelangelo, da Vinci, Brunelleschi. It revolutionized the
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world from the seat of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy.
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And what was the population of Florence, Italy? 1.3 million people? No. No millions of people!
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No hundreds of thousands of people! 70,000. Of course there were tremendous political
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and economic and cultural and historic forces that made Florence the seat of the Renaissance.
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But one thing that I believe very deeply in my heart, and I think most historians would
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agree with me, is that it didn't happen because there was just some random collection of really
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great people. Great people are everywhere all the time. It just so happens that only
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occasionally our cultural and historical and economic forces, such that they will be remembered
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for hundreds or even thousands of years.
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So I like to think of Missoula as like a little Florence. And everyone walking around is an
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unnoticed da Vinci and an unmade Machiavelli. And I think about what separates the great
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people that I remember from the great people that everyone remembers. I think it's 100%
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circumstance.
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We're launching a new channel this week with Jessi Knudsen Castañeda and her husband Augusto,
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who you may know from their frequent appearances on SciShow. They bring to us animals that
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they have rescued so that we can talk about them and educate the world. That's Jessi's
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passion! That's her superpower.
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And Caitlin Hoffmeister, who's also the producer of SciShow, is going to be documenting the
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passion, and sweat, and toil that it takes to run a small business and feed hundreds
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of mouths. Two of those mouths happen to be twin infant children.
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Now that I've produced shows with a bunch of different interesting people here in Missoula--Emily
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Graslie, and Lindsey Doe, and now Jessi--people have asked me why are there so many interesting
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things going on in this one little small town in Missoula? That's the thing, though! That's
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the point! There's interetsting things happening everywhere!
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This isn't a magical place and they're not magical people. It's just people who have
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found something that they're passionate about. But yeah, that can be a hard thing to come
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by. I've watched everyone I've ever known struggle with that. Trying to find something
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that they believe is important.
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And I'm so grateful--changing topics here, really fast--that Nerdfighteria has provided
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that for me. People talk about all the things that I've been able to do. But it is only
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because I found something here that I can believe in. Because, yeah, I live in Missoula,
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Montana, but my first allegiance is to this place.
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A community of hundreds of thousands of people with shared ideas, and values and interests.
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Bigger than Missoula and thus even more full of unappreciated and unnoticed da Vincis and
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Machiavellis and Brunelleschis. The only difference between something being vitally important,
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and not important at all, is whether or not you believe it is.
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I believe that this is important, and that is a gift that you have given me. Thank you!
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John, your life seems like a bit of a grapefruit right now. Don't freak out. Uhh, stay sane.
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And I'll see you on Tuesday.
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If you want to check out Jessi's new channel, there's a link in the description. And there's
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also you can just click over here if you're not on your phone, you can click with your
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mouse. But not with your phone, it doesn't work on phones. Boop.