Dr. Heather Heying on seeing the enthusiasm for the United States from World Cup visitors.

We are a big, brash, diverse, loud country that has certainly made lots of errors. But frankly, the enthusiasm that you see in the parts of the country where the World Cup is, is extraordinary.

The fact is that, especially for Europeans—and the other Western countries—coming here and seeing the scale… the fact that the West, and the Mountain West, and the Midwest, which is not really the West at all, and the Northeast, and the South, and then Texas and Florida, which are places unto themselves—and that’s just the continental 48, and the Great Plains. It’s so diverse, not just geographically, but culturally and culinarily. It’s an incredible landmass with an incredible diversity of people.

And yeah, have we had an arrogance that made “ugly Americans” a thing all over the world. Like, okay, here come the people who think that by just speaking English louder, anyone will be able to understand English. Yeah, that’s true about a lot of Americans.

But it has been pleasurable to see the joy that people coming to the United States taken in what it is that we are.

- Dr. Heather Heying, Episode 332 of The Evolutionary Lens, “The American Experiment at 250” on DarkHorse.

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