Dinesh D'Souza, Author of "The Stones Cry Out"

It is a privilege to welcome on the Newsline Live the best-selling author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza.

Mr. D'Souza is the author of a book released earlier this month entitled The Stones Cry Out, Biblical Archaeology, Prophecy and the Last Days.

Dinesh D'Souza, good morning, thanks so much for coming back on the radio with us.

Good morning delighted to join you.

Thank you.

This book is one that was not easy I trust to research and write took a number of years.

What led you to undertake this effort?

My wife and I visited Israel for the first time the end of 2022 and I was exposed for the first time to some of the artifacts of biblical archaeology

I've done some work in Christian apologetics earlier in my career, but I was not familiar with the things coming out of the ground that, in a very startling way, confirm the historicity of the Bible.

So we're not talking about the miracles.

We're not talking about the theology of the Bible.

But the Bible is an historical narrative.

It begins with Abraham and the patriarchs.

That's about 2000 BC.

It continues with the Exodus and Moses and the crossing into the Promised Land.

That's about 1500 BC.

Then around 1000 BC you have King David and King Solomon, the kind of royal era.

a little bit later, the prophet Isaiah, a couple of hundred years later, the prophet Jeremiah.

So this is the Hebrew Scriptures or the Old Testament.

And then the New Testament, of course, begins with Jesus' birth around four or five B.C.

and ends with the early Christian movement described in the book of Acts.

That's about 50 A.D.

So this is the historical kind of timescale of the Bible.

And there are

There have been hundreds and hundreds of artifacts uncovered over the past couple of hundred years that throw a lot of light on these biblical people and places and events.

And so I got a taste of it in 2022.

I've been studying it ever since, and this book is a product of that research.

And it comes out at a time when I dare say there is renewed interest

religion in faith particularly among younger people in other words you have an audience that is ready to hear this message because it reaffirms what they've been paying attention to the last few years

I think with young people they you know they go off to school they go off to college they learn to respect the the science

the scientific method.

Archaeology, of course, is a branch of science.

It deals with material objects coming out of the ground.

Young people want reason.

They want evidence, and they want to experience these things for themselves.

Now, obviously, from my point of view, the best way to do that is to go to these places, mainly Israel, but, of course, there are artifacts coming out of Jordan and Syria, Iraq, also Egypt.

And in the New Testament, we're talking about Rome and Greece.

So go see for yourself.

That's the best option.

But the next best option, I've tried to write a book that's a kind of summary of 150 years.

of archaeological discovery.

I have maps, timelines, color photographs, and even QR codes that link to on-site video at these sites.

Because I think it's one thing to tell people about something.

It's another thing to show it to them.

And so the book throbs with the excitement of not only revealing these artifacts that confirm the Bible, but also the underlying archaeological reasoning

that goes into finding these places and confirming these events, because biblical locations obviously don't come with name tags, right?

So if you're searching for ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, the question becomes, how will you know if you find it?

The Stones cry out the new book by Dinesh D'Souza.

Mr. D'Souza joins us live on the news line on News Talk 1540 KXEL.

It used to be we would nestle into a chair and read a book.

and nowadays folks do that but they also have their phone right nearby so that they can look things up that strike them as they read and this is the perfect marriage of that because again we can read it in the book you've made it simple for folks to find the video evidence the augmentation that is necessary to bring full flavor to this

yeah I mean it's one thing again you know

to, let's say, me tell you that in the Bible there's an account of how the prophet Jeremiah was thrown into a pit because he was antagonizing the king.

But another thing for me to go stand in that pit, you can sort of feel the eeriness of that.

Now when Jeremiah was in that pit, he was covered in mud and the mud had hardened or caked in such a way that he couldn't get out.

It took 35 men with ropes and rags

to pull them out of there.

But just the experience of being in that spot, which is a known location, is, I think, both eerie and also thrilling because it takes these biblical events and dramatizes them in the very place that they occurred.

And the same applies, for example, to walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

Now,

It's important to know that Jesus was a kind of nomad, a little bit like Abraham.

He never had a settled abode.

He moves from place to place.

So it might seem very unlikely to find, like, where was he born?

What's his childhood home?

What synagogues did he teach in?

Where was he actually crucified or buried?

It might seem unbelievable that you could actually identify these locations, but in fact, we can.

As you mentioned earlier,

Archaeology is a form of science.

There have been those for a long time who have tried to use science or tried to use archaeology to drive a wedge between the words of the Bible and what they claim to be reality.

In other words, to disprove some of these things.

You're turning that completely 180 degrees and using this to prove the literal word that we find.

It's important to realize that I'm not engaged in some sort of polemic here It is true that when Archaeology got started there was a guy named George Smith who discovered Mesopotamian flood narratives much older than the Bible And so he came to the conclusion which I guess understandable.

He's like well, maybe the biblical writers just kind of

took the idea of a worldwide flood from these older Mesopotamian accounts in a kind of early instance of biblical plagiarism.

And so skeptics in the 19th century became very excited and said, wow, this new field of biblical archaeology is going to be an effective battering ram against the Bible.

But you know, 150 years later, that has not turned out to be the case.

As I say, I could cite off the top of my head a hundred artifacts that confirm biblical events, large and small.

Sometimes identifying a minor character in the book of Isaiah or the book of Jeremiah, a guy who is, I could almost call him a cameo appearance.

He appears in one line or three lines.

Nobody paid any attention to that guy until an ancient clay seal came out of the ground with his name on it.

So there are many, many artifacts now that confirm the Bible, and I'm not aware of a single significant archaeological finding that contradicts the Bible, and that alone tells you a

lot.

biblical archaeology prophecy in the last days released just a couple of weeks ago.

You can find it on his website, Amazon, wherever you get your good books these days.

Mr. DeSousa joins us for a few minutes more here on KXEL.

Folks who travel often not to the places you've just described, but certain areas of this country, and they may be historic sites, and sometimes you can kind of get a sense or a feeling.

The problem is so much of it has been industrialized and commercialized, it's hard, but I can recall travel through South Dakota and the Custer site and just being able to imagine the scene because it is, to a large degree, undisturbed.

And I wonder how it must have been for you to be in the place where this all happened, for a believer to be in the place where this all happened, that had to be a powerful experience, I trust.

Absolutely.

It's powerful because the events we're talking about are very, very old.

I mean, the New Testament, of course, goes from about four or five BC to about Jesus died in about 32 AD.

So we're talking about 2000 years ago.

But when we look at the Old Testament, we're talking about

4,000 years ago.

This is really almost at the dawn of recorded history.

And so the idea, for example, that one could find the site in the Bible where Abraham buys a burial cave from a guy called Ephron the Hittite.

That's where Abraham is buried and his wife, Sarah, and some members of his family

you think, wow, how could you possibly find it all this time later?

And yet I describe in the book some remarkable events that have caused these biblical locations to be identified.

Ironically, in some cases, it is the enemies of the Jews and even the enemies of the Christians

who have helped to preserve these sites unintentionally.

So for example, the Roman emperor named Hadrian decided to stamp out the Christian holy sites.

Now Hadrian lived in the second century, so about several decades after Jesus.

But the early Christians knew where Jesus was born.

They knew where he grew up.

They knew where he was crucified, and they were venerating these holy sites.

Well, the emperor Hadrian goes,

finds those sites and builds pagan monuments or shrines on top of them.

Now, little does he know that although he is trying to decimate the site to stamp it out, he is unwittingly marking it.

Because in later centuries, when Christians said, well, let's go find the place of Jesus' birth, all they had to do is go find that pagan shrine and go, OK, let's take the pagan shrine down and build a church right here.

So as I say,

Against his own intentions a hostile Persecutor of Christianity ended up telling us or telling posterity where in fact these holy sites were located

Exit question for Dinesh de Souza the author of the new book the stones cry out of all of the discoveries That you have been Witness to and have followed in these past few years is there one or

perhaps two that just really stood out that caused even you with this experience to kind of look at it a second time almost with disbelief.

Yes, I'll cite one from the New Testament.

One of the key villains of the Bible is the high priest Caiaphas.

He is truly the orchestrator of the crucifixion.

Yes, he needs Pontius Pilate's permission to do it, but Pilate is kind of reluctant.

He's a Roman governor.

His main goal is to keep law and order.

So Caiaphas is the key sort of manipulator who gets this accomplished.

Now, the Bible gives him a single name.

He's Caiaphas, the high priest.

But the historian named Josephus tells us that his first name was Joseph.

So now we know the full name of the high priest Joseph Caiaphas, and if we fast forward 2,500 years...

There are a group of archaeologists digging in the aristocratic or priestly quarter of Jerusalem, and out of the ground come these stone boxes.

They are called ossuaries.

Now, in the first century AD, when you died, you were buried in a tomb.

But to save space, when your body decayed, they would take your bones out and put it in a box and put your name on it.

So here are these archaeologists, by the way, secular guys, and they're looking at these Ossuaries, and one of them stands out, and as they approach it, they are very startled, because it has a name at the top that says this.

Yehoshaphis Bar Kyaphah.

Now, Yehoshaphis Joseph, Bar means son of, and Kyaphah is Kyaphis.

So they open the box, and inside are the actual bones.

60 year old man and they date these bones and they date back to the first century AD So it's him.

Wow.

We're not just talking about like some Writing by a historian or even a stone inscription We are talking about looking at the actual bones of the man who was more instrumental than any other in putting Jesus on the cross

Amazing and fascinating material

Proving the accuracy of the Bible and therefore also telling us what's to come the prophecies of the future the stones cry out Biblical archaeology prophecy in the last days the new book by Dinesh de Souza Mr.. De Souza a privilege to speak with you again Congratulations on this wonderful book, and I really look forward to getting deeply into it as As my reading allows.

Thank you kindly sir.

Hey, thank you very much

And Mr. DeSousa was kind enough to join us live on the news line on News Talk 1540KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.

News Talk 1540 KXCL where Iowa comes to talk.

The Iowa Donation Garden Network is a statewide initiative designed to connect and empower garden organizers.

The group is accepting applications for the 2027 growing season.

Interested community garden organizers are encouraged to register for membership for next year through the end of 2026.

Alicia Herzog is the Iowa Master Gardener program manager.

at Iowa State University Extension and our guest this morning.

Thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me.

So this network program is only a couple of years old.

What's been the upside from the program so far for those community gardens?

Yeah, well, I think.

The biggest thing about the Iowa Donation Garden Network, it really just got off the ground this year was the first programming year.

And so I think the biggest success this year was just the amount of gardens that we had that were interested that came together to join this network and to, you know, collaborate and share peer knowledge with each other, learn from each other, learn from our extension experts, and just really kick off the conversation and get that

you know, all those relationships going.

A relationship building takes time, so it's not something that happens overnight.

But I think the fact that so many people were willing to come to the table and wanted to be a part of that conversation and part of that statewide story, that was really impressive to me.

Let's take a step back and define community gardens.

What are they in terms of this network and what's their objective?

Yeah that's a great question because there are a lot of different types of community gardens out there and we had a lot of questions about that when the donation gardening network started.

So in our context the community donation gardens that we are looking to engage our donation gardens that specifically exist for the sole purpose of raising fresh produce and donating it to

any store of food recovery or food assistance program in their area.

So right now our donation gardens are supporting a lot of different types of efforts whether that's you know that's going directly to a food pantry or it's going to a senior low-income living facility or it's going to a free food

event that's going on at like a local faith center or something like that.

So wherever the food is going to, as long as it's getting into the hands of people who need it and that are experiencing that food insecurity and they're growing that food specifically for that purpose, those are the gardens that we want to engage with.

We did have a lot of questions when we started from excited home gardeners who said, I have a little bit of extra that I can grow in my garden.

Can I

to be part of this network.

And while that's great, that's not really the population that we're trying to engage.

We really want to get to those garden leaders that this is, you know, a larger ask on them and they're looking for that support when they're doing this volunteer work.

And they want to be more successful in the work that they're doing.

So home gardeners, we have some great resources online for them of if you do want to do that in your home garden, what might you consider growing?

where it might you consider donating those things.

And some home gardeners can even donate them to these donation gardens if some of them have gleaning efforts where they're collecting that extra produce.

We're talking with Alicia Herzog of Iowa State University Extension.

She is the manager for the Iowa Master Gardener program and talking about the Iowa Donation Garden Network, which is getting into a new year and looking for community gardens that want to be part of that network.

Last year, almost 60 community donation gardens in the network.

Do you have a sense of how many that is compared to the number that are out there statewide?

Is that?

Almost everybody.

Is that just a fraction?

Where does that land on the spectrum?

You know, I think it's hard to find a count for that because once again, these are generally volunteers that are starting these community donation gardens.

it's different from county to county and city to city but it's hard to get a count on how many donation gardens exist out there and that was one of my goals with starting this program is if we can have a wider reach and we can engage more of those donation gardens we can get a better count of how many of them exist throughout the state and then we can help tell their story of the good work that all of them are doing.

You know it can be a little bit isolating when you're doing this work and you're

in your donation garden and dealing with your pests and your crops and the wacky Iowa weather that we've been having and all of you know where are we getting our volunteers from.

So I think being a part of this statewide network

that's part of the strength is seeing, okay, how many other people out there are doing this same work are experiencing these same problems that I am experiencing that I can talk to and I can have that community.

And also then just the public awareness, right?

Of being able to tell that story of what does community donation gardening look like across Iowa?

What is the reach and the impact of this effort?

How many people are out there

doing this, how many pounds of produce are being donated, and just telling the story of that food moving around and getting to neighbors in need.

So there was the concept for what this might look like in 2025, the implementation this past growing season.

What would you like to do new in 2027?

In 2027, my biggest goal is that there would be more ownership taken by the individual donation gardens to keep these conversations alive and really start being active partners in building this narrative.

So this year, it was great.

We had a lot of people engaged.

We provided a lot of great education to them.

But I think there were still some questions about, okay,

How do we take these relationships now past this one hour meeting that we have quarterly and continue to have these conversations with the other donation gardens around us?

Are there ways that we can partner with them if we are growing something and our food pantry is full and they can't take any more of that item?

Can we talk to another donation garden and see if one of their food pantry partners would need that?

Just, you know, the opportunity for those relations

to grow, to strengthen, and to see what kind of cool collaborative efforts can come from these relationships.

We're talking with Alicia Herzog of Iowa State University Extension, the Iowa Master Gardener Program Manager there, and talking about the Iowa Donation Garden Network with community gardens able to register for 2027 membership through the end of this year and have some collaborative opportunities with other community gardens across a large portion of Iowa.

And so you mentioned that there was a lot of interest from folks individually who were

weren't really the folks that are this program's intended audience.

Do you feel like one of the opportunities out there might be to grow that base of community gardens?

Are there people out there who are hearing, well, this isn't really the right thing for what I'm doing right now.

But if I did this and this and this, maybe I could be part of this.

Definitely.

I think one of the things that the donation gardens might expect or

be excited about or want from the visibility of this effort is they are always looking for volunteers.

So even if someone were to say, well, I can't start this in my area, they could look at our public directory and see is there a garden in my area that's already doing this and might they be looking for volunteers.

So it could be that person that says, well, I'm growing a row already in my home or I can donate my excess produce.

They might then consider

Well, could I actually go volunteer at this donation garden?

Could I be making a larger impact by going and helping in this dedicated space?

Or maybe it would be an instance where they would say, we don't have a donation garden in our area.

Do I talk to some other?

people in my area, some interested citizens who want to address food insecurity in our county, in our city, and do we come together to put something together?

So yeah, I think

The biggest thing about this is there's a lot of opportunity, right?

A lot of opportunity to see what's going on out there to get a feel for where do all these donation gardens exist, but also the opportunity to be inspired and to see how can we tackle this huge problem in our state and how can we help our neighbors in need if this is something that we really care about.

I know that the Master Gardener program volunteering is a key component of that.

You're with the Master Gardener program, but that's not a requirement, I don't believe, for this donation network, right?

If there's a community garden that's out there, it's under the auspices of a local church or some other organization that doesn't have a Master Gardener in it, that's not a prerequisite for joining this network.

Yeah, and that's one of the strengths of the network.

There was a similar program that we used to run where all of the donation gardens that were involved did have to have a master gardener as part of their key core volunteer group.

And that's no longer required.

And so that opens it up to all donation gardens, any donation gardens.

And I, you know, like I said, it really gets to that building the network, seeing the full scope, the full picture of what's happening with donation gardens.

around the state.

We want to get to all of those donation gardens whether or not they previously have had any relationship with extension and outreach.

And then also we do have a very great sponsor for this program, Iowa Total Care.

They've been very generous with supporting this program, getting it off the ground and one of the parts of that besides just covering membership fees for all of the interested gardens.

is that we do have a few scholarship spots to our Garden Academy training, which is our same basic training that we use to train Master Gardener volunteers.

So if there was a community donation garden that wanted to join the network that said, you know,

We need help.

Our volunteers need help.

We have a few people that are kind of the key volunteers and they don't have that horticulture background and we're trying to figure out how do we deal with some of these issues we're seeing every year.

They could apply for a scholarship spot into Garden Academy and we have a few of them that are held just for the members of this donation garden because of that great partnership with Iowa Total Care.

Well, the sign up period to be part of the Iowa Donation Garden Network lasts through the end of this year.

More information available through the Iowa Donation Garden Network web page.

We're talking this morning with Alicia Herzog of the Iowa State University Extension Service.

She's Iowa's Master Gardener Program Manager.

Thanks for being with us.

Yeah, thank

you for having me.

This is the station where Iowa comes to talk.

News Talk 1540 KXCL.

And SKXEL live and local continues on this Tuesday morning time for today's RFD 1540 conversation.

We do this Tuesdays and Thursdays with Dustin Hoffman, supervising editor and senior farm broadcaster with the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network.

You hear reports from the network nine times each weekday here on the blowtorch and as noted Dustin kind enough to join us for this extended conversation Tuesdays and Thursdays.

We would like to say that agribusiness farming agriculture operates independent from politics, but we all know that's not the case.

And the Brazilian elections may have an impact on one of the large crops exported from there, and that impacts the American market as well.

Give us an update on what's happening with beans, thanks to the election.

Well, thanks to the election is right.

We saw kind of a back to the future moment here this go around We we saw that their president Lula as they call him won his historic fourth term not straight, but fourth term Back to back now again with his third term, but he beat right wing senator Flavio Bolsonaro who is the son of?

Former president Jerry Bolsonaro who actually was defeated in the last election

and started, you know, the questioning of whether or not the voting was tampered with or anything like that.

That led to mass riots at the Capitol in Brazil only the weekend before we went down there.

I went down there.

And in fact, President Lula was waiting to be sworn in and he was staying at the exact same hotel I was at.

And so the military guard around there was crazy and their equivalency of the FBI was there and local police

And it was just it looked like a war zone around that hotel In fact when we went to the Capitol to take pictures later on they their military chased us away didn't want anybody near the Capitol at all and we were definitely long ways from it But there was enough for them to get their attention all they basically told us was like fine take your pictures and get out of here and so There was that but of course that what's causing the stirrup and what's causing problems in the market is President Lula

For lack of better terminology, he's not known to be too fiscally responsible.

He's spending money faster than he can take it in.

And of course, that's made a lot of people irate.

It's not been good for their economy.

And in fact, once we found out that Bolsonaro had lost, and going off an even further tangent, Lula had actually lost in the first runoff.

So how in the world was he back in the final election?

That's another question that's being figured out.

And I don't understand Brazilian politics enough to talk on that.

But then there was also a late Sunday decision by one of President Lula's appointed Supreme Court justices to extend voting another two hours over alleged voter transporter regularities, but had not, the Supreme Court did not go for Bolsonaro's petition to extend it because of weather conditions earlier in the day.

And so that's raised some flags.

And of course, since Lula's won,

He has gotten congratulations pouring in from EU, Mexico, France, Canada, India, Russia, of course Ukraine, which is funny, it's the first thing Russia and Ukraine have agreed on in a long time.

And so a lot of these countries, which if you look at some of them, they're also countries that are spending more money than they can take in.

There's no secret that the Trump administration was hoping to work with Bolsonaro.

But he did not win and the Trump administration has been pretty silent on this.

Of course though, the markets didn't like it.

because of Lula's fiscal policies and so the real has dropped quite a bit in fact about a two or three year low against the US dollar and I can see it because it was already a low Comparison when I was there and so there's questions about that of course now the questions about the ball scenario You know campaign saying if this was rigged also though the offset is it's a difference of four million votes and so there are many folks saying that even if there was something is being called in the question likely would not make up a four million

and vote difference in Brazil.

So there's ways to see that could happen as well.

But obviously, the country does not have very good strong faith in its electoral system, its judicial independence, and all of that.

And so they're really having some problems with this.

But the other side of the coin is that, yes, while President Lula is more fiscally liberal, he is going to be up against a Congress that is stacked with more conservative folks on Bolsonaro's side than it's ever been.

This could lead to a lot of headbutting going on between the Congress and the president.

So there's a lot to develop in this, but the markets are reacting quite negatively and that includes soybeans as well.

It's fascinating to me because again, we have the global market situation.

We have the American harvest coming in at this very moment.

Brazil, and you've taught us this through your reporting from there and following it afterwards, has become a main competitor.

But again, these folks who are purchasing from whatever source, to me, what they want is certainty and quality.

And then they worry about price as part of that as well.

Well, if the certainty, the disruptiveness of a nation makes it difficult to guarantee delivery, you know, if the Brazilian people rise up or whatever may happen.

You know, I hate to say that their losses are gained, but might that help the US producers if Brazil is seen as something less than a viable option?

Right now you're looking at economies around the globe, though, that are looking at the fact that Brazil is going to be even cheaper.

and have more plentiful.

So it's going to be tough to stack against.

Of course, US beans are going to be cheaper as well, but it's going to be one of those situations.

And of course, they're just planting right now.

So it's going to be one of those things that we're going to have to keep an eye on.

Of course, the one thing that's been watching, and this is something that doesn't get talked about a lot, is the BRICS organization, which is

Brazil, Russia, India and China.

They have formed kind of a trade pack and they've also welcomed in other countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Indonesia and then more Belarus, Kazakhstan, Thailand and Vietnam and they're trying to basically undermine what has been a US dominated and even Western Europe dominated economy for a global economy for so long.

And when you have powerhouses like that with Brazil's production, Russia's manufacturing

China's technology manufacturing, India's, you know, those are four big economies that are all of a sudden banding against the West and banding against the America and stuff like that.

So that also, we know President Lula in Brazil is a big supporter of that as well.

Now, whether the Congress will be, that's going to be a different situation.

And so it's going to be, it's going to be a long time before any of this shakes out.

And of course, there is going to be that challenge.

We're looking for Bolsonaro's asking for an annulment of the vote.

to see how that plays out but again you're looking at the prices now we know that in the economy we're seeing right now that price plays just as much into it if not more so than quality because of the fact that when you don't have your currency stretching as far or whatever your currency is stretching as far as it used to you're going to try to get the most bang for your buck that you can

and obviously in this hemisphere as we mentioned it's harvest time in the southern hemisphere it's planting time I did not know if

the Brazilians keep supply in the bins like I think many people do in this country.

There are many folks who sell right out of the field.

There are many others who like to store some and play the waiting game over the course of time.

I did not know if there was a ready supply in Brazil that is impacted based on prior harvest, that is impacted by the political change, which therefore could be another domino to fall as folks may want to sell from the field.

as harvest is coming in here.

Well, they do have quite a bit.

You'll see grain storage just like you'd see in the United States.

Not quite to some of the scale, but there is some there, but a lot of it is trucked.

A lot of it goes right to the elevators, right to the grain elevators.

So while there is storage and trying to save some, maybe waiting out for some better prices, or saving what they're going to need to help corn and stuff for grinding for cattle feed and things like that, there's a lot of that too.

Farmers may be playing the waiting game, but they don't play it like we do here.

It's become more contracted and they're starting to take on that more modern way of marketing their grain, kind of like the United States does as well.

You know, you're starting to contract before it even goes into the field.

And, you know, you're playing the market game and putting your protections in to try to do that.

Again, they don't have unlimited grain storage, I mean, in their farms, but they do have some.

Don't get me wrong.

And some decent sized grain legs, but nowhere near the massive million bushel bins that we're used to seeing and things.

like that and you know large bins and setups I mean you're talking some grain legs but nowhere near as involved as the USC's.

Dustin that's great insight as always I appreciate it we'll do this again Thursday morning sir.

Sounds good Jeff.

Dustin Hoffman, Supervising Editor, Senior Farm Broadcaster Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network, and he joins us for this extended RFD-1540 conversation Tuesdays and Thursdays during KXEL Live and Local on News Talk 1540, KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.