Khalil Gibran Muhammad

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair, expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm sitting next to expert Monica Padman.

[2] Welcome.

[3] Hi, expert, Jack Shepard.

[4] Today we have Khalil Gibram Mohammed on, who is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute.

[5] He is the former director of the Schaumburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the world's leading library and archive of global black history.

[6] He has an awesome podcast that I've listened to called Some of My Best Friends Are, Some of My Best Friends Are.

[7] which I didn't get, as you'll hear.

[8] Yeah, it's a podcast with him and his best friend who's white.

[9] And they have some interesting conversations, not unlike what happens on our show sometimes.

[10] Do you think they bid our style?

[11] No. Oh, okay.

[12] Anyways, it's a fantastic one.

[13] With his best friend, as we said, Ben Austin, who's a great journalist.

[14] And, you know, they get into their interracial friendship in a way that only two friends can do.

[15] And it's such a wonderful privilege thing to listen to them interact like that.

[16] Yeah.

[17] I love it, and I think you will too.

[18] So please enjoy Khalil.

[19] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[20] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[21] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[22] Okay.

[23] Wow, this was a first.

[24] Let's just start by saying this was a first for probably you and for us.

[25] We got to see the halls of Harvard, for one.

[26] We just watched the sausage get made.

[27] Yeah.

[28] You left your key to your office on your podium?

[29] I did, yeah, on my lecture podium, delivering my last lecture for the semester.

[30] And then a very eager, bright, young student had to fetch said key.

[31] He thought you were in a different building.

[32] We stayed with you in the hallway throughout the whole saga.

[33] And then Adam, he arrived, and he saved the day.

[34] Adam saved the day.

[35] That sounds like a new TV show.

[36] Adam saved the day.

[37] And we're out of time.

[38] So it was great talking to you.

[39] I hope not.

[40] I hope not.

[41] I'm excited to talk to you.

[42] I listened to your podcast while I was exercising.

[43] I listened to the one about back -to -school panic.

[44] What's it called?

[45] Yep, back -to -school backlash.

[46] Yeah, and it's really incredible.

[47] But before we get to that, you're, of course, a professor at Harvard.

[48] You're a historian.

[49] We teach on race.

[50] You have some focus on crime.

[51] All things were hugely interested to hear.

[52] let's start in the south side of Chicago because I got to hear the clip on the episode one of my great enemies a guy that I would actually like I'd donate a hundred grand to his favorite charity if he'd fist fight me at Arby's is Bill O 'Reilly.

[53] I cannot stand that fucking bully.

[54] So sure enough, you play a clip of Bill O 'Reilly and he's attacking Khalil and he goes, he goes, you know, Khalil, of course the great grandson, or I think he fucked it up and said grandson of Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the nation to Islam, bad man, a very bad, like he gets so weird when he starts, the cadence, yeah.

[55] And then proceeds to say, but you shouldn't hold someone's grandfather's thing against someone.

[56] And it's like, well, then why did you just do that?

[57] What was the point of that, if not to do that?

[58] Yep.

[59] But anyways, I find that fascinating.

[60] I don't find that as a burn.

[61] I'm kind of fascinated by the fact that your great -grandfather was Elijah Muhammad.

[62] Yeah, no. It meant that I grew up in a community where a lot of black.

[63] people own businesses, and there were a lot of bow ties, dessert on almost every corner.

[64] It was a very prideful community and gave birth to people like Muhammad Ali, whose career was sort of emblematic of a very successful African -American whose commitment both to his faith and to his community is a model for people even to this very day.

[65] And even thinking about Bill O 'Reilly saying, Malcolm X, another bad guy.

[66] is an irony beyond belief, given how much this moment of racial reckoning is very much about channeling Malcolm X's own critiques of the hypocrisies of this country.

[67] I've said this on here, I don't know, recently, which is my perception of Malcolm X was like this crazy radical that wanted to annex Alabama or whatever he wanted to do, and he was nuts.

[68] And then I saw the movie, and I was like, oh, he's cool and charismatic and blah, but then I actually heard a speech somewhere.

[69] I don't know where, maybe I'm a revisionist history or something, but I heard a speech and I was like, by God, he is saying word for word, everything we're now accepting as the reality of systemic racism.

[70] And I was like, what a 180 from like what I thought as a kid in Detroit.

[71] What used to be radical.

[72] Yeah.

[73] Of like, what a visionary man. These are like the exact points we're just becoming open to agreeing upon.

[74] That's right.

[75] And the irony of like being a kid growing up in Detroit and having a distorted view.

[76] of Malcolm X or the nation, that's where it was founded.

[77] Oh, really?

[78] Not Chicago.

[79] Not Chicago.

[80] It was Detroit.

[81] Detroit in 1934 is where the nation.

[82] Now, Malcolm X actually was never associated with Detroit or Chicago.

[83] He basically was associated with Harlem.

[84] But it's one of those things where we remember Martin Luther King as this paragon of virtue.

[85] But the truth is that Martin and Malcolm were very much converging at the end of their lives and starting to see a lot of the challenges of the nation through the same lens, the same problems, as you rightly point out, we're still facing today.

[86] Yeah, it's a long road for a white dude out of that.

[87] I got to say, as someone who's like now interviewed a ton of folks that kind of focus on this and slowly having little lightball moments.

[88] Yeah, it's a deep, deep well to crawl out of that you're just largely, not to excuse it, completely unaware of.

[89] Yeah.

[90] To your point, we were presented as Martin Luther King, right?

[91] Like, This is the unicorn.

[92] This is the guy.

[93] Because I presume peaceful, like just the notion that it was going to be a peaceful, nonviolent protest.

[94] Maybe it was why he was kind of broadly accepted.

[95] I'm not sure because the messages are pretty similar.

[96] So to some degree, yes, he professed this nonviolent tradition that he'd borrowed from Gandhi.

[97] But the other irony is that Martin Luther King wasn't considered peaceful by Southerners.

[98] He was considered a radical outside agitator who showed up in southern towns.

[99] stirred up trouble in their black people, right, in the possessive sense of things, right?

[100] And our black people, leave our black people along.

[101] The other thing is even Robert Kennedy, after King gave his I Have a Dream speech, designated Dr. King with Jay Edgar Hoover's urging as a most dangerous threat to national security.

[102] So it's still a lot of revision in terms of how we think about King as someone who was non -threatening and peaceful and this sort of thing.

[103] That's true.

[104] And we just interviewed someone who made a great documentary about that exact thing, Martin Luther King and the FBI, which is, at least from Hoover's perspective, it has the ostensible goal of stamping out communism, but clearly really just driven by racism.

[105] But there was some bogus justification for all this right being kind of a bit of the red scare.

[106] Oh, absolutely.

[107] And the convergence of black people as both black and red was one of the mainstays of discrediting civil rights activists.

[108] The Cold War, interestingly enough, helped to move the needle towards accepting civil rights because the Soviets were making a lot of propaganda out of the lynchings and attacks on civil rights workers.

[109] Yeah, they definitely tried to monetize what was happening, how we were treating black folks, right?

[110] They would invite civil leaders to Russia even, I think.

[111] Absolutely, no. But also in a scramble for like whether Asia or Africa would be friendly to the Soviets or to the United States, this U .S. State Department started to basically manufacture a kind of civil rights, utopic vision of the United States to basically say, you know, no, no, no, no, we're the home of the free and the land of the brave, not the communists, not the Soviets.

[112] Yeah, who did they enlist?

[113] They enlisted some celebrity, right?

[114] Did they not have some?

[115] Oh, absolutely.

[116] Yeah, yeah.

[117] Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, sports athletes like Althea Gibson, the famous first black woman to win, Wimbledon and U .S. National Tennis Championship.

[118] They sent basketball players.

[119] Look at these 12 that were nice to.

[120] Well, you know, you can think of it, like even in the midst of the Colin Kaepernick protest, this notion that successful black athletes should be grateful for the opportunity to be successful and shut up about, you know, anything that they think is wrong with the country.

[121] It's part of the sort of the other side of the coin of this notion of promoting this image of racial harmony using athletes.

[122] Yeah.

[123] I have my own theories, but why do you suppose Chicago was, such a fertile place for the movements that then bore fruit when you grew up there, black -owned businesses.

[124] Like, what was it about that intersection of, you know, the country that made that the place?

[125] Yeah, so it's a great question about Chicago.

[126] I mean, so if people think of Detroit as like the Motor City, as a place that was like epitomized American industry and ability of the country to build things and transform manufacturing in the world, Chicago was a place of politics.

[127] It was the kind of muscular, hard -scrabble machine politics that produced a pretty significant black political class beginning in the 1920s.

[128] Part of it was because of the relocation or migration of black people from the South.

[129] But part of it was that segregation created an opportunity for black people to exercise their political muscles.

[130] And so the first black person to actually to go to Congress after the Reconstruction period, which is 1870s, after the end of slavery, is a black man named Oscar DePriest.

[131] He proceeds by almost a generation, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who was elected from Harlem in 1944.

[132] So from the 1920s, really, to the election of Carol Mosley -Bron, which was the first black woman to go to the U .S. Senate, and of course, most famously, Barack Hussein Obama, who's elected out of Chicago.

[133] Chicago has had this incredible history of black political power.

[134] Yeah, the Obama part is like, if I'm, as a writer, I'm giving notes on this script.

[135] I'm like, it's too convenient now with that history that Obama has his inauguration there.

[136] You know, that's just, come on.

[137] That's right.

[138] But it's not an accident that Jesse Jackson, who's from Greenwood, Mississippi, who is a lieutenant, a very young lieutenant of Dr. King's, migrates basically to Chicago and sets up his national headquarters, Operation Push, and it's still in existence to this day.

[139] Chicago has in many ways been at the center of black institution building since the early 20th century.

[140] So as the great -grandson, and then your father's a Pulitzer Prize -winning photographer, your mother's a doctor, what are you thinking in your youth?

[141] Like, I've got to carry this work on in some way, or like, we're good, now I can just do whatever the fuck I want and go get rich.

[142] Like, you majored first in economics, and I'm curious where your mind was.

[143] politically, spiritually.

[144] And I was thinking about getting paid.

[145] Yeah.

[146] As a kid of the 1980s.

[147] And I say that both because it's true and also because that was the kind of cultural zeitgeist of growing up in the 80s.

[148] I mean.

[149] Yeah.

[150] Brewster's millions.

[151] It's every single story, Silver Spoons.

[152] It's all like the drummins.

[153] It's all about like get some rich.

[154] Yeah.

[155] I'm with you.

[156] I was right there.

[157] So my parents, while they were.

[158] sort of teenagers in the mid -1960s, they were just a little bit too young to be on the front lines of the civil rights movement.

[159] They certainly benefited from it.

[160] My mom was one of the first black teachers in Chicago to desegregate some of the schools to go into all -white schools as a black teacher.

[161] My father, although he worked for Johnson Johnson Publishing, which published Jet in Ebony Magazine, you know, did go on to work at newspapers as kind of not the first generation of black photographers for mainstream newspapers, but most certainly among the first generation.

[162] And he was at the New York Times, right?

[163] Yeah, he was at the Times for 25 years, but he actually won his Pulitzer at Newsday, a Long Island newspaper in New York.

[164] Oh, wow.

[165] And that was in 1985 for covering the Ethiopian crisis at that time.

[166] So for me, my parents were like middle class, successful professionals, and it was like, okay, now what you're going to do?

[167] And the idea was to simply be a good student in school, follow the rules, and success would be measured by my own professional accomplishments.

[168] That's what I set out to do.

[169] In my senior yearbook, the caption says, member of the varsity tennis team, bowling team, assistant manager of the girls tennis team, Dick Tracy Crime Stoppers, which we can talk about.

[170] Of course we should.

[171] And then my hope was to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

[172] Yeah, because in this great analogy they often use, there's that viral video where it's like, okay, if your parents are married, step to the five -yard line.

[173] You know, I'm sure you've seen that video.

[174] Yeah, so your parents put you on the 30 -yard line almost, some version of the 30 -yard line.

[175] So, yeah, I think the inclination is like, get yourself into the end zone.

[176] That's right, yeah.

[177] And I think that was true for, you know, I went to an Ivy League school.

[178] I went to the University of Pennsylvania.

[179] And the way my story is supposed to be written is to say that because of your opportunities and because of the hard work of your parents, Your evidence that the Civil Rights Movement achieved its goals.

[180] That's the way this works.

[181] By the way, it's not an accident we celebrate so much the few successful black people because it buys us belief in this system that anybody can do it.

[182] That's right.

[183] And in fact, that system has been predicated on this notion of model minorities, which is not just about East Asian or Chinese Americans or about South Asians or Indian Americans.

[184] It's also about successful black people as the model minorities and the evidence that we don't have structural oppression, we don't have structural disadvantages.

[185] Everybody who puts in the work gets the rewards they deserve.

[186] It'll never be summed up better than by Chris Rock who said, yeah, I'm in an amazing neighborhood, but I'm the best comedian alive, and I live next to an average dentist.

[187] Who's white?

[188] Like, that really, everything encapsulates the whole thing.

[189] Leave it to Chris Rock to cut through the fog, right?

[190] Yeah.

[191] How long after graduating from Penn and Prong, pursuing cash, did you decide you wanted to go in another direction?

[192] So for me, being in college, it was sort of the best the college means.

[193] Like, I was econ major.

[194] I was studying how the economy works.

[195] But in the meantime, I had a bunch of electives that I could choose.

[196] And I ended up choosing a bunch of classes that were offered either in African -American studies or African -American history.

[197] And I just found them more interesting and more compelling.

[198] And it was filling in a lot of things I didn't learn like most kids in great school or in high school.

[199] Nevertheless, I still planned on, you know, working at Goldman Sachs or somewhere like that after college, except one thing happened, which is that Rodney King was beaten nearly to an inch of his life in 1991.

[200] And it was for my generation, and particularly for those of us who were in college at the time, kind of a Trayvon Martin moment, you know, that we've seen recently play out or Michael Brown, or even for an earlier generation of civil rights leaders, it was like an Emmett Till moment because if, you know, if there were a record playing in the background, it just literally, the needle just scratched.

[201] And it was like, wait a minute, hold up.

[202] Like, how does that happen?

[203] Yeah.

[204] How is it okay?

[205] And how do these guys get off?

[206] So that began to change things for me. Yeah, you know, you're not the first person that we've talked to who had a kind of crisis of conscious in the wake of that.

[207] And I don't know, he was on a, I loved the show.

[208] People think it was trashy, but there was this show Celebrity Rehab and he was one of the patients.

[209] And I mean, what a sweet human being.

[210] It's just so heartbreaking that he died and he couldn't stay sober.

[211] And as an addict, I just was looking at all that, like his struggle.

[212] And I could tell he felt not worthy of the attention he got, not deserving of that.

[213] And what's crazy is that heinous thing he went through probably lit the fire underneath thousands of people that are going to change the world.

[214] Like, I can't imagine he knew the.

[215] impact of that event.

[216] Right.

[217] No, I wrote a piece on this a few years ago after he passed, like literally the week he passed, I wrote something about this.

[218] And I said that the Rodney King beating was the first viral video of police brutality.

[219] Oh, yeah.

[220] And that part of his legacy had, in fact, helped to change the way we understand systemic violence in law enforcement.

[221] And at the end of the day, when history books will be written of this time, more than likely the first chapter is going to be what happened to him and everything that flowed from it.

[222] I actually interviewed Rodney King when I was running the Schaumburg Center in Harlem, which is a cultural institution.

[223] He'd just written his book called The Riot Within.

[224] And he reenacted on stage, it was just, to your point, such a sweet guy.

[225] He literally reenacted on stage how he'd been serially abused by LAPD.

[226] Like they would just come into his neighborhood, grab all the kids, and he told the story of how the car door had the ding marks from their various body parts that were thrown into the car routinely.

[227] And it was surprised me is like, he's a big guy.

[228] It was like 6 '3, and he kind of like acted out what was happening to him.

[229] He ended up dying within months of that interview.

[230] And so it touched me personally because in so many ways, his story had compelled me to leave a career in business to pursue studies of the criminal justice system.

[231] I don't want to get too derailed with this, but it doesn't shock me that because he was so big, he was a target.

[232] Like, he represents what they're so afraid of and what they're trying to enact power over.

[233] It's like, yeah, this point has been made on here before, but I think it's worth repeating, which is, as was later explained to me, it's not like I realized this.

[234] But the real racism of that situation isn't the nine cops beating him up, per se, it's the 20 people who wrote reports when they got back to the station that ignored the whole thing.

[235] And that's where you recognize, oh, that was the culture there.

[236] That is the system there.

[237] That's the actual thing.

[238] I think that's a brilliant way to put it.

[239] And it's not just the 20 people who were complicit in the cover up, but also the process of voir dire and basically deciding that black people can't stand in judgment of white police officers.

[240] And so moving the trial to a friendlier jurisdiction.

[241] And then those jurors denying what their lying eyes told them, right?

[242] I mean, it's just layer upon layer.

[243] I mean, this is an analogy that I think is relevant in this point.

[244] When Ralph Northam got in trouble, the Virginia governor for his medical yearbook in 1984, for being either a man in blackface with a noose around his neck or a clan member lynching the white guy in blackface.

[245] with a noose around his neck, which he originally admitted was his yearbook page, and he was one of those people, which he then later denied, and then an investigation said there was no conclusive evidence.

[246] Like, of course, so all of this is totally absurd.

[247] But here's the point.

[248] The racism of that period wasn't the choice that Ralph Notha made.

[249] It was also the yearbook editors that thought this was perfectly fine, the school that thought this was perfectly fine, and that this went on on hundreds of campuses during those years.

[250] years.

[251] And to some degree, it's still playing out.

[252] Like, that's the racism we're talking about.

[253] Oh, man. I have the gnarliest story of virtually that same thing.

[254] And this was only five years older than me, a friend of mine's cousin in suburban Detroit.

[255] On Halloween, like six of the classmates dressed up as clan members.

[256] Someone went in blackface.

[257] They went into a classroom, told the teacher were here for him.

[258] Everyone laughed.

[259] I mean, dude, that was in 1986.

[260] Exactly.

[261] And exactly.

[262] The faculty didn't think that was insane, yeah.

[263] Yeah, yeah.

[264] And I was 14, right?

[265] So I tell people all the time, like, when I teach my students and most of my students these days don't need a whole lot of motivation to think that there's such a thing as systemic racism.

[266] But still, it can be an abstraction for people.

[267] And I'm like, look, my mother was born in 1950.

[268] So when you think about the history of redlining, when you think about the evidence we now know of the systemic disenfranchisement of, black homeownership and the wealth gap that exists today, it's not just something that happened a long time ago.

[269] It's like people in my own family were either excluded from neighborhoods or subject to predatory lending practices because they couldn't get a standard FHA mortgage.

[270] Yeah.

[271] Yeah.

[272] That's real.

[273] Well, time is a very tricky abstract concept.

[274] I just dealt with this the other day.

[275] We were in England and I don't know what happened, but something was built in 1920.

[276] And I'm like, oh my God, that's forever ago, 1920.

[277] But then I go, fuck, I'm 46.

[278] So that's only two of my lifetimes.

[279] My lifetime doesn't feel that long.

[280] Like when I think about it in that way, it's like, oh, it changes.

[281] And yet, you're talking about five seconds ago, all these things.

[282] They feel like they're eons away, but they're not.

[283] They're like five seconds ago.

[284] Yeah, yeah.

[285] And Americans, you know, have a very peculiar notion of history, which is socialized.

[286] We're socialized to be forward thinking, innovative, let's move forward.

[287] forward, let's forget the past, except when it's convenient to whatever our politics are.

[288] I had this moment in France a few years ago.

[289] It was a simple moment.

[290] I was about to go for a run on the Sin River.

[291] I was there with my family.

[292] This was about a decade ago.

[293] And I just happened to look down at the bridge, but I noticed the inscription on the bridge.

[294] And it was basically like, this bridge was built in 15, 16.

[295] And I was like, holy crap.

[296] Like, that's crazy.

[297] Right?

[298] Yeah, yeah.

[299] Like, it just put in context for me personally in that single moment, how much more history there is in the world than anything we Americans think of and we think of what happened a quote -unquote long time ago.

[300] Yeah, yeah, that bridge was eight years after Columbus set sail virtually.

[301] Right, exactly.

[302] So once you change directions, that causes you to decide to dedicate yourself.

[303] I guess I don't even know if you knew consciously like, oh, I'm dedicating myself to this, but you then go on to graduate school at Rutgers.

[304] What were you thinking at that point was going to be the outcome of that education?

[305] or what was the goal at that point?

[306] Yeah, I wanted to be a professor.

[307] Like, I decided, so I worked for a couple years at Deloitte Intuition on the audit side of consulting.

[308] And I was bored to tears after two weeks.

[309] So I was like, oh, okay, I got to shift gears.

[310] So it took me literally two years to do it because I had to plan and take the GREs and this sort of thing.

[311] But I was committed to being a professor.

[312] I thought that was the best way for me to teach myself and to teach myself and to, you know, to share what I learned with others.

[313] That was pretty much, that was it.

[314] Because I felt cheated by my education and not being prepared to understand the world I actually lived in.

[315] And I wanted to do my part to make sure others wouldn't have that experience.

[316] Yeah, I got to imagine you walk around with a ton of cognitive dissonance all the time.

[317] It's like, well, I was taught this thing.

[318] And they just told me, well, slavery ended in 1860, so we're good.

[319] I don't feel good.

[320] Like, is that kind of the feeling of, like, Like, well, something's missing from the story.

[321] I had a lot of cognitive dissonance at the time because, again, as I said, I was supposed to be the kid who had the opportunities.

[322] I was at an Ivy League education in my early 20s.

[323] And so it wasn't supposed to make sense that I would be upset by what happened to some alcoholic drunk driver on California Highway Patrol.

[324] Like, the cognitive symmetry was that he was a bad person, and I shouldn't have any fealty for the choices a bad person made, and that the cops beat him to death really is maybe a little excessive, but he shouldn't have put himself in that position.

[325] Right, right, right, right.

[326] The cognitive dissonance is that somehow my loyalties are supposed to be with my class position, with my opportunity as evidence that everything's fine, and I couldn't live like that.

[327] That didn't make any sense to me. humans are afraid of things we all like walk through life with a ton of fear and anytime you can kind of dismiss something it's like oh that won't happen to me because of x you kind of embrace that so like even if i'm you that's a terrifying notion that as a black man i could get pulled out of a car and beat by all these people they'd film it no one'd give a shit they wouldn't stop it but you go but i don't drive around drunk so who there could be an incentive yeah for your own fear level to go like, well, I'm even going to separate myself from this guy because this guy's a drunk and I don't do that.

[328] Okay.

[329] That might not happen to me. Until it did, right?

[330] So my Rodney King moment was I was basically in grad school, my first year.

[331] So here I am on the other side of this decision, right, to leave the business world, to throw my lot in with the common man, to at least understand, you know, what they were facing.

[332] And I was warned, this was back in 1995, I was warned that in the neighboring town from New Brunswick, New Jersey, that the cops in Edison, New Jersey pulled over black people all the time.

[333] So I was like, oh, okay, I'll keep an eye on it.

[334] And then one day, I'm coming back from a movie on a date, and I'm driving my, like, 1993 Toyota Camry, which I was very proud of at that time.

[335] It was the first car I bought right after college.

[336] My tags are all perfect.

[337] Yes, my tags are perfect.

[338] I know everything's good.

[339] I'm going to speed limit.

[340] New Jersey State Trooper pulls up beside me, looks around in the car, pulls behind me, and then about a minute later pulls me over.

[341] And so when the cop comes up, I'm like, hey, you know, what's going on?

[342] He's like, could you step out of the car?

[343] And I'm thinking to myself, well, I wasn't speeding.

[344] There's nothing wrong with my car.

[345] What's this about?

[346] And so I'm like, well, can you explain to me why I'm being stopped?

[347] Could you step out of the car?

[348] So I'm like, okay, I get out of the car, takes me to the back of the car.

[349] In the meantime, a second car pulls up, up to my date and starts asking her for ID because she's the child of a judge.

[350] She was a child of a Chicago judge.

[351] She told the cop that she didn't have to show her ID because she didn't do anything wrong.

[352] And if he had a problem with it, he could call her mom.

[353] So the cop backs off of her.

[354] Meanwhile, the other cop tells me that the reason stops me is because there's a plastic dealer frame around my license plate that is partially covering the state where.

[355] the license is issued.

[356] And so it's like state of Illinois with land of Lincoln underneath.

[357] And so I'm looking at it.

[358] I'm like, are you kidding me, dude?

[359] Like, really?

[360] You couldn't figure out that that was Illinois?

[361] And he's like, well, you know, that's illegal by New Jersey.

[362] I said, you know something?

[363] People warned me that cops in this town pull over black people and racially profiled.

[364] He said, he literally said, I don't know what you're talking about.

[365] That's crazy.

[366] That's not me. So here's your ticket and you should get back in your car.

[367] I was like, but, but, but, and he's He's like, if you don't get in your car, I'm going to arrest you because giving you a ticket is a privilege.

[368] So I immediately went to the precinct at like midnight to file a complaint.

[369] The desk captain comes out.

[370] He looks at my car.

[371] He's like, yeah, that seems like some bullshit.

[372] You should come back tomorrow.

[373] I come back the next day, and I meet with the internal affairs guys.

[374] And you know what their excuse was for why the cop wasn't racist and why this was all in my head?

[375] So you know the title of our podcast that some of my best friends are.

[376] This is the next best thing.

[377] What's the next best thing?

[378] Oh, I know it's going to happen.

[379] He's married to a black woman.

[380] Exactly.

[381] No. He wasn't married to her, but he had a black girlfriend.

[382] So four years later, the Department of Justice basically slams the state of New Jersey for systemic racial profiling on the New Jersey Turnpike.

[383] And this is really the first, like, massive case of driver -based racial profiling.

[384] Like, not the stop and frist stuff, but basically highway patrol, systemically racially profiling black motor.

[385] and New Jersey gets pinged for it.

[386] And here I was, just one statistic in a battery of cases.

[387] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[388] We've all been there.

[389] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[390] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[391] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[392] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[393] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[394] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[395] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[396] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon music.

[397] What's up, guys?

[398] This is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[399] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[400] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[401] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[402] And I don't mean just friends.

[403] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[404] The list goes on.

[405] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[406] this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[407] I worked for General Motors for a long time and I worked with the fleet program who would put on these big events for chiefs of police so they could test the car and then order a fleet of them, you know, servicing these clients.

[408] And I was told many times there that most cars come off the assembly line in most states with about four infractions that will allow them to pull you over.

[409] Whether it's air tire pressure or all this little erroneous bullshit.

[410] Yeah, pinned windows was like the favorite.

[411] And the thing is, now we know that these were what are called pretext stops.

[412] So basically, the standard law enforcement practice at the time was use the pretext of tinted windows, driving too slow, didn't use a turn signal, as the way to basically search vehicles driven by black people for guns and drugs.

[413] And it was textbook.

[414] It was what they were doing.

[415] And that's what systemic racism is.

[416] Like, I didn't need the guy to either have a black girlfriend or not have a black girlfriend or have a best black friend or not have a best back friend.

[417] He was following the actual policy that made it much more likely that black motorists would be pulled over to be searched than other communities.

[418] Okay, so that was actually one of the questions.

[419] So you've written and talked extensively about the endearing link between race and crime.

[420] And that's obviously a big topic for us to get into, but I would like to hear you lay out.

[421] I mean, I guess my layman's understanding is simply where there is a tremendous arid desert of opportunity, you're going to see increased crime.

[422] Is that the relationship that you explore?

[423] What explains that?

[424] Please educate me on that.

[425] So, one, I write as a historian.

[426] And so I tell a story that basically offers us a beginning, right?

[427] So during slavery times, right?

[428] So there's like, I'm like Uncle Rema's story here.

[429] My lap, Dax and Monica, and I'm going to tell you a story.

[430] So during slavery, slavery times, there wasn't the need for criminal justice system to target and lock up all the black people.

[431] The point was to keep black people working as enslaved workers, right?

[432] So once we get to after slavery times, you've got this massive disruption in the social hierarchy.

[433] And you've got these people who had once worked for free now claiming their political and civil rights.

[434] And in the South, this is a big problem.

[435] And that's when we begin to see the use of the law of the criminal justice, system as an instrument of coercion.

[436] And so this is even about opportunity in the beginning.

[437] This is about like people destitute and committing crime.

[438] This is about racial control.

[439] How do we course people back to the same plantations they once worked on for free, but now is free laborers to exploitative contracts where they don't get paid fairly for their work, but they ostensibly are still free workers?

[440] That's when it begins.

[441] And that's kind of like a mass incarceration movement so that they can get the labor in the South?

[442] So it's a good question.

[443] There's a distinction to be made between mass incarceration, which actually doesn't happen until the 1970s, and mass criminalization.

[444] Okay.

[445] And criminalization just means it actually doesn't matter whether individuals are guilty or innocent.

[446] What matters is that a sheriff can come and support a landowner and say, is this guy giving you trouble?

[447] Right.

[448] Because that guy happens to be saying, hey, man, you cheated me, right?

[449] Or you assaulted me. And I have rights.

[450] And the sheriff comes up and says, actually, you don't have rights.

[451] and if you utter another word, you're going to go to prison, and you might end up lynched on the way to prison.

[452] Yeah.

[453] So the other side of the story is that after black people started leaving the South, because this is unsustainable, it's terror, and so black folks start leaving around World War I. Immigration dries up for Europeans.

[454] There's still a need to work in factories, so black people take advantage of those opportunities start leaving.

[455] When they show up in places where I grew up, Chicago, Detroit, New York City, Philadelphia, all these places, they are now facing.

[456] kind of more of what you're talking about.

[457] They're facing last, hired, first -fired job structures.

[458] They're facing dilapidated housing and segregated communities where they try to live outside in better communities.

[459] Molotov cocktails are being thrown at them.

[460] White gangs are terrorizing the boundaries of neighborhoods.

[461] And the police are abetting most of this violence.

[462] And so to some degree, the opportunity structures are diminished.

[463] Black people don't have job security, and there's more joblessness.

[464] and there is a certain amount of property level crime and violence within the black community.

[465] But that isn't even really the issue on a grand scale.

[466] The issue is that the police are enforcing racial segregation similar to how lynch mobs enforced white supremacy in the South.

[467] Now, what you raised also presents another story, and that is if we compare the experiences of European immigrants like Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants who come to the country in the late 19th and early 20th century, they are also spit upon, also isolated, subject to racism directed at them.

[468] And there's a lot of crime in their communities as a result of their disadvantages too.

[469] But at some point, beginning in the early 20th century and leading into the Great Depression and the New Deal and this sort of thing, there's all this effort by reformers who were self -identified progressives.

[470] This is where we get the term from today, who are basically like, oh, all this crime in the Italian immigrant community is a function of the discrimination they face and the lack of opportunities they have.

[471] So what are we going to do about it?

[472] Well, conservative said, no more Italians.

[473] They're bad for America.

[474] But liberals said, no, we're going to help them by helping their communities with more job opportunities, with police reform, with civil service so that people who are.

[475] are good at performing policing services, get a shot at being cops, right?

[476] All this external effort and all these interventions and policy ultimately lead to massive investments in the very communities of white immigrants that have been stigmatized.

[477] And just the opposite happens to black folks.

[478] So if we hold constant like discrimination and lack of opportunity for white immigrants in the 1920s in Chicago as compared to black migrants in the same city, we see two different paths emerge.

[479] We see the evidence of crime in the white community being an evidence for opportunity to be extended, for Americanization and assimilation programs, and for black people, we see just the opposite, opportunity to be denied and more segregation and more policing.

[480] And that's the story that explains how today we are still stuck on having discriminatory policies for black people who do face higher rates of violence in their own communities, not as a reason to actually get in and rebuild the communities, but actually to put more police officers on the ground in those communities.

[481] Okay, so that's an interesting dilemma right there.

[482] Well, I've heard black folks say this.

[483] Like, if they're in a neighborhood where the homicide rate is six times their state average or whatever it is, many of those people want police and many people don't.

[484] So I guess if it's me, and of course, I'm looking through my lens.

[485] So, yeah, bring more police in.

[486] I'm not the one that's going to get thrown on the cop court.

[487] I recognize that.

[488] But I can't imagine being in a high crime area and, not wanting police.

[489] I guess unless the police are so discriminatory towards me, I'd rather deal with that.

[490] But how do we deal with that aspect of it?

[491] No, it's a really good question.

[492] And in fact, it's, you know, it's part of what's happening right now in the country where questions about defund have given way to refunding.

[493] So there's a lot of news stories right now that a lot of cities that took money away in 2020 have now put it back in 2021.

[494] And even with the pending election of Eric Adams in New York City, who basically ran as a former police officer committed to investing in better policing is a kind of repudiation of a lot of things that I've just talked about.

[495] So my answer to this, Dax, is that just like I was misinformed until I went to graduate school about how to understand and make sense of the country I lived in in Rodney King, most people in this country still don't have college degrees across all categories, let alone going to college and studying these histories because most people opt out.

[496] It's not a pathway to a speedboat.

[497] That's right.

[498] Majoring in history, yeah.

[499] You're not going to get like a vacation house, yeah.

[500] Right, but even if I'm not even talking about majoring, I'm saying like in your general education requirements, most people still don't opt in.

[501] Like, oh, let me understand the history of race and racism, right?

[502] That it just hasn't been a popular thing.

[503] So I would say that African Americans are also victims of a poor education system where they don't know these histories well enough to even know how to make the case.

[504] strongly other than more policing.

[505] This is why organizing, and so I'm going to shift my scholarly hat to my organizing hat, no social movement ever succeeded without organizing the people to diagnose the conditions under which they suffered.

[506] Like, we romanticize to some degree the notion that just because people are living into the conditions of oppression, that they have a full analysis of what's actually happening to them.

[507] Right.

[508] And so we put a lot of microphones in man and women on the street who are like, yeah, you know, someone just got shot in my neighborhood last week.

[509] And so we need to get the police in here.

[510] But police clearance rates, which is the effectiveness of whether or not they solve homicides or not, are less than 50 % on a lot of these same cities that suffer.

[511] So police aren't themselves not doing a very good job.

[512] And they are themselves a source of alienation for people who feel like, why should I care about anybody in this community when no one cares about me, including the police?

[513] Okay, so you have this great podcast, and you already hit the name of it, and I can't believe you had a story that actually kind of hit perfectly, but yeah, your podcast is some of my best friends are.

[514] And I've got to be honest, when I first read it, I thought it was going to be a show about like, meet my best friends.

[515] I've gotten to meet all these great people with perspectives.

[516] It wasn't until I started listening to it.

[517] I was like, oh, yeah, duh, that's what it means.

[518] like, yeah.

[519] And you host the show with your best friend, Ben Austin.

[520] I hate how he spells his name.

[521] Please pass that on to him.

[522] It should be spelled like the city, but that's neither here nor there.

[523] But he's white and you guys are best friends.

[524] And you guys get into it.

[525] And I got to say, I'm just curious, I say this a lot.

[526] And it sounds like I'm saying my best friend.

[527] But I was married to a black woman on TV for six years.

[528] And I got to tell you, 90 % of our conversations were about race.

[529] Like, we loved it.

[530] We fucking live for both of us.

[531] Because like, we're from different countries almost in ways.

[532] And so we never tired of it.

[533] And I remember thinking it's a shame that there's not some arena in which people could largely and broadly have the conversations that she and I have.

[534] I mean, clearly, there's so much earned respect with one another that it's a very safe place to explore all this stuff.

[535] But I'm telling you some of the stuff we explored, you couldn't possibly explore on TV or out loud in public.

[536] But I cherish that among one of my top friendships I've ever had.

[537] It was so much fun.

[538] So I can see the appeal to why you guys have a show that really talks about this.

[539] Yeah, I mean, so first of all, it is truly genuine and authentic.

[540] I mean, we've been best friends for 35 years.

[541] And I will say the older I've gotten in the more communities I've lived in where my wife and I have had our core college friends and we've met new friends.

[542] And the majority of our social community is black.

[543] That's generally how it's been for us and how it works for a lot of our black friends.

[544] And so when we show up in these spaces, and I bring my best friend, white guy, along with me, it is a little bit unusual.

[545] I mean, it's not to say that my other black friends don't have white buddies that they've known over the years, but in the vernacular of black folks, like, this is my A. Spoon Coon, right?

[546] This is the guy who has my back and has had it for 35 years.

[547] And so part of the inspiration for the show was to say, one, this relationship's unusual.

[548] Two, we've lived life together long enough, embodied in my blackness and his whiteness, you know, both together and separately.

[549] And that's worth thinking about together in this moment of the country we live in.

[550] And then three, professionally, he's made his career as a journalist writing about race and how systemic racism works.

[551] He does a lot of housing.

[552] Yeah, yeah.

[553] He wrote about the most iconic public housing development in this country, Cabrini Green, which was the scene of good times.

[554] Like everyone has seen the inside of Cabrini Greens because of good times.

[555] And then, of course, my own work, which we've already talked about.

[556] So we thought, you know what?

[557] We could model in this show what genuine honesty and authenticity looks like, just like you described with your co -star on the show, for a national audience in a way that wouldn't seem either manufactured or there wouldn't be guardrails on the conversation because I don't really know you like that.

[558] You know what I'm saying?

[559] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[560] Uh -huh.

[561] Now, is there a different cost for you to have him as a best friend than for him to have you as a best friend?

[562] White dudes generally feel very fucking square around black guys.

[563] I know it.

[564] I've watched it.

[565] They just get self -conscious about all this lack of juge that they have.

[566] And so it would be cool that Ben's best friend is black.

[567] You know, I can't imagine he would pay any price for that.

[568] But I'm curious, have you paid a price for that?

[569] Or is it a different equation?

[570] It's a good question.

[571] And I think I agree with you generally.

[572] I mean, so here is kind of the conceit of the show.

[573] So we meet at 14.

[574] And by any high schooler's definition, Ben was way cooler than I was.

[575] Okay.

[576] So, you know, it's not an accident that I'm the guy who becomes an accountant for crying out loud.

[577] When we first meet, I'm Ben's boss.

[578] Like, we literally meet when he gets hired to work for me because I was the guy in charge of him.

[579] Wait, where?

[580] Like TCBY or something?

[581] No, no, no. We worked at a neighborhood computer store in High Park.

[582] Oh, yeah.

[583] You weren't crushing it working at the computer store at 14?

[584] I find that hard to believe.

[585] No, I was crushing it.

[586] I just needed some help.

[587] So we joke that, like, Ben was wearing gerbil jeans and gold chains at the time, listening to hip -hop, and I was basically wearing guest jeans and listening to Phil Collins.

[588] And it's like a body switching comedy.

[589] Right.

[590] It is actually true.

[591] So that's kind of how the story for us begins.

[592] And so his coolness, he didn't need me to be cool.

[593] He had already established himself as like a white guy who had swagger up.

[594] Like one of the jokes is that Ben ended up dating a black woman in high school who ended up becoming his wife.

[595] And her girlfriends were like the popular girls in our high school.

[596] They were fly, they were smart, they were fun.

[597] And so I was like, oh, well, I got to hang out with you two because look at all these single young ladies that are Danielle's friends.

[598] Sure.

[599] So it was less about the guys passing judgment on which one of us might be cooler and more about me being like, okay, so Danielle, could you introduce me to your girlfriend?

[600] Right, right, right.

[601] So you guys have this show and you cover kind of a lot of topics, but clearly there is a theme.

[602] in a through line, you are looking at race a ton.

[603] And what's great is it can span anything.

[604] Like, I'm excited to listen to the episode, but I didn't.

[605] But one is like the black, white buddy cop movie.

[606] You guys just break down 48 hours and I guess lethal weapon.

[607] Oh, man, dude, that is such a good one.

[608] I can't wait.

[609] Of all the ones you pick, like, that is such a good one.

[610] Because I got to tell you, I want to share my own personal experience, which is my father.

[611] Again, I'm like, I think I'm four years younger than you maybe.

[612] Were you born in 70?

[613] 72.

[614] Oh, okay, 72.

[615] So three years.

[616] Three years younger.

[617] and my dad VHS taped 48 hours and my brother would go to our dad's house every other weekend and we would watch that movie sometimes three times and my father's like fascination with Eddie Murphy and like what he wanted us to see in that performance and for us that was probably the seminal moment where I was like oh this guy's so fucking cool and I haven't seen it in decades but it would be really curious to watch it.

[618] sure Nulte's letting some terrible things fly.

[619] Oh, shit.

[620] Yeah, Nelty is amazing in this film.

[621] So we re -watched it just for this episode, and we had seen it as kids, but we hadn't seen it in years, and it is such a brilliant film.

[622] The short take on this is that the racism of Nick Nolte becomes the moral tension of Eddie Murphy functioning as a kind of black savior.

[623] Like, kind of the whole arc of the story is to get Eddie Murty.

[624] Murphy to transform Nick Nolte from a racist cop into a good person.

[625] Uh -huh.

[626] And once you see it again, you're going to be like, holy smokes, like, it's all there.

[627] But most people, because it's Eddie Murphy, because it's Nick Nolte, because it's an amazing, like, cop story, that doesn't hit as strongly as it does now looking back on it.

[628] And so how does lethal weapon either, does it advance or does it stay the same or does it go lower?

[629] Because, again, trapped in my perspective, I would think that move.

[630] was really productive, for a lack of a better word.

[631] Because weirdly, the black officer is in a senior position.

[632] He's got his shit together.

[633] He's got this great family.

[634] The white guy's a nutcase living in a trailer.

[635] I feel like it certainly flipped the rolls of 48 hours.

[636] Yes, so you're exactly right.

[637] It is a Reagan -era version of post -racial America.

[638] And so what's interesting is that Joel Silver makes this film too.

[639] And it's almost like, okay, we started.

[640] here, right, with a Nick Nolte character, and now we've moved to this version of America where, to come back to Rodney King, can't we all get along?

[641] And so yes, we can.

[642] Yeah.

[643] Except that Ben makes this brilliant point in the conversation.

[644] He's basically like, if you think about that film, there's no role for normal white men to function in this America.

[645] Like, you actually have to have a crazy person be subjected to the authority.

[646] of this kind of post -racial black guy, who's the family guy, who is playing by the book, who's the...

[647] He's even a boater.

[648] He's a boater.

[649] He's a boat.

[650] He's even a boater.

[651] It's like the perfect suburban setup, right?

[652] Like the three kids, the wife, and the boat in the driveway.

[653] Yeah, yeah.

[654] And so what we basically say is, in Cold War America, part of the narrative of the Reagan era is that black men and white men can come together to vanquish foreign enemies.

[655] Oh, right.

[656] Sure.

[657] That whole narrative of, like, Vietnam and Gary Busey's character is about, like, closing ranks around a white guy and a black guy where the black guy gets to be the straight man. But really, we're coming together because our enemies are foreign, not domestic.

[658] Our enemies are out there, not between us.

[659] Which I must add, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but I had a college class that said, you know, one of the most helpful things to ever happen between black -white relations was the Vietnam War, right?

[660] It was the first time that black and white soldiers lived in the same barracks.

[661] and did all the same things and got to talk to one another, and that it was a huge step towards where we would want to be.

[662] So, yeah, the notion that he is a Vietnam survivor and he has this blood, yeah.

[663] To that point, they're both Vietnam vets.

[664] And, I mean, that movie, in a way, is read on the surface exactly like you saw it, as productive, as this is a vision, but it also submerges.

[665] Like, the film is around a cocaine problem, right?

[666] Uh -huh.

[667] They're solving a drug murder, right?

[668] And so it's 1987.

[669] It's the height of the crack epidemic.

[670] I mean, Los Angeles at this time is like one of the most corrupt police departments in the country.

[671] It will be exposed for massive corruption in terms of like undercover tactical units and the kind of stuff that they're going on.

[672] The crash unit?

[673] Absolutely.

[674] And so the film glosses over all of this, right?

[675] Yeah.

[676] And so it's almost like the, it's a total inverse.

[677] It's both the inverse in positioning the black character as the lead, as the person who's rational and sane.

[678] It's the inverse in terms of like, we don't have race anymore.

[679] Racism isn't a problem.

[680] and we all get along.

[681] And then finally, it's inverse in that it actually doesn't address in any way the actual context for what's going on in Los Angeles, which is like massive drug problems for black people and brown people and SWAT teams and helicopters over every neighborhood and locking up as many people as possible.

[682] Yeah, it's interesting because even when I think back, at least my memory, like 48 hours is all about him being black and him being white, whereas lethal weapon, I don't recall them even acknowledging that they were white and black.

[683] And the young daughter's got a crush on him.

[684] Like, there's some subtext there.

[685] Like, the young black daughter's got a crush on the white crazy guy, yeah.

[686] And she's dating a white guy, right?

[687] She's dating a white guy.

[688] There's this great scene where race comes up.

[689] It comes up in two places.

[690] One, in during their investigation, this little black kid says to Detective Riggs and to Sergeant Martock, who are the character's names of Danny Glover and Mel Gibson, my mama told me that cops hurt black people.

[691] Do cops hurt black people?

[692] Do they, do they?

[693] And Danny Glover's character says, does anybody want ice cream?

[694] That's kind of good, though.

[695] Well, it is interesting because it's like they kind of just lifted lid off the can just a tiny bit.

[696] So it's like, okay, we're not totally irresponsible here.

[697] And it could have been a terrible moment where he explains no, police are here to help and blah, blah, blah.

[698] He just knew, fuck, I can't tackle this right now.

[699] Let's go get some ice cream.

[700] Well, and who knows what the original script said.

[701] So Danny Glover as a socially conscious actor, I'm assuming if the...

[702] the script had just totally gotten it wrong.

[703] Danny Glover would be like, I can't say this.

[704] This is totally not okay.

[705] Well, here's where I get to in -group, out -group.

[706] Shane Black, who wrote that thing, is the greatest movie cop writer ever.

[707] So, of course, I'm going to bet that.

[708] Yeah, this is your field, not mine.

[709] Yeah, this is my in -group.

[710] Yeah.

[711] I do want to talk about, if you don't mind, the episode I listened to, and I don't want you to reenact the entire episode.

[712] But I do think there's something that.

[713] We all hear a ton that I don't know.

[714] And I talk to tons of black historians and black activists, and I don't know what it fucking means.

[715] And I don't think anyone knows what it means.

[716] But if I could summarize really quick, there's kind of this moral panic happening right now in school systems.

[717] There's 23 or so states that have legislation that's trying to outlaw the teaching of many things.

[718] But it's commonly getting umbrellaed as critical race theory.

[719] And I don't think one person knows what critical race theory is.

[720] I certainly did until I listened to your show.

[721] I would just love it if we could start with what that is before we even talk about it.

[722] Yeah, it's a legal theory taught in law schools.

[723] It's not taught in any K through 12 school in anywhere in the country.

[724] And mostly it's not taught to college students unless they're taking an upper level course where it's being introduced.

[725] And the legal theory tried to explain that while the law on its face evolved out of like the history of slavery and the legitimation of a system of segregation, which the letter of, of the law could articulate, like, black people have no rights that the white man is bound to respect, which was a Supreme Court decision in a Dred Sky case in 1857.

[726] Like, that's about as explicit as the law ever gets when it says black people just don't have rights.

[727] Right.

[728] But for the most part, if we follow the language of the law, you would think America has always been colorblind and fair and equal.

[729] Yeah.

[730] And so critical race theory put back in the historical political context for how the law has evolved from legislation to Supreme Court decisions to basically teach students that they have to understand the law in context.

[731] It also took on challenges.

[732] This is a little more complicated, but basically it took on the limitations of anti -discrimination law to redress the past.

[733] And so the easiest way to explain this is critical race theory understands that it is now against the law to discriminate, but if you need to actually do reparative work, for example, some kind of preferential program that would ensure that black farmers, which is currently a case, get access to loans today that will overcome the lack of loans they didn't get based on discrimination five years ago, 10 years ago, 25 years ago, there are now white, farmers who are saying that's discriminatory.

[734] And so there's no context in which you could say, well, shit, what the fuck?

[735] Like, you discriminate forever.

[736] And then you say, oh, we don't discriminate anymore.

[737] And then you say, okay, you've got all these people holding a bag of nothing with businesses that never prospered.

[738] So what do we do about it?

[739] Well, we can't do anything because if you do something about that, that's anti -white.

[740] And so critical race theory takes on all of those complexities and teaches lawyers how to understand that in the hopes that lawyers will be able to figure out how to write laws and legislation that get us to justice.

[741] Yeah, like how to navigate, how to navigate this system in a way that's going to...

[742] Absolutely.

[743] And that's why it's, that's why it is taught in law schools, because that's where the battles are in terms of how to fix these problems.

[744] And I just want to, people that listen to the show, Armcharies, have heard this before, but I think, again, the two things that I immediately would just point out for people, when you look at the wealth gap, right, one of the major issues is that up until, Quite recently, the 80s, many places you couldn't get a loan to buy a home if you were black.

[745] You also couldn't buy a home in many neighborhoods.

[746] There was federal buildings that were built, housing projects that strictly forbade black folks from owning it.

[747] So if you can't pass on a house to your children, many, many people in this country, that becomes the nest egg.

[748] The house goes to you at some point and then you can grow from there.

[749] Additionally, we were interviewing someone who pointed out, if a black person gets, 100 ,000 a year at a job in general, and a white person makes 100 ,000 a year.

[750] The white person both had probably some kind of support and or inherited some stuff to add to that pile, whereas a black person is generally having to send a lot of that money back to relatives.

[751] So to build the thing is to, and I'm, there's probably more.

[752] Maybe there's a couple you want to point out, but just to just show really quickly, structurally what is happening and why folks are starting at zero like this, you know, the farmer you're referencing.

[753] probably did not get the farm from their dad.

[754] Oh, absolutely.

[755] No, I mean, the farmer example is probably the lesser -known but bigger story.

[756] I mean, so in a country where people pride themselves on being hardworking and self -motivated and independent on autonomous and don't want government down their throats, I mean, the irony is that in agriculture today, there are huge farm subsidies.

[757] The sugar industry alone gets $4 billion in subsidies to basically make sure that people cultivating sugar in this country from cane stocks are competitive on the world market.

[758] Otherwise, the market would be flooded by sugar coming out of Brazil and India and other places that just can make sugar a lot cheaper for reasons having to do with their own forms of exploitation.

[759] So like the idea that that black people are getting special handouts, even within farming, where everyone who's a farmer is not only getting some support from the government, but like horse trading over it, right?

[760] Like constantly lobbying and having debates about, you know, how much support should go to farmers in the midst of droughts and climate change and all this kind of stuff.

[761] And so when we look at that particular history, we're talking about billions and billions of dollars exchanged annually to support increasingly large farmers who are overwhelmingly white or multinationals.

[762] And there's no space at all to have a conversation about the actual documented abuse that led to black farmers not getting even close to their fair share of those actual subsidies to support farming in this country.

[763] Reagan actually, his office in the 1980s lost or destroyed hundreds of claims by black farmers who were bringing class action lawsuits against the Department of Agriculture.

[764] So this is a documented problem, and the question is, like, if you're going to fix it, because, as you already pointed out, intergenerational wealth transfers, land ownership, all of this stuff is up for stakes.

[765] The very thing that most Americans say are quintessential aspects of their identity, right?

[766] Owning your own home, owning land, building and making your own stuff.

[767] But this is all partly a system of transfers from the government to support these people.

[768] Well, talking about subsidies, go to the grocery store and find a single product on the shelves that doesn't have corn in it.

[769] Why does it have corn in it?

[770] Because we subsidize corn.

[771] People grow corn for the subsidy.

[772] So it drives what we eat, what we live by.

[773] Stay tuned.

[774] for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[775] Okay, so let's get into a provocative question.

[776] I'm a white dude.

[777] Probably the main adversary of the LBGTQ community is white straight males.

[778] Probably the common adversary of the black community is the white straight male.

[779] It does as a white straight male of women.

[780] The common, yes, adversary is the white straight male.

[781] So I, at times, I can tell you, I'm like, wow, man, I'm the, the only thing that unites all these groups is that the white straight male is the problem.

[782] As a white straight male, and I'm not boo -hoo me, it's easy to get defensive.

[783] I got to say, it's easy to get defensive.

[784] And what my real goal is, it's not incumbent upon any of these groups to soft sell this to us.

[785] But it is my job to self -sell it to us.

[786] And the thing I think what people can flight is, if we fully understand the history that I'm asking you, Joe White Mail in 2021, to admit you owned slaves or that you created redlining, you're the reason all this happened.

[787] You're responsible and you're at fault.

[788] And I think that leads to insane defensiveness and craziness.

[789] But I don't think that's the ask.

[790] I think the ask is, here's the history, here's where it's landed everybody.

[791] Now, what would be racist is to recognize the deficit that everyone inherited in those marginalized groups and for us to not actively try to write that wrong.

[792] I think the ask is to write that wrong and not for every white male to stand up and say, I'm a terrible racist and I caused all this stuff.

[793] Does that make any sense of I, have I offended anyone?

[794] No, no. No, you acquitted yourself well.

[795] So let me start by saying, let's break up the white guy party, right?

[796] Okay.

[797] So there are actual white nationalists and white supremacists.

[798] They are real people, right?

[799] And they actually believe that more people of color in this country are a threat to their position in society.

[800] Okay.

[801] So let's put them aside.

[802] We've identified them.

[803] Yeah.

[804] On the opposite side, there are lots of white guys who, by dint of lived experience, by dent of education, home training, however they got there, are absolutely fully committed to rewiring the rules of society in a way that are fairer and more just to people who have been historically discriminated.

[805] Okay.

[806] So I think that's important.

[807] There's a spectrum.

[808] And that's what kind of what I'm saying is like I feel like there's one label, white dude.

[809] And it's like, well, I'm not a white nationalist.

[810] And I'm not a fucking.

[811] saint.

[812] I don't know where I'm at on this.

[813] Right.

[814] So then there's the messy middle, right?

[815] And the messy middle is probably where most people fall, where there's a level of awareness like, yeah, you know, the deck hasn't been fair.

[816] And yeah, like, if I analogize this situation to white women, right, take race out of it, it's like, yeah, like I get heard in the room.

[817] People are much more willing to give me access to things than my sister or mother ever got.

[818] And so it doesn't, take a whole lot for people to see what privilege looks like.

[819] And then the question is, like, am I okay with this?

[820] And to what degree am I leaning into change?

[821] So when the Me Too memo shows up of my workplace, am I the guy who's like, yeah, I'm okay with these new rules, right?

[822] I'm okay with the training.

[823] I'm okay with the rules because typically, you know, this kind of behavior has gone on for too long.

[824] Or it's like, fuck this.

[825] I'm offended by this.

[826] Like, that's a choice people have to make.

[827] And I think it's easier to understand that kind of choice you make as an individual to either lean into change or to lean into inertia and the status quo when it comes to these racial conversations and dealing with systemic racism.

[828] Because the beauty of structural racism is I don't actually have to be a bigot or prejudice.

[829] I don't have to be a white nationalist.

[830] In many cases, all I have to do is just show up at work.

[831] And the structure of things will produce disparate outcomes, many of which are directly linked to choices in the past to discriminate against different populations.

[832] You're right.

[833] I don't have to cut in front of you in line.

[834] The boss will invite me in front of you.

[835] Right.

[836] Or I don't have to be a racist as a customer in Starbucks to watch the clerk behind the counter see me before the person who's black who was actually standing in front of me. Mm -hmm.

[837] Mm -hmm.

[838] And that's a weak example because it's not just about like the prejudiced moment or like markets.

[839] I point this out to people all the time.

[840] Like, credit markets are predicated on assets over liabilities.

[841] And so you've already made this point about wealth disparities, but credit markets don't actually have to be led by racist actuaries to, on average, give preferential rates to white borrowers because on average they have more collateral to put up.

[842] And so in the great myth of meritocracy, it's like, well, yeah, that's the evidence of people working hard and saving their money, but it is also the evidence of the advantages that came with white ownership at some point in time.

[843] Right.

[844] And I do want to add the sense of like, I don't want to be grouped into just being a white man. I mean, that's what all these minority groups have experienced forever is just getting lumped in and lumped in.

[845] Well, that's why I pushed back on it.

[846] It's like, well, that was the problem.

[847] So I don't know why reversing that problem as a solution.

[848] Like, it was always wrong.

[849] to go, like, black people are this way.

[850] And I don't know why the solution would be is white males are this way.

[851] I just pointed it out, though, right?

[852] So my first response to you was actually to say, actually, no, there's a lot of heterogeneity amongst white men.

[853] Yeah, yeah.

[854] And so rather than actually taking the bait and saying, yeah, well, white men, blah, blah, blah.

[855] I said, actually, white men are quite different, right?

[856] Right.

[857] It depends on who we're talking about.

[858] And the same would be true in the black community.

[859] Like, we can talk about people who make choices that tend on average to lead to poor outcomes.

[860] But then if you want to look at the systemic outline of it, you say, people are also making poorer choices within limited sets of opportunity.

[861] Yeah.

[862] Right.

[863] Yeah.

[864] So I can choose the straight and narrow in spite of the disadvantages, yes.

[865] Or I can say, well, damn, like, why do I have to play by the rules in a stacked deck?

[866] Bump it.

[867] Like, I'm not going to bother.

[868] Yeah.

[869] Yeah.

[870] Yeah.

[871] The side note is, I've had white friends go, like, I can't believe they're fucking rioting in their own neighborhood.

[872] And I'm like, oh, you can't believe that the system that excluded them, that they're not going to play by the rules then to try to voice their disconsent?

[873] What?

[874] No, you won't listen to them.

[875] I'm so sorry, but that's the option on the table to get heard.

[876] Like, fuck that.

[877] Yeah, not that I'm condoning anything one way or another.

[878] It's just like the notion that they should be playing by the rules in a system that excludes them is kind of comical.

[879] And there's two examples that I think put these in your rhetorical toolkit for those conversations.

[880] One, to quote Kimberly Johnson, the wonderful activist last summer in Floyd, who was in a viral video who basically said, Black people don't own shit in these communities anyway.

[881] So what are we really talking about?

[882] Yeah, yeah.

[883] On average, she's right.

[884] It really isn't quote on, it's where they live, but it's not communities that black people own a lot of things, including businesses and property.

[885] Secondly, what happened on January 6th in this country is white, men of a certain kind, literally attempting to destroy their quote -unquote own government.

[886] That is an example of tearing up your own shit.

[887] I don't know what it is.

[888] Okay, so I really urge everyone to listen to that episode that I listen to it.

[889] The notion that somehow learning this history is going to be destructive to, I don't know, the national character or whatever.

[890] I mean, even the way that Trump would like phrased, I will defund anything that says we are inherently this or that.

[891] Like the perceived stakes.

[892] of learning the history, it's crazy to me. It is crazy.

[893] But it tells you something, like there's an old adage, right?

[894] Like, if you're doing something and no one cares, you're probably not doing the right thing.

[895] If you're doing something and people are screaming, then you're probably on to something.

[896] So in a system that's been more or less unjust to varying degrees, depending on what period we're talking about and exactly how we measure it, we've got the system we deserve because we've taught people to see inequality as inferiority, not as unfairness.

[897] And so if we actually want the national character to change, we're going to have to change the story we tell of ourselves.

[898] We're going to have to be more honest about that history as a predicate for change.

[899] And so Trump's resistance makes perfect sense for Trump, right?

[900] Trump's not interested in racial justice or changing America.

[901] System's working pretty good for him.

[902] It's system's working pretty good for him.

[903] So like when people side up to that, then they're making a choice.

[904] like, yeah, we want to keep things just the way they are.

[905] And that's a familiar problem, too.

[906] When civil rights workers showed up in Little Rock, Arkansas, to try to desegregate Central High School after the Supreme Court decision in 1954, what did we see?

[907] Not everybody in the white community, but a whole lot of white folks show up.

[908] We want our schools white.

[909] And then Eisenhower sends troops in to escort kids into the building.

[910] So I think that the backlash is the evidence that this is actually the right way to go, and we want people to stay the course.

[911] okay now again now this next question i have is going to run the risk of and i've been guilty of this a million times and i'll probably continue to be guilty of it i am the white liberal that king warned against that i think the pace of progress is going just fine so with that disclaimer would it be useful helpful constructive at all to create a continuum where on the right of this or whatever side you wanted on is the white nationalist who says let's just erase black people from history books, period.

[912] They don't even exist in our history.

[913] And then whatever's on the left, and I want to know what's on the left of that spectrum.

[914] Like, what is it that is clearly so inflammatory that it gives fuel?

[915] Because I really do believe the country in general has just been hijacked by both shoulders of the political spectrum.

[916] And I think the majority of us are the messy middle, as you said.

[917] So what is the opposite of that?

[918] And what is some point on that spectrum or continuum that we could perhaps get traction with?

[919] I'm willing to accept a certain degree of both sides 'ism, but only really up to a point.

[920] So the extremes of the left also engage in a kind of authoritarian policing of speech and behavior that makes for little patience for people to actually try to understand because you're basically dismissed if you don't already know and understand.

[921] And so there is a history of authoritarianism on the left called communism that is something to guard against because I don't think that anyone that I want to model my own vision of the future expects to be silent simply because I have a different point of view.

[922] Like I certainly value dissent in an open society around these issues.

[923] Now, are there limits there too, right?

[924] I don't want to be subject to racial epithets at work and this sort of thing.

[925] That's where I think some pockets of the left go too far.

[926] Now, let me be even more provocative on my side.

[927] So when people try to equate Antifa with the proud boys as two sides of the same coin, and most certainly in the wake of the January 6th uprising in insurrection where, you know, literally some elected officials and Republicans blamed Antifa for, which is just total lunacy, if I were to take at face value what Antio, stands for, I would say, I would rather have Antifa than the Proud Boys any day of the week.

[928] And this is where I pushed back against both sides 'ism.

[929] Because fighting against fascism should also be the thing of every American in this country.

[930] Right.

[931] And it's exactly fascism that not only describes much of what we saw play out in the last administration, but also what black people live with in this country when so -called elected officials supported a total system of disenfranchisement and the use of state power to silence dissent among black people to strip them of their rights and to use the power of the state to incarcerate to kill, you name it.

[932] So it ain't like fascism hasn't existed in this country.

[933] And so a tradition of fighting against fascism, if I had to pick, I'm going to side with Antifa any day of the week.

[934] So that's where I draw the line between a quote -unquote, like they're the equally bad.

[935] But is it binary?

[936] Do we have to pick between those two?

[937] No, no, not at all.

[938] I'm just being very.

[939] real about how this conversation goes.

[940] But the truth is in the middle, and not even quite in the middle, like on the middle of America that I think of is people being deliberately miseducated and being told to throw their hat in with political elites because you're trading on your economic misery for some kind of psychological benefit of being a patriot and an American.

[941] Like food stamps be damned, right?

[942] Don't trust the government with health care, you name it.

[943] So like there is tremendous ignorance and illiterate.

[944] in this country that some people will say, listen to this Harvard professor, he's snob, this is why you can't send your kid to college, which is just crazy, right?

[945] Like the notion of anti -intellectualism that passes as like common sense in this country is really sad because relative to many parts of the world, people are just better educated, not only about their own histories, but also just better educated.

[946] That's one thing that I would say the middle has a problem with.

[947] And then left of that center, like the center left, as opposed to left extreme, is that I'd say, like, there are not competing equal visions.

[948] Like people center left do actually think about community and about collective well -being more than people on the center right who are basically like human beings are greedy by nature.

[949] We ought to reward greed because greed will be the ingredient for civilization and advancement.

[950] This is the secret of capitalism.

[951] Reward people for their self -interest and their self -interest will drive innovation.

[952] And therefore, if we just think of yourselves, every man or woman or child for themselves, this civilization will advance because the people who can't keep up will die away, and the people who succeed will benefit the rest of humanity.

[953] And that's just not my stick.

[954] And the truth is, there are plenty of white people.

[955] I mean, the thing that we never talk about is the reason why black people are often pigeonholed as a threat to America from the right is not because 12 % of the population has all this power, although there's a lot of cultural power, there's a lot of visibility.

[956] It's because there are a lot of white people who actually believe in justice too.

[957] And the game that we play is how many white people can black people convince to support justice in America?

[958] And if we can keep that number low, then we're good.

[959] If that number gets too high, then we have a problem.

[960] And so Obama represented, like the possibility that more white people might be swayed by what he represented, 43 % voted in the first election, 39 % in the second election.

[961] And then the summer of George Floyd, what, 15, 25, million overwhelmingly white people, overwhelmingly young white people in the streets in support of massive changes to our society, no wonder we have this backlash.

[962] So at the end of the day, I'm with people who are prepared to change business as usual because we need to change business as usual.

[963] We have more people in cages in this country than at any point in history and anywhere in the world.

[964] Doesn't make any sense.

[965] We've got tremendous inequality and stratification in this country that is both true here in the U .S. and other parts of the world, not sustainable, and to boot, we have a climate that is on fire.

[966] And the fact that, like, the same people whose houses are floating down Main Street is somewhere in Alabama or it's burning in some redwood forest somewhere in California and then look to FEMA to say, hey, where is FEMA to help us get our lives back together, are total hypocrites, right?

[967] Like, if you want to live in this society without government, then don't have government.

[968] But don't use government.

[969] But don't use government when it's convenient to you and then tell everybody else, fend for yourself.

[970] Well, good luck on your next flight without the FAA running air traffic control.

[971] But I am going to try to represent the right right now because it's not that they don't care about the masses.

[972] They care about individuals.

[973] It's not that they don't care about the environment.

[974] It's that they're not willing to starve for it from their worldview.

[975] So I just want to say, these people, they don't not care about, they care about something different.

[976] What we're having an argument about is priorities, I think.

[977] Republicans donate more money to charity.

[978] They get involved more in community activities.

[979] They have a lot of enviable qualities that the left does not have.

[980] We have two groups of people that are afraid of different things in this country, I think.

[981] Now, obviously, the outcome of some of these policies are disproportionately tragic for groups of people.

[982] And I'll acknowledge they're ignoring that.

[983] But I do not like the notion that the right is on.

[984] caring, unsympathetic on anything.

[985] Look, I don't believe a baby is a baby at six weeks, but I do believe if I thought it was a baby, of course I would fight for not to die.

[986] So I don't think it's a monster.

[987] I think they think that's a baby.

[988] I don't.

[989] I will accept that argument because I think that's, let me put it for my purposes, a carve -out, right?

[990] But I do think that when you say the right believes in community, they believe in very small communities, right?

[991] Yeah.

[992] These are communities where it really is about us versus the outside world.

[993] And in a way, the irony of a lot of Republicans who over -index for low -density, small -town America, right?

[994] These are the red counties which over -index in precisely these demographic terms is not places of pluralism where every idea is, welcome.

[995] There are actually places, unlike a New York City where, for all of its liberalism, you get on the subway and there's 14 ,000 different versions of liberalism, right?

[996] At best, and then there's like 10 ,000 versions of reactionaryism.

[997] The people aren't actually saying what they actually think about, the people on the train.

[998] That's less true in these small towns because they're much more parochial, and they're much more wedded to a very narrow set of experiences.

[999] And free speech is not welcomed because people are threatened by alien concepts.

[1000] And that's just well documented.

[1001] So I'll agree with you that there is a commitment to community and caring, but it's a very small conception of community and caring and tends to resist responsibility when it extends beyond that community.

[1002] And this is part of the logic of states' rights and the resistance to government, which is to say, like, we take care of our own, which is only partially true.

[1003] And so why should we have to do X, Y, and Z because the government tells us so, even though red counties are net recipients of federal receipts.

[1004] Blue counties are paying the subsidies for red counties to have what they need in order to have a social net.

[1005] Yeah, that is one of the great ironies.

[1006] Yeah, I mean, look, you and I think the same.

[1007] I think these are human beings.

[1008] I mean, my sort of enthusiastic response to the question before where clearly I got excited about it is not to then render those people monsters, but it is to say that when we have to act on our beliefs in a two -party political system, it's quite a puzzlement as to why Donald Trump would ever become president in the first place, that the man doesn't represent in his own life and lived experiences, any of the values that he purports.

[1009] What are you talking about?

[1010] a very religious man. Did you see him hold that Bible?

[1011] Oh my God.

[1012] I never saw that something looked so natural in someone's hand.

[1013] It just, I mean, I don't think you have to be a crazy liberal to point out like, like this stuff just doesn't hold up to reasonable scrutiny.

[1014] I mean, Mike Pence for crying out loud, I lived in Indiana six years.

[1015] I taught in the heartland.

[1016] I have a child who's a Hoosier.

[1017] And Mike Pence, I don't agree with a lot of Mike Pence, but I give Mike Pence at least respect for living the life that he represented before Donald Trump pulled him into his team.

[1018] And poor guy was subject to a lynch mob, the Capitol, for drawing a line around what happened in the election.

[1019] The Constitution.

[1020] How dare he?

[1021] He's crazy.

[1022] Yeah.

[1023] There's a wild country we live in.

[1024] Freedom!

[1025] Listen, your podcast is spectacular.

[1026] I wish you a ton of continued success with it.

[1027] And I think it's a really cool concept.

[1028] I do want to add because I do want to add because I. I could imagine, based on the description I gave, that you might think there is some preachy tone to it, but it is not at all.

[1029] It's very irreverent and very fun and very back and forth.

[1030] Like, I found learning about that critical race theory to be a party, which you're not expecting when you think you're going to dive into that.

[1031] So I think you've achieved something pretty great.

[1032] So I so appreciate you being on the show, and I hope it goes continued success.

[1033] Thank you.

[1034] Thank you.

[1035] Thanks so much.

[1036] I appreciate it.

[1037] Thanks, Monica.

[1038] Thanks for your time, for your patience and much success to both of you, too.

[1039] All right.

[1040] Take care.

[1041] Okay.

[1042] Bye -bye.

[1043] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Badman.

[1044] We had a very sexy guest on just now.

[1045] My clothes did not implode.

[1046] That's progress, I guess.

[1047] Yeah, but I'm wearing a big, thick sweatshirt, but I did really like him.

[1048] Yes.

[1049] And you were fucked up a little bit.

[1050] Yeah.

[1051] Oh.

[1052] Oh, man. Well, we'll reveal who that is.

[1053] We'll reveal who that is.

[1054] This is my favorite.

[1055] This is my favorite.

[1056] You felt like that too.

[1057] Well, but look, we have the same type, I think.

[1058] It's like, I'm going like, yeah, I could fucking bro with this guy.

[1059] Like, I could hold my side of it.

[1060] Like, it'd be good for him.

[1061] And then you're similarly having a similar thing.

[1062] Yeah, I guess.

[1063] What am I?

[1064] What's happening in my head?

[1065] It's carnal.

[1066] Yeah, it's just, it's just physical.

[1067] Yeah.

[1068] Well, no, I really liked his personality.

[1069] Of course.

[1070] Yeah.

[1071] Of course she did.

[1072] So you have any updates?

[1073] Oh, who cares?

[1074] How's your tattoo?

[1075] Oh, it's good.

[1076] I'm getting really close to me and I'll take that wrap off.

[1077] I think tonight I'm allowed to take it off and I can't wait to see this beautiful bird in all of its.

[1078] Glory.

[1079] Glory, luster, majesty.

[1080] I'm really excited to see it, too.

[1081] I really like it.

[1082] Like, I've been walking by mirrors as one.

[1083] does in their real life.

[1084] And every time I glance, I'm like, oh, yeah, I should have always had this bird on my arm.

[1085] Yeah.

[1086] Like, it feels right.

[1087] The first two, I was like, eh, I don't know.

[1088] I'm like, I think I'm going to grow into them.

[1089] It wasn't like love.

[1090] Oh, interesting.

[1091] Okay.

[1092] Yeah.

[1093] I was like, yeah, I dig it.

[1094] This is like love.

[1095] It's awesome.

[1096] I, you know, I already knew this, but I got to continue to always be more colorful, more kind, more friendly, less mancho, less tough.

[1097] Yeah.

[1098] And so this for me is, It's a step in that right direction.

[1099] Yeah, it's like it's colorful and pretty and fun.

[1100] But it's also a crow.

[1101] Crows are tough.

[1102] Very smart.

[1103] Well, this might interest people.

[1104] Now that I've committed to a crow, and I know that you call a group of crow, a murder of crow, which I love.

[1105] And then that drove me to find out why.

[1106] Uh -huh.

[1107] It's called a murder of crow.

[1108] And the explanations are, of course, you know, they eat carrion.

[1109] So generally they represent when something's about to die.

[1110] they'll be hovering around, so they've become synonymous with death.

[1111] But it also pointed out that they were named, the grouping of crows was named during a period where many of the group names in science were in this poetic phase.

[1112] Oh, interesting.

[1113] So a couple of other really interesting ones was it's called an ostentation of peacocks.

[1114] An ostentation?

[1115] Really?

[1116] Like a group of peacocks is called an ostentation of peacock.

[1117] Because they're ostentatious.

[1118] That's really funny.

[1119] Isn't there one that's like a hug of elephants or like something like not a hug, but something like that, like very sweet.

[1120] Yeah.

[1121] And it's probably happened in that same time period where they were getting a little fanciful with the naming.

[1122] I like it.

[1123] I like it too.

[1124] A murder of crow is so cool.

[1125] Do you know what a group of magpies are called?

[1126] Parliament.

[1127] Oh, no, wait.

[1128] Owls are also a parliament of owl because they're so studious.

[1129] Owls are too.

[1130] Yeah.

[1131] That was in the list, and I had forgotten it.

[1132] So thanks.

[1133] So, wow, the magpie got that as well, huh?

[1134] There was one outside of my backyard this morning, and it sounded crazy.

[1135] Oh, really?

[1136] I don't know that I know what a magpie is.

[1137] Oh, we're going to get a little...

[1138] Oh, I want to hear.

[1139] Oh, I want to hear it.

[1140] Wow.

[1141] I would have felt like I was in Rio, Rio, Rio.

[1142] It is.

[1143] We only have one fact for Khalil, which is sad.

[1144] Actually, I'm wrong.

[1145] I'm wrong.

[1146] Oh, there's a host of facts?

[1147] Yeah.

[1148] Yeah, there's a murder of fact.

[1149] Oh, there's a murder of facts.

[1150] Okay.

[1151] One is, you were saying this fast, so I don't, I think you just flipped your words.

[1152] Oh, oh.

[1153] But you said that Obama's inauguration was in Chicago.

[1154] Oh.

[1155] But his, his celebration party.

[1156] Yeah, the day he won, whatever that.

[1157] His acceptance speech was there in Chicago.

[1158] Oh, my gosh.

[1159] What are you doing?

[1160] Well, I had some extra tissue and I had rolled it up and I didn't know what to do with it.

[1161] So now I've placed it in one of my holders.

[1162] I see that.

[1163] On your nose.

[1164] This, okay, the other day, I was taking a walk around our neighborhood.

[1165] Uh -huh.

[1166] And there was a young lad.

[1167] Okay.

[1168] Cute face.

[1169] Sure.

[1170] How young?

[1171] Mid to late 20s.

[1172] Okay.

[1173] I just want to make sure we weren't talking about like a teen or a child.

[1174] No, that was a good clarification.

[1175] Mid to late 20s on the phone or maybe 30, I don't know.

[1176] He was on the phone like talking some business stuff, whatever.

[1177] Running his business.

[1178] Yeah.

[1179] And he, I was walking and I was like, something's like.

[1180] Is that person crazy?

[1181] Like, there's something on his face.

[1182] But then his conversation seemed very normal.

[1183] Okay.

[1184] And he saw me and he said, hi.

[1185] And I was like, hey.

[1186] Oh, wow.

[1187] You're out there making friends.

[1188] And he had tissue in his nose to exact same way you just did.

[1189] Oh, really?

[1190] Like rolled up long.

[1191] Both nostrils or one?

[1192] No one.

[1193] Maybe he had bang back a, a gram or two the night before out of that nostril, and he had to plug it up to deal with the rest of his day.

[1194] Because of the blood?

[1195] Yeah, blood and the leakage and damage, really.

[1196] It's hard on your nostrils to blow lines.

[1197] Well, I guess I'll know if you are doing that.

[1198] That's a good indicator.

[1199] Well, you'll know when I'm on cocaine, when I don't show up to work.

[1200] That'll be a really good indicator.

[1201] When I'm calling you and I'm in some hotel somewhere with strangers, that's a pretty good giveaway that I'm ripping rails, yeah.

[1202] Yeah, and he, you know, then he was like, oh, no, nothing.

[1203] I was just saying hi to a neighbor.

[1204] And then he continued, you know, he was up back on his phone call.

[1205] And I thought about it for like, at least a lap.

[1206] You were intrigued.

[1207] What's going on?

[1208] Mm -hmm.

[1209] Well, we have one theory in the mix.

[1210] But he wasn't, he wasn't, like, embarrassed?

[1211] Maybe he had forgotten at that point it was in there.

[1212] Maybe you walked away and he was like, oh, my fucking, you stupid son of a bitch.

[1213] You're supposed to take this out before he left your apartment.

[1214] Oh, shit.

[1215] Well, his house.

[1216] His house, yeah.

[1217] He's a homeowner.

[1218] I don't want to diminish his standing in our society or neighborhood.

[1219] Similarly, okay.

[1220] So that just cued one thing.

[1221] I just left Chelsea a handler's podcast, which was really fun.

[1222] It's at a facility that does many podcasts.

[1223] I don't know which one, but I had to go into kind of a big lobby at first.

[1224] And there was an older gentleman there.

[1225] And then I went and did the podcast.

[1226] And then before I left, I went and peed.

[1227] Well, he was in there again.

[1228] And I did not see that he had a Bluetooth thing in his ear.

[1229] So I went into the urinal and he said, oh, you followed me in here.

[1230] And I said, yeah, and I'm going to follow you to your car.

[1231] And then he seamlessly goes, well, you got to eject that thing and then put it back in and repower.

[1232] Wait, what?

[1233] I was like, what the fuck was that?

[1234] And I, like, looked at him.

[1235] Like, what am I supposed to?

[1236] How am I?

[1237] He was on a call and his Bluetooth was very small in his ear.

[1238] And he was mid -conversation when he said.

[1239] to me, and then he just popped back into his other.

[1240] Sure.

[1241] But I was like, I panicked.

[1242] I'm like, what, pop, what is that a reference to my penis?

[1243] These days, you just never know when people are talking to you and they're not talking.

[1244] That's the moral of it.

[1245] Another moral is check your face before you leave the house.

[1246] But look, he also might have totally known and just didn't care.

[1247] Do you think that was his way of nagging you?

[1248] It worked.

[1249] I thought about him a lot.

[1250] Because I realized I've admitted to myself that I have a way of nagging people.

[1251] Oh.

[1252] It's a reverse nag.

[1253] So I would never say anything derogatory about a woman to herself.

[1254] Uh -huh.

[1255] But I do think I have been in my life embracing something that we, societally we know is off -putting.

[1256] Like what?

[1257] What do you mean?

[1258] With Gwyneth.

[1259] So Gwyneth Paltrow is here.

[1260] Yeah.

[1261] I can't get my foot out fast enough.

[1262] It's ugly as hell.

[1263] Like, it's so unattractive, my foot.

[1264] Sure, sure.

[1265] And I show her immediately.

[1266] Yep.

[1267] And then it occurred to me later that does have this subtext of, I don't really care if you think I look ridiculous.

[1268] Oh.

[1269] So it could inadvertently like elevate something.

[1270] Like I'm above you because I'm not interested in you because I'm showing you my warts.

[1271] Right.

[1272] And this guy could be like, clearly I don't care if you like me. Exactly.

[1273] And that is a weird form of negging that could lead to attraction, don't you think?

[1274] Yeah.

[1275] I'm attracted to people who don't like me. So yeah.

[1276] Yes.

[1277] Yeah, me too.

[1278] Oh, it's very interesting.

[1279] I never thought of that version of negging, but I do think that's something that has happened.

[1280] Yeah.

[1281] I've kind of said that about dipping.

[1282] Like, dipping's disgusting.

[1283] But there's something that's vaguely hot about it because the person's basically saying, I don't give a shit if you think I'm disgusting.

[1284] So that makes you just start questioning why this person wouldn't care that you think they're disgusting.

[1285] True.

[1286] It's, I just think it's nuanced.

[1287] It's very deep and nuanced.

[1288] Very novel and proprietary, too.

[1289] Yeah, because we could chalk it up to self -deprecation, but it's not.

[1290] you're right there's something else there's there's a subtext there that I wasn't even aware of it it was it was later that I thought of that yeah so like if you meet a beautiful girl just fart as lot as you can right in front of her well this is what um Darcy Darcy did Darcy Cardin did to her boyfriend yeah she burped was it a far she didn't fart she didn't fart but it was a big belch right when they met and she had a big crush on him and I bet he was like I'm intrigued because she's not she doesn't worried if I'm liking but which is funny because Darcy did They, like, oh, this guy's out of my league.

[1291] Like, she just ruled him out.

[1292] Yeah.

[1293] So she was just herself.

[1294] That's right.

[1295] Which is nice.

[1296] It is a nice.

[1297] I like it.

[1298] But it reverse an egg.

[1299] In a way.

[1300] In a way.

[1301] You do it, by the way.

[1302] Yeah.

[1303] I think that's why so many of the male listeners are in love with you is that you're just yourself.

[1304] You're saying your diarrhea last week.

[1305] And I think they go like, oh, fuck.

[1306] There's something hot about it.

[1307] You're just, you're watching a woman that seems to have a confidence.

[1308] Yeah.

[1309] that is very attractive because you're supposed to be safeguarding people from knowing this about you that you sometimes have a splashy dump.

[1310] Yeah, often.

[1311] Although we were hanging out with some people and there was an eligible person there and I told them that I didn't know if I could swim and then I had a bad bike experience and I could tell that was unattractive.

[1312] You think so?

[1313] Yeah.

[1314] Yeah.

[1315] Oh.

[1316] Yes.

[1317] You think so?

[1318] Yeah, and to be fair, I was just telling the story about the swimming.

[1319] Yeah.

[1320] And somebody else jumped in with the story about the bike.

[1321] So I wasn't really in control of that.

[1322] But then it made me look very inept.

[1323] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1324] All right.

[1325] Which isn't untrue.

[1326] It's pretty untrue.

[1327] These are, we're basically isolated two of the things you are nervous to do, ride a bike and swim, of a, above millions of activities that you partake in.

[1328] I'm going back to that.

[1329] that hotel Ohio Valley and in and spa.

[1330] I'm going back there for a bachelor party.

[1331] Oh, where you rode the bikes.

[1332] That's right.

[1333] And I, you know, I have some anxiety that we might be riding bikes.

[1334] Are you going to train a little bit this time before?

[1335] I believe so.

[1336] Okay, great.

[1337] I'm great.

[1338] You know, I thought those girls would ride bikes really quick.

[1339] You want me to work with you.

[1340] Listen, I did great.

[1341] I did great, except that one term.

[1342] Yeah.

[1343] I'm going to put some cones up and stuff.

[1344] Okay.

[1345] Yeah, we're going to work on your agility and your fast reactions to scary things.

[1346] I'm going to jump out of you.

[1347] I have a tree outfit.

[1348] I'm going to have a bush outfit.

[1349] I'm going to have a car outfit.

[1350] I'm going to jump out of you and scream.

[1351] I hope you wear a helmet because I will run into you.

[1352] Yeah.

[1353] Okay.

[1354] So obviously the inauguration was in Washington.

[1355] At the White House?

[1356] Well, at the Capitol.

[1357] Who farted?

[1358] Rob.

[1359] Nope.

[1360] I really thought it came from that side of the room.

[1361] And I was very surprised.

[1362] Yeah, I can throw them now towards him.

[1363] Wow.

[1364] In hopes that I come out unscathed.

[1365] Oh, my God.

[1366] Okay.

[1367] This is amazing.

[1368] It was like a door opening.

[1369] Yeah.

[1370] Yeah, it sounded squeaky.

[1371] Well, because it was because I was like purposely not pushing because I didn't want anyone to hear my toot.

[1372] And so when I just let it come out naturally, it was longer than anticipated.

[1373] If I had given a little shove, it would have been one little pop.

[1374] But because I was just letting it kind of seep out.

[1375] Yeah.

[1376] it caused that noise in elongated do I want am I nagging you no no no I wonder if you ever if you're trying to be quiet farting I am no no no I'm asking do you ever like try to spread your butt cheeks out oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well I do a lot of things like when I've been around a girl and I've got to use the bathroom in her small apartment sure and I have a lot of farts what I'll do is I'll sit down on the toilet, and I take a big wad of toilet paper, and I push it against my anus in hopes of letting out some farts and muffling the sound.

[1377] I've done that.

[1378] I bet I've done that 30 times in my life.

[1379] Or I'm in a...

[1380] Does it work?

[1381] Yeah, I'm pretty good at it.

[1382] Really?

[1383] Yeah.

[1384] You're spreading your anus a part a bit with the tissue.

[1385] Okay.

[1386] So you're not getting the reverberations and the flap, the the gazoo, you know, part that makes that noise.

[1387] And then it's coming in directly into some tissues so hopefully that's the smell if there is a smell it would be largely absorbed by the tissue and i've done this at workplaces a bunch of times i've done this in motorhomes um you know like we're all we all have these commercial shoots and we're all sharing one motorhome there's like 10 people in there and i got to go in there and let some farts out yeah and i will employ this muffling technique wow okay yeah yeah i really urge you to give it a shot at home perfect it at home before you take it out on the road of course of course i bet Aaron's been through this like as i was telling And I was like, this is so weird.

[1388] And then I was thinking, I bet Aaron's done it, though.

[1389] Yeah.

[1390] That's part of the reason we're so close, I think.

[1391] It's not weird.

[1392] I mean, I think everyone's trying to figure out ways in which their farts can't be heard.

[1393] Yes.

[1394] So that's just your way.

[1395] Right.

[1396] Okay.

[1397] Shane Black.

[1398] Oh.

[1399] You love him.

[1400] Greatest action comedy writer in history.

[1401] Yeah.

[1402] Invented a genre.

[1403] Do you want to read about him?

[1404] Nope.

[1405] Oh.

[1406] I was hoping I was saying his name correctly.

[1407] No, you were just like, you just knew his name was Shane Black who wrote it.

[1408] And I was like, oh, I don't know if he's right about that, but you are.

[1409] Okay.

[1410] You always are.

[1411] Well, I mean, I tried to write lethal weapons, so of course I know about Shane Black.

[1412] Oh, what do you mean?

[1413] The pitch of Chips was Imagine Chips meets Lethal Weapon.

[1414] Oh.

[1415] Yeah.

[1416] And funny enough, I learned in my research that Shane Black was trying to make a different movie.

[1417] Oh.

[1418] He was trying to make a more serious movie.

[1419] I forget which one it was.

[1420] I wish I could remember.

[1421] And then it went through his filter and it became lethal weapon.

[1422] And then I tried to do him and I went through my filter and it became chips.

[1423] Yeah.

[1424] And I was like, you might as well try to imitate something.

[1425] Exactly.

[1426] Like I could only write so many serious scenes in a row before I have to make a joke.

[1427] I can't control myself.

[1428] Kind of like me at the dinner party.

[1429] You know?

[1430] The Tucci did.

[1431] A lot of people were asked they wanted more info on the dinner party after they listened to Tooch.

[1432] Oh, really?

[1433] Well, I guess, you know, They've heard.

[1434] I tried to put on a heck of a show and...

[1435] And you did.

[1436] You succeeded.

[1437] I don't want to take that from you.

[1438] It sounds like I'm nagging you and I'm not.

[1439] I'm giving you credit.

[1440] Everyone enjoyed your company so much.

[1441] But they might have thought that was really fun.

[1442] I couldn't do that once a week.

[1443] More like that.

[1444] I think that's your note.

[1445] I don't know.

[1446] I don't know.

[1447] But what would be delightful for them to find out is like that initial sales pitch, you only get really once.

[1448] Yeah.

[1449] Diminishing.

[1450] It diminishes over.

[1451] time.

[1452] Sure.

[1453] The second trip over, I'm still going to give them 85%.

[1454] Yeah.

[1455] But eventually it'll settle into my, I guess who I am on here, like 65%.

[1456] Yeah.

[1457] Okay.

[1458] Well.

[1459] That was it?

[1460] Yeah.

[1461] Yeah.

[1462] Oh.

[1463] Yeah.

[1464] Sorry.

[1465] It wasn't probably wasn't a very fact heavy.

[1466] This is what we say now.

[1467] It wasn't a very fact heavy episode.

[1468] Well, it wasn't.

[1469] And also, again, again, experts are, I'm just not going to have that many.

[1470] That's right.

[1471] It's just the way it goes.

[1472] It is the way the cookie.

[1473] It's the way the cookie crumbles.

[1474] Ding, ding, ding.

[1475] It's, give a mouse a cookie.

[1476] Now, is this too personal to ask?

[1477] Sure.

[1478] Well, we've talked about this a little bit.

[1479] Will you have some private time thinking about the guest today?

[1480] That's too personal.

[1481] That's pretty personal.

[1482] And actually, it's not that it's personal.

[1483] It's that I don't think it's like fair to the guest.

[1484] Again, if it's a guy and I'm on a show and I find out someone took some personal time after I left, I mean, please.

[1485] I know, but, you know, like, well, it's good for the goose is not good for the gander in this case.

[1486] What does that mean?

[1487] Break it down.

[1488] Well, like, it's not a two -way street.

[1489] It's not like if we have a guest that's a female and I go in and fucking jerk myself right afterwards.

[1490] That's awful.

[1491] Yeah.

[1492] That's rough.

[1493] Yeah, that's bad.

[1494] And what I'm saying is that it's not the same.

[1495] If a female does it to a guy, it is not the same.

[1496] It's like a male dolphin fucking a female human.

[1497] That is fine.

[1498] But a male human fucking a female dolphin is amoral.

[1499] It is.

[1500] It's pathological.

[1501] It's not right.

[1502] It's okay that it's different.

[1503] This guest would love, would like, if I bumped into this guest and I said, I got to tell you something, Monica sped home.

[1504] She got a ticket.

[1505] She couldn't wait to get in her bed and think about your legs.

[1506] he'd be like, oh, fuck, thanks for telling me that, man. Yeah, you're right.

[1507] I think he, I think he.

[1508] And that's what we have to decide these things on.

[1509] Well, is it because like, I mean, but would his wife like it?

[1510] Probably not.

[1511] Well, what does his wife have to do with this?

[1512] She's a human in this overall equation.

[1513] I'm just saying, like, if I out loud say that, like, I'm going to take some personal time thinking about your husband, she probably wouldn't like it.

[1514] So I have to just be quiet about it.

[1515] Well, you know, but hold on.

[1516] You tough for her because, like, you don't, you don't marry someone that's gorgeous and then have an expectation that other people are going to stop finding that person gorgeous because you found them gorgeous.

[1517] That's insane.

[1518] I agree.

[1519] Like, people are jerking off to Kristen right now, probably.

[1520] Someone's given a poll.

[1521] And you know what?

[1522] Yeah, that's what you get.

[1523] I can't have an expectation.

[1524] and people aren't going to masturbate to my spouse?

[1525] Right.

[1526] I'm going to not answer.

[1527] Okay, great.

[1528] I respect that.

[1529] I respect that.

[1530] One thing I keep to myself.

[1531] I respect it.

[1532] Although everyone knows the answer.

[1533] It's pretty obvious.

[1534] Do they?

[1535] Pretty obvious.

[1536] All righty.

[1537] All right.

[1538] I love you.

[1539] Love you.

[1540] Follow armchair expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcast.

[1541] You can listen to every episode of armchair expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts.

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