Radiolab - Debatable

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

In competitive debate future presidents, supreme court justices, and titans of industry pummel each other with logic and rhetoric.  Unclasp your briefcase. It’s time for a showdown. Looking back on an episode originally aired in 2016, we take a good long look at the world of competitive college debate. This is Ryan Wash's story. He's a queer, Black, first-generation college student from Kansas City, Missouri who joined the debate team at Emporia State University on a whim. When he started going up against fast-talking, well-funded, “name-brand” teams, from places like Northwestern and Harvard, it was clear he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. So Ryan became the vanguard of a movement that made everything about debate debatable. In the end, he made himself a home in a strange and hostile land. Whether he was able to change what counts as rigorous academic argument … well, that’s still up for debate. Special thanks to Will Baker, Myra Milam, John Dellamore, Sam Mauer, Tiffany Dillard Knox, Mary Mudd, Darren "Chief" Elliot, Jodee Hobbs, Rashad Evans and Luke Hill.  Special thanks also to Torgeir Kinne Solsvik for use of the song h-lydisk / B Lydian from the album Geirr Tveitt Piano Works and Songs Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today.     Radiolab is on YouTube! Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe!

Hey, it's Latif. This is Radio Lab. Today, we're rerunning one of the most polarizing episodes in the last few years. We didn't expect it to be, but it really was. So yeah, take a listen, whether you've heard it before or not, curious to hear what you think. So tweet at us, but other than that, here you go, debatable from Radio Lab. Yeah.

So before we get started, I had a couple of questions for you. Yeah, please, fire away. So I've talked to a lot of people who have attempted to contact. There's a lot of hesitation. People just don't have faith in media right now and consider in our issues,

to be honest, white controlled media. So I got a couple of questions for you. Yeah. Quest away. Why now? Why do we want to do this story now? Yeah, that's been a couple of years. Yeah, well, you know, it's a, it's,

it's Abby just found story. Yeah. So we, we were, it was unknown to us until right now. Well, this feels a little newsy of the moment. It does come out of you. It does come out of you. This is Robert, by the way, for others. So we have Robert, we have

we have Robert, we have Chad and we have Abigail. Chad J. A. D. Yes. Yes. We should, I guess. Do you have other questions? Sure. We can wait. We can table those. No, no, no, let's hear them. Um, so what is the in go? What do you want the story to say? We never know that beginning.

Okay, uh, hey, I'm Chad, I'm Ron. I'm Robert Crowley, which... This is Radio Lab and today. Today we're gonna tell you the story of a guy. This is a guy named Ryan Wash. He's part of a movement of people who have taken this um, established corner of the academic world. And they've, they've reshaped it, reframed it.

Into something even weirder and more different. Weirder. No, and not weird bad, we're just... No, just interesting. Yeah. Interesting, let's replace the word weirder. Oh, interesting. I don't know.

I'm not just saying. I'm just saying, in debate, Lingo, that's a link. That's a link. Usually when you run a criticism, the link is the thing that they have done bad. Oh. Oh, okay. Well, the description of performance debate

is weird, is problematic. Well, can I put it less? Can I, can I touch mentally? Let's touch mentally. No. Okay, so the world that we're talking about, which is the center of this whole story, is obviously debate. Yes.

High school debate and college debate. Now, I have an innovative debate, but from the outside, it always seemed like this hyper-competitive, like, brain sport. These guys are these accordion briefcase where they have all these files in there with all the research. Yeah, and they go to these tournaments, and they argue about some topic back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Yeah. Now, the interesting thing about debate, I didn't know this beforehand, is that the people who do this often go on to become hugely powerful people, you know, Supreme Court judges,

presidents, leading thinkers, scholars, titans of industry. It's the farm team of the big folks for tomorrow. So, Leia Cokka from Christ, he was a debater. Margaret Thatcher, Ted Cruz, Carl Rove, Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Nixon, Malcolm X, they all were debaters. And today, this is Ryan's story, Ryan Wash's story of debate. Actually, Ryan's story, debating debate. Yes. And the story comes from reporter Abigail Keel, and before we get going, just want to let you know, there is some strong language in the story comes from reporter Abigail Keel and before we get going just want to let you know there is some strong language in the story, some profane words Skip it if you need to. Otherwise here we go. Is it is a cool if we jump in Ryan?

Yeah, I would love to know Ryan like what was your life like before you Were ever on a debate team? Well Kansas City, Missouri, and SID public school, you know, 90, 9% black students. I was actually tricked into debating. Oh really? When was this, when was this, where you're talking about? Oh well, let me see, 2000, I'm sorry, I'm old. 2005. When were you born, if you sang your old?

1990. Oh, come on. But yeah, I ended up getting tricked into debate. I was definitely more of an observant person, which is why I like to play the game of chess because, you know, how people move their pieces the time it takes them to move their pieces all gives away, you know, something their tails. And so I was tricked into debate something, their tails. And so I was tricked into debate by playing chess and I ended up winning the school chess tournament that we had in this little short German Redhead lady named Jane Ronhart, came to chess practice. I ended up being a present chess club. She came to chess

practice one day and pulled me in the hallway and was like, I understand you know you were chess champion and that's a really good thing and we have this debate program and I think you'd be really good at it. Like, anybody who could critically think of chess could critically think of debate. Yeah, yeah, I didn't even know what debate was. So he told her, no.

No, not for me, but I persist. So over the next year. She kept on telling me, she was like, I thought I told you to join debate. I thought I told you to join debate and I was like I thought I told you no I can spot a debater at 20 paces and she was just like okay, you think I'm playing so one Monday I came to school. She handed me a piece of paper. It was a revised schedule. She had my schedule change to where I had debate first hour I just after

So here I am. Here you are. That's what happens with a lot of my debaters. They just come in kind of days like my schedule got changed. I'm like, yeah, okay, that's fine. Take a seat. So those first few classes, Ryan's learning the basics of debate. And in this kind of debate that he's doing, it's called policy debate. There's two teams and two people on each team. Usually the debate is about some kind of national policy topic, like the United States government should increase its economic engagement in China. One team at the beginning of the debate

is randomly assigned to be affirmative. And that means they're supporting that proposition. They're saying, yes, the United States federal government should do that. Here's why. And the other team is the negative team, and they're arguing against the affirmative. Both of those sides make their case, and then at the end, the judge decides who made the better arguments. I mean, I get them up debating almost day one. We ended up having mock debates in class like Pepsi versus Coke, you know, family gov versus the Simpsons and stuff like that. So it wasn't very fun. It made us learn how to do

impact analysis. Impact analysis. What is that? So for instance, let's say you're debating apples versus oranges. If I say the rinds of apples are necessary for the fertilizer to produce oranges so you must vote for apples. That would be the impact of choosing apples over oranges. You have to be able to compare the two and make argumentation. So the traditional standard of argumentation is. And as Ryan started learning all this, impact analysis, toolments, model of argumentation. He started to eat those pathos logos. You really well. Yeah, yeah, he did.

He joined the team, started going to tournaments. You know, debate is one of those activities that affords you the possibility of traveling places where I grew up and went to school. I mean, students didn't leave like a 40 block radius for their entire life, you know? I mean, you're in control in that debate round. And everybody's listening to you.

And I think it's important to feel that way, even if it's only in a 60, 90 minute debate round. Ryan needed those wins. He needed... I was enjoying that affirmation. That was having a great time. The thing that helped me out was that my first tournament was a debate Kansas City tournament.

Debate Kansas City is an urban debate league. And so we were debating other kids from the same neighborhood just went to different schools. And so that environment of debate was, to me, very different. Like, yeah, we wanted to win, but there was a lot more camaraderie in the debate, I thought. And so to me, by the time I went to my first national competition, I was very much committed to debate. But once I went to that national tournament for the

first time, I was like, okay, I don't know about this, you know. And national tournaments, you're up against what I call name brand schools, you know, predominantly private schools. And so we were real excited about that. Put our little dress clothes on, got cute. Got on the bus. Nerv started kicking a little bit just about going to the Bay tournament. We got off the bus, went inside, and then,

we went into the cafeteria. And when we opened the door to walk into cafeteria and began to walk in, the room went silent. I mean, when I tell you the talking stopped, literally 300 other plus students stopped and stared at us because a bus of black kids had just arrived. And they like watched us the whole time that we were in the cafeteria and they was like, what are they doing here? Well, at least that's how I felt, you know? But we walked over to our table

and our coach was like, do not worry about them. Pull out your things, get warmed up, get ready for competition. And so got our stuff pulled out and started to practice. And then they started to whisper. You know, whether they were whispering about debate stuff or about us, I don't know, I wasn't in their heads. But I can definitely explain to you what they felt. It was real awkward. It was real awkward. It was real uncomfortable.

And making things even more awkward and more uncomfortable is that when the debate actually got going, and this is particularly true at the national level, this is what debate sounds like. The plan. The US Federal government through the National Congress was substantially informed domestic transportation infrastructure by requiring that all federally funded road planning projects in the US use 15 to 22% ground on a road and ask for concrete mixes, flooding in the first place.

What is this? Is this like sped up or something? No. This is what debate sounds like today. Like they sort of speed read. Well, the goal of speed reading are spreading, if you will, to get more arguments out. The US highway and road infrastructure has an urgent requirement for parents to come to us.

And apparently, and this is like a quick digression, that this kind of thing actually started in like the 1960s, and the students were actually the ones who were driving it. One of the things that makes debate such an interesting intellectual game is that it's much more of a bottom-up-driven activity than a top-down activity. That's Scott Harris, Director of Debate at the University of Kansas. In the case of speed reading. We evolved a situation where one team decided, well, I'm going to present eight arguments

in the other team, talked slower and only answered six of them, and the judge says, well, you didn't answer two of these arguments, so you lost the debate because you didn't answer those arguments. Well, we need to answer all eight of these arguments. So you lost the debate because you didn't answer those arguments. So that team said, well, we need to answer all eight of those arguments. And they said it took faster. And the other team said, well, we'll present 10 arguments. And then they answered 12. And so it escalated to a point that in some instances is gone way too far.

And getting back to Ryan, it's not as if he didn't know how to do that style of debate. That's the way I debated. I did try to speak fast. But he says somewhere around the first national tournament, like all that stuff just kind of stopped making sense to him, like the fast talking. And the fact that he had to debate these super, you know, high-falutin topics.

I felt as if I could never take any of the stuff that I learned in debate and take it back to 30304 ask you which is where I live. And this isn't just unique to Ryan. I mean, what you see at this stage in debate is that a lot of kids, like especially inner city kids from public schools, black students, you know, they just start to drop out of debate at a certain point. But Ryan, Ryan didn't do that.

Now something big is going to happen, I have a feeling like somebody's gonna say no no What happened was is that a student from University Academy? She was a senior her name was Martiana And she went to a different school than Ryan she came over and asked Ron Hart She needed a partner there was about to be this tournament called Casey Casey C TLC tournament it was aKCCTLC tournament. It was a big high school debate tournament and Martiana, she was a senior. So she was older than Ryan, but she needed a partner. So she came to Jane Reinhart and Jane said, well, here, Ryan, he's your guy.

So met with Martiana was the first day before the tournament happened. And I pulled her into this room and I had, I had three boxes of evidence, you know, and I was ready to go with my traditional stuff. The topic was whether the US should increase participation in national service programs, so like Peace Corps, armed services, stuff like that. And I'm like, oh, this is the stuff that I've been working on. I showed her the learning serve of America stuff.

I had this like Peace Corps affirmative that I hadn't wrote yet. He showed her note cards with statistics on them, quotes from various experts. You know, and she was like, mm-hmm, yeah, that's cute. Yeah, and so she had to meet this expando and was just like, okay. Take this folder, go home, study it.

So I got home and I opened this expando and it was all of this, it was full of things and I stayed up literally all night, studying this file. I mean, it was not a lot of evidence, there was not a lot of pre-written out answers, arguments, there wasn't a lot of that. There was some things, there was Ralph Ellison's.

I am an invisible man. There was a clip from Ralph Ellison's, you know, invisible man in there, there was... You may write me down in history with your bit of twisted lines. My angelou poem in there. You may trod me in history with your bitter twisted lines my angel loop poem in there You may try to meet in the very dirt, but still like dust All right, there was some original stuff that she wrote and I'm like I I didn't get it, but she was the senior so Rahar kind of told me you know let her you know drive the ship

You just ride along and I was like okay. So next day we get to the first debate. I still was very unclear when we arrived at the tournament. Just what was going on. He and Martiana get to the classroom and standing on the other side of the room. Are there two opponents? Are they white kids? Mostly. Yeah, they were white guys and suits with Republican ties on. If you want to know, if you want to vivid this program, yeah. The other team, they're affirmative, so they go first.

And they're like, they lay out this whole argument about how the national service programs are good because they increased US power abroad and then it was Marchana's turn. And so she gets up to give this speech and I start with this like four minute long piece of spoken words. It's like this performative speech kind of about her personal experience and debate. And she had this way of speaking that was very passionately forceful. It made people stop, they stopped writing, they stopped talking. And in the middle of this riff, Martiana laid out this argument.

That the style of debate that they engaged in, that fast-paced form of debate, was exclusionary because it demotivated minority students from participating. And not only that, it also creates this resource imbalance because if you're going to start debating with a ton of arguments, then you have to research that many arguments, and you need help researching those arguments so you pay people, and you pay coaches to help you make those arguments, and that clearly favors rich and affluent schools. And beyond that, Martiana argued, even the language itself sets up a norm of what counts

as intelligent, authoritative argumentation. For instance, like men's voice to be held up over women, black people to always seem angry and brood when they're just being passionate as if they don't have feelings. You know, it was a criticism of the auctioneer style of debate. It was a criticism of the insular lingo of debate. It was a criticism of the way in which debates were decided socially and politically as opposed to argumentatively.

So I was like, okay, I can't get shocked. Were you, did you, did you shock you? No, I wasn't shocked. I was like, I was like, oh, wait, I was like, damn, that was a great, that was tight. Like, snaps like we was at the poetry slam, but I was sitting to myself thinking like, okay, how am I going to extend this? Like when it got to be his turn, what's left for him to say?

I don't know what more, what other words I could use. And so it wasn't until the second person from this team got up and he started to speak. And he was like, you know, debating about the state is great. This is a, this, this is disrespectful to the state of debate. And he turned to speak and he was like, you know, debating about the state is great, boo-boom, this is disrespectful to the state of debate and he turned to her, it was this moment, he turned to her. And he said it like from his soul, you should go down the hall because that's where poetry poses help, this is academic debate. And I was like, what?

And he basically, his argument was that what we were doing was not debate. What we were having was a talent show, is how he described it. And I was just like, I get it. And maybe it was a study and I had done all night, but everything kicked in in that moment, and passion came into the room. And I was like, what was it? You get it. Like I get everything that she was trying to say.

What she was saying about the structure of debate because I had felt those things before. I just didn't know how to articulate them. Was it like I get that I can, was it like permission? I get what she's saying. Like debate is fucked up. I get it. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. And let's just say we definitely went on to win that debate. You won this match? Yeah, we won the debate because... Okay, so let me just explain what happened in this debate. Judges in this kind of situation have a choice, right? Like they can hear the arguments that Ryan and Marcian are making and they can think, okay, this isn't really about the Peace Corps

or about armed services, so you lose. Or they can do what the judge in this debate did and they can say, all right, the topic has kind of shifted, but let's look at what we have in front of us. Let's look at the arguments that were made. You have Ryan and Martiana saying that the structure of debate is racist, and then you saying that the structure of debate is racist. And then you've got the other team not really responding in any kind of like counter-argumentative

way. And Ryan in this debate, what he does is he points at that. He points at when this other team says leave the room and he says, hey, like what they just did proves our point that we are excluded from debate and the judge agreed. Oh, so you use his sort of, you use his, you don't belong here as a kind of, as an argument. And that's what I was saying, as about our evidence and it came for a lot from what happened in the debate itself.

Fascinating. Let me just take that guy's side. So that you're changing the whole, you're throwing huge bombs at them, racism, hegemony. Like what's he supposed to do? He's like, I'm a racist. I'm gonna be, what is he supposed to do? Stop.

What do you mean stop? Or first off, he should stop. Second off of, I mean, you don't have to say your racist, ain't nobody gonna want to admit that they're racist, but you can definitely admit that you've engaged in racist praxis or you can have a debate about whether or not that was a racist praxis. There's a healthy debate to be had about that,

but instead what he said was that you all do not belong here. Leave the room. Like if you walk in and you say what you just said and you say it forcibly and eloquently. I mean, other says, Hey, you're changing the rules here. You're breaking things down to leave the room. And then in the leave the room, they leave themselves open to this counter attack that you give. Like it's still, it still surprises me that you'd win.

Okay. See, and so this is a thing. There's very few rules to debate, but there's tons of norms and depending on, you know, the community of debate, the space of debate that you're in, those norms may differ. But I only know of a few rules like there must be a winner and a loser time limits. And obviously, that be debatable at times. There must be an affirmative and a negative. Other than that, how one approaches debate, how one approaches the topic,

how one approaches themselves in their opposition, all of that stuff is debatable and arguably should be debatable. With this it, there's no like, there's no eyeball of debate. There's no like book, okay. Okay, so they put out things like the NDT rulebook, which is like affirmative teams must be topical,

but in the world of debate, what does it mean to be topical? You know, what does it mean to be on topic? Yeah. That has to be debatable in order for a debate to happen. This is getting very interesting. I'm just curious, if you're really good at this, like can you give me, parse me what you would have said if you were the guy coming after you Or before you well

I'm one of the things that they needed to do in particular was to say that the debate itself shouldn't be about debate They were trying to say that but what they said was y'all should leave See that's interesting because because that's one of the the place where I have sympathy for the other side is is where they're like I thought we were talking about the B score I have sympathy for the other side is where they're like, I thought we were talking about the B score. Like they walked into the wrong room or something. Yeah, but that was fun of our argument. It was that how do you do debate?

How do you participate in an activity for hours and hours and hours, weeks upon weeks upon weeks, arguably years on years and years, and not ever think about why you debate the way that you do. That was what we were pressing. and not ever think about why you debate the way that you do. That was what we were pressing. So what was the other team's reaction? They were really upset. Yeah, they called us an inward and said, Oh no. So really?

Yes. Like, what do you mean? No. Yes. That's, wow. Wow. We'll be right back. Hey everybody, this is Matt Kilti. I was one of the producers for this episode and I wanted to take a moment to thank you, Radio Lab Belongs to Public Radio, which means

that more than anything we rely on listener support to exist. And this episode, like all of our other episodes, involved many people doing many things. Like obviously, there's Abigail, who's incredible. And a whole team of editors, our trusty team, a sound designers, a fact checker, and we talked to a lot of different people for this story. We read a lot of different things, watched many, many, many YouTube videos of college debate, and it took months for us

to put this together. And you know, this is what happens here at Radio Lab. We get to go deep on every story, spending lots of time thinking about how to best tell it. And we do this with your help. This is why our membership program, the lab, exists. And when you sign up as a member of the lab, your support lasts.

And with it, we can take our reporting and our storytelling to even like greater heights. Plus, when you subscribe to the lab, you get perks. For example, everything like cuts that don't make it in the episode, sweet little audio extras, two exclusive merch, sweat bands, really cool. But also events. For example, I did one of our first ask me anything sessions with associate producer Maria Paz. And one of our reporters, Andrew Leland. It was very cool, it was very fun. But most importantly, your support makes it possible

for us to work hard to bring you great stories. So for those of you who are already members, thank you always for making all of this possible. For those of you who aren't yet, you can join the lab at radialab.org slash join. Can't wait to see you there. Hey, I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Crowley, which is radio lab. And it's back to our story again from producer Abigail Keale, which is a story about a guy named Ryan Wash

and about debate, how we debate. Yeah. Okay, so just to kind of like pull back from that moment with Martiana and the poetry and all that, this kind of thing wasn't just happening in a vacuum. Like it actually came from all kinds of different places all at once. And one particular interesting person

who was influencing it was George Soros. With the billionaire? Yeah. Soros, Soros was fascinated by debate. That's Dr. Shunerah Reed-Bringley, she's a scholar and a big figure in the so-called Black debate world. Soros thought that debate was one of those kinds of activities that was incredibly important to the production of democracy.

So he started funding debate programs overseas. And say places like Eastern Europe. And here in the U.S., he poured tons of money. Like millions and millions of millions of dollars to start urban debate programs, first started with New York City. 1997. Right, so they literally went out to all of these New York high schools, talked to a bunch of administrators, and sorrows just pumped money into New York City to start

an urban debate. Then it went to Baltimore, then to Chicago, Detroit, went to Kansas City, out to LA, Newark. And it just kept moving, so we're almost up to maybe 23 or 24 cities. So, you know, if you take a step back and look at it all suddenly really within just a few years you have all of these new black debaters and many of those students she says would go through the exact same thing that Ryan went through. At the regional level you can imagine you get a bunch of African American students, a bunch of teachers who are supporting them and a very positive environment. They build relationships and friendships and so debate feels like home in that space. But as soon as they go to that first national tournament, culture shock,

because there is a sea of white people. And according to Dr. Reed Brinkley, this influx of black debaters into a primarily white space started to create some tension and pressure, and that all built up and eventually resulted in something called the Louisville Project. The Louisville Project started, its goal was to increase a meaningful participation of what's Louisville and the Louisville, and what happened in Louisville.

Let's go back. Let's go back. I know that there's a baseball that's associated with Christ. Okay, so early 2000s. Down at the University of Louisville, there was a debate team. A predominantly African American team. And so they were having a hard time finding traction. He says they would go to these national tournaments.

And no matter what they did, if they tried to accommodate the more traditional style, there was always something that they did wrong. Apparently, those students would try to make arguments about race inside the topics, but usually it didn't work. And so... At a certain point? But they decided that they were done with that. And they were like, no, we are unwilling to play your game

in the way that you have defined it should be played. And so these debaters, what they would basically do is they would show up and they would force a conversation about race. Basically saying, like, we're not going to talk about China or global trade until we deal with this. This is Louisville's famous phrase. They said, we can't change the state, but we can change the state of debate. So they kind of end up developing this whole new methodology,

which is actually a throwback to Aristotle. And in his idea, yeah, you need three things to persuade someone. Ethos, pathos, and logos. Logos is like logic, so, you know, giving research and scholars and evidence and things like that. Pathos, that's where emotion comes in, so maybe a personal story or sharing something that will connect with the audience. And then ethos, which is kind of hard to pin down, you can think of it like as credibility

or sort of like speaking in tune with the spirit of your culture. That's where you get the introduction of the use of hip hop. The use of spoken words. They say the niggas always already queer. That's exactly the point. It means that it is the case turned to the affirmative because we're sending the use of what we call street scholars. of what we call street scholars. And what?

Go shoot! And so go shoot! You know? What was the reaction when this first started? They would say things to Louisville like, you know, this isn't research, this is me search as if like scholars, noted black scholars in their fields are not real experts, right? They would say things like hip hop does not belong here. Your argument style doesn't belong here. And then I'm saying these things in really nice ways, you know what

I mean? But there could be really angry screaming matches at tournaments. Would you have an objection to a pro-efficient as a coach if you said, like, look, for next year, let's never talk about you and leave your gender, your sex, your background, your family, your religion behind and stay entirely in the brain. I doubt that you would do that, but I'm wondering why you wouldn't. Well, I think that's anti-black. I think it's anti-black to. It's anti-everything. It'll be anti-gay, anti-ju, anti-gay. Right, exactly. It would be anti-all of those things, but particularly with fire purposes, right? It would be anti-all of those things, but particularly for our purposes, it would be anti-black. And the reason why that's important for me is because these students don't get to leave

their blackness at the door when they enter for competition. They can pretend that they're not black, but that does not mean that everybody else is going to pretend that they are not black. Even when they speak what arguments they make, when they open their mouths to make an argument, people are paying attention to the fact that it is coming out of a black body. They don't get to speak without race being a factor.

Nobody gets to speak without race being a factor in a nation where race is a factor. Now back to Ryan. So he's 16 years old and he sees Marcia and I do the spoken word poetry thing. He starts to read more about Louisville and he's just like, I'm in. I dedicated my debate career to discussing debate. Every debate. Every single one. Every single one. Fast forward. He graduates high school. Isn't sure he's gonna go to college.

I was a first generation college student so I really didn't know much about the process. But then, early August, 2008, he gets a message from a debate coach at a small school in Kansas called Emporia State University. And August 14th, I was driving up to Emporia for college. So Ryan gets there, gets paired up with a sophomore, Latoya Williams Green. Who's now the director of debate at Cal State Fullerton?

Go best for him. The two of them start debating together. And over the course of a couple years, Ryan starts to get recognized. Um, he's winning speaker awards. He's, you know, making it into the outrounds, it's tournament, but it was an uphill battle. She says that Ryan kept bumping into judges

who weren't really into the whole three-tier approach to debate. Yes, I lost a lot of debates before I won any of them. At this point, Toya is graduated and he's debating with a freshman on the team. He's halfway into his senior year when I had their freshman. His new debate partner flunked out of school. At this point, it was either find somebody to debate with or might have a career with over. Flunked out of school. At this point it was either find somebody to debate with or might have made career with over.

And so what happens is Ryan is also close to one of my best friends who's one of my contemporaries, Rashad Evans, who was then a coach at Western Connecticut University and basically Rashad had this bombshell idea. One day they called Ryan up and they were like, what if you partnered up with this guy from Rutgers, Elijah Smith? And the reason I'm particularly reshought thought this was a good idea, first, Elijah was an astoundingly good debater. He just had excellent skills and traditional skills.

But the other reason was that both Ryan and Elijah were queer black men. The thinking was that you've got two guys kind of standing at the intersection of two like marginalized groups. And if they're gonna try to make an argument about feeling excluded and invisible in the debate world, well, they can own that argument better than almost anyone.

So I called him one night, it was 9.30. And he was like, hey, do you want to come debate with me? And he was like, dude, this is a lot. I can't really answer this right now. And I was like, I understand. I'm asking you to come move to Kansas for a semester or what have you in lieu of? From Newark, from Newark, New Jersey.

He called me back the next morning. It was like 8 a.m. my time. He was like, I've already applied and everything. And so the next couple of weeks he was down in Emporia. Elijah and I debated four tournaments together. First tournament, they won two matches, lost four. I was very upset. I was heartbroken because I was a senior and I was like, I don't really do two four.

But it's fine, you know, it's okay. Dr. Reed Brinkley was actually at that tournament. And she said that watching Ryan in a Elijah debate. It was a hot mess. Because they just didn't have any chemistry. There was nothing persuasive about it. Nothing popped about it. You know, it didn't really speak to the judges.

She remembers the time when Ryan came over to her apartment to talk to her and Rashad. And he was just like, you know, I don't know what we're doing wrong. You know, he just didn't know why things weren't clicking, what's not working, I don't know what's happening. So the three of them were all talking and Rashad, well, Ryan really looks up to Rashad

because Rashad is also a queer black guy, but he's also like a really, really great debater. And it was Rashad who said, you're not being a queer black man, right? You're being a debater. And so Rashad would say things like, you need to butcher it out, you're not being a queer black man, right? You're being a debater. And so Rashad would say things like, you need to butcher it out. You know what I mean? You need to, you know, you need to film it up sometimes.

Sometimes you need to duck walk on them. You know what I mean? Sometimes you're going to have to vote. You know, so he's saying, be black. You will always be black and queer in these spaces. So rather than attempting to hide parts of yourself, instead you should be fully you. Ryan, with this in his head, went back to Elijah, and within a few weeks, things started to click.

Who are just like, here's what our roles are. This is what you do, this is what I do. This debate is about the major performing in the Met them live school, exclusively perpetuated by the negative confrontations. I would start the debate. This is our argument about. This debate is about the debate to perform in the Met themalical school exclusively perpetuated by the negative of their problems. I would start the debate. This is our argument about how it is that they get to propagate the strategy that allows for us to not even be those negative statements they were supposed to be. Ryan would preach. Back at rain in the choir, if you will.

This activity is affecting by the same structure when you call these that allows the hood to be segregated. And then Elijah. You as a competitor, you're not striking let your offense, like your art battle. He did the middle speeches. He dealt with logic, counterarguments, things like that. And there's a question of black, gold, suppression of little pistol allergies. He was better at the game of the mate.

I'm not excited, definitely not excited. Ryan said they went from practicing ethos, pathos, logos, to being it. We embodied that methodology. But you tell me how their methodology, literally, Dean can't stop those to sack fighting side of literally deconstructs those exact fights inside of the debate. And then I will end the debate. That's the shit that our heard that talks about.

Now that's real talk to me hard. Great. And then the second tournament, they made it to the finals. And they lost in a close decision. But their third tournament was actually a national tournament called CEDA, the Cross Examination Debate Association. It's kind of called the People's Tournament.

And they won that tournament. I was able to give a pretty good 2AR and we ended up squeaking the debate out. And then their fourth tournament, their final tournament together. That's actually, it's the whole reason we're telling this story. It's the NDT. The National Debate Tournament. That was the tournament. My decision not to go for a premonition right again, my very specific one, I actually want to go for a premonition.

The NDT is this marathon of a debate tournament. No, I was not going to be ready for my team. It's like, you know, March Madness or something. It's held every year. It lasts for four whole days, and there's 13 rounds of debates, 78 teams. And the NDT is where and there's 13 rounds of debates, 78 teams. And the NDT is where Harvard is, North-Western, you know. Rararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararararar win. Things kick off Friday morning at 8am. Emporia vs Idaho State. And they beat Idaho State. At 11.45am, they take care of Puget Sound.

415. They go against Oklahoma. Oklahoma actually beats them, but it's pre-lame, so it's not like they're out or anything. And then the crazy thing is that after the loss to Oklahoma, Ryan and Elijah go on a roll. They take down USC, they roll over Emory, they beat not one, but two different teams from Harvard, they beat Michigan State, and then on the last day, they beat another team from the University of Michigan, then they go on to beat Wake Forest. That puts them in the semis, which has never been done before by a black team.

And then they're against Oklahoma, who they beat and that. Puts them into the finals. It was, I can't. Everything's very surreal to me. We're in the finals of the NDT. Never happened before. We're also potentially about to unite the crowns and what that means is when seated in the NDT, no team in history had ever done that. And who were they up against?

Well, they were going against a team that Ryan had already faced like twice that year. And lost every time. The 14-time national debate champions Northwestern University. So when this round gets set up between Northwestern and in Poria, one of the things that we've described it as is a clash of civilizations. She says that about Northwestern because they have one of the biggest debate programs in the country. They've got an entire hive mind, you know, with a hotel, She says that about Northwestern because they have one of the biggest debate programs in the country.

They've got an entire hive mind, you know, with a hotel war room for them to strategize in. And then it was us, these two queer black guys from Emporia, Kansas. From a really small school with not a lot of resources. So it is like a David and Galaya story. Hey, I'm Chad Abumrod. And I'm Robert Kroich. This is Radio Lab. And now back to our story about the stated debate. And the one we left off, and his teammate Elijah were about to go head-to-head

With 14 time national debate tournament winner Northwestern Okay, so let me explain the room to you. This is the biggest room that I had ever debated in this hotel room That they have the debate happening and it's a huge ballroom And this ballroom was packed. I'm going to give you a round of applause. But the audience itself is segregated on the right side of the room. Northwestern side, it was packed full of their people.

And then on our side, was it like racially secreted too? It was. It was. It was. So just to round this out. The judges for the scene used to be for the seatings of the baby. Up near the front of the room at a table were the judges, which included our guys' got hairs.

Yeah, and how many judges were judging this debate? Five. Four men, one woman. All of them were white. And... Ryan and Elijah from Aporia, they were on one side of the stage, and on the other side of the stage are the two Northwestern students. Wearing our Northwestern jerseys.

One was this guy? I'm Arjen Velli-Oppen, I debated at Northwestern for four years. And the other was his partner, a young woman named Paten Lee. Paten Lee. I don't know if she knew this, but she was like my college debate nemesis. My partner, Paten, I was a sophomore, whereas my partner and Ryan were on the other side were seniors. And that was the thing that was really getting me. It was going to be my last debate.

It was Peyton's last debate. It was my last debate. We were seniors. This was it. Oh wow. College debate is the pros. It's the NFL. It's it. Since it's their last debate, everybody kind of gets up before their speeches to say like thanks and bye.

This is Ryan? Yeah. And this is going to be my bye, so it might take you a little bit. This is Peyton. To me, he's been my family and my friends. It's been my hardest work and my most rewarding play. And it's taught me more than I could ever dreamt for that. And instead of to all of you, every part of this community and in particular, a number of special people in my life.

Wow. It was a lot. in particular, number of special people in my life. Wow. It was a lot. So the topic for the year was whether or not the United States federal government should increase incentives for certain forms of alternative energies. It was nuclear power, solar power, wind, or reduced restrictions on other forms of alternative energies, coal, natural gas, and oil. Okay, so Ryan and Elijah were affirmative. So they were supposed to argue like something positive about the how the US government should support solar

energy production or should restrict coal usage and energy or whatever, but they're not gonna debate that. That we had figured out that we wanted to talk about the ideal home. In other words, energy isn't the most important conversation that we need to have. The conversation we need to have is whether this community can include people like Ryan, like Elijah. Can we find home in debate? Because that's how the community feels about itself, that this is a home place for a lot of people.

Right, there are people who grew up in debate, people who started debating when they were 12 and 13 went all the way through college. So the people that you often develop the tightest friendships with, people that, you know, have some of your coolest memories because you all spent the summer together going to debate camp.

Those people make up your family. There are people who make friends in debate when they're 13 that they keep until they die. So Ryan's up first and to make his argument about home. He started talking about a movie. Have you all seen the Wiz? I have. I have not.

OK. So. All right not. OK. So. All right, real quick synopsis. It's a 1978 film. And what it is is like an all black cast version of The Wizard of Oz. So like Michael Jackson is playing the scarecrow. Richard Pryor is the whiz.

And Diana Ross is Dorothy. It was that movie was just like, to me. It was the fear that Dorothy felt. Where am I? Where am I? But at the beginning just like to me. You know, it was the fear that Dorothy felt. Where am I? Where am I? At the beginning of arriving to Oz. The indivisible land of Oz. Oz? I want to go home. I mean, the point Ryan's making is that like,

that's how he felt too. When he came into debate, when he was walking into that cafeteria. Yeah. And there's a line where you say, let me find, when the Dorothy's of this world think of energy, they don't think of thorium reactors, but the energy required to get out of bed and navigate the struggle.

Yep. So that's like kind of, is that how you were like tying it? Yeah, energy for us meant what it meant to get out of bed in the morning, what it meant to thrive in the world and what you were never meant to survive. And for Dorothy, she was able to reach a place of odds.

Please, is there a way for me to get home? Where you realized that all you ever needed in the first place was yourself. Home inside me? And that you had the power all along. And that's part of what our argument was. And that was part of what I was trying to say was that I had been in debate for eight years at that point.

And I was so sick and tired of people telling me that what I had to say about debate and what I thought about debate wasn't legit. When debate was a student-driven activity, that I have just as much to say about this topic as you do, and your claims are not any more balanced in mind and vice versa. And Ryan ended his like eight and a half minute speech on sort of this like hopeful appeal. You know, to never give up, you know, we have to ease on down the road together. Dorothy just can't go by herself, you know? Julie Garland, man, I have much of the fabulous

I in the rock. Over 100, she did have one thing right. And that there's no place not even no place. Like I'm. She did have one thing right. And that there's no place, not even no place. Like I am. Woo! Woo! Woo!

Woo! Woo! Woo! And then... After a few minutes, Arjen, the sophomore from Northwestern. I got up and I gave the first negative speech. You from the field, you're a mid-class,

but that's from both your teammates. You've heard us say, I do a nice problem, that's where I'm going to be. Try to avoid any of us to put your resolve in the last couple of minutes. You started to make his argument. The one that they had beat us with every time. Called Topicality, which basically says the topic has posited a question. You know, should the US government alter its approach to energy policy?

And we think that the affirmative should have to answer that. Or this isn't a real debate. Well, I think you see that role about Mr. Pratiknitsky. The first problem, this isn't a real debate. Well, the first problem, I don't think the resolution is a question. Second of all, like, nowhere in the rules, does it say that you have to be topical. But,

this is a debate about the baby things being... Our position was, debate should be theoretically fair. Both sides should be able to win. And if you're gonna come out here and argue that... Racism is bad, debate's not a home. Like, we can't argue against that.

I'm not gonna say debate isn't a home for me, I love it. It's not fair to have to argue against that. Well, former sales, ever sales, who is debate fair for now, who is debate inclusive for now? Is it actually fair if in order to win a debate, you need to have like a whole research team and debate camps that cost thousands of dollars to participate in.

But, also, we're still waiting for those words I heard. There's a topic that's democratically voted upon by all the schools at the beginning of the year. Something about the topic should be mentioned, just to give the negative... basically respect. Respect for the thousands of hours that my partner and I and the Northwestern debate team and other people in debate have spent researching energy and being prepared to talk about the intricacies of energy policy in the United States.

This went on for over an hour. I mean, it was a lot happening. And eventually, Arjun and Peyton really started to like focus their argument on like their version of debate, the traditional version. This is how you actually change the world. Not by focusing on yourself, but doing research, it's being able to argue the affirmative side of something and the negative side of it.

Because people who learn those kinds of skills, they can actually go and do things outside of debate. Like, deal in convoluted globalized trade negotiations or solve global warming. Right. So after two hours of this, it's almost midnight, Ryan feels like exhausted. Um, yeah, but I felt it in the room that people were like, we're not out of the debate. We can still win.

At this point, there's only one speech left, and it's Ryan's. I was nervous. I knew it was my last speech. I knew everybody in the audience was waiting on me. Like, I just felt pressured, and I had maybe five sentences written on a piece of, you know, just copy paper.

And I looked over at Elijah and kind of was just like, well, this is it. This is it. That's all I got. The audio quality of this speech is kind of terrible, but we're just gonna let it play. The role of the violin is this debate for you to go between the best performively and mentally-pulsively

brings debate back home. I don't think they have really answered this. It's our uniqueness argument that four bodies are not allowed in their debate space. All of their evidence assumes the role of a good citizen or an engaged student in democratic society. All of these assume the equal claim bill for people people without a discussion

of the accessor even the right to have a home in the first place. This leads to black barfowl, our Johnson Efton says that before our body sits, wait themselves in a moment of self to be self-reflected, that it enables them to speak out as a way to engage and change our relationship to the world and also to ourselves, which says that regardless of the clever amount we're using, the tools of the master or if we're just simply, and Ryan says like early on that piece of paper he was holding. I like through it. And I start speaking for myself. What I would call the shandei. The shandei. The shandei is the place that encapsulates your soul in your loins. You're all right. is becoming four-twos to those individuals who have already had access to home now to what they are.

Arguing goes and seated that black-garbodies do not have a face that they can call home right now and we need to join these struggles together. We need to hold hands and be dialled. I'm in a wrong department, Jackson. Ease on down the road together, which is exactly what our firmament is in. The lack of that car body is to raise.

The question of why is it that innovation is a question of either or instead of in and and their notions of fairness is one that is always prefigured because the fate is fair for who now. The fate is equal for who now. It still leads us out. Why do I have to make a foreshort? Why do I have to relegate another team to the exclusion, especially when they don't have another place to go? When the fate has been the place where I come to share my view

Perspectives and opinions about the given subject. This is all the fuck I got. I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do when this debate is over. I don't know how to hold on to situate myself But I know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna make proof for those other car bodies that have never ever fucking had a righteous speech And have a debate and they're all fucking out. Nobody asked me about energy production I'm not the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house.

I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who's been in the house. I'm the only one who the structures in the brain that allow us to be a close narrative or individual or fucking jock. There was portions of the speech that I don't remember giving.

It was just, apparently there was a part where I was almost taking a shirt off. Almost with a shirt off. I didn't, like, I don't remember that. And I had a pause because what I was trying to just get out of that zone and come back It took kind of like provide a voice of reason But as I kind of slowed down to do that the crowd starts laughing And I had 50 seconds left. I still have to answer this last thing I still have to extend this piece of evidence. Oh shit, I didn't say anything about warming.

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? But I just feel like I don't know. This is reason enough to vote affirmative. Forget it. I think it's about the first of this debate. Max is on down the road. Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! And then I walked over and shook their hands. I gave Elijah a hug and then I walked out the room and went smoke cigarette. At that point as a judge I took a deep breath, packed up my notes. I put headphones, noise canceling headphones on my head. I found a room where there was no one else around

and I could have total quiet and think about what had been said. Now, Scott says that he felt like the debate was close. It was going to be a tight vote. So I sit down and look at my notes. I relistened the last couple of speeches that I had recorded several times. On one hand, Northwestern presented a lot of good research, and a lot of it he agreed with.

On the other hand, like, Peyton and Argin are saying if you have these skills, then you're going to be better prepared to go talk in front of, like, Congress or something. But Scott says, if you just listen to, like, Ryan and Elijah, like, they sound more persuasive,, like you can't convince me that somebody who sounds like that isn't actually also prepared to do those things. And so like Ryan and Elijah's whole presentation is actually proof that Peyton and Arjun's argument is invalid. At the same time, he thought,

there have to be things that we all just agree on as our starting point. And if the alternative is a world in which the affirmative can come into a debate and talk about anything they want to talk about, then the ability to make that a fair competitive environment seems a little problematic. I think Scott was kind of torn. It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to decide who I thought won the debate. Ryan says that when he was sitting there waiting for the decision to be announced.

I was very convinced that we lost. And eventually... They announced the decision. The three-two decision. Three judges voted from Poria and two from Northwestern. It was like it's the three-two for the affirmative from Emporia. Whoooo! It was like it's a 3-2 for the affirmative from Emporia. My partner, Elijah jumped out. He was like, yeah, people are crying.

I mean, if you could have seen this room erupt into joy, I was in tears watching this historic moment happen because I'd been around for so long and I'd watched so many black debaters fail to make it to that top point. I stood there and I was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. I like to say, I said it like a million times, I was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

What suites got in the end? Well, he actually published just like a 11 page essay all about, you know, his decision explaining why he voted the way he did. There's a lot in there, but what I kind of take away from it is that, you know, while maybe he didn't like that there was a sort of disregard for the topic, he would have liked it a whole lot less if Ryan and Elijah hadn't been in the room. I mean, debate itself is incredibly important to me. Debate has been the greatest influence in shaping

who I am as a person. And so in many ways, I view debate as my home and given that it was a debate that challenged and criticized the activity that I have made a home for the last 40 years that pointed out weaknesses, it caused me to reflect. Why was the argument really worked? I find this kind of like, it's either a segregating or an integrating event. My gavit, my sense is that it's kind of integrating,

like in a racially chilly world, this is a strangely warm spot. Oh, no. Are you saying no? Yeah. Well, all right. Yeah. You know, when we asked Ryan about how he felt

about winning this tournament, I expected him to be really celebratory and tell me that it changed his life. He was the first black student to win this tournament and it seemed important to me. But he didn't really go there. No. You still seem as proud as I want you to seem.

Like why? Why don't you? You know, I, you know, it was a good thing for history. It was a good thing to motivate people. I just, I just want to stay focused. It was an important win. It was significant. It was powerful. It was beautiful, but it was very clear to us very early on that not much had changed by the time we got into the next year. Shonara Reed-Brenkley says that since Ryan's win, there's been like a backlash.

Basically, I mean, the next year, another black team broke through, it was two black women this time and not cause a big controversy and people were saying that the state of debate was ruined. And in that same year, you even had a group of schools like talking about breaking off to form their own tournament where performance styles wouldn't really be invited.

I think all of this just makes Ryan not really know how to feel about his win. Like maybe sometimes it can just for him feel like, an anomaly. Um, yeah. It's sort of seasonal. There's a series of accidents here. You're in a school where accidentally you have a teacher who pushes you, pretty much, forces you into something which suddenly takes you over.

You turn out to be peculiarly good at it almost again by accident, then you're thrown into the sequence of events where you get to meet Elijah, and then almost by accident you become a champion, and then suddenly it's over. The whole thing feels strangely lonely to me, lonely but beautiful, but I wonder how it feels to you. I runically this way. That is the first time you have agreed with Robert, how it feels to you. I runically the same. That is the first time you have agreed with Robert, this entire interview.

Oh, stop. I just gotta give him a hard time. Goodbye, first. 이 정도 이 정도 이 정도 이 정도 이 정도 이 정도 이 정도 이 정도 Huge thanks to Abigail Keel for reporting that piece.

Abigail works for an amazing podcast called The Longest Shortest Time. You should definitely check them out. Thank you Hillary Frank for letting us borrow Abigail. This piece was produced by Mr. Matthew Keelty. We also had original music from Matt and from Dylan Keef. And special thanks to wheel baker Myron Mylon, John Delamore, Sam Mauer, Tiffany Dillard Knox, Mary Mud, Darren, Chief Elliott, and Jody Hobbs, and Rashad Abys. Okay, I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Crowwich.

Thanks for listening. Radio Lab was created by Chad Abumrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulumilera and Lutip Nasser are our co-hosts. Suzy Lektemberg is our executive producer. Dilling Keath is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Qsick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz-Kutietis, Sindrniana Sambendum, Matt Kielte, Animicune, Alex Nisen, Saurakari, Anna

Rusk, Wet Puzz, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Carolyn Cusker and Sarah Sandbach, our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Shiboh. Hi, I'm Luis Beta and I'm calling from Mexico City. Leadership support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Science Sandbox, the Simon's Foundation Initiative and the John Temple Foundation. Foundation and support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. was provided by the Alfred B. Sloan Foundation.