The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Antiracism and Baby Skeletons

Episode Date: March 14, 2021

Trish Roberts-Miller is a scholar of train wrecks in public deliberation—times that communities had all the information they needed to make a good decision and instead made a disastrous one. She is also a at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of several books.  Comic Adrienne Iapalucci has appeared on "The Degenerates" on Netflix and Letterman. She just released her debut album, "Baby Skeletons."  

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast at New York's world-famous comedy cellar, coming at you on Sirius XM 99 Raw Dog. And on the Laugh Button Podcast Network, Dan Aderman here with Noam Dorman, the owner of the World Famous Comedy Club, which will soon, by the way, be back in action. Peri Alashim is here. She is the producer of the show. She's an on-air personality. It kind of evolved that way. It was not our intention at the outset. No, it wasn't at all, actually. It was just hoisted upon us, actually. And we have with us comedy seller regular Adrienne Iapolucci.

She's appeared on The Degenerates on Netflix. She's also appeared on The Letterman Show. She just released her debut album, Baby Skeletons. And hello, Adrienne. It's been a long time since I've seen you. Hey, Ben. letterman show she just released released rather her debut album baby skeletons and hello adrian it's been a long time since i've seen hey dan i know it's been like almost a year well since i've seen you in person i might have seen you on zoom or something that's very possible but in person in person though i was at the comedy cellar just last night at the Olive Tree just last night

because they're having dinner and comedians stop by and do sets behind Plexiglas. How was it? Well, let me put it this way. I couldn't, I mean, of course, it's only 25% capacity, but I couldn't get a seat. You know, all the seats were taken. I sat down at one of the tables and Liz politely asked me to leave because she needed it for a customer. So it's as full as it can be. I mean, again, it's only 24, whatever the

percentage is, but it's, it's, um, you know, the people, the people are, the people are coming to see the show. And, um, so I actually didn't, I, I didn't have, there was no room for me to sit down. So I left, I didn't perform because there was just a long list of people waiting to go. I really just wanted to get out of the house and, you know, more than anything else, more than to perform. So, um, there's a lot of people there, by the way, that I don't recognize. Are there new people that have been, that have been passed at the cellar during the pandemic?

Of course not. Okay. Because there's some names i don't recognize and maybe that they were they had been passed there's no real shows going on there now it's just people the altree just getting up and grabbing a mic i mean i don't even know if it's it's not like a comedy anybody's um you know it's not it's not like it's any kind of real show there's not like an official if you happen to be there nobody i mean it's i mean there's nothing going on just some mic and comedians are fooling around i mean uh there's anybody can go up all right well in any case as i said i didn't go up um so uh let's uh i don't know uh in the in

this week in comedy because i do like to focus at least a little bit on the world of comedy. Go ahead. Coming to the number two America came out this week. Our friend and comedy seller regular what the hell is his name?

I forgot his name. I'm looking at his name. Jermaine Fowler started as Eddie's son's son look i haven't seen people in so long you know last night at the south tell you one anecdote that you might find it funny uh there was an indian guy at the comedy cellar last at the olive tree he had a mask on that's racist well so i i didn't recognize it was he had a mask on So he said But I thought it was Hasan Minhaj So I said Hasan He said no

And then I Oh God I started apologizing See I was right It was racist It absolutely was I don't regard that as racist But I regard it

Who cares what you think Do you find out who it was? Forgot his name He's a newer guy Again one of the guys i didn't know oh dad what did it feel like to be you at that moment awkward but but at the same time just just last week i thought louis ck was colin quinn they both had that larger skull and that freckly skin people you know when you have a mask on that is true what are you gonna do you know, when you have a mask on. That is true. What are you going to do?

You know, I mean, how many times, you know, Robert De Niro thought I was Greg Rogel. And I could have said, oh, all Jews look alike to you. But, you know, well, to him they do, apparently, or at least we look enough alike that they can view this. So, you know, but of course it was awkward. Anyway, has anybody seen Coming 2, the number two, America? I only saw some of it. And? You know, it was, I mean, the first one was so good. So I guess it's more like just a reminiscing type of thing.

I don't know. I was happy for Jermaine, though. I thought he was great in it and Leslie Jones. I don't know. I didn't think it was that great, but i don't know i guess i had such high hopes from the first one well but now was the first one that good or were we just really young and easy to please i don't know i guess the first one maybe it's a little bit of both but it was also um kind of the same storyline in the second one you you know? So it's like the first one didn't have that before

because it was the first time we saw it. I don't know. I'm happy that it came out and Eddie Murphy's working, but I didn't think it was that great. I heard it wasn't that great. I heard Jermaine was, I heard everybody's good at it, but it's just like, it's just not that well-written, I guess. Yeah, Jermaine was great.

Leslie Jones was great. Eddie was great. It's just, yeah, I don't think the storyline was as well-written as guess yeah jermaine was great leslie jones was great eddie was great it's just yeah i don't think the storyline was uh as well written as the first one well it's always fun to see you know nostalgia i mean plays a role so like with cobra kai i mean i didn't think it was a very good show but it's just fun to see these characters exactly i don't think cobra kai is that good either but you know if you're a child of the 80, then it's kind of cool to see these people. Exactly. Yeah. It's also interesting.

I mean, I think this has got to be unprecedented. A sequel 33 years after the first one. I don't think that's ever happened in history, in the history of the movies, I don't think. I mean, that's a long way to go between the first and the second. Yeah, I guess that's what they'll say about it when they don't want to say they like it they'll just bring that up although everybody still looks good though from great from what i've seen you know black don't crack dan yeah is louis anderson's not black is he how's he looking

is he in it i didn't see him i think he is i think he is i don't i don't think i think he's Yeah, is Louis Anderson's not black? How's he looking? Is he in it? I didn't see him. I think he is. I think he is. I don't think, I think he's dead. I think he's dead too. In real life or in the movie? No, I'm pretty sure he's dead in real life. Like maybe in the movie, they, you know, there's a scene where they're like,

hey, that guy that used to work here, oh yeah, you know. But, McDowell's, no, I don't think he's dead in real life. Let me look that up. Thanks to the miracle of man. I'm pretty sure he's dead in real life. Let me look that up. Thanks for the miracle of me. I'm pretty sure he's dead. No, he's not dead. You're thinking of John Candy or Chris Farley. No, Louie Anderson is very much alive. There's another one.

Was he in the movie? Who's the other fat comedian? There's one more that died recently. John Candy's definitely dead. Yes, John Candy is dead well ralphie may but he was much younger yeah louis anderson 67 still very much with us was he in the movie now i might go back to see if he was in it i think he was in the movie i mean they you know why wouldn't they throw him in? You know, I mean, because so much of it is based on nostalgia and if he's still around and I

assume available, I mean, I'm going to go out on a limb here. Um, then, then why not, uh, put him in the movie, but, but let me check that. Once again, thanks to the miracle of the internet coming to America, he plays Maurice. He is incoming to the number two America. He's in it. I don't know how big a role. He didn't have a big role in the first one, so I don't know if he had a particularly big role in this one, but anyway.

Okay, he's in it. So do we want to talk about the Megan and Harry, or do we want to wait for Patricia to get here? Well, I didn't watch it. Did you watch it? I mean, the fascination with the royal family. Huh? I thought you did watch it. No, I did not watch it. No, I don't have a network TV. I only have the internet. I tried to find it on YouTube,

but it's not available. I watched it on the internet on my computer and Juanita told me you watched it. Ariel, you have like the worst reading and audio comprehension of any person I've ever seen. Juanita could not, I did not watch it. I wouldn't even know where to watch it. Well anyway, it's because there's racism involved, accusations of racism, should we wait for Trish to get here or should we, because it's show business related. Yeah, talk about it without her.

I want to talk about other stuff. If you want to get to it. Well, okay. I didn't see it. But since none of us saw it, we can really help our listeners. Yeah, I didn't see it either. I have no idea. Perrielle can give us all we need to know.

Was Louie Anderson in it? I have no idea. But Perrielle can give us all the all we need to know. Was Louie Anderson in it? I have no idea. But Periel can give us all the information we need to know, and then we can analyze it. Now, obviously, everybody knows Oprah interviewed Megan and Harry in California, and accusations were made against the royal family. Accusations of racism, for example, were made. What specific accusations were made, Perrielle? First of all, I would like to say that I do not have the worst audio

and whatever comprehension. I spoke to Juanita today and she told me you saw it because I said we're going to talk about it on air. So please check that before you hurl accusations my way. Number one. It's quite possible that my wife got that wrong, but it wouldn't change what I'm accusing you of because I would never, I wouldn't accuse you of that based on one example, but it is possible that I'm so used to it. I'm jumping the gun here and my wife is just cause she's not far behind you. But I mean mean there is something

that goes on when there are certain people who who you're like constantly always saying to them wait i didn't i didn't i never said that like you notice that some people in your life you're always saying i never said that like my friend harry entered i never have said to harry one time in any conversation no harry that's not what i said like he he, he's, he's always repeats exactly. Even the five years ago, he repeats exactly what I said. Right. Because he's actually listening to you and I'm usually trying to tune it out. Well, in any case, can we, can we, can we cut to the chase here?

What are the conclusions that were made against the royal family? So one of the things that Megan said was that she was not afforded any of the security that Kate was afforded. And it became abundantly clear that there were all of these issues of race at hand, including several conversations about how dark the baby would be. See, this is it. Already. There was one conversation. I only know because I read about it. There was one conversation. I'm not defending one conversation. I'm just saying there were not several. There was one. And they they wouldn't tell they said it was not the queen or the uh duke of winds or whatever it is but it was somebody else in the family asked harry what he thought the skin color of the baby would be and he then told his wife okay so verbatim yeah verbatim is one word go ahead verbatim yeah it was said to oprah

that there were several conversations i watched this yesterday oh and it was with harry not with me, and it was not the Queen. And they said, actually, the Queen, Meghan said that the Queen, and Harry said that the Queen has always been, like, amazing and lovely to them. So that, and that obviously is horrifying on so many levels. I believe the security detail wasn't that only cut off after they decided to exit the family and move to the United States? For Harry, it was.

They cut his security as well. But she was saying, I mean, listen, this is the first thing I've ever seen about anybody royal. This is what I'm saying. When she was told that Archie would not receive security because he was not a prince. He's not, he was not given the title of prince, which I think is because the, because Harry was not heir to the throne. I don't think that's to do with his come.

That's also incorrect. According to what I watched yesterday. It was that Archie should have been afforded a title, and she said she didn't really give a shit about that. The only reason she cared about that was because with a title comes the security, protection. Okay, so here's the two things so megan said uh she used the word several great-grandchildren of the monarch would no longer be prince or princesses except for the eldest son of the eldest son of the prince of wales this was declared by george the fifth in 1917 and and so it has that's been pretty much debunked that's been fact-checked that he was supposed to get a title it's pretty pretty clear from what I read, and I haven't heard a refuter that he wasn't supposed to get a title.

Megan used the word several conversations with family on the topic. But then Harry says, and this is why I got confused, Harry said, now you tell me, I mean, he speaks good English, right? He says, shortly after Harry's entry into the televised conversation, Oprah asked him and he said that conversation I'm never going to share. Harry said at the time it was awkward. I was a bit shocked. Can you tell us what the question was? No, said Harry. I'm not comfortable with sharing that. So he, you know, that's why I got, cause that, that sounds the plain, the plain meaning of that is that conversation.

I'll say those conversations or, you know, that conversation I, I, I won't share. So that's why I got confused. That does sound accurate. Although I'm certain that Megan said that there were several and they both said that. So, so who was right? Was Megan? Harry's Harry. She's just, I mean, Harry's the one. Well, he could, he maybe, he doesn't,

maybe by saying that conversation, he was referring to more than one iteration of it. I don't know, of the same conversation, but you'd have to assume he's right because he's the one who's, she's only reporting hearsay. She didn't witness it. Well, anyway, I mean, I don't know, you know, what difference that

necessarily makes it's still getting things accurate as always makes a difference to us here well if it was one minor member of the royal family that said something stupid that's that's kind of disturbing that's not but it's at the same time it's not the same as a conspiracy in the whole family, especially because you said the queen's always been lovely and she's the head person. Listen, my take is when you are involved in a monarchy that values heredity among everything else and colonialism is not far in your past, it doesn't shock me in the slightest. As a matter of fact, the opposite would shock me to think that there are no residual difficulties with race here. Having said that, basically every grandparent I know, you know, has residual problems with race. So it's not like, that's another reason it shouldn't be a shock. But I, you know,

it's unfortunate, you know. I can't defend that. I would, I can't defend it. To the extent that it's true, it's just, it's distasteful, right? And you've got to wonder why is there still a monarchy at this point? Well, I've always thought the monarchy, you know, to me the monarchy is basically like a living museum.

It's kind of like Colonial Williamsburg. And if that's the case, then racism should be encouraged. Because, you know, I mean, if it's a museum, let it be. I will say this. I find it wrong for them to say, and I can't think of an analogy right now, but I've had many situations like this in my family where somebody says, you know, people say,

well, who said? Because there's a big family, right? Somebody said something, but I'm not going to discuss it. I'm not going to say who. That's usually, when you get to the bottom of that kind of presentation, you usually find that the implication created a worse picture than the actual facts. That's usually the reason that somebody presents something in a very oblique way, if that's the right word. I'm not going to say who, but Trump does that time, right? I'm not going to say who, but people are saying, and then when you get

to the bottom of it, the New York Times did that when they had that article by that guy anonymous that they said was a senior administration official. He turned out just to be a minor thing. So it does bother me to make an explosive, I think when you make an explosive allegation, you have a response one that has actual repercussions throughout the world you should man up and put it all out on the table or don't say it at all in general i think you really need to watch this because they kept first of all harry was unequivocal in his in saying that it was absolutely racism um against megan and they kept saying things we're talking about the conversation about the babies no just

in general well in general i i don't want let's not talk about in general let's be specific because i'm not sure what the i'm not sure what the general accusations are one is that she didn't get a title right what are the accusations the title i don't i mean i don't know but the other thing that they were saying that was that it the firm and the institution which are separate from i guess the queen but it's basically run like a business and there's an hr department and that they i mean there were there were other horrible things oh there was a thing that they came that she came to them about being suicidal and uh yeah i don't know that's like you can't get help like it's not gonna happen like she couldn't, you can't get help. Like, it's not going to happen. Like, she couldn't get help to not kill herself?

Yeah. She was saying that she wanted to go check herself into a mental hospital because she was suicidal. And they were like, you know, no. But was that because she was black or because they didn't want, oh. No, I don't think that that was because she was black or because they didn't want oh no i don't think that that was because she was well that's why i said that's why go ahead sorry oh i was just gonna say that seems more like them just being like snobs and not wanting people to know their business i don't know i mean that's why that's why i i didn't like the general thing because i want to stick to what are

the accusations of race and what are the, just the general, and anybody who's seen the crown knows that the Royal family is, can be very fucked up to the extent that that shows is true. But I, as I was watching it, I, I read some stuff about it. I mean, yeah. But are they saying that she couldn't do that because she was black? I mean. No, I don't. I, that wasn couldn't do that because she was black i mean no i don't i that wasn't the impression that i got but i like i said this so is it just that they didn't i mean i didn't see it either i guess it sounds to me like they don't want people knowing their business

in terms of like going to check yourself into a psych ward but i wouldn't they have their own doctors though like i'm sure the royalty has their own specific doctors that just treat them. So here, Perrielle, now this is exactly what I was referring to. So this is the transcript. Oprah, did you ever think about going to a hospital? Megan, no. That's, no, that's, wait a second. Did you ever think about going to a hospital, or is that possible that you can check yourself in some place?

No, that's what I was asking. Yeah, you can't just do that. You couldn't call an Uber, go to the palace. Yeah, you couldn't just go. You have to understand as well when I joined the family, I'm not going to read the whole thing. Right, so she asked them if she could, she needed permission to do it. Like she said, they take your passport, they take your keys. Like you can't just go to a hospital.

So she needed, she asked for permission to do that. And she was denied that permission. I don't know. That seems weird to me, right? Yeah. I don't know. I'd be, I'd be more upset that the kid has red hair than him being black. I don't know. That seems weird to me, right? Yeah, I don't know. I'd be more upset that the kid has red hair than him being black. I don't know.

I'm looking at the kid right now. He's absolutely adorable. What? You think he's adorable? I mean, his head's a little long. But other than that, I don't want to disparage it on a baby. But the kid's really cute as far as I'm concerned. And, I mean, not that it matters to me, but the, the kid is white. I don't care, but you know, to the extent that it matters to the royal family, rest assured that kid. It looks just like the dad.

He looks like some Harry in him. Well, first of all, I think that, you know, I mean, Megan probably could have gone to the hospital. I mean, you know, she's pretty recognizable. I don't think anybody's think that, you know, I mean, Megan probably could have gone to the hospital. I mean, you know, she's pretty recognizable. I don't think anybody's going to, you know, say like, where's your insurance card? But it's probably a little bit, you know, embarrassing. And obviously she needs to, when a member of the royal family has to go to, you know, the psychiatric emergency room or whatever, they need a little bit of discretion.

Imagine how exciting it would be to be an uber driver and picking up the royal family that'd be the highlight of their life and i that'd be that'd be a good story you know um i i'm just so skeptical of everything all the time it's like a woman that famous they can stop her from going to a doctor i i don't get that you should watch the interview it's interesting how long is it it's like an hour and then they or you know and then they have like all these other clips that i haven't watched that i guess but you know we're at the point and this is interesting but we're at the point in american life when people just believe the

interviews they want to believe. And they just, just believe the interviews they don't want to believe. And it's like, it's, it's, I don't know, in interview, does that really, if you're, if you're inclined to believe it, you believe it. If you're inclined not to believe, you don't believe you look at this, like Woody Allen versus Mia Farrow, the reasonable people that I know who are just like i'm mia farrow but i'm like you know you should you should really watch the the thing it was like it doesn't matter they could watch it

doesn't matter what mia farrow says doesn't matter what dylan says in that video that they're already not going to believe it you know have you seen the woody allen thing no yeah i've watched it and has your mind been changed one way or the other well you know i always kind of lean toward he did it and then um when moses farrow came out with that very strong rebuttal and i heard and people also told me who read woody allen's book that he had his answer woody allen's book and it was yeah and people found his answer to be convincing so then my needle went back to 50 50 but there was one phone call in the show which i found very difficult if not impossible to uh rationalize which is mia says to him in in a one of these tape conversations and i should say they usually tape conversations i don't

take that seriously because it's usually a way for somebody to read their factual their facts into the record because they know that it was being taped. So like, remember when you had that knife and you walked down, it's like a way of, of entering it into evidence. But this was different. She asked Woody, Woody, just tell me, where were you those 20 minutes? And he says, the truth will all come out.

He says it very weirdly. And she goes, yeah, but we were looking for you everywhere. Where were you? Just tell me where you were. And he gives another obfuscational answer. And you would think that he would say, what do you mean? Where was I? I was there the whole time.

Or what are you talking about? And everybody knows I was nowhere. I was in a living room. I was taking a dump. I mean, you would think he would answer that. But instead, he refused to answer. He didn't even say, I don't remember. Yeah, he didn't say, I remember. And, you know. The truth will come out in time. As a common sense person, I just find it very difficult to explain.

Now, maybe his lawyer advised him not to answer any questions. You know, that would be the only answer he could possibly give. But would it really extend to him being worried about giving a exculpatory, truthful answer to his wife, who maybe would just drop the whole thing if she could only find out where he was? It just doesn't make sense. So my needle is 75% against Woody again. By the way, we should before... We have our guest this year. I just want to give Adrian an opportunity. Hi, Patricia.

How are you? We're going to... How do you do? We're going to introduce you properly in just a moment, but I do want to give Adrian a chance to talk about her new... Is it a CD? Is it a DVD? I mean, CDs still exist?

Oh, I don't know. i didn't i don't have actual cd elizabeth still buys them apparently you could just download it or listen to it on spotify or pandora or something well what's it called baby skeletons and what is the significance of those baby skeletons you gotta listen to the album i know but you gotta titillate me a little bit i mean i know you i know you're funny i'm gonna listen to the album but we're talking to people here patricia roberts doesn't know you she's thinking about what comedy album she wants to listen to next she needs a little a little teaser i think i think i mean you don't have to get i don't know that she would like my album i would suggest her not listening to it to be honest i think you're

i think you're judging a book by its cover i know i'm just conservative and she's not and she's got a lot of books behind it she's got like a ton of books behind it and usually people that read a lot of books you know maybe not big comedy fans let's face it they might be i was just kidding i would love her to listen to it anyway and if she if she has any negative stuff to say about it, just, you know, don't tell me like that's, I think we should go back to that. I don't need to know every nasty thing people think. Anyhow, let's introduce Patricia Roberts. Patricia, thank you for your patience.

Patricia Roberts Miller, scholar of what she calls train wrecks and public deliberation, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. That's where my nephew goes, by the way. My nephew's, have you ever had, has Zach Edelman been in any of your classes? I don't think so. Well, he's a bit, you know, he's a bit of a, what's the word I'm looking for? He's a bit of a villajaya. So if you know what that means, he's actually, you know, you'd notice him. He's like his uncle. Anyway, she's the author of several books, among which a demagoguery and democracy and speaking of race, how to have anti-racist conversations that bring us together, if only Patricia, because I'm seeing very little of that going on right now.

But anyway, welcome Patricia Roberts Miller to Live from the Table. Hello, hello. And I know Noam, I know he's very excited to have you on. So I'll let Noam take the baton and run. It's such a hot topic. And I'm an employer and I worry about this stuff. And I also have a wife who's of color and I raised a child from nine months who's black or half black. So I'm all over the place on this.

And to be honest, I have a lot of, there's a lot of things, and I guess I'm typical of my age my color and my my generation as it were there a lot of things about the anti-racist point of view that I I think I I don't agree with or I'm having trouble being convinced about and it's tough to get it's tough to get an aunt someone who stands for anti-racism actually to come on podcasts. And even in, I mean, I don't expect like a harsh head-to-head debate here, but even to get them to come on any show, which somebody might disagree, seems to be hard. I know Coleman Hughes had tried very hard to get Ibram Kendi to debate him, and he wanted to give the money to the United Negro College Fund, blah, blah, blah. And he was cast aside.

I think Ta-Nehisi Coates has been the most forthcoming about being able to say that. Anyway, so you wrote a column. And so I'm very appreciative is what I'm trying to say. I'm very appreciative that you came on the show. You wrote an article in Salon, which I think is an excerpt from a book, how to have more productive conversations about racism.

Stop focusing on individual intent. And I, let me read the, the, a paragraph and I'll let you tell us about it. So take your time. Yeah. Yeah. I want to get to. I should have underlined it. It says racism doesn't require... Okay. I'm sorry. I'll just start with me. So someone said that they thought something we said or did was racist. Our first impulse is to say we aren't racist,

and therefore we could never have intended to do or say something racist. And therefore what we said or did can't have been racist. But racism doesn't require that somebody consciously decide to do something racist. And therefore, what we said or did can't have been racist. But racism doesn't require that somebody consciously decide to do something racist. And you make an analogy of a, I teach in a building that was designed to have heavy doors that are hard to open, stairs all over the place, a ramp that is much too steep, one small elevator. I'm skipping, but I'm not trying to cut out any intention here. The building was designed such that anyone who used a wheelchair, scooter, or even crutches or cane was physically

excluded. The exclusion was probably not conscious on the part of the architects or builders, but it was a manifestation of the beliefs at the time about what sorts of bodies were imagined. So you're making an analogy here, as I take it, that in the same way that the people who built a building, which was totally exclusive of people who have, what's the proper word now? People that are physically challenged. Physically challenged. Society in some ways creates structures which are making it impossible for people of other colors. Is that correct? Yeah, but not just that. I mean, I taught in a building that had been the women's, what was the women's campus. And so what that meant was there was one large bathroom on each floor and that was for the women. And then there was a small bathroom for the male faculty. And that was just the assumption because when it was built, that's what that campus was like.

So then it became very, very complicated to try to do anything about that. It's just you have these structures that were built at certain times with certain assumptions about them. By the way, as a lefty, I can only say preach. Right, yeah. But it's not like somebody got up in the morning and said, I hate lefties. I'm going to make sure left-handed students feel miserable and hate themselves. No, they just, they didn't think is, is what it's about. So, so I'm going to ask this question, then I want to go back to a different question. So, but this is what, this was the first thought I had when I read that analogy. I can speak honestly

with you, right? I'm not, I thought it was an unfortunate analogy or perhaps an unfortunate analogy because immediately what I thought was the first thing I thought, and that's why I immediately wanted to reach out to her, I said, well, what is she saying about black people? What is their disadvantage that they're born with that makes them, that maybe liken them to somebody in a wheelchair? Like, what, what, what could, are you saying that, that I could do something which is not fair to ask, to expect them to be able to do? I'm not, that's not how the analogy is supposed to work, but I was nervous about that. And that's why there's another analogy that you didn't talk about, which is the car crash. But also I need to go back a bit. Sure. And just say, you know, I'm a professor of rhetoric. I'll argue with a parking brake. So you don't need to work.

But also, the right place. But you know, also, I think that the what I really liked about working with this press this press is this book came out of a class I taught for a long time. And what I was trying to get across to my students is you don't go through life stamping things racist or not racist, that these are conversations we have to have. We have to talk them through. And the fact is people don't agree as to what's racist or not. And so and something can be racist in one circumstance and not in another. And so these are just, it's conversations. And ugly, difficult conversations, right? And very unfortunate and unpleasant ones.

But so the, what I was saying is my campus, for instance, was built at a time, most of it was built at a time when they didn't imagine African American students or, or Latinx students or Asian students there. And so they put up statues that make it very clear. So for me, it's about welcoming, you know, that the, that those stairs and things make it very clear to people that you're not welcome. And that's the way a lot of aspects of the campus were. My campus has been working on it very hard, but it's, you know, that's the world in which, that's the built world of ours. So maybe, actually you gave me an entree to my first question I actually wanted to ask you,

because you talk about how people have these arguments and they can't agree. Do you have a working definition of racism? You're going to make me get my own book and figure it out. Yes, I do. But also, I mean... Take your time. Don't worry. I think that's what we need to argue about. So if I understand it, you have a JD, right? Yes, yes.

So you know that the hardest and most important arguments are definitional arguments, are arguments not about does this fit the definition, but what definition should we use? And we should use different definitions under different circumstances, for one thing. But also, that's what we want to argue about. Yes, but when we have a conversation, we all have to agree to be using the word to mean the same thing. Otherwise, it's a meaningless conversation. Actually, you're sounding like John Locke, and he was wrong. I'll take it, but it's true. If I tell you that's a foot high, and you say,

it's not a foot high, but your definition of a foot is different than mine, obviously, it's a silly conversation. We have to agree to what a foot is. No, we don't. We have to know what each other means. Okay. Okay. Then I would just say, okay, I'm going to stipulate to your definition and let's have that conversation.

Then we can argue about mine, but still we have, we still have to both agree to argue about a single, whether something is or is doesn't fit, does or doesn't fit a particular definition. Again, not necessarily because. but if he thinks a foot is one thing and you think a foot's another thing, right?

But like, we actually know what a foot is. So like one of you would be wrong. No, my foot isn't 12 inches. Well, we can actually. An actual foot meaning 12.

No, my actual foot is not 12 inches. So if he says actually both- No, I mean an actual foot, meaning 12. No, my actual foot is not 12 inches. So if he says this is six feet, and I think he means it's six of my feet, we're going to have a misunderstanding. And so where the conversation needs to go is for us to figure out that misunderstanding. Okay, so when you say something is racist- How do you think general, I'm saying like general measurements, like if something's a cup, right? Do you know, like, okay. general measurements like if something's a cup right dinner like okay yeah i guess we're i guess

we're going by like anything can be interpreted as anything no no no not at all but like an actual foot is a measurement well right and so if one of us says oh i mean my foot and the other person says no no i don't i don't mean you're i don't care about your foot i mean you know the like we got three feet of snow but right yeah okay but here's here's the point so uh one of my favorite definitions of rhetoric says that it's understanding misunderstandings and so before what happens a lot of times in disagreements is people first try to solve the problem without defining it and if if we can start out by defining, okay, here's why we're disagreeing. And so, and usually people disagree about racism because they actually have different

definitions of racism. Very few people in our culture now. So, you know, one of the things I've spent a lot of time crawling around dark corners of the internet, arguing with assholes. And even before that, I was on Usenet arguing with assholes. I'm sure some people would say they were arguing with an asshole when they were arguing with me, but that's a different story. What do you mean by asshole? I went to, we disagree about how it's defined. I went to Berkeley and argued with Maoists and Stalinists and Trotskyites and anarcho-communists and libertarians, and it was very fun.

But so what I can say about all of those things is often, again, what happens is that people can't solve the problem because they are using terms in different ways. And so it has to start by saying what's, how are we using these different terms. Tell us what you mean when you say something is racist. Okay, so what I mean is, here, and this is a proposal. Something, an act, a system, a policy, or movie is racist to the extent that it appeals to or reinforces explicitly or implicitly, consciously or unconsciously, essentialized perceptions of racial, in scare quotes, groups in any way that strengthens existing political, economic, or cultural inequalities. So for me, for instance, clowns,

which were racist at one point, aren't racist anymore. The conventional American representation of clowns is Irish. They've got red noses because they're drunks. They've got red hair. They have a clown car which produces too many kids. They've got plaid. So there was a point when the pleasure of clowns was hating the Irish. No one looks at clowns now and goes those damn irish so it's not racist anymore so you're saying that you don't have so you can be racist without any intention okay so that's actually different than kendy's definition yeah it is um but isn't there something wrong here where you can have this word being used so frequently, the accusation being thrown around so frequently, and everybody can have their own private definition of it? Isn't that just a recipe for people being tarred by something unfair?

You know, you call somebody a racist, but actually your definition wasn't actually what the person on Twitter thought you meant when they decided they never want to frequent that person's store again, because they thought you meant he hated black people but what you meant was inadvertently he had some product which you know which has you know it's a that that's this is a this is a recipe for a for an uncivil society if we can't agree huh it's how language works that's what that's how all conversation works you say that this is a violation of the constitution and we're gonna have to talk about what you mean by violation. You say that something is terrorism. We're going to have to talk about what terrorism is. We're going to, if you say I have a right to do something, we're going to have to figure out whether you really mean legal right,

like that's been designated by SCOTUS, or do you mean a sort of transcendental right? Are you going real Kantian at that moment? So in fact, we always have to figure out what the other person means. And that's why rhetoric is about understanding misunderstandings. If we understand what the other person means, then at a certain point, we can say that's a bad definition. I'm not saying that you say to somebody else, well, we'll just sit here and smoke dope and like, you know, peace out on each other's differences. But now you're going to, once we've figured out what the different definitions are, then we'll argue about them. So would you ever call a person a racist? Yeah. So how would you define a person as a racist? Okay. So let's go to the other analogy that I actually kind of like better.

So if I hit your car, okay, if I plow into your car, and you know, you get out and say, Oh, my God, what'd you do? And I say, I didn't mean to hit your car. You'd be like, great, but you did. And then I, you know, we'd sort it out. But if I said I didn't hit your car, because I didn't mean to, so you can't hold me responsible for it, you'd be like, no, you hit my car. I don't care if you meant to or not.

And so that's why focus on intent gets us off in a really bad direction when talking about racism. Because if I did harm to you in some sort of way, I need to work out that. That's not the way it works, in my opinion. Because, for instance, if you hit me with your car by accident, or if you show and shoot me

premeditated, I'm not going to say you're a murderer in both cases, because the outcome was the same. In one case, you're a murderer because you intended to kill me. In the other case, it was an accident, and you're not a murderer. So you can't define it by the outcome. You have to define it by the intent, lest we start putting people in jail for life for accidents. No, because you're jumping to punishment, right? And if you think about

outcomes and instead of thinking about punishment, we're thinking about how to amelior punishment, right? And if you think about outcome, then instead of thinking about punishment, we're thinking about how to ameliorate, right? How to mitigate this. So we're going to mitigate my hitting your car by, we'll call it my insurance company and stuff like that. But here's my point. After a while, if I keep getting in accidents, you're going to say you're a bad driver. It doesn't make sense on that first time.

But after a while, you're going to, and especially if I keep having the same accident over and over, you're going to be like, ah, I'm not sure about the accident part. Well, at that point, I might think you're doing it on purpose. Exactly. And so I think there can come a point where we say this person's racist because they keep doing this. And when you say this person is racist, you mean what? They keep it in your car. What's the definition? What's the definition of a racist person? That they continually engage in racist acts and they either do so intentionally or they do so without any concern about the consequences in the same way that we would say that somebody is a murderer.

If they, okay, so if at some point you're like, oh my gosh, you you know my wife must have accidentally stepped on my gun it was an accident um but but they'll come a point we were like that's a lot of wives can i ask can i jump go ahead jump in a little bit um a lot the definition of racism has changed i think in the general parlance from when I was little, or maybe I just didn't know any better. But now people say that racism has to include institutional power so that a black person can have stereotypes. A black person can have hatred for a white person, potentially. But a black person, at least in America, cannot be racist. Do you believe that that is, is that in accord with your definition of racism? Okay, first off, nobody died and made me Webster, okay?

No, but you have the definition that you work with when you say the word racism. Do you, do you, would you call somebody racist even if they did not have institutional power? Um, you know, power is local, so there could be all sorts of circumstances. What I would say, though, is, to go back to what you said, it's not so much that there are different kinds of racism, and I think that's what people have come to understand, is that you can have cultural racism, biological racism, there are these different kinds, and that's useful to have those sorts of distinctions. As far as whether a person can be engaged in racism if they don't have institutional power, you know, I'm open to

persuasion on that. I tend to say no, but I think what we also have to keep in mind, so I also, for years I taught a course on demagoguery, and I found that students would always try to claim every speech they didn't like was demagoguery. So we have a tendency to do that with racism, and I think we need the category of asshole, right? Right, but can I ask a question? So I mean, so I'm, I want to, I am very skeptical of this, but I don't want it to come across as being an asshole, because I, so I'm going to, I am very skeptical of this, but I don't want it to come across as being a hassle because I, so I'm going to, I just want to take a breath. So on the one hand, it seems to me you're saying that you can be racist or do something racist in a very accidental way. Right. On the other hand, you're saying that if you're sufficiently powerless, like a homeless guy on the street, you could say, you fucking Jew bastard,

kike motherfucker. And we say, well, that's not racism. No, I wouldn't say that. And this is why I think it depends upon whether there's a sort of, it's reinforcing institutional practices. Okay. You had a bunch of podcasts where you talked about the Michael Che, what he said. And that was where you went with that. You went with the, is this reinforcing an existing stereotype? And it doesn't really matter if Jews are powerful or not. What matters is that stereotype has done incredible damage. Yeah. But I, but I didn't, but I said it wasn't anti-Semitic just to be clear. I said, I said, I found, I, I, I winced at the joke because, because I'm, I'm the target of the joke. And I felt it was on, I felt the implication of the joke was unfair,

but I realized I also recognize that reasonable people could differ, but I, but the whole point of the podcast with me saying, but I, I know him and I, I think, I think it's very unfair to say that it was antisemitic or he's antisemitic. Yeah. But you're, you're going back to identity, right? Whether he's antisemitic or not. If that had been a white person making a similar joke about an issue that Black people took seriously, the white person would have immediately been called racist. Maybe, but I... Of course. No, no, you have to give me that

one. Of course they would. Well, I don't know. I'd have to think of examples, but I think, and I also think it was really complicated to think, but what I'm trying to say is, you know, you went to the question of outcome, and I think that's what we need to be talking about. Because if we talk about identity, then we're talking about whether somebody is a moral leper. And now we're talking about eliminating people from or silencing people or whatever, as opposed to let's, you know, and maybe there are people who should be, not maybe, there are people who should be silenced, right? I mean, I think there are people who should just shut the fuck up. I've never been silenced, but yeah, go ahead. I don't believe anybody should be silenced, but I think there are definitely people who should shut up.

Yeah. But what we can talk about is, if we can talk about outcome, then also we're back to talking about mitigating. What would mitigate this stuff if there's a certain damage done. In the book I talk about an instance where I unintentionally appeared to be reinforcing a really racist narrative that I didn't even know existed. I certainly wasn't reinforcing it, but it would have sounded that way. And so a student pointed that out and I had to go back to class the next time and say, I was not saying this. If I had focused on intention, I would have felt like I didn't mean it, so I don't have to do anything. So once we talk about outcomes, you know, we can, so,

and this is a dumb analogy, but it's kind of like, you know, the issue of racism is in civil and not criminal court. Yeah, there is something in the overall, I have to say, that I do like about everything that you're saying. It's not so much that I agree with you, but you're presenting a framework for other people on this topic that you're looking to, to, to, to catch people and then meet out punishment. That is not the vibe I getting from you at all. As a matter of fact, I almost get the contrary vibe from you. And that, to that extent, I, I really agree because. It seems like a very forgiving, she reminds me of the woman.

I got into a car accident many years ago and, and the woman was so nice that it was all my fault and she reminds me of you she came she she actually sent me a card that year um it was for the holidays or whatever but but um anyway uh yeah because to the extent that the thing with michael che happened that was my thing that really bothered me i read that quote by that Jewish leader who was really nasty about it. I said, why do they have to go there? You're offended by the joke.

And I identify with being offended by the joke. And you can bring it up and you can discuss it with them. But just the ramrod attack into this guy and his character and assuming the worst. I hate that. Go ahead, Ben.

Jump in. I think what Noam is saying is that the word racist now is such a scarlet letter in our society that even though you may not, if you call an act racist, you may not mean that the person is a bad person. You may just mean he did something inadvertent. But society, when hearing that word, will think that the person is a bad person you may just mean he did something inadvertent but society when hearing that word will think that the person is a bad person so that you the racism the word racist has become so um such a pejorative well it's always been pejorative but

now it's become career ending well that's why i wrote the book right i'm in rhetoric i'm trying to persuade people you know what happened to Mike Peska, right? No. Oh, okay. Then I won't take the time. But you should research the Mike Peska thing. And then he's a friend of mine. Well, to make it very quick, he defended...

Oh, I know who you're talking about. Okay, yeah. He defended the guy. McNeil was at his name in the Times. He defended McNeil in the times who got fired McNeil in the time got fired because when somebody posed a question to him and use the N word in the question, he repeated the N word in his answer. And then two years later he got fired despite the fact that the,

the African-American editor of the times didn't have the inclination to fire him at first. Um. And then Pesca on his Slack channel said that he thought, no, he said, sometimes, you know, just discussing the word should be allowed. And he got fired for that. That is the world which you don't seem to be a part of to me. And that is what I like. Because, I mean, when you place that kind of landmines around people, like until you can Google the N-word spelled out and find many, many references in the New York Times, Washington Post, Rolling Stone Magazine.

I mean, it's all over the place. You can see it in movies. I mean, it's been quoted. John Lenn can see it in movies. I mean, it's been quoted. John Lennon had it in a song. Randy Newman has it in a song. And then all of a sudden, norms change. And now you're not supposed to quote it under any circumstances. And we all kind of, okay, now we get that. Because I have to admit, when I was younger, I don't anymore. Even with my Black employees, if there was an incident where a customer called somebody the N-word, we would discuss it.

And the black employee would say it and I would say it in the conversation. Now that's changed. But then all of a sudden, now there's a landmine. So now Peska says, well, I don't really agree that McNeil should have been fired for this.

I think it's okay to... And now he's fired. And now people who... And he's fired by the people who claim they really want to have frank discussions about race. Well, you can't have frank discussions around race if you're going to put so many career ending and basically life, quality of life ending landmines. And I use the analogy landmine because you don't know that they're there until you step on them. And this is terrible. And if you read, you know, all the surveys that are going

around now, 60, 70% of people at colleges are keeping views to themselves because they're afraid to share them. Well, let's say you're, let the people, she's nodding her head as if, you know, she's skeptical of that. And maybe you're right, but let's say it's just half that. Let's say it's 30%. No, no, no. The reason I'm saying yeah, yeah, is that there are surveys back that far into the 70s and 60s. Well, I know that when I went to college, it was different, for sure. We could talk about stuff. I went to see, I've discussed it, I went to see Noam Chomsky, followed by Mayor Kahana speak, both of whom who had views that I found offensive in one way or another. And nobody blinked an eye at the idea that these offensive speakers, you know, should be able to

speak and we could decide what we want, you know, about it. And I found those lectures to be memorable, you know, and both those speakers had things I had to grapple with. And now we're not, it's like, we want to protect. You shouldn't, thou shalt not have to grapple with anything any longer. Okay. Well, I've been in colleges since 1977. Yeah. Okay. And I can say it's no worse.

It's that there's this sort of myth of this wonderful time. And it's just that you didn't happen to hit the stuff that was not, that you weren't permitted to say. You know, Harry Edwards almost got fired for various things. He said, I mean, it's, there, there have always been landmines. Different people are stepping on them. But, but what I think you're saying, I think where you and I are vehemently agreeing is, is that these issues keep getting turned into moral, whether somebody is a moral leper, right? That that that racists are um racist acts are things that are done by racist people racist people are evil and therefore

if someone does a racist act they need to be our community needs to be purified of them and i i think that's a mistake in in regard to a lot of stuff um i think we shift to identity way too fast um and by identity i don't mean black versus white versus whatever. What I actually mean is good or bad person that, that we're still kind of Puritan, you know, and we still have this kind of sloppy Calvinism of thinking that people are either good people or bad people. And that what our world needs is to be filled with good people and purified of

bad people. And that's never worked. It doesn't work no matter what you're talking about. I agree. The other thing that has to be mentioned in this, though, where I have really mixed feelings, is that I think a lot of times these decisions get made not on the basis of any kind of principle, but either to avoid a lawsuit or else because they're going to lose business. And so these are really not principled decisions about racism and social justice. They're either, sometimes they're CYA and sometimes they're just, you know, it's just a business decision. I would agree with with that uh dan you have anything you want to add to that and i'm next topic i'm almost done but but i um no i'm i'm curious though what what

courses you teach at you at ut because i um sounds like uh something i'd be where i at ut right now i'd probably want to take one of your classes but what what are you teaching there? Well, I just retired. Boy, did I pick a good time to retire. But I retired so I could write more and I could do more things like this. But I taught a course on demagoguery, another on propaganda, racism, deliberating war, free speech. And these are all rhetoric courses, right? So these aren't, I'm not going in there like a lawyer teaching about the law regarding free speech. I go in talking about how people argue about free speech and what are their assumptions. And, you know, so, you know, as I said at the beginning, what I'm interested in is times that communities had all the information

they needed to make good decisions, and they talked themselves into very bad decisions. Do you think that free speech, of course, it's in our constitution, but aside from that, do you think the kind of free speech that we advocate in the United States is the best way to go, or do you think there's any place, other than incitement, which most people agree should be limited, do you think there's any place for limiting than incitement, which most people agree should be limited, do you think there's any place for limiting free speech? Like in Europe, for example, if I said black people are stupid, if I said that, I'm not saying it, in France, that would be illegal, I believe, or subject to fine, right?

Do you believe that that's appropriate, or are you more in accord with the American model, where free speech is almost absolute in terms of what's best for society there's there's really interesting research um out there both historical and even quantitative that shows that people are tremendously supportive of free speech that they don't really disagree with and that's americans so um i think that we have this ideal of free speech to which we as individuals don't very often live up. And so... But should we? What's best for us as a society? Well, yeah, we have a tendency to judge whether something is offensive. For one thing, we focus

on whether something's offensive. And I don't think that's a good, that's the right way to talk about stuff. We need to talk about whether stuff is harmful because it's possibly offended by something that's not harmful at all. I might be offended. I'm mostly Irish. I might be offended by clowns, knowing the history of them as I do. That's not actually a good reason to ban them or something.

They're not doing any harm, right? And my feelings don't constitute harm. My feelings getting hurt. So that, so I think that's, that's important to keep in mind is that again, we have this sort of fantasy of a time that there was all this free speech and it's now getting restricted and it just doesn't work out that way. We also have a big problem.

I think of this business, the problem of businesses and, and, you know, if it's really going to hurt somebody's business, should they be prohibited from firing somebody for saying something that's super offensive and that's going to, you know, lead to a boycott? And really, that's where most of the free speech issues are. It seems to me they're mostly in Facebook or, you know, privately owned things, newspapers. I think they absolutely should be prohibited. And you know what would happen if they were prohibited? All the threat of boycotts would disappear

because once everybody knows the business owner has no recourse, how can you whip people up against them? Really, it's like this whole notion of putting pressure on businesses to do something is because people know that these people are, you know, maybe at will employees. Although I think some of these people are probably going to have good cases based on their union contracts that are getting kicked down the road now. Because it used to be unions were very adamant that the only thing you should get fired for is your performance at work. And no good union would say, yeah, if they can find some letter that you wrote to a friend and it's offensive, you should get fired for that too. Or if you post something to your friends on Facebook,

it's not even public. Facebook is different than Twitter because Facebook, presumably, you're just talking to your friends. And you should get fired for something you say to your friends because somebody finds it offensive. I've had employees who I've known have said horrible things about Jews. I would never fire them. And this is an example I always give. What happens when an employee of mine walks in with a Farrakhan t-shirt? And I find that this guy just praised Hitler. Should I be allowed to fire them?

Most liberals say, of course, you can't fire somebody for wearing a Farrakhan t-shirt. I'm like, you're right. I shouldn't be able to fire somebody for wearing a Farrakhan t-shirt, period. It's not that hard. We can survive that sort of rough and tumble world, I think. I think we'll be better off for it,

because there is a concept of, we're all prone to this, of blood in the water. And, you know, when you know that you have recourse, you begin to, I'm speaking about myself too here at certain times in my life, you begin to look for that foothold that you know exists and you find a way to find it if you're looking for it, you know. And it you know and i think we're moving in the wrong direction so anyway i have one i have one other uh let's talk about just one aspect of this we could go on forever about this especially because you're such a um nice guest um let's try to integrate uh uh adrian a little bit into the conversation

i'll bring the topic this is this is really one thing I'm really worried about. And that is the movement to get rid of objective standards and testing. Which is, the arguments are anti-racist arguments for the most part that are behind this. And I feel like, and this brings me back to the very beginning. And I'm happy that I don't think that's what actually you were saying but i feared that's what you were saying because it always seems to me the feeling there that the under the under text there is well you know you can't really expect these black kids to score as high as everyone else on these math tests. And I think that's horrible. I think if I were a black parent and my kid wasn't doing well in math, and then the administration came, said, we figured it out. We're just not going to test them on math anymore. I would go there with pitchforks in that school and say, God damn it,

no, you're going to teach my kid to do math until he can do as well as the other kids on that test. Because when he wants to go get a job as an accountant somewhere, they're going to teach my kid to do math until he can do as well as the other kids on that test. Because when he wants to go get a job as an accountant somewhere, they're going to expect him to do math as well as the next person to or any job that you have to manipulate numbers. And if you're going to define these things out of existence, I mean, we're going to wake up 10 years later and see things get even worse. And I don't know. How do you feel about that? Well, OK, I'm you and i could have a long long conversation about the term objective but we won't um instead objective i mean it's the same math test you have to do the following 20 multiplication problems you know that's pretty objective not necessarily somebody picked the problems so um i think i mean somebody picked

the problems i'm saying just numbers on a page how can you pick not directly pick numbers on a page no because they're they're either doing quadratic equations or they're doing those those are numbers you know or they're doing trigonometry whatever they're supposed to learn at that year that grade level the fourth grade like my daughter's in fourth grade she's responsible for multiplication whatever it is yeah there's no cultural bias to these problems she's getting there might be but no no no just some somebody decides that those are the that those are the tests okay so go to outcomes all right if if a student is applying to um study engineering it's perfectly appropriate

for there to be math tests that they get that are the kind of math somebody thinks they, you know, that these courses require that you have learned prior to that. If somebody is going to be studying English, they don't necessarily, they don't need trigonometry for English. So, so, you know, if I, for me, it's a question, I would stay away from the word objective and instead go to the words relevant yeah but if you don't if you don't make sure that the kid in fourth grade is on track with math he's never gonna he's never gonna become an engineer and that's that may be actually what we're seeing when we're trying to understand why there's so few so few minorities and people of color in some of

these um occupations it's not because of what's going on in the acceptance to those programs in colleges. It's because nobody kept them on track in second, third, fourth, fifth grade when they were learning the basics and they never recovered from that. How can you recover from that? It's so complicated. So for instance, one of the things that happens with girls in middle school is they tend to get worse at math. Right. And tend to get worse at math. Right. And if they get worse at math, we got to get them back on track and not stop testing them because they'll never be engineers if they get worse at math. Okay.

But then you want to try to figure out why they're getting worse at math and simply giving them the same tests and engaging in punitive standards or whatever. But if you don't give them the test or you give them the test, they still got worse at math. Yeah, maybe. So if you don't test it, how can you even see whether you've addressed it? In other words, the only way you can see, we have a problem. Women are getting worse at math. We need to focus on this and get them better. But we're also not going to have any tests.

Well, then how are you ever going to know if you got them better or not? Well, you know, okay. See, I think one of the reasons we're having a really confusing conversation is you're talking about a different world from mine. I mean, you're talking about what unions can do. Do you know where I live? I live in Texas. You know what unions can do in Texas? Unless it's a police union, they can't do jack. I'm talking about kids being- Okay. Same thing with, I don't know what, I have no clue what you're talking about with talking about people getting rid of testing. Texas is the land of testing.

No, New York City, they're trying to, well, there's all over the country, there's movements to get rid of testing and there's movements to have, and get rid of SATs and all. Oh, okay, now I understand what you're talking about. Yeah, no. I'm talking about a grammar school,

but SATs is the final version of it. Yeah. So one of the problems is that the tests that are done, if you're talking about like the No Child Left Behind Act, those are really bad tests. If you run an engineering school, at some point you're going to have to test these kids on math. If you don't want to use the math SAT, okay, get rid of the math SAT, but then you have to replace it with another math test that you're going to have to give everybody

unless you think you can just randomly pick people and assume they'll do this. And maybe you could do that if you had statistical evidence that people basically did the same when they were younger and really there wasn't that much difference between people. But when you have huge disparities between people. Yeah. I that what what's getting confused here is that when people are talking about getting rid of the sat as a requirement for college admissions they're talking about it for college admissions not necessarily for particular majors and so i'm going to tell you one last story and then we go, maybe you should come on again. So I, my, my, my, my son, my stepson had all kinds of learning disabilities. And he was going to what is considered the Rolls Royce School for Kids with Learning Disabilities, a low school in Queens, New York. You can look it up and it and I saw great they're gonna help him oh great and every year he went and he seemed to be learning the same things and they

told us he was gonna get a Regents diploma and I realized he wasn't on track for the Regents diploma didn't he make any progress we go in and meet them and they would forgive me they have all kinds of jargon and reasons and they never and finally I I got really mad and I convinced him. I said, I don't like this one bit. We're taking him out and I'm putting him back in regular Ardsley High School as a sophomore. Or as a junior, I guess. Do you know that this kid got a 92 on his trig regents and 88 like like he's he he made more progress in two years in school where they treated him as if he could do it than in 10 years where the experts were supposedly treating

him to his ability i mean it was it was i mean it was so disgusting to see what they were justifying in terms of not being demanding not testing him finding every excuse in the world rather than to i guess their fear is to bring out maybe that he could i don't know maybe they get their money according to performance who knows what cynical reason was behind it but boy i mean i've made few decisions in my life which were as important as that one, just on my gut. I'm like, no, this is ridiculous. Old fashioned is better here. I'm putting him in the real school and I'm going to help him. And it turns out this kid was able to do it and quite well, just with, you know, some day to day help, you know, overseeing him to keep him on track.

He had no problem with intelligence. And I see, it seems to me, they're about to do this Lowell School routine on huge swaths of our communities here. And I really, it pains me to say, I really feel in some way they're just trying to make the problem go away by defining it out of existence. Do you think that he would have done better there if they'd given him tests? He did not start to do better until he had to learn for tests. But if they gave tests and didn't do anything about it, it doesn't sound to me like the testing was either the problem or the solution.

I mean, I know the kind of thing you're talking about. I've had students that I think were, you know, taught to doubt their own abilities. There's a lot of not great ways of teaching. We got to wrap it up. I want to conclude with like a little thing and if you think it's unfair, you can tell me otherwise, I want to wrap it up.

There are two wildly world views here. One, which I think I represent, which I think everybody, but maybe Periel, who's, you know, can't account for Periel, might, might disagree with, which is that, um, I'll take that as a compliment. Yes. Take it as a compliment. That there's, that there's really no gray area when it comes to math,

that either you can do multiplication or you can't. And the way you do it is you give somebody a hundred multiplication problems and you see if they get them right or they're wrong. And there's another worldview out there, which thinks it's not that, it's not that simple. Actually there can be bias within the multiplication problems themselves, or this can be biased within the very, very requirement of thinking that people ought to be able to do these

problems. And that's a fascinating divide. Let me just put it out there. That's a fascinating divide. Is that unfair how I described it? Totally unfair. I mean, I think you're- Correct it, correct it. Okay. I think you're right that those two views exist, but I think that there are a lot of other views that exist as well. And I'm in one that you didn't mention, which is, you know, I'm thoroughly in favor of teaching math. But I think that there are lots of different ways of teaching. We still don't really know the best ways of teaching it. And testing doesn't help us figure that out because the way we do testing is not very good. And so, but yeah.

What are the ways there to test multiplication, then give some multiplication problems? Because you keep going to something specific like multiplication, but somebody is going to make a decision that it's multiplication and that there's going to be a way that they grade the right answer. There are lots of different ways of multiplying it right now. People, it's really fascinating. Somebody asked us, I think, on Twitter or something something of like how do you do this particular math problem my father who was a pathologist and incredibly good at math pretty nearly a genius at math how do you know couldn't help me with my math homework because my math teachers were very rigid that we had to do it in this in this very specific way um and you know so I actually I agree i agree with you to i don't think that's what's going on i don't think there's a significant about i don't think a significant

amount of what we're talking about can be attributed to this but i do agree with you that there are some kids who are gifted in some way actually who can come to an answer differently but can come to that answer predictably correct over and over and over and over again. And it would be wrong probably to penalize them for that. But I don't think, I think what we're really talking about here is kids who are getting the answers wrong, not coming to the right answer incorrectly. I think, you know. Okay. You know, people always want to go to math when you have these kind of discussions.

Because it's much easier because you can bring in cultural, if you have a word problem that uses items in the house, you can say, well, poor houses don't have these things. So I'm trying to avoid that because you could persuade me. You could, I've seen sat questions from the 70s i'm like how could they ever think that that was a fair question i actually can

remember as a little boy being asked a question and the question used the word chord like a musical chord and i can remember thinking this is not fair that they're asking this question i play an instrument my friend doesn't so i i know that i know i've read that apparently they've been studying this and hopefully they've wrung most of that out of the system. But I'm open to that. But math is different. Math is different. Right. And but what that means, it's to some extent, I mean, I'm not a relativist about math. I'm not a relativist at all. I think relativism is silly. But but I'm a skeptic. But also what I'd say, if you look at my reviews or anything, one of the things you'll see about me is I'm a really tough teacher and have a reputation as being a really, really hard teacher, which I could one thing that we do know about teaching is that you can't do it with too many students. Reducing class size doesn't necessarily make the situation better, but it helps.

Parent involvement is tremendously important, and that's really, really clear. I think parenting involvement may be the biggest problem we have as a society. It is, but if you don't have a lot of money, it's hard to live close to good schools. I mean, there are just all these sorts of things that go into it. And so it's just, you know, I mean, I hate to be a classic academic,

but it's true that the situations are really complicated. But here we go back to, that's why we have to talk about them and not just label somebody else, not just say, I refuse to talk to you because you have this point of view that I have decided means you're a moral leper. All right. We got to wrap it up. I, I, I find that I agree with you much more than I thought I would.

You're really a very nice woman and very appreciative of you. It's hard to have conversations like this and keep them so civil. And that's a credit to you not to me so uh anybody else sign off um hopefully we'll have maybe when something else hot drops on on this topic as it always does you can come back on and would like to give adrian the chance to tell us where i don't know she said i guess where to get her special, I guess, would be the same place you get her album. You can go to my website, AdrienneAppaloochee.com, or you could stream it on Pandora, Spotify. Of course, Adrienne Appaloochee is not one of those names that's obvious to spell.

That is true. It's not an easy name. I-A-P-A-L-U-C-C-I. Yeah. Adrian is not obvious. It's A-D-R-I-E. I'm sorry. A-D-R-I-E-N-N-E, right?

Yeah. Which I think is not the typical way. Rocky's wife, I believe, was A-D-R-I-A-N, I think. That's generally how boys spell it. But A-D-R-I-A-N. Google is. That's generally how boys spell it, but ADRIAN. Google is very forgiving with Adrian, I'm sure, but Iapolucci, as long as you get the I-A, I think I-A-P in a comedian.

I'm going to press that theory out right now. I'm Googling Adrian I-AP, and then it comes right up. Adrian, spell correctly, yes. Google is amazing. I mean, you can criticize the modern era for all the stuff that we don't like about it. But my God, could you imagine going back to pre-internet days? I mean, we are so smart.

It's amazing. We were probably no less happy back then. But that's a whole other discussion. You're right. I don't know that we're any happier any happier now but but that's just human nature we just happiness i don't know going to the library and taking a microfiche didn't didn't thrill me the way googling something did and whatever okay we gotta go this is a very nice episode um can we what isn't it insane not to ask trish uh what her

week is about the interview yeah i mean go ahead well we're going to stick around a little bit longer we've already taken up an hour of her time but if she's willing to stay i certainly would love to hear her opinion if she saw the interview i i tell you you know if if we end this i'll just have to go outside and argue with the parking brake so you know um no what what what is the issue well the the megan marco harry uh the prince harry interview if you had seen it if you have any thoughts about it if you haven't seen it obviously then i know, I have a lot of trouble feeling sorry for anybody that rich. I'm sorry. Good for you.

Yeah. So I could not bring myself to watch it. Oh, but rich people can certainly be. I mean, plenty of rich people commit suicide, so we know they're not immune from unhappiness. No, but I don't have to feel sorry for them. Okay, you certainly don't. So wait, what about rich people who are being, who are like at the receiving end of racism?

Yeah, it's, I mean, that was a very snarky thing of me to say and a snarky way to put it, but it's just not, you know, it's just not um you know it's just not something um i mean what i was interested in about all that was the the fact that the british tabloids were so nasty and that we and that they really got very racist in it. And that really surprised me because I have this sort of unreasonable tendency to think that British press handles things better, maybe just because I read The Economist. So that aspect of it really surprised me, but it didn't seem like it was really going very far in that direction of talking about those sorts of problems. You know what, Patricia, I think you put your finger on an insight, which I didn't seem like it was really going very far in that direction of talking about those sorts of problems. You know what, Patricia?

I think you put your finger on an insight, which I don't think anybody's made. It didn't occur to me, which is that, yes, she's a rich and famous woman. I'm a successful person. If somebody, if I told you a story and my mother-in-law called me a Jew, this and that, and she wanted to know if the kid would have it. I mean, how sorry would you feel for me? It says a lot about my mother-in-law. What she describes says a lot about whoever it is that treated her that way.

And that's interesting to us to know that those people, if it's true, are like that. But that's not the same thing as saying, I feel so sorry for Meghan Markle because the truth is, if you're famous and rich and have more, you know, F you money and somebody says something to you that's offensive,

you'll survive. You know, it's like... I don't think she's asking anybody to feel sorry for her, though. I do think that... I mean, I... You know what? The circumstances do kind of imply that she is, yeah.

I don't know. I think the exposing the model... Or telling her story about why she left the royal family, why the, you know, without wanting pity, but just saying, here's why we went to America. I didn't, again, I didn't see the end of it. You know, I have another thing. I don't, I know we're going on too long.

I really don't like when people take these things public. I had terrible fights with my father at certain times, really bad. Even after at all. And I was so offended by that. I said, you know, you're being used here for partisan purposes. Nobody's voting for the Democrats because Ron Reagan Jr. speaks at the convention. This is just a way for them to use your dysfunctional relationship with your father to humiliate're, you're allowing that. And I know you in certain scenarios, I could be convinced that what I'm saying is not correct, but in general, my, my general reflex is you don't have to do this out in front of the world. There's something British for lack of a better word about keeping a stiff upper lip,

privately distancing yourself and saying it's none of the world's fucking business this is between me and my family move on i i would respect that i have to say unless unless they think it's urgent that we know something and then and then there's other ways to do it all so i don't know i don't like the whole there's an exhibitionist quality to it maybe i mean i i don't know them i feel bad passing judgment but my ink my my instinct is that there's something slightly exhibitionist about it why yeah i don't like it and that's and i'm not that's not a defense of the royal family to be clear not a defense at all okay i have to go

i i have to make sure my kids do their homework uh professor is really, really, really, really a pleasure to meet you. How's Manny's guitaring? Manny played some that's his son is Manny. And you posted a video of him playing guitar. Oh, Danny Boy. Oh, nice.

Far from Irish. But I was very impressed. Go ahead. Thank you, Danny. He plays it better after a shot. I was very impressed yeah go ahead thank you dad he plays it better after a shot i was very impressed by it my grandmother sang it better after a shot too you as a known as a professional musician um it is is the kid i mean what do i know he's impressed me but what do i know but you're a professional musician. Does the kid have talent? I don't know yet. Well, if you want to know, he doesn't yet show the signs of a particularly musical ear,

like playing by ear yet. He's only in second grade. He doesn't show that yet. I can't say he doesn't have it. But what he does have already that you can't teach, he does play with, he actually plays with feeling. There's a part in that thing where he slows down at the end and breathes and plays poignantly way above his years.

And I didn't teach him that. He started doing it on his own and he does it over and over. So, you know, one of the interesting things I find about the human condition is that there's so many abilities, math ability, musical ability, intellectual abilities that can be sliced and diced into, you know, a dozen or dozens of discrete sub abilities, which work together to create what we see as a musical ability, but it actually can be quite independent. And one of those things in musical ability is soul for lack of a better word, you know, this sentimentality, schmaltz, Jewish people would say. And I've worked, I'm a musician,

you don't know that, Professor. And I've worked with brilliant people with perfect pitch, who just didn't make you feel anything. And I work with people with marginal other, and they say, my God, if you just make you cry, you know? And so that's a long answer. My son seems to have that. He could make you cry talent. The other stuff, the jury is out. You need all of it, or you need a good amount of all of it to become a substantial musician but as a hobbyist musician that may carry them further than anything else because you can you can learn to the technical aspects anyway so that's

my long answer I think everything overthink everything dance and the number one thing I think is motivation. I mean if he's not willing to put in the hours and he puts it in. Anyhow, somebody has something else to say Adrian any any other final thoughts. Now I have to let my puppy out of her create so. Perry else and the professor the link to my facebook thing

where she could see my son played that Danny boy. It's all it's only it's only 90 seconds or so. I think you'll enjoy it. It's really quite sweet. Podcast at ComedyCellar.com for questions, comments, suggestions, constructive or destructive criticism. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.

Thanks for having me guys.