The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Cancel Culture with Mike Pesca and Tanael Joachim

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Mike Pesca is host of The Gist,and guest hosts the NPR Programs All Things Considered and the news quiz, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. His work has been featured on This American Life, Radiolab, and Planet Money. He has frequently appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and The PBS Newshour, and written for The Washington Post, The Guardian, GQ, Slate, and Baseball Prospectus. Tanael Joachim (TJ) is a stand up comic, a regular at the Comedy Cellar and an Op-Ed contributor for the New York Times. His first special, January 3 is available on Amazon Prime. 

This is Live from the Table, recorded at the world-famous Comedy Cellar, coming at you on Sirius XM 99 Raw Dog. And on the Laugh Button Podcast Network, we have with us today, a full house we have, Tennille, Joaquim, or TJ, as we call him, Comedy Cellar regular, and Comedy Cellar podcast returnee. Welcome, TJ. Thank you for having me. Mike Peska is here. He's been on the show before. Mike Peska is an American radio journalist and podcaster. He is the host of the daily podcast

The Gist and editor of, upon further review, the greatest what-ifs in sports history. Perrielle Ashenbrand is joining us from Jamaica. She's on vacation, but such is her loyalty to the show that she is zooming in from her hotel room.

It looks like a nice hotel. It's not bad. And is that the ocean behind you? I can't quite see. It's actually the Caribbean Sea, but... Well, the Caribbean Sea, I think, is part of the Atlantic Ocean. I'm not sure on that, but that could be Googled easily enough. Or just look at a map.

They touch. Well, all the oceans touch. I mean, the Atlantic and the Pacific touch, right? Like at the Cape Horn, right? And the Panama Canal. Yeah, so it's all one big body of water at the end of the day. And the Mediterranean Sea,

that touches the... So anyway, Noam Dorman, of course, is here. Noam is also joining us remotely via Zoom because COVID has struck the Dorman household. You can run, but you can't hide, folks. After two years of assiduous mask wearing, social distancing, and hand washing, COVID has come to the Dorman house,

and we wish Juanita Dorman, Noam's wife, a speedy recovery from this seemingly never-ending virus Noam is so far symptom-free we wish him continued health and uh and uh yes so anyway uh but but Noam uh is being cautious and I just I just realized the t-shirt I'm wearing I sleep in this t-shirt uh oh whatever it says my teacher says matzo balls I'm wearing. I sleep in this T-shirt. Oh, whatever. My T-shirt says matzo balls. I'm guilty as charged. Yes, my daughter. I'm doing my podcast now.

Get out. How long has Juanita had it? She's had it since this morning. She woke up with a high fever and very, very, very sick. Like not the way you're supposed to be if you've had four Moderna vaccines. And she was vomiting. It's awful. It's just awful.

Wow. How is she now? Just tired or is she still nauseous? I mean, I went into the room a couple of times with a mask on just to make sure she was breathing. That's how sick she was. And but she seems to be a little bit better now. A little bit better. Did she take that Paxlovid? Paxlovid?

Yeah, she took the Paxlovid. And I think that she threw it up, to be honest. I'm not sure. That's not how it's supposed to be taken. I'm not a doctor. Hold on. What is Paxlovid? Does everybody know what that is? I thought it was Paxlovid, but maybe it is. I'm also not a doctor. The liberal version? It really works. But I just had somebody

bust my, so I'm taking it too, like prophylactically as a prophylaxis. And you're wearing a condom. And I had somebody give me shit for it because they said that it was, you know, it's authorized as a EUA,

Emergency Youth Authorization, EUA. It's not FDA approved. And he thought like, why would you take something that's not FDA approved? I'm like, but J&J is not FDA approved. I don't know. Do you think it's an antiviral? I feel like it's pretty generic technology, but maybe I'm wrong. Why would you be thinking that?

The authorization just means they sped along the process for it. There's no evidence that it does anything bad and tons of evidence that it does things good. It's just that it got faster approval because it was so necessary. Yeah. I get that. But, um, right. But I'm not in an emergency. So I don't, I don't want to get COVID. My feeling is that the risk of getting COVID, especially with long COVID, is still not necessarily prevented by the vaccine. Why would I want to risk getting COVID if I know that I'm I got to be above 90 percent? I mean, you're saying is the anti-vaxxers one.

If my wife and I had a loving marriage, I'd be virtually at 100%. But even still, we sleep in the same bed. Well, you're not going to sleep in the same room as her, are you? Not now, but I have been sleeping up until the time that she has these symptoms. So my risk of getting it is very, very high. And I figured I would take this medicine in advance. Anyway, let's get to Pesca because. OK, well, can we first also before we forget, we because we didn't address it last week

because it hadn't happened yet. But Gilbert Gottfried, we should mention. Oh, yeah. Who died last week at the age of 67 after a long illness. Apparently he had myotonic muscular dystrophy, I believe it's called. And he had heart problems that were related to that. He hadn't been well the past couple of years. In any case, he died on Thursday. He was not really a regular here at the comic. He was a regular at the Olive Tree Cafe because he would come for food. He would come for free food.

It's no secret that Gilbert never turned down a free meal. And in that spirit, I went to his Shiva, which is the, you know, after a Jewish funeral, they have a Shiva where everybody gets together and there's food. Is that awake? It's like, well, I guess you could call it the Jewish version of awake. I think the wake, the person's there usually. Yeah, the person you'll look at.

Right. The casket is open and you see them. Or not. A shiva, the person has already been buried and then you go and you eat. So it's more civilized except there's a lot of myths like no mirrors and tearing of garments. It's not exactly

21st century mourning. The way we do wakes in Haiti is you do it the night before the funeral. The body's not there, it's just food and drinks and games. And people just hang out till three, four in the morning. Now, TJ, don't take this question the wrong way. That's a bad way to start, but like there's a lot of movies about Haiti, but the only movies about Haiti have like, I don't know if it's called voodoo,

but like some like some real like scary Yeah, every shit is that real? Go with the one thing that everybody knows. And there's a there's a movie about it made by some Harvard guy back in the I want to say early nineties. Serpent in the Stone or something. Or the Serpent in the Rainbow. Yeah. And it was basically what they really ended up finding out is that the thing that people use is like that powder that is stereotypically people blow it in your face and then you die and you become a zombie.

It's sort of a drug that's put it puts you in a state that sort of between life and death. And then people can just make you work as like this. But that stuff really goes on. There's stories. I've never seen anything with my own eyes, but I've heard enough stories from people that I trust to know that there's something a little weird going there. Now, does the belief in zombies affect the wake ever?

Not really. No. People just get drunk at wakes. They still feel there's like a 0% chance this person's going to be walking. Right. Right. Yeah. And you can only turn into a zombie by the person who murdered you. So if you died of natural causes, you probably can't become a zombie. So just like a vampire. Interesting. Yeah. And you can only turn into a zombie by the person who murdered you. So if you died of natural causes, you probably can't become a zombie. So just like a vampire. Interesting. Yeah. I will say, by the way, I was doing a bit of a Gilbert YouTube kind of a binge, as they often do when people die.

You know, when Glenn Frey died, it was a week or so of Eagles YouTube videos, you know, and that's it. But we died the same thing. So Gilbert died. I watched his videos laughing and I don't laugh much at comedy anymore. So that says something. And he was very unique. And I will say he was unique. I don't know that we have, you know, in that era, I don't know. No one doesn't like to talk too much about comedy. I'll keep it brief. But in that era, it seemed to me we had a lot of very original characters in comedy like Dice Clay, like like

Bobcat Goldthwait, like Sam Kinison, like Stephen Wright. And although since Stephen Wright, there have been others that are similar, but I think he was the first to do that sort of thing. Emo Phillips. Emo Phillips. And I don't know that we've seen that.

Can you name anybody that's come out in the past 10 years, say, that is that character oriented? Well, Perry Hall hasn't made it yet, but... Yes, there are a lot of people like that. They're just not famous yet. I just don't think the industry is looking for those people anymore. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Well, I know a lot of comics would do stuff like that. Do you? I just had voices. Yeah. I don't see them here anyway. And it does seem that comedy is sort of. Taken of I don't know if it's taken a change of trajectory, but this notion of comics as truth tellers has sort of taken hold. Yeah. Comedy is important. Now we have to speak truth to power and all kinds of other nonsense.

People like to say, all right, I'm going to piss everyone off. I was literally reading a philosophical tract about comedy and they were pointing out that there's this divergence where, well, comedians are the truth tellers, but also they don't believe everything they say. Like, how could both those things be true? And he was analyzing the idea or the question of how often do comedians actually stand by their premises? And the answer is something like only as much as, you know, you want to pin it to them. There's no real answer to that. Yeah. The thing is, funny is the end all be all when you're a comedian. But they said. But I do think the new trend is to think differently.

I mean, I listen to some of these comedy podcasts where it's like, if you're not vulnerable and if you're not telling your own truth, right? And you're not really doing comedy, right? Yeah. They're trying to change the narrative, really. But. What's the point of it if I'm here doing some Ted talk that somebody who's not a comedian could also do just being vulnerable there are a lot of truthful things out there yeah the truth is available to anyone so me going on stage and telling you the truth is not very interesting

to an audience who's looking to connect or relate or have a good time don't you yeah I don't know go ahead go ahead don't you think a lot of those weird traits, a lot of those unique comedians, at least the bits or large chunks of their either persona or what they were doing that was funny were absorbed into maybe more likable normal people. Like when Gilbert comes out and does the whole thank you, thank you. And for five minutes pretends to thank everyone. I've seen a bunch of comedians doing a version of that. Right. to thank everyone. I've seen a bunch of comedians doing a version of that, right? And so maybe it's not attached to the whole guy who will go anywhere for a free meal, but it gets absorbed into

regular comedy. Stephen Wright is out there as like a 9 or 10 out of 10. Todd Barry's like a 7 or 6. Just the kind of laconic joke teller. So I think it kind of does get absorbed into the Borg, but you're right. There's not like the person who's just doing that and challenging the audience not to likeorg. But you're right. There's not like the person who's just

doing that and challenging the audience not to like them. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But what'd you say about it, Dan? What'd you want to say? I was just going to say that I'm not sure that comics or even frankly, audience members subscribe to that, right? I don't know that comics necessarily are trying to tell the truth. I think that there's, you know, this sort of movement now in political correctness, or whatever you want to call it, that this is what we're, quote, unquote, supposed to be doing. But I agree with TJ, i think like the end all be all is like whatever is going to be funny right like that that's the standard yeah i agree and i i think you're right in that comics aren't necessarily doing that but i do think comics are generally desperate people

we try to do whatever we can to get what we need to be. So people will do it because they feel like that's what the industry supports, even though it's not genuine. I've seen people who do that. So I'll say a couple of confounding things. And this is what I do on my show. A lot of hypotheticals and pushback and devil's advocate. I've seen, I think it was Camille Namjani saying that early in his career, he used to do his parents as having the Indian accent and he would get a laugh. So if the baseline is do what you do to get a laugh, he's crushing it. But then for him, it just the way he would describe it is it became not his truth. It became a performance and it didn't matter that he got the laugh. He went something vulnerable. So at that point, he went something more realistic. So at that point, he is running away from the idea of comedy telling the truth.

And then on the other hand, this is also what I was thinking of. Chris Rock had this routine about how we need bullies. Do you know the routine I'm talking about? You know, bullies shape us into better people. I know for a fact Chris Rock does not believe that. It's kind of an idea he's toying with. Yes. So, I mean, to to me that's totally legitimate

but does that kind of implicate chris rock was on the cover of the new york times as like spokesman for a black generation this is 10 years ago but as a guy who tells the truth so does that implicate the idea that chris rock is telling the truth as opposed to putting out ideas that might be interesting that he doesn't necessarily subscribe to i think a lot of that has to do with people who don't oh sorry no i'll tell you when you when you say you know for a fact he doesn't believe that you mean you actually know for a fact or you mean that in a as a just as an expression like you just can't believe he really believes together so i've never i've talked to chris rock once you probably have a hundred times but piecing together

what he says he whenever he did the routine which was a few years ago, since then, he talks about that one time at school, he got so upset by a bully that he brought in a brick in a pillowcase and hit the kid. And it was really formative. And he did lots of therapy to get over it. Like his whole comedy stems from the anger there. That's not the kind of guy and the kid who we hit was a bully. That's not a guy who says we need bullies, right? Yeah, that's a guy playing with an idea about what does it mean that we think we need bullies? Yes, and there's something that comedians like to do, which is you take a perspective, even though you don't believe in it,

you want to see how funny you can make that perspective. You sort of like playing devil's advocate. Can I make people laugh at this thing where when I first say it, they don't agree. And the exercise is me trying to get them by the end of it to be like, we get your point. We think it's fine. It could be that Chris,

a, maybe he does believe it or B he doesn't believe it, but he does believe that bullies play a role in society, play a role and have some formative role to play that even though we'd rather not have bullies, maybe they they do they do something. Yeah, I think some some some formative. I took his bit to mean anything. So being bullied is a catalyst for people very often to do things that they otherwise

wouldn't have done, including being a stand up comic or whatever it is. You know, I'll show them. You need to have an ecosystem in check and in balance. You know, you got to have formative moments in your life that make you who you are. If you have a very easy life where no one ever tries to bully you, I don't think you're going to be driven to do great things. It definitely creates a lot of villains in Marvel movies. Right, right, right.

I think that that's the truth, that what comedians really try to do is not be truth-tell but be provocative to the point where we'll be funny, but be provocative to the point where the audience says, well, that's an idea I hadn't considered before. That's fine. That's great. But an actual philosopher would take that to the end. Well, what are the implications of your philosophy? And can you back it up in every single way? And a comedian is not trying to do that so therefore they're not really truth tellers as philosophers understand truth yeah i mean we're just trying to do something that i mean there's no who's the philosopher version of dave chapelle with millions of dollars exactly we do it because it's entertaining to us and we like what we get from an audience and there's frankly speaking rewards in it that that may not exist in being a philosopher i don't know what that even means nowadays so well there's different kinds of comedians some comedians fall into that category that you just described and other comedians uh like myself i mean i i guess there is there's you know i do reveal some truths along

the way but uh that's you know i never thought of that as the main goal right you know i i i don't know if you've seen my act many times and i think your act is also very personal would you say that um it sort of revealed some of your neuroses and yeah it does in a tangential way but there's very little truth in it in terms of my own life i never had a right i never had a uh a sex ed teacher Mr. Morales that demonstrated condom use using his own penis. Right. So what that reveals about me, I don't know if that reveals anything about how your brain works. Other than how my brain works.

Yeah, it's funny. And did it tell ever have sexually girl doggy style? Because, well, that's just how she passed out. I don't think so. Maybe I think that reveals just the whole time. I don't know, by the way, if that joke would fly nowadays within the Me Too era. But that was a joke that he used to tell. That joke is probably 20 years old by now. His father probably beat him, but not with a globe. Right globe right yeah the whole truth thing has gotten out of control it really well well the notion that that's what we have to do i mean if you want to do it great and if you do it well all the time

make a perfectly almost trite observation like in other in other genres of entertainment whether it's music or film or like that there's it's perfectly accepted that there's a million different styles and and ways to come back. Right. Why should comedy be any different? It's like when you watch a movie, do you expect the murderer to be an actual murderer in real life? No. Where's this idea of truth coming from? You know, what you're watching is something that was designed to get you to a place which is ultimately laughter i have watched old episodes of beretta and it takes on a different valence knowing what robert blake did so it does help when the murderer is a murderer yeah i love to watch colombo to this day i mean that that that is really i think one of the highest uh achievements in television anyway

before we get to dan's um, I just want to say that this is a Mike Peska has a nice triumphant story of being canceled and then uncanceling himself. I don't know if he wants to talk about it, but I'd love to hear that because I looked you up a bit before I came, but I don't know too much. So I'd love to hear it. All right. I'll explain to you, TJ. I don't necessarily embrace the word canceled. I will say this. I had a show on a podcast network. It was canceled because of opinions I have. Now I have my own show. So maybe in a lot of ways that adheres to the definition of that sounds like cancellation. So what happened was for seven years, I started doing my show,

the gist, and it is news and analysis, and it's my opinion, but I'm not bludgeoning you with my opinion. It's more like I worked for NPR for 10 years and had a friend there who would say that when, after you study a subject and know enough about it, you've earned some analysis. So there's some earned analysis or earned insight, right? Not me just shooting from the hip. And I kind of hate shows where you kind of have, where the person leads his strong opinion, and then you scratch it a little and there's nothing there anyway. So I tried to be humble. And I tried to always have really good discussions that led to something I would my favorite kind of guest was someone who I disagreed with. And we hashed it out a little bit almost never angrily. And we got to a better place. Anyway, the organization, the place I used

to work very much embrace that it was known for being contrarian or never taking the expected tax. It was a place called slate slate.com. Oh yeah. I'm familiar. So I was there for a long time. And then a discussion arose in a Slack channel and Slack and the, and the, um, the, just the mechanics of Slack do come into play and play a part of what happened. But I took the position. Do you remember when Donald McNeil, the New York Times reporter, took a trip with kids to Peru in 2019 and he used the worst of the ethnic slurs in order to get clarity on a statement that one of the high school students were making. Do you know, do you guys know what I'm talking about with that story?

She asked him a hypothetical. She's somebody, and she used, she used the word, the N word. And should this guy be suspended or something, or some kids use it and he's choose that. Do you think this guy should be suspended? And then he, to clarify, he repeated the word back to her. Did he actually, I don't know if she said it, but he kind of to clarify said, do you mean the N word or, and then he says the actual word. So there was,

this was a big discussion in media because the New York times had some backlash afterwards. Many people in, I guess, some people in the New York times were saying Donna McNeil should be fired. And then the reporter for the New York times, Ben Smith wrote a column about it and it got posted in a Slack channel on slate and and everyone in Slate was talking about it. And everyone thought everyone who offered an opinion on the subject said, yeah, this guy needs to go for what? For just voicing this word two years ago in a trip to Peru. And I dissented. I disagreed. I, of course, did not do so with sharing the word. But what I did was I linked to a tried to be very I tried to do a couple of things. I tried to mirror the opinions of the people who were talking to me.

I tried to say, yes, I understand your point for sure. I wasn't belligerent. I, of course, not only didn't use the word, I didn't use the phrase the N word. I've heard that could be triggering. So I linked to a couple of things. And one of the things I linked to was a John McWhorter piece about the use mentioned distinction. Because I think he wasn't using the word as a slur. He was mentioning it for clarity.

And one of the reasons I did that was John McWhorter, who's been a friend of mine for years. He's great. He had a podcast on Slate. Doesn't now. We both left. But this did not go over well. Wow. So you're saying you were the original Joe Rogan before Joe Rogan?

Is that what happened? Well, I'm really into getting vaccines, though, is the thing. Except Rogan used the word. Rogan did use the word. They went back. And he also used the word, right, and he used it not as a mention. He kind of used it as a use, and there were other things involved there. And there was a time, if you go back to my career, you know,

in 2004, I reported on a trial in Howard Beach, not the original Howard Beach trial. If you're in New York, you remember that. There was another hate crimes trial where the whole trial was Randall Kennedy, the professor from Harvard, came in as an expert witness to try to argue that this word has lost some of its power.

And if a white person used it, it's not ipso facto proof that And if a white person used it, it's not ipso facto proof that it was a hate crime. Anyway, that defense lost. But in doing the report for NPR, I said the word on the air because in 2004, 2005, while working with an editor, this was just seen as the way to do it. And, you know, my position is that there are,

while I'm extremely sensitive about people being upset and I don't want to be a bad coworker and I'd never jut out my chin and say, well, I don't care. I'm going to use it. I don't care about your feelings. I do care about people's feelings and I care about the audience's feelings.

And the one time I contemplated actually using it on the show in a direct quote, in a story where it was very relevant, I did pull back after tracking it, but then saying, no, let's not use it on the air for a whole lot of reasons of sensitivity. Anyway, it did add up that this Slack discussion redounded to Slate and I realizing that we had to part ways and perhaps with neither of us doing so particularly willingly. So there were economic negotiations. And today I own the show outright. I do my own.

I do my own ads. I'm hopefully getting to a place, an economic place that rivals homeless. You seem like you have a nicely ironed shirt. I iron my shirts. There you go. The unhoused can iron their shirts, though, TJ. Right. So I'm doing pretty good. I did go through this. It did give me a lot of insights as to the truth or exaggeration of especially the people who say there is no such thing as cancel culture. It's all consequence culture. It's all a necessary corrective to the excesses of the past where people of color didn't have a voice like, well, it is true that in the past, people of color had much, much less of a voice and there were gatekeepers. It can also be true that in the present there are over corrections or, you know, people who are pilloried and set out to drive for reasons other than, you know, strictly ethical ones.

Okay. That's yeah. You definitely, by pure definition, you, you work until and then you bounce back and you know, that's part of your journey now. It's part of who you are. Yeah. I want to know what was the argument of people who think it should not even be used,

even as a mention? What's the argument? I don't think I've ever heard that one. Well, what they would say and what they did say is, you know, this word has such a unique history and just to hear it brings harm and creates. I'll give you another example that's not even mine. There was a professor in Chicago. I don't know if you guys talked about this on the show. It wasn't, it was not the university of Chicago law school, but university of Illinois, Chicago, I believe. And he, for years had been doing a, um, he'd been giving a test, an exam where as an example, they had to, the students had to weigh in on the, um the legalities of a person using ethnic slurs and sexist language in terms of in terms of they had to put themselves in the position of being lawyers defending a company against wrote that was sexist, but he did not write the word. He wrote N dash blank, blank, blank. The argument was just the presence of that. Well, I'm taking an

exam at a stressful time. I'm a 22 year old black student. I just have to be confronted with this. It's so harmful. It hurts me so much emotionally. I can't exceed on the exam. And there was a huge investigation into the guy. The investigation continued. A small strand of the investigation was the guy saying something hyperbolic like, you know, I things in that his investigation brought up physical violence. Jesse Jackson, literally at the law school, clamoring for this person's job. But to answer your question, that's the idea that just the evocation of the idea of the word is harmful and makes causes an emotional hurt. Well, it's maybe a workplace that you can't get along in. I want to say a couple things about that. First of all, as you were saying it, I... It sounds not great, Norm, if you could turn up the volume or... I might've seemed like I zoned out a bit because I had thought that he had

repeated the word and I just read two accounts of it that actually managed to make it unclear whether he repeated the word or not. It's weird. You mean McNeil? Yeah. Yeah. Whether he repeated the word back. And one of the reasons is that you can't get clarity in the original account because they won't just say what he said. But even McNeil's blog where he describes it, he writes it in a way that it's not clear. So I think he probably didn't repeat the word

because I think he would have written that. Right. That's semi-exculpatory. I get that. Very clever the way he wrote it. But I just want to say that, you know, growing growing up mike's a little bit younger than me i think but growing up who if you came of age in the 70s or thereabouts if and you didn't grow up in like mississippi if you heard the n-word being said uh by a white person, especially you generally heard it said by a progressive person in the

furtherance of a progressive adjacent reason. So like John Lennon had women, women is that women are the N word of the world. Randy Newman, the guy who writes all the Disney songs, have the song Rednecks, where he's like keeping the N words down. And he and he says it because Bob Dylan and Hurricane Bob don't hurt. But F. Lee he, and he says it because Bob Dylan and hurricane Bob don't hear it, but F Lee Bailey, when he, when he cross-examined Mark Furman, he said, Mr. Have you ever said, and he said the word, right. And there was no controversy about F Lee Bailey saying the word at the time, Chevy chase and Richard Pryor, when they did that word association. The most famous SNL script of all time, yeah. Chevy Chase said the word right to Richard Pryor,

and I would imagine Richard Pryor would have known if it was offensive. You know, George Carlin outrageously said the word. He actually calls Eddie Murphy and Richard, or whoever the black comedy teacher is. Yeah, I know that bit. He calls them, he says, he calls them the N-word, you know? Yeah. All to make a point. And nobody at the time, as far as I'm aware,

ever complained about these things. So people need to understand. It's fine. The rules have changed. You can't fight city hall. I'm, I'm even jarred by it now in a visceral way that I didn't use to be. I'm fine. Never saying it again, but people should not pretend that it was not okay or that Black people didn't accept white people saying it when they thought white people were saying it with a proper cause in mind. Now a professor who teaches James Baldwin will get in trouble simply for reading James Baldwin's words. And we're

supposed to pretend that, well, actually, James Baldwin wrote it, but he never intended anybody to say it. I mean, it's not believable, right? So it's a rewrite of history and it's ex post facto punishment. And it's just not right, no matter how you look at it, in my opinion. And for me, the question wasn't so much over the word, although I am a real free speech advocate. And the day the show that was supposed to air the day I was started, my indefinite suspension was literally an interview with Suzanne Nozzle, who's the president of Penn. And we were taught that's the the First Amendment advocacy group. And we were talking about these issues. For me, the bigger issue was the role of dissent and disagreement within an organization. And yeah, let's say there are two people and they have strong views and they're hashing

it out in something like a Slack channel. Isn't that for the good? Isn't that in general? I mean, you have to stay within confines, but doesn't that sharpen the editorial project when you could use your opinions and use your debate on each other and then you present it to the public or the other part of it? In that Slack channel, literally everyone shared this opinion. So if the publication was going to weigh in on it, I just thought it would be an improvement if they perhaps heard another point of view. And this way they could say, oh, there might be people in the reading audience with this point of view.

Let me pre-address it in the piece that's going to result. And I think a lot of that is being lost. Not everywhere. I mean, I think the Atlantic has it. I think that the New York Times, most of it tries to have it. But in general, if there is a tension between causing discomfort within the organization that puts out journalism or an opinion piece. And if that is seen as well, the discomfort could really be, you know, could really back foot one of our employees or one of our staff members versus, well, this might be uncomfortable,

but the product will be better. And that's a better way of thinking. I do think societally we are erring on the side of, you know, harm reduction rather than strengthening arguments. Is this a good lead into the into Twitter and Elon Musk? And or do you have another topic you? No, it's good. But let me add a couple other things. If you do like a hard Google search of Rolling Stone dot com, which is a pretty progressive website, they use the N-word. Maybe they don't anymore, but they did until until pretty recently. And even this Joe Rogan video that's going around, this compendium, this montage of all the times he said the N-word, this video doesn't bleep it out, which is kind of a little contradictory because if it's so horrible to hear the word, I mean, my kids have seen this video.

This is totally viral. Well, because they want you to understand, they want you to get the full effect of Rogan's crime. Right. But some, but right. But sometimes when people use the N word, like if I'm reading to kill a mockingbird to my kids, I won't say the N word to them, but what I'm doing is actually robbing this novel of its power because the word is used in order to, to be be ugly it's like to teach them a

lesson of the ugliness and i and i and i and i suck and dilute the ugliness out of it because apparently you just can't hear this word but you also know your audience but you know this brett stevens argument that he says you should convey the quotes of the of strom thurman and racist senators from the past and george wall, and you should convey them in full effect so that they land on you and have the impact that you're supposed to have. But he had to write that in the Washington Post because the New York Times wouldn't run it.

Oh, that's right. The New York Post. But I was going to say one other thing, just so you know how far things have changed. When I was in law school, a very common argument of the free speech types was that executions ought to be televised, because if we're going to have the death penalty, people should have to see what

it looks like. That's what Phil Donahue said. Yeah. So we should we should be able to see executions on TV. But if anybody says the N word, you have to bleep them out. We pixelate the nipple. I think we're fine. Exactly. OK, my main issue with that argument, the one where people say, if you just mention that word, black people will just crumble like a chocolate chip cookie. Like I'm positive this is not an argument made by black people. Was there some sort of poll conducted where black people say we can't just hear it because if we do, we lose our own sense of humanity? Well, sure, it's white liberals in academia. Well, it came up with that. I think it's generational.

In 2015, Key and Peel co-wrote an op-ed in Time magazine saying that exact point. I am not such a innocent naif that I will dissolve into nothingness if I hear this word. Now, I doubt they would. Well, I'm certain they wouldn't express that, but it wouldn't surprise me if they even change their opinion on that. And I do think, and Jonathan Haidt talks about this, generationally, people under 25 have, or maybe Black people under 25, and certainly white allies of Black people under 25, have a different view than that, TJ. I think. Well, what I think that is, and I, and I've had trouble expressing this in words,

but what I think that is is not a rational thing that people have come to. Cause I'm, I'm feeling this way too. The word is taken on kind of the the visceral impact of when a Muslim sees the bottom of a sole of a shoe, you know, like, you know how they like, this is the ultimate insult. And you, I mean, you can't, all you have to understand is that when a Muslim sees a shoe next to somebody's face, you could read the reaction on their,

in their vitals. What you're saying is it's gone from intellectual consideration to taboo. To a real conditioned response that I, that again, I have to admit, I feel it now. Like I didn't use to feel it. I remember a time where if the word came up in the workplace, I would sit with like Steve King, our door guy there and I would we would discuss it. We'd both use the word. I would never say

that word now. Do you have an idea of when that happened? Do you think you sort of a victim of the media you consuming around you? What do you think happened when you went from being okay with hearing it? And then now it's just, you don't know what to do with yourself it's when you read about my story in the new york times right yeah well it's happened gradually over the last uh six or seven years i i'd say i you know and i and i tried i try to resist it only because i know that it's not intellectual. But, you know, but at some point, actually, I began to just not want to say it because you can't fight City Hall, but it just sounds too ugly.

It's the one vulgarity, which we've just like Lenny Bruce got, Lenny Bruce made fun of the fact that we had these taboo vulgarities. But now we have one that we've all embraced. And someday comedian, some comedian is going to tear it apart and show the flaws in it, just like Lenny Bruce once did. But but also comedians have already. Well, well, black comedians, you mean white comedians going to going to going to start using?

I think so. I think so. But I say something like punk rock doesn't give a shit. White comedian will do that. But that also made me think that maybe we should have a new sympathy to the people who were offended by Lenny Bruce. Because there were people who were so offended by the words that he was using. It seemed silly to us. Yeah. But it really walloped them. It really hit them between the eyes. And now that we have a word,

which we understand what it means to be hit between the eyes and just in a visceral way by a word. So that's what Lenny Bruce was doing to those people, you know? So you kind of can have some sympathy for them that you might not have had. I guess the onus is, I suppose, on white people, because I'm a- It always is.

He is the onus guy that's on you guys Because I wouldn't enjoy that If I'm not a white person So I don't know But I guess you have to make that distinction in your head When you're at a show because I know black comedians Where you just use it all the time Just because it's not my usual vernacular

But so as a white person In a comedy show You have to make the switch in your head when a black person, black comic just drops it left and right. They laugh at it. They know what it is. I guess in their minds, like this is coming from the right source. So it's OK. Yeah. Versus if it's a white person. So I got to switch my brain and be like, now it's not OK, because the color of the person was set to change. I have to say, whenever I hear a black comedian using the word so very often, I do laugh less. Maybe it's because of what I've been through, but it does pull me out of it a little bit. Do you feel the same way now?

No, I don't even hear it as the same word when it comes out of a black. Right, right. Because it is kind of a different word. It's not the same word. And but but it is a same word when it comes out of a black. Right. Right. Because it is kind of a different word. It's not the same word. And but but it is a crutch oftentimes, just like a white comedian might say, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. And sometimes it's necessary and sometimes it adds to the joke. And sometimes it's just, oh, he's trying to get a laugh by saying fuck or bitch or this. That's true. And sometimes the N-word is effective and well used and will provoke a laugh in me. And sometimes I feel like you're just trying to get a laugh by using this

word. There's no, there's nothing else there, but this word that you're trying to force a laugh with it. I'm sorry, Dan. No, sometimes I see it as a crutch, just like the F word is a crutch. And sometimes it's used legitimately. Yes, it can be a crutch. So there was this middle time when, you know, there was a time when I said that in an intellectual context, a white person could say the word and I didn't find it offensive.

But there were always these dumb white people who would say, well, how come I can't call somebody? How come I can't joke with my black friend and call me N-word because they can call each other? You know, what's the difference? And they would pretend to not understand the difference or maybe they really didn't understand the difference, but no, I, I always thought it was jarring to hear a white guy pretend to be so familiar with somebody black that he could use it in a joke or, or like, you know, call, Hey, my N word. No, I, I never, I always thought that was off limits just as a, from a, from an emotional intelligence point of view. That's not what I'm defending here.

I do think that comedy is a lot different from almost every intelligence point of view, that's not what I'm defending here. I do think that comedy is a lot different from almost every other walk of life. And let's just take institutions that might have a use case for this, like a law professor, an English professor, or what I do, a journalist. I think at this point as a journalist, I would almost never use the word, not just me,

but most journalists wouldn't. The price is too high. And you just want to be an ethical person who could communicate to the audience as an ethical person. And I think at this point, even using the word in a reference, you know, just marks you as something other than that. And therefore I would choose, I think that we've come around to the consensus of, well, whether it's maybe not our place to weigh in the depth of the feeling or the honesty of the feeling or where the feeling comes from. As long as our black colleagues are expressing that this is a feeling, we could certainly abide by that. So let me let me let me let me just answer and then let's get on to Twitter.

So I agree with that. What you're talking about is essentially manners and respect. However, one thing I will never say is, okay, for whatever reason, if somebody says that word, and we all know they were saying it in the service of a battle or a feeling they had against racism, they're using it to describe an injustice that bothers them righteously and correctly, for that person to be punished in that context is wrong, wrong, wrong. And anybody who doesn't understand that's wrong is just lost touch with what morality means. You could say he's wrong. You shouldn't have said that. It was impolite. You should be more diplomatic, whatever it is. But if we all know that you were saying it because you were outraged by racism, this is madness. I'm not I just can't you can't get me to say that that's right. Just can't. No, I'm just going to end. I don't know if this is Twitter. Go ahead.

I just want to say I disagree with you wholeheartedly that any white comedian in anything resembling the foreseeable future, maybe in 100 years, the word will have lost our meeting because black and white will be completely, will be a colorblind society or will be all mixed together. But in the foreseeable future, I disagree that any white comedian

is going to take on the N-word. Let's see. Let's see. I've been in America for about 11 years. When you live here that long, you learn very subtle things about race.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently, a white friend, and this is what he said to me. He goes, hey man, I just moved, by the way, this is my white voice. I don't have another one. It's the exact same. He goes, hey man, I just moved to Brooklyn and I found out that I'm white. I was like, what the fuck does that mean? What did you think you were before he moved to Brooklyn? And he goes, oh, I always thought I was raceless. I was like, that is the whitest shit you could ever say to me. That is the most Connecticut state man I have ever heard.

Of course you feel raceless, man. Of course you do. You're a young white man in America. You got courtside seats to life. A white person in America saying they feel raceless, that's like a lion walking in the jungle going, I feel pretty safe in here. I don't know

what these gazelles are afraid of. Well, okay, so on a related matter, I don't know the details of elon musk i guess he made an offer to buy twitter and now he's talking about a potential 10 i don't even know these i was a finance major you think i'd understand this shit but apparently he tweeted like well back then no one had 43 billion dollars so it was 43 billion i mean he's got 200 billion that's the price tag right so now he's talking about a tender offer with a hostile tag i don't fucking know poison pill whatever anyway elon musk talking about taking over twitter and making it a little bit or a lot uh more open and and less censorship on twitter and of course people are making you

know arguments in in both directions as to whether i, a private company has a right to censor, but should it censor? And, you know, what role, is Twitter a public square, basically? And therefore, is the Constitution a right of free speech applicable? But anyway, so these are the arguments and the conversations. Take it, Mike.

Come on, what do you think, Mike? Oh, no, well, it's not, it is a public square to the extent that they have some sort of corporate responsibility not to allow, you know, literal hate speech, the the old school definition from 1999 hate speech or targeting or things that would be allowed in terms of free speech under the law. So I'm just not buying the idea that what Elon Musk wants to do is get on Twitter and rewrite the rules to make anything possible and to invite Donald Trump back. I think it's something else. I think it's mostly trying to, you know, he is a troll.

He likes attention. So I think maybe this whole thing is not actually to buy Twitter, but just to make some points and to get attention about Twitter. I don't think that it would make Twitter a more profitable enterprise to invite most of the people they've kicked off back on. It's one of those things. I mean, he does like it.

He's on it all the time. He's very popular on it. And sure, he's a free speech guy. I could get why he would want to go in that direction as to like remove all the restrictions but my my beef with all the people who sort of look at places like twitter and instagram and facebook and they call it like public square and public utility uh that is just simply not true by the basic rules of it it's a company owned by someone yes but you don't pay

money to use it. But there's the idea of the common carrier. I mean, the telephone company was and is, but especially when there was one telephone company, it was a private company. And yet if the telephone company said, well, we're going to listen to conversations and ban any down any that deal with homosexuality. I think everyone would say, well, you can't do that because you're a common carrier. You should be regulated as such. I think Twitter has gotten to the point close to that, if not that. But I feel like that's different, though, if the phone company wants to listen in on you versus Twitter allowing anyone to use Twitter, I think Twitter isn't the right and the phone company isn't the wrong. Well, my point is that if the example is a private company really can do anything as regards free

speech, there are certain private companies that we've, what is free speech except as the thing that's exercised by radio newspapers and now Twitter. And so if they're not, they're allowed to make rules about free speech, but the government should also, or at least a society should be able to get involved and say there have to be parameters for that. There should be some regulation. And the question is always, what are the parameters? Well, I think it's two issues. One is legally, in the case of the phone company saying we're going to listen to your conversations and we're going to censor you, that's probably illegal, I would guess. Under, well, if they're doing it. Under some sort of reading of the First Amendment. you. That's probably illegal. I would guess under, well, if they're doing it under some sort of reading,

that's probably illegal. But, but even if they say, even if you signed a paper saying I agree to this, it might be illegal, but, but, but legality is one issue. The second issue is policy is, is, is, is the world a better place, whether or not it's legal, illegal, constitutional or unconstitutional, is the world a better place if twitter says uh anything goes never get back on no if twitter says anything goes ah and you can all say what you want to say is the does the world become a better place does the exchange of ideas become more robust uh is information you know i mean obviously not twitter

is so structurally antithetical to the productive exchange of ideas that it doesn't become a better place if we take back all the trolls who were on Twitter and who got kicked off. I mean, exactly. All those companies, what they do is they hack your psychological system to make you use it more. So why are we pretending that those companies are good things for humanity? There's like I think the bad outweighs the good massively the amount of children who are depressed and anxious because of social media especially young girls there's a lot of people who wrote about this so the good that social media gives us as a society i don't think it's enough to make us look at social media as the savior and this like great new tool that we have well we don't

really know we've never run the experiment except without starting with no regulation and then oh my god it's a shit show let's have some sort of regulation and then elon musk gets upset and makes up i think most of them started with some regulation i i i have a i have a bunch of things I want to say about this in no particular order. One is that when Parler got deplatformed, that's when I first have to, if that's the right word, deplatformed, I don't know, when nobody would carry- Yeah, sort of a denial of service, right? Yeah. That's when this common carrier argument actually began to seem more plausible to me because up until then, people had said, and it rang true to me to some extent, well, if you don't like it, start your own app. And then now that it seems like starting your own app really may not be all that possible.

Then at that point, now all the arguments about monopolies and natural monopolies and AT. These are all but they're distancing themselves from it quite rapidly now when Elon Musk wants to own Twitter through a free enterprise mechanism. And then nobody, and now we can say to the left, well, if you don't like Elon Musk buying Twitter, start your own Twitter, right? All of a sudden, what happened to that argument? Why can't you guys just go start your own new Twitter? Anyway, so that's interesting to me. Next thing that I thought of is that, yeah, if there is some empirical evidence that like the retweet button or the like button or whatever it is, is really damaging people. It's not crazy that you could regulate the safety aspects of this and the way you regulate, you know, mechanical products and stuff like that. That's not crazy. I'm not advocating. I'm saying like I'm open to that argument.

But on the issue of censorship. Using like a little, you know, very simplistic analogies of my daughter comes home repeating some dumb ideas that she heard somewhere. Would my inclination be to, I don't ever want to hear that out of your mouth again, or my inclination be to expose her to something that would lead her on her own to realize that these were dumb ideas? I think the answer is obvious there. Similarly, you could probably study nations that have more censorship. And I believe you'll find that there's more conspiracy theories believed in, in the countries where censorship is more accepted. So I think there's good reason to, for us to believe that censorship doesn't work. It backfires. And so then, so then, yeah, but an un totally unregulated Twitter,

you know, that would lead people who smugly say, well, just let it ride. You know, you know, that's really not going to work out either. You can't have people abusing each other and and being saying horrible things to each other. But you would think that they could create some sort of system where someone who tweets something would have a place to put backup to his opinion. And just if he didn't fill out those fields, that would be an indicator to people reading it, to be skeptical of it. And then somewhere where people could refute it in some way, and maybe some sort of Rotten Tomatoes thing where the people who are experts would score it, and then the public, like you could create a lot of skeletal, interesting ideas.

These are kind of off the top of my head over the last 48 hours that you could give people a way to look at these tweets. We're afraid of and trust them. Most people are not stupid and create a way that they could learn about it and come to intelligent conclusions about these things, you know, more often than not, that would be a great way to i think to approach twitter yeah i think part of the problem with that is a lot of people are stupid so it's hard to trust them to get that done people are not so stupid my my other thing is

how what does a reg like free for all twitter look like because i don't use twitter much because i've found it to be the most vicious of all the social media platforms. It's already a pretty shitty place as it is. And you guys know porn is allowed on Twitter. People just post whatever they want. So what is, do we know what Elon's plan to make Twitter even more free? Because it's already pretty free to me, the way I see it. What is he trying to do with it that could make it even allow Trump back on on? What's the idea? I think I think we might be mistaking lawlessness for freedom. I wouldn't call that free. I would. Well, first of all, to the idea of more censorious nations have more

conspiracy theories. Yeah, that's probably true. It probably also tracks with literacy rates. But, you know, Freedom House and some other organizations rank the freest societies. And the EU, America is up there and we have certain freedoms that no one can touch. And the French, you're not allowed to lie about the Holocaust in public. Is that more freedom or less freedom? I don't I'm not exactly sure. But, you know, countries like countries like Canada don't exact. There are limitations on, say, the amount of marketing you could do to children. And yet that kind of makes for a freer society, even though in the one or two rules, that's one thing, one example of free speech you're not allowed to engage in. I think, TJ, what a free for all Twitter looks like is basically Twitter. I mean, right. Except for

like a tiny sliver of people already have it have it. Right. Elon's on Twitter. It's just that Trump isn't. And Elon didn't, you know, go pretty far to foment. So what are people afraid of with Elon buying? People hate Elon. I think people, people hate the cut of his jib essentially. And they think he's a libertarian. He has complex as insofar as he has well thought out politics.

They are a lot more complex. And I really don't think that what he's really trying to do is buy Twitter. complex as insofar as he has well thought out politics, they are a lot more complex. And I really don't think that what he's really trying to do is buy Twitter. I think he's really trying to get attention for the act of the plausible act of buying Twitter, which no one else in the world can actually plausibly lay claim to. Well, but Mike, there were really these outrageous Twitter censors,

censorships of things. The most, you know, famous example being this Hunter Biden story, which, Oh, that'ships of things. The most, you know, famous example being this Hunter Biden story, which, oh, that's right. Yeah. You know, perhaps to me, that was I've done episodes of my show that was weighing in in a way that was, you know, a finger on the scale, unlike anything we've ever seen. And it was improper. It's not that everything it's not that the fact that Hunter Biden really did have a laptop and give it to a blind guy in Delaware. That doesn't really say anything about Joe Biden. But to suppress the

story, I think was a step too far. You know, and Matt Taibbi has a lot of good content where he interviews the censored. And of course, he's only going to pick good, compelling examples where the people who were censored shouldn't have been. And it's because content moderation is kind of a joke. Maybe if there were good laws around it, we wouldn't have to hire some workers in Bangladesh to look at videos of drones killing people and decide what goes up or what doesn't. I mean, there is no content moderation.

Jonathan Hayden, his new article talks about, like even if the most perfect content moderation that the most dedicated person came into play, you would still have 90% of Twitter and Facebook totally unmoderated. You'd have 40 or 50. This is what the whistleblower pointed out. You have 40, 50, 60 languages in which there's zero content moderation. You know, this war into gray, it's not because of Facebook, but there were certainly slaughters,

not just deaths, but slaughters that stemmed from lies that were perpetrated on Twitter in a language that no one who is employed by, sorry, Facebook, in a language no one employed by Facebook even understood, let alone was tasked with moderating. So it's a big problem. It's not about free speech or free expression. It's about being responsible, not just corporate citizen, but world citizen. And they always go, they always lean in the same direction. And I had a situation, this wasn't on Twitter, but it was Facebook. I just posted on Facebook a Chuck Schumer tweet from the previous Gaza war. And it was taken down as being offensive.

Like, like it's, it's's crazy some of the stuff they do. Now, of course, you can blow this up out of proportion. Like, I think our society, you know, our society is not suffering from lack of freedom. Our society is much more suffering from this bubble phenomenon. I hate to use these jargon words, but like everybody has their own intellectual

information ecosystem. So I was talking to a friend of mine who was a labor lawyer, very smart universe, Pennsylvania lawyer, you know, and I was talking to him about this Hunter Biden thing. I said, well, yeah, but that, that Tony Bobulinski interview, you know, and he's, he's like, what are you talking about? I'm Like, you know, that big interview that Tony Bobulinski did, he'd never heard. He literally, you know, he had never heard of this huge story that every single Republican quotes from memory, you know, and like, this is a serious thing, literally from two different worlds, people are getting information. That's a much more serious problem than Twitter. I would say only six percent of America is on Twitter. So that's like barely anybody. You think it's only six? Yeah, I read that somewhere. That's why I like Twitter. I wouldn't

believe that shit. Twitter, Twitter. No, I mean, you read it on Twitter. No, not on Twitter. OK, Dan, you want to talk about the Jen Kirkman thing? Well, since we're talking about Twitter, I wasn't going to mention her name. But first of all, I tried to call Nicole can beep it out if you want. I don't want to. I'm not trying to. So this comedian, L.A. based, I think. But maybe she's in New York now. But she had said that, well, I want to talk with club owners to try to protect female personnel, comics and waitstaff from sexual predators that work at these clubs. This was after Louie had won a Grammy and she kind of this, this individual kind of, uh, took to Twitter to talk about, uh, sexual predators working at comedy clubs and how outraged she was

that nobody, very few people, um, very few people were outraged that Louis won a Grammy. Anyway, she recently tweeted that that somebody had tweeted recently that Louis C.K. performed here the other night. I guess he was here two nights ago or something like that. And so this person tweeted, if you're going to have sexual predators work at your club, USA Comedy Cellar, which is our Twitter handle here, the comedy cellar, at least can at least you shouldn't have surprise guests in other words all comics should be announced i'll read it to be fair to her she said hey comedy seller usa victims of assault don't want to see sexual predators on your stage we certainly don't want to be surprised by them either stop booking predators or put out

warnings before every show that clearly state that there will be a sex offender performing. And that's she retweeted that. And she actually also retweeted somewhere. I guess I don't take the time, but somewhere she said that we shouldn't have surprise guests anymore. That was the way she thinks we should handle it. This is all this is. This doesn't make any sense. That is ridiculous.

Has she ever performed here? No. What if she's never performed here and she's never agreed to discuss stuff with us? But I mean, but what she what she does, I believe, know that we have a disclaimer that goes out to every person in the mixed reservation and as soon as you walk in which says we never know who might drop in uh so essentially don't come swim at your own risk and if someone does drop in that you're unhappy about you can leave without paying so it's not really um it's a false plausible It's not really plausible to say that That anybody

Has the right to be upset If somebody drops in Everybody knows that people might drop in So I'm not sure I mean they do have the right to be upset But they also have the right to leave Which you tell them they can do So I don't know what the problem is

He's the problem, he's the solution No, they have the right to not want which you tell them they can do. So I don't know what the problem is. He's the problem. He's the solution. They have no they have the right to not want to see that person, but they don't have a right to be upset with the club. If we tell listen, if you walk in and say, listen, before you come in here, I want you to know people might drop in on the stage you don't like. You can't say no problem. I'm coming in and they get upset about it. I would say you don't have that right now. No. What what what about the other clubs that she is saying also have surprise she called out i think was it a laugh factory or some other club that she was upset with i think uh chris d'alia was well look you know i want to say that when i first put louis back on the one argument i didn't have a good answer for at the time was well you know people

feel really strongly about this and you're surprising them with this i i didn't i didn't have a good answer for at the time was, well, you know, people feel really strongly about this and you're surprising them with this. I didn't, I didn't dismiss that argument. You remember this, Dan. Yeah. So that's why I said, okay, I can't, I can't deny that people really do feel this way. That's why I said, well, from now on, I'm going to just warn everybody out front. Don't be surprised. But if he does come, I'm happy to pick up your check, which I thought was an elegant, if I do say so myself, solution that any fair minded person would have to say. How often has that happened?

The counter argument known to that is to play devil's advocate because people obviously they didn't. They still came after you at the time. This was like three years ago when you instituted that policy or something like that. They said, well, what about the wait staff, the wait staff? You know, they don't have the choice not to come to work. This is their job. And now you're putting them in a weird position because you're having somebody that might make them uncomfortable coming into. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the way I handled that at the time,

I don't want to rehash the whole thing, is that I had intensive discussions with the waitstaff about it. I know people will dismiss that because they'll say, well, what could they say? But the truth was, and you can hear it on some podcasts we did, the waitstaff was, female waitstaff,

was extremely supportive of him because I believe they had known him already for years. Right. And they were fine with it and they didn't, it was hard for them to all of a sudden become frightened by him. But yeah, that, that I didn't, I didn't really have to face that with anybody. Remember the Wade staff? I don't know how I would have handled it. I would have, I wasn't going to back down. It's still my place.

I still have the right to put Louie on. So, but I mean, look, you could be, I would have looked to work something out with the waitress to make her happy as I could, you know, but you could be a waitress at any restaurant in New York city and Louie could walk in. And are you the owner then supposed to say, no, Louie, you can't be here because I have female wait staff that, don't like you? No, but the difference is with the waitstaff analogy, I'm not sure which way it cuts, but a customer is paying their money to you

to see a show that they presume they're going to have a good time at. And they feel like, what are you, I'm paying you this money and now you're putting on this. I don't want to even use the term issue because I don't believe it's true, so whatever if i may ask over the years that it's been how many people have had said he was i was surprised i didn't like it i want a refund significant number uh um as i i i i've told this before but it's really true if louis comes on second people might roll their eyes but they sit through it because it's four more comedians come on if he's the last act if he's closing out the show then people will say oh you know what i think we want to go and we want to get we want it but we've seen a and we can get the show for free so there's

a little bit of opportunism that comes into that by and large i've been here where he's dropped in and i mean the twice two times that it's happened people went nuts and I didn't see anyone not going nuts. They loved it. Yeah. I mean, I'd say 98% of the people love it. So what is the practical downside to take what this comedian says? What is the practical downside? Why wouldn't you say, all right, we're going to have a new policy.

And Louie, you call me when you want to come on and we're going to put your name on the board. Oh, well, we tried that one time and people just showed up with placards. Right. And that creates a bad environment for the other comedians and for the guests. So basically, in order, if you were to embrace this critique,

there's no workable solution other than the one you have always pre-announcing it works much worse than what you have so really what she's proposing and i'm not questioning her faith is don't have louis at the club i am questioning her because i think there's as a comedian there's an element of jealousy there a lot of people don't want to deal with the you know life is not fair louis is more famous than a lot of us not all comedians are going to be equally famous no matter how hard you work that's a different story so yeah i would i would have to disagree i mean you you you're describing something that can be true but i don't think we have or you have enough information to put that

on on this woman who who might feel very deeply about this cause she might she might but there's also an element of this person did something and now they have to go away forever who are you to say that this person should not be able to work ever again oh i i think she's 100 wrong i don't i don't think there's any principle of a workable society which she can put forward, which would allow. There's no redemption. Oh, no redemption. Or I mean, there's no where where the all the incentive structure is for people to always deny, never admit, because it's so long as they keep denying they can get away with it. Where the the the boss has no forensic or procedural way to even determine what's true or what's not true.

There's a million problems with it. Right. Yeah. Well, I guess you would say it's not about forever punishing or it's not about no redemption. He hasn't taken the necessary steps, whatever she would lay out. But I just think of all the other cases where you go to a blues club or you go to a place where music is being played and you have no idea which guys in that band or which women in that band have done anything wrong. And most of the same people, I guess, who are protesting, let's not book Louie in the club,

also definitely believe in the ban the box movement, which is don't ask people if they're, they are felons. Some of those felons, probably sexual predators. So, I mean, I'm not asking for the critics to be perfect, but there are so many imperfections right at the surface of this criticism. I don't know how deeply I could go. I mean- Of course, when did somebody ever criticize,

when has a liberal, had a liberal ever criticized a business owner for hiring an ex-con or hiring somebody who had a bad past or turned himself around. This is it flies in the face of everything they used to believe in, you know? Yes. Yeah. It's very circumstantial belief. Like I believe in it when it works for my very specific politics. That's all it is. Mike, I just sorry. I was going to say Jerry Seinfeld had this quote that goes, if you if you knew everything about everyone, you wouldn't like anyone.

Yeah. So and that's true in this very specific circumstance, specifically in the work of arts. People just have lives that are very different from what you think, you know. I guess the task of an advanced pluralistic society and gnome is the embodiment or the person in the club who gets to make the rules is you want to do the most good for the most people but there really is no way to accommodate i do think you have you know some sympathy for the person who is surprised but it seems like there's no way to accommodate this comedian's critique with all the other factors that we're talking about so it really is a clash of competing virtues as opposed to right versus wrong.

I would say that's it. You'd have to commit some other sort of ethical wrong in order to accommodate this person's definition of ethics. Mike, if I could just, you said, well, why can't we just put Louis or whomever else on the schedule? Sometimes, oftentimes, they don't want to be on the schedule

because it's a last minute decision. They're in the neighborhood. You know what I'd like to do a set at the comedy seller. And this is one of the things that is offered to comedians of a certain stature. I can't do this, right. But a comedians of a certain stature can do this. They can say, you know, I'm in the area. I hadn't planned on it, but no, let me stop by and do 10 minutes. So when that, and that now, so, so,

so you, we allow for that flex or norm allows for that flexibility because it's generally speaking really good for the club. Yeah. You know, to have, it's not Dan, I mean, you're, you're absolutely right, Dan, but it's just not workable. Like there's no statute book where I can say he did or he didn't do it. There's a moving standard. Some people, by the way, were outraged that Aziz came back and most of us say that's ridiculous.

You know, Z's like that was such a bullshit accusation against disease, but there were women out there who wrote me equally angry emails about disease coming back. So do I have to accommodate the least common denominator? Like it's it's it's not workable in any way. There's there's no objective standard. And I, you know, to go full circle, the nicest solution is to tell people, listen, this is the way we're doing it. You know, don't come if it really bothers you, or if you want to take the chance, it's fine. You can just leave. And by the way, your drinks are on me. No, that's still not enough. You're still a bastard. You're a bastard. Come on now. But TJ, don't dismiss the sincerity of

these people, even though you can't understand their or their beliefs because you're probably going to be wrong you're probably going to be wrong they are sincere that's fair that's fair some of them are sincere but i do think some of them are malicious yes yes of course right but but you better to better to assume that it's sincere and and see what how how strong the ground you're standing on is assuming that they're sincere when you start to dismiss this is my kind of way okay because even if i suspect it's not true if i if i dismiss it as insincere i'm also avoiding grappling with the arguments it's a way to bypass a good consideration of what they're saying

and like that, that would have been how I would not have come to the swim at your own risk. Come on, these people are full of shit, you know? So I try to take it as in good faith. Ariel, why do you stand on this? You've been sitting here being Jamaican for an hour now. What's going on? I'm just stoned out of my mind.

No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I think I agree. I actually agree with Noam. And I think that we walk as women specifically into situations every single day. And we talk to rapists and murderers and people who have committed quote unquote crimes far more egregious than what Louie was accused of or admitted to or whatever that was. It I mean, I'm certainly sympathetic to women who have been sexually assaulted and or raped and who feel and i neither of neither of which louis was accused of let's be clear but go ahead yeah right well i didn't say that no no yeah but and i i i really don't like the word triggered um but i'm i'm sympathetic to that reaction right But I think that it is disingenuous to not simultaneously acknowledge that we deal with those men every single day.

So the fact that you know certain things or certain alleged things about certain people, I think there is a tag on the door that says people might drop in. And if you don't like it, you're you're welcome to leave. But why isn't that the case at every single restaurant then? Right. And every single shopping. Oh, because because because I'm presenting them rather than a random thing. Okay, anyway. That's the point I brought up. You could be a flight attendant and Louis gets on the flight and you have a right to say to American Airlines, hey, you know, you can't let him on here because I'm not comfortable with this.

Imagine that. It's not the same. As a matter of fact, it's not the same. It is, but if you paid for a first class ticket and Louie sitting next to you, I think that Dan's point is well taken. But I'm not I'm not sure that an airline has the right to keep somebody off the flight because they don't want them on the flight. I'm not sure. I think they can do no flightless, but that's only in the case of terrorism or something. Yeah, but I mean, I, I, I am choosing. Well, let's let's move on because Dan had a bunch of topics and I want to I want to try to get through at least one more.

I get the segues on this show a second and on because one of my topics was about singing Chris Easter songs on board some airline. I don't know if you all saw that video. No. What's that? That is a perfect. What's an Easter song? Well, I was talking about Jesus anyway on an airline. I don't know if you all saw that video. No. What's that? That is a perfect. What's an Easter song? Well, I was talking about Jesus anyway on an airline. You didn't see that video. It looked like earlier today.

Yeah, it was a video of these. They had a guitar and there were people singing. I was like very Vatican to service kind of God spell hippie. Yeah. I don't know. Was it Jesus? I assume. And it was.

Was it Spirit Airlines? No. Holy Spirit was, was it spirit airlines? No, no, I think it was easy jet or it might've been, no one knows if it was chartered or not. That hasn't been determined whether it was a regularly scheduled flight or a charter flight. Elon Omer tweeted. It's been getting a lot of, uh, uh, Ilhan. Yeah. It's been getting a lot of, uh, views on Twitter, this video. And Elon Omer tweeted, well, what if my family wanted to sing a Muslim song? How would that go over?

And so there's been a lot of controversy that why are we letting people sing Easter songs or Jesus songs on a plane? And we probably wouldn't let them sing a Muslim song or a Jewish song. And why is anyone allowed to sing on a plane? I mean, shouldn't isn't that's kind of like disturbing the flight. Now, the counter argument is that this might have been a charter flight where everybody was sort of on the same page. But assuming it wasn't a charter flight, it's hard to imagine that they would let this guy had a guitar. Is Jesus his co-pilot? Are you allowed to say that? I don't know. What's it what's a Muslim song? None. The call to prayer comes to mind, but I know no,

no Muslim hymnals. No, no, but basically almost every Arabic song or many of them are, are talk about Muslim themes, you know? I mean, Ilhan,

Ilhan Omar was doing something very specific that Twitter people do. Yes. It's a very, she just wanted to dunk and prove that, oh, they're going to think of all people as terrorists. So they wouldn't allow them to do that, which is sort of antithetical to what America is. I live in a neighborhood where there's a lot of mosques and Muslims pray all the time in the streets.

Nobody bothers them. So what? Well, I'm going to make which point exactly that. But you're trying to make the I think there's two points that are being made. One is, yes, people, you know, Muslims are especially on an airplane might be thought of as terrorists. The second point is white Christian privilege. They're allowed to do whatever they want. They can sing songs about Christmas. They can sing songs about Easter. They can sing songs about Jesus. And no other religious group would be allowed to do this because we live in an imperialist white supremacist society. That's the point I think she was mainly trying to make and that many people on Twitter have made. Well, I just want to tell you guys that I met the Easter Bunny today in Jamaica and he is black.

So I don't know about the white Easter Bunny in Jamaica. Also, is that a thing over there Dan I'm sorry that what you're what you're saying like like just okay if I were on the plane I would find it beautiful to hear a Muslim song and a Muslim holiday I would think that would be that would be make me very proud as an American but I understand not everybody would feel that way but it brings to mind something my father used to say about his childhood, like when they would have Christmas carols in the public school when he was one of the only Jewish kids. And he said, we always knew this was a Christian country and we loved and we're

so happy to be here. And as Jews would begin to like complain about this, my father would always be disturbed by that. He'd say, what are you doing? The country's, you know, 85% Christian, like you really expect them to outlaw Christmas because you don't like it, you know? And he, and, and now as the country is on a trajectory to become literally no one thing, but maybe five different things all at about 20%. Right. You have to wonder whether that's a workable formula. I mean, you know, if there's one that's 85% and everybody else kind of knows that's the way it is, that kind of works.

It may not be fair, but it kind of works. Or it might fall apart if it's become five different things trying to fight. Yes, it might really fall apart because well i will say that in the history of the world it has never worked so there's that but you know mostly demographics one demographic group doesn't so overwhelm the other demographic group just naturally the best closest example is the netherlands but we don't even think you know there's they have protestant and christian and inter-christian sectional violence but we don't even think of that as

like race and one of the reasons is they were able to solve it and generally the west was able to solve christianity so it kind of becomes lower salience and maybe we could do that with race the lebanese tried to do it by having a system of government where they said, vice president's going to be an Arab and president treasurer is going to be a Christian. And that didn't. And, you know, they wrote textbooks about that at the time. Oh, this is the way to go. And then 10 years after the textbook was written, it descends into civil war and doesn't seem to be a great example. But I do think, you know, I've looked a lot at the demographics and I talked to our mutual friend, Yasha Monk. I do think it's a little overstated what becoming the majority minority country is. And it kind of locks into place this idea, especially of Latinos,

which are the rising demographic as being so different than white. And I don't mean in the certain in the we are all children under the same God sense. I mean, you know, the history of America is all these different groups eventually becoming white and absolved into the mainstream. And sadly, I don't know if it will ever happen for black people, but just demographically, if more and more Latinos start to identify as white, then we won't become a quote, majority minority country.

We'll just be a bunch of different white people of different years. I mean, for a country to work, you do need to have a dominant culture, not even a race, just a dominant culture, because multiculturalism, as attractive as it is as an idea, like you just pointed out, it hasn't worked. Well, you have several cultures that work perfectly.

You at least need ideas that we more or less agree with, and I think that that is... Those are the ideas that have become the dominant culture. Yeah, well, I don't know if the culture is a song, but it's at least things like like the constitution's pretty good and not perfect and george washington okay he had his good points stuff like that yeah i mean the most important point we're forgetting is what kind of bottom losers sing on an airplane it doesn't matter anybody it doesn't matter if it was jews or muslim why are you singing on a plane i would

find that annoying coming from anybody we're all trying to get to someplace. Shut the fuck up and enjoy the flight. Agreed. I you know, if it's nice music, well sung, I probably would have thought it was a good diversion because I get very bored on a plane and I do listen to my movies and podcasts. Yeah, but I live entertainment wouldn't offend me if it was well done necessarily. But, you know, I don't speak for the entire flight. Again, it might have been a charter flight. And

that hasn't yet been established. Maybe no one on the flight itself was offended. Were there people on the flight who were outraged or just people who saw the video? I don't know because nobody on the flight has thus far chimed in. And so we don't really know the situation. And I think I'm saying good night to everybody. Wait, wait, wait. I think everybody here is going to agree. You know, if you're five different things, if a country is made up of five different things,

the only workable solution is that everybody wants to pull together to be one, to be five legs or something of one thing. And so many of these things like this cultural appropriation thing, these are so damaging, so damaging to our future. You know, the notion that we should rub up against each other, begin to appreciate various things that these other people expose us to, but then it's off limits to you.

You shall not cook their food. You shall not wear their fashion. This is crazy. And this makes me pessimistic. If you were to close your eyes and imagine what a healthy country would look like, that's pretty easy to do. And yet everything, everything the left seems to want are the opposite of what is the obvious thing, the obvious direction we should be moving in. So that's

literally the definition of culture. No one owns anything. Everything that a culture has, it came from somewhere. Somebody saw it. They were like, let me replicate this. They either make it better or worse. And then you have cultures and they evolve. I mean, you have New York state. There's like maybe 70 different cultures in New York state. But they are probably in Jackson, Queens. There are 70. Exactly. So this idea that you should never touch something because there's one group that owns it is one of the dumbest thing that the left has sort of come up with food. So much worse. When you see this white guy that we were talking about beforehand,

who's complaining about too many black people in country music, it seems so obviously racist to us. Right. But then it's, it's literally the logic of cultural appropriation. It's literally precisely how people accept because it it's the target is white people that's what we've done now we've made everything acceptable if you're shitting on white people yeah yeah yeah all right what percentage of people who raise a cultural appropriation argument really are representative of the of the country what percentage of americans

really feel strongly uh have an anti-cultural appropriation stance. Small, but powerful, just like cancel culture. Yeah. There's been a few times where I've heard aspects of it where I thought maybe this has some merit. For instance, I remember Beyonce and there were a couple of African South African artists who said Beyonce borrowed or stole ideas from them and she never gave them credit. Beyonce or Shakira? Beyonce is Beyonce.

So it's it became like, OK, maybe most of the arguments, most of the quote unquote valid arguments with cultural appropriation like Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis and black music, it's not really cultural appropriation, just ripping off and not paying. Exactly. Which is very different from cultural appropriation. Right. Everybody, I got to run. They got to run. Why don't you get your hair braided while you're in Jamaica?

And well, that's what I was just going to say. Like, if you guys could have figured this out and then pass, you know, our I might have been able to come home with braids. I think you have to. When are you coming back? You're coming back tomorrow. Yeah, I'm coming back to my mom, Marley. I don't know this, but Bob Marley was half white. Well, actually, it's funny.

I'll say this very quickly. I came to see Noam's band at the Olive Tree the other day. And you guys were amazing. But you were somebody was also singing a Bob Marley song. And I was wondering soon it's going to be that like white people can't even sing Bob Marley songs. Yeah. Oh, I've heard that argument before. People go. People are dumb. OK, well, I'm going to get braids by everybody. Right. OK, so that's it. Well, I would I mean, I know Mike's big, big inflation guy.

And I did write that down on my list. But if we are we we've been doing this like an hour and. Oh, I want to hear. I'm interested in this. We can. I'm a big inflation guy and i did write that down on my list but if we are we we've been doing this like an hour and oh i want to hear i'm interested in this we can i'm a big inflation guy well i don't know you tweeted a couple things about inflation oh yes i did let me just intro this section and we'll do it briefly because we're running out of time inflation is running wild everybody good intro you nailed it well we don't it's not this it's not this is my favorite and it's not the inflation coupled with unemployment that we had the so-called stagflation in the 70s. It's inflation with full employment. Yes. So the economy is heating up. Yes. OK, but we got inflation. Mike, you the economy running hot. You don't want it to happen. Here's my problem with the discussion around inflation. I was mostly in, you know, leftish progressive circles. And I was always of the opinion. We're talking from like 2010 to 2020. Yes. Inflation isn't a problem now. Thank God. So let's not do everything to prevent it no matter what. But at

the same time, it could be a problem, which seems like an irrational thing to say, since it has reared its head and to some extent is just a natural consequence of other economic factors. But I have to tell you, in these progressive circles, the idea that you would ever, anyone would ever be worried about inflation was not just laughable. It was seen as almost evil. You were either a total idiot to worry about inflation, or you were engaged in a bad faith argument and just lying. You're not really engaged. You're not really worried about inflation. You just want the rich people to keep the money. And it's an inaccurate way to set policy, where you never contemplate this very real thing that can happen, and it did happen.

And now the argument now very quickly is that when we see inflation, the same lefty circles will say, well, I mean, we got hit with a pandemic and we got hit with supply chain problems and we never could have foreseen that. And that is true, but oftentimes bad things happen and then you get the economic consequence that comes with those bad things. But of all those people saying, well, who knew about the supply chain? Who knew about the pandemic? Then at the time when you voted $1.9 billion in stimulus, were you worried about inflation then? And a smart person would have been, and some liberal economists were. But for the most part, the people who are the snarkiest on Twitter would just laugh at you and say, oh, the only reason you're raising a specter of inflation is that you're a bad, stupid or evil person. It's not a good place to be in where you can't even have a decent debate. I would invite everybody to watch. I don't know if you saw it, Mike. There was a debate. There

was two of them now, but the first one between Larry Summers and Paul Krugman on this very issue before it happened. And at the time when I saw it, it was so clear to me that Larry Summers was wiping the floor with Paul Krugman in terms of what were pretty much common sense arguments, you know, fundamental economic arguments. Yeah. Like you're putting in people are going to have three times as much money to spend than they had before COVID, you know, like just like you should have you, did you hear it? Oh yeah. And to me, Summers seemed to be not just winning the argument, but you almost had to struggle to think what kind of point Krugman was making. And the answer is people on the left just hate Larry Summers. They hate him as a person. Well, and he also Krugman actually made some blatantly political arguments about like, well, this is bad for Democrats.

If we, if we do this, you know, which is an economist shouldn't be saying that. And I want to make one other point about this because one of the left wing hot, maybe it's already been destroyed, but there was a hot left wing argument, essentially, if I understand it correctly, which is saying that you could just print money. Yeah, this is the MMT, modern monetary theory argument. Yeah. And I was just wondering when we were contemplating all these sanctions against Russia, if the MMT people ever said, well, we can't hurt Russia with sanctions. They can just print money. Like, why can't Putin just print out the money and give it to his people? Like, isn't that what that teaches? Well, their argument is, you know, the U.S can't put just print out the money and give it to his people. Like, isn't that what that teaches?

Well, their argument is, you know, the U.S. dollar is different from every other currency. So, you know, since we essentially set the rules, the MMT people aren't taking a loss. People who believe in the MMT people literally write arguments saying, well, they've been proven right. And I don't. Do they have an example of how they've been proven right? Their idea is that you could run the economy super hot and create low unemployment by pumping a lot of money into the economy. And that is true. And then the counter argument is then inflation comes.

And now they're saying, well, let's see how it plays out over the next six months or a year. You know, we can use we could could use controls, not beforehand where we set high interest rates. We can combat it by rising, raising the interest rates. So we'll see either we'll go into recession and then the MMT people will still somehow still say they're right. Or we'll narrowly avoid a recession. Well, the question related to comedy is will inflation have an effect on comedian pay and that always seems to be the one exception there's so much of this podcast that seems to be a backdoor labor issue between you yeah that's kind of a fun little interplay that we have it's a it's an underlying right

since we're going past the thing, so did I discuss this with you, my Robert Reich's tweet about Starbucks? No. So, you know, Robert Reich is a real lefty on economics. And he tweeted one of the, and this does come back to comedy then. He tweeted one of the dumbest things I ever heard. He complained that Starbucks wasn't raising, I'm sorry. He complained that Starbucks was raising their prices during this inflationary period. His argument being that Starbucks has tons of money. They don't need to raise their prices. And I was thinking immediately, what an idiot. Every mom and pop competing with Starbucks

needs Starbucks to raise their prices because until Starbucks raises their prices, they can't raise their prices. And if they can't raise their prices, they haven't got all the capital that Starbucks has. So it's almost predatory. It would be predatory if Starbucks didn't raise its prices because it would starve everybody. What would that do? What would that do for the Amazon bought everybody?

So what does that have to do with comedy right now? There is inflation and it's, it's, and it's cutting into my bottom line for sure. But there's a part of me that says, if it's, if it's hurting me, it's gotta be killing my competition. And you know, I'm like, I'm, I'm reluctant to raise my prices because I know as soon as I raise my prices, all the other clubs will be, Oh, thank God he raises prices. And they'll come up with me. So you're starving them like Maripol. A little bit, but I don't believe in raising prices and I do it as a last resort. But yeah,

Dan's right. Like if at some point the cost of living is just going up, the comedians need to make more money. I'm making less money. I might have to raise the prices. How does Robert Reich think that employment happens or the wages of workers rise? I mean, based on that, if the company is making less profit, will they be hiring more workers? Will they be paying their workers more? They will not. Usually profits rise. And then to keep that going or to get more profits, you get more workers in there to keep the train a chugging. And if you have a profit margin that's lowering, it's not good for workers.

Mike, listen, when some things are so obvious when you do it and you can't, and the smartest people in the world don't get it. Like even people were so puzzled why no one was coming back to work. It's like, they're not coming back. I knew they were not coming back to work. They're still not coming back to work by the way, because they have plenty of money. Like the only reason nobody wants to work, but the only reason somebody doesn't go back to work is because they can afford not to. Right. Period. And so I say, remember those tweets that were denying that was actually a phenomenon. I'm a Democrat. I'm a liberal. But you could go to all the pod save America guys going, all these Republicans saying people don't want to work. They just want to save

their money. Yes, it's true. It's a true phenomenon. It's documented. It's documentable. Remember it. We still can't do our brunch in the comedy cellar because I can't get a staff together. I mean, it's getting better gradually. But I know why that is, because people don't need to work. And by the way, I have a lot to say about this, but just in general, the Republican conservative point of view that we need to worry about our incentive structure to get people to work, not making things too easily, not cutting checks too easily. This is all very real. And you can believe that's all very real and true without wanting to see people who really need money being denied. But it's kind of like people have to go one way or another. They can't accept it. It's like I always say about stop and frisk. I was never comfortable with stop and frisk. And I became very much against it when Bloomberg blew past what was, in my opinion, the law of diminishing returns.

But I never thought it didn't work. It's not the same thing to be it can be against stop and frisk, but to say, oh, it has no effect on crime. Well, of course, it had an effect on. Of course, it did. Of course, all economic policy creates incentives and disincentives. Like, of course, it did. Of course, all economic policy creates incentives and disincentives. Like, of course it does. And there are probably a lot of Republicans pointing to certain incentives or disincentives and they're exaggerating. And you know what? If you raise the minimum wage from seven and a quarter to eight ninety five nationally, it is not going to hurt businesses.

But if you raise it to 15 in Alabama, it actually will. And it's not because Republicans are assholes. It's because of economics. Yeah, I agree. All right. We I think. Yeah, I think that's a good bullet point to end things. Either I'm a liberal or Mike's a conservative. It's a little scary here.

I don't know. Michael, thank you for coming by, TJ. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Noam, hope you don't get COVID. Get well soon to your lovely wife Same to Emmett No, that's fine

Mike's son has also been He's got a touch of the vid I just saw him literally two nights ago And again, you're most symptomatic Before the symptoms start So that's all I'm going to say about that And I was right next to him But okay

Podcast at ComedySally.com for comments and suggestions please let us know we talked a lot about comedy, we talked about inflation we talked about Jesus on airplanes we talked about so many things, what did you like what didn't you like, what do you want to hear more of what do you want to hear less of, what do you think about Mike Peska

is he great or what what a pleasure to have a professional a professional on the air it's amazing tj uh you know let us know uh should we have him back we've had him on a couple times uh yeah so so please you know let us know nicole lions hello how do you do what do you think of this episode it was great great, as always. You can't, I mean, she's like a poker face, but with, you know, with her voice.

Yeah, as always. You can't trust her. The as always is a little deflating for you and me, TJ. You know. Yeah. Just two other guys. All right, thank you. We'll see you next time on Laugh It Up.

Good night. Good night.