The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - The Vaccine

Episode Date: January 30, 2021

Dean Edwards is a stand-up comedian, actor, singer, writer, musician and voice artist. Dr. Satish Pillai is a Senior Investigator in Viral Pathogenesis at Vitalant Research Institute and a Professor of Laboratory Medicine at UCSF.  

this is live from the table the official official podcast of New York's world-famous comedy cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99 Raw Dog, as well as on the Laugh Button Podcast Network. Dan Natterman here with Nolan Dorman, owner of the world-famous comedy cellar, Periel Ashenbrand, the show's producer. With us, Dean Edwards, standwards standard comic actor singer writer musician first artist his multiple tv appearances include saturday night live and the sopranos and of course he's a regular it was until the pandemic at the world famous comedy dean it's been a while good to have you with us yeah good to see you there your interest is you're a musician and singer

which i didn't know um i used to i mean i most of my friends in college knew me as a rapper before uh before they knew me as a comic um when you said that i was like oh wow someone someone did some research perriel it believes in in in in uh detailed introductions yeah so he dug that up somewhere, and I didn't know that. But I know a lot of comedians are musical. I know Dave Chappelle, I believe, is a musician. Of course, Craig Robinson's a musician. Yeah, of course, Craig, yeah.

Numerous other, Kyle Dunnigan does a lot of music, and et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, good to see you. It's been a long time. Yeah, man, too long. I don't think it's been, I don't think I've seen you since before the pandemic.

I think the last time I played the cellar in the Village Underground was, I want to say, March 11th or 12th 2020. The only reason I remember is because I had

to cancel that weekend because God forbid I lost a bunch of gigs in the Middle East. And so I hit my agent and scrambled and said, listen, man, I need some dates. And I think Marlon Wayans canceled in West Palm. So I had to fly out the next morning to go do that weekend. And then everything shut down before I came home. Well, we're going on a, I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's almost a year going on, but I've seen some people here and there. Right.

Over the summer, I used to go to the comedy cellar because it was outside seating. So I used to sleep. I don't think I ever saw you there, but anyway. You know what? I did see you the one of the few nights I think I went once just to hang out and I saw you and Val and I think Russ and then two more

times I came through the night that I think Louis C K and Keith went on I was on and one other night the night during that week, and then I haven't been on really since, you know. But I also wanted to add and salute to Nome because you're part of the reason I was prepared.

I just shot a, actually I have a comedy special premiering on Tuesday on Netflix. Tiffany Haddish presents They Ready Season 2. We shot and one of the reasons I was so gun ready was because of getting all the reps. So I wanted to thank Noam

and Esty. I planned on sending y'all a message actually on Friday saying thank you. The multiple stage repetitions at least had me prepared so that for the six weeks leading up to the show, I had a general idea of a good amount of the material I wanted to do. And the cellar is a big reason for that. So thank you. That's terrific. Our pleasure. By the way, somebody had their TV on or something?

I hear a... You know what? My wife has her friend's class. Oh, that's okay. Yeah, we're sharing space. I have a wife too and I know there's nothing you can do about it. Okay.

Don't worry. Right. You want to have a life after this podcast, right? That's why I led with that. All right, so what else? What else? Did anybody get the vaccine? No, we're young, healthy people, relatively speaking.

So we don't get vaccinated. If I were to get it off for like somebody said, listen, I have a friend who can hook you up with the vaccine. Should I take it or not? Of course. Why wouldn't you? Because ostensibly I'd be going ahead of someone else who might be told there's no, you know, they're out of this. By the way, to me, I actually don't have that opportunity.

But I do know people who have gotten hooked up, as it were, with the vaccine. Who jumped the line. Who jumped the line. Who jumped the line. Yeah, yeah. Was it jumping the line, or is it that, you know, like the Titanic, those first few lifeboats, nobody wanted to get on them. So is it okay for them? Right, right.

Oh, I'm not judging it. I'm just, you know, based on the conversation we're having, it seems like there's a negative connotation behind someone, like Noam just said, that got it. And they got hooked up as opposed to, you know, whatever the rollout is. You know, I was watching on the news earlier that one fire chief is probably about to do some time because one of his underlings, actually, he was stealing only three vials of it. If you're going to steal it, don't go to jail for three vials.

Go all out. So, Periel, Periel is a friend of Satish. Periel, what if Satish told you, don't tell anybody, but I can get you a vaccine. Would you take it? I'd be there tomorrow.

I'd get in the fucking car right now. Are you kidding? First of all, the entire system in this country works like that. So let's not pretend that having privilege or money or something doesn't afford you better medical care in every single situation. So what's your point here? Is that like, why is this different than anything else? Like if you had cancer, God forbid, and you knew a doctor at Sloan Kettering who said, oh yeah, I could get you a spot, even though there's a three month wait period, would you

not go to Sloan Kettering because you were taking somebody else's spot? I don't know what I would do. I guess, I guess I probably, I guess faced with life and death, I probably would take the spot and, and maybe not be terribly proud of myself, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about taking a vaccine. That's, I mean, you just have to wait, wait a little bit longer. That's all. No no they're also throwing out vaccines you know when i took my parents to get vaccinated in queens harry l uh me think you doth protest a little harshly here like are you is there something you want to tell us about your access to the vaccine no i'm fessing up i would get i would if i had a chance to get it i would get it and not feel the slightest bit guilty about it.

Cause I don't think I'm taking it from somebody else. If I had the chance to get it last week when my parents got it. And I, I'm not saying I did, but if I had the chance, maybe I did. If you're not taking it from people, if you're not taking it, the issue is, is are you taking it from people, if you're not taking it,

the issue is, is are you taking it from people? And I don't think you are. I was told that if you go to a pharmacy in New York, that some pharmacies that are offering it, I don't know if this is true, but if, if there's nobody showed up that day to get vaccinated,

they'll give it to you. That's what they told. They vaccinate. My dad's almost 80. And he, my mom was supposed to get it on a Saturday. And my dad had an appointment on Monday. And they let my dad get it the same day as my mom, because it was towards the end of the day.

And they said, if we, you know, we'll, we throw them out. And then they asked me, do you want one too, honey? There we go. No, I mean me, do you want one too, honey? There we go. No, I mean, your question is, I mean, it's a hypothetical. I don't know if it has much real world application because I don't think that's happening. I think that people that are getting vaccinated that are younger are getting vaccinated because otherwise they would have thrown it out the back.

No, no, no. People are getting hooked up. Of course. And that's the way the world works. Actually Donald Trump said something like that one time. He said, unfortunately, you know, That's the way the world works. Actually, Donald Trump said something like that one time. He said, unfortunately, that's the way the world works. And he got a lot of flack from it. But it's the case. You know, I just, I might not, I would not feel that comfortable about doing that, given the fact that I'm okay and that if I had access to a vaccine, I might try

to give it to like, you know, Steve Fabricant's dad who's in Florida was having trouble getting one or something. I don't know. It's not that simple. You can't transfer a vaccine available in New York to Steve Fabricant's father who's in Florida. Yeah. So if there's a vaccine and they're going to throw it away, you would take it.

You know, you know, what's interesting to me is that I don't vote. And Perry L says to me, how can you not vote? And I'm like, well, my vote doesn't matter. I'm in New York. She goes,

if everybody thought that way, could you imagine what would happen? And I'm like, nobody does it that way. Now you're like, I grabbed that vaccine in a heartbeat. That's the way it won't work, motherfucker.

What are you you an idiot? What a hypocrite. I just think that it's insane to draw the line at the COVID vaccine where, like, most things that were afforded were afforded because of luck or privilege or some combination of both of those things so why is the covid vaccine any different i i think what you're i think what you're saying is actually um absolutely asinine but i'm i'm not sure i understood it i think what you're saying is that because the world is so unfair we should no longer worry about doing things that are unfair. I think,

I think that's what I've heard you say. Anarchy. Chaos. No, that's not what I'm saying. Okay. I'm saying that if you have money and privilege, you were able to order food online during the pandemic and not have to go to a grocery store.

Right? I think anybody who can buy food can order it online. False. There were people who were in the stores doing the shopping for people who like me and you. Okay. I made sure there's some people who

don't have to do it. Now my point is a little bit more well taken. I don't see- No, I still have no idea what you're talking about. Does anybody? Dan, you want to- Okay, I'd love to. She's saying she doesn't feel guilty about being privileged,

but we're talking about an issue of if by not taking the vaccine, somebody else would get it versus it would get thrown away that's the question no before Satish gets here we get deep into COVID I would like to at least take advantage of our one on one time with Dean to find out a little bit of how he's been occupying himself during these pandemic months. Oh, bro. Man, listen, my family's sick of me and I'm sick of them. It's been a challenge because we, you know, fortunately we have a house,

but it's a New York City house. So this is not like I'm in the West Wing and my family's in the West Wing. I pretty much was relegated to my bedroom because the eldest started, graduated and started college during this. And college is in her bedroom. And my youngest is still in high school from her bedroom or the dining room. My wife is a professor, so I'm actually in her classroom, what's normally her classroom. And I was just in the bedroom or the basement. And the beauty of at least when we had decent weather, I would go and sit out in the backyard

and hang out there. But it's, you know, it's in the 30s. And so... The weather makes all the difference, you know, when you can go outside and it's in the 30s and so the weather makes all the difference you know when you hang out in the park you know yeah go take a walk just walk around the block just just to just to not have cabin fever um you know when and succumb to just being stuck in the house but i think i mean when when tiffany called me in August, from August, even really through right now, I've been occupied with focusing on making sure I was funny enough that people wouldn't turn past me on Netflix and promoting it. And it's given me something to do. So who's the special called, your Netflix special?

It's Tiffany Addis Presents They Ready Season 2. And it's myself, Godfrey, Tony Woods, Aaron Jackson, Barbara Carlisle, and Kim Clark out of L.A. And so six of us, we each got, I think, the specials, probably average about 20- odd minutes um and uh for me it was also dope because i i actually at the end of uh at the end of 2019 i actually recorded myself saying i'm shooting a special in 2020 for netflix and i actually uh when i showed tiffany and and page her which from uh from one of the Sykes company push it, but they were all blown away.

Like you manifested. I was like, hey, I just, you know, I believe in speaking things into existence. I'm real big on energy. And so now I'm more so, okay, now I'm speaking a full hour into existence and millions of dollars and so forth. That's a great lineup, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, man. Yeah, I mean, and I honestly, I think the reason they, obviously she chose people because we each somehow touched her, affected her on her, you know, journey in this entertainment business. And she spoke to each of us about that. But I think she also was wise in saying, you know, I know Dean has a strong 20, 30 minutes ready. I know Godfrey has a strong, strong set already intact,

Tony Woods and so forth. So that even though we only had, you know, a month and a half or so to prepare and getting stage time was going to be scarce, you know, we all knew that we'd come in ready. Where'd you film it? Were you able to get a live audience? Yeah, yeah. We actually shot it out at Long Beach Terrace Theater, man,

where Richard Pryor shot his first concert, live in concert. Wow. We shot at the same theater. We all had to go through the necessary COVID precautions as far as getting multiple tests. They tested the audience. The audience was masked. They shot it. We actually shot in front of the audience. The audience was masked. They shot it. We actually shot in front of the theater.

We shot some things interior as far as like a round table discussion, but the actual stage, they built a stage in front of the theater so that we were at least outdoors. But when you watch it, you can't tell. You can hardly tell that it's outdoors unless there's one shot where you can see a tree in the distant uh distant background aside from that i when i watched it i was amazed at how impressive they they were with the uh production value and making it look like we were indoors erin jackson terrific by the way she's she's not that well known but she's really great yeah Erin Erin is uh and and it's funny because Erin she you know we were talking leading up to it and and you know she's such a she's such a comedian's comedian um where she she likes to work out

you know five six times a night just to get the right verbiage and to economize her her language and you know going into um because we take two nights we shot on a friday and saturday and on friday night um before the show she's like i don't know you know i'm i just i i you could see she was she was a bundle of nerves in a good way because she just wanted to make sure um her set was concise and ready because normally when you shoot something you want to go and work out in the city that you're you're playing and prep you know and just get a feel for the audience and we really didn't have that opportunity but after friday night show i think think everyone was ready and said, okay, Saturday. Because, I mean, helicopters.

Godfrey had two helicopters go by while he was performing on Friday night. And I had two motorcycles drown out punchlines. So you had to say, you know what, I want to stop and do that again. That's the beauty of TV. That's so great. No, and by that again. That's the beauty of TV. That's so great. No, and by the way, we ask you this every week, but is there any further information regarding the reopening of the Comedy Cellar?

Just an update? I know we go through this all the time, but... There's no update, and I'm... I mean, I don't even know. I'm having trouble remembering I had a Comedy Cellar. It's been so long. It's so weird. I said this a long time ago, but now I can really say it.

I can totally see how, for whatever reason, if you get used to not working, for whatever reason either either it's because either because you have a tremendous amount of money or because you're on government assistance or whatever it is it really does it is bad to your soul it is you get used to it and it and I can see how it will be hard to put my pants on in the morning and start going to work every day again you know i can see that and um you know it worries me like people have to get back to work it's not gonna be that easy no do you do you look at it as sort of like uh i mean this is

this is obviously exaggerating but do you look at it as almost like a slow drawn out death not not happen and by that I I guess I say that because I remember uh my dad passed in 2007 and he retired in 2006 and I I honestly I don't I don't believe in retirement because I think having a daily purpose having a something to do every day gives you drive and purpose and keeps you, you know, excited about life. And I remember the, maybe a month or two, a few months before he passed, my mother actually saying, Dino, daddy looks old. And he did, because he wasn't getting up and going every day and so i i i agree with what gnome is saying that you know people when you get used to not doing anything it's a it's easy to succumb to you know whatever demons you have in your life whether it's drugs or or liquor or what

have you whatever vices you have but when you have have purpose, even if you're, you're, you're on drugs, you have to go to a job. Yeah. You're a functioning, uh, you know, drug head or, or, uh, alcoholic, but you have a function. If you're just sitting at home, you're just wallowing in it. And you just have more access to the poison. So, yeah, so it's so it's a bad time uh welcome satish let me give him a formal you know you know perriel is a stickler for intros but i want to ask him the first question go ahead and she's got satish palai palai palai good to see you guys i'm sorry sorry. We've had you before.

Dr. Satish Palai. Senior investigator in viral pathogenesis at the Pallant Research Institute and a professor of lab medicine at University of California, San Francisco until COVID. He was basically working on a cure for AIDS and pivoted once COVID.

And a musician, and a fine musician. Is he a musician? a fine musician you know music's on youtube um satish i have a question for you yeah if i have a friend who could hook me up with a vaccine you know like after hours at the pharmacy or something you know should i take it absolutely you should yes why were you guys thinking that okay no no one basically told me that I was totally amoral. And I was like, no, no, no, he was saying you're a let me let me clarify something. Okay, so there are cases where there's like a dose sitting someplace that's going to wind up in a trash bin if it's not given to someone. I don't think you should cut in line and take a vaccine away from somebody who desperately needs it. But there are

definitely cases, there's suboptimal allocation of these resources, right? And there are definitely cases where doses are going to be, they're going to wind up in a wastebasket. And in that case, you should definitely take one. I don't think you should jump in and take one if somebody else is going to get deprived. I wasn't talking about one jump in and take one if somebody else is going to get deprived. I wasn't talking about one that fell off the truck, as they say in The Sopranos. I'm talking about cutting the line because I have access.

It's not cutting the line, though. If somebody offers you a vaccine, it doesn't necessarily mean that- It's not supposed to. It's my hypothetical, my rules, okay? It's not happening. It's my hypothetical that someone who works in a pharmacy who's not supposed to do so calls me up and says,

listen, come in the parking lot. I'll hook you up, one, two, three. Is that happening, Satish? Are people cutting the line? Or are people just doses that would have otherwise been thrown away going to people that are not in risk groups? I've heard of the latter happening. In terms of people cutting the line, I think it's...

I haven't heard any definite stories about that, about people actually cutting the line. It's just kind of the standard story where we have some pretty serious health disparities in this country. And so the the have-nots are, as usual getting more screwed than the uh the haves um that's what i was saying right how are the have-nots getting screwed tell that's important tell us about that it's the same thing where you know they're deprioritized one way or another they're just not uh that many uh centers where they're actually um giving out the vaccines in resource limited settings or um it's exactly like everything else with health disparities and medical care.

I'm quite curious about that. So, for instance, I know two people who took the vaccine who were over 65 who just got an appointment through regular channels and went and got the vaccine, neither of which benefited from their bank accounts in any way. I mean, one of them didn't have much money and one of them has more money, but neither of those facts came to play. How is it that someone who is a have not, as you put it, wouldn't be able to do exactly like the people that I know who did it? So I'm not saying that there's like a direct, you know,

survey of people's bank accounts. So, you know, there's some formula about what your material wealth is and whether or not you can get the vaccine. It's even something as simple as just like the number of centers that are distributing vaccines, you know, with respect to other demographic variables and everything else, you know, it's something that-

That probably wouldn't be in Manhattan so much or New York City, but you mean like somewhere in the middle of the country somewhere? Yeah, I think that's an issue. And I think in general, and hopefully this will be rectified because now I think we have some people running the show that are legitimately engaged in making this all happen better. But the, I mean, just the rollout of the vaccines has been far from optimal and it's just going way, way, way more slowly.

Actually, there is an irony to what you're saying. You've probably seen this because the states that have been doing best per capita have been small, poor states. Many of them, West Virginia, the Dakotas, I don't know if the Dakotas are poor or not, but they're, but definitely, you know that i mean it's in california where i mean yes you have people in the federal government now who maybe are better motivated but california really shouldn't need president biden to get their shit together right i mean california is is a huge country all on its own, and they're

just going to, they're just running a shit show there. So let me tell you, when you say they shouldn't need that, that's not the way I actually think about it. I think the only way that we're going to have an effective response against this pandemic is to have a coordinated federal response. I don't think it should be the kind of thing where, you know, every county or every state sort of fends for themselves and has their own public health care. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm saying, what can the federal government do for Gavin Newsom? Is that his name?

That he can't, that he's constrained from doing, from himself. He can't marshal California resources and California clinics to be, like in New York, in New York, for instance, they weren't open 24-7. What does that have to do with Trump or Biden? Like, that's our governor. Open the fucking thing 24-7, right? So one thing is, even though California has got resources, the federal government has a lot more resources

that they could mobilize to do this. And the other thing is- Satish, Satish, look me in the eye and tell me you think that the reason California is screwing up this vaccine rollout has anything to do with a lack of resources. No, I don't think it's because we're a poor state. No, I don't think that's why. I think there's multiple problems. But really what I think-

That's what I think. But we need to have a centralized, unified strategy in the way we do this for this to work correctly. That's what I think. Maybe. I'm not against essentialized. No, let me give you a very simple reason why we can't have like a state-by-state solution. One very, very simple reason is that we don't live in some sort of magical fragmented habitat

where what happens in California stays in California or what happens in Idaho stays there, right? We have people going back and forth. So we exist in a soup. And so even if we have really effective management one location you know all we need is one weak link in the fence to compromise the whole no no i don't don't misconstrue me i i i of course we're all connected i'm i'm just uh based on life experience, I don't see any reason whatsoever that something would be better managed by one central thing for 300 million people than, for instance, Mayor Bloomberg would be able to manage New York City's vaccine rollout. I think that it is a kind of an act of faith and a myth to think that the people in Washington are better at running things. I do agree with you that if there's a shortage of money,

if there's a shortage of money and resources, yes, then Washington should make sure that nobody is foregoing things because they don't have the money. Poor states, Mississippi, whatever it is. Yeah, absolutely. Money, Washington can provide. But logistics and management skills, these are almost impossible from thousands of miles away.

You need to be close to it. And Washington has no advantage. And if you just look at things which Washington does manage, like the post office or, I mean, any number of things, there's no indication that they know how to do it. It's probably gonna take, you know, a month or two before we see an impact on the pandemic and how it's managed.

You know, I don't think this stuff happens overnight. But I'm really optimistic, based on what I've seen so far, that we're gonna see improvements on the ground. And, like, to give you one idea, you know, kind of speaking for what my background is, like, you know, in terms of how the vaccines are rolled out, that's kind of one component of a multi-component strategy, right? You need, in addition to vaccination, you need testing and you need molecular surveillance, right? So I'm sure you guys have seen all these

news stories about the different genetic variants of SARS- that are popping up right so really for the vaccines to work you need it's like all hands on deck you need to have a really really strong mandated public health intervention so everybody's wearing masks and everything else to limit spread outside of the vaccines you need to have really good testing contact tracing if we can actually have it um and then also you know molecular surveillance so we can look to see when there are new emerging strains of the virus and we understand whether they compromise the vaccine or not. So again, it's like there are many, many facets to this, and I think it's very difficult to just have it be a Wild West situation where every region is managing this according to their own guidelines and principles. I think that's dangerous. Satish, I'm, oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.

No, no, you go, go ahead, Satish. No, I'm curious what your thoughts are on specifically African Americans, but people of color and their paranoia towards taking the vaccine. Yeah. And can you speak on that and how- I'm happy you narrowed down the question

because I thought he was just going to have a free what do you think of African Americans question. Oh, great. Like, what do you think of me? No, I mean, I think that there's a real historical precedent there associated with it. It's fully justified and understandable. And I think basically it is the job of the scientific establishment to convey information

as fluidly and openly as possible to people of color to make them understand why it is worthwhile and why it makes sense. And actually, there was a very cool, you know, dr fauci um what was the name of the woman but there was a um very famous african-american activist in dc who actually set up like this zoom forum with with dr fauci about this exact issue oh really you know what i'll send you guys the the link to the recording of this conversation i'd like to check that out it's the whole conversation was geared around this conversation. Oh, I'd like to check that out. The whole conversation was geared around this one question and what really needs to be done here.

Right. Dean, can I say, Dean, I actually have a much harsher opinion than Satish does. And I think that Satish's answer is the common decent person's answer, which is that, well, they have a justification, blah, blah. I would say no. And I thought about this, like what would you say to a loved one?

If I was a loved one, if she has a black African American wife, I say, honey, don't be ridiculous. Tuskegee was a hundred years ago and it was a, you know, people were sick and they, and they, and they let them stay sick. There's no reason that you should take something that happened a hundred years ago and transpose it onto a vaccine, which is being distributed to everybody, white, black, all young. That's just pure paranoia. And I don't even want to give you an inch on that, honey,

because it's dangerous. Yes, because I'm Jewish. I can bring back all sorts of things that have happened in history and try to create a scenario as to why I shouldn't trust. And people look at me, what's the matter? Are you serious right now? They would look at me like, you're nuts. Of course, I'm not taking away the outrage of what happened in history.

But there is no connection, no connection other than some sort of emotional one, which doesn't stand up to reason between the atrocities of the past. And atrocity is the word for it. And some rational fear today. And I think by telling people, I understand, yeah, it's reasonable. We're actually, we're keeping that as a permanent kind of thing that people believe because we keep telling them, saying, well, AIDS was introduced into the ghetto by Jewish doctors. This was a very difficult conspiracy theory to rebut because they build on these things. And I think that, no, it's not reasonable. I mean, unless you can come with some scenario.

It's like the election being fixed. It's like, no, you have to have some facts. I'm not going to say to some crazy person, well, you're right. They did do it when Kennedy was running. So it is reasonable for you to think the election was fixed. And I don't want to insult you by telling you you're being ridiculous. No, no, no, no, no. The election was not fixed.

You have no evidence. And just because this happened in the past does not mean you're you're on so that's my harsh answer but that comes from my heart because i care in a certain way not not because i'm trying to be dismissive of people no and i i didn't i didn't take it as dismissive but the the retort that i would say is yeah we yeah, we shouldn't be paranoid, but, you know, in a quote-unquote post-racial Obama administration, there was a good amount of the population that didn't believe George Floyd could happen, you know, and all the outrage that occurred last year with police leaning on someone's neck for nearly nine minutes. I'm not saying that the paranoia is justified and some of what Noam said is true, but I'm not going to discount that people have a reason to be paranoid because the system has failed and continues to fail them.

You know, fail people specifically like myself. But Dean, this is the thing. Leaving George Floyd out of it, someday when the world turns again, I'd like to sit down with you and play, you know, go into that in more detail. I don't want to do it here because it's such a tricky subject to talk about. Right, right, right. But I would say that yes, my point is this. Taking everything you say

is true. I fear that the end result of that kind of talk is that it will increase the number of Black Americans who don't take the vaccine because they're suspicious of it and that's and what i'm trying to do is say just like from a psychological point of view what what what should the message be if you want to make sure that the maximum number of black people take it with confidence and save their lives and i think that

the more you say the kind of thing that you're saying, well, who would have thought before George Floyd, blah, blah, blah, so maybe you should really think about this. I think that in the end is going to lead to exactly the opposite result that I think which we all want, which is we want everybody to take the vaccine. We want black people to save their lives

and the lives of their loved ones. And I think there is something healthy about saying to somebody no stop the crazy talk and take the vaccine especially within especially now i can't say it but especially within the community i'm saying it would be very very helpful to hear that message i think but no you did bring up you did bring up psychological reactions which i don't think yeah that's what i'm talking about really you, I don't think that can be discounted. I think the real doctor,

I think doctor-patient relationships are of a special kind. And there's an intimacy there and it's fraught with, am I right, Dr. Pillai? So I don't see patients, right? Cause I'm just a nerd doctor. I don't, I'm not a, I'm'm not i don't do that my wife does that not me but i but you know what i'm saying the doctor patient it's fraught with with all sorts of i mean this guy is touching your naked body he's you know he's um we go to we go to a different

doctor i think he might be touching your naked body i mean you know I had a skin check recently for for you know just dermatology I mean you know it's it's sort of an intimate thing and and there's a lot of you know imagine the finger in the ass you know and and and by the way I think there have been studies that people feel better with doctors, like women with women doctors, black people with black doctors. You know, I don't think it's to be discounted that the uneasiness that one might feel with a doctor just in general. Yeah, I also think that like if somebody's skeptical about something, the thing to do is not to say you're being crazy. The thing to do is actually like talk to them and explain to them and listen to them. Like when you're, when your wife is.

Well, look, he believes that they're being crazy and he has a right to express that belief. No, I mean, crazy is a flippant word i don't know if i would actually use that tool but i'm saying that uh i think that the process of dishonestly manipulating somebody and giving credence to something that you actually don't believe yourself like like what the truth is that when you say well i understand i understand why you feel that way they're like no i don, I understand why you feel that way. They're like, no, I don't really understand why you feel that way.

I think it's irrational what you're feeling. And like I said, we don't take that tack when people really believe that Trump won the election. We say, no, no, no, that's not the way it works. You have to have evidence. And if you don't have evidence, then you're really making a mistake here. And this is dangerous. And I'm flipping to the vaccine. And by the way, this is dangerous because you can die without this vaccine.

So stop with all this fear. It makes no sense. It is 100 years ago. I mean, I don't know. Maybe there's more recent examples. But Tuskegee was almost 100 years ago. This is not a relevant historical example unless you want i mean you could think of all sorts of things that happened 100 years

ago that you want to bring them to bear on today this is another planet from today and like i said and again this is a vaccine which is being distributed to everybody it is not a secret program to keep information from sick black people that they have syphilis. I mean it's just so, it's nuts to me. But the Tuskegee thing, I mean that's an extreme event and that's you know that's one isolated scenario. And it's a national shame, I hope nobody gets me wrong. Of course it is, but I would say there's been a continuum of not just incidents, but just kind of day-to-day perceptions of people involved in public health not always acting in people's best interests. Tell us, tell us. The level of treatment or the same kinds of treatment as other races or ethnic groups.

I think there's like a general feeling of imbalance. It's not just about these severe examples. I will just say that I will not go to a non-Jewish therapist. Because I don't want him sitting there thinking, this is one crazy neurotic Jew. I started by saying it was harsh. I just feel that we are, we should start from the end first.

If we just, that's, this would make me happy. We should start from the notion of, okay, what should the response be to maximize people who might be suspicious to take it? And I worry that by, by,

by, by giving into the idea, well, you know, this is totally could happen, but in this case, I don't think it is happening. It's kind of what it sounds like. Yeah, you're totally reasonable. I mean, you're right. We should be suspicious of the government trying to kill us with a vaccine.

So let's look into the reason we don't. I think as soon as you cede that ground, some people are going to be like, I'm out. I'm not taking these chances. The real way I see this, I really think it boils down to this, and this goes beyond, you know, just African Americans and their potential paranoia with the vaccine. In general, I just think scientists and clinicians, there just needs to be a steady stream of information to the public about how these things work, you know, what things are not perfect, what things are working really great,

what things we still have no frigging clue about because there are plenty of things that we don't. I think all that information needs to be conveyed regularly and clearly. And I think that's the problem we have in general, even outside of this pandemic, that there's not enough...

Let me give you a hypothetical. By the way... No, you've made your point admirably. No, let me just say one thing and then we'll go on. Imagine Barack Obama, who is probably extremely, extremely trusted by

A lot of the country And most black people And he gets in front of the TV And says what do you think about this vaccine And Barack Obama said Listen Don't be crazy I want to tell everybody

In my community Take that vaccine Don't give it a second thought Past We all know the past That has nothing to do, it has zero to do with today, take that vaccine. I would stand up and cheer for him. I think that would be the best thing he could say. And for somebody like Barack Obama to say such a thing

would be tremendously healthy and healing, I mean, positive for the country. It needs to be said, and it can only be said by somebody like Barack Obama who has that trust, you know? So that's really what I'm saying. Okay, next thing, Dan, go ahead. I just wanted to clarify my point, which was not contradicting Noam's point, was tangential to Noam's point about trust

between a doctor and a patient and race. And here's a study, a patient's more satisfied with care from doctors of same race. When patients have a choice, they are likely to choose a doctor of the same race or ethnic background. This is from BMJ, whatever that is.

British Medical Journal. Okay, the British Medical Journal. I think that because the relationship between the doctor and the patient is a particularly unique one. I guess the solution would be to have more diversity in medicine. I think this is a, this is an area where diversity would be helpful.

And, and I agree with that. I don't think a hundred years is that long ago. Yeah. I mean, the Holocaust was like a hundred years ago like you can't even you can't just dismiss something because you think it's not relevant noam's point was is that he doesn't see you're making my point for me perry all by the way but go ahead that no if you were to

go to germany wouldn't be in fear that he would get rounded up. Although I, I would say. I don't know about that. Oh my God. A hundred years ago is quite a long time ago. You're talking about the days before television. I mean, like, do you understand? They still had horses and buggies in the streets. They knew nothing about, I think this is pre-antibiotics. This is pre-transparency. If anything, this is when black people, many, many black people walking around had been slaves as children, right? I'm not getting there really. They're talking about, or they'd be old people by then,

but the generation of slaves was not even gone. I don't see how you can compare that to 2020 America. I think that if you have a large group of people that are collectively saying the same thing, it's important to not just dismiss it. That doesn't mean that... Okay, but you are really making my point because my point is, and this is

really what I've been... Is anybody going to back me up here? No. My point is that we are just... By the way, I think it's 90 years ago. We're just too... Now you're making my point.

No, we're just too ready to concede that these things are reasonable. And here is somebody like you, and this is nice in a way because it's not emotional, you're not black, there's nothing like, I can't insult you about it. I'm telling you, Perrielle, you just can't think that something that happened 90 years ago is happening today. I mean, that's just crazy. Here's my point on this. Again, none of this is happening in a vacuum, right?

And so let me ask you this. What do you think about the justice system in this country? Do you believe that there are biases or do you think that they're overblown and they're BS? Like, do you think that people of different colors get treated differently in this country? Yeah, no, I think there are some biases and some of it're overblown and they're BS? Like, do you think that people of different colors get treated differently in this country? Yeah, no, I think there are some biases and some of it is overblown,

but you don't have to go back a hundred years for a single example of the justice system to make that case. You can go back, you can go just to stop and frisk in New York City and make these cases. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I'm not- But I don't think people can necessarily draw

like a perfect line in the sand between like public health and the justice system. They're part of like a larger equation. I think I don't think that they're discrete and completely separated entities. What do other people think? Well, I think what you're saying, I agree. I agree with Noam that I don't think it's it's rational. I agree with Satam that I don't think it's rational I agree with Satish that I understand why people think it I understand the psychology You had a tremendous number of people Believing that AIDS was injected

Was that not true? This is much more harmful than the suspicion. That ready to keep an open mind to outrageous conspiracies does much more harm than the suspicion and the open-mindedness protects against, in my opinion. Much, much more harm. People should not think that doctors invented AIDS to kill black people.

And that, and that should not be aired as a reasonable opinion out there until such time as there's some evidence of it, you know, but as just, and we, and we are, we are, we're solicitous of these crazy ideas. And I think that we shouldn't be on the left and the right. I mean, we're right now, we're witnessing a time when people are very solicitous of outrageous things on the right. And I don't think we should be solicitous of... Anyway, I think, like I said, I think, Noam, you've made your point quite admirably.

Ad nauseum, as usual. Can I ask a super quick question? Because Satish joined us, I think, like one of the first, if not the first episode that we ever did on Zoom. It was one of our best episodes. Right when the pandemic hit and I was like, oh, my God, we have to get Satish on here. And now you just got your second vaccine, right? Yep, I did.

I just got it two days ago and I pretty much felt like dog crap yesterday, but now I'm feeling fine again, which is good. But for 24 hours, I was definitely not feeling so great. Which one? I got the Moderna. So it's interesting. My wife actually got the Pfizer and I got the Moderna. So we're sort of like a little comparative incubator in here.

Yep. Did she feel, after she took her second one, how did she feel? She, she felt really bad. She felt even worse than me. I think she's fighting an actual fever of like 101 degrees or something. I don't think I registered a legitimate temperature.

I felt like I had a fever and had some chills and stuff, but I didn't have, I didn't actually have a registrable temperature. But, but the weird thing is like, I actually love the fact that we had these symptoms because in my head, I'm picturing, you know, little soldiers in my immune system kind of going haywire. And to me, I would have almost been disappointed if I didn't

have any reaction because I sort of crashed my head and wonder if I wasn't really mounting an aggressive immune response. So what does it mean now? Like I heard somebody say that every person who gets vaccinated is at like all of us getting one step closer to some sort of normal life. Like, are we all going to get vaccinated soon? Like, are we going to be safe? I've heard of people getting the vaccine and then getting COVID. Like how long are you, does it take for it to kick in? I mean, can you impart some wisdom? You actually know somebody who got the vaccine and got COVID? I think, no, didn't you tell me about somebody who got it? No.

I don't know. I don't know of any cases like that, but there's a lot of moving parts here. So in terms of, I mean, I think where we're going is everybody gets vaccinated and even that's going to be a problem in terms of vaccine uptake in this country. But for the vaccine to really work, we need to get the majority of people vaccinated. And the other thing that I can't stress enough is that everybody needs to kick it up a notch in terms of masking and all of the other public health protections. And here's why, right? What we're noticing now is, you know, there are new genetic variants of the virus that are popping up, right? And this is not, it's not a shocker. Like, this is how RNA viruses behave. You know, we expect them to mutate over

time. And it was inevitable that there would be new versions of the virus that would pop up on the radar screen. But the engine that drives the evolution of the virus is the propagation and replication of the virus, you know, across communities and across people. So, like, the more we let that go as we're rolling out the vaccine, the harder it's going to be to control the virus through the vaccines, if that makes sense. So like, you know, even if the vaccines are being rolled out very efficiently, we need to keep all of the other public health safeguards in place. And actually, we need to kick them up a notch to make sure that the vaccines have a chance to really work and outmatch the pace of the evolution of the virus. That's kind of where we're at. Kicking things up a notch might be tricky with a population that has already kind of had it. Yeah. And feels that the end is in sight and are prone to let their guard down.

I'm so worried about that, that like since people think that, you know, there are vaccines that have been invented, that, you know, we can take our masks off and everything else, and we are just not there right now. Like the one way to make sure that these vaccines will not be the panacea that they possibly could be is if people just start taking their masks off

and start hanging out at bars and stuff. It's, because basically we'll just end up with this really gnarly viral genetic soup, you know, where we have like a sea of different viral resistance mutants, and it'll be very difficult to manage. So we really need to do both in tandem, like all of the basic crap,

like washing the crap out of your hands, wearing that. I don't think we can rely on people to do that without some sort of government, you know... Intervention. Mandate. Mandate, yeah. I'm a fan of a government mandate.

I think we really need to have some very firm, you know, federal guidelines that really make sure that people do not congregate and everybody's masked and everybody's washing their hands all the time. Now, this issue of the, you know, the continuous mutation of the virus, obviously this is a worldwide issue. What are the other, you know?

Yeah, exactly. And we're not gonna be, I mean, we're just a blip on that. I totally agree with you. And so like, if there's, you know, a genetic variant that, for instance, has vaccine resistance somewhere across the globe, you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that it's going to wind up on our shores. I mean, it's like almost impossible to stop that.

So it really, it's going to require a concerted global effort, you know, to really make sure that the vaccines are being deployed as all these other public health safeguards are. Here's a question for you. I read somewhere that actually the drawing board, as it were, the vaccine on paper was developed and the vaccine was actually using right away within weeks of the, right? Yeah. If a variant were to pop up tomorrow, which this vaccine did not work on, how quickly could we have a vaccine? And what are the chances that they would speed up the approval process? Yeah, so I think,

so I'll be completely honest about this. I don't like being wrong about stuff, but I have to admit, I actually gambled against these mRNA vaccines. I thought, you know, since they didn't have any sort of track record and they were extremely novel, I really didn't think they'd hit it out of the park with the first try pretty much. And they sure did, which is awesome. But what does that mean? They hit it out of the park with the first try?

So the mRNA vaccine, right, this idea of just using. It means it works, Perri-El. Well, it means it works, but the actual, this type of vaccine, right, this type, this construction of a vaccine, an mRNA-based vaccine is totally novel. So there are no other vaccinations that we have, you know, that we've been using, you know, like for polio or any other stuff that are based on this mRNA vaccine concept. It's really a new vaccine concept. And so the fact that they could bring it to the table at this point of extreme human desperation and they just hit it out of the park, right out of the gates.

Like it worked in the initial trials, right? And so what happens once you're vaccinated? Like you're immediately safe? Perrielle, I don't expect you to be following the conversation, but he was about to answer the previous question, which was- Dr. I won't get distracted. Let me answer your question first, then I'll go back to the other one. And I'm also really hopped up on coffee, so I don't go really fast.

But one of the real awesome things about these mRNA vaccines is they're extremely simple, okay? So really what they are is just like a small stretch of nucleic acids inside like a little fat bubble. That's what they do and they inject that into you and it goes into cells and then it essentially uses your own cellular machinery to produce proteins that immunize you, right?

But the real cool thing is since the vaccine is so simple, they can really just start printing essentially different versions of those nucleic acid strings to match the new genetic variants of the virus that show up, right? So that's really cool. And you touched on a really important point, which is that even if the dorks in the lab can come up with new stretches of mRNA that they can package in the vaccines, really there needs to be changes in the regulatory oversight of the vaccine development so that rather than having to go through the whole hamster wheel every time they print out a new genetic variants of the vaccine, it needs to be fast tracked because it's not really a new vaccine.

It's just sort of like vaccine 1.1, 1.2. There's subtle variations in the genetic sequence. So I'm pretty optimistic. I think there will be like matching regulatory changes that will allow that to happen. The other thing is that, and you know, this is something that's been explored a lot in the HIV vaccine design world. In addition to just vaccinating people against one, you know, genetic variant, like one at a time, there is a possibility that you could vaccinate people against a swarm, right? So that you could have multiple genetic variants that are represented in a single vaccine dose. So you're actually immunized against multiple circulating strains.

And as I'm guessing you already know, like Moderna is already, they have like a booster that they're already designing that's going to be focused on one of the new genetic variants. So people that had the normal vaccine, you know, the first generation vaccine will be able to get a booster that's targeted towards like the UK variant. So what is your estimation on when the comedy salad will be back up and running? Because Noam has no idea. I don't know. I honestly don't know. And a lot of it is just there's so many uh there's so much human behavior that has to be predicted um to make that to really figure that out i i really don't know i don't know like when you say back up to normal like where we can all kind of hang out you know in a cellar together with like no masks and i don't know i think it's going to be 2022 probably oh don't say that i i

really i i i find it hard to believe that we'll be, that this calendar year we'll be able to just sort of all hang out indoors with no masks the way we were like, you know, a year and a half ago. I personally don't think so, but, you know, I hope I'm wrong. We'll be back, Satish, I promise you. Yes. Sooner than you think. I'm a big, I'm just like with the testing, actually.

I'm quite optimistic that the logistics will ramp up very, very quickly. We're good at that in this country. And we're also, we also have unreasonable expectation. We think that things hit the ground running. They don't. It takes a month, six weeks, whatever it is. And then we do miraculous things, you know. So I think you're going to see a real curve.

And I think that we're going to be all right. That's what I think. Yeah, I think we're going to be all right. I actually, I wonder if we're going to be all right. I just don't know. The timeline. The timeline that's in dispute. The timeline. I wonder if we're going to be all right. I just don't know the timeline. No, not the disputing. It's the timeline that's in dispute.

The timeline. The timeline. There's a lot of moving parts in that timeline, and it's difficult to predict. But I'm very optimistic that we'll go back to some type of normalcy that will be happy for all of us. I mean, at the same time, also, the treatments are getting much, much better. So that's also the fear of getting it is different. Yeah, the treatments and the other things, they're subtle things.

Just talking to my wife and other physicians, they're subtle things that they've been able to do in a clinical setting, even aside from any drugs, to really improve outcomes for patients. Even little things like what they call proning, placing individuals on their tummies instead of their back. There's little subtle things like that. They've already been able to take a good cut out of the mortality of the disease based on some very common sense, you know, clinical changes that don't even involve the administration

of drugs. I guess we got to wrap it up. Are they any closer to being able to make a better guess on an individual basis of whether someone is going to get a bad case or, you know. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, yeah. I know that's something that, you know, my lab, we're really interested in. So, what you're talking about is essentially identifying clinical biomarkers that allow us to predict whether somebody is likely to develop severe disease or not. I was pointing out my language. I said I was pointing out my language.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani I like the word biomarker. Biomarker is one of my favorite words. As you already know, I'm sure there's some really great predictors already just in terms of age and comorbidities, like having diabetes, obesity, all of these other factors. Then there are other things. There are other components of the immune system. Something that my lab studies a lot is something called interferon. Have you ever heard of interferon? Sure.

Dr. Interferon is sort of a one of a one size fits all chemical messenger that everybody's body produces that helps us fight a range of infections. And there's more and more data that suggests that there are deficiencies in that interferon network in individuals that can progress to severe disease. And so the cool thing is, in addition to finding these predictors, we'll probably be able to develop a new generation of therapies that could correct some of these deficiencies that we find, right?

Apropos of Larry King, if I could just bring this up for a second. Now, he went into the hospital with COVID and he died, I guess, this week. Everything I've read, nothing said he died of COVID. Everything says he died after having been hospitalized for COVID. What gives? Seems obvious to me he died of COVID,

and yet every headline or every story I'm reading says Larry King died after being hospitalized with COVID. Nobody says he died of COVID. Explanation, if you have one. I really don't know. I have no idea. It's out of my daily life. I have another question about the the

comorbidities is it if you have diabetes you have a higher risk of dying right yeah but does that mean when you have diabetes you have a higher risk of having a bad case of covid or is it just like if you all have i you know because it seems like some people get this, old people too, people have this, and they barely become symptomatic or they have a light cold. Yeah. And then, yeah, but like if my friend gets a really bad flu or an 80-year-old gets really bad flu, yeah, the 80-year-old is going to die. But is that the reason they got a bad case of it? That's what I haven't been able to understand.

That's a great question. So basically you're asking whether it's also correlated with having just symptomatic or aggressively symptomatic disease, aside from actually being on a ventilator or something. And to be honest, I don't know. All of the correlations I've seen have been with extreme outcomes. They've been with, you know, either requirement for oxygen or really winding up on a ventilator or like hospitalization times, those are the outcomes. But in terms of just sort of like more of a bread and butter, nasty case where you can still stay at home, I haven't seen any data supporting that like those comorbidities are associated with that as well. Interesting question. That's what's weird to me is the way some people just get nothing and other people's the worst

sickness they've had in their life. Some people like they stay sick for eight months, some people lose their taste. I mean, I've never heard of a disease like this before. Yeah, you know, just without going too deep into the weeds, I think one reason why there's such a crazy diversity of outcomes with this infection, you know, which is very different from like influenza is like, you know, influenza is kind of a classical respiratory infection, right? It infects your lungs and it gums up your ability to breathe. But this virus is really pernicious. It can really, it can get into lots of different tissues and it can wreak havoc in lots of places besides your lungs. So it can screw up your toes, it can screw up your kidneys, it can enter your brain, it can enter cardiomyocytes and affect

your heart lining and heart function. So it's like this thing can just damage so many different types of tissues and cells that you have this massive spectrum of pathology that you don't see with a normal respiratory infection. Dr. How come we've never come across a virus that made us better in some way? How come we don't virus make us stronger? Dr. You're totally wrong about that. You're absolutely wrong about that. First of all, I'm sure there are tons of viruses that we haven't characterized that help us, but check this out.

Look up, this is one of the most beautiful cases of virology and medicine I've seen, but look up phage therapy. Okay? But so- Dr. Dean Mitchell, Have you spelled that? Dr. Dean Mitchell, What's that again? Dr. Dean Mitchell, What did you call it? Dr. Dean Mitchell, Phage therapy.

So phage is spelled P-H-A-G-E, right? Dr. Dean Mitchell, Okay. Dr. Dean Mitchell, So bacteriophage are viruses that infect bacteria, right? And so, you know, we have commensal bacteria, right? So we have lots of bacteria in our guts that help us, you know, make a living and help us digest our food. Then there are also pathogenic bacteria that, you know, screw up our lives. But there are viruses that make a living by destroying bacteria. And some of those viruses specifically attack and destroy the bacteria that are harmful to us.

And so there's a whole evolving field called phage therapy now where you can actually either design or use these bacteriophage viruses to infect and destroy pathogenic bacteria. And just to give you one little snippet, which I love the story so much. There's a professor at UCSD named Dr. Stephanie Scrappy. And I don't remember all the details, but her husband had a debilitating bacterial infection, and they couldn't find anything to treat it. And she had this like eureka idea, this was probably like four years ago or something, where she decided to start doing like, just experimental phage therapy. And sure enough, there were, there was nothing,

there's nothing the doctors could give her husband to save him. And just through like some iterative experimentation, she actually was able to administer a dose of a bacteria phage that could destroy this bacteria that was plaguing her husband. And she cured him. Check out that. I mean, look it up. I'm probably, I'm giving you a very crude oversimplification of the story, but that's basically what happened, which is pretty damn cool. So viruses can help. Would you include that if you have a link to that,

along with the one you said you're going to send us about the speech? I'd like to check that out. Yeah, so the Dr. Tony Fauci forum thing and then the phage therapy thing with Dr. Stratney. I'll definitely send you that. That's one of the coolest cases in modern biomedicine, I think. I got to go. My son can't find his iPads. Wait, I have one super quick question dean what did what were you in the sopranos oh i i think i was the only uh black male ever on the sopranos that didn't play a drug dealer

or um a gay dude because because that's what we played on that. No, I was in the episode was titled Where's Johnny? Remember when Uncle Junior started losing it and he went back to the old neighborhood and I think one of the old places he hung out turned into like a kid's rec center and I got to kick Junior

out of there. What you doing here fool? Awesome. Oh my god that's you doing here, fool? Awesome. Oh, my God. That's you. I had less hair. You watched that. Oh, my God. It's amazing.

But you can catch They Ready Season 2 premiering on February 2nd, everybody. Nice. Nice. By the way, why don't you plug that other thing you do, We're Not Okay. Oh.

You had it in the New York Times. Did you sell more tickets because of the Times? We sold a nice amount of tickets. Thank you. How many more would you say you sold because of the Times? I don't know. I mean, not as many as I would have thought, like, it's not like, but that didn't really faze me as much because now I every time I talk about the show, I just say

as seen in the New York Times. Yeah. I your your, your son found his iPad because he's calling my son. That's funny. I host and produce a comedy show on Zoom every Sunday with Jessica Kersen and Rachel Feinstein. And it's just like totally fucking bananas. It's called we're not okay comedy show and it's really fun. But yeah. I watched it one time. It was really good.

Thank you. I take that as a big compliment coming from you. I have one final question because no, when I had a big argument about this, about, so Satish, I want to know what you have to think, what you think about Dr. Jill Biden wanting to be called doctor. Hell yeah, she should be called doctor. She's got a PhD. Why shouldn't she be called doctor?

Well, we have that most people who are not medical doctor. Well, no. Why don't you say what you said? Well, just for the record, I thought that the guy who wrote the original column was was a very version of disrespectful. Yeah, I read that column. Yeah, I wasn't. I didn't like I didn't like I didn't like the tone of the column at all. However, from all the research I've done, major newspapers, the AP, whatever it is, they don't and have never used doctor to describe anything but medical

doctors. And it's weird when somebody harps on a credential that they want mentioned about their name, especially when we all know it's, it's a, it's not even a full PhD. She has, it's some other doctorate in education. I mean, this is not, it does not, I mean, I'm a, I'm, I have a JD, Juris Doctor. So I suppose I could ask to be, you know, have that would refer to me as, you know dr gnome yeah or jurist as um esquire i don't know i mean i know it's just like it's weird it's not it's not a real credential a a advanced degree in education doesn't compare to a master's degree in virology i mean come on now i don't i don't feel that way i'm telling you i've known from experience

i come from a family that had educators in the family and i'm telling you that uh this is gobbledygook anyway and in my high school we had a my english teacher in 12th grade was dr white i assume she was not a medical doctor we all called her dr white um i don't finish my sentence you're right yes dan go ahead i apologize i don't know if she outside of the context of a of our high school was referred to as doctor but certainly in a uh academic context one often will refer to somebody with a phd as doctor right apparently, you Google it at home. Apparently, it's not a full, it's not an act, it's a different kind of PhD.

And there have been editorials and major newspapers on this subject prior to Jill Biden, where they had said, you know, come out against the idea of, you know, this ultra respect for the term doctor it's not there's many people that have said doctor what about dr martin luther king jr i mean as i recall yeah that's a tough one dr king i know i never heard dr king say check your blood well i'm doing a bad impression he wasn't a medical i i would argue you gotta check your blood yes i would doing a bad impression he wasn't a medic i would argue you gotta check

your blood yes i would argue with two things i would argue two things with dr king number one i don't believe he ever corrected people for not using doctor right number number two When a man is that important and that admirable, the urge to want to pay him that respect is quite understandable. And I would not compare it to the urge to call Dr. Jill Biden doctor. We want to pay our respects to Martin Luther King any way we can. So we're happy to use that, I think. And I, you know. But it does demonstrate that we do use the term doctor

in non-medical context. Yeah, we do. Of course we do. Go ahead, Dean. No, I was going to say, what about when Bugs Bunny says, what's up, doc? What's up, mister? It doesn't have the same ring.

I mean, Bill Cosby used to like to be called doctor, right? Come on. I think it's said at the end of the show. Come on, come on. I will say this. Unless if we abolish the term doctor for anything but medical doctors, one major problem is there is a real bias. So if you look, females are more likely to not be referred to as doctor, even if you compare people that have the same exact level of education and training and success, right?

There's a bias where males will be called doctors more often than females. So I think that's like pretty dangerous ground. So unless if there's some universal decision that does not call anybody with a PhD, a doctor, I think basically if you got a PhD, you should be called doctor across the board. It's gotta be one or the other. I don't think so. The one example that Noam gave that, you know, sort of had me thinking that he had a good point was he said, you know, if you're on an airplane and you have a heart attack and so he says they're a doctor i didn't give you that example that was somebody somebody else said that dude i i i've had this thought so many times but i've been on multiple airplanes where you know

we need a doctor right away and like all the time i want to walk up there and be like oh no i can't do anything but i will i will sequence his dna like i just i think in that context people understand what's being uh what's being just to be clear because and this is mark this day on your calendar because this was the day that doesn't happen often that peril didn't actually understand my point i i was it was not that i object to anybody calling her doctor i i've never that's never cared what i what i what i object to is the ultra concern, you shall address me. And I say, no, come on now. In my opinion, it's kind of an inferiority complex when somebody does that. And the fact that people were criticized for not calling her Dr. Biden when there's no rule

that you have to refer to someone as a PhD, as a doctor. I could say I had Maya Angelou on my show. I could say I had Dr. Maya Angelou on my show. Nobody would say, how could you say Maya Angelou? You know, it's never, I've never,

this has never been a thing before. And like I said, the AP, I believe it was the Washington Post, a few of the big shots have had a stylistic rule for years not to refer to doctor except for medical doctors. So there's a reason they do that. But I don't have anything against Jill Biden and I don't care if somebody calls her doctor,

want to be nice to her, whatever it is. I'm just not that impressed with the credential, I'll tell you that. I am quite impressed with medical doctors. Well, that depends. I mean, if they went to like the University of Granada Med School, I'd be like, I don't like to see the word universidades on my doctor's diploma. I mean, have you read from time to time, you have the ability to read like the dissertation of somebody with a you can see them online of somebody you know who had a wrote a dissertation you know for a PhD something in education or something like that this is not I mean they're terrible New York City New York City has done tests of their own teachers with doctorates and they couldn't they couldn't do basic grammar

I mean come on now let's Let's be honest. I'm not saying anything about Dr. Jill Biden. She may be a genius for all I know, but the credential does not make her a genius. And being a genius is not more impressive because you have the credential. The credential itself is not very meaningful to me. As opposed to when you go through all the years of medical school and then you pass those exams, that means something. That is an accomplishment that I do not think is equivalent to the accomplishment of getting a PhD in a social science, in my opinion. I could be wrong. Sorry, people at home. I don't mean, you know. I'm not a sociologist i don't mean it as bad as it sounds because you know i i think there are brilliant people uh in every walk

of life including you know jobs you've never i think they're brilliant people in every walk of life but i think that i think that physicists and mathematicians have to be at the top of the of the list i may be actually the opposite i think i'm actually the opposite of an elitist in in that way and it's coming out the wrong way i actually have little regard for titles and experts and whatever it is i don't find the average doctor that i meet to be more intelligent than the average guy, average waiter or waitress, actually, you know, I just don't. But I think when somebody puts their nose to the grindstone and does seven or eight years work or something and accomplish,

I get a credential and passes an exam that has to be, that's, that's an accomplishment. You have to respect that, you know, whatever. have to respect that you know whatever okay is that it can we go the t-shirt t-shirt come on like every couple months you know well he hopefully we won't need him anymore because the pandemic will be over i mean that's right geez okay i'd hope he has more need beyond the pandemic that's his main thing but but uh he is a musician as well we could have him on to sing for us i suppose i'd love to do that but he is a musician as well. We could have him on to sing for us, I suppose. I'd love to do that sometime. Dean is a musician also.

Nice, Dean. What do you play? I spit bars, son. Nice. All right. He's extremely musical because he can sing, and he's very musical. A little thank you note. You don't play any instrument?

I played cornet for six. I played the trumpet for six years. Yeah. I can tell you six years. Oh yeah. Yeah. All right, Perriel. Is the trumpet as objectively difficult as piano and guitar,

or are all instruments equally difficult to be at a virtuoso level? It seems to be a trumpet, you blow into it, you play one note at a time. I mean, guitar and piano, there's a billion different notes

and fingerings and... I didn't say it was uh difficult i don't know i'm not saying that i'm just a separate question because i'm learning guitar right now on my own here in my apartment it's probably a pandemic hobby and i took trumpet in high school i mean i wasn't any good at that because i i didn't practice but i mean this guitar this shit is insane well it's not not an easy instrument though it wasn't just it wasn't just one note with the three keys you have most multiple notes you just play three just like hot cross buns all day long i i think i think you could be wrong about trumpet and actually this

is there is a relationship some instruments harder than others there is a relationship between this and the uh the other conversation about the doctorate. I think that the trumpet depends to a certain extent on a certain natural physical ability in your embouchure to produce the notes. The actual physical three fingers cannot be, in my opinion, compared to two hands playing, you know, 10 notes at the same time in contrary motion on a piano, or even the individual coordination you need of four limbs on the drums, you know, it's a, but having said that, to play any instrument in a way that is brilliant, it were for lack of a better word is equally hard on any instrument and that is a matter of the human soul and talent and in other words if you're a brilliant artist you have a brilliant musical soul you will express it on any instrument any instrument even even even rudimentarily on a piano you make more music

than a virtuoso who doesn't have doesn't have the soul for it so it's really weird to compare what's every instrument is it's very hard to make beautiful music on any instrument i kind of agree with that that the virtuosity like i don't think it's easier to really attain some level of virtuosity i don't think it's easier on one instrument than another I will say this the learning curve is disproportionately ugly on different instruments so I will say that yeah my daughter I hope my daughter doesn't hear this but like the violin like when you're when you're starting out on the violin it's like it takes a long time before you can make uh noises on that instrument that aren't like oh you know what I mean yeah whereas on the piano I feel like you can attain some level of proficiency a lot quicker

on a piano because it's laid out in front of you. And in general, if you compare fretless instruments to instruments with frets, right? Instruments that have discrete notes versus ones where you have to manage the pitch, I feel like there's kind of a line in the sand between those classes of instruments. Dan, what do you think? I think all instruments are hard when you're blind i don't know how those guys do it uh you you from time to time you see the ratings and class of classical guitar is often rated as the most difficult instrument

um for various reasons but guitar and piano i mean the for one obvious reason is that they have many notes to worry about it simultaneously hey there's a child behind you he's looking for his ipad again you found it oh you found it good okay okay i wanted i wanted to ask you okay but you know i'm doing a radio show yeah you know this is actually being broadcast on Sirius Radio. You know, you really don't... Yeah, I know. Okay, okay. So why don't you go sit and wait for me,

and I'll come in a minute. Everyone ask me really quick. Ask me really quick. Well, there's something weird. So I'm trying to figure out how to make my own Roblox game. So I looked up a video all by myself. No help. So then...

Okay, this is too long. It's not long. It's too long. It's not long. It's not long. Here we go. So, Dean... Poor kid. He ain't ready. Yeah.

Look, I was gonna do Donkey for him, but I didn't know if he was familiar with Shrek or not. No, it's too late. He is. Where can we see your special?

Oh, on Netflix. Premieres on Netflix. We premiered? Oh, on Netflix. Premieres on Netflix. We premiered February 2nd on Netflix. They Ready, season two. Amazing. Satish, where can we find you? I just want to ask Adina again. What's the name of this on Netflix?

Oh, it's Tiffany Haddish Presents They Ready, season two. Oh, awesome. All right, I'm going to check that out tonight. It doesn't premiere until next Tuesday on the the second though. Okay. But add it to your watch list. Oh heck yeah, I definitely will. In terms of me I'm just so bad with any sort of social media or anything that what I and then I have a bunch of links there there's vaccines that you can disseminate to

I got a room full over here so just stop by, it'll cost you you can find us, where can everybody email us you guys? podcast at comedyseller.com podcast at comedyseller.com you can follow us on Instagram at livefromthetable Chicago Manual of Style by the way ComedyCellar.com. Podcast at ComedyCellar.com. Follow us on Instagram at Live From the Table.

Chicago Manual of Style, by the way, says doctor is reserved for medical doctors. No. So, you know, let's get the partisan battle out of this. This all predates the issue. Okay. All right. Good night, everybody.

Thank you. Good night, y'all. Be safe. Be safe. night, y'all. Be safe. Be safe.