The Eric Metaxas Show - Adam Kissel: Slacking: A Guide to Ivy League Miseducation

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Adam Kissel shares his new book: Slacking: A Guide to Ivy League Miseducation. ADAM KISSEL is a visiting fellow for higher education reform in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

Welcome to the Eric Metaxus show. I shouldn't tell you this, but Eric hired someone who sounds just like him to host today's show. But since I'm the announcer, they told me, so I'm telling you, don't be fooled. The real Eric's in jail. Hey there, folks. At Socrates in the city, we're doing a new thing. It's called The Question of where we interview somebody. I'm not talking.

We just let them talk on an important question. and we've got a number of those. They're all like nine, ten minutes long. We're going to play one of those for you right now. Here it is. We're entering the age of biology in the sense that earlier in the 19th century, there was an understanding of synthetic chemistry, the basic elements. The periodic table of elements wasn't discovered to the middle of the 19th century.

20th century, a huge impact from the age of physics. Now we're going on in a convergence of technologies to understand the more complicated realms of biology. And within those realms, everything from the basic genetics to the processes of human development, to the functioning of the brain, for example, will be opened up, new possibilities will emerge, and will be able to intervene positively or disruptively

in a lot of levels of human as well as all animal and plant life. Right now, we can do basic things, employing genetic engineering, for example, to alter plants and animals to make more fruitful crops or more enduring animals for farm use. But when it comes to human beings, the questions arise, well, how will we use these technologies in intervening in human life?

And those are very challenging. What kind of possibilities will emerge? It's unknown at this time. But certainly there will be many. And I think, for example, we're gonna learn how to control the aging of gray hair so people won't have to have gray hair. We'll probably learn how to avoid wrinkles in skin

so people will look younger than they are. We may be able to use specific drugs to enhance certain powers in the human mind, but a lot of it's going to be more complicated and people suspect because everything is involved with everything else, and so you change one thing, and you're going to alter inevitably a lot of things.

So we have to approach this. very carefully. In the large arena of bioethics, it isn't just the scientific dimensions that are important, but the human meaning of the application of the science. And people often are drawn toward positive dimensions of some intervention. But the human body is so complicated and so interrelated in its processes that when you gain one thing, you're liable to change other things at the same time, not just biologically, but socially as well, and the sense that a person has of their existence. So personal and social disruptions could take place. We're just at the early edge of interventions in human existence.

We don't yet know how effective they will be. We may not actually need to change genes. We may just use small molecule drugs to alter a lot of things in human existence. as desired, but each one of those things is going to come with potential benefits and potential dangers, and that's going to be a very big challenge, and we need to think comprehensively, biologically, personally, socially, and spiritually about the meaning of these interventions. The very word human comes from a Latin root that's the same as humus meaning earth or soil, and, of course, the biblical description is that God,

gathered up the dust and formed atom. And so we are the creatures of the red dust of the earth. Metaphorically, that is a very great significance when you think about biology, because we are fashioned in such a way that we fit like a hand made to fit an existing glove into the very world into which we dwell. We need to understand the complexity of that fit that the natural world and the human being are a unit. And when we disrupt the natural world, we're disrupting our environment. When we disrupt ourselves, we may not fit in with the world in which we've been brought forth.

The implications of that can be extended to say that we're creatures of the earth and therefore we need to be humble within it. And it's very interesting because that word humble also comes in the same root as human and humus earth or soil. So we are creatures of the earth, and we ought to be humble within it. Because we're creatures of the earth, because we are formed and fashioned in a way that comports with, that coordinates with the nature of our environment,

it's very easy to think because we are capable of intervening that we can proceed along the lines of our, particular desires, our appetites, our desires, and ambitions, without understanding how complex these systems actually are. So there's a lot of imagination about where we might go with our biotechnology, ranging from drugs that make us capable of certain types of things that we'd like to be able to do better. The primary example of that, obviously, is steroids for better athletic performance, but there's all sorts of imaginations for what we might be able to do. And then on to things like brain computer interfaces, where we could control the video game,

for example, with our minds without moving a finger. But it's somewhat dangerous to think in these terms, because any intervention in the human body is going to come with both positive and negative impacts. And people, it's easy to have this vision of a kind of technological transcendence this is what's promoting a lot of advances in social thinking about biotechnology, but we need to be very careful how we intervene because we don't really understand our lives. We're framed by nature. We're also constrained by nature,

and nature guides our lives in ways that, especially when we're younger, we don't appreciate the wisdom of our life process. So, for example, many people among my students, many of the young people no longer want to have children. They sort of, for some reason, see that their opportunities in life, their fulfillment will be greater without children. But almost everybody I know, in fact, everybody I know last children has said to me that those children have turned out to be the most meaningful part of their life, even if it's sometimes difficult. And if you relinquish that experience because you think you know better than natural life processes, you may end up cheating yourself out of the most profound experiences of human life.

In other words, we're framed and constrained. Desires, like sexual desire, for example, are directions, not destinations. There's a certain drive for fulfillment of sexual desire. But nature has something else in mind. Nature has babies in mind. Babies as children, meaningful, engagement, nourishing life in its next generation. This is where life is more wise in its processes

than we individually are as individuals choosing our destiny. The most fundamental question behind biotechnology is the deep question of where did we come from? and what are we for as human beings and a collective social culture and as a spiritual being. I was asked recently if you had one thing to tell somebody one piece of wisdom, what would you say? And it would be wisdom, of course, it's not simply my own wisdom. But I would say, seek he first the kingdom of God and all else will be granted unto you. of God is intimately involved with our biotechnology because there are many, many urgent needs

in our species and in our wider world where we can intervene positively with biotechnology. That's the role of ethics to see where we can use our technologies and what we can use them for in a way that brings into being more fully the kingdom of God. So the point is that God is good, and that's the root of bioethics. We need to ask what is good, and what is good is the comprehensive, cohesive understanding of the whole, not what is good for one thing only and for one purpose only. A major retail chain just canceled a massive order, leaving My Pillar with an overstock of the classic My Pillows.

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Now don't forget to use promo code Eric to grab your standard MyPellow for only 1798 only while supplies last. Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to Adam Kissel, who's written a brand new book called Slacking, a guide to Ivy League Miseducation. So, Adam, you are giving us chapter and verse, because a lot of us, we know theoretically that things are very, very bad. But you're giving us the specifics. And you're talking right now, folks, Adam Kisle is not making this up. You can read the book slacking. You're telling us of actual courses at Yale University. Anybody who thinks that this is some elite institution where you're going to get a good education,

that is simply not true. And Adam, you're giving us the sad facts and receipts of the matter. So keep going. So we're talking about courses that meet the gen eds at Yale, the core curriculum, making you an educated person. But instead of reading Homer and Beowulf, you're learning about Beyonce. You're learning about East Asian martial arts films. Or maybe you're taking this course called Pap Safism, which surveys the lesbian presence in pop culture. That's all at Yale.

But at Princeton, a whole course just on shoes. At Penn, decolonizing French food. So these courses are narrow. biased, tendentious, question begging. They're not giving you the best that has been thought and said in the world. Yes, that's the understatement of the century. I mean, I say these kinds of things a lot on this program and anywhere I go, but most people find it hard to believe.

And I think the real point is that generations of these students going to these elite institutions, quote unquote, have been, as you put it in your title, miseducated, and they are now going to law firms, going into corporations, going into government. They do not have the basics. And so if you see Yale or Harvard or one of these schools on a resume, ladies and gentlemen, I would be inclined in most cases to throw it, put it in the round file. to skip it because these kids are being indoctrinated. But I mean, what you're just saying, Adam, these are so, they're not just pathetic, but the trendiness of it.

I mean, my goodness, to have to lure some dumb 19-year-old into taking a course by mentioning Beyonce, it's so, there's a level of pandering going on. It's amazing. It is. Just to take Harvard now, you could take this course called Z. zombies, witchcraft, and uncanny science. You could take ethnic studies and education.

But look, there's a path forward. There's a narrow path. If you want to be a striver instead of a slacker, you can take the few remaining good courses. So if I'm an employer, I say, I want to know what you actually took. I don't care what it says on your diploma. I want to see what it says in your transcript. Well, that's pretty smart. In other words, if you're stuck at one of these instances,

institutions, there are some courses. You've got to look, but they're there. Yes, and every chapter in the book has a list of the courses that you can take if you want to be the striver and a list of the courses you can take if you want to be the worst slacker you can be. So at any of the eight Ivy leagues, even Brown, you can find courses that are serious. You read the classics of social and political thought. You learn real things about other civilizations. So you can do it. You just have to search for it, and slacking the book helps you get there. Okay. So, but tell me again, Adam, what led you to say, I actually want to write a book about this? Is it just, have you always had an interest in this kind of thing?

Ever since I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, when there was a big battle over the core curriculum in 1999, I said, I want to understand how to articulate what makes an educated human being and citizen. And I got into curriculum study 25 years ago. Then when October 7th happened and the Ivy League showed its true colors too often, I said, we need to tell the public what's really going on in the Ivy League. Let's figure it out. I did a chapter on Cornell. I said, this is worse than I expected. We need to write the whole book. I got two co-authors and we did it. Well, I think, you know, there's always the proverbial silver lining. Things finally have gotten so bad, so nakedly horrible that people are paying attention. I mentioned Bill Ackerman. Thank the Lord that this philanthropist woke up to see that he was funding, you know, the intifada effectively, that he was funding, you know, the intifada effectively, that he was funding, radical, anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitic is a nice word.

Jew-hating lunacy. And he said, okay, I'm going to stop doing that. I think many people have woken up because things are so bad. The most obvious example is the scandal, the Claudine Gay scandal at Harvard, that you think that this woman, you know, and again, any time, and this is this is the horror of DEI. Anytime you see a person of color or a woman, you kind of have to suspect, even if it's not true. That's why it's so pernicious that, oh, well, they were hired because they're a woman or they were hired because they're a person of color, which does a disservice

to every woman and every person of color who actually achieves anything. So here you have Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, involved in a plagiarism scandal, the president of Harvard University. That's kind of, I think that that was a good wake-up call for people. You know, one of the jokes about Harvard is that the hardest thing about it is getting in. Another joke about higher ed is that we'll pretend to teach and you students pretend to learn. Right. So, and then the third joke about Harvard is that it's a hedge fund with a college attached to it. Right. So we need our, what I call legacy elite institutions to become truly good again and great again by teaching high-quality students admitted on the basis of merit with high-quality faculty,

hired and promoted on the basis of merit, with high-quality curriculum. So there is one silver-lining in the IVs, which is STEM. If you're an engineering student or a math student, you can find lots of good courses within your discipline and even in your core classes. Unfortunately, you still have to take humanities and social sciences because you need to get well-rounded. But if you're going to go to the Ivy or send your kid to the Ivy's, you should really decide to choose STEM. Science technology. Right. Yeah, that's the good news. It's it's hard. It doesn't, it's not that they don't try, but it's hard to make biology or chemistry, you know, really. Well, I have to tell you though, that at Cornell, the only really bad course at Cornell in the sciences, you watch

Disney movies about animals, you compare them to real animals, then you pretend you're one of the animals in animal society, and it meets your science requirement at Cornell. Okay, now Adam Kisle, you're just making stuff up now. That can't be true. That cannot be true. Even worse, the Alumni Association did a whole article about how great it was and how much fun students were having in that course. You can read about it. and slacking or online. Sad to say, but it's the only really bad course at Cornell in the sciences. In the science.

It meets your science requirement. Yeah. Well, I have to say, you know, again, there's nothing particularly new here for people like me or you, but the fact is you're you're drilling down and you're showing you're showing the details in case anybody wants to know the details here they are folks these are the classes being offered at these formerly elite institutions do you get in the book do you get into I guess for me what goes hand in hand with this kind of lunatic political radical This leftist radicalism is a denigration of America, a denigration of ideas of honor and dignity.

They really don't ever, you know, you're not going to go to a place like Yale or Harvard and get a course on American history where Washington is lifted up as a hero. It's part of the whole gestalt, I guess, of these places, that that kind of thinking is everywhere. But you get into that specifically in the book, the issue of character or how they kind of sneer at the idea of honor? We do. And unless you take Harvey Mansfield's courses at Harvard, there's almost nobody to take in history or political science, who will give you a fair view of Western American civilization. and the founders. And a lot of this comes back to the idea that the

American dream, the false idea that the American dream has always been a myth, that the middle class has been pushed away by capitalism, that capitalism has been our problem instead of our solution, that American and Western values are irretrievably tainted, and that all of the oppressed groups of every category need to be in solidarity together to overcome capitalism. the family Western values.

So these courses reflect that mindset. We'll be right back, folks, talking to Adam Kissel. The new book is slacking a guide to Ivy League miseducation. Welcome back. We're talking to Adam Kissel. The new book is slacking a guide to Ivy League miseducation. So, Adam, you were just talking about this idea that's essentially ubiquitous in these formerly elite institutions, that America is a bad thing. Now, I grew up in a working class home.

My parents didn't go to college. And I remember, you know, entering Yale and seeing this for the first time, seeing that patriotism is sneered at. America is a bad thing. Ronald Reagan, you know, the boogeyman of the day. He was, you know, he was bad. He was. He was bad. He was. was a fascist. I mean, this stuff is in the 80s. So we're talking 40 years ago, these ideas were reigning at Yale University. And I'd never encountered them before. This kind of mocking attitude, it's really spiritually very, very dark. I even remember there is a statue of Nathan Hale, beautiful statue, outside the dorm, Connecticut Hall, where he was a student. That dorm still exists. It's a beautiful,

18th century building. And when it was put up, which would have been around World War I, there was this idea of honor that this man gave his life for his country. That idea was absolutely wiped away and these ideas would be treated with cynicism and sarcasm. Well, a lot of the legacy elite institutions no longer think of themselves as American universities. they think of themselves as universities of the world. They have no good reason to promote American values, certainly not American civics as it used to be taught. And since our high schools do such a poor job in teaching civics,

a lot of the education required to be an excellent citizen and human being, that responsibility is left to the colleges. A bunch of the public colleges do a very nice job at this, but the higher, the more elite you get, the worse it gets in teaching you respect for the core American principles, equality under the law, like Harvard Law School, I'm not sure how much they like the Constitution there, for instance, right? Well, what's the big surprise? I mean, or the Yale Law School, you know, produced Barack Obama and, you know, the Clintons.

I mean, this goes back. This goes way back, folks, and it's horrifying. But I guess the question comes up, Adam, about federal funding. I am thrilled, thrilled that President Trump has said, hey, you want some federal funding? Well, we've got some problems. You're not going to get the federal funding unless you do a few things. We don't, I don't think we've ever had, I know that we've never had a president with the guts to challenge these institutions in this way. Well, the only good analogy is maybe from the 1950s and 60s when colleges and schools were violating civil rights in the area of race.

Now, places like Harvard and Columbia have had to admit that they've been violating civil rights in the area of anti-Semitism. And Harvard, I think, has a 300-page report explaining from the inside what has been going on there. So the Trump administration has said, well, the law says if you are violating civil rights, you can't get federal dollars. And we're going to hold you to that. So I support the presidents and the agencies in their mission in doing this because it's not curriculum, even though these problems are infused throughout the curriculum, you don't want the federal government in charge of curriculum and colleges. But you do want to think about having them preserve equal rights for their students and faculty. And that's the angle that they're using productively to get some of these institutions in shape. Well, I think you're overstating by saying getting these institutions in shape. Just saying we're not going to allow Jew hatred on our campus, that doesn't exactly turn them into, you know, the Yale of 1850. Let's be honest here. This is tiny stuff.

So I'm just glad that the president has the guts to call them out on this. I guess he's also called them out, though, on the deal. DEI stuff, has he not? Yeah, so when DEI becomes illegal DEI, and he's always careful to say, we're not going to police viewpoints on campus, but we are going to police the kind of DEI that runs into discrimination. If you're saying that students are so bad because of their identity, that they are inherently a bad person, it's legitimate to go after them.

So you're right. The culture on campus is broken in so many ways, just fixing the Jewish. hatred, anti-Semitism is a tiny piece of that. Calling them out on curriculum is a significant piece if they could actually change. Calling them out on free speech and DEI problems where they are enforcing a culture of political correctness. So I was in college in the early 90s at Harvard Brown. Early 90s were when people started talking about political correctness. That's another big part of the culture. And it's what fed into the DEI of today saying there's only one right way to look at the world through the lens of oppressors and oppressed. And if you don't, we don't like you here

on our campus. So the Trump administration has, I think, pushed back in a healthy way on that from within the federal role. And then states have done a great job, too, in some cases, North Carolina, Florida, Utah, Ohio, right? Saying universities in our state also need to stop discriminating. We'll be right back, folks. The book is slacking. Folks, floodwaters in Texas have devastated entire communities, but we can help. I'm Eric Metaxis. Please join us and our partner at Food for the Poor to send relief kits to families who have lost everything. You can call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 or click on the banner at metaxis.com.

Metaxistalk.com. dot com. Thank you. Hey there, folks. Food for the poor is boots on the ground in Texas right now, getting emergency supplies into the hands of families who have been devastated by the deadly flooding. Join me, Eric Mataxis, and our partner

in supporting this urgent effort. Please call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 or click on the banner. at Metaxistalkis talk.com. Metaxistalk.com. Please help.

Thank you. Welcome back. I'm talking to Adam Kissel, who with his two co-authors has put together a book called Slacking, a guide to Ivy League Miseducation. So you and your co-authors have gone through the Ivy League,

and there's a chapter on each one and the courses they offer. You mentioned that there is a course at Yale on the occult. Again, unless you went to one of these schools, which of course I did, you cannot imagine how bad it is. And of course, it's gotten infinitely worse with every decade. But tell us more about some of these courses being offered.

And folks, just to be clear, we're not just nitpicking. We're not saying, oh, look at this, look at this, but most of it is okay. Most of it is not okay. That's what's so horrible. And that's why I would say to anybody, in my view, the Ivy League is dead. They've been dying. It's like the New York Times. You really cannot take it seriously. It went over the edge into the abyss at some point with the New York Times, I think was 2016 with the election of Donald Trump. They had always been left leaning. But then, they decided really to double down and they went into the drink. And I think we have to be honest that that's really what's happened at these Ivy League schools and not just the Ivy League schools, all these elite institutions. It's really too bad. Some might trace this back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Romantic era saying, we don't have a classical education model for you. We want you to just pursue your passions and interests. We're not going to give you a clearly articulated curriculum anymore. Hit your wagon to a start. and go ever you want, even into the occult, right? And that romantic model versus the classical model leaves you with courses like what I've been talking about.

So you could take decolonizing the mind on the effects of colonialism and post-colonial power relations on the field of psychiatry. That's Yale meets your arts and humanities requirement. You could take queer girlhood at Cornell. again, Beyonce Nation. Here's a good one. Intersectional Disability Studies.

It meets one of your core requirements at Cornell. Now what's interesting about Columbia is that on paper, they still, and for the last hundred years, have had a Western Civilization Corps. And unfortunately, what you get are international anti-submitted graduate students teaching the Corps, and they're saying, oh, we have to teach this, but we don't like it anyway.

So they're undermining what the faculty have said they thought a great education should be. And then if you look at the, you'd say, 20th century part of the Columbia Corps, it's all Marx and critical race theory. So they ruined the ending of American history and Western civilization, even at Columbia, which starts out so well, and you end up with thinking that America and the West are bad. Well, I mean, again, I remember, I think, I'm pretty sure it was 1983. I took a course on the 19th century novel. And the professor, you know, was an angry feminist who, imagine reading Middlemarch through those, through those, through that lens. It just spoils everything, these beautiful books. So even if you take a course where you're reading George Eliot's, middle march, it's infected. And so again, this is why my big takeaway is the Ivy League really is

dead, folks. It's been dying for a long time. But, you know, here we're getting chapter and verse of these insane courses. And again, these are just the courses. Imagine what the climate is like in the dining halls and on the campus. If these are the courses, these are what the adults, the tenured adults are teaching. What does that tell you? you about the climate on the campus. And so that's a bigger part of the story, isn't it, Adam, that for me it was less the courses than the overall climate, the milieu. Yes. And so if you go to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression website, you can see an annual survey of hundreds of institutions about the campus climate. They ask you,

are you willing to say something outside the mainstream in class? Or are you too scared to do it? are you even willing to, and on the other side, would you be willing to commit violence against a speaker who says something you don't like on campus? The numbers are scary in the number of students who are afraid to speak on campus, and then conversely those who would commit violence to stop a speaker they don't like on campus. And that's across hundreds of institutions. We have a long, long way to go and not just into IVs. And I'll tell you one reason is that the faculty of the second-year institutions were trained. at the Ivy League, and they're bringing that mindset into the second tier and third-tier institutions. Well, this is where we are. This is where we are. And again, I just want to say the Ivy League is dead

and all these elite institutions. I mean, you know, you can go down the line, Williams College, Amherst, Georgetown, one of the worst of the worst. They have lost their minds. They've been losing their minds for a long, long time. And I just say this because I think people need to know it. I think we always assume that these elite institutions are somehow still worth attending. My friend Charlie Kirk wrote a book called the, I think it's the college scam. You know, you would really do better taking some online courses with Hillsdale or Jordan Peterson Academy, at least in my estimation, by far than wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars at these Marxist indoctrination camps. And again, I'm not exaggerating, folks. This is true. Adam, we've just got a

minute left. What else can we say? State schools are doing a really good job in the red states because the senior administration, the trustees, and the legislature are starting to hold them accountable. Okay, Adam Kissel, thank you, folks. The book is slacking a guide to Ivy League miseducation. Folks, floodwaters in Texas have devastated entire communities, but we can help. I'm Eric Mataxis. Please join us and our partner at Food for the Poor to send relief kits to families who have lost everything. You can call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 or click on the banner at Metaxistalk.com. Metaxistalk.com. Thank you. We're pulling segments from the archive. Here's a fun facts Friday with Eric and Albin from 2018.

to take you to his mansion in the sky. Hey, hey, hey, hey, it's the Fun Facts Friday today. Oh, yes, it is. Albin. It's just sitting here reading a fact. It's Friday, man. Yes, yes. I was just reading this fact that came in through the Daily Mail.

Religious people live four years longer than atheists, according to a recent study. Scientists put it down to something like four things in particular. Can you take a guess, even though you're looking right at? at it. Oh, I couldn't read it. No, you couldn't. Okay. Well, okay. I don't know. Well, this is interesting, because this is something that people that go to church probably do a lot of. They're more social, number one, because if you go to church, you're going to, you know, communicate with others and you're going to mingle. They volunteer. I thought this was interesting. It keeps your life going a little longer because you're helping others. And, of course, mostly they drink less. They might drink,

but they drink a lot less. And way less heroin abuse. I don't see that. I mean, I didn't know that. Okay. Well, we want to share a couple more fun facts with people. Did you want to talk about you can retire? What was the thing about retiring to places?

Again, this came out just I guess a week or so ago. Recently in USA Today, they had retirement planning. Go abroad and you can live nicely on just $30,000 a year. So if you're an older person, you're retiring, you're taking all your money, money basically from this country and going to live somewhere else. They had five cities that you might want to retire in. And, of course, some of them are very, very nice, right? Like Mafra, Portugal.

And they tell you a little bit about Mafra, why? So if you go to Mafra, Portugal, you can live handsomely for very little money. But here's the only downside. Right. It's Portugal. It's Portugal. You're somewhere else. If you don't happen to speak Portuguese and not many people do, then you live in Mafer,

Portugal, you got all this money, but you can't even communicate. That's not good. Also, Quenca, Ecuador. Right. If you want to live in Ecuador, you could live very nicely, but here's the downside. It's Ecuador. I mean, I don't think Ecuador is a bad place, and Portugal's not a bad place, but, you know, most people in America probably want to retire in America, don't you think? That's what I think, too. But the one, the last one on the list that I could not believe, number five on the list is Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Okay? man, the golf course is in Cambodia.

Look out. Incredible. Watch out, baby. Are you serious? Yeah, that's, they have, this is a USA Today article, so it's not like some, you know, hairbrain. It says a single retiree can get by on just $1,100 a month. Right.

A guy named Tom Richter, who is in San Diego, says he pays $250 a month for a one-bedroom apartment with a balcony in the middle of the city. Wow. Here's the problem. Oh, yeah. The city is Phnom Penn. Exactly. My other problem is that the grandchildren are not going to visit you in Phnom Penh.

And a couple of these cities on the list is like you're the rich American in town, okay? If something goes wrong, who do you think they're going to kill? Who are they going to come after? Hey, there's a retiree up on the hill. He's got all his money up there with him. Hey, let's let him alone. Alvin, this is hilarious. Are you serious?

I'm serious. I mean, this is USA Today has nothing better to do. And evidently we got nothing better to do than to spread their lies. Okay, here's a final thing I want to share with the group. Okay, jockey Frank Hayes won the Belmont Stakes in 1923 after suffering a fatal heart attack halfway through the race. His horse continued despite the death of the jockey upon his very back and won the Belmont Stakes. That is unbelievable. I want it to end on a positive note and we failed.

Oh, gosh. Well, thanks, Chad, for helping us out. Thank you, Shad. Yeah. I think. Is his name really Shad? It sure is. Folks, we know his name Shad.

We love Shad. Thanks for listening. It's Fun Facts Friday on the Irkman, Texas show.