The Megyn Kelly Show - Threats Aimed at Kavanaugh, and a Free Speech Culture, with Greg Lukianoff and Anjelah Johnson-Reyes | Ep. 353

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Greg Lukianoff, CEO of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), to talk about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh being protested while at dinner, threats aimed at all the conservative Supreme Court justices, destruction of the norms, the standard for "incitement," what qualifies as harassment, Alex Berenson's return to Twitter after his lawsuit against the company, the possibility that the government pressured Twitter to censor Berenson, the decline of our culture of free speech, using the courts to fight back against free speech suppression, whether Elon Musk will buy Twitter, microaggressions being punished in one school district, Biden's problematic Title IX decisions and due process changes, and more. Then comedian Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, author of "Who Do I Think I Am?" joins to talk about how she became a Raiderette, her dream job as a Friends extra, the comedy routine which launched her career after it went viral on YouTube, the secret to impressions, anger and rage, using comedy to bring people together, following her dreams to become an actress, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Protesters once again targeting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and it's disgusting. It's absolutely disgusting what they're doing. This time they forced him to run out the back of a D.C. area steakhouse. According to reports, the protesters gathered outside of Morton's steakhouse after finding out that Justice Kavanaugh was there. They reached out to the manager and demanded that our sitting Supreme Court justice be kicked out. Morton's, to its credit, said, you're lunatics. Okay,

that's what I said. But basically, I said no dice. And now they are reportedly condemning the actions of the protesters. Morton's just as mad as we are about this, saying that these protesters unduly harassed the justice and other patrons and calling it shameful. Kavanaugh was forced to exit through a back door and the protesters love that. They're celebrating it. Keep in mind, this comes weeks after a 22 year old man was arrested near Kavanaugh's home after threatening to kill him. Right. That's the tension. That's that's the tenor of the conversation around Justice Kavanaugh and some of these conservative justices now. And yet this group gleefully encourages people to continue doing this, continue targeting him.

This will be fun. We'll try to ruin his life. How about cost him his life? That's a real risk in this behavior, which no one seems to give two dams about on the side of the protesters. Today, we are joined by one of the most important voices on the issue of free speech and due process and a lawyer himself. Greg Lukianoff is the CEO and president of FIRE. This group was focused on education exclusively and free speech rights on campus. But recently, to all of our excitement, it has expanded its efforts and its mission and changed its name slightly to now the Foundation for Individual Rights, not in education, but for individual rights and expression, because their mission is much wider. Greg, welcome back. Good to be in here, Megan. I'm so ticked off about the Kavanaugh thing.

It's insane. And I realize, okay, you know, this group shut down D.C. They can run around calling him whatever names they want to call him. Fine. That's their right, as you know. They can go protest outside of the Supreme Court. That's uniquely American. Love that.

As a matter of fact, I think that's awesome, even if I don't agree with what they're saying. But going to his house is a different thing. It actually does violate at least one law on paper. And targeting the man in his personal life as he sits with friends or family. I don't know who he's with trying to have a meal. And they're not done. They're not done, Greg. I mean, this group is tweeting out that they want more that.

Hold on. I want to get the first of all they're celebrating per politico that they got a tip where he was eating and then all the protesters rushed they showed up out front that's when they called the manager demanding that he be kicked out forced to exit through the real rear uh snuck out the back with his security detail and um now they're out there saying more more more shut more shutdown D.C. tweets today. No rights for us. No peace for you. Get effed at Morton's. P.S. Eat the rich. And they retweeted this. I wish every Supreme Court justice a very fuck you. Leave the kitchen. I hope you didn't

pay for and didn't get dessert. And on it goes. What are your thoughts? Well, from a First Amendment standpoint, I mean, I live in D.C. Can they protest, you know, from the public street? And this is to keep in mind, this is downtown. This is two blocks away from the White House. So if they're doing a peaceful protest outside of a restaurant, they're absolutely within their rights to do that. Where it starts getting a little dicier is if they're, you know, preventing people from getting into the getting into the restaurant, if they're actually, you know, shutting people from getting into the restaurant, if they're actually, you know, shutting down operations there, that kind of stuff, then there's very common sense limitations on what you can and can't do in this kind of protest. I get why people are,

you know, frustrated or think it's just completely wrong to target someone in their personal capacity. But as a matter of rights, this is something that has happened, you know, since the dawn of the Republic. Now, I was happy to see in The Washington Post that they were covering the fact that there was someone who was arrested for plotting to kill Kavanaugh, which was not, in my opinion, getting nearly enough coverage. And that's a sobering fact that people really need to be presented with. And one thing I want to be extremely clear about, threats to kill somebody, threats of bodily harm or death, those are not protected north, should they be? You know, to me, it's not even about whether it's protected speech. It's about the bounds of decency and what kind of society we want to live in. We cannot have Supreme Court justices under constant threat like this, disruption to their personal life.

And this group, I'll give you an example. They they tweeted out. It's called Shut Down D.C. and they continue to tweet out his personal information and call for protests against them in their personal spaces. And this one this morning was D.C. service industry workers, meaning, you know, all waiters, waitresses, everybody everywhere. If you see Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett or Roberts, DM us with the details! Will Venmo you $50 for a confirmed sighting and $200 if they're still there 30 minutes after your message. Someone responded, you are literally putting a bounty on Supreme Court justices heads. And Shutdown DC responded, no, we're putting a bounty on Supreme Court justices' heads. And Shut Down D.C. responded, no, we're putting a bounty on their dinners. Because Shut Down D.C., I'm sure, has perfect accuracy in its prediction of who will show up, what their motivation will

be, whether they will be a dangerous person, right? I mean, they're playing with fire here, so to speak, Greg. Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that we point out a lot in higher ed is trying to get people to put themselves in the shoes of what if it was someone they really liked being targeted in this way. And even though the law protects this, the can versus should part is a big part of the analysis in a democracy. But unfortunately, we seem to have gotten entirely out of the idea that you should put yourself in the person you're censoring shoes, the person that you're targeting shoes. They say they tweeted out Ruth. Ruth sent us. That's the one that's been protesting outside of the justices homes. It was Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Barrett, Amy Coney Barrett this week and last.

I mean, honestly, they both have children. She has a 10-year-old child. This is beyond. So they continue protesting out there. And Ruth sent us. They tweeted out how the protesters found out that Kavanaugh was there. They said one of our regular Wednesday SCOTUS 6 protesters sent us this text. Morton's needed me to work tonight, but mother effing Brett Kavanaugh is here eating. He could probably hear you from the street. So we should know Morton should be able to figure out who this was, who released the fact that Justice Kavanaugh was was eating there. This is a security issue. That person should be fired immediately. I'm 100 percent fired. And then they they tweet out the following. The nation's rage is growing. What would you do if you were his waiter? That that's obviously threatening. And the Supreme Court security team ought to be looking at that. They need food tasters now. We just left Rome with our kids where the tour guide was explaining to our little kid, our eight year old, among others, and the other three. How many do I have? Three total. About how the pope still has a food tester because there's been, you know, such a long history of the pope's quietly being assassinated.

My son Thatcher said, that's a terrible job, which it is. But are we at the point now we're going to need that for the justices? Will you get these lunatics tweeting out? What would you do if you were his waiter? What is that supposed to mean? It's just getting very disturbing. Yeah. And just as Morton can decide not to serve whatever customers they don't want, you don't have to continue to hire a waiter who you think actually ratted out someone who was there. So, yeah, it's it's difficult times for the Republic. And one thing that I point out is that sometimes on both sides, both extremes of the right and the left, there's an idea that kind of like the time is over for free speech or civility or other democratic

norms. But I always point out, particularly when it comes to freedom of speech, that's when all of these other things fall apart. That's when the rules of the game become more important, not less. They just adding some more to it. The protesters got to Morton's. They waited at the entrance. Justice Kavanaugh got out the back and they tweeted out. This is their messaging from Ruth sent us again a tweet saying Kavanaugh just snuck out with security through the loading dock. You should have seen how scared he was. Pretty hilarious. Also, Clarence Thomas is a regular here.

There will be hashtag no peace for sexual deviance. Now, I assume they're referring to the Blasey Ford claims against Kavanaugh, the Anita Hill claims against Thomas. Strange, though, because I don't see them doing this to Joe Biden, who's been credibly accused by Tara Reid and many others of odd behavior, weird grooming type behavior towards 12 year old girls and so on. They don't they don't want to do this to their side. They just want to target justices who got smeared totally unfairly during their confirmation hearing. It's also really weird to hear people on the left, you know, quote unquote, targeting sexual deviance. Like basically, that was what they used to call gay people, you know, like so barring that length, it's just it's true. And by the way, that's their bread and butter. Take a look at the presidents they've elected. You know, Bill Clinton. Oh, what's he?

He's OK. Anyway, I feel very uncomfortable with where it's going. And it's not that they don't have the right to say these things or be obnoxious. They have the legal right because we live in that kind of a country. But I mean, you could cross a line. You're the expert on free speech. You could cross a line where, you know, you directly encourage them to show up. And if you directly encourage violence and then violence happens, that's what they're trying to say. Trump did on January 6th, legal incitement. But the standard is very high, very high. They'd have to cross a lot more bars before you could get the way they do it in Europe with the ridiculous restrictions on free speech. It's like they think that we have something where, you know, threatening somebody, actually, you know, stalking someone and harassing them is they think that anything goes. And it's like, no, we've actually got 100 years of solid common sense thinking on these kind of things.

But one rule is that you can't censor somebody just because you don't like their point of view. You know, the sort of propaganda around this issue around Dobbs being decided by the Supreme Court conservative majority, just looking for my note here, has led to so much just misleading, you know, by by pundits in the press about how this is a right. And, you know, it's been taken away as opposed to a Supreme Court decision that reversed an earlier decision recognizing a right that is nowhere in the Constitution. That's indisputable. It doesn't appear in the Constitution. This guy, Elie Mestal, Elie Mestal with The Nation and an MSNBC contributor writes, quote, the right of white men to eat dinner in peace without being interrupted by mouthy women complaining about

politics or who has access to their bodies was well established at the founding of this nation. Quote, Neil Gorsuch soon joined by Kavanaugh, suggesting that's what they're like. These two are going to find that white men have a right to eat in peace without being bothered by mouthy women. You get it all in there, Greg. You got white, right? Their race somehow has to be injected into this. Of course, men, because, you know, Amy Coney Barrett's vagina didn't give her special rights to issue the decision in Dobbs. But these men with the male parts, forget it. They're not allowed to say what they want to say. And now just the demonization of them, as opposed to like saying they have a conservative judicial philosophy makes sense with a conservative judicial philosophy. By the way,

even liberals like Lawrence Tribe have criticized Roe as poorly founded. You got to go after them for all of their identity issues. Yeah, actually, this is a good time as any to announce I'm writing a book with Ricky Schlott, 21. Yeah, he worked with called canceling of the American mind. And while it's about free speech and the legal rights, it's also about the way we argue as a society at the moment and saying that we figured out this Byzantine system to actually never address what someone's saying on the merits to immediately make it personal about the person. The sort of ad hominem way, certainly you have the right to engage in ad hominem arguments, but if you care at all about getting closer to the truth, that's not going to get you there. It's just so distressing to me and they don't show any signs of stopping. I do want to point out, we played this the other day, Sam B went on TV. She's still on TV. I'm not exactly sure where this is from and specifically called out to her followers to do this. We have the clip. Here it is. I can't describe how painful it is to be here now in a place where the Supreme Court has the power to erase 50 years of constitutional law.

Make no mistake, this is not where it ends. Conservatives will not rest until they have come for all of our rights. And we have to raise hell in our cities, in Washington, in every restaurant Justice Alito eats at for the rest of his life. Because if Republicans have made our lives hell, it's time to return the favor. There we go. There we go. I mean, I wouldn't I would not think I would still not think even if she said that and violence had erupted against Kavanaugh at the restaurant or Alito, it's still not incitement, right? Yeah. No, it wouldn't cross the line of incitement. And the incitement standard being very high is overall a good thing. But this is one of the

things that seems to have fallen out of the discussion a lot. There are some things that are supposed to be decided in the realm of politics, like just as much as they are allowed to criticize and protest, calling people counter protesting for one thing or saying

that we think this is inappropriate. You know, that's the way we're supposed to handle a lot more of these things in at least in a healthy republic. I'm not sure that's where we are at the moment. It would have been great. I don't know what happened, but it would have been great if you had seen people come out of Morton's and start chanting as well, like,

get out of here, like, leave him alone. Of course, as tempers ratchet up, so does the danger. So these things, you do have to worry. And there's a reason that these justices now have to have round the clock protection. And so do their children because they're being blamed for this decision. So the whole thing is out of control. And by the way, we still haven't found the Supreme Court leaker, still haven't found the Supreme Court leaker. And I have to I have to say the more time that goes by, the less we're supposed to take it seriously. It's like if the Supreme Court is not taking the endangerment of these justices via that leak seriously, why should the nation like they got to get on there, you know, get on it and find the damn leaker if they haven't already,

because I'm starting to lose faith. And actually, it's causing more and more people to wonder whether it was a justice, whether they do know who the leaker was, but they're protecting him or her. Yeah, I'm a member of the Supreme Court bar and I've never seen a historical moment like this. Yeah. Just to give you the full Morton's statement, because it was pretty good. Honorable Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh and all of our other patrons at the restaurant were unduly harassed by unruly protesters while eating dinner at our Morton's restaurant. Politics, regardless of your side or views, should not trample the freedom of play of the right to congregate and eat dinner. There is a time and place for everything. Disturbing the dinner of all of our customers was an act of selfishness and void of decency. That's exactly right. Selfishness and decency. And that's like,

look, you could potentially cross over in this behavior to where it does amount to some sort of unlawful harassment. You know, that that can be a criminal charge. It's tough to turn protest into that even at one's home, though there are certain laws on the books which we've discussed with respect to the Supreme Court. But really, this is a matter of they need to be shamed. They need to be shamed out of doing this. It is about decency and their selfishness and possibly having the other patrons in the restaurant come out and say, get out of here, leave them alone, you know, like like him or dislike him. This is wrong. OK, so let's move on, because there are a couple of other things in the news about free speech that I think are interesting. I want to ask you about Alex Berenson, one of the most provocative covid tweeters has been he was kicked off Twitter permanently.

And now he just got back on. And it's actually very interesting. I don't know if you know who this is, but he's a vaccine skeptic. I mean, he's just been pointing out all along that the vaccines don't seem to do what the companies or the government are telling us they do. And he's had questions certainly about the efficacy of masks and so on. So in August of last year, almost 12 months later now, he was permanently suspended by Twitter over allegedly violating their, quote, misinformation policy. And this is the final tweet that got him axed. he was permanently suspended by Twitter over allegedly violating their quote misinformation policy. And this is the final tweet that got him axed. It doesn't stop infection or transmission. Don't think of it as a vaccine. Think of it at best as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed in advance of illness. And we want to mandate it insanity.

So he filed a lawsuit against them, Greg, and it appears that he has won. He filed it in San Francisco, looks like federal court where they're based. And the statement Berenson released as he's back on Twitter is the parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution. I have been reinstated. Twitter has acknowledged that my tweets should not have led to my suspension at that time. To recap, last August, Twitter banned me after I got five strikes under its COVID-19 misinformation policy, which meant I had supposedly made claims of fact that were, quote, demonstrably false or misleading and, quote, likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm. That's the policy, Alex writes. That's what it takes to get a strike. Look it up.

Now we come to find those tweets, quote, should not have led to my suspension. And Alex writes, oopsie. And here's the part I want to ask you about. The settlement does not end my investigation into the pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter to suspend my account. I will have more to say on that issue in the near future. And Elon Musk, who, of course,

is in the midst of trying to buy Twitter. More on that in a minute. There's an update there. Says tweets at Alex Berenson saying, can you please say more about this, quote, pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter? Berenson responds, I wish I could, Elon Musk, but the settlement with Twitter prevents me. However, in the near future, I hope and expect to have more to report. Now we're in a very dangerous free speech territory. Twitter suppressing Alex is one thing. The federal government pressuring them to do it is another. Go.

Yeah, no, this is concerning. The you you know i'm not used to a situation because twitter is of course a private company so that they have free speech rights and association rights of their own but there's a line you know when the government is actually saying you have to kick these people off you have to fire that journalist all that kind of stuff where it starts actually looking a lot more like state action, which is bound, which is prevented by the first amendment. And the, the whole misinformation argument scares me because, you know, free speech is all about the fact that none of us are all knowing, none of us are omniscient, you know, and, and the idea that we can say definitively that any given speaker is

absolutely for all times, you know, wrong, or for that matter, isn't contributing something to the argument just by being skeptical is this information opens up like a ability to censor that's a mile wide and people should be much more critical when it comes up because it's not that easy to know the truth. And they're not even hiding it. I mean, Glenn Greenwald had a piece last year. It was February, I think, of 2021 calling out House Democrats. Industry self-regulation has failed and therefore we must begin the work of changing incentives, driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation.

So this is this is them trying to use state power to change what the social media platforms will allow on their sites. This is why Vivek Ramaswamy had a piece last year arguing in the Wall Street Journal that we do need to take a hard look at whether when thanks to both the carrot and the stick being used against the social media companies by the government, they've transformed into something much closer to a state actor, that we could treat them, though private, as more of a public entity for purposes of free speech. What do you think? I mean, that line exists. And the amount of encouragement, of coercive action that the government is taking, that's

going to be the key question. But it's already at a stage where it's kind of like, taking, that's going to be the key question. But it's already at a stage where it's kind of like, okay, you're really pushing on the social media companies to, you know, for example, exclude some of Joe Rogan's episodes. And it's like, okay, that's, even if you don't think you're crossing in the line of an abuse of power, which is debatable, you know, one thing that the new FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, you know, tries to emphasize are these norms about freedom of speech, about free speech culture.

And the idea that kind of like you are also knowing that you can decide for people in advance what they are or are not allowed to hear is fundamentally troubling. And it's also incredibly, frankly, arrogant. Yes. Oh, this is I want to talk about this. I also want to I forgot to mention my friend, my friend Jed Rubinstein, who was the co-author of that Wall Street Journal piece with Vivek well worth everyone's time. Humility, free speech and humility go hand in hand. And this is part of earlier this week, we had Noah Rothman, who has a new book out called The New Puritans on how sort of these wokesters who are trying to police everybody's speech are just like the old Puritans. And they are totally against fun and they think they know better. And there's a condescension to the way they everything. Not all of your opinions may be perfectly, quote, right. And that in this country, we prize something above being right anyway, which is debate

and freedom of expression and the ability to duke it out. Well, this is one of just in the past couple of weeks, you know, I've been seeing, you know, mainstream, you know, mainstream media outlets coming out with things and assertions that were considered misinformation and disinformation at the beginning of COVID. So what is popularly known has already changed. And we haven't apologized to some of the people who got their accounts shut down because they actually said, hey, maybe actually... And the funny thing about when you mentioned Alex getting in trouble for saying that the vaccines are more of a therapeutic, I mean, I've heard very pro-vaccine people say essentially that, that it doesn't prevent transmission. So it's one of these things

where if someone is selling you a bill of goods that, oh yeah, we have perfect knowledge at this moment, we always think we have perfect knowledge and we're always wrong. What do you make of, because I think I know the answer, but what do you make of the fact that Alex sued Twitter of using the courts to battle these overreaches. Well, I mean, one thing that we see, like, so for example, like FIRE, we fight private colleges. And even though private colleges are not bound by the First Amendment, they do make promises of freedom of speech. They do make promises of academic freedom. And a lot of these social media companies, they have, you know, at least some minimal guarantees of process and minimal guarantees of, you know, that we won't shut down people because of their viewpoint. And if they if they're promising that contractually speaking, then you potentially have a lawsuit. That's how he won. He tweeted out a step by step guide and basically said if Twitter had just

had issued no terms of service, they would have won. But because they said, here's our five strike procedure. And, you know, these are the circumstances under which we would permanently ban somebody. And they didn't follow it in his case. And it seemed tailored, you know, specifically after the fact to get Alex off Twitter. That's why he won. So just because it's a private company, it's not true that they can just do whatever they want. There are terms of service and there are implicit and explicit promises in some cases to the users on what they will and will not do. It's helpful, right, to have a lawyer, to at least look into a lawyer, to call a group like yours and say,

do I have something or don't I? And so is that something that you like with the new fire, the new and expanded fire that you like with the new fire, the new and expanded fire that's off of the college campuses, not off, but adding to help in a case like this for a civilian? We're always willing to answer questions. And particularly when you start having that nexus between, you know, government coercion. One thing that we want to do to target social media, first of all, we promote free speech norms, like hearing people out, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, all of these old idioms of a free society. But we want to go a little further with social media. And we just launched about a month ago the new expanded mission. So we're still figuring a lot of stuff out. But one thing I would love to

be able to do is to use market pressure on social media and give them ratings in terms of like this social media site. If you have controversial opinions, if you want free speech, go to this one. This one gets a D or an F for however we decide to do the ratings. I think that just because something isn't a state actor doesn't mean they're above criticism. And you would think sometimes that people who normally are fairly critical of corporations suddenly are like, well, no, the social media companies can do whatever they want. They can't violate their own promises and they know, identity politics and woke ism and censorship and so on, they're not it's not good enough. free speech and to be against this. I think it was somebody on my team forwarded me. I'll find it someplace. But it was Judge Learned Hand's take on this, talking about how, you know, I understand, obviously, the Constitution is important and laws are important. But once you've lost the desire for liberty in your heart, there's very little hope for society. And that's what's

really disturbing about what's going on here. The social media companies, the people pressuring them, in this case, House Democrats, you know, they've lost the desire for liberty in their hearts. Yeah. Well, and everybody should check out the speech. It's a 1944 speech given by Judge Ler Learned Hand, one of the probably the most famous lawyer who never made it to the Supreme Court, you know, of all time. It's absolutely beautiful. It's a beautiful poetry about this. It's called The Spirit of Liberty. And it's something that Americans. You tweeted it out.

That's why it was in my packet. Sorry. Keep going, Greg. We also have an audio version of it because it's kind of our lodestar when it comes to free speech culture, because it's just such a beautiful expression of this idea. One of the things that I talk about is like the true spirit of liberty is that which is not always sure that it is right. And I say this on campuses, it's like I'm saying a Zen cone, it blows people's minds. Like, what does that even mean? It's like, no, there are all these norms that make our constitutional norms matter, because there's a million countries out there who have promises of free speech nominally in their constitutions and in their laws. But if they

don't have the culture to back it up, it ends up meaning pretty much nothing. Yes, this is, so you tweeted on Independence Day, This is what he writes in part. What do we mean when we say that, first of all, we seek liberty? This is Judge Learned Hand, 1944. I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes. Believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution,

no law, no court can even do much to help it. That's, I mean, it's profound and it's true and it's slightly depressing. Let me ask you this. Absolutely. As so much of what he did was Elon Musk, the purchase of Twitter, I support it 100 percent, as most people who are not far left do, I think, because he's way more pro free speech than the people running Twitter now. But the latest news today is this is per The Washington Post. His deal is in peril. It's in, quote, serious jeopardy, according to three people familiar with the matter. His team has stopped engaging in certain discussions around funding for the $44 billion deal, including with one party, likely a backer of it. Somebody said, one of the three people close to it said,

his team doubts the bot figures that they've been provided by Twitter, and they don't think they have enough information to evaluate Twitter as a business. So that's kind of depressing, too. We needed it to happen. It would have been nice to have one platform owned by somebody who genuinely cares about and gets what free speech is. Yeah. No, we did an open letter to Elon Musk saying that, listen, we don't want the government coming in and saying that you have to abide by First Amendment norms.

But we got about 100 years of thoughtful wisdom from people, including people like the great learned at hand, on how you can have free speech in the real world. So by all means, look at that. But the thing that was kind of the most mind blowing, I think, for the American people, unfortunately, by this point, I was kind of used to it to myself, was seeing that after so many articles, so many think pieces, you know, particularly some really, truly atrocious programs on the media, on NPR, that really came out with bad information about freedom of speech, straw man arguments, you know, explaining that free speech is actually, turns out, actually,

free speech is not so great. Those don't produce the same kind of negative reaction in Twitter, for example, as someone just coming out and saying that I want Twitter to protect freedom of speech. The sheer freak out, you know, of people when he just uttered, you know, the idea that this should do a better job protecting freedom of speech really can show the American people to a degree how much the sort of academic negative conception of freedom of speech, which was even unpopular on campus until fairly recently, is winning the day with a lot of the most influential people in the country. And the other the flip side of that is forced speech, you know, forced. You will use the pronouns of someone's choice or you will be expelled or you will be fired. More and more of this is becoming mandated on campuses and employment.

And is that legal? Well, there's the question we'll leave hanging in the air while we squeeze in a quick break. And Greg will answer it when we come back. We'll talk about some of the insanity that he's fighting. My guest today is Greg Lukianoff for the organization FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. And if you don't already support them, you should because he's got your back and he doesn't care whether you're a Republican or Democrat. His organization is basically what the ACLU used to be, but no longer is. He's not about politics. He's about principle. And your lawsuits that you guys have brought right now that you have pending reflect that you've defended liberal students whose speech has been punished like a Black Lives Matter poster in a

window. And you've defended conservative students who have been punished. You don't care about somebody's politics. What you care about is our Constitution. So good for you. And so give us a minute on how you're expanding, because I even as your fan, I don't totally get like how big are we going here? Sure. Well, we're going very big. And we're currently an organization of about 85 people. We're about a $20 million organization now focused overwhelmingly on higher ed, but already doing some amount of education about freedom of speech. We have K-12 outreach. We were expanding to begin with to some degree.

But we decided that we needed to go beyond campus ASAP because, frankly, 2020 was the worst year for free speech, at least in the U.S., that I have seen, period. And so even though we were thinking about maybe holding off expanding beyond campus until 2024, our 25th anniversary, we're like, this cannot wait. So we announced it about a month ago. We're expanding the most in three places. Research, litigation, we're tripling our litigation staff. And so, you know, lawyers out there, people who really care about freedom of speech, contact us, apply for jobs. We need the best of the best. super excited about is doing a gigantic public education push, a series of wonderfully moving ads that reminds people that free speech, just like Learn at Hand, like to remember us, is about these compelling, beautiful ideas about what a democracy, what a democratic republic is supposed to look like. We're going a different way. I love that you're fighting it. I mentioned before the break, you know, this now pushing more and more schools and even companies to make the unwillingness to say somebody's preferred pronouns

effectively the professional death penalty. Like you, you can be fired for that or you can be expelled for that. And it's not just college. This isn't about pronouns, but it is about speech. Our friends over at FAIR, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, sent this to us. The Hamilton Southeastern School Board of Trustees in Indiana, all right, so this is a heartland, just decided to change its K through 12 student handbook. You can now potentially get expelled for the following microaggressions. Right. All right. Listen, here's a couple of examples. If you say to somebody, and it doesn't matter what their skin color is,

you are so articulate. The message they say is it's unusual for someone of your race to be intelligent. So I guess it doesn't matter. If I say that to you as a K through 12 student, I could basically be insulting your race, not your whatever. If you look at a person of color, I guess, I don't know, they just say if I if you look at somebody and say, when I look at you, I don't see color. Well, that denies a person of color's racial and ethnic experiences used to be a principle of Martin Luther King's. But now it can

get you expelled. If you say, yeah, use of the pronouns he or the term guys to refer to all people. So a teacher standing in front of a room full of kids saying, all right, guys, it's time to wrap it up. Fired, potentially. Could be suspended, fired. This is insane. And yet when Fair wrote to them and complained,

the board wrote back, we're doubling down. No, 100 percent. We stand by every word. We're doing it in the heartland and beyond. Yeah. So microaggressions, a lot of times people misunderstand what me and my co-author, Jonathan Haidt, you know, are saying about microaggressions. Should you be aware of ways that you unintentionally insult people without knowing it? Absolutely. But when you try to, when you make these into rules, you produce truly ridiculous and really scary results. I mean, one of the ones that they would talk about was as being a microaggression from the very beginning is asking someone where they're from. I'm a first generation American. My mom's from Britain. My dad's from Russia by way of Yugoslavia. That was a very normal thing for

immigrant kids and first generation kids to ask. There's nothing, it wasn't considered, it was considered being incurious to not ask that. So it really, it shows you how far we've gone from appreciating free speech, both as a legal right, but also as a cultural right. If you're suddenly saying that actually these things that we've now decided are deeply offensive, even though we thought the exact opposite were deeply offensive 10 years ago. Now, these will get you kicked out of K through 12. It's been it's been a very rapid slide over the last 10 years. And, yeah, I'm right with fair. I'm very worried about these kind of policies.

And even like the use of the pronoun he as a stand in for everybody. And we've been doing that for time immemorial. It's too laborious. It takes too much space on the paper to cover everybody. What are you supposed to do? In the case of emergency, if one finds oneself locked in, one should get the key.

And then when one wants to leave, he, she, they, they, them, should, come on. We need a short form. And it doesn't as a woman, I've never felt offended by this is absurd., because I think it makes people feel, you know, elevated in some way. And when it comes to, I also think that there's a sense that anybody before 2020, you know, was some kind of horrible troglodyte, like they were evil, and none of this stuff had occurred to people before. And I grew up with a very strong sense that, and sort of, I think everybody else, that guys everybody else that guys had become something that was completely gender neutral. When you're telling your friends, hey, guys, let's go over here. And you have to decide to figure out a way to make that offensive. I would say it when speaking to a group of women I'm out with that are all women. I would say, hey, guys, are we ordering? What are we doing?

Like what? Right. Gwendolyn shaking her head. Yes. And she's young. Unlike me. OK, so let's talk about the latest, because the other thing that I know that you guys have been saber rattling about in a good way is the Title nine revision. Oh, yeah, that that this administration is trying to push through and how wrong they are for all of Trump's troubles in terms of whatever my audience heard me talk about his temperament and so on. This is one of the greatest things he did. He reversed the Obama era's erasure of due process for young men accused on college campuses. And now Biden's

bringing back those problematic due process approaches. And I don't know, are they going to get away with it? Greg, outline what he's doing and whether you think he's going to get away with it. Well, this has been a battle of my life. My career goes back to 2001. And believe it or not, back then, the Department of Education was actually saying that if universities pass speech codes and claim that Title IX made them do so, uh-uh, that's not us. If you go ahead and do that, you can't do that if you're bound by the First Amendment, even if you're a private college, you shouldn't blame us for that. And that'll change in 2011. That's when you start having the Department of Education under Obama passing all of these new rules, limiting due process for

people accused of sexual harassment. People sometimes immediately jump to assault. It's like, no, it's actually about harassment. Just rape is considered a kind of harassment and so is assault, which is an interesting progression of law anyway. And then in 2013, they made an even bigger threat to freedom of speech because your listeners might not know this, but since the 80s, those campus speech codes that came out in the 80s, just 20 years after the free speech movement in Berkeley, those were all harassment codes. And they all claimed that they had to pass these codes that made being anything that could be deemed offensive, punishable under that university policy. So we fought so hard to get rid of these ridiculous codes. We knew that general counsels at universities, if you get behind closed doors, were saying, this is impossible. We are being put in a situation

where we will be on the losing side of a due process lawsuit if we implement these policies, because they provide very little due process to those accused of harassment and assault. Next to none. Next to none. And we got these changes. Betsy DeVos's Department of Education did a great thing here. They included limiting harassment so it couldn't be used against freedom of speech. And all that work has been undone. Despite the fact, by the way, Megan, that there's been, you know, 200 cases almost so far where universities have been on the losing side of cases. We're just trying to enforce these rules.

They're losing. And still they go ahead and pass. They get rid of all these important reforms to Title IX. Let's just talk about a few of them because it really it's shocking. It shocks the conscience what they want to get rid of. Things like the right to cross examine your accuser and the right to see the evidence against you. It's insane. That's what Joe Biden wants to eliminate. Among other things, for in particular,

it tends to be young men, could be young women, but accused of sexual harassment on college campuses. And if you get found guilty of one of these things, you get expelled. Usually you get kicked out of the college and you get a label on you that follows you around like the Grim Reaper. So you can't see the evidence against you and you can't cross examine your accuser anymore. And they're taking us back, as I understand it, Greg, to these kangaroo courts where the victim's rights advocate

will be the investigator on the case and will also be now the cross examiner if she thinks cross examination is necessary and will be the finder of fact on whether you did it. Yeah. Well, and the cross-examination, eliminating that is particularly striking because a court, I believe it was Sixth Circuit Court, said that you have to allow for cross-examination if you want to have a program that is in the least bit fair. So they're actually knowingly defying existing law and also things that just, you know, that anybody who cares about fairness should should be concerned about. Here's what's great about fire, among other things, the law that you helped get

passed in Louisiana. And I didn't even know about this. I took a look at what you advised them and they did it, good for them. And the next thing I did was to Google the best colleges in Louisiana because I want my children to go there. I want them to be, Tulane came up first, Louisiana Tech, University of Louisiana, I could go down the list.

These are the things that they just put into law there saying any public college students and student organizations, um, basically have to follow when somebody gets accused, the express presumption of innocence. It's crazy, Greg, but that's, that's not a thing anymore, right? Most college campuses don't, they don't have that. Yeah. The idea that you even have to argue for this stuff is, is kind of mind blowing. And meanwhile, when it comes to,

there was a dean from a school, and I can't actually name the dean because he doesn't want me to, but he would say that these laws create the worst of all possible worlds. And I was wondering what he meant by that. And what he was saying was, listen, if you're guilty of rape, then you're surely not being punished nearly enough by just being kicked out of a college. But if it's just because of something you said, if it's a total kangaroo court situation and clearly you did nothing wrong, then it's truly a miscarriage of justice. So even people who are guilty aren't being punished nearly enough, and people who aren't are consistently being kicked out of school. So you've got the presumption of innocence written into this law that would govern the public

colleges. You've got the right to the active assistance of attorney during all stages of the disciplinary process, the right to cross examination, advanced notice of the charges, reasonable continuous access to the administrative file and all of the evidence in the institution's possession, including evidence that might demonstrate the accused innocence and impartiality from the hearing panel, including a prohibition against one person filing or filling multiple roles during the adjudication process. This is the way forward. We need more. Is there any other state besides Louisiana who's passed a law like this? We got some good due process protections, I think, in North Carolina pretty early on. But we're going to we're going to keep

pushing this. And I love the fact that you read those rights, because I think every American would assume, wait, there are situations where I can't know what the evidence against me is or what I'm charged with or the presumption of innocence. And the more people look into this, I think the more horrified they'll be. All right. This is why everybody needs to support FIRE and Greg's new expanded mission. I know you've gotten some big donations. You need even more. What's the website before I let you go? So people who want to support this mission can.

Thefire.org. And we've raised $30 million for the expansion already, but I'm still trying to raise another 50 because what our research tells us is that Americans want freedom of speech and that really the emperor is wearing no clothes and you just have to stand up to the bullies who want to shut you up. Our young lawyer. I would love to work for a group like yours. I would love to spend my life fighting these legal battles. They matter. It really is what the ACLU used to be. And I know, you know, you did a whole documentary on what the ACLU used to be. It's over for them a whole documentary on what the ACLU used to be. It's over for them.

We've got to move on without them. We need fire, thefire.org. Greg, what a pleasure. Great to see you again. Thank you, Megan. And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megan Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111

every weekday at noon east. And the full video show and clips when you subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. Post posted there now is still our july 4th video of my family dressed up and all of our friends as um you know the folks inhabiting the colonies back in 1776 and you will get a laugh out of my little ben franklin uh if you prefer an audio podcast you can follow and download an apple spot Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free.

And there you'll find our full archives with more than 350 shows now. We're going to close out the week with some fun. Joining me now is one of the most successful stand-up comedians touring today, Angela Johnson-Reyes. Angela recently released a memoir called Who Do I Think I Am? Who Do I Think I Am? Stories of Chola Wishes and Caviar Dreams. And we're so glad to have her with us today. Angela, welcome to the show. Hi, how are you? So good to have you here. I'm great. I'm great. Thank you so much for doing this.

So where does the title come from? Because now having read large portions of the book, I haven't made the entire way through, but I love what I've read. What what are you trying to get at when you say, who do I think I am? So who do I think I am is layered. It's who do I think I am stories of self-identity growing up Mexican and American, but I didn't speak Spanish. My last name was Johnson. I wanted to be a chola real bad, but nobody was scared of little payasa Johnson. Like it just did not work. And it's like, who am I trying to figure that out? Who I am, even in my faith, like growing up, you know, Christian and evolving and, and finding out who

am I, who do I think I am? But it's also, who do I think I am to dream such big dreams and go for them? Like, who do I think I am to say something outrageous like I wanna be an actress? Like, what did I know about being an actress? I knew nothing about being an actress. The audacity I have to say something like that. So it's like, who do I think I am to go for my dreams,

to be writing a book, to be living this life? So it's like, who do I think I am to go for my dreams to be writing a book to be living this life. So it's like the audacity to chase your dreams and figuring out who I am. All right. So what's a chola? Okay. So a chola is like a tough Latina, like gangbanger chick. Like I wanted to be that girl from the movies that you saw. The Mi Vida Loca from Training Day. Like I wanted to be that tough chick in a low rider. But I wasn't cut out for it. Let me tell you.

I would tell my mom. I'd be like, mom, do we have any family members in prison? Like I wanted some like street credit. You know what I mean? I was like, give me some street credit, mom. Do we have any family members in prison? She's like, no, we're not that family. Stop. But I wanted it so bad. I wanted my name. I wanted to ride in a low rider with hydraulics. I wanted that life. There's still part of me that still wants that that life, just the look of I don't actually want

to commit crimes or anything. Right. Good call. And we'll get to that. We're like, there's a character based on that in part. And I think it's also based on your brother which is amazing and extremely extremely popular which we'll talk about one second but um so is it true that you when considering what you might be because i've talked about this before i was made to take a little test of what you might be you know when you're late when you're older what do you want to be when you grow up and believe it or not it actually told me that i should be a journalist and i rejected that and went to law school. Yours told you, you should go to law school. And you actually considered that and wisely moved on from that as a suggestion, found a much happier way to live your life. Yeah, I realized I didn't want to

actually be a lawyer. I just wanted to play a lawyer on TV. Like that's what I want. I wanted to be an actress is what it was. But you had to go to a lot, lot of school to be a lawyer. And I did not love school. So I was like, you know what? Let me just spend like a day, right? You spend a day pretending like, what would it, what would it, what would I look like? What would I sound like if I were a lawyer? And I'm curious as somebody who practiced law for 10 years, whether you did like run, run me through it. It was just real stressed. All I would do is I would pretend to answer a phone and be like I'm on it and slam the phone down and I would get a red pen and I would write things in a red pen and it was just stressed out like that's I just knew how to be stressed

that's what it meant to be a lawyer is that's all I knew how to do I was I love it yes I uh I think your books did something like I just kept yelling out to Cheryl. Yeah, I'm on it, Cheryl. Damn it. That's actually exactly how it is. Yeah, I think you nailed it. Yeah, very stressed and angry and angry. And I know you can relate to that. We'll get to that in a minute. So you decided no to the law career, but you did decide acting would be fun. But it sounds like you felt like that was just too like, oh, come on. I'm from California. I'm going to be an actress. OK, sure, sure. That's going to happen. So you kind of didn't take your own dream seriously for a while. Well, I didn't take it seriously because it felt so far fetched. Like I'm this little Mexican-American girl from San Jose, California. Where do you see actors in San Jose? You don't like I don't. How do you even be in the movie? Like, I remember I would go to the movies and I couldn't enjoy it

because I was just mad that I wasn't in it. And I didn't know how to get in it. I was like, if somebody told me how I could be like, just show me where that car is and I can stand by that car like that girl's doing like I knew I could do. I just didn't know how. And I would never say it out loud because I was embarrassed. It was like, I was ashamed to say that I had such big dreams to be an actress because I might as well say I want to be a princess, you know, like that's how far fetched it was. And so I kind of tucked it away in my heart. And it wasn't until I had a friend who moved from San Jose to Hollywood and she was in a Ross commercial. She was in an NSYNC video. And I was like, oh, I know somebody famous.

Oh, my God. And I remember talking to her one day and I was like, hey, I want to do what you're doing. And she's like, OK, if you move out here to Hollywood, I will help you get started and I'll help show you the ropes. So now this far-fetched fantasy was becoming more of an attainable dream, something I could actually go for. And she was the only person that I had like told my secret to. And right around the same time, I had another friend who was a cheerleader for the Oakland Raiders. And, um, she was like, Hey, I'm a cheerleader for the Raiders. Now you should come try out. And I was like, oh, that's not really my jam.

That's not my thing. And then it was one of those moments where I was like, I was praying about it. And I was like, God, what do I do with my life? Like, I want to be an actress. I'm going to go and I'm going to try out for the Oakland Raiders. And if I make the squad, I will do it for one year. And then I will move to L.A LA and I will pursue my dreams to be an actress. And if I don't make the squad, then I'm going to take that as my sign from God that the

entertainment industry is not for me. And I will go be a dog walker or a massage therapist or something. Cause those are the only other things that I'm good at is giving massages and petting dogs. So I was like, I'll be one of those things. And I tried out for the Raiders. I made the squad and I came home from the Superbowl. We went to the Superbowl that year is like the best year to pick, to be a cheerleader for the Oakland Raiders, came home from the Superbowl, packed up my stuff. And I moved to Hollywood and started from the ground up as an extra. And that's when I really started to pursue my dreams to be an actress. How did you make it onto the Oakland Raiders cheer squad without it doesn't

sound like you were a hardcore cheerleader or dancer. Like, how did you do that? It must have been very competitive. I was a cheerleader, but a different kind of cheerleader. I grew up doing like Pop Warner, competitive college all stars like that kind of stuff where it's stunts and tumbling. The Raiders was more sexy, beautiful, and like train dancing, like pirouettes and, you know, spot when you turn. I'm like, I don't know how to turn. Like, what do you mean? And so when I went to this audition, I drove by myself to Oakland. There was about 700 girls at this audition. It was an open call audition. They had everybody there. They had people wearing like cat costumes and like it was anybody who was welcome. And, um, so I try out and I make it to the second round. I'm like, Oh, okay. I mean, the first round was

like, they ask you a few questions and you smile. Um, and then I made it to the second round. We had to learn dance. And so I'm learning the choreography that at this point there's maybe 300 girls left and we're in this banquet room at this hotel in Oakland. And the choreographer is on stage. And she has one of those like Britney Spears microphones on and she's, you know, five, six, seven, eight, doing the choreography and whatnot. And then she stops, and she jumps off the stage, and she kind of weaves her way through the crowd and she comes up to me and she goes, clearly you have no dance training, but you have something that cannot be taught. And that was the most powerful backhanded compliment I had ever received in my life. And I still hold onto it till this day because I got what she was saying. She was absolutely right.

I had no dance training, but I had something within me. I had the it factor. I had something that you can't teach people. You either have it or you don't. What was it? Because I know you would wind up winning rookie of the year as a cheerleader for the Raiders. And so like you did have, she was right. What was it? I don't know, girl. It's just my it. You know what I mean? It's just, I have what it takes to do what's just, I have what it takes to do what I do. You have what it takes to do what you do. Not everybody can do what you do and you do it so well. And it's just like, you can't teach people how to do you either have it or you don't. It's that it factor. It's, it's what the X factor on, on the TV show, you either have it or you

don't, you know? But, um, yeah, I'm, I'm grateful that this is what I get to do. You know, it reminds me of a young aspiring broadcaster at Fox when I was there who used to put on the camera. She would like put on on the screen, like right beneath the screen that you'd be looking into a sign, a message to herself that read. And I quote, don't forget to sparkle. Bless her, bless her. I know, I was just allowed to say that. You either sparkle or you don't sparkle, but you can't remember to sparkle. Let's turn on my sparkle.

Oh, that's funny. Don't forget it. Hey, I may adopt that. Don't forget to sparkle, you guys. Reminds me of that, is it Prep and Landing, that Christmas special where they're like, that's not very tinsel. Oh, you've got to watch it. It's amazing. OK, so you have a very successful year as a cheerleader. And that's your that's your sign, your sign from God that you're on the right path and you're going to go pursue your, your dream of becoming an actress. You move to Hollywood, your friend starts helping you and your, your desire

to start as like getting parts as an extra made me laugh because my mom, who is hilarious, she, she always feels that, you know, she could have had a career in front of the camera because she's very vivacious. And, uh, for a short stint after law school, I dated a filmmaker. He was an aspiring filmmaker. He'd been,'d made one independent film. And he told her that if she just says the word hello in a movie, they have to pay her five hundred dollars. So every time she would open the door when he would come to visit me, she'd be like, hello, hello. Everything was an audition. He never cast her. Practice her different hellos. But that's how the greats get started by being an extra. And you wound up becoming an extra

on literally like one of the most successful shows in television history, Friends. So how did that happen? Oh, my gosh. Great story. I love this story. Um, so my friend kept her word. She said, if you move out here, I will help you get started. I'll help show you the ropes. And she sure did. And she was like, okay, listen, you're going to go sign up to be an extra and you're going to go to central casting. And that's where they cast all the extras for all the TV shows and movies. And she's like, you're going to see a line of people standing outside all the way out the door, down the block. And they're all waiting to be an extra. I don't want you to wait in line. Okay. I want you to go to the store, get a tray of cookies, and I want you to bring your Raiderette

headshot. And I want you to go straight through the doors to the front window. And you tell the lady that you're here to see Sam. And when Sam comes out, I want you to give him the cookies and give him your headshot. And I want you to tell him you're new to town and you want to be an extra. That's it. And I was like, girl, this sounds real sleazy. Like this sounds like all the casting couch stories that I've heard that you don't want to be a part of. Like, what are you doing?

And she's like, Sam, take a look at my cookies. No, exactly. Don't get no funfetti cookies. And I'm like, OK, what's funfetti cookies? Is that code word for something like funfetti cookies? i'm like okay what's funfetti cookies is that code word for something like what why is there funfetti cookies and she's like just get you out of the tip so um i show up at central casting i have my tray of cookies my sleazy cookies my bribe i'm walking past all these people it's like that i can tell that they know what i'm doing i'm like

i'm sorry you guys i'm just doing what i have to do i'm trying to do what you think so i go through i go to the front door and i talk to the woman at the window and i'm like hi i I have to do. I'm trying to do what you think. So I go through, I go to the front door and I talked to the woman at the window and I'm like, hi, I'm here to see Sam. She's like, okay, he'll be right out.

And, uh, here through the doors walks this guy, Sam, and he's wearing a Raiders hat. Now keep in mind, he had just come off the Superbowl maybe like a month ago. And so he's wearing a Raiders hat. And here I am with my tray of cookies and my Raiderette headshot. And he's like, hey, what's up? And I'm like, oh, hi,

I'm new to town and I wanted to be an extra. These are for you. And this is for you. And I handed my Raiderette headshot and he's like, Raiders, no way. And he's like flipping out. And he's like, yeah, we'll get you signed up. Don't even worry about it. He calls me like three days later and he's like, Hey, do you want to be an extra on friends? And I was like, uh, my favorite show of all time. Yeah. Yeah. I do want to be an extra on friends. And so immediately, uh, that's my first job is I'm an extra on my favorite show of all time. And I remember walking onto the set and seeing the guy's apartment, the girl's apartment, Central Park, the coffee shop. It was so magical. I can still smell the soundstage today. Like it just, it feels so magical. Like the dreamer inside of me wakes up, you know, and I think about that time

and just walking on. And I was nobody, I was an extra, like extras are not respected. We're like the bottom of the totem pole, but I didn't care. I wasn't there to be respected. I was nobody. I was an extra. Like extras are not respected. We're like the bottom of the totem pole, but I didn't care. I wasn't there to be respected. I was there to chase my dreams, to watch and learn. And it was basically like I got to take free class from Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Courtney Cox. I'm watching them make their decisions. I'm watching them communicate with the crew, communicate with the director, communicate with the writers. I'm learning all this new language. I'm watching and learning from the best of the best. And I ended up being an extra on Friends for seasons nine and 10. And I made friends with the second AD.

And he was funny. I was funny. We kept making each other laugh. And he's like, I'm going to bring you back tomorrow. I'm like, OK. And then I come back tomorrow and he's like, I'll bring you back next week. I'm like, OK. And next thing you know, I come back for the whole season nine and the whole season 10. And it was probably till this day still my most favorite job that I have ever had. And I can't believe that I got to be on a part of history to be on that show. And I can still see me in the background sometimes because I still watch. Yeah. Like, where were you? If I wanted to find you in the background of friends, where would you be? In the coffee shop. And I was in Central Park many times and, you know, just walking in the back. And they'll be like, OK, when you hear Joey say, how you doing?

Then you walk from the bar over here to this seat over here. Like that was your cue and stuff. But there's one episode that that people will for sure see me. It's, I don't know if they were like trying to keep it real this one episode, but they're like, how is it that this gang really gets to sit on the couch every single time they come there, right? So there's one episode that they're sitting at the high top table behind the couch because there's two girls sitting on the couch and I'm one of the girls.

And they had me with like my books out, like I'm a college student studying. It was, I was pretending to be a lawyer again. I was studying on the couch and that's me. So you could definitely see that. Cheryl. So that's amazing. That's like being able to audit an acting class, right? By some of the top, most talented actors in the country. So what fun. And I love the way you write about in your book about how they were all your friends, or in your mind, at least. But I don't like over two years, you must have spent some time with them. And was it a positive experience? Like, you know, the interactions you had with them?

Oh, yeah. Incredible. I mean, I got invited to their uh holiday party which you know being an extra getting invited to a holiday party that must mean you're one of the favorites because extras don't get invited to the holiday parties but i sure did and i i remember just i would have small interactions with them i wouldn't try to do the most like anytime there was somebody trying to do the most trying to like stripe up a strike up a conversation with them they'd be like no move her out of the way please stop talking to jenna ranston i was never seen again like i was just quiet minding my own business and if they spoke to me i would speak back period and so there would be times like at the craft service table and i'm just there like getting some snacks yeah i was getting my groceries for

the week is what i was doing because i was poor and I was just making, you know, like a hundred bucks being an extra. So I was like, let me get my groceries, put them in my backpack and take them home. That's what I was doing. And then there was one time Lisa Kudrow walks up and she's sitting next to me at the craft service table and she, she gets this little tea cake. She takes by a tea cake. She's like, Oh, these are good. Right. And I was like, mm-hmm. And that's all she said to me. Like 20 years ago, she said, mm, these are good, right? And still, I remember the one time Lisa Kudrow talked to me and said, these are good, right?

And that's it. And I said, mm-hmm, that's it. And I remember my interaction. All she had to do was pay attention, see me. She saw me and that's all I needed. Was it one of those things where you're like, where was my natural wit at that moment? Why couldn't I have said something? It would have been my funny self. Yeah, nothing. That could have been my audition. She could have been like,

oh, let's put her in a scene. Nope. I just said, mm-hmm. Nailed it. Okay. So after Friends, it ended after a couple of years. And I recall a passage in the book to the effect of now I'm broke. I'm out of a job. I don't know what to do next. You can't just be an extra forever because it doesn't really pay your bills. And this is when comedy began for you. Like, I mean, you were always funny from the sound of it, but like the beginnings of it were what, an improv class somebody wanted you to take? So I would go to this church back in the day. It was called the Oasis. And every Tuesday night they would have creative arts night at this church where

they would have an acting class, a dancing class, a production class, like whatever you wanted to get involved in. They were aware that everybody in their congregation was probably in the entertainment industry in some way, shape or form. So on Tuesday nights, they would have classes for people. So I was in the acting class and there was a woman there. She saw me. We would play improv games in the acting class. And I was funny in the improv games. And she was like, hey, do you want to come take my joke writing standup comedy class? And I was like, I don't know, is it free? And she was like, yeah, it's free. And I was like, I guess so. I had no desire to be a standup comedian at all. It was just a free class. So I was like, sure, get in where you fit

in. I might as well. So I take this joke writing class. One of the first jokes that I wrote in this class was this nail salon bit that ended up blowing up my spot years later on YouTube. And I remember at the time I would tell her, I was like, hey, I have this this kind of like character that I do. I talk about going to get my nails done. And I remember her saying, oh, nail salon jokes are so hacky. Everybody has a nail salon joke. Just steer clear of nail salon jokes. Kind of like steer clear of, you know, flight jokes like, oh, you know, in flight huh? Like steer clear of that kind of stuff. And I was like, you know what? I don't know if anybody does it like me, so I'm just going to do it anyway. And I did that joke and it ended up blowing up my spot years later on YouTube.

But that's how I started doing standup was in a free class at a church. Wow. You went viral before people were really going viral. And this we have a bit of it, the nail salon clip. One of the reasons that you became a star. Here's a little introduction. And enjoy. Watch. Me and my sister, we go over, it's a place called Beautiful Nail. I was kind of confused when I first read the sign, though.

Beautiful Nail. Just one. Just one nail. Just one. Just one nail. Do I get to pick which one? Now with these ladies, they're so nice. They make you feel like it's all about you and customer service. Whatever you like, we do for you. Really nice, yeah. I will do for you.

As soon as I walk in they greet me right away, Hi honey, what you need today? Can I get my nails done? Okay honey, do you like pedicure too? No, no, just my nails done okay honey do you like pedicure too no no just my nails honey why you don't lie pedicure it may look nice it's so sexy it's better for you oh all right sure then I'll get a pedicure too thanks okay honey sit down number six my links you do for you good job only $20 okay sit down Oh, alright, sure, then I'll get a pedicure too, thanks. Okay, honey, sit down, I'm gonna stick my link, she do for you, good job, only $20, that's okay, sit down. Oh, okay, thanks. So my link starts doing my nails right away.

By the way, her American name is Tammy. Tammy. Tammy. You have boyfriend? No, no, I don't have boyfriend. Honey, why you don't have? You look so pretty, like model, cheerleader, something pretty. You like long or short nail uh short nails please thanks oh honey that's why you don't have boyfriend

i do for you long better all right fine i'll have long nails thanks it's okay, honey. Only $4 more. That's okay. That's amazing. It's been a while since I've actually watched that video. I have been doing, when that video was taken, I had been doing stand-up for four months. I had just started doing stand-up comedy. Like you could even see, like I was too nervous to take the microphone out of the mic stand. I didn't,

I didn't have confidence. I was just, I had just started doing standup when that video was taken and then it ended up going viral and blowing up my spot. And then here I am 15 years later, I've been doing standup for 15 years. And if I don't do that joke, the crowd will protest.

Like it's unreal how this, we just checked it right now. It has 42 million views on YouTube on one video. It's been uploaded so many times there. It's it's unreal that video, how viral it went. It's crazy. But I seeing it like I I'm getting the it factor there, you know, like you're very beautiful and you have there's a natural ease. And my God, your impressions are next level because it's not just that one. We can go through and we will a couple of more. But like, have you always been good at impressions when you were growing up? If you wanted to do it, were you one of those people was like it would just come

naturally to you and you get the you'd get the sort of the gate perfectly and you'll get you get the way they speak perfectly and that the facial mannerisms. Yeah, I feel like I've always had an ear for accents and I'm very observant. So whether I'm doing an impression of my grandpa or my nail tech or my next door neighbor, I watch how their face moves. I watch and I listen to what their voice sounds like. And I don't know exactly how to like I couldn't really teach how to do it. But there's something in my ear that I can hear and mimic. And it's why I always say like I like to sing, but I can never harmonize because in a harmony, you you do a note and then I do a different note. You play this one and I play this one. And then we do at the same time. It sounds beautiful. But once I hear you do what you're doing, I'm just going to copy you because that's what I do is I copy what I hear.

So I can never harmonize. If I'm singing with somebody, I can never harmonize. I'll sing by myself. Give me a microphone, girl. You pause for a second because let me not hear what you're doing so I can sing but the second I hear something if somebody's talking in an accent to me I can't help but start talking the way they talk I did it you know yesterday with a guy from Australia and I was like I'm sorry I I keep trying to sound like you sound and like sorry but um, I don't know what it is. I've noticed that whenever I rarely try to do an accent because it's just not right for somebody in my role. It doesn't end well. But even in social conversation, if I try to do anybody's accent, it always comes out as an Indian accent.

And that's just like that's inappropriate, too. Like I just got to stay away. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing. There's some accents that I do that it's just, it'll always end up British or it'll always end up Indian or something like I can start one way. I was like, okay, this is my Irish accent. And it's like, you're Irish or from Dubai, which one, you know what I mean? And I'm like, I don't know. It just goes whatever direction it

wants to stay, stay tuned. All right. So after that, it went viral. People, you're generating buzz. And as I understand it, you get an agent and the agent helps you get an audition for MADtv. And help me remember what MADtv is and its importance at this point in our cycle. So MADtv is, some people would say like Saturday night lives, little sister. Um, and, um, I grew up watching mad TV and I loved Stuart, miss Swan. Like there was some really great characters that I just loved watching on mad TV. The fact that I could get an audition to be on this show was unreal. It was unbelievable. And this all happened because this nail salon video went viral and people started seeing me, ended up getting an agent, getting a manager. I started getting messages. This is back in MySpace days. So people would come to my MySpace page and be like, Hey, I'm the assistant to so-and-so at Fox, at CBS, at this production company, that production company. And they want to meet with you. They saw this nail salon video.

They want to meet with you. So I started taking all these meetings and getting auditions. And one of the auditions I got was for MADtv. And they said, you need to come with three original characters and three celebrity impressions. And I was like, okay, well, I don't do celebrity impressions. I've never done celebrity impressions in my life. So what I did was I went to this brand new thing called YouTube. And I was like, let me just look for any Latina celebrity that I could look like or impersonate. And let me just watch some videos of them and let me just copy them. So first one, Jennifer Lopez, obviously. I start watching video after video after video of

Jennifer Lopez. And then I start noticing things about her. I noticed that when she's on the red carpet, she's doing interview and she waves, she waves like this. She does the hand puppet wave. She doesn't do the finger wave. She doesn't wave like this. She does this hand puppet wave. So I'm like, okay, she does this wave. And then I noticed that when she laughed, she would like do this like high pitch kind of like raspy in the back of her throat, like laugh. And I was like, okay, so I'm going to be Jennifer Lopez on the red carpet and I'm just going to wave and I'm going to laugh. Um, and, and the one video that I saw, she was saying hi to Philly. She was going,

hi Philly. And that's it. And so when I auditioned for the show, I was like, this is Jennifer Lopez on the red carpet. And every question that they would ask me, her response was high Philly wave. And she would laugh and she would just laugh to all their questions. So they thought that I was making this creative choice to be like, oh, my gosh, this is so funny. Jennifer Lopez, she just laughs and waves to every question. That's hilarious. Now, girl, that's all I could do. That's the only part of Jennifer Lopez I could get down was her laugh and her wave. So I was like, well, let me just do this a bunch of times. And then I look up Rosalind Sanchez from Without a

Trace and I start watching her and I noticed that the way she spoke with her accent, she spoke very fast. She was very quickly with all of her words that she would say it. And all of her words came out of the front of her mouth. She'd be like, did you get a good look at the wisdom in the case? It was very in the front of her mouth. So I was like i'll be rosslyn sanchez and i'm just gonna do that i'm gonna talk real fast with the spanish accent and then it was at the time when paula abdul was a judge on american idol and where she would be like was she intoxicated we're not quite sure but she's doing her her laugh and just kind of all over the place and so i was like like, I'm going to be Paula Abdul and I'm just going to do my drunk clap. And, and that was it. And they were like, Oh my God, genius. Yes. And I was like, and, um, and then my three

original characters were characters that I wrote in this free joke writing class at church. And they weren't characters for sketch. They were just jokes in my act for standup. So I did a joke about my grandpa and I was like, well, let me just change it to my grandma and let me just like mold her a little bit, give her some more act outs. And I'll, I'll say, this is my grandma and this is my sister. She wants to be a rapper. She, her name is Bonquiqui. And I was like, this is my sister. And this is my sister. She wants to be a rapper. She her name is Bon Quiqui. And I was like, this is my sister. And I just started doing all the characters from this free class that I wrote in church and audition for Mad TV. And then I ended up booking it. I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Now I gotta learn how to do all these celebrity impressions because I don't know what

I'm doing. I never took a sketch comedy class. I never went to Groundling, Second City, any of these schools. So I was kind of like teaching myself on YouTube how to do it. And I booked it. You didn't need to. Forgive me for this analogy, but it reminds me a little bit. We just got back from vacation in Italy and we spent a lot of time looking at the David and Florence, you know, Michelangelo sculpture and his one painting in the Uffizi and so on. But they talked a lot about the tour guides, his sculpture and how he, like Leonardo

da Vinci, used to dissect dead bodies so that they could see the musculature and like the ligature and actually understand the biology, the anatomy. And that was reflected in their works of art. You could see there's a reason why the David is just so perfect. And he's even got the vein running down his arm is just so lifelike in an extraordinary way. So he saw that in the dead bodies and the other in the live ones that he studied, and he was able to translate it in a way that was just so realistic. And that was his gift. I hear the same kind of gift in you. Like I could have looked at those same three actresses, those same clips you looked at. And I would never have noticed the puppet wave ever.

I would never have noticed that the woman was speaking out of, as you just said, the front of her mouth. I've never even said that phrase. It's not even something that would occur. But when you say it, I'm like, yes, a hundred percent. Like that's a gift you have. So whether you know that you're studying, you know, you're probably, your whole life you've been studying and you didn't even realize you were developing this extraordinary gift that was probably inborn, right?

You probably had this, and now you're finally getting to use it in a way that's paying the bills. It's extraordinary. Yeah, thank you. But thank you for saying that. It's interesting because my dad is hilarious. I say that my dad is the first comedian that I ever met. He was not a standup

comedian. He was just life of the party, funny guy. He's still with us. I speak in past because I'm talking about when I was younger, watching him growing up, life of the party. He taught me how to get the laugh in a conversation, not by teaching me, okay, say this. And then you say this, he didn't teach me like that. He taught me just by doing and I would watch him in every conversation. He had a zinger. He had a one liner. He had something going back and forth, back and forth. And he was funny. He was always making everybody laugh. He was very charming. He was a flirt like he that was my dad. He's a flirt, charming, funny guy. And so and he was very athletic and he's very competitive. So I grew up watching that and being like, OK, this is what we do. Somebody says this. Then you say this real fast and then they start laughing. So my whole family is funny. I am not the funniest one in my family. I would say that my brother, Kenny,

is probably the funniest one in our family. He is so funny, but he's so quick. He's very quick-witted. Like before, we on a text thread and our sibling text thread is hilarious. But before I could reply, he already sent it. He already is in there. He's so quick-witted. But the only thing is I'm the performer of the family. My brother, he won't perform. He already is in there. He's so quick witted. But the only thing is,

I'm the performer of the family. My brother, he won't perform. He shuts down. You put him a microphone in front of him. He'll get quite he'll say not one word. He's so embarrassed. He's not a performer. I'm the performer, but he's the one who's so quick. I'm like, oh, I wish I had your quick wit. I wish he could help. He could help write material, right? I mean, there's a there's a job for him, too. And when you expand, when you get your own Sirius XM radio channel, you can put him on. It doesn't have to be on camera. He can just do his brilliance behind behind the microphone, but not necessarily on cam. And you'll have the whole family exposing us to your your quick wit and your humor. All right. So let's talk about him. He is the one who's my inspiration for my other character.

For one of your most famous characters. You mentioned her. And I actually, I don't want to mispronounce, Bon Kwee Kwee. Can you say it again? Bon Kwee Kwee. Bon Kwee Kwee. Okay, sorry. Forgive me.

I was in tears watching this. So explain Bon Kwee Kwee and how you came up with her for MADtv. And then I'm going to play a clip. Okay. When I auditioned for the show, I said, uh, this is my sister. She wants to be a rapper. And, um, Bonquiqui is a mix of a lot of people that I've met throughout my life. Like we were just talking about, I watch and I observe. And, and so Bonquiqui is a mix of a lot of different people, but, uh, two specific people,

mostly, um, one is a girl from a Burger King drive through in Memphis, Tennessee, that I met when I was a teenager. I was young. I was still in high school, went to Memphis, met At the time when I created this character, my brother was not sober. So he was just wild. He would say whatever he was thinking. And a lot of times it was what other people were thinking, but they would never say it out loud. That was my brother. He had no filter, but he was very funny and quick witted. And he was a trendsetter.

So he would say something and people would start saying it. He had a new way that he would laugh and everyone would laugh the way he laughed. And it would just be a little. And next, you know, all his co-workers, he does hair. So at the hair salon, all the co-workers, all the other hairstylists, now they all go and they all laugh like that just because it's a thing that he did. And he he's always been that trendsetter. He's going to start closing his hand when he talks. Now, everybody around him close their hand when he talks. Whatever he does, people start doing.

And so Bonquiqui, a lot of what she says and does came from me watching my brother and things that he would say and do. And so that's who Bon Quiqui is. She's basically this disgruntled fast food employee who wants to be in music. She wants to be a rapper and she gets fired from every job that she has. She has issues with authority. She don't like being told what to do. But that is who Bung Kwee Kwee is. Oh, we've got this genius. It's so well done. She's amazing. Here's a little bit of Bung Kwee Kwee.

Welcome to King Burger, where we could do it your way, but don't get crazy. Number six with a cookies and cream milkshake. You sure you just don't want to coke? Pardon? I gotta get the ice cream out, put some cookies all up in it. I don you just don't want a Coke? Pardon? Yeah, I got to get the ice cream out, put some cookies all up in it. I don't even know how to use that blender. They got me pressing all these crazy buttons.

No, you can have a Coke. Let me get number six with a large Coke. Next. All right, I'll have a number three with no cheese, no tomato, and no lettuce. Dang, anything else? I got a complicated order! Let me get number three with no cheese, no tomato.

Oh, wait, wait. I'm sorry. I am. Uh, excuse me, sir. You see me trying to put in my order? Don't interrupt. Rude. And no lettuce. That's it. What? I changed my mind about the cheese. Oh, now you want some cheese?

Yes. Now you want some cheese yes now you want some cheese you see me putting the order why you didn't say that in the first place i know sir don't get loud with me sir do not get loud with me oh no security rude i love that rude i love i love that she's so rude, but calling everybody else rude. Like she calls you what she is. Like all the things. Don't interrupt. Hugely, hugely successful and famous for a reason.

All right. Let me squeeze in one more quick break and then we'll come back much more with Angela and maybe bunk weekly right after this. So, Angela, I have a story to tell you, and when I land it, you're going to know why I'm telling it to you. OK, I have I have three kids. They're they're 12, 11 and eight. And my middle child was having a tutor helper with some of her homework. And the guy's very nice. And if if she's just got ants in her pants that day, he'll like play ping pong with her or something like that, just to sort of like help her. Well, one day my son, my eldest needed help with his math. So I said, hey, could you help him?

So he did. And they too took a break with the ping pong. And so the tutor sends me a very nice note after spending some time with both of my two oldest children and says, they're great kids. They did it fine. They're really good at hand. They've got crazy good. Do you know that they have crazy good hand-eye coordination? And I did know this about my kids. And I said, oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I said that they get their hand-eye coordination and athletic abilities from their dad. From me, they get their anger. When I read your book, I was like, okay, I need to know this girl

because I think she can relate to that. And it's, of course, me making fun of myself, but there's this strain of truth in it. And I know from your own upbringing, you can relate. Oh, yeah. That's why I got my royal inheritance from my dad. My surprise, it's anger and rage. But the crazy thing is, there's the only people that have the the code to unlock the rage monster is really my husband. He's the only person that has the code to unlock the monster. Growing up, it's your siblings.

You know, it's always the person close to you. My siblings, they were the only ones that could unlock the rage monster. And then you grow up and now my siblings are my best friends. And now it's my husband. He's, I don't know. I don't even know the code to the rage monster. And he knows it. He'll push all the right buttons.

Oh, here she comes. Oh, here she comes. Whoa. Here she comes. You asked for it. Yeah. My family is actually the reverse where my husband, he never gets, he never gets angry,

but I know how to do it. Like if I really want to do it, I can get him there. I got to be really motivated. Yeah, exactly. I've got the code too. So now you and your husband

I understand within the past few years you did something we did as well which was you moved to the suburbs and that is one of the many reasons I love this clip because I did the same thing and because I can 100% relate to this comedy bit about city sleep sounds it's from it's not seven now that we live in a house, a lot of things are changing because we used to live in an apartment on a street with all apartment buildings. So it was crowded, noisy. We didn't have a yard. Now we live in a neighborhood with just houses with nature. And weird noises. Like

sounds I've never even heard before. Weird, like meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow.

Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow.

Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow.

Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. I don't know what that is. And that's scary. Because I don't know those sounds.

Because where I used to live, I'm used to hearing sounds that are more like, woo, woo, woo, woo. Like the sound of somebody getting arrested out front. That make me feel safe. Same. A hundred percent. Same.

Listen, I got it. I got to feel gotta feel comfortable i gotta know my surroundings you know what i mean i remember when i first moved it was we had wild animals we had all kinds of stuff going on i didn't know what was happening but you get used to it yeah i remember literally there was a several mornings in a row where i was like, what is that sound? What is that? I'm like, it's coming from my phone, I think. Did Twitter change the alert sound? It's like this tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet. It's like a new neighbor.

It's a bird. It's a bird, Meg. It's outside the house. It's not from your phone. It's nature. And we moved to Nashville now and I had never seen a cicada in my life. And people will be like, oh, it's cicada season. Not like right now. But when we first moved here, they're like, oh, it's cicada season. This loud noise. I didn't know what was happening. I was like,

I think the telephone pole, the wires, I think they're malfunctioning. I think one of them is about to explode right now and fall into the house because it is making the loudest noise of all time. Like, oh, no, that's the cable. And I was like, OK, well, listen, I don't know how to do this. It's so true. Now, one of the things I like about your comedy is you you stay in your lane. You're a comedian. You try to make people laugh. And I I'm fine with people who get political in their comedy. And as long as they keep it, you know, both sides, like a Jay Leno approach or Johnny Carson approach. But so many of the comedians today have gone like hardcore political. They want applause more than they want, you know, laughs.

So was that a conscious decision by you to just just make people laugh? Like, let's not get into politics. Yeah, I feel like when I'm doing my show, I want everybody to feel welcome. And I am aware that I probably do not agree with a lot of people in the audience on on a lot of different issues in our life. And that's OK, because at that moment, I I always hope and pray that when people come into my show, that they're able to leave behind the thing that was stressing them out before, whether that be their marriage, maybe they're getting a divorce, maybe their mother is sick, maybe their child is just like wilding out at school.

And maybe it's politics. Maybe it's, you know, all the shootings that are happening. Maybe everything that you're seeing on social media, you're seeing on the news, like it can really weigh you down. And we're all on social media. We're all scrolling. So we're filling ourselves up with all these things that can feel heavy and enrage us that when you come to my show, I'm like, let's talk about how, when I brush my teeth, I do this. And they're like, Oh my God, me too. And all we're doing is talking about brushing our teeth. Like it's a very simple thing, but it's relatable. And as a human, we connect on that. So it's like an opportunity for us to connect with each other. And instead

of disconnect, which is what we do on social media all day is realize who we are disconnected with. Like, Oh, they believe that. And I believe this disconnect, disconnect. And we're doing that all day long. So in this one setting, I have every color in the audience. I have all the different ages and the audience, different sexualities in the audience. Everybody's different, but we connect on something human. And that's what I love to do when I write material. I write material to, yes, get a laugh, but more importantly, to connect on a human level. So people feel seen and heard. I feel seen and heard. They're like, oh, get a laugh, but more importantly, to connect on a human level. So people feel seen and heard.

I feel seen and heard. They're like, oh, my God, me too. My husband does that. Oh, my God, my wife does that. I love to see that in the audience, to see people go, me too. That's what I love to see. And I'm sure for other comics who do political stuff, they will see people ideas going me to me too, because you're you're in a yes room. You know what I mean? You're you're filled with people who who agree

with you on everything that you're talking about. But I'm aware that we don't agree on everything and we don't need to agree on everything. But what we can't agree on is that I'm a human, you're a human and we do weird things. So let's talk about that. It's so great. There's so much fodder outside of politics. And when you come into a stand up club and you deliver a routine, it's such a gift. It's like I am here to give you this special gift to just trying to make you laugh. All I really want to do is make you feel good. I want to get your endorphins flowing. I want to make the serotonin go like that. That's what you're really saying. And so it is filled with it's brought with peril when you go to the political place, because now suddenly it's like, oh, wait, now I feel defensive or wait. Now I feel angry or now I don't feel like the fun, good stuff anymore. So I have to say I appreciate your approach in the minute we have left. What's

next for you? So you're on tour. You got your book. What's next? What is success 10 years from now look like for you? You know what? My dream has always been like a multicam sitcom. I would love and I think it's because I started on Friends and always been like a multicam sitcom. I would love, and I think it's because I started on Friends and that's like so nostalgic for me. I would love to do a multicam sitcom and like just love my life. That's the goal for me. Love my life. I feel like it's going to happen. You're so good. I mean, you don't even need that, of course, but like it would be great to see you in that setting because you obviously have many, many gifts.

And thank you so much for helping expose our audience to them. We're going to buy the book and we're going to come check out your tour dates. I'm sad you're not coming to New Jersey, but it seems like you're going to Washington, D.C. So that's Mid-Atlantic. We could make that happen. Angela, thank you. Thank you. And don't forget, you can go to Angela.com. She spells it in a different way.

A-N-J-E-L-A-H. And there's also a funny story behind that if you read her book. A-N-J-E-L-A-H.com to grab her book, Who Do I Think I Am? And for her tour dates. Well, she was delightful, wasn't she? Thank you all for joining us all this week. I want to tell you next week we've got Dr. Drew coming back and comedian Andrew Schultz. He was a huge favorite.

You're going to love that. Have a great weekend. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.