Will Cain Country - CANCELED: The Musician Blacklisted for Resisting DEI (ft. James Zimmermann & Dr. Patrick Spero)

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Story 1: In a nation based on free speech, speaking out against certain issues is now more dangerous than ever, especially if you’re on the political Right. Professional Clarinetist James Zimmermann joins Will to share how his opposition to DEI led to him losing out on a high-profile orchestra gig despite unanimously winning three sets of blind auditions, and the high stakes legal battle he now finds himself embroiled in as a result.Story 2: It’s no secret that many Americans struggle with a healthy diet, but what about what we put into our minds? Will and The Crew discuss America’s increasingly unhealthy media consumption habits and what Bad Bunny’s halftime show says about the ‘age of slop.’Story 3: Are we running the country as the founders intended? Award-Winning Historian and CEO of the American Philosophical Society Dr. Patrick Spero discusses how America’s government has evolved over time and gets into the drama of a young America, as documented in the new FOX Nation series ‘The White House.’Subscribe to ‘Will Cain Country’ on YouTube here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch Will Cain Country!⁠⁠⁠Follow ‘Will Cain Country’ on X (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), Instagram (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), TikTok (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), and Facebook (⁠⁠⁠@willcainnews⁠⁠⁠)Follow Will on X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WillCain⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Blind audition to win. First seat in a symphony orchestra. But only to be told, no. The job goes to number two because of DEI, the real-life story and the conversation with James Zimmerman. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, not names. On old paper, not marble statues, real men and real battles amidst the construction of the White House. Kane Country, the Will Kane Country YouTube channel, the Wilcane Facebook page. Always here for you by following us at Spotify or on Apple.

James Zimmerman is an American clarinetist and classical music commentator, best known for his tenure as principal clarinet of the Nashville Symphony. and for recently widely covered disputes within the orchestra worlds. After more than a decade in Nashville's first chair, he has been a prominent voice in debates over merit, blind auditions, and DEI policies because in late 2025, he won a blind audition for principal clarinet at the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. And then they gave his seat to someone else, which prompted a lawsuit. He continues to perform, record, and speak publicly about excellence and fairness in the arts and the effects of DEI. and we're joined now by James Zimmerman. Hi, James.

Hey, Will, nice to meet you. Thanks for having me on. Nice to meet you as well. Let's do this. Let's tell the story of what happened in Knoxville. It seems to me a test of ultimate merit to do a blind audition. If you won, it would seem that would be your job. That's not what happened in Knoxville?

Unfortunately not. They had a vacancy for principal clarinet that they advertised an audition for last. summer and I got word of this audition from a friend in the Knoxville Symphony, a violinist who said to me, hey man, I'm familiar with your story about how you were ousted from the Nashville Symphony. I think it's ridiculous. And we've got an audition for principal clarinet, so if you're looking to get back in the game, this would be a good one for you to take. I hope you'll consider coming out. Now, Knoxville is not too far from Nashville, and I figured it's a small regional orchestra. I could stay here in Nashville where I'm well established with my home and three children

and my studio recording career and my teaching empire and my software career that I launched in 2020 after being ousted. So I figured, okay, I got to win this blind audition, which is a very competitive process. It's like the Olympics. You know, it's days-long process where you have to be in top fighting shape. So I spent two months practicing hours and hours a day. You know, my kids fallen asleep to the sound of me practicing after work, waking up to the sound of me practicing every morning,

practicing all weekend long to get myself in shape, to go behind a screen and compete against tons and tons of candidates from all over the place wanting this one job. Because winner takes all in these blind auditions. The second place finisher goes home with nothing. Except in Knoxville, that is what happened. And the second place finisher was given the job because after I sent my resume, which they accepted and invited me to the audition, my resume and my name are out there. They know my checkered past in Nashville.

I'm sure we'll get to that in a minute. But when they invited me to the audition, I figured that meant that they would give me a probationary contract for one year if I won the audition. So I went out there. I competed in three rounds of blind auditions across two days. I won the job unanimously. And then two days later, the CEO called me and said, hey, we found out some stuff about your history in Nashville. So we're not going to employ you.

We're not even going to talk to you about the possibility of hiring you. Best of luck to you. So at that point, I had two paths before me. I could walk away with my tail between my legs, admit defeat, and let the left continue to bulldoze our arts institutions until they no longer exist. or I could take legal action against the Knoxville Symphony for discrimination and failing to live up to their promises. And I took the latter path. So I'm embroiled now in a lawsuit and out there talking about how important it is to take action against leftist control of institutions lest they be gone forever. So a blind audition, you sit behind a screen. It's a multi-day process and everybody simply judges you by their ear, I presume.

But second place, it went to second place. allegation is that this was discriminatory practices. I don't think just in due to your, as you described, a checkered past in Nashville, but as I understand it as well, second place who ultimately was awarded the job was also someone who would qualify as a minority status higher under DEI policies for the symphony. That's right. And that was luck of the draw for them. So they look at the results of the audition, which as you said, is totally blind. They are not considering my education, my age, my race, my gender, my political views. This is how it should be. This is the most meritocratic system imaginable for determining someone's competence. You know, they don't consider extraneous factors. It's all about the merit of your playing. So I won the job based solely on that. They'd had no idea who I was when I was playing. But when the curtain was lifted at the end and they saw my resume, they looked at my past and they said, oh gosh, this guy is high. hostile to DEI. He put up a big fight about it at his former employer of the Nashville Symphony.

And it just so happens that the second place finisher checks a box. So why don't we just kill two birds with one stone here, hire the second place finisher. That means we have one less white guy in the orchestra, which is what these orchestras. There's a huge bias against white men of European descent in orchestras, even though that's where 90% of the music they play comes from historically. So it was an easy decision for them to make a stance against me and say, you know, we don't tolerate problematic employees who do not bend the knee to DEI. And we've got this second place finisher who checks a box for us. So, of course, their stated reason for passing on you, James, is because of, as you described it, your checkered past in Nashville. So let's talk a little bit about, as you mentioned, what happened with the symphony in Nashville? Well, to make a long story short, there's plenty of coverage on this out there. If you Google my name followed by the word fired, you'll see it all. It boils down to an agenda in the late 2010s where the symphony was under a lot of pressure during Trump's first term to diversify.

The symphony was apologizing for its long history of racism. There's not enough minorities on the stage, so we're going to do whatever we can to diversify this orchestra and make it more accessible to people of all colors and coming into the concert hall to hear us play, which I was totally on board with this. I advocated for blind auditions and it boiled down to a temporary player who was given the job of principal oboe, the most important job in an orchestra. He was the supervisor of my little Woodwind department. He did not win the job by a blind audition. He was appointed. He happened to be black. He was borderline qualified for the job, but for two years he underperformed in his role. He was not up to snuff technically or artistically with any of the other players around him,

all of whom had won blind auditions and gone through the conventional process. So this temporary player had to win a blind audition against a national pool of candidates to secure his job permanently, which he did in 2019. I coached him up. I had him at my house. I advocated for him. I told him, I want you to win this job. It'll be great if our orchestra is the first one to have a black principal.

oboists, that will be great for us. It will show our commitment to diversity. And besides, if you win this job based on the merit of your playing, you're going to prove to the world that blind auditions are the fairest way possible to pick a candidate. So he wins the blind audition, and there's a snafu in the deliberation process where the conductor found out that it was this black oboist that had been playing with us for two years. And the conductor said, I don't want to hire this guy. I don't think he's very good. And I think we should just pretend that we didn't find out it was him. We should declare this audition a no hire and we should hold another audition in the future and pretend this never happened. So essentially he's telling us all to lie to this black oboe player,

which I refuse to do because it was ethically wrong. And I think he deserved the chance to prove his medal. And after that, there was an enormous blackmail campaign by this black oboist to say, you better hire me for this job permanently or I'm going to sue the orchestra into the ground for racial discrimination, which the orchestra completely caved to it. And then, following that, this guy became a Jussie Smollett-type figure, launching an enormous smear campaign against me personally because he knew I was hostile to his anti-racist agenda. And he went so far as to take me to civil court, make up stories about me that I was stalking him, driving past his house maliciously. None of it is true. But the symphony backed him from start. to finish to avoid legal action. So it wasn't just enough for this guy to get me fired and make

himself famous as a DEI activist in the first place. Being unemployed is not enough for these people. They need to make you unemployable, which so far they have done with me. I have gone out five years later, five years later trying to move on win another job meritocratically in the Knoxville Symphony, and I still seem to be unhireable five years later because all of this stuff in the past. The Knoxville Symphony did not take any interest in the story itself. They didn't dig any deeper. They didn't find out that they continued to try to take civil action against me a year later to renew some bogus restraining orders they got against me to make a statement. Those extensions were declined a year later by a judge in 2021 who said, I see exactly what you're

doing here. You're trying to use the court system as a weapon against this guy. So forget it. their schick ended in 2021. There's no chance of me going back to the Nashville Symphony, even though they still haven't filled my position six years later. I will not be reinstated there. So that's where I am right now. It was a smear campaign, a very unfortunate situation, a lot of blackmail involved, social death for me,

and I'm trying to come back through the proper channels of blind auditions. But the only recourse I have is the court system now, so that's the act I'm taking. a smear campaign that leaves you ultimately unemployable. If I have this story correct, James, there's an odd twist that I'm having trouble reconciling, and that twist is that ultimately this oboist becomes a Jesse Smollett, DEI, civil rights figure, within the Nashville Symphony, which you are opposed to. But it sounds like the origins of your relationship was you actually helping him win the job

by coaching him up under the pretense of a blind audition. And in fact, being the guy who advocated for him when other. wanted to hold his past record against him in being permanently hired as the oboist. While race may not have played a role at that point, it sounds like the orchestra was suggesting we've already seen him on a trial basis. He's not good. Even though he won the blind audition, let's deny him the job. You don't participate in that. You had priorly coached him up, and yet he becomes your enemy? Exactly. That's what I was saying a moment ago, that he was preparing for this blind audition.

And I took it upon myself to tell this guy what nobody else had had the courage to tell him in his past. Keep in mind that this oboe player had reached the finals of a blind audition 15 times in his career and not secured the job. Back then, it's also worth mentioning that blind auditions used to be blind until final rounds, at which point they would remove the screen

when the field of candidates has been narrowed down to two or three people. At that point, they start looking at your resume, they look at who you are, they look at your mannerisms. But there was the contention by DEI people that this is not good because if we take the screen down and we see these players are black, orchestras are anti-black and black people are not going to get hired because the audition process is not fully blind. So I advocated in my own orchestra through contact negotiations to get the audition screen to the end. We got that provision memorialized in the contract. And I said to this player, I was like, look, I know you think it's racism that's holding you out of these jobs. But it's not.

It's you. You have failed to reach your full potential. I believe in you. I believe that what you need to do is just ignore that noise, focus on yourself, and chill out. This guy played with a certain amount of. anxiety and forcefulness. He played like a guy who didn't believe in his teammates. It's very much like a sport. This guy was a selfish player, not paying attention to what was going on around him, very scared all the time. So I said to him, you just solved those issues in the blind audition,

then you're going to reach your full potential and you can be a great player. But you are not there yet. You need to step up, young man. He was a little younger than I was. So I took like a big brother sort of role towards him. And I was at I was rooting for him. in this blind audition. And when he won it and the conductor tried to take it away from him, I said, absolutely no way. That is not how we do things in America. Our conductor is not from America. He's an immigrant from Costa Rica. By the way, you might have seen him conducting in the Super Bowl on Sunday in the Bad Bunny halftime show. So it's not like any of these terrible things that these DEI-style players do have ruined their careers. They've gone onto these huge careers,

seats in academia and on boards of directors and orchestras, and I'm still on the outside looking in. So, yeah, I did stand up to what I thought was an incredibly foul thing that happened to my black friend. But because I was hostile and to his political agenda, he needed to get rid of me. I also think there was an enormous amount of jealousy involved. I was a powerful star player in the Nashville Symphony.

I was very well respected, and I have allowed. voice. You know, I'm not that agreeable. I'm a disagreeable type of person when I see oppression happening, which we need people like that who will speak up, especially when they're going to speak up on behalf of the oppressed and underserved. I did that a lot. But that's why the guy went after me, because I didn't agree with his political agenda. And I didn't think racism was on the, was the reason he was not getting the job. I thought it was because of his playing. Imagine that, trying to hold somebody responsible for their own actions. Let's take a quick break, but continue this conversation with James Zimmerman, a DEI victim of the symphony in Nashville and Knoxville on Wilcane Country.

This is Ainsley Earhart. Thank you for joining me for the 52 episode podcast series, The Life of Jesus. A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told. Listen and follow now at Fox News Podcasts.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome back to Will Kane Country. We're still hanging out with preeminent clarinetist. James Zimmerman, who, because of DEI policies, has found himself unemployable in the symphony. It stands to reason that the arts would fully embrace a leftist message of DEI, but it's not a,

it's not a segment of our economy, our society, it gets a lot of attention because it's normally focused almost exclusively on business, DEI in business. And it seems like art like medicine would be a place where merit would hold out the longest in retaining its validity. That being said, art is subjective. So there's a lot of places from where you can insert other priorities than simply what is objectively the best. But I know that, you know, symphony, honestly, and I'm not, if you were having me rank things, I'm qualified to be talking about, James. This would come in near the bottom, which is symphony. But I do know, like you described it as an athletic competition, I do know there is objective metrics.

I do know there is a meritocracy available to it. And it makes me wonder, from your perspective, how much art has been corrupted by placing other priorities. In this case, we are talking about DEI, but other priorities above good art. Yeah, that's a great question. And that's where a lot of the debates are centered in the arts right now. Like how can you say what is more beautiful than something else? Isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder? And that's that idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder has done a lot of damage to the arts where, you know, now you look at the Sistine Chapel or the works of the great sculptors of the Renaissance. And now we go to a museum of modern art and we see a banana. duct-taped to the wall and we're told it's that's great expression and great art so the arts have sort of lost their footing like when you say yeah the symphony is not a as viable cultural institution as it was this is the reason why is because we've gotten so far away from what is objectively great in orchestras so there's a couple solutions to this number one

blind auditions which we already have that is how we choose who does the playing in the orchestra We put everybody against each other in an athletic-style competition, and we pick a winner. This is something I think that has been interesting to people as I've gone around and done the talk show circuit, explaining to people who don't really understand what the symphony world entails, and that it's even a job at all for people. Like, I was not doing the symphony as a hobby. I want people to understand that. This is my job.

This is how it was paying my mortgage. And this is what I'm doing instead of, you know, being in corporate America. So that's one thing. Do you think... Go ahead. No, I would love to hear the other thing on what could be done to solve this problem within art and specifically symphony. Well, what I was going to say was, I think that the performing arts are about to experience a renaissance. Because if you look at what's happening in entertainment, so much of it is just slop now.

You're scrolling X.com and half the images you see, you don't know if they're AI generated. You know, they're designed for a short attention span. There's like a proliferation of, you know, talk, like podcasters that don't have expertise in the subjects they're talking about. So people are going to want to turn back to human style art. They're going to want to go to the ballet because they know it's real. It's a human connection that they feel with the performers on stage. They're going to want to hear the symphony. They're going to want to go to concerts.

They're going to want to, you know, turn away from the slop on Netflix and say, I want something real. So if there's no symphonies to go. back to, we're going to have a giant vacuum of the performing arts that have been popular for centuries like Shakespeare and Beethoven. So that's why I think it's important for the symphony to stay relevant and for people to explain, like, look at what is happening on the inside. It's totally hostile to right-wingers. It's totally hostile to white men. And if we don't stop that now, we're going to be, the symphonies are going to be extinct, and that's going to be a huge loss for humanity. I wanted to explore that, and you started to answer this with the second part of that

question or the second part of that answer, do you think if we can agree, and not many will, that beauty is not in the behi the beholder, that it can be that there is a certain amount of subjectivism to art, but that doesn't negate that there's a great amount of objectivity as well to quality in art, that a banana tape to a wall is not of the same quality as the Sistine Chapel. If that is the case, if we have, and I do believe that we have gone very, very, very far in the direction of its art because I say it's art, what do you think we are, like on a grand scale? Like from Mozart and Beethoven, Beethoven, Wagner and Michelangelo to whatever it is we are today, do you think we are severely corrupted from some high point that we once existed? in art, or are we being cremudgeons? And the complexity of art today is far beyond the imagination of anyone from the, you know, Renaissance. Well, it's a good question because arts do

have to evolve and they do have to play a relationship between, they have to have a relationship with what is happening in modern times. So if you look at a piece like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, That's the one that starts, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Everyone knows that piece. What is that piece really about? That piece is about man's battle with his own fate. That's sound,

that's fate knocking at your door. And in the end of Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, we have a triumph of man over his own fate. We are still fighting those battles internally in 2026. The idea of man versus fate, the questions we ask, why am I here?

How did I get here? Where am I going? We're asking the same questions that people have always asked. So do I think that modern art bananas taped on the wall in the Bad Bunny halftime show are raising those questions in the human mind as well as Beethoven and the Sistine Chapel? No, definitely not. But I don't think all artists are totally misguided now. I think there's some of us who have maintained the vitality of human spirit that existed hundreds of years ago and are putting it into great modern songwriting and composed. Those people are just more difficult to find because they're powerless. You know, the slop factories are totally in control of tech and social media and pushing really bad entertainment on us because it sells and because it's more sexualized. And yeah, so maybe I do sound a little curmudgeonly like you said. But I don't think all hope is lost at all.

I think we have to fight for beauty and we have to understand what beauty is and we have to understand what it means to transgress beauty because sometimes, You know, you need a little darkness and ugliness to appreciate the light of creation and the light of inspiration. So, yeah, we're in a tough spot. You know, everything that's happened in postmodernity has really left us on our heels. But I think the truth is going to return, and that's what we're here trying to fight for. And if it does return, if the truth returns and your message of hope is true, where do you go? not Netflix Amazon Prime

Well there's good stuff there and there's good stuff in the live I'm kidding But I'm serious I'm kidding what I'm serious I'm like to go I'm like you know where I would like to go To find beauty

Yeah good question I would like to go to a psychological place Where I don't have to care about the stuff That we've been forced to care about recently Like I don't want to care When I go to an orchestra The number of women or black people or gay people or trans people that are on the stage when i'm watching a show

i don't care how many black people directed it or how many women were on staff like i just want to go back to caring about beauty and that's it it would be much simpler in my opinion yeah yeah that that makes a lot of sense well what a fascinating story james i'll tell you what we should talk again sometime and a more home and there's probably a portion of the honest like art but you know it's really, really, actually, I think it's hard to remind yourself of the importance of art and actually what is art and the role of art and why it's important. You know, I'm no better than anybody else. How many minutes a day do I lose to scrolling?

And how much slop do I watch on television? And the answer is a lot on both fronts. But at the same time, I'm not going to reverse engineer my choices by suggesting. my choices are of the same quality as someone who's reading a very good book or going to museum to look at real art. And I think that understanding that spectrum of available choices is, I don't know, I'm interested. What is art? Right there, that question. What is art? And so I'd love to revisit that with you sometime, James. Yeah, I think that is the much more interesting question and what I love to debate. That requires a little bit more unpacking.

I really appreciate you having me on to talk about what I'm doing immediately with my legal story. I think that makes the arts accessible and interesting to a wider audience. But the questions you're asking, how do we quench the thirst of the human spirit for beauty? Where do I go to find art? I'd love to come back and talk about that in the future because that's where all the magic happens is in conversations like that. All right, let's do that. Wish you the best of luck. Thanks for sharing your story.

Appreciate it very much. There you goes. James Zimmerman. Looking for a job, by the way. Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Symphony Orchestra. And the effects of the corruptive ability of DEI on the answer to that question. What is art? Hey, I'll tell you what, guys. Let's take a quick break. I believe when we come back, we've got Dr. Patrick Sparrow coming on. Who is going to talk to us about Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John. John Adams, the real human beings as they sit there in the swamp of D.C., building the White House. Next on Wilcane Country. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, the men, the fights, the duels, the battles as they build the White House.

It is Wilcane Country. Streaming live at the Wilcane Country YouTube channel and the Fox News Facebook page. Two of a day's Dan, tinfoil pat with us here today. Hey, we were just talking about. So there's this entire movement. I think this is fair to say. At least at my age, fellas, I don't know how much, Patrick, I don't think you're super into this, but I don't mean that as an insult. That's mean.

But it's very, very trendy in a good way to begin to think about what you eat, what you consume, what, how you move. body health longevity optimization is very, very, very popular. Okay, why you laugh at Patrick? Because of my caveat, the runway I laid about whether or not you were into this. Yeah, I was like, I was going to talk about art or culture or something because I'm like, I'm into all kinds of stuff like that. He's not very culture. Then you're like food and movement.

I'm like, yeah, I'm out. Not an interest. Yeah, yeah. See, you admit it. You admit it. Longevity is not at the top of your priority list right now. But, I mean, you guys have seen the stats, right, about alcohol drinking and how down it is. It's like so down.

Yeah. And there's a lot of reasons for that. It's not great for you. Yeah. Well, that's what I said is a lot of reasons. Young people aren't as social as they used to be. Sure. And alcohol is a social lubricant.

It's a big social thing to do. Probably increased use of THC in various forms, you know, gummies and drinks and everything else. Well, you can get it. But also, the health of the health. effects of alcohol. Like, alcohol is objectively, like, really bad for you, really bad. Among the, quote, unquote, drugs of choice, it's actually probably one of the worst, you know, the most socially acceptable, but physically what it's doing to your body among the worst. So my point is, certainly at my age, I'm a decade older than you guys. I think that when you're

with your friends, when you do it, a lot of people end up talking about this stuff a lot. you know, what you're, you know, they're wearing something. I'm wearing a new whoop band. I used to wear one years ago. I'm back to wearing it again. How much sleep are you getting? You know, all of these things? You know what we don't focus on?

And everybody seems to understand, don't eat the junk food, don't eat the chips, don't eat the cookies. Everybody seems to understand. Don't eat the processed foods. Look, maha, right? Maha. But there's so little attention paid to the quality of the stuff that we put in our brain. That's what I'm getting at.

and what Dan and I were talking about just a moment ago during the break. And I'm as guilty as anybody else. Like, I try not, and I'm not good. I'm not good at it. I try not to eat crap. I really do. That being said, I'm drinking a monster energy drink like three out of five days a week right now before the TV show. But I know.

But the stuff that we put into our brain, man, I would say we're in the obesity era of stuff we're putting into our brain, right? Don't you think that's fair? Like the crap that we are putting in, from scrolling, from TV, from the shows that we watch. I say that and we have all these choices and we've all said, oh, you know, these shows are better than the shows we used to watch. So I don't know, but I do think that we're putting a lot of crap into our brain. And music is part of that. Yeah. So that's why my good thing.

Music may be the worst, Dan. I think so too, because we spent a lot of time. just listening to it and just like immersing ourselves into music without having the visual stimulation and following plot lines and stuff like that. And it is just slop. It's just to, let's take, it's a serotonin boost most of it just to make you feel.

Okay, let's take Bad Bunny. Let's take Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl for half time for a moment. So, first of all, there's the slop of just BS nonsense. This isn't bad. I don't know if Bad Bunny tried to make this, but did you guys see this meme, this, viral statement going around. Apparently at some point in the in the performance he handed a Grammy or a replica of a Grammy to like a let's call it a five-year-old a five-year-old Latino

boy right and the left took that and ran with it that he had given it to it's spread fast. Is it Liam Ramos? Is it Liam Ramos to have the name right? Yes, that's correct. Yeah, Liam Ramos is the boy that that was separated from his father. His father was an illegal immigrant that ran and he was abandoned by his father. But then everybody on the left said, oh, my God, they're arresting.

It's like a, by the way, it's a farce built upon a farce. Like the first thing that Leon Ramos was arrested was a farce. It was fake news. I had to tell my wife that. Then they built that fake news on top of that fake news. Yeah. But that's just one example. I saw the lyrics.

This was fake. I saw the right passing around lyrics of what Bad Bunny was saying in Spanish. And I think it was fake because now I've seen another translation. of it and the translation of what bad bunny was saying forget whether or not it was over-sexualized it was sloped dan it was like yeah i think this is what he was it was all about how many girlfriends he has right that's it's dance and he's taking him to the vip club well that's what the left would say in response to this like yeah it was kind of mongo number five yeah i mean listen to kid rock what he's saying it's a vibe but fine fine i'm not

making a political point i'm not but kid Rock wasn't the halftime show of the Super Bowl. Sure. I'm really not. I'm talking about the quality of music that is elevated to the highest place in our society. And like legitimately what Bad Money is saying is like not even first grade level like statements. You know what I mean? And watching the Grammys and watching the Grammys too, all of the new music is the same exact thing. All the best new artists. There's maybe two good artists that I saw but everything else at the Grammys

was just slop crap like easy to make you can make the beats in your bedroom kind of thing it's just it's ridiculous it was hard watch yeah it's interesting you know Ben Shapiro's sort of been on this beat like talking about the quality of music because he's into classical music um

big band and how degraded popular music is but you could argue that music is in the worst shape of all of of all the art forms in terms of everything's been done already that can't be true you think it's an exhausted

exhaustive medium so yeah it's just I don't I you pick up a guitar there's only so many things you could do out of it right and so many people have done so many amazing things it's tough that's why I don't agree with like copy right infringement and everything when it comes to music I'm like there are 11 notes

it's gonna sound the same eventually right but but our friend of Cura the Don actually is very aware of this being an issue. And that's why he created meaning wave, which is like taking lo-fi beats and all this kind of stuff and trying to create meaning out of it. And it's like, I think it's important to try,

because like that's the stuff that seeps into your subconscious and forms who you are. So. I mean, like you said, Will, before, we kind of stop. We stop learning new things at a certain age. I still listen to music I've listened to for the past 15 years, you know? Well, the stories that you've heard, but really honestly probably don't know that much about, include those of the stories of the American founders. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison.

There's a new Fox Nation series up about the White House. It's entitled The White House. It's up on Fox Nation now. February 6 is when it began. Several episodes that walked through building the White House in Washington. Washington, D.C. and the presence that inhabited it during that time, like Jefferson, Adams, and Madison. And Dr. Patrick Sparrow is a historian of the American Revolution and the chief executive officer of the American philosophical society in Philadelphia. And he joins us now to talk more about this time period,

the Revolution and the White House. Dr. Sparrow, it's great to see you. That's great to be here, Will, and I hope I might be able to add some of that good stuff to the brain. I heard you guys talking just now about all the bad stuff going in there. So hopefully you can change a little bit of that now. Yeah. I mean, I would like to think, first of all, that's a lot of pressure, doctor. You just put it on me. I never held myself out to be the Mozart of political or cultural talk.

So don't think that I'm in oftentimes many of the same ways of the slop that I'm sure is hurting people's brains. I'd like to think we elevate it from time and time. But this is certainly an opportunity, to your point. I think the most intriguing thing for me to start is these guys are not human beings, not in our minds. They are marble statues, their names in a history book, they're signers of documents, they're American presidents, and they're long, far away. And even when we compliment them, as I often do, and I think the founding period was probably a moment of genius in human history, I don't think it was just normal guys, smart guys. there was something different about them. But what you can do is help remind us these were human beings.

And Jefferson Adams, for example, as we know, hated each other. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, one of the things I often point out, and it's particularly, I think, important in our own time, is that, you know, the government, the founders themselves were humans. We're all humans. All humans are infallible. We make mistakes, all of us. And so if you look to a government that has run,

governed by the people, it's always going to be flawed because we as a species are flawed. So it's important to recognize that. But I do think that the founding era was a remarkable moment, not just in our nation's history, but in world history, to have toppled a monarchy, to have taken that step to say that we trust a government that is governed by the people themselves, that there is no boss, that we're all bosses of ourselves, and that the best ways to protect individual liberty is to entrust it with the people themselves, not with a monarch. And so that was an incredible moment in our nation. The principles of the founding still guide us today. There are the first principles. I think there's still one of the things that unite us,

even though we feel divided when we talk about the actual principles themselves. I think there's a widespread embrace of them. And in global history, the revolution inspired independence movements around the globe and continues to shape such movement. So it is a world historic moment, but it was created by people just like us, which means that we can make the world better ourselves, just like they made the world better themselves in 1776. And of course, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were great rivals politically, but were first great friends.

As you may know, they were very close. Abigail was friendly with Thomas and the like. But then politics really drove them apart in the 1790s in early 1800s. But then later in life, they reconnected and had an incredible exchange, never seeing each other again in person, but exchanging letters and rekindling that friendship that had been divided and lost because of partisan politics. Is that what did destroy their friendship? Was it simple difference of opinion on American governance or was it more personal? Well, no, it was political that turned personal, is the way I would describe it. So what actually happens is in the George Washington administration, so the first presidency,

most Americans and those that were in government, they had just fought this revolution against the British. And many of them thought that they shared the same ideals, the same ideas. I think what we see in that founding period is something we all can relate to even today, where they all had been outsiders in the British Empire and they were united against the power, the person who had the power in government. And then once they got to governing themselves, they realized, oh, maybe there are some differences.

There's differences over how strong we think the federal government should be or how weak we think the federal government should be. There are differences over what our foreign policy should be and should we rely with the British, should we rely with the French, what is our relationship to the rest of the world? And all of a sudden, these fissures, started to form within American society. And for those that had just fought this revolution,

they started to see the other side, not as colleagues, but perhaps as enemies. You know, there were people that accused the federalist, which were as, you know, Adams and Hamilton, of really just wanting to re-implement the British system, maybe even become a quasi-state of Great Britain, maybe even put monarchy back into the American government. And then, you know, my favorite thing is that when Adams was running against Thomas Jefferson in 1800, those who supported Adams, they accused Thomas Jefferson of if he's elected president, he's going to legalize rape and incest.

So if you think we're heated today, you can go back to the 1800s and find some very similar stuff going on there. But they were friends. It's always a good reminder. What did you say? it's always a good reminder when we think that we're sort of on the edge and teetering on falling apart that we've been here we just forget we may not have personally been here but we as a country have been here do you think what do you think by the way the founders this is a great question i think a lot of people have posited at times if you could time travel those men yeah to present day and i'm not that interested in their judgment of the personality of Donald Trump or or Joe Biden in his age or whatever. But if they saw the size, the scope and the role of the federal government in what is now a much bigger project than they ever could have envisioned, 300 million plus people and so forth,

do you think this would be anywhere in the realm of what they envisioned this would end up being? Do you think they would be disappointed? Well, that's a really great question. There's actually been a recent historian who pointed out that at the end of their lives, most of the founders, Jefferson, Adams, even Washington, with the exception perhaps of Madison, had really become concerned about the future of the country. They didn't know if it was going to hold together. They didn't know if it was staying true to those.

founding first principles. They were concerned about the direction of the country then. So if they were to fast forward to today and see what we have, I think they would be surprised, but there's gonna be just like we were just talking about, things that they can relate to. So for instance, one of the things that George Washington was a huge advocate for was what they called

internal improvements. What he wanted to do was create a canal that would help tap into the Ohio country, which is we're all all the fertile lands were. And to get that agricultural surplus to the eastern sea coast that could been exported to the world, well, they would then see these incredible turnpikes that we've created that connects our country together,

helps combine our country. The way the turnpikes help create a unified country, they would be surprised by the size, they'd be surprised by the speed of the cars, the number of the cars and people, but in some respects, they would see the similarities, I think, between the turnpike systems that we've developed today

and the things that they wanted to do in the 19th. century. So surely they'd be surprised by the technology, by the size, by the scope, but they're going to find, just like we were just talking about similarities today with what they were talking about, you know, almost 300 years ago. But I think, would you think this is fair, even among the federalists, the size and scope of the federal government, this isn't a backhanded way of criticizing the growth of the federal government from a conservative perspective. I think it's just an objective analysis of this. Even by the standards of the federalists, I think they would be, I don't know if the word is appalled because that attaches a value judgment to it. They would be taken aback

by the size of the federal government and its role in everyday life and maybe even the supremacy that it holds over the states in terms of governance. I mean, it always, you know, there was supremacy, but now there's a vast gap. I think it's a fair to say there's a vast gap between the federal government and the states. And I think even, I wonder. even among the federalists, if that wouldn't have been like, whoa, guys, we never intended the government in D.C. to be this ever present in your life. No, I think there's a real element of truth to that, with the exception perhaps of Hamilton, but I think Hamilton sometimes might get a bad wrap on that as well. I think there's been a shift in Americans' perceptions. And I think it's probably

widely shared. It's a question of, I think the question that used to get asked, perhaps is can the federal government do this, whereas today the question is more should. And if you follow what I'm saying, there was a question in time, the separation between the federal government and the states was much clearer, and the states had probably more autonomy than they do today.

And the question was often, can the federal government do this, whereas today it's more of a question of should, which is not a question of whether or not it has the ability to do, it's whether or not it should do it, or not. That might be a subtle shift, or maybe not subtle, but as I think through it, between then and now. I absolutely, you know, the role of the states, you know, this was part of the theories that,

you know, the states themselves, the closer to the people, the more, you know, representative it would be. There is, will, a little fun fact. And I might get some of the details wrong, but the gist, I promise, is going to be mostly right. And this might be something to, it's interesting. to think about, but George Washington, when he oversaw the Constitutional Convention, he said very little, but on the very last day, they were debating how many people should be in each congressional district. And if I remember right, the debate was between 30,000 people per district or 40,000 people per district. And Washington said, I think it should be 30,000. What does that mean? It means that George Washington believed that the closer government is to the people, the more representation

there is, the more effective it will be. You know, a large district for Congress is not as effective as a small district with 30,000 people in it. Now, here's the fun fact. It wasn't until the 1920s. Our current size of Congress is arbitrary. Congress continued to grow

with the population of the United States. And in the 1920s, because of the size of Congress itself, they decided to put a cap on how many Congress people there will be. As a result of that, representation on the congressional district has grown exponentially. It used to be that Congress grew with the population, and now it's stagnant. And so if you were to ask me what I think they might be more shocked about, I mean, I think

there'd be, you know, certainly they'd be surprised at the size of the federal government, the number of people, where it is, what it does. But I think more than anything, that the structure of government today does not reflect what was originally conceived and what had largely been the case in American history until the early 20th century. Let's take quick break, but continue this conversation on the founders in the White House, House with Dr. Patrick Sparrow on Will Cain Country. Welcome back to Will Cain Country. We're still talking with Dr. Patrick Sparrow, American Revolution historian, about the founding

days and the White House. Oh, that's interesting. That's really interesting. One more before we kind of start talking more about the White House. You gave flowers to the founders a moment ago in that age, the age of revolution, but also couched in. They were human beings. But were they just like us?

I mean, was this not a period in history where you had a group of men that certainly produced a unique outcome, even among the age of revolution? Like the other revolutions, the French, the South American revolutions, they did not produce the same kind of outcome that the United States Revolution did. They don't have the same success story. You know, the founding documents, the enshrine of checks and balances and so forth took a philosophical understanding among these men of a whole host of classical education that I hate to they each had 140 IQ or whatever. But they did have something different that seemed to put them in a rare space, I would argue, in the scope of history. in their time, but also even in art, as compared to our time. You're talking about some men that I think were really unique and of high quality intellects. But intellect isn't the right thing.

It's like wisdom in philosophy is what they were uniquely, really, really special, I think, compared to anything. Yeah. Well, they didn't have the internet to distract them first and foremost. So, but you're absolutely right. And there's a fun fact that I've heard. I haven't done the research myself. But, I mean, think about the leaders that the state of Virginia produced, you know, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, you know,

Marshall, Patrick Henry, you know, you can keep going down the list. Just remarkable number of people who shaped the founding of our nation. you know, a foundation that still guides us today. And when you think about that, if you were to think about the population of, you know, a small city, you know, Virginia's population was maybe 500,000 at that time, you know, think of all of these great leaders that that population is producing. So what is the difference? You know, I was kind of making a joke about the internet, but when I think that they all had,

and it was part of this Enlightenment era, is a common reading list, if you will. They all spoke a very similar language. They all had read similar books on history or on philosophy. So they had a common foundation upon which they all could communicate and talk and create these documents and these institutions that have lasted now for 250 years, some of them, and hopefully will last another 250 more. And more than that has provided inspiration for nations around the world in order to create their own independent countries founded on the ideals of freedom and liberty.

Yeah. Okay, this Fox Nation special puts all these men in their time and place and puts it centered around the White House and the building of the White House. And sort of each one of these guys' relationships to the symbol of the White House but also the physical structure of the White House. Tell me what that means. Why is that important? Well, you know, to me, the White House tells American history writ large in a whole number of different ways. So first off, it's in the White House where many of the most important events that have shaped our history and often the history of the world have happened. More than that, the White House has come to embody the United States our national character.

It is, as you said, a symbol. If somebody were to think about what they picture, when they picture the United States, the White House is likely going to be one of the few places that many people will identify. But more than that, when you study the White House itself and its evolution as a space as a house, you also see all the changes that are affecting American society,

whether it's the installation of plumbing or telephone or the need to reinforce the White House in the Cold War era. out of fears of potential cataclysmic nuclear war. So the White House itself is a wonderful way to learn about American history. American history writ large, but also all the social and technological changes that are affecting our people. Yeah.

And then quickly, would you just talk to me about, I believe the series focuses on largely Jefferson, Adams, and Madison? and those men during the initial building phase of the White House. The one figure that we associate the most with the White House is not any of those three men. It's sort of one of those men's wives, which I think, it's fair to say, is Dolly Madison. Yeah, no. So, yeah, Dolly Madison really, in my view, and most historians' views, established the modern White House today, laid the foundations for it. But before you learn about Dahl, you have to kind of appreciate what she inherited and what preceded her.

She was, you know, Thomas Madison had been the Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson. He had been Jefferson's protege, one of his closest political allies and advisors. Thomas Jefferson was really the first person to inhabit the White House. Adams had been there for a few months. And Jefferson was himself a bachelor president. and very much treated the White House like a bachelor pad. You know, he had an incredible menagerie of animals. There were reports of, you know, rams and sheeps out in the yard.

In fact, supposedly one of Jefferson's Rams killed a young boy in D.C. Inside the White House, Jefferson, for his inauguration, was gifted an enormous, over a thousand pound chunk of cheese from a group of farmers in Massachusetts as his inauguration gift. And for years, at least two years, people were continuing to eat this cheese in Jefferson's White House. So Dolly, you know, and oftentimes,

Dahlie is serving as the de facto first lady at official events. And Jefferson gets rid of all formality in, you know, official state dinners. He gets himself into diplomatic rows with Great Britain because of the way his dinners are performed. And so Dolly's,

no, no, no. For a country like ours, we have to establish the White House as a formal public space for the country. We also need it to become a space that helps cohere Washington's society. Because by the time of the Madisons, D.C. had really become, you know, the political capital. When Jefferson arrived, it was just getting off its ground. But at this point, you know, this is, senators have, you know, renting apartments, congressmen are there. There are more federal officials, to your other point, occupying and living in the area and there needed to be a way in a space that like formalized governance. And so Dolly Madison really created the first modern White House. She held formal dinners. She redesigned the White House so that it had style.

It was based on Republican values, ideas that projected Americans democratic and Republican principles. And what she realized is that White House was the way to help grease the wheels of government. By bringing together politicians in social settings, she could help move government along to help heal partisan divides by creating a space for people to collegially get together to become friends that would then help them conduct politics in the White House and Congress. Well, it is at Fox Nation right now. It's called the White House. And it does follow these early years, the building of the White House and what was described then as the swamp of Washington, D.C. and the administrations of these early presidents through this period in what was the age of enlightenment and some really, really special men. I hope we did, Dr. Sparrow, I hope we did elevate it a little bit, the conversation today, beyond Bad Bunny's halftime performance, perhaps, and the rest of the scrolling we're putting into our brains.

But I appreciate your time today. It's good to talk to you. Thank you. Thanks, Will. It's been great. Thank you. Okay. Take care. All right. Let me just go really quickly here because let's see what some of the people are saying. I'd like to check in here with the people before we go. What are they saying? Suzanne says, Will appreciate this. My cousin, James Madison, was only 5'4.

Humble Brack. The shortest present today. Oh, yeah. Is that about 5'4? Or is that about the fact that James Madison is your cousin, Suzanne? I don't know, Suzanne. It's both. She loves how into height you are.

Men were, people were shorter back then. I know. Yeah, was 54 short back then? Don't know. Daria Pavell says, early presidents walked so modern politics could sprint into chaos. Here's the thing. Yes. However, we are always prisoners of our moment. And listening to Dr. Sparrow talk about, like, a ram killed a kid because Jefferson was keeping a ram in the White House. Can you imagine, like, the CNN news cycle if President Trump had a ram that accidentally killed a kid? like the world would what would happen explode dude

explode and so what I'm getting at is I think sometimes we're prisoners of our moment like like this has all been pristine and perfect until we got to Donald Trump you know like yeah

I love the the it's often it's often like the the never Trump right that talks about the norms Let's revisit this. What norms are you talking about? Are you talking about a two-year-old wheel of cheese that we eat?

Lisa Seneca back on YouTube says, hey, guys, ask Dan what he thinks of the lyrics to the bad bunny song that he sang. Very inappropriate at the Super Bowl with the child, but not a lot of people know. This is what you're talking about, Lisa. I don't think it, there was that thing going around. Patrick, you're Mr. viral. Did President Trump even post it on truth social? I'm pretty sure.

But now I'm hearing that's not. How did Trump know what happened if he didn't watch it? I don't. I'm just kidding. Got him. You got them, Dan. Got them. Yes.

No coming back from this. There's no coming back from this. The word he said the most was A. He was just like, A, A, A, basically the whole time. Yeah. But I saw a translation and it's just really rudimentary. It's like my aunt asked me about my girlfriend. I've got so many girlfriends.

I've got Puerto Rican girlfriend and a Mexican girlfriend. And I'm, and I'm, but that's a, that is a really, really elevated way to say it. I'm, because like the punchline is he's taking them all to the VIP section.

Going to the VIP. Like, that's it. The message is no deeper than the repetition of, yeah. Go ahead, Patrick. I do think, I can't really,

I don't speak Spanish. So it's really difficult for me to know, exactly. But from what I can gather, is, because I did the same thing. I actually said, what songs did he sing? I pulled the first one. I searched for the lyrics and the translation to English.

And it was pretty egregious, you know, stuff. It was pretty, uh... Okay, see, he did sing multiple songs. But I do think that he probably had like a radio edit version. Yeah, he didn't say the words. Some of the songs had bad words, but he didn't say them. Yeah, people were saying in the audience, in the crowd, people were saying, the unedited versions while he was singing the edited versions.

So that's just, you know. You still so happy to talk about Bad Bunny Will. Yeah, really. Olivia Ray, 626 says on YouTube, I'm such a Zach Bryan fan. He tells great stories. Here's why I want to read that comment. I actually was thinking about Zach Brian.

We're talking about high art because I like Zach Brian too. And I'm like, are his lyrics and songs elevated or is that the slop we're talking about too? Or is it like, not slop, but still. It's emo. I think it's good, Dan. You just think it's emo country? Yeah, it's kind of like emo country. Nothing wrong with him.

But it's, you know, it's not the most intricate of chord progressions and, you know, things like that. What's wrong with emo? Intricate chord. I was an emo kid. Intricate chord progressions is beyond me. It doesn't challenge you. Midwest emo is extremely intricate. It doesn't challenge you.

Hmm. All right. Well, that's it for the slop of us. today here on Wilcane Country. We always appreciate you spending some of your minutes of your day with us. We really do. Please follow us on Spotify or Apple. We'll be back again tomorrow. Same time, same place. We'll see you next time. Listen to ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members, you can listen to this show, ad-free on the Amazon Music app.