In this episode, Samuel Ashworth, Professor of Creative Writing at George Washington University, talks about his new book, The Death and Life of August Sweeney, in an innovative way. Then, Dr. Ted Williams III, a Chicago educator, actor, and activist, discusses the importance of the arts in activism and makes the case for reparations toward African Americans.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.
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00:01:07 --> 00:01:10 i hope you enjoy this episode as well,
00:01:11 --> 00:01:16 the following program is hosted by the nbg podcast network.
00:01:16 --> 00:01:56 Music.
00:01:56 --> 00:02:02 Hello. I'm Welcome to Another Moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.
00:02:03 --> 00:02:08 And today we've got a great show. I've got two men coming on,
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 one who has written a fascinating book.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:17 Yes, another fiction book. Yeah, it's getting to be a trend now, but that's okay.
00:02:17 --> 00:02:22 It's all right. I'm enjoying it, and I hope that you're enjoying it as well.
00:02:23 --> 00:02:29 But we decided with this interview, because the book is not a political book,
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 but we decided to have some fun with it anyway.
00:02:33 --> 00:02:37 And he has some political opinions.
00:02:37 --> 00:02:44 Not too political, but you'll feel it when you hear his interview.
00:02:44 --> 00:02:50 And then my other guest is a true Renaissance man.
00:02:51 --> 00:02:56 And he's a Chicago Bears fan. So he's already a hero in my book, right?
00:02:58 --> 00:03:04 So I hope that y'all will enjoy these guests and the serious discussions that
00:03:04 --> 00:03:06 they're going to address.
00:03:08 --> 00:03:15 And support what they do. They will make their plugs during the interview and...
00:03:16 --> 00:03:20 You know, do the best you can, not just with the guests today,
00:03:20 --> 00:03:26 but any guests that you've heard on the podcast, make sure that you support their endeavors.
00:03:26 --> 00:03:30 And we are still looking for 20 subscribers on Patreon.
00:03:31 --> 00:03:36 So speaking about support, I need y'all to support our podcast.
00:03:38 --> 00:03:42 And as always, I greatly appreciate those of y'all who listen.
00:03:43 --> 00:03:51 And I really hope that you appreciate the content that we're putting out there.
00:03:52 --> 00:03:58 This is not an easy time. You've heard me say that before, and you are experiencing it.
00:03:59 --> 00:04:04 A lot of y'all are upset. It was just a poll that came out that said that 57%
00:04:04 --> 00:04:09 of the American people feel that the president is a little erratic when it comes
00:04:09 --> 00:04:13 to dealing with these trades,
00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 tariffs and all that stuff.
00:04:16 --> 00:04:23 And I've got some information on tariffs too that I hope that y'all aggressively appreciate.
00:04:23 --> 00:04:29 That was brought in by a past contributor of this podcast.
00:04:31 --> 00:04:38 So, you know, we really want you all to get engaged and get involved And I've
00:04:38 --> 00:04:43 got some commentary at the end that is pretty painful to me,
00:04:43 --> 00:04:45 but I feel as though I need to say it.
00:04:46 --> 00:04:51 So I want y'all to listen to the podcast and listen all the way through to that
00:04:51 --> 00:04:56 because I think it's very, very important where we are right now.
00:04:58 --> 00:05:02 So I hope that whetted your appetite a little bit. And now we're going to go
00:05:02 --> 00:05:08 ahead and get this program started. And as always, we started off with a moment of news with Grace G.
00:05:09 --> 00:05:16 Music.
00:05:17 --> 00:05:21 A measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico has infected 256 people.
00:05:22 --> 00:05:26 New Mexico reported its first measles-related death in over 40 years,
00:05:26 --> 00:05:30 involving an unvaccinated adult linked to an outbreak of cases in Lee County.
00:05:31 --> 00:05:36 A federal judge ordered six U.S. agencies to reinstate thousands of probationary
00:05:36 --> 00:05:40 employees fired during Trump's federal workforce purge.
00:05:40 --> 00:05:45 The U.S. Secret Service shocked and hospitalized an armed man from Indiana near
00:05:45 --> 00:05:46 the White House during a confrontation.
00:05:47 --> 00:05:52 The Republican-led House passed a stopgap funding bill to prevent a partial government shutdown.
00:05:53 --> 00:05:58 House Republicans also blocked legislative challenges to Trump's controversial tariffs.
00:05:58 --> 00:06:02 Three individuals faced charges including manslaughter and hazing in the death
00:06:02 --> 00:06:07 of Southern University student Caleb Wilson during an off-campus fraternity ritual.
00:06:07 --> 00:06:13 A U.S. judge prevented the deportation of Columbia University Palestinian activist
00:06:13 --> 00:06:17 Mahmoud Khalil following his arrest under Trump's protest crackdown.
00:06:17 --> 00:06:21 The National Labor Relations Board has reversed its stance on job protection
00:06:21 --> 00:06:26 for appointees, despite recent court rulings blocking such dismissals.
00:06:26 --> 00:06:31 A federal judge ruled that President Trump cannot remove Democratic member Susan
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 Sui Grundman from the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
00:06:34 --> 00:06:39 A former U.S. Solicitor General recommended dismissing the DOJ's corruption
00:06:39 --> 00:06:42 case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams with prejudice.
00:06:43 --> 00:06:47 A U.S. judge blocked parts of Trump's executive order targeting the law firm
00:06:47 --> 00:06:53 Perkins Coie, which was based on its diversity policies and past work for Hillary Clinton.
00:06:53 --> 00:06:57 U.N. officials warned that escalating violence and political arrests in South
00:06:57 --> 00:07:01 Sudan jeopardized its 2018 peace deal.
00:07:01 --> 00:07:08 South Carolina executed a convicted murderer by firing squad for the first time in 15 years.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:15 And Robert G. Clark Jr., 96, the first black Mississippi lawmaker elected since
00:07:15 --> 00:07:18 Reconstruction, was laid to rest in his hometown of Lexington.
00:07:19 --> 00:07:23 I am Grace Gee, and this has been a Moment of News.
00:07:22 --> 00:07:30 Music.
00:07:30 --> 00:07:33 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news.
00:07:34 --> 00:07:39 Now, it is time for my guest, Samuel Ashworth.
00:07:40 --> 00:07:44 Samuel Ashworth is a professor of creative writing at George Washington University
00:07:44 --> 00:07:50 and a former columnist at The Rumpus. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared
00:07:50 --> 00:07:54 in the Washington Post magazine, Long Reads, Eater, and Gawker.
00:07:55 --> 00:07:59 A native New Yorker, he now lives with his wife and two sons in Washington, D.C.
00:08:00 --> 00:08:07 A two-time ghostwriter, The Death and Life of August Sweeney is his first novel.
00:08:07 --> 00:08:11 And we're going to be talking about that in the interview.
00:08:11 --> 00:08:16 And I think you're going to like how we get into it. So, ladies and gentlemen,
00:08:17 --> 00:08:23 it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast, Samuel Ashworth.
00:08:24 --> 00:08:34 Music.
00:08:34 --> 00:08:39 All right. Samuel Ashworth. How are you doing, Professor? You doing good?
00:08:39 --> 00:08:41 I'm doing great. I am glad to be here.
00:08:41 --> 00:08:50 Well, I am honored to have you on, too. And we're going to talk about your book that's coming up.
00:08:50 --> 00:08:55 And the name of the book, ladies and gentlemen, is called The Death and Life of August Sweeney.
00:08:55 --> 00:09:03 And I understand this is your first novel, but but you've been involved in the
00:09:03 --> 00:09:08 creative process, primarily trying to teach people how to be creative.
00:09:08 --> 00:09:13 So and we'll we'll dive into that a little bit as we get on with the interview.
00:09:14 --> 00:09:18 But I do some icebreakers to kind of get the conversation started.
00:09:18 --> 00:09:22 So the first icebreaker is a quote that I want you to respond to.
00:09:22 --> 00:09:27 Now, I'll give you a hint. And sometimes I don't give a hint about who the quote
00:09:27 --> 00:09:33 comes from, but you had a quote in your book from James Joyce.
00:09:33 --> 00:09:37 I'm not using that quote from James Joyce, but I'm going to use another one.
00:09:37 --> 00:09:42 It says, fall if you will, but rise you must.
00:09:43 --> 00:09:50 What does that quote mean to you? And none so soon shall the mound for the earth
00:09:50 --> 00:09:53 come to a set down secular phoenix.
00:09:55 --> 00:10:00 The oaks of old they lie in peat yet elms leap where ask is lay i can't believe
00:10:00 --> 00:10:12 you like you nailed it that's from fitting its wake and i feel like you wow you sort of,
00:10:12 --> 00:10:21 tapped into the deepest root that this book has i think i came up as a joyce
00:10:21 --> 00:10:26 guy like From the time I was 15, I, like, lacked onto him.
00:10:27 --> 00:10:32 And when there was one line in particular, from the very beginning of Fitting
00:10:32 --> 00:10:37 Its Wake, that line, the oaks of old, they lie in peat, yet elms leap where
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 ash could ask his lay. He means ashes, but he says ask his.
00:10:42 --> 00:10:49 And that idea of death and rebirth, of decay and growth, it just lodged in my
00:10:49 --> 00:10:53 head like sand in an oyster shell.
00:10:55 --> 00:11:00 The idea, Finnegan's Wake is all about the cycle of death in reverse.
00:11:00 --> 00:11:05 He creates this cycle. And I'm so sorry. I absolutely did not mean to nerd out about Finnegan's Wake.
00:11:05 --> 00:11:10 That's okay. On the show. That's how you started it. And you may not have known
00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 this was a thing for me, but it is.
00:11:14 --> 00:11:20 Because we can live and die in ways in books we cannot in our lives.
00:11:20 --> 00:11:24 But if we can do it in books we can
00:11:24 --> 00:11:27 do it in our imagination and we can
00:11:27 --> 00:11:32 transform our relationship with these things we can deepen them we can go to
00:11:32 --> 00:11:38 places we we otherwise can't imagine and so everything about the death and life
00:11:38 --> 00:11:44 of august sweeney is about that cycle of growth and decay And that sounds very like, it's not,
00:11:44 --> 00:11:50 it sounds very woo woo coming from me, but like, I wanted to write a book that
00:11:50 --> 00:11:58 would transform the reader's relationship with death and my own and transform
00:11:58 --> 00:11:59 our relationship with our bodies.
00:12:00 --> 00:12:04 And if anything, the hardest thing I had to do was keep James Joyce out of it
00:12:04 --> 00:12:08 because that's such a part of his books.
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 And so that's why he's the epigraph and I cut him out of everywhere else.
00:12:11 --> 00:12:14 But now you go bringing it back well yeah
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 well that's good because it you know that that gets
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 us you know that that kind of gives
00:12:20 --> 00:12:27 the origins story as far as where you were at in trying to put this book together
00:12:27 --> 00:12:31 oh and there's one other thing too wait there's one other thing sorry that would
00:12:31 --> 00:12:36 what you quoted fall if you but will rise you must he doesn't spell it fall
00:12:36 --> 00:12:39 f-a-l-l he spells it p-h-a-l-l,
00:12:39 --> 00:12:47 okay it's a it's a dick joke oh I got you oh it's you but will it's fallis of
00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 you but rise you must and that that.
00:12:53 --> 00:12:59 Energy, that sort of that graphic rippled sexual energy is also absolutely at
00:12:59 --> 00:12:59 the core of the whole book.
00:13:00 --> 00:13:05 Yeah. All right. So let me get to this other icebreaker that I normally do,
00:13:05 --> 00:13:07 and it's called 20 questions.
00:13:08 --> 00:13:12 So what I need you to do is give me a number between one and 20.
00:13:13 --> 00:13:17 11. All right. And that seems to be a popular number, by the way.
00:13:18 --> 00:13:21 Where do you go to check a fact that you see,
00:13:21 --> 00:13:24 hear or read to check
00:13:24 --> 00:13:30 a fact that i see hear or read well depends where i saw heard or read it if
00:13:30 --> 00:13:36 because there was a huge amount of of research that went into this book especially
00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 anatomical i'm not a doctor i'm not
00:13:38 --> 00:13:42 there's every pre-man i'm a terrible scientist so i had to teach myself,
00:13:42 --> 00:13:47 autopsy pathology and anatomy in general so i for that i really really i had
00:13:47 --> 00:13:52 a textbook i basically started working at a university library at a university
00:13:52 --> 00:13:55 so that I could have access to the library so that I could get textbooks.
00:13:56 --> 00:13:59 So if it's coming from a textbook, I'll take it.
00:14:00 --> 00:14:04 If I hear it somewhere else, I will almost always try to run it down to the
00:14:04 --> 00:14:09 source, which usually if it's a scientific study, I'm going to go read the scientific study.
00:14:10 --> 00:14:17 And that's become definitely important because I've done a lot of writing about
00:14:17 --> 00:14:22 autopsies, which aren't incredibly well studied.
00:14:22 --> 00:14:29 There isn't an overwhelming amount of data on frequency, price, etc.
00:14:29 --> 00:14:33 So if I'm publishing something, I have a piece coming in The Atlantic next week
00:14:33 --> 00:14:37 about why everything television has taught you about the autopsy is wrong.
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 Doing the fact-checking for that was exceptionally hard because I have numbers
00:14:42 --> 00:14:45 that were fact-checked five years ago that may have evolved,
00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 but there aren't hard numbers right now.
00:14:48 --> 00:14:52 But yeah, I try to go as close to the source as I possibly can.
00:14:52 --> 00:14:58 And then, especially if I'm outside of my expertise, as I was for half this
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 book, I have secondary readers.
00:15:03 --> 00:15:07 I had a pathologist read this book. I had an oncologist read this book.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 I had a bunch of restaurant professionals read the book and flag anything that
00:15:10 --> 00:15:14 that bumped for them as exaggerated or false.
00:15:15 --> 00:15:25 So so give the audience kind of a summary of what the death and life of August Sweeney is about.
00:15:26 --> 00:15:32 So there's the log line, which is heart cell, as it turned out.
00:15:32 --> 00:15:41 It's a book about the rise and fall and redemption of iconic celebrity chef
00:15:41 --> 00:15:49 Hold through his autopsy at the hands of a woman whom he mysteriously handpicked for the job.
00:15:50 --> 00:15:55 She doesn't know. She's been handpicked. She doesn't even know who this man is at first.
00:15:56 --> 00:16:02 But as we discover quickly, he asked for her and takes her a long time to figure out why.
00:16:02 --> 00:16:07 But what's more important is that he set this whole thing up knowing full well he was going to die.
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 His death is not exactly a surprise.
00:16:11 --> 00:16:15 And how it happened isn't really a mystery. This is not a murder mystery.
00:16:15 --> 00:16:17 This is a guy drops dead on the line.
00:16:18 --> 00:16:23 In his restaurant that was supposed to be his comeback. But if you ask me sort
00:16:23 --> 00:16:24 of what the book is about,
00:16:24 --> 00:16:31 like the real log line I like to use is there's a line in the book where the
00:16:31 --> 00:16:35 doctor says the living lie, the dead can't.
00:16:35 --> 00:16:38 But that doesn't mean they give up the truth easily.
00:16:39 --> 00:16:42 Yeah and it's it's a
00:16:42 --> 00:16:45 real cool way how you you know
00:16:45 --> 00:16:48 because sometimes I when I read books
00:16:48 --> 00:16:51 I like to I guess I live in this age
00:16:51 --> 00:16:55 now where it's like everything becomes a movie and so
00:16:55 --> 00:16:59 I'm just kind of visualizing like
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 one minute you know the doctor's working and
00:17:02 --> 00:17:05 then we go to a part of of
00:17:05 --> 00:17:08 august's life and it's like as
00:17:08 --> 00:17:11 she's exploring him it's like
00:17:11 --> 00:17:14 you're picking back up it's like you're the the flashbacks that
00:17:14 --> 00:17:19 you put in now it's like okay so she found that part of his life you know i'm
00:17:19 --> 00:17:25 saying i think that's that's that's really interesting how you did that and
00:17:25 --> 00:17:31 and like you said you you weren't really an expert you're basically a professor
00:17:31 --> 00:17:33 at a college you're creative writing professor.
00:17:33 --> 00:17:42 And so you had to do what I call method acting in order to put this book together.
00:17:42 --> 00:17:48 So you actually worked in a restaurant setting and you actually worked at a
00:17:48 --> 00:17:53 hospital autopsy clinic to kind of get your background.
00:17:53 --> 00:17:58 Talk about what you learned other than what you needed for the book,
00:17:58 --> 00:18:01 what you learned about those particular industries.
00:18:02 --> 00:18:07 And since this is a political show, what do you think.
00:18:08 --> 00:18:13 Needs to be done policy-wise dealing with those particular industries that may
00:18:13 --> 00:18:17 have caught your attention while you were engaged in that?
00:18:17 --> 00:18:22 That's a great question. I'll start with how, yeah, how this sort of came to
00:18:22 --> 00:18:28 be because it did begin with that notion of could you tell a person's life story
00:18:28 --> 00:18:30 by dissecting their body?
00:18:30 --> 00:18:35 You know, if you look at the sweep of literature and of fiction out there.
00:18:35 --> 00:18:43 You can go anywhere in the universe in fiction. You can go to the furthest reaches
00:18:43 --> 00:18:45 of deep space, to the center of the earth.
00:18:45 --> 00:18:49 You can go way into the distant past. You can go into the future.
00:18:49 --> 00:18:55 You can travel to any country, any locale, any setting, any kind of person.
00:18:55 --> 00:18:58 But there's one place that literature really hasn't
00:18:58 --> 00:19:01 gone unless you count the magic school us and
00:19:01 --> 00:19:04 that's inside the human body there is very
00:19:04 --> 00:19:07 very very little literature out there very little fiction that
00:19:07 --> 00:19:10 really gets into what makes
00:19:10 --> 00:19:19 a body go and that was sort of the beginning premise of the book and you're
00:19:19 --> 00:19:23 right to write it i had well i had worked in restaurants i'd worked in the service
00:19:23 --> 00:19:29 industry since i was like 16 years old i was always i was a bartender i knew when i was,
00:19:30 --> 00:19:33 going to be a writer when I was 14 or 15.
00:19:33 --> 00:19:37 And when I got to be 18, I realized I better have a trade because I don't know
00:19:37 --> 00:19:39 how to use Microsoft Excel.
00:19:39 --> 00:19:44 So I became a bartender because that you can work anywhere, you set your own hours.
00:19:44 --> 00:19:47 It's fascinating. I loved it, but I always worked in what we call the front
00:19:47 --> 00:19:49 of house, not the kitchen.
00:19:50 --> 00:19:56 And my father was a restaurant architect growing up. So it was always a part
00:19:56 --> 00:19:59 of my life. I always loved the restaurant industry.
00:19:59 --> 00:20:03 It's the only industry I kind of understand at all. It's the only kind of business I understand.
00:20:04 --> 00:20:09 But as for the medical element, I, nothing, I really knew nothing.
00:20:09 --> 00:20:15 I had taken a class in college called primate anatomy, which actually might've
00:20:15 --> 00:20:19 been the best class that I took aside from the Finnegan's weight class.
00:20:19 --> 00:20:28 Which gets me into trouble but when i you're right when you say it's like method acting i view.
00:20:29 --> 00:20:34 Fiction as a chance to do the thing that actors get to do where they get to
00:20:34 --> 00:20:42 go take crash courses right actors get sent off to to to to spain for four months
00:20:42 --> 00:20:45 to learn how to be a bullfighter You know,
00:20:45 --> 00:20:49 they'll, they'll get intensive scuba diving lessons.
00:20:49 --> 00:20:55 They'll learn defensive driving. I thought I, that's what a great way to be an artist to my mind,
00:20:55 --> 00:21:00 to get to absorb these fascinating things that the world has to offer and then
00:21:00 --> 00:21:02 convey them to readers in a way
00:21:02 --> 00:21:06 that's exciting and transforms our understanding of the world around us.
00:21:06 --> 00:21:11 So, you know, on this one, I picked being a, picked being a chef,
00:21:11 --> 00:21:13 although in my case, it was really being a prep cook.
00:21:14 --> 00:21:19 I went to, I got a grant and I got to travel to France to work as a prep cook
00:21:19 --> 00:21:22 in a Michelin starred kitchen, which I hated.
00:21:23 --> 00:21:32 Turns out, I was a good bartender. I'm not a bad cook, but I am not built for
00:21:32 --> 00:21:34 a kitchen. A lot of reasons.
00:21:35 --> 00:21:41 But that same summer, I got to go. I got very lucky. And I knew somebody who
00:21:41 --> 00:21:43 was resident in pathology in Pittsburgh.
00:21:43 --> 00:21:50 And his attending let me come for two weeks to observe and assist in their autopsy lab.
00:21:51 --> 00:21:53 And I had been writing the book before this. So this is like,
00:21:53 --> 00:21:57 this is like 2017. I had been writing the book sort of for real and in my head
00:21:57 --> 00:21:59 for about five years at this point.
00:22:00 --> 00:22:07 And I had written bits of Maya's story. And two minutes after I walked into that autopsy lab,
00:22:07 --> 00:22:11 I knew everything I'd written about Maya had to be thrown away because I did
00:22:11 --> 00:22:17 not have any concept of what an autopsy really was, how it worked, what it involved.
00:22:18 --> 00:22:21 We've all seen autopsies, a bazillion of them on television.
00:22:21 --> 00:22:28 There's always this sort of blue light people are wearing maybe an apron they
00:22:28 --> 00:22:32 have machines that you can sort of pass over thing and it reveals every metal
00:22:32 --> 00:22:34 in the corpses but none of this is real,
00:22:36 --> 00:22:42 none of it and i also had been worried that it would be grotesque or gruesome
00:22:42 --> 00:22:45 or difficult for me to see you know because you walk in and then there's just
00:22:45 --> 00:22:49 a dead person stuck naked very dead very freshly dead.
00:22:49 --> 00:22:54 There's no embalming fluid there. They died usually the day before or that day.
00:22:55 --> 00:22:58 And I thought I was going to have trouble and I just didn't.
00:22:59 --> 00:23:02 The it and i
00:23:02 --> 00:23:05 i think this gets into something that i actually do care about you asked about
00:23:05 --> 00:23:10 like the political resonance of of these things and there's two sides to it
00:23:10 --> 00:23:17 one is the side of the autopsies which is that in america and really throughout
00:23:17 --> 00:23:20 the the wealthy developed world we are,
00:23:21 --> 00:23:27 more insulated from death than at any time in human history through for all
00:23:27 --> 00:23:31 of human history leading up to really the last 50 years,
00:23:31 --> 00:23:36 death has been a fairly constant fixture in people's life.
00:23:36 --> 00:23:40 It was, you knew it more intimately. It was closer. It was scarier.
00:23:42 --> 00:23:47 But, well, now 50% of us die in hospitals. And I used to think that I was surprised
00:23:47 --> 00:23:50 it's that low. I thought it would be more.
00:23:51 --> 00:23:55 But to, we are so walled off from death.
00:23:56 --> 00:24:02 We're so protected from it. Because also to the way that the elderly die is
00:24:02 --> 00:24:05 much, it's much less likely to be at home, right?
00:24:05 --> 00:24:10 It's more that you're going to be in a home or a hospice and you're sort of,
00:24:10 --> 00:24:14 maybe your family's coming to visit, but it's not that intimate. You don't really see it.
00:24:14 --> 00:24:17 And when you don't see something, you're more scared of it.
00:24:18 --> 00:24:21 And for, there's a strong industry now in America.
00:24:22 --> 00:24:27 I mean, the death industry is very large, but there's now and has been for a
00:24:27 --> 00:24:32 good 10, 15 years of movement to change the way that we die,
00:24:32 --> 00:24:36 whether it's to die at home or to reconsider what a good death looks like.
00:24:38 --> 00:24:41 And there's a lot of great work out there by a woman named Caitlin Doty,
00:24:41 --> 00:24:46 who is a former permanent mortician, wrote Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,
00:24:47 --> 00:24:50 a woman named Ann Newman, who wrote a book called The Good Death.
00:24:51 --> 00:24:53 And then Atul Gawande wrote Being Mortal.
00:24:54 --> 00:24:58 And one of the things that I really hoped with this book, this book really is
00:24:58 --> 00:25:01 a confrontation with death, but it isn't supposed to be scary.
00:25:01 --> 00:25:03 It's never about horror.
00:25:03 --> 00:25:07 It's never supposed to frighten or shake you.
00:25:07 --> 00:25:10 It's supposed to expose you to
00:25:10 --> 00:25:13 something so that you can get a grip on it because if we never see something we
00:25:13 --> 00:25:17 don't have any understanding of
00:25:17 --> 00:25:20 how to deal with it when it does come rather for us or for people around us
00:25:20 --> 00:25:28 and so to that i like to tell people that autopsies are an extraordinarily valuable
00:25:28 --> 00:25:34 and respectful medical procedure they're the gold standard for diagnosis,
00:25:34 --> 00:25:40 if you die in a teaching hospital the hospital will usually offer it to you for free.
00:25:42 --> 00:25:46 And rarely do the people who are asking you about the autopsy have any concept
00:25:46 --> 00:25:49 of what it involves few will have ever seen it most doctors have never seen
00:25:49 --> 00:25:55 an autopsy only pathologists have to watch them they have to do 50 to get accredited
00:25:55 --> 00:26:01 but there are a lot of reasons and i can get into them later if you want me to,
00:26:02 --> 00:26:08 but there are a number of reasons why an autopsy can provide closure for families.
00:26:08 --> 00:26:14 They can provide vitally important medical information that will not necessarily
00:26:14 --> 00:26:19 be accessible through regular diagnosis, especially in cases of dementia.
00:26:20 --> 00:26:25 Even people imagine that autopsies are only for cases of suspicious death or
00:26:25 --> 00:26:30 accidental death or mysterious death and that isn't the case autopsies can and
00:26:30 --> 00:26:34 should be for everybody because they're,
00:26:35 --> 00:26:41 They are a way to jumpstart the grieving process. They can catch things that
00:26:41 --> 00:26:42 the hospital may not have seen.
00:26:42 --> 00:26:47 They can catch genetic questions that may never be answerable otherwise.
00:26:47 --> 00:26:52 And if you're a hospital, they provide a lot of quality control because autopsies
00:26:52 --> 00:26:58 catch errors at a high rate, about 10%. And people make mistakes.
00:26:59 --> 00:27:00 Autopsies are there to make sure they don't happen twice.
00:27:01 --> 00:27:07 So that's my autopsy soapbox. I can come down off of it because when it comes
00:27:07 --> 00:27:10 to restaurants, there's also a political element there.
00:27:11 --> 00:27:17 There are a piece that came out today, I believe, in Eater by a woman named Jaya Saxena,
00:27:17 --> 00:27:25 which is all about how restaurants have weathered the post-COVID era and how
00:27:25 --> 00:27:28 there isn't really a post-COVID era for restaurants. They're still dealing with it.
00:27:29 --> 00:27:35 And now with the destruction of federal funding, they're getting hit hard.
00:27:35 --> 00:27:39 Restaurants are failing at a, have always failed at a high rate.
00:27:39 --> 00:27:41 And now that rate is much, much, much higher.
00:27:42 --> 00:27:47 So one of the things that I tried to do with this book was COVID is an element
00:27:47 --> 00:27:49 in it. COVID happened while I was finishing it.
00:27:50 --> 00:27:55 And I knew that when I wrote it, whenever it came out, it was going to come
00:27:55 --> 00:27:56 out into a post COVID era.
00:27:56 --> 00:28:01 And the two industries that the book was about, medicine and food,
00:28:01 --> 00:28:06 were going to be transformed, possibly permanently, by what was happening at that moment.
00:28:06 --> 00:28:14 And I had to ask myself, what would an equitable restaurant look like in,
00:28:14 --> 00:28:19 say, like 2025, I think, or sit around 2023 or 2024?
00:28:19 --> 00:28:22 What would the restaurant of the future look like?
00:28:22 --> 00:28:26 What would a sustainable and equitable environment look like?
00:28:26 --> 00:28:31 And I tried to create that at the end of the book. And I think in the main, I got it right.
00:28:33 --> 00:28:40 But yeah, there are political elements to both of these things that are only
00:28:40 --> 00:28:44 going to get worse, I think, in the coming years.
00:28:45 --> 00:28:52 Yeah. And, you know, I just, I think that you may be right in that,
00:28:52 --> 00:29:00 but I'm hoping that people get more, as we're still coming out of COVID,
00:29:00 --> 00:29:09 more engaged in focusing, honing more in on policy solutions rather than entertainment.
00:29:09 --> 00:29:15 But that's my political commentary. Terry, I'm not going to get too deep with
00:29:15 --> 00:29:20 you on that, but I did want to do something a little fun so you could flesh
00:29:20 --> 00:29:22 out the characters a little bit.
00:29:22 --> 00:29:30 So since this is a political podcast, let's imagine August Sweeney and Dr.
00:29:30 --> 00:29:35 Maya Zhu were candidates for an important political office you had to vote for.
00:29:36 --> 00:29:41 First, what would be appealing about Sweeney and Zoo to a voter?
00:29:41 --> 00:29:46 I mean, it's funny because August would annihilate her.
00:29:46 --> 00:29:50 It would be like 90 to 10. He would ruin her.
00:29:51 --> 00:29:57 And what I find interesting about that question is that August is the chef on the table.
00:29:58 --> 00:30:01 And Maya is the doctor who is taking him apart. And Maya is the one who's telling
00:30:01 --> 00:30:04 his story or peeling his story away.
00:30:05 --> 00:30:09 And she's having her own arc over the course of the day my august story takes
00:30:09 --> 00:30:16 50 years maya's story takes one day and they're cut together and they're two
00:30:16 --> 00:30:22 sides of the same coin they're both creatures of intense intense appetites of
00:30:22 --> 00:30:24 ambition desire the difference is.
00:30:25 --> 00:30:29 August gives in to all of his appetites august
00:30:29 --> 00:30:33 is completely sybaritic he loves
00:30:33 --> 00:30:37 pleasure he loves food he loves sex
00:30:37 --> 00:30:40 he loves people he loves life maya loves
00:30:40 --> 00:30:43 what she does and she walls herself
00:30:43 --> 00:30:46 off from everything else in order to
00:30:46 --> 00:30:50 succeed at the one thing that she does so if
00:30:50 --> 00:30:54 they were running against each other it would be a bloodbath because august
00:30:54 --> 00:31:02 is the most fun guy in the whole august is falstaff he is six foot nine four
00:31:02 --> 00:31:08 hundred pounds he He is so large that he creates his own gravity and he draws people into him.
00:31:09 --> 00:31:13 He is the best person to be around. Even his daughter, who shows up later in
00:31:13 --> 00:31:20 the book, the daughter from whom he is estranged, remembers how extraordinary
00:31:20 --> 00:31:23 it was when you did get to be with him.
00:31:24 --> 00:31:27 And I think that that's the secret that a lot of great politicians have,
00:31:27 --> 00:31:29 which is that when you're with them, and the great politicians,
00:31:29 --> 00:31:33 they have this faculty of making you feel like you were the only one in the whole world.
00:31:33 --> 00:31:37 This was especially what people said about Clinton. Biden was really good at this.
00:31:39 --> 00:31:49 They make you feel seen. They make you in just moments. Maya would be a terrific dictator.
00:31:50 --> 00:31:55 If Maya didn't have to run for anything in her whole life and she had complete
00:31:55 --> 00:31:59 control, she would be, I think she would be a tremendous dictator.
00:32:00 --> 00:32:04 She is a terrible manager, however, because she doesn't want to deal with anyone else.
00:32:05 --> 00:32:09 She doesn't like to, to, to have to trust anybody.
00:32:09 --> 00:32:14 And if she were running, you know, I mean, it'd be a little bit of a rerun of 2016.
00:32:15 --> 00:32:20 Frankly, it's the guy who's constantly doing comedy and improvising and giving
00:32:20 --> 00:32:26 people what they want versus the woman with clearly articulated 20 point plan
00:32:26 --> 00:32:27 for debt restructuring.
00:32:27 --> 00:32:30 One of those people makes a better administrator.
00:32:30 --> 00:32:36 Right. August would be I wouldn't say he'd be a disaster if elected because
00:32:36 --> 00:32:42 he does work hard. He does do the work. He is extraordinarily gifted at what he does.
00:32:43 --> 00:32:46 That's why he's him. That's why he gets away with it.
00:32:46 --> 00:32:52 His whole life is getting away with it, which is, again, the stamp of a successful
00:32:52 --> 00:32:56 and sustainable politician, for better or for worse.
00:32:57 --> 00:33:01 And he's intensely loyal to people around him. So August does have that very
00:33:01 --> 00:33:03 political quality. That's why he succeeds on television.
00:33:04 --> 00:33:06 That's why he becomes such a celebrity.
00:33:07 --> 00:33:15 I don't think Maya could get through a stump speech frankly but if I wanted
00:33:15 --> 00:33:22 someone to be a cabinet secretary I would pick Maya I would let Maya run HHS.
00:33:24 --> 00:33:30 Let her be let her be the surgeon general I got you so you've already kind of
00:33:30 --> 00:33:36 dealt with who you think would win And I'd be curious to know, who would you vote for?
00:33:37 --> 00:33:40 You know, I live in Washington, D.C.
00:33:41 --> 00:33:44 I'm married to a civil servant. Everyone here I know is a civil servant.
00:33:44 --> 00:33:47 I know very few people in the political world. Everyone here I know is in policy.
00:33:49 --> 00:33:55 And it's interesting because I know people who work for people like Maya,
00:33:55 --> 00:34:00 who don't like to share, who are really competent in their own world.
00:34:01 --> 00:34:04 But who for whatever reason cannot
00:34:04 --> 00:34:08 delegate can't manage those people
00:34:08 --> 00:34:11 genuinely should not be running
00:34:11 --> 00:34:14 things i mean we can point there's
00:34:14 --> 00:34:17 a whole host of reasons why people shouldn't be in charge but this is a kind
00:34:17 --> 00:34:23 of very specific competence that works great if you need them to do work for
00:34:23 --> 00:34:28 you but the minute they're in charge of others it starts to fall apart now in
00:34:28 --> 00:34:32 august August is, he's not quite amoral.
00:34:33 --> 00:34:39 But he is loosely moral. If August were on my team, right?
00:34:40 --> 00:34:43 If he believed in what, if he said, I believe in what I believe,
00:34:43 --> 00:34:44 I'm going to fight for this thing.
00:34:45 --> 00:34:49 Knowing everything that I do about them both, I might actually vote for August
00:34:49 --> 00:34:52 because August does know how to build a team.
00:34:52 --> 00:34:56 August does know how to get people to do what he wants them to do.
00:34:56 --> 00:34:59 Does he have the purest motivations?
00:35:00 --> 00:35:05 Probably not. will he inevitably be
00:35:05 --> 00:35:08 caught up in a massive scandal oh yeah
00:35:08 --> 00:35:11 like definitely he's like he's going
00:35:11 --> 00:35:15 to he'll like you put him in the senate he's gonna have like a term and a half
00:35:15 --> 00:35:21 and then he yeah then he'd have to resign for the dumbest scandal you've ever
00:35:21 --> 00:35:27 heard of that's sort of what i love about him but no i really like knowing everything
00:35:27 --> 00:35:28 i know about how this city works.
00:35:30 --> 00:35:31 I don't know.
00:35:33 --> 00:35:38 Like I might, I would vote for August for president. I might vote for Maya for
00:35:38 --> 00:35:39 Senate. Does that make sense?
00:35:40 --> 00:35:44 Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that's pretty cool. Cause that's since you,
00:35:44 --> 00:35:49 you know, you're the, you have the inside information on both of these characters.
00:35:49 --> 00:35:54 I just thought that that would be an interesting take on.
00:35:54 --> 00:35:58 I love it. I love thinking about it. It's the, it's my other,
00:35:59 --> 00:36:00 fascination that I don't ever write about.
00:36:01 --> 00:36:07 I got you. So look, I wanted to ask you this one last question that's kind of
00:36:07 --> 00:36:09 off of the book, but into what you do.
00:36:10 --> 00:36:13 You're a professor of creative writing at George Washington University.
00:36:13 --> 00:36:24 So your job is to kind of not only teach, but kind of mentor young writers, get them in their space.
00:36:24 --> 00:36:33 But one of the issues I know that's got to be concerning you is this move to ban books.
00:36:33 --> 00:36:44 How do you console or how do you encourage your students to pursue what they
00:36:44 --> 00:36:51 want to write about in an atmosphere where their work could literally be taken off a library shelf.
00:36:53 --> 00:36:58 I... I... You know, it's funny because...
00:37:00 --> 00:37:03 You know what let's go back to james joyce for a second
00:37:03 --> 00:37:06 i'm so sorry that's okay ulysses is
00:37:06 --> 00:37:09 banned in the u.s it comes out in 1922
00:37:09 --> 00:37:20 it's immediately banned as obscene and about 10 years later the a publisher
00:37:20 --> 00:37:24 a guy named bennett sir very famous publisher one i believe wants to use Ulysses
00:37:24 --> 00:37:29 as a test case to fight the obscenity laws.
00:37:29 --> 00:37:32 And so they import a copy.
00:37:32 --> 00:37:39 And the guy, he makes the crossing from Europe, Paris probably, on a steamship.
00:37:39 --> 00:37:43 And he has at least one copy of Ulysses in his luggage.
00:37:43 --> 00:37:49 And what he expects is that the goal is for the customs officer to inspect the
00:37:49 --> 00:37:54 luggage, confiscate the book on the grounds of obscenity, and then they'll sue.
00:37:54 --> 00:37:56 And that's, they have standing, they can go to town.
00:37:57 --> 00:38:01 The problem is he arrives in the middle of summer and it is hot as hell.
00:38:02 --> 00:38:05 And they're going to customs officers, free the air of air conditioning.
00:38:05 --> 00:38:09 It's blazing. The customs officer does not give a damn.
00:38:10 --> 00:38:14 The publisher's just like, he's go, just, no, just go, just go, just go.
00:38:14 --> 00:38:17 And this guy is sweating because he just made this whole trip for one reason
00:38:17 --> 00:38:21 and he'd like he he puts his suitcase in front of the customs officers i demand
00:38:21 --> 00:38:28 that you inspect my bag and this guy's like fine and he does and it launches
00:38:28 --> 00:38:36 the case and like they win ulysses is allowed to come into the u.s i think in 1933 right and there,
00:38:37 --> 00:38:41 think about book banning is it's for
00:38:41 --> 00:38:49 idiots and because if there's one way to guarantee people want to get their
00:38:49 --> 00:38:55 hands on a book it's to ban right banned in boston was a tagline for literature
00:38:55 --> 00:39:00 back in the days when anti-obscenity laws had actual teeth in this country.
00:39:02 --> 00:39:07 Thing the idea of like i know that there's a bunch of there's there's politicians out there who have,
00:39:08 --> 00:39:12 really excited for like a return to the comstock act which
00:39:12 --> 00:39:15 is horrifying and preposterous but when i talk to
00:39:15 --> 00:39:19 my students it's not it's not
00:39:19 --> 00:39:21 a factor which i think is great like nobody is worried
00:39:21 --> 00:39:24 about having their book taken off a library shelf because by the time your book
00:39:24 --> 00:39:27 has made it to a library shelf mazel tov you've
00:39:27 --> 00:39:31 made it and like you
00:39:31 --> 00:39:34 go and look at the list of the most banned books in this
00:39:34 --> 00:39:38 country they're also some of the most popular so when
00:39:38 --> 00:39:42 i talked to them the you know
00:39:42 --> 00:39:45 and i've known friends who've had to go and like get up
00:39:45 --> 00:39:48 in the faces of people like the moms for liberty or whoever it is
00:39:48 --> 00:39:51 is trying to come into school districts and ban book and as you get in these
00:39:51 --> 00:39:57 people's faces and they wilt right they're not usually from that area and they
00:39:57 --> 00:40:00 don't have much of a leg to stand on and it horrifies far more people than it
00:40:00 --> 00:40:06 attracts you know i hope that in three years i'm not remembering i said this
00:40:06 --> 00:40:08 and being like boy was i naive.
00:40:09 --> 00:40:12 But no what i try to do with my students honestly is i
00:40:12 --> 00:40:16 try to prepare them for the publishing world i try to i teach
00:40:16 --> 00:40:19 a class that very few people do which is
00:40:19 --> 00:40:22 really about how to turn this into a career it's less about craft
00:40:22 --> 00:40:25 and more about how to make money how to
00:40:25 --> 00:40:27 file your taxes what different outlets want how
00:40:27 --> 00:40:30 to pitch things how to write a book proposal how to ghostwrite things i
00:40:30 --> 00:40:34 bring in people like speech writers copywriters screenwriters
00:40:34 --> 00:40:37 and it's it's what i
00:40:37 --> 00:40:40 want is for students people to come out of that environment being able to say
00:40:40 --> 00:40:43 yes to anything that comes their way even if
00:40:43 --> 00:40:48 they don't know how to do it they know that they can learn how and so for me
00:40:48 --> 00:40:54 the The best thing I can do as a professor is give them enough of a roadmap
00:40:54 --> 00:41:00 to a writing life that when they encounter setbacks or confusion or mystery
00:41:00 --> 00:41:02 or gatekeepers, they don't give up.
00:41:03 --> 00:41:09 Yeah. And that encouragement is, you know, regardless of what what what you're
00:41:09 --> 00:41:11 teaching is always, always good.
00:41:11 --> 00:41:14 So, look, we're in a unique situation.
00:41:15 --> 00:41:19 Your book, The Death and Life of August Sweeney, has not come out yet,
00:41:19 --> 00:41:22 but is coming out very, very soon.
00:41:23 --> 00:41:28 So tell people, you know, when the book's going to drop, you know,
00:41:28 --> 00:41:30 how they'll be able to get the book.
00:41:30 --> 00:41:34 And if people want to get in touch with you per se, how can they do that as well?
00:41:35 --> 00:41:39 That's great. So, yeah, the book comes out March 20th. So I think a couple of
00:41:39 --> 00:41:43 days after this recording drops, it'll be available anywhere you get your books.
00:41:43 --> 00:41:47 If you want to request it from your local library, please, please, please do that.
00:41:47 --> 00:41:51 There's nothing I would like more talking about libraries than to have that
00:41:51 --> 00:41:52 book be on library shelves.
00:41:53 --> 00:41:57 It i will be doing appearances in
00:41:57 --> 00:42:00 new york green light books that's with
00:42:00 --> 00:42:03 the top chef judge tom colicchio which i
00:42:03 --> 00:42:08 am excited about and terrified of because i've never met the man i have an event
00:42:08 --> 00:42:14 in two events in dc where i live we won in baltimore and then i'll be at the
00:42:14 --> 00:42:20 awp conference in Los Angeles from March 26 to 29.
00:42:21 --> 00:42:27 I very much want to hear from readers or people who have questions at all.
00:42:27 --> 00:42:31 You can find me on my website, www.samuelashworth.com.
00:42:31 --> 00:42:35 And I like to speak directly to anybody who is in the medical world.
00:42:36 --> 00:42:42 One of my great dreams for this book, and a lot of doctors I've spoken to have started doing it,
00:42:42 --> 00:42:45 is I would love this book to be on the curriculum in medical schools because
00:42:45 --> 00:42:48 it is about medical students it is about
00:42:48 --> 00:42:53 a vital procedure that most of those students and even the doctors will never
00:42:53 --> 00:43:02 see and i to me the absolute highest honor would be to find myself on syllabi
00:43:02 --> 00:43:07 in medical schools because then i at least this book will have done some good.
00:43:08 --> 00:43:14 Well, I think you're going to get that wish taken care of because,
00:43:14 --> 00:43:17 like you said, it's very detailed.
00:43:17 --> 00:43:25 I mean, even the way the book opens, it's like I had to do some research myself
00:43:25 --> 00:43:31 just to kind of get started. I was like, oh, wow, this is really an autopsy report. Okay.
00:43:32 --> 00:43:38 So I think people are going to get a lot out of that. I think people are going
00:43:38 --> 00:43:44 to learn a lot by reading this book as well as being entertained.
00:43:44 --> 00:43:47 So congratulations on putting that together.
00:43:47 --> 00:43:54 And Samuel Ashworth, it's really been an honor to talk to you and to meet you.
00:43:55 --> 00:44:00 And I hope that, like I do any author that comes on, I hope your book flies off the shelf.
00:44:00 --> 00:44:08 I hope it's it's a bestseller and and hopefully that you will on the on the
00:44:08 --> 00:44:13 success of this book that you continue to write and and continue to produce
00:44:13 --> 00:44:17 quality writers as well, because because we need them.
00:44:17 --> 00:44:23 You know, I admit and I tell people I'm not a big fiction person,
00:44:23 --> 00:44:29 but one of the good things about this podcast is that it's got me reading a lot more.
00:44:30 --> 00:44:37 And so I enjoy reading your book. And again, I wish you much success on it.
00:44:37 --> 00:44:44 And as always, any guest that comes on the show is an open invitation to come back.
00:44:44 --> 00:44:49 So when you get inspired to write something else or you or you got something
00:44:49 --> 00:44:52 burning in your chest and say, Eric, I need to talk to somebody about it.
00:44:53 --> 00:44:58 Just feel free to come back, my man. Thank you so much. My pleasure, Eric. Thank you so much.
00:44:59 --> 00:45:02 All right, guys. And we're going to catch all on the other side.
00:45:04 --> 00:45:22 Music.
00:45:22 --> 00:45:28 And we are back. So before we go to my next guest, I wanted to highlight something
00:45:28 --> 00:45:36 that was submitted by previous contributor to the program, Professor Richard or Rick Roberts.
00:45:37 --> 00:45:41 Rick is a specialist professor in the Department of Economics,
00:45:41 --> 00:45:43 Finance and Real Estate at Monmouth University.
00:45:44 --> 00:45:48 And he came on before to talk about economics.
00:45:49 --> 00:45:58 And so I asked him to submit something, and he couldn't find the time really to record it.
00:45:58 --> 00:46:03 So what he did was he wrote something up that I could read talking about tariffs.
00:46:04 --> 00:46:07 And so I wanted to kind of give this primer to the listeners,
00:46:07 --> 00:46:13 if some of y'all might be confused about that, and since, you know,
00:46:14 --> 00:46:17 President Trump has been talking about that a lot.
00:46:18 --> 00:46:21 And so I wanted to give some facts.
00:46:22 --> 00:46:30 And so the explanation of tariffs are that tariffs are taxes imposed on important goods.
00:46:30 --> 00:46:35 President Trump has used tariffs and the threat of additional tariffs as leverage
00:46:35 --> 00:46:40 to address issues like fentanyl smuggling, encourage fair trade practices,
00:46:41 --> 00:46:43 and to boost domestic manufacturing.
00:46:43 --> 00:46:51 Most presidents tend to use the latter two, and they target a particular country
00:46:51 --> 00:46:55 rather than just saying everybody's got to pay a tariff, right?
00:46:56 --> 00:47:03 But, you know, it's really just a kind of a tool to get countries to the table
00:47:03 --> 00:47:08 and talk about how they can be better trade partners.
00:47:09 --> 00:47:10 It's, you know, it's a weapon.
00:47:11 --> 00:47:16 And, you know, they do use the term tariff war, right? A lot of times.
00:47:17 --> 00:47:23 So, you know, that's why it's not used that often.
00:47:23 --> 00:47:28 But in President Trump's case, he seems to be in love with tariffs.
00:47:28 --> 00:47:36 So anyway, Trump's tariffs have been targeted, have targeted goods like steel, aluminum, and lumber.
00:47:37 --> 00:47:40 Countries most affected include Canada, Mexico, and China.
00:47:41 --> 00:47:48 Recently, Trump doubled planned tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, increasing them to 50%.
00:47:49 --> 00:47:52 Excuse me. So...
00:47:54 --> 00:47:59 And he's taking them off. Right. So when Professor Roberts wrote this,
00:47:59 --> 00:48:02 the 50 percent was on at that point.
00:48:03 --> 00:48:10 He was recently interviewed and he said to the Economic News Today that tariffs
00:48:10 --> 00:48:12 are a self-inflicted wound.
00:48:13 --> 00:48:19 And he stated that because tariffs increased the cost of imported inputs for
00:48:19 --> 00:48:26 businesses, leading to higher prices for consumers and reduced purchasing power.
00:48:26 --> 00:48:31 This will slow the economy over the short run and lead to fewer jobs.
00:48:32 --> 00:48:37 Pay attention to that. All right. So how have the financial markets reacted?
00:48:37 --> 00:48:41 The stock market has reacted negatively to tariff announcements,
00:48:41 --> 00:48:46 largely because the announcement often flip flop tariffs on again,
00:48:46 --> 00:48:50 then off again with significant sell offs occurring.
00:48:51 --> 00:48:56 Uncertainty around tariffs can also discourage investment and slow down the economy.
00:48:57 --> 00:49:03 So there's some theories running around that Trump might be doing this to help
00:49:03 --> 00:49:08 some friends out, knowing what impact it has on the stock market,
00:49:08 --> 00:49:13 helping people buy low and then sell high, right, when things stabilize.
00:49:14 --> 00:49:16 So that's kind of out there.
00:49:18 --> 00:49:23 How does the tariff policies impact the average American consumer?
00:49:23 --> 00:49:28 This is the part where the confusion is, where it shouldn't be, but it is.
00:49:28 --> 00:49:35 It says consumers will face higher prices for goods due to increased import costs.
00:49:35 --> 00:49:40 U.S. companies use inputs from overseas to make their products.
00:49:40 --> 00:49:46 If the prices of inputs go up, the companies will have to raise the prices of
00:49:46 --> 00:49:48 their products for consumers.
00:49:48 --> 00:49:53 And he cites an example, Canadian lumber prices.
00:49:53 --> 00:49:59 If they increase, then it'll be an increase in new home prices for Americans.
00:49:59 --> 00:50:04 So any new construction that uses Canadian lumber, you know,
00:50:04 --> 00:50:07 to set the framing and all that stuff, then that means that the.
00:50:08 --> 00:50:12 Home that's being built is going to cost more. All right.
00:50:13 --> 00:50:17 Americans will face higher prices buying products produced overseas.
00:50:18 --> 00:50:22 The example he cites is Amazon products that are made in China.
00:50:22 --> 00:50:27 So if you order something from Amazon, Amazon is going to raise the price because
00:50:27 --> 00:50:35 the tariff affects them because the cost is passed down from that Chinese manufacturer to Amazon.
00:50:35 --> 00:50:43 Amazon has to raise the price either in shipping or raise the price overall to cover the shipping.
00:50:43 --> 00:50:48 It all depends on where you go. But either way to go, you're going to feel it, right?
00:50:49 --> 00:50:53 And finally, he says, given the current economic landscape, what advice would
00:50:53 --> 00:50:56 he give to policymakers regarding tariffs?
00:50:56 --> 00:50:59 And he said that he would advise against tariffs.
00:51:00 --> 00:51:05 However, it is not in President Trump's DNA to reverse course on a policy that
00:51:05 --> 00:51:06 he is so strongly supported.
00:51:06 --> 00:51:09 Again, he seems to be in love with tariffs.
00:51:09 --> 00:51:15 Therefore, Professor Roberts would suggest that he announce a program and stick with it.
00:51:15 --> 00:51:21 Stop flip-flopping on the size and breadth of the tariffs as it confuses markets
00:51:21 --> 00:51:26 and has contributed to fears of recession and continued market declines.
00:51:26 --> 00:51:34 And the president and his commerce secretary have basically admitted that if
00:51:34 --> 00:51:36 they go through with this tariff war,
00:51:36 --> 00:51:41 if they commit to it, then it's probably going to be a recession, right?
00:51:42 --> 00:51:48 So I just wanted to throw that out there. Hopefully that's helpful to some folks.
00:51:49 --> 00:51:54 You know, they've had some questions and the beauty of this is the podcast,
00:51:54 --> 00:51:57 You can, you know, save it, download it,
00:51:58 --> 00:52:00 you know, rewind it, play it
00:52:00 --> 00:52:05 for your friends that have some questions so they'll be better educated.
00:52:05 --> 00:52:09 Right. But the bottom line is tariffs are bad for the economy.
00:52:10 --> 00:52:18 And in the immediate. Right. And, you know, if we do see an increase in American
00:52:18 --> 00:52:21 manufacturing of certain products, that's going to be down the line.
00:52:21 --> 00:52:23 That's not going to be right away.
00:52:25 --> 00:52:31 But if you throw a tariff on any and everything, then, yes, it's going to hurt.
00:52:31 --> 00:52:32 Is going to hurt your wallet.
00:52:32 --> 00:52:37 So that promise that was made about from day one that he was going to lower
00:52:37 --> 00:52:42 prices, if he's committed to these tariffs, he's not going to be able to fulfill
00:52:42 --> 00:52:45 that promise because everything is going to go up. All right.
00:52:46 --> 00:52:50 So now that we got that out the way, let me go ahead and introduce my next guest,
00:52:50 --> 00:52:53 and that's Dr. Ted Williams III.
00:52:54 --> 00:52:58 Dr. Ted Williams III is a passionate educator, actor, and author who is a graduate
00:52:58 --> 00:53:03 of Rutgers University, the University of Chicago, and Northern Seminary.
00:53:03 --> 00:53:08 He teaches political science and is the chairman of the Social Sciences Department
00:53:08 --> 00:53:11 at Kennedy King College, one of the city colleges of Chicago.
00:53:12 --> 00:53:17 Currently, he is also an adjunct professor at Wheaton College and previously
00:53:17 --> 00:53:18 at Chicago State University.
00:53:19 --> 00:53:25 Williams is the former host of WYCC PBS television's The Professor's Public
00:53:25 --> 00:53:31 Affair Talk Show and has provided insightful political commentary for WGN-TV,
00:53:32 --> 00:53:37 NBC-TV, Upfront with Jesse Jackson, and a host of additional media outlets.
00:53:37 --> 00:53:42 As an actor, he has appeared in commercials for companies including Subway,
00:53:43 --> 00:53:45 Cheerios, and Empire Carpet,
00:53:46 --> 00:53:50 and recently appeared in the films Human Zoos, The Christmas Thief,
00:53:50 --> 00:53:54 and on NBC's Chicago PD and Showtime's The Chi.
00:53:54 --> 00:53:59 Furthermore, he is a contributor to the Third World Press text.
00:54:00 --> 00:54:04 Not My President, creator of the production Torn the Musical,
00:54:04 --> 00:54:09 and author of the book The Way Out, Christianity, Politics, and the Future of
00:54:09 --> 00:54:10 the African American Community.
00:54:10 --> 00:54:16 His justice-infused artistic work has been funded by the Illinois Arts Council,
00:54:17 --> 00:54:21 Illinois Humanities, and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
00:54:22 --> 00:54:26 Williams is a former candidate for the Chicago City Council.
00:54:26 --> 00:54:30 So I think it was Ward 9, for those of y'all who are listening from Chicago.
00:54:31 --> 00:54:35 And the creator of the production 1619, The Journey of a People.
00:54:36 --> 00:54:42 1619 was nominated for the 2020 August Wilson Award for Best Writing of a Musical
00:54:42 --> 00:54:44 by the Black Theater Alliance Awards.
00:54:45 --> 00:54:50 In 2021, inspired by the need to teach elementary school children American history,
00:54:50 --> 00:54:57 He launched the 1619 Musical Chicago Public Schools Arts Integrated Educational Program.
00:54:58 --> 00:55:04 Williams is an Illinois Humanities Road Scholar and was appointed by Illinois Governor J.B.
00:55:04 --> 00:55:07 Pritzker to serve on the state's Reparations Commission.
00:55:08 --> 00:55:13 He has led numerous civic engagement initiatives, provided board leadership
00:55:13 --> 00:55:17 for various nonprofits, and is often called upon as a speaker and consultant
00:55:17 --> 00:55:22 on the topics of social justice, diversity, and effective communication.
00:55:22 --> 00:55:28 He enjoys biking, dance, and watching his favorite team, the Chicago Bears.
00:55:28 --> 00:55:32 He and his wife, Rosalind, are raising three beautiful children.
00:55:32 --> 00:55:36 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:55:36 --> 00:55:40 on this podcast, Dr. Ted Williams III.
00:55:42 --> 00:55:52 Music.
00:55:51 --> 00:55:54 All right dr ted williams how
00:55:54 --> 00:55:59 you doing so you're doing good i am fantastic brother good to be here well i
00:55:59 --> 00:56:03 am honored to have you on because you you're kind of a renaissance man from
00:56:03 --> 00:56:09 from my research so i'm always honored and then of course you're a chicago bears
00:56:09 --> 00:56:12 fan so So you're close to God as far as I'm concerned.
00:56:14 --> 00:56:17 Well, he just tells me I'm a person of faith, man. That's what that is.
00:56:17 --> 00:56:18 You know what I'm saying?
00:56:18 --> 00:56:22 That I believe in what is never seen. You understand what I'm saying?
00:56:22 --> 00:56:25 So, you know, year after year, brother, it's our year. I mean,
00:56:25 --> 00:56:26 that's what we do every year. We're all like, hey, it's our year.
00:56:26 --> 00:56:29 It's our year. And, you know, here we are. So I have faith, brother. I have faith.
00:56:30 --> 00:56:35 Yeah. Well, you know, being a Chicago sports fan, period, that's always the
00:56:35 --> 00:56:37 mantra to the accident and do it. So.
00:56:38 --> 00:56:42 Exactly. But what I like to do to kind of get the interview going,
00:56:42 --> 00:56:45 I like to break the ice. So there's a couple of things I do.
00:56:46 --> 00:56:53 First thing is I offer a quote to the guest. So this is your quote. What I hear, I forget.
00:56:53 --> 00:56:59 What I see, I remember. And what I do, I understand. What does that quote mean to you?
00:57:00 --> 00:57:06 Wow, you've definitely done your research, man. That is a Chinese proverb that
00:57:06 --> 00:57:09 is my philosophy as an educator.
00:57:10 --> 00:57:14 And so my main work is education. I won't get into all that,
00:57:14 --> 00:57:20 but I manifest that through some artistic work and through speaking and that sort of thing.
00:57:20 --> 00:57:26 But at the core, I'm an educator. And so that proverb essentially says that
00:57:26 --> 00:57:33 if you want to transform people in an educational space, you can't just talk at them.
00:57:33 --> 00:57:41 What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. So for me, it is clear that when someone,
00:57:42 --> 00:57:47 let's say I put a play on stage, they will remember the history and the lessons
00:57:47 --> 00:57:52 that I'm putting through the theater in a more significant way than if I were just speaking, right?
00:57:53 --> 00:57:58 And then, but the doing, right? The doing is where the real transformation happens.
00:57:58 --> 00:58:05 I actually did my dissertation on the impact of theater on educational experiences.
00:58:05 --> 00:58:10 And what I realized is that I interviewed hundreds of people that had come see
00:58:10 --> 00:58:15 my shows, but the people that were in the show were transformed more than the
00:58:15 --> 00:58:19 people who were performing through my 1619 work with the historic production that we do.
00:58:20 --> 00:58:23 And so what I realized is, is that people can see and learn,
00:58:23 --> 00:58:25 but there's nothing like doing.
00:58:25 --> 00:58:29 There's nothing like that engaging in that sort of apprenticeship or getting
00:58:29 --> 00:58:31 your hands dirty in whatever it is that you're doing.
00:58:31 --> 00:58:34 And so for me, that is, you know, my educational philosophy.
00:58:34 --> 00:58:40 And so critical if we're going to build, you know, communities that are justice-minded,
00:58:40 --> 00:58:43 critical thinking, empathy-based communities.
00:58:43 --> 00:58:48 We got to get people hearing about what needs to happen, seeing what needs to
00:58:48 --> 00:58:51 happen, and then engaging in the work as well. Yeah.
00:58:52 --> 00:58:58 So my next icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.
00:58:59 --> 00:59:03 And I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.
00:59:04 --> 00:59:07 Okay, 17. All right. So this is your question.
00:59:08 --> 00:59:14 What's something about people who see the world differently than you that you've come to appreciate?
00:59:16 --> 00:59:21 Wow, that is a tough question. That is a very, very tough question.
00:59:23 --> 00:59:25 Never had that one before, so I'm just going to need a second.
00:59:25 --> 00:59:30 People see the world different from me that I have come to appreciate. Okay, I got it. Yeah.
00:59:30 --> 00:59:37 All right. So I'm an artist and I'm an educator, but I am often around people
00:59:37 --> 00:59:38 who do not have that skill set.
00:59:40 --> 00:59:46 Their personalities are very different. They may be people who have skills of
00:59:46 --> 00:59:50 administration or may be a little bit more, you know, a little more high strung than I am.
00:59:51 --> 00:59:53 I tend to be a pretty easygoing guy, right?
00:59:53 --> 00:59:57 In terms of sort of life, because life is just happening for all of us.
00:59:57 --> 01:00:00 So I appreciate people with different skills than I have.
01:00:00 --> 01:00:06 People who are, who enjoy kind of, you know, I work in a bureaucracy as an educator.
01:00:06 --> 01:00:09 And so the bureaucracy, I always tell people I'm allergic to it,
01:00:09 --> 01:00:13 it drives me nuts and I have to, you know, give five pieces of paper and five
01:00:13 --> 01:00:16 signatures to bring in someone to talk or to do really anything.
01:00:17 --> 01:00:20 But there are people that I know who really excel in that space,
01:00:20 --> 01:00:23 and they are highly efficient in those spaces.
01:00:23 --> 01:00:28 And so what I have learned is that people who don't kind of share my view of
01:00:28 --> 01:00:32 the world in that way, and they have a different talent or different skill set,
01:00:32 --> 01:00:37 I'm always learning from them and trying to better myself in that way.
01:00:37 --> 01:00:40 And so I think that that to me would be the way that I look at it.
01:00:40 --> 01:00:44 Now, I won't get political on that question because that's a tougher question.
01:00:44 --> 01:00:48 And I'm doing actually a talk next week on political unity, right?
01:00:49 --> 01:00:51 Can you imagine that in the middle of all this craziness?
01:00:51 --> 01:00:56 And I am working hard to get my mind wrapped around how we bridge these gaps.
01:00:56 --> 01:00:59 I've done a lot of work in it, but this season has been very tough.
01:01:00 --> 01:01:03 So anyway, I'll leave it at the non-political thing. I'm sure we'll get into
01:01:03 --> 01:01:06 political thing later, but I'm going to answer your question just with that
01:01:06 --> 01:01:07 one and leave it like that.
01:01:08 --> 01:01:13 Well, if if if I had to have money on somebody that could probably pull off
01:01:13 --> 01:01:17 a political unity thing, I think I would put some safe money on you, sir.
01:01:17 --> 01:01:21 I think you might be able to make that happen. Thank you, my brother.
01:01:21 --> 01:01:25 Thank you, my brother. Who was Mrs. Gorman to you?
01:01:26 --> 01:01:30 Wow. Wow. Mrs. Gorman was my fourth grade teacher.
01:01:31 --> 01:01:38 And I remember that I was in the fourth grade when I first understood social
01:01:38 --> 01:01:40 justice and the need for social justice.
01:01:40 --> 01:01:47 I was sitting in her class and I remember thinking about just being bored in
01:01:47 --> 01:01:50 school, to be honest with you, like many kids are. I was bored.
01:01:51 --> 01:01:54 And she came in and started talking about the civil rights movement.
01:01:54 --> 01:01:56 And I immediately perked up.
01:01:56 --> 01:02:03 Because I realized, even at that age, that what people had done for us so that
01:02:03 --> 01:02:07 we could live and survive, people had died.
01:02:07 --> 01:02:12 People had died so that I could be in the seat that I was sitting in.
01:02:12 --> 01:02:15 In fourth grade, I understood that. And in fourth grade, I looked at people
01:02:15 --> 01:02:20 like Martin Luther King and Meg Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks,
01:02:20 --> 01:02:22 and they just excited me.
01:02:22 --> 01:02:27 And I just felt a sense of gratitude, like, I can't waste this.
01:02:27 --> 01:02:30 In fourth grade, I thought about this. I said, I can't waste this.
01:02:30 --> 01:02:33 Look at what these people did for me. You know, and that's really fueled my
01:02:33 --> 01:02:38 life ever since then, you know, 40 X number years later beyond that.
01:02:38 --> 01:02:45 I just look at that and say, my God, it is such an honor to live in their legacy and their footsteps.
01:02:46 --> 01:02:50 And Mrs. Gorman, by the way, was a Caucasian woman who lived in the south suburb of Chicago.
01:02:51 --> 01:02:54 I pray that she's still around with us. I hope she even still remembers me.
01:02:54 --> 01:02:58 But it's amazing what educators can do to impact you.
01:02:58 --> 01:03:02 And they don't even realize it. And so her coming in that day talking about
01:03:02 --> 01:03:04 the civil rights movement, I want to say it honestly changed my life.
01:03:04 --> 01:03:11 Yeah. As far as a teacher for me, I went to Garrett A. Morgan from the south side of Chicago.
01:03:12 --> 01:03:15 And so my second grade teacher was a lady named Mrs. Haynes.
01:03:16 --> 01:03:22 And she had written a book about black history for elementary kids. So.
01:03:23 --> 01:03:28 She she gave the book out only to a certain number of students,
01:03:28 --> 01:03:30 and I was one of the ones that got one.
01:03:31 --> 01:03:39 And, you know, reading that book and just her kind of taking an interest in
01:03:39 --> 01:03:42 me kind of shaped me the way in the direction I ended up being, too.
01:03:42 --> 01:03:46 So I agree with you about educators. Plus, my mom was a teacher.
01:03:46 --> 01:03:51 So, you know, it worked out pretty good as far as respecting teachers.
01:03:53 --> 01:03:59 You're an educator an actor and an activist which role do you cherish the most and why,
01:04:00 --> 01:04:07 sir i will never answer that question and like ask me which one of my kids are
01:04:07 --> 01:04:11 like the best right so they all are wonderful in their own way you know and
01:04:11 --> 01:04:16 so you know i may love one kid more on friday than i do on saturday because
01:04:16 --> 01:04:19 they're they're acting better than the other kid but then they flip over on Saturday,
01:04:19 --> 01:04:22 but then the other kid comes and hangs out with me on Sunday, right?
01:04:22 --> 01:04:27 So it always switches. And I think the same thing with those passions and the
01:04:27 --> 01:04:31 callings that I have as an activist, as an educator, and as an actor,
01:04:31 --> 01:04:34 and what I have found to be the most powerful
01:04:35 --> 01:04:38 tool that I've been given, and all of us have been given gifts in our lives.
01:04:38 --> 01:04:42 And I think part of our lives are just finding out what it is that the creator
01:04:42 --> 01:04:45 has given us to do and doing it and figuring it out.
01:04:45 --> 01:04:48 It's a wonderful journey, I think, that all of us have to go on.
01:04:48 --> 01:04:52 And obviously, you have found yours and what you're doing in this work.
01:04:52 --> 01:04:56 And it is critical that you are telling stories and you are inspiring people.
01:04:56 --> 01:05:00 You're elevating the discussion and elevating our communities.
01:05:00 --> 01:05:03 And so you found what you're supposed to do. And I'm sure you do other things,
01:05:03 --> 01:05:06 but this is so critical and so important.
01:05:06 --> 01:05:10 And so the melding of those, I wrote this production called 16, 19.
01:05:10 --> 01:05:13 I'd written some other plays, and I've been acting since I was 12,
01:05:13 --> 01:05:15 and you know, I've kind of done a bunch of stuff.
01:05:15 --> 01:05:18 But when I figured out that I could sit down.
01:05:19 --> 01:05:23 All my political stuff, all my artistic stuff, my faith and my activism and
01:05:23 --> 01:05:27 throw it all in one spot, I go, oh, this is this is life right here.
01:05:27 --> 01:05:34 This is this is it. And I just had sort of an epiphany, a life changing moment in that in that season.
01:05:34 --> 01:05:40 So I don't I don't separate them, brother. I really, really don't. My artistic work.
01:05:40 --> 01:05:45 I realize that I may have chosen to do the arts because I just enjoy them.
01:05:45 --> 01:05:49 But as I got older, I realized, as Malcolm X said, we don't have the luxury
01:05:49 --> 01:05:50 to fight on any one front.
01:05:51 --> 01:05:54 So everything that we're doing is a part of the struggle, right,
01:05:54 --> 01:05:57 for social elevation, for social justice.
01:05:57 --> 01:06:04 And so for me, as Amiri Baraka would say, why would you as an artist waste the
01:06:04 --> 01:06:08 opportunity that you have to impact the world? That's what art does.
01:06:08 --> 01:06:13 Art transforms. Paul Robeson talked about how artists are the gatekeepers of truth.
01:06:13 --> 01:06:19 And so as an actor, I don't have anything to say unless I bring my activism
01:06:19 --> 01:06:21 and my education to the table.
01:06:21 --> 01:06:25 And in those things, the art just becomes a tool. That's really all it is, by the way.
01:06:26 --> 01:06:28 I do what I do to get people's attention.
01:06:28 --> 01:06:32 The word educate, the word entertain, actually means just to hold one's attention.
01:06:33 --> 01:06:38 So I entertain so that people will listen to something more than just,
01:06:38 --> 01:06:44 you know, sort of my musings or whatever. And so for me, when built together
01:06:44 --> 01:06:46 perfectly, they are phenomenal.
01:06:46 --> 01:06:53 One of my artistic heroes is a late great king of pop who I have looked at,
01:06:53 --> 01:06:57 studied, loved his family for years.
01:06:57 --> 01:07:00 Gone visit the house in Gary, the king of pop for those who may not know as
01:07:00 --> 01:07:03 Michael Jackson, but gone and studied in those things.
01:07:03 --> 01:07:08 And you asking me the question whether activist, educator, or artist,
01:07:08 --> 01:07:12 actor is more significant, is like asking him whether he enjoys singing,
01:07:12 --> 01:07:16 dancing, or creating music videos more, right? They're all the same.
01:07:17 --> 01:07:22 Because he did all those things so well, he really had this unique experience.
01:07:23 --> 01:07:27 On the world. And that is what I, brother, pray to have in my life,
01:07:28 --> 01:07:30 that the years that I have here.
01:07:31 --> 01:07:35 I'll be 49 this year, and the years that I have here on this earth,
01:07:36 --> 01:07:40 I pray that, you know, I don't know how many more I'll get, but I pray that
01:07:40 --> 01:07:45 when I leave, I will have left the world a little bit better than it was before I came.
01:07:46 --> 01:07:49 And then even if I don't get to do it while I'm here, You know,
01:07:49 --> 01:07:53 Karl Marx, I was reading the Communist Manifesto of my students the other day,
01:07:54 --> 01:07:56 written in 1848 and transformed the world.
01:07:56 --> 01:07:59 Karl Marx only had 12 people at his funeral when he died.
01:08:00 --> 01:08:03 So his ideas never really took root while he was alive.
01:08:03 --> 01:08:09 But when he died, his roots, his ideology transformed the world.
01:08:09 --> 01:08:12 Whether you agree with Marxism or not, the impact is still there.
01:08:12 --> 01:08:17 And so that, my brother, is what I hope, right? That your work,
01:08:17 --> 01:08:18 your podcast will live on.
01:08:19 --> 01:08:22 You know, I still listen to folks who, you know, who are no longer with us,
01:08:22 --> 01:08:23 who've done this kind of work, right?
01:08:24 --> 01:08:27 Because it's just so powerful that my art and my writing will live on.
01:08:27 --> 01:08:31 And hopefully it will transform and impact people's minds and hearts later on.
01:08:32 --> 01:08:35 So for me, my tools, they gotta be together.
01:08:35 --> 01:08:40 They come together in a perfect symmetry and they go out hopefully to transform
01:08:40 --> 01:08:42 the world. And I spent years trying to pick.
01:08:42 --> 01:08:47 And when I got the revelation that the power was in the combination of those
01:08:47 --> 01:08:50 things, I stopped picking and would never answer that question for that reason.
01:08:52 --> 01:08:56 All right. So I'm going to throw a similar question at you. Which historical
01:08:56 --> 01:09:01 figure inspired you more, Paul Robeson or Booker T. Washington?
01:09:02 --> 01:09:06 Paul Robeson without a shadow of a doubt. Now, I actually love Booker C.
01:09:06 --> 01:09:08 Washington, love W.E.B.
01:09:09 --> 01:09:13 Dubois, and have studied them heavily. But Paul Robeson, I'm going to tell you
01:09:13 --> 01:09:14 this, this is so interesting.
01:09:15 --> 01:09:18 I feel a spiritual connection to Paul Robeson. And I'm going to tell you why.
01:09:18 --> 01:09:22 It's this crazy thing. I was born the year Paul Robeson died.
01:09:23 --> 01:09:30 I unknowingly went to the same college as Paul Robeson. The first song in my
01:09:30 --> 01:09:35 1619 production was the first song that Paul Robeson recorded in the studio.
01:09:35 --> 01:09:37 I never knew these things, by the way, okay?
01:09:38 --> 01:09:42 And so it's an old Negro spiritual called Steal Away.
01:09:43 --> 01:09:50 And the combination of sort of artistic interest and the political activism
01:09:50 --> 01:09:53 piece has always sort of been in my heart.
01:09:54 --> 01:09:57 I learned about Paul Robeson later. My mother used to teach at a high school
01:09:57 --> 01:10:01 called Paul Robeson High School. She used to take me there and let me hang out.
01:10:01 --> 01:10:04 She would substitute teach it to your point of having educated parents.
01:10:04 --> 01:10:08 My dad was a businessman. My mom was an educator and counselor and some other things.
01:10:09 --> 01:10:12 And so Paul Robeson has impacted me there.
01:10:12 --> 01:10:15 I would honestly say the artists that have impacted me the most in the world
01:10:15 --> 01:10:20 are probably, you know, Michael Jackson first and foremost in terms of just
01:10:20 --> 01:10:22 growing up in that era of what that meant.
01:10:22 --> 01:10:26 Artistically as a humanitarian sort of thing. But Paul Robeson is right there for me.
01:10:26 --> 01:10:32 And I wish his legacy was more well-known, but I understand part of the reason
01:10:32 --> 01:10:38 why his legacy is not as well-known is because he paid a significant price for his activism.
01:10:39 --> 01:10:44 And I am proud of him. And I wish more artists, people with the talent that
01:10:44 --> 01:10:47 we have, particularly people of African descent, we've got such,
01:10:47 --> 01:10:51 we lead the culture of the world, brother. We lead the culture of the world.
01:10:52 --> 01:10:53 And for me...
01:10:54 --> 01:10:59 Mary Baraka said, like, why would you do that and then not like transform people?
01:10:59 --> 01:11:02 Why would you do that or grab their attention and not do anything with it?
01:11:03 --> 01:11:06 And so when I look at someone like Paul Robeson, who, you know,
01:11:06 --> 01:11:10 found solidarity with the people in the Soviet Union and really was a champion
01:11:10 --> 01:11:14 of workers' rights and was blacklisted, right, by the U.S.
01:11:14 --> 01:11:18 Government, not allowed to perform for the last part of his life,
01:11:18 --> 01:11:19 really lost a lot of his income.
01:11:20 --> 01:11:25 He was a phenomenal, phenomenal orator he was a phenomenal phenomenal vocalist
01:11:25 --> 01:11:27 he was a phenomenal phenomenal actor.
01:11:28 --> 01:11:33 And the world should know about him and yet only you know select few of us do
01:11:33 --> 01:11:37 because i think that they have made an effort and his son said this in an interview
01:11:37 --> 01:11:42 recently i have just made an effort to to wipe out his phenomenal legacy his
01:11:42 --> 01:11:45 amazing legacy his tremendous legacy his world-changing legacy.
01:11:46 --> 01:11:51 And I am just honored to even, you know, have a piece of that,
01:11:51 --> 01:11:54 brother, just to have a piece of it and to have walked the halls of Rutgers
01:11:54 --> 01:11:58 University like he did and then to have a little bit of the artistic talent.
01:11:58 --> 01:12:02 I think he got more artistic talent than I have, you know, but I am so proud
01:12:02 --> 01:12:05 of his legacy and will continue to try to carry it out through my life.
01:12:06 --> 01:12:08 And hopefully my kids know about Paul Robeson now, and hopefully they'll carry
01:12:08 --> 01:12:14 it on in their lives to, and we keep on moving forward with artistic output
01:12:14 --> 01:12:17 that helps to bring forth justice and equality for all people.
01:12:17 --> 01:12:22 And that, I think, it was his legacy. And that's the legacy I pray to live in as well.
01:12:23 --> 01:12:25 Yeah. So when I...
01:12:26 --> 01:12:33 I started getting to research you and started getting to know a little bit about you.
01:12:33 --> 01:12:39 I mean, that, that's a name. Anytime I see people in the arts that really,
01:12:39 --> 01:12:45 especially the two people I think more is Paul Robeson and Harry Belafonte.
01:12:45 --> 01:12:48 And I've actually had the pleasure of meeting Mr.
01:12:49 --> 01:12:54 Belafonte and being on program with him, you know, Mario Van Peoples,
01:12:54 --> 01:12:56 those, those type of folks.
01:12:57 --> 01:13:02 So you're just carrying on to that tradition that really needs to be carried forward.
01:13:03 --> 01:13:08 But the real reason why I got you on, you came across my radar because Governor
01:13:08 --> 01:13:12 Pritzker put you on the Illinois Reparations Commission.
01:13:13 --> 01:13:18 And I have been, I'm just going to say this, I've been trying to get somebody
01:13:18 --> 01:13:23 on this program other than me to talk about reparations.
01:13:24 --> 01:13:27 And yeah it's and and with all the
01:13:27 --> 01:13:31 noise that's out there in social media and stuff i really
01:13:31 --> 01:13:33 wanted to get somebody on here to kind of get into it a
01:13:33 --> 01:13:40 little bit i know we can't get into it a whole lot but i noticed something in
01:13:40 --> 01:13:45 the book of numbers chapter five verses six and seven and i guess we'll use
01:13:45 --> 01:13:50 the new international version is there say to the israelites any man or woman
01:13:50 --> 01:13:52 who wrongs another in any way,
01:13:52 --> 01:13:55 and so is unfaithful to the Lord,
01:13:55 --> 01:13:59 is guilty, and must confess the sins they have committed.
01:13:59 --> 01:14:03 They must make full restitution for the wrong they have done,
01:14:03 --> 01:14:09 add a fifth of the value to it, and give it all to the person they have wronged.
01:14:09 --> 01:14:16 Do you feel there is a moral Christian obligation to provide reparations to African Americans?
01:14:18 --> 01:14:20 Now, thank you for that question. Okay, I'm definitely going to answer that one.
01:14:21 --> 01:14:28 Not only do I feel that, but I committed to making sure that consistent with
01:14:28 --> 01:14:34 our struggle historically, you know, I've written a book, I've written a paper
01:14:34 --> 01:14:35 about this particular topic.
01:14:35 --> 01:14:36 I've written a book about the
01:14:36 --> 01:14:40 larger obligations that the Christian community have to social justice.
01:14:40 --> 01:14:44 And I've written a paper extensively about that topic, reparations,
01:14:44 --> 01:14:52 answering your question. I am fully committed and fully convinced that this is a moral question.
01:14:52 --> 01:15:00 And because moral questions in our community have been led historically by people of faith, Dr.
01:15:00 --> 01:15:05 King's of the world, the Malcolm X's of the world, the Reverend Jesse Jackson's
01:15:05 --> 01:15:10 of the world, Adam Clayton Powell, all these folks, Hiram Rebels, the first U.S.
01:15:10 --> 01:15:14 Senator, African-American, all of these folks were people who came out of the
01:15:14 --> 01:15:15 church faith community.
01:15:15 --> 01:15:20 Community, tradition, and understood that the best way to organize and strategize
01:15:20 --> 01:15:23 our people is to hit them in the heart, right?
01:15:23 --> 01:15:26 Not just hit them in the minds and the pocketbooks, but to hit them in the heart.
01:15:26 --> 01:15:29 And I believe that's the only way that social change actually honestly occurs.
01:15:30 --> 01:15:32 You've got to connect with people's sense of humanity.
01:15:33 --> 01:15:39 And there's no better way or place or space to do that than the church community.
01:15:39 --> 01:15:44 And so the reparations this question particularly is a very simple question, okay?
01:15:46 --> 01:15:51 And I think that people take different approaches to this, but here's the approach that I have taken.
01:15:52 --> 01:15:57 The average European American family, family of European descent,
01:15:57 --> 01:16:01 I call them European Americans rather than white, and I call us Americans of
01:16:01 --> 01:16:02 African descent rather than black.
01:16:03 --> 01:16:05 If you want to hear about that, I'll tell you about that later,
01:16:05 --> 01:16:07 but I'll keep on rolling, okay? Unless you do.
01:16:08 --> 01:16:14 So the average European-American family is worth 10 times what the average African-American
01:16:14 --> 01:16:18 family is worth 10 times, right? That's today in 2025.
01:16:18 --> 01:16:22 There was an economic study that showed that if nothing is done,
01:16:22 --> 01:16:28 that it would take 228 years for that gap to close.
01:16:28 --> 01:16:34 Okay, 228 years. So we're talking about, you know, we're talking about generations
01:16:34 --> 01:16:37 upon generations upon generations upon generations upon generations upon generations.
01:16:39 --> 01:16:45 And the question becomes, why did this happen? This is the fundamental question we must ask.
01:16:45 --> 01:16:49 Because if we don't ask this question, by the way, we make assumptions about
01:16:49 --> 01:16:55 people's behavior and their capabilities based on their race.
01:16:55 --> 01:16:59 We drive through cities like Chicago, every major city in the country,
01:16:59 --> 01:17:02 by the way, and we see people who are black and brown, who are struggling in life.
01:17:02 --> 01:17:07 And we see people who are not black and brown. We see there's poverty in their communities as well.
01:17:08 --> 01:17:12 But when we see wealth, American wealth, we see it looking sort of one way.
01:17:12 --> 01:17:16 So we drive around these communities, and if you don't ever go back and think.
01:17:17 --> 01:17:23 The great advantages that were given to people of European descent over African
01:17:23 --> 01:17:26 descent, you'll make racist assumptions in many ways.
01:17:26 --> 01:17:29 I mean, there's just no other, there's really only two options on this, by the way.
01:17:29 --> 01:17:34 Either African Americans have been systemically discriminated against in a way
01:17:34 --> 01:17:37 that has put us in the position that we're in, or we're just lazy,
01:17:37 --> 01:17:39 violent, criminal, you name it.
01:17:40 --> 01:17:42 Those are the only two options you have, by the way, okay?
01:17:42 --> 01:17:47 And so, The ignorance of people, this is why empathy and critical thinking are
01:17:47 --> 01:17:51 the two most important qualities in our world today that are deeply,
01:17:51 --> 01:17:53 desperately missing, empathy and critical thinking,
01:17:54 --> 01:17:58 those will lead you to the conclusion that there's something going on here.
01:17:58 --> 01:18:00 Let's talk a little bit about how we got here.
01:18:01 --> 01:18:06 We had 250 years of slavery in this country, ended through the Emancipation
01:18:06 --> 01:18:11 Proclamation and the beginning of the Reconstruction era in 1865.
01:18:12 --> 01:18:17 1865 to 1877, the United States government in certain ways began to move on
01:18:17 --> 01:18:20 Lincoln's promise for 40 acres and a mule.
01:18:21 --> 01:18:25 And yet, after Lincoln died, the commitment to what he had put forward,
01:18:25 --> 01:18:29 recognizing, not through any particular love for people of African descent,
01:18:29 --> 01:18:33 but just recognizing that you cannot enslave people for 20, 50 years,
01:18:33 --> 01:18:35 just drop them off on the corner and assume that they're going to figure it out.
01:18:35 --> 01:18:40 They're going to create, they're going to create, they're not going to create,
01:18:40 --> 01:18:41 but they're going to exist in
01:18:41 --> 01:18:47 conditions that are, there's no ability to progress in that space, right?
01:18:47 --> 01:18:51 So you have freedom on paper, but without economic freedom, the freedom to eat,
01:18:52 --> 01:18:56 the freedom to live, the freedom to, the ability to take care of yourself, what is freedom, right?
01:18:56 --> 01:19:01 It's like someone being released from prison and they're dropped off on the
01:19:01 --> 01:19:02 corner with nothing, right?
01:19:02 --> 01:19:07 The recidivism rates in our country is 70% for this reason, because we don't
01:19:07 --> 01:19:12 set people up well to come out of the prison environment and live their lives.
01:19:12 --> 01:19:14 And so many of them go back.
01:19:14 --> 01:19:19 This is our story as African Americans. Now, I'm going to tell you real quickly
01:19:19 --> 01:19:22 as I go through this story, I still believe it's a story of hope.
01:19:22 --> 01:19:26 You mentioned the Bible and you mentioned faith on this question.
01:19:26 --> 01:19:30 And I, in my book, write that we are kind of akin to the story of Joseph,
01:19:30 --> 01:19:36 that the story of Joseph, if people are familiar with it, is a story of wrongful imprisonment.
01:19:36 --> 01:19:42 And ultimately, though, that wrongful imprisonment and that really significant
01:19:42 --> 01:19:46 injustice that occurred to him was something that actually produced violence.
01:19:47 --> 01:19:51 Phenomenal fruit in the sense that he was put in a position later on in life
01:19:51 --> 01:19:52 where he still had influence.
01:19:53 --> 01:19:57 African-Americans have a $1 trillion economy, by the way, even in a country
01:19:57 --> 01:19:59 that's oppressed them for generations.
01:19:59 --> 01:20:05 So we do have influence. We do have some significant ability to move the needle
01:20:05 --> 01:20:07 politically, socially, and otherwise.
01:20:07 --> 01:20:12 And so in that, I do believe this is a story of hope. So let's flipping back to the Reconstruction.
01:20:13 --> 01:20:18 So we get through the Reconstruction. the southern states essentially win after
01:20:18 --> 01:20:23 they lose the Civil War because what happens for them is that Johnson does not
01:20:23 --> 01:20:28 punish them, that Lincoln had put forth that to get back into the Union,
01:20:28 --> 01:20:31 something like 10 to 20 percent of them had to pledge allegiance back to the
01:20:31 --> 01:20:33 United States. Johnson wiped that away.
01:20:34 --> 01:20:38 In 1877, there was a great compromise, 1877, between Samuel L.
01:20:38 --> 01:20:39 Tilden and Rutherford B.
01:20:40 --> 01:20:42 Hayes, in which Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidency. They couldn't figure
01:20:42 --> 01:20:44 who'd won the presidency for six months.
01:20:44 --> 01:20:48 So they meet in this hotel in Washington, D.C., actually owned by a black man. It's a crazy story.
01:20:48 --> 01:20:51 And they meet in this hotel in Washington, D.C., and Samuel L.
01:20:51 --> 01:20:54 Tilden says to Rutherford B. Hayes, I will give you the presidency and we'll
01:20:54 --> 01:20:56 end all this if you give me the South.
01:20:57 --> 01:21:02 And he says, great. So he removes all the federal troops overnight and that ushers in 100 years.
01:21:03 --> 01:21:07 To 100 years of Jim Crow segregation and legally sanctioned terror, right?
01:21:07 --> 01:21:13 So now we fast forward to 1963, the Civil Rights Act, 64 Civil Rights Act,
01:21:13 --> 01:21:16 1965, the Voting Rights Act, 1968, the Housing Rights Act.
01:21:17 --> 01:21:19 Honestly, the democracy, I would say, really started there.
01:21:20 --> 01:21:24 I would suggest that prior to the 1960s with no federally guaranteed right to
01:21:24 --> 01:21:26 vote or housing, that we didn't have a democracy.
01:21:27 --> 01:21:32 So our democracy is, what, 70 years old now, 60, 70 years old, okay, in reality?
01:21:33 --> 01:21:36 And so we start the clock there with us.
01:21:36 --> 01:21:40 But we start the clock without ever getting these reparations done.
01:21:40 --> 01:21:45 Now, by the way, the federal government gave out reparations in small numbers
01:21:45 --> 01:21:49 and rescinded those after allowing the South to do what they did.
01:21:49 --> 01:21:54 But they also did give reparations to white slave owners in Washington, D.C., particularly,
01:21:55 --> 01:21:59 to compensate them for the loss of their enslaved, just like happened to the
01:21:59 --> 01:22:02 Haitians, which is why Haiti is in such a horrible condition right now,
01:22:02 --> 01:22:05 because they were they pay reparations to the French.
01:22:05 --> 01:22:10 So it was it was the opposite of justice, brother. It was reverse justice.
01:22:10 --> 01:22:13 Right. You talk about reverse discrimination. There you go right there.
01:22:13 --> 01:22:17 The other way that they talk about it doesn't exist. But this is true for reverse discrimination.
01:22:18 --> 01:22:23 And so we get to a place where the 60s and 70s, we start the clock.
01:22:23 --> 01:22:26 We still have never dealt with this wealth gap. We still never dealt with this inequality.
01:22:26 --> 01:22:30 We still never dealt with the fact that the Homestead Act, GI Bill,
01:22:30 --> 01:22:34 that the government is subsidizing white families to actually build wealth and
01:22:34 --> 01:22:39 own land and housing for generations. And African-Americans never got any of that.
01:22:39 --> 01:22:43 In fact, places like Black Wall Street, once again, reverse discrimination.
01:22:43 --> 01:22:44 We said, OK, well, we don't have anything.
01:22:44 --> 01:22:47 We're going to build our own communities. and the federal government bombs that
01:22:47 --> 01:22:49 community and works against all these things.
01:22:49 --> 01:22:54 And you have decades of redlining, right, and contract buying in which housing
01:22:54 --> 01:22:57 African-Americans are paying for years on houses that they never actually own.
01:22:57 --> 01:23:03 So the robbing and the theft of wealth. So we get to where we are today.
01:23:04 --> 01:23:06 And we've never addressed that. We've never done anything about it.
01:23:06 --> 01:23:09 By the way, the Reparance Commission we have, I have to say this,
01:23:09 --> 01:23:16 honestly, is but a drop in the bucket for what was promised from the federal government.
01:23:16 --> 01:23:19 Because the federal government never did or never fulfilled this promise,
01:23:20 --> 01:23:22 states have had to pick it up. When did they pick it up?
01:23:23 --> 01:23:26 2021, brother. Right? We're talking from 1865 to 2021.
01:23:27 --> 01:23:30 We don't have one single state that picked up this bill.
01:23:30 --> 01:23:33 One single federal entity that decided we're going to do this.
01:23:33 --> 01:23:35 Now, many people say, oh, well, what about the war on poverty?
01:23:35 --> 01:23:39 What about all of these things that were, you know, given to you guys through
01:23:39 --> 01:23:40 affirmative action, et cetera, et cetera?
01:23:40 --> 01:23:43 We understand affirmative action was not particularly for black people.
01:23:44 --> 01:23:47 We understand the war on poverty was not particularly for black people.
01:23:47 --> 01:23:51 And we understand that not just that it wasn't for them on paper,
01:23:51 --> 01:23:56 it did not go to them in reality either.
01:23:57 --> 01:24:00 And we look at, say, affirmative action, number one, recipients of affirmative
01:24:00 --> 01:24:04 action are women of Caucasian European descent.
01:24:05 --> 01:24:09 So we've never fixed this. We've never dealt with it. And I just always talk
01:24:09 --> 01:24:11 a lot about inequality is not going to fix itself.
01:24:11 --> 01:24:14 Dr. King said we can't have a first-class nation with second-class citizens.
01:24:14 --> 01:24:18 At some point, these issues affect everyone. That's why I'm very much around.
01:24:18 --> 01:24:19 That's what I teach everywhere I go.
01:24:20 --> 01:24:23 You know, people who don't look like me, this stuff's going to affect you if you don't deal with it.
01:24:24 --> 01:24:27 And it's better for all of us. And so California, first state,
01:24:28 --> 01:24:32 post George Floyd, Illinois, second state, New York, third state,
01:24:32 --> 01:24:35 only three states in the union that have decided they're going to pick up the
01:24:35 --> 01:24:37 reparations banner themselves and try to do something.
01:24:37 --> 01:24:42 Now, there have been localities, Edmonds, Illinois, Asheville, North Carolina.
01:24:42 --> 01:24:44 There's a county in Los Angeles, a Los Angeles area.
01:24:45 --> 01:24:47 They all picked up their own small reparations programs.
01:24:48 --> 01:24:54 But this is where we are, sir. And even if we don't get back to slavery on this question,
01:24:54 --> 01:25:00 which we should, but even if we don't, we have enough injustice that has occurred
01:25:00 --> 01:25:04 towards people of African descent in the last 100 years, particularly around
01:25:04 --> 01:25:06 housing, wealth, and those sorts of things.
01:25:06 --> 01:25:12 We could spend the next 100 years going through and rectifying and dealing with
01:25:12 --> 01:25:14 the injustices that exist.
01:25:14 --> 01:25:16 And yes, I think it's a biblical directive.
01:25:17 --> 01:25:20 And I think we got a lot of work to do, brother. And I'm happy to be alive during
01:25:20 --> 01:25:24 a time when this is happening, because I do believe that if Malcolm X was living
01:25:24 --> 01:25:28 and Maca Evers was living and Dr. King, this is what they'd be doing.
01:25:29 --> 01:25:33 Yeah. And I greatly appreciate the detail in which you talked about that,
01:25:33 --> 01:25:39 because, you know, I've tried to deal with that on the show and, you know,
01:25:40 --> 01:25:46 like one of the facts was that the Freedmen's Bureau that was set up to be that financial support.
01:25:48 --> 01:25:51 And the Freeman's Bank and all that, that fell under the Department of War.
01:25:52 --> 01:25:58 So when the Democrats in Congress wanted to cut the budget under the Department
01:25:58 --> 01:26:01 of War, that's basically when the Freeman Bureau ended.
01:26:01 --> 01:26:05 And that kind of added to the downward spiral, as long as what you said,
01:26:05 --> 01:26:10 Andrew Johnson, you know, waiving the loyalty clause and all that kind of stuff.
01:26:12 --> 01:26:19 What is your vision of reparations? Because, you know, I always refer people
01:26:19 --> 01:26:21 to the Dave Chappelle skit, right?
01:26:21 --> 01:26:27 And I think a lot of people feel that that Dave Chappelle skit is really what black people want.
01:26:28 --> 01:26:32 And, you know, it's like, and
01:26:32 --> 01:26:36 then we had the controversy in San Francisco where the president of NAACP,
01:26:36 --> 01:26:40 they were floating around giving a check about like, I think,
01:26:40 --> 01:26:44 5 million to descendants of slaves in California specifically.
01:26:45 --> 01:26:49 And he said, I don't want a $5 million check. I want X, Y, and Z done.
01:26:49 --> 01:26:54 So you being on that commission, what is your vision? What would be success
01:26:54 --> 01:26:56 to you as far as reparations go?
01:26:57 --> 01:27:01 Yeah. Thank you for this. And I want to say very clearly, I do not speak on
01:27:01 --> 01:27:03 behalf of the commission in this interview.
01:27:04 --> 01:27:05 It is a state commission, so they
01:27:05 --> 01:27:10 have lots of state bureaucratic media restrictions and things like that.
01:27:10 --> 01:27:15 So I am speaking as Ted Williams here. and Ted Williams' vision.
01:27:15 --> 01:27:22 I realize the civil rights movement, we marched, we fought, we did all these various things.
01:27:22 --> 01:27:28 But if you really look at the movement, the courts were a phenomenal,
01:27:28 --> 01:27:33 powerful, effective place that progress occurred.
01:27:34 --> 01:27:39 When you think about particularly court cases like Brown versus the Board of
01:27:39 --> 01:27:43 Education, and then many of the cases that followed sort of around discrimination.
01:27:44 --> 01:27:51 I would say that we miss the core of the movement if we miss the power of the courts.
01:27:52 --> 01:27:54 So with where we are today.
01:27:56 --> 01:27:59 Look at this in multiple ways. Do we go for federal reparations,
01:27:59 --> 01:28:03 which we can't even get DEI programs right now at the federal level,
01:28:03 --> 01:28:07 so you can forget about that and just be realistic about the political wins.
01:28:07 --> 01:28:10 Although there are a few, interestingly enough, a few conservatives,
01:28:11 --> 01:28:14 people like Ann Coulter, by the way, political commentators,
01:28:14 --> 01:28:19 who is about as far right and inflammatory in her language as she goes,
01:28:19 --> 01:28:21 who is a real firm proponent of reparations.
01:28:22 --> 01:28:26 Also, Alan Keyes, who ran for the U.S.
01:28:26 --> 01:28:32 Senate and was an ambassador, and he is right-wing, African-American.
01:28:33 --> 01:28:37 He supports reparations as well, which I think is an interesting take on this issue.
01:28:37 --> 01:28:43 And so I don't have much hope at the federal level, at least right now.
01:28:43 --> 01:28:48 But I do have hope for the courts and the localities.
01:28:48 --> 01:28:54 What Everson did was they had a fund, a reparations fund, and they gave out
01:28:54 --> 01:28:59 payments to people whose housing had been devalued through contract buying,
01:28:59 --> 01:29:00 through discriminatory practices.
01:29:01 --> 01:29:06 Asheville, North Carolina, did a similar reparations program that was housing specific.
01:29:06 --> 01:29:11 And I believe it's Manhattan Beach in California where there was a family who,
01:29:11 --> 01:29:16 through eminent domain, African-American family lost their home on beachfront property.
01:29:16 --> 01:29:22 And their settlement was $20 million just recently to get their land back.
01:29:22 --> 01:29:26 I think that there are literally, brother, thousands of cases like that,
01:29:26 --> 01:29:32 thousands throughout this country that could go to people who are living still today.
01:29:33 --> 01:29:37 So see, the opposition to reparations, they want to come and talk about,
01:29:37 --> 01:29:42 well, you know, it was so long ago and how can we figure out which descendants
01:29:42 --> 01:29:47 should get it and why should we give everybody a check because they're just going to blow it.
01:29:47 --> 01:29:52 Okay, all those arguments, I can put all those arguments in a bucket and leave
01:29:52 --> 01:29:54 them over there and say, you know what, you can have all those arguments.
01:29:55 --> 01:30:00 Cannot have is the fact that over the last 100 years, like for instance,
01:30:00 --> 01:30:05 contract buying on the south and west side of Chicago, there was an economic
01:30:05 --> 01:30:08 study that said that the cost of it was close to $3 billion.
01:30:08 --> 01:30:10 And this is in the last 60 years.
01:30:11 --> 01:30:14 So don't tell me we can't do anything about that, right?
01:30:14 --> 01:30:19 Don't tell me that we cannot in this capitalist system address the discrimination
01:30:19 --> 01:30:24 that has occurred for people of African descent very specifically, very directly.
01:30:25 --> 01:30:30 To people who are either still alive or their children are still alive. We can start there.
01:30:30 --> 01:30:33 You want to do any of the slaves? Fine, we ain't gonna talk about it.
01:30:33 --> 01:30:35 We start there and then we start moving backwards.
01:30:36 --> 01:30:39 And that to me is our path. That to me is success, brother. If I could see that
01:30:39 --> 01:30:41 happen in my lifetime, that would be success.
01:30:41 --> 01:30:44 I think we will get to where we want to go ultimately.
01:30:45 --> 01:30:47 And that's the strategy thing for me. And not everybody agrees,
01:30:47 --> 01:30:49 by the way. There are people in the movement that don't agree with me,
01:30:50 --> 01:30:51 and that's okay. You know, it's okay.
01:30:52 --> 01:30:58 But I'm very practical in this. I know that there is not necessarily the kind
01:30:58 --> 01:31:00 of national appetite for what we're talking about.
01:31:00 --> 01:31:03 And it doesn't have to be, by the way. I mean, there's not always an appetite
01:31:03 --> 01:31:07 for legislation. Legislation passes every day that people, there's not an appetite for.
01:31:07 --> 01:31:11 So I'm not suggesting that. But I am saying that what we can do is we can build
01:31:11 --> 01:31:15 a movement of justice, biblical justice, as we've talked about.
01:31:15 --> 01:31:21 But how can you argue? How can anyone argue? How can anyone argue with reparations
01:31:21 --> 01:31:26 for Jim Crow segregation, reparations for redlining, reparations for contract
01:31:26 --> 01:31:28 buying, literally for people who are still alive?
01:31:29 --> 01:31:31 How on earth could you possibly argue against that?
01:31:31 --> 01:31:35 And then from there, we get the winds that will move us further back into history.
01:31:35 --> 01:31:39 And yes, I think as well, one of the things that our reparations commission,
01:31:39 --> 01:31:41 well, actually, this is not officially us, so let me say this.
01:31:41 --> 01:31:49 But part of what we have had discussions about is this question of disclosure,
01:31:49 --> 01:31:52 this disclosure bill, the slavery era disclosure bill, that we would hold—.
01:31:54 --> 01:31:58 Companies accountable who have built their wealth off of slavery.
01:31:59 --> 01:32:03 And that, my friend, is another win that I think that we should be going for
01:32:03 --> 01:32:06 in our community. I don't think you can argue that either.
01:32:07 --> 01:32:10 Now, what happens with those funds, we could have many conversations about,
01:32:10 --> 01:32:11 and I'm totally fine with that.
01:32:12 --> 01:32:16 Some people are straight for cash payments. Some people are for educational,
01:32:17 --> 01:32:20 free education. Some people are for, you know, housing investments.
01:32:21 --> 01:32:24 You know, I honestly could go anyway on a lot of those.
01:32:24 --> 01:32:31 But what I can't do is play the game and agree to the idea that we can't afford
01:32:31 --> 01:32:36 it and that we can't do justice by people. That I cannot do.
01:32:37 --> 01:32:43 Elon Musk makes, what is it, $8 million a day off the federal government.
01:32:43 --> 01:32:51 Our defense budget is $800 billion a year, I don't have any issues withholding
01:32:51 --> 01:32:54 us to paying for things that are worthwhile.
01:32:54 --> 01:32:55 And let me say this in closing on that, brother.
01:32:56 --> 01:33:02 If we don't, if we don't, we are only strong as our weakest link in this country.
01:33:03 --> 01:33:08 For some reason, we have this notion, this idea, and this capitalist society
01:33:08 --> 01:33:13 that has enjoyed white supremacy as well, that we can have a great country and
01:33:13 --> 01:33:15 leave large swaths of the country behind.
01:33:17 --> 01:33:21 Chinese don't believe that, by the way. The Japanese don't believe that, by the way.
01:33:21 --> 01:33:25 I think that there are many countries, you can go to the Netherlands,
01:33:25 --> 01:33:30 other places, that don't look at their side and go, shoot, we have people to waste.
01:33:30 --> 01:33:33 The investments that we make in education, infrastructure, all those things,
01:33:34 --> 01:33:37 for people who have been marginalized historically will actually only make the
01:33:37 --> 01:33:38 country better as a whole.
01:33:39 --> 01:33:44 That's what our current leadership does not understand. And that's what I think
01:33:44 --> 01:33:48 that if we don't figure that out, we're all going to go down with the ship.
01:33:48 --> 01:33:54 And that's why reparations and all policies that push forth diversity,
01:33:55 --> 01:34:00 equity, and inclusion are good for the entire country, not just for us.
01:34:01 --> 01:34:04 Yeah. And I greatly appreciate that.
01:34:04 --> 01:34:08 And this is something that we could have a discussion for a long time,
01:34:08 --> 01:34:11 and so I thank you for that.
01:34:12 --> 01:34:21 Knowing that time is a constraint, let me just close out and have you plug something
01:34:21 --> 01:34:24 and kind of talk about it at the same time.
01:34:24 --> 01:34:29 You created this musical called 1619, The Journey of People.
01:34:30 --> 01:34:33 So kind of talk about what inspired you to create it.
01:34:33 --> 01:34:39 Are you still doing it? How can people, you know, get the play or the musical
01:34:39 --> 01:34:42 to be performed where they are?
01:34:42 --> 01:34:46 And also, how can people get in touch with you? And we'll just close out like that.
01:34:47 --> 01:34:52 Thank you so much for that question. And I am, once again, just honored to be with you today.
01:34:52 --> 01:34:57 I can tell from our interaction that these are conversations that you have been
01:34:57 --> 01:34:59 having and you're thinking deeply about.
01:34:59 --> 01:35:02 And we need to raise the consciousness of our people.
01:35:02 --> 01:35:06 And so I am grateful. And when I say our people, I mean people who look like
01:35:06 --> 01:35:08 you and I, but I mean Americans as a whole.
01:35:09 --> 01:35:13 Black history is American history. And so one of the things that we promote
01:35:13 --> 01:35:18 in our production is the idea that everyone needs to know about this history.
01:35:18 --> 01:35:23 We have had people in our 1619 production that go through 400 years of history
01:35:23 --> 01:35:26 in two hours in various ways.
01:35:26 --> 01:35:30 But we've had many people who don't look like you or I come to the show,
01:35:30 --> 01:35:35 and it has been an introduction for them, a palatable introduction for them
01:35:35 --> 01:35:40 to sit in a theater space and to deal with these issues that we know exist.
01:35:40 --> 01:35:45 And so I'm honored to be able to do that. Back in 2019, we were commemorating
01:35:45 --> 01:35:50 the 400-year anniversary of the first 20 enslaved Africans who arrived on the
01:35:50 --> 01:35:53 shores of Point Comfort, Virginia, August 20th, 1619.
01:35:54 --> 01:35:58 And that commemoration, there were many commemorations across the country.
01:35:58 --> 01:36:02 We, myself, I got inspired to create this production.
01:36:03 --> 01:36:07 I was going to do something academic and I wanted to create a production,
01:36:07 --> 01:36:11 which, and I'm working on another one around some larger questions in America
01:36:11 --> 01:36:15 to commemorate sort of where we are in this moment in American history.
01:36:16 --> 01:36:19 But I wrote this production and started immediately.
01:36:20 --> 01:36:23 There was an immediate demand for it, which I didn't realize that existed.
01:36:23 --> 01:36:28 We performed it a couple of times and I had college is calling me and locality is calling me.
01:36:29 --> 01:36:31 And to be honest with you, brother, every time I sit down and go,
01:36:31 --> 01:36:34 okay, we're kind of, you know, with the pandemic hit and, you know,
01:36:34 --> 01:36:36 I had an injury this year.
01:36:36 --> 01:36:39 I broke my collarbone. So I was down for four months on that.
01:36:39 --> 01:36:43 And people still calling. They're still calling. So we just had a very busy
01:36:43 --> 01:36:48 Black History Month and I'm booked out for Juneteenth already because people
01:36:48 --> 01:36:52 are, they're calling and they want to experience this and understand this.
01:36:52 --> 01:36:57 What we do is I have tried to create a production that was accessible for everyone
01:36:57 --> 01:37:03 and that I'm a firm believer artistically that you throw a lot of things on the wall.
01:37:04 --> 01:37:08 And there's something in it for everybody. So we've got hip-hop in the show.
01:37:08 --> 01:37:11 We've got jazz in the show. We've got some blues numbers in the show.
01:37:12 --> 01:37:15 We have some West African dance numbers in the show.
01:37:15 --> 01:37:17 We have a little classical music.
01:37:18 --> 01:37:20 We just go on this sensory experience.
01:37:20 --> 01:37:23 We hit people in their hearts. We hit them with their minds,
01:37:23 --> 01:37:24 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
01:37:25 --> 01:37:29 And we've been pretty successful. We were nominated for an award here in Chicago
01:37:29 --> 01:37:33 for the Black Theater Alliance Awards, the best musical. We've traveled many, many places.
01:37:34 --> 01:37:37 We've done residencies at various theaters throughout Chicago.
01:37:37 --> 01:37:38 We've traveled outside of that.
01:37:38 --> 01:37:43 We've been on TV a bunch of times. And we have just been sharing this information.
01:37:44 --> 01:37:47 What has been most powerful to me in all of this?
01:37:47 --> 01:37:51 And I only do the full production with 20 people, but I also,
01:37:51 --> 01:37:54 people call me, can you just come talk about the show and do a one person?
01:37:54 --> 01:37:57 I'm the great. And I do monologues. I'm in the show as well.
01:37:57 --> 01:37:58 So I do monologues from that.
01:37:58 --> 01:38:02 What's been most impactful to me has been
01:38:02 --> 01:38:07 to see how people connect with the history that we talk about in a personal
01:38:07 --> 01:38:11 way that has nothing to do with us by the way so i realized very quickly this
01:38:11 --> 01:38:15 show is not about us this show is about this history so we have a section on
01:38:15 --> 01:38:21 the great migration in chicago and i have people who you know because you know our our folks tend to,
01:38:22 --> 01:38:26 you know we tend to be very verbal in in in spaces and so we'll be on stage
01:38:26 --> 01:38:29 and i'll say something and some of the audience will yell something out that
01:38:29 --> 01:38:31 they, you know, experience or whatever.
01:38:32 --> 01:38:36 And we talked about Dr. King's journey through Chicago, through Marquette Park,
01:38:36 --> 01:38:38 when he was pelted with rocks and things like that.
01:38:39 --> 01:38:42 And we had people that were there, you know.
01:38:42 --> 01:38:48 And that meant a lot to me, you know. And I could hear them. And they respond.
01:38:48 --> 01:38:52 You know, we connected with Nicole Hannah-Jones for the 1619 Project out of New York.
01:38:52 --> 01:38:55 And I've been on a panel with her, got to interview her, that sort of thing.
01:38:56 --> 01:39:01 And there was a connection there. Reverend Jesse Jackson and Judge Mathis have
01:39:01 --> 01:39:06 seen our work, and there was a strong connection there and just an appreciation there.
01:39:06 --> 01:39:09 We also met when we performed at Hampton University.
01:39:09 --> 01:39:13 The Tucker family, who is historically linked to that first,
01:39:14 --> 01:39:18 they can draw their lineage back to those first 20 enslaved Africans very cleanly
01:39:18 --> 01:39:20 and very clearly. They have a whole historic society.
01:39:20 --> 01:39:24 They came to our show, and I realized within the first couple months,
01:39:24 --> 01:39:26 we've been doing a show for five years.
01:39:26 --> 01:39:29 I remember I realized, actually six years now, I realized in the first couple
01:39:29 --> 01:39:33 months that this history was so much bigger than us. And so I'm so grateful to do it.
01:39:33 --> 01:39:38 You can check out 1619 Musical or probably more easily, you can find me.
01:39:39 --> 01:39:41 And so I'm typically the third. I'm on all this, mostly social media sites.
01:39:42 --> 01:39:50 And you can hit me on social media or you can see where we We're doing small,
01:39:50 --> 01:39:53 local, sort of municipality production.
01:39:53 --> 01:39:59 So I've got One City's got us doing their outdoor festival for Juneteenth and things like that.
01:40:00 --> 01:40:05 But in terms of our actual show coming back again, we are looking at dates for
01:40:05 --> 01:40:07 the summer and have not announced those yet.
01:40:07 --> 01:40:11 But they'll be announced very soon. And we're excited to get back because this
01:40:11 --> 01:40:14 history is not Black history. It's American history.
01:40:14 --> 01:40:19 And everybody needs to know. And we're open to wherever we need to go. to carry this message.
01:40:20 --> 01:40:23 It is really the work of my life and I'm grateful to be able to do it.
01:40:24 --> 01:40:28 Well, Dr. Ted Williams III, it's been an honor to talk to you,
01:40:29 --> 01:40:34 have an open invitation to come back on and maybe we'll have a little more time.
01:40:34 --> 01:40:37 Although we did spend a good amount of time, but we'll, we could,
01:40:37 --> 01:40:41 we could flesh, we could flesh out some more things when you come back,
01:40:41 --> 01:40:45 brother, and continue success on what you're doing. I'm glad that you're healed.
01:40:49 --> 01:40:53 Yes, sir. But, uh, but again, thank you for coming on the podcast.
01:40:53 --> 01:40:57 I greatly appreciate Brother Fleming, I appreciate you finding me.
01:40:57 --> 01:41:02 I appreciate you having a platform like this. I've enjoyed this conversation with you.
01:41:03 --> 01:41:07 I would love to come back and dig a little deeper. So we'll figure that out here.
01:41:07 --> 01:41:13 But I am just honored and also proud of your work because we got to do this.
01:41:13 --> 01:41:16 And I'm going to start listening to your podcast now, now that I'm become a
01:41:16 --> 01:41:20 fan, okay? So I'll be listening and I'm sure you have some great guests and things like that.
01:41:20 --> 01:41:25 But you keep up the work too because we need all of us on various fronts to
01:41:25 --> 01:41:28 educate and inspire people, right?
01:41:28 --> 01:41:32 Towards empathy and critical thinking and the justice that needs to happen.
01:41:33 --> 01:41:36 And, you know, as Dr. King said, and I'll close out with this,
01:41:36 --> 01:41:40 he said, I may not get there with you, you know, but I want you to know tonight
01:41:40 --> 01:41:43 that we as a people will get to the promised land.
01:41:43 --> 01:41:48 And that was, as many people know, delivered April 3rd, 1968,
01:41:49 --> 01:41:51 the night before he was assassinated.
01:41:52 --> 01:41:57 And I believe that we all have to push the ball, you know, in our generation
01:41:57 --> 01:41:59 as the biblical concept as well, too.
01:41:59 --> 01:42:01 And so you keep doing what you're doing. I'll do what I'm doing.
01:42:02 --> 01:42:04 We're going to educate some younger people, get them doing it, man.
01:42:05 --> 01:42:09 And prayerfully, we will get to the promised land, brother. So I'm grateful.
01:42:09 --> 01:42:12 Have a wonderful day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you, brother.
01:42:12 --> 01:42:14 All right, guys, and we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
01:42:14 --> 01:42:25 Music.
01:42:26 --> 01:42:34 All right, and we are back. So I want to thank Samuel Ashworth for coming on,
01:42:35 --> 01:42:39 and he enjoyed it. And I hope that you enjoyed the interview as well.
01:42:39 --> 01:42:47 It was a lot of fun doing it that way, and hopefully that got you interested
01:42:47 --> 01:42:50 in buying the book, The Death and Life of August Sweeney.
01:42:52 --> 01:42:57 And you'll enjoy it because it's a rich book, right?
01:42:58 --> 01:43:05 Builds up the main characters really well. And I think it's a story that a lot
01:43:05 --> 01:43:08 of us can relate to, if not personally somebody we know.
01:43:09 --> 01:43:17 So, and I really hope that you liked our exchange, incorporating politics into
01:43:17 --> 01:43:20 a book that's really not political, right?
01:43:21 --> 01:43:25 And then I want to thank Dr. Ted Williams III for taking time out of his hectic
01:43:25 --> 01:43:34 schedule to come on and talk about issues dealing with reparations and just
01:43:34 --> 01:43:36 y'all get to know a little bit about him.
01:43:37 --> 01:43:41 Because I think it's important not just to, in my style,
01:43:43 --> 01:43:50 not just to deal with the folks because of what they do or what they've written or whatever,
01:43:51 --> 01:43:56 but to get to know them as human beings because the underlying factor in all
01:43:56 --> 01:44:01 this is that politics impacts the lives of human beings.
01:44:04 --> 01:44:09 And sometimes I think the human beings that are given positions forget that
01:44:09 --> 01:44:11 and I'll dive into that a little more.
01:44:12 --> 01:44:15 So I just want to thank Dr. Williams.
01:44:17 --> 01:44:22 To helping put that in perspective a little bit in his interview and to address
01:44:22 --> 01:44:26 the issues that I wanted to address with him. Okay.
01:44:27 --> 01:44:33 And Professor Roberts, Rick Roberts, for providing that information for me to
01:44:33 --> 01:44:34 read, dealing with tariffs.
01:44:35 --> 01:44:42 As stated earlier, he wanted to record it, but it didn't work out the way he
01:44:42 --> 01:44:46 wanted to because he is human and he is a professor and they are in school.
01:44:47 --> 01:44:52 And so at least he had the time to write that out for me. And Dr.
01:44:52 --> 01:44:58 Roberts, Professor Roberts, I greatly appreciate that and look forward to you coming on.
01:44:59 --> 01:45:03 He did commit while he was doing all that for me that he was going to come back
01:45:03 --> 01:45:07 on and kind of assess where we are when he does come on.
01:45:08 --> 01:45:13 So speaking about assessment, I got on Twitter.
01:45:14 --> 01:45:22 I'm recording this. Oh, by the way, so this episode is going to drop on St. Patrick's Day.
01:45:22 --> 01:45:26 So happy St. Patrick's Day to everybody, since I didn't do that in the intro.
01:45:28 --> 01:45:34 And the luck of the Irish really needs to fall upon these folks I'm going to
01:45:34 --> 01:45:36 talk about. But I think it's too late.
01:45:38 --> 01:45:42 And so let me kind of get into that a little bit.
01:45:43 --> 01:45:51 If I can. And I just really am disappointed beyond measure.
01:45:53 --> 01:45:59 And, you know, it's just one of those things that I didn't think was going to
01:45:59 --> 01:46:02 happen in my lifetime. Yeah.
01:46:03 --> 01:46:09 Year. And it's really, really sad that we're at this point.
01:46:10 --> 01:46:16 But I just, I'm really almost at a loss for words.
01:46:17 --> 01:46:25 So I got on Twitter, y'all call it X, and basically gave the obituary for the
01:46:25 --> 01:46:27 Democratic Party of the United States.
01:46:28 --> 01:46:33 And like I said, as I'm recording this, the reason why I gave the obituary was
01:46:33 --> 01:46:43 because later on today, I'm recording this on Friday, and the vote for the,
01:46:44 --> 01:46:52 continuing resolution to keep the government functioning until September has
01:46:52 --> 01:46:54 not been voted on yet, at least not on the Senate side.
01:46:55 --> 01:46:59 The House passed it, as you heard on the news, But there was a question about
01:46:59 --> 01:47:02 the Democrats supporting it.
01:47:02 --> 01:47:09 For those who don't quite understand, the dynamic is that today they're voting
01:47:09 --> 01:47:14 on what they call cloture, which to make it simple, they're basically voting
01:47:14 --> 01:47:17 to bring it on the floor to vote.
01:47:17 --> 01:47:24 And then after it's, excuse me, been moved to be on the floor,
01:47:25 --> 01:47:28 then they can have the official vote on the legislation.
01:47:29 --> 01:47:35 But you need to have, according to the crazy rules that both the Democrats and
01:47:35 --> 01:47:43 Republicans agree to, you got to have 60 votes out of 100 to bring it out of cloture.
01:47:43 --> 01:47:54 And you know it all depends who's the minority party how that benefits them right and you know.
01:47:55 --> 01:47:59 One of the things that happened was that when it passed on the House side,
01:48:00 --> 01:48:05 only one Democrat voted for the House version of the bill, of the resolution.
01:48:06 --> 01:48:11 And there's this group, No Labels, who I've been trying to get somebody from
01:48:11 --> 01:48:12 the organization to come on.
01:48:13 --> 01:48:18 And I understand I'm not, you know, Pod Save America, Joe Rogan.
01:48:18 --> 01:48:23 I ain't got like five million viewers, so you may not think it's important to
01:48:23 --> 01:48:27 come on. But, you know, at least I invited them.
01:48:27 --> 01:48:33 So it's on them that they didn't come on. But nonetheless, they wanted to tout
01:48:33 --> 01:48:37 the Democrat that voted for the continuing resolution.
01:48:37 --> 01:48:46 And I responded to them that their lack of awareness is alarming or something to that effect.
01:48:46 --> 01:48:56 I mean, you can go on my ex in Twitter, whatever, and see what I said exactly.
01:48:57 --> 01:49:03 But then on the Senate side, one of the Republicans said that they're not voting
01:49:03 --> 01:49:04 for it. I think it was Rand Paul.
01:49:06 --> 01:49:13 And so that means that eight Democrats would have to vote for it.
01:49:14 --> 01:49:23 For it to pass. If it does not pass, then the government is shut down as of
01:49:23 --> 01:49:25 this upcoming weekend as I'm recording this.
01:49:26 --> 01:49:31 So, you know, the plan in my mind was thinking when this show dropped,
01:49:31 --> 01:49:33 we would be in a shutdown.
01:49:35 --> 01:49:43 Because I felt that the Democrats shouldn't vote for it, just like on the House side.
01:49:44 --> 01:49:48 And initially, that was the plan.
01:49:49 --> 01:49:54 But then yesterday, Senator Chuck Schumer, who I have no real love for,
01:49:55 --> 01:50:00 and that's personal with me because when he was over the Democratic Senate Campaign
01:50:00 --> 01:50:03 Committee, he did everything he could not to help me.
01:50:03 --> 01:50:08 And if it wasn't for the AFL-CIO, the national AFL-CIO, and of course,
01:50:08 --> 01:50:12 the Mississippi chapter, I wouldn't have got any support from them.
01:50:13 --> 01:50:16 So I don't have any love lost with Chuck Schumer.
01:50:16 --> 01:50:21 He doesn't know who I am from Adam's house cat, and he never cared to know, but that's okay.
01:50:22 --> 01:50:26 You know, that's been over almost 20 years ago, whatever.
01:50:27 --> 01:50:31 But at the time, that was pretty painful that the chairman of the Democratic
01:50:31 --> 01:50:35 Senate Campaign Committee wouldn't do anything to help.
01:50:36 --> 01:50:41 As a matter of fact, they did everything to try to either ignore me or embarrass me, right?
01:50:42 --> 01:50:47 So you tend to remember that. Now, I'm not in a position to do anything,
01:50:47 --> 01:50:53 so there's no need for me to, quote unquote, have a grudge, but he ain't my friend.
01:50:55 --> 01:51:00 And even though he has had some magic moments, the true character of him comes
01:51:00 --> 01:51:01 out in moments like this.
01:51:02 --> 01:51:06 And so earlier they said, oh no, we're not voting for that, blah, blah.
01:51:06 --> 01:51:10 And then yesterday, Thursday, which was March 13th,
01:51:11 --> 01:51:18 2025, he basically killed the Democratic Party of the United States, as we know it, right?
01:51:20 --> 01:51:23 Because he got up and said that he was going to support it.
01:51:25 --> 01:51:31 Now, if it was just like, okay, he's going to do it and nobody else is going
01:51:31 --> 01:51:36 to do it, if he had just kind of said it in a press conference or something like that, okay.
01:51:36 --> 01:51:41 But he's the minority leader in the Senate. He is the leader of the Democrats in the Senate.
01:51:42 --> 01:51:46 So for him to get on the floor and say that, that means he's got seven other
01:51:46 --> 01:51:48 senators that are going to vote with him.
01:51:49 --> 01:51:53 And so him and those seven other senators, and one of them is going to be John
01:51:53 --> 01:51:58 Fetterman, who I don't, you know, I don't know what goes on with these people.
01:51:58 --> 01:52:05 I really don't. It's something about landing at Reagan National Airport,
01:52:05 --> 01:52:12 crossing that Potomac River, landing in that basin that makes people lose touch with their minds.
01:52:12 --> 01:52:17 John Fetterman, people were defending him because he had just suffered a stroke.
01:52:19 --> 01:52:24 And people were showing empathy and people were showing true commitment.
01:52:24 --> 01:52:27 And since he said he was willing to fight on and keep running,
01:52:28 --> 01:52:32 people supported him. And he got elected to the United States Senate after suffering
01:52:32 --> 01:52:35 a stroke, which could have killed him. Right.
01:52:36 --> 01:52:42 And so, thank goodness now he's healthier and he's he's able to talk better.
01:52:42 --> 01:52:46 And he's he's he still has some struggles, but not like he did,
01:52:46 --> 01:52:49 you know, when he first got in there while he was campaigning.
01:52:50 --> 01:52:55 And for him to now kind of get into this mode, well, you know,
01:52:55 --> 01:52:59 I'm just trying to be a peacemaker and all that stuff. It's like,
01:52:59 --> 01:53:00 dude, you look like that.
01:53:01 --> 01:53:05 If you have seen Reacher, that show that comes on Amazon Prime,
01:53:06 --> 01:53:11 if you've seen Reacher, that's John Fetterman, right? Right.
01:53:12 --> 01:53:19 This giant man who, you know, was combative when he got elected to the Senate.
01:53:20 --> 01:53:25 And now I guess that he's been there and he's he's got a few perks and privileges
01:53:25 --> 01:53:27 and all that stuff. Now he's not the tough guy.
01:53:27 --> 01:53:32 Now he's the reconciliator in a time when we need tough guys. Right.
01:53:33 --> 01:53:37 So the Rand Paul's vote was already canceled out with Fetterman.
01:53:37 --> 01:53:40 And then when Chuck Schumer got up there and spoke.
01:53:41 --> 01:53:46 But that's that's it. That's ballgame. That's the end of the story,
01:53:46 --> 01:53:51 because there'll be six other Democrats that want to curry favor with Schumer.
01:53:52 --> 01:53:57 Although I will give John Ossoff credit because John is going to be up for reelection
01:53:57 --> 01:54:03 in 2026. He's one of the senators from Georgia, and he said he's voting no.
01:54:04 --> 01:54:08 Right. So and Marjorie Taylor Greene's talking about running against him.
01:54:10 --> 01:54:15 So for him to take that stand, that's that's the courage we're looking for.
01:54:15 --> 01:54:23 But he's not a saint on some issues, but we'll you know, we can deal with issues.
01:54:23 --> 01:54:27 Right. But we're talking about fighting for.
01:54:28 --> 01:54:36 The institution. And a micro the U.S. Congress and the macro the United States government.
01:54:36 --> 01:54:41 Just last week, I said, people, the Democrats have to do something drastic.
01:54:41 --> 01:54:47 They had the ping pong paddles last week at Trump's address to the Congress
01:54:47 --> 01:54:49 instead of just walking out.
01:54:49 --> 01:54:51 Right. Tone deaf on that.
01:54:52 --> 01:54:58 Only Al Green got the memo to challenge him. Right. If you're going to be there, be disruptive.
01:54:59 --> 01:55:04 But you shouldn't have been there at all. Right. There shouldn't even been an Al Green moment.
01:55:04 --> 01:55:09 Everybody should have been gone. Everybody should have went back to their districts
01:55:09 --> 01:55:11 or whatever, right? Or their states.
01:55:12 --> 01:55:18 And then you follow it up this week by talking tough and within 24 hours.
01:55:18 --> 01:55:21 I just want you to understand that. It was like within 24 hours.
01:55:23 --> 01:55:28 Accentulate. You surrender. And then you try to say, oh, but it'll be much worse
01:55:28 --> 01:55:31 if it's a shutdown because he'll have total reign and all that stuff.
01:55:32 --> 01:55:37 No, he won't. If the government is shut down, it's shut down.
01:55:37 --> 01:55:43 Ain't no Doge happening. Ain't no Elon. None of that's happening.
01:55:43 --> 01:55:53 Now, it's unfortunate for people who still have a job with the federal government to, you know,
01:55:53 --> 01:55:59 be put in a situation where they're out of work and they can't get any back pay, which is insane.
01:56:00 --> 01:56:05 You budgeted the money. Why won't you pay these people for the time that they
01:56:05 --> 01:56:10 lost because of something that they had no control over?
01:56:10 --> 01:56:13 Right. You gave people back pay for 9-11.
01:56:14 --> 01:56:18 Why can't you give them back pay for a shutdown? I just don't understand it.
01:56:18 --> 01:56:22 And Congress still gets paid. Each member of Congress still gets a check,
01:56:22 --> 01:56:27 whether they're in session or not, whether the government is shut down or not. They all get paid.
01:56:27 --> 01:56:34 So I want that to rattle in your brain, too. So we don't want people to have inconvenience.
01:56:34 --> 01:56:39 But at the rate we're going, how secure is a government job anyway?
01:56:39 --> 01:56:46 When you got to have federal judges saying you need to hire these people back that you just got fired.
01:56:46 --> 01:56:48 You didn't have the authority to fire these people.
01:56:49 --> 01:56:54 So you need to hire them back. Only to have some people in the administration say make us.
01:56:55 --> 01:57:03 Right. There's even talk about how can we give to judicial branch enforcement
01:57:03 --> 01:57:10 teeth to make sure these people follow the decisions that they make.
01:57:12 --> 01:57:16 That's how defiant this administration is to the courts.
01:57:16 --> 01:57:23 But when you elect a criminal, criminals don't like courts, especially convicted
01:57:23 --> 01:57:25 ones. They're not big fans of the courts.
01:57:26 --> 01:57:28 It doesn't matter what they're convicted of.
01:57:28 --> 01:57:34 That's just natural. They're not going to be saying, oh, it was fair and blah, blah.
01:57:34 --> 01:57:37 They're not going to do that because it personally affected them.
01:57:38 --> 01:57:44 So why would we think that this criminal who occupies the house at 1600 Pennsylvania
01:57:44 --> 01:57:46 Avenue would be any different?
01:57:48 --> 01:57:54 Should be in jail, but he is the president of the United States. So there's that.
01:57:55 --> 01:58:03 So you think, Chuck Schumer, that shutting down the government would make it
01:58:03 --> 01:58:08 easier for him, a man who has no boundaries.
01:58:09 --> 01:58:14 He's basically got to get out of jail free card thanks to the Supreme Court,
01:58:14 --> 01:58:18 as far as anything he does as president, illegal.
01:58:19 --> 01:58:24 All you got to say is, well, I was just acting as president. I didn't know. Okay.
01:58:25 --> 01:58:30 Or did it ever occur to you that in this time that's not normal,
01:58:30 --> 01:58:33 that you got to do something to shake things up?
01:58:34 --> 01:58:36 You've got to have some leverage.
01:58:37 --> 01:58:41 You got to be able to look these folks in the eye and say, all right,
01:58:41 --> 01:58:43 it's time for this weird stuff to end.
01:58:44 --> 01:58:51 It's time for y'all to grow up and do things in decency and in order.
01:58:52 --> 01:58:54 We have put up with this mess for a decade.
01:58:55 --> 01:59:01 Ever since that dude, Donald Trump, came down an escalator.
01:59:01 --> 01:59:06 He was going down, and that was symbolic of the country going down.
01:59:06 --> 01:59:11 As far as political efficacy, as far as political commitment,
01:59:11 --> 01:59:14 as far as political everything,
01:59:14 --> 01:59:20 the quorum, all that came down with him coming down the escalator.
01:59:20 --> 01:59:21 That was the perfect metaphor.
01:59:22 --> 01:59:28 But somehow in the minds of some of these people that have been in the institution
01:59:28 --> 01:59:32 for a while, that they think Oh, the glory days are coming back.
01:59:33 --> 01:59:39 Barack Obama said in the early 2000s, it's time for a new normal.
01:59:40 --> 01:59:41 Y'all didn't get the memo?
01:59:42 --> 01:59:46 Over the last 10 years, y'all haven't picked up the fact that what you thought
01:59:46 --> 01:59:48 was cool is not cool anymore?
01:59:48 --> 01:59:53 Yes, I would love to get to a point, and I have preached this on the podcast,
01:59:53 --> 01:59:57 that we need to get back to civil discourse and debating the issues and having
01:59:57 --> 01:59:59 intelligence discussions on the issues.
02:00:00 --> 02:00:04 But, you know, sometimes you got to shake things up.
02:00:04 --> 02:00:08 You know, the Republicans all into spankings and all that. Well,
02:00:08 --> 02:00:11 maybe they need one for sure.
02:00:12 --> 02:00:16 Need to shut down the government to get their attention.
02:00:17 --> 02:00:24 Black Lives Matter protesters shut down conventions and highways,
02:00:24 --> 02:00:26 and they got your attention.
02:00:27 --> 02:00:31 That's when all these corporations started saying, oh, DEI, and we love black
02:00:31 --> 02:00:33 people, and all this stuff. They got your attention.
02:00:34 --> 02:00:39 So why not shut down the government to get these folks' attention?
02:00:39 --> 02:00:44 You can blame all you want to. You can play the spin game. I've been playing the spin game forever.
02:00:45 --> 02:00:49 At some point, you just don't care what they say.
02:00:50 --> 02:00:54 Either you're going to stop doing this or we're just going to stop altogether.
02:00:54 --> 02:00:56 We're just going to shut it down.
02:00:56 --> 02:00:58 Then you will have nothing to play with.
02:00:59 --> 02:01:04 But when you capitulate, I'm just glad Zelensky is the president of Ukraine and not Schumer.
02:01:05 --> 02:01:09 Because if Schumer was the president of Ukraine, we wouldn't be having this
02:01:09 --> 02:01:13 discussion about Abe because he would have surrendered within the three days.
02:01:14 --> 02:01:18 We need fighters, ladies and gentlemen. We need people in the office.
02:01:18 --> 02:01:22 When you're talking about an American leader, the most powerful characteristic
02:01:22 --> 02:01:25 that person has is that they're going to fight for the ideals of America.
02:01:26 --> 02:01:27 They're going to fight for it.
02:01:27 --> 02:01:33 They're not going to play a game and play altruistic bingo.
02:01:33 --> 02:01:36 No, this is real. This is really happening right now.
02:01:36 --> 02:01:40 The richest man in the world has teamed up with the most powerful man in the
02:01:40 --> 02:01:43 world to destroy the government that impacts all of us.
02:01:44 --> 02:01:49 They're literally selling Teslas on the White House lawn. That's how far we've devolved.
02:01:51 --> 02:01:58 Surrender to that, you and seven other senators, including Fetterman,
02:01:59 --> 02:02:00 y'all going to give this up.
02:02:01 --> 02:02:08 So if those people do what they say they're going to do, because we don't know who the other six are,
02:02:08 --> 02:02:14 but if those eight senators vote to pass this resolution, then the Democratic
02:02:14 --> 02:02:17 Party of the United States, the oldest political party in the world,
02:02:18 --> 02:02:21 a party that has existed since 1828,
02:02:21 --> 02:02:23 will be no more.
02:02:23 --> 02:02:27 I did a podcast talking about the return of good feelings.
02:02:27 --> 02:02:32 And in my hypothesis, I thought because how extreme the Republicans were,
02:02:32 --> 02:02:39 that they were going to be pushed to irrelevancy and that the same people would
02:02:39 --> 02:02:42 run and maybe down the road, a new party will emerge.
02:02:43 --> 02:02:46 Well, lo and behold, how wrong was I?
02:02:47 --> 02:02:51 The irrelevant party seems to be the Democratic Party, the party that I'm affiliated
02:02:51 --> 02:02:54 with. And that's why I'm upset. And that's why I'm grieving.
02:02:55 --> 02:03:00 Because I never thought in my active years like that, because,
02:03:00 --> 02:03:08 you know, if I'm 90 or 100, well, you know, century long enough, see some kind of change.
02:03:08 --> 02:03:15 But in my active years, in a time where I'm still, quote unquote,
02:03:15 --> 02:03:18 young enough to run for something under the Democratic banner,
02:03:19 --> 02:03:21 I don't have a party anymore.
02:03:22 --> 02:03:28 I'm a nomad. When people refer to me, they say, oh, he's with the extinct tribe.
02:03:28 --> 02:03:31 He's one of the few Democrats that's still left.
02:03:32 --> 02:03:35 All because of a lack of courage and leadership.
02:03:36 --> 02:03:45 All because of lack of a backbone. all because of a naivete that is nauseating.
02:03:46 --> 02:03:50 I want to believe that good things can happen.
02:03:51 --> 02:03:55 But I also understand that some BS is going to happen too.
02:03:55 --> 02:03:59 You got to navigate through the BS because the BS is just like cold air.
02:03:59 --> 02:04:00 It's at the lowest level.
02:04:01 --> 02:04:05 In order to get to the warm air up top, you're going to have to fight through it.
02:04:05 --> 02:04:09 And if you're not willing to fight, then get out of the way.
02:04:10 --> 02:04:13 General Patton may have been a racist, but he was right about that.
02:04:13 --> 02:04:15 Either you fight or get out of the way.
02:04:17 --> 02:04:20 Especially if you're going to be an impediment to those of us that want to fight.
02:04:21 --> 02:04:25 Get out of the way. If you don't want to fight, then step down as the minority leader.
02:04:26 --> 02:04:28 Just be a senator from New York.
02:04:30 --> 02:04:35 You like the power. You like the trappings. You like the ambiance.
02:04:35 --> 02:04:39 But it's not about the trappings. It's about the work.
02:04:40 --> 02:04:44 If you're not going to fight for what you supposedly believe it,
02:04:45 --> 02:04:50 because I question that too, especially in this time, if you're not going to
02:04:50 --> 02:04:54 fight, then step aside. Leave it alone.
02:04:55 --> 02:04:58 There were people asking me to step aside because I sent an email,
02:04:59 --> 02:05:04 an email that was meant for one person, and it went everywhere.
02:05:05 --> 02:05:09 They literally had a poll at a TV station, ask it be to quit.
02:05:10 --> 02:05:13 And that station director came to me and said, how you doing?
02:05:13 --> 02:05:18 I said, I'd be doing a lot better if you stop trying to get me to quit my job, right?
02:05:18 --> 02:05:24 That was an email. And I'm not saying I was wrong or whatever, right?
02:05:25 --> 02:05:31 That's irrelevant. at this point, because I did what I had to do at the time
02:05:31 --> 02:05:35 to address it and got reelected after that, right?
02:05:36 --> 02:05:40 But it was like people were asking for my job for an email.
02:05:41 --> 02:05:48 You are about to destroy the oldest political party and you get to keep your job?
02:05:49 --> 02:05:51 That's crazy. That's insane.
02:05:53 --> 02:05:57 And for those folks who think this is hyperbolic, just keep watching.
02:05:57 --> 02:06:01 If this vote goes down the way that Chuck Schumer wants it to go down and they
02:06:01 --> 02:06:04 pass that resolution, watch.
02:06:05 --> 02:06:11 When I put that out there on Facebook, people who were Democratic advocates
02:06:11 --> 02:06:14 said, yep, you're right.
02:06:15 --> 02:06:22 People that I know have raised money, that are raising money right now for Democratic candidates.
02:06:22 --> 02:06:27 People that have fought on issues, that I've fought with side by side on issues.
02:06:28 --> 02:06:35 They didn't say, Eric, you might be overdoing it. They said, yep, exactly.
02:06:35 --> 02:06:38 Because they understand what's at stake.
02:06:39 --> 02:06:43 They understand the fight of the lifetime that we are in.
02:06:44 --> 02:06:51 This is it, y'all. And I know people say, oh, but Kamala Harris had won.
02:06:52 --> 02:06:57 Be business as usual, which may be good, may not be good, but it's better than
02:06:57 --> 02:06:58 what we're dealing with now.
02:06:59 --> 02:07:03 So since we can't turn back time and get her elected.
02:07:04 --> 02:07:07 OK, so now we're going to have to deal with this.
02:07:09 --> 02:07:14 So understanding since November that we were going to have to be in a fight
02:07:14 --> 02:07:21 for the next four years, not the next two, the next four, because the midterms
02:07:21 --> 02:07:24 are not guaranteed. And especially now.
02:07:26 --> 02:07:29 Are mad when you send them an email saying, give me money.
02:07:30 --> 02:07:36 You were sending emails asking for money from us after Kamala had just lost.
02:07:37 --> 02:07:41 Didn't think, yeah, we might need a week to kind of let everybody process this.
02:07:42 --> 02:07:49 No, you went right back to asking us for money to build our hopes up again, only to throw it away.
02:07:49 --> 02:07:55 And I got people I don't even know, don't know what kind of a chance they have
02:07:55 --> 02:08:00 or when I'm getting solicitations every day on all three of my email accounts.
02:08:01 --> 02:08:08 And yet, when you have a chance to show what we're investing in, you surrender.
02:08:09 --> 02:08:16 I don't understand. I'm not giving money to a burial fund.
02:08:16 --> 02:08:21 I'm giving money to a building fund, right? There's a difference.
02:08:22 --> 02:08:27 When I give to a burial fund, I hope none of the money is ever used.
02:08:27 --> 02:08:31 When I give to a building fund, I expect to see progress.
02:08:32 --> 02:08:39 If you are asking people for money, then earn it. Fight for them.
02:08:40 --> 02:08:43 Fight for this government. Fight for this nation.
02:08:44 --> 02:08:47 Don't try to play 4D chess on a checkerboard.
02:08:48 --> 02:08:54 That's not how this works. If you're going to fight, fight.
02:08:54 --> 02:08:57 If you're not going to fight, get out of the way.
02:08:59 --> 02:09:04 And I hate to say that the Democratic Party that I grew up in,
02:09:05 --> 02:09:13 that I've been an activist in, I've been an elected official and a candidate in, is no longer here.
02:09:13 --> 02:09:20 And I'm going to have to deal with that on this podcast and any other venue
02:09:20 --> 02:09:24 that I participate in. And that's going to be hard.
02:09:25 --> 02:09:31 But what I hope emerges from the death of the oldest political party in the
02:09:31 --> 02:09:39 world is that a new party emerges that remembers what it means to be an American,
02:09:40 --> 02:09:44 and that they will fight for this nation to the very end.
02:09:45 --> 02:09:48 Thank you for listening. Until next time.
02:09:48 --> 02:10:36 Music.
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