0:00

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts

0:02

on expert. I'm Dan Rather and I'm

0:04

joined by the minister of Duluth, the

0:07

Duchess of Duluth. Did you

0:09

see any mice on your

0:11

trip? No mice, but I did

0:13

see the evidence of when said mice

0:15

were at play while the cat was

0:17

away because they did eat back of

0:19

one of the couch cushions. So whenever

0:21

they were removed for Aaron to pull

0:23

up the hide-a-bed, they would be up

0:25

on the counter and I would see

0:27

where those little mice had been gnawing

0:29

away at it. You don't think there was

0:31

a new mouse? There's definitely not new mice, no,

0:33

because we're just foods around and we would have

0:36

heard them. I told you I would have a talk with

0:38

them and I did. I appreciate it so

0:40

much because they were not in the

0:42

dunes with us at all. Okay, good.

0:44

Today we have Dr. Henry Louis Gates

0:46

Jr. He's an award-winning filmmaker,

0:48

a literary scholar, a journalist, and a

0:50

cultural critic. He's been teaching at Harvard,

0:52

this is a ballpark, I probably said

0:54

it in the interview, but I think

0:56

he's 30 years into teaching at Harvard.

1:00

His books include Stoney the Road,

1:02

Colored People, A Memoir, and The

1:04

Signifying Monkey. He has two new

1:06

docs that are dropping right now,

1:08

season 10 of Finding Your Roots

1:11

on PBS. And he also has

1:13

Gospel, which is also coming out

1:15

on PBS right quick, both sensational.

1:17

He is so good at both

1:19

of those things. This was such

1:21

a fun interview. It was, it was

1:23

like having a history lesson. Yeah, I loved it,

1:26

but like so dynamic and he's a very special

1:28

person. Yes, and he was sitting in a position

1:30

we've never experienced. He was much closer to us

1:32

because he was in a chair for his back

1:35

or something. Yeah, and he was quite

1:37

close to us, which I enjoyed. It was more like

1:39

having a meal with him then. It was, and

1:41

also it's funny because he comes up

1:43

on this show a fair amount. Yes,

1:46

so many of our guests have been

1:48

and done his show. Yeah, Kerry

1:50

Washington, that was a huge part of her

1:52

interview. Ends up becoming a book. Yeah,

1:54

so it's fun. So it's about time he

1:56

was here. Please enjoy Dr. Henry Louis Gates

1:58

Jr. We are

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use the offer code dax to save 10%

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on your first purchase of a website or

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domain. This

2:55

is so great to

2:58

have you. It's great to meet you.

3:02

I need a nice house. Well,

3:05

thank you so much. I got a proper hillbilly

3:07

compound here in the middle of

3:10

Los Angeles. Yeah, I'm

3:12

from West Virginia, so I understand.

3:14

My whole family's from rural Kentucky. It's a great

3:16

place to be. I'm a big fan of the

3:18

city. I'm

3:20

from West Virginia, so I understand.

3:22

My whole family's from rural Kentucky.

3:25

I grew up in Detroit, so we're the

3:27

only family in this neighborhood that has 20

3:29

cars in the yard and a motorhome and

3:31

dirt bikes. But you need a washing machine. I

3:34

do. With a ringer. Big

3:36

time. On the porch. And a

3:38

refrigerator. Yes, yes. I'm in

3:40

comedically an enormous satellite dish, which is also present.

3:42

You know, I'd like to. I have a stenosis,

3:45

so I would prefer to sit on a hard

3:47

chair. Is that possible? Oh, so then I could

3:49

straight up chair. More like a desk chair. Let

3:51

me grab it at a right angle. If that

3:54

totally got to make it work. Is this chair

3:56

like you? That's great. We had a

3:58

screen last night. We have LaVar

4:00

Burton. You know LaVar Burton? Yes, yes,

4:02

we're reading Rainbow. Yeah, are you in

4:05

the reading Rainbow generation? I am, yeah.

4:07

He has three generations of fans. Roots,

4:10

as me. Yeah. Reading Rainbow, the

4:12

two. Yeah. And then Star

4:14

Trek, of course. Yeah, that's true. You

4:17

sort of run the gambit. The gambit. I

4:19

think Chris is in the front with him too. Oh really?

4:22

Mm-hmm. Well, see if he can get my girls. Oh great. Another

4:24

challenge to get the last generation.

4:26

Exactly. Yeah. That's right. We're

4:28

going to start a screening episode to Finding

4:30

Roots at Loyola Marymouth. Oh nice. On a

4:32

big screen with a guest. Oh okay. And

4:34

500 people. And is it the

4:36

first time they're seeing it? Yeah, well Angela Davis,

4:39

the revolutionary, she wanted to see hers in advance.

4:41

And I didn't want her to go off, go

4:43

black on me in the middle of fucking 500

4:45

people. She's like, ah. But LaVar

4:47

didn't want to see his. He wept like a baby.

4:49

Oh. Yeah, and then he

4:52

sat next to me while we watched. Then

4:54

we did a one-on-one and he cried all

4:56

over again. Oh my God. No, it was

4:58

fascinating. It wasn't a great experience in my

5:00

life. Aw. How wonderful. And

5:02

that was at Loyola? Yeah. Okay, so we're

5:04

on in theory. Crying's got to be a

5:06

good signal when you do your job

5:09

right. The money shop. We might, yes. We might. For

5:11

us too, by the way. Yes, I think we might

5:13

share that in common. That's why I

5:16

brought that up. I'm not after it,

5:18

but obviously when it happens, I go

5:20

like, oh that's really special. It's a

5:22

real moment. Connection, yeah. Something occurred that's

5:24

real. I had to learn pacing, timing

5:26

with a guest. You know,

5:28

when we sit down, our reveals last

5:30

four hours or five hours. Right, we're

5:32

seeing an edited 48-minute version. Okay,

5:35

yeah, 30 minutes. Because we always do

5:37

two guests per episode. When I started,

5:39

it was called African-American Lives. I only

5:41

did black guests. My whole intent was

5:44

to replicate what Alex Haley purported to

5:46

have done. Forgive me, I don't know

5:48

who Alex Haley is. Alex Haley wrote

5:50

Roots. And then, Levar was Kundakinte in

5:52

Roots in 1977. So

5:55

Alex Haley is co-terminus

5:57

with African-American genealogy.

6:00

black people find their roots in Africa. Are

6:02

you old enough to know about the Go Back Machine?

6:04

No. Oh my God. Tell

6:06

me about the Go Back Machine. Oh, I think it was called

6:08

the Go Back Machine. You could go back in time. Oh, okay.

6:11

And it was a show. Yeah, it was a show. It

6:13

was a cartoon show. Okay. Okay. Maybe

6:16

somebody can Google. We do a fact check after. It'll be a

6:18

part of the fact check. Yeah. Alex

6:20

was able to reverse the middle passage,

6:23

go back to Africa and find the

6:25

village where he came from on his

6:27

mother's line. This was every African American

6:29

dream. So I conceived a

6:31

documentary series for PBS that did

6:33

what he purported to do scientifically

6:36

in a laboratory in the test

6:38

tube. That was the whole conceit.

6:40

And it aired in 2006 and

6:42

Oprah, Quincy, Chris Tucker, Bishop T.D.

6:44

Jakes, Mae Jemison, the first black

6:46

female astronaut because I didn't want

6:49

to just show business people. Yeah.

6:52

In a different range of phenotypes. Black people come

6:54

in a thousand shades of brown. Yeah. And

6:57

rainbow coalition of sepias. So

6:59

I wanted to stress that as

7:01

well. And we were revealing something to

7:03

one of the guests. I can't remember

7:05

which one. And they didn't cry. And

7:07

my producer, Osako Gladshow, at the time

7:10

when we were doing an analysis, I said, why

7:12

didn't they cry? I mean, it was such a

7:14

moving revelation. And she said, because you stepped on

7:17

their line, you didn't give them enough space. And

7:20

I was mortified and I had to learn

7:22

to count. I had another producer who said,

7:25

put your head down, shut your eyes and

7:27

count to five because they are getting so

7:29

much information. And the information is

7:31

so emotional that you have to

7:33

let them process it. And that's

7:35

what I've learned to do. And

7:37

last night, a rabbi after the

7:39

screening of LaVar Burton and West

7:41

Doody's episode, he congratulated me on

7:43

giving people their space to respond.

7:45

And I said, I owe it

7:47

to two producers who said, just

7:50

take a breath. Just let them

7:52

process. And it seemed like

7:54

an interminable amount of time to me.

7:57

But for them, it was just seconds. Learn

8:00

the same exact a blowhard. The would

8:02

help thus was were have an audio

8:04

format. So whereas you can give space

8:07

and there's a million things mean said

8:09

by the close up of the guests

8:11

on their face in this format is

8:13

dead, There's nothing there. So before we

8:15

edited this show started out noses live

8:18

in. I had that kind of neurotic

8:20

sense of feeling all the gaps and

8:22

then once we started editing I think

8:24

we both got more. Me I was

8:26

the main offenders, got more comfortable and

8:29

just letting things lives. But it's still

8:31

hard. There's this is how dependent urge

8:33

to comfort fill the space for vent

8:35

awkwardness. Years Only human stuff that's going

8:37

on while you're still trying to conduct

8:39

this other thing.a bad habits for me

8:41

Well and example is the fact that

8:44

my you're just speaking I nodded my

8:46

head and least three different same as

8:48

a cessna These are accused you're trying

8:50

to draw them out by his shining,

8:52

keeps him going to China, let people

8:54

know the you're listening and you don't

8:56

know what else going on in their

8:58

hit. I have the. Pleasure of

9:00

introducing you to stories you never

9:02

dreamed of, but which I have

9:05

not only relevant to the person

9:07

that you've become by genetically. the

9:09

stories about these people are embedded

9:11

in your genius. You've inherited Dna

9:14

from them. You are a walking

9:16

family tree. Yes, back five hundred

9:18

years. As amazing as case for

9:20

Mitochondrial Eve all the way back

9:22

to Africa. Yeah, and I mean

9:25

rarely. It's all their. it's history

9:27

before history, some form of immortality.

9:29

Now for. ancestors living in the last

9:31

six generations if we take thirty years

9:33

as generous you actually inherit dna from

9:36

each of those and that's a lot

9:38

of answers the first time i did

9:40

my family tree i was nine years

9:42

old for me i'm family tree was

9:44

my father's i my mother's one that's

9:46

right it never occurred to me that

9:48

the leaves and branches in the tree

9:51

a relevant to my their my roots

9:53

the branches of the tree pick a

9:55

better metaphor for your top down the

9:57

house and ssssss a have your father's

9:59

mother father's mother's life. And

10:01

your number of ancestors doubles

10:03

each generation. So you actually

10:05

have 64 fourth-grade grandparents. You

10:07

have two parents, you have

10:09

four grandparents, you have eight

10:11

great-grandparents, you have 16 great-grandparents,

10:13

you have 32 third-grade grandparents,

10:16

and 64 fourth-grade grandparents.

10:18

Now for me as an African-American,

10:20

I'm extraordinary likely in two ways.

10:22

I know the identities of six

10:25

of my fourth-grade grandparents. Two

10:29

sets were freed by the

10:31

American Revolution. And the third set

10:33

was freed in the

10:35

will of a man named Abraham Van

10:37

Meter in 1823. And the punchline is,

10:39

now I grew up in the hills

10:42

of eastern West Virginia in the Allegheny

10:44

Mountains on the Potomac River. Not exactly

10:47

a hotbed of African-American culture, you know

10:49

what I'm talking about? The

10:51

only thing we could get on the radio, AM,

10:54

in the daytime was WWVA. Country

10:57

music. Fifty

10:59

thousand won. And then the black

11:01

music would sink. After the

11:04

sun went down, the black states from

11:06

the south, we'd be able to pick

11:08

them up through AM. But when I

11:10

started the series, I'm looking east

11:13

toward Africa. I want to replicate Alex

11:15

Haley. I want my Kunta Kinte moment.

11:17

And when they did my family tree,

11:20

it turned out that the most interesting thing

11:22

and the most deeply moving thing that they

11:25

found was all these

11:27

generations of African-Americans who were

11:29

free since the American Revolution

11:31

or shortly after and who

11:33

lived 30 miles from

11:36

where I was born. No kidding.

11:38

My family never moved

11:41

from the hollows of

11:43

the hills of eastern West Virginia and

11:45

your country boy. You know, deep,

11:48

deep Roots. I didn't have

11:51

to look to Senegal or Angola

11:53

or Nigeria. I had to look

11:55

at Moorfield. Different counties. Yeah, Moorfield

11:57

and Hardy County. And I grew

11:59

up. On the Maryland West

12:01

Virginia border for the Potomac River The first,

12:03

they have deer season school holland. Yup, think

12:05

that when you're right now now you get

12:08

for ten the high seas around. The people

12:10

there wrap themselves up in the Second

12:12

Amendment. They have no idea why anybody would

12:14

want to ban guns, but you know what?

12:17

I'm seventy three years old and I lived

12:19

there twenty four seven till I was eighteen

12:21

when asked colleagues were not to. you have

12:23

to that time. I never heard

12:26

of one person shooting the know the

12:28

person and everybody had guns and I

12:30

don't want to come off like a

12:32

dissenting I believe And gun control. I

12:34

think we're I to control but nobody

12:36

at a Ak Forty seven issue to

12:38

dear Zachary no no as weren't have

12:40

Laura they're they're or an orange but

12:42

yeah yeah and doing their best buds

12:44

you to cow So which was mistaken

12:46

for a deer that have a morals

12:48

size. So I grew up in this

12:50

counter intuitive but deeply rooted African American

12:52

rural culture. Which. Doesn't sit in

12:54

the textbooks, the history books don't generally

12:57

right about the come a black experience

12:59

that I experienced and so I have

13:01

very deep roots which are right under

13:03

my seat. Ryan I had to go

13:05

to Yale, go to Cambridge England, get

13:07

a Phd, comeback, get a job at

13:09

Harvard as a professor. Wake up in

13:11

the middle night, bases through a dream,

13:13

get the idea for finding your roots,

13:15

then become the most de un aids

13:17

as a black man in the history

13:19

of the world only to find them.

13:21

My roots are right under my feet.

13:23

Are under your nose. As we would

13:25

say, a New Era Zone able to

13:28

video you got an amazing yes it's

13:30

so ingrained. Let's go back to their

13:32

those so nine nine years old you

13:34

do. The first family tree was that

13:36

like a school exercise on July second,

13:38

Nineteen Sixty Edward St. Lawrence Capesize. Here's

13:40

my father's father. He looked like a

13:42

wingman. he was so why we called

13:44

him Casper behind his back and assess.

13:47

You guessing? youngmenowme I I have asthma from

13:49

a young Iranians as a means of gamers

13:52

trances. There are only two of us. my

13:54

brother paul who's an oral surgeon retired

13:56

now and me the baby and daddy

13:58

was also looks white man. He

14:00

was also mistaken for Jewish. He even went

14:03

to a Jewish school for a while in

14:05

Newark, New Jersey. He worked in a paper

14:07

mill. He worked in the paper mill in

14:09

the daytime and was a janitor at the

14:11

telephone company in the evening. But his aunt

14:13

married a dentist. She went to Howard University

14:16

and became a nurse at the beginning of

14:18

the 20th century. My father was the seventh

14:20

son and was really brilliant. So they brought

14:22

him up there to live and he went

14:24

to a public school in Newark and most

14:26

of the kids were Jewish. So

14:28

he goes to school on Yom Kippur.

14:30

And the teacher says, what are you doing here?

14:33

It's Yom Kippur. And my daddy said, what? Yom

14:35

Kippur, what is that? And he realized he thought he was Jewish. He was

14:37

like, why isn't anyone here? Is it deer season up here? You

14:41

got it. So daddy took

14:43

my brother and me up

14:45

to the open casket at his father's

14:47

funeral. It's July 2nd, 1960 in Cumberland,

14:50

Maryland, which is 25 miles from the little town

14:52

in West Virginia in which I grew up. All

14:55

the gazes are from Cumberland, also on the Potomac

14:57

River. All the Colmans, my mother's family, were from

14:59

Piedmont, which crossed the river from

15:01

the paper mill. And all the gazes are

15:03

still in Cumberland Mill, going back to the

15:05

Old Scapes, which is what the story is

15:08

about. So I had never been that close

15:10

to a corpse before. And my grandfather looked

15:12

ridiculously white. I mean, if he looked like

15:15

Casper with blood coursing through his veins, you

15:17

can imagine how white he looked dead. He

15:19

looked like he had been coated with alabaster

15:21

and sprinkled with baby powder. He identified though

15:24

as African-American. He was a race man, yeah.

15:26

And he didn't try to pass. But we've

15:28

had people in the Gates family who did

15:30

pass. Well, just I think it's relevant for

15:32

backstory. You did ultimately figure out that you

15:35

have 50% European ancestry. That's

15:37

right. With some Irish folks in there. 50% European and 50%

15:41

Sub-Saharan Africa. 50, wow. And so I

15:43

was just freaked out being that close

15:46

to a corpse and also looking at

15:49

this alabaster-coated man who was my grandfather.

15:51

So that was very traumatic. So then

15:53

we went to the Rose Hill Episcopal

15:55

Cemetery. The Gates was very Episcopan and

15:58

buried my grandfather. And all the Gates are buried. there.

16:00

And we came back to my grandparents house

16:02

and daddy took Rocky, my brother, and me

16:04

upstairs to his parents' bedroom. And we'd never

16:07

even been upstairs in this house because you

16:09

couldn't do that. Things are very formal then.

16:11

You couldn't go upstairs in your grandparents' house.

16:13

You couldn't sit on a bed. You couldn't

16:16

step on a grave. And you definitely could

16:18

not call an adult by their first name.

16:20

My parents are gone. Their parents are gone. And

16:23

if I'm telling a story about Mr. Ozzie, I'm

16:25

still calling him Mr. Ozzie, but I'm still

16:27

here. So anyway, it was like

16:30

going to the moon for us. Rocky and me

16:32

were looking at all this furniture and all this

16:34

stuff. My grandfather, his hobby was to grow tulips

16:36

and he had all these framed blue and red

16:39

and yellow, I think was the third color,

16:41

ribbons for competition. He went, we had no idea.

16:43

So anyway, there was a sun porch off their

16:45

bedroom. Daddy takes us out on the sun porch

16:47

and there was a big armoire and daddy opened

16:50

it and it was full of bank

16:52

ledgers. And my grandfather was a janitor

16:54

at the first national bank in

16:56

Carmelon, Maryland. And he was stealing these bank

16:58

ledgers. So Rocky and I compared notes. We

17:01

thought this man, we were rich. Sure. He

17:03

had squirreled away some fortune. Unfortunately,

17:05

my grandfather was stealing these

17:07

bank ledgers and using them

17:10

as scrapbooks. He was clipping

17:12

newspapers and he glued

17:14

the clippings in. Just using it on his

17:16

paper. Yeah. There were dozens. So daddy starts

17:18

taking these big bank ledgers, putting them on

17:20

the ground where he was crouched, turning the

17:22

pages for receipt. Finally, after six or seven

17:24

of these explorations, he found what he was

17:26

looking for. And he said, you boys look

17:28

here. He lived to be 97 and a

17:31

half and two dying day. He called me

17:33

boy. That was a term of affection for

17:35

me. So we looked and it

17:37

was an obituary and the obituary was dated January

17:39

6, 1888. And

17:41

it said, die this day in Cumberland, Maryland. Jane

17:44

Gates, an estimable colored book.

17:46

Like estimating cheese. No, no.

17:49

No, no, no. Osteemable. That's

17:52

right. A person who got a

17:54

greater esteem. Yes. Yes. All right.

17:56

Then he pulled a sepia colored

17:58

photograph out between the pages. the

18:00

scrapbook and he said, that's Jane Gates,

18:03

that's the oldest ancestor we've

18:05

ever been able to trace. I

18:07

never want you to forget her name and

18:09

I never want you to forget her face

18:11

and she was a midwife and in the

18:13

obituary I think they used a euphemism that

18:15

suggests that she was did nursing and my

18:18

brother and I stared this obituary said this

18:20

funny-looking lady who had her midwifery out in

18:22

on it was just head and shoulders but

18:24

she had this cap on and this white

18:26

thing and then daddy put the photograph back

18:28

in the scrapbook, closed it, gathered

18:30

all the rest of them, put in

18:32

the armoire. We went downstairs had the

18:35

repast meal following the burial and then

18:37

we drove home to Piedmont. Now because

18:39

my father worked two jobs at the

18:41

paper mill in his janitor we were

18:43

the quote-unquote richest black people in this

18:45

little town of 2,500 people,

18:47

an Irish Italian paper mill town with a

18:49

handful of black people. So what that meant

18:52

because he had this second job extra income.

18:54

And mom worked. No mom and ever worked.

18:56

Oh that's no because that was a thing.

18:58

He worked two jobs so my mother could

19:00

be a lady. You should sue Wikipedia said she

19:02

cleaned houses. When she was a little girl she did

19:04

and she was one of 12. She

19:07

cleaned houses. She cleaned one house

19:09

and the people were so horrible to her but it was

19:12

very nice house and it turned out years later it was

19:14

owned by my father's best friend who was this white man

19:16

and when I was 25 I came

19:18

back from England I talked to my brother and we

19:20

bought that house for my Oh wow.

19:22

That feels good. And the first night we

19:25

were at dinner and we were all so

19:27

happy and my brothers Mary and I was

19:29

marrying and we had really nice

19:31

wine and right in the middle then my

19:33

mother burst into tears and she said these

19:35

people treated me so horribly and one time

19:38

they planted five dollars in the sofa to

19:40

see if she would steal it and she

19:42

was 12 years old. Skippy she said I

19:44

don't know if I can live in this

19:46

house and we said mama it's not Thompson's

19:49

house anymore this Pauline Gates house this is

19:51

your house everything was fine. So sorry you

19:54

were at the downstairs because

19:56

we had a very nice house I always

19:58

had my own bedroom and I

20:00

had my own bookcase and

20:03

my own desk. Beautiful mahogany antique

20:05

set. And on my desk next

20:07

to my bed sat a red

20:09

Webster's dictionary because in the eighth

20:11

grade I fell in love with

20:13

etymology and I loved just reading

20:15

a dictionary. And the last thing

20:17

I did was look up the

20:19

word estimable. Okay, here we go.

20:21

Because I didn't know what it

20:23

was. And I thought

20:25

wow, that funny looking old lady who has

20:27

my surname is estimable. Maybe I'm estimable too.

20:30

So the next day was July 3rd, 1960.

20:33

I'm still nine years old. I would be 10

20:35

in September that year. And we went to

20:38

the colored 4th of July picnic.

20:40

Those schools integrated in my county incredibly

20:43

in 1955. Remember Brown v. Board,

20:46

the Supreme Court decisions, 54. So you

20:48

would have been four years old at

20:50

that time when they integrated? They integrated

20:52

in 55. Oh, okay. So you entered

20:54

it was already integrated. And first grade,

20:56

I went to the white school. So

20:58

I went to 12 years of integrated

21:00

school. In spite of the fact that

21:02

the schools integrated, the social events were

21:04

segregated because people still weren't crazy about

21:06

miscegenation, interracial dating or sex. That was

21:09

not happening. And on the way back,

21:11

I asked daddy to stop at Red

21:13

Bull's newsstand, which is like a convenience

21:15

store today. He was a virus. I

21:17

remember I'm from an Irish Italian paper.

21:19

So everybody, they were either Irish Italian

21:21

or some mixture or some variety of

21:23

that. They were all Catholic. Yep. I

21:25

asked daddy to buy me a composition

21:28

book. And that night in front

21:31

of our 12 inch RCA Victor

21:33

television, I interviewed my mother and

21:35

father about what only

21:37

years later I would

21:39

learn is called your family tree or

21:41

your genealogy. I wanted to know two

21:44

things. I wanted to know how someone

21:46

with my physical feature, my phenotype could

21:48

be descended from a grandfather who was

21:50

so white, he looked like a ghost

21:52

with translucent skin.

21:55

And I wanted to know what in the world was my

21:57

connection to this woman who had been until

22:00

slavery was abolished in Maryland in 1864, but

22:04

who had my name, and who had

22:06

five children, all fathered by the same

22:08

man, and whose identity she took to

22:10

the grave, a white man. The

22:12

only thing she told those

22:14

five children, including my great-grandfather,

22:16

also Edward Gates, was that

22:19

they had the same father and that he

22:21

was white. Wow. They never met him. They

22:23

didn't know his name. Did you uncover this?

22:25

You must have at this point. To this day,

22:27

there's only one Gates who knows

22:29

the identity of this man. Is

22:32

his name Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.? Oh

22:34

my God. We are having a Gates family

22:36

reunion in May

22:38

in Cumberland, Jane Gates' house, which she

22:41

bought in 1870. Cash.

22:44

Wow. Where did a person

22:46

who was enslaved to 1864 get

22:49

enough money to plunk down 12 in

22:51

a white neighborhood for a house? That

22:54

house, because of my cousin Johnny Gates,

22:56

is on the National Historic Register. We

22:58

are having a family reunion, and C.C.

23:00

Moore, the most brilliant genetic

23:02

genealogist in the history of

23:04

science, will reveal the

23:07

identity of Jane Gates' paramour. Oh

23:09

my gosh. Okay. Wow. And

23:11

obviously, it's assumed that that mysterious man is the

23:13

one who bought that house for her. Or gave

23:15

her the cash. She gave her the cash. That's

23:18

what we presume, but we don't know. Because $1,200

23:20

is significant. But you don't have to

23:22

be Sherlock Holmes against that. Right. But

23:24

who knows? Some of my cousins

23:26

have taken DNA to... Let me tell

23:28

you something interesting about that family. There

23:30

was Jane. Her eldest son was my

23:32

great-grandfather. He married a woman also very

23:34

like-complicated. They had two boys and three

23:37

girls. At the beginning of the 20th century, they

23:39

sent those three girls to Howard

23:41

University. Really? And they kept my

23:43

grandfather to run our 200-acre farm in

23:46

Patissons Creek, West Virginia, which is very near

23:49

Piedmont and very near Cumberland, Maryland. It's hard

23:51

for people to understand, but the paper mill

23:53

town I grew up in is halfway between

23:55

Pittsburgh and Washington. It's a funny

23:57

tri-state area, and it's on the Maryland-West Virginia. border

24:00

and Pennsylvania is only a few miles

24:02

away. So that's a scene of a

24:04

million Civil War. Harper's Ferry where John

24:06

Brown's raid on the federal

24:09

arsenal took place in 1859 is now

24:11

a superhighway, about an hour and 15

24:13

minutes away. Gettysburg is fairly nearby. So

24:15

clearly there were family members, well maybe

24:18

not because they've been merged by your

24:20

current family, but certainly family members, some

24:22

were living in Maryland, some were living

24:25

in West Virginia, one had slavery, one

24:27

did not at some period, right? Well

24:29

West Virginia was Virginia until June 20th

24:31

1863. But the reason that I descend

24:34

from so many free people of color

24:36

is that there was no need

24:38

in those mountains for slavery. You

24:40

know you're not having tobacco plantations

24:42

like we had in Virginia or

24:44

cotton plantations like you had in

24:46

Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia which

24:48

is what led to the Trail

24:50

of Tears. The richest cotton growing

24:52

soil in the United States and

24:54

perhaps one of the richest cotton

24:56

growing soils in the world happened

24:58

to be occupied by five Native

25:00

American nations, the so-called five civilized

25:02

tribes, which is why in 1830

25:04

the President of the United States

25:06

signed the Indian Removal Act Andrew Jackson

25:08

to get that soil from the creek

25:11

to Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Cherokee and

25:13

the Seminole. So where I grew up

25:15

my ancestors there were house servants maybe

25:17

but no estates so we were lucky

25:19

in that way. Yeah. And that led

25:21

to people being freed early on and

25:23

Joe and Sarah Bruce, my fourth great-grandparents

25:25

of my father's mother's line were freed

25:28

as I mentioned in 1823 by a

25:30

man named Abraham Van Meter and we

25:32

have his will. So he probably freed

25:34

them when he liked them he said

25:36

that in his will also because

25:38

he didn't want to burn in hell. Right,

25:40

right, right. The will says on the death

25:42

of my wife Elizabeth Van Meter they

25:45

will be free and he gave them 1,000 acres of land

25:47

and some of that land

25:49

is still in our family the Bruce branch. Wow.

25:51

You know what's horrible though? My instinct

25:53

is to say that's nice. Well

25:55

there's a lot of like

25:57

contradictory emotions you have like I

26:00

was even inclined to say like, yes,

26:02

if there's not an enormous economic benefit

26:04

to the practice, it was also expensive

26:06

to keep people in that time. So

26:08

you couldn't have done it if it

26:10

wasn't yielding. And I'm like, well, that's

26:12

kind of a dicey thing to bring

26:14

into this. Well, it's all horrible. It's

26:16

all just factual. Because, apologies for slavery.

26:18

I know this is going to sound

26:21

outrageous, but some people, historians, made the

26:23

argument that slave owners were being benevolent

26:25

because they were losing money and they

26:27

were doing this to help these poor,

26:29

benighted Africans graduate from the University of

26:31

Slavery. I don't buy that for a

26:33

second, but I read a great paper

26:35

when I was an anthropology major about

26:37

someone breaking down in modern day economic

26:40

times the cost of each of the

26:42

things they were supplying, whether it was

26:44

boots and it was food and this

26:46

and that, and then making an analysis

26:48

of minimum wage and confronting the fact

26:50

that a lot of the modern systems

26:52

are nearly obviously you have freedom. They're

26:54

not comparable in that way, but just

26:57

the actual cost in many instances

27:00

is cheaper to just pay this minimum wage,

27:02

which is completely insignificant and you can't sustain

27:04

your, you know, that was the angle of

27:06

the paper. Right. You studied

27:08

anthropology. Yeah. At UCLA. You

27:11

guys were both summa. I'm just some measly magna. Glad

27:13

you brought that up. Yeah, yeah. Two days in a

27:15

row. I know. I

27:18

was a class of 73 and when I

27:20

hit Yale in 69, anthropology was

27:22

one of the sexiest of the majors. Sidney

27:25

Mintz, who wrote a brilliant book on the

27:27

role of sugar. You know, in America you

27:29

think about cotton and slavery, but the

27:32

real demonic commodity was sugar. That's everything

27:34

that's happening in the Caribbean. The Caribbean

27:36

and Brazil. Yeah. Okay, here's

27:38

a quiz parley game for you. Oh, great. We

27:41

now know. I got to remind you, I'm only

27:43

magna. Yeah, I like it. This might be a summa question.

27:45

Okay. And he's just like, yeah, I'm not

27:47

out there. Well, and I walk with a cane. So, yeah, I see you.

27:49

I'm not a fan of that. I'm not a fan of that. I'm not

27:51

a fan of that. I see you. I died

27:53

last night. So,

27:56

three spades. By

27:59

the way, do you play spades? Everybody plays bass. We

28:01

are sad. It's our religion. We probably played

28:03

nine hours a week. Really? Oh

28:06

my God. So when you just said that,

28:08

I got a burst of excitement. Okay, so

28:10

we know because of a huge database called

28:12

the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, put

28:14

together by a man I admire so much,

28:16

David Altus and David Richardson who recently passed,

28:19

and a lot of other historians. It turns

28:21

out there were little pockets of historians trying

28:23

to count the number of Africans who were

28:26

enslaved shipped across the Atlantic. These guys figured

28:28

out they could bring everybody together and collate

28:30

all the data. And this is what they

28:32

found. Any of your listeners can look up

28:35

voyages.org or just type in the Transatlantic Slave

28:37

Trade Database and you can get to the

28:39

website that has the data that I'm about

28:41

to share with you. So

28:44

we now know that there were 12.5 million Africans

28:46

shipped across the Atlantic between the

28:48

early 16th century and 1866, more

28:50

or less. 15%

28:53

die in the Middle Passage. That means

28:55

about 10.7 million get off

28:58

the boats. How many of those 10.7

29:00

million came to what is now the

29:02

United States? Just guess. Mine's

29:04

4 million. That's good guess. Mine's 9.

29:07

9 million. Yeah. Okay,

29:09

final guess. Yeah, I'm going to have to

29:11

stick because it's so arbitrary. That's my hunch. What?

29:17

Of the 12.5 million? Of

29:19

the 12.7 million, only 388,000 were shipped directly. From

29:25

Africa to what is now the United States

29:27

and another 70,000 were shipped to the West

29:31

Indies and then came 450,000. That's

29:34

it. So it

29:36

was entirely a sugar workforce.

29:39

Five million went to Brazil. Oh

29:42

my God. Brazil today is the second

29:44

largest black nation in the world after

29:46

Nigeria. Approximately 950,000 went to Cuba. 172,000

29:51

went to Santa Bang,

29:53

which is now Haiti because of

29:55

the Haitian Revolution. Almost 2X got

29:57

to Haiti. A million went to

30:00

Jamaica. So, five million went to

30:02

Brazil, a million went to

30:04

Jamaica, almost a million went to

30:06

Cuba, 772,000 went to Haiti, and

30:09

all because of a five-letter word called

30:11

sugar. And the average lifespan of

30:13

an enslaved man on a sugar plantation

30:16

was seven years. Fuck. Oh,

30:18

Lord. And they just replaced them like

30:21

we used to replace spark plugs. Can

30:23

I now add an anthropological part of

30:25

that whole story? That always fascinates me.

30:28

When you look at the incredibly high

30:30

rate of hypertension and related health issues

30:32

among African Americans in exploring why that

30:34

is, it was pointed out that most

30:37

of the Africans were

30:39

captured in East Africa.

30:42

Shaking your head no. No. 99%

30:45

came from West Africa. Okay. So many

30:47

were marched across Africa to sail out

30:49

of West Africa where they were shipped

30:51

from and many, many died on that

30:53

walk from dehydration. So the people that

30:55

made it to West Africa and to

30:57

get on a boat had already had

30:59

an inordinately high salinity count naturally in

31:01

their body. Then they get on a

31:03

ship where this whole other wave dies

31:05

of again dehydration and the only ones

31:07

that actually made it alive to get

31:09

to these islands or to hear are

31:11

people that had such an inordinately high

31:13

salinity count genetically. And that's the group

31:15

we start with here. It's called the

31:17

salt thesis. Essentially, you're right. Africa

31:20

is too big to have walked anybody from

31:22

the East to the West. Right. Or from

31:24

the interior. That's better. And

31:26

so it is a thesis, which

31:28

is a salient thesis that if

31:30

you could retain fluid under those

31:32

circumstances, as you put it, Mr.

31:34

Anthropologist, Mr. Magnus, that would be

31:37

very well. Sounds derogatory in this

31:39

group. That

31:41

you had a better chance to survive. That's the good

31:43

news. The bad news is if you retain fluid, you

31:45

have high blood pressure. So that's what's called

31:47

the salt thesis. Yes. Stay

31:50

tuned for more armchair expert.

31:54

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34:10

Can I get into one other dicey observation I

34:12

made? I'm reluctant to say it out loud, but

34:14

it definitely struck me, which is I grew up

34:17

in Detroit, Detroit. Yeah, I mean, I grew up

34:19

20 miles outside of Detroit, but

34:21

I also did live in downtown Detroit before I ended up moving

34:24

here. And when

34:26

I went to Africa in 2012, and

34:29

I was in Tanzania and I was in Kenya

34:31

and I was in a few different places. My

34:34

initial shock was, oh my

34:37

God, these black folks are so much smaller

34:39

than the black folks in Detroit. I

34:42

mean, significantly, like if I'm walking around

34:44

Detroit, I'm maybe in the 65th

34:47

percentile in height and muscularity and

34:50

everything else. And I go

34:52

to Africa and nearly everyone I meet,

34:54

I'm bigger than. And for me, I

34:56

was like, oh my God, this is

34:58

so interesting. But there's a great variety.

35:00

You know, the Tutsis, they're

35:03

very famous for being tall. Yes.

35:05

And the Hutu or Graciel, which

35:07

is why the white people said that they should run

35:09

things. But your point is that nutrition,

35:11

the amount of milk determines your stature. And

35:13

there's been so genetic. But also genetic. Who

35:15

survived? Who was robust enough to get here?

35:18

Who was bred to be a laborer? There's

35:20

just so many factors that lead to how

35:22

they were here. Yes. Once they were here,

35:24

I couldn't not notice it. You've been several

35:26

times and you did the great show. When

35:29

I was an undergraduate, Yale had a program

35:31

called Five Year BA. Twelve people were chosen.

35:33

It was very competitive. And you went to

35:35

what we used to call the Third World,

35:37

the developing world. And you had to work,

35:40

hence Five Year BA. And I

35:42

really wanted to go to Africa. When I

35:44

was a kid, I read an article in

35:46

the Reader's Digest about an African kid who

35:48

essentially walked across the equator and was saved

35:51

by these missionaries. And I think it ended

35:53

up in Washington state. And the idea across

35:55

an equator became an obsession with me. Yeah.

35:58

And I was pre-med. I was raised. to

36:00

be a doctor, my brother's an oral surgeon.

36:02

For my mother, God bless her soul,

36:04

you know, in heaven there's a father, son, the Holy

36:06

Ghost and a medical doctor. Birthday

36:09

stethoscope, you know, Christmas

36:11

dissecting kits. All

36:14

smart little color boys and color girls are going

36:16

to be doctors. Doctor was the

36:18

top of the heat. Then lawyers. Same with

36:20

Indian family. Any immigrant family also

36:22

has that exact same... Hierarchy.

36:24

...reination. You'd go to someone's house and

36:26

they'd say, Skippy and Rocky, I understand you're doing well in

36:28

school, what are you going to be? My mother's saying, they

36:31

are going to be doctors. Yeah. Yeah.

36:34

Yeah. The gazes are Episcopalians

36:36

and the Anglican communion is divided up between

36:38

what we might call first world and third

36:40

world diocese. And the diocese of West Virginia's

36:42

sister diocese was the diocese of Central Toninga

36:44

and Nica, now Central Tanzania. So

36:47

I was able to get a job at

36:49

a mission hospital in the middle of Tanzania

36:51

with the Gogo people. In those days, they

36:53

didn't have frequent flyer miles, they had air

36:55

miles. So if you're JFK and I'm Dar

36:58

Es Salaam Airport, there were exactly 11,000 air

37:00

miles between the two. So

37:03

I got on a plane with

37:05

a backpack, Paris sandals, jeans, three

37:08

books, plus Arthur Frommer's Europe on

37:10

$5 a day. Oh, lovely.

37:12

You had a Frommer's Guide. And

37:14

I flew from New York to

37:16

London, to Paris, to Amsterdam, to

37:18

Rome, to Athens, to Tel Aviv,

37:21

to Addis Ababa, to Nairobi,

37:23

and to Dar Es Salaam, over,

37:26

I don't know, six week period. And

37:28

then slept from Dar Es Salaam into

37:30

the interior. The worst ship of my

37:32

life was on a bus. It

37:34

took 18 hours to go from Dar to

37:36

Dodoma, the official capital. I'm nice as hell,

37:39

it's imaginable. Oh my God, I bounced off

37:41

the ceiling, I mean literally. And people got

37:43

on with goats and chickens and stuff. And

37:46

I did my best not to burst into tears and

37:48

think, this is the biggest vatake I ever made in

37:50

my home. Yeah. Exploring

37:54

my roots. I didn't think this was what

37:56

my roots were going to look like. And

37:58

I worked in that mission hospital. I

38:00

learned a lot about myself. I

38:02

was living with European missionaries. There

38:04

were maybe half a dozen. They

38:07

were mostly Australian nurses and an

38:09

Australian doctor. And I was

38:11

a female doctor for a while and she

38:13

eventually left. We had a 120-bed hospital for

38:15

50,000 people

38:19

in that district. I worked in the theater,

38:21

as we say in England. I worked in

38:23

the operating room holding a mask for

38:25

people under anesthesia. That's what I did every

38:27

day. And I saw things that I never

38:29

would ever see in medical school in the

38:32

United States. A woman came in, said

38:34

she'd been pregnant for two years. The

38:37

doctor was the jack of all

38:39

trades. He did everything. He removed

38:42

a basketball tumor out of this

38:44

lady's stomach. I learned a lot

38:46

about human beings. I learned a lot about

38:48

myself. I learned how African I was and

38:50

wasn't and how American I was and wasn't.

38:53

Yeah, can I ask what your fantasy was

38:55

before arriving and what was the dissonance and

38:57

what did you conclude? That's a great question.

39:00

I don't think anybody's ever asked me that.

39:02

First of all, there were so many myths

39:04

about what our people in Africa were like.

39:07

I'm using scare quotes. We got

39:09

quotes going, yeah. What our people

39:11

were composed of, what different African

39:14

civilizations consisted of. And I

39:16

wanted to see for myself. I

39:18

wanted to get to know one

39:20

specific African culture, the Gogo people.

39:22

The language is marvelous. A singer,

39:24

one was an Ngo-go, plural is

39:26

wago-go. They lived in Ugo-go and

39:28

they spoke Kigogo. Wonderful. And I

39:30

learned a little Swihili. I was

39:32

tutored by a fellow student

39:34

from Tanzania who was at

39:36

Yale. But my vocabulary was

39:38

inordinately populated by two kinds of

39:41

words. A word like wehale, which

39:43

means breathe deeply. Right, right.

39:45

And because I was living in missionaries, I had

39:47

to go to chapel every morning. So let's see.

39:49

You have a couple trucks out there, right? So

39:52

you can pick the kind of truck that's your

39:54

fantasy truck and it will be my gift if

39:56

you answer the following question. What

39:58

does wehale mean? No, we're Haley

40:01

means breathing. Okay. I'm sorry. We just say

40:03

that because no what does um takati fu

40:05

mean? It's a religious term. I was just

40:07

gonna say you're in chapel. So that's a

40:09

good context, right? Fantasy

40:14

truck, okay. I'm gonna

40:16

say in his name as

40:19

close. Oh, but not Holy

40:24

holy holy Holy

40:27

Oh God

40:30

almighty It means

40:32

holy holy So I have all kind

40:34

of words of my vocabulary related to

40:37

the hospital and to church Right

40:40

breathe deeply and holy but I guess my

40:42

question is you're a young man We're all

40:44

searching for our identity at that point the

40:46

boat ride on the Queen Elizabeth to to

40:48

go to England I know that moment. I

40:50

can only imagine what the narrative self was

40:52

saying. I'm going to England I'm gonna study.

40:55

Oh my god. That was so happy. I

40:57

can only imagine so this is another one

40:59

those ones Like I'm gonna go to

41:01

Africa. I'm from there. I'm

41:03

gonna feel when I get there Did

41:06

you have expectations that you would have some kind

41:08

of sense of? Connection

41:11

a connection and a clarification and the

41:13

whole we all carry being filled Those

41:15

were the questions on the table would

41:17

I feel connection? I was completely open

41:20

How African is an African American?

41:22

Uh-huh a 19 year old I

41:25

turned 20 in the village I

41:27

was never into romanticizing Africa. I

41:30

didn't throw away on my Western Glory weren't have

41:32

a closet full of dashiki. I have one dashiki,

41:34

which was cool. They weren't the holders of magic

41:36

They were gonna hand you I had an afro.

41:38

I'm very proud that after you could Google skip

41:40

gates and afro You can see it online. Oh,

41:42

I shall after I watch the time machine cartoon

41:44

straight over to the afro The

41:47

way back machine way back way back. I'm

41:49

getting closer to remembering I realized

41:51

that Africa was a long time ago in

41:53

the history of our people that we were

41:56

an African people who lived in the new

41:58

world and Even. The

42:00

Africans called me. In

42:02

any other African American and I'm single.

42:05

Which. Basically means white men. Were

42:08

fewer hours. You are brother, but you

42:10

are Western. The most important thing I

42:12

realize it's how American we are. To

42:14

me, culture defines everything. I've always been

42:16

kind of hesitant at a notion that

42:18

our identity or this spirit or anything

42:21

would be just a genetic thing. Get

42:23

that it would be by light. As

42:25

ridiculous as I was. Essential Answers Operating

42:27

software. I have two children. If.

42:29

It birth. They. Had been

42:31

spirited away to Say China and

42:34

raised in China. And. If

42:36

the Chinese is crucial to what I'm

42:38

about to say, it's Chinese. people. Treated

42:40

them like they returns. They be Chinese.

42:42

Read a handy when I go to.

42:45

Do you know? yeah, like bows or

42:47

eyes and fried chicken run out of

42:49

that. There are those things are not

42:51

biological. That's a crazy ridiculous thing. So

42:54

I loved it. I love the people.

42:56

they love me. I love being there.

42:58

My went from pre med took me

43:00

a few years. Cambridge mas the crucial

43:02

arena when I abandon that fantasy being

43:05

a doctor. And discovered thanks to

43:07

to Africans while the Syrian girl who

43:09

that a Nobel prize thirteen years later

43:11

after we met them. First African the

43:13

get the Nobel prize in literature and

43:16

my best friend climbing Anthony appear who

43:18

writes the Ss as calm in the

43:20

Sunday Times. Malkin, a great philosopher both

43:22

the Godfather new met them your golf

43:24

I met him and caped you are

43:27

fucking bouncing around. There's a lot Miss

43:29

Do and you've already been Africa now

43:31

you're in England was one more element

43:33

remembered the fantasy of Italian cause even.

43:36

ah yes yes so after i lived

43:38

in the village the people didn't have

43:40

running water and didn't have electricity we

43:42

had a generator because as living with

43:44

the missionaries many of the most important

43:46

battles more were one were fought in

43:48

africa this was a german outposts his

43:50

village are real and i lived in

43:52

the german jail ah of like a

43:54

german for it and there is a

43:56

cemetery of german soldiers who had died

43:58

is always called Kilimatindi. And you could

44:00

see it in the very first documentary

44:02

that I made. It was for the

44:05

BBC series called The Great Rail Journey.

44:07

You went with your wife, your then

44:09

wife and your two daughters. Yeah. And

44:11

it ends with me going back to

44:13

the village 25 years later. Between August

44:15

and December, I lived in that village.

44:17

And it was tough. I

44:19

was seeing things. I didn't like the

44:21

politics of the missionaries vis-a-vis the Africans,

44:23

and I got in arguments with them.

44:25

Let me put it kindly. I mean,

44:27

these people were sacrificing so much

44:29

to help the African people, but

44:31

they also had condescending attitudes about

44:33

it. They came with a prize.

44:35

Yeah. We got in big fights

44:38

about that. And finally, I left and I

44:40

went to Dar Es Salaam. There was a

44:42

great university and I heard the great historian

44:44

Walter Rodney lecture about the history of slavery

44:46

and relationship to economics and all kinds of

44:48

interesting things. I was there about a month

44:51

and I wanted to go to Zanzibar. So

44:53

go to Zanzibar, you would go down to

44:55

the dock at night and there were fishing

44:57

boats that would sail overnight to Zanzibar from

44:59

Dar. And you'd give them a dollar.

45:01

And there was this white guy there named

45:04

Lawrence Biddle Weeks. Well, hold on a second.

45:06

Yeah, your name recalls incredible. Go ahead, Monica.

45:08

It's kind of unparalleled. Yeah. We always comment

45:10

on that. We've noticed that older people do

45:12

this. My mother does this. She remembers all

45:14

of her schoolteacher's names. We're working on the

45:16

theory on why this is. Maybe too much

45:18

stimuli and TV and something else. We don't

45:20

have it. I feel like it's unique to

45:22

your generation. Well, but it's genetic in my

45:24

family. My father and brother could tell you

45:26

the hand you played in Bidwys 20 years

45:28

ago. I mean, they had this photographic

45:31

memory. I have a good memory. They had a

45:33

perfect memory. My brother could tell me all the

45:35

bones in the body, all the nerves, that kind

45:37

of stuff. A sign of genius. But anyway, you

45:39

got a white cat on a boat. Larry,

45:42

and halfway over to Zanzibar. And

45:44

you have to imagine what the

45:46

stars look like with no pollution.

45:49

You could see the Southern Cross, a different

45:51

set of constellations. It's just

45:53

out there. The Equator moves its tears.

45:55

He Told me that his fantasy had

45:57

been like Cecil Rhodes. The

46:00

old railroad caped to Cairo to

46:02

Larry's. Was. The hitchhike from South

46:04

Africa are going to Egypt. I told

46:06

him mine does it. Readers Digest article

46:08

was a speech. I was equally that.

46:11

We flipped a coin. I. Won

46:13

an about two weeks later we

46:15

went from Dar Salaam to Mombasa.

46:17

Kenya Mombasa to Nairobi Nairobi to

46:19

compile of the capital of Uganda

46:22

right after idiom means coup was

46:24

from Kampala down to Kigali, the

46:26

capital Rwanda. From Kigali to Go

46:28

my on Lake Kivu in the

46:30

Congo and then six days to

46:32

Bush in Eastern Congo to Kiss

46:35

and Ghani and we gun on

46:37

the big river and took six

46:39

days and sale down the consensus.

46:42

Which. Is about two hundred miles from

46:44

the Atlantic coast. So you one coin

46:46

toss out now and I got my

46:48

fantasy. Yeah, we did and that matched

46:51

your fantasy. that was. You should have

46:53

abandoned medicine to be a marvelous at

46:55

the disco them by your Hemingway out

46:58

there. But in my twentieth year I'd

47:00

climb the Parthenon. I'd been the The

47:02

Coliseum, I'd been to the Holy Land

47:04

and I'd seen Six Seven Consists Mare.

47:07

And when I came back to Yale

47:09

nobody could tell me said about only.

47:13

Out sitting around and bowl says his

47:15

people and I see keys in half

47:17

or as Mogadishu I yell at me

47:20

how we were in Africa Now young

47:22

I you know you're talking about and

47:24

that free me I was proud of

47:26

my African Here it's and I became

47:28

a professor of African An African American

47:30

says because of the intervention in Cambridge

47:32

of so he can answer the obvious

47:34

but I knew where my Africana the

47:36

as it were started and stopped I

47:38

knew the culture of is not biological.

47:40

I knew there was another senseless. I.

47:42

Knew that. Are. people had

47:44

left africa a long time ago and they

47:47

were big differences and when i sailed back

47:49

to the united states from england and so

47:51

says hillary arbor since his i was glad

47:53

to be home and i knew that i

47:55

was american enough proud of but i was

47:57

an african american i wasn't in the mirror

48:00

like you're an American. And I

48:02

wasn't an American like you, I'm an immigrant

48:04

family. My people had been here forever. Is

48:07

it fair to say you're walking with

48:09

a limp because you're an African American?

48:12

Yeah, I had a normal hip condition,

48:14

a slipped apithicism that was misdiagnosed by

48:16

a racist white doctor who said that

48:18

it was entirely psychosomatic. Yeah, because white

48:20

folks lie about their pain level. Yeah,

48:22

if you break your hip, you have

48:24

what's called referred pain. I had this

48:26

enormous pain in my knee, but

48:28

my leg was rotated out 180 degrees. So

48:31

any elementary medical school student would have

48:34

known that my hip was broken. Right.

48:36

Except this idiot. And so he

48:38

wrapped my leg with a walking cast. And

48:40

while he was doing it, he said, well,

48:42

I understand you're a good student. Everybody knew

48:44

everybody in this county. And I said, yes,

48:46

sir, I want to be a doctor. And

48:48

he said, well, who was the first scientist

48:50

to process oxygen? And I said, I think

48:52

it was Joseph Priestley. Somebody can fact correct

48:54

me on that. Yeah. He asked me three

48:57

or four questions. And I answered them. The

48:59

cast arrived a few hours later and

49:01

they stood me up to have

49:03

me walk with my hip devolved completely

49:05

separately. Oh my God. And I fell.

49:07

And my mother was there and my

49:09

mother said, that's it, we're taking him

49:11

out of this hospital. But that was

49:13

the guy. And he told my parents

49:15

that it was psychosomatic, that I had

49:17

studied too hard, that all those answers

49:19

I gave were a sign that basically

49:21

the Negro mind had cracked under the

49:23

pressure. No. I swear to God. And

49:25

I don't even like to talk about it because it's still...

49:28

Yeah. And so, yes,

49:30

you're returning to America. There is

49:32

the Statue of Liberty. You

49:34

are right to cry. And also there's

49:36

a reality that you're also entering this country with

49:38

a limb because of the reality of being black

49:41

in America. Yeah. But the differential between the lengths

49:43

of my leg got worse over time. So I

49:45

didn't walk with a cane then, but I walk

49:47

with a cane now and there's about an inch

49:49

and a half difference. How old were you when

49:51

that happened? I was 14 years old. Playing

49:54

touch football. No. And I

49:56

had... I'm not even on a warpath about football, so I just

49:58

want to fuel it a little bit. Three on... operations and

50:00

then they finally put in a cup

50:02

arthroplasty and they all have had two hip replacements. And

50:05

I have my shoes made by a great

50:07

orthopedic shoemaker if anybody wants to know the

50:10

TO Day Company, DEY. Shout out.

50:12

The best orthopedic shoes in the whole world.

50:14

Okay, we got to get into the shows.

50:16

This is so fun. It is so fun

50:19

and you're such an incredible storyteller. But the

50:21

boat ride, I'm a romantic. The boat ride

50:23

at that age to England. I had just

50:25

graduated from Yale the day before. It's a

50:28

rural area of West Virginia. The

50:30

narrative itself has got to be high-fiving

50:33

itself. Well, the Gateses have a long

50:35

history of college education. So

50:37

I mentioned my three great aunts were educated

50:39

at Howard. My father's first cousin, the son

50:41

of one of those three, graduated from Harvard

50:44

Law School in 1949. No,

50:46

wow. George Lee. The Ivy League was

50:48

always his presence. Yeah. And

50:50

he married a black woman. His wife

50:52

got a PhD in comparative

50:54

literature from Harvard in 1955. Oh

50:57

my gosh. The black woman. Yeah. Wow.

50:59

Oh wow. Her name is Dorothy Hicks

51:01

Lee. We created a prize in her

51:03

honor that's given at Harvard every year.

51:06

Oh, amazing. She's the first black person

51:08

to get a PhD in comparative literature

51:10

and the second woman. So anyway,

51:12

the Gateses valued education. So one of us

51:14

had gone to Harvard, so I applied to

51:16

Yale and I got it. Yeah. And I

51:19

loved it from the second I got there.

51:21

I was so glad. The last thing I

51:23

told my father and my mother was, I

51:25

said, look, all these kids up there are

51:28

a genius. You know, I thought it was

51:30

like Albert and Alberta Einstein. 1969

51:33

when I was going up, I was transferring. I

51:35

did my first year at a community college five

51:37

miles away and then I transferred and when I

51:39

wrote to Yale, I said, I'd be happy to

51:41

repeat my freshman year. My brother and I

51:44

never got the memo that black people didn't

51:46

test well in a standardized exam. We were

51:48

too far away from the city. So we

51:50

always tested well. So I tested well. I'd

51:52

gotten straight A's at Telmik State College and

51:54

they let me in to solve my year.

51:56

When I got there, I looked at this

51:58

building, Neo Gothic building. that

52:00

was a cathedral. I walked in, it

52:02

was in the library, and I stood

52:04

there, and there's this great stained glass

52:06

window where you used to go to

52:08

check out books. And I thought, this

52:11

is Never Neverland, man. I have been

52:13

transported into Hogwarts. Yeah. And that was

52:15

the year they let in women for

52:17

the first time. Well, good for you.

52:19

Class of 73. Yeah. Yeah,

52:22

thank God. You've done shit pretty perfectly.

52:24

The schools were integrated. No, they loved

52:26

women in Yale. And it was

52:28

the largest class of black kids. We were

52:31

the first affirmative action generation when the

52:33

Ivy League schools lifted their strict racist

52:35

quote on the number of black kids

52:37

who could matriculate. And I was one

52:39

of 96, either in the freshman class

52:41

or who transferred, because some of the

52:44

women were transferring from the Seven Sisters.

52:46

Women's College. Sheila Jackson Lee, very good

52:48

friend, Congresswoman from Houston, she transferred from

52:50

Hunter. If I get a C average,

52:52

I said to my dad, that's like

52:54

getting an A from Western University. Right.

52:57

And he looked at me and he

52:59

said, boy, you think I'm stupid. He

53:02

said, just go up there, do as well as you

53:04

can do. And if

53:10

they don't treat you right, just remember, you

53:12

can always come on home. And he told

53:14

me that I cried. Yeah. And that did

53:16

more to give me self confidence. The message

53:18

was my love for you is unconditional. Yeah.

53:20

You can come back with your tail between

53:22

your legs. You're my son. But then he

53:24

added, but I know if you do the

53:26

best you could do, you're going to get

53:28

straight. Exactly. We didn't have A's and B's.

53:30

We had honors, high pass, pass and fail.

53:32

The first semester, if I'm recalling correctly, I

53:34

got one honors and 300 passes and I

53:36

was ecstatic. But the second semester, baby, I

53:38

got four honors and one high pass. And

53:40

the rest of my time, I got straight A's.

53:43

And you went in Andrew Mellon,

53:45

Paul Mellon, Paul Mellon. I was junior year Phi

53:48

Beta Kappa and I graduated just like you. Suma

53:53

wouldn't want to be a magna. We

53:55

had more fun. In

54:01

that bag of fantasies that I

54:03

was carrying around invisibly, one was to be a

54:05

Rhodes Scholar. I wanted to go to Harvard Yale,

54:08

and I wanted to go to Oxford, Cambridge. And

54:10

I applied for all these fellowships. Look, I

54:13

was junior, 5'8", I was black, I was

54:15

from West Virginia. I was going

54:17

to get one of these things, right? But I was a finalist, and

54:19

I didn't get any. I was a

54:21

finalist for Rhodes, I was a finalist for Marshall.

54:23

And I was blowing the interviews somehow. And

54:25

my girlfriend at the time said, you're probably just being

54:28

an asshole. Trying to pretend to be somebody you're not.

54:30

Why aren't you just going to be yourself? I

54:32

was down to the seventh possibility to fulfill

54:34

this fantasy that I had had since the

54:37

8th grade. And it was the Mellon Fellowship.

54:39

Before I walked in, I was sitting

54:41

in the anty room, and this kid came out, and

54:43

his face was radiant. And

54:45

he knew that he had been selected. He said, oh,

54:48

that was the best interview I ever did, and I'm

54:50

going to go to Cambridge, and I'm going to, we

54:52

say, read. We don't study or

54:54

major in. He said, I told him I

54:56

was going to read English with Professor So-and-so,

54:59

and I thought, man, I'm dead, because I

55:01

don't even know who he's talking about. He

55:04

wrote a door open, and he said, Mr. Gates?

55:06

And they said, why would you like to go

55:08

to Cambridge? The Melons, they're

55:11

two from Yale to Clare College,

55:14

Cambridge, and two from Clare, who

55:16

come to Yale. There were 12 colleges at Yale,

55:18

which are Yale's names for dorms. And

55:21

they hit the college until recent, it was called the Master. And

55:24

one of the masters was a woman, to make it

55:26

even more ironic, Kitty Lussman. I'll never forget her, a

55:28

brilliant child-type scientist. Yeah, you won't forget her because you

55:30

haven't forgotten a single name you've heard over the last

55:32

73 years. And

55:34

I said, I have no idea with whom I want

55:36

to study or even what. And they looked at me

55:38

like I was dead. And they said, well, why do

55:40

you want to go? Why do you want this fellowship?

55:43

I said, at the end of my sophomore year,

55:45

I was lucky enough to be chosen for the

55:47

five-year BA program. And I lived in Africa, and

55:49

on the way to Africa. I

55:52

traveled over to the European continent and went to the

55:54

Middle East. And then on the way back, I went

55:56

to Paris and London. And so I had a year,

55:58

and I had a chance to look for it. myself

56:00

as a black person living in a majority

56:05

black. And I was able to

56:08

begin to understand how much of social

56:10

dilemmas that I faced, how much of

56:12

my personality and my characteristics were related

56:14

to African people and African culture. And

56:17

I said in other words I had

56:19

a chance to think about how much

56:21

is racial in terms of social dilemmas

56:23

and how much is related

56:26

to other factors like class, like economics.

56:28

Oh Cass, that great book. Isabel's book.

56:30

And I said I would like to

56:32

have the same opportunity in reverse. I

56:35

would like to be able to be

56:37

a black American studying race, living

56:41

in Europe to see how much

56:43

of my personality is American, how

56:45

is race socially constructed in England.

56:47

What is transcendent about blackness

56:52

and what is local about blackness. What

56:54

is the black experience in England and

56:56

how does the black experience in England

56:58

compared to the black experience in America.

57:00

That was it baby. Yeah. Because I

57:02

was telling the truth

57:07

that was why I wanted to live there. I

57:10

didn't know that my fate was sitting over

57:12

there at the University of Cambridge, that my

57:14

whole career was waiting for me through the

57:17

intervention of two African

57:19

geniuses, one who had spent

57:21

27 months in prison during

57:23

the Nigerian Civil War, Wolee Sheyinka. When

57:25

he got out he published his prison

57:27

memoirs and the Nigerian government wanted to

57:29

kill him all over again. He took

57:31

political exile, got a fellowship

57:34

to teach at Cambridge. The English

57:36

department was so backwards that they

57:38

wouldn't give him an appointment because

57:40

they said African literature wasn't really

57:42

a literature. So he was in

57:44

the social anthropology department. Oh sure.

57:47

Well we'll take anyone. And he

57:49

only had one student. And that

57:51

was me. And he gave a

57:53

series of lectures which were collected under the

57:55

title Myth Literature in the African Worldview. And

57:57

in the preface he talks about the

58:00

experience of his one student in the

58:02

English department not giving him a teaching

58:04

appointment and getting the teaching appointment in

58:06

social anthropology. And then Anthony Appiah was

58:08

a second year student, a genius like

58:10

Sri Lanka, and he had moved from

58:12

wanting to be a doctor. He was

58:14

pre-med first year and switched to philosophy.

58:16

And the two of them, after we

58:18

had met for a month, Anthony's father's

58:20

a prominent Ghanaian politician. He was best

58:22

friends with Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah turned against

58:24

him, put him in jail because he

58:26

accused Nkrumah of corruption. But he's like

58:28

the John Adams of Ghana. And

58:30

the two of them took me out

58:32

to an Indian meal and my mouth

58:35

was on fire because these Africans liked

58:37

his hot food. Sri Lanka is an

58:39

enophile connoisseur of wine and my generation

58:41

yelled didn't drink wine. We use cheap

58:43

wine like Boon Farm Apple Wine and

58:45

Mad Dog 2020 in hookahs for the

58:51

consumption of more vaporous kinds

58:53

of pleasure. So my mouth

58:55

is on fire. I'm getting

58:57

drunk from drinking all this

58:59

wine. They look at me and they

59:01

said, we have brought you here for a reason.

59:03

We are from your future and you are not

59:05

going to be a medical doctor. You are going

59:07

to be a professor of African and African-American studies.

59:10

I was done your shot. And

59:13

I burst into tears because

59:15

I realized that it's

59:17

what I really wanted to do. Yeah. You

59:19

got permission to. I got permission to. I

59:22

was black but not

59:24

a socially constructed blackness in America.

59:27

I was like an anthropologist. I

59:29

could be completely removed from the

59:32

experience of West Indians who had

59:34

come up primarily on the windrush

59:36

in 1948 and their

59:38

descendants living in England. And I was

59:40

able to begin to understand like I

59:43

did in Africa, how much of what

59:45

I thought was social situations entirely constructed

59:47

by racism. How much was really constructed

59:49

by class? Yeah. What

59:52

social problems were common to

59:54

Tanzania, England, and the United States?

59:56

Well, they can't all be about the experience

59:58

of slavery and it's after. math. Yeah,

1:00:00

well that's what Isabelle did. She did

1:00:03

the Dalit in India, the Jews in

1:00:05

Nazi Germany and the African Americans

1:00:07

here. Absolutely. They don't share race in

1:00:09

Commons. What else are they sharing? Right,

1:00:12

so you control the variables like an

1:00:14

experiment. I was blessed because of that

1:00:16

experience that year away between my sophomore

1:00:19

and junior year and the fellowship to

1:00:21

go to Cambridge to study the curious

1:00:23

interaction between race and class upfront

1:00:26

and personal in my own

1:00:28

life every day. I thought before I went

1:00:30

to Africa that race was everything, which is

1:00:33

a famous saying from a racist scientist in

1:00:35

the 19th century. But it's

1:00:37

not class. It's just as important. Well,

1:00:39

you look at the similarities. I as

1:00:41

a white trash kid from my area,

1:00:44

why do I like rap? Why do

1:00:46

I like country? This is disenfranchised stories.

1:00:49

Yes, that's right. It's the same shit.

1:00:51

I graduated at Piedmont High School with

1:00:53

36 kids and most of them were

1:00:56

white. I know that as it were,

1:00:58

the cultures of poverty are colorblind. Right.

1:01:00

That obesity, out of wedlock pregnancy, educational

1:01:02

attainment, health attainment, every metric we would

1:01:05

use to evaluate, you could graph them.

1:01:07

We wouldn't know who was who. You

1:01:09

got it. Which is not to say

1:01:11

there's not another layer, which is more

1:01:14

dangerous, I acknowledge, but you could make a

1:01:16

graph or no one could tell. The bottom line

1:01:18

is economics. You know, as the brothers

1:01:21

say, it's all about the Benjamins. Yeah,

1:01:23

everything else is part of the superstars.

1:01:25

I definitely believe that. And it's infuriating

1:01:27

to watch how the two classes have

1:01:29

been pitted against each other to prevent

1:01:31

us from getting together to go, wait,

1:01:33

who's the real enemy? The two races

1:01:35

have been. That's what I'm saying. It's

1:01:37

been intentional to make these poor white

1:01:40

folks and the black folks. In two

1:01:42

weeks, I'll start second semester at Harvard

1:01:44

and I'm teaching a brand new seminar

1:01:46

on W.E.B. Du Bois, the greatest black

1:01:48

intellectual of all time. And he

1:01:50

published an essay called The Wages

1:01:52

of Whiteness and I'll be teaching

1:01:55

it. And it's about how people

1:01:57

with identical class interests because of

1:01:59

the structures of racism have been

1:02:01

America would rather identify vertically in

1:02:03

the silo than laterally to

1:02:06

their classed counterparts, their brothers,

1:02:08

their brothers and sisters, that

1:02:11

we should be fighting together

1:02:13

to address problems that are

1:02:15

fundamentally economic. And then you

1:02:17

have demagogues who then manipulate

1:02:19

these received structures of racism

1:02:21

to convince poor white people

1:02:23

that their interests are based

1:02:26

on the purity of whiteness,

1:02:29

sanctity of whiteness. All

1:02:31

these people color coming in, but it's not.

1:02:34

They're being exploited by the system economically. And

1:02:36

used to pacify. Well, at least you're not

1:02:38

those people. So those people are really below

1:02:40

you, even though they're not. Right. That is

1:02:43

something we can give you to prevent you

1:02:45

from poking holes in the system. You should

1:02:47

be so delighted you're a part of. And

1:02:50

so that most attempts historically to organize workers

1:02:52

economically fell apart as soon as they played

1:02:54

the race card. They go, at least you're

1:02:56

not an android. Yeah. No matter how poor you

1:02:58

are, you are a white man. That's the great

1:03:01

Chris Rock joke. There's a white janitor in here

1:03:03

that's watching me and saying, I

1:03:05

don't think I'd trade places with him. I'll

1:03:07

just stick with this white thing. And I

1:03:09

learned that implicitly every day in the year

1:03:12

in Tanzania, in Europe, the year off, and

1:03:14

then in England. And that was a great

1:03:16

thing. Didn't make me a Marxist. Right. You

1:03:18

know, I'm very much involved in figuring out

1:03:21

how to make capitalism more humane. Yeah. And

1:03:23

I've been very blessed in my career. My

1:03:25

wife is a Cuban citizen and my

1:03:27

stepchildren are now Americans. I met her

1:03:29

in 2009 when I was filming one

1:03:31

of my favorite black history series for

1:03:33

PBS called Black and Latin America. And

1:03:35

she was a prominent historian and I

1:03:37

met her at 10 o'clock in the

1:03:39

morning, interviewed, took her to lunch, take

1:03:41

her to dinner. I've been in love

1:03:43

ever since. But for her, race in

1:03:45

a communist country, class was everything. Yeah.

1:03:47

And what was suppressed was race. That's

1:03:49

so interesting. And for us, what was

1:03:51

suppressed is class. Yeah. You know, America,

1:03:53

what are you talking about? We don't

1:03:55

have classes. Right. We're a meritocracy.

1:03:58

Yeah. Yeah. And meritocracy. But

1:04:00

you can also see we have the

1:04:02

owner of condo Miami and you can

1:04:04

see the fervor of Cuban immigrants and

1:04:06

how well they do. I'm generalizing not

1:04:09

everybody. But when their family gatherings and

1:04:11

people talk about the promise of America,

1:04:13

you realize that that is what made

1:04:15

our country great. Martin Luther King gave

1:04:17

a commencement address at Stanford that I

1:04:19

like to quote. And he said, it's

1:04:21

commonly said that we're a nation of

1:04:23

immigrants America, but we're also a nation

1:04:25

of exile. And that's beautiful.

1:04:27

We're a nation of political exiles, religious

1:04:29

exiles, and economic exiles. People came here

1:04:31

and they go, this is wide open.

1:04:33

I often ask people that I'm interviewing

1:04:36

for Finding Your Roots, do you think

1:04:38

that you could have had this career

1:04:40

if your ancestors had stayed in Ukraine

1:04:43

or in England? No way. Everything

1:04:45

became possible once they came here. And we have

1:04:48

to remember that. I think the popularity of Finding

1:04:50

Your Roots has to do with two things. One,

1:04:53

reminding people that we're a nation

1:04:55

of immigrant slash exiles. And two,

1:04:57

biologically, that at the level of the genome,

1:04:59

we're 99.99% the same. And

1:05:03

three, note there is no such thing

1:05:05

as racial purity. That we're all mixed up. And

1:05:08

50,000 years ago, we were all Africans. In

1:05:11

Anthro, we reject race as a concept.

1:05:13

You could genetically have more in common

1:05:16

if you're Irish with somebody in Central

1:05:18

Africa than someone in Southern Africa would

1:05:20

have. Right. And

1:05:22

medieval people have used the

1:05:24

tiny little phenotypical difference. The

1:05:26

least significant, least complex gene

1:05:28

order. To reify them to

1:05:30

say that those signify fundamental

1:05:33

differences of essence, characteristics, meaning

1:05:35

something different than we mean.

1:05:37

Your level of intelligence. Ultimately,

1:05:40

your value. So then on all of those

1:05:43

diagrams of the great chain of being, there's

1:05:45

God at the top looking like Carlton Heston.

1:05:47

They're the angels right under God. And then

1:05:49

there are the four or five, quote, unquote,

1:05:52

races of man. And at

1:05:54

the bottom of the races of man

1:05:56

was an African with a Simeon look

1:05:59

just under the African. The next

1:06:01

rung of the Great Chain of Bean was an

1:06:03

ape. Ah, last

1:06:05

stop. Isn't that cold? Oh, fuck.

1:06:10

Stay tuned for more Armchair

1:06:12

Expert. If you dare.

1:06:22

Okay, we must because you've come here, obviously,

1:06:24

to promote something. This is great. It is so

1:06:27

awesome. I didn't have to use this. I didn't

1:06:29

have to. I'm going to Jacques Marie Majer buy

1:06:31

a new pair of glasses. Oh my gosh,

1:06:33

I just learned about that brand. They

1:06:35

are amazing. My next door neighbor, my

1:06:37

friend Larry Bobo, has about 10 pairs

1:06:40

of these. I've just heard about it

1:06:42

that they're amazing sunglasses. And I went.

1:06:44

When we landed, I dropped Mary

1:06:46

Elle off at Malibu and Eli took me

1:06:48

to the shop in Venice. And the director,

1:06:51

he's Norwegian. It's a Netflix show. What's it

1:06:53

called? Brother Sun? That's so hot. This

1:06:57

tall Norwegian guy. Anyway, he was there

1:06:59

celebrating the success, buying two or three

1:07:02

pairs of Jacques Marie Majer glasses. Okay,

1:07:05

so we're almost done, right? Yeah, we're totally almost done.

1:07:07

I mean, I'm enjoying it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm

1:07:09

about to hit the wall because I've only had a

1:07:12

banana. Totally. Of course. But I

1:07:14

really have had a good time. Me too.

1:07:16

I just want to tell people, though, Finding

1:07:18

Your Roots, season 10, is currently airing. And

1:07:21

you have a new four-part documentary

1:07:23

called Gospel, and a Gospel

1:07:25

Live concert accompanying that. That's right. That was recorded

1:07:27

here in LA at a famous church. With John

1:07:30

Legend. That's right. With John Legend. And he was

1:07:32

one of the people that we had on. I

1:07:34

just wanted to ask you two questions about this.

1:07:36

Oh, sure. We have

1:07:38

had Alicia Keys. We have had him. We've had 10 singers

1:07:41

on who all got their start in

1:07:44

the church singing. Without

1:07:46

exception, everyone we interviewed has a

1:07:48

much different relationship with religion now than

1:07:50

they grew up with. And I do think we

1:07:52

would agree that the country gets more secular. I

1:07:55

have this deep fear of what replaces that. When

1:07:57

you look at Aretha Franklin, you... look

1:08:00

at Whitney Houston, it all came out

1:08:02

of church, it all came out of

1:08:04

gospel and as that dissipates, what happens?

1:08:06

That's a great question. First of all,

1:08:09

you're absolutely correct that R&B,

1:08:11

Soul, the foundation is gospel music.

1:08:13

All of Motown came out of

1:08:15

the church. Yeah. There's

1:08:17

even the Sam Cooke record. In each

1:08:19

part of the people transitioning from gospel

1:08:21

to R&B, on side A, it's

1:08:24

gospel and side B, it was R&B.

1:08:26

There it is epitomized in an actual

1:08:28

record. By the way, the largest collection

1:08:31

of gospel music is at Baylor University

1:08:33

because of a scholar named Robert Darden

1:08:35

whom we interview and who's in the

1:08:38

series. W.E.B. Du Bois famously said

1:08:40

that, the black church is composed of three

1:08:42

elements, the preacher, the music and the frenzy.

1:08:44

I did a documentary on the history of

1:08:46

the black church called The Black Church. This

1:08:48

is our story, this is our song and

1:08:50

you couldn't do everything not even in four

1:08:52

hours. So I wanted to do the sequel

1:08:54

on the glue that held it together and the

1:08:56

glue that held it together was the music, the

1:08:58

music and the

1:09:01

rhetorical styles of great preachers which are

1:09:03

very musical and that's what our series

1:09:05

is. There's a great line from one

1:09:07

of the female guests in the doc

1:09:09

who says, the sermon becomes the song,

1:09:12

the song becomes the sermon. That's right,

1:09:14

inextricably intertwined. Yeah, it's just one big

1:09:16

circle informing one another. Gospel existed in

1:09:18

the 19th century as a white form.

1:09:20

Blessed Assurance was written by a blind

1:09:23

white woman which is, this is our

1:09:25

story, this is our song. But Black

1:09:27

Gospel was invented about in the

1:09:31

1920s in different places but Chicago

1:09:33

takes pride of place because Thomas

1:09:35

A. Dorsey, Georgia Tom, the blues

1:09:37

player migrated there first in 1916

1:09:40

and settling in 1919. Mahalia

1:09:42

Jackson comes up from New Orleans in 1927 and

1:09:44

this is part of The

1:09:47

Great Migration which Isabel Wokinson has also

1:09:49

written about and the series that I'm

1:09:51

making now is on The Great Migration

1:09:53

and this becomes this cauldron of culture

1:09:55

and all this stuff is boiling and

1:09:58

bubbling and the secular version

1:10:00

goes into jazz out of blues

1:10:02

and ragtime. And the sacred version,

1:10:04

jazz and blues, meld with the

1:10:06

spirituals, the music created by the

1:10:09

slaves to form gospel. And

1:10:11

that becomes this powerful new

1:10:14

musical form, which still

1:10:16

exists and is still morphing. To

1:10:18

answer your question, Kirk Franklin records

1:10:20

stomp in 1997, which flips out all

1:10:23

the preachers because it's hip hop. So here

1:10:25

we can see that musical forms are still

1:10:27

growing out of the church the golden age

1:10:29

of hip hop. So the church is still

1:10:32

important, but it's not as important as it

1:10:34

was before, which brings us to a fundamental

1:10:36

formal or structural aspect of hip hop, which

1:10:39

is sampling. Yeah. And the thing about sampling

1:10:41

is that's only going to music school. Yeah.

1:10:44

Because you're borrowing forms that your father

1:10:46

or even you're at this point, your

1:10:48

grandfather or grandmother, or your mother listened

1:10:50

to. It's also the greatest democratizing

1:10:52

tool to ever hit music. Yeah, which

1:10:55

is one reason that survived for 50

1:10:57

years. Yeah. And it's everywhere. Okay. On

1:10:59

your next trip, I'm going to make

1:11:01

you tie together the signifying money. Monkey.

1:11:04

Monkey dyslexia. I typed it up wrong.

1:11:06

Yeah. The signifying monkey. Money signifying. On

1:11:10

your next visit, we're going to explore that. Yeah.

1:11:12

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think

1:11:15

there's some crazy huge parallel between those two. Oh,

1:11:17

but I really had a good time. You know,

1:11:19

my PR people said, you know, we want you

1:11:21

to do this. So I

1:11:23

go, who the fuck is this guy? And they said, you know,

1:11:25

you're doing his wife's family tree

1:11:28

and I go, Oh, okay.

1:11:30

Well, I got the nice side. There you go.

1:11:32

Well, it'll be a good the first time of

1:11:35

benefit. So look, you're gonna let me do your

1:11:37

family tree. You gotta let me do it now.

1:11:39

I don't want to go down and sit with

1:11:41

you to find out my family owned slaves, but

1:11:43

you know what? Well, I'm gonna tell you your

1:11:45

family owned slave. Now that I've

1:11:48

told you, we have Lance that

1:11:50

loyal. I do want to do, because I have

1:11:52

the honchos from hazard, Kentucky who are all murderers

1:11:54

and it's a very wild ride. But you never

1:11:56

know where it's going to go. And besides, who

1:11:58

cares what your ancestors. My

1:12:00

producers when I was coming over they go, now

1:12:03

this motherfucker down. I'll do it. Look

1:12:06

at that. And

1:12:08

wherever we go, I'll walk you through it. I'll

1:12:11

hold you in it. Because I like

1:12:13

you. I have a rapport with both of you. We have

1:12:15

a nice little thing here. It's great. Absolutely. Chemistry we call

1:12:17

it. You haven't

1:12:20

eaten up. No, it's nice. When I

1:12:22

got here, realized I was in the

1:12:24

time warp and I was back in

1:12:26

Appalachia. Yes, exactly. High-end Appalachia. Alright.

1:12:28

Great having you and good luck with everything. Thank you.

1:12:33

Stay tuned for the facts check so you can hear all the facts

1:12:35

that were wrong. You

1:12:41

got to wear your orange boots. I can because it's

1:12:43

a rainy day. It's a rainy

1:12:45

day. It was a rainy day yesterday and a rainy

1:12:48

day today. And how's your sad? My

1:12:51

sad is confused. I've had some exchanges

1:12:53

with you and you sounded pretty chipper. Yeah. My

1:12:56

sad is a little confused because

1:12:58

I'm coming out

1:13:01

of my funk. Okay.

1:13:03

But then it rained. So

1:13:06

my funk was like... Wait a minute.

1:13:08

Are we back? It was supposed to be funky

1:13:11

again. Right. And now we have a... So

1:13:14

it doesn't really know how to feel. What day

1:13:16

did the funk lift? It had to

1:13:18

do with astrology. Tell me. Tell me.

1:13:20

You're getting deeper and deeper and I

1:13:22

love it. I don't know because of

1:13:24

my natal chart. Because

1:13:26

of my natal chart, Clarice, the woman

1:13:28

I saw, the astrologer I saw. Your

1:13:31

advisor. Well, I haven't brought her on

1:13:34

to the team yet. Okay. Full time. But

1:13:37

I get her emails now. Oh,

1:13:39

okay. You're on her mailer list now. Actually,

1:13:41

let me read it. Okay.

1:13:44

Oh my god. It's my dad's birthday. Holy swamps. Good thing

1:13:47

we looked at your astrologer. Calvin's

1:13:49

too. Their share birthday? Oh my god. That's

1:13:51

good luck for Calvin. That reminds me of

1:13:53

a show. I

1:13:55

can see that. Similar coloring. They

1:13:58

seem like... Quietly

1:14:00

why? Twin flames. Subtle

1:14:03

wiseness like. Yeah, I can see

1:14:05

that. Wow. Maybe

1:14:08

Calvin is gonna inherit the

1:14:10

Sim. Well,

1:14:12

your dad might be

1:14:15

enjoying the Sim so much that he had

1:14:17

himself now born to go through on another

1:14:19

ride, another cycle. They do kind of look

1:14:21

alike. Now that we're talking about it. And

1:14:23

they have a very similar disposition. Twin flames. Twin

1:14:27

flames. That was a good one, Rump. That

1:14:29

was good. Okay, Clarice. She said.

1:14:31

Oh my God, for half a second when you

1:14:33

said Clarice. You thought it was. No, you go,

1:14:36

okay, Clarice. Which is the exact

1:14:38

delivery of our guests. Like whatever the fact

1:14:40

check's about. And I was

1:14:42

like, oh. Oh. Clarice, I don't remember.

1:14:44

I was really scrambling. Oh, I see. I don't

1:14:46

remember talking to a Clarice. Yeah, no.

1:14:49

Clarice, isn't that the name

1:14:51

of? Yeah. What's that movie? Council

1:14:53

of the Lambs. A Chianti. Oh,

1:14:58

we have something fun coming up. We

1:15:01

have a fun themed week ahead. And

1:15:03

in having to do with

1:15:05

that, just reminded me, there's

1:15:07

a scene in the show of

1:15:12

the theme we're doing. Oh boy. Where

1:15:16

parts of a body is eaten. Oh

1:15:18

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

1:15:20

yeah. And blood drank. Uh-huh,

1:15:22

yep. Pivot Clarice. Yes. This

1:15:25

is her email. A significant

1:15:27

event is set to unfold this Saturday.

1:15:29

This was past Saturday. Oh my goodness.

1:15:32

Making a transition as Pluto moves

1:15:34

from Capricorn to Aquarius. This

1:15:37

shift occurring as Pluto changes signs includes

1:15:39

a final conjunction with the sun at

1:15:41

the very end of Capricorn, 29 degrees.

1:15:44

A degree in astrology known for its

1:15:47

connection to Mars. The planet associated with

1:15:49

aggression and tension. Ooh. As an Aquarian,

1:15:51

oh, I won't talk about our personal

1:15:53

stuff. Oh. It's

1:15:56

important to note that January 20th could potentially

1:15:58

be an intense and dynamic day. if

1:16:00

you're interested, okay,

1:16:03

that was all. But that really

1:16:06

kind of was the day. But this

1:16:08

is interesting, because it sounds a little foreboding, that

1:16:10

email. It sounds a little intense, and what were

1:16:12

the adjectives used? Yeah, aggression and

1:16:14

tension. Yes, that's not- No, but

1:16:17

it's coming out of. Oh,

1:16:19

okay, okay. That does make

1:16:21

sense. Right. There has been tension

1:16:23

and aggression, actually. Oh

1:16:27

yes, I thought it was me. I was

1:16:29

like cracking my brain. I was like, I

1:16:31

don't think I've been aggressive, but I have

1:16:33

quit dibs, so maybe I've lost perspective. No,

1:16:35

no, no, but yeah, so I

1:16:37

do think I felt the- The

1:16:39

Pluto shift. The highest turn, the plutonium shift.

1:16:42

The plutonium shift, it moved out

1:16:44

of Capricorn into- Into Aquarius. Aquarius,

1:16:46

the age of Aquarius. Then I read

1:16:48

something else that was like a longer, more

1:16:50

intricate thing on it. Do you, could

1:16:53

we do, let's do a percentage

1:16:55

out of 100. 100 is

1:16:57

you believe in astrology in a way that

1:16:59

you would make decisions in your life around

1:17:02

it. Okay. That's 100.

1:17:05

Okay. I don't know why I'm using 100 scale. Let's do 10. Okay,

1:17:08

that's easier. Because I had a weird

1:17:10

hunch it was gonna be down into like, you

1:17:12

know, like 33. I

1:17:14

had a hunch we're gonna need the extra digits. So

1:17:16

let's stick with 100. Well, two decimals, like 9.4. Oh,

1:17:19

okay. That's us. Let's do a centa-based.

1:17:22

Okay, so I don't think that's the word. So that's 100

1:17:24

is you're designing your entire life around.

1:17:27

Zero is a hogwash. It'd be a waste

1:17:29

of time. It's not even entertaining because it's

1:17:32

such a waste of time. I see. Yes,

1:17:34

I've said enough about the product. Where

1:17:36

do you think you're at? And where do

1:17:38

you think you're headed? I am

1:17:41

at, I'm at. Be

1:17:45

honest. I am. You're a little probably

1:17:47

embarrassed to go. No, don't

1:17:50

do that. Don't leave the witness. Don't

1:17:52

point paint me into a corner. So Capricorn. I

1:17:56

didn't get the memo that Pluto has left Capricorn.

1:17:58

Okay, I think I'm. at

1:18:00

46.7. No

1:18:03

kidding. But I'm heading to 68.

1:18:08

Okay and where were you when

1:18:10

you first started sending Kristen

1:18:12

and I those? Um, 10. Wow

1:18:16

so it's really building. 10 for

1:18:19

fun. Entertainment. Entertainment. And then up

1:18:21

until 22 it was entertainment. Okay.

1:18:23

Then from 22 to 37 it

1:18:26

was man these signs like

1:18:37

your astrological sign is

1:18:40

seeming pretty dead on.

1:18:42

Right okay. So more convincing. Yeah.

1:18:44

Then from 37 to

1:18:47

what I say 46.7 where I'm at. Uh-huh.

1:18:50

We need to

1:18:52

put we need a chart in here by the

1:18:54

way I'm already worried that we're gonna lose these

1:18:56

numbers. Yeah. Just down now. Right around. I will

1:18:58

put the picture. Okay. Yeah. For the future you

1:19:00

mean? Well I'd like to have a chart in

1:19:03

here so we know. Yeah. How it's programmed. Yeah.

1:19:05

Well okay so that little area

1:19:08

is expanding to

1:19:10

like the sky and

1:19:13

this stuff. More predictions. But

1:19:16

not like. First it's like wow these

1:19:18

are pretty accurate descriptions but now the

1:19:20

predictions are. I'm not there yet though. Okay.

1:19:22

That will start at 52. Okay okay. But

1:19:26

I'm getting there because I don't want to

1:19:28

tell you this um during the natal chart

1:19:31

reading she did so I am very

1:19:34

against predictions of any kind.

1:19:36

Right. The only thing that scares

1:19:38

me about your new interest in

1:19:40

this and growing belief is

1:19:43

self-fulfilling. Self-fulfilling. Yeah. Exactly. It's not a

1:19:45

waste of time to detail what we

1:19:47

mean by that which is like a

1:19:49

lot of times when you hear something's

1:19:51

gonna happen you've. You

1:19:53

look for it and you sort of make it happen. You

1:19:55

make it happen. You manifest it. Yeah. No

1:19:57

I'm hyper aware of self-fulfilling prophecies. And

1:20:00

it's why I don't ever, like

1:20:03

I'm so against psychics or

1:20:05

tarot card readings or anything like that.

1:20:08

So far astrology isn't that. This

1:20:10

was your chart when you were

1:20:13

born and these are like attributes.

1:20:16

But when I had my reading,

1:20:18

she asked me, is

1:20:21

there anything I've been like worried about or

1:20:23

wanna know? You knew immediately what

1:20:25

you would want an answer to. Yeah,

1:20:27

and I asked. You did. It

1:20:30

was about career I'm in. It was

1:20:32

about work, yeah. Yeah. Well,

1:20:36

okay. And then she didn't, she

1:20:39

did a good job. She wasn't like, yes,

1:20:41

this is gonna happen or this isn't gonna

1:20:43

happen or anything. She kind of said like,

1:20:45

uh oh. Oh gee. I

1:20:47

know, I know, I know. She didn't, but

1:20:50

the way she was answering it

1:20:52

did make me feel scared. Yes,

1:20:54

yes. And then I was

1:20:56

so mad. You

1:20:59

even cracked the door to it, yeah.

1:21:01

Yes, this is exactly why I don't do

1:21:04

this. But then she found

1:21:06

out another piece of information. And

1:21:08

that changed everything. So anyways,

1:21:10

it was good. Okay, good, good.

1:21:14

But of course for me, I'm hearing this, what

1:21:16

I was scared was bad news. And

1:21:18

I immediately, I was like, I have

1:21:20

to unhear this. I hate that. That's

1:21:22

not true. And then

1:21:24

immediately I went into how do I reframe

1:21:27

this in my head to make it. Like I was

1:21:29

already gonna make it good. Right, but it was

1:21:31

gonna take a lot of work and a lot of zig

1:21:33

zaggy. Yeah, but it didn't matter because it was fine. Oh,

1:21:35

okay, great. So I guess I

1:21:37

did kind of, oh, she did, then

1:21:39

she gave. You broke your own rule a little bit. She was like,

1:21:41

these dates are good. Oh,

1:21:44

what were the dates? I didn't write them down. But

1:21:47

it was like, it was like now-ish.

1:21:50

You guys are bringing Rob to these. It

1:21:52

got me, it got me. But

1:21:55

no, it's like now-ish. And

1:21:58

so I think this has to. to get

1:22:00

rolling. Which is what it is. Okay. Okay.

1:22:04

Anyway, so I have used it, I

1:22:06

guess, slightly more than I would have

1:22:08

thought. Also, I'm reading this book. I

1:22:11

don't love it. First of all, congratulations. You're

1:22:13

reading. Thank you. You're doing your

1:22:15

resolution. I'm trying. I don't love the book,

1:22:17

so it's hard. Why don't you switch books?

1:22:19

I don't want to. I want to finish it. Okay.

1:22:23

See it through. We'll finish where you start. It's a good book, but it

1:22:25

doesn't have a tip in it. It doesn't have a hook, yeah. But

1:22:27

there's a bunch of astrology stuff in it.

1:22:29

The protagonist is obsessed with astrology. How

1:22:32

fun for you. And so it's all

1:22:34

coming together. Yeah. Yeah.

1:22:37

What's your percentage? Be honest. Four.

1:22:42

No, you like it more than four. Well,

1:22:46

I enjoy when you send those things and it

1:22:48

does sound like us. Yeah, you get a little

1:22:50

bit like, wow. But I don't. I've

1:22:53

heard you say wow. Well,

1:22:56

for sure. I mean, I think one of

1:22:58

them said I wear noise canceling headphones. But

1:23:00

at the same time, you know why that's

1:23:02

tricky? This is what keeps me at a four.

1:23:05

Everybody wears noise canceling headphones. Rob

1:23:08

wears noise canceling headphones. Yes, America wears noise

1:23:10

canceling headphones. Even the earbuds are noise canceling.

1:23:12

It was not about that. It

1:23:15

was just one second. So

1:23:17

they're saying things that really apply

1:23:19

to everybody. But in this

1:23:22

case, yeah, they really apply to me because I'm

1:23:24

using them to prevent myself from going mad. Right.

1:23:28

So I agree. But I'm just

1:23:30

saying it's hard to believe in anything because you

1:23:32

just say like these folks brush their teeth and I'm like,

1:23:34

oh, my God, I do. You know,

1:23:36

everyone's doing that's not fair or right.

1:23:39

You're right. Because for one, the

1:23:41

noise canceling headphones happened while I

1:23:43

was after the next day,

1:23:45

after you had noise canceling

1:23:47

headphones on all day to regulate your emotions.

1:23:50

Yeah. And none of us did.

1:23:52

It wasn't like we were all walking around

1:23:54

with them. You were very specific in that.

1:23:56

Yes. That one was crazy. And

1:23:58

that was really fun. kept me willing to read

1:24:01

them. Like when you send them, I don't ignore them.

1:24:03

Let me read one. Well, hold on. What's

1:24:05

the actual science behind it? Like what is

1:24:07

it? Stars and planets and when you're born and

1:24:10

the way it maps, I don't, I

1:24:12

think a lot, I don't know. The one I've

1:24:14

heard people say that

1:24:16

I can see where they think it's

1:24:18

compelling is that your

1:24:20

body is majority water. I've heard this

1:24:22

one. Right. And the moon is

1:24:24

pulling the tides in and out. So it has

1:24:26

an enormous impact obviously on water and

1:24:29

you're made of water. Now for me,

1:24:31

there's a big gap between water in

1:24:33

your body and serotonin

1:24:36

and neuropidephrine and every chemical

1:24:38

that's actually controlling your mood.

1:24:41

I mean, I guess you could argue there's

1:24:43

a lot of water in those, I don't

1:24:46

know. Yep, you could. But I don't even

1:24:48

know if that's true. I don't know if

1:24:50

synapses and neurotransmitters are full of water or

1:24:52

electricity. I'm not even sure. It's more

1:24:54

traits than mood. I mean, some of it's

1:24:57

mood and like when Mercury's in retrograde, that

1:24:59

has a big effect. Yeah,

1:25:01

buckle up. Especially for me because Mercury

1:25:03

is my ruling planet. Mm, you're a slave

1:25:05

to Mercury. Which he said is a good

1:25:07

thing. Okay, that is a good one? I

1:25:10

guess. Oh, the other thing, so my other issue.

1:25:12

So one is that I think they say things

1:25:14

that everyone has and

1:25:16

you have it in varying degrees and then

1:25:18

on a month where it's like, wow, I

1:25:20

was peak that trait. I mean, we all

1:25:22

have the same stuff. We're all agitated at

1:25:24

times. We're all excited. We're all horny. We're

1:25:27

all sad. You were talking about, but I

1:25:29

think there are noise canceling headphones. I have not worn them

1:25:31

yet. I know! And that's my

1:25:33

present to give. I'm going to. I

1:25:36

just have it. Do you mean to connect it? Is

1:25:39

that what's going on? Is that what you're a

1:25:41

little nervous about? I'm a little like, I probably have to do some

1:25:43

stuff. to the attic, just

1:25:45

pretend you're returning them. And then when

1:25:47

you're here, I will connect your phone and your

1:25:50

computer to them. So then all you gotta do is pick them up, put

1:25:52

them on and it'll go, beep, beep! And then it's connected. Yeah. That

1:25:55

might help. They made it way easier connecting. Yeah,

1:25:58

and then you're turning your Bluetooth on. on your

1:26:00

device. I'm gonna.

1:26:03

My other issue is, because my mother would

1:26:05

go to, she would get a reading once

1:26:07

in a while. It

1:26:09

was something she liked to do. For entertainment purposes.

1:26:12

One or two things would materialize

1:26:15

and she would be blown away by that. But

1:26:17

the problem is they spoke for an hour, sometimes

1:26:20

two hours. So

1:26:22

several hundred things had been said that

1:26:24

didn't come true. So the percentage is

1:26:26

so low. If I take 25 guesses

1:26:28

right now about you and one of

1:26:31

them's right, but 24 are wrong, I

1:26:33

don't think you'd ever go like, that's just

1:26:35

clairvoyant. No, you're not. Right. Because

1:26:37

I've even seen people do these mind

1:26:40

games with people and

1:26:42

they get three wrong in route to the fourth and

1:26:44

then when they get to the fourth, it's like, whoa,

1:26:46

it'd be like, I see that you have a sister

1:26:48

and they'll go like, oh, I don't have a sister,

1:26:51

but maybe it's a friend you're so close to you

1:26:53

think of as a sister. Yes, Becky and I always

1:26:55

say we're, you know, like, we

1:26:57

don't care that it was wrong. We got to

1:26:59

that she has a friend. I agree. Everyone.

1:27:04

Okay, so that's why I'm at four. I just

1:27:06

think that's not, I'm just, I don't think that's an accurate number.

1:27:08

What do you think my number is? I think

1:27:10

you're a 14. Okay,

1:27:13

I'll do that. I'm 14. Okay.

1:27:15

If anyone asks me later today, I'm gonna say I'm a 14. And we have to write

1:27:17

it on the chart. Okay, tell me about

1:27:20

your weekend. Cause I was out of town. So I don't know

1:27:22

anything that happened to you this weekend. What did

1:27:24

you do? Oh, I had a Valley day.

1:27:27

Horseman's Lodge? No, it

1:27:30

wasn't a tried and true Valley day. Normally I

1:27:32

get a bagel, then I go to the coffee

1:27:34

shop and I work all day at the coffee

1:27:37

shop. Then we go to Foreman's and

1:27:39

play poker. And then we go

1:27:41

to Don Cucos and have burritos. Oh, fun.

1:27:44

I know. God, you're young. I'm

1:27:46

so young. I'm really not. Did

1:27:48

you do any of that stuff? Well, yeah, we went to

1:27:50

Don Cucos. We went to Houston. Oh,

1:27:52

fun. For lunch. Friday night. Oh,

1:27:55

for lunch. Just delicious. We went to the

1:27:57

bookstore. And then we went to Foreman's. Okay.

1:28:00

And played. We ended up playing Spades, not

1:28:02

poker. Okay. And then

1:28:04

we went to Don Cucos and then we got a

1:28:06

milkshake. Fun. Yeah, it

1:28:08

was really fun. I love that. Man,

1:28:11

Bob's has just the best

1:28:13

milkshakes. But you went to Bob's big boy. Yeah,

1:28:15

that's right. Go for milkshake. This is a ding ding. Because

1:28:18

this weekend, I cooked a steak

1:28:20

for my friend Rich. And

1:28:23

he said, I want it fucking blasted.

1:28:25

Like, leave it on so long. Well.

1:28:27

So let me just say, Rich

1:28:30

and Patty, who I've known now for 14 years, Rich

1:28:33

and Patty owned the company Tatum that built

1:28:35

my sand car. The best one in the

1:28:37

world named after their daughter, Tatum. So

1:28:39

I've been friendly with them and I camp with them

1:28:42

sometimes. I really, really like them. They're both retired now.

1:28:44

Yeah. And then they were with

1:28:46

friends who I'd never met, Mike and Amber.

1:28:49

And they were awesome. So like the four of

1:28:51

them I just was having so much fun with.

1:28:53

And so Mike and Amber have been out to

1:28:55

a restaurant with Rich a bunch of times watching

1:28:57

him try to order a steak. And he can't

1:28:59

get them to ruin it enough. Right. So I

1:29:01

said you might want to try this technique. I

1:29:04

love the malts at Bob's Big Boys.

1:29:07

And I always want them to put

1:29:09

more malts in. And the strategy I

1:29:11

finally figured out that works every time

1:29:13

is you tell the server, OK,

1:29:16

I want you to put so

1:29:18

much malton that

1:29:20

you will have a moment where you think, fuck,

1:29:23

I put too much malton and I've ruined it.

1:29:26

Double that. Yeah. And

1:29:28

that works. Yeah. So I said, start telling

1:29:30

them like, I want you to cook this

1:29:33

so well burnt. The

1:29:35

moment you think I've

1:29:37

ruined this steak, you're halfway there. Wow. So

1:29:39

they're going to try the TV. We'll see

1:29:41

if that strategy works. Wow. But what a

1:29:43

ding, ding, ding, because then I ended up

1:29:45

telling that story probably three times this weekend

1:29:47

about the malt. Oh, you did. Well, because

1:29:49

then I cooked them a hamburger and I

1:29:51

also had to blast the hamburger. And then

1:29:53

some other people were talking about how Rich

1:29:55

Loves his. Oh, OK. And then,

1:29:57

you know, wow. Yeah. Well.

1:30:00

It doesn't take a lot of provocation for me to

1:30:02

tell that malt story as you would have guessed. Yeah,

1:30:04

because- I knew you were thinking that and so I'll

1:30:06

cut to the chase. Only

1:30:09

because we have heard it on here once before too. Yeah, but

1:30:11

you know- But it's great! I thought it was

1:30:13

a problem. The thing is we've been on for six years so

1:30:15

sometimes I'm gonna- we have new listeners in India that don't know

1:30:17

and they might go to baths on vacation. The Indian listeners

1:30:19

have been here since day one. I don't

1:30:22

know. It's as sad as growing. Yeah, no, it's

1:30:24

true. A lot of

1:30:26

people don't know about Peababy, you know? That's a

1:30:28

sad- But Peababy was

1:30:30

a long time ago. Right, and

1:30:32

I'm gonna told that malt story around that time.

1:30:34

It was and it was pretty- Oh. It

1:30:38

was just a few

1:30:40

months ago because- When did it-

1:30:42

you have an exact memory when you told it? I do know

1:30:45

why. I know that the reason we

1:30:47

talked about it is because I was

1:30:49

talking about Valley Days. Ah, the

1:30:51

malt. Because Jess and I get malts- But you did

1:30:53

like a milkshake, not a malt. Yeah, but he loves

1:30:56

malts. Yeah. Probably around

1:30:58

that time I was telling the story of

1:31:00

my trigger shot because that had to do

1:31:02

with that day. It's all my time. That

1:31:04

was October. Yeah. And then we were

1:31:07

talking about Bob's and then you told your malt story. Oh,

1:31:09

okay. And here I am again. And I

1:31:11

told it all weekend. And you- Is

1:31:15

there any prediction of when I'll stop telling

1:31:17

that story? Oh, actually. Because it clearly something's

1:31:19

in my moon cycle. Okay, other highlights? Oh,

1:31:21

yeah. Oh, no, no, that was Friday

1:31:23

night. I wanna hear about your Saturday night. Yeah, I had a brunch with

1:31:25

Liz. Fun. There's a pin

1:31:27

in that for synced for two weeks

1:31:29

from now. And

1:31:32

then yesterday I did nothing

1:31:35

while I cooked. I made a

1:31:37

banana bread and then I made a soup. But

1:31:40

based on something that happened in the brunch with

1:31:43

Liz, but we're gonna talk about two weeks from

1:31:45

now on synced, we talked about boredom and

1:31:47

how we can't really get bored anymore.

1:31:50

Our society doesn't understand boredom

1:31:52

anymore. No appetite for boredom. What does

1:31:54

it mean- No tolerance for boredom. You

1:31:56

will all you always have a distraction. You

1:31:58

always have your phone. There's always

1:32:00

a million things you could be looking at.

1:32:03

And then I got a

1:32:06

little bored yesterday. It was like sort

1:32:08

of the goal. Oh, okay. I'm not

1:32:10

gonna go do anything. I'm

1:32:12

gonna try not to just like keep refreshing the

1:32:14

phone. What was the longest you had put your phone down?

1:32:17

I was down a while, cause I, well, I

1:32:19

made the banana bread, although that's like not boring.

1:32:22

But yeah, like when I would

1:32:25

grab it out of instinct,

1:32:28

I would put it down. I mean, a few

1:32:30

times I looked at it. I'm not saying I

1:32:32

didn't look at it, but it was an intention

1:32:35

to just don't always go here. You can just

1:32:37

like lay here. Yeah, yeah. I

1:32:39

read some of my book, but I got

1:32:41

a little bored, which was nice. And I

1:32:44

think maybe as adults, we might get three

1:32:46

of those days a year. There's

1:32:49

so few and far between. They're probably

1:32:51

restful in a weird way. Very. Yeah,

1:32:53

restorative. So it's nice. Oh,

1:32:56

good. Okay, so

1:32:58

I went with Aaron Weekley, best friend Aaron Weekley.

1:33:00

Yes, to the Sand Dunes. To the Sand Dunes.

1:33:03

And we had a spectacular time.

1:33:05

Great. And we brought four

1:33:07

vehicles to off-roading cause they break. It's

1:33:10

part of the biz. Yeah. It's to

1:33:12

be expected. Yeah. So first day

1:33:14

we went on a rip in the four seater and

1:33:16

the one seater, and I haven't driven my one seater

1:33:18

since it's been turboed and the engine's done. It's so

1:33:21

fun. I was having so much fun. Then

1:33:23

we went out in the Raptor at night to try out

1:33:25

all the crazy new lighting I have for it. And that

1:33:27

was awesome. Loved it. And

1:33:29

then Thursday Rich and Patty were there.

1:33:32

I got the sand car out, and

1:33:34

then I'm following Rich in his sand

1:33:36

truck. So much fun. And

1:33:39

then the girls showed up

1:33:41

on Friday. But Aaron

1:33:43

and I first night we watched most

1:33:47

of Napoleon. Okay. We like to

1:33:49

do movie nights when we're out there. Great. Napoleon

1:33:52

Dynamite? Nope, the movie Napoleon with... Oh,

1:33:56

the new movie. The new movie, yes. Okay.

1:33:58

How was it? We were loving it. But then

1:34:00

Aaron started sawing logs about two-thirds the way through so

1:34:02

I shut it down. What's that mean pooping? No, but

1:34:05

snoring. Oh Yeah, he was

1:34:07

out cold. We put the we put the pull-out

1:34:09

bed out of he sleeps on the pull-out bed

1:34:11

Which is an air mattress in the big TVs

1:34:13

up front and then we lay in the Pull

1:34:16

out bed and watch and then all of a

1:34:18

sudden he was snoring So then

1:34:21

Friday the girls arrived Lincoln

1:34:23

Delta Kristin I took the

1:34:25

girls out in the Raptor at night, which is

1:34:27

really fun The Lincoln of course wanted more more

1:34:29

more Then at night Lincoln

1:34:32

really want to put some Ted Seger stickers on

1:34:34

the swing set because everyone put stickers on it

1:34:36

So you had to go get to the swing

1:34:38

set. There's also a volleyball court. Oh Sand

1:34:41

volleyball and volleyball Shepherds

1:34:45

plus Aaron versus Patty

1:34:49

rich Amber and

1:34:51

Mike fun and Reactivated

1:34:54

everything that had hurt from the week

1:34:56

before shoot rotator cuff right arm fucked

1:34:58

neat left knee doesn't matter diving It's

1:35:00

a blast. It was a nail biter

1:35:03

Thirteen to fifteen we lost but we had

1:35:05

two kids. Okay, but also We're

1:35:08

in the middle of the dunes playing ball. It's like a

1:35:10

weird Synchronized I

1:35:12

know but you've been saying For

1:35:15

weeks now Sam

1:35:17

volleyball bad hate it would way rather

1:35:19

play But then you loved it. Well,

1:35:22

I'll play volleyball on any surface. I

1:35:24

love volleyball I'd

1:35:26

play on hot lava if there is Wow Okay,

1:35:30

so that's fun. It was really

1:35:32

really fun then that night second

1:35:34

viewing of Barbie. All right.

1:35:36

Yes great movie What a

1:35:38

great movie really held up.

1:35:40

It's a masterpiece. It's really you love

1:35:42

it so much. It's so well-made It's

1:35:45

so creative Also thinking

1:35:47

for those actors like there's those scenes where

1:35:49

they're on that stupid beach set with a plastic

1:35:51

wave behind them and plastic everything And I

1:35:53

was thinking on set these

1:35:55

people thank God had a lot of faith

1:35:57

in her. Yeah, and it was But

1:36:00

when you're standing on this crazy

1:36:02

plasticy set doing a big song

1:36:05

and dance routine Yeah without

1:36:07

the music. There's no real music in

1:36:09

those scenes. Yep Ryan Gosling This one

1:36:12

in particular is him singing his big

1:36:14

song Yeah, and it's at the beach

1:36:16

and I'm like this this

1:36:18

is full commitment and probably felt a little

1:36:21

scary He's pulling his shirt open and he's

1:36:23

being douchey Intentionally on

1:36:26

this plastic toy set. I

1:36:28

know I'm I'm impressed Yeah, and

1:36:30

Togretta. Holy smokes. It's just such a

1:36:33

masterpiece Side note Aaron

1:36:35

and I this entire trip have had a

1:36:37

new thing We want to have

1:36:39

a brand of paper towels and it's for men

1:36:41

who work hard and sometimes have to pee just

1:36:43

on a roll Of paper towel. This all started

1:36:46

because I was peeing driving the bus Following

1:36:49

a police escort of an oversized trailer on

1:36:51

the drive out. So we're going 35 I've

1:36:55

got the cruise on and I'm standing next to the

1:36:57

wheel peeing in a very small jug I had to

1:36:59

cut it off halfway through and then I was afraid

1:37:01

of a bunch of drippage So then I was using

1:37:04

the paper towel to wrap around my penis when I

1:37:06

put it back in my pants Okay And

1:37:08

then on that led to us thinking of just