Interracial Buddies, Interracial Films

like how do you guys know each other? They were really excited and interested and like were you in the military together, Like they couldn't conceive of a space where we would just had this kind of like comfort around one another. And it's sort of it's sort of triggered their their curiosity of where would that space exist. I just would distinctly remember it being kind of like the whitest place I'd ever visited in terms of activities too, like we went mountain bike ging. Yeah, we've never done

that before. Yeah, And and having people look at us, even your roommate what was his name, Chip or Chad? Okay, Chip, Chad? Uh totally different? Um, so you know, really nice guy. I mean that I think even Chad was a little like Wow, Ben Scott, you know, got this black friend. I'm Khalil Jibrawn Muhammed and I'm Ben Austin. I was giving you a runaway. Oh yeah, I don't. I give myself runaway. You don't give me runaway. I'm Ben Austin

and I'm Khalil Gibrad Muhammed. We're two best friends, one black, one wife. I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is some of my best friends are some of my best friends are in this show. We wrestle with the absurdities and the challenges of a deeply divided and unequal country. Yeah. So we're going to talk today about buddies, Buddies on the big screen, interracial buddy films. Yep. And just a heads up because we're talking about interracial buddy films.

Some of the clips contain offensive language. Let's do it. So we're gonna talk about four to eight hours and we're going to talk about other interracial buddy films today. No goddamn way to start a partnership. I get this partners sween brothers and we've friends. I'm putting you down and keeping you down until games is locked up or dead. And if Games gets away, you're gonna be sorry you ever met me. I'm already sorry. These Buddy films were

about crossing the color line, creating relationships. So that opening scene we just heard, which has, you know, this classic line, we ain't buddies, we ain't partners, and we ain't friends, which set the moral arc of the story, which is that we're gonna be buddies, partners and friends, and we're gonna do a sequel, and we're going to launch all

kinds of sequels. So I think it's an important moment to think about the last forty years since the nineteen eighties, and how we got to a moment where we're now talking about systemic racism because something about the notion of just being together didn't get us to the Promised Land. Yeah. Yeah, because I think this moment of talking about racism in America and systemic racism in particular. This guy asked me

the other day. He found out I was a historian, and he's like, oh, you teach at Harvard, you're an expert. I've been dying astis, So what do you think the solution is the First thing I say, I was like, dude, come on, I studied the past, but that was just me trying to demure from the question, and it is no seriously, And I said, well, what do you think and he said, integration, man, integration. I grew up in Jersey City. There's people everywhere from all over the world.

And he said, we just need to spend more time together. Yeah, And that's what these Buddy films were about. We were really shown something then that we were we were we were thinking about and revisiting a movie like that now, you know, to try to try to imagine that moment back when we were kids and what we saw. And then also this other thing like what do they what do they tell us? Now? What are we? What do we learn? What do we take away from them? Yeah,

so they are all these amazing films. There's everything from The Defiant Ones in nineteen fifty eight with Sydney Poortier and Tony Curtis. Everybody lives by and everybody stuck with what is even a swamp? Animals? Even that weasel. You're calling me a weasel. No, I'm calling you a white man. There's in the Heat of the Night in nineteen sixty

seven Sydney Potier again, they call me, mister Tibbs. I mean he is, like, I don't know, he's the every black man in Hollywood at that time, and he's starring alongside Rod Steiger. You got Silver Streak with Gene wild there and Richard Prior. I can't pass for black. You tell him. I didn't say I was gonna make you black. I said I was gonna get you on the train. Now we've got to make them cops. Thank you black.

And then they get back together and stir crazy. There's also Blazing Saddles, which was the first movie that my brother and I went to and we looked at one another and were like, damn, they make movies for us. And then and then we jump into the nineteen eighties. Yeah, we got Trading Places, dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy again from Cameroon.

Do you remember me? It's Lionel, Joseph Yep and all the Beverly Hills cop movies of course, which which is when Eddie Murphy is at the prime of his career, disturbing the piece I got thrown out of a window. What's the fucking charge? Were getting pushed out of a moving far huh? Jay Walking. Then in the early nineties, you get White Men Can't Jump, which is in a samizingly amazing film with Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes. Now

I'll see you a hustle man. Hey, I never used no goofy white motherfucker like fat Hey, who you calling coofy white motherfuck you. There's Rush Hour, which extends the genre of interracial buddy films to Jackie chan that. There's also Training Day with Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawk, a kind of another version with that inversion, right exactly. Yeah, yeah, so there. So there's a lot of films, right, it's been this is a genre that's been going on literally

for half a century. So we're gonna talk about two in particular today, forty eight Hours, the first of Eddie Murphy's films, and also Lethal Weapon, which is a kind of a genre buster with Danny Glover and Mel Gibson. Yeah, these films set in motion, you know, dozens of copycat versions. So Khalil, you you were talking about all the ways

that you, you know, Danny Glover to hide stereotypes. Do you remember that at the time at all of seeing that and feeling anything, Well, I think, I mean, yeah, I was very conscious of portrayals of blackness and black men, black people. You know, I remember watching The Cosby Show like everybody else, with a great sense of pride at this incredible family, the Huxtables, and so any movie that featured black people and particularly black men and key characters

was a big deal. I Mean, I'd come off of seeing Richard Pryor, who mostly was doing comedy of one kind or another, whether it was in his own films or with Gene Wilder, and these films seemed, you know, they seemed more mature, more positive, and I remember feeling that I was invested in what was happening on the big screen. I think this is probably true for forty eight Hours too. I Mean, we don't talk about the genre of black savior films like we talk about the

genre of white savior films. But that's that's the other thing that I think made these films interesting to black audiences. Well, the thing about the white character and all of these films is that for them to have the relationship with the black character, they need to be outsiders. That's part

of the trope. You know, you're you're separate, You're a crazy person, a vigilante, not a team player, like you're outside somehow white society, normal white society, and therefore you could be linked up with this black person in some way.

That's why I'm thinking about these Buddy films as black savior films, right because at the end of the day, white people don't need saving but four right like, But for the characters Riggs who's suicidal, Nick Nolte, who's just an asshole cop who's very selfish and himself is quick triggered and racist, right like, he needs Eddie Murphy so he can stop being a racist cop. So these Buddy films are doing something to create space for black people in a white society that had only ever imagined them

as something less than. So Eddie Murphy been. I mean, of course he was for our generation what Richard Pryor had been to our parents' generation, and what Dave Chappelle has been for a whole generation of young people who are younger than us, the black comic translator of all the racist myths and mythologies and absurdities in America. And that's part of the excitement of forty eight Hours. It's a breakout role and we know him already, but it was just part of my coming of age experience in

Hyde Park and being at the local theater. And of course you and I ended up working literally we met the next year after that movie and work next door at Hyde Park Computers, the theater and the computer store. We're almost contiguous, and yeah, and seeing movies there was a big deal. Yeah. So that movie I think is really powerful because it is so steeped in racism, Like you're talking about forty eight hours, forty eight hours, I mean, yeah,

it is. It is in your face. I mean, if a weapon verst color blind version of this, right, this is just the opposite. Yeah, so this is very much a Hollywood film. Joel Silver produces this film, maybe it's his first one, and he ends up producing actually Lethal Weapon and a million other movies. But there's something that still feels really unique about this and different from other films. There's all this racism in the film, but it feels like it's an analysis of racism and race rather than

being racist. Oh. Absolutely, From the very first moment, the opening scene is you know where one guy breaks in the one out of prison, and the whole way he does it is by saying racist things against him as a as a Native American. Right, it's from the very opening lines, you got a big mouth. He's only joking. They have the water place, firewater Tonto. Is that what

you mean? Firewater? Huh? Yeah, there's firewater Tonto. Right. So yeah, so Eddie Murphy is joined in this league, this band of criminals, um, that includes two white guys, an Indian and a black guy. It's kind of like one of those jokes, right, like what happens when two white guys in Indian and black guy get together and rob a bank? And so that's like the conceit of the film out the gate and uh, the racism directed towards the character. What if was his name? Billy? Yeah, Billy the Native

American guy? Yeah, Billy yeah, Billy. Um is just it

means it's it's it's all dropping from the beginning. And so partly what I'm thinking about seeing that as kids is how commonplace it was to play to this racist humor in these stereotypes, right, yes, saying it felt like that race is always present and on people's minds, and people talk about it, and people worry about it, and people joke about it, and it's there at every moment, and it doesn't necessarily lead to racism, but you don't pass up a moment to mention it, or to joke

about it, or to nudge something about it. Yeah, I mean the humor. The humor is dramatized, so it's not meant for laughs. Right, It's like, we all know this is how we really think and talk about each other, so we're going to lean into that. In fact, Nick Nolty's character, I mean, he you know, he opens as this kind of you know, working stiff cop who's sleeping with this woman. You know, he's noncommittal, it's just about the sex, and it's just another day on the job.

And this day happens to be one where he's going to end up getting some black guy out of jail to solve a crime. But the first thing you know, out of his mouth basically within the conversation when he meets Eddie Murphy shortly after, he basically says, I need your help, is you know I thought you were a smart boy, like I mean, and he says it just shy of a Southern twang. Oh man, it it I mean, I I it goes from boy jive. He calls him a spear chucker. He says, you, um, what was He

calls him watermelon at one point. Yeah, later on, Yeah, he calls him a chocolate colored loser. And then and then finally it like builds builds built, and they have this scene where they get in the fist fight. He uses the N word it like, I mean he goes to places you're like watermelon, damn, like spear chucker, like and another actor. You know, if you had Mel Gibson saying on those lines, it would have come across totally differently.

There's something about about about Nick Nolty's racism and like also like he's this giant, hulking guy and so shabby and worn out, and like his lines are delivered with a weariness. You know, it's not like he's not there's not like a spit edge to them. He's just like he's just fallen apart. Yeah. Well again, I think he's also standing in as this Irish cop. Like he he

has a proverbial Irish cup of coffee. He pulls out his flask and drops a little whiskey in it before he gets his day started, and his racism is dripping from him, which is a way of kind of signifying that the moral arc right of his experience is gonna be coming to terms with how shitty he is as a person to black people and all that's inside of him that Eddie Murphy stands in as this canvas for him to spew on, including as you pointed out, this

line over he calls him literally an overdressed, charcoal colored loser. But the truth is he is himself a loser his well but he but he, but he is right. Nobody likes this guy so so that that idea. I mean, I hadn't even thought of the film in a way as a black savior movie. Um. And there's this, there's this is this amazing moment when they're in the black bar and Nick Nolty's character essentially apologizes for all the racist things. He said, muff, that was just doing much job,

keeping me down. Yeah, well, doing your job. Don't explain everything, Jack, Yeah, you're right, as long as you feeling like Abraham Lincoln, which at first I was like, I confused it with with George Washington. Was it telling the truth? And I was like, oh no, he means freeing the slaves exactly, Like yeah, I mean the the idea that you know in his raspy, weary voice. He says all the words again and apologizes, I was just doing my job holding

you down. And Eddie Murphy's line is amazing, you know, doing your job doesn't explain all of it, right, and he says, yeah, yeah, you're right, fuck like like like and then it's so like real and crazy that this is actually happening in this in this buddy movie that Eddie Murphy has to like deflate it with his laugh, right, No, it was. I agree, it was incredible, and I mean this is this is where I think the film is groundbreaking for taking head on how so many Americans are

thinking about these issues in this moment. Yeah, you're right. You know. One of the things that this film does powerfully that say lethal weapon doesn't do at all. It actually shows them develop a relationship. They actually do connect. And then there's a sense too of like the other kind of male bonding of doing a job well that they both live by a code, you know, that their sense of this being you know, your pluck and your ingenuity.

When Nick Nolty defends him against the chief, he says he might be a convict, but he's the smartest partner I ever worked with right. That's that's a big part of what you're talking about, which is that that their authentic relationship has has to rise above the normal rules that apply in a society that's broken. They maybe that's a good good moment to talk about that. That bar

scene the probably the famous scene in the movie. Yeah, so this scene, you know they're they're going in to find out where this guy Billy is, and they know that he used to bartend there, and they walk into this bar and it is just like some fantasy land of if they say redneck bar. Like the first shot, you hear these fiddles, it's like the Charlie Daniels band, and you see a woman on stage dancing to like fiddles,

going nuts. Every single person in there is white, and he is wearing a cowboy hat, and there are Confederate flags everywhere we where, Like it just goes from small Confederate flag, bigger, big Confederate flag, bigger Confederate flag. And so the first line that Eddie Murphy says, not a very popular place for my kind of place, always like custry boys. They're sure there. I was gonna like you. Eddie Murphy. The work that he does in this scene.

Just it's masterful, right, But it also it's also the moment where Eddie Murphy and bo ease the actual power of policing. Yes, right, yeah, that's that's a moment where Nick Nolte sees a version of himself and realizes how much power and privilege he actually has. Yeah, so before they go into this Honckey talk bar, Eddie Murphy's character Reggie Hammond says to Nick Nolty's character Jack Kates, the thing that gives you power is your badge. I could get the information if I just had a badge. And

Nick Nolty he says, no way. You know, I'm a great cop. I know what I'm doing. And so they make a bet and he says, I'll give you my badge and you can you can try to see if you can get the same information out of these people. Oh yeah, no, it's it's such a powerful moment in the film because, to anyone's surprise, no one has seen a film a moment like this in a in a

Hollywood scene. This is probably this is probably top ten scene for groundbreaking use of comedy to illustrate some of the most powerful social forces in society, including how much the intersection of race and policing matter in our system. Yeah, like this is orson Wells level right here, like this this is up there. Yeah yeah, all right, listen up. I don't like white people. I hate rednecks. You people

are rednecks. It means I'm enjoying this shit. Yeah, so okay, So like that is the moment where Eddie Murphy fully embodies Nick Noti's power. He literally turns. He basically collides the power of policing with the power to be racist because he can do anything to these people and they can do nothing about it. You know what I am. I'm your worst fucking night man, man manigga would have badged. I mean, I got permission to kick your fucking ass

whenever I feel like it. And that that is the slavery metaphor playing out in this moment which Nick Nolte. And what I love about the scene is it's also the moment where Nick Nolte is watching this. The camera comes back to Nick Nolty time and time again, so that he can see with his own eyes what he has been doing to people. Yeah and maybe maybe like he sees it, but he doesn't. It doesn't sink in yet,

but it's part, it's part of the process grow. Yeah. Yeah, so I think we should take a look then at how this notion of power and privilege moves out of Eddie Murphy to another movie that Joel Silver makes five years later, another interracial buddy film, another cop action film, and this time Danny Glover plays the straight guy, and he's the cop in charge. He's Sergeant Murtok, and all

of a sudden, all these stereotypes are completely inverted. He's a family man, he's hashes, he's played by the rules, he's fifty years old, thinking about retirement because he's already done his twenty year bit. And he gets this crazy ass lunatic white guy as a partner who's played by Mel Gibbs. Fascinating. So the premise of Lethal Weapon is, you know, Danny Glover's character, Murtile is his name, Roger

Murtile is Murtalk, Murtalk, Murtalk. Yeah, he's a cop. You know, he's guess he's near retirement or something like he's just turned fifty and then copy years. You know, that's like twenty five good years on the force. Yeah, so you're at that done they're on the lapd and he gets this renegade partner, you know, the outside or not the team player, you know, and and somebody who they think is suicidal, and it's Mel Gibson, right, and that's a real bad I'm a real company's a really fucking gun.

It turns out to be a little crazy in the end. I mean, when we saw it, do you think of it as like an important film in any way of seeing like interracial you know, males bonding in some way. Did you remember it that way? I did. Yeah. The thing that struck me on seeing it now because I also remember just just the imagery of seeing the movie posters and seeing the VHS box all the time, of thinking like that it meant something and seeing it now

is how little it's actually an interracial film. The cast is, it's a black man and a white man, but that race. You know, it's almost like the idea of I don't see color like that's that's the story of the film. That there's no actual writing or very little where they're interrogating race, where they're thinking about it, where they're asking about it. It's not present. They're not actually interested in one another there, you know, it's just a sketch of

the story. Like they don't they don't really bond over anything beyond the surface, and they don't exist in terms of their racial identities. They just exist in the you know, in the present to do action. See see, this is where I would disagree. So I think that whether it was deliberate in the scriptwriting or whether it was in the casting itself, is a commentary on race. If mean, first of all, Danny Glover is a socially conscious actor.

Second of all, he basically inverts every stereotype in his role. Now, the truth is, had it been a white guy, we wouldn't necessarily be able to make this commentary. But I think it matters to the viewer. It matters to the audience that the boss of this film is the black guy, the guy who's the family guy, is the black guy, the guy who is representing black cops at a time when black cops are still being killed by fellow officers when they're off duty um and are forming organizations to

try to fight against racism inside of law enforcement. It matters that he's the one in that really powerful scene when they're investigating the murder of the women who died in the opening scene and they go up to that group of kids. Come on, man, you can't say that's not about race. Is that a real gun? Yeah, yes, this is a real gun. Did you kill people? No, it's some guys hurting someone. I try to shoot him in the lake or something, just to stop them. Mama's police, missie,

black people. Is it true? Yea? Is it true? Is that true? True? Is that true? Maybe? Kids scream? Scream? Do you like icecream? Yeah? Yeah? I think that that is such a powerful scene in this film because it didn't it just didn't have to happen. It did not have to happen. Nothing about that brief moment with those kids had to go there other than the need to acknowledge that there was this larger social reality happening and

that those kids were bearing witness to it. Um, I don't just we were kind of saying the same thing, like like there's a there's a symbolism of their presence, but it's very rarely written into the script and meaning. And so there's a scene later where, um, you know, the Special Forces guy shoot Riggs. Mel Gibson and Murtog's daughter has been kidnapped and He's running around the streets

of La holding a gun, his shirt off. He looks crazy and police are pulling up and never is there a moment like, oh shit, they might shoot him, right and and in forty eight hours, it's like every moment that you know, cost people up like we're gonna shoot this motherfucker, and you always feel that, And so it's sort of race blind at different times. And yet there's

this symbolism. And so the daughter, they're like, they live in some neighborhood and you're like, all right, that's interesting, but they don't discuss that in terms of what it means for them to live in that neighborhood. The daughter is going on some date with a white boy. You know that. He says, blond hair, that's not an issue. Um, they don't don't really talk about it. But then there are these two moments when they try to script in some race and one is at the dinner table where

they beat box. And this is like some white Hollywood version of like, well, what would a black family do if they're you know, at dinner. I think they're gonna beat box and then they wrap I'm going to find Roger. And the point is that that they actually don't have, like, oh my gosh, black people can't all naturally rap. I don't know if you notice this, but you can see on their fridge like an end apartheide sticker. Oh, I

totally saw it. This is why you and I are not agreeing on this because I think this is the Reagan era. This is an era of I mean no, listen, Reagan appoints several key black people in cabinet positions, like basically building the base of a kind of black conservative movement that is very much about color blindness and seeing people as individuals. This is the zeitgeist of the Reagan moment, that's this feeling. This film is like part of that brainwashed.

I agree with you. It's like, for the most part, it's not exploring that idea. It's not you know, it doesn't never lends it. Its surfaces at a couple of moments like this, but for the most part, you know, they're not they're not they're not thinking about their racial identities, they're not discussing them. So then I'm going to talk about the very end of the film and what you're saying, because so you know, I mean, the premise doesn't really matter in a way, it's like just a mcguffin, as

they say, it's set up. You know, there's a murder, there's some drugs. They have to stop it, and the bad Vietnam Special Forces guys are trying to kill them. And so one of these guys played by Gary Busey is the other Special Forces and then he and Mel

Gibson have this fight on Danny Glover's suburban lawn. The very ends, yeah, because he's he you know, they need revenge, and in some absurd way, they all the police arelike, you know, even though he's murdered all these people, let's let them fight like fist fight as like, you know, to work this out like man to man. And this is such a man world. And and so you know, in the end, Mel Gibson is getting he's getting beat up. He takes his shirt off, you know, purposefully like he's

he's you know, this is Mel Gibson. It's raining, he's wet. He has this mullet, like a long mullet, you know, curly mullet, and you know he's getting punched, but he's punching back and he he ends up knocking this guy out and the police are arresting him, and but then Gary Busey you know, does a jiu jitsu moves and

pulls a gun from one of the officers. And at this point mel Gibson is with his shirt off and soaking wet and exhausted, and Danny Glover has draped him in a blanket and is holding him into his chest. The total buddy moment, dude, Like, this is the culmination.

This is the culmination of a movie that is in conversation with other buddy films, which no, man, I gotta, I gotta set this up right, because the film starts in classic buddy film fashion with them saying we are stuck with each other, right, and the culminating scene that you're about to describe is the full narrative arc of that relationship. I got your partner. Yeah, So culmination is

the right word because it's totally orgasmic. It's actually the two of them coming together, like like, he is naked, mel Gibson, exhausted, He's draped in a blanket on Danny Glover's chest, holding him and he says, you know, I got you, buddy, I got you, buddy, And then Gary Busey it turns out that he has a gun on them, and they both hold up their guns simultaneously and and you know, shoot one after the other. No, I we totally agree on that. And that is the story of

Cold War Reagan America. Right. Our enemies are foreign, not domestic. We as individuals can rise and succeed in this nation if we are hard working, if we are family people, if we love on our kids, if we don't do drugs, if we show restraint. That is the moment where how does it end? Right? Because the next scene is a family scene. The next scene after this as orgasmic embrace of this black guy and white guy. And interestingly enough, of course, Danny Glover towers over mel Gibson, right, you

know he is black Mammy Fogure in this moment. Right. The next scene is them going back to his house and inviting Rigs into the home with his dog Sam to join the family in a holiday meal. That is the closure of Cold World America. Right. We are cops, we kill bad guys. We do this together. We are

in this together. So what's obvious about these films is these are films for white audiences, for white men who are making these films and imagining that liberal Hollywood is talking to white guys around America who you know who who are having very isolated, segregated, all white experiences. And so, as a white guy, what do you think these films tell us as we look back and thinking about our

own relationship and coming of age in the the nineteen eighties. Yeah, I mean I also tried to watch these movies and see whether I saw myself in them, you know, definitely, definitely not in mel Gibson, you know, but I do think it is that sense of redemption that you talked about. There's something comforting in them, right, Like that's how we're

redemption for white men. That that the sense of you know, coming together is also a sense of, you know, the country's ideals being realized in a way that also isn't you know, it's not like the social order is being transformed. It's you know, it's it's ah, you don't have to give up very much to see this piece um. In fact, you gain a friend, and that's if that's all it takes to have a better society. That you have a

new buddy and that everyone likes you. You know that that that the this is a very easy version of racial reconciliation. Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right. So, I mean we are in this present moment of these the last several years where people have been called to account and and so looking back on these movies from our youth and are wrestling with race and racism and where white people are looking at themselves and looking at the system. And it's a look that often people are

avoiding because it's uncomfortable. But sometimes you almost all you have to do, I guess is is the nod or the corporate sponsorship or the like on Twitter. And that feels somewhat equivalent to these movies. I don't know that we were They weren't revolutionary for sure. No, But I mean I mean to you too, not about us. I mean, like if we're thinking about what what do we make of these films and the world they've played and how people were socialized, you know, in the course of our

coming of age. Right, So we are fifty basically, um, I mean I am a little younger than you. Of course you're you're fifty m forty nine. But the notion that seeing these films, or watching MTV, or playing on a sports team with black people, or having one in your band was was enough? So yeah, I think that's I think that's I think that's what what what I learned looking back on these films, Yeah, that it wasn't enough.

It maybe necessary in a way to create possible relationships that would change our politics and rewrite the rules of our society, but yeah, not enough. That's one to grow on. Yeah. Man, Well I learned a lot about how we were supposed to be buddies by watching these films. Again, friends and partners. Friends, Yeah, say we were, we were friends partners, but I mean, you know, on the tennis court, we were never friends of partners basketball. That's the line that that's the line

that starts their their interaction. We ain't brothers, we ain't partners, and we ain't friends. Yea. And then I got that that's what I have tattooed on my arm. It's it all came together and I loving brotherly embrace. Yeah. Yeah, alright, man, case closed, All right, love you love you man? So do Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil, Debron Muhammed, and my best friend Ben Austin.

It's produced by Serf Vincent and edited by Karen Shakerji. Our engineer is Martin Gonzalez. Our associate editor is Tischell Williams, and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias. Our executive producers are Leta Molad and Mia La Belle Special thanks to Eddie Murphy. You've been formative to our lives. Thanks to my wife Stephanie, who was our sharpest listener on this episode, and macatl the biggest movie watcher I know, who help with research

at Pushkin. Thanks to Heather Faine, Carly Niggliori, John Schnars, and Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan AVERYR. Young from his amazing album Tubman. You will definitely want to check out more of his music at his website averyar Young dot com. You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin Pods, and you can sign up for our newsletter at Pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider becoming a Pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content uninterrupted listening for four dollars and ninety nine cents of mine. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple Podcasts subscriptions. You got a Hot Mike, Hot Mike. I'm ready as as as we say on the golf course, as your

motor running. I don't know what that means. When you're ready, that's when you're ready, now whatever, that's when you're ready. You grew up. You grew up. You grew up three blocks exactly, and we were My father told me, he said to me, we are not people who play golf. He said that to me