Thank You For Being Some of Our Best Friends

Pushing God, Lily, your kinfold, what's your baby daddy's coming?

Go your baby daddies too shame and or criminal to stay.

I'm Khalil Jbron Muhammad.

I'm Ben Austin. We are two best friends, one black, one white.

I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is some of my best friends are wait.

Khalil, this is our last episode of the season, and I'm starting to figure something out. Some of my best friends are like, we're best friends, but it's also like that racist thing that people say, or that prejudice thing. You know, some of my best friends are. It's a double meaning.

You've just figured this out.

What a great title. In this show, we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country.

And yep, you said it. This is our last episode of the season. Man, what a journey it's been this year. But what a fitting way to come back to where it all started with Lil Lily and the man behind that magical song that just always makes me really feel good about this show.

Yeah, yeah, you're hearing that right now. And we are so excited to have Avery R. Young with us. He's the Poet Laureate of Chicago, the sound of this show, and just an amazingly talented soul. We're going to talk to him about his work as an interdisciplinary artist and educator, and of course how it all comes back to Chicago. Avery, what's up man? It is so good to have you on the show. Wow.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, this is a full circle moment for some of my best friends.

Are yes, you all for having me.

And hey, congratulations, I'm being named the first Poet Laureate of Chicago.

That's so crazy. Every time people say that, I'm like, thank you so much, thank you so much. It's honored to be here. And yeah, because y'all don't don't don't don't.

That's right, that's right. So you know what I was going to say is I knew you back when before, before you were all this hot stuff Poet laureate. Yeah, and your song Lil Lily, I was, I was. I was the one who introduced Khalil to it, and we wanted a Chicago artist, that's right. And and that song, you know, it's funky way like, it's so emotional and honest in a lot of ways and alive and every

Yeah, man, yeah, I appreciate it. Well listen you uh you passed the first litmus test on on this side of the Some of my best friends are with Little Lily because I played it for my wife Stephanie and she was like, oh man, that is hot. So that that that made it. That made it a done deal, and we are just so grateful in so many ways. Avery. Our show has always had you as a sonic partner. Is a better way to part it?

Love it?

I mean I think that I think that was the fit of the song in the show, because I mean the lyric content that song is heavy.

You know.

That's so that's that's something that I want to know a little bit more about. I mean, you know, what is the story behind the song?

Oh goodness, the story behind the song is so the song is on a record called Tubman, and Tubman is like the sonic poems that I couldn't put in a book right, and the book Neckbone right, so I had Neckbone is full of visual and traditional verse. And then there's these Then there was these sounds that I were hearing or the songs whatever I was hearing that I wouldn't you can't put in the book.

So I was like, well, let me put it in that. Let me put it in the record. And the lily is in response to a poem in the book about my mother.

And so toy Derrecott, who's a wonderful, wonderful writer and mentor from from the d.

From the Choice one time her her.

Assignment to me was to write something in my Darkest Ink, and little Lily is one of those pieces that I think is from my darkest Ink.

So we asked like, yeah, what's the dynamic between you and your mom? What's the story you want to tell about her.

I'm my mama's favorite, I'm a first child, I'm her only boy. We are definitely definitely definitely too blue and tight like blue, and we were all of us were raised by.

Her, her aunt, which is like my big mama, which is you know, it's it's a really complicated situations.

That word, that's that word, because that's the best hooks of the song that is confident.

It's really it's really complicated. It's lads, just as a testament to a lot of how we how we love and how we support, support and take care of each other. So my mother is special needs, and the phone really is really kind of really tackling this, this me being a product of sexual abuse, you know, and like they have been mothers who was like they can't deal with the child, so they you know, and then then there's been cases where they over loved, if that's that's a

You know.

This woman who is her?

Who is her aunt stepped in to raise her after my uncle brought my mother to her house as my grandmother was dealing with substance abuse and the guilt of you know, the story of it was the substance abuse that did this to her child, right, yes, yes, and that's a thing that she can't handle, right. So she gives the child to her to her son, and he's like, but I'm nineteen and I had this other life, the rest of his life that I have to live. I

We love them and we raise them as they our own, and we keep them as you know, a family. And that's that's the that's the that's the story.

And there is a yeah, yeah, thanks for sharing all of that. Avery. So let's let's just break this down a little bit with the song lyrics. So little Lily is your mom, and she has special needs. She was raised by her aunt because her mother suffered from drug addiction. And while your aunt was away at work, your mom was sexually abused. And so you sing it's complicated, because this is a complicated story, and really this is a song as a tribute, uh to your mother who you love dealing.

That's you know, that's the story in the sense. And then what you do with a song like Little Lily is.

You you can you sing? Can you sing a little love bit? Avery?

Because I sing a little bit? It goes hey lily song can folk don't need to be slow.

Ba bunk Mamma married on off to work, now her house and stays, and.

Lily your kinfold, what's your baby daddy's coming?

Go your baby daddies to shame and or criminal to stay? Boom boom hell lily boom.

Don't think guy's been and efficient shield boom boom.

So may it is song.

Service you was swore boom above a dog, don't bunk hell Lily, doom doom.

You know nobody can do you like jeeves boom boom, bump bump. You know no, I'm gonna do you like the love. That's so funny that the lyric, because that's the song she used to sing in shirt.

She was singing the song like nodding, like Jesus, like Lord, she's seen it.

A long time.

So that's how that okay, And little Lily is.

Your mother, Lily is my mother? Yes, mother Mary going off to work. That's the great eyes.

Yes, all right, all right, Oh my god, my hair was standing on in Oh I was.

I was so moved.

That's just so beautiful. And and your ability to not only sing so amazingly, but you had the funk going, you had the bass player.

That was.

Yeah, that's that song, as you just described, both in its intonation, in the in the rhythms and grooves, and and also in the actual lyrics, speak so much to the church and to gospel. And your band is called the Deacon Board. So so talk about your musical background, your influences, the role of church, and your music.

Wow, the musical background has come from very musical family. Everybody plays a lot, well, everybody doesn't play.

A lot of us do play. It is there's a lot. Everybody sings though, that's the thing that everybody does. Everybody sings.

And we grew up in church, but also grew we also grew up in the household where if Mary Booker was listening to me Halea Jackson, all the children were listening to Millie Jackson.

Chicago Gospel, Great Uh and an R and b. Greade, I got it, so it.

Was always, it was always, but I've never and then I grew up not necessarily understanding the difference in the two. Like you, it was that one thing you sing, you sing in church, and it's one thing that's playing on the radio. But if you really, if you, if you stand still right and you understand vibrations like it's it's it's from the same place. They thumping church just like they thumping on this Millie Jackson.

Record. They crooning in church just like they're crooling on the Millie Jackson record. All of that.

Understanding the narrative of life through the lyric of song and through the thump of our foot and hip bone and the conditions in which people live and then create in.

Spite of those conditions is it's always.

It's fascinating me and it plays out through the work. So then growing up with that ass an influence, I just bring more of that. I'm just bringing I'm just continuing that conversation. Martie Gaines is definitely definitely an influence as far as music it's concerned Gill Scott Hearing, because Gill Scot Hearing taught me the possibility of that the song still houses a poem.

The songs the poem that's really powerfully said.

Yeah.

Rights for the fact that you could be you know, what is a song with without bravery?

House doesn't stand without courage, you know. So that's what I need, that's what.

Falls in well well, Avery, I just want to say, like hearing all those influences certainly show up in your music. And I think, you know, for us and for our listeners, uh, for the fans of some of my best friends are we have benefited so much from all those influences in the way that you have captured the sacred in the secular. So, uh, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk a bit more about your artistry.

We'll be right back. We are back on some of my best friends with the amazing Avery Are Young. Avery, I'm thinking about I'm thinking about the first time we met, which was a bunch of years ago, and it was at an art opening in Chicago, and you were doing visual art at that time, a sculpture and you were presenting this sculpture which was a noose, an actual noose, and at the bottom of it were skittles sort of scattered around it.

Yes, yes, yes.

That was my first solo exhibition, and so a lot of the visual text work was in relationship to it. At the time, what was the murder in the trial of trayvon Martin. I just really wanted to think about the materials, just the material the caves did a lot of studying about what was going on and then try to implement that ended the materiars used inside.

Of the.

And trayvon Martin as he was walking in his in his neighborhood, he had gone to the store to buy skittles.

Yes, yes, skittles.

So in your exhibit you see this noose and it's like ten feet off the ground, and it's made out of blue jeans, like torn up blue jeans, the entire noose, and it extends on one end all the way to the floor where it meets empty bags of skittles, and then the candy skittles spread out all on the floor. Can you can you tell us you know how you made this, like you're you're thinking behind it.

So we took I took the.

Jeans and I kind of ripped them up, and then my friend Chuld had sold them to so they were like this one long piece, and then we soaked it and.

Arizona Arizona iced teas and all kinds.

I just stuck a bunch of it, soaked them in that for a couple of days, and then once we got the once that got it, dried it for a minute and then began.

To do the work of.

Twisted it so that it would look like a rope and what the sugar and I mean the sugar in the drinks would help bind, yes, yes, and we're singing that that would happen, and like it worked, and I was like, and then we went about the business of time the noose and I remember like that day every other day it was. It was it was really hard

Tad News and I.

Could avery, yeah, I mean this idea that you captured of Trayvon Martin also being lynched, and this is my first introduction to you, and I'm seeing this and this powerful visual art, and then I'm thinking about, well, who is this guy? What what is his artistry? And then that same night you performed Resurrect Fred, which is really performance art. It's a song and more than that, and I was like, Oh, this guy isn't just a visual artist. He is this you know, multi varied performance artist. Like

Here we go back to this gospel and attachment, this attachment to the church. A lot of what influences, especially as a performance artist, is preaching and a certain and seeing how a person with certain cadence and power and confidence and knowledge of a word inscripture and history presents this literature which is what you know, a Bible was

Only noted recording of the weeping.

But always like why, you know, because he was he had lost a good friend, and the community lost a very good friend and ally and advocate them when they lost Chairman Fred and all the others got lost. That was within that within that time, we're talking about very violent political time in American history, and Chairman Fred was definitely not the only person who was slain in this time.

You know, we talked about we talked about the guns and.

And them protected community with artillery, but they were also waking up in the morning, fixing breakfast and serving it to the panthers, and they be in the Black Panthers.

So song resurrect Fred is let's let's let's get that together. So that's what I wane when I'm saying resurrect Fred.

Yes, that's it's about the resurrection of that work, that work that is happening or what was happening in the communities with the Black Panthers, and that's how that that's how they comes about coming.

So Avery, I didn't meet you that way, and and this is my first time really getting to know you in this personal way, and I'm just really grateful for this opportunity. But I did get a chance to see Emmett till the Remix, which is a video performance that that that you've done, and I mean it's like it's incredible and in a way that speaks directly to what you describe with resurrect Fred, meaning that here is this this young man who's killed in uh mississipp be Uh.

Uh.

You you you call back to actually the presence of the community at the time that they bear witness and it's really powerful to see in the video. But could you could you set the context for what you do in I Matilda Remix by singing a little bit.

Of it for us, man, we are getting our money's worth there, man, ohn is such an it is such a space.

And again.

We are you there.

When they did what they did to that ball?

Where there.

When they did what they did to that ball? Were you there when they snatched the mile? It was her uncle's house? Well you're there, they snatched the mile to your uncle's high?

Is this him?

Is this skill?

Is it?

Is this him?

Is this skim missage?

Is this shame?

Is this.

Hum?

Whoa care?

Is this?

Yeah?

Man?

Thank you that that that that were you there? That you part like you're telling the story and it's bearing witness, but it also feels like an accusation, like you were you there? Tell us about that? Like that you're you're putting a burden on us too.

Yeah, that particular peace is.

Flipping around a hem or spiritual about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Where you're there when they crucify the Lord. Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble where you're there when they crucified the Lord? And again I actually were you there to be a witness?

You know this?

It's placing it, it's.

Doing this thing that Gwyndolan Brooks does and we real coul right, the womans and they real cool. They left school. And by using the language we it implicates any and everybody that reads it. So you're one of the seven. You're one of the seven at the goal of the shovel, right, And so using that language where you there, even if you weren't born in a time right, you get through, You get through this journey, where you get through this language,

Yeah, Avery, I just have to say, for folks who haven't seen this video, which we will, we will most certainly link to for the show, that everything you've been describing in terms of like the mashup of the past. You've talked about biblical times, you're talking about the time of Jesus' crucifixion, You've talked about the time of the

That's one of the lines too, celebrating the life of a person who is no longer with us, and then celebrating my life of a person who still is. The idea that length of that particular line, Who's going to live is what you do in this body that will continue to tell the continue to tell the story of this person who couldn't And that's just the thing we

Muhammad Ali talked.

About learning about Immin Tell and seeing the image in it on the on the front page of a newspaper and all all of these things that have that particular death moves people to so many different motions and then they get to that last line, but who's gonna leave?

Yeah, Yeah, such a such a powerful way to keep the memory of Emmettel present in the ongoing struggle for a new generation of young people who have been fighting against this problem. We're gonna take another break, and when we come back, we're gonna talk about you as poet laureate.

We'll be right back, man, Avery, We are back on some of my best friends. I thank you so much. This has been just incredible and Khalil, I have had the great fortune of seeing Avery performing person, and it is this mix of all these things. It's visual our it's dance, it's preaching, it's spoken word, it's poetry. Mostly I'm you know, it's off in participatory and I'm off in there and I'm thinking, don't pick me, don't pick me.

No, no, no no, You're like you're like you're like your leg star.

You can't. Before I'm told, I was like, thank god you didn't pull me into the center.

Called up to the podium.

Yes, so Avery, you know, we've we've heard your poetry today in song. But you're you're now the poet Laureate of Chicago, and let's talk about that.

What is that?

What does that job entail? What have you been doing for these last several weeks.

I've been doing a lot of readings at this point, but I plan to do a lot of community building so and get calls, Hey, you've been you, You've been like, it's gonna be you.

It's like all.

Smack is like a bad signal, like a poetry.

It was hilarious because I had just had lunch with Eve you and it was like my niece and I was telling her friends, so yes, and I was telling Eve, you know, I think it's gonna be you, like I dominated you, and he was like no.

I was talking to Jamila, Sila would Tomila Wood is another amazing Chicago musician and artists.

And poet right and they both like these young women who you know, with the wrestle of a generation of artists in Chicago, who I've mentored and talked and like I said, and just in community with. But I got the news and I was like really like excited and honored, and like the coolest part is be being the innamural one. I get to figure it out, you know, and really set up shop for those who who will follow as

Of that nature.

You you evoked Gwendolyn Brooks earlier and when we were in like middle school, Uh, she was the Illinois Poet laureate. Yes, and I just remember what it meant to have her presence being around that she would like show up at the school and people talked about it, and she was somebody that that was you saw and that her poems you cited. We real cool. They felt accessible, they felt like they were about the city. She's in Africa, an American woman, she was, she was older, she felt like

I get to go to schools and you know, get to go to schools, like I said, and I really want to get students together to write with each other, you know, and write and write these massive or epic poems with each other, you know, and not just be about me coming to the school and saying, hey, I'm every young and I'm the Chicago Poet Laureate, but really building community ways in which so many other organizations who

You know.

Well, so so you have this, you have this book of poetry called neck Bone, and you you subtitle it visual Versus. So so let's talk about about that, because clearly, as a multidisciplinary artist, you cannot keep your brain working on one track.

So it's full up up in the brain between the eyes. I'm like, oh, but that was even the.

Point, so I think when well, for me, mm hmm, the the poem that you see on the page is extracted language.

It's language that you pick from.

All the words and all the imagery that's going on in your brain and inside your imagination. I keep, I keep trying to talk about this and not sound like it's just voodoo. Yes, it's just like that is that is with intent. But so that the idea of then just being transparent of how I see a poem as opposed to extracting the language from what I see, is why how visual visual versus come.

I'm a little just showing what I see.

M favery, You're giving us like a view into how your mind is working. Which yeah, I think I think these poems do, which is you're having a conversation, often with received images, like with pop culture, of things that are important to you. And so there's like this triangulation that's going on, and then it's sort of visual for you, and then it's being turned into words.

But it's also can I just say it's also the book has seventy colorful colored illustrations, So this isn't you're not speaking purely in attraction. You actually have drawn in the book. You've used your artistic visual talent to actually put in the book illustrations in a book of poetry, which is unusual for most for most poets, and.

The words are often the text is often part of like a painting or a drawing. I want to I want to ask you a question about your work, and both your work is poet laureate of Chicago, and really all you're at work in a way you're reimagining Chicago and telling a Chicago story. And I want to ask you that, like, what is the story of Chicago that you're trying to change and reinterpret and reinvent.

I don't necessarily I'm reinventing or reimagine in Chicago. I think I present the Chicago that I experience, Okay, and I do experience Chicago a lot of times through my imagination or in the context of others imagination, because I'm

When I say Eve and Jamila like my nieces, they are truly like my nieces.

And then we ain't have no we have no biological connection to each other, but the extension and the extension of family is you know, I have a very diverse dinner table, you know. And again as we treated and love each other's family. So I'm trying to present the Chicago that I get. But the work is always or why not. The work is really in the imagination.

When I tell students write what you know I was, when they always well, right, what you know? Right right?

What you know?

And you know a thing because you've.

Either experienced it, witnessed it, you know, you've researched it to the point where you feel like you know it enough to write about it, or the best space of all, it's just to imagine it, because when you imagine it, can't nobody tell you they had yours?

Does it did?

Because I had this way, I said, and so that is, you know.

That's what I tell That's really both boss situation, that's to your imagination. You can implement the things you researched and the things in which you know, and the things and what you experienced into the imagination. You're doing something totally like beyond beyond you know. That's why I teach.

That's just why it's amazing to be inside your imagination, even for this past, you know, even for this conversation.

Thank you, thank you.

Well listen, we've talked a lot about Chicago just now. But some of my best friends are has taken Lil Lily International. We have listeners all over the world, so we are just grateful to be on this journey with you. You are certainly one of our best friends, and we are so excited for what is to come for you in the future. Thank you so much, Avery for joining us today, for taking some time out and sharing your artistry with us.

Thank you.

All right, Khalil, speaking of theme songs, this is our last episode of the season. Yeah, and also for now at least, our last episode with the show.

It's not goodbye, it's farewell. It has been an amazing journey, at least for me. I don't know about you, but I want to talk a little bit about the fact that we have done this show as part of our own relationship. Like, you know, we've done a lot of things together over the years, and this show just fits right in with that. Yeah, and we talked about so many of those things. But I want to reminisce a little bit, like you know, we had our first jobs together,

I'm tearing up a little bit. And the thing, the thing is, I also taught you how to host a podcast, and I feel like I'm, you know, teaching you over so many episodes. It's been that's been a beautiful thing.

Of course, of course I feel that way.

Well.

I also like memory lane, Like my first poker game was at your house, My first shibot dinner, first time I ever researched in a college library was because your dad sent us there during a teacher strike when we were fifteen to sixteen years old.

That's right, crycial decade I got.

I got my first high school girlfriends because of you and your then high school sweetheart now wife, Daniel Ure hooking you up, and we stood up in each other's we weddings. We were there when our first borns came into the world, not actually at the delivery table, but like within forty eight hours. The first time I ever rented a place with Stephanie at Martha's Vineyard without being like with your parents or with my parents in this case, guess who was there me?

That's right, you were there, because I don't remember any of these things. Well, yes, you do, so this is important to document it.

I love this well. I just think like in a way thinking of retrospectively about what's gone on these last two years, which represents now our thirty seventh year, and a relationship has also been thinking about our friendship through this podcast.

Yeah, actually doing this podcast together in this way and working with you, it's like making meaning out of both our relationship and our lives and the things we're experiencing in the world, but making that meaning together. I know that I I went into writing in a lot of ways because I wanted to make meaning out of the world and for this process that that each week, you know,

No, I feel the same way. And I thought you were going to add to like sitting down for these calls like the shit ton of work we do because, man, I mean, I'm pretty sure our listeners will appreciate this, but we've read a shit ton of books, We've watched a shit ton of television, we have watched movies multiple times. Our producers have been and indefatigable in following big words yeah and following up archival tape so that the show could, you know, have these beautiful moments.

Can I say something a little darker too? I mean, we started working on this show about three years ago, and it was right after George Floyd's murder. It was in that moment of national reckoning on race. And maybe that's even we had the show.

That is exactly one of the reasons we had the show, like how can you.

Talk about race openly and in a way that feels honest and you know, two people actually engaging one another and then to explore all these topics in the country. And over the course of doing this show, you know, we've had so much joy, but we've also gone through during that time this rapid surprising how fast it was, retrenchment, this backlash. The divides that we talk about have only become deeper.

That's right, it does help to think about the fact that what we talk about is like almost criminal in a lot of states. I mean, we know for a fact that we've heard from listeners who are teachers, some people have stopped you on the street, and like, I have assigned episodes of Some of My Best Friends Are to my high school students. And that's in Illinois, of course, and I know some of that's happened here in New Jersey,

So you think our show actually caused the backlash.

Well, I have a surprise for you on this point. So the Barbie movie the runaway hit of the summer. So, dude, you haven't seen the movie, but guess what. There is a line in the movie when one of the characters says, some of my best friends are Jewish. Dude, I'm telling you when you say our show is part of the backlash.

We made it.

We made it into the biggest Hollywood hit of the summer.

Oh man.

But you raise a really good point, Ben, that it was our goal to try to offer something in this moment of existential crisis where people weren't quite sure what to do as the Trump era was unfolding. We said, like, we're going to have this conversation and we're gonna we're gonna each week figure out how to understand and say

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And and and to try to add to the conversation in a in a productive way, in a meaningful way.

So I know, I know that every listener has kind of uh at least at least I've heard, you know, people have favorite episodes, but I have my own, and I don't know about you, but I want to hear a couple of your favorite ones. I I to this day absolutely love the Interracial Buddy Films episode, like that, that episode, the conversation about forty eight Hours and Leave the Weapon, the like scene in that bar scene where we talk about what's happening when Eddie Murphy like becomes

Well, I'll say, like, I'm gonna speak more generally because you know, you and I have a rapport and sort of you know, a casualist. So there's something really fantastic when people we didn't know that well came on the show and we're just completely comfortable with us and be

And I think it was started The Bad and the Funny, and.

It started by Dave Chappelle having this Netflix show. But we decided that we would reveal to one another some of our favorite comedy moments. And there was a moment on air while we're recording when it turned out that we picked the exact same clip. We both picked this Eddie Murphy skit from Saturday Live. And just like the joyousness of that moment, the euphoria, like I was just like giddy that we you know, our minds were working the same.

Moody and kurrt. If you missed that episode, listeners, go back and Ben is like a four year old kid, just so happy. Funny thing is for this conversation. I actually picked that memory, that memory too.

Ah see.

You know, listen, I mean, this is the one opportunity that we have in two seasons, over two years of episodes, to share what someone else thought about our show other than us. And so I'm going to read one listener review, and of course it's a good one, because who gets a shit about the ones that hated us?

Man, So this is very healthy. That's a very healthy way I would I'm the person that only looks at the negative one. This is a difference between us too. Everybody be more like Khalil So.

From June eighth, twenty twenty three, on the Apple podcast app, a listener whose hashtag is my alter ego is a Navy Seal titled their five star review as the Intersection of Information and Joy. And this is what this listener wrote, I love this podcast so much. It gives me so much joy to hear two men speak frankly about the aspects of a long, beautiful friendship. I want to go to Martha's vineyard on vacation with these two amazing families. Carry on with great joy heart emoji. But there's more.

Oh.

This listener adds update. As I continue to listen to this informative, educational, important podcast. May I just say that nothing on this beautiful, fragile planet brings me more joy and yes, with a tear in my eye than at the end when you sign off with I love you, Man, I love you too, Yes, yes, thank you. My alter ego is a Navy seal, because in my darkest moments to come, I will be coming back to this review to know that we brought some joy in the world.

That's beautiful. Well, let me ask you. Let me ask you a kind of thought experiment. As close as we are. If you could think of anyone else to have done this podcast with, even even a historical figure, who would it be? Man?

I think I would have done it with Eddie Murphy?

Huh interesting? Okay, I got you, Yeah, I got you. I got you because I would have still chosen you. That's fucked up, all right, we gotta go see everybody later. Khali, Yeah, my bad.

I'm sorry. All right, So listen before we sign off. We've got a couple more listeners who are gonna leave us with some parting thoughts.

Hey, bro, I'm really gonna miss you being in my closet like twice a week with Khalil. It has been really awesome to have you guys get to spend this much time together.

And I can't wait till see what you guys cook up next.

All right, beautiful, that's Khalil's wife, Stephanie. That's beautiful.

Thank you for that, Ben and Khalil. I can't believe it's your final episode. Congratulations on your podcast. I'm so happy the world got to hear just how smart, andsightful and fucking funny you guys are. I'm privileged because I get to continue to see your love, friendship, and brotherhood. Congrats guys.

That's beautiful. That's my wife, Danielle. And the beautiful part of the podcast is she still has so many episodes to catch up on so she can enjoy this for years to come.

Well, I can't speak on that, but I can say that they were part of the show for sure, and I think if we were going to thank you, at least a couple people beyond our producers and the Pushkin family, I think we had to give it up to Stephanie and Danielle.

The loves of our lives.

That's right, Yeah, that's right, all right man. Well, I'm sorry that I would have chosen Eddie Murphy if I had to do this again, but you know I did. There's a trick question.

There are no trick questions. There are no trick questions, only only revealing our true selves.

The truth is that there's no substitute for you, and and this has been an amazing run. And yeah, I guess no surprises here.

I love you, man, I'll see you on the other side. Love you too.

Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil, Jabron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin.

It's produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our associate producer is Rachel Yang. It's edited by Sarah Nix with help from Keyshell Williams. Our engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our managing producer is Constanza Guyardo.

At Pushkin thanks to Leitol, Molad, Julia Barton, Heather Fein, Carly Migliori, John Schnarz, Greta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.

Our theme song, Little Lily is by fellow Chicaguan the brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely want to check out his music at his website, Averyaryong 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

And if you like our show, please give us a five star rating and a review and listen. Even if you don't like it, give it a five star rating and a review, and please tell all of your best friends about it. Thank you, Sir

MHM