Unpacking Our Identities with Jay Caspian Kang

one white. I'm a historian and I'm a journalist, and this is some of my best friends are in this show. We wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country, and in this episode we deepen our understanding of that divide by talking with Jay Caspian King about his new book The Loneliest Americans? Don't you baby, Dad? Khalil, We've been we've been thinking for a while, how do we do an episode of this show if some of my best friends are that that

is about the Asian American experience? Yeah? Yeah, we have talked about this a lot, and I'm like, why don't we talk about all our Asian American best friends. Yeah, and I was worried that that was gonna be like, man, we sound like that the joke of the show's title, and you were like, yeah, yeah, but that's okay. So then Jay Caspian Kang's book came out, The Loneliest Americans, yep, and I remember you were like, dude, we should talk

about that. Yeah. Yeah, because I've been following his work for for more than a decade, right, Like I remember he used to write for this website called grant Land, which I also wrote for. He worked for Vice News as a civil rights reporter. He wrote for The New York Times magazine, which we've both which we've both written for.

But ump ump, yes, okay, all right, that's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, And he writes this newsletter now for The New York Times, which is so smart and funny and kind of offbeat at the same time. Part of the race related series, right yeah. Yeah. So this was like it seems so connected to what we're doing and and and also controversial in a way like this book, I think The Loneliest Americans takes a stance that has actually like he's got some backlash on Yeah. So we got him on the show.

He joined us from his home in northern California. Yeah,

so let's get into it just generally for listeners. The book is about the identity of Asian people in America, and I'm careful to not saying Asian American because you talk about how that identity doesn't exist and sort of you challenge that that that sense and I we want to invite you on the show because we read this book and it felt so much in dialogue with this show, which is called Some of My Best Friends Are and as you know, about race and all these ways and

also with our lives, because the show is really about you know, we're wrestling with these stories too, and the white black binary, yeah, and like embodied and the sense like you you write about this white black binary and that you know, the white part sort of embodying assimilation and upward mobility, and the black part a sense of either like victimization and racial struggle and that there wasn't really a place for you personally and also not a

place for most Asians in America. Certainly, My parents were never like how's it going navigating space or like, you know, how does it feel to be you know, in these classrooms or like you know what's going on in there um and and and man, I mean like thinking about your book and thinking about like we went back to our high school yearbook after reading your book because Jay I brought it. I brought it out just for you, and you know, like it looks like a chessboard, right,

it's like black white black white white. That's wow. Yeah. Yeah, there's like one white kid on each page. Every every girl has the exacting way more way more in the middle of exactly and more particularly, I mean to Ben's larger point. I mean, because your book inspired so much of our own thinking about like seeing ourselves like across this vast spectrum of how we understand whiteness and blackness. I literally went back and counted, like how many students

could I identify as part of an Asian diaspora? And I couldn't get to two hands. Oh wow, how big was a school? Almost two pretty sure our class? Yeah, five hundred yeah. And I thought maybe we could first start about the three of us all growing up mostly in the nineteen eighties, and thinking about how we all learned that that binary existed, Like this is sort of the main racial divide and you have to fit somewhere in it, right, right. I split my childhood between Cambridge,

Master Jesus Chapehol North Carolina, two university towns. And in Cambridge, you know, after a few years, for a year we moved out to the suburbs, I think as in first or second grade. And this one of my first clear memories is that, you know, watching the kids get off the Metco bus. You know, like when we had beard to the suburbs. It's all black, you know, just black

kids probably from Roxbury, South Boston. You gotta tell us a little something about Mecco because you know, it's sort of this dream experiment that people brag about, is like, like about it. Wow. Macco was the Boston area busting program, right, and it was seen as this great speaking of progressive thought and it was a huge infrastructure thing where they would bus kids thirty forty minutes out into the suburbs

and that it was basically the peak of like school integration, goodwill. Right, And yeah, one of the first memories I have from from my childhood period is just sort of standing at the bus circle and you know, watching the Mico bus roll and and every kid who got off the bus was black. And there are no black kids at the rest of the school, and like maybe there's one or two,

but almost none. But I don't think that I was really aware that I was like much different than the white kids, you know, because I lived in that town, right, Like, I didn't take that bus, and so the differentiate or of race in that in that instance was whether or

not you took the bus. Right. That was the first time I thought I actually realized that there was any difference, you know, and standing in the bus circle there and just sort of you know, because it was so it was so stark, right like it was just like those kids ride that bus. I don't ride that bus, right, and so I must be part of this group. So then you move from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the south to Chapel Hill, I believe, right in North Carolina. What was

that school? Like My schooling was very similar to yours. You know, there weren't that many Asian kids around, and the school had a lot of black students and a lot of white students. You know. Um, you know, there's this really interesting class element to it too, where I was in this very odd program back then and it was like eighteen of us. I don't I hate people say this, but it's like some sort of like accelerated program.

But we had three black kids in that class, and one of their fathers was like the most famous doctor in the area, like you know, like on local news when the doctor comes on, right, right, So he was our in the Piedmont area. He was sort of the Sanjay Gupta. And then the other girl in our class, her father was an educator. The mother was like I think worked in stem And then we had one kid who is from the sort of you know, the poor black neighborhood and Chapel Hill. And it was interesting how

like that was even differentiated even for us in fifth grade. Right, you mean you understood these black kids were different from each other, right, right. It was more ingrained in us to think of it that way than it would be to think of it as being like totally separated, right, And it was very It made for a very confusing experience that I tried to write about in the book, where it's just like, you know, like how do you sort of sort all this, especially when you know you're

in the situation where you have to differentiate. But I mean, it's an interesting point about how you're also navigating the absurdities of racial stereotypes that you can see black people who are also trying to traverse, challenge, avoid And you tell this great story about Dwayne, a friend of yours who you befriended. I can't that was that also in Yeah, it's the same kid who was in that class, who came who lived in that Okay, so we're talking about Dwayne. Yeah,

he's the poor kid. Yeah yeah, yeah. You make the point about Duwayne as the poor kid in the community being kind of representative of the absurdity of this notion of people of color all being the same. Oh yeah, someone had told me that we were both people of color. Just look at them like they're crazy, you know, because there was such separation between me and Dwayne, right, and you know, in the book, I sort of illustrated through this anecdote where like our literal league games or some

of our little games were played in Dwayne's neighborhood. And if you can imagine how yeah, this is still the South Chepho's progressive town is still the South, right, and the way in which people would talk about going to those games right, lock your car, you know, like make sure that like get in and out as quickly as possible, all this sort of stuff, this kind of anti black everyone's a criminal rhetoric. Yeah, and you know as a kid,

you absorbed that, right. And so then you were playing and Dwayne walks over the field, he sees me, says hello, you know, I there's another moment where I just like sort of understand that seeing him in that environment, you see like, oh, what they're talking about when they say lock your cars and get out of there as quickly as possible as Dwayne? Right, And so the idea at that moment that like, you and Dwayne are people of color and like, what what are you talking about? You know?

And um, I don't know. I've thought about that moment so much throughout my life where it's just like, uh, you know, because in some ways I felt like I was betraying him, right, um, because I was acting so awkward and that it was shocking to me. I was like probably twelve years old something like that, and um, and I'm having these thoughts right about my friend. And yeah, I mean it's it's tough to talk about even now,

you know. And the reality of it is that I think if you said that Deirdre and I, you know, who was a woman whose father was like our famous doctor. If you had said Deirdre and your people of color, I had been sure, you know, but Due and I could not be people of color together. And I think that that's like a very complicated thing that I think

that those types of distinctions are very uncomfortable. But you know, in my life, at least, they're much more felt, like, you know, like they seem much more real to me than terms like people of color. You struggle with the term people of color throughout most of the book, and I've been thinking, is there is there a moment when you really come to terms with who you are? Because that seems to me to be a question at the heart of this book. Who am I? Right? Right? That's true? Well,

I think it was a series of moments. And I think what's interesting about the series of moments, and maybe this is not typical for Asian people, but certainly it was true for me, was that none of the moments

had anything to do with white people. Right. Of course, in some ways it had to do with white people, but it was not about differentiating myself from white people or having white people differentiate themselves from me, right, It was about every single one of these moments involved black people, right involved It involved either differentiating myself from black people

or having black people differentiate themselves from me. Wow, And I think that that actually is you know, it has informed basically all of my thinking, right, and that this went through a lot of phases like when I was sixteen, seventeen, maybe fifteen, like I wore Timberland's and listen to listen to Wu Tang and nas and oh, snap, you're getting close to band. You're pushing up on the white guy in this conversation. I wonder he has some stories to tell, right, right.

But it was like, you know, like I feel like people are about our age and a little bit older. I'm much more familiar with this than young people today because I think it's sort of been drummed out of

the culture. But there's a period where like a lot of Asian kids, a lot of Jews kids, I think, would sort of put on this affect when they're teenagers, right or maybe, And sometimes like it's like I don't know if it's even an affect, right, It's just like you're developing, and this is this is a path that you chose, You chose this type of identification and I definitely went through all of that, right, and so you you swing back and forth, right, but um, well it's

interesting to me at the time or you know now that I think about it is like I don't know, Like I don't know, Ben, why did you like what was your because he's literally just literally the white guy in this conversation being silent, like you said at the right. And then what's the what was that like for you? Like what like what what was your experience with that? The what is like in terms of identity right now?

Like in high school? Like where you did you listen rap and like sort of talk about yeah, listen to rap? I mean like Khalil and I joke because he was more like Phil Collins, and I was more like, are you talking about me? You got to talk about I'm embracing it. Uh. You know. So the dominant culture was, you know, which I've felt a part of. Like I mean, I was like, you know, saturated by by this world and like you know, uh, connected to it in a

lot of ways. Um. You know, Khalil had been asking me after reading this book about being Jewish in that in that world, and I was sort of thinking about that in my head, and like there wasn't like an alternative white dominant culture that I felt that I you know, was vacillating between you know, like like between say white and black and then a third thing Jewish. You know that they're just it didn't exist in any numbers in

our in our community. Um so I could be the think of a whole lot of corny white dudes who you know. But but that doesn't mean exactly, That doesn't mean that it's did you have like a like did you feel like not totally white at the time? Either, because like that was it? You know in North Carolina that my friends are mostly Jewish, there weren't that many of them, you know, And I think about it, it's

like this is like the eighties and nineties. It's like they weren't exactly white back then either, you know, Like that's a great question. You know, what's what's funny about that. I would say that I didn't think that at all in high school. And then when I went to college and I was like amidst this all white culture, I was like, man, I'm not really like all these white people, And I didn't think in those terms beforehand. You know, I thought I was just this thing that existed in

this space. Um, and and then being in a in an all white space, essentially a college and people who didn't grow up in communities and neighborhoods like I did, I was like, man, I'm not like these white people. And that had less to do with being Jewish than than with sort of just coming from from a certain certain neighborhood. Right. Well, well, what I can tell you, Jay uh In, in clearer terms is that this dude was was black cool in high school. Uh He carried

himself in the way that you know, had swagger. He wore a gold chain. To this day, I've never owned a gold chain. I'm gonna I'm gonna get you one for your He had, he had his garb o jeans. I was still weare who didn't? Yeah, well I had, I had, And so if I showed you pictures of him back then, you would totally get it. Oh yeah yeah. And any of my friends were exactly you know, we're like that. It's an interesting thing because I feel like

there's a lot of sort of shame. Right. It's not like people like are gonna cancel you get mad at you if you did that, but certainly and unless you actually put on black face, right, done, right, But it's very stot of his very ghost now, and I don't know, like do you do you get that? Do you think it's ghost now or do you like how do you reflect back on it and think about like, hey, you know, like, no,

I was right, you know, No, No, I don't. I don't feel it because I don't feel like I was pretending to be something I wasn't either, right, I think I was aware of the cultures around me and also you know, engaged in it um and so yeah, the menu of options were there, and I like picked from those menu items, you know, like the six items. I picked five of them and one of them, as Khalil said, it might have been like, you know, white kid on

the math team, and I didn't pick that one. When we come back after the break, we're going to talk to Jay about choices he made to focus his reporting on Black Lives Matter protests and the choices Asians in America can make about their future. You write a lot about your reporting on the Black Lives Matter protests, which is something that I also did a lot of reporting

on here in Chicago. After the killing of Lakwan McDonald and sort of like I got deep into this here, and you know what drew you to that reporting and sort of like what did you learn about yourself by covering this racial justice moment? Well, you know, since I was in high school or college, I thought that I still feel this way, you know, like I'm very drawn to protest movements, especially you know, street protests. It's like

the thing that I feel most passionately about. Right, And so during Ferguson and for the four years after, like that was basically my job. Yeah, you were, you were their quote civil rights reporter for it. For right, I did some stuff for The Times, and then my job for vices, you know, just go and you know, see what's happening. And uh, as a result, I went to tons of these protests, right, like uh, Baton Rouge, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Saint Louis, Alton, Stirling, right, right, and you write a

lot about Philando Castile, right. You know, it felt like at first I was just like, well, and a lot they might be like, well, I'm the only Asian person here, you know, and like what it's like you like you count the faces right, right, right? I would just count well one more thing before you say that. So I learned for the first time that Asian people at least at least you give the nod. I was like, holy shit, Like there's an Asian nod, right, isn't then what you say?

Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I think I have protested like twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen, Yeah, definitely. But now last summer there was much more Asian people out for George Floyd. But you know, prior to that, I would see very few, you know, and um, people can argue with me or whatever. But I was at all of these, you know, and I was looking and I didn't see many, and it really did sort of form a lot of my thinking in the last five years. Right. It was just like, well,

what is all this? What is like sort of the public face of what people say Asian American identity is within like the press, right, they say, oh, well, it's like a radical political identity. It's like, you know, like we're allies, were we're fellow people of color, right, And I'd be like, well where are you? You know, like, um like why are you not showing up? Where are

all of you? And um, you know, it made me realize that like the people who say those things are saying them in earnest and I bet a lot of them did go to a lot of those protests, you know, but it's a very small population, and the fast majority of Asian America people who are either recent immigrants or people who are a political right and and yeah, I don't know, I think it's difficult to make the argument that the people who who sort of think of Asian

American identity as like this progressive people of color thing or in any way, the majority they're just you know, they're just happen to be the people who get to talk and define that thing. And that realization I think it has been like the most formative for my political police at least, right, which is just like maybe we don't have to think about this stuff. Maybe it's more important to show up and you know, like within the space of the protest, like all these things will be resolved.

You can make connections, you can talk to people, you can organize with people, and that if you show up, ninety nine percent of the people, they are not going to worry about you know, your relative privilege or or you know where you fit on a racial hierarchy scale at all, Right, Like they're happy you showed up. And I think that that's a message I tried to put in the book because I think a lot of people, a lot of Asian Americans like myself, who you know,

went to good schools and are upwardly mobile. I think I just need to hear it, you know, like, don't worry about show up. Yeah, Jay, this is really fascinating. I mean, you know, I teach at Harvard and I see I see these kids. I mean, and many of them were born here. Some of them aren't into the country. But to your point about feeling uncomfortable with this notion of a shared people of color identity is a very real thing, and I think your book does a good

job of that. I think it would be helpful for me, though, to understand, like, how before nineteen sixty five, for those immigrants, as compared to the kids we're talking about that I teach, or yourself, or the people you want to show up at these protests, how should we understand this difference between

the four nineteen sixty five and after nineteen sixty five. Yeah, So in nineteen sixty census, there's like something like eight hundred thousand people who are called Asians in this country, right, and many of them have been here for generations, right. And the reason why there's not more is because it's you know, there's exclusion laws. It's basically impossible to immigrate

from Asia to the United States. And so you have this community, like a lot of them have been interned, right by the time the sixties roll around, and it's a small community. They've direct links back to a lot of the campaigns of like racial terror that were inflicted

upon Chinese people. All this stuff happened, and then what you have in ninety sixty five, you have you at the heartseller Immigration Act, and now you have more than twenty million Asian people in America and the fastest growing yeah, right, population, fast growing population, people from all sorts of countries right coming in. You know the boundaries what Asian America is

expand every single day, right. And you have populations that people don't even know about, right, like um like mong population, or you have like Laosian populations. And you know, if you ask people on the street what's Asian, what is Asian America mean, They're mostly gonna just say Chinese, Japanese or whatever, maybe sometimes Korean Korea or Korean and so

the boundaries are have expanded just drastically since then. And so one of the questions that I asked is, just like, it's a history that those people prior to nineteen sixty five define themselves through internment exclusion, right, does it really have that much relevance to the people who came post in nineteen sixty five? Do the stories from the past have any irrelevance to the masses of people who come afterwards? And how do they think about themselves in America? Right?

And I think they think about themselves in America very differently. I think they're much more like my parents, who are just sort of like, put your head down, work, you know, don't think of about it. You're in America now, you know, try and fit in and try and be successful, right, And these are the ways that you can be successful. We can't help you all that much, you know, because we don't know, we have no social capital here, right.

And so what's strange is that there's now this disconnect where the way that Asian American history is told, or Asian American identity is formed, it's very much based in things like the Chinese Exclusion Act, right, like you saw when the women get killed in the spa in Atlanta. Like everybody's doing threads about Asian American history, right, and it's it's about internment stuff like that. And my thought is always just like I'm not that stuff is bad,

you know, like it was. It was it was like a regime of white terror against Asian people, Right, What does that really have like a full on connection with people who who have no no lineage to that out at all. Right, And so I think that's sort of the point that I try and make in the book, which is just like this is a pretty formless group people at this point, right, and that, um, they can really be anything. But what the thing that they're not really is like a fully formed people in any sort

of way. Yeah, right, They're not cohesive yet, because I think to your point, the assimilationists imperatives of post sixty five immigrants, the ones who are coming today, I agree with you, creates this huge knowledge vacuum. And I think part of what you're writing about in this book is is kind of what that means for justice? Yeah? Yeah, And I'll say, like you know, the book is fascinating

and the storytelling is amazing. Your mom on trips taking out the phone book and looking for Korean names, right, and then and then actually calling those people and then like getting together with right. Yeah, they're just like sort of asking like, hey, you are right here? You know what I'm just meaning, like, you know that's a Yeah. It was definitely a cringe moment for me and my sis and what are you doing? Yeah, But now that

I'm older, I understand it much better. You know, she must have felt very unsettled when my dad dragged us all out to like the you know, the barons of the West every summer, being like right, this is like Wyoming, right, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota South, Like is there are only vacations like we didn't go to I don't know, normal vacations. Man, I love your parents, but can we talk about you

as a parent. You also open and close the book writing about your daughter, and your daughter is biracial, your your your wife is white. And I'll also make a plug half Jewish and also my children are by racial And it is such an interesting sort of you know, opening up to identity because you don't share a certain kind of identity with the person who is closest to you in the world, and and so there's a lot

of reflection that that causes. And maybe early on because later you're just like I'm just trying to deal with being a parent, but early on like where you are, like you're really you're deep in at thinking these thoughts like will my child have an experience that it's different than mine? Yeah, I mean that's sort of the emotional core of the book, right, It's sort of a rumination on why why did this happen to me, you know

and other Asian people? And then what's the future going to look like right now that people are in this path of assimilation or if they are on this path of assimilation, and and who are the people who are not on the path of assimilation? What are their lives

going to look like? And so for my daughter, I think about him, like, you know, she's we live here in the East Bay, and you know, there's a ton of half Asian kids running around, right, And she goes to a school where there are way more half Asian kids than there were Asian kids period in any school I ever went too, And there are a lot of Asian kids too, right, And I remember the teacher at

some point. You know, this is I think during Pride Week or something like that, like said to me, you know, she's like, I just want to raise like a bunch of allies, right, like I want these kids to be allies.

And it's very you know, like in my head, it kind of fucked me up because I was like, ally, yeah, it's like I am not white, you know, like like if somebody had told me, like, you know, like you need to be an ally, I would be like listen, you know, like I'm I'm not white, you know, like let me tell you, like you need you need to a lie with me. Right. My child who was like not great, you know, like because I am not white,

you know. But then I think about it just like maybe she's right, you know, like maybe you know, I'm sure Ben you had these thoughts too. Or it's just like like, is the stuff that I write, you know, it's the stuff that I think about, I talked about in myself, is going to be relatable to her, right, Like is she gonna think about things in the same way? Yeah? Yeah, it's interesting you have such a contrarian persona online right and and and you know, I mean maybe that is

inherently part of you. But it also feels, you know, it's so forward on and everything you post and that, as you said, is like this emotional core and rawness and openness you know, it has it has none of that. Well I was I was thinking though that, I mean, your dilemma, which you so you're so expressive about, you know, because you're like, you know, I don't want my daughter to be entitled, you know, I don't want to raise

a spoiled kid. I mean, these are your words, right, And it seems to me, like Ben and I have talked about this on this show a lot, but we as parents do make a choice. We make a choice about what we teach our kids about the world we

live in. And you know, I'm wondering, just as a final reflection, like, are you teaching your daughter the things that you're writing about, because that seems to me to be a very different reality for her than what happened to you when your parents didn't talk to you about these things. Well, she's she's she's about to turn five, and so it's right about the time when these conversations start, you know, And um, yeah, I think so, you know, and I think that that I would like her to

be aware of it in a way. Now she turns into like your sort of stereotypical, like you know, bleeding heart liberal Berkeley kid. I'd be overjoyed. I'd be so happy, you know. But um, yeah, you know here in Berkeley we have a huge homeless population, right, and you know, like, uh does not understand why people live in tense right,

And those conversations are starting. I had a friend come over at some point, and I probably shouldn't tell this story, but it's almost it's kind of a little funny, you know. But she had a friend coming in the middle of the pandemic, and no one had been in our house in a long time. And first when first people come to our house is one of my friends who's black, and she goes like he walks in and she says

he's black. I was like, ohoh, you know, like it wasn't because she had not been around black people before, you know, but I think that she had been learning at school that there was this you know, like because they learned about civil rights movement everything like that, and I think that it had been this moment where she like was starting to differentiate people. And you know, when we lived in New York. I lived in Crown Heights.

You know, she goes to U preschool everything like that, where like you know, like thirty the kids in her class are black, and so it's not like she had not been around black people before, but it was this moment where you know, something had clicked in her head and so yeah, we had to talk then too, you know. But it's Jay Jay that is that's such a beautiful story because you know, for me as a parent, my kids are older, my wife and I committed very early

onto teaching them, but even we made mistakes. And by that, I mean we didn't talk about Asians like we talked about black white and the consequences of that was that we were living My youngest daughter was born Indiana, were having in a community with a large population of Asian students, many of whom were immigrant students. And one day babysitter has are like four year old kid on the bus, the campus bus, which was not a common experience for her.

But she's on a campus bus and she turns to her babysitter and says, why are there so many Asian people on this bus? Right? Right? Right? So you know, like that's an invitation right to parenting and to having a conversation. We are just so grateful for you spending time with us today, and we're going to count you among our best friends. Jay, So thanks for thanks for spending time with us. Jay. Oh good, now, this is great.

I think I think talking to him, I appreciated so much his openness with us and how experiences from his childhood are still he's still processing them, and you know, I feel the same way. I feel the same way about my past, Like it's still I'm still wrestling with different ideas and thinking about wrestling with no doubt you

to talk about that some more. But but but I also think like if the book was only his personal individual experiences, it wouldn't work right, Like, like he is just one person, but he tells this story about himself, and it is a kind of coming of age story and a coming of age story racially, but also an intellectual coming of age story because he tells a story

of thinking. You know, he cakes all this personal stuff and history and research and other flashpoint moments that are really important for an Asian community in the United States. I think I think that works. But I think the word I would use would not be intellectual. I think

it would be political. One of the things that stuck out to me is when he talked about, both in the book and a little bit in our conversation that you know, who is really speaking for the people working in low wage retail nail salon laundering restaurants today, who's really speaking for them? And what he's basically saying is in my community, not a whole lot of us. Yeah, And he's saying their politics don't align necessarily, but we have to find this common ground. And that, to me,

that was a really powerful part of the book. That is an especially powerful part of the book because that's so much about what you and I are really committed to. We're committed to the work that we do individually and this show collectively, because these issues that we face should be all of ours to tackle. Yeah. Yeah. Jay opens the book by saying he's not going to provide all the answers, but he really is going to engage with

a lot of these questions, and he totally succeeds in that. Like, I am deeply immersed in this topic now from reading the book and thinking about it a lot, and wrestling with these questions and I definitely recommend people to dive into this book as well. Yeah, and the truth is that, probably for the first time in many ways, I am much more sensitive to and aware of many more communities that I need to care as much about as I care about my own. I think that's really that's a

value to the book. So yeah, that's a powerful point. All right, man, love you, Love you too. Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalilibron Mohammed and my best friend Ben Austin. It's produced by Sheriff Vincent and edited by Karen Shakerjee. Our engineer is Martin Gonzalez. Our associate editor is Keishell Williams, Our associate producer is Lucy Sullivan, and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias. Our executive

producers are Leeta Molad and Mia La Belle. Special thanks to Jay Caspian Kang. He's our newest best friend and you should check out his book, The Loneliest Americans and also subscribe to his New York Times newsletter at Pushkin. Thanks to Heather Faine, Carley Migliori, 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

averyryng 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. If you love some of my best friends are in any of the other shows from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for four

dollars and ninety nine cents a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. And I just want to say, Khalil, you just proved that argument about somebody who's connected to Harvard will bring it up in the first fifteen minutes of the conversation, because I didn't actually say no, that's I brought it on first. I see it's what little you know about Cambridge has more than just Harvard. How about that