Rewiring How We Think Featuring Akil Parker and Cole Davis

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Welcome. I'm Eric Fleming, host of A Moment with Eric Fleming, the podcast of our time.

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The following program is hosted by the NVG Podcast Network.

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Hello, and welcome to Another Moment with Eric Fleming. I am your host, Eric Fleming.

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So this episode is going to be entitled, Rewiring How We Think.

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And the reason is because I have two guests on.

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One, the Kiel Parker is going to talk about mathematics.

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I know a lot of us are like, mathematics? I hated mathematics.

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Well, this brother is going to come on and tell you why you should love mathematics.

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Why the black community should love mathematics.

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And then the next guest is a gentleman named Cole Davis.

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Cole Davis is from England. He's a psychologist and is a polymorph. He's a lot of things.

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But he's written a book called Stone Age Now,

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which makes the argument that all this old way of thinking, us trying to solve

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today's problems with old ideologies and old labels.

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Basically just the thought patterns and strategies that we've been going through

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over the last, I don't know, 100 years, to be generous.

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He's saying it's time for us to break out of that.

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And so he sets the framework for that in his book.

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And so we'll talk about some of the things in the interview and,

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you know, how it relates to some contemporary issues that we're dealing with right this minute.

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So I just, I think this is going to be a thought-provoking episode,

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and I hope that you listen to it with an open mind.

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I believe most of you all that listen to this podcast do listen with an open

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mind and that you get something out of it.

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If you do get something out of it, please go to www.momenteric.com and let the

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people know on the website what you think about the podcast.

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Give it a five-star rating. Donate either one time or subscribe.

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Just continue to show your support for this podcast.

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And I encourage you also to listen to other independent podcasters as well.

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Continue to be well-rounded. it, I've noticed there's some more people,

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seems like every day people are doing podcasts, but there's more people that,

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really have had an influence that are starting to do that now.

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And podcasters are actually becoming political issues, right?

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And, you know, we'll deal with that a little later.

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But I want to say this before we move forward,

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A lot of us know that Dolly Parton passed away last week. And for those of you

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who had the chance to meet her, you know, I'm envious of that.

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Although most of us in America felt like we knew her.

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And if there was ever such a thing as an American saint, if we actually had

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a canonization process for sainthood in America, she would definitely qualify.

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Nobody is perfect. I'm sure if you really were into her life and,

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you know, if you're really, really into her family in that circle,

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I'm sure you would find some flaws, right, because we're all human beings.

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But as far as how she lived her life in public and in private,

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the example that she gave as far as being humble and being given a giving is

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something that all of us can relate to and all of us should strive for.

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So, you know, the tributes have been coming in and they'll be probably coming

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in for a while as more and more things are being revealed now that she's passed away, that she was.

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Involved in, had our hands in.

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But I did want to acknowledge that before we got into the podcast,

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because for so much of our lives over the last 10 years,

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we have seen the worst of this country.

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And for some of us, that's nothing new.

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But now I believe it's been exposed to the whole nation as opposed to people

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in certain areas of the nation.

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So whenever somebody like Dolly Parton leaves, we have to acknowledge the loss,

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that we as a nation suffered.

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Because that part of the country I am referring to or hinting towards, she came from that.

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And she could have very easily been part of that culture. But she chose to rise above it.

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And she looked at it as a challenge, and she fought against it in her own quiet way.

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She overcame poverty, but she didn't want to be greedy.

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She had things, but she wasn't satisfied till others had things.

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So we have to acknowledge people like that.

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And people acknowledged her when she was alive. When she died,

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she was literally the most popular American in the country.

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I want you to keep that in mind. The President of the United States has a favorability rating of 30.

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The President of the United States has a favorability rating of 30.

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Dalek Pardone, on the day she died, had a favorability rating of 70.

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So I'll leave y'all with that. So let's go ahead and get this show started.

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As always, we kick it off with a moment of news. With Grace Cheek.

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Thanks, Eric. The Supreme Court temporarily lifted one injunction against Trump's

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mail-in voting restrictions, but another legal challenge made by Democratic-led states is still active.

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Everton Blair won the special election in Georgia to replace the late Representative

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David Scott, defeating Scott's daughter, Marcy.

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Nikaila Jasmine Thomas won the Oklahoma Democratic Senate runoff for the seat

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vacated by Mark Wayne Mullen.

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Darlene Graham won the Republican Senate runoff in South Carolina and will face

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Democrat Annie Andrews in the November election.

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Thousands gathered in the nation's capital on the 63rd anniversary of the March

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on Washington to defend voting rights and other civil liberties,

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citing concerns about recent changes to voting protections and congressional redistricting.

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Gary, Indiana residents had their power restored after being without electricity

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for two weeks due to severe storms.

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An arbitrator ordered The Washington Post to reinstate journalist Karen Atsia

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with back pay after finding the newspaper lacked sufficient cause to fire her

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over social media posts concerning Charlie Kirk's death.

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ICE agent Christian Castro was released from a Texas jail after a federal judge

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declined to compel his extradition to Minnesota, where he faces assault charges related to a shooting.

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Former Illinois Deputy Sean Grayson, who was serving a 20-year sentence for

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killing Sonia Massey, died in prison at age 32 while undergoing treatment for advanced colon cancer.

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Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, the father of a deployed U.S. Navy sailor on the USS

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Abraham Lincoln, was released from immigration detention.

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Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion and impose stricter limits on teen use

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of Facebook and Instagram to settle claims that its platforms were designed to addict children.

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And beloved entertainer and philanthropist Dolly Parton died at the age of 80.

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I am Grace Gee, and this has been a Moment of News.

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All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. And now it is time for my guest, Akil Parker.

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Akil Parker is a Black man playing his part by teaching math to anybody who

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will listen either in person, virtually, or on YouTube.

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He is the founder and CEO of All This Math, an educational services company

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with a mission to improve the relationship between math and the Black community.

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He provides physical and online math resources for parents, youth, and math teachers.

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In addition to All This Math YouTube channel, he has written a math resource

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guidebook for parents and guardians entitled, How Do You Use All This Math, Volume 1?

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One of his major initiatives is to help empower parents to feel comfortable

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and confident in assisting their

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children with math homework in order to improve student math outcomes.

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Kiel Parker was an adjunct professor at Cheney University where he taught math

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courses such as elementary algebra and math methods for teachers.

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He has been a math teacher for the past 20 years in Philadelphia and beyond

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in the classroom, as well as in virtual spaces.

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He has nearly 200 podcast slash radio show appearances in an attempt to rebrand

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mathematics in a more positive light has been featured in multiple magazine

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and newspaper articles regarding his work.

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He is also the father of three wonderful children that have greatly inspired

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his math instruction over the years.

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Mr. Parker is a firm believer in mathematics being a conduit for the development

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of highly necessary problem-solving skills and critical thinking ability,

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which can ultimately improve humanity overall.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest

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on this podcast, Akil Parker.

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All right. Akil Parker. How are you doing, brother? You doing good?

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I'm doing great, actually.

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Okay. Well, that's good to know.

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So I want to talk to you about math.

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So let me break down a little personal thing to you.

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My dad was great in math. He was actually thought about being a math major in college.

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And he went to college on a wrestling scholarship, believe it or not.

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But he He was really into math. He even learned German so he could understand

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math better. He was really serious about it.

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So raising me, he just thought genetically I was going to be good at math. That did not work out.

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And I tell people all the time I got into politics because I sucked at math.

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Accounting beat my butt in college, and so I switched majors.

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But you are a believer, a practitioner, an ambassador for mathematics,

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especially for black folk.

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So I wanted to have you to come on because the mission that you're doing,

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I think, is really, really important.

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It's more than just, quote unquote, being a teacher. There's some real thought

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behind it. So I wanted to highlight that during the interview.

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So before we get into all that, I do a couple of icebreakers.

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So the first icebreaker is a quote I want you to respond to.

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And the quote is, if you build it, they will come.

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When you say respond, what do you mean by respond? Like what my reaction is

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to that or what my... Yes, sir.

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Oh, I mean, I think it definitely is very relevant to the Black community in

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terms of institution building.

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Oftentimes, we become very critical of individual behaviors in the absence of

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institutions that are meant to form behaviors and influence behaviors.

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So I'm a staunch believer in building institutions.

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You know, so, and I remember that, that quote from Phil the Dreams.

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Yeah, I definitely remember that. Yes, sir.

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Yeah, so now my next icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.

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So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.

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19. All right.

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What are some values you think most people share, even if they express them differently?

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Values, I think most people share. The desire for justice is one.

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The desire to be part of something greater than themselves, such as a group, is another.

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The desire to be happy. Those are just, those are a few things that come to mind.

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Okay. All right. So where in your life journey did you decide to be a teacher?

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I decided to be a teacher in 2005 as an economic necessity because I was I just left the job.

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I was about to be fired from a job with the FBIC and instead resigned.

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So that way, when I wouldn't have a termination on my record in case I wanted

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another government job and I had a baby on the way.

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So that's when I decided to become a teacher because I knew there were a lot

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of opportunities for teachers, especially math teachers, since math teachers

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are in demand, still are. But this is we're talking about back in 2005.

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So that's when I decided to become a teacher. So I didn't major in education

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in college. I majored in finance.

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I had no desire to ever be a classroom teacher, but I am glad that it did happen.

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You know, my life went on this trajectory because it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

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Yeah. So you've been on this journey for over 20 years. Okay. Yeah.

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When you hear a student or even an adult ask the question, why do we need to learn all this math?

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We are never going to use One, how does that make you feel? And two,

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how do you respond to that?

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Well, at this point, it makes me feel inspired. You know, it makes me feel that

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this work that I'm doing is very needed and very necessary,

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because a lot of people respond that way or think of mathematics that way because

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of usually because of negative experiences in school, in math classes.

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And also in school, what often happens is we don't really get the opportunity

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to learn what math really is and be able to see the beauty of mathematics because

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it's really problem solving.

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You know, and a lot of people that say that they're never going to use math,

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are actually using math on a daily and regular basis, but they just don't recognize

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it because they don't know what mathematics actually is.

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Anytime you're doing any type of problem solving that you're going through a mathematical process.

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Anytime you're trying to, you're in a store shopping and you're trying to figure

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out if this is a good deal or a bad deal, or,

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you know, or if somebody's lying to you or telling the truth,

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like you mentioned politics, like there's a whole lot of mathematics and politics,

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you know, there's decision, there's game theory and, you know,

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decision theory, there's things like the Shapley-Schubick power index,

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you know, we want to, you know, I mean, mathematicians are working on political

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campaigns to figure out, okay, what's the,

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best course of action to spend, these resources, you know, and in which community

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should we spend the resources where we think we're going to get the most votes.

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So there's really, there's nothing you can do in life that doesn't involve some

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type of mathematical process. The question is, do we see it or not?

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You know, and as we know, a lot of times things are right in front of us,

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but if you can't recognize it, then you might not see it, but that doesn't mean that it's not there.

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You know, it's like the old heads used to say, you know, if it was a snake, it would have bit you.

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So it's kind of like one of those types of things. So I will admit,

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though, early in my teaching career, I used to frustrate me when when students

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would say that, you know, I'm never going to use this because I would take it

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personal, you know, which is which is a problem.

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But that was just my own immaturity and also my own like lack of content mastery.

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I hadn't mastered my content.

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So when they would say that, there would be that little voice in the back of

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my head like, wow, like maybe they're right.

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But that's only because I didn't understand the math well enough,

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you know, as well as I as I began to understand it as years progressed.

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But, yeah, so it inspires me when I hear that because, you know,

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I'm like, OK, well, maybe I can plant a seed at least, you know,

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to get this person to start thinking differently,

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you know, about mathematics and also and show them the relatability of it,

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because that's really, I think, a major key in school. School is such a high

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stakes testing environment.

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And school is really test prep at this point, you know, for the most part.

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School is really test prep.

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And test prep isn't really about giving you strong foundation in the conceptual

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aspects of whatever the concept is, whatever the subject is.

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Like when I do SAT prep, you know, I'm not really there to, that time is not

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really designated for teaching the actual foundations of how algebra one works,

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how arithmetic works, how geometry works.

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Test prep is really for me giving you the different tricks of the trade and

00:19:48.827 --> 00:19:54.032
the strategies to answer the maximum amount of questions correctly in the least amount of time.

00:19:54.653 --> 00:20:00.393
So, you know, with that in mind, you know, school has kind of adopted this like test prep model.

00:20:00.772 --> 00:20:04.087
I mean, teachers are under a lot of stress. Administrators are under a lot of stress.

00:20:04.679 --> 00:20:09.311
And, you know, there's this demand for increased test scores every year.

00:20:10.023 --> 00:20:14.066
You're not going to really get the opportunity in most cases to really develop

00:20:14.066 --> 00:20:17.720
an appreciation or a love for mathematics because that's not what the time is for.

00:20:18.365 --> 00:20:23.336
But that just means that as a community, we have to figure out ways and implement

00:20:23.336 --> 00:20:25.754
ways to develop some type of infrastructure,

00:20:26.277 --> 00:20:29.956
in the neighborhoods and the households and the churches, the moschets on the

00:20:29.956 --> 00:20:34.446
street corners, wherever to develop that foundation in mathematics.

00:20:34.446 --> 00:20:38.416
And that's a large part of the work that I do with the resources that I create.

00:20:38.416 --> 00:20:42.206
And, you know, I try to just, you know, share those resources and those ideas

00:20:42.206 --> 00:20:46.418
with the community, whether in person or using social media or the Internet,

00:20:46.755 --> 00:20:53.046
you know, so people can, you know, start to see like, you know, the relevance of math.

00:20:53.046 --> 00:20:57.456
And also, I also like to get people to understand who benefits when you take

00:20:57.456 --> 00:21:01.206
that position that math is irrelevant because math is really a tool.

00:21:01.206 --> 00:21:03.620
So it's a really viable, really viable tool.

00:21:04.183 --> 00:21:09.436
And once you say that, you know, you're not a math person or math is irrelevant

00:21:09.436 --> 00:21:12.976
or you're never going to use it, that just makes it easier for those that don't

00:21:12.976 --> 00:21:17.521
hold that position and don't hold that opinion because you've disqualified yourself from competition.

00:21:17.997 --> 00:21:22.646
Since there's so many opportunities that require a strong foundation in mathematics,

00:21:22.646 --> 00:21:25.015
algebra one and, you know, the higher level math.

00:21:26.010 --> 00:21:29.383
You're basically self-selecting yourself out of the competition,

00:21:29.905 --> 00:21:34.255
which is beneficial to people that don't have that opinion in that position.

00:21:34.255 --> 00:21:37.665
So I think that's also something I like to talk to people about.

00:21:37.665 --> 00:21:41.845
It's like, you know, don't do that to yourself, you know, because once you say

00:21:41.845 --> 00:21:44.730
I hate math, I'm never going to use math and this is irrelevant.

00:21:45.142 --> 00:21:48.545
You're also saying I'm never going to be a doctor. I'm never going to be a registered

00:21:48.545 --> 00:21:51.475
nurse, never going to be a lawyer, never going to be an architect,

00:21:51.475 --> 00:21:53.890
any type of engineer, computer scientist.

00:21:54.384 --> 00:21:57.805
You're also saying that because the math is a requirement, you know,

00:21:57.805 --> 00:21:59.425
for those types of careers.

00:21:59.425 --> 00:22:04.055
But, you know, and, you know, I go on and on. You know, it's so many things

00:22:04.055 --> 00:22:09.425
I could say to a person that says kind of like that reduces the value of mathematics.

00:22:09.425 --> 00:22:11.990
But, you know, this is this is the work that I signed up for.

00:22:12.675 --> 00:22:15.873
Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you, you, you were getting, you were getting cranked

00:22:15.873 --> 00:22:17.632
up there. I appreciate that.

00:22:18.085 --> 00:22:20.770
So what was the genesis for all this math?

00:22:21.451 --> 00:22:25.886
Genesis for all this math was me deciding to turn my hustle into a business

00:22:26.281 --> 00:22:29.003
because as a math teacher, people are always asking you like,

00:22:29.003 --> 00:22:32.213
can you tutor my child and, you know, some on the side here.

00:22:32.213 --> 00:22:34.773
And, you know, as a full-time teacher, you know, I used to all throughout my

00:22:34.773 --> 00:22:37.943
career since 2005, I would like, you know, tutor people on the side here and

00:22:37.943 --> 00:22:40.023
there, but I didn't really take it seriously.

00:22:40.023 --> 00:22:45.833
So one day around 2017, I decided to actually take it seriously and create an

00:22:45.833 --> 00:22:50.692
actual business, all this math, you know, around the end of that school year.

00:22:51.063 --> 00:22:57.093
I didn't really I guess I did a little bit of tutoring that that school year between 2017 and 2018.

00:22:57.093 --> 00:23:03.033
But it was really in 2018, the end of the 2018 school year that June that left

00:23:03.033 --> 00:23:05.973
the school district of Philadelphia. I was I was teaching at Overbrook High

00:23:05.973 --> 00:23:08.380
School at that time and I left the school district of Philadelphia,

00:23:08.710 --> 00:23:12.073
basically retired from from teaching, you know, full time at least.

00:23:12.673 --> 00:23:16.906
In the classroom. And I decided to, you know, go all in with math tutoring.

00:23:17.527 --> 00:23:22.263
So that was kind of the genesis of all this math. And then it grew into some

00:23:22.263 --> 00:23:26.170
consulting opportunities, some teacher coaching opportunities.

00:23:26.634 --> 00:23:29.148
You know, I had some relationships with some administrators,

00:23:29.577 --> 00:23:32.443
you know, around the Philadelphia area that brought me in to like work with

00:23:32.443 --> 00:23:35.439
some of their younger, you know, less experienced math teachers.

00:23:36.011 --> 00:23:39.553
And then I started like doing work with like developing and resources because

00:23:39.553 --> 00:23:43.215
what I realized was it's really about reimagining the household.

00:23:43.575 --> 00:23:46.113
You know, there's a lot of conversation about reimagining schools,

00:23:46.113 --> 00:23:50.863
which I do think is important, but I think what's equally or more important

00:23:50.863 --> 00:23:52.567
is reimagining the household.

00:23:53.270 --> 00:23:56.066
And especially because everybody says that, you know, they always throw this

00:23:56.066 --> 00:23:59.080
like cliche around that, you know, it starts in the home, it starts in the home.

00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:03.446
But oftentimes we're not telling people what that looks like or giving people

00:24:03.446 --> 00:24:07.046
instruction as to what it looks like when you start education in the home or

00:24:07.046 --> 00:24:08.726
when you start math education in the home.

00:24:08.726 --> 00:24:13.208
So I just, you know, I started developing resources. I published my book in

00:24:13.382 --> 00:24:18.119
2023, How to Use All This Math, Volume 1, available on Amazon.

00:24:18.740 --> 00:24:24.289
And, you know, basically the book is just me showing how as a math teacher,

00:24:24.626 --> 00:24:29.138
right, and a mathematician, me showing how everyday activities that,

00:24:29.491 --> 00:24:32.835
you know, we do all the time, you know, and take for granted.

00:24:33.595 --> 00:24:36.306
Can actually be math lessons and be arithmetic lessons.

00:24:36.356 --> 00:24:39.536
Like, you know, doing this thing over here when you're at the grocery store,

00:24:39.536 --> 00:24:43.586
when you're walking down the street or riding in the car, like these are opportunities

00:24:43.586 --> 00:24:45.211
to practice different math skills.

00:24:45.669 --> 00:24:49.506
And I think that's what's really going to that's what's really going to be required

00:24:49.506 --> 00:24:55.006
for us to win, because far too often children just go into school like these

00:24:55.006 --> 00:24:59.212
blank slates and they don't already have enough prior knowledge and prerequisite skills.

00:24:59.752 --> 00:25:04.846
So, you know, but if we could use the household as the first classroom or like

00:25:04.846 --> 00:25:08.906
essentially get a head start in the household, then once they get into school,

00:25:08.906 --> 00:25:11.403
we get into the classroom. Because, like I said, school is really test prep.

00:25:11.937 --> 00:25:13.046
They'll be ready for the test prep.

00:25:13.586 --> 00:25:17.051
But a lot of times they're not ready for the test prep. They need a lot of remediation.

00:25:17.562 --> 00:25:22.388
They have, you know, learning blind spots, you know, a lot of unfinished learning.

00:25:22.858 --> 00:25:27.183
And it makes it much more difficult for the teachers to really move through their curriculum.

00:25:27.570 --> 00:25:32.796
So a lot of my work these days is around, you know, helping families and,

00:25:32.796 --> 00:25:35.546
you know, the community, the mothers, the fathers, the grandparents,

00:25:35.546 --> 00:25:41.240
the uncles, the aunts, you know, helping them to become the primary math educators.

00:25:41.867 --> 00:25:45.356
So. So, yeah, that's what that's what, you know, all this math is is really

00:25:45.356 --> 00:25:46.684
focused on a lot these days.

00:25:47.406 --> 00:25:52.818
Yeah. So unfortunately, we we're audio only podcast, but you've got this cool

00:25:52.818 --> 00:25:55.562
T-shirt on that says Histematics.

00:25:55.997 --> 00:25:59.765
So the question I have is, what is Histematics?

00:26:00.173 --> 00:26:06.258
So Histematics is an idea that I just I decided to formalize it in 2019 when

00:26:06.258 --> 00:26:11.468
there was a conference that had a call for papers, call for proposals to discuss

00:26:11.468 --> 00:26:12.810
a topic that was related to it.

00:26:13.153 --> 00:26:16.658
You know, but histematics is basically when I use black history to teach math

00:26:16.658 --> 00:26:18.180
and I use math to teach black history.

00:26:18.679 --> 00:26:22.118
And this is really something I kind of organically had been doing throughout

00:26:22.118 --> 00:26:24.153
my entire career since 2005.

00:26:24.698 --> 00:26:28.048
And, you know, when you think about it, when I think about it,

00:26:28.048 --> 00:26:30.938
I was I'm the teacher, like whether it was a geometry class,

00:26:31.107 --> 00:26:35.728
algebra one class, algebra two, calculus, without fail, some teach,

00:26:35.728 --> 00:26:38.978
some student will raise their hand and say early in the school year and say, Mr.

00:26:38.978 --> 00:26:41.480
Parker, you should have been an African-American history teacher.

00:26:42.090 --> 00:26:47.802
Because students are so conditioned to compartmentalize education.

00:26:48.581 --> 00:26:51.431
And what I'm trying to do is like, you know, blur those lines,

00:26:51.570 --> 00:26:54.918
you know, we show the connections and the interdisciplinary nature of all the

00:26:54.918 --> 00:26:57.648
subjects, because that makes it make more sense anyway, I think.

00:26:58.159 --> 00:27:01.508
Right. So histematics is just a way to do that, because, you know,

00:27:01.508 --> 00:27:06.798
I'm creating like, you know, do now problems or quiz questions or test questions

00:27:06.798 --> 00:27:08.968
that, you know, involve mathematics.

00:27:08.968 --> 00:27:12.988
You know, they're about quantitative analysis, but the information in the problem

00:27:12.988 --> 00:27:18.068
might include the Black Panther Party for self-defense or Paul Robeson or Assata

00:27:18.068 --> 00:27:21.698
Shakur or Mary McLeod Bethune or, you know, people like that.

00:27:21.698 --> 00:27:25.528
So, you know, I'm trying to give the students an opportunity to practice math,

00:27:25.784 --> 00:27:29.088
but also learn about the black history as well.

00:27:29.088 --> 00:27:32.028
Because, you know, in my classes that I was teaching, you know,

00:27:32.028 --> 00:27:35.351
like there was there was a lot of deficiency in mathematics,

00:27:35.566 --> 00:27:39.038
but there also was deficiency in black history and just that knowledge itself

00:27:39.038 --> 00:27:40.674
and that, you know, historical awareness.

00:27:41.237 --> 00:27:42.488
So I always thought like, well,

00:27:42.488 --> 00:27:46.560
you know, if I could do two things at the same time, you know, why not?

00:27:47.065 --> 00:27:51.568
Why not, you know, teach the, you know, teach, expose them to the African-American

00:27:51.568 --> 00:27:56.738
history and the African history, as well as expose them to the Algebra 1 topics

00:27:56.738 --> 00:28:00.668
and the geometry topics, you know, you know, and, you know, it can be kind of,

00:28:01.248 --> 00:28:04.915
fundamental and basic or it could be, you know, more complex, you know, as an example.

00:28:05.757 --> 00:28:08.143
You know, like, so if we're talking about somebody like, you know,

00:28:08.143 --> 00:28:13.066
Fred Hampton, you know, Fred Hampton, unfortunately, assassinated in 1969.

00:28:13.519 --> 00:28:16.671
So a simple question might be, you know, asking the students,

00:28:16.978 --> 00:28:19.526
you know, how old were you in 1969?

00:28:19.845 --> 00:28:22.903
Now, of course, no student that I'm going to be in contact with,

00:28:22.903 --> 00:28:24.820
you know, was even born in 1969.

00:28:25.307 --> 00:28:28.453
But and they recognize that, which is good, you know, because that shows that

00:28:28.453 --> 00:28:29.359
they're thinking critically.

00:28:29.702 --> 00:28:33.123
But what I'm really trying to do is introduce them to integers and negative

00:28:33.123 --> 00:28:34.758
numbers and the negative and the number line.

00:28:35.286 --> 00:28:40.418
Right to get them to think okay well what was i doing like in relation to the year that i was born,

00:28:41.058 --> 00:28:45.998
you know how far away on the number line is the year 1969 so if a student was born in,

00:28:46.439 --> 00:28:50.561
i don't know let's say 2005 right then they have to do the calculation

00:28:50.967 --> 00:28:54.683
you know what's the difference between 2005 and 1969 so we're thinking like

00:28:54.683 --> 00:28:59.803
let's see 69 to 70 is one year 70 to 2000 is 30 years so 35 plus one that's

00:28:59.803 --> 00:29:01.823
36 years it's a 36 year difference,

00:29:02.322 --> 00:29:06.629
so that means that at that time of his assassination, you would have been negative 36 years old.

00:29:07.270 --> 00:29:10.763
So they're thinking about Fred Hampton and they think hopefully they'll be thinking

00:29:10.763 --> 00:29:14.834
about the Black Panther Party, Chicago, Mark Clark, rest in peace to those two brothers.

00:29:15.673 --> 00:29:18.425
You know, and maybe they'll, you know, do some further research on,

00:29:18.425 --> 00:29:22.585
you know, Huey P. Newton, you know, Bobby Sill, Kathleen Cleaver,

00:29:22.925 --> 00:29:27.043
Lane Brown, all of these types of people and also the work that was being done

00:29:27.235 --> 00:29:28.698
in the community. Right.

00:29:29.426 --> 00:29:32.862
But then they're getting to practice math at the same time, you know.

00:29:32.973 --> 00:29:36.205
And so that's that's kind of what what histematics. That's one example of what

00:29:36.205 --> 00:29:40.350
histematics looks like in real time. Yeah. Yeah.

00:29:41.001 --> 00:29:43.648
Yeah. So if you ask me a question, I'd say four.

00:29:44.945 --> 00:29:49.276
I was four years old when that went down and I was living in Chicago at the time.

00:29:49.798 --> 00:29:56.009
So in that line, is there a black mathematician that, that you,

00:29:56.364 --> 00:30:01.454
that you have as a favorite or do you, you don't, you don't really get into that?

00:30:02.047 --> 00:30:04.725
I definitely get into that. And I'm glad you asked that question because so

00:30:04.725 --> 00:30:07.120
histamatics is broken down into five elements.

00:30:07.532 --> 00:30:12.739
And the fifth element of histamatics is is what I call black math exemplars,

00:30:13.359 --> 00:30:17.085
because I also love the belief that part of the reason that a lot of our black

00:30:17.085 --> 00:30:20.925
children and black youth have deficiencies in mathematics is because we don't

00:30:20.925 --> 00:30:22.765
like like we believe that,

00:30:23.350 --> 00:30:28.175
we are never going to use math and math is futile and useless because we don't

00:30:28.175 --> 00:30:30.298
often don't see a lot of black people doing math.

00:30:30.740 --> 00:30:34.825
We don't see a lot of black math teachers, men or women. We don't see or we

00:30:34.825 --> 00:30:36.405
don't learn about black mathematicians.

00:30:36.405 --> 00:30:40.565
So it's hard for me to say who my favorite is, but I got a couple that come to mind.

00:30:40.565 --> 00:30:44.995
There's Dr. Abdul Aleem Shabazz, who actually taught in Chicago at the University

00:30:44.995 --> 00:30:49.155
of Islam for like 30 years before leaving there. And then he taught at several

00:30:49.155 --> 00:30:54.125
HBCUs. He taught at Lincoln University. He's actually an alum of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

00:30:54.537 --> 00:30:59.015
I taught at Clark Atlanta University, taught at Southern University down in

00:30:59.015 --> 00:31:01.825
Louisiana, either Southern or Grambling. I get those confused.

00:31:01.825 --> 00:31:04.695
I'm not sure which one it was, but it was one of those two, either Southern or Grambling.

00:31:05.324 --> 00:31:10.602
Then there's, well, his claim to fame is the fact that he is responsible for

00:31:10.602 --> 00:31:15.332
training more black math PhDs than any other single person, you know,

00:31:15.332 --> 00:31:18.069
in the history of the United States. That's his claim to fame.

00:31:18.481 --> 00:31:21.963
Then there's Dr. Gloria Ford Gilmer, who I often talk about a whole lot.

00:31:22.299 --> 00:31:25.222
She's born and raised in Baltimore. You know, I wasn't born in Baltimore,

00:31:25.222 --> 00:31:28.522
but I was raised in Baltimore, definitely, through my formative years.

00:31:28.522 --> 00:31:32.412
So she's from there. She's also a graduate of Oregon State, you know, my alma mater.

00:31:32.412 --> 00:31:37.262
So that's another reason. But she did a lot of work with an area of math called

00:31:37.262 --> 00:31:43.102
ethnomathematics, where we deal with problems that are significant to a specific

00:31:43.102 --> 00:31:45.205
exclusive to a certain cultures of people.

00:31:45.658 --> 00:31:49.422
Right. Part of her work was just talking about how, you know,

00:31:49.422 --> 00:31:51.698
ways that we can teach geometry through hair braiding.

00:31:52.319 --> 00:31:56.212
You know, and just noticing the tessellations and the different patterns of

00:31:56.212 --> 00:31:59.282
the parts in the hair and all those types of things, you know,

00:31:59.282 --> 00:32:02.062
which is very which is very important because what what you're really getting

00:32:02.062 --> 00:32:03.961
into is culturally responsive pedagogy.

00:32:04.553 --> 00:32:07.020
Because, you know, and I and I think that, you know, as teachers,

00:32:07.473 --> 00:32:08.752
we have to do a better job of that.

00:32:08.752 --> 00:32:11.202
And that's something that I didn't do as good of a job, you know,

00:32:11.202 --> 00:32:14.782
at when I was in the classroom, showing the relevance and the relatability of

00:32:14.782 --> 00:32:16.982
mathematics, because I'm sitting there thinking back.

00:32:16.982 --> 00:32:20.172
Sometimes I think in retrospect, like, how is it that I had?

00:32:20.172 --> 00:32:23.042
I taught I'm teaching in West Philly. I'm teaching in North Philly.

00:32:23.042 --> 00:32:25.572
I'm teaching, you know, students from all over Philadelphia.

00:32:25.572 --> 00:32:30.120
You got all these girls with these elaborate braided hairstyles and everything.

00:32:30.399 --> 00:32:33.312
And they sitting in my geometry class talking about they don't understand geometry.

00:32:33.672 --> 00:32:35.101
This don't make no sense. I don't get it.

00:32:35.466 --> 00:32:40.642
Right. But at no point did I ever think to meet them where they were and try

00:32:40.642 --> 00:32:44.052
to figure out ways of saying, OK, well, what about, you know,

00:32:44.052 --> 00:32:45.213
when you get your hair braided?

00:32:45.561 --> 00:32:49.592
Look at those little patterns, the patterns on your scalp. I see triangles.

00:32:49.592 --> 00:32:54.542
I see trapezoids. I see rectangles, you know, just to make the geometry more

00:32:54.542 --> 00:32:57.262
relevant, you know, to them. And even the brothers, the brothers with their

00:32:57.262 --> 00:32:59.912
locks and, you know, with their cornrows and everything. Right.

00:33:00.599 --> 00:33:04.248
So we have a lot of there are a lot of ways that even with our own cultural

00:33:04.248 --> 00:33:10.018
norms and cultural practices that we can leverage that and make that the basis

00:33:10.018 --> 00:33:12.239
for all different types of math lessons.

00:33:12.739 --> 00:33:15.848
You know, so then and that's what that's one of that was a large part of Dr.

00:33:15.848 --> 00:33:17.674
Gloria Ford Gilmer's work.

00:33:18.169 --> 00:33:21.058
But, you know, the list goes on. There's so many. There's, you know,

00:33:21.058 --> 00:33:26.728
David Blackwell, J. Ernest Wilkins, Catherine Johnson, you know,

00:33:26.728 --> 00:33:31.350
the sisters that, you know, were featured in the Hidden Figures movie that worked for NASA.

00:33:31.936 --> 00:33:35.593
There's so many. I'm actually going to be doing a series on black mathematicians

00:33:35.966 --> 00:33:38.850
where I'm going to be doing a lot of like research on black mathematicians and

00:33:39.140 --> 00:33:42.368
and using social media, trying to use social media for something positive because

00:33:42.368 --> 00:33:44.028
there's so much nonsense on social media.

00:33:44.028 --> 00:33:47.888
But I'll be doing some like some video content where I just talk about black

00:33:47.888 --> 00:33:52.398
mathematicians, you know, and hopefully that, you know, this will be used,

00:33:52.398 --> 00:33:54.408
you know, some of the school teachers will pick it up and, you know,

00:33:54.408 --> 00:33:57.938
expose their students to it, you know, because that's a big thing.

00:33:57.938 --> 00:34:02.280
A big part of our deficiency around mathematics is the fact that we don't,

00:34:02.582 --> 00:34:03.738
there's a lack of representation.

00:34:03.738 --> 00:34:06.578
We don't know about all of these black people that, you know,

00:34:06.578 --> 00:34:09.388
excel in mathematics and not just here in the United States,

00:34:09.388 --> 00:34:13.606
but, you know, in other countries, but also going back to ancient Africa, you know,

00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:17.398
we think about ancient Kemet, modern day Egypt, all the mathematics that had

00:34:17.398 --> 00:34:21.672
to be practiced just to build a pyramid, you know, and for them to still be standing to this day,

00:34:22.101 --> 00:34:25.004
you know, the mathematics that was required, you know, to make that happen.

00:34:25.515 --> 00:34:30.408
So. So, yes. So to your question, I don't know if I have a favorite mathematician,

00:34:30.408 --> 00:34:33.518
though. The two I mentioned are the two I initially mentioned,

00:34:33.518 --> 00:34:35.093
the two of my favorites. But.

00:34:35.958 --> 00:34:41.308
It would be hard for me to put one on top, you know, as the GOAT,

00:34:41.308 --> 00:34:43.710
I guess. It would be difficult for me to do.

00:34:44.490 --> 00:34:53.054
Yeah, and the only one I knew prior to, you know, even going to college or whatever was Ernest Just.

00:34:53.681 --> 00:34:57.292
And he was more known for being a founder of one of the fraternities.

00:34:58.178 --> 00:35:02.238
Black fraternities, more so than being a mathematician. But there's actually

00:35:02.238 --> 00:35:04.553
a building at Jackson State named after him.

00:35:05.087 --> 00:35:11.280
Because I think he talked there for a moment. But yeah, that's a group of people,

00:35:11.966 --> 00:35:13.468
just like black inventors.

00:35:13.468 --> 00:35:18.478
It's just a group of people that our culture and really American society don't

00:35:18.478 --> 00:35:24.198
know as fluently as they say other people. So I appreciate that you're going

00:35:24.198 --> 00:35:25.903
to be dedicating some time to do that.

00:35:26.524 --> 00:35:29.890
Yeah. How does math improve critical thinking?

00:35:30.727 --> 00:35:33.455
So I'm glad you asked this question too.

00:35:33.878 --> 00:35:36.678
Every time we're doing problems, and this is what I want people definitely to

00:35:36.678 --> 00:35:38.979
take away from listening to this episode, is that,

00:35:39.602 --> 00:35:42.708
I want us to really value, and as parents, I want you to have these conversations

00:35:42.708 --> 00:35:45.518
with your children that when your children are in math classes,

00:35:45.518 --> 00:35:48.798
whether it's an arithmetic class, algebra one class, pre-algebra,

00:35:48.798 --> 00:35:51.338
algebra two, geometry, whatever the math class is,

00:35:51.808 --> 00:35:55.535
every time they're presented with any type of example problem,

00:35:55.947 --> 00:35:58.571
they're getting an opportunity to practice critical thinking.

00:35:59.343 --> 00:36:01.648
That's that's that's really all it is. So when people say, like,

00:36:01.648 --> 00:36:04.438
you know, well, why do I need to know the Pythagorean theorem?

00:36:04.438 --> 00:36:07.048
Like, you know, when am I going to use that in life? When am I going to be in

00:36:07.048 --> 00:36:08.708
the grocery store and, you know,

00:36:08.708 --> 00:36:11.934
have to use this formula or the quadratic formula or whatever formula?

00:36:12.677 --> 00:36:17.388
I remind people it's not about that. It's about the thought process that you

00:36:17.388 --> 00:36:21.168
had to go through when you were sitting in that classroom and had to use the

00:36:21.168 --> 00:36:23.834
Pythagorean theorem or use the quadratic formula.

00:36:24.299 --> 00:36:28.281
You're training your brain to think in a methodical, systematic way,

00:36:28.797 --> 00:36:32.788
which is oftentimes very much needed. I mean, this is part and parcel of critical

00:36:32.788 --> 00:36:38.509
thinking, being able to identify all the relevant factors, being able to figure out, OK, what is my goal?

00:36:38.759 --> 00:36:42.778
What is my end result? What would the consequences be of me taking this route

00:36:42.778 --> 00:36:43.895
or not taking this route?

00:36:44.243 --> 00:36:49.288
Right. All of that is critical thinking. And when you're sitting in that geometry

00:36:49.288 --> 00:36:52.378
class and using the Pythagorean theorem and you're solving it,

00:36:52.408 --> 00:36:56.118
trying to solve the problem with the ladder is leaning up against the house.

00:36:56.118 --> 00:36:59.794
And, you know, you got to figure out, well, how long is the ladder?

00:37:00.079 --> 00:37:03.508
If you know how far the base of the ladder is away from the house,

00:37:03.508 --> 00:37:08.630
and you also know how far up the ladder touches the side of the house,

00:37:09.012 --> 00:37:12.449
you got to figure that out. You got to think to yourself, okay, what formula do I use?

00:37:12.583 --> 00:37:14.574
Okay, cool. Write that down. Okay.

00:37:15.004 --> 00:37:18.288
In this formula, I got three different variables. I got the A or B and the C,

00:37:18.946 --> 00:37:20.960
which one of these numbers goes in which place.

00:37:21.326 --> 00:37:24.605
All of that is critical. You're practicing critical thinking.

00:37:25.197 --> 00:37:29.521
And what we want to do is develop what we as educators call automaticity,

00:37:29.865 --> 00:37:33.458
right? We want to be able to automatically just know, okay, how to figure stuff out.

00:37:33.834 --> 00:37:37.428
So parents, make sure you're letting your children know, like when they're in

00:37:37.428 --> 00:37:39.116
that math class, it's not about...

00:37:39.918 --> 00:37:42.742
When they're going to be in the gas station or when they're going to be at,

00:37:42.742 --> 00:37:45.842
you know, grocery store or whatever and have to pull out this formula.

00:37:45.842 --> 00:37:50.282
It's about developing your ability to think, which is a skill they're going

00:37:50.282 --> 00:37:52.632
to need wherever they are, whenever they're in the gas station,

00:37:52.632 --> 00:37:53.944
grocery store, wherever.

00:37:54.262 --> 00:37:56.863
You know, it's very similar to athletics. Right.

00:37:57.363 --> 00:38:00.592
Your favorite football player, your favorite running back is not going to ever

00:38:00.592 --> 00:38:05.582
at any point during the game, run it down the field, put the ball down and,

00:38:05.941 --> 00:38:09.205
you know, get down and do pushups in the middle of the game.

00:38:09.674 --> 00:38:14.902
Right. But they'll do pushups in practice. They'll do the calisthenics in order

00:38:14.902 --> 00:38:17.174
to develop themselves to be ready to play.

00:38:17.865 --> 00:38:21.082
This is what mathematics. This is one of the many things mathematics does for

00:38:21.082 --> 00:38:24.782
us. It gets us ready for life. It develops our critical thinking ability because

00:38:24.782 --> 00:38:28.790
that's all you're doing in mathematics is just. You're using critical thinking on a regular basis.

00:38:29.155 --> 00:38:33.329
You know, you may be confronted with a problem and you may know five different formulas.

00:38:34.082 --> 00:38:37.902
You have to sit there and think, OK, which of these five formulas should I use right now?

00:38:38.361 --> 00:38:41.693
That's a thought process is if you use the wrong formula. And actually,

00:38:42.024 --> 00:38:43.498
you might be able. Here's another thing.

00:38:44.143 --> 00:38:48.671
You might be able to actually use any of those five formulas or methods to solve this problem.

00:38:48.984 --> 00:38:53.100
But now you've got to think in terms of efficiency and the economy of time.

00:38:53.460 --> 00:38:56.409
Which formula do I want to use? Which formula makes the most sense?

00:38:56.861 --> 00:38:59.015
Because if all of them are going to give me the right answer,

00:38:59.474 --> 00:39:02.462
I then got to figure out, okay, well, I don't want to pick the formula that's

00:39:02.462 --> 00:39:03.618
going to take the most time.

00:39:04.118 --> 00:39:06.289
I want to pick the formula that's going to take the least amount of time.

00:39:06.591 --> 00:39:08.500
So now we're back to using critical thinking again.

00:39:09.052 --> 00:39:13.942
So mathematics really gives us an opportunity to develop our critical thinking

00:39:13.942 --> 00:39:18.712
ability because these are choices and decisions that we have to make while we're

00:39:18.712 --> 00:39:19.742
sitting in that math class.

00:39:19.742 --> 00:39:24.972
So I just think it's it's unfortunate when the kids kind of tap out and give

00:39:24.972 --> 00:39:28.342
up and, you know, kind of fall back on that idea that I'm never going to use

00:39:28.342 --> 00:39:31.122
this or I don't want to be a mathematician. I don't want to be a math teacher.

00:39:31.122 --> 00:39:32.748
So why should I care about this?

00:39:33.416 --> 00:39:36.700
They're passing up a great opportunity to develop critical thinking ability,

00:39:37.470 --> 00:39:40.257
which we all which we all are going to need as human beings.

00:39:41.123 --> 00:39:45.578
Yeah. And it's something that's vitally needed now in my world,

00:39:45.578 --> 00:39:47.299
in the political world. Definitely.

00:39:48.306 --> 00:39:51.772
You make the argument that math is a language. Explain that.

00:39:52.495 --> 00:39:58.038
So it is. I make that argument because, well, I mean, that's part of an accepted

00:39:58.038 --> 00:39:59.295
definition of mathematics.

00:40:00.050 --> 00:40:03.188
There are a lot of symbols in it, which leads to a lot of confusion.

00:40:03.188 --> 00:40:06.482
And sometimes it's just an issue of not knowing what the symbols mean.

00:40:06.900 --> 00:40:10.749
And also sometimes one symbol can mean different things in different times.

00:40:11.208 --> 00:40:16.208
Right. You may often see people arguing over order of operations questions or

00:40:16.208 --> 00:40:17.441
PEMDAS questions. Right.

00:40:17.859 --> 00:40:22.235
And they may say, well, the parentheses PEMDAS says that the P is first in PEMDAS.

00:40:22.572 --> 00:40:25.417
That stands for parentheses. So therefore, whenever I see parentheses,

00:40:25.649 --> 00:40:29.820
I'm supposed to, you know, do the do the operation around the parentheses first.

00:40:30.083 --> 00:40:34.042
Well, when we say parentheses, we're actually referring to a grouping symbol.

00:40:34.569 --> 00:40:38.784
Sometimes a parentheses can be used for to group an expression inside of it.

00:40:39.329 --> 00:40:41.842
Sometimes parentheses just represents multiplication.

00:40:42.440 --> 00:40:47.513
So these are also things that we have to know. This is part of the language of mathematics, right?

00:40:47.751 --> 00:40:50.642
And also when you think about this too, think about word problems.

00:40:51.892 --> 00:40:57.368
One of the benefits of mathematics is that what it does is it takes a very more

00:40:57.368 --> 00:41:03.488
convoluted and more extensive word problem or situation, and you can condense

00:41:03.488 --> 00:41:05.232
it into just a simple equation.

00:41:05.760 --> 00:41:12.210
Like we could write out a five to seven sentence word problem describing the situation.

00:41:12.645 --> 00:41:16.198
But then if we want to answer the question that's being asked within that five

00:41:16.198 --> 00:41:21.378
to seven sentence question or word problem, we could condense it to an equation

00:41:21.378 --> 00:41:23.884
that basically just says three X plus five equals 20.

00:41:24.569 --> 00:41:29.188
So, but the issue is, okay, knowing how to do that translation.

00:41:29.845 --> 00:41:35.023
Just like going from, you know, Swahili to English or Spanish to English or

00:41:35.023 --> 00:41:38.233
English to Arabic, right? Knowing how to do that translation.

00:41:38.738 --> 00:41:43.003
And that's another thing I want to bring up, which is that there are many people

00:41:43.003 --> 00:41:47.033
that also adopt this position that, well, I'm not a math person,

00:41:47.033 --> 00:41:48.096
but I am a reading person.

00:41:48.438 --> 00:41:52.053
Well, I'll say this, in order to be a math person, you must also be a reading

00:41:52.053 --> 00:41:54.394
person because you must have reading comprehension ability.

00:41:54.794 --> 00:41:57.633
Because when we get into the applications and these long word problems,

00:41:57.952 --> 00:42:01.587
we got to know how to read that stuff so that we will know how to do that translation

00:42:01.709 --> 00:42:05.713
from the word problem to that, you know, shorter equation.

00:42:05.713 --> 00:42:08.673
Or sometimes we'll have a system of equations where we'll have two or three

00:42:08.673 --> 00:42:12.576
equations, you know, that we combine together in order to figure out the unknown values.

00:42:12.970 --> 00:42:18.293
So so, yeah, definitely math is definitely a language, a language that we we have to embrace.

00:42:18.293 --> 00:42:22.653
And I also think that if we thought about it that way, and if we as math teachers

00:42:22.653 --> 00:42:27.463
started to speak about mathematics that way, that would make it seem more understandable.

00:42:27.463 --> 00:42:31.263
Because if you're a student that can excel in your Spanish class or your Chinese

00:42:31.263 --> 00:42:36.243
class or in your Arabic class or your Swahili class, because you understand

00:42:36.243 --> 00:42:40.017
language and understand how to translate from one language to another.

00:42:40.557 --> 00:42:43.384
Then you may that may change your perspective around mathematics.

00:42:43.691 --> 00:42:46.303
Because now you're just saying, oh, OK, well, so that's what that exponent means.

00:42:46.303 --> 00:42:47.505
So the exponent means this.

00:42:48.004 --> 00:42:51.673
OK, when this is written like a fraction, it means this. The parentheses mean

00:42:51.673 --> 00:42:54.634
this. The brackets mean this. The absolute value symbol means this.

00:42:55.005 --> 00:42:58.713
You know, otherwise we often a lot of students end up just feeling overwhelmed

00:42:58.713 --> 00:43:00.804
because they're like, what does this even mean? I don't understand this.

00:43:01.423 --> 00:43:05.113
Not realizing that. Well, initially, you're not supposed to understand it because

00:43:05.113 --> 00:43:06.032
it's a different language.

00:43:06.531 --> 00:43:10.123
It's a different way of expressing an idea, you know. So. So,

00:43:10.123 --> 00:43:13.225
yeah, I definitely believe that mathematics is a language.

00:43:14.297 --> 00:43:20.713
All right. The Annie E. Casey Foundation reported in 2025 that 90 percent of

00:43:20.713 --> 00:43:23.798
black eighth graders were not proficient in math.

00:43:24.397 --> 00:43:29.946
So I have two questions and you kind of answered the first one in a sense.

00:43:30.457 --> 00:43:37.557
So I'll rephrase it as this test prep culture that's in schools.

00:43:38.040 --> 00:43:40.431
Do you feel that that's failing our children?

00:43:41.294 --> 00:43:45.956
I don't think it's beneficial for our children unless they already have those prerequisite skills.

00:43:46.519 --> 00:43:50.257
It wouldn't be a problem if the children already had the prerequisite skills. Now, they don't.

00:43:50.454 --> 00:43:54.233
Many of our children don't, which is evident by the standardized test scores

00:43:54.233 --> 00:43:56.196
that come out every year around August, September.

00:43:56.510 --> 00:43:59.333
Well, actually, now they're being tested, being graded by AI,

00:43:59.333 --> 00:44:03.246
I believe. So they're coming out even much sooner to when the tests are being taken in the spring.

00:44:03.577 --> 00:44:08.338
But but yeah, a lot of our children are not prepared with the prerequisite and foundational skills.

00:44:08.785 --> 00:44:12.683
So it does really do a disservice. But then we also have to think about,

00:44:12.683 --> 00:44:13.917
again, who benefits from that.

00:44:14.569 --> 00:44:19.148
I don't think any of this is accidental or coincidental. And also, it's not a new problem.

00:44:19.775 --> 00:44:23.153
You know, there's been math deficiency in public schools for years.

00:44:23.153 --> 00:44:26.462
You know, in 1950, you know, people were having these conversations. So,

00:44:27.200 --> 00:44:30.868
we have to at some point also think about what we're up against as a community

00:44:31.292 --> 00:44:36.273
and also consider that if this really were a problem, then entities that have

00:44:36.273 --> 00:44:40.273
resources, political entities, corporate entities that have financial resources

00:44:40.713 --> 00:44:44.006
that they use to solve problems, they would have solved the problem already.

00:44:44.524 --> 00:44:47.783
But the fact that the problem hasn't been solved, it leads me to believe that

00:44:47.783 --> 00:44:51.983
thinking about things mathematically and algebraically, perhaps this isn't actually a problem.

00:44:52.442 --> 00:44:55.593
Maybe this is actually because it's definitely a benefit. Because again,

00:44:55.593 --> 00:44:59.518
we talked earlier about when you disqualify yourself from competition,

00:44:59.907 --> 00:45:02.773
that's better for those that are not disqualified from competition.

00:45:02.773 --> 00:45:09.351
So there are certain groups and people that are able to excel with less competition, right?

00:45:10.352 --> 00:45:15.399
So I think that, you know, and again, that's why I always go back to the community.

00:45:15.399 --> 00:45:16.940
Like, what should the community do?

00:45:17.434 --> 00:45:21.758
I think we should advocate for schools to change some of their practices and operate better.

00:45:22.227 --> 00:45:27.349
But I think with the limited energy and time that we have, I think we'd get

00:45:27.349 --> 00:45:32.509
more bang for our buck if we make attempts to develop community members,

00:45:32.509 --> 00:45:36.134
develop parents, develop grandparents, develop,

00:45:36.668 --> 00:45:40.250
the aunts and uncles, and just create programming where,

00:45:40.877 --> 00:45:45.399
you know, we can help them to be able to help their children,

00:45:45.399 --> 00:45:47.343
their nieces, their nephews, and their grandchildren.

00:45:47.790 --> 00:45:51.706
So that way, when the children go into school, they'll already be prepared,

00:45:51.899 --> 00:45:58.331
you know, for that test prep culture and that, you know, those test prep type of classroom settings.

00:45:59.158 --> 00:46:04.144
So my follow-up is, what can all this math do to change that trajectory?

00:46:05.327 --> 00:46:09.958
Keep coming on podcasts like this and, you know, proselytizing about the value

00:46:09.958 --> 00:46:12.458
of mathematics, because that's a lot of it is not.

00:46:13.041 --> 00:46:17.058
There are a lot of people out here that will speak of how difficult math is

00:46:17.058 --> 00:46:19.247
and how hard math is and how they would never get at it.

00:46:19.612 --> 00:46:24.458
But if you dig into the personal lives of these people, you realize that they

00:46:24.458 --> 00:46:28.297
actually do things on a regular basis that I would say are much more difficult

00:46:28.419 --> 00:46:30.537
than the math that they think is very difficult.

00:46:31.089 --> 00:46:36.020
Right so really it's a matter of perspective like a lot of we we've been conditioned,

00:46:36.606 --> 00:46:41.964
over time to identify and view mathematics as this very difficult subject,

00:46:42.664 --> 00:46:45.161
but the question is like what if we didn't think it was a difficult subject,

00:46:45.805 --> 00:46:48.928
then what would we do right what if we thought that we could do it what if we

00:46:48.928 --> 00:46:50.030
thought we were supposed to do it,

00:46:50.548 --> 00:46:54.678
you got you got kids that you know think that black kids that think that they're

00:46:54.678 --> 00:46:57.752
supposed to be great at basketball they might be trash at basketball,

00:46:58.101 --> 00:47:00.069
but they think they're supposed to be great at basketball.

00:47:00.336 --> 00:47:02.611
So they'll still persevere. They'll keep trying.

00:47:03.242 --> 00:47:05.848
What if we could apply that to mathematics? Whereas a lot of,

00:47:05.848 --> 00:47:08.918
a lot of black kids have been conditioned to think that they're not supposed

00:47:08.918 --> 00:47:10.665
to be good at mathematics.

00:47:11.019 --> 00:47:13.811
But what if we were able to shift that narrative? And that's really a marketing issue.

00:47:14.388 --> 00:47:18.328
You know, cause we think about a lot of the things that we accept collectively

00:47:18.328 --> 00:47:21.498
in this society, just due to marketing, the things that we normalize and the

00:47:21.498 --> 00:47:24.398
things that we think make sense, you know, just because of.

00:47:25.118 --> 00:47:30.878
Strong, effective, and consistent daily repetitive marketing over and over again.

00:47:30.878 --> 00:47:34.328
I mean, I think about commercial rap music, and I grew up listening to commercial

00:47:34.328 --> 00:47:37.478
rap music. I still listen to it from time to time, but it is an excellent delivery

00:47:37.478 --> 00:47:43.535
system for ideas, products, ideology, a value system.

00:47:44.011 --> 00:47:47.338
But when you really take the time to listen to what the rappers are being paid

00:47:47.338 --> 00:47:53.909
to say to us and to our children, it is some of the most basic, mundane, nonsense.

00:47:54.727 --> 00:47:59.220
But because it's so consistent and it's so readily available,

00:47:59.835 --> 00:48:03.303
we normalize it and we think, oh, yeah, that does make sense.

00:48:03.303 --> 00:48:07.596
And nobody ever takes the time to step back and question the validity of it.

00:48:07.955 --> 00:48:12.362
Right. But imagine if we did that with mathematics, if we just marketed mathematics

00:48:12.617 --> 00:48:15.553
on a regular basis, if we actually. Because what often happens,

00:48:15.553 --> 00:48:19.933
too, in schools, a child will be in a classroom and say, I'm never going to

00:48:19.933 --> 00:48:22.542
use this in life. This is nonsense. Why are we learning this?

00:48:23.140 --> 00:48:27.665
And there usually won't be another student in the classroom to refute that point.

00:48:28.129 --> 00:48:32.003
It just becomes an instant consensus to that idea. And you may have a teacher

00:48:32.003 --> 00:48:33.000
that may try to refute it.

00:48:33.493 --> 00:48:38.053
But oftentimes the teachers may not have the that gift of gab or they may not

00:48:38.053 --> 00:48:42.813
have that, you know, in their their arsenal of a good rebuttal that will actually

00:48:42.813 --> 00:48:45.486
convince the students that, no, that student is wrong. Right.

00:48:45.875 --> 00:48:48.573
We got to get, you know, how, like, you know, young brothers might argue about

00:48:48.573 --> 00:48:51.094
who the greatest football player is, greatest basketball player is.

00:48:51.593 --> 00:48:53.654
It's always going to be two. It's always going to be two sided.

00:48:54.043 --> 00:48:55.378
It's going to be an actual debate.

00:48:56.167 --> 00:48:59.835
That's how we need to get that. When somebody stands up and says math is useless,

00:49:00.386 --> 00:49:03.759
they need to be in classrooms, students actually debating that point.

00:49:04.467 --> 00:49:08.173
But it's not a debate. But in order to get to that point, we got to keep like,

00:49:08.173 --> 00:49:12.043
you know, marketing math and like, you know, propagandizing it and promoting

00:49:12.043 --> 00:49:15.053
it, you know, because it really does. And it's not going to be easy,

00:49:15.053 --> 00:49:17.712
but what I'm really talking about is a paradigm shift.

00:49:18.152 --> 00:49:20.623
You know, this is like this is like something revolutionary,

00:49:20.623 --> 00:49:24.473
just like changing the way the whole black community like looks at math.

00:49:24.473 --> 00:49:27.063
And instead of and also that means we got to get rid of this,

00:49:27.063 --> 00:49:30.923
too. We got to get rid of this black unicorn concept because we do know people

00:49:30.923 --> 00:49:34.243
in our community we grew up with. So we might have that one person in our family

00:49:34.243 --> 00:49:36.704
or a couple of people in our family. Oh, they're good at math. Right.

00:49:37.273 --> 00:49:40.923
And then there's a comfort involved with that. But if we want for everybody

00:49:40.923 --> 00:49:44.593
to be good at MAV, then that means that that one person or those one or two

00:49:44.593 --> 00:49:47.606
people, they're not going to be that special no more. And I think that's fine.

00:49:48.187 --> 00:49:51.304
I think that's fine. And I think that's something else we're going to have to accept and deal with.

00:49:51.565 --> 00:49:56.003
And also those people that are the black unicorns in the community or in the

00:49:56.003 --> 00:49:58.408
family, they're going to have to start helping the people that aren't.

00:49:59.065 --> 00:50:03.003
They're going to have to stop gatekeeping their ability and,

00:50:03.003 --> 00:50:06.669
you know, really start sharing that skill set more aggressively.

00:50:08.875 --> 00:50:12.620
Yeah. All right. 20 years from now, what will you consider success?

00:50:13.563 --> 00:50:21.690
I would consider success a large percentage of black adults speaking positively

00:50:21.690 --> 00:50:23.598
about their experience in mathematics.

00:50:24.596 --> 00:50:29.420
Black adults, parents, grandparents feeling comfortable sitting down,

00:50:29.420 --> 00:50:34.630
helping, providing help with math homework because they were exposed to some

00:50:34.630 --> 00:50:38.480
of the resources of all this math, you know, 20 years prior,

00:50:39.123 --> 00:50:43.260
you know, or, you know, 10 years prior or five years prior or 15 years prior.

00:50:43.260 --> 00:50:45.842
You know, that's what I would consider success.

00:50:46.324 --> 00:50:50.240
You know, people saying that, you know, yeah, Matt. Yeah, I like math.

00:50:50.240 --> 00:50:54.380
I love math, you know, because, you know, I looked at some I looked at the all

00:50:54.380 --> 00:50:58.683
this math YouTube channel or I got tutored through all this math or,

00:50:59.177 --> 00:51:01.301
you know, we used to get the all this math books.

00:51:01.795 --> 00:51:05.545
You know, that's what I would that's what I would consider success. Yeah.

00:51:06.216 --> 00:51:10.495
All right. So finish this sentence. I have hope because.

00:51:11.511 --> 00:51:16.790
We're still here. When I say that, what I mean is more specifically is when

00:51:16.790 --> 00:51:19.544
we understand our history in this country and in the world,

00:51:20.194 --> 00:51:26.719
the fact that we're still here is a testament to our strength and resilience.

00:51:27.534 --> 00:51:30.453
Yeah. Because when we really understand, it's like, you know,

00:51:30.808 --> 00:51:34.941
it's like, wow, we survived all that. Why aren't we extinct right now?

00:51:35.821 --> 00:51:39.640
So that gives me a lot. That gives me hope every day. Amen, brother.

00:51:40.514 --> 00:51:46.623
All right. So Akil Parker or Professor Akil Parker, how can people reach out to you?

00:51:47.174 --> 00:51:51.058
How can people access all this great material you got with all this math?

00:51:51.610 --> 00:51:56.806
So definitely go to YouTube, go to all this math on YouTube, subscribe and share.

00:51:57.594 --> 00:51:59.970
Yeah, I like something that you said on one of your episodes.

00:51:59.970 --> 00:52:03.182
Don't don't don't treat it like a secret, like a guilty pleasure.

00:52:03.466 --> 00:52:06.967
Like your part, like you said about your podcast, share, share it, share the podcast.

00:52:07.263 --> 00:52:10.293
Yeah, do the same with my YouTube channel. Share the YouTube channel.

00:52:10.717 --> 00:52:15.889
Also on social media, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, follow me at All This Math,

00:52:16.301 --> 00:52:20.360
where, you know, you'll see me, you know, doing random math problems,

00:52:20.360 --> 00:52:23.964
you know, maybe with my youngest son or maybe with my daughter when she was younger.

00:52:24.387 --> 00:52:27.780
I'm just modeling for parents, you know, things that they can do because I'm

00:52:27.780 --> 00:52:30.716
a math teacher, but I'm a parent first. I'm a father first.

00:52:31.123 --> 00:52:36.022
So it's my responsibility to provide that math foundation for my children.

00:52:36.301 --> 00:52:40.700
And I just show I'm showing examples of how, you know, you can do it,

00:52:40.700 --> 00:52:43.649
too, without even being a math teacher. He doesn't. A lot of the things I do,

00:52:43.968 --> 00:52:47.554
you don't have to be a math teacher to be able to do these things. You know, not at all.

00:52:48.124 --> 00:52:52.391
But but, yeah, definitely. And also my Web site is all this math dot com.

00:52:52.855 --> 00:52:56.124
So. So, yeah, definitely, definitely follow, share.

00:52:56.652 --> 00:53:00.870
And I'm trying to change the narrative around mathematics in the black community

00:53:00.870 --> 00:53:05.170
Actually, the mission of the company is to improve the relationship between

00:53:05.170 --> 00:53:06.601
mathematics and the black community.

00:53:07.435 --> 00:53:11.232
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you being a brother to do that.

00:53:11.400 --> 00:53:14.483
I think, you know, we have to

00:53:14.483 --> 00:53:22.924
be creative and the way that you are using a science like mathematics to,

00:53:23.740 --> 00:53:28.523
connect with other relevant things like critical thinking, like history.

00:53:29.853 --> 00:53:36.156
Just, you know, expanding somebody's universe, right? Expanding their thought process.

00:53:36.504 --> 00:53:39.883
Because I think that's, you know, when I, in my political world,

00:53:40.500 --> 00:53:44.703
the biggest challenge I think we have is that we have people with too many people

00:53:44.703 --> 00:53:46.967
with too narrow concepts, right?

00:53:47.693 --> 00:53:52.873
And the more expansive people can think, the more qualified people we can get

00:53:52.873 --> 00:53:56.538
elected and the more productive things we could do as a society.

00:53:57.014 --> 00:54:02.755
Now, that may sound Pollyannish, but that's what I want to see achieved.

00:54:03.313 --> 00:54:08.443
And so you and others that are doing similar work and other things will help

00:54:08.443 --> 00:54:12.881
us get there. So I greatly appreciate that. I greatly appreciate your enthusiasm

00:54:13.282 --> 00:54:17.654
for wanting to be on the podcast and coming on, brother. I appreciate it. And thank you so much.

00:54:18.369 --> 00:54:21.403
Man i thank you thank you for sharing your platform with me and allowing me

00:54:21.403 --> 00:54:25.893
to you know talk my talk about mathematics and promote it you know to the to

00:54:25.893 --> 00:54:29.833
the community and and to the world and and yeah i definitely you know in the

00:54:29.833 --> 00:54:31.423
world of politics i think that,

00:54:32.110 --> 00:54:36.653
mathematics is key to politics because as you said it develops our critical

00:54:36.653 --> 00:54:40.873
thinking ability and it helps us to see it helps us develop our consequential

00:54:40.873 --> 00:54:44.093
thinking because you know somebody will politician will say well we should do

00:54:44.093 --> 00:54:46.483
this and we're going to do this and then it's going to have this outcome

00:54:46.924 --> 00:54:49.763
But I think if we're able to think more critically, we'll know,

00:54:49.763 --> 00:54:52.805
OK, well, even though he or she is saying that this is going to be the outcome,

00:54:53.362 --> 00:54:57.113
we know that when we think, look at things mathematically through that mathematical

00:54:57.113 --> 00:54:58.929
lens, it's not going to have that outcome.

00:54:59.829 --> 00:55:03.014
There's no way possible it's going to have that outcome. But critical thinking

00:55:03.014 --> 00:55:06.844
is required to be able to see that, you know, but oftentimes something a person

00:55:06.844 --> 00:55:11.414
will be marketed a certain way and we'll get into the identity politics and

00:55:11.414 --> 00:55:12.872
say, well, I like him or I like her.

00:55:13.174 --> 00:55:17.254
So then it's like anything they say, just, you know, it's like,

00:55:17.254 --> 00:55:20.394
all right, I'm going to take it at face value without having the ability to

00:55:20.394 --> 00:55:24.622
actually analyze and assess what the actual outcome is going to be.

00:55:25.257 --> 00:55:29.494
You know, which is actually what more to my point of why I believe that there's

00:55:29.494 --> 00:55:33.005
nothing coincidental or accidental about our level of math deficiency,

00:55:33.545 --> 00:55:35.774
because with that level of math deficiency, that means we're going to have a

00:55:35.774 --> 00:55:40.544
certain lack of critical thinking ability, which means that it's easier to control

00:55:40.544 --> 00:55:46.066
and manipulate and, you know, bamboozle, you know, large amounts of our people.

00:55:46.869 --> 00:55:50.921
Amen to that. Amen to that. All right. So the rule is, is that,

00:55:51.427 --> 00:55:54.114
you know, once you've been on, you have open invitation to come back.

00:55:54.114 --> 00:55:57.554
So please, please, please take advantage of it, brother. I'd like to talk to

00:55:57.554 --> 00:56:01.084
you some more about some, some, some, some stuff.

00:56:01.584 --> 00:56:06.775
And, and, and we'll, we'll definitely relate it to mathematics or whatever we talk about.

00:56:07.325 --> 00:56:11.294
Yeah, definitely. This is something I just was exposed to, that Shapley-Schubick

00:56:11.294 --> 00:56:17.364
Power Index, which deals with decision-making ability in politics.

00:56:18.764 --> 00:56:25.704
When congressmen and congresswomen make votes, it's like a mathematical formula,

00:56:25.704 --> 00:56:30.223
so to speak, which helps to predict what the potential outcomes could be.

00:56:30.787 --> 00:56:35.724
But yeah yeah we'll get it we can get into that next time you come on but definitely

00:56:35.724 --> 00:56:41.184
for sure it's going to be interesting to see after November how how,

00:56:42.324 --> 00:56:48.550
the Congress is going to shape up and then watch how they respond because,

00:56:49.118 --> 00:56:53.014
you probably wouldn't get a good reading based off this last Congress so we

00:56:53.014 --> 00:56:57.564
want to see an active Congress and see how that works but again Akil thank you

00:56:57.564 --> 00:57:00.978
brother I appreciate you coming on all right brother Appreciate you having me.

00:57:01.562 --> 00:57:03.262
All right, guys. We're going to catch y'all on the other side.

00:57:22.584 --> 00:57:27.640
All right, we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Cole Davis.

00:57:28.271 --> 00:57:33.568
Cole Davis is a psychologist and a polymuff who has been a researcher,

00:57:34.509 --> 00:57:38.520
data analyst, writer, educator, historian, and philosopher.

00:57:39.127 --> 00:57:43.881
With various books to his credit, his current publication is The Stone Age Now,

00:57:43.986 --> 00:57:50.092
which is, in particular, how ancient ways of thinking are laying waste to our world.

00:57:50.562 --> 00:57:54.189
And we'll be talking about the Stone Age now during the interview.

00:57:54.189 --> 00:57:58.259
So ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a

00:57:58.259 --> 00:58:02.085
guest on this podcast, Cole Davis.

00:58:13.218 --> 00:58:17.668
All right. Cole Davis, how you doing? So you doing good? Oh,

00:58:17.668 --> 00:58:21.154
I'm good to see you. Yes. Thank you. Well, I'm glad to have you on.

00:58:21.779 --> 00:58:27.470
You sent me a copy of your new book, The Stone Age Now, Be Happy and Save the World.

00:58:28.000 --> 00:58:31.430
And I said, OK, let's have a talk about that.

00:58:32.938 --> 00:58:37.768
Instead of just a book review, let's let's let's let's get into why you wrote

00:58:37.768 --> 00:58:43.147
this book and all that stuff. So first couple of things I do is icebreakers.

00:58:43.884 --> 00:58:47.280
So the first icebreaker is a quote that I want you to respond to.

00:58:48.249 --> 00:58:52.173
And the quote is, curiosity is the lust of the mind.

00:58:53.339 --> 00:58:59.291
Uh, I would hope that perhaps objectivities would suggest love rather than lust.

00:59:00.241 --> 00:59:05.371
But I do think that even if you know exactly what you're planning to do,

00:59:05.656 --> 00:59:13.144
the research is necessary and yeah curiosity definitely helps yes yes sir all,

00:59:14.166 --> 00:59:19.728
right so now my next icebreaker is what i call 20 questions so i need you to

00:59:19.728 --> 00:59:23.455
give me a number between one and 20 four all,

00:59:24.485 --> 00:59:29.233
right how should we balance individual freedoms with the common good.

00:59:30.500 --> 00:59:35.220
Actually, that's one question that does come up in the Stone Age now, is exactly that.

00:59:35.982 --> 00:59:42.293
Because whilst it's certainly reasonable to want your freedom,

00:59:42.979 --> 00:59:48.941
people sometimes, quite commonly, don't see when their freedom impinges on other people.

00:59:49.872 --> 00:59:54.992
And this is a fine balance, both at the governmental level, but also at levels

00:59:54.992 --> 00:59:58.697
of teams and even individuals in social life.

00:59:59.672 --> 01:00:03.982
And in terms of politics i think it's extremely important and it's one of the

01:00:03.982 --> 01:00:10.532
things that thomas hobbs who gets mentioned in stone age now has to say he he

01:00:10.637 --> 01:00:12.721
his answer is to have a mighty,

01:00:13.762 --> 01:00:19.248
leadership leviathan as he called it then but his main point was that individuals,

01:00:20.032 --> 01:00:24.391
often had different appetites and that there are some individuals who have appetites

01:00:24.548 --> 01:00:29.162
that are greater than others and who will want to consume and consume and consume.

01:00:29.162 --> 01:00:31.653
And obviously, there's quite a lot of meaning involved in this,

01:00:32.112 --> 01:00:37.369
and it can be extrapolated from the 17th century to now that.

01:00:38.586 --> 01:00:41.547
Yeah, some people are taking liberties with other people's freedom.

01:00:42.457 --> 01:00:47.547
Yes, sir. All right. So why did you decide to write this book at this time?

01:00:48.243 --> 01:00:51.414
Well, I wrote it out of exasperation.

01:00:52.497 --> 01:00:54.971
I wrote most of it in 2008.

01:00:56.186 --> 01:01:01.192
But at the time, it didn't seem quite so relevant to a lot of people,

01:01:01.192 --> 01:01:06.092
whereas now the breeders that have actually gone through it now really feel

01:01:06.092 --> 01:01:10.229
that it's much more relevant now than it was before.

01:01:10.918 --> 01:01:13.322
I personally would say the principles are pretty similar.

01:01:15.133 --> 01:01:20.393
Yeah, it's exasperation seeing the same decision-making going on now,

01:01:21.121 --> 01:01:26.055
as was damaging the world, as they were doing 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and longer.

01:01:27.006 --> 01:01:33.925
And part of this, my idea of atavism, well, not my idea, the idea of atavism, going,

01:01:35.166 --> 01:01:44.046
thinking and acting in ancient, outmoded ways, seems to me to be both the problem,

01:01:44.046 --> 01:01:49.119
but also potentially the way to actually make radical improvement again.

01:01:50.326 --> 01:01:53.362
So yeah it's exasperation let's see for example,

01:01:54.064 --> 01:01:59.846
i remember the time when yugoslavia broke up and each country would remember

01:01:59.846 --> 01:02:05.364
the atrocities that occurred by citizens of the other country and would then visit that upon.

01:02:06.646 --> 01:02:12.856
Upon that those other countries and that cycle is not just in yugoslavia we're

01:02:12.856 --> 01:02:18.616
seeing it here in other parts of the world as well but it is just this yeah

01:02:18.616 --> 01:02:19.936
people do not seem to be learning.

01:02:20.691 --> 01:02:24.819
And yeah, very exasperating and scary in terms of other people,

01:02:25.022 --> 01:02:29.652
seeing other people are in great danger from this sort of thing. Yes, sir.

01:02:30.586 --> 01:02:35.039
Who was Thomas Hobbes and why do you feel he was misunderstood?

01:02:36.171 --> 01:02:41.366
Right. Thomas Hobbes was a philosopher, in that he's still in print.

01:02:41.366 --> 01:02:44.712
I guess he is a philosopher, in the 17th century.

01:02:45.881 --> 01:02:52.293
He's most famous for a book called Leviathan. Leviathan was basically a.

01:02:53.913 --> 01:02:57.571
A type of, uh, study, no, not study.

01:02:59.672 --> 01:03:06.144
Sorry, the words go sometimes. Uh, basically he was interested in government,

01:03:06.713 --> 01:03:10.532
and the relationship between individuals and the government.

01:03:10.869 --> 01:03:17.364
You know, basically his was, if you like, one of the early visitations to the social contract.

01:03:18.997 --> 01:03:26.877
Now he me because his leviathan was a monarch and that was his choice people

01:03:26.877 --> 01:03:30.810
therefore take him as being an absolutist and ultra conservative that sort of thing,

01:03:31.977 --> 01:03:36.975
i am i don't believe that i just believe that he was actually trying to be logical

01:03:37.335 --> 01:03:42.127
and that happened when you live just after a civil war, you probably do want

01:03:42.127 --> 01:03:45.381
to go with the status quo of the leadership.

01:03:46.350 --> 01:03:52.424
But he actually said, your government could be an autocracy, a monarchy.

01:03:53.011 --> 01:03:58.311
It could be an aristocracy, an elite, or it could be a democracy.

01:03:58.976 --> 01:04:03.157
And whilst he personally was not fond of democracy at the time,

01:04:03.157 --> 01:04:06.487
which had a somewhat different meaning anyway, nevertheless,

01:04:06.487 --> 01:04:09.645
he was showing that all of these possibilities.

01:04:10.488 --> 01:04:16.107
So, as I say, he's been rather misread because Leviathan having a force that

01:04:16.107 --> 01:04:20.477
is a necessary governmental force did not have to be a monarchy.

01:04:20.477 --> 01:04:24.167
That just happened to be what he said at the time.

01:04:25.154 --> 01:04:27.354
I'm not the only revisionist of Thomas Hobbes.

01:04:28.523 --> 01:04:34.062
And also his individual psychology of how people think and act,

01:04:34.636 --> 01:04:41.875
I think is still quite useful and it certainly at least kicks off a debate between uh.

01:04:43.269 --> 01:04:49.048
About individuals and their relationships with the state. I think he's well

01:04:49.048 --> 01:04:52.446
worth reading, at least the first part of it, of Leviathan.

01:04:53.480 --> 01:05:00.103
Yeah, so Hobbes was, his Leviathan was similar to Machiavelli's The Prince,

01:05:00.755 --> 01:05:07.673
in that it was basically relating to the times that they were in and the governments they were under.

01:05:08.331 --> 01:05:11.738
Oh, yeah. And so what, you know, my.

01:05:13.479 --> 01:05:17.572
My bae if i when i used to have to summarize,

01:05:18.257 --> 01:05:24.178
like you know philosophers like that we would say that hobbes was the guy who

01:05:24.178 --> 01:05:30.404
thought that people were inherently bad and like plato who thought that people were inherently good,

01:05:31.190 --> 01:05:35.238
and i know that sounds simplistic but that was just kind of like for somebody

01:05:35.238 --> 01:05:39.308
that wasn't into politics all that stuff it's like well what is this hobbesian

01:05:39.428 --> 01:05:40.745
And when they say Hobbes,

01:05:41.273 --> 01:05:44.338
and so that's what we say is like, well, Hobbes just thinks that people were

01:05:44.338 --> 01:05:50.660
born bad and they have to have government or society to get them in line and get them in shape.

01:05:51.403 --> 01:05:57.248
Whereas Plato, you know, felt that people were inherently good and that,

01:05:57.248 --> 01:06:01.270
you know, government was designed to maintain that and to fight evil.

01:06:01.815 --> 01:06:07.728
So you know but the fact that you in the book were you weren't,

01:06:08.810 --> 01:06:12.578
you you basically said he was misunderstood but you went into some detail as

01:06:12.578 --> 01:06:18.168
to why he thought the way he thought and all that stuff so and and people have

01:06:18.168 --> 01:06:20.768
characterized you as a defender of Hobbes so,

01:06:21.639 --> 01:06:24.744
you know I just wanted to ask that question to you well,

01:06:25.791 --> 01:06:29.251
I'm one of the revisionists with regards to Hobbes who actually,

01:06:30.628 --> 01:06:35.883
I feel that both Hobbes and Plato for that matter are rather...

01:06:38.064 --> 01:06:44.544
Are treated with a rather broad brush, as in people identify one as this absolutist

01:06:44.544 --> 01:06:46.772
who thinks, well, yeah, the people are all up to him.

01:06:47.579 --> 01:06:53.571
I don't think he saw all people as bad. In fact, I'd be surprised if he would.

01:06:54.772 --> 01:06:59.220
But he did say that some people have bigger appetites than others.

01:06:59.792 --> 01:07:05.524
Basically, we know that regardless of what you're looking at,

01:07:05.524 --> 01:07:10.301
whether it's about personality types or intelligence or, in this case.

01:07:12.854 --> 01:07:15.763
Moral thinking, he did recognize,

01:07:18.155 --> 01:07:24.024
that there's quite a range. He wasn't actually – I think just to say basically

01:07:24.024 --> 01:07:27.599
one thought everybody was good and one person said everybody was bad,

01:07:27.785 --> 01:07:29.996
I think it's psychologically unlikely.

01:07:31.044 --> 01:07:35.574
I think it's a rather crude characterization.

01:07:36.384 --> 01:07:40.669
Part of it is because a lot of people like to hear what John Locke has to say,

01:07:41.000 --> 01:07:48.104
and certainly Locke and Hobbes were very different in their characterization of human beings.

01:07:48.564 --> 01:07:51.884
Locke basically was your top of the rails. He wasn't saying that people were

01:07:51.884 --> 01:07:56.865
necessarily good, but he was also saying they could be anything given their environment.

01:07:57.753 --> 01:08:05.564
Where Hobbes doesn't disagree with this, but he does suggest that there needs

01:08:05.564 --> 01:08:10.251
to be a governing force as well as just what people are.

01:08:12.068 --> 01:08:16.196
Let's put it this way. Let's say we look at today's Britain and today's America.

01:08:17.276 --> 01:08:21.430
Yes, democracy is important, and we do hope that democracy, well,

01:08:21.430 --> 01:08:24.077
I hope that democracy will win out.

01:08:24.997 --> 01:08:29.550
But there are, I would challenge people to say that you can get away without

01:08:29.550 --> 01:08:33.087
a government, and without a government that has lethal force.

01:08:35.651 --> 01:08:40.593
Well, I'd like to hear people telling me that that's not necessary.

01:08:41.257 --> 01:08:44.555
I have heard people say it's not necessary, but I'd be surprised.

01:08:45.378 --> 01:08:50.740
Apart from else even if the whole of the american people were democratically

01:08:50.740 --> 01:08:56.146
inclined what do you do when it comes to defending yourself from a country like

01:08:56.326 --> 01:08:57.598
today's russia for example,

01:08:59.418 --> 01:09:03.430
i don't think they would just sit looking at us and going oh that's okay you've

01:09:03.430 --> 01:09:08.090
got you've got a complete democracy that's got no power behind you that's okay

01:09:08.090 --> 01:09:10.742
we won't bother invading or attacking. Of course they will.

01:09:11.920 --> 01:09:17.940
Yeah. Yeah, so when you're saying lethal force, you mean as far as a nation-state

01:09:17.940 --> 01:09:22.070
and not a lethal force upon its own people? Uh.

01:09:24.944 --> 01:09:27.081
It does depend on what its own people are doing.

01:09:29.090 --> 01:09:34.720
I, I mean, I would like to, I would, I personally, if you're taking into account,

01:09:34.720 --> 01:09:40.123
for example, crimes, would far prefer that people are not, uh, executed.

01:09:41.396 --> 01:09:48.965
My emphasis is more on rehabilitation, but I can't say that you can run the country,

01:09:51.007 --> 01:09:56.070
without the need for force. Yeah, I got you. I got you. All right,

01:09:56.070 --> 01:10:01.498
so what is atavism, and why is it the greatest danger to modern civilization?

01:10:02.197 --> 01:10:08.286
Right. Atavism is basically thinking and doing things in an extremely outmoded way.

01:10:10.606 --> 01:10:18.686
And what's happening is that people are acting, they're doing things which appear

01:10:18.686 --> 01:10:23.396
to be natural, but they may have been appropriate in the Stone Age.

01:10:23.396 --> 01:10:28.256
I've used the Stone Age as a literary vehicle, by the way, because people quite

01:10:28.256 --> 01:10:32.706
often use this idea of the Stone Age man and modern technology,

01:10:32.706 --> 01:10:33.452
but it doesn't have to be.

01:10:33.690 --> 01:10:37.695
In fact, an awful lot of this probably comes from the early days of agriculture,

01:10:38.346 --> 01:10:43.766
when you to spend when there was a great danger from the agriculturalist point

01:10:43.766 --> 01:10:49.091
of view of the nomads who would come and seize what they needed when they wanted it.

01:10:50.666 --> 01:10:55.240
Now, things like personal impressions.

01:10:57.675 --> 01:11:01.206
Why do we think this political party is doing badly? And it's got nothing to

01:11:01.206 --> 01:11:06.589
do with facts. It's got nothing to do with policies. It's just what people happen to feel.

01:11:07.511 --> 01:11:11.703
Now this was appropriate when politics was extremely interpersonal,

01:11:13.272 --> 01:11:19.246
to use it now when basically prime ministers and presidents are at a great distance

01:11:19.246 --> 01:11:24.936
from us really what is impractical people are not able to make serious political

01:11:24.936 --> 01:11:27.554
choices because they're still using this impression idea.

01:11:29.235 --> 01:11:35.076
Similarly we've got a lot of partisanship and a lot of the partisanship isn't

01:11:35.076 --> 01:11:41.213
necessarily again about policy about policies or facts it's actually i'm,

01:11:42.226 --> 01:11:48.161
this i'm one of those i'm not one of those and again this was probably a lifesaver,

01:11:48.990 --> 01:11:54.197
some tens of thousands of years ago but that's actually the most dangerous thing now.

01:11:55.851 --> 01:11:59.970
One example of atavism is what is called revanchism.

01:12:00.601 --> 01:12:06.311
Revanchism is when you want your territory back from going back to whatever

01:12:06.311 --> 01:12:11.539
time you happened to deem was the time when it should have been yours and it hasn't been six.

01:12:12.570 --> 01:12:18.353
And that's a major problem at the moment. It's very much a theme of two of our,

01:12:18.975 --> 01:12:23.112
currently most vicious wars going on at the moment.

01:12:24.268 --> 01:12:29.091
And yeah and it's still driven by people actually who would go along with the

01:12:29.091 --> 01:12:32.557
idea of oh yes ukraine has always been russian,

01:12:33.664 --> 01:12:37.651
on this they've always been one of us that sort of thing and similarly you get

01:12:37.651 --> 01:12:42.447
the same thing in the middle east as well with different people making claims,

01:12:42.900 --> 01:12:46.150
some making claims to certain different times in the 20th century,

01:12:46.820 --> 01:12:50.518
others trying to make biblical claims and,

01:12:51.470 --> 01:12:57.361
it's not only crazy but it's also immensely dangerous and you know i can bring

01:12:57.361 --> 01:13:00.650
a personal point to it really painful to watch,

01:13:01.362 --> 01:13:05.671
and and to predict and to be able to predict that it's still going to happen

01:13:05.671 --> 01:13:08.368
and we're going to keep doing it yeah,

01:13:09.517 --> 01:13:13.870
why do you contend that the nuclear family concept is not natural?

01:13:15.275 --> 01:13:20.248
Well, it's a natural version of the family, but it's not the only one.

01:13:22.381 --> 01:13:28.797
It has been, and still is in some countries, a tendency for the grandchildren,

01:13:29.273 --> 01:13:32.066
and the grandparents to look after the grandchildren,

01:13:32.595 --> 01:13:38.281
leaving the adults much more effective in actually getting on with their getting

01:13:38.281 --> 01:13:44.820
on with making with what they getting on with the family's survival,

01:13:45.922 --> 01:13:47.822
and I,

01:13:49.524 --> 01:13:52.484
In terms of practicalities, I don't necessarily see.

01:13:54.544 --> 01:14:00.738
That the family unit of children living with parents is necessarily the only way of doing things.

01:14:01.877 --> 01:14:04.624
It's not something I feel quite as strong about as some of the other things

01:14:04.624 --> 01:14:09.664
I've been talking about, but yes, I think grandparents looking after children

01:14:09.664 --> 01:14:15.646
is not unheard of, and you could say economically it might be more practical.

01:14:17.142 --> 01:14:24.585
Yeah, because in America, especially in sociological or political conversations,

01:14:25.324 --> 01:14:31.862
the nuclear family, which is husband, wife, children, is, you know,

01:14:31.862 --> 01:14:37.221
has always been described as the basic unit of society and the ideal unit.

01:14:37.680 --> 01:14:44.367
And so a lot of the metrics as far as like whether a child is going to live in poverty or not, or,

01:14:45.094 --> 01:14:50.527
whether somebody is going to succeed in college, a lot of those metrics are

01:14:50.707 --> 01:14:53.822
determined based off that nuclear family concept.

01:14:53.822 --> 01:15:00.620
So it was really interesting to see you address that in the book.

01:15:00.950 --> 01:15:06.502
Now, this is audio only, so they can't see it, but the name of the book is called

01:15:06.502 --> 01:15:10.035
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

01:15:10.795 --> 01:15:13.462
Kingsolver. Yeah, Barbara Kingsolver.

01:15:14.487 --> 01:15:19.400
It's partly about child poverty. In this case, it's set in Appalachia.

01:15:20.263 --> 01:15:24.122
But it's also about drugs, which is not something I've come to discuss today.

01:15:24.122 --> 01:15:27.662
But it's a wonderful book, and I think,

01:15:29.142 --> 01:15:34.108
it's worth considering if you're particularly interested in American poverty,

01:15:34.972 --> 01:15:41.252
and the strains on the family based on poverty.

01:15:44.590 --> 01:15:47.481
Okay. All right. No, she's not paying me anything, by the way. All right.

01:15:47.777 --> 01:15:52.222
I'm glad. And then, Ms. Barbara, if you were listening, And,

01:15:52.222 --> 01:15:56.387
you know, you're more than welcome to come on the podcast and talk about your own book.

01:15:57.185 --> 01:16:03.204
But thank you for recommending that. Why is it dangerous to allow religion to enter into politics?

01:16:05.277 --> 01:16:13.960
Religion is not alone. No, it shares with various other institutions this partisanship.

01:16:14.751 --> 01:16:20.187
Basically, I've come across this again and again and again, that somebody who

01:16:20.187 --> 01:16:24.617
believes in one religion will say, all the other religions are rubbish,

01:16:25.226 --> 01:16:27.833
garbage, except ours. Ours is better.

01:16:29.485 --> 01:16:34.384
You've already set up a new type of psychological nationalism.

01:16:37.244 --> 01:16:44.906
And I think it's Richard Dawkins who says that it can turn good people into bad.

01:16:45.322 --> 01:16:50.484
But certainly I don't necessarily agree that it's the only or main cause of

01:16:50.484 --> 01:16:53.617
problems in the world, but I don't think it helps either.

01:16:54.722 --> 01:16:57.764
And I hope this doesn't insult people who actually are religious.

01:16:58.778 --> 01:17:05.909
But I do feel a true separation of religion and state should be the case.

01:17:06.974 --> 01:17:13.044
And I think it's one this may be happening more in Britain where but,

01:17:14.534 --> 01:17:18.994
I'm not sure that there's sufficient secularization going on and I do think

01:17:18.994 --> 01:17:24.071
that religion can be part of the.

01:17:25.703 --> 01:17:33.344
Of an atavistic structure because most of them are partly based on history or

01:17:33.344 --> 01:17:37.431
prehistory of a particular people,

01:17:38.677 --> 01:17:42.964
or they're based on stories told

01:17:42.964 --> 01:17:48.332
about a particular religious figure many decades after that person lived,

01:17:49.131 --> 01:17:56.465
and people are asked to as people are asked to subscribe to a group of ideas,

01:17:57.236 --> 01:18:05.824
and my thinking has been i used to think well all of these have an inherent goodness, and,

01:18:06.604 --> 01:18:08.751
that's the tap, the stem of.

01:18:10.148 --> 01:18:18.148
Whereas now I'm inclined to think that they're more, again, a form of factionalism, largely.

01:18:19.026 --> 01:18:23.328
Well, you see it. I mean, you pointed out in the book, you mentioned about,

01:18:23.328 --> 01:18:29.019
you know, you have different divisions or sects of Islam.

01:18:29.668 --> 01:18:33.928
The same with the Jewish or Hebrew faith. Same with Christianity.

01:18:34.288 --> 01:18:36.308
Christianity just in the United

01:18:36.308 --> 01:18:40.707
States alone, you have like multiple denominations all over the place.

01:18:41.380 --> 01:18:50.978
And so, you know, it's inherently factionalized if within your own religion,

01:18:50.978 --> 01:18:54.267
there's different versions of how to practice the religion.

01:18:54.946 --> 01:19:00.448
So when you incorporate that into politics, which, for example,

01:19:00.448 --> 01:19:05.566
you know, we talk about Christian nationalism here a lot, but it's like,

01:19:05.990 --> 01:19:08.198
which Christianity are you talking about?

01:19:08.198 --> 01:19:10.888
Are you talking about Baptist? You're talking about Methodist?

01:19:10.888 --> 01:19:12.190
You're talking about Lutheran?

01:19:12.655 --> 01:19:18.488
Which one are you leaning toward in order to say that America is this Christian nation? Right.

01:19:19.121 --> 01:19:22.493
So I think, you know, I totally agree with you on that.

01:19:22.929 --> 01:19:28.377
And, and, you know, the founding fathers, even though people say that,

01:19:28.558 --> 01:19:31.498
you know, they were Christians and all that, if you actually study the history,

01:19:31.498 --> 01:19:35.248
most of them were not, or if they were, they were not trying,

01:19:35.788 --> 01:19:37.548
they were trying to separate that.

01:19:37.548 --> 01:19:41.289
And if you understand the history of the people that came here to settle,

01:19:41.912 --> 01:19:46.038
they were trying to get away from a situation where you actually had the Church

01:19:46.038 --> 01:19:50.238
of England and they said that all the citizens had to ascribe to that.

01:19:50.238 --> 01:19:54.528
And those that said, no, we're not feeling that we're going to leave and set

01:19:54.528 --> 01:19:57.969
up our own colonies. Right. And a new part of the planet.

01:19:58.515 --> 01:20:05.188
So, you know, I don't understand. I don't I don't I don't understand the psychology

01:20:05.188 --> 01:20:09.192
as to why people feel that they have to infuse religion.

01:20:10.454 --> 01:20:14.219
Other than the fact that they want to have some set of morals,

01:20:14.556 --> 01:20:21.099
right? That what you talked about, that inherent good that's in the practice of spirituality.

01:20:21.776 --> 01:20:29.034
Well, I would suggest, though, that the idea of the Puritans merely leaving,

01:20:30.025 --> 01:20:36.287
a repressive Europe to then have freedom over in the American colonies,

01:20:36.792 --> 01:20:41.804
It's a bit of a myth because I think that an awful lot of them came and were

01:20:41.804 --> 01:20:46.846
quite repressive of those they thought were not suitably moral people.

01:20:49.829 --> 01:20:53.184
They may have come over for their own freedom, but they didn't come over out

01:20:53.184 --> 01:20:56.366
of a love of freedom generalized.

01:20:57.317 --> 01:21:02.404
Yeah, well, point taken on that. History will agree with your point of view

01:21:02.404 --> 01:21:04.694
too. Let me ask you this question.

01:21:06.067 --> 01:21:10.607
When a political candidate identifies themselves as a democratic socialist,

01:21:11.448 --> 01:21:13.323
should a voter be afraid of them?

01:21:14.338 --> 01:21:19.204
On the whole, now, first of all, I need to say that democratic socialist doesn't

01:21:19.204 --> 01:21:23.817
necessarily mean exactly the same thing in Britain as it does in America.

01:21:25.749 --> 01:21:31.544
I feel that it is not as dangerous as some sets of political beliefs.

01:21:32.084 --> 01:21:40.117
It suggests that while they do believe in greater regulation than your mainstream

01:21:40.273 --> 01:21:45.261
conservative or Republican or Democrat, Democratic parties,

01:21:46.254 --> 01:21:50.457
I think it is crucial that they are still saying that we are nevertheless Democrats.

01:21:50.736 --> 01:21:55.589
Presumably they mean this with the small D as well as the necessary and as well as the big d,

01:21:56.946 --> 01:22:02.231
in our own setting here they are to the left wing of the labor party,

01:22:03.144 --> 01:22:08.979
now i personally am no longer on that side of things but i can see some validity

01:22:08.979 --> 01:22:15.048
to it so no i don't think you should be afraid unless you're,

01:22:16.666 --> 01:22:21.216
unless you're an adherent of the sort of idea where everything is free,

01:22:21.216 --> 01:22:25.561
including free speech, as including telling outright lies.

01:22:27.824 --> 01:22:32.740
Or if you're wanting a situation where businesses can do what they like,

01:22:33.631 --> 01:22:41.356
regardless of the effects on members of the public, and regardless of the law, then yes.

01:22:41.356 --> 01:22:46.461
But I don't think you should be afraid of democratic socialists per se,

01:22:47.453 --> 01:22:50.633
I think you will find that they are still Democrats with a small d.

01:22:51.574 --> 01:22:56.686
They're democratic in intent. I have not heard, I've certainly read that in

01:22:56.686 --> 01:23:00.716
America there are people who will take out the word socialism and that they

01:23:00.716 --> 01:23:05.702
will shout like mad about it and say, yeah, they're going to turn us into communists.

01:23:06.166 --> 01:23:09.979
I think this is an unreasonable extrapolation of what they're doing.

01:23:10.977 --> 01:23:18.499
So i yeah i don't think i don't think that you should be too worried about them personally,

01:23:19.421 --> 01:23:23.296
doesn't mean you have to agree with them right right it is one thing but you

01:23:23.296 --> 01:23:29.760
know like the fear mongering that's going on in in the political season here,

01:23:30.624 --> 01:23:35.366
one of the things that we're reminding people is that franklin delano rolleveld

01:23:35.366 --> 01:23:41.116
who was elected four times to be president united States was probably the best

01:23:41.116 --> 01:23:44.124
example of socialism in the United States.

01:23:45.492 --> 01:23:48.694
And he did that because the markets had failed.

01:23:49.466 --> 01:23:56.204
You know, he inherited the Great Depression. And so he took it upon himself.

01:23:56.773 --> 01:24:00.422
And he didn't get everything that he wanted. You know, he wanted to pack the

01:24:00.422 --> 01:24:05.442
Supreme Court and a few other things. But a lot of things like he did with the

01:24:05.442 --> 01:24:11.041
WPA and the Triple C and other projects that were out there.

01:24:11.724 --> 01:24:15.915
You know social security which all of us still benefit from here,

01:24:16.554 --> 01:24:21.692
i mean all that stuff was under him and so you know when people talk about socialism

01:24:21.692 --> 01:24:26.302
we have to remind people that it's like you know what the example they want

01:24:26.302 --> 01:24:29.285
to use is like you know like in cuba,

01:24:29.948 --> 01:24:33.952
where castro was saying he was a more of a socialist than a communist,

01:24:34.762 --> 01:24:40.602
and so for those people that left cuba if you say socialist or communist to

01:24:40.602 --> 01:24:43.271
them, they might have an adverse reaction to that.

01:24:43.915 --> 01:24:49.122
And so they, you know, and there's a lady running in Florida who has identified

01:24:49.122 --> 01:24:50.712
herself as a Democrat socialist.

01:24:50.712 --> 01:24:53.932
And so they're trying to say, well, see, she's trying to be like Castro.

01:24:53.932 --> 01:24:59.234
I mean, you know, even gone as far as to say she celebrates Castro's birthday, which is not true.

01:24:59.732 --> 01:25:05.432
But, you know, I wanted, because you address and define socialism in the book,

01:25:06.460 --> 01:25:08.805
I wanted you to answer that question because.

01:25:11.612 --> 01:25:19.071
People going by gut reactions instead of facts tend to make these generalizations.

01:25:19.844 --> 01:25:28.384
Once again, we're going by impressions and also a tendency to use words and to react to them.

01:25:29.702 --> 01:25:34.239
Very symbolist. Yeah, certainly, from what I can gather, the,

01:25:35.022 --> 01:25:40.212
Florida Republicans in particular, ones of Cuban extraction do rather react

01:25:40.212 --> 01:25:44.753
as soon as they hear the word and they compare it with Castro's government, things like that.

01:25:46.635 --> 01:25:52.915
What I say in my book is that socialism and capitalism, to some extent,

01:25:52.915 --> 01:25:57.958
can be more on a type of continuum, particularly of state control.

01:25:59.315 --> 01:26:05.575
In other words, it's not necessarily reasonable for people to shout, oh,

01:26:06.823 --> 01:26:13.063
these are communists, any more reasonably than it is for me to say about particular,

01:26:13.621 --> 01:26:15.414
conservatives, oh, these are fascists.

01:26:15.751 --> 01:26:19.337
They're both misuses of of terms,

01:26:20.318 --> 01:26:25.962
but as i say i personally feel that a more objective way of looking at it is

01:26:26.108 --> 01:26:32.336
the degree of state control that you need going i'm going back to hobbes i mean hobbes,

01:26:32.992 --> 01:26:37.728
is also suggesting that you do need control of one type or another,

01:26:38.606 --> 01:26:42.576
but how much of it is the more modern question is how much of it,

01:26:43.559 --> 01:26:52.162
where obviously the socialists do want more regulation than their conservative counterparts that's.

01:26:54.145 --> 01:26:57.152
Within certain bounds that i think is a reasonable thing to say,

01:26:57.988 --> 01:27:03.113
but so therefore where on the where on this continuum is it reasonable to say

01:27:03.252 --> 01:27:07.755
ah they're socialists they're communists they're they're one or the other i

01:27:07.755 --> 01:27:10.121
think that people do rather jump at names.

01:27:11.539 --> 01:27:18.230
One of, yeah. Okay. I'm an anti-symbolist, really, I guess, if I'm anything. Yes, sir.

01:27:18.712 --> 01:27:21.574
Has racism hindered America's growth?

01:27:23.265 --> 01:27:26.725
Yes, I think so. Perhaps I've answered that one rather quickly, but.

01:27:28.688 --> 01:27:35.615
It still appears that the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction meant

01:27:35.615 --> 01:27:41.919
that the development of millions of people was damaged.

01:27:43.148 --> 01:27:48.707
It meant that literacy for millions of people just wasn't there.

01:27:49.771 --> 01:27:53.869
And this has an effect. We know just from,

01:27:55.320 --> 01:28:00.175
studies of educational progression, this is in Britain, but I'm fairly sure

01:28:00.175 --> 01:28:02.105
it's similar in America, that,

01:28:03.107 --> 01:28:09.695
homes without books mean that the children from those homes are less likely

01:28:09.695 --> 01:28:11.275
to thrive educationally.

01:28:12.336 --> 01:28:17.015
Now if you then move towards racism in particular obviously the treatment of

01:28:17.015 --> 01:28:24.528
black people well for hundreds of years including well at least well into the last century,

01:28:25.600 --> 01:28:31.585
this means that you've got a whole mass of people who are have the equivalent

01:28:31.585 --> 01:28:35.327
of that of being brought up with so much disadvantage,

01:28:36.841 --> 01:28:44.041
so you've got conflict obviously but you've also got a failure to thrive for millions of people.

01:28:45.905 --> 01:28:53.025
I just cannot see how you could see that as being anything other than a failure,

01:28:53.525 --> 01:28:55.798
in progress. Basically,

01:28:57.078 --> 01:29:03.148
people have been let down. Yeah. Yeah. I, well, I mean, it's just so obvious.

01:29:03.148 --> 01:29:11.749
I'm not sure I, I can say more without going into the details of Andrew Johnson and all the rest of it.

01:29:11.918 --> 01:29:16.128
Yeah. But you, you nailed it on the head and that's one of the examples that

01:29:16.128 --> 01:29:20.759
you use in a book about the, when the Roman empire was successful,

01:29:21.456 --> 01:29:27.488
it was people of all different ethnicities and, cultures and all that that fell

01:29:27.488 --> 01:29:31.214
under the empire and touted the empire even fought for the empire,

01:29:32.161 --> 01:29:39.648
and and and you know it was like that diversity helped the empire stay strong

01:29:39.648 --> 01:29:43.338
and when they started delving into things like slavery and other things that's

01:29:43.658 --> 01:29:47.062
you know and there was a whole lot of other issues as you point out in the book,

01:29:47.904 --> 01:29:51.266
that led to the empire's downfall but Slavery did not help it,

01:29:52.004 --> 01:29:54.007
right? Social and justice did a lot.

01:29:54.658 --> 01:30:00.318
It was a major problem, yes. Yeah, so it's like, you know, that's one of the

01:30:00.318 --> 01:30:04.333
arguments we've always tried to expose to people was that.

01:30:06.586 --> 01:30:11.759
America is the only nation on the planet where there is a citizen from every,

01:30:12.356 --> 01:30:17.046
country in the world that has residency in the United States.

01:30:17.471 --> 01:30:20.227
It's the only country that has that distinction.

01:30:20.999 --> 01:30:26.306
And we've always argued that is a strength for us that is not a hindrance,

01:30:27.096 --> 01:30:31.661
and when you get these people that have this nationalistic viewpoint you know

01:30:31.998 --> 01:30:35.638
it's like there's an american is this,

01:30:36.272 --> 01:30:40.098
and it's like oh an american is a person that looks in the mirror every day

01:30:40.098 --> 01:30:45.374
that lives in the united states that's a citizen that's what an american is and the sooner,

01:30:46.175 --> 01:30:51.848
we could grasp that concept, I think the sooner we can propel ourselves,

01:30:51.848 --> 01:30:56.327
because we always brag about being the number one nation in the world, but to really be that,

01:30:56.992 --> 01:31:01.317
one of the things we have to embrace is our diversity and all that stuff.

01:31:02.651 --> 01:31:07.581
Let me, I got a couple more questions, and I'm already over what I promised

01:31:07.581 --> 01:31:12.069
you, but let's see if we can power through. I'll do my best. Well, no, so will I.

01:31:13.036 --> 01:31:15.103
Why is self-sufficiency a delusion?

01:31:17.927 --> 01:31:23.301
All right. I do, I am aware over in America that you do have people who want

01:31:23.301 --> 01:31:28.444
to live in nuclear bunkers and want to get together as communities.

01:31:28.784 --> 01:31:38.801
Is i'm not sure how how possible it is for that to last a very long in any one place more generally we,

01:31:39.890 --> 01:31:44.711
if you're going to actually be a capitalist state where you are trying to actually

01:31:44.711 --> 01:31:50.613
or a capitalist society where you are going to allow the free flow of goods,

01:31:51.107 --> 01:31:53.150
so that there is genuine competition.

01:31:54.606 --> 01:31:57.711
That all sounds great, but there's another side to it too, which is that if

01:31:57.711 --> 01:32:03.489
you don't have that, you won't get the sort of competition of a healthy capitalism.

01:32:06.339 --> 01:32:11.801
In our case, for example, over here in Britain, we haven't been agriculturally

01:32:11.801 --> 01:32:14.988
self-sufficient for I don't know how long.

01:32:15.577 --> 01:32:23.341
I think an attempt was made during the days of invasion or potential evasion,

01:32:23.914 --> 01:32:29.694
Second World War, First World War, the polyonic wars, attempts were made to be, basically,

01:32:30.398 --> 01:32:32.995
at the moment, if we truly had a war,

01:32:33.704 --> 01:32:39.531
we would be so reliant on other countries, and we could literally be starved

01:32:39.531 --> 01:32:41.976
out. I hope Mr. Putin isn't listening to this.

01:32:44.135 --> 01:32:50.403
So, I think it's a dream, and it's part of this dream of,

01:32:52.064 --> 01:32:55.380
It's an atavistic dream. We have the whole world here.

01:32:55.589 --> 01:32:59.711
There are some disadvantages to being part of the world, but nevertheless,

01:33:00.844 --> 01:33:03.866
economically, it's a pike dream.

01:33:04.186 --> 01:33:08.223
We need food, and quite often food needs to actually move across different countries.

01:33:08.894 --> 01:33:12.086
And again, if you allow another country to starve.

01:33:14.308 --> 01:33:18.655
Leaving aside the moral implications, what are the likely political ones?

01:33:18.998 --> 01:33:24.797
We see people genuinely fleeing from certain African states at the moment.

01:33:25.198 --> 01:33:27.029
Basically, they're starving.

01:33:27.696 --> 01:33:34.452
And we should try to do something about it, although it sounds very socialist to do so. If we don't,

01:33:36.470 --> 01:33:41.459
the consequences are almost incalculable. So, yeah,

01:33:43.563 --> 01:33:46.715
lots of people want to be sufficient.

01:33:46.982 --> 01:33:51.424
Autarky, is it? Autarky, I think, is the insufficient system.

01:33:51.424 --> 01:33:53.252
I can't remember the word, but I think it's autarky.

01:33:54.924 --> 01:34:00.204
I think it's a bit of a dream. I won't even talk about your tariff situation at the moment.

01:34:03.281 --> 01:34:08.794
To be honest, I'm not sure I understand sufficiently. Well, you're not the only

01:34:08.794 --> 01:34:13.184
one. We're here, and we have no clue what the president is doing with the tariff

01:34:13.184 --> 01:34:15.563
thing, but we'll move on from that.

01:34:16.528 --> 01:34:18.398
How can politicians be better,

01:34:20.187 --> 01:34:28.737
How can politicians be better? Well, I think they have to try to overcome the

01:34:28.737 --> 01:34:34.489
electoral barrier, which is because they've got an election every two or four years,

01:34:35.424 --> 01:34:40.767
people are actually chasing policies which will get them back in. And I understand that.

01:34:41.764 --> 01:34:44.307
You know, if you want a democracy, you've got to have a democracy.

01:34:44.307 --> 01:34:45.897
You've got to have elections. I mean, that's why.

01:34:46.246 --> 01:34:52.987
At the same time, that chasing short-term policies is a problem because a lot

01:34:52.987 --> 01:34:57.377
of our problems won't be dealt with just by one star like Mr.

01:34:57.377 --> 01:35:00.751
Burnham or Mr. Trump or whoever just doing their thing.

01:35:02.453 --> 01:35:08.764
Many reforms are going to have to go on for years, eight years, 12 years, 30 years.

01:35:09.620 --> 01:35:16.115
So basically, politicians will do better to at least consider having committees,

01:35:18.556 --> 01:35:24.975
to agree on certain policies, regardless of their political shade.

01:35:25.388 --> 01:35:27.917
That's not happening. And...

01:35:29.133 --> 01:35:31.948
And I think, I mean, we have a thing called select committees,

01:35:32.262 --> 01:35:36.946
and they are specialists in whether it's defense or it's health,

01:35:37.716 --> 01:35:40.218
and they focus on those things.

01:35:40.701 --> 01:35:44.446
But basically, and I'm sure the Americans have got a similar thing.

01:35:45.086 --> 01:35:47.926
I do excuse my ignorance. While I know quite a lot about America,

01:35:48.246 --> 01:35:52.891
I don't have as much idea of modern politics as you guys do, obviously.

01:35:53.804 --> 01:36:00.456
But i do think that a greater focus on the long term and more power for these

01:36:00.456 --> 01:36:06.016
select committees in other words it's for the president for example to override,

01:36:06.643 --> 01:36:11.501
a select committee i think they'd have to be a rather difficult barrier for them to meet,

01:36:12.257 --> 01:36:17.400
so yeah an emphasis on on long-term work i would also say going to my theme,

01:36:17.853 --> 01:36:20.755
try to have a think each time you want to legislate about,

01:36:21.634 --> 01:36:26.086
is this just some belief that I've picked up from my upbringing,

01:36:26.475 --> 01:36:30.643
or is this actually something I objectively think is important for the country?

01:36:31.259 --> 01:36:38.006
But yeah, agreement to do certain things in the long term, I think is really important.

01:36:38.386 --> 01:36:40.447
I think it's possible too.

01:36:41.159 --> 01:36:45.002
Yeah. All right. So you end your book with this passage.

01:36:45.698 --> 01:36:50.882
Happiness can be achieved by good works and by independent reflection of what is good.

01:36:51.271 --> 01:36:55.619
The constellations of philosophy are those of active thought,

01:36:56.031 --> 01:37:00.583
as long as we do not reflect over much on whether or not we are happy.

01:37:01.192 --> 01:37:06.393
If you concern yourself with your overall value to society, however modest,

01:37:06.816 --> 01:37:10.143
then perhaps you can save the world and be happy.

01:37:10.735 --> 01:37:17.137
So my question to you is personal. What have you done to achieve that definition of happiness?

01:37:18.732 --> 01:37:23.230
Up until very recently, I've been doing voluntary work.

01:37:24.837 --> 01:37:29.420
I had to recognize, as a patriot, of course, that my country no longer needs me.

01:37:30.040 --> 01:37:38.002
So basically, yeah, I have done some voluntary work because now I'm getting old and also rather ill.

01:37:38.548 --> 01:37:43.450
I've now reduced my voluntary work to occasions when people happen to call on

01:37:43.450 --> 01:37:45.762
me or that problem bangs on my door.

01:37:46.234 --> 01:37:48.759
Did literally a couple of days ago. Drive me mad.

01:37:51.100 --> 01:37:57.520
Obviously, the writing of this book, I've previously been a conventionally published

01:37:57.520 --> 01:38:02.915
author of books on statistics, because part of my work has been in research.

01:38:03.961 --> 01:38:05.772
But I would like to think that this book,

01:38:08.059 --> 01:38:11.471
may gain some traction in getting people to look at,

01:38:13.487 --> 01:38:16.500
getting a look at longer-term, more objective ways of dealing with things.

01:38:17.028 --> 01:38:18.881
As far as happiness is concerned.

01:38:21.952 --> 01:38:26.102
What I've said about happiness in the book is, A, don't chase it,

01:38:27.374 --> 01:38:31.920
but by doing useful things, you may contribute to your own contentment.

01:38:32.918 --> 01:38:37.052
I'm not going to claim that this is my own formulation. It certainly isn't.

01:38:37.052 --> 01:38:45.638
It's based on a variety of research findings by psychologists of a greater caliber than myself.

01:38:46.570 --> 01:38:52.630
But the findings tend to suggest that happiness is a fleeting phenomenon.

01:38:53.795 --> 01:38:59.205
Quite often, as they say, I didn't realize I was happy until I looked back.

01:39:00.169 --> 01:39:04.252
And I do think that people actually can, by just chasing what they think is

01:39:04.652 --> 01:39:07.361
going to make them happy, is not necessarily going to do so.

01:39:07.977 --> 01:39:12.692
And also, it's been shown that people who do see there's a value to what they

01:39:12.692 --> 01:39:16.967
do and are trying to do something valuable for their country or for people,

01:39:17.520 --> 01:39:21.212
quite often do sense, not necessarily, well, let's stop calling it happiness.

01:39:21.212 --> 01:39:25.229
As I say, happiness is a fleeting concept, but may get a certain contentment.

01:39:27.175 --> 01:39:31.996
Whether or not they will actually help to change the world? Well, I hope so, but I'm not,

01:39:34.793 --> 01:39:37.890
I can't sound necessarily optimistic. All right.

01:39:38.575 --> 01:39:44.479
All right. So that leads me to my challenge. Finish this sentence. I have hope because.

01:39:47.653 --> 01:39:52.494
I have hope because people are still communicating with each other.

01:39:53.086 --> 01:39:58.259
And some of them are doing so with goodwill and with an ability to listen.

01:40:00.109 --> 01:40:07.966
I have hope that people will continue to read and will try to work a bit harder

01:40:07.966 --> 01:40:12.653
at reading other points of view than just their own.

01:40:13.716 --> 01:40:17.871
Unfortunately, there's quite a lot of that, but I do think it is possible.

01:40:19.140 --> 01:40:24.476
And quite frankly, if our current environmental community woes don't scare the

01:40:24.816 --> 01:40:28.184
living daylights out of people they they really should,

01:40:29.091 --> 01:40:35.140
yes sir all right well cole davis first of all thank you for for coming on to the podcast and,

01:40:35.726 --> 01:40:40.596
thank you for writing this book if people want to get the stone age now be happy

01:40:40.596 --> 01:40:44.254
and save the world how can they do that and how can they reach out to you.

01:40:46.064 --> 01:40:49.107
Generally speaking, people will buy via online stores.

01:40:50.099 --> 01:40:55.664
In Britain, we've got one bookshop that actually does stock it.

01:40:56.591 --> 01:41:01.605
You can see that on, but on the whole, most people would have to get it on online stores. Yeah.

01:41:02.317 --> 01:41:07.384
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, that sort of thing. Okay. And how can they reach out to you personally?

01:41:08.579 --> 01:41:11.238
While it would be very nice to hear from people and their views,

01:41:11.569 --> 01:41:14.117
I'm not selling it. I'm not selling them personally.

01:41:14.920 --> 01:41:19.773
And yeah but yeah by all means if people want to send me an email that's fine

01:41:19.773 --> 01:41:25.388
they can find on the publisher's website if they want to exchange ideas but but no i'm not actually,

01:41:26.595 --> 01:41:30.826
flogging them myself to use the cockney cockney phrase all,

01:41:31.546 --> 01:41:36.073
right well well mr davis thank you again for coming on i greatly appreciate

01:41:36.073 --> 01:41:40.857
it one of my rules is that once you've been on you have an open invitation to come back,

01:41:41.432 --> 01:41:46.063
and I fully expect you to take advantage of it and I look forward to having

01:41:46.063 --> 01:41:48.569
another conversation with you but thank you again,

01:41:49.179 --> 01:41:52.767
for for coming on today Eric that was a very uh,

01:41:53.567 --> 01:41:57.393
it was quite a tough interview I and it did show that you obviously took quite

01:41:57.393 --> 01:42:02.403
a lot of care and actually uh looking through my book and uh and picking at

01:42:02.403 --> 01:42:05.099
picking at its potential weak points. I was impressed.

01:42:06.783 --> 01:42:09.465
Yes, let's certainly think about meeting again.

01:42:25.599 --> 01:42:31.099
All right, and we are back. And so I just want to thank Akil Parker and Cole

01:42:31.099 --> 01:42:33.311
Davis for coming on to the podcast.

01:42:34.300 --> 01:42:37.592
And so you know that the feature works.

01:42:38.727 --> 01:42:44.900
These two gentlemen both requested to be on the podcast. They both sought me out.

01:42:45.440 --> 01:42:50.869
So just imagine this brother here and Mr. Davis over in England.

01:42:50.869 --> 01:42:53.036
Both of them sought to be on the podcast.

01:42:54.000 --> 01:43:00.809
And considering what they were bringing to the table, I was more than honored to have them come on.

01:43:00.809 --> 01:43:06.279
And I hope that you enjoyed those conversations. I hope you realize the commitment

01:43:06.279 --> 01:43:10.601
and dedication that both of these gentlemen have to trying to make this world a better place.

01:43:11.246 --> 01:43:17.099
And, you know, I don't know them know them, but based on the conversations we

01:43:17.099 --> 01:43:22.766
had off air, both of them have made tremendous sacrifices to get to this point.

01:43:23.401 --> 01:43:28.091
Where they have a platform to talk about how we can do better.

01:43:29.133 --> 01:43:34.643
And so I'm just glad that somehow, someway, I was a part of that journey.

01:43:35.247 --> 01:43:39.310
And I hope that you all got something beneficial out of those conversations.

01:43:40.929 --> 01:43:46.419
So I won't be long because I said what I wanted to say about Ms.

01:43:46.419 --> 01:43:52.144
Pardon at the beginning, but there's something else that's bothering me.

01:43:53.223 --> 01:43:59.619
And as somebody that's run for public office, somebody that's run for a statewide

01:43:59.619 --> 01:44:01.171
slash national position,

01:44:02.025 --> 01:44:10.759
you know, one of the things I try to do on this podcast is give you the uncensored,

01:44:10.759 --> 01:44:14.126
unfiltered opinions of those guests that I bring on.

01:44:14.932 --> 01:44:24.322
And I have told people either before or after the interview that this is not a got you show.

01:44:24.943 --> 01:44:27.770
We're not trying to put you in an uncomfortable position.

01:44:28.939 --> 01:44:32.903
I do try to ask challenging questions to get the best out of the guest.

01:44:33.465 --> 01:44:40.935
And so far from the reviews from the guests, I've done a pretty good job in

01:44:41.220 --> 01:44:42.717
pulling out stuff from them.

01:44:43.803 --> 01:44:45.944
Including these two gentlemen today.

01:44:47.089 --> 01:44:53.469
So that is my job. Now, if somebody says something on the show that's really

01:44:53.469 --> 01:44:58.690
crazy, I've got this moment in the podcast where I can address that.

01:44:59.469 --> 01:45:03.530
If it's something that needs to be fact-checked or whatever the case may be.

01:45:05.695 --> 01:45:13.995
But I try not to be confrontational with the guests, and I want them to get their point across.

01:45:15.075 --> 01:45:20.705
I just went to an event last week, and I saw a couple of people that I've been

01:45:20.705 --> 01:45:25.204
trying to get on the podcast, and I just reminded them. You know, it's like, hey, look,

01:45:28.035 --> 01:45:31.440
one in particular, we're not on the same political spectrum.

01:45:32.239 --> 01:45:39.285
But I do respect how that person operates and just reminded them,

01:45:39.285 --> 01:45:43.575
hey, look, the invitation is still there. I need you to come on the show.

01:45:44.446 --> 01:45:48.791
So hopefully we'll make that happen. But I,

01:45:49.995 --> 01:45:54.145
and I get that there are certain things that people do that you have to ask

01:45:54.145 --> 01:45:59.570
the question about if that's what part of the dynamic of the person.

01:46:00.265 --> 01:46:04.247
And there's ways that you can ask the question to get them to talk about it,

01:46:04.972 --> 01:46:06.291
in their own comfort zone.

01:46:06.692 --> 01:46:11.225
You don't necessarily have to be confrontational with them, but just give them

01:46:11.225 --> 01:46:13.516
the runway and let that plane take off.

01:46:14.409 --> 01:46:22.127
What I've been seeing with the Democratic candidates going on shows that allegedly,

01:46:23.423 --> 01:46:28.888
are liberal or pro-Democratic politics.

01:46:30.520 --> 01:46:38.303
Is the constant reminder of how we as Democrats figure out a way to snatch defeat

01:46:38.303 --> 01:46:39.667
out of the jaws of victory.

01:46:40.535 --> 01:46:46.455
It is amazing to me that we harp on things that are irrelevant or crazy.

01:46:47.403 --> 01:46:54.183
Because the only reason why you're doing that is to diminish the opportunities

01:46:54.183 --> 01:46:55.671
for those Democrats to win.

01:46:56.699 --> 01:47:01.232
I asked Mr. Davis, should people be afraid of democratic socialists, right?

01:47:02.811 --> 01:47:08.193
You know, but people want to, you know, it's like, well, why did you say you

01:47:08.193 --> 01:47:09.650
were a democratic socialist?

01:47:10.299 --> 01:47:15.706
Okay, that's a fair question. But then, you know, when they answer the question,

01:47:16.322 --> 01:47:22.513
and they say, look, you know, in the case of Angie Nixon, I am a member of the

01:47:22.513 --> 01:47:25.048
Democratic Socialist Organization.

01:47:25.627 --> 01:47:30.282
I don't agree with everything that they say. Now, that's what she said.

01:47:30.922 --> 01:47:34.335
And she even enumerated some things, right?

01:47:36.780 --> 01:47:40.531
You know, that's no different than me saying I'm a member of the Democratic

01:47:40.531 --> 01:47:45.102
Party, but I don't agree with everything that's on the Democratic platform.

01:47:45.726 --> 01:47:48.644
That's happened before and it'll happen again.

01:47:49.945 --> 01:47:54.331
Because when we get into those discussions about the issues we're going to run

01:47:54.331 --> 01:47:56.319
on, we have debates about them.

01:47:57.128 --> 01:48:02.761
And especially during the presidential year, at least we used to have platform

01:48:02.761 --> 01:48:10.325
committees and sit there and determine what is the Democrat platform for that election cycle.

01:48:11.716 --> 01:48:16.905
And the candidate addresses that. Now, sometimes the candidate doesn't like,

01:48:17.682 --> 01:48:24.267
everything on the platform, so he or she will just kind of cherry pick around that.

01:48:26.471 --> 01:48:32.171
Whereas our Republican friends run wholeheartedly with theirs.

01:48:32.171 --> 01:48:34.276
I mean, Project 2025 was their agenda.

01:48:35.327 --> 01:48:38.471
They didn't hide from it. Well, Donald Trump tried to lie and say that he didn't

01:48:38.471 --> 01:48:42.731
know about it. But everybody that was on the staff, campaign staff,

01:48:42.731 --> 01:48:49.250
everybody that's in this current administration, they all had like chapters in the book. Right.

01:48:51.171 --> 01:48:59.032
So, you know, but, you know, for the most part, they ran with that on their full chest, you know.

01:49:01.914 --> 01:49:09.671
And they don't equivocate. And their ecosystem tries to boost them up in such

01:49:09.671 --> 01:49:14.871
a way that once they get elected or, you know, they're like deified.

01:49:14.871 --> 01:49:18.161
I mean, Ken Paxson is the worst human being ever, but you wouldn't know that

01:49:18.161 --> 01:49:19.359
if you listen to Fox News.

01:49:20.825 --> 01:49:28.090
But on the Democratic side, we want to tear people up by who we are associated with, right? All right.

01:49:28.705 --> 01:49:32.415
We've got a young man who won the Democratic primary in Michigan.

01:49:33.720 --> 01:49:36.690
And there are some Democrats in Michigan that are like, well,

01:49:36.690 --> 01:49:37.994
I don't know if I'm going to support them.

01:49:38.522 --> 01:49:42.480
Well, if I'm in the leadership of the Democratic Party in Michigan,

01:49:42.480 --> 01:49:47.872
I would tell those folks, either you get on board or you can go on across the street.

01:49:48.744 --> 01:49:53.680
Because in the fair election, primary that was held, the majority of people

01:49:53.680 --> 01:49:58.612
that showed up in the Democratic primary voted for Dr. El Saeed.

01:49:59.491 --> 01:50:03.390
He won the nomination. In Florida, Angie Nixon won the nomination.

01:50:04.416 --> 01:50:07.603
So if you claim to be a Democrat and you can't get behind them,

01:50:08.437 --> 01:50:14.730
then you're really not a Democrat because you had your chance to support who

01:50:14.730 --> 01:50:18.281
you wanted to support and to get them over the finish line in the primary.

01:50:19.240 --> 01:50:22.750
It wasn't like these people were appointed. It wasn't like somebody was in a

01:50:22.750 --> 01:50:25.450
back room and just drew a name out of a hat.

01:50:25.833 --> 01:50:33.326
These people got before the electorate and they chose these individuals to be the nominee.

01:50:33.442 --> 01:50:36.756
The team has been selected for the most part nationally.

01:50:37.657 --> 01:50:41.430
Again, like I said last week, I wanted Jasmine Clark to have the opportunity

01:50:41.430 --> 01:50:42.875
to be a Democrat nominee.

01:50:43.264 --> 01:50:48.814
People in Texas said James Tallarico. You know what? Great. Team Tallarico, here I am.

01:50:51.208 --> 01:50:56.899
That's how that works. So if you claim to be a Democrat and you can't do that,

01:50:57.852 --> 01:51:00.098
then you're not a Democrat.

01:51:01.056 --> 01:51:06.150
You can in the primary you don't want that person to get in then you do what

01:51:06.150 --> 01:51:09.765
you can to get the person that you want in elected,

01:51:10.666 --> 01:51:15.606
but after the process is over that's it and even if you still don't like them,

01:51:16.210 --> 01:51:21.210
don't find a microphone or a tape recorder and say that you still don't like

01:51:21.210 --> 01:51:25.033
this person that's one number two,

01:51:26.355 --> 01:51:29.509
This association problem, right?

01:51:30.481 --> 01:51:36.224
You know, I had to denounce somebody when I was running for the U.S. Senate.

01:51:37.438 --> 01:51:44.003
And the main reason why I had to denounce that person was because Chuck Schumer,

01:51:45.332 --> 01:51:47.005
wanted to use that against me.

01:51:47.005 --> 01:51:52.658
He wanted to label me, an elected official, as some kind of lunatic, right?

01:51:53.504 --> 01:51:59.390
Because they wanted somebody that had a name who actually wasn't.

01:52:00.644 --> 01:52:04.787
I won't say he was a lunatic, but let's just say he was not fit for the job.

01:52:05.438 --> 01:52:08.822
And he's a good guy, but he wasn't ready for primetime.

01:52:11.015 --> 01:52:15.549
But because he had the name and because of where he was from,

01:52:16.312 --> 01:52:21.328
they wanted him to be token opposition, right, if they were going to have somebody.

01:52:23.070 --> 01:52:28.648
And I got called in. This is the first time I ran in 06. I got called in.

01:52:29.881 --> 01:52:34.594
And, you know, folks were trying to convince me to drop out. Party leaders.

01:52:35.949 --> 01:52:39.345
And I had to break it down to them because I was running against Trent Lott.

01:52:40.656 --> 01:52:47.590
And Trent was sitting on $10 million in 2006. He was sitting on $10 million.

01:52:49.161 --> 01:52:55.412
And their whole argument was, well, Eric, we need you to, you know, we don't,

01:52:56.559 --> 01:53:01.680
you know, we're trying to focus our efforts on getting these white Democrats

01:53:01.680 --> 01:53:06.582
in these swing districts reelected in the state house, in the state Senate.

01:53:08.024 --> 01:53:13.040
And I said, if I don't run against Trent Lott, then he's got $10 million to

01:53:13.040 --> 01:53:14.145
do whatever he wants to do.

01:53:15.144 --> 01:53:19.919
At least give me the shot to make him spend three of it so he'll only have seven.

01:53:20.790 --> 01:53:26.623
Can y'all manage to wage a campaign if he only has $7 million at his disposal,

01:53:27.139 --> 01:53:28.377
to help these candidates?

01:53:29.277 --> 01:53:32.585
And once I broke it down to him like that, I said yes.

01:53:33.242 --> 01:53:36.400
Now, Chuck Schumer wasn't sold on that.

01:53:37.024 --> 01:53:40.599
And when he found out that I was involved with Lyndon LaRouche,

01:53:41.372 --> 01:53:43.020
and when I say involved, it was like Mr.

01:53:43.020 --> 01:53:51.220
LaRouche invited me to events, you know, had me lobbying for causes like stopping

01:53:51.220 --> 01:53:55.170
the country of Mexico from selling their oil and national gas rights to a company

01:53:55.170 --> 01:53:56.768
that was about ready to go bankrupt,

01:53:57.584 --> 01:54:00.472
or closing the urgent,

01:54:01.710 --> 01:54:03.270
the emergency care.

01:54:03.270 --> 01:54:08.639
The trauma unit in D.C., the only hospital that had a trauma unit in D.C., stuff like that.

01:54:10.359 --> 01:54:18.932
And because of that, and Mr. LaRouche had said some things that were interpreted as being anti-Semitic.

01:54:19.928 --> 01:54:25.216
And even though his whole agenda was dealing with Zionism,

01:54:25.999 --> 01:54:36.539
which is the concept of European Jews wanting to establish a nation state in

01:54:36.539 --> 01:54:38.721
the homeland, which is Israel, right?

01:54:39.643 --> 01:54:44.120
So, he's a nationalist, just like the Christian nationalists,

01:54:44.347 --> 01:54:45.786
right? He's a nationalist organization.

01:54:47.123 --> 01:54:51.549
And so, because he was so firm on that, there were some people or a lot of people

01:54:51.549 --> 01:54:53.512
who felt that he was anti-Semitic.

01:54:54.335 --> 01:54:59.751
Even though he had Jewish people as his major lieutenants in the organization.

01:55:00.819 --> 01:55:05.714
Nonetheless, because there were people that actually cared about me,

01:55:06.492 --> 01:55:11.072
that said, hey, you might need to distance yourself from this guy, I did that.

01:55:11.943 --> 01:55:18.909
And I felt kind of bad about that because, you know, I remember when two years

01:55:18.909 --> 01:55:22.679
later, Obama had to do the same thing with Jeremiah Wright. And I went to high

01:55:22.679 --> 01:55:23.646
school with his daughter.

01:55:24.458 --> 01:55:27.929
And I knew what Reverend Wright was talking about. if you're black,

01:55:27.929 --> 01:55:29.887
you understood exactly what he was talking about.

01:55:31.289 --> 01:55:38.689
But Obama was at that point where he had to win and they didn't want anything.

01:55:38.689 --> 01:55:40.976
So he had to distance himself from Reverend Wright.

01:55:42.161 --> 01:55:47.329
And just like President Obama, it hurt me to distance myself from somebody just

01:55:47.329 --> 01:55:52.660
because they said something that we don't necessarily agree with or we don't,

01:55:53.431 --> 01:55:56.277
we wouldn't have said it the way that they said it. Right.

01:55:57.345 --> 01:55:59.859
They wanted me to distance myself from Farrakhan. And I'm like,

01:55:59.859 --> 01:56:03.597
I'm not even a member of the Nation of Islam. What are you talking about? Right?

01:56:04.567 --> 01:56:07.551
I mean, it was just all this paranoia about this, that, and the other.

01:56:08.212 --> 01:56:15.379
And so Schumer put this guy on me, Ron Gusenberg, who's been blogging about

01:56:15.379 --> 01:56:18.124
Florida politics and national politics for years.

01:56:19.495 --> 01:56:22.589
So he had been doing it for years before I met him. And so now 20 years,

01:56:23.029 --> 01:56:27.221
he's been in the game for over 20 years, probably 30 or 40 at this particular point.

01:56:27.822 --> 01:56:33.399
But Ron's a legit guy. And at that time, his blog was one of the influential

01:56:33.399 --> 01:56:36.095
blogs in the Democratic ecosystem.

01:56:37.196 --> 01:56:44.622
So he sicked Ron on me, and I basically made my denouncement on Ron's blog.

01:56:46.065 --> 01:56:52.029
And Ron put it out there, and that was the end of that.

01:56:52.802 --> 01:56:56.869
And I ended up getting the Democratic nomination, and then, of course,

01:56:56.869 --> 01:57:03.856
I lost to Trent. Then Trent put me on the target list along with the white Democrats he was after.

01:57:04.759 --> 01:57:10.065
You know, they found somebody, you know, the support of the Democratic primary against me and she won.

01:57:10.664 --> 01:57:12.980
That's politics. That's how it goes. Right?

01:57:14.779 --> 01:57:20.889
They just, and really, they got a bonus because they didn't think that she could

01:57:20.889 --> 01:57:25.315
beat me. They just wanted me to understand it and appreciate me running against Trent Lott.

01:57:26.612 --> 01:57:28.119
But they ended up backing a good candidate.

01:57:29.639 --> 01:57:34.658
So she won, right? That's how the ball bounces, you know?

01:57:35.398 --> 01:57:39.299
And they thought that was going to end my political career. And then I ended

01:57:39.299 --> 01:57:43.951
up being a Democrat nominee two years later in 2008.

01:57:45.262 --> 01:57:52.099
And so I know what Dr. El-Said, I know what Angie, I know what all these other

01:57:52.099 --> 01:57:54.385
folks are going through. Been there, done that.

01:57:55.687 --> 01:58:01.399
And I just think it's stupid for the media to keep harping on it.

01:58:01.399 --> 01:58:05.389
I know everybody wants their Pulitzer Prize moment or Peabody or Edward R.

01:58:05.389 --> 01:58:06.629
Murrow moment, whatever.

01:58:07.468 --> 01:58:10.742
But it's like if you hear other people asking that question,

01:58:11.613 --> 01:58:17.441
maybe you don't need to ask it. Or maybe you need to be more creative in how you ask it, right?

01:58:18.444 --> 01:58:23.480
This whole thing about Hassan Piker. Look, Hassan has his podcast.

01:58:23.614 --> 01:58:27.445
He's a comedian by profession. Let's get that straight, first of all.

01:58:28.315 --> 01:58:36.430
He's a comedian, and he uses his platform to support people that he believes in.

01:58:37.507 --> 01:58:43.591
Now, he is intelligent enough to know that everything that he says on his podcast,

01:58:44.072 --> 01:58:48.819
the people that he's endorsing are not going to agree with that because he's

01:58:48.819 --> 01:58:50.883
deliberately trying to push the envelope.

01:58:51.533 --> 01:58:57.236
No different than Joe Rogan or anybody else or Nick Fuentes, right?

01:58:57.889 --> 01:59:04.089
But if you show up on his podcast, well, okay, then we got to show up on Joe's or Nick's.

01:59:04.729 --> 01:59:08.591
Then people are going to ask questions, well, why did you feel comfortable going on those shows?

01:59:09.437 --> 01:59:13.724
That's a legitimate question. And if your answer should be.

01:59:15.168 --> 01:59:19.888
I don't agree with everything these people say, but I'm trying to reach as many

01:59:19.888 --> 01:59:28.162
people as I can get this message out, you know, and my advisors thought it would be safe for me to do that.

01:59:29.186 --> 01:59:32.141
Now, whether people accept that or not, that's it. But that's,

01:59:32.768 --> 01:59:39.255
it's really all you can do because you can't control if an asshole, right?

01:59:39.808 --> 01:59:44.275
Or a crazy person endorses you. You can't control that at all.

01:59:45.248 --> 01:59:49.793
You know, if somebody shows up and says, hey, I'm campaigning for Eric Fleming.

01:59:51.428 --> 01:59:55.108
I don't know this joker from Adam's house cat, or I may have heard about him on TV.

01:59:56.177 --> 01:59:59.412
I didn't ask him to come, or I didn't ask her to come. They just showed up.

02:00:00.022 --> 02:00:02.756
They used their platform to say, Eric Fleming's a good guy.

02:00:04.923 --> 02:00:07.843
And then they keep saying, well, are you going to campaign? I wasn't campaigning

02:00:07.843 --> 02:00:10.115
with him from Jump Street, right?

02:00:10.742 --> 02:00:17.026
He showed up or she showed up and said, I support this guy. I support Eric Fleming.

02:00:18.029 --> 02:00:22.963
So I'm supposed to be like, to hell with that? I said, that individual has the

02:00:22.963 --> 02:00:24.521
right to say whatever they want to say.

02:00:25.651 --> 02:00:29.693
I don't agree with everything, but I do agree with the fact that I'm the best

02:00:29.693 --> 02:00:31.508
person for this job. I do agree with that.

02:00:32.275 --> 02:00:34.098
That's the one thing we definitely agree on.

02:00:35.024 --> 02:00:38.183
And just keep it moving. But they keep bringing it up, over,

02:00:38.483 --> 02:00:40.939
everybody. Everybody's got to have their moment.

02:00:43.348 --> 02:00:47.638
Like it's Chinese water torture, and this is the moment that they're going to crack.

02:00:48.400 --> 02:00:54.150
It's like that's why people try to get exclusives, so they can get those questions in.

02:00:54.516 --> 02:00:57.463
And then everybody else is like, well, you're just going to have to do the best

02:00:57.463 --> 02:01:00.263
you can. And I know there's some producers that are like, hey,

02:01:00.263 --> 02:01:04.077
you got to ask them the question because so-and-so asked the question. No, we don't.

02:01:05.130 --> 02:01:07.531
We don't have to ask them the question, right?

02:01:08.919 --> 02:01:13.193
Because our job is not to destroy the people that are going to give us an opportunity

02:01:13.193 --> 02:01:15.699
to get out of this mess, right?

02:01:17.243 --> 02:01:21.493
And I want you to understand that, you know, and then some people will say,

02:01:21.493 --> 02:01:24.601
well, we're doing them a service because Republicans are going to bring it out there.

02:01:25.245 --> 02:01:29.403
Then let the Republicans do that work. You ain't got to test them no more.

02:01:29.403 --> 02:01:31.566
They battle tested. They won the primary.

02:01:32.553 --> 02:01:37.373
They're battle tested. Whatever nasty things were said by other fellow Democrats

02:01:37.373 --> 02:01:40.923
in the primary, they weathered that storm, and they're in there.

02:01:42.185 --> 02:01:44.953
There are black people in Detroit right now that are saying,

02:01:44.953 --> 02:01:46.938
well, you know, I don't know about this guy.

02:01:48.012 --> 02:01:52.313
And then it's like, hey, didn't you get your glasses from that guy?

02:01:53.023 --> 02:01:57.083
You remember that program he did? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah,

02:01:57.083 --> 02:01:59.937
that was him. You know, you've got to...

02:02:01.664 --> 02:02:07.774
Don't know. You know, I just, it's a self-destruct mechanism that's within the

02:02:07.774 --> 02:02:11.247
Democrat, the Democratic Party mindset.

02:02:12.204 --> 02:02:18.514
It's like, you know, it's kind of like you go through the military boot camp

02:02:18.514 --> 02:02:22.290
or you go through law enforcement academy.

02:02:23.144 --> 02:02:27.634
And the whole concept of that is to create an incredible amount of stress levels.

02:02:27.634 --> 02:02:32.868
So then when you actually are out there, whether it's at war or on your patrol,

02:02:33.350 --> 02:02:39.081
that you can handle it because you manage the stress for those 11, 12 weeks, right?

02:02:40.959 --> 02:02:44.229
The reason why they had these programs set up for like three months,

02:02:44.229 --> 02:02:51.250
basically, for you to just deal with the most craziest, illogical situations.

02:02:52.134 --> 02:02:54.903
You're at stress at all levels, whether you're taking a test,

02:02:55.327 --> 02:02:57.092
whether you're doing PT, whatever.

02:02:57.579 --> 02:03:00.491
Everything is a stress test, right?

02:03:01.733 --> 02:03:07.599
Because most of your military duty, most of your law enforcement duty is not

02:03:07.599 --> 02:03:09.408
going to be that stressful, not every day.

02:03:10.275 --> 02:03:13.702
There will be moments, but it won't be like that every day.

02:03:14.461 --> 02:03:19.830
But their whole goal is to get you ready for that moment, right?

02:03:20.504 --> 02:03:25.439
And so just imagine that after you've done all that, then the people that.

02:03:26.827 --> 02:03:32.985
Whether it's your military unit or your precinct, every day,

02:03:33.212 --> 02:03:38.519
they're constantly questioning the stuff that you've already dealt with in boot camp or in the academy.

02:03:39.191 --> 02:03:41.884
They're constantly putting you through a stress test for no reason.

02:03:42.857 --> 02:03:46.789
You could be having a calm day and then all of a sudden they come up with some

02:03:46.789 --> 02:03:50.158
crazy stuff in-house that you got to deal with.

02:03:51.006 --> 02:03:54.349
That's what's happening right now. These people have gone through the primary

02:03:54.349 --> 02:03:58.658
process. They've done that. They've survived. They've earned the nomination.

02:03:59.723 --> 02:04:04.268
So why do we have to put him through a stress test, right?

02:04:04.863 --> 02:04:09.683
That's, the enemy is there now. Now it's like, okay, we're out. We're out of boot camp.

02:04:10.698 --> 02:04:13.062
So now we're in battle. So I'm ready.

02:04:14.519 --> 02:04:19.962
I don't need, I don't need any war trading at this point. We're at war, you know?

02:04:20.684 --> 02:04:24.080
It's time to fight the enemy. It's time to focus on them.

02:04:25.826 --> 02:04:30.420
If you constantly, like, you know, hit me with friendly fire,

02:04:31.483 --> 02:04:36.283
then it's like that takes away my focus. If I got to duck your bullets,

02:04:37.137 --> 02:04:39.896
then I might get hit with one of theirs.

02:04:40.949 --> 02:04:43.826
You know, now people are going to do what they want to do. And they're going

02:04:43.826 --> 02:04:46.416
to say, well, you know, we're generalists. You don't understand.

02:04:46.416 --> 02:04:47.850
Yada, yada, yada, this, that, and the other.

02:04:48.773 --> 02:04:50.231
I know greed when I see it.

02:04:51.537 --> 02:04:56.839
And just like you can condemn the greed that Donald Trump and all these folks,

02:04:57.470 --> 02:05:00.772
you know, are doing with our taxpayer dollars, right?

02:05:01.599 --> 02:05:07.536
Your greed is different. Your greed is clout chasing your fame or trying to

02:05:07.536 --> 02:05:11.648
make a name for yourself or trying to prove your bona fides, right?

02:05:12.588 --> 02:05:16.709
But it seems to me that if you got your own show on national television,

02:05:17.445 --> 02:05:19.106
I don't think you got anything else to prove.

02:05:19.885 --> 02:05:24.316
You know, if the people watch your show, you'll stay on. If the ratings are

02:05:24.316 --> 02:05:25.692
bad, they'll take it off.

02:05:26.989 --> 02:05:31.986
But obviously you've done enough to prove that you're legitimate enough to have

02:05:31.986 --> 02:05:34.747
a national show. You've paid your dues.

02:05:35.992 --> 02:05:42.568
So you don't have to continue to destroy or attempt to destroy people.

02:05:43.841 --> 02:05:46.567
There's a proposal on your team. The Republicans get it.

02:05:46.694 --> 02:05:51.706
Like I said, Kim Paxson As contemptible as he is, I promise you,

02:05:51.706 --> 02:05:55.602
if you watch Fox News, they're not going to bring any of that stuff up.

02:05:56.496 --> 02:05:58.552
They're going to sugarcoat it and all that stuff.

02:05:59.613 --> 02:06:03.175
Whether it's right or wrong, it's strategy. Right?

02:06:04.058 --> 02:06:09.508
And if you claim that you want this to end, then you need to have a strategy.

02:06:10.534 --> 02:06:14.472
See, Graham Plattner got taken out in the primary. Right?

02:06:15.469 --> 02:06:18.888
When it got too much to bear for folks, he had to drop out.

02:06:19.715 --> 02:06:25.251
And now you've got another candidate in Maine that can possibly win, right?

02:06:27.926 --> 02:06:32.436
If you keep trying to dig up stuff on your own people and it just gets closer

02:06:32.436 --> 02:06:36.563
and closer to time, there's literally like 60-some days before the election.

02:06:38.165 --> 02:06:41.306
It's time to focus in on it. The Republicans are getting ready.

02:06:41.306 --> 02:06:46.223
Look, the Republicans are getting ready to have a midterm convention. That's how bad it is.

02:06:47.023 --> 02:06:54.256
They want to have a moment on primetime TV in a midterm year to remind people,

02:06:54.256 --> 02:06:57.969
hey, we're not as bad as it may seem like we are.

02:06:59.182 --> 02:07:02.968
Now, of course, it's not going to go away with the plan because the president,

02:07:03.646 --> 02:07:07.570
is who he is. And it's basically going to be like, I'm not the bad guy.

02:07:08.519 --> 02:07:13.226
And all these guys, if they want my endorsement, have to agree with that.

02:07:14.682 --> 02:07:17.707
If they want my blessing, if they want my money from my PACs,

02:07:18.565 --> 02:07:19.944
this is really all about me.

02:07:20.449 --> 02:07:23.822
I'm just saying it's for the midterm, but it's really all about me.

02:07:24.764 --> 02:07:29.646
So it's not going to benefit the Republicans at all, but it's just going to

02:07:29.646 --> 02:07:33.089
remind American people, I need to go vote.

02:07:33.706 --> 02:07:38.087
And we need to get all those people that showed up on stage out.

02:07:39.465 --> 02:07:48.005
That's all it's really going to do. But if, you know, if our shows are trying

02:07:48.005 --> 02:07:53.815
to tear down candidates in states that we need to win, we need to win all of them in the U.S.

02:07:53.815 --> 02:07:56.214
Senate. Every last one needs to win.

02:07:57.112 --> 02:08:00.073
It's not like, well, we got to have four, you know.

02:08:00.421 --> 02:08:04.235
No, if we got a Democratic candidate running, all of them need to win.

02:08:04.235 --> 02:08:06.990
None of them are sacrificial, whether it's Ms.

02:08:08.285 --> 02:08:18.615
Perolta in Alaska or Angie in Florida or Dr. El Saeed in Michigan or Jackson

02:08:18.615 --> 02:08:21.305
in Maine or whoever, right?

02:08:21.943 --> 02:08:23.847
Stratton in Illinois. She's running.

02:08:24.985 --> 02:08:28.037
It's not a given that she'd go in. She's running.

02:08:28.987 --> 02:08:31.948
Well, I think she's running for governor. No, she's running for the Senate.

02:08:32.834 --> 02:08:37.145
Yeah. So, I mean, we got all these people running all over the place,

02:08:37.145 --> 02:08:39.420
and they all need to win. All of them.

02:08:40.362 --> 02:08:43.476
We're not even talking about a person running in Wyoming.

02:08:44.512 --> 02:08:48.568
Ah, we can't win that. Hey, you know, the way things are going,

02:08:49.625 --> 02:08:54.245
there's cattle ranchers in Wyoming that are not happy that Argentinian beef

02:08:54.245 --> 02:08:55.393
is about to flood the market.

02:08:56.805 --> 02:09:03.805
Nothing is a given. Nothing. We cannot surrender any seat. We cannot throw anybody

02:09:03.805 --> 02:09:05.973
under the bus at this point.

02:09:06.906 --> 02:09:13.031
It's time for us to fight the real enemy and stop fighting amongst ourselves.

02:09:14.078 --> 02:09:18.526
The primaries are over. The team has been selected.

02:09:19.700 --> 02:09:24.378
It is time to support and root for the team. I'm in Georgia,

02:09:24.611 --> 02:09:27.769
so John Ossoff is my guy for the U.S. Senate.

02:09:28.727 --> 02:09:33.619
At this event I was at, somebody brought Mike Collins in there.

02:09:35.666 --> 02:09:39.676
Let Mike Collins speak. There's none more black folk in the room and let Mike

02:09:39.676 --> 02:09:40.849
Collins speak to these black folks.

02:09:41.800 --> 02:09:45.854
We weren't hearing that because we know Mike Collins.

02:09:47.055 --> 02:09:51.266
We're not supporting him. So, you know,

02:09:52.550 --> 02:09:58.966
so I guess it's not really a controversy here in Georgia about who's on It's

02:09:58.966 --> 02:10:02.407
also for Senate and bottoms for governor.

02:10:03.085 --> 02:10:06.078
That's pretty much dealt with and done.

02:10:07.104 --> 02:10:12.080
So now the question becomes, what are the rest of the country going to do?

02:10:12.948 --> 02:10:19.194
You know, we got to get people elected in spite of gerrymandered districts like,

02:10:19.653 --> 02:10:24.732
Shamari Figures in Alabama or Justin Pearson in Tennessee, right?

02:10:26.475 --> 02:10:31.848
Get Ms. Janew elected in Vermont, even though the Republican is like,

02:10:31.987 --> 02:10:37.445
well, you know, I don't really like Trump. It's like, bruh, you don't hate him either.

02:10:40.185 --> 02:10:51.465
He got to go. It's like Minnesota, Flanagan, everybody, everybody that's running for the U.S.

02:10:51.465 --> 02:10:57.445
Senate, you got to get behind them and stop trying to find something to boost

02:10:57.445 --> 02:11:02.928
your ratings or get you a shot at some kind of a war down the line.

02:11:03.982 --> 02:11:08.760
Because once they get elected, they'll have enough. There will be real issues.

02:11:09.229 --> 02:11:14.092
And we'll be watching to see if those folks live up to their promises.

02:11:15.056 --> 02:11:17.046
Because that's when you start holding them accountable.

02:11:18.057 --> 02:11:22.825
You don't want to assassinate somebody because somebody, It was some guy that

02:11:22.825 --> 02:11:29.107
lived on the same block of Barack Obama that either made a terroristic threat or did something crazy.

02:11:29.943 --> 02:11:33.578
And he said because he lived on the same block and they asked him,

02:11:34.308 --> 02:11:35.399
I was aboard my neighbor.

02:11:36.174 --> 02:11:40.386
So Barack Obama had to deal with this guy. He he probably barely knew.

02:11:41.350 --> 02:11:44.795
But because he lived on the same block, he had to address that. Right.

02:11:48.736 --> 02:11:53.707
You don't want to go after the Republicans for who they associate with. Sometimes you do.

02:11:54.380 --> 02:11:59.410
Some of y'all, a lot of y'all do. But y'all equivocate with them.

02:12:00.101 --> 02:12:03.287
Y'all actually have those folks come on your show, right?

02:12:04.046 --> 02:12:08.574
See, if you really wanted to send a message about Hasan Piker,

02:12:09.125 --> 02:12:10.641
have him come on the show.

02:12:11.070 --> 02:12:14.663
Not the candidates you're trying to get elected. If you think he's the problem,

02:12:15.571 --> 02:12:20.426
have him come on the show and ask him the questions because of your position

02:12:20.426 --> 02:12:24.196
on this, because you don't you think you're hurting the people that you're that

02:12:24.196 --> 02:12:26.667
you claim to support. Put him on the spot.

02:12:27.365 --> 02:12:32.830
Don't put the candidates on the spot because a candidate's job is to get every vote they can.

02:12:33.627 --> 02:12:36.316
You know, tell you another quick story. I got to go.

02:12:36.716 --> 02:12:41.721
I got, but, and I may have told this story before, but when I ran for a tax collector, right,

02:12:42.804 --> 02:12:48.826
they had this big event in Raymond, Mississippi, and I gave my speech and all

02:12:48.826 --> 02:12:54.691
that, and there was this white guy who came up to me and was just like, oh man.

02:12:56.116 --> 02:13:00.246
That was amazing, I'm supporting you, whatever you need, da-da-da-da,

02:13:00.246 --> 02:13:02.078
yada-da-da, this is another, Right.

02:13:03.068 --> 02:13:08.714
And I say, cool. So the reporter, it was this guy named Danny McKenzie.

02:13:09.378 --> 02:13:12.076
And Danny was, I guess he lived down in Raymond. I don't know.

02:13:12.076 --> 02:13:14.051
But he was the organizer of the event.

02:13:14.952 --> 02:13:20.482
And we literally had to stand. It was a stump, literally a tree stump that we had to stand on to speak.

02:13:22.370 --> 02:13:27.437
Danny kind of pulled me aside afterwards. He said, I noticed this guy was really, really talking to you.

02:13:28.082 --> 02:13:31.420
He said, do you know who that guy is? And I said, I have no idea who he is.

02:13:32.233 --> 02:13:36.500
He said, that's James Richardson. And I said, oh, snap.

02:13:37.075 --> 02:13:40.645
He said, yeah. I said, okay, well, glad you told me that.

02:13:41.318 --> 02:13:44.974
Now, Danny didn't have to do that, right? But he told me that.

02:13:46.710 --> 02:13:51.200
Okay I get it so Mr.

02:13:51.200 --> 02:13:57.130
Richardson was the reason my opponent at that time was in the office Mr.

02:13:57.130 --> 02:14:00.327
Richardson had been accused of stealing some money,

02:14:01.634 --> 02:14:08.910
and he resigned and so the governor appointed this guy Pepper to be the tax

02:14:08.910 --> 02:14:14.407
collector and then Pepper turned around and switched parties and became Republican so So...

02:14:16.222 --> 02:14:20.761
I was the first or second person to run against him after he became a Republican.

02:14:22.017 --> 02:14:25.662
And, you know, it was the long shot because it was a good old boy network.

02:14:25.662 --> 02:14:30.058
Pepper was in the good old boy network because they were flipping.

02:14:30.839 --> 02:14:33.202
He had already just made the switch. Others had not.

02:14:34.710 --> 02:14:38.120
And so the courthouse gang is what they called them.

02:14:39.374 --> 02:14:44.580
And so, you know, but Richardson was the reason why Pepper was in there.

02:14:45.410 --> 02:14:51.872
So naturally, I didn't want Pepper saying, oh, well, Richardson is helping that

02:14:51.872 --> 02:14:54.702
young man run. He's trying to control him and blah, blah, this.

02:14:54.702 --> 02:14:56.711
I didn't want to give him the opportunity.

02:14:57.082 --> 02:15:01.662
And the reason why I knew that, because Danny McKinney did something that he

02:15:01.662 --> 02:15:04.341
didn't have to do. And he gave me a heads up.

02:15:05.259 --> 02:15:07.512
Because he saw that I was, you know, being friendly with him.

02:15:07.542 --> 02:15:10.809
I was being friendly with everybody. Because I'm trying to give votes.

02:15:11.924 --> 02:15:18.502
And, you know, but Danny didn't do a story saying Richardson supports Fleming

02:15:18.502 --> 02:15:21.222
and none of that, because he could have, because he witnessed,

02:15:21.222 --> 02:15:22.628
he saw Richardson talking to me.

02:15:22.763 --> 02:15:26.731
He could have been an ambitious reporter and done that, but he didn't do that.

02:15:27.092 --> 02:15:31.884
He gave me a heads up, right? Say, hey, be careful.

02:15:32.007 --> 02:15:36.812
Now, if later on, after he gave me the heads up, I was hanging out with Richardson

02:15:36.812 --> 02:15:39.922
and doing this and doing that, well, then that's on me. Now,

02:15:39.922 --> 02:15:41.092
I do have to explain that.

02:15:42.030 --> 02:15:47.243
But again, I can't control the fact that Mr. Richardson is going to vote for me in the election.

02:15:48.132 --> 02:15:53.112
I can't control the fact that he probably went to his neighbors in Raymond and

02:15:53.112 --> 02:15:55.687
said, hey, I'm voting for that Fleming guy.

02:15:56.751 --> 02:16:00.745
His fear of influence. I don't know how many votes Mr. Richardson got for me,

02:16:01.534 --> 02:16:03.171
but he wasn't a part of my campaign.

02:16:03.874 --> 02:16:11.505
But I couldn't control him campaigning for me either because that's not how that works. I mean...

02:16:13.387 --> 02:16:18.557
Sure, there's some people with some questionable backgrounds that are fans of

02:16:18.557 --> 02:16:23.997
these reporters asking these questions, right? They can't control that.

02:16:25.011 --> 02:16:29.427
I mean, how would you feel if somebody went up to a reporter and said,

02:16:29.427 --> 02:16:31.634
well, hey, I heard Charles Manson loves your show.

02:16:32.429 --> 02:16:34.994
What do you think about that? What can you do?

02:16:35.849 --> 02:16:40.249
Yeah, I think Manson's still alive. I don't know. But what can you do?

02:16:41.293 --> 02:16:45.496
Sirhan, Sirhan. Big fan of your show. What are you going to do about that?

02:16:46.289 --> 02:16:50.867
Nothing. You can't. How can you even answer that question? What do you do?

02:16:51.824 --> 02:16:58.687
So if a podcaster or somebody that's throwing out flame-throwing takes says,

02:16:58.687 --> 02:17:02.423
I support this candidate, the candidate has no control of that.

02:17:03.306 --> 02:17:09.147
And, you know, I've yet to see a Republican denounce any of the crazy folks

02:17:09.147 --> 02:17:14.254
that's on their side because they understand their enemy is the Democrats.

02:17:15.395 --> 02:17:19.075
Now, if you want to make an ethical argument, so be it.

02:17:19.960 --> 02:17:23.647
But in reality, the whole concept of battle and war and all that,

02:17:23.861 --> 02:17:27.466
it's really not an ethical concept anyway, but we do it.

02:17:28.997 --> 02:17:31.362
So, you know, I just...

02:17:33.597 --> 02:17:37.727
Really bothered me. And if you agree with that, cool. If you don't agree with

02:17:37.727 --> 02:17:39.282
that, let me know either way.

02:17:40.351 --> 02:17:44.217
But that's just from my experience. That's just the frustration.

02:17:44.217 --> 02:17:50.160
I want to see Angie Nixon, Dr. El Saeed, and every Democrat on the ticket win.

02:17:51.582 --> 02:17:55.067
Will that happen? Probably not. The young sister in Oklahoma,

02:17:55.067 --> 02:17:59.057
Thomas, the nurse, you know, they're trying to jump on her.

02:17:59.377 --> 02:18:02.032
It's like, bruh, she is the nominee.

02:18:02.774 --> 02:18:09.387
Get behind her. It hurt my heart when I was in running for the U.S.

02:18:09.387 --> 02:18:15.067
Senate in Mississippi, and Shamari's mom was running for the Senate in Alabama

02:18:15.067 --> 02:18:19.447
at the same time, and the folks in Alabama were at my fundraiser,

02:18:20.398 --> 02:18:24.540
and basically saying that Miss Vivian couldn't win in their own state.

02:18:25.607 --> 02:18:29.627
And I told them, I said, I appreciate y'all coming over and showing support

02:18:29.627 --> 02:18:34.951
and all that, but Ms. Vivian can win if y'all get behind her.

02:18:35.696 --> 02:18:39.069
And I broke it down to them. Now, neither one of us won.

02:18:39.590 --> 02:18:47.297
But I'm hoping that my conversation with them at least gave them some kind of

02:18:47.297 --> 02:18:49.888
a commitment to at least show face for her.

02:18:50.885 --> 02:18:55.137
But that hurt my heart. It's like, well, you know, we can't win.

02:18:55.137 --> 02:18:59.843
Why even have a primary, right? Why accept the money?

02:19:00.782 --> 02:19:05.205
Because that's how parties initially make their money is off these filing fees.

02:19:06.285 --> 02:19:11.783
So if you don't want anybody to run, then don't accept any filing fees for that position.

02:19:12.257 --> 02:19:16.983
You're a private organization. You can do that. The Supreme Court said that you're a private club.

02:19:17.915 --> 02:19:21.727
So you can deny membership. If you don't want to have a primary because you

02:19:21.727 --> 02:19:24.972
don't think you can win, then don't accept the money from people wanting to run.

02:19:26.001 --> 02:19:28.029
But if you're a true political party...

02:19:29.825 --> 02:19:33.228
In every seat. And you compete for every seat.

02:19:34.306 --> 02:19:39.275
So not only do you accept the money, but you expend your resources to make sure these people win.

02:19:40.305 --> 02:19:43.661
Stop trying to tear them down from behind the scenes and all that.

02:19:44.393 --> 02:19:49.845
Because if this fool Rogers gets in in Michigan because somebody said,

02:19:49.845 --> 02:19:52.735
well, I didn't like the fact that he hung out with Hassan Piker.

02:19:53.304 --> 02:19:56.851
Bruh, that's one less vote toward impeachment.

02:19:57.818 --> 02:20:03.872
I mean, the goal should be to get every Senate seat available.

02:20:04.561 --> 02:20:08.438
If there's 36 seats out there, I don't know how many, 33, 36.

02:20:09.913 --> 02:20:15.188
We need to try to get all of them. Every last one of them is on the ballot. Every last one.

02:20:16.186 --> 02:20:19.009
Then you won't even have to worry about the conversation about a filibuster.

02:20:20.163 --> 02:20:25.805
Get them all. Help these people win. Stop trying to take them down on the slide

02:20:25.805 --> 02:20:29.055
because they don't fit your perfect definition, right?

02:20:32.270 --> 02:20:36.207
They don't meet the political availability test in your mind.

02:20:37.061 --> 02:20:41.464
They are the Democratic nominee. They are the team. Support the team.

02:20:42.636 --> 02:20:44.249
All right, that's all I got. Thank y'all.