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The Keri Croft Show
The Keri Croft Show is a podcast for people building something BADASS. A business. A dream. A life that actually feels like yours.
Hosted by Keri Croft, this podcast explores the real stories behind the build, what it takes to start, and more importantly, the Mental Athleticism™ it takes to stay in it when the excitement fades and the work gets real.
The Keri Croft Show features conversations with founders, creatives, musicians and people in the middle of building something meaningful, without the highlight reel.
🎙 New episodes drop every Thursday.
The Keri Croft Show
Professor Hasan Jeffries on Humanity, History, and This Moment in America
I don’t usually sit down with history professors, but after this conversation, I might need to start.
In this episode, I’m joined by Hasan Kwame Jeffries, College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University, and I’ll be honest, I was little intimidated.
What followed was one of those conversations that stretches you. Not because it’s heavy, but because it’s honest.
We talk about history as story, not nostalgia. About why banning books is a hard no. About capitalism, debt, incarceration, and the long shadow of slavery and how those systems didn’t disappear, they just changed shape. Professor Jeffries breaks down complex ideas in a way that’s accessible, grounded, and deeply human.
He also shares a story about his dad, a baseball call that “was too close to take,” and how that lesson shaped his discipline, his truth-telling, and the way he shows up in the world.
We get into what today’s college students are really like post-COVID and what it means to live through this moment in America without fear-mongering or performance.
This isn’t a lecture. It’s me asking real questions, sometimes for dummies (my words, not his), and having a conversation that left me thinking long after the cameras stopped rolling.
If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, confused, or just hungry for context about how we got here this episode is for you.
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SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you very much. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for gracing me with your presence today.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for inviting me.
SPEAKER_01:Let's talk through your outfit. Let's try let's do a fit check. So, I mean, this you have me at the hat. Why'd you take the hat off?
SPEAKER_00:Gentleman doesn't wear a hat indoors.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, damn it. Well, he had a really cool hat, but he look you look equally as as suave. Thank you. And then you got your suspenders and your shoes. I I saw the shoes too. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Do you always dress like this with your cufflinks?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. It's the work attire.
SPEAKER_01:It you wear you you dress like that every time.
SPEAKER_00:Every day.
SPEAKER_01:Never miss.
SPEAKER_00:Never miss.
SPEAKER_01:Do you do most professors at Ohio State dress like this?
SPEAKER_00:No, most professors are wearing, you know, jeans and you're not doing that.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not doing that. You're showing up and showing out. Yeah. I like that about you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What's your skincare routine?
SPEAKER_00:Uh nothing serious. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little uh you're just blessed.
SPEAKER_01:Hashtag.
SPEAKER_00:Stay off the, you know, don't smoke.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, stay off that. Stay off that stuff. Um, you live clean? Yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Little drink here and there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. That's about it. But I've occasional.
SPEAKER_01:I I assume you're like a high class, like, you know, like take the glass like this, do some bourbon kind of guy. I don't see you like, you know, throwing back like a garage beer for some reason. Am I wrong?
SPEAKER_00:No, no, no. But I'm, you know, I'm a I'm I'm a simple man of simple beer tastes, not fancy at all. Okay. This working class guy from Brooklyn. So give me a give me a Heineken, whatever my dad drank.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, good. All right. See, so here we're we're peeling you back a little because you come in looking like this. So I'm gonna I'm gonna you know think one way. Now we're getting in there a little bit. Fair enough. You look like you work out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What do you do?
SPEAKER_00:Nothing, nothing big. You know, I'm not a I'm not a gym guy, basement, you know, uh beach body fitness. They've renamed it.
SPEAKER_01:Are you still into beach body? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Good for you. Because I'm not a I'm not a I'm not I'm not I'm not much of an extrovert, right? So I like to just go downstairs in the quiet. I don't even want to think about it. Like I've never been like, okay, I gotta do this and this. I don't want to think about it. So just put it, pop in the video, do the routine. I don't think about it. Give me my 25, 35, 45, and I'm done.
SPEAKER_01:So what is your average? See, this is this interests me. Because I'm I'm in my garage right now alone. I've got the sauna, I've got the Peloton Tread Plus, and I've got my C10, which is like a commercial grade, like where you can do all the cables, the bench press, and all that. Yeah. And I need the solace. Yeah. So I because I just I just sold my fitness company. I don't know if you knew I that I okay. So I sold my interest now. So for the last decade, it's been the opposite. It's like every time you walk through the door, you know, it's people, it's you know, you can really easily get lost in the noise and all the stuff going around around you. And so for me, the last like year and a half has been really interesting because I'm like, you know what, I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna go in the garage. Like last winter, I have no insulation in there. I was out there in the negative. Remember how cold it got? I was out there. Like I had frostbite on my face, but it would feel so good once I got started.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And you're like, damn it, I can do this. Like no one's doing this shit, you know? So you do you normally do 25 minutes? Or is it all a matter of like what you have that morning? It's like I'm just gonna get up, yeah, yeah, trick myself into saying 25 minutes, and then maybe if I go 45.
SPEAKER_00:No, so this is this is why I like the videos. I don't, you know, whatever it is, they okay, 35, 45, whatever the routine is, that's what I'm doing. So I don't do anything extra. I don't want to think about it. I just want to do it and keep it moving.
SPEAKER_01:Do you do it seven days a week?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, usually. When you know, if I'm traveling, I try to get it in. So I always, and and it, and if I got three kids, right? So sometimes it's early morning, sometimes it's afternoon, but I try to mark it off the calendar. It's the one thing I can control.
SPEAKER_01:That's true. Before what time you do it?
SPEAKER_00:It it really depends.
SPEAKER_01:Is it usually in the morning?
SPEAKER_00:It used to be. Like when I was, you know, my my my wife was away overseas, and so I was had to get the girls up to go to school. And so then I was like in this 4:30, 5 a.m. But I'm not a morning person, so that was really like a challenge. Yeah. Um, so you know, I after come home from after teaching, get it in. So I I don't have in my ideal world, I would have wake up, exercise, start the day, maybe do something at night if I have some energy.
SPEAKER_01:I love it.
SPEAKER_00:But here it just fit it in.
SPEAKER_01:And then do you eat well?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, you know, I I'm not, I I have I need to change my dietary habits as my metabolism is slowing down with age. I can't just, you know, I have to get serious now about that stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Well, whatever's going on, you look damn good. Your energy is, I'm feeling the energy is like a 12 out of 10. So keep doing what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. We'll do.
SPEAKER_01:All right. So you, like you said, you're from Brooklyn.
SPEAKER_00:Once you, you, you, you, you're born and raised in Brooklyn, you're always from Brooklyn, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So, but you know, I left to go to college, never went back. So I've been living in Ohio longer than I've been living in Brooklyn.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, but the roots, the deep, deep roots always Brooklyn. It's always I can hear it in your voice too. It's always there. Like you have that like edge. I can tell like you get a couple of Heineken's in you, boy. Let's turn on some ice cube. We're gonna, we're gonna be something's popping. So in your intake form, I always ask people, I say, you know, is there a memory? And and you you hit it. Like a lot of people will give me like a broad stroke or something. I'm like, no, I'm looking for like one little memory that like may have just been a moment in time that like you just always remember. And you talked about your dad.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And you were playing, was it baseball?
SPEAKER_00:Little league baseball. Little league baseball. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I love this story about how he threw the third ball and it wasn't a strike, but he called it a strike. Why don't you tell that story?
SPEAKER_00:So, you know, I was I I was good, and I and I knew I was good. I'm nine years old as well, right? But I'm but I'm I'm I'm good at this, right? And he played college ball, so he was good. And one day in Brooklyn, you know, Prospect Park, heart of Brooklyn, New York, literally game, umpire didn't show up. And so the coaches are like, look, you know, any parents. My dad was like, Yeah, you know, I used to play ball. I'm happy to happy to umpire the game. And it was so I get up there and I'm having a pretty good game. I remember this distinctly, right? I'm doing my thing, right? And I was flashy. I mean, this is this is this is early 80s, right? So I got, I mean, I'm looking like Ricky Henderson, and this is going back, right? I mean, I have my models on the heroes on the wall. And so I get up there and I work the count deep. So it's a three-two, three balls, two strikes, right? And, you know, in comes, you know, the pitch that to me is clearly low and outside. And, you know, I'm I'm literally taking, about to take my base, dropping the bat and headed to first. And my dad just rings me up with enthusiasm, right? A full-on out. And I stop and I look, and I'm like, I mean, I can't say anything, but I'm like, dad, like how like what's going on, like how could you do this, right? And it was, so I'm out, right? So, you know, strike three, son, go take your seat on the bench. And afterward, like, I'm both still in shock and also like really pissed off, right? Because I'm like, hot, like one, one, I'm your son, right? Two, it was a ball, like, what are you doing? And we're going home and we used to ride the subways, you know, nine, ten years old, New York City, this is what you just did. But when my dad would come to a game, he had a little 10-speed bike, nothing fancy, no mountain bikes at the time, right? And I used to ride on the handlebars, and we would ride home, you know, 20 minutes from the park. And I'm not saying anything to him, because now I'm getting, you know, I'm I'm I'm thinking about this, I'm stewing in it, right? You can call me out on this BS Paul, right? And then finally I said, I said, Dad, how could you call me out? It was clearly a ball. And he says, it was too close to take. Never let anything that close just pass by. You gotta swing at it. And I'm like, Yeah, but it was a ball. And he goes, Yeah, but it was too close to take. So this is I'm nine years old at this time, right? So for the next 40 years, my dad just passed away a year and a half ago. I would walk in a room on random occasions, and I would just randomly say, ball. And he'd be like, too close to take. So this goes on. I mean, for years, for years. And then finally one day I sat down, I was like, I was like, Dad, look, let's let's be honest, let's be honest. Like, it was a ball, wasn't it? And he sort of sits back and he's like, probably, but it was also too close to take. You gotta swing at that stuff, man. Right? He's like, nobody's ever gonna give you anything, and I'm not gonna give you anything either. You had to swing at it. I was like, fair enough.
SPEAKER_01:That's such a lesson. It is I love it. I read it and I was like, damn.
SPEAKER_00:He was a social worker, so he was always teaching.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you were super close with your dad.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, as close as you know, we weren't best buddies, right? I mean, I think him as a a product of sort of the Jim Crow era and you know, raising two boys in New York City, Brooklyn, the 70s, 80s, like there was a he wasn't a touchy-feely kind of guy. Um, but he always said, you know, come here, I love you. You know, I mean, he was sort of a you know, a a uh a a veteran, you know. So he was like a tough, but he was also a social worker, substance abuse counselor, right? So he understood sort of that there needed to be affection and love. So he demonstrated, he showed it, but we weren't like picking up the phone, like, hey dad, let me tell you what's going on, you know. He was like, check it in, y'all okay? Yeah, we okay.
SPEAKER_01:That's just that I feel like that's that's so great though, and so typical for a lot of males. I feel like when I think about my husband, too, it's like, you know, with my son, the discipline and like trying to show him how to be a man. I mean the kid's seven years old, you know. It's like, but when are you gonna start showing them? Yeah, right. But I think it's like a male-to-male thing, but he it sounds like he was always there for you.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. No, no, for sure. He was always there.
SPEAKER_01:You know, which not a lot of people can say that.
SPEAKER_00:No, I'm very fortunate in that sense.
SPEAKER_01:So when did you decide, like, okay, American history, this is it, this is my calling?
SPEAKER_00:I was always interested in history as a subject, as a story, because history is nothing but a story, right? It's a story from which you extract meaning. And I was always interested in it as a subject. But what I was learning in school wasn't really helping me understand what I was seeing in the world. So, you know, I was riding a subway. My brother and I were, you know, I was seven years old, I think. Seven, and he's two years old, about nine. And we're taking this train by ourselves to go to school, right? Parents are like, hey, gotta go to work, yeah. Go to school, you know, took us to train station two times. This is where you go, this is how you start, this is how you get off, go. So this is New York City in the 70s and 80s, there's a lot going on. And what I'm seeing, none of it is being explained in real time in school. So again, being attracted to history as meaning, as story, as meaning, I was just drawn to that and looking for stories that explained what I was what I was seeing. So I entered college as a history major. Like I had already made that, I had already made that decision. Um, you know, when I was um in high school, I was actually in a in a magnet program, a medical science magnet program. Uh, and that's the way you gain sort of segregated schools in New York City, right? And you had to figure out what magnet program to be in. So I was in a medical science magnet program. I was gonna be a medical researcher and in and find the cure for cancer and make my grandma proud. And I was actually doing an internship up at Columbia University, taking a two and a half hour train ride during the summer to get a small little paycheck, but it was a paycheck, uh, in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology. And I spent a summer watching stuff spin in a room of four scientists who couldn't hold a conversation. I was like, I can't, I can't, I cannot do this. But every day when I got off the train, the A train, up to up in, up in Harlem, Columbia's really part of Harlem, I would make a left turn and that would take me to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where the research lab was. But if I made a right turn, I went, it was the abandoned, boarded-up Audubon ballroom. And the Audubon ballroom is where Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. And so every day I had this decision to make. I was like, that's where I really want to go and just explore that place. But instead, I'm headed into this lab to look at these folk who can't hold a conversation. So at the end of the summer, we were going around the room, and people had invested in us to become these future medical researchers, and they're saying, they get to, oh, what do you want to do? What did you learn? What did you learn? And they got to me and they're like, What did you learn? And I was like, I learned this ain't what I want to do. And sometimes you got to have those experiences. Truth teller. Truth teller. And so that's when I was like, Yeah, I need to pursue history as a as a sort of career, the study of history as sort of a career goal.
SPEAKER_01:Is when you say like you describe yourself, like you're a truth teller, you're a truth seeker, did that come from your passion of history, or you've always felt that way?
SPEAKER_00:No, I think, I think it's a mix, right? And so part of it is, you know, you like to think that you come up with all these things and like this is who you are, and you're sort of self-made in that way. But, you know, in truth, you know, a lot of that is instilled in me by sort of community, my dad, my uncle, you know, growing up in sort of the civil rights, black power era, there were times when we were not going to baseball games on Saturday to play a little league because my parents, my dad was taking us up, you know, to Harlem to listen to these activists speak, and we're like, we just want to watch cartoons. And they're like, no, you're gonna learn something. And so being exposed to those who were, you know, committed to that, right? Just sort of making sense of the world and speaking truth to power, you know, I that that that sunk in. Uh, and so in a very real way, that's sort of an extension of those who I saw and really respected and admired.
SPEAKER_01:You know, today's world, it is uh, it's wild. It feels wild. But I mean, I'm sure back, you know, it felt wild then too, right? It's all relative. It's like where you are in time. You know, as I was researching the Constitution of the United States here and I have my scroll. Don't think I didn't study up for you. I didn't just wake up this morning and go, oh, I got Professor Jeffries on the horn today. But this quote that I was reading to you, it says, America's crises aren't new. They're constitutional hangovers from the unresolved moral hypocrisy. Yeah. And so I think that's a great starting point. Yeah. Um, because not only is the world crazy, but like even like, you know, a couple years ago when it was still crazy, I was reading, was it 1619? So I was reading that book, and I was like, damn, what the hell? Like, what's going on? Right. And so just the idea of like what really happened and what is history, and like what is supposed to be taught, and like how we've whitewashed, I guess, everything to make this to romanticize what really happened. Like, what is your like stance on all like the whole, like, what are we supposed to be teaching and banning things? And all I mean, I know it's a loaded question. Yeah, no, I mean it's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:It's the question that we all need to be asking and discussing and trying and trying to answer. Um, I'll begin quickly with should we what should we be banning and should we be banning things? No, we should not be banning things. That's the worst thing in the world we should do. That's a hard no, right? And in in addition to being a sort of professor, I also am a member of the board member of Ohio's ACL ACLU, the ACLU of Ohio, and we do not believe in banning things. I mean, that's critically important. We should all be exposed to whatever sort of opinions and truths and books and and things we disagree with, right? I mean, I I I always challenge my students. I'm like, look, there's stuff that I'm gonna say to you that we're gonna learn about that is going to affirm your beliefs, but there's also stuff that we're gonna learn about that are gonna challenge your beliefs. Now, two one of two things is gonna happen. Either you're gonna come out believing even more deeply in what you believe in, or you're gonna come out thinking differently about what you believe. And both are totally fine, right? You just have to be open to the idea of having your I your ideas sort of challenged and thought. It's all make you stronger, or make you either way is gonna make you stronger, right? That's what I believe. So no book banning. Let's let's let's let's mix that immediately. And the other thing is, you know, we are obsessed, and particularly in America, had a a friend, Reggie Gibson, uh um literary performer, and he and he said this uh in a in a small documentary film, and it just blew me away. He said, he says, we as Americans, we hate history. When I heard him say that, I was like, bruh, come on, man. I'm a history professor, man. You can't be saying stuff like that. Like, what are you saying? He said, but then he explained. He said, we hate history, but we love nostalgia. Right? We love stories about the past that make us feel comfortable in the present, which is totally cool, right? But that ain't history, right? And when we when we talk about whitewash, we're talking about sanitizing, right? We're talking about, especially for white folk in America, we've been doing this, we've been doing this for generations, right? Conjuring stories about the past that make us feel comfortable in the present. And it becomes deeply personal. This is also one of the things that I found, like, and why it becomes challenging to sort of talk and teach about these things, is that we receive our understanding of the past, the stories of the past, not simply from books and unknown, unfamiliar authors that may be assigned, but we receive them from people we love and care about, right? From teachers who we respect and admire, from siblings, from parents, from grandparents. And when we start to look at those aspects of history that make us uncomfortable, that contradict those sort of those nostalgic narratives that we inherited, suddenly we're not just challenging a narrative, we're actually challenging our feelings, our love for those who we hold dear. That's why it becomes so challenging. I mean, I have to tell my students, like, look, I I this ain't personal, right? This I got nothing against Mimaw, right? But what Mima told you wasn't right, right? So, I mean, that's part of part of the challenge, right? Uh but we're also, you know, gotta be clear, because there's a lot of talk about, you know, if you talk about slavery and it's about shame and blame, like nobody's blaming anybody for any of this. Like, no, no little white kid, you know, Kylie wasn't alive. During the Jim Crow era or during slavery, she's not responsible for that. But she is responsible for that.
SPEAKER_01:But when you say nobody's blaming, don't you think some people kind of are though? Doesn't it feel like there is some blame or some sort of thing? I mean, I feel like there's like blame for slavery? I don't know if it's blame for slavery or like the situation we're in today with race, or if if people are having contradictory emotions or something, and that it's like certain fault. I don't know. I feel like we're still people are paying sins of the past sometimes.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Well, I th I think we gotta be clear. Like we are still living with the legacy of hundreds of years of deeply institutionalized racial discrimination.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right? That that that should not be debatable. And it still impacts people's lives. So, in that sense, but the creation of that and the perpetuation of that in the past isn't anybody's fault today.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:But we have to be aware that it exists. And just as people are harmed by that, there are also people who are privileged and benefited by it.
SPEAKER_01:Agreed. And I think that's I think that's where people get, I mean, you just said it perfectly, of course, because you're the I mean you're prof Jeffries. But I think that's where people get defensive. Yes. You know, where it's like, I don't think people are trying to blame you for what happened in the past. But if you can't look at the situation today and say there are still residual things happening that are keeping people down today from this, that's where and I agree with that. I mean, there's no doubt that that's the case. Stress and inflammation take a toll on your body and your wellness. Relax, restore, and rejuvenate at Panacea Luxury Spa Boutique. Book any service of$100 or more and enjoy two hours in our luxury amenities. Unwind in our Himalayan salt saunas, recharge in our wet retreat space with a eucalyptus steam room, hot hydrotherapy pool, and cold plunge. Then drift into deep relaxation with our hanging loungers. What's your panacea? We'll help you find it. Who says you need a special occasion to feel like a celeb? I mean, stress is real, life is busy, and your scalp? Yeah, it deserves some love too. That's where Headspace by Mia Santiago comes in. Treat yourself or someone who deserves it to a luxurious scalp treatment and a killer blowout or cut because nothing says main character energy, honey, like a fresh style from celebrity stylist Mia and her team. And because we love a good deal, mention the Carrie Croft show and get 20% off your service or any gift card for somebody in your life that you love. Headspace by Mia Santiago, because great hair days shouldn't be rare.
SPEAKER_00:It is.
SPEAKER_01:But let's let's go back to like the idea of systematic, you know, if you have privilege versus not having privilege and going all the way back in time to like when America was born.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Which we're like gonna be 250 years old. Is that crazy?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um so what are those words, these words like um sharecropping? Is that what it was? So sharecropping, like slavery slavery's abolished. Yeah. And please correct me because I am a this is called American history for dummies. Okay. You're doing good. So slavery's abolished, but then you kind of wrap this whole like let's hold the man down still by doing sharecropping, which back in the day was basically saying, okay, you can have part of my land and we're gonna plant some seeds. And then when that shit comes to fruition, I'm gonna take not only the best part of the crop, but I'm also gonna take like some revenue. I'm gonna make sure that I'm a leg up. So you're still like, you're still holding somebody down, calling it, wrapping it something else. But then in today's world, that still exists in just other ways. Yeah. Like with certain debt, like certain ways to give high credit cards or like ways that you continue to hold people down. There's many examples of that. So to say it doesn't exist today or isn't it a residual consequence, I think you're like not paying attention.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, we live in America, and there's one of the things that's a constant in America is capitalism. And one of the central components of capitalism is actually debt, right? And debt has been used. There's like good debt and bad debt, right? I mean, this you know, you're a businesswoman, right? I mean, good debt, you know, bad debt is credit card debt, right? Good debt is a mortgage, good debt is, you know, some uh uh a line of credit, a home equity line of credit, a business line of credit. So we've always dealt with these sort of questions of debt, but debt can also shackle you. Uh and one of the things that we saw coming out of slavery is the use of debt to tie African American laborers back to the land. So we we we one of the things that we don't do or that we do too quickly is we stop talking about the institution of slavery, right? When slavery ends 1865, it's like sometimes I, you know, I look at my students, I'm like, what did y'all think? Like white Southerners were like, oh, my bad. Like, we ain't know you want to be free, right? And then everything was cool. But but no, white Southerners, in particular, we're talking about the South, they still they tried to recreate the labor controls that they lost with the institution of slavery. Because slavery is an economic system. That's why it's around for 250 years, 100 years after the founding. It's an economic system. People are making money off of it, and it's dependent upon controlling black labor. And so they're looking for a new way to control black labor, and they settle upon sharecropping because white former enslavers had land but no labor. African Americans had labor but no land. So it begins as a compromise, right? Black people want land because they understand that it's an agrarian society. They want land of their own. But it's never, it's not happening. There's no redistribution of land. It could have been, never was. So they enter into these agreements that on the surface are equitable, but in reality, as you explained by the end, they're saddled with debt. And at the time, if you owed a debt to somebody, including uh particularly an employer, you could not leave that person's employee. That was a law. So they get shackled by debt. And if we look at sort of the ways in which debt has continued to play out and evolve over the 20th century and now into the 21st century, we see the ways in which debt is still shackling people and leading to different kinds of unfreed.
SPEAKER_01:How do you deal with political conversations in this climate?
SPEAKER_00:I have them.
SPEAKER_01:But like how do you so do you do you subscribe to one side or the other? Or do you in what sense? In like politics.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Democrat.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. And then I vote Democrat.
SPEAKER_00:I like to think of myself as an independent.
SPEAKER_01:How do you sort of like, if you have someone who's like a big MAGA or someone who's super republic, how do you sort of like you have a very Van Jones type vibe. And I love, when I say I love him, gotcha. Love him. Like I just feel like it would it'd be very hard, I think, to kind of like get you in a space where you weren't, you know, rational.
SPEAKER_00:I try to be I try to be rational. I I do. I try to think these things through. But I will say in this particular moment, something that does make sort of conversations about these issues, particularly political conversations, difficult. I mean, I grew up in a in a household in which we discussed politics all the time. I mean, it is what we did. It was how we understood and and made sense of the world that was around us. So I'm I'm a bit of a political creature. My brother's in politics. So like we we but there's two things that both my brother and I and my dad as well, like choose not to discuss. We'll debate, we'll debate anything. We'll do like sports, colors. I mean, this is just how we grew up. Two things we will not debate. We'll not debate somebody's humanity. I I don't do that. Right? That that that's not a topic for discussion. If you want, if you don't recognize somebody's humanity, then we don't have anything to discuss, whether that's because of their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, their immigration status, I'm not interested in that conversation. I need you to recognize their humanity. So not debating that. I'm also not debating religion. We can discuss religion, but I'm not debating religion. Especially in America, the the three, the Abrahamic religions, right, which are all related Judaism, Islam, uh, and Christianity. Because all three of those, at the center of them, is faith. And faith is belief in the absence of fact. So there's nothing, and I'm a historian, so there's nothing factual that I could present to you that would move you off of a particular position that's rooted in your faith, right? Because that's the power of faith. You don't need to have a tangible fact to understand and believe it. Which is fine. I get it. But we are in a moment now where, particularly on the political right, the politics has become like religion. Where you cannot offer objective facts to move a person off of a position or to better understand their position, because their politics have become like a religion. It's become a faith. And those conversations I'm not really interested in having, right? Because it's not a policy debate. There's nothing I can present to you. And there's nothing that you could really offer me that could help me move, that could shift me one way or the other, because you're not basing it in fact. That I think is really, really problematic of the moment that we are in.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I say it's scary to me, but I think, again, like I said before, I mean, every person who's gone through something in history, they think it's scary. You know, because you know, you know how you get where when someone's really old, like let's say they're 80, 85, they're like, oh shit, it's coming to an end. We're all gonna die. I'm sorry, I'm like that. I'm getting older and I'm like, oh God, it's the end of time. What's happening? You know?
SPEAKER_00:Maybe right.
SPEAKER_01:Are you a real religious guy? Like, are you deep in your spirit, like spirituality?
SPEAKER_00:More spiritual. I'm I'm a Christian. I'm not a very good one, but I think that's that's what you should be, right? And that's the whole point of it. Trying to get better.
SPEAKER_01:So, what are the students right now? Like, what are they talking about? What's the vibe? Yeah how are you connecting at Ohio State with these kids?
SPEAKER_00:That's a really good question. Uh, because students change, right? I mean, the there's we think about um historians classify generations as sort of about 20 years, right? But for students, um it's been my observation that a generation is really about seven years. About about five to seven years, about seven years, you'll get a new the students will be thinking differently and engaging in the world differently. And if we think about sort of students who I'm encountering now at Ohio State, like their formative years were COVID. I mean, that was their experience. And and that's we're still trying, and and COVID at a particular stage of their development. So there was a moment, you know, last year, about the happens quickly. Remember, it's the seven years is that sort of window where I'm looking at these students and I'm like, I don't understand you all, right? Like what, like, how are y'all like moving through this world, right? Because, and it was this mix. And I had a colleague who explained this, I was like, I'm not what I'm giving, I'm not getting back, right? And this was quick because going into 2020, into, I mean, these students were like the students I would get, and I teach courses on civil rights and politics. I get students who are really energized. I mean, it was beautiful. I was rolling out the ball on the basketball court, sitting back, crossing my arms, and like playing. They were like designing plays, right? I mean, it was fantastic. Three years later, these kids are looking at me like, we gotta read this. I'm like, yeah, that's the whole point. They had, it was this mix of like really high level of entitlement. Like, I don't really feel well, so I don't think I should have to do this, and insecurity, right? And those two together are just like, what do I do with you all? But that has begun to that has begun to turn just as quickly as it sort of shifted in that direction, and I changed the way I approached, because I used I had all this cool stuff, right? I was like, you know, we're doing debates and discussions and, you know, I mean, all these cool things and looking at websites and all this other stuff. And I was like, but I'm not getting from you all at the pause. I was like, I'm not getting from you all what I need to get out of you all in terms of where you're starting and where you're ending. And so, you know, last year I was like, all right, we're done with the cool stuff. Y'all just gonna sit here, you're gonna listen to me lecture, because I need you to know what I'm trying to teach you. So, you know, it shifted. But they're but they're there. And I didn't know if they were gonna be there, but they're there. They're getting there, right? So I'm I am um I'm I'm increasingly impressed again with what they're doing, how they're approaching the world. But one thing has been constant, although the numbers and the percentages will shift, is there's always some students who wind up taking my classes because they want to change the world. It's just a function of how many and what's that percentage, right? You know, 2018, 2019, and 2020, that percentage was really, really high, right? I mean, 70, 80% of my kids were in there because they're trying to figure this thing out and trying to change the world. Three or four years later, they were like, Yeah, it fit my schedule. But now it's it's moving up again. And that's that's what I really live for. That's where you feed off of that energy.
SPEAKER_01:So let's go back to Van Jones real quick because um he's my dude, I will say. Do you have any, I'm sure you do, have a passionate thought around incarceration in our country? And like I know he is big on reform of incarceration. I actually heard him at a summit in California. Um, I can't remember who he was interviewing some really smart entrepreneur who's like putting satellites up in fucking Mars or something. But you know, he had gotten that grant from I think Jeff Bezos. Yeah, yeah. Um, and he was talking about the number of prisons in California alone that were being built. Like, what are your thoughts on that? I feel like that is completely off the rails.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, we think about again, go back to capitalism, right? Why are we spending so much money on prisons? Because prisons, prison construction, prison, prison maintenance, warehousing people is big business. Uh, and we're also seeing now uh this shift over from sort of warehousing citizens to warehousing detainees for immigrants. I mean, it's it's it's capitalism. And it's also capitalism at its at its worst, uh pulling people out of society, not for reform, not for rehabilitation. Uh, but I'm not saying anything that you don't you don't already know. I mean, this is but but what it is, I think to me, it's it's it's really it's it's not it's partly a policy problem, right? And we could we could change it by changing policies, but it's really a priorities problem, right? A societal priorities problem. What are we prioritizing? Are we prioritizing incarcerating people or are we prioritizing education? Because if we prioritize education over incarceration, then we don't have to deal with incarceration. But we're not prioritizing education in the ways that we could and should. We're using third grade reading statistics, grade reading attainment for kids in the third grade to determine how many beds that we need to build in 15 years to incarcerate them. Instead of saying, okay, what do we need to invest to make sure we don't have to build beds for folk who are down and out and gonna wind up in prison in 15 years?
SPEAKER_01:So speaking of pulling people out of society and ice and all this crazy stuff going on right now with immigration, what clearly there's a different way to do that. What is your perspective on that?
SPEAKER_00:One goes back to the humanity thing. Right. Right? We gotta treat people, all people, with with with humanity and with dignity. I think what's most shocking and surprising, I don't even know if shocking and surprising is actually the the term, but we have to recognize this isn't actually about immigration enforcement, right? This isn't about, you know, deportations. Because you can, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, Barack Obama deported uh more people than Joe Biden did and Donald Trump in his first term. And he did it without any of this. So if you there's i if this is really your objective, then there's a way to do it that doesn't dehumanize, that doesn't demoralize, that doesn't threaten people's basic human rights as well as their as well as their civil rights. So what we're looking at is just performance. And the question then becomes, what's the performance for? The show of force, the show of aggression. You know, I I've been waiting for all those, all my Second Amendment friends, right, who who for years was talking about, you know, look, man, we gotta have a Second Amendment against the tyranny of the federal government. Well, you got mass federal government agents running around, you know, cities in America. Where are you, my friend? You know, what what's up with that? So it is about performance and show, but it's also, I think, gonna erode the basic, you know, what makes America unique, right? That that you did not have this, that we had freedom of speech, right? I mean, those are the types of things that do make this country unique. For all of its faults, all of its failings and shortcomings, there were certain principles uh that seemed to be universal, that crossed political boundaries, and now those are being rolled back. And so I share that, I share that fear. I don't I don't know where we are, where we are going, but it but it but it's not into the light. It really is into the dark.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I on that note, it's like, you know, we're gonna be 250 years old. So like, is it are we in a midlife crisis? Like what what is happening with America right now? But then I guess just as important or more importantly, like, where will we be in another hundred years?
SPEAKER_00:If we are here. Right.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, that that's that's that's the the part that is really scary that people, and myself included, when I think about things, when I ideate, when I daydream, um those things now include those types of thoughts, like for real.
SPEAKER_00:No, and they should, right? But but here's the thing. Like we have going back to the nostalgia thing, one of the elements of nostalgia is this idea of perpetual progress, right? That things may have been bad once in America, but they always get better because we are the bright light, the shining, the shining light on the hill. That's actually not the way like America has developed. Certainly not along the lines of race, but but but but but even more generally, right? There are periods of of progress, but then there are longer periods where things not only just stay the same, but they actually get worse. But we're also coming on the heels of sort of what is modern America. Modern America, where we have this sort of central place in The world is is really young. Right? I mean, we're talking about post-World War II, we're talking about 50 years. Right? And that was partly a function of the complete devastation of Europe on the heels of World War II and the nuclear race, nuclear armament. So we had, you know, we had capitalism on our side and we had nuclear weapons on our side. You know, that that that age, that era is over, right? So what are we gonna do as a nation to hold ourselves in this sort of position of leadership that is being abdicated right now by the current administration? I mean, this this isn't a political analysis, right? Like this is a partisan analysis. I'm just telling you what they're telling us. Like, nah, we don't want to have anything to do with that. Well, when you start playing with the tariffs and all the economic dependence, what's happening is that the rest of the world is saying we are no longer the dependable person as a nation that we once were. The dollar ain't that strong that we can just go off on our own. So what I think we're actually seeing, will the nation be here? Yeah, the nation will probably be here. But will we be as dominant? Will we have as much influence, both economic, political, and moral as we have had in the past? No, we won't. That was when we blew up, uh I'm using the royal we here, we blew up USAID on the ceilings. USAID was a federal agency that really did sort of, you know, the the work of health and um uh disaster relief overseas. And people are like, oh, why are you giving, you know, a million dollars to this country? Because that was that soft power that kept us relevant. And we just willingly gave that up. And we're gonna feel the consequences of that going forward.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I agree with that. And then you mix in this like AI, which is everybody's buzzword. Nobody really knows, you know, nobody really knows. I'm sure you get that whole thing, like, are you over 40 and still using AI like Google? You know, disappear for a month and try all these, you know, it's like like there's this big mystic thing that you need to learn behind the scenes about AI, right? Um, but when you hear, I have to like curb what I watch, because I do, I'm a TikToker. I don't know if you watch TikTok at all. But on one hand, it's a really great way to get sound bites, but on the other hand, it serves you. Like it serves you what you're looking for. And so it becomes like this double-edged sword. And so whatever the guy's name, Sam Altman, that's it. Maybe he's like when they show clips of him talking about the work, like the scenarios of things that could happen with these bots and stuff. I have to just like shut it off. I'm like, this is like a crazy movie. It is, you know, like a bad sci-fi movie. Yeah, it's almost like you want to go back to the 90s where things were simple. But they didn't seem simple, did they?
SPEAKER_00:They did not seem simple. You know, like that's they were complicated. It was just a different kind of company.
SPEAKER_01:It was a different kind of complicated. Yeah. You were doing your was it in the 90s, you were doing your step college, college. So this is an interesting. Let's take a little quick little detour back to the little detour. You were like, what did they call you? What was your title?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I was the Kane man. You were the okay. I don't know how much the listeners are familiar with sort of black, historically black, you know, fraternities and sororities. But one of the things, if you go back to your college days, would be step shows. Yeah, right. So this is a kind of a dance, ritualistic dance and stuff like that. Um, but with my fraternity cap alphasai, we use you maybe familiar with if you if you you Google it, right? I mean, it'll come up, right? Not Google it, but you still do the canes in red and white. And I was nice. I was nice.
SPEAKER_01:You danced.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I danced. I danced. But you probably could still dance. No, I don't. I gave that up.
SPEAKER_01:I know, but you probably still could. Like if somebody turns some music on, like, I'm not gonna put you on the spot because you can dance here. But like you probably could, you you don't just lose that rhythm.
SPEAKER_00:You don't lose a rhythm, but you know, as you age and you age gracefully, you wind up just doing like, yeah, it's just like a little sway, you know what I'm saying? It's like I'm gonna chill, right? A little bop, right? That's about it.
SPEAKER_01:Do you have any video of you like?
SPEAKER_00:No, because this is the this is the pre-cell phone age. So there's some grainy, there's some grainy, like the old fraternity brothers, like once in a while, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, man, is that it's like, yeah, it's a sign. I was I was in more still photos. I was nice. My kids don't believe it, right? Well, when they get to college, they'll be like, oh, I love that.
SPEAKER_01:That's nice. That's so cool. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:The pleasure's been mine. It's been great.
SPEAKER_01:Is there anything else that you would like to leave here and be like, God, I wish we would have talked about? Because I get that all the time with people where they're like, I really wish we would have said this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Is there anything that you can think of?
SPEAKER_00:But if maybe maybe I'll come back.
SPEAKER_01:You know what? This could just be part one. Yeah. This could be part one.
SPEAKER_00:We'll save that for part two.
SPEAKER_01:I would love that. Oh, that was he's saying he likes me. He's saying he's he will come back. You're saying there's a chance. I love it. So take back. No take back. Seriously, this has been awesome. You're you're very special human. But I knew that. Thank you. I already knew that, which is why I courted you for a year before you said yes.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01:And if you're still out there following your girl, follow me on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. And until next time, keep moving, baby.
