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Welcome, Dan Levy, to really being honest about it, just a giant piece of shit to the big city Bald Eagles, a podcast exclusive that none of our bosses ask for. More sports, more work, less pay.

I haven't stopped talking in a month.

I mean, I tell you, just when you thought the show couldn't be more dilutive than last time I listened to this show. I haven't listened for years.

Now, here's the marching bands. No way am I missing something.

What am I missing? The end of the story. That phase. Chris Fallica, it's Fallica. He made on the penis and the habitual liar.

I didn't ask for any of us for all of it.

The big Swede. I'm Chris Cody, BSP. And so Bomana, you had a parting shot that you did about LeBron and how LeBron could never be Ali. And a lot of people came after you as they do come after me. When I offer, you know, a criticism or two of LeBron James, it becomes that I'm a hater. How did that one go over? And can you just tell the people who didn't hear the parting shot what it is you were trying to do with the parting shot?

Yeah. So my point was and I do believe that.

I think LeBron has done a lot of great work, and I think that we have given him a lot of praise for the great work that he has done and deservedly so, like the open to school. Right. But opening a school in that stuff, that's a real rich people play right as well. He should make a rich people play as he is, in fact, a rich person like he can do those things. But I have felt and you can look at that with his production company doing like that Muhammad Ali documentary, and he's been lean, heavy and like the more than an athlete and all of that stuff.

I do believe that he has tried to position himself as like the LeBron excuse me, the Muhammad Ali of his time. He wants to be seen not simply as someone who is working toward good causes, but as someone who is at the forefront of these things. Right. LeBron and a whole lot that LeBron does or he's just a passenger on it. Right. And he's been showing up to the arena and like the leader to society shirt. And I'm like, nobody gets to anoint themselves a leader.

Right. And it happens in basketball a lot where people will tell you, like Yoni's did this like when they decided they were going to play that game after Jacob Blake was shot. And he's like, you know, I'm the leader of the team and this is what the leader does. Now, you don't anoint yourself the leadership. In my point, really, though, about Ali, was the Ali that we talk about as being a social conscience of sorts was the twenty one twenty two twenty three year old Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali in his thirties is doing business with Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, that when Mobutu in Zaire, Muhammad Ali in his 40s is endorsing Orrin Hatch and says that's his favorite politician ever because he wants to put God in schools.

You know, now, Ali, of course, himself was just a bit scattershot on some of these things. But the energy that really drives those kinds of movements typically comes from younger people. Like it's more likely that somebody like Jaylen Brown would be the guy at the front of that. Then it would be LeBron James, because that's just how these things work over and over again and across the board. You can go look at him. Even Martin Luther King dinner was so Carmichael was a younger person, was fueling the energy toward the late 60s.

Well, you know, once we got there and so I said this about LeBron, just like, yo, you're not going to be Muhammad Ali and so on yourself reading the autobiography of Malcolm X and stuff like that.

That ain't doing much for me, to be perfectly honest, like I think there's roles that you can play, and I think that he plays the role of a very rich guy who cares a lot in these things. But when the guys have decided that they weren't going to play, LeBron didn't like that. And then they're like, well, you know, we talked to Barack Obama about it. Well, of course, Obama is going to say you guys need to hurry up and play because Obama would have never made that decision in the first place.

Now, I thought they should have gone ahead and played. Don't get me wrong. But Ali was a revolutionary type, right? Ali was a radical. And I had some people push back on me at the idea of calling Ali radical. But I don't use that as a pejorative term. He was a radical. That's not what LeBron is like, these initiatives about pushing voting, they're very good and I think they should do that. But look what's happening all over the place now where you got the crazy long lines with people trying to vote and stuff like that.

For example, in in California, where you had the misleading ballot boxes that were put up. Right. Like LeBron is pushing for change within the system. That is totally different than Colin Kaepernick, who advocates for change. That is an alteration and in some ways a destruction of the system as it exists. And so I don't knock LeBron for the things that he is doing. I just think that things that he does need to be put into a proper context.

And I do personally wish that he was a bit less self aggrandizing about about his role in these things.

Well, the risk, Bomani, is not nearly the same. The things that Muhammad Ali risks were real and heavy and wasn't the behavior of a rich man. But I have marveled at the voice that LeBron has developed over the last 10 years. When you go back to Trayvon Martin wearing a hoodie that at the time for LeBron James was radical and he has absolutely found his voice with power and championships and success, where he's he's not really risking very much of anything in some of the things that he's advocating for.

Well, I think in 2012 was huge. Keep in mind, he had even won a title yet. Right. Like this is not even a year after what happened in Dallas against the Mavericks. And we got all the bad things in the world to say about LeBron. When that happened like that was big. I mean, I was like legitimately choked up at that point because that was such a strong statement from an entire basketball team in a way that I had really I don't recall seeing previous to that.

Like and that's the thing I always want to be clear about LeBron is I have a great admiration for a lot of the things that he has done right and the things that he's been willing to do.

But he's also made some business decisions along the way. And I don't blame him for that. Like, as you said, the risk for him is not the same at this point. And he's got a lot more to lose. He's got a lot more to take care of. He's got a lot more people who are depending on him.

And look, I lead the nation to Islam behind him. LeBron got Nike behind him.

Those are two different organizations. Right. And they're going to encourage you to do things in two completely different ways. And so I'm down to give him props for what he does. I don't like, though, and I guess for me, it's kind of a double edged sword for him in that he gets so much attention for being LeBron James.

And that's part of why it's so good when he does anything, because there's so much attention on him. But you can't do these things for the attention like the question, because LeBron, are you leveraging the attention that you always get or are you courting attention for yourself? And that line for me has been a little bit blurry at some points this year.

What can you tell the people who are too young to remember what Joe Morgan meant at a different time? In sports, baseball was king. He was an unusual looking second baseman with power at the center of one of the most famous line ups baseball has ever had. He passed away this week. He was also to another generation. He was the voice of baseball and then the voice of baseball without analytics, where a lot of people made fun of him for not evolving with the times the passing of Joe Morgan.

How do you eulogize him?

Well, what's interesting about the analytics thing is that as a broadcaster, he is analogous to Charles Barkley in the sense that they are all time greats who are not really who were not really on board with the modern paradigm of analyzing their sports, but their careers.

The advance numbers loved them like Barkley in a way where they even though Charles Barkley was a giant star when he played the advanced numbers, we've got a pointed out that he was actually even better than people realized he was. Joe Morgan, without question, is the best post-integration second baseman in baseball history.

And the big red machine, which I was obviously not alive to see, but definitely was alive at points to get the proper context on it. Probably the best collection of baseball players that we have ever seen on a baseball team does Hall of Famer after Hall of Famer after Hall of Famer like Ken Griffey. Daddy was a really good player, but like the seventh best player maybe on that team when they had that. And Joe Morgan was that guy, he and Johnny Bench, the two best players that were on that team and I think with second baseman and middle infielders generally.

But I think second baseman in particular, there's so much bigger now than they used to be. Like physically, you would never have guys that were this size playing those middle infield positions back in the day, like playing second base and play shortstop. The glove was most important. And if you can get a bat out of it, that would be fantastic.

Trued second baseman could not hit. That's where you put the guy that shortstop is where you put the guy who could not it.

Yes. Second baseman hit second or eighth. Right. Like that was where they were in the. Fired up no matter what age old Morgan had, Pop Joe Morgan, one, two MVP's at second base like he is one of the all time great baseball players. And they're like, as you mentioned, I became familiar with him, obviously, as a broadcaster because he was getting those gigs when Major League Baseball from my childhood all the way all night, he was that guy.

But just do not ever get this twisted no matter what you thought about him because of him being a broadcaster. And I mean, somebody started a website called Fire Joe Morgan because they hated him so much as a broadcaster. But don't get this twisted man. That is one of the greatest baseball players they had ever been. And at a time you remember, we used to have a lot more distinct batting stances, right? He had that elbow twitch that was his bag.

Like, I feel like we don't have that so much anymore. People holding the baton. Funny ways.

Can you explain to me how you reconcile the fact that you and I spend a good amount of time complaining about the injustice in college football, but where we work, we also get money, at least in part from college football, and a few entities benefit more from the existence of college football than ESPN and ESPN employees.

I mean, ESPN kind of owns college football in some ways, like the guys put other people in ballgames and television shows, and this company owns a lot of them. I reconcile it by honestly. You're not the the major industrial operation with a heart of gold does not exist. It just does it. And so, yeah, I have a lot of problems with the way the college football is run. I also think there's a greater value in me speaking on college football from somewhat of the inside than there is from the outside.

Right. Nobody would listen to anything I had to say about the infrastructure of college football if they would not listen to what I have to say about actual college football games and the likes. And I still enjoy the games. I enjoy the absurdity of everything that surrounds college football. Who's in charge and why? Write like I dig it. I have no problem admitting that I enjoy it while also having a problem with the ways that the players are treated.

And that often gets tricky because a lot of the players don't have a problem with the way that they are treated. And I don't listen to that. I still have a problem for them, even if they are like, but I got this MacBook and I stay in a great dorm and everything goes right. Like I still look at them and be like, oh, but there should be more for, you know, we're still there. But I don't I don't think is difficult or I don't think that being critical of the NCAA in the way things are done requires like somebody like me to set himself on fire.

Right. Like it did require me to quit my job in the name of solidarity, because once I do that, nobody gives a damn about what I had to say about any of those things.

So what do you do with Trump as a political tool saying he saved college football, he's taken credit for a lot of things that he can't take credit for. But on this one, I believe I don't know if credit is the word that I want to use, but the FCC and the FCC went the way that they did for political reasons. And whatever is happening with the Big Ten seems to absolutely have been influenced by his pressures. So when he takes credit for saving college football, you do what with that?

I am not so sure that his pressure actually made anything happen just because I don't know if at the point in time in which that happened, he was popular enough to really, like, sway any thing from those folks. Like, keep it in mind, we had seen the month or so before, clearly across the board, major operations, like not really care what he thought were their embrace of black lives matter in all of these sorts of things. Right.

So I'm not so sure that Trump actually made this happen with the Big Ten.

It doesn't matter, though, but whether he made it happen or not, it can look enough like it. Like he can manipulate the pieces, whether it's factual or so, to play politics with it and make it hard to rebut.

Yeah, I think that he could make it hard to rebut. But I don't know if in the end that's going to have any true effect on what happens in this election. Like, I think he keeps like you threw it out at the debate. He's going to throw it out a lot. The idea that he brought back Big Ten football, like I think he can, I think he can throw all that stuff around. But, man, everything moves so fast now and there's so many bigger fish to fry right now than anything close to that that I don't like.

I think that he has injected himself into it, but I don't think that that's going to matter for the election. I don't think it mattered in terms of making things happen. I think what happened with the Big Ten was the Big Ten thought that when they said they weren't going to play, then nobody else was going to play. And then other people play. Now, I could make the argument that what has actually happened since people have started playing college football affirms the Big Ten's decision not to do this.

Like Vanderbilt, try to play a game last week of fifty six scholarship players. They're not going to be able to play. This week we saw the University of Houston at one point had three straight games canceled because the other teams couldn't get enough people there. Baylor right now is dealing with with an outbreak on their roster of guys, we call it. Right. The Big Ten says they've got some super special testing program that's going to make it possible for them to do it.

And if they can make it happen, then they should go ahead and make it happen. But what I think really happened, there was three schools voted against playing this fall. They voted for playing this fall, and one of them was Ohio State. And then once Ohio State started making that super push and they had two players out here making the push, we had people doing this marching and everything else. And all the hill came down on the new commissioner.

Right. All those all those presidents saw that heat that was coming from the people. And then they just let the commissioner out there to flounder. They're like, all right. Well, you know, you figure out what to do here. And then at that point, they were coming back like I don't think there was any way around it at that point that they were going to wind up coming back. And so Trump can do a touchdown dance on this one.

But he's not the one that brought this across the line.

I don't think south Alabama, south Alabama. Bo hasn't played a game in three weeks and is now playing Texas State because of an outbreak.

Why? What are we doing? Like, what are what are we doing? Why do I I actually understand, you know, the greed of risking young bodies because you want the dollars. But South Alabama, Texas state, like, what are we doing? That that is where it gets wild is the idea that people just feel like they have to have football no matter what, and I guess they got some financial considerations, too, because they got TV contracts that they have to fulfill, because that's what this is.

It's just everybody doing the best they can to put these games on television.

But I want to I talked about this a little bit on the right time, and I want to bring this over here. Did you see this story for The New York Times this weekend about like covid causing brain fog?

I have not seen that story. Oh, my God.

There are people who are reporting, like one of the long term things is like losing memory, being unable to remember things like what a toothbrush is called, you know, like a woman talking about how she just they she couldn't read like she was just not able to, like, literally could not read like two, three months after the fact.

Had the bosses tell her that she had to take 13 months of leave because she had not recovered. Like we see these guys test positive and then come back and we don't think anything else of it after it happens.

The potential consequences of contracting this disease are so dire, like the point I made is that could you imagine being at a point where suddenly you literally take leave of your senses like, you know, we are people who operate with our brains. Can you imagine just all of a sudden your brain doesn't work the way that it used to?

These people are saying that they feel like they have dementia trying to recover from covid-19 like sassier confusion, delirium and other types of altered mental function called encephalopathy have occurred during hospitalization covid-19 respiratory problems. And a study found such patients need longer hospitalizations, higher mortality rates and often could manage daily activities right after hospitalization like this ain't just some cough. And we are leaving these kids out here and we don't even know how long they're going to be shaken, this kind of stuff off when it happens like this one woman said this year.

She said One morning everything in my brain was white, static. I was sitting on the edge of the bed crying, feeling something's wrong. I should be asking for help, but I could remember who or what I should be asking. I forgot who I was and where I was. I don't know why it is south Alabama and Texas state, I know you said the television contracts, but I don't get some of the things that we're doing in sports where Mullin is out here saying in our state because it's always our state as the Santos runs around high firing people and not wearing a mask at the Trump rally, that Mullan's out here saying that he wants the swamp filled with people because he lost to Texas.

Ninety thousand people like he says he wants. And by the way, you know, get when they come back and ask him about it afterwards, they really want to talk about it.

No, more like apparently somebody was like, dude, if you lost your mind, I am amazed, especially when you talk about South Alabama and Texas state. I am just amazed at that. Many kids are willing to play that. There are not I I'm still stunned that we have not loudly heard from a single organization or group of parents saying, what in the world are we doing here?

Because look, man, everybody's like, well, this kid has a chance to go to the league. Most of these kids know they ain't got no damn chance to go to league. And if they don't know that I was so mean, most of their parents know at these lower levels they don't have a chance to be like Alabama got. Eighty five scholarship players, 30 of them are going to go to the league. And maybe I get why player eighty four at Alabama thinks that he's going to go to league.

I do not understand why player eighty four at Texas State is out there.

Oh, but I've talked to football players about something that I wouldn't understand because you and I have talked before about like choosing to be a police officer and that I don't have it in me to be a police officer. But I've stood on a sideline with Ricky Williams, Bomani, and he's looking at a field in retirement and saying, what the hell was I doing because of the way the bodies are moving? That's Ricky Williams like. Yes. And he talks about the warrior mentality that you don't think of consequences.

You can't play that sport thinking of consequences. You can't play that sport. And and Dak Prescott expects to be the guy taken off the field on a stretcher.

Do you remember the first time you were on the sideline? It's terrifying. It's terrifying. And for me, that was at a Division two game, right? Like we weren't even getting all the way up. It was at a Division two game. And I was like, what in the world? And I do I remember the first time I was on the sideline for Division one game and it involved a redshirt freshman named Mike Pollen's. Who was Greg policies, brother idiot coming in Raleigh, North Carolina, was playing against Virginia Tech.

And so it's bedfast his defense against a guy who's never played football before. It was one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen. Baddoo was never right after that happened. And I could not blame him because I was like, how are they getting there so fast? Geico presents Monster Counseling Dracula, tell me how you're feeling, no one understands how lonely these no one will even let me into their house. I knock and knock, but they ignore me.

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Since the 1980s, hip hop and America's prisons have grown side by side. And we're going to investigate this connection to see how it lifts us up and holds us down.

Hip hop is talking about what we live trying to live the American dream in at the American Dream. I'm city manager. I'm Rodney Cormark.

Listen now to the Louder than a Riot podcast from NPR Music, where we chase the collision of Crime and punishment in America.

Can you tell me, speaking of the police, Bomani, a few years ago, I remember you asking, I don't know whether you've got an answer to this question, what the vetting process is for police officers, because how do you arrive in a place where you're selecting that as the job and you're that often behaving out of what feels like fear? Carl Douglas argues that police officers are usually action junkies and then the excuse for wrong behavior becomes fear, but that what they're searching for is, is the action.

Did you get an answer for what the vetting process is on police officers?

No, I did not get an answer. But I do think that there's kind of a range to this, right? I do think that some of those dudes are out there afraid, like there is a big story in New York a couple of years ago where this I think it was Chinese, but as Asian gentleman who's a police officer and you got into the pink houses, the housing project in Brooklyn and shot somebody there. And of course, because he went white, he did go to jail.

Right. They they they sent him in and there were a lot of protests that surrounded it. And the protests annoyed me on one level because it felt as though the Chinese community in New York, basically their argument was Yodle saying white people to jail for this. Why are you sending him to jail for this as though they basically he deserved the right to kill black people with impunity? Right. Like there's a whole range of issues that I had with that.

But the point they made that was legitimate was it felt like they were sending the youngsters by people who were unlike not quite ready for such things into some of these terrible neighborhoods. And then that dude is in there scared. And then he winds up shook and he shoots somebody. And I just the point I always make about that is if you want me to give them room to be human and be afraid, that's fine. Just I. I can't do that and treat them like heroes at once.

Like a hero is not someone who is unafraid, but a hero, someone at least in the way that we typically use it in these contexts who rises above that fear maintains himself or herself and then, you know, keeps it going and does what's supposed to be done. But we can't make them heroes. And then when they mess up and kill somebody, just be like, oh, hey, hey, man, you know, you got to understand they were afraid you would be afraid to.

Yeah. That's why I don't work there. Like, ain't never been a time that you gone to a restaurant and it messed up your food and to do it was like, well, you know. I would have done the same thing. No, no, like that's that's that's that's not the defense for professionals when they don't do their jobs in the ways that they should.

And so, yeah, there's room to be afraid and it makes you human to be afraid. And I get all of that. But you can't be a police officer if you're scared of being a police officer. Like, that's that's the whole thing. Like what what they're telling me they're afraid of is their jobs.

And to me, at least, it can't be that. Lightening it up a little bit as a fan of both laughing and music, what did you like best about Saturday Night Live? Was it Jack White or was it Bill Burr?

I had to get to Jack White, though. I joined Jack White House on the concert a couple of years ago as a funny story in and of itself. But I enjoyed him greatly because our Bill Burr so I have met Bill Burr.

I did an interview with Bill Burr on the radio in 2008, the summer of 2008. And I'm like the fill in guy ought to drive in Raleigh. And I'm talking to Byrd because we had to deal with the local comedy club. So, you know, whoever's coming would, you know, come on. And he's like, yeah, yeah. But Obama, you got to vote for him, right?

I said I'd tell him. I was like, hey, man, I got to come back here tomorrow, you know, to say I like you. You get to go back to wherever you are after you do your comedy gig. I got to come back here tomorrow. You would not put me in this back any way that Daddy told that joke about white women and man, oh, man. The uncomfortable laughter in that theater is people tried to figure out whether or not it was funny, except it was it was uproarious.

There was no way around it. And did I said, I'll do it at the next morning. I was like, OK, time for the surgery for Bill Burns wife to go through the roof.

Good Bill Barbet to a black woman, which I mean, got to admit, a little surprising for that dude from Boston out here. If he hangs out with Chappelle, it's not right that everybody saw that we've covered it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bellbird, what they got do feel like as a white man, once you are married to a black woman, you may recontextualize white women in a way that you never had before. You go to hear some perspectives that have not been offered to you, Bomani.

I thought that that's where that came from. I thought the Milburn's part of the routine, given that he has sharpened and sculpted. I'm the guy who doesn't give a bleep and I'm going to do the performance art of not giving a bleep and also watch white women react to white women humor the way that I am saying that they will react. I thought that was absolutely born out of Boston. That and not not of the misogyny that you so often find with the Boston meathead, but that the fact that he is married to a black woman and can listen has to listen to that perspective.

Yeah, I don't think he would have told that joke fifteen years ago. Right. Like, I don't think he would have quite bit ready or able to. And he dropped it masterfully.

Like I saw some on Twitter with somebody said that he was walking around in New York the week of like and he workshopped the routine with people on the street, you know, comics, comics, one point comics make about the comedy club and why they had such a problem with people like showing up with video cameras and stuff is they got to figure out, Tony, you can only figure out Tony in front of people. And sometimes you're going to get the tone wrong as you try to figure out what the tone is that you need to have in your routine.

And so he went on the streets to figure it out and he nailed it. He just absolutely nailed it. And I just wish the people didn't know whether to laugh.

It was like, oh, many people in there. So many people did not know whether he was deep in there.

Like, it's not like I think I saw something that said that Saturday Night Live is like giving people, paying them like extras. And that way they can get around some of the stuff. Yes. But it wasn't like there were people there. There were people there. You heard him laugh early and then it got late. It was the best part also about Barry is Byrd is the type of comedian where when they had that kind of reaction, that's not going to stop him.

He's like, oh, yes, well, I love that part of him so much because I hear so many comedians now. But just they won't shut up about how difficult it is to do comedy in this climate. And guys like Chappelle, the guys who are best at it, are a they like the challenge of it. And B, they end up doing it well because they're like, that's the point of jokes. I'm defending comedy here to be able to go up against the edge.

I'm just telling jokes.

Yeah, the the the ethos of comedians is the only thing that matters is if it's funny, like that's what they're going for. They're willing to ignore a lot of things if it's funny.

Now, I contend that Dave Chappelle needs to approach that a bit differently than even Bill Burr does. And Bill Burr is a big star. But like with Dave Chappelle, when you tell jokes about transgender people, it means something different lands something different. It goes to different places. You are viewed as a modern philosopher of sorts with people. And so there is a more damaging effect for when you get these things wrong in those settings. Right. But I also understand their argument.

Like my man, Felonious Monk made his point on Twitter. He was like, you paid your money to come in here. You knew what this was when you walked in. You know, and of course, there are lines to it, but I have found the comedians that we have a problem with, for being racist, for being misogynist, whatever may be, they generally have one thing in common, like Andrew Dice Clay jumps out as an immediate example.

He wasn't funny. I had a problem with Andrew Dice Clay.

Was that the only thing for him was laughing at women, laughing at black people.

But it wasn't actually funny. Wasn't clever either. Right, exactly. Like if you figure out how to make it funny and clever, you can go now with BRX. Like the thing he did on Saturday Night Live didn't even fall under the heading of things that you, like, need to worry about or whatever it is. But I always thought that the conversations around Dave Chappelle were less less conversations about comedy than conversations about what it means to be Dave Chappelle and what is your responsibility.

And that is not the same responsibility as someone playing at one o'clock in the morning at Comedy Cellar.

He's the person I most want to talk to in entertainment because I found Chappelle's entire journey, not just because I want to laugh. I've just found there's so much wisdom in what he's experienced and how he's experienced it. And when I when I watch back rooting for things that I thought were great, whether it's Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy or George Carlin or wherever it is, you put the top of the food chain and stand up comedy man Eddie Murphy, stuff that does not hold up in today's climate, like in any way at all.

Well, I watch Delirious a few months ago for the first time in years. All right. And the stuff about gay people is the one that jumps off the page. And he's done a measure of apology of that, but. The one that got me in that routine was at some point, he says something to the effect and women these days they get mad if you slap them like it was.

But it told me less about Eddie Murphy than it did about the Times, like there was a real uncomfortable thing when he's using the F word, talking about gay people. When he talked about slapping your girlfriend, people just kind of laughed and went along with that. Right. And then he starts like that. Part of the success of Eddie Murphy is the fact that he is a product of B three channel universe, which is to say that the references that he was making were references that everybody could get because everybody was watching the same shows.

So black comedian Eddie Murphy telling jokes about The Honeymooners is telling jokes that everybody can get. There aren't really a lot of analogous things now that you could just throw out there. I'm going to tell a joke about this in literally every person is going to be get it, so get going to get it. So he was able to be, like, really inclusive in the frame of reference because the country's frame of reference was a lot more narrow. But that also meant like The Honeymooners, so many of the jokes on The Honeymooners are about to hit you in the face.

Ralph Krab to say that to his wife, you know, like, oh, it's they're just things that we not tolerate and you doing. So I would say that just because it's funny to tell a joke about beating your wife. No, no, no. We're not going to go with that. Right. Like, there are clearly lines that are in place. But for the comic, it's going to be is it funny? And if you could find a joke that's so funny that it overcomes the horror of talking about beating your wife, then they go to ride with it.

That's what it's always going to be. I don't know what joke is that funny, but that's what they're going to do.

I'm not prisoner of the moment when I say Chappelle's the best ever do it.

No, I think there's an argument for it. Right. Like, I think he's way up there and he's got a particular style, like I've seen a lot now, like four or five times. Like I, I modeled the way that I make content after the way Dave Chappelle made that television show and made Chappelle's Block party. That documentary like that is the the push and the inspiration and like the intellectual underpinning of all the things I do of how to code things in ways that multiple people can hear them.

And the vision that if this is good enough and it's a good enough time that people will let go of whatever nonsensical hangups they have and they'll be able to consume it. Right. Like like I view him in a different way, but like as a stand up comic. Yeah. You're talking about him. You talk about Eddie Murphy, you talk about Richard Pryor, you talk about George Carlin, like like that's a rarefied air that those guys are into.

But also, by the way, I put Katt Williams up there in that rarefied air.

Also I'd put for sculpting it and other comedians would do Seinfeld. I would put him close, even though he didn't talk about the same sort of he didn't have sort of the pulse of important topics. He was doing more flimsy material. Yeah.

I've never, like, really checked out his stand up, but I am amazed and impressed. Like, I know there's a movie about to check that we need to script his act all the way down. He decided to build it back up.

You need to check out that movie. Yeah, I think it's called comedians. Yeah. And you see him in a kitchen in Cleveland, sort of hunched over, afraid to perform in front of thirty people just because those those comedians they talked you showed in that movie. There's a real poignant scene of Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock amazed by Bill Cosby that Bill Cosby, because these things are so sculpted, because it's not improvisational, these guys are playing music up there sometimes from memorization.

They know where the laughs are supposed to go. They know how to hit the notes so that the laughs even pause for the laugh when the laughs aren't there because they're expecting the laughs. And so they marveled that Bill Cosby would just go up there and do 90 minutes, 90 fresh minutes.

Bill Cosby is like the O.J. Simpson of comedy in the sense that we get to listing who all of these guys are who are like O.J. says, who are the greatest running backs of all time, even like, damn this this one dude.

Who is that? We used to always put it right here on the list. Who is that guy?

That's what Bill Cosby is like. I feel like I'm forgetting somebody.

I don't know how many of the people around here who have gotten used to listening to you on our show know just the depths of your musical expertise. You are a music critic. Before you were a sports persona. So where do you put Jack White in terms of histories, guitarists? Because it's a short list and he's the guy for the modern times. Yeah.

And he's almost kind of like an anachronism as being like a super duper guitar player in this day and age. Right. Like, this isn't really an era of bands where we have people who just jump out. Where you talk about them is just being instrumentalists in a way that everybody knows. If you mention his name, like Eddie Van Halen just died, you don't have to listen to Van Halen. You know, when somebody talks about Eddie Van Halen, you're talking about a great guitar player and Jack White is there.

And Jack White's thing was it was that great era of the early part of the first decade of the new millennium where it got lo fi and grimy. Right. Like, I love my morning jacket, for example, from that time, because it got lo fi and like, nasty in a way that I enjoy my music being. And so I don't look at white like where Van Halen so much about Eddie Van Halen was. I think he was.

Eddie's grooves in Eddie's riffs were what made him good. I. Enjoy Eddie Van Halen as a soloist. Actually, I find his solos to be kind of aimless and just kind of showing off all the magic tricks that he can do with the guitar. And I feel like as white dudes started listening to music that wasn't made by black people, they started moving away from like the soul and grit of things and started moving more into, oh, look at the school trick that I can do and start talking about technical expertise and a bunch of other shit that I really care about.

I never felt like that's what it was about with Jack White, like Jack White. That is that is music. That's about a feeling by and large. And that's where he always gets me there. When I really like Jack White, it's just it's about how it feels more solid and how it sounds.

So the top of the list is in terms of making you because you're going to go with the feels there. Right.

Like it's not. Yeah. Like Jimi Hendrix is like there's there's Hendrix and then there's, like everybody that, like, falls below.

It is no fault. Like Carlos Santana is incredible in that he could do so much of that technical stuff and is still like always like really felt like something. Tom Morello is the do for me who can do all of the guitar tricks. But it's still always has a very clear and distinct feeling as to what it is. So I think about to do it like, oh me a Black Sabbath, where to me the feel of Black Sabbath is everybody but the guitar player.

Right. And then they just let him be granted to do is missing a couple of fingertips, you know, interferes with your ability to like, get this done. And with Van Halen, I guess I would say I miss the point for a while because I would just always get so tired of people talking about those solos. And then you go and listen to how hard those grooves are and you're like, OK, so this is what everything is actually about.

Is this guy moment in?

Good talking to you, as always. Thank you, sir. Again, a reminder to all of you, if you enjoy this time with Bomani, there's more of it. The right time with Bomani Jones is something you need to be listening to. So find it wherever it is you get your podcast. Thank you, sir.

All right, man. Be good.