The Daily Show: Ears Edition

One of the funniest shows I've ever seen. One of the most poignant shows I've ever seen. People crying, people laughing like that.

I've seen some shows where, you know, if an audience is, let's say, from New York, they really get the show. If they're not from New York, maybe they don't enjoy it as much. Or if the audience is is black, maybe they get it more or less. This was one of those shows where everyone was enjoying it from from a different perspective.

It's phenomenal. It's one of the funniest, most intelligent, just everything. This is that you put.

Our other guest is a law professor at the University of Michigan, the author of the book, The Right to Repair. Aaron Perzanowski.

But before we get into any of that, let's just unpack first and foremost, what does right to repair mean? Aaron, give us the legal mumbo jumbo of it real quick.

First, I'm contractually obligated to, you know, try to sell my book so people should read The Right to Repair from the fine folks at Cambridge University Press, where I try to talk about a lot of the things that we've been covering today.

So the title of the book, Half American, comes from a letter that a man named James Thompson wrote in December 1941 shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

What Thompson asks is, should I sacrifice my life to live Half American? Is the America I know worth defending?

What he's saying is he is a black American. He's saying about what it means for him and other black Americans to get drafted into a military that is entirely racially segregated.

The army is segregated. It only particularly allows black Americans to serve in supply and logistical roles. By and large, they're not allowed to participate in combat.

In the Navy, black Americans are only allowed to volunteer and be drafted into the messman branch where they essentially will wait on and serve white officers. And at the start of the war, black Americans aren't allowed in the Marine Corps at all.

I wrote a book in 2016 about my experience In the Country.

So this amazing book, it just came out called The Exceptions by Kate Czerniaki is all about MIT and a lawsuit that was brought against MIT by a bunch of women in the 1970s, which is relatively recent.

At MIT, what Kate says in the book is that women felt lucky. Women who were doing basically the shit jobs. The women who are doing these shit crap jobs as basically glorified secretaries, but doing the science, they felt lucky to have any job at all in the sciences.

Today I'm joined by co-founder of A Call To Men and co-author of The Book of Dares, 100 Ways For Boys To Be Kind, Bold And Brave.

This book, this is my first book New Kid. It's the first graphic novel only graphic novel ever to win a Newbery medal. It was the second book to win the Newbery and the Coretta Scott King. And the only book ever to win those two and the Kirkus Prize.

So the first book award award award. This book people go CRT. Right.

Now this book that you have, School Trips, a wonderful wonderful book. It's about you know black child out there doing this thing. It's been banned in a bunch of places. First off congratulations on being banned.

I'm not sure if my largely poor largely African-American students will be able to relate to this book.

this book was a good reminder that we are all equal and we should treat people with kindness and respect because you never know what someone is going through.

It's a coming of age book about these three teens. It takes place in 2098 and I just was imagining what's the world going to look like?

what's society going to look like? And more importantly, like for me, cause we're born and raised in New York, what's New York going to look like, you know, to those kids.

And I just started dissecting, dissecting and breaking it down and really, um, trying to look through the eyes of a budding mind

climate change has happened. It's about classism. It's about sexism. It's obviously it's about, you know, racism is still in there, all the isms.

it's really about these kids who are like trying to figure themselves out. Cause you know that, that 14, 15 year old stage is an awkward part of life, like just, just for anyone.

I didn't find that out until November of 2018 after I wrote a book about it

first thing in my cart, a stocks for dummies book. OK, look, I don't know shit about stocks. All right. Yeah, I crush it and I make tons of money, but I don't understand any of it. So as soon as I learn to read, this book is going to be super helpful.

So I was in Los Angeles just before the pandemic and I was working, right? And my mom from Germany was there helping with my daughter who was about one at the time. And then the world shut down and weeks turned into months, literally.

And I remember that when I was a kid, and I was kind of an odd kid, that she changed my life by telling me the meaning of my name, which was quite unusual in Germany.

It's not common at all. So do they say Diane or do they say- They say Diane and it rhymes with banana, like Diana banana.

And so I started writing it down and I thought about my own daughter and how long we thought about giving her a name. And that's kind of how it started.

It's a really wonderful book about belonging, about understanding where you come from, why you're special, why you're important.

Your face became synonymous with a move.

I walked in the shoes of this character that that has been so impactful and so inspirational aspirational wish-fulfilling for decades.

It's never gone away for me. It's always been a part of me.

I had two things working for and against me one. I was associated with a role that was, you know famous for being iconic Character right away and two I decided to age very slowly.

What the the thing that I've been able to do is and I write to this in the book I've always kept one foot in and one foot out of it.

I feel like I'm in grad school really, you know, with with Latonya Jackson our our leader our director.

But I'm looking at him across the stage like I know you originated this role I'm doing my best, huh?

It's a full contact sport.

I wanted to challenge myself It was it was about uh seeing trying to test my abilities, you know, trying to grow as an artist I wanted to keep searching and I dove I don't know. I dove head in you know, I was I was going for it I felt like the words of uh of august wilson would lead me to the promised land There was a character that I really loved and enjoyed every time I read it.

It's a ghost story It's also incredibly funny. It's got a lot of humor in it. It's I mean august wilson is a genius

why do you think a book from one of his staffers comes out every single week?

Because every single person he interacts with is like, yo, have I got a f***ing up story for you?