--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Fall is here. Might be time to find some nice new pieces you can wear again and again. With Saks Fifth Avenue, it can be a breeze to shop for your personal style, like maybe a relaxed Prada blazer or Gucci loafers that are great for both work and the weekend.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is very Sean. This is very Sean-coated. Gucci loafers. Saks says Saks makes shopping feel totally customized to you, whether that's from an in-store stylist or a visit to Saks.com, where they can show you just what you want to see. They say they'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in or when something you've been eyeing is back in stock.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find inspiration for your personal style every day at Saks Fifth Avenue. Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab. At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus, get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Today's show is about the stand-up comedy of one David Chappelle and features stronger language than you typically hear on Today Explained. Let's start the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'd like to start by addressing the LBGTQ community director. And I want every member of that community to know that I come here the night in peace. And I hope to negotiate the release of DaBaby.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dave Chappelle has dropped a bunch of stand-up specials on Netflix, but his latest, and apparently last, The Closer, hits a little differently. For starters, it's led to an entire reckoning at Netflix. On top of that, resounding condemnation from the trans community, and just this week, a response from the comedian himself.
--:-- Aja Romano: Asia Romano, you've been writing about The Closer for Vox. What exactly does Dave Chappelle say in it?
--:-- Aja Romano: Most of it is him just talking about trans people. It's quite remarkable, actually, how much he talks about trans people on this special.
--:-- Aja Romano: Now listen, women get mad at me. Gay people get mad at me. Lesbians get mad at me. But I'm gonna tell you right now, and it's true, these transgenders, these niggers want me dead. I've gone too far. I've said too much.
--:-- Aja Romano: He also has a moment where he misgenders one of his friends deliberately in order to sort of make a point that we should be able to laugh at jokes like these.
--:-- Aja Romano: I feel like Daphne lied to me. She always says she identified as a woman. And then one day she goes up to the roof of a building and jumps off and kills herself. Clearly, only a man would do some gangster shit like that.
--:-- Aja Romano: Hear me out. As hard as it is to hear a joke like that, I'm telling you right now, Daphne would have loved that joke. That's why she was my friend.
--:-- Aja Romano: What is his greater point in this special? Why is he spending so much time focusing on the trans community?
--:-- Aja Romano: I think there are a couple of different things going on here. Chappelle himself has always been interested in calling out white privilege and elevating the oppression of black people and drawing attention to it.
--:-- Aja Romano: And I think he believes that if you are a black queer person or a black trans person, that identity vector does not matter. He has actually a line where he talks about this.
--:-- Aja Romano: I'm telling you right now, a black gay person would have never done that to me. Because a black gay person knows when the police shows up, they're not going to care who called them. They don't show up like, which one of you niggers is Clifford? We're all Clifford.
--:-- Aja Romano: This is basically the broader point that he is trying to make to an extent.
--:-- Aja Romano: Any of you who have ever watched me know that I have never had a problem with transgender people. if you listen to what I'm saying, clearly my problem has always been with white people.
--:-- Aja Romano: But I think there's another element to this, which is that he thinks that that trans people in their quest for correct pronoun usage and the way that they discuss things like gender and biology are essentially going too far and getting hysterical and changing what he views as basic biological facts.
--:-- Aja Romano: Gender is a fact. This is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on Earth had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. That is a fact.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are any of his arguments convincing Asia?
--:-- Aja Romano: I think they definitely are to many of his fans who have been really supportive of his platform and his position on all these issues.
--:-- Aja Romano: And I think, for example, one of the more succinct points that he makes in the show is when he says he's talking about queer people and white privilege, again, which is a recurring theme throughout the show, basically meaning that gay white people are white above all else, right?
--:-- Aja Romano: By the same logic that he seems to believe that black trans people are black above all else, right? So that's like kind of a way of saying that that a person might be like queer or trans until they want to like pull a race card or something like that.
--:-- Aja Romano: Or a benefit from white privilege. You know, I thought we were going to come to blows. I was ready. I was ready.
--:-- Aja Romano: And then right when you think we would fight, guess what he did? He picked up his phone and he called the police.
--:-- Aja Romano: And this, this thing I'm describing is a major issue that I have with that community.
--:-- Aja Romano: Gay people are minorities until they need to be white again.
--:-- Aja Romano: And I think that's an example of what Chappelle does really well. You know, he says something in a way that is very concrete and pointed and sharp and succinct.
--:-- Aja Romano: But it's, to me, immediately undermined by the fact that he also doesn't seem to consider at all that Black trans people can have a profoundly different experience from Black cisgender people.
--:-- Aja Romano: And even that Black trans people exist. Because he doesn't talk a lot about Black trans people in his special. He doesn't acknowledge them at all.
--:-- Aja Romano: Why do you think that is?
--:-- Aja Romano: I think, honestly, because he thinks it doesn't matter. There's a moment where he says, you know, that if the cops are called on a gay Black man, that all the cops are going to see when they arrive at the scene is the color of the man's skin.
--:-- Aja Romano: And I think he puts that into the show as kind of like a disclaimer, you know, to talk about how he views blackness as the most important, I guess, identity vector that someone can be if they're in that position.
--:-- Aja Romano: Obviously, that is a very valid perspective, but it's not one that's borne out by any statistic that we know about the actual lives that trans people face on a day-to-day basis, especially trans people of color.
--:-- Aja Romano: Because trans people of color face, by orders of magnitude, more harassment, more sexual assault, more police brutality, more instances of homelessness, more instances of homicide, and more instances of suicide than cisgender people.
--:-- Aja Romano: These facts are borne out by statistics and research over and over and over again
--:-- Aja Romano: Like trans people and especially trans people of color live lives that are highly highly marginalized and highly vulnerable
--:-- Aja Romano: And nothing in Dave Chappelle special really acknowledges that
--:-- Aja Romano: And he really seems to view trans people as this sort of like group of shrill entitled white people yammering on about pronouns and then getting mad at him.
--:-- Aja Romano: Ultimately, he seems kind of confused in this special.
--:-- Aja Romano: He's a TERF. I'm team TERF.
--:-- Aja Romano: Which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist and means he's loudly and proudly transphobic, but he also sort of scolds an audience member who's for North Carolina's now repealed anti-trans bathroom bill.
--:-- Aja Romano: North Carolina passed a law once that said a person in North Carolina must use the restroom that corresponds with the gender they were assigned on their birth certificate.
--:-- Aja Romano: No, no, no, no. No, that's not a good law. That's a mean law. No American should have to present a birth certificate to take a shit at Walmart in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the baby shot and killed a motherfucker.
--:-- Aja Romano: I mean, I think it's very muddled, honestly.
--:-- Aja Romano: I think to him, he says he's, quote, team turf, right? Which is not quite the same as saying he is a turf. He just sort of supports them, sort of, and specifically talks about how he supports J.K. Rowling because J.K. Rowling was called out.
--:-- Aja Romano: I will have order.
--:-- Aja Romano: Well, part of the reason she was called out was for discussing gender essentialism and biology associated with gender.
--:-- Aja Romano: And this is something that he seems to be completely unable to accept trans people's experiences regarding.
--:-- Aja Romano: He really seems to sort of draw a line at saying biological gender is fact and you can't change it. it's fact.
--:-- Aja Romano: That itself is a very transphobic stance that does not align with science on gender and biology.
--:-- Aja Romano: But Chappelle being very, very adamant that this is his position and his position is that gender and biology are related and inextricably linked gives many, many, many transphobic people permission to go out and parrot that view.
--:-- Aja Romano: I think to him, he probably doesn't think that holding that belief makes him transphobic, but it certainly creates transphobia in the real world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The concern over whether everything Dave Chappelle says will be taken as fact and parroted by his fans is, of course, compounded by the fact that he is arguably the most popular stand-up comedian in the world, right?
--:-- Aja Romano: Absolutely. Absolutely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when you think about him having six Netflix specials, right? And just what the number of Netflix subscribers alone, that's a huge audience, you know, which is probably why this becomes such a huge controversy within the company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think unlike any we've ever seen when this special is released, tell me how it's received internally at Netflix.
--:-- Aja Romano: There was immediate backlash at Netflix over this show. So I think even before it was released, staffers had been worried about the impact and had been discussing it internally.
--:-- Aja Romano: The day after it was released, various employees at Netflix made Twitter threads about it and how upset they were by it.
--:-- Aja Romano: And it almost immediately just generated lots and lots of backlash, both within the trans community and within the Netflix community of staff and employees.
--:-- Aja Romano: And the backlash was so intense and so swift that the co-CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, issued an internal memo that almost made things worse because his initial response was sort of really dismissive of the idea that a show like this could have real-world harm, which we know statistically is not true.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How do Netflix employees react to Ted's statement?
--:-- Aja Romano: Very unhappily. They staged a protest and a walkout, basically.
--:-- Aja Romano: Workers deserve to be safe and treated respectfully at work. They deserve to be heard when they feel that the product they're being told to make was harmful.
--:-- Aja Romano: And we need Netflix to change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And even knowing that the walkout was coming, Sarandos walked back his initial statement a little bit, But he told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview that his stance had not changed and that basically trans fans would just have to get over it because the closer was staying.
--:-- Aja Romano: What did he walk back? He walked back the idea that the show could not cause harm in the real world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He basically said, you know, I was wrong. I handled it badly. Of course, I believe that fiction can impact real life.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, Netflix is enjoying a really good quarter because of Squid Game. They are in a very good financial situation, and I think that they aren't really motivated to consider the backlash of a relatively minor part of their audience.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's sort of the end of the story at Netflix.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then this week, Dave Chappelle himself responds to all the controversy his special stirred up.
--:-- Aja Romano: What did he say?
--:-- Aja Romano: He basically said that he wasn't going to be submitting to the trans community and the queer community.
--:-- Aja Romano: He wasn't going to let them, quote unquote, summon him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are they trying to summon him?
--:-- Aja Romano: I mean, I don't think so. he wants to sit down with them and and like meet uh as friends but but he wants that meeting to happen on his terms first of all you cannot come if you have not watched my special from beginning to end.
--:-- Aja Romano: You must come to a place of my choosing and a time of my choosing.
--:-- Aja Romano: And thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He basically all but says this, like he wants trans people to show that they have a sense of humor and that they can laugh at themselves and that they're not sticklers for pronouns and that they won't cancel him if he gets something wrong.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's what he wants.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But at the same time, like the moment they try to set the terms of that meeting, as it were, then suddenly he won't allow them to summon him, you know?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that that's a very revealing sort of power dynamic there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Dave Chappelle would like to be an open dialogue with the trans community, but only on his own terms.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's definitely the impression that the show leaves you with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you can't really have a respectful conversation if you don't respect the terms that one half of the conversation is using.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you think there's any real chance here for resolution between Dave Chappelle, his Legion fans, and the trans community?
--:-- Aja Romano: I mean, this is Dave Chappelle. In the long run, he probably won't face repercussions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he might have to sit out a couple of film festivals because in the immediate aftermath of all of this, he has said that a number of film festivals aren't inviting him to show his new documentary that he's been working on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But in the end, in the long run, he's still going to be Dave Chappelle comedy legend.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he's still going to have the respect of his peers, his fans and apparently Netflix.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You have to answer the question. Am I canceled or not? Then let go
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you very much and good night
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A word from our sponsors and then is Dave Chappelle new special funny Does that even matter? It should, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know. We're going to ask Craig Jenkins. He's a critic.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars. But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head. Not anymore, says Built Rewards.
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--:-- Craig Jenkins: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's be honest. Are you happy with your job? Like, really happy?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Like, really happy? The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown, or one we never wanted in the first place.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: But still, we stick it out, and we give reasons like, what if the next move is even worse?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I've already put years into this place, and maybe the most common one, isn't everyone kind of miserable at work?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving.
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--:-- Craig Jenkins: Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer. That's strawberry.me slash unstuck.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's start the show Craig Jenkins and I mean i guess on paper i am the pop critic at uh vulture Wicked.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: What are you off paper?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know. Trouble.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Fair.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When was the first time you saw Dave Chappelle doing comedy?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Maybe my first time seeing him do anything is Half Baked. You know, the pothead classic.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Right near the beach. Boy! Classic.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: And then I got into a little bit of his stand-up stuff. You know, saw him in films. He's in Robin Hood Men in Tights, I believe.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: That's right, he is.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Achoo! bless you but yeah i guess early on in the general scheme of things so for for anyone who was like too young or too old to remember what made dave chappelle dave chappelle it was just the irreverence and and the willingness to to go places where not everyone else would in the humor now this is when i knew i was in a bad neighborhood you only see this in the worst neighborhoods remember it's three o'clock in the morning it's three o'clock in the morning I look out the window.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: It was a fucking baby standing on a corner.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After that, he starts to do more television. I mean, Chappelle's show essentially gives an entire quadrant of a whole generation its sense of humor in a lot of ways.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, the jokes indoor, you know, the yelling out Kobe. Kobe! Anytime you throw a piece of paper in the trash to this day kind of thing, the Rick James stuff.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I'm one of the baddest motherfuckers of all time. One of the best singers, one of the best looking motherfuckers you've ever seen. I'm Rick James, bitch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just infinite classic sketches.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, a smart sense of humor and a smart, like, sociopolitical compass underneath all that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, it was goofy, but it was goofy to a point, a political point, I think, often.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's not something that everyone else was doing at the time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, the show creates all these incredible characters who are still somehow permeating our culture.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What is, like, the most compelling stuff he does on that show when it comes to having like a deeper message?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: You know, it was stuff like the racial draft.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Good evening and welcome to the first and maybe only racial draft here in New York City. Folks, this is for all the marbles. What happens here will state the racial standing of these Americans once and for all. That's right.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Where, you know, he's playing up stereotypes and he's also trying to say something about them.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Tremendous opportunity for me. Finally be part of a race, have a home. So long, fried rice. Hello, fried chicken. I love you guys!
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Which was where he plays a white supremacist who was blind and doesn't realize that he's a black person.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I mean, it made the guy millions. And I don't know a person in their 20s and 30s who isn't aware of it.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Although I haven't been into it in a while. I do definitely take a spin through the show every now and then and catch the classics.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: And they kind of stand up a lot of them still.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He famously walks away from a $50 million contract renewal at Comedy Central to make more Chappelle's show.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Why does he make that decision?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: We were told more recently that what inspired it is that he felt like the reach of the show had exceeded the ability of the whole audience to understand what he was getting at.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: More specifically, there was a sketch about blackface and he caught a white guy laughing and that made him deeply uncomfortable, is what he says.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I mean, obviously the sketch was made to make people laugh, but what was it about a white guy laughing at it that didn't sit right with him?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: You know, I don't think we have the most detail about that story, but like the gist of it is that he realized that there's people who are laughing a different way than he intended them to.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Which is really interesting considering where we're at now.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: A decade or so later, Chappelle signs, I think, what we know to be at least a $60 million deal with Netflix to crank out a few comedy specials for them.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: How's his comedy evolved in these specials?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I don't know that it's evolved. You know, he's come back with the same compass and with the same idea of morality.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: But there are new issues and the way that he has approached some of them has gotten him into hot water as much as there's good and poignant stuff in a lot of those specials and usually the majority of at least the older ones would he would be selling you something that was you know sharp and of the moment until he started to get into issues where he doing the reading
--:-- Craig Jenkins: We talked a bit about the hot water
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Tell me about some of the poignants
--:-- Craig Jenkins: You know I especially liked 846 from last year This is weird and less than ideal circumstances to do a show. But the only way to figure out if this shit will actually work is to do the goddamn show.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Where he talks about, and without even necessarily cracking a joke, he holds the audience's attention, you know, talking about race and, you know, the issues leading up to and stemming from the George Floyd murder of last year.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: What are you signifying? That you can kneel on a man's neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds and feel like you wouldn't get the wrath of God.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: That's what is happening right now.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Redemption Song, the one where he talks about his difficulties with Netflix, which is really like issues about ownership of the show and stuff like that.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: It was kind of sharp, really like weathered showbiz guy analysis that you don't really get from anyone because he's got that unusual trajectory.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: This is a very important moment.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I want to thank Ted Sarandos at Netflix, a CEO who had the courage to take my show off its platform and financial detriment to his company just because I asked.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: And, you know, there's stuff in the specials like Equanimity and The Age of Spin, you know, about aging and about being a dad and about, you know, rural Ohio and stuff that I thought really spoke truly to where he is right now.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I live in Ohio, and anyone that knows anything about Ohio knows that even the word Ohio is an old Native American word.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: It means literally a land of poor white people.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: You mentioned that in 846, which I agree is maybe the most powerful thing he's done in this sort of, whatever it is, third stage of his career, it isn't that funny.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: He isn't doing it for the laughs.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Do you think Dave Chappelle cares how funny he is anymore?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I don't think so.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I don't think that there's a necessity for him to always be, you know, side-splitting.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: He can show up and he can give what is essentially a really dark TED talk.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: And that can be just as fascinating as a lot of jokes, you know, instead.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Which might sort of set up the question of whether The Closer is funny.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: You reviewed it for Vulture and you didn't think it was that funny, did you?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Intermittently, it is funny, but he's not on the smart side of stuff.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: He's really sort of got this idea that, you know, social justice is more like a rat race and the different groups, you know, get by at each other's expenses.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: And that doesn't account for people who fit into multiple groups at the same time.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: We blacks, we look at the gay community and we go, God damn it, look how well that movement is going. Look how well you are doing.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: And we've been trapped in this predicament for hundreds of years how the fuck are you making that kind of progress i can't help but feel like if slaves had baby oil and booty shorts we might have been free a hundred years sooner you know what i mean
--:-- Craig Jenkins: He's had trouble grasping that concept in the more recent specials, particularly in The Closer, where he tries to say that, you know, his criticism of the LGBTQ community throughout the last, you know, the preceding five specials was really about white people, which sort of begs the question of, don't you realize that that community is not predominantly white necessarily, among others?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: What do you think it is about Chappelle and where he's at as someone who's, you know, followed his career pretty closely for a couple decades now, that this is such a motivating issue for him, that he really wants to, like, spend multiple comedy specials talking about the trans community and the LGBTQ community.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: You know, that happens. We've seen people like Lil Boosie, like J.K. Rowling, who get, you know, a bee in their bonnet about, you know, queer issues and their lack of understanding of them and the backlash that they get for speaking out of pocket about things.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: And then it just becomes this sort of like weird ideological obsession. Like they keep having to peck at it because like, I mean, it's a very of the moment thing. Like anything that you say that gets you a lot of smoke.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: So now we're in this position where Dave, who was often championed as this kind of political progressive of a sort in the past, is now resonating with right-wing figures. and this doesn't bother him.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: And that's fascinating because he once gave up 50 million bucks because he didn't like who was laughing.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Do you think Chappelle has like another great chapter in him?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I mean, considering how much he's accomplished as a stand-up comic, it feels like he's given the world quite a bit.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: Does a comedian of his stature and like his legacy need to reinvent himself one more time?
--:-- Craig Jenkins: He can do it. He's smart enough to. It's a question of whether he's so hard-headed that this is going to be the future for him that he's just going to constantly live and sort of this gutting antagonism of people who are more progressive and try and wedge in there and not realize that he's useful to the right now.
--:-- Craig Jenkins: I would love to see it happen. I would also love to see him go somewhere for a while.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tonight's musical guest to Chicago's finest emcee Give it up for Common and Kanye West. Yeah, it's Common Sense. Kanye West on the Dave Chappelle Show.
--:-- Kanye West: Everybody got to eat right, y'all. It's the food, baby.
--:-- Kanye West: I walked in the crib. Got two kids and my baby mama late. Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh.
--:-- Kanye West: So I had to did what I had to did. Because I had to kid. It's an oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Craig Jenkins. He's trouble at Vulture.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Amina Al-Sadi is a ninja here at Today Explained. She had helped producing today's show from Hady Mawajdeh.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was engineered by Efim Shapiro and Cristian Ayala, edited by Matt Collette, and fact-checked by Laura Bullard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The rest of the team includes Will Reed, Victoria Chamberlain, Miles Bryan, and Halima Shah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's Deep of Audio.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The deputy is Jillian Weinberger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We use music from Breakmaster Cylinder and sometimes Noam Hassenfeld.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram for him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I had to did what I had to did Cause I had to give I'm up all night Getting my money right Into the blue and white
