Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Trissie McMillan Cotton, welcome back
Speaker 1: to the Daily Show. Welcome back to me. Indeed, it's
Speaker 1: a pleasure to be back, right or do I say professor?
Speaker 1: I'd love to know what you prefer because you you
Speaker 1: have so many prestigious titles. You know, it's with New
Speaker 1: York Times best selling author. You know, it could be professor,
Speaker 1: it could be Mccauthin. Is it a genius ground that
Speaker 1: they give you? You can say that. I think I'm
Speaker 1: not supposed to say that. The Foundation would prefer not.
Speaker 1: But that's interesting. So they say you're a genius, but
Speaker 1: they're not. They're like, you're not allowed to say it
Speaker 1: of yourself exactly, kind of like your mother tells you
Speaker 1: some things are best said about you by others. I see, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're amazing, but don't ever think that about yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's well, well, then I will say to the genius
Speaker 1: professor that is Trissy, Welcome to the show. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. What a time to have you on, because
Speaker 1: you know, there are a few people who I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: learning from engaging with um studying because you're not just
Speaker 1: a professor, You're a sociologist. You're somebody who looks at
Speaker 1: the world. You study what has happened, what is happening,
Speaker 1: and how you think it will happen going forward, and
Speaker 1: right now feels like an interesting time of everything this
Speaker 1: going on. Let's let's start with you know, one of
Speaker 1: our favorite platforms that we chad on all the time. Twitter.
Speaker 1: It's been a really interesting time on Twitter right now.
Speaker 1: That's an understatement. I try I specialize in those. Um
Speaker 1: I would love to know your opinion on Twitter itself
Speaker 1: and how we see its role in our society. There
Speaker 1: are some who say, because it is a business, Elon
Speaker 1: can do whatever he wants. He paid it, he paid
Speaker 1: for it, he can take it, he can he can
Speaker 1: do as he pleases. On the other hand, there are
Speaker 1: people who are saying Ellen taking over Twitter, which has
Speaker 1: become this public square, only goes to show how, you know,
Speaker 1: dangerous can be to have billionaires defining what everybody else
Speaker 1: can speak, or what what what the speech might or
Speaker 1: may not be. And all of those things are true,
Speaker 1: they are not true to mam line in equal parts.
Speaker 1: So I think the bigger story here, uh is that
Speaker 1: we outsourced the public square to the private sector. Right,
Speaker 1: Twitter becomes or it feels like, the public square, but
Speaker 1: it has never operated in practice as a public square.
Speaker 1: It cannot. It is not owned by the state or
Speaker 1: by the people. And in fact, one of the things
Speaker 1: that minority people, queer people have said for years about
Speaker 1: Twitter is that they could not participate the same way
Speaker 1: that really powerful brands could participate, or politicians or particular
Speaker 1: specially trolls. Uh. And so in a true public square,
Speaker 1: there would be some way for people to talk back
Speaker 1: right to the powers that be. That's never been Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's never been any social media platform. That is the
Speaker 1: difference between a business and something that is truly public.
Speaker 1: So it is a business. Elon Musk can buy it
Speaker 1: as he was eventually, you know, forced to do um uh.
Speaker 1: You know, he wrote a check and then his behind
Speaker 1: had to cash it. And that's how we find ourselves here,
Speaker 1: that we have used it to try to express sort
Speaker 1: of you know, people power does not mean that the
Speaker 1: people own it or have any authority over it. What
Speaker 1: that says to me, and what I think it says
Speaker 1: to many other people, is that there should be a
Speaker 1: public space. We are in an information society. Information is power,
Speaker 1: and it is money. Why don't we have a civic
Speaker 1: public square that exists on the internet? Elon must buy
Speaker 1: and Twitter would not have mattered if the state was
Speaker 1: competing with Twitter. That's interesting, Yeah, but what do you think?
Speaker 1: But do you think you know, many of these ideas
Speaker 1: are sound except when you add in that the states
Speaker 1: in question would be America. Yes, no, no, And I
Speaker 1: mean that's not because of America's in netnos or anything,
Speaker 1: but rather because America sees everything through the lens of
Speaker 1: you know, left or rights, Democrat Republican always it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what the issue is. And it feels like America
Speaker 1: itself would never be able to create something like this
Speaker 1: because both sides wouldn't agree on what the thing should
Speaker 1: or shouldn't be. Oh no, absolutely. I mean we see
Speaker 1: this debate about everything that is publicly governed, particularly our schools,
Speaker 1: right where we cannot agree on whether or not our
Speaker 1: schools are indoctrinating our children or should be preparing them
Speaker 1: for the economy of the future. Somehow Americans wanted to
Speaker 1: do both, right, don't teach my children anything but make
Speaker 1: sure that they can be competitive in the economy of
Speaker 1: the future. But you know what that is the mess
Speaker 1: of democratic participation. It does not mean that we get
Speaker 1: it right. It means that there is a way to
Speaker 1: get it right sometimes, so we don't have to have
Speaker 1: the whole thing figured out for us to invest in publicness.
Speaker 1: So one of you know, I teach at a public
Speaker 1: university in North Carolina, and I teach a lot of
Speaker 1: students who will go on to work in libraries and
Speaker 1: in the information sector. You know, libraries are to me
Speaker 1: the shining example on the hill of what a public
Speaker 1: space can be. Are they perfect at Absolutely not? But
Speaker 1: do they welcome people into them and meet people where
Speaker 1: they are? Absolutely? Can America do that? Yes? Now do
Speaker 1: we have to fight to do it every step of
Speaker 1: the way, Absolutely, But we can have that fight. You
Speaker 1: can't have that fight when an entity is owned by
Speaker 1: a single meglomaniac. Huh. You know, well, when we when
Speaker 1: we talk about these spaces and we talk about these ideas,
Speaker 1: and we talk about these conversations, there's no denying that
Speaker 1: Twitter and many places like it have benefited from the
Speaker 1: diverse array of voices that have now been part of
Speaker 1: the platform. You know, you wouldn't know what was happening
Speaker 1: on the ground in the same way in Iran. Were
Speaker 1: it not for Twitter, you know, you wouldn't know what
Speaker 1: was happening on the ground, in the same way in Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: were it not for Twitter, it has become as you said,
Speaker 1: it has the illusion at times of a public square.
Speaker 1: But many people have used it to that effect. I
Speaker 1: would love to know, you know, from your perspective, if
Speaker 1: somebody who seen your own journey, you know, from general
Speaker 1: obscurity to now becoming somebody whose voice is so respected
Speaker 1: and recognized. You know, you right for the New York
Speaker 1: Times as part of the ed. You you you're shaping
Speaker 1: people's opinions. How do you find the balance well? Or
Speaker 1: how do you inspire people you teach to think critically
Speaker 1: about the world that they're living in, because half of
Speaker 1: the things we know are taught to us, and then
Speaker 1: at some point we have to decipher between what we've
Speaker 1: been taught is the truth and then what is the
Speaker 1: truth or where the gray even exists? How how do
Speaker 1: you even begin that journey as a teacher and as
Speaker 1: a learner who's constantly because you're constantly learning, well, I
Speaker 1: think that is part of it. I try to always
Speaker 1: be a learner. It's really easy, I think to develop
Speaker 1: and grow in your career and forget how overwhelming it
Speaker 1: is to learn something new for the first time. So
Speaker 1: I try to be an idiot as much as humanly
Speaker 1: possible that all the time, you know, I enroll in something,
Speaker 1: I take up something that I'm just absolutely horrible at
Speaker 1: doing because I want to feel how vulnerable it feels
Speaker 1: to learn. And it is a very vulnerable space. So
Speaker 1: when I am feeling generous, I think that there is
Speaker 1: a not insignificant part of the American public that isn't
Speaker 1: so much afraid of the other as they are of
Speaker 1: being ignorant. And some people would rather be angry than stupid,
Speaker 1: and so figuring it out is actually really hard. This
Speaker 1: is something I've learned as I've taught people, uh, And
Speaker 1: so there's a certain amount of vulnerability I think we
Speaker 1: have to share with each other to say that just
Speaker 1: because I have achieved something in one part of the
Speaker 1: world or in one profession, doesn't mean I know everything. Now,
Speaker 1: the challenge for us is that we have a culture
Speaker 1: that absolutely likes to turn every success story into a
Speaker 1: universal story of genius. Right, so you found it Facebook,
Speaker 1: and now you can solve world hunger. As if those
Speaker 1: have anything to do with each other. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so that is a problem of the culture, but don't
Speaker 1: think it has to be that way. And I actually
Speaker 1: think one of the good things about Twitter has been
Speaker 1: how many people have been willing to model learning and
Speaker 1: public so that other people could see that it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to strip you of your status or your position,
Speaker 1: that learning can happen without you, you know, flailing about
Speaker 1: I think I'll miss that about Twitter. You know, it
Speaker 1: ends eventually listen all social media apps and uh, there'll
Speaker 1: be something new, obviously, but I don't know that anything
Speaker 1: else would be able to capture. That was one of
Speaker 1: the best things about Twitter. Um. It was a space
Speaker 1: for people to see different kinds of genius. That you
Speaker 1: could be a good in one domain still learning in
Speaker 1: another domain, that you could risk it. It is something
Speaker 1: that I enjoyed doing personally, and I think that it
Speaker 1: was never the the appsentension listen people turned it into
Speaker 1: that that is not what it was designed to do.
Speaker 1: Think that's because we innately want to do that as
Speaker 1: human beings. I do. I have to believe that human
Speaker 1: beings are fundamentally curious, and social media is only popular
Speaker 1: because we're curious. We go there because we want to
Speaker 1: see we're nosy, we you know, we want to rub
Speaker 1: reneck the world, you know. Uh. And so what it
Speaker 1: is done, it is it's made it profitable, made our
Speaker 1: curiosity profitable. Uh. And it has made our curiosity politically polarized.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean the curiosity is bad. I actually
Speaker 1: think it is a thing that separates us, you know,
Speaker 1: from the rest of uh, one of the animal keenom.
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't wanna throw shade on animals.
Speaker 1: Animals are good, They're pretty curious. Yeah, actually are pretty curious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think at heart we're eight if we're lucky, right,
Speaker 1: you know. But it does separate us, I think from
Speaker 1: like a brick wall. It does. Indeed, it doesn't need
Speaker 1: shade has been thrown. Animals haven't spread. I could talk
Speaker 1: to you, I could talk to you for hours. But
Speaker 1: that's why we have your books, That's why we have
Speaker 1: some of your tweets. Thank you again for joining me
Speaker 1: on the show. Thank you everything, Thanks for shame. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. One more time starts Tony for Everybody.
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