Speaker 1: Pushing. I'm Khalil Jabr Muhammad and I'm Ben Austin. We're
Speaker 1: two best friends, one black, one white. I'm a historian
Speaker 1: and I'm a journalist. And now we have a new podcast.
Speaker 1: It's called some of my Best Friends Are Like, I'm
Speaker 1: not a racist. Some of my best friends are dot
Speaker 1: dot dot. And in this show, we're going to wrestle
Speaker 1: with the challenges and absurdities of a deeply divided and
Speaker 1: unequal country because we know, after nearly thirty five years
Speaker 1: of relationship, that being a black guy and a white
Speaker 1: guy hanging out together is not gonna get us to
Speaker 1: the Promised Land. So we grew up on the South
Speaker 1: Side of Chicago together. We've known each other since we
Speaker 1: were thirteen and fourteen, back when we were backing groceries
Speaker 1: and making three twenty five an hour and playing pickup
Speaker 1: games of sixteen in softball. And here we are look
Speaker 1: all grown up. I mean, look at you. Ben. You
Speaker 1: are this incredible writer and journalist. You've written for The
Speaker 1: New York Times, Wired magazine, GQ. You have written about
Speaker 1: housing and one of the most iconic public housing complexes
Speaker 1: in Chicago. You continue to work on criminal justice issues,
Speaker 1: really proud of you, man, and you keep doing your thing. Well,
Speaker 1: let me let me sing your praises. Okay, you've somehow
Speaker 1: made it to Harvard, you know, from from Kenwood to Harvard.
Speaker 1: Now you're teaching there. You're one of pre eminent scholars
Speaker 1: on race and racism and American history. Before Harvard, you
Speaker 1: ran an amazing research library in Harlem called the Shaun
Speaker 1: Berg Center. Yeah, that's just an incredible place. But you
Speaker 1: know what, all of those accomplishments would mean nothing if
Speaker 1: I hadn't been your boss at fourteen. That prepared me
Speaker 1: for the leadership, that's right. And you know, we went
Speaker 1: to a public high school here, a predominantly African American
Speaker 1: high school. You had the gold chain, you were winning
Speaker 1: the Jabbo jeans, and I was killing it. I was
Speaker 1: killing it. I was listening to Phil Collins and Madonna. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so so like what you're kind of saying on
Speaker 1: the spectrum is that I was cool and you weren't.
Speaker 1: I just want to put that out there. That's really right,
Speaker 1: It's definitely true. So we're basically going to talk about
Speaker 1: the things we've been talking about for like thirty five years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the serious stuff because because after all. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've made careers as people who try to make sense
Speaker 1: of the world we live in, right you. As a journalist,
Speaker 1: I write about the past and try to help people
Speaker 1: figure out why the past matters to the present. So
Speaker 1: here we are. We're going to talk about these issues
Speaker 1: of politics and history, and we're gonna talk about pop culture. Yep.
Speaker 1: So let's do that. Let's start talking. All right, it's complicated,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna do it together. Listen as some of
Speaker 1: my best friends are. On September ninth, Subscribe on Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.