Living In Paradox With Chloe Valdary (Ep.8)

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Living In Paradox With Chloe Valdary"

Conversations with Coleman – Episode 8 (May 14, 2020)

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Overview

In this candid and wide-ranging conversation, host Coleman Hughes speaks with Chloé Valdary, writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Theory of Enchantment. The two dive deep into topics such as art, race, spiritual fulfillment, black history, the Great Awokening, Black Lives Matter, the role of branding, hip hop versus Western canon, paradox in life and creativity, and the power of collective experience. Throughout, Valdary's passion for art as a guiding principle in her worldview shines, and the dynamic between her and Coleman offers nuanced reflections on culture, politics, and identity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Chloé Valdary’s Podcasting & 'Weed and Wisdom' [02:39–04:26]

• Chloé’s new podcast, "Weed and Wisdom"
  • Originated from her experiences with the intellectual expansiveness of edibles compared to smoking weed.
  • “When I have an edible, it’s like that much more incredible.” (Chloé, 04:21)

2. Upbringing in New Orleans & Education in Black History [05:17–08:14]

• Growing up in both predominantly black and mixed schools, Valdary’s worldview was shaped by an education rooted in empowerment and black excellence (Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou featured early).
• Emphasizes the richness of a racially and culturally diverse upbringing:
  • "I grew up around people of all different backgrounds..." (Chloé, 07:27)

3. Human Oneness vs. Modern Racial Rhetoric [08:14–11:16]

• Both speakers share a commitment to the "oneness of the human family," finding current popular rhetoric about white people (“white male as slur”) mystifying and alienating.

4. Learning Black History—Focus on Achievement or Oppression? [14:01–19:44]

• Discussion of a NYT Op-Ed advocating for Black History Month’s focus to shift from achievement to oppression.
• Chloé: "I don’t see how spiritual culmination comes to fruition through that process. By definition, that’s not how spiritual work works.” (16:55)
• Coleman asserted that repeated political reparations (from museums to apologies) haven't filled a "spiritual hole" in America.

5. The "Great Awokening", Spiritual Fulfillment, & Social Media [20:57–25:11]

• The duo reflects on the change in racial discourse post-Obama, theorizing:
  • Social media’s role in accelerating outrage.
  • Growing material comfort can highlight a lack of spiritual purpose.
  • “There’s a total difference between the caliber of folks like Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes... they were... spiritually more advanced than the current generation of writers.” (Chloé, 24:06)

6. Material Inequality vs. Well-Being [27:33–33:12]

• They question the assumption that wealth is directly tied to happiness or spiritual fulfillment.
• Chloé recaps Jonathan Haidt: "Past a certain median income, there's no correlation between money and happiness." (30:59)
• Discussion about polling black vs. white Americans on happiness/family time challenging economic determinism.

7. Chloé’s Connection to Israel & the Politics of Solidarity [33:20–39:01]

• Her affinity for Jewish culture stems from a unique Christian upbringing.
• Explains why the National Black Lives Matter movement adopts an explicit anti-Israel stance—rooted in a tradition framing the West as an oppressive force.
  • "They take their understanding of American history ... and project it onto other countries’ histories..." (Chloé, 36:07)
• Reflects on earlier black leaders who supported Israel, connecting it more to black resilience.

8. Twitter, Art, and Productive Disagreement [41:41–44:21]

• Chloé credits her Twitter success to seeing art as her core political orientation, not seeking to win arguments but emphasizing the "eternal worthiness" of others:
  • “I still believe fundamentally in your eternal worthiness, which is a spiritual claim.” (Chloé, 44:10)

9. Hip Hop and the Western Canon [44:52–49:03]

• Chloé views hip hop as a direct continuation of the literary tradition (like Homer’s bards).
  • "Hip hop is... the greatest thing since the ancient bards." (Chloé, 44:55)
• Hip hop’s complexity and introspection are often missed by surface-level critics.

10. Paradox, Art, and Cancel Culture [50:32–54:39]

• On her music (Paradox): Valdary is "obsessed with paradox"—blending contrasting identities and experiences (e.g., divine and romantic love in Prince or David’s biblical story).
• Argues cancel culture is incompatible with great art as both “live in the space of paradox.”

11. Underrated Artists and Inspirations [55:11–58:09]

• Chloé recommends the Puerto Rican band IFA and British artist Ben Howard as profound, under-the-radar musicians.
• She samples Edgar Allan Poe and Nina Simone in her music, to blend seemingly disparate icons (57:12).

12. James Baldwin & Pliability of Great Minds [58:09–61:03]

• Baldwin’s "spiritual insight" discussed; compared to a great rapper in his complexity and ability to change his mind publicly.

13. Charter Schools, Education Reform, and Theory of Enchantment [61:03–67:01]

• Charter schools’ effectiveness depends on context; no universal verdict.
• Chloé’s Theory of Enchantment curriculum teaches social-emotional learning through pop culture as a bridge to deeper Western ideas.
  • “Mining that data to distill lessons about the human condition...” (Chloé, 66:00)

14. Branding, Identity, and Emotional Connection [71:09–77:45]

• Branding is about what objects "represent"—Nike sells the idea “that you can do anything.”
• “They’re not buying the clothing, they’re buying what the clothing represents. ... You're buying the medicine." (Chloé, 73:30)
• Debate about the personal vs. collective experience of fandom (merch, concerts).

15. Individual vs. Collective Spiritual Experience [78:43–83:15]

• The conversation considers whether spiritual experiences are diminished or enhanced in groups.
  • Chloé shares the evolutionary origin of “Olé!” as a collective religious chant and compares concert experiences to civil rights freedom songs.

16. Dance, Meditation, and Individual Practice [83:49–84:20]

• Chloé prefers dance (especially to Afrobeats) over seated meditation as her spiritual or meditative practice.

17. The Decline of Chance the Rapper [84:23–86:29]

• Both agree Chance's music has lost its spark.
  • Possible causes: "hit chasing," artistic overproduction, or loss of uniqueness.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the limits of material reparations:
  “If it’s a spiritual thing, you can’t fill it by political means.” (Coleman, 20:18)

• On black history education:
  “I received a very foundational introduction and in-depth exploration of black history... It’s not that the content isn’t there. It’s that the lens through which I understand the content is totally different.” (Chloé, 13:42)

• On why collective ‘reckoning’ with the past can miss the point:
  “That’s not how spiritual work works. By constantly trying to seek a sort of, like, cosmic justice in which everyone’s forced to... perpetually reckon with the distant past…” (Chloé, 16:55)

• On Twitter and disagreement:
  “It’s not just that I’m willing to have conversations... I still believe fundamentally in your eternal worthiness, which is a spiritual claim.” (Chloé, 44:09)

• On hip hop’s literary legacy:
  “I think hip hop is... the greatest thing since the ancient bards. What it does with language is equivalent to what Homer did with things like the Odyssey.” (Chloé, 44:55)

• On paradox in life and art:
  “Spirituality, I think, plays in the space of paradox. ... If we as a society... internalize the ability to hold space for two seemingly disparate ideas... we’d be a much healthier society.” (Chloé, 52:14)

• On branding and buying meaning:
  “Nike is not selling you a shoe. Nike is selling you the idea that you can do anything, and that’s why you buy the shoe...” (Chloé, 73:30)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:39] — Chloé’s podcasting & the role of edibles
• [05:17] — Upbringing in New Orleans & education
• [08:14] — Human family & race discourse
• [14:01] — NYT Op-Ed on Black History Month: focus shift
• [20:57] — Post-Obama: why the shift in racial conversation?
• [27:33] — Material wellbeing vs. spiritual fulfillment
• [33:20] — Chloé’s affinity for Israel & BLM’s position
• [41:41] — Twitter, art, and disagreement
• [44:52] — Hip hop, Western canon, and complexity
• [50:32] — Art, paradox, and cancel culture
• [55:11] — Underrated artists & creative inspirations
• [58:09] — James Baldwin, pliability, and complexity
• [61:03] — Charter school debate & Theory of Enchantment
• [71:09] — Branding, identity, and consumer behavior
• [78:43] — Personal vs. collective spiritual experience
• [84:23] — Decline of Chance the Rapper’s music

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Tone & Closing Theme

The tone is intellectually curious, relaxed, warm, and reflective. Chloé frequently connects her thoughts back to the importance of art, paradox, and spiritual rather than merely material or political modes of healing and understanding. The conversation closes with playful discussion about music, dance, and fandom, emphasizing the nonlinear, creative energy that defines both Chloé Valdary’s worldview and her approach to life and art.

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"Mining that data to distill lessons about the human condition in order to teach people how to be in better relationship with themselves and with their community around them."
—Chloé Valdary, on Theory of Enchantment [66:00]

"If we are a society that believes in art, I don't think cancel culture can last, because art has to play in the space of paradox."
—Chloé Valdary [53:56]

Transcript

[A]

SA.

[B]

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. If you're hearing this, then you're on the public feed, which means you'll get episodes a week after they come out and you'll hear advertisements. You can gain access to the subscriber feed by going to ColemanHughes.org and becoming a supporter. This means you'll have access to episodes a week early, you'll never hear ads, and you'll get access to bonus Q and A episodes. You can also support me by liking and subscribing on YouTube and sharing the show with friends and family. As always, thank you so much for your support. Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Chloe Valdari. Chloe Valdari is a writer and an entrepreneur. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and elsewhere. She runs a company called the Theory of Enchantment, which teaches social and emotional learning in schools and diversity and inclusion in companies and government agencies. We talk about her new podcast, which involves inviting her guests to smoke weed. We talk about the difference between smoking weed and eating it. We talk about how to think about black history and historical injustice, modern rhetoric about white people. We talk about the causes of the Great Awokening, which is a term Matthew Iglesias coined, referring to the period since 2014 or so when white Democrats have become more woke on the issue of race than black people. We talk about why Black Lives Matter perceives themselves to be connected to the Israel Palestine conflict. We talk about Chloe's unique approach to Twitter, art and politics. We talk about the relationship between hip hop and the Western canon. We talk about charter schools, branding. And we end the podcast by talking about why I don't buy merchandise from artists I love and why Chance the Rapper's music has gotten worse. I hope you're all doing well at whatever level of quarantine you're experiencing right now, and I hope you enjoy the podcast. Chloe Valderi, thanks for being on my podcast.

[A]

Thank you for inviting me.

[B]

You just started your own podcast?

[A]

I did. I just started my second podcast. Yeah, I started my first podcast, Theory of Enchantment, about a year and a half ago.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I started this new one, Weed and Wisdom, with Chloe recently, like a week ago.

[B]

Weed and Wisdom. What's the connection between the two?

[A]

So I started smoking weed when I was, like 23 years old, just purely recreationally because my friends were doing it. And then I recognized that when I would take edibles, I had a very interesting relationship with it musically and intellectually. And I thought that that experience on edibles was actually quite intellectually expansive. So I wanted to take that practice of, you know, imbibing in edible into a more regimented format and just have discussions that were interesting and had to do a lot with pop culture, with famous people or interesting people in a podcast format.

[B]

So what's the difference between smoking weed and eating it to you?

[A]

For smoking weed, it's not really. It lasts. The high lasts for about a minute, I guess. And so if I want to have like a sustained series of thoughts that are like intellectually interesting or musically interesting, I can't really do that when I smoke weed. But when I take an edible, it lasts four to six hours. And so I can do everything from produce music to just, even just consume music in a way that is different from my experience consuming music without it. Even though I think both music is a separate issue. Like I'm obsessed with music, so either way is amazing. But when I have an edible, it's like that much more incredible.

[B]

Edibles are dangerous. I found.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

One time in high school, I made weed infused peanut butter.

[A]

Oh, wow. Yeah.

[B]

When my dad wasn't home and he came back and the whole house smelled like weed.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Amateur mistake.

[B]

Yeah. And we went into the city to see a show, came back, missed our stop on the train because we fell asleep.

[A]

Oh. Yeah. I think I'm. I think I was okay because I. I started using or I started, you know, partaking weed, marijuana at a age when my brain was more or less fully function. So I never smoked it as a teenager or anything like that. And I think I sort of like, I missed out, but also to my advantage, I missed out on all the fun stories that would have happened if I wouldn't have. If I wouldn't have missed out on doing it in my teenage years.

[B]

So let's talk about your upbringing a little bit before we talk about music.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

So you're from New Orleans. New Orleans or New Orleans.

[A]

I say New Orleans, but either way is fine.

[B]

Do you think there's any connection between having grown up in New Orleans and your political views, your views on race? On Israel?

[A]

I think on race, probably not really. Not necessarily on Israel or political views in general, but I think when it comes to the issue of race, where race intersects with education, New Orleans is actually a very interesting city because it has schools that are both really, really of poor quality and. And schools that are really, really amazing and has this interesting tradition of being one of the first cities in the country to value education for women because of Its French and Catholic background, but also my educational experience growing up. Like, I went to elementary school called Langston Hughes Elementary School for about four years.

[B]

My long lost cousin.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I actually wanted to ask you if you were related to him.

[B]

I've lied and I have before as a joke.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. People take it seriously.

[B]

No, no. People, they don't usually believe me.

[A]

Oh, okay. Okay.

[B]

I don't know why they don't.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. That's weird. But it's. I had wondered if you were somehow related. That'd be amazing. But what that educational experience did was actually quite foundational because it was very much. It gave me a lot of black history, and in doing so. But it gave me a black history that was very much rooted in empowerment and very much rooted in a narrative of, like, redemption. Some of the first things that I had to learn in English literature classes, for example, at elementary school was like poetry, the poetry of Langston Hughes, poetry of Maya Angelou. And so these were figures who loomed large in my imagination at a very, very young age. And as a result, like, the image of black America loomed large in my imagination at a very young age. And then after attending that school for a couple of years, I attended a predominantly mixed school, I guess you could say very international in the sense that I went to. To school with people from all kinds of different backgrounds, and that's how my, you know, pre college education, that's how it was like. So first I went to a school that was predominantly black, then I went to a school that was predominantly mixed, and I went to high school that was predominantly black for a couple of years. And then I. I graduated from a high school that was predominantly mixed. So I grew up around people of all different backgrounds. And I don't know if other people assume that other people don't have that experience in other cities, but to the extent that that experience happened in New Orleans, it was very relevant and very foundational in. In constructing my worldview.

[B]

And that worldview is, I think, part of what unites us are part of. When I see your tweets.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The common thread I see between you and I and Camille Foster Amish Tatterton Williams is a deep commitment to the oneness of the human family.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And there are probably various disagreements, maybe big ones, between a lot of those folks I just mentioned, but that seems to have become such a cliche message now to the point where it just elicits an eye roll.

[A]

Does it? I mean, I don't know. I think in a lot of circles, that I am in. It doesn't necessarily elicit that. Certainly on Twitter it does, but I'm not sure that that's really representational of any meaningful thing or even if it is meaningful. I don't know the extent to which it is meaningful. But to your point. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of. There's a lot of language and rhetoric in political circles today, for example, that are about white people that I just fundamentally can't fathom because I grew up around white people. And. And the impression that I get when I read some of these comments or just when I think about the attitude that these. That people are putting out there is something that is fundamentally foreign. It's a foreign concept to me because, like, the only thing I can think of when I read those things is that, like, these people clearly don't know white people or, like, not in an intimate. In an intimate setting, the way you would know, you know, a friend or a family member. So it's just. Yeah. I can't really. It's not that. It's not simply that I disagree with the rhetoric. It's that it's incomprehensible to me.

[B]

Yeah. So I. I definitely share that. And I. You know, I grew up in a town that was. As I think perhaps you did.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know. Well, like your school, it was mixed.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

A quarter black, over half white, and some Hispanics and Asians. And I grew up with an intuitive sense that these divisions don't matter.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Equally at home, being friends with black kids, Asian kids, white kids.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And the divisions might be funny at most, but they were not deep. They were not essential.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so when I got to about 16 or 17 and started hearing the rhetoric about white people, the casual way in which being, say, a white male is almost a slur.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or it's used that way. It likewise. It just didn't register. It was, like, profoundly confusing.

[A]

Yeah. You started hearing that when you were 16 and 17.

[B]

I did. I started hearing it before college.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because I went to a very progressive high school.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

A high school that was less diverse than I had grown up with in elementary school.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

A private high school. And it was very progressive, and it was an early adopter of the wave of intersectionality and wokeness.

[A]

What year was this?

[B]

This would be in about 2012.

[A]

Okay. I didn't quite. I don't. I don't think I started hearing it until 2014. And I think that that was sort of a product of Ferguson and what was going on with Black Lives Matter protests, at least. I didn't really hear about intersectionality until 2014, but that's interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I wonder if there was a bigger impact on you or just a different impact on you having heard it in high school.

[B]

Maybe. You know, I think because I got introduced to it and imbibed it and more or less believed it in high school, you know, kind of like a, you know, getting a shot. I was maybe immunized by the time I went to college to a degree that a lot of other people weren't.

[A]

Okay. Yeah.

[B]

You know, a few. We were just talking with my girlfriend before from Texas has never heard any of this stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then you come to, you know, you come to a college on the coast, and for the first time you're hearing. You feel like you're swallowing a red pill. You're hearing about the prison industrial complex and, you know, a whole litany of other things that probably your public school didn't give you at all.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so you imbibe not only truths from that, but also falsehoods and overstatements, and you have no immunity against it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You haven't heard anything. You haven't heard the counter arguments.

[A]

Right. It's like the. It's like the only thing you've heard. So you're used to it and you think it's a standard. And then you're probably told that the fact that your high school, your elementary school, didn't mention such things as the prison industrial complex is proof that you were. Feel you were like, you know, indoctrinated or uneducated or something like that. Yeah. But that's so interesting to me because, like, my response to that is like, I. I really did receive an incredible education in black history, you know, And I do think that there is something to be said for folks who are in school who aren't receiving any education about black history. And that is a problem. But, like, I received a very foundational introduction and in depth exploration of black history since I was at least 6 years old. So that also that accusation of ignorance is a mis accusation. It's just that I'm looking at things through a different lens. It's not that the content isn't there. It's that the lens through which I understand the content is totally different.

[B]

I think I grew up with quite a bit of black history as well. I grew up reading and memorizing the Langston Hughes poems and Maya Angelou and whatnot through the school system.

[A]

Right. Same. Yeah.

[B]

There was recently a New York Times Op Ed. I don't know if you saw this, that arguing. We need to change the emphasis in Black History Month from all the things black people have accomplished, the great writers, the great inventors, to all the ways in which black people have been mistreated.

[A]

Really? I did not see that.

[B]

Yeah, it was a few days ago.

[A]

That's wild to me. That's crazy, actually. But, yeah, continue.

[B]

I think this reflects. I think I, you know, I could have predicted that that album would be released eventually.

[A]

The person who wrote it was black.

[B]

That's a good question. I don't. I don't remember.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

In any case, do you know what.

[A]

The crux of the argument was? Just so I can see if I can steel manage?

[B]

Okay. The crux of the argument was, yes, it's great that we celebrate George Washington Carver, we celebrate Langston Hughes, and black people have done amazing things, but fundamentally, we have not addressed how deeply black people have been oppressed historically in this country. And so to focus on. On the ways in which black people have achieved despite. Despite that oppression, rather than focusing on the. The oppression itself is a missed opportunity.

[A]

For what?

[B]

For coming to terms with how brutal America has been to black bodies.

[A]

So it's interesting. I just went to. It's funny, we're having this conversation. I just went to the Smithsonian African American Museum in D.C. i was just there two days ago, actually, so saw it for the first time. It's amazing. An amazing, amazing museum. And so I'm thinking about my experience there as I ponder this Op Ed. I don't. I guess I still don't know to what end I get the. No, I really don't get to what end that would be for. So I don't know. I'll read. I'll read the Op Ed if you could send it to me. Yeah, you know.

[B]

Well, my take on it is that there is this. There's this idea that is increasingly popular just in the past five years and especially in the past year with and, you know, reparations. The 1619 Project are all of a piece with this sentiment, which is that if we can only really come to terms with the past, starting at 16:19 to the present, slavery, the black codes, Jim Crow, lynching, et cetera, redlining. If we could only educate people about this stuff more, there's some point that we'll reach that will constitute a deep. Some kind of deep spiritual victory for the country. And what we have to do is keep reaching backwards in order to go forward.

[A]

Yeah, I don't think that that's how I think if the argument is about material conditions, and that's an argument that can be made, and I could argue for and against that. But if the argument is spiritual, then I don't see how spiritual culmination comes to fruition through that process. By definition, that's not how spiritual work works. By constantly trying to seek a sort of, like, cosmic justice in which everyone's forced to, it seems like, perpetually reckon with the distant past, as opposed to equipping folks, both black and white and every color in between in the present with the, I guess, internal disposition to understand their internal worthiness, which is a totally different. Like that is not achieved through constantly looking for a reckoning with the past. And, in fact, those are two different projects, actually. And it's funny, because no one's talking about that project. And I don't know, people are sort of conflating things, I think.

[B]

So, Yeah. I really couldn't agree more. I think the injustices of history are a bottomless pit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that doesn't mean you should not learn about them. Of course, history is, you know, it's as important as every other subject in school. And certainly I'm very open to arguments about this textbook. In Texas, they call slaves immigrants.

[A]

Here.

[B]

Why do they do that?

[A]

Oh, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Let's change that. All for it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's a very separate thing, I think, to argue that there's some point we're coming to that we just have to keep reaching and reaching and reaching for a reckoning with our historical injustices. And I think in practice, if you look at. There's a treadmill effect, is what I'm trying to say, where every time we do get something that is a important acknowledgment of historical oppression, such as the museum in D.C. which gets a few million views of visitors every year. And it's like if I'm.

[A]

Which is a national project in the.

[B]

Country'S capital and has extensive exhibits on slavery.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And costs, like, hundreds of millions of dollars to build building that, I don't think made a dent in the spiritual hole that some people feel about the past.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Nor did 50 years of affirmative action, which was initially sometimes called compensatory justice because it was argued for as a kind of reparations back in the 60s before the rationale changed. Nor has national apologies for slavery that Congress did some 12 years ago. I don't see any of these things as having really healed the hole that people seem to feel, acknowledging that that Hole is real. However, if it's a spiritual thing, you can't fill it by political means.

[A]

Yeah, that's the irony is that we're having a political conversation to address a spiritual issue. And I don't know that that point has been raised, like, as a protest against a lot of the ways in which we're talking about this as a nation. So yeah, that is an irony ultimately. So I don't know what will happen as a result because this seems like a very new wave of, like this, this new type of conversation that we're having about race was not the conversation we were having. I mean, I don't remember us having this conversation when Obama was in office.

[B]

Me neither.

[A]

This was. This was not the tone and tenor that characterizes this current conversation was not the tone and tenor when Obama was in office.

[B]

Not at all.

[A]

So it's striking to me that we're having it now and I'm sort of perplexed by why. Why now?

[B]

So here's one theory and I don't know if it's right.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Whether or not they. They could say so. Most people have a very politics heavy theory of how groups advance materially. I think most people, you know, just assume that you get the right politicians in people become wealthier.

[A]

Right, sure.

[B]

That politics comes before economics and is the causal factor.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So if you think about why it was that, you know, in 1964 or 65, the civil rights movements won its greatest political victories. Civil Rights act, the Voting Rights Act. Why is it at that moment that the riots start in northern cities in Newark and Detroit and whatnot. Okay, why? Why at the point of greatest victory? Why at the point of greatest victory in terms of getting a black president?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Do race relations seem to go deteriorate? Yeah. Deteriorate, yeah. What it might be is a mismatch between expectations and reality because people have that implicit theory of politics. It's like a trickle down theory. You get the right politicians and sort of the material circumstances get better. What happened is we got a black president and then four years later we heard the video of Trayvon getting stalked by George Zimmerman. We saw Michael Brown got killed and Alton Sterling. So there was like a expectations rose along with social media, showing us some of the realities. And the distance between those two things created this outrage.

[A]

That's interesting. So do you think that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for social media?

[B]

My guess is that yes. Yeah, probably wouldn't have happened, but. Or not to the same extent?

[A]

Sure. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know. I think that my theory, which I'm coming up with right now, is that as material conditions increase, and it doesn't have to necessarily be this case, but this. This is actually part of my criticism of, like, excessive capitalism as material. As material conditions become better, a lack of purpose or lack of the feeling of purpose becomes more sensitively felt by a civilization. And this results in a mismatch in the sense that people are actually looking. People. People are wealthier on the whole, but are actually suffering from spiritual impoverishment. And then they come up with. They come up with ideas to rectify that, which is what we talked about earlier. But those ideas are material in nature and not spiritual and therefore not able to actually meet the challenge. And I think. I think that there's a total difference between the caliber of folks like, you know, Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes and the way they spoke about the human condition, given everything that they lived through, was very different than some of the figures I think of who are writing in the New York Times and who are saying certain things about the nature of man today vis a vis race. And so I think it's interesting that even though the poets and writers of the Harlem Renaissance era were dealing with far worse material conditions, they were, in a way, spiritually more advanced than the current generation of writers.

[B]

There's one theory of that which says the reason that the writers and thinkers and leaders of that era were better were because there was less incentive to be such a person to begin with.

[A]

To be. To be what kind of person?

[B]

So if I think of, like, what it took to. To be on the front lines of the civil rights. Civil rights movement.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

A willingness to put your body on the line to take what was an unpopular position until. Until the 60s, and even still kind of unpopular in the early 60s. So willingness to take an unpopular position, no guarantee of financial success, bodily harm. And the people who rise to the top in such a system are people that are highly principled.

[A]

Right. Sure.

[B]

Today, if you look at the incentives to become a New York Times writer about race, who's writing things like should black children and white children even be friends? You know, all of these.

[A]

Which was just wild.

[B]

Honestly, crazy things that passed.

[A]

That. That was written. Yeah. That. That was absurd.

[B]

Yeah. But you can write that, you know, the mainstream will accept you because at least, like the mainstream journalistic institutions.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Accept that it attracts a kind of person that is, on average, less excellent.

[A]

Yeah. But I don't know. I. I don't understand why there's Less excellence in the, in. I mean, I don't know that there is. We're talking about a very elite group of people, but given that we're talking about a very elite group of people, I don't understand why there's less excellence in that among that population, in that community. I don't. I get that there are incentives to write in certain ways, to be sort of like useful to these journalistic institutions that are using clickbait for, you know, for to get as many eyes as possible. But that still doesn't really, I don't think, explain the downward trend in terms of spiritual impoverishment.

[B]

So you think the rising material circumstances helps explain that?

[A]

I think at the very least there's a correlation that hasn't been, that hasn't been explained, that hasn't been explored in depth. And it's ironic because it would change the nature of our conversations about concepts like privilege and stuff. Because if you're. Ironically, a lot of people who talk about concepts like white privilege and economic inequality along racial lines are oftentimes super critical, as I am, of excesses, of capitalism, of capitalist excess. But the terms with which they discuss this are actually still very much material. Which is super ironic. Right, because they're making a critique of materialism, but they don't realize that they're still using materialist terms to criticize it. Whereas if the issue is primarily, or at least in part, I wouldn't say it's exclusively, but certainly primarily a spiritual issue, then the solution is not merely to talk about material inequality. And in fact, one could argue that, or one could ask the question, what are the implications of the fact that folks like the Harlem Renaissance writers were materially poorer than their white, often racist counterparts and yet were more spiritually mature and thus arguably lived a more fulfilling life? And so that changes the nature of what you measure when it comes to access to a quality life. Because you're not looking in a material lens, you're looking through a, through a spiritual lens.

[B]

That's very interesting to me. And one, I think I've actually had very similar thoughts to that myself. Like I've looked at someone who, for example, is very exercised about the wealth gap between blacks and whites. Yeah, if I were to catch them in a completely non political mode and talk to them about what is the value of wealth? And in their mind they weren't thinking about the wealth gap or anything like that, how important is money to living a good life? They would probably say something like, well, once you have the basics, yeah, most of what what, what it means to be happy is as like a social creature, to like have great friendships, great relationships.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To cultivate beautiful relationships with other people, to see the world, to live by a set of values. However, if you talk about gaps in wealth, there's this implicit assumption, I think, that. That material circumstances are everything.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's not that they would say so, but the idea is like if you equalize wealth, you're equalizing happiness.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Which is interesting because if you, if you're, if you're, if you poll black people versus white people on like happiness measures or like spending time with family measures, you'll find, you'll find some kind of disparities that aren't really predicted by the economics at all.

[A]

Right. Yeah. So I feel like I remember Jonathan Haidt talking about something similar in his first book, the Happiness Hypothesis, where he pointed out that like at a certain median income or past a certain median income, there's no correlation between money and happiness. And in fact that if you were to compare, I'm generalizing, I don't remember the exact statistics, but if you were to compare the happiness level of a single male individual who has like millions of dollars to a young, a poor 40 year old African American woman with diabetes, the likelihood that, but, but like she is married and she has a church community and she has a, she has a network as it were, she is far more likely to be happier than that single young white male bachelor who has all the money. And so like, what are the implications of that for when we talk about privilege is a question that I've always wanted to explore and have wanted people to like, think more deeply about.

[B]

Yeah, this, that reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens in which he argues persuasively, I think that humans were happier in hunter gatherer societies than as farming peasants. That's a separate question from whether we're happier now.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

But I think the agricultural revolution made the typical person less happy. That's a pretty persuasive case to make because, you know, obviously there was less wealth in the world.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You were living day by day hunting, but you had more space, less crowding, no urbanization. Often your workday was not nearly as long as it was if you were say a rice farmer in China.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that in a very big picture sense is making a similar point about the surprising lack of correlation between wealth and happiness in certain instances. That can be certainly overstated.

[A]

Sure, definitely. Yeah.

[B]

But I think that is an important argument to inject. So let's pivot a little bit.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You talk about Israel quite often. How did you come to care about that issue?

[A]

So I was raised in a very atypical Christian background, very similar to Seventh Day Adventists. So I went to church on Saturdays instead of Sundays. I grew up observing Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur instead of Christmas and Easter. So I grew up with a lot of Jewish culture, even though I'm not Jewish. And that inevitably, I think, led to a lot of cultural affinity for the Jewish community. And so in 2012, when I was in college, I noticed that globally, anti Semitism was rising in places like France and in Europe at large. And on a deeply psychological level because. Because we shared so many cultural things, I felt anti Semitism, not. I felt something against antisemitism, not only because it was against Jewish people, but I also felt. It felt as though it were a personal attack on me as well because of how I was raised with all of these different cultural things to which I belong, traditions to which I belong. So that led me to do a lot of research into anti Semitism and Israel advocacy and stuff like that. And eventually I started a student Pro Israel club at the University of New Orleans, where I did Israel advocacy for three and a half years. Um, moved to New York afterwards, but then. And worked at the Wall Street Journal. But after I was at the Wall Street Journal for a year, also continued to work in the Israel space for two years before starting my own company. So. But that's like the. That's the story of how I got involved.

[B]

So I have a question.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Why does Black Lives Matter have a position on Israel, Palestine? Another way of saying it is.

[A]

It's a great question.

[B]

If you were to ask Palestinians if they have an opinion on Black Lives Matter. Yeah, I doubt that. Whether they would even have heard of it, much less of whether their politics on the issue of race in America would be straightforwardly predictable.

[A]

Well, Palestinian Americans probably have.

[B]

I mean, Palestinians.

[A]

Palestinians, like in the West Bank.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, the reason why Black Lives Matter. And I'll speak. I'll say this about, like, national Black Lives Matter. This isn't necessarily true for local Black Lives Matter chapters who really don't. In my experience, it varies from place to place whether or not they have an opinion on this at all. They're usually dealing with local issues. But national Black Lives Matter has an opinion because it sees itself within the same tradition of the. It's a certain tradition that has. That is a part of black America. But it's not The Kingian tradition, it's a much more explicitly anti west, anti Western tradition in the sense that it sees the west explicitly and exclusively as, quote, unquote, the oppressive white man. And then it. And then it associates an ignorant fashion or it takes everything that it associates with, quote, unquote, the white man as being oppressive by the transitive property. And have knowing absolutely nothing about Israel or. And in addition to not knowing anything about Israel, taking their understanding of American history with regard to slavery and Jim Crow and projecting it onto other countries histories, they then come to the conclusion that Israel is an oppressor.

[B]

That is exactly what I think. Which is interesting because. So I watched a debate, watched the debate more than once actually, between Alan Dershowitz and Peter Beinart.

[A]

Okay, yeah, classic.

[B]

Great debate.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Both very smart on the issue of Israel, Palestine. And Alan Dershowitz argued that the only or the main reason why there is an outsize focused on Israel from the global community is anti Semitism. And I think that is only true of some aspects of the focus on Israel.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

If you were to argue why does the Muslim world focus so much on Israel, antisemitism has to be a part of that explanation. However, if you go to a college campus in America and you see a bunch of probably mostly white, but, you know, a diverse group of, you know, economically privileged kids on an Ivy League university waving flags for boycott, divest sanction, I don't think they're anti Semites and I don't think they're inspired by anti Semitism. I think they're, as you said, they're grafting US politics onto Israel, Palestine, and it's become a symbolic issue. And that's why it's aligned with Black Lives Matter, because people see it as symbolically the same thing. Which is interesting because back in the 60s and early 70s, Bayard Rustin, who is a favorite writer of mine and a key figure in the civil rights movement, he used to argue that we should support Israel precisely because it's similar to our situation, however with the opposite. Where Israel is analogous to black Americans.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And Israel's enemies are analogous to white.

[A]

Supremacists, even prior to the 60s and 70s. I mean, I have a book on my bookshelf called the New Negro, which I think was written in the 20s. And it's a collection of essays written by people active in the Harlem Renaissance movement. And in the foreword they make mention of Zionism as like the. The model for a black American Renaissance. So, yeah, I think it depends on not just where your politics lies, but the fundamental spirit of how you see the world. I think ultimately, if you see the world through what I would call redemptive lens, then you don't come to this sort of like Manichean black versus white understanding of, of society and the way the world works. And if you don't have that lens, then your views on Israel are probably going to be closer to mine. Whereas if you do have that view, if you do take that view, if you do think that life is ultimately one big fight between blacks and whites, the west and the rest, then you are more likely to find yourself expressing anti Zionist ideas. And what's ironic, though, when it comes to black America specifically, what's ironic in taking the latter position is that in order to do so, you would have to deny the rich legacy that black Americans have contributed to America. Because if you, if, if your view of America is exclusively one of, you know, the white oppressor, then you by definition are ignoring the black contribution to it. You're choosing to downplay it or dismiss it, or say that it's irrelevant ultimately. And I think that that's the most profound irony of that sort of viewpoint.

[B]

That's interesting. I've noticed that as well. I've read in Thomas Sowell, who famous black conservative libertarian, he is very fond of pointing out the amazing success of certain black institutions. You know, in the 1800s, there were black politicians, you know, in Detroit. He, you know, that's like a fact that only Thomas Sowell would point out. Or, you know, there were black schools before integration that in some cases outscored white schools in the same city, like Dunbar High School in Washington and whatnot. Okay, slight shift of topic.

[A]

Okay, again, it's like speed round.

[B]

You are unusually good at Twitter.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

What's your secret?

[A]

I don't know if I have a secret. I think Twitter is definitely giving me the most bang for my buck. I think that it is very possible to seriously exchange ideas on Twitter. If you are deliberate about curating your Twitter account in such a way and trying to engage people seriously with serious ideas and avoiding the trolls or blocking the trolls or not even indulging the trolls. I think that there is a way to really, again, just like, curate and facilitate important conversations with people. But also, I would say another reason why I've been successful on Twitter is because my, if you were to ask me what my politics or my political orientation is, it would probably, I would probably respond by, by not answering the question. But if I had to give you an answer, it would probably be Art. And so that. Which is to say that I talk about a whole host of issues on Twitter that have nothing to do with politics, but that have political implications or have implications for how I view politics or how I develop political language when talking about political issues. But ultimately it stems back to my love of and fascination with the human condition, which I find is both tragic and triumphant at the same time. That's just my general view of the way the world works and the way human beings operate. And then that informs the way I look at a lot of things, including, like, when I get into arguments with people on Twitter, and that results in a very. In a much less harsh tone with people that I disagree with. And I think that people notice that, and people notice that I'm. I'm willing to have conversations with them, even if I disagree with. With them. And it's not just that I'm willing to have conversations with them in the sense of this sort of. Really. I love the idw, but, like, the IDW has this tendency to be super, like, I don't know, like, still politically adjacent and nerdy about. About the way they have conversations with people they disagree with. But my approach is like, I disagree with you, but I still think you are. I still believe fundamentally in your eternal worthiness, which is a spiritual. It's a spiritual claim. It's not just the. It's not just a politically heterodox claim. And there's something deeper to that ultimately. And so I would say that probably contributes to some of my popularity on Twitter.

[B]

I love the idea that your political orientation is art.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's just like an intentional category error, but in a space that needs category errors because most of Twitter is so boring and predictable. And your Twitter is. It is not boring.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Not. Not predictable.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Sometimes topic isn't predictable.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Viewpoint isn't predictable sometimes.

[A]

I might be talking about, you know, Jordan Peterson one day. The next day I might be talking about Jay Z.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And it's this. But it's the same lens and which is art that produces that.

[B]

What do you think about the role of hip hop in American culture?

[A]

Well, I personally think that hip hop is like. I think hip hop is the. The greatest thing since the ancient bards. Like, I think. I think hip hop, what it does with language is. Is equivalent to what Homer did with things like the Odyssey. And I. I don't. I don't know that people have made that connection, but that's. That seems to me to be very obvious. I think it's one of the Greatest literary. It's part of the literary heritage of the west and of America and one of its greatest contributions that African Americans have made to the West. So.

[B]

Well, both the Homer and both homer and hip hop use rhyming as a means to facilitate memorization. Like, infectiousness of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Of like, language.

[A]

Yeah. And, and, and what, what both of those like do with storytelling is insane on a, On a genius level. I mean, obviously I'm talking about like good hip hop, not like trash hip hop, but like, in general the genre is. Is a brilliant mechanism for storytelling. And that shouldn't be taken for granted because storytelling is a very humanizing, humanizing tool. It's ironic to me when people who love hip hop or who claim to love hip hop come to certain conclusions about white people. Because doesn't like, when they come to like or any people who they generalize about. That doesn't make any sense to me. It's sort of like missing the lesson in. Embedded in hip hop to a certain extent.

[B]

What's that lesson?

[A]

The complexity of the human condition and the, and the uniqueness of, of every human being and, and how important it is to tell how important it is that human beings tell their story. You know, that sort of like, is missed when people on the one hand say they love, you know, Jay Z and then on the other hand in another tweet are like making a politically derisive comment about like white people in general. Like that, to me, that seems to be a mismatch.

[B]

So I tend to agree. I think if you actually look at most rappers, they tend to be people, at least the ones that stand the test of time. Very high verbal intelligence. Very high open mindedness. Very high emotional introspection.

[A]

Yeah. Incredibly high emotional introspection.

[B]

Yeah. Even if they're rapping completely about violence or gang, like the type of person who comes from the hood comes from a place where violence is normalized.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And ends up becoming a rapper instead of someone who is.

[A]

Yeah. A gang banger.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, they were the artsy kid. Yeah, they were the artsy kid who to whatever extent they were involved in criminal activity, still primarily viewed themselves as. As most artists do, as having some crisis of meaning that needed, that required that they invent their own meaning structure.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I think about that a lot when I think about Kendrick Lamar and I have. This is sort of my problem with folks like Tomi Lahren whose commentary on hip hop is bereft of awareness of that. Like the taking at face value the story where a rapper's Talking about the time when they, when they were involved in a gang is as silly as. It's as silly as like taking Romeo and Juliet and thinking that Shakespeare is like, you know, glorifying like these family feuds when obviously that's not the point.

[B]

Watching the Godfather and being like, well, this is violent.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

There's nothing redeeming here at all.

[A]

Yeah, there's nothing. There's no lesson in this to learn from. It's really quite small minded and just uninteresting as a point of analysis.

[B]

Yeah. So I do think there is a dynamic. So like, if you're going to analyze the lyrics of a hip hop song without an understanding of the potential for irony.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Kendrick Lamar can't understand anything if you don't understand his use of irony.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

However, I do worry about the death of hip hop being marked by its importation into the, the mainstream institutions of academic study.

[A]

Okay, what do you mean by that?

[B]

So I feel like jazz used to be huge. Jazz was popular, you know, in the late 50s it was American popular music. Now it's not at all popular, but you can major in it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So I wonder if that happened to hip hop.

[A]

I don't know that jazz was ever as. I mean, I know it was global, but I don't know if it was as global as hip hop is today. And because hip hop is so global, I don't know that it would ever be like it would become a relic. That being said, I mean, Homer used to be big and now he studied in philosophy majors. So maybe that's just the way that things go. And maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it's a matter of timing. Hopefully if it does happen, it won't happen in our lifetimes or for another thousand lifetimes. You know, I think that's sort of the compromise that we would have to look for.

[B]

Yeah. So one thing people, not a lot of people know about you is that you make music.

[A]

Yes, I do. Yeah.

[B]

On SoundCloud under the name Paradox.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Why Paradox?

[A]

It's a good question. I used to. I remember. I'm trying to remember the answer to this question because there was a. I started making music about a year and a half ago because I was always drawn to music. When I would take edibles and I would, I would slowly but surely experiment with drumming on Jem Bayes. And a couple years ago I started to teach myself guitar as well. And I always was, was. Was also like very much moved by gospel and what gospel did with different chord Progressions. And. And. And I was also. Oh, this is why. Paradox. Okay. I'm. I'm glad you asked me that, because now I know. Now I remember. I was always drawn to artists who lived in paradox. So artists like Prince, for example, the way he plays with the space between romantic love and divine love is one of the most incredible paradoxes that I've seen displayed in an artist, because, like, the way he would, you know, in. In the song I would die for your present, both. Both a romantic message, but also a divine message in the way that he was describing his love for a person was, I think, really beautiful. The same way, like Stevie Wonder does that in the song, as when he's describing his love that he has for a human being. But it's very clear that the love is, like, divinely inspired. And I always love the. The blurring of the lines between. Between those things. I'm also, in general, a spiritual person, and spirituality, I think, plays in the space of paradox. When I think of biblical figures like King David, for example, who was a very paradoxical figure, who was someone who. Who, you know, as the story goes, as a young man slayed Goliath and found favor with God, but also committed incredible sins and committing adultery and murdering someone in order to get the woman that he wanted and neglecting his sons as a father. And yet all he had all these qualities and vices, but he was also still ultimately known as, quote, unquote, a man after God's own heart. And that complexity, I think, is quite beautiful. And if we as a society or as a culture were to study that complexity and internalize the ability to hold space for two seemingly disparate ideas, qualities at once, I think would be a much healthier society. And so paradox does that also. DJing is fundamentally about playing with paradox because, like, if you're a good dj, you can take something that's really slow, bpm, and somehow make it match with something that's really fast. Bpm. And the. And the. The. The combination of the two, when the audience hears it, that's where they go crazy. So that's why I chose that name.

[B]

When you speak about David, it reminded me about. Reminded me of Cardi B. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, I could see that amazing creative mind.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So used to drug, like, drug men and steal their money in another life. Paradox.

[A]

Paradox. Yeah.

[B]

It also sounded like David would be canceled today or that cancel culture doesn't allow for paradox.

[A]

Well, see, I. So that's why I ultimately think cancel culture can't last if we are. If we are a society that believes in art, I don't think cancel culture can last because art has to play in the space of paradox and has to. Good art has to play in the space of complexity. And as long as we yearn for good art, I think that that will. That will always have an advantage over cancel culture.

[B]

That's what Chanye said. You want crazy art, but you don't want it from crazy people.

[A]

Oh, is that what he said? Yeah, yeah.

[B]

He said, you want crazy art from sane people.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Doesn't make any sense.

[A]

It doesn't work.

[B]

But what if as a culture, we just become accustomed to sane art? Boring.

[A]

I don't know what that. I don't know what that looks like.

[B]

Boring art. Art that never thinks outside the box.

[A]

I don't know if that looks. I don't think that's art. I don't. I don't know what that looks like. Like, I can't conceptualize what that means. And I don't think there are artistic trends that indicate where there are political trends, but I don't think there are cultural trends that indicate we're going. We're heading in that direction. I think we have a lot of crazy artists right now, and that is ultimately a good thing for society, you.

[B]

Know, who are underrated artists that you think people about.

[A]

So my. One of my favorite bands of the.

[B]

Past, besides Paradox, of course.

[A]

Right? Of course. Yes. Yes. Check them out. Check out my SoundCloud. No, my. My favorite artist. One of my favorite artists of the past four years now is a band called ifa, spelled I F E. Based out of Puerto Rico. They debuted their. Their album in 2017. NPR called them. The article said that the only regret that I have in listening to this album is that I cannot listen to it for the first time ever again. Yeah. And it blends like a lot of cultural traditions from. From the ancient religion of Yoruba. So the. The main band leader, Oturo Moon, is from Indiana originally, but moved to Puerto Rico and converted to the Yoruba religion. And really it's a. The album is a beautiful celebration of that religion and his experience, but it. It's such a beautiful album and I think they're up and coming, but I've seen them twice in Brooklyn and they're just incredible. I also stalked him and eventually had him on my podcast. So check out the interview if people are interested in. But yeah, IFA is definitely a band to watch. That's the. That's the only one that comes immediately to mind. I'm a huge fan of Ben Howard, who's a famous singer, songwriter, guitarist out of the uk. He's the reason why I started learning guitar, started teaching myself guitar. I've been obsessed with him since high school. Some. A lot of people know about him, but I think more people could. Could stand to know about him because he's brilliant, especially not only in playing the guitar, which I think he's a genius at acoustic guitar specifically. But his lyrics are just profound and. And really ultimately about the human condition. And I could talk about other artists that I love, but they aren't. A lot of them are already mainstream.

[B]

So one of Your songs on SoundCloud has Edgar Allan Poe.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

As the picture. Why him?

[A]

So I don't know if you notice the lyrics in that song. What I was doing was I was combining lyrics from. I was combining a verse from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe where he goes, she loved with a love that was more than love. So I took that lyric and then I combined it with a lyric from Nina Simone's song Come Ye. And I thought it was just interesting because both of these artists were describing or trying to describe love in these two different pieces. And. And so I named that song Poe after. After the verse.

[B]

See, that's what I love about you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Very few people would think to combine Edgar Allan Poe and Nina Simone.

[A]

Yeah, it's. And I think like, that's all that also speaks to my obsession with paradox or. And which is not necessarily paradox, but it's like combining people that you wouldn't have necessarily put together, you know.

[B]

What does James Baldwin mean to you?

[A]

Oh, I mean, James Baldwin was like. He was such a spiritual figure and deeply insightful, I think, about the human condition. I teach Baldwin in some of the work that I do. I teach the fire next time. And also everybody's protest novel, which I think is incredibly relevant for today, but his ability to just peel back the political layers and peel back the political rhetoric and get to the heart of. Of the humanness of certain very challenging things that were going on in his day was brilliant and quite a rare talent that I hope to be able to do in like manner. So I also. It's weird because I think a lot of people quote James Baldwin, but they don't read him, you know. And so that's just interesting to me how that happens. And you know, some people can sort of like, not even take him out of context, just like, are just very not well read when it comes to Baldwin. And so one of the things I hope to Change culturally is that trend.

[B]

I think Baldwin and Alexis de Tocqueville are similar in that they wrote so much and they were so. Their minds were so pliable.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And not boring. Interesting that you can quote them in support of a lot of very different and sometimes opposing.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Beliefs.

[A]

So I feel like, in that sense, James Baldwin. I view James Baldwin in the same sense that I view, like, a hip hop artist. Right. Because, like. And Jay Z talks about this in his autobiography, Decoded, where he says, I always confuse people because on one hand, in one rap, I'm saying, f the police. And in another rap, in another situation, I'm actually holding a benefit for police officers. And people don't understand, like, the complexity of that, of what I'm doing with that. And I think that. I mean, I obviously haven't spoken to James Baldwin, but I think that something similar was going on. Was going on with that. And again, this goes back to giving people or allowing people to just, like, have space to change their minds and change it back again and. And be angry sometimes and say things that aren't so healthy that reflect that anger, but then after further reflection, change their minds. And I wish that we would sort of approach our understanding of these historical figures in that way. And also, like, I think I should probably approach certain contemporary figures whose ideas I don't like in that way as well, and sort of hold space for them emotionally, even while disagreeing with them politically.

[B]

Complete pivot again. We, you and I once met at a charter school. We ran. We ran into each other at a charter school. I don't know if you remember.

[A]

Oh, in the Bronx. In the Bronx, Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It was a long time ago. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, I guess it was. New Orleans, famously, after Katrina, built many charter schools.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The question is, what do you think of charter schools in general? Are they a good thing? Should we expand them? Are they bad? Should we attack them, as some politicians are doing now?

[A]

So I was a product of a charter school education. I graduated from Shout out to Benjamin Franklin High School, the best school in all of Louisiana, which is a charter school. So I had a great experience. But at the same time, I will say one of the books I just read for work was a textbook called the History of Education in America, fourth edition. And what I learned from there is, like, there is no guarantee that a charter school is going to necessarily be better than a public school. It just depends on how the charter school is run. It depends on the amount of resources in a district that are allocated to that school. It depends on A whole host of factors that make it impossible to say whether or not charter schools writ large are better than public schools writ large. Some of them are, Some of them aren't. Politicians may be playing a different game that is, you know, politically expedient for them. But that's a separate question just based upon my personal experience and also based upon the research I've done from whether or not public schools are better or worse than charter schools.

[B]

From what I know, charter schools have tended to work in cities.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Have tended to not work in. Not cities.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I could see that. I could see that geographical.

[B]

I don't know why that is.

[A]

I don't know why either. It has something to do with the allocation of resources, probably, though, that are available in cities that are less available or not available in more rural areas. So. But yeah, I mean, I don't personally have a problem with them, but I could see how and why, again, not talking about politicians, because that there's a whole host of other factors that are at play with politicians for good and for, for worse. But I could see how and why parents would and would not want charter schools given the set of circumstances they may be dealing with.

[B]

So I can see, to me, I can't really see why they wouldn't want the option.

[A]

Okay. Well, I think that they may not want the option if they have proof that, like, if you, if you have the choice of, if it's a zero sum game, if you have the choice of really reforming a public school, like, if you, if you think that you can make the case, if you take a given public school that's not doing so well, but it clearly was doing well before, so something happened that's fixable. And it's the case of like having that process happen or taking all the funds out of that school and then investing it in a charter school. I could imagine why a parent would not necessarily like that, especially if they themselves went to this high school and they have some sort of, like, emotional attachment to it and they feel a legacy and they want to restore it to its former, you know, glory. I could see a whole host of reasons for that.

[B]

So in general. Yeah, I can see that. In that case.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In the general case, if you have a charter school that's coming into a neighborhood where the public schools have been failing for, for a long time.

[A]

Decades. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

And the line to get into the public school is thousands of kids long.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In those cases, just not enough position really, really does baffle me.

[A]

Okay, that's fair. Yeah. It could be. It's weird because there's not enough. There's not enough real estate. So why not build more real estate, essentially by building a charter school? Yeah, I hear that. I hear that. The truth is, I'm not really at all exercised by it because when. When we were talking about politicians being crazy, that doesn't. I mean, I know it affects people.

[B]

And I know it's really talking about non politicians.

[A]

Oh, non politicians, yes. Just like. So, like parents, for example.

[B]

Or journalists.

[A]

Or journalists. You know. Okay.

[B]

Twitter people.

[A]

Sure. Well, Twitter people are a whole. And, you know, we are. We are, I guess, part of that, but I don't know. I don't know. That's less my. I'm not. I'm not that passionate about it. Maybe I should be, but as a result, I'm not really an expertise on it, an expert on it, so.

[B]

So the theory of Enchant. Enchantment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What is it?

[A]

So Theory of Enchantment is my startup that I created a year ago. And what it is, is a framework and a curriculum that I designed that teaches social emotional learning through the lens of pop culture. So really taking a lot of the things that we've been talking about with regard to art, and this goes back to, I think, why my politics is ultimately art. Taking famous books, famous music, famous movies, and mining that data to distill lessons about the human condition in order to teach people how to be in better relationship with themselves and with their community around them.

[B]

I like that idea mainly because I think a lot of the reason that kids don't get interested in ideas is because we give them the ancient stuff before we give them the stuff that they understand intuitively.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And this is partly based on personal experience.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

I did not become very interested in ideas until I read great science and philosophy books from the past 20, 30 years.

[A]

Okay. It's very recent.

[B]

I didn't get interested in it by reading Plato.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Reading more recent stuff made me interested increasingly in the whole legacy of the Western canon.

[A]

Okay, that's interesting.

[B]

But I think people more naturally understand more intuitively, more easily the things that have been created in their own time. And so to draw a link between pop culture and all of the, you know. And Shakespeare.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As I think you do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That is an idea that really intrigues me.

[A]

So do you think that that's typical of most people's experience in. In school, for example, like. Like that they would be able to relate more to Plato if they were first given in a curriculum setting? More contemporary?

[B]

Maybe.

[A]

Maybe, yeah.

[B]

I mean, what I know is that most people who read Shakespeare didn't resonate with it or tended to. To get the good grade.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

But aren't reading it on their own time fair?

[A]

I was a nerd. I mean, I still am. I was a nerd when it came to English literature. So. Especially like in high school. So, you know, this. Franklin taught Homer and Shakespeare and you know, Scarlet Letter and all of these. All of these different quote unquote, ancient texts that I don't know if it was probably more the teacher. The teacher is responsible for so much in terms of. In terms of making or breaking a student or rather. Or rather closing or opening the student's gaze or horizon when it comes to life. And so I'd say probably a combination of those things, a combination of the teacher who's teaching the material and the ability to connect the past to the present. But I would say that, like, it's ironic to me. This is interesting. Cause we talked about hip hop earlier. It's ironic to me that some people who are sort of like, this happens on the right and the left, there are folks on the right who esteem the value of Shakespeare, but then are confounded by the brilliance of hip hop. And that is so ironic to me. And then there are folks on the left who love hip hop or who claim to love the cultural legacy of hip hop, but then in the same breath will dismiss Shakespeare as an old white man, proving that they understand none of what they are talking about, neither hip hop nor Shakespeare. So I think that the more we can bridge the gap between the past and the present through literary experiences in K through 12 and in college, I think the better and the more well rounded we'll be as a society and as a country.

[B]

In that vein, I think if you understand why the Montagues and the Capulets hated each other, you understand more about inner city gang violence than someone who attributes it all to material circumstances. Poverty, for example.

[A]

That's a good. That's a good point. Yeah. I hadn't thought about the poverty piece or the material conditions piece, but yeah, Shakespeare and Juliet is a gang story. I mean, just so people understand, it's a story about gangbang and a romance that happens like against the backdrop of that. Right. So I challenge and encourage people who may have a very much caricaturing perspective of folks who live in the ghetto who are inevitably experiencing things like gang activity and like dealing with drugs and violence and things of that nature. I encourage people to look at that and explore that and think about that through the lens of their understanding of the great books that they esteem. Because once you do, I think you can begin to humanize that which you previously only saw through a very caricatured and distant, distant lens.

[B]

Okay, so my last question is about branding.

[A]

Okay. Oh, I don't know. Okay, what about it?

[B]

I've heard you talk about branding in a way that is deeper than most people view the concept explicitly. I think so.

[A]

Okay, remind me.

[B]

Maybe I'm misidentifying this, but. And perhaps this has to do with theory of enchantment.

[A]

Okay, probably.

[B]

But you've talked about the importance of branding. I mean, the only. So let me. Let me throw a few thoughts and see if anything comes to your head as interesting to say. One is that I've always been a little bit mystified by the importance of that is attached to brand.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So when my friend, you know, lines up at 6:00am to get the. The new supreme hoodie and pay $700 for it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm like, dude, I just got a pretty nice hoodie for $20. It looks the same. I'm going to use my other 680 to go like, buy something useful.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And he's like, no, you're missing the point. Like, you. You lack, like, the sense organ that's detecting something out there in the world that is very real.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's the value of the brand. On the other hand, I've heard, like, straightforward econ, maybe not 101, but like, econ arguments for branding.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The importance of the brand is like, you're in a store, you see 10 different kinds of toothpastes. You don't. It's too costly to get information about each one and know which one is the best.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

So rather than do that, you just get Aquafina because, you know, it's not horrible.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

That's the value of a brand. It's like reducing the amount of time you have to spend distinguishing between products.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

So do you have a philosophy of branding that is deeper than that?

[A]

So the econ piece, I get it, but I find it uninteresting. Meaning, like, I would totally buy the. No, the Walgreens version of the toothpaste because I know that it's the same.

[B]

But that's more branding. So would you buy the. Would you. Would you experiment with the form of toothpaste you've never heard of?

[A]

Well, I'm comparing it to, like, Colgate. Meaning I'm in this scenario. I'm saying Colgate is the stronger brand. And if. If The Walgreens brand was cheaper. I would buy the Walgreens brand because I know that it's made of the exact same thing.

[B]

Another way of asking, what am I not getting about the supreme hoodie?

[A]

Okay, so. So that's a different question. Because once you get into the realm of clothing and tennis shoes, the people aren't buying the clothing. They're buying what the clothing represents. Now, I can't speak to Supreme. I'm not really into that. But I do understand it from, like, a Nike perspective. So Nike. And if you haven't read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, who founded Nike, you should. It's an amazing book. It's a page turner. But what Nike did. Nike is not selling you a shoe. Nike is selling you the idea that you can do anything, and that's why you buy the shoe. And by the way, Kanye said this about his own music a couple years ago in an interview. He said, when you buy my music, you're buying the medicine. He's like, I am the medicine. That, that feels you. That gets you up in the morning and says, I'm going to go do this. So with the whole Nike universe and the whole just do it universe, that's why people are so obsessed. Same thing with Air Jordan. They're not buying the shoe. They're buying the idea that they could be just like Michael Jordan. And that's not just true for, you know, companies like Nike. It's true for, for influencers like Beyonce as well. When people, when women hear the song, you know, who Run the World, Girls, they see their. Themselves and their potential reflected in that content. And all of this is. It was, for me, when I was doing research on different companies. This is probably what you're thinking about what I, what I talked about when I was doing research on different companies and sort of like what was a common denominator that connected all these famous brands together? That's what they were doing. They were creating content where their audience saw themselves and their potential reflected in the content. And that is fundamentally enchanting. And so that's why people wait, you know, at the Apple Store. I don't know if they still do it at the Apple Store, but that's how people used to wait, you know, in the Apple Store in lines. And that's why they do it for Supreme. So that would probably do it for Adidas, for the right product. I, I love Nike, but I probably. I would rather, like, have a Nike deal than wait in line for, for a Nike product. But I would, I would consider doing it for, like, Beyonce, Ivy park stuff. But. But I'm not buying the material. And as much as I'm buying the spirit of the material or the. The message that the material transmits. And I'm trying to think of something that you would buy, you would. You might wait in line for that would reflect the. The spirit of the thing.

[B]

So, interestingly, I. There's a lot of artists that I love, but I intentionally avoid purchasing their merch. I think that's not good.

[A]

Coleman, you're not supporting them.

[B]

I buy their music, I buy their concert tickets, but I don't buy the merch.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Why? Because I think. I think I view my relationship with their art as so special that I don't want it represented by something that's mass produced.

[A]

But you.

[B]

At a deep level, that's probably why.

[A]

But you know that they're not making a lot of money because of streaming services. Right. And so, like, they're making a lot of their actual money through the merchandise.

[B]

And the concert tickets. And the concert tickets.

[A]

Yeah. That's. I mean, do you.

[B]

Would you say most people who buy the merch, they're not buying it because they know that's how they're supporting the artist? Are they?

[A]

I actually would say, if I were to guess, and I have no idea of knowing this, I haven't researched it, but I would say, like, the people who buy the merch are actually the more devoted fans. I don't think it's. I don't think the merch is being bought by. Unless you're talking about Beyonce. Right.

[B]

But it's not charity. The reason they're buying it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's.

[A]

No, it's because.

[B]

It's because they want it.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's. But what I'm disagreeing with is your assertion that it's, like, mass produced. I think that the merch is, like, probably mostly bought by the most devoted fans as opposed to the masses.

[B]

I see.

[A]

Yeah, I think those are the people buying the merch. Like, I love Kendrick Lamar. I'm not about to buy. Right. Kendrick Lamar T shirt.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Although the guy next to me who was crying at his during his damn tour probably is the kind of guy who's going to buy that serious thing.

[B]

So even that guy. When I feel like I'm that guy, I want my relationship with their music to be so special and private that I don't want anyone else. I want to have a shirt that is. Either I'm the only one in the world who has it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Or I don't want it at all.

[A]

Why?

[B]

That's a question for me and my therapist.

[A]

Hypothetically, you don't want to share in this collective experience of, you know, belonging.

[B]

And in other contexts, I might, but at the concert, I would. Yeah, maybe. Maybe the. Well, we grew up in an era where a lot of listening to music can be done solo, by itself, in one's headphones, divorced from the world, in a sense. And it's interesting to fall in love with someone in that context and then go to a concert where everything is now open.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And you're sharing the experiences with many people. But perhaps I've been conditioned to love music in the first context and not in the second and not in the second. Not that I don't love music in the second context, but you see what I'm saying, right?

[A]

Yeah. It's not as personal for you.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And the personal is more deeply felt than the collective.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Although. So this is something to think about. I don't know if you're a spiritual person. I gather that you are to a certain extent. This is something to think about. So when it comes to the second piece. So one of the things I've been fascinated by is the fact that psychologically, human beings are willing to stand as close as possible to each other at a concert, to human beings they've never met, to get as close as possible to the stage. I thought that was. I've always thought that was so fascinating that people are willing to let go of their inhibitions for this one moment. And I always wondered, like, what about the concert experience was producing that? And so a couple years ago, I was listening to npr, and they were talking about the history of, you know, when people will chant, like, olay, olay, olay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At, like, bullfights or even, you know, other performances or whatever. So I'm about the history of this, and I realized that it's relevant to. To this concert experience. So it turns out that when Spain. Well, let me back up. So Spain at some point, was under Islamic influence way, way back in the day. And when folks would go to a concert and they would see an amazing experience, it was like, literally witnessing God. And it would move them so much that they would start chanting the name of God in Arabic, which is Allah. So they would say, allah, Allah, Allah. And over time, that became, ole, ole, ole. So that's how we have that phrase today. And what I realized from learning that was that the concert experience is a very sacred and spiritual experience, and it doesn't require one. A Spiritual experience does not require one to be alone. Right. You can, you can be alone and have a spiritual experience. You can be with the collective and have a spiritual experience, which is like, you know, church or traditional houses of worship, what they're trying to facilitate. And so for me, if I, if I were to sort of like see things from your perspective, and I'm guessing, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but there's something very sacred about like the individual. Right. There's something very sacred and dignified and spiritual about the individual. But what I am suggesting to you is that that sacredness doesn't diminish among the collective or with the collective. And in fact, I think this was something that was both the individual and the collective. And the spiritualness of both experiences in the human condition was something I think that was very much expressed during the civil rights movement with a lot of like the freedom songs that were sung and a lot of the different tactics, tactics that were taken with regard to the sit ins and stuff like that. I think that what was cool about the civil rights movement was like King and all of his various colleagues, what they did was they gave expression to the dignity of the human being in both in the sense that of the human being as the individual, but also in the sense of the human being being connected to his or her fellow man. And I. And I. It may be worth thinking about that dynamic when you think about your experience in a concert and how. And the beauty of how you are, you are, along with your fellow man, experiencing this amazing, incredible phenomenon in the. In the concert hall, which I think is both sacred and spiritual and sometimes secular, which is the paradox.

[B]

All good points. You asked whether I'm a spiritual person and that made me think of another area in which I kind of have the same quirk of personality, I'll put it, which is I meditate.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Mindfulness meditation. And I've been to several retreats.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

And invariably talk about how much better it is, how much more powerful it is to meditate in groups than alone.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I've never understood it though.

[A]

Oh, you've never had that experience?

[B]

Never had the experience of my meditation in a group being on average more powerful, more meaningful than meditation alone for me, just the same.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But most people seem to agree with them and so, yeah, that's interesting. At minimum, it seems like I have a coherent personality across the board.

[A]

Yeah, well, at least it's equal because you said for the concerts, like personal, the personal experience is just better than the collective experience.

[B]

Well, that's not quite what I meant.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I think they're about the same, actually. With a concert, it's probably a little better because it's live, energetic.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

But it's not necessarily the other people there that, like, make it better.

[A]

Interesting. In any event, it's crazy because I don't really meditate. Like, for me, music is my meditation. I've tried. I've done meditation here and there, but I never. I never, like, became so passionate about it. But for me, like, music and dance are my. My practices in meditation.

[B]

What kind of dance do you do?

[A]

I don't know how you describe it, but I guess so. Afrobeats is, like, my favorite type of music to dance to. I get. I feel, like, really connected to the continent of Africa when I dance the Afrobeats, like, on a. On a visce. Like, I have had people come up to me and tell me that they thought I was from Africa when they've seen me dance to Afrobeats. So I don't know how you would describe it, but it's dance that's very much in sync with that genre of music.

[B]

Okay, now this is my actual last question.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Do you agree with me that Chance the rapper's music has declined?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Why do you think it has? Good question.

[A]

I don't know what he's doing. He went from this very interesting mixture of pop, rap, and spirit and gospel to, like. I don't know. What is he doing? Trap music. I don't know. I don't know. It sounds. I just don't recognize anything unique in what he's producing now as opposed to his first pieces of work. It sounds like noise, Right? What do you think?

[B]

I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

One of my friends said he's quote, hit chasing.

[A]

Oh, that's now.

[B]

Which is. Which is every song. He's trying to get every song to be a hit.

[A]

Okay. Yeah.

[B]

Or has too many hands in the pot, too many producers on each track.

[A]

Saturating each.

[B]

Each song with. It's like. Like putting sugar and a lot of sugar and a lot of salt in the same thing. Because you think it's gonna taste good.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Actually, you need to take away most of.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That. And go back to simplicity and trying so hard.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Alternative theory is that ever since he had a baby, something has changed about him as a person.

[A]

Really? I don't know. I don't think that's it. I don't think that's it. Because, like, when he produced that song may I have this dance with Francis and the Lights, which was, you know, for him, I think, a love letter to his daughter. I think that was. That was like, quintessentially chance rapper. That was like powerful chance rapper and chance rapper in his prime. But I don't know. Have you seen Rhythm and Flow, the show on Netflix?

[B]

No, I still haven't. I've heard it's good.

[A]

So good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I don't know where he's going as an artist, but as a judge, it's one of the best shows on Netflix, so be sure to check it out and maybe that'll inspire him to make better music. I don't know.

[B]

Okay. Can you tell people where to find you before we wrap up?

[A]

Yes, I am on Twitter, primarily @cvalderey.v A L D A R Y is how you spell my last name. And also follow Theory of Enchantment. Also check out the Theory of Enchantment podcast on itunes and other platforms. Platforms available. You can check out my music on SoundCloud under the moniker Beats by Paradox. And I hope to be producing more music soon. I've been. I hit a lull with work and stuff, but I hope to be producing more of that. So feel free to reach out or for a conversation or chitchat if people want to.

[B]

Awesome. Thank you, Chloe.

[A]

Thank you.