Casey Gerald says ruining his reputation saved his life

0:00I haven't seen my son since 2012. This is Deborah Tice. The disappearance of her son, Austin, is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world. What do you want from me? Why should I have the mystery? I know that my son is somewhere alive. Listen to Where Is Austin Tice? From MPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4, on the MPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today, writer Casey Gerald, has walked away from his own success twice. The first time was in 2016 at the height of everything. He was a kid from Oak Cliff, a working-class neighborhood on the south side of Dallas, who had made it out the way America tells us to make it out. A football scholarship to Yale, a job at Lehman Brothers, an MBA from Harvard. He created a nonprofit that put him on magazine covers and TED stages with a talk viewed millions of times. He opened for President Barack Obama at South by Southwest in 2016.

1:03And there was even a New York magazine headline that asked, does Casey Gerald know how to fix America? And then just like that, he shut down his nonprofit, stopped answering the phone, and disappeared. His memoir, There Will Be No Miracles Here, was his first report back. Then he went quiet again. And now, after that second-long silence, Casey Gerald has returned with a book that reads less like a memoir and more like a challenge. It's called The Great Refusal, A New Vision of Resistance. It's his attempt to make sense of the choice at the center of his own life, to stop trying to convince America that he deserves a place in it, and take back the authority to decide what his life is for. Casey Gerald, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you, Tony. You're so good to be with you. Well, you know, the first time we spoke, I think it was around 2018, 2019. You had just come back into view after shutting down MBAs across America.

2:04That is your nonprofit, which you created that sent MBAs all across the country to help small business owners. And you left New York, you went quiet. And in this book, you described that choice as a desperate one. And I thought that was a very interesting choice of words to call it a desperate one, desperate to get away from what. Well, I wasn't getting away from anything. I was going towards something. I just didn't know what it was. You know, people ask me all the time, they say, hey, my cousin wants to write a memoir. Do you have any advice for them? I say, absolutely, do not do it unless your life depends on it. And that certainly was the case for me. I had accomplished by my late 20s about everything the kid is supposed to achieve. You know, when I first left Oakcliffe, South Oakcliffe high school in 2005 and went off to Yale, they put posters up

3:06in every school, public school and downs. Look who's going to Yale. He did it, you can too. And despite doing it or maybe because of it, I was really cracked up. I don't know if you'd say I was having a nervous breakdown, but I wouldn't too far off. And I was awful, say it. But all I knew was that something was wrong with me. And something was wrong with a lot of my friends when we finally talk about it. And something was wrong with the world is 2016. So I just said, I'm leaving. Where did you actually go? What did you actually do? Well, I went to Texas. I went back to Texas. I went to Austin. I'm from Dallas. And so I had two friends in Austin. And I woke up one morning. I said, hey, do you think I can rent a house in Austin? To write, because I had agreed to write this book.

4:06I didn't know if I was going to finish a book. I didn't know that I could write a book. There will be no miracles here. All I knew was, you know, the book business is about the only one that'll pay you to investigate your own problems. And so I figured, OK, I'll try this as long as I can. So I went to Austin and kind of hit away, you know, in this little house for two years to write. I'm just curious. Those unanswered calls, those text messages, did you listen to them? Did you read them? All of the people trying to get in touch with you during that time that you were away. Not really. But I don't necessarily say they would pride. I write in this book. Sometimes you have to ruin your reputation to save your life. So I like people. I don't like putting on this front of, oh, I'm, you know, too busy to answer the phone. And so I didn't really listen to any of them because I was trying to listen to whatever

5:08this little heart of mine was trying to say. I want to get to why you feel like you were cracking up and running away because, by all accounts, as you said, your life seemed like a dream on paper. You had attained ultimate success. And somebody once told you, in fact, it was, I think it was the dean during your freshman welcome at Yale who said to the class, if you're going to be a token, just be the best token that you can be. You went on, Yale, Lehman Brothers, magazine covers, TED Talks. What did that token require of you being that token? Well, I never believed the whole token thing. Thankfully, I grew up in a pretty much total segregation. So, you know, O'Clyff, at least in my vintage,

6:08you know, the yard man was black. My teachers were black. So, I came from people who were extraordinary. My elementary school principal, I always say she looked like Lena Horne, you know, Rita Jones, she's the past now. She had a PhD. My grandmother Clarice, I carry her around all the time, was born in a Freepman's community, Pellum, Texas. I didn't have a college degree. Red books all the time, and she'd always tell us, you have to know your history. So, I never felt any lack of value that would leave me to believe that I needed white people to accept me. I don't give myself an credit for that. I give the people who raised me the credit for that. So, it wasn't so much that I was, the cost was trying to be a token. The cost was trying to convince the world and myself

7:11that I was valuable as a human being. That probably comes more from, you know, a strange thing when your parents leave you, you know. And so, I hit this sense, my mother left to disappear from a psych ward when I was 13. And so, I was like, I was 13. And so, it struck me, I think, very early, that if your mother can leave you, everything's on the table. Your mother struggled with mental illness, as you said. She really disappeared when you were around 13. And your father, who was this larger than life, football star, he played for Ohio State for a time, he also was in and out of your life, most of your life. So, that is interesting. You really understanding this moment that you're in where you are at the height of your career and success

8:13and attention is being lauded towards you that you make this decision to disappear and from a system that you don't view yourself as a token. But you came to the understanding that you are viewed that way within the system. Well, I came to the understanding, a couple things in that. First off, I came to an understanding that our universities were committing malpractice. That was my understanding. Same more. Thankfully, I heard that Dean tell that to those freshmen, years after I graduated from Yale and had started the work that I'm doing now of trying to be real, you know, and trying to be free. So, you didn't hear that while you were in school? No, and to be clear, if I had heard it, I probably would have done it. I would have tried. I remember my freshman advisor when I got to Yale, I had on a fitted hat and she said, well, first off, take your hat off.

9:14Like a baseball kid? Yeah, yeah, like a baseball kid. New era baseball kid. And she said, well, first off, take your hat off, which is fair. I was in her office, take your hat off. She says, do you wear those things around campus? I said, yeah. And she said, oh, no, Casey, you're at Yale now. You don't have to do that. And so, when I say our universities and our elite regimes of accomplishment are committing my practice against young people, not just black people, but young people in this country, probably many countries, beyond this one, it is that they offer a dead end bargain. They say, we'll give you the keys to the kingdom, but you gotta leave parts of yourself outside. And so we're trained very comprehensively, probably from nap time in kindergarten to comply, to become strangers to ourselves so that we make sense to other people to mutilate ourselves

10:17and turn ourselves into little nuggets so that people can digest us and they give us the right degrees and the right job and the right invitation to oak bluff smartness vineyard, okay? And in return, you wake up one day and you said, same thing they said 2,000 years ago, what would a prophet of man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? There is no brass ring, no degree, no accomplishment that can feel the whole in your soul. You know, it's really interesting with the rollback of DEI and the word diversity, even being a dirty word, people don't even like to use it anymore. Do you think that that dean would give the same advice to those students today, you know, to be the best token that you can be? I don't know. My generous read is that the advice,

11:19if you're gonna be a token, be the best token you can be, is coming from a place that makes a lot of sense and it can get you a decent part of the way down a path that you think is the path. But there's only one path and the path is to remember who you really are. Your soul is coming to this human body for a time for a reason and for a much larger purpose than dying for your country or getting into the University Club in San Francisco. I want you to read from the book because I really want to get at the heart of what you were feeling, what had been revealed to you, what you understood once you're making all this money at Lehman and once you have like created this nonprofit and you are like in the world, I want you to start third paragraph because you made, you arrived at this place and you are the one.

12:22It is tempting to become the one, to feel special with your little seat at the big table. But we have seen too much to kid ourselves. We know the one does not get fed, some scraps, okay? But not enough to nourish, never enough to take home to your people, the folks you thought you'd played the game for. The one always loses the game, collects $200 and never passes go or passes go and passes go and passes go and passes go and dies having passed go many times and gone nowhere but crazy. To be fair, the one does on occasion and hair at the kingdom, the country. Takes on its values, makes its dreams, their dreams, makes its dreams come true. It becomes a star in quote the national fantasy in such a way that the fantasy will be left unchanged and the social structure left untouched unquote.

13:25Each one who penetrates serves as a spoonful of hope that helps to make mass suffering go down and thus prevents a bit at least one million people from revolt, that's just my estimate. Therefore, whole industries exist to circulate great stories about the ones and awful stories about the ones who suddenly, someday, hurled their scripts and screamed, this makes no sense. Thank you for reading that and what is so fascinating for me about you Casey is that you were the one and you also made the choice, you made the choice to be that other person, to say this makes no sense, this makes no sense for me. Well, people talk about the American dream, okay? And I like fantasy as much as anybody. I'm not opposed to the American dream. Sure, there's a Casey Gerald, there's a Tonya Mosley,

14:26there's Oprah Winfrey, there's a song you saw to my ear, okay. But what I'm interested in is the American machine, this conveyor belt that takes young people from neighborhoods like mine or JD Vance's from nothing to nowhere while picking off the chosen few like me. So if I hadn't had Demora's Vance in the fifth grade and Gwendolyn Davis, my other fifth grade teacher who just passed, my whole life was falling apart. My parents had gone, I was, I didn't know where I was standing day to day, I felt like the most worthless child in the history of the universe. And these two women, saw me and Miss Vance always says, Casey Gerald, boy, yo, little big old eyes, you just, Davis and I said, this boy just watch us, everywhere we go, he just watch us, he sees everything. So I happen to have a sensibility at that time

15:31where my response to the horror of my life was to submit to anybody, usually strangers, who could give me what I needed. You know, while reading your book, there were a couple of different things that were just happening at the same time. And it's funny how that happens sometimes when you're in the midst of one thing then all of these messages come around you. And there's this particular clip from Josh Johnson, the comedian that I wanna play, it's from his standup and it speaks to this broader sense of what you are saying happened to you individually, maybe happening to us collectively. Let's listen. You graduate and people are like, look, I think humanity's almost done anyway.

16:35So why don't you just move back in with your parents for a little while, let the robots get legs going, like let the AI legs and then let's all just wind down as a society. Because it's an insane thing to do now to set these kids into the world where they're like, look, you could work hard or or, I'm gonna pitch you something crazy or if you get popular enough, you could make your own coin, all right? Now, if you make your own coin and if you pump and dump fast enough, the SEC won't even catch you like that. So then you can at least hold onto that nest egg for like 10 years, you some of that to pay off your loans. If we're still on the dollar, there's nothing back enough the dollar. The debt is at 40 trillion. So who knows, we might be on the yen soon. We have no idea. That was comedian Josh Johnson

17:36in one of his recent stand-ups. There are so many little moments in this that he even goes back to this idea of like, what is this all for participating here? But in particular, that clip, what's your response to that? Rejoice. Hallelujah. Thank you Lord. It's over. Ken Lackavora, Ken Lackavora, great paleontologist I met years ago. We were having a conversation about mass extinction and he said, well, Casey, we've had five mass extinctions already. We're gonna have mass extinctions are just a fact of life, but mass extinction is not total extinction. About 97% of all living organisms, some of my fact check me, they go extinct. I've heard him speak about this before he said, humans is just what the world is doing right now. Hello.

18:36So this is why it's so important to remember who you are. When I was, this was early pandemic, May 2020, and I was really, I felt that I was slipping back in the crisis mode and I just had my mother, tried to get her some help, some mental health help. And that was taking a toll on me. A lot of things were taking a toll and I found a new therapist, Robert. And our first session, he says, well, Casey, how are you feeling? I said, Robert, I'm having a hard time. And he said, well, you're not having a hard time. Casey's having a hard time. That was, you know, this one I'm getting kind of upset. So he says, have you ever driven a car? I say, yeah. He said, at any time when you were driving the car, did you become the car? I said, no. He said, that's how I want you to think about your life. You, your soul is a driver.

19:37Casey is a vehicle. And just like your car breaks down, it goes to junkyard, that means you stop driving. That's what your soul does. So I say that to say, it's so important that we understand that this is not our first time. This is not our first rodeo. It will not be our last rodeo. And we didn't come here just to suffer. We came here to play some role. Could be just growing a tomato, which incidentally is very difficult I've learned in the past six months. It's damn hard to grow a good tomato. But to play some role in the unfolding of the universe. So the end of a world is not the end of the world. World's end all the time. I had horrible breakup a couple years ago. A world ended. Okay, and I grieve it all the time. There is a great cry inside each of us. That we ought to just let out. Our guest today is writer Casey Gerald. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Moasley, and this is Fresh Air.

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21:41Watch or listen to that Wildcard conversation on the NPR app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And my guest today is writer Casey Gerald. He's written a new book called The Great Refusal, a new vision of resistance. It's a follow-up to his 2018 memoir, There Will Be No Miracles Here. Prior to his writing career, he opened for President Barack Obama at South by Southwest in 2016. And his TED talks have been viewed more than 4 million times. He's also a new America fellow and resides in Texas. You know, I mean, I know you've heard this. You heard this during the first run when you were talking about there will be no miracles here and your op-eds, nice of you to say what a privileged place for you to say this. They're people who are just truly struggling to get by,

22:43who want to opt out of everything right now, who want to have the time to think to even get to the ideas that you were talking about. Well, I don't want them to get to my ideas. I want them to get to their life. When I say The Great Refusal, I'm not trying to lure people into refusal. I'm trying to let people off the hook. I'm trying to help people see or zoom out and grasp that they're already living refusal. They're hatred of certain policies. They're anger, they're despair, they're frustration, they're fatigue, your exhaustion in sand, go to sleep, your exhaustion in sand, wake up. There is a refusal at the soul level, the soul screams, no, I don't want this anymore. I don't want to tolerate it anymore. And as a great mentor, my Evelyn Henry Miller told me once, when I was 24, I was in this awful job.

23:45And she says, Casey, sometimes it's not about knowing what you're gonna do, it's about knowing what you're not gonna do. And you are not doing this anymore. So you go quit tomorrow. So, and I did. And so I say that to say, refusal is devotion. So every time you're refusing, every time you say no, you're actually underneath that, you're betting on devotion to the thing that really matters to you, the thing you really want, the thing you're really here to do. And so every time you just let it go, maybe we could call the book The Great Surrender. Just let that stuff go that ain't yours, that you don't want no way, that you've been really up at night for years and months and crying really talking yourself out of letting go. Let it go. You've talked about Oak Cliff, this neighborhood that you were from in Dallas, Texas. What does that place mean for those who don't know?

24:45Well, Oak Cliff, the Oak Cliff of my youth, where my grandparents integrated my aunt, my mother's sister, my father's brothers, were the first black children to go to South Oclif high school. My grandfather was a pastor in this neighborhood. When they moved in, you know, people egged the cars and told the paper at their homes and they didn't leave. So part of what Oak Cliff is to me is the same thing I saw in these fires and I'd heard these stories about Altadena, which I didn't know about. In California, in California, in the last year. I heard these stories of these enclave of black people who in absolutely impossible situations made a pretty marvelous life on their terms. And so that's what it means to some degree,

25:46but it also, in some ways, is the best preparation for what we're living through right now and what we will be living through in time to come, which is when nobody has any money and very few people know what dinner is gonna be tomorrow, you get to sharing pretty quickly. It's that kind of community. Absolutely. Working class community, you grew up in the 90s and so looking outside of your front door, what did you see? Well, depending on the day, I saw a lot of pecans, that's for sure. And sometimes I'd see our neighbors, we knew everybody on the street and they knew us and they knew our mamas and daddies and we saw people helping people and we also saw, you know, crazy stuff and we saw, you know, our classmates be killed

26:48and we saw our parents straggling home high and we saw, you know, that old cutlass that our uncle had, that somebody had, you know, put some candy paint on, you know, and we saw double dutch and we saw the leaves running down the street in a rain storm, we saw life and that is perhaps if you wanna talk about hope. My experience was not necessarily working class, my experience and the experience of my friends was horrific. There's really no other word for it. And yet I cannot tell you, Tonya, we had a hell of a time. You know, we had a great time. So that's partially when you talk about old privilege of you to say, you know, from your perch,

27:49you can say, but everybody else is trying to get through it. I'm not talking to you as Casey Gerald, the Yale graduate, the Harvard MBA. I'm talking to you as having recovered that child who had nothing, who didn't even have a mother and a father and who had a great time. Your mom, as you mentioned to us, suffered from mental illness and she disappeared around 13. When did you understand that she wasn't coming back? That's a great question. When a person disappears and they've been gone for two or three years and you've heard nothing, I just assumed she was dead. Now she wound up, my sister found her almost five years late. She came back, which is a whole other complication. But in my teenage mind and my mother was my only person

28:50in the world that I really liked. That was my buddy, you know. And so it was a lot easier for me to just conclude that she was dead than to keep spending all that energy figuring out when she was coming back. But it took much longer to do something more interesting, which was to realize that she had taught me perhaps the greatest lesson that anyone's ever taught me. I don't know that this book or this disappearance to save my life, this walking away from everything that I had set out to do, this willingness to endure a lot of scorn and criticism, to walk away, I wouldn't have that frame of reference and I might not have the guts to do it. If I didn't have the example of this woman who I know loves me more than anything in the world, who got to a certain point in this like word

29:51where everything around her was killing her and she said, I gotta get away. And she ruined her reputation to save her life. Who was it that signed your permission slips and fed you and tended to you during those years? Everybody. Everybody. That's what I say. The one I'm accountable to people. My sister dropped out of college and adopted me. She was 19. I was 15. I told people we were like the boxed car children, both of my grandmother's whether they wanted to or not. They never let me go. My aunts let me stay there. My aunts would pick me up from school. My teachers, my, I had what is Blanche Du Bois. I've always depended on the kindness of strangers. I choose to believe, because I can't prove it, but I don't have to. I choose to believe that for some reason God, the universe, my people beyond this world,

30:53beyond their bodies have conspired since the very beginning to get me my daily bread. So I could get on about whatever business I'm here to do. My guest today is writer Casey Gerald. His new book is called The Great Refusal, a new vision of resistance. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Looking for love? One New York event promises to find you your perfect match using Palantir, though not affiliated with the actual software company. They can sue me. I could lose everything, but it would all be worth it if at least two people here have a spark. So no pressure. The facts, myths and dark jokes surrounding Palantir. Listen to a plan of money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Thorn. On Bullseye, American football. They're one of the world's most beloved email bands. And they know that their songs are pretty emo.

31:54There's some lines that I'm back away from them like a little bit, just like, oh, maybe they won't catch this one. Find Bullseye in the NPR app at maximumfund.org or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. And today I'm talking with writer Casey Gerald, author of The New Book, The Great Refusal, a new vision of resistance. It picks up from his previous book, There Will Be No Miracles Here, which is a memoir that chronicled his life growing up in Oakcliff, Dallas, attending Yale and Harvard, working at Lehman Brothers, creating a successful nonprofit, and then at the height of his success, walking away. How does refusing or letting go for people during a time of great division look like when many people are upset about the direction that this country might be going? Two things. One, it might look like you turn and off CNN. But don't turn off NPR. I'm joking.

32:54Don't turn it off until, except for those times, where you can feel your stomach tightening up. You can feel yourself getting mad. It's not to say don't be informed, but really ask yourself, um, how much of this news diet, information diet, media diet, is making me more capable of being useful on this issue. Now, I go and have to get gas almost every day. I live in Texas and it's horrible. And, you know, it's really unbelievable what it costs to live every day. Okay, but you see that in the grocery store. I don't actually need to watch an hour

33:56on the latest action in the straight of her moves to know that gas is high. Okay, I don't need it. So really, trust, trust what you are feeling, trust that there's something in you that don't want this no more. Sometimes your news diet, your media diet, your conversation diet with your friends. Sometimes it will feel much like when you've had too much to drink or you had two double cheeseburgers from McDonald's. You know, you just feel sick. Pay attention to it. Put the burger down. You know, the other thing on this is, this is a great example of what I mean, the refusal is devotion. If you hate what ice is doing anywhere in this country, everywhere in this country, you also love something else. You actually have a vision of how a just

34:57and fair society would treat people. You have a fundamental belief about the sacredness of a child's relationship with their parent. So stick with your frustration enough to see that you actually have a vision of the good and the beautiful and the righteous. And from that creative energy, that's the energy that creates worlds. We can't win just by saying, boy, I hate that. But we can use, boy, I hate that as a starting point for saying, oh, but I know something that I really want and I love and I'm willing to fight for and I'm willing to jam on. Every time you think about going to a protest or a party, put on some good music, have some drinks, have some snacks, and then start talking with your friends about the stuff you really want to see happen.

35:58And I promise you, you're sitting on some clue. Every seed of angst you have, the other side of it is a seed of the world to come and of the country that you really want. What is the difference between refusal and giving up? Sometimes there is no difference. I don't really care what you call it. You call it refusal, you can call it given up, you can call it peach cobbler, I don't care. All I care about is, are you in tune with how you're feeling? Are you in tune and with the courage and capacity that you have to let go of things that are harming you, that are hurting you, that are dragging you down, that are killing you, that you have, have you developed enough faith to know that if I let this go,

36:59if I let this man go, this isn't the end of love. You know, I always come back to love because you know, I just really, I just want to be on the beach with the love right now, that's all, I don't want to get up. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, don't worry. You don't know what the end is going to be. Stay prayed up, stay in tune with who you really are, your inner guidance, stay in tune and accountable to the people that love you to your friends, make the most honest, righteous, thorough choice that you can of a next right step and trust that has her, Miles Davis used to tell this man, we can play the mistake. You can't get it wrong, trust something and trust that even if that next right step leads you to a dead end, you can turn around and go a different way.

37:59What about the power of protest to create change? What might we lose if people opt out? Well, first off, I'm not telling anybody that opt out of anything, my hope is that people opt in to who they really are and what they really want and what their gifts are and what they've come here to do. My dear friend, who's a very important part of this book, Dorey McKesson, Dorey of... Civil Rights activist. Civil Rights activist. Who came, became prominent during the Mike Brown protests after he was killed in Missouri. So, Dorey, that was his natural environment. When we first met, he was spending every day. We'd be sitting at my house and it'd be two in the morning and he'd be planning a boycott and he wasn't frustrated or stressed. He was having a great time. So trust that there is some thing that is your thing. If you're the protest type and that's what's calling you,

39:00what would be Goldberg say to Lauren Hill and Sister Act 2? Girl, you can quit the choir all you want to. But if you wake up and you want to sing and you go to sleep and you want to sing or trust it, you ain't got to listen to me. Listen to your soul. Listen to five-year-old you who really loved a certain thing. At five years old, there was probably something in time you mostly that had something that makes total sense to you now. It's the same thing for somebody who wants to protest, who wants to lead a revolution, who wants to, you know, a stage of cool and Sri Lanka. Follow the cut of your jib. Blow your horn as true and as strong as you can and trust that that is some note in the universal symphony. Don't do what I'm telling you to do. Do what you in your most private righteous moment would have yourself to do. And I trust that I support you. I might not be there, but I'm cheering for you all the way. Casey Gerald, as always, thank you. Thank you. This is a great gift, as always, thank you.

40:02Casey Gerald's new book is the Great Refusal, a new vision of resistance. Coming up, TV critic David B. and Kooley reviews the Canadian Sketch Comedy Series, SCTV, which is now streaming on Netflix. This is Fresh Air. You count on sunscreen to protect your skin, but that SPF rating on the bottle might not be exactly as advertised. So you could measure an SPF 50 at one lab and an SPF 30 at another. On the Sunday story, is it time to update sunscreen guidance? Listen now to the Sunday story from the Up First podcast on the MPR app. History is intriguing, but unlike the present, it can feel far off. On NPR's through line, we bring it back to life and put you in the middle of it. Go inside the stories from then that shaped the world we live in now. Find NPR's through line wherever you get your podcasts.

41:05Hi there, I'm Brittany Loose and not to brag, but I host a really fabulous podcast. It's called It's Been a Minute. I love making it and I think you'll love listening to it. Over the last year, hundreds of thousands of listeners have been tuning in and I gotta say, if you haven't yet, you're missing out. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR today. This is Fresh Air. SCTV, also known as Second City TV, was a low budget sketch comedy show that originated in Canada in the mid 1970s and continued in syndication and on network and cable TV until 1984. Its cast members over the years have included John Candy, Martin Short, Catherine O'Hara and Andrea Martin. And the entire series has generally been unavailable to watch. But beginning this month, all six seasons of SCTV are available to stream on Netflix. Our TV critic David B. and Kooley is thrilled

42:05and here's his review. SCTV was an outgrowth of the stage company of Second City Toronto and originally was televised by the Global Television Network, one of Canada's smaller networks. It premiered in 1976 the year after the launch of NBC's Saturday Night Live in the United States and wasn't syndicated here until 1977 after the first two seasons of SCTV had been completed. Yet SCTV embraced that underdog status and attitude with a vengeance. Its premise was brilliant. Every episode would focus on the same low rent TV station from Melonville presenting samples of its programming from Sinon to Sinoff. But also showing commercials and promos as well as news broadcasts, variety specials, and behind the scenes visits with talent, executives, and employees at the fictional station. In other words, SCTV could satirize just about everything and did,

43:05with a cast so talented, many of them would become and remain major comedy stars. Netflix is repeating the original sequence of shows from Canada, which not only introduced the cast members, but also for a while, used a cheeky opening narration that never made it across the border, until now. I have to warn you, or at least point out, that this compilation of SCTV episodes is neither complete nor unedited. When one first season episode called Ethnic Humor was syndicated to the States, some sketches were cut for fear of offending. Now, in this Netflix lineup, that entire episode is missing. In other episodes, a few sketches are cut and music replaced or omitted, but by and large, this six-season collection is an almost complete treasure trove. And the only other warning before diving in is that sometimes certain sketches were reacting to their times, with events and celebrities that will fail to register

44:05with many of today's viewers. Captain Kangaroo, for example. But today's viewers also should delight in how intricately written, cleverly interwoven, and superbly performed, these sketches are. For example, Joe Flarity plays SCTV Newsman Floyd Robertson, but Floyd also moonlights as the station's late-night movie host, dressed as a vampire and introducing a string of frighteningly dull films. God Floyd, the F.K.D.S. reminding you to stay to this early night. For Monster Jellar Horror Theater. Some program offerings, like English for beginners, are the kind of shows early-morning TV used to present all the time, aimed at serving the public. Catherine O'Hara plays the Stern instructor, and Andrea Martin plays her confused but eager student. Hello, and welcome to English for Beginners. I am your instructor, Miss Lucille Hitzker. And today's guest student is Frieza Perini-Skroloso.

45:07Hello. Hello. Hello. Come in. Come in. Come in. Come in. Come in. Those are standalone standards. Others are provided over the years by everyone from Martin Short as Ed Grimley to John Candy and Eugene Levy as the polka-playing Schmengue brothers. And the more fluent you are in pop culture, the more SCTV will reward you. Take this bit, featuring Eugene Levy and Tony Rosado as Abidon Castello, adapting the famous Who's On First Bit into a confusing rapid-fire exchange, not about the names of baseball players, but the names of some rock groups. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a great show for you tonight. Our first group is making their big comeback on the show tonight. So, Lou, why don't you introduce the band? You want me to introduce the band? That's right. All right, I'll introduce the band. The band.

46:07What's the name of the band? I'm telling you, man. The band. Who's the band? No, no, no. Who's on next week? What do you ask me for? I'm not asking you. I'm telling you. Who's on next week? Who's on next week? I'm going to introduce the band tonight. I've got no other name. That is their name. That's who's name. The band. What's the matter with you? Look, are you the fellow book the band? That's right. Who's the band? Who's on next week? That's what I'm trying to find out. Well, I'm telling you. Look, have you signed a contract with the band? That's right. What's the band's name on it? Absolutely. And it's talking to us. Who signed it? The band. Who signed it? Who's on next week? I don't care. Who's on next week? I've got no other name. The band's on tonight. Are you listening to me? The band is on tonight. Who's on next week? You follow me? Yes. Oh, no. Yes, I know. They were booked. Who's booked? Didn't I just say who's on next week? Yes. No, no, they're booked. And there's my favorite SCTV sketch of all. An extended parody that imagines Rick Moranis as Woody Allen collaborating on a movie with Dave Thomas as Bob Hope. Look, Woody, I don't want to pull rank on you or anything. But I mean, I do this kind of stuff all the time.

47:08When you're in New York, you give them the big apple stuff. When you're in Chicago, you give them the windy city kind of thing. I mean, that's the stuff that really slays it. I mean, last year I was in St. Louis. I can't believe this. I mean, what am I going to do? Edit a different prank for every city that this film plays in? That big art, St. Louis. Wait a second. Maybe it's not such a bad idea. I mean, you know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? What am I saying? I'll be editing until I'm 90. Are you listening to me, Woody? My advice is to watch all of these SCTV episodes whenever you want or need a laugh. But to watch them in the reverse order that Netflix presents them. Start with season one and work through the shows in their original order. That way, you can watch the talent bloom and ignite. But however and whenever you watch SCTV, you're in for a real treat. And finally, that treat is being served up in one convenient place. David being coolly reviewed SCTV. All six seasons are now streaming on Netflix.

48:09Tomorrow on Fresh Air, it's been nearly 25 years since 9-11. writer Richard Beck says the response to that day reshaped American life from mass surveillance to a deepening distrust of one another. His book is called Home Land, The War on Terror and American Life. Join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanishevsky. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorak, Ann Marie Baldenado, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Balman, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CB Nesper. They a challenger directed today's show.

49:10With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley. This message comes from Thumbtack. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between Matt Payne finish and Satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app. Download today. This week on Newsmakers, after more than a decade in comedy, I wasn't sure that we would get here. Robbie Hoffman is fearless. I had a small feeling I wasn't sure. And fully herself. My line, Lord. Hello. You can go out and flash. Well, I'm not home now. I'm doing something. We plunge into comedy and success with Robbie Hoffman on NPR's Newsmakers.