CZM Reverse Book Club: Talking "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" with Bridget, Hazel, and All of You

0:00This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. There should not be a single law enforcement agency. It does not have body cameras. It's real. Black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything. It's raw. And I'm sitting here going. They are playing y'all for foes. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there everybody. Amy Robock and TJ Holmes here from the Amy and TJ podcast. We're going to cover everything you need to know during this heated political season. Yes, we just saw Lindsey Graham, the death of a long time senator. Also, we've got a couple of missing members of Congress. Also, we got a lot of members of Congress behaving badly. We got accusations, allegations flying all day long on Capitol Hill. Listen to Amy and TJ on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

1:05Welcome aboard season six of the girlfriends flight or fight, which takes place 30,000 feet in the sky. A beautiful woman smiles and hands you a scotch. But you have no idea just how messed up her job actually is. It was the most sexist job I think you could have. Until one day, a group of stewardesses spark a revolution that reshapes America. Listen to the girlfriends flight or fight on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Michael and Perry Oli. I want to tell you about my new podcast Underground Zero. We're looking at the opportunity of a lifetime for us and the other families. It's about the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. What's in the tunnels? Go boss of English. It'll be worth half a billion. Starring Steve Sharipa, Ray Abruzzo and me, Michael and Perry Oli.

2:05How far you prepared to go? Depends how far you are. Listen to Underground Zero on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Call the media. Call the club. Call the club. Call the club. Hello and welcome to Call the Call the club. The only podcast usually where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. But this time, there was no reading at all unless you use subtitles like me. Because this time, we're talking about a television show, one particular episode of one particular television show. But first, I want to introduce that I'm not alone on the call like you heard. We have Hazel, our producer. We also have Bridget Todd, who's here. I have Bridget Todd. Hi, Marg. Hi, Hazel. Thank you for having me. I'm so thrilled to be here.

3:05In the club. In the club. In the club. In the club. In the club. We're so happy to have you and I'm so glad it worked out. Yeah, so if you're listening and you're like, wasn't this supposed to be last week? Well, unfortunately, there was this horrible disease that was unearthed upon the world six years ago and still has lingering effects. Yeah, I don't know whether Bridget, you want to. A little thing called COVID. I had it. I was so sad to not be able to join. And part of me was like, I can just do it and maybe sounding loopy. It'll sound like Afrofuturist. You know, people think she's really deep. The future is the same as the past, but all of it feels like fever. I thought I could maybe just disguise my COVID fog as deep thoughts about the show, man. Yeah, little PSA. I had to go to the hospital. I'm fine now, but the doctor told me that multiple people who had come in before me were also there for COVID.

4:08So she was like, tell everybody COVID is having a moment right now. You know, do what you got to do. Protect yourself. But yeah, it's out there. Yeah, well, I'm so glad you're feeling better. Same. Yeah, they gave me all the good drugs. Oh, yeah. So Hazel, do you want to talk to us about deep space nine? Margaret, I would love to talk to you about deep space nine. This is one of my favorite things to talk about in the world. Yeah. So we are, even though it's September now, we're finishing out our Black August series. Where we're just reading stories, you know, about Black Revolutionary history, about prison abolition, and about remembering our Mars. And you know, we wanted to, we've been doing these kind of reverse episodes. Are we asking you all to, you know, do a reading or watch an episode and give us your thoughts so we can have more of a book club. I thought we'd, you know, do that today since, you know, a big part of Black August is reading together and studying together. Yeah. And as a show doing sci-fi and speculative fiction and all of us are trekkies to some degree or another.

5:13We figured we'd do a star trek episode because why not? You know, it's easy to watch an episode. And there's a lot to talk about. So if you haven't yet watched deep space nine season six episode 13 called far beyond the stars, you know, just be aware that you're going to be in for some space. And that you're going to be in for some spoilers. Maybe you'll pause, watch the episode if you want. And then you can rejoin us here for a discussion. Okay. Now everyone's back from watching it. I ordinarily would never tell somebody to turn off a podcast that I'm making. But this is a situation where it's such a good episode. And even if you're not somebody who has been a religious watcher of deep space nine, it's a self contained story. And humanly people should watch it. Like even if you're like, well, I'm not really into star trek, you should watch it. Yeah, it takes place in 1950s, the United States, which is not the same as the normal start trek universe for those who are not familiar with star trek. That's a very good way to put it. Not the same as what they're usually dealing with in star trek, although they do go back to that kind of.

6:16I expected this to be a holiday episode. I went in assuming it was a holiday episode. Okay, sorry. Anyway. I'm just going to talk about this. A number of you submitted your comments on Reddit. So we'll also be reading your stuff. If that sounds fun, you know, keep listening, keep watching for more opportunities where we do stuff like this. Yeah. Should we just start with like an overview of the episode, Marguerite and Bridgett? What did you think happened? Oh, what do I think happened as such a different question than what I saw happening? Although normally it'd be the kind of same. Okay. Some other special moments of about Stray Kids. Say I know you're definitely worth various of those things. I know nobody could negotiate. Man, we're both dating for more than 40 days. We are both dating for 140 IUites right now. I think you know. Is anyone with VSA team? Anyone who won my team? I don't know how to count that дав. I don't know, right?

7:16Oh, I get that. where when Dorothy goes to Oz, characters that she saw in her Kansas life are also in Oz, or you're like, I know you, you look familiar. So there's a very familiar cast of characters that make up the people that he works on this magazine with. He has a, I guess it's the editor who, I would say the editor believes that he is like talented as a writer, but he's really bust in his chops. He's like, oh, sorry. It's the picture day for the magazine, just to like lay out kind of the vibe here. And the black writer and the woman writer, it's like, doesn't even need to be said that they will not be photographed in the picture because their readers would never stand for it. Remote work is always as advantages and disadvantages. You've got a face for writing science fiction, Paul. Oh, thanks. You're welcome. And so this is kind of how the writer

8:18starts to introduce that this is going to be an episode about prejudice, about racism, and also about the history of sci-fi, which I think is really fun coming from Star Trek, which is one of like the pillars of sci-fi and pillars of like social commentary, kinds of sci-fi. And we'll get into analysis stuff. But after they do the picture day, a conversation, the illustrator comes in and gives out, this is how they assign the stories for the week, as the illustrator comes in with a bunch of these cool pictures and they kind of divvy out the pictures and Benny Russell, who again, this is in Star Trek Universe, this is Captain Benjamin Cisco, but in 1953, hallucination, religious, prophetic space, you know, he's a black science fiction officer. You know, he's a black science fiction author, Benny Russell, gets assigned a picture that's like a charcoal sketch of DS9 of the space station that Captain Cisco works on in the future.

9:19When he goes home to this very noir-looking apartment with he's like piano, and there's all kinds of details that are like just beautiful. It's so awesome. It's really like a treat for the eyes. And again, we're a shorter podcast, so we can't cover the specific meaning of everything. But he writes the story of what becomes the pilot of Deep Space Nine. He tells the story of Benjamin Cisco, the black captain of the spaceship in the future. And during this time, he's having some, I would call mild hallucinations. He encounters this baseball player in the diner where I think his partner works, and then he has like a little bit of a split, and then, wait, it's worth, you know, he's like, he's having these hallucinations that take him back to the ship, and then back to what we understand as his present day, where he's almost sort of inhibiting both at the same time. At times, it's like he's dancing between 1950s New York City where he is this black science fiction writer,

10:21and a time 400 years in the future where he is the captain of this ship in space. And then everyone he's talking to in the diner, I love the diner scenes, maybe almost the most. Everyone he's talking to in the diner is reflecting a different version of how to cope with white culture as a black person in society, whether it's his partner who's like, look, the way that we're gonna get ahead, you're gonna stop right in your silly stories. You can still write them on the side, but we're gonna go into business, we're gonna run this diner together, and that's how we're gonna get ahead. Versus you have the baseball player who's like, no, this is the only way to have people's respect, right? It's to be really good at this one thing. And then you have Jimmy the hustler played by Jake Cisco, his son who comes in and is like, man, fuck all that, they're never gonna respect you, steal their shit, you know? And it's just like, and all of them are treated respectfully. Like all of them are in tension with each other because none of them are doing what Benny Russell wants to do.

11:22And so they're all kind of in tension with him, but they're also all deeply care about him, even though the baseball players, like his romantic rival, they literally help each other up, you know? Yeah, that was one of my favorite parts of the show. And so he writes this story, which is the pilot of Deep Space Nine. He brings it into his editor, and his editor is like, oh, they'll never greenlight a story where it's a black space captain, you know, make him white. He's like, that's not what I wrote. There's a bit of a compromise where somebody on his writing team says, what if it's a dream, what if it's a dream sequence? And, you know, this is just a Negro man's dream of the future. And then he wakes up and it's not really real. Well, that, you know, play Kate the audiences. And it seems like that's actually okay. And so even though it's a compromise to this very strong vision that he had for this story that he wanted to tell, he's like, okay,

12:23if this is what it takes to get this story published, I'll do it. He has a happy moment where he comes home. And I think he gets three cents a word, which, as somebody, I'm curious what you thought about that, Barger, because that's somebody who was like, tries to get money for writing. You're like, oh, three cents a word, huh? Well, what's funny is like, three cents a word's like, I've been paid that. Yeah. And, and money, this is taking place in the 50s. And so I did some research, you know, the science fiction writers of America is not a union, but it kind of sets what the pro rate is for pulp speculative fiction. If you're a pro magazine, you need to pay at least SFW rates in order to be taken seriously. And that rate is eight cents a word. Now? Yeah, now. Yeah, because it hasn't gone up since 2019, I think. It's been a minute since I've specifically been quiet in those trenches, because now I have easier time getting my fiction published than I did when I was like selling fiction and desperately looking up the sense of words. But three cents a word is the equivalent of 42 cents a word

13:25now, which is, again, eight-ish times, of seven and a half times, what the rate that a professional science fiction short story writer is expecting to get. So it's kind of funny, because you're looking back at like ye oldy bad times when you watch this. And you're like, even two cents a word, right? Is 28 cents. And now, if you're writing articles, that's not the best rate. It's been a minute since I've looked at this stuff. But sometimes for like a nonfiction article, you could be easily getting like a dollar a word if you're like really at the top of your game. But like also, because the other thing I saw when I, you know, you get handed a picture, and then you got to write a story based on it. And that's your work for the month? Oh my god, that's a dream. That's a dream. One story a month. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. That was a weird workflow to me of like, here's how we assign the story. The art guy draws an image and then just hands them out.

14:26And then you got to cope with a story based on that illustration. But as genius, I love pulp. I love like, you're just like, all right, figure it out. I don't know what the story is. You know, and they have this scene where it's like, quark is like, you know, but the illustration is trash, but the story will be art. Yeah, I can't speak to like sci-fi pulp flows in the, you know, 1950s, but I think that that might be how some Star Trek episodes were written. Huh. Yeah. I don't know a ton about this. I was listening to another podcast in prep spoilers. And they said that, yeah, like sometimes just like one of the producers would whip up a weird little freak alien and give it to the writers or maybe like, roll with this and then roll with it. That's sick. I love it. I love it prompt. So it all goes well. He writes the story is all dream and everyone loves him and no one, especially not his son dies, right? Yeah, it's a really happy ending. It's a really short episode. Yeah.

15:26They're like, ah, you've made it. Well, so Benny Russell, the 1950s author, takes his advance for this story. He takes his girl out on the town. They have a really nice night. But there's like a ruckus for me in the street. He goes to check it out and comes on two cops who are the in-world equivalent of Gull DuCott and Wei-Hoo-Hoo are like, fashy bad guys in the deep space nine universe. But they are like, investigating and have just murdered Jimmy who's the hustler kid who in the deep space nine universe is Jake's. As go, that's his son. I think in 1950s, I don't think that Benny and Jimmy are related. It hits the audience hard because that's Jake. That's our boy. He's grown up on the show. We met him as a 12 year old and now he's a journalist. He's going off to see the world. He's coming up. But, again, we can sort of get into the nitty gritty around all of the stuff maps.

16:29What I was thinking was that do you know who would never commit racist violence in a systemic way unless it's the Washington State Highway Patrol? Is it the products and services that's for the podcast? That's right. They probably have never committed racist violence. Well, they might not have created this. I don't know if this is a good bit, but we should throw the ads. Alright, fine. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the survivor files. You just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

17:31I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their stories about what it takes to make it out alive, listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Benieto and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at

18:34us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed. And the argument is do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complained about the very thing they received. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off. I said this is exactly what I'm talking about.

19:35Y'all go scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same bag. That's Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network. 12 seats. Those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 23. You better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts. College football will hijack your weekend, ruin your sleep and break your heart. And that's why we make the solo travel college football show. I'm Ty Hildenbrand. He's Dan Rubenstein. How's it going? Every week we preview the games that matter, sort through the biggest storylines and tell you what to watch before kickoff. There's a lot to keep track of. Who's for real? Which upset is hiding in plain sight and which storyline is about to take over your group chat? And when the games are over, join us in the aftermath too. We're going to react to what happened, talk about the biggest results.

20:38Of course we'll cover the playoff picture and all the little details you might have missed while flipping between like 12 games at once. Whether you know every coach and coordinator or just want to understand why everybody is yelling, we're here to help make sense of the madness. Listen to the Solid Verbal College football show on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Yeah, just sort of bring this home. So after Jimmy is murdered at the hands of the police, Benny Russell intervenes and I think we might have gotten the specific order of the episode a little bit out of order, but it's all vibes. We're not the experts here. If you want the experts, you can go to starter track. That's not us. We're just, we're just bitches.

21:41They like beat the crap out of them, the police. And I will say something that I mean, I know we're going to get into analysis in a minute, but it just didn't reach me to see where the, when the police are roughing the kid up, they're like, oh, well, he was breaking into cars with a crowbar. That was the excuse that we used to kill him. And just the idea that property destruction is violence and like, like deserving of, you know, like, like property destruction is more important than the value of human life. It's a good vibe like that. So like that's the excuse the police give as to why it's okay that they shot this kid in the street because he was using a crowbar to try to get in the cars. And also in that scene, you have the black cops in the background holding back the crowd. I'm sure that was not a coincidence. Not at all. And like a little bit radical for a statement of first-star trek to make, you know? Seriously, yeah.

22:41So I think Cisco goes back to the editorial office still thinking that, you know, well, at least my story is getting published. And there he finds that the story, that the whole episode, or the episode, very finds that the entire issue has been pulped. It's not going to run. And on top of that, he is also let go from his job at the Science Fiction Magazine. That's the end of the show, isn't it? Kind of wakes up at that point. It was all a dream. Yeah, he has a big breakdown where he's like, you know, you can pulp a story, but you can't pulp an idea. What I came up with was real. I don't, you know, there's something you can do to me. It's a real like scene of acting grovy toss, but then he wakes up on the ship and it's not clear to him whether or not that was a dream or his experience as Captain Cisco, the captain of this ship, whether that's a dream, you know, he's told at one point, you're

23:46both the dreamer and the dream. So I feel like we're sort of left kind of grappling with that a little bit. And the thing I like about that, I don't usually like fourth wall breaking. Like I'm not a big meta story person. I tend to be pretty linear in my imagination. And I really liked this. This really worked for me the way that it also calls in all of Star Trek, right? Because Star Trek is the dream. Star Trek is the dream that was created by pulp writers. And this particular episode was created by the actor who's doing these things, you know, and I genuinely like the interplay of maybe the things that we create in our head are real, right? Like that's one of the things that Benny Russell keeps saying is like, no, these things that I've experienced, they're real. You can't get rid of them. They've been written down. They're real. And it's like saying story is real and you help create things. And like Star Trek has had actual effects on culture and anti-racism, right?

24:53And it's, it is real. These stories matter. And I really like that it's intentionally like this like incredibly pulpy office and magazine, right? Like, because even when he's name dropping all of the other black authors at the time, they're not pulp authors. Although DeBoys absolutely wrote trashy, he's specular fiction. You can listen to this show and hear DeBoys' fiction. But it wasn't presented as genre, I believe. It was probably presented as literature, just literally based on who did it. Yeah, that really worked for me too. And a lot of the sort of wink, wink, nod, nod, like, oh, you know, like Major Kira or K who she is in the 50s being like, yeah, we need more representation of strong women leaders in science fiction. Look at the audience. I can see it being a little cheesy. I'm gonna keep it really totally working. I love it. This has got to be, I mean, I'm not the deepest Star Trek person, but like, this has got

25:57to be one of the best episodes, right? If they're making lists of the best Deep Space Nine episodes, this has got to be top five of those lists, right? Oh, I mean, it's my favorite Deep Space Nine episode. It's my favorite episode of Star Trek. A lot of the cast who worked on the show have also said like that this was their favorite one to work on. Listener, I can't make your decisions for you, but almost everybody that I know has this in their top three. And it's nice too that like, you can watch it out of order. I'm someone who kind of needs to watch things in order when it all possible, but this one genuinely, it's a stand alone. Should we talk about what listeners have to say about it and kind of talk about what we have to say about it? Yeah, let's jump and do it. Does anybody have a Reddit comment that they really wanted to get into or should I just go with the first one? My linear thinking brain was like, well, there's one in front of me and it's from Diogeny's having a wee. I wanted to say I love our listeners and I love all of our listeners. Clever, silly Reddit names.

26:58You guys are the best. That one at Diogeny's having a wee is a reference to urinating on rich people because Diogeny's was a strange homeless punk rock philosopher who I had many disagreements with his ideas who one of his ideas was you should go to rich people parties and then pee on people. I love that you're doing a close read of just a Reddit name. I love this. Do you want to read it for us, Meg? Yeah, but I'm going to read a strange voice even I don't remember what the comment says. DS9 did a lot of one off high concept episodes that came out of left field and this is one of the best of them, IMO. Racism isn't an unheard of topic for Star Trek to tackle, but this is the only episode I can think of that did away with analogies and addressed it head on. Having Avery Brooks, Cisco's actor, direct the episode as a great choice. They specifically chose him because they wanted someone with direct experience with racism to direct it. And it wasn't as weird of a voice as I was expecting, I'm sorry.

28:01So I love the way that this episode deals with racism. And I think especially in the 90s, I have a soft spot for a lot of 90s television and whenever a lot, not even 90s television that I liked when they were doing a very special episode about racism. I'm thinking about shows like Quantum Leap, which I loved, but like go back and watch it. It does not really hold up in a lot of ways. And they really had a tendency to show racists as these like singular monsters who just were full of hate had hate coming out of their pores. What I like about this episode is that I would argue that the villain beyond the police is the editor who sees Benny as like talented and smart and like wants to give him a chance. But that does not keep him from doing the bidding of their racist publication owner, right? That he's not portrayed, at least in my opinion, as like some like hate filled, seething monster.

29:03And in some ways that's kind of worse because it's more commonplace and more realistic. Yeah, he's like representing a system. I was going to say I think that really works well with the character that they chose for the editor is Odo who is like the kind of station mall cop who is very lawfully aligned as very kind of rules and by the books. And they kind of show how that sort of attitude ends up holding up systems of oppression. Even when his name is Douglas Papsd is the editor, like you said, believes in Benny, thinks he's a talented writer. He doesn't seem to personally have anything against the story, but just, you know, isn't brave enough to stand up to his editor and advocate for Benny and doesn't trust his audiences to, you know, take a chance on something that might be a little bit outside of what they're typically sold. Would you say that there's no blue ribbon for this, Papsd? I might give you that one.

30:06Excellent. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the survivor files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced, but these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their stories about what it takes to make it out alive, listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your

31:09podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinierro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I try to be alone I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast.

32:14Here's what you missed. And the argument is do you want to win? If you don't win you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complained about the very thing they were receiving. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off. I said this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all go scream at Chanel but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same back. And now, Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts. College football will hijack your weekend, ruin your sleep and break your heart.

33:18And that's why we make the Solid Verbal College football show. I'm Ty Hildenbrand. He's Dan Rubenstein. How's it going? Every week we preview the games that matter, sort through the biggest storylines and tell you what to watch before kickoff. There's a lot to keep track of. Who's for real? Which upset is hiding in plain sight and which storyline is about to take over your group chat? And when the games are over, join us in the aftermath too. We're going to react to what happened, talk about the biggest results. Of course we'll cover the playoff picture. And all the little details you might have missed while flipping between like 12 games at once. Whether you know every coach and coordinator or just want to understand why everybody is yelling, we're here to help make sense of the madness. Listen to the Solid Verbal College football show on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

34:18I have a lot of love in my heart for Avery Brooks. Avery Brooks went to Oberlin College, which listeners please forget this as soon as I say it. That's my alma mater. So I was watching Deep Space Nine while I was in college and you know, then would go to meetings at the student union where there like, you know, was a picture of Avery Brooks, you know, for his, you know, came back to do. He studied theater at Oberlin College and he would come back periodically to do, you know, special master classes and acting. And I don't know, that just like always felt really special to feel kind of this tie in with like, Captain Cisco and Avery Brooks and knowing that, you know, we sort of are coming from the same place. And I think also I want to say like Avery put so much intention into this episode. There's so many little Easter eggs like in the set decoration and in the costume and then to also be, you know, the main featured voice and the, you know, the main feature

35:21and actor in, in the show is just such a labor of love into making this. And I can tell that it's something that Avery like I've indicated for. He's, he's talked a lot about his experience as an African American man on the set of Star Trek and doesn't have like a lot of the actors kind of go to the cons and are really involved in the fan base and he's kind of put Star Trek behind him. If I'm remembering correctly in a large part because of racism that he dealt with and it's really cool to like kind of see these places where he is interjecting himself and his experiences and making, making the show his own. Is racism in the fandom community? I'm not, I'm just the first time hearing of that. You're sure? No, I'm with you. I always say like watching this episode, it was almost like bitter sweet to watch knowing all of that. And then exactly as you said, he is all the ways that the set design, so many little details,

36:26the way that the episode is this tender and beautiful depiction of black intellectual life through not just writing but sports, dance, fashion, art, dreaming, religion. Crime, I'm just going to shout out crime. I like Jimmy. Yeah, it's like there's a scene where he comes out when there's the Hughes book of poetry, the ways of white folks and there's a poem in that collection where he talks about how the Tom Tom laughs, the Tom Tom cries, right? It's singing, dancing, and sports, but also crime, also getting hassled by the cops, also like getting harassed at work. Like the episode does such a beautiful tender job of portraying this, I don't know, dynamic vision of black intellectual life in the 50s that I just think is so, it's so loving. It's like it's clearly a labor of love, as you said. Yeah. And I think like it's that's it is like when Avery Brooks would have been growing up, you know, like it's it feels so lived and because he lived it.

37:28And you branch in the Langston Hughes book, which I love and I love that specific edition because I'm pretty sure that that edition would have been printed in like the late 80s, which means that it's from the future. Like we're still getting this like richness of like you said, black intellectual culture sort of across time and Benny Resil is like living in the future. And obviously that's just like set dresser didn't want to go find a book from the 50s. But everything is intentional. And like you can find these little ripples of meaning. And even if it's unintentional, like I think that it just makes it smarter. Like I love it when a piece of media is smarter than the people who write it and put it together. Bridget, you talked about the way that 90s racism and anti-racism was dealt with on TV. This ties into Langston Hughes and everything you're just saying Hazel, it all comes together. There's this very, very different way that this is handling it than almost everything. As you mentioned about 90s trying to deal with race because in the 90s TV was just trying to do like I don't see race, right?

38:31It was seen as very normal for me to also watch family matters as like a white girl. And like identify just as much with Erkholl as with I actually can't come up with a comparable character and a white family on a sitcom off the top of my head. I watched a lot of family matters, but that left me with this sense of not understanding racism, right? Because of the way it was presented when you only have like the evil monster and it was actually Langston Hughes poetry and a very patient English teacher who talked this out of me, right? Because I came up in this like, ah, race doesn't matter, it's less your horrible monster. And I was reading all this Langston Hughes poetry for school and I was like, well, I don't get why all of this ties back into race isn't this a kind of universal feeling that he's describing. And my English teacher just like patiently sat with me for a moment and was like, this is why this matters. And it was just like a little like light bulb where I'm like, ah, now I understand.

39:35And so this episode just does so much better than the other media at the time. Like I was expecting like, because some of the stuff I think we're going to talk about later is about the racialization of Bashir who is like a white presenting non white person and then also Quark. I don't remember their names in this episode. I struggled to remember one name for people. And so Quark is Jewish in this episode, right? It's a Jewish commie. Yeah. I was going into it assuming that the writers weren't taking those identities into consideration that everyone is just white, right? And then I'm like, oh, I actually have to give the people who wrote this credit to not just have a terrible 90s pretending like everything's fine understanding of more complicated parts of like race and ethnicity. Yeah. I, first of all, shout out to that teacher. Yeah, no, he fucking changed my life. Yep.

40:36He was also in all of the John Waters movies. Oh my God, really? Yeah, he was just like a background character, like the like young black man who like, actually, I don't want to talk to myself and tell you exactly who my English teacher was. But yeah, no, he's, that may love to strange life. But he finally succeeded in a dream of becoming an English teacher. Anyway, I do think that there's a lot, I mean, there's probably a lot of like well-meaning leftist types who still think that, you know, the only kind of solidarity is class solidarity is as important as that is, race is real. And like, you don't get to understanding like genuine, meaningful understanding by pretending that it's not. And I think that like the 90s did present this idea that the objective was a colorblind society. And I think that this episode is so layered and thoughtful and sort of depicting the complexities of people's identity. I love this sort of black women, Jewish kind of solidarity that sort of quietly at play in the backdrop of this episode.

41:36Well, it turns out that it's really easy to look at an episode like this for longer than the period of time that we have to look at it in only one episode. So this is now two weeks of content. So you're going to have to wait everyone for another week to hear even more about it. But if you haven't had a chance to watch the show yet, now's a chance to go catch up and watch it. But in the meantime, if you can't wait and you want to hear more about what Bridget Todd has to say about things, Bridget, is there any way that people can do that? There sure is. I happen to have an audiobook out called Love at First Prompt AI in the Future of Intimacy. If you are interested in grappling with questions about what is real, what makes something real as it pertains to the way that folks are using AI for intimacy and why maybe it's not a great idea to be outsourcing our most intimate human thoughts and connections to AI companies that we cannot always trust.

42:37Check it out. You can do that at Love at FirstPrompt.com. Hell yeah. You also have a podcast about it every single time I mentioned your podcast. My brain is incapable of not making the joke that it's an untrue statement. You have a podcast called There's No Girls on the Internet. That is true. And there are girls on the internet. We're all around. You know, there's all kinds of folks on the internet having nerdy conversations. So if you are a sci-fi fan and want to have more nerdy tech and internet conversations, check it out. We should start a show called Bitches on the Internet. I'm sure it'll go over well with everybody. All right. That's it for this week. We'll see you all next week. Bye. It could happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolzoneMedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions.

43:38Thanks for listening. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait a minute, hold up. They changed all of that? Yes. It's real. This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency. It's wrong. White folks have never allowed that reckoning to last more than a decade. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, everybody. Amy Robock and TJ Holmes here from the Amy and TJ podcast. We're going to cover everything you need to know during this heated political season. Yes, we just saw Lindsey Graham, the death of a long time senator. Also, we've got a couple of missing members of Congress. Also, we got a lot of members of Congress behaving badly. We got accusations, allegations flying all day long on Capitol Hill. Listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

44:40your podcasts. Hi, I'm Michael and Perry Oli. I want to tell you about my new podcast Underground Zero. We're looking at the opportunity of a lifetime for us and the other families. It's about the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. What's in the tunnels? Go wash over English. It could be worth half a billion. Starring Steve Sharipa, Ray Abruzzo, and me, Michael and Perry Oli. How far you prepared to go? Depends how far you were. Listen to Underground Zero on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome aboard season six of The Girlfriends, Flight or Fight, which takes place 30,000 feet in the sky. A beautiful woman smiles and hands you a scotch. But you have no idea just how messed up her job actually is. It was the most sexist job I think you could have. Until one day, a group of stewardesses spark a revolution that reshapes America.

45:40Listen to The Girlfriends, Flight or Fight, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.