Transcript

Intro Voices:

You're listening to Radiolab from WNYC.

Ryan:

Before we get started I had a couple of questions for you.

Abigail:

Yeah, please. Fire away.

Ryan:

I've talked to a lot of people who you've attempted to contact. There's a lot of hesitation. People just don't have faith in media right now, and considering our issues, to be honest, white-controlled media.

Ryan:

So I got a couple of questions for you.

Abigail:

Yeah.

Jad:

Quest away.

Ryan:

Why now?

Jad:

Why do we want to do this story now?

Ryan:

Yeah. It's been a couple of years.

Jad:

Well, Abby just found the story. It was unknown to us until right now.

Robert:

This feels a little newsy-of-the-moment in its upside-down way.

Jad:

This is Robert, by the way, our other host.

Robert:

Hi.

Ryan:

So we have Robert, we have...

Jad:

We have Robert, we have Jad...

Abigail:

And we have Abigail.

Ryan:

Jad?

Robert:

J-A-D.

Ryan:

J-A-D. Yes.

Jad:

Did you have other questions?

Ryan:

Sure. We can wait. We can table those.

Jad:

No, ask them. Ask them.

Robert:

Let's hear them.

Ryan:

So what is the end goal? What do you want the story to say?

Robert:

We never that at the beginning.

Jad:

Okay, hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

Robert:

I'm Robert Krulwich.

Jad:

This is Radiolab and today...

Robert:

Today we're going to tell you the story of a guy: a guy named Ryan Wash.

Jad:

He's part of a movement of people who have taken this established corner of the academic world and they've reshaped it and reframed it.

Robert:

Into something even weirder and more different.

Ryan:

Weirder. Huh.

Jad:

No, not weird bad. Weird interesting. Interesting. Let's replace the word weird with interesting.

Robert:

I don't know, I'll confess I find it...

Ryan:

I'm just saying in debate lingo, that's a link.

Robert:

That's a link?

Ryan:

Usually, when you run a criticism the link is the thing that they've done bad.

Robert:

Oh, okay.

Ryan:

The description of performance debate is problematic.

Jad:

Can I put a less...

Robert:

Less judgmentally?

Jad:

Okay, so the world that we're talking about, which is at the center of this whole story, is debate.

Robert:

Yes.

Jad:

High school debate and college debate. Now, I never did debate, but from the outside it always seemed like this hyper-competitive brain sport.

Robert:

These guys with these accordion briefcases where they have all these files in there with all the research.

Jad:

Yeah. They go to these tournaments and they argue about some topic back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

Jad:

Now, the interesting about debate... I didn't know this beforehand... is that the people who people who do this often go on to become hugely powerful people: Supreme Court judges, presidents, leading thinkers, scholars, titans of industry.

Robert:

It's the farm team of the big folks for tomorrow. So Lee Iacocca from Chrysler, he was a debater.

Jad:

Margaret Thatcher, Ted Cruz, Carl Rove, Hillary Clinton.

Robert:

Oprah Winfrey.

Jad:

Richard Nixon.

Robert:

Malcolm X.

Jad:

They all were debaters.

Jad:

Today, this is Ryan Wash's story of debate.

Abigail:

Actually, it's Ryan's story debating debate.

Jad:

Yes. This story comes from reporter Abigail Keel. Before we get going, I just want to let you know there is some language in this story: some profane words. Skip it if you need to. Otherwise, here we go.

Abigail:

Is it cool if we jump in, Ryan?

Ryan:

Yeah.

Abigail:

I would love to know, Ryan, what was your life like before you were ever on a debate team?

Ryan:

Well, Kansas City, Missouri, inner city public school. 99% black students. I was actually tricked into debating.

Jad:

Really? When was this that you're talking about?

Ryan:

Let me see. 2000... I'm sorry, I'm old. 2005?

Jad:

When were you born if you're saying you're old?

Ryan:

1990.

Jad:

Oh, come on.

Ryan:

But yeah. I ended up getting tricked into debate. I'm definitely more of an observant person, which is why I like to play the game of chess, because how people move their pieces... the time it takes them to move their pieces... all gives away something. There are tells.

Ryan:

So I was tricked into debate by playing chess, and I ended up winning the school chess tournament that we had. This little short German redhead lady named Jane Reinhardt came to chess practice... I ended up being president of the chess club... one day and pulled me in the hallway and was like...

Jane:

I understand you were chess champion and that's a really good thing. We have this debate program and I think you'd be really good at it.

Ryan:

Like, "Anybody who could critically think at chess could critically think at debate." Yadda yadda yadda. I didn't even know what debate was.

Abigail:

So he told her...

Ryan:

No.

Jane:

"No. Not for me." But I persist.

Abigail:

So over the next year...

Ryan:

She kept on telling me, "I thought I told you to join debate." I was like, "I thought I told you no."

Jane:

I can spot a debater at 20 paces.

Ryan:

She was just like, "Okay, you think I'm playing." One Monday I came to school. She handed me a piece of paper. It was a revised scheduled. She had my scheduled to where I had debate first hour.

Jane:

I just [inaudible 00:06:14].

Ryan:

So here I am.

Jane:

Here you are. That's what's happens with a lot of my debaters. They just come in kind of dazed. Like, "Uh, my schedule got changed." I'm like, "Yeah, okay, that's fine. Take a seat."

Abigail:

Those first few classes, Ryan is learning the basics of debate, and this kind of debate that he's doing is called policy debate. There's two teams and two people on each team. Usually the debate is about some kind of national policy topic, like, "The United States government should increase its economic engagement in China." One team, at the beginning of the debate, is randomly assigned to be affirmative. That means they're supporting that proposition. They're saying, "Yes, the United States' federal government should do that. Here's why." The other team is the negative team, and they're doing against the affirmative.

Abigail:

Both of those sides make their case and then at the end the judge decides who made the better arguments.

Jane:

I mean, I get them up debating almost day one.

Ryan:

We ended up having mock-debates in class, like Pepsi versus Coke, Family Guy versus the Simpsons, stuff like that. It was very fun. It made us learn how to do impact analysis.

Jad:

Impact analysis?

Robert:

What is that?

Ryan:

For instance...

Abigail:

Let's say you're debating apples versus oranges.

Ryan:

If I say the rinds of apples are necessary for the fertilizer to produce oranges, so you must vote for apples.

Abigail:

That would be the impact of choosing apples over oranges.

Ryan:

You have to be able to compare the two and make argumentation. The traditional standard for argumentation...

Abigail:

And as Ryan started learning all of this.

Ryan:

Impact analysis...

Ryan:

Toulmin's model...

Ryan:

Argumentation...

Abigail:

He started to...

Ryan:

Ethos, pathos, logos...

Abigail:

Do really well.

Jane:

Yeah. Yeah he did.

Abigail:

Joined the team. Started going to tournaments.

Ryan:

Debate is one of those activities that affords you the possibility of traveling places. Where I grew up and went to school, students didn't leave a 40 block radius for their entire life.

Jane:

You're in control in that debate round and everybody is listening to you. I think it's important to feel that way, even if it's only in a 60, 90 minute debate round.

Jane:

Ryan needed those wins. He needed...

Ryan:

I was enjoying debate.

Jane:

That affirmation.

Ryan:

I was having a great time.

Ryan:

The thing that helped me out was that my first tournament was a Debate Kansas City tournament. Debate Kansas City is an urban debate league. So we were debating other kids from the same neighborhood, just went to different schools. That environment of debate was, to me, very different. Like yeah, we wanted to win, but there was a lot more camaraderie in the debate, I thought.

Ryan:

By the time I went to my first national competition, I was very much committed to debate. But once I went to that national tournament for the first time, I was like, "Okay, I don't know about this."

Jane:

At national tournaments, you're up against what I call name brand schools.

Abigail:

You know, like predominately private schools.

Ryan:

We were real excited about that. Put our little dress clothes on. Got cute.

Abigail:

Got on the bus.

Ryan:

Nerves started kicking a little bit just about going to a debate tournament. Got off the bus, went inside, and then we went into the cafeteria. When we opened the door to walk into the cafeteria and began to walk in the room went silent. I mean, when I tell you the talking stopped, literally 300 other plus students stopped and stared at us because a bus of black kids had just arrived. They watched us the whole time that we were in the cafeteria. They was like, "What are they doing here?" At least, that's how I felt.

Ryan:

We walked over to our table and our coach was like, "Do not worry about them. Pull out your things. Get warmed up. Get ready for competition." So got our stuff pulled out and started to practice, and then they started to whisper. Whether they were whispering about debate stuff or about us, I don't know. I wasn't in their heads. But I can definitely explain to you what that felt like. It was real awkward and it was real uncomfortable.

Abigail:

And making things even more awkward and more uncomfortable is that when the debates actually got going... and this is particularly true at the national level... this is what debate sounds like.

Debaters:

This event also turns back [inaudible 00:10:54] kids are sitting [inaudible 00:10:54] global nuclear war and esclation if there's a backlash [inaudible 00:10:54].

Debaters:

The plan: US federal government through an act of Congress will substantially reform domestic transportation infrastructure by requiring that all federally founded road paving projects in the US use 15 to 22% ground rubber and asphalt and concrete mixes.

Debaters:

One, [inaudible 00:11:02] moving targets, seven slots of [crosstalk 00:11:04].

Jad:

What is this? Is this sped up or something?

Abigail:

No. This is what debate sounds like today. They kind of speed read.

Ryan:

The goal of speed reading, or spreading, if you will, is to get more arguments.

Debaters:

The US highway and road infrastructure has an urgent requirement for [crosstalk 00:11:19].

Debaters:

Hetero supremacy and white supremacy [inaudible 00:11:19].

Abigail:

And apparently... and this is a quick digression... this kind of thing actually started in the 1960s and the students were actually the ones who were driving it.

Scott:

One of the things that makes debate such an interesting intellectual game is that it's much more of a bottom-up-driven activity than a top-down activity.

Abigail:

That's Scott Harris, director of debate at the University of Kansas. In the case of speed reading...

Scott:

We developed a situation where one team decided, "I'm going to present eight arguments," and the other team talked slower and only answered six of them, and the judge says, "Well, you didn't answer two of these arguments so you lost the debate because you didn't answer those arguments." So the other team said, "We need to answer all eight of those arguments," and they started to talk faster. And the other team said, "Well, we'll present 10 arguments," and then they answered 12. It escalated to a point that, in some instances, has gone way too far.

Abigail:

Getting back to Ryan: it's not as if he didn't know how to do that style of debate.

Ryan:

That's the way I debated. I did try to speak fast.

Abigail:

But he says somewhere around the first national tournament, all that stuff stopped making sense to him, like the fast talking and the fact that he had to debate these super highfalutin topics.

Ryan:

I felt as if I could never take any of the stuff that I learned in debate and take it back to 304 [Aski 00:12:40], which is where I lived.

Abigail:

This isn't just unique to Ryan. What you see at this stage in debate is that a lot of kids, especially inner city kids from public schools, black students, they just start to drop out of debate at a certain point. But Ryan didn't do that.

Robert:

Now something big is going to happen. I have a feeling. Somebody's going to say...

Ryan:

No.

Robert:

No?

Ryan:

No. What happened was that a student from University Academy... she was a senior...

Abigail:

Her name was [Marshana 00:13:07] and she went to a different school than Ryan.

Ryan:

She came over and asked Reinhardt. She needed a partner. There was about to be this tournament called KCKCC TLC Tournament.

Abigail:

It was a big high school debate tournament. Marshana, she was a senior, so she was older than Ryan, but she needed a partner. She came to Jane Reinhardt and Jane said, "Well, here, Ryan. He's your guy."

Ryan:

So I met with Marshana. It was the Thursday before the tournament happened. And I pulled her into this room and I had three boxes of evidence and I was ready to go with my traditional stuff.

Abigail:

The topic was whether the US should increase participation in national service programs, so like Peace Corp, Armed Services, stuff like that.

Ryan:

I'm like, "This is the stuff that I've been working on." I showed her the Learn and Serve America stuff. I had this Peace Corp affirmative that I hadn't wrote yet.

Abigail:

He showed her note cards with statistics on them, quotes from various experts.

Ryan:

And she was like, "Mm-hmm (affirmative). Uh-huh (affirmative). Yeah, that's cute." So she handed me this expando was just like...

Abigail:

"Take this folder, go home, study it."

Ryan:

So I go home and I open this expando and it was full of things. I stayed up literally all night studying this file. I mean, it was not a lot of evidence. There was not a lot of pre-written out answers to arguments. There wasn't a lot. There was Ralph Ellison's...

Speaker 9:

I am an invisible man.

Ryan:

There was a clip from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in there. There was...

Angelou:

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines.

Ryan:

A Maya Angelou poem in there.

Angelou:

You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I rise.

Ryan:

There was some original stuff that she wrote. And I didn't get it. But she was the senior, and Reinhardt kind of told me, "Let her drive the ship, you just ride along." I was like, okay.

Ryan:

So...

Abigail:

Next day.

Ryan:

We get to the first debate. I still was very unclear when we arrived at the tournament just what was going on.

Abigail:

He and Marshana get to the classroom and standing on the other side of the room are their two opponents.

Robert:

Are they white kids mostly?

Ryan:

Yeah. They were white guys in suits with Republican ties on, if you want a vivid description.

Abigail:

The other team, they're affirmative, so they go first.

Ryan:

And they're like, [inaudible 00:15:23].

Abigail:

They lay out this whole argument about how the national service programs are good because they increase US power abroad. Then it was Marshana's turn.

Ryan:

So she gets up to give this speech and it starts with this like four minute long piece of spoken word.

Abigail:

It's like this performative speech, kind of, about her personal experience in debate.

Ryan:

And she had this way of speaking that was very passionately forceful. It made people stop. They stopped writing. They stopped talking.

Abigail:

And in the middle of this riff, Marshana laid out this argument...

Ryan:

That the style of debate that they engaged in, that fast paced form of debate, was exclusionary because it demotivated minority students from participating.

Abigail:

Not only, that it also creates this resource imbalance, because if you're going to start debating with a ton of arguments then you have to research that many arguments and you need help researching those arguments, so you pay people and you pay coaches to help you may those arguments, and that clearly favors rich and affluent schools. And beyond that, Marshana argued, even the language itself sets up a norm of what counts as intelligent, authoritative argumentation.

Ryan:

For instance, like men's voice to be held up over women, black people to always seem angry and rude when they're just being passionate, as if they don't have feelings. It was a criticism of the auctioneer style of debate. It was a criticism of the insular lingo of debate. It was a criticism of the way in which debates were decided socially and politically as opposed to argumentatively.

Ryan:

I was like, "Okay, I kind of get what she's [crosstalk 00:17:05]."

Robert:

Were you shocked? Did this shock you?

Ryan:

No. I wasn't shocked. On the one hand, I was like, "That was great. That was tight." Snaps, like we was at the poetry slam. But I was sitting to myself, thinking, "Okay, how am I going to extend this?"

Abigail:

When it got to be his turn, what's left for him to say?

Ryan:

I don't know what other words I could use.

Ryan:

It wasn't until the second person from this team got up and he started to speak and he was like debating about "The state is great! This is disrespectful to the state of debate." And he turned to her... it was this moment... and he said it like from his soul: "You should go down the hall, because that's where poetry/prose is held. This is academic debate."

Ryan:

I was like, "What?" Basically, his argument was that what we were doing was not debating. What we were having was a talent show, is how he described it. And I was just like, "I get it." And maybe it was the studying I had done all night, but everything kicked in in that moment. My passion came into the room and I was just like...

Jad:

What was it? You get it?

Ryan:

Like, I get everything that she was trying to say... what she was saying about the structure of debate, because I had felt those things before. I just didn't know how to articulate them.

Jad:

Was it like permission?

Ryan:

I get what she's saying. Debate is fucked up. I'm sorry.

Abigail:

No, you're fine.

Ryan:

Let's just say we definitely went on to win that debate.

Robert:

You won this match?

Ryan:

Yeah, we won the debate because...

Abigail:

Let me just explain what happened in this debate. Judges, in this kind of situation, have a choice: they can hear the arguments that Ryan and Marshana are making and they can think, "Okay, this isn't really about the Peace Corp or about Armed Services, so you lose," or they can do what the judge in this debate did and they can say, "All right, the topic has shifted, but let's look at what we have in front of us. Let's look at the arguments that were made." You have Ryan and Marshana saying that the structure of debate is racist and then you've got the other team not really responding in any kind of counter-argumentative way.

Abigail:

Ryan, in this debate, points at that. He points at when this other team says, "Leave the room," and he says, "Hey, what they just did proves our point: that we are excluded from debate." And the judge agreed.

Jad:

Oh, so you used his "You don't belong here" as an argument against him.

Ryan:

That's what I was saying about our evidence. It came a lot from what happened in the debate itself.

Jad:

That is fascinating.

Robert:

But wait a second, wait a second. Let me just take that guy's side. You're throwing huge bombs at them: racism, hegemony. What's he supposed to do? Say, "I'm a racist?" What is he supposed to do?

Ryan:

Stop.

Robert:

What do you mean stop?

Ryan:

First off, he should stop. Second off, you don't have to say you're racist. Ain't nobody going to want to admit that they're racist. But you can definitely admit that you've engaged in racist practices or you can have a debate about whether or not that was a racist practice. There's a healthy debate to be had about that. But instead, what he said was that "You all do not belong here."

Robert:

"Leave the room." If you walk in and you say what you just said and you say it forcibly and eloquently... I mean, the other side says, "Hey, you're changing the rules here. You're breaking things down. Leave the room." And then in the "Leave the room" they leave themselves open to this counter-attack that you give. It still surprises me that you'd win.

Ryan:

This is the thing. There's very few rules to debate, but there's tons of norms, and depending on the community of debate... the space of debate that you're in... those norms may differ. I only know of a few rules, like there must be a winner and a loser, time limits... and I've seen that be debatable at times... there must be an affirmative and a negative. Other than that, how one approaches debate, how one approaches the topic, how one approaches themselves and their opposition, all of that stuff is debatable and arguably should be debatable.

Jad:

There's no, like, Bible of debate? There's no book of...

Ryan:

No. They put out things like the NDT Rule Book, which is like affirmative teams must be topical, but in the world of debate what does it mean to be topical? What does it mean to be on topic? That has to be debatable in order for a debate to [inaudible 00:21:48].

Jad:

This is getting very interesting.

Robert:

I'm just curious, if you're really good at this, can you parse me what you would've said if you were the guy coming after you or before you?

Ryan:

One of the things that they needed to do in particular was to say that the debate itself shouldn't be about debate. They were trying to say that, but they said was, "Y'all should leave."

Jad:

That's interesting, because the place where I have sympathy for the other side is where they're like, "I thought we were talking about the Peace Corp." Like they walked into the wrong room or something.

Robert:

But on the other hand...

Ryan:

But that was part of our argument, was that how do you do debate, how do you participate in an activity for hours and hours and hours... weeks upon weeks upon weeks, and arguable years on years on years... and not every think about why you debate the way that you do. That's what we were pressing.

Abigail:

What was the other team's reaction?

Ryan:

They were really upset. They called us a n-word and shit like that.

Jad:

No. Really?

Ryan:

Yes. Like, what do you mean no? Yes!

Jad:

That's... wow.

Jad:

We'll be right back.







Jad:

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

Robert:

I'm Robert Krulwich.

Jad:

This is Radiolab.

Robert:

And it's back to our story, again from producer Abigail Keel.

Jad:

Which is a story about a guy named Ryan Wash and about debate. How we debate.

Abigail:

Just to pull back from that moment with Marshana and the poetry and all that, this kind of thing wasn't just happening in a vacuum. It actually came from all kinds of different places all at once.

Abigail:

One particular interesting person who was influencing it was George Soros.

Jad:

The billionaire?

Abigail:

Yeah.

Shanara:

Soros was fascinated by debate.

Abigail:

That's Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley. She's a scholar and a big figure in the so-called black debate world.

Shanara:

Soros thought that debate was one of those kinds of activities that was incredibly important to the production of democracy.

Abigail:

So he started funding debate programs overseas...

Shanara:

In places like eastern Europe.

Abigail:

And here in the US he poured tons of money...

Shanara:

Like millions and millions and millions of dollars to start urban debate programs. First started with New York City.

Abigail:

1977.

Shanara:

They literally went out to all these New York high schools, talked to a bunch of administrators, and Soros just pumped money into New York City to start an urban debate league.

Abigail:

Then it went to Baltimore, then to Chicago, Detroit. It went to Kansas City, out to LA, Newark.

Shanara:

And it just kept moving. We're almost up to maybe 23 or 24 cities.

Abigail:

If you take a step back and look at it all, suddenly within a few years you have all of these new black debaters, and many of those students, she says, would go through the exact same thing that Ryan went through.

Shanara:

At the regional level, you can imagine you get a bunch of African American students, a bunch of teachers who are supporting them in a very positive environment. They build relationships and friendships. So debate feels like home in that space.

Abigail:

But as soon as they go to that first national tournament...

Shanara:

Culture shock, because there is a sea of white people.

Abigail:

And according to Dr. Reid-Brinkley, this influx of black debaters into a primarily white space started to create some tension and pressure. That all built up and eventually resulted in something called the Louisville Project.

Ryan:

The Louisville Project started. Its goal was to increase meaningful participation of [crosstalk 00:27:55].

Jad:

[crosstalk 00:27:55].

Robert:

[crosstalk 00:27:55] happened in Louisville.

Ryan:

Let's go back.

Robert:

I know that there's a baseball bat associated with Louisville.

Ryan:

Jesus Christ.

Ryan:

So, early 2000s...

Abigail:

Down at the University of Louisville, there was a debate team.

Ryan:

A predominately African American team. They were having a hard time finding traction.

Abigail:

He says they would go to these national tournaments...

Ryan:

And no matter what they did, if they tried to accommodate the more traditional style, there was always something that they did wrong.

Abigail:

Apparently those students would try to make arguments about race inside the topics, but usually it didn't work.

Ryan:

And so...

Abigail:

At a certain point...

Ryan:

They decided that they were done with that.

Shanara:

They were like, "No, we are unwilling to play your game in the way that you have defined it should be played."

Abigail:

So these debaters, what they would basically do is they would show up and they would force a conversation about race, basically saying, "We're not going to talk about China or global trade until we deal with this."

Shanara:

This is Louisville's famous phrase. They said, "We can't change the state, but we can change the state of debate."

Abigail:

They end up developing this whole new methodology, which is actually a throwback to Aristotle. In his idea, you need three things to persuade someone: ethos, pathos, and logos. Logos is like logic, so getting research and scholars and evidence and things like that. Pathos, that's where emotion comes in, so maybe a personal story or sharing something that will connect with the audience. And then ethos, which is kind of hard to pin down. You can think of it as like credibility or speaking in tune with the spirit of your culture.

Shanara:

That's where you get the introduction of the use of hip hop.

Performers:

Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. I say the darker complexion, the deeper the roots.

Shanara:

The use of spoken word.

Performers:

They say the niggers always already queer. That's exactly the point. It means that it is a case turned to the affirmative because we're saying that [crosstalk 00:29:58].

Shanara:

The use of what we call street scholars.

Performers:

Hands up, don't shoot. Hands up, don't shoot.

Jad:

What was the reaction when this first started?

Shanara:

They would say things to Louisville like, "This isn't research, this is me-search," as if noted black scholars in their fields are not real experts, right? They would say things like, "Hip hop does not belong here. Your argument style doesn't belong here." I'm saying these things in really nice ways, but there could be really angry screaming matches at tournaments.

Robert:

Would you have an objection to a prohibition... As a coach, if you said, "Look, for next year, let's never talk about you and leave your gender, your sex, your background, your family, your religion behind and stay entirely in the brain." I doubt that you would do that, but I'm wondering why you wouldn't.

Shanara:

I think that's anti-black. I think it's anti-black to...

Robert:

Well, it's anti-everything. It would be anti-gay, anti-Jew, anti-everything.

Shanara:

Exactly. It would be anti all of those things. But particularly, for our purposes, it would anti-black. The reason that's important for me is because these students don't get to leave their blackness at the door when they enter for competition, right? They can pretend that they're not black, but that does not mean that everybody else is going to pretend that they are not black. Even when they speak, what arguments they make... When they open their mouths to make an argument, people are paying attention to the fact that it is coming out of a black body. They don't get to speak without race being a factor. Nobody gets to speak without race being a factor in a nation where race is a factor.

Abigail:

Now back to Ryan. He's 16 years old and he sees Marshana do this spoken word poetry thing. Starts to read more about Louisville and he's like, "I'm in."

Ryan:

I dedicated my debate career to discussing debate. Every debate. Every single one.

Jad:

Every debate.

Ryan:

Every single one.

Abigail:

Fast forward. He graduates high school. Isn't sure he's going to go to college.

Ryan:

I was a first generation college student, so I really didn't know much about the process.

Abigail:

But then, early August 2008, he gets a message from a debate coach at a small in Kansas called Emporia State University.

Ryan:

And August 14 I was driving up to Emporia for college.

Abigail:

So Ryan gets there, gets paired up with a sophomore: Latoya Williams-Green.

Ryan:

Who's now the director of debate at Cal State [inaudible 00:32:22] best friend.

Abigail:

The two of them start debating together and over the course of a couple years, Ryan starts to get recognized.

Shanara:

He's winning speaker awards. He's making it into the outer rounds at tournaments. But it was an uphill battle.

Abigail:

She says that Ryan kept bumping into judges who weren't really into the whole three-tier approach to debate.

Ryan:

Yes. I lost a lot of debates before I won any of them.

Abigail:

And at this point, Latoya has graduated and he's debating a freshman on the team. He's halfway into senior year when his new debate partner flunked out of school.

Ryan:

At this point, it was either find somebody to debate with or my debate career was over.

Shanara:

What happens is Ryan is also close to one of my best friends who's one of my contemporaries, [Reshad 00:33:12] Evans, who was then a coach at Western Connecticut University. Basically, Reshad had this bombshell idea.

Abigail:

One day, they called Ryan up, and they were like, "What if you partnered up with this guy from Rutgers: Elijah Smith?"

Shanara:

The reason why particularly Reshad thought this was a good idea: first, Elijah was an astoundingly good debater. He just had excellent skills and traditional skills. But the other reason was that both Ryan and Elijah were queer black men.

Abigail:

The thinking was that you've got two guys standing at the intersection of two marginalized groups, and if they're going to try to make an argument about feeling excluded and invisible, well, they can own that argument better than almost anyone.

Ryan:

So I called him one night. It was 9:30 PM.

Abigail:

And he was like, "Hey, do you want to come debate with me?"

Ryan:

And he was like, "Dude, this is a lot. I can't really answer this right now." I was like, "I understand. I'm asking you to come move to Kansas for a semester, or what have you, and live..."

Jad:

From Newark.

Ryan:

From Newark, New Jersey.

Ryan:

He called me back the next morning. It was like 8:00 AM my time. He was like, "I've already applied and everything." The next couple weeks he was down in Emporia. Elijah and I debated four tournaments together.

Abigail:

First tournament they won two matches, lost four.

Ryan:

I was very upset. I was heartbroken because I was senior and I was like, "I don't really do 2-4. But it's fine. It's okay."

Abigail:

Dr. Reid-Brinkley was actually at that tournament, and she said that watching Ryan and Elijah debate...

Shanara:

Was a hot mess.

Abigail:

They just didn't have any chemistry.

Shanara:

There was nothing persuasive about it. Nothing popped about it. It didn't really speak to the judges.

Abigail:

She remembers a time when Ryan came over to her apartment to talk to her and Reshad.

Shanara:

He was just like, "I don't know what we're doing wrong." He just didn't know why things weren't clicking. "What's not working? I don't know what's happening."

Abigail:

So the three of them were all talking, and Reshad... Ryan really looks up to Reshad because Reshad is also a queer black guy, but he's also like a really great debater.

Shanara:

And it was Reshad who said, "You're not being a queer black man. You're being a debater." Reshad would say things like, "You need to butch it out. You need to fem it up sometimes. Sometimes you need to duck walk on them. Sometimes you're going to have to vogue." He's saying be black. "You will always be black and queer in these spaces, so rather than attempting to hide parts of yourself, instead you should be fully you."

Abigail:

Ryan, with this in his head, went back to Elijah. And within a few weeks things started to click.

Ryan:

We were just like, "Here's what our roles are: this is what you do, this is what I do."

Ryan:

This debate is about debate that [inaudible 00:36:02] exclusions perpetuated by the negative...

Ryan:

I would start the debate...

Ryan:

This is our argument about how it is to [inaudible 00:36:07] the strategy that allows for us to not even be those niggers that you say we're supposed to be.

Abigail:

Ryan would preach.

Ryan:

I could reign in the choir, if you will.

Ryan:

That activity is effected by the same structural inequalities that allowed the hood to be segregated.

Abigail:

And then Elijah...

Elijah:

You as a competitor, [inaudible 00:36:22] offense, your argument about how I...

Ryan:

He did the middle speeches.

Abigail:

He dealt with logic, counter-arguments, things like that.

Elijah:

It isn't a question of black goals, it's a question of new epistemologies.

Ryan:

He was better at the game of debate.

Abigail:

Ryan said they went from practicing ethos, pathos, logos, to being it.

Ryan:

We embodied that methodology.

Ryan:

You tell me how their [inaudible 00:36:41] literally deconstructs those that sacrificed inside this debate. You probably...

Ryan:

And then I would end the debates.

Ryan:

That's the shit that our [inaudible 00:36:49] talks about. Now that's some real talk, sweetheart.

Abigail:

In their second tournament, they made it to the finals and they lost in a close decision. But their third tournament was actually a national tournament called CEDA: the Cross Examination Debate Association.

Ryan:

It's called the people's tournament.

Abigail:

And they won that tournament.

Ryan:

I was able to give a pretty good 2AR and we ended up squeaking the debate out.

Abigail:

And then, their fourth tournament... their final tournament together... it's actually the whole reason we're telling this story. It's the NDT.

Ryan:

The National Debate Tournament. That was the tournament.

Debaters:

My decision not to go for a [inaudible 00:37:25].

Abigail:

The NDT is this marathon of a debate tournament.

Debaters:

[inaudible 00:37:30].

Abigail:

It's like March Madness or something. It's held every year.

Debaters:

[inaudible 00:37:36].

Abigail:

It lasts for four whole days and there's 13 rounds of debates, 78 teams.

Ryan:

The NDT is where Harvard is, Northwestern...

Singers:

(singing)

Ryan:

Georgetown...

Debaters:

[inaudible 00:37:53].

Ryan:

That's the tournament that they prepare for.

Abigail:

That's the tournament those sorts of teams usually win.

Ryan:

So we're definitely the underdogs. An all black team had never gotten past quarterfinals of this tournament.

Abigail:

Things kick off Friday morning at 8:00 AM. Emporia versus Idaho State. And they beat Idaho State. At 11:45 AM, they take care of Puget Sound. 4:15 PM, they go against Oklahoma. Oklahoma actually beats them, but it's prelims, so it's not like they're out or anything. Then the crazy thing is that after the loss to Oklahoma, Ryan and Elijah go on a roll. They take USC, they roll over Emory, they beat not one, but two, different teams from Harvard. They beat Michigan State, and then on the last day they beat another team from the University of Michigan, then they go on to beat Wake Forest. That puts them in the semis, which has never been done before by a black team. Then they're against Oklahoma, who they beat and that puts them into the finals.

Ryan:

Everything is very surreal to me. We're in the finals of the NDT. Never happened before. We're also potentially about to unite the crowns, and what that means is win CEDA and the NDT. No team in history had ever done that.

Jad:

And who were they up against?

Abigail:

They were going against a team that Ryan had already faced twice that year.

Ryan:

And lost every time.

Abigail:

The 14 time national debate champions, Northwestern University.

Shanara:

When this round gets set up between Northwestern and Emporia, one of the things that we've described it as is a clash of civilizations.

Abigail:

She says that about Northwestern because they have one of the biggest debate programs in the country.

Shanara:

They've got an entire hive mind with a hotel war room for them to strategize in.

Ryan:

And then it was us, these two queer black guys from Emporia, Kansas.

Shanara:

From a really small school with not a lot of resources. So it is like a David and Goliath story.

Ryan:

Let me explain the room to you all. This is the biggest room that I had ever debated in.

Shanara:

This hotel room that they have the debate happening in is a huge ballroom.

Speaker 18:

Welcome to the final round of the 2013 National Debate Tournament.

Shanara:

And this ballroom was packed.

Ryan:

The audience itself was segregated. One the right side of the room, Northwestern's side, it was packed full of their people. And then on our side, it was...

Jad:

Was it like racially segregated, too?

Ryan:

It was.

Abigail:

Just to round this out...

Speaker 18:

The judges for this evening's debate are...

Abigail:

Near the front of room at a table were the judges, which included our guy Scott Harris.

Scott:

Yep.

Robert:

And how many judges were judging this debate?

Scott:

Five. Four men, one woman. All of them were white.

Ryan:

And...

Speaker 18:

The affirmative team in tonight's debate will be Emporia State University.

Abigail:

Ryan and Elijah from Emporia, they were one side of the stage. On the other side of the stage are the two Northwestern students.

Arjun:

Wearing our Northwestern jerseys.

Abigail:

One was this guy.

Arjun:

I'm Arjun Vellayappan. I debated at Northwestern for four years.

Abigail:

The other was his partner: a young woman named...

Speaker 18:

Peyton Lee.

Abigail:

Peyton Lee.

Ryan:

I don't know if she knew this, but she was like my college debate nemesis.

Arjun:

My partner Peyton, I was a sophomore, whereas my partner and Ryan on the other side were seniors.

Ryan:

And that was the thing that really getting me. It was going to be my last debate. It was Peyton's last debate. It was my last debate. We were seniors. This was it. College debate is the pros. It's the NFL. It's it.

Abigail:

Since it's their last debate, everybody gets up before their speeches to say thanks and bye.

Arjun:

I want to thank Northwestern for providing the opportunity to make debate a home.

Ryan:

And for myself...

Jad:

This is Ryan.

Ryan:

This is my last debate.

Abigail:

And...

Peyton:

This is going to be my goodbye, so it might take a bit.

Abigail:

This is Peyton.

Peyton:

Debate has been my family and my friends. It's my hardest work and my most rewarding play. It's taught me more than I could've ever dreamed. For that, I'm indebted to all of you. Every part of this community, and in particular a number of special people in my life.

Jad:

Wow.

Ryan:

It was a lot.

Arjun:

The topic for the year was whether or not the United States federal government should increase incentives for certain forms of alternative energies.

Ryan:

It was nuclear power, solar power, wind...

Arjun:

Or reduce restrictions on other forms of alternative energies.

Ryan:

Coal, natural gas, and oil.

Abigail:

So Ryan and Elijah were affirmative. They were supposed to argue something positive about how the US government should support solar energy production or should restrict coal usage and energy or whatever, but they're not going to debate that.

Ryan:

We had figured out that we wanted to talk about the idea of home.

Abigail:

In other words, energy isn't the most important conversation that we need to have. The conversation we need to have is whether this community can include people like Ryan, like Elijah.

Ryan:

Can we find home in debate?

Shanara:

Because that's how the community feels about itself: that this is a home place for a lot of people. There are people who grew up in debate, people who started debating when they were 12 and 13, went all the way through college. The people that you often develop that tightest friendships with, the people that have some of your coolest memories because you all spent the summer together going to debate camp, those people make up your family. There are people who make friends in debate when they're 13 that they keep until they die.

Abigail:

So Ryan is up first. To make his argument about his home...

Ryan:

Judy Garland references the great [inaudible 00:43:46] of Kansas when she told audiences that there was no place like home in the Wizard of Oz...

Abigail:

He starts about a movie.

Ryan:

Have you all seen The Wiz?

Abigail:

I have.

Robert:

I have not.

Jad:

No, sorry.

Abigail:

Real quick synopsis. It's a 1978 film and what it is it like an all black cast version of the Wizard of Oz. So Michael Jackson is playing the Scarecrow. Richard Pryor is the Wiz. And Diana Ross is Dorothy.

Ryan:

That movie was just like, to me, it was the fear that Dorothy felt...

Dorothy:

Where am I? Where am I?

Ryan:

At the beginning of arriving to Oz.

Speaker 22:

The indivisible land of Oz.

Dorothy:

Oz? I want to go home.

Abigail:

The point Ryan is making is that's how he felt too when he came into debate, when he was walking into that cafeteria.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Abigail:

There's a line where you say... let me find it... "When the Dorothys of this world think of energy, they don't think of thorium reactors, but the energy required to get out of bed and navigate the struggle.

Ryan:

Yep.

Abigail:

Is that how you were tying it?

Ryan:

Yeah. Energy for us meant what it meant to get out of bed in the morning, what it meant to thrive in a world in which you were never meant to survive.

Abigail:

And for Dorothy...

Ryan:

She was able to reach a place of Oz.

Dorothy:

Please, is there a way for me to get home?

Ryan:

Where you realize that all you ever needed in the first place was yourself.

Dorothy:

Home? Inside me?

Ryan:

And that you had the power all along. That's part of what our argument was and that was part of what I was trying to say, was that I had been in debate for eight years at that point, and I was so sick and tired of people telling me that what I had to say about debate and what I thought about debate wasn't legit, when debate was a student-driven activity: that I have just as much to say about this topic as you do, and your claims are not any more valid than mine, and vice-versa.

Abigail:

Ryan ended his eight and half minute speech on this hopeful appeal.

Ryan:

You know, to never give up. We have to ease on down the road together. Dorothy can't just go by herself.

Ryan:

Judy Garland might have much over the fabulous Diana Ross, oh but honey, she did have one thing right in that is there no place, [inaudible 00:45:57], no place like home.

Arjun:

And then...

Abigail:

After a few minutes, Arjun, the sophomore from Northwestern...

Arjun:

I got up and I gave the first negative speech.

Arjun:

[inaudible 00:46:17].

Abigail:

He started to make his argument.

Ryan:

The one that they had beat us with every time.

Arjun:

Called topicality, which basically says the topic has posited a question.

Abigail:

You know: "Should the US government alter its approach to energy policy?"

Arjun:

And we think the affirmative should have to answer that...

Abigail:

Or this isn't a real debate.

Ryan:

Well, first of all, I don't think the resolution is a question.

Abigail:

Second of all, nowhere in the rules does it say that you have to be topical.

Arjun:

But...

Peyton:

This is a debate about [inaudible 00:46:47].

Arjun:

Our position was that debate should be theoretically fair. Both sides should be able to win.

Abigail:

And if you're going to come out here and argue that...

Arjun:

Racism is bad, debate is not a home...

Abigail:

We can't argue against that.

Arjun:

I'm not going to say debate isn't a home for me. I love it.

Abigail:

It's not fair to have to argue against that.

Ryan:

Well...

Elijah:

We form ourselves, as ourselves...

Ryan:

Is debate fair for now? Who is debate inclusive for now?

Abigail:

Is it actually fair if, in order to win a debate, you need to have a whole research team and debate camps that cost thousands of dollars to participate in...

Arjun:

But...

Arjun:

Also, [inaudible 00:47:18].

Arjun:

There's a topic that's democratically voted upon by all the schools at the beginning of the year. Something about the topic should be mentioned just to give the negative respect: respect for the thousands of hours that my partner and I in the Northwestern debate team and other people in debate have spent researching energy and being prepared to talk about the intricacies of energy policy in the United States.

Abigail:

This went on for over an hour.

Ryan:

It was a lot happening.

Abigail:

And eventually, Arjun and Peyton start to focus their argument on their version on debate: the tradition version. "This is how you actually change the world: not by focusing on yourself, but doing research. It's being able to argue the affirmative side of something and the negative side of it, because people who learn those kinds of skills...

Arjun:

They can actually go and do things outside of debate.

Abigail:

Like deal in convoluted globalized trade negotiations, or solve global warming.

Arjun:

Right.

Abigail:

So after two hours of this, it's almost midnight. Ryan feels exhausted.

Ryan:

Yeah, but I felt it in the room that people were like, "We're not out of the debate. We can still win."

Abigail:

At this point, there's only one speech left, and it's Ryan's.

Ryan:

I was nervous. I knew it was last speech. I knew everybody in the audience was waiting on me. I just felt pressured and I had maybe five sentences written on a piece of copy paper. I looked over at Elijah and was kind of like, "Well, this is it. This is all I've got."

Abigail:

The audio quality of this speech is kind of terrible, but we're just going to let it play.

Ryan:

[inaudible 00:48:59] in this debate for you to both of teams that best performed [inaudible 00:49:02] methodologically bring this debate back home, I don't think they have really answered this [inaudible 00:49:07] argument that [inaudible 00:49:08] are not allowed in their debate. All of their evidence assumes the role of a good citizen or an engaged student in a democratic society. All of these assume an equal playing field for people, but [inaudible 00:49:18] discussion of the access or even the right to have a home in the first place. This leads to black [inaudible 00:49:23] our job [inaudible 00:49:24] in a moment of [inaudible 00:49:28] to be self-reflective that enabled them to speak out, as a way to engage and change our relationship to the world, and also to ourselves, which says that regardless of whether or not we're using the tools of the master or if we're just simply...

Abigail:

And Ryan says early that piece of paper he was holding...

Ryan:

I threw it. I start speaking from my soul, or what I will call the [shaunde 00:49:50].

Jad:

The shaunde.

Ryan:

The shaunde is the place that encapsulates your soul and your loins.

Jad:

Well, all right.

Ryan:

It's always about something not fair. It's always about a [inaudible 00:50:02] fucking [inaudible 00:50:03], but the question then becomes, how broad do we get? When does their research model ever access our portion of the library? When do we have a discussion about those individuals. Their method of debate has become foreclosed to those individuals who have already had access to homes now for what they are. Argument [inaudible 00:50:21] black [inaudible 00:50:22] bodies do not have a space that they can call home right now, and we need to join the struggle together. We need to hold hands and be [inaudible 00:50:30] Michael Jackson and ease on down the road together, which is exactly what our affirmative is. It allows us [inaudible 00:50:37] to raise the question of why is it that in debates it's a question of either/or instead of hand-and-hand.

Ryan:

Their notions of fairness is one that is always [inaudible 00:50:45] because debate is [inaudible 00:50:47] for who now? Debate is equal for who now? It's still leaves us out! Why do I have to make a forced choice? Why do I got to relegate another team to the exclusion, especially one that don't have another place to go, when debate has been the place where I come to share my views, perspectives, and opinions about a given subject? This is all the [inaudible 00:51:05] I got.

Ryan:

I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do when this debate is over. I don't know how I'm going to situate myself. But I know one thing that I'm going to do: I'm going to make [inaudible 00:51:13] that have never, ever fucking had a right to speak and have a debate in their own fucking house! Nobody ask me about energy production! Nobody asked me what it means to get out of bed in the morning, which is why [inaudible 00:51:26] never, ever, fucking [inaudible 00:51:28] me! We are the education that your model of debate bring [inaudible 00:51:32] because we can you teach you some shit about yourself and how you're complacent with the strategies in debate that allow us to be exclusionary to other individuals. Our fucking job...

Ryan:

There was portions of the speech that I don't remember giving. Apparently there was a part where I almost took my shirt off. I almost ripped my shirt off. Like, I don't remember that. I had to pause because I was trying to get out of that zone and come back to provide a voice of reason, but as I kind of slowed down to do that the crowd started clapping. I had 50 seconds left. I still have to answer this last thing. I still have to extend this piece of evidence. Oh shit, I didn't say anything about warming. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

Ryan:

I just was like, "I don't know. This is reason enough to vote affirmative. Forget it."

Ryan:

I think that the judges should vote affirmative in this debate. Blessings on [inaudible 00:52:35].

Ryan:

And then, I walked over and shook their hands. I gave Elijah a hug. And then I walked out of the room and went and smoked a cigarette.

Scott:

At that point as a judge, I took a deep breath, packed up my notes. I put noise-canceling headphones on my head. I found a room where there was no one else around and I could have total quiet and think about what had been said.

Abigail:

Now, Scott says that he felt like the debate was close, like it was going to be a tight vote.

Scott:

So I sit down and I look at my notes. I relisten to the last couple of speeches that I had recorded several times.

Abigail:

On one hand, Northwestern presented a lot a good research, and a lot of it he agreed with. On the other hand, Peyton and Arjun are saying, "If you have these skills then you're going to be better prepared to go talk in front of Congress or something." But Scott says, "If you just listen to Ryan and Elijah, they sound more persuasive. You can't convince that somebody who sounds like that isn't actually also prepared to do those things." Ryan and Elijah's whole presentation is actually proof that Peyton and Arjun's argument is invalid.

Abigail:

At the same time, he thought, "There have to be things that we all just agree on as our starting point."

Scott:

And if the alternative is a world in which the affirmative can come into a debate and talk about anything they want to talk about, then the ability to make that a fair competitive environment seems a little problematic.

Abigail:

I think Scott was torn.

Scott:

It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to decide who I thought won the debate.

Speaker 18:

Are you all ready?

Abigail:

Ryan says that when he was sitting there waiting for the decision to be announced...

Ryan:

I was very convinced that we lost.

Abigail:

And eventually...

Ryan:

They announced the decision...

Scott:

The three-two decision. Three judges voted for Emporia and two for Northwestern.

Ryan:

He was like, "It's a 3-2 for the affirmative from Emporia."

Ryan:

My partner Elijah jumped up. He was like, "Yeah!" People were crying.

Shanara:

I mean, if you could have seen this room erupt into joy... I was in tears watching this historic moment happen because I had been around for so long and I'd watched so many black debaters fail to make it to that top point.

Ryan:

I stood there and I was like, "Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god." I said it like a million times. "Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god."

Jad:

What swayed Scott in the end?

Abigail:

He actually published this 11 page essay all about his decision explaining why he voted the way he did. There's a lot in there, but what I take away from it is that while maybe he didn't like that there was a disregard for the topic, he would've liked it a whole lot less if Ryan and Elijah hadn't been in the room.

Scott:

I mean, debate itself is incredibly important to me. Debate has been the greatest influence in shaping who I am as a person. In many ways, I view debate as my home, and given that it was a debate that challenged and criticized the activity that I have made a home for the last 40 years, that pointed out weaknesses, it caused me to reflect.

Jad:

Wow. So their argument really worked.

Robert:

I find this kind of like it's either a segregating or an integrating event. My sense is that it's integrating. In a racially chilly world, this is a strangely warm spot.

Ryan:

No.

Robert:

Are you saying no?

Ryan:

No.

Abigail:

When asked about how he felt about winning this tournament, I expected him to be really celebratory and tell me that it changed his life. He was the first black student to win this tournament and it seemed important to me. But he didn't really go there.

Ryan:

No.

Abigail:

You don't seem as proud as I want you to seem. Why don't you?

Ryan:

You know, it was a good thing for history, and it was a good thing to motivate people. I just want to stay focused.

Shanara:

It was an important win. It was significant. It was powerful. It was beautiful. But it was very clear to us very early on that not much had changed by the time we got into the next year.

Abigail:

Shanara Reid-Brinkley says that since Ryan's win there's a backlash. The next year another black team broke through. It was two black women this time, and that caused this big controversy and people were saying that the state of debate was ruined. In that same year, you even had a group of schools breaking off to form their own tournament where performance styles wouldn't be invited.

Abigail:

I think all of this makes Ryan not really know how to feel about his win. Maybe sometimes, for him, it can feel like an anomaly.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Robert:

It sort of seems like there's a series of accidents here. You're in school, where accidentally you have a teacher who pushes you... pretty much forces you... into something which suddenly takes you over. You turn out to be peculiarly good at it, almost by accident. Then you're thrown into this sequence of events where you get to meet Elijah and then almost by accident you become a champion and then suddenly it's over.

Robert:

The whole thing feels strangely lonely. Lonely, but beautiful. I wonder how it feels to you.

Ryan:

Ironically, the same.

Jad:

That is the first time that you've agreed with Robert this entire interview.

Ryan:

Oh, stop. I just got to give him a hard time and vice-versa.

Singers:

(singing)

Jad:

Huge thanks to Abigail Keel for reporting that piece. Abigail works for an amazing podcast called the Longest Shortest Time. You should definitely check them out. Thank you Hillary Frank for letting us borrow Abigail. This piece was produced by Mr. Matthew Kielty.

Jad:

We also had original music from Matt and from Dylan Keefe.

Robert:

And special thanks to Will Baker...

Jad:

[Myar Milum 00:59:50]...

Robert:

John Delimore...

Jad:

Sam [Mour 00:59:53]...

Robert:

Tiffany Dillard-Knox and Mary Mudd...

Jad:

Daren Chief Elliot...

Robert:

And Jody Hobb...

Jad:

And Reshad Evans.

Jad:

Okay, I'm Jad Abumrad.

Robert:

I'm Robert Krulwich.

Jad:

Thanks for listening.

Speaker 23:

Start of message.

Arjun:

Hi, this Arjun Vellayappan from the debate story. I'm just calling to read out the text for the credits, so here goes nothing.

Arjun:

Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad. Dylan Keefe is the director. Sound design is Lauren Wheeler. Senior editor [inaudible 01:00:26] and Molly Webster, with help from Alexandria Lee Young, Tracie Hunte, Stefanie [inaudible 01:00:35], and Michael [inaudible 01:00:35]. Our fact checkers are Eva Astrid and Michelle Harris.

Arjun:

Thanks. Looking forward to the story. Bye.

Speaker 23:

End of message.

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