From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

We live in a time when violence has been in the forefront of our thought and political rhetoric. That factor has shaped what has become normalized, generally speaking and in politics, specifically.

That’s Joanne Freeman. She’s a professor of American History at Yale University and former co-host of the CAFE history podcast, Now & Then. Joanne is a leading expert on the political history of the United States and a trusted voice in moments of political turmoil.

She joins me today to discuss the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, President Biden’s decision not to seek reelection, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, and what else we can expect from now until November.

And please stick around to the end of the episode to hear a special conversation with the very talented Zeshan B, whose new album I got to executive produce. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

Q&A

Now, let’s get to your questions. This question comes in a tweet from Cynthia who asks, “In order to make SCOTUS reforms, do Dems need to win White House and both chambers of Congress?” Well, Cynthia, thanks for your question. We talked at great length about the proposed SCOTUS reforms put forward by President Joe Biden this week on the CAFE Insider Podcast. And Joyce Vance and I discussed the ins and outs of how any of this would come about.

And with respect to two of the three reforms, I think it’s clear that you would need a constitutional amendment. And with respect to one of the proposed reforms, probably you would need a constitutional amendment to remind people the three reforms proposed by President Biden are no immunity for crimes a former president committed in office to essentially overturn the Supreme Court’s decision from several weeks ago.

Two, 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, so you’d have a new justice every two years like clockwork.

And, three, a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. So, to the extent that two or all three of these require a constitutional amendment. As a little civics reminder, the Constitution has only been amended a handful of times since the founding of the country. And to amend the Constitution, you need two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate. And then after that, the constitutional amendment is presented to the states, and you need three-quarters of the states to ratify what Congress has done.

So, at current levels of basically equal and divided government, the House slightly in favor of the Republicans, the Senate slightly in favor of the Democrats, unless some new and unexpected spirited bipartisanship about the court were to sweep the nation, and in particular the Congress, I don’t see any of this happening anytime soon.

As a matter of fact, with respect to the Supreme Court, the Conservatives, you might imagine, like the status quo, it’s this supreme court functioning under these rules, even under this confirmation process, and under life tenure during which Roe v. Wade was overturned, affirmative action was overturned, and a whole slew of other things that have been overturned.

So, even though these reforms are not sort of on their face partisan in any way, I don’t see why Conservatives would have any interest or incentive to upset the status quo. I think these reforms are interesting. I think they’re warranted on the merits, but given how late it is in the presidential term, given how deeply difficult it is to amend the Constitution, these amount to talking points more than I think actionable items for the Congress or for the States.

This question comes in an email from Evan who writes, “Do you think the 11th Circuit will reverse Judge Cannon’s dismissal of Trump’s classified documents case in Florida? Is it possible that they reverse her decision and also reassign the case to a new judge?” Well, these are great questions that lots of people are speculating about.

Just to remind everyone, there’s this criminal case in the Southern District of Florida overseen by Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed some years ago by President Trump himself that Jack Smith, the special prosecutor, has brought. There have been a series of motions to dismiss the indictment in that case and in other cases where Donald Trump is facing criminal accusation.

And lo and behold, just a few weeks ago, I think the Monday after the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, Aileen Cannon, the judge, picked one of those issues as a basis on which to dismiss the indictment in its entirety against Donald Trump. And the basis of the dismissal was that in her view, the appointment of Jack Smith, who was neither presidentially appointed nor Senate confirmed, violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution and also violated the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution.

And as Joyce and I have said on CAFE Insider a number of times, she’s the lone jurist in the country who, when considering this question, has ruled in this manner. Two preliminary questions naturally arise before I even address what I think will happen on the merits in the 11th Circuit. One is, how quickly can this happen? And the answer to the question is not very quickly.

Some people have wondered why Jack Smith has not sought to expedite the appeal on this very significant setback dismissal of the indictment in its entirety. And I think the clock is what’s at play here, and in particular the election clock. My supposition is that Jack Smith has decided, whether expedited or not, this issue on appeal is not going to be resolved until well after the election, possibly not to leave and after the next president is sworn in, whether it’s Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. And so for that reason, why bother expediting it at all?

The other question that arises is, well, it’s possible as a legal technical matter to cure the deficiency by just having this case filed by a sitting presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed US attorney, like the US attorney in the Southern District of Florida. Because, remember, part of the flaw that the judge found, as I’ve said, is that Jack Smith was not presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed, so just have someone with those credentials and that track record to lead the case.

There are many reasons why potentially and otherwise you might not want to do that, but one is, again, the clock. To have a new U.S. Attorney file the charges put you back to day one. And I think there’s a decent argument that even though the appeal will take a long time, refiling the case and having to deal again with lots of similar challenges would be even slower than going through the appeals process.

So, going back to the 11th Circuit, I think that the 11th Circuit, as being clear-eyed and looks closely at the Constitution and looks closely at the law here, it will rule in the same way that other circuits and other district courts have ruled and reverse the dismissal of the indictment. Of course, all of that is subject to the potential unfortunate eventuality of Donald Trump being reelected, in which case this matter and the DC matter in all likelihood go away.

This question comes in an email from Ben. “Hey Preet, longtime listener. Quick legal question. Now that you’re a big-time music producer, do your song recommendations on Twitter have any sort of legal or civil guarantee of quality? You are an expert after all. Congratulations on another new success. Ben.”

Well, that’s a wonderful question, Ben. I don’t know if I’m a big-time music producer, but I am officially, as I’ve mentioned, and as you’ll hear at the end of the show, an executive producer for what I think is a fantastic and great record album by my friend, Zeshan B.

Some of you may know if you’re on Twitter, or X, as some people now call it, starting about three or four weeks ago, every evening I post a song that I love. I started doing that a few weeks ago just as an escape for a few minutes every day from all the things that we talk about in the podcast and we think about on television and reading the papers. It’s a respite away from politics, away from the law, away from all these controversies and issues that we have to deal with and are important to deal with as citizens who care about our country.

I’m sure you’ll agree when I say that music that you love is not only uplifting, it’s transporting. And I’ve found that when I take five minutes in the evening every night and just think about what songs, what music makes me happy, that brings me to a better place, it’s probably one of the best parts of my day. And I’m pleased by the reaction I’m getting to some of the picks. Not everyone agrees with every one of my picks, but I love to hear from you. What are your favorite songs? What songs would you like me to post?

I’ll be right back with my conversation with Joanne Freeman.

THE INTERVIEW

The 2024 election is right around the corner, but who knows what else might happen from now until then? Political historian Joanne Freeman joins me to make sense of it all. Joanne Freeman, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

So, goodness gracious. We are recording this. I just want to timestamp it for the audience. We have a lot to get to. You have a lot to explain to me and the public at large about what the hell is going on in the country. So, we’re recording this on Tuesday afternoon, around lunchtime on July 30th. I did the math so you don’t have to, I don’t know how good at math historians are, but I presume you’re excellent at it-

No, not this one.

… but I did the math, anyway. The debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was on June 27th. That was 33 days ago. And so, I have had this conversation with a lot of laypeople in the last 33 days. But I’m now asking you, a professional verified historian at the Yale University, is this the craziest 33 days certainly in modern American political history? Or is there something to rival it?

In modern American political history, I’m going to do what historians never do, Preet. They never say first, only ultimate best.

Well, that’s why I constrained it to modern political history.

Yeah, but thank you because otherwise I couldn’t say this, but certainly I would say it’s the craziest and the quickest, the sort of fastest, hyper speedy moment of political change that I can think of in the modern era.

And when you watch the news and you realize these things that are happening now are headlines, but they will be really important parts of history, multiple inflection points occurring in the space of less than 33 days, how do you process it yourself as you think both in the immediate term, but always I assume ultimately also thinking about in the longer term?

That’s a really good question because I find myself struggling between the two. As a historian, I’m constantly thinking about the dynamics of this moment and how this moment is unfolding, and why it’s unfolding this way, and how I might look at it 10 years from now. So, part of my brain is on historian autopilot, I suppose, but another part of my brain is just swept up in this moment and that cannot be disconnected.

So, I find myself analyzing like we could, I’m sure at some point, talk about technology in this moment because I think that’s a fascinating thing. And so, historian brain is thinking like, “Wow, new tweak on technology and democracy. How fascinating,” even as the other part of me is saying, “I think I’m going to tune into that Kamala Zoom conversation tonight and see what happens because it’s so interesting.”

Emotionally, I’m swept up in this, even apart from historian dumb, and I think that’s actually in many ways representative of what a lot of people are feeling right now.

Do you think there’s a structural reason aside from how media operates and how social media operates and how technology changes things and distorts things, is there something else about the structure of our democracy that allows this kind of thing?

For example, this is a terrible analogy or metaphor or parallel, but we are seeing of occasions of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change, the increase by small amounts in the global temperature are causing people, say, more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more fires, more sorts of colossally significant weather events. Is there any analogy here? Is there something about the structure of our political system or the nature of our political rhetoric or the technology that you referenced that is giving rise to the craziness of our politics?

Well, I think so. I mean, now you have to… Historian brain will be talking now.

But I don’t want the autopilot, Joanne.

No, no. Oh, no autopilot.

I didn’t know there was autopilot historian brain.

I didn’t either. I think I just confessed something I probably shouldn’t have confessed.

Yeah, I’m telling Google.

Uh-oh. But here’s the thing about technology and democracy, and it’s going to sound obvious, but I think when it plays out it isn’t. Basically, if democracy, if you understand that as a conversation between political power holders and we, the people who give them power, any technology that shapes that conversation can profoundly shape democracy.

And going back to the period I normally write about, the telegraph did that, where suddenly things happened in Washington and 45 minutes later the entire country knew, and people in Washington didn’t know what the heck to do with that. And the people around the country didn’t quite know what to believe.

You can look ahead in time and say that during the civil rights era, television had that kind of an impact where suddenly people were seeing what was happening to the protesters on TV, which gave them a totally different understanding of what was going on and, again, changed the structure of things at the time.

Now, moving ahead in time, you could say that social media generally, I mean, having a tweeting president, but also just Obama using social media and email. I remember getting emails that seemed to be from President Obama, and I remember thinking, “Not another email from President Obama.” It was ridiculous at the time.

But here’s the thing about this moment, the Zoom moment. Kamala is using Zoom in a way that I think, knowingly or not, is transforming this political moment in important ways because it means you can see, you can connect with. There’ve been one or two positive things that came out of the pandemic era.

Yeah, I didn’t know what Zoom was four and a half years ago.

Exactly, exactly. Neither did I. And neither did most people, I would bet. So, for while, I was like, “Oh, look at that. Zoom is letting people connect from home. Zoom is allowing small cultural institutions to have a national or international reach with their programming. How great.”

But now, we’re watching the political impact of this in a way that it hasn’t been used before. And just these Zoom calls, the white dudes for Kamala, white women for Kamala, all of these events that are raising millions and millions of dollars and have hundreds of thousands of people signing up, this is a really interesting tweak in technology and politics, and thus, I think democracy. I think that it feels as though it has the making of a movement. And that’s partly technology that is fostering that.

You said something sort of funny in the circumstances recently, and you must say it a bunch depending on what’s going on in the world, that when something bad happens, with respect to violence and politics, you’re very popular.

People need to talk to Professor Freeman. And part of the reason for that is you wrote a book five years ago or six years ago called The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. So, you’re all over the place as people try to make sense of and get explanations about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump that occurred sometime during that 33-day period that we’re examining. Is there a way for you as an historian to put that assassination attempt into the pantheon of the US’s history of political violence or each of these things just totally separate and singular?

Well, I would say one important connection, and I do talk about it in that book, is that for violence or threats to be effective, they just have to seem possible. In my book, I write about, I don’t know, 70, 80 violent incidents in the House and Senate in, say, a 30-year period, which is a lot.

But again, I suppose you can do what some mathematically inclined person would do and chop it up, “Ooh, per year, that’s only…” Someone did that to me once when I was giving a lecture. “Well, that’s only five incidents per year.” I thought, That doesn’t seem good to me.”

But what matters is that people believed, and in the case of my book, I’m talking about southerners and people who supported slavery, threatening northerners or anti-slavery advocates with violence, not necessarily carrying out the violence but threatening. They were armed, they had knives, they had guns. And what mattered was that the northerners believed they could get hurt, they could get shot, they could get challenged to a duel, and that was enough for a long time for them to self-censor.

And so, part of what’s interesting about this moment is that there’s been a lot of violent rhetoric, praising violence, former President Trump smiling at it, offering to get lawyers for people if they engage in it. All of that kind of behavior over the years in which he clearly, on a certain level, enjoys that people are willing to do that for him.

And that ethos, even without actual violence, is enough to encourage violence, to discourage people, to intimidate people, and to motivate people to step forward and do things that now they feel encouraged to do that they might not have otherwise.

And so, it’s a rhetorical ploy and a really crafty one by someone in power to use, which is you say or do things that hint at what you like and hint at what you approve in the realm of violence. But then you can say, “Well, it wasn’t me. I was just talking. It’s just words. I mean, it’s these other people who chose to take action on it.”

Well, some people might take issue with what you just said to the extent you are suggesting, I don’t know that you are, that Donald Trump bears some of the blame for the assassination attempt on him. Is that what you’re saying?

Not that directly. I guess what I’m saying is, he certainly contributed to a climate in which violence has been in the forefront of our political rhetoric. He contributed to that climate. I have no idea, and I don’t know if anyone has any idea about what happened actually in that moment and what the person who was shooting was thinking or anything else.

There are new reports this morning about some of his social views, but I think it’s all unclear.

Right.

It’s so unclear.

That seems unclear, so I don’t think we can actually draw a lot of conclusions about much based on that yet, but I would say that we live in a time when violence has been in the forefront of our thought and political rhetoric for a couple of years now. And in some ways, in a direct way, that would’ve been unthinkable not that many years ago. And what I’m mostly saying is that factor has shaped what has become normalized, generally speaking, and in politics specifically.

Here’s the thing that I kept thinking about that day, and it leads to a bit of a suggested paradox that I’ll ask you about in a moment if I remember. My memory is not great in the short term lately. What would’ve happened, given the powder keg and the polarization that is America, had the assassin been successful? Do you have a sense, given your understanding of history and the current climate also, about what kind of violence that would’ve provoked?

I don’t know if I’m speaking now as a historian or just as a person, but it seems to me that that would have unleashed a lot of violence because then it would’ve felt to people like they had been attacked, they had been victimized with that kind of injury slash death.

And once people feel victimized, and we see this a lot in some of the politics on the right as well, once people are convinced that they’re victims, that unleashes everything. Then, it’s no holds barred, then it’s just, “I’ve been victimized. It’s my right to fight back. I should fight back. What kind of a person am I if I don’t fight back?”

Actually, “What kind of a man am I if I don’t fight back?” Which would be more in the realm of where some of the rhetoric on the right is these days. So, even just for that logic alone, I think that would’ve unleashed a lot of violence.

Do you think that by and large people who are the political adversaries of Donald Trump, namely elected Democrats and others, had the right reaction after the assassination attempt? Did they get the tone right? I asked that because I have a question that I’ve alluded to a couple of times already.

Well, I mean, you informed me. It felt to me that the reaction was, “That was bad. That shouldn’t have happened. We’re sorry. We feel bad for him. We’re…” whatever. And then, a little bit of, “What actually happened? Was it real? Was it staged?” Which I can tell you, all the way back to the first assassination attempt against the president, that happened then too.

Andrew Jackson, first assassination attempt against the president, and people immediately said one of two things. Number one, maybe his enemies sort of made that happen to get rid of him or, number two, maybe the whole thing was staged to get him sympathy. So, I know we heard both of them.

Well, that’s not new.

Oh, no. That was…

I’m going to get to conspiracy theories in a moment.

Yeah, that goes all the way back.

It’s in the pre-Twitter.

Oh, way, way, way pre-Twitter. Yes, indeed. Though, in a way, that’s a really logical political reaction in the world of high partisan politics. But Preet, I want to get your read on what are you describing when you say the reaction?

Here’s what sits in my head. I’m against Trump. I don’t want him to be reelected. I think it is disastrous for the country. I also don’t believe in political violence.

Right.

And I can believe both of those things at the same time-

Right.

… because you had a lot of people saying, “We wish the former president a speedy recovery. We’re glad it wasn’t worse. We’re glad he is okay.” And the Trump supporters have said, sort of that’s very cynical some of them, that you have a guy who some liberals say is like Hitler. “Hey, the guy who’s almost like Hitler, we wish you a speedy recovery, and we’re glad you’re okay.”

And their point is, which I think is not a valid one, but their point is, “You’re full of shit. You’re saying these things because they’re politically necessary to say…” I guess is what they’re saying. “You’re saying these things because they’re politically necessary to say, but this is a guy who you think is going to become a dictator, and you’re blithely wishing him a happy recovery, and you’re happy that he’s okay.”

And I say to that, that’s not inconsistent at all-

Right.

… because you should not wish death and injury and assassination upon your political rivals. That’s why America is great. That’s why the peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next is so amazing and idealistic, and beautiful and almost sacrosanct and holy in this country. And you don’t want bad things to happen to your opponent even if you think they’re terrible. That’s what democracy is all about. What am I missing?

No. Sadly, maybe for your podcast, I agree with you because what we are supposed to be able to do as a, small D, democratic nation, is encompass dissent, encompass disagreement, encompass all kinds of diversity. That’s how we operate. That’s what we’re supposed to do.

You can look all the way back and say the sort of framers and the founding generation talked a lot about debate and compromise, and that sounds very civilized, but debate doesn’t have to be civilized, right? Debate could be argument. Debate could be angry. Debate can be high levels of dissension and disagreement. Compromise is supposed to be the outcome.

But you’re absolutely right that we are supposed to be able to encompass all of this. We’re supposed to be able to have a big dent. We haven’t necessarily always been good at that, but yeah, I think wishing that your political opponents will be harmed and die, I don’t think, as you’re suggesting here, I don’t think that’s really something that is, again small D, democratic.

It’s also stupid because what goes around comes around. If that’s how you’re going to want to conduct things, then people have guns on both sides.

Well, exactly at both sides.

More guns on one side than the other.

Both sides are then saying, “I don’t think you should live.” That’s not the way a democratic structured, successful political system can operate.

Yeah. So, I want to ask a question that relates a little bit to the crazy cycle of events and politics over the last number of weeks because I think you made some reference to this or said words to this effect. It seems odd to me that it’s just a few days since a major party nominee was almost shot to death, and it’s not the top news anymore because other things have happened. Is there something odd about that? Or is that just the way we are now? Short attention spans?

Well, it certainly struck and strikes me as odd. I mean, particularly given that, sadly, in some ways on the person, something horrible like that happens. And I’m, immediately, the person people call, and I had a really busy week, a really busy media week. And then, poof, it was gone.

So, we actually have a scientific metric?

Yes.

It’s the Joanne Freeman meter. Right? If you were to graph… I love this. This is great. This is actually political science. Political science for dummies who don’t know how to do math or graphing, and that would include me. If you were to graph the number of media requests you got starting, and I don’t mean to be frivolous about this, but the day after, you are the preeminent expert on political violence in this country at Yale, how would you describe the falloff?

So, that was what? A Saturday night-

Yeah.

… or Saturday day? I would say that by Wednesday, I was getting far fewer requests. I would say for a few days I was all over the place, I was at radio, TV, people were wanting opinions on things. And then, it began to fall off, and I was filmed for a documentary on political violence.

I want to say on Wednesday, it was supposed to air the following weekend, and they delayed it because there was other news that was more important, namely President Biden deciding not to run. So, even within one week, other news bumped that from the media.

We alluded to this earlier, but I want to get more of your thoughts on this. There are conspiracy theories on both sides. One side believes or there are people on one side who believe that Trump staged his own assassination attempt, which is ludicrous and illogical for about 400,000 reasons.

Yes.

And then, there are people who, on the Trump side, sincerely believe, based on their evaluation of events, even though investigation of those events is not complete, that this was a failed deep state coup assassination attempt by Democrats on Donald Trump, which is also ludicrous and stupid for about 400 reasons.

Yes.

Should we feel good about the fact that this is not new? I mean, I hadn’t known. I guess one of the differences is, and you referred to technology earlier, is that now conspiracy theorists can convene on the Internet where they couldn’t before? Does that make it worse or the same?

Oh no, it makes it worse and not only convene, but just see the conspiracy theories. They don’t even have to convene. So, Jackson, an assassination attempt that the assassin found him on the steps of the Capitol and actually shot one gun at Jackson, which misfired and then shot a second gun at Jackson, which misfired, which of course at the time people called providential.

People found out about it because, ultimately, it ended up in the newspaper but that took time to get around, whereas in a nanosecond today, that would be all over the nation. There would be people coming up with theories, there would be fake evidence, and I want to come back to that momentarily. There’d be all kinds of things, and it would be hard to pierce the veil of what did or didn’t happen.

And that’s part of what’s built into the technology moment that we’re experiencing is that factor two, which involves other technologies. But the fact that even if you are serious and thoughtful and are analyzing and tracking the evidence that you’re seeing online, it still can be really difficult to tell what’s real.

Well, that’s a huge problem and will continue to be. I’ll be right back with Joanne Freeman after this.

I want to go back to a different historical moment that I don’t think we mentioned yet. 43 years ago, I still remember I was a kid, and I remember watching a live television and seeing the replays of then President Reagan being shot. And I remember that the news coverage was nonstop, obviously.

Right.

He had just been elected. There were some doubts about him, about his age, and some other things. How quaint that there were doubts about a 69-year-old man being President of the United States.

I resent that now.

Got to love those times. And he made a couple of jokes. I still remember, I think it was something like he was reported to have said, when he was getting surgery or at least getting some treatment in the hospital, “I hope you’re all Republicans.”

Yeah, right.

And that endeared him in a way that’s impossible to describe today-

Right.

… to people all over the country, including tens of millions of people who did not vote for him.

Right.

And did not want him to be the president.

Right.

And lots of people attribute his early success and continued success to that moment, to how he used that moment with great political skill. Donald Trump, whatever you think of him and whatever you think of his campaign and everything else, had one of the most iconic moments in presidential history or electoral history when he did what he did after he was shot with the fist bump and that iconic photograph. Is it too early to tell what effect that will have on his political fortunes as compared to Ronald Reagan’s political fortunes?

I think it is too early. Beyond a small circle of people like you and me and folks who analyze that, I think broadly speaking, people still don’t agree on what happened, and they really don’t agree on its interpretation in a way that, I don’t remember being the case when Reagan was shot, I don’t remember-

But it was when Jackson was.

Jackson, although that was all high-level political people.

Right.

So, it wasn’t the American people at that point. It took them forever to learn about it. And actually, I’d have to do some pretty deep digging to find out what they thought about it. I think I’ve read a diary entry in which someone says, “Providential. Jackson is special.” But I think now, I wouldn’t make that prediction because, with Reagan, there was a moment where everyone collectively held their breath and thought, “Oh, no.” And I don’t know if that moment happened.

Well, there’s another difference that we’ve talked about in the podcast, and I’m sure you’ve talked about, and that is we were at a time when, as recently as 1984, where a politician of one party or the other could win 49 states. And I think if you put up a bottle of shampoo on the Democratic-Republican side, the non-shampoo candidate would not win 49 states. Fair?

Probably. Although that’s taken me a minute to get that.

You’re like, “Is it dandruff shampoo?” I don’t know, maybe conditioner.

I’m stuck on it.

Is it high-end shampoo? I was trying to come up with some inanimate object to make the point.

Right. Shampoo. It’s just even the word shampoo, Preet. It’s just an excellent word, but…

I was going for comedic value there, but the point is I can’t imagine a universe in which, even the most pathetic worst candidate, either as a Republican or a Democrat, would gain only one state. And the best candidate, even where there’s a huge wide gulf in the talents and ethics and morality and integrity of the Democrat and the Republican, you wouldn’t get a lopsided result like 49 to one, right?

Right. No, that’s true.

So, what do we make of that? You’re the historian. What’s the takeaway from it?

Yeah, good question. Well, I suppose one easy answer is, as much as I had very strong feelings about Reagan and Republicans and Democrats back at that moment in time, I think I was in college at the time, I wouldn’t say that it was a world in which like now we truly are, not just looking at two different fundamental different worldviews, but there is one side which has a lot of people who fundamentally have stepped away from supporting democracy.

And once it’s no longer a matter of, “I don’t like your foreign policy, I think you should not spend so much money on welfare, I think… whatever,” typical normal policy disagreements, when you have fundamental structural, and I don’t even want to call it a disagreement, structural feelings about whether a democratic constitutional system is good or bad, that’s a different world. That’s a different planet. And in that kind of climate, everything gets an added meaning to it, whether we want it to or not, that’s a new lens through which we have to understand what’s going on politically.

So, the Biden decision to withdraw from the race, people have recited people in your profession, historians have said there are really only three, even arguable analogs, and some of them don’t really fit. And I wonder what you think of this, of presidents who were able to run again and voluntarily relinquished the chance to do so.

George Washington, before there were term limits on the presidency, stepped down after two, Harry Truman in the middle of the 20th century, and LBJ with all the swirling controversy around the Vietnam War. Are those the right analogs? And if they are, how do you place the Biden decision in history?

Right. First off, I’ll say it is true, broadly historically speaking, that presidents don’t like to step away from power.

No.

So, the fact that you can tick off a handful like that, in and of itself, is suggestive. The reason why I don’t think this moment exactly lines up with those is because the moment when Biden did this is different. He had all but secured the nomination. He was on his way. He was insisting he was going to stay in.

And at that late moment, not because of a war, in the case of LBJ, not because of an outside event, but because of partisan politics, he decided at that moment, and again as a historian, people keep saying, “Oh, he was shoved out. He was pushed out. It wasn’t his choice,” as a historian, I say, “Wow, five years from now, I’m going to really want to see what happened behind the scenes,” because I can guess, but we don’t really know.

Still, at this late point when he made it clear that he wanted to stay, and then decided to leave, that’s different. And that’s about partisan… actually, not partisan, that’s about party politics. And that’s a different kind of moment than the ones that you’ve just named.

How is history going to judge Nancy Pelosi? Some people have suggested that she’s the most consequential, and you can choose your way of finishing the sentence, the most consequential speaker, the most consequential democratic politician, the most consequential politician in recent memory. What do you think of that assessment?

I think she’s enormously consequential. I think she’s had a huge influence. I think, I’m going to say it because it needs to be said, if she-

Say it.

If she were male, people would have a lot less negative things to say about Nancy Pelosi. So, the fact that she’s all of those things and a woman is a problem for some. I do think she’s amazingly consequential. I think you can tell that by all of the ridiculous things that people try to attach to her like, “Oh, well she didn’t call in the National Guard,” or whatever the crazy thing is that people claim, like on January 6th, that have nothing to do with her.

I do think, I can say as a historian, that if in 10 years we’re looking back to this moment, you would have to think hard and really analyze, find her papers, see what people are saying about her behind the scenes, to really understand what’s going on now because she does have a broad influence.

But it’s one thing to have influence and wield power, which is impressive, but it’s of limited impressiveness when you’re the commander in chief, you actually are the commander in chief. When you’re the Speaker of the House, you actually run the House. You have the gable. When you’re a judge in a courtroom, when you’re a prosecutor, you have a grand jury. When you’re the speaker emerita and you’re just one of 435, that’s more impressive to me that she was able to assert influence and power. What’s the secret of that?

Well, part of it I think has to do with why she was a powerful speaker. She has a skill set. She has ability. She has a strength of presentation and purpose. She has big political savvy. What she can do and how she does it, both strategically and even performatively, that has a real power to it. She’s really, really good at what she does. So, even as someone who is a former speaker and who’s just one of many, she doesn’t leave that history behind her. She carries that power with her, and she carries that skill set with her.

Yeah, I mean, you have to be very wise and shrewd. I mean, I guess another person who is in that category as an ex-president and has a lot of influence, at least it seems to be the case, is Barack Obama. Bill Clinton, less so. Is that a fair assessment?

Yeah, I would agree.

Why do you think that is? Is it recency?

That’s a good question. Maybe it’s recency. Maybe it’s also because there was surrounding Obama in the same way that Nancy Pelosi had some of this, a kind of emotional support. Look at who this person is, look at what this person has done. In the case of Pelosi, well, she is a woman doing this, so it’s extra bonus hard and Barack Obama as a Black man, extra bonus hard.

Clinton, a white man being powerful, okay. He was good at what he did, yes. He was savvy, yes. He played the public in a smart way. Was it the saxophone that he played? And he talked about what kind of underwear he wore, and all that kind of stuff, which made people think, “Wow, a different kind of president.” And then, he kind of walked himself off the edge of the cliff during his presidency. So, he has a more complicated and tangled partly that he did by himself, legacy, as far as what trails after him. And I think Obama and Pelosi do not.

As a historical matter, I don’t know if you participate in these surveys, and you don’t have to say if you do or not, but this famous survey every so often, I think every year where historians rank the presidents based on how good a president they were. And some people have renaissance and some people fade, even though people thought their presidencies were great closer in time to when they were in office. Do you participate? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Yeah, I do. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.

Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. On those surveys, is President Clinton, is his star rising or falling or remaining the same?

Oh, that’s a good question. I actually do not know the answer to that. I would not think it’s rising.

What is it in your mind?

I would assume he’s somewhere in the middle. And I don’t know if I would know if it’s rising or falling, but I don’t know why it would be rising.

Can you see a time 20, 30 years hence that the Trump star rises in that context?

Yikes. Well, part of my answer to that has to do with where the hell we’re going to be down the road and what we’re comparing it to. So, it’s hard for me to say that it would because it seems, in so many blatant ways, there were so many bad things about it happening during a moment of extreme crisis. It’s hard for me to see, but we live in a time where you can no longer say what is or isn’t possible.

I want to talk about Kamala Harris and her strengths and her weaknesses. People can examine for themselves, but I want to ask you about a particular criticism. And I want to state at the outset, there’s no particular reason, Professor Freeman, that I’m asking you this question, but there has been some criticism. You’re helping me here.

I know. I know where you’re going to, Preet. No.

You’re really helping me. You really know how to help a guy set it up. There has been some criticism of Kamala Harris’s laugh. Are you offended by that criticism for no reason in particular?

For no reason in particular, I am. I am offended, but I’m offended for a very specific reason. I’m someone who clearly has done a lot of public-minded work. I talk to the public. My lecture courses are online, and I am very often, I’m a female political historian. I’m talking to rooms full of men or men are tuning into me online, and I cannot count on two hands the number of times someone has criticized me for laughing.

Yeah. So, what the hell is that about?

Well, in part, I lump it along with your voice is too high, it’s screechy. So, I sound female, and that’s horrible. I just think it’s a way… I mean, people have been saying this online in the last few days too. Men tell you to smile all the time, but they don’t like it when you laugh, right? So, they want you to be pretty and smile, but they don’t want you actually making noise.

But that’s bizarre. I actually… I don’t mean, this sounds sort of strange. I kind of like the sound of a woman laughing.

Yes. Well, I like being a woman who’s laughing.

That means you’ve made a successful joke-

Yes, yes.

… which is an aspiration of mine every few minutes. What am I missing? Am I not alpha male enough?

Ooh, I’m not even going to answer that one, Preet, but of course you’re alpha male enough. I think it’s partly, I mean, people have been saying this, I couldn’t come up with this on my own, that especially now where manhood, masculinity are really being talked about a lot on the right. A woman laughing bears with it, the idea of a woman laughing at you. And so, that’s bad, but I think it’s an easy swipe at a woman.

When people would criticize my laughing, they wouldn’t say laughing. They’d say cackling or giggling. And either way, it’s making fun of me for taking joy in what I do and not sounding like them. And it was also an excuse for people to not take me seriously. “Well, she giggles. Why should I listen to what she said?”

Yeah. It’s nuts.

It just a way of… It’s nuts.

It’s nuts.

And it’s a highly gendered way of swatting at someone and doing it in such a way that… I can’t deny that I laugh all the time, I can’t deny that I have a loud laugh, and I’m not going to… I’m going to keep doing it because it’s who I am, but…

We’re going to actually, in the editing process, we’re going to amplify the volume of your laughing.

Okay.

Note to the team. Let’s talk about the substance for a moment, I guess the politics. My favorite adage comes from the great screenwriter William Goldman. And he’s speaking about the screen trade, but it applies to politics and so many other things. Nobody knows anything.

On the morning before Joe Biden dropped out of the race, people are speculating about how divisive things would be, how much infighting there would be, how many people would challenge Kamala Harris. The craziness of the convention was being speculated about. And boy, nobody knew anything. I never heard anybody suggest, and maybe there’s some people who were brilliant pundits. I don’t remember hearing anybody suggest, “Well, one way this could shake out is that Biden endorses her when he withdraws.”

And one by one, every leading figure, including people who could have been her rivals for the spot, will enthusiastically and jubilantly support her, and she will have the whole thing wrapped up. By the way, with $200 million raised, sixty-something percent of whom are first-time contributors within a week.

Right.

Did anybody see that coming?

Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I certainly didn’t.

You didn’t, right.

I did not. And not only did I not, because again, I think most people did not, but given what was happening in the press leading up to that moment with this universal cry for, “Biden needs to leave, Biden needs to step down. Why the hell isn’t he stepping down? He can’t win. It’s horrible.” What people were talking about along with that was not. If he does, Kamala’s going to be great. It was more like, “Whoa, Gavin Newsom might be good.” There were any number of other people, often men, who people were suggesting would be better than Biden.

By the way, can we just break down the wall for a second? The voice you use when you’re taking the position of somebody who’s not the brightest-

Yes.

… do you have a model for that voice?

No, it’s my male voice.

Because you lapsed into it a few times. I’m just…

Yeah, no, that’s my person of authority voice, yeah.

Okay.

I didn’t even realize that I had just done that, but yeah, I guess I do that all the time. But anyway, what you didn’t see in those moments was people saying, “And then, man, Kamala, she would take us to the finish line.” So, even if you could get past what felt to me like this bandwagon of make him go away, that was so extreme that it was pushing the public away from it. It was so over the top.

Still, there was no indication there that I picked up on that suggested that Kamala would come in number one. And number two, that she would come in with this amount of momentum and support and emotion.

Is it true that if it had gone the other way and people were fearing that divided convention, isn’t that the way it used to work? And people were talking about it as if it would be the death of the Democratic party or democracy or some other terrible outcome, but these things were not coronations in the past, were they?

No. No. And as a matter of fact, again, going back to my time period, in the 19th century, conventions were actually places where decisions were made as opposed to people marching in having pledged themselves to support someone. And then, you have the performative moment. And there were all moments when no one could find anyone who they agreed on, and they would pick some total dark horse candidate that no one had ever heard of.

When was it certain that John Kennedy would be the Democratic nominee in 1960?

I don’t even know the answer to that.

My recollection is it was close in time to the nomination.

Yes. Right, exactly.

Which way is better?

Which way is better? I don’t know if I would say one is better or worse. I do protest against people who are using the word coronation to suggest about Kamala Harris is going to go in, and she’s just going to be coronated, as though somehow or other, it’s this monarchical privilege being bestowed.

There will be voting. And people there, because Biden no longer is the candidate, people pledged themselves to Biden. They can vote, generally speaking, as they choose at the convention. It’s hard for me to believe that we’re going to see anything other than Kamala Harris being chosen as the nominee.

But coronation is not the word that I would apply to what we’re about to see. We’re about to see an actual process, which is a fine and wonderful thing to see in American politics, is actual political processes in action.

There’s a lot of speculation as we’re recording this. I don’t think we’ll have the answer before this is made public. Who should Kamala Harris pick to be her vice president? Give us an historian’s perspective on when the hell that matters and when it doesn’t matter, and in which direction is it? Can it only do harm or can it sometimes do a lot of good?

Well, I think it could do either. I think we’re at a moment when the right hasn’t yet figured out how to get to Kamala because the ways in which traditionally they might have are now big time baggage. So, if they swatted her for being a woman, they look like the anti-women party in a way that they don’t want to appear. If they are racist, openly racist, then that’s also exposing a major thread within the right. They haven’t yet figured out what to do to get back at her.

So, the vice presidential candidate, I suppose, JD Vance, for example, might be someone that could do more damage than good. I can’t tell. I do want to make one point though, because I find this fascinating, and hopefully you’ll agree with me. Preet, but one-

I’m agreeing in advance.

Thank you very much. I feel good already. I’ve been saying for maybe a little less than a year, I even spoke to some senators and said this in a speech to some senators, that when you look back at the 1850s and you look back at the people threatening the southerners, violent, carrying guns, carrying knives, threatening people, silencing them into submission, what did the people who were really skilled politically at that time do?

They used humor to push back. They deflated the bullies and the wannabe authoritarians with humor. Not malicious humor, but actually kind of mild and yet unmistakable humor. And it deflated these southern slaveholders. You could watch them sort of dissolve into a little puddle of-

Well, you can’t rebut humor.

No, well, exactly. And because, generally speaking, authoritarian types, their power relies on fear. And if you can deflate that by poking fun and getting people to laugh, that’s a real power. And some of what we’re seeing right now, which is why we talked a little while ago about making fun of Kamala’s laugh. Part of the humor of that, to me, speaking as a political historian, is the humor that she has and is using to swat at Trump and his supporters is highly effective because she’s, in a sense, hitting back.

And when you look at the late 1850s, when suddenly you had northerners getting elected into Congress and they came ready to push back, ready to be obnoxious, ready to stand up and not sit down when someone tried to get at them, you suddenly had northerners saying, “Yeah, do it again.” And it created a kind of a we, it created a groupness. And so, some of the dynamic of what we’re seeing now, I think it’s directly related to that.

Professor Joanne Freeman, thanks so much for spending time with us.

Thanks for having me.

My conversation with Joanne Freeman continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. And the bonus for Insiders, we discussed whether the country is ready for a Kamala Harris presidency and the very implications of that question.

When has anyone said, “Oh yeah, we’re ready for that change”? When do we ever see potentially monumental change and say, “Yeah, we’re all in” ?It’s the change itself that makes itself possible.

To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

BUTTON

Are we there?

Are we there yet?

It’s been a journey.

And I’m yearning to be somewhere.

Where we belong, where we belong.

It’s been so long.

And I need a place to rest my weary head.

Everyday, when I wake up…

Hey, folks, to end the show this week, I wanted to do something a little bit different, a little bit special. As I previewed last week and on social media, I have a new title. On top of being a lawyer, a podcaster, former U.S. Attorney, I am now improbably also an executive producer. An executive producer, no less of a new music album performed by my friend, Zeshan B. The album is called O Say, Can You See? We hope you’ll download it from iTunes, buy the vinyl record that’s also available.

Without any further ado, I’m joined by my friend Zeshan B. Zeshan, welcome to the show.

It’s great to be here with you, brother. This is rather early, is it not? Usually you and I are-

We take notes two in the morning.

Yeah, yeah. We communicate with each other from midnight until the wee hours of the morning. We’re real pillow talk. This is very early.

Yeah, it’s too early for pillow talk, in fact. I’ll tell you, a number of people came up to me after they saw that you and I were on Morning Joe talking about the album, and they played a bit of the first track, the first single, On My Own. Like, “What the hell is going on? How are you producing a record album?”

And the first thing I like to tell people is, above all other things, not just your message, not just the nature of your music, but the quality of your voice, which I say all the time, I said in of Morning Joe, is like a voice from heaven. And people can check out the veracity of that statement when they listened to the album. Variety Magazine did a piece on the album in our collaboration-

Right.

… and called us the odd couple.

Yeah.

We are kind of an odd couple, aren’t we?

I have to agree with that assessment. Although when they said that we’re the odd couple, I said, “Which one of us is Oscar? Which one of us is Felix?” That was hard to parse out.

So, should we tell the origin story? You and I met about two and a half years ago at a book launch. We had never met before, and I heard you perform on stage, and I and everyone else in the audience was blown away. This was a venue in New York City. And we got to talking backstage, and we became fast friends. You’re the kind of person that I’ve said before, I’ve only known you two and a half years, but I feel like I’ve known you for decades.

So, we had an instant connection. And then, at some point, you’re working on your most recent album. And you asked whether we could collaborate, and I said… What did I say? Did I say yes?

At first, I think you were kind of flabbergasted. It was almost like that scene in Goodfellas when Sonny goes up to Paulie and says, “Hey, could you just buy this restaurant from me?” And Paulie says, “Well, what do I know about running a restaurant? I can’t do anything.”

It was exactly like that.

It was like that where you were Paulie, where you said, “I don’t know how to be a music producer. I don’t know anything.” And I said, “How hard can it be? Just put a cigar in your mouth and order me around a little bit.” Although they don’t use cigars anymore, I guess they vape more.

Now, people can tell from this conversation how you immediately won me over by essentially using a Goodfellas reference. That’ll get me every time.

You’ve put away a few Goodfellas yourself, so I figured-

I have, I have. Before we start talking about some of the album, your roots are in both opera and gospel. You, as a young person, sang in gospel choirs. Can you tell us more about that?

Well, it was really a thrill, Preet. I mean, I was the only non-Black kid that was in gospel choir. And not only was I the only Indian kid in gospel choir, I was also the lead soloist. And I think it’s because the director of the choir recognized that, regardless of what this kid looks like, he’s got the goods. He can sing-

Jesus is on the mainline.

Tell him what you know.

Jesus is on the mainline.

Tell him what you know.

Jesus is on the mainline.

Tell him what you know.

You just call him up.

And tell him what you know.

You know?

Oh, I know. You have the pipes, my friend. I want to get to this album. O Say, Can I See? What are the themes of the album? Why’d you do this album?

Well, I wanted to put something out that was inspired by my influences. The pandemic was a time of great reflection for all of us. And in my case, my livelihood was completely taken away from me. And what I did as a musician was deemed nonessential.

And so, in those difficult circumstances, the only thing I could do was write. And I listened to a lot of orchestral music and at some point decided I would like to do an album with an orchestra. And so, this record is a soul record, classic soul record. It’s recorded with a chamber orchestra. It’s 13 tracks, 12 in English, one in Urdu.

One of my favorite songs on the album is in Urdu.

Yeah. And I feel very lucky to have inherited, and Preet, I know you feel the same way, to have inherited a very rich culture from the old country. And I wanted to write an Urdu song that had an R&B flair, and that became the one Urdu song, Woh Zamana Yaad Hai, that’s on there. And that has really idiomatic strings that sound like something from India, but the beat is very just ’70s R&B.

Woh zamana yaad hai.

[foreign language 00:59:26].

[foreign language 00:59:26].

[foreign language 00:59:26].

[foreign language 00:59:26].

[foreign language 00:59:26].

[foreign language 00:59:29].

Woh zamana yaad hai…

The first single, and people can catch the video too in the show notes, On My Own, that’s a very different song from the one you were just mentioning. What is that song about?

Well, that song is about this universal theme of loneliness, especially the loneliness that some of us feel. We live in big cities. We live in big cities surrounded by people, yet we still feel isolated and alone. It has a lot of melancholy in it, but also there is a feeling of exaltation. And I wanted to tell people that even though you feel alone, you actually are not because there are many others around you.

As the Beatles said, << All the lonely people >> and in this case, that’s what On My Own was.

On my own.

On my own.

On my own.

Will anybody miss me when I’m gone?

There’s a great song, uplifting song on the album called Mountaintop. Tell folks what day you wrote that song or felt compelled to write that song.

Well, I went in to write a song with my songwriting partner, Mike McAllister. He’s just a wonderful producer, songwriter, and he’s the other half of my creative brain or, should I say, he’s a third of my creative brain. Preet occupies 33.3%, the other third. Right, Preet?

If you say so.

But getting back to, I went in the studio that day with the intention of writing something that was anthemic, and I had just started writing a song. Mike and I decided we wanted to write something around the liberation theology imagery of a mountaintop that you hear in gospel music or in the speeches of Dr. King.

And we had just gotten to that point where it’s like, “Okay, the mountaintop will be that focal point, that sort of linchpin of the song,” when I got a text from my wife saying that Roe v. Wade was overturned. And we wrote the song the day Roe v. Wade was overturned. And my wife was so distraught because she just felt like her voice didn’t matter. And I took a break from the session. I went outside to call her because she was so upset. I was trying to console her, but what could I say to her in that moment other than to just listen and hear her out?

And just so folks understand, your wife is actually in the medical profession.

That’s correct. My wife is a doctor. And day in and day out, she sees the disparities that exist in healthcare when it comes to minorities, and she was on the front lines of the pandemic. It upset her greatly that women cannot have the access to reproductive care and that their choices are governed by men, and this is something that I think should upset all of us.

And so, when she told me that awful news about Roe v. Wade being overturned, I felt so helpless until I went back in the studio and I said, “Well, this is the opportunity to do something about it, to use my voice as a man.” There’s such a thing as using our male privilege to speak out on these injustices, these indignities.

Crying times.

Crying times.

Still we argue.

Holding tight.

Yearning ’cause we share.

A dream that cannot be denied.

We do, we learn to fly.

We’ll reach the mountaintop.

Mountaintop.

Mountaintop.

Mountaintop.

Ooh, (singing).

How do you feel about this moment with Kamala Harris and how does that affect your music?

I feel really excited. I feel just a burst of optimism and hope. And Kamala Harris, what’s so fascinating is she’s Black and South Asian, and in my case, those are the two cultures that influence my music the most. So, in a way, she represents me in many ways, and I couldn’t be more excited. And I want to do anything I can in my capacity, as a musician, to help her campaign and to energize voters. I want to get the Muslim vote out in Detroit, in Michigan.

There’s so much that I want to do, and my music has been used by Biden campaign surrogates back in 2020 to get those Muslim votes. I want to do that again. The album has a lot of songs that I think project that same optimism and that excitement and that idealism that Vice President Harris projects. And so, I’m just excited. I’m thrilled.

So am I. Zeshan, before I let you go, the title track, the title of the album, O Say, Can You See?, where do I know that line from? It sounds very familiar.

I think it’s your ringtone, right?

Well, I’m very patriotic. I’m nothing if not patriotic.

This is one thing that Preet and I… Another thing we bond on is we love our country very much. And I, for one, I’ve grown tired of patriotism being hijacked by one side and being enshrouded in the Bible and the flag and guns and other things. Those of us who, on the other side, we are just as patriotic.

In the case of O Say, Can You See?, I’ve sung the national anthem for President Obama at the White House. I also sang it for President Carter at an event in Detroit. And this is a true story. After I finished singing it, he said that it was the greatest rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner that he ever heard, which was a great compliment to me. This is a president. He probably woke up to the sound of a marine band playing the Star-Spangled Banner.

All that to say, I’ve sung our national anthem in those high-profile situations, and so I felt a certain proximity to it. I felt a certain equity in it, a certain, shall we say, ownership of it, that I wanted to recast it in my own way to write my own version of it. But to emphasize that question, oh say, can you see? Can you see what’s going on? Can you see the past? Can you see the future? And the result is the title track.

Ooh, visible me.

Like I’m just make believe.

But everyone around.

They never hear the sound.

I’m a boy who’s been ’round.

Like a murmur in the crowd.

Ooh… O say, can you see?

O say, can you see?

When it came to deciding the name of the album, Preet was the one who said, “Why don’t we just call it the name of the title track?” And my production team, none of us had thought about that, none of us had considered that. But it was one of those moments where it’s like, “Yeah.” Like, “Whoa, I didn’t even think about that.” So, Preet, I got to thank you for that, brother.

I don’t take credit for much in the album, but I also said to you, “I wanted one more song.”

You did.

You thought you were done. And I said, “I think we need one more.”

Right.

And that song is Dream On.

That’s right. I really enjoyed writing that song because it was a challenge. Like you said, we had already finished writing everything, and I guess I had started to sit on my laurels and you’re like, “Oh, why don’t we do one more?”

So, very easy. I’m like that coach, “Give me 20 more pushups.” I’m not getting on the ground.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You were the cigar champion, exec producer in that situation. “All right, kid, you got to give me one more.” I loved it. And so, I embraced it. And that song, it speaks to how I really tried to embrace simplicity in this record. I know it’s hard to imagine because in the album you hear this big complex orchestral sound with strings, horns. There’s multiple drummers on some tracks. There’s auxiliary percussion, timpani, vibraphone, all that stuff, but that stuff all came later in the process.

First and foremost, the goal was to write songs that can slap with any arrangement behind them. Doesn’t matter if they should be able to be just sung with voice and guitar or voice and piano. And in our case, with Dream On, we wrote that song in one day after you had asked for another song. And you had also echoed that sentiment of can you make something super simple, just almost like We Shall Overcome.

And so, it’s amazing how hard it is to write stuff that is simple. It’s difficult to write things that are simple, but we really enjoyed the challenge, and we were very pleased with the result. It’s simple.

Oh, I am too.

A whole lot of crying and dying.

We’re trying to outrun the past.

But people are hurting and yearning.

For a future that’s certain to last.

But when the sun goes down.

And (singing) falls.

Hold your palm and wait for the calm.

The dreamer who doesn’t dream at all.

Yes, the dreamer who doesn’t dream at all.

Hmm, yeah…

Zeshan, congratulations on the album. It’s amazing. You and the rest of the band did an unbelievable job. I listened to it all the time. Highest compliment you’re going to get, my dad loves the album.

Oh, wow. Really?

He listened to its entire entirety.

Loved the album, how about that?

On Friday, what he totally does. He might be a little bit partial to the Urdu lyrics. One of the-

I wonder why.

… songs we mentioned, but I would urge folks to listen to it. Download the album on iTunes. You have a classic vinyl version of the album-

Right, yep.

… that’s available for purchase for those of you who like to listen to music that way. Very proud of you, sir. Very proud of what we did together. I love you, Zeshan. Good luck and congratulations.

Thank you, brother. Proud of you as well.

Oh, butterfly, birds up so high.

On a branch of the (singing) tree.

You love to fly, three thousand miles.

(singing)…

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guests, Joanne Freeman and Zeshan B.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández, and the CAFE Team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.