Welcome to The Lost Debata Show for Political Eclectics.

I'm Ravi Gupta.

And in a little bit, we're going to hear from Dorsey Hobson, who was the superintendent

of Shelby County Schools, which includes Memphis and its suburbs.

At a really interesting time when the district was forced to merge the suburbs and the city,

but then the state government basically gave the suburbs ability to go back to

running their own school districts. And at the same time, there was also a state takeover of a ton of

schools within the district. So he was in the middle of a lot of stuff. And he talks a lot about

how the job of a superintendent in many ways is, as I put it to him, an impossible job. And you can hear from

him there. He basically didn't disagree. And I think it, I think it's a dovetails with some of the

things that we've been talking about on this podcast about how pushing more and more control

locally to school leaders, parents, operators continues to be where a lot of my energy is within school system reform. Because if you

hear from people like Dorsey who are really well-intentioned, capable, talented people,

and they tell you what he tells us in this interview about what it was like trying to put

his arms around, the bureaucracy and the politics of running a school

district, you're left wondering, hey, is this really the best way to do things? I also use some

clips in that interview from a parent organizer named Sarah Carpenter. And so we get a lot of

perspectives there. And it's one of my favorite types of episodes because we hear from people

who actually do the work

instead of people like me who just talk about the work, right? And that's what makes a good

episode, I think. But before I get there, let's talk about some stuff that's in the news. And I think

we can begin with Cash Patel, who is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. And I've talked about

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