Hey, everyone listening to the podcast. This is Ari Melbert speaking to you exclusively for our podcast extras.

This weekend special edition is the interview I did with comedian Dave Chappelle, explaining why he's endorsing for the first time ever a candidate in politics.

It's his friend, a man who's running for the governor of Maryland, Democrat Ben Jealous.

So we talked about why Chappelle's getting involved in politics, why criminal justice reform

and marijuana legalization is a key issue.

And after the interview, you'll hear another special thing that we did on the show, my breakdown

of Dave Chappelle's comedy and his critiques of the Trump

era. We're putting this together because you guys have told us that you do like when we have

these podcast extras, so we're happy to serve them up. You can also leave a comment letting us know

what you think of this. On Rate Us if you want. We appreciate five stars, but obviously just rate your

heart, whatever you think is fair. And here's my discussion with Dave Chappelle.

With me now is Ben Jealous, candidate for the governor of Maryland and comedian Dave Chappelle. Thanks for being here, both of you. My question, Ben, after all your work in civil rights, why are you running for governor now?

And Dave, why are you endorsing him when you don't usually get involved in endorsing candidates?

Ben, you want to go first?

Sure, I'll go first.

You know, Ari, look, you know, I'm running for governor because I have a vision that we can finally

fully fund our schools.

We can finally pass

single payer, so-called Medicare for All. And we can end this era of massive student debt by ending

mass incarceration. And a big part of ending mass incarceration in Maryland is to finally

legalize cannabis, period. And so that's part of why Dave is here,

is that we've been talking about, frankly,

...