Hey guys, before we started the episode today, I wanted to remind you all that we've got a live show coming up.

It's on January 25th at the Greenspace.

It's going to be at 7 p.m.

That's in New York City.

You can get your tickets at thegreenspace.org.

We'll have lots of guests old and new, and lots of jai will be flowing it's going to be

great please come and have fun with us come and see something and say something with us

tell me if this experience sounds familiar to you i get into a cab because I need to get out of the

lower east side really quick and get someplace uptown. So I wave down a cab, get in the cab,

take a seat, tell them where we need to go. I relax a little bit. Take a look at the name on the

plate and, you know, their name is also Amad, or maybe their

last name is Ali. And you go, hey, your name is Amad Ali? My full name is Amid al-Yukper.

And they go, really? Where are you from? And then I would go, oh, well, I was born in Michigan,

but my parents are Pakistani. And they say, oh my gosh, I'm Pakistani too. Where in Pakistan is your family from? And I'll say, you know, my dad is from Faslabad and my mother's from Ravalpindi. And they go, Ravalpindi, seriously? That's where I'm from. I grew up in Ravalpindi. And where did you live? I go, oh, I lived, you know, my mom's house is on the road by the park. And they go, no way. Right there. I used to pass there every day. And they go, yeah, that's where I'll go visit every time. And then for the next half hour, we start building these connections of how my parents came to America, how they came to

America, how their kids are growing up in America, how it feels to be Muslim in America,

how I experience being a young Muslim in America.

I think this happens to me about 75% of the time I get into a cab.

Like, no joke.

This is not an exaggeration.

And it happens not just with Pakistani cab drivers. It happens with all sorts of different Muslim backgrounds.

So obviously it's easy for me as a single Muslim man in a cab to talk to another Muslim man

in a cap. It's an access that I have that maybe other groups don't have, like if

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