From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

In October, which may seem like eons past, but was just a few months ago, really, we assembled

one of our biggest and best New Yorker festivals ever.

It was kind of a big to-do because it was the 20th anniversary of the New Yorker Festival,

and we pulled out all the stops, with interviews and live performances in venues all over

New York and packed houses, if you can imagine such a thing as a

packed house. Today on the program, we're going to hear from two of the big stars of that event,

Keenan Thompson, the former child actor and now Saturday Night Live veteran, and Hassan Minaj,

the comedian and political commentator. You could call him one of the many protégés of John Stewart.

He worked as a correspondent on The Daily Show,

and that was a role that blended comedy with pretty serious political analysis.

Minaj launched his own show Patriot Act on Netflix in 2018,

and in two short years, the show won both an Emmy and a Peabody Award.

When he spoke with the New Yorkers Carrie Batten last fall, Minage had just had something of a viral

moment testifying before Congress on the subject of student loans.

Now, look, we know the deck is stacked against student borrowers in ways that it wasn't 10 or even 15 years ago.

And they deserve some basic protections.

Americans should not have to go bankrupt pursuing higher education, and they should never be preyed upon by under-regulated loan servicing companies.

So members of this committee, we know the government is capable

of stepping in during a financial crisis.

So really all I'm asking today is,

...