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Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will? All right, well, you know how people like to keep tabs on their old classmates. You know, just so you can see what everybody's wound up doing.

That is why I joined Facebook. I want to see what people are doing. I want to see how my high school rivals are doing. Terribly, I hope. Did you recently join Facebook? Yeah, yeah, last week. Like your grandmother. That's pretty great. Actually, I was thinking about that this week while reading up on Thurgood Marshall, and it actually made me feel so bad for the Lincoln College class of 1930,

which I know you're, I think you're an expert on the Lincoln College class of 1930.

I am not, but I'm guessing it's because they graduated a future Supreme Court Justice.

Well, that's the thing. So Lincoln's class of 1930 was actually home to a slew of prominent

black leaders. So for literature, you had Langston Hughes. For music, there was Cab Calloway.

Then, of course, there was Marshall himself who made this colossal name for himself in the legal

system. And on the political side of things, the class had Kwame Nakrumah, the future president

of Ghana. Isn't that unbelievable? I mean, no matter which field the other students went into,

they were all pretty much guaranteed to be outshown by their classmates. But the more I poked around

Marshall's biography, the more I wanted to know. How did he become such a larger-than-life figure

in the courtroom? How did he look

at the Constitution? And did he really take the oath of office from an ex-clan member? So let's dive in.

Yeah. Hey there, podcast listeners. Welcome to part-time genius. I'm Will Pearson. And as always, I'm joined by my good friend Mengesh hot-ticketer. On the other side of the soundproof glass, watching old days of our lives reruns. This gives him an excuse to do this because I know he likes to do this on the quiet. But in honor of Thurgood Marshall, that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I know it's a tribute, but I do feel like Tristan just loves his stories.

He does. He definitely loves his stories. Well, that was my first thought. But Tristan was so adamant about only watching episodes from the 1970s and 80s that it made me wonder if there really was a connection.

So we did a little bit of digging, of course, and it turns out that during his years on the bench,

Justice Thurgood Marshall

was actually a big fan of days of our lives, and I love this. But, I mean, like, really a fan of soap operas

in general, and apparently he once told Justice Brennan there was, quote, a lot to be learned about life

from soap operas. So things like how to stop your evil twin from stealing the men you love, I imagine. These practical life lessons. And Justice Marshall didn't want to miss any of them. In fact, Time Magazine ran this report. This was back in 1976, claiming that Marshall would often call a recess right around 1 p.m. so that he could watch the latest days of our lives episode in his chambers.

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