Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series Real Time with Bill Mom.

Okay, we'll hear back down over time. Welcome back.

Nice to have you here on the panel. Okay, this is for Caitlin in a re-what?

I don't think anybody has put blowtops in the chipset in the same sentence.

This is a career high. Okay. And that's why. Okay, carry on. All right, get me back on track.

In a reversal, New York City announced they will tighten emissions to their top high schools and rely more on merit rather than the lottery system that was previously used. What do you make of this?

Well, merit, so obviously such a controversial word right now. What is it meant by what's meant by merit? Is it what you did on a test and why is one person able to, you know, have access to so much testing material, etc.

But I'll tell you those top schools that have traditionally, you know, stivocin and broke Bronx science. Those kids who test out high and, you know, who went to Bronx science as AOC's father and built their life that way.

Yeah. Went to where? The Bronx high school of science. Oh, it's one of those test in schools. So she wasn't horribly disadvantaged.

Well, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that those schools have traditionally taken top test takers, which is a controversial thing to say, but those kids tend to really push forward and do very well. So it's tough.

Yeah. Look, I, I think we have a big, bigger problem, which is China, which is educating and graduating as many engineers every year as we graduate all college students. And so we're facing an economic educational superpower and don't know what to do with all these kids in our country.

We can't afford to keep wasting genius. The merit-based system seem to leave out a lot of people. Some of this lottery stuff doesn't work out as well as people wanted to. So we've got a big problem. And so if somebody wants to try something different, what's going to happen is it's going to turn into a big kind of woke war about stuff that at the end of the day, the kids who most need the most help are still not getting it.

So, you know, I'm not going to pass judgment on this particular proposal, but I just think that the one thing we should be coming together on is the fact that we want our kids to be able to compete in a brutal global economy with China. And we are way off track right now.

Well, but we're kicking China's.

The kicking China's ass with kids who have a degrees in the dramatic and visual arts. So I just want to say they may have all the engineers.

Not like we've been in communication skills on.

Okay, so this is for you. Should the U.S. continue working with Iran on a nuclear deal?

Not at all.

No.

No. Not even that.

Look, because at the same time when President Biden takes all of them who I just met, saying that our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Iran.

But at the same time when they continue negotiating with these murderers, it means that they're giving billions of dollars to those who they condemn.

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