Welcome everybody to the Michael Still podcast. I'm Michael Steele. I'm so glad you could be with us because really you had no choice.

You're stuck in your house at least if you're smart, safe people, you're stuck in your house unlike some dumbass people out there with no

Matt, okay, I digress. I got in there too early. I'm not going there now. But anyway, I'm glad you are with me today. I've got my I you know,

I'm at this point in this relationship. I don't know how he feels, but I'm at this point in this relationship where I can refer to him as dear friend.

Yeah, you know, totally brothers don't typically go there that early, you know, it takes sometimes maybe some kovacier and you know, but we got there quick.

Come on, we we traveled internationally together. Our spouses are friends. Yes, yes. This is all good. Jonathan Cape Art. He is the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist member of the Washington Post editorial board

in the pain writer focusing on the intersection of social and cultural issues and politics host of a great podcast, which I've had the luxury because it is a luxury for me to appear to have appeared the number of times I have. I think it's six now. So you are the most. So this is the most by far. This is what you call make up podcasting here because I owe the brother some time. But he is the host of the K-pop podcast.

He's also an MSNBC contributor where we are colleagues together. He serves as a substitute anchor and has served as a guest host on midday in WNYC on New York Public Radio.

He was the deputy editorial page editor of the New York Daily News from 2002 and 2000 to 2004. That's how it all began for you. It's an adj.

That's good. I think it goes even further back because I'm old.

You are. You are a young looking old black man. You know what they say? BDC.

Yeah, it does. Right? I get that all the time. How do you think I am? Oh, you're probably about 45. Baby, come on home with me. No.

I'm not 45. But yeah, but you've been in this game a while and I wanted to go start with your roots to get into some really.

I want to have a barbershop conversation about some shit that's just on the street right now that we just got to get out there and deal with.

And I think you're going to be good to talk about that because you've covered this. These story lines from George Floyd and others for a long, long time.

So I but I wanted to get so people to understand.

This journalism thing isn't like you know you didn't wake up and want to peel it so you you had you put in some time right?

Right. Yep. Yep. My first job. Well, you can go all the way back to my first internship on the today show at NBC in the summers of 86 and 87.

And then working as a temp at NBC during all my breaks from college. Excuse me. My first job real job in journalism was as a vacation relief researcher on the today show.

Those are always fun jobs right? Yeah, because you know, I left a full time job with benefits to take a big leap of faith for a guarantee of just three months.

No health insurance lateral move in terms of salary because there was going to be a ton of overtime.

And that went to do that for the today show and I took that leap of faith one because I knew a lot of the people there.

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