Hi, I'm Annamarik Haks. Welcome to With Friends Like These. I'm really excited for this week's

pod. My guest is Rembert Brown, who you may know from the dearly departed, much-limited

grant land. He was also a writer at New York Magazine, and he has a piece out this week in Bleacher

Report that is a profile of Colin Kaepernick that is also one of the best essays about America

and race that's come out in a while, and I am including Donati Kota's piece in the Atlantic

last week. If you're a long-time listener to the show, you know some of the themes that we talk

about primarily on-converting conversations and having conversations with people across

differences, and that's what Rembert's essay is about. It's also about imperfection and progress

and being willing to start making changes without knowing what the exact outcome is going to be,

which is something that I struggle with all the time. I struggle with as I am doing this intro

right now. It's one of my favorite interviews that we've done so far. I hope you like it as much as I

did. And the internet does not know a lamb who's difficult to kill, so few things are riskier than

stepping out before you're fully polished. That catch-all woke, meaning everything and nothing,

is overused now, not as a sticker for the well-informed and intention, but as a stamp of disapproval

for those who have messed up and therefore aren't. To be a work in progress is nearly unacceptable

because the currency that drives our culture is not self-improvement, but instead the ongoing

erosive process of each person on each side, desingating who is wrong and who is right.

You've got to give people space to develop thought, mature, and change course. The political

commentator Angela Rye tells me about Colin, about all of us. She, like many, was a vocal supporter of

Colin, but had a moment of skepticism after he proudly spoke about not voting. The days and weeks

and months, the year after the election were an easy time to point fingers considering the outcome.

But after the anger Rye says comes the process of remembering the people who truly caused change

...