[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we head into Martin Luther King weekend, a program note and then a conversation I'm really looking forward to. The program note is that on King Day itself, on Monday, we'll continue our oral history call-in series with a call-in centering Black voices for anyone who lived through and remembers any of what we call the civil rights era, right? Let's say anytime from the end of World War II through the passage of the main civil rights laws to the assassination of Dr. King in 1968.

We'll invite you to call in with a memory of the movement, anything that sticks with you to this day. Maybe you met Dr. King along the way or it doesn't have to be directly related to Dr. King at all. Also, we'll invite you to give us your opinion here, almost 60 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on what those laws have accomplished and what they haven't accomplished, and how to complete the work of bringing real equality, not just under the law but economically and in other ways.

That's an oral history call-in on Monday centering Black voices for those of you who lived through the civil rights era and were aware of Dr. King in his lifetime. Right now as we head into the King holiday weekend, we're thrilled to have another reverend doctor who has been a spiritual inspiration several times already on this show. Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior pastor at the Middle Collegiate Church on East 7th Street in the East Village; and Rabbi Joshua Stanton, rabbi of the East End Temple on East 17th Street.

Some of you may know that the East End Temple has been hosting Rev. Lewis's church services since fire destroyed the Middle Collegiate Church in December 2020. Rabbi Stanton, among many other things, serves on the Board of Governors of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, which liaises on behalf of Jewish communities worldwide with the Vatican and other international religious bodies. He is no stranger to interreligious cooperation.

Rev. Lewis, among many other things, is author of books, including Ten Essential Strategies for Becoming a Multiracial Congregation and her recent book, Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World. That book brought her here for a book interview about a year ago. She has also helped us observe the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and do a live radio Easter gathering during COVID lockdown in the spring of 2020.

Some of you may remember her great appearance for that. This Sunday for the Martin Luther King weekend, Rev. Lewis and Rabbi Stanton will be hosting what they call a free teach-in on racism and anti-Semitism in today's world. Rev. Lewis, welcome back. Rabbi Stanton, welcome to WNYC.

Rabbi Joshua Stanton: Thank you so much.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Sounds like the start of a joke. A reverend and a rabbi walk into a synagogue.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Of course, it's no joke.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: If you add for church, it's really a beautiful story, right?

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] Rabbi Stanton, since you are new here, would you like to introduce East End Temple a little bit to our listeners and talk about what it's been like having the Middle Collegiate Church congregation in a Jewish space since the fire two years ago?

Rabbi Joshua Stanton: East End Temple is a burgeoning Jewish community in Lower Manhattan and we are neighbors of Middle Collegiate Church. Rev. Lewis has been a mentor to me for years. When the terrible fire broke out, she and I were in touch very early on. I said to her, "Sincerely, anything you need if you need space, whatever it could be, we're here for you as a community."

That's because our community walks the walk of Jewish values, walks the walk of so many universal religious values, and we love our neighbors. Rev. Lewis, as it turned out, was looking for space. Middle Collegiate Church was looking for space. We have had the blessing and privilege of serving as a tabernacle for a community that is an inspiration not just for Christians but for people all across New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Rev. Lewis, can you reintroduce Middle Collegiate Church a little bit, not so much the building as the congregation to our listeners? How multiracial is it, for example, and has it meant anything spiritually or interreligiously to be holding your Christian services in Rabbi Stanton's Jewish space?

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: This is one of those times, Brian, where I'm glad we're on the radio and not on television because my eyes are tearing listening to Josh describe our relationship.

Brian Lehrer: Do you need a minute?

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: [chuckles] Maybe not.

Brian Lehrer: You know what? Let me give you a minute to compose your-- Oh, okay. Go on. I think you want to go on. Go ahead.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: I'm ready. I'm ready. First of all, my community brings me to tears. I came to study Middle Church 20 years ago when I was working on a PhD in psych and religion. My question was, how is it that churches say they're welcoming and inclusive, but eleven o'clock is still often the most segregated hour in America as Dr. King so famously observed? I walked into this church with white folks and Black folks and Chinese folks and Indigenous folks and Latinx folks and queer folks and straight folks all hugged up and loving on each other.

It was an Easter Sunday morning the first time I was there and I was like, "Oh, my God, this looks both like the subway and also like heaven." It was just fantastic and has only become more that, Brian, in these last 20 years. We really are so diverse. It's hard to know what is the racial ethnic majority in our community. Over time, we've become more and more interfaith, not just, say, Jewish and Christian couples but Jews who find their way to our community because of the music and the social justice implications. Muslims, Buddhists, and my favorite, atheists and agnostics who go to church because they--

Brian Lehrer: What?

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Oh yes, because they love the music and they love the justice focus. It is incredible to be in the room with all of those kinds of people to be in the digital spaces during COVID and post-fire with all of those people. Brian, we've grown in the last two years from a community of about 1,300 to a community of over 2,000 in 22 countries.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. After your physical space was destroyed, your congregation has grown inside.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Grown, that's right. I think it's because people could find us. They heard about the story. They heard about the fire. 22 countries now and 48 states. I don't know what's up with those other two states, but 48 states. [laughs]

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Oh, do you want to finish the thought there? Go ahead.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: One thing more is to say what it's like to be in a Mishkan, to be in a tabernacle with my friend Josh at East End Temple is, to me, Brian, to bring to the fore the Jewishness of Jesus, that this is a Jewish man, a rabbi, a teacher that we follow, we Christians follow in the way. When I stand on the bema at East End Temple with the beautiful Hebrew words surrounding me when we go to the library and in there are the scrolls, it is beyond description, the beauty of this experience.

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to just keep going on that? Rabbi Stanton, what are you thinking?

Rabbi Joshua Stanton: There's so much to unpack. I would say that, in many ways, Middle Collegiate Church is mentoring all of East End Temple. The American-Jewish community woke up in the last 10 years and realized that at least 15% of American Jews identify as people of color. All of a sudden, racism and other issues of hate are not just out there in the wider world. They are ones that impact our community members.

We are learning from Middle Collegiate Church. It's an extraordinary example as a truly multicultural house of worship in how we can be better. Because the reality is, at least as far as I've seen it in American-Jewish spaces, it's majority Ashkenazi, which means in the American racial caste system, we look white-passing. Folks who are not Ashkenazi or are not white-passing have so many terrible conversations about belonging.

We've had people and, again, I have one of the most loving communities I could possibly imagine. The number of people who are converts to Judaism, who are people of color from any number of walks of life, a lot of them grew up Jewish by the way, which is a story that is often untold or under-told, who are asked about what brings them to East End Temple. It's clear that we have work to do internally as do so many communities across New York City and beyond.

In addition, I just have to say as we approach Martin Luther King Day, I feel as though a lot of Ashkenazi Jews like me hold up photos of our parents and grandparents involved in the civil rights movement and act as though we are absolved of any obligation right now to fight racism. My grandfather was a public school principal. He oversaw an integrated school that was wonderful in the greater New York City area.

He did go to the South to March, to tell his story about integrated schools and why the South needed to follow suit. What have I done? The reality, Brian, is remarkably little. I am as much showing up on Sunday at East End Temple for a church service with Middle Collegiate Church to teach as I am to study because the Jewish community loves its history. It is a source of enduring strength for people that has been homeless and wandering and has suffered so much.

When it comes to the civil rights movement, I fear that our history is actually inhibiting us, is keeping us from engaging in civil rights work today at a time when racism is alive and well in the structures of our country, on the streets of New York, in society writ large. I plan to come and learn at the feet of my teachers, notably the reverend, Dr. Jacqui Lewis, and then to learn for the purpose of action because I am tired of standing on the sidelines of racial justice work.

I am tired of pretending that my grandfather's actions somehow are enough for my family and that I don't have to do anything today. We need to rebuild beloved community and there is no one I would rather work on that with than the reverend, Dr. Jacqui Lewis, and no community more suited to work alongside the East End Temple community than Middle Collegiate Church.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, you can join the conversation if you'd like with Rev. Jacqui Lewis from the Middle Collegiate Church congregation in the East Village and Rabbi Joshua Stanton from East End synagogue in the East Village on racism and anti-Semitism and Black Jewish unity in the face of today's white supremacy, which they're going to get into. Say what's on your mind or in your heart or ask our guests a question.

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Do any Jews of color happen to be listening right now? Rabbi Stanton was just talking about "white-passing Jews," which is probably the bulk of Jews in America. Probably a lot of us consider ourselves both white and Jewish, but there's a distinction there too that we can also parse. Do any explicit Jews of color happen to be listening right now?

You can talk about the experience or issues raised in your life by being both Jewish and a person of color in today's world. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer as we preview the teach-in that Rev. Lewis and Rabbi Stanton are going to be doing together on Sunday at the synagogue as part of Martin Luther King weekend. Rev. Lewis, you want to pick up where Rabbi Stanton left off and talk more about what you expect will happen at this event on Sunday?

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Yes, thank you, Brian. Thank you so much, Josh. I think I want to say this. Psychologist Robert Carter says there are lots of differences that we wrestle with in this nation, but race is a different difference. He is a student as I am of writers of racial identity development work. I'm going to just say racism in America, racism around the globe is a ubiquitous, seemingly never-ending problem.

One of the things that I try to do in my book Fierce Love is to call us all in. That's language that Joshua and I both use. Sometimes, Brian, I say playfully. I'm on the nice white people tour about race. I get asked to go to lots of nice white people to talk about race. They invite me to come because I frame this as a human problem that only humans can fix and that we actually only can fix together.

The way we fix it together is we remember that there is one race and that is human and that what we're really talking about is ethnicity and religiosity and physiognomy when we talk about "race in America." The common enemy for all humans is the white supremacist ideologies that are endemic to the world like it just is. America exported white supremacist ideologies when Thomas Jefferson wrote Notes on Virginia and sent it to France and the pseudo-race science develops in Europe and is echoed in science in Philadelphia.

We exported white supremacist ideologies to Germany, which resulted in the Holocaust. We exported it also to South Africa, where, at Stellenbosch University, apartheid theologies were created. We did this, Brian. We did it and we need to repent about it. All of us, no matter our race or ethnicity or gender or sexuality or religion, have to take it in as a calling-in to love each other out of this dilemma, out of this problem.

It's fierce love. It's ubuntu, a philosophy from South Africa that says, "A human is a human through other humans." Josh and I are humans who happen to be religious leaders, who happen to have different texts and, for Christians, some of the same texts with Jews that take us straight to love. Love God with everything you have. Love your neighbor as yourself. All of the world's major religions call us to love.

Brian, this is what we're going to be talking about is, how do we get to beloved community for real? How do we take seriously the command to love? Just to say so we don't run out of time, any of the Christians who don't understand that when Jesus gives a command to love that He's quoting Deuteronomy and quoting Leviticus that He's a Jew quoting Jewish text. To be anti-Semitic and Christian is to be anti-Jesus and Christian is to be antichrist, anti-god, and we just can't do that.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Rev. Lewis and Rabbi Stanton. Our lines are full with people who want to get in on this conversation. Rabbi Stanton, I'm going to follow up briefly with you after the break on something you said a minute ago in your last answer about being part of the white-passing Ashkenazi-Jewish community. I'm going to ask you if you yourself do not identify as white and make a distinction in your Judaism from that. We'll go down many other paths as well. Brian Lehrer on WNYC, stay with us.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior pastor at the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village when it's not burned down; and Rabbi Joshua Stanton, rabbi of the East End Temple in the East Village. This Sunday for the Martin Luther King weekend, Rev. Dr. Lewis and Rabbi Stanton together will be hosting what they call a free teach-in on racism and anti-Semitism in today's world. Rabbi Stanton, do you consider yourself white?

Rabbi Joshua Stanton: Short version, no. Longer version, it's really complicated. I think the best description of Ashkenazi Jews in the United States might be conditionally white, that some people view us as passing as white when we do not have articles of faith that distinguish us from a majority Christian or secular culture. My grandfather grew up in Germany as the Nazis were rising.

The first he knew about being Jewish was after the Nuremberg Laws. He used to hold his nose so that it wouldn't grow down with the physical standards that the Nazis had for what Jews looked like with a hooked nose. American Jews are stereotyped with a hooked nose. American Jews who are Ashkenazi are stereotyped in all kinds of racialized ways. It is so tragic that white supremacists have a monopoly on racial language in our country.

Based on their terms, Jews are very much not white. It is unclear what we are because Ashkenazi Jews reside in something of a no man's land, where white supremacists consider us very much not white. They talk about our blood. They talk about our race. They talk about us in racialized language. Folks who are not white supremacists presume that we have a degree of comfort and certainty and strength.

Sometimes it feels like we don't have, so it's really complicated. Again, my short answer is no. My longer answer is, it's no because of a great deal of pain and suffering that we continue to endure at the hands of white supremacists who racialize American Jews and cannot engage for the life of them and the fierce love of the sort that the reverend, Dr. Jacqui Lewis, speaks of in which we are one race and we humanize each other.

Brian Lehrer: Justin in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Justin.

Justin: Hi, thanks for having me on. I'm really enjoying this conversation. It resonates with me quite a bit because I am a person of color with an Ashkenazi-Jewish mother and family, but I was raised completely secular. I appreciate what the rabbi was just saying, which is all these things are complicated and nuanced. Unfortunately, most people I find don't really want to engage in those types of nuanced conversations that people want to.

Oh, sorry, I'm turning off my radio here. People want you to fit into a neat box. If you don't check or say what it is that you are that fits into their perspective, it gets problematic for people outside yourself. Anyway, the main thing I just wanted to say is that I'm greatly inspired by this conversation. It resonates with me greatly because I was raised completely non-religious, although I have spiritual tendencies and this conversation very much speaks to me.

Brian Lehrer: Justin, thank you so much. Michelle on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Michelle.

Michelle: Hi, Brian. How are you? Thank you so much for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Michelle: I completely agree with the last caller. I identify as a Black Jew. My mother is an Ashkenazi Jew. Her parents are Russian-Polish immigrants. My dad is an immigrant from Haiti. When we talk about our phenotype and how we look, how to identify, I identify as a Black woman and a Black Jew. I grew up Jewish. My parents sent me to a private school and I went to Hebrew school on the weekends. We were a part of a synagogue.

The entire time I grew up as a young Black girl, a Black teenager to right now, a Black woman, I have found that the Jewish community has been extremely racist and treated myself and other Jews of color like second-class citizens and not as full members of the community. It has been a struggle for me to continue to feel a connection to Judaism and to continue to practice and to feel like I'm in isolation, or to go to spaces where I really don't feel 100% comfortable, or that I'm being perceived in a way as not truly Jewish, as not really Jewish. It has been really hard.

Brian Lehrer: How does that get expressed in your experience?

Michelle: Well, growing up, people would ask me if I was adopted. As a teenager, even going to Israel and participating in different kinds of Jewish events where my parents weren't around, I would always have to explain, "Oh no, my mom is Jewish. I was born Jewish. I'm not a giyur. I'm not a convert." That's another big one. "Oh, are you a convert? Oh, that's so great that you're a convert." That's a big one, or people would say things like, "Oh, that's okay that your dad's Black." [chuckles] I didn't ask.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Wow.

Michelle: I didn't ask if it was okay if my dad's Black or, "Oh, you're still Jewish. Your mom's Jewish." "I knew that. Thank you for the clarification."

Brian Lehrer: [laughs]

Michelle: Those comments are unnecessary and hurtful, and let me know that I'm not being accepted fully and let me know that I am a second-class citizen. It's unfortunate. It's truly unfortunate.

Brian Lehrer: Rev. Dr. Lewis, you were reacting there. You want to talk to Michelle?

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Oh, Michelle, thank you so much for telling your story, and you too, Justin. I really believe in the power of stories. Our stories have so many beautiful nuances. Michelle, all of the experiences you've had, the beauty of your mom and dad's relationship, all the different, diverse, gorgeous histories and events that happen because you are who you are. I just want to celebrate that. I want to say that I think what's true and sad about the way humans are wired is that hurt people hurt people.

The way that white supremacy shows up, Michelle, in the Jewish community is that Jews are not Black in an oppressed situation. Well, at least I'm not Black, and that is Chinese people feel that way. Not all the Chinese people. Anybody start calling Brian and yelling. When you export anti-Blackness around the globe, the people who are not Black have taken in to derive Black people is to be better than Black people, right?

That's how caste works. What I want to say to our listeners and to you and to all of us is the enemy is prejudice. The enemy is white supremacist ideologies that have us compete with each other in oppressive Olympics. The enemy is false narratives of inferiority that keep breeding themselves over and over and over again. Michelle, I'm so glad you called in, you and Justin, to tell your stories.

Michelle: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Michelle, thank you very much. This is WNYC-FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. Few more minutes with Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis and Rabbi Joshua Stanton, both from their respective congregations on the Lower East Side. The temple has been hosting the church's congregation since the physical Middle Collegiate Church on East 7th Street burned down two years ago. This Sunday as part of Martin Luther King weekend, they are holding a teach-in on anti-Semitism and racism at the East End Temple.

Rabbi Stanton, being both of you, social justice-oriented clergy people, you both think and preach about power imbalances and marginalization. We've been talking some about that in this conversation. You talked about it in one of your earlier answers, talking to people in your Jewish community who you want to not rest on the historical laurels of being involved in the King civil rights era, but saying they need to be more involved in fighting anti-Black racism today.

How do you deal with the fact that American Jews collectively do have so much more wealth and power than Black Americans on average, and yet referring to Jewish wealth and power, the way many people do it, is also a classic anti-Semitic trope? I'm sure you agree. Can you weave a multi-layered truth out of that, that respects and loves all parties?

Rabbi Joshua Stanton: The conversation that we have in this country about privilege does not map neatly onto Jewish history or the Jewish present. Privilege presupposes an enduring power. Folks whose families have been here for hundreds of years and have remained on top, that might be privilege. Jews in the diaspora have not had the blessing of remaining in one country long enough to have the privilege conversation work.

The way that we frame it to ourselves very often is we use the power we have when we've got it the best we can. It presupposes that one day, we could have power. The next day, we could have less than nothing. In my family, part of it comes from Germany. These were people who had made it in German society until they very much had not. The enduring fear on the part of American Jews and, frankly, it's not an unfounded fear given the rise in white supremacy is that whatever vestiges of power, whatever sense of power we might have, it's going to be very short-lived.

It's a scary time to be Jewish in the United States. Nonetheless, that is not an excuse to rest on our laurels about the civil rights movement and about fighting racism. We can at once feel fearful and threatened and have some of those threats be awfully real and fight systemic racism, fight the structures of racism, care about the Jews of color in a way that clearly in too many communities we are not. It has to be a both/and. We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to be able to fight racism and fight anti-Semitism at the same time. That's what the teach-in is about.

Brian Lehrer: Rev. Lewis, you want to continue that from your vantage point? I'm sure some Jewish listeners who are listening right now are thinking, "Yes, all of that is true," and there's also some Black people who are anti-Semitic. Kanye West has been in the news there that have not come up yet in this conversation as a thing. How do you weave these multiple layers together?

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Oh, thank you, Brian. Let me just start right there with Blackness and anti-Semitic tropes that we see in our community. This is why I invited Josh into this teach-in with me quite honestly. I think it's a very dangerous thing when our public folks, not just Kanye but comedians, are jumping on this anti-Semitic bandwagon. I want to go back to my comment to Michelle about hurt people hurting people, which is no excuse, Brian, but it is to saying that I think white supremacist ideologies in this nation bake in the possibility of Chinese and Latinx people fighting with each other.

I lived in California for a time and the dynamics between Koreans and Blacks or Blacks and Dominicans-- How insane is it that there's a white power structure that luxuriates in so-called minorities or people on the margins duking it out for a thin slice of the American dream? In fact, that's insanity. I would like to just call in my Black siblings again to remind them, not only is Jesus Jewish but the way we think about His, let's say, historic ethnicity is that the Jews from which Jesus comes are Afro-Semitic. We get that from the genealogies that we study. We get that from a look at the cradle of civilization.

We look at the Mediterranean Sea. We look at the ethnicity of those people that were Jesus' ancestors and we can say African and Semitic. How dare we not examine our own biases, my Black family, and our own prejudices? We don't have enough power in this nation to be "racist," not the way we define racism, but we do have enough power to love our way through this, to study our scripture, to look at what Jesus' life was and would've been, and also not to rest on the laurels of Dr. King and Abraham Heschel and to say, today, we need movements that are multiethnic, multicultural, multiracial movements of love and justice.

I'm in one. Josh is in it. We are Sikh. We are Buddhist. We are Jewish. We are Christian. We are Muslim. We are agnostic. We are atheists. People who believe in love as a public ethic to heal the world. Come on, my people. Let us not dance with the devil and be anti-Semitic in this nation when the one we follow into ministry is a Jew. Our Muslim brothers and sisters think of Jesus as a prophet. Our Jewish sisters and brothers think of Him as a teacher. If we think of Him as "Christ," then we also need to understand His ethnicity as something to celebrate.

Brian Lehrer: Let me squeeze in one more call. Arturo in Ridgewood, New Jersey. We've got a minute for you, Arturo. Hi there.

Arturo: Good morning. What a privilege it is to be with you this morning and to hear my dear sister and teacher and mentor, the reverend, Dr. Jacqui Lewis. I'm a former student of hers. Because of her teachings, her writings, and her inspiration, I am serving a community of faith that has been predominantly white for 132 years that is progressively becoming a multiracial, multicultural faith community Christian church because we have to.

I'm grateful for the work that she continues to do. Fierce Love is a must-read. I'm wondering very quickly, Dr. Lewis, if you could again or just state to our siblings, specifically our white sisters and brothers, clergy and laypersons, the importance of what it means to grow a multiracial, multicultural community for the betterment of us becoming a more diverse and inclusive community. Thank you very, very much for all that you do.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Thank you too, Arturo.

Brian Lehrer: Arturo, thank you. We do have one minute left. Rev. Dr. Lewis, you can obviously answer his question and also maybe tell people how they can attend either in person or virtually, the teach-in you're doing on Sunday with Rabbi Stanton.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Thank you, Brian. We are called into love. Love is the non-possessive delight in the uniqueness of the other. We are called to love. We're not called to love the people who look like us. We're called to rehearse God's reign on earth or tikkun olam on earth right now. We cannot do that in segregated pockets, period. Love, period.

Everything else is commentary. If you want to be with me and Josh, we're worshiping at East End Temple, 17th Street and Second Avenue at 9:30 in the morning and at 11:45. The 11:45 worship will be streamed on all the places where you find Middle Church at middlechurch.org, our YouTube channel, and our Facebook channel. We can't wait to be in this conversation with you.

Brian Lehrer: Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Rabbi Joshua Stanton, this has been special. Thank you both so much.

Rabbi Joshua Stanton: Thank you.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis: Thank you, Brian. It's good to be with you. See you tomorrow, Josh. See you on Sunday. [chuckles]

Rabbi Joshua Stanton: See you tomorrow.

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.