April 8, 2022 • 32 mins
What do you think of when you hear the name Bill Cosby? Anita Hill speaks with W. Kamau Bell, the creator of the new documentary series, “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” about how to have difficult conversations, like the one in Bell’s film which reckons with Cosby’s achievements as well as his transgressions and the lasting effects.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
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(00:39):
or at Pushkin dot Fm. As a black man in
America who grew up through this, we need to talk
about Bill Cosby. That's filmmaker and comedian W. Kamal Bell,
who recently released the documentary series We Need to talk
About Cosby or Bell, who is drawn to challenging conversations.
(01:04):
This was a conversation that had to happen, you know.
Series comes out of the fact that as a black
kid who was born in the early seventies, who grew
up in an America where Bill Cosby was part of
the wallpaper of Black America, and I was right there
every week wanting to be one of the Huxtables. I
just sort of thought in some sense that I was
walking in the path that Bill Cosby had created, and
(01:26):
to try to aspire to be like him, to be
a comedian who is funny but also does good in
the world, who is intelligent but also silly and helps
pull other people along who may not be pulled along otherwise.
And then the sixty women came forward that I was
like wrestling with how does all this make sense? Because
they seem to be such disparate truths, And so the
(01:47):
documentary is just me inviting people to have that conversation
about how do we make sense of all of this?
And it's not a conversation, and lots of people want
to have. More people said no than yes, But the
people who showed up really showed up, including many of
the survivors. Bill Cosby is the trojan horse for having
the bigger conversation about rape culture in America. I'm Anita Hill.
This is Getting Even, my podcast about equality and what
(02:11):
it takes to get there. On Getting Even, I speak
with people who are improving our imperfect world, people who
took risks and broke the rules. In this episode, w
Kamal Bell and I discuss the importance of having hard conversations,
the kind of conversations that move us forward as a society,
(02:36):
and how Bell's documentary we need to talk about Cosby
accomplishes exactly that tell us about your series. It's title,
We need to talk Who's the Wii? That's funny? I
see the wei as people who see that title and go, oh, yeah,
(02:58):
we do. I think it's one of those things that
you opt into it if it resonates with you. I've
seen many people go, I don't even talk about Cosby,
and I'm like, well, good, there's lots of other TV
for you to watch, you know. But I think for me,
when we release the trailer and the title, to see
many people go finally, we're gonna have this discussion. And
I think we were very clear about like we're going
to talk about all of its career and the crimes,
(03:20):
and to see a lot of people go, I've been
wanting to have this conversation but not knowing where to
have it. At the core because I'm a black man.
Black people are the core part of this conversation, because
his effect on us is very different than the effect
on the greater world. But certainly the Cosby Show was
not just the biggest show in Black America. It was
the biggest show in America. So a lot of people
who are not black also are defined by that. We
(03:42):
there's also a generational divide here. I think if you're
under the age of thirty five, maybe you're like, I
don't understand what we need to talk about. I get
it's a he's a criminal who raped a lot of people.
I don't know what we need to talk about, and
I've seen some of that, but I think there is
like if you were my generation, was the gen X
or the jet or Baby boomers, you came up sort
of admiring this man. And so I really do think
(04:04):
that part of this is a generational conversation. Yeah, and
generational conversations are really really difficult to translate sometimes. Yes,
but you are letting the public in to your conversation,
your way of making sense out of the whole episode
in the scandal that is whirling around Bill Cosby. Now,
(04:28):
who do you think should hear this conversation? I mean,
a big part of this is about really examining a
rape culture in America, and not all of that is crime.
A lot of that is things that are quote unquote
jokes or ways in which we talk about sexual salt
and rape, but also ways in which we have been
(04:49):
acculturated to treat women at the workplace. I sort of
came of age in the nineties when a lot of
these conversations started to happen, When we started to you know,
I think about, like specifically related to you, the Clarence
Thomas case. I was a teenager who was like trying
to understand what was going on and not really able
to have that conversation. Yet I think about like the
(05:09):
Mike Tyson case, and times in my life when it's
like I have been sort of acculturated not by my
mom but by rape culture overall to sort of ask
those were what was she doing there? Why would she
say that? Why? Why can't you make that joke? Why
are people being so sensitive? And then luckily I grew
out of that, and so for me, a part of
this is like we still haven't figured out how pervasive
(05:31):
rape culture is in this country and how damaging it
can be. Where then a woman says she's been raped
or actually assaulted, that many of us immediately go what
was she doing there? Instead of going how can we
help you? How can we heal you? How can we
get you some justice? Do you think your role as
a father influenced your desire to explore this topic? Yeah,
(05:54):
I mean I think that for me, I have three daughters.
When my wife got pregnant with our first kid, I
wasn't one of those men who was like, I need
a boy because we need to play football. I didn't
play football as a kid, so I didn't know what.
I was just happy that the child was healthy. But
then when my oldest daughter was born and we started
hanging out and I saw her personality and mostly got
(06:14):
pregnant again, I was like, I want another one of these,
I want another girl. We'd ended up having three girls,
and I was sort of always aware, and I would
joke about this that my role was to be a
double agent, to tell them this is what men are doing,
this is what men are saying, this is how you
have to be prepared. So I think that yes, being
a father has affected me definitely, being a father of
three girls. But when I'm doing the work on the series,
(06:36):
I'm not doing that thing where it's like, as a
father of three girls, we need to talk about cosbia.
I'm very careful to not use my daughters as props
for becoming a better person. I think I want to
be a better person because I have these daughters, but
I don't want them to become public props for me
becoming a better person. Well that's interesting because I often
hear from a man who say, well, I never really
(06:57):
understood this issue until I had daughters, and I wonder
why they waited until they had daughters or It's definitely
an aolving conversations. So my daughters are part of that
evolving conversation. But you know, my wife wouldn't have a
good wouldn't have married me if I wasn't already sort
of evolving on those ideas. So you have to capture
(07:20):
a lot of different perspectives, a whole lot, and you
you did it very well. I have to say in
the series, thank you. There is so much footage and
information about Bill Cosby. On the one hand, when you
talk about the career, there's so much information, and then
even though there are multiple accusers, there's you know, we
(07:43):
know very little about them, example, the basics of their story.
How do you put that together and make that a
balance conversation and even a four episode series. I mean,
we were aware and I'm going to talk about my
team here. This is a delicate balance. There weren't models
in the world of how you achieved this balance. I
think the two documentaries that I associate with this are O. J.
(08:07):
Simpson made in America by ezral In, which was like,
how do you tell the story of a complicated man,
you tell a story of a complicated America. And so
I feel like that was one of the tent poles
at this and the other one was Dreamhampton Surviving r
Kelly about not shying away from letting survivors talk, like,
don't just reduce them to sound bites. So in my mind,
I was sort of trying to sort of bring these
two different types of filmmaking together, like, we don't want
(08:29):
people to think we tricked them into watching a documentary
that's just about isn't Bill Cosby Great? Even though some
of this is going to come off as isn't Bill
Cosby Great? So you have to sort of figure out
how do you sprinkle breadcrumbs? How do you sort of
mix those tones up in a way so that people
who are there for one know that the other one's coming,
and people who are not there for the other know
that the other one's coming. So they didn't know there's
going to be a sort of a pendulum. How do
(08:51):
you keep it compelling? And I think the biggest thing
we figured out was, like in the Cosby sections, the paces,
when we're talking about his career, the pace moves pretty
quickly because there's a lot to cover, there's a lot
of good archival, and you don't you can sort of
really motivate people through it with how you a sort
of edit it, but when you get to the survivors,
you slow down. We didn't use a lot of archival
(09:13):
to cover up there talking. We didn't use music to
let you know how to feel, We didn't do a
lot of the tricks of TV to sort of go,
this is what we're trying to get you to. We
sort of let them talk with not a lot of adornment,
and it really sort of gave the dock the sort
of like multiple shifts and movements that a little bit
I was worried we're released it. People would be like,
this is two different docks compounded into one. But people
(09:34):
really understand how we're like we're down shifting and up shifting,
and I think people generally seem to really appreciate that. Yeah.
I really was struck by how much space you gave
survivors to talk about their experience, and I wondered if
you learn something about the scope of the allegations from
listening to them that maybe has been missing in the
(09:57):
public conversation. Yeah, I think very early on when we
started doing the research, I didn't realize that some of
the allegations went back as far as they did, that
they sort of track with this whole career, that they
go back to the sixties. I think that even people
who supports the survivors don't understand, and people who don't
support the survivors want to sort of categorize this as
sixty one night stands that went wrong, maybe went wrong,
(10:20):
or sixty women who wanted something from him, and then
they're trying to be vindictive. But when you look at
the work that he put into sort of courting these women,
that was not something I was aware of. So, like,
there's women who sort of were in He was in
their lives for years, and they would not hear from
him for a long time and think they weren't going
to hear from him again, and then he would reach
out to them, and he would fly them around the
country and pay for acting lessons and all these things,
(10:42):
and then one day they would wake up and realize
what they've gotten into. I didn't realize how much work
he put into grooming these women. Yeah, it's almost predatory. Yes,
I think one of the survivors says he put as
much work into his career as he did into these activities. Yes,
I thought that was a very interesting line. And you know,
you've talked about your connection to Bill Cosby, and you've
(11:05):
talked a bit about America's connection to but couldn't you
say a little bit more about that? Yeah, Dick Gregory
kicks the door open, and she's the first black man,
black comedian his book to be on late night talk shows.
Dick Gregor was probably the biggest being in the country,
but then he turned towards activism by talking very directly
to white America about racism. And so Bill Cosby comes
(11:28):
on the scene, and then Bill Cosby's able to sort
of really saunter through that door, but he said, I'm
not going to be confrontational with you. Cosby is sort
of this very safe and palatable choice. But also he
was really funny and talking about things that the white
people could relate to, just go into the movies and
his mom and football and Bible stories, and so he
(11:49):
really takes up a space that America needed of like
we're seeing all these images of black people on TV
at a time when if you turn on the news,
black people are engaged in the work of trying to
make America anti racist, getting our butts kicked on the
local news or the TV news, doing sit ins. At
that point, Martha King Junior is considered to be a
dangerous radical by many white Americans. This one, this handsome,
(12:11):
charismatic guy. He seems okay, and black people will feel like, oh,
we can finally turn the TV and see one of us.
And he's not shucking and jiving, he's not half stepping.
He seems to be a fully embodied version of himself.
And I think that you can't talk about the history
of black people in television without talking about Bill Cosby
at that point in his career. You know, I learned
(12:34):
that he was also something of an activist in the
entertainment world, so that on the one hand, he was
non confrontational as a comic, but as an actor he
became more of an activist. Let's said, we're right to activist.
I'll say, can you tell us about that? And did
you know about it beforehand? So when before this film
(12:58):
was ever even inklinging of an idea? After all the
survivors started coming forward, I read an article about a
filmmaker named Tony Robinson, a black woman who was making
film about the history of black stunt performers in Hollywood,
and her doc told the story of how Bill Cosby
was the person not among the people, but was the
person who integrated black stunt performing because on the set
(13:19):
of I Spy in the sixties, he refused to He's like,
if you don't find me a black stunt performer, I'm
not going to do this show and need to think
about like it's his first it's his big break. This
show is making history. It's the first time a black
man a white man have been on TV as co
leads of a series. It's Hollywood history. He's an up
and coming comedian, but he doesn't have that much power.
But he says, I refused to do the show unless
(13:40):
you find me a black stunt man. Because at that point,
what Hollywood did is if a black person need a
stunt performer, they would take a white stunt performer and
paint him black, literally black. And Bill Cosby saw that
happening and said I won't do it, and they said okay,
and they found him a black stunt performer who Bill
Cosby worked with for years, and black stunt performers say
that's the moment things changed. The thing that is amazing
(14:00):
about that story is that Bill Cosby didn't run to
the news with it. He didn't make it didn't become
a big national story. It very easily could have. So
it's one of the many ways which Bill Cosby throughout
his career made the world better without demanding credit for it. Now,
often Bill Cosby did demand credit for things, but that
was not one of those things. And so when I
read that Noney's documentary was sort of in troubled at
(14:22):
the point. Apparently it's gonna come out now, but at
that point she didn't know what to do with the
documentary because she had to cut an interview she had
with Bill Cosby. I was like, we're gonna lose history
here if we don't tell this story. That was the
thing that made me go, somebody's gonna tell this story.
If this documentary doesn't come out again, it will come
out now. I don't think even Bill Cosby fans know
that story. And again, it just makes the story more complicated.
(14:42):
It doesn't make the story easy to tell, because it's
easy to say if you think he sexual assaulted and
raped these women, you could just say well, he wasn't
that funny anyway. Okay, maybe not funny to you, but
now we're talking about history that made the world better
for black people. Okay, So maybe it's the cynical part
of me, but I'm thinking about whether or not Bill
(15:03):
Cosby used some of those outward facing sides, the humor,
the activism, the sort of non confrontational side of him
in the way he walked into a room on television.
Do you ever think that that might have been all
of those things might have been cover for his sinister side,
(15:24):
the mister Hyde side of him. Jelani Cobb, who's a
great writer and academic, and he's in the dock and
he says a lot of people have tried to sort
of say this as Doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde, but
he says, I think there's a compelling case that it's
all mister Hyde. And I think that gets to that
point that he's actively sort of like putting forward public faces.
He knows that if he gives twenty million dollars to
(15:45):
a university, he gets him a lot of good coverage.
But he gave twenty million dollars to Spellman, a university
for black women. So I think the idea being that
like two things can be true at once, even if
they seem like their opposite. So, and you know, one
of the things that has happened because of this dock
is that I've heard other stories of Bill Cosby, some
of them about sexual assault, but some of them about
just like borish behavior where people would be like I
(16:07):
saw Bill Cosby somewhere and I was excited to meet him,
and he was not nice to me at all, Like
not just blew me off, but not nice or making
fun of people in ways that felt crueler that didn't
feel like the Bill Cosby saw a TV. Now, if
that's just the story, if we don't have all these
sexual assault stories, that is true of many stand up comedians,
but when you know the whole story of Bill Cosby,
it does feel like that offstage face is meaner than
(16:29):
you would expect for a guy who is being heralded
as America's Dad. After the break, we talk about the
forces that enable Cosby to be like mister Hyde and
how this documentary series models a conversation about issues that
we'd rather not face, but must you are listening to
(17:04):
getting even I'm Anita Hill, I'm speaking with W Kamal
Bell about his Doctor commentary series. We need to talk
about Cosby. We had these clues that he was mister Hyde,
yet we were willing to accommodate him. Yes, and so
(17:28):
I really want us to think about why we were
accommodating him. Bottom line is that we stay silent and
we silence others to protect something. And when we're talking
about rape culture, it's not necessarily that we stay silent
to protect the victims, nor is it that we stay
(17:50):
silent to protect the accusers. We're protecting something else, I believe,
some emotional investment that we have in people like Bill Cosby,
or we're protecting an economic investment that we have in
Bill Cosby. Yes, I think it's it's such a like
(18:11):
toxic stew of things we're talking about here. I think
that we have to sort of look at the fact
that one Hollywood was specifically designed to create false images
of its stars. When Bill Cosby first comes onto the scene,
you know, we're still sort of in that studio era
where if Hollywood decides you're going to be a star,
and that back then they were deciding you were going
(18:31):
to be a star, what do they do? They change
your name, they dye your hair, they give you new clothes,
They tell you who you're dating. Even if you're gay,
you're still going to date this woman. And they get
pictures taken of you being casual when you're not being casual,
and they and they control where you go and who
you talk to, and if you're doing things they don't
want you to do, they cover that stuff up. So
(18:53):
Hollywood led us to believe over years that these people
were perfect people even though they weren't. And I think
that starts to cover up a lot of bad behavior,
and it starts to create an industry that is good
at covering up bad behavior, so that by the time
you hear that one of your favorite celebrities is doing
awful things, you're like, but what do you mean he's done.
He's such a good person. I've been told he's done
(19:14):
all these good things. I've been told. So it's it's
a cognitive dissonance where you're like, but he's he's never
done a bad thing before, and what you don't know
is his bad things have been covered up all this time.
If it's a black celebrity, we have lots of role
models that could be promoted to like being stars in
this country, but because of racism, they don't get access
to being stars the same way that white people do.
(19:35):
So we feel like we don't have enough heroes and
role models, and so it is hard for some black
people to think we're gonna lose one, even if it's
at the cost of over sixty women who've accused that
person of rape. We're sort of trying to do the math, like,
was does the good outweigh the bad? Okay, he did
these things that these sixty women, but he did all
these good things and that outweighs the bad. And I
don't think. I don't think the math works that way.
(19:57):
I think you have to sort of go there is
good in there is bad, and we can look at it.
But if the bad is bad enough, you can't. There's
not enough good to outweigh it well. And I also
think that you have this history of over policing in
the black community where they want to keep the police
at bay, especially from somebody who we have learned to
(20:20):
believe that, Okay, if Bill Cosby can make it, he
can lift the rest of us, or some more of
us can come through, and cand you just say a
little bit about the role that respectability politics has played
in a black community perception of good and evil. Whenever
hear black people who feel like they can't handle all
of this information, or don't want to all this information,
(20:42):
or want to pretend like the survivors are lying, it's
sort of tragic for me because I feel like one
thing black people have been good at in his country
is acknowledging the dual nature of America. So we have
been able to sort of on some level, go America
is the greatest country in the world because that's what
we've been sold and we believe that, and we can
sort of point opportunities in our life this might not
have happened in another country. But at the same time
(21:03):
we're also able to acknowledge America is specifically hard on
black people. And so I think factability politics acts like
the structural stuff doesn't exist, and it's just about this
is the greatest country in the world. If Bill Cosby
can make it, you can make it, when in fact,
it's like that's just not true. You can look at
him as an example of like, yeay, he made it,
(21:23):
and yeah he's helping other people get through, but it
is not true that we all have the same access
to making it specifically if you're a black person, specifically
at that point in history. And Cholby's didn't try to
make Bill Cosby the biggest star in the world. It
happened because of a lot of different things that came together.
But Shelbys, We've got a capitalize on it. Once he's
in there. Yes, he's getting access to all the commercials,
(21:45):
all the endorsements, all the opportunities, and all the protection.
I lead something called the Hollywood Commission, and we're charged
with trying to deal with some of these problems in
the entertainment industry of rape culture and the valuing of women.
And I think about how often you hear when someone
(22:07):
is finally revealed somebody like you know, Harvey Weinstein or
Scott Ruden. How often you hear, oh, well, it was
well known in Hollywood, but it's not ever acted upon.
And so I want to span out of bed because
he has a conversation about Cosby, But as you say,
it's a conversation about a bigger social issue we had.
(22:29):
The Hollywood community is only one. I've dealt with, university
communities and church communities all around these issues. And I'm
wondering if you think this series can be a model
for how we move forward on claims of sexual abuse
in the black community, of course, but other communities that
(22:52):
grapple with the same problem, the problem of silencing and
denials and dismissiveness. I hope. So. I think I'm aware
that like, at the end of the day, this is
just a series of like episodes of television, and that's
not legislation. It's not structural change, it's not institutional change.
I have to understand that, Like the work is what
(23:13):
happens after people watch it, when they turn to each
other or they go online and they start to go
what do we do now? And I want to be
engaged in the what do we do now? Conversation. I
don't think it's my job to lead it, but I
think I have sort of This film can help be
a part of that. But to me, I mean, the
film is absolutely wants to be like and all those
places you name, the church, Hollywood, you know, all these
(23:34):
different communities, what are the unifying factors? Like there's an
institutional mandate to protect people in power no matter what,
and I think we have to get away from that
and power are the ways in which you can anonymously
tip us off on some bad behavior. We don't have
that in society generally, not enough. That I think is
one of the key things to work on. That it's
(23:56):
not about adjusting the current nature of all this. It's
about going, we need to redo the structure. Yeah, it's
ultimately about we're doing this structure. But I have to say,
if I want to have a conversation about rape culture
in Hollywood, I'm going to come to you and you're
(24:17):
gonna help me design it. You said nothing but a word.
I feel like there are people and I will I
say this. Who I'm just a I'm a enlisted like
enlisted like a private in the army, And I'm sort
of feel that way about you, Like if you need me,
I'm here for you. I'm happy to I think one
(24:39):
thing that I do know how to do is to
sort of like have these conversations, and but I also
know how to surround myself people who are smarter than me,
who can help these conversations be productive and meaningful and
have lasting effects. Well, thank you, listen, do you have
any questions for me? You've had this conversation a trillion
times about the supreme Court and Clarence Thomas. But for
(25:01):
me personally, how I went into that not understanding and
how I came out on the other stand understanding something
that I did not understand. And a lot of that
was conversations with my mom who was sort of walking
me through what was going on there. The thing that
I think that I've realized as I get older, not
enough of us came through and I was not fixed
(25:21):
at the end of it. I was not like it
took me years to get to where I am. Now.
How can we do this better? What could we have
done better? Because I feel like that, you know, I
don't think I came through far enough on the other side,
but I certainly I understood things about harassing the workplace
that I did not understand before. Yeah, I think the
answer to that doesn't go back to nineteen ninety one,
(25:42):
and I think we're still trying to find how we
can do better. But first of all, I think we
have to create forums where survivors, victims and accuse can
be heard as equals, where the balances and tip toward
one or the other. We also have to have a
(26:08):
forum where people around this because you know, these situations
don't just involve two people. They involve communities many times,
and people in the communities convent their frustrations, anger, disappointment,
and really they're fears. Because I think a lot of
that is happening why people have such a strong reaction.
(26:29):
So we've got to be able to create that space
where people can talk about their fears and understand how
some of them are misplaced. They're based on a lot
of myths and tropes and you know, our racist and sexists.
And ultimately, what I think is necessary as a place
where we can actually have a conversation about equality that's thorough,
(26:56):
that's real. I mean, that covers all kinds of identities
because typically these conversations happen and you know, like put
the Thomas here, Well that's that's focused on racial equality
because he's a black man, But they weren't thinking about
gender equality. So those are my that's my start that
start to answer your question how can we make it better?
(27:19):
And I say this not to patronize you, but I
do believe that they start with real, honest, genuine conversations.
I mean, I be clear, I don't feel patronized by
it at all, because I didn't invent conversations so didn't
Oh my gosh, I was sure it was you. I
won't think whoever it was, and you and you have
(27:42):
brought them to another level. So even if you didn't
invent them, thank you. I appreciate that. I am here
to serve whatever however you feel like. I need to
serve because there's just so much more work to do.
And I feel like I was thinking about this is
the way when you're thinking about my kids. When my
mom handed me the America is Racist baton, it was
lighter than when she had gotten it, you know, And
(28:03):
I think I'm in danger of handing my kids a
heavier baton, and this is you know, yes, it is
very scary. So and I think when my mom handed
to me, the conversation, like you said, was just about racism.
And now that conversation is a lot more inclusive. So
the tome's automatically going to be different, but I don't
want it to be heavier, right right, Well, that's great.
(28:24):
That gives me something to think about and look forward to,
because I think you're absolutely right. The last thing any
of us want to do is to pass on a
world that's in we're shape than what we got when
we were born into it, like, oh my god, I again.
I just want to thank you for making the film.
(28:44):
I want to thank you for really being so honest
sharing with us why you made it, and also, you know,
not just making the film, but really showing us how
we can address these issues, the issue of rape culture
and our denial of it. Thank you. It's an honor
to be here, an extreme honor. And as I said,
I am, I'm now officially enrolled as a soldier in
(29:06):
the I need to Hell Army, so I'm here you
need me. Thank you, Thank you. I grew up in
an era where it was understood that you didn't speak
publicly about bad behavior happening within your community. Today, I
know that it was a survival tactic in black communities
(29:28):
as well as many others, and sometimes it was necessary.
But as Audrey Lord told us, your silence will not
protect you. W Kamal Bell's film We Need to Talk
About Cosby reminds us that silence won't protect our communities either.
(29:48):
Through his documentary, Bell brought victims out of the margins
and placed them visibly in the center of the conversation
as humans, not as caricatures, and he gave activists an
expert space to shed light on the presumptions that make
people unwilling to believe victims and structures and make it
(30:09):
impossible for victims to be heard. Bell allowed for resolution
for the people who participated in the conversation, even if
in the end not everyone agreed. He forces us to
think about accountability in what it looks like we need
to talk about Cosby provides a blueprint for other hard conversations.
(30:36):
Next week, you'll hear me in conversation with Sam Fragoso
on an episode of his podcasts Talk Easy. We'll be
back the following week with authors Alice and Rebecca Walker.
Getting Even is a production of Pushkin Industries and is
written and hosted by me Anita Hill. It is produced
(30:57):
by Mola Board and Brittany Brown. Our editor is Sarah Kramer,
our engineer is Amanda kay Wang, and our showrunner is
Sasha Matthias. Luis Gara composed original music for the show.
Our executive producers are Mia Lobel and Letal malad Our.
(31:18):
Director of Development is Justine Lane. At Pushkin. Thanks to
Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton, John Schnarz
and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter at
Anita Hill and on Facebook at Anita Hill. You can
(31:42):
find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin Pods, and
you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm.
If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries,
consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and
you can hear Getting Even and other Pushkin shows add
(32:03):
free and receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up the Getting
Even Show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot
fm to find more Pushkin podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen
Pushkin Getting Even is produced by Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to
Pushkin Plus and you can hear Getting Even and other
Pushkin shows add free and receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign
up on the Getting Even show page in Apple Podcasts
(00:39):
or at Pushkin dot Fm. As a black man in
America who grew up through this, we need to talk
about Bill Cosby. That's filmmaker and comedian W. Kamal Bell,
who recently released the documentary series We Need to talk
About Cosby or Bell, who is drawn to challenging conversations.
(01:04):
This was a conversation that had to happen, you know.
Series comes out of the fact that as a black
kid who was born in the early seventies, who grew
up in an America where Bill Cosby was part of
the wallpaper of Black America, and I was right there
every week wanting to be one of the Huxtables. I
just sort of thought in some sense that I was
walking in the path that Bill Cosby had created, and
(01:26):
to try to aspire to be like him, to be
a comedian who is funny but also does good in
the world, who is intelligent but also silly and helps
pull other people along who may not be pulled along otherwise.
And then the sixty women came forward that I was
like wrestling with how does all this make sense? Because
they seem to be such disparate truths, And so the
(01:47):
documentary is just me inviting people to have that conversation
about how do we make sense of all of this?
And it's not a conversation, and lots of people want
to have. More people said no than yes, But the
people who showed up really showed up, including many of
the survivors. Bill Cosby is the trojan horse for having
the bigger conversation about rape culture in America. I'm Anita Hill.
This is Getting Even, my podcast about equality and what
(02:11):
it takes to get there. On Getting Even, I speak
with people who are improving our imperfect world, people who
took risks and broke the rules. In this episode, w
Kamal Bell and I discuss the importance of having hard conversations,
the kind of conversations that move us forward as a society,
(02:36):
and how Bell's documentary we need to talk about Cosby
accomplishes exactly that tell us about your series. It's title,
We need to talk Who's the Wii? That's funny? I
see the wei as people who see that title and go, oh, yeah,
(02:58):
we do. I think it's one of those things that
you opt into it if it resonates with you. I've
seen many people go, I don't even talk about Cosby,
and I'm like, well, good, there's lots of other TV
for you to watch, you know. But I think for me,
when we release the trailer and the title, to see
many people go finally, we're gonna have this discussion. And
I think we were very clear about like we're going
to talk about all of its career and the crimes,
(03:20):
and to see a lot of people go, I've been
wanting to have this conversation but not knowing where to
have it. At the core because I'm a black man.
Black people are the core part of this conversation, because
his effect on us is very different than the effect
on the greater world. But certainly the Cosby Show was
not just the biggest show in Black America. It was
the biggest show in America. So a lot of people
who are not black also are defined by that. We
(03:42):
there's also a generational divide here. I think if you're
under the age of thirty five, maybe you're like, I
don't understand what we need to talk about. I get
it's a he's a criminal who raped a lot of people.
I don't know what we need to talk about, and
I've seen some of that, but I think there is
like if you were my generation, was the gen X
or the jet or Baby boomers, you came up sort
of admiring this man. And so I really do think
(04:04):
that part of this is a generational conversation. Yeah, and
generational conversations are really really difficult to translate sometimes. Yes,
but you are letting the public in to your conversation,
your way of making sense out of the whole episode
in the scandal that is whirling around Bill Cosby. Now,
(04:28):
who do you think should hear this conversation? I mean,
a big part of this is about really examining a
rape culture in America, and not all of that is crime.
A lot of that is things that are quote unquote
jokes or ways in which we talk about sexual salt
and rape, but also ways in which we have been
(04:49):
acculturated to treat women at the workplace. I sort of
came of age in the nineties when a lot of
these conversations started to happen, When we started to you know,
I think about, like specifically related to you, the Clarence
Thomas case. I was a teenager who was like trying
to understand what was going on and not really able
to have that conversation. Yet I think about like the
(05:09):
Mike Tyson case, and times in my life when it's
like I have been sort of acculturated not by my
mom but by rape culture overall to sort of ask
those were what was she doing there? Why would she
say that? Why? Why can't you make that joke? Why
are people being so sensitive? And then luckily I grew
out of that, and so for me, a part of
this is like we still haven't figured out how pervasive
(05:31):
rape culture is in this country and how damaging it
can be. Where then a woman says she's been raped
or actually assaulted, that many of us immediately go what
was she doing there? Instead of going how can we
help you? How can we heal you? How can we
get you some justice? Do you think your role as
a father influenced your desire to explore this topic? Yeah,
(05:54):
I mean I think that for me, I have three daughters.
When my wife got pregnant with our first kid, I
wasn't one of those men who was like, I need
a boy because we need to play football. I didn't
play football as a kid, so I didn't know what.
I was just happy that the child was healthy. But
then when my oldest daughter was born and we started
hanging out and I saw her personality and mostly got
(06:14):
pregnant again, I was like, I want another one of these,
I want another girl. We'd ended up having three girls,
and I was sort of always aware, and I would
joke about this that my role was to be a
double agent, to tell them this is what men are doing,
this is what men are saying, this is how you
have to be prepared. So I think that yes, being
a father has affected me definitely, being a father of
three girls. But when I'm doing the work on the series,
(06:36):
I'm not doing that thing where it's like, as a
father of three girls, we need to talk about cosbia.
I'm very careful to not use my daughters as props
for becoming a better person. I think I want to
be a better person because I have these daughters, but
I don't want them to become public props for me
becoming a better person. Well that's interesting because I often
hear from a man who say, well, I never really
(06:57):
understood this issue until I had daughters, and I wonder
why they waited until they had daughters or It's definitely
an aolving conversations. So my daughters are part of that
evolving conversation. But you know, my wife wouldn't have a
good wouldn't have married me if I wasn't already sort
of evolving on those ideas. So you have to capture
(07:20):
a lot of different perspectives, a whole lot, and you
you did it very well. I have to say in
the series, thank you. There is so much footage and
information about Bill Cosby. On the one hand, when you
talk about the career, there's so much information, and then
even though there are multiple accusers, there's you know, we
(07:43):
know very little about them, example, the basics of their story.
How do you put that together and make that a
balance conversation and even a four episode series. I mean,
we were aware and I'm going to talk about my
team here. This is a delicate balance. There weren't models
in the world of how you achieved this balance. I
think the two documentaries that I associate with this are O. J.
(08:07):
Simpson made in America by ezral In, which was like,
how do you tell the story of a complicated man,
you tell a story of a complicated America. And so
I feel like that was one of the tent poles
at this and the other one was Dreamhampton Surviving r
Kelly about not shying away from letting survivors talk, like,
don't just reduce them to sound bites. So in my mind,
I was sort of trying to sort of bring these
two different types of filmmaking together, like, we don't want
(08:29):
people to think we tricked them into watching a documentary
that's just about isn't Bill Cosby Great? Even though some
of this is going to come off as isn't Bill
Cosby Great? So you have to sort of figure out
how do you sprinkle breadcrumbs? How do you sort of
mix those tones up in a way so that people
who are there for one know that the other one's coming,
and people who are not there for the other know
that the other one's coming. So they didn't know there's
going to be a sort of a pendulum. How do
(08:51):
you keep it compelling? And I think the biggest thing
we figured out was, like in the Cosby sections, the paces,
when we're talking about his career, the pace moves pretty
quickly because there's a lot to cover, there's a lot
of good archival, and you don't you can sort of
really motivate people through it with how you a sort
of edit it, but when you get to the survivors,
you slow down. We didn't use a lot of archival
(09:13):
to cover up there talking. We didn't use music to
let you know how to feel, We didn't do a
lot of the tricks of TV to sort of go,
this is what we're trying to get you to. We
sort of let them talk with not a lot of adornment,
and it really sort of gave the dock the sort
of like multiple shifts and movements that a little bit
I was worried we're released it. People would be like,
this is two different docks compounded into one. But people
(09:34):
really understand how we're like we're down shifting and up shifting,
and I think people generally seem to really appreciate that. Yeah.
I really was struck by how much space you gave
survivors to talk about their experience, and I wondered if
you learn something about the scope of the allegations from
listening to them that maybe has been missing in the
(09:57):
public conversation. Yeah, I think very early on when we
started doing the research, I didn't realize that some of
the allegations went back as far as they did, that
they sort of track with this whole career, that they
go back to the sixties. I think that even people
who supports the survivors don't understand, and people who don't
support the survivors want to sort of categorize this as
sixty one night stands that went wrong, maybe went wrong,
(10:20):
or sixty women who wanted something from him, and then
they're trying to be vindictive. But when you look at
the work that he put into sort of courting these women,
that was not something I was aware of. So, like,
there's women who sort of were in He was in
their lives for years, and they would not hear from
him for a long time and think they weren't going
to hear from him again, and then he would reach
out to them, and he would fly them around the
country and pay for acting lessons and all these things,
(10:42):
and then one day they would wake up and realize
what they've gotten into. I didn't realize how much work
he put into grooming these women. Yeah, it's almost predatory. Yes,
I think one of the survivors says he put as
much work into his career as he did into these activities. Yes,
I thought that was a very interesting line. And you know,
you've talked about your connection to Bill Cosby, and you've
(11:05):
talked a bit about America's connection to but couldn't you
say a little bit more about that? Yeah, Dick Gregory
kicks the door open, and she's the first black man,
black comedian his book to be on late night talk shows.
Dick Gregor was probably the biggest being in the country,
but then he turned towards activism by talking very directly
to white America about racism. And so Bill Cosby comes
(11:28):
on the scene, and then Bill Cosby's able to sort
of really saunter through that door, but he said, I'm
not going to be confrontational with you. Cosby is sort
of this very safe and palatable choice. But also he
was really funny and talking about things that the white
people could relate to, just go into the movies and
his mom and football and Bible stories, and so he
(11:49):
really takes up a space that America needed of like
we're seeing all these images of black people on TV
at a time when if you turn on the news,
black people are engaged in the work of trying to
make America anti racist, getting our butts kicked on the
local news or the TV news, doing sit ins. At
that point, Martha King Junior is considered to be a
dangerous radical by many white Americans. This one, this handsome,
(12:11):
charismatic guy. He seems okay, and black people will feel like, oh,
we can finally turn the TV and see one of us.
And he's not shucking and jiving, he's not half stepping.
He seems to be a fully embodied version of himself.
And I think that you can't talk about the history
of black people in television without talking about Bill Cosby
at that point in his career. You know, I learned
(12:34):
that he was also something of an activist in the
entertainment world, so that on the one hand, he was
non confrontational as a comic, but as an actor he
became more of an activist. Let's said, we're right to activist.
I'll say, can you tell us about that? And did
you know about it beforehand? So when before this film
(12:58):
was ever even inklinging of an idea? After all the
survivors started coming forward, I read an article about a
filmmaker named Tony Robinson, a black woman who was making
film about the history of black stunt performers in Hollywood,
and her doc told the story of how Bill Cosby
was the person not among the people, but was the
person who integrated black stunt performing because on the set
(13:19):
of I Spy in the sixties, he refused to He's like,
if you don't find me a black stunt performer, I'm
not going to do this show and need to think
about like it's his first it's his big break. This
show is making history. It's the first time a black
man a white man have been on TV as co
leads of a series. It's Hollywood history. He's an up
and coming comedian, but he doesn't have that much power.
But he says, I refused to do the show unless
(13:40):
you find me a black stunt man. Because at that point,
what Hollywood did is if a black person need a
stunt performer, they would take a white stunt performer and
paint him black, literally black. And Bill Cosby saw that
happening and said I won't do it, and they said okay,
and they found him a black stunt performer who Bill
Cosby worked with for years, and black stunt performers say
that's the moment things changed. The thing that is amazing
(14:00):
about that story is that Bill Cosby didn't run to
the news with it. He didn't make it didn't become
a big national story. It very easily could have. So
it's one of the many ways which Bill Cosby throughout
his career made the world better without demanding credit for it. Now,
often Bill Cosby did demand credit for things, but that
was not one of those things. And so when I
read that Noney's documentary was sort of in troubled at
(14:22):
the point. Apparently it's gonna come out now, but at
that point she didn't know what to do with the
documentary because she had to cut an interview she had
with Bill Cosby. I was like, we're gonna lose history
here if we don't tell this story. That was the
thing that made me go, somebody's gonna tell this story.
If this documentary doesn't come out again, it will come
out now. I don't think even Bill Cosby fans know
that story. And again, it just makes the story more complicated.
(14:42):
It doesn't make the story easy to tell, because it's
easy to say if you think he sexual assaulted and
raped these women, you could just say well, he wasn't
that funny anyway. Okay, maybe not funny to you, but
now we're talking about history that made the world better
for black people. Okay, So maybe it's the cynical part
of me, but I'm thinking about whether or not Bill
(15:03):
Cosby used some of those outward facing sides, the humor,
the activism, the sort of non confrontational side of him
in the way he walked into a room on television.
Do you ever think that that might have been all
of those things might have been cover for his sinister side,
(15:24):
the mister Hyde side of him. Jelani Cobb, who's a
great writer and academic, and he's in the dock and
he says a lot of people have tried to sort
of say this as Doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde, but
he says, I think there's a compelling case that it's
all mister Hyde. And I think that gets to that
point that he's actively sort of like putting forward public faces.
He knows that if he gives twenty million dollars to
(15:45):
a university, he gets him a lot of good coverage.
But he gave twenty million dollars to Spellman, a university
for black women. So I think the idea being that
like two things can be true at once, even if
they seem like their opposite. So, and you know, one
of the things that has happened because of this dock
is that I've heard other stories of Bill Cosby, some
of them about sexual assault, but some of them about
just like borish behavior where people would be like I
(16:07):
saw Bill Cosby somewhere and I was excited to meet him,
and he was not nice to me at all, Like
not just blew me off, but not nice or making
fun of people in ways that felt crueler that didn't
feel like the Bill Cosby saw a TV. Now, if
that's just the story, if we don't have all these
sexual assault stories, that is true of many stand up comedians,
but when you know the whole story of Bill Cosby,
it does feel like that offstage face is meaner than
(16:29):
you would expect for a guy who is being heralded
as America's Dad. After the break, we talk about the
forces that enable Cosby to be like mister Hyde and
how this documentary series models a conversation about issues that
we'd rather not face, but must you are listening to
(17:04):
getting even I'm Anita Hill, I'm speaking with W Kamal
Bell about his Doctor commentary series. We need to talk
about Cosby. We had these clues that he was mister Hyde,
yet we were willing to accommodate him. Yes, and so
(17:28):
I really want us to think about why we were
accommodating him. Bottom line is that we stay silent and
we silence others to protect something. And when we're talking
about rape culture, it's not necessarily that we stay silent
to protect the victims, nor is it that we stay
(17:50):
silent to protect the accusers. We're protecting something else, I believe,
some emotional investment that we have in people like Bill Cosby,
or we're protecting an economic investment that we have in
Bill Cosby. Yes, I think it's it's such a like
(18:11):
toxic stew of things we're talking about here. I think
that we have to sort of look at the fact
that one Hollywood was specifically designed to create false images
of its stars. When Bill Cosby first comes onto the scene,
you know, we're still sort of in that studio era
where if Hollywood decides you're going to be a star,
and that back then they were deciding you were going
(18:31):
to be a star, what do they do? They change
your name, they dye your hair, they give you new clothes,
They tell you who you're dating. Even if you're gay,
you're still going to date this woman. And they get
pictures taken of you being casual when you're not being casual,
and they and they control where you go and who
you talk to, and if you're doing things they don't
want you to do, they cover that stuff up. So
(18:53):
Hollywood led us to believe over years that these people
were perfect people even though they weren't. And I think
that starts to cover up a lot of bad behavior,
and it starts to create an industry that is good
at covering up bad behavior, so that by the time
you hear that one of your favorite celebrities is doing
awful things, you're like, but what do you mean he's done.
He's such a good person. I've been told he's done
(19:14):
all these good things. I've been told. So it's it's
a cognitive dissonance where you're like, but he's he's never
done a bad thing before, and what you don't know
is his bad things have been covered up all this time.
If it's a black celebrity, we have lots of role
models that could be promoted to like being stars in
this country, but because of racism, they don't get access
to being stars the same way that white people do.
(19:35):
So we feel like we don't have enough heroes and
role models, and so it is hard for some black
people to think we're gonna lose one, even if it's
at the cost of over sixty women who've accused that
person of rape. We're sort of trying to do the math, like,
was does the good outweigh the bad? Okay, he did
these things that these sixty women, but he did all
these good things and that outweighs the bad. And I
don't think. I don't think the math works that way.
(19:57):
I think you have to sort of go there is
good in there is bad, and we can look at it.
But if the bad is bad enough, you can't. There's
not enough good to outweigh it well. And I also
think that you have this history of over policing in
the black community where they want to keep the police
at bay, especially from somebody who we have learned to
(20:20):
believe that, Okay, if Bill Cosby can make it, he
can lift the rest of us, or some more of
us can come through, and cand you just say a
little bit about the role that respectability politics has played
in a black community perception of good and evil. Whenever
hear black people who feel like they can't handle all
of this information, or don't want to all this information,
(20:42):
or want to pretend like the survivors are lying, it's
sort of tragic for me because I feel like one
thing black people have been good at in his country
is acknowledging the dual nature of America. So we have
been able to sort of on some level, go America
is the greatest country in the world because that's what
we've been sold and we believe that, and we can
sort of point opportunities in our life this might not
have happened in another country. But at the same time
(21:03):
we're also able to acknowledge America is specifically hard on
black people. And so I think factability politics acts like
the structural stuff doesn't exist, and it's just about this
is the greatest country in the world. If Bill Cosby
can make it, you can make it, when in fact,
it's like that's just not true. You can look at
him as an example of like, yeay, he made it,
(21:23):
and yeah he's helping other people get through, but it
is not true that we all have the same access
to making it specifically if you're a black person, specifically
at that point in history. And Cholby's didn't try to
make Bill Cosby the biggest star in the world. It
happened because of a lot of different things that came together.
But Shelbys, We've got a capitalize on it. Once he's
in there. Yes, he's getting access to all the commercials,
(21:45):
all the endorsements, all the opportunities, and all the protection.
I lead something called the Hollywood Commission, and we're charged
with trying to deal with some of these problems in
the entertainment industry of rape culture and the valuing of women.
And I think about how often you hear when someone
(22:07):
is finally revealed somebody like you know, Harvey Weinstein or
Scott Ruden. How often you hear, oh, well, it was
well known in Hollywood, but it's not ever acted upon.
And so I want to span out of bed because
he has a conversation about Cosby, But as you say,
it's a conversation about a bigger social issue we had.
(22:29):
The Hollywood community is only one. I've dealt with, university
communities and church communities all around these issues. And I'm
wondering if you think this series can be a model
for how we move forward on claims of sexual abuse
in the black community, of course, but other communities that
(22:52):
grapple with the same problem, the problem of silencing and
denials and dismissiveness. I hope. So. I think I'm aware
that like, at the end of the day, this is
just a series of like episodes of television, and that's
not legislation. It's not structural change, it's not institutional change.
I have to understand that, Like the work is what
(23:13):
happens after people watch it, when they turn to each
other or they go online and they start to go
what do we do now? And I want to be
engaged in the what do we do now? Conversation. I
don't think it's my job to lead it, but I
think I have sort of This film can help be
a part of that. But to me, I mean, the
film is absolutely wants to be like and all those
places you name, the church, Hollywood, you know, all these
(23:34):
different communities, what are the unifying factors? Like there's an
institutional mandate to protect people in power no matter what,
and I think we have to get away from that
and power are the ways in which you can anonymously
tip us off on some bad behavior. We don't have
that in society generally, not enough. That I think is
one of the key things to work on. That it's
(23:56):
not about adjusting the current nature of all this. It's
about going, we need to redo the structure. Yeah, it's
ultimately about we're doing this structure. But I have to say,
if I want to have a conversation about rape culture
in Hollywood, I'm going to come to you and you're
(24:17):
gonna help me design it. You said nothing but a word.
I feel like there are people and I will I
say this. Who I'm just a I'm a enlisted like
enlisted like a private in the army, And I'm sort
of feel that way about you, Like if you need me,
I'm here for you. I'm happy to I think one
(24:39):
thing that I do know how to do is to
sort of like have these conversations, and but I also
know how to surround myself people who are smarter than me,
who can help these conversations be productive and meaningful and
have lasting effects. Well, thank you, listen, do you have
any questions for me? You've had this conversation a trillion
times about the supreme Court and Clarence Thomas. But for
(25:01):
me personally, how I went into that not understanding and
how I came out on the other stand understanding something
that I did not understand. And a lot of that
was conversations with my mom who was sort of walking
me through what was going on there. The thing that
I think that I've realized as I get older, not
enough of us came through and I was not fixed
(25:21):
at the end of it. I was not like it
took me years to get to where I am. Now.
How can we do this better? What could we have
done better? Because I feel like that, you know, I
don't think I came through far enough on the other side,
but I certainly I understood things about harassing the workplace
that I did not understand before. Yeah, I think the
answer to that doesn't go back to nineteen ninety one,
(25:42):
and I think we're still trying to find how we
can do better. But first of all, I think we
have to create forums where survivors, victims and accuse can
be heard as equals, where the balances and tip toward
one or the other. We also have to have a
(26:08):
forum where people around this because you know, these situations
don't just involve two people. They involve communities many times,
and people in the communities convent their frustrations, anger, disappointment,
and really they're fears. Because I think a lot of
that is happening why people have such a strong reaction.
(26:29):
So we've got to be able to create that space
where people can talk about their fears and understand how
some of them are misplaced. They're based on a lot
of myths and tropes and you know, our racist and sexists.
And ultimately, what I think is necessary as a place
where we can actually have a conversation about equality that's thorough,
(26:56):
that's real. I mean, that covers all kinds of identities
because typically these conversations happen and you know, like put
the Thomas here, Well that's that's focused on racial equality
because he's a black man, But they weren't thinking about
gender equality. So those are my that's my start that
start to answer your question how can we make it better?
(27:19):
And I say this not to patronize you, but I
do believe that they start with real, honest, genuine conversations.
I mean, I be clear, I don't feel patronized by
it at all, because I didn't invent conversations so didn't
Oh my gosh, I was sure it was you. I
won't think whoever it was, and you and you have
(27:42):
brought them to another level. So even if you didn't
invent them, thank you. I appreciate that. I am here
to serve whatever however you feel like. I need to
serve because there's just so much more work to do.
And I feel like I was thinking about this is
the way when you're thinking about my kids. When my
mom handed me the America is Racist baton, it was
lighter than when she had gotten it, you know, And
(28:03):
I think I'm in danger of handing my kids a
heavier baton, and this is you know, yes, it is
very scary. So and I think when my mom handed
to me, the conversation, like you said, was just about racism.
And now that conversation is a lot more inclusive. So
the tome's automatically going to be different, but I don't
want it to be heavier, right right, Well, that's great.
(28:24):
That gives me something to think about and look forward to,
because I think you're absolutely right. The last thing any
of us want to do is to pass on a
world that's in we're shape than what we got when
we were born into it, like, oh my god, I again.
I just want to thank you for making the film.
(28:44):
I want to thank you for really being so honest
sharing with us why you made it, and also, you know,
not just making the film, but really showing us how
we can address these issues, the issue of rape culture
and our denial of it. Thank you. It's an honor
to be here, an extreme honor. And as I said,
I am, I'm now officially enrolled as a soldier in
(29:06):
the I need to Hell Army, so I'm here you
need me. Thank you, Thank you. I grew up in
an era where it was understood that you didn't speak
publicly about bad behavior happening within your community. Today, I
know that it was a survival tactic in black communities
(29:28):
as well as many others, and sometimes it was necessary.
But as Audrey Lord told us, your silence will not
protect you. W Kamal Bell's film We Need to Talk
About Cosby reminds us that silence won't protect our communities either.
(29:48):
Through his documentary, Bell brought victims out of the margins
and placed them visibly in the center of the conversation
as humans, not as caricatures, and he gave activists an
expert space to shed light on the presumptions that make
people unwilling to believe victims and structures and make it
(30:09):
impossible for victims to be heard. Bell allowed for resolution
for the people who participated in the conversation, even if
in the end not everyone agreed. He forces us to
think about accountability in what it looks like we need
to talk about Cosby provides a blueprint for other hard conversations.
(30:36):
Next week, you'll hear me in conversation with Sam Fragoso
on an episode of his podcasts Talk Easy. We'll be
back the following week with authors Alice and Rebecca Walker.
Getting Even is a production of Pushkin Industries and is
written and hosted by me Anita Hill. It is produced
(30:57):
by Mola Board and Brittany Brown. Our editor is Sarah Kramer,
our engineer is Amanda kay Wang, and our showrunner is
Sasha Matthias. Luis Gara composed original music for the show.
Our executive producers are Mia Lobel and Letal malad Our.
(31:18):
Director of Development is Justine Lane. At Pushkin. Thanks to
Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton, John Schnarz
and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter at
Anita Hill and on Facebook at Anita Hill. You can
(31:42):
find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin Pods, and
you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm.
If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries,
consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and
you can hear Getting Even and other Pushkin shows add
(32:03):
free and receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up the Getting
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