November 25, 2025 • 34 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time, time, time, Luck and load.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Michael Very show is on the air. Houston. Duncan is
our guest. He is doing a new one man show
on the Great Thomas Soul. When I asked the question,
it was because I'm genuinely thinking about how I would
(00:31):
do it if I were doing that. I don't have
the acting skill you do. But I research people. I
study them. I say, I take them apart and put
them back together. I'm fascinated by by not just what
people have to say, especially someone like Soul who has
so much to say, but how they arrived at that.
You know, his experience with Milton Friedman and having been
in Friedman's class at the University of Chicago, and he says,
(00:54):
but I left the class and I was still a liberal.
And he goes to work for the Labor Department and
he realizes that the Labor Department does not care about
black people or employees, both of whom they claim to
and that when he pointed out that the data was
actually harmful to these people from what they were recommending,
(01:14):
that they said, that doesn't matter. And that was the moment,
that was his aha moment, that was his his eureka,
Oh my goodness, these people don't believe anything they're saying,
and it it transformed him and he went on to
be the man he is today. You know, I think
that's just absolutely fascinating. And that tells you this man
wasn't born into this, right, I mean, I've made a
(01:35):
transformation in my life from from what I think and
and where I am, and most of us have, and
in his I think that will I can. Sorry, I'm
thinking and planning this, this project for you. I'm writing
it in my head Clifton right now as we talk,
uh and and I'm just imagining you have such a
great opportunity to tell that as just that is that
is fantastic. So what does it look like? I mean,
(01:57):
will this be a will you go on tour? Because
if you do, we're coordinating Houston for you and all
of our markets for that matter. But what do you
envision this looking like?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Well, right now, the plan is to spend the next
six months developing, you know, researching and developing a first draft.
I've got a great line producer as well as some
great trusted friends who are New York sharp in terms of,
you know, their ability to discern what's good and what
is not. So that's the first step. But then as
(02:26):
time goes on, what I want to do. It's sort
of like what a stand up comedian does, right. They
go around and they do all types of venues to
test out their material because you don't know what works
until you do it in front of an audience. The
audience is the one who teaches you how to do
the show right. What you know, what moments are working,
what moments are clicking. When are they on the edge
(02:46):
of their seats, When are they listening? When are they
sort of unwrapping candies and coughing and wrestling through their programs?
When are they laughing? When are they you know, silent?
You know, are they gasping anywhere? And so you know,
I mean it's a piece of live theater and one
of the one of the great things about theater. And
you touched on this in your intro is you know,
it's just it's part of You're in this experience. You're
(03:09):
in a room with other people, other human beings, sharing
the same air, the same molecules, the same sound waves,
the same space, and experiencing something together. And that's the
magic of theater that you have you have the the
relationship between the actor and the audience that you don't
get when you're doing TV and film. And so that's
really a big prospect for me, is that, you know,
(03:30):
just touring around and seeing how people respond and what
they respond to. And I always enjoy talking to people
after shows as well to see like what worked for
them and what didn't, and also seeing the country but
will also be nice. But then ultimately the goal is
to upload the show on the internet so that the
whole world can see it. And but that's that's only
after it's been you know, honed and tightened and and
(03:55):
performed before you know, a bunch of audiences, which is
again what comedians do before they film their own special.
So that's you know, it might be a grueling road process.
But there's already been a few people who have been.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Like, yeah, you know, come do it. I somehow think
you're up for Clifton. You fell to the depths, didn't
expect it, had no net. We're waiting tables and wondering
what had become of your life. And and somehow since
then you you have had to talk about a guy
having a resurgence. You've had a pretty darn good, run yourself,
(04:26):
and I think it's it's headed upward. And I think
now you're in control of your career in a way
that even though you were an accomplished actor, you could
you were always at the at the mercy of the
casting agent. Now you're taking control of your own career
and the product you produce, and I think that's I
think that's very exciting. I think that's very exciting. Have
(04:47):
you given a thought, sorry, have you given thought to
meeting Thomas Old to conversations to that process.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yeah, well, you know you mentioned before. I mean, he
is notoriously elusive. We say so initially, I mean I
was so excited. I didn't really think about it because
I figured I'm never going to get a response from him.
But I know people who know him, they're trying to
get in touch with him, or to get us in touch,
I should say, because you know, at the end of
the day, I was like, yeah, I'm so excited about it,
the idea, but be kind of weird to do this
(05:17):
whole play without without talking to him and you know,
hearing what he has to say about it. So we're
trying to get in touch with him, as you know,
it's very, very difficult to do so, and I'm like,
you know, the dude is almost one hundred years old,
so I kind of want to leave him alone and
so he can have you know, so he can sort of,
you know, enjoy enjoy his time and not be pestered
(05:40):
by by some you know, young gen X, old millennial
who wants to you know, I guess talk about him.
So but we're working on trying to get in touch
with him, and you know, just even the phone call
would be would be cool. The visit will be even better.
But you know, we'll we'll see how that pans out.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
The good news is there is a great body of
work out there, of interviews and I often quote examples
he gives in the book Basic Economics. And I studied
economics in college. I took a number of courses, and
I've read my wife was in a PhD program when
she switched to law from economics. Economics is something I
read about a lot, is something I think about, It's
(06:20):
something I stay I try to stay on top of.
And yet he writes this book Basic Economics, which is
kind of economics for people that didn't go to college,
and it is so beautifully written because of the simplicity.
Thomas Soul doesn't feel the need to be inaccessible to
show that he's brilliant. He does just the opposite. He
makes the difficult understandable. And you know, I think Rush
(06:43):
Limbo had a knack for doing that on the radio,
but Soul does that with very complicated concepts, and then
he'll use a little anecdote of you know, when he
was traveling in India and this happened. That book Basic
Economics is my favorite of everything he did because of
the accessibility and because of the ability to democratize knowledge
(07:05):
about simple scientific concepts underpinning economics. And I think that
that alone, if that was all he ever did, would
be amazing, and of course he did so much more well.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I totally agree. You know, I think Basic Economics should
be required reading for all high school students in the
United States. We'd have a way, way different country. And
I mean, he wrote it to be accessible, and I
was like, dude, if even a dummy like me can
understand what he's saying, you know, that is that is
a That's a great gift to be able to, like
you said, break down these complex issues and simplify them.
(07:37):
For the messes. I'm also thinking of someone like the
physicist Richard Feynman. Feinnman was also someone who really championed simplicity.
But the thing about it is that even in the
arts as well and the craft of acting, you know, simplicity, simplicity,
simplicity is always key. Be specific, be simple. You don't
need a bunch of ornate you know, flowery language, or
(07:58):
you don't have to use a bunch of gestures or whatever.
Just get to what's simple and what's true. And that's
as true for I think Thomas Soul's work as it
is for acting as well. So it's kind of funny
now that I'm saying it's out loud, but in a
way that that approach to make something, make something simple
and accessible, and it was probably a good ethos to follow.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
What else do you want to marry? What do you
want you.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Want to the Michael Barry.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Just to say the word and.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I'll throw a asshole around for god. Clifton Duncan, a celebrated,
much respected stage actor, is our guest. He is doing
a new one man show on the great Thomas Soul
and sharing some details about that with us. When friends
of mine from law school used to say, you know, Michael,
(08:47):
you're better than that. You're talking about such simplistic things
in such simplistic ways. I would respond, and they never
liked this. I would say, I sell big Max, not caviar,
because it's the masses. And so many times we try
to distance ourselves in this ivory tower from real people
by using language that is hard to understand and therefore disconnects,
(09:08):
when the point is the ideas should be universal and
they should be accessible. And I think that's one of
the things that Soul does so beautifully and so modest,
because he does not attempt to hold himself out as
if he's a pontificating professor, but quite the opposite.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
He tells a story about he was teaching at I
think it was Cornell. I think it was Cornell, and
he was talking about how affirmative action had hurt the
black students and how he went to the admissions office
and he found that the students who were struggling the
most were students who were black and shouldn't have been admitted.
And his point was these students were going to fill
out of Cornell and fell out of life because of
(09:49):
what would happen when that student should have gone to
Indiana or Indiana State and they would have been an
a student and they could have built along the way.
It's like throwing a kid from high school into the
pro into the pro and they're not ready for that,
and you think you're helping them, but you're not. Clifton
Duncan is our guest. He's working on a project called Soul,
a solo play about an American genius. Now, I noticed
(10:11):
recently you did a GoFundMe and your goal was to
raise ten thousand dollars and in a matter of hours
you had raised seventy two thousand dollars with six hundred
and twenty eight backers. It is clear to me that
there is an audience for what you're doing, and more importantly,
there are a lot of people out here like our
show that support what you're doing. That's got to be
(10:31):
got to be humbling and gratifying. It definitely is, and
on some level it's a bit daunting. But after remind
myself that people are very excited and they want to
they want to see me succeed, which is great. But
I think the biggest story about that is that right now,
the American theater industry is still reeling from its self
inflicted wounds from the pandemic years.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
And I mean Als one of the only people who
was saying publicly like, we shouldn't we shouldn't be doing this.
This is not the right way to go. You go
to destroy the industry, And they're as of now, I mean,
Broadway still has not recovered from from their closures, their
theaters around the country which are truncating their seasons or
they're closing outright, and you know, the leaders within the
(11:15):
theater industry are just are talking about how there's just
you know, how it's so expensive to produce shows, and
you know, twenty percent of the audience hasn't even come back,
and owners are drying up in the ideaiata. And I'm
just one guy, and within the span of a couple
of weeks, I've raised almost one hundred thousand dollars. So
on one hand, it's a bit of I take a
(11:36):
little bit of joy in the fact that these people
who decided that I should not be allowed to work
for making a very logical medical decision for myself are
sitting there wondering, what the heck are we going to do?
How we're going to you know, like I hear from
my friends who are still in the game in New
York who are saying, you know, own the stars are
making money now, like you know, the regular sort of
jobbing journeymen actors who they make their living, but you know,
(11:59):
they have to hustle it it. There's just nowhere near
as much money anymore. At the same time, what's also
great is that it indicates to me what I've felt
for a long time, which is that there is a huge,
huge audience outside of these deep blue metros who think
they're so much better than everybody else and think they're
so much more sophisticated than everybody else.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Like, no, you are something right there, brother, keep going.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well you know people, but people want
to see great arts and they don't want to you know,
made by people that don't hate them. And there's this idea,
you know, and I spent so much time around these people,
but they think everyone in Red America or flyover country,
so to speak, is some redneck groub or whatever they like.
They don't get it. They just don't get it. And
to me, I think the bigger story, it's bigger than
(12:43):
myself is that there are people out there. I mean,
there are so many like sort of small donors to
the project who want to see succeed or I get
messages from people who say, like, I don't really have
anything to give, but I'm like yo, you know, like
great comments and good vibes are also accepted as means
of support. So there's a huge, untapped, massive people who
are who want to come and give their you know,
(13:06):
and trade their money and their time for a great
experience at the theatre in the arts. And that's that's
really the big story for me, because I think more
I suppose I call the more conservative leaning, more right leaning,
you know whatever. One of my frustrations has been that,
you know, there hasn't been that much support for the
for the arts, but why would they write you know
what I mean, that they've been so reviled by people
(13:27):
who are making so much of the culture. So it's
just it's really gratifying, you know, on multiple levels, but
especially because it's it's money coming from people that, you know,
aren't they They have been pushed out, you know what
I mean, from from the industry, and so that that's
the bigger story there is that there is a there
is a a hunger for for arts and for culture
(13:48):
and for entertainment, and that is the that's really gratifying
for me, because I'm like, dude, this is it, This
is it right here, there's way, way, way, way more
people who outside of New York and LA.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And trying to.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Doing work that appeals to do those people, to me,
seems like a much much, a much better idea than
catering to the sliver of people who adhere to these
really sort of extreme left wing views which just keep
getting more and more insane.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
You Clifton Duncan is our guest is a great stage actor,
was in Broadway. He refused to bend the knee during
COVID and found himself out of a career and an
identity and out of great artistic talent and a whole
lot of grit. Is back and he's going to be
bigger than ever. He's got a lot going on. We're
(14:41):
going to get to that in just a moment, but
we wanted to talk to him about his new project,
a one man show about Thomas Soul. You wrote, Clifton.
Legendary producer Rick Rubin is open about the anxiety he
feels at the start of a new project, you just
don't know what the damn thing's going to be. That's daunting.
So now what's next? And then you tell a about
as you read it becoming Thomas Soul, do you intend
(15:03):
to wear his black horn rim glasses? And we talked
about his afro earlier. Do you intend to do you
intend to appear to look like Thomas Soul?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Well, of course, you know, and someone actually on that
post is on my substack, the State of the Arts,
and they posted about his glasses specifically, and he said,
you know, you could use it as a form of
a mask. So in the theater and acting, you know,
you can sometimes use maskwork to find different shades of
a character or different different modes of expression. And to me,
the glasses they're so iconic, you know, along with the fro,
(15:35):
that that's one of those things where you have to
incorporate it and do it. And I'm curious as to
how the glasses would transform it. I sort of see
this moment in the show where the dawning of the
glasses becomes a pivotal kind of moment that people kind
of know because people know him because of the you know,
these glasses.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
And that sort of rumpled professor look he has, right,
he's not in any way stylish's. He's sort of like
the professor in the paper Chase. He's he's got kind
of the hound's tooth uh off colored jacket, but he
always has to tie and he always has the dress.
But he's not he's not stylish per SE's. He's sort
of conservatively dressed. But it's very distinctive. You can. You know,
(16:13):
I watch I watch everything on him on YouTube, and
when I'm flipping around because I've watched so much, the algorithm,
you know, puts more in my cue to watch, and
I can always spot him, you know, you can just
glance at him. You can see that it's him. It
is interesting because the glasses, I think probably will transform
you because that's so unlike your look. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
you know I have I have.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I'm slightly near sighted, so I have some glasses that
I wear, but they're no, they're nowhere on a level
of of the of the soul glasses, the soul godless.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I don't care if somebody this restakes you. You can't
shoot Michaels.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
It's been rebooked, so if the comparison between progress simply
the decency of the life available to people. They weren't black,
the families were intact and schools worked, and the neighborhood's
more or less safe, that people were able to lead
decent lives.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
If the contrast between that.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
World and the world we inhabit now is owing so
directly to liberal policies intended, so we're told to help
African Americans. Why do African Americans support the liberal the
more liberal of the two parties, the Democratic Party, at
the rates of ninety and more percent. Why is the
(17:27):
first African American president so deeply committed to promoting and
extending liberal policies. Why is his African American Attorney general
again so deeply committed to affirmative action and other.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Why this makes no sense?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Well, I don't think we could be enough hours to
answer all those, But to take the political thing, one
of the things I discovered in the research for mine
and from my book I'm currently working on, is that
leaders of groups that are lagging in countries around the
world almost invariably have counterproductive policies for them. And it
(18:08):
makes perfect sense because in so far as members of
lagging groups assimilate into the values and achievements of the
larger society.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
They don't need those leaders, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And you see this you look at the history of
the Czechs in the nineteenth century. People are worried that
the Czechs are all learning to speak German. Well, at
that time, if you wanted to become a professional person, scientists,
anything like that, you had to use books that were
written in German, simply because the German acquired a volume
(18:48):
of literature centuries ahead of Czech And yet they fought to.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
With and nail against that.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
If you look at the Sri Lanka, one of the
arguments that was made there to the Buddhists leaders was
that if we don't do something, the Tamil minority will
assimilate members of the of the of the sin Ealese majority,
and then there will be no Buddhists or sin Ealese
in another several generations. And so, I mean, there's no
(19:18):
mystery to me as the why Jesse Jackson says what
he does, or Al Shafton and others because that benefits them,
but it does not benefit the people they lead. And
all the incentives are for leaders to lead people into
things that don't help the people but help the leaders.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Clifton Duncan, Why do you think there has been you know,
six hundred and twenty eight backers, you've had more than
that since then? That was the number I saw from
a few days ago. Where do you what is the
source of this? Why do you think people want He's
not a well known guy, or as well known as
he should be considering his intellectual prowess and his influence.
(19:58):
Why do you think people want to see this?
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Well? One, you know, I've built an audience over the
past few years just by speaking my mind, and so
I think the the people that I've attracted to my work,
or my ideas, or my opinions, my persona whatever you
you know, whatever you might want to call it, they're
excited about the prospect of me doing doing something, especially
(20:26):
giving my story in my background. And I think, again,
soul is somebody who among this demographic of folks is highly,
highly revered. And so I think the combination of those
two factors and people are really sick of the current
(20:47):
traditional cultural institutions just pumping out I mean everything from
comic books and video games to Hollywood. Right, they're pumping
out this content that or this material that speaks to
one at Soul put a vision of the world and
it's just not connecting with people. So I think there's
an excitement about myself. There's an excitement about seeing someone
(21:08):
like Soul brought to the stage in the manner of
you know, a third Good Marshall or James Baldwin or
you know, Louis Armstrong or Paul Robinson have been done before.
And there's also just a sort of what's the PG term,
sort of a middle finger to the established cultural institution saying, hey,
(21:30):
you know, we we're putting our money where we want
it to go, and we're we're not putting it like
I said before, that we're not going to your theaters.
We want to see we want to hire this person
to write this play. We don't we don't care about
what you're doing, you know, over there. And so I
think it's it's a it's a it's a mixture of
things and also a Florida aspect. Now that I think
(21:53):
about it might be just I think there seems to
be a shift in the zeitgeist. I'm in New York
right now, and I was hanging out last night with
a bunch of younger artists, and there is a it
was a much more heterodox crowd, mixed crowd. There were
some Republicans there, there were some you know, lefties there,
and I think a lot of people are really more
(22:14):
even in New York, are just really they're more over
all of this division and partisan nonsense than I think
we're being led to believe. Like it's sort of an
open conversation now, but about what the problems are in
terms of you know, quote unquote wokeness or progressivism, whatever
it is people are seeing, and I think they really
are being getting fed up with it. So, you know,
(22:36):
it also just might be the right place at the
right time. I mean, you know, that's what most acting
careers are anyway. But maybe in the cultural zeitgeist, it's
just that time where people are like, we're ready for
this and this is what we want. So maybe I'm
just a lucky so and so by discovering, you know,
striking right at the right.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Time, Well, I have you here. You have certainly peaked
a number of people's interest in who is the man
behind this voice and this experience of how he got there?
And we've gone deep into that in the past but
before I let you go, I want to let people
know what you're up to and how they can support you.
(23:16):
You're doing a podcast now.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, thanks Michael. So, I mean, I do have a podcast,
but I haven't recorded an episode in a while. It's
the Clifton Duncan Podcast, but I will resume shortly with
some fantastic guests. I also have a sub stack aka
newsletter called The State of the Arts, which I try
to post weekly, but you know, things are really busy lately,
so it's a bit more difficult. But my thoughts about
(23:43):
just the state of our cultural institutions, and it's the
intersection both that and the podcast. But the tagline is,
you know, the intersection of art, entertainment, culture and society.
So it's a bit of current events, bit of politics,
but mostly art and culture and how they intersect and
and how they influenced society. I'm also on Twitter at
(24:06):
Clifton A. Duncan. That's probably my biggest platform right now.
I'm also on Instagram at Clifton Duncan Online. And finally
I have a YouTube channel which is just my first
and last name, Clifton Duncan, and you know, you can
find my podcast on. There some performance videos as well,
which I hope to post more of. So that's my
(24:26):
digital footprint and how people can find me and find
out more about me.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I'm very proud of what you've done, making lemons, making
lemonade out of the lemons that were dealt you. I
told you when we spoke several years ago that you
are a very dangerous man, because the most dangerous man
is a black man with an independent mind in America today,
(24:51):
and you have dared to be dangerous by being independent.
You may not recall, but you and I share a
birthday of November tenth, so one of the love of
Thomas soul and a birthday of November tenth, I'm reminded
by looking at your Twitter page, Clifton Duncan. We look
forward to seeing this production. We wish you the absolute best.
(25:13):
I'm sure some folks don't want to contribute to you,
to you to your fundraiser for that to help you
put this on, and I will be as well. And
good luck, my man, good luck. You're doing great work.
You're making a difference.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Michael, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure. Ramon
King of Ding and this other guy, Michael Barry.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
My friend David Malsby, who's the executive director of Well,
you know, because Ramone's making David malls be jokes because
they're big buddies. Who's the executive director of Camp Hope,
and Ramone spends a lot of time with David. They
record the Camp Hope podcast together. Well, I laughed because
(25:57):
he's Ramone said, he's not your friend. One y'all think
I'm laughing at David Malsby. I wouldn't do that. Ramon's
basically saying that that David doesn't like me, which could
be true. Could be true, because I'm you know, I
can be difficult to be around. But David Mallsby sent
me something recently that I really liked. It's Johnny Carson
(26:19):
and Ramona and I love Johnny Carson telling the story
of how he first met Red Skelton. And there's going
to be a point to this at the end of it.
But for some of our older listeners, you you probably
love Red Skelton, and I know I do. I just
thought it was a great story. So I'm constantly consuming content,
(26:43):
and some of it I want to share with you.
So here was the story.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
Let me tell you how I first met Red Skelton.
I may have told this a story on the air before,
But when I first came to California in nineteen fifty,
I was doing a show at KNXT, the local CBS
channel on Vine Street, was right across then the Hollywood
Ranch Market, and I had a five minute television show
in the morning one from eight to.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Fifty five to nine o'clock.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
Well, if you take the half hour station identification time,
it really comes down to four and a half minutes, right.
He was sponsored by a coffee from the Midwest called
Butternut Coffee. So by the time you take out the commercial,
I had three and a half minutes a show, and
only I had a little too flat, and I had
the door on two saw horses. That was my desk,
(27:28):
very little money, so I would come in and do
some jokes on what was going on on the paper.
And one morning, just for the fun of it, I
had the stage manager just run in front of the
camera could even see what was I says I read.
I said, that was today's guest, Red Skelton, and we
don't have any more time to talk with him because
of the limits of our show. I got a call
on the telephone from Red Skelton, who watches a lot
(27:52):
of television. He's a television fan and he's watching the
local kid in the local station near Los Angeles do
the show.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
He says, would you like me to go down and
be on the show?
Speaker 6 (28:02):
I said, you've got to be kidding. Next morning, he
gets in his car. He drives down from his home.
Red Skeleton shows up at KNXT and I was been
a fan of Red since I was a kid.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
He says, what would you like me to do?
Speaker 6 (28:16):
And I said, well, if you don't mind nothing.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
He says, what do you mean.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
I said, I just want you to sit behind me
and I'll do the show and you just sit there.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
He said, okay, So I came out.
Speaker 6 (28:27):
I'd do my three minutes of jokes and so forth.
At the end of the show, I turned around and
I said.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
And what's your name?
Speaker 6 (28:32):
And I said, and he would say I'm Red Skeleton,
and I would say A likely story, and I say,
thank you, We'll see you tomorrow. This went on for
about seven or eight shows. This man got in the car,
he drove down. I didn't let him for six days,
and the final day we opened up the show and
I found the Kenny.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
The other day at home. I still have that little.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
Segment and I was bound and gagged. My hands were
tired and the gag and Red was set there and
did the three and a half minutes, did the commercial
and everything.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
That is the way we.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
Met well most times I ever had in my life.
Where was hanging around CBS in the fifties when you
were on the air and all those great shows came out,
playoffs in ninety and Bob Cross being our link letter
and all those great shows were working.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
There was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Yeah, it's what You're a wonderful man to be around.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
You taught me a lot. I stole a lot from you. Yeah,
oh yes I did.
Speaker 7 (29:24):
No.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
No, it's like the students. They say, Johnny was with
you at one time. You helped him gets I said, no,
nobody helps you get started. If you've got talent, thinking,
put you behind a brick wall, you'll come through. You know.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
That's so that's what you have. And I know we
play this on the fourth of July every year, but
we cannot talk about Red Skelton without playing the Red
Skeleton Pledge of Allegiance version. That is my absolute favorite.
Although Charlie Daniels is just be a close second. So
(29:57):
it's kind of like Paul Harvey. It's timeless. So here
we go.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
I remember a teacher that I had now, only I
went through the seventh grade.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
I went to the seventh grade and I.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Left home when I was ten years old because I
was hungry, and I used to do I work in
the summer and I go to school in the winter.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
But I had this one teacher.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
It was the principal of the Harrison School in Vincennes, Indiana.
To me, this was the greatest teacher, a real sage
of my time. Anyhow, he had such wisdom, and we
were all reciting the Pledge of Allegiance one day and
he walked over, this little old teacher, mister Lasswell was
his name, mister Lastwell, and he says, I've been listening
(30:39):
to you boys and girls recite the Pledge of Allegiance
all semester, and it seems as though it's becoming monotonous
to you. If I may, may I recite it and
try to explain to you the meaning of each word.
(31:00):
I me an individual, a committee of one.
Speaker 7 (31:08):
Pledge dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without
self pity, allegiance, my love, and my devotion.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
To the flag, our standard old glory, a symbol of freedom.
Wherever she waives, there's respect because your loyalty has given
her a dignity that shouts Freedom is everybody's job.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
United.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
That means that we have all come together, states, individual
communities that have united into forty eight great states, forty
eight individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose, all
divided with imaginary boundaries, yet united to a common purpose.
(32:06):
And that's love for country and to the republic. Republic
a state in which sovereign power is invested in representatives
chosen by the.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
People to govern.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
And government is the people, and it's from the people
to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
For which it stands one nation, one nation, meaning so
blessed by God, indivisible, incapable of being divided. With liberty,
(32:49):
which is freedom, the right of power to live one's
own life without threats, fear, or some sort of retaliation,
and justice the principle are qualities of dealing fairly with others,
for all for all, which means, boys and girls, it's
(33:15):
as much your country as it is mine. And now, boys,
and girls, let me hear you recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
of America and to the Republic for which it stands,
(33:37):
one nation, indivision, with liberty and justice for all. Since
I was a small boy, two states have been added
to our country, and two words have been added to
the Pledge of Allegiance under God. Wouldn't it be a
(34:00):
pity if someone said that is a prayer, and that
would be eliminated from school stoop
It's that time time, time, time, Luck and load.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Michael Very show is on the air. Houston. Duncan is
our guest. He is doing a new one man show
on the Great Thomas Soul. When I asked the question,
it was because I'm genuinely thinking about how I would
(00:31):
do it if I were doing that. I don't have
the acting skill you do. But I research people. I
study them. I say, I take them apart and put
them back together. I'm fascinated by by not just what
people have to say, especially someone like Soul who has
so much to say, but how they arrived at that.
You know, his experience with Milton Friedman and having been
in Friedman's class at the University of Chicago, and he says,
(00:54):
but I left the class and I was still a liberal.
And he goes to work for the Labor Department and
he realizes that the Labor Department does not care about
black people or employees, both of whom they claim to
and that when he pointed out that the data was
actually harmful to these people from what they were recommending,
(01:14):
that they said, that doesn't matter. And that was the moment,
that was his aha moment, that was his his eureka,
Oh my goodness, these people don't believe anything they're saying,
and it it transformed him and he went on to
be the man he is today. You know, I think
that's just absolutely fascinating. And that tells you this man
wasn't born into this, right, I mean, I've made a
(01:35):
transformation in my life from from what I think and
and where I am, and most of us have, and
in his I think that will I can. Sorry, I'm
thinking and planning this, this project for you. I'm writing
it in my head Clifton right now as we talk,
uh and and I'm just imagining you have such a
great opportunity to tell that as just that is that
is fantastic. So what does it look like? I mean,
(01:57):
will this be a will you go on tour? Because
if you do, we're coordinating Houston for you and all
of our markets for that matter. But what do you
envision this looking like?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Well, right now, the plan is to spend the next
six months developing, you know, researching and developing a first draft.
I've got a great line producer as well as some
great trusted friends who are New York sharp in terms of,
you know, their ability to discern what's good and what
is not. So that's the first step. But then as
(02:26):
time goes on, what I want to do. It's sort
of like what a stand up comedian does, right. They
go around and they do all types of venues to
test out their material because you don't know what works
until you do it in front of an audience. The
audience is the one who teaches you how to do
the show right. What you know, what moments are working,
what moments are clicking. When are they on the edge
(02:46):
of their seats, When are they listening? When are they
sort of unwrapping candies and coughing and wrestling through their programs?
When are they laughing? When are they you know, silent?
You know, are they gasping anywhere? And so you know,
I mean it's a piece of live theater and one
of the one of the great things about theater. And
you touched on this in your intro is you know,
it's just it's part of You're in this experience. You're
(03:09):
in a room with other people, other human beings, sharing
the same air, the same molecules, the same sound waves,
the same space, and experiencing something together. And that's the
magic of theater that you have you have the the
relationship between the actor and the audience that you don't
get when you're doing TV and film. And so that's
really a big prospect for me, is that, you know,
(03:30):
just touring around and seeing how people respond and what
they respond to. And I always enjoy talking to people
after shows as well to see like what worked for
them and what didn't, and also seeing the country but
will also be nice. But then ultimately the goal is
to upload the show on the internet so that the
whole world can see it. And but that's that's only
after it's been you know, honed and tightened and and
(03:55):
performed before you know, a bunch of audiences, which is
again what comedians do before they film their own special.
So that's you know, it might be a grueling road process.
But there's already been a few people who have been.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Like, yeah, you know, come do it. I somehow think
you're up for Clifton. You fell to the depths, didn't
expect it, had no net. We're waiting tables and wondering
what had become of your life. And and somehow since
then you you have had to talk about a guy
having a resurgence. You've had a pretty darn good, run yourself,
(04:26):
and I think it's it's headed upward. And I think
now you're in control of your career in a way
that even though you were an accomplished actor, you could
you were always at the at the mercy of the
casting agent. Now you're taking control of your own career
and the product you produce, and I think that's I
think that's very exciting. I think that's very exciting. Have
(04:47):
you given a thought, sorry, have you given thought to
meeting Thomas Old to conversations to that process.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yeah, well, you know you mentioned before. I mean, he
is notoriously elusive. We say so initially, I mean I
was so excited. I didn't really think about it because
I figured I'm never going to get a response from him.
But I know people who know him, they're trying to
get in touch with him, or to get us in touch,
I should say, because you know, at the end of
the day, I was like, yeah, I'm so excited about it,
the idea, but be kind of weird to do this
(05:17):
whole play without without talking to him and you know,
hearing what he has to say about it. So we're
trying to get in touch with him, as you know,
it's very, very difficult to do so, and I'm like,
you know, the dude is almost one hundred years old,
so I kind of want to leave him alone and
so he can have you know, so he can sort of,
you know, enjoy enjoy his time and not be pestered
(05:40):
by by some you know, young gen X, old millennial
who wants to you know, I guess talk about him.
So but we're working on trying to get in touch
with him, and you know, just even the phone call
would be would be cool. The visit will be even better.
But you know, we'll we'll see how that pans out.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
The good news is there is a great body of
work out there, of interviews and I often quote examples
he gives in the book Basic Economics. And I studied
economics in college. I took a number of courses, and
I've read my wife was in a PhD program when
she switched to law from economics. Economics is something I
read about a lot, is something I think about, It's
(06:20):
something I stay I try to stay on top of.
And yet he writes this book Basic Economics, which is
kind of economics for people that didn't go to college,
and it is so beautifully written because of the simplicity.
Thomas Soul doesn't feel the need to be inaccessible to
show that he's brilliant. He does just the opposite. He
makes the difficult understandable. And you know, I think Rush
(06:43):
Limbo had a knack for doing that on the radio,
but Soul does that with very complicated concepts, and then
he'll use a little anecdote of you know, when he
was traveling in India and this happened. That book Basic
Economics is my favorite of everything he did because of
the accessibility and because of the ability to democratize knowledge
(07:05):
about simple scientific concepts underpinning economics. And I think that
that alone, if that was all he ever did, would
be amazing, and of course he did so much more well.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I totally agree. You know, I think Basic Economics should
be required reading for all high school students in the
United States. We'd have a way, way different country. And
I mean, he wrote it to be accessible, and I
was like, dude, if even a dummy like me can
understand what he's saying, you know, that is that is
a That's a great gift to be able to, like
you said, break down these complex issues and simplify them.
(07:37):
For the messes. I'm also thinking of someone like the
physicist Richard Feynman. Feinnman was also someone who really championed simplicity.
But the thing about it is that even in the
arts as well and the craft of acting, you know, simplicity, simplicity,
simplicity is always key. Be specific, be simple. You don't
need a bunch of ornate you know, flowery language, or
(07:58):
you don't have to use a bunch of gestures or whatever.
Just get to what's simple and what's true. And that's
as true for I think Thomas Soul's work as it
is for acting as well. So it's kind of funny
now that I'm saying it's out loud, but in a
way that that approach to make something, make something simple
and accessible, and it was probably a good ethos to follow.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
What else do you want to marry? What do you
want you.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Want to the Michael Barry.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Just to say the word and.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I'll throw a asshole around for god. Clifton Duncan, a celebrated,
much respected stage actor, is our guest. He is doing
a new one man show on the great Thomas Soul
and sharing some details about that with us. When friends
of mine from law school used to say, you know, Michael,
(08:47):
you're better than that. You're talking about such simplistic things
in such simplistic ways. I would respond, and they never
liked this. I would say, I sell big Max, not caviar,
because it's the masses. And so many times we try
to distance ourselves in this ivory tower from real people
by using language that is hard to understand and therefore disconnects,
(09:08):
when the point is the ideas should be universal and
they should be accessible. And I think that's one of
the things that Soul does so beautifully and so modest,
because he does not attempt to hold himself out as
if he's a pontificating professor, but quite the opposite.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
He tells a story about he was teaching at I
think it was Cornell. I think it was Cornell, and
he was talking about how affirmative action had hurt the
black students and how he went to the admissions office
and he found that the students who were struggling the
most were students who were black and shouldn't have been admitted.
And his point was these students were going to fill
out of Cornell and fell out of life because of
(09:49):
what would happen when that student should have gone to
Indiana or Indiana State and they would have been an
a student and they could have built along the way.
It's like throwing a kid from high school into the
pro into the pro and they're not ready for that,
and you think you're helping them, but you're not. Clifton
Duncan is our guest. He's working on a project called Soul,
a solo play about an American genius. Now, I noticed
(10:11):
recently you did a GoFundMe and your goal was to
raise ten thousand dollars and in a matter of hours
you had raised seventy two thousand dollars with six hundred
and twenty eight backers. It is clear to me that
there is an audience for what you're doing, and more importantly,
there are a lot of people out here like our
show that support what you're doing. That's got to be
(10:31):
got to be humbling and gratifying. It definitely is, and
on some level it's a bit daunting. But after remind
myself that people are very excited and they want to
they want to see me succeed, which is great. But
I think the biggest story about that is that right now,
the American theater industry is still reeling from its self
inflicted wounds from the pandemic years.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
And I mean Als one of the only people who
was saying publicly like, we shouldn't we shouldn't be doing this.
This is not the right way to go. You go
to destroy the industry, And they're as of now, I mean,
Broadway still has not recovered from from their closures, their
theaters around the country which are truncating their seasons or
they're closing outright, and you know, the leaders within the
(11:15):
theater industry are just are talking about how there's just
you know, how it's so expensive to produce shows, and
you know, twenty percent of the audience hasn't even come back,
and owners are drying up in the ideaiata. And I'm
just one guy, and within the span of a couple
of weeks, I've raised almost one hundred thousand dollars. So
on one hand, it's a bit of I take a
(11:36):
little bit of joy in the fact that these people
who decided that I should not be allowed to work
for making a very logical medical decision for myself are
sitting there wondering, what the heck are we going to do?
How we're going to you know, like I hear from
my friends who are still in the game in New
York who are saying, you know, own the stars are
making money now, like you know, the regular sort of
jobbing journeymen actors who they make their living, but you know,
(11:59):
they have to hustle it it. There's just nowhere near
as much money anymore. At the same time, what's also
great is that it indicates to me what I've felt
for a long time, which is that there is a huge,
huge audience outside of these deep blue metros who think
they're so much better than everybody else and think they're
so much more sophisticated than everybody else.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Like, no, you are something right there, brother, keep going.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well you know people, but people want
to see great arts and they don't want to you know,
made by people that don't hate them. And there's this idea,
you know, and I spent so much time around these people,
but they think everyone in Red America or flyover country,
so to speak, is some redneck groub or whatever they like.
They don't get it. They just don't get it. And
to me, I think the bigger story, it's bigger than
(12:43):
myself is that there are people out there. I mean,
there are so many like sort of small donors to
the project who want to see succeed or I get
messages from people who say, like, I don't really have
anything to give, but I'm like yo, you know, like
great comments and good vibes are also accepted as means
of support. So there's a huge, untapped, massive people who
are who want to come and give their you know,
(13:06):
and trade their money and their time for a great
experience at the theatre in the arts. And that's that's
really the big story for me, because I think more
I suppose I call the more conservative leaning, more right leaning,
you know whatever. One of my frustrations has been that,
you know, there hasn't been that much support for the
for the arts, but why would they write you know
what I mean, that they've been so reviled by people
(13:27):
who are making so much of the culture. So it's
just it's really gratifying, you know, on multiple levels, but
especially because it's it's money coming from people that, you know,
aren't they They have been pushed out, you know what
I mean, from from the industry, and so that that's
the bigger story there is that there is a there
is a a hunger for for arts and for culture
(13:48):
and for entertainment, and that is the that's really gratifying
for me, because I'm like, dude, this is it, This
is it right here, there's way, way, way, way more
people who outside of New York and LA.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And trying to.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Doing work that appeals to do those people, to me,
seems like a much much, a much better idea than
catering to the sliver of people who adhere to these
really sort of extreme left wing views which just keep
getting more and more insane.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
You Clifton Duncan is our guest is a great stage actor,
was in Broadway. He refused to bend the knee during
COVID and found himself out of a career and an
identity and out of great artistic talent and a whole
lot of grit. Is back and he's going to be
bigger than ever. He's got a lot going on. We're
(14:41):
going to get to that in just a moment, but
we wanted to talk to him about his new project,
a one man show about Thomas Soul. You wrote, Clifton.
Legendary producer Rick Rubin is open about the anxiety he
feels at the start of a new project, you just
don't know what the damn thing's going to be. That's daunting.
So now what's next? And then you tell a about
as you read it becoming Thomas Soul, do you intend
(15:03):
to wear his black horn rim glasses? And we talked
about his afro earlier. Do you intend to do you
intend to appear to look like Thomas Soul?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Well, of course, you know, and someone actually on that
post is on my substack, the State of the Arts,
and they posted about his glasses specifically, and he said,
you know, you could use it as a form of
a mask. So in the theater and acting, you know,
you can sometimes use maskwork to find different shades of
a character or different different modes of expression. And to me,
the glasses they're so iconic, you know, along with the fro,
(15:35):
that that's one of those things where you have to
incorporate it and do it. And I'm curious as to
how the glasses would transform it. I sort of see
this moment in the show where the dawning of the
glasses becomes a pivotal kind of moment that people kind
of know because people know him because of the you know,
these glasses.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
And that sort of rumpled professor look he has, right,
he's not in any way stylish's. He's sort of like
the professor in the paper Chase. He's he's got kind
of the hound's tooth uh off colored jacket, but he
always has to tie and he always has the dress.
But he's not he's not stylish per SE's. He's sort
of conservatively dressed. But it's very distinctive. You can. You know,
(16:13):
I watch I watch everything on him on YouTube, and
when I'm flipping around because I've watched so much, the algorithm,
you know, puts more in my cue to watch, and
I can always spot him, you know, you can just
glance at him. You can see that it's him. It
is interesting because the glasses, I think probably will transform
you because that's so unlike your look. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
you know I have I have.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I'm slightly near sighted, so I have some glasses that
I wear, but they're no, they're nowhere on a level
of of the of the soul glasses, the soul godless.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I don't care if somebody this restakes you. You can't
shoot Michaels.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
It's been rebooked, so if the comparison between progress simply
the decency of the life available to people. They weren't black,
the families were intact and schools worked, and the neighborhood's
more or less safe, that people were able to lead
decent lives.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
If the contrast between that.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
World and the world we inhabit now is owing so
directly to liberal policies intended, so we're told to help
African Americans. Why do African Americans support the liberal the
more liberal of the two parties, the Democratic Party, at
the rates of ninety and more percent. Why is the
(17:27):
first African American president so deeply committed to promoting and
extending liberal policies. Why is his African American Attorney general
again so deeply committed to affirmative action and other.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Why this makes no sense?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Well, I don't think we could be enough hours to
answer all those, But to take the political thing, one
of the things I discovered in the research for mine
and from my book I'm currently working on, is that
leaders of groups that are lagging in countries around the
world almost invariably have counterproductive policies for them. And it
(18:08):
makes perfect sense because in so far as members of
lagging groups assimilate into the values and achievements of the
larger society.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
They don't need those leaders, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And you see this you look at the history of
the Czechs in the nineteenth century. People are worried that
the Czechs are all learning to speak German. Well, at
that time, if you wanted to become a professional person, scientists,
anything like that, you had to use books that were
written in German, simply because the German acquired a volume
(18:48):
of literature centuries ahead of Czech And yet they fought to.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
With and nail against that.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
If you look at the Sri Lanka, one of the
arguments that was made there to the Buddhists leaders was
that if we don't do something, the Tamil minority will
assimilate members of the of the of the sin Ealese majority,
and then there will be no Buddhists or sin Ealese
in another several generations. And so, I mean, there's no
(19:18):
mystery to me as the why Jesse Jackson says what
he does, or Al Shafton and others because that benefits them,
but it does not benefit the people they lead. And
all the incentives are for leaders to lead people into
things that don't help the people but help the leaders.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Clifton Duncan, Why do you think there has been you know,
six hundred and twenty eight backers, you've had more than
that since then? That was the number I saw from
a few days ago. Where do you what is the
source of this? Why do you think people want He's
not a well known guy, or as well known as
he should be considering his intellectual prowess and his influence.
(19:58):
Why do you think people want to see this?
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Well? One, you know, I've built an audience over the
past few years just by speaking my mind, and so
I think the the people that I've attracted to my work,
or my ideas, or my opinions, my persona whatever you
you know, whatever you might want to call it, they're
excited about the prospect of me doing doing something, especially
(20:26):
giving my story in my background. And I think, again,
soul is somebody who among this demographic of folks is highly,
highly revered. And so I think the combination of those
two factors and people are really sick of the current
(20:47):
traditional cultural institutions just pumping out I mean everything from
comic books and video games to Hollywood. Right, they're pumping
out this content that or this material that speaks to
one at Soul put a vision of the world and
it's just not connecting with people. So I think there's
an excitement about myself. There's an excitement about seeing someone
(21:08):
like Soul brought to the stage in the manner of
you know, a third Good Marshall or James Baldwin or
you know, Louis Armstrong or Paul Robinson have been done before.
And there's also just a sort of what's the PG term,
sort of a middle finger to the established cultural institution saying, hey,
(21:30):
you know, we we're putting our money where we want
it to go, and we're we're not putting it like
I said before, that we're not going to your theaters.
We want to see we want to hire this person
to write this play. We don't we don't care about
what you're doing, you know, over there. And so I
think it's it's a it's a it's a mixture of
things and also a Florida aspect. Now that I think
(21:53):
about it might be just I think there seems to
be a shift in the zeitgeist. I'm in New York
right now, and I was hanging out last night with
a bunch of younger artists, and there is a it
was a much more heterodox crowd, mixed crowd. There were
some Republicans there, there were some you know, lefties there,
and I think a lot of people are really more
(22:14):
even in New York, are just really they're more over
all of this division and partisan nonsense than I think
we're being led to believe. Like it's sort of an
open conversation now, but about what the problems are in
terms of you know, quote unquote wokeness or progressivism, whatever
it is people are seeing, and I think they really
are being getting fed up with it. So, you know,
(22:36):
it also just might be the right place at the
right time. I mean, you know, that's what most acting
careers are anyway. But maybe in the cultural zeitgeist, it's
just that time where people are like, we're ready for
this and this is what we want. So maybe I'm
just a lucky so and so by discovering, you know,
striking right at the right.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Time, Well, I have you here. You have certainly peaked
a number of people's interest in who is the man
behind this voice and this experience of how he got there?
And we've gone deep into that in the past but
before I let you go, I want to let people
know what you're up to and how they can support you.
(23:16):
You're doing a podcast now.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, thanks Michael. So, I mean, I do have a podcast,
but I haven't recorded an episode in a while. It's
the Clifton Duncan Podcast, but I will resume shortly with
some fantastic guests. I also have a sub stack aka
newsletter called The State of the Arts, which I try
to post weekly, but you know, things are really busy lately,
so it's a bit more difficult. But my thoughts about
(23:43):
just the state of our cultural institutions, and it's the
intersection both that and the podcast. But the tagline is,
you know, the intersection of art, entertainment, culture and society.
So it's a bit of current events, bit of politics,
but mostly art and culture and how they intersect and
and how they influenced society. I'm also on Twitter at
(24:06):
Clifton A. Duncan. That's probably my biggest platform right now.
I'm also on Instagram at Clifton Duncan Online. And finally
I have a YouTube channel which is just my first
and last name, Clifton Duncan, and you know, you can
find my podcast on. There some performance videos as well,
which I hope to post more of. So that's my
(24:26):
digital footprint and how people can find me and find
out more about me.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I'm very proud of what you've done, making lemons, making
lemonade out of the lemons that were dealt you. I
told you when we spoke several years ago that you
are a very dangerous man, because the most dangerous man
is a black man with an independent mind in America today,
(24:51):
and you have dared to be dangerous by being independent.
You may not recall, but you and I share a
birthday of November tenth, so one of the love of
Thomas soul and a birthday of November tenth, I'm reminded
by looking at your Twitter page, Clifton Duncan. We look
forward to seeing this production. We wish you the absolute best.
(25:13):
I'm sure some folks don't want to contribute to you,
to you to your fundraiser for that to help you
put this on, and I will be as well. And
good luck, my man, good luck. You're doing great work.
You're making a difference.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Michael, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure. Ramon
King of Ding and this other guy, Michael Barry.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
My friend David Malsby, who's the executive director of Well,
you know, because Ramone's making David malls be jokes because
they're big buddies. Who's the executive director of Camp Hope,
and Ramone spends a lot of time with David. They
record the Camp Hope podcast together. Well, I laughed because
(25:57):
he's Ramone said, he's not your friend. One y'all think
I'm laughing at David Malsby. I wouldn't do that. Ramon's
basically saying that that David doesn't like me, which could
be true. Could be true, because I'm you know, I
can be difficult to be around. But David Mallsby sent
me something recently that I really liked. It's Johnny Carson
(26:19):
and Ramona and I love Johnny Carson telling the story
of how he first met Red Skelton. And there's going
to be a point to this at the end of it.
But for some of our older listeners, you you probably
love Red Skelton, and I know I do. I just
thought it was a great story. So I'm constantly consuming content,
(26:43):
and some of it I want to share with you.
So here was the story.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
Let me tell you how I first met Red Skelton.
I may have told this a story on the air before,
But when I first came to California in nineteen fifty,
I was doing a show at KNXT, the local CBS
channel on Vine Street, was right across then the Hollywood
Ranch Market, and I had a five minute television show
in the morning one from eight to.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Fifty five to nine o'clock.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
Well, if you take the half hour station identification time,
it really comes down to four and a half minutes, right.
He was sponsored by a coffee from the Midwest called
Butternut Coffee. So by the time you take out the commercial,
I had three and a half minutes a show, and
only I had a little too flat, and I had
the door on two saw horses. That was my desk,
(27:28):
very little money, so I would come in and do
some jokes on what was going on on the paper.
And one morning, just for the fun of it, I
had the stage manager just run in front of the
camera could even see what was I says I read.
I said, that was today's guest, Red Skelton, and we
don't have any more time to talk with him because
of the limits of our show. I got a call
on the telephone from Red Skelton, who watches a lot
(27:52):
of television. He's a television fan and he's watching the
local kid in the local station near Los Angeles do
the show.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
He says, would you like me to go down and
be on the show?
Speaker 6 (28:02):
I said, you've got to be kidding. Next morning, he
gets in his car. He drives down from his home.
Red Skeleton shows up at KNXT and I was been
a fan of Red since I was a kid.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
He says, what would you like me to do?
Speaker 6 (28:16):
And I said, well, if you don't mind nothing.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
He says, what do you mean.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
I said, I just want you to sit behind me
and I'll do the show and you just sit there.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
He said, okay, So I came out.
Speaker 6 (28:27):
I'd do my three minutes of jokes and so forth.
At the end of the show, I turned around and
I said.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
And what's your name?
Speaker 6 (28:32):
And I said, and he would say I'm Red Skeleton,
and I would say A likely story, and I say,
thank you, We'll see you tomorrow. This went on for
about seven or eight shows. This man got in the car,
he drove down. I didn't let him for six days,
and the final day we opened up the show and
I found the Kenny.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
The other day at home. I still have that little.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
Segment and I was bound and gagged. My hands were
tired and the gag and Red was set there and
did the three and a half minutes, did the commercial
and everything.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
That is the way we.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
Met well most times I ever had in my life.
Where was hanging around CBS in the fifties when you
were on the air and all those great shows came out,
playoffs in ninety and Bob Cross being our link letter
and all those great shows were working.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
There was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Yeah, it's what You're a wonderful man to be around.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
You taught me a lot. I stole a lot from you. Yeah,
oh yes I did.
Speaker 7 (29:24):
No.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
No, it's like the students. They say, Johnny was with
you at one time. You helped him gets I said, no,
nobody helps you get started. If you've got talent, thinking,
put you behind a brick wall, you'll come through. You know.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
That's so that's what you have. And I know we
play this on the fourth of July every year, but
we cannot talk about Red Skelton without playing the Red
Skeleton Pledge of Allegiance version. That is my absolute favorite.
Although Charlie Daniels is just be a close second. So
(29:57):
it's kind of like Paul Harvey. It's timeless. So here
we go.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
I remember a teacher that I had now, only I
went through the seventh grade.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
I went to the seventh grade and I.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Left home when I was ten years old because I
was hungry, and I used to do I work in
the summer and I go to school in the winter.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
But I had this one teacher.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
It was the principal of the Harrison School in Vincennes, Indiana.
To me, this was the greatest teacher, a real sage
of my time. Anyhow, he had such wisdom, and we
were all reciting the Pledge of Allegiance one day and
he walked over, this little old teacher, mister Lasswell was
his name, mister Lastwell, and he says, I've been listening
(30:39):
to you boys and girls recite the Pledge of Allegiance
all semester, and it seems as though it's becoming monotonous
to you. If I may, may I recite it and
try to explain to you the meaning of each word.
(31:00):
I me an individual, a committee of one.
Speaker 7 (31:08):
Pledge dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without
self pity, allegiance, my love, and my devotion.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
To the flag, our standard old glory, a symbol of freedom.
Wherever she waives, there's respect because your loyalty has given
her a dignity that shouts Freedom is everybody's job.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
United.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
That means that we have all come together, states, individual
communities that have united into forty eight great states, forty
eight individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose, all
divided with imaginary boundaries, yet united to a common purpose.
(32:06):
And that's love for country and to the republic. Republic
a state in which sovereign power is invested in representatives
chosen by the.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
People to govern.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
And government is the people, and it's from the people
to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
For which it stands one nation, one nation, meaning so
blessed by God, indivisible, incapable of being divided. With liberty,
(32:49):
which is freedom, the right of power to live one's
own life without threats, fear, or some sort of retaliation,
and justice the principle are qualities of dealing fairly with others,
for all for all, which means, boys and girls, it's
(33:15):
as much your country as it is mine. And now, boys,
and girls, let me hear you recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
of America and to the Republic for which it stands,
(33:37):
one nation, indivision, with liberty and justice for all. Since
I was a small boy, two states have been added
to our country, and two words have been added to
the Pledge of Allegiance under God. Wouldn't it be a
(34:00):
pity if someone said that is a prayer, and that
would be eliminated from school stoop
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