0:00
MITCH: I did a bunch of research into the other thing about the show that is interesting to me when it comes to religion: how explicitly Christian the football stuff is. 'Cause they don't ever really talk about. They don't make a storyline about it. But they are, like, praying in the locker room. We don't ever see - they don't ever do what would be really over the line, which would be prayers over the PA, but they get close.
AUSTIN: I had - I got into a massive argument with someone - 'cause I was a college minister's intern -
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I regularly taught, like, classes on Wednesday nights, I did shit like that. There was a girl there that was from this small town in Texas, and she fully thought that it was one hundred percent fine for the principal of the school to go on the intercom and pray before the thing.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And I told her, "That is illegal. You can't do that."
MITCH: I mean, I'm about to explain why that is i-lli-gal.
AUSTIN: Yeah. And she was like, "But, but it's such a good thing." And I was like, "No it's not! It's illegal! There's a reason."
MITCH: Well - and this is gonna be, I hope, evident through the cases I'm gonna talk about - but, one of the things about this whole argument that frustrates me is this argument that Christians have when they talk about this kind of thing, that these are good, community building things that are good, outside of Christianity. The implication being that you can't get them any way else. And it's the same thing I was talking about a while ago about football: yes, football is good in that it fosters teamwork and cooperation and fairness, so do a lot of other things.
AUSTIN: Yeah, a lot of other things.
MITCH: Like, I can see how - genuinely - I can see how kneeling in prayer together as a group fosters a sense of, like, community. I get that. It's not the only way.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: And that is not so important that we're going to ignore the Constitution and case law, because you can't imagine another way to make your teammates feel close to each other that doesn't involve Christian prayer.
AUSTIN: It is a bullshit argument so that they can put it in schools, that's exactly what it is.
MITCH: That's a lot of the arguments, though. Like, "Well, how else are we gonna..." Or, one of the defendants in one of the cases I wanna talk about, one of his arguments is that he is, yes, teaching math and Spanish and football or whatever he teaches, but he's also teaching character development, and how else is he supposed to teach character? This is the only way he knows how. And I'm like, "Well, then go back to school. Read a book."
AUSTIN: Don't teach it.
MITCH: There's a lot of ways to teach character and teach morality that don't involve praying to Jesus Christ.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That's bullshit. It comes up a lot. I feel like that's the argument that we would see from most people in the show, is like, "Well yeah, I get that we're not supposed to do this Christian thing, but isn't it worth it? Because we gotta teach these kids respect."
AUSTIN: That's exactly what Eric Taylor would say.
MITCH: And it's the same thing we talked about a few episodes ago about that yelling and abusing your players. Like, yes, it is good to teach your players commitment and working through pain and, like, trying hard even when it's difficult. If your only way of achieving those things is through abusing your players, maybe you shouldn't be a coach.
AUSTIN: Exactly.
MITCH: If your only way of showing a person how to be a good person is by teaching them The Lord's Prayer, maybe you're not the best teacher in the world.
AUSTIN: The Lord's Prayer.
MITCH: One of... we'll get into it.
AUSTIN: I know. It's just... Oh my god...
MITCH: I tried to find what I would assume would be the precedent setting cases from recent history. We have one from the late 80s and two from the 2000s that are, as far as I can tell, the highest court, most recently, ruling on the ideas of prayer. And they kind of stack on top of each other because each one was used in the following one.
AUSTIN: As a precedent?
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: Yeah
3:34
MITCH: In 1988, we had Jane Doe v. Duncanville Independent School District.
AUSTIN: Duncanville, Texas?
MITCH: I don't... I think it was Texas.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It was the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, so Texas, yeah. This was a girl named Jane Doe, she joined the 7th grade basketball team in 1988, and I think they filed suit when she was, like, close to the end of her high school career. So it went on for years.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: The coach of the basketball team, Coach Smith, said the Lord's Prayer at every single practice, in the locker room before games, on the bus, and - what I think is the most harmful - center court after the games in front of all the audie- in front of the stands. Jane went along with it because she was a 7th grader so of course she did,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: but her dad eventually, like, asked her if she was ok with it and she said no. So he told her that she could just, like, stand apart from the group and just, like, wait until they were done.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That should be... Like, I don't think that she should have to put up with that, but that is a solution that should've worked.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: What ended up happening is she got made fun of by her teammates, obviously. She would get comments - when they were having their center court prayer session after the games, the people in the stands would yell stuff at her.
AUSTIN: What?
MITCH: And it had in the court documents that her history teacher called her "a little atheist." So, like, she's getting abuse from, like, every side. Teachers, fans, students, everything, just because she didn't join them in prayer in the middle of the court. So this one's pretty cut and dry. It's public, it is clearly creating a problem.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Jane Doe and her father sued. The court ruled that they had to cease all activities that were led by a coach or teacher, but, constitutionally, it's allowed if it is truly student led. The main reason that the court ruled against the school in this case is because Jane was part of a program that a lot of schools have, where her PE credit was basketball. So instead of going to 7th hour she went to basketball practice and she was getting school credit. Up to this point, the argument would be, you know, basketball's an extracurricular. If you don't like basketball, don't play.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: You don't have to. This is saying, no, she is getting school credit for this activity, she can't choose not to do it. She shouldn't have to choose anyway, but you know, like... They were using official class time. The coach was not acting as a community member, he was not acting as an extracurricular leader, he was teaching a class.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: And he was leading prayer. So they said they couldn't do it anymore. This was in 1988, had this case come forward earlier, or had it only been inside the locker room, I think that the court would've ruled differently.
AUSTIN: Probably
MITCH: But it met the certain requirements - that it was so clearly a problem, and it was happening during instructional time, clearly started and led by the teacher - that it was ruled that way. So, we fast forward a little bit, 2000, The Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, this is also the Fifth Circuit Court. I don't know where Santa Fe is. Santa Fe, Texas.
AUSTIN: Santa Fe, New Mexico?
MITCH: This is Texas, I'm pretty sure.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: There's also one in Texas, I don't know where it is. This one kind of got into a different contentious area of the debate. Until 1995, one of the student council seats that the students elected every year was a chaplain. And that chaplain said a prayer over the PA before each football game. So, like, while the players are out there, while they're doing the national anthem, there was a chaplain who would read a prayer over the PA. I feel like that's pretty normal, I feel like a lot of schools have done that.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: Possibly there's some that still are. Two families filed suit, specifically citing the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, that the government may not establish any kind of... establish or prohibit any religion. I think it's interesting, the families were Mormon and Catholic.
AUSTIN: That is very...
MITCH: These aren't militant atheists, these aren't, you know, Muslims or Hindus or something. These are, kind of, also Christian families.
AUSTIN: Kind of, yeah.
MITCH: Just ones that don't belong to the specific sect of Christianity that is being
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: done at the time. While the suit was pending, before it was tried on, the district changed their policy. They had two elections for their student body. The first election was yes or no, should we have invocations before the game? The student body voted yes. Then they elected a student to lead those invocations, and they picked somebody. And the school was saying that clearly this was student led. Students voted to do it, students voted for the person, we had nothing to do with this. This is all them. This was in the Supreme Court. The majority opinion Stevens, O'Conner, Kennedy, Sauder, Ginsburg, and Breyer. So who you'd expect.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That means the minority was Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas.
AUSTIN: Doesn't fucking surprise me.
MITCH: Of course. They ruled that - this is a quote - "The student led prayers involved both perceived and actual government endorsement of the delivery of prayer at important school events. Such speech is not properly characterized as private." Essentially what the ruling was saying was if you're in the locker room and a student spontaneously leads a prayer, that's fine. No one's gonna say they're not allowed to. It can be silent, in their locker, just them closing their eyes. It can be them leading a group of people in an out loud prayer. Because nobody is going to see that and assume, reasonably, that the school is endorsing it one way or the other. It is something that a student just spontaneously did.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: By having it be as public as possible, in the schedule, the school is endorsing it, is what they were saying.
AUSTIN: Oh yes, they were.
MITCH: There is no reasonable way... If a person came up and didn't know anything about it and saw that, you would assume that the school had endorsed this. 'Cause they had. So they ruled that it was unconstitutional.
9:19
MITCH: Rehnquist, in his minority argument, called the decision “disturbing,” and said it “bristled with hostility to all things religious in public life.”
(both laughing)
AUSTIN: What a dramatic…
MITCH: A bit disingenuous.
AUSTIN: What a dramatic bitch.
MITCH: Rehnquist was kind of a dramatic bitch. Scalia and Thomas both just sitting there, silent.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: Rest in Hell, both of ‘em.
AUSTIN: For fucking real.
MITCH: Then we get to the big one, the real interesting one. This - oh my god - I read…
AUSTIN: (laughing) Rest in hell, sorry. Here’s a question - and this has nothing to do with this podcast - it has something to do with what we were just talking about though. In your opinion -
MITCH: Will I be on the Supreme Court some day?
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: I think so.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think you could.
MITCH: I haven’t gone to law school yet, but (laughing)
AUSTIN: You have to wear that PUP shirt constantly.
MITCH: Yeah. I’m gonna get a lace bib like Ruth Bader Ginsburg had, but it’s this design, and like,
AUSTIN: And then whenever you write your decisions afterwards,
MITCH: Also I don’t want anyone to think I’m like, a pup, with like a leather mask. This is a the band PUP shirt.
AUSTIN: Yes
(both laughing)
MITCH: I am not a pup.
AUSTIN: Nothing wrong with that.
MITCH: Ahhhhhh
AUSTIN: I mean, you do you. You do you, boo boo.
MITCH: Far away from me.
AUSTIN: (laughing) Ok, whoo, ok. In your opinion -
MITCH: Is kink shaming constitutionally allowed? Yes. Should we kind shame? Yes.
AUSTIN: Yes. (laughing)
MITCH: Pups are weird.
AUSTIN: Ok (laughing) now that we… get off of this shit… Should we A: pack the court, B: set up, constitutionally, mandated term limits, C: both?
MITCH: I would like C, I think A is more, practically, the better choice right now.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: I feel like saying “packing the court” is disingenuous because the Republicans have packed the court.
AUSTIN: Oh, they’ve packed the court.
MITCH: The court has been packed.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: I think the court should be more than nine people, already. We should have 11 or 13. And, you know, we’ve had this, like - some of the older members of the court are not clearly along party lines. Like Kennedy kind of skews the perception of it a little bit, because Kennedy’s mostly - on very public things, like gay marriage, Kennedy’s been on the right side. He’s still made a lot of conservative decisions on things that people don’t pay attention to. But Kennedy was a conservative appointment.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Most of the people on the court right now were Republican appointees.
AUSTIN: Oh, definitely.
MITCH: They’ve packed the court pretty successfully for the past 30 years.
AUSTIN: They successfully pushed Merrick Garland.
MITCH: Yeah. I think, given how much the country has grown since the Supreme Court was founded, given the complexity of the issues the court is dealing with all the time, 11 or 13 members would be better in every way. There’s no down side. It looks like, just, being vindictive or whatever, like, “Oh you’re in charge so you’re gonna pack the court.” A little bit, yeah, that’s what the other side’s been doing.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Gotta do it to not have this country fall apart (laughing) You know, the Supreme Court is like… Obviously we need a body to do what the Supreme Court does that is not decided by voters. That’s the other thing I don’t love about this idea of “can we fill the seat or not? We have to do it based on voters’ decisions.” The Supreme Court is not supposed to be left up to the voters.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: Obviously, the voters are voting for the people who appoint them, so it is getting there, but the whole point of the Supreme Court is that we have experts who are interpreting, and it’s not tied to a political party.
AUSTIN: No, it shouldn’t be.
MITCH: Or who has voted when and for who.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Again, now we have tens of thousands of people that are at the level that they conceivably could be picked to be a district judge or a federal judge, so there are enough, like… When the courts were started, I mean, the late 1700s, early 1800s, there weren’t that many legal experts in the country.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It was kind of like the top of the game if you were in that game. Now, if you’re the person that’s in a position to put somebody on the court, you can find the person that most closely aligns to your political beliefs because there are so many people to choose from.
AUSTIN: Yep
MITCH: The seats are not being filled by the unambiguous best person for the job, they’re being filled by the person who’s going to do whoever’s appointing them’s bidding most effectively and efficiently. And that’s why we have Kennedy, appointed by a Republican, pretty conservative, he hasn’t followed the conservative playbook his whole career because he is primarily a judge. Most of the ones that have come after him are not. They are primarily agents of one party or the other.
AUSTIN: They’re partisan.
MITCH: Yeah, and that’s not what it was designed to be. Can it be fixed? I don’t know, probably not. (laughing)
AUSTIN: Probably not, no.
MITCH: Putting more people on the court might help.
AUSTIN: If it’s going to be as partisan as it is, then we need to make sure we keep it as even as possible.
MITCH: That’s my frustration with the Democrats. It’s like, yeah, it would be great if it wasn’t partisan. It is. What are we gonna do about it?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Put more people on it.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I would also love to take a time machine back to a time to fix it a hundred years ago so it never became like this, but we can’t. So what can we do? We can add two more seats.
AUSTIN: Yeah, at least make it a six to five. At least. Because six to three is incredibly disingenuous and not fair.
15:11
MITCH: Let's talk about
AUSTIN: Yes!
MITCH: Borden v. School District of Township of East Brunswick.
AUSTIN: Wait, wait. Borden milk?
MITCH: No. Marcus Borden.
AUSTIN: Lizzie Borden?
MITCH: Marcus.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: Lizzie Borden's too cool. Doubt they're related.
AUSTIN: Uh, she's cool?
MITCH: Yeah, she took an axe. Christina Ricci played her. Christina Ricci doesn't play lame people.
AUSTIN: Ah, well, Black Snake Moan?
MITCH: I didn't see that one.
AUSTIN: It was fine.
MITCH: Marcus Borden - I have a lot here, this is gonna go long, we can edit it into it's own little thing if we want to. But I like it. I did a lot of research for this one. Marcus Borden led prayers at pregame dinners and in the locker room from 1983 to the early 2000s. His whole head coaching career. That's important for all the arguments that come later. He became head coach in 83, until the story starts in the late 90s, early 2000s, he led both prayers himself, only, for almost twenty years. These dinner were the football team, obviously, their parents, invited guests, and cheerleaders. So it's a pretty big amount of people.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: Semi-public, not just the team in a spontaneous team building experience.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Before '97, he would have a local minister say a prayer at the dinner, not in the locker room, but at the dinner. The athletic director told him he couldn't in '97, so he switched it to where the minister wrote a prayer and then a player would read that prayer at the dinner, for the next few years.
AUSTIN: Yeah, 'cause that's -
MITCH: I know.
AUSTIN: better.
MITCH: In 2003, 2004, and 2005, Borden said his own prayer at the beginning of the year, and then he would select a senior every week to do it. The implication from what I've read is that he was just, like - you're at the dinner, they're about to serve the food, he's like, "Greenameyer, say the prayer." And you say it. Like, that's what it seems like, based on what we read later.
AUSTIN: Grace
MITCH: In the locker room, they do it like we see on the show. They'd all be kneeling or sitting, looking at the plays, talking about the strategy, and the last thing they would do before going on the field was he would pray, and then they'd, you know, say whatever they'd say and go out there. 2005, my personal hero Joanne Magistro - I think she got... I think 2005 is when she... I think she, like, became a superintendent and started fixing some things. She received a complaint from a parent. They said that they thought it was inappropriate that he asked everybody to kneel and he bowed his head and he did his whole thing. She agreed. Didn't do anything yet, because it was one complaint.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: But she got two more complaints from other parents. One of them specifically was, "My kid's a senior, he doesn't like participating in this prayer at all, but he's also super scared that we're going to go to one of these dinners and the coach is going to ask him to pray when he doesn't pray." Like,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: that's prayer where there shouldn't be prayer, but also public speaking and being put on the spot.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: After several more complaints, Magistro... Ok, so she told the principal and the AD, they talked to him, he said, "Yeah, totally, got it, we'll stop." They didn't stop. So after a few more complaints, Magistro herself went and talked to Borden, and said that he couldn't do it anymore. And he said, "I don't know what you're talking about, I can't do it." So the board drafted some guidelines for him. These are not quotes, but they're pretty close to it. 1: students had the constitutional right to prayer, provided that it is truly student initiated and it doesn't interfere with normal school operations. 2: the school district or any representative may not encourage, lead, mandate, initiate, directly or indirectly, coerce student prayer. And 3: representatives of the school district cannot participate. That's what they gave him.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: He got these guidelines on October 6th, and then he resigned.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: On October 17th, he withdrew his resignation and said he would follow the rules. Do you think he was going to?
BOTH: No
AUSTIN: Standing up to the man.
MITCH: So he finishes out that season. It seems to me like he did follow the rules, at least enough not to get in trouble anymore. The rules that they were putting in place, students were still leading prayer. Prayer existed in exactly the same way and time and place that it always had.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: It was just student initiated and he wasn't doing it anymore.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I would argue, still not completely spontaneous and involuntary.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: The fact that it had been such a tradition for so long means that it's not spontaneously student led.
AUSTIN: No, it's not.
MITCH: But it fit the requirements of the guidelines, so they let it go.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Before the start of the 2006 season, Borden emailed his two co-captains and asked them to ask each individual player how they felt about the whole thing. They called each player and reported back to Borden that the players had voted to continue praying. So they continued the tradition.
AUSTIN: You can't see faces, but mine shifted.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: A lot.
MITCH: Yeah yeah. Borden's new... his strategy now is that, ok, the students have voted, because before the season starts their captain called them on the phone and said, "Hey, you know the tradition we've done for 30 years? Do you wanna be the one who says we can't do this anymore? No? Ok, we're gonna keep doing it." His thing is that he's just going to kneel and bow his head. He's not gonna say anything, he's not gonna... They're not saying a prayer together, they're not reciting the Lord's Prayer. But he is kneeling and he is bowing his head.
AUSTIN: He's Tebowing.
MITCH: Then Borden sued the school district and Magistro, saying he sought to "show respect for his players, respect for The Team Players, and respect for East Brunswick's football tradition by bowing and kneeling."
AUSTIN: He... he... ugh...
MITCH: He essentially... He came back on...
AUSTIN: He split them up and said "the team players."
MITCH: Yeah. Capitalized. Capital The, capital Team, capital Prayers.
AUSTIN: Fucker.
MITCH: The district court granted his suit and called the guidelines that the district had put down overbroad and vague. Borden was allowed to disregard the guidelines and awarded court costs and counsel fees.
AUSTIN: Ok, so just make it more detailed. Just say "You can't pray." Got it.
21:23
MITCH: So this court, the district court, ruled that his speech was solely private - speech in this case being kneeling and bowing his head. They said that is a private thing, it's not intended to communicate matters of public importance, so it is not a... it's part of his first amendment rights.
AUSTIN: Right, yeah
MITCH: Ummm
AUSTIN: What about the emails to his students?
MITCH: That didn't come up in this. Borden claims that his actions were for team morale and connection, not for public statements or endorsements. That's the important part, is that he is not allowed to make any public facing statements that represent the school district.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: He argued that he wasn't representing the school district. He wasn't doing anything that anybody could take as a statement. He was just doing something as subtly and inoffensively as he could, and he wanted to do more, so he sued.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: The district court does this, the school appeals, it goes to the circuit court of appeals. They disagreed with pretty much everything the district court said.
AUSTIN: Of course
MITCH: Thank goodness
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: The district court ruled that Borden's right to academic freedom "affords his the right to exercise professional judgment and teaching his players respect for others, or as he calls it, character education." That's what the district court says.
AUSTIN: (laughing) Ok, yeah
MITCH: This is how the circuit court shot that down, 'cause it's obviously bullshit. In his suit, he says two different things that are just so obviously contradictory. He said that his actions and his speech were private and not meant to be representative of himself as an actor of the district, as a representative of the district. But then in a separate part of his suit, he said that they were teaching methods and classroom management techniques. And part of his academic freedoms were to decide how to teach his class. So he's saying, on one hand, this is his private speech, you can't control it. On the other hand, hey, part of my job is to teach character development. This is how I choose to teach character development, so you can't tell me I can't. I have academic freedom. The circuit court ruled that, by his own admission, these are pedagogic tools, which means that he is acting as an agent of the school district. So the original guidelines stand. Obviously.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: He said, in his filed documents, I am using kneeling, bowing, and leading prayers as methods of teaching character development. And, like, oh you are? So you're teaching? No, you can't do that.
AUSTIN: Eat shit, Borden.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That's why that specific part of the suit was shot down, because, like, you gave them the ammo.
AUSTIN: You played yourself.
MITCH: You played yourself.
AUSTIN: You played yourself (laughing)
MITCH: You big dummy. The school district argued
(Devil Town theme music)
24:03
MITCH: We're back into it.
AUSTIN: We're back in.
MITCH: It's heavy. I think I left off -
AUSTIN: Tell me that Borden eats shit and dies.
MITCH: Well no. I didn't look up if he's dead or not.
AUSTIN: Did he eat shit?
MITCH: Probably
AUSTIN: That's what praying gets you. (laughing) That's an official statement from Devil Town itself.
MITCH: Yeah, we're called Devil Town.
AUSTIN: You pray, you eat shit, that's it.
MITCH: That's the thing, the song Devil Town, when it's used in the show, I feel like they're implying it's a bad thing. I want to live in a devil town.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I love the devil.
BOTH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: I love the devil. Lucifer? Son of the Morning? I'm a morning person.
MITCH: Morningstar himself? Anyway...
AUSTIN: I eat those Morningstar patties.
MITCH: Yeah, the devil is vegan. That's half the reason Texas hates him.
AUSTIN: Makes so much sense.
MITCH: That's what the song is about. "I was living in a devil town. All my friends are vampires. Can't even get a decent hamburger."
AUSTIN: (laughing) This is dumb.
MITCH: (singing) I was living in a devil town. I don't like black bean burgers.
BOTH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: Can we get back to Borden?
MITCH: Yes. The Circuit Court ruled that, by Borden's own admission, he was using these things as pedagogic tools, which means that the district was not infringing on his rights to say that he couldn't do it. The District... And, like, that's true in general. The idea of a teacher having academic freedom is not a constitutionally guaranteed right.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: There are lots of districts, you know, that have language implying that it is, but when it really comes down to it, if you are a teacher the district is allowed to tell you what you can and can't teach and how you can and can't teach it. I am on the side of, like, I don't want districts to do that most of the time. I think teachers should be allowed to. But legally, they're allowed to do that.
AUSTIN: Yeah, again, played yourself.
MITCH: Yeah, no, he played himself, for sure. The school district successfully argued that they instituted the original guidelines in anticipation of potential Establishment Clause violations. Which we can see from the previous case, it is a violation of the Establishment Clause. Both cases used what is called the endorsement test, which asks whether a reasonable observer would interpret an act as an endorsement of religion. The court ruled that it did in this case, because of his history. There was an argument filed by one of the majority judges that, just, had a different read on some things. He specifically said that if we had this exact case and it was the coach's first year and his first time doing anything, it wouldn't be as cut and dry. But the fact that Borden had been doing this himself, clearly his own volition, for twenty years,
AUSTIN: He set his own precedent.
MITCH: Yeah. There is no way, if somebody came in and was told the history of the case and watched what happened in the locker room, it looks like they are doing what he wants with his endorsement. Because they are. Because of tradition, because of social pressure.
AUSTIN: Oh, definitely.
MITCH: No, he didn't tell those players they had to do it, but there was such a long history of expectation there, that of course they have to.
AUSTIN: Yeah. So is this... was this the Supreme Court?
MITCH: No, this was the Circuit Court of Appeals.
AUSTIN: Ok.
MITCH: I have a little bit more that makes it a little bit more... So this is the separate statement from the court. The first one was pretty cut and dry, just really used those two arguments. The suit brought by Borden had a million little clauses in it, like, there were a lot of arguments, and part of the reason it didn't work is there were too many and they muddled each other. The ruling was very straight forward. It was Establishment Clause. It was saying that the school district was fair in assuming that there could be an Establishment Clause violation, so their guidelines were, you know, reasonable.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And that he had set a precedent that meant that he couldn't pretend that these were just neutral things he was doing anymore. A separate statement from a different judge - I didn't write down their names - revealed some things from the case that I hadn't seen, that are more -
AUSTIN: You have to do each of the voices though, so we know who they are.
MITCH: This guy sounds, lucky coincidence, this judge sounds exactly like this.
AUSTIN: Oh dang, ok.
MITCH: We're voice twins.
AUSTIN: You're a judge.
MITCH: I wish, oh my gosh. I'd be such a bad judge.
AUSTIN: Would you?
MITCH: I would get stuff done.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I would be a partisan hack for sure.
AUSTIN: Run for Oklahoma Supreme Court.
MITCH: Did you see... which Batman movie is it where the Scarecrow has a court?
AUSTIN: Third
MITCH: And he, like, burns billionaires? Is that what he does?
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: Yeah, that would be my court.
AUSTIN: You just have a sign that says Eat the Rich.
MITCH: Yeah. I do like that - people didn't like the third Batman movie. I like that, no only did he give us a villain that was so much hotter and more right than Batman, he also brought back the old villains and was like, guess what? They were right too. Hey, remember Scarecrow from the first one? He's right too.
AUSTIN: You thought Bane was hot?
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Why?
MITCH: The jacket, the mask.
AUSTIN: Oh, so you're into military types.
MITCH: It's close to a pup mask, I just realized. I played myself!
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: I'm a regular old Borden over here.
AUSTIN: (laughing) I played myself!
MITCH: Um... In a separate ruling, he specifically picked apart some of the District Court's ruling, in ways that it, like, obviously didn't make sense. In his writing, he uses things like "obviously" and "clearly." He's like, "In the original suit, it was claimed that 'this.' The District Court ruled 'this.' Clearly that was not true." (laughing) And I was like, ooh I like this guy. The District Court had agreed with Borden's assertion that, after 2006, the prayers had been spontaneous and student led. But when you have, on the record, the whole thing with the captains calling the players, he's like, "no, that's ridiculous. There's undue pressure for younger players to go along with it."
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Obviously. It's ridiculous that the District Court bought the argument in the first place,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: is essentially what it's saying.
AUSTIN: Also, didn't read the suit.
MITCH: Yeah. This judge really, really didn't like that Borden had said - same thing I was saying earlier - that Borden had said things implying that the point of the prayers wasn't a religious purpose, it was to foster team unity, to build community, to give seriousness and respect to what they were doing.
AUSTIN: He's using it as pedegogy.
MITCH: Yeah. He said it was evidently false. One parent had called Magistro, crying, and said that her son specifically said he was scared that if he didn't go along with it or if he said anything about it he would lose playing time. So, like, these kids that are trying to fight against it, it's not just that they're uncomfortable. It's that they're in a position where they feel like if they say anything out of line at all, they're gonna be ridiculed and whatever, but they're also gonna have material disadvantages.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: They would. But it is explicit in the... there are, like, this is in the case.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Like, this is known.
31:05
MITCH: This judge calls out the fact that - ok, you say that these methods are… the purpose of these methods is not religious - because one of his earlier arguments is, ok, yes I am a Christian, so the way I go about it is Christian.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But the purpose is not to praise the Christian God, the purpose is to develop a sense of unity and seriousness. He said, if your genuine goal was to promote community, but some of your students were feeling that ostracized and scared, you should have known that your methods weren’t working.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Obviously he should have. It was a bullshit excuse to begin with. But I like that he calls it out specifically. Saying, you know, you wanted to create unity and the unity you wanted to create did not include anybody who wasn’t explicitly Christian.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: And if they were, they could either shut up and go along with it or not be on the team. That’s the only options.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It pains me that there are so many places where that has been and still is the case, and the people just haven’t spoken up about it. Not that they should, I’m not saying that they should’ve fixed it by now, but you know what I mean? If you’re the only person on the team that has any problem with this, no, you’re not going to say anything.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: ‘Cause even if it goes to court and you win this case, court cases like this take years. You have one year of eligibility left before you’re done playing. This might be your last time to ever play football in your life.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Are you gonna risk that?
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: No, you’re gonna go along with it. But that’s not ok.
AUSTIN: No, it’s not ok.
MITCH: That’s wrong.
AUSTIN: It’s purposefully divisive.
MITCH: Yeah. This is a quote from this judge: “What to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices, in a school context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an attempt to employ the machinery of the state to enforce a religious orthodoxy.” Yes.
AUSTIN: That’s it.
MITCH: That’s exactly it.
AUSTIN: That’s it.
MITCH: This is the kicker. I was reading a long, long, long, like thirty pages long play by play of the whole case. This is at the bottom, in the footnotes. I didn’t read it in any of the overviews. But to me the most damning evidence in the whole thing. Before any of the football players complained, two cheerleaders had complained about the dinner prayers. And it didn’t make it to the school board and they didn’t make any guidelines about it, but Magistro has record of them, and submitted them when they were filing suit.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: The original complaints were from cheerleaders who were Jewish. They spoke up a little bit more publicly about not liking these prayers, and were pretty mercilessly attacked and harassed and bullied by other students. There was a blog created by students about these two cheerleaders, and here are some quotes from the blog: “First they crucified Jesus, then they get Borden fired. Jews gotta learn to stop ruining everything cool.” These are other students at the school. Which goes to show that, like, this isn’t just some nice disagreement on what we personally prefer religiously. This is a community where, like, Borden’s gotten away with it for so long because, clearly, 95% of the students in the school think he’s right and want him to keep doing it. And the few that don’t are, like… This is how much the other students in the school are also part of this problem.
AUSTIN: They also say that George Soros was involved?
MITCH: This was before that time, but yeah, they would’ve.
AUSTIN: Ok, Jesus, I thought you were about to read it and I was like…
MITCH: No this is another quote.
AUSTIN: Fuck
MITCH: This is a quote: “Damn Jews, then you wonder why Hitler did what he did back in the day.”
AUSTIN: Motherfuck
MITCH: Last one. This one’s got a bunch of capital cases, lower cases.
AUSTIN: Oh no (laughing)
MITCH: “Maybe if Borden held a gun to the -” and then they spelled Jews with, like, seven w’s - “Maybe if Borden held a gun to the Jew’s head and was like ‘bitch get on your knees and pray to Jesus,’ then that might be breaking the law. Mmm maybe not. Just suck it up if you don’t fucking like what’s going on in America then go the fuck back to your country and stay there and pray.”
AUSTIN: Oh my god
MITCH: Where does this guy think that a couple of Jewish cheerleaders are from?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: To go back to? (laughing) Does he think they’re Israeli? They’re probably not.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: That was the last thing I read in the history of this case.
AUSTIN: God
MITCH: Where it ended wasn’t even that harsh of a judgment. The judgment essentially held that the original guidelines the school put in place stand.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Borden is still allowed to be in the locker room while they’re praying, he’s just not allowed to say anything himself, he’s not allowed to bow his head or kneel. Students are still allowed to do it. They didn’t even say the students weren’t allowed to follow the same tradition.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I would’ve… I think they would’ve been legally sound to say - which is where I feel like it’s cutting it too close to infringing on students’ rights, but like… In the spirit of the law, whatever student led prayers exist shouldn’t be the same exact tradition that had already been in place. There’s no way of judging or enforcing that. You know, you wanna start over fresh
AUSTIN: Yes, yeah
MITCH: and say if a student wants to - we’re not gonna say… we’re not gonna put the idea in their minds at all. If they want to, we’re not gonna stand in their way, we’re not gonna do anything at all with it. The students know what has been done before.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: So they’re gonna do it exactly the same way. I am assuming that in 2007, the next season, students probably did the exact same kind of prayer they had always done.
AUSTIN: Probably.
36:30
36:30
AUSTIN: Now, this was in the Seventh Circuit, is that what you said?
MITCH: Third? I think it's New Jersey.
AUSTIN: Oh it was Third, ok. So in that situation,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: that is a precedent in that circuit, then?
MITCH: Yes. Any other circuit court in the country could also use that as precedent, or they could write their own.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: If a case just like this came up in California, it would not be uncommon at all for them to cite this case as the precedent.
AUSTIN: Right. That's the Ninth Circuit, right?
MITCH: I don't know.
AUSTIN: California?
MITCH: Yeah, Texas is Fifth, California's Ninth I think.
AUSTIN: I think so, 'cause that's the one the Republicans always rail on.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah. To my eyes... There are a lot of other cases that have to do with, you know, the Establishment Clause and religion in schools. Those three were specifically about coaches and they kind of touch on the ways that sports are different from regular schools. You have these big, public gatherings where there are hundreds, if not thousands, of non-school related people there. You have activities that are sometimes happening in school, sometimes out of school. And where is the line between what is instructional time, when are coaches representing the district, and what is not. I also read a thing that was actually really well written, I didn't save it to cite it, but I will later. It's essentially a website that's a reference for coaches, being like, a bunch of the stuff on the site is, like, hands on coaching advice, like, teaching advice. A bunch of it is, like, what are the rules when it comes to this thing? They had a long explanation of these cases, which is where I got most of where the important stuff was from.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: They essentially said, it is what it is. If you are a coach, you need to go into it knowing that you are not allowed to do or say anything on either side of the matter, at all.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Every school is gonna be different. You might be in a school where there is prayer, you might be in a school where there isn't prayer. As a representative of your school district, legally, you are not supposed to engage with it in any way.
AUSTIN: Yep
MITCH: The only times that it is allowed to be regulated is if it is not student initiated or if it is disrupting reasonable -
AUSTIN: School time, pretty much.
MITCH: school things. Which is why, you know, a teacher could go in and get onto a kid praying at lunch, the court would said, him praying at lunch is not interfering with school duties.
AUSTIN: Right, yeah
MITCH: A kid standing up on his desk in the middle of a history lecture and praying out loud, yeah, a teacher would be legally allowed to say, you're not allowed to do that right now.
AUSTIN: Exactly, yeah
MITCH: That's pretty cut and dry. But the advice to coaches was basically, you know, if in the locker room your students are praying together, you're not allowed to say anything one way or the other. You can't tell them you're glad, like, and it's kind of on the line where, like, you know... There were some scenarios about, like, some of these coaches also volunteered at their churches after school. Students know that, that's public information. Students know what coaches think.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: You're allowed to tell them what you think. You're just not allowed to do anything that could reasonably be considered coercion or encouragement
AUSTIN: Endorsement
MITCH: or endorsement, one way or the other.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Which, like, it seems like it isn't a big deal. It's a tricky line to walk, and I know from experience, like... I've never had any confusion for what I am teaching.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But, you're walking down the hallway and a kid walks up to you and says, "Hey, are you a Christian?" It's, like, hard to think, like, "ok, what am I allowed to say and not say?"
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah
MITCH: A teacher is fully allowed to tell a student about themselves. They're just not allowed to do it in a way that could reasonably be considered an endorsement or a condemnation or a coercion.
AUSTIN: It's different saying, "Yes, I'm a Christian." and "Yes, I believe that Christ is blah blah blah." and go into it.
MITCH: And honestly, like, I'm following the spirit of the law, I would tell a student that I wasn't a Christian, I don't go to church. I would want to be careful, especially working with little kids, not to do it in a tone or with an expression implying that I think it's a bad thing.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: I do
BOTH: (laughing)
MITCH: but I don't want a kid to know that, especially a little kid.
AUSTIN: Yeah, they're impressionable.
MITCH: And especially, like, I am also in a place where I have tons of religions in my school and we don't have a strong, dominant Christian, you know, social climate.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: But a lot of these kids are coming from places where, like, if two cheerleaders are speaking out against a prayer and they're getting that kind of hate from other students, there's pretty clearly a strong cultural bias in this town,
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: in New Jersey.
AUSTIN: In New Jersey.
MITCH: Imagine what it's like in rural Texas.
AUSTIN: Oh, again, I got into that full ass argument with that girl 'cause she thought it was completely fine and there was no backlash, none.
MITCH: Yeah. And it really... I've gotten into arguments with people about it. It really comes down to
AUSTIN: That was Cisco, Texas, if anybody wants to look up Cisco, Texas.
MITCH: (laughing) The idea - you see it in some of these cases - the idea of, "well, we had the students vote, most of them want it. We asked the students, they all said they like it." The idea being, if I have a hundred students and 95 of them want to pray and five of them don't, the automatic assumption is, I don't care about those five, I'm gonna do what the 95 want. My inclination, just, as a teacher, I want to do something that is not going to alienate anybody. And it really bothers me to know that there are a lot of teachers out there that will do something knowing that it's going to alienate and ostracize five of their kids, and not be bothered by that. But that's clearly the scenario in a lot of places.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, it is.
MITCH: And that's frustrating.
AUSTIN: It is frustrating.
MITCH: We are going on an hour thirty-seven. (laughing)
AUSTIN: Yeah, it's a long one.
MITCH: Let's go - do you have anything more you wanna say about this whole topic?
AUSTIN: Oh, I mean, not particularly. I will say that, whenever I was in school, that's what we did. We prayed.
MITCH: Oh, I was gonna ask. I forgot to ask.
AUSTIN: No, we definitely did. And our coach was the one who led it.
MITCH: Yeah. Our...
AUSTIN: We never had a benediction or anything like that before the game or anything.
MITCH: Yeah. See, we... I was in things that were not part of the traditional... Like, I would not be surprised if my high school's football and basketball teams did have prayers in the locker room. Marching band and the school musical and quiz bowl, those weren't the teachers or the kids that were gonna want to pray. Which is also... goes to show that it's, like, we would have the stereotypical, you know, movie style, we're about to go out on the field we gotta get a pump up speech from our coach. It wasn't weird that there was no prayer involved. I don't think many of us were like, ugh I can't really get invested in this thing because we didn't pray to Jesus.
AUSTIN: Praying never got me pumped.
MITCH: No
AUSTIN: Ever. In fact, it made me sleepy, so. I've fallen asleep on multiple occasions while I've been praying.
43:25
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MITCH: I do not have a football question for you.
AUSTIN: Hey, that's fine.
MITCH: I know everything now, I'm an expert.
AUSTIN: Can you come up with anything?
MITCH: I was gonna say, can we do recommendations for non-Friday Night Lights things, 'cause I have one for that.
AUSTIN: Hmmm, let's see.
MITCH: I have one.
AUSTIN: Ok, I do too, because I just finished the show. It has to do with sports.
MITCH: You go first.
AUSTIN: Oh were you going to say that one?
MITCH: No, I don't know what you're talking about. Oh my gosh! Yes I do, we literally just watched it.
AUSTIN: Yeah, we just watched it.
MITCH: What is your recommendation?
AUSTIN: Brockmire!
MITCH: Brockmire!
AUSTIN: Brockmire Brockmire Brockmire! It is incredible, it is as crass as you possibly can be, without being, like...
MITCH: It gets so sincere towards the end that I forget how gross and inappropriate the show is, like, it is crass.
AUSTIN: Oh it is, it is. But what... Usually whenever you have those types of shows, it inherently spits in the face the typical, like, macho crassness that's in that type of show.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Brockmire is as ridiculous and unfiltered as he possibly is,
MITCH: He is the type of like, what we have now of comedians of like, the type of anti-PC I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say and it's gonna piss you off, get over it, don't be such a pussy. But he's also extremely anti-racist and feminist and he hates billionaires and
AUSTIN: Very sex positive
MITCH: I love that. Like, he's that personality type, of like, sorry if you don't like it I'm gonna say what I need to say, he's just on the progressive side of every issue.
AUSTIN: I just think that that's actually Hank Azaria.
MITCH: It's based on a character created by him
AUSTIN: Yeah. But it's such a good show.
MITCH: It's incredible.
AUSTIN: And they did the same thing that Parks and Rec did in their final season.
MITCH: I'd say better.
AUSTIN: I would say better, too. And I love that season,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSITN: of Parks and Rec.
MITCH: That's not a dig on Parks and Rec,
AUSTIN: It's not my favorite season,
MITCH: I'm just saying Brockmire did it well.
AUSTIN: but Brockmire latest season might be my favorite season of that show.
MITCH: We didn't say what it is. It's a show about a baseball commentator. And for as much as it's not actually about baseball, it actually kind of is.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: Like, we don't really have that much baseball media. Like, there's some movies from the 90s and the 2000s. But I haven't ever seen a show that was more loving towards baseball.
AUSTIN: It loves baseball, and it talks about the problems that baseball has, like, now. And -
MITCH: And you get some good locker room scenes in season 1 if that's what you're into.
AUSTIN: (laughing) Uribe
MITCH: You do.
AUSTIN: But it is... If you wanna watch a show that is crass, it's very funny, but you'll also cry: Brockmire.
MITCH: I don't think I cried.
AUSTIN: I did. I did a lot. The last episode,
MITCH: It's very sad.
AUSTIN: the last episode, it's sad but it's not. And the whole final scene just killed me. And there's a lot of things in that show, especially between him and Charles, it's just, ugh
MITCH: Love Charles.
AUSTIN: Charles, oh Charles.
MITCH: My thing is also a sports related thing that's not actually about sports that also made me cry this week. That is Jon Bois's 20020. I still don't know how to say it.
AUSTIN: Two hundred twenty?
MITCH: Yeah. Twenty-e-twenty? Jon Bois just finished this week his sequel to his book - or his, I don't know, novel - 17776. He wrote this thing a few years ago, I consider it a book, a novel. I think it's one of, I think it's one of the best pieces of internet writing I've ever read, in that it wouldn't work as a published on paper book, it needs to be on the internet. But it is a piece of writing, it's an incredible novel. The main characters are the two Pioneer Space Probes, Pioneer 9 and 10, and JUICE, which has not been launched yet, I think it launches in, like, two years. It takes place in the year 17776, so 100,000 years in the future? I'm not good at math.
AUSTIN: Less than that, but yeah.
MITCH: Ok. Close to it? The premise is
AUSTIN: Wait, no, yes, I don't know
MITCH: in the year 2026, something mysterious happens - he doesn't dig into what happens, it's not interested in that - something happens in 2026 where everybody stops aging, everybody stops being born, everybody stops dying. Essentially people become immortal as they are in 2026. And for a while there are some of the problems that exist now continue happening. Global warming wipes out a lot of the east coast and the, you know, Gulf coast. Some people have a really hard time with it, but eventually, you know, we get to a post-capitalist society. They invent these nanobots that essentially prevent you from getting injured in any way. And he imagines, what does football look like in this world? A hundred thousand years in the future, they've had time to run through every iteration possible, so most games of football in that year don't actually look like football.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: They're either taking place over the whole state of Nebraska, or they're actually chess, or they're, you know, whatever. The first book is a bunch of short stories set in this world, but you're focusing on different characters every time. I thought that... I didn't know he was going to write a sequel to it, I was happy as it is. He did write a sequel, he just finished publishing it, and it's set in the year 20020.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: One of the probes has been in hibernation that whole time, she has just woken up, we're kind of seeing things through her eyes. There has been a football game, one game, that has been going on for a thousand years. And it involves every college team in the country, a hundred and eleven college teams, and the field is all of their fields if they extended out of both endzones until they reached a border.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: So you have 111 teams trying to get and control 111 footballs, and they can go anywhere they want as long as they stay on this crisscross of fields, going on every part of America. And he set out to do a different - the first one is about "what does it mean to like sports? What can sports look like? What do sports look like if we're not tied to things that we think sports are about now?" The second one is the experience of live sports. 'Cause in the first one we're not actually seeing much actual live football. This is looking at one game. He's really good at a thing, like, a story that shouldn't have any stakes because, like, nobody can get hurt and nobody can die and they live forever. Every chapter is, like, high stakes, it's like, tense, cliff hangers, you're like, what's gonna happen? It's so good. I think the new one might be better than the first one. If you don't know anything about Jon Bois, just go watch everything he's ever done. He perfectly wraps up his, like, weird way of writing dialog, his talent at both creating characters and also drawing pathos from things that you wouldn't necessarily expect to have it. And pulling real history that you would never learn about because it's buried in one newspaper from Nebraska in 1880, and telling you that story in a creative way. The thesis statement that's been true forever - it's just nice to hear him say it out loud - he said, "I just want to thank everybody who's read 20020 so far. I hope football fans dig it, but I also wrote it for every kind of person who's never bothered with football because they never felt like they were invited." That's a nice little presentation of his ideas.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And I feel like it's accurate. He's never really had human characters that went through the whole book, and in this book he does. And they're a Hispanic, gay, married couple, are his two lead characters. And they are incredible. I love them so much. They're my favorite characters in anything.
51:21
MITCH: But he's pretty explicitly, like - yes, he’s talking about, what does it mean to play sports? What is football? How else can humans experience what is good about football without the things that are bad about football? But he’s also saying, what does football look like if it stops being just for straight guys?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Like, the world of football he has created is completely gender-blind and race-blind and disability-blind, like, it’s for everybody in the future.
AUSTIN: Honestly, Blaseball.
MITCH: It’s very… Like, these books and Blaseball are hand in hand, very very similar. And I feel like what both of them have shown is that there are a lot of people who would love sports if they were invited to the table.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I feel like I’m kinda… I have spent my whole life thinking I hated sports, and I do still hate sports, but there’s obviously a lot about sports that I do love. I was just never involved in the cultural phenomenon of football,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: in any way.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well, and, he is so good at drawing in, just, tons of different people. The amount of comments that I see on his youtube videos that are like, “I don’t even like sports and I love this.”
MITCH: I feel like it’s reasonable to say that most of Jon Bois’s fans are not sports fans.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. So, read those. I need to read them. If you don’t wanna read anything, look up his youtube. I think we’ve probably talked about him before, but… He did Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, which is, like, a five part series on the history of the MMA.
MITCH: It’s incredible. It’s not, I think, a good introduction to him.
AUSTIN: It’s not. But it’s good.
MITCH: It’s amazing.
AUSTIN: It’s a very good documentary. But his best work is the History of the Seattle Mariners. It is incredible. Is it six parts?
MITCH: Six parts.
AUSTIN: Six parts. Well, I take that back, it’s his second best work. His best work is definitely
MITCH: Troy State?
AUSTIN: Troy State, yeah. God, just
MITCH: I’d say, if you’re a sports fan, you probably already know what SB Nation is.
AUSTIN: Yeah, Secret Base
MITCH: And they’re all incredible, I love all of SB Nation. If you’re not a sports fan, his series called Pretty Good, find a video that isn’t about sports. He has Pretty Good videos that are about other topics. But if you like him and you like that style, you will like the sports stuff. I’ve watched hours of sports documentaries that I never would’ve thought I was interested in because it’s Jon Bois.
AUSTIN: I think I actually talked about one of his videos, it was the shorter one on Colin Kaepernick, whenever we talked about that.
MITCH: Yeah, you did, you mentioned it. Also an incredible video, not the strongest Jon Bois voice.
AUSTIN: No, it’s not.
MITCH: I watch his videos because sometimes he shows actual camera footage of himself, and he’s no slouch.
AUSTIN: (laughing) He’s no slouch. He is also high school educated. Doesn’t have a college degree. And he’s the head of the video department at SB Nation.
MITCH: He’s obviously extremely intelligent.
AUSTIN: Yeah, he’s shaped that entire company.
MITCH: And that’s one of his things that he always goes back to, is like, he knows he’s smart, he’s got a body of work to prove he’s smart, he wants it known that he did not go to college.
AUSTIN: Yeah, god. He’s essentially the guy that gives the Silicon Valley dudes their first, what’s it called… Except he went to college and he’s telling people not to go. Wait, no, he didn’t go to college, I take that back. Nevermind.
MITCH: It’s, you know. I feel like he would say pretty similar to what I’d say, if you need to go to college to do what you wanna do, go to college.
AUSTIN: Go to college.
MITCH: But don’t think that you have to.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Only go if you need to, only go if it really makes sense.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: I had to, to get the job I wanted to get. Now I’m realizing, like, nah, in Oklahoma, I could’ve done my job without an education degree. But at the time, I was like, if I wanna do this job, I have to go to college. So I did. There are lots of paths that my life could’ve taken that didn’t involve college that would’ve been just fine.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well, I’m cleaning carpets now. I don’t need a degree for that.
MITCH: A lot of people in my life make a lot better money than I do without a college degree. My little brother is a welder, he makes twice what I make.
AUSTIN: Oh man. Ok, well, I’m Austin.
MITCH: I’m Mitch.
AUSTIN: And this is Devil Town.
BOTH: (laughing)
MITCH: I’m Mitch, and we have been robots this whole time.
AUSTIN: We have been robots. Robots. Fuck the establishment.
BOTH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: Why did mine turn up so high?
MITCH: ‘Cause you’re talking super loud.
AUSTIN: I wasn’t earlier.
MITCH: This is how it’s always been.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: It sounds fine.
AUSTIN: I just screamed into the microphones
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