Casey Gerald says ruining his reputation saved his life

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today, writer Casey Gerald, has walked away from his own success twice. The first time was in 2016 at the height of everything. He was a kid from Oak Cliff, a working-class neighborhood on the south side of Dallas, who had made it out the way America tells us to make it out. A football scholarship to Yale, a job at Lehman Brothers, an MBA from Harvard. He created a nonprofit that put him on magazine covers and TED stages, with a talk viewed millions of times. He opened for President Barack Obama at South by Southwest in 2016. And there was even a New York Magazine headline that asked, Does Casey Gerald know how to fix America? And then just like that, he shut down his nonprofit, stopped answering the phone, and disappeared. His memoir, There Will Be No Miracles Here, was his first report back. Then he went quiet again. And now, after that second long silence, Casey Gerald has returned with a book that reads less like a memoir and more like a challenge. It's called The Great Refusal, A New Vision of Resistance. It's his attempt to make sense of the choice at the center of his own life, to stop trying to convince America that he deserves a place in it, and take back the authority to decide what his life is for. Casey Gerald, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you, Tonya. So good to be with you. Well, you know, the first time we spoke, I think it was around 2018, 2019, you had just come back into view after shutting down MBAs across America. That is your nonprofit, which you created, that sent MBAs all across the country to help small business owners. And you left New York, you went quiet, and in this book, you describe that choice as a desperate, and I thought that was a very interesting choice of words, to call it a desperate one. Desperate to get away from what? Well, I wasn't getting away from anything. I was going towards something. I just didn't know what it was. You know, people ask me all the time, they say, hey, my cousin wants to write a memoir. Do you have any advice for them? I say, absolutely, do not do it, unless your life depends on it. And that certainly was the case for me. I had accomplished by my late 20s about everything the kid is supposed to achieve. You know, when I first left Oak Cliff, South Oak Cliff High School in 2005 and went off to Yale, they put posters up in every school, public school in Dallas. Look who's going to Yale. He did it, you can too. And despite doing it, or maybe because of it, I was really cracked up. I don't know if you'd say I was having a nervous breakdown, but I wasn't too far off, and I was awful sad. But all I knew was that something was wrong with me. And something was wrong with a lot of my friends when we finally talked about it, and something was wrong with the world. It was 2016. So I just said, I'm leaving. Where did you actually go? What did you actually do? Well, I went to Texas. I went back to Texas. I went to Austin. I'm from Dallas. And so I had two friends in Austin. And I woke up one morning. I said, hey, do you think I can rent a house in Austin to write? Because I had agreed to write this book. I didn't know if I was going to finish a book. I didn't know that I could write a book, There Will Be No Miracles Here. All I knew was, you know, the book business is about the only one that will pay you to investigate your own problems. And so I was like, I'm going to write a book. I'm going to write a book. I figured, okay, I'll try this as long as I can. So I went to Austin and kind of hid away, you know, in this little house for two years to write. I'm just curious. Those unanswered calls, those text messages, did you listen to them? Did you read them? All of the people trying to get in touch with you during that time that you were away? Not really. But I don't necessarily say that with pride. I write in this book. Sometimes you have to ruin your reputation to save your life. So, you know, I like people. I don't like putting on this front of, oh, I'm, you know, too busy to answer the phone. And so I didn't really listen to any of them because I was trying to listen to whatever this little heart of mine was trying to say. I want to get to why you feel like you were cracking up and running away because by all accounts, as you said, your life seemed like a dream on paper. You had attained ultimate success. And somebody once told you, in fact, it was, I think it was the dean during your freshman welcome at Yale who said to the class, if you're going to be a token, just be the best token that you can be. You went on. Yale. Lehman Brothers, magazine covers, TED Talks. What did that token require of you being that token? Well, I never believed the whole token thing. Thankfully, I grew up in a pretty much total segregation. So, you know, Oak Cliff, at least in my vintage, you know, the yard man was black. My teachers were black. So I came from people who were extraordinary. My elementary school principal, I always say she looked like Lena Horne, you know, Aretha Jones. She's passed now. She had a Ph.D. My grandmother, Clarice, I carry her around all the time, was born in a Freedman's community, Pelham, Texas. Didn't have a college degree. Read books all the time. And she'd always tell us, you have to know your history. So I never felt any lack of value. That would lead me to believe that I needed white people to accept me. I don't give myself any credit for that. I give the people who raised me the credit for that. So it wasn't so much that I was, the cost was trying to be a token. The cost was trying to convince the world and myself that, I was valuable as a human being. That probably comes more from, you know, it's a strange thing when your parents leave you, you know. And so I had this sense, my mother left, disappeared from a psych ward when I was 13. And so it struck me, I think very early, that if your mother can leave you, everything's on the table. Mm. Your mother struggled with mental illness. As you said, she really disappeared when you were around 13. And your father, who was this larger than life football star, he played for Ohio State for a time. He also was in and out of your life, most of your life. So that is interesting, you really understanding this moment that you're in, where you are at the height of your career and success and attention is being lauded towards you, that you make this decision. And you made this decision to disappear from a system that you don't view yourself as a token. But you came to the understanding that you are viewed that way within the system. Well, I came to an understanding, a couple things in that. First off, I came to an understanding that our universities were committing malpractice. That was my understanding. Say more. Thankfully, I heard that Dean tell that to those freshmen years after I graduated from Yale. And had started the work that I'm doing now of trying to be real, you know, and trying to be free. So you didn't hear that while you were in school? No. And to be clear, if I had heard it, I probably would have done it. I would have tried. Yeah. I remember my freshman advisor, when I got to Yale, I had on a fitted hat. And she said, well, first off, you know, take your hat off. Like a baseball cap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a baseball cap. New era. Baseball cap. And she said, well, first off, you know, take your hat off, which is fair. I was in her office. Take your hat off. She says, do you wear those things around campus? And I said, yeah, yeah. And she said, oh, no, Casey, you're at Yale now. You don't have to do that. And so when I say our universities and our elite regimes of accomplishment are committing malpractice against young people, not just black people, but young people in this country, probably many countries beyond. This one. It is that they offer a dead end bargain. They say, we'll give you the keys to the kingdom. But you got to leave parts of yourself outside. And so we're trained very comprehensively, probably from nap time in kindergarten to comply, to become strangers to ourselves so that we make sense to other people, to mutilate ourselves and turn ourselves. And they give us the right degrees and the right job and the right invitation. to Oak Bluff's Martha's Vineyard, okay? And in return, you wake up one day and you say, same thing they said 2,000 years ago, what would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? There is no brass ring, no degree, no accomplishment that can fill the hole in your soul. You know, it's really interesting with the rollback of DEI and the word diversity even being a dirty word. People don't even like to use it anymore. Do you think that that dean would give the same advice to those students today, you know, to be the best token that you can be? I don't know. My generous read is that the advice, if you're going to be a token, be the best token you can be, is coming from a place that makes a lot of sense. And it can get you a decent part of the way down a path that you think is the path. But there's only one path, and the path is to remember who you really are. Your soul has come into this human body for a time and for a reason and for a much larger purpose than dying for your country or getting killed for your country. Or getting into the university club in San Francisco. I want you to read from the book because I really want to get at the heart of what you were feeling, what had been revealed to you, what you understood once you're making all this money at Lehman and once you have, like, created this nonprofit and you are, like, in the world. I want you to start third paragraph because you made, you arrived at this place and you are the one. It is tempting to become the one, to feel special with your little seat at the big table. But we have seen too much to kid ourselves. We know the one does not get fed. Some scraps, okay, but not enough to nourish, never enough to take home to your people, the folks you thought you'd played the game for. The one always loses the game, collects $200 and never passes go or passes go and passes go. Passes go and passes go and passes go and dies having passed go many times and gone nowhere but crazy. To be fair, the one does on occasion inherit the kingdom, the country, takes on its values, makes its dreams their dreams, makes its dreams come true, becomes a star in, quote, the national fantasy in such a way that the fantasy will be left unchanged and the social structure left unchanged. Each one who penetrates serves as a spoonful of hope that helps to make mass suffering go down and thus prevents, I bet, at least one million people from revolt. That's just my estimate. Therefore, whole industries exist to circulate great stories about the ones and awful stories about the ones who suddenly, someday, hurl their scripts and scream, this makes no sense. Thank you for reading that. And what is so fascinating for me about you, Casey, is that you were the one and you also made the choice, you made the choice to be that other person, to say, this makes no sense. This makes no sense for me. Well, people talk about the American dream, okay? And I like fantasy as much as anybody. I'm not opposed to it. I'm not opposed to the American dream. Sure, there's a Casey Gerald, there's a Tanya Mosley, there's an Oprah Winfrey, there's a Sonia Sotomayor. Okay. But what I'm interested in is the American machine, this conveyor belt that takes young people from neighborhoods like mine or J.D. Vance's from nothing to nowhere while picking off the chosen few like me. So if I hadn't had Demorris Vance in the fifth grade and Gwendolyn Davis, my other friend, my fifth grade teacher who just passed, my whole life was falling apart. My parents had gone. I didn't know where I was staying day to day. I felt like the most worthless child in the history of the universe. And these two women saw me. And Ms. Vance always says, Casey, Casey Gerald, boy, you have little big old eyes. You just, Davis and I said, this boy just watch us everywhere we go. He just watch us. He sees everything. So I happened to have a sensibility at that time where my response to the horror of my life was to submit to anybody, usually strangers, who could give me what I needed. You know, while, reading your book, there were a couple of different things that were just happening at the same time. And it's funny how that happens sometimes when you're in the midst of one thing, then all of these messages come around you. And there's this particular clip from Josh Johnson, the comedian, that I want to play. It's from his standup. And it speaks to this broader sense of what you are saying happened to you. individually may be happening to us collectively. Let's listen. You graduate and people are like, look, I think humanity's almost done anyway. So why don't you just move back in with your parents for a little while, let the robots get legs going, like let the give the AI legs and then let's all just wind down as a society. Because it's an insane thing to do now to sit, to send these kids into the world where they're like, look, you could work hard or, or I'm going to pitch you something crazy. Or if you get popular enough, you could make your own coin. All right. Now, if you make your own coin and if you pump and dump fast enough, the SEC won't even catch you like that. So then you can at least hold on to that nest egg for like 10 years, use some of that to pay off your loan. If we're still on the dollar, there's nothing backing up the dollar. The debt is at 40 trillions. So who knows? We might be on the yen soon. We have no idea. That was comedian Josh Johnson in one of his recent standups. There are so many little moments in this that he even goes back to this idea of like, what is this all for participating here? But in particular, that clip, what's your response to that? Rejoice. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord. It's over. Ken Lacovara, Ken Lacovara, a great paleontologist I met years ago. We were having a conversation about mass extinction. And he said, well, Casey, you know, we've had five mass extinctions already. We're going to have mass extinctions are just a fact of life. But mass extinction is not total extinction. About 97% of all living organisms, somebody fact-checked me, you know, they go extinct. I've heard him speak about this before. He said, you know, humans is just what the world is doing right now. Hello. So this is why it's so important to remember who you are. When I was, this was early pandemic, May 2020. And I was really, I felt that I was slipping back in the crisis. And I had just had my mother, you know, tried to get her some help and some mental health help. And that was taking a toll on me. A lot of things were taking a toll. And I found a new therapist, Robert. And our first session, he says, well, Casey, how are you feeling? I said, Robert, I'm having a hard time. And he said, well, you're not having a hard time. Casey's having a hard time. And I was, you know, at this point, I'm getting kind of upset. So he says, have you ever driven a car? And I said, yeah. He said, at any time when you were driving the car, did you become the car? I said, no. He said, that's how I want you to think about your life. You, your soul is a driver. Casey is a vehicle. And just like your car breaks down, it goes to junkyard. That doesn't mean you stop driving. That's what your soul does. So I say that to say, it's so important that we understand that this is not our first time. This is not our first rodeo. This is not our first time. This is not our last rodeo. It will not be our last rodeo. And we didn't come here just to suffer. We came here to play some role. Could be just growing a tomato, which incidentally is very difficult. I've learned in the past six months, it's damn hard to grow a good tomato, but to play some role in the unfolding of the universe. So the end of a world is not the end of the world. Worlds end all the time. I had a horrible breakup a couple of years ago. I had a horrible breakup a couple of years So a world ended, okay? grieve it all the time. There is a great cry inside each of us that we ought to just let out. Our guest today is writer Casey Gerald. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is writer Casey Gerald. He's written a new book called The Great Refusal, A New Vision of Resistance. It's a follow-up to his 2018 memoir, There Will Be No Miracles Here. Prior to his writing career, he opened for President Barack Obama at South by Southwest in 2016, and his TED Talks have been viewed more than four million times. He's also a New America Fellow and resides in Texas. You know, I mean, I know you've heard this. You heard this during the first run when you were talking about There Will Be No Miracles Here and your op-eds. Nice of you to say that. What a privileged place for you to say this. There are people who are just truly struggling to get by, who want to opt out of everything right now, who want to have the time to think to even get to the ideas that you are talking about. Well, I don't want them to get to my ideas. I want them to get to their life. When I say The Great Refusal, I'm not trying to lure people into refusal. I'm trying to let people off the hook. I'm trying to help people see or zoom out and grasp that they're already living refusal, their hatred of certain policies, their anger, their despair, their frustration, their fatigue, your exhaustion in saying, go to sleep, your exhaustion is saying, wake up. There is a refusal at the soul level. The soul screams, no, I don't want to do this. I don't want this anymore. I don't want to tolerate it anymore. And as a great mentor of mine, Evelyn Henry-Miller told me once when I was 24, I was in this awful job. And she says, Casey, sometimes it's not about knowing what you're going to do. It's about knowing what you're not going to do. And you are not doing this anymore. So you go quit tomorrow. Okay. So, so, and I did. And so I say that to say refusal is devotion. So every time you're refusing, every time you say no, you're actually underneath that. You're betting on devotion to the thing that really matters to you, the thing you really want, the thing you're really here to do. And so every time you just let it go, maybe we could call the book The Great Surrender. Just let that stuff go that ain't yours, that you don't want no way, that you've been really up at night for years and months and crying, talking yourself out of letting go. Let it go. You've talked about Oak Cliff, this neighborhood that you were from in Dallas, Texas. What does that place mean for those who don't know? Well, Oak Cliff, the Oak Cliff of my youth, where my grandparents integrated, my aunt, my mother's sister, my father's brothers were the first black children to go to South Oak Cliff High School. My grandfather was a pastor in this neighborhood. When they moved in, you know, people egged the cars and toilet paper at their homes and they didn't leave. So part of what Oak Cliff is to me is the same thing I saw in these fires when I'd heard these stories about Altadena, which I didn't know about. In California, you had the fires last year. I heard these stories of these enclaves. Of black people who, in absolutely impossible situations, made a pretty marvelous life on their terms. And so that's what it means to some degree. But it also, in some ways, is the best preparation for what we're living through right now and what we will be living through in time to come, which is when nobody has any money and very few people know what dinner is going to be. tomorrow, you get to sharing pretty quickly. It's that kind of community. Absolutely. Working class community. You grew up in the 90s. And so looking outside of your front door, what did you see? Well, depending on the day, I saw a lot of pecans, that's for sure. And sometimes I'd see our neighbors. We knew everybody on the street. And they knew us, and they knew our mamas and daddies. And we saw people helping people. And we also saw, you know, crazy stuff. And we saw, you know, our classmates be killed. And we saw our parents straggling home, high. And we saw, you know, that old cutlass that our uncle had, that somebody had, you know, put some candy paint on, you know. And we saw Double Dutch. And we saw the the leaves running down the street in a rainstorm. We saw life. And that is, perhaps, if you want to talk about hope. My experience was not necessarily working. I was just trying to figure out how to live. And I was just trying to figure out how to live. And I was just trying to figure working class. My experience and the experience of my friends was horrific. There's really no other word for it. And yet, I cannot tell you, Tanya, we had a hell of a time. You know, we had a great time. So that's partially when you talk about, oh, privileged of you to say, you know, from your perch, you can say, but everybody else trying to get through it. I'm talking to you as Casey Gerald, the Yale graduate, the Harvard MBA. I'm talking to you as having recovered that child who had nothing, who didn't even have a mother and a father, and who had a great time. Your mom, as you mentioned to us, suffered from mental illness and she disappeared around 13. When did you understand that she wasn't coming back? That's a great question. When a person disappears, and they've been gone for two or three years, and you've heard nothing, I just assumed she was dead. Now she wound up, my sister found her five years, almost five years later, she came back, which is a whole other complication. But in my teenage mind, and my mother was my only person in the world that I really liked. That was my buddy, you know. And so, you know, I just assumed that she was dead. And I just assumed that she was dead. And so, it was a lot easier for me to just conclude that she was dead than to keep spending all that energy figuring out when she was coming back. But it took much longer to do something more interesting, which was to realize that she had taught me perhaps the greatest lesson that anyone's ever taught me. I don't know that this book or this Disappearance to save my life, this walking away from everything that I had set out to do, this willingness to endure a lot of scorn and criticism, to walk away. I wouldn't have that frame of reference, and I might not have the guts to do it, if I didn't have the example of this woman, who I know loves me more than anything in the world, who got to a certain point in their psych ward where everything around her was killing her, and she said, I got to get away. And she ruined her reputation to save her life. Who was it that signed your permission slips and fed you and tended to you during those times? In those years? Everybody. Everybody. That's why I say the one. I'm accountable to people. My sister dropped out of college and adopted me. She was 19. I was 15. I told people we were like the boxcar children. Both of my grandmothers, whether they wanted to or not, they never let me go. My aunts let me stay there. My aunts would pick me up from school. My teachers. I had, what is Blanche DuBois, I've always depended on the kindness of strangers. I choose to believe. Because I can't prove it, but I don't have to. I choose to believe that for some reason, God, the universe, my people, beyond this world, beyond their bodies, have conspired since the very beginning to get me my daily bread so I can get on about whatever business I'm here to do. My guest today. This is writer Casey Gerald. His new book is called The Great Refusal, A New Vision of Resistance. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. And today I'm talking with writer Casey Gerald, author of the new book, The Great Refusal, A New Vision of Resistance. It picks up from his previous book, There Will Be No Miracles Here, which is a memoir that chronicled his life growing up in Oak Cliff, Dallas, attending Yale and Harvard, working at L.A. Lehman Brothers, creating a successful nonprofit, and then at the height of his success, walking away. How does refusing or letting go for people during a time of great division look like when many people are upset about the direction that this country might be going? Two things. One, it might look like you're turning off CNN. But don't turn off NPR. I'm joking. Don't turn it off until, except for those times where you can feel your stomach tightening up. You can feel yourself getting mad. It's not to say don't be informed, but really ask yourself, um, how much of this news diet, information diet, media diet, is making me more capable of being useful on this issue? Now, I go and have to get gas almost every day. I live in Texas, and it's horrible. And, you know, it's really unbelievable. What it costs to live every day. Okay. But you see that in the grocery store. I don't actually need to watch an hour on the latest action in the Strait of Hormuz to know that gas is high. Okay. I don't need it. So really, um, trust, trust what you are feeling. Trust that there's something in you that don't want this no more. Sometimes your news diet, your media diet, your conversation diet, with your friends, sometimes it will feel much like when you've had too much to drink, or you had two double cheeseburgers from McDonald's. You know, you just feel sick. Pay attention to it. Put the burger down. You know, the other thing on this is, this is a great example of what I mean that refusal is devotion. If you hate what ICE is doing anywhere in this country, everywhere in this country, you also love something else. You, you, you actually have a vision of how a just and fair society would treat people. You have a fundamental belief about the sacredness of a child's relationship with their parent. So stick with your frustration enough to see that you actually have a vision of how a just and fair society would treat people. You have a vision of how a just and fair society would treat people. You have a fundamental belief that you have to have a vision of the good and the beautiful and the righteous. And from that creative energy, that's the energy that creates worlds. We can't win just by saying, boy, I hate that. But we can use, boy, I hate that as a starting point for saying, oh, but I know something that I really want and I love and I'm willing to fight for and I'm willing to jam. on. Every time you think about going to a protest or a party, put on some good music, have some drinks, have some snacks, and then start talking with your friends about the stuff you really want to see happen. And I promise you, you're sitting on some clue. Every seed of angst you have, the other side of it is a seed of the world to come and of the country that you really want. What is the difference between refusal and giving up? Sometimes there is no difference. I don't really care what you call it. You call it refusal. You can call it giving up. You can call it peach cobbler. I don't care. All I care about is, are you in tune with how you're feeling? Are you in tune with the courage and capacity that you have to let go of things? Are you in tune with how you're feeling? Are you in tune with the courage and capacity that you have to let go of things that are harming you, that are hurting you, that are dragging you down, that are killing you? Do you have, have you developed enough faith to know that if I let this go, if I let this man go, this isn't the end of love? You know, I always come back to love because, you know, I just, you know, really, I just want to be on the beach with a lover, you know, that's all I want to get off. So, so, so, so, so, so. So, don't worry. You don't know what the end is going to be. Stay prayed up. Stay in tune with who you really are, your inner guidance. Stay in tune and accountable to the people that love you, to your friends. Make the most honest, righteous, thorough choice you can of a next right step and trust that as Miles Davis used to tell his band, we can play the mistake. You can't get it wrong. Try something and trust that even if that next right step leads you to a dead end, you can turn around and go a different way. What about the power of protest to create change? What might we lose if people opt out? Well, first off, I'm not telling anybody to opt out of anything. My hope is that people opt in to who they really are. And what they really want and what their gifts are and what they've come here to do. My dear friend, who's a very important part of this book, DeRay McKesson. DeRay. Civil rights activist. Who became prominent during the Mike Brown protests after he was killed in Missouri. Right. So, you know, DeRay, that was his natural environment. When we first met, he was spending every day. We'd be sitting at my house. And it'd be two in the morning and he'd be planning a boycott. And he wasn't frustrated or stressed. He was having a great time. So trust that there is something that is your thing. If you're the protest type and that's what's calling you, what did Whoopi Goldberg say to Lauryn Hill in Sister Act 2? Girl, you can quit the choir all you want to. But if you wake up and you want to sing and you go to sleep and you want to sing, you're a singer. Trust it. You ain't got to listen to me. Listen to your soul. Listen to five year old you who really loved a certain thing. At five years old, there was probably something in Tanya Mosley that had something that makes total sense to you now. It's the same thing for somebody who wants to protest, who wants to lead a revolution, who wants to, you know, stage a coup in Sri Lanka. Follow the cut of your jib. Blow your horn as true and as strong as you can. And trust that that is some note in the Universal Symphony. Don't do it. I'm telling you. I'm telling you to do. Do what you, in your most private, righteous moment, would have yourself to do. And I trust it. I support you. I might not be there, but I'm cheering for you all the way. Casey Gerald, as always, thank you. Thank you. This is a great gift, as always, Tanya. Casey Gerald's new book is The Great Refusal, A New Vision of Resistance. Coming up, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the Canadian sketch comedy series SCTV, which is now streaming on Netflix. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. SCTV, also known as Second City TV, was a low-budget sketch comedy show that originated in Canada in the mid-1970s and continued in syndication and on network and cable TV until 1984. Its cast members over the years have included John Candy, Martin Short, Catherine O'Hara, and Andrea Martin. And the entire series has generally been unavailable to watch. But beginning this month, all six seasons of SCTV are available to stream on Netflix. Our TV critic David Bianculli is thrilled, and here's his review. SCTV was an outgrowth of the stage company of Second City Toronto and originally was televised by the Global Television Network, one of Canada's smaller networks. It premiered in 1976, the year after the launch of NBC's Saturday Night Live in the United States, and wasn't syndicated here until 1980. It premiered in 1977, after the first two seasons of SCTV had been completed. Yet, SCTV embraced that underdog status and attitude with a vengeance. Its premise was brilliant. Every episode would focus on the same low-rent TV station from Mellonville, presenting samples of its programming from sign-on to sign-off. But also, showing commercials and promos, as well as news broadcasts, variety specials, and behind-the-scenes visits with talent, executives, and employees at the fictional station. In other words, SCTV could satirize just about everything. And did. With a cast so talented, many of them would become, and remain, major comedy stars. Netflix is repeating the original sequence of shows from Canada, which not only introduced the cast members, but also, for a while, used a cheeky opening narration that never made it across the border. Until now. I have to warn you. Or at least point out, that this compilation of SCTV episodes is neither complete nor unedited. When one first-season episode, called Ethnic Incident, humor was syndicated to the States, some sketches were cut for fear of offending. Now, in this Netflix lineup, that entire episode is missing. In other episodes, a few sketches are cut and music replaced or omitted, but by and large, this six-season collection is an almost complete treasure trove. And the only other warning before diving in is that sometimes certain sketches were reacting to their times with events and celebrities that will fail to register with many of today's viewers. Captain Kangaroo, for example. But today's viewers also should delight in how intricately written, cleverly interwoven, and superbly performed these sketches are. For example, Joe Flaherty plays SCTV newsman Floyd Robertson, but Floyd also moonlights as the station's late night movie host, dressed as a vampire and introducing a string. A frighteningly dull film. Some program offerings, like English for Beginners, are the kind of shows early morning TV used to present all the time, aimed at serving the public. Catherine O'Hara plays the stern instructor, and Andrea Martin plays her confused but eager student. Hello, and welcome to English for Beginners. I am your instructor, Miss Lucille Hitzger, and today's guest student is Frisa Perrini-Scoloso. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Come in. Come in. Come in. Come in. Come in. Those are standalone standouts. Others are provided over the years by everyone from Martin Short as Ed Grimley, to John Candy and Eugene Levy as the polka-playing Schmengi brothers. And the more fluent you are in pop culture, the more SCTV will reward you. Take this bit, featuring Eugene Levy and Tony Rosato as Abbott and Costello, adapting the famous Who's On First bit into a confusing rapid-fire exchange, not about the names of baseball players, but the names of some rock groups. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a great show for you tonight. Our first group is making their big comeback on the show tonight. Salute! Hello, why don't you introduce the band? You want me to introduce the band? That's right. All right, I'll introduce the band. What band? The band. What's the name of the band? I'm telling you, man, the band. Well, who's the band? No, no, no. Who's on next week? What are you asking me for? I'm not asking you. I'm telling you, who's on next week? Well, what do I care who's on next week? If I'm going to introduce the band tonight, I've got to know their name. That is their name. That's whose name? The band. What's the matter with you? Look, are you the fellow who booked the band? That's right. Who's on next week? That's what I'm trying to find out. Well, I'm telling you. Look, have you signed a contract with the band? That's right. Was the band's name on it? Absolutely. It's no good unless they sign it. It's no good unless who signed it? The band. Well, who signed it? Who's on next week? I don't care who's on next week. I've got to know the name of the band that's on tonight. Are you listening to me? The band is on tonight. Who's on next week? You follow me? Yes. No, no. Yes said no. They were booked. Who's booked? Didn't I just say who's on next week? Yes. No, no, no. They're booked. And there's my favorite SCTV sketch of all. An extended parody that imagines Rick Moranis as Woody Allen collaborating on a movie with Dave Thomas as Bob Hope. It'll make the critics happy. What am I saying? I'll be editing until I'm 90. Are you listening to me, Woody? My advice is to watch all of these SCTV episodes whenever you want or need a laugh. But to watch them in the reverse order that Netflix presents them. Start with season one and work through the shows in their original order. That way, you can watch the talent bloom and ignite. But however and whenever you watch SCTV, you're in for a real treat. And finally, that treat is being served up in one convenient place. David Bianculli reviewed SCTV. All six seasons are now streaming on Netflix. Tomorrow on Fresh Air. It's been nearly 25 years since 9-11. Writer Richard Beck says the response to that day reshaped American life. From mass surveillance to a deepening distrust of one another. His book is called Homeland. The War on Terror in America. The War on Terror in American Life. Join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley. ♪♪♪