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A podcast from the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University about play and pop culture. Professors Haeny Yoon and Nathan Holbert talk with educators, parents and kids about how they play in their work and their lives, and why play and pop culture matter.
The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speaker to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, staff or Trustees either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.
Haeny Yoon:
All right, everybody. Welcome to Pop and Play, the podcast all about play in its many silly, serious, and powerful forms. Are we ever going to come up with a different tagline?
Nathan Holbert:
No, I'm going to have those three.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I'm Haeny Yoon.
Nathan Holbert:
And I'm Nathan Holbert. And today we are bringing you another Pop Off. These are short episodes where we talk a little bit about what's going on in pop culture, what's going on in the news, and how it relates to play and pop culture.
But before we get into that, we want to let you know about our upcoming Play Date. So as a reminder, this season, rather than wait for the spring to drop all of our episodes, we're trying to release episodes every two weeks or so, and-
Haeny Yoon:
Or so is the emphasis.
Nathan Holbert:
Planning on two weeks, but things happen. And so we have a special kind of episode that we're kind of weaving into these Pop Offs, and we're calling these Play Dates.
Haeny Yoon:
That's right. These are episodes where we engage in a play experience together. So Nathan and I will be doing this and you will be able to not watch us, but listen to us as we enjoy such play. And we'll let you know ahead of time what we're going to play with and we invite you to play along with us. This next first Play Date will be the inaugural listen to Taylor Swift's new album, Life of a Showgirl.
Nathan Holbert:
Woo.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. And that's right, we're not releasing it till later because we want to give you time to soak it all in, to indulge, to memorize all the lyrics and to figure out what your favorite song is.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. And I'm sure you're all going to be waiting to hear from Haeny and me before you decide what your actual opinion is. We're tastemakers.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. I'm sure you're not listening to anybody else talk about it, like experts.
Nathan Holbert:
Not yet. Yeah, of course. But you should expect this episode to come out on November 11th. Look for it in your feed then. And we're also going to try to host kind of a hashtag conversation maybe as well later on that day on Bluesky. We'll provide more of that information for you soon. But until then, get excited. We're very excited. We're gearing up for some... What did you call-
Haeny Yoon:
I am very excited for the takeover.
Nathan Holbert:
There it is. The takeover coming up. We're looking forward to engaging in that and then talking with you all about it.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. My social card is very full for the next week.
Nathan Holbert:
Mine is not, because all of my friends are exploring Taylor Swift and I'm just at home by myself.
Well, with that in mind, we want to talk though today, not about Taylor Swift though, I'm sure Taylor will come up, she always does, I want to talk a little bit about the state of the world a little. Is that okay with you, Haeny?
Haeny Yoon:
Yes, that's okay. I can do this for 15 minutes.
Nathan Holbert:
Good. Which is about how long these Pop Offs are. So we're going to be dating this episode a little bit-
Haeny Yoon:
Just a little.
Nathan Holbert:
... in terms of the recording. But we're recording this particular Pop Off maybe a week or two after Jimmy Kimmel's, is it The Late Show? Which one is his called? The Late Show?
Haeny Yoon:
No, his is not the...
Nathan Holbert:
Evening Show? Tonight Show?
Haeny Yoon:
The Late Show is Stephen Colbert.
Nathan Holbert:
Nighttime show? I can't remember which one his is called. But Jimmy Kimmel's show was taken off the air and then of course reinstated, and we're recording a week or two after that.
And if you don't recall this, the real quick context here was that Jimmy Kimmel had said on air that the, I think he said sort of the MAGA sect or the MAGA bros are trying to figure out how to pin Charlie Kirk's murder on anyone but themselves I think was what he said, or something approximately like that. And that had led to him being taken off the air.
This, to me, was kind of an inciting moment for us to think about autocracy, for us to think about the ways in which our media exists within these types of situations, these types of moments of history, and the ways in which something like play, for example, is relevant or not relevant during these kinds of events.
And so today, this sort of Pop Off episode is for the adults. We're talking about play, we're talking about play specifically for adults primarily, as well as maybe young people occasionally. And I want to use this framing for us to get into this and that is how is play policed? When do we police play? How do we do it? What does it mean when we police play and-
Haeny Yoon:
And who decides?
Nathan Holbert:
And who decides, and how we should react and respond to that? Right?
So maybe just to kind of get us started here, Haeny, I'm sure you remember the Jimmy Kimmel incident, what was your kind of immediate reaction to that? Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
So I think for me, my first reaction was like, "Oh, man, we got jokes and we can't take them."
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
And so I think that was sort of how I was starting to think about it. And I think we've all been in that situation where someone says something to us that's uncomfortable or someone, not just uncomfortable, but someone maybe jokes to us or says something that sort of hits a soft spot and a nerve and it's difficult to kind of take in.
So I'm not saying that feelings don't get hurt, and I'm not saying that those feelings aren't justified, right? But I think there is a way to handle that that isn't so autocratic and authoritarian and that isn't about immediately to using your power to take someone off the air and to do the worst to them, and a place where there could be a conversation.
Nathan Holbert:
Let's tease those things apart a little bit because there's actually a few different kinds of ideas mixed together here.
One is how we as individuals police one another or engage with one another. But another is, and maybe we should hit this first, is how the power of the state gets used to police the ways in which people behave, the kinds of media that's produced, the kinds of art that's created, the kind of jokes that are allowed to happen, right?
And of course the Kimmel situation is instructive because it was this moment where Jimmy Kimmel wasn't actually saying anything specific about the supposed reason he'd been taken off the air, right? Trump didn't like the fact that he was making jokes about him and had been kind of looking for a reason to get rid of him for some time, right?
And so it was the act of being a comedian, it was the act of not giving deference to Dear Leader that led to his show being taken off the air and the use of the FCC specifically to make that happen.
But the state uses this kind of power all the time, right? I was thinking about Taylor Swift during the election had said she was going to vote for Kamala Harris and that was kind of a big thing, and then suddenly Trump started talking about her a lot more. Do you remember this?
Haeny Yoon:
Of course I do. I don't know why you're even asking me. It's-
Nathan Holbert:
I was trying to remember what he said though. I was trying to remember specifically what he said.
Haeny Yoon:
I don't remember what he said. I mean, I definitely know at some point he said Taylor Swift is not hot.
Nathan Holbert:
That's what it was. Yeah. Yeah. She's not hot. Right? So kind of using the... And then there's all this self-censoring of media that we're seeing happening left and right.
So there's this kind of really big version of how autocracy, how the state's power gets used to influence the ways in which we create media, the ways in which we disseminate that media.
But then there's the other thing that you're talking about, which is sort of the way we collectively police one another. And this takes a lot of different forms. One that comes to my mind is this kind of doomerism, this kind of what some people would want to call cancel culture, the ways in which we start to kind of police who's in the in-group and who's in out-group based upon the language we use, based upon whether or not we fully commit to a particular issue, say the right words, express the right emotions.
That's a dangerous thing. And that's a thing that we, I think, separate from large state institutions, the power that that brings, I think we kind of collectively find ourselves in those positions where we do that too. Like you were saying, you hear somebody say a comment that is maybe problematic or maybe it's not as sensitive as it should be, and you kind of have an opportunity to react or respond to that.
And what do we do in those moments? Do we exclude that person? Do we get everyone else around us to notice the mistake that they've made and get them to exclude that person, or do we respond differently?
Haeny Yoon:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I could think of so many instances where I did those two things that you mentioned, and I'm not proud of it, where I think the easy thing is to exclude people or the easy thing is to talk about them on a thread over here or somewhere in private where no one's watching. And I feel like we have such a canceling people out kind of culture or calling people out where this could be opportunities to call people in. And I feel like that's sort of-
Nathan Holbert:
Say a bit more about the difference between those two things.
Haeny Yoon:
Well, I feel like it's so... Okay. I will say that the reason why I watch reality TV sometimes is because it makes me feel better about myself.
Nathan Holbert:
Okay.
Haeny Yoon:
Right?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
So I'm like, "At least I'm not as bad as these people who do this thing," but I'm allowed to watch them and call out whatever they're doing to the larger public, right?
Nathan Holbert:
Right.
Haeny Yoon:
And I feel like that's our initial, I don't know why our, and I think it goes with cancel culture and doomerism, right? Our first reaction is to call them out in public, and it feels like a performative act, where I feel like calling someone in is really trying to have a tense, maybe difficult conversation with somebody to kind of mutually discuss this idea and to not necessarily simply just call out mistakes, but call people in and to think about what those actions and what those words might do. And there's a potential that change can happen that way, whereas I feel like calling people out feels like a performative act that I'm not sure if we're really interested in change.
Nathan Holbert:
No, it's more about us, right? It's more about us making sure that we told everyone else that this person is bad or this person doesn't belong in our group, and look at all of us, we're all together and we all agree that this person is a problem, right?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah. And calling someone in is more out of acts of care.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
And the sort of doomerism is part of this, right? Their version of, it's the same sort of phenomena, but their version of it is you're not sufficiently angry. You're not sufficiently upset or sad or enraged by the state of the world. Everything's bad. You're making a joke or you're acknowledging this other interesting thing, but you should be sad. We should be terrified. We should be worried. And if we're not, then we're not actively working to resist or we're not actively working to push back, or we're not part of the community that seems to care, right?
I think these are, they're common. As you noted, we have a tendency to want to do that because we want to be part of the in-group and we want to show that we're part of the in-group lots of times. But these are divisive things that we do, right?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. And kind of the only that matters is the one that's visible.
Nathan Holbert:
Right.
Haeny Yoon:
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Holbert:
Right.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, so why are we even talking about this? What is it? We're not experts on autocracy or comedy or jokes or any of these things.
Nathan Holbert:
Hang on. Wait. We're not an experts on comedy?
Haeny Yoon:
Okay. [inaudible 00:11:21]. We'll let people decide that.
Nathan Holbert:
Yes, we're not. We're not. We're not.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
We're not.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. But we are experts in schools, right? So what does this plain autocracy have to do with school?
Nathan Holbert:
Well, I mean, I think maybe the first place to start is thinking about what are the ways in which we see this sort of self-editing, this self-policing or this policing of others, where are the places we see this? We've sort of talked about the state, we've talked about places like social media and potentially in kind of social situations.
Another place we see it is schools. Right? We see this a lot with the way in which children's play is heavily policed, heavily surveilled, and talked about as needing to look a certain way, right?
Haeny Yoon:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think as soon as you said that, I also want to harken back to your self-policing thing.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
I just feel like we've socialized children enough or young people enough that they can also now be counted on to police each other. Right? And so I think about even when I was a teacher how many times I can count on these kids to tell on whoever and to tell me if something is not what I wanted, right? And so I just feel like this level of policing-
Nathan Holbert:
Billy's got this. I don't even have to jump in.
Haeny Yoon:
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. But I feel like this level of policing gets to this dangerous level where we're not just the authority figure's doing it, but that you've commissioned sort of your generals or commanders to sort of start to police each other, and now you have this, quote unquote, police state in kindergarten.
Nathan Holbert:
God, that's dark.
Haeny Yoon:
That is really dark. Sorry. Sorry about that.
Nathan Holbert:
But what's the counter story here, right? So you've seen it, I've seen it whenever I was a teacher as well. I think it's very, you noted kindergarten, it's a very common situation in elementary school. There's something that happens when kids get older, which is I tell older kids where the teacher starts to become the man and the kids are resisting the man in this case, but for the young kids, there's still kind of this fuzziness here.
And so what's the counter story? How do we respond instead when we see kids playing, both kids sort of calling out other kids for playing wrong, but also the times where we see kids playing wrong? What did you do when you were an elementary school teacher and you saw this happen?
Haeny Yoon:
I mean, I can't say from experience of what I've done. I've done a lot of things wrong, I would say. But there is one thing that I've been thinking about is I do feel like there's so many times where it's hard for us to sit in the discomfort, right?
Our tendency as adults is like, "Okay, well, something's wrong. I'm going to have to try to fix it." Right? Or, "This difficult conversation is happening, so I have to try to mediate it." Right?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
And I feel like that's kind of an outgrowth of schooling, is that we've just been trained for years and years to be like, "Okay, difficult conversations, bad. Conflict, bad. We have to figure out a way to mediate conflict." And so I think we do that even in the tools that we use for kids, right?
So I often think about behavior charts, right? I don't know if you remember that wheel that if something happens between you and another person, you have some options on this social wheel, right?
Nathan Holbert:
Oh. Spin the wheel?
Haeny Yoon:
So wheel one could be you ignore it, right? One spoke could be tell the teacher, one spoke could be walk away.
Nathan Holbert:
Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
One spoke could be do something else, right? I just feel like there's so many options of ways to ignore this versus options to kind of deal with the, not to say that you should have a full-on confrontation, but to deal with the conflict, to know that there's a conflict in front of you and not to run away from it, but to figure out strategies and ways to deal with it, right? And I think about that even in elementary school teaching where you're like, "This is how you have a discussion." Right? And you do all these things to be collaborative and nice to each other like, "Thank you for your feedback. This is what I think though."
Nathan Holbert:
"I hear what you're saying."
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. "I disagree with you." It just feels like there has to be different ways that we're sort of starting to have this conversation.
I feel like the larger Jimmy Kimmel story is such an illustration of how even as adults, we don't really understand how to reckon with people or reckon with difficult arguments that we don't necessarily agree on.
Nathan Holbert:
Right. Right. Yeah. And I think play is part of this. I mean, part of the sort of response or answer to dealing with a conflict or someone kind of behaving in a way that is creating division or problems amongst a group is to figure out ways to embrace them, figure out ways to include them, figure out ways to, as you said, sort of talk and engage around whatever the particular issue is.
I'm thinking about, I've been reading Eve Tuck for this class that I'm teaching right now. She talks specifically about this notion of damage-based research, and she proposes sort of shifting to a desire-based framework.
And this notion of desire, I was thinking about kind of play as desire, and there's something really inviting and powerful, I think, about that reframing. We can think of play as desire, we can think of play as being about hope and about kind of future thinking of longing of something different, and also kind of creating space to sort of experiment with what that future thing, that new thing can be.
And so I think play is part of the solution to responding to these sort of autocratic tendencies, whether they come from a powerful state or whether they come from our own tendency to police one another.
And I think what's important in a situation where you have these kind of massive forces of autocracy is to lean harder into democracy, lean harder into the community, lean harder into bringing people together towards progressive ends. Progressive here not necessarily referring to the political organization, but progressing society, progressing people, and how to think about what that can look like.
And I think to be more even kind of blunt, people want to play. People want to have fun. They want to have joy. They want to experience love and happiness and togetherness and community, and that is a really, I think, powerful contrast to what autocracy sort of proposes to offer, right?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. As you were talking I was just thinking, "Yeah, a lot of these scenarios naturally occur during play, whether you're three or 100." But I think those things naturally occur during play, right?
And we're so frantically trying to think about arbitrary ways to make things happen, but I do think we think so hard and spend a lot of money and resources and thought contriving scenarios where people can practice these things, and we have this natural outlet in play where tensions naturally occur, conflicts naturally occur, negotiation naturally needs to occur, right? And so all of these things can come together in that space.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, and so we need to be playing more. I mean, I think it's kind of the punchline here to start this sort of response to the provocation at the beginning for this Pop Off is how do we deal with autocracy and what is play versus autocracy? And the answer is play. Play is the solution here.
It's about finding joy, expressing joy, expressing and encountering joy together, right? Make silly things, create with others, play with friends, go hang out, experience the world, find pleasure and joy in experiences out in the world. And use that to sort of represent the kind of life that we can create together, as opposed to one of kind of fear and division that the alternative suggests is out there.
Haeny Yoon:
Some of us need to play more.
Nathan Holbert:
Some of us need to play more. And I would also just add maybe as the kind of postscript here is that for those of us that has gene expressions like me, a white guy, we can not only play more, we can also be playing in the face of this autocracy a little more loudly and a little more forcefully.
I mean, that's one thing that when you see something like what Jimmy Kimmel did or what others are doing out there in the media, that's important. Certainly not everyone has the privilege or the safety to be doing that, but if you do, we should be doing that, because it's fun.
Haeny Yoon:
Very good.
Nathan Holbert:
It brings us together, right?
Haeny Yoon:
Very good.
Nathan Holbert:
All right. I think we solved autocracy.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah, we solved it.
Nathan Holbert:
But get out there, play more, and hang out together. Right?
Haeny Yoon:
Right. And use your power for good.
Nathan Holbert:
Use your power for good.
As always, please feel free, if you have some thoughts about the conversations that we're having here as part of this episode or part of the other episodes, reach out to us, leave us a comment, send us an email, rate the show. We always appreciate it when you rate our show so others can find us. And share specifically with friends so that they can find this episode too.
Haeny Yoon:
Right. See you next time.
Nathan Holbert:
Next time. And keep an eye out for our Play Date coming up.
Haeny Yoon:
Life of a Showgirl drops soon.
Nathan Holbert:
Yes. Bye.