How would you react to these dilemmas? Amala Ekpunobi is confronted with the hardest choices in this game of Would You Rather with Michael Knowles. Leave your answers in the comments! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| You know, we bring a lot of old friends on the show. | |
| We have them over. | |
| We play games. | |
| We smoke cigars. | |
| We drink. | |
| We drink and smoke cigars while we play games. | |
| But sometimes we get the distinct privilege of meeting somebody new. | |
| And there is a new voice out there. | |
| She is taking PragerU by storm. | |
| That would be Amala Epanobi. | |
| Amala is some... | |
| I've only just met Amala right now. | |
| I don't know anything really about her other than what I've seen online. | |
| So I'm going to grill her and figure out who really is Amala Epanobi. | |
| Amala, thank you for being here. | |
| Thanks for having me, Michael. | |
| I'm ready to get grilled. | |
| Are you ready? | |
| Get ready for the hot seat, okay? | |
| The producers have put together a list of questions that are supposed to tell us everything that we need to know about you. | |
| Okay, I'm ready. | |
| First question. | |
| Would you rather smoke a cigar with Dennis Prager or drink a beer with Will Witt? | |
| Oh, you're starting right out the gate with very, very easy questions here, Michael. | |
| That's easy. | |
| Yes, it is. | |
| How's that easy? | |
| Because I love Dennis more than anything, so I'm going to go smoking a cigar with Dennis Prager. | |
| You know, the other great thing about smoking a cigar with Dennis is Dennis doesn't like Cubans, but people give him Cubans. | |
| So when you go and smoke a cigar with him... | |
| He'll have these gorgeous, I mean, like $100 cigars, that he's going to throw them in the trash. | |
| So you get to pick the scraps from Dennis' table are really, really wonderful. | |
| So every Cuban that you give to Dennis Prager goes to Michael Knowles. | |
| Goes straight to me. | |
| At least all of them should, and a fair number of them have. | |
| Next up, would you rather debate Candace Owens or Ben Shapiro? | |
| Oh, no. | |
| Okay, now we have a harder question. | |
| Let's see. | |
| I'm going to go... | |
| Honestly, there's no right answer to this. | |
| I think I may fail either way, but I'm going to go with Candace Owens. | |
| You would rather debate Candace? | |
| Yeah. | |
| You're crazy. | |
| I'd like to feel the heat. | |
| I'm crazy. | |
| Yes. | |
| This hearing, in my opinion, is a farce. | |
| Yes. | |
| Look, they're obviously both very intelligent, very serious, sharp people. | |
| However, while Ben is just a fact machine, right? | |
| It would be definitely a formidable experience. | |
| Right. | |
| Candace is a force of nature. | |
| Yeah. | |
| She is like a military-grade cannon. | |
| And I never want that thing aimed in my direction, not once. | |
| She'll bring the claws out on me. | |
| Yes, maybe you're more courageous than I am. | |
| Next question. | |
| Next question. | |
| Since there is a good chance that this actually may happen, would you prefer to be banned from YouTube or TikTok? | |
| Ooh, well, considering I've already been banned off of TikTok probably three or four times now. | |
| Are you back on at the moment? | |
| I'm back on at the moment, but PragerU is permanently banned off of TikTok, so I think I'll take another round with TikTok. | |
| I'm so used to it right now. | |
| Yeah, that's fair. | |
| I would like to be banned off of TikTok because it's much more conducive to virtue. | |
| I only tried TikTok, truly, my wife and I sat next to each other. | |
| We tried it for about 20 minutes, and it's like crack for your brain. | |
| I thought Instagram was bad, but you're just, first of all, some of the stuff is not fit for the queen, but then you're scrolling through it, and it's all video, so you just can't look away. | |
| It's so immersive. | |
| It is the most atrocious piece of social media that I think has ever been created, so I don't mind being banned on it. | |
| And where can people find you on TikTok? | |
| People can find me at Amalepinobi on TikTok if it stays there. | |
| I mean, right after I say this, I could be gone. | |
| That's true. | |
| You could be. | |
| Okay. | |
| Speaking of debates, this actually does get a little bit more toward political philosophy. | |
| Okay, sure. | |
| Would you rather have a debate with a BLM leader on racial justice or with a DSA member, say, on socialism? | |
| Oof. of Both of them would be, I think, very, very easy. | |
| I think I could hit both of those out of the park. | |
| I'm going to go BLM activist because I used to be one. | |
| So I think I can meet them head to head. | |
| Have you seen that interview with Larry Elder and Dave Rubin where Larry Elder looks him dead in the face and he goes, give me an example of systemic racism. | |
| And Dave just can't do it. | |
| That's who I would be. | |
| It's brutal, because, yeah, I mean, in that sort of a circumstance, if you've got a lot going in, I mean, you were a, I know you were a leftist activist, but you're saying you were kind of like more BLM. I was definitely associated with BLM, so I did virtually every single leftist campaign that you can think of out in Florida I was a part of, so BLM was one of those. | |
| Wow. | |
| Because I agree with you. | |
| I mean, I think socialism's evil. | |
| It's the second oldest faith of mankind is communism. | |
| That's what Whitaker Chambers told us. | |
| It goes back to the Garden of Eden when the serpent said, ye shall be as gods. | |
| Many popes have written about how just evil and rotten and terrible socialism is. | |
| I know now people seem to think that Jesus was a socialist or something, but it's just preposterous to say that. | |
| Right. | |
| I think it was John XXIII who said no Christian can subscribe even to moderate socialism. | |
| So it's like, I get it. | |
| It's really evil. | |
| But I also think it's kind of beating a dead horse at this point to talk about socialism. | |
| That's not the big issue. | |
| People aren't out in the streets for socialist summer burning down cities. | |
| BLM is burning down cities. | |
| Right. | |
| And the whole CRT thing in schools. | |
| I mean, it just keeps going race, race, race. | |
| So that's where I would fight the battle. | |
| Yeah, I think you're right. | |
| No one's really teaching Marx in schools or Lenin or Engels or Trotsky. | |
| People are studying Kimberley Crenshaw. | |
| They're studying all these really radical racialized things. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| So it is Marxism in a way, so maybe socialism is the battle, but it's like... | |
| But it's in this cultural front. | |
| This is actually the subject of my upcoming book, Speechless, by the way, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, which is available for order right now, for actual order. | |
| Just a little brief plug in there. | |
| Thank you, Amala, for setting me up for that. | |
| It was just so smooth. | |
| I didn't even have to set you up. | |
| Okay, I think you're right. | |
| I totally agree with you on that point. | |
| Would you rather have Joe Biden finish out his term as president Or have Kamala Harris take office before 2024? | |
| Oh, goodness. | |
| That's a tough one, too. | |
| I can't even wait for Joe Biden to finish a sentence at this point. | |
| Yeah, none of us can. | |
| I'm thinking I've got to go with the lesser of two evils. | |
| I think Kamala is a very, very dark horse in the running here. | |
| I'm going to go with Joe Biden. | |
| Let him finish the term. | |
| Hopefully he makes it. | |
| Yeah, I agree. | |
| She's so grating. | |
| Obviously, the whole thing is just being controlled by the liberal establishment. | |
| Both of those people are empty suits. | |
| Right. | |
| But between Joe Biden's simpering, doddering inanity and Kamala Harris's witchy cackle... | |
| I would rather grit my teeth and bear the Biden mumbling than that sort of unbearable. | |
| It is. | |
| She's, oh gosh. | |
| She's, what a woman. | |
| What a woman. | |
| What a woman. | |
| Speaking of these sorts of left-wing women, would you rather be stuck in an elevator with AOC or Nancy Pelosi? | |
| Ooh, okay. | |
| I'm gonna go with Nancy Pelosi. | |
| At least she's got a little bit of a mature aura to her. | |
| AOC, I think once I got out of the elevator, she would accuse me of attacking her or something. | |
| I gotta keep my wits about me and I don't want a lawsuit on my hands. | |
| I'm gonna go with Nancy Pelosi. | |
| I agree. | |
| I think, actually, you could have a conversation with Pelosi, whereas with AOC, she's just always making these really disingenuous, bad faith. | |
| Everything's on social media. | |
| And Pelosi also, when she kind of loses her marbles every so often, she goes into that really pleasant... | |
| Do you remember she was on a morning show? | |
| She said, Good morning. | |
| Sunday morning. | |
| Good morning. | |
| Sunday morning. | |
| It was just an answer to a question no one asked. | |
| Oh, the abracadabra thing that she did. | |
| You remember that? | |
| Yes. | |
| Yeah, she's a strange... | |
| At least it would be just a strange, interesting experience with her. | |
| Yes, I agree. | |
| Okay, so we're like totally simpatico now. | |
| Yeah, we're great. | |
| Okay. | |
| Okay, I have to ask this question. | |
| Okay. | |
| I remember when I was in college, you would hear this all the time. | |
| You'd hear, hey, you know, I'm a conservative, but I'm a fiscal conservative, social liberal. | |
| It was always the way to say, like, hey, I'm a conservative, but I still want to get invited to parties. | |
| So, hey, I'm a conservative, but I still want girls to talk to me. | |
| Right. | |
| So would you say, there are so many different types of conservatives. | |
| There's the libertarians, the neoconservatives, the traditional conservatives, the populists, the this, the that, and the other thing, right? | |
| Put a hundred conservatives in a room, you get a hundred different answers. | |
| Right. | |
| Are you socially liberal, socially moderate even, let's say, socially libertarian, get off my lawn, or are you one of those dread, evil social conservatives? | |
| I'm a social conservative. | |
| My girl! | |
| All right. | |
| Love it. | |
| Yeah, no, I don't feel I need to whisper that at all. | |
| I'm a social conservative all the way. | |
| Right. | |
| Because sometimes you'll hear this. | |
| You'll hear people say, look, you know, I'm conservative in this way, but I actually don't think the government should have anything to say about any cultural issue whatsoever. | |
| And let's just cut taxes and that's it. | |
| And I think the GOP has been just cutting taxes for 30 years. | |
| What has it gotten us? | |
| Right. | |
| The country's in rubble. | |
| The real problem in our country right now is a cultural problem, especially when it comes to young people. | |
| So that's why I'm here. | |
| That's why I'm at PragerU. | |
| That's why I'm fighting the fight. | |
| Because that's what happened to me. | |
| I was a young person. | |
| I was indoctrinated by the left. | |
| I met a conservative who was out there trying to talk to young people. | |
| And I found all these conservative videos, videos like yours, and that's what woke me up. | |
| So if I can do that for some crazy young people, that's what I'll do. | |
| Now, I love you saying this because so often, I think, Boomers believe that young conservatives believe that we shouldn't hear anything about society or culture. | |
| Right. | |
| When I hear, sometimes I'll go to conservative fundraisers or things like that, and I'll hear, you know, the way to reach the youths is to stop talking about abortion or marriage or family or society or any of these. | |
| And I think, you've never talked to a teenager or a 20-something in your life. | |
| Because every young person who's a young conservative that I know is significantly more socially conservative than even the millennials, but certainly Gen X or the boomers. | |
| Right. | |
| The hill that I die on in terms of conservatism is definitely not a fiscal one. | |
| It's a social one because the culture is really the problem. | |
| And when you meet young people, whether they're on the left or the right, what they're talking about is social issues. | |
| That's the real war here. | |
| 100%. | |
| This is good. | |
| This is good stuff. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Oh, and this is a really tough one. | |
| Okay. | |
| Okay, I'll tell you what. | |
| I'm going to start with the less tough one, then I'm going to bring you to the really tough one. | |
| Sure, okay. | |
| I'm ready. | |
| So, Joe Biden, he's not looking good. | |
| He's looking a little slow. | |
| No, he is. | |
| If he does not run for re-election in 2024, who would you rather see be the Democrat nominee? | |
| Now, I know Kamala's kind of the anointed one, but assuming you can get any Democrat you want, who would you rather see? | |
| I want to see, I think I would want to see the craziest of the crazy. | |
| Just because it's got to get so ridiculous that nobody can possibly vote for them. | |
| Maybe like an AOC or an Ilhan. | |
| Just to show them the true craziness of the left. | |
| And anybody who's on the right that goes up against that I think will win in a landslide. | |
| That's, you know, it's a dangerous game. | |
| It is. | |
| It's the game of a young person. | |
| It is. | |
| Gamble it all. | |
| Red 23. | |
| You gotta see a crazy one, Michael. | |
| All in, yep. | |
| AOC, I think, will just be old enough in 2024. | |
| Should be exactly 35. | |
| Right, right. | |
| Lady never tells, but yeah, I think that's true. | |
| Okay, so you're in for AOC. Fair enough. | |
| Fair argument. | |
| Now, the really tough question. | |
| Ron DeSantis is doing great stuff in Florida. | |
| He is. | |
| He's a very good governor. | |
| He appears to want to run for president. | |
| He's kind of taking on some Trump-like attributes in the demeanor, in the speech. | |
| I think he's running for the Trump lane of the Republican presidential primary. | |
| So let's say that DeSantis wants to run and Trump wants to run. | |
| Who do you want to run? | |
| Ooh, I think I'm going to put my name in the hat for the young buck. | |
| I think I'm going to go for DeSantis. | |
| Okay. | |
| He's a governor that I've seen. | |
| Obviously, I'm from Florida. | |
| I moved from Florida to LA for PragerU, but he's really been running game in Florida. | |
| He's been actually making changes. | |
| Look what he's done with big tech. | |
| Look what he's done with the lockdowns. | |
| Look what he's done just all over the state. | |
| He's actually making changes. | |
| So I would love to see somebody young, fresh, and conservative hop in the ring. | |
| Fair enough. | |
| And, you know, one hopes that if both those guys want to run, I hope they work it out. | |
| Right. | |
| You know, the worst thing, I think, because part of me thinks, man, I'd love to see Trump run again. | |
| Part of me thinks there are a lot of, I mean, forget even just DeSantis, there are a lot of really good candidates on the Republican side. | |
| I just don't want them to kill each other. | |
| Exactly. | |
| You know, that would be unfortunate. | |
| Yeah, don't go Dutch on it. | |
| Just pick one and let him run. | |
| Yes, that's right. | |
| Would you, if you... | |
| Okay, two questions. | |
| I'm going to start off with one. | |
| Okay. | |
| Do you think that the universities can be reformed, or do you think they need to be basically demolished? | |
| Oof. | |
| Okay. | |
| This is a very, very tough one. | |
| You're a tenured influencer at Prager University. | |
| I know. | |
| You have institutional backing. | |
| I've been there a whole of three months, so I'm very far back to this one. | |
| Let's see. | |
| I think... | |
| I don't know. | |
| I think we need to reform the education system, although I think it's going to be very, very difficult. | |
| So it might need some destruction here. | |
| I don't see the use in really attending a college or university unless you absolutely have to at this point, which is leaning me towards it just needs to be destroyed. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, you know, I'm always a great defender of reforming things over the knocking them down, and I'm a great defender of the universities. | |
| And yet, even the late Roger Scruton, one of the great conservative philosophers of the last few decades, he said in his very posh British way, he said, I think they basically have to be destroyed. | |
| I think they must. | |
| It's very difficult. | |
| If the thing is totally rotted out from the core, I mean, I could name Fewer than half a dozen universities in America or colleges where you can still get a good education, really, that's not infected by this stuff. | |
| So, okay, fair enough. | |
| Today, well, actually, okay, I want to ask you this one, too. | |
| Okay. | |
| If you could only abolish one of these institutions, you've got your gavel, you will abolish it. | |
| Gotcha. | |
| Would you abolish the universities or would you abolish social media? | |
| Okay. | |
| Okay. | |
| I'm going to pull out the gavel and I'm going to say, boom, social media. | |
| I think not everybody attends a university, but every single person is on social media. | |
| And they're truly controlled by these super far-left big tech overlords. | |
| So if I'm going to choose one, I think I'm going to choose the one with the most impact, and that would be social media. | |
| But the problem, look, I'm with you, I understand this. | |
| However... | |
| However. | |
| You're on social media. | |
| I am on social media. | |
| We know about you because of social media. | |
| That is true. | |
| You make a fair point. | |
| So now if we get rid of the social media, then it's just NBC again. | |
| So that's no good. | |
| But if we empower the social media, then it's Jack Dorsey, hipster Rasputin. | |
| and that's no good. | |
| Do I get to change my gavel, Michael? | |
| You may be, but you're in between a rock and a hard place. | |
| I am in between a rock and a hard place. | |
| They both have significant influence on our society. | |
| Yes. | |
| We are churning out radicals on both sides. | |
| You can abolish them both. | |
| It's fine. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Double gavel? | |
| It is too much. | |
| Conservatives know there are limits to things. | |
| All right, we'll put a pin in that one. | |
| Okay. | |
| Today. | |
| Would it be better for black Americans to abolish affirmative action or to expand affirmative action? | |
| Abolish. | |
| 100%. | |
| I want to ask you this on your answer because I think the affirmative action stuff is terrible and I really don't like it. | |
| I am open to the idea that history has an effect on current society and history. | |
| You know, we're conservatives. | |
| We believe in the past and the future and the way that one generation affects another. | |
| Right. | |
| So, when people talk about the legacy of slavery, I think it's overwrought. | |
| I think it's kind of silly. | |
| I think there are a lot of other factors. | |
| However, there is, I think, something to it. | |
| There is something to, you know, the sins of the father coming onto the son and all these. | |
| So... | |
| You'd get rid of affirmative action. | |
| Is there any argument for it anymore? | |
| Not that I can see now. | |
| And I think my comeback to that is, is there any right, privilege, thing that I have as a black person that you have, is there any right or privilege that you have that I don't? | |
| And I don't think that's true anymore. | |
| I don't think I'm held back by the current society of today. | |
| And while there may be small remnants of the past, of the transgressions of America, I don't think they're as significant as the left tells us they are. | |
| And if you achieve something through affirmative action, how much should you actually achieve? | |
| I think it's stripping people of true accomplishment, of true success, if you got it because of your race. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, I think that's true. | |
| I remember Clarence Thomas wrote about this in his memoir. | |
| He couldn't get it. | |
| He went to Yale Law School. | |
| This guy's one of the smartest lawyers in the country. | |
| And he couldn't get a job because they all thought he was an affirmative action case. | |
| Right. | |
| And he said, then I learned the value of a Yale degree in this affirmative action society. | |
| Sure. | |
| It was a bupkis. | |
| It was worth nothing. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Yeah, no, that's a good point. | |
| And it's also just everyone suffers. | |
| Everyone does. | |
| And everyone's got some privileges and everyone suffers. | |
| And it's just not conducive to flourishing, to whine and complain and try to ask for special entitlements. | |
| Right. | |
| Because of suffering. | |
| It won't make you strong. | |
| You won't thrive. | |
| Okay. | |
| Last question. | |
| Last question. | |
| If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self. | |
| Now, you are, a lady never tells her age, you're fairly young at the moment. | |
| So I don't know, your younger self would be even younger. | |
| Sure. | |
| But you went through this leftist period, this BLM period. | |
| What would you tell yourself? | |
| I would tell myself, and I answered this question earlier, I would tell myself that you are nobody's victim, and the people who are trying to convince you that you are a victim are the ones that are truly out to get you and are truly against you. | |
| And you won't get anywhere if you listen to those people. | |
| And I listened to them for a very, very long time, and then I found somebody who told me, no, you are not, and you can be successful, and you are successful, and that completely changed my mindset. | |
| It changed my worldview, and now here I am. | |
| So I think I'm a testament to don't let anybody tell you you're a victim. | |
| Yeah, I think that's terrific. | |
| And you've had many difficulties in your life, okay? | |
| And we don't need to get into all. | |
| I want to talk about the most specific one, the silent K. People, I know, I can really identify with this. | |
| People, I'm sure they pronounce it Ek Penobi. | |
| Yes, they do, Michael. | |
| Michael Canoles. | |
| They think it was an anglicization of cannoli at Ellis Island, but it wasn't. | |
| It's not. | |
| We both share the same struggle. | |
| It's hard. | |
| And we're different races. | |
| We're different genders. | |
| We share the same struggle. | |
| That's Silent K. You're assuming. | |
| You're assuming a lot of things about my sex and my race. | |
| But that's for another episode. | |
| Amala Epanobi, thank you for being here. | |
| Where can people find you? | |
| They can find me anywhere on social media. | |
| And if you guys want to follow PragerU, that's where I'm making content. | |
| So you can find me anywhere. | |
| I'm all over the place. | |
| All over the place. | |
| And you can find Amala on TikTok for now. | |
| You cannot find me on TikTok, okay? | |
| Nobody wants me on TikTok. | |
| Amala, thank you so much for being here. | |
| Thank you for having me. | |
| And I do want you on TikTok. |