The Kid is in School Podcast · The Kid is in School Podcast

Bearing Fruit🍒🍇🥝

March 12, 2024·43 min·4 clips

A juror observes the demographic shift in the courtroom and questions if social movements have changed jury selection.

Jury duty starts as a complaint, but not the normal bored-in-a-room kind. The funny part is the insult of being available, prepared, and still not wanted. He thinks he is qualified. Law and Orders, Jury Duty, The Juror, 12 Angry Men, The Client, and The Pelican Brief become his homemade credential packet. Nobody picks him. That little rejection has the same sting as the comedy stories that come later, where judgment claims to be clean while wobbling all over the place. The talk moves to contests. Old stand-up nights at Comics, Caroline's, and Broadway get replayed with the exact sourness of someone who still has the receipt in a drawer. Luke remembers the applause meter. It is supposed to settle the room, but once it gets aimed at one table, fairness starts looking pretty dumb. That loss still has fingerprints on it. The point is not that every contest is rigged. It is that comedy gets weird fast when someone tries to score it like a clean event. Then home barges back in. A chalkboard moment with the kid falls apart, and the kid gets sent to her room in the exact way one parent wanted to avoid. Nobody comes out looking great. The home argument has the same shape as jury duty and the comedy club, only smaller, louder, and closer to the bell. One parent wants the better method. One falls back on the familiar one. Then both parents are mad, and the kid is mad at everybody. The bell is still coming. The episode keeps poking at little systems that promise order, then watching people bring their moods, old losses, and bad angles into the room.

As heard by us

A loose but sharp listen about jury duty, bad judging, and the sting of being overlooked.

The Kid is in School opens on jury duty envy and turns it into a prickly, funny complaint about fairness, boredom, and the odd thrill of being summoned.

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Why you'd press play

Jury duty envy, bad judging, and a kid who will not stay put.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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