Ted Rall: Good morning. I’m Ted Rall, and over there is Robby West, filling in for Manila Chan, who’s off spelunking. You’re watching the TMI Show, the Ted Manila Information Show, for Monday, July 28, 2025. Thank you so much for joining us.
Robby West: Good to have you, Ted. I just want to give a big shout-out and thank you to the people over on YouTube. We hit monetization over there on Saturday.
Ted Rall: Woo-hoo! It’s been a long time coming.
Robby West: We came through. My wife, I am pleased to announce, was the one-thousandth subscriber to the TMI Show.
Ted Rall: Really? Was that intentional, or was that a coincidence?
Robby West: Oh, it was 100% intentional. I said, “Hey, you need to do this.” Being the nice wife that she is, she actually subscribed. The very first show that popped up for her was the story we did about a whites-only community in Arkansas, which, my wife being Black, she thought was kind of, what’s the word, crazy.
Ted Rall: The story we did or them doing it?
Robby West: A little bit of both. She was just like, “What are y’all doing? This is crazy.” Keep in mind, we live in Montana, which is probably the whitest state in the entire country.
Oh, it is. We’ve got some Native Americans scattered in, but for the most part, it’s pasty white like me. I think a lot of that has to do with winter being here nine months out of the year. But, you know, it is what it is.
Ted Rall: There’s definitely some history there. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us. Please like, follow, and share the show. We again thank you for the monetization, but it’s just the beginning. It literally starts out with pennies.
Yep, and then it moves on to single-digit dollars. On YouTube, you don’t start to see real money until you get 10,000 or more subscribers. We’re at a thousand. We’re like a baby show, but we’ve been doing this for the better part of a year, ever since we got banned by the sanctions from our last gig. It is what it is, but here we are. Let’s get right into the headlines. There’s, as always, a lot to talk about.
Ted Rall: New York City is about to face a huge influx of ICE raids and agents. They’re going to flood the zone, according to DHS. Protesters are gearing up, so we’re anticipating a clash like we saw in LA between Angelenos and ICE, but here in New York. There are protests scheduled for today, both in the middle of the day and this evening after work. I think things are going to heat up, really, in the outer boroughs. It’s not about where the official protests are going to happen.
Robby West: Robby and I will talk about that. We might even disagree. There might be some disagreement. You never know.
Ted Rall: The Trump administration is deporting an old IRA veteran who’s been living peacefully here in the US for over thirty-five or forty years. He’s a great-grandfather, but Trump’s decided that now he’s a terrorist, even though all had been forgiven, and there’s peace in Northern Ireland. They’re going to deport his sick old self back to Ireland. Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to a ceasefire. We’re going to talk about what that means and what was the role of Trump’s tariffs in this border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia. It’s so strange. Finally, this would have been a Manila topic, but I’m curious to see what you have to say about the way people manage their time. There are people like me who are really obsessive about finishing a task. I can’t be interrupted. You can’t talk to me while I’m working on it. Then there are people like my mom, who was a teacher and could be writing something while three students were talking to her at the same time. She was the ultimate multitasker. There’s a new study out talking about what they call monochronic and polychronic people. You might want to look that up if you’re interested. That’s our show, so let’s get to it.
Robby West: Imagine that we had jaws.
Ted Rall: First, it was LA versus ICE. Now it’s NYC versus ICE. The Trump administration announced that ICE agents are about to flood New York City to crack down on undocumented immigrants. Over the weekend, protests took place across the United States over Trump’s immigration policies and Trump’s one big beautiful bill. Under the one big beautiful bill, ICE will become the biggest military or police force in the United States. I’d say paramilitary because that’s really what they are. Demonstrators say they believe the bill will hurt working-class families of all races and are calling for the whole thing to be repealed, which is not likely to happen. The protests are happening after Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last week that the DOJ, the Department of Justice, is suing New York City and Mayor Eric Adams over sanctuary laws.
Just to bring this back a little bit, a year ago, Eric Adams was facing federal corruption charges because he is corrupt. The Trump administration said, “We will make those charges go away if you agree to cooperate with ICE and not enforce your sanctuary city laws.” Adams said, “No problem. Come in and take any brown people you want away, but not me because I’m brown.” They did that, but now, even so, Trump is still suing him because now he wants the unenforced law to go away as well as the enforcement. The lawsuit is alleging that the city’s sanctuary policies are still interfering with the enforcement of federal immigration law. It should be pointed out that last week, an off-duty Customs and Border Protection officer was essentially assassinated in Upper Manhattan. Another protest is scheduled for 6 PM at City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan tonight. Humphrey Bogart’s line to a Nazi officer in Casablanca comes to mind: “There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.” Robby, here’s the deal. It’s always hard to anticipate protests or how intense they will be or not be. This could all fizzle easily. But my gut tells me this won’t fizzle. ICE is coming to the nation’s most liberal city, with 11% Republicans, as we were talking about before the show. They’re going to go to the outer boroughs—Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens—that have tons of immigrants, many of them undocumented, and some green card holders as well. For the most part, these are big minority communities. They’re going to come in there, and those neighborhoods are very protective of themselves. They’re going to get some support from leftist, full-fledged US citizens. I think it would not be shocking—in fact, it’ll be shocking if there are not violent clashes between ICE and New Yorkers in the coming week.
Robby West: I’m sure you’re right. To my detriment, I’ve never been to New York. I’ve never been to LA. Just a couple of questions because you’ve been to both. You live in New York right now. Which city seems to be feistier? Which one has the more volatile population? If it comes down to brass tacks, which population is more likely to stand up and actually fight, LA or New York?
Ted Rall: I spent a lot of time in LA too. I’ve lived in LA, not as much as New York. I know New York a lot better, but I’ve worked in LA. I was at the LA Times. I was at KFI radio in LA. I would rate them about equal. They’re both equally feisty. New Yorkers really don’t like nonsense. In both cases, we tend to view things on a very personal level. When you live in close contact, elbow to elbow on the subway, in a city of eight million people, more so than Angelenos. Los Angeles is a city of neighborhoods where it’s grids separated by big boulevards. Inside those grids are very individual neighborhoods that are like a city within a city, and those people feel a bond to one another. New York also has neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves, but our affiliations are like, if you’re a fellow New Yorker, I tend to feel bonded to you regardless of your race if you’re in trouble, just because it’s such a hard, expensive city to live in. It doesn’t always mean we stick together.
Robby West: Here’s the interesting part about this that I don’t understand about your city. Mamdani ran and won primarily because of the cost of living in New York, specifically rents and wages not keeping up. He ran on economic populism. So how can you, on one hand, say you’re being priced out of the city, which is true, that your wages are not sufficient, which is true, and that the rents are screwing you, which is true, while at the same time, go to war for a demographic of people that’s directly responsible for higher rents, lower wages, and pricing out of the city? You said New Yorkers famously don’t tolerate bullshit. Isn’t that the definition of bullshit? You want people to stand up and fight to protect the same people who are screwing them.
Ted Rall: Robby, as you know, we’ve talked about immigration, and I agree with you that the law of supply and demand indicates that the more workers you have coming into the country, the more it has a downward effect on wages overall for everybody. In a city like New York, though, it doesn’t feel like your job prospects are being harmed by immigration. Let me explain why. First of all, there’s no place in the country that’s easier to find work. There’s always a job—maybe not a good job, but there’s always work. That’s why people live in cities—it’s easier to find work.
Robby West: Sure, you have work, but do you have a living wage? For example, I could go to Alabama and work on a cotton field because I’ve done that. Finding work’s not the problem. The problem is finding a job that will pay me a wage so I can provide for my family. If I’m competing against the entire third world, how can I do that?
Ted Rall: That’s the issue. Everybody’s experience is unique to themselves in New York and everywhere else. My general sense is that if you’re looking for work here, you can probably find a job that, by national standards, pays well. It’s not hard to find a $20 or $25 an hour job in New York City—almost anyone can, without a fancy degree. Psychologically, most New Yorkers don’t view Mexicans or other immigrants as hurting their job prospects. They’re taking entry-level jobs, like in the kitchen of a restaurant, that most white New Yorkers, for example, wouldn’t want anyway. There’s also the sense that, even in New York City, I ought to be able to earn $25 an hour and pay my rent. Those wages aren’t really that unreasonable. The rents are unreasonable. I’m paying $5,100 a month in rent—that’s ridiculous. If you saw my apartment, you’d say, “Okay, Ted, that’s a nice apartment,” but be serious. If I said it’s a $2,000 a month apartment, you might say that seems about right, or maybe $2,500. The “rent is too damn high” resonates, whether it should or not, in New York.
There’s a sense of community here too. This is the traditional gateway to immigration in New York City. Everything about the city reminds us—we have the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, Ellis Island is right here. We have tons of recent immigrants, people who barely speak English, but their kids all speak English, and we know them. Unlike a place like Montana, we see the immigrant experience every single day. I go to my falafel place and get a shawarma from a Palestinian guy who speaks English but also Arabic, and his kid is at Cornell, totally Americanized, skateboards, and everything. That’s the immigrant experience—we see it every day. If they were going to Rikers Island and picking up members of Tren de Aragua involved in violent crimes and deporting them back to Venezuela, no one would care. We have homegrown criminals; we don’t need to import them. But that’s not what’s happening here. When you’re going into a restaurant in Queens and rounding up a hardworking lady who’s just trying to make ends meet, it doesn’t seem right. The way ICE comports itself has a huge effect here. This is a city where you worry about crime. If you have random dudes with police jackets bought on eBay, driving around in vans, wearing masks and balaclavas in 95-degree heat, kidnapping people without identifying themselves, they’re going to get a reaction.
Robby West: Of course. I don’t support what ICE is doing, but I oppose the way they’re doing it. A police force is not an army.
Ted Rall: It’s not a police force either. It’s a paramilitary force, the kind of thing the United States hasn’t traditionally had. The KKK would’ve been an example of a paramilitary force—vigilantes. This is the kind of thing you see in third-world dictatorships, where you’re crossing a border, and some guy’s like, “Let me see your passport.” I’m like, “Who are you? You’re not wearing a uniform, you have no official status, you just have a shitty grin.” That’s not getting you anywhere with me.
Robby West: I agree. I support the mission ICE has, but I oppose the way they’re doing it. They should be able to go in, wear a uniform, identify themselves, say, “This is who I am, this is why I’m here, you’re here illegally, I’m sending you home,” and they should have just cause.
Ted Rall: Just cause is that if someone’s here illegally, that’s it. You can’t just approach someone and say, “Oh, you have brown skin, prove you’re an American.” We don’t have an ID law in this country. Well, we’re about to deport an old white Irishman, so let’s drop the race card because that doesn’t really fly. We know the raids have mostly been about profiling, not about specific evidence like, “Robby El Westo is here illegally, reported by his wife who doesn’t like him anymore, let’s go check him out.” That’s okay—they’re following the law. But how they do it matters. They should start with the baddies first.
Robby West: Here’s why they’re not going to—because the prison complex gets paid by having that body in that cell. Let’s pretend that’s not going to happen because it’s not. Another question, Ted, showing my ignorance here—I’ve never been to your city. In South Texas, with its high Mexican population, they turned out in overwhelming numbers to support Trump because those legal Mexicans oppose illegal immigration because it’s driving down their wages. Are you seeing that same effect in New York? Are the legal immigrants happy about these mass deportations because it’s going to increase the money in their wallets?
Ted Rall: It’s a mixed bag. There’s always a tendency for older legal immigrants to pull up the ladder into the treehouse and say, “We got ours, and we don’t want to share now.” There’s definitely some of that. Most people who are legal immigrants in the United States did not come here legally. Most overstayed visas, had fake green card marriages—nobody came here really legally. The people who came across the Bering Strait didn’t come here legally. The people who came to Ellis Island showed up without a visa because they wanted workers and paid them nothing. It was just like what happened with Biden.
Robby West: But here’s the big difference. With Biden, you come across the border, and it was legal. Non-enforcement does not make it legal. A president is not a king. A president cannot repeal law; he can choose not to enforce it. He can say, “Come in, wait here, we’ll process you later.” Then a new president comes in and says, “You’re going home now, your time is up.” Of all Trump’s many flaws—and there are many—I’m not a Trump supporter. I’m a right-winger, but I’m not a Trumpie. I fully support Trump on his mission of deporting illegal immigrants, full stop.
Ted Rall: We have a viewer question worth talking about. Backside of Nowhere says, “I’d really like to know why ICE isn’t busting employers of the undocumented.” Because they’re bribed. There was a really interesting piece in yesterday’s New York Times about a company, I think in Kansas, that hired a lot of undocumented workers and was trying not to. They subscribed to E-Verify, which checks if someone is authorized to work in the United States. This company was like, “We did everything, we don’t want to hire illegals, we used E-Verify.” But a lot of illegal immigrants have fake IDs or stolen IDs—identity theft. ICE came and arrested a bunch of their employees, and it almost destroyed their business entirely. They asked the federal government, “What should we do to avoid this happening again?” They were told, “Just keep using E-Verify.” Even businessmen trying to do the right thing and follow the law aren’t being helped by the government to figure out a system that works. If there was no demand, there would be no issue.
Robby West: One of the reasons this is such a major issue is that both political parties are guilty. Reagan granted amnesty in the eighties with the promise from Congress that they would secure the border—it never happened. Republicans want cheap labor, Democrats want votes. The ultimate loser, as Larry was talking about last week on our show about economics, is the American worker because immigration deflates wages, while inflation drives up the cost of living. Neither political party cares, and that’s where you get a Donald Trump. If Donald Trump fails, mark my words, it’s going to get violent. I don’t want that to happen, but it will.
Ted Rall: Speaking of violence, I want to issue this warning: the federal government should not come to New York this way. Come correct, or don’t come at all. Don’t come here with ICE, with armored personnel carriers and goon squads. New York doesn’t play. We’re not going to tolerate it.
Robby West: It fizzled out in LA—what makes New York different?
Ted Rall: It’ll probably fizzle out here too, eventually, because getting tear-gassed is no fun, and we don’t have an organized left to keep it going. But it’s going to be ugly optics.
Ted Rall: The president seems really interested in provoking visuals that he thinks will play to his base—sending in the goon squad into sanctuary cities like LA and New York, showing liberal protesters with their signs running away from tear gas. He doesn’t care about the support of New York and LA, which he doesn’t have anyway. Is this really playing with the right-wing base? Polls show Trump is losing ground and is underwater now on the immigration issue, which was a super strong issue for him. If he’s perceived as kicking ass and deporting like crazy, why is he losing ground there?
Robby West: With the Trump cultists, sure, they’ll cheer it—they’ll get the Benny Johnsons and those types. But people on the right, like me, on the populist right, understand what this is. This is Trump trying to deflect from Epstein. He’s trying to change the conversation. It’s not just him keeping a campaign promise. He’s only deporting a third as many as Obama did, but there were no optics. Obama didn’t send goon squads to major cities; he went to places like Arkansas to a chicken plant nobody sees. This is all theater. I’m telling the people on the right, this is a distraction. Trump’s had a really bad couple of weeks—there’s a major split, probably a civil war, in his base. Yesterday or Friday, when John Kiriakou was on Redacted with Thomas Massie, that’s the split right there. That’s what has Trump doing this—he’s trying to change the conversation.
Ted Rall: I’m not sure this is that, but if it’s playing that way, in politics, perception is reality. I
Robby West: f I were President West and my campaign promise was to round up every single illegal migrant, I wouldn’t send in an army to do it because it’ll just drive people underground and cause a problem. I would make the economic case. I’d address the country: “The reason why your wages suck is the same reason why sand is cheap. The dignity of labor no longer exists. Your work is not worth what it should be. Meanwhile, our government is $37 trillion in debt, and we’re paying for it by printing more dollars that further devalue every dollar in your pocket. So I’m hurting you two different ways.”
Ted Rall: Let’s talk about that IRA veteran. The Trump administration is deporting an 82-year-old former leader of the Irish Republican Army, who has lived peacefully since the end of the resistance against the British occupation of Northern Ireland. Gabriel Megahey, 82 years old, lived in New York City for decades after Northern Ireland gave up its fight for freedom. A June 20 letter from the Department of Homeland Security warned that his parole was being terminated thirty years after he and other IRA members were allowed to stay here in the USA. The Belfast native was convicted in 1983 in Brooklyn federal court for conspiring to buy missiles to shoot down British helicopters amid the violent clashes in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles. At the time, the feds considered him the officer commanding of America and Canada for the IRA. Megahey, known by the nickname “Skinny Legs”—you don’t get to choose your nickname—was described by then-US Attorney as the most culpable of these defendants, part of a network of men who sought to use this country as a base for terrorist activities.
Megahey, who first moved to Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1975, insisted at his sentencing, “No one wants peace more than us.” He got out of prison in 1988. Megahey and four other IRA members were allowed to remain in the US as part of the Good Friday Accord, the April 1998 agreement that ended decades of violence in Ireland. Now a grandfather of 14 and great-grandfather of five, who moved to Delaware in 2019, he is reeling after DHS warned that he’ll be fined and criminally prosecuted if he stays in the US. The letter stated, “DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States. The federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.” Megahey, who relies on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to pay for expensive medicine to treat his heart, faces the loss of benefits. He declined to comment but said he had no regrets: “I’d do it all again, but I wouldn’t get caught next time.”
Robby West: There’s something to be said for honesty, I guess. The way I see this is double jeopardy. He went in, did his time, and was allowed to stay. I’m a hardliner on immigration, but I also value civil liberties. He’s already been punished—what’s the point? He’s an old man. Some people try to find ancient Nazis, 102 or 103 years old—what’s the point? Just let him be.
Ted Rall: In the case of the Nazis, you could say they were free eighty more years than they deserved to be and don’t deserve to be free one day longer. But what about this guy? I completely agree with his cause. Northern Ireland should not be part of the UK—it should be part of Ireland. Anyone who looks at a map can see that. The IRA’s cause was just and noble, and the only problem is it came to an end because they lost. The war ended, the resistance lost, the oppressors won. The IRA didn’t kill Americans—they killed Brits. It was a resistance army. New York was very supportive of the IRA in the eighties. I remember going to IRA bars where they tithed a percentage of the profits to the IRA. I was laughing at the idea that this guy was trying to buy missiles in New York City—what was he thinking? It was a wild place in the eighties, but holy shit.
Robby West: If I were going to reconstitute the Confederate army, I wouldn’t go to New York City to do it. I’d try somewhere else—Pakistan’s a good spot. I smell a computer-generated letter. DHS went through everyone who’s ever been convicted of any crime and has a green card or served time, and they’re like, “We can technically revoke your parole.” They’re doing a sweep without taking individual cases into account. The dude’s 82—it’s basically a death sentence.
Ted Rall: Ireland has national healthcare—he’ll be fine, but it’s absurd.
Robby West: He’s already been punished. If you’re going to deport him, do it then, not now. He must not have gotten his citizenship, or this couldn’t happen. He’s a green card holder. I’m a hardliner on immigration, but the dude’s already been punished. Double jeopardy is called that for a reason. The government doesn’t have the right to take your property, life, or liberty after you’ve paid your debt to society. They don’t get to do that twice.
Ted Rall: Anamondo Rake says, “I don’t think this immigration show is for Epstein; Tulsi and the Russia show is for Epstein.”
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Robby West: The Russia show—Americans have kind of lost the plot with it. They’re bored with it, to be honest. This is about catching headlines on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. It’s about showing American troops on the streets of an American city clashing with American citizens for the benefit of illegal immigrants. It’s all to generate headlines. He’s trying to change the conversation—it’s a distraction.
He needs to create that wedge. The fact that Cenk Uygur and I are agreeing on anything is absolutely insane. To make sure that agreement ends, he’s doing this. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
Ted Rall: By the way, completely out of left field, from the YouTube feed, Tony J says, “Civil fortitude is still pretty common,” and Backside replied, “Civil forfeiture should be unconstitutional.” Absolutely. Civil forfeiture is a multibillion-dollar-a-year business for American government agencies, mostly law enforcement. They sit on the side of the highway, wait for people to drive by with fancy cars they want to add to their police department, pull them over on a pretext, and if they find cash, they say, “You have a lot of cash, you must be involved in something illegal.” They impound your car and cash, never charge you, but keep the property. You have to go to court to get it back, and it often costs more to hire lawyers than it’s worth, so people walk away. It’s a disgusting practice. The US Supreme Court has expressed concern but hasn’t put an end to it, and they should. That is theft.
Robby West: Where’s Mamdani on all this with ICE coming to the city and immigration? Is he over the morning?
Ted Rall: We’ll hear from him. He’s going to be anti-ICE. Even anti-illegal immigration New Yorkers aren’t going to be into ICE acting the way they are. Only 1% of New Yorkers will defend ICE. If you show up and arrest someone who’s undocumented, fair and square, like a man, wearing a uniform, no mask, they’ll have more support or at least tolerance. That’s not how they’re doing it. Mamdani’s going to have to thread this needle carefully because the real estate interests are already up his ass over Israel and stuff. He’ll have to express concern, show support for the detainees, while not coming out as pro-illegal immigration because that’ll be a bad look. He’ll have to find a middle ground.
Robby West: Is there a middle ground? Either you support open borders or you don’t.
Ted Rall: There is a middle ground. You could say, “A nation-state should control its borders, but we have a history of not doing so for a long time. If people are already here, we don’t want to disrupt their lives and destroy families. If you can prove you’ve obeyed the law and done everything right, we’ll provide a path to citizenship, but we’ll start controlling the border today.” That’s a middle ground.
Robby West: If that’s the case, I advocate for deporting every single illegal immigrant to New York City. God be with you.
Ted Rall: At this point, we could probably use the population since so many people have left. Let’s get into this situation in Southeast Asia. Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in a breakthrough to resolve deadly border clashes that entered day five. According to the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, who chaired the talks as head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional block, also known as ASEAN, both sides have reached a common understanding to take steps to return to normalcy. This is not a peace accord, just a ceasefire, with details to be worked out later. The Prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Manet, and Thai acting Prime Minister, Phumtham Wechayachai, have agreed to an immediate and unconditional ceasefire effective from midnight local time in Thailand and Cambodia on Tuesday. This border clash has been an ongoing controversy since the French drew the border in 1907. There’s a variance between the text of the original border agreement, which favors Thailand, and the map that goes with it, which favors Cambodia. Cambodia wants to go with the map, Thailand with the text. At issue are several thousand acres that include key Buddhist temples, so they’re fighting over religious stuff too. Trump threatened both countries with sky-high tariffs starting August 1 if they didn’t agree to a ceasefire. Cambodia has almost no trade with the United States, so they didn’t care. Thailand has a lot of trade with the United States, so they did care. Cambodia agreed because they’re the weaker side. Thailand’s fielding F-16s against Cambodia, which just has artillery. It’s a very poor country compared to Thailand. Everyone had a motive to come to the table.
Robby West: Cambodia is war-torn, landlocked, with no natural resources. It has good tourism—Angkor Wat is breathtakingly spectacular. Have you been there?
Ted Rall: I have. It’s stunning. It was very dangerous when I went. I went on a bus full of tourists, and the bus after mine was raided by Khmer Rouge fighters who killed everyone on board. It’s important to catch the right bus.
Robby West: Pol Pot was just a nut. Does the government control most of Cambodia’s territory now, or is it still lawless?
Ted Rall: The government is weak, but it’s not a failed state, and there’s no civil conflict now. The Khmer Rouge are finished. The Vietnamese finished them off.
Robby West: The Vietnamese don’t get credit. No Western country would take out the trash with the Killing Fields and genocide, so the Vietnamese did it, just four years after defeating the United States.
They kicked major ass. If you have a veteran army, you might as well use it before you lose that knowledge.
Ted Rall: Arguments about punctuality are common, but experts say they’re often about something else—the different ways we relate to time. Social scientists have worked for decades to understand our varying approaches to the clock. In the 1950s, anthropologist Edward Hall coined the terms monochronic and polychronic to describe different cultural attitudes toward time. In Northern Europe and the US, which Hall called monochronic societies, people emphasize deadlines and work sequentially, completing one task before moving to the next. In Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, polychronic societies, people are more comfortable shifting gears in the middle of a task and less rigid about sticking to a schedule. In those countries, if you ask, “What time does the bus leave?” they might say, “Oh, 3:00,” but it could be 6:00, 7:00, or maybe not until tomorrow.
Hall’s insights have inspired generations of organizational theorists and management experts. While he originally made observations about societies, others have noted that people’s individual time-use styles vary within a society. Studies suggest that people are most creative, motivated, and productive when they can work in their preferred style, whether dipping in and out or focusing laser-like on a single task. Becoming aware of your own relationship to time can make your life easier and help you negotiate conflicts with those around you. One way to gauge your time value is to notice how you respond to interruptions. If you’re preparing a presentation and a colleague calls to talk, do you pick up and say you’re busy, or make time for what might be a twenty-minute conversation? If you’d send that call to voicemail, you’re likely monochronic, said Donna Ballard, a chronemics expert at the University of Texas at Austin. People who manage their time as a series of tasks to tick off a to-do list live by the clock and prioritize obligations over relationships during work hours. For someone like this, an interruption is almost by definition irritating, said Alan Bluedorn, professor of management at the University of Missouri and author of The Human Organization of Time. Polychronic people give primacy to experiences and relationships that don’t always fit into prearranged schedules. The other day, a cousin of Ms. Kelch was visiting from out of town, and although she had an assignment for work, she put it off for a day to go on a hike together. Not every deadline is truly urgent, she said. When interruptions come up that I feel are valuable enough, it makes me reprioritize.
Robby West: Monochronic here for sure. Especially when I’m working, as you know, I tend to have busy days. If I’m editing clips or making videos, that’s always when my wife comes in and says, “Hey, Robby, let’s talk, we need to connect on an emotional level.” It’s like, “No, we really don’t. I need to get this done.” I’m behind on the TMI Show, Deprogrammed, or DMZ—I’ve got stuff to do. She asks, “When are you going to be done?” I say, “1:00 in the morning. I have time for you between 1:00 AM and 1:30 AM.” That’s my day—that’s your window. My wife, as y’all know, is Black, and she runs on what’s called CPT—Colored People’s Time. 2:00 might mean 2:15, 2:30, or maybe 2:40, but never early.
Ted Rall: I’m familiar with Black People’s Time. When my mom and I visited the Caribbean for the first time, in Turks and Caicos, we arrived at the airport in Providenciales. A guy comes over and says, “Do you need a taxi?” We said, “Yes.” He says, “Wait here.” My mom’s like, “Where’s he going?” I said, “He’s going to see if he can find more people to take several groups at once in his van.” She’s like, “How long is it going to take?” I said, “Probably a while—it’s like herding cats.” She’s like, “Can’t we go now?” I’m like, “Do you know how to drive the van? Do you have the keys? We have to chill. You’re on island time. Enjoy the ocean breezes and relax because it’s not going to change anything.” It would help if there were Mai Tais. My
Robby West: wife is early if it’s something really important, like picking someone up from the airport—she’s always there early. She’s a medical coder, so she has deadlines and quotas. That’s great.
Ted Rall: My ex-wife was a chronic optimist. I’d say, “Meet me downtown at such-and-such time.” She’d show up late, and I’d ask, “What time did you leave?” She’d say, “Twenty minutes ago.” I’m like, “It’s a thirty-five-minute trip. Why did you leave in twenty minutes?” She’d say, “There was that one time I made it in twenty minutes.” That one time requires perfect synchronicity of the subway gods. In the real world, you have to allow extra time for delays.
Robby West: Your ex-wife would’ve fit right in here in Montana. There are no subways, but you could be delayed by a bear or a herd of cows stopping on the road. Cowboys will drive them out, so there’s not as much man-made obstruction. A bear might take a crap in the middle of the highway—it happens—but you can drive around it or take pictures. Being an optimist with travel is good in the summer. Wintertime is different—if a drive normally takes twenty minutes, you better figure an hour because it’s cold, the roads are icy, people spin out, and you have to go slow. My default setting is “on time is late.” For my wife, especially her family, on time is way too early.
Ted Rall: As Shakespeare said, “Know thyself.” It’s really important. When I get interrupted in the middle of a task, especially tech stuff where I’m thinking about five or six things at once, it’s maddening. It’s like, “No, no, no, leave me alone.” I need large blocks of uninterrupted time. I don’t understand people like my mother, who could talk to six people at once. I’m a very single-minded, task-driven individual. You give me a task, and I do it.
Robby West: My boss, the same lady I ripped into a couple of months ago, asked during my review, “Robby, what can I do to make your job more enjoyable and help you be more productive?” I said, “Tell me what you need me to do and stay the hell out of my way.” That’s in my review. She asked, “What support do you need?” I said, “The support I need is for you to stay the hell out of my life.” That’s it.
Ted Rall: That is support. I don’t think polychronic people are bad—they’re better suited for certain jobs, like air traffic control. You can’t have someone like me saying, “Wait, I’m working on this one thing, I can’t step away.” That wouldn’t work.
Robby West: A hundred percent. Polychronic people tend to be more artistic, able to process more information faster. It makes me jealous, but that’s not how God made me. I’m a single-minded dude—I think about one thing at a time, solve that problem, then move to the next.
Ted Rall: That’s how I am too. Robby, that leaves it for today. Thanks for sitting in for Manila Chan, who’s off spelunking. She should be back tomorrow. I’m Ted Rall. Please like, follow, and share the show as much as possible. Vote early and vote often.
Robby West: Thank you so much for being here. Bye.
