In Defense of Plagiarism╎ Brian L. Frye on Ross Barkan, Claudine Gay, and Writing With AI from The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table

In Defense of Plagiarism╎ Brian L. Frye on Ross Barkan, Claudine Gay, and Writing With AI

1 hour 3 minutes Posted Sep 10, 2026 at 1:28 pm.

Dan's back from Vegas, and a fan letter about the theme song

Did Amazon rip off the Comedy Cellar's sign? (Plus the cease-and-desist Grand Prix)

Ross Barkan, joke stealing, and the plagiarism skeptic's case

"The only capital scholarly offense": Claudine Gay, a fourth-grade Beethoven report, and who owns an idea

Why Barkan got fired: editors, links, and the Al Franken theory

Arday, the speed of light, and who plagiarism norms are for

AI writing: 100% on Pangram and "the burden of banality"

9/11 at 25, and Mamdani

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Show notes

Ross Barkan got fired for it. Jason Arday resigned over it. Claudine Gay lost Harvard because of it. Brian Frye, a Tulane law professor and the legal academy's one and only defender of plagiarism, says nobody can explain why it's wrong in the first place. He joins Noam, Dan, and Periel to make the case: why the Gay affair was "a joke," why Arday's real problem was never plagiarism, why Barkan's readers didn't care, and why comedians police joke theft better than any court could. Also: did Amazon rip off the Comedy Cellar's sign? What's a byline worth when Claude wrote the prose?

And, days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, memory, overreaction, and Mayor Mamdani.

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