Hey there, tell me a little about yourself and what you're up to.

My full name is Abdul-Hadi Kaakour, but that tends to scare people, so I go by Hadi K, aka LebaNonchalant, aka Chunky Hummus, hold the chickpeas. Going by Hadi calms people down: it's a nice name, it's short, and it can be culturally ambiguous — Arab, Persian, Indian, etc. I also look culturally ambiguous, apparently. Very rarely do I get Lebanese, most often I get Persian. People also claim I have a Persian accent, but I don't believe so. I've been told I look Afghani, Indian, Pakistani, Turkish — the list goes on. Right now I'm a third year med student (somehow I've made it this far!).

When I was in 9th grade, my mom bought me the necklace I'm wearing now (and in the photo). When I came to Miami for med school, I lived in Little Havana when I first moved in, where I also learned that the chain I was wearing was a Miami Cuban-style chain. So I guess I fit right in. Cuban people sometimes talk to me in Spanish. Or, if I'm in a room with a physician and they're doing the patient's history in Spanish, the patient will start talking to me in Spanish. And I smile like, I don't know what's going on. And they're like, "What a shame, these young Latino kids are growing up without culture, not knowing how to speak Spanish." So that's me, disappointing everybody.

Tell me about how you grew up. Who or what had the strongest influences in shaping your life philosophy today?

Starting with the obvious, my parents — I'm very influenced by the stories of my parents and their experience with the Lebanese Civil War, particularly my father, who grew up very poor. He made it as a physician despite enormous odds. He was French educated in high school and grew up learning in French and speaking Arabic at home. The "Ivy League" of the Middle East is the American University of Beirut, but he didn't know any English. Despite all odds, he got into the school somehow and had only that summer break to learn English up to a collegiate level. He couldn't afford daily lessons; he could only afford one hour a week. He would show up, the instructor would give him a week's worth of lessons, and he'd do it returning the next week with a stack of completed homework, exchanging it for a new stack of lessons to complete. He taught himself English over the course of a couple months. Because of that and many other struggles, whenever I get too comfortable, I feel like I'm slacking and have got to keep going and struggling.

When did your parents come to America?

They came in the mid-to-late 1980s. He came seeking a residency in pathology and wanted to practice in the U.S. It's hard for anyone to leave their homeland, and being so far away from his parents was always hard for him. He ended up in Dallas, where he met my mother. Why my mom went to Dallas is a good question — I never thought about it! They met there, got married, he got a fellowship in NYU, drove across the US, lived in Queens, and I was born. He got a job upstate when he finished his training, and so we moved to Upstate NY. I have two younger siblings, a sister and a brother. My brother's 14 years younger than me, and I feel like I'm missing his entire childhood — he just turned 10. Speaking on the phone isn't quite enough. I wish I could be there, a little closer to him. My sister is finishing up her senior year at UNC, and she's also interested in medicine.

For a long time, I felt closer to my brother than my sister, but in the last couple years, I've grown much closer to my sister. Adolescence drove us to do our own thing for a while, but my parents always said as you grow up, there's no one like your siblings. I hate those Buzzfeed lists, but my sister sends me these lists saying, "Oh my god, this is describing me" but I'm like, "No no no, that's me" — we're way more similar than I ever imagined we would be. I'm excited - we're getting closer, and value each other a lot more now.

I always wished that my brother and I could live close together, start a Fan Clan in the US.

Yeah, Kaakour clan would be sweet. We hope to do things together, start institutions, companies, etc. We joked when we were younger that we would call the company HADI - Hadi And Dalia Inc. She would get upset that the company wasn't called DALIA, but I was like hey, my name doesn't fit in yours!

Haha, that's cute, and a great company name. What did you imagine the company would do?

No idea. Well, maybe it'd be a holding company where we could invest in issues we care about — alleviating poverty, etc.

Are there any issues you're passionate about?

My life is a like "jack of all trades, master of none". But I don't want to be a dilettante and just flirt with many things, I want to make a meaningful impact. I think socioeconomic disparities trouble me the most. Things like access to healthcare and other resources always upsets me. Some say that poverty is a disease of the childhood, a pediatric disease. If you're a child born into poverty, your access to education and nutrition/health is restricted, which obviously has far-reaching implications. I heard that "capitalism isn't broken", it's working as it should, and these issues and suffering is exactly part and parcel of capitalism. Do I agree with that? It seems to be a compelling argument; I don't know what the alternative is. I think, deep down, we really like being classist as human beings. The best place to see class in action is to go to the airport.

It's so funny, I was randomly spontaneously upgraded to business class on an international flight, and once you sit down, they give you champagne, and you get to watch all these tired, sweaty people file one after another in the economy class as you sit there reclining, enjoying your champagne in your business class palace. It's ridiculous. When you go into a Gucci store, you can't act as if you've never seen this opulence before or else you stick right out. But at that moment, I didn't want to act like I expected this stuff. I was like, "Whoa we get champagne!!! This is sick!!!" and actin' the fool. The special business class only attendant always referred to me as "Mr. Kaakour" and I was like, I have a name!!! In Economy, you're just a Sir or Madam at best, with a small packet of peanuts.

The special business class only attendant always referred to me as "Mr. Kaakour" and I was like, I have a name!!! In Economy, you're just a Sir or Madam at best, with a small packet of peanuts.

Since you are a bit of a dilettante, what hobbies are you into?

I'm trying not to be a dilettante; I don't want to flirt around with these different things. I'd like to be an "intellectual polygamist": have serious relationships with my different curiosities and interests. But there are very few things I don't find interesting. I don't know why, I think a lot of things just capture my imagination. Fundamentally, I'm trying to do what a lot of us are trying to do — make a difference. When I take on projects, I think I find them interesting because I try to see the end goal and see the difference that can be made in what I'm doing.

There was a point in my life, around sophomore year of college, when I was sitting in biochemistry lab during a summer, when I realized I wouldn't be able to do everything I wanted to do in life. That was a sad day. But I was like, you know what, F it, I'm just gonna follow one of my life philosophies: Rock it 'til the wheels fall off. My laptop is 8 years old, and I'm still rockin' it — I think I have like one wheel left. For better or worse, I kind of treat my life like that. The only thing we can do is try to leave this world in a better state than when we came into it. What motivates me is whether it's true or not — is that I convinced myself of a certain degree of agency in affecting causes I believe in. Because I feel like I could/should do something, I do it and once I'm in it, I'm like, "What did I get myself into?!" but anything with my name on it has to be 100%. I don't want to put out sloppy work. That keeps me going, and I am very stubborn about not giving up.

You started a YouTube channel, right? What was that?

My best friend and I started started writing a sitcom in college. In our naiveté, we wanted to push it to Hollywood people. It was a sitcom that was kind of Seinfeld-y, a little like Community — it would be about college students that were minorities and their issues, as they navigated college like any other kid, but with the added spin of dealing with family, religion, cultural differences, etc. The stories you don't really see on TV. (Jenny: I would have loved to see that on TV.) We realized very quickly that we were nobodies, and we needed a portfolio showing anything we were doing. Any time you're doing creative work, you need to put out a portfolio so people trust you'll do good, consistent work. We started a YouTube channel doing commission sketches, parodies, random videos to put our work out there and work towards this goal. We realized we really enjoyed this, and built a small production company. We didn't make much money at all (Jenny: I'm glad to hear you made anything! It's a tough industry, that's awesome!), got a few views, and got like some petty amount back so we could pay a crew to shoot some stuff. And now, whenever I encounter a hilarious idea, I'm just thinking, this would be a tight sketch to shoot! I still write these ideas down.

I don't do as much anymore, but I also used to do some standup at a few venues in Philadelphia — my friend who I started the company with got me into it. I did some open mics in NYC, and I tried once down here in Miami, but it's hard to do with a med school schedule. I couldn't really put any time into crafting my set. I performed one time for the med school talent show, called Cabaret. A couple nights before in a dress rehearsal, I realized the deans of the med school would be there so I had to rewrite my material — mad stressful!

A man with a mission like that usually has someone to look up to. Do you have any heroes?

I could be cliché and say Elon Musk. That dude is amazing and a half. He's done a few different things, and done them extraordinarily well. Elizabeth Holmes is a boss. A guy whose job I admire is Bill Gates. Every time I log onto his foundation website, and you see the causes he invests and works in. If you ask me what causes I care about, it's all the stuff on Bill Gates' website. I'm like, "Dammit, I need to get billions of dollars to just do this kind of work meaningfully." The man gets results.

Jenny, earlier you mentioned you're interested in learning about different people's perspectives on money with this interview project. Currently I live on loans, with a meager budget of a few hundred dollars a month. As a resident, you make like $48,000 a year. But when I think about it, I'm like, what the hell am I going to do with $48,000? I'm sure I'll find a way to spend it, but it seems like a lot of money to me actually. When it comes to sustaining my lifestyle, I always joke that I'd like to make a lot of money one day and buy a lot of shit I don't need and then feel guilty about it, and then move on with my life, just to go through that phase. But real talk — I don't know what I'd do with all this money that you make as a doctor. When I think of someone like Bill Gates, I think, maybe that's the way you make a difference. Wu Tang said it best — "Cash rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M., get da money, dollah dollah bill y'all." Bill Gates can do whatever he wants, because he's funding himself and everything working for him who believes in this mission. And I was like, is that the route? Should I make a shit ton of money and do the Bill Gates lifestyle? I don't know. I'm thinking about it. But obviously it's non-trivial to become the richest person alive, so maybe I should come up with other ideas.

A lot of Wharton kids go through this thought process, if they're sold on the "I want to help people eventually" mindset: earn a lot of money, then give it back.

I think it can be morally questionable to take with one hand and be lauded for giving with the other hand. Not going to generalize and say everybody is like that, but I think it's important to know the providence of your financial means, so that both the means and the ends are good. But then again, you can't even buy a coffee or Apple iPhone without being complicit in the inhuman treatment of workers in a land you can't see. So we're all complicit, we're all guilty.

This makes me think of some of the guilt I felt about watching the news, and seeing all the terrible things that happened this summer. It felt so far away from me and I felt quite helpless to do anything to help beyond a meager personal contribution, and that's something I'm kind of struggling with in my mind now. I see so much and am stunned to silence, but I can't do anything. I feel like once I'm aware of it, I have a responsibility for it.

There's a quote by Arundhati Roy: "The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable."

That's pretty profound. It imbues us with a huge degree of responsibility. There's a saying in Arabic: if you don't speak about the evil or wrongdoing, you're as guilty. I think that's why it's hard — if it was easy, we'd all do the right thing. How do you reconcile or react to it?

Do you think that as the son of immigrants, with some sort of connection to other countries, or the cultural "homeland", that you are sometimes caught up with "homeland politics" that affects your views on current events?

I think that overall, compared to some of my American friends who may not have a deep heritage with another country, it really depends on how involved you are with foreign policy. In a way, there's a burden that feels like an allegiance — no, a sense of duty — to the land my parents had to leave to give me the chance at a better life. A lot of people there don't have access to the resources I do in America. A lot of folks in America do care, but as someone from the area, you have an understanding of the culture, the language, etc. At the same time while feeling this sense of duty to the country of my heritage, I will joke that I'm a perpetual foreigner. I have an accent when I speak English so that you know I'm not exactly from here, but I've lived in the States my whole life so when I speak English-accented Arabic, I'm a foreigner around my family in Lebanon. They're like, "You talk Lebanese-ish, but you're not really from here." I'm a perpetual foreigner. No matter what tongue I speak, I'm always someone not from the area. In a way, that hurts — damn, that's my people, you know? But going back to the ideal sense of duty that I feel, I think, it's fine, it's fine. I'm part of this new breed of _blank_-American.

I spoke with an international student from Zimbabwe one time in college. He was telling me, "I came to America to learn knowledge and skills, but I'm going back to Zimbabwe to use it there." That was cool. I don't like this whole labeling of first world/third world/developed/developing world. What is this specific end goal that everyone is working and developing towards? I do think that societal infrastructure and institutions in a lot of countries could be improved, and there are ways to help build to the needs of those countries.

What was the socio/political/economic environment you grew up in? How did that impact how you view the world or your opinions?

I was in 6th grade when the Two Towers went down. It was a big moment for all Americans, but it was a bigger moment for Brown-Americans. I mean that specifically as a vague statement — not just Arabs but Persians, Indians, Pakistanis — all these different cultures that unfortunately (and it's really sad) — paid the price for bigotry. More Sikhs paid the price for racism and Islamophobia in America than anyone else. It reminded me of signs Chinese-Americans put in their stores during WW2 when the Japanese were being interned — "We're not Japanese!" All this stuff about "separate, separate", when we don't want to be looped into the violence for survival. I grew up in that era, and we're still going through that era. Once a month at least, you see a story, usually about a Sikh guy, unfortunately, who is getting attacked. One guy in NYC was pushed into the trains, because he wore a turban. That's the sociopolitical landscape I grew up in. And my full name is Abdul-Hadi. I never went by the Abdul part, mostly because Hadi was easier, but I am very apprehensive sometimes about people knowing my full name because as any minority, you get discriminated against subconsciously.

I was reading something about a guy named "Jose" who as an experiment, dropped the "s" on resumes to become Joe, and instantly, he got more interviews. You never know what things affect you sometimes, these subconscious prejudices. Anyways, we're still going through that. Another burden that I feel I've taken on is not necessarily to act in my best behavior, but to know that eyes are looking, that whenever someone messes up, people always check, "Is he Muslim?" Everyone's got to be on their best behavior. It's not different from what African Americans. Black Americans have been going through since their kidnapping to the US centuries ago. So I feel this burden to not only be squeaky clean, but also make sure I achieve by "white standards" so people can't say anything like, "Muslims and Arabs are primitive, or backwards." As a minority, you're an ambassador of "your people", and your individualism — a salient feature of American/Western society — is completely eroded. You mess up as a white person, and you just made a bad decision. As a minority, your whole community/religion/etc. is on trial.

It's very interesting to hear you talk about that. As an Asian American, I never had to face any of those specific connotations, but seeing that happen to other minorities made me realize that our cultural backgrounds is a permanent piece of identity that is carried around. Whether we choose to react to the world with that identity or not, there are phenotypical traits that will dictate how the world responds to you. Many Asian Americans fell in the "safe" category after 9/11, but these perceptions fluctuate with the times.

It's interesting how "white Americans" define "safeness." Asian Americans are considered safe, but when you turn on Fox, the country of China is the bogeyman. And all of the Middle East is the bogeyman. But Indians are safe — Mindy Kaling, Aziz Ansari, Bobby Jindal, we love them. But Pakistanis, baaaad. They're Muslim, gotta watch out. It's very interesting how these things get divided and categorized.

Do you feel like an American?

I'm an American citizen, and I do take it a little for granted sometimes. When you talk to an immigrant, they're so grateful and want those citizen privileges so much. I tend to forget the struggles my parents went through to get this citizenship. We have stable electricity, food, don't need to bribe the bureaucracy to get anything done, we're living at the top of Maslow's hierarchy here. I was reading about Tunisia recently, a few years after their revolution, and the journalist was asking the youth, are you going to register to vote? And the youth were like, "Look, we were in the streets tearing shit down to give democracy a try, but now we have 2 parties, talking about religions or something else, but there's still no security to live our lives in the streets. The job system is still bad, and democracy hasn't gotten us anywhere. Don't get us wrong, dictators suck, but what we are looking for is security so we can live a little bit." And that's depressing for me to read — democracy is hard to attain, and it's a long journey. But the point is still there. Security. In America, I can come home with a reasonable amount of rule of law, and the expectations of safety. The amount of vigilantism or bigotry fueled violence is largely the fringe of society. I can walk in my neighborhood without needing to arm myself. I know that we are the global 1%, with the way that we live. And it's important to remember that. We might perceive things as bad, but it's really that it's good, and we need to get better.

We identify ourselves by many cohorts — gender, age, sexuality, nationality, cultural upbringing, sociocultural, etc. What cohorts do you feel have the strongest impact on you? What do you identify most strongly with?

In general, I try not to have a strong affiliation with any sort of cohorts, lest I slip into jingoism or other mindless outbursts. Like when we caught Osama Bin Laden, was I happy? Yeah man, he's a bad dude, he terrorized a lot of Americans but also many more Arabs and Muslims. But everyone was celebrating on his grave, and I try to not get caught up in that kind of stuff. When it comes to patriotic moments, I am proud to be an American, especially when I see America taking the side of truth, justice, morality, principles I espouse. That's why I think sometimes that when I'm thinking about foreign policy, I get depressed about the cognitive dissonance with our imperialistic actions. It engenders more anger towards us; it's mutually destructive. Real patriotism — to really be an American patriot — you have to call your country out when it's not being fair or just. If I really care about my community, my area, my country, then I want to make it the best I can be, including calling it out when it is overstepping its boundaries and being a big bully in the world.

In terms of identity and community, I think college was a big time for me to explore that. I don't like my "labels" to speak for me, because labels carry a lot of baggage, both positive and negative. I never really identified 100% with political parties because there's stuff I agree and disagree with for both. I don't like pigeonholing myself. I technically identify as Arab American, but sometimes when I look around, I see despicable behavior that makes me sad. I just read an article yesterday about a Lebanese-American oncologist who was diagnosing healthy people with cancer and administering chemotherapy just to cheat Medicare. Sick. At those times, it disgusts me to be Lebanese American. I don't want that label to speak for me, and I get hesitant to label myself like that, because I'm not that type of Lebanese-American, lest someone defines what it means for me.

I consider myself someone who wants to make a difference in the world. I'm someone who has a deep, almost outrageous sense of justice. If there's no justice, I get very angry. I try to be Martin Luther, but sometimes I get real Malcolm X — no justice, no peace! That's an example of how I like to define myself. It's more nuanced than saying, I'm Hadi, I'm Muslim, I'm Arab-American. Then, people like to generalize and put you in buckets.

What were the top 1-3 most defining moments in your life? Any moments that you would consider "life lessons"?

I try to hopefully redefine myself every day as a better human being. For defining moments, there was that one afternoon in the summer between junior and senior year of college, when it really hit me that life was finite. All these dreams and ideas I had, all these multiple contradictory dreams, I wouldn't be able to achieve them all and bring them to life. That was... distressing. But it's hard to think of a single moment.

What is the biggest regret/worst decision of your life? Would you change it if you could?

I try to live my life without regrets. I don't think I have any major regrets, though there are a lot of things I wish for. I've had this wish I could maybe change or explore to see "what if...?" I've had this wish since I was 9 or 10, when in playing Pokemon, if you came across a super rare pokemon, you want to save your game before you fight it, so that if you defeat it by mistake, you could have another chance at catching it. What if I could make a "save point" in my life and take some actions, see how it pans out, and restart it if I could, with the knowledge I had from my previous encounter? Multiple takes at life right, who wouldn't want that? People say things work out, because if you're adaptable, life will be good. I don't have regrets. I could always call my mom more often. (Jenny: Me too, man, me too.)

There's another quote I'll drop here, from Imam Ali — "Work for a better life as if you live forever, and work for a better end as if you die tomorrow." Not to sound macabre and say I'm thinking about my death, but almost weekly, I'm faced with moments where I'm faced with my own mortality. I'm young and healthy thank God, but it'll be times like when the bus almost hits you while crossing the street, and I'm thinking, I was inches or centimeters away from imminent death. And you start to think, if I were to die right now, am I happy with the way I'm leaving things? Frequently, that answer is no, and there's work to be done. I try to leave my interactions with other people on a happy, or at least neutral note. Of course I get angry, frustrated, and sad sometimes too, but if you were to die right now, or someone you loved died (God forbid!), is the last thing you want them to hear from you, "Stop talking to me right now, I'm busy!"? If/when I do that, I try to calm down, call back, apologize, you know. It's a lifelong goal to destroy your ego and improve yourself, but so far, in general, that's helped me live without regrets. ■