My favorite animal is steak.

Host: The night was wet, the city alive with neon glare and smoke curling from street-food stalls. A light rain had just fallen, leaving mirrors of color on the asphalt. Inside a small, dimly lit diner, the air was thick with the smell of grease, coffee, and memory. Jack sat in the corner, a half-eaten steak before him, its steam rising like a confession. Across from him, Jeeny stirred her tea, her eyes bright with quiet anger.

Host: The clock ticked, slow and deliberate, as though marking the distance between beliefs.

Jeeny: “You know, that quote you just said — ‘My favorite animal is steak’ — it’s not just sarcasm, Jack. It’s… violence in wit’s clothing.”

Jack: “Violence?” He smirked, cutting another piece of meat. “It’s humor, Jeeny. Fran Lebowitz was mocking pretension — the kind that turns ethics into fashion. She was saying, ‘Don’t pretend to care more than you actually do.’ It’s honesty in its rawest form.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. It’s apathy in clever disguise. That kind of humor kills empathy. You think it’s funny, but it’s the same attitude that lets people consume without consequence, build without thought, destroy without remorse.”

Host: Her voice rose, soft but cutting, like the edge of a glass tear. Jack leaned back, his eyes narrow, the neon light reflecting off their gray steel.

Jack: “You think every joke must carry a moral? That every meal must weep for the cow that died? Life doesn’t function like that, Jeeny. We’re animals too. We eat, we survive. The difference is we invented sarcasm to make it bearable.”

Jeeny: “That’s the problem. You’ve normalized indifference. You’ve elevated cynicism to culture. Do you remember the footage from the 1970s, when the Green Revolution began? How they praised it for feeding millions, but ignored the forests burning, the species dying, the soil turning to dust? We called it progress, Jack, but it was just steak — our ‘favorite animal’ — while the real ones vanished.”

Host: The rain started again, softly, tapping the window like a metronome of guilt. A truck rumbled by, splattering the curb with mud and headlight shadows.

Jack: “You’re turning a quip into a sermon. Lebowitz wasn’t defending cruelty — she was mocking hypocrisy. People love to parade their compassion, but they still order the steak. Isn’t that worse than admitting it’s your favorite?”

Jeeny: “There’s a difference between honesty and resignation. When you laugh at something cruel just because it’s true, you’re not clever — you’re complicit. You’re saying, ‘The world is cruel, and I like it that way.’”

Jack: “Or maybe I’m saying, ‘The world is cruel, and I refuse to lie about it.’”

Host: A pause. The diners’ humming voices faded, leaving only the drone of the refrigerator and the sizzle of the grill. Jack’s knife rested against the plate, gleaming like a thin mirror.

Jeeny: “So that’s it? Truth over kindness?”

Jack: “If you have to choose.”

Jeeny: “But the two don’t exclude each other. Truth without kindness is cruelty. Kindness without truth is illusion.”

Jack: “Then maybe illusion is what keeps people alive. You think the factory worker who slaughters hundreds of animals every day can survive without numbing himself? You think the nurse who watches people die can feel everything? We build walls, Jeeny — not to hide, but to function.”

Host: Jeeny’s hands tightened around her cup. Steam rose, clouding the space between them, as if the air itself were struggling to breathe.

Jeeny: “Maybe, Jack. But at what cost? We’re numbing not just pain, but compassion. We’ve made a world where feeling is weakness, and sarcasm is armor. You call it functioning — I call it forgetting.”

Jack: “And I call it evolution. You want a species that feels too much? It would collapse under its own empathy. We adapt by growing cold.”

Jeeny: “But coldness isn’t strength. It’s decay. Look around — the planet, the wars, the disconnected faces on their screens. We’ve evolved into machines that smile at sarcasm and shrink from sincerity.”

Host: The light from the sign outside flickered, casting their faces in shifting shades — red, blue, ghostly white. The diner felt trapped between eras, a relic of humor and hunger.

Jack: “You think a quote can corrupt the world?”

Jeeny: “Not the quote — the attitude behind it. Every joke shapes a belief, and every belief builds a world.”

Jack: “Then maybe it’s the only kind of world we’re capable of. A funny, heartless, honest one.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. The world is capable of more. It’s we who’ve forgotten how to demand it.”

Host: The tension thickened, like smoke before a storm. Outside, a homeless man passed, carrying a plastic bag that rattled like bones. He paused at the window, staring at Jack’s plate, his eyes hollow and bright with hunger. Neither Jack nor Jeeny moved. The moment hung, silent, shameful.

Jeeny: “There. That’s the truth you defend. The steak is your favorite animal — because it can’t stare back.”

Host: Jack looked down, the knife still, the blood cooling on the plate. His voice lowered, rough with a tired humor.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. But that animal feeds more than me. It feeds the economy, the tradition, the comfort. The world is built on what we’re willing to ignore.”

Jeeny: “And it will end on the same.”

Host: A flash of lightning cut through the sky, illuminating the steam of the diner like ghosts of words left unsaid. The storm had grown, but so had the silence between them.

Jack: “So what do you want, Jeeny? For people to stop eating, stop laughing, stop being human?”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. I want them to remember what being human means.”

Host: Her eyes glimmered, not with anger now, but with grief — a grief for the simplicity of kindness that had once been ordinary. Jack’s expression softened, his sarcasm slipping like a coat too heavy for warmth.

Jack: “You know… I used to have a dog when I was a kid. A stray, all ribs and mud. He’d wait for me after school, every day, rain or snow. One day, he didn’t show. My father said someone had run him over. I remember thinking, ‘It’s just an animal.’ But it felt like the first time something inside me died.”

Jeeny: “And you never buried it, did you?”

Jack: “No. I fed it — with irony, with jokes, with steak.”

Host: The storm softened, the rain turning into a haze that kissed the windows. The neon light steadied, no longer flickering, as if the universe itself had exhaled.

Jeeny: “Then maybe the point isn’t to stop eating steak, Jack. It’s to stop forgetting the animal that became it.”

Jack: He smiled, a slow, broken smile. “And maybe the point isn’t to stop joking, Jeeny. It’s to remember why the joke hurts.”

Host: The clock ticked again, a gentler rhythm now. The homeless man had disappeared into the rain. The two sat in silence, the world spinning outside — hungry, honest, alive.

Host: In the window’s reflection, the neon sign read: OPEN ALL NIGHT. And for the first time, it didn’t mean just the diner — it meant their hearts.