Speaker 1: Pushkin, this is talk easy.
Speaker 2: I'm student Forgo, so welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Today.
Speaker 2: As we close out twenty twenty three, we look back
Speaker 2: on the year that was before we head into twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. I wanted to revisit some of my favorite
Speaker 2: passages from the past twelve months. Not an easy year,
Speaker 2: but these are all subjects that stayed with me that
Speaker 2: I kept coming back to, either for the jokes or
Speaker 2: the wisdom, or sometimes if we were lucky, a bit
Speaker 2: of both. This was, objectively, as I said last week,
Speaker 2: a pretty difficult year, especially in Hollywood, as the industry
Speaker 2: faced a pretty historic double labor strike between the actors
Speaker 2: and writers and the studios. As such, there was about
Speaker 2: three four months there where we stood in solidarity with
Speaker 2: the unions and didn't air any episodes with the kinds
Speaker 2: of people that typically come on this program, and so
Speaker 2: in that time the strike forced a lot of us
Speaker 2: who make podcasts to either a go on hiatus, B
Speaker 2: release a series of reruns, or c get really really
Speaker 2: creative on the booking front. Thankfully, we have an incredible
Speaker 2: team here and we mostly option see and as such
Speaker 2: we landed on this next guest, Sam Sanders, formerly at MPR.
Speaker 2: Sanders is the co host of Vibe Check and really
Speaker 2: one of my favorite culture critics working today. When Sanders
Speaker 2: and I sat down, it was in the middle of
Speaker 2: the strike, and he did his damnedest to make sense
Speaker 2: of some of the biggest stories from the summer. Let's
Speaker 2: take a listen. These past few months have been a lot.
Speaker 2: It's been a lot.
Speaker 1: It's been a lot, a lot.
Speaker 2: It's been maybe too much, although some of the stuff
Speaker 2: that has felt like too much has been an excellent
Speaker 2: exercise in indulgence. When I think of the three biggest
Speaker 2: pop stories of this year right now, it's Beyonce going
Speaker 2: on tour, It's Taylor Swift going on tour, and it's
Speaker 2: Barbie taking over the world, and all three of those
Speaker 2: things were just like supersized as pop culture moments. And
Speaker 2: I feel like it's too much, but also we needed it.
Speaker 2: We have been in lockdown for years, and so part
Speaker 2: of why you see people losing their minds at Beyonce shows,
Speaker 2: at Taylor shows, it's because we didn't have that for
Speaker 2: a few years. We're so happy to have it again.
Speaker 2: I even't think of the movies in general. There was
Speaker 2: a lot of talk when the pandemic was shutting theaters down?
Speaker 2: Will it ever come back? Will we ever do it?
Speaker 2: And then Top Gun Maverick comes out and everyone's like,
Speaker 2: is this a fluke or are we back? And seeing
Speaker 2: Barbie succeed so soundly, it's like, yes, movies are back.
Speaker 2: So to all of this, I'm like, pop culture is back.
Speaker 2: I had a couple of those on my list. Why
Speaker 2: don't we just jump in, let's do it. Now that
Speaker 2: a whole lot of people have seen Barbie and Oppenheimer. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and now that the Barbenheimer phenomenon has settled just a
Speaker 2: little bit, it's calmed down just a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: where are you at on these two films, respectively? Why
Speaker 2: don't we start with Oppenheimer? I go to Christopher Nolan
Speaker 2: films for amazing and spectacular visual effects.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're running for office. Uh huh this moviegoer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I was very surprised that this Christopher Nolan film
Speaker 2: felt like it had an Aaron Zorcan script. There was
Speaker 2: so much dialogue which was delivered brilliantly and beautiful by
Speaker 2: the actors in the film, But I wanted some more
Speaker 2: of the Christopher Nolan special effects Wizardry. I just don't
Speaker 2: go to Christopher Nolan for dialogue.
Speaker 1: Are you a Nolan guy?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: But the ones that I have enjoyed from him, I
Speaker 2: liked the effects.
Speaker 1: What are your favorites?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I actually saw a Tenant during Pandemic and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh wow, interesting. I still don't understand.
Speaker 2: No one does, but not Inception? Was it Inception? Inception
Speaker 2: is which Batman movie was him?
Speaker 1: It was all three of them.
Speaker 2: Yes, those are great, those are great, but yeah, it's like,
Speaker 2: when I think of what I loved about all those movies,
Speaker 2: it wasn't the dialogue that said they do the work.
Speaker 2: You know, it is a technical feat. Kudos to him.
Speaker 2: I think my thoughts on Barbie are gosh, super super
Speaker 2: super super fun. As soon as you get in any
Speaker 2: way analytical about that script in that plot pass a
Speaker 2: one on one level, you're like.
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: So many movies are built on this idea of a
Speaker 2: hero's journey.
Speaker 1: Joseph Campbell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's someone who experiences something that disrupts their world.
Speaker 2: Then they have to go on a quest to reset
Speaker 2: their world, and the process they lose some things, they gain,
Speaker 2: some things, they learn, some things but what I found
Speaker 2: with Barbie was that the film couldn't figure out if
Speaker 2: Barbie or Ken should have had the hero's journey, when
Speaker 2: in fact, America Ferrera's character should have had the hero's journey.
Speaker 2: She is the mother of the young teen who sets
Speaker 2: off the Barbie drama. And no spoilers here, but if
Speaker 2: you've seen this film or not, what America Ferrera's character
Speaker 2: does sets off the action in the film, and towards
Speaker 2: the end of the film, she has a monologue that
Speaker 2: crystallizes the emotional mistakes of the whole endeavor, yet we
Speaker 2: know the least about her and she gets the least
Speaker 2: amount of plot.
Speaker 1: What did you think of that monologue?
Speaker 2: I thought it was delivered beautifully. Sam Sanders pauses before answering.
Speaker 2: When I first heard it, I was like yes, And
Speaker 2: then as soon as I began so, I saw it
Speaker 2: twice first weekend because I wanted to have thoughts about it,
Speaker 2: And as soon as I talked to my friends, whose
Speaker 2: opinions I respect and like to hear, we all were
Speaker 2: just kind of like, it's a little one on one.
Speaker 2: There was a version of feminism in Barbie that did
Speaker 2: not at all acknowledge how feminism can needs to be
Speaker 2: different when it intersects with sexuality, when it intersects with race.
Speaker 2: This was a very queer coded movie in which no
Speaker 2: one's actually publicly queer.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: All the marketing for Barbie felt gay as fuck, and
Speaker 2: I loved it. And then I get into the movie
Speaker 2: and the Allen characters I guess supposed to be gay
Speaker 2: and hard enough. Barbie Doctor is a trans woman, but
Speaker 2: it's never spoken of, and they all about Alan b gay.
Speaker 2: Kate McKinnon is almost the sphinx or oracle that sends
Speaker 2: Barbie on this quest queer coded character let her be gay? Two,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I was telling friends on one of
Speaker 2: my shows five Check. I was like, I would have
Speaker 2: loved this Barbie film even more if Barbie's whole quest
Speaker 2: was just figuring out that she's a lesbian and and
Speaker 2: and Ken is actually gay and in love with simoulu Ken.
Speaker 1: Do feel dupe?
Speaker 2: Then I don't feel duped. I feel like Greta did
Speaker 2: the damn thing. You just feel that there's a disconnect
Speaker 2: between the marketing and then the actual materials in the film.
Speaker 2: I also feel like you cannot make a blockbuster that's
Speaker 2: too gay.
Speaker 1: Why is that?
Speaker 2: Name one?
Speaker 1: Next question, name.
Speaker 2: One name, name a blockbuster that's just like super fucking gay.
Speaker 1: Top gun.
Speaker 2: I'm leading away the lappings allowed touche, but no, I
Speaker 2: think that that movie one had to answer to so
Speaker 2: many stakeholders. You gotta make Mattel happy while also kind
Speaker 2: of mocking Barbie. You have to make a blockbuster because
Speaker 2: everyone's been waiting for this film for years and it
Speaker 2: needs to be feminist. So like, giving all those constraints,
Speaker 2: she did a wonderful job. I think what I want
Speaker 2: to see next is an indie take on Barbie that
Speaker 2: is entirely intersectional and directed by and starring mikay Leicole.
Speaker 2: Let's do that?
Speaker 1: Sign me up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, wherever I can invest stocks? Yeah, Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2: I love Barbie. It's a fun ride, but no blockbuster
Speaker 2: can fully address intersectionality. And and I get that.
Speaker 5: Hi Barbie, Hi Can Hi Bobby, Hi Barbie.
Speaker 1: Hi Barbie.
Speaker 2: I can, I can, I can?
Speaker 4: I can?
Speaker 1: I got suppose ice.
Speaker 5: Free cool Hip Barbie, Hi Barby, Hi Barbie, Hi Barby,
Speaker 5: Hi Barbie, Hi Barbie, Hi Barbie Barbie A Hi Barby,
Speaker 5: Hi Barby, Hi war.
Speaker 3: Hi Harvey Hi Barby, Hi Barby.
Speaker 2: Hi Barbie.
Speaker 6: Oh hi Alan.
Speaker 3: There are no multiples of Allen.
Speaker 1: He's just Allum.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm confused about that.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about two stories this summer that
Speaker 2: I think represent the worst of Twitter, oh and the
Speaker 2: best of Twitter.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the bad. Earlier in August, President Trump
Speaker 2: was booked in Georgia, where he faces thirteen criminal charges
Speaker 2: in the state's election interference case. He now faces ninety
Speaker 2: one criminal charges across four jurisdictions. But this is the
Speaker 2: first time we received a mug shot of the former president.
Speaker 2: You first started covering Trump on the NPR Politics podcast
Speaker 2: back in twenty fifteen. Yeah. I know you have moved
Speaker 2: away from politics. I know you even moved away from Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. But what did you make of seeing this photo?
Speaker 2: Did you think this day would come? My general theory
Speaker 2: on Donald Trump, and I was on the trail with
Speaker 2: him during that campaign season, like following that man around
Speaker 2: for a while. I'm sorry, you know, I survived once
Speaker 2: he won, I think pretty quickly, especially after the Russia stuff,
Speaker 2: which you know kind of went nowhere. I said to myself,
Speaker 2: he may or may not win reelection. He may or
Speaker 2: may not be caught up on charges, but he will
Speaker 2: never see the inside of a prison. I just don't
Speaker 2: think it's going to happen, and I feel like this
Speaker 2: mugshot lets people believe that he might. I still don't
Speaker 2: see how this man goes to prison. I don't see it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think if any case is going to
Speaker 2: do it, it's the Georgia case because it's state charges
Speaker 2: and not federal charges. So if you were to win reelection,
Speaker 2: he could pardon himself of any federal crimes, but he
Speaker 2: can't do it for state crimes, right, So this is
Speaker 2: the case that could stick the most. I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people who work in politics and who think
Speaker 2: about these things are pretty worried about the unrest that
Speaker 2: might be unleashed should he go into a prison. Sarah
Speaker 2: Palin said recently that if he were to go to prison,
Speaker 2: we could be entering a civil war. It's like when
Speaker 2: the toddler says, if you don't give me a donut,
Speaker 2: I'll throw a tantrum in this store. So I feel like,
Speaker 2: are we giving the right a donut? But also I
Speaker 2: don't want a tantrum in this store. I don't want
Speaker 2: another insurrection. He listed himself at six and fifteen. See
Speaker 2: that cute girl, cute a lie or a zembic. Imagine
Speaker 2: Trump on ozembic. I think if he's two fifteen, it's
Speaker 2: gotta be he's not too fifteen.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, I wonder how much I should
Speaker 2: think about these like image moments, like a mug out.
Speaker 1: Of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Is it a big deal? Is it not a big deal?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I know I saw it today and I was like, WHOA.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. At this point, I don't know
Speaker 2: what about Donald Trump needs to get a rise out
Speaker 2: of me. It's been years of this man just being
Speaker 2: a fool, you know what I'm saying. Of course, I
Speaker 2: have lost a barometer on any of this stuff, but
Speaker 2: I still think I'll never go to jailer prison. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm glad you mentioned the charges, because Trump's arraignment came
Speaker 2: a day after he skipped the Republican debate, choosing instead
Speaker 2: to sit down with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 2: That was posted on X, which I'm almost certain is
Speaker 2: my least favorite sentence I've ever said on this show X.
Speaker 2: That's what it said in the time I know, but yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a hard sentence for me. I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 2: But let's play a clip that essentially amounts to a
Speaker 2: Trump allegiance the TV for each of the Republican the BA.
Speaker 1: It's on a screen. I want to take a listen.
Speaker 7: You all signed a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.
Speaker 7: If former President Trump is convicted in a court of law,
Speaker 7: would you still support him as your party's choice. Please
Speaker 7: raise your hand if you would, just hold on, so
Speaker 7: just be clear.
Speaker 1: Governor Christie, you were kind of late to the game there.
Speaker 4: But nor know I'm doing this.
Speaker 2: Look, look, I'm doing this.
Speaker 1: I know you didn't. No, what's the new book?
Speaker 4: What Look, here's the here's the bottom line. Someone's got
Speaker 4: to stop normalizing this conduct. Okay, now and now, whether
Speaker 4: or not, whether or not you believe that the criminal
Speaker 4: charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the
Speaker 4: office of President of the United States.
Speaker 2: Okay, Chris Christy. The bar is on the floor. The
Speaker 2: bar's on the floor. Sorry, go ahead. For those who
Speaker 2: haven't seen the video of that clip, four instantly raise
Speaker 2: their hands in support of Trump. DeSantis and Pence wavered
Speaker 2: for a moment, then looked around, then raised their hands.
Speaker 2: Christy made some kind of weird gesture with his pointer
Speaker 2: finger that was kind of a hand raised, kind of
Speaker 2: a nothing, and Asa Hutchinson technically kept his hand down.
Speaker 2: But if anyone watched the debate, it's hard to know
Speaker 2: what he did because he has a very ghostly like
Speaker 2: presence on stage. When you watch that, what are you
Speaker 2: thinking about, especially as we are entering this election cycle
Speaker 2: come fall. It's performance art. Chris Christy acting like he
Speaker 2: can in any way take a moral stand against Donald
Speaker 2: Trump after working for Donald Trump and helping him get elected.
Speaker 2: It's just performance art. I think all of these politicians
Speaker 2: want nothing more than to win at any cost or
Speaker 2: be a VP pick at any cost, and what they
Speaker 2: say about Trump and what they reveal about their thoughts
Speaker 2: on Trump will only be what they think will help
Speaker 2: them win. None of them and we'll say what they
Speaker 2: really think about that man. And that is a problem
Speaker 2: with that party right now, because there's a conversation the RNC,
Speaker 2: the Republican Party there in the party have on a
Speaker 2: microphone and in front of a screen, and there's a
Speaker 2: conversation they have when the MIC's are off and the
Speaker 2: cameras are off, and it's been that way since that
Speaker 2: man won his first primary. And you've seen that switch.
Speaker 2: I've got off the records with these people when I
Speaker 2: was following Trump and like as soon as I turned
Speaker 2: the mic off, then it really came out. As a
Speaker 2: politics reporter at MPR in twenty fifteen to twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: you saw that switch happen, Yes, And there were a
Speaker 2: few who like, I'll never forget One night I caught
Speaker 2: Lindsey Graham at one of the early debates, I want
Speaker 2: to say, in Vegas, and he let it. He kind
Speaker 2: of let Trump have it on my microphone and that
Speaker 2: made it into the story the next day. But within
Speaker 2: two months he was like kissing Trump's butt, knowing that
Speaker 2: when you see video like this, you can't look at
Speaker 2: it as an indicator of how they'll actually behave. You
Speaker 2: have to look at it as an indicator of how
Speaker 2: much they'll hide. That's what it is. That was Sam Sanders.
Speaker 2: He's the host of Vibe Check from Stitcher. You can
Speaker 2: find the rest of that episode and his program wherever
Speaker 2: you are listening to this right now. Next up, she's
Speaker 2: an actor, a director, and the star of Poker Face,
Speaker 2: for which she just received an Emmy nomination. Of course,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the one and only Natasha Leon. There's
Speaker 2: so much in this episode that I wanted to pull
Speaker 2: bits from, But what you're about to hear is an
Speaker 2: early section of the conversation where she talks about how
Speaker 2: confusing her time was as a child actor and how
Speaker 2: she had to find her way back to acting on
Speaker 2: her own terms later as an adult. This is Natasha Leon,
Speaker 2: so growing up in Great Nec. I'm gonna be honest,
Speaker 2: I never heard of Great Neck until yesterday. Great but I.
Speaker 1: Think one of your first yes, sorry, yes, we've done
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: There your one of your first performances you gave. As
Speaker 2: I understand, it was for the passengers on the Long
Speaker 2: Island Railroad. Your mother's behest. You would do a dramatic
Speaker 2: reading of stock tips from the Wall Street Journal. I'm curious,
Speaker 2: what did that sound like?
Speaker 3: Gosh, I wish I could still do it for you.
Speaker 3: This is like you want my old Shirley Temple material.
Speaker 3: I feel I would need I would need a paper,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Because you got to read
Speaker 3: off the names of the listings, and then you got
Speaker 3: to tell you know, what's up, what's down? It's a
Speaker 3: trick I can no longer do. I did it for years.
Speaker 3: I remember, like between the ages of four and ten,
Speaker 3: this was like my major urigalar sort of spoon bending
Speaker 3: magic trick is I would delight audiences of adults by
Speaker 3: reading them stocks.
Speaker 2: Did that part trick? Did it make sense to you
Speaker 2: at the time? Were you just like, this is just
Speaker 2: part of who I am.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess, yeah, you know. So I'm born
Speaker 3: in the city. I feel like that's important because I
Speaker 3: lie about it often. You know, another I say, I'm
Speaker 3: from Manhattan, but I genuinely am, I swear to God.
Speaker 3: And they had this dilapidated mansion in Kings Point and
Speaker 3: Great Neck and Long Island.
Speaker 1: But your parents told you Herman Melville used.
Speaker 4: To live in.
Speaker 3: They said, yes, Herman Melville. And then the New Yorker
Speaker 3: told me, go fuck yourself, it's not Herman Melville's house.
Speaker 3: I said, well, why would you describe childhood who cares
Speaker 3: like I didn't know. It was a fucking mess. And
Speaker 3: I didn't know they were pathological.
Speaker 8: Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: This is like discovering Santa isn't real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, yeah, And I was like who
Speaker 3: else was claiming Hermon Melville's Calm Down movie?
Speaker 1: Dick, Like, why couldn't they just let you have it?
Speaker 3: Why couldn't they let me have it? But unsubscribed, unsubscribe,
Speaker 3: that's the New Yorker anyway?
Speaker 1: Is that the tagline? Unsubscribe? That's the New Yorker.
Speaker 3: No, We're just like, we debunk your childhood the New York.
Speaker 1: York since nineteen oh seven.
Speaker 3: You thought your life was a mess, way here to
Speaker 3: confirm it, bitch.
Speaker 1: You know it was just as bad as you say.
Speaker 1: We talked to many people.
Speaker 3: We talked to many people. We found out it was worse.
Speaker 3: You know, you had three things you thought that you
Speaker 3: could hang on. They tried to tell me. At some point,
Speaker 3: they were like, we couldn't find your you know. So
Speaker 3: NYU skipped me my senior year, and I was going
Speaker 3: to be in there film and philosophy program. I wanted
Speaker 3: to be a director. I wanted to read a bunch
Speaker 3: of fucking Neetzsche or whatever and then go write sort
Speaker 3: of Bergmann but funny movies about it. I'd already worked
Speaker 3: with Whatddy allen to talk about him a lot today,
Speaker 3: because not enough people do right now.
Speaker 2: And uh, and you put Ts Eliott in that essay
Speaker 2: right to get in.
Speaker 3: I did, Wow, you've done your research, the hollow men,
Speaker 3: the hollow men. And so I guest says, sure, come
Speaker 3: here early. And the point is is that I never
Speaker 3: paid the tuition. You know, I never actually went. I
Speaker 3: just audited classes for multiple semesters. And the New Yorker
Speaker 3: tried to tell me that I didn't and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 3: this is Keith Perman Melville. But I swear to god,
Speaker 3: I've been in that building like multiple times. I've taken
Speaker 3: cinema studies one to one, and that's why I decided
Speaker 3: to leave. So what are you guys doing here? That
Speaker 3: was a real back and forth. I was like, I'm
Speaker 3: not in the thing because I never went to the school.
Speaker 3: So now I'm determined to get you know, one of
Speaker 3: those honorary doctorates to teach the New York or a lesson.
Speaker 2: That will teach them that'll show that way. Here is
Speaker 2: a confirmed fact. Your first official role comes in Nora
Speaker 2: Ephron's Heartburn in nineteen eighty five. I know it was
Speaker 2: a brief appearance, but you played a child asleep on
Speaker 2: some guy's lap at a wedding, and I'm just wondering, like,
Speaker 2: how much of yourself did you bring to that character?
Speaker 1: Thank you?
Speaker 2: Was it deep method acting or was it challenging?
Speaker 3: You know who knew that? Only thirty years later I'd
Speaker 3: be off off Broadway in a black box doing a
Speaker 3: play called tigersby Still and also method acting, sleeping on
Speaker 3: stage when it said she sleeps.
Speaker 1: It was a precursor, it was.
Speaker 3: And that's the nature of quantum consciousness, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, who are we in which moment?
Speaker 2: I barely know who I am in this moment, So
Speaker 2: it's a challenge. When you did that role, did any
Speaker 2: part of that process make sense to you? Did it
Speaker 2: excite you to like be on set? Was it something
Speaker 2: you thought, well, this seems like kind of fun, I
Speaker 2: could do this.
Speaker 3: The child acting thing is so weird because, well, in
Speaker 3: the first place, I guess the good news is I
Speaker 3: was never a child star. I was like a working
Speaker 3: child actor. Wh's weird is, of course, having spoken a lot,
Speaker 3: and you know, being friends with people like mcauay culkin.
Speaker 3: Let's say we all have a similar experience of my
Speaker 3: parents put me in this thing. Sure, I was somewhat
Speaker 3: charismatic and naturally inclined towards it. But then the weirdness
Speaker 3: of the fact that I'm so highly attuned as a
Speaker 3: small adult accidentally does have a sort of b side
Speaker 3: that's inevitable. Not to speak to him, to speak for myself.
Speaker 3: For me in adulthood, I really had to come back
Speaker 3: to it on purpose. That was necessary because I was,
Speaker 3: for lack of a better term, you know, a natural.
Speaker 3: I'd never taken an acting lesson or anything like that.
Speaker 3: And back in my time, you know, a kid had
Speaker 3: to know tap and so on. Kidding, but I was
Speaker 3: into that kind of thing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Like I like the idea of being a song and
Speaker 3: dance man and like a street egin, and I liked
Speaker 3: the concept, but the truth of like the inevitable again
Speaker 3: speaking for myself only, of having a fucked up family
Speaker 3: dynamic while that's happening while you're trying to make money,
Speaker 3: and there are weird things, you know, like for sure
Speaker 3: my family spent the cash. For sure, I'd be like
Speaker 3: embarrassed by behavior at work. So like actually doing let's
Speaker 3: say Peeb's Playhouse would be so fun by the error
Speaker 3: around it would make me feel sort of weird or embarrassed,
Speaker 3: you know, of like having a parent there, or just
Speaker 3: weird things like walking around like Times Square, you know,
Speaker 3: auditioning and like the eighties by yourself.
Speaker 1: Weird, hoping your dad will pick you up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and why don't you ask me the questions and
Speaker 3: I'll try to answer one at a time, because it's
Speaker 3: wonderful that you know all this stuff and that I
Speaker 3: know you. And I'm down for the ride because I'm
Speaker 3: a one shrink short of a party at the moment.
Speaker 3: So I'll take the free.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm here for.
Speaker 3: I'll take it.
Speaker 2: You have this quote about your parents, who did seem
Speaker 2: like the driving forces in your early career. You said,
Speaker 2: even if they were ready to have children, it is
Speaker 2: kind of a wacky idea to put your child in
Speaker 2: business at six years old. I had to become coherent
Speaker 2: and a businesswoman at six. By ten, I was a
Speaker 2: jaded professional. By sixteen, my youth was over and my
Speaker 2: goose cooked. I don't think they knew better. It was
Speaker 2: a decision of my parents built on hopeful ignorance. What
Speaker 2: is that hopeful ignorance?
Speaker 1: What does that look like?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think another way of I mean now
Speaker 3: I'm so well, I'm the six six sick, depraved person.
Speaker 3: But you know I'm also well, I guess.
Speaker 1: Against my will, I'll be prefacing that in the intro.
Speaker 3: Or at least, you know, very high functioning. I'll thanks
Speaker 3: so much. And I'm also a tech a veil if
Speaker 3: anyone has a job. Okay, I was wondering why I
Speaker 3: gotta get the good stuff out there? Anyway, A book
Speaker 3: like you know, the Gifted Child of Narcissistic Parents is
Speaker 3: really what that means, this sort of hopeful ignorance, meaning
Speaker 3: even if you have a kid at home who's saying, oh,
Speaker 3: I want to do blank blank blank. You know, you
Speaker 3: see it all the time with sort of nepo babies.
Speaker 3: I guess that the healthy ones the parents were like, great,
Speaker 3: but you need to sort of finish school, and we'll
Speaker 3: give you sort of a lot of the tools that
Speaker 3: when you you still feel this way at eighteen, you
Speaker 3: can do it. Meaning we'll encourage you in the arts
Speaker 3: and all these ways, but also we want to make
Speaker 3: sure that you're well rounded enough to make that decision
Speaker 3: if you still feel that way at eighteen. You know,
Speaker 3: for example, who knows, maybe I would have said I
Speaker 3: what I really want to be as a playwright, or
Speaker 3: you know, what I really want to be as a musician,
Speaker 3: or I don't know. I don't even know that I
Speaker 3: ever said this is what I want to do, so
Speaker 3: much as they were like, well, we're going to take
Speaker 3: advantage of the fact that you got this mop top
Speaker 3: curly hair, and you like reading the paper out loud
Speaker 3: to people, and we're going to make some money off this, basically,
Speaker 3: and it will realize a dream that we have by
Speaker 3: proxy of you being a somebody, because to us, the
Speaker 3: value system is a thing that you, as a teenager,
Speaker 3: will decide is a very sick, warped value system. So
Speaker 3: by the time I'm sixteen, what I mean by all
Speaker 3: that my goose is cooked or whatever when we talk
Speaker 3: about the hollow men is by then I now had
Speaker 3: a working experience of what it meant to be in
Speaker 3: an industry that valued things that were no longer aligned
Speaker 3: with my sense of meaning or purpose. I think that
Speaker 3: my parents' vision for it was one that was strictly
Speaker 3: about making it and fame. So for me, I spent
Speaker 3: about a decade aggressively trying to fail or sort of
Speaker 3: like dim my light as best I could to annihilate
Speaker 3: that completely and then rebuilding. That was very much about
Speaker 3: what would my version of this look like.
Speaker 1: That was Natasha Leone.
Speaker 2: Her new show, poker Face, is currently available to stream
Speaker 2: on Peacock. Our next guest has been referred to as
Speaker 2: America's Sweetheart, the most normal actor in Hollywood, which sounds
Speaker 2: kind of like an oxymoron, and in twenty eighteen, as
Speaker 2: part of a poll from Reader's Digest, the most trusted
Speaker 2: person in America. Of course, it's mister Tom Hanks. Here
Speaker 2: he is talking about life before he became the Tom Hanks,
Speaker 2: when he was just a preteen kid starting to fall in.
Speaker 1: Love with the movies.
Speaker 2: You know, we're trying to pinpoint the beginning of your
Speaker 2: love of storytelling, but I want to try to identify
Speaker 2: the beginning of your desire to be an artist, which
Speaker 2: I think happens at around thirteen years old. You're lying
Speaker 2: in bed, trying to fall asleep the night before you
Speaker 2: go to see two thousand and one Space Odyssey in
Speaker 2: the theater. That was it.
Speaker 6: I viewed it all as a very romantic quest, the
Speaker 6: idea of sailing across space and space suits and helmets.
Speaker 6: I was not enthralled in the adventure of it as
Speaker 6: much as I was sort of like in the beauty
Speaker 6: of it. And I had actually seen this book prior
Speaker 6: to seeing the movie itself. Is called The Making of
Speaker 6: two thousand and one a Space Odyssey, which I couldn't
Speaker 6: understand because I hadn't seen the movie yet, but it
Speaker 6: had photographs in it of the making of the movie,
Speaker 6: and knowing that I was going to see and I
Speaker 6: understand in ninety I'm going to say this was sixty seven.
Speaker 6: I guess sixty seven, sixty eight.
Speaker 1: The movie came out in sixty eight.
Speaker 6: Okay, so this is in the fall of nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 6: We went down to the cinerama domes. It was a
Speaker 6: big deal and had lobby displays and what have you.
Speaker 6: And it was the first time I was in a
Speaker 6: theater where I noticed that the sound system was the
Speaker 6: most advanced I had ever heard. It wasn't just coming
Speaker 6: from the screen, it was coming from all around us.
Speaker 6: And there was actually an overture. So I walked into
Speaker 6: the theater and it still lit up, but Leghetti's Overture
Speaker 6: is playing, and when it began, I was used to
Speaker 6: movies as they had always been John Wayne movies and
Speaker 6: Kirk Douglas movies and movies that you saw in Charlton Heston.
Speaker 6: You know, movies had dialogue, and they had bad guys
Speaker 6: and protagonists, and you never really there was very little
Speaker 6: irony or mystery. Everything was spelled out for you. And
Speaker 6: hear this movie unspooled and there isn't a word of
Speaker 6: spoken dialogue until about twenty seven minutes into it when
Speaker 6: a lady says, here's your level, sir. And prior to that,
Speaker 6: we saw the entire history of humankind played out via
Speaker 6: Stanley Kubrick's vision. Now that was I'm thirteen, and I
Speaker 6: see finally an understand that cinema is this combination of
Speaker 6: light and image and performance and procedure and behavior. And
Speaker 6: I was able to figure out that what we were
Speaker 6: looking at was man learning how to use a tool
Speaker 6: in order to beat his way into getting what he wants.
Speaker 6: And then from that comes the greatest time cut in
Speaker 6: the history of cinema, in which a bone is thrown
Speaker 6: up in the air and when it comes down your
Speaker 6: thirty thousand years into the future and man has conquered
Speaker 6: space and is flying to the moon like it's relatively routine.
Speaker 6: And I can't say that I understood any of that
Speaker 6: movie when I saw it, but I knew that it
Speaker 6: was great, and I knew that it had blown the
Speaker 6: back of my head off as far as consciousness wise.
Speaker 6: But I reveled in every small, tiny detail of it
Speaker 6: so much so that I went back the next week
Speaker 6: by myself in order to see it again. And I've
Speaker 6: been looking at it ever since. Because there is a
Speaker 6: story about as big as you're ever going to get.
Speaker 6: That it that that is that is still nothing more
Speaker 6: than odd dialogue. I mean, there's no narrator that says
Speaker 6: and it was at that moment that Moonwatcher real life.
Speaker 6: There's nothing like that in there. The only the only
Speaker 6: uh supers are you know, beyond the infinite. That's there's
Speaker 6: there's nothing in there that makes it easy for you
Speaker 6: to comprehend what's going on outside.
Speaker 2: After you saw the movie, you said, once I started
Speaker 2: asking this question, how do I find the vocabulary for
Speaker 2: what's rattling around inside my head?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 6: That the thing about being an actor is you're speaking
Speaker 6: with somebody else vocabulary, but it goes through the sieve
Speaker 6: of your own consciousness. I gravitated to acting because I
Speaker 6: could get up in front of people like it was
Speaker 6: nothing at all. Other people can't do that, you know.
Speaker 6: I realized that that was a difference, and the vocabulary
Speaker 6: of communicating ideas by way of the first of course,
Speaker 6: the words of a playwright. Well, it's one thing to
Speaker 6: learn the dialogue, but it's something totally different to understand
Speaker 6: what the heck you're saying at the same time, what
Speaker 6: it is that you're trying to communicate. In some ways,
Speaker 6: all you need to do is trust the language. But
Speaker 6: something else happens That I learned about seven years later
Speaker 6: when I was twenty and found myself doing Shakespeare. Dan Sullivan,
Speaker 6: who at the time was directing us at the Great
Speaker 6: Lake Shakespeare Festival, got mad at all of the professional
Speaker 6: actors in the room because they were hungover from a
Speaker 6: party the night before, and he said, look, you guys
Speaker 6: have to show up on time, and you have to
Speaker 6: know the text and you have to have an idea.
Speaker 6: I understood showing up on time, because we get yelled
Speaker 6: at if we were not up on time. That's true.
Speaker 6: I didn't have a lot of lines to learn because
Speaker 6: it was pretty much carrying a spear and only had
Speaker 6: really one scene as an actor. But nonetheless you had
Speaker 6: to know that guy. But the thing that he said
Speaker 6: about and have an idea that was new. I thought,
Speaker 6: we're told what to do, we're told when to move,
Speaker 6: we're told what.
Speaker 2: No, no, no.
Speaker 6: He was actually saying, you have to come in with
Speaker 6: something grander than is what is just written down on
Speaker 6: the page. And I didn't even know how to do
Speaker 6: that for another fifteen years or so, but I understood
Speaker 6: that that was the difference between doing it professionally and
Speaker 6: doing it for the parks Department. You had to you
Speaker 6: had to do something more than just read the play
Speaker 6: and learn the lines. You had to study some aspects
Speaker 6: of human need and human behavior and the particulars I'm
Speaker 6: going to tell you right now. I played Fabian in
Speaker 6: Twelfth Night, and Fabian, I believe, is the worst role
Speaker 6: ever written in Shakespeare. And he is in one scene
Speaker 6: in which he and somebody else sits in a tree
Speaker 6: and laughs as Malvolio reads a fake letter, and Fabian
Speaker 6: has this line. The worst line in Shakespeare is this line.
Speaker 6: Sauder will cry out on it, though it be as
Speaker 6: rank as a fox. Sam Fragoso, do you have any
Speaker 6: idea what that means? Sauder will cry out on it,
Speaker 6: there would be at rank as a fox.
Speaker 1: Sam Fragoso doesn't.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure what it means either, but I was
Speaker 6: instructed to say it as though it was the funniest
Speaker 6: retort you could possibly imagine saying, and we had to
Speaker 6: laugh our asses off after wed s the story that
Speaker 6: you have to come up with the idea that you
Speaker 6: have to have in your pocket, has to be able
Speaker 6: to make sense out of saying a line that bad.
Speaker 2: So that's you at twenty years old. I want to
Speaker 2: understand about the ideas and questions rattling and signed your
Speaker 2: head looking for a vocabulary, a vocabulary of.
Speaker 6: What it was, the vocabulary of of playing it by ear,
Speaker 6: If that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I think I not loneliness.
Speaker 6: Well, I filled up loneliness by being that guy who
Speaker 6: happily walked into the room I did. I mean, but
Speaker 6: there's a combination between being why are you lonely? Are
Speaker 6: you lonely because no one has paid attention to you?
Speaker 6: I can't say that was the case.
Speaker 1: I think I was.
Speaker 6: My loneliness came about because of confusion, because no one
Speaker 6: ever really explained to me where we were going or
Speaker 6: why outside of a couple of teachers and the parents
Speaker 6: of friends of mine. I'm not sure anybody ever put
Speaker 6: a shoulder or hand on my shoulder and said, you
Speaker 6: know what, this has nothing to do with you, and
Speaker 6: you're going to be okay, and all I have to
Speaker 6: do is trust your instincts. I just figured out that
Speaker 6: I had to trust my instincts. I knew people that
Speaker 6: would rationalize away any possible move or anything that I
Speaker 6: can't do that because I have a job, or I
Speaker 6: can't take this gig because of that. I was a
Speaker 6: bit of a blank canvas when it came down to
Speaker 6: people coming up to me, particularly at the Great Lake
Speaker 6: Shakespeare Festival, in which people were telling me based on
Speaker 6: their observation of me, they said, Okay, if you want
Speaker 6: to be an actor, here's what you need to do.
Speaker 6: I never addressed the first part of their advice, which is,
Speaker 6: do I want to be an actor? Is it even
Speaker 6: possible to be an actor? Who's an actor in this world?
Speaker 6: Well they were, and they were telling me you are too,
Speaker 6: and so here's what you need to do. You need
Speaker 6: to go to New York City. Going to New York
Speaker 6: City is only things that Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds
Speaker 6: did in motion pictures. I didn't go to New York City.
Speaker 6: I was from Oakland, for goodness sake. Maybe I'll get
Speaker 6: drafted or something like that. But so the vocabulary is
Speaker 6: looking forward to was I think, the vocabulary of options
Speaker 6: beyond the ones that were immediately around me, I realizing that,
Speaker 6: oh I can do that. The vocabulary of saying, well,
Speaker 6: let's see what's going to.
Speaker 1: Happen after the break? More from maybe hold on, Tom,
Speaker 1: I want to take it.
Speaker 6: You're listening to talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. I'm Tom Hanks,
Speaker 6: and we'll be right.
Speaker 1: Back, coming back.
Speaker 2: I want to thank Tom Hanks for doing my job
Speaker 2: for me and just taking us to an ad break.
Speaker 2: Why we don't use that more often, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: But a couple more passages here before we end twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. This one comes from writer Hilton Now's. You've
Speaker 2: likely read his work in The New Yorker, where he's
Speaker 2: been a staff writer since nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: He won the.
Speaker 2: Pulled Surprize for Criticism in twenty seventeen for his work
Speaker 2: at the magazine, some of which has been collected in
Speaker 2: books like White Girls and most recently, My Pin up.
Speaker 2: His latest project, however, was not a book, but an
Speaker 2: exhibition about the late Joan Didion, who, thankfully we spent
Speaker 2: a large portion of our time together discussing in great detail.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen. One source of inspiration, both back
Speaker 2: then and now is in the work of the late
Speaker 2: Joan Didion. Oh yes, and I thought we could talk
Speaker 2: about her in this new exhibition you curated at the
Speaker 2: Hammer Museum called What She Means Now. Back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six, you interviewed Dideon for the Paris Review,
Speaker 2: in which she explains that and I quote, although a
Speaker 2: novel takes place in the larger world, there's always some
Speaker 2: drive in it that is entirely personal, even if you
Speaker 2: don't know it while you're doing it. Now that this
Speaker 2: exhibition is for everyone to see, I'm curious what was
Speaker 2: that drive for you, as you said, about creating What
Speaker 2: She Means.
Speaker 9: Oh, that's a wonderful question, thank you. I think that
Speaker 9: one of the real sort of salient points for me
Speaker 9: to make the show was the show a life evolving,
Speaker 9: and that the life was so much about the development
Speaker 9: of a character.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 9: So there's this very smart person from Sacramento who goes
Speaker 9: to college and she starts to write or feel that
Speaker 9: it's all been said before, but she's continuing, this is
Speaker 9: didim mm hmm. And then she goes to New York
Speaker 9: and she's working for Vogue, and she's having a pretty
Speaker 9: bourgeois She's doing everything that's expected of her. And then
Speaker 9: she stops doing everything that's expected of her as she
Speaker 9: becomes a more serious writer, and then moves back to
Speaker 9: Los Angeles during a time of great social upheaval. And
Speaker 9: I think it was that moment in her life that
Speaker 9: she became Joan Didion, because she allowed for the fracture
Speaker 9: to be part of the story. She was no longer
Speaker 9: holding it together and writing the perfectly constructed novel like
Speaker 9: run River, her first book. She understood that her voice
Speaker 9: and her feelings and her thought and her ethos was
Speaker 9: really kind of in sync with the times and that
Speaker 9: she was living in. And I think she had such
Speaker 9: an incredible facility to not only chart the times and
Speaker 9: that she was involved with, but to understand that her
Speaker 9: body was not separate from this fracture. Her thinking everything
Speaker 9: that she had been raised to think and presuppose as
Speaker 9: a kind of bourgeois girl, had to be jettison in
Speaker 9: order for her to be alive in the moment of
Speaker 9: her life.
Speaker 2: In this life, did Ion, more than just about any
Speaker 2: writer from the twentieth century, is returned to again and again,
Speaker 2: certainly one of the most. I wondered, why do you
Speaker 2: think that is.
Speaker 9: Because of the honesty of the voice. I think that
Speaker 9: when you, as she would say, putting cards on the table,
Speaker 9: I'm just paraphrasing, but you know you're risking the humiliation
Speaker 9: of seeing your name in print, is what she wrote.
Speaker 9: But I would say it's a humiliation of seeing yourself
Speaker 9: and when you risk that, it takes your chances right.
Speaker 9: You're not the kind of person who's going to keep
Speaker 9: your cards close to the chest. It's an act of
Speaker 9: freedom as much as anything else is to tell people
Speaker 9: who you are. They can't tell you you've told them.
Speaker 9: It's a form of control too. But I think she
Speaker 9: was very interested in how what did this vulnerability mean?
Speaker 9: What did this life mean without that self exposure.
Speaker 1: She was someone that came of age as a gold
Speaker 1: waterer Republican, and I.
Speaker 9: Think you have to know that that definition is very
Speaker 9: different now than what it was then.
Speaker 6: Then.
Speaker 9: It was Republicans meant you know, limited government interference in
Speaker 9: the life of citizens. That's really what it meant. And yes,
Speaker 9: there was conservatism, but there was also that aspect.
Speaker 2: Of it, and the Republicans have carried that tradition proudly exactly.
Speaker 2: Maybe my theory then is, as someone who came from
Speaker 2: this Republican household in Sacramento, she had these very firm
Speaker 2: ideas and understandings of the world that were passed down
Speaker 2: to her yes by her parents. Yes, and then life
Speaker 2: does what it does. Yes, And she has this kind
Speaker 2: of life long, ongoing public reckoning with herself and the
Speaker 2: world around her. Yes, And perhaps in those increasingly fractured
Speaker 2: times people ran to it.
Speaker 9: I think they also found the necessity of her voice, right.
Speaker 9: I think that what she was brilliant at was articulating destabilization.
Speaker 9: How you become one thing based on assume notions of
Speaker 9: the past. And this destabilization is a remark thing to
Speaker 9: live through. How do we live through it with language
Speaker 9: or how do we make language to talk about this experience.
Speaker 2: It's impossible to pick a single passage. I know she's
Speaker 2: so great that captures all her abilities and interests, but
Speaker 2: I know this one piece which comes at the beginning
Speaker 2: of her novel, A book of common prayer means a
Speaker 2: whole lot too.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it does. Happy to read it. Chapter one. I
Speaker 9: will be her witness. That would translate see Sue testigo,
Speaker 9: and will not appear in your Traveler's phrasebook because it
Speaker 9: is not a useful phrase for the prudent traveler. Here's
Speaker 9: what happened. She left one man, she left a second man.
Speaker 9: She traveled again with the first. She let him die alone.
Speaker 9: She lost one child to quote unquote history, and another
Speaker 9: two quote unquote complications. I offer in each instance the
Speaker 9: evaluation of others. Judge herself capable of shedding that baggage,
Speaker 9: and came to Bocca Glande a tourist una turista, so
Speaker 9: she said. In fact, she came here less as a
Speaker 9: tourist than a sojourner. But she did not make that distinction.
Speaker 9: She made not enough distinctions. She dreamed her life. She
Speaker 9: died hopeful. In summary, so you know the story. Of course,
Speaker 9: the story had extenuating circumstances, weather, cracked sidewalks and paragorna,
Speaker 9: but only for the living. I think that's such a
Speaker 9: remarkable piece of writing, and it says so much about
Speaker 9: how life is. For those of us who are reading
Speaker 9: the book that she's writing, you know, it's a beautiful piece.
Speaker 2: It's also a piece about self delusion and how this
Speaker 2: country produces dreamers. And incidentally, Diddyan, both on the page
Speaker 2: and in your time with her, see to make a
Speaker 2: dreamer out of you. And yet the greater irony is that,
Speaker 2: as inspiring as she was, I imagine you had to,
Speaker 2: like all writers, unlearn her voice in order to find
Speaker 2: your own.
Speaker 9: Yes, I don't think I was technically influenced by her,
Speaker 9: but I was certainly influenced by her interest in writing
Speaker 9: about women in fiction well she I mean a lot
Speaker 9: of people don't read her later stuff, which is unfortunate.
Speaker 9: But if you look at novels like Last The Last
Speaker 9: Thing He Wanted on Democracy, these are all kind of
Speaker 9: romances about women who don't fit, who are away or
Speaker 9: outside of the status quo, despite money or fame or whatever.
Speaker 9: And I think that one of the things that I
Speaker 9: love about her writing is this search for continuity, even
Speaker 9: though she knows it doesn't exist in particularly in the
Speaker 9: fiction and her essays. Of course, I loved finding out
Speaker 9: that James Baldwin was one of her favorite writers, and
Speaker 9: they do stand side by side on the bookcase for
Speaker 9: me because of not only their voices, which are extraordinary,
Speaker 9: but their ability to take the political and to make
Speaker 9: it not only just personal, but the.
Speaker 2: Narrative that was writer hilt Now's The Didion exhibition he
Speaker 2: curated is called Joan Didion What She Means, and it's
Speaker 2: currently available at the Perez Art Museum in Miami, Florida.
Speaker 1: I believe they have.
Speaker 2: Plans to move the exhibition to multiple cities in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. Do not quote me on that, but I
Speaker 2: believe that's true. If it does end up in a
Speaker 2: city near you, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It
Speaker 2: is unquestionably some of the best three hours I've spent
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three. As Hilton noted at the end
Speaker 2: of that section, Diddion's ability to blend the personal and
Speaker 2: the political was really one of her greatest gifts as
Speaker 2: a writer and essayist. The same could be said about
Speaker 2: our last guest today, novelist Zadi Smith. We sat around
Speaker 2: the publication of her newest book, The Fraud, which is
Speaker 2: now available wherever you do your reading. But the personal
Speaker 2: and political and the interplay between those two, and the
Speaker 2: relationship between those two ended up kind of becoming the
Speaker 2: heart of this conversation, the thing we kept coming back
Speaker 2: to and turning over and interrogating. We asked these big
Speaker 2: central questions around what the political efficacy is of making art,
Speaker 2: how progressives seem to so often fail to recognize their
Speaker 2: own hypocrisy, and then, probably most broadly, how do we
Speaker 2: live a life of principles instead of of as Zati
Speaker 2: says a series of public statements, This is unquestionably some
Speaker 2: of my favorite twenty or so minutes of tape from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, and in my view, a pretty fitting
Speaker 2: way to.
Speaker 1: End this year. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2: Thinking about that great quote from Their Eyes Were Watching
Speaker 2: God by zor'n Neil Hurston. She wrote, there are years
Speaker 2: that ask questions and years that answer. It's beautiful that
Speaker 2: period of moving to Rome, then Boston, then New York City.
Speaker 2: I wonder if you were starting to discover some answers
Speaker 2: for yourself.
Speaker 8: It was just great to get out of this parochial context,
Speaker 8: to learn a different language. That's an incredible thing for
Speaker 8: a write to like you, Just like you see around
Speaker 8: the edges of what you do into a whole different universe.
Speaker 8: I don't speak Italian well, but just to have it,
Speaker 8: it's it made me understand translation and it was just
Speaker 8: huge and in Italy I just decided to I don't
Speaker 8: fere allowed to say this, but just like devote myself
Speaker 8: to pleasure, like I worked so hard my whole youth
Speaker 8: when other people are like having fun. I was writing
Speaker 8: books and then anything. I was just like, I just
Speaker 8: want to live. And it was fantastic. You know, it's
Speaker 8: a fantastic place to do very little.
Speaker 1: Why would you not be allowed to say that.
Speaker 8: I don't know, I'm such I come from a Protestant
Speaker 8: culture and it was such a privilege, like who the
Speaker 8: hell gets to just sit in Rome and not do
Speaker 8: very much? But I didn't do very much. I didn't
Speaker 8: I ate and drank and talked to people and had
Speaker 8: fun and it was kind of great. And I just
Speaker 8: learned a lot about beauty. And like my husband's are
Speaker 8: you know, Northern Irish Protestant, which is the most Protestanty
Speaker 8: Protestant you can get apart from perhaps Scottish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, top Protestant.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and is he okay? He's good? But he also
Speaker 8: initially learned like some of the lessons of Italian life,
Speaker 8: which is like, you know, enjoy yourself. Things are beautiful,
Speaker 8: like don't rush everywhere, sit, have a coffee, chill the
Speaker 8: fuck out, and that's what we did.
Speaker 3: It was good.
Speaker 2: You did eventually find yourself back to the page, so
Speaker 2: it was you, not like you ran away entirely.
Speaker 8: No, But I remember the moment. I was sitting in
Speaker 8: Tuscany at this lady's house and she runs a writer
Speaker 8: to treat. But I wasn't doing any writing now. I
Speaker 8: was just sitting around and the phone rang and it
Speaker 8: was Bob Silversman in New York Review. He wasn't really
Speaker 8: to talk to me, was ringing to talk to this woman.
Speaker 8: Be a treacher. Sorry, But I answered the phone and
Speaker 8: he was like who is that? And I was like, oh,
Speaker 8: I'm Sadie and he was like hey Smith. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 8: are you interested in Kafka?
Speaker 3: And I was like what.
Speaker 8: I had never like all the time in England, if
Speaker 8: anybody asked me to review something, they would only ever
Speaker 8: ask me to review books about multicultural London, like over
Speaker 8: and over again. It was that kind of not they
Speaker 8: have anything against them, of course I wrote them, but
Speaker 8: the idea that I had no other concerns in the
Speaker 8: world was so English to me. And for the first time,
Speaker 8: as American was saying to me, are you interested in
Speaker 8: something else? And as it happened, I really was interested
Speaker 8: in Kafka. So he said, well, why don't you write
Speaker 8: so see what you can do? How about four thousand words?
Speaker 8: And so for the first time in Italy, I thought, oh,
Speaker 8: maybe I should do some work, and I wrote that
Speaker 8: essay and that kind of just changed everything.
Speaker 2: It was for the New York Review of Books that
Speaker 2: you wrote that piece on Forrester. Yeah, that was in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight. Yeah, and I I have a
Speaker 2: passage from it here where I think it seems like
Speaker 2: you started to develop that idea of good writing requiring
Speaker 2: good being puke.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't believe any of that anymore. So I'm
Speaker 8: not going to defend that for one second. That's a
Speaker 8: young person's foolishness. Okay, well, it's moralistic and it's just exhausting. Well,
Speaker 8: let's let's interrogate what oare go on? What did I say?
Speaker 2: Uh? Is what Forster said? Oh God, do we in
Speaker 2: these terrible This is not you don't worry.
Speaker 1: I do have courtes from you.
Speaker 2: We can do that too, right, Do we in these
Speaker 2: terrible times want to be humanists or fanatics? I have
Speaker 2: no doubt as to my own wish. I would rather
Speaker 2: be a humanist with all his faults than a fanatic
Speaker 2: with all his virtues.
Speaker 8: Well, look, that is a good quote. But the argument
Speaker 8: is what does humanism mean? And at the moment it
Speaker 8: means to a lot of young people just some kind
Speaker 8: of neo liberal cover story. Some willly bullshit about how
Speaker 8: we're all the sa blah blah blah. So you can
Speaker 8: think that that's humanism, and there is certainly a version
Speaker 8: of that. That's the version sold to you by particular
Speaker 8: corporations right in their adverts, and in there that's the
Speaker 8: general human they're trying to sell to. But there is
Speaker 8: another humanism, which to me is radical and socialist and
Speaker 8: is interested in finding a collective category in which you
Speaker 8: can perform acts of political solidarity.
Speaker 2: Can you unpack your definition or one that actually matters
Speaker 2: to you?
Speaker 8: Look, I would say it's about having a kind of
Speaker 8: Angela Davis talks about it a little bit. You need
Speaker 8: to have a bracketed sense of yourself as a political citizen.
Speaker 8: So it's absolutely the case, particularly in America, because of
Speaker 8: the way your politics are structured that you need to
Speaker 8: gather in identity groups in order to pressure government for rights.
Speaker 8: That's how America works, and that's not going to change.
Speaker 8: But it is important, I think, to know that that
Speaker 8: is not the only way that politics can function at
Speaker 8: moments where you were I'm thinking particularly about like the
Speaker 8: wave of AI that's about to come at us, or
Speaker 8: also the literal wave that is coming at us through
Speaker 8: climate change. If you don't have a radical collective idea
Speaker 8: of the human you're splintered in the face.
Speaker 4: Of the wave.
Speaker 1: That is my problem. You can expin that you're.
Speaker 8: Going to have to find a way, just as they
Speaker 8: did in the nineteenth century in the battle against slavery,
Speaker 8: to say I am a Manchester cotton worker. You are
Speaker 8: a sugar worker and forced laborer and enslave person in
Speaker 8: the Caribbean. We are not in the same situation exactly,
Speaker 8: but we are working under the same system, which is
Speaker 8: a system of capital. Can we work together even though
Speaker 8: our situations are not perfectly analogous. To do that, you
Speaker 8: need some conception of your human situation under this power structure.
Speaker 8: And if you say no, we can't work together because
Speaker 8: you can't exactly comprehend my situation comprehend yours. The only
Speaker 8: person who wins from that is capital itself.
Speaker 2: This seems like you're hinting at the You kind of
Speaker 2: reminded me of Chappelle's line the imperfect allies.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's okay to have in perfect allies. It's not
Speaker 8: a compromise, it's not. It is a way of making
Speaker 8: politics work.
Speaker 2: You did just accidentally kick me. Was that because I'm
Speaker 2: twenty nine and I represent a younger generation?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 8: No, And that's that's the most of all the stupid
Speaker 8: binary dialectics, Like if you're young, you are going to
Speaker 8: become old, So that dialectic is literal insanity. There is
Speaker 8: no point screaming about how awful the old are. It
Speaker 8: is coming at you so soon, so we might as
Speaker 8: well find some That's a classic example some way of
Speaker 8: communicating that isn't a war.
Speaker 1: I think we've done a good job.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, you said recently, I can't emphasize how quickly
Speaker 2: people much younger than you are going to find you
Speaker 2: utterly absurd.
Speaker 8: I know you never believe it. No one believes it.
Speaker 8: Everybody thinks, But I'm young in a new way that
Speaker 8: will never age and I will never but it just
Speaker 8: always happens, so you might as well get ready for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good writing requires good being. This is something you
Speaker 2: said for many years and you think it's absolute nonsense.
Speaker 8: Now, yeah, I think it's absolute nonsense, nonsense nonsense.
Speaker 1: Does writing make you a better person or no?
Speaker 2: Okay, are you a better person because of writing?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 8: Sorry, I just I don't.
Speaker 2: That's not my experience, Okay, because these were all feelings
Speaker 2: you had and sentiments you had before.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because I was when you're in the world. Part
Speaker 8: of the kind of simplicity when I was young. At
Speaker 8: least I can't speak to other young people when I
Speaker 8: was young. The ethical area that you're dealing with is
Speaker 8: really small. So if you wake up in the morning,
Speaker 8: like if I'm twenty four and I'm writing novels, all
Speaker 8: I have to do to be a good person is
Speaker 8: to get up in the morning, have my breakfast, write
Speaker 8: my book, maybe to hang out with my friends and
Speaker 8: go to bed. Right, the ethical area is really small,
Speaker 8: so you can really do it the moment you add
Speaker 8: more people, partners, kids, dogs, you have two kids, right, Yeah,
Speaker 8: the ethical area immediately what's that thing? May sometimes say online,
Speaker 8: like just be good. It's not complicated. It's so complicated.
Speaker 1: It's quite hard.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's so hard, and the more people involved, being
Speaker 8: good to one person of course means perhaps not being
Speaker 8: good to another. Rights and duties are in constant tension.
Speaker 8: So it's just something you maybe don't know when you're
Speaker 8: twenty four, but it becomes radiantly clear the older you
Speaker 8: get that the ethical area is so complicated that the
Speaker 8: hope of being perfectly good is you know, of course
Speaker 8: you can hope it, but it really is deeply delusional.
Speaker 8: Parenting is just so humbling and destructive of your sense
Speaker 8: of yourself as some great person. It just it destroys that.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, she says, staring at me, knowing I'm twenty nine
Speaker 2: with no kids.
Speaker 8: No, but I don't know. I never felt I was
Speaker 8: a particularly great person. So that's not something. It's not
Speaker 8: like I'm falling from a great height. But the only
Speaker 8: thing what I do is not giving. I write, which
Speaker 8: is for me. People who actually are outward facing and
Speaker 8: are constantly giving of themselves, like actually doing that are
Speaker 8: to me the admirable people.
Speaker 2: You know, in fact, beyond the personal reasons of making art.
Speaker 2: You've written pretty extensively about the perceived political power and
Speaker 2: the quote necessity of storytelling. Yeah, because throughout the pandemic
Speaker 2: and through lockdown, many people were making the case for
Speaker 2: art's nobility, it's capacity to change us, to enlighten. And
Speaker 2: yet in an essay from your book Intimations, which was
Speaker 2: written I think in the throes of the pandemic, you
Speaker 2: seem to have a very different view, at least when
Speaker 2: it comes to the work you've been making for the
Speaker 2: past twenty six years.
Speaker 1: Can we take a look at that?
Speaker 8: Sure, don't sound so excited, you have a look? Okay?
Speaker 8: Oh boy, here here okay. The more utilitarian minded defenders
Speaker 8: of art justify its existence by insisting upon its potential
Speaker 8: political efficacy, which is usually overstated. Artists themselves are especially
Speaker 8: fond of overstating it. But even if you believe in
Speaker 8: the potential political efficacy of art, as I do, few
Speaker 8: artists would dare count on its timeliness. It's a delusional
Speaker 8: pain to finishes a canvas at two o'clock and expects
Speaker 8: radical societal transformation by four. Even when artists right manifestos,
Speaker 8: they are hopefully aware that their exigent tone is finally borrowed,
Speaker 8: only echoing and mimicking the urgency of the guerrilla's demands
Speaker 8: or the activist protests, rather than truly enacting it. The
Speaker 8: people sometimes demand change, they almost never demand art. As
Speaker 8: a consequence, art stands in a dubious relation to necessity
Speaker 8: and to time itself. It is something to do, yes,
Speaker 8: but when it is done, and whether it is done
Speaker 8: at all is generally considered a question for artists alone.
Speaker 8: An attempt to connect the artist's labor with the work
Speaker 8: of truly laboring people is frequently made, but always strikes
Speaker 8: me as tenuous, with the fundamental dividing line being this
Speaker 8: question of the clock. Labor is work done by the
Speaker 8: clock and paid by it too. Art takes time and
Speaker 8: devise it up as arts is fit. It is something
Speaker 8: to do. Do you know what I want to say something?
Speaker 8: It's occurred to me on this tour recently that I
Speaker 8: think what it is when I listen to other artists
Speaker 8: talk like they use the words radical every other word.
Speaker 8: They're constantly stating these apparently progressive arguments. But then I
Speaker 8: know about them, like I know that kids are in
Speaker 8: private school. I know that it just really blows my
Speaker 8: mind that people haven't literally no shame about this rhetoric
Speaker 8: that has no relation to their lives, particularly in America,
Speaker 8: they continue to live these like harp bourgeois lives. And
Speaker 8: then so I've never said I never speak like that,
Speaker 8: because embarrassing, I realized my life is actually in the commons,
Speaker 8: like I have a case.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 8: I mean, I try and live like some of the
Speaker 8: things that I really believe a society should be arranged.
Speaker 8: I don't. I don't know. I mean my parents had
Speaker 8: their kind of moments of activism when I was a kid,
Speaker 8: and so I connect that activism with actually going out
Speaker 8: and doing it, like they went out and marched and
Speaker 8: they were involved at a kind of grassroots level. So
Speaker 8: that's the thing I take seriously. I just cannot take
Speaker 8: seriously people speaking as if their very existence is just radical.
Speaker 8: They're just radical because they are alive and willing to
Speaker 8: give you their art.
Speaker 9: I can't.
Speaker 8: I find that really hard to take seriously.
Speaker 2: It sounds like the part that's rubbing you the wrong
Speaker 2: way is that you have contemporary writers that are acting
Speaker 2: like politicians maybe or speaking in public like their policy.
Speaker 8: That's I realized that in the age of the algorithm,
Speaker 8: politics is something that has to be legible. So because
Speaker 8: I haven't said I am this and this is what
Speaker 8: I believe, I think I've allowed people to assume politics
Speaker 8: that I really do not engage with. But I always
Speaker 8: assume that. I mean, I don't know, I just rem
Speaker 8: Does that bother you, No, it doesn't really, because I
Speaker 8: want The lesson I took from my parents is do
Speaker 8: you want to label yourself endlessly in your armchair or
Speaker 8: do you want to get on the streets and actually
Speaker 8: change people's minds. So to me, the arguments in my
Speaker 8: books are they're open enough that people can enter. Hopefully
Speaker 8: they enter and something happens.
Speaker 1: It's funny.
Speaker 2: The very thing that I probably love most about your
Speaker 2: work is that it does feel inviting and that it's
Speaker 2: not not particularly dogmatic, and perhaps in the absence of
Speaker 2: clear definition, others, especially on the Internet, have maybe trying
Speaker 2: to define you in your work for you.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and I've realized that they have no idea like
Speaker 8: where I come from with the people I come from,
Speaker 8: because I never said but that's because I believe in privacy.
Speaker 8: I just don't understand this kind of public facing person
Speaker 8: who's a series of statements. I can't engage with it.
Speaker 8: But it just surprises me that people think making radical
Speaker 8: work is saying my work is radical. That's not what
Speaker 8: I think radical work is. I think radical work is
Speaker 8: radical work. It does something radical to you as you're
Speaker 8: reading it, to the way you think, and to the
Speaker 8: formation of your ideas.
Speaker 2: As believe, we're trying to sift through a whole lot. Yes,
Speaker 2: very big ideas, right. And the truth is, as you
Speaker 2: were talking, I couldn't help but shake that headline that
Speaker 2: came about from a recent Vulture review. I think it
Speaker 2: was how Zady Smith lost her teeth, which did take
Speaker 2: issue with your politics, or at least how you think
Speaker 2: of politics in relation to your work.
Speaker 1: What did you make of that?
Speaker 8: I mean, I do slightly take issue of being judged
Speaker 8: the level of my black radicalism by by someone who
Speaker 8: isn't in that tradition. And also, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 8: I don't know how to put it.
Speaker 3: I just what.
Speaker 8: I think.
Speaker 9: What do I think?
Speaker 8: Oh God, it's about the principle of hospitality. I think
Speaker 8: that's like even like that kind of ancient Greek idea
Speaker 8: that the door of pros is open, like I so
Speaker 8: remember when I was a kid, like we used to
Speaker 8: hand out the socialist work and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 8: And there was always this idea when you're dealing with
Speaker 8: like upper middle class intellectuals, they have this idealized proletariat
Speaker 8: figure in their mind. And of course that was we
Speaker 8: were the We're the people. We were there waiting for
Speaker 8: the And I remember, particularly my father, like watching the
Speaker 8: way they would talk to my father, that there's this
Speaker 8: disappointment that the pot when you meet them, isn't using
Speaker 8: the same language that you're using, right, doesn't fully embrace
Speaker 8: the Marxist discourse. In his language, is worried about his
Speaker 8: rent and his food maybe doesn't have the same aesthetics
Speaker 8: as you, and and I was always struck by that,
Speaker 8: And even when I got to college, it was more intense, right,
Speaker 8: that there's this kind of leftist movement, and the inconvenient
Speaker 8: thing is that the people they speak to they don't
Speaker 8: really like or understand. So I come from somewhere else,
Speaker 8: and I do think I both like and understand the
Speaker 8: people I grew up amongst. And I'm not ever willing
Speaker 8: to just shut the door in them because their language
Speaker 8: isn't correct or they're not thinking in quite the way
Speaker 8: that I would wish they would think. I'm trying to
Speaker 8: find common ground, and to me, common ground is not
Speaker 8: a middling space. It's like a radical space. It's a
Speaker 8: space you can share in common. The commons is the
Speaker 8: thing that concerns me.
Speaker 2: Back in two thousand, yes, you went on Charlie Row.
Speaker 8: God, yeah, that's the only time to be on television
Speaker 8: twice on Charlie Rose.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I've seen them both.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's it. And after that it's like, I never
Speaker 8: want to do this again in my life.
Speaker 1: Well you did just fine.
Speaker 2: You had a quote in that first one that I
Speaker 2: wonder if it's still true for you. You said, empathy
Speaker 2: and voyeurism are kind of two sides of the same thing.
Speaker 2: You have to like looking, and then once you finish looking,
Speaker 2: you have to make an effort to understand. Does that
Speaker 2: still ring true to you?
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's my kink for sure. I like to watch.
Speaker 8: I like to watch people. I like to watch their lives.
Speaker 2: I wasn't gonna say kink, but no, but it's fine.
Speaker 8: I don't mind. That's truth. I'm really voyeuristic. It's deep
Speaker 8: in my nature and I know it is and yeah,
Speaker 8: I guess the problem people have the idea that in
Speaker 8: understanding people, you forgive them. It's all very Christian, that
Speaker 8: kind of idea, And.
Speaker 1: Your husband says you have to do everything in your
Speaker 1: power to not be Christian.
Speaker 8: What he said. But you know, when I was writing
Speaker 8: this book looking at these radical socialist Christians who were
Speaker 8: some of the greatest anti slavery campaigners, Thomas Spence, Robert
Speaker 8: Wedderburn who turned from Christ but then spoke of correctly
Speaker 8: that when you get into the social Gospel, what you're
Speaker 8: being asked to do there is beyond any Marxist fantasy.
Speaker 8: It's like you're being asked to give every single thing
Speaker 8: that you have to the weakest and poorest in front
Speaker 8: of you. So there is certainly a radical Gospel, but
Speaker 8: now I'm nowhere near anything like that. But understanding doesn't
Speaker 8: have to mean approving. But I think that the really
Speaker 8: hard thing, the difference between me and perhaps younger writers,
Speaker 8: is that whether I approve or disapprove of the people
Speaker 8: in my novels is not the point to me.
Speaker 1: This was your point around tar. Yeah, that is interesting.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's just it's a serious difference. Of course, I
Speaker 8: have my personal views, and but that's not the beginning
Speaker 8: and end of when I'm critiquing something, I just, you know,
Speaker 8: like I'm reading Virginia Wolf's stories now, and I love Wolf,
Speaker 8: and sometimes she's an asshole, and I can just know that,
Speaker 8: do you know what I mean? I just know that
Speaker 8: sometimes she's a fucking asshole. Yes, so that's that. It's
Speaker 8: not I'm not condoning. I'm just it's just the fact
Speaker 8: it's okay to contain more than one idea, like you
Speaker 8: can just have have it and know it.
Speaker 1: And you think my generation is not capable of holding them.
Speaker 8: No, I think they absolutely are.
Speaker 2: I know they are, because you think they do the
Speaker 2: beginning and ending thing that it begins to ends with
Speaker 2: their own personal politics.
Speaker 8: No, I don't think that either. I think that dumb
Speaker 8: people are like that. But I keep reading really brilliant
Speaker 8: novels by people younger than me all the time. I'm
Speaker 8: brilliant criticism, And so it's not I don't believe in
Speaker 8: like it's some kind of generational trait. It's always that
Speaker 8: instinct is in every generation of like shutting down at
Speaker 8: a certain point or No, I don't believe that. I'm
Speaker 8: just talking about my particular which just don't stop. They
Speaker 8: just keep going. I can't help that, you know.
Speaker 2: Eighteen years ago, Yes, you interviewed author Ian McEwan in
Speaker 2: the Believer magazine. Yeah, he was about fifty seven at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 8: Is this the meaning of deep dive? Is this what
Speaker 8: happening here? Sam? Is that what you like to do?
Speaker 8: I really understand it now.
Speaker 1: You were skeptical in the beginning.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I know, but now I'm like, whoo, it's intense.
Speaker 8: It's amazing the things you've managed to find go on.
Speaker 2: He was about fifty seven at the time. Yes, And
Speaker 2: toward the end of your interview, you asked him what
Speaker 2: it feels like to look at your own bookshelves and
Speaker 2: this nice little backlog of work, this little stack. You said,
Speaker 2: I don't know what that would feel like. Amazing, I
Speaker 2: would think. Does it give you any pleasure?
Speaker 9: Though?
Speaker 8: What did he say?
Speaker 2: I'm a little more interested in what you would say now,
Speaker 2: because you know, when we started this conversation, he said,
Speaker 2: I've been on book tour and people keep bringing all
Speaker 2: these books to me, and I don't know how time
Speaker 2: has moved so fast, And I never imagined having all
Speaker 2: these things written that you have spent your time on
Speaker 2: in your life, invested.
Speaker 8: In I just it's weird, Like I you know, when
Speaker 8: you're young, you come to destroy the generation above. I
Speaker 8: came to destroy Ian. I love Ian, but I came
Speaker 8: to destroy him, just as he came to destroy the
Speaker 8: generation above him, just as young novelists come to destroy me.
Speaker 8: That's like the natural ecosystem of literure. And if it
Speaker 8: doesn't happen, it's not healthy. So I'm so used to
Speaker 8: coming to be the destroyer, and now I'm here to
Speaker 8: be the destroyed. And it's just a weird feeling. I
Speaker 8: don't know, it's weird. I did these books, I'll probably
Speaker 8: do some more. And what I do notice about the
Speaker 8: writers I came to destroy is that you feel a
Speaker 8: kind of new fondness for them. You see new things
Speaker 8: in them and which I like. And I hope I
Speaker 8: feel that way about my work as I get older,
Speaker 8: that I come around to it again. But the moment,
Speaker 8: I'm still like full of beans. Man, I'm kind of
Speaker 8: I to do something new.
Speaker 1: Have they given you pleasure?
Speaker 8: This one gave me a lot of pleasure, satisfaction, And yeah,
Speaker 8: like I didn't know if I could do it, and
Speaker 8: I did it to my own satisfaction. That's the best
Speaker 8: way I can put it. And then last night when
Speaker 8: I was signing, people came up talking to me about
Speaker 8: White Teeth have so moved like a book I barely remember,
Speaker 8: and it was so nice, like kids coming up and
Speaker 8: talking about reading it. And I still felt quite disassociated,
Speaker 8: like it's not I couldn't remember writing it. But I thought, God,
Speaker 8: that's so nice that it's just out in the world
Speaker 8: being with people. What an incredible thing?
Speaker 1: Do you want to know? His answer?
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, go on, he said, to your question, does
Speaker 2: it give you pleasure? It's like a family album, the
Speaker 2: consciousness of your own past. People say what you were
Speaker 2: doing in such and such years, And I know exactly
Speaker 2: what I was doing. I know I was publishing a
Speaker 2: particular book. Are halfway through another one. These books are
Speaker 2: the spoonfuls with which I've measured my existence.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's exactly it. And I don't know if that's
Speaker 8: a normal thing to do with your life, but that's
Speaker 8: what I've done.
Speaker 1: It's okay, Is it okay?
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's actually it's good. Yeah. I mean, I I
Speaker 8: personally feel that relations with human beings are more important,
Speaker 8: and I treasure, my friendships and my loves and my
Speaker 8: children and all of that. But it's not a bad
Speaker 8: way to spend the day, not at all.
Speaker 1: That was Zadie Smith.
Speaker 2: She's the author of books like White Teeth, Intimations, and
Speaker 2: most recently The Fraud. You can listen to that episode,
Speaker 2: or any of the episodes we played clips from today
Speaker 2: at Talk easypond dot com. You can also listen to
Speaker 2: those full conversations wherever you are listening.
Speaker 1: To this right now before we go.
Speaker 2: I've been doing Talk Easy since twenty sixteen, and one
Speaker 2: difficult part of doing a show every week. There are
Speaker 2: a few difficult parts, but one especially difficult part, and
Speaker 2: something I don't talk a lot about on the program,
Speaker 2: is that if you do this work long enough, some
Speaker 2: of the people that I've sat across from pass away.
Speaker 2: And I'd be remiss to not pay tribute to one
Speaker 2: of my favorite guests in my seven years of making
Speaker 2: Talk Easy. He came on many many times. I'm, of course,
Speaker 2: talking about the late Norman Lear. He passed away in
Speaker 2: early December at the age of one hundred and one.
Speaker 2: He's probably the only one hundred and one year old
Speaker 2: that left us much much too soon.
Speaker 1: What can I say?
Speaker 2: He was more vibrant in his triple digits than I
Speaker 2: am at the end of my twenties. His contributions, of
Speaker 2: course include all in the family, good times, Maud, basically
Speaker 2: the television that you were raised on, or the very
Speaker 2: least your parents were raised on. But but I think
Speaker 2: about his legacy, I do think he will live on
Speaker 2: through all the people that he championed and supported, all
Speaker 2: the shows he produced, all the careers he made, all
Speaker 2: the young people like me that he believed in before
Speaker 2: just about anyone else did. I still remember that first
Speaker 2: time I sat with him. It was in twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: or twenty eighteen. I think I couldn't have been old
Speaker 2: in twenty three, twenty four I had never met him.
Speaker 2: I went to his office with two microphones because in
Speaker 2: those days we didn't have a studio, and I remember
Speaker 2: I walked in and he was yelling at the TV,
Speaker 2: which undoubtedly featured Trump, who had just done something terrible,
Speaker 2: which narrows it down to Chex's notes every single day
Speaker 2: of his four years. So I can't remember the exact day,
Speaker 2: But what really mattered was his spirit. Norman in that conversation,
Speaker 2: if you heard it, or even in our conversation in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, which was around his ninety eighth birthday.
Speaker 1: He had a.
Speaker 2: Warmth to him, a curiosity to him, a generosity of
Speaker 2: spirit that was unmatched, a joy and a love for
Speaker 2: being alive that made you want to live more. To
Speaker 2: know Norman was to know a man who knew the
Speaker 2: power he had and knew how to use it. And
Speaker 2: I mean that in the best way. He knew what
Speaker 2: a word of encouragement could do for someone, and he
Speaker 2: did it again and again. I saw it with people
Speaker 2: in my life. I saw it in my life. He
Speaker 2: opened doors for people, He stayed in touch because he
Speaker 2: loved people that loved doing what they do. And I
Speaker 2: mean this, I do not think that we would be
Speaker 2: making this show today if not for him his support,
Speaker 2: if not for his love, and that is the thing
Speaker 2: that he will leave behind as well.
Speaker 1: The year ahead.
Speaker 2: I am not going to use this time to scare anyone.
Speaker 2: I think we know that it's going to be hard
Speaker 2: and taxing and emotionally exhausting. I don't know how exactly
Speaker 2: we're going to do it, but I think we have
Speaker 2: something to learn from Norman.
Speaker 1: This is a man who.
Speaker 2: He bought one of the few original copies of the
Speaker 2: Declaration of Independence. He's someone who literally fought in World
Speaker 2: War Two for democracy, spent a lot of his life
Speaker 2: doing political work and humanitarian work around democracy and on
Speaker 2: behalf of this country that he believed in.
Speaker 1: That's what he had.
Speaker 2: More than anything, he had belief. And I don't know
Speaker 2: how we're a manage through twenty twenty four, but I
Speaker 2: do know whatever stamina he had, whatever belief he continued
Speaker 2: to hold to the very end, that is what we
Speaker 2: are going to need. He will be so missed. I
Speaker 2: don't know what we're gonna do without him, I really don't,
Speaker 2: but I'm so grateful that we got to pass through
Speaker 2: at the same time. And with that we will do
Speaker 2: just as he always did and continue onward. His three
Speaker 2: favorite words in the English language he always liked to
Speaker 2: say this. His three favorite words are the same ones.
Speaker 2: I will end today's show on to be continued, stay safe,
Speaker 2: and I'll see.
Speaker 1: You in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: And that's our show. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer is Janick sa Bravo. Our associate producer
Speaker 2: is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by Kitlyn Dryden
Speaker 2: and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck.
Speaker 2: Our illustrations are by Christia Chenoy. Video and graphics by
Speaker 2: Ian Chang, Derek gaberzak, Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca. I
Speaker 2: also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond,
Speaker 2: Julia Barton, John Stars, Kerrie Brody, Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan,
Speaker 2: Kira Posey, Tara Machado, Jason Gambrel, Justin Lang, Malcolm Gladwell,
Speaker 2: Greta con and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you
Speaker 2: for listening to this special New Year's Eve edition of
Speaker 2: Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week. Until then,
Speaker 2: stay safe and so long.