‘The Pitt’ Is Giving a Dose of Humanity

Summary

Podcast Summary

Overview:

Podcast: Cannonball with Wesley Morris
Host: Wesley Morris | The New York Times
Episode: ‘The Pitt’ Is Giving a Dose of Humanity (February 5, 2026)

In this episode, Wesley Morris is joined by his editor and friend, Sasha Weiss, to explore the magnetism of the hit TV medical drama "The Pit," dissecting its unique approach to the medical procedural genre and its resonance with contemporary cultural issues. The episode then shifts to examine cultural obsession and the intense personal attachments we form to works of art, via a deeply personal conversation with writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner on her repeated viewings of the Broadway musical "Operation Mincemeat." The episode wraps up with a reflection on a personal Grammy highlight.

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1. The Allure and Innovation of "The Pit"

(00:20 – 16:36)

Main Discussion Points:

• Redefining the Medical Procedural
  • "The Pit" stands out by following a single ER shift across an entire season ("a single day lasts for, like, 15 episodes"), giving sustained focus to both patients and staff.
• A Sense of Contemporary and Ethical Urgency
  • The show feels fresh and vital, unlike nostalgic '90s predecessors ("The Pit is making an ancient, comforting TV genre feel contemporary and vital.")
  • The cases are unending and messy, accurately reflecting real-life healthcare challenges.
• Representation of Systemic Issues
  • The series serves as a lens on urgent societal problems: overdoses, insurance woes, mass shootings, and mental health crises are introduced seamlessly through the hospital’s doors.
  • "This show is a moral universe where these doctors are dealing with all kinds of really deep problems." — Sasha Weiss [04:17]
• The Waiting Room as Microcosm
  • The waiting room is a living, breathing 'sea of humanity' representing every demographic and problem in the city.
  • "The waiting room on this show, to me, is a little bit like the pool of contestants on The Price is Right." — Wesley Morris [05:14]
• Distinctive Character Work Through Ethics
  • Instead of relying on melodramatic backstories, character is revealed through ethical choices in crisis.
  • "This is the first medical show I have watched… where characters get developed, not so much through writing about the personal lives of these people, but through the demonstration of an ethical practice." — Wesley Morris [09:57]
• Moral Stakes, Game Show Comparison
  • Each ambulance brings a new moral test, likened to a high-stakes game: "More game show references, cause each ambulance pulls up and it’s Let's Make a Deal, right?" — Wesley Morris [10:46]
• Bodily Realism & Tactility
  • Streaming allows the show to depict medical reality unflinchingly—dislocated shoulders, blood, and all ("I like seeing it because I like seeing people minister to bodies." — Sasha Weiss [14:49])
  • A focus on physical equality and shared vulnerability: "When you cut somebody open, it doesn't matter how much money they have or what they look like. A dislocated shoulder is a dislocated shoulder..." — Wesley Morris [15:05]
• Viewer Transformation
  • The show gradually trains viewers not to look away from bodily vulnerability and mortality: "I can feel the show training me to not watch it through my fingers." — Wesley Morris [15:41]

Memorable Moments:

• The "baby in the bathroom" bit (06:31) — showing both the show's absurdity and stoic humor.
• The perspectiveshift to a deaf character (07:40), emphasizing empathy.
• Discussion of the Hippocratic Oath, centering the show's moral backbone (08:35).
• Soap vs. soap opera: "There's a lot of soap and no opera." — Wesley Morris [12:29]

---

2. The Pull of Cultural Obsession

(18:57 – 43:24)

Guest: Taffy Brodesser-Akner, writer & novelist

Main Discussion Points:

• Taffy's Story: Thirteen Visits to "Operation Mincemeat"
  • Taffy candidly describes being emotionally "numb" until drawn in and reinvigorated by the musical:
    • "Even the things that I like only take up part of my attention... Everything I watch feels flat. I could see every move coming. I’m never surprised anymore. And into that, I was invited to this show..." — Taffy Brodesser-Akner [19:41]
  • The beauty is not only in the experience, but in a compulsion to share it with others:
    • "I want you to see this thing that I find perfect... this show had me by the soul." — Taffy Brodesser-Akner [23:30]
  • Investigating what drives repeated consumption—both rational and mysterious.
• Personalized Artistic Attachments
  • Wesley’s childhood obsession revisiting "Misery" (Rob Reiner film):
    • As a teenager at boarding school, he repeatedly watched and wept for Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates):
      • "I watched a movie about a loving woman who was taking care of a person from the goodness of her heart... I was, as far as I can tell, alone, weeping." — Wesley Morris [27:52]
    • Linking his response to feelings of maternal loss and longing.
  • Sasha’s powerful but painful attachment to "Normal People":
    • "The precise emotional register of the show, which takes its characters' intensity of feeling very seriously, is the register that's only available to you at a certain age, I think." — Sasha Weiss [36:23]
    • Rewatching as 'professional masochism' to re-experience potent, youthful emotions.

Notable Quotes:

• "You are the thing, and the thing is you. And it becomes one with your identity for a time." — Sasha Weiss [25:11]
• "I am there to figure this out and to shake myself and remind myself that this exists, that this feeling inside me exists." — Taffy Brodesser-Akner [38:51]
• "We’ve got to seize the perimenopause of our passions wherever and however… and however old we are." — Sasha Weiss [42:33]

Key Timestamps & Segments:

• [19:25] Taffy on her first, unremarkable viewing of the show.
• [23:30] Taffy describes the urge to share her obsession.
• [27:52] Wesley recounts his peculiar reaction to "Misery."
• [33:05] Sasha on her hesitant return to "Normal People."
• [36:23] On aging and the fading of raw emotional intensity.
• [38:51] Acknowledging self-performing and the drive to revive dormant feelings.

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3. The Joy of Being Moved: Grammy Reflections

(44:22 – 46:58)

Main Discussion Points:

• A Moment of Musical Grace: Lola Young’s "Messy" at the Grammys
  • Wesley shares his gratitude after being genuinely surprised and moved by Lola Young’s Grammy performance and win.
    • "She just… she really does something in my heart and it's still happening to my heart right now." — Wesley Morris [46:58]
• The Value of Being Unexpectedly Touched
  • Just as with the earlier themes of art obsession, there's a satisfaction and gratitude in being caught off guard emotionally by cultural events:
    • "I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank you, Grammy people." — Wesley Morris [47:00]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "I think it would be nice to talk about, like, this kind of thickness of representation and humanity." — Sasha Weiss [04:17]
• "I think that, like, part of my going back, I went three times in one weekend... I was really trying to understand why I felt this way and everybody else felt a different way." — Wesley Morris [31:40]
• "If you have that feeling, seize it and investigate it... Because I think it's a really good thing to do." — Sasha Weiss [42:23]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:20–16:36 — Discussion on "The Pit", what makes it unique
• 18:57–43:24 — Taffy Brodesser-Akner on cultural obsession ("Operation Mincemeat"); Wesley and Sasha share their own stories
• 44:22–46:58 — Lola Young Grammy moment

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Tone

Conversational, earnest, searching, affectionate, and tinged with the playful wit and vulnerability typical of Morris and friends.

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Conclusion

This episode traverses both the public and private spheres of cultural life: from how "The Pit" revitalizes a classic genre to how our irrational attachments to art reveal and revive us. With a focus on both the human beings we watch on screen and the human beings we become as audience members, the episode ends on a note of gratitude for the art that reaches in and finds us—sometimes when we don't even know we're waiting.

Transcript

[A]

This podcast is supported by McDonald's hot honey sauce. You'll want to make sure you're on time for the McDonald's breakfast menu now that it has the hot honey sausage egg biscuit. And for later in the day, try the hot honey snack wrap. It may beat what you thought was your fave. Hot Honey Sauce is at McDonald's for a limited time only.

[B]

I'm Wesley Morris, and this is Cannonball Today. Doctor, Doctor, can you feel me burning? Burning? Despite everything going on in the world at this moment, every Thursday for the last few weeks, I've been in what passes for a good mood because we got a new season of the Pit. And there is a particular kind of satisfaction that's hard to describe watching this thing. It involves this strange feeling of. I mean, it's not quite nostalgia, but I'm convinced that, like, lurking right beneath the surface of this show is er. And if I could just peel back the top right, most edge of the screen, just go like bruop, like wallpaper. I'll find all those old NBC characters right underneath. And yet we're not just going back to er. The Pit is making an ancient, comforting TV genre feel contemporary and vital. On those old shows, most patients, you know, they went home by the end of an episode. On this show, the cases never quite close. Here, a single day lasts for, like, 15 episodes, which feels much more true. And so I asked my editor and my friend Sasha Weiss to come back and help me think through what this show's doing with this first four episodes of its second season and why this show is necessary. Also forgot why it's so good. That's first. And then we're gonna talk to our colleague at the Times magazine about becoming obsessed with a particular work of art. This person has gone to see the same oddball Broadway musical not once, not thrice, but 13 times. And the two of us, me and Sasha, want to know what's wrong with her. Actually, since we've also had this experience ourselves, what do we do with these obsessions when something turns us into cultural stalkers? And then the Grammys were last weekend, and I just wanted to talk about something I loved. Doc, here comes a cannonball. Ok, I have a problem. I am going through some real Pit withdrawal because I'm like everybody else. I get an episode a week and then I start, oof. Or, you know, I'm just. I'm feening.

[C]

Well, they're so clever, the way they set up this show.

[B]

I'm feeding for some more of the Pit.

[C]

It's the old way of television.

[B]

21 million people watched every episode of season one. Like, something like 20 million.

[C]

It doesn't happen anymore, culturally, very, very rarely.

[B]

That is streaming crazy.

[C]

So let's just tell people who are living under a rock what it's about.

[B]

Well, 20 million people is not still.

[C]

It's not everybody.

[B]

It's not everybody.

[C]

So the Pit is a medical procedural, takes place over 15 hours on one shift. The attending physician in this Pittsburgh ER is Dr. Robbie Rabinovich, played by Noah Wylie, a kind of like, older instantiation of young, beautiful, innocent Noah Wiley from ER days. People really responded to the show in its first season. They watched it religiously. It spawned huge fandoms, and I think it really, really spoke to a deep need for a kind of, like, civics lesson. This show is a moral universe where these doctors are dealing with all kinds of really deep problems. I mean, anything that's going on in our society passes through the gauntlet of this very busy city hospital. There are fentanyl overdoses. There are people without insurance coverage. There are mass shootings and people with mental illness who are sort of not covered by the system. And all of those problems are coming into this space and having to be dealt with by serious people who have serious ways of dealing with them. So, I don't know, I feel like it would be nice to talk about, like, this kind of thickness of representation and humanity. I mean, how they put it across and how they're doing it. Like, for instance, the waiting room, the show and how it functions.

[B]

Well, I mean, the waiting room is. I don't know. I mean, you watch a lot of these medical shows, and the waiting room is kind of a. It's kind of an afterthought. And to me, I mean, the thing that. The way I. There's a lot of different ways to think about the waiting room. Right. On this show. The waiting room on this show, to me, is a little bit like the pool of contestants on the prices. Right?

[C]

I love that. Tomas Cordera.

[D]

Mr. Tomas Cordera, please come through the window.

[C]

I have your insurance card.

[D]

Tomas Cordera.

[B]

Sasha Weiss, come on down. You're the next contestant on getting this third degree burn taken care of in room 12.

[A]

Have you been here long?

[B]

I've been here about four hours.

[A]

Oh, we were here two nights ago. We waited seven hours.

[B]

It's all bullshit. Can't believe somebody hasn't died out here. Like, you don't know who's gonna get called. Everybody kind of wants to be seen, but the show is gonna just choose somebody to take into the emergency room from the waiting room. But also the people in that emergency room waiting area are like, just. It's a sea of humanity. Right. Every type of person is in there, Every race, every ethnicity among the races, every ailment, every. There's a. Somebody left a baby in the bathroom this season.

[C]

Is anyone missing a baby?

[D]

Did anyone leave their child in the rest.

[B]

Who would do such a thing?

[C]

Who would do such a thing? And yet it's received with the usual sang froid.

[B]

There's a baby. There's a baby.

[C]

There's a baby in the bathroom. There's actually a moment, a waiting room moment that I find really indicative of some of the sensitivity and strength of the show. And it's a waiting room moment. Do you know which moment I'm talking about? I bet.

[B]

You know, I mean, the only. I can't. It's hard to identify one moment, the baby moment. But, like, I guess where the show is slowing down and showing you the deaf woman.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

In, like, episode two, I guess let's.

[C]

Watch it for a second, because I.

[B]

Think it really of season two, it.

[C]

Shows something about what the show is up to.

[D]

You have to see the man over there. Right now, we see people in order of severity, ma'.

[E]

Am.

[C]

Okay, so we're in the waiting room. There's all these people. There's fighting, there's clamor.

[B]

And we're watching this woman watch what is happening. And she's like, well, when am I gonna go? That's the look on her face.

[C]

And suddenly the sound goes out.

[B]

And it's the show switching perspectives to be entirely inside the point of view of this character.

[C]

And just for a moment, you know, enough to make you curious.

[B]

But meaningfully.

[C]

But meaningfully, it's a weirdly moving moment I found to suddenly be in her perspective. And it shows the way that the show is just interested in so many different people and their experiences.

[B]

And I think that's one of the great things about this show. I've never watched a show where characters are developed.

[A]

Through.

[B]

I mean, like, you identified this earlier as the show operating within an absolute moral framework.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Like, we are watching characters who've taken a Hippocratic oath to essentially do right by their patients, whoever it is who.

[C]

Comes in, and they never know who it's going to be. Yes.

[B]

I mean, if anybody needs a little refresher for the Hippocratic oath, I'll just read you a little bit of it. Into whatsoever houses I enter, this is what the doctors pledge when they. When they become doctors into whatsoever houses I enter. I will enter to help the sick. And I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of a man or woman. Bond or free. Bond or free. I mean, this was written before. There've always been slaves, people. Bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear, in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession, in my intercourse with men, there's also that if it be.

[C]

It's getting really moved there.

[B]

Come on. If it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge holding such things to be holy secrets. I mean, so we're operating. That is an ethical pledge within the moral framework of care and interpersonal responsibility. And I. This is the first medical show I have watched, and I've. I mean, I haven't watched them all, but I would say I'm at like a good 72%. I've never watched characters get developed, not so much through writing about the personal lives of these people.

[C]

Right.

[B]

But through.

[C]

Cause we only get glimpses of those things around the edges.

[B]

Right.

[C]

That's not what the material of the show is.

[B]

Right? Nope. We don't get to follow anybody home because again, it's 15 episodes, one hour in the shift of a day. And the way these characters get developed on the pit is kind of through the demonstration of an ethical practice. Yes, Right. Like, how do these people respond to decisions?

[C]

It really is like a kind of ethical contraption. Like, I love the way you're describing it. And there's like a great moment. I don't know why I found it such a great moment this season, but I did, where Dr. Robbie and a couple of the other residents are just standing, you know, right outside the door of the emergency room, greeting a stream of humanity, you know, a stream of ambulances.

[B]

More game show references. Cause each ambulance pulls up and it's let's Make a Deal, right?

[C]

It's a game, but it's a game with the highest moral stakes and people who are really devoted to it. And, you know, each ambulance comes in, you see, you're in the doctor's perspective, right? Like, the door opens and you don't know what's going to come at you. You don't know how severe, you don't know how sick they are. You don't know who they are, where they're coming from. And you have to assess the situation and make a decision. And it's kind of a brilliant. It's a moral funnel, and it funnels you into the System. And then you have to see how all of these different people handle this. Pamela Perry, 48, abdominal pain with vomiting.

[A]

After eating chilaquiles with fried eggs.

[F]

BP 108 over 64.

[C]

Pulse 98.

[B]

Good.

[A]

Savage.

[B]

Okay, let's see how she feels with some Zofran and a leader wide open.

[F]

Got it.

[C]

Who do we have here?

[A]

Jean Samba, 54, half an hour of left sided chest pain.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I also love that moment too, because every time that door opens, the doctors are immediately reminded that this is not just some body. This is a person with an age, a name and circumstances.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

And they have to take the humanity into consideration as well as the nature of injury.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

But I don't know. There's just. It really does. The show has the power. Unlike all these other shows where, like, so many of them are about, like, doctors as angels, doctors as broken people finding redemption through the medical system, doctors trying to solve a very thorny medical case, doctors in love, doctors breaking up. Like, the thing that I love about this show is, like, it's not a soap opera. It's just. There's a lot of soap and no opera.

[C]

Yeah, right.

[B]

You know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of soap on this show.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, the other thing this show is really interested in, apart from character and seeing people and seeing their complex situations, is seeing bodies and showing bodies in a way that like, actually TV doesn't and, well, can't.

[B]

Cause there's just some stuff you can't show on cbs.

[C]

I am happy that streaming is one good thing about streaming. It allows for some bodily stuff. And the bodily.

[B]

Okay, scatologica, let's go. Bring it.

[C]

Well, it's not about sc. I like it that a show about doctors shows doctors having to handle human beings and the structures and blood and guts of their body. And where we work in a medical system. I mean, I've heard this from patients, right? Like where their doctors don't touch them. In this show, there's a lot of touch and also showing some of the tactility of bodies. Like there's the scene where this construction worker has fallen and dislocated his shoulder and his bone is sticking out. And they show us how it works to reinsert a bone.

[B]

Do you remember that they tie a bandage or like they've got some gauze or, you know, some kind of very tough tensile material around this guy and they're just. They're trying to pull the shoulder back into the socket and it won't go.

[F]

Okay.

[C]

On My count. One, two, three.

[D]

Come on, motherfucker. The humeral head is not reducing.

[C]

Should be done in the OR.

[D]

I am the OR.

[B]

Okay, we're gonna get this back here. And Dr. Robbie's like, I think you gotta mel. Stick four fingers into that humeral head.

[C]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. Get in there really, really deep. Why don't you try maybe turning something a little bit, and then we'll see what happens.

[C]

And 1, 2, 3.

[B]

Very cool.

[F]

Sterile saline fixer.

[B]

Sure enough, like, his trick works, and it just goes right back in.

[C]

And the camera goes in cliffs.

[B]

Like, you see the bone, you watch the bone go. I mean, it's like it gets sucked into a black hole or something.

[C]

Yeah, but, you know, but it's like, I like seeing it because I like seeing people minister to bodies.

[B]

It's a huge, important part of the show. I think I agree with you.

[C]

Well, what do you think is important about it?

[B]

That all the bodies are the same.

[F]

Mm.

[B]

I know this is really, like, obvious and perhaps even, like, overly sentimental, but it really is. When you cut somebody open, it doesn't matter how much money they have or what they look like. A dislocated shoulder is a dislocated shoulder, and everybody deserves to have it relocated. And so there is.

[C]

And we're dealing with humans here, right? It's right. We're dealing with humans and their peculiar, particular way of being and being constructed. And the people that are doing that are really interested in that, and it makes us really interested in that.

[B]

I can feel the show training me to not watch it through my fingers. Cause I'm watching increasingly less of it like this and more of it like.

[C]

Okay, you're like, confront the catastrophe of being mortal. Confront the catastrophe of being vulnerable. Confront the catastrophe of being a human being.

[B]

Yeah. I think it is a real social service in that sense. Like psychosocial service in that sense. Okay, I. We should stop. There are. We're only four episodes in. There must be, like, what, 35 more episodes in this season? We will. I'd like.

[C]

There's so many little seeds that have been planted.

[B]

Right.

[C]

What's gonna happen with Dr. McKay's date? What's gonna happen with.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[C]

The sexy soccer player with Louie and the belly? What's gonna happen with that baby?

[F]

The baby?

[B]

Oh, yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot. It also, we have.

[C]

Is Dr. Robbie gonna go on his sabbatical?

[B]

Is he gonna. Is he gonna do it with Dr. Alashimi?

[C]

Because, by the way, we have not.

[B]

Talked about what a Like what a slut Dr. Robbie might be.

[C]

Completely.

[B]

I mean, and everybody seems to know it.

[C]

I know there's a lot to come back to.

[B]

There is a skeleton in that man's closet. And I feel like season three is gonna, it's gonna come walking into the er. But in the meantime, I think we should. And when we come back, we're gonna talk to our friend and colleague Taffy Brodesser Achner, who is a very prolific writer of profiles. She has written two novels, one of which, Fleischman's in trouble, was turned into a very successful television show. She was feeling really kind of culturally dead inside and wasn't responding to anything. And then one day she felt found a work of art that awakened her dead parts and could not get enough of it. And we want to talk about, like, what happened to her. So we're just going to take a break and when we come back, Taffy Rodeser.

[E]

I'm Judson Jones. I'm a reporter and meteorologist at the New York Times. For about two decades I've been covering extreme weather which is getting worse because of climate change. And it's becoming more important to get timely and accurate weather information. That's why we send these customized newsletters letting you know up to three days in advance about extreme weather that could impact you or a place you care about. At the Times, you can be confident that everything we publish is based off the most accurate, scientific embedded information available to us because we want you to be able to make real time decisions about how to go about your life. This is the kind of work that makes subscribing to the New York Times so valuable and it's how you can support fact based independent journalism. So if you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe.

[B]

Okay. We are here with Taffy Brodessa Rachner. And Taffy, you wrote this story about having this experience, going to see Operation Mincemeat. Many, many, many, many, many times.

[C]

13 times.

[F]

You're short a few minis.

[B]

Well, let's just assume that many contains at least two or three.

[F]

Sure.

[B]

Can you. Let's just go back to the first time you did it.

[F]

Okay.

[B]

You didn't, you know, you just went to see a show.

[F]

I went to see a show in press previews.

[B]

Right.

[F]

With Michael Paulson, our theater reporter who invites me to stuff. And if the date works out, I say yes. Because who would say no to Michael Paulson?

[B]

I would not.

[F]

I would never say he's best theater date in town. And I Go to this show with him. And I am zoned out the way I always am. Lately I feel like I have been so bored. Lately I feel like even the things that I like only take up part of my attention. That, you know, I could be watching this and I could be thinking about that, and everything I watch feels flat. I could see every move coming. I'm never surprised anymore. And into that. I was invited to this show, and I'm sitting there and I'm watching it.

[D]

Seek a dreamt of being a pilot but you're never gonna fly Stick a dreamt of sailing the seven seas but.

[F]

Never got to try and something in me says something is happening on stage and you should pay attention to it.

[D]

We were made to give the orders While lesser men take heed for some were born to follow but we were born to lead Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to MI5.

[B]

I think we should just say for one sec that Operation Mincemeat is a musical that's created essentially by. By some friends from England. And the show is essentially about a plot to trick the Nazis into going to Sardinia.

[F]

Right. It's a ruse.

[B]

Yes.

[F]

They dress up the corpse of a homeless man as a British spy with plans attached to his wrist. They pretend he was drowned off the coast of Spain.

[B]

Right?

[F]

And then there is an intermission. And Michael Paulson, who does invite me a lot, turns to me with the dread he has developed of me, about to explain to him why the thing we're watching is not that good. And I say, I love it. And the delight on his face. The shock and the delight on his face. The second act is somehow even better than the first act.

[D]

Soon the journey will be done.

[F]

And I. I don't even want us to take the bus home like we do. I want to walk because. Because the world is great and what a town. And can you believe we get to do this? And I'm Mary Tyler Moore in the middle of the street and I can't believe what I've just seen. And I go home and I say, I just saw the best musical. And normally that's where it would end. But what happened next was that a friend was coming into town, and she said, what should I see? And I said, you should see. Have you heard of Operation Mincemeat? She had. And she said, I'll see that. And I said, I'll go with you. Me, who never has time. Me, who is negligent of everything and who. I don't exercise enough. And I have three sisters and two children and a mother and nobody ever sees me.

[C]

And you thought consciously, like, I want to see that again and have that experience again of perfect alignment.

[F]

Yeah, I want to go in and I want. I want to show it to someone. That's what I wanted. I wanted to show it to somebody.

[B]

But what did you want to show, like, the second time? Like, what did you want this person that you took to see or to experience asking questions.

[F]

Ask questions of the heart. You're asking questions of the heart. And the answer is, I want you to see this thing that I find perfect. I want to show you that I have found something perfect. And beyond that, I mean, I have editors who ask me to write paragraphs explaining it, and I could make a list of the things that I liked and love and the reason I think it works. And those are matters of my brain. But this show had me by the soul. And I could not remember a time.

[B]

By the first experience. But you didn't know that.

[F]

I didn't know it yet. I didn't know. I knew that it was crazy that I was going to a Broadway show for a second time. Like, I grew up in Brooklyn. You go to Broadway shows on your birthday, if you're lucky, you stand in the TKTS line and you see what nobody else wanted to see. And you do it once or twice a year, if you are very, very lucky. Here I was going a second time, and then. I cannot tell you. I have a list of dates. I have ticket receipts, and I still can't even tell you because telling you is words, and this is my soul.

[B]

Okay, the thing is, don't worry.

[F]

I am embarrassed. I just want everyone to know. I don't want to be embarrassed either.

[B]

I mean, the reason we brought you here for a reason, Taff, right?

[C]

Like, you inspired us. Or maybe more to the point, you reminded us of a feeling that is a very specific feeling, which is the feeling of. You described it so beautifully. Being enclosed in a world of art that then becomes your inner world.

[F]

Right? That you are the thing.

[C]

You are the thing, and the thing is you. And it becomes one with your identity for a time. And trying to understand why that happens, why that happens.

[F]

But also then maybe stop trying to understand why it happens and being so grateful that it did happen. Hmm.

[C]

That's really touching, Taffy.

[B]

But okay, I want to come back to this.

[F]

This is cool, right? To just cry here. Okay, good, good. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you.

[B]

Thank you. But I also think that, like, to a person, I think that these kinds.

[C]

Of.

[B]

Obsessions can be Both explained and are also inexplicable. Right, right. And so, you know, part of the reason that you're here today is to, like, work this out among the people.

[C]

Returning to the therapeutic part of this conversation.

[F]

I'm here for it.

[C]

Where we all learn something about ourselves.

[B]

We hope, like, everybody's got one of these things, right? Where you have a reaction, you don't really know why. And if you're the kind of person who's curious about that, you maybe want to get to the bottom of it. When I was 14, 13, I was 14, I went and saw Misery. Rob Reiner's Misery. James Caan is a famous novelist. He's written a bunch of very popular books featuring this one character. He has this car accident, returning from having written the last novel about this character, and he has killed her off.

[A]

You're gonna be just fine.

[B]

He gets pulled out of the snow by a woman who lives in a house nearby.

[F]

I'm here. Number one fan.

[B]

She nurses him back to health. Here.

[C]

What are they?

[B]

They're called Navril.

[A]

They're for your pain.

[B]

She finds out he's gonna kill off her favorite character.

[F]

She made me so happy.

[B]

She made me forget all my problems. And she is like, I would rather you didn't do that.

[D]

You did it.

[C]

You murdered my misery, Annie.

[B]

And instead of letting you go off and write some other things because you know you want to be free of this character, I'm going to imprison you in my house until you write some more of my favorite character in a new book. How about that? And until you do that, I'm going to torture you.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm gonna keep you here until I get my book. How's that sound? Yeah, that's not the movie I watched as a 14 year old.

[F]

Tell me.

[B]

I watched a movie about a loving woman who was taking care of a person from the goodness of her heart and every once in a while would just, you know, be in a bad mood.

[F]

How about she chopped off his feet?

[B]

She doesn't chop his foot off. She just merely breaks the shit out of his. Shit out of his ankle.

[F]

Oh, sorry. I'm so sorry. Sorry. It's called Were There Two Miseries?

[B]

No, there's only one Misery. There's lots of miseries, Taffy, but there's only one. Rob Reiner's Misery, starring Kathy Bates and James Gunn. She hobbles him. She puts a plank of wood between his two ankles, and she takes a sledgehammer and whacks his foot. And the movie shows you his foot go from 12 o' clock to about four.

[C]

And yet you find her loving Kathy Bates apology.

[B]

I did not know. So I think what we're talking about here.

[F]

Yeah.

[B]

Is the irrational.

[F]

Yeah.

[B]

Irrational responses to works of art.

[C]

Can I ask a question?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Did you, the first time you saw it, understand that you were having a different experience than the people around you? Sure. And is that why you got interested in revisiting it?

[B]

Well, I think the thing that really messed me up was the ending of the movie. The death and misery. She should just die. Maybe the first time. There's a gun, there's an eye gouging. At some point, he picks up a statue that she keeps in the house of a pig and just bashes her head in over and over. It's just like. It's just too much.

[F]

It's too much. It's gruesome.

[B]

Now, while this is happening, I'm weeping.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And everybody else in the audience is clapping and cheering.

[F]

Right.

[B]

I'm, as far as I can tell, alone, weeping. And I am sobbing. I can remember somebody looking over at me and being like, oh, my God, what is going on with this kid? So I went back the next day to see if it happened again. Sure enough, it's time to kill Kathy Bates. And I'm weeping.

[C]

So what do you understand about your response now? I mean, what did you understand then and what do you understand now? Cause I still don't totally understand it.

[B]

Like, you mean on my behalf, you don't understand it?

[C]

Yeah. Like, what were you feeling about this woman and seeing in her and noticing in her.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I was going to a boarding school and it's a boarding school. You don't get to see your parents. I was really like. I had a real deep. Well, I think of missing my mother.

[F]

Yeah.

[B]

And any substitutes for that, like. And I think that was the trauma of going to that school. I loved my mother a lot. And I was never mad at her for putting me in the school. We had to do it. It was the right thing to do. But, you know, the hole that lives in me that nobody can really control is filled by these depictions of moms in certain kinds of women in movies. And Annie Wilkes, Kathy Bates performance sort of filled that hole.

[F]

Cause she's not a mother in the movie.

[A]

No.

[B]

But she's not interested in maternal. She's taking care of James Caan. She mostly, for a while, most of her screen time is taking care of him. Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I was more responding to the bright side. Cause her bright sides are so Bright. Her ups are really up, and her downs can be fatal.

[F]

Yeah, it can be homicidal.

[B]

So I think that, like, part of my going back, I went three times in one weekend, and then one more time during the run of the movie. And then when it comes out on home video, I broke that tape. Cause I watched Misery so much. I think I was really trying to understand why I felt this way and everybody else felt a different way. But then, can I just say, as a coda to this story. And the Oscar goes to Kathy Bates. In Mezuria, Kathy Bates won an Oscar.

[A]

I'd like to thank William Goldman for bringing the wonderful crazy Annie Wilkes to the screen and Stephen King for thinking of her in the first place.

[B]

And I actually think that there are more people out there.

[C]

Who read her the way you do, who kind of read her.

[B]

I don't know if they weep the way I wept, but there's an email.

[F]

Address associated with this podcast that we can ask people.

[C]

I do think we should ask people about their experience.

[F]

No, we could do that. But we also need to know if anybody is watching Misery and weeping for Kathy Bates.

[E]

Do you?

[C]

Yes, I have one. Mine is different from both of yours in that I did not repetitively consume this thing because I was scared to go back, because the way that it held me was a little bit disturbing and unhinging. Okay. And it's a tame object of love and shared with other people. It is the show Normal People, okay. Based on the Sally Rooney novel.

[A]

We used to hook up secretly.

[C]

Secretly. That's cool. That's actually really hot.

[B]

I don't tell anybody in school about this.

[C]

Like I talk to anyone at school. It's the story of these two young Irish people. They live in Sligo, kind of a small town. Marianne, a tempestuous, kind of spiky, very, very feeling young woman. Well, I object to every thought or action or feeling of mine being policed. Like we're in some authoritarian fantasy.

[B]

Well, it's not that, though, is it? It's just school.

[C]

And Connell, her classmate, who is very sensitive, very shy, and cares a lot about being liked.

[B]

An orally clique with a lot of people. I struggle with that, actually.

[C]

And they embark on a relationship which at first is secret because he's embarrassed of her. And they have this, like, passionate, magnetized, sexual draw to each other. Probably hate me, but you're the only.

[F]

Person who actually talks to me.

[B]

Never said that I hated you.

[C]

Well, I like you. And then it traces their relationship over the next four or five years. And sometimes they're able to be together, and often they part and misunderstand each other. And I found the experience of watching this relationship unfold just exquisitely painful. I kind of thought I was them. Do you guys ever have that experience where, like, I would find myself, like, holding steaming cups of tea and looking mournfully out of windows? And, like, I think, like, the surface reading is pretty obvious. Like, they're beautiful young people, like, having this incredible mystical sex. And, you know, they're so gorgeous, and they have a kind of, like, ineffable passion. And, like, that's really great to think about when you're a long married person with a couple kids, you know? Yes. But I know that there's something else. And I think, for me, I should say I didn't want to go back there because I found it actually very painful to engage with it. Like, I felt.

[B]

But what was that about?

[C]

I felt pain.

[F]

I understand it.

[C]

You understand it?

[F]

Yeah, I do.

[C]

And I think what it's about. So I return to it. I'm pleased and also sad to report that the same thing happened again. I've been up since for, like, 2am watching it again.

[B]

You just did this.

[C]

I did it again. I did it to investigate the feeling of.

[F]

It's a professional.

[C]

I did it to investigate the feeling.

[B]

Professional masochism.

[C]

Well, but I think what it is is that the precise emotional register of the show, which takes its character's intensity of feeling very seriously, is the register that's only available to you at a certain age, I think. And, like, it's not available to me anymore. That register. That exact register.

[B]

So it's kind of like.

[F]

It's like a museum of your youth.

[C]

It's a museum of my youth. And it's like revisiting an old emotional zone. And I think, like, did you like.

[B]

Yourself in that zone?

[C]

Yes, But I think once you learn how to deal with the vicissitudes of life and once you know the structures of your emotional life, your edges become a little more blunted. And not to say that I have no peaks of feeling, but they're much more contained because I recognize how things go. So when you're young and you don't recognize how things go, you can swell. And when you're older, you can't.

[B]

So can I read something from Taffy's what Taffy Wrote?

[C]

Yeah, sure.

[B]

There is still a vestige of my brain that is fighting to save me, to defeat the doldrums of passive consumption by dragging me to fight for active passion. And I feel like there's something going on with that for you, Sasha, with normal people or whatever normal people has, like, can activate in you.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

And, I mean, obviously you've had this experience with Operation Mincemeat, but I'm wondering. I mean, like, you have not gone back to watch normal people as many times as Taffy has gone to see Operation Mincemeat. But I do kind of wonder if there's an aspect of your having this experience, and I wonder how you will feel about the question I'm going to ask Taffy, but, like, how much of what we're talking about you doing here is a kind of performance that you need to do for yourself. Right, Right.

[F]

The other people I've spoken to who have been multiple, multiple, multiple times, describe the language they use is being there for them. I don't feel that way. I feel that I am there for me.

[B]

Yeah. That's what I'm. That's what I'm asking.

[F]

I feel that I am there to figure this out and to shake myself and remind myself that this exists, that this feeling inside me exists. And, you know, there's a phrase I use in there, the perimenopause of my passions. I think it is the amount of people who are like, I'm in perimenopause, too. I'm like, no, no, no. I'm using it as a metaphor. Like, why can't we use that as a metaphor? This idea of this thing that you're pushing away, this thing that's going away from you, this sort of youthful passion, the same thing Sasha describes that you thought you might not ever experience again because you thought, there I am. I am so controlled now. I can appreciate things. I can like them. I can even be moved by them. I can never be consumed anymore. And here I was consumed. And it's not an accident that it happened over the course of turning 50. Mm.

[B]

Yeah. This is interesting. Cause, you know, don't kill me, but, like, I mean, I don't know how old Annie Wilkes is supposed to be.

[F]

How dare you? She's probably supposed to be 36. That's what I find out now is that, like, everybody.

[C]

Everybody in the. In the 90s was 36 when we thought they were 65.

[F]

What she is like this a thing that happens to a woman at 50. I don't know. I don't speak for all women.

[B]

That wasn't my point. My point was that James Caan is taking away her Operation Mincemeat. Right. He's decided he's not writing this show. Anymore. He's done.

[E]

He's done.

[F]

And not performing anymore.

[C]

You are so right to be sympathetic to her.

[F]

You were so right.

[B]

I have no sympathy for the James Caan character here.

[F]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Even though I'm supposed to. But I feel like what is happening here is this woman's entire world is being taken away from her.

[F]

But now I have questions, and it is. Did you put those two things together when you read my story and that's why you were thinking of Misery? Would you have thought.

[B]

I didn't think about that until I was.

[C]

I just thought about it just now.

[F]

I feel like I want to lie down in the fetal position. You're right.

[B]

I mean, what if I.

[F]

What if I chop off their feet tonight?

[C]

Then they can't.

[B]

Well, then they can't leap in like that. I.

[C]

Can I take this in, like, in, like, a. Can I put a different spin on the ball, please? Maybe a typically earnest one, Please. But, like, I have to say that for me, like, what your piece did was make me go back to this site of unsettledness. Right. Like, it asked me to confront it again. You were not afraid to confront it again. And you were 14, so it's a little different.

[F]

But it's like I was relieved to feel something again. And you are afraid to go back.

[C]

But then I went. And I think there's something, like, really good in the cultivation of this. I mean, they're not a dime a dozen. These obsessions fall upon you. You can't predict them. But if you have that feeling, sees it and investigate it and, like, figure out what's going on and have contact with it. Because I think it's, like, It's a really good thing to do.

[F]

Yeah.

[C]

Which is yet another reason to sympathize with Kathy Bates.

[B]

Yeah. Cause she knows, and she knows that what happens without this character in her life is death.

[F]

Yeah.

[C]

So we've gotta seize the perimenopause of our passions wherever and however. And however old we are.

[F]

Yes. Yes.

[C]

But I think it. I think it does. Like, again, not to be.

[B]

I'm not laughing at the perimenopause. There's a concision here that I just am seriously west of.

[C]

But I think it's like, you can go back. Like, you can. You can. You can. By doing this exercise. Not an exercise, by. By submitting to this. To these passions, you actually can go back. You can go home again, and you.

[F]

Could stop being the cool observer of the world and be part of it.

[B]

Well, I think that you have discovered something about Yourself. And the discovery, I think kind of is the answer.

[F]

Yeah.

[C]

And it's kind of an invitation or it was for me to like, make the same discovery. So. Thank you.

[F]

Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad you did that.

[B]

The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen.

[C]

The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections.

[B]

I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling.

[F]

I go to games always doing the.

[B]

Mini, doing the wordle doing. I loved how much content it exposed.

[C]

Me to things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for.

[B]

This app is essential.

[F]

The New York Times app.

[A]

All of the times, all in one place.

[F]

Download it [e-mail] app.

[B]

We're back. And before we go, I just wanted to say thank you to the Grammy people. I don't often get to say this to the Grammy people because often it's a different blank. You. But something wonderful happened. A lot of wonderful things happened during that broadcast. But personally, I went in only interested in one artist, and that was Lola Young. She made one of my very, very, very favorite songs from last year. It's called messy.

[D]

Cause I'm too messy and then I'm too fucked up clean. You told me get a job and you ask where the hell I've been.

[B]

It's like one of those slow burning rock numbers. But I love the confidence of that song. It just sounds so good when she repeats that part of the song where she's like, you hate the fucking law.

[C]

Anyway.

[B]

I'm like, what is she gonna do with the Grammys? And I'm like, is she gonna come out and, like, wear baggy pants and, like, do the things she does in the video where she's just standing there being pissed off? No, she sits at a piano pissed off and does the song there. And she's taken this like, uptempo song back into Adele territory.

[D]

You know, I'm impatient so why would you leave me waiting outside? Outside the station when it was like minus four degrees a night? You get what you say. I just really don't want to hear it right now. Can you shut up alike once in your life.

[B]

There's something about her gaze as she turns this like, slow burning banger into basically a torch song. And she belts it.

[D]

Fold my clothes cause I'm too messy and then I'm just too damn clean. You told me get a job. Then you ask where the hell I've.

[B]

Been and I'm like, okay, we're Done. That's enough.

[F]

But then.

[B]

This amazing thing happens during the show.

[A]

I very much relate to this song. Messy Lonely Young.

[B]

Lola Young, best pop solo performance comes up and she wins.

[D]

I don't know what I'm gonna say because I don't have any speech prepared. Obviously, I don't.

[C]

It's messy. Do you know what I mean?

[D]

I don't know what to say. Thank you so much.

[B]

She beats Chapel Road. Sabrina Carpenter, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber. It is a. It is a wonderful thing. This is a person who was in ill health last year and is now. Now she's got a Grammy. I just. I love this woman so much. She just. She really does something in my heart and it's still happening to my heart right now. Cause I. I still can't believe she won. Bad Bunny Kendrick. Yeah, that was bound to happen. But Lola Young winning anything. I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank you, Grammy people. That's our show. Listen, if you cannot get enough of the Pit and you need to read more about it, I would offer you Sam Anderson's New York Times Magazine profile of the makers of the show and a really fascinating piece by Nicholas Coolish about the lawsuit between Michael Crichton's widow over how. How much the Pit looks like.

[C]

Er.

[B]

They'll be in the show. Notes. This episode of Cannonball was produced by Elissa Dudley, Janelle Anderson, John White and Austin Mitchell. It was edited by Lisa Tobin. Daniel Ramirez engineered this episode. It was recorded by Maddie Masiello, Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pittman. Dan Powell and Diane Wong did the original music. Our theme music, as always, is by Jeff, Justin Ellington, Bobby Doherty. He took the photo for our show.

[A]

Art.

[B]

Our video team is Brooke Minters and Felice Leon. This episode was filmed by Alfredo Chiarapa, Andrew Smith and Thomas Trudeau. It was edited by Jeremy Rocklin and Jamie HEFFITZ. We're on YouTube. I know. Tell me something I don't already know, but I just. I gotta say it anyway. Next week. Hey, hey, hey. I can't quite get the intonation right, but y' all know who. There's nobody else who's like, hey, hey. Also, the Seahawks and the Patriots are gonna be there, too. Thanks for listening, everybody.