Chuck D on How Hip-Hop Changed the World

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Chuck D on How Hip-Hop Changed the World

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Host: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
Date: February 10, 2023
Guests: Chuck D (Public Enemy), Kelefa Sanneh (music journalist), David Remnick (host), with clips from Flavor Flav

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Kelefa Sanneh sits down with Chuck D, iconic frontman of Public Enemy and co-creator of the new PBS documentary "Fight the Power: How Hip-Hop Changed the World." The conversation examines hip-hop’s origins, its radical voice in both music and politics, and its global impact. Chuck D reflects on his journey in hip-hop, the genre’s power for change, and the importance of creativity and community.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. First Encounters with Hip-Hop (01:08–04:37)

• Hip-Hop’s Origins and Influences:
  Chuck D recalls how innovation—like DJ Kool Herc’s use of two turntables—inspired him. He reflects on early radio DJs, such as Gary Byrd, who influenced both the music and the culture.

  • "The ingenuity of DJ Kool Herc was the spark that ignited this beautiful art form called hip hop." – Chuck D (01:40)

• Connection to Black Radio and Storytelling:
  He draws parallels between the presentation styles of early hip-hop MCs and the black radio voices of his youth.

  “This person was on the microphones, is doing a little bit like the presenters do on AM radios, playing black music.”
  —Chuck D (02:31)

2. The Documentary’s Focus: World Impact (04:37–05:17)

• Global Reach:
  Chuck D emphasizes “world” as the key word:

  “I’ve been 116 countries over 38 years… But people have made their way to say, Chuck, this is what this art form is meant to me in all continents except for Antarctica and parts of the Arctic.”
  —Chuck D (04:48)

3. Early Choices in Hip-Hop: Escapism vs. Realism (05:17–06:06)

• Subject Matter in Early Hip-Hop:
  The choice to prioritize party themes over harsh realities was strategic for survival and spirit.

  “What’s our escape route? We want to have escapism. We want to take this spaceship up out of here. Beam me up, Scotty Fast.”
  —Chuck D (05:47)

4. Chuck D’s Artistic Path and Philosophy (06:06–07:25)

• From Art to Music:
  Chuck D describes how his art background and education led him to see hip-hop as an artistic and communal force.

  “I wanted to curate, present, navigate, teach, and lead the hip hop art as making it something that people will revere, just like Grant Wood…”
  —Chuck D (06:06)

• Hip-hop motivated his college completion and steered his creative career:

  “So hip hop as an idea got me through college.”
  —Chuck D (07:25)

5. Public Enemy’s Radicalism (07:53–09:15)

• State of Hip-Hop and Society in the ’80s:
  Chuck D contextualizes the political landscape that shaped Public Enemy’s voice—Reagan, Bush, apartheid, and global political turmoil.

  “How could you talk about being in the middle of a decade where communities are destroyed by R and B? It’s Reagan and Bush, cointelpro, crack and guns…”
  —Chuck D (08:14)

6. The Power and Clarity of Rap (09:15–10:05)

• On Lyrics and Message:
  Rap’s vocal clarity stands apart from much of popular music, where lyrics often fade into the background:

  “Hip hop and rap happens to damn near speak their words.”
  —Chuck D (09:41)

7. Naming and Identity in Hip-Hop (10:05–11:00)

• Reclaiming Names:
  MCs construct new identities as a form of resistance.

  “It’s the first rejection of the slave name. You know, it’s like, you know, I can’t call myself Malcolm X, but you know what, I’m Chuck D, that type of thing.”
  —Chuck D (10:15)

8. Commercialization and Fragmentation Post-90s (11:00–14:00)

• Industry Shifts:
  Chuck D critiques how record companies systemically reduced hip-hop to solo acts and “commodified” it, stripping collective and cultural context.

  “Around the turn of the 90s, the record companies and corporations felt they could reduce the culture’s elements down to one, which is the emceeing on a record. So you remove the other elements…”
  —Chuck D (12:44)

• Performance and Authenticity:
  He emphasizes live performance as the true test of an artist and an enduring cultural connection.

  “Performance is always the extension of art anyway. You ain’t just seeing me stand on a mic and fucking spitting bars…”
  —Chuck D (14:00)

9. Hip-Hop’s Global and Political Influence (15:13–17:05)

• Influence Abroad:
  Hip-hop has driven solidarity and protest in unexpected places. Chuck D recounts a moment when a Public Enemy concert contributed to a ceasefire in Yugoslavia.

  “They stopped the war for one day in a Yugoslavian conflict...Next day, I tell Public Enemy and Ice Tea, all right, it’s time for y’ all to raise up out of here. Cause we’re going to war tomorrow.”
  —Chuck D (16:23)

• Beyond Borders:
  “You cannot separate the black diaspora from black creativity in the future.”
  —Chuck D (16:00)

10. Evolution and the Future of Hip-Hop (17:05–19:15)

• From Revolution to Evolution:
  Hip-hop’s evolution mirrors the evolution of Black music forms, and its longevity is notable but not guaranteed.

  “Curtis Blow is revolutionary. Jay Z is evolution.”
  —Chuck D (17:26)
  “50 years is not long in real life. 50 years long in cultural life.”
  —Chuck D (18:08)

• Looking Ahead:
  The preservation of hip-hop is linked to generational teaching, care for the planet, and broader social values.

  “I’d like to take 10 more years of people understanding that they got to take care of the next generations, teach them, take care of the planet. And I think hip hop will always…ride regardless.”
  —Chuck D (18:38)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The most important word in that is world.”
  —Chuck D on the global impact of hip-hop (04:48)

• “Spectacle gets you interested and get you in the building. It don’t keep you there. Spectacular keeps you there.”
  —Chuck D on culture vs. commercialism (11:41)

• “One MC spitting bars over beats, man, it’s like that’s when it comes down to a point where anybody could do it…they gotta go through a rites of passage just cause they’re a star without proving it.”
  —Chuck D on the difference between studio and performance (14:00)

• “You cannot separate the black diaspora from black creativity in the future.”
  —Chuck D (16:00)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:08 – The power and symbolism of the “Fight the Power” video and Public Enemy’s role
• 04:48 – Hip-hop’s global reach and the focus of the new documentary
• 06:06 – Chuck D’s art background and approach to leading and teaching hip-hop
• 07:59 – The radical context of Public Enemy in hip-hop’s history
• 09:41 – The distinct vocal clarity and messaging of rap
• 10:15 – The socio-political significance of MCs’ chosen names
• 12:44 – Decline of the group model in hip-hop and industry-driven changes
• 14:00 – The ritual and authenticity of live performance
• 16:23 – Hip-hop’s role in global politics, including a Yugoslavian ceasefire
• 17:26 – Revolution vs. evolution in hip-hop’s timeline
• 18:38 – Hopes for hip-hop’s future, emphasizing global and generational continuity

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Tone & Style

The conversation is thoughtful, impassioned, and reflective—a blend of nostalgia, critique, and hope. Chuck D’s language is direct, evocative, and at times poetic, echoing his lyrical style.

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For listeners and readers alike, this episode serves as both a personal journey through hip-hop history and a wider meditation on music's power to reflect and transform culture worldwide.

Transcript

[Chuck D]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, staff writer. Kelefasaneh covers a lot of subjects for us. He writes about politics and sports and music, a lot of music. Recently he met up with a legendary figure in hip hop, the frontman and emcee of Public Enemy, Chuck D. So.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

I met Chuck D for the first time at this bar called the Ivy Lounge in Manhattan. It was empty. It was during the day. They had cleared it out for us. And, you know, I think I was expecting a slightly more stern person than the guy who walked in. Hi, how you doing?

[Chuck D]

I'm K. Hey, K. How you doing? Good to meet you again. I've seen you.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

So you've seen me. Yeah, maybe. I'm so excited to sit down with you. Like a lot of people, I saw the Fight the power video from 1989, directed by Spike Lee, you know, Chuck D and Flavor Flav and the other members of Public Enemy leading a March through Brooklyn.

[Flavor Flav]

89 the number, another summer.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

So Chuck D was 26 when the first Public Enemy album comes out. And almost from the beginning, he seemed like an elder statesman, and he seemed like a big brother.

[Flavor Flav]

Giving what you're getting, knowing what I know in While the black band's sweating in the rhythm I'm rolling.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

And he has this new documentary called Fight the How Hip Hop Changed the World. You know, it's all about the connections between hip hop and the world around it, the culture around it, the politics around it.

[Chuck D]

The ingenuity of DJ Kool Herc was the spark that ignited this beautiful art form called hip hop.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

When I listen to Public Enemy now, I hear it as protest music in a double sense. I hear it as protest music against, you know, the state of the world, but also that there's an internal protest, a sense that Public Enemy is protesting what's going on with hip hop. But one thing that I noticed when I watched the documentary and even more when I talked to him, he seemed to be more focused on potential. What he mainly sees is the hope of all the things that hip hop might yet still become. Do you remember when you first got a sense in New York City that something's happening, something new is happening? These kids are doing some sort of new music. This thing called hip hop is bubbling.

[Chuck D]

Yeah, of course, the technical aspect, I thought, like, why do they need two turntables in case one breaks down? But when I heard it, it's like, okay, you Got mixers. What the hell's a mixer? I know what a cake mixer is, you know what I'm saying? Right? So like anybody else was naive and this person was on the microphones, is doing a little bit like the presenters do on AM radios, playing black music. WBLS on the FM dial. Before that, WWRL played all the black music in the city and the surrounding metropolitan area. And it was a small 1600 bandwidth station at the end of the dial. And they'd be like, Gary Bird, 1600 on the WWRL dial. Come on, this is LTD. And he'd be like, wow, man. You know what I'm saying?

[Flavor Flav]

From wwrl New York, Progress.

[Chuck D]

AM in the Apple.

[Flavor Flav]

And I'm Gary Bird from the GB Experience.

[Chuck D]

Gary Bird was a person that I grew up with, twice growing up with him playing music on wwrl. Later on, Gary Bird hooks up with Stevie Wonder. They end up being friends. Stevie Wonder produces a song for Gary Bird called the Crown, where Gary Bird is actually like a 16 minute dropping bars about our brilliance as human beings and as black folk. Well, Stevie Wonder does that and it's a Motown rap record in 1982. Never gets talked about. So we'll talk about it right here.

[Flavor Flav]

People of the world, wherever you be, welcome to Cosmic University, where life is the journey and love is the trip. And the study of them will make you here. I'm professor of the rap and when I speak, I guarantee that my lines will not be.

[Chuck D]

At that particular time. You know, hip hop was emulating all this with the great voices playing great music, going from the ones and twos, being able to, you know, bring that noise to the people. So I came up in all that.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

It's a four part hip hop documentary on pbs. Fight the Power. How Hip Hop changed the world. Why is that important for you? For that to be your focus? How Hip Hop changed the world.

[Chuck D]

Most important word in that is world. I've been 116 countries over 38 years, so I've seen the changes and have people come to me with different languages, although I can't interpret not one other than the King's English, unfortunately, which is my biggest regret. But people have made their way to say, Chuck, this is what this art form is meant to me in all continents except for Antarctica and parts of the Arctic.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

There's a quote from you in the documentary. You say the pioneers in the beginning, they could have easily rapped about the real things that's right in front of them. Guns, drugs, infiltrating New York City in 78, 79. And they said, you know what? There's no way that's gonna be popular. We want to keep the party going.

[Chuck D]

Yeah. Not that they wanted to commodify it into something that's going to just quickly just like, it's got to be popular so I could get money. Yeah, they wanted to make money to get up out of there.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

Right.

[Chuck D]

But I think it was one of those things. It's like, okay, everybody knows them damn stories. What's our escape route? We want to have escapism. We want to take this spaceship up out of here. Beam me up, Scotty Fast.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

Did you feel like you wanted to join this hip hop movement that was happening, or did you feel like you wanted to redirect this hip hop movement?

[Chuck D]

I wanted to curate, present, navigate, teach, and lead the hip hop art as making it something that people will revere, just like Grant Wood, you know what I'm saying? So I was educated in the arts ever since I was a little kid. My mother started Roosevelt Community Theater in 1973 in Roosevelt. I was under Frank Frazier's tutelage as an art teacher in 1972 and Roosevelt. I go to Adelphi University to become a commercial artist. But as what? I had no idea. I definitely wasn't gonna go into architecture, and I wanted to become a renderer. And the music led me to the point. Even after I got kicked out my first year at the freshman year at Delphi, I actually got back in because all of a sudden hip hop records came out and I said, wow, I could be in the music business as a hip hop illustrator, Art department, album jackets, advertising. Wow, okay. And that got me through the rest of Adelphi, where I graduated Dean's List in 1984. So hip hop as an idea got me through college.

[Flavor Flav]

Elvis was a hero to Mo, but Elvis was a hero to Movis was a hero to Mo but he never meant to me yes, he's straight out racing just to suck on simple and plain mother, you mean John Wayne? Cause I'm black and I'm proud already I'm hyped cause I'm amped Most of my heroes don't appear in no stamp stamp all look back, you look and find nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check don't worry, be hacked was the number one champ. Damn if I said you can slap me right here. Get it.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

I think a lot of people nowadays might not realize just how radical Public Enemy was when you came out.

[Chuck D]

Why would I count them if they don't realize it. It's like.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

But I don't just mean radical compared to America. I mean radical compared to what else was happening in hip hop at that moment.

[Chuck D]

You have to take a long survey of what was happening in hip hop to make a comparison.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

Right.

[Chuck D]

It's not an art form that could be really easily thrown to you in four part series and you get it all. So if we were able to repeat the context of Public Enemy, how could you talk about being in the middle of a decade where communities are destroyed by R and B? It's Reagan and Bush, cointelpro, crack and guns. You know what I'm saying? Drugs and guns. At that time, when we started out, Nelson Mandela was in prison in South Africa, Margaret Thatcher was running the UK and Gorbachev's Soviet Union was teetering on the brink of disaster politically, worldwide. And this was trickling down to like, damn, can we actually be humans too? Public Enemy was kind of like, okay, I'm making records. I am the voice of in the middle of this, but at the same time, I'm bringing a community with me. And that was my role, to actually lead a whole community, even a community that's juxtaposed and not getting along with each other.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

Right.

[Chuck D]

You know, being able to be that voice of maybe some reason.

[Flavor Flav]

I got a letter from the government the other day. I opened and read it and said they were suckers. They wanted me for their army or whatever venture Me giving a damn. I said never. Here is a land that never gave a damn.

[Chuck D]

One Rap was able to use more words.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

Yeah.

[Chuck D]

In a shorter distance of time.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

Yeah.

[Chuck D]

Singing. I mean, I. I'm bad on lyrics. I still don't know what the hell a lot of songs are saying. Right. I can't make out the lyrics. And nobody seemed to ever say that. Yeah, well, you know, everything else in popular music is unintelligible because they happen to sing their words instead of speak their words. Well, hip hop and rap happens to damn near speak their words.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

And there's like a justification thing that happens in hip hop where there's this sense of who are you? Who were you to be talking to?

[Chuck D]

Me.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

And so rappers would say, this is who I am. Let me tell you who I am.

[Chuck D]

It's the first rejection of the slave name. You know, it's like, you know, I can't call myself Malcolm X, but you know what, I'm Chuck D, that type of thing. You know what I'm saying? I'm KRS1. You know, I'm not Chris Parker, Right. And the rejection of the slave name was really the socio political thing that white folks in America, when you tell them that, they like, I didn't even know that. I didn't even think of it that way. Well, number one, you didn't have to. But if you want to understand the page of where we're coming from, being called somebody else is number one on our brains or something that we trying to change. And when I call myself something else, you find difficulty in it.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

In 1997, in your book, you wrote, right now, rap is being used in a way that's negative to the existence of black people. Okay, why did you feel that way?

[Chuck D]

Because the curators were failing and it was dropping the ball, explaining what it could do and actually put things in the right context and place. I'm 37 at the time, and I saw people saying, well, we could grab the lowest hanging fruit and just to get the eyeballs in order for me to make a living with it, I'm like, damn. All right. So me, I have a firm belief is like, spectacle gets you interested and get you in the building. It don't keep you there. Spectacular keeps you there. Matter of fact, spectacular keeps you coming back for more. The rock guys understand that. I was with Prophets of Rage four years. Every night we gotta stand in ovation and rocked hard as hell. I'm not saying it never happened in the rap world. It's just that it's been groomed differently, you know, I mean, in the rock world, man, people come back and back and back and back. The promoters take it seriously. The black thing. The promoters always felt, yeah, if we could get a lot of money for it, we don't know how long it's going to last. And we'll. We'll take this headache money. And if it burns out, burns out. It's disposable cool. We'll get the next one and replace it. I think that's been a disservice to the art form. And I said that at 37 years old in 1997 and clearly we've seen.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

But it's also, if you go back and when I think about the mid to late 90s, I think of that as another golden age for hip hop. I think of that as the Jay golden corporate age. But I think of that as the Jay Z era, the Missy Elliott era, the Outkast era.

[Chuck D]

You're giving me. You're giving. Well, with the exception of Outkast, you're giving me a whole bunch of individuals. And around the turn of the 90s, the record companies and corporations felt they could reduce the culture's elements down to one, which is the emceeing on a record. So you remove the other elements. DJing, that was removed, the dance element was removed, Art element was removed. Got MCing, okay? They make a records. The biggest change is when they seen that the downsizing from collectors into solo acts is what probably was the biggest change. And because that wasn't handled or managed correctly, Hip hop became a whole bunch of soloists in the 90s because it was easier to renegotiate with one person in a group. Therefore, if you name your best groups out of 2000, you name an individuals, you name your best groups out of the 80s, you naming groups destroy our collective.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

But part of that I think is because rapping is so powerful. I mean, when I think about Public Enemy, there's so much going on. But I think about you and your voice and Flavor Flav's voice and these incredible tracks, okay, that's.

[Chuck D]

Yes, you sitting home and thinking, but if you saw us performing, which is performance is always the extension of art anyway. You ain't just seeing me stand on a mic and fucking spitting bars. So I think this documentary raises the bar over the bars. Hip hop is all the panoramic elements and motion. You know, you got sight, style, sound and story. Those things. When they circulate, that's what you have. Something that people say, I come back to you. For years and years, one MC spin bars over beats, man, it's like that's when it comes down to a point where anybody could do it. You got it right in the studio, you practice that, you know the studio's gonna make it right before it leaves. And they go out to perform it. And I'm like, well, they gotta go through a rites of passage just cause they're a star without proving it. And the first thing I look for is they're gonna run out of breath. They're not gonna be able to do what they recorded number three. All right? They're on a tour, they're gonna lose their voice after the first three days. Cause they're trying too hard. And then you be like, ah. In the rock world, you rehearse and your first night, you better get it right. And you better not have any mishaps on the whole thing.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

To go back to the question that's kind of implied in the documentary about how hip hop changed the world. How did hip hop change the world? And did it change the world for the better?

[Chuck D]

Well, for the last 30 years, hip hop's been in Africa and they've surpassed the natural skill set that we're accustomed to in the United States of America. But that's always the case if you pay attention to Africa. You know, the whole key is to make yourself feel better or superior. Is like, all you gotta do is pay Africa no mind. Like it don't exist. Like, you know what, it might have started over there, but we're not acknowledging it until it starts in the United States. And that's just. That's derogatory to the black diaspora. You cannot separate the black diaspora from black creativity in the future. So I seen hip hop change the world many times over in places that's not just reduced to people under the construct of dark skin. I mean, in Yugoslavia and ourselves and Ice Tea saw a war stopped as we're doing a concert there in an ice arena. And they stopped the war for one day in a Yugoslavian, you know, conflict between Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro and Slovenia. Next day, I tell Public Enemy and Ice Tea, all right, it's time for y' all to raise up out of here. Cause we're going to war tomorrow. Sure enough, we left over the borderline boom bombing over here. Wow. So hip hop has changed the world because they would look at Fight the Power and six in the Morning as far as anti authoritative, you know, conversation and applied the Taylor life, their language, their whole situation said, yeah, we got another guide map based on black people in the United States, music and vibe to actually apply to ourselves and our movement.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

But isn't it interesting how things have flipped? How Hip hop used to be so divisive and polarizing. Some people loved it, some people hated it. Radio stations would say, we play all the hits and no rap. And now here we are, and you're talking about the divisions in America. And sometimes it seems like hip hop is. Is one of the only things that just about everyone seems to, like, say, evolution.

[Chuck D]

How can you not study evolution? I mean, it's like revolution starts out evolution. What evolves into, you know, I mean, Curtis Blow is revolutionary. Jay Z is evolution. He's an evolution. The. The culmination of all these things that led up to him doing the great things that he does. Yeah. Will it be evolution after Jay Z? Sure, there will be. Is this thing going to be called hip hop or does it get termed into something else? Probably. You know, we had jazz before everything was jazz, right.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

And that's what we expect, is that things are going to change and the era is not going to last forever. So how has the hip hop era managed to last for half a century?

[Chuck D]

50 years is not long in real life. 50 years long in cultural life.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

Mm, yeah, very long.

[Chuck D]

But in real life, it's like, yeah.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

But do you think, do you think 50 years from now, two people might be sitting in a rooftop bar, in a hotel talking about, how did hip hop manage to last 100 years?

[Chuck D]

Shit, you better be whole. 50 years from now, people will be sitting. I mean, really, let's go 10 years at a time.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

Okay?

[Chuck D]

I'd like to take 10 more years of people understanding that they got to take care of the next generations, teach them, take care of the planet. And I think hip hop will always gonna. Is gonna be there. It's gonna ride regardless. I don't think hip hop's the thing that you ask, could be around. We want to ask for human beings to be around. We want to ask for the way of life, peace, love, sharing, to be around.

[David Remnick]

Chuck D of Public Enemy. He's a creator, along with his producing partner, Lori Bullough, of Fight the Power. How Hip Hop Changed the World. It's a documentary series now on pbs, and you can find Kelefasane's writing on hip hop and a wide range of other musical subjects and [e-mail] this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. Power.

[Flavor Flav]

Come on. What we got to say?

[Chuck D]

Fight the Power.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The list of movies and TV shows adapted from video games is really long, and it's kind of checkered for every Tomb Raider. We have dozens of forgettable shows and would be blockbusters that just weren't. But now there's the Last of Us, the HBO show based on a series of games set in a post apocalyptic world. The Last of Us has been years in the making, and it's turned out to be a huge success both critically and commercially.

[Pedro Pascal]

I know what's out there. We were going with an entire squadron for that very reason. But now I don't have a truck. I don't have a squadron. Fedra is five minutes away. What I do have is you. And I know what you're both capable of, for better or worse.

[David Remnick]

I talked to Alex Barish, who's an editor at the New Yorker, to understand why adapting video games has been so difficult over the years and what makes it work when it does work. Alex wrote about the Last of Us in December. Alex, I think you know me well enough to know after all this time spent working together that what I know about video games. You could fit in a thimble. My kids will never forgive me. They're grown now, but I outlawed them at home. They remind me of this all the time. And maybe I made a mistake, but you love them. And more to the point, you're telling us that video games are now kind of. It's a long process, but have been influencing all other kinds of arts, particularly obviously television and movies. So what I'd love for you to do for us today is give us three instances where video games have been adapted to great effect and real effect on popular culture. So let's go to it.

[Alex Barish]

I think we do have to begin with Super Mario Bros. Which I would not call a great adaptation, but it is an instructive one in its, its impact and its reception. Nobody in Hollywood had tried the live action, feature length, you know, video game adaptation as a form. And frankly, the game did not give them a lot to work with in the way of plot.

[Chuck D]

They're brothers, they're plumbers, they're on the trail of a kidnapped princess and a mystical meteorite.

[Flavor Flav]

It's incredible.

[Chuck D]

That gives anyone who possesses it the power to rule the universe.

[Alex Barish]

So when they came to adapt it, there was a degree of self consciousness, a kind of desire to say this is something more than the game. The tagline, in fact was this ain't no game. And they were aiming for a kind of Ghostbusters y subversive comedy mode. Slightly darker, slightly zanier, and they missed.

[David Remnick]

But unless I'm wrong, Super Mario Bros. Was a console game. It comes out in 1993 as a film and lo and behold, in 2023, somebody's taking another crack at it.

[Alex Barish]

Oh yes, we are trying again with Chris Pratt in the title role.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

It's me, Mario.

[Alex Barish]

And I think this speaks to Hollywood's quest. You know, they've not given up. It was a box office bomb at the time. But nobody has given up on cracking this formula.

[David Remnick]

Now we come next to something that dominated my household when my kids were really young. Pokemon.

[Flavor Flav]

I know it's my destiny.

[Alex Barish]

This is the one that is nearest and dearest to my heart, I will say in terms of the adaptations past. And it had this really interesting sort of unusual mutualistic relationship between the games and the series. The series, I should say, had 1200 episodes, 25 seasons, it's still going strong. And every time a new game came out, they would take the protagonist of the show, who is this sort of perennial 10 year old called Ash Ketchum, and plop him into the New region. So he meets all the same monsters as you meet in the. He's meeting the same characters, he's fighting the fights that you as a player would undertake. And that sort of feedback loop has continued for decades now. It was actually recently announced that Ash would be stepping down as the protagonist after some 25 years. So there was a real outpouring of nostalgia and excitement about that.

[David Remnick]

Is Ash retiring to Boca Raton?

[Alex Barish]

We can only hope after the service that he's put in.

[Chuck D]

You did it, buddy.

[David Remnick]

Now, not long ago, you came into an editorial meeting, I don't know, a few months ago, and said that HBO is gonna make a huge hit show out of a game called the Last of Us. Am I right?

[Alex Barish]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

And I greeted this idea with a raised eyebrow, but said, Alex, you go ahead and do it.

[Kelefa Sanneh]

The video game turned small screen sensation had HBO's second biggest debut of the last 13 years behind only House of the Dragon.

[Alex Barish]

Yeah, it's pretty amazing. The premise of the show and of the game is quite simple. A fungus based pandemic has decimated society. And there's a smuggler called Joel who is played in the show by Pedro Pascal, who lost his daughter at the beginning of the outbreak some 20 years prior. And he is thrown together with this young girl called Ellie, who it's understood may be immune to the pathogen and thus could sort of save what remains of society. So they have this kind of road trip across America. He is taking her to a lab where they hope that they will be able to engineer a cure.

[Chuck D]

Joel, I can handle myself. It's called luck. And it is going to run out. You hear that?

[Flavor Flav]

Run.

[Chuck D]

There's too many of them.

[Alex Barish]

That sounds like every post apocalyptic story under the sun, but it's really about sort of the ways of living that people have carved out for themselves in this landscape. You know, there are some people who are building these kind of idealistic socialist communes. There are people who've barricaded themselves into their own towns and won't let anyone else in. There are people who've turned to incredible violence. There are, you know, all of these different modes of existence and, and you were sort of seeing all of this unfold through the deepening relationship, this kind of father daughter dynamic between the two of them.

[David Remnick]

So, Alex, Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon and the Last of Us. Is this all about Hollywood's search for intellectual property that will become the next Marvel or something like it? A franchise that will just float the boat financially?

[Alex Barish]

I mean, I think that's certainly a factor. You know, Amazon Paramount, Netflix, basically every studio and streamer under the sun is trying to do some version of this. And there have been a lot of false stuts. You know, Assassin's Creed with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard was sort of believed to be the next great hope of video game adaptations back in 2016, I think it was, and that just crashed and burned and plans for sequels were promptly scrapped. So, you know, there has been some attempt over the decades to get something like this off the ground. But I think that the Last of Us has the advantage of this inherently cinematic quality and of a team that genuinely believes in what they're doing. So it's not this kind of cynical cash grab alone.

[David Remnick]

You know, is it possible to predict what other games will become the television and movies of the near future?

[Alex Barish]

I mean, there are a million that are currently in development. You know, Amazon just announced a God of War series. Netflix are trying about a dozen different things right now and seeing what sticks. I mean, I think the thing to look for, and I hope that they know this now, is, you know, strongly defined characters and a strong narrative backbone, something that a lot of these adaptations have historically lacked. Because, you know, when you're playing a game, you want to be able to project onto the character, you kind of get to fill in the gaps or even customize the way that they look and the way they act. And when that comes to television and they're just an empty cipher, it's not very interesting to watch because you have no reason to care about them. So I think if people are careful in their selection of source material, then they will have much more success in that arena.

[David Remnick]

Alex, thanks so much. Great to talk to you as always. Yeah, thank you. Alex Barish is an editor at the New Yorker and you can find his reporting piece about the Last of us@New Yorker.com I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with the New Yorker Radio Hour next week and we hope you'll join us.

[Narrator/Producer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Breda Green, Adam Howard, Kalalea, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell and Ngofen Mputabuele, with guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Harrison Keith Mine, Mike Kutchman and Meher Bhatia. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Tsarina Endowment Fund.