Episode 11: Life as a Reporter Covering ISIS, and Puppet Sex

Summary

Episode Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour, Episode 11

Date: January 1, 2016
Host: David Remnick
Main Theme:
This episode explores the challenging realities of journalism in times of terror, the creative process behind comedy and cartoons, and the boundaries of storytelling through animation. With a mix of lighthearted discussions and gripping accounts from the frontlines of extremism, the episode delves into how stories are crafted, survived, and transformed—from a New York Times reporter covering ISIS, to comedians reimagining representation, and filmmakers animating existential loneliness.

---

1. Life as a Cartoonist: "Life's A Batch" with Matt Diffie and Emily Flake

Timestamps: 00:53–02:26, 41:37–43:04, 53:20–54:24

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Cartooning Process: Matt Diffie and Emily Flake exchange banter about the difficulties and humor in coming up with cartoon ideas, particularly themed around babies and daily life (00:53).
• Cartoonist Routine: They discuss the randomness of cartoon ideas—ranging from “towns of hell” to “kitty-sized ice cream cones”—and how inspiration often emerges from mundane tasks (41:51).
• Joke Development: Diffie and Flake riff on horse “spooking” jokes and share the anxiety and relief of selling a cartoon to The New Yorker, illustrating the competitive and creative spirit involved (42:37, 53:20).

Notable Quotes

• "Everything you buy for a baby is covered with choking warnings... Apparently, a baby can choke on anything." – Matt Diffie (01:48)
• "I get a lot of ideas while I do mundane tasks..." – Emily Flake (41:58)
• "Stop saying President Trump. You're spooking the horses." – Matt Diffie on his successful cartoon pitch (53:39)

---

2. Aziz Ansari on Comedy, Representation, and Writing "Master of None"

Timestamps: 03:10–15:58

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Sitcoms and Freedom: Ansari, interviewed by Sarah Larson, describes how "Master of None" breaks sitcom rules by letting characters take fun, unusual risks without ridicule (04:20).
• Writing Structure: The show's structure is inspired by Ansari’s stand-up, with each episode centering on a distinct topic rather than following a fixed ensemble (05:47).
• Gender and Diversity: Ansari discusses episodes based on real experiences of women and the ambiguity and empathy built into storylines about microaggressions (06:44–08:51).
• Changing Cultural Norms: They reflect on shifting attitudes toward problematic celebrities (R. Kelly, Cosby) and how stand-up comedy content has evolved (09:06–10:55).
• Race and Casting: Ansari talks about resistance in TV casting to diversity and why authentic storytelling matters (11:01–13:34).

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Writing True to Life:
  “You don't see the same four people all the time in your real life; you have different groups of friends that come in and out.” – Aziz Ansari (05:57)
• On Representation:
  “White people relate to anything if it's good, well written, you have good characters, a compelling story, you relate to anything. People watch anime movies about bugs and fish!” – Aziz Ansari (13:00)
• On Facing Creative Exhaustion:
  “If we did a second season, I would just need some time or else... what we're making wouldn't be as good as the first season.” – Aziz Ansari (15:27)

---

3. Frontline Reporting on ISIS: Rukmini Callimachi’s Perspective

Timestamps: 16:33–31:44

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Reporting Risks: Rukmini Callimachi shares the techniques and dangers of reporting on terrorism, going to "the last safe place" near conflict zones to speak with refugees and survivors (16:49).
• ISIS's Social Media Tactics: She explains how ISIS differs from al Qaeda in using vast social media propaganda to recruit and indoctrinate, even attempting to convert her during interviews (17:51–18:51).
• Underestimating Extremism: Callimachi argues that both media and policymakers have consistently underestimated ISIS’s seriousness and appeal to youth (20:09).
• Normalization of Violence: Repetitive exposure to propaganda videos desensitizes both recruits and the public, creating dangerous normalization (23:38–24:38).
• Online Recruitment: She recounts how a Sunday school teacher in Washington was drawn into ISIS propaganda and embraced by the community, highlighting recruitment vulnerability and cognitive dissonance (25:15–26:53).
• Challenges as a Female Reporter: Callimachi details the gendered challenges in gaining jihadist sources' trust and navigating advances (27:44–29:38).
• Enduring Threat: She doubts the “war” with extremism will end soon, likening the ideology to “poison in the groundwater” that’s nearly impossible to eradicate (31:28–31:40).

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Speaking With Jihadists:
  "They think that they can possibly convince me to give up my faith and accept theirs. ... It was just incessant, relentless." – Rukmini Callimachi (18:53, 19:35)
• On the Lure of Extremism:
  “There’s something exciting to them about being part of this apocalyptic project… They literally believe that they are living at the moment before the Rapture.” – Rukmini Callimachi (22:06)
• On Female Access:
  “Once I’m in, I feel that I have an advantage because they see me as soft, female... kind of like a sweet spot, you know, for a while. And then very quickly from there it goes to them hitting on me, and that’s when it all goes to hell.” – Rukmini Callimachi (27:44)
• On Reporting Fatigue:
  “A year in, he finally said, you remind me of a woman I wanted to marry. I was like, oh my God. All of that effort for that.” – Rukmini Callimachi (29:25)
• On the Battle Ahead:
  “It’s almost like a poison that enters the groundwater. And how do you get it out?” – Rukmini Callimachi (31:40)

---

4. Refugees and Survival: George Packer & Dr. Omar Mahdi

Timestamps: 32:11–40:47

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Firsthand Testimony: Omar Mahdi shares his harrowing experiences fleeing Baghdad—including kidnapping, torture, and loss of family members—before seeking refuge and ultimately resettling in Indiana (33:06–36:10).
• Contrast in Cultures: Mahdi reflects on the disorienting peace of Muncie, Indiana after the constant violence of Baghdad (35:10).
• Refugee Crisis Reflections: He expresses empathy for current Middle Eastern refugees, highlighting the difficulties of starting from nothing and facing suspicion (36:33).
• Political Context: Discussion on anti-refugee rhetoric, especially Indiana’s governor rejecting Syrian families, and the wider impact of fear-mongering political figures (38:04).
• Impact of Terror Attacks: Mahdi describes his personal anxiety during the San Bernardino shooting and his fear of collective backlash against Muslims in America (39:03).

Notable Quotes

• “...they are encouraging this division.” – Omar Mahdi on political leaders’ rhetoric (37:38)
• “Whenever I hear shooting or something bad happen... I hope it’s not a Muslim.” – Omar Mahdi (39:03)

---

5. Animation, Loneliness, and Puppet Sex: Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson on "Anomalisa"

Timestamps: 44:01–52:47

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Creative Decisions in Animation: Kaufman and Johnson recount how "Anomalisa" morphed from a staged radio play into a stop-motion film, motivated by the desire to portray authentic adult emotion in animation (46:03–46:45).
• Artistry and "Uncanny Valley": They discuss painstaking efforts to keep the animation soulful and avoid eeriness, focusing on subtle imperfections and human touches (47:07–49:07).
• Production Challenges: Creating "Anomalisa" nearly destroyed their studio resources, with immense labor for nuanced scenes, including its now-celebrated puppet sex scene (49:41, 50:01).
• Loneliness and Representation: The directors talk about the film’s resonance for lonely people and the comfort audiences might find in seeing authentic representations of their own experiences (51:53–52:36).

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Animation’s Power:
  “Every single thing you see in stop motion is a choice... You’re starting to see sort of this whittling down of human movement into its most essential version, maybe.” – Duke Johnson (46:45)
• On Representation and Connection:
  “I think people who feel things that aren't represented in the media feel comforted by seeing themselves represented, even if it's in their pain.” – Duke Johnson (52:13)
• On the Hardest Scene:
  "That is the best puppet sex I have seen." – Tad Friend, referring to Anomalisa (50:02)

---

6. Final Cartoonist Round-Up

Timestamps: 53:20–54:24

• Flake and Diffie celebrate both selling cartoons that week, sharing the joy of creative success.
• Diffie promises an "All Centaur Batch" next time, keeping their whimsical spirit alive.

---

Overall Language & Tone

The episode maintains an intellectually curious, sometimes wry, and often emotionally direct tone:

• Comedic Segments: Lively, improvised, and self-deprecating
• Journalism & Reporting: Candid, grave, and at times introspective
• Film Conversation: Nerdily enthusiastic, honest about artistic struggle

---

For Further Listening

• Next week's feature: Sarah Koenig of "Serial" will discuss the podcasting phenomenon.
• More from Matt Diffie’s “Life’s a Batch” coming in later episodes.

---

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour takes listeners from the nervous laughter of the cartoonist’s studio to the existential dread of conflict zones—illustrating how narrative, whether humorous or harrowing, shapes our understanding of the world.

Transcript

[Aziz Ansari]

Floor 38.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

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

[Aziz Ansari]

It's very exciting to be having a.

[Emily Flake]

Conversation with someone when they have that revelation.

[David Remnick]

He's really smart.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

He's actually someone who's kind of savvy.

[Aziz Ansari]

You know, every parent maybe looking at.

[Sarah Larson]

This case, it could be an interesting process piece.

[Tad Friend]

Okay.

[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick, and welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Life for a cartoonist isn't easy. Every week, you're churning out ideas to come up with a batch of drafts to give to the New Yorker's cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff. This week, cartoonist Matt Diffie calls up his colleague Emily Flake for a new installment of Life's A Batch.

[Matt Diffie]

Hey, this is Matt Diffie. Welcome to Life's A Batch. One of the cartoonists here, and I'm gonna call one of my colleagues, my cronies, Emily Flake. She's been doing cartoons for the magazine since 2008. I'm gonna call her and see how her work's coming along. Hello? Hey, Emily. Day one of the work week.

[Emily Flake]

Yeah.

[Matt Diffie]

Started anything yet?

[Emily Flake]

Of course not. It's day one of the work week.

[Matt Diffie]

Yeah, plenty of days. That's like day zero, you know, with a new baby. I'm starting to think, you know, baby ideas. Got one. One idea already. That is, the new mother has the baby in her arms, and she's talking on the phone and saying, yeah, the doctor said to keep him swaddled for the first three weeks, and then the dad is in a big swaddled blanket on the couch.

[Emily Flake]

Nice for me. I was a little hesitant to pitch a lot of baby ideas because I didn't want to be stuck in the lady cartoon ghetto. Your mileage may vary on the.

[Matt Diffie]

Yeah, well, I mean, one thing that I'm pretty sure there's a joke in is the fact that everything you buy for a baby is covered with choking warnings. You know, this is a choking hazard. Apparently, a baby can choke on anything.

[Emily Flake]

They can. They can choke on your ideas. If you have bad thoughts around a baby, your baby might choke.

[Matt Diffie]

Baby cpr, I think you grab them by the ankles and sort of swing them around in a circle.

[Emily Flake]

Pretty sure how you kill a chicken.

[Matt Diffie]

It's amazing how similar farming practices is.

[Emily Flake]

Applied to child raising.

[Matt Diffie]

Yeah, that's another book you can write.

[Emily Flake]

Fertile Ground.

[Matt Diffie]

Ha ha ha. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, I'm not worried about you. We'll talk maybe in. Maybe in four or five days, see how the week went for you.

[Emily Flake]

All right. Talk to you later.

[Matt Diffie]

Cool. Till then. Bye.

[David Remnick]

Emily Flake and Matt Diffie, cartoonists for the New Yorker. Today I'm going to be talking with Rukmini Kalamaki, who's doing some of the most difficult, bravest work in journalism right now, covering ISIS for the New York Times. And she's getting very close to people who are inspiring fear all over the world. But we're going to start on a lighter note. A much lighter note. Comedy. There's a tradition of comedians going from stand up to sitcoms. Think of Bob Newhart or Jerry Seinfeld. Aziz Ansari is ready to play in that league after making a reputation on stage.

[Matt Diffie]

He.

[David Remnick]

He was cast on Amy Poehler's Parks and Recreation, where he played an Indian American who took the phony name Tom Haverford to boost his career in government. And he was kind of an idiot.

[Aziz Ansari]

Every day I start by hitting up Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. Sometimes I like to throw in LinkedIn for the professional shouties.

[David Remnick]

Ansari's new show is Master of None. He's the creator and star, and he plays a character much closer to himself, a decent, well meaning guy named Dev. A young actor struggling to make a place for himself.

[Aziz Ansari]

My dads are so weird. Tell my dad I got a call back on the Sickening. Oh, the black virus movie.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

That's great.

[Aziz Ansari]

Thank you. I told him. He's like, okay, can you fix my iPad? How about, hey, son, great work? Or hey, son, I'm proud of you. I have never, ever heard my dad say the word proud.

[Omar Mahdi]

It's always like, that's it.

[Aziz Ansari]

So that's all you've done. Like, if I went to the moon.

[Omar Mahdi]

He would honestly be like, when are.

[Sarah Larson]

You going to Mars?

[Aziz Ansari]

Yeah. Oh, Brian, you went to the moon. That's like graduating from community college. When are you gonna graduate from Harvard, AKA go to Pluto?

[David Remnick]

Ansari came to the New Yorker recently to talk with staff writer Sarah Larson.

[Sarah Larson]

One of the things I really like about your show is that the characters seem to have a lot of freedom to do fun, inventive, weird things and not have it blow up in their face. Like, I love the episode where there's a sort of date that they fly to Nashville. And I feel like if that happened on a regular sitcom, first of all, it wouldn't happen. Secondly, if they did, it would just be to show what fools they are. You know what I mean? It would be kind of like, oh, this was a terrible idea. But actually, this charming scenario plays out and they have all these fun and funny Adventures. They get to know each other, and there's a little problem at the end, but it's not because they're idiots for having taken a first date to Nashville, you know?

[Aziz Ansari]

Yeah. You know, these two people, they get along and there is this banter and all this, but there's certain moments that are a little uncomfortable.

[Sarah Larson]

Right.

[Aziz Ansari]

Like when Dev makes the joke about her being vegetarian and she's kind of.

[Sarah Larson]

Well, he realizes she is vegetarian. I mean, they do have this intimacy, and they do really like each other, but there they are in this barbecue place.

[Aziz Ansari]

You want to split a Pitmaster combo drummies and ribs?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Oh, no, I can't do that.

[Aziz Ansari]

Why not?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

I'm kind of a vegetarian.

[Sarah Larson]

No.

[Aziz Ansari]

Are you serious? There was a big debate in the writer's room. Can we make Rachel vegetarian? Is that making her too unlikable? Would Dev ever date someone?

[Sarah Larson]

Well, as a vegetarian, I feel like this is one of the nicer portraits of vegetarianism that I've seen in popular culture.

[Aziz Ansari]

Really?

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah. I love the structure of the show, which has. Each episode is a different topic, basically. How did you arrive at that structure?

[Aziz Ansari]

At a certain point when we were writing the series, we realized, oh, this show is more like my standup than a series, in that each episode is kind of about one of these topics, and it really explores it. It allowed us to do that by doing things like we don't have an ensemble that shows up every week. You know, in most shows like this, you see the same four friends eating dinner together every week. And at a certain point, we were riding. We were like, you don't see the same four people all the time. In your real life, you have different groups of friends that come in and out of your life, and, you know, you look at something like Allen wrote on Parks and Rec, and I think that becomes kind of a strange challenge at times where it's like, you know, there'd be times when we were filming Parks and Rec where I'd be like, why is Tom here right now? He doesn't need to be here.

[Sarah Larson]

There's no way he could still work in this department. And what is his job?

[Aziz Ansari]

He quit. He's not supposed to be around these people all the time. This doesn't make sense.

[Sarah Larson]

Who cares? It also, I feel like it's a structure that has empathy built into it a little bit, because you really look at things from other people's perspective. The episode about women, I mean, you cover some of that in your standup, too. Those feel like it came out of conversations with women about their Experiences being followed by creepy guys coming home from a bar or.

[Aziz Ansari]

Yeah, and, you know, we had women in the writers room that we would have long conversations about this stuff. And, you know. You know, one of the women told me when she leaves a bar at night, she would walk in the middle of the street and dial 91 just in case. And so we put that in there. And the argument at the very end, I think, is really what that episode is about. And the argument at the end is a group of people are sitting at the table. Me, my girlfriend in the show, and my other friend Denise. And the other guy's characters. And the director of this commercial that I worked on shakes our hands, but doesn't shake the women's hands. What?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

You didn't notice that that guy only introduced himself to the men at the table? He went right past us. Like, Denise and I were invisible.

[Omar Mahdi]

Yeah, he totally snubbed us.

[Aziz Ansari]

I don't know. I don't think that was intentional. You guys were sitting in the corner. He was probably just in a rush.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Yeah, well, in his rush, he managed.

[Duke Johnson]

To shake hands with two random dudes.

[David Remnick]

And Arnold, he didn't think we were important enough.

[Tad Friend]

I don't know.

[Aziz Ansari]

Seems like he might be reading a bit much into it.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

We're telling you that this is something that definitely happens to women all the time. But Fang deny our perception of the world.

[Matt Diffie]

Here's my issue.

[Duke Johnson]

He just went to the bathroom, washed his hands, and they're still wet.

[Matt Diffie]

I don't wanna shake no wet hands.

[Aziz Ansari]

And that scene, there was a split in the room even amongst the women in the writer's room. Some people were like, well, yeah, I see where he's coming from. And then some of the women were like, no, that happens to me. Like, that definitely happens. And I was like. And we were like, we gotta change it. It's very ambiguous. And I was like, no, this is actually perfect. That's great. It shouldn't be clear. The just to not immediately dismiss someone when they say something affected them that way and to actually hear them out and see what they have to say.

[Sarah Larson]

Can we talk about R. Kelly a little bit?

[Aziz Ansari]

R. Kelly?

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah.

[Aziz Ansari]

Okay.

[Sarah Larson]

So you have done a lot of great comedic stuff about R. Kelly and you've been a fan of R. Kelly, and our feelings, culturally, have changed about R. Kelly.

[Aziz Ansari]

Yeah.

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah.

[Aziz Ansari]

Well, you know, I read this piece in New York magazine that was really interesting about. Basically was asking the question, like, knowing, like, the shadiness of what's going on there.

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah, well, he's had a lot of rape allegations and settlements and brutal stuff. Yeah, yeah.

[Aziz Ansari]

It's the worst stuff, right? Yeah. Like when you hear Ignition come on, is it right to just be happy about that?

[Sarah Larson]

Right.

[Aziz Ansari]

That's a hard question.

[Sarah Larson]

I mean, I think the answer to that same question.

[Tad Friend]

Yeah.

[Aziz Ansari]

The answer is kind of no.

[Sarah Larson]

Right, right.

[Aziz Ansari]

I mean, like the Cosby show, it's like, I don't know if anyone's gonna watch that show anymore.

[Sarah Larson]

Right?

[Aziz Ansari]

Yeah. I don't know if a generation is gonna like, we're the last people alive that are gonna know that Monopoly scene in the Cosby Show. We're the last people. Like, I don't think anyone's gonna raise their children. You gotta check out. You gotta check out the Cosby Show.

[Sarah Larson]

Right, right, right.

[Aziz Ansari]

You know what's interesting is I was talking to these kids who are maybe 14, 15 years old. They're my managers, one of my manager's kids. They came to one of my stand up shows and I asked them about stand up shows they watched. And I brought up like Eddie Murphy, Delirious, like, hey, I tried to watch that. And they're like, I couldn't make it through it all the homophobia. I was like, wow, that's incredible to hear a young person say that. I couldn't imagine a kid that age saying that.

[Sarah Larson]

Right.

[Aziz Ansari]

20, 30 years ago. No, it was an interesting thing to see.

[Sarah Larson]

You know, things have changed a lot in the last few years.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Yeah.

[Aziz Ansari]

And I think even Eddie Murphy is like, hey, I was 22 years old when I did that special. And I said some stupid stuff.

[Sarah Larson]

Right.

[Aziz Ansari]

And it was a different time. And you know, yeah. There's things in my first stand up specials. I'm sure if I went back now, I'd probably change things or adjust things based on kind of growing as a person.

[Sarah Larson]

I was also, I was thinking about, I read your piece in the New York Times about race and casting.

[Aziz Ansari]

Oh, thanks.

[Sarah Larson]

It was quite good. And the end was so great and so interesting. And when you just kind of said, people will, you know, accept lots of things, there's kind of like, give us, you know, like Arnold Schwarzenegger as a robot, for example. You know, like a robot with a crazy Austrian accent, like. And I think there's a sense of relief when actual casting of not just a lot of good looking white guys, straight white guys, when other kinds of people are cast, people like that. You know, audiences are thought to want a certain kind of thing, what we've had forever. But there's huge sense of relief and joy when we get Empire or when we get a show like yours.

[Aziz Ansari]

Yeah. I think a lot of those people that make those decisions operate from a place of fear, and they're not operating from a place of creative excitement.

[Sarah Larson]

Right.

[Aziz Ansari]

And I operate from that place.

[Sarah Larson]

Exactly.

[Aziz Ansari]

And if you operate from creative excitement, you believe in what you're making and you believe that if it's good, people are gonna watch it. I think sometimes people are scared. And I've heard people say things like, well, when someone watches a show, they need to see someone that they can kind of imagine is their person in the show. Or, you know, there's horrifying things of people being like, well, this character needs to be really hot. You know, everyone needs to want to have sex with that character. We need to sexy up this guy or girl. I mean, more often, these are things said about female characters, of course, but. And none of that. I don't buy any of it. I just don't. Especially after Master of None. Because you know what? Indians on tv, you'd show that to someone and they'd be like, I mean, who's gonna relate to this? This is such a specific issue about your. I don't know. Basically what they're saying is they say things like, well, I don't know if mainstream audiences will enjoy that. And what that basically means is, I'm not sure white people are gonna relate to that.

[Sarah Larson]

Right.

[Aziz Ansari]

Guess what? White people relate to anything if it's good, well written, you have good characters, a compelling story, you relate to anything. People watch anime movies about bugs and fish. They're relating to those problems.

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah.

[Aziz Ansari]

Because all these things, ultimately, Indians on tv, we've all had a version of feeling like that, regardless of your race or ethnicity. And I think the other thing is, I think Master of None feels authentic because it's written by me and Alan. And so that's our story. It's not like a white guy. If a white guy wrote Indians on tv, it would be horrible. It would be so bad.

[Sarah Larson]

If a white guy wrote racist parents.

[Aziz Ansari]

It would be terrible. You know, it'd be. I mean, maybe it wouldn't be terrible. Maybe they were really interviewed, you know, me and Alan for a long time about our stories and then wrote that episode, they might have been able to pull it off, but it's just so much more real coming from us. And I think also me and Alan, our real life, we do have a mix of people like that. You know, when Alan and I hang out, there isn't Indian guy and an Asian guy. My world is diverse like that.

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah.

[Aziz Ansari]

There's sometimes people watch a show down. They're like, oh, it's all white people. And sometimes that is a valid criticism of, like, really, this is. There's just white people. And this is kind of a bummer to not see any diversity. But then you watch like, it's not. The answer, I also think is not like, you watch, like, if Seinfeld came out today, I think it should be those same four white people. That's his world, and that's what's happening.

[Sarah Larson]

What about girls?

[Aziz Ansari]

Girls? Well, I think that's her world. I do see four white girls having brunch together a lot. I see that quite a bit. So I don't think. Yes. I don't think it rings is phony. I have seen four white girls hang out together. So I think the criticism of girls is, you know, just saying, like, oh, she just put four white girls, whatever. Like, that's her show. Like, you know, and, you know, what we need is you need more people that are coming up to get in a position where they can make their own show. You know, so maybe in a year or whenever or tomorrow we'll see a show with four Asian girls hanging out. I'd love to see that show.

[Tad Friend]

Yeah.

[Aziz Ansari]

That's the other great thing about this stuff is you realize we've told so many stories about white people. Right. There's an infinite number of stories left.

[Sarah Larson]

Right.

[Tad Friend]

Right.

[Aziz Ansari]

And as more people come up and pursue careers like mine and are from different backgrounds, we'll see more of them.

[Sarah Larson]

So you don't know yet if are you making a second season?

[Aziz Ansari]

We haven't heard officially, but I think things are in our favor to do one. Yeah.

[Sarah Larson]

Do you have thoughts about where you might want to take it?

[Aziz Ansari]

Honestly, it's hard for me because I'm so tapped at the moment. Like, I dump my whole head into this first season of the show. And so if we did a second season, I would just need some time or else I would freak out that we. What we're making wouldn't be as good as the first season.

[Sarah Larson]

So you want to take a little break and just kind of recharge.

[Aziz Ansari]

Yeah. Cause otherwise, what would second season be about? It'd be a guy promoting season one of his show.

[Sarah Larson]

It would be interesting.

[Aziz Ansari]

It would just be Dev doing podcasts and radio shows.

[Sarah Larson]

Thanks for coming in, Aziz.

[Aziz Ansari]

Thank you for having me.

[David Remnick]

Comedian Aziz Ansari talking with the New Yorker's Sarah Larson. The show is called Master of None. In a minute. George Packer, who covered the Iraq war for years, will Call up an old friend, a refugee from the war who barely made it out alive. That's coming up in a moment. You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Matt Diffie]

David.

[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Rukmini Kalamaki, who was born in totalitarian Romania and is a reporter for the New York Times, is doing some of the bravest and most astonishing reporting we have on ISIS and other terror groups.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

I learned in Mali, in West Africa, where I was based for almost eight years, that when an Al Qaeda linked group or a jihadist group takes over an area, your initial reaction is, well, I can't go there. You know, and so you kind of put down your hands and go, I can't cover this. And in fact, I learned from covering Mali that you can go to the line of control, to the last safe place before their territory starts. And in that area, there's often refugees that are coming across, there's traitors that are going back and forth, and there's survivors of whatever atrocities they're carrying out that are making it into the safe area.

[David Remnick]

The catalog of horrors Rukmini has written about is long, and the personal risk she takes is terrifying. But a lot of what she brings to the world comes from social media, where she's getting much closer to jihadists than any of us want to be. By paying attention to Twitter and other platforms, she's trying to understand what motivates these people, what makes violent extremism so alluring to these young people.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

In the case of ISIS and also Al Qaeda, you have the entire body of what they say, and most of ISIS propaganda and Al Qaeda propaganda, it's coming out almost like a word vomit. You know, multiple statements a day. And I think most reporters just on Twitter, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Telegram, on, you know, they make these little ebooks, videos, YouTube. I mean, they're extremely prolific.

[David Remnick]

How is this different from al Qaeda? Al Qaeda was, to the. At least to the popular imagination, largely a secretive organization. It did not hide in plain sight, where I get the impression that ISIS wants you to know everything and more.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Isis. So Al Qaeda was secretive. ISIS has taken almost the opposite approach where they've flooded the system. They have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter, and they are so good now at the pitch. And believe me, they've tried to convert me, and I put up with it because I want to talk to them.

[David Remnick]

How have they tried to convert you?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

When I reach out to these jihadists and speak to them, and I speak to them, through a variety of platforms, encrypted, non encrypted, et cetera. Often the way that I'll get them to talk to me is they think that they can possibly convince me to give up my faith and accept theirs. The fact that I'm Christian to them, they think gives them an avenue because I therefore already have a faith. And they will then try to convince me that Christ was actually just a prophet. And so I put up with this. It's sometimes very tiring. There was one guy called Abu Khalid Al Ameriki who I think was, according to reports, was killed in a drone strike a couple months ago. And it was just incessant.

[David Remnick]

You met him where?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

I never met him. Never met him. I spoke to him on a platform called Kik. He's an African American from the us not clear where he claimed he was a Christian before. And he came out in one of these early videos threatening the West. But it was just relentless, relentless. And you know, to humor him, he would send me videos and say, rukmini, I will not talk to you until you watch this video. So I'd go and watch the video, you know, and then come back to him with more questions. But did you see the video? Did you see what it said about Christ?

[David Remnick]

Were we slow to recognize the rise of isis? Was it rising in plain sight?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

I think on the one hand we have done ourselves a disservice, and I mean journalists and policy analysts, by constantly underestimating ISIS. And we've been doing that since 2012, 2013. Comments. You know, we're sort of the framework for it, but we continue to sort of, we continue to not take them seriously. You know, and I know because I speak to them, I know that they're dead serious. I know that they really, these are people that are willing to pay with their lives, not in some metaphorical sense, they are willing to die for this.

[David Remnick]

Now we're sitting here in our nice warm and or air conditioned homes in the west and we watch what we're able to watch and read what we're able to read. And we're not just reading about resentful cadres fighting the western invader. We're alas used to this by now. We're seeing something else. We're seeing a level of depredation, of beheadings of, as you've reported really brilliantly in the Times, of sexual crime committed against Yazdi women, against children, rape as a means of control of self satisfaction. The list goes on. It's so extensive and so grotesque that it even offends Al Qaeda. It even offends groups that you would have thought unoffendable.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Right.

[David Remnick]

When you think about this, why is this happening? What is driving people to what to us can only seem acts of.

[Tad Friend]

That.

[David Remnick]

Goes well beyond the political, that it goes into an area of psychosis.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Right. What drives it? Yeah, my God. I mean, that's like the billion dollar question. I can say from, from the people I've interviewed who either became jihadists or attempted to become and then pull themselves back. Once you buy into their brand of Islam and you sort of let down your guard. There's something exciting to them about being part of this apocalyptic project. You know, they literally believe that they are living at the moment before the Rapture, to use a Christian corollary. They think they're on the verge of this end of times battle, that it' sand it's not just some sort of metaphor. They really believe that this is going to happen and that they are there. You know, a lot of them have profile pictures of them on horses. They think they're going to be there on, you know, on their black steed at the moment of, you know, the end of the world. And there's something, you know, a lot of ISIS members are basically teenagers, you know, and sort of early twenties. And think back to how impressionable one is.

[David Remnick]

So this is the hard thing. Fundamentalism exists in various forms and sadly in all religions. But this is different, is it not?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

It's a form of fundamentalism. Right?

[David Remnick]

I mean, the level, the level of intensity of it, the level of organization, the level of cruelty, the level of millenarian thinking.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Yeah, yeah. And the thing with the cruelty is that I really do think that the senses get dull to it. And I just came back from Iraq as, you know, one of the interviews that I did was with a young boy, I think he was 12. And he's a Yazidi child who had been separated from his mother and sent forcibly to a recruitment camp. And part of his training, he was taken by a Saudi deputy, Amir. Part of his training was the sheik would take him into his office, sit him down at his plush, you know, chair in front of the laptop and force him to watch beheading video after beheading video, after beheading video. He actually, they actually had a photo of it that they had posted on Facebook that he showed me. And you see this little kid with this blanched face just looking at this, you know, and once you see this over and over and over again, I can say, even for myself, because I've been forced to watch these videos.

[David Remnick]

It becomes normalized in some terrible way.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

It becomes normalized. It becomes normalized. And a couple of months ago, you know, isis, I don't think could have predicted the PR hit that they got from the James Foley execution. I'm sure they thought it was going to be important.

[David Remnick]

And when you say PR hit, you mean it in a perversely positive sense?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Yes, yes. I mean, recruitment spiked. Twitter traffic to the Islamic State spiked. The woman that I ended up profiling from Washington state, a Sunday school teacher, that was the avenue that brought her to them. You know, she saw this and went, oh my God. And then she reached out to them and within weeks she was, she was thinking that they're her friends, you know.

[David Remnick]

But pause on that, pause on that. You're a teacher in the state of Washington.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

And you see a human being beheaded.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

And this is attractive to you, and it causes you to completely transform your wife.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

It's not attractive. She was disgusted and horrified by it, but she had never seen anything like that before. And this is a young woman who, like a lot of young people, had really no connection to the news. And she heard on CNN that they hadthat they were on Twitter and that they were under the hashtag MessageToAmerica. So she went on Twitter, like all young people do, and found a hashtag and decided to send questions to them. And what surprised her is that they responded. She couldn't believe, you know, that these so called terrorists were taking the time to write to her. And then the thing that really surprised her is that they were nice to her. And this is a young woman who has a bit of a misfit, you know, existence. She has some disabilities, doesn't have a lot of friends, doesn't have a lot of things to do. And suddenly she has this community.

[Tad Friend]

She's embraced.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

She's embraced, yeah, she's embraced. She's loved, she's sent. And you see these messages just gushing with affection. My dear sister, how are you today? How's your blood pressure? Are you feeling better? Do you have a cold? Take this medicine for this cold. How's your gardening going? Oh, those kind of greens are better planted here. She suddenly has something to do. And so what the cognitive dissonance for her was. These people are called terrorists, but they're some of the nicest people I've ever spoken to. So therefore what the media is saying about them must be wrong.

[David Remnick]

And your sources, when you talk to them, do they exaggerate? Is there any Way to verify what their. I don't mean when they're talking about ideology or their ideas or their enthusiasms, but their experiences.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Of course, they exaggerate. You know, of course, it's always like this. Abu Khalid Al Amraki tried to claim to me that he was holding multiple American hostages. And because this happens to be something that I followed very closely, I know he wasn't holding, you know, American hostages. And I called his bluff on it, and he got kind of upset and didn't talk to me for a couple of days.

[David Remnick]

And in this world. In this world, Rukmini, what factor does it play that you're a woman in this world working as a reporter? How do you navigate that? Good, bad or indifferent? Literally down to the details of what you wear, how you have to behave? Does it matter that you. Is it almost an advantage that you're working with a translator?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Sometimes on the one hand, the initial access to the jihadists is, I think, harder for me than if I were a man. I've had many of them shut me down, citing Quranic verses that prohibit them from speaking to women that are not family. But once I'm in, I feel that I have an advantage because they see me as soft, they see me as female, they see me as these things. And so there's kind of like a sweet spot, you know, for a while. And then very quickly from there it goes to them hitting on me, and that's when it all goes to hell. Because as soon as, you know, I have to say very clearly early on now, I say, and by the way, I'm married. Here's a little bit about me. I live in the New York area, and I always throw in very early on that I'm married and happily so to try to shut down, you know, that avenue. There was this one guy, he was a member of Al Qaeda. And I worked on this guy for almost a year. David. I had a post it note next to my bed because he was. I suspected he was in Egypt. I wasn't totally sure, but by the time difference, I think he was in Egypt. And so he was getting up for early morning prayers around the time when I was going to bed. And so at every night, I tried to, like, start texting him, you know, a little bit and have a little bit of discussion. And he always had, like. It was like this thing he was dangling in front of me where I always felt like he was almost going to start talking to me, almost, you know, open up. And a year into it, by the way, in the Process of this year, he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. He left Al Qaeda. So I was able to sort of, I was able to get something, you know, out of this. And a year in, he finally said, rukmini, you know, I have something to tell you. And I'm like, yes, what are you going to tell me? And please, you know, this is something quite sensitive. And I said, oh, sure, great. You know, go ahead. And he said, you remind me of a woman I wanted to marry. I was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. You know, like, you know, all of that effort for that.

[David Remnick]

Well, I've been reporting a very long time. That's never, never happened to me.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Right.

[Tad Friend]

Oh, God.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Right.

[David Remnick]

And getting hit on by Al Qaeda.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Right, right.

[David Remnick]

So how did this get resolved?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

I'm married. I'm married. I'm happily married. And he actually sent me a message. The last time we spoke was three or four months ago. And he sent me a message saying that he's just gotten married. Good.

[David Remnick]

Some major figures in American politics and also in the foreign policy world, ranging from the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, to Leon Panetta, who headed the CIA and the Pentagon, have used the same metaphor to describe what's going on in the Middle east in particular, which is that it's going to be a 30 years war. Why is this going to be with us for so long? What is the complication? How do you see it ending?

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Oh, my God. Honestly, I don't see it ending. I mean, I don't. I wonder if in our lifetime we're going to see the end of this, because what I see, maybe we should.

[David Remnick]

Define what this is.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

That means what the problem of extreme Islam. But on the other hand, militarily, what I saw in northern Iraq and in Syria is that when you put real force against them, it's like pushing on an open door. And this is what happens with these groups is I think if you have a real force pushing them back, they fold very quickly. The problem is you then have to stay. And does the United States or any Western power, do they want to stay, you know, in these places? And now the question isn't just staying in Iraq. Now the question is staying in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Nigeria, pretty soon Somalia, the Sinai, they're trying to take over Bangladesh, Afghanistan, I mean, you know, they. And not to mention the suburbs of Paris. And so that's the, that's why your.

[David Remnick]

Forecast is for a very, very long time.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

I think so, because I think it's what I've seen about this Ideology is. It's almost like a poison that enters the groundwater. And how do you get it out?

[David Remnick]

Rukmini, thank you so much and I'd love to have you back again.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Thanks, David. It's a pleasure.

[David Remnick]

Rukmini Kalamaki is a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. New Yorker. Staff writer George Packer covered the war in Iraq and went on to write the book the Assassin's Gate. He's written about American politics and many other subjects, but he still writes about the causes of extremism and its victims.

[George Packer]

I met omar Mahdi in 2005 while I was covering the Iraq war. He was a doctor before the war, and he went on to work for Western NGOs and eventually as an interpreter for journalists, starting with me. He had a phenomenal memory. He was calm in every situation and, and he was an objective and non sectarian Iraqi. And all those things made him the ideal person to work with in the most dangerous years of the Iraq war. He and I became very good friends. And as the situation in Iraq deteriorated into a civil war, I worried about Omar's safety. His two younger brothers were kidnapped. Fortunately, he was able to get them released. Another was tortured, shot twice in the head, survived, but was horribly wounded. And finally, Omar's father was abducted by a Shia militia and Omar found him in the Baghdad morgue. When was that, Omar?

[Omar Mahdi]

That was in 2007. When someone dies, usually we take them to a place where they wash them. And my friend Ali Fadil gave me a digital camera and he told me to take picture to the body. And he said, that will be approved on what you've gone through. And I remember they put my father on like a concrete, almost like a concrete step where they put the body on before they washed them. And I hold the digital camera in my hand, trying to take pictures. And I just looked and said, that's unfair. I don't want someone to see him like that. You know, you see him partially decomposed. There was like maggots and worms coming out of. And I just said, I can't do that. And I shut down the camera and I left and we buried him that day. And by then I knew that that's it, there's nothing left for us. And I managed to get my family to Syria.

[George Packer]

What I remember from that time, Omar, is just the feeling that everything was over in Baghdad, but you couldn't leave because you had applied for a Fulbright. I remember writing a letter for you. And then month after month after month went by while you waited for the visa, even after you were approved for a Fulbright Scholarship, you had to wait for the visa. And I just kept thinking, every day he waits, he is a day closer to him getting killed. And I just wanted you to get out of there. And you and Ayad, your friend, were living together, almost like hiding in a house in Mansur, hardly ever going out and waiting, both of you, to hear whether you had gotten your visa to the United States. Finally, you got the visa, and you flew, of all places, to Muncie, Indiana, where you became a journalism master's student at Ball State. Right?

[Omar Mahdi]

Yes.

[George Packer]

It's crazy to an American to think you go from Baghdad to Muncie, Indiana. It just seems like you couldn't have gone farther away.

[Omar Mahdi]

That's true. And I was overwhelmed. How quiet and silent the town was. And in the first week, I was even unable to sleep because you're used to the noises in Baghdad and the helicopter sounds and the machine guns and explosions going on here and there. And suddenly I'm in this peaceful place where literally you hear nothing. And one night in particular, I remember I used to sleep and leave the window open, and suddenly there were this, like, loud bang. And I just, like, jumped from the bed. And I was like, where is this? And it was the. The trash truck, the dumpster. And when they put it back, it banged. And so it was like. It brought painful memories. But I think in a way, going there also helped me heal because it was just quiet and peaceful. And at Bowl State, everybody was really friendly and nice to me.

[George Packer]

And eventually your family came over too. Your mother, your sister and her family, and your younger brothers, right?

[Omar Mahdi]

Yes. As I said, before I left Iraq, I moved them to Syria. They applied for the United Nations Refugee Organization Seeking resettlement in a safer country.

[George Packer]

I'm wondering how you see the current crisis of refugees and how it compares with the situation you and your family were in.

[Omar Mahdi]

First thing, I think we are lucky that we got here and we were able to rebuild our lives. I feel really sad that those people, they might never be able to come here. It's not easy going through what they've been through. And they had to leave everything and literally leave with their clothes on them, like what we did. I met few people through work or through other friends, and they told me later that when they first met me, they were suspicious of me. But then after they knew me, they. These suspicions resolved and we became good friends. And I find it really hard now because the problem is the leaders or the candidates, they encouraging this fear, and they are encouraging this division we could.

[George Packer]

Start, Omar, with the governor of your own state of Indiana. And I should say you're now an American citizen and you are a doctor again at a hospital in Indianapolis, which is a great thing. But the governor of your own state refused to allow a Syrian family to be resettled there, and they had to be redirected from John F. Kennedy Airport to Connecticut, which welcomed them. I wonder how that made you feel as a resident of Indiana.

[Omar Mahdi]

It really made me feel sad because that's. First of all, let's talk about this family themselves, who came from horrible situation and they're looking forward to a new life. They want friendly faces who smile at them. That's all what I wanted. And then they arrived and they hear this terrible news that you're unwelcome in Indiana. And luckily they find another state that welcomed them. And here in Indiana, that tells the people that we cannot trust those people. We cannot trust whoever comes from the Middle East. And I think this may damage to the relationships between people here.

[George Packer]

Did the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, change anything for you, Omar? I think for some Americans, it seems to have sent a huge current of fear unlike anything I've ever seen in this country in my lifetime. And I'm wondering if you felt it there in Indianapolis.

[Omar Mahdi]

I have felt it. I was in the hospital when this happened, and I immediately, like, paused. I was going to see a patient, and then I saw the breaking news came on my phone and. And I was like, oh, my God, what's going on? And the whole night I had anxiety. I could hear my heart beating in my neck. I just wanted to hear what's going on. And I became more concerned when they say they were like, this is not like other mass shooting. There were two people, three people, and things were organized. And again, I was like, I hope it's not a Muslim. And that's usually the thought comes to me whenever I hear shooting or something bad happen. And then I finished my shift, I went home, and I was still there, still didn't announce any names. And then I think around 11 or so when they said the name, and it was Saeed Farooq, I remember, and I cursed. Like, I was like, that's it. That's gonna even get the backlash. And usually I wake every morning on my alarm is set on npr and I immediately went to my clock and I turn it off because I didn't want to hear the news in the morning because I knew this will be really bad. I knew there will be a big backlash. And unfortunately, that's what happened. And again, Donald Trump, he started to add all this inflammatory response and he wanted to ban all Muslims. So he was telling people, look around you, whoever looks like a Muslim, this is a risk or this is a potential threat to you.

[Tad Friend]

Yeah.

[George Packer]

But you're here and you're not going to be going anywhere. And I am going to remind you, Omar, that you owe me a visit.

[Omar Mahdi]

I will come and visit, I promise.

[George Packer]

You better take care, Omar.

[Omar Mahdi]

Thank you. You too.

[David Remnick]

Omar Mahdi, a doctor in Indianapolis talking with George Packer. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour Stick. I'm David Remnick and thanks for joining us today on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Next week, I'll talk with a woman who last year seemingly overnight became one of the most important people in American journalism. Sarah Koenig, host of the podcast Phenomenon Serial. That's next week. Now let's check in with cartoonists Matt Diffie and Emily Flake and see how they're making out with this week's batch of cartoons.

[Matt Diffie]

Hey, this is Matt Diffie. Back to Life's a batch. We spoke to Emily Flake, beginning of the work week for a cartoonist. That was Wednesday, but now it's Monday. Hopefully she's got a few ideas by now. We'll see.

[Emily Flake]

Hello, Matt, how are you?

[Matt Diffie]

I'm doing all right. It's Monday.

[Emily Flake]

I feel like I should like, you know, read you a couple of just like the random things that are written down here, like towns of hell, Chihuahuas, hoof prints in the sand, fat kitty size. I'm thinking about like kitty size ice cream cones, not fat kitty thighs. That's for a different publication. I get a lot of ideas while I do mundane tasks, you know, like making dinner, washing the dishes. I actually sold a cartoon about dishes. A plumber taking a cog out of a drain and a sort of sour looking woman standing by and the plumber is saying, Yep, it's about 25 years of resentment. All right, well, what do you, what do you got, Matt?

[Matt Diffie]

I, I want to do a joke about, you know how like horse people, they're always, oh, you're, we're spooking the horses.

[Emily Flake]

Right.

[Matt Diffie]

They always use the word spooking.

[Emily Flake]

Right.

[Matt Diffie]

But I don't know what to do with it. I don't know if it should be ghosts riding horses or if it should be something ridiculous like we should quit talking about the economy. We're spooking the horses.

[Emily Flake]

Right? Right.

[Matt Diffie]

Okay. Well, cartoon like the wind. I guess I will do the same and we'll talk after We've found out whether we sold or not.

[Emily Flake]

All right, see you later.

[David Remnick]

Matt Diffie and Emily Flake, New Yorker cartoonists. You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Charlie Kaufman hasn't made a lot of movies, but the ones he's made tend to be cult favorites and. And critical darlings. Movies like Eternal Sunshine, of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich. So a new Charlie Kaufman movie is a bit of an event. Now, the earlier movies had real people in them, but the one that's just come out, Anomalisa, is different. It's filmed entirely in stop motion animation with puppets. He and his co director, Duke Johnson, recently met up with the New Yorker's Tad Friend, and they went to the Whitney Museum of American Art here in New York, which, as it happens, maybe wasn't such a great idea.

[Duke Johnson]

You're blowing out someone's eardrums now.

[Tad Friend]

He said, be natural. Act like you normally act.

[Duke Johnson]

That's true.

[Tad Friend]

Have you guys been to this new wedding?

[Matt Diffie]

No.

[Omar Mahdi]

No.

[Tad Friend]

Me neither.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Whitney.

[Tad Friend]

We'Re in the wrong business. I thought, you know, people that don't really understand modern art. Who decides which of these works of art is worthy enough to be put in a museum and admired? Is it like by committee? Is it an individual? Well, Charlie gets one vote. Usually.

[Duke Johnson]

I get one vote. Yeah. Yeah, I was out. This day.

[Tad Friend]

I have to do my little thing, which is to say, I'm Tad Friend. I'm here with Charlie Kaufman, the writer of Anomalisa, and Duke Johnson, the director. We directed it together. Let me do it again. I'm Tad friend. I'm here with Charlie Kaufman, the writer and director, and Duke Johnson, the other director, sort of nodding. There's got to be a better way. Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, the directors. Yeah, that's good.

[Duke Johnson]

One of them is Charlie.

[Tad Friend]

Charlie Ellison. That kind of limps. Yeah. We're gonna spend a little more time on this anyway, from the creators of the new film Anomalisa.

[Duke Johnson]

That didn't work so well for me.

[Tad Friend]

And Charlie also wrote it. He wants it to be known. Probably won't be speaking to each other after this time in the Whitney. I'm Tad Friend, a staff writer here at the magazine. Anomalisa is a stop motion animation film about spending a night in a Cincinnati hotel room, drunk and alone and trying for a stab at romance. Like a lot of Charlie Kaufman's work, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, an adaptation, it's also about the sort of unquantifiable mystery of being a human Being well, is there? I guess one of the things I was curious about is why stop motion animation for that film?

[Duke Johnson]

At first, it was sort of an accident. My friend Dino Stanmitopoulos had seen the play in 2005, and he really liked it. So.

[Matt Diffie]

Right.

[Tad Friend]

It was a radio play.

[Duke Johnson]

It was a staged radio play. Yeah.

[Tad Friend]

And so with sound effects.

[Duke Johnson]

Yes. And Carter Burwell conducting musicians with his score. Dino had seen the play and he liked the play. So they came to me with the idea of stop motion, because that's what they do. Ultimately, I think it ended up being the right choice for it.

[Tad Friend]

Dino and I had been working in stop motion, animated television comedy, adult comedy. We'd always wanted to take the medium of stop motion and use it to tell emotionally authentic stories.

[Duke Johnson]

Every single thing you see in stop motion is a choice. You know, every finger movement of a character is. So you're starting to see sort of this whittling down of human movement or something, into its most essential version, maybe. And then I think there was also this sort of dreamlike quality that came with it, which fit with the story.

[Tad Friend]

The handmade aspect of it adds a soulfulness, a sense of life beyond what you're looking at.

[Duke Johnson]

You know, the influence of the animators. You can see that. And we. We're very careful to keep that in the movie. Basically, where the animators are touching the thing and you've got little fabric moves, you've got hair moving and stuff like that.

[Tad Friend]

Basically, it's the brush strokes. Every time they touch it, the impressions of their fingers leave some sort of impact. Right.

[Duke Johnson]

You feel that.

[Tad Friend]

I was thinking, like, there's something about the way Michael Stone, the main character, kind of flops on the bed, that if you saw an actor doing that, it would seem like just a movement that he happened to. But in this case, it seems like some existential, you know, beached whale kind of giving up, throwing himself into the waves.

[Duke Johnson]

I don't even know because. Because I think, you know, on some level, as an audience member, that that was planned out, that it's not an accident. It's not. It's not as a choice in the moment by an actor or. Or one of 50 takes. It's like from the moment of. The genesis of this. Of this movie, moments were built into. This happens here, this happens here.

[Tad Friend]

Right. There's a lot of thought that goes into that, right? Because, like, him falling back on the bed, the bed has to be rigged with washers to make it go down in the shape of his body. And that didn't quite work. He doesn't really bend like a human, so he's kind of hard laying on this bed that's curved in. So we actually had to animate the comforter. Whereas it's three minutes and you're shooting with live actors. It's like, could you flop a little harder? Okay, done.

[Duke Johnson]

Three minutes. And you've done it 20 times, right?

[Tad Friend]

Yeah, yeah. More flopping. Less flopping. More anxious flopping. You're talking about how he's not quite human in his body. Did you guys discuss the uncanny valley aspect of it and.

[Duke Johnson]

A lot.

[Omar Mahdi]

Yeah.

[Tad Friend]

The idea that at a certain point, if something looks human but not quite human, it freaks us out. Where something that looks totally robotic doesn't. Something that looks human doesn't bother us, but something in the middle does. Did you want to get into the uncanny valley? Did you want to?

[Duke Johnson]

No, we didn't. We didn't. And we worked really hard to avoid it. We put a lot of attention toward the eyes. They're always active in this thing and they're very articulated. And then the thing, you know, the feeling of the animator's presence, the imperfection of the movement that sort of lessens or tempers that. That uncanny valley thing.

[Tad Friend]

Should we keep wandering?

[Omar Mahdi]

Yeah.

[Tad Friend]

Do you guys have thoughts of doing another stop motion?

[Duke Johnson]

Yeah, we'd love to. If this works, you know, if this makes any kind of commercial sense and then someone wants to.

[Tad Friend]

Does it make commercial sense? What's your sense of whether it makes any sense? No idea.

[Duke Johnson]

We don't know. I mean, you know, it's really.

[Tad Friend]

Because no one's really done this before, Right. It's usually sort of Wallace and Gromit.

[Duke Johnson]

No, it's R rated. It's R rated. And so is there an audience?

[Tad Friend]

The sex is kind of like.

[Duke Johnson]

Sex is good.

[Tad Friend]

Sex is amazing for, you know, these puppets. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, congratulations, Duke. Thank you. That is the best puppet sex I have seen. Thank you. Well, we did it together, right? We within our studio have talked about, if we do another one, let's make it a little more broad, appeal to a broader audience, which is kind of sad, but Paramount, my studio, Starburns, in response to Anomalisa. Yes. Because Anomalisa literally almost destroyed the studio multiple times. Because it was like, cost $10 million or because it took so long, it cost about 8 million, I think.

[Duke Johnson]

Took up all their studios, the whole.

[Tad Friend]

Studio, the whole building, for two years, and they're not making any profit at all. We loved this experience. We're happy with the film. The way that it came out, we're happy with the way that. That it's being received. But if we had to do it again exactly in this process, it would be difficult to say okay. And to dive into three more years of, like, struggling every day, sometimes crying in the parking lot. You know, it's like, dude, how many crying in the parking lot was there, Charlie?

[Aziz Ansari]

All the time.

[Tad Friend]

You couldn't get him out of the parking lot.

[Duke Johnson]

Actually, just this morning, I had to find a parking lot in the city, which was hard, I know. Oh, look.

[Tad Friend]

As we walked through the Whitney, Charlie stopped and made his way over to the puppets and said, oh, look. Continuing his obsession with puppets. I wonder if they're real. I don't think they're real. Right. They're not functional. Should I grab one? Well, I mean, they're real things, but they're made to look like marionettes. Right, Ventura? Yeah, right. You guys are coming out at the holiday season?

[Duke Johnson]

Yes.

[Tad Friend]

Does it seem like a good holiday movie?

[Duke Johnson]

Oh, you know, I think it might be. I think it might be counterintuitive, but it might be good for the lonely people. I don't know.

[Tad Friend]

Maybe not. If you're lonely of the holidays, go see Anomalisa. That's the.

[Duke Johnson]

Yeah.

[Tad Friend]

Do you think lonely people are comforted by seeing other people being lonely?

[Duke Johnson]

I think people who feel things that aren't represented in the media feel comforted by seeing themselves represented, even if it's in their pain. I feel that way if I'm not feeling connected. I don't feel comforted by seeing connected, happy people when I don't feel it's honest, you know?

[Tad Friend]

Is there any representation of happy connectedness that strikes you, does strike you as honest?

[Duke Johnson]

Yeah, probably. I have to think about it.

[Tad Friend]

How do you feel at the end of It's a Wonderful Life?

[Duke Johnson]

Yeah, that's not my movie.

[David Remnick]

That's Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson talking about their new film Anomalisa with the New Yorkers. Tad, friend, let's check in with our cartoonist now and see if they finally made their deadline.

[Emily Flake]

Hello.

[Matt Diffie]

Hey, Emily. How's it going?

[Emily Flake]

It's going well. How are you?

[Matt Diffie]

Pretty good, because I actually sold a cartoon this week.

[Emily Flake]

I also sold a cartoon, which makes me very. The cartoon I sold is a family, you know, picking apples, and the father is sort of brightly saying, maybe next time we can mine our own salt.

[Matt Diffie]

That's pretty good. Well, I sold one. Remember, I was talking about spooking the horses? So it's two cowboys ride on horses and one of them saying, stop saying President Trump. You're spooking the horses.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

Yeah.

[Matt Diffie]

Had one, though, that I don't even think we talked about, but I really hoped it would sell. Three cowboys on horseback and one of them is looking into the pot and he's saying, which one of you keeps eating all the oatmeal? And then when you look at the cowboys on horseback, you realize that one of them is not actually a cowboy on horseback, but a cowboy centaur.

[Emily Flake]

I truly love the idea of a centaur being part of a cowboy crew. I think you can exploit that for other jokes.

[Matt Diffie]

All Centaur Batch next week Matt Diffie.

[David Remnick]

And Emily Flake, cartoonists extraordinaire. Matt will be back in a few weeks with another installment of Life's a Batch. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us today on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Next week, I'll talk with Sarah Koenig, the host of Serial. Till then, have a great week and a happy new year.

[Rukmini Callimachi]

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 Tuneyards. This episode was produced by Emily Botin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Paul Schneider and Steven Valentino, with help from Becky Cooper.