Episode 12: Sarah Koenig on "Serial," and a Resilient Poet

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode 12: Sarah Koenig on "Serial," and a Resilient Poet
Date: January 8, 2016
Host: David Remnick
Podcast by: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

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Overview

This episode features in-depth conversations and storytelling on three diverse topics:

• An interview with Sarah Koenig, creator and host of the podcast Serial, discussing its impact, journalistic style, and the evolution from season one to two.
• A profile of poet Robin Coste Lewis, interviewed by Hilton Als, tracing her artistic journey following a traumatic brain injury.
• Reflections on education reform with Jelani Cobb revisiting his alma mater, Jamaica High School, and its closure.
• Bonus: A segment with John Seabrook and his son Harry about the changing landscape of pop music and its influence across generations.

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1. Sarah Koenig on Serial: Podcasting, Ethics & Empathy

[00:28–18:54]

The Beginnings: From Russia to Podcasting

• David Remnick recounts meeting Sarah Koenig in Moscow in the 1990s when she was a rookie reporter for The New York Times.
  "It was very, very clear that she had everything it takes to become a first-class reporter." (00:28)

Transition from Print Journalism to Serial

• Crime reporting in print: Koenig describes herself as too empathetic for conventional court reporting, often seeing truth on both sides.

  • Quote: "I was always really suckered by both sides... There’s shades of truth here that are a lot subtler than we generally acknowledge in this system." (02:30, Sarah Koenig)

• Why switch from newspapers to audio: She was uninspired by traditional assignments and inspired hearing This American Life on the radio:

  • "That is what I want to do." (04:27)

The Phenomenon of Serial

• Season 1’s murder mystery resonated with listeners far more than Koenig anticipated:
  • "People really like a murder story. I didn’t understand the true crime genre." (05:19)

Grappling with True Crime Ethics

• Koenig is unsettled by the commodification of crime stories, but feels Serial resists this trend:
  • "I see others doing it and I like to criticize them, but I don’t think I did that." (05:43)
  • Remnick draws a parallel to In Cold Blood and its ambiguity in blending reporting and sensationalism.

On Empathy & Understanding in Storytelling

• Koenig aspires to foster empathy without judgment:
  • "At least don’t judge before you’ve tried to understand. That’s what I want." (07:47)

Choosing Season 2’s Subject: Bowe Bergdahl

• The story came via Mark Boal, who had recorded 25 hours of interviews with Bergdahl; Koenig herself never interviewed him directly.
  • On access and ethics: "We’ve certainly not paid Bowe any money and as far as I know there’s not been any money exchanged between Page One and Bowe." (09:23)
  • Koenig had to rely on existing, intimate recordings: "He was trying really hard to explain himself in a way that I find rare." (10:57)

Bergdahl’s Motivation, In His Words

• Excerpt of Bergdahl explaining his mindset before leaving his post:
  • "I was trying to prove to myself. I was trying to prove to the world... that I was capable of... being that person." (12:01, Bowe Bergdahl)
  • "It wasn’t that I just decided, hey, I’m going to do this to prove that I could do it... I was trying to find a solution to the problem at hand, and I just tied into it this idea, kind of like two birds with one stone." (12:38, Bowe Bergdahl)

Sarah Koenig’s Distinctive Voice and Process

• Writing and performance are heavily scripted yet deliberately personal.
  • "I need to know what you make of all this... Otherwise, I don’t care. You need to make me care." (14:06, Julie Snyder as quoted by Koenig)
  • Objective: build trust with listeners: "You can trust me because I’ve done my homework... for me to get away with having a little fun in it, you have to earn [it]." (15:34)

Impact on Journalism and Podcasting

• Koenig sees Serial as blending established journalistic and serialized storytelling elements, but with unique week-to-week suspense.
  • "People found that they were interacting with it in their brains in the same way that they’re interacting with... escapist entertainment... It’s journalism. And I’m interacting with journalism in the same way that I interact with escapist entertainment." (17:20)

Memorable Quotes

• "Having a voice in your stories is not new. But there was something about the bringing together of all these things." (17:20)
• "You want the story itself to innately matter." (18:36, David Remnick)
• "A lot of people, listening helps make things matter." (18:38, Sarah Koenig)

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2. Robin Coste Lewis: Poetry, Disability & Resilience

[19:33–30:30]

Prompt for the Conversation

• Poet Robin Coste Lewis won the National Book Award for her debut collection Voyage of the Sable Venus, inspired by images of Black women in Western art.

Uncovering Hidden Histories in Art

• The title comes from 18th-century pro-slavery imagery, leading to a research project uncovering Black women’s overlooked presence in art.
  • "So many black women in exhibitions all over the world... but you wouldn’t think of it, because who would think to look...?" (21:10, Robin Coste Lewis)

Personal Crisis: The Accident and Aftermath

• Lewis suffered a catastrophic fall, resulting in traumatic brain injury, losing the ability to read or write, and facing intense daily limitations.
  • "I fought really hard for a year to teach myself the alphabet again... the language control of my brain was badly damaged." (23:04)
  • Her new writing process: only able to write one line per day, which shaped her poetic style—"the best damn line I can think of." (24:47)

Triumph & New Freedoms

• Despite being told she’d never write, teach, or have a child, Lewis achieved all three.
  • "They told me I could never write again, teach again, read again, and not become a mother." (25:30)
  • On becoming a mother: "I tried and tried and tried for many, many years. And then it finally happened. The deep irony is I found out I was pregnant four days after my father's funeral." (27:36)

Living with Brain Injury

• Lewis views her brain’s quirks as artistic gifts:

  • "I still very much appreciate that my brain has become an odd little bedfellow... that's kind of sexy to me. I like that you see things that other people aren't seeing." (28:00)

• Parenting with disability:

  • "It's like, mommy's brain is in a wheelchair... I feel like I'm constantly repressing his little spirit in ways in order to stay asymptomatic and take care of him." (29:29)

Notable Quotes

• "That calm brain damage, the gift that keeps on taking, you know." (24:30, Robin Coste Lewis)
• "Partly because if I'm gonna die, I can write whatever the hell I want... I'm so free, yes." (24:33–24:48)
• "There's nothing like being annoyed to get... the juice is going." (25:46, Robin Coste Lewis)
• "You wake up with him and it's like, look, we're here." (28:40, Hilton Als / Lewis)

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3. Jelani Cobb Returns to Jamaica High: Schools, Community, and Change

[34:43–45:56]

The Story of Jamaica High School’s Demise

• Once prestigious, Jamaica High in Queens closed in 2014 after years of decline and policy changes.

  • "...Produced several Pulitzer Prize winners and Olympians. As recently as the mid-80s... cited as an outstanding school on the national level." (34:46, David Remnick)

• Journalist and alumnus Jelani Cobb revisits, reflecting on the school’s racial and cultural diversity and the sense of community it fostered.

  • "Jamaica was the kind of place where a black kid from the south side of the borough and a Pakistani Muslim... could bond over our mutual interest in breakdancing." (35:09)

Systemic Changes and Decline

• City policies and changing demographics led to a drop in performance and support—even as the building kept its grandeur.
• Former student Kimberly Walcott discusses the loss of academic programs and resources.

Closure and Broader Significance

• A past school shooting in 1986 continued to shape perceptions decades later.

  • "Unfortunately, school shootings are common now. But at this point in time, we did not have any frame of reference for something like that happening." (42:55, Jelani Cobb)

• Cobb reflects on why communities rally to save “failing” schools—not just for nostalgia, but belief in their potential and the loss of opportunity for future students.

Memorable Quote

• "When we close schools, we're not just closing the school... we're closing a particular history." (43:50, Jelani Cobb)

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4. Music Across Generations: John and Harry Seabrook

[46:45–54:39]

Pop Music Bonds

• John Seabrook, inspired by his son Harry’s love of contemporary pop, became fascinated by the behind-the-scenes songwriters shaping today’s hits.
  • "Some guys talk about sports with their kids, but music, that's something that we totally kind of saw eye to eye on and bonded over." (49:00)
• Together, they discuss how pop production has become an "assembly line," and how the music's raunchier lyrics and sonic complexity mark it as different from previous generations.
  • "I realized that this giant change had taken place... There had been this enormous change, and now songs were tracks... the whole thing is a giant assembly line." (52:57, Harry Seabrook)
• Harry: "It's sort of disenchanting." (53:22)

Memorable/Funny Moments

• John: "I don't think the book would exist without you, man." (54:21)
• Father and son camaraderie, sharing and sometimes resisting each other's musical tastes.

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Notable Quotes & Highlights

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Highlight | |-----------|------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:30 | Sarah Koenig | "I was always really suckered by both sides...There’s shades of truth here..." | | 05:19 | Sarah Koenig | "People really like a murder story. I didn’t understand the true crime genre." | | 07:47 | Sarah Koenig | "At least don't judge before you've tried to understand. That's what I want." | | 12:01 | Bowe Bergdahl | "I was trying to prove to myself. I was trying to prove to the world..." | | 15:34 | Sarah Koenig | "You can trust me because I’ve done my homework..." | | 17:20 | Sarah Koenig | "Having a voice in your stories is not new...But bringing together..." | | 21:10 | Robin Coste Lewis | "So many black women in exhibitions all over the world...but you wouldn't think of it." | | 24:30 | Robin Coste Lewis | "That calm brain damage, the gift that keeps on taking, you know." | | 27:36 | Robin Coste Lewis | "The deep irony is I found out I was pregnant four days after my father's funeral." | | 43:50 | Jelani Cobb | "When we close schools, we're not just closing the school...we're closing a particular history." | | 52:57 | Harry Seabrook | "It's kind of like the whole thing is a giant assembly line..." |

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Sarah Koenig Interview: 00:28–18:54
• Robin Coste Lewis Conversation: 19:33–30:30
• Jelani Cobb on Jamaica High: 34:43–45:56
• John & Harry Seabrook on Pop Music: 46:45–54:39

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Episode Takeaways

• Sarah Koenig explores the ethics, empathy, and innovative style underpinning Serial, and how her work gently bends, but doesn't break, traditional journalism’s rules.
• Robin Coste Lewis turns profound adversity into artistic voice and agency, redrawing the limits of what’s possible after catastrophic injury.
• Jelani Cobb’s walk through Jamaica High is a meditation on community memory, systemic neglect, and the layered value of public institutions.
• John and Harry Seabrook’s dialogue illustrates how music bridges generational deep-dives—and how the pop industry’s mechanics both enchant and disillusion.

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Perfect for listeners seeking layered, empathetic storytelling and critical thought across reporting, art, education, and pop culture.

Transcript

[John Seabrook]

Floor 38.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Sarah Koenig]

A co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. It's very exciting to be having a conversation with someone when they have that.

[David Remnick]

Revelation, right at first he's really smart.

[Sarah Koenig]

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

[David Remnick]

You know, every parent maybe looking at.

This case, it could be an interesting process piece.

Okay.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Now, for many years, I've been reporting from Russia, living there in the late 80s and early 90s as a reporter for the Washington Post and returning for reporting trips ever since. In the 90s, when Big Boris Yeltsin was in power, I was hanging out with some friends and I met a funny, smart young woman in the New York Times bureau named Sarah Koenigse. She wasn't long out of school, but it was very, very clear that she had everything it takes to become a first class reporter. But who knew what kind. Sarah Koenig became the co creator and the host of Serial. I think you know the rest. It was downloaded about a kazillion times and changed radio and podcasting completely. Now Serial is into its second season with a story about a young man named Bowe Bergdahl who wanders off his base in Afghanistan and ends up captured by the Taliban. He was a prisoner for five years until the US Government finally worked out a prisoner exchange deal. Joining me is Sarah Koenigk. So, Sarah, I don't think we've talked in years. I met you in Moscow in maybe the 92, 93 or something like that, am I right?

[Sarah Koenig]

A little later, I believe it would have been 96ish.

[David Remnick]

Ah.

And you worked for the New York Times?

[Sarah Koenig]

I did. I was a peon.

[David Remnick]

And now we're talking some years later and you are the host of the most remarkable podcast. And I want to talk first about what came in between.

[Sarah Koenig]

Okay.

[David Remnick]

You were a crime reporter for a conventional newspaper for a while, and what you made your mark on last year with the first season of Serial was a crime story. And I'm wondering how you see the way you would do a crime piece in a newspaper and the way you set about thinking about things when you came all these years later to Serial.

[Sarah Koenig]

I mean, I feel like I. It's not like I was some great court reporter or anything. I think, though, maybe, maybe if I try to parse it now, I was always really suckered by both sides. I'd be covering her trial and I'd be like, well, that Sounds reasonable. You know, and then the defense would get out and be like, right. He didn't. That's right. Like, I believed everyone. Like, there's shades of truth in here that are a lot subtler than we generally acknowledge in this system. And that was always the part that was interesting to me.

[David Remnick]

Were you sick of newspapers? Was there a fed up moment?

[John Seabrook]

No.

[Sarah Koenig]

I mean, I feel like, yes, I was fed up, but I was a bad fit. I mean, the stuff that was interesting to me was never quite what was interesting to my editors.

[David Remnick]

So give me an example of that.

[Sarah Koenig]

Oh, it's so. I just remember there was a time I had been covering this thing where the courthouse itself, the building was basically sort of infested is the wrong word when you're talking about pigeons. But, like, there were just a ton of pigeons everywhere. And what would happen is, like, they would die, and just, like, their carcasses would be rotting on the little balconies outside people's windows. Like, it was disgusting. And people were starting to, like. People were worried that it was, like, a health problem. People were getting, like, bronchial problems and getting weird infections. And I remember that they had a press conference in front of the courthouse, and there was a poster. Like, someone had, like, pinned up a poster on the podium, and it said, cancer, cancer, cancer. And I just found that really funny. Just like the theater of how government works and how press conferences are just, like, the inherent phoniness of them and the inherent theater of it. And, like, I just remember really enjoying all of that and that kind of coming out in the story. And just like, all of it, cut, cut, slash, slash. Take it out, take it out, take it out. Which is proper, right? Like, nobody cares. I don't know. The truth is, I heard this American Life on the radio one day and was just like, what is that? I had never heard anything about, like, that. And I was like, that's what I want to do. That is what I want to do.

[David Remnick]

And so you went to work at this American Life for a while and started a side project called Serial.

Yeah.

And the first season is about a high school murder mystery. It's a huge hit. And now the second season is about this kid who walks off his army post in Afghanistan. You and your colleagues strangely warned that people probably aren't gonna like season two as much as they did season one, which struck me as kind of funny. Why did you say that?

[Sarah Koenig]

It's not that they. Well, I guess it is that they wouldn't like it. I think that there was, you know, And I weirdly, did not understand this going into season one.

[David Remnick]

Wow.

[Sarah Koenig]

People really like a murder story. I didn't understand the true crime genre.

[David Remnick]

Did something about true crime bother you? The confluence of people die and it becomes a form of kind of entertainment and news at the same time.

[Sarah Koenig]

I mean, it bothers me. I don't think I thought about it that much before I did the Syed case.

[David Remnick]

It bothers you now what you actually went and did?

[Sarah Koenig]

No, because I don't think I did that. I see others doing it and I like to criticize them, but I don't think I did that.

[David Remnick]

So in 1965, the New Yorker published Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which was a mass murder. Somebody, two people broke into a house and killed an entire family. Truman Capote came to William Shawn, the editor of. At that time, and said. And he kind of lied. He said, I want to write a piece about the way this murder affected the town. And Sean thought this was a great idea. And then, of course, Trima Caputty went out and he wrote the greatest true crime book ever written. And it kind of invented what's now known as the nonfiction novel. And one of the secrets of New Yorker history is that William Shawn hated In Cold Blood. Really embarrassed him. Yeah, it made him worry. People are running to the newsstands to hear about this thing that I'm finding deeply unsettling.

[Sarah Koenig]

It was untoward.

[David Remnick]

You're saying that you didn't do what Capote did in some way?

[Sarah Koenig]

Well, I mean, I think maybe we're talking apples and oranges. I think that there's an industry of true crime. And then there's also just like the whole franchise of CSI, SVU, Law & Order, all of that stuff. Right. Which is drama, which is a different thing. But I think sort of taken together, there is this whole industry of crime stories, murder stories, and mostly they are making things more fake than they are. And I don't think that In Cold Blood does that. I think that the brilliance of what he did, right, is he makes you kinda almost empathize with these killers. I mean, he makes you. Or at the very least, he forces you to try to understand them. And, like, that's the huge difference that I see.

[David Remnick]

And that's what you want.

[Sarah Koenig]

That's what I want, yes.

[David Remnick]

You want us to empathize with the subject of the first one and now Bowe Bergdahl.

[Sarah Koenig]

Or at least try to understand. At least don't judge before you've tried to understand. That's what I want.

[David Remnick]

When you're looking for a second story, you're looking for a second season. What were you looking for? What did you want? And then how did the Borgdahl story happen?

[Sarah Koenig]

So we didn't know what we want. We really were like, we were really floundering around for a while. So the Bergdahl story came because Mark Bowles production company, Page One. So Hugo Lindgren, who's. I don't remember his title exactly, I think he's the president of Page One or something. He knew Julie Snyder, my partner and so he sort of came to her and was like, hey, we have this tape, do you think we could do something with it?

[David Remnick]

So this is totally fascinating. Mark Bol, I think it's fair to say that he was a journalist, turned to the movie business and he's famous for Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. And he goes and he approaches Beau Bergdo and gets access to him and interviews him for 25 hours. What was the arrangement there? Because in the movie business when you do that and you get someone's access and life rights, you very normally you pay for them. Was that the case in this case?

[Sarah Koenig]

So he, you know, like obviously Beau had agreed to talk to him and Beau knew that these conversations were for research for this movie. I feel like I probably shouldn't talk about whatever Mark's arrangement is with Bo, just cuz it's not my business.

[David Remnick]

But isn't it your business? I mean.

[Sarah Koenig]

Well, I know it, I know it. I just don't know that I should be talking to you about it. I mean what I can say is like we've certainly not paid Beau any money and as far as I know there's not been any money exchanged between Page One and Beau. But I would want to totally fact check that. That I can say that I can say, yeah.

[David Remnick]

And what's your relationship with Bo Bergdahl?

[Sarah Koenig]

So my relationship is very arm's length. It's completely mediated through Mark.

[David Remnick]

So that's a challenge. I've got to think, what challenge does that present? How do you deal with it?

[Sarah Koenig]

So I really worried about that in the beginning. I was like, how am I even gonna find my way into this material if I can't interview him on the record myself and all of that.

[David Remnick]

Can you interview him at all? Did you talk to him off the record or, or it's just. Do you have the ability to pick up the phone and talk to Bergdahl?

[Sarah Koenig]

I do not have the ability to pick up the phone and talk to.

[David Remnick]

Bergdahl in no way communicate with him.

[Sarah Koenig]

It'S a little. What I'll say is, what I have access to are the recordings that Mark Bol has made with beau, and it's.

[David Remnick]

25 hours of it. And the first thing you do is. Do what? You just listen straight through.

[Sarah Koenig]

Well, the first thing I do is read straight through. Read the transcripts. Yeah.

[David Remnick]

And when you read them the first time, what was the impression that you had? You thought, oh, my God, he's so brilliant. He's an idiot. He's so fascinated.

[Sarah Koenig]

What's your takeaway? My thing was I'd never seen someone talk about this topic in a way that felt intimate like this. And frankly, just some of the facts of it are on their face, extraordinary. So he's also describing something that almost no one has experienced before. The other thing that struck me is he's a really unusual person. The way he thinks is not the usual way. And I felt like he was trying really hard to explain himself in a way that I find rare. How do you mean that? He's really trying to explain how things felt and how he put pieces of information together in his head and then the decisions he made based on those. On that information. How he's like.

[David Remnick]

It's shocking. At one point, I was listening, I guess it was in episode one, and he says he wants to be Jason Bourne somehow he wants to, quote, prove to the world that I was the real thing.

[Bowe Bergdahl]

I was trying to prove to myself. I was trying to prove to the world, anybody who used to know me that I was capable of, you know, being that person.

[David Remnick]

Like a super soldier, you mean?

[Bowe Bergdahl]

Yeah. Capable of being what I appeared to be.

[David Remnick]

Why not just wait and see if you got the opportunity to prove that? Like on a mission, you know, because you hadn't even been there that long. Like, why not wait. Why not wait a couple months and see if you get a chance to prove yourself in a, you know, some kind of tactical engagement?

[Bowe Bergdahl]

Because it was a combination of situations. The situation that I was in was an extremely bad situation. I saw things falling apart as far as my command was.

[David Remnick]

Right, right, right.

[Bowe Bergdahl]

Was concerned. So it wasn't that I just decided, hey, I'm going to do this to prove that I could do it. I was trying to find a solution to the problem at hand, and I just tied into it this idea, kind of like two birds with one stone.

[David Remnick]

I was just gonna say two birds with one stone.

[Sarah Koenig]

I mean, this is also what's cool about it, is, you know, at the time, Beau doesn't know that he's Talking to a podcast audience. Beau's just talking to Mark for research on a movie. It's not a journalistic endeavor. In quite the same way that I was doing with Adnan, where, like, I'm approaching him as a reporter saying, like, I look at this.

[David Remnick]

But just to be clear, Bergdahl was okay with the switching over of the purpose of those tapes.

[Sarah Koenig]

Oh, of course. Like, ye. I mean, I wouldn't be doing the podcast if he weren't like, yes, of course. And in a way, it's kind of freeing, you know, for me, where I don't have to worry about that relationship all the time. It's stressful to manage that relationship over like a year and a half or however long I was doing it with.

[David Remnick]

A nun over time. In the same way that a writer develops a voice in print that's not precisely him or her. You've done the same on radio. How conscious is it and how did you come to it?

[Sarah Koenig]

So, I don't know. I think the best way I can explain it is when I started to write season one. The first episode came pretty easily, but the second episode, we did edit after edit after edit, and it was just taking weeks. And my colleagues were just like, it's not working. It's not good. Finally, Julie Snyder, who's my partner, she was just like, I need to know what you make of all this. You, Sarah Canning, make up all this. Otherwise, I don't care. I don't know why you're telling me all this stuff about, like, high school kids. I don't care. You need to make me care. And I was like, ooh. And I was quite uncomfortable with that initially, but then I realized, like, oh, that's the thing that's gonna make you listen to the stuff I think is important.

[David Remnick]

And that's what makes. I mean, to some degree, it's Sarah Koenig's voice and also the peeling back of the artifice of old fashioned journalism, of saying, here's the way this sausage is done. Sarah, is your voice on the radio completely written out?

[Sarah Koenig]

Yes. Yes, it is. So scripted. Everything is. So.

[David Remnick]

Then what are you trying to achieve? In the Sarah Koenig that you're presenting, no writer is herself or himself on the page exactly the way they are, out in the cold, messy life. So what's the difference?

[Sarah Koenig]

What's the difference? I mean, yeah, I'm probably more cheerful on the. I mean, I don't know, you know, like, I feel like that's so personal. I feel like you're asking me to, like, you know, undress or something.

[David Remnick]

We're not in the same room. People should die.

[Sarah Koenig]

That's true. I know. God. Phew. I. I think that I am trying to convey that you can trust me because I've done my homework. I know that sounds really boring, but for me to get away with having a little fun in it, like making a joke every once in a while, which I just think, like, sometimes you just need it when the material is dark, it's just. It helps you get through, like, the.

[David Remnick]

Moment of here's me calling the Taliban.

[Sarah Koenig]

Sure, right. Like, I mean, I'm just. It's funny to me. Like, I would like to be able to make jokes, but I think, like, you have to earn in the sense that, like, it can't just be self indulgence all the time. You have to kind of. You have to telegraph that, like, I'm gonna be interrogating this story in the same way you, the listener, are interrogating it at home. I'm standing in for the listener all the time. I feel like that's what I'm trying to do.

[David Remnick]

So, clearly, newspapers in this country, not just provincial newspapers, but newspapers in general, are having a horrendous time.

[Sarah Koenig]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

And it's not just because of the squinching down of advertising and all. It occurs to me that some of it might have to do with style. And along comes this different way of telling a story, and it appeals particularly to younger people. What do you glean from. What lessons do you take away? What do you think you brought to the table that wasn't there, that caused such a furor and such a center of interest?

Hmm.

[Sarah Koenig]

I mean, nothing that I did was new. Exactly. You know, in other words, like, narrative journalism isn't new. Serialized storytelling is not new. Having a voice in your stories is not new. But I think that there was something about the bringing together of all of these things, and especially the kind of week to week thing where you had to wait a week in between. And I think what happened is people found that they were enjoying. They were interacting with it in their brains in the same way that they're interacting with, like, escapist entertainment. So, like House of Cards or something like that, you know, and then they sort of were like, wait, it's not. But it's real. It's journalism. This is journalism. And I'm interacting with journalism in the same way that I interact with escapist entertainment. So of course that, like. So that raises, like, a question, right? Like, is that. Okay, how do you answer that? And Yeah, I mean, I think it is okay as long as I am sticking to journalistic principles and as long as we're sticking to the truth, you know, I mean, however you define that. But I think we're okay. I mean, you want people to listen to your stories like we all do, right? Like, there's no.

[David Remnick]

You want the story itself to innately matter, to have some.

[Sarah Koenig]

You want it to matter. Yeah, of course. But like a lot of people, listening helps make things matter. I mean, that's. No matter how beautiful it is, if, like, 10 people read it, it wasn't gonna matter.

[David Remnick]

We'll be listening. And, Sarah, it is great to connect with you again after so long.

Thank you.

Take care.

[Sarah Koenig]

Bye.

[David Remnick]

Sarah Koenig is the host and executive producer of the podcast serial. We did follow up with Mark Bowles production company, and they confirm what Sarah said. Bo Bergdahl has not been paid to participate in the making of cereal. I'm David Remnick. Coming up, Hilton Knowles talks with the poet Robin Cost Lewis, whose story of enduring a personal disaster, a terrible accident, to win acclaim as a writer is truly remarkable. That's next on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stay tuned.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, my God. This book is one of the high points of my life.

[David Remnick]

Oh, my gosh.

[Hilton Als]

I begged to review it.

[David Remnick]

Thank you.

[Hilton Als]

And I said, she's gonna win this award.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, I'm glad everybody knew. I didn't know.

That's Hilton Als, a staff writer at the New Yorker, talking with Robin Cost Lewis about her debut poetry collection, which just won a National Book Award. The book is Voyage of the Sable Venus, and it takes its name from an 18th century engraving.

There's this gorgeous black woman on a clamshell like Botticelli's Venus, and she's attended by all these classical figures. And it isn't until you really look at that you realize it's a pro slavery image because Triton or Neptune is carrying. Instead of a trident, he's carrying a flag of the Union Jack.

That got her interested in images of black women in Western art, a research project that got much bigger than she ever anticipated.

It just led me on this whole path, and I really thought at the time it was going to be a few pages long. And then every time I would do research, it would just get darker and deeper and longer and more horrid. It just didn't stop. It didn't let up.

Voyage of the Sable Venus is Robin Cass Lewis first book of poems. She was trained as a Sanskrit scholar at Harvard, and Now in her 50s, she's working on a Ph.D. the Western art Project.

As beautiful as it is, it also has such an ugly underside for so many kinds of people.

[Hilton Als]

Well, it had to hack away other things in order to stand on something.

[David Remnick]

Right, right. So, you know, like, for me, if I would go into a museum and see some kind of GR. Historical painting about some emperor doing something fabulous, conquering some land, there might not have been a black woman in that painting, but the frame might have had black female bodies carved throughout it in some kind of subservient position.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

Do you know? And we're not supposed to notice that frame, and we're not supposed to think about it, but it's there. And that's what was so fascinating to me, is that there are so many black women in exhibitions all over the world, in every time period, in every country, every continent. It's everywhere. But you wouldn't think of it, because who would think to look at the carving of a comb closely or the face of a button for an emperor? Why would someone need to carve a black female body onto the button of an emperor?

Why?

You know, and then when you start looking just for that, that's when it begins to kind of emerge.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

And so I wouldn't have. I don't think I would have done. I don't think. I don't know that I would have seen that had my brain not slowed me down and made me look more slowly.

[Hilton Als]

Yes. I know that you began writing poetry because of something that happened.

[Kimberly Walcott]

Yeah.

[Hilton Als]

Do you. Can you do. Would you mind talking about that?

[David Remnick]

Not at all. Not at all. I was in what they call a catastrophic acc. I fell through an open stairwell, and I.

[Hilton Als]

What does that mean? There were no stairs.

[David Remnick]

There was no rail.

[Hilton Als]

There was no rail that I didn't know.

[David Remnick]

And it was a dark room, and I was going to get my coat in a restaurant, and they failed to tell me there was a hole in the middle of the floor, and I walked into air.

[Hilton Als]

Where was this?

[David Remnick]

In San Francisco.

[Hilton Als]

Mm.

[David Remnick]

I was at a conference, and I was just having dinner with a friend, and I got cold and I asked for my coat, and they led me back to this room and said, it's over there. And I could see my coat hanging on a wall, but I couldn't see the hole in the floor.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, my God.

[David Remnick]

So I fell through. And for the last. I guess it's 16 years now. 16 years. I've been doing a lot of rehab and recovery and some.

[Hilton Als]

What was the effect of the falling?

[Sarah Koenig]

Well.

[David Remnick]

Oh, thank you. So I was diagnosed with permanent, mild to moderate brain damage. So a traumatic brain injury. And then I had all kinds of injuries all over my body. I still have so many surgeries to have that I'll be going into soon. But the most kind of devastating part of it was the brain injury. And at some point, I couldn't read or write. And I was very. They call it exquisite hypersensitivity. Everything triggered some kind of symptom. Talking, walking, seeing, hearing, smelling, you name it. Anything that had to do with the senses would send me into a spiral where I would end up sleeping for days upon days. My memory. I fought really hard for a year to teach myself the Alphabet again. It took a year just to do that because the language control of my brain was badly damaged. But, you know, I hate to be that person that is always looking for the green side of something, but it turned out to be, in many ways, a blessing in disguise. That calm brain damage, the. The gift that keeps on taking, you.

[Bowe Bergdahl]

Know.

[David Remnick]

And I don't think that. I know, I joke with my friends that this book is actually about brain damage. I know I would not have written this book had I not had that accident. So. Partly because if I'm gonna die, I can write whatever the hell I want.

[Hilton Als]

Exactly. You're free.

[David Remnick]

I'm so free, yes. And there's no one to care about much in terms of pleasing. But also, the doctors told me I could only write one line a day, and I could only read one line a day. And that, of course, spiraled me into an incredible depression for several months. And then at some point, you know how that grace, that voice of grace just comes into your mind? And this voice just said to me, okay, then it's going to be the best damn line I can think of. And so every single day I would spend in bed thinking of the best line, and I couldn't write because my hands were all in different casts and all kinds of splints.

[Hilton Als]

Were you a mother when you had this accident?

[David Remnick]

No. No, no, no. They also told me I couldn't have a kid. They told me I could never write again, teach again, read again, and not become a mother.

[Hilton Als]

And you've done all those things?

[David Remnick]

I've done all those things.

[Hilton Als]

You know, this is.

[David Remnick]

I was annoyed. I was enraged.

[Hilton Als]

Yes. There's nothing like being annoyed to get.

[David Remnick]

Absolutely. The juice is going, oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Hilton Als]

Tell me about your son. And how did that miracle occur to you?

[David Remnick]

Oh, my God. What do you mean?

[John Seabrook]

How?

[Hilton Als]

Well, I know how it happens, but the decisions.

[David Remnick]

There's a bird and there's a bee.

[Hilton Als]

Yes, exactly. There's a stork in the diaper.

[John Seabrook]

Exactly.

[Hilton Als]

But how did you decide to become a mother?

[David Remnick]

This is such a great question. I have been haunted with being a mother all my life. And when they told me I couldn't have kids, I really had to think about it. And I thought about it for like a decade. You know, what does it mean to be a disabled woman and to have a child? And don't be selfish and mess with this kid's life if you can't really raise him or her well. And then one day I was walking down the street in Boston. I was doing major rehabilitation at the time. I was in occupational therapy, speech language therapy. Just, you know, going outside would hurt. And one day I'd gone to do something, and there was a woman, this gorgeous woman in a power wheelchair wheeling down the street of what felt like to me, 60 miles per hour with two of her kids in her lap.

[Hilton Als]

Wow.

[David Remnick]

She was like, high talented. And they were having such a good time. And I was like, you idiot, if this woman can raise her kids, you can have a kid. And she was such my inspiration. And so then I was hell bent. And I tried and tried and tried for many, many years. And then it finally happened. Finally happened. And the deep irony for me is that my father was the first person to tell me, way before my accident, I think you really should have a baby, Robin. You want to be a mother, you should just do it. My father was incredible. He was funny, too.

[Hilton Als]

I love him already.

[David Remnick]

Oh, he was so good. And the deep irony is I found out after years of trying to get pregnant, I found out I was pregnant four days after my father's funeral.

[Hilton Als]

Oh, wow.

[David Remnick]

Which felt so magical to me because I always told him, you know, you know, when you die, you better take me with you, because there's no reason I'm staying without you. And so the fact that when I found out I was pregnant, it felt like he stayed with me in some way.

[Hilton Als]

How does the accident impact you today?

[David Remnick]

Well, I mean, I've grown comfortable with being brain damaged.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

It's become familiar. You know that saying that human beings can get used to anything? I got used to it. I don't know. I still very much appreciate that my brain has become an odd little bedfellow with me. We love each other. I'm like, you're a freak brain. And that's kind of sexy to me. I like that you see these things.

[John Seabrook]

That other people aren't seeing.

[David Remnick]

But keep it to yourself. And we'll try to turn it into art at some point.

[Hilton Als]

Yeah. Does it help you parent in a different way, do you think?

[David Remnick]

Absolutely. It helps me put it in fifth gear every day from the gate. And, you know, you wake up with.

[Hilton Als]

Him and it's like, look, we're here.

[David Remnick]

Absolutely. And also, I mean, this is the macabre part. Like, supposedly my brain won't last as long as most people's brains will last. I know that, and I think that's also why I push myself so hard to write. There's a certain urgency. Like, I feel like I'm fighting the clock until my brain starts to rot. And. And so I try to have a lot of fun. I try to parent him for the future. Like, I've already. Like, I have a whole library for him once I'm gone. I have friends sign books to him for the future because I know there's gonna come a time where I won't be able to be present in the same way that I am now.

[Hilton Als]

Did you talk to him about that?

[David Remnick]

I do. I mean, I had to because. Because my disability is invisible.

[Hilton Als]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

And so the way I described it to him when he was younger, I said, it's like, mommy's brain is in a wheelchair, you know, and sometimes, you know, it's hard because, you know, he's a gregarious, precocious, fabulous child. And, you know, he's about eight now. He's seven. And I have to tell him sometimes to be quiet. That's a drag. That's just a drag. Or I can't. You know, I'm sad that he doesn't know the person before my accident, because I was a huge audiophile. I mean, like a music collection, that's brilliant. And I can't listen to music and have people talking at the same time in a room unless it's a lot of people talking. So things like that. Like, I'm constantly. I feel like I'm constantly repressing his little spirit in ways. In order to stay.

[Hilton Als]

Sweetie.

[David Remnick]

In order to stay asymptomatic and, like, take care of him or make him dinner. So in those ways. But it's also okay because I feel like, you know, he's getting to learn about the ways in which bodies are.

[Hilton Als]

Different and also the ways in which life curtails us.

[David Remnick]

Absolutely.

That's Hilton Als, a staff writer at the New Yorker, talking with the poet Robin Cost Lewis. Her debut collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus, just won a National Book Award. I'm David Remnick. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Now, Richard Brody writes about movies for the New Yorker. And whenever I run into him in the hallway, he's got something interesting, maybe even eccentric to say and to recommend. You were recommending to me a documentary that's on Hulu.

[Richard Brody]

Yeah, it's a sort of documentary. It's called Symbiosychotaxoplasm. Take one. It's an intermingling of documentary and fiction. It's made by William Greaves.

[David Remnick]

All right, clear out of the way here.

[Jelani Cobb]

Clear out of the way.

[Richard Brody]

Who was the host of Black Journal on PBS in late 1960s, early 70s. This is one of the pioneering independent films by a black director. The story involves a couple who are going through a romantic crisis. He has four or five different couples play this story out in Central park with a crew that is being filmed making the film.

[David Remnick]

Alice, come on, can't you wait? Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

[Jelani Cobb]

What?

[David Remnick]

What?

Me alone, okay? Just leave me alone.

What are you looking forward to in 2016?

[Richard Brody]

Well, the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have a new film coming. Hail Caesar. It opens on February 5th, and it's an inside Hollywood comedy. It's all about a big toga film, but the story involves a fixer, someone who works behind the scenes to control the images, to control the public image, and also to control the scandals that arise in the course of the making of a film. And it's one that's set in the 1950s, which I think is special. Inside. Llewyn Davis is one of their greatest films, and I think that's so because it comes from their early childhood. They're attempting to reconstruct something very personal to them. And I think the same will hold for Hail Caesar. Of course, I haven't seen it, and you never know about predicting, but it's a great cast. Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton. I'm very much looking forward to it.

[David Remnick]

Richard, before we go any further, I've got a question. Why in God's name in your 2015 best of list, you tucked in there right at the end, 50 shades of gray.

[Richard Brody]

50 shades of gray, for all of its clumsiness, for all of its artifice. And by the way, I think Dakota Johnson is a superb actress for all of its Hollywood corner cutting. It takes its subject straight on.

[David Remnick]

Right. Anything else you're looking forward to?

[Richard Brody]

Well, since we talked about 50 Shades of Grey, I'm looking forward to 50 Shades of Black. I've seen the trailer, and it looks like a lot of fun.

[David Remnick]

Is that a sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey. What is it?

[Richard Brody]

It's the parody starring Marlon Wayans.

[David Remnick]

I think I'd rather see that than the original. Richard Brody blogs about Films for new yorker.com this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. I'm David Remnick. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Probably the biggest trend in education lately, and certainly the most contentious, is school closure, officials using testing to evaluate school performance and close the ones that are underperforming. Recently we've heard more parents and educators, even some school officials, criticizing that approach. They say it punishes teachers and students for economic and social issues that affect student achievement and that closing schools and opening new ones is destabilizing rather than helpful. There's been a lot of school closure here in New York. Sometimes it still makes the news. Keep the school open, give it the resources it needs. Like when a once prestigious old school like Jamaica High School out in Queens shut down.

New York City Department of Education is.

[Sarah Koenig]

Planning to close Jamaica High School.

[David Remnick]

Jamaica High School has an incredibly proud history. Its alumni include several Pulitzer Prize winners and Olympians. As recently as the mid-80s, when the New Yorker's Jelani Cobb was a student there, it was cited as an outstanding school on the national level. But it shut down in 2014, and Jelani went back recently to find out what had happened.

[Jelani Cobb]

I graduated in 1987, and Jamaica does have a reputation in New York City. For one, it was an academically rigorous institution and it was known for producing really high caliber students. It also had a kind of no nonsense tradition. I lived in a community about a mile and a half south of the school called South Jamaica. It was mostly working class. There were some poor families who lived there as well. And that was a really important thing for my parents, particularly that I lived in a neighborhood that probably wasn't the best, but I was zoned for one of the best schools in the city. There's a story that illustrates the kind of place that Jamaica was, and it takes place not long after September 11th at a point where there was still a lot of tension in the public. People were really afraid and, you know, you saw it manifest in different ways in different places. I was on an airplane and I just boarded and sat down and I saw a gentleman coming down the aisle and he was a brown skinned man and he had on kind of a flowing tunic outfit and baggy pants and people kind of saw him and identified him as Muslim. You can almost see the tension ratcheting up as he comes closer and closer and he Then sits down across the aisle from me and I look over and realize that I recognize him. And I said, shake. And he looks over at me kind of quizzically and I said, it's Jelani. We were in the same breakdance group in high school. And you could see everyone just kind of relax. Like the tension just dissipated because, like, oh, he was a breakdancer in high school and, you know, he's not going to do anything to harm us. The irony of it was that, you know, I'm a large African American man and I'm actually in the position of making a group of white people feel more safe and comfortable, which is not how I typically experience the world. But the more notable thing to me was that Jamaica was the kind of place where a black kid from the south side of the borough and a Pakistani Muslim who was from not far from the school could meet and bond over our mutual interest in breakdancing. So I would take the Q5 bus. I went back to the neighborhood recently. I wanted to see my school since it had closed back in high school. I rode a bus 45 minutes each way to get to school. And then we'd get off and start walking up this hill. You know that old story about people's parents who said they walked uphill five miles each morning to go to school and. And that was kind of like we felt like we had some equivalent of that just by braving this particular hill early in the morning. My parents moved to queens in about 1967, and I was born in 1969. And moving to Queens was a big deal at that point. You know, the black population in Queens was coming from Harlem, you know, the Bronx communities where, you know, African Americans had largely been restricted to living. And this hill is legendary. People just kind of refer to it as the hill. When you get to it. Near the top of the hill, you see this majestic building. And as you see it, the building itself resembled a state capitol. This magnificent structure, you know, with these two wings and this long central corridor connecting it and this rolling green, you know, in front of it, looking at the building. It's a wildly idealistic undertaking to just say, let's build this magnificent structure and then teach people here for most of its history that idealism was rewarded. Until it wasn't. In the early 2000s, New York City adopted a policy of school choice which allowed students to enroll in any high school school in the city. That policy, combined with demographic changes that brought larger numbers of low income and non English speaking students into the school, made it Harder for Jamaica to compete, other schools began siphoning off top students that once would have applied to Jamaica. By 2009, the graduation rate had sunk to 39%. Two years later, the New York City Department of Education decided to close the school. When I visited, I found my school covered with scaffolding. So you can't really see just how incredible the structure is on its own. You kind of have to use your imagination. You graduated in. So I wanted to talk to a recent graduate who could talk about what Jamaica was like toward the end of its existence.

[Kimberly Walcott]

2013. I'm sorry, 2013. I was a class of 2013.

[Jelani Cobb]

Kimberly Walcott graduated a couple years ago. Today, four smaller schools occupy the space that once held just one school. So what was interesting to me is, like, when I was here, there seemed to be a lot of activities. I wound up participating in science programs and played baseball. And there was another program for students who were interested in business, medical careers. Was that like, your experience? Where did you feel like you had those opportunities?

[Kimberly Walcott]

When I came here, I was accepted as a law. I think they had a law program. But everything else just sort of fizzled out. We just became, like, I guess, the lower class in the school.

[Jelani Cobb]

So the other thing that I remember that was notable about this school is that it kind of looked like the United nations, you know, so we had, you know, students from all over the Caribbean. We had students from former Soviet bloc countries who were here. We had Lithuanian students, Russian students, South Asian students, East Asian students. And, you know, there was just this incredible diversity of the population.

[Kimberly Walcott]

I did not. There was not a diverse. I mean, in the beginning, a bit more than how it ended at the end, there were just a majority of Caribbean students. Haitians. Yeah, Caribbean. A lot of know, white American. I don't remember. Probably very few. Like to count. I could probably count, actually. Oh, yeah, they're close.

[Jelani Cobb]

Yeah. Oh, you can kind of see through this glass here a little bit. And that glass case has yearbooks going back through all Jamaica's history. And I remember being excited that 1987 was in there. Like, not all of them. The yearbooks are just kind of random selections. I was like, oh, yeah, we made the cut.

[David Remnick]

Oh, gosh.

[Jelani Cobb]

So apparently they weren't too ashamed of us. So here's the kind of not good story. So we're at the central entrance here for the high school. If you go through those doors, you'll be in the main corridor. And directly across from you is the auditorium. And in 1986, we would typically meet in the Mornings before classes started and we would kind of mill around in the auditorium and talk. And that particular morning, there was a conflict between a young man by the name of Stanley Pacheco and another young man by the name of Gregory. Evelyn and Greg pulled out a gun and shot Stanley.

[Kimberly Walcott]

And I heard of that incident, but I wasn't sure of how it went down. I didn't. You were actually here for that?

[Jelani Cobb]

I was here. I was a student here.

[David Remnick]

Wow.

[Jelani Cobb]

Yeah.

[Sarah Koenig]

What was it like?

[Jelani Cobb]

Unfortunately, school shootings are common now. But at this point in time, we did not have any frame of reference for something like that happening. And the school went on. But we were. For the rest. That was my senior year. For the rest of the year, that incident kind of hung over us.

[Kimberly Walcott]

I was going to say, I think that was probably the reason for a lot of the bad names that Jamaica High School got.

[Jelani Cobb]

That's been amazing to me that something that happened almost 30 years before you graduated and it's shocking that people were still talking about it, that you still knew.

[Kimberly Walcott]

Yeah, I was definite. I was aware, but it wasn't like we sort of constantly talked about was brought up and. And then we're like, oh, wow, maybe that's the reason why Jamaica's quote unquote, a bad school.

[Jelani Cobb]

And so I think that's one of the things that's interesting too. Like when we close schools, we're not just closing the school, you know, what we're doing is closing a particular history. I don't know what exactly should have happened here. When the school closed, about 63% of the students here qualified as low income. It almost seemed like a no brainer. Like if you're going to have that population, you have to have the resources to address what their needs are. And for a long time it seems like this was a place where that happened and then it was a place where that ceased to happen. It's fenced off and it looks like a funeral shroud almost. And it's a metaphor for a particular kind of idea about education. I think one of the things that was most notable to me about this story is that when it came out that same week, a group of parents and community members had begun a hunger strike to prevent the closure of Dyett High School in Chicago. And it struck me that this is not just a local story, it's not just a personal story, it's really a national story. And there are lots of people in lots of different places who are concerned about what happens when an institution in their community closes on the surface it's hard to understand why a community would protest the closure of a failing school. But people weren't protesting to keep a failing school open. They were protesting because they believed that institution had the potential to be great once again. Most of the people who I grew up with did not wind up going to college or did not wind up going to graduate school or having opportunities that I wound up having. And I kind of look and say, there's one less way for that person, someone coming from the community that I came from, who has those aspirations to get to where they want to be in life. Now.

[David Remnick]

That'S staff writer Jelani Cobb at his alma mater, Jamaica High School. We'll close the show now with a story about being a parent and how it sometimes takes you to strange places you didn't quite expect. John Seabrook writes a lot about music for the New Yorker. And I know that his taste runs to the Stones and James Brown and the Beatles. Middle aged guy kind of stuff. But in the last few years, he started writing about contemporary pop music, profiling the producers and artists who dominate the top 10 charts. This fall, he published a book called the Song Machine, about the pop industry. But truthfully, John wouldn't have even listened to pop music if it weren't for his son, Harry.

[John Seabrook]

I started playing myself when Harry was born because I thought that it would be a great thing to have music around the house. My mother played the piano around the house. I wanted to pass along the gift of loving a song. Yeah, I guess I kind of also wanted to educate him a little bit in what I felt was sort of a classical pop music education. You know, the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young. But he loved the songs. I think they sank in. You feel like they. They kind of embedded themselves somehow.

[Harry Seabrook]

Now that you mention it, one or two songs you successfully transmitted. The one Bob Dylan song. No, no Love. Mine is zero.

[David Remnick]

No limit.

[John Seabrook]

Oh, Love minus zero.

[Harry Seabrook]

That one.

[Richard Brody]

That one.

[John Seabrook]

You picked up on that one. The imagery in that song is really powerful. In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat.

[Harry Seabrook]

Quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.

[John Seabrook]

Okay, I know. Draw conclusions on the wall. That's a cool image, right?

[Sarah Koenig]

Come speak of the future.

[Jelani Cobb]

So which.

[Harry Seabrook]

I remember seizing control of the front seat in fifth grade. I was allowed to ride in at once.

[John Seabrook]

You got big enough.

[Harry Seabrook]

Yeah. And mom declared that it would be okay one time. And then I never really. It was impossible to uproot me from the front seat. So once I sort of had established my empire in the driver's seat.

[John Seabrook]

Empire of the front seat.

[Harry Seabrook]

Right then I started, like, colonizing the radio presets. And I reconfigured all of them to the top 40 channels. Instead of, like, NPR, 92.3, Z110, 35. All these ones that I would. I would sort of dig around, like, scan until I found pop stations.

[John Seabrook]

Wherever you go, you hear these songs. If it's a high school basketball game and the band plays them at halftime, or if it's the super bowl and Katy Perry is singing them, these songs have become the soundtrack to all of our lives. And very, very little is known about the songwriters and the producers who make them. That's how the book that I wrote, the Song Machine, came about. Because I was fascinated by these songs, and I wanted to know who made them and how they were made and what their influences were. And it became a great source of conversation for us because Harry was really into it too. You know, some guys talk about sports with their kids, but music, you know, that's something that we totally kind of saw eye to eye on and bonded over. What had changed in pop music between the time I stopped listening to it and started listening to it again was the lyric. The lyric had gotten much raunchier, much more R rated, if not sort of borderline X rated. That was kind of a hip hop sort of influence, I think. Coming in, you know, the 50 cent zone, candy shop. Okay.

[Jelani Cobb]

Wow.

[John Seabrook]

What's that about, do you think? The lollipop.

[Harry Seabrook]

I thought he was just like candy.

[John Seabrook]

He like candy, right? Well, I was concerned that the double entendre wasn't concealed enough. And so you. You get a little embarrassed at first. But I was struck by the amazing sonic texture and tapestry that if you come off of the street not listening to pop music for 10 years, and you listen to Right Round, which is a Dr. Luke song. The production, the sounds, the sound of the way that starts.

[Harry Seabrook]

Yeah, I remember being very embarrassed about liking that song. And I was acutely aware that that was like ke$, and that was like, dislike. You're supposed to dislike ke doll.

[Bowe Bergdahl]

Ha.

[David Remnick]

But I was like, this is kind of.

[Harry Seabrook]

This is kind of catchy.

[John Seabrook]

Well, I guess most of us would be horrified and appalled by these songs. I mean, I've always liked a good song. And what I call a good song is a song that moves you, that communicates this ecstatic feeling. At some point, I felt that Right Round really had something which I understood, even if it was in a different package. And, you know, I mean, it wasn't a guitar Solo. That sound is not a guitar solo. You know, I realized that this giant change had taken place. Songs used to be a melody writer and a lyric writer. The melody guy would maybe sit at the piano sketching out melodies and the lyric guy would sort of throw out words. And that was how, you know, for many years, decades, going back to Tin Pan Alley and before songs were made and there had been this enormous change. And now songs were tracks that were made by producers and then hooks, they were added by these kind of, they call top lane writers that would come in and kind of improvise on the mic. And then the lyrics kind of came afterwards and were often written by somebody else altogether.

[Harry Seabrook]

It's kind of like the whole thing is a giant assembly line. I was already aware that they didn't. Not all of them wrote their own songs. But I really didn't realize the extent to which this whole thing is a machine until dad started writing about this. It's sort of disenchanting.

[David Remnick]

I was dreaming for so long.

[John Seabrook]

But I have found that in terms of, like, listening to new music and listening to good songs, that pop music has gotten kind of more interesting in a musical way, at least in a sonic way. You know, I have this love of music. I got this love of music from my mother in particular, who loved, you know, show tunes. My Fair Lady. I have often walked down the street before and it was like the fun times. There was the times when, like, the furniture seemed to lift a little bit up off the floor and music in the house just made everything seem happier. So I just wanted that. That for me was an important value that you kind of want to pass along to your kids. Yeah, I.

[Harry Seabrook]

Maybe we narcissistically think that a lot of his interest in pop stems from me.

[John Seabrook]

I don't think the book would exist without you, man. So I have it a high five. He didn't like that. For the record.

[David Remnick]

John and Harry Seabrook. John's book about the making of pop music is called the Song Machine. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Next week we'll get workout tips from the novelist Nathan Englander. See you next week.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a.

[Sarah Koenig]

Co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed.

[David Remnick]

By Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards.