Episode 29: The Missing Boater, and Robert Glasper

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour, Episode 29: The Missing Boater, and Robert Glasper

Date: May 6, 2016
Host: David Remnick
Featured Guests: Emily Nussbaum, Lindy West, Robert Glasper, Ben McGrath
Main Themes: Representation of sexual violence on TV, the evolution and future of jazz, the life and disappearance of canoeist Dick Conant

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Episode Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour weaves together three core segments:

1. A reflective conversation on how contemporary TV series address sexual violence, featuring The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum and writer Lindy West.
2. An intimate interview and live piano session with jazz pianist Robert Glasper about his craft, influences, and mission to keep jazz vital.
3. Ben McGrath’s poignant profile of Dick Conant, an enigmatic modern-day adventurer whose life was devoted to marathon canoe journeys, and who vanished mysteriously in 2014.

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1. Representation of Sexual Violence on Television

Guests: Emily Nussbaum and Lindy West
Timestamps: 00:53–14:12

Key Discussion Points

• Jessica Jones and Trauma (00:53–03:26)

  • Explores how Jessica Jones confronts sexual violence and its psychological aftermath.
  • The uniqueness lies in making the survivor (Jessica) central, “not just about sexual violence, but a much broader, richer metaphor that has to do with consent, coercion, abuse…” — David Remnick (02:30)

• Landmark Moments in TV (03:26–04:52)

  • The Sopranos' Dr. Melfi rape storyline discussed as a turning point in how sexual violence is portrayed—shocking not just for its content but for the raw depiction of aftermath.

• Comedy as Catharsis (05:09–08:49)

  • Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Inside Amy Schumer use humor to address trauma and rape culture.
  • “People use humor as a coping mechanism for really, really dark things... Survivors use comedy as catharsis.” — Lindy West (07:19)
  • Amy Schumer’s “no raping” sketch as “so accurate” about how society looks for exceptions in issues of consent.

• Diversity of Female Voices (08:49–09:57)

  • More women-led shows mean a wider range of perspectives on sexual violence.
  • “The more you have women running shows... the more each show doesn't have to be the representative for this…” — David Remnick (09:16)

• Game of Thrones and Sexual Violence (09:57–11:24)

  • Lindy West voices complex feelings: sexual violence as both honest in-world and sometimes gratuitous titillation.
  • “...if the female characters in Game of Thrones were not constantly in peril, it would be a lie.” — Lindy West (10:22)

• Law & Order: SVU and Victim Diversity (11:24–13:18)

  • SVU offers a spectrum of victim portrayals and, despite exploitative elements, can feel cathartic.
  • “It’s nice to see justice done once in a while in a world where justice is quite often not done.” — Lindy West (12:00)

• TV as Serial Storytelling (13:18–14:12)

  • The advantage: complex, whole characters can emerge, whose trauma is part of them but not their sole defining trait.

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2. Interview with Jazz Pianist Robert Glasper

Interviewer: David Remnick
Timestamps: 16:30–35:00

Key Discussion Points

• Modernizing Jazz and Glasper’s Mission (18:17–19:55)

  • Glasper insists jazz must evolve: “If you're not putting you in it, then it's already been done.” — Robert Glasper (18:35)
  • Critiques jazz’s museum-like preservation: “The jazz world... is on autopilot... stuck in history...” (19:39).
  • Advocates for innovation—citing Miles Davis as a pioneering force once criticized for electrifying jazz.

• Jazz and Hip Hop: Cross-Pollination (21:14–21:42)

  • Glasper acknowledges hip hop’s vitality is maintained through youth and business infrastructure, reducing the risk of stagnation seen in jazz.

• Introducing Jazz to New Audiences (22:00–22:29)

  • Glasper bridges generational and genre gaps by interpreting pop and hip hop artists within a jazz trio format.

• Live Performance: “Levels” (23:10–28:41)

  • Demonstrates his blend of structure and openness, leaving room for band members’ personalities.
  • On improvisation: “Sometimes songs are so beautiful that you don’t need that extra stuff in the middle.” (28:46)

• Musical Roots and Early Talent (29:39–31:44)

  • Raised in Houston with a singer mother who immersed him in diverse genres and church music.
  • Self-taught with minimal lessons, developed by playing along to records, lending to his eclectic style.
  • “I was an only child and all I did was play the piano … Once I started playing, that's what I loved to do.” (30:51)

• Political Engagement through Music (31:44–32:52)

  • His cover of Kendrick Lamar's “Dying of Thirst” features children reciting names of Black Americans killed by police.
  • “Unfortunately, even since we recorded, there's been so many more. You know, it's unfortunate that I might have to do a part two.”—Robert Glasper (32:35)

• Collaboration and Genre Fluidity (32:55–34:32)

  • Describes the spontaneity of working with Kendrick Lamar and how ease across genres may be commercially challenging but artistically necessary.
  • “All that music is in my blood. I don’t see where it should be a problem or where it should be like a mystery.” (34:15)

• Industry Demands vs. Artistic Freedom (34:23–35:00)

  • Glasper asserts, “People try to put demands on me, but I’m trying to knock those down, whether they like it or not.” (34:28)

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3. The Life and Disappearance of Dick Conant

Narrative & Reporting: Ben McGrath
Timestamps: 36:38–54:52

Key Discussion Points

• Meeting Dick Conant (36:38–39:00)

  • McGrath recounts first encountering Conant, a large, eccentric man undertaking epic river expeditions by canoe.

• Conant's Background and Lifestyle (39:12–41:27)

  • An “epic adventurer” who drifted between jobs and never settled—railroad worker, navy man, ticketseller, janitor.
  • Conant was homeless by conventional standards but preferred the term “living outside.”
  • “One of the reasons I go on these trips is because... I don’t have an apartment.” — Dick Conant (41:13)

• Intellectual Life and Journals (41:27–43:25)

  • Prolific writer; kept detailed journals, sometimes in the form of unpublished books.
  • Excerpts reveal his poetic attention to the details of nature and daily life on the river.

• Personal Struggles and Identity on the Water (43:25–46:07)

  • On land, Conant stood out and was misunderstood; on the river, he was transformed and at peace.
  • “When I am out on the water in my canoe, I do call the shots. My time is my own.” — Conant’s journal, read by narrator (45:35)

• Disappearance and Search (46:07–48:04)

  • In 2014, hunters found his abandoned canoe—no sign of Conant. All his possessions were left behind; family alerted.
  • No activity ever observed beyond his social security deposit—strong indication he perished.

• Mental Health and “Barnacles” (48:04–51:18)

  • Friends and family discussed Conant’s extreme sensitivity, periodic delusions, and a history of mental health struggles.
  • Canoeing seen not as escapism but as a survival mechanism.
  • “He told her [his mother] that he’d been contending with mental barnacles.” — Ben McGrath (50:22)

• Reflections on His Life and Legacy (51:18–54:11)

  • Conant moved on quickly from place to place, often feeling he’d overstayed his welcome.
  • Rivers gave him dignity and self-possession otherwise denied.
  • “I repeat that I am not out here finding myself. I was never lost. What I am doing is paddling around, finding geography I have not seen … and having a jolly good time before I die.” — Conant’s journal, read by narrator (53:02)

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Notable Quotes

• “If you're not putting you in it, then it's already been done.”
  — Robert Glasper on artistic originality (18:35)
• “The jazz world... is on autopilot... stuck in history.”
  — Robert Glasper on the need for jazz to evolve (19:39)
• “People use humor as a coping mechanism for really, really dark things... Survivors use comedy as catharsis.”
  — Lindy West on comedy’s role for trauma survivors (07:19)
• “I am not out here finding myself. I was never lost.”
  — Dick Conant, from his journal (53:02)
• “The more women you have running shows, the more each show doesn't have to be the representative for this.”
  — David Remnick on diversity among TV creators (09:16)

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Memorable Moments

• The incisive, humorous exchange on artist lookalikes in the intro (00:26–00:54).
• Glasper’s live piano improvisation, demonstrating both his skill and his musical philosophy (23:10–28:41).
• The “closing doors” comedic segment, a New York subway ode (15:07–16:30).
• Powerful recitation of names in Glasper’s “Dying of Thirst” cover, linking art and activism (32:08–32:52).
• Excerpts from Dick Conant's journals, revealing both his poetry and struggles (42:08–53:02).

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Additional Resources

• Emily Nussbaum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning writing: newyorkerradio.org
• Robert Glasper’s album, Everything’s Beautiful
• Ben McGrath’s writing on Dick Conant in The New Yorker

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Transcript

[David Remnick]

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

[Interviewer / Host]

There he is.

[Robert Glasper]

Hello.

[Interviewer / Host]

How are you?

[Robert Glasper]

All right. All right. How you doing?

[Interviewer / Host]

Good.

[Robert Glasper]

Cool.

[Interviewer / Host]

Are you off for a while?

[Robert Glasper]

Yes, I just got home yesterday from tour. Who's the actor they say you look like? Because there's one guy. It's killing me.

[Interviewer / Host]

Jeff Goldblum or something.

[Robert Glasper]

Oh, not the Fly. Not him.

[Interviewer / Host]

That guy.

[Robert Glasper]

Not Jeff Goldblum.

[Interviewer / Host]

He looked good in the Fly. Not anymore. Not anymore.

[Robert Glasper]

No. There's another guy. He's like more. More comedic actors.

[Interviewer / Host]

I think Clooney is.

[Robert Glasper]

Who you reaching? Maybe Brad Pitt.

[Ben McGrath]

Yeah, that's it.

[Interviewer / Host]

Yeah.

[Robert Glasper]

Yeah, I think it's Brad.

[Interviewer / Host]

You got her, Denzel. I forget which one it is.

[Robert Glasper]

You get Denzel a lot. I was about to say that. Too. Huge.

[Interviewer / Host]

I can't walk down the street.

[Robert Glasper]

I feel you.

[Interviewer / Host]

That's. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Today, I'll be talking with the pianist Robert Glasper about how to keep jazz from becoming a museum piece. And he'll give a fantastic live performance from his album called Covered. That's later in the hour. I watch a hell of a lot of tv, possibly more than my share, but still, it can be hard to keep up. So I rely on the New Yorker's television critic Emily Nussbaum to point me toward the best stuff. She's a huge fan of the Netflix show Jessica Jones, which just won a Peabody Award. It's based on a Marvel Comics superhero who's become a private investigator.

[Ben McGrath]

A big part of the job is.

[Robert Glasper]

Looking for the worst in people.

[Interviewer / Host]

Turns out I excel at that.

[David Remnick]

Jessica Jones is a superhero who is also a rape survivor.

[Interviewer / Host]

That's Emily Nussbaum, the New Yorker's television critic.

[David Remnick]

The backstory of Jessica Jones is that she was traumatized by a supervillain who kidnapped her, used mind control, and forced her to be his girlfriend. So it's about a specific kind of trauma that involves not just sexual violence, but a kind of brainwashing. Something that has left a feeling of guilt and collusion in her.

[Interviewer / Host]

We used to do a lot more than just touch hands.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, it's called rape. What?

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

Which part of staying in five star hotels, eating in all the best places.

[David Remnick]

Doing whatever the hell you wanted, is rape? The part where I didn't want to do any of it. And one of the reasons that the show is so powerful is that it's not simply about sexual violence, but about a much broader, richer metaphor that has to do with consent, coercion, abuse, the excuses people make, and the traumatic aftermath for people who go through things like this. And what's powerful about it is that the survivor of the assault is at the center of the show.

[Interviewer / Host]

Jessica Jones may be the first superhero show to confront rape in any significant way, but Emily has written about a surprising number of programs on the air now that deal with rape very differently from what we've ever seen on tv. She points out that it's not just a plot on crime shows, but in family dramas, fantasy, even in comedy.

[David Remnick]

Some people have criticized this, and they've seen it as very exploitative. But by and large, I think this is a really encouraging moment because I actually think, what can I say? I mean, I think sexual violence is a part of the world, and that as women's lives become more central to TV portrayals, that's part of it. I think there was actually a big breakthrough moment in terms of TV presentations of sexual violence in general. And honestly, it was the Sopranos. There was this period when it was the show everybody was talking about. And then a while into the show, one of the main characters, Tony Soprano's psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi, was raped by a stranger in a parking lot on a staircase. And it was shown. It came out of the blue. And this is not, in general, the way that rape had been shown on tv.

[Robert Glasper]

Shut up. Don't turn around. I said shut up.

[David Remnick]

And so the Melfi rape plot became this cracking point for what could be shown on television and how it could be shown, and people wondered what the aftermath would be.

[Robert Glasper]

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Come on. What are you.

[Ben McGrath]

What's the matter?

[Robert Glasper]

What's the matter? It's okay.

[David Remnick]

Go on.

[Robert Glasper]

What? I mean, you want to say something? No.

[David Remnick]

This is a clip from Kimmy Schmidt, which is a show on Netflix that Tina Fey and Robert Carlock created. That's a very strange sitcom about a girl who's moved to New York and has been through this enormously traumatic circumstance where she was trapped for years in a bunker by this psychopathic guy along with some other women. She's very chipper and very upbeat, but in the middle of the night, she has terrible nightmares. I have to get out of here. He's waiting for me. And her roommate is essentially saying to her, you have to get help. What am I doing?

[Robert Glasper]

You tell me. This isn't the Chinatown bus. You can't just choke someone who's sleeping.

[David Remnick]

Titus, I'm so sorry, Kimmy Schmidt.

[Robert Glasper]

You are clearly repressing some stuff, and it is very unhealthy for Titus. You need to talk to somebody.

[David Remnick]

Absolutely not.

[Robert Glasper]

What if you take a lover and you murder him in his sleep? Who are they gonna pin that on? Rainbow Bright or gay Tiki Barber?

[David Remnick]

I'm not taking a lover. That's gross. One of the writers I think, is really great on how pop culture represents women is Lindy West. She's written on issues like rape jokes and comedy, and she's dealt with a lot of controversy about that. She's currently writing for GQ.com and the Guardian. Hi, Lindy.

[Lindy West]

Hi.

[David Remnick]

How are you doing?

[Lindy West]

I'm doing great.

[David Remnick]

One of the things about Kimmy Schmidt is, although it is never explicit about the fact that she's been raped, it's something that's so implicit in the situation because it's based on all of these other experiences that have happened, you know, these terrible stories in real life.

[Lindy West]

But in a way, the whole thing is about the way that that experience has manifested in her life and the way that she copes with it. So in that way, it's very present. Every part of her kind of wacky personality you could read as a coping mechanism. So to me, it feels like the shadow of that. Of those sexual assaults are there all the time.

[David Remnick]

Yeah. Her whole sense of joy and excitement about living again after the terrible thing has happened and trying find a way to be the hero of her own story is also presented as something very feminine and sweet in a way that I actually found kind of fascinating and unusual.

[Lindy West]

Yeah. And if you look at the way that a lot of people actually function, people use humor as a coping mechanism for really, really dark things. If you want to make a comedy show about a rape survivor, you kind of have to balance it by making it really funny and bright and almost surreal. The other part of these conversations is that people say, you know, you can't. You can't take rape out of comedy. You can't make rules about what people can address, because people use comedy as catharsis, and. Yeah, they do. Survivors use comedy as catharsis.

[David Remnick]

Yeah. And actually, we should go to the Amy Schumer show. That's a parody of Friday Night Lights in which the coach is telling the guys on his team the three rules. And one of the rules is no raping, and this does not go down well.

[Interviewer / Host]

Can we rape in awakenings?

[Robert Glasper]

Nope.

[Lindy West]

What if it's Halloween and she's dressed.

[Interviewer / Host]

Like a sexy cat?

[Robert Glasper]

Nope.

[Interviewer / Host]

What if she thinks it's rape? But I don't still?

[Robert Glasper]

Nope. What about, like, a sexy ladybug? Nope.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

Gotta stop.

[Robert Glasper]

No, you gotta stop.

[Lindy West]

If you write anything about rape, people fall all over themselves trying to find loopholes to make it okay to violate women's boundaries. It's really, really amazing how that sketch plays like a satire, but it's so accurate. People love to paint feminists as the opposite. Like, feminism is the opposite of comedy. But I love how all the stuff coming out of Amy Schumer this season, it really knocks that down. The idea that you can't be edgy if you want to talk about rape responsibly. And of course you can.

[David Remnick]

One of the things that's very thrilling is that there are so many more female voices on television that you get each person coming at it with their own aesthetic. Amy Schumer has a particular one. You have Broad City doing a different thing. The more they have women running shows and women's characters at the center of them, the more you get a range and the more each show doesn't have to be the representative for this, because I think that's been some of the difficulty in talking about sexual violence on television in the past, is that when there's just one show that's doing it, that show has to represent. And people can much more understandably look to that show and say, is it doing the right thing? Is it educating people? And while I would obviously like portrayals of rape and sexual violence on TV to some extent spread good messages, I think that's a very limiting way to talk about any kind of art. And what's exciting is just seeing the field expanding. So you get all of these things in contradiction with one another. Let's talk about Game of Thrones. Cause you're way more of an expert on that than I am. Yeah, but what do you think about that show in terms of the portraits of sexual violence? It's a universe where rape is a constant threat.

[Lindy West]

I've thought about this a lot, and I'm pretty conflicted about the way that women's bodies and women's sexuality are used in that show. I think a lot of times they use nude women as set dressing, basically. When it comes to the actual plot lines involving sexual violence, I think it's actually done really well. The way that they are really honest about what it would be like for women in this kind of a lawless, hyper masculine society. It's like I would find it insulting if the female characters in Game of Thrones were not constantly in peril. It would be a lie. It would feel like men letting themselves off the hook.

[David Remnick]

Leave her face I like her pretty. My lady's overdressed.

[Robert Glasper]

I'm burden her.

[Lindy West]

There are a lot of shows that use sexual violence for titillation and are hugely popular, which is.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, I was wondering what you, what you felt about that. I, I, I'm always conflicted about this because, first of all, I actually have no problem in some cases with people using anything for titillation because I actually like a lot of pulp and horror and things like that. As long as it's intelligent and it's doing it in a powerful way that actually has something to say about the world. On the other hand, it's hard to deny that some things actually are blatantly exploitative. Actually, we should probably talk about svu.

[Lindy West]

Yeah.

[Ben McGrath]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

Because I know both you and I have watched that show quite a lot. Why do you think you're so drawn to watching svu? Because it would be hard to deny that that show is often, especially in the way that things are filmed, like, blatantly exploitative in a sort of an old school lifetime woman in peril kind of way.

[Lindy West]

Totally. I think the show depicts a wide range of rape victims. There's so many tropes that victims and survivors tend to fall into. And so I think there's some diversity on SVU in terms of how women handle assaults. It's also, this is kind of a fantasy, but it's nice to see justice done once in a while in a world where justice is quite often not done.

[David Remnick]

You know, Eddie, I've been doing this for a while, and I can see that you are, you got a lot of weight on you. And I can also see that you want to let it go.

[Interviewer / Host]

I can take it. I can carry it.

[Ben McGrath]

Carry what?

[Interviewer / Host]

What do they do to you?

[David Remnick]

I actually think the cheapness of it and the way in which it's sometimes accidentally funny and has this very formulaic feeling is kind of helpful to me as a viewer in this odd way because it makes it a safe thing to watch. I mean, it's only going to affect me so much. I know that the vast proportion of the audience for that show is a female audience. This is a side thing, but I wanted to bring up the Fosters, which is a show in ABC Family. The main character is Callie, who's a teenage girl. She's been in several different foster homes. And one thing that happens before the show begins is that she was raped by her foster brother. She's the kind of character that could easily be a character in svu, but instead of her being the somewhat exotic victim girl, you end up seeing her path through life.

[Lindy West]

It's rare that characters who've been raped on TV get to be more than a rape survivor where, you know, they get to be whole characters where. Because that's how it is in real life. You aren't your trauma, you know, I mean, obviously these traumas are hugely affecting and change people's lives. But you're still a human being and you're still complex and, you know, you have interests.

[David Remnick]

And this is one of the things I think, frankly, is one of the big advantages to TV as a, you know, immersive, serial storytelling thing is because it takes place over so much time, this can be an element in a character, but not the element in the character.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay, what are we doing here? You hear about that meteor shower tonight? What about it?

[Ben McGrath]

Front row seats.

[David Remnick]

It was very nice talking to you. Yeah, great talking to you too.

[Lindy West]

This was fun. I guess. I don't know.

[David Remnick]

I guess I'll talk to you another time. Okay, Bye.

[Robert Glasper]

Bye.

[Interviewer / Host]

Emily Nussbaum, television critic for the New Yorker, talking with the writer Lindy West. You can find Emily's Pulitzer Prize winning writing on Amy Schumer, Unbreakable, Kimmy Schmidt and other [e-mail] I'm David Remnick. And later this hour, a modern day adventurer crisscrosses America by canoe. And I'll talk with pianist Robert Glasper, who's trying to save jazz from the museum. Stick around.

[Robert Glasper]

Stand clear of the closing doors, please. Please make way. The doors are closing.

[Ben McGrath]

They can cause injury, and injury is.

[Robert Glasper]

Strictly against MTA policy.

[Ben McGrath]

Please move your bike away from the closing doors.

[Robert Glasper]

Sir.

[Ben McGrath]

Your huge tub of snack mix can't be there.

[Robert Glasper]

Man. That goat will be pulverized by these powerful doors.

[Ben McGrath]

To the mariachi band currently walking.

[Robert Glasper]

Welcome, you fools.

[Ben McGrath]

How do you not understand the majesty of the doors? All doors are closing. You are taunting powers greater than you can imagine.

[Robert Glasper]

Oh, how the doors are closing, Closing, closing, closing. You feel them closing not only in.

[Ben McGrath]

The vibrating, anxious air, but in the fearful screams inside your head.

[Robert Glasper]

Be aware of the closing doors or.

[Ben McGrath]

Be unaware and perish.

[Interviewer / Host]

Stand clear of the closing doors by Emmett von Stockelberg. It was performed by Charlie Pellet, who's actually the voice of the official New York City subway announcer, and he appeared. Courtesy of Bloomberg Radio. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For almost a decade now, pianist Robert Glasper has made a name for himself as a guy who brings his mastery of jazz technique to pop music. His Upcoming album Everything's Beautiful is a tribute to Miles Davis with some of the biggest names in soul and hip hop and contemporary R and B, joining Glasper to reinterpret and give a new twist to the jazz legend's work. I spoke with Glasper last year after the release of his album Covered, which has much more of a straight ahead jazz feel to it, just piano, bass and drums. It includes songs by RB and hip hop musicians, people like Bilal and Kendrick Lamar, but also some of the most familiar standards in the jazz catalog, like this version of Stella by Starlight Light. Stella by Starlight's been recorded by I don't know how many musicians.

[Robert Glasper]

500 million.

[Ben McGrath]

Is that the exact number?

[Robert Glasper]

Yeah.

[Ben McGrath]

Did you listen to all of them?

[Robert Glasper]

I listened to half of them. You know, two, about 250 million of them.

[Interviewer / Host]

And when you do that, you say, do you back away or is there an idea in mind that you want to put forward on this?

[Robert Glasper]

My thing is, yeah, it's either you do it totally different or you don't do it at all. I try to put me in everything I do, because if you're not putting you in it, then it's already been done.

[Interviewer / Host]

So what's the point and what's the you in it?

[Robert Glasper]

For the uninitiated, what I naturally feel, I can't say. Oh, well, if you put a hip hop beat to it, it's me. Because everything about me isn't always hip hop. You know, for this thing, it was the sound of my band. The best bands are the bands that have personalities on each instrument. You know, I write with those guys in mind and I make arrangements with those guys in mind. So I leave a lot of. Even when I arrange something, I leave it kind of open so they can interpret it their way. So then you have an actual sound of a band, not one guy dictating everything everybody else does.

[Interviewer / Host]

In the hip hop world, you're known to some extent as that jazz guy. And yet you stand in relationship to jazz in a complicated way. A few years ago you told Downbeat this. I've gotten bored with jazz to the point where I wouldn't mind something bad happening.

[Robert Glasper]

Right.

[Interviewer / Host]

Slapping hurts, but at some point it'll wake you up. I feel like jazz needs a big ass slap totally. Meaning what?

[Robert Glasper]

Meaning jazz. The jazz world a lot of times is on autopilot. A lot of the jazz world is very much stuck in history too, in golf, with the 60s and the 50s and the 40s and all of our heroes. You know what I mean, but music has to keep living.

[Interviewer / Host]

Do you think the jazz world has become a museum of itself?

[Robert Glasper]

Without a doubt. Easily. Without a doubt. You're getting a history lesson. This is how you swing now. This is how you do this. The beauty about the music, it always evolved, you know what I mean? That's why when the 70s came around, you know, it started getting more electric because there were more electric instruments. So you keep getting influenced by what's around you at the time.

[Interviewer / Host]

And yet when Miles Davis brought electronic instruments to the fore, he got a lot of guff for it, to say the least.

[Robert Glasper]

Totally.

[Interviewer / Host]

Not everybody loved it.

[Robert Glasper]

Not everybody's a genius. Not. Not everybody is a forward thinker, you know what I mean? So you're not gonna please everyone off top because they don't know what you're doing at first. It's crazy to them.

[Interviewer / Host]

Let's hear the first taste of liftoff from Black Radio, which was the album that won you the R and B Grammy a couple of years ago.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

Oh, yeah.

[Robert Glasper]

Hello, world peace and love. I wish you the best. And now for the next coming to your mind live and direct from the Ethers. Now it's all in your speakers down to your sneakers.

[Interviewer / Host]

Do you ever think or do you ever worry about hip hop itself burning out in the same way that you were talking about jazz maybe becoming dangerously close to a museum of itself?

[Robert Glasper]

Not really, because it's such a young music. There's so many young artists, and the labels and the business of it all are pushing the young artists. That's what keeps hip hop booming and keeps it alive, really. So I don't fear that it's gonna die out anytime soon at all.

[Interviewer / Host]

The new album is much more of a jazz album.

[Robert Glasper]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Host]

Than Black radio. Black radio 2. Much more. Other than producing beautiful music. Do you have a mission here? Are you trying to guide people back into younger people, into listening to not only your record, but Miles and Monk and Sonny Rollins and all the rest?

[Robert Glasper]

Somewhat. Is that somewhat? It's just like it's about Christian Scott and Marcus Strickland and contemporaries and Kenneth Whalem. Yeah, contemporaries, my friends. Miles doesn't have a problem with selling records. It's my contemporaries that are having the problem. So that's why I chose to do jazz trio. But do songs that people of my time today know. Kendrick Lamar, Jhenene Aiko, Bilal, John Legend, Radiohead, you know, because those are people that. And albums and artists that are relevant now.

[Interviewer / Host]

So, Robert, to give people a sense of your latest album, maybe we can listen to a Bit of one of the original pieces you were working from. And then have you play something?

[Robert Glasper]

Sure.

[Interviewer / Host]

Maybe the Bilal cut called Levels. Let me take you. Could you play your version for us?

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

Sure.

[Interviewer / Host]

We've got a big old piano here in the studio.

[Robert Glasper]

Oh, I didn't even see that big old piano over there. That big. Look at that. What is that, Steinway?

[Interviewer / Host]

That's something like that.

[Robert Glasper]

How convenient. Sure. Sa sam sa sam sa.

[Interviewer / Host]

That's beautiful, Robert.

[Robert Glasper]

Thank you.

[Interviewer / Host]

You leave yourself room to improvise in the spaces.

[Robert Glasper]

Yes, yes, exactly. For me, you know, sometimes solos can take the song too far out of context. I feel like when it's needed for the music, I take a solo. But sometimes songs are so beautiful that you don't need that extra stuff in the middle. You kind of just play the song.

[Interviewer / Host]

So you don't see these as vehicles. It's not like Coltrane playing My Favorite Things, which has a theme. It's repeated and then it's 15 minutes of exploration of.

[Robert Glasper]

Right. Not this particular song and not this particular album, you know, but there are times where I do explore and really, really get in there.

[Interviewer / Host]

Like, stretch out.

[Robert Glasper]

Yeah, exactly. There are times for that. But this particular album wasn't necessarily for that. It was built more for the person who just likes to listen to, you know, pop and R and B and hip hop, that kind of vibe.

[Interviewer / Host]

What do you like as a listener? You have a little bit of everything on this record. There's a radio head cut called Reckoner.

[Robert Glasper]

Hip hop covers, Joni Mitchell and. Yeah, you know, I grew up with so much music in my home. My mother was a singer. She'll do a Broadway gig one night, a jazz gig one night, a pop gig one night, a country gig, funk gig. And then she was the music director at church on Sundays. You know what I mean? So there was.

[Interviewer / Host]

You grew up in Houston?

[Robert Glasper]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Host]

And your mother was in which. What kind of church?

[Robert Glasper]

Baptist church. She was the director of the. Of the choir. She would take me to all the rehearsals and to church and even to a lot of her gigs. I would be at her shows, you know, when I was like, literally two years old. You know, I was on the main stage when I was 11, playing at church.

[Interviewer / Host]

You got lessons, I assume, kind of.

[Robert Glasper]

Every Blue Moon, but not really just kind of did it. I kind of. Once I started. Started playing, I kind of just went off on a tangent and just.

[Interviewer / Host]

You had never had lessons in your life?

[Robert Glasper]

I took six months of classical lessons when I was in seventh grade, and then I took one year or Two years of gospel lessons when I was in seventh and eighth grade.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay, hold the phone. After you just played that, you've never taken more than a year or two of lessons?

[Robert Glasper]

No, no, not at all.

[Interviewer / Host]

Mothers at home are listening to this and crying. They have no. They have no way to convince their kids to sit there like I did for.

[Robert Glasper]

But I was an only child and all I did was play the piano. Once I started playing, that's what I love to do. So my mother.

[Interviewer / Host]

And you could play on the keyboard what you were hearing in your head?

[Robert Glasper]

Yes, I could play with her in my head. And I would love to learn songs off the radio.

[Interviewer / Host]

I hate you.

[Robert Glasper]

You know.

[Interviewer / Host]

Theory, too. You could just pick this up like nothing.

[Robert Glasper]

Theory. Yes. And I, you know, I got really good at theory once I went to the High School for Performing Arts in Houston.

[Interviewer / Host]

Now, are you going to make a gospel record at some point?

[Robert Glasper]

Yes, I am going to make a gospel record. I'm putting it together in my mind now. I don't know when it's going to come out or when I'm actually going to do it, but I see it being done in the next year or two for sure.

[Interviewer / Host]

Now, before we leap off of this, the current album, I have to say that the covers are all over the place. There's a Joni Mitchell, a John legend, and you cover a song by Kendrick Lamar, who may be the figure in hip hop.

[Robert Glasper]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Host]

Today. And you've worked with him a lot, and you've taken Dying of Thirst, one of his best known, most political tracks, and made it your own. Look at the coroner. Daughter is dead, mother is mourning.

[Robert Glasper]

The straight bullets. AK bullets. Resuscitation was waiting patiently, but they couldn't.

[Interviewer / Host]

And so you hear that and you say to yourself, now I'm gonna do my version.

[Robert Glasper]

This song just speaks to me. So what I did was I got my son and a few of his friends to just say the names of some of the people who were killed by the police in the last few years.

[Interviewer / Host]

You know, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin.

[Robert Glasper]

And unfortunately, even since we recorded, there's been so many more. You know, it's unfortunate that I might have to do a part two.

[Interviewer / Host]

Rekia Boyd, Ayanna Jones.

[Robert Glasper]

Oscar Grant iii.

[Interviewer / Host]

Now, when you work with Kendrick Lamar, how does that collaboration.

[Robert Glasper]

It was really cool because I literally recorded that album the same night I recorded my album covered before I did my recording Terrace Martin, a good friend of mine who is a producer on that album called me and said, hey, when you finish recording, can you run over here to Dr. Dre's recording. Kendrick's here. Want you to play on some stuff. And I was like, cool.

[Interviewer / Host]

With no preparation, with no notion, no none.

[Robert Glasper]

They played me the track they wanted me to play. I listened to it once or twice, and then I played.

[Interviewer / Host]

It was lucky. You had a year and a half of lessons.

[Robert Glasper]

Yeah. So then after that, after I put that one track, Kendrick was like, oh, man, pull up so. And so pull up this track. Pull up that track. So I literally sat down and played, like, seven or eight songs that night.

[Interviewer / Host]

Robert, is it a problem, as well as a gift in the music business to be someone who is trying all different kinds of things? Is it a commercial difficulty?

[Robert Glasper]

It can be, because most people, when they do something, they do one thing, and they do one thing well. You know what I mean? This is what I do, and this is what it is. I play jazz. That's what I'm gonna play, and that's what it is. That's hard enough, and that's hard enough when people put a label on you and you have to. But, you know, I was blessed to be good at more than one thing. So why am I only going to do one thing, you know, Especially when it's. We're talking about music that come from my people, like African American music. We're talking about rock music, we're talking about hip hop music, we're talking about jazz music, we're talking about blues, talking about gospel. And the list goes on and on. And all that music is in my blood. I don't see where it should be a problem or where it should be like a mystery.

[Interviewer / Host]

Do you feel the music business is putting any demands on you, or do you live outside of that?

[Robert Glasper]

People try to put demands on me, but I'm trying to knock those down, whether they like it or not.

[Interviewer / Host]

What are the demands? What do they want out of you?

[Robert Glasper]

Well, people. You know, people want to keep you in a box. To keep you. They want to keep you in the jazz box. So when you. When you get out of that, it's like, what are you doing? Even the jazz community is like, hey, what are you doing? You're leaving us? You know, how dare you leave us. You know, it's like. Like a crazy ex wife or something. Like, I'm not leaving. I'm going to the store. I'll be back. I'm not abandoning you. Jazz. Chill out.

[Interviewer / Host]

Robert Glasper. His new album, Everything's Beautiful, comes out later this month. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. DAVID I'm David Remnick. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Now get out your mental map of the United States. This is a long and complicated story, but it's worth it. Start at the headwaters of the Mississippi river in northern Minnesota. Get in a canoe, go all the way down the Mississippi past New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. That would be pretty amazing, inconceivable as far as anyone else is concerned, but we're far from done. Now turn around in your canoe and head north. Paddle up the Mobile river, take a couple of turns into Tennessee, almost to the Virginia border. Hitch a ride over the Appalachian Mountains, then get back in the water and go down the James river, eventually reaching the Atlantic near Portsmouth, Virginia. It sounds incredible, but a man named Dick Conant spent years taking voyages just like that one. He wasn't some wild kid. He didn't start until he was in his 40s. He was already overweight, with a lot of medical problems behind him. And he described his Life to Ben McGrath, who's a staff writer at the New Yorker, right after they met, absolutely by chance, right outside Ben's house in the suburbs of New York. And now Ben has this story of a difficult but truly remarkable life here.

[Ben McGrath]

We're in the town of Piermont, New York, which is about 15 miles north of the George Washington Bridge on the west side of the Hudson river. And I like to go kayaking, usually in the mornings. And the day I met Dick, which was Labor Day of 2014, I was going to take my two year old kayaking and my neighbor peeked his head over that wall and he said, there's somebody in here who I think you might want to meet. So I started walking over to my neighbor's skin Scott's house. And before heading inside, I notice at this point that there's this dirty red canoe tied up to the base of his seawall. It's covered in tarps and some trash bags maybe, and it's got army duffels. I mean, it really looked like it had been packed for the apocalypse. And inside, sitting at the head of a long rectangular table, was Dick Conant. He said he was 63 and he had a big beard and he was bright red and he probably weighed 300 pounds. He had these dusty denim bib overalls. I mean, I, I remember having the impression that it was as though Santa Claus had canoed into town and he was kind of holding forth. And, and I gathered that he was about two months into a journey that he expected to last at Least another six more months. And he had begun up by the Canadian border and was basically going to be taking a chain of rivers and canals down the Atlantic seaboard and ending up in Florida. And he was on this journey for, from what I could tell, no particular reason. It quickly became clear that this was not his first insane voyage. In fact, within a couple minutes of my arriving, he was telling a story about how he once almost got run over by a barge on the Mississippi at night. As it happened, he'd basically been crisscrossing the country alone in a canoe for the better part of two decades. But I missed the opportunity to really draw him out on the particulars of those trips because I did, after all, have my 2 year old with me. And he was threatening to destroy my neighbor's house. So it wasn't really until the next morning when I woke up and thought, okay, I gotta find this guy again. So I got some binoculars and drove down south. And after a while, sort of hiking along the shore, I was able to see up in the distance this flashing yellow plastic paddle. When he got within earshot of me, I yelled his name and started waving him. Sure. And he backed the boat in and he just decided to set up camp right there.

[Robert Glasper]

I'm due for a good break.

[Ben McGrath]

I might make camp right here.

[Robert Glasper]

I'm exhausted.

[Ben McGrath]

Right.

[Robert Glasper]

Is there a place you can sit? Do you have something to drink, like a soda pop?

[Ben McGrath]

I'm. I don't, unfortunately. Sorry.

[Robert Glasper]

You like one? No.

[Interviewer / Host]

No.

[Ben McGrath]

You don't want to waste supplies. Yeah, it's no waste, believe me. And we started talking and I began to learn the very long and mysterious life of Dick Conant.

[Robert Glasper]

I was born in Germany.

[Ben McGrath]

We lived in Germany for three years. My dad was with army armor, so.

[Robert Glasper]

We moved down to Kentucky, Fort Knox for four years.

[Ben McGrath]

He had grown up actually a bit of an army brat. He'd been all over the place. But most of his schooling as a boy was done in Pearl River, New York. Pearl river is a pretty ordinary suburb now. But in the 50s and 60s when he was there, they did really think of it as kind of Mark Twain country. It was winding country roads, and the upper reaches of the Hackensack river were there, and they had a little dinghy and they would kind of go up and down. Dick, in fact, invented a club that. It was called Catfish Yacht Club. So there's a way in which, throughout all of his life, he saw himself as a kind of an epic adventurer. He was at the top of his high school class. He had a full scholarship to college. He was a hugely talented man who had, because of various troubles, he had not amounted to much in a conventional sense. I had a really checkered career with Nicole. I worked on the railroad in Wyoming for. He had worked on the railroad in Wyoming. He had worked on the oil rigs. He was a coal miner. He was a janitor. He worked in hospitals. He was a weather observer. He was in the Navy. He worked selling. Most recently, before I met him, he'd been selling bus tickets at a Greyhound station. So I think, you know, the fact that he hadn't achieved one of the phrases that he didn't have a white picket fence. He didn't have a. He didn't have a family.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

I'm at 60, 63 years old.

[Ben McGrath]

You know, this is.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

These adventures are incredible.

[Ben McGrath]

They really are. However, I would much rather be at.

[Robert Glasper]

Home with a woman and a family like you had.

[Ben McGrath]

And he was homeless.

[Robert Glasper]

Well, one of the reasons I go.

[Ben McGrath]

On these trips is because, well, I don't have an apartment.

[Robert Glasper]

Okay.

[Ben McGrath]

When he wasn't paddling, he camped outside in what he called a swamp in Bozeman, Montana.

[Robert Glasper]

People call it homeless. I don't.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

I've been living like this since 2007.

[Ben McGrath]

From talking to him, it was clear that he was extremely well read, Both in a historical sense, with literary references and historical references, but also could more than hold his own when talking about current events. When this trip is over, I'll sit down and write a prose account. He told me that he'd written several books and in fact, I think had a couple of them with him in the boat on flash drives. I've written three books.

[Robert Glasper]

Oh, okay. I'm just not published.

[Ben McGrath]

Okay. By the time I get finished writing.

[Robert Glasper]

A book, I'm ready to go on another trip.

[Ben McGrath]

The books read like journals. Each of them is a chronological account of a particular transcontinental canoe trip.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

November 13, 1999. I visited with a dog. This damn thing followed me for two two miles along the riverbank after I got underway. November 14, 1999. I saw an interesting sight today. A bald eagle was pestering and chasing a great baron in midair. August 12, 2009. I'm up at dawn. I paddle all day. I see eagles and other wild. January 18, 2010. I'm on a tawny sand beach, listening to squawking birds. January 4, 2000. My abode, my bedroom is a gravel riverbank, and my living room is the greatest river system of the most beautiful country on earth. August 20, 1999. Some guy and his wife Woke me up from a nap at Lewis and Clark State Park. He asked me if that was my rig in the river. I said the red canoe was mine. He asked me where I was going. I said the Gulf of Mexico. He asked me eventually why. I told him I got tired of TV and automobiles, so I just took off and jumped in the river. He and his wife stared at me blankly. Like Pat Schroeder used to say, some of you people just don't get it.

[Ben McGrath]

He was physically a very striking man, you know, very large, always wore overalls. He apparently rode a bike that was often too small for him. He had a kind of a booming, if gentle voice. And in a town, in a place, you get a man who looks like that on land and that person sticks out in a way that makes people uncomfortable. And he was very aware of that. Bozeman, Montana is a relatively small town where if you're a 300 pound man who wears overalls and rides a bicycle back of in front forth, people do know you and notice you again and again and probably do roll their eyes or whisper things. One of the layers, that guy on the bike again, when he's on the river and he emerges into a new town, he's not that guy. He's this guy. And the difference between that guy and this guy was. Was everything to him.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

September 17, 2007. At the risk of sounding like a whining crybaby complainer, I've got to get some baggage off my shoulders. The people in Bozeman did not appreciate my talent or skills or, God forbid, my robust personality. I am not a wealthy man unless I consider the innate skills granted to me by nature, as this present odyssey can convey, I am an unabashed and gifted adventurer.

[Ben McGrath]

Because he had been a successful kid and student and athlete and all these things, he had a strong sense of his own talents and potential. And yet by middle age, he clearly hadn't reached any of it, in a conventional sense at least. And so the canoeing, which really he took up, I think his first long trip, he was 43 years old. So in a way you could think of it as a midlife crisis. But it also, it became a way for him to shift that sense of squandered potential into a real sense of accomplishment. It became a career in which he could excel.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

September 17, 2007. This is a good opportunity to reiterate a concept which is very real and quite stabilizing in a psychological aspect. Though I am no king of the Irish or any warrior king, when I am out on the water in my canoe, I do call the shots. My time is my own. It belongs to me. Though in most places I visit, I am treated with friendship and generosity and often kindness in the extreme, I am beholden to no one.

[Ben McGrath]

My main goal at the time had been simply to write a short Talk of the Town story for the magazine about an unusual man who had passed through town. And I think the story came out in late September, October 20, he sent me an email saying that he was hale and hardy in. In Delaware City, Delaware. And at that point, I believe he said he was preparing for his next leg, which was across Chesapeake Bay, and didn't hear anything again until November 29th. It was a Saturday, and I was getting lunch ready for my kids, and I got a phone call from a number I did not recognize. And it was a wildlife officer in North Carolina saying he was investigating a missing boater. And it took me no more than two seconds to realize who he was talking about. As it turned out, some duck hunters had found a canoe, but not a canoeist. And in going through the boat, they had found my phone number in it. The point where they found the boat, it was turned upside down up against some cypress knees, and it was on the Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. And if you look south across the sound at that point, it's like 12 miles across. I mean, you can't see the other side. You might as well be on Lake Michigan. So they thought they had a huge search area, and they didn't know when he'd gone missing because no one. His itinerary was known only to himself. Dick had seven living siblings. Not one of them knew where he was or what he was up to. If they knew, it was only because I'd written an article in the Talk of the Town section.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

I wanted to visit my mother and siblings. Some of them I had not seen in over 25 years. If you don't visit once in a while, you end up forgetting altogether.

[Ben McGrath]

After he had gone missing, I went back to my notes, and I saw the part in my conversation with him when he mentioned his older brother Joe in Peachtree City, Georgia. I looked up Joe's phone number at that point when I got the call from the officer, and I gave the officer Joe's phone number. And that's how the family found out. Unfortunately, you know, I think there was an initial wish on the part of friends he'd met and his family members to think, well, maybe he, you know, look, he lived a free and kind of untethered life to begin with. Maybe he just decided to ditch the boat and go somewhere else. The thing that makes that seem unlikely is that, you know, he already lived pretty close to off the grid. As much as he wanted to, he was able to accomplish it. You know, he lived outside in Bozeman, Montana. He paddled where he wanted to when he wanted to. They found a mountain of stuff in his boat. His wallet, his naval discharge papers, his journals, his maps, his money, his food, his tent. His body is still not accounted for. They have been tracking his bank account since he went missing, and the only activity in his bank account is the monthly automatic deposit of his Social Security. It was a weird and almost unsettling feeling to think that sort of just by happenstance, I'd become the link between Dick and his largely estranged family. And it felt. Felt very personal. A few months after the news had kind of settled in, I ended up meeting with a couple of his brothers who lived closer to me, and they began sharing with me some of his manuscripts and talking to me about their childhood. One of the things that became clearer was that he was sensitive to an extreme and sometimes paranoid and delusional degree. In fact, when he was in the Navy in his 30s, he was briefly placed on mental leave. But I think the most elegant way of putting it is something Dick himself said to his mother, apparently after he completed one of these trips, and that's that he told her that he'd been contending with mental barnacles.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

March 31, 2010. I am paranoid. So I spent some time camouflaging my camp. It is small and tight, but I'm getting paranoid. It looked like another setup. If I got friendly with one woman, the other would have. September 16, 2009. One can never be certain of what another will do when he or she is truly afraid. March 5, 2010. Now I am increasingly thinking that my visit had more sinister aspects to it than I. November 15, 2007. I began to think in terms of the infinite variety of turns a human mind can twist to fabricate and mold. Given irrefutable facts, a determined mind can construct a total delusion out of a whole cloth and thereby satisfy a gnawing yet wishful thought process.

[Ben McGrath]

This is one of the reasons why he would often move is I think he ultimately, if he spent too many days in one place, he began to worry that he'd overstayed his welcome and he felt that he had to go. Which is a shame, because in many cases, when I call the people who were there, they only remember him fondly. They don't remember the offending incident that made him think that he had to go.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

December 20, 2007. I began to feel like a heel when I finally empathized with him with Wayne. The feeling that I had offended him and his friends began to gnaw at my mind. He will continue to do so for some time to come. I just, frankly, didn't know any better. My ignorance of social niceties this late in life is fairly deplorable, but I guess it comes with the territory. I find it a bit disconcerting that of the many friends I have met on this adventure, most I will never see again.

[Ben McGrath]

You know, when I look back at the Talk story I wrote, I wonder sometimes, in light of what happened, about a comment that an old family friend of Dick's made, I think it was something like, you know, what Dickie needed was not an article in the New Yorker, but an intervention. I feel pretty strongly that isn't true. I really think, in light of what I've come to understand about his past and some of the difficulties he faced in his head, is that I really think that the rivers were a survival mechanism for him. And he himself would often write that he was surprised that he was still alive and not because he'd been doing this crazy river paddling, but because of other things that had happened in his life. For Dick, it wasn't a. It wasn't a lark. It was simply his way of being.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

January 18, 2008. Frankly, if somebody prefers the domestic life, that is the life he leads or pursues. If he prefers to wander, then he takes off. This stuff about finding oneself is a bunch of baloney. I repeat that I am not out here finding myself. I was never lost. What I am doing is paddling around, finding geography I have not seen, observing various industry and transport, experiencing wildlife, meeting new people, most of whom are worth meeting, and having a jolly good time before I die.

[Ben McGrath]

It was the only way that Dick could be happy in the world, was moving along through a river. He himself seemed to think that when he first began doing this as a serious line of work, so to speak, which was more than 15 years ago, that that was the beginning of saving his life rather than ending. Yeah.

[Robert Glasper]

Yes.

[Ben McGrath]

Well, thank you so much.

[Robert Glasper]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love telling about my trip. I.

[Ben McGrath]

You know, I don't care if I get publishing, you get published or not.

[Robert Glasper]

But I do enjoy relating.

[Ben McGrath]

Yeah, that's happening. Are you. Be careful.

[Narrator / Journal Reader]

All right.

[Robert Glasper]

Drive safely. Very good. That's for your wife and child. Will do one or the other. All right. Thank you. Will do.

[Interviewer / Host]

Ben McGrath talking with Dick Conant. Excerpts from Conant's journals were read for us by People. Peter Gallagher, I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us and please join us again next week. Stay in touch with us on Twitter ewyorkerradio or leave us a [e-mail] the.

[David Remnick]

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

[Ben McGrath]

Our theme music was composed and performed.

[David Remnick]

By Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards.

[Ben McGrath]

This episode was produced with special assistance from Kathryn Wells.

[David Remnick]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.