← The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Episode 32: Lena Dunham Turns Thirty, and Memorial Day Malaise
00:55:27
Lena Dunham talks about turning thirty and backing Hillary Clinton when her peers are feeling the Bern; and Amy Davidson gives us a history lesson on political conventions gone wrong.
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- [00:04]
Lena Dunham
Floor 38. It's very exciting to be having a.
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Interviewer/Host
Conversation with someone when they have that revelation.
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David Remnick
Maybe looking at this case could be an interesting process.
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Interviewer/Host
Okay.
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Narrator/Reporter
From one World Trade center in Manhattan.
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Interviewer/Host
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
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Narrator/Reporter
A co production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker.
- [00:31]
David Remnick
Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Recently, I asked a friend to join me on the New Yorker Radio Hour for a pretty big occasion. So, Lena, in about two hours, you're gonna be at your birthday party celebrating your 30th birthday. And so what we did is we brought into the studio a big giant bottle of champagne. Let's see if we can uncork it.
- [00:56]
Lena Dunham
Oh, my God.
- [00:56]
David Remnick
And make the appropriate sound. There it is.
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Interviewer/Host
Yay.
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David Remnick
Happy birthday.
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Lena Dunham
Thank you, David. This means a lot. I've known you now for four birthdays.
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David Remnick
That's right.
- [01:07]
Lena Dunham
Just so you guys at home can see, it's a bottle of Manischewitz that he's poured for me.
- [01:11]
David Remnick
That is not true. I've known Lena Dunham for years and we spoke just hours before she headed off to her birthday party. Turning 30 is a huge event in anybody's life. But Lena is the creator of the show girls, the defining TV show of our era about life as an urban 20something. And so you've got to wonder if closing that chapter could pose some sort of career issue for her as well as the usual angst. Are you anxious at all about turning 30? Your show, your film, your. Your presence in the world has all been about in some way not being 30, not being 30, about being young and growing into yourself. And is this odd for you?
- [01:56]
Lena Dunham
It's funny you ask. I feel thrilled about it. I've always liked the idea of being someone who's like past my major childbearing portion of things. Doing my work, enjoying children who are old enough to talk and have friends who I regularly meet for ethnic food. That's just what I want my life to be. And I feel like, I mean, so much of what the show's about is how full of sort of, not just sort of romantic, but existential drama your 20s are. And I just. The amount of times I text a friend and they write back, I'm depressed, but I'm not sure why, considering my job is good, but maybe my boyfriend just isn't fun enough. Like, it just seems like everybody's problems. Like, I'm talking about, obviously a very specific echelon, highly privileged New Yorkers, girls who live partially supported by their parents in Brooklyn. But I will say that there's a sense that it's like everybody needs something a little more high stakes to worry about.
- [02:51]
David Remnick
You are right now filming the last, the sixth and last season of Girls.
- [02:56]
Lena Dunham
Yeah.
- [02:56]
David Remnick
And the season we've all just seen was something immensely deeper, at times darker than what we remembered from the first season, the second season.
- [03:08]
Interviewer/Host
Are you okay?
- [03:10]
Narrator/Reporter
Yeah, yeah, I'm.
- [03:13]
Lena Dunham
I'm great.
- [03:14]
Narrator/Reporter
You know, I work at as the.
- [03:18]
Lena Dunham
Assistant manager in the second biggest cat cafe in Tokyo and everybody's really jealous about that. And I'm dating this beautiful Japanese man and we're gonna lose our virginities to each other.
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Narrator/Reporter
So everything's really perfect, you know, like.
- [03:31]
Lena Dunham
My life is perfect.
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Narrator/Reporter
Yeah.
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Interviewer/Host
You seem great.
- [03:34]
Narrator/Reporter
Yeah.
- [03:35]
Interviewer/Host
You're not like, oh, wait, you're like fully crying.
- [03:38]
Amy Davidson
Yeah.
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Interviewer/Host
Are you okay?
- [03:42]
Narrator/Reporter
I'm really sad.
- [03:46]
Interviewer/Host
And I'm really lonely.
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David Remnick
And did you have any idea, Lena, where you wanted your four characters, and it's more than four characters really, where you wanted them to end up and where you wanted them to land in terms of their lives at that point?
- [04:05]
Lena Dunham
I remember thinking, if we get to make a pilot, Diane, to use the language of our people, that will be amazing and I'll have that in my arsenal. Then when it got picked up, I went, oh, my God, if we get to do one season of this, I can't believe it.
- [04:19]
David Remnick
So it's more of a scramble than we'd imagine.
- [04:21]
Lena Dunham
So for the first two seasons, I think I was living with so much of a fear that all I'd ever heard about TV was like, you get canceled, you get pushed aside. I didn't believe that we were gonna have until probably season three. I don't think I understood that we were going to have the choice. As supportive as HBO was, this was all my baggage. I didn't know that we were gonna have the choice to end this how we wanted to and when we wanted to. And so when it became apparent, like probably around season three, that, you know, we were gonna get to make this show kind of for as long as we felt we wanted to, I think that's when we really started to put our heads together and think, like, so what's this going to look like? When's the right time to end this? Where do we want these girls to wind up? And I think that's when we were like, oh, let's start thinking about this in a more like holistic, long term way.
- [05:11]
David Remnick
Because with what's called arcs, longer arcs and all that.
- [05:14]
Lena Dunham
Exactly. And then before season five is when we decided, like, okay, Season six is when we're probably gonna wanna end this thing.
- [05:22]
David Remnick
Why? Because you're turning 30? No.
- [05:24]
Lena Dunham
Well, it is a kind of neat and tidy coincidence, but I think our feeling was just like, we wanted to make sure that we didn't start to overstay our welcome or that it didn't start to feel like that kind of sitcom convention, of dragging on these. The fact is, these are characters who've been growing apart for a long time. And so at a certain point, it's gonna make sense that their friendships really do splinter. And then what is the show?
- [05:46]
David Remnick
So then how do you go? Birthday's lovely, and we'll have a great time tonight and all the rest. Then there's tomorrow. So how do you live the next part of your life creatively and personally after this enormous chapter and run of artistic achievement and psychological complexity, all of it, now there is a kind of door that you're walking through.
- [06:11]
Lena Dunham
Well, I think a lot about the show and who knows how I'll feel afterwards, but I think a lot about it as being a particular period of my life when I really went for it. Sort of like excising the trauma of what it was to be young and talking about these issues. And I'm really looking forward, you know, like, the next book I'm doing is a book of fiction. Whether there's things that, from my Life are recognizable, 100%, but it's still. That's a different thing. I'm looking. I'm so excited to be like, tell me about that.
- [06:39]
David Remnick
Insofar as you want to. No, I'm thrilled to A book of fiction. Why that and what's it about?
- [06:44]
Lena Dunham
It's a book of short stories. I'm doing it with Random House, although I'm not sure 100% when it's coming out. It's about half. It's a bunch of short stories and a novella.
- [06:54]
Interviewer/Host
And I said, knowing you, it's already done.
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David Remnick
Cause, like, the first time we met, I said, maybe you should write more. Like the essay on Nora Ephron. And by the time I got home from the restaurant where we met, there was on my screen a manuscript of 14 pieces.
- [07:09]
Lena Dunham
And you were probably like, God damn it, now I have to read these.
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Narrator/Reporter
That was quick.
- [07:14]
Lena Dunham
I did a bunch of them. But I think that the thing that I'm realizing is that fiction isn't like essays. There's a certain sort of looseness to the form. And, of course, you can be cool and experimental with fiction, but I'm not George Saunders. I'm Me. So I have to figure out a way to do them. I have to figure out what my form is and make it sort of sound like my voice. But I just felt strongly like I had stories to tell that weren't exactly my own. And there were, again, it's this thing about kind of taking your experience. Like, I don't want to write about being a famous person. That's the most boring thing in the world. But there are analogous experiences. There are experiences that might involve some of the same emotional realities that aren't me going. It was so hard for me to come home to go to work the day after the Met Ball because I was tired and felt emotionally tired.
- [07:59]
David Remnick
That is a bitch, by the way.
- [08:00]
Lena Dunham
I mean, it was tiring, but it's not that fun to hear about.
- [08:06]
David Remnick
And you've also got a new project, Lenny, which is a newsletter, a web magazine that you've been working on with your collaborator, Jenny Connor. And it's not really a Lena Dunham branding exercise as such. You've got a real point of view here. Tell me how that came about.
- [08:20]
Lena Dunham
That was the goal, which is not to do something that was like a vanity project or a sort of lifestyle site, because if someone wanted lifestyle information, I would not be the person that they would come to anyway. But it felt as though, like, Twitter is a landmine. You don't necessarily want to go there to have a 140 character per fight with somebody. You want to be able to express your opinions about sort of what it is to be female now, both politically and personally in a longer form way. And I wanted to be able to support the voices of other writers because I feel like I've had this, like, tremendous gift of if I've got an idea, if I've got something I've got to say, there's a good chance that I'm going to get a couple of people to listen to me. And so what I thought would be so great is if I could take that platform and give some space to some writers who have a different perspective or an unheard perspective.
- [09:07]
David Remnick
Were these writers that were getting sort of shut out of other media or you felt that you would be able to target an audience in a different way?
- [09:14]
Lena Dunham
I think it's a combination. I think it's like Lenny is a really. I think that the Internet can kind of like create the illusion that everybody's getting heard when they're actually not. When they're actually getting drowned out. And so obviously, the feminist dialogue on the Internet has never been louder. And that's a really great thing, but it also creates a lot of discontent about who are the loudest voices and how did they get that way. And so Lenny was the goal was to level the playing field, right?
- [09:42]
David Remnick
Lena, you go to campuses here, and there you go, you're a graduate of Oberlin, which is a big, formative, a distinguished arguing college. Distinguished arguing college. And how do you. When you go to campuses and you have conversations, how does that square with the kind of caricature that we're hearing about all the time about safe spaces and trigger warnings and all that stuff? Is that the reality of what you're seeing there, or is it more complex? Or what is your sense of the way political discussions are taking place on campus? What's your concern? What do you think is just not a reflection of how it's going on?
- [10:22]
Lena Dunham
It's a great question. The last time I went to Oberlin, about a year and a half ago, I believe, maybe it was more like two years now. And I felt like I went in kind of ready to. I was like, oh, God, am I going to get in trouble for? Like, am I going to get, you know, told that I triggered the whole audience and they're all gonna walk out. Somebody told me there was gonna be a protest of me, but they couldn't seem to really explain to me why there was gonna be a protest of me. And did you ever find out? Somebody told me that I was a line item in the story of what did they say? How does it feel to be a line item in the so many people story of privilege and oppression?
- [10:55]
Baratunde Thurston
Okay.
- [10:56]
Lena Dunham
And I was like, that's a big job. I didn't know I had it. But what I actually found was a bunch of super curious people who wanted to laugh and wanted to be entertained. And I think the thing that's always the thing that I felt even when I was at Oberlin, which was the word trigger warning had not even entered the lexicon when I was at Oberlin, was that, like, there's amazing pluses and amazing minuses to giving young, unformed people power over the direction that a community takes. And at its best, it starts these conversations that would never even occur to the adults in the room. And at its worst, it drives out free speech, like, wildly and aggressively. And the thing that's rough for me about the whole trigger warning culture is that I have plenty of stuff. I'm a survivor of sexual assault. I have plenty of stuff that I've got a lot of anxiety issues. I have plenty of stuff that triggers me. But I also like to be given the respect to. Given the respect that I can handle ideas without internalizing them. And there's some sense that we need to protect students like gentle flowers, when the fact is ideas aren't the thing that hurt people.
- [12:04]
David Remnick
Lena, you've been campaigning here and there for Hillary Clinton.
- [12:07]
Lena Dunham
Here and there and everywhere and everywhere.
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David Remnick
And yet. And yet, in the circles that you travel in, I would bet there are a lot of Bernie people, a lot.
- [12:16]
Lena Dunham
Of Bernie Sanders people that are for sure the minority. Now I'm the minority. Or there's people who don't want to. Who are for Hillary but don't want to talk about it because they don't feel like dealing with whatever backlash is going to come from their peer group or come from the Internet or whatever.
- [12:31]
David Remnick
So describe that backlash to me. What do you feel?
- [12:34]
Lena Dunham
It's interesting. I get a lot of comments on Instagram that are like, I thought you were cool. I thought your heart was in the right place. I thought you got it. And it's interesting because it's a reminder to me, like, there's something about my politics that's, like, distinctly sort of second wavy. Like, I'm. Sort of. There's. I'm.
- [12:52]
David Remnick
Well, break that down for me, what second wavy means.
- [12:54]
Lena Dunham
Like, that I'm like. Like that. The. I'm, you know, like a Gloria Steinem, Kitty McKinnon bell hooks lovin'. Although bell hooks is into Bernie. So we're. But, you know, I'm like the energy of 1970s feminism, 1960s, 1970s feminism still feels as applicable to me as it did today. It's like, nothing makes me crazier than when sort of somebody looks at Gloria Simon and goes, whitefeminism. Because she. Yes, she is a white feminist, but her.
- [13:25]
David Remnick
What with Flo Kennedy at her side.
- [13:27]
Lena Dunham
Her whole mission has been to, like, take the women that she. To take marginalized women and try to make them the face of Helena.
- [13:35]
David Remnick
Why Hillary and not Bernie for you?
- [13:37]
Lena Dunham
I think she's the most qualified person for the job. I think that I don't mind the idea of having somebody who's a member of the establishment, because guess what? The government is an establishment, and there needs to be somebody who understands how to navigate it. But also, if all I wanted was a female in the White House, why wouldn't I have been running around behind, you know, Sarah Palin fixing her skirts?
- [13:56]
David Remnick
There's been discussion among young people and old people about how Hillary performs gender. You hear her critics talking about shouting and yelling. And why does she raise her voice and how she looks and is she. Do you ever get a sense from talking to Hillary Clinton about how she feels about this more than beyond what she allows herself publicly?
- [14:19]
Lena Dunham
I think when I interviewed her, something that she said was that I really liked was I asked her a question about fashion, and I wanted to be respectful. But also, fashion is a part of what she has to deal with in a way that perhaps a male president doesn't. He goes and gets some Zenya suits and lives his life, and then she.
- [14:36]
David Remnick
Has to get the jackets, and she's.
- [14:38]
Lena Dunham
Got to get the jackets, and she's got to get the dresses, and she's got to get the gowns. And if you think about how much we think about what Michelle Obama's wearing, and Michelle Obama happens to ace it all the time, but not everybody's at Michelle Obama's level of fashion wizardry. And Hillary said, like, I was asking her about this Donna Karan dress that she'd worn early in her time at the White House. And she said, I like it. And people don't get this, like, I like to have fun with fashion. What's the point of spending all this time if you're not gonna get to enjoy yourself? And I thought about how much this experience of being analyzed, sort of, you know, each hand gesture and each facial gesture and your voice getting raised and whatever. Your voice getting raised and then your voice getting lowered. How much of the fun it must take out of it for her. And I like.
- [15:21]
David Remnick
Fun is never a word that we associate with Hillary Clinton.
- [15:23]
Lena Dunham
Somehow I found her, when I spent time with her, to be humorous, joyful, an excellent listener. The other thing is this, which is, like, every time I turn on the tv, I feel like Bernie's screaming at me. I don't have a problem with it. You know, I have a Jewish grandfather. I know what that feels like. But it's just an interesting thing.
- [15:40]
Baratunde Thurston
Too much salt?
- [15:41]
Lena Dunham
Yeah. No, it's an interesting thing to see this person who's fully expressing his identity. Identity nonstop. And being rewarded for it. So is Donald Trump. I mean, Donald Trump is expressing his identity. He's yelling. He's laughing at his own jokes. He's given permission to just go ham hard as a mother, as Kanye west would say. And she's just not. I don't know. I trust that her beliefs and her. I trust in her beliefs, and I trust in her ability to execute in her beliefs.
- [16:14]
David Remnick
Lena, thank you so much, and happy birthday again to you. I'm gonna clink your glass.
- [16:19]
Lena Dunham
It's an honor. I hope that all the Bernie Bros don't come after me, but I also feel like they've already done what they can. I'm so happy to be here with you. It's a joy.
- [16:29]
David Remnick
Thanks, Amelia.
- [16:30]
Narrator/Reporter
Thank you.
- [16:34]
David Remnick
Lena Dunham, creator of the show Girls and of the newsletter Leni. You can find out more about that@newyorkerradio.org Coming up, Amy Davidson, one of the New Yorker's great political writers, looks to the past to see what happens when a political party goes to war with itself in public. That's just ahead on the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. One of the big questions in the presidential campaign is whether or when Paul Ryan will make his peace with Donald Trump, which would signal that the Republican establishment is accepting what is obviously the will of the voters. There's no candidate still standing who will contest Trump at the convention, but if the Republican establishment is still against him, it's going to be an amazing thing to see. And some officials are threatening to skip Cleveland altogether. Staff writer Amy Davidson has been thinking about two Democratic conventions of years past that shed some light on what could happen in Cleveland, and she has a little history lesson for us about the value of putting up a fight.
- [18:02]
Narrator/Reporter
The question really for the Republicans is if the convention isn't a means to prevent Donald Trump from being the nominee, does it have any use? Is there anything that can be done to at least say in the context of the convention that this is not the party of Donald Trump? The GOP might consider looking at one of the Democratic conventions, the Democratic convention of 1980.
- [18:26]
Amy Davidson
The battle was fought by two good men, Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter.
- [18:32]
Narrator/Reporter
President Carter, who was the incumbent, had hundreds of more delegates than the next nearest contender, Ted Kennedy, and he had hundreds more than he needed for an absolute majority. But Kennedy still went looking for a fight.
- [18:47]
Amy Davidson
I want my delegates to know that they are going to vote their conscience no matter what that rule is going to be this evening on issues of platform and the issues of the nomination.
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Narrator/Reporter
His only chance to get the nomination was basically to have all of the rules changed, to have them rewritten so that none of the delegates who had been pledged to either of the candidates had to keep to those pledges.
- [19:10]
Amy Davidson
We cannot afford to nominate a Democratic candidate who will be quoting Herbert Hoover in the fall.
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Narrator/Reporter
Kennedy thought that with the Kennedy magic, with his idea of leadership, with the questions about Carter's leadership because of the hostage crisis which was unfolding then, that he could grab it.
- [19:34]
Amy Davidson
I Say the four years we've had already are four years too many.
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Narrator/Reporter
It didn't work, partly because Jimmy Carter made the case, similar to one hears from the Trump side now, that this would be outright theft, that he had won those delegates fair and square, and that for all of the talk of conscience and freedom, what was being attempted was really something kind of low.
- [20:01]
Amy Davidson
It's almost incomprehensible how a brokered horse traded smoke filled room convention could be labeled open and the decision made by 20 million Democrats in the open primaries and the open caucuses could be called closed.
- [20:19]
Narrator/Reporter
But Kennedy had gone there trying something that Republicans today seem to think is impossible, to try to do whatever he could within the rules, because it's within the rules to try to change the rules, to change the direction of the party that he thought was going off the rails.
- [20:36]
Amy Davidson
Well, I'm deeply gratified by the support I received on the rules fight tonight, but not quite as gratified as President Carter.
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Narrator/Reporter
At its heart, it was a question of ambition. It was a question of his idea that he'd be a better leader. Nobody there was saying the sort of things that Republicans are saying about Donald Trump. Nobody was calling Jimmy Carter a con man or a fraud or somebody who it wouldn't be safe to have in the White House. This was really about two choices that even Ted Kennedy, when pressed, would concede were reasonable choices.
- [21:15]
Amy Davidson
I am confident that the Democratic Party will reunite on the basis of Democratic principles and that together we will march towards a democratic victory in 1980.
- [21:27]
Narrator/Reporter
The convention isn't just about choosing a candidate. It's about defining the party, about the party's identity. Not only who is our candidate, but who are we? One of the moments when a lot of Republicans recoiled from Trump before he secured the nomination came when he seemed to go back and forth about whether he was willing to disavow the endorsement of David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
- [21:53]
Amy Davidson
And certainly I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong. But you may have groups in there that are totally fine and it would be very unfair. So give me a list of the groups and I'll let you know.
- [22:02]
Lena Dunham
Okay. I mean, I'm just talking about David.
- [22:04]
Baratunde Thurston
Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here.
- [22:05]
Amy Davidson
But I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. David Duke.
- [22:08]
Narrator/Reporter
The whole question of the Klan and their involvement in politics is actually one that the country's been dealing with for more than a century and a half. And it was one that was an issue at the 1924 Democratic convention. The two leading candidates who arrived at the convention in 1924 were William McAdoo of California and Governor Al Smith of New York. But before the convention even got to the question of who the nominee was going to be, there was a fight over the party platform, all of the positions the party was going to take on any number of issues. There was a wing of the party that thought it was important to include in the platform a plank, a passage explicitly disavowing and condemning the Ku Klux Klan, Klan by name.
- [22:56]
Amy Davidson
The vote of the Tennessee delegation will accordingly be recorded as a whole for Mr. McAdoo.
- [23:03]
Narrator/Reporter
McAdoo managed to keep, by just a handful of votes, he managed to keep the plank out of the Democratic Party platform. So the party did not condemn the Klan. But in killing that plank, he also killed his candidacy. There were enough people who had a principled objection to him becoming the party's candidate after seeing him go to any lengths he could for the Klan. Al Smith though, didn't have enough votes to get the nomination himself. So it came down to whether he was going to let McAdoo win or if he was just going to keep blocking the convention as long as he could. And he took the latter pass for 103 ballots. There are descriptions from the time of people, some of them sleep deprived, staggering around the floor and others kicking each other, punching each other, just getting into all out physical brawls, sweltering in an un air conditioned Madison Square Garden in the middle of the summer.
- [24:14]
Amy Davidson
In recognition of the efficiency of the police of the city of New York after nearly 100 ballots.
- [24:26]
Narrator/Reporter
One amazing thing about the history of the convention is that the floor manager for Al Smith, the one who was, you know, rounding up votes for the plank condemning the Klan and then for Smith's nomination, was a young politician named Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- [24:44]
Amy Davidson
For the sake of the party, therefore, Governor Smith authorizes me to say that immediately upon the withdrawal by Mr. McAdoo of his name, Governor Smith will withdraw his name also from the consideration of.
- [25:05]
Narrator/Reporter
The John Davis, the candidate the convention eventually arrived at, had no real chance but for the delegates in 1924, it was better to lose with Davis than to win with McAdoo and the Klan. And that was the decision they made. If the Republican party is going to have some sort of self respect left or dignity left, or if those ideas are important to it, then options like rules fights, like platform fights, like taking part in the debate over what the party is going to be matter. It might be the case that the noblest thing a Republican can do is stay as far away from Cleveland and the Trump convention as possible. But there's something to be said for standing on the convention floor in Cleveland and shouting, no.
- [26:08]
David Remnick
Amy Davidson is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and she's been watching the campaigns extremely carefully online and in our pages. And you can find her writing about Paul Ryan and Donald Trump and so many other topics@newyorkerradio.org Baratunda Thurston has a career that I don't know of anything quite like it. On the one hand, he's a comedian, a writer, a commentator, host of a podcast, and the author of a book called how to Be Black. So he's definitely a personality. And on the other hand, he's also a digital media executive who's been in charge of building audience for media outlets like the Onion and more recently, the Daily show with Trevor Noah. He's in the business of talking about metrics and analytics and the thing we call content creation. He recently sat down with the New Yorker's website editor, Nick Thompson, to talk a little shop.
- [27:11]
Nick Thompson
The last time I saw you was about nine months ago and was a dinner hosted by the head of Medium.
- [27:17]
Baratunde Thurston
Yes.
- [27:18]
Nick Thompson
And there was nice symmetry because it was. It was right before you started at the Daily Show.
- [27:23]
Baratunde Thurston
Right.
- [27:23]
Nick Thompson
And now you've just quit the Daily show and you've written about it on Medium.
- [27:28]
Baratunde Thurston
Boom.
- [27:29]
Lena Dunham
Oh, wow.
- [27:30]
Nick Thompson
Amazing.
- [27:30]
Baratunde Thurston
Yes.
- [27:31]
Nick Thompson
So why, Baratini Thurston, did you leave the Daily Show?
- [27:35]
Baratunde Thurston
Time. Really? There was a. I was there for nine months. I was brought in to expand the digital footprint.
- [27:41]
Nick Thompson
You were head of digital there.
- [27:43]
Baratunde Thurston
Yeah, I didn't have that title, though. I had a TV title, which is supervising producer, and I had a department which I call the expansion team. So, yeah, my job was to help relaunch the show, add more Internet sauce to it from the previous era, which didn't have very much sauce. And we had a new, young, dynamic, connected host who invited me to join him on this journey. So I did pretty much most of what I came to do, and I think what the network figured that it wanted and got increasingly clear about versus what I came to do, they started to differ a little bit. Part of what my job there was supposed to be was supervising producer and contributor.
- [28:24]
Nick Thompson
Yeah.
- [28:24]
Baratunde Thurston
And the contributor means on air, means writing pieces for me to perform. And the supervising producer y job sucked all the time. It also totally took me away from my own voice and my ability to express myself, like on camera, on stage, on Microsoft. And that became an increasingly Frustrating.
- [28:44]
Nick Thompson
But you're still writing stuff. I mean, like, for example, Black Donald Trump came out not so long ago. And I assume you played a role in creating that character.
- [28:53]
Baratunde Thurston
Very minor role. I mean, creating that character. I played no role. I think that was Roy Wood Jr. A bunch of writers. I played a role in the video and helping do really smart things to make that seen and heard by people. We put it on genius.com and annotated all the lyrics to prove every line came from something verbatim that Donald Trump has said or tweeted.
- [29:13]
Nick Thompson
Why don't we pause and listen to a little clip of Black Donald Trump?
- [29:16]
Baratunde Thurston
Some people say I'm very, very, very intelligent. Mexico is not our friend. Build the wall. I love the Mexicans. Nobody has more respect for a woman.
- [29:25]
David Remnick
I declaim sadly, no longer a team.
- [29:27]
Amy Davidson
True.
- [29:28]
Baratunde Thurston
Yeah. That was an amazing piece of art.
- [29:30]
Nick Thompson
Let me ask you a question about Trump and humor. Is it possible for humor to really counter Trump or to change the way the public perceives Trump? I mean, black Trump was hilarious, right? You know, the John Oliver make Donald Trump again was hilarious. And a billion people or whatever it is, watch that. But it didn't really have an effect on Trump, did it?
- [29:49]
Baratunde Thurston
Trump is a very special boss like, video game villain, and most of the shots you fire at him make him stronger. And those missiles get enveloped into his own ugly, and he spits them back out, and fire comes out of his face and it rallies his own people even further. So attacks that make him look like a victim serve him. Attacks that make him look like a pervert serve him. Attacks that make him look stupid tend to serve him. And I don't think humor alone is gonna be enough. It's a part of it.
- [30:23]
Nick Thompson
So do you think the Daily show actually made Trump stronger?
- [30:26]
Baratunde Thurston
Not alone. I think he feeds off of attention, and there is a way to create attention for him that rewards the type of perverse behavior he exhibits. I think there are a couple of key moments where the show did something really different. I think the first was right after Trevor got there. And I remember the meeting where it came up. It's one of my most beautiful memories as I walked in my first day, and I wasn't the only black person in a writer's room. I was like the fifth person in the room. And Trevor was having a conversation with his fellow African writers, Joseph and David, and he says, we know this guy. We've heard these things before. This is IDI Amin. This is Museveni. This is Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa Trump is basically an African dictator. And so they found all this great footage to show the insane things that people this country laughs at and say, prove that a nation can't handle democracy. Have said. And then they play what Donald Trump has said. I have a very good brain. I'm very, very intelligent. That felt categorically different from some of the other. Like, oh, isn't his hair crazy? It's like making fun of George W. Bush for talking funny. Like, there's levels of light humor that you could apply to someone like that. And then there's a deeper gut punch.
- [31:43]
Nick Thompson
Well, the African dictators thing was particularly good. I mean, it was an incredible segment. It was something that only really Trevor Noah could do. You can't imagine.
- [31:50]
Baratunde Thurston
It was the New Daily Show.
- [31:51]
Nick Thompson
It was the New Daily Show. It was a guy from South Africa who actually make this joke, who has the credibility. And it's funny, not weird.
- [31:58]
Baratunde Thurston
I was like, yo, this dude has depth.
- [32:00]
Nick Thompson
Yeah.
- [32:00]
Baratunde Thurston
Okay. I will happily work with. And even for someone like this.
- [32:05]
Nick Thompson
Let me go to a critique of Trevor Noah. Cause you said you're drawn to him because of his depth.
- [32:08]
Baratunde Thurston
Yeah.
- [32:09]
Nick Thompson
Right. And the critique of Trevor Noah is that he doesn't have the depth you want. He's very funny, he's very charismatic. No one would deny him that. But there's a sense that when he's doing interviews, he's not pushing people as far as he could, or he's not going in. He doesn't go for the jugular, is what it'll say in, like, every review of Trevor Noah.
- [32:24]
Baratunde Thurston
Yeah.
- [32:24]
Nick Thompson
How do you respond to that?
- [32:25]
Baratunde Thurston
I think, you know, like a Roman Coliseum. The public wants blood.
- [32:30]
Nick Thompson
Yeah.
- [32:30]
Baratunde Thurston
I don't think people really understand how a show works. And it's a comedy show. And it's something Jon Stewart always said. And I always got annoyed by it. Cause I'm like, no, it's not just a comedy show. This is a new show.
- [32:44]
Narrator/Reporter
You're teaching the truth to the youth.
- [32:45]
Baratunde Thurston
And those things are also true. But John going for the jugular, quote, unquote, probably started happening in year 10.
- [32:55]
Nick Thompson
Right.
- [32:55]
Baratunde Thurston
My perspective is it's hard to get people to come on your show if you're, quote, unquote, going for the jugular. And it takes some time to find that balance.
- [33:08]
Nick Thompson
So there was a moment in Trevor Noah's interview with Lindsey Graham that I thought was a pretty good example of this. Noah's interviewing Graham, and Graham is saying that Donald Trump's not really a Republican. And Trevor Noah comes back with a pretty hard question.
- [33:20]
David Remnick
If you say, if you say Donald.
- [33:21]
Baratunde Thurston
Trump is not a Republican, why does it seem like the Republican base fits him like a glove?
- [33:27]
Lena Dunham
What's going on?
- [33:28]
Baratunde Thurston
Do the voters not know that this.
- [33:30]
David Remnick
Or have you maybe given them the impression that maybe this is a party.
- [33:33]
Amy Davidson
That supports authority and bigotry and all of those things you listed? Is that possible?
- [33:40]
Interviewer/Host
It's possible that Some do, absolutely. 35% of my party believes that Obama's a Muslim born in Kenya. He's locked that crowd down. Now 65% of us just think he's a bad president.
- [33:53]
Baratunde Thurston
Oh, there was a joke there, but.
- [33:57]
Nick Thompson
That was an amazing question by Trevor Noah, like, pivoting right there with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham pivoting right there, asking him a really tough follow up. But we didn't go any further than that. Lindsey Graham made a joke and then we sort of shifted to another clip of Ted Cruz. Would you have wanted him to go further there?
- [34:12]
Baratunde Thurston
Probably, yeah. Like, I probably would have wanted to ask that question more and more. I'm also a different person.
- [34:20]
Nick Thompson
Yeah.
- [34:20]
Baratunde Thurston
And I don't think it's like a huge miss or huge failure. I'm like, oh, Trevor Noah just ruined the Daily show by not sticking it. Because I think he also, for him, he, like, articulated and represented a lot of those viewers who also had that same thing. Just to be able to say that out loud to someone.
- [34:35]
Nick Thompson
What is your philosophy when you get in, when you're, when you're on the other side of the table or when you're in a podcast or, you know, you're having a conversation about race, it's the hardest thing for this country to talk about. And one of the great things about listening to you, whether it's one of your talks or one of your podcasts, is that you're very funny, you're very open, you're terrific at it. If you're with somebody like Lindsey Graham and it's you, Baratunde, how far do you take it and when do you stop?
- [34:58]
Baratunde Thurston
I think you stop when he swings at you. I feel like Lindsey Graham would swing at you. If you grew up in a bar, you probably witnessed a number of bar brawls and taking some notes. I like the conversation where both sides feel uncomfortable.
- [35:12]
Nick Thompson
Yeah.
- [35:12]
Baratunde Thurston
One of the projects that I put on hold when I joined the Daily show was my own podcast called Our National Conversation about Conversations About Race.
- [35:21]
Nick Thompson
And it's hosted by three people.
- [35:22]
Baratunde Thurston
Yeah. Tanner, Colby, Raquel Cepeda, and myself. So what I like about any conversation, especially a race one, is the pushing, but also the pulling and the asking.
- [35:35]
Nick Thompson
What does the pushing and the pulling mean?
- [35:37]
Baratunde Thurston
So the pushing is from a perspective of like, I know something, I need you to acknowledge it. I'm gonna push you into this little uncomfortable corner for you because you need to be confronted with some truth that I think I have. The pulling is, you've got something too, and I don't have it. What is your experience? What is your perspective? What happened or didn't happen to you that I can learn from as well.
- [36:06]
Nick Thompson
That makes lots of sense. It sounds a little different, though, from pushing Lindsey Graham to the point at which he takes a swing at you.
- [36:11]
Baratunde Thurston
I know. And I wouldn't want to make Lindsey Graham punch at me. I would want a forum where there's more time to actually keep going. And I think the structure that says this is a five minute interview also leads to moments where you leave questions unanswered. Cause you gotta go to commercial break.
- [36:29]
Nick Thompson
So tell me what the point of the podcast is. What are you trying to do with the podcast?
- [36:33]
Baratunde Thurston
So many of the race conversations we allegedly have are just within groups. You got all the black people over here talking to other black people about what's going on there. You have Latino people over here talking about other Latino people. You have white people talking about what everybody doesn't understand about them. Or when you do have a cross cultural thing, it's usually pretty binary. It's usually single gender. And so we tried to design.
- [36:56]
Nick Thompson
You've got a black man, a Latina woman and a white guy, right?
- [36:59]
Baratunde Thurston
Yeah. And we. And we've brought in guests who are East Asian, South Asian, gay and straight, and immigrants, you know, people who are not even actually born in this country. And I think that perspective, everything's getting more complicated. And we wanted to create a show that acknowledged we can, like, afford to dip our toe into the rivers of complexity.
- [37:17]
Nick Thompson
So how is your understanding? You've gone through all sorts of series of jobs, you've done all kinds of things. How is your understanding of this central issue, how comedy and humor helps people talk about race? How has it evolved and changed?
- [37:29]
Interviewer/Host
Hmm.
- [37:31]
Baratunde Thurston
It's not easy. Humor is not like a panacea. It doesn't. It's not a cure all. And I think some, apparently not some people even, you know, abuse it. Humor is a great spotlight. Humor alongside engineering, alongside other forms of art, alongside actual community building, super powerful. But I think humor is largely focuses attention and relieves pain. The jokes are not gonna resolve America's great diseases. Not alone. It can ease the pain. It can show you where to apply therapy. But humor alone is not up to the task. I don't think anything alone is.
- [38:20]
David Remnick
Baratunda Thurston, media thinker, writer, comedian, podcast host. He spoke with the New Yorker's Nick Thompson. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. In a minute, we're going to try something a little unusual, so stick around. I'm David Remnick. Next week on the show, Hilton Alls joins Michelle Williams backstage on the set of the deeply unsettling play Blackbird, next time on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Now, this being Memorial Day weekend, going to give you something a little different. It's a piece of fiction called of all things, Memorial Day, and it's set on Memorial Day and it's by the writer Peter Cameron. The story is told by a teenage boy suffering silently through the holiday with his mother and a stepfather he just can't accept. It's performed here by Noah Galvin, one of the stars of the new ABC comedy the Real o'. Neills. So here's Memorial Day.
- [39:33]
Interviewer/Host
I am eating a grapefruit with a grapefruit spoon my mother bought last summer from a door to door salesman on a large three wheeled bike. My mother and I were sitting on the front steps that day and we watched him glide down the street into our driveway and up our front walk. He opened his case on the handlebars and it was full of fruit appliances, pineapple corers, melon ballers, watermelon cedars, orange juice squeezers and grapefruit spoons. My mother bought four of the spoons and the man peddled himself out of our lives. That was about a year ago. Since then a lot has changed, I think as I pry the grapefruit pulp away from the skin with the serrated edge of the spoon. Since then, my mother has remarried, my father has moved to California, and I have stopped talking. Actually, I talk quite a lot at school, but never at home. I have nothing to say to anyone here. Across the table from me drinking postum, is my new stepfather. He wasn't here last year. I don't think he was anywhere last year. His name is Lonnie, and my mother met him at a Seth Speaks seminar. Seth is this guy without a body who speaks out of the mouth of this lady and tells you how to fix your life. Both Lonnie and my mother have fixed their lives one day at a time, my mother says every morning, smiling at Lonni and then less happily at me. Lonnie is only 13 years older than I am. He is 29, but looks about 14 when the three of us go out together, he is mistaken for my brother. Listen to this, lonnie says. Both Lonnie and my mother continue to talk to me, consult with me, and read things to me in the hope that I will forget and speak. If gypsy moths continue to destroy trees at their present rate, North America will become a desert incapable of supporting any life by the year 4000. Lonnie has a morbid sense of humor and delights in macabre newspaper fillers because he knows I won't answer. He doesn't glance up at me. He continues to stare at his paper and says, wow, think of that. I look out the window. My mother is sitting in an inflated rubber boat in the swimming pool, scrubbing the fiberglass walls with a stiff brush and Mr. Clean. They get stained during the winter. She does this every Memorial Day. We always open the pool this weekend, and she always blows up the yellow boat, puts on her Yankees hat so her hair won't turn orange, and paddles around the edge of the pool, leaving a trail of suds. Last year, as she scrubbed, the diamond from her old engagement ring fell out and sank to the bottom of the pool. She was still married to my father, although they were planning to separate after a last family vacation in July. My mother shook the suds off her hand and raised it in front of her face, her fingers flat, as if she were admiring a new ring. Oh, Stephen, she said. I think I've lost my diamond. What? I said. I still talked. Then the diamond fell out of my ring. Look. I got up from the chair I was sitting on and kneeled beside the pool. She held out her hand, the way women do in old movies when they expect it to be kissed. I looked down at her ring, and she was right. The diamond was gone. The setting looked like an empty hand tightly grabbing nothing. Do you see it? She asked, looking down into the pool. Because we had just taken the COVID off. The water was murky. It must be down there, she said. Maybe if you dove in. She looked at me with a nice pleading look on her face. I took off my shirt. I felt her looking at my chest. There's no hair on my chest, and every time my mother sees it, I know she checks to see if any has grown. I dove into the pool. The water was so cold my head ached. I opened my eyes and swam quickly around the bottom of the pool. I felt like one of those Japanese pearl fishers, but I didn't see the diamond. I surfaced and swam to the side. I don't see it I said. I can't see anything. Where's the mask? Oh, dear, my mother said. Didn't we throw it away last year? I forget, I said. I got out of the pool and stood shivering in the sun. Suddenly I got the idea that if I found the diamond, maybe my parents wouldn't separate. I know it sounds ridiculous, but at that moment, standing with my arms crossed over my thin chest, watching my mother begin to cry in her inflatable boat, at that moment the diamond sitting on the bottom of the pool took on a larger meaning, and I thought that if it were replaced in the tiny clutching hand of my mother's ring, we might live happily ever after. So I had my father drive me downtown, and I bought another diving mask at the 5 and 10, and when we got home I put it on first, spitting on the glass so it wouldn't fog, and dove into the water and dove again and again until I actually found the diamond, glittering in a mess of leaves and bloated inchworms at the bottom of the pool. I throw my grapefruit rind away and go outside and sit on the edge of the diving board with my feet in the water. My mother watches me for a second, probably deciding if it's worthwhile to say anything. Then she goes back to her scrubbing. Later, I'm sitting by the mailbox. Since I've stopped talking, I've written a lot of letters. I write to men in prison, and I answer personal ads claiming to be whatever it is the placer desires, an elegant, educated young lady for afternoon pleasure or a gbm. The mail from prison is the best. Long, long letters about nothing, since it seems nothing is done in prison. A lot of remembering, a lot of bizarre requests. Send me a shoehorn. Send me an empty egg carton. Arts and crafts. Send me an electric toothbrush. I like writing letters to people I've never met. Lonnie is planting geraniums he bought this morning in front of the A and P when he did the grocery shopping. Lonnie is very good about doing his share. I am not about mine. Every night I wait with delicious anticipation for my mother to tell me to take out the garbage. How many times do I have to tell you? Can't you just do it? Lonnie gets up and walks over to me, trowel in hand. He has on plaid Bermuda shorts and a Disney World T shirt. If I talked, I'd ask him when he went to Disney World, but I can live without the information. Lonnie flips the trowel at me and it slips like a knife into the ground a few inches from my leg. Bingo, lonnie says. Scare you? I think when a person stops talking, people forget that he can still hear. Lonnie is always saying dumb things to me, things you'd only say to a deaf person or a baby. What a day, lonnie says as if to illustrate this point. He stretches out beside me and I look at his long white legs. He has sneakers and white socks on. He never goes barefoot. He's too uptight to go barefoot. He would step on a piece of glass immediately. That's the kind of person Lonnie is. The Captain Ice cream truck rolls lazily down our street. Lonnie stands up and reaches in his pocket. Would you like an ice pop? He asks me, looking at his change. I shake my head no. An ice pop? Where did he grow up? Kentucky? Lonnie walks into the street and flags down the ice cream man as if it isn't obvious what he's standing there for. The truck slows down and the ice cream man jumps out. It's a woman. What can I get you? She says, opening the freezer on the side of the truck. It's the old fashioned kind of truck with the ice cream hidden in its frozen depths. I always thought you needed to have incredibly long arms to be a good Captain Ice cream person. Well, I'd like a nice ice pop, lonnie says. A twin bullet suggests the woman. What flavor do you have? Cherry? Lonnie asks. Sure, the woman says. Cherry, grape, orange, lemon cola, and tutti frutti. For a second I have a horrible feeling that Lonnie will want a Tutti Frutti. I'll have a cherry, he says. Lonnie comes back, peeling the sticky paper from his cherry bullet. It's a bright pink color. The truck drives away. Guess how much this cost, Lonnie says, sitting beside me on the grass. 60 cents. It's a good thing you didn't want one. He licks his fingers and then the ice stick. You want a bite? He holds it out toward me. Lonnie is so patient and so sweet. It's just too bad he's such a nerd. I take a bite of his cherry bullet. Good, huh? Lonnie says. He watches me eat for a second, then takes a bite himself. He breaks the bullet in half and eats it in a couple of huge bites. A little pink juice runs down his chin. What are you waiting for? He asks. I nod toward the mailbox. It's Memorial Day, lonnie says. The mail doesn't come. He stands up and pulls the trowel out of the ground. I think of King Arthur. There's no mail for anyone today, lonnie says, no matter how long you wait. He hands me his two bullet sticks and returns to his geraniums. I have this feeling, holding the stained wooden sticks, that I will keep them for a long, long time and come across them one day and remember this moment incorrectly. After the coals in the barbecue have melted into powder, the fireflies come out. They hesitate in the air as if stunned. By dusk, Lonni and my mother are sitting beside the now clean pool, and I am sitting on the other side of the natural forsythia fence that is planted around it, watching the bats swoop from tree to tree, feeling the darkness clot all around me. I can hear Lonnie and my mother talking, but I can't make out what they're saying. I love this time of day, early evening, early summer. It makes me want to cry. We always had a barbecue on Memorial Day with my father, and my mother cooked this year's hamburgers on her new barbecue, which Lonnie bought her for Mother's Day. She's old enough to be his mother, but she isn't, I would have said, if I talked. She cooked them in the same dumb, cheerful way she cooked last year's. She has no sense of sanctity or ritual. She would give Lonnie my father's clothes if my father had left any behind to give. My mother walks toward me with the hose, then past me toward her garden to spray the pea plants.
- [52:05]
Lena Dunham
Okay.
- [52:06]
Interviewer/Host
She yells to Lonnie, who stands by the spigot. He turns the knob and then goes inside. The light in the kitchen snaps on. My mother stands with one hand on her hip, the other raising and lowering the hose, throwing large fans of water over the garden. She used to bathe me every night, and I think of the peas hanging in their green skins, dripping. I lie with one ear on the cool grass and I can hear the water drumming into the garden. It makes me sleepy. Then I hear it stop and I look up to see my mother walking toward me, the skin on her bare legs and arms glowing. She sits down beside me, and for a while she says nothing. I pretend I'm asleep on the ground, although I know she knows I'm awake. Then she starts to talk, as I knew she would. My mother says, you are breaking my heart. She says it as if it were literally true, as if her heart were actually breaking. I just want you to know that she says. You're old enough to know that you are breaking my heart. I sit up. I look at my mother's chest as if I could see her heart breaking. She has on a polo shirt with a little blue whale on her left breast. I'm afraid to look at her face. We sit like that for a while, and darkness grows around us. When I open my mouth to speak, my mother uncoils her arm from her side and covers my mouth with her hand. I look at her. Wait, she says. Don't say anything yet. I can feel her flesh against my lips. Her wrist smells of chlorine. The fireflies lighting all around us make me dizzy.
- [54:33]
David Remnick
Memorial Day, performed for us by Noah Galvin. It first appeared in the New Yorker in 1983, and the author Peter Cameron went on to write, someday this pain will be useful to you, and most recently, Coral Glynn. I hope you're having a great holiday weekend, and I hope you'll join me again next week for Michelle Williams and the man who's opening a new chapter in American theater, Oscar Eustis.
- [54:59]
Lena Dunham
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported.
- [55:12]
Narrator/Reporter
In part by the Churina Endowment Fund.
- [55:17]
Interviewer/Host
Sam.