Episode 45: Father Pfleger, Larry David, and the History of Autism

Summary

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The New Yorker Radio Hour – Episode 45: Father Pfleger, Larry David, and the History of Autism

Date: August 26, 2016
Host: David Remnick
Producers: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

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Episode Overview

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

1. A profile of Chicago’s activist priest Father Michael Pfleger and his fight against gun violence on the South Side
2. A comic reading by Larry David of "Missed Connections for A Holes"
3. Insightful conversations—first with comedy powerhouse Judd Apatow on his career and influences, then with novelist Edmund White about art, aging, and beauty, and finally a deep dive with journalists John Donvan and Karen Zucker on the complex history and evolving understanding of autism

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1. Father Pfleger: Fighting for Chicago’s South Side

[00:29–12:32]
Reporter: Evan Osnos
Featured: Father Michael Pfleger

Key Points & Insights

• Background:
  Father Michael Pfleger, a white priest at the predominantly Black St. Sabina Church, has become a force in Chicago's politics and community struggle against violence.
• Personal History:
  • Pfleger was forever shaped by witnessing Martin Luther King Jr. marching against housing discrimination in Chicago in 1966.
  • "It launched him on an obsession, as he puts it, with King and also with the struggle for civil rights." (Osnos, 02:32)
• Community Impact:
  • Pfleger attends and leads many funerals for young men lost to violence—viewing these moments as urgent calls for community action.
  • At Philip "Cartoon" Dupree’s funeral, Pfleger addresses gang members with raw honesty about violence and personal responsibility.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "What's it going to take to stop the madness out here? ... What we also got to do is stop the shooting and the killing of each other." (Pfleger, 06:07)
  • "We have to stop this crazy spirit of retaliation. ... You never get even." (Pfleger, 09:16)
  • "Are you kidding me? We gonna fight and shoot and kill over blocks that have been abandoned and neglected by the city and the state and the federal government so long some blocks that look like third world countries." (Pfleger, 09:50)
• Memorable Moments:
  • Osnos reveals that Cartoon once threatened to kill Pfleger, but the priest still chose to perform the funeral, using the occasion to plead for change (07:33).
• Reflection:
  • "He allows himself to imagine that the acts of one person on any given day can, in fact, perhaps change the history to come." (Osnos, 11:28)

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2. Larry David Reads “Missed Connections for A Holes”

[13:17–16:01]
Writer: Ethan Cooperberg
Performed by: Larry David

Key Points & Insights

• Premise:
  Larry David dramatically reads satirical "Missed Connections" ads targeting everyday rudeness—vegan hypocrisy, ill-tended dogs, slow burrito orders, poor grammar, and Google Glass douchery.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "You said that you literally could not live without the salsa you were buying. I wish you could literally not live without that salsa. Because then I'd take it from you." (Larry David, 15:24)
• Tone:
  Classic Larry David—acerbic, deadpan, and hilarious in skewering social irritations.

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3. Judd Apatow on Comedy, Responsibility, and Family

[16:01–32:35]
Interviewers: Susan Morrison, occasional contributions from David Remnick and Josh Rothman

Key Points & Insights

• Stand-Up Return & Club Scene:
  Apatow returns to stand-up after 22 years, finds joy at New York’s Comedy Cellar surrounded by comedy legends.
• Transition from Performer to Writer/Producer:
  • Left stand-up due to self-doubt and friends' prowess; found strength writing in others' voices (18:05).
  • "If I'm a disappointment, it's a drag. So they don't give you the courtesy laugh for too long." (Apatow, 18:54)
• On Creating Movies vs. Stand-Up:
  • Movies are “painful” and stressful, stand-up offers immediate feedback—relief or fresh challenge (19:16, 19:37).
• On Bill Cosby:
  Apatow was outspoken about Cosby's alleged crimes, motivated by knowledge of survivors and personal outrage:
  • "He did this, and we can't let this disappear again... His whole life is about personal responsibility. So it's very weird for a guy at the end of it to not take any personal responsibility." (21:01)
• On Comedians as Public Intellectuals:
  • "I think comedians have always pointed out BS. ... Comedy has mocked lack of tolerance." (22:47)
  • Comedy helps foster rational, tolerant perspectives in the younger generation.
• Family Influence:
  • His mother’s job at a comedy club after divorce shaped his comedic education—suggests parental sacrifice intertwined with his creative path (24:04).
• On Relationships, Growth, and His Netflix Show "Love":
  • Comedy thrives on characters in distress—“being a human being is being immature.” (27:03)
  • The show reveals messy, real-time relationship dynamics (28:11).
• Improv & Creative Process:
  • Encourages improvisation on set for authenticity—“You really have to listen because people are going to subtly reword everything all the time.” (29:27)
• On “Conservative” Endings:
  • Argues hope, resilience, and happiness are human, not political, values—“I like showing hope. I like showing people struggle to figure out how to make it work.” (30:58)

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4. Edmund White on Gay Art, Aging, and Beauty

[33:26–42:11]
Interviewer: Josh Rothman
Guest: Edmund White

Key Points & Insights

• Literary Influence:
  White’s candid, unapologetic depictions of gay life have broadened the literary discourse on sexuality and identity.
• Writing Motives:
  • "All of writing, I think, is made up of two elements. One is mimesis, where you're imitating actual life experiences. And the other part is fantasy... I tip more toward the fantasy end." (34:20)
• Beauty and Aging in Gay Culture:
  • Discusses fleeting youth, changing ideals of male beauty—"Being beautiful induced melancholy in Guy." (White reading, 37:11)
  • Shifts from youth worship to broader, cultivated notions of adulthood and connection.
• Romanticism & AIDS Era:
  • Love stories in his novels progress past the ‘happy ending,’ delve into real-life complexity.
  • “Some things are worth dying for. But people didn’t want to hear that.” (40:17)
• Changing Acceptance & Possibilities:
  • Openness has diversified gay experience, and thus, its literary representation.
  • On his students' contradictions: “I have a terrible gaydar these days and I can never tell who’s gay.” (41:21)

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5. The Changing History and Definition of Autism

[43:50–54:47]
Guests: John Donvan & Karen Zucker
Interviewer: David Remnick

Key Points & Insights

• Personal Stakes:
  Both authors have close family experience with autism—Zucker as a mother, Donvan through marriage.
• Services and Society:
  • Stark difference in support for adults with autism internationally—“We have next to nothing [in the U.S.].” (Remnick, 45:54)
  • Turning 21 brings an abrupt end to legal and social support, termed “falling off a cliff.” (46:26)
• Rising Diagnosis Rates & Spectrum Complexity:
  • Broadening definitions and increased awareness inflate statistics; "each time we count...we're counting apples and oranges." (Zucker, 47:15)
  • The term ‘on the spectrum’ has become vague, complicating understanding and support.
• Patient Zero:
  The search for “Donald T.”, the first person identified as autistic by Leo Kanner, reflected the arc from medical curiosity to community acceptance—Donald lives in a supportive small town.
  • “We absolutely have found the guy...” (Zucker, 50:05)
• Hope, Therapy, and Social Inclusion:
  • Research is rapidly progressing but splintering; science may find “many, many kinds of autisms." (Donvan, 51:48)
  • The biggest need is not a cure but social acceptance, dignity, and inclusion.
  • Zucker’s account of her son's airport ordeal illustrates abiding societal hurdles—“We really have a lot of work to do on the most basic level of awareness.” (Zucker, 53:00)
• Notable Quotes:
  • "If our book has an argument, it's that society needs to find a better way not to be jerks towards individuals with autism, find a space for them, a place for them in society, make it easier." (Donvan, 52:43)
  • "As a society, we really. There are pockets of acceptance and mostly with kids. ... My son's 21 now and they wouldn't have stopped him as a kid, but as a six foot skinny guy who doesn't shave very well, people are freaked out." (Zucker, 54:25)

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Timestamps of Major Segments

• 00:29 – Father Pfleger profile begins
• 05:16 – Pfleger’s funeral oratory for "Cartoon"
• 06:07 – On violence and responsibility in the community
• 13:17 – Larry David reads “Missed Connections for A Holes”
• 17:01 – Judd Apatow interview at Comedy Cellar
• 21:01 – Apatow on Cosby and personal responsibility
• 27:03 – Discussion of his Netflix show “Love”
• 33:26 – Edmund White interview
• 37:11 – White reads from “Our Young Man”
• 43:50 – Autism: Donvan & Zucker join Remnick
• 46:26 – “Falling off a cliff” at age 21 for care
• 49:12 – Donald Triplett (“patient zero”) and his town
• 51:48 – Genetics, therapy, and the quest for acceptance

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Tone and Style

The episode is a blend of documentary depth, comic relief, and heartfelt conversation, varying from the urgent and inspirational (Father Pfleger) to acerbic (Larry David), introspective (Judd Apatow and Edmund White), and advocacy-driven (Donvan & Zucker).

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Further Reading & Credits

• Evan Osnos’ profile of Father Pfleger at newyorkerradio.org
• Karen Zucker & John Donvan’s book: In a Different Key: The Story of Autism
• Edmund White’s novel: Our Young Man
• Judd Apatow’s Netflix series: Love
  Produced by: Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield, Paul Schneider, Stephen Valentine, and others.
  Music: Meryl Garbus of Tune-Yards

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Transcript

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Floor 38.

[Susan Morrison]

It's very exciting to be having a.

[Karen Zucker]

Conversation with someone when they have that revelation.

[Susan Morrison]

I mean, it'd be good if you.

[Josh Rothman]

Have a source for it.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

Yeah.

[Karen Zucker]

The telegraph from one World Trade center in Manhattan. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. We have a lot coming up today, including, I'm very excited about this, a performance by Larry David in fine form as an impossible crank venting on the Internet. So stick around for that. We're going to start off, though, in Chicago on the south side. Chicago, like much of the country, is a safer place than it was 25 years ago. The murder rate is, roughly speaking, half of what it used to be. But violence on the south side remains stubbornly, tragically high. And many neighborhoods there have been dangerous for generations. Among the people trying to change the south side is a priest named Michael Fleger. Father Fleger is such a well known figure that Spike Lee based a character on him in his recent film Chiraq. Evan Asnos has been spending a lot of time with Father Fleger lately, and he attended a funeral recently that Fleger led for a young gang member.

[Judd Apatow]

God is able.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

I'm just asking right now, turn your life around and turn it over to God.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

Father Michael Flager was raised on the Southwest side of Chicago and became a priest in the 70s. In 1975, he was assigned to St Sabina's which is the largest African American Catholic church in Chicago. And the obvious fact about him when you meet him is that Father Pfleger is white and his congregation is almost entirely African American.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Because if he can do it for granny, he can do it for every single one of us. God can turn things around out here.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

Really the defining moment for Michael Flager growing up was 1966. And in that summer, Martin Luther King marched in Chicago against housing discrimination. And Flager went and watched the protest. And there was one march in particular in Marquette park where the crowd was throwing things, bottles and rocks, and Martin Luther King was hit in the head by a roc.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Many times.

[Susan Morrison]

I'm immune to it.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

And later, Flager was going home and was thinking to himself, this was the craziest man he had ever seen. And in its own way, it launched him on an obsession, as he puts it, with King and also with the struggle for civil rights. And it became the defining fact of his life. Over the years, Father Pfleger has become a very powerful figure in Chicago politics. There is nobody, no mayor, no member of the city council who can afford to ignore him. And partly that's because he thrusts himself into the middle of debates constantly. And you see him on the 5 o' clock news.

[Karen Zucker]

Father Michael Flager of St. Sabina's church was posting this Facebook message about the.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Violence in Chicago in the first month of 2016.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

He has almost single handedly built this presence in Chicago politics by being unrelenting and by constantly calling reporters, calling the newspaper, letting them know when he thinks something is unjust or something is wrong. And he knows that they will love a good story. And Michael Flager is a very good story.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Come on, one more time, put your hands together and open up your mouth and just give a scream to God.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

In January, I attended a funeral at Flaggers Church for a young man named Philip Dupree, though everybody in the neighborhood called him Toon, which was short for cartoon. He'd been nicknamed that when he was a kid because he had a big forehead and big ears. And he was very well known in the neighborhood because he was a member of the Gangster Disciples and more specifically, a part of the gang called G Ville, which controlled an area right near the church. And he had been arrested over the years, many, many times for assault, for cannabis possession, for what's called gang loitering, for carrying a weapon in a vehicle. And Cartoon had recently been shot and killed in a car a couple of blocks from the church. And Father Pfleger had rushed out and had gone to the scene of the crime and found him there. Khartun is laying at the front of the church in a silver casket beneath a tall portrait of a young black Jesus in a long white robe. And the church holds over a thousand people, and it's packed. Everybody of a certain age in that neighborhood knew Cartoon. And a lot of the people who are there are members of the local gangs. And it's not at all clear what it is that Father Pfleger is going to say to them.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Philip was much bigger than Toon. Some folk just knew Toon on the street, but I knew Philip. Philip was a person, as everyone said, love people. Philip liked to come in every situation and just turn it up. Came here to church and sat up here and wanted to turn up church. I said, this is my church. Sit down.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

There are a lot of funerals like this at St. Sabina's because it sits in one of Chicago's most violent neighborhoods. There were about 500 people killed last year in Chicago by gun violence. And Father Pfleger was Not going to miss an opportunity to talk about this violence. And what the people in that church could do to try to bring it to an end.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

What's it going to take to stop the madness out here? We tell you something, sisters and brothers. I'm fighting like hell to get bad cops off the street. I will fight every day to put every cop that's on the street bad in jail where he or she belongs. But what we also got to do is stop the shooting and the killing of each other.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

Father Flager is deeply embedded in this community. He's been here longer, in fact, Than many people in the church that day have been alive. And for him, that means being responsible not only for people inside the church. But also involved in their struggles outside in the neighborhood. And as the violence has become more intractable in that neighborhood, he's led marches. People go and literally call out the names of the gang members. And call on them to stop killing. And there's a lot of people who don't like that he's doing that.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

I'm not going to stand here and pretend that Phil was all that. And that a tune didn't exist. I ain't gonna pretend that.

[David Remnick]

I told his mom that.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Many of you probably remember me when we used to do marches on Friday nights. I called Cartoon out. I'd run down the street, and we'd be out of charge and say, khatun, come talk to me. Cub, come talk to me. Stan, come talk.

[David Remnick]

I called them all out.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

I ain't afraid of nobody. I got God on my side.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

What Father Pfleger didn't tell the congregation is what he told me, which is that Khartoum had threatened to kill him a few years ago when he was going around the neighborhood calling out the names of gang members. He says that Cartoon put out the word that if he didn't close his mouth, then Father Pfleger could end up dead. He doesn't really know why nobody carried out the threat to kill him. As he said, a lot of people have threatened me over the years. Part of the reason why he decided to have a funeral for this young man who had threatened to kill him Was partly because I think on some level, he believed or wanted to believe that Khartoum was trying to turn his life around. Before he was killed, he'd started coming to church and was talking to the priest about it. I also think he saw it as an opportunity to talk to people. Who he may never have that opportunity to talk with quite that way again. He looked out over that crowd of Hundreds of young men. And he spoke to them with a kind of fury. I mean, he was saying to them almost explicitly, if you don't change your ways, you will be next. You'll be here. And without putting too fine a point on it, perhaps the one thing that cartoon actually gave Father Flager was an excuse to have a very hard and very necessary conversation with the people around him.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

We better make up our mind. The governor, the mayor, the alderman, the police, they ain't gonna do nothing about this. If you're waiting on them to change this, you might as well give up waiting. We have to stop this. We have to stop this in Auburn, Gresham and Englewood and Chatham and Lawndale. We have to stop this. And we have to stop this crazy spirit of retaliation. Because guess what? You never get even. There's no such thing as this one gets this one, this one gets this one. And it always just ante and up and we're just watching blood run down our streets. You never get even. We gotta stop this stupidity. I know I'm gonna upset some people, but that's all right. I got friends I don't need no more. We gotta stop this stupid mentality. Well, Marshfield belongs to them. Laughlin belongs to them. Foster belongs to them. Kaepernick belongs to them. 76 and and and holster belongs to them. We gotta stop all that craziness. Are you kidding me? We gonna fight and shoot and kill over blocks that have been abandoned and neglected by the city and the state and the federal government so long some blocks that look like third world countries. And we're gonna fight over a block that other people don't give a damn about. How stupid is that? Instead of banding together and saying, we gonna be in the real fight, we're gonna fight city hall, we're gonna fight the governor, we're gon President. And bring some economic development, bring some jobs, bring some hope, bring some possibility back to our community. You can't just say, stop the violence. Give me a job, give me a way out, give me an opportunity. This fight, this fight is in our hands.

[Narrator/Reporter (Evan Osnos)]

It's impossible not to listen to Father Pueger and think of the way in which he was shaped by the struggle of the 20th century, which was the civil rights struggle. And the strange miracle of him is that he betrays no sense, no knowledge that he has another one of these funerals in another few days or a few days after that. It's a certain form of suspension, of cynicism that he is allowing himself to imagine that the acts of one person on any given day can, in fact, perhaps change the history to come.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

I need you all to stand on your feet and give these brothers a hand as they come back to their seat. Come on. Keep your hands clapping. Encourage these brothers, okay?

[David Remnick]

Ask.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Everybody take their seat.

[David Remnick]

Evan Osnos, staff writer at the New Yorker, talking about Michael Fleger, the senior pastor at St. Sabina in Chicago. You can read Evan's profile of father [e-mail] this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come on.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Sing that Michael.

[Judd Apatow]

You are.

[Larry David]

I was at a coffee shop in Park Slope. You were sitting next to me talking to your friend about how you're a vegan but you secretly eat eggs. I really wish I had said something to you. Your voice was loud and distracted me from my work.

[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. You know those Missed connections? They used to be in the back of weekly newspapers. Now they're on Craigslist and wherever else this is. Missed Connections for a Holes by Ethan Cooperberg, read for us by none other than Larry David.

[Larry David]

Hi. I saw you at the dog park. You had the German shepherd and I had the terrier. If this is you, please message me the name of the park and your address. Your dog was not well attended and I'd like to report you to the proper officials. You're in front of me in line at the Chipotle in Queensland. You order the carnitas burrito with no beans ad guac. I still remember this because it took you almost 10 minutes to order. You had all the time in the world while we were in line. What were you doing then? How could it take you so long to decide not to have beans? Either you want beans or you don't want beans. It's not that hard. Please email me. I need to understand this. We made small talk in the checkout line at Trader Joe's. You said that you literally could not live without the salsa you were buying. I wish we could talk again. You used literally incorrectly. I wish you could literally not live without that salsa. Because then I'd take it from you. At a bar celebrating my friend's birthday in Midtown. We were wearing Google Glass. I tried to mouth you look like a moron. Did you record that? You were sitting right next to me in an airplane terminal and we were both on our laptops. You were totally hogging the armrest. But when you moved your hand to cough, I took the armrest. You glanced at me angrily. This just Happened. Now I can see you writing a post about me online, so I'm doing the same thing. You're still writing. Me too. We can both see each other's laptops as we write. I wish we could just talk in person so I could tell you not to be so passive aggressive out loud.

[David Remnick]

That was Larry David performing Ethan Cooperberg's Missed Connections for a Holes. Judd Apatow has been responsible for an astonishing amount of the comedy of our time. He's not always the one telling the jokes, but as a writer, a director, a producer, a cultivator of talent, he's been behind cult favorites like Freaks and Geeks and some of Hollywood's biggest comedies, including the 40 Year Old Virgin and one of my favorites, Bridesmaids. So maybe it's a good thing that Apatow's earlier career as a stand up comedian didn't exactly take off. But with a lot of success behind him, he started performing on stage again. The New Yorker Susan Morrison, who is herself a great cultivator of comedic talent for the magazine, met up with him earlier this year at one of his favorite comedy clubs.

[Susan Morrison]

We're going. We're downstairs. We're in the actual comedy club. So we're here in the Comedy Cellar on McDougal street, which is kind of like a time warp. Judd, why did you want to come here?

[Judd Apatow]

I just thought maybe we would promote them and then they'd give me better spots. No, the, the. The reason why we're here is just I, I love it here. It's, it's. They've been here 30 years. It's a small comedy club, and I found it really fun to do stand up here again because you come in and then just Chris Rock walks in or Dave Chappelle or, or Louis. And there are these magical nights. You know, a few months ago, Chris Rock came in and everyone was like, is he gonna go on? And he went on stage and just improvised Oscar jokes for half an hour. I was pretty blown away. And as a comedy nerd, I was in heaven because I'm really only a comedian. To get to watch stuff like that, it's like, that's my passion. Into the kingdom.

[Susan Morrison]

So you started out doing stand up, and then you hadn't done it for 22 years. Why had you stopped initially?

[Judd Apatow]

Well, it's hard to know because it's so easy to rewrite history. One reason was because so many of my friends were so good at it, and I really felt like I'm not as good as them, and it bothered me. And I think I was a little bored of myself. I didn't have much to say. I didn't have a strong point of view. I wasn't angry. I wasn't reinventing the form. And then I kept getting jobs as a writer. I was really good at writing in other people's voices. So if Roseanne Barr said, can you write jokes in my voice? I didn't have any problem doing that. It was much harder to do it for myself.

[Susan Morrison]

So when you came back to it, do you think that your years of experience being a television writer and a producer and a husband and a father, I mean, that made you better at it? Or do you think, I hope this isn't insulting, or people laughing at you just because now you're a name brand?

[Judd Apatow]

Exactly. Well, I think that they laugh about maybe two minutes. You know what I mean? If they don't know you, they'll ride it a little bit. But if I. If I'm a disappointment, it's a drag. So they don't give you the courtesy laugh for. For too long.

[Susan Morrison]

I see. Does it give you something that the rest of your career doesn't? I mean, what do you get out of it that you don't get from being a director and a producer and a writer?

[Judd Apatow]

Well, there's so much you want to talk about that you can't do in a movie. Movies are painful. I mean, when they go, well, I usually just feel like I dodged a bullet. But a good comedy show makes you happy. And then a bad one, you're like, well, I'll do it again tomorrow.

[Susan Morrison]

It's this combustive thing. It happens. It's over. And then you can start again the next day.

[Judd Apatow]

But if a movie bombs, I'm not sleeping for a while. I've wasted millions of dollars of other people's money. A giant corporation is suffering.

[Susan Morrison]

Now, when you last year, you did stand up at Carnegie hall and at comedy festivals and also on the Tonight show where you killed doing a bit about Cosby. It was your imagining of what Cosby's act would be like today.

[Judd Apatow]

Isn't that weird? He's, like, doing standup. What do you think his act is like? Do you think he's still talking about it? You think he says, like, you have a bit of trouble with the wife. You ever, like, get into the dog.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

House with the wife? You're in the doghouse with the wife.

[Judd Apatow]

Cause of something that you did.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Like the other day, there was something.

[Josh Rothman]

About reading the paper, and I didn't.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Want my wife to read the paper. So I got up at 5 in.

[Josh Rothman]

The morning, and I snuck out to.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

The driveway to get the paper, and I hid the paper.

[Josh Rothman]

And the next day I got up.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

And I hid the paper.

[Susan Morrison]

Now, you were an early and really ardent voice against Cosmi and a defender of his accusers. Why were you so vociferous about it? Is it because you have two daughters? Is it because he was your boyhood hero?

[Judd Apatow]

All of that. And I know one of the victims, and I've met a bunch of them since. And when you meet them, it just becomes very obvious. You know, it's a lot of people with the exact same story. He had an M.O. he had a way. He was behaving. I don't think there's any question that it's true. I felt that someone had to say, let's just be honest. He just. He did this, and we can't let this disappear again. He should pay for his crimes or he should do something for these women. He's worth a probably almost a million dollars. You think he could do something thoughtful for these people before he dies and do something that shows that he understands that he's hurt people? That's what his whole life is about. His whole life is about personal responsibility. So it's very weird for a guy at the end of it to not take any personal responsibility.

[Susan Morrison]

But I think what you say there's a case for reparations, it's kind of interesting against these women.

[Judd Apatow]

Wouldn't it be amazing if out of the blue, Bill Cosby just said, I hurt a lot of people. I'm a very wealthy man. These people's lives were forever affected by this, and I'm going to try to do something for them. Would that be the greatest lesson to the world?

[Susan Morrison]

Maybe he'll hear this.

[Judd Apatow]

I doubt it. I doubt it. What do you think he's watching on TV right now?

[Susan Morrison]

Now, I read that you told an interviewer once, quote, people have been trained to think that being amused is what's most important in our country. I think that you said that in relation to Donald Trump. Right. And we're all kind of guilty. You know, at the beginning of the Trump campaign, even we in the media sort of viewed it as this delightful joke. And then it got scary.

[Judd Apatow]

But.

[Susan Morrison]

But there is a sense that. That comedians have become our public intellectuals.

[Judd Apatow]

Oh, I think comedians have always pointed out BS And I think young people have learned to look at the world through that lens. They've looked at it through the Daily show or the Colbert Report. And I've always Said, I feel like a lot of comedy has mocked lack of tolerance. So that's why I think gay marriage was accepted much faster, because people like Jon Stewart were just eviscerating anyone that would have an issue with it. And so you have a whole generation of people who are much more rational. I mean, we'll see how that ultimately plays out, if that's correct. But I think a lot of young people are taking a second look in a way that hopefully is healthy. The Trump thing is different. It's tapping into all sorts of rage and frustration. And hopefully, as people figure out this is what he would do, though. Here's what he would do. Do you agree with these steps that they would, you know, will realize there are probably better people than him to make these decisions.

[Susan Morrison]

Now, your parents were divorced when you were an adolescent, and your mom worked in a comedy club, right, which allowed you kind of entree to round the clock.

[Judd Apatow]

One summer, after my parents separated, my mom was a hostess at the East End Comedy Club in Southampton. I got to watch all the comedians and all. All the shows all summer. And sometimes I think maybe my mom did that just for me. What could she have gotten paid, 100 bucks or 50 bucks?

[Susan Morrison]

I think that is such a beautiful story. I'm sure she did it for that reason.

[Judd Apatow]

On some level, as a kid, you.

[Susan Morrison]

Never think your parent is doing something like that with you in mind, but I'm sure she must have been.

[Judd Apatow]

But yet she seemed to enjoy it, but really loved that I enjoyed it. And so I went to every show all summer.

[Susan Morrison]

Amazing. I've read that you thought there's a connection between the upheaval of your parents divorce, and you're ultimately becoming a producer and a writer rather than a performer. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[Judd Apatow]

Well, I was a middle child and a child of divorce. So you become someone that tries to create safety. I always found safety in working, because I always feel like if I'm in motion, I'll be okay. And as a producer, you take the most damaged part of your psyche and you use it for good. So if you're a nervous person and if you have catastrophic thinking and you're always going, what could go wrong? As a producer, that's the best attribute, because you're thinking, how many days do we need to shoot this? What would be the appropriate budget? How do we make sure we do it in the right amount of hours? And you could run these problems and solve them all day long because you're a nervous person, feel in control.

[Susan Morrison]

No, I mean, it's made me think, When I was 13, my father went crazy and my family imploded, and I'd never drawn the connection between. You know, I started out in my career always wanting to be an editor and not a writer, you know, wanting to kind of shape everything. And, Chris, what you're saying about process, and it's only now in my old age that I feel like I've got it together enough to want to be.

[Judd Apatow]

A writer the way it's interesting, and also to be supportive of other people. There's something about that, too, where you feel like, oh, I can help people, and I can make people's lives less chaotic. So if I'm working with Amy Schumer, I enjoy giving her an experience as a writer and an actor. That's pleasant, but on some level, you're doing it for yourself because you feel like I've had hard times, and I like helping people not have hard times.

[Susan Morrison]

Right. It's a kind of paying it forward. Now, let's talk about your new show on Netflix. Love. A lot of your work is about a man child getting his act together and growing up. It seems to me that in love the Netflix show, it's a woman, so that'll be 235.

[Karen Zucker]

Dude, I don't have my wallet. Can I pay you back later? I'm good for it. I'll come right back.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Hey, you know what?

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

I got this.

[Judd Apatow]

Okay.

[Karen Zucker]

And a pack of cigarettes.

[Susan Morrison]

Tell us about that as a familiar.

[Judd Apatow]

Well, I think for comedy, people need to be in distress or a mess. You know, people who have their act together are just not that interesting. So every story is about someone who's a mess or someone who's immature. And as I get older, I'm 48. I don't know anybody who's mature, really. When I talk to them about their lives, everyone's in a panic. Everybody's nervous. Everybody's trying to do the right thing. So I feel like that's just being a human being is being immature. Unless you're like, I don't know, Bruce Springsteen. I hope that Bruce Springsteen, I don't think he is mature. Those records are about all of these. The different things that went wrong in his life and adjustments that he's made. Yeah. So everybody is in turmoil, and that's what I find fun. And I think relationships bring out everything you're struggling with. And that's what's interesting about the show. It's two people who are basically hiding who they really are because it's the early romance and Slowly, their histories are revealed to each other, and they have to deal with it.

[Susan Morrison]

And the show seems to take place in real time.

[Judd Apatow]

Yes. And I feel like what's fun about the show is it's 10 episodes. I think it all takes place over 10 days. And so you're seeing the moment they meet, and then the moment when they have to decide, do they want to go out? And then if they go out, do we want to do that again? And you're seeing all those in between moments.

[Susan Morrison]

Before, we were talking about Stand up, which. Which I imagine is pretty scripted. You write it out, you memorize it. But your movies utilize a lot of improv. Does Is. Is love a show that has a lot of improvisation in it, or do you stick to a script?

[Judd Apatow]

There is some improvisation in the show. Paul Rust is one of the UCB greats, and Gillian is very good at it. And there's a lot of people from that world on the show. But we probably improvised more in the first bunch of episodes. But I'd like to tell everyone, on any set, if you think of something, just say it. If you're acting and in the moment something occurs to you, no one is ever gonna be mad if you just go a completely different way. And that changes how people act because they pay more attention to each other, because they know, oh, they may not say the line. So no one.

[Susan Morrison]

So you have to listen.

[Judd Apatow]

You really have to listen because. Because people are going to subtly reword everything all the time.

[Susan Morrison]

Right. I know that your movies have so many more thousands of feet of film than most people's movies. And I always.

[Judd Apatow]

Digital memory, you mean?

[Susan Morrison]

Oh, I guess so. Dating myself. I always wonder whether in some, you know, future age, people could put together, like, six different versions of Knocked Up. Something with all the leftover footage of. I mean, is that something that worries you?

[Judd Apatow]

James Franco asked me if I would give him all of the dailies of Freaks and Geeks. He may have asked for Knocked up also. And he would just wanted to just.

[Susan Morrison]

Play with them, right?

[Judd Apatow]

Just play with them.

[Susan Morrison]

Collage.

[Judd Apatow]

Cut something, turn it into something else, you know, which is a really fascinating idea. I mean, that's what should happen at film school. Like, if you were studying to be an editor, someone should give you 2 million feet of film of Knocked up and say, okay, don't ever look at the movie again. Turn it into a movie. That would be great.

[Susan Morrison]

And being the Judd Apatow chair at usc.

[Judd Apatow]

Exactly.

[Susan Morrison]

This is gonna be a great tax deduction for you, too.

[Judd Apatow]

You've got to do there's all your heavyweights footage. Go for it.

[Susan Morrison]

Now, the Times bed columnist Ross Douthat wrote kind of a weird editorial in the Times praising your work for what he called its essential conservatism. Now, I guess what he meant is that the movies often end with a wedding like a Shakespearean comedy. But how does that. How do you respond to that comment?

[Judd Apatow]

I'm always for people trying to better themselves, and I'm for people trying to find happiness and love and sanity and relationships. I don't think that's a conservative value. I think it's a human value. So, yeah, I think it's nice to not spend your life alone and miserable. And so in a lot of the movies, people are attempting not to do that. And sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. I like showing hope. I like showing people struggle to figure out how to make it work. But I certainly don't think that's a conservative idea. In terms of reproductive rights, obviously, I'm very pro choice, but if people, you know, if it goes back to knocked up, you know, if she has an abortion, the movie's over eight minutes in. And I thought it was interesting to see two people try to get to know each other. You know, this baby's happening and we don't really like each other, but maybe we should see if we're wrong about not liking each other.

[Susan Morrison]

Right.

[Judd Apatow]

I'm on board.

[Susan Morrison]

Yay. I really appreciate you saying that.

[Judd Apatow]

No problem. You know, so I'll tell you, maybe if you could help me by telling me, like, one thing that I am.

[Father Michael Pfleger]

Supposed to do, that would be good.

[Judd Apatow]

Because I literally have no idea whatsoever.

[David Remnick]

I have no idea either.

[Judd Apatow]

So do you want to get together.

[Josh Rothman]

And talk about it or something like that? Yeah, sure. Date?

[Susan Morrison]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

That's Judd Apatow talking with Susan Morrison. You can watch season one of his show Love on Netflix. Season two will be out in 2017. I'm David Remnick, and you're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. The novelist Edmund White has been at the center of gay fiction since the 1970s. His book A Boy's Own Story was the first widely read coming out novel in America. And he's written many novels since, along with four books of memoirs, collections of essays, a play, and biographies of Marcel Proust and Jean Genet. This spring, at the age of 76, White published his 13th novel, Our Young Man. The New Yorker's Josh Rothman sat down to talk with him about it.

[Josh Rothman]

Okay, good.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

So I want to call you Professor White, but I think I should Call you Edmund?

[Josh Rothman]

Yeah.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

Well, I wanted to talk to Ed for a number of reasons. One is, you know, he's actually had a huge influence on me as a. As a person and a writer. I met Edmund because he was my creative writing teacher in college. I had never heard of him, you know, before I had him as a teacher, I had just never read anything like his books. As a straight man reading them, you do have a little bit of envy. I mean, it's you. You envy the, you know, sexual freedom, the excitement, and also just the difference. And one thing that Ed is famous for is that he's unapologetic about loving gay culture as it existed pre aids. His new novel, which is called Our Young man, is about a male model and a sort of ageless male model who never gets older. And he lives a life like frozen in time.

[Josh Rothman]

In this book, Our Young Man, I was writing it right after, well, during and right after a heart attack where I was in the hospital for 40 days and couldn't walk or talk, but I could still scribble. And I think I was trying to write about a more glamorous period in the past that would cheer me up. I didn't want to write about old people dying like myself. I mean, all of writing, I think, is made up of two elements. One is mimesis, where you're imitating actual life experiences. And the other part is fantasy, where you're imagining another world, another life. And I think there always has to be a balance between those two. But in this one, I think I tip more toward the fantasy end of the spectrum.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

I basically feel like I know you very well after all of these years of reading you. Do you write, in part, to be known by people.

[Josh Rothman]

Well, when I first started writing autobiographical fiction, nobody like me couldn't write autobiographies. You had to be the winner of the battle of Iwo Jima or something to write a memoir.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

But in writing about sex in such a frank way, was there any. What was your feeling in doing that?

[Josh Rothman]

Well, I felt rather defiant about it. I still feel this, that it's one of the most important parts of human experience. It's where people actually live in their minds. And that it's remarkable how little it gets written about. I always say that straight writers, straight male writers can't write about it because their wives would be angry. And gays had a kind of freedom now less so because they're all married.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

Right. I mean, what do you think about the. So I'm 36, so I'm too old to be involved in the sort of millennial world of Snapchat and sexting and things like that. But there does seem to be like a casualness, or at least theoretically there's supposed to be a casualness about sex in the sort of digital social media universe. I mean, do you have any consciousness of that?

[Josh Rothman]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I had dinner last night with a friend who's 24 and very handsome and who's always on Grindr. But I think he's always kind of slightly disappointed because people are so dumb. I mean, he's the biggest reader I know and no one can keep up with him.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

So the new novel, it's the life of a male model named Guy, who. He's an aperture into a world of glamour. He's so good looking, so beautiful that it's almost like he doesn't realize what is happening around him or what effect he's having on people.

[Josh Rothman]

I think the burdens of being beautiful are something people don't talk about too much, but it's something that's always interested me.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

Could I convince you to read a passage from the book?

[Josh Rothman]

Sure, absolutely.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

I marked a beginning.

[Josh Rothman]

His first weekend on Fire island with Pierre Georges, who turned out to be unexpectedly hairy in a swimsuit. Guy slowly descended the wooden stairs from the dunes to the beach wearing nothing but a tight white swimsuit and sunglasses. And a dozen men looked up from their towels at him and he was afraid he might faint. He thought to himself, I'll never be this perfect again. An idea that made him sad. Something about being beautiful induced melancholy in Guy. He was aware of how brief his perfection would be and then sneered at himself for being so narcissistic. He and Pierre Georges took a public speedboat at midnight from the grove to the pines with a bunch of over excited guys and they all rushed into the Sandpiper. Guy was stoned and taller than most of the other men. And as he stared out over them, he experienced a distinctly Buddhist feeling of evanescence. He looked out over the shirtless, muscled, tanned men and realized that right here on this disco floor there was such a concentration of fashion, slimming, money, bleaching, plastic surgery, psychotherapy, and all for naught. In a few years they'd all be old walruses and then a few more dead. Thank you.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

I mean, when I first started to read you as an 18 year old straight guy who had mostly read novels by straight men, I had just never read anything about male beauty. Like the vocabulary of beauty had just never been applied to men. And it changed my view of the world. I mean, it changed the way that I saw myself and other men, too. How does beauty work in gay culture, gay life, and how has it changed over time?

[Josh Rothman]

Well, when I was young, the only thing to be was a beautiful boy in gay life. And then when you turned 30, your friends would have a funeral for you because your life was over. But there was a real dichotomy of the men and the boys. The boys were the objects of desire, and the men were the predators who had to pay money, usually to go to bed, and the boys. But with gay liberation, everything changed. And suddenly the new ideal was to be 35 years old with a mustache and to have a lover and adopt a Korean daughter. And there was a kind of emphasis on being macho and working out at the gym. I mean, before the gym, you had to be born beautiful, but after the gym, you could work out and become beautiful. So when I think about.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

Sometimes if I'm trying to describe what your books are about to people, I'll say they're about love. They're love stories. A lot of your novels are love stories, but they're not like Jane Austen. They don't end at the moment of love. They kind of continue into time. Do you think of yourself as a romantic person or someone?

[Josh Rothman]

Yeah, I do. I think. Yeah. I made everybody furious during the AIDS era when I said, well, some things are worth dying for. But people didn't want to hear that. But Foucault used to say that for straight people, courtship was the important thing, and it led up to marriage or consummation of sex somehow. And that for gay people, the most romantic moment was putting your trick, whom you just had sex with in a cab, sending him uptown, and. And that when you were alone and could muse about what the whole thing was like and replay it in your mind. That was more romantic than the courtship.

[Edmund White]

Yeah.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

You know, gay life has changed so much, and as a novelist, the aesthetic possibilities of it have changed. I mean, you still do describe gay life as it existed in the past, but once it meant one thing to write about it. Now it means something different. Has something been lost or something gained in that. In that comfort or openness?

[Josh Rothman]

The fact that so many people are able to pass now as straight is fruitful, I think, for a novelist, you know, because you could have a character who you'd have to read two thirds of the book before you discovered he was gay. I don't know. Like, my students are so strange. Like, half of them are Christian, and where purity rings in and the other half are hooking up every day and going to these drunken routes like, I have a terrible gay daughter these days and I can never tell who's gay. And gay students of mine have to wear a T shirt saying I am gay.

[Interviewer Josh Rothman]

They don't really do that.

[Josh Rothman]

They did. One of them did. Otherwise, I don't get it.

[David Remnick]

That's the writer, Edmund White, talking with Josh Rothman. White's book Our Young man came out this spring. I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. There's at least one candidate for president out there right now who makes no secret of the fact that he inhaled and he's pretty proud of it. Next week I'll talk with Gary Johnson, who wants to take libertarianism out of the fringe of American politics and put it into the mainstream. You don't want to miss it. I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Now, autism was first named and diagnosed 75 years ago, and it was believed to be a rare condition. In recent years, ideas about autism have changed a lot and the number of people diagnosed with what we now call autism spectrum disorders has grown at a startling rate. John Donvan and Karen Zucker are journalists for ABC and the authors of a book called In a Different Key. It's a history of the condition and a study of how people are affected by it. Now, this is a subject I follow with particular interest. I've got a teenage daughter who's profoundly affected by autism and the subject is also very, very personal for John Donvan and Karen Zucker.

[Karen Zucker]

I have a 21 year old son with autism and I would not have written this book if I didn't have a 21 year old son.

[David Remnick]

Where is he now? What kind of condition is he in? What's his life like?

[Karen Zucker]

He's a really interesting guy. I would say he was always on an upward track until this year. He's at a special program in Arizona called Chapel Haven west, which is for life skills and living skills off the university. And this is his third year, he's coming home in June for good. And he's capable of flying there by himself after years and years of practice. But if any sort of curve ball were to happen, if anything out of order, it could be somewhat disastrous.

[David Remnick]

A long ticket, a late flight.

[Karen Zucker]

Yeah, I mean, he usually does not land with his ID or anything that he went on the plane with, but he gets there. So he's a good traveler, but he can't manage himself. He will need support for his life in order to just make sure that he eats and buys the right food. And he's working on all of that, but he does not have it down.

[Edmund White]

And John, I married into the autism community, quote, unquote. My wife grew up in Israel in Tel Aviv with a younger brother, a year and a half younger, who was born in the late 1960s and diagnosed at the age of about 3 with autism, at a time when the diagnosis was considered a very rare thing, and when the advice her mom was given was to put her brother, whose name is Draw, into an institution. And her mom went and looked at the institution. It was horrible. And she actually, as a result of that, became an activist in Israel and she built schools and built residences.

[David Remnick]

My understanding is that, in fact, I was once at a dinner seated next to the wife of a very prominent Israeli politician. We were talking about this, and they're explaining the care that adults with autism have in Israel and some other countries, and it's markedly better than what we have here. Well, because we have next to nothing.

[Karen Zucker]

Thank you for saying that.

[David Remnick]

Next to nothing.

[Karen Zucker]

I know it all too well. And it's challenging because all of our kids grow up to be adults and we haven't figured out the adult piece.

[David Remnick]

And apparently we don't live forever to care for that.

[Karen Zucker]

We know, too. And it's scary. It's scary to be a parent. It's scary to know that as your child gets older, as opposed to things getting better and better. You know, there's a term people say falling off a cliff. It's real.

[David Remnick]

What do you mean by falling off a Cliff?

[Karen Zucker]

You turn 21, you know, with parents. And the parents in this book, the advocates, they fought to get their kids out of institutions. We talk about the civil rights and we talk about how parents then change the laws so that their kids could go to school. Well, that's been. That's their protection until they're 21, is that the law says they have the right to an education. And at 21, the law doesn't give them anything.

[David Remnick]

Now we hear that the prevalence of autism, not so long ago it was 1 in 120, and now it's 1 in 20. What are these statistics in your mind reflecting? Is it a greater ability, a keener ability, a greater willingness to diagnose people with Asperger's autism somewhere on the scale, or is it increasing, in fact?

[Karen Zucker]

Well, autism is now a spectrum. It's called the autism spectrum. And over the years and decades, we keep changing the definition of what autism is. And we keep broadening the definition. And so each time we count how many people we are, we're counting apples and oranges. We're not counting the same thing anymore. We also, as a society are much more aware of autism than we ever were before. And that makes people more willing to sort of own up to it. It's also.

[David Remnick]

Do you think there's sometimes some over diagnosis when you hear some. I constantly hear, and maybe my ears are especially tuned to this, as yours are, but when I hear somebody sort of flippantly say, oh, he or she kind of on the spectrum, there's something. This has entered the language that at any kind of behavior that's a little unusual or quirky, somehow the spectrum is invoked.

[Karen Zucker]

Well, that's what's happened is that we have made the spectrum so large that you have such extreme ends of it that we sort of think down the road it will break apart again and maybe we'll start to look at things like different types of autisms. And it is not one spectrum, because you can't call the person who's banging their head against a wall or who can't care for themselves the same guy who has a PhD. They have something that's so incredibly different. And, you know, as a parent, I feel that it complicates things.

[David Remnick]

So you have written about, as one of the centerpieces of this book, the man who is known as patient number one, Leo Connor, identified a child named Donald Triplett as autistic in his early paper, in the 30s. He's still alive. You know him. And how did your relationship with Donald inform this book?

[Karen Zucker]

Well, we set out to find Donald. There were archival medical records that we were able to find. And so then we needed to find Donald to see if we could get access to them. And John and I sort of set out to do some investigative reporting. And we knew he was in Forest, Mississippi.

[Edmund White]

That's because Leo Connor left a lot of clues throughout the medical speeches he gave here and there. And at one point he mentioned this town, Forest, Mississippi.

[Karen Zucker]

So I started calling all the T's in Forrest.

[Edmund White]

That's because, again, we need to explain that the medical literature did not give Donald's last name. He was described as just Donald T. Dash. So we had the first letter of his last name.

[Karen Zucker]

Right. And there weren't a lot of Donalds, but there were a lot of T's. And, you know, it wasn't that many down the line. About 15 calls in.

[David Remnick]

How many. How big a town is Forest, Mississippi?

[Edmund White]

About 3,500.

[Karen Zucker]

Yeah. It's not a huge place, but I got lucky that it was. It didn't take weeks. And I called this number and I get this answering machine, and it says, hello, happy Spring and Happy fall and have a wonderful Christmas and welcome to 2007. And I hang up the phone and I call John. We got him. This is Donald. I know this is Donald. We absolutely have found the guy that.

[David Remnick]

Comes from personal experience.

[Karen Zucker]

That's probably the most I ever heard him speak at one time was on the answering machine because he's not chatty. He is our friend.

[David Remnick]

He's 80.

[Karen Zucker]

He's 82, and he has traveled the world. He learned how to drive when he was 27, cares for himself. Yes, he lives in the same home that he grew up in, but he also has this town called Forest, Mississippi, that has completely embraced him and John and I believe that a lot of his success has been growing up in a place where people have watched out for him his whole life and embraced him and just made him one of them.

[David Remnick]

I assume that there are many parents out there who are listening who have children on the autism spectrum, and certainly everybody knows somebody. And the interest in this is thankfully rising all the time. What hope is there in terms of therapies, in terms of maybe the word shouldn't be cure, but analysis? Where is the research heading in autism?

[Edmund White]

The research primarily is going in the direction of studying the genetics of autism. That's a field where the deeper they get in, the more complicated they believe it's going to be. As Karen said before, we may find that there are so many different pathways to this condition, which really is defined by rather subjective observation of people's behaviors. It might turn out that there are many, many kinds of autisms, but we're very, very far away from that. I don't think we're at a point where in our lifetime we're going to figure out what causes autism. We do know that behavioral treatments, which are very intense and very expensive, can ameliorate some of the more limiting behaviors. But I think our thought on putting our hope for the solution to the predicament and dilemma of severely affected people on science and cures is maybe not the right focus. The focus we really think needs to be. If our book has an argument, it's that society needs to find a better way not to be jerks towards individuals with autism, find a space for them, a place for them in society, make it easier.

[David Remnick]

Karen, where should activism push?

[Karen Zucker]

You know, I don't. I think that John sort of nailed it in the sense of acceptance. And I can, I can speak to that. My son, who on some levels is competent, but on most levels really struggles. He tried to get on a plane last summer and he didn't make eye contact with the woman on the floor while he was getting his ticket. And she tried to prevent him from flying and she went and got his supervisors and it became this ordeal where, you know, one of the. I just sort of said, go, go. You didn't do anything wrong. You have a right to fly. Just. Just go. And he got himself through. And the next thing I knew, this woman who's working at the counter is chasing after him as if he's some sort of terrorist, literally to bring him back from flying on an airplane. So we really have a lot of work to do on the most basic level of awareness. I mean, we feel like we've come far. We're not locking people up in institutions. That's fantastic. We're not. Our kids get to go to school. That's great. But as a society, we really. There are pockets of acceptance and mostly with kids.

[David Remnick]

Pockets of real. Yes. With kids. Of real kindness on the street and in a store.

[Karen Zucker]

Absolutely. But it is kids. And my son's 21 now and they wouldn't have stopped him as a kid, but as a six foot skinny guy who doesn't shave very well, people are freaked out.

[David Remnick]

They don't know how to react.

[Karen Zucker]

They really are. And that would be the goal.

[David Remnick]

Thank you both. I really appreciate it. I appreciate more than I can tell you the book itself.

[Karen Zucker]

Thank you.

[Edmund White]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

That's Karen Zucker and John Donvan, the authors of In A Different Key. I spoke with them in February just after their book came out. And that's it for today. Next week I'll talk with Gary Johnson, the presidential candidate who wants to bring libertarianism to the masses. I hope you'll join us.

[Karen Zucker]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards. This episode was produced by Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield, Paul Schneider and Stephen Valentine, with help from Owen Agnew, Alex Barron, Becky Cooper, Matt Fidler and Sharon Michihy. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.