Episode 55: Final Notes on the 2016 Election

Summary

Podcast Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour — Episode 55: Final Notes on the 2016 Election
Date: November 4, 2016
Host: David Remnick (WNYC Studios and The New Yorker)

---

Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour explores the unpredictable, turbulent, and emotionally charged atmosphere leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Through satirical sketches, high school simulations, interviews with evangelical leaders, and reflections on cyber politics and email scandals, the show presents a multifaceted look at the election’s impact on politics, journalism, religion, and American society. The episode concludes with a musical piece capturing the hopes and anxieties of a divided electorate.

---

Episode Structure & Key Segments

1. Satirical “Studio Notes” on the 2016 Election (00:39–05:59)

Format: Scripted comedy sketch Key Voices: Emily Bottin, Sarah Larson, Alex Baron, Russell Moore

Highlights

• The 2016 election is imagined as a movie script, subjected to studio “notes” for plausibility, clarity and storytelling.
• The writers mock the surreal characters and moments: “Does Donald have to be orange?”, “If Ben is the world’s best brain surgeon, why is he written like Pauly Shore with carbon monoxide poisoning?” (01:13–02:09)
• Lampooning memorable real quotes (“blood coming out of her wherever”, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody”), and the implausibility that Trump could still be a contender after multiple scandals.
• Suggested punch-ups (“Basket of Deplorables is clunky… How about cornucopia of reprehensibles?” [04:27])
• Satirical alternative endings, including Obama returning as “Barack from the first film” to save the day, poking fun at fantastical plot solutions.

Tone

Playful, absurdist, sharply satirical—it underscores how real-life events of the election felt stranger than fiction.

---

2. Editorial Reflection & Mock Election at Townsend Harris High School (05:59–20:16)

Format: Editorial comments, feature reporting
Key Voices: David Remnick, Josh Rothman, Alex Baron, students Daniel Kaldorov (Trump), Mizba Pochi (Clinton)

Key Points

• David Remnick editorializes about the toxic political climate:

  “On the one hand, you’ve got a flawed but deeply intelligent and committed politician. On the other, a demagogue, the likes of which we’ve never encountered in presidential politics, not ever.” (06:10)

• The show immerses listeners in a mock election at a diverse, majority-female NYC high school:
  • Students role-play as major candidates, with Daniel as Trump and Mizba as Clinton.
  • Mizba, the student Clinton, relates personally to Trump’s rhetoric as a Muslim American.
  • Daniel, whose parents are Soviet immigrants, strives to perform Trump “respectfully... I want it to still be kind of light-hearted and fun in a way. I don't really want anybody to really be upset by what I said.” (11:12)
  • Notable incident: Last year’s “Trump” told the Hillary character to “stop PMSing,” leading to outrage—a real moment reflecting the tension of playing controversial figures.
• The simulation includes campaign rallies, media moments, and heated debate:
  • Example: Student Trump barges into a simulated radio show to attack Clinton over emails (“You committed a crime. Hillary Clinton needs to be put in prison, all right? She’s a criminal.” [14:46])
  • Teachers discuss the challenges of modeling empathy and civility in an election where incivility is so prominent.

Notable Quotes

• “He's trying to embody the opposite of what America embodies… and he's ruining it all.” —Mizba Pochi (student “Clinton”) [09:25]
• “I have a lot of sympathy for Daniel the student playing Trump. A few weeks ago, it was incredibly fun to be Trump. Now it’s definitely not. It’s scary, it’s unsettling, and it's uncomfortable.” —Alex Baron [19:32]

Insights

The simulation exposes students to real moral and social questions at the heart of the 2016 election and highlights the challenge of engaging difficult political realities in an educational context.

---

3. Evangelicals, Politics, and the Election — Interview with Russell Moore (20:16–33:06)

Format: In-depth interview
Key Voices: David Remnick, Caliph Hassaneh, Russell Moore (Southern Baptist Convention)

Key Points

• The traditional alliance between evangelical Christians and the GOP is scrutinized, with special focus on Russell Moore’s dissent from that alliance.
• Russell Moore’s critique of “cultural Christianity” and call for evangelicals to see themselves as a “moral minority,” not a political majority.
  • “The church doesn’t rise and fall with American culture. The church is resilient because the church is bigger than America and bigger than culture and rests in the promises of Jesus himself.” (23:38)
• Moore highlights a generational divide:
  • Older evangelicals support Trump based on Supreme Court nominations and tradition.
  • Younger evangelicals, according to Moore, are “deeply worried about what this awful choice means for the future of America and the church.” (28:46)
• Discussion of racism, religious freedom, and the dangers of political power:

Notable Quotes

• “What I don’t want to see is the kind of Bible Belt cultural Christianity where people are joining churches because it does them some social good. I think that’s harmful to people. I think it’s harmful to the witness of the church.” —Russell Moore [27:32]
• “Christianity is more Christian in a certain sense when it is a minority… power and political power corrupts.” —Caliph Hassaneh paraphrasing Moore [32:48]

Insights

Moore’s position signals a major shift in American religious politics, as prominent Christian leaders question the cost of political entanglement for faith communities.

---

4. Hacking, Journalism, and the Podesta Emails (33:06–43:03)

Format: Expert discussion
Key Voices: Nick Thompson (interviewer), Steve Coll (Columbia Journalism School), Fabio Bertoni (New Yorker’s lawyer)

Key Points

• Explores the legal, ethical, and journalistic challenges of covering politically significant “stolen” documents, particularly WikiLeaks’ release of John Podesta’s emails.
• Legal expert clarifies: Journalists can publish leaked or hacked documents as long as they did not participate in the original hack (37:09).
• Steve Coll emphasizes the difference between public interest and personal privacy violations, critiquing WikiLeaks’ approach of complete data dumps:

  “I come from a tradition and still believe in the value of filtering… it is indefensible to publish private information about people who are not public figures.” (40:40)

• The discussion reflects anxiety over growing incentives for hacking and the implications for transparency and privacy in politics:

  “The ecosystem that now exists is incredibly rewarding for hackers.” —Nick Thompson (41:31)

Insights

Raises questions about the evolving boundaries of journalistic responsibility, the risks of criminalizing reporting, and the future of digital political warfare.

---

5. Final Song Project: “Utopia” and Reflections on Voter Emotion (43:03–53:56)

Format: Musical performance & conversation
Key Voices: Michael Friedman (composer), Sarah Larson, Emily Bottin

Key Points

• Michael Friedman shares his closing “campaign song” for the project, “Utopia,” crafted from interviews with a far-left-leaning adult film performer who is ambivalent about voting and expresses both deep despair and utopian hope.
• The interviewee’s story—of homelessness, resilience, and a longing for a future marked by community—is presented as a microcosm of the radical uncertainty and intensity of 2016.
• Post-performance discussion underscores the role of family, emotion, and public schools in shaping political identity:
  • “Voting is so often more an emotional decision than it is a rational decision for a lot of people.” —Emily Bottin (50:52)
  • “For all that we talk about millennials... I felt like I met a lot of really thoughtful, really committed, really confused and sometimes even really upset but thoughtful young people... The kids are all right.” —Michael Friedman (53:16)

Notable Quote from the song:

• “...That is salvation, I think, in the future, like, for people to work less and travel the country and not have a lot of possessions… If we can imagine a world like that and can work towards a means to get there. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.” —Interviewee/Michael Friedman (around 50:00)

Insights

Art powerfully translates the year’s anxieties, hopes, and the stark personal impacts of an environment defined by political and economic instability.

---

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “On the one hand, you’ve got a flawed but deeply intelligent and committed politician. On the other, a demagogue, the likes of which we’ve never encountered in presidential politics, not ever.” —David Remnick (06:10)
• “Does Donald have to be orange? We're just not sure how that would read visually.” —Emily Bottin (01:13)
• “I have a lot of sympathy for Daniel the student playing Trump. A few weeks ago, it was incredibly fun to be Trump. Now it’s definitely not. It’s scary, it’s unsettling, and it’s uncomfortable.” —Alex Baron (19:32)
• “The church doesn’t rise and fall with American culture. The church is resilient because the church is bigger than America and bigger than culture and rests in the promises of Jesus himself.” —Russell Moore (23:38)
• “I come from a tradition and still believe in the value of filtering... it is indefensible to publish private information about people who are not public figures that involves their medical condition, their psychological condition, or that puts them in imminent harm.” —Steve Coll (40:40)
• “For all that we talk about millennials... The kids are all right.” —Michael Friedman (53:16)

---

Conclusion

Final Notes on the 2016 Election successfully captures the emotional, social, ethical, and absurd elements of an unprecedented political moment. Through humor, observation, and diverse voices—from the satirical to the sincerely hopeful—the episode both documents and critiques the closing days of a campaign that left the nation changed and uncertain, but not without hope or resilience.

---

Transcript

[Nick Thompson]

Floor 38.

[Josh Rothman]

I'm so excited to be having a.

[Sarah Larson]

Conversation with someone when they have that revelation.

[David Remnick]

How does this work as a national story?

[Sarah Larson]

Well, it's a whole.

[David Remnick]

WINS San Francisco from one World Trade center in Manhattan.

[Nick Thompson]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[David Remnick]

A co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[Emily Bottin]

Come in. Can we get you anything? Bottled water, Green juice, dirt, broth?

[Alex Baron]

Water?

[Emily Bottin]

Can you tell Josh to get him a water?

[Alex Baron]

Josh, get him a water.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Don't be frightened, but we're going to be talking about the election today, and we're going to start with studio notes on the 2016 presidential election screenplay.

[Emily Bottin]

So let's talk about your script. The 2016 presidential election. Overall, we love what you've done. So many unexpected twists.

[Sarah Larson]

How do you come up with this?

[Russell Moore]

Steph, thank you.

[Emily Bottin]

But we feel like we're not quite there yet. We do have some notes.

[Sarah Larson]

Should we just jump right in page one?

[Nick Thompson]

Hmm.

[Emily Bottin]

Does Donald have to be orange? We're just not sure how that would read visually.

[Sarah Larson]

Seems like it would be sort of grotesque.

[Emily Bottin]

And personally, I don't get what a conch shaped hair hat the texture of corn silk would look like, but it's certainly going to eat into our effects budget. Also, please cut the word rapist from his opening line.

[Sarah Larson]

Sure I can.

[Emily Bottin]

Page two. I'm confused. Why does everybody already hate Hillary? I think we need some sort of explanation here. Like what if she used to be a hitman or she's an avowed Satanist or something. This flashback where we learned that she was really sneaky about emails years earlier doesn't do it. Okay, page six. Are we supposed to be rooting for Jeb? All the early emphasis on Jeb is distracting. Maybe get rid of this character altogether. And this is a minor note. If Ben is the world's best brain surgeon, why is he written like Pauly Shore with carbon monoxide poisoning?

[Sarah Larson]

Is this anti comedy? Of course we get it, but we're.

[Alex Baron]

Not sure middle America will.

[Emily Bottin]

On the other hand, the old guy Bernie is so much fun. Maybe he's our R2D2.

[Sarah Larson]

I'm imagining plush toys.

[Emily Bottin]

But he needs a pithier catchphrase than the billionaire class has mortgaged your future to Wall street.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Sure.

[Emily Bottin]

Page 20. Blood coming out of her wherever is going to get us an NC17 rating. Please cut that. Yep, page 24. I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters. Okay, two on the Nose. This should be subtext.

[Alex Baron]

Got it.

[Emily Bottin]

Page 33. I kind of feel like the smart choice would be for them to pick Marco. No.

[Sarah Larson]

Totally.

[Emily Bottin]

Yeah. You need to make us understand why nobody wants Marco. Page 41.

[David Remnick]

Oof.

[Emily Bottin]

I had to go all the way back to the beginning here because I did not remember who Kasich was. Is there any way Kasich could be more Something?

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Yes.

[Emily Bottin]

Yeah, let's lose all the Mexican judge stuff. I'm thinking about the Latino audience here. It just doesn't make sense to needlessly alienate them with something like this.

[Nick Thompson]

Fair enough.

[Emily Bottin]

From page 53 to 56, it's all TED. I could use 90% less TED.

[Sarah Larson]

TED makes her skin crawl.

[Emily Bottin]

Ted belongs in a different movie. A David lynch movie about peeping Toms.

[Sarah Larson]

Oh, I'm writing that down. I can see that. Oh.

[Emily Bottin]

Page 66. Tim who? It feels weird to suddenly introduce a major new character at the beginning of Act 3. What if instead of Tim, it were Elizabeth here?

[Sarah Larson]

We love Elizabeth.

[Emily Bottin]

Elizabeth is so cool and tech savvy. We want to see more of her. If it absolutely has to be Tim, can you at least give him some Elizabeth style zingers?

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

That's not really Tim's.

[Emily Bottin]

Page 71. I hate to, but the evil Russians thing has been done to death.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Yeah.

[Emily Bottin]

Page 74. After Donald has done all of this, we're expected to believe he's somehow still polling around 40%. Please change this to a more realistic number, like 3% or no percent. Page 81. Basket of Deplorables is clunky. Basket of deplorables?

[Sarah Larson]

I can't imagine that on a movie poster.

[Russell Moore]

How about cornucopia of reprehensibles?

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Or something better?

[Emily Bottin]

You know, I still can't help thinking Hillary should have done something to deserve all the vitriol. Like maybe she appears to consistently support a hyper interventionist foreign policy and that's what people criticize her for.

[Sarah Larson]

Or the reason she has a command of basic facts is because she's a cyborg.

[Emily Bottin]

Or what if her husband had been a bad president?

[Alex Baron]

Got it, Cyborg.

[Emily Bottin]

We're dragging a little towards the end here. Do we really need a VP debate? Or Gary Johnson? Wait, wait, I must have missed this before. Grab them by the. No. Real people do not talk like this.

[Sarah Larson]

Sorry.

[Emily Bottin]

Now, I know we've gone back and forth on a couple of different endings, but none of them feel quite right. Especially the super scary one.

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah, it's not a horror movie, and.

[Emily Bottin]

This is way out of left field, but we were thinking what If Barack from the first film comes back and somehow wins this election, too, and then he gets to be president again, maybe forever, you feel like this might be an ending that audiences could really get excited about.

[David Remnick]

Studio notes on the 2016 presidential election screenplay, a story by Tom O', Donnell, with Lisa Lampanelli as the senior executive, along with Brian Quijada and Colin Stokes. So finally, after nearly two years of very high drama and very low rhetoric, the 2016 election is reaching its end. And not a moment too soon. Now, forgive me, but I'm going to editorialize for a moment. Recently, my colleagues and I published an endorsement in the New Yorker that made very plain our view of the presidential choice. On the one hand, you've got a flawed but deeply intelligent and committed politician. On the other, a demagogue, the likes of which we've never encountered in presidential politics, not ever. Donald Trump's sins have accumulated to the point where they just blur together. His misogyny, his willful ignorance of policy, his race baiting, his dishonesty in business and politics, his coarsening, the unbelievable coarsening of a process that was never so high minded to begin with. When one of the options is so toxic, there really is no choice. And yet, upwards of 50 million Americans, people with real grievances, real anxieties, are likely to vote for Donald Trump and will all be wrestling with the aftermath of the election Tuesday for a long time to come. Today, we're going to consider that aftermath from a few different angles, starting with some people who aren't voting. Not yet. Last year around this time, we visited a high school in Queens that runs a school wide mock election, a totally immersive simulation of the real campaign with the whole school taking part. They were doing the primaries back then in their simulation. And Jeb Bush, remember Jeb Bush? He was the nominee. But that was last year, a very innocent time. This year, a senior named Daniel Kaldorov is playing Donald Trump and Mizba Pochi is Hillary Clinton. The stakes are what they are. They're enormous. And here's the New Yorker's Josh Rothman at Townsend Harris High School.

[Josh Rothman]

Mine's right here. Wainscap. Yeah, that's what I meant. Wage gap.

[Alex Baron]

I went back to Townsend Harris the day of the kickoff rally. The election simulation is a really big deal. It takes over the whole school in the fall and it has an enormous cast of characters. There are vice presidential candidates, there are pollsters. One student even plays Nate Silver, the statistician. There's even a Melania Trump.

[Josh Rothman]

I told people That I was Melania. And they were like, oh. And then they were like, oh, I kind of see how it fits. And I was like, okay. I don't know if I should take that as a good thing or a bad thing.

[Alex Baron]

And it kicks off with a huge election rally outside in the school's courtyard in the fall. As it happens this year, the student who's playing Hillary, I think she's a lot like the real Hillary Clinton. She's really informed, really intelligent. She's really done her homework.

[Josh Rothman]

America is better, stronger today because of President Obama's leadership.

[Alex Baron]

Mizpah, the girl who plays Hillary, is Muslim, and she wears a hijab. And so for her, Trump's rhetoric is really personally offensive. So does the real. The real Donald, does he drive you a little crazy?

[Josh Rothman]

Oh, yes, of course.

[Nick Thompson]

Of course.

[Alex Baron]

You have some emotional reserve. So you got some real.

[Josh Rothman]

I honestly do, because he's trying to embody the opposite of what America embodies, what my forefathers, what all our forefathers came here for, and he's ruining it all. That's all I want to say. And it's hard.

[Alex Baron]

The student playing Hillary isn't. Isn't the only one who feels that way about Trump. Townsend Harris is a pretty unusual place. Its student body is 70% female, and 78% of the students are minorities. This is a tough crowd for Donald Trump. Now, that said, the student playing Trump this year is great. His name is Daniel. He's a real conservative. His parents are immigrants from the Soviet Union, so he's a real patriotic capitalist. And he seems to be toying with the idea of running a sort of clean campaign, a sort of better version of the Trump campaign, or a less unhinged version of the Trump campaign.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

I'm not really afraid of being, like, whatever, hated, for lack of a better word, or, like, just disliked because of conservative views. But I'm gonna try to be respectful as a person.

[Alex Baron]

I think it's fair to say that playing Donald Trump is the most difficult role in the election simulation, especially this year, because in order to accurately play Trump, you have to violate the rules of decorum that should apply in an ordinary high school. Last year, there was a huge uproar because during this simulated presidential debate, the student who was playing Trump decided to just fully inhabit his character. And in the middle of a heated exchange with Hillary Clinton, he told her to stop PMSing. And it was such a big deal that the government teachers at the school almost ended the simulation because it was so offensive to all the women. Who were in the audience. That's gotta be on Daniel's mind right now.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Even if there is gonna be a little, like, insults thrown here and there, I don't want it to be like a real, like, personal sting, you know, I want it to still be kind of light hearted and fun in a way. I don't really want anybody to really be upset by what I said.

[Alex Baron]

Have you, like, stood in front of a mirror and worked on the actorly dimensions of being Donald's?

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

I'm actually pretty shy when it comes to, like, performing in front of people. But when I really get into it, like, usually I can be a little over the top. Like, I just need to get the ball rolling and then, like, the character kind of comes out. So the less preparation I have, the more genuine it comes out. Like, I don't like it to be really scripted or anything. Like, it's not really. Whatever happens at, like, this kickoff rally will be mostly spontaneous. All right, listen, guys, I just have to say, we live in the greatest country in the world. That's right. And, you know, we all are. We're a nation of winners. We're all winners here. But. But I have some sad news to tell you all. For the past decade, or even more so, we've been losing. We've been losing to career politicians who are serve only the interests of big donors. All right, I support myself. All right, I support. I am for the interests of the people. And listen, and we've been losing around the world as well. All right, we've been losing to China. Let's get real here. We need to live up to our name. We need to be who we were meant to be, and we need to start winning in trade.

[Josh Rothman]

Thank you.

[Alex Baron]

I have to say, when I heard Trump's election rally speech, I was blown away. He really found a way to unleash his inner Trump. And Hillary was, I think, a little bit like the real Hillary, which is to say, you know, frankly, she was a little bit unexciting.

[Josh Rothman]

I want to thank the people all across America who have taken their time out to come and talk to me. I've learned a lot about you and the persistent problems Americans face each and every day. Many of you feel as if you're.

[Alex Baron]

You know, after the kickoff rally, my main thought was, man, Trump is going to run away with this thing because he is so entertaining and because, frankly, there's an element of rebellion to voting for Trump. Even in Townsend Harris, you know, this is a high school where it's all very socially conscious. The Teachers are basically pretty liberal. And you just think that maybe these voters, just like the real voters, will want to stick it to demand by voting for Donald Trump. Now, the kickoff rally is just the start of the whole simulation. A lot of the simulation happens through media. So just like in real life, the kids at Townsend Harris have a version of Meet the Press, they have political talk radio, and that's where a lot of the action happens.

[Josh Rothman]

Yeah, it was definitely a memorable rally. The energy was high all around with the chants, the speeches, the posters, plus of course, the crowd.

[Alex Baron]

So the first big media moment of the simulated election this year happened on political radio. Hillary was being interviewed on their show, which is called Hawk Talk, and Donald Trump just decided to barge in and take over.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

You weren't taking my call, so I just wanted to ask Hillary Clinton, are you absolutely nuts? Deleting 33,000 emails? You committed a crime.

[Nick Thompson]

It seems Donald Trump has entered the scene.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Hillary Clinton needs to be put in prison, alright? She's a criminal. I answered two calls during my show. We're receiving a call.

[Nick Thompson]

Donald, please.

[Josh Rothman]

Yes, caller.

[Sarah Larson]

Hello, this is Wendy Long and I'm.

[Josh Rothman]

Calling to say that I support Donald Trump bullying.

[Nick Thompson]

Usa.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Usa. Usa. We're crashing this plane with no survivors. We're crashing the plane with no survivors. Things have taken an unexpected turn. Make america Great again.

[Nick Thompson]

Mr. Clinton, what do you have to say to Mr. Donald Trump?

[Josh Rothman]

I have no responses to any irrational events as such has happened. It's been proven by the U.S. department of justice that I am innocent and that you're wrong.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

You're wrong.

[Nick Thompson]

They say you are wrong.

[Josh Rothman]

I have no words against. If they don't believe in what has been said, that's it.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

She owns the FBI.

[Josh Rothman]

Mr. Trump, we're gonna have to ask you to leave. Thank you.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Vote Trump 2016.

[Josh Rothman]

Yes, caller, thank you.

[Nick Thompson]

Security, this is Gary Johnson and I.

[Russell Moore]

Just wanted to call and say that.

[Alex Baron]

We should let Gary debate and that Gary.

[Nick Thompson]

Gary fricking matters.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Well, maybe next time. Gary, thank you for the call.

[Josh Rothman]

Do we have any actual callers?

[Alex Baron]

I have to say I give the students an A plus. They're doing an amazing job simulating the candidates. Trump acted just like Trump. Hillary acted just like Hillary. Gary Johnson acted just like Gary Johnson. But it's almost like they're doing it a little bit too well. It creates a real conundrum for the teachers who are overseeing the election, like Alex Wood. He runs the media classes, so he's essentially teaching the students how to produce these radio shows.

[Nick Thompson]

I mean, my worry is that students These students are 17 years old. The kids listening to the shows are younger. This is their first presidential campaign that they're really sort of paying attention to. So this is like the new normal for them, right? Like, this is they know it's not normal, but they don't have a lot of reference points to realize how abnormal it is. The other thing, which I haven't had as much time to debrief and it takes more time is like, how do you teach young people the empathy that they're not seeing in someone like Trump? So the whole thing about, you know, grabbing women by their right, I don't know if you guys have got to bleep that or not, but like, I had a student and the TV show was like, we should call this next segment like, you know, grab the candidate by their, like, beep or something like that. And to a 17 year old boy, like, it sounded hilarious. Like, let's, of course, let's call it this. And I'm like, can I explain to you why try to explain to you why, like, people are offended by this and women are offended by this and men are offended by this and this is not something that we necessarily want to bring to our show. And it's hard though, because when you're 17, you can, you know, you're learning about the world and how it works and what's like, jerk like, behavior and what's not. But when they see Trump doing it, like, he could be our next president. So it doesn't seem like, well, what's the big deal? Like, Trump does it, like, it sounds funny, we could do it.

[Josh Rothman]

Okay, so Trump, I just wanted to talk to you quickly about this current topic of the leaked bus conversation that you had with Billy Bush in 2005. So in the video, you bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and having sex with women. And this is clearly sexual assault. Yet you continue to say that this is locker room talk. Can you please define what locker room talk is to you? And like, callers, please call in if you have any.

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

Like, so I've stated many times that I did not mean that seriously, and I apologize for my comments. This was 11 years ago. However, if we want to talk about real cases of sexual assault, three women have come out against Bill Clinton and have said that they have raped them. All right, their names are Juanita Broderick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willie. All right.

[Josh Rothman]

Yes, hello. Please state your name and password.

[Alex Baron]

You are doing a good job inhabiting the Trump character. How have the last few weeks been for you? There's been a lot of crazy revelations and a lot of twists and turns in the real campaign. Like, what's it been like?

[Daniel (student playing Trump)]

It's definitely been really challenging with a lot of the things that Trump has said. And it's so it's kind of a rough patch that we've hit during, like, classroom visits and things. Like, a lot of the underclassmen ask some, like, pretty tough questions. And like, I've been, I've been doing okay. Like, I, I sort of, you know, they haven't completely stumped me, but it's like, it definitely got me sweating a little bit with trying to play off some of these things.

[Alex Baron]

I have a lot of sympathy for Daniel the student playing Trump. A few weeks ago, it was incredibly fun to be Trump. Now it's definitely not. It's scary, it's unsettling, and it's uncomfortable. Lots of teachers were worried that the simulation was going to go off the rails this year, and it did. The idea was to teach students about the political process, and instead they're debating sexual assault, personal responsibility, right and wrong. I don't think a teacher could have designed a classroom unit with that kind of moral urgency. So in the end, I think the simulation's working. This election has us all asking some really tough questions, and the students are coming up with their own answers.

[David Remnick]

That's the New Yorker's Josh Rothman @ Townsend Harris High School in Flushing, New York. Coming up, we'll talk with Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention. A lot of evangelical Christians this year are feeling defeated by their choice in the election. But Moore's view of the situation might actually surprise you. You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour sticker. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Now, one of the surprising things about this election season, among too many surprising things, has been the evangelical vote. The Republican Party's alliance with evangelical Christians goes back for decades to the days of Jerry Falwell. But in the primaries, Donald Trump beat out all the religious conservatives like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. And since then, issues like gay marriage and abortion have seemed like an afterthought in the rhetoric. One of the big dissenters among evangelicals is a major figure, Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention. Moore is not only opposed to Trump, he thinks that Christians should rethink their relationship with politics altogether. The New Yorker's caliph has Sana has been writing about Moore. Kay, who exactly is this guy, Russell Moore?

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Well, Russell Moore is the head of what they call the ethics and religious Liberties Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. And that basically makes him the theologian in chief of the Southern Baptists. It's a position that's sometimes referred to as being the evangelical pope.

[David Remnick]

I think in the Vatican, they have a position like that, too. There's somebody who's in charge of the doctrine.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Yes, they have an even catchier name for it. For years, starting in the 1980s, they were a really important part of the Republican coalition. I mean, this is a. This is a group with a long history. It was formed in 1845 as they broke off from the National Baptist groups. And basically, they were formed in defense of slavery. And so they were a majority white church for their first century, basically. And they basically became the dominant religion in many places in the American South.

[David Remnick]

What kind of political force are they? What do they represent, and what kind of strength do they have?

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Well, for a long time, the evangelicals were the most kind of powerful group of Christians, and the Southern Baptists were the most powerful group within evangelicals in.

[David Remnick]

The 80s and the 90s.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Yeah. So they were kind of in the driving seat.

[David Remnick]

What's changed?

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Well, what's changed is that some have gotten disillusioned partly as a result of the Bush years. There is this feeling that maybe among some younger evangelicals, they're maybe starting to rethink this idea that evangelicals were a little too cozy with Republicans and had maybe allowed themselves to be drawn into partisan politics. And while the Southern Baptists are still big, when you look at the numbers, there is a sense that maybe they are starting to shrink. And part of what Moore says is that we can't take for granted as Southern Baptists, this idea that we are the majority, and that, in fact, maybe we should start thinking of ourselves instead as a moral minority.

[Russell Moore]

One of the things that Jesus is consistently saying is, don't be afraid, fear not. And frankly, I see one of my primary missions being to say to American Christians, the church doesn't rise and fall with American culture. The church is resilient because the church is bigger than America and bigger than culture and rests in the promises of Jesus himself. Augustine had to say that with the fall of the Roman Empire, I think every generation of Christians, we have to remind ourselves of that.

[David Remnick]

So, Kay, you talked this summer.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Yeah. I was at. Every year they do this big gathering of Southern Baptist pastors at Opryland, funnily enough, in Nashville.

[David Remnick]

What's it like?

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Well, it's younger than I might have expected. I think the median age of a Southern Baptist Convention worshiper is 54 or 55 and rising. And this group was much, much younger than that, with a real emphasis on diversity. It's still a majority white denomination, but there were African Americans on stage, Latino pastors on stage. And so the sensibility was very different. And there was a sense in which this was kind of Russell Moore's crew. Is there a way to engage that next generation without declaring war on the past? I mean, is there a way that you can make maybe more culturally traditional, not to say conservative, members of the SBC comfortable with what you're doing or is part of your job to make them feel uncomfortable? Because what matters is the new generation coming up.

[Russell Moore]

Well, part of what I see my role as being is to make all of us uncomfortable to a certain degree. So when I'm speaking to younger evangelicals, I'm often prodding them and calling them back from an overreaction to the last generation. Many of them wanted to respond to the sort of hyper political baby boomer generation with this illusion of complete disengagement from social questions. I think there's a tendency in Christian life sometimes to declare war on the future and older generations to see the next generation as a problem. I'm actually really encouraged by seeing what is happening with the next generation of evangelical Christians.

[David Remnick]

In the 80s and 90s, the Southern Baptists were really the core of the religious rite, or at least part of the core. And there was a coziness or an identification between evangelicals and the Republicans. Is this changing?

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Yeah, it is changing. I mean, in retrospect, it seems like the Bush years did kind of mark the end of an era. There was this moment in the 2004 election campaign when evangelicals supported Bush very strongly. And there was an idea that Bush was gonna then, in return come out in favor of a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. Obviously, that didn't happen. And for that and for a number of other reasons, there really was some disillusionment that set in and a sense that that the church and that the evangelical movement in particular, including the Southern Baptist Convention, made it too easy for politicians to use this religious group as a political tool.

[David Remnick]

Does that mean that Russell Moore represents a more liberal stream in the Southern Baptists?

[Caliph Hassaneh]

It means he represents a less partisan stream. I mean, in terms of both theology and politics. Russell Moore is a conservative. He is, you know, very outspoken on the issue of abortion. He's very opposed to same sex marriage. And, you know, in this election year, he's no fan of Donald Trump, but also certainly no fan of Hillary Clinton either. So he just thinks that Southern Baptists and all Christians need to be Christians first.

[Russell Moore]

What I don't want to see is the kind of Bible Belt cultural Christianity where people are joining churches because it does them some social good. I think that's harmful to people. I think it's harmful to the witness of the church. People who see in a church simply encouragement toward life management or political positions are going to stay home and read the newspaper or watch television on Sunday mornings.

[David Remnick]

So what he's arguing for is, in a sense, more church and less state. But evangelicals, in the end, events, are supporting Trump. No matter what. They're hearing about any number of issues, any number of kind of behaviors, they're supporting Trump.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Yeah. And that's really the paradox that he's found himself in this year is that it's one thing to be to say I'm out of step with America. It's a more complicated thing to say I'm essentially the theologian in chief of the Southern Baptist Convention, and I'm out of step with the Southern Baptists. And that's what he's trying to figure out. Part of it, maybe he hopes, is that this is an election year thing and this will die down after the election's over. I think part of it is that his hope is that it's a generational thing.

[Russell Moore]

I think there's a great deal of difference, just anecdotally, as I'm experiencing it, between over 50 evangelicals and younger evangelicals when it comes to the trauma. Probably the most predominant question that I've been asked over the past couple of days, and it's been this way for months, what do we do? Who do we write in? Or what's. Is there a third party candidate that you can tell us to vote for? I don't endorse particular candidates, so that's not what I do. But these are typically younger evangelicals. Older evangelicals are much more in the habit of the Republican nominee says he's going to appoint pro life, pro family Supreme Court justices. Let's support him. I find the big division right now between conflicted evangelicals, even those who are voting for Donald Trump, but who are deeply worried about what this awful choice means for the future of America and the church. And those evangelicals who, after the primaries were over, were more than willing to simply put all of their concerns in a blind trust about character, about racial justice, about misogyny, about various other issues. I think that's a big, big division.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

I've got to think that for a lot of evangelicals, and you see this certainly anecdotally, one of the reasons for support for Trump has to do with Islam, has to do with the sense that the US Is, is at war with radical Islam that Obama doesn't realize, doesn't care, and that we need someone strong to fight for this country.

[Russell Moore]

Definitely. I think you're right.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Is that necessarily a wrong or unbiblical thing to think?

[Russell Moore]

No. I mean, it is. If what we are saying is that Muslims themselves are people who ought to have their consciences violated, their religious freedoms restricted. The idea of religious tests for people in terms of being in this country on the basis of their religious affiliation, I think is wrong. Biblically, what's not wrong is Romans 13 in the Bible calls on the governing authorities to deal with evildoers and to deal with injustice. So certainly where you have violent movements such as the Islamic State or Al Qaeda or other terrorist networks, the government has a responsibility to deal with this.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

You do a lot of media, you do a lot of social media. You become very kind of public presence. Even so, you're probably not as public, probably not as famous as some other Southern Baptists that speak out about politics, Mike Huckabee, for example, or even someone like Robert Jeffress, who leads the First Baptist Church of Dallas. Does it concern you, does it bother you that some of the kinds of voices that in this case have been pro Trump may speak more to the older generation? Is it important that people, when they think of Baptists, think of younger, multi ethnic leaders? Or is that something you're not so concerned about?

[Russell Moore]

Well, I'm not so concerned about that because we really don't live in an American culture where you have the sort of monolithic religious presence. That's not the world that we live in now. I think the question is, will we also be speaking to not just senior adults with memories of so called Christian America, but to the rest of America and the world about an older, more ancient vision of what Christianity means? I think that's what's important.

[David Remnick]

To take the church back to what he thinks are its actual religious roots.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Yeah, I mean, I think he thinks that Christianity is more Christian in a certain sense when it is a minority. You know, I think part of it is this idea that power and political power corrupts. And of course, that's an easy enough thing to believe when your perception is that you don't have any political power.

[David Remnick]

The New Yorker's Calif Hassaneh. And if you go to newyorkerradio.org, you can read his entire article about Russell Moore for the magazine. Still ahead this hour, the election of 2016 as seen by a far left wing porn performer who thinks he just might support Donald Trump. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. There's certainly never been an election in which email has played such a huge role, possibly even a decisive role. As if Hillary Clinton's private server weren't enough, there was the stuff on Anthony Weiner's laptop, which the FBI is now looking at. And there was the hack of the dnc, allegedly by the Russians, which fueled the idea of a rigged election. And there's the John Podesta email archive, which WikiLeaks has been releasing bit by bit, seemingly calculated to smear Hillary Clinton until the very end. Some of those emails were legally obtained in investigation, some were leaked, and some were outright hacked, most likely by a foreign government. And that raises questions that journalists struggle with or ought to struggle with. And to unpack it all, we called in Steve Coll, a contributor to the New Yorker. Steve was managing editor of the Washington Post and he's dean of the journalism school at Columbia University. He sat down with the editor of newyorker.com, our own Nick Thompson.

[Nick Thompson]

Let's talk, Steve, about it personally for you. You know, I used to be your editor here at the New Yorker. The last piece I worked on with you was a profile of Mullah Omar.

[Steve Coll]

He did not comment for that story.

[Nick Thompson]

Nor did we get his emails. Why don't you tell me the story of some moment where you had a complicated choice to face about whether to cover something, how to handle a document that may or may not have been stolen.

[Steve Coll]

In my life as a reporter, I've never come across stolen goods in some raw sense. I mean, I've certainly come across classified information that I know the government would regard as stolen, but which I regard as normal journalistic source material. But when we use this phrase, stolen documents in reference to journalistic source material, I think we have to be really careful because first we have to recognize, recognize that a lot of legitimate source material, say the scenario of an insider, a whistleblower providing you a document that they think the public needs to know about. That material is often referred to by critics of the press as stolen goods. And the criminalization of journalism is something that journalists have to be very wary about stepping into. And yet there clearly are some materials that are acquired by pure theft. And now, of course, as we'll move on to talk about, you have states North Korea, Russia, others going around and deliberately stealing materials.

[Nick Thompson]

So separating out whether they're newsworthy or not, what is it about the stolen goods that you object to?

[Steve Coll]

Well, first of all, the law. I think you have to consider your public interest function, your ethical standards and decision making and your legal risk all together. And if you get one wrong, you can put your publication in jeopardy. Just ask Gawker about that. You can make a bad ethical decision and manage the legal risk poorly and be out of business.

[Nick Thompson]

So, Steve, when I hear that phrase, legal risk, it makes me think of something we're always supposed to do, which is call the lawyer when something like this comes up. So let me call our lawyer, Fabio Bertoni. He's the New Yorker's lawyer, and he's who we call whenever there's a complicated legal question or a question about documents or ethical issues like this. So let's ring him. Hello, Fabio?

[Sarah Larson]

Yep.

[Nick Thompson]

Hey, it's Nick. How are you?

[Alex Baron]

Good, how are you?

[Nick Thompson]

I'm here with Steve Kahl, and we are talking about the legality and ethics of reporting on stolen documents.

[Steve Coll]

Mm.

[Nick Thompson]

What are journalists allowed to do when a document comes to them that's clearly stolen, and what are their restrictions?

[Alex Baron]

Well, under the supreme court decision from 2001, Barnicki, journalists are allowed to report.

[David Remnick]

On documents even if they're stolen documents.

[Alex Baron]

In fact, journalists rely on documents that.

[Nick Thompson]

Are leaked to them all the time.

[Alex Baron]

There's no prohibition on receiving stolen documents or hacked documents.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Reporters are not allowed to break the law themselves.

[Alex Baron]

So journalists can't trespass or hack, but.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

If they receive hacked documents, they can report on them.

[Nick Thompson]

What about inducing people? Can I go on Twitter and say, hey, I'm looking for X, Y, or Z? Please send them to me if I know that X, Y, or Z are likely to be stolen.

[Alex Baron]

I mean, sure, every newspaper in the.

[Caliph Hassaneh]

Country wants Donald Trump's tax returns, for.

[Sarah Larson]

Example, but that's distinct from participating in.

[Alex Baron]

An actual illegal act of theft.

[Nick Thompson]

All right, thank you very much, Fabio. It's always great to talk to you. I love the clarity of your advice.

[Alex Baron]

Thanks a lot, guys.

[Nick Thompson]

All right, Steve. So, really, as Fabio explains, there are not a lot of legal problems with publishing stolen documents. But before we called them up, you were expressing a lot of concern as somebody who ran the Washington Post newsroom about documents of a stolen provenance. So let's talk specifically about the big one in the news. WikiLeaks has been publishing years and years of John Podesta's emails. I think they plan on publishing 50,000. They're sending them out every day as we approach the election, it seems, and American intelligence agencies have reported, and most people who are experts in the subject believe that what's happened is the Russians hacked into John Podesta's email account with a specific agenda of influencing the election to favor Donald Trump and more generally to sow chaos in the American democratic process. It sounds like from your previous answer, you wouldn't want to publish stories on this.

[Steve Coll]

No. There are ethical and professional considerations, not legal considerations, as we've clarified. You say it seems many people believe intelligence agencies anonymously have reported that the Russians hacked these. We don't, in fact, know this for a fact. Where did the emails come from? WikiLeaks published them. So unless you can look behind WikiLeaks to determine with exactitude where these materials came from, I think you have to be careful about making your news judgment on the basis of an appearance that the Russians did this. And so your decision making is really about scrutinizing WikiLeaks. Do you feel that they've been transparent enough about where this material came from? Do you feel that you understand that they are motivated in the public interest? Do you accept them as a journalistic exchange? I would tend with caution to accept all of that and to look at their materials on a news judgment basis. But you're responsible for your own compact with your audience about judgment of this sort.

[Nick Thompson]

What WikiLeaks did is it dumped everything online, which is different from the way that Edward Snowden took his documents, where he gave them to Glenn Greenwald. They carefully scrutinized them. Do you think WikiLeaks is to blame in part for the way they handled this? For example, there's a bit in Podesta emails about a staffer for the Clinton foundation about her near suicide.

[Sarah Larson]

Right.

[Nick Thompson]

Something that really, really shouldn't be out there. Do you blame WikiLeaks in part for how it was published?

[Steve Coll]

Yeah, I think they're responsible and accountable for the decision to dump everything. I come from a tradition and still believe in the value of filtering. I do think that it is indefensible to publish private information about people who are not public figures that involves their medical condition, their psychological condition, or that puts them in imminent harm. Direct imminent harm. I just don't think you can defend that as a publisher.

[Nick Thompson]

Another question I want to ask is whether one of the consequences of this election is that it's just going to make hacking so intense. Enticing. Whoever hacked John Podesta's email has had a profound effect on the potential election of the most powerful person on the planet. The ecosystem that now exists is incredibly rewarding for hackers.

[Steve Coll]

Well, there's a big archive out there. I think institutions are now going to be tempted to limit their exposure if they feel that they have one, including political operations. And I would imagine that political communication within campaigns is going to change as a result of what you say. But look, I mean, what is it about these emails that we find sort of sensational, apart from whatever public interest disclosures they may contain? It's abusiveness. You know, there's a kind of arrogance and entitlement and stupidity that sometimes these inadvertent disclosures expose, and we don't want that in our government.

[Nick Thompson]

So the polls are very, very close at the moment. But it sounds like what you're saying is that if Hillary Clinton is indeed elected, that she and her government will act better and speak to one another better because they're so aware that all of their emails might well end up on the open Internet.

[Steve Coll]

Well, I don't think they will accept that proposition, but I do think that they may use defensible classified systems more effectively than they have in the past. So I don't know what it all adds up to in terms of change conduct. But transparency is generally not a bad thing for human society.

[Nick Thompson]

So the ultimate irony is that the final result of this will be Hillary Clinton does more on the classified email server.

[Sarah Larson]

Exactly.

[David Remnick]

That's Steve Coll of the Journalism School of Columbia University talking with the New Yorker's Nick Thompson. We're going to finish up today with a song. Since the beginning of the year, we've been hearing from composer Michael Friedman about his campaign songs project. Friedman, who usually writes for Broadway and off Broadway shows, has been traveling the country interviewing voters about what's on their minds. And he takes those interviews and crafts his own unique kind of musical storytelling. The New Yorker Sarah Larson caught up with him one last time before Election Day Tuesday.

[Sarah Larson]

Hello, Michael. Hi, Sarah. It's great to see you. It's great to see you. You're in the studio for the first time. I know. We are finally face to face. It's wonderful for the final song of this project. Yes. The thing I love about this project.

[Emily Bottin]

Or one of the many things, is.

[Sarah Larson]

That by listening to people's dialogues or.

[Emily Bottin]

Interviews as music, you weirdly focus so much on what they're actually saying. So much more on what they're actually saying.

[Sarah Larson]

Let's talk about your last song a little bit. Yeah. The title of it is Utopia and it Is a guy who lives between the east coast and the west, who works in the adult film industry, in the gay part of the adult film industry. And I was trying to think of what summed everything up. And oddly, this interview, which is, in a funny way, of someone who is far off of the center of most people's experience, experience and political feelings, etc. What I was interested in is he there was the despair. And the anger in this interview is about as intense as in any interview I've done. And at the same time, the kind of utopian vision of the future is more intense than in any interview I've done, which I think have been the sort of twin poles of this whole project, that people are in total despair and they are grasping at sort of utopian visions, which maybe is the recipe for fascism. Utopian visions can be dangerous. Almost always they are dangerous. And almost every song has a little glimpse of utopia at the end.

[Emily Bottin]

And also guns.

[Sarah Larson]

End of guns. Should we hear your song? Yeah. I grew up in Texas. You know, it's hot and it's humid, and it's a pretty conservative place. We were a solid Republican family. Mom's an evangelical Christian, Dad's Ukrainian Catholic. So, like, we were forced to go to church for four hours every Sunday, and dad would lay in the backyard and sunbathe when I came out. My father was very supportive, but my mother. And it took a long time, but, you know, I still love my mother, and I've come to kind of feel compassion for the way she believes. But it's been a long process. I got into porn. Cause, you know, after college, I'd taken out a ton of loans, and, you know, there was no way on earth I could ever pay them back. But porn is a big corporation. They've just made. I need content. And I'm getting older. I'm not getting as much work. And it's not like, you know, there's a retirement plan. I mean, there are worse ways to make money. So my project to film sex in every state in America. Well, the inspiration partly was practical. I'd been evicted out of my apartment that I'd lived in for 10 years. And I had all the. And really no money. So I gave away every single thing that I owned, like shoes, socks, glasses, everything gone. And I'm homeless. Why not make the best of it? Make content while seeing the country. You know, the best states to find people to have sex with were red states, you know, Kentucky, Oklahoma. But, you know, I think America's in really bad shape, and it's getting to a point where it's no longer sustainable. It's gonna be incredibly difficult to maintain order, to maintain the kind of government we maintained in the past. And as someone on the left and the really far left, as an anarcho socialist, I'd like to see the best possible version of the politics realized before it's too late. I mean, just to frame everything, you have to remember what happened with Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party could have decided we have this candidate who's pretty progressive, who's pretty damn popular, and instead, they decided to stop that process. And that is simply to say there's no hope. I'm so fed up. I'm like, anything we can do to destroy it, that's a good thing. So I'm honestly more on the side of the Donald Trump supporters that that's maybe the silver lining in this election cycle, that people get used to this authoritarian figure who might be the wrong kind, the Donald Trump kind, and see what that kind of rule is like and, you know, ask for a better version of it. Cause honestly, after this election, Michael, can you see a way forward that's positive? Michael, when you imagine the future, aren't there whole parts of the earth that are uninhabitable? Are we going to be this callous nation that lets people starve to death? But where are all of these people gonna go, Michael? Can you see either party getting us through these crises? I'm probably not gonna vote, but one thing I think I have going on in my favor, at least at this point in my life, is this whole network of really beautiful human beings, People who will be there for me, who have been there for me. And, yeah, that's my only hope. I don't think, you know, that it's. That's a big hope, but, like, that is salvation, I think, in the future, like, for people to work less and travel the country and not have a lot of possessions and, you know, eat good food and see natural wonders and incredible, like, cultures you didn't know existed. I mean, that's what we should all be doing. And so I think part of it is just to live out that fantasy and make it real for myself and make it real for anyone else who wants to tag along. Like, if we can imagine a world like that and can work towards a means to get there. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful. Beautiful. It's beautiful.

[Emily Bottin]

That was Michael Friedman singing his song Utopia. Michael, that song was really beautiful.

[Sarah Larson]

One of the things I thought about.

[Emily Bottin]

Is that voting is so often more an Emotional decision than it is a rational decision for a lot of people.

[Sarah Larson]

Yes. And especially this year, I think we've really seen how much that is true.

[Emily Bottin]

On the left and the right.

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah. Or in so many of the songs, how much everything comes down to family and to, in fact, mothers.

[David Remnick]

Yeah.

[Sarah Larson]

Let's talk a little bit about that.

[Emily Bottin]

There are some themes that have come up in just about every song.

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah. I mean, you said guns, which have come up in almost every song, weirdly. Yeah. And mothers having a huge emotional impact on sort of. Yeah. So what's that all about? I guess it turns out mothers have huge emotional impacts on all of our lives. I had never thought of that, but I think in the way that politics plays out in a kind of reflection of your family, which I guess is also an emotional thing, but. And here we're watching an election in which there's sort of truly a daddy figure and truly a mommy figure, more than in most elections I've ever seen before. I mean, I guess we've never had a woman running for president, so that's a first. But sort of the family romance of American democracy and how much people do look at politics the way that they look at their family, or the way they hate their family or the way they love their family, or the way they miss their family. The songs tended to be really about the.

[Emily Bottin]

The singers themselves and their lives and.

[Sarah Larson]

Their concerns and all of the things.

[Emily Bottin]

That tie into politics, jobs, economics, education.

[Sarah Larson]

Yeah. I mean, I've got to say, the public school thing was the other that everywhere I went between the way public schools are getting shut down, but also, again, utopia versus despair. Every public school I went to, and I went to some very, quote, bad public schools, and there were these amazing students learning, and there were amazing teachers trying to help them learn, and often in not the easiest circumstances, but there was a lot of hope and a lot of belief, and a lot of that was, to me, I came out of this year feeling like, go public schools. I actually have to admit.

[Emily Bottin]

Oh, good.

[Sarah Larson]

Well, that's encouraging. That felt. I mean, so you keep talking about dystopia, but there's a lot to feel good about. Yeah. Maybe you try to find it.

[Emily Bottin]

How do you feel at the end of this project?

[Sarah Larson]

The thing I would say I came out of this year feeling was, on some level, the kids are all right. We might be the bad guys, and certainly maybe us and people older than us. But I really did feel like for all that we talk about millennials and the younger generation and technology and sexual culture and learning and everything. I felt like I met a lot of really thoughtful, really committed, really confused and sometimes even really upset but thoughtful young people. And I certainly wasn't seeking them out for that, so.

[Emily Bottin]

Well, that's excellent, Michael. Thank you so much.

[Sarah Larson]

Thank you, Sarah. It's been a pleasure all year.

[David Remnick]

That's Michael Friedman with Sarah Larson. Friedman performed his campaign songs at WNYC Jerome L. Green Performance Space last week, and you can hear the whole evening's program as a special episode of our podcast. Look for the New Yorker Radio Hour on itunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And that's it for this week. Next week we've got Zadie Smith, Leonard Cohen and a whole lot more. And one other thing, the election will be over. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening. Now go vote.

[Sarah Larson]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a.

[David Remnick]

Co production of WNYC Studios and the New York Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with.

[Alex Baron]

Additional music by Alexis Cuadrado.

[David Remnick]

This episode was produced by Alex Baron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill.

[Alex Baron]

Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix.

[David Remnick]

Michael Rayfield, Mytha Lee Rao and Steven Valentino, with help from Emma Allen, Becky Cooper, Johnny Vince Evans, Susan Morrison and Corey Schreppel.

[Alex Baron]

The New York Parker Radio Hour is.

[David Remnick]

Supported in part by the Churina Endowment Fund.