Episode 57: Zadie Smith and Conservatives Strike Back

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode 57: Zadie Smith and Conservatives Strike Back
Date: November 18, 2016
Host: David Remnick
Guests: David Frum, Zadie Smith, Dr. Africa Stewart, Sarah Stillman, David Haglund

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Overview

This episode, hosted by David Remnick, brings together prominent thinkers and storytellers to explore the upheaval in American politics following the 2016 presidential election, a deep dive into Zadie Smith's new novel and the contemporary state of fiction, and an on-the-ground look at the realities of the refugee crisis through an MSF (Doctors Without Borders) simulation. The episode is rich with reflection on identity, institutions, literature, and the responsibilities of elites and citizens alike.

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Key Segments and Discussion Points

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1. The Conservative Response to Trump: David Frum Interview

Timestamps: 00:28–15:16

The State of the Republican Party and Frum’s Perspective

• David Remnick opens by contextualizing the political turmoil in Washington after Trump’s victory, focusing on conservative intellectuals’ discomfort.
• David Frum, a leading conservative thinker and former Bush speechwriter, articulates his conflicted response to Trump (01:57–05:31):
  • Initially “Trump curious” due to Trump’s working-class economic focus and cautious stance on immigration.
  • Ultimately, Frum’s concerns with Trump’s character outweighed policy alignments.
  • “The problem with Trump is that Trump's own character and personality and deficiencies overwhelmed some of the more interesting and promising things that he talked about.” (David Frum, 01:57)
• Frum explains his “painful” decision to vote for Hillary Clinton, believing the rule of law and democratic institutions were at stake (04:06–05:31).

Conservative Intelligentsia and Trump

• Remnick brings up the lack of traditional conservative support on mainstream panels (05:31–06:51).
• Frum observes that political actors “jump on bandwagons,” and even those initially opposed to Trump are quickly making their peace with his victory.

Elites, Responsibility, and Political Identity

• Frum discusses being labeled an “elitist,” acknowledging his privileges but stressing that “the job of those people then is to realize their privileges and then to be extra responsible” (07:12–08:23).
• He criticizes both right and left elites, arguing elites must act responsibly rather than deny their privilege.

Trump, Corruption, and Institutional Dangers

• Frum warns about potential abuses of power regarding Trump’s business interests:
  • “The worst case scenario is the Department of Justice no longer works the way a first world Department of Justice is supposed to work. It will be used for protecting the President's interests and those of his friends from investigation.” (Frum, 10:04)
• He stresses that “the very worst thing that Trump will do or could do in his first year… he’s already done… to raise a question about whether the U.S. commitment to defend NATO partners will be honored.” (10:34)

Russia’s Role and U.S. Institutions

• Frum is particularly alarmed at the “very clear probability that Russian intelligence directly manipulated an American election… They had an impact on the election… probably enough to put their preferred candidate over the top, and the rest of us have to live with the consequences.” (Frum, 12:11)

On Resistance and the Role of Citizens

• Frum concludes with a call to defend institutions: “We have a common stake in rules of the game, and those are the things that are in danger in this Trump presidency. And those are the things you have to rally to defend. We absolutely have the capacity to protect them. And so shame on us if we don't.” (Frum, 14:25)

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2. A Bit of Holiday Satire: Cranberry Sauce Speaks

Timestamps: 15:56–18:47

• Comic piece voiced by Shiraka Dunlap (written by Will Stephen) gives voice to cranberry sauce, humorously lamenting its marginalized role in Thanksgiving dinner.

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3. Zadie Smith on the Novel, Race, and Voice

Timestamps: 19:22–34:32

The State of Fiction and New Voices

• Zadie Smith expresses excitement about contemporary fiction by women and authors of color:
  • “It seems like a good time. I don’t know, I’m doing a lot of reading and it seems like a good time.” (Zadie Smith, 19:22)
  • She cites Alexandra Kleeman, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Yaa Gyasi.

On Writing “Swing Time”

• Smith describes her latest novel as “a kind of fable about blackness,” centered on the friendship between two girls in a dance class (20:29).
• Dance as metaphor: “Whenever I’m thinking about race, I always think of it exactly on that line of generalization… Both what is held against you and also what you hold close.” (21:19)

Female Friendship in Literature

• Smith and Remnick discuss why female friendships now take center stage in fiction:
  • “Women, with families, are writing more than they have in human history. And one of the things which is very important in female life is this relationship.” (24:27)

On Writing in the First Person

• Smith confesses initial “British snobbery” about first-person narration, influenced by Shakespearean ideas of empathy and negative capability (25:53–26:11):
  • “The first person… is considered an indulgence or something bordering on the memoiristic… and also basically limited. But that’s a very infantile idea of the first person.” (26:11)
  • She now sees it as a powerful literary effect.

Real People in Fiction; The “Impurity” of Fiction

• Smith discusses including real figures like Darryl Pinckney in her novel, relishing fiction’s “fundamentally immoral form” and its ability to “eat up reality and do whatever it wants.” (28:19–28:20)

Multivoiced-ness: Obama, Race, and Disappointment

• Reflecting on her essay “Speaking in Tongues,” Smith analyzes Obama’s ability and difficulty in being “multi-voiced” (29:19):
  • On Obama’s flexibility: “At a certain point people want from you a commitment… and he’s constitutionally incapable of doing that.” (29:19)
  • On racial emergency and black Americans’ need for direct advocacy: “In times of emergency, and I think for black people in America in the past few years, this has felt like an emergency. The kind of flexibility [Obama] prizes doesn't feel like much. We at times needed someone to stand directly with us and lay a line down.” (30:27)

The Emotional Aftermath of Writing and Artistic Satisfaction

• Smith describes finally feeling satisfaction with “Swing Time,” for “the first time… I got closer to something that I wanted and that was more honest.” (32:43)
• Still, “reading is the pleasure source for me… Writing is the thing you bring a lunch bucket to.” (33:22)

The Future of the Novel

• Smith and Remnick discuss new forms of storytelling (e.g., young writers publishing serial fiction via apps), with an acceptance that “the kids will be on a different track altogether.” (34:19)

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4. Literary Picks with David Haglund

Timestamps: 34:43–39:47

• Haglund recommends comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, crosswords (and the “Rex Parker” blog), and forgotten soul musician Lee Moses as antidotes to life’s heaviness.
• Discussion on cultural assumptions in crossword puzzles and the changing nature of “common knowledge.”

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5. Refugee Realities: Doctors Without Borders Simulation

Timestamps: 42:16–54:34

The MSF “Forced From Home” Exhibit

• Sarah Stillman visits an immersive exhibit meant to simulate the refugee experience (42:16).
  • “It turned out to be a kind of step by step look into, you know, everything from the actual boat journey… to what it looks like when Doctors Without Borders… sets up these emergency clinics.” (42:50)
• Led by Dr. Africa Stewart, OBGYN from Georgia and veteran of MSF missions.

Walking in Refugee Shoes

• Participants must select five items to “take” as refugees (water, money, cellphone, etc.), forced to give some up as they progress, highlighting the impossible decisions actual refugees make (44:21–50:02).
• The simulation highlights the paradoxes of empathy exercises—are they self-congratulatory, or do they foster true awareness? (51:37)

The Emotional Labor of Humanitarian Work

• Dr. Stewart shares the intense pressures of the work and the coping mechanisms staff develop:
  • “Most of what I use practically, I learned from my colleagues. The first thing I learned is you don't cry in front of the staff. It is better to be respected than loved.” (53:08)
  • “I always say I'm not going back to the field. And I do, always.… it's too much. I'm too old for this crap.” (54:14)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• David Frum (on the Trump presidency's dangers):
  “The worst case scenario is the Department of Justice no longer works the way a first world Department of Justice is supposed to work. It will be used for protecting the President's interests and those of his friends from investigation.” (10:04)
• Zadie Smith (on female friendship in fiction):
  “Women… writing more than they have in human history. And one of the things which is very important in female life is this relationship. I don’t know a woman who hasn’t had these intense childhood friendships.” (24:27)
• Dr. Africa Stewart (on the cost of humanitarian work):
  “I have some secrets that I'll never speak to another soul because it's just too heavy. But every now and again I can call Denmark and talk to Anya and she knows why I called. And we don't even have to talk about it… Sometimes that's all I needed. Wash your hands, do it again. Just don't give up.” (53:08)

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Segment Timestamps (MM:SS)

• 00:28 — Introduction: Turmoil in Washington
• 01:57 — Interview: David Frum on conservatism and Trump
• 04:06 — Frum’s “painful” vote for Clinton
• 10:04 — Department of Justice warning
• 12:11 — Russian interference concerns
• 14:25 — Defense of institutions and civic action
• 15:56 — Comic interlude: Cranberry sauce monologue
• 19:22 — Zadie Smith on fiction today
• 20:29 — “Swing Time” central themes
• 24:27 — Female friendship in novels
• 25:53 — First-person narrative discussion
• 29:19 — Smith on Obama’s “multi-voiced” leadership
• 32:43 — Artistic fulfillment and honesty in writing
• 34:43 — David Haglund's cultural recommendations
• 42:16 — Refugee crisis simulation with Dr. Africa Stewart and Sarah Stillman
• 53:08 — Stewart on emotional labor in field work

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Tone & Language Notes

David Remnick’s approach is probing, intellectual, but compassionate. David Frum is cautious, deeply concerned but measured. Zadie Smith is thoughtful, self-reflective, and witty. Dr. Africa Stewart brings a mix of sobering realism and humor grounded in experience. Sarah Stillman is skeptical but empathetic. Literary and cultural references abound, and the conversation remains accessible and insightful throughout.

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Conclusion

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour showcases a critical moment in politics, the evolving nature of fiction, and firsthand humanitarian insight with clarity, warmth, and urgency. Thoughtful reflection and personal stories highlight the complexity of identity, responsibility, and creativity in uncertain times.

Transcript

[Cranberry Sauce (voice actor)]

Floor 38.

[David Remnick]

These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

I think it'd be interesting to really try to unravel what his ties.

[David Frum]

There's this sort of country city divide, their own convenient ends, and it's not clear where it goes next.

[Sarah Stillman]

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]

DAVID welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today I'm going to catch up with the writer Zadie Smith to talk about her new novel and the state of the novel in general. And we'll have a brief word about Thanksgiving dinner, or rather a word from Thanksgiving dinner. We're going to start, though, in Washington, where the known world is in absolute turmoil. Democrats are trying to figure out a strategy to create themselves almost as a resistance movement. And the Republican establishment is scrambling to regain whatever influence it has left. Being a Washington insider in the age of Trump just got a lot more complicated and complicated for people like David Frum. Frum has gold standard credentials as a neocon. He was a speechwriter for George W. Bush, credited with inventing the term the axis of evil, and he's done work for the Manhattan Institute and the Weekly Standard. But those are exactly the kind of conservative institutions that Trump's campaign and now his transition team is treating with a degree of contempt. And David Frum, in the end, voted for Hillary Clinton. David, you've been very skeptical about the direction of the Republican Party for a long time now. I've been reading you in the Atlantic and articles elsewhere where you've been very worried about the course that conservatism has taken, particularly within the gop. And Trump has had you worried for a long time, hasn't he?

[David Frum]

Yes, but at the beginning, I have to say I was susceptible to some of his appeal. When Trump appeared on the scene as a serious candidate in the summer of 2015, I was impressed because he did touch on some issues that I thought were important, the need to reorient toward a more middle class kind of economics, to not to promise what could never be delivered, radical changes in programs like Medicare and Social Security. And I also agreed with him that the United States needed a more cautious approach to immigration. So I suppose I fell into the category of those whom my friend Ross Douthit has called Trump curious. The problem with Trump is that Trump's own character and personality and deficiencies overwhelmed some of the more interesting and promising things that he talked about. At least at the beginning of his campaign.

[David Remnick]

Well, you've been worried about the state of the party for a long time and its ability to win and retain power. And now here it is.

[David Frum]

Well, elections aren't one on policy, elections are won on identification. And he was able to persuade sufficient numbers of people in the right states to believe in just enough way to give him the presidency without actually winning the popular vote, that he could make a massive improvement in the job prospects of his voters, blue collar voters, especially men. But by the way, you can see it shaping up, what he's going to do, we are going to have, it looks like a massive fiscal stimulus in the United States. We're going to have a big tax cut, a big defense buildup and a big roads and highways bill. You put all those things together and you are going to see a big increase in demand led tax a lot, spend a lot, borrow a lot. It always works. It doesn't always work forever. It doesn't always work for a very long time. It often results in inflation. It may distort the structure of the economy, but within the four year cycle, it works.

[David Remnick]

Now, let's be clear. You voted for Hillary Clinton, which I assume to a great extent, David, was a painful act for you.

[David Frum]

I voted in an absentee ballot and the ballot remained in my outbox for three days. It was painful.

[David Remnick]

Well, describe your thinking. What did you have to decide over? What made you decide what you did?

[David Frum]

I became convinced that what was on the ballot were this time were not policies, but the very structure of American legality, the rule of law, the constitutional system. And the anxiety I had and have about Donald Trump is will he follow the basic rules of how American democracy is supposed to work? Here's just one telling indication of what we have to worry about. On the night that Donald Trump put away the Electoral College, there was a giant collapse in financial markets. But those markets recovered over the next 18 hours and things sort of got back to normal. But among the biggest spikes was the stock of Deutsche Bank. Deutsche bank is the only bank that will lend to Donald Trump. The Department of Justice had imposed or was demanding from Deutsche Bank a fine for misconduct during the financial crisis of $14 billion. The markets clearly decided that if Donald Trump is the president, that fine is going to go away. Now, presidents aren't supposed to meddle with fines, especially of their lenders, but the markets clearly said Donald Trump is not going to abide by that rule. And Deutsche bank stock, which had been in terrible trouble before, spiked dramatically.

[David Remnick]

I was on a television show. And the host of the show, Fareed Zakaria, said, you know, it's impossible for me to get anybody from the, you know, traditional conservative intelligentsia to come on the show and speak up in favor of Donald Trump. You get the usual surrogates and talking heads that you always see on CNN or msnbc. The same half a dozen people who've never written anything or were not deep policy thinkers, they're there as surrogates. What does this mean for conservative thinking in this country?

[David Frum]

Well, Fareed Zakaria's show airs on Sunday, but it records on Thursdays. Had he waited one more day, I think his problem would have gone away. People jump on bandwagons. That is the nature of politics. It's the nature of Washington. And I every day, every day, hour, every hour, you see people who had been previously opposed to Donald Trump, who are prominent intellectual names, making some kind or other peace with him. The demonstrations that have happened over the past few nights have stimulated it. A lot of people who had disliked Donald Trump could look at those demonstrations and say, right, these are people I dislike even more. You know, the safety pin movement is everything that irritates me about liberal weepiness. And I'm reconciled to Donald Trump, or at least I'm hopeful about him. And that is happening at a very.

[David Remnick]

Fast pace to the alt right, whether it makes its appearance on Twitter or Facebook. All the aren't you just like me, but with a redder complexion? In other words, the cartoon of you has got to be someone who's disconnected and elite and out of it. How are you received? I know how I am as a liberal. I wonder how you are as a conservative.

[David Frum]

Oh, well, you know, there's a lot of abusive stuff on social media. I seem to get off rather lightly. The question of being, however, an elitist cutoff. I mean, yeah, that's all true. I mean, I have a fancy education. I live in Washington D.C. i spend most of my time in the nicer parts of North America. I'm reasonably financially secure, don't work with my hands. That's all true. And I don't take that as a self indictment because one of the things that I strongly believe about politics is that look, you're always going to have in any human society people who are more privileged than others. That's just the way it works. And the job of those people then is to realize their privileges and then to be extra responsible. One of the things I don't like a lot about the campus left with all of these attacks on people's privileges, that their goal is to drive people to pretend that they don't have advantages that they have. My concern is not that we have these out of touch elites. My concern is that we have these irresponsible and ungenerous elites that will not accept the duties that go with their position.

[David Remnick]

You've written that Trump's first order of business will be to protect and further his own brand, his finances. This seems almost optimistic to me, the idea that he'll be so absorbed with his own affairs to straightaway follow through on all the hateful campaign promises he's made. Is this really the best scenario?

[David Frum]

Oh, well, maybe I'm influenced here. I've spent a lot of time this year, as you have done over your distinguished career in East Central Europe, and it's full of rising demagogues. And when American journalists go to Hungary or Poland, what they are struck by are the bigotries, the anti Semitism. They are a very strong force. Attacks on gypsies, on migrants of various kinds. And they also notice in the background a certain amount of stealing. But the stealing is the point. That's what all these other things are there to enable. I mean, somebody like Viktor Orban, who was in Hungary, the prime minister of Hungary, a highly authoritarian leader who started off at the beginning of his career as a European liberal admirer of Margaret Thatcher, somebody who wanted to make Hungary a modern country integrated into the EU and NATO, discovered enormous economic possibilities and realized the only way to get them was to inflame people's fears. But it was always about making themselves rich in the course of self enrichment. You can do a lot of damage to a country's institution, institutions and rule of law of a kind that endures for decades. And if the Trump administration were to play out the way I fear it will, you know, you're not going to see Jim Crow reimposed. But what you may see at the end of it is the Department of Justice no longer works the way a first world Department of Justice is supposed to work.

[David Remnick]

And what will it be used for?

[David Frum]

It will be used for protecting the President's interests and those of his friends from investigation.

[David Remnick]

I just want to emphasize this. This is a conservative Republican intellectual warning us that the Justice Department might be used as an arm of the presidency to protect his economic interests. Am I getting that right?

[David Frum]

To protect him from investigation?

[David Remnick]

That's an incredible, incredible thing. And how else would you fill out the notion of what the worst case scenario of a Trump presidency is?

[David Frum]

I think that that's bad enough I mean, the very worst thing that Trump will do or could do in his first year of his presidency, he's already done, and that is during the campaign, to raise a question about whether the U.S. commitment to defend NATO partners will be honored. That's one of those things that once said, can't be unsaid. The question mark now is always there, and everybody, friend and foe, has to take into account that possibility.

[David Remnick]

So if your concern is that if Vladimir Putin wants to make a move on Estonia, which is a NATO member state, the game's already up.

[David Frum]

Yeah, he's been given information, by the way. That's how you get into wars. By the way, what's very important in these security situations. And this is, I mean, the lesson that President Obama taught us with his havering about the red lines in Syria. For a great power like the United States, it matters less where you draw the line than that. Everyone knows that the line. One of the craziest things that people said during the last phase of the campaign was that if Hillary Clinton is elected, we'll have a war with Russia because she'll be clear about what the lines are. Russia is much weaker than the United States. Clear lines they will respect. Blurry lines tempt them. Because when you think about what Russia might do in Estonia, for example, don't think about, you know, tanks rolling across the border. Think about small groups of irregular forces who, you know, the Russians can disavow, who then carry out sabotage. Think about cyber warfare. Think about the planting of false news stories. Thinking about manipulating the political processes of these countries. We've seen pro Putin leaders elected just in this past week in Moldova and Bulgaria. Moldova is on the other side of Ukraine and makes it that much more difficult for a democratic Ukraine to get off the ground. These are major, major concerns. And above all, and this is the thing I think we say, what is it that puts me to 11 on Trump alarmism. It is the very clear probability that Russian intelligence directly manipulated an American election. This is not just a partisan issue, because the fact that this could happen on President Obama's watch is such a statement of contempt and disdain for what I regard as his weak leadership. I mean, how could the Russians dare? How could they think they could do such a thing? But they did it. The intelligence operation succeeded. They had an impact on the election in such a close electoral college contest, probably enough to put their preferred candidate over the top, and the rest of us have to live with the consequences. I don't know that Donald Trump will continue to feel any gratitude For Vladimir Putin, I rather doubt that. But the Russians have scored a win at the expense of our institutions.

[David Remnick]

David, you are Canadian and you Live in Washington, D.C. are you sticking around or are you going back home?

[David Frum]

You mean to escape the Trumpite terror?

[David Remnick]

Something like that.

[David Frum]

I dual national now. I have a family here. And of course, you know, people sometimes say things when you get some negative comments on social media about, you know, you're being very courageous to stand up for this. I think, you know, if we were living in Vladimir Putin's revolution, Russia, and you're presented with the offer, look, you continue to resist the authorities and you get killed. If you cooperate with them, we'll make you rich. You have to pause and think about that. But if in this society, the downside is you get negative comments on social media, and the upside is you get invited to the White House Hanukkah party, I don't think you have any excuse for.

[David Remnick]

But do you think that's a limit of the threat? A lot of people are very concerned about the First Amendment under somebody who has all the opinions he does about the press and also has talked about changing libel laws, about all kinds of things, about attacking the press.

[David Frum]

Look, it can't happen unless you let it. So I don't agree that everything's going to be fine. And I think it's actually a very dangerous thing to say and an aroused citizenry working to defend, I've used the word, I realize, institutions a lot in this interview. And that, I think, is what the theme of the Trump presidency is about. One of the things I try to say to my liberal friends, if you find yourself tempted to criticize Donald Trump for doing something that if Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio were the president, he would also do. Bite your tongue. That's not what this is about. Conservatives get to win elections sometimes, and when they do, they will do conservative things, just as liberals do. We have a common stake in rules of the game, and those are the things that are in danger in the this Trump presidency. And those are the things you have to rally to defend. We absolutely have the capacity to protect them. And so shame on us if we don't.

[David Remnick]

David, thank you very much.

[David Frum]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

David Frum is a senior editor at the Atlantic magazine. There's more to come on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Thanksgiving is around the corner, and the cranberry sauce would like your attention, if just for a moment.

[Sarah Stillman]

Hello.

[Zadie Smith]

Hi.

[Cranberry Sauce (voice actor)]

I have something to say here. I'M just gonna take a minute here. Now I get it. I'm the cute one. I'm sweet, I'm red. I plop out of a can. It's fun, but enough is enough. My therapist told me to be direct about my feelings. So before you all dig in and give your thanks, I would like to say a few things that have been on my mind. Because, damn it, I'm a legitimate part of the meal and it's about time I was treated as such. I guess it's my fault for assuming I was anything more than a glorified dipping sauce to you people. Do you think I don't see what you see? I stick out like a sore thumb. A red, wobbly sore thumb with the ridges from my can still branded into my side, shaming me. You're store bought, freak. I'm not the disgusting one here. You're disgusting. The way you people talk, belch, indulge in your orgies of savory fats.

[Sarah Stillman]

What a feast.

[Cranberry Sauce (voice actor)]

What a spread. Oh, the turkey looks divine. Did you make this stuffing yourself? And oh, what is that? Cranberry sauce? Yeah, it is. It is cranberry sauce. But I can join in the fun. I can give thanks. I'm thankful to Frank for running back into the kitchen to get that novelty turkey spoon to serve me with like I wasn't already everybody's monkey in a sailor suit. I'm thankful to wide eyed college gal Kate for for saying that the only good thing about me is that I'm vegan. Keep making a difference, Kate. The world needs you. I'm thankful to dumb baby Julie for mashing me onto her face as part of her desperate pandering clown routine. But most of all, I'm thankful to each of the cousins from Weehawken because without those mouth breathers, I wouldn't be gobbled up like slop in a trough like some sort of sweet Spam. Just because I'm Ocean Spray doesn't mean I can't cry. I've got feelings. I'm scrumptious and I deserve more. So thanks you very much and by all means, bon appetit.

[David Remnick]

The cranberry sauce has something to say. That's a piece by Will Stephen, a writer on Saturday Night Live, and it was performed for the New Yorker Radio Hour by Shiraka Dunlap. You know, there's a story about the British novelist Anthony Trollope. Trollope apparently wrote so quickly and so efficiently that when he'd finish a novel at say, 9 in the morning, he'd write the end. And then he'd write the first sentence 15 minutes later of the very next book. But most writers these days give themselves at least a little break between books. And that's exactly when I caught up with Zadie Smith.

[Zadie Smith]

Oh, yeah, sure. Sorry. I'll take my jacket off. We'll see what occurs. It's a good time to fiction, though, don't you think? I feel like. I don't know, I'm doing a lot of reading and it seems like a good time.

[David Remnick]

Are you. What are you reading?

[Zadie Smith]

Lots of Girls. Alexandra Kleeman, Natessa Moshfegh. I don't know. It seems like an exciting time.

[David Remnick]

So you really keep up?

[Zadie Smith]

Well, not normally because I'm working, but when I finish working.

[David Remnick]

You go on a binge.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

One reason it's always great to talk to Zadie Smith is, and forgive the bad cliche, she's just someone who's got her finger on the pulse. She's been writing entertaining but very serious books dealing with race and ethnicity and gender for a long time now, a decade and a half. Her first best seller, it's amazing to remember, was White Teeth when she was 24. She's written essays about how we feel about global warming and recently she wrote about Brexit, a very sad and moving piece about how Britain has profoundly changed. And she's published personal essays and some terrific short stories, of course, in the New Yorker. Her new novel, Swing Time, is her first in four years.

[Zadie Smith]

The book is about two girls who meet when they're about seven years old in a dance class. But I thought about it as a kind of fable about blackness. That's really how I thought about it. And actually when I just finished this book, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, who is, I think, almost half my age. And I saw, even though the novels don't have anything plot wise in common, it seemed to me the same instinct, like she sat down to write a novel about the entirety of idea spohr in this incredible intensification. 300 pages she does it in. Mine is longer and looser. But I was trying to imagine the idea of one life somehow, thematically speaking, for a lot of different lives.

[David Remnick]

Why did you settle on dancing as a motor for this?

[Zadie Smith]

For the same kind of essentialist reasons. I was thinking of something I connect deeply with the communal experience of blackness. And dance is one of those things I realized whenever I'm thinking about race, I always think of it exactly on that line of generalization. So we are thought of as certain kind of people with certain kind of qualities, whether you're Jewish or black or Irish, and those things are both what is held against you and also what you hold close. It's on such a strange border. You hate to be stereotyped, right, or generalized, and yet the borders by which you mark your community are exactly about the things that you have in common or you considered shared across this great diaspora. That line is where I always writing to that strange double edge.

[David Remnick]

I want you to, if you would, I'd love to have you. Read from the novel where your narrator, the unnamed narrator, is meeting her close friend Tracy.

[Zadie Smith]

Sure. My mind was on Tracy and on the soles of her ballet shoes, upon which I now read. Freed clearly stamped in the leather, her natural arches were two hummingbirds in flight, curved in on themselves. My own feet were square and flat. They seemed to grind through the positions. I felt like a toddler placing wooden blocks at a series of right angles to each other. Flutter, flutter, flutter, said Isabelle. Yes, that's lovely, Tracy. Compliments made Tracy throw her head back and flare her little pig nose awfully. Aside from that, she was perfection. I was besotted. Her mother seemed equally infatuated. Her commitment to those classes seemed the only consistent feature of what we would now call her parenting. She came to class more than any other mother, and while there, her attention rarely wavered from her daughter's feet. My own mother's focus was always elsewhere. She could never simply sit somewhere and let time pass. She always had to be learning something. She might arrive at the beginning of class with, say, the Black Jacobins in hand, and by the time I came over to ask her to swap my ballet shoes for tap, she'd already be 100 pages through. Later, when my father took over, he either slept or went for a walk, the parental euphemism for smoking in the churchyard. At this early stage, Tracy and I were not friends or enemies or even acquaintances. We barely spoke. Yet there was always this mutual awareness, an invisible band strung between us, connecting us and preventing us from straying too deeply into relations with others. Technically, I spoke more to Lily Bingham, who went to my school, and Tracy's own standby was sad old Danika Babbage, with her ripped tights and thick accent, she lived on Tracy's corridor. But though we giggled and joked with these white girls during class, and although they had every right to assume that they were our focus, our central concern that we were to them the good friends we appeared to be, as soon as it came to break time and squash and biscuits, Tracy and I Lined up next to each other. Every time it was almost unconscious. Two iron filings drawn to a magnet.

[David Remnick]

Female friendship is at the absolute center of this book. Can you talk a little bit about that? That seems to be a subject that's not only yours for the moment, but it's certainly Ferrantes and others. Why now?

[Zadie Smith]

I was thinking about that, too, in two areas. Like, it's structural. It's to do with the fact to me that women are. With families, are writing more than they have in human history. And one of the things which is very important in female life is this relationship. I don't know a woman who hasn't had these intense childhood friendships, which she still has a kind of ambivalent or stressful reaction to, but we never heard of them. Because men were writing these books for the most part. And women, when they began to write en masse, had this feeling of inhibition, like, well, which stories will matter? I certainly, when I wrote White Teeth, wrote somewhat in drag, I think. Right. You write with the idea of, well, what is a story? And story is certainly about. There are men at the center of that story and a masculine conception. I think, to become. To feel free, you need to have examples of it before you. And space. And I think what's happening now is a lot of women writers feeling something of that freedom, that their subjects are not small or domestic or uninteresting, that they are to the material of the novel.

[David Remnick]

Sadie, I think this is a departure for you in. In a technical term. You're writing this book in first person.

[Zadie Smith]

Right.

[David Remnick]

Why did you resist that before?

[Zadie Smith]

A bit of British snobbery, probably, and.

[David Remnick]

Or British reluctance.

[Zadie Smith]

Reluctance and misunderstanding of what the form is like. Once I started writing in it, I saw all these possibilities.

[David Remnick]

Well, explain to an American listener why there is a snobbery at all in not writing in first person.

[Zadie Smith]

I think I've been writing about this recently, thinking about it. I think it's about Shakespeare, actually, the root of it, because we're told from a very young age that Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the world, not coincidentally from England, and that his greatness is exactly this negative capability, this incredible broad act of empathy. In his ideal mode, he is both a black man and a Jew and a woman and an old man and child and et cetera. And this is idealized in British life, I think, as the aim of literature, which is a kind of ethical and aesthetic confusion, in my view, but one that I was very much under as a student. And the first person, I think, is considered an indulgence or something bordering on the memoiristic or, you know, or certainly I did think of it that way, I think. And also basically limited. Like if you're just talking about how you feel, what about everybody else in the picture? But that's a very infantile idea of the first person.

[David Remnick]

So when you set out in first person, did you find it liberating or the opposite?

[Zadie Smith]

I thought it was a tool that could be used like it's a literary effect, among many others. Like when I read. When you read Nausegaard or Ferrante or people genuinely writing a straight memoir, there is the idea on the reader's part that this is in some way more authentic. Right, that's the idea. But the writer knows that. I mean, I know that Nazga does not remember what he said to his father in 1974. I know that.

[David Remnick]

Or what he had for breakfast.

[Zadie Smith]

No, but he remembers these things. So it's a literary effect and an extremely powerful one, because one of them, the effects of it is the reader constantly asking themselves, well, is this you? And the Frisian of that is very useful. It can be manipulated just like one key amongst many that you.

[David Remnick]

In fact, to such a degree that you get to the end of the novel and there's a scene in which Daryl Pinkney arrives.

[Zadie Smith]

Yes. I put Daryl in a real life.

[David Remnick]

Person who we both know. And James Fenton.

[Zadie Smith]

Yeah, that was the only real folk. I don't. It was the thrill of doing it, of entering them into the fiction. Also the voraciousness of fiction. Right. That it can eat up reality and.

[David Remnick]

Do whatever it wants.

[Zadie Smith]

And do whatever it wants. It is like a fundamentally immoral form. Right. You have to deal with its impurity. It's why it makes people uncomfortable a lot of the time.

[David Remnick]

Zid, you wrote a remarkable article for the New York Review of Books some years ago called Speaking in Tongues. And it was about being multi voiced. And it was. At first it was about Obama's ability to be multi voiced. The way he would speak in a black church on the south side of Chicago, and then he would speak in deeper southern Illinois to what we now call the white working class. That's also part of you. It's also part of you as a person and as a writer. And maybe it's part of all of us in some way or another. Now that Obama is leaving office. How do you look back on that article and your evaluation of him and how well or not he used that ability to be multi voiced to confront that huge issue of race?

[Zadie Smith]

I think his Instinct to please many people at the same time or to speak to many people at the same time. Had a certain difficulty. Right. Because at a certain point people want from you a commitment, a commitment to stand in one place with them. And I think he's constitutionally incapable of doing that. There have been moments in the church when he spoke and sang in Charleston. Yeah. It doesn't surprise me because I always thought of him as a writer, first of having a writer mentality.

[David Remnick]

But he disappointed you as a leader?

[Zadie Smith]

No, he never. I think there is no person who will ever take up that office probably in my lifetime, who I admire more. That's never going to happen. But the person I admire, that's not always an effective political figure. But I mean that as a compliment to him as a human.

[David Remnick]

But where did he let you down? Where did his politics let you down? And were not, say, firm enough or clear enough?

[Zadie Smith]

I think in times of emergency, and I think for black people in America in the past few years, this has felt like an emergency. The kind of flexibility he prizes doesn't feel like much. We at times needed someone to stand directly with us and lay a line down. And I think that was the problem.

[David Remnick]

When you talk about it being an emergency, do you get a sense that in the empirical sense that things are worse now?

[Zadie Smith]

I think it's about historical time, this incredible impatience. As far as I can see, I'm an outsider. But African Americans have been asked time and time again to be patient.

[David Remnick]

Letter from Birmingham Jail is all about that, right? It's always the insistence on not being patient enough with patience.

[Zadie Smith]

And to me it's about generations of wasted talent. That is always my feeling politically is that you're asking people to waste what is greatest amongst their people, to never even find out what they are capable of. And it feels late in the day to still be making that argument and still seeing generations of young black people not fulfilling their capacity.

[David Remnick]

Zaidie, when you finish a book, as you have now, you give yourself a break. Is there. Do you breathe?

[Zadie Smith]

I'm trying to give myself a break. And this time I. I'm just trying to be in the world, you know, go and pick up my kids, sit in Washington Square, go and see some culture, do something. Writing is a real way of controlling pleasure. Someone suggested to me recently, and I think it's very true, it's a strange person who takes it up.

[David Remnick]

Sadie, you've talked about the business of writing as in the end, events, an act for you of ultimately of disappointment. And I just wonder if you Ever finish a book and you have some feeling of deeper satisfaction that you can at some level admit to yourself that you've written the book that you wanted to write?

[Zadie Smith]

No, this time I do have it. Much more than for the first time. Definitely for the first time.

[David Remnick]

Is it the book or you grew up in some way?

[Zadie Smith]

Maybe both. I heard Saffron Foer speaking yesterday at my place of work, and he said something smart about wanting to be known that both readers and writers want this. And there's a great temptation every day to present yourself in a way that doesn't allow for that. But I did feel, particularly in the shape of these sentences, that I got closer to something that I wanted and that was more honest. So I. I'm happy, but I'm always happiest to be honest. Reading that is the pleasure source for me.

[David Remnick]

Writing is the thing you bring a lunch bucket to. And it's the job that allows you to be liberated to read and be with your family and friends. You're gonna do one of these things. Again, I'm patting the novel.

[Zadie Smith]

Honestly, I think I'll always write. Novels are. The novel doesn't have to. Even as a form, it doesn't have to continue forever. You know, it's like late in the day of the novel. I was with a lot of teenagers last summer, and one of them was writing a novel which had quite a large audience on a phone app. And she already had like not just hundreds, but thousands of people reading this thing. I don't think our model, the thing we both grew up with.

[David Remnick]

Pages Inc. 400 pages.

[Zadie Smith]

But it's not to me, it's not a sad matter. Like we're not going to live that much, you know, we're going to die. In 30 to 40 years, I take my life.

[David Remnick]

Excuse me, I'm going to live forever. Pomegranate juice, the gym, etc.

[Zadie Smith]

New Yorkers will live forever. But for the rest of us who.

[David Remnick]

Are going to die, sorry, sorry that.

[Zadie Smith]

I'm not too long time. If they just we mosey along together till the end of this, that's fine with me, but the kids will be on a different track altogether.

[David Remnick]

Ah, the kids. Thanks.

[Zadie Smith]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

Zadie Smith's new book is called Swing Time. And you can find everything she's written for the New Yorker, including a fantastic profile of the comedy team Key and [e-mail] My colleague David Haglund, who's the literary editor of new yorker.com has dropped by the office and he's going to tell me what he's into these days? Because that's the only way I ever know anything.

[David Haglund]

Well, and you know, these days, lately I've been looking for the things that reliably cheer me up, pick me up, divert me from some of the more awful things in the world.

[David Remnick]

So I have found myself going, that's not pharmacological.

[David Haglund]

That's right. Non pharmacological options. Do you know Mitchell and Webb? You know, that comedy team?

[David Remnick]

Don't quiz me.

[David Haglund]

Okay, let me tell you about Mitchell and Webb.

[David Remnick]

Much better.

[Sarah Stillman]

David.

[David Haglund]

David Mitchell and Robert Webb, these two British comedians, they met at Cambridge in the early 90s and they're probably best known for a sitcom that they had called Peep show, which is very funny, but they also had a sketch show called that Mitchell and Webb Look. And my introduction to it was a sketch about an editor.

[Zadie Smith]

And.

[David Haglund]

And I like to watch it because it makes me feel like maybe I'm not so bad at my job.

[David Remnick]

You're not wasting your life.

[David Haglund]

Well, I'm not sure it convinces me of that, but basically, when I watch it, I know I'm not as bad as that guy in this sketch. David Mitchell, who's often the brainy one. He comes in, he's an author, he's gone to see his editor and he's telling him about his latest book.

[David Remnick]

So at the end of chapter two, Henry is beginning to question his own motives in pursuing the case and at the same time wondering whether Sarah is telling him the whole story about the divorce.

[Anthony (fictional character or editor)]

Yeah, I'm just gonna stop you there, Anthony.

[David Remnick]

Sure.

[Anthony (fictional character or editor)]

I mean, yeah, but I mean, we've just reached the end of chapter two, and I can't for the life of me tell you what the hell's going on. I mean, you know, Henry, Sarah, these.

[David Frum]

Are just words, really.

[Anthony (fictional character or editor)]

I mean, it's great. It's all great, Anthony, obviously. But I just wonder. I mean, just as an example, I mean, not this. I mean, not this at all. Don't do this. But what if, say, the main character dies at the end of chapter one? I mean, not that, but I mean, something like that. I mean, not like that, but yeah. I mean, what if. I mean, not this. Ignore this. What if Henry, although obviously not if he had sex. I mean, not sex, but sex.

[David Remnick]

Well, that's a great tribute to editors and what they do is.

[David Frum]

Right. Exactly.

[David Haglund]

The next time I say not this, but I will remember to stop myself and think again. Think a little harder about what I really want to suggest.

[David Remnick]

What else have you been listening to? Or reading.

[David Haglund]

So this is not a quiz, I promise, but are you a crossword puzzle person at all? Do you do the crossword puzzle?

[David Remnick]

Only on Mondays when I can finish that. It goes downhill from there.

[David Haglund]

So I find myself becoming increasingly fond of and dependent on the New York Times crossword puzzle. And there's a blog called Rex Parker does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, where the guy who writes is not actually named Rex Parker. His real name is Michael Sharp. And every day he does the puzzle and then he writes a little review. And it actually is a model of criticism.

[David Frum]

He's.

[David Haglund]

And he makes you appreciate the art of crossword puzzle construction. He's very good on the politics of crossword puzzles, too, which is.

[David Remnick]

What are the politics of crossword puzzles?

[David Haglund]

Well, if you think about it, crossword puzzles are a test of what we think of as common knowledge. But who's common knowledge? Right.

[David Remnick]

And what are the assumptions?

[David Haglund]

A lot of cultural references from the 60s and 70s.

[David Remnick]

A lot of Arlo Guthrie. Not so much hip hop.

[David Haglund]

Not so much hip hop. Michael Sharpey is very good on these things. And he makes you aware of. Of what you're doing in a way that I really appreciate. And then I go back to doing the crossword puzzle.

[David Remnick]

Does it make you better at the crossword puzzle?

[David Haglund]

A little bit. A little bit. Because you notice that, I mean, obviously there are certain words, certain phrases that get used, reused all the time.

[David Remnick]

Like what?

[David Haglund]

You know, like Esai Morales, E, S, A, I, Very good. Four letter word for the crossword puzzle. And that guy, by having that being the most famous Isai in the United States.

[David Remnick]

So is it more about cultural assumptions or more about maximum vowels?

[David Haglund]

It's a little bit of both. A little bit of both. I mean, you know, for instance, maybe there's another Isai for a long time. Rae, Right, Ray. You know, Ray Armentrout showed up recently, which was nice as a fan of her work.

[David Remnick]

Interesting. And what else you been reading or listening to?

[David Haglund]

So the last thing I've been turning to a lot recently is music of Lee Moses. And I have a weakness for sort of forgotten or largely forgotten pop musicians. And Lee Moses, he grew up in Atlanta, came to New York in the 1960s, recorded one album, came out in 1971, and that was it. It wasn't a success. He went back to Atlanta, never recorded again, died in 1997. But over the years it has built up this kind of cult following. And it's great and it cheers me up every time I hear it.

[David Frum]

Oh yeah, we got the Shallow in secrecy Nobody must know about you and me.

[David Remnick]

The OJs would be happy.

[David Haglund]

As am I after I hear that song.

[David Remnick]

Me too. Me too. Thanks for coming by, David.

[Zadie Smith]

Always good to see you.

[David Haglund]

Good to see you too, David.

[David Frum]

Oh, no matter where. Oh, yes, I will.

[David Remnick]

David Haglund is an editor at the New Yorker, and you can find links to the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, the Rex Parker crossword blog, and the soul singer lee [e-mail] Next week, it's the holidays, and we've got a really big treat. A conversation with the true American great, Bruce Springsteen. We'll go all the way back to his beginnings. Amazingly enough, the music business was such.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

That John Hammond, one of the greatest.

[David Frum]

A and R men and producers, were.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

Seeing idiots off the street, you know, And John Hammond says, well, play me something. So I sat down and I closed my eyes and I played them.

[David Remnick]

Saint in the city I had skin like leather and my diamond hard look.

[Zadie Smith]

Of a cobra.

[David Haglund]

I was born blue.

[David Remnick]

And weather that I burst just like.

[David Haglund]

A supernova I could walk like Brando right into the sun the dance just.

[David Remnick]

Bruce Springsteen. That's next week, and there's more to come this week on the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm here with one of the great reporters around today, Sarah Stillman. And I hope you don't mind if I brag a little bit. She just won a MacArthur Fellowship, better known as the Genius Award. Sarah, you've written for the magazine about issues facing refugees, and you've covered the huge number of people that have been fleeing gang violence and chaos in Central America. But recently, you spent an afternoon at a pretend refugee camp. What was that about?

[Sarah Stillman]

So Doctors Without Borders decided to put on this exhibit, and it's called Forced from Home. And it's currently traveling the country from the east coast to the West Coast. And it wasn't so much a fake refugee camp as a sort of interactive exhibit that actually tries to simulate in these different stages, the various complex steps and choices of people who have actually been forced to flee their homes.

[David Remnick]

And how does it compare to a real refugee camp? Is it possible to even come close to the sense of packed in ness and desperation that you so often find in refugee camps in the Middle east or wherever you might go?

[Sarah Stillman]

I mean, to be honest, I was totally skeptical at first. It seemed like, does the financial district really need a chance for people to come and think they've morally absolved themselves by walking around this place. But it turned out to be a kind of step by step look into, you know, everything from the actual boat journey, like you get inside one of the inflatable rafts, to, you know, what it looks like when Doctors Without Borders, also known as msf, sets up these emergency clinics.

[David Remnick]

And were tourists going in and out of this.

[Sarah Stillman]

Exactly. There were all kinds of people. So there were school groups that included populations of kids who were themselves immigrants and in some cases, refugees. But then you also saw random stragglers pulled in off the streets. And then perhaps most interesting to me was actually the people who led you through it, which were actual MSF staff members who were fresh from the field, whether dealing with Syrian refugees or in my case, I went through it with a woman named Dr. Africa Stewart. She's an OBGYN from Georgia. She's worked with MSF in South Sudan, in Nigeria. And so you were getting these people who were kind of radiating a sense of just emerging from the fire of these crises. I'm thinking, would it make sense to go through the space?

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

Let me assign your country.

[Sarah Stillman]

Okay, great. So over here we get our country tax. So one of the first things we did at the exhibit was to pick up a card that assigned you the country from which you're supposedly fleeing.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

So Honduras, South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, and Burundi. And some of them are asylum seekers, some are internally displaced persons, IDPs.

[Sarah Stillman]

So I chose Honduras, Africa, picked South Sudan. There was also a board with cellophane little placards, and each one of them had a picture of an item that you might take with you you wanted.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

So everyone chooses five items.

[Sarah Stillman]

So basically you can choose, like, what they've got, like a cell phone, water, sewing machine, passport, bottles, keys, wheelchair, guitar. Some of these items seemed strange to me. Like, why would you bring your keys, for instance? These people are fleeing their homes. They're not, say, going out for groceries.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

But it's a sentimental token. People feel like if you lock your door and take your keys, they feel like at one point this will be over and I'm going to go home. And the idea that they just want to come here and have their babies is a lie.

[Sarah Stillman]

So I went with what I figured was a really practical choice. I chose a passport, water. I chose money and shoes. And then I chose a cell phone. Because a lot of the Syrian refugees have spent, spoken to recently have told me that the cell phone was like the most vital item, both in terms of figuring out where they were going. Literally talk to people who spend time Googling how to not drown While crossing in the Mediterranean in one of these rinky dink boats, they use WhatsApp to communicate with their smugglers, to communicate with their family members back home in Syria. So that was my thinking behind that choice. What was the most interesting question that a kid has asked you? Moving through the exhibit.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

The smaller ones are always curious if they should bring their pets because they are younger. We are hesitant to tell them that someone's gonna eat your pet.

[Sarah Stillman]

So. Dr. Stewart is an obstetrician and a gynecologist with a practice in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, and she's also a mom of three kids. Back in 2011, she and her husband had talked about her going to work with Doctors Without Borders or with msf, but it didn't feel real until she got a call.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

I text him, msf called, can I go to Sudan? And he texts back, autocorrect is crazy. What'd you say? And I go, no, I want to go to Sudan. It was a little bit of, if I don't go, I know what will happen. People bleed to death. There's no one else who knows how to do what I do. So people walk for miles and just bleed to death and their babies die. And in this context, when mom is unwell, her other small children are uncared for, and it just sort of changes. It can change a whole village that way. And so I figured out how to make it work. I can cook a cauldron of spaghetti sauce and turn it into or five different things in the freezer with the label.

[Sarah Stillman]

And is that what you do before you go off? You, like, prepare the meals for your time away?

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

Oh, my goodness. It helps partly because it helps my husband feel like, okay, that's handled. You know, that part of it is done. And for the kids, I mean, the way your mom cooks, it's special. So he would do the best he could. But on the weekends, Mommy's food, and you only have to do that four times, and then Mommy will be home, and it helps.

[Sarah Stillman]

So we got to the next stage of the exhibit. They placed a small kind of inflatable boat of the sort that smugglers actually use to take people across. And I think it's meant to seat around eight people, but they're often finding 20, 25 people in these boats. And so they essentially crammed the whole tour group just the way that the refugees would be crammed in like sardines in this little boat.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

We started msf, started doing rescues in the water, and we had this whole debate of, are we making the problem worse because once the smugglers find out that we're going to come save them, are they going to take more people out? And we went back and forth for a couple of days, and we decided ultimately that part of our mission is neutrality. If you need us, it doesn't matter how you got into that situation. So in the lifeboat, so we started doing rescues. And the first part of that is getting real life jackets. And we have. We're picking people out of the water that are wearing the equivalent of props. And they were sold them. Right. They're not seaworthy or they're not meant for salt water.

[Sarah Stillman]

People are selling those. They're manufacturing basically these fake, crappy life jackets that don't even work. That's like, such a cynical. I can't even imagine who would think of that idea. But I guess there's a lot of money to be made in this crisis. And can you tell, like, if we look at those two jackets in the boat right there, like, can we tell which one is real and which one's fake?

[Cranberry Sauce (voice actor)]

Yes.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

I can assure you, if you are given the choice between the two, you'll pick the real one every time. But when there aren't any, you can't tell, you know.

[Sarah Stillman]

So then we got to the point in the exhibit where we had to give up another one of our items. I reluctantly chose to give up my cell phone and to hold onto the water because it felt like that was a really requisite object and a cell phone seemed like a really frivolous one. Then, of course, we turned the corner, and Dr. Stewart points out that we're arriving in the MSF area. And in fact, they did provide the bare essentials, including water. So probably not the best choice.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

As long as you need us, everything that you need is free.

[Sarah Stillman]

I see. I was about to go into a place with water. Yeah, I guess you make some bad calls. I think that was a bad call. I screwed myself.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

And that people always say, like, oh, can I get that back? No, because that's my cell phone back.

[Sarah Stillman]

If you'll give it to me.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

No, that's part of the experience, though, is choosing incorrectly and finding out later that you needed that thing or you did or this is useless.

[Sarah Stillman]

Yeah, it's interesting to. To think that in this current refugee climate that one of the most valuable things you could possibly have is a cell phone. And so later she took me to this part of the exhibit where they displayed these really innovative, creative ways that refugees had come up with in the camps to charge the phones. Just impromptu Self made chargers. So at that point we transitioned to the tents, which are the longer term living stations, the things you've heard about.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

In the news, mostly to sort of illustrate the idea that people are fleeing for months and months. If you don't drown, you aren't kidnapped, you don't get shot along the way. This is it.

[Sarah Stillman]

I mean, it's a real. To be honest, I mean, it looks like a bunch of plastic tarps draped over and really looks like a lot of what we would conceptualize as trash. I mean, there's a little doll made out of trash and garbage bags and a little toy made out of a milk carton with some wheels attached. But otherwise it's just these little tents and flip flops and the flimsiness that almost is a physical representation of these people's situations in terms of precarious. Like it looks like the wind could blow away this whole place.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

And this is long term housing, this is what they fled to. So if you can appreciate that this is good news to a lot of families, then it shines a light on what they left, the seriousness of it, the lack of safety, warmth.

[Sarah Stillman]

The exhibit ends there, but it definitely left me thinking partly just about how I'd walked into it, feeling pretty skeptical. I just have big questions about the nature of these exercises where even as we try to build empathy for those going through the refugee crisis, how often are we doing that in ways that are really just self congratulatory chances to momentarily pause from our days, quickly imagine what it's like to be someone in one of these, in these dire straits, and then to just jump back into our lives and pat ourselves on the back for having done so, but without any real stakes in the line, without really any action being taken. And this left me thinking, actually the value in the exhibit lay elsewhere. And I think it lay in two places. And the first was really just getting outside the binaries that so much of the reporting on the refugee crisis play into. And I think those, you know, fall into either the category of tales of refugees who were really exceptional and wildly resilient and really, really special in their courage and bravery, or the tales of the kind of faceless masses. But this exhibit was really about the smaller daily choices that millions of people are making again and again and again. And it also made me think about, well, what is Dr. Stewart getting out.

[Zadie Smith]

Of all of this?

[Sarah Stillman]

And it became pretty quickly clear that all of the doctors there were really having one of the first chances they'd had to talk with each other about the really intense environments in which they're operating in all these far flung parts of the world, then sharing that with the rest of us, that there is an element of education that's an equally important part of the job.

[Dr. Africa Stewart]

I can get lost in the operating room. I can just be doing sexual violence repair after repair after repair, or doing fistula repair after repair. Repair. Because that's the thing that I can do. Most of what I use practically, I learned from my colleagues. The first thing I learned is you don't cry in front of the staff. It is better to be respected than loved. Don't cry in front of the staff. I mean, I have. I have some secrets that I'll never speak to another soul because it's just too heavy. But every now and again I can call Denmark and talk to Anya and she knows why I called. And we don't even have to talk about it. We can just say, it could have been worse. We, we did the right thing. I just hate how it turned out. So we get the training. We get it, but we get it on the fly. And sometimes it's some Australian going, aye, buck up. Okay. Sometimes that's all I needed. Just, okay, I'm back on it. Wash your hands, do it again. Just don't give up. And I always say I'm not going back to the field. And I do, always. I probably have it in my chat with my husband. I'm never coming back. Never. It's too much. I'm too old for this crap. And he's like, uh huh. We'll talk about it when you get home. Because he's right.

[David Remnick]

That's Dr. Africa Stewart, an OBGYN in the Atlanta area and a member of Doctors Without Borders, also known as msf. She talked with the New Yorker staff writer Sarah Stillman, and the exhibit Forced From Home will continue its tour next year. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. And that's it for today. Hope you have a great Thanksgiving with people who matter to you. And next week by Conversation is one of the great songwriters and performers ever, Bruce Springsteen. Don't miss it. I'm David Remnick and thanks for listening.

[Sarah Stillman]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.