Margaret Atwood, Evangelizing Against Climate Change, and Greek Tragedy

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Margaret Atwood, Evangelizing Against Climate Change, and Greek Tragedy

Date: April 14, 2017
Host: David Remnick (WNYC Studios & The New Yorker)

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Episode Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour weaves together profiles, storytelling, and in-depth interviews, focusing on three main themes: the struggle to communicate the urgency of climate change (especially to skeptical audiences), the sudden renewed relevance of Margaret Atwood’s "The Handmaid's Tale" in the Trump era, and the power of ancient Greek tragedy to catalyze healing and dialogue among military veterans. The episode features heartfelt, sometimes humorous vignettes and tough conversations, with notable guests like climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, novelist Margaret Atwood, Pulitzer-winning critic Hilton Als, and theater director Brian Dorries.

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Segment 1: Humor and the Work-from-Home Blues (00:02–03:33)

• Starts with a tongue-in-cheek sketch, “911, What’s Your Emergency?” spoofing a 911 call from a man (played by Bill Hader), listless in pandemic-like isolation, unable to distinguish pajamas from jeans, snacking, lost in the distractions of working from home.
• Notable quote:
  “You went from meerkats straight to pornography.”
  — 911 Operator Charisse (Kristen Wiig) [02:50]
• Sets a humorous but oddly poignant tone about isolation and distraction in modern life.

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Segment 2: Katharine Hayhoe on Evangelizing Against Climate Change (03:33–15:44)

Connecting Faith and Science

• Katharine Hayhoe is profiled as a unique voice—an evangelical Christian and top climate scientist at Texas Tech, known for her skill in speaking to conservative, skeptical audiences.
• Hayhoe’s approach isn’t about overwhelming with facts:
  • She begins with shared values or concerns (faith, local water issues) before introducing climate data.
  • Notable quote:
    “The first thing I do is not pulling out the science... the absolute worst thing that we can do in any argument.”
    — Katharine Hayhoe [04:59]

Personal Story: Converting a Climate Skeptic

• Hayhoe describes how her husband, from a Republican background, was initially a climate skeptic.
  • The turning point: downloading NASA’s temperature data and looking at it first-hand.
  • Notable quote:
    “What was the simplest choice? Was NASA involved in... a worldwide conspiracy, or was NASA... correct when they said the planet was warming?”
    — Katharine Hayhoe [08:03]

Resistance to Change

• Resistance isn’t about disbelief in science but “solution aversion”: fear of government control, loss of freedoms.
  • Example: a Texan water manager agrees with the science but fears, “I don’t want the government setting my thermostat.” [09:13]

Politics, Denial, and Real Motivations

• Hayhoe: Many climate-denying politicians privately acknowledge the truth but avoid action for political survival.
• The bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus offers hope but reveals the real risks elected officials face, using Bob Inglis’s ouster as a cautionary tale for Republicans admitting belief in climate science. [13:38]
• Hayhoe gets more criticism from Christians for being a scientist than from scientists for being a Christian.
  • Notable quote:
    “Our faith has been hijacked by our politics, and climate change is one of the biggest casualties.”
    — Katharine Hayhoe [15:42]

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Segment 3: Margaret Atwood and the "Handmaid’s Tale" Phenomenon (15:53–33:17)

Atwood as Realist, Not Prophet

• After Trump’s election, "The Handmaid’s Tale" sales soar, with the public drawing analogies to a dystopian future.
• Atwood insists her work is a reflection—not an invention—of reality:
  • Notable quote:
    “I didn’t create that world. I reflected that world. And I put nothing into the book that had not already happened at some point, at some time to someone.”
    — Margaret Atwood [16:09 & 21:06]

The Roots of Distopia & Reaction to Trump Era

• Discussion about why the book’s themes resonate without the government literally following the novel’s script.
• Atwood explains that Trump’s supporters rationalize his role via biblical examples—using unrighteous men as tools for a perceived greater good. [22:02]
• Atwood’s childhood in Canada’s wilderness shaped her—books, nature, and freedom from strict gender expectations.
  • “They just had a lot of activities that they loved to do and could do chums things together, like canoe trips. But you don’t do canoe trips in a frilly dress.” [26:49]

Gender Roles and Feminism

• Reflects on growing up with unspoken gender divisions but not feeling constrained by them herself.
• Atwood discusses the meaning(s) of “feminist” and her stance:
  • “Women are human beings. Hand up? Yes, I’m for that... What I’m not for is some notion that women, because they’re women... are more virtuous and noble.” [29:49]

Legacy and Literary Immortality

• Atwood is unconcerned with being eternally defined by "The Handmaid’s Tale":
  • “Will I care? Assume at the point at which it’s going to define me I will be dead... typically happens to a well known writer when they die is... people lose interest.” [31:25, 31:58]

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Segment 4: Hilton Als on Criticism and Representation (33:17–39:17)

• Hilton Als, fresh from his Pulitzer win for criticism, discusses his mission to bring stories of people of color into the mainstream literary and theater conversation at The New Yorker.
  • “It was very important to not make color a specialty item, that it was part of the conversation.” [36:36]
• He celebrates diversity in theater and finds renewal in up-and-coming playwrights—not in another revival of classics.
• Memorable theater experiences include The Blacks at Harlem’s Classical Theater and Bette Midler’s performances, highlighting acting that is about giving everything to the audience. [38:41]

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Segment 5: Greek Tragedy and Theater of War (39:29–54:17)

The Power of Ancient Drama

• Brian Dorries, founder of Theater of War, describes performing Sophocles’ tragedies (like "Ajax" and "Philoctetes") for military audiences, from the Pentagon to VA facilities.
  • “These weren’t simply entertainment, but... a way of passing down really crucial institutional knowledge between generations of veterans...” [40:10, 43:34]

Scenes and Emotional Impact

• Actors perform intense scenes from Sophocles, resonating with themes of abandonment, trauma, and suffering.
  • Notable excerpt: “I am Philoctetes... They left me here to die in tattered rags, sleeping in a jagged cave, starving...” [41:20]

Connecting Ancient Trauma to Modern War

• Panel discussion with journalist Robin Wright:
  • Ancient Greeks openly confronted the traumas of war as civic duty; today, veterans often carry these experiences in silence—leading to stigma and distance from civilian life.
  • Audience responses reveal the timelessness of emotions around loss, shame, moral injury, and survivor’s guilt.
    • Example: A U.S. Army lieutenant colonel compares a friend’s suicide to Ajax and Philoctetes, vowing “never again” to leave a comrade alone with their suffering. [49:36–51:03]

Tragedy as Healing

• Greek tragedy is not just pessimistic—it offers relief and community through the shared experience of truth.
  • “For audiences, counterintuitively, the response can be one of relief to see themselves reflected in a story.” [51:21]
• Robin Wright concludes that seeing one’s dark thoughts and experiences reflected onscreen or onstage creates community and solace.

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Notable Quotes by Timestamp

• “The first thing I do is not pulling out the science... the absolute worst thing that we can do in any argument.”
  — Katharine Hayhoe [04:59]

• “Our faith has been hijacked by our politics, and climate change is one of the biggest casualties.”
  — Katharine Hayhoe [15:42]

• “I didn’t create that world. I reflected that world.”
  — Margaret Atwood [16:09 & 21:06]

• “Women are human beings. Hand up? Yes, I’m for that... What I’m not for is some notion that women, because they’re women... are more virtuous and noble.”
  — Margaret Atwood [29:49]

• “It was very important to not make color a specialty item, that it was part of the conversation.”
  — Hilton Als [36:36]

• “These weren’t simply entertainment, but... a way of passing down really crucial institutional knowledge between generations of veterans...”
  — Brian Dorries [40:10, 43:34]

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Key Timestamps of Major Sections

• Work-from-home Satire: 00:02–03:33
• Katharine Hayhoe Interview: 03:33–15:44
• Margaret Atwood Profile/Interview: 15:53–33:17
• Hilton Als and Criticism: 33:17–39:17
• Theater of War/Greek Tragedy for Veterans: 39:29–54:17

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Takeaways

• Climate change communication hinges on shared values, not just facts—a lesson for anyone trying to advocate in polarized environments.
• Dystopian literature isn’t predictive fiction, but a tool for examining what societies are capable of, making it continually timely as circumstances shift.
• Ancient Greek tragedy, far from being escapist or purely depressing, can be a powerful bridge for empathy, healing, and communal affirmation among people experiencing trauma—even today.
• Storytelling—whether literary, scientific, or dramatic—remains vital for breaking through isolation and forging shared meaning.

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This episode is a rich tapestry of humor, reflection, and urgency, encouraging listeners to seek truth, connect across lines, and draw strength—and clarity—from the stories we share.

Transcript

[911 Operator Charisse]

911, what's your emergency?

[Robert]

Hi. I work from home.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Okay. Is anyone else there with you, sir?

[Robert]

No, I'm alone.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[911 Operator Charisse]

And when was the last time you saw someone else?

[Robert]

My wife. This morning, I guess.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Let's go ahead and open up the blinds. Okay. And let some light in.

[Robert]

How much light?

[911 Operator Charisse]

Just a little is fine.

[Robert]

I did it. It's bright. Feels so bright on my face.

[911 Operator Charisse]

That's good. That's how it's supposed to feel. I need you to tell me what you're wearing. Okay.

[Robert]

You know, just regular clothes.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Outside clothes or inside clothes?

[Robert]

Let me check. Pajamas. I'm wearing my pajamas. I swore I changed into regular. I thought these were jeans.

[911 Operator Charisse]

It's okay, sir. Calm down.

[Robert]

Wait. This isn't even a shirt. It's just my skin. God damn. Damn it.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Can we assume that you haven't showered today?

[Robert]

I don't know.

[911 Operator Charisse]

I need you to walk over to the bathroom and see if your towel is damp. Okay. Can you do that for me?

[Robert]

Yeah.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Okay, great.

[Robert]

I'm walking over there. Okay, I'm here. I'm in the bathroom. I see my towel. It's dry. It's a dry towel.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Okay. That's okay. What is your name, sir?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Robert.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Robert. I'm Charisse.

[Robert]

Hi, Charisse.

[911 Operator Charisse]

You did the right thing by calling today, Robert. I'm gonna get some people over there soon to help you. Okay? Now, Robert, did you eat anything today?

[Robert]

I keep putting things in my mouth a lot.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Are you eating now, Robert? Okay, can you tell me what food you've eaten today?

[Robert]

I don't exactly. I mean, I started out with breakfast before my wife left for work. I think maybe I had a bowl of cereal when she left.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Is that it?

[Robert]

Like an hour or so later? I had a banana with peanut butter.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Did you slice the banana?

[Robert]

Nope. I dipped it right into the jar. Because no one was watching.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

No one watches.

[911 Operator Charisse]

And did you have lunch after that, or was that lunch?

[Robert]

I remember ham. Lots of ham.

[911 Operator Charisse]

In a sandwich?

[Robert]

No, no sandwich. Just ham pieces.

[911 Operator Charisse]

That's okay. Did you get any work done today?

[Robert]

I don't think so. I was supposed to make a deck for a meeting, and I started it. I started the deck.

[911 Operator Charisse]

And then you stopped?

[Robert]

Well, the Internet has fun things for me to do, so I did them.

[911 Operator Charisse]

What kind of things?

[Robert]

I watched a video about meerkats.

[911 Operator Charisse]

A documentary?

[Robert]

Yeah. And then that led me to other videos that weren't documentaries.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Okay, so you started watching pornography?

[Robert]

Yes.

[911 Operator Charisse]

You went from meerkats straight to pornography.

[Robert]

That's right. Yeah.

[911 Operator Charisse]

And how long did you spend watching videos?

[Robert]

Doesn't really matter because I make my own schedule, you know?

[911 Operator Charisse]

Robert. Robert. Robert, I need you to stay with me. Okay? All right. The EMT should be there shortly. The EMTs are gonna help you get that deck ready and get you showered and changed.

[David Remnick]

Thank you.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Until they get there, no more eating and no more meerkat videos or other videos, okay?

[Brian Dorries]

I work from home.

[911 Operator Charisse]

Sh. Sh. I know, Robert. I know you do. Are you chewing?

[David Remnick]

I work from home. And I guess that's why I rarely do work from home. I mean. That's a piece by Colin Nissen from the New Yorker's Department of Shouts and Murmurs. It was performed for the Radio Hour by Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. I'm David Remnick and thanks so much for joining us. Now, next weekend, scientists from all over the country are going to be marching in Washington. Thousands of people who believe in the science of. Of climate change will show their support for the environment and the political reforms needed to preserve it. Needless to say, many more people who think, as the President does, that climate change is a hoax will not be at the march, which is where a woman named Katherine Hayhoe comes in. Hayhoe is a climate scientist at Texas Tech and Lubbock, and you can find her all over YouTube and television advocating for climate change. She's also an evangelical Christian, and she spends time in churches across the country trying to convince a tough audience of conservative skeptics that a belief in God can be reconciled with a belief in science. Now, you're known for being a kind of master communicator when it comes to getting Christians, devout Christians, to adopt the fight against climate change. How are you going about putting that message in front of people? What is your approach, your tactics?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

The way I talk about this issue is the first thing I do is not pulling out the science, not, you know, getting all the data out and just saying, look, here's the data, and if you don't agree with it, you know, you're an idiot. That is the absolute worst thing that we can do in any argument. Really?

[David Remnick]

Why is that? That's the Al Gore approach. Here are my slides. Here's the fact based evidence. Why is that a bad approach?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

It works if we're already convinced of the reality of the issue and we want the information to inform our decisions over how concerned we need to be and what we do about it.

[David Remnick]

Right.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Whereas if we're. If we're talking to people who are very genuinely skeptical or if they're, I think doubtful is a better word in talking to them. The first thing I do is I start by connecting over a value or a concern that we already share. If I'm giving a chapel service at a Christian college, I start with almost a statement of belief. This is what I believe, and I know you do too, about God and the Bible and, and this planet that we live on. If I'm talking to water managers, I start by talking about water. I talk about our droughts and our floods and our incredible variability that we see here in Texas. I talk about something that I know we agree on until we're nodding along together. And only then do I do some explaining on how things have already changed in the places where we live and how we expect them to change in the future.

[David Remnick]

Now this all suggests that you must have a hell of a marriage because your husband's an academic and he's a pastor as well. And the two of you co wrote a book together called a Climate for Change Global Warming Facts for Faith Based Decisions. But as I understand it, when the two of you married, he was a climate change denier. How did he come around?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Well, he grew up in a conservative Republican family. His dad was a Republican politician and a lawyer. His former girlfriend was. Her father was the head of the Gun Owners of America Association. And so he had never met some who shared his beliefs and his faith who thought that climate change was real. But coming from Canada, I had never met anybody who didn't think climate change was real. So we had actually been married about six months before the penny dropped on that one.

[David Remnick]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I want to know all about that. So how did the penny drop through the powers of personal persuasion or scientific proof at the dinner table?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Well, it came up because I was already working in the field, but I was working a bit down in the weeds on of non CO2 greenhouse gas emissions and how we might meet international targets through reducing methane. And so I was doing chemical modeling, so he knew I was in atmospheric science, but he hadn't really put the pieces together. And you know, this was a while back, this was more than 15 years ago, when climate change wasn't really in the news like it is today. And so he knew what I did, but he hadn't quite figured out that it was all about climate change until maybe, I think casually over dinner one night, I was talking about, oh well, my next project is going to be looking at climate change impacts on the Great Lakes. And he was like, what? What are you talking about?

[David Remnick]

Did you Beat him into intellectual submission. How did you change his mind? Or did you change his mind?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Yes, yes, his mind has changed, but not through any beating into intellectual submission. Because here's the thing.

[David Remnick]

All right, point taken.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Yes. He is a very smart person. So he understands statistics, he understands the scientific method, he understands experiments and peer review. He understands all those. And I thought, well, here's a really smart person who says it isn't true. Let's explore his reasons. And we went through all the science together. For him, one of the biggest turning points was downloading NASA's temperature data set to his own computer and plotting global temperature. And at that point, he said it was like Occam's razor. He had a choice to make. And what was the simplest choice? Was NASA involved in this global worldwide conspiracy for decades, or was NASA, who put men on the moon, actually correct when they said the planet was warming? So that was a big turning point for him. But then after that, we got into more of the ideological issues, the questions about solutions, and does this mean loss of personal liberties and complete destruction of the economy and government control and all that? So I learned so much about the real reasons why people object to this issue from him.

[David Remnick]

What's the resistance? What's the nature of the resistance?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

We believe, and to a certain extent we've been told, that acting on climate means incredible loss. It means loss of our comfortable lifestyles. It means loss of freedom. It might mean government telling me what to do. I was talking to a group of water managers a year or so ago down in South Texas, and at the end of my talk, which was all about water and then how it's changing in the future and how we can conserve in the future, an older gentleman at the back stood up and he said, you know, I was really doubtful about what you had to say, but everything you've said makes sense. I agree with you. Things are changing, and we need to prepare. The problem I have, he said very honestly, is that I don't want the government setting my thermostat. That is the idea people have.

[David Remnick]

In the past few weeks, Trump has taken significant steps to nullify the work of the Obama administration on climate change. And it may well turn out that he's going to turn against the Paris agreement as a whole. Do you have any hope of being able to work with the Trump administration? Do you see that there's any way to reach the Trump administration on this issue?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

When they first came in, I know that there was hope among myselves, other scientists, other policy people. Right now. I don't see the hope. I literally do not because they're doing things that make no common sense. For example, investing in and shoring up the coal industry. Coal jobs have been declining for three decades already. They've been in free fall the last decade. Not because of the Clean Power Plan. It hadn't even really gone into effect yet. It's because simply natural gas prices are lower and renewable energy prices are dropping even faster. So I see them making decisions that just make no sense from an economic perspective, let alone from a climate perspective. So how hopeful am I that we can move in the right direction over the next few years? At the federal level, I am not very hopeful. But at the state, at the city level, and in the tech sector, and even the energy sector, I am hopeful because over the last eight years, under an administration that was doing everything it could to take action on climate, even in those circumstances, the majority of the positive forward momentum was happening below the federal level. It was driven by economics, it was driven by the necessity to build resilience in vulnerable areas. And that work is continuing right here in Texas as well as around the United States.

[David Remnick]

You know, you see people in high positions of power, educated people, people who have no reason not to know, denying climate change to this day in the Senate, in the Congress. What's to blame there? How to account for that?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Well, here's the fascinating thing. This applies to people in Congress and the Senate as well, to, you know, my next door neighbor or the person down the street. When someone says they don't agree with the science of climate change, they will use sciencey sounding arguments. It's just a natural cycle, the science isn't certain. Or sometimes they'll use religious Y sounding arguments. God's in control, he'd never let this happen. Or the world's gonna end anyways, why do we care? But if we dig below the surface, we find that, you know what, their objections have nothing to do with science and they have nothing to do with religion. They have everything to do with solution aversion. And in fact, the vast majority of members of Congress who publicly say climate change isn't real behind closed doors, and I have even seen some of them do this behind closed doors, they'll say, oh, yes, of course it's real, but I don't want to fix it.

[David Remnick]

Who's done that?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

And so it's easier, it's easier to say it isn't real than to say, sure, it's real, but I don't want to fix it.

[David Remnick]

Who have you heard? Do That.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

I have heard several people say that, and I would rather not say publicly who they are.

[David Remnick]

Well, for the greater cause of truth. I mean, if you believe in the urgency of this issue, don't you think that should be brought out into the light?

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Well, what I do think is a positive way forward is the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which is what Citizens Climate Lobby has been putting together. And they just announced 10 new members.

[David Remnick]

No, excuse me. That. In all respects, that's a talking point.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

What politicians do you hear that deny climate change in public and then behind closed doors say, yeah, I know it's true, but I can't say that.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Okay, well, sorry, I was going there. If you could just let me finish my thought.

[Robert]

Okay.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Okay. So my thought was this. There is this bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which is incredible. I mean, they have 17 members from the Democrat Party and 17 members now from the Republican Party. No Democrat can enter unless they have a Republican partner. But right now, politically, it is scary for people to kind of literally. I don't mean to belittle this, but to come out of the closet and to say, yes, as a Republican, I agree. Climate change is real, because they look at the example of Bob Inglis. Bob Inglis is a very conservative Republican congressman from South Carolina. Bob Inglis announced that he supported climate change. He was beaten in the primaries in his own state. And so it's almost the case where Republican members of Congress are taken into this room and sat in this chair with a portrait of Bob on the wall and said, here is what will happen to you, too, if you announce this. But I think it is irresponsible of me to actually say who it is, who's next in line, because they are afraid and they are waiting until the next time or the right time, I should say.

[David Remnick]

I guess, Katherine, the question has to arise, what kind of backlash do you get among your listeners in the religious community, Broadly speaking, how many people are really responding and changing their minds?

[Margaret Atwood]

Mm.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

I would say that for every one letter or comment or email, I get saying, well, you're not a real scientist because you're a Christian. I get about a hundred saying, well, you're not a real Christian because you're a scientist. And it absolutely breaks my heart that we've been fed this series of lies, that somehow, if we're a Christian, then Genesis, where it says that we have responsibility of the Earth, doesn't apply to us. And Revelation, where it says God will destroy those who destroy the Earth, somehow isn't part of the Bible, and especially all the middle parts where it talks about loving your neighbor and caring for those who are in need and watching out for the poor and the needy. Somehow the middle of the Bible doesn't matter to us either. We live in a really strange era where our faith has been hijacked by our politics, and climate change is one of the biggest casualties.

[David Remnick]

Katharine Hayhoe, thank you so much.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

My pleasure.

[David Remnick]

Kathryn Hayhoe is the director of the Climate Science center at Texas Tech. In a minute. The novelist Margaret Atwood talks about her dystopian classic, the Handmaid's Tale, which in her eyes was just a straightforward piece of realism.

[Margaret Atwood]

Okay. I didn't create that world. I reflected that world. And I put nothing into the book that had not already happened at some point, at some time to someone.

[David Remnick]

You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Something Funny happened on November 9th or a lot of funny things, but among them, somewhere way down the list, is this. Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, the Handmaid's Tale just took off in the months after the election. Sales of the novel were up 200% compared to the year before, and the book flew to the top of Amazon's literary bestseller list, along with 1984 by George Orwell and other dystopian tales. Now, it's not that the Republican platform called for the enslavement of women, let's not go that far. But somehow the combination of Mike Pence's very hyper traditional view of women, let's say, and Donald Trump's kind of Hugh Hefner view of women made a lot of people think very hard about Atwood's novel, where women are divided into wives, housekeepers and childbearers, and all of them are the property of men. At the Women's March in Washington the day after the inauguration, there was one widely photographed sign that said, make Margaret Atwood fiction again. The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1985, and there's a new television adaptation coming from Hulu this month. Margaret Atwood is 77, and she spoke recently with the New Yorker's Rebecca Mead.

[Rebecca Mead]

You know, I'd love it if you would read a passage for us from early on in the Handmaid's Tale.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yep.

[Rebecca Mead]

This is a moment when Offred, the central character, is walking down the street and we are learning about her world from which she has come.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yep. And what she says is this. The sidewalks here are cement like a child. I avoid stepping on the cracks. I am remembering my feet on these sidewalks in the time before and what I used to wear on them. Sometimes it was shoes for running with cushioned soles and breathing holes and stars of fluorescent fabric that reflected light in the darkness. Though I never ran at night and in the daytime only besides well frequented roads, women were not protected then. I remember the rules, rules that were never spelled out but that every woman knew. Don't open your door to a stranger, even if he says he is the police. Make him slide his ID under the door. Don't stop on the road to help a motorist pretending to be in trouble. Keep the locks on and keep going. If anyone whistles, don't turn to look. Don't go into a laundromat by yourself. At night I think about laundromats when I wore to them. Shorts, jeans, jogging pants. When I put into them my own clothes, my own soap, my own money, money I had earned myself. I think about having such control now. We walk along the same street in red pairs and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles. There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

[Rebecca Mead]

Good Lord, the book is so chilling and so bleak, and I wonder to write about that world, what kind of toll it took on you while you were doing it.

[Margaret Atwood]

I think it's a slight myth that writing a book that is working when it's working, takes a toll on the writer. I think what takes a toll is when you're writing a book that isn't working out. So that is pretty debilitating. But when something is going along quite quickly, you're actually pretty energized, even when.

[Rebecca Mead]

The world that you're creating is such a bleak one.

[Margaret Atwood]

Okay, I didn't create that world. I reflected that world. As far as I was concerned, I was reflecting the world that already existed. I didn't do anything that people hadn't already done, in other words, and therefore were quite capable of doing again. So I was reflecting the world. I wasn't thinking it up. And to that extent, I think it's cathartic to write about those things that are real and to put them out there.

[Rebecca Mead]

So sales of the Handmaid's Tale rocketed up after the election of Donald Trump, but he's not an exemplar of puritan values or the kind of values that are described in the novel. So I wondered whether that made sense to you, that the book took off in the way that it did.

[Margaret Atwood]

He has not. But lot of people in his quotes base are. So how did they reconcile that? You can do that quite easily, the Bible being such a various document. And you come to the passages where God is using some king or other of reprehensible values to fulfill his plan. So the way they justified it was. Well, to put it mildly. He isn't Jesus, but he will help us get some of the righteous things that we want.

[Rebecca Mead]

I wanted to talk to you about your upbringing. You had a pretty unusual upbringing. Much of your childhood you spent in the remote wilderness of the north of Canada where your father was studying insect life. And I wondered if you could talk to me a little bit about what that was like up there.

[Margaret Atwood]

Okay, so it wasn't so unusual then as it would be now. It was pretty remote at that time. I think when he first went to that location, there was no road, so very technology light. So no electricity, no running water, no flush toilets, books, shortwave radio, but all you could really get on it was Russia. And that was it.

[Rebecca Mead]

So how did you spend your time?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, when we were of school age, which wasn't of course, for the first five years or so, my mother would just get the workbooks from the school and we would fill them out. And if you filled them out really quickly, then you could do whatever you liked. So it made me superficial and speedy.

[Rebecca Mead]

Characteristics you're very well known for, that's true hard work.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yes, I'm a very fast reader.

[Rebecca Mead]

For instance, how do you think that this experience of this kind of childhood shaped the kind of writing that you became?

[Margaret Atwood]

Very luckily, I'm not my own biographer. I'm deeply grateful for that. Also, I'm not my own psychiatrist, so I don't even want to speculate on that because in order to make any meaningful statement about it at all, I would have to have another me. And that other me would have grown up in some other way. And then we could compare the me that I am with that other me, genetically identical, who had grown up in some other way. And then we could say something about it. You see, I did grow up with the biologists, so we just don't say anything about these things unless you can actually say something meaningful, accurate.

[Rebecca Mead]

Right. You mentioned to me when we were talking at one point about wanting to be the kind of girl who got to wear a frilly dress, frilly print dress, but your mother didn't let you have a frilly prink Dress?

[Margaret Atwood]

No, no, it's not that she didn't let me. It didn't occur to her. It wasn't in her head.

[Rebecca Mead]

Right.

[Margaret Atwood]

So if I had said, I want a frilly pink dress, maybe she would have got me one. But of course, I was not a very demanding child in that way. So I think my mother went shopping. You know, mother daughter shopping, that big cliche. I think that happened to me once for my first.

[Rebecca Mead]

Do you remember what you bought?

[Margaret Atwood]

Absolutely. The first high school formal, we got an ice blue brocade formal. And in those days you got the brocade shoes dyed to match. So she underwent that with me. I think it was a big sacrifice. You have to understand that my dad picked out her clothes. She was not interested in it.

[Rebecca Mead]

So the gender roles in your house were quite unusual for the time.

[Margaret Atwood]

They were unusual but not reversed. So I think it was that period of culture and you can go back and read sort of how to books for wives and husbands of the. I think from the Edwardian age until after the war, it was the sort of chum's model, you know, that your spouse was supposed to be your chum or your pal. That may seem unusual now, but it wasn't so unusual for the time. They just had a lot of activities that they loved to do and they could do chums things together, like canoe trips. But you don't do canoe trips in a frilly dress.

[Rebecca Mead]

That's right. I love the chum's model of marriage.

[Margaret Atwood]

Yes.

[Rebecca Mead]

Do you remember a first moment or an early moment of experiencing sexism or recognizing it?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, you didn't call it that. I mean, you can go back and describe stuff that happened, but it wouldn't have been called sexism. For instance, I was of the age when there was these schoolhouses that were built probably in the 19th century out of red brick, and there was the girls playground and the boys playground. And so boys could come onto that side and play marbles, but you could not go onto the other side and play soccer. So gender roles. Definitely there were gender roles, but nobody thought anything about it because when you're in the middle of something like that, it seems normal to you. It didn't seem entirely normal to me because of how I grew up, but I was very interested in it.

[Rebecca Mead]

Did you ever have that experience of thinking, God, I wish I was a boy, it's better for them?

[Margaret Atwood]

No, I didn't. Sorry. I suppose because I wasn't wildly discriminated against growing up as a girl, I wasn't told that there were a lot of things I couldn't do because I was a girl.

[Rebecca Mead]

Lucky you.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, lucky me. I think a lot of the people I went to high school with and even college with were because they'd come from communities. And you can read all about this in Alice Monroe, in those small town communities, about the worst thing that could happen to you was that you would be laughed at. And somehow I just. I missed that part. I think you kind of have to have missed that part if you're going to be a writer because you risk making an idiot of yourself every time you publish something.

[Rebecca Mead]

You have to have missed the crippling self consciousness of adolescence or youth.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, I think, you know, I think everybody's a bit self conscious about something, such as their appearance. So I did all of the things that people probably do, which is different shades of lipstick and what do I look like upside down? But I don't recall being crippled by it. Were you crippled by crippling self consciousness?

[Rebecca Mead]

I'm crippled by it right this second. No, I'm joking.

[Margaret Atwood]

No.

[Rebecca Mead]

I wanted to ask you about the feminist label. This is something that in the past, I've read that you've sort of slightly balked at being described as a feminist.

[Margaret Atwood]

Writer because there are so many meanings of that word. I'm very happy to put my hand up for one box that says feminist on it, but there are a lot of other boxes. So. Which box labeled feminist?

[Rebecca Mead]

Are we talking about which box labeled feminist?

[Margaret Atwood]

Are you the one I put my hand up for? Women are human beings. Hand up? Yes, I'm for that. Fairness in hiring practices, fairness in equal pay for work of equal value. Reforming the legal system so that there is a better process for dealing with sexual assault crimes. Hands up. However, human beings often do wonderful things, and human beings can also do terrible things. And if women are human beings, they're not exempt from doing terrible things. So Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 wax. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. But she got off on that because the feminists of the day said a woman could not ever possibly do a murder like that. Wrong. What I'm not for is some notion that women, because they're women, are, by virtue of being women, more virtuous and noble. Mm.

[Rebecca Mead]

You've written so many books and so many of them are still so widely read. That's Alias Grace is being adapted as a miniseries, too. So we're lucky this year in having both Hulu doing the Handmaid's Tale and Netflix doing Alias Grace. But probably the book that's gonna define you is the Handmaid's Tale. Are you okay with that?

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, will I care? Assume at the point at which it's going to define me I will be dead? Is that what we're saying?

[Rebecca Mead]

I suppose that's a very healthy way to look at it, yeah.

[Margaret Atwood]

Well, it's not going to actually bother me one way or the other once I'm dead. I mean, people keep asking me, so what do you think your legacy is going to be? Well, you know, apart from pieces of property that I'm leaving to my descendants. What are you talking about?

[Rebecca Mead]

Really?

[911 Operator Charisse]

That.

[Margaret Atwood]

Really? Yeah, but you see, time moves on. And what typically happens to a well known writer when they die is first of all, they have a big uptick as everybody either goes boo hoo or else boo. You know, they get both evaluated and denounced and then people lose interest because it's a new and different generation. And then after a while, you know, it happened to George Eliot, then you might get a resurgence or you might not. You might just vanish into oblivion. And that will also depend on what government is in power and what the literary fashions of the day are. One hopes there will be readers. One hopes people will still be reading books. I think that would be wonderful. And if they are still reading books, maybe they will read some of my books. But it will be as it is now, that is, some people like them, other people don't. Right. This is a small thing in the history of humanity. Of course, being Canadian, I'm always saying things like that. We go in for self balloon puncturing just so nobody will accuse us of having a swelled head.

[David Remnick]

Margaret Atwood talking with the New Yorker's Rebecca Mead. Rebecca wrote a profile of Margaret Atwood and you can find that [e-mail] Hulu's adaptation of Atwood's Handmaid's Tale premieres on April 26, and Netflix's Alias Grace comes later this year. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Much more to come this hour. Stick around. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This last week, everyone at the magazine gathered in the halls to celebrate our longtime staff writer and my dear friend and colleague, Hilton Alls, who just won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Hilton is a critic, but a critic who makes his entire self known to the reader, no less than a novelist or a poet, I have to say. Hilton started writing for the New Yorker in 1994 and became a theater critic in 2002, though he won for his work as a theater critic. He could just as easily have won for his outstanding essay on the movie moonlight or another essay on Beyonce or past work on Derek Walcott, Missy Elliott, or his own personal history. A couple of days after the announcement in the champagne, Hilton came in for a visit. How do you feel?

[Hilton Als]

Well, I'm. It's a very. Writers, as you know, are not used to public acclaim. And so it felt when I left your office after we watched it together.

[David Remnick]

We watched a live stream of these.

[Hilton Als]

Live stream, and we'll be honest with you, is that I burst into tears after I left your office and saw the faces standing up to.

[David Remnick]

You know, we've been at the magazine about the same amount of time and it. In all you've done theater criticism has been the main thing in the last almost 20 years now, 18 years, whatever it is. But you've written so many profiles, critical pieces, essays, personal essays about your family and much more. But there's a kind of mission to what you're doing.

[Hilton Als]

I always. I've loved the magazine since 1973 when Patrick O', Connor, who was one of the great paperback publishers, gave me a subscription. And it used to come in a brown paper rapper. And I always, always perked up when I would see something by Andrea Lee about black Philadelphia life or Jamaica Kincaid or Derek Walcott or Jervis Anderson was a huge favorite of mine and I thought he was a great reporter. But it felt as if these different stories were sort of guest starring roles as opposed to part of the general conversation. So when I started to write here, I wanted people of color to really be part of the conversation.

[David Remnick]

And this is when Hilton.

[Hilton Als]

This is about 19 when I first wrote a talk story or something, so it would be 1991. But I felt that it was very important to not make color a specialty item, that it was part of the conversation, whether it. And I just thought there were so many writers of color whom I loved, I just wanted the conversation to get bigger. So I would just assign myself source as you famously. I would just start reporting something and if someone liked it, they liked it. There was no assignment from Missy Elliott. I just went to Virginia and followed her.

[David Remnick]

Let me ask you about being a critic, a theater critic. Does there come a point where you say to yourself, it never runs out or you come up against a wall? Do you get tired of it? Do the seasons begin to resemble each other?

[Hilton Als]

No, because there are always, always great people coming up, and that's really what keeps you going. Not the fourth revival of The Glass Menagerie or but young people like Lynn Nottage and just a whole crew of people who are not going to really sort of let theater become standardized. That's what's great.

[David Remnick]

Hilton, I wonder if it's possible of all your theater going just to close out if there's one night in the theater that you can single out as transcendent and the kind of thing that you go to the theater hoping for.

[Hilton Als]

Again, I think two different kinds of productions that I've seen. One was at the Classical Theater of Harlem when they did Jean Genet's the Blacks. And I remember writing you a note about it saying this is what I want to do. And the second thing was Bette Midler twice, once in her live show and secondly when she played Sue Mengus on Broadway. She really.

[David Remnick]

What was the name of that show?

[Hilton Als]

I'll Eat yout Last, Sue Mangus. It was one of the great things along with her live, her one woman show because it's that old thing that is so rarely, you can't teach it. So a lot of these great actors and truly great actors, they have lots of star qualities but they do not have that push to get out there and give you a great show at any cost. She just gets out there and she wants to give you a great show.

[David Remnick]

Hilton, thank you so much and again, congratulations.

[Hilton Als]

Thanks, David.

[David Remnick]

That's the inimitable Hilton Alls who just won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

[Brian Dorries]

My name is Brian Dorries. I'm the founder of Theatre of War and I'm honored to be here.

[David Remnick]

A couple of weeks ago, a group of actors took the stage at WNYC's Jerome L. Green performance Space. And it was not the usual theatrical fair. They were presenting excerpts from two plays that are more than 2,000 years old.

[Brian Dorries]

Tonight marks the 377th performance of Theater of War since we got off the ground back in 2008. And over the last close to 10 years now we performed all over the world, from the Pentagon to homeless shelters to VA facilities to Japan, Germany, US army facilities across the United States, even in Gitmo, where we went twice.

[David Remnick]

Theater of War uses ancient Greek tragedies to help military veterans and their families talk about the realities of war and its aftermath. The group's founder, Brian Dorries, says the Greeks used the plays in the very same way.

[Brian Dorries]

So tonight we're going to perform six scenes at breakneck speed of two ancient Greek plays written by Sophocles, who was a general in the Athenian army. He was elected general twice and These ancient plays were performed for as many as 17,000 citizen soldiers who sat in the center of Athens in the Theater of Dionysus, shoulder to shoulder with the generals in the front row and the hoplite cadets in the nosebleed section in the back. They sat and watched these plays in a century in which the Athenians saw nearly 80 years of war.

[David Remnick]

The performers in Theater of War have included Paul Giamatti, Blythe Danner, John Turturro, Samira Wylie, and David Strathearn. Strathearn took on the role of the Greek warrior Philoctetes, who's abandoned on an island for nine years by his comrades after he's injured on the way to the trojan war. Francis McDormand and Catherine Irby were on stage with him.

[Robert]

I am wretched, hated by the gods if men don't know my story. Those who discarded my weak body now laugh silently while the disease grows stronger each day. I am Philoctetes, the keeper of Heracles. Bow, whom the generals and Odysseus abandoned, suffering from a snakebite. They left me here to die in tattered rags, sleeping in a jagged cave, starving, without much food to eat. I only wish the same for them. Imagine my surprised son when I awoke. The tears I shed, the sound of my sadness. All of the ships in the fleet had vanished. Alone with my infection. I only knew pain. Son, this is what they have done to me, the Greek generals and Odysseus. I only pray the Olympian gods visit them with proportionate suffering.

[Margaret Atwood]

I pity you, son of Poeas.

[Robin Wright]

And I know what you mean about.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

Odysseus and the sons of Atreus. They are evil men.

[Robert]

I'm sorry, son. I want to hear more about your troubles.

[David Remnick]

But first, the New Yorker's Robin Wright has reported from more than 100 countries, often from wars and conflict zones. But this fall, she turned briefly theater critic.

[Robin Wright]

Hi, Brian.

[Brian Dorries]

Hi, Robin.

[Margaret Atwood]

How are you?

[Brian Dorries]

I'm doing well, thanks.

[David Remnick]

She wrote about Theater of War for the New Yorker, and she recently spoke with its founder, Brian Duries.

[Robin Wright]

I've been covering wars now for more than four decades. And when I first saw Theater of War, it really spoke to me personally. It addressed issues I hadn't even realized that I was trying to cope with these many years later. So I thank you both for bringing this project to life and particularly for bringing it to my life. The ancient Greeks represented the first militarized democracy. And what's really striking about listening to your plays is their honesty in confronting it among their own combat forces. And is so much more advanced than what's happened in the US military. How did they deal with it so much more honestly?

[Brian Dorries]

I mean, first of all, what's so remarkable about 5th century Athens is that the Greeks saw nearly 80 years of war. Sophocles, whose plays we perform, was a general, and he was elected general twice. And of course, the audience would have been composed of as many as 17,000 citizen soldiers. Seen from this perspective, ancient Greek drama seems like this very deliberate and powerful tool developed out of a need to communalize the experience of war. These weren't simply entertainment, but they were a way of passing down really crucial institutional knowledge between generations of veterans about subjects like what we now call PTSD or suicide, or what they might have called divine madness. As you said, 2.7 million people served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria of our citizens. But of course, nothing could be further from ancient Athens, where it was 100% compulsory service. So the divide between civilian and soldier has never been greater in our democracy. And it's for that reason that performances like what we do create spaces so that other people can collectively shoulder the burden of those stories. And we're not saying to veterans, hey, you. You shoulder the burden of what happened in war as we civilians sort of naively act as if we can wipe off the blood and walk away because we didn't agree with the foreign policy decisions that sent these volunteer service members into war.

[Robin Wright]

I want to share a moment from the play Ajax, who was a great Greek warrior consumed with rage during the ninth year of the Trojan War.

[Brian Dorries]

Yeah. So Ajax, who's a great decorated warrior, lost his best friend Achilles in battle and commits an act of violence where he tries to kill his commanding officers and ends up blinded by Athena, killing animals instead cows and goats. And covered in their blood and consumed with shame, he then, as he wakes up to what he's actually done, out of this dissociative rage, he begins to contemplate suicide. And you hear in that excerpt something so remarkable from my perspective, because not only does Sophocles stage the suicide of this great warrior, he does so on stage, which was never done in the ancient world, but he also takes us through, step by step by step, the insidious logic of someone who's thinking about killing himself.

[Robert]

So what should I do now? The gods hate me, the Greeks loathe me, the Trojans despise me. Perhaps I should set sail for home across the open sea, leaving behind ships and men and the sons of Atreus. But what will I say to my father? Telamon when he sees my face.

[Brian Dorries]

How.

[Robert]

Will he even bear to look at me when I explain how I disgraced our family name for which he fought so hard, his heart will break right then and there. When a man suffers without end in sight and takes no pleasure in living his life day by day by day, wishing for death, he should not live out all his years. It is pitiful when men hold on to false hopes. A great man must live in honor or die an honorable death.

[Robin Wright]

Why do you think it is that American service members relate to the character of ajax in the 21st century?

[Brian Dorries]

Well, one of the things that seems. There are some things about the play that just transcend time. Not everything does. And that's part the of partly by design. You know, we don't do documentary theater. This is not. We're not holding up a mirror to the audience and saying, this is you. We're taking this ancient text and we're sort of pulling back from it, and we're saying, you know, this is a strange text from a different culture in a different time. But what did you see of yourself in this story across thousands of years? And let people make their own connections. So people, often Marines and soldiers and sailors and airmen, will hear the story of Ajax, and they will respond to his rage. And they'll also respond, I think, almost universally to the guilt that he feels at having survived after losing his best friend and his shame at having committed an act that went against the grain of his own moral compass that he didn't feel in control of.

[Robin Wright]

There's an interactive component in every one of your plays. And in many ways, what happens after the performance is as important as the performance itself.

[Brian Dorries]

Yeah. So after the performance, in this little discussion period, we had, you know, scheduled for 45 minutes, and the discussion we scheduled for 45 minutes lasted three and a half hours and had to be cut off around midnight. And the first person who ever spoke at a theater of war performance was a military spouse. And I'll never forget because she approached the microphone and she said, hello, my name is Marshalle. I'm the wife of a Navy seal, and I'm the proud mother of a Marine. And my husband went away four times to war, and each time he came back dragging invisible bodies into our house. Just like Ajax, the war came home with him. And a quote from the play, our home is a slaughterhouse.

[David Remnick]

At one recent talkback session, an officer who's also a mental health counselor wanted to talk about how the story of Ajax spoke directly to him.

[Robert]

So I'm required to Let you know that the opinions that I voice tonight are not my. Are my personal opinions and not the opinions of the United States military. So I, you know, my name is Joe, Lieutenant colonel in the Army, Battalion commander. It was one year ago this month that my best friend, fellow warrior comrade Tim o', Connor, killed himself. And it was tonight that Tim was speaking to me through Ajax. Calm death, visit me, cut my throat, end my suffering. I imagine that Tim was saying something very similar when he shot himself in isolation in a hotel parking lot. So the infantry side of me, thanks to my Ranger creed, which I live and die by, never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy, just like Philoctetes comrades left him into the hands of the enemy, the enemy being in isolation. So we let Tim slip into the hands of the enemy, but never again. Never again. So thank.

[Margaret Atwood]

You.

[Robin Wright]

Greek tragedy can sometimes seem so pessimistic. What is it about these plays that you felt would not just resonate, but maybe even uplift or inspire or perhaps even help heal your audiences?

[Brian Dorries]

I think we all, when we were taught Greek tragedy, we learned that Greek tragedy was this sort of, as you said, pessimistic expression of this fatalistic culture that basically described human beings as barely able to apprehend the forces at work upon us until it's too late, and we've destroyed ourselves sometimes milliseconds too late in Greek tragedy, and we've destroyed our families and generations to come. And while that is what happens on stage in many of these plays, I think what we've missed all these thousands of years is that that's not necessarily the response they provoke in an audience that's come together to watch them, the plays. And I was reminded, just thinking about that, of an early response we had from a soldier who was sitting in an audience in Germany on a US army concern, and he had deployed to Iraq. And he said, I think Sophocles wrote these plays to boost morale. He was responding to a question I often ask audiences, why do you think Sophocles wrote the play? And I said, look, what's morale boosting about these plays? And before I could finish asking the question, he said, because they're the truth and because the truth isn't being whitewashed and because we're all sitting here acknowledging it shoulder to shoulder. And for me, that was a huge lesson that Greek tragedy, while on stage, depicted these sort of individuals whose lives were coming apart before our very eyes. But. But for audiences, counterintuitively, the response can be one of relief to see themselves reflected in a story. And what I've noticed is people after performances described feeling. They say they're buzzing. Often they talk about feeling relief. And I've noticed people come back time and time again to theater of war. People say, this is my 12th time seeing theater of war. We have theater of war groupies and, and they always seem to be getting something new and the sense that they're doing something or contributing something by saying something that otherwise would have been so stigmatized and shameful that they would never have revealed it. And it gives them permission and others permission to do the same.

[Robin Wright]

I know I came away listening to the performances twice with a sense that there is a community that experiences these things and the dark thoughts that, that all of us who have covered wars or been in war zones have felt. And that in itself is a kind of reassuring phenomena. It helps.

[David Remnick]

That's Robin Wright talking with Brian Dories, the artistic director for Theater of War. And they'll be performing across the country all this spring.

[Robin Wright]

Bryant, it's always great to talk to you. Let me know if you're back in Washington again.

[Brian Dorries]

Yeah, we're gonna come down and perform for the Joint Chiefs and we're waiting on the date at the Pentagon. And as soon as I know it, I'm gonna send it to you, Rob, because I'm hoping you can be there.

[David Remnick]

That's it for today. Thanks for joining us. Next week I'll be talking with Elizabeth Warren, so please don't miss that. Till then, you can keep up with us on Twitter. New yorkerradio. Have a great week.

[Robin Wright]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a.

[Katherine Hayhoe]

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 Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Baron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield, Michael Lee Rao and Steven Valentino, with help from Susan Morrison, Emma Allen, Becky Cooper, Jessica Henderson and Johnny Vincevans.

[Robin Wright]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported.

[Margaret Atwood]

In part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.