Fresh Air - Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook

Episode Date: December 21, 2024

Award-winning sister-brother duo Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell talk about their songwriting process, her changing voice, and their new album, Hit Me Hard and Soft. Later, Stephen Colbert and his wife Evie McGee Colbert talk about their cookbook of home recipes inspired by their South Carolina roots. It's called Does This Taste Funny?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Terri Gross Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. Terri Gross From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terri Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell, the sister and brother music partners who are a global phenomenon,

will talk about working together, becoming famous in their teens, family, how her voice is changing, and how her signature baggy clothes were inspired by hip hop. I would watch those videos and instead of being jealous of the women who get to be around the hot men, I would be jealous of the hot men and I wanted to be them. I wanted to dress like them and I wanted to be able to act like them.

Later, Stephen Colbert and Evy McGee Colbert, they're married, she does bits with him on a CBS late night show, and they've collaborated on a new cookbook. Well, I do get to eat what he makes, which is often delicious, always. Often? Often. I would say often. Well, I'm experimenting. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, offering over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else.

Hand-selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive design and immersive experiences, from medieval falconry to volcanic wine tasting. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of over 30 hotel brands around the world. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. This message comes from Wyse, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com, T's and C's apply. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, offering over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else.

Hand-selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive design and immersive experiences, from medieval falconry to volcanic wine tasting. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of over 30 hotel brands around the world. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. Support for this podcast comes from the Neubauer Family Foundation, supporting WHYY's Fresh Air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell. As you probably know, they're siblings who write songs together. She sings on their albums, he produces and plays several instruments. They've been writing and recording together since she was 13 and he was 18. Considering the number of records they've broken in the last few years, they're more than popular. They're a phenomenon. Their album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was the second in Grammy history to win in the major categories Best Record, Album, Song, and New Artist all in the same year. Phineas was the youngest person to receive a Grammy for Producer of the Year, non-classical.

Billie was the youngest to win two Oscars, one for the theme for the Bond film No Time to Die and another for What Was I Made For from the Barbie movie. She collaborated on both songs with Phineas. They're continuing to break records. Billy was the youngest most listened to artist on Spotify this year. Their latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, is now nominated for six Grammys, including all the major categories. Each of its tracks reached over 150 million streams on Spotify. Vinius also has an independent career as a producer and recording artist. His second solo album was recently released called For Crying Out Loud. Billie spent her teen years in front of her fans and the press. In 2019,

music critic John Perelis wrote in the New York Times, Eilish, age 17, has spent the last few years establishing herself as the negation of what a female teen pop star used to be. She doesn't play innocent or ingratiating or flirtatious or perky or cute. Instead, she's sullen, depressive, death-haunted, sly, analytical and confrontational, all without raising her voice. Let's start with a song from Hit Me Hard and Soft. This is L'amour de ma vie, which is French for the love of my life. I wish you the best for the rest of your life. Felt sorry for you when I looked in your eyes But I need to confess, I told you a lie

I said you, you were the love of my life, the love of my life Did I break your heart? Did I waste your time? I tried to be there for you Then you tried to break mine It isn't asking for a lot for an apology For making me feel I could kill you if I tried to leave Billy Eilish, Phineas O'Connell, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Billy, it strikes me you're singing more in a fuller voice. What's changing about your voice and how you choose to use it? Well, you know, we started making music when I was about 13. And as most 13 year olds, I had not, you know, grown into my body and my voice and all the things that you age into as a human. And I always, you know, it's funny, like when,

when things like that happen at a young age, you kind of have this idea that that's how things are going to be forever. And so in my mind, at the time, my my voice was gonna sound like it did then forever I thought it was gonna be soft and my range wasn't gonna be like very big and I Wasn't ever gonna be able to belt and I wasn't ever gonna be able to you know have much of a chest mix in my voice and You know I spent many years touring and singing and doing shows and my voice matured and started to change. And in the making of Hit Me Hard and Soft, I started working with a singing teacher, which I hadn't done since I was a kid in my choir. And I kind of always like felt hesitant to and kind of embarrassed to somehow.

And it completely has just honestly changed my life and I Mean, I've just my voice has just gotten you know Ten times better in the last two years and what's amazing is it's just gonna keep getting better Did you want to do a whispery voice? Was that like a style choice or just like that's the way your sounds? No, that's just how I sang. That's what's funny about it. I just, you know, I was like, I couldn't really do much else. Like I didn't have the range,

I didn't have the strength in my vocal cords and my breathing, you know? And think about, you know, how your voice sounded when you were a kid opposed to now. It's a completely different thing. Yeah. And Phineas, I assume you do the arrangements. Yeah, like the production and the instrumental arrangement.

I would say that I do plenty of it, but Billy is deeply involved. And I would say that as time has gone on, Billy has become kind of more knowledgeable and articulate about what she likes and what she doesn't in instrumental arrangement and production and vocal arrangement. So we're either brainstorming stuff together or at the very least she's reacting to what I do and a kind of a, I like that, go further, I'm not crazy about that, take that out, kind of a sense, if that makes sense. I want to play a track because I like the instrumentation, the arrangement so much,

and it's called The Diner. So Phineas, do you want to say a little bit about the instrumental track of this? The Diner is a slight anomaly in terms of the way that Billy and I most commonly work. I would say the way that we most commonly work is I sit down with a guitar or I sit down at a piano and I play chords and Billy sings melodies and we come up with lyrics and melodies together over top chords. In the case of The Diner, on my own I had made what became sort of most of the loaded onto a keyboard and the horn is then chromatic on the keyboard and you play the bup bup bup bup bupp, bup, bup, bup, bup.

That's me playing piano, but through a horn sample. And then I programmed drum samples and then bass samples, or I guess not bass samples, but bass synthesizers over top of that. And I presented it to Billy. And then she riffed these super menacing, cool lyrics over top of it. So let's hear the diner. I saw you on the screen I know I meant to be

You're starin' in my dreams The magazines, you're lookin' red at me I'm here around the clock I'm waitin' on your call But please don't call the cops They'll make me stop And I just wanna talk I'm waiting on the corner till the sun is set and leave I'm waiting on the corner till the sun is set and leave I'm waiting on the corner till the sun is set and leave I'm waiting on the corner till the sun is set and leave

I'm waiting on the corner till the sun is set and leave I'm waiting on the corner till the sun is set and leave I'm waiting on the corner till the sun is set and leave I'm waiting on the corner till the sun is set and leave I'll say you're right and you can't speak goodnight I waited on the corner till I saw the city It was easy getting over and I landed on my feet I came in through the kitchen looking for something to eat I left a calling card so they would know that I was in trouble That was The Diner from the new Billie Eilish album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, and my guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas.

Phineas, you're not on all of the current tour that Billie is on, and you've just released your second solo album. Does that have significant meaning in terms of the nature of your music partnership? Well, I think if I go back to the kind of genesis of this, first of all, we lived together. We both lived at home with our parents when we started making music. I was 18 and Billy was 13. And over the ensuing, you know, years, even after I moved out into my own place as a 21-year-old, we still made most of the music in the bedroom in my childhood home. And as time went on and Billy's tour became a more and more heavy lift, she started to need to be more kind of diligent about how much vocal rest and physical rest she was getting

on the road, which meant that we were making less music on the road. The turn of the tide there was that we would come off the road and had made nothing new, and then we'd have a detox at home where we would have just spent every day together for several months and we'd kind of chill out and then we'd sort of reconvene and start making new music and then we'd go back out on the road. And so it just became a kind of a version of like, wow, this is going to dominate every minute of my life and I feel that I'm really not the best pianist, guitarist, backup singer, accompanist for Billie, you know, that's not the thing

that is my sort of special skill there. My special skill is being able to write and record songs with her. And so if I am picking between the two, and I have other stuff on my plate, I'll pick making the album every time. Billie, can you talk a little bit about when you were a teenager and you had all these like teenage teenagers, especially teenage girls, as like such dedicated fans, what was it like for you to grow up as a teenage star

with so many teenage listeners, kind of idolizing you. And then judging from what I've seen and read about you, you've been kind of insecure about yourself, not necessarily of your music, but for any insecurity you have, to have all these people turning you into an idol must have been, well, maybe was a little disorienting?

Definitely. I think though, honestly, even though it was a lot for a young brain and body to deal with. In a way, the fact that I was a teenager and they were also teenagers somehow felt less kind of, I don't know, I think I just felt so connected to them because we were all the same age. And I think it can be really hard when you're an adult and you have fans that are children to you or, you know, way older than you. Like, I think that it, I think that something about us all kind of feeling like we were growing up together was like, Like, honestly comforting to me and also, I didn't really have many friends for a couple

years. Well, you were homeschooled, so it's not like you were hanging out in the schoolyard or in the classrooms with your peers. Well, so this is what's interesting is we were homeschooled, we didn't go to school, but Phineas and I both had so many friends growing up and we did so many things and there was no shortage of friends. There was no shortage of activities and things to do, which I think can be surprising for people to hear because they kind of think like, well, then how did you meet them? And we had all sorts of things we did I was part of a choir and I was in a dance company and I

we did aerial arts and I rode horses and I did gymnastics and I acted and Phineas acted and I was in a you know there were so many things that were social for us and Honestly when I Became famous-ish at 14, it was not a good time in terms of like, keeping friendships. I think when you're 14, that's kind of an age where friendships are already kind of rocky. And also all my friends did go to school. So like they were all going to high school and and suddenly I had no way of relating to anyone. And I kind of lost all my friends and I I maintained a couple but those were really challenging to keep even still. And so for those few years of becoming this like enormous superstar, I was kind of feeling

like wait, what the hell is the point? I don't have any friends and I don't have like, like I'm losing all the things that I love so deeply and all the people that I love. And so in a way, the fans kind of saved me in that way because they were my age and I felt like they were the only kind of friends I had for a while. My guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas. Their latest album is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from Lady Mafia. This is the story of the glorified lone shark

swimming in the murky waters of fast money and shady deals. Did she blow $10 million of other people's money? Lady Mafia is available for listening now on The Binge, wherever you get your podcasts. There are celebrity interview shows, and then there's Wild Card. It's a podcast from NPR that the New York Times just named as one of the 10 best of 2024. It's hosted by me, Rachel Martin. I ask guests like Issa Rae and Bo and Yang, revealing questions like what's a place you consider sacred? Has ambition ever led you astray? And I'm telling you, it is such a good time. Listen to Wild Card wherever you get your podcasts. In college, Mustafa Suleiman started a helpline for young British Muslims.

People were just looking to find support in a language that made sense to them. Today, he's CEO of Microsoft AI, where he's building digital helpers. Think of me as your superpower in your pocket. Building the future of AI. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terri Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell, their brother

and sister and songwriting and performing partners. And their new album is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. Phineas, what's it been like for you, especially early on when Billy was very young and you were still in your teens, your late teens, what was it like for you to have an audience dominated by teenage girls when you're a guy and you're also older, you're four or five years older

than Billy? older, you know, you're four or five years older than Billy. Yeah, I'm four years older. So I would say that I didn't have much of a kind of a feeling one way or the other about the the age or gender of the predominant audience. I had a real sense of gratitude for their enthusiasm. And the audience that was coming to the shows that Billy was playing couldn't have been more engaged and enthusiastic. Billy, I've read that some girls or young women in the audience are throwing their bras onto the stage when you perform. How often does that happen?

Do you have any idea how that started? I? Mean that's like a classic well it used to be panties that you know women would throw at male stars You know right well. It's funny like I always envied that I remember like watching You know videos of men performing whoever they may be be, and people throwing bras and underwear. And I always thought, ugh, that's so awesome. That's so sick, so powerful. I always was just jealous of that. And I remember when I was first doing shows,

fans throw all sorts of things on stage. They throw gifts and presents and different flags of different kinds. And honestly, like right away, people started throwing bras when we were all, me and the audience, 16. And I loved it. I really did. I spent many years having a lot of, not gender dysphoria about my own gender, but I think a lot of women go through the feeling of just envying men in any kind of way, one way or

the other. And for me, I would watch videos of different male performers on stage and just feel this deep sadness in my body that I'll never be able to take my shirt off on stage and run around and not try very hard and just jump around on stage and that's enough and have enough energy from just myself with no backup dancers and no, you know, huge stage production and the crowd will still love me and that's just like, only a man can do that. And because of that, I think more than almost anything else in my career, I was very, very, very determined to kind of prove that and to kind of prove that thought wrong.

And I really did, I really feel like I did. I didn't like the kind of pop girl, leotard, you know, backup dancers, hair done thing. I didn't like that for me. I liked it for other people, but that didn't resonate with me. I never saw myself in those people. And honestly, I never saw myself in those people and honestly I never saw myself in any women that I saw on stage but I did see myself in the men that I saw on

stage and I thought that was unfair and so I did everything that I could to kind of try to break that within myself and the industry. But you know on a related note you often dress you know on videos and in performance on stage in really baggy clothes. And I was thinking like, since you grew up with a lot of hip hop, in a lot of hip hop performances on stage and in videos, the dancers or the women in the videos

are usually dressed, and especially earlier in the period when you were growing up, were dressed in like really tight and scanty kind of clothes and the men are wearing like baggy hoodies and pants that are so baggy they're like falling down. And in that sense did you take your cue from the men in hip-hop in terms of dress as opposed to the women? Yes, exactly correct. I would watch those videos and instead of being jealous

of the women who get to be around the hot men, I would be jealous of the hot men and I wanted to be them. And I wanted to dress like them and I wanted to, you know, be able to act like them. And to be fair, I had all sorts of women that I looked up to and artists that I, you know, are the reason that I am who I am. And also, I wouldn't have been able, even if I felt the way I did, I wouldn't have been able to achieve it had it not been for the incredibly powerful, strong-willed women artists and people in the public eye that came before me that made it possible for me. So like, my favorite singers are all kind of old jazz singers that I've always looked up to and I'm always forcing people to watch videos of Ella Fitzgerald singing live and

Julie London singing live and you know, Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson and all these people. We were watching these videos and every single one of course because of that period of time they're all wearing dresses. They're all wearing tight, you know, corseted maybe dresses with their hair done. But like they didn't, they couldn't, they couldn't just not do that. You know, that's part of how things were then. And so thank God that those women came before me because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do anything. Phineas, you have a new album and I want to play a song from that. So I want to end with Family Feud because your family is so important to you both and the way you still operate as a family, because I think your parents are often touring with you, or at least they used to.

So this is your song, Phineas, it's from your new album. Do you want to just say a couple of words about writing it? Sure, we had just finished making Billie's album and it was about to come out, and I knew that this multi-year world tour was on the horizon for her and that I wouldn't be on it. I was just sort of thinking about my relationship with her and how kind of public our family had become and she's a public figure, I'm a lesser public figure.

There's a lot of attention and judgment paid to us both, and especially to Billy, and it's just sort of a rumination on that. Billy Eilish, Phineas O'Connell, thank you both so much. I really appreciate you coming on our show, and good luck with the rest of your tours. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks so much, Terri. A little late but not alone And you're only 22 And the world is watching you Judging everything you do Just a house and just a room Just a handful of balloons Just another afternoon

Just the way it almost was When it's just the two of us That's Family Feud from Phineas' new album for Cryin' Out Loud. Billie Eilish and Phineas' latest album together is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. My next guests are Stephen Colbert and Evy McGee Colbert. They're partners in their marriage as well as in their production company and she makes regular appearances on his CBS show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. During the COVID lockdown when he hosted The Late Show from their home, she was his partner on the show, acting as a producer, sound engineer, and serving

as an audience of one. I loved hearing her laughing at his jokes. They're typically not partners in the kitchen because they have different approaches to cooking, but now they have a new cookbook they co-authored with the great title, Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves. Shrimp are well represented in the book because Stephen and Evie grew up in coastal South Carolina where they still have a home. Each recipe in the book is preceded by the story behind it and memories associated with it,

so you actually learn about Stephen and Evie as you read the recipes. If you watch Colbert's show, you know he likes a good drink. The book has a whole chapter on drinks. Each episode of The Late Show opens with a monologue, typically satirizing a major event in the news. Colbert doesn't pull his punches, especially when it comes to threats against democracy. Stephen, Evie, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such a pleasure to have you back on the show,

Stephen, and to talk to you, Evie. Thank you. Thanks, Terri. I'm so excited to be here, truly. It's been too long. Oh, yeah. So, first question to you, Stephen, how do you find time to cook? I can't believe that you find time.

I don't have time to cook, and I don't have half the job that you do. I make, like, omelets and heat-roasted chicken. Evy will tell you, it's relaxing for me. That's, that's what I want to do. You know, on a Saturday afternoon, if I've, if I've got a moment and I, and I've got it to myself, especially if there's a farmer's market in town or something like that, I want to go get a pork belly and just start marinating that or start, you know, you know what, I've got some brioche, I've got eggs, I've never done an almond bread pudding before, let's try that with me, with the crispy top. Ooh, I'll make a cartouche on the top and sort of steam it in a bain-marie first, then I'll take it off

and ooh, what about a bourbon caramel, so like I get, and I don't, what drives every crazy sometimes is that then I don't eat it. Yeah, you're not cooking to make food for yourself, you're just cooking to make a process. Right, I just, I love process. I love one thing becoming another thing. Well, it's kind of like doing the show. You get there in the morning and there's, I don't know, maybe nine stories that are generally dominating

the conversation over the last 24 hours. We have good pitches on six of them, and three of them then dominate the monologue, because we've boiled it all down. We've taken, that's why I like the show Chopped, because they take, you know, you have these baskets at the beginning of the show where there's like, you have octopus and licorice and you have smoked salt here, make an entree or whatever.

That's what doing the show is like. And kind of you have to love process to do a show on a daily basis. And that's related to food for me. One thing becomes another thing with a little care, a little love, and a little imagination. And I find it incredibly smoothing. Smoothing, it's also smoothing. It's also bloating.

But it's also incredibly soothing to me. And then I'll just try to go give the food away. So, Evy, if Colbert is doing all this cooking but doesn't eat it, do you get to eat it? And do you do a lot of the cooking that you actually both eat? Well, I do get to eat it and do you do a lot of the cooking that you actually both eat? Well, I do get to eat what he makes, which is often delicious, always. Often?

Often. I would say often. Well, I'm experimenting. I'm imagining what it's going to be like and you know, things don't always work out, Terry. When I was growing up, my mother wasn't much of a cook, but she had two, like, fantastic dishes that she made. And I always look forward to those. But Monday nights, I'd almost be in tears, because Mondays are bad enough when you're going to school.

Yeah. And she'd sometimes make broiled mackerel, which is a very bitter fish. Especially when you're a kid. Yeah, and with, like, canned string beans. Oh, god. And I know. And lettuce with no dressing on beans. Oh, God. And I know. And lettuce with no dressing on it.

Sure. Iceberg. And I'd nearly be in tears. But later in the week, the food got better. So I'm wondering with each of you, the recipes in your book look absolutely sumptuous. But were there meals that you had that nearly brought you to tears when you were growing up? Oh, my God. Oh, yeah.

Yes. When I was a kid, my, again, 11 kids and also Catholic, so no meat on Fridays, we had so many Mrs. Paul's or like Gorton's fish sticks. I think it was Mrs. Paul's fish sticks growing up. And my mother, her idea of making you fancy, and I'm sure she saw this suggestion, the serving suggestion on like on the back of the package with some partnership with Campbell, because it would take a can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup and you would just heat up the condensed soup and ladle that over the fish sticks as the sauce.

Oh, no water? You're supposed to add a can of water. No, no, that's if you're making soup, not if you're making a delicious remoulade. Imagine the salt content. Oh, exactly. Exactly. I'm a creature of pure sodium by the time I was 10. But that also, this is the thing that even I, as a child who just would eat anything you put in front of me, spaghetti with ketchup. Oh, my God.

Oh, I had that once at my aunt's house. Oh, my God. We got that all the time. My brothers and sisters loved it. I don't understand what's happening. But I would, of course, have to eat it. Have you ever worked two years anticipating something your mother was going to serve for dinner? Yeah, my parents, you know, everything was very local.

So we had, I think a lot of Charlestonians love this, is shad roe, which is really hard to get. It's, you know, the roe of a shad fish, and I hated that. But they- And it would be steamed with vinegar. They would have that all the time, too. Seasonally. Seasonally, yeah.

Yeah. Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert have a new book called Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves. We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is the story of one family torn apart. Listen to The Black Gate on the embedded podcast from NPR. All episodes are available now. Donald Trump promised to change Washington, DC, a place where there's an old saying that personnel is policy.

That's why we have created a new podcast called Trump's Terms, where you can follow NPR's coverage of the incoming Trump administration, from his cabinet secretaries to political advisors and top military leaders, to understand who they are, what they believe, and how they'll govern. Listen to Trump's terms from NPR. Every weekday, NPR's best political reporters come to you on the NPR Politics Podcast to explain the big news coming out of Washington, the campaign trail and beyond. We don't just want to tell you what happened, we tell you why it matters. Join the MPR Politics podcast every single afternoon to understand the world through political eyes.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to our interview with Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They're married, she makes regular appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, they're partners in a production company, and now they've co-authored a new cookbook called Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves. Evy, are there things you had to sacrifice in your life when Stephen became famous and had this kind of consuming career and you had children. Wow. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, I decided it was, listen, I think I'm incredibly lucky to have been able to be home with our children. But Stephen's hours were really long and difficult

and I felt that I just wanted to be home with them when I could. So I ended up spending a lot of my time as a stay-at-home mother, which I had never expected to do. And it was real privilege. Yeah, I think there were sacrifices. I had trained to be an actress and I decided not to be an actress, even before we got married. But then later in life,

I had opportunities to do some performing, which I chose frequently not to do because it would take me out of town and I felt that our family needed somebody at home. I mean, I don't in any way want to suggest I ever felt cheated because it was such a privilege to be able to have the life I had. I feel incredibly lucky that I was with my children. I mean, even though Stephen had a busy job, he wasn't gone, he just came home late. So we were always together as a family. And that's, in show business, that's super unusual, you know. So I think we've had an incredibly lucky time, frankly, very blessed. I can't speak to your experience because that's your experience, but certainly for the business

that I'm in, this is one of the more normative jobs you can have because you know where you're going and you know when you're coming home. And the hours may be long, but at least you can plan your life. Right. And you're going to be home. I mean, you're not traveling to different locations. I'm not in Sarajevo shooting Game of Thrones. Unless they want to cast me. And then to hell with all of this TV stuff, I'm a star.

Hell with the family. I had someone say to me once, Terry, that I think is so funny. I guess you'd been doing the Colbert pour for a year or two, Stephen, and I was chairing a book fair in our kids' school, and there was an author who said that she wanted to meet me because I was Stephen's wife. And I remember saying to my friend, my life is just getting really weird. This is just weird. And she turned to me and said, the life you ordered has arrived. And I thought it was such a funny way, but it is true. It all comes

as a package, right? If you want to be a performer or if you want to be an artist, and with fame comes attention, comes opportunity, but also comes sacrifice of some way. You're both from prominent families. Stephen, your father died when you were 10. But before that, he'd been a director of a program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and he worked at the National Institutes of Health. And then the family moved to South Carolina, and he became the first vice president for

academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina. That was in 1969. And, Evie, your father was a prominent civil litigator. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives for three terms. He was a Democrat. Because your fathers were prominent, were you expected to be model children? Huh. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I don't think because our...or I'll just speak for me.

I don't think because of who my father was, was I expected to be a model child. I think the same...I mean, first of all, I think we were all 11 children in the family. I think we were all held to the same standard. I think I had a slightly different relationship with my dad than my other brothers and sisters did because I was the last. They used to say, I can't believe dad took you to the carnival. Like dad hates carnivals or I can't believe Dad went to the beach with you or something like that, but my father had a sense that, you know, this is his last

bite at the apple. And to do those fatherly things with me, because my father died when I was young, it's not so much I was held to a standard that I had to match him is that when your parent dies when you're young, they become Olympian or there's something much larger than life, which of course is how a child sees their parent, but you never get to move beyond that. So as you get older, they also get larger. So as your view of the world or what you believe is asked of you to be an adult, at least for me, my father inflated ahead of me and became even grander in a way. And so if there was any standard placed on me, it was placed on me by myself. My mother was not asking me to be a certain person because of who my father was. I did it to myself because of the person

I perceived my father to be. And I actually don't think I'm very far off. I think he was an extraordinary man. But I think that's self-imposed on my part. Danielle Pletka And probably on mine too, actually. I mean, I was lucky enough to have had my father for a long time. He just passed away this past April. And at his funeral, when I delivered the eulogy, I mentioned how as a little girl, I used to like to put my feet in my father's footprints on the sand. And I think metaphorically, that's how I felt about him. I admired my father so much that I always wanted to try to live up to be the person

he was. And the same for my mother. I hit the jackpot with my parents. I really love them. And I think for me, it wasn't being a model child. It was being a person who cared about the community they lived in and gave of themselves and their time to make the world a better place in whatever way they could. And my parents were both selfless, community active. They did a lot in the town of Charleston. Marc Thiessen And for me, because I wanted to know my father, even though I was robbed of that ability, to move beyond the childhood view of him, because I wanted to know him, I grabbed onto the little things that I did know about

him. For instance, my father's idea of fun was to read philosophy. He really would enjoy sitting down with Jacques Maritain or Leombert or other French Christian humanists. And so, that's what I read. I read a lot of books. I knew that he had lived a life of the mind, so that's what I wanted to do. It was important to be smart. My father was a dean, an assistant dean at Yale Medical when he was 29. He was a full dean at 31 at St. Louis. And so he was this academic superstar, which I never was, but he was this academic superstar and a deep thinker. And I aspired for that in hopes of knowing him. And often, it was religiously based. He was Jesuit educated, but my mother and my father both profoundly dedicated to their Catholic faith in different ways.

My father more intellectually and my mother more sort of mystically in a way, though she also read a great deal, but more Dorothy Day. And I think I was most influenced by the little bit I knew that I used as a thread to pull on to try to understand Him. Danielle Pletka Stephen, I've known about your deep faith and Catholicism since the Daily Show when you were kind of like the religion correspondent and you had a regular feature called This Week in God. Stephen Kupryk This is the God Machine. Beep boop boop. Danielle Pletka Yes. And you still talk about religion on

The Late Show. And you satirize religion, you satirize Catholicism, you satirize the pope. So I was really surprised when the pope invited you to the Vatican as part of a larger event. I don't remember what the event was, but Jim Gaffigan was there. I think David Sedaris was there. David S. C. Sure, Conan was there. Jimmy Fallon was there. Chris Rock was there. Kirsten Khire What was this about? David S. Well, first, if I could just back up just slightly here, I'm willing to talk about my own faith if my guest asks me about it. I don't like to proselytize. And I'll make any jokes about the Catholic Church. You know, they deserve a lot of them.

And I am deeply Catholic in that it is combed into my being, but I don't know how deeply devout I am. I know people who are really deeply devout and I wouldn't want to put myself in their league. I just am integrally Catholic, if you know what I mean. And I do love my church, and I still go to church, and I do have a faith. I just don't want to confuse myself with someone who is a very devoted Catholic, a devout, I mean. But I have become friends with Father Jim Martin over the years, who's sort of like the Broadway priest in New York, and he's the editor of America Magazine, and he was the chaplain of the Colbert Report on the old show.

I remember. And, you know, we've become dear friends over the years. And he just wrote me one day, actually got the email right before I went on stage at the Late Show one night saying, hey, the Vatican has asked me to put together a list of like 20 comedians because the Pope wants to meet with some comedians, would you mind helping with that? And I was like, yeah, sure. So I put a list together of 40 comedians. They sent me back a list of 15 or 20, something like that. Like they made their selects of my selects and with a few of their own. And Jim Gaffigan

and I called everybody on the list and we said, hey, we don't really know what this is about, but the pope wants to meet comedians because he thinks that comedians do something valuable in society and he just wants to meet us. Now, I thought we were going to go to Rome and like hang with the pope. I don't know why I thought that. I thought that maybe we'd like sit there and we'd have coffee or tea with the pope and he would ask us some questions, then we would get a photo and leave. It turns out that these were comedians from all over the world. It was like from 60 countries. And the pope had a meeting in the apostolic palace with us. There was, I think, altogether was like 110 comedians and we all didn't know what was going on. And we all sat there and

the pope came in and he gave a beautiful speech about comedy that we did not understand at all, that we read later, that was about how... Because it was in Italian? It was in Solamente in Italiano. And it was about how comedy, I think, eases people's day, and it is like the social lubricant, and it's okay to make fun of God and the church and the pope and all that kind of stuff, as long as you do it with a smile and there's some intention to make people feel better. And what struck me was... It's like your philosophy.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would like to think so. And what struck me is that we're in this room, which is about the size of the Sistine Chapel, and it's actually just down the hall from the Sistine Chapel. And it's more Rococo than it is, you know, late Renaissance. But it's beautiful. It's like you're in another Sistine Chapel. And we're all sitting there in our Sunday best, as it were, waiting for the Pope to

come in. But comedians are all iconoclasts. We're all people who have a pretty jaundiced view of authority. And I know that some of the people there weren't Catholic or weren't meaningfully Catholic, at least by their own description anymore. And the minute the pope came in, we all leapt to our feet. Like the iconoclasm went out the door. We all just leapt to our feet and started applauding and like screaming. I thought, wow, that's the effect the pope has on 110 comedians. Like, it was almost like an autonomic response because you've spent all this, it's like the location, it's the red shoes,

it's the white outfit, it's all like the guys with the sashes around you, the pope's gentlemen who all look like butlers and everything. I was sort of shocked that we all kind of gave into it immediately. Did you get to meet the Pope one on one? I did, I did. I memorized something in Italian. I went up and I said, you know, Sancte Padre, you know, Holy Father, my name is Stephen Colbert, and I am the reciting, I'm the Revoce Recitante, I'm the reciting voice for your memoir life, because he had released a memoir of his life in the spring. And I had gotten a call

from my manager to say, baby doll, you're not going to believe who wants you to do their audiobook. And I'm like, who? And he goes, just guess. I'm like, I don't know, Barbra Streisand. No. And he goes, the f***ing Pope. And I go, does it pay? And he goes, you better believe. So anyway, so he negotiates with the Vatican for my contract. And I read the Pope, so I just said, I read your book. I thank you so much. I was reciting a voice for your book. And he said, ha! I kind of used his hand to guide me to the side. So that was it. That's all

I got. It wasn't that, it was very nice. And he gave me a rosary. We all got rosaries blessed by the Pope. Danielle Pletka I'd like you each to leave us with your favorite comfort food. Michael O'Brien Well, most of the book is comfort food. Danielle Plet. It is. There's a lot of butter. Yeah.

Oh, I don't know. I mean, my favorite recipe in the book is the one that we start with my mother's cheese biscuits because those were things that she made always. And so now when I make them, I feel like she's with me and it makes, it's comforting. And I love them. They're wonderful to give and they're delicious and fattening. I think comfort food should be fattening. Matthew 5.30 I've got so many in there. It's probably the red rice. You know, growing up on the coast

of South Carolina, just anywhere in the South, there's so much red rice and it has its roots in Jolof rice of West Africa, but it's super jammy and a little spicy and salty. And I had it almost every day growing up at Styles Point Elementary School on Michael Drive on James Island, South Carolina, which is still there. And there were just barrels of it being cooked every day by those lunch ladies. And I never got tired of it. And right before this book, I actually found a way to make it based on an Alison Roman recipe that I said, oh, that sauce she's making for the pasta actually has the flavor I remember as a child from this red rice. And I tried it and it worked. And that discovery of being able to get that flavor back from my childhood, those carefree years is what that rice gives me.

When you say carefree years, do you mean before your father died? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, taste is powerful. It's true. Smell is powerful. I think we both enjoyed that rediscovery of recipes that we'd grown up with, which we

maybe had made them in our adulthood, but not really spent time with them the way we spent time with them writing this book. And that's what COVID did. We were back there in Charleston, on that island, with our families, with the people who had taught us to make these and made these for us as when we were children and with those ingredients from that field and that creek. And it was a terrible time that had in it this gift to us, for us to slow down, go home and remember. And also working, it sounds like working together so closely on the show worked out okay. Which we had been so afraid to do, or at least I had been afraid to do,

because I was so nervous the first time Evie was on, that she wouldn't have a good time. It's actually made it to air. Her going, oh, my God, you're trembling. I'm like, I'm afraid this is going to be a bad experience for you because I'm bossy. No, no, no. But we have had fun. You know, and this whole process has been a lot of fun. And an enormous amount of work. And I just could not be more, I could not have more admiration for the people who do this for a living because we had no idea what a huge undertaking is to do a lot of these books.

There's a lot of detail in a cookbook. Oh my God, three years to do this. You have to be right about whether it's a teaspoon or a tablespoon. You really do, it makes a difference. Were your recipes fact-checked? Yes, by a lot of people. Six ways to Sunday. It went through us, we'd make it many times, and then through our niece Lucy.

Our niece Lucy Wickman was fabulous. She helped test it everything. And then all of that would go on to Chris Styler, who was a professional test kitchen, essentially. And he would say, is this what it's supposed to look and taste like? And we'd go, no. And then he would say, then you need to rewrite this recipe. Well, I don't cook fancy things or ambitious things, but I enjoyed seeing the recipes. I enjoyed all the anecdotes.

So I'm so glad we got to talk. It's just been such a pleasure and a joy to speak with you both. You too. Thank you so much. And to you. And to you and to you. Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert have a new book called Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terri Gross.

Miller. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. This message comes from Grammarly. 231. That's the average number of apps used by many companies. This leads to a lot of context and tab switching, which can drain employee focus, costing your company. Grammarly can help because it uses AI that works in over 500,000 apps and websites. Join over 70,000 teams who save an average of $500,000 per employee per year using Grammarly. Go to grammarly.com slash enterprise to learn more. The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news

is about what matters to you. Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation. So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes and home prices, The S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever. follow all the big changes and what they mean for you. Make America affordable again. Listen to The Indicator, the daily economics podcast from NPR.