Fresh Air - Best Of: Dr. Fauci's Talks With Trump / 'Hacks' Star Hannah Einbinder

Episode Date: June 29, 2024

If you've ever wondered what conversations were like between Donald Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci during the Covid pandemic, wonder no more. Fauci talks about his new memoir, in which he relates several profanity-laced scoldings he got from the President. Also, we hear from Hannah Einbinder, who stars with Jean Smart in the comedy series Hacks. And Maureen Corrigan shares some summer book recommendations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. If you've ever wondered what the conversations were like between Donald Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID pandemic, wonder no more. Today, Fauci talks about his new memoir, in which he relates several profanity-laced scoldings he got from the president. Also, we hear from Hannah Einbinder, who stars with Gene Smart in the comedy series Hacks. Einbinder has a new comedy special in which she talks about turning points in her life. She says most comics talk about the differences between men and women, but how many actually know? I am collecting research. I am gathering data. I'm risking my life. And I'm here to tell you, folks, the results are in. Men are idiots and women are annoying.

And Maureen Corrigan shares some summer book recommendations. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from WISE, 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. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. My first guest, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is one of the most recognizable people in America. For much of the past four years, he's been the public face of

the government's response to the COVID pandemic, earning admiration and gratitude from millions and from others, condemnation for masking requirements, business, school, and travel restrictions, and among the most darkly conspiratorial, for somehow causing the catastrophe. Both points of view were on display at a House committee hearing where he was thanked profusely by Democrats and told he should be in prison by one Republican. But Fauci's leadership role in protecting the nation's health predates COVID by decades. He headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health for 38 years before retiring in 2022 to take an academic appointment. He played leading roles in responding to the AIDS crisis,

the Ebola outbreak, the SARS epidemic, the threat of anthrax, and more. He became a skilled Washington player, advising seven presidents and constantly briefing Congress in public and private hearings. And he never gave up seeing patients, at one point climbing into protective gear resembling a spacesuit to treat a hospitalized Ebola patient. Anthony Fauci is now a professor at Georgetown University with a joint appointment at the School of Medicine and the McCourt School of Public Policy. He tells his story in a new memoir titled On Call, A Doctor's Journey in Public Service. Well, Dr. Fauci, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Thank you. It's good to be back with you. You would become a significant advisor to presidents in your career, particularly George H.W. Bush, whom you got to know when he was vice president, when Reagan was the president. And you write that early on when you were going to meet with, I guess it was the vice president and others in the West Wing, an old friend gave you some advice on how to handle yourself when you talked to the president. What did he say? Yeah, it was someone who had experience in the White House. He had worked in the Nixon White House for several years. And I was getting ready to go in for the first time to meet with President Reagan. And he said to me, you know, one of the

things you should do is that a good rule of thumb is as you walk into the White House, go under that awning in the West Wing, just say to yourself, this might be the last time I'm going to go into this building. And what he meant is you should say to yourself that I might have to say something, either to the president or to the president's advisors, that would be an inconvenient truth that they may not like to hear, but it would be the truth. And then that might lead to you're not getting asked back again. But that's okay, because you've got to stick with always telling the truth to the best of your capability. If you start going into the White House saying, wow, this is really a great place to be. I wish I get asked back. Then you might be

afraid to say something that might offend someone or that might essentially shoot the messenger. You never should get yourself into that position. You should always be willing to say, you know, as great as it is and as awesome as it is to go into the White House, a very heady experience, you might not ever get asked back. And that's okay. But if, in fact, you keep telling the truth, people will respect you, and you likely will get asked back because they respect you. So let's talk about your experience with COVID. I mean, you had great relationships with the many presidents that you had served. You were known.

I gather you didn't have a lot to do with Trump until this issue arose. And yet you became kind of the public face of this. There came a point when you were working with the task force, which Vice President Mike Pence headed, that you were going to have to contradict the president. You were going to have to publicly refute his message. For example, his embrace of hydroxychloroquine. So how did you decide to handle that? Well, it was not an easy decision because I have a great deal of respect for the office of the presidency of the United States that I had served under multiple presidents. But I felt I had, you know, a responsibility to preserve my own professional and personal integrity, as well as importantly, to fulfill my responsibility to whom I really serve, namely,

the people of the United States of America. And when the president started to say things, I mean, he wanted so badly for this to end because the fact that we were, you know, it was January, then February, then March, and then people started thinking about pretty soon we were going to get into election mode. And he really wanted, understandably, the outbreak to essentially go away. So he started to say things that were just not true, like it's going to disappear like magic. It's going to go away. Don't worry about it. We have everything under control. And when it became clear that that was not the case, then he started to say things that were just scientifically untrue, like

hydroxychloroquine is essentially the end all that's going to take care of us. So I just felt that I had to, when asked, get up and just tell the truth and say, when a reporter asked me, the president says this is going to go away like magic. Is that true? And I would have to say no. According to my estimate, it's not going to go away like magic. And they would ask me about hydroxychloroquine and I'd say, no, there's no scientific evidence that hydroxychloroquine works. And in fact, there was evidence that it might be harmful. And that, you know, was the beginning of a situation that put me at odds, not only with the president, but more intensively with his staff. But I felt I had to do it. It was there was no turning back. I could not give false information or sanction false information for the American public. I just could not do that. Right. It was interesting, as you described this relationship with Donald Trump, that, you know, you're both New Yorkers and he kind of liked you for that. You kind of had this background. And you write that after you would be in these COVID briefings when you were both there,

that he would sometimes pull you into a side room afterwards to talk about what? You know, there were a couple of things. I mean, he, you know, a very complicated figure. We had a very interesting relationship, was very correct. I don't know whether it was the fact that he recognized me as kind of a fellow New Yorker, but he always felt that he wanted to maintain a good relationship with me. And even, you know, when he would come in and start saying, why are you saying these things? You got to be more positive. You got to be more positive. And he would get angry with me. But then at the end of it, he would always say, we're OK, aren't we? I mean, we're good. Things are OK. Because he didn't want to leave the conversation thinking that we were at odds with each other, even though many in his staff at the time were overtly at odds with me, particularly the communication people and people like Peter Navarro and others. So it was a complicated issue.

There were times when you think he was very favorably disposed, and then he would get angry at some of the things that I was saying, even though they were absolutely the truth. Yeah. Well, I think readers will enjoy a lot of the direct quotes that you have him because they're pretty salty. And in particular, at one point in the spring of 2020, remember when Easter was approaching and Trump had agreed to some restrictions on activity and mitigation measures,

but he really wanted to get this over with and get the country back open. And you were giving a different message. You were saying, no, we've still got a lot of deaths and a lot of infections in hospitals. We have to stay with this. He says to you, and this is a quote from Trump to you, Anthony, you are losing me trillions of effing dollars. Anthony, you and I are okay. There is no problem between us. I know you better than you

think, and I respect and I like you. You need to do your thing, and I need to do mine. What did you take that to mean? I know you're a doc and you have to tell the truth. I'm a politician and I'm going to use you as a punching bag later. You know, I think actually that's what he was saying. He was saying, you know, I know I understand you and I know you feel you got to do that. You know, I don't like what you're doing, but, you know, you're going to do your thing and I'm going to do mine. And he was essentially saying, I'm going to keep saying what I'm saying, regardless of what you say. When he was saying, you're losing me a trillion dash dollars, he was referring to the fact that when I would say something like that, that there would be

difficulty that we're still in the middle of it. Obviously, the stock market didn't like that. And that's what he meant by I'm losing him trillions of dollars. But it happened to be the truth. It wasn't like I was trying to get the economy in trouble. It was the truth. Yeah. You know, I'm wondering how you got these direct quotes. Did you keep a diary? Yeah. No, it's very difficult to forget when the president speaks to you like that. It gets embedded in your mind. Very difficult to forget that. You know, it's hard to imagine a more difficult situation where there's this terrible pandemic, which is, you know, highly infectious, highly deadly. And you're operating, you know, at best, even in good faith with incomplete information,

like what should the social distancing number be? And, you know, how effective are masks, depending on what we know about how it spreads. And you say in the book that, you know, there were certainly things that you would have done differently if, you know, if you'd had more information. And yet, did you ever get the feeling that the president really cared to listen to the science that when you would explain things, he was taking it in? You know, it's tough to get into someone's mind about what they were thinking, how much attention they were paying. But I can tell you that he did not get into the details of understanding the science. It was more the broad, big picture. He wanted the outbreak over, and he wanted to get down to the business of, you know, running the country and getting the re-election going. That was the main thing on his mind. That was always

the main thing on his mind. Again, I will tell listeners there are plenty more salty quotes from the president in there. We're not going to dwell on all of them. But there's a lot of detail here about what you went through. What I'm interested in, I don't know if you've reflected on this, but how might the experience of the United States have been different if there was a president, you know, who had the patience to listen to the scientists and develop consistent policies and messaging and, you know, worked collaboratively on this. Have you thought about that? You know, I think it's not a good idea to try and quantitate that because then that gets taken out of context. that whenever you have a situation when the bully pulpit of the presidency can be used in a positive way to get the country to move in one direction or another in response to whatever crisis or whatever issue is at hand, it has a lot of impact, you know. And for example, one of the things when it became clear that we were telling people to wear masks, the president sort of said, well, I'll go along with that. But personally,

I don't really think I want to wear a mask. It really could have been such a great boost to mask wearing if he had been very proactive in saying, hey, everybody out there, you know, the CDC is saying you should wear a mask and I'm going to wear a mask just to show that I'm doing it too. He never did that. He always gave a negative connotation to wearing masks. Right. So there was plenty of room for his followers to think it was useless and the people who were suggesting it were dupes. You're no longer in the government now.

What's your life like? Well, you know, for the greater part of a year, I stepped down in the end of December of 2022, and I spent a lot of time since then working on, you know, writing this, finishing it, and finally editing it, which, as you might imagine, takes a while to get it to what I really like. And I felt good about it, which I do. But I also am on the faculty as a distinguished university professor in a dual appointment in the Department of Medicine, in the School of Medicine.

At Georgetown, yeah. At Georgetown University and in the McCourt Medicine. At Georgetown. At Georgetown University and in the McCourt School of Public Policy. And I just love Georgetown. I mean, it's just such a great place to be. I love being around students. I love, you know, the kind of interactions you have with fireside chats and seminars and lectures that I give. And I just like being on campus. You know, I had been at the NIH, as I mentioned, for 54 years, and my interaction was exclusively with people at the doctoral and postdoctoral level. The idea and the reality of being surrounded by students, I mean, really young students, undergraduate students, medical students, students who are going

for master's degrees or PhDs, to have exposure to them is just a very invigorating experience, and I'm really enjoying it an awful lot. Good luck. Thanks for your efforts, and thanks for speaking with us, Dr. Fauci. My pleasure. I appreciate you having me on the show. Dr. Anthony Fauci led the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years. His new memoir is On Call, A Doctor's Journey in Public Service. Coming up, book critic Maureen Corrigan shares some summer reading recommendations, and we'll hear from comic and actor Hannah Einbinder. She co-stars in the hit show Hacks, and she has a new comedy special. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has been preparing for the summer by, what else, reading, reading, reading.

Here's a couple of her summer book recommendations. Summer reading. For me, those words suggest an unhurried expanse of time to lose myself in a good story, fiction or nonfiction. Save the dystopian novels till the fall, please. Right now, I want books that glimmer like fireflies with dashes of humor and nostalgia. I've just read two that fit those summery specifications. Catherine Newman's new novel is called Sandwich, after the town on Cape Cod where her characters have rented a cottage for one precious week every summer for the past 20 years. The title also winks at the situation of our main character,

Rachel, nicknamed Rocky, who's halfway in age between her young adult children and her elderly parents, all of whom crowd into that ramshackle cottage. In the opening scene of Sandwich, Rocky's husband, Nicky, stands paralyzed, plunger in hand, before the cottage's single, overflowing old toilet. As Rocky's vacation week progresses, other things also slosh and overflow. Secrets, messy emotions like anger and shame, and, as Rocky tells us, her own aging body. Menopause, she says, feels like a slow leak. Thoughts leaking out of your head, flesh leaking out of your skin, fluid leaking out of your joints. You need a lube job, is how you feel, body work. Newman elegantly segues from Nora Ephron-like comic passages like that one to elegy. To return to the same place every summer, after all, is to be periodically brought up short by the passage of time. In the middle of the novel, for instance, Rocky uses another metaphor to describe her position

in her family, and this time her tone is infused with anticipatory grief. Life is a seesaw, Rocky says, and I am standing dead center, still and balanced, living kids on one side, living parents on the other. Nikki here with me at the fulcrum. Don't move a muscle, I think, but I will, of course. You have to. Sandwich is my idea of the perfect summer novel, shimmering and substantive. One more aspect of Newman's book deserves highlighting. Like many other novels by best-selling female authors, I'm thinking of Jennifer Weiner, Ann Patchett, and Megan Abbott. Newman introduces a storyline here about abortion. She writes about that contested subject

and the emotions it engenders in a way that I've never encountered in fiction before. As a city kid who grew up in an apartment without air conditioning, I have happy memories of seeking relief from the heat by wandering around grand New York department stores like Bloomingdale's, Macy's, and B.tman. Julie Sato's new narrative history, called When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, is a treat for anyone like me who yearns to time travel back to some of those palaces of consumption at the height of their grandeur. But even more revelatory are the stories Sato excavates of the women who presided over three of the greatest and now vanished New York department stores, Bonwit Teller, Lord & Taylor, and Henry Bendell. Geraldine Stutz rescued Bendell's in the 1960s as shopping moved to the suburbs by turning its small size into an

advantage, creating exclusive boutiques within the store that attracted customers like Gloria Vanderbilt, Cher, and Barbra Streisand. Some 30 years earlier, Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor, who Life magazine dubbed America's number one career woman, revolutionized fashion by championing the sporty American look at a time when French designers held sway. But the standout figure of the trio is Hortense Adlam, a self-described housewife whose husband bought a near-bankrupt and sagging Bonwit Teller during the Great Depression and asked her to visit the store to judge it with a woman's eye. One of her first smash successes was the introduction of a hat department on the main floor. In 1934, Hortense became the first woman president of an American department store. Sato specializes in entertaining cultural histories. Her previous book was a history of New York's Plaza Hotel. Here, she intersperses descriptions of such wonders as Salvador Dali-designed window displays at Bonwitz with accounts of the racism pervasive in these department stores.

For those readers immune to the allure of shopping or the shore, be assured that more summer reading recommendations, especially mysteries and crime novels, are coming your way. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Sandwich by Katherine Newman and When Women Ran Fifth Avenue by Julie Sato. Terry has our next interview. I'll let her introduce it. My guest Hannah Einbinder is a comic who stars opposite Jean Smart in the HBO and Max series Hacks. The series is about the personality and generational conflicts, as well as the bonds, between an older comic, played by Smart, and a young comedy writer who works for her, played by Einbinder. Einbinder has been nominated for two Emmy Awards. The show has won six.

Einbinder's mother, Lorraine Newman, is an important figure in the comedy world. Newman was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live and co-founded the improv group The Groundlings. Here's how Einbinder introduces herself in her new comedy special called Everything Must Go. My mother had me when she was 42. Because before that age, she was busy.

See, my mother made the money in our house. She was 12 years older than my father and refused to legally marry him. What does being a woman mean to me? It means being a man. Einbinder Special touches on some pretty personal topics, which we'll talk about, including the impact of being diagnosed in high school with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and then smoking marijuana to take the edge off the Adderall

and coming out as bisexual. Of course, we'll also talk about working with Jean Smart on Hacks. Hacks has concluded its third season and has been renewed for a fourth. When the series begins, Jean Smart's character, Deborah, is a veteran Vegas headliner whose star is fading because her jokes have passed their expiration date. Her agent matches her with a young comedy writer, played by Einbinder, who has problems of her own. You can get a sense of the generational differences in this scene. Deborah, with Ava's help, is making a comeback and is in line to be offered the job she's always wanted,

hosting a popular late-night show. She's about to be given an honorary degree and is at a party on the college campus when she finds out a video has gone viral stringing together some of her jokes from years ago that are now considered insensitive and problematic. Ava is by her side. Jean Smart's character, Debra, speaks first. I can't believe this is happening now. I know. It's really bad timing. I finally get an ounce of relevance. I'm this close, and they just want to take it away from me again. I'm sorry to say this,

but, I mean, you're not the only victim here. Oh? Oh, really? Who's the other victim? Someone who was offended by a joke? Many jokes. I'm sorry. People are too easily offended now. If you don't like a joke, don't laugh! They're not.

This is insane! Me! I am being taken down by a liberal mob! Me, who was the first person to be fined by the FCC for saying the word abortion on TV! Why come after me? Hey, this is not a value judgment on your entire being. Oh, really? They're just upset about some mistakes you made. Jokes I made. Jokes that everybody was doing at the time.

Yes, and the jokes were hurtful. Both things can be true. You get to be rich and famous for making jokes, and people are allowed to have their reactions to them. I mean, why not use your comedian brain to fight through your defensiveness and think outside of yourself? Isn't that what good comics do?

Why don't you just apologize? Okay, that scene was set at a fraternity party on the campus. Hannah Einbinder, welcome to Fresh Air. So what do you think about the idea of canceling people for old jokes that weren't seen as in really bad taste at the time, but in retrospect, are very problematic? You know, I think it is about the way that the comedian responds now. You know, I think if you double down and, like Debra, refuse to apologize, then you're standing by the remarks you made. And if they are racist or problematic or, you know,

whatever they may be in whatever case it is, then that is a problem. And people have the absolute right to, you know, not want to consume your art anymore. And I think a lot of comedians are headstrong personalities who don't want to compromise and whose job is to have an opinion and to stick by it. And their entire work is their own perspective. And so wavering on that and being malleable in that way is not something that comedians are typically willing to do. It's also like, I used to be considered enlightened. I said abortion on TV, that got me into a lot of trouble. And so why does anybody have the right to criticize me now? which is acknowledge the contribution that Deborah has made to comedy and, you know, that she did break boundaries and cross barriers and that she did, you know, contribute to a progressive exploration of comedy. And that, of course, directly furthers the cultures. You know, in the case of Deborah, she said abortion on TV and she was fined. And that's like, you know, that is a progressive and daring and feminist act,

I think. But it still doesn't excuse these jokes. In the series Hacks, your character is kind of canceled in the first episode for a joke that she posted about a closeted senator who sent his son to conversion therapy so that the son could learn to undo his homosexuality. And I'm wondering if you have ever come close to being canceled for a joke that you told that was seen by some group or somebody as being, you know, problematic. I have not. I just, that's like not the school that I come from. Like I don't feel, you know, there's this famous George Carlin quote that is,

the comedian's job is to find the line and deliberately cross it. And I think that is valuable, but I choose to cross the line in different ways. For me, I choose to cross the line in different ways for me I choose to cross the line in terms of form and the exploration of the material and the way that the material is presented in terms of format and style I don't necessarily see you know in the case of a lot of these male comedians today, like clowning on trans people as like speaking truth to power. And it's something that I could never even get anywhere near because I just have such a different view on what this art form is. I just really, I could not relate to these men any less, really, honestly. Did you learn a lot about acting by working with Jean Smart?

Oh, yeah. Was it mostly by example, or did she give you actual tips? It was very much by example. She's really so gifted naturally and also technically, you know, when it comes to the very, you know, meticulous blocking work and continuity. And, you know, I picked up the pen on this line, just things like that. She's very sharp and she's very on it. And I have tried to absorb as much as I can. We're listening to Terry Gross's interview with Hannah Einbinder. Einbinder stars with Jean Smart in the HBO and Max series Hacks, and she has a new comedy special called Everything Must Go that's streaming on Max.

We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. So, you know, your mother is Lorraine Newman, one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live. When you were growing up, was being funny something that was really prized or rewarded by your parents? Certainly, 100 percent, yeah. I think it was the main currency in our home. And, you know, my parents are both tough laughs. So I had to do a lot to get what I wanted, you know, to do like, a lot to get a big response from them. And yeah, it's like, it is a love language for sure. And that was definitely my experience growing up. Do you feel like you learned how to take something really awful that happened to you and tell a funny story about it?

Like turn bad things into comedy? Yeah. I mean, I think that might just be a product of being Jewish. But yeah, it's also my specific upbringing for sure. You know, you mentioned maybe that's a product of being Jewish. When I was growing up, and I'm closer to your mother's age, when I was growing up, there were like so many Jewish comics, and some of them were like really pretty sexist and bordering a little on racist, like the Catskill comics. Yes, of course. Jackie Mason. Of course. And they were on TV.

They were in the Borscht Belt and the Catskill Mountains with the hotels, the resort hotels. You probably missed all of that. And also Mel Brooks, who was hilarious and is always hilarious. Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, those guys are awesome. I feel they were kind of an exception because while their comedy, especially Mel Brooks, while their comedy was daring and certainly by today's standards, there are certainly things there that you could not do them today. Things in Blazing Saddles, you know. But I would say The Producers is a good example of something where Mel Brooks, who is a Jew who's making a

movie about Hitler, and it is funny and it does come from the right side of things. I think that certainly at the time would have been seen as very progressive and I love all of those movies. So part of what you talk about in your new comedy special is taking Adderall because you were diagnosed with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. How old were you? When I was diagnosed? Yes. I started being medicated, I believe it was my freshman year of high school. So I guess that would be 14, 13, 14. So how does the attention deficit fit into working so hard at being a competitive cheerleader?

And I can see how hyperactivity would fit into being an athlete, but it sounds like you were very, very focused, which isn't the attention deficit way. Well, it actually is. It is? So, yeah. So there is an element of ADHD called hyperfixation. ADHD is very similar to autism in that folks who are neurodivergent, who are ADHD, have a very hard time focusing on things that they are not incredibly passionate about. And then they become obsessed with, you know, niche topics, experiences, activities, etc. And it becomes sort of like autism, where you just are totally devoted to this one thing and can't think of anything else. And so it's a it's sort of a misconception

about ADHD that folks like us can't really focus on anything. It's really that we can only focus on things we're obsessed with. So is that figuring into comedy now? Oh, certainly. I would say that comedy was the post-cheerleading hyperfixation that I pursued very intensely. So you took Adderall for six years. How did it make you feel? Like, what was the difference between being on it and off it? It made me feel cut off from my soul. Oh, that's big. Yeah, yeah.

It was not positive for me. And I do want to just say for folks who do take Adderall, who have ADHD, I don't want to invalidate how much it can help people. It really can help people. And a lot of folks function so much better on it. And that is so valid. I did not have that experience. And I know of a lot of folks who also didn't have that experience. I felt kind of numb on it. It kind of dulled my sparkle, if you will. And I was kind of aggro too, you know, like I, there is one molecular difference between the compound that is Adderall and the compound that is methamphetamine. So just so we're all clear on like what the drug is, it does make you,

or make me, I should say, you know, quick to anger and really unable to access the full spectrum of emotions. I cut it out cold turkey in college, and I was confronted with such intense mood swings and all of these emotions that I had not felt in years. And it was insane. And I put on, you know, maybe 20 pounds. And I started napping, which I never did before. And my sleep was all different. And, you know, I'd have occasional, very, very occasional heart palpitations. And, you know, prolonged use of this drug for me was not great. And, you know, I had to take it because I was at a public school and I was not doing well in math and science. And, you know, I always did well in English and history and my AP government class and environmental science and things like that.

But it was a tool for me to get by in school. And when I stopped, I had to deal with a lot of really tough emotions, and I had to readjust to society for sure. Were any of the things you had to deal with, the mood swings and intense emotions, was that partly withdrawal or was that other things that had been suppressed over the years that you were taking Adderall rising to the surface all at once? I would say it would be both. Certainly in the several months of my withdrawal, I was dealing with such, such intense feelings. And I really accredit my ability to work through

that to my roommate in college my friend ellie nielsen she is my best friend and she lived with me and um she sorry i'm gonna cry she um she just helped me like work through um you know re-acclimating and all of these really deep emotional experiences that I had been cut off from. And I remember it being so hard and I wanted to at times go back, but there was really no way to unsee, you know, what I had seen on the other side. So yeah, I'm very grateful to have a friend like her. Because, you know, she just helped me through it. You said that the ADHD helps you really like, obsess over whatever it is that you're most passionate about, which is now comedy. But how did you discover comedy for yourself? what was your pathway to thinking this is what I

need to do this is what I feel passionate about well um and I've spoken about this uh Nicole Byer a wonderful comedian came to my college when I was on the improv team and she asked if any of the kids wanted to open for her and I volunteered and that first set was totally life-changing. And I really never looked back. It just felt so good. And, you know, this was at a time in my life where I didn't really feel good. And it was like this eight to 10 minute relief from the very bad feeling. And I just became obsessed and started to chase that and you know did my kind of obsessive thing of like memorizing albums you know and listening in the car and writing incessantly and going to open mics every night and driving all over the city and you know

so um that that kind of kicked it off because I did improv. But again, like the mental disposition I've described stopped me from being really a good improviser because you have to be able to kind of just be mentally free. And I was so overthinking and so in my head still those, you know, deep grooves, those neural pathways had been carved from years of those types of thoughts. So it was very hard for me to do improv, which actually now I quite like. I love improvising. We improvise on the set of Hacks a lot. And, you know, on stage, I'll go off on a tangent and riff and it's very fun now. But at the time, I couldn't do it at all. So something else you talk about in the comedy special is being bisexual. And I want to play an excerpt of that part of your comedy special. Here it is, Hannah Bisexuals, everybody wants us, but no one wants us. The straights don't claim us. The queers certainly don't claim us. Hey, lesbians, what did we ever do to you

besides lead you on and break your heart? Why are you mad, I wonder? How else can I say this? Bisexuals are the Jews of the LGBTQIA plus community. Is that tracking? Everyone's like, ah, bisexuals. They're just shape-shifting, maniacal villains. They're not one of us. Ring a bell, Jews?

That's so funny. Thanks. So do you still feel that way, that bisexuals, even though they're the B in LGBTQ+, that even though they're the B and are officially recognized, that they're still estranged from the community? Because people used to think, I don't think that's as true now, that if you're bisexual, you're just afraid of committing to one team or the other. You know what? I think some people still think that.

I think there's a lot of, you know, that stuff that's still pretty ingrained. I think that people in general are fearful of identities that are not binary. I think we as people really like for red to mean stop and green to mean go. And it challenges certain individuals' worldview and understanding of themselves and others when they are confronted with someone who is secure in the middle, secure with gray, you know, in a world that tries very desperately to be black and white. I also think, like, people are so accustomed to thinking of things as being on a spectrum, especially for, like, neurotypical people. But when it comes to sexuality, it's sometimes, well, you know, the queer community, I hope I'm not misinterpreted as placing, you know, backhanded comments above

in any way the very real violence that a lot of members of the queer community face. I just want to clarify that. Understood. Yeah. And you know, to my point in the special, it does typically come more so from members of the community, ironically. That's been my experience, at least. Mostly my experiences with biphobia did not come from straight people. But it's okay. Do you feel like parts of your personality changed when you're in a relationship with a man versus with a woman? And more specifically, do you find yourself ever unintentionally and against your will falling more into conventional gender roles when you're when I'm with a man, I'm actually so violently resisting those traditional gender roles. But I typically tend to date men who are, I guess you could call them feminine. I mean, I definitely feel like when I date men, I wear the pants. So I guess that's, I'm mommy's girl. Yeah, I think that's kind of how I operate,

you know, because my mom was 12 years my father's senior. And, you know, in many ways, my dad is a highly emotional guy, which is a wonderful thing. Dad, don't be sensitive. That's not a bad thing. It's nice that you're sensitive. I think, you know, my ideas of gender roles have been totally flipped from jump. You know, my view on what it means to be a woman is sort of contrary to the popular notion. Just like you say in the opening bit on your comedy special, which we excerpted at the beginning of the show, that your idea of a woman as a man. Yeah, exactly. So your father's mother was a lesbian, and he was raised mostly by two women.

Did you meet your grandmother? I did, yeah. Did she talk with you about what it was like to come out, I think, in 1962? You know what? She did, but she was someone who really, like, you know, and she's someone from this generation of like, oh, it was fine. You know, like, I'm sure she had experienced a lot of really terrible things. But she didn't know to necessarily deem them as such. I think a lot of those women are tough from that generation, especially queer women, my God.

And, you know, their stories are very rarely heard. And I feel very lucky to have been, you know, able to talk with her about it. But, yeah, she certainly, you know, from my dad's telling, you know, it was tough. Her family really did not embrace her. And, you know, it was this very tight-knit Jewish community in Philly. In Philly? Yeah, yeah. My dad's from Philly.

I'm a big Eagles fan. Go Birds. Oh, Philadelphia's where our show is based. I know. And she just kind of, you know, like I detail in the special, she left Philly and set out for California and kind of started over. And she had the love of her brother, but I think there were a lot of folks who, you know, just couldn't, especially the women, you know, around, they just could not tolerate someone violating order in that way. What will the neighbors think?

No, exactly. Oh, my God. It's like, you know, she was such a black sheep in that way. But, you know, like I said, I'm so proud to be a descendant of the great Edna Swerdloff. So I want to close with the music that you open and close your comedy special with, because I really like the song, and it's called J'ai de l'oublié. It's a French french song which translates to i have forgotten or i must have forgotten and it's by somebody i never heard of manu roblin roblin roblin my new roblin einbinder thank you so much for coming on our show it's been a pleasure to talk with you

i wish you much more success because i'd like to see more of you. Oh, thank you so much, Terry. I appreciate you. Yeah, no, I appreciate you. And so Hannah Einbinder's new comedy special on Max is called Everything Must Go. And she stars with Jean Smart in the series Hacks, which originates on HBO and also can be streamed on Max. Oui, ce jour où je croyais T'aimer à tout jamais Tout au long des années J'ai dû l'oublier, j'ai dû l'oublier Ta façon de m'embrasser Et de me regarder

Et de me regarder, j'ai pu l'oublier, l'oublier Mes yeux se sont perdus dans un rêve inconnu Où tu as disparu Ce passé que ta voix Devrait faire revivre en moi J'ai du l'oublier That's the song J'ai du l'oublier, which opens and closes

Hannah Einbinder's new comedy special Everything Must Go. It's streaming on Max. La rivière cachée Où nous ayons rêvé J'ai du l'oublier Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.

This message comes from Grammarly. Audrey Bentham. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.