Radiolab - AV Smackdown . . . The Podcast

Episode Date: May 19, 2009

On May 6th, at WNYC's new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, we opened up an age old can of worms. Jad and Robert faced off over which medium is superior -- television or radio. This American Life's Ira Glass was the referee. There were stunning jabs, wicked uppercuts, and even the occasional low blow.

Hey, I'm Chad Abumrad. And I'm Robert Krollwick. This is Radio Lab, the podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, we are here for a historic confrontation. And on today's podcast, we'll start with a little combat. I want to tell you about an event Robert and I did recently, right here in WNYC's new green space. We built a little boxing ring with ropes and everything. We asked Ira Glass, who you're hearing to be our boxing referee.

About 250 people showed up. Robert and I decided to go head to head. To settle once and for all. the debate radio versus television which is superior so let's get started

in this corner Robert the Crusher Crowich I got to wear a blue silk kind of vaccine gig in the opposite corner

the one the only Jad boom boom Aberbride. Ladies gentlemen, put your hands together. And I got to wear the very stylish red boxing trunks. With a hood? With a hood. And real boxing

those. So here's how it went. We went five rounds. The rules were pretty simple. I'd play something. Then Robert would play something. And then Ira and the audience would judge. Round one, topic was, Which is better at pictures? Radio.

Or television? We'll just jump to the results, just to give you a taste. All right. Television is the winner. Round two. Which medium is better at emotions? Is it radio? Or is it television?

Oh. So after two rounds, we were tied, and so let's just speed things up here. We went three more rounds or three various questions. And when we got to round five, which was on the question of which is more fun radio or TV, well, here's what happened. I declare television the winner. No! No!

There was more sound. Riot! Do you want to have a recount? We can do a recount. I want them to riot. You're familiar with the concept of sore loser, right? Radio doesn't have to win. How much more dignity is there to this whole event?

We're in a radio station, Ira. We have to win. If we can't win here, we can't win anywhere. All right, I'll take a poll again. Radio. I suddenly realized why they don't do recounts in elections. And television. You guys are saying tie?

It was a draw. It was a draw. Everybody won that night, Chad. No. Radio and TV. No. I still refused to believe. So then we decided, well, okay.

We took off our robes and our gloves. And then we sat down and said, well, let's just put it all together here. Like, there are rules for making TV. There are rules for making radio. And how are they different? And Ira began. All the rules of what we do on the radio, especially on our show,

where the stories have narrative motion, where there's characters in motion and there's a conflict that announces itself pretty quickly. And the people have to be pretty, somebody has to be pretty charming and you can relate to. It's like our show on the radio pretends to be a show where we're documenting everyday life, but we're not actually.

What we're doing is getting sort of regular people who are in really, really unusual and interesting situations that would be worth putting on the radio. And the thing that having pictures let us do was to actually eliminate the need for a surprising plotline and could let us just have moments that we knew would be dramatic, like a guy's kid comes home from the Army, comes home from Iraq, and, you know, like we had specific moments we were going out to shoot,

but they didn't have to surprise in exactly the same way, and really a lot of the thing is kind of staring at people in a way that just is just anti-radio. It was just an entire hour that just would have been very difficult to do on radio. A lot of what we did on TV, I think you could have done on radio. There's like a hugeness to the radio,

to the intimacy of the radio. Like when you're in the actual crudy little hospital room and a not-so-fancy hospital in Washington State, and it's a real guy and his sort of semi-temporary, photogenic mom and he's like a little bit of a stiff and I don't know like and then and then they perform the scene and you see them really they're not iconic weirdly like like something about the specifics of staring at them and of that room and you recognize kind of the hospital tray it just plays really differently whereas on radio it would be weirdly mythic if you think about

that piece that piece that you played with it where it's the death and the kid, there's something really epic about it. Like, it's intimate and it's epic because he, like with his deep voice and her and her sort of symbolic, like kidness, become iconic. I was talking about a piece which had an unfairly cute daughter growing up in a father with a really deep voice. This was, I think we played it in round two. This is from John Bewin.

At first, it's first. physical, like any great love, those eyes, those hands, those thighs. Really? Hey, Harper, what does a kitty cat say? The weight of them, on your lap, climbing on your head. Nobody writes pop songs about that touch, that feeling. What you're going to listen about? I'm going to listen to you.

Ooh. But riding around inside that little body, there's this person. Over here? A budding mind. You'll do anything to touch. Here you go. I make this for you. That's special coffee.

So this small body becomes the source of your biggest fears. The child's flesh is vulnerable. So you are too. I do. But my favorite part of that school is going outside. is going outside. It's paradise. You all look wonderful in your outfits. Mrs. Said, I can't wait to learn what all of you want to be when you grow up.

Can I have some milk? How old are you now, girl? Eight. Hi, Daddy. I'm scared. But you have to let go. Let her go little by little. Well, Lindsay said that Kayla said something mean about me. She said not as how Kayla... In that way, too, in that way in which her body was never for you.

Next message. Hi, Eddie, it's Harper. We're going to be out, like on a G-A-O girl's after day-out. Just call me on my cell phone. Like, if anything happens or anything, I'll call you whenever I come home. Okay, bye. So, girl, how old are you going to be your next birthday? 13.

And have you and your mama talked about, you know, the talk? Yeah. Do you think you and I should have the talk? No. No. No. Good. So that was a piece called Scared from John Bewin, thanks to him, and to Harper Bewin, and to the Third Coast Audio Festival. And now back to the event. I think one of the deep differences is when you watch the TV,

TV. It is an act of staring. So you're in a chair or standing and you're looking across a space at a box with a square and in the square are some images. And your options are to look away or to look at it. You also know that between you and it, there could be lots of business. Someone could come by. A cat could go by. A child could go by. A dog could go by. Or something could catch your eye and you'd flick it away. So there is a stare in TV. In the radio, often people either clamp something on either ear or if they don't do that and they're just listening to the radio, there is an intimate kind of sharing where if the radio is describing, the person listening starts to paint involuntarily just because

they helplessly picture the words you're saying. And the painting in the painting in the way your head, first of all, belongs to you. And it's not a stare. It's actually very unlike a stare. And there's more, when you are co-authoring, which is what you're doing, the story you're being told, there is more room in there for that story in a way. But when you stare, you do get to see things that you wouldn't know, that you wouldn't find yourself, that you couldn't imagine.

But there is a coolness to the stair and a warmness to the radio that just travels and there were advantages and disadvantages to both. See, I, the other, like I see all that and felt all that when we were making TV. Like the other thing that always struck me is a huge difference is that to get an emotional moment on TV, like we could make an emotional moment. And just like you say, you have people's faces and they communicate so much and communicate just as much as the voice does. But to make an emotional moment on TV, it's almost like we would have to like erect a scaffolding for it to happen and build to the moment.

And there'd have to be like fast action, fast action, fast action, cutting, cutting, and then we'd have to slow it down. So you could feel the slowness. And then there could be slower sorts of emotion and feeling. And the music would change. And it was sort of like a much bigger orchestration job in the way it had to be photographed and handled. whereas on radio, it has such emotion as the default position. It's the thing that it's going to do when it's not even trying to do anything is communicate a lot of feeling and a lot of intimacy.

We can send out anybody with a tape recorder, and if they can talk to somebody, they'll get that. And the sound of the person's voice will carry out of this feeling. And that seemed to me just a huge difference. And then people were more able to open up on the radio too. It was sort of an ancillary thing when it isn't like a camera crew on lights and like, you know, we were shooting very pretty, so there's a lot of people. And versus by the time we finished our second season,

like when we started our first season, I thought, well, we'll get the same percentage of people who open up on radio and TV. But by the time we got to the end of the second season, Lisa and Nancy and the other producers, when they really wanted to get down with people, we would film part of the interview, and then they would just tape part of the interview. They would just take the person off, and they were tape part of the interview just with a tape recorder.

It was just them. Yeah. And then we would use that part and the part where you see pictures of other stuff. And yeah, so we totally tricked it out to get the kinds of quotes that we wanted because we weren't getting the quotes we wanted

while the camera was rolling sometimes. Let me ask you both a question. Since you both have done radio and TV, in many cases the same story on radio and TV, how is the experience of doing radio or being behind the camera different than being. behind the microphone.

Because I have this, I always sort of joke with him. I have this experience. Every time I see him on TV, it tweaks me. It's weird. Because I'm like, who is that guy? He's not the Robert that I know from the studio, because he's the Robert in the studio, and the Robert, like, in this ring.

And I love the fact that we're having this quiet chat in a boxing ring, by the way. He's kind of like this oversized, outsized, emotional dude. He's, like, just huge gestures. But on TV, it's all, like, he keeps it small. He kind of brings it in. And there's something about the scale that it's really interesting to me when you see somebody do both. You know, I mean, I wonder, I wonder like...

He's always said this. He says, you know, he just says, it's so little, you're so tight, you're so... You learn, here's the thing, the camera goes and looks right at you, and so if you were to give a big Cheshire Cat grin, if you were to make a broad gesture in the box, it's just too big. too big. So you just learn somewhere along the line that you do scale it down because you're so big in this virtual space. But you're bigger on the radio? Because I always say I tell people like when you're performing on the radio, it's like you're in front of a camera and the camera's always on close-up and like you use your inside voice, you know?

Kind of. Well, you had to get the desk. Yeah. Why the desk? Well, that was just in the first season. I mean, well, the conceit of it was we couldn't figure out how to put me on TV. Like, where should I be, or should I even be, should you ever see me at all? And then it seemed kind of, kind of artsy that you would never see me. You know what I mean? My favorite version of the different ways that you would see me would be that I would walk into each story at the end, like Rod Serling, and go, a man and a woman. You know, but I feel like I could perform that, too.

But was it a scale thing, or was it that you needed to feel somehow? No, no, we put, we did the desk because we just, thought like after trying to run, we shot all sorts of different things as little tests, and all of them trying to run away from the conventions of a host on TV. But truthfully, like everything's been done if you're a host on TV. Like, you know, your own a real desk that's been done. You in a car just talking to the camera. You're walking down the street with the subject.

You just, like every sort of casual and non-casual version has been done. And so we thought, well, let's instead of running away from the conventions, let's run towards them, let's take the corneous convention and let's do the desk and the suit and the mug and like a microphone and let's like have a let's build one of those desks that only exist on television that doesn't exist in nature that's like those shiny desks and um and then let's put it outside let's just put it somewhere random we had never i had never seen the there's apparently a monty python thing where they were the anchor man is outside i didn't know that you see even that had been done but um so we would just take it to incredibly like the idea is like one day it's in a factory floor

and the next day it's by a nuclear power station and you know then so that was the idea it was just Let's make something big and photographic. But why are the trouble? You said you couldn't figure out how to be on TV. Because this American life, it's so identical, it has that weirdly just, it's imprinting a kind of intimacy on so many people. I know, and it's something weirdly anti-intimate

about the image that we ended up making with me in it. And in the second season, because of that, instead of shooting it that way, we bought a little flip camera for $149 at Best Buy, and we shot all the things of me with that. We'd just go on the subway and I would just shoot myself talking to the camera and saying my thing. What about the audience? I sense that the radio audience is a completely different audience in a consistently different mood than the television audience.

What do you think? I mean, I do. Different, like as in different people or different when they're in front of the TV versus... A different people, but commercial television tends to get a slightly older group and radio, at least this radio that Miss American Life and Radio Lab does, this gets a bit of a younger audience. But beyond that, I think the radio audience gets the impression that they know you,

know you, and the TV audience, because of the staring, they will respect you, they'll do, yo, so you want TV, thing. That is, they'll notice you. They don't presume to begin or have a conversation with you, whereas on the radio, they presume

to have a conversation with you. You're saying from your experience, being on NPR, and being on ABC. Yeah. You know where we see it actually, we sort of see the flip side of that is when we take over Terry Gross' spot Fridays at 3,

which we do a couple times a year, you would not believe the vitriol. The venomous explosion. Who are they? Of hatred, as if we have kidnapped Terry, literally kidnapped her, and taken and locked her into the closet. There are Terry Gross.

But Friday's her rerun show. They've heard it already. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's part of their routine. On Fridays, at 3, what do I do? I do her. And who are these two people?

And what are they doing? No, no. They don't listen to it. They just like, they bite it. I have to say, like, the biggest thing I've ever done on TV was just two weeks ago, and that is that I

appeared on the Colbert Report. And I'd been on The Daily Show. I'd been on Letterman. I'd been on Conan. But there's something about people's relationship to Stephen Colbert, where, like, complete strangers walk up to me on the street and call it to me on the street, and, like, a lot of them, and it's like, hey, saw your own Colbert.

They feel like it was us against him or something. Like, they have such a, like, they just want me to know, like, they watched Colbert and they were with me, you know. And it was a complete... With you because you survived Colbert or with you because they... You're part of the Colbert Club? Both. Like, I survived it. They're like, hey, you did okay. sort of, with Colbert.

You know, like, it very much was like, it was like I was in a boxing match with Stephen Colbert, and they appreciated it, and they want to tell me about it, like in a way that I've found really lovely. That's maybe our last question, is the glamour question. There has been, for years,

associated with being on TV. There's this sense of, oh, wow, kind of thing. And then radio was sort of a other thing you could do if you were in a car. or cutting carrot. And I get the sense that that's actually switched a bit. So Steve Colbert could almost have, has a radio, I don't know why I say this,

but Steve Colbert, who does wonderful sight gags and, you know, but there is something about that show, even more than the other one, that does seem like, I don't know why, seems like the best radio that I hear. Does these people have such a personal relationship with him in a way that, I don't know, I mean, I feel that way about a handful of shows. You know, I feel that way about the drawing.

You know, I feel that way about Friday Night Lights. You know. The greatest show on television. Except for the second season. Except for the why. Saying the second season was a downer. The one. It's true.

I mean, they're good. I mean, I guess I'm saying, like, you know, I feel that about other things in television besides Stephen Cole. But I think that's the bond you feel with any show that you really love. You feel like you really like... No, no, because, like, I was in the subway, and I saw an inspector from the world. that really mean guy, the Polish guy, who wants to buy the, yeah, Valche.

I saw the actor who plays Valchik. And he was sitting there and I was holding the pole. And I thought, I guess I'll honor him by my quiet gaze. I won't say anything, and my heart was beating and everything. I was thinking I was going to tell my wife, guess who I saw on the subway? And but I didn't, if I'd seen Stephen Colbert, or if I didn't know you in And so you, or you, I think I'd, uh...

He says with the stain. I think I'd find it more approach you. I think I might dare. I might say, oh, hi, or something like that. Yeah, it's true. Well, that's because on the radio, if you're performing it right, you're exactly human size. Like, like, if you're on the radio, if you're doing it correctly, I think you're, there's a one-to-one scale.

But you just, you said earlier though, that was myth, mythic and epic, too, though. That moment in that story. Yeah, no, I, you know, that's true. I guess it's a contradiction. I think one of the things that this American life did was they made true stories feel like fairy tales. And it has to do with the music. It has to do with the way they're constructed and with the surprise and the characters that you meet. It feels like a fairy tale.

It feels like you're entering. You mean on TV and on radio? I mean mostly on the radio. I'm thinking sort of early, you know, just that show coming out. out of everything else that was at that time. Suddenly these characters did seem large. They seemed like sort of epic and huge, but yet sort of like embedded in their breasts

the same sort of desires and fascinations and fears that the rest of us had. So that was new for me to hear that. So I don't know. I mean, it gets confusing when you use the techniques of fiction storytelling, techniques of movie making with true stories. You can invest true reality with a sense

of largeness and a sense of sweep that you would only expect to see like in a movie theater. That's kind of the cool thing about it, I think. And then there's the wire. Thank you all for coming. Thanks for coming out. Okay, that's how you've been ended.

We want to thank Carrie Hillman for helping us produce the event. Definitely want to think the Green Space people for making that very cool space available. Green Space means the part of the building at WNYC. Yeah, this is new space. We can now have live events, which is where that was. It just was inaugurated that very week, so I was our inaugural. Maybe we'd do more of those.

And also to the Hungry Marching Band because they made a lot of big, loud, noisy music. Yes, thanks. And also, we want to thank the people that help make Radio Lab possible. That would be, number one. Mr. Sloan. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Number two. Mr. Corporation.

For public broadcasting. And number three. Mr. National Science. Yes. Who has a foundation. Yeah, then. I'm Jada. Boomrod.

I'm Robert Krollich. Thanks for listening.