Revisionist History - Americana Music Live with Drew Holcomb and Malcolm Gladwell

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Wrapping up our summer music series, the Memphis-born, East Nashville-based singer songwriter Drew Holcomb talks with Malcolm in front of a live audience at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Drew plays original songs and a few covers you might recognize on this exploration of his journey to Americana music.   For more interviews like this, check out Pushkin’s Broken Record podcast. For more Drew Holcomb visit his website, drewholcomb.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. On my last trip to London, I had dinner at my favorite spot in Clerkenwell. It's been in continuous operation for something like 150 years, which means it predates automobiles, radios, and the zipper. I had the mangalita loin chop and the potatoes confi. Yum. You need to go there.

Although, I don't know if I'm allowed to say the name. Let's just say it starts with a Q, then a C, and then an H. If you're planning a trip of your own, consider hosting your home on Airbnb. Your place could become part of someone else's story while simultaneously earning you extra cash for the Mangalita Loin Chop. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you. I'll take it off.

I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such. thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me.

I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No such thing on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No such thing. This is Eric Glass. On this American Life, sometimes we just show up somewhere, turn on our tape recorders, and see what happens.

If you can't get seven cars in 12 days, you've got to look yourself in the mirror and say, holy, what are you kidding me? Like, at this car dealership, trying to sell its monthly quota of cars, and it is not going well. I just don't want one balloon to a car. Balloon the whole freaking place, so it looks like a circus. This American Life, true stories, really good ones, every week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Back in the spring, I was part of a traveling variety show called No Small Endeavor.

It's put on by a friend of mine, a theologian from Nashville named Lee Camp. A bunch of us got in a big tour bus, left Nashville for Louisville, then Indianapolis, then Grand Rapids. Lee and I told a story about the famous showdown between the suffragettes and the anti-slavery movement in the mid-19th century. And then a bunch of musicians played music to help us tell a story. It was one of the most fun things I've ever done in my life. Anyway, when you're traveling on a tour bus, you spend a lot of time talking to everyone else on the tour bus, and along the way, I got to know the musical headliner on the show, the singer-songwriter Drew Holcomb. And I found him so thoughtful and fantastic and full of life that I invited him to come to New York and sit down with me at 824's newly reopened Cherry Lane Theater. And to my delight, and I hope your delight as well, he said yes.

Drew is in his early 40s Beard lives in Nashville but he's from Memphis He's maybe a country artist Although he would dispute that description His band is called The Neighbors And they've been together forever And if you've never heard his music

You're going to hear more than a little bit on this episode Because I gave him only one rule Before we had our conversation You have to bring your guitar And it can never leave your side Here we go All right, all right Welcome everybody to the Cherry Lane Theater

It's going to be a great evening. I want you guys to welcome Malcolm Gladwell and Drew Holcomb. Good evening. I'll get us started with a song. All right. I am fare thee well now, I am strong, I am good-bye, I'm a long way from home. I am an orchard at the start of spring. I am a mockingbird I love to sing, and I'm going to fly.

I'm going to fly I am I am laughing I am laughing the weeping willow tree I'm a dog barking

a honey bee sting I ain't no angel but I've got my wings I'm gonna fly I'm gonna fly I'm going to fly I'm going to fly I'm going to fly I'm going to fly I am flesh and bones. I am a gunshot with a microphone. I'm a boy at the window as the summer sunsets.

An old man in winter, nothing more, nothing less. Now I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly. I'm going to fly I'm going to fly I've ever written. I always figure when I get nervous, just play something you like, you know. When did you write that song? I wrote that song probably January of 2022. I always tend to write a lot of songs right around, mainly

after New Year's. It's a good time to kind of get in your feelings and introspection about your life, about the world around you, and it tends to be a creative season for me. how do you decide you say that's your favorite song you've ever written probably yeah why what is it about that song well it was it was it was something about the song kind of came out of this um i'd just turned 40 around that time and i actually enjoyed all the way things that i felt after turning 40 everybody told me i should be afraid of them i actually really enjoyed them also was kind of born an old soul. My mom said I was born an old man. I felt comfortable in that transition already just because of sort of how I am. I started writing that song with the lyric started, I'm a boy at the window

as the summer sunsets. I have this keen memory from my childhood of being told to go to bed before the sun went down in the summertime, you know, and staring at the window and seeing my neighbor whose parents let him stay up. And being sort of full of jealousy, but also sort of full of wonder and and then also i even though i'm not old i feel certain i feel old in certain ways and i sort of the song is kind of in the tension is me just sort of embracing the tension of that and that tension feels more and more what i see when i look in the mirror and so when i'll play that song i feel i feel it's like a blanket for me you know and also finally let myself admit that i like my own music you're not supposed to do that but i i do like my own music

Why are you not supposed to do that? I don't know. It's just a, you know, cultural thing. You shouldn't, you know, if you drive down the street and see an artist listening to their own music, you might think, man, what an arrogant guy. But, you know, which that happens to me with my kids sometimes because they want to hear my songs. I just look at people, you know, hey. Yep, it's me listening to my own song.

Yeah. How would you describe the genre that that song belongs to? You know, I, growing up, I was, the, music that I listen to a lot sort of fit in either categories of folk or rock and roll some country soul folk rock was sort of how I framed it before this sort of ubiquitous word of Americana kind of came around and it felt like they created a sort of a an institutional home for artists like myself who are definitely not country in the sort of commercial sense and We're not rock in the sort of new radio sense, and we were a bit homeless.

There's a lot of us, and so it kind of created this. So that's what I say now is in Americana. One of the great things about being a quote-unquote Americana artist is there's not really a lot of rules about what you make, how you make, whether the song has five stanzas and no chorus or, you know, horns or whatever. You can kind of do whatever you want. It just has to be sort of made by real people. in a, you know, in a real sense. You're from Tennessee, and you live in Nashville,

but you take great pains to distance yourself from country music. Well, it all started. I'm from Memphis, which is, you know, 200 miles west and a bit south of Nashville. And we were raised, Memphisans are sort of, it's baked into your childhood and you're upbringing to hate Nashville. Yeah. It's part of how you're raised. For instance, my parents, every fall, we would drive to Knoxville where they attended school and we'd go to a Tennessee football game. And that's a 387 mile drive. So in 18 years, let's say

we did it, I don't know, maybe 16 times in my childhood that I can recall. And so 32 times through Nashville, we stopped zero times. And I-40 goes right through the middle of town. and my dad would just say there's a state capital keep on moving so we grew up admiring you know there was some country

that sort of leaked into my into my childhood I think there's perceptions of folks outside the south that like everybody in the south just listen to country music we listen to Motown and Bob Dylan and Amy Grant you know like it was this interesting mix

of like gospel music and you know black soul music and and then all the can my dad loved all the sort of contemporary 70s songwriter stuff and so there was not a lot of country music in it yeah yeah in my childhood i want to talk a little more about Memphis and Nashville in your mind what is the difference between Memphis and Nashville well practically speaking I mean Memphis is a very it's a hometown city meaning that most of the people that live there grew up there had family from there grew up in the surrounding, you know, 100 mile radius, whereas Nashville attracts people from all over the country, especially in the last 15 to 20 years. And so it's a much sort of more,

those two realities create different, very different cultures. In Memphis, everybody knows each other and, you know, where do you go to school and who do you, you know, it's a bit of that small town, big city experience. Whereas in Nashville, so many young people move there because of what the city can offer them the opportunities that may springboard out of living there and then it's a center for i mean the big employers in the in nashville or the music business and health care which are both sort of booming and transient jobs whereas memphis it's you know these big blue collar companies like fedex and auto zone and so it just creates very different cultures and that you know racially memphis is majority african-american town Nashville's very lily white you know um so they're just

they're very different. My favorite story to tell about Nashville when I moved there was Memphis is a great food town, especially cheap food, you know, tamales and barbecue and great unique pizza. And it's just a very, you know, being a river town, there's a lot of transients over decades. So you get a lot of unique food. And Nashville had basically nothing that I wanted to eat. And I would just complain to my wife. I was like, that's nice here.

I know you're from here, and that's why I moved here. But there's nothing to eat here that I want to eat. And then, fast forward almost 20 years, and it's one of the greatest food towns, you know, in the country. Everything's there now. So it's changing. It's a very sort of evolving and fluid place. Maybe you can explain my favorite joke.

It's my favorite joke because I feel it has many, many layers, many of which I don't understand. Okay. It's a joke from the civil rights movement era. black man in Detroit wakes up in the middle of the night it's one of those people who come up from the south

you know in them turns to his wife and said I had a terrible dream and she said what happened he said I dreamt that Jesus came to me

and told me to go to Birmingham and she says did Jesus say it go with you he says Jesus said he'd go as far as Memphis that's a great joke isn't it?

It's my favorite joke of all time it has like I said because it's a joke about Jesus who said he would be with us always but not in Birmingham not Birmingham it's a joke about Birmingham

it's definitely a joke at the expensive it's a dark joke but like why does Jesus stop at Memphis well because I mean Jesus would love Memphis there's great food there's great hospitality there's great music like Jesus would thrive there Yeah. That was my experience. Jesus thrived in Memphis.

You listened, well, I want to go back to that mixture of things you were listening to as a kid. Motown, Amy Grant. What was the third one? Bob Dylan. That's a fantastic and unusual mix of things to be exposed to. Is this your father or your mother's doing that's pushing? Both, both, yeah. So my dad grew up in the, you know, my parents met in the third grade. and so they grew up seven or eight like blocks from each other so there's this very sort of I won't have 28 grandkids it's like a very yeah there's a lot going on there um that's just on my

mom's side that I didn't include my dad's side so wait there's 28 grandkids on your mom's side that's right yeah and I'm number 14 or 15 I can remember but wow yeah so very like it'd be hard to overstate how sort of like central Christianity and religion was to my upbringing. Part of that was that when I was, apparently when I was like, I don't even know how old, three, four or five years old, someone from the church came to my parents' house and everybody in their church was doing like a record clean out of things in their house that weren't honoring to God. And so they would get rid of all these records that I, when I heard about this in high school, I wept. I was like, oh, Dad, you had all of these great records and original copies

that the image they're out because it was the devil's music. That was really too bad, you know. A lot of Led Zeppelin got thrown out and things like that. Yeah, I mean, come on. Yeah, got to get rid of it. Which we could, I'll come back to this, but my first record I ever bought was Pearl Jam's 10. I was 11. I actually got it for Christmas from Santa Claus. And my dad broke the record by 5 p.m. on Christmas Day because we had to go through the liner notes together and there's drug references and he's like, you're too young for this and break.

So this was, you know, an intense scene. But some of the things that made it through the gauntlet was Bob Dylan's evangelical records. Of course. You know, slow train coming and saved and there's another one. Yeah. And then because he's still made it in

there, somehow his old records also got a pass. Yeah. Got grandfathered in. Yeah. Got grandfathered in. yeah and he was Jewish so there's like a thing there too you know you're allowed to have records made by Jewish artists so um and then motown was like it was all you could listen to motown except for like um what's the the you know the great the margay record i'm just blanking on oh sexual healing of course well yeah yeah but the name of the record what's going on what's going oh what's going on yeah oh sexual healing would have been was on that record wasn't it no what's

going on as earlier. I was saying sexual really is so far beyond... Oh yeah, yeah. You can only hear that the only way you could hear that in my childhood was at a wedding. That's right. By the cover band, you know. And so, and it still felt awkward for everybody, but... So, yeah, there was...

So then any Christian music was okay. Bob Dylan was okay. And Motown was okay because it was just a bunch of love songs and clean oldies stuff, you know, before the music business got, you know, messed up. Can you explain to a heathen

New York City audience. Who Amy Grant is and why she's important? Yeah, Amy Grant was sort of, I mean, the whole genre of contemporary Christian music was, there was Southern Gospel, which is the whole different thing. So it's basically take the songwriter model

and people started applying it to their faith stories, which this all predates the whole, now the big thing is all this big ensemble worship stuff, which was basically like all these church bands trying to sound like cold play in you too so amy grant was like this young songwriter and she was they created a old radio sort of format around artists like her and she became the the most most famous and successful

and then she had a crossover pop hit called baby baby that sort of sent her into regular superstardom and um yeah she's just a very beloved woman and she's she's also as a human she's like she's honestly one of the greatest ones I've ever met. Yeah. You know her. I know her because my wife knew her. But I moved to Nashville again, sort of like, country and Christian music,

this town sucks, you know? And then I got to know these people, and I was like, wow, these people are all really great. This is tough. Wait, so wait, what denomination were your parents? Yeah, they went to like an independent Bible church. Yeah. So it was non-denominational.

They were very proud of that. Yeah. I was asking you about, other music that made it in. Yeah, I think basically my parents were pretty okay with all the classics, so we would go see, you know, you could go see Paul Simon. They built the pyramid in Memphis when I was a kid, which was a new arena where the Memphis Tigers played.

And so I got a job there in high school as a part of the event staff. And so I got to see all these concerts for free by telling people to stop smoking. you know and had my little yellow shirt on um and you know anything from boys to men to zizi top to whatever could sell 15,000 tickets I was you know exposed to and at a certain point the sort of the rules weren't really that well enforced it was a sort of a young when we were young it was very much that way but our alarm clock every day growing up was my mom played piano and she would play hymns like that was get up and go to school was like up from the grave he arose you know she was like a whole her like whole play on get up and go to school you know um that's fantastic

yeah it's great yeah a daily resurrection she's got a great sense of humor yeah um i have a theory which i very grandiosely call gladwell's theory of asymmetrical parenting which is that at any given moment, when we account for our parental influence on our lives, we only talk about one parent. It can change over time. But you try this out on somebody. You ask somebody, well, you know, so difficult. What are your parents? People will never talk about their parents. They will, the minute you dig into it, they only talk about one for a while. So I would like you to give me an asymmetrical parental theory of the Drew Holcomb, challenge. who matters i completely disagree with that theory um i'm not saying that you only only one mattered i'm

saying that at any given moment only one matters yeah in in a particular story you're toggling yeah right so it may be from you know in high school it's only your mom and then in college it's only your yeah that's a i i my parents are going to listen to this probably you know Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's the whole point. Yeah. Yeah, I think we were actually talking earlier backstage about how as dads, you sometimes get this free pass that it's almost like, and I've seen this, I have three children, that especially with my daughter, she sort of defaults to dad, you're doing great, you're awesome, even if my wife Ellie has done all of the hard work that day in the parenting space. So with that said, I think that that's probably true in a lot of ways that my dad had sort of an outsized influence. What did your dad do?

Well, he was a dentist, and then he hated it. So he quit and became a financial advisor. Seriously, it's a true story. This reminds me one of my favorite stories about a friend of mine whose dad was an investment banker. and he once had a long heart to heart with his daughter, my friend, about how he felt his career had been misspent and he made a series of terrible choices and he had squandered his life in a profession with no meaning.

And she was very moved by this because she didn't realize her father had this other side. And she said, Dad, so what do you think you should have been? And he says, I think I should have been a tax attorney. that's kind of like kind of what you're here and here it's kind of like what your dad did yeah

well he he said that he was just very he was very sort of bored by the monotony of dentistry and how he's a he's very extrovert and he was trying to have conversations with people and they couldn't because

oh he was one of those annoying dentists who's like asking you questions And you're like 17 things in your head? Totally. Well, and I think, honestly, I think it was a, it was a serious crossroads for him because he'd spent, he put himself through dental school selling jewelry out of a tackle box. This is like he, he worked his way really hard to get himself this, you know, job and this career. But then a decade in, he realized how much he really did not enjoy it. And found a way out of it. It took him. It wasn't like an immediate transition. He went to one day a week to, doing the other thing to two days a week doing the other thing to half and half and then eventually when I was in high school sold his practice and went full time the other direction he loved music and he had wanted to pursue music in high school he wanted to be in a like in a garage band and his dad who was even more strict you know than my parents generation basically was the cut your hair and don't you you know he has a story he says he tells the story about my grandfather

they were driving in the car and my grandfather smoked cigarettes nonstop and Bill Withers Lean on me was on the radio and dad was like 14 years old in the passenger seat and it's that part of the song where if you need a friend call me

you just call me and my grandfather was a jazz guy he hated popular music he said he finally takes a drag on a cigarette after about the seventh or eighth call me and he goes well just call him damn it so he had this like weird relationship where his father squashed his

creative yeah dreams and so I think when I sort of showed interest in this he he sort of just launched fully in with me oh really yeah you know the first thing I told him I wanted to pursue music

I had like an okay guitar he's like well let's go to the guitar shop let's get you something nice you know if you're really going to work hard at it I'm in your corner yeah that was his two rules where if you're going to work hard at it and then he said And promise me that if it's not working, you'll know when to walk away and move on with your life.

And he could say that from experience because he walked away from something. You know, he didn't just stick with the career that he chose as a 19-year-old, really, because he started dental school. Back then, you didn't have to get a college degree to go to dental school. You just had to get the prerex, which he did in three semesters and then started dental school as a 19-year-old. So. Can you play another song? Yeah, sure.

right i'll uh since for this is sort of symmetrical asymmetrical i'm gonna go down the street to my grandparents house uh i grew up five doors down the street from my grandfather who was this sort of a lion um of a man he was a bit of a big fish personality he would he would tell these stories that you didn't know how much of it was true and how much it was fiction lived a very interesting life, was a surgeon, was the chief of surgery in Tokyo immediately following World War II, operated on Admiral de Gano, two weeks before he was executed, like he just has these, like, wild stories in his life. And one of them was that he told this story about how he went to England with his friend who raised Labrador Retrievers, who got invited to this dog trial at the Queens Estate.

And so he went, and he was very old and couldn't walk around very well. And he came back with this wild story about how he got to ride around the Queen's estate and the Queens Land River with her driving it. And we were all like, sure, you know, sure you did. And he passed away about six years later, and we got a letter from the Queen's secretary, sending her regrets of his passing and sharing how much the Queen enjoyed the day. She spent with him driving around her estate and her land rover. So there you go.

I wrote this song about him many years after he died. He just had a huge influence on me in the songs called Dragons. I was climbing a mountain, asleep in the moonlight, go of my grandpa came to me in a dream as the stars hung above us he started singing this chorus he laughed loud as heaven and said this to me take a few chances a few worthy romances go swimming in the ocean on New Year's Day don't listen to the critics stand up and bear witness go slay all the dragons that stand in your way we stayed up and talked until the sunrise of war and love and sorrow he said stop

spending all your money on forgiveness of sins today's all you promised don't trouble with tomorrow he faded into the forest proudly singing this hymn take a few chances a few worldly romances go swimming in the ocean on new year's day don't listen to the critics stand up and bear witness go slay all the dragons that stand in your way I Woke up with a fever, surrounded by lightning, All my windows were open, I let the rain flood in. The past felt like the present, with a future uncertain. I sang like a sparrow, lost in the wind.

Take a few chances, a few worthy romances, go swimming in the ocean on New Year's day. Don't listen to the critics, stand up and bear witness. Go slay all the dragons that stand in your way. Go slay all the dragons that stand in your way. Stand in your way. Thank you. Incredibly beautiful tribute.

Thank you. Yeah. It's a beautiful man. We'll be right back. Hey there, Malcolm Gladwell here. I was just in London and I spent most of my time doing what I love most there, walking, miles and miles. Through Clerkenwell and Covent Garden and Shortwich, stopping for espresso, thinking, writing, hanging out in Proofrock Coffee, my favorite coffee shop in the city. Then I had dinner at my favorite restaurant in Clerkenwell. It's been open for about

150 years. You can feel the history and the floorboards. That's what I love about traveling. It slows you down and gets you out of your usual rhythm. And if you're looking to switch up your everyday routine, consider hosting your home on Airbnb while you're away. It's an easy way to earn a little extra and offer someone else a meaningful stay. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and think you could do it it turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control and they're saying like okay pull this until this pull that

turn this it's just i can do my eyes closed i'm manny i'm noah this is devon and on our new show no such thing we get to the bottom of questions like these join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then, as we try the whole thing out for real, wait, what? Oh, that's the run right. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to no such thing on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Eric Glass. On this American Life, sometimes we just show up somewhere, turn on our tape recorders, and see what happens. If you can't get seven cars in 12 days, you've got to look yourself. in the mirror and say, holy, what are you kidding me? Like, at this car dealership, trying to sell its monthly quota of cars, and it is not going well.

I just don't want one balloon to a car. Balloon the whole freaking place, so it looks like a circus. This American life, true stories, really good ones, every week. Listen wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. Let's talk a little bit about

the role of faith in your life and work. yeah you uh so you grew up in a very religious family you went to seminary in scotland tell me about that decision i uh i think i've always sort of grown up i think a lot of people that grew in a world that i grew up in sort of either chose to just join into that space as adults or they sort of run the other direction and go through a deconstruction phase where they you know on a spectrum of sort of kindness to full vitriol they depart from that space and instead I tried to navigate sort of a third way which is I didn't have a personal experience with faith that sort of mirrored what I was told it was going to be like and that it would bring all this

meaning and stuff to my life and when I was 17 my brother passed away he was born in spina and had all sorts of health issues but still suddenly out of nowhere I was out of the country when it happened on doing like a summer of Spanish immersion in the Dominican Republic and passed away and got home all the sacraments and words and instruments and communities of faith were sort of bubbled up in me and it wasn't making sense for me so I had sort of a crisis of faith and instead of turning away from it I was still sort of trying to figure it out but music was really the thing that kind of helped me make sense of my life. I would never forget. There were two records in particular in that era. One was Van Morrison's

moon dance. The other one was David Gray's White Ladder. I would just drive in my car and just listen these records and sob. And those records weren't even necessarily about grief, but they were they were grief records for me. And so, but I also didn't, my experience with faith and the faith community was that while I was struggling to believe what they told me was the right thing to believe, was experiencing a lot of love and affection from them and had from a young age. And so a lot of people's hurt and deconstruction is fed off of abuse or mistreatment or, you know, and that was not my experience. And so I couldn't have that same sort of departure because I was loved well.

And so it's created this really interesting tension in me because I was also expanding the way my worldview is expanding in ways that didn't line up with a lot of what I grew up around. but also we're talking about it you know it's easy to lump people into these categories and really the spectrum of people who helped raise me all they all have different different sort of spectrum of beliefs about different things whether cultural cosmic theological cultural political etc so I don't want to sort of speak about that community as one monolith but um but at the same time what I was finding and who I was becoming was getting farther from the that. And part of the way I, part of that was going to seminary. I went to Scotland. They had a

program at St. Andrews University where I could go for two weeks a semester, twice a year, and then write my papers. And so, you know, I was just, I was searching, but I was enjoying the search. You know, it was like, it was less of a, like, frantic looking for the lost keys when you're trying to get out of the house and more of a, like, I just want to keep looking. I'm finding a lot of interesting things. I'm reading a lot of interesting people. It just allowed myself. to engage in reading and in music and in ways that was sort of open to it instead of looking for a fight.

And that's sort of the way I would say that I was raised is that the church in that era, the school that I went to was a wall. There's more of a wall and less of a bridge. It's more about protecting the flock instead of building a bridge to the world. And I would say my faith now is much more of like, I just want to be a bridge builder.

but I haven't necessarily I haven't rejected some of the sort of central teachings of Christian orthodoxy but I have certainly rejected sort of American evangelical culture and this cost me a lot of fans but that's okay Memphis to Scotland is a long way yeah my senior high school English teacher took a trip every year to the UK in the first place we went with Scotland and that immediately within three days on that trip I said I'm going to study abroad here

this place is Edinburgh is just this wonderland and you know I loved English literature I loved English history you know and honestly like the South was settled by Scots so a lot of it you know so there was like when Braveheart came out every southerner in the world was like yeah you know was there anything about the music of Scotland that appealed to

yeah yeah there's a there was a there's a pub down the street from my flat Sandy Bell was the name of it and every night they had traditional Scottish music you know people playing instruments that I didn't even know what they were

but they play these traditional Scottish folk songs and they'd always end with Locke Lomond You take the high road and I'll take the low road and I'll be in Scotland before you for me and my true love are there to meet again on the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Lock Lough

I was like, I'd sit in the corner crying about me and this mythical woman. I'm going to meet at the Bonnie Banks of Locke Lohman. Your Scottish accent's pretty good. You've got a lot of practice. My kids are always asking for it. But there's something about the Scottish weather and the story that sort of, that's where I started writing songs. I was still sort of in the throes of my grief. and I was trying to process that grief

and so as a student I decided my senior thesis in my program was going to be an oral history about my brother's life and death from everybody that knew him and sort of the question was why does a severely handicapped child have such like so because when he passed away there were like 2,000 people at the funeral

2000. Yeah, there were like a hundred nurses from the hospital that had met him over the last 15 years came. And the entire elementary school he went to had a day out of school and they all came. Yeah. Yeah, it was just an incredible celebration of a very short but very sort of thorough life. And so my sort of analytical side of my brain with the creative side of my brain was like, what if I just wrote an oral history of his life and interviewed his doctors, teachers, his neighbors, his cousins, and why? why did jay matter so much to you so i was working on that in scotland and that's when i started writing songs because i didn't really know anybody i always say that that time i was alone i wasn't necessarily lonely but i was alone and i had to i had taken my guitar and i just started writing and when i got back home from that semester i started playing these songs for some friends and i think they were all expecting something completely different for my life like i got laughed out a couple times before the songs like wait you wrote songs i mean i know you play music but like aren't you going to be like history lawyer guy or something and i play on these songs they're like oh these are

what's the first song you wrote that you were proud of a song called uh nightingale that i don't remember but i do remember it being about um my then friend um and much later became my wife ellie but it was a heartbreak song because she had sort of ripped the heart from my chest in that era of my life so Is that why you don't remember it? Yeah, I got to move on from that song

Yeah You can't have forgotten all of it No, I mean that was something like Well, okay This is embarrassing I do remember the first line Cinderella was a fairy tale One that's true

I don't remember where it went after that But it was something about She sang like a nightingale Something something that rhymes with truth Wait did you play this for her after she broke up with you? Well, you made an assumption there that we dated in the first place.

Oh, I see. At what point in the trajectory of you and Ellie, did she hear that song? I mean, pretty soon after I wrote it, but I didn't tell it was about her, you know? She didn't figure it out. No, she did not. Oh, come on.

Well, that's according to her. You've talked to her about that. But, yeah, so that, I mean, that was the first song I sang, and I was playing it and like for my buddies in college, and they're like, that's pretty good, you know. But that was before Scotland. That was the first song I wrote.

The Scotland's art started writing songs that I, I don't know, just something started to click. But really, I didn't, it took me, I moved quickly into sort of what I would call my 20 to 23 year old, Steve Earl, Bruce Springsteen, Ryan Adams' imitation phase. Where I was really trying to write the rugged third person minor chord songs. And it wasn't me, but I needed to do that

to find my path. But none of those songs are available on the internet. Which Bruce Springsteen? There are many Bruce Springsteins? Which is your favorite Bruce Springsteen? Well, my favorite Bruce Springsteen is Greetings from Raspberry Park, Bruce Springsteen, but I like them all.

But the one I was imitating was like the Nebraska-Tom-O. I was going to say Nebraska. Yeah. I want to talk about Nebraska for a month. moment. I, because I was obsessed with that record. Yeah. And you know, it's funny because music like that doesn't just influence musicians. It influences writers. Yeah. And the song that I always came back to was, I don't know what it's called, but it's the one about the guy who's a police officer. Highway Patrolman. Highway Patrolman. I played that song a hundred

times. Man turns us back on his family. He just ain't no good. He just ain't no good. That was like, as a kind of template for writing an emotionally powerful story, it's just stuck in my head. That song is so beautifully constructed. Can you remember any of it? Can you play? I can play the chorus probably. Yeah, play the chorus. For those who don't know the song, this is, it's, I think it's one of his finest songs. I can do a part of it. Let's see. My name is Joe Roberts. I work for the state Sergeant out of Burtonville Bears number eight

I've always been an honest man honest as I could I got a brother named Frankie and Frankie ain't no good Is it bad that I sing a lot? Ask the audience, I don't know But then, you know, goes on Yeah, we're laughing and drinking

Nothing feels better than blood on blood Taking turns dancing with Maria As the band plays night of the Johnstown flood Catch him when he's straight again Like any brother would No, teach him how to walk that line Two different choruses Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry

Because my favorite is Like any brother would And turns his back on his family Well, he just ain't no good And then there's this That line to me that That song, I love a song for a lot of different reasons If you know, I'll just, the song's been out for 40 years

So, spoiler alert Basically, you know The narrator is a state trooper highway patrolman and his brother's a mess and he ends up injuring possibly killing somebody in a bar fight and he gets called into the scene and realizes his own brother and his brother he's chasing him out of the state in michigan and uh and he lets him go into canada you know and lets him escape and then it ends with that course um and turns back on his family he just ain't no good and uh my brother who's now been eight years sober

there was a lot of years where that was like that was our dynamic you know as I was the good rule following successful big brother and he was the you know he didn't mind me saying that he were very close but and he's turned his life around but I thought that was going to be my life was like

I'm going to lose him to his vice and so I'd play that song on nights when I hadn't heard from him and I love that song there's a lot of emotion in here a lot of emotion in here in no in you oh yeah I'll take that as a common moment I did not just folks may not know this but we

Drew and I met a couple months back because we're doing this thing which can't be described and it's a form of a variety show a variety show we hung out together I was on the bus with Drew among other things and you said something there's a series of things I didn't know anything about you. And you said something to me that just so surprised me. And you said that you just talked about how you have it.

You get angry. Yeah. And I didn't see that. I didn't see that in you. And I was so surprised to hear that. I was sort of taught growing up that anger is bad, you know, that what I've since learned is that anger is not bad, it's rage that's bad, which is like sort of the, this is going to get all counseling on you guys, but it's been a big part of my journey as a person and as a musician. It's not the anger that's bad. Anger's like the red light, you know, it's what you do with it. And so I've learned instead of getting sort of physically upset is to go, I'm so angry, what is it? It's usually some sort of injustice, either against me or the world or my neighbor or my family. or is it's your yellow light that's flashing that you're lonely or sad or hurt.

And so I've learned that it's like my superpower. Like when I'm angry, I know that I know that I've got to figure out what's going on instead of trying to tamp it down, you know. Have you ever written, what is the angriest song? I have an idea that you've ever written. Oh, that's great. It's a song called Ring the Bells.

Yes. Okay. you want to hear it yeah wait you had to give the context yeah i wrote this song uh with my i wrote this song with my friends avner and amanda ramirez uh avener is a cuban american amanda's african-american we wrote this song together i think three days after um the charlottesville um white supremacy raleigh uh when some Very famous sort of American Christians were both sides in the situation. And we got real pissed and wrote this song together.

Ring the bells, this time I mean it, bid the hatred fairly well. Give back the pieces of my Jesus. Take your counterfeit to hell. Bang the drums, this means war, not the kind you will. waiting for we say mercy won't be rationed here's what we're fighting for if all is fair and love and war then what the hell is love even for if we can't sing it loud enough we'll keep on adding voices oh ring the bells ring the bells ring the bells ring the bells Ring the bell!

Just a little bit of it. That's what I... That's the one I had in mind. I was very angry when I wrote that song. It felt good. Yeah. It's funny. You play it like a man possessed.

Well, I was watching Dan. Tiger one time with my daughter. And there's this... But I just love the segue from... Yeah. ...possessed to someone who... There's a lot of Daniel Tiger in my life as well. It's very related to what we're talking about.

So there's this scene where Daniel gets upset. And the mom says, okay, Daniel, we're going to learn the song. If you feel so mad that you want to roar, take a deep breath, then count to four. And I was like, I'm sorry. Emmy Lou, she's four years old. I'm like, that's not always true. Sometimes what you need to do when you feel so mad that you want to roar,

take a deep breath and roar! Yes. Get it out. Don't stuff that stuff inside of you. We'll be right back with Drew's answers to the homework assignment I gave him. I asked him to come up with his

five favorite country songs of all time so he could compare his list to mine. Hey there, Malcolm Gladwell here. I was just in London, and I spent most of my time doing what I love most there, walking, miles and miles. Through Clerkenwell and Covent Garden and Shortwich, stopping for espresso, thinking, writing, hanging out in Proofrock Coffee, my favorite coffee shop in the city. Then I had dinner at my favorite restaurant in Clerkenwell. It's been open for about 150 years. You can feel the history and the floorboards.

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This is Eric Glass, the host of This American Life. So much is changing so rapidly right now with President Trump in office. It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what. To try and do that, we've been finding these incredible stories about right now that are funny and have feeling and you get to see people everywhere, adapting and making sense of this new America that we find ourselves in. If you haven't listened in a while, I honestly think these are some of the best stories we've ever done. This American Life, every week, wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. Can we talk? Let's talk about musical influences for a moment.

Let's start with Amy Lou Harris. I would love to. when we were thinking about this evening about our list of iconic country songs and one of my one of on my list is uh balder to birmingham do you know that no that's the that is uh it is the um one of the few songwriting credits she has on her first i think she only has one songwriting credit on her first nine albums. And that's Boulder to Birmingham, which she writes about Graham Parsons.

Oh, yeah. And it is, actually, we're going to play a little bit of it. It is the most, just play the first little, like, 30 seconds of it. I've never heard this song. I'm very excited to. It's so heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

And the, I mentioned it only because we were talking about grief and about emotion. It's a song, it's a song about grief. And it's a, the articulation of her sense of loss and longing is just perfect.

Anyway, here it is, I think. I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham I would hold my life in a saving race. I would walk all the way. from Boulder to Birmingham if I thought I could see

I could see your face I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham if I thought I could see I could see your face that's her the way she articulates her sense of loss she sings with so much ache too

Yeah. Did you do your homework? I did my homework. Yeah. You're one assignment. I respect. Yeah, I had some arguments with my wife when I picked this first one because she's like, I don't think of that as a country song.

And I was like, well, it was like a number three on the country charts. And I think my favorite country song, or what I think is the best country song is Wichita lineman by Glenn Campbell. Uh-huh. I need you more than want you. And I want you for all time. there's a song about a Jimmy Webb wrote the song

and he talks about how his I think it was his uncle was a lineman he always remembered seeing him up on the poles working on the electrical lines um and so the song came easy to him because he can imagine him you know

being away from home for a long time wishing for to be home with the one he loves and it's stood the test of time too it's a very simple song about a working man missing his love but that's my number one your wife said that was not a country song

she said she doesn't think of it as a country song what does she think of it as she that was not clear to me we agreed on my my second one though which is what which is crazy by patsy klein oh yes okay I mean it's such a standard but it is so good

and I love that Willie Nelson wrote it and then a couple years later he kind of quit the industry, moves to Austin, Texas, and writes the most non-commercial country record ever that's, you know, Red-Headed Stranger, and as a 43-year-old, his career blows up. Just love the story, and we've played a lot, we've gotten to play a lot of shows with Willie over the years. I've sang with him a dozen times. Well, you know Willie Alson. I didn't know. Yeah, I mean, we're not, we don't, like, call each other because he's, you know, he's an

older guy, and, but I have, yeah, we've shared this. stage and sung he does this really neat thing every night where he does a medley of i saw the light will the circle be unbroken um one other i'm blinking on um and he invites you know the opener to come out and sing it with him so i've got to do that 12 or 15 times so um he and dolly to me are the two living legends left you know yeah in that space and then my third one would be Jolene. As a Tennessee and if I didn't mention

a Dolly Parton song probably couldn't go home. What's your other one or two? George Jones, the Grand Tour. That's a sad song. It's, you know, I have, I might be more attracted to, you like are attracted to

pure emotion, it seems like, and I'm attracted in country music to over-the-top grandiosity. And the grand tour, George Jones is like he's like the, he's in the best possible sense of the word, a caricature

of a country singer. That voice, in fact, we're going to make them play just a beginning of and play the grand tour until the line chills me to the bone. Step rider, come on in.

if you'd like to take the grand tour of the lonely house that once was home sweet home I have nothing here to sell you just some things that I will tell you I know we'll chill you to the bone. I mean, the notion that you would write a song that with a straight face has the phrase, chill you to the bone. And you know, he's got nothing. He doesn't have anything that's chilling you to the bone.

No. Some woman dumped him. Yeah, that's it. An empty house. This will chill you to the bone. My empty house. My empty house. He's so, I just can't.

Get over the fact. He's so genius. Yeah, you love the melodrama. I love the melodrama. I once, back in the day of mixtapes, I used to make these mixtapes constantly, and they were always named after, for reasons I forget now.

They were always named after popes. So on the front of the CD case, I'd have an image of one of the popes, like, you know, Pope Pius the 12th, or Emmanuel the 16th. And then the song, I made like 10 of them. because there were a lot of popes.

And I was once driving with some person who didn't know me very well, and I was playing one of these mixtapes, the long drive, one of these mixtapes after another, and after like the third one, this guy, Mike, turned to me and said, what is the matter with you? Every single song was some kind of melancholy

over-the-top weeper. I'm happy if the tempo is never picked up. Yeah, songwriting, you're always pulling from, your library you know and you hopefully your library just keeps growing and growing and the trick is when i when i was young you're imitating and then you get better at find it when you find your own voice and then you're just sort of taking cues from your library you're not copying anybody but you're you're going oh that's interesting that kind of reminds me of this let's you know make it our own and the people that you've mentioned who are important influences for you we just mentioned we talked to

before, but, oh, about Paul Simon. I'm curious, what's the thread that links, and also Tom, I know that Tom Petty is someone that has had an influence. What's the thread that links these influences? I think all those songwriters, I don't know if there's actually a perfect common thread between them, but something about all those artists,

they made records that really connected with me and helped me sort of, see the world, if you will, and help me feel the world. And that's the beauty of music is there's a bit of magic to it. And I'm sure there's scientific and sociological ways to explain them. I'm not really interested necessarily in hearing them because I like the magic of it. I like the myth that I don't know why this record speaks to me so much. But when I hear Tom Petty's Wildflowers, and I hear, all I have to hear is,

You belong among the wildflowers. You belong in a boat out at sea. That in and of itself is just a beautiful sentiment, you know. Executed with this, you know, the arrangement, the sonic sort of landscape of it. None of the artists that I love seem to sort of play by a certain formula. Maybe they do sometimes on certain songs or certain records. But Tom Petty's a great example. If you look at his sort of the arc of his career and listen to the records, they don't all sound the same.

There's, you know, different producers have sort of different eras and fingerprints on his, on his work. Jeff Lynn stuff is different than the Jimmy O'Vine stuff. And I like that, that they're always looking for something else to say, something else to sing, some new way to express human experience via music and instruments and electricity and all this stuff that makes it work. I asked you to sing one cover. Tell me what you chose and why. Well, I chose this song because you and I connected over the song back when we met in April. And I just saw this artist play at the Riemann, which is my favorite venue in the world and a serious underplay for him.

The last time I saw him in Nashville was at the Bridgestone Arena. then he retired and now he's come out of retirement to do these intimate acoustic shows. I know that you have interacted with him a ton, and I've heard nothing but great things about him personally, and I think this is one of the great songs. I also think it has what I consider the best first line of a song that I've ever heard. So this is Paul Simon's America. Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together

I've got some real estate here in my bag So I bought a pack of cigarettes Mrs. Wagner's pies and walked off to look for America Kathy I said as we bought it a greyhound in Pittsburgh Michigan Michigan seems like a dream to me now It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw I've gone to look for America

Laughing on a bus playing games with their faces in the Gabbardine suit is a spy I said be careful his bowtie It's really a camera Well toss me a cigarette I've got one here in my raincoat No, we smoked the last one an hour ago. Well, I looked at the scenery.

She read her magazine as the moon rose over an open field. Kathy, I'm lost I said though I knew she was sleeping I'm empty and aching and I don't know why counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike

they've all gone to look for America all gone to look for America we've all gone to look for America let us be lovers we'll marry

our fortunes together That was beautiful Thank you You said his concert at the Ryman that you saw earlier this year It was actually This was really sweet for me personally

But we played Two nights at the Ryman on May 2nd and third and then he played three nights of the rhyme in may like 12 13th and 14th and I got to sit um and watch a show right after I'd played there and to see one of my heroes in the same spot that I was in eight days earlier and he had the same reverence for the room that I always have and it was um it was a bit of an emotional and joyous and overwhelming experience and he did two sets he did the seven hymns record from front to back and then he came out and did sort of all the songs that you would want

expect to hear in the second set and it was just a yeah it was wonderful so you were in a middle you you you were in the middle of writing a song about cormac McCarthy oh yeah i was um tell me how that came about yeah so cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors you know southern gothic dark violent end-of-the-world apocalypse human sort of morality play author, right? Very sparse and no country for old men, all the pretty horses, the road, so many great books that turned into great films, et cetera. So he actually grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is where I went to school, but he had it, he left there and lived all over, but it sort of landed in the desert in Santa Fe, El Paso, somewhere in there.

Unrelated to that, seemingly, was I love old cars, and so I get this email from a company that auctions old cars just because I love to look at them. And I get this email in April, early April, it says, Cormick McCarthy's Ferrari. It's being auctioned off. And so it kind of like blew a fuse in me because I'm like, Cormac McCarthy didn't drive a Ferrari.

It's like nuts. And it's like, sure, he actually did. he drove this black Ferrari in the last years of his life. And so I had this idea of writing a song, Corny McCarthy's Black Ferrari. But I couldn't quite find the end, you know? I couldn't find the end.

But I thought, no, I want to drive Corment McCarthy's Black Ferrari through the desert and have a complete existential crisis. Yeah. And I feel like everybody right now is sort of, we sort of live inside of existential crisis that's that's like going to be the era that we live in we look back on we're like that's the that's the era of the existential crisis there's just so much happening at

such a speed that it's hard to keep up and it's hard to know how to where to put your anger and where to put your your joy and how to how to live and I thought one of the ways it would help me is if I had cori McCarthy's black Ferrari for a day so I wrote this song and first person I sent it to was you because we had talked about that interview and I love old cars too yeah and we also

we connected over old cars and I was like I yeah so I've never played this song before except for during sound check so this is a debut and I really like this song and if you don't like it

I don't really care that much because I like it a lot so let's see if I remember how to Walking on the sidewalk through my neighborhood My neighbor's black cat is up to no good There's something in the air Something in the streets

Like a red tail hawk waiting up in the trees There's levees and tolls and roadblocks and speed bumps Has it been a day a week or just a month unwanted packages by the front door screen and empty pages in my diary. Cormack McCarthy's got a black Ferrari that he drives across the desert on a Sunday morning and I'm dreaming about the wind in my face, nothing but my worn-out suitcase driving that Ferrari like Cormac McCarthy

in my mind in my mind in my mind A fiasco falls like rain on our faces a Mickey Mantle rookie card ruined in the basement and nothing turns out like

you thought it would it's a little more barefoot than Hollywood it's confusing the losing the losing The booze and excusing The stage fright and all the troubleshooting Where do I fit in amongst all the matter And this party always feels like a lost soul's gathering Cormac McCarthy's got a black Ferrari

That he drives across the desert on a Sunday morning And I'm dreaming about the wind in my face nothing but my worn-out suitcase driving that Ferrari-like Cormac McCarthy in my mind in my mind engine and fuel and paint and chrome muscle and blood and skin and bone engine and fuel and paint and chrome muscle and blood and skin and bones Cormack McCarthy's got a black Ferrari that he drives across the desert on a Sunday morning and I'm dreaming about the wind and my

I face nothing but a worn-out suitcase driving that Ferrari like Cormac McCarthy in my mind, in my mind, in my mind. In my mind, I'm driving Cormac McCarthy's black Ferrari in my mind. I love that. Thank you. Why, you said you couldn't figure out how to,

couldn't figure out your way in. What did you mean by that? Well, I had this, this, like, obviously the phrase in the rhyme, Corrie McCarthy's Black Ferrari. It was like, this song going to be like a funny song about how could this maudlin writer have such a, you know,

cultural toy like this. This doesn't make sense to me. It should be an old Chevy pickup. Right, yeah. That's the imagination, right? It's not that he had this car. So it's like a magnum PI car, you know. So then I was like, no, that's not the right frame.

Because what I felt when I saw that that existed as a fan of his work, and it's also someone who would like to have a 1989 Testarosa. just for a day even was that no even the saddest most sort of gothic you know the chronicler of american violence needed an escape and so he had this black Ferrari and he would just go I'd imagine him smiling driving 120 miles an hour across the desert in Santa Fe and there's not a picture in the world that exists of Cory McCarthy smiling no and so I I relate to that. I relate to feeling the weight of, you know, life and all of its, like, joys and tragedies.

And that sometimes the simple pleasure might make it go away for a minute. Has that song, as it stands now, have you worked on that with the band? Or is that all you at this point? Well, they've heard it, but we haven't. No, we wait till we all get in the room together before we sort of die. into it but yeah what will happen to it when the when you all dive in i don't know i mean we'll we'll go through several it's first thing we'll do is we'll make sure we're the right key we'll do some practical things make sure in the right key figure out the tempo um and then we'll sort of jump

into the approach you know like what are the drums going to be doing are we are we is this acoustic sort of is that the main engine driver of the song or are we going to do like a piano bass, drums thing and then, you know, just kind of like try a bunch of different things and then inevitably one of them,

all five of us will go, that's it. That's the approach. Yeah, that's a really beautiful song. Thank you. Thank you. Drew, I think we're, I think our time is...

I have no idea how much time. We've been up for a while, though. We've been up here a while. Yeah. I feel people lurking. How should we end this? I don't know. I'm like being presumptuous if I ask you to play one more song.

Sure, sure. I'll play a song I wrote. There's a wonderful band in Nashville that has toured for many years called Old Crow Medicine Show. My kids go to school with some of Ketch's kids, who's the lead singer and writer, and this is a great Nashville story. We're dropping our kids off at school. He's like, what are you up to this week? And I said, I'm just going to be in my office doing some writing.

and you know working and he said we should write a song this week we'd never written a song together before and so i said well how about tomorrow morning so the next morning we drop our kids off we get coffee about 830 we're writing songs and we wrote this song about 1030 that morning we both had just gotten back into doing normal shows again with a real with live audiences and we had really missed that so this is such a fantastic only in Nashville story yeah it is and then it was a great it was a great song for me it ended up being it's the song's called dance with every everybody, and then ended up getting picked up by the NCAA for two years straight as the theme song for March Madness, which, A, song's not about basketball, and B, I am, like, one of the world's worst basketball players in a big family of athletes, and so it brought me a lot of satisfaction that my song, I was in, I got to participate in March Madness, and none of my athletic six three cousins did, so. You walked into this room, you hardly knew anyone

A sea full of strangers just crashing on the rungs When the band strikes by the end of the night, strangers no more I want to dance with everybody who came through that door Whether you came here to party or you came here to cry Well, to meet somebody, cheat somebody, get low, get high. So come on all you people with two feet on your floor. I want to dance with everybody who came through that door. Whoa, let it all go.

Whoa, shake up your soul. Throw your hands in the air. Throw your hat in the ring. Throw your hips and your heart into everything. Get lost in the crowd Get down on the floor I want to dance with everybody Who came through that door

Well, come all your saints and sinners Poets, prophets and fools All you cowboys, tricksters, Hips, trying so hard to be cool All you dreamers and schemers Thirsty for more I want to dance with everybody Who came through that door

Whoa, let it all go. Whoa, shake up your soul. Throw your hands in the air. Throw your hat in the ring. Throw your hips and your heart into everything. Get lost in the crowd. Get down on the floor. I want to dance with everybody who came through that door.

Oh, hey. Oh, hey. Oh, hey. Well, let's put aside our differences. We'll lace up our shoes. Let's narrow the distance between me and you. Meet me in the middle. Let's quit keeping score.

I want to dance with everybody who came through that door. Whoa, let it all go. Whoa, shake up your soul. Throw your hands in the air. Throw your hat in the ring. Throw your hips and your heart into everything. Turn the world on a string. Turn the winds on a dime.

Turn the wheel to the west and the water to wind. Get lost in the crowd. Get down on the floor. I want to dance with everybody. I can't do that door. I want to dance with everybody. came through that door Thank you so much, Drew.

Thank you all. This episode of Broken Record is produced by Leah Rose and Nina Bird Lawrence with Ben Nadaf Halfrey and Lucy Sullivan. Our engineers are Nina Bird Lawrence, Sarah Bruguerre, and Bent Holliday. Marketing by Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our executive producers are Jacob Smith and Justin Richmond.

Special thanks to 824, to Eloise Linton, and to the whole crew over at the Cherry Lane Theater. My name is Malcolm Gobbo. Ah, come on, why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, Ultra-Light, Ultra-Powerful, and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors. blazing speed, and AI power performance. It keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves.

Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Lenovo, Lenovo. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors, so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you all?

I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me.

I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No Such Thing. This is Eric Glass, the host of This American Life. So much is changing so rapidly right now. with President Trump in office.

It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what. Just try and do that. We've been finding these incredible stories about right now that are funny and have feeling and you get to see people everywhere, adapting and making sense of this new America that we find ourselves in.

If you haven't listened in a while, I honestly think these are some of the best stories we've ever done. This American Life, every week, wherever you get your podcast. This is an I-Heart podcast.