The New Yorker Radio Hour - Another Fiasco for American Soccer, and Praying for Tangier

Episode Date: June 9, 2018

The 2018 World Cup begins this week in Russia, and America is taking a powder. The men’s team failed to qualify for the tournament after a stunning upset loss to Trinidad and Tobago, which is considered to be one of the worst teams in competition. Perhaps no fan was more upset than Roger Bennett, an English soccer commentator and new U.S. citizen, who has rather quixotically devoted himself to the sport as it’s played in America. Bennett is the co-host of the podcast “Men in Blazers” from NBC Sports, and recently hosted “American Fiasco” for WNYC Studios—a longform exploration of the epic U.S. failure in the 1998 World Cup. Bennett spoke with Michael Luo, the editor of newyorker.com, about why the same problems keep casting a shadow over the sport’s future in America. Plus, a visit to Tangier, Virginia. The island is washing out to sea, and its residents may be among the first American refugees of climate change. But that’s not how they see the loss of their island. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent. I think it'd be interesting to really try to unravel what his ties. There's a sort of country-city divide for their own convenient, and then it's not clear where it goes next. From one World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The World Cup begins this week. But soccer in America is still a kind of, acquired taste, and especially this year because our national team failed to qualify to compete for the most watched sporting event on the planet. We don't even get to compete. It's a real blow

for fans, especially Roger Bennett. Bennett is kind of a rare bird. He's an Englishman who's devoted to American soccer. And he lives here while co-hosting the soccer podcast called Men in Blazers from NBC Sports. Bennett came to the studio to talk with Michael Luo about what's wrong with American soccer. Louo is a former captain of the Losser High School varsity team in Michigan. He's also, incidentally, the editor of New Yorker.com. When I remember taking notice of you guys was there in the 2014 World Cup, when you somehow got a gig broadcasting from what seemed like a closet during the world cup. And then after that, you got a show on NBC Sports Network.

You've just made it sound like the early scenes of Scarface. We arrived in America with nothing, and suddenly we're running a mid-sized empire. How did you, a British guy from Liverpool, a long-suffering fan of Everton, end up making a living, basically riffing about soccer? We were just beneficiaries of great timing, to be candid. I arrived in America in 1993. I loved America for the longest time. I'd actually grown up in Liverpool in the 80s, the greatest city in the world,

but when I grew up fairly dark economically, the Thatcher era, and I'd watch a steady stream of American television heart to heart, Fantasy Island, the love boat, Charles in charge, and each show, it just seemed like life was lived in Technicolor in America,

and I always dreamed of moving, there. And I moved there just when the World Cup came to America. And I watched the American team in 1994 swagger onto that field, ginger of beard, mulleted of hair, and I loved it. I just looked at these American guys and I thought, I love this, I love this country, I love this team, I love the possibility of the growth of the game here. And all I wanted to do was just dedicate my life to the growth of the game. I love soccer in the country. I love America. So take us back. to 1994 and what that point meant for American soccer. So to understand 1994, the year that America hosted the World Cup,

you have to understand what football was like before it. You know, when I drew in 1990, I drove around Maine. I was a college counselor desperate to watch England in the semifinals of the World Cup. Not a single bar was willing to pull there to signal down on a huge satellite dish. They all wanted to watch the Portland Sea Dogs minor league baseball game. It looked at me like I was a madman. 94 changed all of that. The American team swaggered onto that

field. They grabbed the world's attention. They got through the group stage. They played Brazil. They looked mighty Brazil. The eventual winners in the eye on July 4th, no less, lost in a unbelievably brutal encounter. But that World Cup, it made America's pulse

absolutely thicken around this sport. The American players started to be coveted after that World Cup. the new heroes. They were on weaty boxes, let them and wanted them. NFL teams tried to recruit them to be kickers. Hollywood agents wanted them to star in movies.

And European elite team suddenly wanted the American and they got jobs abroad. Alexei Lallas, he plays for a team in Padua. And in our podcast, American fiasco, Eric Winalda tells the story of flying in after his Bundesliga game in Germany to pick up Alexei Lallis, who's played in the Syria, I scored a goal in a massive game.

and Alexi says, let's go for dinner and he goes, where are we going to go? Well, there's a restaurant and a tiny island outside of Venice that's almost impossible to get into, we'll go there. And they get out on like a James Bond cigar boat. They just zoom out there

and there's a huge line outside. There's no way they're getting in. And Lallis just pushes to the front of the line and the matriott is like, oh, Lallis is here! And just suddenly like in Goodfellas, a table is whisked in out of nowhere, put down. They're given the pride of place. Suddenly on a small stage, a spotlight goes on,

and everyone in this elite restaurant is clapping saying, Lallis, please sing for us. And Alexi stops eating his pastor, strolls onto the stage and plays his latest cut from his album, Ginger. And Wunelda says,

I looked at it. He knew a year ago, Alexi Lallis was earning like a $5 a day per die. And suddenly he's living a life, which is a mixture of Mick Jagger and James Bond plus Pelle kind of thrown into the mix. And that's how fast and how fast soccer came. So you have recently done a podcast

about the 1998 World Cup in France, a series called American Fiasco, which I've been listening to. And that was a moment of profound disappointment for the American team. So we'll talk about 1998 when the United States finished dead last if you were to count gold differential in France.

Most embarrassingly, losing to Iran, remind us of what happened in 1980. It was like if you've wanted to move the apocalypse now, then you pretty well catch the last year of this campaign. I mean, the American mentality, Michael, is an amazing thing. One of the many reasons I love your country, which is about to become mine on Friday. I'm actually about to be sworn as an American citizen. Congratulations.

God, genuinely the greatest thing I've ever done. But the American mentality is we can do this. 90, we qualified, showed the world we could qualify. 94, we showed the world we can belong. What are we going to do in 1998? You know, we the people who put a man on the moon, we're the people who put a Starbucks on every street corner. We're going to go and we're going to win the bloody World Cup.

And what I was fascinated by was the series of decisions, many, many decisions, almost all of them awfully made that along the way one after another combined to just turn a footballing culture that felt that nothing could stop it. And through human decision, one awful decision after another, and it just became a march of folly. They didn't just destroy the US's World Cup campaign. They destroyed the sports future.

The stakes were so high. They needed the new league to grow. They needed to keep building on 94. You know, the sport lost a ton of sponsors. Americans turned away from soccer in droves. And it was really only the women, the US women, as so often, as please God they will next year, came in 1999 to save the day by winning the World Cup.

And it took about a decade for the sport to really get back to where it was in terms of regaining the trust of the American public. We can go World Cup by World Cup, but why don't we talk about, obviously, the most recent fiasco, America's failure to qualify for the World Cup. Did you have a feeling of deja vu a little bit?

Are there parallels between the American fiasco in 1998 and this campaign? The 2018 era, where they needed to draw against Trinidad and Tobago, the worst team, in qualifying. They fail to get one. We should never play two countries again

at the same time. No more ands. Let's just play. Let's not get cocky kid. Let's just play one country at the time. We'll be okay. 1998 was just one terrible decision in retrospect, taking each one learning from the last mistake to kind of reinforce its cruelty

and idiocy. 2018 has a similar trail of destruction that led to the failure in terms of the leadership. There was a massive leadership transformation. There was an arrogance amongst the players. There was a sense of entitlement. And what still remains the same from 1998 to 2018, and we still have not solved this problem. US soccer is remarkably unique and distinct in that it's an incredibly suburban sport still. I did a study with a Princeton academic Greg Kaplan

before the last World Cup, where we studied the socio-economic culture of every World Cup squad going back to 1990, and socially and economically, just off the radar, the US soccer player, their financial background, their levels of education, just the zip codes they came from. It's an incredibly suburban mentality.

The American player, when they go to Europe, very often when you interview the players, they can't believe the level of cut-throat competition exists and the level of accountability. The foreign players that come to the American League, they can't believe when you lose a big game. Talking to some of the massive players that have come, they'll say, I can't believe you lose a massive game, a derby here.

And people are like, okay, cool, we're we playing next? And, you know, he said, when I played for Malam, if you lost, you did not show your face for a week, and you trained with triple ferocity, and you needed to get the press off your back. None of that accountability exists. There's something deeply parochial still at the heart of US soccer, and until we work it out how to eradicate that,

it's always going to be a nearly sport from a professional perspective. How big of a setback is this for US soccer? 2018, the US did not make the World Cup. It's devastating for the players. It's devastating for the fans. It's bad for human beings who love to have memories, great memories of Landon Donovan scaring against Algeria, of Jonathan Brooks, the young German American

who scored a late winner in the first goal game of the 2014 World Cup against Garnham. Julian Green, the single vest moment of his soccer life. Good, Julian, good! And so we will not have bona fide American memories, but the honest truth is the 2018 World Cup, it's not a matter of will Americans watch, will they not watch.

The honest truth is the World Cup has become such a well-ingrained circus, a telenovela of hearing, and villains and moments of human wonder and disaster and awful haircuts and ill-judge neck tattoos and Americans, they love nothing more than a circus, Michael. They love an excuse to daytime drink. We always joke if you're in a bar at 7.30 in the morning,

society frowns on that behavior, but if you're in that same bar and on the television, Russia are playing Saudi Arabia in the World Cup, you're a football fan. And for that reason, if no other, America will adore will revere, we'll savour anything. Who, for our listeners who are maybe casual soccer fans,

who should they be rooting for in this World Cup? So you've got Iceland, this joyous little nation who truly believe Viking blood flows through their veins. So they're playing against Argentina in the first game. They think they're going to step onto that field and slay Argentina.

I just love that self-confidence. You've got the greatest story in soccer, Ronaldo and Messi, the two, for a decade, just dueling great. But if either one of them, Argentina, Messi, Portugal, Rinaldo, go deep in this tournament and win it, it will cement either man's legend as truly the greatest of all time. I'll close with this reading from the back of your new book Encyclopedia Blazer Tanica. Soccer has been America's Spore the Future since 1972,

propelled by the rise of the World Cup Premier League, the glory of the United States women's national team. Leonel Messi's demigodest, talent, and repeat exposure to Cristiano Ronaldo's pre-nabs, that future has finally arrived. When I read that, I was trying to figure out if you were joking or not, and after our conversation, I realized that you were being serious.

Yeah. Below the age of 27, soccer is between the second and third biggest sport. When Americans are asked by the ESPN sports poll to name their favorite athlete in the world, Ronaldo Messi are in the top 10. 72,000 fans will go and watch Atlanta play on a regular basis, all of which is to say, football, soccer, whatever you want to call it, is very much here.

And it's why to call it America's Sports of the Future, as it has been since 1972, is such a warm delight for us because we know that we're joking. It's very much here, Michael. Roger Bennett is co-host of Men and Blazers. Bennett has just released American Fiasco, a particularly painful podcast from WNYC studios about the epic U.S. fail in the 1998 World Cup. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick. The hurricane season of 2018 has officially started, and we've got to pray that it's not like last years, which brought destruction and death to Houston, Puerto Rico, and much of the Caribbean. Some of the people who will be watching most

closely are the residents of Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. Tangier sits nearly at sea level and is in dire peril from any storm that hits the Mid-Atlantic. The New Yorkers, Carolyn Korman, visited the island along with the radio hour Sarah Nix last year just as a storm was heading in. We're with the mayor headed out to rescue a baby Osprey.

How old do you think it is? Two babies. Two babies. They're not ready to fly yet, and they might be in trouble with the storm coming tomorrow. There's a big storm moving toward a low strip of land called Tangier Island. The island's mayor, James Eskridge, is moving a pair of juvenile offspring, big birds of prey that live on the water, to safety. There was a tire last year, almost ready to fly. We had a strong thunderstorm, and when I went back to it, the birds were going, swept him out of the nest.

The mayor's at the wheel of his skiff. He's a tall guy, he has a big mustache. and you can really see all the years he's spent on the water and his skin, it's deeply tanned, permanently wind-burned. Cameron, you want to do? The Osprey nest is in the harbor on a platform that's only about a yard above the water. The waves are lapping up underneath it.

The mayor's brought 17-year-old Cameron Evans to help him with the rescue. You want these snake gloves? I got a net. Cameron leans out of the boat to scoop the bird up. Don't get cold. Tell me when you're got him. Got him?

They don't think so right now, but it's further ungood. Birds aren't the only thing that could lose their home in a big storm. The islanders could, too. The mayor pulls his boat up to the shoreline. It's really just a few inches of sand with a little bit of topsoil that's all held together by the roots of the shoregrass. It's not a rocky shore. Yeah, this material, it's so soft.

We need a shoreline like Mainz got. This was rock along here. This would be here into the Lord Compton. It was back. Tanger Island is not much more than one square mile, and it's shrinking rapidly. It's a third the size it was when it was first settled in the 18th century. People used to live on islands all over the bay, but now Tanger is one of only two inhabited offshore islands left.

Climate change is tripling or even quadrupling the rate at which land is disappearing, and the 450 people who live here could be among the first climate change refugees in the United States. The storm's blown in, and the wind is howling through the town at 40 or 50 miles an hour. The water's high in the tidal rivers and canals that cut through the island. This morning at high tide around 6 a.m., the water level was up to the floor of the house, a little house behind where we're staying. Many of the pathways across the island were covered in water, unpassable.

And the wind, you can see the rain kind of coming across in sheets like it does in coastal, Yes, this isn't, we're not living on a piece of dry land here. Usually the island's narrow lanes are full of golf carts and scooters, kids tossing footballs. When the sun is shining, it's got a kind of Norman Rockwell feel. Today, everyone is staying inside. We're supposed to be on a boat back to the mainland, but the ferries aren't running. Raining hard. Was that thunder?

No. We're sheltering on the porch of the island's only school, K through 12. It's where Trenna Mour. has been teaching high school math for 18 years. Not at all. She grew up here. She married her high school sweetheart, and she raised her own kids here.

Ten years ago, I had five generations living on the island. My grandmother died at 102. She was a devout Christian, and she is the one who got the vision from the Lord that we were going to get our first seawall. She stood up in church and said, the Lord has given me I've had a vision. And then two years later,

we had the seawall dedication. Nearly 30 years ago, a seawall was built on part of the western side of Tangier Island. It's basically a line of huge boulders. It takes the brunt of the waves. My childhood, before the seawall was there, we used to market. What does that mean you would market? Like a big post and what was there last year in all winter. We would walk down there and just watch that go out to sea.

More and other Tangier residents have been watching their island wash away for as long as they can remember. The difference the Western Seawall has made has many of them praying for a wall all the way around the island. The Lord gave my grandmother a word. I don't know if the Lord's given me a word. The Lord's not given me a word that we're going to get a seawall. But I am going to give that to the Lord. And if they want to say climate change, I do believe in climate change. I really do, but I believe in what it says, like centimeters a year.

We are losing feet. You can see pictures of our island from one 20 years ago. It's half of that all the way around. The only part that hasn't been eroded in 20 years is the part with the seawall. When Moore looks at what's happening to Tangier, she sees fast-acting erosion, not the climate change that's making it worse. A warming planet means more storms and stronger waves, And when saltwater floods the land, like it is right now,

it kills the trees, the grasses, the other vegetation that hold the sand and the topsoil together. Climate change, when you read about that, isn't it like little, little, little pit? We're losing feet, feet, feet. And it's noticeable feet, feet, feet. Do I think climate change is an issue? I mean, I read about it in Florida, you know, how they're losing parts of their land and they're like in southern Florida.

They say it's because climate change. Now, do I know? I know that it's climate change. I don't know that. I'm reading it and I'm assuming people that are smart in that area and know what they're talking about. I'm not going to get into the Al Gore thing, but do I think that was handled correctly? No.

We're here for a special CNN Town Hall on the climate crisis with former Vice President Al Gore. I'm Anderson Cooper. I want to welcome our viewers. Because of what's happening on Tangier, the island has become an object lesson in climate change for some people. This summer, CNN invited James Escort the mayor of Tangier, to be a part of a town hall about climate change.

Mayor, welcome. Thank you. President Gore, Mr. Cooper. I'm a commercial craver, and I've been working to Chesapeake Bay for 50-plus years. I'm not a scientist, but I'm a keen observer. Our island is disappearing, but it's because of erosion and not sea-level rise.

He's wearing a checked button-down shirt and a Tangier Island ball cap, and he looks comfortable on the set entirely relaxed, holding the mic. Back to the question, why I'm not seeing signs of the sea level rise. What do you think the erosion is due to, Mayor? Wave action, storms. Has that increased any?

Not really. So you're losing the island, even though the waves haven't increased. Gore talked about how hard it can be to translate science into something people can understand and see. Then he told a kind of joky story. Reminds me a little bit of a story from Tennessee about a guy that was trapped in a flood. And he was sitting on the front porch, and they came by in an SUV to rescue him. And he said, nope, the Lord will provide. And water kept on rising.

He went up to the second floor, and they came by the window in a boat. He said, come on, we're here to rescue. He said, nope, the Lord will provide. Then he went on up to the rooftop as the water kept rising, and they came over in a helicopter and dropped a rope ladder. He said, nope, Lord will provide. died in the water and went to heaven. He said, God, I thought you were going to provide.

And he said, what do you mean? I sent you an SUV, a boat in the helicopter. And I think that what we have heaven sent. Why would you say that to an island that's counting on God? Trinimore watched the CNN event. What did that have to do with us? So we're saying that if we don't listen and agree with climate change, go ahead and stay here and drown.

And the Lord will provide. See, what other conclusion could we come to? for that joke. It could also be taken to mean that leaving the island would solve their problem, or that there may be a solution other than a seawall. But Al Gore didn't offer any suggestion about how Eskridge and the other islanders can save their community. So that's what I couldn't understand, why this great man and climate change, to joke, I was offended.

I was offended as a Christian and as a Tangierman, because we need more than a story about drowning and going to heaven. from the vice president of the United States. How you see Tangier's predicament depends on where you look. People who are looking for evidence of climate change, see it in action on the island. People who live there watching erosion for as long as they can remember, they see erosion.

If the people who are waiting through floodwaters regularly still don't believe that the climate is changing, maybe that's a testament to how difficult it is for any of, of us to see. How much of your day do you think you spend considering the weather? Probably 60% of it. Yeah. Yeah, weather is, yeah, weather is our lawyer. Yeah. Eskridge is showing us around his crab shanty. He's got dozens of blue crabs and tanks out here. We bring the peeler crabs in and we dump them in these tanks. That's what my father used to do and grandfather before him. He's waiting for them to mull so he can sell them as soft shell crabs, Tangier's specialty.

Oh, this one's shedding right now, and so's that one, right? Yeah, yep. They're called Busters. Who's this? This is Sam Alito. He looks like a stately old gentleman. Yeah, yep. The mayor's also got cats out of the shanty.

We were having a tropical system, and there was a tree stump drifting in the storm, and there was four kittens hanging onto it. I guess they came from the island. But I went out and picked them up, and they've been here ever since. And they're a conservative group. It's Sam Alito and John Roberts, Condi Rice, and Coulter. He's been working from this spot since he graduated from high school in 1976. The building is about the size of a one-car garage,

and it's perched on pilings in the harbor. He points to those pilings and says the high watermark is right where it's always been. and that's why he doesn't believe that climate change is causing the sea level to rise. We've had people coming for years about the erosion problem here. I had a lady that told me, mayor, whether you believe in climate change and sea level rise or not, go along with it because you may get funding to save your island. Who told you that? Some lady, some lady told me, you know, just visiting.

She was in the government. And that's all I'm going to say about that. She said, go along with it, go along with it, and you may get the funding you need because that's the argument of today. And I did a couple interviews after that, and I would mention sea level rise and climate change in it. And I felt real dirty and so. So I stopped doing it. I said, I can't do it. I don't believe it.

I don't believe it. I can't do it. I spoke with a scientist named David Schulte, who studied the impacts of climate change on Tangier Island. And he confirmed to me that the water level is rising in the Chesapeake and that it's forecast to rise up to two feet within this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. At its highest point, Tangier Island is only four feet above sea level.

Scientists say a seawall all around the island would make it more likely that people could be living there into the next century, but it would cost at the very least $30 million. and maybe into the hundreds of millions. It's a huge amount of money to us, but to the government, it's not a lot of money. Myself and President Trump are on the same page when he talks about America first.

I believe in helping folks out all around the world, and we should do that, but we're right here, 50 miles from D.C., and we need help. It looked like that help might be on its way this summer when Donald Trump called the mayor. A news spot had gone. gone out about how 90% of the islanders voted for Trump. And Eskrit said he loved the new president like a member of his own family. Sure enough, he gave me a call Monday afternoon.

How long was the call? What did you guys talk about? Maybe 10 or 12 minutes. He thanked me under town for our support. And we discussed sea level rise. President Trump and myself we're on the same page. We don't see the sea level rise is a threatening thing. I mean, myself, I don't see it happening. The changes that I'm seeing, I believe, a lot of the changes are just natural. Cycles, ups and downs.

I mean, myself and Donald Trump talked about that. He said, you know, Tans, you've been here for hundreds of years and it'll be here for hundreds of more. It's not clear what Trump meant with his reassurance that Tangier Island will be here hundreds of years from now. And there's been no follow-up since that call. But when we got out about it, Eskridge did hear from other people. Folks on the island were very excited.

But some folks on the mainland, you know, some folks were not very happy with the day. We got some hate mail and phone calls. They called him at home, at his wife's business, and at the town office. There were messages saying the people of Tangier were stupid for voting. for Donald Trump. And some people said they hoped the islanders would drown. But those letters and phone calls weren't the only fallout. Later that week, Stephen Colbert brought it up on his show.

Their mayor believes there is a solution to coastal erosion. They need a jetty or perhaps even a sea wall around the entire island and that Trump will cut through red tape and get them that wall. Yes, Trump is going to get them that wall and then make the ocean pay for it. Stephen Colbert. Stephen Colbert completely blew us off. That's all right. I was mentioned on Stephen Colbert publicity.

I don't mind it. Although he shrugs it off, Escortes has stepped into a hornet's nest of politics about climate change and the new president. But there is one thing that the mayor and more, Cameron and the scientists, can all agree on. Oh, yeah, if we were to get a hurricane to come in and get like a 130-mall wind, like the got in parts of Texas, yeah, it would wipe out the whole harbor here and probably a good chunk of the island. After the storm, Eskridge and Cameron take the two juvenile Osprey back to their nest. Then they stop at the north end of the island to check out what the storms done to the coastline.

There used to be other towns up here, Oyster Creek, Cannon, Rubentown. There used to be farms and houses and cemeteries. They're all long gone. Cameron comes up here to look for arrowheads that are left behind from when native. of Americans hunted here. But now, more land has been lost and lost, and it's just bringing up stuff.

Like, foundations of houses up on cannon. Cascets will come out. Caskets? Past people have been buried. When I was up their arrowhead, and I was walking, where the graveyard used to be, looking around,

and I was standing on a casket. I saw the frame of the casket, then I looked down, and I saw the bottom. body. But I could see the ring on her finger. I could tell it was a woman. I was young and I had never saw a body before. And that wasn't a very pretty way to see it. But it was hard to take in. Cameron's finishing high school this year. He wants to go to college. And then he wants to live and work here on the island. And if we do wash away, I'm really not going to have that hometown

anymore to come to. Everybody knows everybody. He builds memories upon those people. I know every single person on the island. I know where to leave, who are related to, their animals, their vehicles. It's harder for a person who doesn't live here to think about it because they're not really living it. It's only natural that you'd want to save your community. They say it's not enough people, but they say, you know, just leave the island and start over, but that's not easy to do, just abandon your home and your business. When I talk about saving Tangier Island, I'm not just talking about saving the island or the land, I'm talking about saving the people, our way of life and our culture.

Eskridge points out a big white cross that he's planted in the harbor. God is life is written on it. Some folks say even without a seawall, they said if God is finished with Tangier, then there's nothing going to keep us here. But if he still has work for us to do, then nothing can take us away from here. It's a helpful way to accept having to leave your home. And some folks, you know, some folks, if we didn't get the help we need, some folks would probably, you know, abandon the island eventually and move to the mainland.

But myself and some more, you know, we're going to stay here as long as possible. James Eskridge, the mayor of Tangier, Virginia, along with Carolyn Korman and Sarin, in 2017. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for this week. Thanks so much for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.