The New Yorker Radio Hour - Barbra Streisand on “The Secret of Life”

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Barbra Streisand has been a huge presence in American entertainment—music, film, and stage—for more than sixty years. She was the youngest person ever to achieve the EGOT, winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards by the age of twenty-seven. At eighty-three years old, Streisand is releasing a new album, “The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume 2.” It’s a collection of duets featuring Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, and Seal, along with younger artists including Hozier, Sam Smith, and Ariana Grande. Streisand sat down with David Remnick to talk about the record and the history behind it. Bob Dylan, for one, apparently had a crush on the singer from afar. “We were both nineteen years old in Greenwich Village, never met each other,” Streisand says. “I remember him sending me flowers and writing me a card in different color pencils, like a child’s writing, you know. And ‘Would you sing with me?’ And I thought, What would I sing with him?” Streisand talks with Remnick about her complicated childhood with her mother, who was jealous of her talent; her dislike of live performance; and the classy way to rebuff a come-on from Marlon Brando.  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.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Hi, sorry to be a little late. Not at all. How are you? Oh, my God. How am I? Hmm. Do you recognize that, boys? Sure you do.

Okay, let me see here. How about if I just do that? Is that okay? Poifte. Pfect. What song was that that I did that? I think you said poifick. more than once in your career.

For 60 years, Barbara Streisand has been a huge presence on the American scene. Singing at first in nightclubs when she was a teenager, she went on to conquer, Broadway, and Hollywood. Streisand was not a stand-up comedian, but she was and remains hilarious with a personality to match her talent. There's a string of first attached to her name. For one thing, she's the youngest person ever to achieve the egot. She was just 28, when she was just 28.

she had already received the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, and the Tony. With the movie Yentel, she became the first woman to star, direct, write, and produce a major studio movie. Anyway, you're interesting. Well, thank you. But you're not so bad yourself. No, I'm interesting. I got to tell you, I read your book. I loved it. What's it like to finish a memoir that's that ambitious, that complete? Is it a satisfying thing to go back over your life from beginning to its most recent days?

What's it like emotionally? No, emotionally it was a pain in the ass. I mean, the point is I knew I should, you know, for the ages, for the next millennium, I should have a review of my life. but for years and years I thought about it but never did it, you know. Was it painful? Yeah, it was. What was painful about it?

Oh, just thinking at my life growing up without a father. And a father who was completely wonderful, I hear, I read. Your father was an academic who was gone by the time you were one or two. right? Fifteen months old, yeah. So his death was like, it remained a mystery to you when you were growing up

and even when you were writing the book? Yeah, yeah, because I, as I said in the book, you know, I would ask my mother, why didn't you speak about him? Why didn't you tell me about my father? Reading about he's so interesting. He was interested in sports and education.

You know, he was an intellectual but he was also, you know, an adventurer. And your mother is portrayed in this book as a very difficult presence. Withholding doesn't begin to describe it. Yeah. I think, you know, I always thought growing up that my mother was jealous of me because she wanted to be famous. She wanted to be known as a great...

singer. Did you, by the process of writing this book, feel that you came to understand your mother better or to reconcile with her in some way, or is that really out of reach? Yes, I feel, I feel pathos now for my mother. I feel like I'm so sorry that she couldn't fulfill her dreams. My mother once told me she would stand with a broom and make believe it's a microphone. Or she went with her sister to interview at the Metropolitan Opera, but she was too scared to sing. Or, you know, she didn't want to travel from Brooklyn to go there. There was always some excuse. But did she ever get any nachus from your own success, or that was impossible?

No. That was hard for her. But I mean, I've grown to, after that understanding of my mother, I feel sad. I feel sad for her, not angry anymore. It's a sadness that she was unfulfilled. She did have a lovely voice, a soprano voice. a soprano voice, very different than mine, but a very pretty voice. And her father would sing in the shul sometimes. So, in other words, it's in the DNA, I think, in the vocal cords, you know?

So much so that the way you describe it, you began singing, you had maybe one lesson. But it was like you emerged from Zeus's head with that voice. We hear it on your debut, the Barbara Streisand album. And there is the Barbara Streisand voice fully formed. You're lonely. You cry the long night. Well, you can cry. Cry me a river.

I cried a river over you. Is that accurate to say? Well, yeah, because the apartment building I lived in in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, had a beautiful sound in the lobby. I love the sound, the echo. I love the echo in that lobby. five years old, you know, five, six years old. And so I would sometimes sing in that lobby with nobody there. I never would sing around anybody. But, and to this day, you know, I'm very sensitive to the sound of the music that I'm recording. Tell me about this record of duets.

this is something that Sinatra did in his time. You've done a version of it in, I think, 2014, an album of duets with other performers. Is it accomplished by two people in the studio together, or do you send audio files back and forth? It depends. I mean, I like to just sing alone, actually. I mean, I did with Paul McCartney because we were filming it,

but I had already, I went into the studio and did a couple of renditions of it, and that's what we played, even though I sang live in the studio. With fall? Yeah, I just sang again. But, you know, I liked my original one, but a line from here and a line from there, whatever. singing with him, so it really doesn't matter. It's very easy to sing a song you like. So in 1971, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to one of his friends, Tony Glover, and he said that he had written Lay Lady Lay about you. And then in 1978, you had an exchange, I think an exchange.

of letters or flowers or something like that. Right, right, right. And then in 2025, many years later, you do this recording together. Had you been talking with him, communicating with him, the idea of doing something together? Well, my representatives tried to speak to him, I guess. You know, the fun thing is, is that we were both 19 years old in Greenwich Village, never met each other. I was at the Bonne Soir, and he was playing the guitar somewhere else.

So I remember him sending me flowers and writing me a card in different color pencils, like a child's writing. And would you sing with me? And I thought, what would I sing with him? How could we get together on this? I couldn't understand it, you know, at that time. But it was sure wonderful to have picked a song, the very thought of you, that it was actually my manager's favorite song that I never sang over 60 years of being with him.

I sang it for his 80th birthday where I gave him a party in my backyard. But that was it. And Bob loved that song. It was a wonderful experience because he's very shy and like I am. But he was wonderful to work with. I mean, I was told you better not, he didn't want any, you know, direction. But when I talked to him about things that I suggested, you know, he was so pliable. He was so open to suggestions.

I mean, everything I heard about him just went out the window. You know, he stood on his feet for three hours. with me. Does work mean something different to you at this stage of your life than it did when you were 30, 40, 50 years old? Is it something that you're as obsessed with as ever, or is it something quite different? Hmm. I never thought of that.

It seemed like just great to record with people I trust. I was so shocked and happy that my voice was there and I was hitting those high notes and that I walked into the room after I sang that first take and everybody was applauding and I was kind of, you know, dazzled by their reaction. Is it there every day or is it some days it's there and some days it's not? No, it was there.

Every day I went into that. studio. So would you perform again after the 2014 album? You did a round of live performances at a bunch of big places, Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and so on. And you've said more recently that you don't love performing live, certainly as much as you might have years ago. No, I, you know, I never really enjoyed, well, maybe when I was 19, I kind of got a kick out of it, because I would just say anything on my mind and, you know, pick songs that were interesting to me to act as an actress because I never wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be an actress. So I looked for material that I could act, you know, from Broadway plays and to be silly, you know, singing who's

afraid of the big bad wolf. You know, I was open to the audience and talking to them, whatever I was doing, was just about being in the moment, you know, things that I was experiencing in acting class. It was never to be a singer. It was to be an actress. So they were fun times, but I could stand in a little club like the bauxois. I didn't have to move. Now, the only problem I have would be because my back hurts. Right.

You know what I mean? And I've always had a bad back. So it's not just age. It's a... I was born with a fusion between my sacrum and my L5 or whatever they told me. And I don't like needles, so I've never had that. Oh, I've had the needle. Can I tell you something?

Yeah, tell me. Works. Oh, yeah. You had a cortisone shot, you mean? Like after the shot, they give you a little... cup of ginger ale and a cookie and I was weeping like a baby with gratitude. It worked so well. What was the name of your doctor? I swear to God, I'll send it to you. Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? The big bad wolf. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Free

medical advice plus Barbara Streisand. We'll continue in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm speaking today with Barbara Streisand. Barbara Streisand is 83 and she's releasing a new album. Her office. I have no idea what number this is by now. I lost count at a million. But it is an album of duets, and it features Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Seal,

and younger artists, including Sam Smith, Ariana Grande, and Tim McGraw. The album is called The Secret of Life, Partners, Volume 2. And I also wanted to talk about Stricane's recent memoir,

which is called, wait for it, my name is Barbara, because if you've been a star as long as Strican has, the anecdotes pile up and up. Let me ask you about memory. One of the most fascinating aspects of this book

is the sheer power of memory. I know you used a researcher, but there are some things that researchers can't tell you. For example, you have a meeting with Marlon Brando, which is just hilarious. And you write about three hours

into the conversation, he looked into my eyes and he said, I'd like to fuck you. I was taken it back, you say. That sounds awful, I said. After a moment of thought, he said, okay, then I'd like to go to a museum with you. And you say, now that's very romantic.

I'd like that. That's exactly right. I guess you can't forget that if that's what happened with Marlon Brando. But then possibly the greatest line in the whole book, to my mind, is you say, you can't remember if you slept with Warren Beatty. Now, I don't think anyone has ever written that line in history. In the history of sex or Hollywood or anything. I know I slept in the bed with him.

But I can't remember if we actually had penetration. I swear to God, I can't. There are certain things I block out. I didn't think I would ever say this in my entire life, but it might be that I'm calling bullshit on Barbara Streisand. Is that possible? You're calling what? I'm calling BS on that.

You can't remember. No, that's right. Well, I'll bet he remembers one. I can, but I know we're still friends. And every year on my birthday, he calls me. And we have a wonderful talk about our lives and our children and so forth. You know, so we're still friends. I met him when I was 15 years old.

And he was 21, I think. Wow. Wow. Now, I happen to know that there's a big, apparently there's a big running. offer on the table for you from Scott Rudin and Barry Dealer who've been dying for you to do gypsy on Broadway. How do you know that? You know, I'm a reporter. Oh my God.

But why would I ever do anything on the stage again like that? I mean, it was horrifying. I mean, I liked, you know, I loved the rehearsal process. I loved learning, you know, every day and experimenting and all that. Would you do a film version of Gypsy, something like that, where it's not as physically taxing? That's what I wanted to do. I had the script. I talked to Stephen Sondheim.

I had it all down in my head, the musical numbers even. I had it in my head, what I wanted to do with it. And unfortunately, and it was my one squabble with Stephen was that he said you can direct it or star in it, but I don't want you to do both at the same time, even though I did it three times before. Yeah, Stephen Sondam, right? Yeah, he just never really wanted to have it made again.

I said, but the other one with, and he knew he knew he and Arthur Lerner, Lawrence hated the first time it was made with Rosalind Russell, who couldn't sing, and they mixed up the play. I wanted to bring back more of the play because Arthur wrote a brilliant play. But I had musical ideas and so forth. It was such a sadness to me that I could never end my career like bookends, you know. Let's make some news here. Are you saying it's now still a possibility? No, I can't because of my back. Even a film. Oh, a film. A film, you know, I thought I could play it because I happened to look young for my age. Damn straight.

Which I like. I like it. But that's interesting about, you know, making Yentel into a musical because this is interesting for me because I love spirituality and, miracles, you know, little miracles. So I hadn't been to see my father's grave ever. Where is he buried? In Long Island, in a cemetery in Long Island. And I didn't even notice at the time until my brother,

who had taken a picture of me standing there, sent me the picture. And in a week, I looked and saw that, Oh my God, the tombstone next to my father's. I was wondering whether to make Yentel into a musical or not, you know. And there on the next tombstone, right next to my father's, was the name Anshel. And Anshel is a very, it's not like the rest of the people in the, you know, in the cemetery, it was, you know, Moisha and or Robert or Sam or whatever.

Ansel? I never saw that. That's the name in Isaac Singer's book that Yentel changes her name to as to be a boy, to be a man. Now, what is that? That gave me the sign to make Yentel a musical. Papa, can you hear me? But can you see me? But can you find me?

Are you near me? So there are things in my life that are like that. Do you listen to music all day long? Never. You never listen to music. No. Why? I don't know.

I just don't feel like it. I don't know. You know, if I listen to music, I like callus or somebody like that, you know. Maria Callas. Yeah. I rarely ever do. I mean, my husband always puts on the radio and then I shut it off or I listen to. Yeah.

You sound like you really hated, not hated, but well, hated performing. It made you, didn't make you happy at all. No, that's right. I did not like performing. Yeah. If I saw one person in the audience in the front, like. Like not applauding, I thought, what's wrong? What didn't he like? Did that ever happen?

Once. And I bet you remember the date. Oh, God, I remember that his feet wouldn't touch the floor. He was very short, obviously. Yeah, hell with him. And I thought, I was so curious as, why would you sit in the front? row and not applaud. Did you not like the song? I was fascinated. You know, did you not like the way I looked, sounded? What? What was it? Why wouldn't you? I mean, just out of kindness, out of niceness. No, I don't. I don't remember the song. I just remember looking at him,

it turned out to be one of my old writers from the early days when I first started to sing, in shows, you know, was it in the 1970s? I want to ask you this. When you're doing a record or a movie or something when you're in your 30s or 40s, I assume you're still ambition is part of the picture. Do you feel that at this stage of life, you are beyond ambition

and there's a different approach to whatever project that you decide to take up? Well, I don't know if I want to do anything that's called a project. I'm really enjoying the secret of life, you know. Can you tell us what that is? I love my grandchildren. I love family. I craved to have a family, you know.

I love my son, you know, where closer than we ever were. Do you ever hear his voice? I haven't. Oh, you should hear his voice. He has a magical voice. We did a duet together too. Barbara Streisand, thank you so much. It's just such a pleasure talking with you.

Oh, it's nice to talk to you, and I've always enjoyed your writing. Well, thank you. Yeah, it's wonderful. And I'll get you that doctor's name. Do I love you? Barbara Streisand is Barbara Streisand. Her new album is called The Secret of Life, including duets with Bob Dylan, Ariana Grande, Tim McGraw, and a slew of others.

I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening. I hope you'll join us 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 Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters,

Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.