The New Yorker Radio Hour - Daniel Radcliffe Gets His Facts Straight, and Pennsylvania’s Pipeline Politics

Episode Date: October 26, 2018

The actor Daniel Radcliffe is on Broadway in a new play called “The Lifespan of a Fact”—perhaps the first-ever work of theatre in which a fact checker is a starring role. Radcliffe’s character is obsessive about his work, and he becomes locked in combat with a writer whose methods are unorthodox.  To get a taste of what fact-checking is really like, Radcliffe got lessons from Peter Canby and Parker Henry of The New Yorker, and then had to check a short piece himself: a review of a Mexican restaurant. Fact and opinion, he quickly learned, are not as easily separated as a layman might think. And in Pennsylvania, the reporter Eliza Griswold follows the route of a pipeline that carries fracking by-products through the back yards of some unhappy voters who think both parties are to blame. 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.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and on today's episode, Daniel Radcliffe, who stars as a fact-checker in a new play on Broadway, gets trained for the role by the crack fact-checking team at the New Yorker. That's just ahead. But we're going to start by taking a look at the elections that are just days away. The midterm elections are often said to be a referendum on the presidency, and that's never been more true than this year in the era of Donald Trump. At the same time, no matter where you live, there are also other issues on your mind as a voter, local stuff that has maybe nothing to do with whether you watch Fox or CNN or even how you feel about Donald Trump.

Reporter Eliza Griswold has been spending a lot of time following races in the state of Pennsylvania, and what she found is that for voters across a wide, swath of the state. The thing that's foremost on people's minds is a gas pipeline. It's already under construction, and it goes through a lot of people's backyards, and they're really unhappy about it. One of the communities Eliza visited was Exton, Pennsylvania, in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Axton is a place where two tectonic plates in American politics meet. We saw Pennsylvania go narrowly for Donald Trump in 2016, and the Philadelphia suburbs are one of those places that political consultants like to talk about as kind of a bellwether. Although the larger county went for Hillary

Clinton, Exent is heavily Republican. About two-thirds of its voters are Republicans. Danielle Frail Otten is running as a Democrat for State Assembly, and she thinks she has a chance. We're going rogue. We're on a leafy suburban street. There are colonial houses which are made of brick and sided with vinyl. It's a middle-class place. How are you guys? And Danielle is going door to door. She's a suburban mom of two kids under the age of five, and she works in marketing. Have you heard about me running for office, Danielle? I see your signs are running. Yeah, you do? Okay. Well, I actually live right on Devon Drive, and I decide to run because for the last five years, our neighbors here have been dealing with this. She's pointing to a long stretch of orange

plastic fencing that marks the beginning of a controversial pipeline, which is supposed to be buried about 40 feet behind all the houses on this street. And fighting the pipeline for the last few years is what motivated Danielle to launch a novices campaign for the Pennsylvania State House, taking on a Republican opponent and the establishment in her own party. There are one, two, three, four, five, six rows of pipes. It's within probably 50 feet of my backyard, like 70 feet from my house. and we're standing right now 10 feet from playground that my neighbor's kids, my kids play on. What are your greatest fears, Danielle, with the pipeline? I mean, how does it impact, how do your fears about it impact your life?

It's horrible to think about it a couple weeks ago. A pipeline exploded in Beaver County in Pennsylvania. It was a Snoco pipeline, and it was only a week old. And so I actually was taking a nap in the afternoon shortly after that happened, and I, like, jumped out of my bed because I had this nightmare of, like, my baby's, like, burning in their bed. And I called them, and I said, John, we have to move. Like, we have to move. We can't stay here. And, like, thankfully, in Beaver County, there were only 30 homes within a mile of that explosion.

and the closest family was 500 feet away, and they escaped with their life, but their home is destroyed. Those things seem like national news to most people, but to people like me, that's like reality. So, you know, we're here trying to connect some of the dots between what's going on politically, nationally, as well as on a state level and the pipeline. How do you see the pipeline as relating to national politics? It's just an example of the egregiousness of what's happening on the national level and all of these regulatory rollbacks and how it really affects our daily life and how it can affect anyone. Anyone. Let's put it this way. I never in my life, never in my life thought I would run for office.

Never, never, ever occurred to me. It just wasn't something I ever, like maybe I thought I would run for school board or something, like something small and local when my kids were older and I had a little more time on my hands. But after all of the things we've experienced over the last few years and just the lack of humanity from the people who represent us, it's hard. It makes you feel powerless, but I refuse to be powerless. Danielle's opponent in District 155 is Becky Corbyn, a Republican who's been in office since 2000. I reached Representative Corbyn for an interview, and she sent the following statement.

I have a proven record of standing up to oil and gas companies to ensure the health and safety of our community. Then she listed her opposition to a number of bills, which she said would have rolled back health protections, standards for oil and gas wells, and made it easier for public utilities to use eminent domain. But here's the thing about Pennsylvania politics. both the Republican legislature and the Democratic governor Tom Wolfe have signed off on the pipeline. Fracking has made Pennsylvania the third largest oil and gas producing state in America. And that's brought in a lot of different players, including Sonoco and its parent company energy transfer partners, which owns this pipeline project, the Mariner East. When we build a pipeline, safety is our top priority.

Our highly skilled engineers, environmental scientists, wildlife biologists, and geologists, design our pipelines to follow the safest routes with the smallest environmental footprint possible. ETP is a private corporation, but they were able to use eminent domain to take people's land against their will in order to lay the pipeline. The pipeline moves natural gas liquids from the Marcellus gas fields in the west for 350 miles to the east to Marcus Hook, outside Philly, where it's shipped overseas. We were following the route of the pipeline through Pennsylvania. Our second stop was 100 miles west of Axton in the small town of Blozerville. At Bloom's Gun Shop, we met Ralph and Doris Bloom. Their shop is a small building in a modified garage on their property,

where shotguns are mixed up with pink stun guns. And it's infested with crickets. So 35 years to make this junkie like it is. It ain't going to get any better. It's pretty cold to me. pipeline went right through their property, and they say it had killed their hay and ruined their drinking water. We have no water. We haven't had any drinking water since June of 2017. There's our water behind it that we got back then. That's the way it come out of the spigots. It's black now. And nobody, plain words, gives it shit, accusing my language, get it straight. I went to Eichelberger, which,

is our state senator, three times for help, nothing. I went to Steve Bloom, our representative, I think three times, nothing. The last I went to Bloom, I took him two bottles of this water over and showed him, I have a drink. This is what it is. He actually come out and looked at the damage that they did, and nothing, just don't do nothing. I reached out to Sonoko to comment on issues related to the pipeline, but they didn't respond. Ralph is a registered Republican, but he voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election because he said she would have been good for the gun business.

He and his wife, Doris, gave us a tour of their property on their four-wheelers. We rode up a hill past their house and surveyed their hayfields. So the pipeline comes over that mountain. Over that mountain. We can see where it's clear cut through the trees. Yep.

Comes all the way down through that pasture. Yep. crosses that's road into your land. And it comes up here, and you can see where it is, because there's this high band of, what's it called? Fallgrass, Foxdale. Foxdale. Which is a state invasive weed.

It's not obnoxious. It's invasive. They call it they don't want you to have it. So when you're looking now at the politics that allow for this to happen, right? what do you think needs to change for something like this to stop being able to happen at a political level? I don't know if you can stop it because I think there's too much money involved. It's all big business and the little guy don't matter. We get more people like Emily involved and maybe people do some good.

But, you know, that's only one person for how many hundredters don't care. So Emily Best is running for state representative in District 30, has been held by Republicans for decades, and it's a nearly impossible race for her to win. She manages a farming cooperative. She served in the Peace Corps in West Africa and lived in Guinea. What she saw of extractive industry in Africa

made her fearful of what oil and gas companies would do as they rushed into Pennsylvania. And do you usually get as involved as you're getting? Like, what are you doing to support her? I'm putting up signs, talking to people, printing stories and telling people trying to try and do what it can. It's hard to do out here in the middle of nowhere,

but I got signs up. See, the voting place is right over here. And I've got signs up on my property. I've got signs up on the neighbors. So when they go to vote, maybe they'll see it. I don't know. You know, we don't know. So you've taken on this fight.

It's probably the most active politically you've ever been. Right. Yeah? Do you have hope that it will change? No. But you're doing it anyway. I'm doing it. I'd like to see Emily,

and at least I could talk to her. 70 miles farther on and an hour and a half drive to the west from Bloom's gun shop, we arrived in Huntington. Huntington is a rural community midway between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. Its woods are lined with white pine and shagbar kickery. We came to visit Ellen Gerhardt, a 63-year-old retired special ed school teacher. She was so upset about the pipeline on our property that she'd actually gone to jail over it. She'd stood in front of some heavy machinery to block the equipment from digging on her land, and she'd also poured a noxious cocktail of rancid milk and Tabasco sauce,

as well as laid rotten cat food near where the pipeline workers were working in order to make their jobs uncomfortable. She'd actually gone to jail over that. But she'd recently been released and showed us the ongoing construction from a safe distance. Well, this is still part of our wetland area, so it gets a little boggy and it gets rocky. Okay, we're... So we're fine. Okay.

famous last words, right? The construction has been so controversial and contentious at the Gerhardt's that pipeline workers carry cameras, and they photographed us as we stood by the work site. We're recording right now? This guy has a camera in his hand, has a small video camera camera. That's what they typically use. Alan and her daughter, Elise, had organized what they called Camp White Pine

on the forested part of their property to try to block the pipeline. Through social media, they'd called on other protesters who came with the expertise to set up this sophisticated network of pulleys and zip wires that allowed protesters to harness and clip into the trees to block chainsaws from clearing the woods. At one point, they had six activists sitting in their trees. I spoke with Elise, the daughter, at their kitchen table. Elise, do you think with the election of Trump this makes any difference in this issue?

I mean, I think people find it easy to blame these things on Trump, but Obama was already doing it anyway. And in Pennsylvania, we have a Democratic governor who is watching all this stuff go down. And he watched what happened to us and to everybody else along this line and all the spills and all the contamination of wells and the destruction of the forest and, you know, retired teachers being thrown in jail. And he still talks about how this project is necessary and good, you know. So that's what you get with a Democrat.

You know, people around here just don't, for the most part, don't get involved with politics. A lot of people don't vote because they don't see value in it, because they haven't been valued by those people who have been in those positions of power. So what does it matter? You know, like, I mean, folks down in Southeast PA were able to, like, actually physically meet with the governor over this pipeline. He doesn't give a shit about meeting with us, you know? Like, he's never going to come out here to meet with people. That's just never going to happen.

They don't care about us. They don't even see us. There's a huge gulf between what? people along this pipeline think is possible, how they think politics can actually impact their lives, and it has to do with economics. For the Gerhard's living in isolated in rural Pennsylvania, the idea that a blue wave could save them just doesn't exist. That's politics for CNN, not reality. But for Danielle Fraal-Oten, running for state assembly in the more prosperous suburbs, politics is part of the solution. Danielle would like to see the pipeline stopped. But even if you're

If Democrats took control of the legislature, which is unlikely, there's no guarantee that they would stop it. It's even less likely that the pipeline will change the outcome of Pennsylvania's congressional races and make it a bluer state again. Still, Danielle is playing a long game. Like Democrats all over the country, she's trying to rebuild the party's presence on the ground in local offices and in people's backyards. I don't do it. Like, we talk all the time, I talk all the time about how through my own race, I'm actually identifying people. for next year's municipal elections because the more people

talk to Democrats, the more they vote for Democrats. So I think it's like a ladder, like you're building a ladder. And if you're missing a rung or the rungs on the other side and you can't step up, it's not like you're not going to be successful.

Eliza Griswold reported from Pennsylvania and you can find everything she's written for us at New Yorker.com. Now our coverage of the midterm elections continues next week with Dan Kaufman, who's been reporting from Wisconsin on an electronics plant that was one of Donald Trump's signature promises on the campaign trail.

And the New Yorker's Andy Borowitz will have a rare sit-down with one of his idols, Derek Smalls, the bass player for spinal tap. Don't miss it. Daniel Radcliffe has had a career any actor might envy. He's played an explorer of the Amazon, the poet Alan Ginsberg, and an FBI agent undercover with neo-Nazis. He starred in the drama Equists and the musical How to Succeed in Business without really trying.

And no, I didn't forget it, he was in all 300 Harry Potter movies. Right now, Daniel Radcliffe is in a new play called The Lifespan of a Fact. And this may be the only work of theater ever written to give a leading role to a fact-checker. And in justice, I may say that we are all glad to see rectify. Now, the fact checkers at The New Yorker, I don't want to brag, but they have something of a reputation. So when Radcliffe wanted to get a taste of what fact-checking was really like, it made sense for him to come by the office and try his hand at it. Here's Peter Canby, who runs the fact-checking department.

So Daniel Radcliffe showed up at my office shortly after Tan on a Monday morning, along with Michael Schulman, who writes about theater for The New Yorker. Hi. Hey. Very well. The New Checker. Thank you. And he didn't look unlike a new checker.

And I wondered whether that had something to do with his intense immersion in the play, where he plays a fact checker in a mortal combat with a difficult writer. Because one of the, obviously the sort of the flaws that, well, I don't know, maybe it isn't a flaw, that my character has in the play is he has no ability to differentiate between what one other character calls the things that matter the things that don't, and he sort of gives equal weight to everything. Everything. I mean, so the thing is, people who aren't familiar with fact checking, mostly think things are either fact or opinion,

and we check the facts, and we leave the opinions alone. But to us, the biggest thing that we work on is what I refer to as fact-based opinion. In other words, like, you have to know the underlying facts in order to correctly construct an argument. It's not really a science, it's more kind of an art. it's kind of akin to editing. There are kind of common-sensical judgments that you make. And, of course, that's a sort of squishy ground

to make common-sensical judgments. But, you know, we are journalists. Well, we should show you how to do it, because we have something for you to work on. Oh, my God. I believe you have a phone call schedule with a chef of a Mexican restaurant at 11. Yeah, so you better get trained.

Are you? Yeah, so what, I mean, the plan is... The plan was to have Daniel Bradcliffe check us. short restaurant review at tables for two written by Hannah Goldfield, herself a former checker. She was very pleased to hear you be checking your piece. Yeah, wait until she gets, yeah, okay. And it's a short review of a restaurant, a Mexican restaurant called Oksomoco. When we start a new checker, we sit them down with a manuscript and have them underline it

for what they think is checkable fact and what's not. Would it be right to underline the details from like the ingredients from the meals? Yeah. Jazzed up with Old Bay. What is Old Bay? Old Bay seasoning. It's like a seafood seasoning. Okay.

And she wants you to check that. And that's the kind of thing you could both do off the website and then check with Chef Justin, who your call was set up with at 11. Wow, I'm going to say that wrong. Agua Chile? Agua Chile. I've never heard of that.

A dish similar to Cevici, soupi, Agua Chile. And you also, when there's kind of like a negative of judgment and there you would back off and make it. Yes, yeah, yeah. It's like lava commented one diner, yeah. Or surgery, yeah, well, we won't be telling him this. So it's a Greenpoint restaurant with a Venice Beach aesthetic.

The problem of that is that that's a little, if he says no, it doesn't have a Venice Beach. For some reason, he's offended by that formulation. It's her judgment. So maybe you could just say like a California beach aesthetic. Like, after you're done with this, we'll set up a job interview in case you want to switch careers. I don't know. I think I have a much easier job right now with less pressure. After I saw that Daniel Radcliffe had a good, firm, quick grasp on what was checkable and what was not,

I walked him around the corner to have him work with Parker Henry, another of the checkers, and one of my deputies. Take your time. Good luck. Okay. When you know they just said like anything else type. Um, you'll be smashing at it. So Parker and Daniel went to the Oximoko website where they looked at menus, prices, and photos of the restaurant. Yeah.

Right? Like that looks like California. Yeah. Aren't you, like hang out of California a lot? No, not at all. People this pale don't like. We really don't look good in California. Everyone just constantly assumes I'm ill.

So just because Parker and Daniel think that Oxamoko has a Venice Beach vibe doesn't mean that that's the way the chef at Oxymoko would describe it. Yeah, I don't know. It's a bit of a dig. Oh, is it? Yeah. I don't know what I'm going for this. So I don't know. Oh, so how are you going to fact check this?

You could frame it like you have no idea that it's potentially. potentially evansive. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just play really dumb. Yeah, playing dumb is key. Intentional density. Some of us are just actually dense. Um, okay.

Our 11 o'clock call is fast approaching. Okay. I mean, we could do it on speakerphone in the library, on my cell phone. Should we do that? Yeah. That might be better. Hi, Justin.

I'm Dan called at The New Yorker. I'm wondering if you had a few minutes to answer some questions about There's a review of your restaurant and I'm just trying to fact check it and make sure everything's accurate. Yes, of course. Yes, that's up. So, first off, your surname, is that spelled B-A-Z-D-A-R-C-H? Correct.

Great. And then I'm just checking, I'm sure you do, but does the restaurant serve guacamole? Yes. Fantastic. The tempura shrimp, I'll write. is estimated that that might have been, had old bay seasoning as an ingredient. Is that... No, no.

Is brunch at your place, which by the way sounds fantastic, and I did particularly like the brunch menu looks amazing. Is brunch served seven days a week? Yes. That's great news for the accuracy of this and for me. Oh yeah, and would it be correct to say that you've sort of got a... you know, a very light sort of California-e feel inside, sort of summary feel. Sorry, yes. I'm an English person who has not been to Mexico, so that was my first frame of reference.

As a fact-checker, I have to point out that it turns out that Daniel Radcliffe actually had been to Mexico. That's great, Justin, thank you very much for being so helpful and so patient with me. You're welcome. Awesome. Have a great day. He's terrified about what we've written. What we've written. and we got to the bottom of the old bay

and we got to the bottom of lime and shillip flakes now we know that was revel in the race that's my that's my that's my walk gate um so yeah yeah you're the carlburtsina

um the carlburntz on tables of tables uh Daniel did a great job as a fact checker I'm going to offer him a job when he's done with the play that's great nothing I do today will be harder than that um

I would get really stressed out doing that all the time. Daniel Radcliffe, he's starring in the lifespan of a fact on Broadway, and we heard from Peter Canby, Parker Henry, and Michael Shulman. And you can read Michael's story about Radcliffe's visit at New Yorker.com. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, and that's it for today. Thanks for joining us. 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 Quar. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Rianning Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Fralman, Callalia, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Emily Mann, Richard Ye and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.