The New Yorker Radio Hour - Episode One: Boarding Call

Episode Date: October 23, 2015

In The New Yorker Radio Hour’s début episode, the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, speaks with Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of “Between the World and Me,” about the profound influence of James Baldwin on his writing and why he’ll always be wary of optimism. Jill Lepore, a staff writer at The New Yorker, introduces us to a childhood friend who was one of the only people of color in their small New England town. This is the first part of a three-part story, “The Search for Big Brown.” Kelefa Sanneh, who is also a staff writer, takes a day trip to a suburb of Philadelphia to visit Spraynard, a pop-punk band. Most of their friends have moved into the city, but the members of Spraynard stayed to try to create a punk scene in their home town. Boarding a plane just got even more chaotic in a Shouts & Murmurs written by George Meyer and performed by Allison Williams, from “Girls,” that imagines a farcical airport scene. And Evan Osnos, who writes about Washington for the magazine, talks about sexism in politics with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York. 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.

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and thanks for joining us for this our very first episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour. Welcome to an experiment. Each week we're going to bring you stories, profiles, and humor, all of it inspired somehow by The New Yorker magazine. And it will all come from the writers, artis and editors who work here at our offices at One World Trade Center.

This won't be a mere audio version of the magazine or the website. It will be its own thing alive to the possibilities of the medium. Starting the magazine in 1925 was an adventure of discovery. We hope this will be too. So we began the hour with a George Meyer sketch called The Privileged Few. It was performed by Alison Williams from HBO's Girls. But now I want to turn to the author of one of the most important, important books of the year. Tanahasi Coates is a correspondent for the Atlantic magazine,

and he's been writing about the persistence of racism in this country. His book Between the World and Me is written as a letter to his teenage son. After reading the book, Tony Morrison compared Coates to no less than James Baldwin, the great essayist and novelist whose work helped shape the civil rights movement. Just recently, Tanahasi moved his family to Paris for a year, following in the footsteps of James Baldwin, who became an emigre in France in the 1940s. I sat down with Tanahasi before he left the country to talk about Baldwin and his influence.

I just wonder if we could start by your describing how you came to Baldwin and the effect it had on you. Sure. It's an interesting thing. So my first memory of Baldwin is being a child, James Baldwin books all over my house. My dad is very, you know, Libelophile love books, particularly collected books, buying about African Americans, Black Aspre. But, you know, I was a huge Malcolm X fan as a young man, and I heard a speech by Malcolm called Message to the Grassroots,

in which he gives a kind of a counter history of the March on Washington, his perspective on the March on Washington. And he had a line in there, and he said they wouldn't let Jimmy Baldwin up. They were talking about the roster of speakers because they didn't know what the hell he was going to say. And I knew Baldwin's name them, but that struck me. And it was like, oh, this Baldwin guy, he must be a little wild. Like, he must be a kind of out there. You know, and I didn't read any James Baldwin. And then I would come across him when I was reading the histories and things like that.

And I don't know why I picked up the fire next time. I think the title is attractive. And I sat up in Founders Library. I picked a book up, and I read it in one straight sitting. And I didn't really understand it. I mean, I got it, but I had this emotional response to it. That happens sometimes when you behold a piece of art. I guess it happens a lot, and you can't quite decipher it, but you know that you feel something.

And I felt something tremendous from it. I held that memory for a very, very long time. And you don't know why you do these things. But recently, I'm talking about 2012, 2013. I went back to him. I had that thick volume, the price of a ticket, which was at that time his collected nonfiction. And he had an essay and then Negroes are in. anti-Semitic because they are anti-white. He was a very, very, you know, a staunch integrationist,

but he had the kind of hard-edged pragmatism, I would say, as crazy as that sounds, they are always associated with nationalism. He had this view of power. You know, he wasn't clear that everything was going to end well, that everything was going to be okay. And he didn't do this sort of hubbub about how, you know, blacks and Jews were natural allies and, you know, this sort of, you know, overly sentimental thing. You know, he wasn't really in it. At the same time, essay wasn't cynical. He just made this case that, listen, when Jews came to this country, they became white. And that's the dominant nature of the, that's the dominant nature of the relationship between black and white people. And that essay, like, hit me so hard. You know what I mean?

And I think it hit me hard because it was cutting. There's a way where you can be true, where you can, you know, get that kind of, um, hard-ed spirit that you feel out of nationalism and still, you know, have a very, very, you know, serious look at the world and a humanistic, you know, if you were the world. I got that from ball. And then I didn't read a Baldwin essay for about 10 years. So in almost every standard collection of the fire next time, it's preceded by a shorter essay called My Dungeon Shook, which is a letter from Baldwin to his nephew

on the 100th anniversary of emancipation. And it begins, it has a passage that goes like this. I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know which is much worse. And this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen. And for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.

It is innocence which constitutes the crime. I have to say when I read that, it goes to your biggest themes. Yeah. The link between you and Baldwin is deep and thematic and uses the same figures in a way. It is. To me, like the most powerful part of it is the innocence which constitutes the crime. You know, I mean, that, that just hit me so hard. It is the desire, the attempt to not know.

You know, it's like one thing to do something or to be a part of a group, a society, you know, a country, a state that does something, but then to pretend like you didn't do it, to pretend like you're fine, you're clean. And what are the structures of white innocence in that sense? Well, I mean, let's just go with the obvious one. I mean, we can talk more complicated than this, but the obvious one is we just saw with the Confederate flag. I mean, that's what the Confederate flag actually is when people stand up and say, no, this is heritage, not hate. Standing in defiance against the history of how that flag was used after the Civil War, standing in defiance of why Alabama raised that flag over the Capitol in 1962.

No, we're just innocent. We're just, you know, we're just in the heritage. We have heritage not hate. I mean, that is the most profound. I mean, there are others, but that is the most profound example of it, I think. Do you feel any burden in this comparison from somebody like Tony Morrison? No. None.

You're 39, 40? 39, I'll be 40 this year. But you don't feel it's a sense of weight. I'm not going to be Baldwin. I'm not, that's not going to happen. You know, I told somebody, James Baldwin is the James Baldwin of this generation. That's not going to happen. And I don't think that's what she was saying. You know, I think other people kind of saw that and heard that.

But I don't think that's what she was saying. I think she was saying there's a way of looking at the world that's been missing for her. And when she read the book, she saw that. I am deeply, deeply honored by that. I'm motivated by it, you know, to try to live up to it. I don't feel weighted by it. Tana Hasey, I want to go to a remarkable interview that I've watched and listened to. I don't know how many times on YouTube.

Kenneth Clark interviewing James Baldwin, and it's a voice that I thought we should hear and have you react to. Jim, what do you see deep in the recesses of your own mind? as the future of our nation. And I ask that question in that way, because I think that the future of the Negro and the future of the nation are linked. They're insoluble.

Now, what do you see? Are you essentially optimistic or pessimistic, and I really don't want to put words in your mouth because what I really want to find out is what you really believe? Well, I'm both glad and sorry you ask me that question. I'll do have best to answer it. I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. So I'm supposed to be an optimist.

But the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people and our representatives. It is entirely up to the American people. whether or not they're going to face and deal with and embrace this stranger when they malign so long. What white people have to do is try to find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place.

Because I'm not a nigger. I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it. The question you've got to ask yourself, the white population of this country has got to ask itself. North and south, because it's one country, it's one country and for a Negro, there's no difference in the north and the south. There's just no difference in the way they, in a way they castrate you. But that's, but the fact of the castration is the American fact. If I'm not a nigger here and you invented him, you, the white people invented him,

then you got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that, whether or not it's able to ask that question. Yeah, it's interesting because I get asked by a lot of people. I'm optimistic or pessimistic. I don't know that I'm either. The polls of optimism and pessimism feel... False? Yeah, and almost unnecessary from the perspective of a writer.

You know, I'm here to sort of observe. I can't tell you what's going to happen, you know, 20, 20 or 30 years. I can tell you what I see right now and what I think. Are things the same as they were when this interview with James Baldwin took place? No, they're better. They're better. But the problem is, I mean, but see, that lures us into like the trap of sort of, inevitable progress.

We conclude that because, you know, things, you know, have been progressively gotten better over the past 250 years that things are necessarily better. But let's take it even in the grand sense. I mean, think about the explosion of violence that World War II represents. Like, when we think about history in general, certainly, you know, one could think about, you know, a sense of inevitable progress right up until, you know, Hitler's army's storm in the Czechoslovakia.

But things go backwards and things can go backwards really, really quickly. It doesn't mean I believe they'll go backwards. That means I hope they go back with. But I think like the notion of failure needs to be present in the mind. You know, the notion of success is not guaranteed. And that's part of your job as a writer. Yeah, I feel like that right now, particularly because of where African-American popular philosophy is right now. I think for at least for the past 50 years, the guiding idea has been the moral arc of the universe is long but bends towards justice.

And I just totally disagree with that, you know. And I- Temperamentally? historically. Both, I think. Because you can't allow yourself to think. Well, no, I just feel like it's kind of disrespectful. The evidence is against it. Like if you, you know, was somebody who was taken to Auschwitz and killed, your arc ended right there. You died. It didn't bend towards justice and bended towards injustice. The arc of your particular history ended right there. Eric Garner's arc ended, you know, on that, you know, concrete where he was choked out on that street. That's it.

That's it. And I know some, you know, people, they say, well, we mean the bigger sense. But see, I think you ought to be profoundly respectful for that individual. I didn't individual is not going to be around to see that bigger sense. Donozy, this other clip touches on a theme that you've been involved with as a writer and as a reporter for quite some time, and I think still are. It has to do with incarceration. Now, there are 20 million people in this country. He's talking here about the black population in the 1960s. And you can't put them all in jail. I know how my nephew feels. I know how I feel. I know how the cats in the barbershop feel. A boy last week, he was 16 in San Francisco told me, I got no country. I've got no flag. He's only 16 years old. And I couldn't say you do. I don't have any evidence to prove that he does.

They were tearing down his house because the San Francisco is engaging, as most of the cities now are engaged in something called urban renewal, which means moving the Negroes out. That is what it means. And the federal government is an accomplice to this fact. Now this, we're talking about human beings. There's not such a thing as a monolithic wall or, you know, some abstraction called a Negro problem. These Negro boys and girls who had 16 and 17 don't believe the country means anything that it says and don't feel they have any place here

on the basis of the performance of the entire country. Tonasi, Baldwin here is talking to his 16-year-old in 1963. You wrote this book for your son Samari when he was 15. Does Samari have a country in your view? Yeah, yeah. And I don't think he would say that. You know, God forbid I speak for him, but I don't think he would say that. Yeah, he does.

I actually think that's the really terrible part about it. You do have a country. You know, I think like during the 60s, there were people who thought that we could divorce ourselves from this, but we can't. We've been here for so long. It would be nice if we could separate ourselves. What do you mean to be nice if we could separate ourselves? Well, I mean, you know, again, like coming from a nationalist background, I mean, that's the dream of nationalism. You know, I was the dream of Malcolm X that we could separate ourselves.

that we could divorce ourselves from what this was. Do you want that? Do I want that? I don't know. I guess I don't think about it in those terms. I mean, no, no, because I don't think, I don't know that things would be any better. I mean, we might set up our own country and be just as brutal or more brutal or God knows what we would do, you know? And then I would be forced to, you know, be on the side of those who were opposing that country.

You know what I mean? Like the fact that I am within a black struggle within a black tradition right now has everything to do. with the power dynamic. And if you shifted the power dynamic, you know, like I don't have loyalty to my skin. You know, there's no, you know, particular thing about people being colored a certain way that ties me to something.

They have loyalty to certain traditions, to heritage, culture, you know, that I feel a certain way about. And ultimately, in terms of the politics, toward a particular struggle, but that struggle really is for justice. I mean, if the power dynamic changed, my role would change.

We've talked about your decision to move to France to Paris. How much of it for you has a resonance because of James Baldwin, Richard Wright? Baldwin once wrote, through this deliberate isolation through lack of numbers, and above all, through his own overwhelming need to be, as it were, to be forgotten. The American Negro in Paris is very nearly the invisible man. What meaning does this year have for you? That's fascinating. You read that because in general, when people have asked me that question,

I say it has no relation to Baldwin. You know, when I wasn't thinking about Baldwin at all. You know, I hope to drink some good wine, eat some good cheese, some good bread. Those are my – that's the uppermost in my mind. But, you know, it's interesting. Paris was the first place that anybody actually ever called me a nigger. That happened to January's woman, who I think was just out of her mind, you know, looked at me. She threw it dirty in the African napkin, and said, kelo-uh, on negr.

And that was the first time anybody had any white person ever addressed me in that way. And I felt nothing. Like, I just didn't care. It was like... A drunk person on the subway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But see, I wouldn't have felt that here. Well, there's a connection to some sort of power here.

That person is... I see that person as part of some larger apparatus that I have a certain history with. That woman obviously is part of a certain apparatus that has some sort of history with the larger black world and with the black diaspora. But this is not my country.

I'm not implicated in this without... Okay, well... So are you taking a vacation from your country and from history for a year? Maybe so. I mean, maybe so. That point about being feeling invisible is very, very true. When I speak, what they hear is not a black person speaking.

They hear an American speaking poor French. And that's how they interact with you. Yes, just a mask, you know what I mean? Right. You know, you're somebody different. By which I do not mean that France is less racist. I don't mean that. But I mean specifically individual me.

Are you leaving your very newfound fame? Because it's not fame for being on dancing. with the stars. It's fame for being, you're going to forgive me, a spokesman of some kind. I hate that aspect. I know you do. I don't want to be a spokesman. No one should look at me to be a spokesman for anybody. But too bad. I mean, you've got it on you. I mean... Well, I'm conflicted. I'm very happy to people are reading the work. I'm very very happy about that. I'm happy about the number of people that read the case for reparations last year. But I don't have any need for people to know who I am.

I think for some readers, they leave your work impressed in many ways. But you know the classic story about all Hollywood pitches about stories. Everybody always ends the pitch by saying, but in the end, it's a story about hope. That's abominable. Which is very funny. But this is not necessarily that. where does any optimism that you have reside? I am very happy that I've lived long enough.

You know, I'm saying this at 39, I hope to live, you know, a lot longer. To be an observer of the world, to be, as far as I'm concerned, on the right side of a really, really important struggle, I take tremendous pride in that. That makes me feel good. It does not matter if that struggle is ultimately successful or not, in terms of how. I feel. If I knew today that, you know, white supremacy ultimately triumphs and this is how the country is until the end of its days and that it ultimately destroys the country, I still struggle. It gives my life meaning. It makes me feel good. I can't define my hope by whether, you know,

I will ultimately be successful. That's not completely up to me. You know, what's up to me is, you know, that I get up every day and I, you know, I try to be honorable. I try to struggle. That's the portion that's up to me. That's where my hope and, and, you know, it's, faith resides. You know, what the universe does and what happens, that's not, that's not mine. Tanaasi Coates just won a MacArthur Genius Award, and he's the author of Between the World and Me, which is a nominee for the National Book Award. Thank you so much. All right, come in again. Nice meeting.

Hey man, how you doing? Wonderful, Bob. How are you? That's definitely sound, you're going to sound like I was forcing it. Every week, cartoonists come by the magazine's office to show us a batch of their latest work. It's been a Tuesday morning ritual here for as long as anybody can remember, and then on Wednesdays, the cartoonists go back to the drawing board. Tree surgeons. The term wingback chair, Shakespeare in the parking lot.

Turtleneck sweaters. Coming up, cartoonist Matt Diffey with Life's a Batch. I'm David Remnick, and you're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. This is Matt Diffey. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. hour. This is Life's A bad's a cartoonist in New York York where we have to pitch your ideas every Tuesday

to our editor, Bob Mancoff. Ten ideas are batch. This week I'm going to talk to my good buddy, Drew Dernovich. Hello? So hey, Drew. Hey, what's up? So how did it go this morning? Did you work yesterday, by the way? I did not work yesterday. Full confession

confession is I was at the beach, but you need to have a clear head in order to think of good ideas, you know? And a little bit of a sunburn. I started thinking about. about the ubiquity of a man just standing solitarily in the center of the page. And it says the male biological clock and the guy is thinking, you know, I got to have a podcast soon. Viewing each other for the...

Yeah. ...in a coffee shop and somebody's saying, are we in this Starbucks or the one across the street? Are we recording your podcast? You're working on now. I'm just thinking of a guy standing like at a cocktail party who has a turtleneck on. He's saying to someone, no, these are turtlene. Maybe that's funnier. Maybe a couple days, maybe on Monday or...

We'll check in with cartoonist Matt Diffey and Drew Dernovich on next week's show. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Evan Osnos is one of our political reporters based in Washington, D.C. Of course, he's following the presidential race with very, very close, maybe even obsessive interest. The other day, he went to see Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York to talk about the issues facing the Democratic Party. Gillibrand was a little-known representative when she was appointed to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. That was when Clinton became Secretary of State. Now Jill Abrann is often mentioned as future presidential material herself.

Evanos met with her at her Senate office. I want to talk about Hillary Clinton's campaign. Hillary Clinton, you have known, of course, for a long time. She's part of the reason you got into politics. But I am struck by the fact that in 2008, she talked about herself in a slightly different way. And there was sort of famously advice that she got from some of her strategists who said, don't emphasize your experience as a woman, don't emphasize your viewpoint as a woman.

Yeah, that was bad advice. That was bad advice. But she took it at the time, and I'm not saying that was her mistake, but she took the advice. And this time she seems to have a different approach. She talks about herself as a grandmother. All the time. It's brilliant. It's exactly the person I know. It's the person I love. And when she talks about her mom, how her mom was basically left to fend for herself as a young girl was cleaning houses and taking care of children by the time she was 12. It tells you something about her. It tells you about her resiliency. And you realize, she's a hard worker because that's what her mother taught her to be. And relating to us as the mother that she is, as the grandmother she is, as the daughter that she is, is how women relate to each other anyway. There was a period coming out of the summer when, look, the campaign was not where she wanted to be. She was running second to Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire. It seems recently like something's changed.

She had a good appearance on Saturday Live. She did well at this Democratic debate. What's going on? What do you think changed? I don't know. I couldn't answer that question. What I've seen is her getting more comfortable in the campaign. I thought the debate was a great example of her being herself and feeling comfortable. You know, when she had to throw a punch, she threw a punch when she made a joke. She'd make a joke. I mean, she just, I was there, and I watched her and she really seemed excited to be there. She had a chance to talk about policy, which she loves. So I'll tell you the interesting thing, you hear that from her, and you are obviously, you have been a fan and you are,

a fan now. But I am struck by friends of mine, Democrats, women who aren't natural supporters of Hillary Clinton, and frankly, they have real apprehensions. What they say is, I'll probably vote for and I'll do it with hesitation. I'm not excited about it. And there's an enthusiasm gap. Right. Well, you know, what I think for that voter who's not sure today, I think clarity will set in when they see what that Republican nominee is going to stand for and what Hillary stands for. And it is so opposite and doesn't align with the values of most Americans. I do think, though, that part of the problem is that for a lot of Americans, it feels like it's a step backwards for us to be returning somebody to the White House, a family that we

have had there before. And frankly, there's a lot of people who look to your generation and they say, why do we not have Democrats in their 40s and 50s who we are putting up for the presidency right now? I think there's plenty of people in their 40s and 50s who aspire to national leadership long term. but I think that Hillary is the most experienced and well-poised to be a great president today. Let's just take a look at governors across the country. Sure, they are great public servants and want to do great things,

but the biggest issue for the next president is going to be national security issues. It's going to be how are you going to address growing international terrorism worldwide? How are you going to deal with the Middle East? And not only is she extremely knowledgeable about these issues, she actually has ideas about what she would try to do, how she would bring a coalition of countries to support. her policies. And I just think that's not true for too many other candidates running for president. One of the things you've been involved with since you got to Washington is encouraging

women to run for office. And you post a book last year off the sidelines. And in there, and at the time that you published it, one of the things that attracted a lot of attention was the fact, as you put it at the time, you, frankly, you told us about things that I don't think most people imagine were happening in Congress. You'd had colleagues who came to you and said, and I'm reading here, good thing you're working out because you wouldn't want to get porky unquote. Probably the first and last time that word will be used on this broadcast. After we talked about that publicly, what response did you get from men and women in Congress? Well, the women said, uh-huh, because it happened to them. I mean, these were not new outrageous statements they'd first heard of today. I did a whole chapter on appearance and how women are judged by their appearance, particularly. in different industries and how it can affect them. And in politics, it can be quite negative. If your opponent is talking about your appearance, whether it's positive or negative,

the statistics show it undermines her. And I really like to include the stories when I was younger, because that's when I didn't have the wherewithal to deal with it. I mean, some congress member at the gym whose name I didn't even know, I could care less what he thinks about what size I am. But when a partner said to me, you know, when we're having this big congratulatory dinner after years of work, saying, don't you just love Kirsten's efforts?

She's worked so hard. and don't you just love her new haircut? That felt like a shot in the gut because... Did you compliment his haircut? No, I just wanted to crawl under the table. I was a junior lawyer. I wasn't a partner yet. If anybody in that room didn't know me,

it would have hurt my chances of being respected. Do you think people are still saying stuff like that to women in Congress today? Sexist remarks? Yes, I think that happens every day, everywhere. Yeah, I'm curious about your sense of where Congress is these days. you've now been here since 2009 in the Senate, right? And so much of what's going on here in Congress is so ingrown in its own way and remote and sclerotic.

And I'm baffled by it. And I think a lot of Americans are just appalled. And I'm curious, you know, in your private conversations when you're sitting around with other senators, are you embarrassed? Are you sad? Are you disappointed? What are you? Well, many of us are frustrated because Washington is broken. It is dysfunctional.

I was talking to some of my female colleagues today about that very issue. Where do you see the source of the problem? Because, you know, it's easy for either of us, people on either side to say, well, it's the Democrats or it's the Republicans. Oh, I think it's just partisan politics. I think it's unfortunately too ego-driven. And I hope someday we have 51% of women in Congress, which I'm trying to accomplish through my off-the-side lines efforts.

Because if we had a Congress that reflects the actual population, we'd have a whole different set of issues we'd be debating. I promise you we would not be debating whether women should have access to contraception. It just wouldn't be on the top 10 list. Would we be talking about defunding Planned Parenthood? I don't think so. Because reality is reality. And Planned Parenthood overwhelmingly gives health care to women across this country.

Overwhelmingly. That's what they do for millions of women and men. You've tried when it comes to sexual assault in the military to make a change to a very deeply rooted culture, which is a Pentagon culture. First time you and I talked about it, you were in the midst of a sexual assault. push, and it didn't work at that point. Will it work? It will. And did you know that I think nearly every presidential candidate supports my bill to take, so we've got Rand Paul on it, we got Ted Cruz on it, Hillary says she sport it, Bernie says he supports it, so we have quite a lot. So what does it take then to actually get it to the point of making it? Well, I'm still working on this president.

I would be grateful if President Obama would decide that this is the kind of reform he supports. That would be an immediate game changer. What would you think is the percentage chance that you'll achieve what you want on that issue by the end of the Obama presidency. I'm optimistic. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Evan Osnos, a staff writer with The New Yorker, talking with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand at her office in Washington.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Jillipoor has been writing for the New Yorker for a decade. She's also a professor of history at Harvard, and she's brought that scholar's mind to everything from the Constitution to Wonder Woman. This summer, she turned her attention to a woman. much more personal project, trying to find the biological father of her best friend since high school, a woman named Adriana. This is the first part of a three-part story, and it starts when they were just kids. My name is Adriana Alti, and when I was eight years old, the thing that I wanted most of all for my eighth birthday was a tape recorder.

And this was because I was given to putting on little shows. or making up little songs and that type of thing. So I get the tape recorder, and I was, I mean, I was horrified. Do I sound like, I mean, I sound like a black person. And I said, you know, to my mother, well, that sounds like a black person. She said, well, what do you mean? Like, people have voices and voices are the same. People are the same.

And I was like, okay, that is not, you're just not going to get, you know, good information. Maybe they don't want to hurt your feelings, or they don't know. You better need to find these things out on your own because people are not going to tell you the truth. My name's Jill Lepore, and I write for the New Yorker and I teach history at Harvard. I'm a historian, and I want to tell a story about origins. And this is the story of the origins of my friendship with my friend Adriana Altie. And it's also a story about race and it's a story about sound. The town I grew up in was a very small town in New England

and it was very white. It was white, white, white. And to tell you how white it is, there is a statue of the lamb, a white lamb in the town common. And that is because Mary Sawyer of Mary had a little lamb is from that town. Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow. You know, there weren't really any people like me. You know, first day of kindergarten, got off the bus, and you went, you know, marched up. And they told, they asked your name.

And then you either were in that class or the other class. And I told them, you know, my name. I later was to find out that, you know, they called my mother and said, you know, Mrs. Altie, did you send the foster child that you have to school today? And, you know, and she said, yes, blah. And that's how I learned. that that wasn't, you know, that was not my last name because they had my last name in what it really was on the list,

which I didn't know. And I went, and then I got it later, I went home. And they told me, well, actually, this is your actual name. But don't worry, because it's going to change when you, you know, get adopted. And I was like, it was the first I'd heard of it. That was in September. And then I was adopted in December. When she was five and went to kindergarten,

there was a photograph of her in the newspaper, because there's this little, this picture of, so this would have been in 1971, a bunch of little white kids getting on a bus, and then this little black girl who's like more than a foot taller than everybody else. And it was kind of like a Ruby Bridges photograph or something. That was really hard, and it was absent

being part of a black family that was part of a political movement that was integrating schools. This was this tiny little girl carrying on her shoulders There's a history of racial segregation. My family, they're great. They're very kind people. They love me very much. And they just thought, well, we'll just love this child, and that's all.

That's all I need to do. They didn't want me to feel bad. So they would tell me things like, you're just the same. You're just the same as everyone else. And I know what, I mean, obviously, I know what they meant by that. And, you know, as in hindsight, I'm like, well, okay, I understand what they're trying to say. but I'm like, but I am, but I am different though.

And they're like, no, you're not. And I said, but I look different. And they're like, well, you're just the same. You're just the same. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what color you are. You could be orange. You could be blue.

You can be what. And I'm like, well, I'm not orange or blue. I'm, you know, I'm this other color. And I remember being in a play, and I was like a snowman in the play. This boy said something like, You can't be a snowman, because snow is not brown. And I said, yes, I said, snow can be brown. Haven't you, haven't you seen it when it's like dirty or, you know, like this and that?

I just thought, I really just thought, well, he's just stupid. How does he not know that snow can be, I didn't know he was insulting me? I'm going to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. George can't hit what his hands can't see. Now you see me, now you don't. He think he will, but I know he won't. The first person I saw who was the same color as I was, was that I thought looked really nice,

like I liked the looks of, was Muhammad Ali. You know, he's so handsome and so, like, I don't know. He was like great. He said he was the greatest, and people were talking about him and he was going to be that heavyweight champion and all these, you know, things. I thought, oh, this is like a, I don't know, listen, this is all right, maybe all right. This whole brown thing might not be.

so bad, you know? So, then, you know, at some point I, you know, I heard my mother say, well, you know, he has a big mouth, that guy. And I'm like, well, what do you mean? And she's like, well, I don't like it. You know, I just was kind of like, well, I don't, this is like a bad deal. I felt very badly. Like, I didn't want to be, you know, brown.

I just didn't. The black man has been brainwashed and it's time for him to learn something about When you look at television, he's the white house cigars, white swan soap, king white soul. I remember having heard someone say one time that he had said something about Mary had a little lamb or something like that. He's a little barn that Mary had a little man and his feet is white as snow. But he says it in the context of like talking about the brainwashing that goes on. And I just thought that it was funny that one of the things he talks about is Mary had a little lamb and that, I mean, that's the town I was from. Even though we grew up in the same place, we had really different childhoods.

I lived in the town one town over from Adriana's town, and then I moved into her town when I was a freshman in high school. I actually didn't know at first that she did live in Sterling because I had never seen her before. So, and she was like, oh, we just moved to Sterling. So I was like, oh, okay. And I immediately liked her. We had French class together, and we kind of propped each other up through what was a really difficult year. So I thought I liked you.

I just thought, this is like. She's neat. I like her. And also, you know, she seemed to really like me. When we were graduating from college, we were both 22, her father died. And at his funeral, her biological mother showed up. You know, she's white. And she had two small, like small children who were, you know, my color.

And I was with a college friend of mine, Ed, and, It was a very weird thing where I looked and I said, oh, Ed, I know who that is. He said, who, who is that? I said, oh, it's not good. It's not a good thing. And he said, what? What, who is it? I said, Ed, I think, I think that's, I think that's my birth mother.

And he said, what? That's Adriana Altie, along with New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore. Their story continues next week when Adriana starts hearing. the rumors about her biological father. But it's not so easy to find a man named William Brown. Just ahead, Kelifasane goes to Philadelphia to reconnect with his punk roots. So this is the time to admit your own musical lineage in a punk band. You were in, what was the name of your band?

I cannot recall. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. Hi, I'm David Remnick. We're going to wrap up this episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour with Kelifasane. He's written about political campaigns in Chris Rock and the perfect cup of coffee. He's a nut about coffee. He's also a big music fan

and his taste never fails to surprise me. So Kay, you went down to Philly. What band did you go in interview? To interview a band called Sprainerd. I heard there was overwhelming demand from readers of the magazine to learn more about a pop-punk band called Sprainerd.

They're based in suburban Philadelphia, kind of Westchester, although I went to interview them in... They're the Westchester Philadelphia? Yeah, Westchester, yeah, Pennsylvania. And I went to interview them in Malvern, which is sort of a suburb of Westchester, I guess, a suburb of a suburb. And that's where the lead singer's brother runs a batting cage and arcade. And the lead singer has worked there ever since high school and still works there between tours. So he works at a batting cage

and he's in a band. Yes. So this band hasn't quite broken out yet. Well, yeah, exactly. And he's trying to figure out if this is the best job ever or a horrible reflection on his life choices. What's the music like? Well, the best term, I guess, is pop punk, which is to say it's melodic punk and it's a genre that has a reputation for being pretty juvenile. But it also is a genre that can be deceptive because there's some great songwriters in that genre. So this is the time to admit your own musical lineage in a punk band. You were in, what was the name of your band? I cannot recall. But no, no, no, this is just, it's also just kind of being an all-purpose music nerd.

And although they are obscure, perhaps, in some sense, you know, this is the genre that Green Day represents. This is the genre, broadly speaking, that Blink 182 represents. But that's old stuff. That's old stuff, but that's stuff that people kind of grew up with on MTV. So this is a kind of music that is very familiar. It's also a kind of music that has a reputation for being somewhat suburban. And this is something that this band kind of grapples with in an interesting way. That this is kind of an idea that this is kind of an idea that this is,

is the sound or a sound of the suburbs. My name is Patrick Graham. I'm in the band Sprayner. I sing and play guitar. And we're currently at Grand Slam, USA, an arcade batting cage facility I've worked since I was 15. I'm 26. I'll be 27 very soon. My name is Patrick Ware.

Patrick, too. I play drums in the band Spraynard. I'm 20. I did What's up? How you? Okay. Welcome to Grand Slam.

Do you want to do like a tour? Do you want to give me a little tour? You can show you around. Is the cages the biggest Is that the biggest draw? Yeah, the cages are huge. Like, I feel like cages keep us in business, probably. Are your speeds limited for the pitching in the batting cages?

The speeds, yeah, it starts at 35 and then goes up by 10 until you get to 75, so. Do you vet people before they can get in the 75 cage? There's definitely instances where we're like, yeah, you can't go in there. Like little kids will be overly confident, but... It has, like, classic arcade games in it still? Not as many as I would like. It's mostly like ticket games because the main clientele is little kids. What are the hot items at the prize counter?

The candy kills it. There's like, you know, galaxy slime, which is like just gooey slime. is always popular. Did your brother start this? Randy, my brother, took over 10 years ago, 10, 11 years ago, and got me my first job. You're still here. And it's still my first and only job.

A lot of our friends after high school did the obvious thing you do. You move to the closest city, and you move into, like, a hip neighborhood, you know. It's kind of like, and we kind of, like, didn't really want any part of that. So we kind of started, basically everybody left except the three of us. We all were like, oh, it's be easy to start a band and spend our time together this way, you know. And the funny thing is, like, this job definitely had something to do with that, because it was like, Grand Slam's awesome. It was like, why do I want to move? And when Randy's going to let me tour all the time.

When you decided to stay in the suburbs, was it partly, I mean, was it just, it was cheaper and it was easier to live out here? Or was, like, what was the, or was it like this is important to the band? Why did you end up staying in the suburbs when so many of your friends, you know, moved to Philadelphia and to try to be cool? So I did move to this city last, or two years ago now. I moved to, like, a very hip up-and-coming neighborhood in South Philadelphia, and I really kind of just felt like I didn't belong there. You know, I'm moving here and I'm, like, intruding on these families that have lived here forever, you know? And I really almost felt like you do feel sort of, like, out of place. It's like, oh, I'll go work at the bar down the street.

and I kind of started to boil it down to the people I love and really care about are here where I'm from in Westchester. I think a lot of it for me, too, was like when we were, we went on tour in high school, and we would go to all these cities and small towns and stuff, and the small towns that made this scene on their own were always, like, way more fun and, like, just meaningful to be in. So I think for me, I definitely, like, saw all my friends moving to Philly, and I didn't want to, like, be a part of all that. I wanted to like make a thing of our own here.

Could you talk a little bit about pop punk? What does that term mean to use? Is that a term that you embrace for Sprainerd? I think the thing we've always struggled with is that like if you sit back and objectively listen to Sprainerd, you say to yourself, this is a pop punk band. But what we've always aimed for is having deeper content within our lyrics than most pop punk bands.

even the descendants what most people would like most like pop punk fans would consider like the best pop punk band the world have god awful terrible lyrics like sometimes like sometimes like terrible like misogynistic just awful lyrics and that's a big problem

within pop punk even current bands you know have that within their band and we fight that as a band we we try and be the anti that but people will interpret your lyrics

how they want to. Well, and I mean, there is this tradition, I guess it's kind of, obviously it's a pop music tradition that gets expressed in a particular way in pop punk, where often it's boys singing about girls, and often it's boys complaining about girls. And it can be hard, I think, even as a listener, to figure out what to do with that and how to interpret and I'm sure how to write a song that maybe even expresses some dissatisfaction, maybe even some romantic dissatisfaction without it seeming like you're a man insulting women. Yeah, it's a weird position to be in because it's definitely like it's something we want to fight.

But at the same time, like I purposely don't use pronouns in my writing because I have that in mind. You know, it's like I know people are going to think this is about me spitefully talking about a woman. And it's like, I know that because I'm a cis male that's singing punk songs. I'm like, that's clearly. and there was like a thing with like our pitchfork article that like we try not to take in to, you know, take too much to heart, but it was basically calling us out being like, these people, it was a line that's like they view women as vapid, thorny creatures. And I was like, I had to email her and be like, that's so detrimental to my, like what I stand for that I have to speak out on this. The song listened to me. That song is, it's kind of comical to me because it is, it's about a really specific. form of microaggression I see it shows. When a man will come up to me and introduce himself and clearly have a woman by his side or nearby and will not address the woman in any way, shape, or form.

And it's just, it's not really more complicated than that. It's just talking about how men are taught to be the dominant one in a conversation and how women are taught to not be the dominant one in a conversation. And how I see that at punk shows between punk people that are supposed to be challenging those things. You know, you talk about the history of pop punk, right? And a lot of it is that spirit of that descendant song, right? I don't want to grow up. And this idea that it's going to be, that there is something sort of juvenile about this genre.

And I think maybe as a result, there is something I'm sure you've noticed as listeners and also as people in bands, where often pop punk bands after a few albums, there is this sense that, oh, we've got to maybe change the kind of music we play. We've got to maybe do something a little slower. like, oh, now we're kind of an indie rock band because we've gotten older and quote unquote wiser. And so I think like a lot of people, when I heard your new record, I was relieved that it was still fun and fast and still felt slightly juvenile.

It's funny, we definitely, I think all of us share that of like, without even realizing that we just want to be young. We just want, that's all we want. I work in an arcade. It's like, I just want to stay a kid. I don't want to worry about anything else. And it wears on you because it's like,

I'm just a pop punk young, like, snotty kid. And then it's like, your parents remind you that you're still at their house. And you're like, oh, I didn't set my... Like, it's fun being young, but, like, it's just the world is kind of set up to destroy that. Did your bed actually break?

Yeah. The lyric is, my bed broke last night. I'm sleeping on the floor. You'd think I'm too old for this. And I think that's just, it was just a moment of like, my room at that house was really nice. And I was like, something about your room when you set your room up the right way, you're like, I have it all together. Your whole life falls into place like, I have an IKEA bed. I got records that I love, like in frames.

I'm growing up, you know? And then my bed broke and my mattress was on the ground. And I'm just like, I'm still a piece of shit. You just like, you know, like your life literally falls apart. But yeah, so I just went on the floor. Sometimes you have to just feel, because I was like, I could sleep on the couch, but then I would feel like a person. Sometimes you just need to feel like the dirt that you are.

That was Patrick Graham and Patrick Ware, who is Patrick No. 2, known as Dos, from the band Spraynard. I met them at Grand Slam in Malvern, Pennsylvania. I'm Kelifacane, and you're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. And I'm David Remnick. Thanks so much for joining us. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. Talk to us on Twitter at New Yorker Radio, where you can reach us at new Yorkerradio.org.

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 Tuneiards. This episode was produced by Emily Boutin, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Avey Carrillo, Jill Duboff, and Paul Schneider. With help from Karen Frillman, Eric Milinski, Stephen Valentino, Julia Weatherill, and Riannon,