The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jonathan Blitzer on the Battle over Immigration; and Olivia Rodrigo Talks with David Remnick

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

In the shadow of another election year, Democrats and Republicans are at a bitter crossroads over immigration, as the system becomes increasingly unmanageable. With as many as twelve thousand migrants arriving at the border per day, and resistance to asylum seekers growing—even among Democrats—the Biden Administration is in a political bind. “You have a global moment of mass migration converging on the border at a time when resources are down. Congress is refusing to give the president the money that he needs for basic operations—it’s a perfect storm,” The New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer tells David Remnick.  Blitzer has covered immigration for years, and his new book, “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here,” takes a long and deep look at U.S. policy and the forces that drive migrants to undertake enormous risks. According to Blitzer, both sides are obscuring the actual problem. “There’s always been an assumption that the case for immigration makes itself—that the moral high ground makes sense to everyone, that we should be welcoming, that people showing up in need obviously should seek protection,” Blitzer says. “I don’t think defenders of immigration have squared the high ideals with some of the practical realities. And sadly the border, which is a tiny sliver of what the immigration system is as a whole, ends up dominating the conversation.”Plus, the pop singer and songwriter Olivia Rodrigo’s rise to fame has been meteoric. She talks with David Remnick about her models for songwriting, dealing with social media as a young celebrity, and how it feels to be branded the voice of Generation Z. 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. I'm David Remnick. The 2024 election will be, well, about a lot of things, not least our democracy. But it seems to me that the subject with the most substance in terms of policy, and also the most peril for the Democrats, is immigration. And it was very much in the news this week. Politicians on the right have sometimes distorted the situation. at the border for sheer political gain.

But the numbers of people seeking asylum now are tremendous. President Biden is saying that he would shut down the border if Congress passes a bipartisan bill giving him that authority. House Republicans aren't likely to pass the bill, and President Biden knows it. But this is a really dramatic change in tone. If that bill with the law today, I'd shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.

For more than a decade, our staff writer, Jonathan Blitzer, has been covering immigration, talking to enforcement officers at the border, White House officials, and of course, to the people who risk it all, risking their lives very often to cross the border. All of that has gone into John's new book, Everyone Who Has Gone is Here. I spoke with Jonathan Blitzer last week. John, if I turn on Fox, the first thing I see, and the second and the third, is the Chiron crisis at the border. What is the crisis at the border

and how long has it been going on and how did it start? The crisis at the border is an endless crisis that gets rolled out every election year and is a reliable winner for Republicans because Democrats are seen as being weak on the border. The sad fact for Democrats is there really is a problem at the border.

The system cannot handle the sheer volume of people who are showing up at the border. What is that a function of? In large part, it's a function of what's happening in the world, not that there's any room for this kind of nuance or context in the political debate happening in Washington around this. Yeah, but give us the nuance and give us the context. I mean, you know, what you're seeing in the hemisphere is an unprecedented period of mass migration and displacement, and it is the result of a number of factors. COVID plays a big role. Economies have collapsed. There have been, you know, repressive governments in Venezuela,

for instance, kind of all of these different regional conflicts, climate change, people who had left their countries and relocated elsewhere in the region only to find those economies collapsing as a result of COVID, the population of people who are showing up at the border is changing, which is worrisome for any administration because it has included people from certain countries where historically the U.S. can't deport them. And so, you know, we're talking about Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua. That has recently changed as a result of high-level diplomatic intervention. But the point is the U.S. system, immigration system at the border and beyond, can't easily deal with the kinds of people.

I mean, you're seeing right now, you know, arrivals on the order of 12,000 people a day. These numbers are astronomical. There aren't places to hold all of them. And so for as long as there aren't the resources to contain and provide. process people as they arrive, large shares of those people are going to be released into the interior of the country. The Democrats are scared of talking about this. Why? I think they see a lose-lose with their constituencies. You have the progressive left that's going to oppose any kind of increased enforcement or harshness of the border, which from an operational standpoint really is

necessary in some form or another. So you're kind of lose-lose on that side of the ledger. Let's slow down then. If you were, if the progressive left was represented at this table, what would the argument be for not having more restriction at the border? They would say that asylum is worth saving. It's salvageable. There just isn't the political will inside the administration to take the measures necessary to handle all of these newcomers and give them a chance to lodge their asylum claims. The inconvenient fact in that is that the vast majority of people who are showing up at the border would not win their asylum cases. Why not?

The nature of asylum law is such that it specifies a very specific set of forms of persecution someone has to be suffering from in order to qualify for relief at the border for protection. And so the people who are showing up now are definitely fleeing for their lives in some form or another. It might be extreme poverty. It might be a collapsing government. It might be that their house was wiped out in a hurricane. But those technically aren't forms of persecution.

as the law has defined that term. And so if you want to find some way of treating them humanely, you need to think more deeply about systemic reform. And that leads to the obvious problem of Washington and Congress, and there's just no movement there. Pramila Jayapal, who's the head of the Progressive Caucus in Congress, said the big problem in immigration, from her point of view, is the fact that you can't pass anything in Congress because of the filibuster.

I think it's probably for reasons even beyond the filibuster. The issue is so toxic that any effort to reform the system, which is sorely needed, is dead on arrival. I think one thing the Biden administration has done is they've said, okay, look, there's the only way to handle the flow isn't to try just to deter people at the U.S. border. By the time they reach the border, it's too late. Now, the administration is going to want to be more orderly and enforcement-minded at the border in certain ways, to try to send a message. But their thinking is we have to create other pathways, other legal pathways for people to come to the U.S. that doesn't involve their setting out and then arriving at the border and overwhelming our resources. And the Trump's solution to this is build a wall.

There were sort of two Trump solutions to this. It has to be said that after probably the ugliest moment in recent American history with the family separation crisis, that was a classic Trump policy. That was 2018. Right. Toward the beginning of the Trump administration or midway through. midway through. That was basically the government doing the harshest thing it could do to families at the border to try to scare other people out of coming to the U.S. Nevertheless, within one year, the numbers of people showing up at the southern border exploded, which just illustrates the fact that people who are fleeing for their lives, people who are in states of major desperation, are going to think first that they have to get to safety and only secondarily about what the exact border policies are going to be at any given

moment. So Trump was struggling with this issue as late as 2019. The two things that he did, that were distinct from what the Biden administration has done, particularly at the border, one was a policy called Remain in Mexico, where he basically shunted asylum seekers into northern Mexico and said for as long as the system delays in processing your asylum applications, you have to stay here. The second thing that he did, and this was the result of the pandemic, was he basically ended asylum invoking public health authorities, saying it's just not safe to have people crossing the border. So the Biden administration has been in a bind with both of those things. first of all, Biden himself campaigned really strongly against the Remain in Mexico policy when he was campaigning for president the first time.

And it was a very appealing message. She said, look, we have an asylum system for a reason. You can't just outsource asylum to another country. So to people who work operations inside the Biden administration at the start of his term, that policy valve wasn't available to them. You had then Title 42, this other measure, this public health. measure, which the administration clung to for as long as it possibly could, because it basically allowed the government to expel people at the border without giving them asylum. The problem with that was they came to rely on that expulsion authority and never really had the wherewithal to begin to

build back up the system that Trump wound down. And so now you have a global moment of mass migration converging on the border at a time when resources are down. Congress is refusing to give the president, the money that he needs for basic operations, it's a perfect storm. I'm talking today with Jonathan Blitzer. He reports for the New Yorker on politics and immigration, and his new book is called Everyone Who's Gone is Here. We'll continue in a minute. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and I'm talking today with Jonathan Blitzer, who covers immigration and politics for the New Yorker. John's just published a terrific new book called Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, which, to my mind,

mind is a definitive contemporary history of the immigration problem. We'll continue our conversation. It seems that Congress is on the verge of passing a bipartisan immigration bill, which would include money for Ukraine and Israel. Is that your understanding of where we are now? We keep hearing that one of these days we're going to see the actual text of this bill. Right. And there's one delay after another. At a certain point, the president himself got out ahead of the negotiators to reassure everyone that one of the provisions in this putative bill would allow him to shut down the border and that he intended to do exactly that if the bill actually made it to his desk. But the bill itself hasn't materialized. What does it mean for Joe Biden to close the border

in practical terms? It's an incredibly striking thing to see that he's even saying such a thing. Again, in 2020, I think a big part of his appeal on the campaign trail was that he stood in opposition to the inhumanity of Trump on this very issue. And that was one of the main planks in his immigration platform was we will resurrect asylum and we will kind of restore this fundamental American ethos. You think of it as a desperate act on Biden's part because of his poll standings vis-à-vis Donald Trump? I see it as a reflection of two things. The first is that this idea of shutting down the border, which did have a kind of concrete manifestation in the form of this technical public health maneuver that the Trump administration put into place that allowed the government to

suspend asylum and just expel anyone who showed up at the border at the start of COVID. That has gotten normalized over the years. The Biden administration eventually ended that particular policy, but it took the Biden administration a fairly long time to do it. And as a result, you started to see even some moderate Democrats entertaining the idea that it wasn't so crazy every once in a while to stop processing people for asylum at the border. So you see, first of all, the normalization of that idea. I think Biden, in a concrete sense, and this is the second point,

yes, I think he feels real political pressure here to show that he takes this seriously and that he wants to be tough. And I think his expectation is that Republicans aren't really serious about negotiating in any sense and that maybe he can call their bluff and the public will see him calling their bluff

and that that's a way he can flip the script on Republicans. Last week, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said to members of his conference in the Senate, listen, you know, we may have to pause on this Senate negotiation because our presumptive nominee is running for president on the immigration issue, and we don't want to give President Biden a victory. We want to allow Trump to run successfully on this issue. So let me get this straight.

There's gambling in Casablanca. There's cynicism in Washington. So the issue that Donald Trump seems to care about most, and certainly his appeal is most intense on it, in terms of policy, immigration is something that he wants to forestall. He wants to forestall this bill simply because of his electoral chances. Just to be clear. Absolutely. And, you know, one of the ironies of this is

the bill itself, the language that we've at least seen from conversations so far around this bill, wouldn't really, in a profound way, change the dynamics at the border. What would it do? It would essentially make it harder for people to pass that initial asylum screening. that's a significant thing.

That's a historic change to the asylum system. There's no question. And there are other provisions that we're hearing about that would basically say, if a certain number of migrants arrive at the border on a given day, the president will have the authority to, quote unquote, shut the border down. Now, what that means is unclear.

What's hung up in these negotiations, of course, is a request, funding request from the president that would allow them to take some of the pressure off at the border right now. That's what's getting held up. You write that Stephen Miller's ultimately ambition was to end the asylum system completely, entirely. What can we expect in a second Donald Trump term where immigration is concerned? It's almost hard to imagine they're going farther than they

already had. I mean, they basically sabotage the immigration system as we knew it in the previous term. What's so scary to me about the prospect of a second Trump term is that all of the radical things they did in the first Trump term, the Muslim ban. And, trying to end DACA for legal protection for dreamers, you know, separating families and the like. All of that is now just sort of part of the arsenal that a government can use and that is less shocking the second time around. They've claimed that they're going to be doing things like setting up internment camps and ramping up deportation. I actually think one of the darker ironies of the Trump years was that for all of their promises of mass deportations, the chaos

and disorder of how they actually enforce that agenda led to kind of more of the same rather than a huge explosion and deportation, you can rest assured that they've learned from their mistakes and that they're going to do everything they can to correct anything that didn't go well in the first term. This is a huge part of Donald Trump's appeal to the American voter. Why is it appealing? And to whom? You know, I think that there's always been, an assumption that the case for immigration makes itself, that kind of the moral high ground makes sense to everyone, that we should be welcoming,

that, you know, people who show up in need, obviously should seek protection and release here. It's the nature of the country. It's good for the workforce and on and on. Exactly. I don't think defenders of immigration have squared the high ideals with some of the practical realities.

And sadly, you know, the border, which is a tiny sliver of what the immigration system is as a whole ends up dominating the entire conversation. Right. Not everybody comes through the southern border. They often come through airports, right? Exactly. And there's a whole legal immigration system that, you know, you would want, you'd want to work in some sort of basic way. And in fact, the idea that the immigration system as a whole

has been starved of any kind of solutions for decades. I mean, the last time Congress meaningfully passed legislation on immigration was 1990. I mean, the world has changed a thousand times over since then. Right. And so the Trumpian appeal is to point to disorder at the border

and say all of the problems in your life aren't going addressed and look what we're doing for these newcomers who've earned nothing and who are now, you know, benefiting from American largesse. And that, I have to say, if in a kind of cynical way,

that makes sense to voters who are frustrated and who are confused and who are scared. I think that the Biden administration should be pointing to things like, you know, eight million job vacancies across the country that need to be filled and they can be filled with workers, with foreign workers. You know, you could have people coming from a foreign country on temporary work visas

and you wouldn't have any of this drama at the border. You'd have people coming in an orderly way. It would be satisfying very specific needs in a bunch of states, including red states. And it would also incentivize people to come, work, and then, return home and it would create a circular migration pattern rather than this build up at the border. I mean, there are practical arguments too. Does Trump's argument, does Trump's rhetoric and demigodry depend completely on mythology and fear or is there any truth in it?

For example, one of the things that he bangs away at is that immigration brings more criminals and crime. I mean, this is an easy one because this is a demonstrable falsehood. you know, the Republican line on this and the Trump line specifically has always been to trot out the families of victims of crime perpetrated by immigrants. You know, these are these are a tiny, tiny sliver of a minority of cases. I mean, on the whole, all of the data supports this. Any and all evidence that you could canvas makes very clear that immigrants commit crime at much lower rates than American citizens. Obviously, Trump, Trump and his allies, see a benefit to continuing to stay on that same script. But what's remarkable, actually, is how nearly identical the script is on immigration now

as it was in 2016. It's the same routine. I mean, I was recently at one of these hearings in Congress for the impeachment of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Majorcas. And it was the same scheme that Trump did on the campaign trail in 2016. They brought family members of people who had died at the hands of some immigrant. And they said, you know, in this case,

the Secretary of Homeland Security is to blame. I mean, this was literally a page out of the Trump campaign book. I do want to ask this. Would all this be happening if Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, had not had the,

what would we call it, the political imagination to send groups of migrants to cities like New York? You know... How much did he spark this? Abbott changed the conversation on the border

for Democrats in a profound way. You know, now you see among mainstream Democrats a willingness to take more dramatic action at the border than we've really ever seen. But what Abbott has done is he has really supercharged the politics. And, you know, it didn't come out of nowhere, it should be said. In 2021, he started a massive statewide enforcement campaign that I think ran pretty afoul of federal law

called Operation Lone Star. What was that? What was Operation Lone Star? It was basically to deputize state law enforcement officials to make immigration arrests and to use money personnel to line people up along the border

and go after migrants, you know, engage in racial profiling, really quite dramatic stuff. And in the early days of the Biden administration, when it was clear that Abbott was ramping up this effort, I think there was a certain reticence on the part of the Biden administration. to bring the fight to Abbott, say, by suing him for these policies.

And over time, you've watched as Abbott has kind of ramped up the pressure bit by bit. And so, you know, a year later, that was 2021. In the spring of 2022 is when he begins the busing. Now you have something like 80,000 people he's bused to Democratic cities. Right now, Republicans in Congress are pushing to impeach Alejandro Majorcas, the head of Homeland Security, which is, quite extraordinary. What role will that play in this entire drama about immigration and the political crisis in Washington? You know, I'm covering this story right now, and you have this incredible

split screen where certain Senate Republicans are calling Majorcas to get advice and input on technical solutions at the border as they're having these negotiations about a possible bill. And simultaneously, their counterparts in the House are charged. ahead with this impeachment effort. This impeachment effort is purely political. It's a chance for them. What are the alleged charges? What are the allegations here? What are the charges that they're proposed to bring against Majorcas? The literal charges are dereliction of duty. And they're claiming that the secretary is deliberately refusing to enforce the law at the southern border as a way of flooding the country with immigrants, which is, I mean, frankly, an outlandish,

notion. I mean, the idea that you could certainly criticize the Biden administration for not, you know, being more orderly in its pursuit of particular policies at the border and so on. It's quite another thing to say there's sort of deliberate malice here and deliberate intent to bring chaos to the border and disorder onto the country. I mean, it's really out there. How far will this impeachment attempt go? And what, what effect will it have? You know, it's interesting. They're going to come close in the House. I mean, it's, they're, they're going to come close in the House. I mean, they've got this razor-thin majority. But interestingly, this idea has come up since really the start of the Biden administration.

Congressional Republicans have wanted to impeach someone. Majorcas was always a good bet for them because there was so much division among Republicans. And immigration was the one issue that kind of united moderate Republicans and right-wing. Has a cabinet member ever been impeached? The last time was in the 1870s. So this is, we're going deep into history here. I mean, this is there's a very historic. Berkeley-minded Congress.

Yes. This is a teachable moment for the country. Now, it occurs to one to ask the question, how many immigrants can the United States feasibly handle?

Matt Iglesias wrote a book in 2020 called One Billion Americans. And he argued that significantly increasing the population was one of the potential keys

to economic growth in this country and at the same time, obviously, poses societal challenges. Do you think significantly increasing the population is good for the country overall?

I think it definitely is. I couldn't quantify it. I couldn't quantify kind of like what the upper limit might look like. But I don't think there's any question that for economic reasons alone, more people coming legally, working legally, would be a boon to everyone. And I don't think any economists really question that at this point. I think it's a kind of widely shared view that managed immigration is a net benefit to the country. We're in a building that overlooks, if you go high up enough into the building, that you can see very distinctly in the harbor, the Statue of Liberty in Ellis Island,

and other symbols of American welcome to immigrants. My grandparents landed in Ellis Island and Castle Gull. and all the rest, maybe that was the same with you. And all that we've been talking about, how does that square with the American self-image, self-regard about its generosity as well as its practicality? I mean, I think it's gotten harder and harder, frankly,

to continue to hold up that ethos as a definitional one to American society. I don't think it's completely lost. You know, it's ironic, given how we're talking about the Biden White House's sort of political lethargy in dealing with immigration. Because I do think that one of the energizing forces in his campaign in 2020 was to make a strong moral case for inclusion. You know, that gets lost in the political parsing of immigration in this country. You know, Trump's, you know, draconian, inhumane political bent on all of this stuff was a liability for him. That did not help him in the 2020 election, but that was because there was a strong, clear message in opposition to that.

What I wish there was more of in the political conversation was a yoking of ideals that I think probably a majority of Americans believe in some form or another with the pragmatic appeal, which actually dovetails with the moral argument. And you mean? Well, one of the most striking things for me reporting on these issues is that, you know, you know, the most striking things for me reporting on these issues is that, I often find government officials who work for agencies that tend to be notorious, agencies like ICE or Customs and Border Protection, these sort of fearsome sounding agencies, we all assume that, you know, it's a kind of rough bunch who work there. A lot of them, quite honestly, make pretty progressive sounding arguments when it comes to specific questions. What should we do at the border? How should we manage the flow of all these people who are arriving? You hear very practical, unsentimental arguments. from them about, all right, listen, the parole system is really our best bet right now because we can't detain everyone. That doesn't make sense. What I find is when I have those conversations with them, sure, we get in the weeds and we're talking about operations. But those conversations actually square with the more idealistic arguments that, you know, we might feel, but that we kind of

assume somehow are an inconvenience to the actual practical administration of the immigration system. You know, if you were to talk to a practitioner, I'm not talking about a kind of professor or an immigration advocate. I'm talking about someone who works for one of these government agencies and has deep experience at the border processing people. You'll hear them say, oh, here we go, another set of apparently harsh enforcement measures that will not really do much. Smuggling networks might respond in a matter of weeks. We might see a dip for a month. And in two months, we're going to have the same problem as before. what do we have? We've inherited a system that's even a little bit more harsher, but doesn't address

any of the real problems we're saying. That tells you what? What is the thing that is absolutely needed at the border in terms of practicality and policy? Stripping away all the rhetoric, stripping away all the ill will and worse, what's absolutely needed? What's absolutely needed? And it scares me to say it aloud because it just, it's, it's so hard to imagine in our political landscape. What's needed is a massive sort of whole of government, this is often said in Washington, a whole of government approach to the issue, not just the Department of Homeland Security, you know, getting more border agents to man ports of entry. You need the State Department involved. You need the Defense Department involved. To do what? To open up

processing centers in the region all over Latin America. So this is a question of a bureaucracy being overwhelmed above all. Exactly. And I think, you know, the real problem is we are dealing with the arrival of people too late in the process. People are uprooted at rates that we've not seen in generations. That's a function of the world. The U.S. alone can't control all of that, the things they can do to mitigate it. But when people are moving at that rate to just tune in at the border, I mean, there are concrete things that would help at the border. And right now, Congress is blocking funding, more immigration judges, streamlining the asylum process, more border agents,

the whole thing. That's fiddling around the margins. It would help, but that wouldn't deal kind of with the overall problem. The overall problem is you have a number of people that no governmental system can process, doing all of that processing in the worst possible place right at the border. If there are ways of beginning that process, of beginning to handle these people, to handle their claims, to understand who's coming why and what they need and what they want, to do that a little farther from the border.

That would require, I mean, you're hearing, as I'm describing this, this is the work of years. This is the work of, you know, multiple governments. This is something that, you know, no single administration can do overnight. And when you really think about it, it seems like an insoluble problem because the politics just stand in the way. And there needs to be some way of keeping the politics at bay while the actual solutions are set in motion.

Jonathan Blitzer, thank you so much. Thanks, too. Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and his new book, Everyone Who Is Gone, is here, goes deep into the history of our immigration system and into the lives of migrants making this extraordinary and often dangerous journey. I'd recommend it to anybody who wants to understand

this current and complicated issue in the way it shapes our politics. Now, with all due respect to Beyonce and Taylor Swift, the year in music in the youth division belonged to 20-year-old Olivia Rodriguez. I hate to give the satisfaction asking how you're doing now. How's the castle built off people you pretend to care about it? At Sunday's Grammy Awards, she's up for album of the year,

record of the year, song of the year, best rock song. In fact, there's a lot more, but I'm running out of breath. I spoke with Olivia Rodriguez in the fall when her album guts had just come out. And so I talked to Gia Tolentino this morning, who's great and on our staff. She's amazing. And she wrote about you for Vogue.

And she said that you're kind of new to New York? Yeah, I am. I just got this apartment a few months ago. I'm still exploring. But I love it. It's the greatest city ever. It's just so much inspiration constantly. So you've left Los Angeles behind?

forever? I don't think so. I mean, L.A. will always be my first home, I think, but I love coming here as often as I can. It's the greatest. Is New York more musically, I don't know, fertile for you in some way? Yeah, I actually think it is in a weird way. I remember people always used to tell that to me, like songwriters that I knew. They're like, oh, you have to go to New York. It's so inspiring. And I would like, roll my eyes. And I'm like, okay, sure. Like, I get it. But we actually made half of this album Guts at Electric Lady studios in Greenwich Village. So you're recording in the same room as Jimmy Hendricks. Yeah, exactly.

All these incredible records were made in those rooms, and it's just, I don't know, you definitely, like, feel that magic in the walls. So let's start from the beginning a little bit. You grew up performing on Disney. You were on the show, Bizarred Vark, and on a high school musical. And you already had a big TV career

as a kid, if you don't mind me saying. Did you also harbor right away? that ambition, that desire, that passion to be a solo singer, to be a songwriter? Completely. I always loved songwriting. That was my first love, my first passion when I was so young. I remember being like four years old or something and making up all these crazy songs about like my four-year-old problems. Do you remember any? Oh my gosh. My mom has a video of me singing about losing my parents in Super Bowl. market, which is a very traumatic experience when you're four years old. I can imagine why I was so moved to

write a song about it. But I think when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, I was acting, but I started like playing songs on piano and learning how to write songs to chords. And that's when everything kind of took off. I fell in love with it. And, you know, that's just been my life ever since. It's just my favorite part of the job. And you seem to have, even much younger than you are now, a real, a really wide sense of listening, that you, a lot of things were going into your ears. What were they and why were you listening to what you were listening to? Yeah, I mean, I give my parents a lot of credit for my music taste. My parents love 90s alternative rock. I grew up listening to, you know, smashing pumpkins and hole and the white stripes. And also, from a very early age, I kind of

fell in love with a lot of female singer-songwriters, and I kind of realized that that was, you know, the kind of lineage that I wanted to follow. I remember going to the thrift store with my mom when I was probably 13 years old and getting tapestry by Carol King for the first time and just playing it to death. I'd play it over and over and over and over and get all these Pat Benatar records

and play them over and over and Johnny Mitchell and I don't know, I just remember something clicking in my head when I was really young and being like, wow, those are the girls that I want to emulate, you know? Looking back, what was the first song that you wrote that you thought, Now, this is something.

This isn't just kidding around. This could bring me somewhere. I mean, I wrote many songs when I was, you know, just putzing around in my living room when I was young. But I actually remember writing driver's license. I remember that exact feeling. Which became a huge hit. Which, yeah, I mean, I owe so much of that song. It, you know, skyrocketed in my career in ways completely unimaginable to me at the time.

But I just remember writing that and feeling like I really expressed something and feeling like I felt like there were so much of myself in that song. And I remember feeling properly represented and that's just a really beautiful feeling. I remember coming into the studio to show my producer the song and saying to him, like, verbatim, I think I just wrote my favorite song that I've ever written. And he was like, okay, sit down and play it. Well, tell me about the experience of writing. How did it work?

Because one of the things that I love about it is it begins so direct. It sets the age, it sets the mood, it sets where you are right with the first line. How did this happen? It's very specific, yeah. I mean, I quite literally got my driver's license a few days before I wrote the song and I was a, I was, you know, loving my newfound freedom. So I was driving around in my neighborhood and listening to sad songs and crying and then thinking about this relationship. and I just sat down at the piano, and I'm a very emotional girl as I am now,

and I just cried at the piano, and I wrote that song. What made you feel that sad in the car when you just had your license? I'm a Jersey kid, you're a California kid. Something about driving, I don't know what it is. It unleashes something. It really does. You know, I thought about this a lot when I first got my driver's license. I think driving is one of the only times you're, like, truly alone,

especially as a teenager, meaning you're living at home with your parents. But I love it to this day. You can do anything in the car. You listen to whatever you want. You can literally scream your head off and no one will hear you. Your neighbors won't be banging on the walls telling you to shut up. So I think it's that isolation that brings out those feelings in you maybe.

So you perform that on Saturday Night Live. How much after the release? Oh, my gosh. Really soon after. I mean, Saturday Night Live was one of my first performances. I think I released that. song and I performed at the Brits in London and S&L.

Those were my first two performances in my singer-songwriter career, which is pretty wild looking back. Ladies and gentlemen, Olivia Rodriguez. So that's when I first heard about you as watching Saturday Night Live. And I looked at the tape again today, and I asked myself, what was going through your mind when you were about to step on stage? And what you had to know was an audience of untold millions with this song.

Are you shaking? How are you feeling? What's in your head? I was terrified. I'm not even going to put up a front. Like, I was being brave. I was so terrified. I remember being in the dressing room.

And the dressing room in S&L is like the coolest place ever. there's like all these pictures of all of your heroes on the wall, you know, that performed on the same stage that you're performing on. And I, uh, I just like fully had a breakdown. I was so nervous and so scared. But you mean by a breakdown? Because you didn't make it out on stage. I did make it out. I was crying. My producer was there, thankfully, who I love and trust so much. And I was just like crying to him. I'm like, I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I'm so scared. He's like, you got it. I love you. You can do it. And, you know, so his support meant a lot to me in that moment.

The first album struck me as, well, as many things, but unless I'm wrong and tell me I'm crazy if I am, that pandemic is something that if that album is to live on in history, and I think it will in pop music history, it's attached to the pandemic in some way, isn't it? Yeah. I actually wrote most of it during the pandemic, and I credit a lot of the songs to that isolation

like we were talking about earlier, I actually forced myself during the pandemic. I had a challenge with myself where I told myself I'd write a song every day as long as a pandemic. Because, you know, we thought that the pandemic was going to be two weeks. I'm like, I can do it.

It turned out to be like, you know, forever. 14 songs. Yeah. But I did that for like maybe five or six months and it really helped me hone in in my songwriting craft and, you know, have discipline with my writing. And also I think that people maybe,

wanted to hear all those sad songs in the pandemic because I think we were all just as a collective facing emotions that maybe we hadn't processed because of our new, you know, surroundings where we couldn't distract ourselves. So, yeah, I think that the pandemic definitely is a big part of that album. I want to ask another question about feeling. What does it feel like physically? When you're on stage in front of a huge crowd and you're singing a ballad like driver's license in front of an immense audience. a big live audience. Yeah, it's really crazy.

I mean, I think that feeling would probably never get old. My favorite songs actually to sing are the really like angry ones, especially on tour. I love looking out in the audience. Sometimes I'll see these girls and they're so young. They're like seven or eight and they're like screaming these angry songs. I'm like getting so hyped up and, you know, they're so enraged. And I just think that's the coolest thing ever, you know?

That's not something you'd see on the street, but it's just so cool that people get to express all those emotions, their music. If you had to think of one moment or one image from your last tour that's seared into your memory, into your brain, what might it be? Glass and Burry. Performing at Glass and Bury was incredible. This is the big festival, outdoor festival in Britain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh.

It's actually the first music festival I'd ever been to, and I got to play it. It's just awesome, and most people I ever played for. How many people were there? Oh, I think it was like 60,000 or something like that. Yeah. You know, pretty crazy to think about. But, yeah, that was a really great moment of my career. And the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade the day before I went on stage,

and Lily Allen and I dedicated, fuck you to the Supreme Court that day. And I just remember feeling so angry and, you know, being around so many of my friends were so angry and didn't know, you know, what to do or what to say. And in that moment, really, feeling like music was such a outlet for us. And looking onto the crowd and seeing everyone who felt the same way, it was, I think it just reminded me what the true purpose of music is, you know. You mean, is something of release and emotional force? Yeah, of everything, of, you know, of protest and of release and togetherness.

You know, seeing an entire crowd, seeing that, and share that emotion in that moment. And it's just so transcendent, you know. Let's talk about your new album. When you wrote your first album, Sour, you had so much that you wanted to express and, you know, and get off your chest and get off your mind as a young person. How is the Olivia Rodriguez of now different than the one who sat down to write Sour? Oh, my gosh. World's different.

But, you know, the craziest thing is I've changed so much just from the ages of 17 to 20. Like, in, you know, in that time period, people are just, you know, you grow, I feel like I grow 20, 25 years and three years, you know. So, yeah, I mean, she's vastly different. But I remember definitely that fear of sitting down and trying to write the second album and thinking, my God, I'm not a, you know, 17-year-old girl going through her first heartbreak anymore. You know, that's such a universally relatable experience, you know, how am I going to make something that feels, you know, like people can get behind? it. But I don't know. I guess it just... What is the pressure? In other words, is it creative or is it that your life has gotten 200% weirder because of, you know, all that comes with stardom and all the rest? What was the

conversation like in your head? Yeah, I think a mix of both. It's definitely like, you know how people always are like, oh, your only competition is your past self? And I was like, well, I don't know if that necessarily worked for me. I don't know how I could ever. ever like, you know, follow up such crazy, you know, unexpected success. And so I put that pressure on myself for a long time. And I remember, actually, Jack White is a big hero of mine. And I met him for the first time, maybe a year ago. And he wrote me this letter.

And it had like a few bullet points of, like, advice. And one of the pieces of advice was that your only job is to write music that you would like to hear on the radio. And I remember I was really struggling with, you know, all this pressure. and, you know, are people on Twitter are going to like like what this song sounds like and all of this, you know, gunk in my head.

And I remember reading that and it just really, like, igniting something in me. And so I think that really helped. So Jack White of the White Stripes writes you this kind of bullet point, you know, advice column. Yeah, and it helped so much. Yeah, and we were able to take his advice? Yeah, I think that keeping that in mind and reframing the story.

songwriting process into just trying to write songs that you enjoy and songs that you like is just the only thing you can do. Also, that being said, making songs that you like is also terribly hard sometimes. It's a lot easier said than done. That's a feat in and of itself. But yeah, I don't know. I think reframing that really, really helped me. I think on this album Guts, I think I really learned how to look at a song and look at songwriting as a sort of a craft and not just this, you know, pouring my heart out at the piano like I was doing when I was 17. So I think these songs definitely took longer to write. And I think we just sat with them for a little longer. Livia, you took a poetry class at USC. Yeah. Uh-huh. When was that and why did you do

that? That was last year. I mean, I was homeschooled my whole life. There's a song on the album called Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl. It's about me. It's dealing with the consequences of that. But Yeah, I was homeschooled my whole life and I always wanted to go to college and I always was very curious. And I'm a very curious person. There's so much that I want to know in this world. And I really enjoyed taking that class. And I've always been super interested in poetry and I've always been writing it for a long time. But yeah, it was really informative and I feel very grateful that I got that opportunity.

We actually turned one of the poems that I wrote as an assignment in the poetry class into, a song on the album called Lacey. So it was pretty productive, I suppose. Lacey, oh, Lacey, it's like you're out to get me you poison every little thing

that I do. Lacey, oh Lacey, I just loathe you lately and I despise my jealous eyes and how hard they fell free. Olivia, were there any poems that you read by poets or poets that you read that are helpful to you as a, not just as a human being, but as an artist? Yeah, I mean, Leonard Cohen, I read lots of his poetry while I was making guts. I think he's incredible.

That's just an endless well of inspiration, all of his writings and, you know, drawings. And I just, it's so inspiring. Yeah, I wrote the poem Lacey inspired by the poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath, too. So, you know, lots of inspiration. Inspiration comes from everywhere. So you grab it out where you can. I don't know if you watch girls. I haven't watched it yet.

Everyone's been recommending it to me, though. I really need to. So Lena Dunham is, you know, the story runner, and she's also the star of the show, and she's a kind of searching young woman. And at a certain point, she announces to her appearance because she wants to be a writer. She says, I think I'm the voice. I'm not the voice of my generation, I think I might be getting this right, but the A voice of a generation. And now you're being branded, I hate to tell you, whether you like it or not, the voice of a generation, the voice of Generation Z, Gen Z.

What do you make of all that? Yeah, you know, I tend to not think about it just because I think that's kind of a scary thought. I don't think of myself that way. I just try to be as much myself as I possibly can and try to make the best work I can but I mean it's obviously super flattering when people say that but yeah I don't know

I love my generation I'm proud to be a part of it so you know you have a song for example where we've all been living with social media for quite a long time you grew it was already there when you you yeah I never didn't have it which is a strange way to grow up yeah and it makes its presence

known in your songs. Do you also look at social media to see how people are perceiving you, which seems like a lot of burden? Yeah, that's an understatement. It's definitely a burden. Yeah, I think that I've gotten better at it, the more that I've been on it. It's just a, you know, it's a part of this job that I think is unnecessary evil. And there are some things on social media that are awesome and I love connecting with people that I normally wouldn't have gotten the chance to. But it is weird. And in my life, I feel like I'm growing in front of people, which is really strange. You know, I've been in front of people for a really long time.

And sometimes it can feel kind of stifling or claustrophobic to feel like you're always being seen. But I don't know. I feel like I have a good relationship with it these days. I think I have a good... Well, tell me about that burden. Yeah, I mean... I think for a long time I felt like I maybe couldn't make mistakes or I always felt this pressure to be a good role model. And I grew up on these kids shows where, you know, that's being a good role model is very, you know, important as it should be.

And I think I always felt like I couldn't be a normal kid and go out and do stupid things and make mistakes and learn, which is, you know, at the end of the day making mistakes is the only way you do learn. But I feel like in this album in particular, I feel like that was kind of me grappling with those feelings and talking about the mistakes that I did end up making and being open and honest about them. And I think that was kind of cathartic for me. Like what? An example.

I mean, there's a song Making the Bed that I really love. And the lyrics are, sometimes I feel like I don't want to be where I am getting drunk at a club with my fair weather friends, like the chorus. And I was kind of nervous to stay. I'm 20 years old, which is not of age yet, I guess. And I don't know, I was nervous to put that one out, and I felt like it, you know, I'm always so conscious of people, you know, young kids listening to my music and, you know, people's parents listening to my music and stuff like that.

But at the end of the day, I think that all of my role models and all of my heroes are my heroes because they are unapologetically who they are. express themselves without fear of being criticized. So that's just what I try to tell myself. On this album, on Guts, you seem to be reaching back even further in history, the opening track, which is about all the impossible standards of being a woman in America starts out kind of Joni Mitchell, but then turns abruptly midway into a song that sounds like the riot girl scene. How do you position your music in this longer tradition of rebellion? It's a great question. I love that question. I mean, I think female rebellion music, for lack of better word, is my favorite music ever. And I've been obsessed with the riot girl punk scene

for a while and I think that song was my stab at trying to write a song like that. But yeah, I feel a lot of kinship towards women. And, you know, I love writing songs about these, you know, female feelings of anger and resentment that maybe aren't so, you know, so easily expressable in an everyday life. How do you look at your now reasonably distant past? A lot of times you'll read about the early careers, particularly of women who were in TV as kids, and they look back on it and they feel sad about it, exploited, something, something maybe not terribly pleasant. Do you feel that you got through that decently treated and it was a healthy experience or there was downsides to it as well? I do.

I can certainly see how people. wouldn't have that experience. I think it's a very strange way to grow up. I feel really lucky that I was surrounded by wonderful people. My parents are so wonderful and so grounded and always looking out for me. And I just owe everything to them. I don't think that I would have that attitude towards it if it wasn't for them. But yeah, it is really strange. And you know, you sacrifice a lot. And I, you know, I didn't have a normal childhood in order to have that career. And I'm really grateful for everything that happened, but it's definitely, it's a give and take. What did you miss most?

I think I actually realized it this year how much I missed, or I feel like I missed out on, like going to high school and being around people my own age and how important that camaraderie felt like to me. I grew up on sets where I was just around 45-year-old guys all the time. And so I think that I sort of feel like I had a relatively lonely childhood, which is okay. I mean, that's why I turned to writing songs and making music and all of that. But, yeah, that's definitely one of the pitfalls. And fame is at the level that you're experiencing it now, which is pretty rare.

Is it lonely or is it something else? I don't know what it is. Gosh, I feel incredibly lucky to have great people. around me, but it certainly is trickier, you know, navigating social life and relationships of any kind. You know, it's definitely

something that I have to put more thought into, I guess, but, you know, social life and relationships are hard regardless of what your career is, so. Now, are we going to see you act again, or is music the rest of your career in a dominant way? I don't know.

I mean, I'm open to whatever. I love telling stories, and And if there's a story that's in a script someday that I would love to tell, then I would be really honored to be able to do that. I don't really know, though. I mean, I love music. I think music will always be my biggest passion. Writing songs is where I feel most like myself. Olivia Rodriguez, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I hate to give the satisfaction asking how you're doing now. How's the castle built off people you pretend to care about just what you. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening. See you next week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garpes of Tuneiards with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Walton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, and Louis Mitchell. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, and Alejandro Tecette. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.