The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Countdown to Brexit, Plus Adam Gopnik’s Turkey Zen

Episode Date: November 16, 2018

More than two years after British voters approved a measure to withdraw their nation from the European Union—a gigantic undertaking with no roadmap of any sort —Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled a plan: essentially, that the U.K. would remain in the European customs union, participating in trade with the E.U. and remaining subject to its trade policies, but exit the political process of the E.U. The deal was seen by some as the worst of both worlds, and several cabinet ministers resigned; May could well lose a no-confidence vote in the immediate future. David Remnick talks with the London-based staff writers Sam Knight and Rebecca Mead about the ongoing challenges of Brexit. And the staff writer Adam Gopnik, who’s been preparing Thanksgiving dinner for decades, considers the zen of cooking a turkey. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. With everything going on in this country over the last two weeks since the midterms, there was also big news from the United Kingdom this week, extremely big news. On Wednesday night, Theresa May came out of her headquarters at 10 Downing Street in London and announced what Britain has been waiting for, for more than two years, a plan for Brexit.

This is a decisive step which enables us to move on and finalize the deal in the days ahead. May spoke for two minutes light on detail, and through most of it, you can hear a protester shouting in the background. I know that there will be difficult days ahead. This is a decision which will come under intense scrutiny, and that is entirely as it should be. Intense scrutiny, it seems, is a British expression that might mean, they're going to come for me and they're going to cut my bleeping head off. Then Theresa May went back inside Ten Downing Street, close the door,

and politically speaking, all hell broke loose. Sam Knight has been covering Brexit, and he recently profiled Theresa May for the magazine. We'll be joined in a minute by Rebecca Mead, a longtime staff writer based in London as well. Sam, I don't know how to put this any better, but what just happened? There is, you know, it's hard to sort of exaggerate the sort of extent of the ferment and the chaos now.

The reason this has been so controversial is that from the get-go, Britain announced that there would be a way to not have a border on the island of Ireland between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, despite the fact that Britain would be leaving the EU. Because the Republic of Ireland is staying in Europe as Britain plans to leave. And at that point, Theresa May set herself the challenge of how to devise a compromise that could allow that to happen. And the solution that has been arrived at after everyone banging their head against this problem for the last 18 months is that not just Northern Ireland, but the whole of the UK will remain inside the EU's customs union, sort of for the foreseeable future until someone can come up with a better idea to solve this problem. And that idea of Britain remaining inside one of the EU's key pieces of architecture,

following lots of rules being subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ, which is the EU's highest court, spells and smells to Brexiteers that we haven't really left, and we may never leave. And that is what's causing the chaos today. So basically the worst of both worlds, right? They would have or would have had all the economic rules and basically no say at all in the process. Theresa May's response to that is that we hope that we will never end up in this situation and once we continue these negotiations in the next unbelievably kind of epic phase of this thing,

which is called the transition period in which negotiations will continue, that we will be able to design something. So this thing, which is called the backstop, a sort of insurance. policy never has to arise. But once you see it in black and white on the text, it's hard to get that out of your head and not to feel sort of fatalistic that Britain will sink into this situation, which is, you know, on the face of it, an absurd situation for, you know, Europe's second largest economy to be a rule taker inside, you know, crucial aspects of the European Union with, as you say, you know, no say over them. Do you see any way forward from here?

So it was really telling to me that on Wednesday evening when Theresa May stepped out of this extremely long and brutal cabinet meeting to announce that the cabinet had agreed to support the deal, she said for the first time the country faces a choice now. It faces a choice between my deal, no deal and no Brexit at all. And, you know, as you'll know, as we've been speaking about, there is this campaign for a people's vote, a second referendum on Brexit, which could, you know, in third referendum on Brexit, which could, you know, in third. theory, keep the UK within the European Union. And it was just very striking to me. That's the first time that Theresa May has aired the possibility. That's not because she wants it to happen or she thinks that's a good idea. She's dead set against it and we'll do everything to stop it happening. And I think in a way she mentioned it to sort of remind Brexiteers and pro-Brexit people to get behind her. Otherwise, this thing is in peril. But I think even raising that possibility

has, if you like, it's emboldened everyone across the political spectrum to think that this thing is up for grabs now. Well, Rebecca, how would you make the case for Brexit? In other words, if you're Boris Johnson at this point, who's still ferociously behind Brexit and not a watered down version, what is he still advertising as the sure benefits of it to the people of the United Kingdom? I think the argument that the Brexiteers made from the very beginning before the vote took place was an argument about a kind of vague idea of sovereignty and control over our destiny as a nation. For the voters for whom the contemporary world gave them very little sense of having any control, that was a very appealing argument. I mean, the thing that one sort of hears around now from people who are either in favor of Brexit or at this point just think it's going to happen, so we might as well deal, is, you know, yes, things will be a little rough for a while, but it'll all work out fine in the end. Those people making that argument have within their own lives a kind of wiggle room for things to take a downturn.

The pity of it is that there are so many people who voted for Brexit who don't have that wiggle room in their own household budget to see food prices go up, for example, as it's anticipated they will. Or to see an economic downturn and for wages to stagnate. They don't have the luxury of thinking that's no big deal. Rebecca, this summer you moved back to London after having lived in New York for 30 years. You must still be seeing this.

city through fresh eyes, even as you and your family look to settle down. Where do you see the evidence of Brexit in practical life, in conversation, in the overall political anxieties of the United Kingdom now that you live there? Well, London, where I've been living since the end of August, is a very different place from the rest of the country. London is sort of an island and done to itself. It voted overwhelmingly to stay in the European Union. London's stuffed to the gills with Europeans and people from other countries too.

It's a very international place. And so when one's here, there's almost a feeling of, I mean, how much difference can it really make? I mean, there's an absurdity to what's going on here. There's a kind of Alice in Wonderland quality to it where there's a kind of disbelief about what's going on. Sam, you've been traveling actually all over the country

and getting a sense of how people feel. Is there any shift in the position on Brexit and outside of London? What are the anxieties about the future? So I think something that's sort of really easy to lose track of, particularly if you're in London, if you're kind of instinctively think that this is, you know, a terrible idea, it's very easy to lose sight of a fundamental kind of driver behind Brexit,

which was a kind of honest, democratic response to a feeling of being governed by remote alienating forces, be that globalization, be that kind of loosely regulated capitalism, be that the European Union. When you're out and about in the country, there is this kind of strong feeling that Brexit is being handled badly. And what we're seeing now, I think, and in a slightly worrying way,

is a kind of betrayal myth emerging. You know, Theresa May is not an avowed Brexiteer. She never sort of has expressed strong views either way on whether Brexit is there a good thing or a bad thing for the country. So there's this... Which is amazing, though, Isn't it? Isn't it amazing that the prime minister of the country has never expressed a firm view one way or the other on the most consequential question in contemporary history for the United Kingdom? How is that possible?

I think that, you know, Theresa May's kind of strength and weakness as a prime minister is that she's not particularly charismatic. She doesn't paint a rosy vision of what is possible. She is a selfless and dutiful person. And I do think that with the presentation of this Brexit deal, she's almost irrelevant. I feel like this deal represents the reality of Brexit. It's a mess. It's a compromise. The agreements that she's come to will protect the economy.

me, they will make Britain more out of the EU than it was before. But it's an ugly proposition. And so I do think that what's happening now is truly an argument about the substance of how this should proceed rather than her personally. Rebecca, just as a point of comparison, you've moved back to London, you've been in New York and the United States for a long time. So you've lived in Trump's America, and now you're living in Brexit, Brit. and I wonder, how does the feel of it differ or resemble what's going on in the United States? The political discussion, the nature of the anxieties and resentments, the working class issue, for example. Well, I mean, I think the difference in atmosphere, I've said this before, but I'll say it here.

I think the difference in atmosphere between Britain and the United States is the difference between depression and psychosis. I mean, I think that there's a... Great. I think that, you know, my feeling, certainly in Trump's America, was one of mounting panic every morning when I looked at the news to see what latest, you know, depredation had happened. Here, it's sort of like, oh, God, yet another dreary Brexit negotiation step to try to assimilate and get through. I mean, the thing about Brexit is this incredibly complicated, incredibly important and unbelievably dull. And, you know, one can never say that about Trump's America. I have to say, it sounds like a giant bollocks. I mean, no one says giant bollocks, but it is a

right. I know that that's a... Cock up. We will say, perhaps. A big cock up. There you go. So everybody's miserable. Nobody's happy. Sam, you just wrote recently about the UK National Health Service, which is a pillar of British life. NHS has fallen on hard times pretty recently, and Brexit is not making things easier. What kind of threat does Brexit pose to these kinds of government institutions, these social welfare institutions, which are so important to daily life in Britain? Yes. I mean, the first one, which is obvious, is that there is a substantial minority.

I think it's about 10 to 15 percent of the workforce of the NHS is made up of EU citizens who come here and deliver people's babies and give their drugs and give them their, you know, their health exams. There's a kind of question mark over their rights and whether they'll want to stay. You know, I think the number of EU midwives coming to the UK has fallen like something like 85% in the last year, you know, so there'll be a real felt effect in staff shortages across the NHS. And then there is, you know, the larger question of how we, of how we pay for these things. I mean, the NHS is a strange one because it's so totemic. The government's focus an enormous amount of kind of energy and funding on trying to keep it going, while actually

lesser-seen aspects of the welfare state are sort of withering on the vine a bit at the moment. So if I live in Middle England, which is part of the heart of the pro-Brexit vote, how am I going to be satisfied by Brexit? How is my life going to be better or am I bound to be disappointed? I mean, Brexit is one of these sort of awful things. posited as a solution. You know, it just can't be the solution. I sometimes kind of grapple around for sort of analogies that sound a bit like this. But imagine if for one reason or another, you know, the American people were offered a referendum

on whether or not to return to the gold standard, right? And you had a kind of huge national campaign in which people sort of put forward essentially a kind of nostalgic version of life when, you know, men were men and a dollar was a dollar. And, you know, a pound of apples in a shops was a pound of apples in the shops. Do you know what I mean? And then a country voted. actually, you know, the turn to the gold standard would actually make life more reasonable and more real and more kind of approachable and people would look each other in the eye again, you know what I mean, that kind of thing. That's what we've done. We've done this arcane policy idea of, as Rebecca said earlier, you know, a few group of people basically obsessed with British sovereignty as if that will solve things like more fulfilling, better skilled jobs for, you know, the white working classes of the Midlands, which it just is not able to. deliver. You know, that's a very negative account of what Brexit is. And I sometimes kind of try

and draw back from that and say, look, the EU is a very, very complicated political project. And I sort of have to hold on to this idea that people who voted for Brexit, they didn't do it from nowhere. You know, they did do it because there is something alarming about a green. group of, you know, and this is the Brexit rhetoric, unelected EU commissioners in charge of trillion dollar budgets in Brussels making rules about, you know, British milk. You know, that can be a kind of an alienating way in which to take part in democratic life. So this is the sort of the yin and the yang in my head all the time about Brexit, is that it will not improve people's living standards, but were they wrong to send a message that they're not

being listened to? That's the two sides of it. But as with the Trump vote, yes, there was a genuine cry of pain from the white working class voter on both sides of the Atlantic. But there was also racism and ignorance and a kind of anti-elitism and all these other factors that played in. The decision may end up having these profound economic consequences for many years to come. but a lot of people thought that what they were voting on was immigration, right? And a sense of wanting to close up Britain's borders, which was sort of an uglier part of the conversation. And that too is something that we're going to have to continue to reckon with.

What an astonishing mess. Rebecca and Sam, thank you so much. Thank you. Pleasure. Rebecca Meade and Sam Knight, both staff writers based in the UK, which is still part of Europe for now. More in a minute. I'm David Remnick, and you're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Kellefassani knows more music and more about music than just about anyone I know. He's written for us about everyone from George Strait to Paul Simon to Gucci-Main to King Crimson. Kelfa is absolutely full of surprises in the best way. Okay, you recently had a piece in the magazine about Christian rock, and no pun intended, it was a revelation to me. Oh, thank you. And what was amazing is how soon it started. I knew, you know, a fair amount about the way gospel had been drawn upon to become soul and R&B in the tradition of Sam Cook or Aretha Franklin. But the way it came into rock and roll is a history.

I don't think that we know quite as well. Now, obviously, a lot of people making rock music over the years have been Christian one way or another. But what starts, a lot of people say it starts in 1916. with this album called Upon This Rock by Larry Norman, is you get what I would call intentionally Christian rock. In other words, you have someone part of what he's trying to do is make an album about Christianity, calling people to Christianity, educating people about Christianity. And he's kind of associated with the Jesus movement, which is this kind of hippie Christian revival that's taking place around the same time. And whereas at the beginning he starts to, he seems like a real anomaly. when he first comes out.

By the 70s, he seems like the godfather of what is this growing genre of Christian rock. There's the so-called Christian Woodstock in 1972 in Dallas called Explo 72. One of the headliners is Larry Norman, but another of the headliners is Billy Graham. I'm assuming Billy Graham was there to preach, not to sing. Billy Graham did not sing.

But these things in the 70s kind of merge, a Christian rock and the mainstream of American Christianity so that by the end of the decade, A lot of mainstream pastors, a lot of big churches have embraced Christian rock. One of the great Christian rock artists to come out of the 1970s is this guy, Phil Kagee, who was in a band called Glass Harp and then goes solo. You might know of him, David, because he's a guitar shredder. And I know you are also a guitar shredder.

Should we listen to a little? Absolutely. What's the song? The song is called Time. It's from his 1976 album, Love Broke Through. This is a live version from 1977. We're headed towards Sticks country here. Well, yeah, and this is what a lot of these bands do

is they draw from all the secular stuff that's going on. Right. And, you know, it's interesting. A lot of the stress and the anxiety in this world of Christian rock is about the lyrics, right? And how should we praise the Lord and how frequently and how explicitly and how much Jesus needs to be in there? Kegie kind of gets away with something different

because he's a guitarist, and some of his songs are instrumental. He does incredible acoustic finger-picking records, and he can really shred. And obviously, when he's shredding, he could be shredding in the service of anything. There he is. He's up in the stratosphere.

He's on the 19th fret here. Okay. And again, you know, the lyrics of the song are about how the Lord's going to come back and you're running out of time, brother. And so there's a certain severity in the words, but the music is much more joyful. Who else is a favorite, Kay?

So, this is Leslie Phillips. I can't trace. She's not that well known, but she's a little better known by the name she used later in her career, which was Sam Phillips. So in the 1980s, as Leslie Phillips, she released a series of Christian rock albums or Christian pop albums. She was sometimes promoted as the Christian Cindy Lopper. A little Alanis-Morissette thing going on. Yeah, although this is before that. This is from 1987.

This album is called The Turning. It was the last album she made as Leslie Phillips. It was also produced by someone who wasn't well-known then, which is T-Bone Burnett. And they ended up getting married. Are these bands playing at the same places that everybody else is playing it, or are they paying mainly at big churches? That's a good question.

Sometimes they are playing regular clubs, but also they have their own circus. And financially, there's a lot of money in this circuit. There's big festivals, there's big churches. And churches are eager to raise money to bring these bands in. So there was big money in it, too. Yeah, there's always been big money in Christian rock music. Partly, I think, my theory is that it's partly because there were often parents willing to buy their kids Christian rock albums and buy their kids tickets to go see Christian rock music.

To keep them on the up and up. Yeah, so it was kind of subsidized. So for Christian rock, there often was this sense that the lyrics are what matters. And as long as you're singing about God, the music can really sound like anything. And for some artists, this meant, oh, we're just going to take whatever the popular styles are and kind of remake those songs with God lyrics and it's going to be not that good. But some other bands realized, like, oh, this is going to give us license to do all sorts of stuff. Like we can really, we can stay in this world and make really crazy noise.

Like Christian punk? As long as were, as long as were, the lyrics are right. So this is a band called Ex-Tol from Norway, whose first gig was in a church outside Oslo in 1994. The song is called Celestial Completion. Recorder thing going and then all of a sudden... They fooled you, didn't they? This is...

Head-bangers. Wouldn't you in a band like this? I was not in a... Well... Yeah. But it might be a little hard to hear without the lyric sheet, but right now they're actually singing Matthew

Chapter 25 verse 23 Well done Good and Faithful Servant You have been faithful with a few things And so That's coming through my headphone I can't hear

Absolutely And so And so they're a great example Of if you really believe This idea that The lyrics are what makes something Christian Christian rock

Could mean a whole lot of things But the religion is sincere I mean nobody's doubting The sincerity of it Oh I mean You know there's always doubters But yes, absolutely a band like Extol, which has, you know, had a long career. And yes, stayed in this world.

Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. And then, so this is a band that's been one of my favorite bands, actually, for a while. They're called Me Without You. They come out of the sort of post-hardcore scene in Philadelphia, formed around 2000. They put out their first album in 2002 on Tooth and Nail, which is a very influential Christian kind of punk and alternative label.

Over the years, a lot of Christian rock kind of became very mainstream, became very popular. Me Without You sort of brings the tradition back to its countercultural roots. The lead singer was famously a dumpster diver, and they ended up drawing in all sorts of things, not just Christian traditions, but Sufi traditions, Baha'i traditions. So they're a band that's actually been influential on a lot of Christian bands, again, showing that this tradition can be a big and capacious tradition. So Christian rock has stayed alive and thriving now for almost the length of rock and roll itself. Yeah, absolutely.

And depending on how you define it, right, you could look at bands like the killers and imagine Dragons, which both have Mormon lead singers, Paramore, even Katie Perry come out of the Christian rock and Christian pop world. So there really is a wide number of different kinds of Christian rock music, and oftentimes people are listening to it even when they don't know they are. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. I hear it all the time Kelifasane You can find his article

about Christian rock at New Yorker.com I'm David Remnick and that's almost it for today if you're traveling this week for the holiday good luck to you and if you're cooking best of luck and a stiff, stiff drink

we're going to leave you now with a few timely words from my friend and colleague Adam Gopnik Adam's been writing for the magazine since 1986, and more than once, he's written about turkeys. Here's Adam. The best way to prepare a turkey is somewhat occult, mysterious, and even in its own way, esoteric answer.

It's like a zen answer, because the truth is, there is no good way to prepare a turkey, my son. There is no good way to prepare a turkey. I have bought French turkeys, and I have bought American turkeys. I have bought heirloom turkeys, and I have bought supermarket turkeys. I have brine turkey. I have basted turkeys. I have pre-baseded turkeys. I have dry-briined turkeys. And after you roast it, either at a very high heat or at a very low heat, after all of that process, it ends up tasting like turkey. The famous thing, of course, is that Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the turkey the national bird of America because it seemed emblematic of everything American.

It is a wild American bird. It is homely. It is somewhat domestic. It isn't a predator like the damn bald eagle. So all of those things, I think, make it attractive to us. The core myth of Thanksgiving, after all, is an attractive one. It's a myth of diversity. It's a myth of coexistence.

One of my own way to say a myth of intersectionality. All myths allied a lot of unpleasantness. No myth known demand is not allied a lot of unpleasantness, whether it's the rape of Europa by the book. or the idea that the Indians were glad that they had sat down to dinner with the pilgrims. I think they became much to regret it. But the thing about a myth is not that it elides reality,

but that it encompasses some other kind of ideal. And that ideal, I think, is still a positive and living one. I remember in the years when we lived down in Soho, we would go to Ottomanelli's butcher there, and everybody's name would be written up in black crayon on brown paper who had a turkey, and they would click it off one by what. want. And seeing that wealth, predictable wealth of immigrant names from bizarre Ashkenazi names like

mine to Ottomanelli and the Italian and Asian and every kind, deeply moving. It's a, you know, it's a holiday of many kinds. It really is a celebration of diversity and bad poultry. We have hosted Thanksgiving every year for 35, 36 years. Usually, I insist on doing most of the feast myself. It does tend to rest on the principle of the marshmallow. The more everything tastes like a marshmallow, the more Thanksgiving it is. And very heavy on starches and sweets. My daughter, Olivia, has gone off to college, and so this will be her first Thanksgiving back. She has been texting me with pictures of sweet potato casseroles. I'm not exactly sure why. It's not part of our tradition, but I think someone probably in her dorm was passing around

sweet potato pictures, which was what they do these days since kids no longer have sex. apparently in their 20s, they share castoral pictures on Pinterest. The idea of a feast is clearly just one of the three or four deepest things in human beings. I don't think there's any culture anywhere in the world that doesn't have dancing, music, and feasting. At least as a super amateur anthropologist, I've never read about any, where those aren't essential rights and rituals. We are a culture where dancing is very formalized now or hived off. We don't typically stop the meal to dance. We love music, but most of our music is secondhand.

It's stuff we listen to on recordings. It's rare for someone to say, let's lead some Gilbert and Sullivan songs. Feasting is the one common ritual that we all have. But I have known people who hate Christmas. I've known that, and I know countless people who never want to celebrate their birthdays. And I have passed Fourth of July's with people who are scarcely aware that it's the Fourth of July, and certainly May Days and who even knows when Arbor Day and Columbus Day fall anymore. I have never known someone who was allergic to Thanksgiving.

So Thanksgiving may be the universal solvent of Scrooge's. You know, we wonder if there had been an American Christmas Carol. It certainly would have been said at Thanksgiving rather than at Christmas and would have involved, you know, some kind of J.P. Morgan type being persuaded by Emma Goldman Goldman and Alexander Berkman to cease being an evil person and become good and eat a turkey. That's actually not a bad idea. I may... Don't broadcast that.

I may do it. That's Adam Gopnik. Please, don't steal his intellectual property. And have a great holiday. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.