Throughline - Behind the Scenes of Throughline

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Today on the show, we're taking you behind the scenes. We'll tell you how Throughline was born, some of what goes into making our episodes, and a little bit about how we make our special sauce — the Throughline rizz, as the kids say.If you want more of these behind-the-scenes conversations become a Throughline+ subscriber. You can find out more at plus.npr.org/throughline.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. First, we have the music come in for the cold open. Then sprinkle in some sound design to beat your interest, a little appetizer for your ears. And then some news tape to give you a little more context on what's happening. America's Viking 1 spacecraft landed on Mars early this morning and sent back two sharp pictures of the red planet.

Or maybe it's a voiceover. The robot lander touched down flawlessly this morning in a sandy desert area. Let's add a little reverb to this one. The Viking spaceship has landed safely on Mars seven years to the day after man first set foot on the moon. I'm Rand Abdel Fattah. I'm Ramtin Arab-Louis. And you're listening to through line from NPR today on the show behind the scenes of well this show

Okay, so some of you listening have been with us since day one and some of you might have just heard about the show But whether you're a die-hard fan sleeping in a through line t-shirt every night or maybe a new listener Just trying to tune out the post-election news. Here on this show, the team is always trying to tell stories that are informative, insightful, and entertaining. So for the episode today, we're taking you behind the scenes of the show, telling you how it was born, some of what goes into making our episodes, and a little bit about how we make our special ThruLine sauce, the ThruLine Riz, as the kids say. Or Cringe, which is what my nine-year-old would say. Anyways, we're going to give you a special behind-the-scenes look

where you'll hear from us and from people on our team about the show and some of the episodes we made. By the way, these behind-the-scenes conversations and more already exist for our Throughline Plus subscribers. So if you're not supporting us yet, but you want more Throughline in your life, sign up now. You can find out more at plus.npr.org slash Throughline.

Coming up, the origins of Throughline or Throughline's Throughline. One of those. Hi, my name is Susan Rozas. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR. If you're a regular listener of the ThruLine podcast, then you probably enjoy some other NPR podcasts too. With NPR+, you get perks for over 20 different NPR podcasts like this one. So start supporting what you love and stop hearing promos like this one at plus.npr.org. Hey everyone, I'm B.A. Parker, a host of the podcast Code Switch, and on my show, I get to dig into all of the facets of being a black woman,

from honoring my ancestors to exploring representation in reality TV. Code Switch is a place where I think out loud about how race and identity are connected. Join me on the Code Switch podcast from NPR. Joe Biden's on his way out and Donald Trump's on his way back. Want to know what's happening as the presidential transition is underway? The NPR Politics Podcast has you covered with the latest news and analysis. Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast. Part One. Through Line. So today, we thought it would be kind of fun to give you a behind the scenes look at how the show got started.

Yeah, it's our origin, the through-line origin story. It all began... No, I'm just kidding. Okay, no. It's like once upon a time... We got to cue the music. About six years ago. We got to cue the doo-doo-doo music. So, no, okay, so it starts in, I think it was October of 2015.

I was brought to NPR by Guy Raz, who was the host of Ted Radio Hour at the time. It's the Ted Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Guy Raz, who was the host of Ted Radio Hour at the time. It's the Ted Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. To work on a new show he was developing, and I had never worked in journalism or podcasting before. I had only worked on music for Ted Radio Hour, and Guy, I think, wanted to take a chance on me and brought me in to work on a pilot for a new show. And it was really kind of a top-secret project.

They sat me kind of in the corner of the sixth floor, I think, or the fifth floor where we were at the time at NPR headquarters. And I was just trying to figure out how to make a podcast. We had done interviews and we're just trying to figure it out. And I was kind of cubing to myself. I wasn't talking to anyone. I think for the first three or four days, I went and looked at the names of the different people that were sitting around me. And I saw one name, and the last name was Abdelhatta.

And I was like, that sounds like an Afghan name, or I don't know, maybe Iranian name. That's kind of, you know, I was like, oh, I wonder who this person is. And a few days later, someone started sitting at that desk and it was run. And I was like super intimidated to talk to you. I was like, who is this? You like, you dressed, I don't know. I thought you kind of dressed. You're a mipster.

You're a Muslim hipster. This is so, it's so funny because like legit, like nobody in my life has ever, ever, ever, ever told me that my fashion or anything about me is cool enough to be intimidated by. I was like, no. I was like, should I go up and say hi to her? I'll take it. that my fashion or anything about me is cool enough to be intimidated by. I was like, no, I said, should I go up and say hi to her? I'll take it. I was like, no, she's probably going to be like, who the hell are you?

And I don't know how or who approached who first, but eventually we started talking to each other and like became friends. And honestly, I don't even remember how we became friends. We were just suddenly friends. It's like... Yeah, I think we just started having lunch together and talking, like for a little context. I had been at NPR for a few years at that point. I'd been kind of jumping around, working on different pilots for podcasts and things like

that. And eventually, by the time the ROM team got there, I was sort of like antsy to also do something new. And, you know, once we got to talking, it was crazy fast how quickly we started talking about the idea for what would become ThruLine. We were just sort of naturally talking about history a lot, talking about religion and politics and all the things that are supposedly off limits to talk about. Those were like our

natural first topics of conversation. And I think partly it was because we both have these immigrant backgrounds and coming from the Middle East. There was just a lot of shared history of personal history for us. And we had the idea of doing something that was creatively different, experimental in sound that would also help explain the present through stories from the past. And we had no idea how you actually take an idea and make it into like a reality. But we decided to bring the idea to my boss at the time and we got our shot to make a pilot episode. Yeah, I mean, we kind of got a shot.

Like all we got was like, okay, yeah. I'm putting a little Rosie spin on it. Basically he was like, your boss Izzy is a nice guy. He was a nice guy, he still isn't a really nice guy. And he was kind of like, yeah, you can use the studio if you want, and let me know if you need a little couple bucks to rent a studio, time, or whatever. And we kind of went off, and probably he didn't have any idea, like, what we were about to do. But we just started, yeah, that's it. We started just making it, honestly, on our split. The other thing we had left out is that by this time, the pilot I was working on became How I Built This.

From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. And Run is now kind of like under the table working on How I Built This, like producing for the show because... Are we allowed to say this on the record? Yeah, we're going to say this because this is so long ago now. Because I was working on it and RUN was like, like she said, looking for something new or whatever. And I was like, yeah, let's work together on this thing.

We were buddies and we both started producing. We're basically the first two producers and also Casey Herman, who's still there now. We're basically producing that show like the first year and having a blast, I think working together. That was the thing that like brought us together. Like we were in the studio together. We were like doing all the things. And so we were also making what would become Do line on the side. We were going and doing interviews at like places. We're acting like, I think you know how they say fake it till you make it. We were definitely faking interviews at like places, we were acting like, I think, you know how they say, fake it till you make it? We were definitely faking it, like, at that point. Yeah, we were like, what is this even going to sound like?

I mean, just figuring out what are we going to sound like? We were never hosts before, so it was like we were learning as we went everything. We definitely had some interviews that, you know, I wouldn't want to revisit. Didn't go so well. Didn't go so well. But honestly, it was just sort of a process of like, all right, you just got to like, keep at it, listen, figure out what sounds good. Like, what is this going to sound like? What is this going to be? And then we eventually ended up with like the first pilot episode, which was actually not the first episode that is in the feed.

which was actually not the first episode that is in the feed. And here is where begins a passion story that is equal in power in Islam to the passion of the Christ in Christianity. Takes three weeks to travel. It was an episode that ended up being called The War of the Worlds. And it was about the history of the Sunnisiyah dividedness, them, and came from like a personal place for both of us. And we were like, you know what? Let's really infuse ourselves into the show

so that they don't think anybody else can host it. Because, you know, we're producers. And, you know, in terms of the production side of things, we had that covered, but we wanted to make sure that nobody would kind of step in and host instead of us. And to Romtean's credit, you know, he was like, hell no, nobody's going to come in and like, chair this show into something else. Like, we came up with the idea, we're making it. And it was really just like the two of us doing everything for the first like year.

And then we, at one point, we're working on another pilot because they wanted us to do a couple more pilots to really get some experience under our belts. Before we do you say that, you should talk about what happened when we played. That's right, that's right. So before they told us to go off and make more pilots, we had to actually play this first pilot episode, War of the Worlds, for my boss at the time.

So we booked a studio at NPR headquarters, we like dimmed the lights, and we sat in there with my boss and just played it. And around maybe 40 or 45 minutes, however long it was later, he, you know, we turn on the lights and he's like, wow, like there's something here. Like this is really good. The quote is... I remember the quote. He said, this is the future.

I just heard the future of NPR. Future of NPR. Future of NPR. Future of NPR. Which was like... Is that what he said? Yeah, he's like, this is the future of NPR. Yes, I heard him say that.

I think I was so like... It was so nice. Because like how... We had no idea what he was going to say. And he's not like a BSer. Like if he didn't like it, he wouldn't have been mean about it, but he would have not responded like that if he had been like, oh. And this is a guy who worked, you know, had worked on Radiolab, like working with them in the past, had been at WNYC.

He had like a lot of experience. So if he didn't think there was anything to it, he wouldn't have said that. So it was like really exciting. That was so validating because otherwise we were just sort of like in our little like, you know, keep in mind we're working on this like in the evenings and on the weekends like in between our day job of making a high purpose. And so, you know, this was like super validating for us because we were like, okay, it's not just us who thinks there's something here, like an outside perspective is actually telling us like, no, there's something here.

And then that set the ball in motion for us to make a few more pilot episodes over the next year and a year, year and a half or so. And while I remember we were working on one episode about the history of US North Korea and Lawrence Wu, who is still a producer on the show to this day, overheard us. And he was at the time, I think an intern on how I built this. And he was like,

Yo, what are you guys talking about? Hey, what are you all talking about? We were like, oh, we're working on this show that we're hoping will get green lit. And he's like, Really? Can I working on this show that we're hoping will get greenlit. And he's like, Really? Can I work on this? You know what? I want in. And Lawrence just jumped in to the trenches with us

and started booking and researching and doing all this stuff. And so it was the three of us at that point, just working on this, what had begun as kind of a pipe dream. And it was a lot of long nights a lot of work a lot of work went into those early years even before the show went out into the world kind of crazy to think about it yeah you're listening to through line where we go back in time to understand the present it was a lot of work.

We had a lot of champions on the inside, people who really supported us. Totally, yeah. Nigel Eaton, of course, Anya Grunman, folks here at NPR really supported us, and the teams that we were working on supported us. But it was a long journey that really was born out of our friendship. And I think the thing I hope folks that are listening to the show still hear that, because I think the show wouldn't have not existed if we weren't friends first, I think, and really like enjoyed working with

each other because it was really hard. But I really wanted to do it for you and I think you really wanted to do it for me. And that was, I think the thing that sustained the show through that difficult, I mean, sustained our effort through that difficult time and since and sustains the show to this day. So hopefully listeners can really hear that. I'm sorry, I'm getting all emo. I'm getting all emo on y'all, but it's true. It was just really-

No, it's true, because when you're like, and you hit obstacles, we had a lot of obstacles along the way, and it's really hard to keep yourself motivated in the face of setbacks, and also have daunting amount of work on your plate. I was about to curse, but I'm keeping it PG over here. But it's really hard to sustain that passion.

And I think our connection is foundational to everything. And I think we've been lucky now over the, now over the last like few years to expand the team with other people who are able to like really believe in that same vision that we had at the beginning. It's like kind of wild actually, I think, right? For both of us to think that like people now believe in the show enough that they want to come and want to like take it to the next level.

Like we're constantly trying to push ourselves in terms of the sound of the show, in terms of the sound of the show, in terms of the ideas of the show, in terms of kind of everything about the show we wanted to just be a reflection of the way that the team is evolving too. And so a lot of the great ideas and the way that the show evolved

has been a reflection of the people who've come onto the team. That's thanks to all of you who listen, who are listening to this now. We had no idea this many people would listen or be passionate about this show. And we're really grateful to all of you for listening. Yeah, thank you so much.

Yeah, and hopefully hearing about the origins of this show, I don't know, give you a little bit of entertainment, get a little break from your day. Yeah. We hope you enjoyed our conversation. a little break from your day. We hope you enjoyed our conversation. And in a way it's kind of like how I built this episode, turning our pipe dream into the show it is today. Coming up, what it takes to find and produce a story with people that have

lived through a historical event. This is Michael Cummings from Savannah, Georgia, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. I appreciate the connections that you both make from the past to help us understand the present and hopefully look for a better future. Thank you. This message comes from the Kresge Foundation. Established 100 years ago, the Kresge Foundation works to expand equity and opportunity in cities across America. A century of impact, a future of opportunity. More at Kresge.org. This message comes from Wondery. Kill List is a true story of how one journalist ended

up in a race against time to warn those on the list whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List wherever you get your podcasts. These days, it can feel like the news is fighting for your attention wherever you turn, but staying informed shouldn't be a battle. Everything you need to navigate the stories that matter to you is at your fingertips. The NPR app cuts through the noise, bringing you local, national, and global coverage. No paywalls, no profits, no nonsense. Download the NPR app in your app store today, or you can go to npr.org slash app. Part 2. Living History. So a lot of what we do at ThruLine takes us to faraway places in the distant past. But

sometimes, we get to tell stories about living history and get to talk to the people who were actually there. We were in our red truck and we were coming back from a trip from the ocean and all of a sudden we came upon these big yellow caution signs that said caution PCB chemicals spilled along roadways. PCBs, otherwise known as polychlorinated biphenyls are man-made industrial chemicals used in factories. They're highly toxic, can cause skin lesions, and are associated with several kinds of cancer.

I saw it on the side of the highway. It looked greasy. It was substance there that I knew that shouldn't be there. What happened next turned a small rural North Carolina community into the birthplace of the environmental justice movement. A movement that seeks to ensure an equitable and healthy environment for everyone. Helicopters flying all over. I just couldn't believe it. As we approached the landfill, there were Pauly Patrolmen in full right gear, face shields,

baton in hand. We didn't know whether they were going to beat us or what. In this next conversation, you'll be hearing from producers Lawrence Wu and Devin Katayama about the making of our episode, Two Miles Down the Road. Here's Lawrence. So I wanted to ask you though, you know, how did you find this story and why did you pitch this? Yeah, yeah. So it's basically when I think about pitches, I kind of just take time to sit quietly and try to think about like what in the world is going on. What are like the big stories?

How am I feeling about the world? And I kind of just follow my interests. And I think a lot of us producers on the show do that. And so one thing that came to mind was this term environmental justice. It's a term that I've been hearing for a really long time that to some degree I've reported on as a reporter in my previous job. But it's a term I also feel like carries a lot of weight

and means like a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And so like we do on this show, you kind of just start like, what is the history of X? What is the history of environmental justice? And so I originally thought of doing this whole episode where we kind of look at the very beginning decades ago and bring it all the way up to, you know, how it's become such a messy, interesting, important topic today. You were talking about, you know,

what made the story so compelling was the people that were involved in the movement. And I think that's one of the cool things about this episode working on this with you is that, you know, we talked to people who had this lived history. And so before we get more into that, how'd you find these guests? How'd you track them down?

You know, cause they're not, that's not like they're our typical scholar historian with their, you know, their university email out there. Right. So, right, right, right. Well, that's actually, so that's one of the cool things about this story. Like you said, and we don't do too many stories, you know, more modern, more recent history. So a lot

of our, the people who we talk about are long gone, but in this particular case, you know, they're still around, they're still like advocating for environmental justice issues. So they're easy to find in that they're still writing, they're still spokespeople, and they're from a really small town. I mean, Warren County itself is a pretty big county, but Afton and the place where this happened is really small. So I kind of just followed the trail. The 40th anniversary of this event happened in 2022.

And so I knew names of people who had been on panels, who had recently talked about this. And I found a local reverend there who was on one of these panels, reached out to him, he was very quick to respond to me. And if this means that we have to bodily stand in front of trucks, bulldozers, road scrapers, even give up our lives so that someone else can live many years in the future. I say it is our duty to sacrifice that. After I got Reverend Willie T. Ramey's contact, it was really easy to find most of the people who are in this

episode. Yeah, it just sounds like he's just super connected in that in terms of that local network. And like everybody in the, in the area knows of each other, right? So it's one of those, you find one person, it's really easy to find the rest. Except, I will tell you, I had trouble finding the Ferruccio's who are very much important and featured in this episode. So that was kind of an interesting story, finding them. In 1977, Debra and Ken Ferruccio made a big decision. They decided to leave Ohio and move to a small town in Warren County, North Carolina.

I moved here because I was looking for a rural community and a beautiful environment. I kind of tag along. Here I am. community and a beautiful environment. I kind of tag along. Here I am. Wait, yeah, so I actually don't know how you found them. So, yeah, so the Fruccio's, just a little bit of background. They are really part of the core group of folks who found out that a landfill was going to be built nearby

and they really started organizing just a few people, which blossomed into hundreds of people later on. So they were hard to find. They had recently done a podcast of their own about this event in Warren County, about this landfill being built. So I knew that they were out there doing stuff, and I contacted them through their website for the

podcast, for the work that they were doing, and I still didn't hear back. And it was getting to the point where I had researched it enough to know that I couldn't do this story without them, without hearing how it kind of formed at the very beginning. And I think I reached out to And I think I reached out to a spouse of their daughter. Okay, yeah. Who was, I think I got the email from some, I think he was a professor somewhere on the East Coast, I can't exactly remember where. And he wrote back really quickly and said,

I think that they would be really happy to hear from you. And from there, it just took off. And I guess they weren't checking their emails from the website. And there really wasn't any other contact information that I could find except for one old email in some public notes from way back when some public record for Deborah. But yeah, after that, they were very responsive.

It just goes to show like part of the work is also just being persistent. You have to find one email works, you have to find phone number or friend of a friend of a friend. Totally. I feel like we've been running into that a lot lately. Like just trying to track people down, book people, book people. Yeah. It gets messy when it gets international. We've been doing a lot of that lately. Yeah. Yeah. So on the topic of the guests that were featured on this episode, they obviously lived through this history. They were part of this one event that kicked off an entire movement,

spanning decades now. And so, oftentimes we're speaking to a historian and they're telling us things that they've been researching for decades and decades. But it's a different experience talking to someone that has lived through that moment. They were actually there on the ground. So what makes it different from our typical kind of interviews that we do?

Yeah, it's kind of fun, but it's also kind of tricky. For one, you're telling somebody stories. So this is somebody's very personal perspective, things that they went through. So some of the context, the greater context, the reflective context that we get from some of our more academic guests can be lost, but what you gain is something very personal. And in this case, like we just needed to know what organizing looked like. The old fashioned way, word to mouth, door to door, church to church, friend to friend, cousin to cousin, brother to brother, sister to sister, family to family.

But it's also tricky because you've got to fact check, right? Like the things that they're saying for the most part. I mean, some things you don't have to fact check, like how they're feeling. But there's a lot that you have to double check and make sure like, did this meeting happen on this day? Were these people at this particular meeting who spoke, who they said they heard from? And so that's what made this episode a little bit tricky.

Like we had great story, we had great facts that they provided. And one of the things that I really relied on here was the local archives of local newspapers. And this is something I hadn't really done in my career that I really loved for this particular episode, because NPR has access to a database of old newspaper archives. And the local Warren County publications were invaluable. They provided so much like play by play, not only like dates and things that the governor was saying

and things like that, but actual play by play of the residents. Like this is where local media really thrives and why it's really important. Like they were kind of the record that I followed for the most part or fact checked against. And then, you know, what else makes it special is the fact that you can hear a lot of different people's perspective about this event.

Often when we're doing stories that are millennia old or centuries old, it's hard to get multiple perspectives. You know, we might get multiple things that happen to groups of people, but we don't always get that personal, like like touch. And so with this particular episode, and actually you dealt with a lot of the people's stories because you dealt with the section related to the actual protest that kind of was a convergence of a lot of people.

It's just kind of, I don't know, it's cool to have that. Yeah, I would say just like it was really fun working on the part where it's going through the protests from that morning to the months, years after that. And for me, I think one of the great joys you were talking about, you know, people's personal experiences. Like one of my favorite stories in this episode was

the protesters, they were put in, it's not a jail, but they're basically detained and they're hungry. And basically some women, really kind women across the street, you know, fried up some chicken and started throwing it over the fence. And it's just such a scene. So what the ladies did is they got some of these young guys to throw it over the fence. So we would be in the yard and say, Chomp me a biscuit.

Can I have a thigh? Or let me have a breast. And over the road and over the fence, the food would come and we ate it. And so I'm curious to know, you know, what are some of your favorite stories that some of the guests told that might not have made it onto the episode? I think that guy who told that story about the chicken being thrown over the fence, Walter, he also told us that Dolly Burwell, who's one of the main activists who we feature in this episode, that his mom babysat for Dolly while she was at

protests and organizing and things like that. And I think that like, for me, first off, of course, like everybody knows each other in this area, but also like this is such a space and town, like people are also helping each other out, throwing chicken over fences or babysitting and everybody's kind of connected in some way. So finding those little connections,

I think was really fun. And then like, I mean, this made it in the episode, but one of my favorite anecdotes was Reverend William Ramey, who's one of the early organizers, who kind of gets called upon to help figure out like how they're gonna organize at the beginning. He kind of goes into this barn at midnight with this small group of people and he's asked to come.

And he doesn't really know, he's a black Reverend in a very white space, white town, meeting white people in the barn at midnight. It kind of tells us a story about how he's getting to the barn. Now, Reverend Ramey, unsurprisingly, didn't like the idea of meeting people who he didn't know in a barn at midnight. But he was also curious. And I go into the barn and I look around and there is nobody there that looks like me. And how there's this old bulb just hanging from the barn ceiling. I mean, he's very much a storyteller in this sense and like he doesn't know what to expect. And then he kind of learns like, hey, we need to get our act together.

How are we going to do this thing? So those kinds of stories are the other kinds of stories that you get when you talk to the people who actually lived through these experiences. I kind of wanted to ask you one question. So you produced part three, which was the day of the main protests. And it's this iconic moment for this event.

It's really what got all the headlines and national press and pictures when you look back on that. Like that's the time that the media was paying attention was when the protests happened. So how did you go about producing it? Because I know we had some personal stories. I also know there was some raw video from that time. So what was that like for you

and how did you go about doing it? Yeah, I mean, that whole section, I mean mean it's just one scene after another, right? So it starts very quiet, it's the morning, they're all gathered at the church, they're gonna go out and sit on this march. And then it quickly escalates to them confronting police or kind of state troopers and then another scene follows. So I just thought of it as scenes, contained scenes. I mean, for me, just producing it's, it's moving to see like, this is how an event, this is how a community rallies together to really fight for a change. And this is how it's done.

Your bodies have to be there. Your physical personhood has to be out there on the streets, lying near the ditch where the dump site is, all these things like it's really just empowering to hear and just it gives you hope. I'm not a super optimistic person, but just listening to the different, you know, the different guests retelling that day, especially the on the day of the protest and on the more kind of technical side, the production side, because I have all these different perspectives from the guests, I was able to kind of mix them in and weave them together. So it really feels like they're just, they're all building on each other,

telling just one story together. I'm sure it was there to intimidate us. And I felt, my God, we're going to war here. Helicopters flying all over. I just couldn't believe it. As we approached the landfill, there were highway patrolmen in full right gear, with face shields, baton in hand. We didn't know whether they were going to beat us or what. What we were seeing was state highway patrol and national guard police cars just parked.

They went way down the road. We were met by the commander of the highway patrol. If you do not cease this unlawful act, you will be arrested. If we did not turn around and go back, we would be arrested. If we did not turn around and go back, we would be arrested. I mean, it's one, it's definitely one of my favorite episodes to produce on just on that aspect alone, because, like you said, we don't get a lot of opportunities to speak to guests who've lived through, you know, a really important moment. Did you see some of the things that they were describing or the people who they were describing in the news, like in some of the footage too?

Yeah, yeah. So that was also really cool too. It was definitely really helpful to watch these old local news for TV news footage because it was exactly how everyone was describing it. It's like the one mile or two mile march to the site, confronted with policemen wearing helmets, batons, people sitting, just civil disobedience. There was even images of the bus that they would put them and detain them and drive them away.

And so, yeah, that was really great to have access to. Yeah, that's so interesting because so much of history, historians and people, we kind of just fill in some of the gaps, you know, in some ways. And when you can actually see the history happening, and then also get told it reflectively, like, dears, decades later, it's it's kind of cool. Well, it was really great working on this episode with you. Me too. Thanks so much for chatting. I'm glad we got to talk about this episode.

Thank you, Lawrence. Now you know a little bit more about how the sauce is made and how rewarding it can be to make an episode like two miles down the road. And for an episode like this, and really every episode on ThruLine, there are a bunch of drives and different iterations before on Thru Line. There are a bunch of drafts and different iterations before it reaches your ears. And for every good story in an episode, there are at least five more that could have made the cut.

Coming up, how we decide which stories get greenlit and which stories end up on the cutting room floor. end up on the cutting room floor. and information that I would have never known about. And I really get an enjoyment listening to it while I'm driving to the ocean to go kayaking. Thank you so much. Part Three, The Better Story. In this next conversation, we're taking you behind the scenes of our 2023 episode, Mythos and Melodrama in the Philippines,

looking at the rise, fall, and resurrection of a Filipino political dynasty. As of the 21st of this month, I signed Proclamation Number 1081, placing the entire Philippines under martial law. Marcus' goal was to stay in power. The only way he could stay in power was to declare martial law and make himself dictator, which is what he did in 1972. In the episode, we looked at how Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos rewrote and even invented

histories to make their authoritarian rule appear preordained and even divine. It's a technique still being used today by their son, Philippine president, Bong Bong Marcos. We'll let producers Anya Steinberg and Christina Kim take it from here. So today we're going to take you behind the scenes of an episode that got released back in May 2023. And I have my fellow producer, Anya Steinberg here to chat with me about it. Hey Anya. Hey Christina. So where should we start with this?

Since this episode was your idea, how about you tell us about where that idea came from? Yeah, so this was an episode I actually pitched because right before joining ThruLine, I was the race and equity reporter at KPBS. And one of the last stories that I was able to work on was actually when Bong Bong Marcos won the presidential election. It seems like foreign news

and I was a local beat reporter in San Diego. So you wouldn't think that that was a story I was gonna cover, but there's such a huge Filipino diaspora all over the United States, especially in California and in San Diego. So I had the opportunity to talk to Filipinos in San Diego about their reactions to this election and it was divided.

There was folks who were just like, this is appalling. So many of my family members were tortured under this regime or my family immigrated out of the Philippines in order to escape the Marcos dynasty. But on the flip side, there was also folks who had very fond memories of Marcos, even though he was a dictator for multiple years. They thought that the country was actually better run under Marcos. And they also believe that Bangong Marcos should have the opportunity to prove himself, that he wasn't just a replica of his father. So it was divided. And the

more I talk to people, the more I realize this is an important story that is truly an American story. This isn't just foreign news. This impacts people who are living in the United States. And there's so many lessons we can draw upon about narratives, about why people are drawn to certain political figures, what motivates them, and kind of the divisions, right? Because just the way the Philippines is divided, I see those same divisions playing out here in the United States, you know, with our politics. Right, right. There's so many parallels between these two stories. And I feel like one of the things that drew me to it was just this idea of history repeating itself.

Like, I remember when we were first talking about this before you pitched it, you said something along the lines of, you know, his father was a dictator and now he's the president. And this is within like a generation's worth of time. How can that happen? And that question itself is just a fascinating story to work from.

That's right. So I was lead producing this, but we were in the trenches together from like day one. And I know in the beginning, like we together pretty much learned the entire history of the Philippines at some point, like pre-colonial, and we were trying to whittle down the story,

and we did decide to focus exclusively on the Marcos. So something that we talk about in the episode is that the Marcos' come to power in large part because they are excellent myth makers. They are so good at controlling the narrative and creating a compelling story about their rags to riches ascension, about them not being elites and thus more relatable, and then as we hear onward to more grandiose myth making. Fernand and Imelda campaigned with pizzazz. Fernand gave rousing speeches.

There are still a thousand rivers to be crossed. Imelda serenaded crowds with love songs. And they even had a motion picture made. So what we did with this episode and what I know we did together so well is tell it in a quote unquote melodramatic fashion in this kind of larger than life way. And we were really, really focused on finding those stories. And as a result, we found too many stories. And we like to start all of our episodes with what we call a cold open. And that was the part that was assigned to you Anya. And what we do with cold opens

is we want to intrigue you. We want to give you like a really good little story, a little entree in before we kind of tell you what the episode is about. And then we continue in with our parts one, two, and three. But Anya, you were given the cold open for this one and what happened? What happened? It was a daunting task. I actually wrote and produced a very different cold open than what finally aired as part of the episode.

It happened around 1971 in South Cotabato on the island of Mindanao. Mindanao is part of the Philippines. On Mindanao, the lush, emerald green jungle butts right up against white sand beaches. Back in 1971, deep in the rainforest and high in the mountains, hid a secret. A group of about 24 individuals were found, and this was the discovery of a so-called Stone Age cave-dwelling people.

They are going to see Momodaka Dewata Tassadai, the bringer of good fortune to the Tasaday. That is their name for Amanda Elizalde. According to most accounts, Manuel Elizalde stumbled upon these people. At the time, Manuel Elizalde was serving in the Philippine government under President Ferdinand Marcos as a member of his cabinet. He got tipped off by a local who had sort of mentioned some interaction with this community that had lived kind of further in the inland. You know, these folks had never had contact with modern civilization. They didn't have the same dietary practices

or agricultural practices. They were in fact foragers. Their tools were incredibly rudimentary. So what they were found with was suggestive of them being so far back in time. It's such a profound and almost ambitious way to describe a people. And it was feeding this idea and frenzy

that people wanted to believe. On the island of Mindanao, a last frontier of the Philippines, a forgotten people engage in man's oldest struggle. They are fighting for the right to exist. They are fighting for their lives. People were drunk on the right to exist. They are fighting for their lives. People were drunk on the Thassaday. Huge international attention flooded in surrounding

the Thassaday. My name is Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez, and I'm an assistant professor of history at the University of California Santa Cruz. International reporters were interested in the discovery. And so this kind of fantastic event was this anthropological phenomenon for intellectuals, for the political community, for random citizens who would just sort of see that, you know, this was quite the marvel to perceive.

The Thassadai had lived apart from civilization for so long that this level of attention was dizzying, maybe even harmful, to a point where Elizalde and the Philippine government started to wonder if this golden age of research had to come to a close for the Tacitais' own good. So in a few years, the Marcos administration would actually call off all visits and say no one was allowed anymore into this place.

And so, Elizalde created this reservation that reportedly kept the Tassaday safe from any further scrutiny, investigation, or research visits. And there the Tassaday would stay, cordoned off from the rest of the world, free to live as they always had until... 1986. A journalist accompanied by a Filipino researcher actually entered into the reservation only to discover that these 24 cave-dwelling people were in fact not of the Stone Age but were likely paid by Elizalde and his team to act as though they were from the Stone Age.

And all of the pieces started coming together that what was in fact perhaps perceived at first as this anthropological phenomenon was really a hoax. Within the blurry story of the Taciti, one thing is clear, the Taciti had a purpose. They were fabricated for a reason. I mean, one has to really see it in this larger trajectory that the Marcos' were really creating for themselves.

This narrative arc that would be essentially, you know, tied back to the Stone Age and brought up, you know, to 1971 with them. To have a peoples that are coming out, the shadows of hundreds of years of colonization, the ravages of World War II, into this new decolonized experiment, only to discover perhaps the most untainted, peaceful peoples. I think that really creates this romantic notion of the Philippines at the time that Marcos and Imelda for sure are able to capitalize upon. For me, as a historian looking back, I would say actually this was a great ruse,

but it was a wonderful distraction. Okay, so if you've listened to the episode, we all know this is not how the episode started. We actually did decide to begin with the Filipino folk tale of Malacca Samaganda, which I mentioned, those are the kind of Adam and Eve of Filipino folklore. The sky told the tired bird to build its nest on one of these islands. Once on land, the bird was struck by a bamboo stalk that was blowing in the breeze. Annoyed, it pecked

at the breeze. Annoyed, it pecked at the bamboo. And then the bamboo split. The first Filipinos emerged from these bamboo stalks. The first man, malakas. Which means strength. And the first woman. Maganda, who was beautiful. And that's how the world began. And in the end, we did decide to do that because that's who Marcos and Emelda Marcos, his first

lady, modeled themselves after. So it was just kind of a more clear through line, if you will. But we really love the story of the Tassadai. So we did try to make it work. So thank you, Anya. But Anya, you know, you sound designed this and you made it. So can you tell us a little bit about what you were thinking and what this story was?

Among the team, I think cold opens are the most notoriously difficult to produce. I think we could all agree on that. I agree. They're the most changed every time. They have a lot of work to do. And especially for an episode like this, there was a lot of things that I was holding in my head going into the script that I was like, oh my gosh, this is overwhelming. Like number one, we have to tell the listeners that we're going to the Philippines and some listeners might have never heard of the Philippines. So we have to tell them a little bit about what that place is like, what are the people

like that lived there, when did it become the Philippines, just like any sort of background that seems like necessary for setting up where we're going. And then we're trying to introduce these larger themes that we're going to kind of unspool and unravel throughout the episode of like myth building and melodrama. We have to introduce the family, the Marcos' and talk a little bit about what was going on at the time, but not too much because we don't want to spoil what's gonna come next. And so when I sat down to make it, I think a place where I start a lot with Cold Opens is like,

how am I gonna take people to this scene? How am I going to build a story? Because you want to suck the listener right in. You want to have sound design. You want to have music. You want to have archival. And so I immediately went to YouTube and I was just watching all these documentaries of when in the 1970s they found, discovered, quote unquote, the Tassadie. And these were like fascinating movies. I probably watched hours and hours of them because it's just all these people flying over the jungle, discovering these mythical supposedly untouched

by civilization group of people. And so it was an interesting historical moment to look back on and realize that this documentary is essentially fake, but nobody knew it when they were making it. I remember like going and watching some of those videos with you and some of these documentaries. I mean, this wasn't just Filipino documentary makers. This was the entire world, like National Geographic was there, US newsmakers were there. And the tone and the way in which they talk about these people was already very telling.

The fact that there's this like primitive people that had been untouched by, you know, Western society or the modern world. There was a real colonial gaze to the way that these documentaries you were looking at were even talking about these people, which I know added an additional layer to you, right? That's like an additional layer to the story. It's like, from whose perspective do we hear about these people and what does that tell us about power and how do we contextualize that in the story? So there was a lot going on in this cold open.

There was a lot going on. And I wanted to start the open in a way that you didn't know where it was going to end up. I didn't want to say, you know, there was this made up group of people who lived in the jungle in the Philippines. It was a lie. Like when the cold open starts, I'm basically framing it so that you think you're also tricked. You think that this is a real life discovery that happened in the seventies of these. I think Kathleen Gutierrez

says so-called stone age cave dwelling people. Like, you're there. And then as you discover that it's all a lie, like, I built it in a way so that you're discovering it while I'm discovering it at the same time. You know, we had discussions about this early on. That's interesting because what we were trying to say, and again, it was too complicated for a cold open, was even a lie can have real life consequences. A lie has a life of its own and the life that it leads is real. And there was so much nuance there that I know we both loved, but even though it didn't work for the episode, it still

really works for, I think, the story we were trying to tell and you did such an amazing job at it. It was such a pleasure to work on this episode with you and really fun to look back on it. Thanks so much for chatting. Thanks, Anya. Now, every time you listen to a new Thru Line episode, you can wonder how many other actual cold opens were there. And the answer is a lot. But I promise you, the one you're getting in the episode is always the best possible one.

That was our final behind-the-scenes conversation for this episode. But it doesn't have to end for you. If you want more behind-the-scenes conversation and how we think through episodes and topic ideas and just so much more, you can sign up for Throughline Plus, which also helps support our work here. You can find out more at plus.npr.org slash ThruLine. And a quick note to listeners, Reverend Willie T. Ramey, who you heard from in our environmental justice episode, actually passed away in June 2024.

That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel Fattah. I'm Ramtin Adab-Louis, and you've been listening to Throughline from NPR. This episode was produced by me and me and Lawrence Wu, Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey Minor, Christina Kim, Devin Kadiyama, Punit Matiwala, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell. Voiceover work in this episode was done by Lauren Swoo. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel. The episode was mixed by Josephine Niyunai.

Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, write us at throughline at npr.org. Thanks for listening.