Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Hrishikesh Hirway

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

“I still feel like I'm wondering what I'm gonna be when I grow up,” Hrishikesh Hirway tells Rachel. That might be because he’s drawn to so many things: he’s an accomplished musician, host of several successful podcasts and just an all-around thoughtful guy. He talks to Rachel about the support and skepticism of his parents while he was growing up and his anxiety over losing precious memories.Buy the Wild Card deck: https://shopnpr.org/wildcard  To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

What have you found surprising about getting older? What I'm surprised about getting older is how little changes, actually. Well, now you're just bragging. But do tell. Tell me. I still feel like I'm a work in progress as much as I did 20 years ago. Like, I still feel like I'm wondering what I'm going to be when I grow up. And I'm wondering when I will figure it out. I'm wondering when I will get.

get to settle my version of myself into the thing that I hope to be. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation. Do you have one of those friends who's always been into music, like really into music? And this friend also happens to be an incredible storyteller with an amazing ear for detail and an insatiable curiosity about human nature and creativity. Well, that's who it feels like I'm hanging out with when, I listen to an episode of the podcast Song Explorer, because the host, Rishikesh Hirwe, is like that friend, helping me understand music and musicians in a deeper way. He's so very good at this because he himself is a musician. He's got a new album out, and it's called In the Last Hour of

Light. And I am so very happy to welcome Rishikeshirwe to Wildcard. Hi. Hi. So good to see you. First round, memories. I hold up three cards. I know you're listening. listen to the show, so you know how this goes. You pick randomly, Rishi-Kesh, one, two, or three. Let's start with one. Where did you get to feel independent as a kid? You know, I think that feeling independent was a really important thing for me as a kid, and still as an adult. I remember when I was little, I didn't quite recognize it for what it was, some kind of willful streak or something. But I remember it used to manifest in a way where people would ask, you know, if you want Coke or Sprite or Coke or Pepsi or something. You know, like in my head, I remember as a little kid, mainstream sodas.

And I thought, no, no, no, I want orange soda. And it wasn't that you necessarily really loved the taste of orange soda. You were just like, I'm going to be different. That's like for the, you know, basic kids. I'm going to be fly my little freak flag of orange soda. Yeah, yeah, that's something different. I think I did genuinely like it more. Okay, okay, good.

But I also don't know that I can completely separate where the motivation was. Was it because I liked the taste? The thing that really sticks out in my mind was I know that I liked that it was sort of a less, it was the path less traveled. Did this ever get you into trouble, independence? Or was it mostly a problem? productive feeling in your family and childhood? I think, I wouldn't say that it got me into trouble, but my parents certainly wanted me to be a doctor,

the traditional career of choice for any Indian family for their kid. And because, again, it was the default, almost before interrogating it for myself, I felt like that wasn't going to be for me. And then I did think about it more, and I recognized that, yeah, I don't think that's going to be what I want. But that was another example of feeling a need to be independent and find my own path. And I just had this inborn nature of trying to avoid the thing that felt like the default. Who modeled that for you? Do you know?

Or you just kind of conjure it? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know that anybody modeled it. And in fact, if somebody modeled it, I might not have been as attracted to it, right? Or so. Yeah. Part of what I liked was that I felt like I was doing my own thing. Yeah.

One, two, or three. Let's do two. Two. Ah, what music became part of your identity as a teenager? Hmm. I mean so much. Really just the idea of music, music became a part of my identity. I think growing up I had been a kid who did well in school

and that was kind of an identity that I didn't want it to be an identity. It was a fact, but then other kids in school would be like, Oh, you're like, oh, you're the smart kid. Yeah, they make an identity for you. Yeah. And then when I started playing in bands and I started playing drums in bands, I was like, oh, this is a thing that's kind of mine. This is a thing that I'm choosing and I really love.

And that was huge for me. And I guess specifically the music that helped me get there was, well, I remember I used to take piano lessons in school. But my piano teacher gave me a key to the drum practice space as sort of, because I'd asked if it would be possible. And so I would go, I wasn't taking drum lessons, but I would go in and pull. play drums along to the album 13 songs by Fugazi. Nice. And that was sort of my, that was my music school, just trying to play along with that album.

And where are your parents with all this at that point? Like, are they like, okay, Rishikesh is, you know, music is a helpful thing to know, to be a well-developed human being. But obviously, it's not a real thing that is a career. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's part of being a well-rounded person, exactly. And what was it like when it became clear to them that this was going to be your path? Oh, then it was very worrisome.

Really? There were so many years where they tried to suggest helpful alternative plans. Really? Still, like years into it? Years into it. You know, I remember my dad telling me, he was like, okay, so you're making records and you're touring. It's almost like you have a small business. And I was like, yeah, kind of.

And he was like, well, maybe you could go to business school. Maybe you should try getting an MBA. This was like last ditch effort. He's like, I'm really stretching here. You know, like, what about that? And I was like, I don't think that's really the path for me. I can totally hear it playing out. It seems like maybe you're a closeted business person, really, is what you are.

Right. Yeah. He's like, you could use the skills you're learning there in business school even in this. whatever it is you're doing. Oh. I know your mom passed away several years ago, but did she ever go to your shows? Did she ever? She did.

I mean, that's the thing. They didn't understand it, and they didn't see a path forward. And they saw how little money I was making. So they were just very, very concerned. But they would come to the shows when I would be, you know, close by. For a while, my family, my mom and my dad lived in the suburbs of Chicago. And I remember I have a very strong memory of them coming to this sort of punk classic venue, the Fireside Bowl. It's a bowling alley where they would have punk shows.

And them coming to see me, I was on tour playing with some friends of mine who were in a hardcore band. And they came to the show. It was like a Saturday afternoon. And my mom's wearing her full, like she's in her sorry. My dad's wearing a jacket and tie. And they came to the fireside bowl. to support my show. I love it.

Okay. One, two, or three? Three, please. Three. What's something early in life that made you appreciate beauty? It's hard to think of a time when I feel like I didn't appreciate it.

It's hard to imagine a time when that changed. My earliest memories still feel suffused with that feeling. My family didn't listen to a lot of American music or Western music. We didn't have the radio on. Sometimes we would listen to Indian music. We would listen to old Bollywood cassettes and things like that. And I think I first fell in love with music,

listening to the music that my mom loved. And I remember listening to Asha Bosley and Lathamangeshka. And their voices and, and that music is probably the first time that I remember falling in love with music and maybe having a sense of something beautiful in that way, certainly in a music way. We're going to pull out of the game. Okay.

To talk about your album. This is your first full-length album in 15 years? Yeah. I've put out a little bit of music in the last few years. After, you know, a 10-year break. I started to put out music again. And this album is the first album in 15 years. So how come?

How come the hiatus? I just really got caught up in the idea that my career wasn't working out the way that I'd hoped it would, or what I had dreamt of, that it was just kind of stuck in second gear or something. And I didn't know how to get out of that. I didn't know how to push things forward. And I'd been doing it for, you know, at that point, over a decade. And the fact that it was feeling stuck there really made me question the whole thing. Like maybe was I even meant to be doing this? Right.

Maybe you should have gone to business school. Exactly. Do you really think that? Yeah. I mean, for sure. I thought I had been maybe trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, you know, that I was just really clinging to a dream that I had for myself. And if I had any kind of objectivity, the way other people were maybe looking at my life, they would say, you know, nice try. It's sweet that you had a dream.

But if you were really meant to be doing this, don't you think after all of these years you would be in a different place than you are right now? And to be clear, what place was it? You just weren't getting the record deals you wanted, the gigs you wanted, you weren't making the kind of money or getting the kind of attention you wanted? Yeah, I mean, I think by some standards, you could have looked at where I was and would have looked good. It would have looked fine, certainly. You know, it was kind of like I was a working musician, but I was making my living from it. I was, you know, kind of like a middle class of musician that nowadays there isn't that much of a space for for a lot of reasons. But at the time that, you know, I was touring. I was playing shows.

I had a record deal. But I had put so much into that album that came out in 2011. I really thought it might like take me to the next level. Yeah, yeah. And it felt like things did move forward, but it moved forward incrementally, not exponentially. Is there an overarching narrative to this body of work, to this particular album? I think so. It wasn't exactly clear when I first started, you know, when I was younger and the last time I made an album, I was in my early 30s.

And now I'm in my mid-40s, you know, just so much has changed in my first. my own life, I lost my mom, and I've been married now for over 15 years. And the scale of things is just different. And I think also just losing someone, losing my mom was really the first, my first experience with profound loss. And she had been such a big part of my life. when I lost her, I started to think about how all of my experiences with her were now in the past. And the only relationship I had with her is in the past.

There was no chance to make new memories. And so every single memory that I had of her was all the more precious because there's a finite amount. And I also started to be very aware of how fragile those memories are. And, you know, reaching for memories that I used to have and recognizing how gossamer thin they were. And, you know. So you wanted to write them in some way. I wanted to write about what I did remember. And I wanted to just write about the idea of this, of feeling the memories around me fade.

You know, how much that breaks. breaks my heart and what that's doing to me right now in the present moment. Every memory that feels important right now, I feel this desperation to hold on to. I want to capture it. I want to fix it in the firmament of my mind as it's happening, as impossible as I know that is, because I also know what it feels like to lose it on the other side. Does that cause some anxiety? Because I relate to that, Right? Like I also lost my mom and my dad. And there's this, I start to get stressed when I think about the preciousness of those memories, just what you're saying. And we have to preserve them. And it falls out into other parts of my life, not just about grief for my parents, but even with my kids who live now are living, humans, creatures, beautiful creatures. And I'm constantly like, remember this. Okay. And now you've got to remember. this. Like be in the moment, but also be separate from it so you can remember it. And it, because I feel this desperation about time, have you been able to acknowledge that you have

that predilection and also sort of just like settle down about it? I haven't gotten to the settle down part of it. Yeah. Yeah. This idea of remember this, remember this, hold on to this. Don't forget this. That feels like it's playing in a loop. And yeah, there's, there's an added urgency to it now because also I grew up feeling like I had a very good memory and now for the first time in my life I don't feel that way I'm like

oh there are details yeah I am starting to become aware of the limitations of it and how it's receding and that's so scary I used to kind of take it for granted that I would remember the important

things with vivid clarity. And now I know that's not true. I know that's not going to be true forever. And so, yeah, I feel this constant anxiety. And that's sort of why I named the album in the last hour of light, because I was trying to find a phrase that captured this sense of like, this is a beautiful moment and you know that it's not going to be here forever. And all of these great things, all of these hours have already passed.

Yeah. Here's your last chance to bask in this and appreciate. Like, please appreciate right now how beautiful this is. Is it a real home movie at the end? It is, yeah. It's actually, it's a song about my wife's father, my father-in-law, who I never met. He passed away two weeks before I met my wife. And despite the fact that I never met him, he has a huge presence in my life just because of how big of a presence he was for her.

And I had been wanting to write about him. One of the things Lindsay's family gave me is his old guitar. He played music. And Lindsay and her brother are so sweet to me, but neither of them played guitar or mandolin. And so they very generously, and their mom gave me his guitar and his mandolin. And so for all of these years that I've had it,

I think of him every time I play one of those. Oh, my God, that's so lovely. But I never met him. I'd never talked to him, never had any kind of conversation. I had no idea what he would have thought of me as the husband of his daughter. Yeah. And I had just had that feeling for so long since we met in 2007. And we'd been together for so long when I finally started writing this song.

One of the things that happened around that time was Lindsay found these home movies that were from her childhood, these like camcorder videos. Oh, that's so great. And then they digitized them so we could actually watch them together. And a lot of the videos were shot by her father. So he's the, there's a beautiful lyric, like you're the, what do you say, you're the person out of frame, but you're clearly Yeah, the voice off screen. Yeah, the voice off screen. I mean, it's, it's, I assumed it was about your mom because it's such a beautiful way to encapsulate, like, the loss of a, of a person who was central and maybe in family structure was just out of frame. Like it's usually the moms who are taking all the pictures, by the way.

So I made a grand assumption about that. Yeah. But it's just a beautiful, beautiful song. Thank you. But yeah, I mean, living with someone who had lost a parent, in the entire time that we've been together, in a way, kind of gave me some instruction of how to carry that loss. Yeah, yeah.

We're going to go back round two, one, two, or three, three new cards. One, please. One. What's a quality you're drawn to that you don't possess? I have a very close friend, Carl Onondorf, who everybody loves. And just everybody loves him. I love him. From the moment I met him, I was just like, this guy is so charming and funny and sweet and great.

and I thought I had a special thing because I recognized all of that in him, you know, and that's why we were such good friends. And then very quickly I realized everybody got that way about him. Oh, my God. I have a friend like that, too. I was like, it's us. It's a we, I see you, I understand you, and you realize, oh, you're everyone's best friend. And I find myself drawn to so many people.

people like that. And then of course, that's because everybody's run to people like that. And I just wish I were someone like that. I wish I were one of those people where it's like, you know, of course everybody wants to hang out with you. Everybody wants to talk to you. Everybody wants to be your friend because it's, I don't know what the attribute is. Charisma, I guess. Yeah. Where someone who just, they walk into a room and everybody wants be their friend without them having to make the effort. And I think, but I think they do make effort. I think that is part of it, is that they, those personality types get filled up by

connection with other human beings. And so when they're in a group setting, it's just those cliches. They make everybody feel important and seen. And, um, and they spend a lot of time cultivating friendships and relationships. So much so that both of us think that our best friends are just our best friends, but they have like many others. Well, you know, and I think specifically there's an effortlessness that I really admire because I do try to be that person.

I admire it so much that I want to emulate it. But I'm so aware of all the effort that I put in. You know, I'm the one who's always asking my friends to hang out. I'm trying very hard to stay in touch with everybody to make sure that the connections that are important to me stay alive. Yeah. But I feel like often I'm the one putting out that effort. And the people who I really admire are the ones who don't even have to put in the effort.

Everybody's drawn to them. Oh, that's a next level. Reaching out to you to say like, hey. The invitation should just come to that person. Exactly. Okay. Next three. One, two or three.

Oh, two, please. Two. What do you feel like you're constantly chasing? These days, I think, I feel like I'm constantly chasing this validation that I am the person outside in the world that matches up with the person that I think I am on the inside. I want to feel like the person that I hope to be and that I hope. hope I am, is actually seen out in the world in the same way. I don't know, you can't ever see yourself from the outside. So it might be something that you never, ever get. Who do you think you are on the inside that's not necessarily recognized on the outside? Well, I don't know,

even that I believe it these days so much, but who I hope I am is an artist. I hope that I can look myself in the mirror and feel like I deserve to be doing the music that I'm doing, that I get to make this record and play these shows and write songs and feel like I have earned that somehow as opposed to it being a, as opposed to it being a lark, some kind of, you know, daydream, some kind of self-indulgence. I don't know. It's funny because if someone else were writing songs, I would never judge them for the act of trying.

Right. I mean, songs or anything else, if someone said, this is something I really love and I really care about and I'm pursuing, I'd be like, great, that's fantastic. You know, like, whatever level you're at, that's amazing. Like, I'm so happy for you.

But for me, for some reason, I don't seem to be able to access that kind of, permission. Yeah, for yourself. Yeah. And also if someone told you that, which I'm sure people do all the time, like, this is awesome. This is so great that you're doing this. Do you not believe them? I think I, it's not some, basically, yes, I don't believe them. I think that they're being very nice. I'm like, people are nice. Right. What they say to you to your face. Yeah. If it were a stranger who had never met me and they were saying it behind my back. Then I might believe it.

Right. But anybody's saying it to me, I'm like, people are too polite. Maybe they're just saying it because they think that's what they need to say. Or they're my friend. They're someone who loves me for some other reason. And they want to support, you know, a dream or something like that. And it's very hard for me to accept the idea that maybe I actually am the person I hope to be. What if you're already there?

Just have to wake up to it. Okay. Last one in this round. One, two, or three? Three. Three. How did I count? One, two, three.

What have you found surprising about getting older? Hmm. I would love to flip this one around. Would you? Would you? And ask you this question. Yes. Especially since you made that comment.

Wait ten years. No, I have an answer to this. I always think of my, although I have a haven't answered it on the show before. No one's ever flipped this one. I remember my grandfather, on my dad's side, my grandpa Ernest, Martin, I remember we used to go to their house quite often. And I remember my dad had picked us up and we were kind of getting, collecting our stuff and trying to scoot out the door. And it was clear he and my dad were in a really, intense conversation and he was starting to forget things and he could he could he was aware that

he was kind of diminished in his mind and his body was so strong his body was so strong he was such a physically strong man he's one of these guys who had those hand you know those hand exerciser things on his car on the steering wheel. So when he was at stoplights, he was always going like this. And he was a farmer and he invented stuff. He was just a very strong guy. And he was really struggling with that disconnect between feeling so strong on the outside and having his mind start to diminish.

And how that applies to me is that it's, I think of that because I, there is still a disconnect. But it's the opposite. I feel like the same in my head. I'm like the same. I'm the same person I was when I was like, of course I've had life experience, but like I think about myself when I was 22 or even when I was a kid, like when I was 10, it's like the same mind. I mean, knock on wood, it hasn't started to go yet, even though I make fun of my memory. And my body starts to change style. And there are all these physical reminders that you're aging. And the world tells you you're aging, especially if you're a woman that you know, point. things out all the time. But it's just weird to me getting older. I feel like the same person. It is the same person. It's the same brain. It's just my same personality. I don't feel like I've changed that much. And that's what's surprising to me. That the disconnect exists. Yeah. That either your mind starts to be different and your body stays the same or you perceive it to be the same or your body changes and your mind or your perception of yourself is the same and it doesn't feel connected. So now you. What I'm surprised about getting older is how little changes

actually. Well, now you're just dragging. But do tell. Tell me. Well, it's like you said, you have the same brain. Well, yes. Yeah. Yeah, right. And I feel like I also have the same brain, which means that I still feel like I'm a work in progress as much as I did 20 years ago. Like, I still feel like I'm wondering what I'm going to be when I grow up. And I'm wondering when I will figure it out. I'm wondering when I will get to settle my version of it. And I'm wondering when I will get to settle my version of myself into the thing that I hope to be. In some ways, it's kind of neat that I still have that feeling. And in other ways, it's terrifying because then I think about the number of my actual age

and I think I am way too old to be having this feeling. But when I read about people in the newspaper and they list their name and then their age, and I'm like, oh, yeah, of course, that's an adult person. And then I'm like, wait, actually, they're my age. That's my age. I feel this separation between what that number is and how unsettled I feel. So I'm surprised as I get older that I don't feel like a reflection of that number. I still feel like a kid and a kid who wants to, yeah, grow up and be this person.

Round three. Beliefs, one, two, or three. One. Who or what is your moral compass? My parents were Hindu, and they wanted to raise me Hindu. But I felt, again, like this allergic reaction to sort of going with the flow, going with the default path. I felt very much inclined to do my own thing. And, you know, when I was around 14 or so, I started to say I didn't want to go to temple.

I didn't want to just go along with that. I wanted to find my own way because I was like, those were my first days of thinking, well, what is religion for really? Isn't religion just a way of communicating morality? And aren't these things separately? aren't these things separate? If you can communicate morality to an entire community and have everybody sort of follow a general sense of morals, then it isn't religion just sort of the ornamentation around that. These are the stories to get to the ultimate. You know, ESOP's fables, ultimately, you know, what's the moral of the story? If you can skip the story and just get to the moral,

that's the important stuff. But can the moral exist without? the story architecture? Maybe not. Maybe not. But I think I had felt like I was starting to understand what the morality was. And I started to recognize all the different places that I was getting it from. You know, not just from religion, but also from the way my parents just taught me to live, you know. And also from cartoons, you know, it's like watching Transformers and like the stories of good and evil.

playing out in that scale and the idea of just like being kind to people. So I... That's the headline of this whole podcast episode. Rishi Keshe your way, moral compass is Transformers. Yeah. Optimus Prime is my answer. Okay, but you were creating your own sense of what it means to be a good person, separate from a religious identity or religious inheritance from your parents.

Yeah. I really wanted to see what you could glean from lots of different places, you know, and then when I went to high school, I took a class on the Old Testament, I took a class on ethics. You know, I really was trying to learn from things that people had written about the idea of morality and, you know, and to Tocqueville and like social contracts and things like that. Like, I feel like it wasn't one singular thing that I was looking for as a moral compass. It was more like this aggregate of writing and talking and teaching and just like the people around me and what I could learn from them because it felt like having your moral compass be too attached to just one dogma was limited or dangerous. Okay, one, two, or three. I'll pick one.

One. Here we go. Do you think that there's order in the universe, or is it all chaos? I think there is both. I think there is order in the universe. I think because of the Fibonacci sequence. No one's ever said that before, guarantee. Yeah.

I don't know what it is. So just explain what it is. I don't know if I know enough to explain it, but the Fibonacci sequences, you know, a mathematical phenomenon where you start with one and then one and then it's two. You basically add the number previous to get the next number. So one plus two, three, two plus three, five, three plus five, eight, five plus eight, three, three plus 813, and it goes on and on and on. I like that.

That's a Fibnacci sequence. Yeah, that feels like a pattern. And it exists in nature. That pattern is in, you see it in the way that flowers, petals, the petals of flowers, the leaves of an avocado. There's all these ways in which nature represents this sort of mathematical. idea. And I think it's so cool and so beautiful. There are so many patterns. And yeah, just the fact that we are walking around and talking and have brains and think. I mean, the evolution is just so incredible.

There's a level of order that exists in just all living things. I think all. I think all. of that. You know, there's so much order in science. And yet, it's also an accident. Right. I mean, when you think about, I mean, there's so much chaos, there's so much obvious chaos. But when you say it like that, the chaos is exceptional to the order. I mean, the order is paramount. It's all, it's all so miraculous that it has to be ordered. It's miraculous. I mean, right now, some electrical impulse is happening in my brain and it's moving my body. And it's moving my body and I'm saying words and the words are in an order that you can understand as an idea. Like, that's unbelievable.

Everything is unbelievable. We should all be walking around all the time saying, oh, my God, I can't believe that any of this is happening. We would be so tired if we did that between that and trying to like seize every memory that's happening around us. Yeah, exactly. We would be so tired. That is fair, though. Everybody should always be going around in awe of everything and desperate to remember it.

Yeah, yeah. I love that. That's a good way to live. Okay. Last question. Last three cards. One, two or three? Two, please.

Two. Wow. You may have just answered this one. What does it mean to live a good life? I think if you've... Gosh, I wish I could ask this one. I wish I could turn this one around on you too. Nope, you can't.

I can't. If you're more easier, I would let you, but this is a hard one. Or it's not hard. Or it's not hard. What does it mean to live a good life? Be good to other people. Make their journey on this planet a little easier, right? Yeah.

I think that's it. And find joy and wonder and awe. and be grateful for it all. And, I mean, it's just, it's the big question, but it's also just like such a simple, simple question. I think right now, just from where I am in my own life, the idea of living a good life is something about contentment, something about finding peace.

and it feels like it should be easy. Like you said, I have so much to be grateful for. But I also have this restlessness that I think in some ways has been really helpful for me. It's been the source of my drive in a lot of ways, a lot of my ambition. but it also fuels this discontent. And I'm trying so hard. In my happiest moments, I forget that. And I can just be with the people that I love and be aware of how much I love them and be grateful for all of that.

So I think the secret to a good life is letting go of that. That gap between what you have and some imaginary idea of something that you might have someday. It's letting go of the idea of striving. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. Rishi Keshe, we end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. In the time machine, you revisit one moment from your past.

It's not a moment you want to change one thing about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. Which moment do you choose? I was talking about this last night, so this is, I'm just going to go with this because it feels close to my memory. But I think I know the exact moment when I fell in love with my wife. Really? I think so. Yeah.

And one of the reasons I'm so aware of it is because I do have a photograph of it. You know, in terms of wanting to hold on to these important memories, I don't know that I realized it was so important when I took this picture, but I took a picture of her. It was on our third date. And now I can look back at that, and I can remember what that felt like, what I had in that moment. It was basically, it's like someone took a picture right before the meteor hits, you know? It's like an inch away from me. It's like the moment where everything changed. Where was she?

Paint a little bit of a picture for me? This was in New York. It was in her apartment. In her apartment. And is she looking at the camera? Yes. She's sitting at her desk. and she's looking back over her shoulder at me and smiling.

And she just, she looks happy. And I remember just how happy I was and how accidental the whole thing was. You know, the chance that we had found each other was so unexpected. And I felt all of it. I really felt the profundity of that moment of just. like, wow, I can't, this idea, right, of like, everybody should be walking around saying, I can't believe this is happening and I want to hold on to it. That's a moment that I remember feeling that way, you know, as it was happening.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that there are a lot of times when your life is changing and you're aware of it. Right. You know, and especially when it's something good. Usually we know when it's something bad. But a lot of times I think you don't know until you look back. And I think maybe in that moment I had a sense. But I would love to be able to go back to that moment, knowing what I know now. Where is the photo? I mean, probably on your phone, but like, do you have it printed out or anything? No, it was a photo I took on my film camera.

Oh. Yeah. It was 2007. So I didn't have a, you know, camera phone. yet, or at least not one that I, that looked, anyway. So is it in a shoebox or is it properly displayed somewhere? It's in a little photo album of pictures from that year. Yeah.

Actually, I found it, I found it tucked into a journal. And that's what made me think of it. I was flipping through a journal and I'd put it in there. And now it's moved into the photo album. Rishikeshier-Way, his new album is called In the Last Hour of Light. Rishi Keshe, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much for having me.

It's so great to be able to talk to you about this stuff. Yeah. I really, really, really appreciate everything you do. If you love the show, you might probably love having a Wild Card deck of your own. And guess what? You're in luck. We've got a custom deck available just for you with some of our favorite questions from the show. It's at shop npr.org slash wildcard.

It is a fantastic way to get deep and introspective with your friends and your family. or honestly with your own thoughts. I hear from people all the time about how they're using them on family vacations, out with friends, as journal prompts. You can find the deck at the link in our episode description, or just go to shop npr.org slash wildcard. This episode was produced by Alicia Zhang and Lee Hale. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Andy Huther.

Wildcard's executive producers, Yolonna Sangweni, and our theme music is by Romteen Arablee. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.