Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Our favorite Memory Time Machine trips

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

At the end of each Wild Card episode, Rachel invites guests to take a trip in our Memory Time Machine and revisit a moment they wouldn’t like to change anything about – a moment they would like to stay in a little longer. We’re sharing some of our favorite trips in the Memory Time Machine, from David Lynch, Brett Goldstein, Jenny Slate, Barry Jenkins and more. 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

Hey, it's Rachel. Just a heads up. There's a little bit of spicy language in this episode. Hey there, it's Rachel. Over the past year, we've heard from a whole lot of you about how much you like the memory time machine part of our show. When we started out, we called it the prize that guests would get after finishing the wildcard game. But we didn't want people to think they were getting like a Norwegian cruise or a new washer dryer set. So we stopped saying prize. And even though I don't say this out loud in the show, now I have come to think of it as like a gift. The guest gets the experience of walking through a meaningful memory, and you and me, we get to connect with the story in our own way.

Just like on my kids' little league team, we are all winners. So we decided to wrap up some of these gifts in one big bow for your listening pleasure. And with that, I present to you some of our very favorite trips in the memory time machine. Our first trip is with a guest who holds a special place in my heart because she was our very first guest on Wildcard, Jenny Slate. So the prize is a trip in our memory time machine. Cool. To revisit a moment from your life, a moment you would not change anything about.

You just would like, you just want to hang out there a little more. Oh, I'll tell you the first thing in my head is my grandmother's really ugly couch. in Quincy, Massachusetts. And she had these side tables, you know, one that nestles under the other. And she would have those paper towels, like, that are so soft and thick, you know, like, not the environmentally good ones that we use now. The other ones. That are like, these are paper, never forget. But, like, the ones that are like, this is basically a washcloth.

my grandmother Rochelle being at her house in Quincy, Massachusetts, and she would make us a sandwich of, and again, this doesn't age well, it was the 80s, Wonderbread and Margarine. You do not need teeth to eat it. And she would put each the side tables in front of us, and we would watch Nickelodeon, and we didn't have cable at our house. And it just was like, it just was, it was just so sad, honestly. I miss my grandmother so much, but sorry.

Yeah. But just deeply peaceful. And like the first feeling of unconditional love is from my grandmother, Rochelle. She was so weird and strange. and really, really traumatized by the Holocaust. And she never let any of that spike us, you know, like we were aware that she was deep inside of something. My sisters, and I think it was like, oh, Nana is, she goes into something. She's not really like other adults.

She's trustworthy. She'll drive the car. She can really, gave really great baths, you know, really good food. But she's living in two days. different places and she surfaces to be with us. And I just remember sitting there with her in all her complexity and having this soft sandwich that we would never be allowed to have at home, no crusts, you know, watching Nickelodeon people get like the gloop on them, like the slime and just being like I, I mean,

I wouldn't have said this as a kid, but like I fucking love this. Like I want this forever. I cannot believe that I don't have that anymore. And I just love it. I just love it. It feels so good to think about it. I was so incredibly lucky to have filmmaker David Lynch on our show. He died seven months after we talked.

Lynch was always into the metaphysical, right? And he was deeply spiritual. So this answer that he gave me to the memory time machine question shouldn't necessarily have surprised me, but it still did. I think in part because of all the verve in his voice when you told the story. You'll see what I mean. Which moment are you going to choose?

Okay, so I was, I heard about this show at the L.A. County Art Museum. All these things from India were coming over from the Far East. Great giant sandstone carvings. So I

went with my second wife, Mary, and my daughter, Jennifer. We went over to see the show. And we got separated. They went one place and I went another on my own. And I was going along this white wall. And I turned around the corner and I realized it was part of a wall that was used to create a long corridor.

So when I walked around the end of the white wall, I turned and I saw I was looking down a long corridor. And my eyes went down the long corridor. and there at the end of the long corridor was a pedestal. And on top of the pedestal, there was the head of Buddha. And my eyes went up to pedestal and landed on the head of Buddha, and boom, white light shot out of the head of Buddha and shot into me, and I was balloon filled with bliss. I was filled with so much bliss.

I had it for hours, this bliss in me from the head of Buddha. Wow. That beats, you know, sitting on the grass in my front yard with my mom and some sun tea, which is usually the memory that I go to in the mess. That's a beautiful memory you've got there. That's a beautiful thing. That's beautiful. Are you kidding me?

I know it's beautiful. And look at the happiness you had there. that moment. It's all about this happiness and a good feeling. The thing to remember about the memory time machine is that you don't have to take it somewhere filled with bliss and good feelings. Remember it's a place you just want to linger in a little longer. And for actor Rob Delaney, that meant revisiting an impossibly difficult time in his life. Well, I'm going to try not to cry for radio, but it would be taking a nap in my son's hospital room while he took a nap when he would fall asleep in his hospital bed because

he was two when he died and you know two-year-old still nap so in the afternoon you know if we'd been doing whatever we were doing in the morning um and had lunch and nap time rolled around you know i'd set him up for his nap and uh you know we were usually in a in a chemo ward and i would um lie down on the bed that they have for the parent in the room there and put on a little music and take a nap with him and we would sleep in the same room and we would dream together and be there. That's what I would pick. Next up we've got actor Terry Cruz and his memory time machine pick was this lovely moment

with his wife made more profound because of the context. Take a listen. What moment do you choose? Oh, that was a great. Man, the moment this came up, it was beautiful. Dodger Stadium. I don't even like baseball. I can't play it.

Don't know it. Don't even know what the rules are. I'm at Dodger Stadium at a baseball game. And my wife and I had just been regrouped. We rededicated ourselves. We had been married 20 years and almost broke up, but we had been through 30. therapy and the whole thing, but we rededicated ourselves to each other.

And she had just sang the national anthem. At the game, wow. But she comes off the field and the sun is going down. I'd never been happier. I was like, wow, like, we're going to do this. We're going to make it. It just made me go, I'm so thankful. I'm just, it was, my heart just exploded with full of gratitude for having my wife,

for my family, for stuff. Still being here and being able to enjoy this moment, being able to enjoy this game, I don't even understand. It was just a full, like, wow, it was one of those all, it was a bit of an all moment. But, man, that's a great memory. Just a great memory. When film director Barry Jenkins got to go in the memory time machine, he chose to go back to the infamous night of the Oscars in 2017. You remember this? when Warren Beatty announced La La Land as Best Picture.

And then it turned out that Barry Jenkins' movie, Moonlight, was the actual winner. It was absolutely chaotic. Just talk about chaos. Again, chaos. Totally chaotic. And typically you would expect that, oh, I wish they would have just said Moonlight and it would have been a normal thing. I don't wish that. Because, you know, sometimes you go into a foreign country and, you know, the customs

where it's like, oh, and what do you do? And maybe, oh, what did, well, you know, you wouldn't know, but remember that thing with the envelope? Oh, I made that phone. People always know. Oh, my God. And so, yeah. And so I don't, I wouldn't change the way it happened.

But I just didn't allow myself to be present. And so I just don't have a memory of that moment, that night, that event. I just don't. It's all just, it kind of, I feel like it got away from me. It eclips me. It eclipsed my experience. in a certain way. So you want to go back and actually have a memory.

So we are changing it a little bit because you want to actually pay attention in that moment. Well, you said that you could live in for a longer time. Yeah, there you go. And I do wish I could have had more time with that moment. Not because of winning Best Picture, but it was the culmination. You know, Adela Romanski.

We went on this journey to create something in our image, this very small story about myself and this gentleman to Roe Ava McCraney's life. And look at how far it traveled. Look at how many people it impacted. And at the moment when that was celebrated, I just don't have a memory of it. I don't have that in body.

I hasten to even talk about that because it's so far in the past. But you ask the question. Yeah, it's still with you. You ask the question. And so it is the answer. God, Barry, how much I wish I actually did have the power to put you in a magical time machine.

So you can do that. Rachel, this is the power of what you do. You just did. Okay. You just did. Okay. I hope so. You just did.

And I thank you for it. As a person who watched it, it was a beautiful moment. It was awesome. You were great. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have been at a watch party watching. As someone who watches a lot of live sports, watching that happen, would have just been absolute madness. It was madness and it was magic. One moment in your performance.

past that you would not change anything about. Oh, thank you. This is the author Sandra Cisneros. She shared her memory time machine moment with me in front of a live audience at the National Book Festival last fall. It was magical, and I expected nothing less. I've written about it. It's called Akumal.

It's a place in the Yucatan away from Cancun, that neck of the woods. And I had a mystical experience when I was very... young. I've had a lot of mystical experiences, but that was like a major. I went there with my parents just before I started graduate school. And my father and mother were very interested in getting water, and we stopped. At that time, Akumal was, there were no hotels, no condos, like now. It was just some hammocks strung up between palm trees and some little shed selling drinks. and they left me alone and I lay down on a very shallow body of water that was a little inlet. I don't like beaches and I don't like water and I'm not a great swimmer.

So it has to be like that shallow for me to want to get in. And it was the softest sand. If you've been to the Mayan Riviera, you know it's the softest sand in the world. And it was all ripples like the roof of your mouth. So when you lay down on it, it cushioned you at the right places, and the water was warm. In the palm branches were giving me a cleansing, and the wind was just right, and the ocean was lapping at my earlobes. And suddenly everything shifted by itself, and I was in a state that we don't have a word for.

It was like I understood what the Buddha understood. that I was connected to everything. I can never die because I was also the wind and the trees and the water and the sand and the universe. And everything was one textile. It was all interwoven. And I understood that. And I knew that, you know, well, I don't mind dying right now. This is perfectly fine because I can't die.

And it was so wonderful. I don't know how many seconds or years or minutes I was in that state of absolute bliss. And then my father said, Sandra Vavanaughes. And I had to get up and go back to the real world and get in the car, and I thought, what the hell? What was that?

I was too young to know what that was. I still am not old enough to know what that was. And whatever it was, it just was a little, like a, you know, zoom, we're going to give her little laser beam. And I thought, that was so amazing. So every once in a while, a memory time machine, trip completely surprises me, which is how I felt about Natasha Rothwell's choice. It was so honest and so intimate and also relatable, and it left me wanting to scream from the

rooftops to all the women I know this, this, listen to this. What moment do you choose? I'm thinking specifically, I went on a trip to Greece, and I was there with, like, some friends and I just remember floating in the pool in this two-piece. And at one point I took, at one point I took my top off. As you do. As you do. And I was just kind of floating there.

And I was at such peace, but it was also peace with my body and myself. It was just kind of like a friend. And this is coming from someone who, like, would wear giant t-shirts over a one-piece, you know, at the community pool when I was younger. So to be at this pool, and I should clarify, this wasn't a public pool. This was that place you were staying. My courage is not that far up to go to a nude beach. But in the privacy of this place we were staying, in this quiet moment by myself. And I was floating in this little donut.

and just had my eyes closed and I was just drifting. And I was just like, had no worry in the world. But I was just so in my body, which I struggle with a lot. And I just was just like had, you know, tits out, a beer in my hand. It was bliss. I would not change the thing about that moment. I love it. Okay, next in our favorite memory time machine moments,

We've got actress Uzo Aduba. What moment do you choose? It's just a moment I'd like to linger in a little longer. I think it will have to be the – I'm just going to go with the first thing that came into my mind. Senior Portrait Day in high school. Not usually a thing that people want to relive. I'm already intrigued. Yes, this was a turning point.

for me. And these were the fancy school pictures because it was the senior year picture, you know. So kind of like a photo shoot. And he's taking my picture. I'm laughing and being myself and chill easy. And as soon as he would take his camera up to take my picture, I would stop laughing, wide mouth and start smiling like this. Mm-hmm.

Mouth shut. Yep. Mouth shut. said to me, you know, why do you keep smiling like that? And I said, I don't know. And he said, no, why? What's it about? And I said, I don't like my gap. Because I was very self-conscious of my gap at that time. I wanted braces so bad. The gap in your teeth, yeah. And I just remember he had his camera in his hand. And he just said, like, I think you have a beautiful smile. And my mom had been saying that to me, my whole life, my family, everybody. And I never believed it.

but that day, for some reason, I believed him for the first time. He was the first person I ever believed. And it stuck with me. I don't know who that guy is. What a gift. But I own a lot. Yeah. And it just changed in my head.

Like, it didn't matter what the outside thinks. It's what do I think. And so now I smile all the time, and I always say I think it's because making up for lost smiles. And my mother actually used to hate that story because she's like, I used to tell you, I told you all the time you had a beautiful smile. Now this random man calls it. So I was like, now you believe you.

You know, she hated it. So I was like, this ridiculous story my daughter's telling. No, we can hear the same message for years and years and years and years. And sometimes you just have to be open in a different time and place and a different person has to tell you the information. Correct, correct. And it sinks into you. Correct.

But that has lived in my DNA forever. and if I could even go and revisit that moment and appreciate it then, I wish I could, so I could smile on that day, on that picture day. But it stayed with me. I think you have a beautiful smile. Brett Goldstein mold over his options for the memory time machine. I absolutely can't tell you my first answer. Which, of course, made me want to know that story.

But I don't get to push them in a certain direction when we're in the memory time machine. So I had to settle for what was clearly the answer that was fit for public consent. assumption. Second answer would be, I don't think I'm finding this one difficult, but give me another minute. No, I'm going to sit here all day. Okay.

Something I'd want to sit in. I mean, for real, I've said it in the special, but I really mean it was the best day of my life when I went to Sesame Street. To give it to me. And there was a thing that I watched and I could have stayed longer.

After I did all my stuff and they were very, very nice to me and they still had more stuff to shoot and they said, would you like to go? Would you like to hang out? And I was like, I'll fucking hang out. And I watched a group of grown people

older than me, I believe, lying on their back on skateboards with cat puppets on their hands riding into each other and pretending and playing catch

trying to catch a ball in the air whilst pretending while making cat noises and I thought this is fucking brilliant and I did think I would like to retire here on Sesame Street

and just do any job on this like it was truly like a collective everyone imbuing this thing with magic and it was so fun and so lovely and so stupid just these fucking adults on skateboards smashing into each other and going

and I thought that's fucking great it's great I could have so I would have extended the day at Sesame Street Our last destination in the memory time machine today comes courtesy of the young adult author Jason Reynolds. And it must be said that my conversation with Jason is one of the most profound I have ever had on this show. And I really urge you to check it out if you haven't already. Jason's memory time machine taps into something all of us who have lost someone feel. Which moment do you choose?

Oh, I, uh, my father. When I finally made it, started to make a couple of dollars, you know. I went and I bought myself a 9-11, a portion 9-11, cherry red, guard red, as the portion people say. And I took it to my father's house. My father had been fighting cancer for a while at this point. But he was home. He had done some surgeries. It was looking good.

And I took it. He was a car man, specifically American muscle. He loved the Mustang. He loved, you know, a corvette. You know, those were his cars. And he did not like anything other than those cars. But I took my German sports car to his house. And he came outside.

And at first he thought I'd bought a Tesla because I had been teasing him that I was going to buy Tesla, which he was very much like, are you crazy? We don't like, you know, all of that. And so he come up. outside and he sees this car and his eyes light up and he's like, let me drive it. And he gets in the car and we pull out onto the main road. He lived in the country and we drove about, we pushed it to about 150 miles an hour maybe. And I remember him slowing the car down and I'm looking at him and I'm like, man, mind you, I'm white knuckling. And he's like, and we pulled back into his

driveway and he's like, I won't lie to you. I was a little afraid, right? And we just bust out of laughing. We had this moment. And then right after that, he told me that he was going to die. So right after that, he said, look, I'm not going to be able to beat this thing. And I probably got six weeks. And so I just want to, you know, so we started to have a very different conversation. And it was all very lovely, honestly, but painful, you know. And if I could extend a moment, me and the old man would have driven a lot longer. We would have taken a road trip. And we had taken a road trip two years before, but we would have done it in the Porsche. And we would have just tore the road apart

because it was the last time that I saw my father alive. He was living for another six weeks, but the last time I saw that thing in his eye that reminded me of who he was and what he had given me, this knucklehead kid who had a, Pinching for toys and, you know, I'm just like them, you know, fast cars and all the things, all the stupid stuff of boyhood. I, you know, I think about that often, you know, this is after telling me that he had a fake Rolex.

I always thought he had a real Rolex. Like, all of these, like, it was, you know what I mean? Like, just, you know, like, he set all these standards for me that I grew into this man who got all the better versions of the things he was pretending to have. And so I just wish he would have lived a little longer for me to give him and show him. him, some of the sweet bits. If you like this episode, I encourage you to go back and listen to or watch all of these episodes in full. Many of them are on our YouTube page. All you have to do is search for Wildcard with Rachel Martin. This episode was produced by Taylor Hutchison and Summer Tomad. Wildcard's executive

producer is Yolanda Sangweni, and our theme music is by Romteen Arapluie. You can reach out to us at wildcard at npr.org and you know what we're going to do. We're going to shuffle the deck. and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.