Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Wild Card: Best of the deck

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

As 2024 winds down, we're sharing some of our favorite answers from the earliest Wild Card episodes.To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes 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

Just a little heads up, this episode contains a little bit of cursing. Hey, everyone, it's Rachel. I hope you're having a great holiday break and that you really have gotten a break. In the spirit of making things easier this holiday season, our team here at Wildcard has put together a curated best of episode just for you. The whole point of the game is to get to the good stuff fast, right? And that's what we're doing for you here, giving you our very favorite moments from 2024, wrapped up with a bow for your listening pleasure.

Moments like Lena Waith describing the Wizard of Oz as her religion. Ted Danson's optimistic spin on his fear of death. And David Lynch being David Lynch. If you're newish to the show, this episode is a great explainer for what we do here. And if you're a long-time listener, first of all, thank you. A thousand times over. Thank you, thank you. And I promise you're going to love revisiting these card questions as much as I do.

As always, we're breaking the show up into three rounds. We'll get deeper as we go. And a heads up, there's some profanity in some of these answers. We're starting with the novelist Tathy Brodusser Ackner. Three cards in my hand. Pick a card one through three. Two. Two.

Where would you go to feel safe as a kid? Oh, my gosh. When I was a kid, my mother had a brown Volvo station wagon. I think it's a 240. It was the one that everyone had at the time. And in the way back, which ironically is not a safe place, like no seatbelt, you're just sort of bobbing around and hoping that your mother who is smoking cigarettes while she's driving has her eyes on the road. That was the place. I was always, I've always felt safe when I was in motion.

Really? Yeah, which says so much about kind of what a disaster personality I am. First of all, what specific motion, not the car with your mom driving? The car, yes. Oh, you did feel safe. Being in transit, being not there yet. Because once you get there, you have to do something or arrive or be or accomplish. But when you're in transit, which I always was.

My parents were divorced. And recently I took my children out to the east end of Long Island. And we passed the exit where my father lived. And they said, you did this every weekend? And I said, yeah. So I don't know if that's because, if I feel safe because I'm so used to it or because I think that being in transit is actually the only time you can stop. And now when I'm on airplanes, I have a couple of rules about airplanes. I'll always watch a movie.

Like I feel very safe when I'm protected from the demands of others. Wow. Yeah, it's weird. I guess I'm telling the truth here. I'm into it. Yeah. Do you feel that way now? I mean, this isn't really a memory thing anymore, but I'm just curious.

Do you feel that sense of security if you're in transit today? You know what? Last night I was coming home from New Jersey from an event for the book. I was in a car and I saw New York. I saw the city where I live across the river. And I thought, I'm so glad I'm not there yet. Because when I got home, I'd have to pack for today and figure out what the morning would look like. But right then, I was just in this state of isolation.

I wonder if a lot of sort of working mothers can relate to this, being trapped in a state where you can't do anything but exist. It's the closest, I think, I get to stillness, weirdly. Yeah. And there's also like, sorry, we have so many more questions to go through, but I mean, stuck in this one because, well, it's because there's like potential too, right? I've always been. Yes. It might be great when I get home. It might be amazing. I haven't screwed it up yet. Yes. Everything could be better. And so let me just stay here before I actually know. I mean, put me in traffic. Oh, uh. Next up is one of my all-time favorite comedic actors who also happens to have a heart of gold. Rob Delaney. Pick a card one, two, or three. Two, please.

Two. What's a moment when a stranger made you feel loved? Oh, my gosh. You've really... I don't... I want to be honest with you now, but I, you know, I have some memories that I've never told people before, not ever anyone. And it's not that they're so intense, but they're just sort of like these touchstone things that I can revisit when I'm like sad or angry to think about people's goodness. And one is so strange.

It's a snowy day. I'm in elementary school, maybe fourth grade. And I remember I was in a hallway at my school. I don't know if I'd gone to the bathroom or something. And an adult woman who didn't work at the school, I don't know who she was, but came in and, like, snow came in with her and was, you know, swirling around her. And it was like a couple of maybe the last day of school before Christmas. I remember she looked at me and she just said, I hope you have a Merry Christmas. And she made eye contact with me, and I'd never seen her before.

And it just felt so nice to have an adult stranger look at me, a stranger boy, and just say something, you know, just nothing remarkable, but just a sweet thing. And that's like one of the larger memories of my crazy life where you would think I would have more. But I just remember this woman doing that. And it just oddly touched me. I think she might have been an angel, I think. She might not have been a human woman. But that's always Yeah, because why does it stick with me for so many years?

So it's one of those things where like there was something deeper happening in that moment than just the words and just the eye contact. So yeah, I think she was a special person who visited me. And I also feel nervous that I told you about it because that's like one of my sort of special memories. So please anyone listening, forget you heard this, or alternately, please treasure it like I do. Thank you for sharing that. I think what I love about this question is that I think that's a particular kind of love. Like that, for me, like when strangers do stuff, it just kills me when someone who, they could just move on with their day. But when they choose to look at you, recognize you, and say something in a moment.

that it just destroys me. It opens me up in a way that if someone, my best friend or my partner or a kid, if anyone else said the same thing, it wouldn't have nearly the impact as a stranger seeing you in that moment. And I love those experiences. They're the best. Yeah.

They really are. Last up for our first round is a man who doesn't give a whole lot of interviews, the legendary filmmaker, David Lynch. One, two, or three? Two. Two. What was your form of rebelling as a teenager? Okay, well, I lived three lives. I lived a home life. I lived kind of a school life, where I say with my sweetheart, my girlfriend, and the studio, art life. So I had a studio during high school.

in downtown Alexandria with my friend Jack Fisk. So after school, I'd go to the studio and then, you know, also was a bit of a party animal. So I had these three lives and I didn't want any of them to mix, really. So I developed spasms of the intestines. You developed a condition. So you created it for yourself. It was psychosomatic? I was a psychosomatic disease, yeah.

And what did it do for you? I shit my pants. That's what happened. It was a horrible thing. However, I'll tell you a good side of this. Okay. The Vietnam War was cooking up around this time. Right.

And my father took me to a doctor because this spasms and intestines. I got an intestinal, you know, one of these things where they look at your. Like a colonoscopy kind of thing? A colonoscopathy, you know, ospity, whatever. Yeah. And the guy was a great doctor,

and he pretended that as he was watching, that it was a racetrack. And he said, here they go around this corner. They're going out of their end. So, such, number seven is in the lead. And they're going around this corner.

In your colon? Following the colon ostomy, you know, he was, as he was telling me about, you know, my intestines. Anyway, he said, you have spasms of the

intestines. And he said, by the way, I see on the x-rays, you have a vertebrae out of place. And if you ever called for the army, I can give you these x-rays and you probably won't be called if you want to get out. So spasms and intestines led to a doctor that helped me get out and I didn't have to go to Vietnam. That, that, we started at what was your form of rebellion. And then we went to you compartmentalizing your life into three lives. And I think the threat is because you worked so hard to keep those lives separate, you developed a stomach disorder. And then you went to a doctor who happened to diagnose something not related that kept you out of Vietnam. Is that right? Wow. And let me live the art life, you know, in peace.

And that was so beautiful. I can't tell you how lucky I've been in my life, how fortunate and lucky I've been. What were you rebelling against? All part of life is a certain point, children are supposed to rebel. It's part of getting prepared to leave the nest. And it's a healthy thing. It's just some rebel more than others. And I caused a lot of sadness and worry for my parents.

I know I did. I had a great relationship with it. but I put him through a lot of trouble. Okay, round two. First up, an actor turned filmmaker and one of my new favorite people, Lena Waite. Three new cards, okay? I got to go at one now.

One, two, three, one. Yeah. When did you feel like you found your people? Oh, man, I think, you know, Michael's Foboda, who was a writer's PA on the game when I was an assistant at girlfriends, he and I just really vived.

And he's just like, yo, I got a writer's group that I do where we sit and we like write original pilots that we're working on to kind of help us get some stuff done. And I walked into that writer's group and I met Justin Simeon who was working on something, which ultimately would become dear white people. And then Justin and I just really clicked and bonded and became friends. So that's really when it happened. So I just like I landed in there and I just like found all these amazing people that I'm still tight with, like, today. Tell me how that jibes with Chicago in your experience there, because it sounds like this, your people were writers. Like, you needed to find your writer people.

Yeah. Did, did you not have that in some way in Chicago? You know, I was a bit of an oddball, you know, in Chicago, because I was obsessed with TV, obsessed with like movies. Like, people go to the movies and watch TV shows to a pastime. And I think my family could tell it was more than that for me. Was it moving you in a different way than it was, your peers? I would be just enthralled by it and be thinking about it.

Like, I have, like, some chest tattoos. I have, like, a power line from Goofy Movie and Jack from Night Before Christmas over here, like, because those are two very important movies for me. I have a Wizard of Oz tattoo. I have Judy Garland here, you know, I have the lion. I have the scarecrow. I have all of it. Like, Because that movie was more than a movie for me. It was almost like a Bible to life. It's like where you are, you always think there's something out there that's better than we're out at right now. But the truth is when you go out there and get to the Emerald City and meet the Wizard, you realize it's all, it's not really what you thought it was.

And then all you long for when you're in the Emerald City is to go where? home. Exactly. And it's a lesson none of us really learned still. You know, we still are trying to go,

like, I got to get to the Wizard. If I could just get to the Emerald City, if I could just, you know, I'm going to keep, everything will be fine. And then you get there, you're just like, I'm still not fine. And so I think what the big reason

why Wizard of Vaz such a religion and a reminder for me is that there is no Emerald City that will feel like home. Mm-hmm. Was that sad for you? Was there a grief attached to that?

Like, no, I think what it did was it helped me to stop. It helped me to slow down and to, I'm still, you know, driven and ambitious. But I've learned that there's no there there. Yeah. You know, it's like we're all chasing something. Because the truth is, there's always something you want. And that's fine. You know, you need that thing to make you want to go.

But you got to remember that it'll be. nice if it happens, it'll be cool, but you don't want it to be a thing that if you don't get it, that you can't find happiness. Next, the incomparable Nikki Giovanni. Nikki died earlier this month, and the episode we did with her is full of the kind of wisdom, wit, and joy that made her legendary. I am so grateful I got the chance to talk with her. One, two, or three.

Let's go for two again. Okay. What emotion do you understand better than all the others? Patience. I'm incredibly patient. It takes a lot to really push me. Where does that come from? Well, I don't know.

I'm the baby sister of two. So that teaches you, one, you're always watching your big sister because they're always so wonderful. They're prettier, they're more intelligent, everything. And so you always... And you want to say, well, one day I'll grow up or whatever. But most of my friends are older. I have very few friends who are my age. I'm 80.

I'm 81. Right. It's a long life already, Nikki, 81. And most of your friends are older than that. Some good longevity. Well, I'm hoping that Aunt Sarah, who was my mother's great aunt. And nobody liked Sarah, by the way. She was a despicable person.

but she lived to be 100. So I do want that dream that lets you live to be 100. I think it'd be interesting to see what's happening in 100. My kids asked me that recently if I wanted to, you know, not just to 100, but like would I want to live forever? And, you know, that's an interesting question to talk about with kids and how having a finite end to life sometimes creates appreciation because you think things are going to end, you know.

But I said I would I would I would do it with some caveats I just want my health I just want I want my body to still to still work I don't want things falling apart on me Things are going to fall apart and so that's again one of the things that You can hear in my breathing and it's because of the pneumonia And that'll go away it this will get well but I'm not afraid of You know being blind I have a friend who's losing her sight and it makes you very uncomfortable. I think what an opportunity to now see the world in a different way.

I mean, look at Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder. So you say, well, they couldn't see, but look at what they created. So obviously they saw something. And I'm not afraid, as I said, 80 kicked my butt. I mean, if it could be wrong with me, it was wrong with me. And I was thinking, okay, well, you know, I had cancer, I had lung cancer, and I had breast cancer. And I said, whatever it happens, I don't want to read, I don't want to be sitting, well, I'll be sitting in hell because I don't think I'm going to heaven. But I don't want to be sitting in hell.

And they said, she fought cancer for, you know, 20 years. I'm not fighting any disease. I'm learning to live with it. And I want the disease to live with me. So every morning that I wake up, me and cancer, we're good shape. And I said, well, let's take a shower. Go about our day. Let's do our life.

Yeah. And one day we won't. And then that means that I'll be transitioned. I'll be in another place. And that's what, you know, I'm talking about my grandmother, but that's what I think about, about grandmother, about sister Althea, who was my eighth-rate teacher and I loved her so much. But I don't think they're not dead because they will never be forgotten for me. and I find myself if I'm not careful and sometimes even if I am talking to them

or they're talking to me. You're never alone when you have somebody like that around you. Yeah. Are you afraid of anything? Well, I'm very cautious around ostrich when I was on, you know. Nikki, what are you talking about? Osterisksis? You're afraid of ostriches?

Well, yeah, you ever been on safari? They are mean. No. They are mean, and that kick will kill you. Ask a lion if you had to put a lion against an ostrich. The lion is gone. That's why you don't see lions. That was just like not where I thought we were going to go.

Oh. No, I like it. I like it. I mean, it's real. That is your fear. The ostrich. Yeah, you have to be very careful around them. I'm not afraid of lions because lions are an intelligent being that unless you're threatening them, they're not going to bother you.

Right. The only ostriches I've had in relation, you know, it's been unpleasant. And I'm lucky that they didn't get to me or they were to kill Thomas and my son and I were on Safari. You have to be careful around ostriches. People need to know that. That is a good and unexpected public service announcement that you have provided, Nikki Giovanni. Rounding out Round two is one of my personal heroes, Jordy LaForge, or at. as he's known to most people, Levar Burton.

Pick a card, one, two, three. I want to go one. You're feeling one. I am. Has your idea of success changed over time? Yes. I used to embody success unconsciously by how busy I felt and how busy I was. Now I feel that success is spending my time well.

And what that means to me, what that looks like is a balance of work and leisure, work and rest. Because I recognize at this stage in my life that although I have a lot of energy, there's a limit to it. And the older I get, the more important it is for me to create that balance of activity and recuperation. Yeah. My job, I've come to the conclusion that my job is to be. LeVar Burton, and I love my job. And as it happens, my job requires a lot of energy going out, right? It's energy output. And unless I recharge this battery, it's not good. It's interesting, though, you got so high, so fast, right? Like, after Roots, you were up here. I was 19. Yeah, you're 19. I mean, you're still like a kid. And so I wonder if your definition of success, that epiphany of realizing you need balance, you got a concern. If you can't just soar or you'll burn out, I wonder if that had to evolve.

Yeah. I had to learn that. Because it's a long life, God willing. Exactly. And I think one of the gifts of roots was that I had to come to terms with, you know what, I may never do anything as big or as important or as impactful as this, okay? And I'm 19. So you just need to manage your expectations.

No, seriously about what's going to happen next, because clearly, A, you don't know, and B, chances are this may be the pinnacle. It just, it may be. It wasn't. No, it turned out not to be, right? And that's the miracle of my life, that it wasn't the only leg on my stool. I have these three jewels, I call them, in my career crown. in Roots and Reading Rainbow and Star Trek.

And I think part of the beauty of that journey for me is seeing that as a storyteller, I've been able to portray the Black experience in America from our enslavement to the stars. And Lavar, the Reading Rainbow Guy, is absolutely in the middle of that continuum. And so to really plot the trajectory of black people through time and space, in this roughly 20th, 21st century timeframe. That is very profound. Yeah. What a gift.

Yeah, what a gift. What a gift. What a gift. Who gets to do that? I do. Starting off round three, we've got a guy who throughout his storied career never turns in a bad performance, including his appearance on Wildcard. Ted Danson. One, two, or three? Three.

Okay. Oh, well. How often do you think about? death. Ooh, a lot. It's usually a version of, I mean, not literal death, but I see, I flip my brain. I've trained it and I like it and it may not be real, but my brain immediately tries to contextualize and spin myself away from fear.

I don't like living in fear. And I have tons of it, you know, it comes up. I had so much fun doing a classic spy that I just finished for Netflix. That halfway through it, I was going, oh, don't die. Let me finish this. To yourself, that's what you were saying? You know, I haven't, I have my, something hurts. You know, oh, is that mean I'm, you know, I'm incapable of finishing that.

Oh, you know, but then I go, wait a minute. And what you're really saying is you are so happy to be doing what you're doing. You're so joyful, having so much fun, don't take it away from me, life. You know, so instead of being fearful, just say, oh, my God, thank you, thank you, thank you for this blessing that I have. Thank you for this job. Thank you for whatever. Because then I can live in gratitude, which is more joyful, and I don't have to live in fear. You know, I will contextualize my way out of fear as much as I possibly can.

There are times, COVID, COVID was like a brick wall for a while. It was like, damn, I can't spin my way out. I got no context here. I got no context. Yeah. So I guess I have another question related to this because you did, you have talked publicly about suffering from plauceriasis. for a long time. And I wonder if that experience made you think differently about your body and your own kind of physical fragility. Oh, definitely. And I can never look at myself in the mirror.

I was born without a chest muscle. I was six foot at 13 and weighed 120 pounds. And then when I was 25, I got psoriasis. I was never able to go, you know, oh, what a glorious. creature you are in your speedo. You know, I never had that self-affirming reflection in the mirror. So I think it made me, I think self-deprecating humor came out of that. My mother also was, you know, was very, she dealt wonderfully with the light things of life, joy and gratitude and excitement and all of those things. When things were dark, which life has, she had trouble with that.

So there were things like phrases like pride goeth before a fall, you know, that kind of stuck in my head. And so it's like being prideful, even though I am, it was something that I tried not to be because I didn't want the fall. even having a conversation with you today where I'm kind of forcing it to be a higher level of the joy meter because that's what I like to hear back. That's where you like to live, yeah. That's where I like to live. But I'm also very aware that I will step out of here and directly into a pile of carmic poo because that's just the way life, the way life works. Mr. Ted, who thinks he's so

wonderful dancing, you know, we'll get a reflection of the truth. But that's fun. That's funny. Our next guest is someone who I knew was going to say beautiful and meaningful thanks. She's the U.S. Poet Laureate, after all, but I don't think anything could have prepared me for how profound this answer was from Ada Lemaum. One, two, or three. Three. Oh. Have you ever had a premonition about something that came true?

I feel like I have, and I'm trying to think of, there's many times where I'm a big dreamer. And my dream world is so. Like literally and figuratively. Yes, like sleeping dreams. Yeah. And so I think that those moments can be slippery for me, whether. there were premonitions or if they were dreams. But I feel like there's a few times.

One of them has been, I think that I knew that we weren't going to be able to conceive a child before we decided to give up on fertility treatments. I think I knew that. And I think it actually helped me to make some decisions to not move forward with any more of the treatments. And so I think I just knew. And it was also very helpful to me because it felt like as much as I just praised mystery and the unknowing, it felt like my body knew something. And it knew it was able to offer me another option and another future that, um, I wasn't quite ready to do yet and to surrender to yet.

Then when I was able to do it and listen to that premonition, it felt like a gift. And it felt like, okay, now what else is possible? Yeah. You know? Because I think as women in our culture, the only possibility oftentimes offered to us as motherhood. That's right. And I felt very bound by that. And letting that go was really freeing.

And I love my life. And I love being child-free. And I think that premonition offered that before I even knew it. Did you have a specific dream? Or it was just a knowing in your bones? I was floating in the Chesapeake Bay. And I just had been. this moment of feeling what if my body was only my body.

And it felt really powerful. What if it didn't belong to anyone else? Woo! And it was just mine. We never talk about it that way. I never felt it that way. All I wanted was to carry something in me, a baby, a child. And then it was so freeing.

And I got out of the ocean. I remember thinking, that was beautiful. Like, what if I'm enough? What if just my body? What if these boundaries and these borders of my skin touching the water was enough? We don't say that. Women don't say that out loud. People don't say that.

Sorry, I'm really creepy. I'm totally going through menopause. And so I cry all the time. Me too. Oh, my God. Thank you for sharing that. Oh, yeah. It's an intimate thing, and I appreciate you.

Thank you for reminding me of it. And wrapping up the whole kitten caboodle, a guest who confirmed my childhood fantasy of being a hand model. The musical and magical. Jeff Goldblum. Last three cards. We're in the last three cards. Okay, three.

So three. The last belief card, the last card, it's the end of the game. I'm getting that prize, whatever it is. I don't care what it is. I'm getting it. Has your idea of what it means to be a good person, changed over time. Well, I suppose that it's become clear and more important.

Well, although sure. I mean, look, my parents were kind of, you know, hey, you should be good. So early on being good, a good boy meant, you know, being polite, which was probably good. nothing wrong with that and, you know, all of that and making A's in school. I then went on to realize later, maybe they meant this, but I didn't get it from them until later that I thought being a good student, which is a good person, how much can you learn and use this lifetime for

growth, it meant not just getting the grade or impressing anybody else, but really delving into what you were curious about connecting with yourself and then delving as deeply as you might, not just to get the grade. So that's good. But more I got clear about how what I did could impact others and help others and contribution, the idea of contribution. And I love that. I'm not going to bore you. It goes on for a little bit, but there's a George Bernard Shaw quote that I like a lot called, this is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose considered by yourself as mighty, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote

itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and while I live it is my privilege to do for it, whatever I can, I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I cherish life for its own sake. life is no brief candle to me. It's a sort of splendid torch that I've got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it off to future generations. That's the whole quote. I've memorized it, but that's, yeah, that's pretty good. And that's not bad to keep in your pocket or up your sleeve and to live by till the end of your days when you can't do it any better and better and better and better. Pretty good, huh?

Thanks so much for listening. And if a few of those questions caught your ear, I'd recommend going back and listening to those entire episodes. This episode was produced by Taylor Hutchison and Lee Hale and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was engineered by Robert Rodriguez, and our theme song is by Romteen Arablewee. Wildcard is produced by Rommel Wood, Cher Vincent, and Lee Hale. Our executive producer is Beth Donovan. Thank you so much for supporting Wildcard. We love making this show and sharing it with you, and there is so much good stuff coming your way in the new year.

Until then, happy New Year! I hope you have an excellent holiday. I will shuffle the deck and we'll see you next week.