Episode 523
with Dylan Marron and Brittany Davis
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello unpack some unexpected topics of conversation; writer and podcaster Dylan Marron chats about his book and podcast of the same name, Conversations with People Who Hate Me and how a phone call can forge a deeper connection than social media; and musician Brittany Davis explains how music became their first language as a blind person, before performing "Loud Loud World" from their new EP I Choose to Live.
Dylan Marron
Writer and Podcaster
Dylan Marron is an actor, author, podcaster and activist whom Glennon Doyle dubbed “the internet’s Love Warrior.” He is the host and creator of the critically acclaimed podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me, a social experiment where he connects strangers who clashed online, whether by calling up his own detractors or moderating calls between others. That project has now become a book, Conversations with People Who Hate Me: 12 Things I Learned from Talking to Internet Strangers, which came out in March 2022. He is also the voice of Carlos on the international sensation Welcome to Night Vale, an alum of the New York Neo Futurists theater company, and the creator of Every Single Word, a video series that edits down popular films to feature only the words spoken by people of color. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband Todd. Website • Twitter
Brittany Davis
Musician and Producer
Brittany Davis is a soulful, genre-breaking musician and producer from Seattle. Born blind, Brittany’s musical journey began when they realized they could play piano by ear. They started recording music at age thirteen while homeless. Now signed to Loosegroove Records, the Seattle label co-founded by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, Brittany is experiencing a meteoric rise. Their debut EP, I Choose to Live, was released in March 2022, and their Tiny Desk (Home) Concert came out the following month. Brittany is also a member of supergroup Painted Shield, which features Gossard, folk singer-songwriter Mason Jennings, and drummer Matt Chamberlain. Website • Listen
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Luke Burbank Hey, Elena!
Elena Passarello Hey, Luke! How's it going?
Luke Burbank It's going very well. You are in Tennessee as we record this.
Elena Passarello I am. I'm on a mountaintop in Tennessee, just like Davy Crockett when he was a baby.
Luke Burbank Wow. That suits you with all that southern charm that you're always kind of exuding. Are you ready for a little "station location identification examination"?
Elena Passarello Did Davy Crockett kill a bar when he was only three?
Luke Burbank And you use the proper pronunciation of bar. All right. Here is how "station location identification examination" works. I'm going to talk about a place in America where Live Wire is on the radio. Elaine has got to guess where I'm talking about. Okay. This place is home to the world's largest bear. Subspecies. Can exceed 1500 pounds. They're only found in this place and on surrounding islands. And the way that they got there was brown bears migrated to this area about 12,000 years ago, and then sea level rose at the end of the ice age. And then these bears became an isolated population.
Elena Passarello Kodiak Bears.
Luke Burbank Kodiak, Alaska, where we're on K O D K Radio in Kodiak, Alaska. Good thinking, Elena.
Elena Passarello I know my bars.
Luke Burbank You sure do. All right. Should we get to the show?
Elena Passarello Let's do it!
Luke Burbank All right. Take it away from PRX. It's Live Wire! This week, podcaster and writer Dylan Maron.
Dylan Marron Debate is the only word we have for conversation across difference. So we think that the only way we can actually communicate with someone that we disagree with is to fight them.
Elena Passarello And the music from Britney Davis.
Brittany Davis Because there is sound, there is life for me and from me. And all of it has its own purpose. It all has different dimensions.
Elena Passarello I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank!
Luke Burbank Thank you so much, Elaina. Thanks to everybody tuning in this week from all over the country, including Kodiak, Alaska. Of course, we asked those listeners, our listeners, a question. We asked, what's the most unexpected conversation you've ever had? And we're going to read those responses coming up a little bit later on in the show. First, though, it's time for the best news we heard all week. This, of course, is our little reminder at the top of the show. There is still you just have to trust us on this. Some good news happening out there in the world. We find it for you, Elena. What's the best news you heard all week?
Elena Passarello Oh, I love this news. From Indianola, Iowa, population 16,000. You know, if you probably are super aware of this over the past decade or so, quite a few small town newspapers, maybe the vast majority of them, have been bought up by these big media conglomerates. And they lose their staff, they lose a lot of their heft, and they really lose the local attention. That makes small town newspapers what I consider to be like one of the most important parts of American life.
Luke Burbank Yes, absolutely. It's a tragedy in this country because it is extremely hard to be profitable in the print newspaper business. And so you have. Yeah, this consolidation and conglomeration that takes so much of the specific local flavor out of these things. It's a real bummer for sure.
Elena Passarello But good news is that opposite thing is happening in Indianola, Iowa, where the Record Herald had been bought out by a huge media company and a couple, a married couple that had both worked there. They had a shared 50 years of experience at the Record Herald, Amy Duncan and Mark Davitt. They first started kind of like a local news website to kind of compensate for the fact that their newspaper had closed. They had to, like, go from house to house and help people understand how to get the news on their iPads. But Gannett, the media juggernaut that owns a lot of these papers now, has recently made offers to certain small town outfits where the small towns can buy the papers back. And since Amy Duncan and Mark Davitt had already spent all this time, you know, a at the original paper and be doing this great digital work, they bought the paper and they're going to give it a shot. So that means people who know this community well are going to be reporting for this community. They're going to be tons of opportunities for that kind of discourse. And if you're within a 6000 mile radius of Indianola, Iowa, maybe you want to subscribe to keep this paper going.
Luke Burbank That's so awesome. Yeah. Well, going from kind of hyper local news to an actual world record Elena the best news that I heard about this week, this actually happened a little while ago, but it just came onto my radar as the story of a guy named Chad Campbell, who is the father of quintuplets, which if you're not great at math, like like me, I look at that's five five babies a quinte and he decided he wanted to run a half marathon pushing his five. He actually has seven children. These are just the five that came out at the same time. So he decided to run a half marathon pushing the quints. They're four years old now. Between the stroller they were in and the kids, that's 240 extra pounds.
Elena Passarello Oh, my gosh.
Luke Burbank That Chad's pushing along for a half marathon, which, of course, is 13.1 miles, half of a regular marathon. He did this in Oakland, by the way, last month. And he wanted to sort of teach people or remind people that anything is possible. So he had this inspirational sign that said anything is possible. And he his wife, who he credits with rightfully so, by the way, with doing the hard work as far as these babies are concerned. Right. Like anything he does with, you know, physical activity around them, he says, yeah, this is this pales in comparison to what my wife went through carrying these quintuplets. But his wife was riding on a bike next to him. And he it was really hot and it was a lot of children to be pushing. So he almost quit a couple of times and she was like encouraging him from the bike and he managed to get through it. He did the whole thing in 2 hours and 19 minutes, which is really not bad. Actually, that's.
Elena Passarello Not bad.
Luke Burbank Considering what he was doing. There's a couple of things about this one. Any time I'm out for a jog, in fact, this just happened. I'm not kidding you. This morning, I was out for a little run in my neighborhood in Portland, and I was feeling a little tired as I was on my way back. And I saw a dad pushing twins in a stroller. And I thought, okay, if he can do that, I can with without any encumbrance, I can finish this little jog. So I'm inspired by people who are out there pushing their kids around in strollers. The other thing is the report is that his kids main response to him pushing them in the half marathon was to yell at him to go faster. And there's a photo of him with this. The stroller is wild. It's like so long and kind of it's almost looks like a like a bobsled or something. You know, you get in.
Elena Passarello For like a row of grocery carts being returned to the corral.
Luke Burbank That's a good, that's a good description. This guy is just working so hard to make this happen and set this record. But the kids in the photo look deeply bored, like which I feel like is parenthood in a nutshell. Like that is what being a parent is. Doing something exceptionally hard and your kids completely not realizing how hard it was.
Elena Passarello Breaking a global record. I was just thinking about how I just got out of an airport and I know that my suitcase weighed 26 pounds and I had to drag it for, I don't know, about a quarter of a mile. And it was a 10th the weight of that stroller. And I was just like, I quit. Yeah, I quit.
Luke Burbank I like wind. So knowing by the way, that the experience of parents is universal, no matter what we do, our kids are going to probably not be that impressed. That is the best news, weirdly, that I heard this week.
Luke Burbank All right. Let's get our first guest on over. He is the host and creator of the critically acclaimed podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me. It's sort of a social experiment that started with him calling up people who'd left mean comments online about him, and he want to find out kind of like what their deal was and try to make a human connection with them if he could. That podcast is now turned into a book by the same name. Dylan Maron is also the voice of Carlos on the hit podcast, Welcome to Night Vale. And he created this really interesting project, Every Single Word, which is a video series that he edited down popular films so that the final product features only the words spoken by people of color in the film. And it is quite revealing, I'll tell you that. Dylan joined us on stage at Revolution Hall in Portland back in June. Take a listen to this.
Dylan Marron Hi, guys.
Luke Burbank Dylan, welcome to the show.
Dylan Marron Thank you for having me.
Luke Burbank Let's actually start with every single word, because I think that's one of the things that really put you on the Internet's radar to a large degree. How did that idea come to you to edit these films down?
Dylan Marron So I was like acting at the time. That was my entry into the creative forum and I was noticing that auditions. So in casting notices, I don't know if you're familiar, but there's like a description of the character, right? And so there will be one character that describes everything about them and gives you their biographical data, what they feel, how vulnerable they are, like their relationship to empathy with others. And then there's others that's like a deli worker. Five lines. And then it will list every nonwhite race. And so it's like you understand that these long flowing casting notices were for for white characters. And so I wanted to kind of identify the whiteness of Hollywood films, but in a way that would ideally bring more people to the table. And so I disguised it as a supercut series, right? That's like this shareable, bite sized form of Internet detritus that we're all familiar with. And it was it cloaked in that was a conversation about representation on screen.
Luke Burbank I have to say, it was shocking to me as a white person to see a film that I love, like Moonrise Kingdom that I've watched. And, you know, I mean, as a white person, you're legally obligated to love anything Wes Anderson.
Dylan Marron Yes, yes, yes.
Luke Burbank Yes. So it never occurred to me because of my lived experience, how little representation there is in that film. It's like less than 10 seconds.
Dylan Marron Yeah. Yeah. And I think to explain, I was picking films that were told Universal Stories and were cast as white by default. So the Lord of the Rings trilogy, all three movies came down to, I think, 47 seconds. That's the trilogy.
Luke Burbank But those are short films and they were.
Dylan Marron Tiny, tiny films.
Luke Burbank So that's I that, We have to also put that in.
Dylan Marron Yeah. They'e tiktoks basically.
Luke Burbank Yeah right. The Vines
Dylan Marron The Vines. Thank you. A classic. Tik Tok vintage.
Luke Burbank Well, I was just I was saying it was it was surprising to me to to realize how many of these films that I've just watched. And again, because of kind of my perspective, it didn't occur to me that there was such little representation of people of color until I was watching your series.
Dylan Marron Yeah, I think the complicated thing as a person of color is you also take this for granted, too, right? I think like the problem wasn't that I didn't like these movies. The problem was that I loved all these movies that I was editing down. And so I think what the project asks, I sound like an artist statement, you know, like print. And what this project interrogates is, you know, what are you not noticing? And what are we subconsciously taking in? What messaging are we subconsciously taking in if we watch? Yes. Okay. Clap.
Luke Burbank Yes.
Dylan Marron Make it slow. So it builds through what I'm saying. But I think what it what it's saying, it's like, what are we letting in? What are we subconsciously understanding if we are baking into our brains? You know, movies are essentially empathy machines. I think that's a Roger Ebert quote. That's how we understand ourselves. That's how we understand our place in humanity. And what is it saying for people of color who are seeing avatars continuously relegated to the sidelines? And so, again, it's just a supercut series. And so I think that project was what helped me learn how to take a big idea and express it in an online format.
Luke Burbank Another thing you did that got a lot of attention were these unboxing videos where you unboxed abstract concepts like masculinity and abelism. And that seems to also be when the trolls really started to come out. Was that your experience?
Dylan Marron You know, every single word. I wasn't in those videos. Those were edits of popular films. And when I started making videos with my face in them and those videos started becoming really popular and I was coming from a very progressive perspective. Yes. And I think context is important about this, which is that this was 2016, 2017, and this was on Facebook. So this is like right when we were experiencing this national public square on Facebook. This is when Facebook video was popping off. And I think that is what set the stage for what came next.
Luke Burbank Well, what I'm really interested in is what you talk about in this book and on the podcast, which is when you started reaching out to some of these people that were posting really mean things about you. So we're gonna hear about that in a moment. First of we got to take this quick break here on Live Wire. We're talking to Dylan Maron. His new book is Conversations with People Who Hate Me 12. Things I learned from talking to Internet strangers. Back with more Live Wire in just a moment.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with the Elena Passarello. We're talking to Dylan Marron. His new book is Conversations with People Who Hate Me Tough Things I Learned From Talking to Internet Strangers. So you were producing a series of different videos, taking on some pretty serious topics, but doing it with a kind of a, I think a fun and somewhat light approach. But this also was drawing a lot of attention from people who disagreed with what you were saying when you're saying, hey, we're too ablest as a society or masculinity is out of control, things like that. So what were people actually saying to you that was negative over the kind of posts that you were getting?
Dylan Marron You know, a lot of it was homophobic. I think a lot of it, yeah. Took swipes at my masculinity, which just to be clear, we were never angling for Alpha. You know, like we're going for Delta, we're going for Zeta. We're goin for bottom of the barrel here. Yes! Zeta male in the house. I think it was like those typical jabs. You know, I think the common terms of cock, you know, a man who has been cheated on by his wife, which to quote Twitter, you have to laugh. You know, the to to call me a cuck is like I would love for whatever woman I was married to to cheat on me. I encourage it. I hope she cheats on me, that she needs a strong sense of self.
Luke Burbank But people are coming at you with all this stuff that they think is insulting you. But the things that they value. Are not the things that you personally value in the same way.
Dylan Marron Yeah I mean, that's 100% true. I also think it's like I had to develop the sense of humor about it because that was the only coping mechanism I had. And so I wouldn't do the traditional things that we all do, like make fun of their typos. And that makes you feel amazing because you are the better person and they misspelled there. And that sent, we're getting Trump out of office. You corrected a typo, you know? And I'm obviously saying that like joking now, but like you kind of felt that, you know, you're like, God, you know, yeah, that's a dunk. And then I think that that didn't feel like it was doing anything. And I, I also kind of realized that I was just essentially fighting fire with fire. So I wanted to find an alternative.
Luke Burbank So one of the people that you reached out to, they write about a book with someone named Josh. Yeah. And Josh had posted something about how being gay was a sin, and all of your opinions were basically wrong.
Dylan Marron Yeah.
Luke Burbank How do you go about establishing contact with somebody who hasn't gone on the Internet just for the purposes of saying mean things about you?
Dylan Marron Well, Josh was the very first person I ever spoke to on the phone, and I would say he fully cracked open this project for me. I was receiving hundreds of messages like this and I received Josh's DM and I had developed this like unexpected coping mechanism for myself where because this was Facebook, this is where Facebook comes into play. It's not YouTube. It's not Twitter, right? It's like, this is a platform where you have already been encouraged to upload every single picture ever taken of you. You're tagged in photos. So I could click on my detractors profile pictures, and I was taken to a partial family tree. I would know what their aunt's favorite band was, you know? And it's like I would use these, like, disparate details to construct this full three dimensional back story as a coping mechanism so that I could convince myself that these were human beings that could be reached. And I bring that up with Josh because Josh was really just like when I clicked on his profile. Sure. I was met with all the memes that I expected that, you know, indicated that we supported different political ideologies, but but also real vulnerability. He was a senior in high school at the time, and he was talking about loneliness and isolation. And if anything, that was something that I related to. You know, like if I had Facebook in that time and I was the last year to not have Facebook in high school and thank God for that. I'm so serious because like, I think we should like normalize drafts of ourselves and understand what is and isn't okay. And to have a permanent record of that is like challenging for all humans, I think, but especially for young people. And so he was sharing things that I'm like, Oh, I would have written that I was lonely on a Friday night. You know, one thing led to another, and I don't know if you want to go into full. Detailed so much longer story that is available in the book.
Luke Burbank There you go.
Dylan Marron But one thing led to another and we jumped on the phone. And that phone call was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I was so used to, like, sharpening my dagger for my videos, you know, like taking aim at the other side through a lens. And it's like, honey, you're not. You're just talking to your people, you know? And talking to him felt like I was actually building a bridge and doing something that I hadn't done before. Yeah.
Luke Burbank We're talking to Dylan Marron about his new book, Conversations with People Who Hate Me. I've heard audio from this conversation with Josh, and it's really powerful because you do hear somebody who's dealing with what they're dealing with. And as is probably often the case, it's hard for someone to continue to be cruel when they're talking on the phone with the person who's the object of their cruelty. Like that other stuff. My guess is falls away pretty quickly. But is that common with the people that you've now dealt with and communicated with who have been very critical of you, is that this is them kind of projecting their pain on someone else?
Dylan Marron Yes and no. Like, I think we love clinging to this idea that hurt people. Hurt people, which I think is true a lot of the time. Not all the time. You know, like I think the ease with which we can communicate online and take jabs at people actually disproves this like 100%. Hurt people hurt people notion because like sometimes they're not hurt, you know, and like I don't use the word trolls anymore because I don't think it's an accurate word. And I also think that we must collectively move on from this very false understanding that it is and this is in quotes, but like lonely guys who live in their mother's basement because one, if they're lonely, that's just relatable. If they live in their mom's basement. I lived with my mom after college. Deal with it. You know, things are expensive, but that's our, like, way to soothe ourselves and to saying it's like, Oh, it's those people over there who do this when these platforms actually encourage that. To get back to your lovely and brilliant question. I took us on a tangent. I think sometimes it's projected pain, but I will say always people felt so profoundly different on the phone than they did in a text medium because you don't actually see that the person you're talking to is human. And the one thing that I was discovering over and over again, and this is when I was talking one on one to people and when I moved into the moderated format, when I started hosting calls between people, is that like so many times, the honest answer is like, I just never thought you were going to read it. Yeah. And on the one hand, there's justifiable criticism there that's like, well, that's a humor. And of course, they're going to read it. And on the other hand, these platforms are so good at making us feel anonymous and invisible and like, we don't matter and like, we're just particles floating in space. So who can kind of blame them for thinking that this, like, missive is never going to reach its supposed target? You know.
Luke Burbank I'm wondering, as somebody who spent a lot of time looking at this world and being now a part of this world, because another thing you do with the podcast is you like you said, you'll now get to people who've had some kind of a disagreement going and you'll kind of Moderate. A conversation there. I mean, is do you have any reason to be optimistic about, like the way that we treat each other online going? I mean, is there any hope for this or is this just sort of going to continue to become even more and more toxic as a place?
Dylan Marron Yes and no is the most honest answer I can give. The like experience I have on the phone calls that I've been lucky enough to be part of has shown me that people are hungry for connection with each other. People are eager to get to know people, to show themselves to other people, to build these bridges that we are chastised for, even bringing up that word because it's to cheugy. You know what I mean? Like and at core, people are hungry for that. People are excited for it. But that's when you get them onto the phone. I cannot even begin to tell you how hard this podcast is to produce because so many people are so hesitant to do this. Understandably so. Right. Like there are some people who don't have the energy to build these bridges of radical empathy with their detractors. I fully understand that, but I also feel hopeless when I spend more than 5 minutes on Twitter because sure, we have to say that yes, necessary information can travel very fast and very far. And that's absolutely true. And it's. Absolutely. Good as a bullhorn for a video of, say, something like police brutality. Right. It's like we have to get this message across and no one's going to believe it if they don't see it. But. All of the other conversation that happens is so gamified that it's more that we are all and I very much include myself in this. We are all playing this game for points where you get more dopamine hits by dunking on someone than actually having a conversation.
Elena Passarello Would you brought up games? It made me think of this thing in your book too, that I never categorized it this way. But so many things that we think of as conversations or are debates. And debates can't be conversations because debates are sports.
Dylan Marron Oh, completely.
Elena Passarello How how did you come up with that concept?
Dylan Marron I think it's from not understanding sports and always being terrified of sports and being let's be real bad, bad at them. But I think like that came up for me when I started this project. And even still now, if people know the concept of the show, they'll praise me for hosting a debate show. Right? Even though I've been vocal that it's not a debate show and at first, you know, I was kind of like annoyed by that. It's like this is conversation, you know, like. But then I realized debate is the only word we have for conversation across difference. So we think that the only way we can actually communicate with someone that we disagree with is to fight them, is to battle them. And I think debates work when there's a shared pool of facts and debate as a concept falls apart when we can't agree on the facts we're there to debate on. So like it comes up with the climate. Yeah, it comes up with the climate change discussion or let's be real debate, which is like if let's say your position is climate change mostly comes from oil companies and not, you know, unrecyclable plastic bottles. And then the other person's position is climate change doesn't exist. There's no debate there. I think what I learned is really ways and what the book is really about is ways to foster, like, meaningful conversation and conscious conversation. It's a tightrope to walk, right? Like, I'm very careful to not sloppily be like, just talk to each other and the world will be good, you know? It's like that's unhealthy for a lot of people. And so I think we're having this huge backlash against kindness and bridge building because like I said, it's a little too cheesy for people and for very good reason. It's kindness is absolutely not a substantial political platform. Right. A lot.
Luke Burbank Of people who have been marginalized feel like completely the advice being just be nicer to the people who have been oppressing you. They are like, that's not really how we should be fixing this.
Dylan Marron And I think that. Yes, absolutely. And I think that's, in fact, harmful to many marginalized people. But just because some people very understandably can't walk across certain bridges doesn't mean you shouldn't if you feel that you have the ability to. You know what I mean? Like, it's it's really I think this work is for people who have the energy to do it and not for the people who don't. It's not a solve. Empathy alone is not going to cure everything that ails us. But I think it is a necessary ingredient that the gamified space of social media is making us forget.
Luke Burbank Yeah, yeah. All that and more in this great new book from Dylan Conversations with People Who Hate Me. Dylan Maron, thanks for coming on Live Wire!
Dylan Marron Thank you for having me. Enjoy.
Luke Burbank That was Dylan Marron right here on Live Wire. We recorded that at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon, back in June. Dylan's book Conversations with People Who Hate Me is available now. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstop from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Palm Springs and San Francisco. And as a member of the OneWorld Alliance, Alaska Airlines can connect you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska Air.com.
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire. Of course, each week we like to ask the Live Wire listeners a question. We were inspired by Dylan Maron's podcast about kind of unexpected, possibly tense conversations. And so we ask the listeners, What's the most unexpected conversation you've ever had? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What do you see?
Elena Passarello Well, speaking of Dylan, this is from a Dylan. I think it's a different Dylan who says I had a conversation with my professor in which he told me there was no future in my major. So that's always a hard thing when the person who's teaching you the thing that you're learning is like, Yeah, kid, good luck.
Luke Burbank I was a you know, I was a drama major in college up until probably my junior year, and we were doing some kind of acting presentation. And I will just say some of the monologues were, I thought, less than stellar. Some were great, but there was a real range. But the response was the same. Everyone was so effusive and so supportive of every monologue, even the ones that weren't great. I thought, Wait a minute, are we all deluding ourselves? I was like, I thought mine went pretty well. Everyone seemed excited, but they're also being pretty excited about some ones that seemed less great. And so I said, I've got to switch my major to a real tried and true moneymaker. Journalism. Oh, yeah.
Elena Passarello I know. I was thinking about all the majors and minors that I've had over my several degrees, and none of them have futures in them. French, anthropology, literature, creative writing. So me and Dylan and you, Luke, we can form a club.
Luke Burbank Here we are. What's another unexpected conversation that one of our listeners had?
Elena Passarello Bill says, I was once speaking to a friend about our passions, and we eventually got to talking about being patriotic. And that's when he told me he only wears American made clothes. And then we had an interesting conversation about the day he discovered that his American flag T-shirt was made in Bangladesh.
Luke Burbank Wow. You see that sometimes something that seems extremely, quote unquote, patriotic. And then you turn it over and you find out it was made somewhere far away from me when I was a kid. Growing up in the eighties, I feel like there were a lot of ads extolling the virtues of buying American.
Elena Passarello Oh, yeah, for sure.
Luke Burbank Just seemed like as a kid there was always ads and it was like people were wearing jeans and turning that, you know, waistband out. It said, like Made in America. And it was like, yeah, you know, lots of waves of grain and flags fluttering like it was. It seemed like a real priority.
Elena Passarello Maybe there are so few now that, like, there's no point in advertising, right?
Luke Burbank The like Consortium of American Manufacturers, there's not enough of them to put in for the TV ad buys that I was seeing as a kid. That's right. One more unexpected conversation before we get to our next guest.
Elena Passarello This is a great one about, I guess, about taste. Jay says one time a friend and I were talking about our favorite movies, and I started things off by saying my favorite movie was The Hateful Eight. And my friend told me that he unironically loves the Bee movie.
Luke Burbank The Jerry Seinfeld one?
Elena Passarello Yeah, I don't know. I think both of those are interesting choices for favorite movies, and I would love to see a mash up of the two.
Luke Burbank I will say that's a real pretty hard pivot between The Hateful Eight and Daisy Domergue, that really memorable performance by Jennifer Jason Leigh. And then you just going right over to Jerry Seinfeld playing a bee.
Elena Passarello That reminds me when David tried to show me that scary movie Halloween and I got so scared and he was like, I knew you were going to get scared. So I also rented this movie. This is back when you rented movies. And then The Chaser movie he had rented for me was Lady and the Tramp. So we went Halloween to Lady at the Tramp.
Luke Burbank That's when you know you're with the right person.
Elena Passarello Amen.
Luke Burbank He's at the Blockbuster or the Redbox or whatever service y'all were using. Just anticipating. I'm going to need we're going to need a palate cleanser after the scary movie.
Elena Passarello I'm so afraid of those. One time there was a scary movie. It just the opening shot was of a doll and I was like, turn it off.
Luke Burbank All right. Thank you to everybody who wrote in responses to our Listener Question. We've got another one for next week's show, which we will reveal at the end of today's episode to stick around for that. In the meantime, this is, of course, Live Wire. Our next guest is a genre breaking musician and producer from Seattle, Born Blind. Britney Davis's musical journey began when they realized they could play piano by ear, and by the age of 13, they were recording their own music. Britney is now signed to Loose Groove Records, which is the Seattle label co-founded by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard. And their debut EP, I Choose to Live was released just this year. Brittany Davis, welcome to Live Wire.
Brittany Davis Thank you.
Luke Burbank So excited to get to talk to you. I've been hearing all about you for a while now. I'm curious. When did you start writing music?
Brittany Davis I began writing music really young. I started playing piano at the age of two and started kind of writing my own songs at four or five.
Elena Passarello Wow.
Luke Burbank What are those songs about when you're four or five? Like the Popsicle truck?
Brittany Davis They're mostly they're mostly instrumental.
Luke Burbank Okay.
Brittany Davis But to me, they were about a lot of things I can't remember now because.
Luke Burbank It's been a while.
Brittany Davis Yeah, but everything is music to me, so I guess everything was a song.
Luke Burbank Did I read correctly that you could actually play bird songs on the piano when you were really young?
Brittany Davis Yes.
Luke Burbank Oh, so how would that work? You would hear a robin and or something, and then you could come in and approximate it on the piano.
Brittany Davis Yeah. A little bird and you. Play it, you know.
Luke Burbank Now, as a person who's blind, it sounds like you've always had a really strong connection to sound. I read that you said that sound is light to you. What do you mean by that?
Brittany Davis Sound is light. Silence is darkness. I mean that because there is sound, there is life for me and from me. And all of it has its own purpose in it all has different dimensions. The same way that different intensities of light can give you different, you know, perceptions of things, the way that it means, the way that it shifts. You know, like if it's a shadow, you know, you still need light for that, right? So the different sonic dimensions are just the same. You know, the same dimensions as light, you know? Mm hmm. As a matter of fact, there was a little study done was like people who are born blind, their visual cortex is actually stimulated when they read Braille by touch and when they hear things by sound. So a lot of the times, it's like we're we're seeing two terms. You know? Yeah. Because that's how we see. So, you know, even though we don't have the visual organ, we have the most powerful organ, I believe, is the brain. The mind. Mm hmm. Is just the dimension of the brain. So that's why I say that sound is light. Because it is a dimension, and it requires dimensions in order for it to work. Same as light. Mm hmm.
Luke Burbank So I'm. My guess would be that as a kid growing up, sound and music and song was just vitally important to you. I mean, what was that? What did it mean to you as a young person?
Brittany Davis Well, I always like to say that music was my first language. It played a role in everything that I felt emotionally, sometimes like different sense, things that you would smell or things that you would touch. Different textures had different notes, had different, you know, tonal scales. Of course, I didn't know nothing about music back then, and I'm still learning now. I wasn't trained, but I've had beautiful mentors and people come in and teach me things and helped me navigate the landscape of music. But the language was always mine.
Luke Burbank I think something that's kind of funny is that you're signed to Loose Groove Records, which was founded by one of the guys in Pearl Jam, Stone Gossard. But you were not really like a Pearl Jam head before you got signed. I know. Do you have to now listen to Pearl Jam because the label you're on was founded by one of the Pearl Jam people.
Brittany Davis No, I love it, though. Oh, really? I listened to it, you know, because it's one of those things where you get curious and every side of music is kind of a side of me. So it's like, yeah, we need the we need the goofies, we need the silly, we need the dark and punchy and grungy. We need the too fast to stop heavy heavy stuff since three in the morning and still going type of music. We need it all because that's the same thing with language. You have things that you know that are good and and and that are pure. But then you also have those things which is like, okay, he's, he's gone off the deep end. He's cursing, he's using all kind of colorful language. And, you know, it's very important to be able to express oneself in all facets. And so that's why I you know, I listen to Pearl Jam. I'm getting into a little bit of rock and roll started getting into some Neil Young and getting it to some Jimi Hendrix. I'm loving me some Jimi Hendrix.
Luke Burbank Well being that you're in Seattle now, I think you, you know, you're like legally required.
Elena Passarello Yeah!
Luke Burbank To like Jimi Hendrix, right.
Elena Passarello I love the guy though man. Can't get enough.
Luke Burbank You know, something that I read in an interview with you that would have never occurred to me was that because you're blind, you have to basically kind of decide who you're going to trust about an outfit that you might be wearing in, like a video or for a performance. Like right now, the listeners can't see, but you have this beautiful yellow head wrap on and matching shirt and some pearls. You look great.
Elena Passarello Mm hmm.
Brittany Davis Thank you.
Luke Burbank But you said sometimes you get conflicting information from people and, like, you have to decide who you're going to go with.
Elena Passarello Yeah, it's it's a what I call inter projection, because I had to project from the inside out what I want to represent, because people around me have to see that in everything that I do so that they know what I'm trying to do. Because if they can't see it, they can't. They don't know it because I can't show them. I can't go. I want to look like a name archetype. Mm hmm. I can only say that I like the materials that feel like this or the fit. You know, as far as how tight or how loose something is, how breathable it is. That's what I'm trying to say. The breadth of the outfit. How much room do I want in the outfit? Do I want it skin tight? You know, I can't say I want to skin tight like so-and-so, because they would understand that, of course. But I don't know that because I've never seen so-and-so, you know what I mean? So it's like you have to trust in yourself to be vulnerable and say, I really like cotton leather or I really like soft cotton materials that, that remind me of home. That remind me of Africa. That remind me of Earth, you know.
Luke Burbank You're listening to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We are talking to musician Brittany Davis. But we've got to take a quick break. Stay with us, though. We will be back with much more, including a song from Brittany. So don't go anywhere. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. And musician Brittany Davis. Can we hear a little bit about the song that you're going to perform today? What's it called and what's the story of how it came about?
Elena Passarello The song that I'm going to be performing for you today is called Now That World, because the world in which I exist can really get overwhelming. It can get loud. It can get disturbing. It can become overstimulating because I listen to it so much. Sometimes people, you know, we say this thing all the time. We say, would you just listen? You know, but what people don't understand a lot of the time is that I listen more than I want to. And sometimes it has a profound effect on the way that I process things in the way that things impact me, in the way that, you know, processes come about. In my mind, it's like everything has to be right, but it can't just look right because people can see something and it looks right and they're like, That's good. But for me, it has to taste right, smile right, feel right, sound right. You got to have all of these different facets to it. There's a depth of understanding that comes through my listening, and I wanted to write a song that inspire people to really look at some of the characteristics they assign to visually impaired folks and our ability to hear I. We can here just like anybody else. But we still suffer in and we're still impacted emotionally by the things that we hear. Sometimes the same way as anyone else would be. Mm hmm. But it also comes to a place where we have to accept the fact that we're different. And we're only human. And that's one of the biggest messages in this song, is that though I'm blind, I'm not a superhero. I'm just me.
Luke Burbank Well, let's hear that song. This is Brittany Davis here on Livewire.
Brittany Davis As I opened my eyes / I realize that I'm not the girl I used to be / And as I opened up my ears / I realized I don't hear what I used to hear / sometimes it all seems so loud / I wish I could turn it all down / and even though I cannot see doesn't mean I'm in some alternate reality / You've got to understand that I am human, just like everyone else / and even though I'm blind don't mean I got a Supermind / I'm just me, I'm myself I am only human / And I am only a girl / In this loud loud world / Ribbons sit on the table / from when I used to run track / I wish I could go back / to those days of innocence / But now that I'm older / It seems like the world is on my shoulders / you saw those words coming / Well, maybe you should come in / To my heart and listen / Cause I am only human / I am only human / See, I try my best like everyone else saying I'm no superhero/ I'm just myself / and I am only a girl / In this loud loud world / Sometimes it all seems so loud / Wish I could turn it all down / leaving though I cannot see / Doesn't mean I'm in some alternate reality / because I am only human / I am only human / See, I try my best like everyone else / I'm no superhero / I'm just myself / and I am only a girl. In this loud loud world.
Luke Burbank Britney Davis right here on Live. Right. Thank you again, Brittany, for taking the time today. We really appreciate you.
Brittany Davis Thank you, Live Wire. This has been great.
Luke Burbank That was Brittany Davis right here on Live Wire. Their EP I Choose to Live is out now. All right. Before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's episode. We are going to be talking to podcast host and writer Nicole Perkins about her latest book, Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be. It's an essay collection about a whole bunch of things, including what Niles Crane from Frazier taught her about romance and sexuality. It's another one of those books, Elena.
Elena Passarello There's racks of them at the Barnes and Noble.
Luke Burbank We're also going to talk to a two time Oscar nominated filmmaker Lucy Walker about this extraordinary documentary that she created called Bring Your Own Brigade. We're back in wildfire season. Although, as is pointed out in the film, Wildfire Season is now more or less a perpetual state for many parts of the country and the world. Lucy made this really incredible film about that topic in California. We're going to talk about that. We're also going to hear some music from Hamilton, Broadway star. Have you heard of it? Joshua Henry will join us and play a song. And as always, we're going to be looking to get your answers to our listener question, Elena. What are we asking the listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello What song lyric best describes your life? Hopefully not "Oh well, whatever, nevermind."
Luke Burbank Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Which, by the way, is inspired by next week's guest, Nicole Perkins. She writes in her memoir How her parents would send messages to each other through song lyrics. Anyway, if you have a song lyric that you think describes your life accurately, go ahead and send it in. We're at Live Wire Radio out there on Twitter and Facebook. All right. That's going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests, Dylan marin and Brittany Davis. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather Dee. Michelle is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester and our marketing manager is Paige Thomas. Our house band is My Gamble Pony Ale, Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer. Our house sound is by Neil Blake and Kotaro Chavez is our intern.
Luke Burbank Additional funding provided by the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation, Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank members Megan Mallard of Portland, Oregon, and Bret Sherman of Happy Valley, Oregon. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio.org. I'm Luke Burbank. For Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team, thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
