Episode 557
with Adam Gopnik, Abby Govindan, and Reckless Son
The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik takes us a journey of his new book The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery, in which he learns how to draw, drive a car at age 55, and pee in public; standup comedian Abby Govindan scams the KKK for a college class; and singer-songwriter Reckless Son chats about playing for the incarcerated at over 150 prisons across the nation, before performing his song "The Wisdom of a Child." Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello share what our listeners have mastered.
Adam Gopnik
Award-winning Writer
New York Times best-selling author Adam Gopnik is a writer that can do anything — and do it well. He has published over nine books including the #1 national bestseller Paris to the Moon. His latest book, The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery explores the fundamental question of "how do we learn—and master—a new skill?" with exquisite, probing prose. Gopnik has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1986 while remaining an active lecturer, lyricist, and libretto writer for many musical projects. He has won the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism three times, as well as the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting, and the Canadian National Magazine Award Gold Medal for arts writing. His work has been anthologized in “Best American Essays", “Best American Travel Writing,” “Best American Sports Writing,” “Best American Food Writing,” and “Best American Spiritual Writing.” Website • Twitter
Abby Govindan
Stand-up Comedian
Abby Govindan is not like other girls: she likes pink, loves iced coffee from Dunkin, and prides herself on only dating guys taller than her. When the 25-year-old comedian and writer from Houston, Texas is not uploading cute selfies on Instagram, you can see her performing stand-up all over the country. Since pursuing comedy 5 years ago, she has amassed a following of over 250,000 people across all social media platforms, but she wants you to know that the fame hasn't changed her one bit. She is currently touring the country with her hour How To Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents. Website • Instagram • Twitter
Reckless Son
Singer-Songwriter
Reckless Son is the musical project of New York-based musician Matt Butler, who has traveled across the country performing in prisons. He took his experiences on the road and penned a one man show organized into nine chapters, featuring a collection of music and monologues painting vivid pictures of the people he met and stories he heard inside these facilities. “People who have lost everything or have had everything taken from them are often truly in touch with what matters most,” Butler said during the show’s final stretch, delivering the line as a songwriter who visits prisons not only to sing but to listen, too. Filled with Americana songs inspired by Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, and other troubadours, Reckless Son is more than a show. It’s a calling. A service. A pledge to, as Butler puts it, “bring healing through the arts.” Website • Instagram • Listen
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Luke Burbank: [00:00:00] Hey there, Elena. [00:00:00][0.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:01] Hey, Luke. How's it going? [00:00:02][0.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:03] It's going pretty well this week. Are you ready for another round of "Station Location Identification Examination"? [00:00:08][5.5]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:09] Oh, yes, I am. [00:00:10][1.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:11] Okay, this is where I'm going to quiz you on somewhere in the country Live Wire is on the radio, you've got to guess the place I am talking about. And I want to mention, no pressure, but I was able to guess this one before they provided me with the answer. [00:00:23][11.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:24] This means I'm not going to get it. [00:00:25][0.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:25] Because of one of the specific clues. So we'll go. Okay. This city is home to the world's largest ball of stamps, which is located in the Boys Town Stamp Center. It's 600 pounds. It measures 32 inches in diameter and contains more than 4.6 million canceled stamps. [00:00:47][22.3]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:48] Is this the clue that you got? [00:00:49][1.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:50] No, it's not. And I'm starting with the, with, I think the less illuminating clue. [00:00:54][4.3]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:54] I think big balls of stamps read very Midwest to me. [00:00:58][3.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:58] Yes. Yes. You are in the right part of the country. [00:01:00][1.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:00] But, I don't know the city. [00:01:01][0.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:02] Okay. Johnny Carson got his start in this city on the local TV station. He had a show called The Squirrel's Nest. Weird wild stuff. [00:01:12][9.7]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:12] Is it Omaha, Nebraska? [00:01:13][0.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:14] It is Omaha, Nebraska, Elena! Where we are on KIOS Radio. [00:01:17][2.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:18] Famous Nebraskan Johnny Carson. [00:01:21][3.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:22] That was the clue that led me to the answer as well. [00:01:24][2.6]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:25] Weird wild stamps. Some weird wild stamps. [00:01:29][4.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:30] That's a much better Carson than I was doing. All right. Should we get rolling with the show? [00:01:34][4.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:35] Let's do it! [00:01:35][0.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:36] Aall right. Take it away. [00:01:36][0.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:40] From PRX, It's LIVE WIRE. This week, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik. [00:01:50][9.7]
Adam Gopnik: [00:01:51] Todd Field, the director and the writer, a wonderful guy, called me out of the blue and said, I've written a movie for Cate Blanchett, and there's a character in it named Adam Gopnik. Would you consider playing him? [00:02:00][9.6]
Elena Passarello: [00:02:02] And comedian Abby Govindan. [00:02:03][1.6]
Abby Govindan: [00:02:04] Translated from Sanskrit Govindan means shepherd, and Abhinaya means overdramatic. So essentially, I am Jesus. Thank you. [00:02:12][8.1]
Elena Passarello: [00:02:13] With music from Reckless Son and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire: Luke Burbank. [00:02:24][10.6]
Luke Burbank: [00:02:26] Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks for tuning in from all over these United States. We've got a great show in store for you this week. Of course, we asked Live Wire listeners a question. We asked, "What are you the master of?" This is related to Adam Gopnik latest book. We're going to hear those answers coming up in a minute. First, though, it is time for the best news we heard all week this. This is our little reminder at the top of the show, there is some good news happening out there in the world. Elena. What is the best news you heard all week? [00:03:00][34.3]
Elena Passarello: [00:03:01] Okay. Sort of. Stretching may be best. The best case is everybody's okay. All right. The story is okay. This is takes place in South Africa where at the beginning of the month, a 30 year old pilot for an engineering company named Rudolf Erasmus was flying for passengers in his little plane across South Africa. And he feels something off like this weird kind of breeze feeling. And he's like, What's happening? And he thought maybe he had his water bottle and spilled or something. He just feels this kind of weird tickle. And he looks down and there is a four foot cape cobra circled around his feet in the cockpit. Yeah. And I went ahead and did some Wikipedia ing because I was like, Oh, maybe it's one of those garter snake cobras that you never hear about. Like maybe have just been. [00:03:54][53.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:03:55] Like, maybe exist. [00:03:55][0.5]
Elena Passarello: [00:03:56] Nope. Wrong. The Cape Cobra is one of the two deadliest snakes in that region. It's also known as the yellow cobra. It's highly venomous. According to Wikipedia, it's quick moving and an alert species. So Rudolf Rasmus had this deadly nope rope, which is what my brother called snakes. [00:04:13][16.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:04:14] As in Nope. I don't want to mess with that rope. [00:04:16][1.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:04:16] Yep, exactly. At his feet. And he was worried that the snake was going to obviously bite him or slither back and bite some of the passengers. So he very calmly got on the intercom and said, Hey, guys, there's snakes on this plane. [00:04:32][15.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:04:33] Oh, my goodness. [00:04:33][0.5]
Elena Passarello: [00:04:34] And they the whole plane just fell deadly silent. It took 10 minutes to find a place to land. And they did. And he got out of there and he was standing on the wing and he looked through the window. He pulled his seat back and the cobra was just curled into, he says, a nice little bundle underneath my seat. The good news is everybody got out. That pilot has nerves of steel. And here's the interesting thing. Once they got on the ground, they called a reptile guy and they couldn't find the snake. [00:05:06][31.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:05:06] No, this is like the much more scary version of something that happened at my house where I had a a gardener snake. But I wanted to videotape it on my phone. And then it got into my, like, HVAC, and it's still never been seen. The stakes much lower. In that situation, though I'd like to point out. [00:05:23][16.8]
Elena Passarello: [00:05:24] The snakes were also much lower because that story happened on the ground. [00:05:26][2.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:05:27] Exactly. This was at, what, 30,000 feet? Oh, my gosh. Two things that could end your life real fast. A plane crash or a venomous snake bite. And these were both intersecting in the skies above South Africa. [00:05:38][11.1]
Elena Passarello: [00:05:39] It's a potential to fire right there. And the poor Rudolf Erasmus had to fly the same plane home afterward. So we just plugged up all the holes of his plane as best he could and toodled on home. [00:05:49][10.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:05:51] Speaking of things that went missing, the best news that I saw this week is about something that's been missing in Arizona but has recently been found. And it is a 15 foot tall red spoon from a Dairy Queen in the greater Phoenix area. So this was like bolted to the side of a Dairy Queen owned by Raman and Puja Kalra. They own a number of dairy queens in the area. And one day they showed up for work and were surprised to see that the 15 foot red spoon was no longer attached to their Dairy Queen. We look at the surveillance video and three people had pulled up, unbolted the spoon and then put it on like a trailer on a flatbed truck and took it out of there. Now it turns out replacing the spoon was going to cost like $7,000. [00:06:42][50.9]
Speaker 5: [00:06:44] Oh. [00:06:44][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:06:45] So they were really hoping to get it back. They you know, it was on the local media. They even made T-shirts for their employees that said, Where's my spoon? Oh. So everybody was everybody was on the lookout for this huge spoon. And it was it was nowhere to be found until a guy named Michael Foster, 52 years old, he was out pretty early in the morning, was like 7 a.m. in the morning. And Elena guess what he was doing. [00:07:13][28.1]
Elena Passarello: [00:07:15] Rollerblading. [00:07:15][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:07:16] Close. He was playing Pokemon Go and he was trying to capture some kind of Pokemon that was at a middle school inn in Phenix. And I don't know if he got the Pokemon or not, but what he did see was a 15 foot red spoon, which he, I think rightfully assumed was the spoon everyone was looking for. And in fact, he says what he did initially was he immediately text is his wife and said it's the spoon. He sent her a picture and her response was just: call the police. So he did. Called the police. They. It came out of, the custodial staff from the middle school had to help push the spoon over the fence because it was really heavy. Then the police strapped the spoon to the top of the cruiser, (yes) and drove it back to the Dairy Queen, where it has now, I think, been reattached. The best part is that the couple that owns Dairy Queen had promised free blizzards for anyone who helped with the with the return of the spoon. So it sounds like Michael Foster and his whole family and probably the custodial staff from the school, even maybe the police officer, everyone's in for a free blizzard. That is the best news that I saw this week. Okay, Let's invite our first guest on over. He's been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1986. He's also a New York Times best selling author who's published many books, including the bestseller Paris to the Moon. His latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery, explores the fundamental question of how do we learn and master a new skill? He also recently appeared in the Oscar nominated film Tar, starring Cate Blanchett, where he appears in a role that they specifically wrote for him. The character was named Adam Gopnik. Here he is, Adam Gopnik on Live Wire. Hello, Adam. Welcome to the show. [00:09:25][128.9]
Adam Gopnik: [00:09:25] Thank you. [00:09:25][0.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:09:26] I really enjoyed this book. Can you talk about what the real work actually means to a magician's term? [00:09:32][5.8]
Adam Gopnik: [00:09:32] Yeah. I learned this term from magicians when my son Luke, Luke was. Was about. [00:09:37][4.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:09:37] This is one of those. Luke, I'm not your father. [00:09:39][1.4]
Adam Gopnik: [00:09:39] Exactly. Exactly. In that case, I am his father. When he was about 13, he got obsessed with card magic, which many 13 year old boys do. But he got really quite good at it. And we ended up going off to Las Vegas with his teacher, a wonderful magician named Jamie Ian Swiss. And we spent a lot of time among magicians. And what I noticed is magicians have the most wonderful shoptalk of any human being. ShopTalk is the best kind of talk there is. But right. Writers don't really have shoptalk because all we can talk about is advances and book tours. That's the only thing that ever happens to writers. But magicians have fantastic shoptalk because they can only talk with each other, right? Because they can never tell a civilian what it is that they're doing. And the phrase that kept coming back again and again at 3 a.m. in a diner in Las Vegas was the real work. Who's got the real work on that? So you can have the real work on that. She's got the real work on that. And what they meant by it, I realized after time was not who invented the trick or the illusion, not even who had perfected it, but who did it in the most credible and spontaneous and persuasive way. That's the person who had the real work. And as soon as I heard that term, I said, Oh my goodness, because we all know what the real work is in the field that we're a master of, we know instantly who's got the real work on anything. And I was at the stage in life where I was doing a lot of compensatory work, you know, wanting to study things that I had missed somehow or failed to do. And so I realized I was in pursuit of the real work. [00:11:06][86.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:11:07] You after being an art critic for many years. You started taking a drawing class, which feels like the punch line kind of writes itself. Like, you know, after critiquing so many other people for so long, you then tried to put sort of pen or pencil to paper. How did that go for you? [00:11:20][13.3]
Adam Gopnik: [00:11:21] Very badly. I was probably the single most unskilled draftsman since the Renaissance. In fact, I think they wanted to cancel the Renaissance once they saw what I made of drawing. But it was it was, you know, useful for me. Now you can make the case that you don't have to be a skilled drawer to judge art. But I think it's generally true that if we don't have some basic empathetic understanding of the enterprise that we're talking about, that we're criticizing or judging you, none of us will ever be able to hit 100 mile per hour fastball. But if we've swung at a 40 mile per hour fastball, we have some vague general idea of what that task is, how difficult it is and what the skills are you need. So I studied drawing, looked at a lot of naked people who come into the room and and stumbled to get them right. [00:12:06][45.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:07] I don't want to give too much away from the book, but there is a memorable moment where a naked person you've just drawn comes over and observes. [00:12:14][7.0]
Adam Gopnik: [00:12:14] Yes. [00:12:14][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:15] How the drawings going? [00:12:16][0.8]
Adam Gopnik: [00:12:16] Yes, exactly. [00:12:16][0.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:17] Which seems like it'd be a lot of pressure on you. [00:12:19][2.1]
Adam Gopnik: [00:12:20] It it was. It was immense pressure because she was about four feet tall, you know, And I had done this grid, this magnificent and terrible drawing of her at the time. And she came over with a heavy New York accent. She said, Is that me? [00:12:31][11.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:32] Right. And the and the and I assume she was the only nude person in the room. [00:12:35][3.2]
Elena Passarello: [00:12:35] Right, right, right. [00:12:36][0.4]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:36] So that she had to ask. [00:12:37][0.8]
Adam Gopnik: [00:12:38] Yes, exactly. If it was you know, what was so cool, though, about learning to draw is that you don't learn to draw by looking at something and then saying, oh, I'm going to get it down. Right. Because that's totally numbing and totally paralyzing. What you learned to do is all these tiny little steps and stunts. So my drawing teacher, great, totally reactionary guy who thinks that Art's been on taking the wrong course since 1855, basically hates all art since 1855. Cezanne, Van Gogh, whoever doesn't, you know, thinks they're all on the wrong track. But what he taught me was that the way you draw a face is not to attempt to draw the face, but just to imagine the face as a clock face. And you see the way you tilted your head right now. This is a great radio moment, right? When I say. [00:13:22][44.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:13:23] It's a highly visual medium. [00:13:24][1.1]
Adam Gopnik: [00:13:24] I believe you see the way you just tilted your head, but you did just tilt your head and you tilted it right at 1:00, you see. So if I draw a clock face anyway, I can get the tilt of your head right at 1:00. And I spent weeks just doing tilts in time and just those little crude schematic steps over time turn into the seamless illusion of a drawing of a better drawing, if not actually a good drawing. And if there was a continuity in everything I did, you know, I learned to drive and I learned to dance and I learned to box. And what all those things have in common is, is that you learn these horribly embarrassing, stumbling little steps. And just through sheer perseverance, they begin to turn into the illusion of a seamless sequence. And that's invariably the nature of the real work. [00:14:10][46.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:14:11] This is Live Wire Radio coming to you this week from Town Hall in Seattle, Washington, we are talking to Adam Gopnik about his latest book, The Real Work: On the mystery of mastery. We got to take a quick break. When we come back. I want to find out more about like maybe sort of the world's first A.I. program or at least what was billed as some kind of a chess playing robot. The Turk The Turk, which is detailed in the book. More with Adam Gopnik in just a moment here on Live Wire. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank. Here with Elena Passarello. We are at Town Hall in Seattle this week. Very exciting. And we are talking to Adam Gopnik from The New Yorker and also his latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. One of the stories that you tell in this book is of this chess playing machine. Called..The Turk. [00:16:34][142.9]
Adam Gopnik: [00:16:35] Automaton. Yeah. This is in the 18th century. A magician really built this machine that seemed it was dressed in Ottoman garb, and it was brilliantly designed. So it seemed to be a robot playing chess. They didn't have the word robot. They called him the automaton and it defeated Napoleon and Ben Franklin and every celebrity of that time and great chess masters and nobody knew how it worked. If it's a machine that plays chess. Now, if they had been thinking clearly as none of us ever do, they would have said, Well, if there's a machine to play chess, there should have been a machine to play checkers before it, Right. It's kind of come out of the blue, this machine. And of course, it wasn't a machine. It was an illusion. There was a chess player buried inside the chest at the bottom of it that was manipulating the piece. [00:17:18][43.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:17:18] If they would, like, open the cabinet and the gears. [00:17:21][2.6]
Adam Gopnik: [00:17:21] Exactly. And the chess player would be on the kind of a you know, a springboard. And he would come back up and then he would slide back down and all of it. Here's the fascinating thing about it to me. Everybody speculated, including Edgar Allan Poe, if you can imagine, how was it that this thing work? Because they said it has to be this insanely great tiny chess master, a child who's been drugged for life. Right. Or a little person who's been enslaved to do it. Here's how it worked. The magician whose name was von Kempelen, would go from town to town, come to Philadelphia or Boston or Paris, and he'd go to a chess cafe and he would say, Is there anybody here who needs a gig and doesn't mind very close working conditions? And in each town he went to, he found a strong enough chess player who, once you put him in this very, very impressive garb, suddenly became a great chess player because it's sort of like The Wizard of Oz writes the little man behind the curtain. We are impressed by the atmospherics of things as much as we are impressed by the efficacy of someone doing it. And so a mediocre or a good chess player became a great chess player in the garb of the ottoman, the basic lesson there. [00:18:28][66.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:18:28] And the other thing, too, that you point out with that story is there are a lot of people who are like pretty good at stuff. Exactly like he could find chess players, enough of them to really wow people. [00:18:38][10.0]
Adam Gopnik: [00:18:39] Absolutely. That's one of the truths about modern life is that we have a plurality of masters. Which raises the question, what is it that distinguishes the people who we think of as being uniquely good at doing something? And invariably, it's not just that they have a level of technical virtuosity, it's that they have some they've discovered some form of personal human way, of vibrating, of altering the technical virtuosity to give it a uniquely human signature. Jimi Hendrix, Child of the City we're sitting in. We love Jimi Hendrix, not just because he's technically amazing, but because of the distortion in his guitar playing, because of the way he found a whole new realm of sound to play with. That's what distinguishes a very good guitar player from a uniquely great guitar player. [00:19:26][47.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:19:26] Well, speaking of Recognize Masters, the actor Cate Blanchett is in this movie Tar that's nominated for an Academy Award. I think of it really as an Adam Gopnik picture. Absolutely, because you are basically the first 15 minutes of the film. It's incredible. I mean, how did that come about? And was that really nervous making for you to be on this set with somebody like Cate Blanchett. [00:19:52][25.3]
Adam Gopnik: [00:19:53] Todd Field, the director and the writer, wonderful guy, called me out of the blue and said, I've written a movie for Cate Blanchett, and there's a character in it named Adam Gopnik. Would you consider playing him? At first I said, You know, I'm a writer and I'm a serious intellectual and I'm concerned with, you know, with the crisis of incarceration and the national emergency of Trump. And I don't do things like that. And he said, That's such a shame, because Cate was so looking forward to working with you and will be so disappointed if you're not there. And I said, hold on, let me call Mr. Gopnik to the phone. And off we went to Berlin to do it, and we spent two days doing it. Cate My friend. Cate Yeah. Actress Cate and I did this. [00:20:38][45.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:20:38] Well talk about mastery, did were you working on the book project while you were working? [00:20:42][3.4]
Adam Gopnik: [00:20:43] And truly, it was one of the things that drew me to do. It was because I thought, this will be really interesting to work with a master actor like Cate Blanchett. But what was most amazing about her was her professionalism, which I know sounds like a minimal way form of praise. What else would she be except professional? But by that I mean that she had found psychological motivation in every line of that very what could have been an extremely tedious what may have been an extremely tedious scene. Otherwise, she had found a way into it. And she always found a little variation on it, but never departed from the, the path that she had chosen. And it was amazing. It was like playing tennis with somebody who's a master tennis player and keeps hitting the ball just over the net in a way that you can handle. [00:21:26][43.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:21:26] So she could be consistent take after take after take, take, take, which makes it easier to make a movie out of this thing that she's sort of pulling out of herself. [00:21:33][6.9]
Adam Gopnik: [00:21:33] Exactly. And they had to remind me that once I'd done an improv that was successful, they could keep it, but they couldn't. I couldn't change it. Shot after shot as we'd worked it over for two days. And in fact, the audience, though it was supposed to be in New York, was made entirely of Germans, Berliners, German speakers, and there had to be a German assistant director who would tell them when to laugh at my jokes. And I would hear saying, you know, something going on? If Germany is the best place for a comedian to work, actually, because they have assistant directors who enforce laughter at every turn. [00:22:09][36.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:22:11] You also in in this book decided you wanted to get your driver's license. And how old were you when you got it? [00:22:17][5.8]
Adam Gopnik: [00:22:17] I was 55 when I got my driver's license. Only in the thank you. Only in New York can you survive that long without knowing how to drive. But I believe that I am distinguished. I believe I am the only person who ever got his driver's license on the same day, the same afternoon as his 20 year old son. I went into the car and did the test. Then I got out. Luke got into the car and and did the test. We both passed. They passed him because he could drive. I think they passed me as a kind of experimental joke. What will happen if we allow this guy out on the streets and what you know, what will be the final result? I'm sure they're still laughing about it at the Department of Motor Vehicles. [00:22:56][38.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:22:57] You know what I actually I found so charming about that part of the book was that you, upon getting your license, called your dad. [00:23:03][6.7]
Adam Gopnik: [00:23:04] Yes, I did. When my dad one of the themes of the book, if I can be serious for a moment, is that all of the things we learn to do are never about technique. They're always about another person. I have a chapter about learning to bake, and it's about my relationship with my mother. The chapter about learning to drive is about my relationship with my super competent father, and we all make ourselves in the shadow of our fathers, but also searching for sunlight that they don't eclipse. And my father was super competent and it was one of the reasons I had never I had never learned to drive. I had spent my entire marriage in what was traditionally gendered as the woman's seat. You know, I was the one who was always saying to the kids, Just be quiet. Your mom needs to find the exit, you know? Please, can we let's just keep it down for one second. While your mom your mom is focusing. And I ended up doing it. But I had a great teacher. You know, the book is very much about great teachers. And there was never a better teacher than Arturo Leone, who was my driving teacher because he taught me the single most important thing in driving, which is the hand. And he said, whenever you're likely to be in any kind of conflict with another car, he said, Just use the hand, Just hold up, use the hands, because the hand means everything. So the hand means you. The hand means bless you. The hand means thank you. The hand means Wait a moment, The hand means I'm exiting. The hand means I can just use the hand at every time. And I have been using the hand ever since. [00:24:29][85.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:24:31] Have you brought it into other parts of your life? [00:24:32][1.7]
Adam Gopnik: [00:24:33] The hand will work for everything. [00:24:34][0.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:24:34] Going to the airport wherever you are. Just like. [00:24:36][2.0]
Adam Gopnik: [00:24:36] Exactly. [00:24:36][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:24:37] It's sort of. You're right. I mean, it's it's you're not taking any more crap from this person, but you're also not giving them, like, something that's openly aggressive or hostile. [00:24:45][7.5]
Adam Gopnik: [00:24:45] They can interpret it as broadly as they want to. Right. And that's it. And Arturo's point, which is a good one, is that the reason the thing I learned about driving is that it's actually not that difficult, even if you're 55 when you start. [00:24:56][11.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:24:56] Except for the fact that he apparently picked you up in front of your house in Manhattan. Yeah. And was like, get in. And that was your beginning of driving. [00:25:05][8.6]
Adam Gopnik: [00:25:06] I was paralyzed with fear as I went up Madison Avenue with taxis honking and 16 wheelers surrounding me. But that's the thing about driving. It's not really that difficult. It's just incredibly dangerous. Even if you learn to do it when you're 15, you don't understand danger as a concept, right? Because you're immortal and nothing will ever happen to you. If you're 55, All you can think about is I've got three tons of metal at my command and no one is stopping me from plowing into the next car from running through the light. And it's it's terrifying. I mean, if they if anyone looked rationally at what driving is, we would never allow anyone to drive. Yeah. [00:25:45][39.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:25:47] We're talking to Adam Gopnik here on Livewire about his new book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. That's a typical reaction in Seattle when you mentioned the end of cars. [00:26:00][13.0]
Adam Gopnik: [00:26:00] Oh, yes. [00:26:00][0.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:26:01] It's uniquely most of people recumbent biked here on the Bert Gilman Trail. This book really took an unexpected turn for me, sort of towards the end after, you know, you're talking about learning to drive and do all these things that you wanted to sort of master and a thing that you also decided you wanted to master or at least improve on was the ability to pee on an airplane. [00:26:25][24.1]
Adam Gopnik: [00:26:25] Yes, I suffer from a condition which I suspect somebody else in this room does. If the statistics are right of extreme shy bladder, which is called paruresis, it has a medical name paruresis, and it sounds like the most it is the most embarrassing condition you can possibly have. You can't urinate in public places and certainly not on planes, but it exacts an enormous price because if you think about it, if you're on a seven or eight hour flight and you're in extreme discomfort for most of the flight, and it's one of those things that's simultaneously trivial and embarrassing and very life dominating for anybody who suffers from it. It's one of those things like insomnia or claustrophobia or something that is only as trivial as it is unless you've got it. And I went to work with a cognitive behavioral therapist, a wonderful guy named Dan Walker, who does nothing except treat guys with paruresis. I won't repeat how he describes his daily work. [00:27:22][56.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:27:22] It's in the book. [00:27:22][0.2]
Adam Gopnik: [00:27:23] It's in the book. [00:27:23][0.4]
Luke Burbank: [00:27:24] It's work purchasing the book for. [00:27:24][0.3]
Adam Gopnik: [00:27:26] But that's what he does. He because the answer to paruresis, as with most phobias and that we suffer from, is just to practice your way out of it, just to practice your way out of it. And I set about doing that. The funny thing that happened is, is that Dan, bless him, a wonderful guy, is a fanatic bicyclist. He loved his like as here, loves biking through New York. And he encouraged me to get on my bike and follow him to all of these public bathrooms where we would practice urinating in public. Now, here's the difficult thing, right? It's actually not at all dangerous to pee in any public place. It is incredibly dangerous to bicycle in New York City. So he got me out of one phobia, which was painful, but not, in fact dangerous by encouraging me to pursue an activity which is not painful but is insanely dangerous to be doing because there are monuments to fallen bicyclists all around New York, right? There are no statues to guys who couldn't pee on planes. [00:28:24][57.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:28:24] But I have to say, like, I really appreciated you being vulnerable enough to write about this, because I think and you sort of say this in the chapter, the term shy bladder, in a way it diminishes it or makes it seem like, hey, why are you being so shy? But it's a it's on the same sort of continuum as a sort of a small panic attack. Right. [00:28:44][19.4]
Adam Gopnik: [00:28:44] It is it is a form of a small, small daily panic attack in one in one little room. You know, the truth of it is and this is something that I wanted to draw attention to, of course, it was difficult and embarrassing, and I was at some moment reluctant to do it. Everybody's got something. Every single person in this room and in any room you turn into is struggling with something. And that's part of our common humanity. We struggle with our phobias. We struggle with our anxieties and. It's sort of the reverse of the of the accomplishments I'm talking about. You build accomplishments and skills out of all of these tiny little steps. And then somehow in life we do the reverse. We build things that imprison us and limit us out of something tiny steps that we don't even remember from our childhood. And then we have to disassemble them so that we can enter more fully into into concert with other people. And I just think that that's the single most important thing you can learn. You build up the real work through little steps and you disassemble the bad work through the same kinds of little steps. That's what that's the task for all of us in life. [00:29:50][65.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:29:50] Yeah. The book is The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery, written by the star of the movie Tar, Adam Gopnik. And. And that was Adam Gopnik right here on Live Wire. His latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery, 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 dot com. This is Live Wire from PRX, of course. Each week we ask our listeners a question based on Adam Gopnik's book. This week we asked the listeners, What are you a master of? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are you seeing? [00:30:59][69.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:31:00] Here's one from Zara. Zara is the master of making playlists for very niche moods. [00:31:05][5.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:31:06] Okay. [00:31:06][0.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:31:08] Yes. Because, you know, like, I feel like our whole culture now is subject is like perennial scrolling. Try to find a movie to watch You scroll forever, trying to find something to listen to. You scroll through Spotify forever. I want somebody to just have a shelf of mood playlists for day night. Taking your shoes off, making pasta. You know all of the different phases of my motley life, my wild and wondrous life. I want. I want as Zara to be there making playlists for them. [00:31:36][28.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:31:36] You're so right, though, about this sort of paralysis of having so many options. There's something oddly comforting about going into, like, a dive bar, and they just have a regular old jukebox and there's like, you look through and you go, They're like only three half decent songs on this whole thing. But that's great because you know what you have to work with. [00:31:55][18.6]
Elena Passarello: [00:31:55] I once got kicked out of a bar for playing Take this Job and shove it three times in a row. [00:31:59][3.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:32:02] I love it. What's something else that our listeners are the master of? [00:32:06][3.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:32:06] Phil is the master of being behind trucks that have something fall off of them. A case of potato chips, cedar shingles, the entire roof of the truck. And once memorably a port a John. [00:32:18][11.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:32:18] No! [00:32:18][0.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:32:20] Poor Phil! [00:32:21][0.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:32:21] That would that would actually strike some panic in me next time I was like if you've got that kind of luck what happens when a Porta john hits the freeway at 60 miles an hour I assume nothing good. Okay, one more thing that one of our listeners is a master chef. [00:32:37][15.8]
Elena Passarello: [00:32:38] Okay, How about this one from Heather? Heather says, I am a master at remembering my dreams, which happened to be very vivid. Are you a dream rememberer? [00:32:47][9.4]
Luke Burbank: [00:32:48] No, I. I rarely remember anything from my dreams. And when I do, it's. It's sort of complete nonsense. But I'm jealous of people that have these sort of coherent dreams, that they remember the characters and what people were doing and stuff. I mean, it's like a fun, free movie. You get to stream into your brain. [00:33:05][17.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:33:06] Yeah, I have a theory that nonfiction writers don't remember their dreams, and fiction writers and poets do quite a bit, and they talk about it quite a bit. So who's with me? Nonfiction writers. [00:33:16][10.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:33:17] All right. Thank you to everyone for sending in your responses. We got another listener question for next week's show coming up at the end of today's program. In the meantime. Our next guest has amassed a following of over a quarter million folks across her various social media feeds. But she wants you to know that that fame has not changed her one bit, other than the fact that she's touring the country with her hour long stand up comedy tour titled How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents. Other than that, she is exactly exactly like the rest of us. This is Abby Govindan in here on Live Wire. [00:33:50][32.4]
Abby Govindan: [00:33:55] Oh, my God. Thank you guys for coming. My name is Abby Govindan. I know that I don't look like my name is Abby. And it's because my name is not short for Abigail. It's short for something in Sanskrit. That's not the joke, not yet. So my full name is Abhinaya Govindan, and translated from Sanskrit, Govindan means shepherd and Abhinaya means overdramatic. My name does mean overdramatic shepherd. So essentially, I am Jesus. Thank you. I am currently touring the country with my hour called How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents. It is the story of how I told my parents I wanted to be a standup comedian. They were very, very upset about it. We had a terrible relationship for a long time and we worked past it together and now we have a really great relationship. So I talk to my parents a lot over the course of my standup hour. And one question that I get really often, if you'll believe it, people will come up to me after the show and they'll say, Hey, Abby, why don't you use an Indian accent when you're talking about your parents? And it's like racism of that question aside, I feel like my parents Indian accent is like the least funny thing about them. You know, like my dad, he's a very stoic, unemotional Indian man. I have never seen this man shed a tear once. Except for the day Steve Jobs died randomly. My mom's a different kind of funny. She's where I get my sense of humor from when I was a kid, if I ever upset her, she would say, Hey, Abby, you know you're adopted, right? And I'd be like, No, that can't be the case because I look exactly like you. And she was like, Yeah, you know how after a while, dogs start looking like their owners? That's kind of what's happening here. A lot of Indians stand up comedians like to come up on stage. They like to say, I disappointed my parents by becoming a standup comedian. That's not actually necessarily the case for me. Standup comedy is going pretty well. I'm a seasoned vet in embarrassing my parents in that I was doing it well before I was a standup comedian. You know what I'm saying? In my senior year, I took a class called The Psychology of Disgust. And each week we would talk about something that was, quote unquote, disgusting. And one week our topic was white supremacy. Right? And so our professors informed us that we had to buy the Klansmen to study at that week. Now, the Klansmen, for those of you who don't know, is the KKK manifesto kind of like the handbook on how to be racist. Now, there are two places that you can get the Klansmen. The first is the KKK and the second is the University of Arkansas. Now, here is the problem. The KKK's version was a little bit cheaper. Have you ever been so broke? You find yourself questioning your racial morals? No. So I emailed the University of Arkansas and I was like, Hey, I'm a broke college student. I can't afford this. Would you be able to send it to me for free? And they responded. The lady was really nice. She was like, No, I'm sorry. The proceeds from this go to our history and classics department. You would have to pay for it. So I emailed the KKK. I feel like you guys are having a little bit of trouble trusting me. Do you guys want to hear that email? I said, Dear KKK, H.R. Department. My name is Abigail and I'm a nice white woman from the University of Arkansas. I've considered dabbling in white supremacy, but have very little money because of Obama. Would you kindly send me a copy of The Klansmen free of charge Yours, Abigail. And a few weeks later, I got a response. Is said: Dearest Abigail, it is so nice to see young women such as yourself proactively engaging with their heritage. Attached you will find a full copy of The Klansmen free of charge yours, the KKK. And that is the story of the time I was so broke that I scam the KKK out of $32. I did move to New York City around this time last year actually to pursue standup comedy full time. So happy to be there. Yes. Thank you so much. I love living in New York City. I love doing this. I love traveling and making people laugh for a living. But moving out of my house was so painful. I had grown so close to my parents over the course of the pandemic. My mom dropped me off at the airport. I was a mess. I was sobbing. I was like, Ama, I'm going to miss you so much. And she, without missing a beat, looks me straight in the eye and says, Abby, will you please stop crying at the airport? People are going to think we're human trafficking you. [00:39:03][308.2]
Abby Govindan: [00:39:05] You guys in a great audience. Thank you so much. Keep it going. [00:39:07][2.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:39:18] Abby Govindan everybody, here on Live Wire! That was Abby Govindan right here on Live Wire. You can follow Abby along with her many, many other followers over on Instagram at Abby Govindan or on Twitter at AbbyGOV. And you can find out more information about her standup show, How to embarrass your immigrant parents over on those places as well. I'm Luke Burbank. Here with Elena Passarello. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, our musical guest, Reckless Son. We'll talk about what it's like performing to incarcerated folks in prisons all over the country. Plus, we're going to hear a song from him in a moment right after this quick break. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Okay, before we get our musical guest dialed up a little preview of next week's show, we are going to be talking to Michelle Zauner. You may know Michelle Zauner as the musician Japanese Breakfast, of course. She also released a very highly acclaimed memoir called Crying in H. Mart, which talks about food and her late mother and how she and her mother connected over cooking. Then we're going to get some standup from the very funny Sean Patton about the perils of air travel and also his personal campaign to normalize public flatulence. And then we're going to hear some music from one of my very favorite folks out there right now. Kurt Vile is going to be checking in. And as always, we're going be looking to get your answer to our listener question. Elena. What are we asking the listeners for next week's show? [00:42:01][163.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:42:01] We want to know, what would you like to normalize? So what practice, behavior, hobby. [00:42:07][5.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:42:08] All right. If you have an answer to that question, what would you like to normalize? Hit us up on Twitter or Facebook. We're at Live Wire Radio. This is Live Wire from PRX. Our musical guest this week has performed over 150 concerts in jails and prisons across the country from Utah to Rikers Island. He's turned those experiences into a one man show titled Reckless Son, featuring a collection of music and monologues painting vivid pictures of the people that he's met and the stories he's heard from inside those facilities. His self-titled debut album comes out in June. Let's welcome Reckless Son to Live Wire. Welcome to the show. [00:42:50][41.4]
Reckless Son: [00:42:50] Thank you very much. [00:42:51][0.6]
Luke Burbank: [00:42:52] We're happy to have you here. I've been following your journey online and I find it totally fascinating. I kind of wanted to start at the beginning, like, what was the moment that you you sort of had the idea, hey, maybe I should go and actually play for incarcerated folks. [00:43:04][12.4]
Reckless Son: [00:43:05] At the time, when I played my first concert in a jail, which was in 2016. I was working on music for a documentary film about teenagers that were struggling with substance use and special recovery high schools that were created in order to support them. And while I was working on that film, I saw a video on Facebook of men inside of a heroin recovery program in a county jail in Virginia singing. And it occurred to me that they might appreciate or relate to some of the music that I was writing. And very quickly, a concert got arranged for me at what's called the Sharp Unit at the Sheriff's Heroin Addiction Recovery Program in the Albany County Jail, which is, you know, in the capital region, New York. And I just went up and played. [00:43:56][50.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:43:57] And what was that like right before you strike your first chord on the guitar as you're looking around in this room of of folks that are incarcerated? Like what's going through your mind? Is your heart racing. [00:44:06][9.6]
Reckless Son: [00:44:08] It's racing a little bit right now, Luke. Well, you know, in all seriousness, though. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Without a doubt. [00:44:21][13.6]
Luke Burbank: [00:44:22] But then, you know, you're now in an area where, again, people are being incarcerated, they are going through whatever they're going through. And now you very earnestly with this instrument are going to like, speak your story to them. How did they take it? [00:44:36][14.0]
Reckless Son: [00:44:37] You know, the way it went over surprised everybody. I think it surprised them. It surprised me. I think there was there was a huge amount of skepticism. You know, when they saw me walk in with a guitar and was kind of like, what is what was this guy about? What's, what's he here for? I think the sheriff was really surprised know as far as how it went over. But something I didn't think about when I first went in to do it was that when you walk in to to provide a service, a volunteer service at a correctional facility, you automatically gain a little bit of credibility with those folks because they understand to some degree that you that you've taken time to come in and give it to them. As my experience would would lead me to believe that, you know, people who are incarcerated have a tendency to feel unseen or neglected or out of sight and out of mind. And so I think that right off the bat, before I played my first song, there was some degree of appreciation that existed just because I was willing to come and spend time with them. [00:45:40][63.6]
Luke Burbank: [00:45:41] And I understand that you've actually visited a number of facilities here in Oregon since you've been here. [00:45:45][4.0]
Reckless Son: [00:45:46] Three? [00:45:46][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:45:46] Yeah. How long have you been here? [00:45:48][1.3]
Reckless Son: [00:45:49] How long we've been here? Tuesday. So. Yeah. Yeah, So. [00:45:51][2.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:45:51] So like, you're averaging one prison a day. [00:45:53][2.1]
Reckless Son: [00:45:55] One and a half. I visited OSP Oregon State Penitentiary yesterday morning, and one of the most remarkable things I've seen in my whole life is that in that facility, they have a Japanese healing garden set up with a koi pond, if you can believe it. We were given a tour by a man named Randy who had done like 33 years in solitary confinement on death row. And the thing that was so striking about it, I mean, it was a lot to take in, you know, in general. But there's probably no place more appropriate for a Japanese healing garden to be than a maximum security prison. But at the same time, that's probably the least likely place you'd ever think to find one. And so if I were going to make a comment about the carceral system, that would be it. As far as just sort of like, are we intending for people to heal while they're in there? But the idea that it was so unlikely for that to be there but that there was no other place that it that it should be, you know, really, really, really struck me. [00:47:00][65.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:47:01] Do you ever find yourself playing a gig for the non incarcerated thinking, I wish I was at Rikers? Like, man, this coffee, these people are stiffs? [00:47:12][10.3]
Reckless Son: [00:47:13] Well, I will say that I do tend to be more comfortable playing for the incarcerated than I do for a for a civilian audience. [00:47:23][9.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:47:24] Well, speaking of which, what song are we going to hear? [00:47:25][1.4]
Reckless Son: [00:47:26] It's a song called The Wisdom of a Child. I wrote it for my little brother James. [00:47:29][3.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:47:31] This is Reckless Son on Live Wire. [00:47:32][1.6]
Reckless Son: [00:47:44] On death. But we waited for the line. Our clothes will warm Diane's brain fog into the night. And ranching ways of navigation following the star. Brother, I can't tell you where you're going. But I know just where you are. Every time I close my eyes. Sinking to sleep. Stare across the sky. I hear the sound of your heartbeat. See the man that you become. Following the dream, dream dream. Skate across the ocean like a figure on the ice. The waves will come crashing down like Zongo, and it's now faith in destinations, be they. Near Alpha Brother, I can tell you ain't going. But I know just who you are. I watched you as grown up to humble in your writing. Gracious in a full. You'll see the world. You'll see it all. The moment you become the service of a call, just listen for your call. Oh. When the night begins. Before the day. Soon you'll ask what makes this work this way? Sad. The silence. If you start to bring you the voice will. Patiently. The Lord is waiting for you and me. A thousand miles of ocean leads into the sea and will trace the state of grace. A map from up above this brother. I can tell that way. And going. You all bring in light and bring in the. So my father was five miles away with the wisdom of a child joyously at play. I'll find you as you find your way to the man that you become. And you are today. All. [00:51:11][206.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:51:25] That was reckless, son. Right here on Live Wire. His self-titled EP is out in June. That's going to do it for this episode of Live Wire. Big thanks to our guests, Adam Gopnik, Abby Govindan, and Reckless Son. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. [00:51:47][21.6]
Elena Passarello: [00:51:48] Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester, our marketing and production manager is Paige Thomas. Our production fellow is Tanvi Kumar and Yasamin Mehdian is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer and Our House Sound is by D. Neil Blake. [00:52:14][25.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:52:15] Additional funding provided by the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation Live Wire was created by Robin TLuke Burbank: [00:00:00] Hey there, Elena. [00:00:00][0.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:01] Hey, Luke. How's it going? [00:00:02][0.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:03] It's going pretty well this week. Are you ready for another round of "Station Location Identification Examination"? [00:00:08][5.5]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:09] Oh, yes, I am. [00:00:10][1.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:11] Okay, this is where I'm going to quiz you on somewhere in the country Live Wire is on the radio, you've got to guess the place I am talking about. And I want to mention, no pressure, but I was able to guess this one before they provided me with the answer. [00:00:23][11.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:24] This means I'm not going to get it. [00:00:25][0.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:25] Because of one of the specific clues. So we'll go. Okay. This city is home to the world's largest ball of stamps, which is located in the Boys Town Stamp Center. It's 600 pounds. It measures 32 inches in diameter and contains more than 4.6 million canceled stamps. [00:00:47][22.3]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:48] Is this the clue that you got? [00:00:49][1.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:50] No, it's not. And I'm starting with the, with, I think the less illuminating clue. [00:00:54][4.3]
Elena Passarello: [00:00:54] I think big balls of stamps read very Midwest to me. [00:00:58][3.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:00:58] Yes. Yes. You are in the right part of the country. [00:01:00][1.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:00] But, I don't know the city. [00:01:01][0.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:02] Okay. Johnny Carson got his start in this city on the local TV station. He had a show called The Squirrel's Nest. Weird wild stuff. [00:01:12][9.7]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:12] Is it Omaha, Nebraska? [00:01:13][0.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:14] It is Omaha, Nebraska, Elena! Where we are on KIOS Radio. [00:01:17][2.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:18] Famous Nebraskan Johnny Carson. [00:01:21][3.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:22] That was the clue that led me to the answer as well. [00:01:24][2.6]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:25] Weird wild stamps. Some weird wild stamps. [00:01:29][4.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:30] That's a much better Carson than I was doing. All right. Should we get rolling with the show? [00:01:34][4.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:35] Let's do it! [00:01:35][0.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:01:36] Aall right. Take it away. [00:01:36][0.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:01:40] From PRX, It's LIVE WIRE. This week, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik. [00:01:50][9.7]
Adam Gopnik: [00:01:51] Todd Field, the director and the writer, a wonderful guy, called me out of the blue and said, I've written a movie for Cate Blanchett, and there's a character in it named Adam Gopnik. Would you consider playing him? [00:02:00][9.6]
Elena Passarello: [00:02:02] And comedian Abby Govindan. [00:02:03][1.6]
Abby Govindan: [00:02:04] Translated from Sanskrit Govindan means shepherd, and Abhinaya means overdramatic. So essentially, I am Jesus. Thank you. [00:02:12][8.1]
Elena Passarello: [00:02:13] With music from Reckless Son and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire: Luke Burbank. [00:02:24][10.6]
Luke Burbank: [00:02:26] Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks for tuning in from all over these United States. We've got a great show in store for you this week. Of course, we asked Live Wire listeners a question. We asked, "What are you the master of?" This is related to Adam Gopnik latest book. We're going to hear those answers coming up in a minute. First, though, it is time for the best news we heard all week this. This is our little reminder at the top of the show, there is some good news happening out there in the world. Elena. What is the best news you heard all week? [00:03:00][34.3]
Elena Passarello: [00:03:01] Okay. Sort of. Stretching may be best. The best case is everybody's okay. All right. The story is okay. This is takes place in South Africa where at the beginning of the month, a 30 year old pilot for an engineering company named Rudolf Erasmus was flying for passengers in his little plane across South Africa. And he feels something off like this weird kind of breeze feeling. And he's like, What's happening? And he thought maybe he had his water bottle and spilled or something. He just feels this kind of weird tickle. And he looks down and there is a four foot cape cobra circled around his feet in the cockpit. Yeah. And I went ahead and did some Wikipedia ing because I was like, Oh, maybe it's one of those garter snake cobras that you never hear about. Like maybe have just been. [00:03:54][53.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:03:55] Like, maybe exist. [00:03:55][0.5]
Elena Passarello: [00:03:56] Nope. Wrong. The Cape Cobra is one of the two deadliest snakes in that region. It's also known as the yellow cobra. It's highly venomous. According to Wikipedia, it's quick moving and an alert species. So Rudolf Rasmus had this deadly nope rope, which is what my brother called snakes. [00:04:13][16.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:04:14] As in Nope. I don't want to mess with that rope. [00:04:16][1.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:04:16] Yep, exactly. At his feet. And he was worried that the snake was going to obviously bite him or slither back and bite some of the passengers. So he very calmly got on the intercom and said, Hey, guys, there's snakes on this plane. [00:04:32][15.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:04:33] Oh, my goodness. [00:04:33][0.5]
Elena Passarello: [00:04:34] And they the whole plane just fell deadly silent. It took 10 minutes to find a place to land. And they did. And he got out of there and he was standing on the wing and he looked through the window. He pulled his seat back and the cobra was just curled into, he says, a nice little bundle underneath my seat. The good news is everybody got out. That pilot has nerves of steel. And here's the interesting thing. Once they got on the ground, they called a reptile guy and they couldn't find the snake. [00:05:06][31.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:05:06] No, this is like the much more scary version of something that happened at my house where I had a a gardener snake. But I wanted to videotape it on my phone. And then it got into my, like, HVAC, and it's still never been seen. The stakes much lower. In that situation, though I'd like to point out. [00:05:23][16.8]
Elena Passarello: [00:05:24] The snakes were also much lower because that story happened on the ground. [00:05:26][2.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:05:27] Exactly. This was at, what, 30,000 feet? Oh, my gosh. Two things that could end your life real fast. A plane crash or a venomous snake bite. And these were both intersecting in the skies above South Africa. [00:05:38][11.1]
Elena Passarello: [00:05:39] It's a potential to fire right there. And the poor Rudolf Erasmus had to fly the same plane home afterward. So we just plugged up all the holes of his plane as best he could and toodled on home. [00:05:49][10.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:05:51] Speaking of things that went missing, the best news that I saw this week is about something that's been missing in Arizona but has recently been found. And it is a 15 foot tall red spoon from a Dairy Queen in the greater Phoenix area. So this was like bolted to the side of a Dairy Queen owned by Raman and Puja Kalra. They own a number of dairy queens in the area. And one day they showed up for work and were surprised to see that the 15 foot red spoon was no longer attached to their Dairy Queen. We look at the surveillance video and three people had pulled up, unbolted the spoon and then put it on like a trailer on a flatbed truck and took it out of there. Now it turns out replacing the spoon was going to cost like $7,000. [00:06:42][50.9]
Speaker 5: [00:06:44] Oh. [00:06:44][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:06:45] So they were really hoping to get it back. They you know, it was on the local media. They even made T-shirts for their employees that said, Where's my spoon? Oh. So everybody was everybody was on the lookout for this huge spoon. And it was it was nowhere to be found until a guy named Michael Foster, 52 years old, he was out pretty early in the morning, was like 7 a.m. in the morning. And Elena guess what he was doing. [00:07:13][28.1]
Elena Passarello: [00:07:15] Rollerblading. [00:07:15][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:07:16] Close. He was playing Pokemon Go and he was trying to capture some kind of Pokemon that was at a middle school inn in Phenix. And I don't know if he got the Pokemon or not, but what he did see was a 15 foot red spoon, which he, I think rightfully assumed was the spoon everyone was looking for. And in fact, he says what he did initially was he immediately text is his wife and said it's the spoon. He sent her a picture and her response was just: call the police. So he did. Called the police. They. It came out of, the custodial staff from the middle school had to help push the spoon over the fence because it was really heavy. Then the police strapped the spoon to the top of the cruiser, (yes) and drove it back to the Dairy Queen, where it has now, I think, been reattached. The best part is that the couple that owns Dairy Queen had promised free blizzards for anyone who helped with the with the return of the spoon. So it sounds like Michael Foster and his whole family and probably the custodial staff from the school, even maybe the police officer, everyone's in for a free blizzard. That is the best news that I saw this week. Okay, Let's invite our first guest on over. He's been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1986. He's also a New York Times best selling author who's published many books, including the bestseller Paris to the Moon. His latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery, explores the fundamental question of how do we learn and master a new skill? He also recently appeared in the Oscar nominated film Tar, starring Cate Blanchett, where he appears in a role that they specifically wrote for him. The character was named Adam Gopnik. Here he is, Adam Gopnik on Live Wire. Hello, Adam. Welcome to the show. [00:09:25][128.9]
Adam Gopnik: [00:09:25] Thank you. [00:09:25][0.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:09:26] I really enjoyed this book. Can you talk about what the real work actually means to a magician's term? [00:09:32][5.8]
Adam Gopnik: [00:09:32] Yeah. I learned this term from magicians when my son Luke, Luke was. Was about. [00:09:37][4.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:09:37] This is one of those. Luke, I'm not your father. [00:09:39][1.4]
Adam Gopnik: [00:09:39] Exactly. Exactly. In that case, I am his father. When he was about 13, he got obsessed with card magic, which many 13 year old boys do. But he got really quite good at it. And we ended up going off to Las Vegas with his teacher, a wonderful magician named Jamie Ian Swiss. And we spent a lot of time among magicians. And what I noticed is magicians have the most wonderful shoptalk of any human being. ShopTalk is the best kind of talk there is. But right. Writers don't really have shoptalk because all we can talk about is advances and book tours. That's the only thing that ever happens to writers. But magicians have fantastic shoptalk because they can only talk with each other, right? Because they can never tell a civilian what it is that they're doing. And the phrase that kept coming back again and again at 3 a.m. in a diner in Las Vegas was the real work. Who's got the real work on that? So you can have the real work on that. She's got the real work on that. And what they meant by it, I realized after time was not who invented the trick or the illusion, not even who had perfected it, but who did it in the most credible and spontaneous and persuasive way. That's the person who had the real work. And as soon as I heard that term, I said, Oh my goodness, because we all know what the real work is in the field that we're a master of, we know instantly who's got the real work on anything. And I was at the stage in life where I was doing a lot of compensatory work, you know, wanting to study things that I had missed somehow or failed to do. And so I realized I was in pursuit of the real work. [00:11:06][86.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:11:07] You after being an art critic for many years. You started taking a drawing class, which feels like the punch line kind of writes itself. Like, you know, after critiquing so many other people for so long, you then tried to put sort of pen or pencil to paper. How did that go for you? [00:11:20][13.3]
Adam Gopnik: [00:11:21] Very badly. I was probably the single most unskilled draftsman since the Renaissance. In fact, I think they wanted to cancel the Renaissance once they saw what I made of drawing. But it was it was, you know, useful for me. Now you can make the case that you don't have to be a skilled drawer to judge art. But I think it's generally true that if we don't have some basic empathetic understanding of the enterprise that we're talking about, that we're criticizing or judging you, none of us will ever be able to hit 100 mile per hour fastball. But if we've swung at a 40 mile per hour fastball, we have some vague general idea of what that task is, how difficult it is and what the skills are you need. So I studied drawing, looked at a lot of naked people who come into the room and and stumbled to get them right. [00:12:06][45.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:07] I don't want to give too much away from the book, but there is a memorable moment where a naked person you've just drawn comes over and observes. [00:12:14][7.0]
Adam Gopnik: [00:12:14] Yes. [00:12:14][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:15] How the drawings going? [00:12:16][0.8]
Adam Gopnik: [00:12:16] Yes, exactly. [00:12:16][0.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:17] Which seems like it'd be a lot of pressure on you. [00:12:19][2.1]
Adam Gopnik: [00:12:20] It it was. It was immense pressure because she was about four feet tall, you know, And I had done this grid, this magnificent and terrible drawing of her at the time. And she came over with a heavy New York accent. She said, Is that me? [00:12:31][11.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:32] Right. And the and the and I assume she was the only nude person in the room. [00:12:35][3.2]
Elena Passarello: [00:12:35] Right, right, right. [00:12:36][0.4]
Luke Burbank: [00:12:36] So that she had to ask. [00:12:37][0.8]
Adam Gopnik: [00:12:38] Yes, exactly. If it was you know, what was so cool, though, about learning to draw is that you don't learn to draw by looking at something and then saying, oh, I'm going to get it down. Right. Because that's totally numbing and totally paralyzing. What you learned to do is all these tiny little steps and stunts. So my drawing teacher, great, totally reactionary guy who thinks that Art's been on taking the wrong course since 1855, basically hates all art since 1855. Cezanne, Van Gogh, whoever doesn't, you know, thinks they're all on the wrong track. But what he taught me was that the way you draw a face is not to attempt to draw the face, but just to imagine the face as a clock face. And you see the way you tilted your head right now. This is a great radio moment, right? When I say. [00:13:22][44.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:13:23] It's a highly visual medium. [00:13:24][1.1]
Adam Gopnik: [00:13:24] I believe you see the way you just tilted your head, but you did just tilt your head and you tilted it right at 1:00, you see. So if I draw a clock face anyway, I can get the tilt of your head right at 1:00. And I spent weeks just doing tilts in time and just those little crude schematic steps over time turn into the seamless illusion of a drawing of a better drawing, if not actually a good drawing. And if there was a continuity in everything I did, you know, I learned to drive and I learned to dance and I learned to box. And what all those things have in common is, is that you learn these horribly embarrassing, stumbling little steps. And just through sheer perseverance, they begin to turn into the illusion of a seamless sequence. And that's invariably the nature of the real work. [00:14:10][46.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:14:11] This is Live Wire Radio coming to you this week from Town Hall in Seattle, Washington, we are talking to Adam Gopnik about his latest book, The Real Work: On the mystery of mastery. We got to take a quick break. When we come back. I want to find out more about like maybe sort of the world's first A.I. program or at least what was billed as some kind of a chess playing robot. The Turk The Turk, which is detailed in the book. More with Adam Gopnik in just a moment here on Live Wire. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank. Here with Elena Passarello. We are at Town Hall in Seattle this week. Very exciting. And we are talking to Adam Gopnik from The New Yorker and also his latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. One of the stories that you tell in this book is of this chess playing machine. Called..The Turk. [00:16:34][142.9]
Adam Gopnik: [00:16:35] Automaton. Yeah. This is in the 18th century. A magician really built this machine that seemed it was dressed in Ottoman garb, and it was brilliantly designed. So it seemed to be a robot playing chess. They didn't have the word robot. They called him the automaton and it defeated Napoleon and Ben Franklin and every celebrity of that time and great chess masters and nobody knew how it worked. If it's a machine that plays chess. Now, if they had been thinking clearly as none of us ever do, they would have said, Well, if there's a machine to play chess, there should have been a machine to play checkers before it, Right. It's kind of come out of the blue, this machine. And of course, it wasn't a machine. It was an illusion. There was a chess player buried inside the chest at the bottom of it that was manipulating the piece. [00:17:18][43.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:17:18] If they would, like, open the cabinet and the gears. [00:17:21][2.6]
Adam Gopnik: [00:17:21] Exactly. And the chess player would be on the kind of a you know, a springboard. And he would come back up and then he would slide back down and all of it. Here's the fascinating thing about it to me. Everybody speculated, including Edgar Allan Poe, if you can imagine, how was it that this thing work? Because they said it has to be this insanely great tiny chess master, a child who's been drugged for life. Right. Or a little person who's been enslaved to do it. Here's how it worked. The magician whose name was von Kempelen, would go from town to town, come to Philadelphia or Boston or Paris, and he'd go to a chess cafe and he would say, Is there anybody here who needs a gig and doesn't mind very close working conditions? And in each town he went to, he found a strong enough chess player who, once you put him in this very, very impressive garb, suddenly became a great chess player because it's sort of like The Wizard of Oz writes the little man behind the curtain. We are impressed by the atmospherics of things as much as we are impressed by the efficacy of someone doing it. And so a mediocre or a good chess player became a great chess player in the garb of the ottoman, the basic lesson there. [00:18:28][66.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:18:28] And the other thing, too, that you point out with that story is there are a lot of people who are like pretty good at stuff. Exactly like he could find chess players, enough of them to really wow people. [00:18:38][10.0]
Adam Gopnik: [00:18:39] Absolutely. That's one of the truths about modern life is that we have a plurality of masters. Which raises the question, what is it that distinguishes the people who we think of as being uniquely good at doing something? And invariably, it's not just that they have a level of technical virtuosity, it's that they have some they've discovered some form of personal human way, of vibrating, of altering the technical virtuosity to give it a uniquely human signature. Jimi Hendrix, Child of the City we're sitting in. We love Jimi Hendrix, not just because he's technically amazing, but because of the distortion in his guitar playing, because of the way he found a whole new realm of sound to play with. That's what distinguishes a very good guitar player from a uniquely great guitar player. [00:19:26][47.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:19:26] Well, speaking of Recognize Masters, the actor Cate Blanchett is in this movie Tar that's nominated for an Academy Award. I think of it really as an Adam Gopnik picture. Absolutely, because you are basically the first 15 minutes of the film. It's incredible. I mean, how did that come about? And was that really nervous making for you to be on this set with somebody like Cate Blanchett. [00:19:52][25.3]
Adam Gopnik: [00:19:53] Todd Field, the director and the writer, wonderful guy, called me out of the blue and said, I've written a movie for Cate Blanchett, and there's a character in it named Adam Gopnik. Would you consider playing him? At first I said, You know, I'm a writer and I'm a serious intellectual and I'm concerned with, you know, with the crisis of incarceration and the national emergency of Trump. And I don't do things like that. And he said, That's such a shame, because Cate was so looking forward to working with you and will be so disappointed if you're not there. And I said, hold on, let me call Mr. Gopnik to the phone. And off we went to Berlin to do it, and we spent two days doing it. Cate My friend. Cate Yeah. Actress Cate and I did this. [00:20:38][45.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:20:38] Well talk about mastery, did were you working on the book project while you were working? [00:20:42][3.4]
Adam Gopnik: [00:20:43] And truly, it was one of the things that drew me to do. It was because I thought, this will be really interesting to work with a master actor like Cate Blanchett. But what was most amazing about her was her professionalism, which I know sounds like a minimal way form of praise. What else would she be except professional? But by that I mean that she had found psychological motivation in every line of that very what could have been an extremely tedious what may have been an extremely tedious scene. Otherwise, she had found a way into it. And she always found a little variation on it, but never departed from the, the path that she had chosen. And it was amazing. It was like playing tennis with somebody who's a master tennis player and keeps hitting the ball just over the net in a way that you can handle. [00:21:26][43.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:21:26] So she could be consistent take after take after take, take, take, which makes it easier to make a movie out of this thing that she's sort of pulling out of herself. [00:21:33][6.9]
Adam Gopnik: [00:21:33] Exactly. And they had to remind me that once I'd done an improv that was successful, they could keep it, but they couldn't. I couldn't change it. Shot after shot as we'd worked it over for two days. And in fact, the audience, though it was supposed to be in New York, was made entirely of Germans, Berliners, German speakers, and there had to be a German assistant director who would tell them when to laugh at my jokes. And I would hear saying, you know, something going on? If Germany is the best place for a comedian to work, actually, because they have assistant directors who enforce laughter at every turn. [00:22:09][36.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:22:11] You also in in this book decided you wanted to get your driver's license. And how old were you when you got it? [00:22:17][5.8]
Adam Gopnik: [00:22:17] I was 55 when I got my driver's license. Only in the thank you. Only in New York can you survive that long without knowing how to drive. But I believe that I am distinguished. I believe I am the only person who ever got his driver's license on the same day, the same afternoon as his 20 year old son. I went into the car and did the test. Then I got out. Luke got into the car and and did the test. We both passed. They passed him because he could drive. I think they passed me as a kind of experimental joke. What will happen if we allow this guy out on the streets and what you know, what will be the final result? I'm sure they're still laughing about it at the Department of Motor Vehicles. [00:22:56][38.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:22:57] You know what I actually I found so charming about that part of the book was that you, upon getting your license, called your dad. [00:23:03][6.7]
Adam Gopnik: [00:23:04] Yes, I did. When my dad one of the themes of the book, if I can be serious for a moment, is that all of the things we learn to do are never about technique. They're always about another person. I have a chapter about learning to bake, and it's about my relationship with my mother. The chapter about learning to drive is about my relationship with my super competent father, and we all make ourselves in the shadow of our fathers, but also searching for sunlight that they don't eclipse. And my father was super competent and it was one of the reasons I had never I had never learned to drive. I had spent my entire marriage in what was traditionally gendered as the woman's seat. You know, I was the one who was always saying to the kids, Just be quiet. Your mom needs to find the exit, you know? Please, can we let's just keep it down for one second. While your mom your mom is focusing. And I ended up doing it. But I had a great teacher. You know, the book is very much about great teachers. And there was never a better teacher than Arturo Leone, who was my driving teacher because he taught me the single most important thing in driving, which is the hand. And he said, whenever you're likely to be in any kind of conflict with another car, he said, Just use the hand, Just hold up, use the hands, because the hand means everything. So the hand means you. The hand means bless you. The hand means thank you. The hand means Wait a moment, The hand means I'm exiting. The hand means I can just use the hand at every time. And I have been using the hand ever since. [00:24:29][85.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:24:31] Have you brought it into other parts of your life? [00:24:32][1.7]
Adam Gopnik: [00:24:33] The hand will work for everything. [00:24:34][0.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:24:34] Going to the airport wherever you are. Just like. [00:24:36][2.0]
Adam Gopnik: [00:24:36] Exactly. [00:24:36][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:24:37] It's sort of. You're right. I mean, it's it's you're not taking any more crap from this person, but you're also not giving them, like, something that's openly aggressive or hostile. [00:24:45][7.5]
Adam Gopnik: [00:24:45] They can interpret it as broadly as they want to. Right. And that's it. And Arturo's point, which is a good one, is that the reason the thing I learned about driving is that it's actually not that difficult, even if you're 55 when you start. [00:24:56][11.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:24:56] Except for the fact that he apparently picked you up in front of your house in Manhattan. Yeah. And was like, get in. And that was your beginning of driving. [00:25:05][8.6]
Adam Gopnik: [00:25:06] I was paralyzed with fear as I went up Madison Avenue with taxis honking and 16 wheelers surrounding me. But that's the thing about driving. It's not really that difficult. It's just incredibly dangerous. Even if you learn to do it when you're 15, you don't understand danger as a concept, right? Because you're immortal and nothing will ever happen to you. If you're 55, All you can think about is I've got three tons of metal at my command and no one is stopping me from plowing into the next car from running through the light. And it's it's terrifying. I mean, if they if anyone looked rationally at what driving is, we would never allow anyone to drive. Yeah. [00:25:45][39.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:25:47] We're talking to Adam Gopnik here on Livewire about his new book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. That's a typical reaction in Seattle when you mentioned the end of cars. [00:26:00][13.0]
Adam Gopnik: [00:26:00] Oh, yes. [00:26:00][0.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:26:01] It's uniquely most of people recumbent biked here on the Bert Gilman Trail. This book really took an unexpected turn for me, sort of towards the end after, you know, you're talking about learning to drive and do all these things that you wanted to sort of master and a thing that you also decided you wanted to master or at least improve on was the ability to pee on an airplane. [00:26:25][24.1]
Adam Gopnik: [00:26:25] Yes, I suffer from a condition which I suspect somebody else in this room does. If the statistics are right of extreme shy bladder, which is called paruresis, it has a medical name paruresis, and it sounds like the most it is the most embarrassing condition you can possibly have. You can't urinate in public places and certainly not on planes, but it exacts an enormous price because if you think about it, if you're on a seven or eight hour flight and you're in extreme discomfort for most of the flight, and it's one of those things that's simultaneously trivial and embarrassing and very life dominating for anybody who suffers from it. It's one of those things like insomnia or claustrophobia or something that is only as trivial as it is unless you've got it. And I went to work with a cognitive behavioral therapist, a wonderful guy named Dan Walker, who does nothing except treat guys with paruresis. I won't repeat how he describes his daily work. [00:27:22][56.2]
Luke Burbank: [00:27:22] It's in the book. [00:27:22][0.2]
Adam Gopnik: [00:27:23] It's in the book. [00:27:23][0.4]
Luke Burbank: [00:27:24] It's work purchasing the book for. [00:27:24][0.3]
Adam Gopnik: [00:27:26] But that's what he does. He because the answer to paruresis, as with most phobias and that we suffer from, is just to practice your way out of it, just to practice your way out of it. And I set about doing that. The funny thing that happened is, is that Dan, bless him, a wonderful guy, is a fanatic bicyclist. He loved his like as here, loves biking through New York. And he encouraged me to get on my bike and follow him to all of these public bathrooms where we would practice urinating in public. Now, here's the difficult thing, right? It's actually not at all dangerous to pee in any public place. It is incredibly dangerous to bicycle in New York City. So he got me out of one phobia, which was painful, but not, in fact dangerous by encouraging me to pursue an activity which is not painful but is insanely dangerous to be doing because there are monuments to fallen bicyclists all around New York, right? There are no statues to guys who couldn't pee on planes. [00:28:24][57.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:28:24] But I have to say, like, I really appreciated you being vulnerable enough to write about this, because I think and you sort of say this in the chapter, the term shy bladder, in a way it diminishes it or makes it seem like, hey, why are you being so shy? But it's a it's on the same sort of continuum as a sort of a small panic attack. Right. [00:28:44][19.4]
Adam Gopnik: [00:28:44] It is it is a form of a small, small daily panic attack in one in one little room. You know, the truth of it is and this is something that I wanted to draw attention to, of course, it was difficult and embarrassing, and I was at some moment reluctant to do it. Everybody's got something. Every single person in this room and in any room you turn into is struggling with something. And that's part of our common humanity. We struggle with our phobias. We struggle with our anxieties and. It's sort of the reverse of the of the accomplishments I'm talking about. You build accomplishments and skills out of all of these tiny little steps. And then somehow in life we do the reverse. We build things that imprison us and limit us out of something tiny steps that we don't even remember from our childhood. And then we have to disassemble them so that we can enter more fully into into concert with other people. And I just think that that's the single most important thing you can learn. You build up the real work through little steps and you disassemble the bad work through the same kinds of little steps. That's what that's the task for all of us in life. [00:29:50][65.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:29:50] Yeah. The book is The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery, written by the star of the movie Tar, Adam Gopnik. And. And that was Adam Gopnik right here on Live Wire. His latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery, 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 dot com. This is Live Wire from PRX, of course. Each week we ask our listeners a question based on Adam Gopnik's book. This week we asked the listeners, What are you a master of? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are you seeing? [00:30:59][69.4]
Elena Passarello: [00:31:00] Here's one from Zara. Zara is the master of making playlists for very niche moods. [00:31:05][5.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:31:06] Okay. [00:31:06][0.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:31:08] Yes. Because, you know, like, I feel like our whole culture now is subject is like perennial scrolling. Try to find a movie to watch You scroll forever, trying to find something to listen to. You scroll through Spotify forever. I want somebody to just have a shelf of mood playlists for day night. Taking your shoes off, making pasta. You know all of the different phases of my motley life, my wild and wondrous life. I want. I want as Zara to be there making playlists for them. [00:31:36][28.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:31:36] You're so right, though, about this sort of paralysis of having so many options. There's something oddly comforting about going into, like, a dive bar, and they just have a regular old jukebox and there's like, you look through and you go, They're like only three half decent songs on this whole thing. But that's great because you know what you have to work with. [00:31:55][18.6]
Elena Passarello: [00:31:55] I once got kicked out of a bar for playing Take this Job and shove it three times in a row. [00:31:59][3.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:32:02] I love it. What's something else that our listeners are the master of? [00:32:06][3.9]
Elena Passarello: [00:32:06] Phil is the master of being behind trucks that have something fall off of them. A case of potato chips, cedar shingles, the entire roof of the truck. And once memorably a port a John. [00:32:18][11.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:32:18] No! [00:32:18][0.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:32:20] Poor Phil! [00:32:21][0.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:32:21] That would that would actually strike some panic in me next time I was like if you've got that kind of luck what happens when a Porta john hits the freeway at 60 miles an hour I assume nothing good. Okay, one more thing that one of our listeners is a master chef. [00:32:37][15.8]
Elena Passarello: [00:32:38] Okay, How about this one from Heather? Heather says, I am a master at remembering my dreams, which happened to be very vivid. Are you a dream rememberer? [00:32:47][9.4]
Luke Burbank: [00:32:48] No, I. I rarely remember anything from my dreams. And when I do, it's. It's sort of complete nonsense. But I'm jealous of people that have these sort of coherent dreams, that they remember the characters and what people were doing and stuff. I mean, it's like a fun, free movie. You get to stream into your brain. [00:33:05][17.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:33:06] Yeah, I have a theory that nonfiction writers don't remember their dreams, and fiction writers and poets do quite a bit, and they talk about it quite a bit. So who's with me? Nonfiction writers. [00:33:16][10.5]
Luke Burbank: [00:33:17] All right. Thank you to everyone for sending in your responses. We got another listener question for next week's show coming up at the end of today's program. In the meantime. Our next guest has amassed a following of over a quarter million folks across her various social media feeds. But she wants you to know that that fame has not changed her one bit, other than the fact that she's touring the country with her hour long stand up comedy tour titled How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents. Other than that, she is exactly exactly like the rest of us. This is Abby Govindan in here on Live Wire. [00:33:50][32.4]
Abby Govindan: [00:33:55] Oh, my God. Thank you guys for coming. My name is Abby Govindan. I know that I don't look like my name is Abby. And it's because my name is not short for Abigail. It's short for something in Sanskrit. That's not the joke, not yet. So my full name is Abhinaya Govindan, and translated from Sanskrit, Govindan means shepherd and Abhinaya means overdramatic. My name does mean overdramatic shepherd. So essentially, I am Jesus. Thank you. I am currently touring the country with my hour called How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents. It is the story of how I told my parents I wanted to be a standup comedian. They were very, very upset about it. We had a terrible relationship for a long time and we worked past it together and now we have a really great relationship. So I talk to my parents a lot over the course of my standup hour. And one question that I get really often, if you'll believe it, people will come up to me after the show and they'll say, Hey, Abby, why don't you use an Indian accent when you're talking about your parents? And it's like racism of that question aside, I feel like my parents Indian accent is like the least funny thing about them. You know, like my dad, he's a very stoic, unemotional Indian man. I have never seen this man shed a tear once. Except for the day Steve Jobs died randomly. My mom's a different kind of funny. She's where I get my sense of humor from when I was a kid, if I ever upset her, she would say, Hey, Abby, you know you're adopted, right? And I'd be like, No, that can't be the case because I look exactly like you. And she was like, Yeah, you know how after a while, dogs start looking like their owners? That's kind of what's happening here. A lot of Indians stand up comedians like to come up on stage. They like to say, I disappointed my parents by becoming a standup comedian. That's not actually necessarily the case for me. Standup comedy is going pretty well. I'm a seasoned vet in embarrassing my parents in that I was doing it well before I was a standup comedian. You know what I'm saying? In my senior year, I took a class called The Psychology of Disgust. And each week we would talk about something that was, quote unquote, disgusting. And one week our topic was white supremacy. Right? And so our professors informed us that we had to buy the Klansmen to study at that week. Now, the Klansmen, for those of you who don't know, is the KKK manifesto kind of like the handbook on how to be racist. Now, there are two places that you can get the Klansmen. The first is the KKK and the second is the University of Arkansas. Now, here is the problem. The KKK's version was a little bit cheaper. Have you ever been so broke? You find yourself questioning your racial morals? No. So I emailed the University of Arkansas and I was like, Hey, I'm a broke college student. I can't afford this. Would you be able to send it to me for free? And they responded. The lady was really nice. She was like, No, I'm sorry. The proceeds from this go to our history and classics department. You would have to pay for it. So I emailed the KKK. I feel like you guys are having a little bit of trouble trusting me. Do you guys want to hear that email? I said, Dear KKK, H.R. Department. My name is Abigail and I'm a nice white woman from the University of Arkansas. I've considered dabbling in white supremacy, but have very little money because of Obama. Would you kindly send me a copy of The Klansmen free of charge Yours, Abigail. And a few weeks later, I got a response. Is said: Dearest Abigail, it is so nice to see young women such as yourself proactively engaging with their heritage. Attached you will find a full copy of The Klansmen free of charge yours, the KKK. And that is the story of the time I was so broke that I scam the KKK out of $32. I did move to New York City around this time last year actually to pursue standup comedy full time. So happy to be there. Yes. Thank you so much. I love living in New York City. I love doing this. I love traveling and making people laugh for a living. But moving out of my house was so painful. I had grown so close to my parents over the course of the pandemic. My mom dropped me off at the airport. I was a mess. I was sobbing. I was like, Ama, I'm going to miss you so much. And she, without missing a beat, looks me straight in the eye and says, Abby, will you please stop crying at the airport? People are going to think we're human trafficking you. [00:39:03][308.2]
Abby Govindan: [00:39:05] You guys in a great audience. Thank you so much. Keep it going. [00:39:07][2.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:39:18] Abby Govindan everybody, here on Live Wire! That was Abby Govindan right here on Live Wire. You can follow Abby along with her many, many other followers over on Instagram at Abby Govindan or on Twitter at AbbyGOV. And you can find out more information about her standup show, How to embarrass your immigrant parents over on those places as well. I'm Luke Burbank. Here with Elena Passarello. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, our musical guest, Reckless Son. We'll talk about what it's like performing to incarcerated folks in prisons all over the country. Plus, we're going to hear a song from him in a moment right after this quick break. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Okay, before we get our musical guest dialed up a little preview of next week's show, we are going to be talking to Michelle Zauner. You may know Michelle Zauner as the musician Japanese Breakfast, of course. She also released a very highly acclaimed memoir called Crying in H. Mart, which talks about food and her late mother and how she and her mother connected over cooking. Then we're going to get some standup from the very funny Sean Patton about the perils of air travel and also his personal campaign to normalize public flatulence. And then we're going to hear some music from one of my very favorite folks out there right now. Kurt Vile is going to be checking in. And as always, we're going be looking to get your answer to our listener question. Elena. What are we asking the listeners for next week's show? [00:42:01][163.0]
Elena Passarello: [00:42:01] We want to know, what would you like to normalize? So what practice, behavior, hobby. [00:42:07][5.9]
Luke Burbank: [00:42:08] All right. If you have an answer to that question, what would you like to normalize? Hit us up on Twitter or Facebook. We're at Live Wire Radio. This is Live Wire from PRX. Our musical guest this week has performed over 150 concerts in jails and prisons across the country from Utah to Rikers Island. He's turned those experiences into a one man show titled Reckless Son, featuring a collection of music and monologues painting vivid pictures of the people that he's met and the stories he's heard from inside those facilities. His self-titled debut album comes out in June. Let's welcome Reckless Son to Live Wire. Welcome to the show. [00:42:50][41.4]
Reckless Son: [00:42:50] Thank you very much. [00:42:51][0.6]
Luke Burbank: [00:42:52] We're happy to have you here. I've been following your journey online and I find it totally fascinating. I kind of wanted to start at the beginning, like, what was the moment that you you sort of had the idea, hey, maybe I should go and actually play for incarcerated folks. [00:43:04][12.4]
Reckless Son: [00:43:05] At the time, when I played my first concert in a jail, which was in 2016. I was working on music for a documentary film about teenagers that were struggling with substance use and special recovery high schools that were created in order to support them. And while I was working on that film, I saw a video on Facebook of men inside of a heroin recovery program in a county jail in Virginia singing. And it occurred to me that they might appreciate or relate to some of the music that I was writing. And very quickly, a concert got arranged for me at what's called the Sharp Unit at the Sheriff's Heroin Addiction Recovery Program in the Albany County Jail, which is, you know, in the capital region, New York. And I just went up and played. [00:43:56][50.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:43:57] And what was that like right before you strike your first chord on the guitar as you're looking around in this room of of folks that are incarcerated? Like what's going through your mind? Is your heart racing. [00:44:06][9.6]
Reckless Son: [00:44:08] It's racing a little bit right now, Luke. Well, you know, in all seriousness, though. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Without a doubt. [00:44:21][13.6]
Luke Burbank: [00:44:22] But then, you know, you're now in an area where, again, people are being incarcerated, they are going through whatever they're going through. And now you very earnestly with this instrument are going to like, speak your story to them. How did they take it? [00:44:36][14.0]
Reckless Son: [00:44:37] You know, the way it went over surprised everybody. I think it surprised them. It surprised me. I think there was there was a huge amount of skepticism. You know, when they saw me walk in with a guitar and was kind of like, what is what was this guy about? What's, what's he here for? I think the sheriff was really surprised know as far as how it went over. But something I didn't think about when I first went in to do it was that when you walk in to to provide a service, a volunteer service at a correctional facility, you automatically gain a little bit of credibility with those folks because they understand to some degree that you that you've taken time to come in and give it to them. As my experience would would lead me to believe that, you know, people who are incarcerated have a tendency to feel unseen or neglected or out of sight and out of mind. And so I think that right off the bat, before I played my first song, there was some degree of appreciation that existed just because I was willing to come and spend time with them. [00:45:40][63.6]
Luke Burbank: [00:45:41] And I understand that you've actually visited a number of facilities here in Oregon since you've been here. [00:45:45][4.0]
Reckless Son: [00:45:46] Three? [00:45:46][0.0]
Luke Burbank: [00:45:46] Yeah. How long have you been here? [00:45:48][1.3]
Reckless Son: [00:45:49] How long we've been here? Tuesday. So. Yeah. Yeah, So. [00:45:51][2.3]
Luke Burbank: [00:45:51] So like, you're averaging one prison a day. [00:45:53][2.1]
Reckless Son: [00:45:55] One and a half. I visited OSP Oregon State Penitentiary yesterday morning, and one of the most remarkable things I've seen in my whole life is that in that facility, they have a Japanese healing garden set up with a koi pond, if you can believe it. We were given a tour by a man named Randy who had done like 33 years in solitary confinement on death row. And the thing that was so striking about it, I mean, it was a lot to take in, you know, in general. But there's probably no place more appropriate for a Japanese healing garden to be than a maximum security prison. But at the same time, that's probably the least likely place you'd ever think to find one. And so if I were going to make a comment about the carceral system, that would be it. As far as just sort of like, are we intending for people to heal while they're in there? But the idea that it was so unlikely for that to be there but that there was no other place that it that it should be, you know, really, really, really struck me. [00:47:00][65.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:47:01] Do you ever find yourself playing a gig for the non incarcerated thinking, I wish I was at Rikers? Like, man, this coffee, these people are stiffs? [00:47:12][10.3]
Reckless Son: [00:47:13] Well, I will say that I do tend to be more comfortable playing for the incarcerated than I do for a for a civilian audience. [00:47:23][9.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:47:24] Well, speaking of which, what song are we going to hear? [00:47:25][1.4]
Reckless Son: [00:47:26] It's a song called The Wisdom of a Child. I wrote it for my little brother James. [00:47:29][3.1]
Luke Burbank: [00:47:31] This is Reckless Son on Live Wire. [00:47:32][1.6]
Reckless Son: [00:47:44] On death. But we waited for the line. Our clothes will warm Diane's brain fog into the night. And ranching ways of navigation following the star. Brother, I can't tell you where you're going. But I know just where you are. Every time I close my eyes. Sinking to sleep. Stare across the sky. I hear the sound of your heartbeat. See the man that you become. Following the dream, dream dream. Skate across the ocean like a figure on the ice. The waves will come crashing down like Zongo, and it's now faith in destinations, be they. Near Alpha Brother, I can tell you ain't going. But I know just who you are. I watched you as grown up to humble in your writing. Gracious in a full. You'll see the world. You'll see it all. The moment you become the service of a call, just listen for your call. Oh. When the night begins. Before the day. Soon you'll ask what makes this work this way? Sad. The silence. If you start to bring you the voice will. Patiently. The Lord is waiting for you and me. A thousand miles of ocean leads into the sea and will trace the state of grace. A map from up above this brother. I can tell that way. And going. You all bring in light and bring in the. So my father was five miles away with the wisdom of a child joyously at play. I'll find you as you find your way to the man that you become. And you are today. All. [00:51:11][206.8]
Luke Burbank: [00:51:25] That was reckless, son. Right here on Live Wire. His self-titled EP is out in June. That's going to do it for this episode of Live Wire. Big thanks to our guests, Adam Gopnik, Abby Govindan, and Reckless Son. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. [00:51:47][21.6]
Elena Passarello: [00:51:48] Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester, our marketing and production manager is Paige Thomas. Our production fellow is Tanvi Kumar and Yasamin Mehdian is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer and Our House Sound is by D. Neil Blake. [00:52:14][25.7]
Luke Burbank: [00:52:15] 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 member Katrina Penaflor of Portland, Oregon, for more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast. Head on over to Live Wire Radio dot org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week. [00:52:40][25.4]
[00:52:56] PRX. [00:52:56][0.0]
[3008.4]enenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank member Katrina Penaflor of Portland, Oregon, for more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast. Head on over to Live Wire Radio dot org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week. [00:52:40][25.4]
[00:52:56] PRX. [00:52:56][0.0]
[3008.4]
