Episode 627
with Ian Karmel & Dr. Alisa Karmel, Zainab Johnson, and Meklit
Comedian and writer Ian Karmel pairs up with his sister Dr. Alisa Karmel to unpack the book they co-authored T-Shirt Swim Club, about growing up fat in a world made for thin people; stand-up comedian Zainab Johnson riffs on being one of 13 children; and Ethio-jazz artist Meklit performs the title track off her new EP "Ethio Blue." Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello talk sibling rivalry.
Ian Karmel & Dr. Alisa Karmel
Comedian, Writer, & Hometown Hero
Ian Karmel is an Emmy award winning LA-based stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. Ian was head writer for The Late Late Show with James Corden, and was one of the founding writers in the show's 2015 re-creation. His stand-up has been featured on Conan, The Late Late Show, Comedy Central, Netflix's The Comedy Line Up, and as Just for Laughs New Face in 2013. His debut comedy album, 9.2 on Pitchfork, was released in 2015. Ian hosts the weekly podcast All Fantasy Everything, where funny people and experts come together to fantasy draft pop culture. Ian played an instrumental role in Portland's comedy renaissance and was voted Portland's Funniest Person in their inaugural contest. His debut memoir, T-Shirt Swim Club, co-written with his sister Alisa Karmel, explore the daily humiliations of being fat and why it’s so hard to talk about something so visible. Kirkus calls it “a comic and philosophical exploration suffused with hard-won wisdom and charming wit.” Website • Instagram
Alisa Karmel holds a doctorate in psychology and two masters, one of clinical psychology the other of and nutrition. She provides counseling for weight-centric concerns including issues related to fatness, obesity, and being overweight, such as body acceptance; health behavior improvement; and depression, anxiety, trauma, and other mood disorders. Website • Instagram
Zainab Johnson
Comedian Behind "Hijabs Off"
Zainab Johnson is a stand-up comedian, actress, and writer. Zainab’s comedy is based on her unique point-of-view, which was shaped growing up in Harlem as one of thirteen siblings in a black Muslim family. After getting a degree in Education and Math and taking a job as a teacher, she quickly learned that she had a different calling. Zainab is currently a series regular on the Amazon Original hit series titled UPLOAD from Greg Daniels, she is one of the hosts for Netflix's show 100 HUMANS, and starred as Dr. Hanniel in the brilliantly written web series Avant-Guardians. She made her first late night stand up appearance on NBC's LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS, and had breakout appearances on HBO’s ALL DEF COMEDY, NBC’s LAST COMIC STANDING, and has performed at the JFL Comedy Festival in Montreal first as a "New Face of Comedy", then as one of "Variety's Top 10 Comics to Watch", and most recently on the longest running JFL show Just For The Culture. Her first hourlong special, Hijabs Off, is now available to stream on Amazon. Website • Instagram
Meklit
Ethio-American Singer & Composer
Meklit Hadero, an Ethio-American vocalist, mixes the sounds of East Africa and the Bay Area so smoothly Silicon Valley should use her process to make a super blender. Her latest album When the People Move, the Music Moves Too was called “...compelling and wholly her own” by Afropop. A singer-songwriter with a love of collaboration, she’s also a TED Senior Fellow whose talk “The Unexpected Beauty of Everyday Sounds” has been viewed over 1.2 million times. Meklit is also the host of the podcast Movement, where she tells stories of global migration through music. Get ready to get down with Meklit.Website • Twitter • Instagram
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Luke Burbank: This episode of Live Wire was originally recorded in March of 2024. We hope you like it. Now let's get to the show. Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It's going great. Look at you. New haircut.
Elena Passarello: This is radio. So we could describe my hair in a completely different way. Like I got a mohawk or something. What do you think?
Luke Burbank: It really works for you. Hey, are you ready to play a little Station Location Identification Examination?
Elena Passarello: Absolutely.
Luke Burbank: All right, here is the part of the show where I quiz Elena on a place in the country where Live Wire's on the radio. She's got a guess, where we're talking about. For many decades, the motto of this town's local paper masthead has been: Covers Harney County like the sagebrush.
Elena Passarello: Okay, so we're somewhere in the American West.
Luke Burbank: It's there, there's sagebrush there. It's a place that people maybe don't always think of as being kind of sagebrush country. But it's—I'll tell you this, it's relatively close to home for us.
Elena Passarello: Oh, so maybe it's somewhere in eastern Oregon.
Luke Burbank: It is in Oregon. Okay, here's the here's the giveaway. It's named after a famous Scottish poet.
Elena Passarello: Oh, well, that would be Burns.
Luke Burbank: That's right. I didn't even finish the the clue. That's exactly right. It is Burns, Oregon, where we are on KOBN.
Elena Passarello: I didn't know that Burns, Oregon was named after Robert Burns.
Luke Burbank: I barely even got "Scottish po" and you knew it was Burns, Oregon. I knew you'd know that. All right. Should we get to the show?
Elena Passarello: Let's do it.
Luke Burbank: All right. Take it away from it.
Elena Passarello: From PRX, it's Live Wire! This week, author Sloane Crosley.
Sloane Crosley: I was sent these self-help books, and I'm not trying to trash the whole genre, but it was, like, insane how much it left out the one relationship that everyone in this room has don't all have parents. You don't all have siblings. You don't all have children. You all have one friend.
Elena Passarello: And cartoonist Roz Chast.
Roz Chast: An interior decorator, told me this fact, which was that cushions are the juice of the house.
Elena Passarello: With music from Black Belt Eagle Scout and our fabulous house band, I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in from all over the country, including Burns, Oregon. We have a great show in store for you this week, and we're going to cover sort of a range of topics. We're talking about grief. We're going to talk about dreams. And of course, we've asked the Live Wire listeners a question as we like to do. We asked: what's something you dream about a surprising amount? And, we're going to hear the responses to that question coming up in a moment. First, though, it's time for the best news we heard all week. This is our little reminder at the top of the show that there is some good news happening out there in the world. You just got to look for it, Elena. What is the best news that you've heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Well, the bad news is that I am talking about sports again, which my own father has commented on. It's a slippery slope for me. Tony P. was like, oh, you did a basketball story. What a risk.
Luke Burbank: I thought that was a great topic for you. I like your you bring fresh eyes to the whole concept of sports Elena, and I dig that.
Elena Passarello: Well, did you know Luke Burbank that before the baseball season starts, all of the baseball teams go to warm places and they train, and it's in the springtime, so it's called spring training. Did you know about this?
Luke Burbank: It's ringing some bells. This is ringing the bell.
Elena Passarello: Also, when they go do spring training, they bring a couple dozen minor league umpires to referee or to call these major league teams when they're doing the spring training games. It's a sort of rite of passage, and it's also a prerequisite to get called up to the big show. If you're an umpire, to get invited to be a part of this crew at spring training, and this year, one of the 24 minor league umpires that is headed to spring training is 47 year old Jen Powell. She has proven herself to be a superstar in the umpire world. Over the past eight years. She's risen to prominence with just an incredible momentum, and she is at the top of her field right now. She's called a championship. She's the class triple A crew chief, which is the most senior rank, I guess, in her league. She's training umpires. So she's really, really, like, on her way. And this momentum is making people speculate that she might become the first woman in history to call a regular season MLB game. She's basically just one step away from, breaking that glass ceiling.
Luke Burbank: About dang time.
Elena Passarello: Women are already officiating in the NBA and the NFL, both the WNBA and the NBA. I guess you could call.
Luke Burbank: It that, would actually be a great flex. Let's start calling it the NBA as well since we have to call it the WNBA.
Elena Passarello: Done. Yeah, that is done and done. And actually two women may have been at these spring training events before, but just decades apart from each other. A woman in the 80s and a woman in the early 2000s about 25 years ago, both of whom have been texting accolades to Jen Powell. People are like, stopping her, like, while she's, like, going on and off the field. She's developing her own fandom. She's intensely modest as a person. But I am so excited that Major League Baseball has found an incredible candidate to call all those touchdowns and double dribble slam dunks and hat tricks.
Luke Burbank: Welcome to hopefully. Anyway, Jen Powell to the MLB. Hey, I have a story that I saw out of the Bronx New York, the Boogie Down Bronx which I was just so kind of tickled by this story now, in my capacity as a, sort of micro celebrity of the local media scene, I have been involved in various charity fundraisers, and what I've noticed about helping out with fundraisers is that there's a whole industry in separating very wealthy people from some amount of their money so as to help support causes that need supporting. But the thing is that it seems like a lot of times that support comes with a string, which is could you also, name the building after me or somebody in my family or someone who, you know, I want to honor, like.
Elena Passarello: Let my son go to school here and all of his sons and his sons and his sons, there.
Luke Burbank: Seems to be a certain, I don't know, quid pro quo in this world. And, so when I saw that the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx had received the largest ever private donation to a medical school of $1 billion from somebody named Ruth Guardsman, I assumed that they would be changing the name to the Ruth Guardsman College of Medicine, but they are in fact not because Ruth Goddess Man, who has a long association with the school. She actually joined their Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center in the 1960s when she was working with children with learning disabilities. She has donated $1 billion to this medical school so that no one there has to pay tuition for the foreseeable future, because of course, medical school tuition is is an unbelievable financial pressure on people. Well, this is at least at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine not going to be the case. They got all of the students together for an emergency meeting. And there are these great photos of these med students finding out that someone was donating $1 billion to the school, and that for the incoming folks, they would have no tuition for over the course of the year for the. The folks who are about to graduate. This is retroactive for back one year, so their last year is covered. And then to the young people out there who are not even of medical school age, they will be able to go here at no cost. And the thing that is to me, so charming about this is that there are no strings attached to this. I love the quote from one of the professors, who said, I suspect we're going to need a much bigger admissions committee, which is the academic version of you're going to need a bigger boat. Yep.
Elena Passarello: A bigger application reading boat that's going to change medicine. Don't you think that's going to make a big difference?
Luke Burbank: Yeah. So, that is absolutely the best news that I heard this week. You. All right. Let's welcome our first guest on over to the program. She is the author of the novels Cult Classic as well as the class plus three essay collections, including I Was Told There'd Be Cake. And How did you Get This Number? Her latest book, Grief Is for people, explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of a very close friend. Booklist calls it a searching, impassioned, cathartic, and loving elegy and just a heads up for folks. This interview does address the topic of suicide, so take care when listening to our conversation with Sloane Crosley. This was recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. Hello, Sloane. Welcome back to the show. Hi.
Sloane Crosley: Thank you for having me. I'm completely delighted to be here.
Luke Burbank: This book is really, really incredible. I was telling you backstage that I sat down with the intention of, of kind of reading a little bit of it so that I could stay, you know, up on my assignments. And I just read the whole thing.
Sloane Crosley: Who's giving you these assignments?
Luke Burbank: The producers.
Sloane Crosley: Aye.
Luke Burbank: They insist they read the books before interviewing the authors.
Sloane Crosley: What a drag.
Luke Burbank: I know, right? Serious buzzkill. But I, I found the book just so engrossing. And, I mean, it is about grief. It's about the loss of your very dear friend. But it's also a real page turner, because it sort of has you trying to solve a mystery around a burglary in your apartment. Can you kind of talk about what happened there?
Sloane Crosley: Yeah, well, the lesson of the story is going to be don't mess with anyone who works freelance a tremendous amount of time to hunt you down. And basically, I was burglarized in, 2019. I left the house for one hour. Came back. There were muddy footprints on my bed, a couple of smashed little cabinets, and all my jewelry was gone. Anything? I had been left by my grandmother. Anything she had been left. Anything I would leave somebody gone, gone, gone. And it's maybe worth noting that. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm not someone I wouldn't target me. It just sort of happened. And as I was trying to solve this, I was, of course, consulting my best friend who I used to work with, at random House, who was my boss for 20 years when I worked in book publishing. And then we had dinner in, late July. And it's funny, because he the last words he ever said to me, he was going to bomb us out right away, the last words he ever said to me, when I was upset about the jewelry, he hugged me and he said, well, you know, if it helps, you can't take it with you when you go home. And then three days later, he died by suicide. [crowd aw's] I'm sorry I told you. Also, he's a wildly funny person. I don't know, but.
Luke Burbank: The book's not called comedy is for people, okay? It's called Grief is for People. So if I have the order of events right in the book, you come back to your apartment and you find it sort of torn apart. You call the police first, but then your friend Russell is pretty much the next person you call. [Sloane Crosley: Yes.] Why? Why you call him in that moment.
Sloane Crosley: I think, you know, there is this I and I, I'm trying not to go on a tangent that I don't even have the authority to to discuss. Really? But do you know what the shmoo is? Okay. It's like some of it. Somebody here knows. It was like an old cartoon, I think in the maybe in the 40s or the 50s. And it was this animal that was an everything animal. It could be your pet, you could eat it. You could, you know, it's companionship. It would defend you like it was all these things. And Russell's friendship with me and my friendship with him was like that, where, like, he was the person I would call, you know, he's just sort of that person. And what was weird to your point is that when I called him, he seemed really sort of unmoored, not by the missing jewelry, but by the shell of that have been smashed that we brought together. And it seemed like this weird avoidant upset.
Luke Burbank: Because he was a, he loved like antiquing and things. And so he had where the—
Sloane Crosley: The only gay man in America that loves antiquing
Luke Burbank: Yes, he's blazing a real trail—
Sloane Crosley: Really. Truly.
Luke Burbank: With the antiquing for the gays. So he had you know, kind of talked you into buying this spice kind of drawer that you had the jewelry in. And you said in that moment he was focusing on the piece of furniture. You think because the jewelry was too hard for it, maybe even what was going on at that point for him internally.
Sloane Crosley: I think so too. But that's the I mean, it's difference. People, people, people do this. But then, yeah, after he dies, I got sort of re-energized to find some of the jewelry, which obviously is like impossible. There's no clues.
Luke Burbank: I actually want to I want to talk about the hunt for the jewelry after this short break, because it involves you doing some, some real sleuthing. And also it it brings me to a topic of your previous experience on eBay, which I was frankly somewhat shocked to read about. So we're going to talk about that in a moment. How about that for a teaser, folks? It's Live Wire. We're talking to Sloane Crosley. Her book is Grief Is for People. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We are at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, talking to Sloane Crosley about her latest book, Grief is for People. The book is about the loss of your dear friend Russell, kind of intertwined with, this burglary that happened in your apartment, which, you know, throughout the book, it becomes pretty clear that this jewelry that's been stolen from, by the way, passed down to you by a grandmother that you point out was a bad person.
Sloane Crosley: Oh, yeah. I said, the line is, I've never met anyone who misses her.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Sloane Crosley: Maybe they're out there, but I just haven't met them.
Luke Burbank: So, like, despite the provenance of the jewelry that was stolen, or at least some of it, it becomes, it almost sounds like it takes on a sort of extra importance to you, because it's clearly standing in for this other grief that you're trying to process, which is the suicide of your dear friend. So you said about to try to get the stuff back, and at one point you're going on like Craigslist and eBay and all these places. And you mentioned in the book that your only experience with selling something on eBay was selling a signed copy of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown that you and you basically nicked at your work. It's what? Well, how much you get for something like that? What?
Sloane Crosley: So basically. So Russell used to always encouraged us. I work for vintage books. He hired me, sort of almost made me work there, which is sort of sweet. Turned out to be a great choice, but, you know, it's a very, well, highfalutin, publishing house. It's the paperback arm of Chernoff. And sometimes he would encourage us to go and get our book signed of an author with signing stock. So I have books because he would encourage us to do this. You know, that I've. I like signed things of Murakami that are first edition Philip Roth, all this stuff. But I thought he was encouraging it for like, everything. So I was like, well, Dan Brown's on another floor. I'll just go get him to sign this copy of The Da Vinci Code. Which is not to say if you guys love The Da Vinci Code. I've never read it, so I can't trash it. I don't know, but the point is, is I keep trying to unload it because I just, I don't know, I didn't like the spine. I didn't like the kind of its jib. Really? Yeah. This isn't even about the contents.
Luke Burbank: Isn't it a bunch of gears? Or clocks or it's a code or something.
Sloane Crosley: It's red and it's got, like, an up close of you know Leo, I don't know. And so every time I try to, you know, discarded it, I realize it was signed and I'd put it back, and then finally I sold it, and it took forever. Nobody wanted it. Sorry. Dan Brown, I'm sure you're listening.
Luke Burbank: He's underwriting the program, and—
Sloane Crosley: Well, he's getting name dropped an awful lot.
Luke Burbank: Was underwriting the program, actually.
Sloane Crosley: But so that so I feel like when I try to find some of the jewelry, I had this, like, thought that, you know, some of this stuff is pretty expensive and maybe it won't go that fast when I tried to find it.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, because you did find it eventually.
Sloane Crosley: I found some of it, and I, I told you the lesson of this story was do not mess with anyone who works freelance. That's what I said.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, exactly. I don't want to give that part away.
Sloane Crosley: I did find some stuff.
Luke Burbank: You know, something, that you write about in the book or you mentioned is an Italian author saying something to the effect of. Writing about your grief is not going to fix it for you.
Sloane Crosley: Natalia Ginzburg
Luke Burbank: And I'm paraphrasing there. But to that effect. What was it like for you to write this, and how did that affect? For better or for worse, the grief that you still feel?
Sloane Crosley: This is a very good question. In a way, it's like the question. I feel like there's this sense of everyone assumes catharsis. You must feel so much better. And I always feel like that is for emails that are ideally unsent. As well as, you know, diary entries. I just feel like the idea, I think even with my humor writing and even with the novels, my experience of it is that you sort of take a sliver of yourself and you offer it up and it gets like spun out in the centrifuge of readers forever. So you actually sort of are sacrificing a piece of you that never gets over it. So I'm very upset. Yeah. But I also feel like I can have both. It being doesn't make the book pointless because I didn't get over it.
Luke Burbank: Well, I mean, I think this is a really incredible book, and it had me thinking about grief. You describe your grief in a way a lot of us have felt and maybe not had words for [Sloane Crosley: Thank you.] sometimes. And I was wondering, could you actually read a little passage from the book?
Sloane Crosley: Oh, you really, you picked a bummer. Okay, cool.
Luke Burbank: I just want to say—
Sloane Crosley: It is a funny book.
Luke Burbank: The book is very, very readable. It's very funny. I—the reason that this, this section spoke to me is because you talk about suicide and, and your thoughts on it as a related to your friend in a way that I hadn't really thought about. [Sloane: Thank you.] And also about the b******* that people say to people who are grieving.
Sloane Crosley: Oh yeah.
Luke Burbank: That is unhelpful. You know, so I think it encapsulates kind of a lot.
Sloane Crosley: Okay. Thank you.
Sloane Crosley: When you die by suicide, you die alone. With few exceptions, you die alone. I don't think people talk about this enough when they talk about suicide. If they talk about it at all. The ending of one's life is the thing. Taking attendance seems like splitting hairs. But I cannot get over it. My friend was alone when he was murdered. I repeat it out loud, opting for a purposefully obscured angle on the story and then scanning for errors. The facts check out. My friend was alone when he was murdered. I don't quite have the ego to think I could have stopped a cogent 52 year old man with no history of depression or therapy, and no prior attempts at self-harm from taking his own life. Still, there are those who will, unsolicited, tell me that I shouldn't blame myself. These people are idiots, or else they are projecting their own losses and are also idiots. I am angry. It's too soon to be this angry. I know the stages of grief are not linear, nor are they solid enough to be hidden under shells and split around. But something is off. Russell and I did not share children a mortgage or business. But then I realize this anger is a false positive. I'm not angry at Russell. I am angry at everyone. Except for Russell. A guy on a city bike rounds a corner and stops so close he hits my wrist. When he won't apologize, I run after him, suggesting he go for his mother. My super, who tends to make conversation by scolding people, knocks on my door to lecture me about a package I've left languishing on the lobby radiator for a day, instead of thanking him and moving on. I snap at him. This panic about everyone's belongings is a little late, don't you think? Don't take the burglary out on me, I tell him. Even though I am at present taking Russell's death out on him later, I will feel great shame about this interaction. I start shutting out friends with some I can't stand to see my pain reflected in their eyes. There are craters in their timelines. Ancient holes in the shape of someone gone too soon. But I don't want to be around more entrenched versions of myself. I barely want to be around this version. Others knew Russell the same way I did and worked with him too. Spent those summers on his porch too. But we have all committed the sin of not being able to bring him back. Still others offer me pat wisdom that sounds as if it's been vetted by general counsel. I can tell I'm being handled. They assure me I won't feel like this forever. Oh, yeah. Everyone's a psychic when you're sad. With more casual connections. I've always held the watering can of our two person garden and now I can just put it down. If all it takes is one unanswered text to kill the friendship, then that's all it takes. When a newer friend hears the news second hand, she calls. But there's a strange racket in the background. She's bottling vinegar. Lots of vinegar. Unholy amounts of vinegar. I comment on the cacophony of glass, hoping that she will take the hint. Is this the best soundtrack for the story of a hanging? But the noise shows no sign of abating. She's multitasking a condolence call. I can't do this, I say, and hang up on her.
Luke Burbank: That's Sloane Crosley reading from Grief is for People. The title of the book, Grief ss for People. When I first picked up, I didn't really know what that meant. And then in the book, it becomes clear that what you are learning is that grief is for when we lose people. It's not for when we lose stuff. You're sad about your jewelry, grieving about your friend. Was that something that you had given any thought to before these two things came into your your life?
Sloane Crosley: The title is sort of intentionally blunt, and in a way I don't think it's true. It's woven in so that like obviously it's made clear hopefully several times in the book that I'm not conflating the severity of a burglary with the severity of my friend's suicide or anyone's suicide. But he had this thing for objects. He loved them. I talk about how it's so much of his spirit and his sort of it. Like he had these, like, annexes of things, like it wasn't. He would buy some, like, heinous flamingo shaped ashtray from the flea market, and it just wasn't enough for you to compliment it. You had to, like, agree how great it was. Or he'd be like, give it back. You don't get to hold it. Yeah. Like, okay, I don't know. I we're in an office. I just like, but you know, he's just sort of this person who just, like, love the past. Love books, lives so much in the past, which is, I think, in part of what happened to him. I think the world changed a lot around him. And it's dangerous for someone with that level of nostalgia for it. But yeah, I think it's I think it's for a lot of the book is about finding your place as the friend who's experienced a loss because so much is, you know, I was sent these self-help books and I'm not trying to trash the whole genre, but it was like insane how much it left out the one relationship that everyone in this room has. You don't all have parents. You don't all have siblings. You don't all have children. You all have one friend. I hope it's a lot about, like, finding my place in, like, who is grief for?
Luke Burbank: I'm curious, though. You describe your friend Russell. We're talking to Sloane Crosley, by the way, about her book, Grief is for People. You describe him as having this kind of interesting personality where he didn't really say, I love you to you. He wasn't directly effusive to you. Or if you you dedicated a previous book to him, and he was kind of like, there's all the other people you should have dedicated to. But then you heard that he went around the office the next day showing everyone the dedication, like he had that kind of personality.
Sloane Crosley: Yeah, like a weasel.
Luke Burbank: Like a weasel. I believe in the DSM five calls it a weasel disorder. I mean, not to ask you to speculate, but I mean, my God, how would that guy feel about the fact that there's a roomful of people in Portland, Oregon, and untold other radio listeners hearing about him, thinking about him in this moment?
Sloane Crosley: Well. I think his first instinct would again be to be like, isn't there something better to write about? Because he I mean, this is someone and part of that is him teasing me. Part of that is humility. And then I think a bigger part than I realized clearly is about this sort of propensity towards self erasure. Obviously, it's one thing to not like attention on your birthday because I don't know your signs of cancer, and it's a different thing to do it because you don't want to be seen.
Luke Burbank: What's the the line in the book that someone else is writing that said, you can't tear out a page from your life, but you can burn the whole book.
Sloane Crosley: Yeah. George sand.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Sloane Crosley: Yeah. And he burned the whole book. He burned the entire book. And I think the thing is, is that, he would probably be proud of me. He likes. He wanted me to do. Well, I'm telling you, we had this relationship that was almost Father Daughtery. Where it's like, as long as, you know, the book does. Well, I think he would have this, like, messed up sense of himself. Is like, honestly, this is really dark, but, like, grist for the mill or something like that, that it's good that I made the story out of this and not understanding. But part of the struggle of the book is like trying to almost explain to him in absentia how wrong he was. I mean, I have a line in it. This is gross. I'm quoting myself, but I have a line in it where I say something like, how hard it is to love someone who is just so wrong and who will never be right again. Yeah. You know.
Luke Burbank: Well, I have to say, it is an incredibly well-written book. Thank you. So thanks for writing. Thanks for sharing your friend Russell with us. Thank you. Sloane Crosley, everyone right here on Live Wire. That was Sloane Crosley, right here on Live Wire. Her new book, Grief Is for people, is available right now. This is Live Wire. As we deal each week, we we've asked our listeners a question in honor of a Roz Chast book. You're going to hear about that coming up in a moment. We have asked the listeners: what's something you dream about a surprising amount? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are you seeing?
Elena Passarello: Okay, here's one from Karen. Karen says, I have recurring nightmares where I'm either on a cruise ship or I'm in The Hunger Games, or it's a combination of both.
Luke Burbank: I believe that is accurate to some of the cruise ship situations we've heard about over the last few years.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, somebody volunteers as tribute and then before you know it, they're on the the sun deck.
Luke Burbank: It's all right. What's something else one of our listeners is dreaming about? Maybe a little too much.
Elena Passarello: Okay. Julie says I dream about my house. It's always either something smells weird and I spend the whole dream trying to find it, but never do. Or it's that all the walls are melting.
Luke Burbank: Oh, stressful. Structurally, I think the walls dissolving is a is it more terrifying thing, but it's also not great having a mystery smell in your house.
Elena Passarello: Oh no, I'm dealing with that right now involving my walls. And I bought a blacklight. Don't ever do this. Somebody said if you buy a blacklight, you can find, like a pet smell. Maybe if I could offer one piece of advice to all of our listeners, never buy a blacklight.
Luke Burbank: No good comes from that.
Elena Passarello: No good. The world is full of schmutz, I guess is just a way to think about it.
Luke Burbank: Okay, one more dreamscape that our listeners are living in they want to tell us about.
Elena Passarello: Oh, there's so many good ones. This one from Debbie is terrifying. I'm pretty insecure about my eyebrows, Debbie says. And the dream I have a lot is that I wake up and my eyebrow hairs are so long they touch the ground and every time I try to cut them, they grow back faster and with a vengeance. [Luke: Oh wow.] What would the dream analysis books say about that?
Luke Burbank: I promise you, there is one though, like I if you Google that, I bet you there's bunch of people having that dream and someone thinks they know what it means.
Elena Passarello: I bet it has something to do with like, aging. Like, you know, if your teeth fall out, you're afraid of change. But I bet if your eyebrows are growing really long and they're and they're going fast and fast, it's like, maybe it's not aging, but just time passing.
Luke Burbank: Or you're turning into, 60 minutes commentator Andy Rooney. I have long held the theory that sort of good dreams, like you in the lottery or whatever, are kind of a bummer. And bad dreams, you know, like, you, you, you know, lost someone or something's going wrong are kind of awesome. Because when you wake up from a bad dream, your thought is, oh, you.
Elena Passarello: Your life is better.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. When you wake up from a good dream, you're like, oh, for real.
Elena Passarello: That's why I only dream about shapes.
Luke Burbank: That there are no bad dreams. When you dream about shapes just.
Elena Passarello: Like circles of rectangles.
Luke Burbank: You just wake up and you're like that. That was a rhombus, wasn't it? Oh, that's right, on with your day. Thank you. To everyone who responded to our listener question this week. Speaking of dreams, let's welcome our next guest over. She's published more than a thousand cartoons in The New Yorker, and has written or illustrated more than a dozen books, including the number one New York Times bestseller, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Her latest book is I Must Be Dreaming, and it explores the surreal nighttime world inside her mind, and it also seeks to untangle one of our most enduring human mysteries, which would be dreams. This is Roz Chast, who joined us on stage at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. Hello, Roz. Welcome to the program.
Roz Chast: Hello.
Luke Burbank: This book is so interesting. I mean, it's funny, but it's also it's informative and it's something that everybody typically has, which are dreams. And everyone is told no one cares about your dreams. That's the whole premise. And here we are. We're going to spend 20 minutes on national radio and with a captive audience talking about your dreams. Why did you inflict this on people Roz Chast?
Roz Chast: Well, well, here's the thing. Everybody always says, like, the two things that you're really not supposed to talk about are like your dreams and your aches and pains. But I actually find all those things, like, more interesting than most other things. It's like, tell me you like what's going on with you medically? Like, I want to know, like, you know, tell me your symptoms since, like like I like that. I'd rather hear about that then. Like your kids, your goals. You know, there's there's there's like, so much that people talk about that I find so incredibly boring. Much more boring than dreams or, like, aches and pains. You know.
Luke Burbank: I was wondering, Roz, could you just read your your sort of five, kind of bullet points or sentences about why dreaming is so great? I just feel like it kind of sets up the book really well. And your your love of of dreaming.
Roz Chast: Okay, okay. This is why dreaming is so great.
Roz Chast: One it's free entertainment. Two you don't need special clothes or equipment. Three everybody can do it. You don't need to be attractive, rich, smart, popular, healthy or anything. Four. There are no experts. Yes, there are people on the internet who are happy to tell you how to optimize your dreams. What a stupid idea. The whole point of dreams is to see where they take you. And five, they are a nightly reminder of the mystery of consciousness. I've deliberately kept REM cycles in the biomechanics of sleep out of this book because it's interesting to me, but it's not all that interesting, right?
Luke Burbank: You're not trying to, like, illustrate the definitive tome on the science of sleep. You're just telling us about the time that you met Wallace Shawn in a dream.
Roz Chast: Yes, yes. And I and, we were walking along this street.
Luke Burbank: And it's happening.
Roz Chast: And, and and I, I learned, like, this very interesting fact about broccoli that, that it sort of grew out of the ground like mushrooms.
Luke Burbank: Let's run through some of the categories of dreams that you've had that you feature in the book, and maybe you can expand on them a little bit. So you start with recurring dreams. Yes. You have one called New York has an unusual neighborhood. What happens in that?
Roz Chast: Yes. Oh, that's like you kind of wandering around and like, you're in midtown and then suddenly there's a beach, and you didn't know it was there. And it doesn't even. It doesn't make sense because you're in Midtown, but still, there's a beach. Or like, suddenly you're walking along and there's like, a desert, and it's like the Sahara desert. And like, I had this one that little shells, but like the the should this couple of the shells were chipped. So that was like, you know, they were like a little bit cheesy, you know, a little bit like, not such great shells. But I, but I think that this really has to do. It's a, it's a kind of version of the, of the very typical New York dream of like, my apartment has rooms I didn't know about. And, and I think it's because, you know, space is so tight that it's like, I didn't know this was a two bedroom apartment, right? Yeah. This is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life.
Luke Burbank: I have a washer and dryer in the unit? I don't have to go to the scary basement.
Roz Chast: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: What about this one? Seems like it's right in the name, but I still would like to hear more about it. Your recurring dream called pregnant and old.
Roz Chast: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Believe me, that is not a happy dream. Is like it is certain. Even in my dreams. I know this should not be happening. This is really not. This will not end well.
Luke Burbank: You also mentioned, in your recurring dreams, an oldie but goodie. They think we've all had teeth falling out.
Roz Chast: Oh, yeah.
Luke Burbank: I was like, top five dreams.
Roz Chast: Yes, yes, teeth. Two lost dreams are extremely common and have been since, you know, Egyptian times. I mean, since people started recording dreams and trying to make sense of these strange stories.
Luke Burbank: I also want to talk about your celebrity dreams. Okay, so because I feel like you have the most New York celebrity dreams, like the celebrities that show up in your dreams are like Fran Lebowitz and Wallace Shawn was like, Ed Koch not available like this. Like a very certain kind of New York or celebrity.
Roz Chast: Yeah. No, I don't think I've ever dreamed about Ed Koch. No, probably.
Roz Chast: Of the best.
Roz Chast: Yeah, yeah.
Luke Burbank: What what happened in your your friendly with stream?
Roz Chast: Fran Lebowitz was on a she was on a book tour, actually, and, she had roller skates over her shoulder. Classic Fran Liebowitz. Right. And, and and I, I love her writing, but I find I've never met her. I find her kind of a little bit intimidating. And even in the dream, I knew that what I was saying was, like, completely stupid. I came up to her and I said, well, if you're ever in the neighborhood, why don't you give a hoot and a holler? And it's like, I don't even say that. I would never say that to anybody. But, like, somehow I found myself saying that to her. It was very embarrassing.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. We are talking to Roz Chast about her new book, I Must Be Dreaming. That actually brings up something that you mentioned in the book, which is you can remember specific phrases, you can extract actual things verbatim that you said in your dream.
Roz Chast: Not always, just on occasion. And I love when that happens because as I wrote about it in the book, I think it was Nightmare on Elm Street. There's this really terrifying scene that I loved, where the girl has a nightmare of a Freddy Krueger chasing her, and, she grabs his hat, and when she wakes up, she's holding his hat, and I saw.
Luke Burbank: And it's a fedora.
Roz Chast: Yeah, yeah. Very scary hat. Well, when I can extract a whole phrase, I feel like I've almost like I grabbed, like, Freddy Krueger hat. I got something out of the dream, like, in its entirety. And one of them that I mentioned in the book was, an interior decorator told me this fact, which was, that cushions are the juice of the house. I don't know it. Like, it's sort of. It almost makes sense. Yes. You know. Yeah, but not really.
Luke Burbank: It's it is that kind of thing. If you sort of squint hard enough, you can kind of.
Roz Chast: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Like, are they, are they the juice of the kind of art. The kind of art.
Roz Chast: Yeah. It has that ring of truth. Yeah. Like I'm not this planet, you know.
Luke Burbank: Which also is my memory of, like, you know, when you're having a dream that feels very profound in the moment. Like, it makes perfect sense to you in that moment.
Roz Chast: Oh, yeah. Definitely.
Luke Burbank: Speaking of home decor, I had I happened to read a New York Times, interview with you about your home decorating out in Connecticut, where you live. Do you really have a collection of scarves made by other cartoonists?
Roz Chast: Yes, yes I do. This was a thing in the 40s. In the 50s? In the 60s, I guess it was the swag of the day. And, cartoonists, I have, really these beautiful scarves. Anatole Carver ski and Jules Phifer and James Thurber. The to me, their art. I mean, I don't wear them. I have them framed, and they are just beautiful.
Luke Burbank: So there's kind of there is a corner of the internet that where people are collecting these and selling them. Yeah, yeah. Do you ever get outbid on a Charles Schulz?
Roz Chast: I did get outbid on a Charles Adams scarf. Somebody sniped me, and. Not cool. I was so, so upset that I wound up doing, like, a cartoon about it that, that I posted to Instagram. And it was really like. I just hope you like your, you know, [explective] scarf, you know, really just, you know, I hope you just really enjoy that.
Luke Burbank: Now, you must get asked this all the time, but it is the idea, the first thing and then the drawing comes afterwards.
Roz Chast: Mostly, yeah. Although occasionally an idea will come from, like, doodling. But mostly it's the idea first. In fact, at the New Yorker, the cartoons were originally called idea drawings. Which is sort of interesting because that's what they are. Yeah.
Elena Passarello: Not future scarves.?
Roz Chast: Not future scarves. No.
Luke Burbank: There is though. I mean, it is it is a very unique kind of comedic talent because you write in the book that you get ideas for cartoons, sometimes in your dreams, and they're usually bad.
Roz Chast: You can you.
Luke Burbank: Tell me about The Willard of Oz and Tad Lesso.
Roz Chast: Yes, yes. I'm telling you, they're really stupid.
Luke Burbank: What's the who's the Willard of Oz?
Roz Chast: Willard of Oz is just this, like, really schlubby kind of, dopey sort of guy. And, he's not the Wiz. He's Willard of Oz. But I thought that the Tad, it was, you know, Ted Lasso, that Tad Lesso was kind of, you know, it was like, whoa, brain. You know, this is this is not a terribly, you know, funny cartoon, but it's interesting, you know that. But that that's the dreaming brain likes puns, likes wordplay. And that has been written about.
Luke Burbank: I know this is this book is not about the science of dreaming or the science of sleep, but you have obviously spent a lot of time thinking about it. And just based on your kind of anecdotal research, what what is your guess as to like what our brains are trying to do when we dream?
Roz Chast: I think, well, I at the end of the book, I do have a pie chart. And, because cartoonists need to make pie charts, we just do. And, I think it's a combination of a lot of things. I mean, if I had to, you know, of course, Freud and Jung being the two biggies from the 20th century, I sort of saw more in the young Ian side of things. I kind of like that. That idea that, dreams connect to the, collective unconscious and that they tap into some part of our brains where we are all connected.
Luke Burbank: And Fran Lebowitz is there.
Roz Chast: And family, everybody is there, you know? That's that. That's the whole thing.
Luke Burbank: Well, thanks for being here. The book is I must be dreaming. Roz Chast, everybody right here on line. Thank you. Thank you. That was Roz Chast, right here on Live Wire. Her latest book, I Must Be Dreaming, is available right now. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We have got to take a very quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we are going to hear some music from the incredible Black Belt Eagle Scout. Stay with us. Welcome back to Live Wire from PR. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Okay, before we get to our musical guest this week, a little preview of next week's show, we are going to be talking to award winning author and journalist Hector Tovar about what it means to him anyway to be Latino in America. His latest book is Our Migrant Souls, a meditation on race and the Meanings and Myths of Latino. And in it, he aims to try to discover the Latino identity. What it is, what it isn't. We're going to talk to Hector about growing up in LA with his family, and why he thinks Star Wars might be the ultimate Latino film. We're also going to talk to comedian and filmmaker Jenna Friedman about her memoir, Not Funny, which is misleading because Jenna is, in fact, very funny. Although there is one joke or sort of topic that she will probably avoid going forward. We're going to get an explanation on that next week. Then we're going to hear a cover of Tom waits by one of our very favorite bands, the sister trio Joseph. So it is going to be an amazing show next week. Do not miss it. In the meantime, our musical guest this week grew up on the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in La Conner, Washington, where she was influenced by the cultural singing and drumming of her family, as well as bootleg tapes of Hall and Nirvana. Rolling Stone calls her latest album The Land, the Water, the Sky, fiery and brilliant. This is Black Belt Eagle Scout, who joined us at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. Well, let's hear a song. What are we going to hear?
Black Belt Eagle Scout: I'm going to play a song called "Nobody."
Luke Burbank: Okay. This is a Black Belt Eagle Scout right here on Live Wire.
[Black Belt Eagle Scout plays the song Nobody]
Luke Burbank: That was Black Belt Eagle Scout right here on Live Wire. Make sure to check out her latest album, The Land, the water, the Sky. All right. That is going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. Huge thanks to our guests Sloane Crosley, Roz Chast, and Black Belt Eagle Scout.
Elena Passarello: Speaker 2: [00:51:43] Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather de Michelle is our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Savchenko. Evan Hoffer is our technical director and our house sound is by D Neil Blake. Trey Hester is our assistant editor and Becky Phillips is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Al Alvez, and A Walker Spring who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Molly Pettit and Trey Hester.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the state of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire, was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we would like to thank members Heidi Festoon of Brandywine, Maryland, and Daniel Mueller of Banks, Oregon. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over the LiveWireradio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elana Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week. PRX.
