Episode 663
Danzy Senna, Penny Lane, and Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom
Author Danzy Senna unpacks the struggles of her protagonist to write the quintessential biracial comedy, in her newest (and very meta) novel Colored Television; filmmaker Penny Lane discusses her latest documentary Confessions of a Good Samaritan, which follows her personal quest to donate one of her kidneys to a stranger; and Brazilian rock duo Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom perform "We Used to Be Awesome." Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello share some kind acts from strangers.
Danzy Senna
Award-Winning Author
Danzy Senna is the author of four previous works of fiction, including the bestselling Caucasia, Symptomatic, New People, and most recently Colored Television, which was featured in “The 100 Must-Read Books of 2024” by TIME. Funny, piercing, and page-turning, Colored Television is her most on-the-money novel yet. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Danzy teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Website
Penny Lane
Documentary Filmmaker
Penny Lane has been making award-winning, innovative nonfiction films for over a decade. This includes six features—most recently Confessions of a Good Samaritan, winner of the Hope Award at SXSW 2023—and over a dozen short films. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Penny has been honored with mid-career retrospectives at the Museum of the Moving Image, San Francisco DocFest, Open City Documentary Festival, and Cinema Moderne. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And yes, Penny Lane is her real name. Website • Instagram
Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom
Brazilian Rock Troubadour
São Paulo natives Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom are shaking up the Portland, Oregon music scene with their charm and charisma. Serving up 5-day weekends every week, no stage is too big or too small for their iconic and hilarious brand of entertainment. The duo was signed by producer Sterling Fox on his label Blanket Fort in 2020. Johnny's debut EP Experience Report #1 combines sophisticated lyricism and original vocal stylings with a unique jangly Brazilian beat. Past performances include Treefort 2022, Jam in the Van 2022, and Pickathon 2024, along with numerous sold-out shows in Portland. Their humorous delivery of crowd-favorite originals and unique interpretations of classics produce an irresistible urge to move, laugh, cry, and applaud. Website • Instagram
Show Notes
Best News
Elena’s story: “‘Unbelievable’ Renaissance of Rare Cloud Forest as Unique Species Reclaim Paradise”
Luke’s story: “Pilot Bought 30 Pizzas for Everyone on Plane During Hours-Long Delay, Passenger Says”
Danzy Senna
Danzy’s latest novel: Colored Television
Luke and Danzy discuss golden-age Hollywood starlet Carol Channing, who was compelled to conceal her multiracial identity for the duration of her career.
Live Wire Listener Question
What is the kindest thing a stranger has done for you?
Penny Lane
Penny’s latest film, Confessions of A Good Samaritan, is now available to stream on Netflix.
Station Location Identification Examination (SLIE)
This week’s station shoutout goes to KIYE-FM 88.7 of Lapwai, ID.
Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom
Johnny and Dom play about 9 to 11 shows a week here in Portland.
You can catch them around town at their regular show, The Johnny-Variety-Franco Show!
Their frequent local performances sometimes include private serenades. During the COVID lockdown, Johnny founded a nonprofit called Curbside Serenades, which has a mission to be an advocate for street musicians and curate public performances in non-traditional spaces such as parks, pedestrian plazas, and curbsides. Ultimately, they delivered 200 serenades in 2020 alone. You can watch their story here.
It has now also evolved into a concert series in Laurelhurst Park that is free and open to all ages.
Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom perform their song “We Used to Be Awesome.”
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Luke Burbank: This episode of Live Wire was originally recorded in December of 2024. We hope you enjoy it. Now, let's get to the show.
Elena Passarello: From PRX. It's Live Wire! This week, author Danzy Senna.
Danzy Senna: I come from this country called interracial America. Like that is the culture of which I'm born. And so it informs the perspective of the characters. But the books are not necessarily about that.
Elena Passarello: Filmmaker Penny Lane.
Penny Lane: Basically, I made everyone uncomfortable at every stage. My friends, the medical professionals, even the kidney transplant professionals were like, What? What are you doing here?
Elena Passarello: With music from Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom, and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now the host of Live Wire Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much. I'm Luke Burbank. That's my adopted sister, Elena Passarello. We have a fabulous episode of Live Wire in store for you this week. We are going to experience the entire range of human emotion and organ donation. First, though, we got to start things off with the best news we heard all week. This, of course, is our little reminder at the top of the show. There's good news out there in the world. If you're having trouble finding it. We have a whole team of people that look for it and send it to us and we tell you about it. Elena, what's the best news you heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Well, Lucas Margaret Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: That's your middle name, right?
Luke Burbank: Yes, sure. Have you been looking at my birth certificate again?
Elena Passarello: Yeah. Have you ever heard of a cloud forest?
Luke Burbank: No, but, like, I had not heard those words until you just said them, and I already feel like that's where I want to live.
Elena Passarello: Oh yeah. This seems like kind of an amazing place. It's a kind of an ecosystem that comes from this rare geological occasion. When a mountain, it's usually like a dead volcano or something springs up from the ocean. So there's all that moisture around the mountain and it shoots up 800ft in the air. And then the temperature change causes this beautiful cloud to kind of hang over the peak of the mountain like snow. [Luke: Wow.] So if you're up on the mountain, you know, you're living in this sort of cloud wonderland. And that is what is happening at the Gnarled Mossy Cloud Forest on Lord Howe Island, which is in the Tasman Sea, sort of east of Australia. They've got a cloud forest there, so it's.
Luke Burbank: Right around the corner. It's in the Tasman Sea.
Elena Passarello: Yeah. So humans didn't show up there until the whaling industry in the 18th century and it was this island that kind of got to exist on its own, which happens a lot. And then at the top of Mt Gower, where the cloud forest is, it was kind of its own island because the altitude made it kind of isolated. There are species of birds, bugs and plants there. You can't see them anywhere else in the world. But when humans showed up, they brought with them things like rodents and cats and pigs, and that really messed up the ecosystem. So there were like tons of extinctions in the 20th century on this little island. But five years ago, they started a $15 million initiative in the cloud forest to rid all of the island of its rodents.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: They successfully did that five years ago. And now scientists are starting to take stock of the effect of that work. And it is just gangbusters more than they had anticipated and in such a short period of time. That's the best news for me. Not just that this change is happening, but it's happening really quickly. One of the scientists describes what's been going on in the past five years as an ecological renaissance. Let me give you some specifics. 30 species of plants have been listed now as in full recovery, including the little mountain palm, which only exists on the island of Providence Petrel. There is a wood hen called the Lord Howe Island woodhen. There are only 30 of them left in the 1970s. And now there are so many of them on the island that you hear them day and night. They've become part of the sonic landscape of this ecosystem, and there's insects recovering their populations like this weevil that had been thought to be extinct since 1916. For 100 years they were like Sayonara, weevil. But now that Weevil has been located, it's back and it's on its way to thriving. There's still a lot of work to be done. There's a coral reef there that everyone's paying close attention to. But. Wow. Right. What an amazing change. I mean, I haven't done anything in the past five years except for like, you know, have to punch another hole in my belt.
Luke Burbank: Listen, I don't want a rat shame, but I think we all knew we didn't need more rats and the cloud forest.
Elena Passarello: No.
Luke Burbank: Now, from the cloud forest Elena to that moment. And we've all experienced it. When you'd like to be soaring in the clouds. But you are not because you are dealing with a flight delay and or cancellations. The kind of thing that unfortunately happens a lot these days, it seems. Well, a woman named Tanya Stamos was recently on a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Houston, and there was a medical emergency on the plane and they had to land in New Mexico. So, unfortunately, these passengers on this flight were now kind of stuck in New Mexico and they were there for hours and hours and hours, and they, in fact, couldn't take off and kept being one thing or another. And the pilot who, by the way, remains nameless, felt so bad for these United Airlines passengers that he personally went and bought 30 pizzas from a pizza place, brought them back to the airport and just gave everyone pizza who were waiting for this flight indefinitely, interminably. And this is an interesting note in the article, 150 passengers or so, they point out that the pilot, for all his generosity, he waited till everyone had gotten their pizza before he fixed his plate of pizza.
Elena Passarello: It's like the oxygen mask.
Luke Burbank: That's right. What an amazing thing for this pilot to do and then not even get named in the piece. Apparently, it really sort of raised everyone's spirits. And they were able to take off. The reports are that the person with the medical emergency is doing all right, thankfully. [Elena: Oh, good.] And everybody got where they were going. But just like this moment, I mean, you know, I don't know why it is that sitting still in an aluminum tube, it's just like the most exhausting experience. Like it shouldn't be on paper, but it is. [Elena: Yeah.] And then when you got to wait extra long, it's just so soul crushing. So this pilot taking money out of his own wallet and time out of his own life to make everyone's day a little bit better there in Santa Fe. That is the best news that I heard all week. All right. Let's welcome our first guest on over to the program. She's the author of six books, including her latest Colored Television, which is a brilliantly dark comedy about love, ambition and the sort of racial identity industrial complex that can be Hollywood. NPR calls the book funny, awkward and discomforting. That's also how my hosting style has been described by certain reviewers. This is Danzy Senna, who joined us as part of the Portland Book Festival at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. Take a listen. Danzy. Welcome to Live Wire.
Danzy Senna: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
Luke Burbank: I was so excited when we found out you were going to be part of the Portland Book Festival and that you were going to come on Live Wire. And I thought this book was just really, really funny. It was insightful. But I heard somewhere that you had started writing it and then, like, put it in a drawer. Why did you pull it back out of the drawer?
Danzy Senna: Well, the reason I put it in the drawer was because my children were quarantined at home. And there was no thinking about work for about a year and a half. But I had written about a hundred pages. And, you know, then the sort of world stopped and I pulled it out and I was like, Is this still going to be funny? And I realized we sort of needed humor more than ever at that point. And Hollywood never. The absurdity of Hollywood never grows old. So.
Luke Burbank: So you felt like it held up. Have you ever had the experience of writing something, whether it's just a note to yourself, you know, before falling asleep or even something that got pages to it where you then re-engage with it and go, wow, this was not good.
Danzy Senna: Well, I've had a strange experience. After the pandemic, I went back to my office and I hadn't been there in a long time and I found a list on my table. It was just a notepad and it just said bucket list and there was nothing else there.
Luke Burbank: This book is the story of Jane Gibson and her husband, Lenny. Can you sort of describe them a little bit? Like, what are they? What are they sort of hoping for?
Danzy Senna: So they're starving artists living in L.A. and they've been committed to their art. They met when they were younger and sort of had the romance of just being purist. She's a novelist, he's a visual artist, and they were not going to sell out. And now they're in their 40s and they have two children and it looks a lot less cute to be poor and to be sort of not successful in their respective careers. But Lenny is still kind of enthralled with this idea of staying, you know, on the outside and being pure to his work. And she's ready to kind of cash in on her identity.
Luke Burbank: Right. And the sense I got and you can tell me if I'm reading this correctly, it's sort of Jane, who is biracial, is more ready to engage with a certain kind of white culture potentially or just culture at large to get to the sort of dream version of their life than Lenny is.
Danzy Senna: Yes. She's, you know, her conflict. She's half black and half white like myself. But her conflict isn't between, you know, being mixed. It's about how to capitalize on this identity and how to get paid for it, essentially. So she goes to Hollywood to try to pitch the greatest biracial comedy of all times. And her husband, you know, she keeps that a secret from her husband, basically.
Luke Burbank: Right. Because Lenny's thing, as you write, is he, as a black artist, does not really feature black figures in his art. And Jane is like, you would really move some units if you did that.
Danzy Senna: She's like, just paint some little figure that signifies blackness to sell to the white art world. And he refuses to. He's committed to abstraction and she's like, We've got to get paid. Like, this isn't working. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. We're talking to Danzy Senna about the book Colored Television. This is Live Wire Radio from PRX. We're here this week as part of the Portland Book Festival. We've got to take a very quick break. We've got much more coming up in just a moment. Stay with us. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here at the Elena Passarello. We are part of the Portland Book Festival this week. We're at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, and we're talking to Danzy Senna about her latest book, Colored Television. You talk in the book about the trope of the tragic, and then you use a word that I don't think America needs me saying on the radio, But it's a it's a pretty charged word. And I'm curious what you're looking to say with the use of that word, which you do a lot in the book.
Danzy Senna: Yeah, I look, I've used the word mulatto maybe a hundred times in this novel. And then on my book tour, everyone's sort of thinking it's okay to use. And I'm like, Don't get your ass kicked.
Luke Burbank: Well, actually, you know, I want to. I'm curious about that. Like, how do you feel about people interviewing you, particularly white people using that word?
Danzy Senna: I mean, it's a vintage racist word. Like it's not the kind of word you get called in the playground anymore. And if they do call you that, then they probably have been reading some very old novels. So it's not like a high stakes situation for me. And, you know, it's a word that I use in a group with my friends. And, you know, I'm go ahead and try to use it. See what?
Luke Burbank: I'm okay. I'm good. But what was the importance of using the word in the book? What is? What are you looking to have the reader experience?
Danzy Senna: There's really no other word that specifically describes people who are American, who are half black and half white except the word mulatto. You know, there's words like multiracial or biracial could describe any to mix. So so part of the embracing of it is the fact that we have never been named. We're not sort of part of the narrative. We've been cut out of the picture as a population, even though there are plenty of us in the Kardashian family in particular.
Luke Burbank: So we yeah, the Kardashians and Carol Channing come up in the book. And I, I certainly, in the case of Carol Channing, didn't realize that she had a biracial background.
Danzy Senna: Yes. And she didn't tell anyone. I mean, it was, you know, something that she hid consciously until she was in her 80s because she knew that she would not get the parts. So it's got a fraught history. And I like the word because it's it's filled with all that history. I mean, it's a really problematic word. And if you're writing things that are too safe, I think you miss some of that history.
Luke Burbank: One of the things that happens to Jane before she goes to Hollywood is she wants to write this really sweeping book about that. And I'll just keep using the technically wrong term for biracial experience. And then it ends up growing and growing into something much larger and less sellable than she intended.
Danzy Senna: Yes, she writes a big man spreading novel. That's what she wants to write. And it's ten years of writing about the mulatto in America. And, you know, she takes on too much and it destroys their finances and their children are neglected. And it's all in service of this novel that goes from the original, you know, plantation mixed race child all the way up to the present of, you know, Zoe Kravitz. And it's just too many years to take on. And it almost destroys her entire, you know, sanity and life. And I was trying to get into the horror of writing a novel. Yeah, it was.
Elena Passarello: It was horrific.
Danzy Senna: Like the dark horror story of what it is to be a novelist and to not have any perspective left. And, you know, you bury yourself in these pages and you're alone. And she says she feels like the little boy in The Shining, like with her fingers talking to each other and the sort of madness of writing a novel. I wanted to get out. And so she thinks television writing is going to sort of cure her of all of this madness and it's going to be collaborative. And she's going to get to buy a home in Los Angeles in multicultural Mayberry, and they're going to have the bourgeois life, and it's going to be sane and collaborative and easy, and it doesn't work out quite as she's hoped.
Luke Burbank: There's this moment when Jane's, I think, agent, talking about this very sprawling book that's gotten out of control, says, I think the quote is, some books are just meant to be left in a drawer, which is just, like, devastating.
Danzy Senna: The worst rejection letter ever. I wanted to write like it was a masochistic exercise, writing that letter sort of to myself. And, you know, she does put the novel in the drawer and she keeps imagining. It's like a body in the trunk. Like she can hear it thrashing around. It's almost dead, but it's not quite dead. So it was, you know, kind of really going into what it is to be an artist and to not get the sort of recognition of the world. And what do you continue to do this for? Why do we continue to do this? Sort of mad works of art that don't sell, you know, in particular that don't give you the money.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Danzy Senna about her book, Color Television. This is Live Wire. We are coming to you as part of the Portland Book Festival this week. Your parents, your actual parents were among the first generation of illegal interracial marriages. [Danzy: Yes.] And that that group of folks is sometimes referred to as like the loving generation because of the court ruling. But I think it's in the book, although sometimes I was writing these questions, I was going, is this Jane or is this Danzy? I think this is Jane says she doesn't consider her parents to be part of the loving generation because of their relationship.
Danzy Senna: She calls them part of the hating generation because most of those couples, along with most of the non interracial couples, divorced. If you were born as Gen X in the 70s, you know, they were all the hating generation. So it's kind of like pushing against this mythology and sentimental mythology around integration and this this, you know, black and white mix and sort of at every point she skewers these different fantasies about what it is to be mixed.
Luke Burbank: In the book, Jane sort of identifies Gen-X is definitely in the top two things. She identifies as something it's like switches between her, her ethnicity and Gen X and this Is that also how you feel? And if so, how does that show up in your life? Being profoundly Gen X.
Danzy Senna: I'm profoundly Gen X, you know, first of all, being the child of an interracial couple that was legal. But then also, you know, latchkey kid, fearful child just.
Luke Burbank: Coming home when it got dark.
Danzy Senna: Yes and eating like...
Luke Burbank: And no one knows where you are.
Danzy Senna: Devil dogs in front of Diff'rent Strokes. Yeah. And you know, my parents like my mother smoked chain smoked and in the car with us all the time until we went to college. And then she went and stopped smoking, which feels like the ultimate. But she at one point, you know, Jane is a professor and she's noticing things about the different generations that she teaches. And, you know, she says, you know, with the millennial students, if they cancel you, you really have to worry because they will go and they will destroy your life. But the Gen Z students, if they get offended by something you say, usually they lose their attention span before they can fill out all the forms.
Luke Burbank: Yeah I, I read a review of the book that said this book has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with politics. What do you think of that statement?
Danzy Senna: I mean, I think everything I write sort of takes on these questions of identity, which I think are considered political, but for me are deeply personal and are treated with a lot of irreverence. So maybe I'm undercutting any kind of earnestness in the writing of it. But they're typically loaded and in, you know, the political sphere. And especially right now.
Luke Burbank: I heard a different interview or saw an interview with you where they were responding to something you had said about people asking you because you've written a number of great works and a lot of it has centered around the idea of being biracial. And basically, you said people are still asking me, why am I writing about this? And you're like, nobody asks an Irish writer while they're why they're still writing about Irish people.
Danzy Senna: Yeah, No. And they don't ask any other race of people. They assume that they're going to write from the geography that they come from, but they don't assume that I come from anywhere and I come from this country called interracial America. Like that is the culture of which I'm born. And so it informs the perspective of the characters. But the books are not necessarily about that.
Luke Burbank: Right. Well, that's one of the things. Right. So Jane does finally decide to go write TV and wants to write something that starts out fairly nuanced, like there are people and they happen to be mixed race, but that's not the only thing about them. And then sort of gets caught up with this guy Hampton, who is I want to give it away, but it doesn't really end exactly the way she's thinking.
Danzy Senna: Yeah. I mean, he keeps telling her it needs to be more biracial and she doesn't know what that really is. So she keeps sort of dancing for supper for this producer. And you know, what is more biracial? Like which storyline is going to be biracial enough for him? And, you know, he just is never satisfied with her pictures. And so I keep like, I had so much fun writing these pitches. It's just so much of the television world involves not writing. It involves these meetings. So I was kind of poking fun at the fact that there's almost no writing that happens in this novel. It's all meetings and notes.
Luke Burbank: Well, okay. On the subject of which, if I have this right, this book, you're in development to make this book into something for the screen. Yes. And I'm just curious, like, you know, without giving too much away, it's not a great experience for Jane. And I'm wondering, like, will this be for you, potentially life imitating art, imitating you, being very pissed off?
Danzy Senna: No, I'm hoping to continue this meta experience and then have someone exploit me and it's all going to just keep going.
Luke Burbank: Forever and ever and ever. Yeah. Well, we hope it does because the book is really fun and really insightful. Danzy Senna, thank you so much for coming on, Live Wire. That was author Danzy Senna right here on Live Wire as part of the Portland Book Festival. Her latest novel, Colored Television, is available to read now. This is Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Each week we like to ask our audience a question kind of related to the one of the topics from the show and inspired by the documentary that you're going to hear about coming up from Penny Lane, where she sought to donate a kidney to a complete stranger. We asked the Live Wire listeners, What is the kindest thing a stranger has done for you? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What do are you seeing?
Elena Passarello: Here's one from Lily. Lily says, "I was waiting in a long line with my four year old to get a hot dog. And as soon as I handed it to her, she dropped it ketchup side down, which is the worst side. Into the gravel."
Luke Burbank: Hundred percent.
Elena Passarello: So she has a meltdown. And then Lily says, " A man handed me his own hot dog to give to her. He may have just been trying to make the screaming stop, but it was appreciated nonetheless."
Luke Burbank: That is very, very thoughtful. And also, there's a whole range of how generous this person was potentially being if you were at a baseball game.
Elena Passarello: Very generous because that's a pricey hotdog.
Luke Burbank: Way price is like $20. Hot dog if you're a Costco. [Elena: Yeah.] The dollar. Still a nice move. I'm just saying. All right. What's something else kind that somebody did for a Live Wire listener?
Elena Passarello: Here's one from Sarah Classic. I was waiting at the bus stop with a shopping bag full of new books, and it suddenly started pouring. And the person sitting at the stop next to me shared her umbrella. And then her bus came and she left it behind for me to use. So she's going off on umbrella into the great beyond.
Luke Burbank: Unbelievable.
Elena Passarello: If I saw somebody with unprotected books, I think I would probably like I would take off my shirt and give it to her. Like, you can't let those things get soggy. You know.
Luke Burbank: I was thinking about the whole Pacific Northwest umbrella culture the other day. I was going into Home Depot and it was storming and I had an umbrella and I realized I was very out of step with the typical clientele because there's a whole thing in the Northwest where people are very proud of not using umbrellas. And I have never understood that. As I was walking and maintaining my nice, comfortable, dry state of affairs and everyone else was like hunching to their cars, it was like the rain was going into the crack of their wherever I thought. I know that I look like a dandy here, but I don't care. I'm dry.
Elena Passarello: I have never understood that about the Pacific Northwest. And I'm glad that you, a pretty native Pacific Northwest Center, shares this.
Luke Burbank: All right. One more nice thing that somebody had done for them.
Elena Passarello: Okay. This one is great because I think it might be coming from inside the house, the Live Wire house.
Luke Burbank: The call is coming from inside the building.
Elena Passarello: Yes, this is from Ashley. Ashley says, "When I was little, I was wandering around loose in a Sur La Tabla while my parents were doing something else. I accidentally knocked down a whole fig of ice cream scoopers with ceramic handles that were sitting on a high shelf and the pieces shattered everywhere. I was bawling my eyes out, but the staff told my parents they didn't have to pay for the damages. And then one of the employees gave me a piece of her peppermint bark." So it wasn't even like sort of tableau like check out bait. Peppermint Bargain was like the snack of this kind employee, which is very, very sweet.
Luke Burbank: That, first of all, is very heartwarming because I'm 48 years old and I feel worried when I'm in Sur La Tabla that I'm going to break something. It's very nice, but it's very like it's for people that are gourmands and everything. I also think this is an amazing study of how as a child, even if they don't have ice cream at a place, you will find the thing that serves ice cream.
Elena Passarello: That's true.
Luke Burbank: You found the most fun kid related thing at a super high end kitchen supply.
Elena Passarello: So it's like go to a sporting goods store and finding the bike pump because you want to buy.
Luke Burbank: Exactly. All right. Well, everybody, let's take the lesson to be kind to each other. Thank you to everyone who was kind enough to send in a response for that. This is Live Wire from PRX. A speaking of very kind gestures. Let me ask you a question, Elena. What do Kenny G. Satanists and Richard Nixon have in common?
Elena Passarello: I hope it has something to do with curly hair.
Luke Burbank: It's our next guest actually, who has made award winning films about all of those subjects. Her latest project is titled Confessions of a Good Samaritan, and it's a documentary that follows one person's journey of giving their kidney to a complete stranger. Indiewire calls it a fascinating study of altruism. Penny Lane, by the way, is that person. It was her kidney that was being donated, and she joined us at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon, to talk about it. Take a listen. Penny, welcome to the show.
Penny Lane: Hello. Hello, everybody.
Luke Burbank: I should say welcome back. We had you on during the pandemic to talk about your phenomenal film you made about Kenny G. I would say the film of record. Yes. On the topic of Kenny G.
Penny Lane: It's the only one.
Luke Burbank: Okay. I'm still this is a really different movie. It's, I would say, a little more serious, but still has its light moments. I'm curious, when did the thought first occur to you to donate a kidney from your body to someone that you would never meet?
Penny Lane: I think it was probably around 2017. I heard about it, I think on a podcast I want to say, but I can't remember exactly which one. I just learned that there were people who did this and I wanted to be one of them. And then it took me a few years to actually, like, make it happen.
Luke Burbank: Were you expecting a certain kind of reaction from the transplant folks, like after you got through to someone and you said, I'm going to do this very altruistic thing?
Penny Lane: Yeah. You know, I don't really know what I was picturing, but on some level, I did think it would be like kind of special. Like, you know, there'd be some special red carpet treatment or something.
Luke Burbank: Or the word the word hero would be passed around liberally.
Penny Lane: Maybe like a couple standing hours, you know, casual. But none of those things happened. It basically, if you decide to give your kidney to anyone and you, you know, enter the medical system, it's just like any other medical procedure. There's a lot of paperwork and testing. And it's not it's not the most exciting experience.
Luke Burbank: They did not come up to you with tears in their eyes.
Penny Lane: I came up to them with tears in my eyes, but they were uncomfortable about that. Basically, I made everyone uncomfortable at every stage. My friends, the medical professionals, even the kidney transplant professionals were like, What? What are you doing here?
Luke Burbank: Was that because you had a film crew in tow? Was that making people feel weird?
Penny Lane: The film crew came a little later, so I began the process of the intake at Long Gone, and then a few months into it, as the date of my surgery was getting closer, I was like, I might have to film this. And I really kind of resisted it for a long time because, well, I just didn't want to make a film about it. I mean, but it just became like, it's like it just became this thing where I was like, This is what I do. I make these films. And I was very intrigued by and confused by the experience. And so I thought there could be something rich there artistically. So eventually we picked up the cameras and they let us film in the hospital too.
Luke Burbank: Were you worried that it would look like you were doing this as some sort of gonzo journalism project?
Penny Lane: Totally. Totally. Totally, totally. And that was probably my biggest fear about like, what the misperception would be, that it was like Penny had an idea for a movie that might get into Sundance or something, you know?
Luke Burbank: Did it get into Sundance?
Penny Lane: No, it didn't. So even if I had, even if I was going.
Luke Burbank: To give a I need to get into Sundance.
Penny Lane: Really? I mean, yeah, what do I need to do?
Luke Burbank: Geez.
Penny Lane: Didn't get in anyway, so. No. So it did occur to me that people would think either that the whole thing was about kind of attention seeking, which is something that I think people do suspect about what we call altruistic kidney donors, that somehow they're like narcissists in disguise and they're just looking for attention. And I will tell you that if you are a narcissist and you are looking for attention, this is a bad way to do it because people get really uncomfortable when you bring it up. They don't like it if I make like a Facebook post. Yes, I'm old, I'm on Facebook. If I say like I got a Guggenheim Fellowship, I'll get like 10,000 likes. And if I say I'm donating my kidney to a stranger, I get five and a bunch of like unfollows. So it's not like a way to get like clout. Clout has no standing, owes no clout, no Sundance. What's in it for me?
Elena Passarello: Why do you think people are chillier about this than they are about winning a major award?
Penny Lane: Well, good question, because I think that we're very uncomfortable with altruists. I think I am, too. I think that our default position is like if someone does a good thing, there's some intellectual for some of us, some intellectual party that wants to kind of tear them down or like be skeptical of it. What are you trying to compensate for? You know, that kind of thing. I think it's for me, like the whole spirit of the film was to make a statement that, like, actually, I think people are pretty good and we help each other all the time and we don't acknowledge that enough. And, you know, so there's this kind of like, what makes the altruistic kidney donor special, that's kind of like the MacGuffin that fuels the film, like what makes these weirdos weird. And ultimately, I think, like, there's nothing weird about them. They just happen to do this one good thing.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire from PRX. We are talking to filmmaker Penny Lane about her latest project, Confessions of a Good Samaritan, where she donated a kidney altruistically, as they say, to somebody that she would never meet. What is the current status of the waiting list for people who need this kind of kidney transplant?
Penny Lane: So in the United States, there's about 100,000 people on the waitlist at any given time. Most of those people will die. While they're on that list. It's good that we have more and more people giving organs after they die. But for all kinds of bureaucratic and physiological reasons, it's quite difficult to get those organs from the deceased person to the person who needs them. So that's never really going to make a big dent in the list. Also, the rate of kidney disease keeps going up. So so, yeah, so that's kind of the state of affairs in any given year. There's about 20,000 transplants. 5000 of those are living donors who give usually to someone they know. The other 15,000 are deceased donor organs, and then about 100 of them will do it for a stranger.
Elena Passarello: 100.
Penny Lane: About 100 a year. So it's a small group of people and it's only been going on for maybe 20 years. So.
Luke Burbank: Right. Because, I mean, one of the things you point out in the film is that this wasn't medically possible until the invention of this one particular anti-rejection drug. Right. Which then created this whole new issue, which is now we can actually do it, but where do we get the.
Penny Lane: And now we have an organ shortage, something called an organ shortage, which didn't exist before. We knew we could actually use organs in that way. So yeah, the thing that's interesting in the history of organ transplantation is that it's very ethically fraught and very politically fraught and it always has been. So one of the things you learn in the film is historically how those changes in our technological abilities have changed, how we think about it ethically. So early on, you know, when it was when it was the case that only an identical twin. Right. Right. Could give their kidney to another identical twin because we hadn't worked out the immunosuppressant technology yet at that stage, you would think now. Well, of course, of course, that twin would like to give his kid you to save the life of his brother and we should allow him. But in fact, it was very controversial and many, many doctors thought that was a huge mistake and shouldn't happen. So we've changed our ethical ideas about this over the last 5 or 6 decades. A lot.
Luke Burbank: It was very brave of you to have yourself filmed coming out of surgery. I do not want anyone recording me when I'm coming down off of those drugs. I have no idea the kind of I might say. I mean.
Penny Lane: Same. Same.
Luke Burbank: I'd say this I'm conscious right now and not medicated and this is what I sound like. I cannot imagine coming off of like a powerful, you know, anesthetic. Were you nervous about what you were going to say or how you were going to look coming out of the surgery?
Penny Lane: I mean, you know, I definitely went into this with a bit of naivete. I'd never had major surgery. And so I didn't really know, like how coming out of the anesthesia can be so strange and emotional. I mean, so no spoilers here, but I mean, I woke up sobbing. It was very intense. And actually to be to be honest, that footage was the footage that convinced me to make the film because, like, you know, I could argue about it all day, I could talk about it all day. But there's something about the image of my, like, like looks. It looks like a corpse, you know, like my, like, bloated corpse body, like rolling down the hallway, waking up sobbing. You know, my face is all puffy. I look like dead, you know? And it was just sort of like such a strong image. Like that image to me was like, I think I didn't realize what a sacrifice this was until I saw the image. And most people would never see that image of themselves.
Elena Passarello: It's so beautiful because you're asking, did it work? Did it work? Did it go through with that? And it just shows that when you're that vulnerable because of the medication, it shows that the stakes were just sky high for you. Not not, you know, the worry or the fear, but the fear that it would take, that it would work, that it would be successful.
Penny Lane: Or that I would back out. I was very afraid that I was so afraid that I would, like, have a panic attack, and like kind of fail. Yeah. I was so scared.
Elena Passarello: Well, and that's something else that someone says in the documentary is 90% of the people that explore giving a kidney back out. Right? Right. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Wow. Did you get close to backing out at any point?
Penny Lane: No, never.
Luke Burbank: Really?
Penny Lane: No. Particularly once the recipient had been identified and notified. That is a a point of no return. Like that's just etiquette. You don't.
Elena Passarello: That's just good manners.
Luke Burbank: That's just. You were just raised. Right? I'm training. We're talking to Penny Lane about her latest film, Confessions of a Good Samaritan, following her journey of donating a kidney altruistically, meaning she didn't know the person who was the recipient. What does the amygdala kind of mean? How does the amygdala factor into all of this?
Penny Lane: So one of the things I learned early on in my research project well, like the research question, the film was like, am I weird? Why does it seem like, why is it the case that like, 100 people can be presented with this information? Like, you know, there's mean people are dying. Here's the risk of the surgery. Very minor risk, safer all the time. And you could save someone's life by doing this. And the question I had was like, why do such a small number of people say, Well, heck yeah, of course I want to do that. And then everyone else looks at them like they're nuts. And I was like, That's an interesting psychological question that points at something. So I discover that there was a neuroscientist named Abigail Marsh. Who at Georgetown, and she has been studying the brains of altruistic kidney donors. Like what? Lucky for me. Like what? Like I couldn't believe it. There aren't even that many of us. But she said that it was actually really easy to do these research studies because altruistic, kinky donors are very conscientious and they respond to emails and show up on time. And so she was like, they all wanted to help. It was crazy. Like, usually it's really hard to find people for my studies. And so she was looking at the amygdala because she had studied the amygdala for ten years in people with psychopathic traits. And the hypothesis is that people with psychopathic traits lack something that other people have. Call it empathy, call it caring, call whatever compassion. They also are notoriously very fearless. On average, people with psychopathic traits have smaller than average. Amygdala is like they're small and they're not that active when they're looking at images of people in distress. It, like, doesn't seem to do anything to their brain. So her hypothesis was, well, would there be something like an anti psychopath, like an extra empathetic person? And she thought maybe this population would qualify. So she did the same studies she did with the psychopaths, with the altruists, and in fact discovered that on average, the altruistic kidney donors, amygdala, were larger than average. Mine's enormous. Like even amongst the kidney donors. I was like, way up there.
Luke Burbank: All right. Weird flex, but okay.
Penny Lane: Weird flex. So anyway, so it doesn't it's like, what does that mean? It's hard to say what that means. Like it's too early in the world of like, neurosciences to really know. But there is it points to the diversity of our internal experiences. Like we all assume that our internal experience is something like the people sitting next to us. And in fact, there's just a lot of different things going on in there that we all think are normal. And I tell you, like, I made this film because I wanted to interrogate myself and I tried to be like, is there something else? Like, am I just looking for attention? Like, what. Is the you know, am I trying to, like, prove to myself that I'm a good person? I mean, all that's in the film. But ultimately, I think it's not that strange. Like, people truly do things for other people all the time with no expectation of anything in return.
Luke Burbank: Well, Penny Lane, thank you for coming here and bragging about your oversize amygdala. And you're with me and you're really great. New film. It's called Confessions of a Good Samaritan. Penny Lane, thanks for coming in.
Penny Lane: Thank you.
Luke Burbank: That was Penny Lane right here on Live Wire. You can catch Penny's latest documentary, Confessions of a Good Samaritan. It is out now. This is Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Passarello. We need to take a very quick break. Don't go anywhere, because when we return, we are going to hear music from the Brazilian rock and roll troubadours. Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom. You do not want to miss this. So stick around for more Live Wire in a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. It is that time again in the show where we play a little "Station Location Identification Examination". This is where we quiz our esteemed and informed announcer Elena Passarello about somewhere in the U.S. where Live Wire is on the radio, and she's got to guess the place that I'm talking about. The Lewis and Clark expedition camped near this place in eighteen five and eighteen six. And throughout history, the surrounding valley was home to potato farming. A gold rush? Yeah. I think the potatoes really gave it away. And at one point it was part of the Oregon Territory, but now it's become part of another state. So I'm guessing you have a sense of the state.
Elena Passarello: Maybe that's got to be Idaho.
Luke Burbank: Yes. Okay. You're in the right place and you may be as close as you're going to get to this actual name. So I'm going to give you half a point. Okay? Okay. Two famous residents of this place, Lillian Marie Disney, the wife of Walt Disney, and Chase Spencer, who played Sam Yulee in the iconic Twilight series. Does that help?
Elena Passarello: No.
Luke Burbank: I'm giving it to you. Forget in the state of Idaho, it's Lapwai, Idaho. Lapwai is also home of the Nez Pierce indigenous tribe. It's Lapwai, Idaho, where we're on the radio on KIYE-FM Lapwai, Idaho. This is Live Wire. Before we get to our musical guests, a little preview of what we are doing on next week's show, we are going to be talking to Scaachi Koul. She's a senior writer at Slate and also the co-host of the hit podcast, Scamfluencers. Scaachi is also someone who really knows how to name a book. Her debut was the best seller. One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, which covered among other things, uh, her marriage, as in when she got married now, her latest book of essays is called Sucker Punch. And, um, well, yeah, it explores the end of that marriage. We're also going to talk to musician Emma Ruth Rundle about her debut book of poetry. It's called the Bella Vista. She's going to do something on the show. I don't think we've ever had. With poetry before. She brought her own vinyl record to accompany her poetry and it sounds really amazing. Emma's also a musician and is gonna play us a song, kind of a mix of folk and ambient. The New York Times calls her music patiently haunting. So really incredible show coming your way next week. Do not miss it. In the meantime, our musical guest this week started out in Sao Paulo, Brazil, before relocating right here to Portland, Oregon, which many, as you know, Elena, refer to as the Sao Paulo of northwest Oregon. Striking similarities. They started out busking in various parks and they would busk for like hours and hours, like ten hour busking sessions. Now they're playing all over the Pacific Northwest, including the Tree Fort Music Festival Pickathon. And these days, right here on little ole Live Wire, Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom joined us onstage at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. Take a listen.
Johnny Franco: Hello, everybody.
Luke Burbank: You both look absolutely dapper as can be. I want to get one question out of the way very quickly. And I'm sorry, I must get asked a lot, but the name of the band, Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom. Was there a question as to if you were really brothers at one point that you were looking to clarify? Because I look at the two of you and I know these guys are real brothers.
Johnny Franco: Well, you know, we're real brothers. We come from the same mother. And we just had to make sure because people are always actually meant to tell you the truth. Luke. When we started playing in Portland, it would just be, Here's my brother Dom, And people would say, Is that your real brother? And, and so we just decided to add that on to the name to make it easier.
Luke Burbank: That's smart. That's just working smarter, not harder.
Elena Passarello: That's right.
Johnny Franco: I told that to a six year old. Ask me that question. I told him this exact same answer and he said, Well, you made it worse.
Luke Burbank: I feel like that six year old is really gunning for my job. [Elena: Yeah.] Let's talk about this variety show that you're doing now. What? What exactly happens?
Johnny Franco: Well, so it's the Johnny Variety Franco show, and it is just the sum of our act. You know, we played so many shows that are different. Within one another, we play 9 to 11 shows a week in Portland all the time. And so we're just everywhere. And most of the times you have to convey to the to the situation, you know, but to the variety show, we get a chance to do it ourselves and put on the show that we like to present to people. And we're putting it the next one at the Star Theater downtown Portland with the Johnny Variety Franco Show, the third edition.
Luke Burbank: Wow. Third edition. Yeah. You are telling me because I accosted you on the street earlier, that this variety show is sort of an outgrowth of a much more sort of personal thing where you were just like serenading people.
Johnny Franco: Yes, That's where it all started. In fact, I was pretty apprehensive about going on national radio because this show was is molded to the city of Portland, that Portland has shaped the act the way that it is today because we flew in, you know, and took it to the streets immediately. And for two years we were over there on Southwest six and Morrison performing six hours a day, five days a week and getting intimate with the city of Portland. And then the pandemic came and we just got an invitation to come and perform outside of somebody's window for their birthday and figured that would be a good service that we could provide to the city. And so we advertised it and it turned out to be pretty good. And we delivered 200 serenades in 2020 alone. Yes.
Luke Burbank: Well, let's hear a song. What are you going to play?
Johnny Franco: A song inspired in real life. This one's called We Used to Be Awesome.
Luke Burbank: This is Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom on Live Wire.
Johnny Franco: [Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom performs "We Used to Be Awesome"]
Luke Burbank: Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom. And that's going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests Danzy Senna, Penny Lane and Johnny Franco and His Real Brother Dom.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director. Leona Kinderman is our assistant technical director and our House Sound Is by Daniel Blake. Ashley Park is our production fellow and Andrea Castro-Martinez is our intern.
Luke Burbank: Our house band is Sam Pinkerton, Ethan Fox Tucker, Ayal Alves and A Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Eben Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid.
Elena Passarello: Additional funding provided by the City of Portland's Office of Arts and Culture. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank members T.J. Millbrook of Portland, Oregon, and Kimmie Nam of Portland, Oregon. Also a very special thanks to the super cool Amanda Bullock and all the fine folks at the Portland Book Festival.
Luke Burbank: For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast at your convenience, visit LiveWireRadio.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.
PRX.
