Episode 680

Aubrey Gordon, Jean Grae, and Rogê

Podcaster Aubrey Gordon dives deep into topics tackled on her hit show Maintenance Phase, including the monopolization of weight-loss medications; multi-disciplinary artist Jean Grae explains why she's banning gum chewing and beatboxing at her funeral; and Brazilian singer-songwriter Rogê performs "A Lenda Do Abaeté" from his album Curyman II.

Aubrey Gordon

Writer and Podcaster

Aubrey Gordon is an author, columnist, and co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase with journalist Michael Hobbes, where the two debunk and decode wellness and weight loss trends. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Vox, Literary Hub, SELF, Health, Glamour, and more. Her first book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, was released in November 2020. Her second book, “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People, is a New York Times and Indie bestseller.

Website • Instagram

Jean Grae

Author and Creative Juggernaut

Jean Grae is a multidisciplinary artist, humorist, and former rapper with over 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry. She’s collaborated with influential musicians including The Roots, Robert Glasper, and her prolific body of work is featured at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2019, the Public Theater commissioned her one-person show Jeanius, which played for a limited time and sold out to audiences in New York City. She currently resides in Baltimore with her shared-custody cat Littles. In My Remaining Years is her first book.

Instagram

Rogê

Samba Sensation

Latin Grammy nominee Rogê is a songwriter, composer, and musician considered to be a principal part of the Brazilian popular music scene revival. He has released seven solo albums and two collaborations with samba legends Arlindo Cruz and Seu Jorge. His latest albums Curyman and Curyman II celebrate the vibrancy of Brazilian culture while tackling the country’s complex history, so that, in Rogê's own words, “we don’t give in to sadness, to laziness, to a lack of desire to move on with life. It’s the certainty that a new day will dawn.”

Website • Instagram

Show Notes

Best News

• Elena’s story: “Runner, 97, breaks European Parkrun record with 250th event”

• Luke’s story: “Ohio woman grew up receiving handwritten letters from her father. Now he and other dads are writing to over 1,000 people across the globe”

Aubrey Gordon

• Luke and Aubrey talk about the podcast she co-hosts with journalist Michael Hobbes, Maintenance Phase, which is about debunking health and wellness myths.

• Listen and learn more about Maintenance Phase!

• Luke and Aubrey discuss pandemic-era podcasts, naming Jeremy Piven’s How U Livin, J. Piven and Dennis Quaide’s The Dennissance as examples.

• Aubrey mentions a couple of health myths debunked on her podcast, including the miracle weight-loss pill Ozempic and the fabled Blue Zones.

• Aubrey’s advice for healthy living: enjoy taking care of yourself and splurge on the ad-free versions of your streaming services—because it’s worth it.

Live Wire Listener Question

• How would you like to be celebrated after your death?

Jean Grae

• Jean Grae’s new book is In My Remaining Years, a memoir of her extraordinary life. (We really recommend listening to the audiobook!)

• Luke asks about some major moments in Jean’s life: her childhood in the famous Hotel Chelsea, the beginning of her career as a rapper, and the inception of her project, Church of the Infinite You.

Rogê

• Rogê performs “A Lenda Do Abaeté,” a song written by Dorvil Caymmi and inspired by Bahia, Brazil. You can find it on Rogê’s 2024 album Curryman II.

• Full Transcript

  Elena Passarello From PRX, it's Live Wire! This week, writer and podcaster, Aubrey Gordon. 

  Aubrey Gordon While current events stuff might get a little bit more of a fact check, health and wellness, one would hope, right? Like one would hope. 

  Elena Passarello Humorous Jean Grae. 

  Jean Grae It's very difficult to be like, hey, is anyone else having to shoot a puppet show in their house in the middle of a pandemic? 

  Elena Passarello With music from Roger and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of LiveWire, Luke Burbank. 

  Luke Burbank Hey, thanks so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in all over America. We have a lot of show to get to this week. So we might as well get to it. Of course, first we got to kick things off the way we always do with the best news we heard all week. This is our little reminder at the top of the show that there is in fact some good news happening in the world. We find it for you and we present it here on LiveWire. Elena, what is the best news you heard all week? 

  Elena Passarello Okay, Luke Burbank, have you ever heard of Parkrun before? Not Parkour, but Parkrun? 

  Luke Burbank No. 

  Elena Passarello Me neither, until I learned about this cool best news event. [Luke: Okay.] Parkrun is this kind of tradition that's about 20 years old, where every Saturday in various parks around the planet, people get together and run a 5K. And you get your times and you log your times and it's kind of a cool way to sort of be social. It's like a running club, but if you engage in it, you're called a parkrunner. [Luke: Nice.] And this is happening in Zimbabwe, Australia, America, Denmark, but it started in England. And in Northern Ireland, there is a woman who is maybe the most famous park runner in Belfast. Her name is Grace Chambers. She just completed her 250th parkrun. [Luke: Nice.] And she's 97 years old. [Luke: Wow.] I know. She's a retired teacher. She started doing park running when she was 88 after she had major invasive surgery and a member of her rehab team was like, hey, there's this cool thing where we get together when we run 5Ks in the park. And she was like all right, just give me a couple of weeks. So she started doing it and there have been a few obstacles. She's broken her leg. Parkrun was shut down during COVID. She often runs with her daughter. She's made several close friends and she's kind of walking around these park runs in and around Belfast with celebrity status. At one point, an Olympic gold medalist named Kelly Holmes came to run with her and she was running alongside Grace Chambers and Grace was like, stop talking to me, you're messing up my time. Earlier this year. She had a valve replacement heart surgery. She only took one week off She told the doctor. Well, you got me this new valve I guess I got to go test it out and she was back in the park as soon as she could. And the sort of icing on the cake is recently once she completed her 250th run, the Orion Park in Belfast has dedicated a bench in her name. [Luke: Nice.] It says this is Grace's bench the park runner extraordinaire. And if anybody ever asks me to do a parkrun, I will probably be taking a rest on that bench. 

  Luke Burbank Absolutely. Did I tell you the last time that I did a 5k was many years ago?[Elena: Huh.] And through a clerical error, I got entered in the over 70 category, which I then won. 

  Elena Passarello Hey! 

  Luke Burbank So then I called the guy who got second place in the over 70 category. And I was like, you are the true winner of this 5k. And he said, well, that's great. Would you like to run a marathon with me? And we did. The guy's named John DiLoreto, and he and I trained for a marathon and did a marathon together. 

  Elena Passarello Get that guy a bench. 

  Luke Burbank The best news that I heard all week takes us to Ohio where a woman named Rosie Pollock was recently reflecting on her childhood in one particular part of her childhood, which is that her dad, a guy named Buzz, loved to write her letters. 

  Elena Passarello Hmm. 

  Luke Burbank Throughout her life, her dad wrote her something like 3,500 letters or so. These would be like if she was off at summer camp or if they were separated for any reason. And then as she moved into young adulthood, he would write her letters to congratulate her on various milestones. He would tell her how it was going in his grad school program. He was getting his PhD from Antioch. Sometimes he would her a letter to talk about his favorite sandwich at Subway. [Elena: Huh.] And, uh, so a little while ago, Rosie, who now has children of her own and noticed that her dad Buzz was just kind of seemed a little off, you know, he had finally gotten that PhD. His life was kind of slowing down in the way that it does when, you know, you maybe get a little bit further into your life. And she had this idea. She thought maybe something that would help him kind of get his vim and vigor back would be to write letters again. And so she made a TikTok, of course, because this is what we do, nowadays. And basically asked people on TikTok, would you like to get a letter from my dad? And like immediately 1200 people said, yes, please. 

  Elena Passarello Oh my God. 

  Luke Burbank In fact, so many people wanted letters from Buzz that basically they created this dad letter project and they were able to get, I think it's three additional dads to volunteer for duty. 

  Elena Passarello Awww! 

  Luke Burbank So they've got this team of dads. Now, if you go to their website, the website is the 'Dad Letter Project'. Just Google that. And you basically fill out a form kind of explaining like what's going on with you, what you'd like the subject matter to be of the dad letter, and then one of these dads will straight up write you a full on letter. 

  Elena Passarello Aww. 

  Luke Burbank Address it to you and put a stamp on it, which they pay for. And send you a letter. 

  Elena Passarello I love that it's also not that project where you say, please write my dad a letter. [Luke: Right?] And then the dad gets 250 letters from all over the world. It's so active. It's like, my dad, give my dad project so that everybody can learn about what a cool guy he is. 

  Luke Burbank And Buzz takes it very seriously. He claims that he never gets tired of writing, but if he's sort of getting burned out on a particular day, he will stop mid letter, he will go home, he'll go to sleep. He will get up the next day and he will pick the letter up where he left off. Cause he's, he's not phony. I mean, he is literally not phoning this in, but he's also - he's really giving these things his best shot. So thousands of people having their lives improved by getting a letter from one of these dads. That is the best news that I heard all week. All right, let's get our first guest on over here. Speaking of writing, she's an amazing writer who's built her career, busting questionable health claims and anti-fat culture, which it turns out is still happening all over the place, unfortunately, but gosh darn it, Elena. If she doesn't make this all very fun and interesting while she's at it, she's the author of two books, including the New York Times bestseller, 'You Just Need to Lose Weight and 19 Other Myths About Fat People.' When she is not writing, she is one of the co-hosts of the wildly popular podcast 'Maintenance Phase.' This is Aubrey Gordon, who joined us at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. 

  Aubrey Gordon Hi someone. Hello voices emerging from the darkness.

  Luke Burbank All right. All right, all right, okay. I've literally never gotten that response. Eleven years of doing the show. [Audience: I love you Luke!] Well, that doesn't count. Aubrey, welcome back to Livewire. 

  Aubrey Gordon Hi, thanks for having me! What a treat.

  Luke Burbank I am such a fan of 'Maintenance Phase'. It's so smart and engaging and fun. It's just like the perfect amount of every kind of a thing. I also, not to brag, I host a couple of our podcasts and my least favorite question is when someone says, 'what is your podcast about?' So I'll ask you, Aubrey Gordon, what is your podcast about. 

  Aubrey Gordon Uh, Maintenance Phase is a podcast that is about debunking, uh, junk science claims that are often sort of trotted out in the name of, uh weight loss, sort of wellness writ large and sometimes public health. So that's what, that's what we do, we're debunkers.

  Luke Burbank And you're not, [Aubrey: Thanks.] You're not running out of material, huh? 

  Aubrey Gordon Not anytime soon, not anytime soon. No, wellness farms. We're not running out of content. You know what I mean? Like we got all kinds of stuff to think and talk about. Plenty of stuff that we, I think, probably would rather not- [Luke: Yeah.] have to talk about, but here we are. Yeah, absolutely. 

  Luke Burbank I love how smart you and the co-host Michael Hobbs are on these topics and also your kind of dynamic together. I'm wondering, what are your and Michael's qualifications for hosting a show like this? Is it just having a very good, like BS detector? Is that like the first core competency of doing this? 

  Aubrey Gordon I think that our qualifications are low tolerance for nonsense, and I think that's pretty much it, right? Like, we are a couple of guys, we're not healthcare providers ourselves, we are not researchers ourselves, but what we're trying to do is dig into the primary text of science. Rather than someone telling you about a report that they said they read when they saw a headline and it might have been from the Onion. Or it might have been a TV ad for a weight loss drug, or it might've been something, right, like that all of this stuff sort of are health and wellness information. While political information might get fact checked, while current events stuff might get a little bit more of a fact check. Health and wellness, one would hope, right? Like one would hope. I'm living in a dream world for a moment, allow me that. 

  Luke Burbank Don't- Nobody wake up on Aubrey Gordon. It's dangerous. If you wake her up in this state, it's very dangerous. 

  Aubrey Gordon The end of Newhart, and I'm just waking up. 

  Luke Burbank Exactly. Welcome to the snow globe. 

  Aubrey Gordon Sure, yeah, there are areas in media that are very rigorously fact-checked, or at least that aspire to or that we expect should be able to. And I think health and wellness, along with historically women's media, is often a place where fact- checking takes a real backseat. And I thing where a lot of us get our ideas about sort of, what is, 'common sense for wellness or for weight loss.' Really just comes straight from advertising, right? That's actually like one of the top sources of like, 'health and wellness information in our lives.' And those are people who are trying to sell you things, right? Like that can't be your source for science everybody, but it is one of our main sort of things that we think of as a source for science. 

  Luke Burbank How did you and Michael Hobbs end up doing this podcast together? 

  Aubrey Gordon He was a reporter for Huffington Post Highline and had worked on a number of really phenomenal stories for them. One that he was working on is an exceptional story called, 'Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong', which if you haven't read it, I just so strongly recommend it. It's exceptional. And he had called me a bunch of times to be like, can I quote you for this story? And I was like, no, I'm scared. Really? Yeah, he's like, Mr. Fact Check. I was, like, I don't want to mess up. 

  Luke Burbank Had you been writing and speaking, so you are kind of out in the discourse on this. 

  Aubrey Gordon I had been writing, but I was anonymous at that point. [Luke: Really? Woah.] And I hadn't shown my face publicly or whatever. And as it happened, a good friend of mine was doing a performance up in Seattle, and I talked to Mike and was like, I'm gonna be in Seattle. And he was like cool, we're getting lunch. And I was like I get there at like 5 p.m. And I drive out at nine, and he was then we're having a late lunch, I guess. And we did and we just sat and talked for a really long time and hit it off. And the next call I got from Mike was when the lockdowns hit and he was like, seems like a good time to start a podcast no? So that's what we did. 

  Luke Burbank I mean it's amazing. It is the absolute best case scenario because there were so many podcasts that were started during the pandemic. [Aubrey: Yes] And so many of them were so forgettable and yet you two really hit upon something. 

  Aubrey Gordon Listen, we've already stopped talking about Dennis Quaid's podcast, The Denisonce. You know what I mean? Like, we lost so much already. 

  Luke Burbank I mean- and by the way, R.I.P Jeremy Piven's podcast, How You Live in J Piven. 

  Elena Passarello No, no, no. 

  Aubrey Gordon Is that real? Is that a real thing? 

  Luke Burbank Oh, oh, far too real. 

  Aubrey Gordon Oh, no. 

  Luke Burbank I think they had about eight episodes. 

  Aubrey Gordon Oh no. I'm going to listen to 100% of those. Oh no! 

  Luke Burbank We are talking to Aubrey Gordon, one half of the Maintenance Phase podcast here on LiveWire. We have to take a very short break, but don't go anywhere much more in a moment. Stay with us. 

  Luke Burbank Hey, welcome back to LiveWire everybody. My name is Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. A fine assortment of folks at the Alberta Rose Theater here in Portland, Oregon and Aubrey Gordon from the Maintenance Phase podcast. I'm curious what the sort of research and preparation is for an episode of the show. Since I have is that either you or your co-host, Michael Hobbs kind of take the primary research role and then kind of unfold this story for the other person. But I mean, it seems like you are really, really putting in your time on trying to learn everything you can about the topic. Like, how involved is the research? 

  Aubrey Gordon I will say, I just postponed a record with Mike because I was like, I'm gonna be ready by this date, I promise. And then I was, like, no, there's more research to do. So this will have been, by the time we record next week, this will have been a month of just full-time research on bulletproof coffee. The butter and the coffee guy. The butter and the coffee guy?

  Luke Burbank Oh yeah, sure sure. Oh yeah. 

  Aubrey Gordon Do you remember bulletproof? 

  Luke Burbank I was putting butter in my coffee for a while. 

  Aubrey Gordon Were you doing it? 

  Luke Burbank Yeah. [Aubrey: Yeah, absolutely.] It was a weird time. 

  Aubrey Gordon People were like, it tastes great. And I'm like, I mean, I bet. Like, it's butter. I don't know why it wouldn't. [Luke: Yeah. Oh wow.] But yeah, so there's been like a deep dive into that guy. And like, I wouldn't have thought that there was four weeks worth of research to do. [Luke: Wow.] He says he was the first person ever to sell something on the internet. And I'm like, I don't know how to confirm or disconfirm that extremely wild claim. 

  Luke Burbank Um, I was listening to an episode that you did about, uh, GLP-1 drugs, specifically Ozempic, but I noted that it was back in, I think 2023. [Aubrey: Yeah.] So it was a little while ago, maybe almost two years ago. There has been still so much more sort of prevalence of these drugs in the culture. And I'm just, I guess I'm curious what you see as the sort of like pros and cons of these. How do we say it? I was saying it wrong. [Aubrey: GLP-1, you nailed it.] Semaglutides? [Aubrey: Semaglutides.] Semaglutides.

  Aubrey Gordon It took so long for me to figure out how to say that right. Yeah, I mean, I think probably the best indicator of where we are now is the hims and hers ad from the Super Bowl. 

  Luke Burbank The people that we're selling boner pills have shifted over to this like alleged weight loss drug 

  Aubrey Gordon Look at you doing the yeoman's work of a host, saying it so I don't have to. Look at YOU! 

  Luke Burbank I mean, honestly, I was doing some amateur research on that whole subject myself, so... I was ready to go. Put me in coach. 

  Aubrey Gordon LAUGHS 

  Luke Burbank But you're saying that the fact that this thing that started off as a drug that was supposed to help manage diabetes has now moved into the arena of something that is being pitched purely as a way to modify your body. 

  Aubrey Gordon Yes, and I think perhaps the biggest issue there isn't that people are taking weight loss drugs, like you do, you team, you wanna take some weight loss drug, go for it. You don't want to, you don't have to, look at that. And the issue is there is infinitely more demand than there is supply for the actual molecule that is ozempic. Novo Nordisk owns that molecule currently. So lots of places are saying that they're selling compounded semaglutide. Baby, we don't know what that is. But it's not semaglutide because that is owned by Novo Nordisk. And they are not letting it out, right? So... 

  Luke Burbank The boner pill people lied to me? 

  Aubrey Gordon Well, I know it's really hard to imagine that the people who are like, obesity is killing everyone, all the fat people are gonna kill all of us in that ad, right? Were actually maybe playing that up a little bit. It's weird. So, like, that seems to me to be the biggest issue here is that we have mostly press that is fanning the flames of desire for these drugs and ramping up the excitement. When they know that there's not enough supply to cover all of the diabetic people. So diabetic people can't get it. People who want it for weight loss can't get it. And now the available substance is a compounded version that is like not subject to the same level of scrutiny from the FDA. I can't think of a time in my lifetime that this many people have been striving to get the same drug in the same moment. Like that's wild, that's a wild place to be in. And I think it's really unfortunate that we have this system set up where by private companies can just sort of print cash is what it feels like. 

  Luke Burbank Not to mention something, we're talking to Aubrey Gordon from the Maintenance Phase podcast here on LiveWire, something that came up in that episode, which was you have this thing that's billed as like, you know, the cure for obesity, like there's a magic pill, and then it immediately creates a question for people who are in larger bodies, like why aren't you doing it? [Aubrey: Mm-hm.] Like another, and you're citing a long list of things that preceded it, whether it's FenFen, whether it was Alli. It's like another conversation that somebody is thrust into having about like why aren't they availing themselves of this? 

  Aubrey Gordon The other thing that happens, in addition to downplaying medical side effects, is that we also move the goalposts on what kind of weight loss is acceptable. [Luke: Right.] Right? That like one of the big sort of refrains that you will hear in the Ozempic conversation is like, that's the easy way out and you gotta do it the hard way. And I think that what that reveals about us is that don't actually care how much people weigh, we care about watching fat people suffer. That that is actually the request is like I need to see you in pain. While you're pursuing thinness, it's not acceptable to folks, right? 

  Luke Burbank So that fatphobia can follow a person through whatever their body looks like, to where they're a person who now weighs less because of maybe taking one of these drugs, but they didn't do it correctly. They're still receiving the ire of somebody who's judging them in essentially the same manner. 

  Aubrey Gordon Totally, which also encourages that person to exhibit more anti-fatness toward fat people to distance themselves, to be like, they're the bad ones, I actually did it. Even if I didn't do it in,  'the right way.'  So it's just a, it's a really complicated time to feel like, I think for a lot of folks, particularly thin folks, it felt like we had made a lot gains in the body positivity world, and really all it took was one magic pill or magic injection to sort of share what I think a lot fat folks knew, which was like. Oh guys, we're doing a lot of window dressing here. There isn't the sort of depth of change that would get people to start a conversation like this from a more critical or skeptical place. 

  Luke Burbank I could talk to you for hours, literally. [Aubrey: Back at you.] I have a very parasocial relationship with you as a Maintenance Phase listener. [Elena: Same.] But I would be remiss if if we didn't try to quickly get to the bottom of the whole blue zones situation which it's been a wild ride. If you know what these are this was you know these parts of the world where people supposedly regularly live into their 100's and I'm the kind of person who's like buying a certain kind of uh bean uh thing from Trader Joe's because TikTok said it's on the Blue Zone diet. But then there was, a whole big piece that was like, actually this is all BS. 

  Aubrey Gordon Yeah, they're was. 

  Luke Burbank And and then there was the Maintenance Phase episode which sort of came down somewhere in the middle, like do i have to throw these beans out from Trader Joe's Aubrey?

  Aubrey Gordon No, I am a bean truther. [Luke: Okay.] I love beans. I have a keychain that says, a friend of mine who's a food blogger, Rebecca Eisenberg, has started calling me the beanfluencer because I never stop talking about beans. So I now have a chain that says beanfluenser on it. It's fine. So the Blue Zones as a concept for folks who are unfamiliar, the idea was to map out all the places on the globe where people were living past 100 years. It wasn't, where is the life expectancy the longest? It wasn't where do people have the fewest chronic health conditions? It wasn't any other measure. It was just, do you live past 100? How many of you are there? If there are a lot, it's a Blue Zone. And that got spun up pretty quickly by a guy named Dan Buettner, who wrote like a Blue Zones cookbook and a couple of books and had a Netflix series about it. There was then a large scale debunking that got a bunch of traction. That found that in one of those regions, in a blue zone in Greece, a number of people were essentially just committing pension fraud. And that appears to be true. People were not living past 100. They were collecting checks from family members. 

  Luke Burbank But, as you and Michael point out, that was, that seemed to be sort of localized to Greece. [Aubrey: That was one of the Blue Zones.] Right. 

  Aubrey Gordon I think the other thing that Mike brought up about this that I really appreciated was, again, we got really hyper-focused on this idea of there's something magical happening in places where more than usual people live past 100. But the flip side of that is that a lot of these places had relatively low life expectancies and were pretty poor areas, right? So it just is like a really tricky thing where you can go, sure, we can look at centenarians and act like that is a specially special thing, or we can at the massive body of research that we have on how to increase life expectancies overall, whether or not people live to 100 and have to eat the special minestrone with the special beans from Sardinia. There are lots and lots of things that we can do right here, right now that aren't like this sort of party trick of like, where are the most people over 100? Where is the guy from the Today show going to do his little smuckers with a name like smuckered? It's gotta be good.

  Luke Burbank But the larger idea is why don't we pursue policies that give more people better healthcare access? So that more people are living a healthy life, not just randomly, there's like six guys like chain smoking who maybe got to 105. 

  Aubrey Gordon Totally! Absolutely! Or maybe we're committing pension fraud? Who knows.

  Luke Burbank With so much of this stuff being exaggerated or unreliable, I'm curious for you in your own life, what are your like, what's your North Star? Like what are you kind of principles that you think about that do feel true to you when so much stuff that's out there is a sales pitch? 

  Aubrey Gordon I really think that most of it is just like, you know what it looks like to eat well, you know, what it feels like when you're cooking for yourself and you like what you're cooking. Focus on the joy of taking care of yourself. And great, thank you. And I think as much as possible, honestly, the other big change, this is such a good question, I have not been asked this before and I'm thinking it through in real time. The other thing that I have done, honest to God, is every streaming service that I have that offers an ad-free option, I will pay them for an ad free option. [Luke: Wow, that's profound.] Because that's where just an overwhelming volume of garbage is just like Hulu ads, where you're just like, oh, every commercial break Seven Wegovi ads back to back. I'm good. Right? 

  Luke Burbank I never thought of that as being basically a self-preservation for one's mental health to actually pay for the ad-free version. 

  Aubrey Gordon Ad-free YouTube, baby. It's the way to go. 

  Luke Burbank Well, this and more can be learned if you tune into Maintenance Phase. Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbs is a great podcast. Aubrey Gordon, thank you so much. That was Aubrey Gordon right here on LiveWire. Her podcast, Maintenance Phase, is available wherever you get that sort of thing. LiveWire is brought to you by Powells Books, a Portland institution since 1971. Powells offers a selection of new and used books in stores and online at Powells.com. You are listening to LiveWire, I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. Of course, each week on the program, we ask the LiveWired audience a question. This week, we were inspired by our next guest's book, which includes a very specific list of things that she wants to have happen and not happen at her funeral. So because of this, Elena, what question did we ask? The Live Wire audience. 

  Elena Passarello We asked them, how would you like to be celebrated after your death? 

  Luke Burbank Wow. That's a big question. 

  Elena Passarello Mm-hm. 

  Luke Burbank Elena has been collecting up those responses and she's got them now. What are people saying? 

  Elena Passarello Well, Brian took my idea. Brian says, I want to be Weekend at Bernies. Which, of course, if you are under the age of 40, the whole premise is that these guys really need this person who has been deceased to seem alive. And so they like take him on a roller coaster or whatever. Brian wants to be Weekened at Bernie's to a Mariners' game. He says, prop me up, put some sunglasses on me and let's see if we can fool the Jumbotron. 

  Luke Burbank You know, I am a lifelong Seattle Mariners fan, Elena, and I've been to many games where I wished I was deceased. 

  Elena Passarello Yeah! 

  Luke Burbank It's difficult to be a person who's both living and rooting for the Seattle Mariners. [Elena: Aw.] All right. What's another way in which one of our listeners would like to be remembered? 

  Elena Passarello OK, well, this one from Danielle, I don't know if I'm sure about this one. Danielle says, all my loved ones have to adopt a pet from an animal shelter and then name it after me. That way, they could be constantly reminded of what a lovable pain in the ass I was. [Luke: Wow.] I mean, it keeps your memory alive. But then you're going to say things like, oh, grandma just barfed in my shoe. 

  Luke Burbank Yeah. Danielle, not on the rug! Like, you know, I mean, it is perfectly on brand though. If Danielle is kind of a lovable, but annoying person. 

  Elena Passarello Yeah, if Danielle likes to chew up shoes and kill rats in the yard, you know, then great. [Luke: Nice.] Sorry, Danielle. 

  Luke Burbank All right, one more way that one of our listeners wants to be celebrated in the afterlife. 

  Elena Passarello I think this one is beautiful because it's a great way to remember someone, but it's also a great to help the people who have to deal with all of the earthly goods that one leaves behind. Anne says, I want everyone to take a book off of my bookshelf and read it and hopefully keep it. So then all those books don't have to be boxed and sent or anything like that. And then your library is just scattered all over the place, which is so beautiful. 

  Luke Burbank Yes. I mean, if you think about the books that you've read as being kind of, they become an essential part of you, I think. And so that then to have that sort of redistributed throughout presumably the lives of the people you love and knew that's a very, it's a beautiful sentiment. Well, thank you to everybody who responded to our audience question. Of course, this is Livewire and our next guest is a multidisciplinary artist, humorist, and one-time rapper with over 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry or even longer. If you consider her childhood in the Chelsea Hotel, her new memoir is titled In My Remaining Years, and it reflects on her extraordinary life, and it provides kind of a much-needing rallying cry for those of us who are still maybe trying to figure out their life in their 40s, or very late 40s if you're me. Kirkus Review calls it a fierce funny book that embraces life and all its imperfections with open arms. This is Jean Grae, who joined us at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon recently. Take a listen. Hello Jean, welcome to the show. I saw a picture of you, you post on Instagram, I think it's you in like fifth grade, and I think underneath it's just written, I don't know if it was your handwriting or your teacher's, it was like goal, and you just wrote entertainer. 

  Jean Grae Yeah, you know that fifth grade yearbook when everyone has to write in what they're gonna be and I was like I'm not narrowing it down because I don't want to be wrong. And everyone was like veterinarian. I'm like tall order. I want to look back on this and be like nailed it. 

  Luke Burbank And that's really what a big part of the book is, I think, is you kind of checking in with yourself, looking back to some degree at your life, but really looking forward and just trying to assess, like, how has this been sort of going? When we catch up with you at the very beginning of the, it's the pandemic, you're physically feeling very ill, not from COVID, but from some auto-immune stuff, and your marriage is kind of crumbling, and you're also, it sounds like, supporting yourself by doing a puppet show from your living room?

  Jean Grae Yeah, that's right, Luke. 

  Luke Burbank How did you end up there, exactly?

  Jean Grae Uh, all things converged at possibly the worst time ever. And the puppet show was actually something I'd been trying to work on for years, what I was calling an adult educational show called, That's Not How You Do That. [Luke: That's a good name.] Which was everyday faux paws. Like, you know, when you get off the escalator, don't just stand there. If I am in a store and I hand you the money, when you give me the money back, can you please put it in my hand and not on the counter? 

  Luke Burbank Mm-hmm. 

  Jean Grae And I always wanted to do it as a puppet show for nostalgia reasons, just because I grew up on Jim Henson and the Muppets and Sesame Street. And I think puppets are a good way to talk to people. Sometimes they don't wanna listen to actual people. So the plan was to start shooting the show in April of 2020. 

  Luke Burbank They remember. 

  Jean Grae Yeah, yeah, you guys remember. A little thing happened. But they asked me, the company then asked me. They're like, could you do this show at home? I was like, well, we don't have a home. We are about to move. But absolutely, I could learn how to make puppets and write six episodes and then build a home and then shoot my own show and edit my own shows. And that did definitely contribute to the divorce. 

  Luke Burbank Yeah, you talked in the book about you were seeking online therapy or was it online or was it? 

  Jean Grae Yeah. It was, yeah, my first talk therapy and I was like, I don't know what to do anymore. And also, it's very difficult to talk to your friends or anyone, very easy to talk about something like divorce, but very difficult to be like, hey, is anyone else having to shoot a puppet show in their house in the middle of a pandemic?  

  Luke Burbank Something that comes up in your biography a lot is the fact that you were born in South Africa, raised in New York, your parents were musicians, and you lived in the Chelsea Hotel, the famous Chelsea Hotel. And what you say in the book is that people always have some expectation about that. Like, you're gonna have crazy stories about Sid and Nancy, but like, it was where you lived as a person growing up and it was the way that a lot of places people live growing up, good things and bad things. 

  Jean Grae Yeah, I think it's your home, no matter what it is. So it wasn't actually normal from the outside. And even kids I went to school with lived in apartments, or lived in lofts, or lived around the city. And I do joke in the book that my mom used to try to use that statement when your kid comes home late at night and be like, what do you think this is, a hotel? And I was like... uhh. [Luke: Yeah.] But I think it's the kind of childhood that gives you an understanding of how to deal with darkness real quick. That it doesn't have to be ever-consuming and that death is kind of an inevitable part of life. 

  Luke Burbank OK, I want to talk a little bit about your music career. If I understand right, you were interested in beat making and production before you actually started rapping over things. Do you think that made you a stronger musician because you had this kind of technical background? And would you have been happy just sticking with that? Did somebody talk you into actually doing the rapping? 

  Jean Grae Somebody did talk me into doing the rapping. And I did love kind of being behind the scenes more. And I think it was part of my general competitive nature after that and seeing all these guys do stuff. And I was like, well, I can do it better than that. My friend was like you can definitely do it better than, that. I should do it. And I think that's what happens with... Women, femme-presenting people, who are not looked at generally as competitive or technical, kind of, we're just there and we have to be grateful to be in the company of men. So it was kind of a middle finger to all of that, and like, okay, yeah, I can do that, but I can also do that too. And I know you guys need beats, because otherwise it's just silent rapping, and nobody wants that. 

  Luke Burbank If you were just listening and you heard Jean Grae, the inflection in your voice, that reminded me a little bit of the audio book version of this book. I kind of bounced back and forth between the book copy and then the listening to it. It might be my favorite audio book I've ever listened to in my life. 

  Elena Passarello Same. 

  Jean Grae Thank you so much. 

  Luke Burbank I mean, if just your delivery of the kind of sound effects that are worked in, it's just the right amount. And also, how much work did you put into the audio book of this book? 

  Jean Grae I will tell you, all the work is not what anyone asked for, which is also generally what I kind of do for a living. It's the easiest way for me to explain it. One, I just say I do what needs to get done. And two, I'm like, it's also nothing that anyone asked for. [Luke: Oh, it came through though.] They asked me who would be narrating the book. I was like, oh, the book is secondary. I had to write the book so that I could narrate the book. 

  Luke Burbank I'll- 

  Jean Grae That's why it's great. I love the book. I love a physical book. And also, the book is there because I wanted to do the cover of the book. [Luke: Which is great.] But the audiobook narrating it was one of my greatest joys. 

  Luke Burbank Can we talk a little bit about the Church of the Infinite You? [Jean: Yes, we can.] This is the church that you've started. 

  Jean Grae Oh my. 

  Luke Burbank And service has started here, by the way. Thank you to all who celebrate. Tell me about some of the kind of principles of this idea. 

  Jean Grae Church of the Infinite You started because it's really hard to do like fight club like one-on-one when you meet people. [Luke: You mean, like legally?] And also and also legally is a problem. I was kind of meeting people out in the wild and and having connections and being like what do you do? Why aren't you doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing? I'm gonna come in and check on you and I would be complete strangers and then I would go back and check in on them, be like did you do that open mic? Did you start painting again? So it started as a place, non-religious at all. A place for people to come and find their superhero self. Like the idea was I hope that you come to this church, that we talk about some things, that you feel comfortable enough sharing. That we have the choir sing, and that you don't come back. I don't want to be a leader. I definitely did not want to be a cult leader. The ponytail was good, but I still didn't want to be a cult leader. 

  Luke Burbank I don't know. 

  Jean Grae You know, the idea that we're all here to save ourselves first and that is how we build bigger community is taking care of yourself, making sure you're doing the things that you're really supposed to do. It's not necessarily pipe trains and things don't have to be just fantastical and absurd because we're out here having to grind away at doing a capitalism every two seconds. Like, we just, we cannot get through. In that way. There has to be some other outlet. So church was a weekly general reminder that you still need to do those things. Like you have to, we have to. 

  Luke Burbank Well, as I mentioned, at the start of the book, we catch up with you at a kind of a tough time. At the end of the books, I feel like it seems like things are moving in a positive direction, even though what you're spelling out is the exact details for your funeral. And what should and should not happen there, including no beatboxing and no gum chewing. Why, or are those not allowed at Jean Grae's funeral? 

  Jean Grae Well, the gum chewing, because it could be mistaken for the beatboxing.  

  Luke Burbank I see, so it's beatboxing adjacent.. 

  Jean Grae Beatboxing adjacent and I had already said that I had sharpshooters in place if anyone beatboxed So if you're gum chewing, I you know something happens. [Luke: You could get taken out.] Yeah, you could get taking out but this idea of perception and people controlling your narrative. And so I think the funeral is so particular because of all these years of being like, I don't think they understood. But I'm like, hey, I'm a very particular person. I like the things I like. And that should be OK. And especially on what I think is my most special day. I have had two weddings. They were not my most-special days. But my funeral should really be about me and not things that other people have ever wanted for me. And the idea that mortality salience, you know, that we're all gonna die and that talking about it, that being vulnerable and honest is not a bad thing. It is how we get to the real living of the life, being like, it's okay, it is gonna happen. We can make it fabulous, let's make sure. I will put it in a book and an audio book. 

  Luke Burbank A really good audio book. 

  Jean Grae So that when we get to the funeral, and if some people are there, maybe some of you, you can be like, no, that guy is trying to beatbox. Jean said she did not want that. 

  Luke Burbank I've got it right here, first Jean, chapter two. Thou shalt not beat box. The book is in my remaining years. Jean Grae, it's phenomenal. Thank you so much for coming on. That was Jean Gray, recorded live at the Patricia Reser Center for the Performing Arts in Beaverton, Oregon. You can check out Jean's book in my remaining years, wherever you get your books. All right, we've got to take a quick break here on LiveWire, but stay where you are when we come back. Brazilian singer-songwriter, Roge, will play us an amazing tune, so stay with us. Welcome back to LiveWire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Pasarello right over there. Okay, before we get to our musical performance from Roge this week, a little preview of next week's episode. We are gonna be talking to the writer John Mualem from the New York Times Magazine. He has this great book of essays. It's called Serious Face. Now here's one of the things that John writes about in this book of essay. Why, if you see a painting of a Spanish bullfighter and it looks exactly like your friend, don't take a picture of it and send it to them. Uh, we're also going to meet chef and bar owner, Jenny Nguyen, who opened what we think has got to be the first ever sports bar that only plays women's sports on the TVs in the sports bar. It's called the Sports Bra. It was started here in Portland, Oregon, but they are now expanding nationally, which is very cool. Uh, and then we're going to hear some music from a friend of the program. The one and only Laura Veirs. So that's all next week on live wire. Support for LiveWire comes from the Celeste Hotel in St. Paul, Minnesota. An independent boutique hotel, this former art conservatory and convent is on the national list of historic places. For booking and for more information, visit thecelestehotel.com. This is Live Wire, our musical guest. This week is a Latin Grammy nominee who's been re-imagining Brazilian pop music for over 20 years. He's released seven solo albums, even helped write the theme song for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. His latest albums, Curryman and Curryman 2, celebrate the vibrancy of Brazilian culture while tackling the country's complex history so that in his words, quote, 'We don't give in to sadness, to laziness, to lack of desire to move on with life,' which God, why does that feel like something that we here in America might need some help on these days? This is Roge recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. What song are we gonna hear? 

  Roge Yeah, the song I born and raised in Rio, but have other place that I love, it's Bahia. And I love Bahia, warm water, good food, and good, mystic, Bahia is very mystic. And this song I recorded, that's my last album, it's Curryman II, this is called A Lenda Do Abaeté. This song's from 1950s, from Dorival Caymmi. And it talk about the... The mystic place in Bahia is Abayeter. It's a black lake with white sand around. So this is a very special place, mystic place, and we call it the A Lenda Do Abaete. 

  Luke Burbank All right, this is Roge on LiveWire. 

  Roge [Roge performs A Lendo Do Abaete.]

  Roge Thank you. Thank you so much. 

  Luke Burbank That was Roge recorded live at the Alberta Rose theater in Portland. His album Curry Man II is available right now. That is gonna do it for this week's episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Aubrey Gordon, Jean Grae, and Roge. Special thanks also this episode to Hallie and Rick Sadel. 

  Elena Passarello Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather De Michelle is our Executive Director and our Producer and Editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our Technical Director is Eben Hoffer. Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our Assistant Editor and our House Sound is by Deneal Blake and Aaron Tomasko. C. Steinman was our Production Manager and Ashley Park is our Production Fellow. 

  Elena Passarello Valentine Keck is our operations manager and Ezra Veenstra runs our front of house. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Sam Pinkerton, Eyal Alvez, Ben Grace, 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 James F. And Marion L. Miller Foundation, Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank members Carly Ruffalo and Ian Paja of Portland, Oregon. 

  Luke Burbank For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole LiveWIRE team. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.

  PRX.