Episode 681
Jon Mooallem, Jenny Nguyen, and Laura Veirs
Writer Jon Mooallem (The New York Times Magazine) discusses his newest collection of essays Serious Face and why you shouldn't tell your friend they look like a 1940’s Spanish bullfighter; chef Jenny Nguyen chats about opening her Portland bar The Sports Bra, which exclusively televises womens' sports; and singer-songwriter Laura Veirs performs "My Lantern" from her new album Found Light. Plus, Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello talk dream businesses.
Jon Mooallem
Writer and Journalist
Master storyteller Jon Mooallem is a longtime writer at large for The New York Times Magazine and a contributor to This American Life. He is the author of Wild Ones (2013), which was named a notable book of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and Canada’s National Post, as well as This Is Chance! (2022). His latest collection of essays is called Serious Face, one of Literary Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2022.
Jenny Nguyen
Chef and Entrepreneur
Jenny Nguyen is the chef, founder, and owner of The Sports Bra, the world’s first sports bar showing only women’s sports. A basketball player from an early age, Jenny turned to the culinary arts after an injury ended her sports career in college and worked her way up in kitchens for the next 15 years. The Sports Bra, which opened in Portland, Oregon in April 2022, raised over $100k on Kickstarter, received press coverage from around the world, and continues to draw attention to gender inequality in sports.
Laura Veirs
Singer-Songwriter
Laura Veirs is a singer-songwriter from Portland, Oregon known for inquisitive, literary lyrics and an intricate chamber folk sound. She has a dozen albums to her name, many of which she released on her own label, Raven Marching Band Records. A prolific collaborator, she has worked with such artists as Sufjan Stevens, Bill Frisell, and Bela Fleck, as well as Neko Case and k.d. lang in the supergroup case/lang/veirs. In 2018, she created the podcast Midnight Lightning, about musician parents, and that same year she published a children’s book, Libba: The Magnificent Life of Elizabeth Cotten. Her new album, Found Light, was written in a period of post-divorce self-rediscovery.
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Luke Burbank: This episode of Live Wire was originally recorded in August of 2022. We hope you enjoy it. Now let’s get to the show.
Elena Passarello: From PRX. It's LIVE WIRE. And this week, writer Jon Mooallem.
Jon Mooallem: He has a face that's as dreary as a third class funeral on a rainy day. And what I realized with this bullfighter, who's my exact twin, apparently was just renowned for his ugliness.
Elena Passarello: Chef and women's sports advocate Jenny Nguyen.
Jenny Nguyen: Here we are. We're a space that is dedicated to showing women sports. Right. But there isn't any possible way that we're able to show 24/7 content.
Elena Passarello: With music from Laura Veirs: 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, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in all over the country. We have a great show in store for you all this week. Of course, we asked Live Wire listeners a question for this week's show. First, though, it's time for the best news we heard all week. Of course this is our little reminder at the top of the show that there's some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what is the best news you heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Okay. Kitty cat news from Kentucky.
Luke Burbank: It's been a week since one of us checked in on the kitty cat beat, so it was about time.
Elena Passarello: I know, I have a hard time not making all my best news, feline related, but this was pretty good. There's a woman in Ashland, Kentucky, named Randi McGlone, who recently got herself a new recliner. Tried it out for a couple of days, decided that it wasn't for her, called the company, and they took it back to their Big Sandy Superstore warehouse. And she was like, back to the drawing board. Wait a minute. Where's my cat?
Luke Burbank: Oh, no.
Elena Passarello: She looked around and her house isn't that big. And she has a cat that she's very close to. She calls it sort of like in the vein of an emotional support animal named Inky. Inky already had used up one of Inky's nine lives by being in a fire when Inky was a kitten. So Inky doesn't have any whiskers and has a really interesting fur pattern and a burned paws. So a real survivor cat and also a real emotional cat for Randi McGlone. So back at the warehouse, at the Big Sandy Superstore, they unload this recliner and all they see is this little black lightning bolt that just shoots into the bowels of the warehouse. They call Randi, and they're like, I think we have your cat. She goes, She goes down there and she calls and calls and calls in this big warehouse, and she can't find Inky. And she goes back again and tries and tries to find Inky. She goes back again. And this is a warehouse. The doors are opening and closing. Things are going in and out. There are plenty of recliners to hide it.
Luke Burbank: Inky can't navigate the doorways because Inky doesn't have whiskers, which we know are like an important sensory part of the cat's deal.
Elena Passarello: Right. But three weeks later, Randi thought her cat was gone. They finally managed to trap Inky at the superstore. They called her. She came over and now the cat is reunited.
Luke Burbank: And this woman has decided to just buy futons going forward. Just something with less.
Elena Passarello: Pillows on the floor. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, exactly like a tatami room. Something where the cat cannot get wedged in a hidden space.
Elena Passarello: If they want to hide certain kinds of cats, you really can never find them. They're so flexible and like, good luck.
Luke Burbank: Speaking of hidden animals, can I just tell you about the best thing that I saw this week or heard about? I didn't actually see it, but I heard about a chinchilla named Mr. Bean was hiding in the bag of somebody that I was flying with. I was flying home from Chicago recently and we had had no end of like weather delays and hassle. And everyone on the flight kind of bonded because we had, you know, been through so much. Planes, trains and automobiles. Right. And the person next to me, she mentioned that she was she goes, I'm sneaking an animal on this flight. I go, What? She goes, Yeah, I have a chinchilla named Mr. Bean in the bag. She showed me some pictures of him on her phone and she was like, He's my son. He's my everything. I was like, Where do you where do you get a chinchilla named Mr. Bean? She goes, Well, I'm a teacher in Chicago. And he was the class Chinchilla.
Elena Passarello: Oh, she went through security like surreptitious.
Luke Burbank: Mr. We were way past security. We were at the gate. Oh, my gosh. Mr. Bean had made it through security and was ready to take this flight from Chicago to Portland. And the idea that this teacher had basically taken Mr. Bean home because, you know, that happens with those classroom pets where it's kind of like, you know, there are no takers. I think he was like eight or nine when she took him home. So was not a young chinchilla. And they have now bonded so well and to such a degree that they're just like little ride or die for each other. So.
Elena Passarello: Oh, my gosh.
Luke Burbank: And Mr. Bean, Mr. Bean made it to Portland safe and sound. So I'm not advocating for sneaking pets onto flights, but I'm just saying it was pretty memorable and cool for me as an...plus, I didn't know how cute chinchillas are. I think of a chinchillas being sort of hamster like they got these big old cute ears. They got really kind of. Yeah, their eyes, big giant eyes are like a Disney character or something.
Elena Passarello: Did you see that JetBlue photo of a flight attendant just carrying a gigantic cat up and down the aisles going, Is this your cat? Is this your cat?
Luke Burbank: That would happen if I tried to sneak my cat bubbles on to a flight. She would she would escape within moments and be giving Inky a run for their money in terms of using up lives. So Inky the cat only being on life number seven and Mr. Bean, the chinchilla flying cross-country. That's the best news that we've heard all week. All right. Let's get our first guest on over to the show. He is a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. And he was the person behind the Surprisingly Listenable podcast, the Walking podcast, wherein he would just record himself walking around Bainbridge Island in Washington where he lives. What we want to talk to him about, though, is his exceptional new book of essays. It's titled Serious Face. It covers everything from monk seals to the former skydiving entrepreneur who's been building his dream city in the desert of California, calling it the center of the world. Jon Mooallem joined us on stage at the Alberto Rose Theater. Let's take a listen to that conversation. Hello, Jon.
Jon Mooallem: Hi.
Luke Burbank: Welcome back to the show.
Jon Mooallem: Thank you very much.
Luke Burbank: This book series Face is just such an absolutely wonderful read. It's a collection of essays on a variety of different topics and things that you've reported on in your life over the years. One of the questions that you pose in the book is: Why are we not better than we are? You said that sort of a question that you've been trying to answer in one way or another throughout your career. What do you exactly mean by that question? Why are we not better than we are? What are you trying to explore?
Jon Mooallem: Yeah, well, first I'd say it's I kind of borrowed my I didn't borrow it. I stole that line from a from a poem by a poet, Eric Trethewey, which I had read, like 25 years ago, and just kind of still rattling around my head. And yeah, I think that's when I had to sit down and think about, you know, what tied a lot of these pieces together. It did seem like that was a question they were all driving in one way or another. Not necessarily like in a moral sense, like why are we not, you know, perfect angels all the time? But just even like, as functional machinery, like, why is it that I was supposed to check that my water heater wasn't leaking before I left the house this morning and I didn't do it, you know, And.
Luke Burbank: That really happened. I really.
Jon Mooallem: That's true story, you know. But yeah, I just think that we're in some ways it's like when you when you really can step back, you see, like a lot of us are kind of bumbling around and more inept than I think we generally realize. And that but the problem is, is like we can imagine better, you know, better ways of doing things. We can imagine sort of the perfect way to do everything. And so a lot of the stories in the book are about this kind of breakdown between theory and practice when people are really trying to accomplish something great and kind of just can't just can't get there.
Luke Burbank: Hmm. One of the early essays in the book involves you and some buddies heading out to Alaska for a kayaking trip, and things did not sort of play out the way you were expecting. What happened?
Jon Mooallem: Yeah, we were kayaking in Glacier Bay, which is a really remote part of Alaska and had been rained in one day, weren't able to get in the boats that day because the water was too rough. So we decided to just kind of hike around after the rain had died down and a very large tree fell over and landed on my friend and knocked him into a river. That's the short version of the story.
Luke Burbank: But I mean, the what makes it so compelling is, first of all, your friend was, it turns out, injured very sort of gravely. And you're also in the absolute middle of nowhere. And also, like no offense, but one of your friends was sort of an outdoor guide. But the other two.
Jon Mooallem: Exactly. My friend, whose name is also John, was the one who was injured and he was the one who had all the experience and know how, you know, we were his guests. I mean, I should say he's he's okay. We got we got him out. Yes. And the Coast Guard came through a kind of freak series of coincidences. We were able to get word to the Coast Guard. But yeah, I mean, that's a perfect example of this of this question is like, you know, somehow everything worked out, but it was not because we were, you know, perfectly capable, you know, competent people. It was it was a lot of luck. It could have easily gone different ways. And it was just sort of like repeatedly, kind of just like trying to not let the current emergency, you know, take us all under and then getting to the next emergency.
Luke Burbank: You turned, as is so often the case in emergencies to poetry.
ELena Passarello Yeah. First aid kit was poetry.
Jon Mooallem: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, you really want me in a crisis because. Yeah, there was there was a moment in this in this whole adventure where my one friend had had gone back to our campsite to try to get hold of this radio and reach some help. And I and was left alone with my friend, my friend John, who was just laying on the forest floor, completely immobilized. And, you know, I had this sense, like probably mostly from movies, you know, you're supposed to talk to the person who's kind of going in and out of consciousness and just kind of try to pull them back. But, you know, I didn't have a script for that, right? Like, you actually need to say things. And I initially started kind of like bumbling around. And at one point I apologized because I thought I'd overstayed my welcome with his family at Christmas one year I was sort of like cleansing myself of my, you know, And I realized, oh, this is messed up. Like, I don't want him to think. I think he's dying. Right. So...
Luke Burbank: And that's also not how that's supposed to work. It's the person who's dying, who's supposed to get some stuff off their chest, not the other person who's basically fine.
Jon Mooallem: You know, that's a that's a really good point. I'm going to add that to the list of things that did not go right. But yeah, so I had these professors in college who had insisted and required us to memorize poems. And so, yeah, so I the first one I reached for was The Shampoo by Elizabeth Bishop, which is a love poem she wrote for another woman about washing her hair. And so there I was reciting that to John. And, you know, we went I went through some more hits from Robert Frost and Auden, and I didn't realize that at the time. I would not have been able to tell you as I thought it was maybe a matter of minutes. It turns out for an hour and a half. John and I were there before anyone came back to to help us, and I think I was doing poetry most of that time.
Luke Burbank: And he told you later that that that actually was really great for him in that moment. It was really helpful.
Jon Mooallem: Yeah. I mean, that was that was another really surprising thing about being able to talk this out all this time later was I had this image of myself as, you know, pretty helpless and and yeah. And I think John was really grateful for it. He told me that if he had to almost die on the floor of a forest, he'd love for me to be there next time, too. So. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire from PRX. We are listening to a conversation with the writer Jon Mooallem: about his latest collection of essays, Serious Face. We've got to take a quick break, but when we get back, John is going to read one of those essays about his face and its resemblance to a certain Spanish bullfighter, which Jon didn't take as a huge compliment. Don't go anywhere. More Live Wire in a moment. Hey, welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello:. We are at the Alberta Rose Theater here in Portland, Oregon. We're talking to Jon Mooallem. His new book of essays is Serious Face. The essay that you've written about your face and the face of a a famous Spanish bullfighter was actually in the New York Times magazine. I'm sure a lot of people here got a chance to read it. It's a really incredible piece of writing. And I was wondering, could you maybe read a little bit from that particular essay in the book?
Jon Mooallem: Sure, yeah.
Luke Burbank: Now, friends of yours started sending you photographs of this particular bullfighter that they would see photos of in Spain. And what was his name? His name.
Jon Mooallem: Was Manpolete. Although I didn't know that at the time. It was it was two friends who had been at a restaurant and seen this photograph on the wall and sent it to me immediately because the guy looked just like me. They were really freaked out by it as I as was. I saw it, too. You don't often not only see this about yourself, but I couldn't deny it. He looked exactly like me.
Luke Burbank: And then. So you wrote about it. And maybe we could hear some of that.
Jon Mooallem: Sure. Yeah, Well, so I'll just say that my face is very crooked for the listening public at home. My jaw is kind of going in one way, my nose and the other. I say in the piece, it's so it's I'm never kind of really looking straight at you, no matter which way I turn my head.
Luke Burbank: I think it's beguiling for the record.
Jon Mooallem: Thank you. This is all just a trick to get people to tell me I'm handsome.
Jon Mooallem: All right, so this is a part of the piece where I stop talking about the bullfighters face and start talking about my face instead. No one appreciates my face with more uncontrollable gusto than dentists, though. More than once I've endured one calling a colleague from the other room to come have a look. They peer at my X-rays with giddy concentration, as though pressing open a fresh book of Sudoku and sometimes asked me to get out of the chair and stand against the wall so they can get a few shots with the regular camera, too. I was in my mid-thirties before I realized that these demoralizing portrait sessions were in a standard part of a dental exam. Every time I see a new dentist, it's the same. They get like archeologists before a dig. Eager to know what sort of ruined structure is hidden under there, imagining all the physical dysfunction and pain that I must be living with, and the many diagnostic tools and specialists that could be gathered behind the project of setting it. All right. They aren't wrong. My jaw is so misshapen that I can feel it wriggle out of joint whenever I open wide enough for a hamburger or yawn and then bonk back into place. And the guns on the left side of my mouth are wearing away at a distressing rate since those teeth apparently clamped together long before the ones on the other side can connect and therefore do most of the chewing. But my only serious complaint has been the headaches, the small genus of pains that have wracked me periodically since childhood. There's a particular kind of dull headache that sprouts under and above my eyes like mold. There's one that presses and holds its weight against my face from inside, like a tantruming toddler squatting against her bedroom door to keep the world out. There's the throbbing one that hangs around diffusely for hours and only produces pain when I focus on it like a pang of guilt. Maybe none of this makes sense. These headaches smolder at the periphery of language in a nonsensical cloud of synesthesia and memories: purple pain, newsprint colored pain, pain that has the turgid heft of Greek yogurt or smells like the inside of an umbrella, pain that funnels me back to one gloomy Sunday afternoon from my childhood splayed on the carpet, watching Steve Martin in The Jerk on Channel 11. Does anyone truly comprehend the pressures roiling inside their own head? As far as I understand it, the source of my headaches is probably my sinuses, which over time were narrowed and crushed like a plastic straw as the bones of my jaw and nose grew into them out of alignment. But I can't say for sure. And a couple of different points in my life. I've gotten motivated to better diagnose and even fix these problems, shuttling around for exploratory scans and consultations. Doctors have proposed plastic surgery to straighten out my nose or surgically breaking my jaw and resetting it after walking me through the complete cartography of the human face in an anatomy textbook. One postulated that perhaps my flattened sinuses could be bored open wider with lasers. I should didn't even know that's a real thing when he said it to me. I didn't know until the other day that that's a real thing. Really? Yeah. I thought he was. I was like, Well, let's look at this guy anyway. But to be honest, I've never earnestly considered pursuing any of these doctors recommendations. Just nodded along innertly with my misshapen face as they spoke. Somehow every intervention has felt so pointlessly ambitious, so laborious, so dramatic. For better or worse, these problems feel normal to me. And the truth is, I started to identify so deeply with the peculiarities of my face that the idea of correcting those imperfections eventually became unthinkable. Looking in the mirror, I try to imagine every part of me pointing flawlessly forward and wonder, who would I be then? When I was younger, I worried I was ugly. But by the time I turned 30, there was even a measure of perverse vanity involved. I'd come to appreciate my face so much that I was willing to live with the pain of having it attached to my head. And that's why reading the first Manolete biography on my kitchen floor the night it arrived, it didn't upset me to learn how allegedly grotesque my doppelganger was and how unrepentantly and universally this face we shared was ridiculed. I was able to brush it off and even rest some wry amusement from the discovery. And that felt good. Good to feel unthreatened. Good to recognize that a kind of genuine acceptance and equanimity had apparently been growing inside me from an odd angle all those years. In short, that night I felt myself freely loving who I am and was proud. But then I read the rest of the mentality biography.
Luke Burbank: That's Jon Mooallem here on Live Wire. The story of Manolete and his life is fascinating, as detailed in this book. Also, you point out the science right now is that really our sinuses serve no functional purpose other than ruining our lives. If we have sinus problems.
Jon Mooallem: Yeah, I kind of. I got really curious about sinuses. Like, what are these things? Why do we have essentially these empty spaces in our heads? And, yeah, as it was explained to me, it's this sort of case of, you know, not everything in evolution does a job, right? Some things just happen and then they're not hurting anyone and they kind of stick around. And so we've got these things in our head just clogging up with snot all the time, and there's nothing we can do about it.
ELena Passarello That's what I think is so cool about this book, though, is because it seems like you got the photos of Manolete years and years ago. But the essay itself takes us to all of these different places. Like, I don't know, I'm assuming you didn't think you were going to be spending this much time in the I can't do the annals of sinus study. Maybe the sinuses of sinus studies.
Jon Mooallem: Yeah, it's true. I mean, well, the first thing was I got this photo. I mean, I think it was it was almost 15 years ago now. And I got this photo and I just had this photo on my phone, and I'd show it to people and I'd be like, Check this out. And everyone would laugh. And it took me years before I even thought like, Well, who is this guy? Maybe I should figure out who this guy is? And so, yeah, I say the book. I finally got this biography of him and and it arrives and I rip it open. I'm sitting at my floor and the first sentence I read, literally, I open up the book, I crack the spine and I look and the first things I read says he has a face that's as dreary as a third class funeral on a rainy day. And and what I realized with this bullfighter, who is my exact twin, apparently was just renowned for his ugliness. Like people just could not stop talking about how ugly he was. Even people who really loved him, they would always tack on some cheap shot about, you know, call him old big nose or something. So so then I had to sit with that for a few years. Yeah. And, you know, then I was like, Well, how can I write about sinuses now? I'm right. But yeah, no, you're right. I think like in, in many ways it's like, you know, even though I think having done this kind of work for so long, I kind of go through the world like thinking that everything is potentially a story. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a story like right then and there. You know, there's a there's a lot of stuff sloshing around that that kind of has to wait for the right moment.
Luke Burbank: I'm wondering how it feels to you to have the reaction that this piece has had lots of people and talking about it, not the least of them. Jamie Lee Curtis apparently is now your new like PR person. What is going on? What what is happening with you and Jamie Lee Curtis?
Jon Mooallem: JLC You know, I just I got a really nice note from Jamie Lee Curtis. And, you know, it's fun when she's celebrities, you know.
Luke Burbank: But now.
Jon Mooallem: But yeah, so she's been kind of championing the book online, which I'm very grateful for. And it's I don't know what more to say about that. Thank you, Jamie Lee Curtis.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, I guess I guess the nature of my question is, you know, you have written a lot of really incredible essays, but they're often about other people, a guy who decides to build a town that he's calling the center of the universe in Felicity, California, named for his wife. When you write a piece like that and people say, Hey, that was a great piece, that feels good, but when you write a piece that's literally about the inside of who you are and they say, This really moved me. That must be an intense experience.
Jon Mooallem: Yeah, it's really it's really special. I mean, I think it's like, I don't really understand how to how to interact. I mean, it's nice when I get an email, like I've gotten some really beautiful emails from people and that's always great. And yet I know better than to, like kind of go actively seek the feedback to the piece online.
Luke Burbank: When I have finally saw a Manolete's picture, I thought he was a quite handsome kind of he got a little Vincent Gallo type situation going, which as your twin by extension means you are also a handsome person. Jon Mooallem, (thank you) and more importantly, my phone and computer autocorrect many words now to Mooallem.
ELena Passarello Same, see?!
Luke Burbank: I don't know how you did that. Like, that's the mark of success.
ELena Passarello That's Jamie Lee Curtis.
Luke Burbank: That's the JLC.
Jon Mooallem: Is that's the JLC difference right there.
Luke Burbank: Jon Mooallem, everyone. The book is Serious Face. That was Jon Mooallem right here on Live Wire, recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater. His latest book, Serious Face, is available now. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstop from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Palm Springs and San Francisco, and as a member of the OneWorld alliance. Alaska Airlines can connect you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska Air dot com. This is Live Wire as we do each week on the show. We have asked the live wire listeners a question this week in honor of Jenni Nguyen, who we're going to talk to about starting her dream business, the Sports Bra. We asked the listeners, Describe your dream business. Elena has been collecting up those responses with you. I see you're already laughing. What are the people saying?
ELena Passarello Three words from Mark in terms of Mark's dream business. Hot tub testing.
Luke Burbank: Hot tub testing.
Elena Passarello: I mean, let's think this through. Mark, Like, what do you. You go to people's houses and get in their hot tubs. Is that worth talking about or are you in like a a quality control like warehouse?
Luke Burbank: Right. And then the other problem is that, sure, if you're in the Goldilocks zone, that's great. If you only get to test hot tubs that are the right temperature. But, you know, they also figure out what's too cold and what's too hot.
ELena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank: All right. What's what's another dream business that one of our listeners would like to start?
ELena Passarello Oh, this is a pretty good idea from Erika. Erika says, I want to start a business where people upload pictures and stats on their dogs. And then when I feel like having a companion on my nature walk, I will select and borrow their dog for the afternoon.
Luke Burbank: That is a great idea!
ELena Passarello Right? You could be like, Oh, I really need like a long walk to pick a Rhodesian ridge back. If you just kind of want to take like a small stroll, maybe like a cavalier King Charles. I don't know.
Luke Burbank: As a dog owner, throughout my life, of course, I loved walking my dog. But there are also the days when you just don't have time for it. Maybe you're not feeling well. You're too busy. And it would be a huge favor if somebody wanted to take your dog, run them through the woods for ten miles and bring them back all tired and content.
Elena Passarello: I've told you about the dog bus that used to go around Corvallis and pick up dogs to take them to the woods and exhaust them and then bring them home. And the dogs would jump on the school bus and they all knew their assigned seats.
Luke Burbank: That is adorable. But that's a business. This sounds more like a volunteer organization with somebody who wants to walk a dog and somebody who has a dog that needs walking.
Elena Passarello: It's like a dating service. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Exactly. It's like hinge, but for pet owners. All right, One more dream business idea from our listeners.
Elena Passarello: Okay, Here's one from Maggie. Maggie wants to open a soup restaurant with rotating daily soups and a ton of side options. Garlic bread, salads and fries. It sort of sounds like the soup counter from Seinfeld. Only people are nice. And maybe you can sit down.
Luke Burbank: I'll tell you what, I eat a lot of soup even in the summertime. And I don't think there are enough dedicated soup restaurants. Yeah. If Maggie was able to start this business, I would be the first customer.
Elena Passarello: What do you call it? Soup, superstars.
Luke Burbank: Soup. Super bad at coming up with restaurant names. That would be my contribution to it. I always wanted to start a restaurant That would also you could eat in a recliner, and then when you were done, you could recline and take a nap.
Elena Passarello: The immediate nap that follows. Yeah, You just like you sound like.
Luke Burbank: I just need 10 to 15 minutes to sleep this off and I'm ready to go. No, I will not leave this Denny's. I am napping. All right. Thank you to everyone who wrote in with responses to our listener question. We've got an audience question for next week's show, which we're going to reveal at the end of today's program. So stick around for that. Speaking of dream businesses, by the way, our next guest had the courage to completely defy her parent's advice during the pandemic when they said, do not open a sports bar in Portland, Oregon, in the midst of a pandemic. But this was not just any sports bar. This was the Sports Bra, the world's first sports bar that we know of, anyway, that exclusively shows women's sports on the televisions. It's already been a huge success. They raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter to get it going. And they've gotten all kinds of news coverage from all over the world. And in the process, they've been able to draw attention to the gender inequality in terms of which sports are getting televised. Her name is Jenny Nguyen, and she joined us on stage at the Alberta Rose Theater. Take a listen to this. Jenny, thank you for making some time in your schedule to be here. I live not far from the sports bra, and I drive down Broadway every day and there is a line out the door and I just think. I think this has been too successful. You might need to shut it down. It's just it seems like a lot of work. I mean, that place is a hit.
Jenny Nguyen: Yeah, it's been pretty incredible. I'm overwhelmed, really.
Luke Burbank: Let's kind of go back to for the four people in America who haven't heard the story yet of the Sports Bra. It's an amazing one. So you and some some friends and your partner were out watching an NCAA finals game in the women's bracket. And it was a great game. It came down to the wire. But there was one thing going on in your experience was that the audio wasn't on in the bar because this was women's sports, right?
Jenny Nguyen: That's correct. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's a really common experience for anyone who's a women's sports fan that goes out to go try to watch it on TV and it's like, okay, you go to this space and there's a million TV's on, none of them have your game on. So it was the same in this particular case. And when you think about the NCAA finals, like to me, I mean, basketball's my jam. Yes. So it's like the biggest game of the year. And so we roll in and there's like a dozen of us and the game is not on. Something else is on the main screen. And so we just asked to have the one of the TV's changed and they kind of put us over into the side and it's like a small TV in the corner and we, you know, are kind of used to that. So we watch the game, we have a great time and ends up being like one of the best games ever. And afterwards, you know, we were just out in the parking lot, milling around, talking about how great a game it was. And then somebody was just like, Yeah, it would have been better if the sound had been on. Yeah, you know, Right. And it was at that moment where it just clicked where I was like, I didn't even notice. So had I gotten so used to, you know, watching women's sports in like, a compromised way. Yeah. And that's what that's what stood out to me.
Luke Burbank: So then you and your friends started referring to this mythical sports bar that you were going to start someday. That was like where none of the lame sort of like, you know, sexist gendered norms of the regular sports bar existed, right?
Jenny Nguyen: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't so blatant as that as as more of a place for us to just go and hang out and watch games and feel comfortable, you know, like for my friends and I. And it was never going to be a place that I was planning on opening up. It was just like this fictional place that was just like, Oh, you know, like this game would be on at the Sports Bra or at the Sports Bra we'd have a vegan version of this, you know, like just random stuff.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, it was like it was this, like, idealized version where everything was great.
Jenny Nguyen: Yeah, the toilet paper would never run out.
Elena Passarello: And it sounds like you named it early. It was the Sports Bra, even when it was still just a figment of your imagination.
Jenny Nguyen: I'm pretty sure that, like maybe a day or two days after that 2018 game, you know, it was just like the little seed was living in my head and I was like, If there was a place, you know, what would it be called and what would be cool? And, you know, the thing that kind of stuck out to me was that it's just a sports bar, and all you're doing is you're changing the channel, which is real simple, right? So you just take like sports bar and you just changed it, changed the letters and Sports Bra. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: You do have that trademarked, right? I do, Yeah. Okay, good. Because that is $1,000,000,000 idea. The other thing to actually, Jenny, that I've heard you say before is the Sports Bra is not a quote unquote women's sports bar. It's a sports bar that happens to show women's sports on the television. Why is that an important distinction to you?
Jenny Nguyen: Oh, man. It's I mean, I get it all the time. Are men allowed in there? It's just like, yeah, it's not a sports bar for women. You know, it's a bar for women's sports. And so, like, statistically, a majority of women's sports fans are men. So the thing is, if you like sports, you don't care who's playing it. You just like sports. Yeah, but what happens is that, you know, 96% of all sports that are on TV are men's sports. So that's what people identify with and that's what they are cheering for most of the time.
Luke Burbank: But I mean, something that I didn't realize until I started looking into the story was that there are lots and lots and lots of of women's sports happening all the time. The issue is they're not being televised or they're streaming somewhere. So it seems like a big part of your work, along with creating the menu and the cocktail list and all the normal things about running a bar restaurant. Sure. In addition to that, you've become this sort of like content merchant who's trying to actually get the stuff to put on those TV's. Right. What is that been like?
Jenny Nguyen: Absolutely. I really like if there's anybody out there that is into that, I really think that is somebody else's full time job is to find women's content so that we can play it at the Bra. Yeah, it's it's really intense, you know, because one interesting thing is that there are, you know, dozens and dozens of streaming services and they know that there are people out there who are interested in these women's sports and they want to access it. And so they're willing to pay, you know, $4.99 a month or whatever it is. But there's there's so many. So even you have something as huge as the WNBA, and it's playing on seven different channels. I mean, that's a huge league. And then you're talking about things like bowling or surfing or any of these smaller, like lesser known sports or whatever. How are you going to watch those?
Luke Burbank: So is it that they're not even being filmed right now and you're trying to get people to get out to do that or it's they're being filmed, but you don't have the rights as a bar owner to show the stream. Like, what are the impediments?
Jenny Nguyen: The second thing.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Jenny Nguyen: So with streaming services, they pay very little money to get that content. And that's why, you know, it's $4.99 for me to watch it at home. But there's no way for a business to show it in commercial because that those rights cost a lot more. But what has happened is people who have heard or the streaming services who have heard have reached out and they're like, you know, we can see the benefit in giving you access to this stuff because it's it helps us to promote ourselves and to promote these leagues and these sports. And you're drawing attention to that, and so you're helping to grow it. And so it's like a, you know, scratch your back, scratch my back kind of thing. Yeah. And that's that's what we need, I think, to get it started. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: We are talking to Jenny Nguyen, the owner and founder of the Sports Bra here in Portland, which is a sports bar that exclusively shows women's sports on the televisions. Now, when you and I talked, I don't know, a month ago or so, when you're opening the place, you said that during the times of day when maybe there wasn't any content involving women's sports, you were considering leaving the TV's off as a way of pointing out this kind of lack of coverage. Where have you landed on that now that you've been open a month? What are you doing?
Jenny Nguyen: Yeah, I mean, part of it is kind of tempering expectations. A lot of people expect, you know, they walk into a sports bar and TVs are blaring 24/7, and that's the expectation. And so, like, what I wanted to do was just to make sure that people know that here we are. We're a space that is dedicated to showing women's sports. Right? But there isn't any possible way that we're able to show 24/7 content. You know, there's not like running commentary, There's not tons of replays. There's not like, oh, the 1976 Arnold Palmer. Right. Right. Classic Special.
Luke Burbank: For men's Sports. There's just so much of it has been televised. It's a mind numbing amount of content that you could always put in a VHS tape of Dorf on golf.
Jenny Nguyen: Or somebody always talking.
Luke Burbank: That's where my brain went. That's Tim Conway doing a sketch. That's not even real sports.
Jenny Nguyen: Yeah. I mean, with men's sports, there's always, like, commentary. You know, I wanted to temper expectations. I didn't want guests to come in and expect what they're used to for a regular sports bar to be what we have access to. And then another thing is like, you know, 90, 95% of all sports bars are probably streaming things that they shouldn't be. And, you know, we can do that. But one we're one entity that maybe a lot of people are watching and two, super visible and two. Like, why would I want to do that when the point is to kind of drive home the idea that we need more representation, we need more access, we need more of.
Luke Burbank: If you're stealing, feeling, broadcast of women's sport, that's not.
Jenny Nguyen: Yeah. And then people would come in and be like, Oh, there's plenty of women's sports on T.V.. Right. You know, so.
Luke Burbank: This has been such a success and also just something that the community has really rallied around. Hmm. Has that sunk into you or are you just thinking about it intellectually but not able to fully wrap your mind around it, I guess.
Jenny Nguyen: You know, I think it comes in waves. There are moments and it's like these are the small moments that sneak in when you least expect it. You know, whether it's like 1030 and things are starting to die down and I'm having my shift drink and and I, like, sit back and I watch the bartenders do what they do. I watch my servers do what they do, and everybody is moving in the pieces that they should be. There's people sitting at the bar watching a game and those quiet moments where I'm able to sit back and be like. You know, this is a space that I've always wanted. This is the space that I've always wanted to be in. And now that we're here, like, I can kind of create that for other people and it sinks in in these little moments. Yeah. And then, you know, there's messages and letters that I get daily that are very impactful. And it's a great way to slow down and remind me of why I started to do this.
Luke Burbank: The real question is, has this completely killed your ability to play rec basketball (100%), which ironically was a huge part of your life before this. And now you created this thing that makes it so you can't play basketball with your friends anymore.
Jenny Nguyen: 100%. So I signed up for a rec league, like right before I knew I was going to open. I was just like, okay, I'm going to commit to one hour a week. Like, it'll be good for me to get physically out there and, like, sweat it out while all of this other stuff is happening. And immediately as soon as the doors open, I was just like, You guys got to find another point guard.
Luke Burbank: Well, we're glad your talents are being used over at the Sports Bra. Jenny Nguyen, founder of the Sports Bra here in Portland, Oregon.
Luke Burbank: That was Jenny Nguyen. Recorded in front of a live audience at the Alberta Rose Theater. If you're in the Portland area, make sure you check out the Sports Bra and tell Jenny "hi". From Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank: here with Elena Passarello:. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we are going to talk to Laura Veirs about what it was like producing her own music after divorcing her husband, who was also her producer. Then we're going to get to hear some of that music. So stick around. This is Live Wire. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank: here with Elena Passarello:. All right. Before we hear from our musical guest, a little preview of next week's show, we are going to be talking to essayist and New York Times bestselling author Adam Gopnik about his latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. It explores the fundamental question of how do we learn and master a new skill? But in classic Adam Gopnik style, it does it in a way that just illuminates the wider world somehow. Booklist calls it joyous and insightful. We're also going to hear how Adam ended up, I would say, basically dominating the first 15 minutes of the Oscar nominated film Tár.
Elena Passarello: Yes.
Luke Burbank: I really think of it as an Adam Gopnik film at this point. We're also going to hear some comedy from the very funny Abby Govindan who attempted to scam the KKK for a school project. And as always, we're going to be looking to get your answer to our listener question. Elena What are we asking the listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: We want to know, what are you the master of? So what skill do you have in spades.
Luke Burbank: Right? Or just a thing that you are the most of whom may not be. It could be mastery, or it could just be, you know, extra ness. Right. That would be. Although I think I may have that title. I'm not sure. Anyway, if you've got a response to our question, hit us up on Twitter or Facebook or at Live Wire Radio. Pretty much everywhere out there on social media. All right. Our musical guest this week is a singer songwriter known for her inquisitive and literary lyrics. She's released a dozen albums, many of them via her own label, Raving Marching Band Records. She's also collaborated with a whole range of artists, including Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case, and also k.d. lang as part of the supergroup Case Lang Veirs. Her new album is Found Light. Laura Veirs joined us on stage at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Let's take a listen to that. Hello, Laura. It's so nice to have you back on the show.
Laura Veirs: Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank: How have you been?
Laura Veirs: I've been all right. How have you been?
Luke Burbank: We've been all right. I was reading a quote from you about this latest album. I mean, you have made a lot of records in your day, and you said that this album in many ways kind of feels like your debut album. Why so?
Laura Veirs: So the first one that I have produced myself and I produced it with a friend named Shahzad Smiley from New York, and my ex-husband was my producer for 20 years. And so when we broke up, I had to rediscover myself as a musician independently, and it took a little bit of searching. But I'm happy with what I found.
Luke Burbank: Wow. So that is a whole new way of making your music. Yeah. Did you? You know, I don't want to get you to talk about anything that you don't feel particularly comfortable with. But did you find as your own producer or co-producer, that you made different decisions and that you liked some of the decisions better because now you were sort of driving that bus?
Laura Veirs: Yeah, in certain ways. I mean, Tucker, my ex is a great record producer and we made a lot of music that I'm proud of. But being in my own producer driver's seat, I made some decisions that I felt happy with, like only doing a couple of takes and not really doing a lot of edits, just going with the raw feeling of the music and also limiting ourselves to just a few instruments per track so that the songs themselves really came to life in a way that I felt was fresh and new for me. So yeah, it was a really difficult experience in terms of figuring out how to parse out myself, you know, from my ex in that long relationship, which was really collaborative for so many years. Also, we have kids and houses and studios and all this stuff that we had to disentangle over a long period of time. And then I had I wanted to be really authentic in the way that I told the story of how difficult this is, because especially when you have kids, a divorce is very painful. But also the reason people do it is because it's leading you to something better. So I did want to try, in my most authentic way as a writer or a songwriter, to express the depth of that situation. Well.
Luke Burbank: It would appear that the music is really finding an audience. The New York Times is What to Cook. This Week newsletter instructed its readers to listen to your new single while they're cooking this weekend. This is a real thing. Do you know about this?
Laura Veirs: You know, someone mentioned it backstage. I had heard that it was like recommended on the New York Times playlist, but I didn't realize it was.
Luke Burbank: They said, Yeah, it's what to cook this week. You're supposed to people that want to listen to the new single. And according to The New York Times, cook cheese enchiladas.
Laura Veirs: Okay, well, I should try that. Sounds fun.
Luke Burbank: Is that the song that we're going to hear?
Laura Veirs: That's not one that's like. Like pretty hard rocker. Okay. It's called Winter Windows and it's out on YouTube. I did a video I would like made a video in my basement with my iPhone. And it was like doing an a weird, insane dancing. So it's on YouTube. Can check it out.
Luke Burbank: This is Laura Veirs here on Live Wire.
Laura Veirs: This is one of the songs off my new album, it’s called My Lantern. [Laura Veirs plays My Lantern.]
Luke Burbank: That was Laura Veirs right here on Live Wire. Her latest album, Found Light, is out now. All right. That's going to do it for this week's episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Jon Mooallem, Jenny Nguyen, and Laura Veirs. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester. Our marketing manager is Paige Thomas, and our production fellow is Tanvi Kumar. Yasmin Mehdian is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer and Our House Sound is by D. Neil Blake.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the State of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank member Kristian Asher for more information about the show or how you can listen to our podcast. Head on over to Live Wire Radio dot org. I'm Luke Burbank: for Elena Passarello: and the whole Live Wire team. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
