Running to the Noise, Episode 15

[00:00:00] Carmen: I'm Carmen Twilley Ambar, president of Oberlin College of Conservatory. Welcome to Running to the Noise, where I speak with all sorts of folks who are tackling our toughest problems and working to spark positive change around the world. Because here at Oberlin, we don’t shy away from the challenging situations that threaten to divide us.
We run towards them.

[00:01:00] Carmen: Welcome to a special holiday edition of Running to the Noise. I'm your host, Carmen Twilley Ambar. This month, we're unwrapping something a little bit different: a Best Of episode featuring some of our most memorable conversations with guests from our first season. You'll hear New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker talk about what to expect from a second Trump presidency.

And former Mayor of Baltimore Stephanie Rawlings-Blake share the challenges faced by women in politics. You'll gain insight into the creative process of groundbreaking artist Rhiannon Giddens, who just nabbed her 11th Grammy nomination, and listen in on a mini master class with best-selling novelist James McBride.

His new page-turner, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, is slated to become a Steven Spielberg production. We'll revisit our first episode with actor and comedian Ed Helms, who launched the second season of his own podcast, Snafu, this summer. And finally, I couldn’t do a best-of episode without returning to my favorite story: how one act of kindness led to an Oscar win for documentary filmmaker Shane Boris.

[00:02:00] Carmen: I hope these highlights bring a little extra light and warmth to your celebrations, and thank you for being a part of our community this year. Whether you're tuning in while taking some time off, traveling to see family, or simply taking a moment to reflect, I wish you and your loved ones health and happiness and plenty of joy.
Now, let's dive in.

[00:02:30] Carmen: You mentioned that you've covered five presidents. Anything you want to say about the most challenging president to cover? Do you have a different approach? Is it about how the administration treats you or your engagement with them? What can we know about the difference between covering different presidents?

[00:02:50] Peter Baker: Well, what’s interesting is, after Obama, I had become convinced that presidents were more alike than we thought, right? Democrat, Republican, obviously their different policies and personalities, but the dynamics of being president were pretty similar, regardless of who the president was, because the issues were often the same.

And the choices available to them were in this relatively narrow band. And what I learned with Trump is, no, it doesn’t always work that way.

[00:03:30] Peter Baker: That you can, in fact, blast every norm out of the sky. And that, in fact, all the rules that I thought applied to the presidency turned out to be advisory, not, you know, requirements. Right. And he challenged everything I thought we understood about the presidency and about politics.

And that made it a challenge for a journalist because it’s not our job to take sides. It’s not, and I think a lot of people want us to. It’s not our job to be the opposition. And he wants us to.

[00:04:00] Peter Baker: And we have to be careful not to fall into that trap. He wanted to make us the opposition because it’s convenient for him politically. And so it was our job to avoid that. Marty Baron, who is the executive editor of The Washington Post at the time, came up with a great line. He said, “We’re not at war; we’re at work.”

He wanted to be at war with the press. That’s not our job. Our job is to tell the truth, to investigate, to be blunt about the challenges and the facts. And if he’s going to tell things that are untrue, it’s our job to say he’s not telling the truth. But it’s not our job to be the opposition. And that’s a careful balance, and it’s a hard one to find.

[00:04:50] Carmen: So let’s talk a little bit about Trump. So, for the audience, if you haven’t got a chance to read The Divider, it’s 652 pages, so you’re going to have to set yourself down and get ready for it. You know, it’s a deep dive into Donald Trump’s time in the White House. And it’s a great book.

One of the sobering points that I think you make is that you talk about Trump as being more ignorant about the White House and the federal government, perhaps, than any other president in history, but that he began to figure out what power he had along the way. Testing his limits and pushing the boundaries.

[00:05:30] Carmen: And I think what is so concerning to people about that, who have concerns about Trump, is what would a second Trump presidency look like, when he won’t have to learn as much? He will know what levers to pull and seems to be prepared to put people around him who are willing to go about his desires in ways that maybe the first group that was in wasn’t willing to do.

[00:06:00] Carmen: So a big question. I don’t know if you can answer it in the time we have, but what do you think the consequences are of a second Trump presidency?

[00:06:10] Peter Baker: Well, I think that one thing we try to do with this book is to examine the four years he was in office. And if you want to know what a second term is going to be like, look at what’s in our book that he tried to do and didn’t get to do, right?

For all the reasons you said, because he didn’t understand how government worked, because he had people around him who he didn’t really know, who were more conventional Republicans or military officers or government veterans, who basically stopped him from doing some of the more outlandish and more, in some cases, maybe illegal or even unconstitutional things, right?

[00:07:00] Peter Baker: They’re not going to be there in a second term. They’re absolutely not going to be there. One thing he’s learned is not to bring in John Kelly and H.R. McMaster and Mattis and all these figures who spent their lives in the military or the government and who believe in the system, you know whether you agree with their opinions or not, they’re not going to be there. They’re going to be pure Trumpers, and they have made clear that their number one priority for putting together a new government is loyalty to Trump and nothing else—more than anything else anyway.

So all the things he tried to do in the first term, he couldn’t do. That’s what you should expect in a second term.

[00:07:30] Peter Baker: We had a senior national security official who spent a lot of time in the Oval Office tell us this rather remarkable metaphor. The person said that Trump is like the Velociraptor in Jurassic Park. You’ve seen the Velociraptors chasing the children into the kitchen?

[00:07:50] Carmen: Yes.

[00:07:51] Peter Baker: And the kids are like, shut that door! They think, okay, thank goodness. And then the Velociraptors learn how to open the door.

[00:08:00] Carmen: Oh my God. That’s so frightening.

[00:08:03] Peter Baker: Exactly. Right. So this national security official is saying that he has learned how to open the door. And in a second term, he won’t be thwarted or stymied in the way he was in the first term on a lot of things he wanted to do—like, you know, getting rid of birthright citizenship, which he doesn’t have the constitutional power to do, but he might try to do it again.

[00:08:30] Peter Baker: Or getting out of NATO right now, in the middle of the war in Ukraine. Like all kinds of things that he wanted to do, like using the military in the streets.

[00:08:40] Carmen: Yes. I mean, the recent reporting around what they’re putting together around the use of the military with civilians, with the domestic population, is nerve-wracking.

[00:08:50] Peter Baker: And you know why he’s going to do it? Because he tried to do it in the first term. And he had a general there in Mark Milley who said, no, that’s not what the military is for.

[00:09:00] Peter Baker: Who’s going to be the general there next time? It won’t be Mark Milley. And we don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think you can assume that whatever happened in the first, or what he tried to do in the first term but didn’t get done, he’ll try in the second term without the same inhibitions.

[00:09:20] Carmen: I guess the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, Peter, is women in politics—just a little bit about how women are treated in the political sphere.

And I don’t know how much you’ve faced this. I’d be interested to hear, but just these gendered critiques. You know, I think Kamala Harris has certainly faced that. Hillary faced that as well. You know, do you smile enough? Did you wear the right clothes?

[00:09:50] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: Yeah, it gets exhausting because it’s hard, and it’s one of those things—it’s like racism. It’s frustrating to be the impacted person and yelling about it, right? It’s much more, I think, effective for someone who is not impacted by it to notice it and say something about it, right?

As opposed to, you know, when you’re doing it, especially as a woman, now you’re whining, now you’re complaining, now you’re this. But it was incessant. I mean, what shoes I had on, what makeup—incessant.

[00:10:30] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: But it was one of those things like, you know, I’m not going to change it, right? There’s no way I’m going to wake people up to the sexism, to the gender stereotypes, to the way in which they’re critiquing leadership decisions and even results with a gender bias, right?

So I can beat myself up and be mad about it, or I can, you know, get up, be the person I want to be every day, and get things done, right?

[00:11:00] Carmen: Did you just decide, Stephanie, because I know that women face this in all sorts of areas, but particularly in the political sphere because of just the scrutiny. Did you just decide, hey, I’m not going to worry about that anymore? I’m going to put it in this box? When you say it was incessant, did it bother you, or did you just figure out some way to put it to the side?

[00:11:30] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: Both, right? It bothered me because it was annoying. It was annoying. Because you see people, and there are characteristics that if you’re a tall man, you’re assumed to be smart. It’s just frustrating.

[00:12:00] Carmen: Yeah. It’s kind of like, I’ve heard people say, you know, if it’s a man that makes a decision, it’s strategic. If it’s a woman, it’s calculating. Because one thing to kind of critique your makeup and your hair and your shoes—okay, that’s a certain kind of framework. But the results are this kind of gendered language, if you want to call it that: strategic, thoughtful, careful, calculating, aloof—whatever the phrase is.

[00:12:30] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: Listen, when I got the crime rate, the homicide rate, down to the lowest it’s been, I swear to you, people said, “Oh, it was because of the way the moons were aligned.”

[00:12:50] Carmen: What?

[00:12:51] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: Like, not, “You were making decisions that were impacting and saving lives,” but, you know, like astrology or something. It was like crazy. It was like they could attribute the success to anything but my leadership.

[00:13:20] Carmen: Anything but.

[00:13:21] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: Anything but. And, you know, it’s crazy. You mentioned the death of Freddie Gray and the challenges that we had after that. I look at the way other mayors—the lens through which they are perceived, their judgments. And I know if I were a different gender, the things that I did would be interpreted differently.

[00:13:50] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: I know that if I were a different race, they would be interpreted differently because I see in other cities where mayors of other genders and other races make decisions that are harmful to the communities that they’re trying to serve. They’re not called on it, right?

[00:14:10] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: So when I make a decision to save lives, to make sure that we don’t escalate—I was berated on national television for waiting too long to call in the National Guard at a time when I had already seen what happens when there was a rush to militarize a response to a protest.

[00:14:40] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: And, you know, the former governor to this day thinks that he ran in and saved our city. He doesn’t have any concept of the fact, historically, that was a, you know, a bad decision. When we had riots in ’68, I think the National Guard killed like seven people.

[00:15:00] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: And imagine what my city would have been if the first call I made was to the governor to bring in the National Guard and seven people were killed. Baltimore would not be left, right? The entire city would have burned down.

[00:15:30] Carmen: You are so diverse in all the things that you can do. And I guess I’m wondering, how you became this, I think you’ve described it, evangelist for the banjo. Maybe you can just help our audience understand a little bit about how you came to that, to this instrument, and its importance to you.

[00:16:00] Rhiannon Giddens: Well, it actually does start at Oberlin because I was here, and I was doing the classical music thing and really loving it. Like, I do want to stress how much I love opera and I love Western classical art music. I was 100% in.

People have made up memories about me playing banjo here. I never played banjo here. I didn’t listen to folk music. I wasn’t involved in the folk community—nothing. I was like all classical all the time.

[00:16:30] Rhiannon Giddens: And then I saw a flyer for what I thought was English country dance. Okay, so follow me. We’ll get there eventually.

[00:16:40] Carmen: Okay, okay. We’ll get there.

[00:16:42] Rhiannon Giddens: And I’m a Jane Austen nut.

[00:16:45] Carmen: Oh, nice.

[00:16:46] Rhiannon Giddens: And so that’s what they do in the Jane Austen time period, English country dance. And I went, and it was for contra dance.

[00:17:00] Rhiannon Giddens: Now, contra dance is the American descendant of English country dance, right? And I was like, well, I’ll stick around. And I was like, this is really fun. So I started contra dancing.

[00:17:20] Rhiannon Giddens: And I freaking loved it, and that’s when I first kind of got into the whole idea of folk dance, and it’s always done to live music. So then I started getting leads in operas and I kind of had to let that go because all my evenings were taken up.

[00:17:40] Rhiannon Giddens: And so when I moved back down to North Carolina after I got my degree, I was kind of like, I don’t know what I want to do. And I’m not sure it’s opera because the world of opera is kind of, you know, just didn’t fit who I was as a person. Like, you know, I don’t like wearing heels. I don’t like wearing makeup. I don’t like doing any of that stuff.

[00:18:00] Rhiannon Giddens: And it felt like to me that there was more of that in my future, you know, but the bottom line for me was, you know, what can I do in opera? I’m one of like 20 million sopranos. What can I do that actually is meaningful?

[00:18:30] Carmen: Makes a difference?

[00:18:31] Rhiannon Giddens: Yeah, makes a difference, distinctive. And I was kind of having a hard time answering that question.

So I came back home to North Carolina and I started contra dancing. I found the community. There was a very rich community of contra dance where I’m from in Piedmont, North Carolina. And that is where I first heard the old-time banjo.

[00:19:00] Rhiannon Giddens: So I tell you, if I hadn’t found that here at Oberlin—if you don’t know that it’s there, you have no clue. So it was kind of amazing. And I started hearing the old-time banjo.

I’d heard the bluegrass banjo. So a lot of people, if they know anything about the banjo, they know the bluegrass style, which is like the Beverly Hillbillies, which is like bluegrass, which is even Béla Fleck. That’s his style, based on bluegrass. And that’s what I’d heard. My uncle’s in a bluegrass band, all that kind of stuff.

[00:19:30] Rhiannon Giddens: And when I heard the old-time version, which is funkier, it’s a totally different technique. It’s more syncopated. It’s more dance rhythms. I was like, what is that?

[00:20:00] Rhiannon Giddens: And so I started to, like, I’d hear it all the time when I went to the dances, and I started wanting to learn how to play it. You know, I was working as an administrative assistant at a corporation at this time. I was working 40 hours a week and saving my money, and so I bought a really cheap banjo. And then I also wanted to learn fiddle, so I bought a really cheap fiddle.

[00:20:30] Carmen: Any hesitation there, just sort of picking up an instrument? Was that part of your natural— I mean, you use your voice as an instrument, but this ability to pick up other instruments and just kind of take them on?

[00:20:45] Rhiannon Giddens: You know, it’s kind of interesting. I obviously have this thing of just throwing myself—you know, actually shrieking—into the deep end of whatever I do.

[00:21:00] Rhiannon Giddens: And the way that you approach things. So, like, I learned I wanted to be a singer. Okay, I don’t know anything about opera, but they sing all the time. That sounds great. Let me do that.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I got here and had to really just release any kind of expectation of knowing what I was doing, release the ego, and just, like, you know, accept the instruction that I was being given.

[00:21:30] Carmen: Such a lesson. I hope the audience is hearing that. Release the ego and just, you know—

[00:21:40] Rhiannon Giddens: Right. Because I was here to learn. And so I’ve kind of done that over and over and over again. And it seems to be my superpower. Like, when I first picked up the banjo, I was just kind of, you know, learning here and there. I would take a workshop.

[00:22:00] Rhiannon Giddens: I would save up my money, and I would go for a week in the summer. And I would go to these sort of roots music camps where you could take classes all week.

[00:22:15] Carmen: And you’re still working 40 hours a week?

[00:22:17] Rhiannon Giddens: Absolutely.

[00:22:18] Rhiannon Giddens: Well, to get my fiddle and banjo, I took on a second job as a singing hostess for the Macaroni Grill.

[00:22:30] Carmen: I’ve seen those hostesses in that recording grill. That was you?

[00:22:33] Rhiannon Giddens: Yeah. And I—you know, somebody would ask for a song, and I’d sing, and they’d give me a tip or whatever.

[00:22:40] Rhiannon Giddens: And I worked until I had enough money to buy my instruments. Then I quit, you know, because I was still working 40 hours a week at the day job, right? So, I mean, I just—I know how to work, that’s for sure.

[00:23:00] Rhiannon Giddens: So I was trying to teach myself and find the instruction where I could. And then I learned about the banjo as an African-American instrument, and that’s what I didn’t know.

[00:23:15] Carmen: Well, let me just stop you right there for a moment. Because I do think that your commitment to sort of the history of the instrument and its roots and kind of being an evangelist—not just in your ability to play, but to talk about its history—that feels very Oberlin to me, this kind of mission-driven approach to the history.

[00:23:40] Carmen: So you started doing that research. What did you discover that just…?

[00:23:45] Rhiannon Giddens: Well, I mean, even just the fact that, you know, the African diaspora created the banjo in the Caribbean—that was huge. Like, I had no idea Black people played the banjo.

[00:24:00] Rhiannon Giddens: I was kind of walking into the tradition like, “Hey, can I do this?” You know, “Will y’all let me in here?” And not realizing that it was actually a shared tradition that belongs to everybody.

[00:24:20] Rhiannon Giddens: And so that really, you know, it activated me in a couple of different ways. I was like, “Oh, wow, that’s amazing. I didn’t know this.” And then I was like, “And why don’t I know this?”

[00:24:40] Rhiannon Giddens: And then that rapidly led to, “In whose best interest is it that I do not know this?” And that pretty much put me on the track. So I was obsessed from then on.

[00:25:00] Carmen: James, what is your routine? So when you have an idea, when that spark of creativity hits you, when you’re writing a novel, what is your routine? How do you go about the writing process?

[00:25:20] James McBride: Well, I basically spend months and months and sometimes years researching.

[00:25:30] Carmen: Right.

[00:25:32] James McBride: So that means getting out, talking to people, going to places. You know, it doesn’t matter whether—it’s a McDonald’s in Eastern Maryland or a McDonald’s in Des Moines, Iowa. You just have to figure out how to put that in your brain.

Otherwise, you can’t really smell the land, you know? You have to go there. You have to eat the food. You have to walk the earth, wherever you’re writing about. You have to walk the earth, even if the earth you’re walking over is 200 years old from the time you’re writing about it.

[00:26:00] James McBride: So basically, I just do a tremendous amount of research. I’m always researching. Life is research. And then at some point, you know, I have enough material to sit down and write. But I don’t really write until the muzzle is fully loaded.

[00:26:20] Carmen: Interesting metaphor.

[00:26:22] James McBride: Yeah, pardon the awful metaphor, but essentially, I just do a tremendous amount of research. So I’m always researching two or three things at a time.

[00:26:30] Carmen: Two or three ideas at a time?

[00:26:32] James McBride: Yeah.

[00:26:33] Carmen: Interesting. So when you’re doing your research, is it about location first? Is it character-driven? You’re trying to figure out how to think about a particular character? Is it all those things meshed together?

[00:26:50] James McBride: Not really. I mean, you know, if you’re talking about fiction, then you run into an interesting character in your imagination, and then you have to find a place where that character lives. But then you have to ask yourself, “Why do I like this character and what does that character represent?”

[00:27:10] James McBride: Because the deeper story of a book is what powers it. Once you get past the structural issues that a novel or screenplay or creative writing piece represents, you have to get to, “Why am I sitting down to write this in the first place?”

[00:27:30] James McBride: And if you haven’t figured that out, then there’s no real sense in doing the project at all. So you have to look at writing in two ways. For a young writer, you know, writing is a kind of catharsis and a search for identity.

[00:27:50] James McBride: Once you figure that out, then the tradecraft, which you can learn at a place like Oberlin, comes into play. And that tradecraft comes from the learning, labor, and discipline you develop as an undergraduate student who studies whatever you’re interested in.

[00:28:10] Carmen: Right.

[00:28:12] James McBride: The actual exercise of writing a book—I get up at 4:00, 4:30 in the morning. I write for as long as I can, which is usually, you know, two or three hours.

[00:28:30] James McBride: And then the phone starts ringing, and things start clanging and clanging. And then, before you know it, it’s 7:00 PM.

[00:28:40] Carmen: Yeah.

[00:28:41] James McBride: But I usually do my writing really early in the morning. And then if I’m working on anything involving music, I go through stages. I’ll practice or whatever.

[00:29:00] James McBride: Just so the students know, when I graduated from Oberlin, I went from Oberlin to Columbia and got a master’s.

[00:29:10] Carmen: That’s right.

[00:29:11] James McBride: Then I worked at several newspapers. And I quit all those jobs.

[00:29:20] Carmen: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:21] James McBride: I did that for nine years, worked for People Magazine, Boston Globe, Washington Post. That was the last job. And then I quit that, and I just played music for nine years.

[00:29:40] Carmen: Was that decision to quit—were you nervous about that? What was your mindset?

[00:29:50] James McBride: Well, I wanted to be happy, you know? And I wasn’t happy as a journalist. So I just went where happiness was. I was happy playing music. I was broke, but I was very happy.

[00:30:10] James McBride: When I was a sophomore at Oberlin, I went to Europe on an exchange program. And I, you know, I encourage students to do it. They don’t do it enough. Certainly, they should.

[00:30:30] James McBride: And I met an old lady there who was a survivor of the First and Second World Wars. Her name was Madame Awé. I used to talk to her about my college life and what I was going to do afterward, and she said, “I’ve always done what I wanted to do, and I’ve never been sorry.”

[00:31:00] James McBride: And I had to look no further than my own mother to see someone who had always done what she wanted to do and wasn’t sorry about it.

[00:31:20] James McBride: So, you know, if you’re making decisions based on money, you’re not going to be happy. But you have to be willing to struggle. And that struggle will inspire some kind of creative activity.

[00:31:40] James McBride: And that creative activity usually brings a great amount of joy.

[00:31:50] Carmen: That’s so powerful.

[00:31:52] James McBride: If you want to have a steady job the rest of your life—well, teaching is very creative, and it’s wonderful. And you meet people, and you engage with young people who change your life.

[00:32:10] James McBride: And that’s one way of doing it. But another way of doing it is to simply decide that you’ll do whatever you need to do in order to pursue your art, because your art makes you happy.

[00:32:30] Carmen: That’s such a beautiful sentiment.

[00:32:32] James McBride: Yeah, that’s kind of how it worked for me. So I didn’t really choose to be a novelist—it just rolled out. Life kind of shoved me forward.

[00:32:50] Carmen: You know what I love about that, James? There’s so much debate on college campuses now about how to help students think about their life after Oberlin and their careers.

[00:33:10] Carmen: And, you know, we try to do all these things to give them a framework for thinking about it. But you probably gave them the best advice: go do something that makes you happy.

[00:33:30] James McBride: Well, I mean, look, when I was coming out of school, they used to say, “There are no jobs to get. You’re not going to get a job.”

[00:33:50] James McBride: I went to see Thad Jones and Mel Lewis playing in New York, and I was talking to one of the saxophone players, and I said, “How much are you guys making?”

[00:34:00] James McBride: And he said, “We’re making like $30 for the night.” And I was like, oh boy. I said, “Well, I might as well get my tin cup out and start begging right now.”

[00:34:20] Carmen: If he’s making $30 and he’s fantastic, what about me?

[00:34:30] James McBride: But what happens is, if students can simply discard this whole business of, “You must leave school and work for Google right away and make $80,000 a year,” or go to Harvard, or do something that looks good but doesn’t make you happy, they’re making a tremendous mistake.

[00:35:00] James McBride: The world is full of people driving BMWs, living in gated communities, who hate their jobs and are unhappy.

[00:35:20] James McBride: So, you know, you have to move toward happiness. It doesn’t mean you should be poor. It does mean you should work hard. But it also means you should do what you like to do creatively.

[00:35:40] James McBride: Because if you do it well enough, someone, at some point, somewhere, will pay you to do it.

[00:35:50] Carmen: I’m so happy you’re on this podcast because you have your own podcast that is super awesome called Snafu. I guess I just wanted to ask you my last couple of questions—like, why are you obsessed with impending Armageddon?

[00:36:10] Ed Helms: It’s fun! Come on!

[00:36:12] Carmen: It’s lighthearted.

[00:36:13] Ed Helms: What’s not to love?

[00:36:15] Carmen: It’s not to love! It’s almost over. Let’s be happy about it.

[00:36:20] Ed Helms: So, for a little context, Snafu is my podcast, which is a history podcast. Season one is all about an event in 1983. True story. A lot of historians believe it’s the closest we ever came to nuclear annihilation.

[00:36:40] Carmen: That I think we should all know more about, but I don’t think we really knew about it.

[00:36:50] Ed Helms: Yeah.

[00:36:51] Carmen: And we’re like, “Oh my God. I didn’t know that when I was in eighth grade, or whatever it was, it was almost the end for everyone.”

[00:37:00] Carmen: You know, I wondered a little bit—what do you hope we glean from it? I mean, you’re a history nerd. You’re trying to teach us something, I know. What do you hope that we’re gleaning from this particular story? What are we supposed to learn?

[00:37:20] Ed Helms: Well, no spoilers. I’m going to let you listen to the—let people listen to the podcast because we draw some pretty powerful conclusions toward the end of season one of Snafu.

[00:37:40] Ed Helms: But I think just from a little bit of a higher altitude point of view, there was something a little bit cynical in this idea of wanting to do a history podcast but focusing on the massive screw-ups.

[00:38:00] Ed Helms: And the only reason that’s a little bit cynical is because, like, of course people are going to be interested in that. It’s like a car wreck—you drive by, and you look at it. Like, you just—you want to see and learn the grisly details.

[00:38:20] Ed Helms: And that’s what’s intrinsically enticing about a snafu on a huge scale, like a giant international mess-up of some kind.

[00:38:40] Ed Helms: So that was sort of the fun reason why we wanted to tell these particular kinds of stories. But then also, what made it, and what I think emerged for us in the writing of season one in a way that I don’t think I entirely expected, was how much—

[00:39:00] Ed Helms: You know, we always like to say we can learn from history, right? There are lessons in history. Probably the best quote is, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

[00:39:20] Ed Helms: But there are, you know, in these individual episodes or individual events, it is really powerful to contemplate different outcomes, different processes.

[00:39:40] Ed Helms: Or, who made the right decisions here? Who made the wrong decisions? Who saved the day? How did they do it? And who do we want to emulate?

[00:40:00] Ed Helms: And I love that. That is also such a fun part of Snafu—breaking down the lessons and the takeaways. Some of these things have really powerful social implications, cultural implications that are not just sort of like, “Hey, don’t launch a nuclear missile.”

[00:40:20] Carmen: That’s right. We probably could have gotten that one without the whole series.

[00:40:30] Carmen: And sometimes it’s just interesting to look at history so you can go, “Hmm, that feels real familiar. Maybe we should pay a little bit more attention to this.”

[00:40:50] Ed Helms: Absolutely. And also, there’s so much history that is powerful and meaningful that has been lost, or pushed aside, or just kind of muddied because of whoever was the dominant storyteller at the time.

[00:41:10] Ed Helms: And, you know, they say history is written by the winners. That’s reductive, but true. And so it’s interesting to look—well, maybe the losers have some really powerful, meaningful stories.

[00:41:30] Ed Helms: Maybe the winners were really bad and had bad intentions. So I think exploring history that you’re not familiar with, that you don’t know—episodes you’ve never heard about—it’s almost like fractal geometry.

[00:41:50] Ed Helms: It doesn’t matter how small of an event it was; it can still be revelatory for you.

[00:42:00] Carmen: Are you optimistic about humankind? Like, you know, are we going to make it? What do you think? Are we going to be okay?

[00:42:15] Ed Helms: Nope, we’re not. It’s not good.

[00:42:20] Carmen: I was going to say, this is going to be a terrible end to this podcast if Ed goes, “Yeah, no, sorry, Carmen. We’re done.”

[00:42:30] Ed Helms: Yeah, me and this laptop are about to jump out this ten-story window. Here’s the thing. I would be lying if I said, “Yeah, everything’s going to be great.” Are you kidding me?

[00:42:50] Ed Helms: But I do believe—let me start with something grim, which is—I’m very sad at what has become very clear, which is that humans are not capable of comprehending cataclysm at scale.

[00:43:10] Ed Helms: You know, we’re basically watching the Earth turn into a ball of fire, and all we’re doing is just kind of writing news stories about it and talking to our friends being like, “Oh my gosh, can you believe this is crazy?”

[00:43:30] Ed Helms: This is the Earth giving us alarm bells, and we’re still just kind of like, “Yeah man, I guess that’s kind of crazy.”

[00:43:50] Ed Helms: So I am very dismayed by this sort of evolutionary glitch in the human race, which is we just can’t understand, comprehend, or sort of take on problems at that scale automatically.

[00:44:10] Ed Helms: But I am also very encouraged that that seems to be shifting. And as much frustration and division as there is in America right now, I think what’s even more powerful is a desire for it to be better and a desire for it to heal and get better.

[00:44:40] Ed Helms: Unfortunately, there is a lot of nihilistic rage that we’re dealing with, and that’s very real. And honestly, I get it. I get feeling that way.

[00:45:00] Carmen: There’s a few things to be mad about. I’ll give you that.

[00:45:10] Ed Helms: Yeah, but we just have to tap into the best version of ourselves. And, you know, I have kids, so I don’t have a choice. I’ve got to just try to make this world as beautiful as I can because my kids are the most amazing creatures the world has ever known, and I want them to thrive and be happy.

[00:45:40] Carmen: Tell us a little bit about your path—how you went from freshly minted Obie, graduate of Oberlin College, “I have my politics degree,” to producing these incredible films.

[00:46:00] Shane Boris: Sure. Yeah, I think I took a very circuitous path that followed the flow of what was happening with and to me. Right after Oberlin, I took a year off.

[00:46:30] Shane Boris: I spent some time working in Alaska for an Indigenous cultural and language preservation organization. And then I went to London to learn because I was going to grad school in India.

[00:47:00] Shane Boris: And on my flight to India, the flight got canceled, and the ticket agent was looking completely beleaguered and despondent. And I bought him a sandwich, just as sort of, like, “It’s going to be okay.”

[00:47:30] Shane Boris: And then, when I went to get my ticket—I was 23 at the time—when I went to get my ticket, he gave me a business-class seat. And the person sitting next to me was a producer from Hollywood on his way to India to make a film.

[00:48:00] Carmen: Oh my God.

[00:48:01] Shane Boris: Yeah, it was a really serendipitous encounter. His name is Andy Spaulding, and he just showed me the script that he was going to make.

[00:48:30] Shane Boris: We just got to talking, and he fell asleep. We woke up in Frankfurt on our layover, and I just told him what I thought. And he said, just there in the airport, that I should come shadow him on set in Tamil Nadu in southern India.

[00:49:00] Shane Boris: So I went to Delhi, where my university was, registered for classes, and then took another flight down south to be with him for a week. And that was my first exposure to film.

[00:49:30] Carmen: Oh my God. That is one of the most incredible stories I’ve ever heard because I think one of the things that’s so powerful about it is how life sometimes meets you, but you have to be willing to go and meet it.

[00:49:50] Carmen: In that moment, you were willing to go and meet it. You said you read the script, and he woke up, and you gave him your perspective. What did you say to him?

[00:50:10] Shane Boris: Good question. What did I say? I don’t remember, to be totally honest. Let me think.

[00:50:30] Shane Boris: It changed the trajectory of my life. What were these compelling words that I said to this person? Wow, nobody’s ever asked me that, actually.

[00:50:50] Shane Boris: What I can honestly remember is that, for most producers and for most people, when they share their work, it’s hard to get honest, honest feedback that’s not trying to make something into something it’s not.

[00:51:10] Shane Boris: I think what happened was, I really tried to read the script, understand what it was and what it was going for, and communicate my appreciation for that—and some ideas about how it could be thought of in a different way and portrayed in a new way.

[00:51:30] Carmen: Right. Because you weren’t trying to accomplish any career thing when you were having that conversation. You weren’t making those comments with an end in mind.

[00:51:50] Shane Boris: Exactly. I think there’s a real power in not wanting things from everybody that you encounter—wanting something that improves your situation, your station in life—and rather the very difficult task of just loving everyone and telling the truth.

[00:52:10] Shane Boris: Doing both of those things at all times and trying to make the encounter beautiful and meaningful and true for what it is.

[00:52:30] Carmen: Yeah. And it led to—it wasn’t the only thing on your path, but it certainly is an important part of why you’ve ended up where you are.

[00:52:50] Carmen: Those few moments that were not planned, not structured, not designed, not even hoped for, but just happened. I love it.

[00:53:00] Carmen: Thanks for listening to Running to the Noise, a podcast produced by Oberlin College and Conservatory.

[00:53:20] Carmen: Our music is composed by Professor of Jazz Guitar Bobby Ferrazza and performed by the Oberlin Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble, a student group created through the support of the legendary jazz musician.

[00:53:40] Carmen: If you enjoyed the show, be sure to hit that subscribe button, leave us a review, and share this episode online so Obies and other folks can find this too.

[00:54:00] Carmen: I’m Carmen Twilley Ambar, and I’ll be back soon with more great conversations from thought leaders.