Micah Loewinger: This is On the Media. I'm Micah Loewinger.

Brooke Gladstone: I'm Brooke Gladstone. As host of a public radio show, I know well how easy public radio is to parody.

Margaret Jo McCullen: Hello, I'm Margaret Jo McCullen.

Terry Rialto: I'm Terry Rialto.

Margaret Jo McCullen & Terry Rialto: You're listening to The Delicious Dish on National Public Radio.

Brooke Gladstone: Saturday Night Live debuted The Delicious Dish skit in 1996 and it ran for years. So soft spoken, earnest, earthy.

Terry Rialto: Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. I have such happy memories from childhood dressing up and going door-to-door collecting for UNICEF.

Margaret Jo McCullen: I know, same.

Brooke Gladstone: Soldiering on in hand-knit sweaters with delicate stomachs and modest dreams.

Terry Rialto: Now, what's on your list this holiday season, Margaret Jo?

Margaret Jo McCullen: Terry, I really got greedy this year. I'm asking Kris Kringle for a wooden bull, some oversized index cards, and a funnel.

[laughter]

Terry Rialto: Ooh, a funnel. That'll be great for funneling.

Margaret Jo McCullen: I know. I feel like a glutton.

[laughter]

Brooke Gladstone: This week on Peacock, an updated rendition, one that reflects our current culture wars, or more narrowly, the intramural feuds among progressives. The new show is called In the Know, about a daily NPR show produced in New York City. The rather cringy characters are portrayed by stop-motion puppets, and each episode features an interview with a real person who appears on Zoom.

The show is written by Zach Woods, Brandon Gardner, and Mike Judge, creator of Beavis and Butt-Head, and who also voices the character of Sandy, the music critic in In the Know.

Zach Woods, who played Gabe from The Office and Jared from Silicon Valley, plays the central role of Lauren Caspian, billed as the third most famous NPR host. Zach Woods and Brandon Gardner, welcome to On the Media.

Brandon Gardner: Thank you.

Zach Woods: Thank you, Brooke.

Brooke Gladstone: You wrote, "We love public radio. It's engaging and comforting, but it also reflects aspects of ourselves that we're embarrassed by, which is why we created a show about an NPR host who is, sadly, an only slightly exaggerated version of ourselves."

Zach Woods: Being quoted back to yourself is one of the coolest punishments that I think a person can impose on another.

Brooke Gladstone: Slightly, Lauren Caspian, NPR's host of In the Know, is insufferable.

[laughter]

[clip playing]

Lauren: Barb.

Barb: Lauren, what is it? Your mid-interview.

Lauren: I think the sit warmer feature on my office chair might be causing my passive sperm. I need you to exchange it.

Barb: Fine. Right after the interview.

Lauren: No, right now, Barb. I'm not trying to give my semen an endless spa day.

[end of clip]

Zach Woods: Here's the thing. This is Zach talking. Insufferable. Listen, we can keep up a façade for probably the length of this interview but the truth is, if you were to hang around, you would witness us behave in ways that are troublingly similar to Lauren Caspian. Hopefully, we're less socially catastrophic. He's pretty inconsiderate of the people he works with. In terms of the cosmetic morality stuff, I think we probably sin the same sins. I don't know. What do you think, Brandon?

Brandon Gardner: I think Lauren has a lot of, at least I'll say, my vanity at times and ego at times, and desperation to be loved and included, which I also have.

Brooke Gladstone: There are several things that you parody about a public radio interview. Lauren is always self-referential right down to his passive sperm. He interrupts his guests constantly and the way he says, "Molly, our producer, thinks that sounds like Michael Barbaro from The Daily."

Zach Woods: You got it.

Brooke Gladstone: She was right?

Brandon Gardner: Good ear, Molly.

Brooke Gladstone: The quick subject change.

[clip playing]

Lauren: I like to treat my interviews like a trampoline and boing from one subject to another.

Kaia Gerber: I'm ready.

Lauren: Boing, boing.

[end of clip]

Brooke Gladstone: Tell me, what are some of the other hallmarks of a classic public radio interview?

Zach Woods: Again, at the risk of being like an ingratiating LA nightmare and too obsequious, Brooke, I will say, hearing your voice say, Lauren suffers from passive sperm is like a career highlight for me. I just want to say that and then we can move on. I think one of the hallmarks is that diversity of guests, so many different kinds of people who get interviewed on NPR. I like the reporting the vast majority of the time.

In terms of the more skin-crawly stuff, I would say, we talked about making this Instagram filter to promote the show. That was like an NPR Instagram filter where you would speak into your camera and then the filter would give you an enormous forehead and insert random pregnant pauses into your speech because I think a slightly self-conscious cerebralness combined with a very practiced collection of verbal affectations is closely associated with NPR in my head.

Brandon Gardner: One thing I think we were excited about and you're excited about playing Lauren was the opportunity to do the act of listening, the sort of, "Mmm," those empathetic sounds that we do associate sometimes with public radio interviews.

Brooke Gladstone: Mmm.

Brandon Gardner: Exactly. Honestly, they're both funny and soothing to me. The other thing is there's probably some overlap that's accidental because we are at the same time as we're trying to be funny, we're genuinely trying to do a good hour-long interview with the guests where we really did do our best to research it and we have all these topics we want to cover. Like the boing-boing is us just being like, how do we switch to this line of thought and we couldn't think of something more eloquent?

Brooke Gladstone: Let me ask you about those interviews with the real-life celebrities, Kaia Gerber, Jonathan van Ness, Ken Burns, Tegan and Sara, Mike Tyson, Roxane Gay, and Hugh Laurie. The real guests talk to these characters on Zoom, like how we were speaking. Is that scripted? Who are the guests actually talking to?

Brandon Gardner: The only heads up we give them up top is I'll pop on real quick over to Zoom and thank them for participating with this show that doesn't exist yet and say, just act like you're doing a real NPR interview. The only thing we ask you not to point out is that you're talking to a puppet.

Zach Woods: There's one interview that is scripted. At one point we asked Tegan and Sara to pretend that they were being made nauseous by Lauren's voice [unintelligible 00:36:14] but other than that, it's all improvised.

Brooke Gladstone: The one with Tegan and Sara. It is absolutely hilarious where Lauren opines on what makes Terry Gross special.

[clip playing]

Lauren: In regard to Terry Gross, unfortunately, that is all an act. She's cold as an icicle and dumb as rocks. We call her very gross. If you've ever seen her eat, you know what I'm talking about. Ranch dressing seems to linger on her lips like a memory on a summer night. I consider her the marm of public radio and I don't throw that term around lightly.

[clip end]

Zach Woods: When I met Mike Judge, who was one of the co-creators on the show, I said, "I'm not by nature a jealous person, but you did fresh air. I wished badness on you because I'm so jealous of that." I felt that Lauren would naturally blow with Terry Gross. He has a bitter rivalry with Malcolm Gladwell who's probably unaware of the rivalry.

Brooke Gladstone: Among the other hallmarks of public radio, the pledge drive, the tote bag, the kombucha.

[clip playing]

Lauren: Chase, my post-show kombucha isn't just a treat. It's a prescription-strength blend of yeast and bacteria cultures.

Fabian: The only cultures you seem to respect.

Lauren: This is terrible.

Carl: Are you okay, Lauren?

Lauren: My bowels are a delicately constructed Swiss clock, and the smallest irregularity can trigger the end of time.

[clip end]

Brooke Gladstone: Lauren's various physical maladies are they symbolic?

Zach Woods: I feel like it wouldn't surprise me if, in the world of NPR, there's a inversion where the degree of your lactose intolerance would almost be like a status symbol. Like how little you could tolerate dairy would be something that you would have swagger about. Maybe that's not true.

Brandon Gardner: When we're talking to the animators who are actually moving the Lauren puppet, is that Lauren has a very difficult relationship with his own body. Both in terms of his digestive tract, but also if you were to see Lauren dance or try to physically express excitement, he's such a cerebral person that he can only do small arm gestures. That's something I associate with a certain type of person who's maybe a little too intellectual and a little too self-aware.

Zach Woods: The other thing that goes along with that hyper-cerebralness is there's this very gentle, soft-spoken disposition that I've noticed but just behind that very nonviolent, therapized facade often lurks what to me seems like machismo and competitiveness, this kind of unowned ambition or something. I always think that's funny when people are so allergic to their own complicated interior lives that they can only present these very soft parts, but it doesn't make the hard parts go away. It just makes them go underground.

Brooke Gladstone: Now about progressive hypocrisy, I know you say that you see it in yourselves, but you chose public radio to take it down. There must have been things that you knew you wanted to skewer.

Zach Woods: For a long time, Brandon and I would have these quiet conversations where we would talk about things we thought were obnoxious. Inevitably, these conversations would end in the same way, the performative, virtue-signally stuff. I would get annoyed, and then I would hear my own voice getting so shrill and sanctimonious and then I'd be like, but I'm full of shit because I don't walk the walk in any real way. I hear what you're saying, Brooke. You're probably like, "Okay, okay. You're [unintelligible 00:39:57]. You guys are nice, you're not threatening anyone, everyone's friends. You're liars."

Brandon Gardner: Give us the real deal.

Zach Woods: [chuckles] The real deal really is that we hate ourselves.

[laughter]

Brandon Gardner: I think like what Zach said too of quiet conversations, Zach and I would have quiet conversations because we had just been at a party or with people at the improv theater we perform at, and someone had said something, and I didn't have the courage to say something in the moment, but afterwards, I'd be like, "That was sort of weird that they said that. That seems a little outrageous." I was nervous to say it in a group, so I would have to quietly say it to Zach. One thing that was exciting about this show is like, "Oh, all these things we've whispered about, we can actually put it into a show and try to make funny."

Brooke Gladstone: We talked about Lauren, who's insufferably holier than thou overcompensating for what would otherwise probably be disabling insecurity. There's Fabian is a perfect match for Lauren. She can't stand him, and she is equally in high dudgeon most of the time. Then there's Barb, the senior producer played by the great J. Smith-Cameron, who just absorbs constant attacks for being the man. There's Carl, the engineer, who really likes Barb, and who is wonderfully self-possessed. Then there's Sandy, the cultural critic, which seems to be a carryover character from the early days of WBAI Pacifica Radio.

[laughter]

Brooke Gladstone: I'm just wondering how you came up with this particular collection of people.

Brandon Gardner: One thing that always is interesting to me is there's articles about big battles within the New York Times between older progressives and younger progressives. I want to be in those conference rooms when they're fighting about something. That was one thing I had in the back of my mind with the idea of Barb, and Lauren, and Fabian as three generations of liberal, and how they're more or less all on the same team with more or less all of the same ideals, but they will brutally go after each other for anything that they think is less than perfectly in line with what they think the current point of view should be.

[clip playing]

Barb: Oh, I also wanted to let everyone know that that homeless gentleman is still in the bathroom.

Lauren: Barb.

Barb: Huh?

Lauren: That is hate speech. He is an unhoused person.

Fabian: Actually, the preferred term is person who is currently without housing.

Lauren: No, I don't think so. Are you sure?

Fabian: Yes.

Barb: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm really very empathetic to the man's situation. I volunteer at a homeless shelter.

Lauren: No, you volunteer at an unhoused shelter.

Fabian: A shelter for persons currently without housing.

Lauren: It just feels very clunky.

Fabian: Oh, I'm sorry. Is it too inconvenient to treat vulnerable populations with respect?

Lauren: How dare you? I was using the term Inuit back in the '90s. I've been spelling women with a Y since before I could spell my name.

Fabian: Either way. Until he leaves, everyone on the floor will have to use the Starbucks down the street.

Lauren: Maybe that will teach us about the lack of water closets in this country. May I remind you all that this is public radio. Let us urinate and do all other washroom shamefuls in solidarity with our unhoused brothers and sisters.

Fabian: Brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings currently without housing.

Lauren: God damn it.

[end of clip]

Zach Woods: They become so preoccupied with updating their glossary of terms that they're ignoring the fact that Barb is really the only one walking the walk in any meaningful way. Brandon and I really agree that language matters, but when language becomes a filibuster to avoid the more challenging and uncomfortable work, it's obnoxious.

Brandon Gardner: I will fully admit, I'm one of the people who put a black square on my Instagram in support of Black Lives Matter because I was like, "I don't know what else to do." I really don't think that helped anyone, but I was like, "I don't want to seem like I don't support this." Have I been actively going to city council meetings trying to get legislation passed? No, I haven't. Things like that, it's like, I'm as guilty as anybody where sometimes I just take the most convenient route to showing my support for something.

Zach Woods: As insufferable as their behavior can be, another thing that felt really important to me and Brandon was not to just create these tired archetypal hyper left-wing pin cushions for us to sink our little satirical pins into and to start from humanity.

Brooke Gladstone: There's a lot of redemption as the series progresses. There's a moment in the sixth episode when Lauren's kid is visiting. It's between Lauren and his producer, Fabian, that get at this idea.

[clip playing]

Lauren: Okay, tell me what to do.

Fabian: Just be a dad. Be a normal, boring dad.

Lauren: I don't know how to be boring.

Fabian: Wrong, bitch. You are boring. So am I. That's why I hate you. You're like a magic mirror that shows me what a sweaty fraud I am. I mean, look at us. I'm staging a protest for nobody, and you're dragging your son to get mercury poisoning with nerds who don't even like you. For what? We're still boring, Lauren. Now we're just boring and alone.

[end of clip]

Zach Woods: I think there's a tendency to make ourselves one thing. You're this identity, or you're this opinion, or you're this act that you did. It just doesn't really resonate with my experience of people. I just feel like people are this bird's nest of irresolvable, beautiful, frustrating, horrible, transcendent pieces. For me, comedy, stories, art, that's where I go to have the complexity restored to the world. I love this quote from Cherry Jones, the theater actor, where she said, "Theater is where we comfort each other with our shortcomings." I think that's such a beautiful sentiment.

I think that's what we were trying to do here as best we could. Again, it's like puppets and there's jokes about passive sperm and foreskin restoration and stuff. Lest we get too high and mighty in our discussion of it, I think it's important to remember that it's a dumb-as-hell animated show, but that is the foundational worldview that I think we're trying to express. Right, Brandon, or no?

Brandon Gardner: Yes, definitely.

Brooke Gladstone: You have six episodes. Do you see a longer arc for what's going on here? What's the best-case scenario?

Zach Woods: Merchandising, baby.

[laughter]

Brooke Gladstone: Bobbleheads.

Zach Woods: Bobbleheads, baby, we want that.

Brandon Gardner: We have not completely mined everything that is ridiculous about ourselves, so there's room.

Brooke Gladstone: Or about public radio, by no means.

Brandon Gardner: Probably not. We now need to do some actual research.

Zach Woods: Can I ask you, Brooke, what do you feel are the major ones we missed?

Brooke Gladstone: The tone of public radio has changed a lot. Your depiction of public radio, which I know is not the point. The point isn't for you to do an accurate depiction of public radio. It's a framing device, but it struggled so much with the internet that its tone has gotten a lot looser and a little less homogeneous than it was before. The idea was always Terry Gross. Now you have all sorts of people who don't sound like Terry Gross. I think there's been a tremendous effort to loosen it and to diversify it. How successful it is from location to location is something else. It felt more like local radio, given the lack of resources than like NPR, which is kind of corporate these days.

Zach Woods: I like the intimacy and the cozy provincialism of radio sometimes. Even if it's like on a car trip, if you go and you're hearing the local NPR station, or even not an NPR station, it's a quick way to get a strong feeling for the place you are without ever having to get out of your car because you're terrified to meet actual people.

Brooke Gladstone: It's a super intimate medium. One thing that Ira once told me, he tried to bring This American Life to television, and he did for a season, but he said that people are so much less relatable when you can see them.

Zach Woods: Maybe that's why it's a little bit of a sin to have a medium that can carry so much intimacy and then cover yourself in affectation. You could imagine it's kind of like bad sex or something where it's like, it's the most intimate situation, but if you're pretending to be something you're not, it ruins the whole thing.

[laughter]

Zach Woods: The one thing I'm a real expert on is bads.

[laughter]

Brooke Gladstone: Thank you guys so much for being available.

Brandon Gardner: Thank you.

Zach Woods: This was the best.

Brooke Gladstone: Zach Woods and Brandon Gardner are the co-creators and showrunners of the new show, In The Know, out this week on Peacock.

Zach Woods: If you were stuck in a library during an apocalyptic blizzard, what is the first book you would burn for warmth?

Brooke Gladstone: Oh, wow.

Zach Woods: For me, it would be Malcolm Gladwell's blink because I just believe-- I mean this in a neutral and objective way, it's pure horse shit.

[music]

Micah Loewinger: That's it for this week's show. On the Media is produced by Eloise Blondiau, Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark-Callender, and Candice Wang, with help from Shaan Merchant.

Brooke Gladstone: Our technical directors, Jennifer Munson. Our engineers this week are Andrew Nerviano and Brendan Dalton. Katya Rogers is our executive producer. On the Media is a production of WNYC Studios. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Micah Loewinger: I'm Micah Loewinger.

[music]

 

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