Just the Beginning: Episode 6
Listening Party!
Kickstarter’s Just the Beginning podcast featuring stories about how independent creators bring their ideas to life. Join Nick and Zakiya as they listen to and discuss hit Kickstarter-affiliated podcasts.
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Featured in this Episode
Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls: Frida Kahlo read by Pamela Adlon
The bestselling Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls books tell stories of extraordinary women from the past and present in the form of lushly illustrated fairy tales. For their podcast, they invite notable contemporary women to read these stories. We’ll hear an excerpt from an episode featuring actress and comedian Pamela Adlon telling the story of painter Frida Kahlo.
Radio Diaries: The Working Tapes of Studs Terkel
In the early 1970’s, author Studs Terkel went around the country with a tape recorder interviewing people about their jobs for his book Working. Working with Project& and the Studs Terkel Radio Archive, the Radio Diaries team took those source tapes and turned them into radio pieces, allowing us to hear the voices of many of Terkel’s interview subjects for the first time. We’ll hear stories from a private investigator, a police officer, and an advertising executive.
Racist Sandwich: Erasing Black Barbeque
Racist Sandwich explores food through the lenses of race, gender, and class. We’ll hear an excerpt from their James Beard Award-nominated episode Erasing Black Barbeque. Producer Stephanie Kuo takes listeners to Texas to explore barbeque’s Black roots — and how food journalists have largely ignored them.
Transcript
Zakiya Gibbons: From Kickstarter, this is Just the Beginning. In this episode: A listening party!
[Theme music: Balún, “Años Atrás”]
Preview Montage
Pamela Adlon: Frida could not sit, so her mother had a special easel made, one that allowed her to paint while lying in bed.
Thomas Fischetti: What happened was, I found a homemade knife stashed away in one of the closets. With butter stains on it.
Johnny Walker: My culture created this art. Uh, that’s the only problem I have. That we’re just like non-existent, like it didn’t happen.
Intro
Zakiya Gibbons: Nick.
Nick Yulman: Yes, Zakiya.
[laughter]
ZG: Ok, so, this is a special episode because we’re sitting down together talking about something that’s very near and dear to both of our hearts.
NY: Yeah. I mean, here we are on a podcast, and we’re about to talk about podcasts [laughs]
ZG: I know, very meta, very wow.
NY: I don’t know about you, but people always come to me and they’re like, “You’re the podcast person in my life…”
ZG: Oh my god, yes. All the time.
NY: “…tell me all the good ones.”
ZG: Yeah, no, at parties when people hear that I’m a podcast producer they’re like “Oh my god, what are you listening to? Do you have any recommendations?” And I’m like, “Unfortunately, I don’t” [laughter] because even though I’m in this biz, there’s just so many out there and because it’s my job, sometimes I have to, like, take a break from it and step back and just only listen to music.
NY: Not to mention, we spend so much of our time with headphones on editing audio that we can’t have somebody else’s podcast going on while we’re doing our jobs.
ZG: Exactly, yeah.
NY: [laughs] But, I always mean to catch up with all of the stuff that I love, and, like, also when I get to listen to a story with somebody, it’s just such a different experience and it’s just such a fun thing.
ZG: My new thing is to be on the treadmill listening to podcasts. Well my new thing — I feel like I can’t claim that because I’ve only been to the gym once [laughter] But —
NY: It’s already a thing, though [laughs]
ZG: It’s like, gonna be a thing [laughs]! But yeah, now that you point it out, I don’t think that I’ve ever listened to a podcast with other people.
NY: Do you wanna listen to some podcasts now?
ZG: You know, I thought you would never ask —
NY: [laughs]
ZG: I’ve been waiting for this moment, and the answer is yes.
[Music: Balún, “Ultraviolenta”]
NY: We have just this sort of embarrassment of riches to draw from when it comes to Kickstarter-affiliated podcasts.
ZG: There’s so many of them! Snap Judgment — one of my favorites — 99% Invisible, all of Radiotopia.
NY: Right, Radiotopia, the network that supports all these independent shows got its start on Kickstarter, which was, like, an amazing moment around here.
ZG: If podcasts were different groups of kids in high school, Radiotopia are like the cool, alt kids. You like wanna be their friends but you’re too intimidated to sit with them at lunch.
NY: Or maybe they’re like the AV club.
ZG: [laughs] I think they’re cool.
NY: To be clear me too [laughs].
ZG: I know [laughs]. There’s the podcast You Had Me At Black!
NY: Oh, that’s a great one.
ZG: It’s all about millennial black storytellers telling their stories. That’s a cool one.
NY: Planet Money did that campaign to like make a T-shirt and then report on how the T-shirt was made, which was —
ZG: Wait! [Laughs] I didn’t know that was a Kickstarter thing! I remember that.
NY: You could back to get the T-shirt, and then hear the story of how your T-shirt got made.
ZG: Wow.
NY: But, you know, aside from the big names in the — let’s be honest — small world of podcasting [laughs], there’s also so many campaigns for just like, podcasts for a very specific audience. So like, if you are very into collecting pens, there’s a podcast called Pen Addict that covers that world, and there’s a podcast devoted to like, HP Lovecraft and Cthulhu.
ZG: [Laughs] Was that all Latin?
NY: [Laughs] To be honest, I don’t know fully what that is but HP Lovecraft is this horror writer and Cthulu is like a multi-tentacled demon.
ZG: [laughs]
NY: And if you wanted to find out what that even is, there’s a whole podcast you can listen to [laughs]
ZG: Oh my gosh, well I guess I have to check it out now.
NY: It’s totally optional. Demon worship is not something that anybody else can force upon you [laughs].
ZG: [laughs] So what you’re saying is that there’s a podcast for literally everyone’s weird interests.
NY: Many people have found podcasts that they love through Kickstarter, and we’re gonna have a little listening party today and hopefully introduce folks listening to this podcast to a few new favorites.
ZG: I’m so excited.
[Music]
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls
ZG: The first podcast we’re gonna hear comes from the people who made The Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls books. Have you heard of those?
NY: I have heard of those because my three-year-old daughter is a big fan of them. Like, they’re actually good night stories that we read to her, which makes her a rebel girl, I guess, which totally checks out!
ZG: You know, it’s great to hear that I have so much in common with a three year old. I also like these books. So yeah, they’re books about women in history. You know, contemporary women, And women from like ancient Egypt who have made a mark in history but haven’t always gotten recognition for what they’ve accomplished.
NY: One of the big hits for my daughter was Joan Jett, who has become one of her favorites. If you’ve never seen a three year old trying to learn the lyrics to Bad Reputation, it’s a sight to see.
ZG: Oh my God, she’s a cool three year old. So the creators of these books, Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, also started a Rebel Girls podcast. And what makes it especially cool is that they have well-known women and femme identifying people telling the stories of these remarkable women from history. So you know, you have Tarana Burke, who started the Me Too movement, telling the story of Harriet Tubman. And you have journalist Jodie Cantor reading the story of the mathematician Ada Lovelace.
And we’re going to hear the story of Frida Kahlo, the legendary Mexican painter, read by Pamela Adlon, who’s a writer, comedian, actor, AND the voice of one of my favorite cartoon characters, Bobby from King of the Hill [laughs]. This excerpt starts with a pivotal moment in Frida’s life, when she was 18 years old, riding on a bus with her boyfriend at the time, Alejandro.
Pamela Adlon: One day, Frida and Alejandro hopped on one of the new buses that had just started to populate the streets of Mexico City. It was crowded, but they found two seats in the back. A few minutes later, a tram violently hit the bus. The bus seemed to bend impossibly. Then it burst into a million pieces. The metal handrail broke violently. And it impaled Frida just like a sword. A passenger next to them was carrying a package full of powdered gold. The package broke during the collision, and the sparkling powder flew everywhere, gently coating Frida’s bleeding body in gold. “La ballerina! La ballerina!” People shouted. They thought she was a dancer.
Frida was rushed to the hospital, and for an entire month, it wasn’t clear if she would survive. Her spine was broken in three places. Her collar bone was broken too. And her right leg was fractured in 11 places. Her right foot was crushed. Her convalescence took two years, and she never fully recovered, but she had survived. To overcome the consequences of polio, she had learned to become an athlete. Now, to recover from this terrible accident, she had to learn how to stay still. So she began to paint.
Frida could not sit, so her mother had a special easel made, one that allowed her to paint while lying in bed. She started painting the friends who came to visit her. Her relatives, and herself. “I paint myself,” she wrote, “because I am so often alone, and because I am the subject I know best.” Unable to see the world outside, she saw it in her body. Valleys and mountains, flowers, and buildings. Through her paintings, Frida gave herself a second life. She suffered a lot, but she painted herself as a hero. A woman capable of surviving and thriving on even the most hostile and desolate planet. In her self portraits, she never looked pitiful. She stood with the dignity of a queen, and with a fire in her eyes.
ZG: That was Pamela Adlon telling the story of Frida Kahlo from the Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls podcast. This podcast, like, reminds me of one of those cartoons, like Adventure Time or Sponge Bob, where it’s, like, okay, like this seems like a kid show, but adults can get into it too.
NY: Totally, and the image that they paint there of gold dust flying around in the middle of this accident is so beautiful in this sad way.
ZG: Yeah, and you know, for people familiar with Frida Kahlo, this is like a pretty well known incident that’s happened to her. But what I really respect about Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, the podcast and the books, is their level of detail in the retelling of these stories. And the research that goes into it; like, I’ve heard of that story, but just listening to it, there’s so much that I didn’t know about how all of that happened.
NY: So you were just actually visiting Frida Kahlo’s house, right?
ZG: Yeah, I was just in Mexico City, literally just a few days ago at her house. You know, her house is now a museum, and there’s tour guides and you know, this information about her. But listening to this, I learned so much more about her through this, this podcast episode than actually at the museum.
NY: It’s cool to hear you talking about having just been there and seeing the sort of preserved version of her life, but a story like this really captures something different.
ZG: Telling these real stories of these real people through this fairy tale, fantastical lens, for me makes them feel even more real.
[Music: Sheverb, “Last Day of Summer” ]
ZG: Head to rebelgirls.co to hear the rest of this episode. And subscribe to the podcast to catch their new second season that will feature stories about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Celia Cruz, the “Queen of salsa” and more.
Radio Diaries: The Working Tapes of Studs Terkel
NY: The next show we’re going to listen to, Radio Diaries, also does an amazing job of bringing history to life in this really personal way. What they do is reveal historical events through the eyes of people who are not famous, who are not the people you’d read about in history books. And you hear them telling their own story in their own voice.
ZG: You know what I like about Radio Diaries? I’m like a voyeur in the sense that I’m just so fascinated by how other people live their lives. Like when I walk down the street, I literally kinda look through windows, and like I’m always asking very personal questions of people. And I like Radio Diaries because I can get a glimpse into, like, peoples’ lives.
NY: Yeah, I mean the stories that they uncover are wild. So, Joe Richman who started Radio Diaries is a big inspiration for us, and a lot of folks who make radio. We’re gonna share stories from a series where he and his team got to work with some rare recordings made by one of his inspirations. The tape’s Studs Terkel, the legendary oral historian and journalist collected for his book “Working”. Here’s Joe to explain what we’ll hear.
Joe Richman: Hi, I’m Joe Richman, executive producer of Radio Diaries. In the early 1970s, author Studs Terkel went around the country with the Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorder, interviewing people about their jobs. He turned these interviews into a book called “Working”. And then something surprising happened, the 600 page oral history collection became a best seller. It even inspired a Broadway musical. Something about ordinary people talking about their daily lives, in their own words struck a nerve. It certainly did that for me. This is the sound of my copy of “Working” from high school. But it’s one thing to read the interviews in the book, it’s another thing to hear them, and for more than four decades very few people had. After the book was released in 1974, the tapes were packed away in Studs’ home office. A few years ago, we at Radio Diaries along with our friend Jane Saks with Project& were offered the chance to make a radio and podcast series out of the recordings. Here are some of our favorite stories from the “Working” tapes.
Studs recorded more than a hundred interviews for his book “Working”. Some, honestly, are duds. And some almost feel like accidental works of art. Here at Radio Diaries, one of our favorites is this interview with a private eye in Brooklyn.
Studs Terkel: I’m seated somewhere in Brooklyn, home of the- Anthony Ruggiero and his wife, a very delightful boy. So, this is a book about work. Jobs people do. How would you describe your work?
Thomas Fischetti: Uh, let’s see. How would I describe my work? 90 percent of the job is the ability to move around, to different places. Without causing any suspicion. And uh -
Kat: Can I cut into it?
TF: Oh, sure.
Kat: No, I am just thinking, like, they usually put him in a job where he has the most mobility -
TF: Right, yeah. And you gotta be a quick talker. Any private investigator, any private detective, he has one thing and one thing only and that is his wits. He can’t pull a badge out, in a bind and say “hey, police department” nor can he use a gun. You gotta — no -
ST: No, you never, you never carry a gun.
TF: I’d like to, there are times that I wish that I had a gun
Studs Terkel: Really?
TF: But, you ain’t got a gun, you ain’t got a badge. You gotta be slick, seriously, you gotta be a bullshit.
ST: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
TF: Undercover investigators are the greatest actors in the world, you gotta be.
ST: Yeah? But getting back to the uh, the nature of the work you do, what for example?
TF: Okay, for instance … the butter business.
ST: What were you supposed to uncover there?
TF: A theft. They had a theft of butter. In a bread factory. It sounds ridiculous but it ran into quite a bit of money. 70 pound cartons of butter were being swiped on an average of once a week, and this was going on for six months to a year, which amounted to something like four thousand — five thousand dollars. So, they sent me in there and I got a job as a mixer, I was a dough mixer. So, I had a week to bust this case. And, what happened was, I found a homemade knife stashed away in one of the closets. With butter stains on it. We that the butter was being taken out of the refrigerator. So, what I did was, I stationed myself on top of the refrigerator, which was in a completely darkened room, and I stayed up there for four days. Eight hour shifts. Well, you have feelings when you are seated on top of the refrigerator, for eights hours you see -
ST: Eight hours, right. You ever need to go to the toilet?
TF: No.
ST: You did before.
TF: Whatever I had to do, I did before I went up there -
ST: And eating and dri — so you — what did you do during the eight hours?
TF: Smoke, looked out the window (laughs). Keeping this place on constant surveillance, I knew who came in, who went out, I knew the times and everything -
ST: Nobody saw you on top of the refrigerator?
TF: Nobody saw me.
ST: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
TF: And then this one particular Friday night, he comes. A clean up man. So, he comes, opens up, takes the butter and then he left the area. I went down, I checked that it was butter and called up my supervisor. This was like two o’clock in the morning. I says “ah, we got the guy, the case is over.” (laughs)
ST: Sounds like a novel. Alright, so, does this job affect your outlook outside the job, on life?
TF: As a matter of fact, I think this job has done more for me, as far as understanding people is concerned, than before.
ST: You make a discovery about human beings too.
TF: Yeah, and basically everybody’s the same. This is my discovery. Why does a person steal? You know, if a guy steals a loaf of bread because he’s got a kid who’s hungry, you call this man a thief? I mean yeah, there’s thieves and then there are thieves.
ST: You- you think the job then makes you more tolerant to peoples frailties?
TF: Oh yeah [crosstalk]
ST: Makes you more tolerant?
TF: I think so. Don’t it Kat?
Kat: Oh yeah. You came a long way.
TF: What do you mean? What do you mean? (laughs)
ST: You know what, this may see- she’s implying, if I get you right, that you didn’t have this feeling once.
Kat: Yeah, you used to put people in categories, sort of. You know … ah, shades of things like, they were either black or white, you know, and that was it, and I think you’ve come out of that.
TF: Yeah, well, you find out that people aren’t that bad, really. That is what you read in the paper, basically, people aren’t that bad, they’re pretty good.
ST: We’ll end with this, it sounds great.
JR: Private Eye, Thomas Fischetti and his wife Kat, interviewed by Studs Terkel for his book “Working”. Vichetti is now retired and lives in New Jersey and if you pick up a copy of the book, his story is under the pseudonym Anthony Ruggiero, you know, he had to keep a low profile.
Going through all these tapes from the 1970’s, it’s fascinating to hear how different back then. Unions were powerful, you talked to an actual operator to make a long distance phone call, and private investigators didn’t have Google. But the interview that really struck me the most wasn’t about how mush had changed over the past four decades, but how much hasn’t. This is the story of RR Robinson a Chicago police officer and one of the founders of the Afro-American Patrolman’s League.
Studs Terkel: I am talking with Renault Robinson and I’m thinking, Renault, why did you become a policeman?
Renault Robinson: Well, policemen is looked upon, in the black community, as an important thing. Even though, people are afraid of ’em or people have bad thoughts about ’em. Uh, the position itself is still one of importance. I quit a job, paying more money, to become a police officer and uh … sometimes I wonder if that was the best decision to make (laugh).
ST: Could you describe your day? The day of a policeman in uniform?
RR: Well, first of all, you are given an assignment and a partner. Most of the white guys are wondering what black they are gonna get today. And the black guys are wondering the same thing, which one of these … fool’s am I gonna get today?
ST: (laughs)
RR: The black cop is saying “the only reason I am with this white cop is because they want to protect this life while he is riding around the black community, to- to ward off the bullets”. And so, you know, there’s hard feelings on both sides.
ST: Well, what happens then, during these eight hours? You’re sitting with this white guy.
RR: Say nothin’ to each other at all. Can you imagine that? For eight hours?
ST: So there is no conversation?
RR: Very little or none. Very little or none. (Laugh) I told Studs exactly what the situation was. My name is Renault Robinson and when I first started on the police department, I went in there to do the best job I could as a policeman. But, that became very difficult once I realized what the true circumstances were.
ST: What led to your disenchantment?
RR: I think it was just seeing blacks being treated one way and whites being treated another. You know, majority of the policemen in my station were white. The opinions that they had with black people are: that they are all criminals, they have no morals, no scruples, they’re dirty and nasty, et cetera, et cetera.
ST: So the trouble is with an ordinary citizen, coul- do you dwell on this stuff?
RR: Well, I would say about 60 percent of police-citizen contact start at a traffic situation. Certain units have really developed a science around stopping an automobile. In other words, in their minds, (laughs), if they stop 100 cars in the black community, the likelihood of them finding one or two or three violations of some sort is highly possible. Now of course, after you have stopped a thousand, you’ve got 900 people who are very pissed off. Teachers, lawyers, doctors … just average working people who, haven’t broken any law and are very irritated and aggravated about being stopped by the police. And, black folks who are minority, tolerance around police brutality, has grown very short.
ST: So they won’t accept that anymore.
RR: They won’t accept that treatment. They won’t accept that de-humanizing, degrading treatment. That’s why more young kids are being killed by the police than ever before.
RR: 50 years later, whether it’s Chicago or Baltimore or Detroit, the same thing is happening in all of these cities. Th-this feels like deja vu. At the time I joined the Chicago police department, I was young, and I guess I was very energetic about doing something, about racism. You know, I remember, they forced us to put sawed off shotguns, police issued, in the squad cars, loaded with double O buck shot, if you’re a hunter, you know what that is. I and, you know, a hand full of other black police officers just felt that that was wrong. You’re chasing that kid, or chasing that stolen car, and you’ve got something that could tear somebody’s head off.
So, the Afro-American Patrolmans League, we raised hell, we picketed, we marched, we did everything to get the police department to take those guns out of the squad cars. Of course, speaking out like that on a regular basis, made me an unpopular fellow in the police department. You go into your locker room, and you see in your mailbox, is human feces and cigarette ashes and trash, you kinda know what that means. You go in the bathroom and there is a picture of you on the wall, dressed as a native, with a bone in your nose, you know how they feel. They were all nicky nack stuff, just to try to force me out of the department.
ST: I know the fact that now you have the reputation, speaking out, speaking your mind. Every now and then, you are suspended.
RR: I’ve got a 30 day suspension pending now.
ST: What do they use as grounds?
RR: Well, this latest one, I’m being suspended because I was passing out literature in the police station, to black policemen, about the Patrolmans League. I was arrested, in the station, and I am being suspended for ‘Conduct Unbecoming a Policeman’.
RR: In the end, I knew I had to go. I mean, I had fractured too many (laughs) too many feelings and uh, too many people who didn’t want to hear what I had to say. And I left. I get a small pension now … and the beat goes on.
JR: In 1973, RR Robinson and the Afro-American Patrolman’s League filed a landmark discrimination suit against the Chicago Police Department. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court which ruled in favor of the Patrolmans League. Renault Robinson retired from the force in 1983. He still lives in Chicago.
One of the people Studs interviewed was a 30 year old advertising executive in Chicago. One of the few women at the time to have a high level position in the industry.
ST: This is about the work you do. You’re a big shot, aren’t you?
Barbra Herrick: Yes. Well, I write and produce television commercials. Big ones like General Mills, Campbell, Kraft and I am probably one of the … say 10, highest paid people at the agency.
ST: Do you ever question what you’re selling?
BH: Do I ever question what I’m selling? Oh, I would say all the time. Of course. I don’t think what I do is essential or necessary. Even that it performs much of a service, you know, you’re saying to a lady “because this oil comes from the bottom of algae on the sea, you are going to have a timeless face.” That’s a crock of shit. I mean, I know that. It’s a part of my job, I do it.
ST: But something else involved here. You are the only woman there.
BH: Well, I am the only female producer at the agency. You know, it used to be the token black. And now I am definitely the token woman. And I’m ideal because I know how to handle myself, obviously, or I wouldn’t be where I am. I’m young enough to communicate, I think, effectively and yet I am old enough to see, you know, the danger.
ST: What is the danger? I mean, do you -
BH: Well danger is aging. I mean, I am in a profession in which I cannot age. I could not be doing this at 38.
ST: You might not be as valuable as yo are right now?
BH: Well, I haven’t seen many women in any executive capacity age gracefully, in the advertising business.
ST: Just for the sake of the record, I might describe you as very, very attractive, you know.
BH: Well, I don’t make any attempt to be, you know, the glasses and bun and totally asexual image because that isn’t the way I am. And I am not overly provocative either. It’s this thin line. When I am with a strange group of men, say new clients, I am frequently taken for the secretary, you know. Generally the first reaction I get is they don’t look at me. The first three meetings at Johnson, even if I would ask a direct question, about the assignment or the project, they would answer the question and look at my boss or another man in the room. They had trouble relating just around a conference table.
ST: A-so, you are the equal of these guys because you are bright.
BH: Yes. But, I make them very nervous. Some of them can’t categorize me. Here I am, this young girl, you know “she’s not married, what’s the matter with her? Doesn’t she want a real life as a woman?” You know there are always labels that people use. Is it lesbian, is it a, you know, somebodies mistress in the company? Currently, the label that I enjoy, um, you know in quotes, is a women’s liber. Which I am, you know, I advocate a certain amount.
ST: Now here we come to a key. You are a young woman executive, creative spirit. You are facing up to double standards obviously.
BH: All the time. There was a time when I thought if I had been born male, it would have been a lot simpler. But I don’t daily think of that, I just sit here and I think “Christ, you know, look where you are.”
ST: This is a fantastic interview! (laughing) I’ll stop the tape.
[Music: ensemble, et al, “Confessions of an Honest Man”]
JR: Studs Terkel interviewing an advertising executive in 1972. She appeared in his book under the pseudonym Barbra Herrick.
ZG: I love that tape. It sounds so old, like the audio sounds so old but this could have been recorded just yesterday. Hearing this woman talk about being the only woman in the room. This is a white woman from the 70’s. I’m, like, a black 26-year-old woman in 2019 and I still relate to it. I feel like whenever you hear a dated woman voice, from like 40 years ago, it’s usually like “oh my, I just, bloop, bloop, bloop. I just baked a pie” but hearing this, she just sounds like any woman I would know. I just really appreciated that there is some tape of a real woman from back then, in that job, talking how she really talks.
NY: How often can you get your interview subject to say “the thing I do is a crock of shit” (laughs)
ZG: Exactly.
NY: Um, I mean, that’s what’s so amazing about these tapes. You’re hearing people talk very honestly about the thing that they spend their time doing. The good things about it, the bad things about it and it’s such a rare-rare glimpse.
ZG: OK so Nick, so I was at Frida Kahlo’s house but you were are Studs Terkel’s house.
NY: (laughs) It’s true, yeah, uh, so as you know, I, once upon a time, worked at uh, StoryCorps, which is this like, oral history project. You worked there too-
ZG: Yes. Intern!
NY: (laughs) So, did Michael Garofalo, our friend who also produces this show. The StoryCorps Mobile Tour, these airstream trailers that have studios in them that go all around the country and you know, very much like what Studs Terkel was doing, collect interviews with everyday people, as they say, um- and like, part of my job there, when I was traveling on the mobile tour, was when we were in Chicago, we got to go to his house and pulled the trailer up and you know, I would definitely say we did an interview with him but I would not say that I interviewed Studs Terkel (laughs) because um, it was basically we turned on the recorder as like, ask him a few questions and it was just him, dropping wisdom for the next two hours, telling us what we needed to know to do this work. You know, an amazing experience and he was an amazing presence.
ZG: What kind of wisdom did he drop?
NY: You know one of the things that-that Studs told us when we sat down to talk to him, but also constantly told people, was that his epitaph would be “curiosity didn’t kill this cat” (laughs) and like-
ZG: Wow (laughs)
NY: That was his M.O., you know like, if you want to find out something about somebody who is in front of you, you have license um, it’s actually a great compliment to ask somebody about their lives.
ZG: If only there was a job where I could just sit in front of people and ask them questions all day.
NY: Don’t you ever wish that — (laughs)
ZG: Oh, I’d be so good at that!
NY: Like-like if, like, all these amazing creative people you who’s work you admire, you could just like, find out what was behind it. (laughs)
ZG: I know. (laughs)
NY: (laughs)
[Music]
NY: The “Working” tapes of Studs Terkel series was produced by Joe Richman, Nellie Gillis and Sarah Cape-Cramer of Radio Diaries. Along with Jane Sachs of Project&. The editors for this series were Deborah George and Ben Shapiro.
Subscribe to the Radio Diaries podcast to hear more from this series and all the other wonderful stories they produce.
For this project, they also worked with WFMT’s Studs Terkel Radio Archive. They ran a campaign on Kickstarter to preserve their collection of more than one thousand of his interviews. Head to StudsTerkel.WFMT.com to hear recordings of him in conversation with an amazing array of people, including James Baldwin, Buster Keaton, Laurie Anderson, Rosa Parks, Simone De Beauvoir, Frank Zappa, plus many fascinating folks whose names you don’t know.
Racist Sandwich: Erasing Black Barbeque
ZG: Now we’re about to hear a clip from Racist Sandwich, a podcast that looks at race and gender and social class through food.
NY: It’s food podcast but it’s not one where you’re gonna hear about new recipes to bake over the weekend or something like that.
ZG: Yeah, no, it takes a deep look at food and culture, and asks a lot of tough questions. We’re going to hear a clip from their episode “Erasing Black Barbecue.” Producer Stephanie Kuo takes listeners to Texas to explore barbeques’ black roots — and how food journalists have largely ignored them.
She talks to a lot of people in this episode, including Danial Vaughn, who has the *incredible* job of being Barbecue Editor at Texas Monthly. Here’s Stephanie Kuo.
Stephanie Kuo: I wanted to talk to Vaughn for the story, not only because he’s been affectionately dubbed ‘The Barbecue Snob of the State’ but also because he wrote an interesting article in Texas Monthly a few years ago. It took a deep look at how he and the magazine set the standard for what we consider noteworthy barbecue here. And he did a gutsy thing for a white guy riding to a primarily white audience. He said they’ve gotten it all wrong. I’ll read you a bit of it.
At Texas Monthly we evaluate barbecue joints according to brisket. It’s a common fallback position for writers and barbecue fans alike. A rating system anchored in the legendary and mostly white-owned joints of central Texas. If the brisket isn’t any good, then the restaurant is only worthy of moderate praise. And if a barbecue joint doesn’t have great brisket, it won’t make our top 50 list. I’ve come to realize that it’s an outdated way of thinking. It’s like judging a deli solely on its poor pastrami even it has the world’s best corned beef. Or requiring that Tom Brady also be good at basketball before we can call him a great athlete. What made you come to that realization?
Daniel Vaughn: I was really eating the beeflinks at Patillo’s Bar-B-Q in Beaumont, Texas. It’s a place that, uh, has been operating in that same family since 1912, and when I first visited there some six or seven years ago for the first time I’d never heard of it. After eating it, after understanding its history, and after tasting those incredible beeflings, I thought it was pretty much a travesty that not only had I never heard about it but the fact that this place is famous. I mean if it’s been around over a hundred years there’s not a whole lot of Texas barbecue joints, um, with any specialty that’s been around that long. It’s the fourth oldest barbecue joint in the state, and, uh, by a long shot the oldest black-owned barbecue joint in the state.
SK: You see, it dawned on him: all this hype about brisket was actually strangling the Texas barbecue scene, which is as diverse as it is huge. The meat in East Texas and South Texas is nothing like the sliced brisket you’ve seen on your Instagram feeds in the past few years. It’s ribs, hotlinks, chicken, sides. But the meat in East and South Texas isn’t the stuff that’s making it onto Food Network, Bon Appétit, or BuzzFeed. And that media landscape, filled with trendy, raw, rugged, cool white guys cooking brisket has almost entirely erased barbecue’s black roots.
[music]
Johnny Walker: There’s a whole lot more to barbecue than cooking brisket. Ribs, tasty ribs, tasty chicken, are not easy to produce. But my whole thing is if you can’t beat them, join them. I figured out how to cook brisket.
SK: Now let’s meet Johnny Walker, owner and pitmaster of Momma Jean’s in Lampasas, Texas. It’s a small town, 7,000-ish people, about an hour northwest of Austin.
JW: There’s not a lot of people that look like me in Austin anymore. Uh, I — I can’t make a living in Austin. I’m the incredible invisible man in Austin.
SK: So Walker moved out to the Hill Country and opened up Momma Jean’s where he puts out the kind of barbecue he grew up eating in South Dallas. Recipes and rubs passed down through generations of great cooks in his family. The basics, he calls them: beef — not to be confused with brisket, chicken, hotlinks, mainly pork ribs.
JW: For me and my family — myself and my brothers — whenever we’re creating a rub, the first thing that we wanna test it on is ribs. So that still stands true to this day for us anyway.
SK: The way that brisket has come into the spotlight has created a really difficult environment for other barbecuers. Um, I don’t know what question to ask, I think we should just kind of start somewhere.
JW: [laughs]
SK: The topic is Erasing Black Barbecue Heritage, uh, in Texas and you have a lot of opinions about it. Like what is the first thing you want to say.
JW: Well, i- it doesn’t have anything to do with brisket. Uh, it, it, it, I don’t think that, uh, the absence of Black folks cooking barbecue has anything to do with brisket. I didn’t grew up eating brisket. It’s a, it’s more of a central Texas thing. Uh, I know Black folks that were born and raised in central Texas that are my age. And brisket was a big thing with them when they were children. Uh, but the absence of Black folks in the commercial, uh, barbecue cooking arena in, in Texas I think it has to do with, uh, cultural things that, that happened from, uh, my mom and dad’s generation, you know, the folks that were born in, into the, the ’20s and the ’30s and how they raised their children who were, who were my age, uh, my generation.
JW: You know, I’m, I’m 58 years old. They didn’t want us to be cooks. There w- there was a narrow sculpt of professions that a Black person after slave we’re doing Jim Crow, and after Jim Crow, uh, that you are allowed to take part in. But my mom and dad’s generations raised their kids to go to college and not be a cook, not be a janitor, uh, not to cut someone’s grass. Back in those days, those are the type of jobs that you did because you had to. You didn’t have a choice. So, a cook was one of those things. Now, you’ve got rockstar status attached to someone who’s, uh, gifted in the kitchen. And maybe they’ve got a wonderful personality that comes across well in the media. So, they’re, they’re made the star.
SK: And it’s not lost on him who those stars are today.
JW: Not even a little bit (laughs). I mean it’s only 20 years ago that whenever you went to eat barbecue, if there wasn’t a Black man in the kitchen there was a Black woman in the kitchen. 25, 30 years ago, absolutely. Uh, uh, whether it was Black-owned or not, uh, there were Black people doing the cooking. And that has just totally changed. You can’t help but be a little perturbed at it because you’ve just kind of been written out of the whole scenario, you know. You just kind of been written out of it and, and, and it’s no one’s fault.
Uh, uh, but it is someone’s fault, in my opinion, if you fail to recognize the people that are responsible for this craft. Uh, ’cause just, let’s just be honest, most white folks back when I was growing up had a Black woman that was raised in their kid’s form, doing their cooking for them, that’s just what it was. My uncles and, and their people before them and, and, uh, they spent a lot of time crafting this thing we call barbecue now. No one’s doing anything different that they didn’t do.
SK: Okay. Let’s make this real clear because we get this a lot at Racist Sandwich:
Speaker: Are you telling me that it’s white people’s fault that Black folks don’t make barbecue anymore? Are you blaming white people?
SK: No, that’s not what I’m saying. And that’s certainly not what Johnny Walker is saying. The story of modern barbecue is incomplete, and it constantly ignores some of its most important characters. People like Walker just want his culture to get the credit it’s due.
JW: It’s just kind of amazing for my culture to be such a big part of this science. I mean you know, ribs were cast off me, the slaves were given the meats that the white family didn’t want. There’s the saying when you’re doing well, oh, man you’re eating high on the hog, right? Because those were the parts of the, the, the animal that the white folks got. We got the lower parts, right? And we f- we found a way, through our expertise, to make these things delicacies. I mean how many times now do you hear this chef who’s usually European, uh, who says, oh, you know, he’s, he’s doing this new thing that’s like blazing, uh, trails in, on the cooking scene and he’s cooking pork belly.
It’s like, are you kidding me? That’s nothing new. You know, European guy says, “This is something new, and look how wonderful it is. Look how great it tastes,” and all of a sudden is this huge movement behind it. I don’t have a problem with that. That’s okay. But I have a problem with being rode out of this whole book called barbecue when I know for a fact, and when everyone who’s, who understands the history of it knows this to be a fact, that my culture created this art. Uh, that’s the only problem I have.
ZG: That was Johnny Walker, owner of Momma Jean’s BBQ in Lampasas, Texas speaking with producer, Stephanie Kuo. You also heard from Daniel Vaughn, BBQ editor at Texas Monthly.
That clip has such a good job of contextualizing the whole messiness of the politics of barbecue. Unfortunately, this is a story we’ve heard before of Black people or people of color having a cultural thing, and then it gets like appropriate or taken by white people, and then they get the credit, and you know, you see it with music, you see it with hair, you see it with land, and you know, something I think about a lot but you know, in one context I don’t have to think about it is food.
NY: And, and I think it’s also amazing to hear him like talk about this as something that he links back to slavery. Like, and that’s a context that he’s agreeing to making barbecue. Like that it is that deep for him.
ZG: And it’s not like he’s saying or anyone’s saying like therefore white people can’t make barbecue, but it’s just like about how food is talked about and who’s getting acknowledged for this history and this food. I keep thinking about how it affects creativity negatively when only a handful of people are in a position to dub what is good and bad and worthy. You see that same kind of framework and mindset in the food industry even with like BuzzFeed and this and Bon Appétit and the Food Network. Now I’m looking back thinking about all the times I’ve googled, like, “places I must eat” and I’m like “this is the best, you know, because this website says this is the best” but there’s all these things behind the curtain that you don’t see what’s going on like all the …
NY: Yeah.
ZG:… politics of it.
NY: Like one thing that also characterizes this sort of like rockstar chef idea, or like you know, somebody who might be on like the Food Network, whatever is like this is like individual creativity, right, of like oh, I, I’m, I created this …
ZG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
NY: … this dish and now you, you will enjoy it. Uh, he’s, he’s paying tribute to like the idea of like generational cultural creativity, too. And like …
ZG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
NY: … that, I mean he’s talking about like this innovation and creativity that comes out of necessity that, that yeah, as he’s saying is being erased and being attributed to like these individuals who don’t actually necessarily have legitimate ownership of it.
ZG: Yeah, who would’ve thought barbecue was so political?
[Music: Sheverb, “Cactus Juice”]
ZG: Also fun fact: this episode earned Racist Sandwich a James Beard Award nomination! You should really head to racistsandwhich.com to listen the whole episode, and to hear more stories about food and culture.
Credits
NY: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Just the Beginning. The show is produced by Zakiya Gibbons, Michael Garofalo and me, Nick Yulman. Elyse Mallouk is Kickstarter’s Editorial Director.
Our theme music is by Balún. And we also featured tracks by ensemble et al., and Sheverb, whose psychedelic Texas twang you’re hearing now.
ZG: We heard stories in this episode from the wonderful podcasts Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, Radio Diaries, and Racist Sandwich.Visit us at podcast.kickstarter.com, and tell us what you think of the show — leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
ZG: Until next time, I’m Zakiya Gibbons
NY: I’m Nick Yulman. And this is just the beginning.
