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In podcasting, the title producer is a catchall.
Without the producer, there would be no podcast.
But few listeners could name the producers of some of their favorite shows off the top of their heads.
Ive always felt that our guests are owed the same throw in of attention and care.
You have to keep some of that stuff in, though, too.
Of course, there are times in which were going to leave in messy things.
They usually respond with, Wow, that actually sounded really great, and theyre happy with it.
We just have this ticking clock of 6 a.m. going in the background, trying to make it happen.
And were getting very, very close to the deadline.
Im talking 5:30 in the morning.
you might slap your Pro Tools plug-ins on top of it and just get it out on the air.
Im like, What are you talking about Its corrupt?
And she goes, Listen.
I listen, and all of the hearing tape is just fuzz.
We just started to panic.
I go to the RAW-audio file, and Im like, Maybe something happened in your Pro Tools session.
Maybe I can pull it up in my session.
So I go to the RAW-audio file everything weve recorded throughout the day.
It is completely corrupt.
None of it exists.
I dont know how were going to solve this.
Eventually, he did figure it out, and he was able to restore all the audio.
I think we blew our deadline by one minute.
We just collapsed in our chairs, and we were shaking.
It sounds goofy on the one hand.
We were paranoid that, as American journalists asking about a CIA operation, we would be followed.
Which is all to say: Theres just this baseline paranoia to the whole show.
Hes a German heavy-metal star from the Scorpions.
We were trying to do what we called surfacing.
It was totally empty.
It was very suspicious.
Hes been told by every person youve talked to.
Theyve all been coordinating.
He knows why youre coming.
Hes prepared for you.
Its probably not true, but if it is true, its very high stakes.
We didnt really want to do that, but we were curious.
So there was a lot of game theory in a way no other interview Ive worked on had.
We really scripted each interview question very precisely, the way a prosecutor would in court.
But he just went down and had a drink at the bar by himself for like 45 minutes.
We dont want to give away spoilers.
Its especially difficult to interview people from the cast, like Tarik and Hazel or Molly.
Dont worry, were not going to dig into your life.
So you have to navigate that and reconcile the fact that youre talking to real people.
Scheduling is difficult, too.
I am so willing to record things at 3 a.m. L.A. time.
I dont care if thats how were going to get something to happen.
Then I was frantically emailing them like, Okay, can we actually do this?
What day will actually work?
It was just a blessing and a prayer that we found 30 minutes to make it happen.
I used to be able to book all my guests through Twitter and Twitter DMs.
I went from being able to just DM someone like, Hey, you want to do this show?
Heres the info, to Right, no, this actually is me on this other account.
I swear Im not a fake person.
Okay, lets email.
I really wanted people to find this episode, in particular, really interesting and moving.
But he ended up being an amazing talker and very compelling.
It was also the first time he saw his parents afraid.
Then the driver would drive a train full of dead people back to Pakistan.
So it was just really intense content-wise, and I remember doing that interview and feeling superemotionally moved.
His voice is really, really compelling, and we think you should change it up.
His voice and his story should be central.
Im culturally and spiritually Muslim, too, and there was just so much violence happening.
I remember seeing that prayer constantly and tearing up and being really affected by it.
Working on the episode was a confrontation of all of that.
Im a terrible liar.
Im not very tricky.
So, to me, theres something about con men that feels a little bit like having a superpower.
This will be our best episode ever.
I just kind of got bewitched by the con-man mystique.
I can see the strengths and I can see the weaknesses.
I just remember feeling like,This is bad.
This does not work at all.And thats not a fun feeling to have.
If you might nail the framing early on, everything else can just click into place.
Because its not really a culture story, this guy being a con man.
That was a lot of Willas doing.
I sort of led us a little bit astray, and she managed to pull us back.
Our show gets pretty meta a lot, but this is among the most meta episodes weve done.
We both discovered our dad within months of each other.
Objectivity was not even a question in the room.
It was a very fine line to walk.
Thats something that can be a real challenge to the editorial process.
In the end, I did do a lot of editing.
There was also the risk of secondhand traumatizing myself.
They had also erected a 24-hour prayer shield over the city.
Like a lot of subcultures, this group of Evangelical Christians had a very specific language.
My head just hurt.
Then they started praying for me not to sleep, so then I stopped sleeping.
At a certain point without sleep, you just go woo-woo-ish.
And Im trying to understand the magic of the place, and I found this story of Laurin Stennis.
Shes fighting to get her flag to replace the [now-former] Mississippi flag.
I thought,Two years from now, we will release it.
I thought this would be one story in this sweeping series.
I call them like, Hey, can you just flip it back on?
They have to give me totally new Wi-Fi, but everything is backed up because of COVID.
And every day we thought the flag was either going to come down or not come down.
We didnt know what was going to happen with the story.
It was really fun, though.
Can you help me?
So we went on a journey to find out what happened.
So theyre usually one word, or theyre one letter, or theyre one letter and one number.
Theyre really simple and easy-to-remember handles that are obviously incredibly valuable, especially to these young people.
Theyre all on this one Discord.
Theyre all playing video games with each other.
Our client Lizzie, all she wanted from the person who took it was an apology.
Theyre pretty brash young boys on the internet.
They dont want to be sensitive.
They dont want to be considerate.
They dont necessarily think about other peoples feelings.
I pulled @Lizard.
So we were like, Cool, great, a confession, amazing.
Okay, how do we get this kid to talk to us?
Then, one day, he posts a blurry photo of a high-school hallway.
So were like, Okay, you might see the colors of the tile.
It might as well just be a random stock image online.
Eventually, we had to be bold and message them on Discord.
Luckily, he responded.
You have Joe Exotic, and you have Carole Baskin.
The same with Caroles world.
Structuring the story like that, beat by beat, was really challenging.
And when this happens, wheres Carole?
Then, the second episode, its all about Carole.
The episode opens in-scene.
Hes there, and hes undercover, and as the episode progresses, theres this tension-building moment.
Thats when all hell breaks loose and he releases this huge attack on Carole.
They knew exactly who it was.
His name was David Stanton, and he moves to Joes farm in Oklahoma.
Things go south pretty quickly.
We dont need other episodes.
I know you do.
So it becomes this exercise in empathy.
So when I played it for multiple people, everyone was like, You have to cut this episode.
Its just not about anything, and I dont know why Im hearing it.
So I became convinced I should cut the episode.
That was really the episode that moved her.
It wouldnt feel like it was sort of a randomly placed biography of a woman.
On a production schedule, thats insane, but we just had to make it happen.
It was a wild ride.
Now, about 25 percent of NBA basketball players are foreign-born.
So we had Dirk Nowitzki as our guest, who was a total gent.
He was so great.
He was ready to be interviewed.
I was already a fan.
Adande, lost power in his entire building.
But then our other co-host, B.J.
It came out fine.
It was like,Okay, we did it.
So lesson learned: Always have a backup for your backup for your backup.
I got really sick on the way home from Calcutta like, really sick.
I was so paranoid about it.
I got into my house and just threw up.
I was sick for days.
And theyre like, you might come next week.
So I had to book a plane ticket to Acapulco and pull myself together.
I had, like, Gatorade and saltines on the plane with me.
I was still in that stage of things.
The whole trip was a nightmare.
I spent the weirdest night Ive spent with anyone with Bikram.
He was totally crazy, and he wouldnt let me go.
He left it with me and his assistant that this is all good.
It got really awkward really fast.
She threatened to sue us.
And then signed off wishing me safe travels and hoping we can keep in touch.
So my whole thing with talk is that you do a lot of research in advance.
I like to fully prep a conversation that Im hosting.
I think within a talk format, you’re free to still create a narrative feel, right?
That youre starting in one place and evolving and finishing in another place.
But the fall of 2016 was a really tough time because it was such an intense election.
And once the election of Trump was settled, what that meant, and the different dimensions.
Instead, we have to be more streamlined and the best version of ourselves.
I dont like loading them in.
I dont even care to watch them perform.
I didnt like getting them up in elevators.
I did not like watching them unravel their cords.
So that is already where I was at.
Dont make a run at shake her hand.
And I was like, Oh, well this is going to be a great day.
And I was like, Huh.
Well, this is an NPR station.
1 tourist destination in Chicago.
So, yeah, I guess people are making burgers.
So we had to talk to him and ask him questions.
