Transcript - Episode 3: A Very Rachel Zucker Thing To Do
Hey, It’s Me
EPISODE # 3
Hosts: Mike Sakasegawa and Rachel Zucker
Transcript by: Leigh Sugar
Transcripts formatted after those from Disability Visibility Project
Please note: transcripts are transcribed directly from recordings of live conversations; as a result, quotes and statements may be approximate and there may be unintended memory errors.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Hey, it's me. Okay, so I found this piece of audio that I love, that surprised me, that I learned a lot from, and I've actually listened to it a few times in the past week, and I want you to listen to it so we can talk about it. And, I'm open to playing this on the episode itself or not playing it and we could discuss it, describe it, but not play it.
I don't know what you're going to think about this. So big reveal, as you are soon about to hear, it is a message that you left me, and I'm going to say a few words about why I love this message, but I'd like to play it and talk about it tomorrow on the podcast. Or we could talk about why you think that's a terrible idea and don't want to play it. Or you can just leave me a message saying no way.
So just to set it up for you and if you agree to have this be on the episode, so this message, you left it for me right after the message that you left that opened the previous episode, the, “Hey, It's Me” message. And so it starts off this message being like what I love, meta, meta, meta, meta, meta about the podcast, about our relationship, about in so many weird ways that, I don't know, it feels like totally right to me how weird this is.
And it has like all the elements or hallmarks of the messages that you leave me that I love so much, including there's a kind of wisdom or philosophy inherent in the longer messages from you. This one is about certainty and clarity and the difference between them. And I've thought a lot about that in the past few days, it's been very helpful and interesting to me.
And then there's like all kinds of like philosophical rhetorical concepts that are like very personal, and in response to the messages that I've left you. So they feel incredibly like I have my own personal philosopher friend who's designing a way of thinking about my own life with me. It's kind of wild.
So, right. This one's about the importance of having compatible values and how that affects trust in a relationship and what you yourself feel like is necessary for you to have trust in a relationship. And you also mentioned the protests and briefly BDS and masculinity. And then like almost all of our, almost all of my favorite messages that you leave me, or I think that I leave you, there's always some reference to food or cooking, and always you say something that makes me laugh.
So I love this message. I hope you like listening to it. I am interested to find out if you feel provoked by me [laughs] or, or what, what is your emotional experience, both listening to this message and also listening to this, well, listening to the message I'm leaving you right now and listening to the audio that I'm about to send you? I guess I'll find out.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: So what do you think of that? It's funny. I think there's something about this thing that we're doing where the messages, if this is what we're doing for the beginnings, for the cold opens, there's something about it that sort of points towards an authenticity, you know, like this is just sort of almost like found footage.
But then of course, it is actually on, like there is actually a fair amount of artifice and performance. I don't think it's all going to be like that. I think that, you know, in some cases it'll be probably more off the cuff than that one was, but there is something interesting about, about the, about just being aware of the performance of it all.
[4:40]
So you asked, how do I want you to be clear with Mark. And I just want to say, you know, like I have opinions about how, like what people owe each other, you know, and about, you know, how to behave ethically. But that's not the same as me saying I want you to do a certain thing, you know, like you don't owe it to me to be in a relationship with this man in a way that, you know, like I don't have any right to place any demands on you, you know, like what I want is not really relevant.
What I want is relevant to my relationship with you and it's relevant to my other relationships and to my life, but this is your life. What I want is immaterial. I think that, you know, there's a difference between clarity and certainty, you know, that if I say to you, I don't really know what I want the podcast to be yet, that is clear, it's not certain.
If we say to each other, “It could turn into this, or we could just keep it like this, we don't know what the show is gonna be yet,” that's all very clear, and we're both clear about where the other person stands, even if, though neither of us is certain about where we are or where we're going, you know?
I could say to you, “I'm apprehensive about certain aspects of this new show idea. I'm also excited by certain aspects.” I'm already having thoughts about, I'm already thinking through things like what the logo should look like and what the website should look like. And I'm already planning for, like I'm already thinking about how to, how to integrate this, the workflow, into my life, you know.
That's a lot of planning ahead for something. That's still very tentative, you know, still in the very formative stages. I'm a little worried about investing so much of myself in it. But it also just seems like fun, you know, and there's no reason to need to nail it down, you know, that's me being clear with you.
Do you owe it to Mark to be clear with him? I don't know. I think that if you, if you're worried about leading him on, then one thing you could do to assuage that worry would be to be clear about your uncertainty. To be clear and say, “I like spending time with you. I don't know if this will ever be more than that. I don't know that it won't.” That's a thing that you could say. You know, that's setting expectations. Another way you could assuage that fear is to just stop seeing him. And then you wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. You know, there's lots of ways that you could do any of these things.
And I'm not trying to tell you what you should do. And I'm not trying to give you advice. I'm just telling you what I think. I don't know, maybe I was giving you advice before, but that's not how I feel right now. If it were me, and I were getting into a relationship with someone, I would like the clarity. I don't know if Mark would appreciate that and I don't know if that's the right thing to do in any kind of universal sense or objective sense. I don't know. I don't know if that even would be ultimately the healthiest thing for me. I just know that's how I would feel about it.
The way that you talk about him, the sort of specificity with which you were telling this story, it's interesting. I feel like I'm getting more and more of a picture of him as we continue talking. It was interesting to notice the way that my own reactions to the things you were saying kind of went in a lot of different directions. There were things that you described where I was like, “Eugh, I don't know about that.”
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And then there were things that you described where I was like, “Well maybe,” and it sounds like that's very similar to what you're going through with him. I don't think that in order for a relationship to be good, or a strong, or a fulfilling, or a meaningful relationship, that the two, the people in that relationship need to agree on everything. I don't think that's true at all. I do think that the people in the relationship need to have compatible values.
[9:54]
Not that they're necessarily identical values, but compatible values that like on key values, there does need to be alignment, and on the ones where there aren't alignment, they need to be misaligned in a way that can still function.
I think that when there is, when people have values that are too different from each other, it's just, it's too hard, because I think that a meaningful connection and a real relationship, a fulfilling relationship requires a feeling of safety. And if, and for me, at least if, if there are things where I feel like I cannot actually talk about these things, like talk about things that are important to me without having to worry that it's, it's maybe going to start a fight, or that it's, or that this person is going to be condescending to me, or mean, or any of those things, like if I don't have that trust then I'm never gonna settle into it. I'm never gonna feel like I am really connecting with that person because I'm gonna feel like I'm on all the time. I mean, I don't know if it's possible to ever feel completely safe and completely trusting of another person. And I don't honestly know that it's healthy to do so, you know, I don't know that, you know, I think it's kind of like, people always say, like, when you have a dog, you should never completely trust a dog, like, because you never know what the dog is going to do, even if the dog is, like, really sweet to you, and really, you feel like you know, like, you don't know, because you don't know how a dog thinks, and I kind of feel like that's true of other people to some degree as well, you know, you don't, there are unknowable and unreachable parts of people, you know, and there are parts of us that are unknowable and unreachable even to ourselves.
So I don't know if it's a good thing to completely give one himself over to trust in that way. But I feel like there needs to be at least a level of trust. And to me, like having compatible values is a big part of that. I can be in relationship with people who believe things that I find abhorrent, but I can't… but those relationships, even if the connection there is real and meaningful and deep, like, I cannot fully be myself around that person.
I think that if I'm gonna be in a relationship with someone, in a romantic relationship or even a close friendship, I need to have a feeling of comfort, you know?
So all that is just to say, I think that it's, that stuff, the conversation you were describing about protests, stuff like that, like that would, that would make it really hard for me to be, to continue seeing someone, you know, if there are like, basic fundamental things that I don't, in terms of like, right and wrong and stuff like that, that I disagreed with someone on, I don't know that I could be in a relationship. Does that mean that you shouldn't? No. Like, I'm just saying that's how it is for me. You know?
And also, like, I don't think there's anything wrong with, like, again, you're feeling these things out. You enjoy spending time with him. Like, maybe you don't want that kind of intimacy with him just yet. It's okay for it to just be a sex thing or be sex and sort of a casual friendship, you know, but not necessarily a deeply emotional connection.
I don't know. It can be whatever it is. You know, I'm just saying for like, for me, if I'm thinking about like a life partner, I don't think it would work. Maybe. I don't know. I feel like I'm sounding judgmental right now. And like, again, like telling, like trying to… that I'm coming across like there's something that I want you to do or think that you should do, and I really don't. To me it sounds like he seems like a mostly decent guy, but also it seems like he has trouble seeing outside of himself, you know like the way that you describe his response to the protests and the way you try to describe the way he kind of shuts down if he doesn't get like, “I just don't get it. I don't know, I don't get it,” like the way that he keeps talking and ruining the moment, like, but it does seem like something to watch out for.
[15:05]
I do wonder, like, to, if there is like a degree to which a man, like, you like him kind of being more forceful. You like him being sort of more take charge. You like, and you definitely dislike the sort of, like, weaker or ineffectual. And that's, and I wonder if there, I wonder how like if there is a correlation, you know, I mean, there must be a correlation between like, the kind of man who is forceful and kind of take charge and strong in that masculine kind of way that can be attractive, but who, you know, that correlates with men who are fundamentally selfish, you know.
I don't think it has to be that way. I'm learning how to be more forceful or assertive or things like that, and I, and I, I try not to be selfish, but for me, like, I'm learning how to do that.
And by the way, when you were describing him in the kitchen, you did not sound bad at all, like, even just watching somebody hold the knife wrong, you know, even if it's a good knife or, you know, like I have several different knives, you know, like I've got different knives that I sort of do different things with have, I have a, you know, a couple of eight inch chef knives. And I have a small paring knife. I've got a six or seven inch Santoku knife. And I do different things with them, I keep them really sharp, and there is something just uncomfortable about watching somebody do something in the kitchen that is wrong or dangerous or something like that, it's just, you know, I don't love that. I also don't love watching people walk near ledges, you know. Makes sense to me. Also I, I am judgmental about men who have bad kitchen skills, I just am, cause cooking is not that fucking hard, I don't know. Anyway, I gotta go into work now. I'll talk to you later.
[Music]
RACHEL ZUCKER: Hi.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Hi.
RACHEL ZUCKER: I have some questions for you.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Okay.
RACHEL ZUCKER: I want to know how you feel about what I did, which is to say, send you this audio of a message that you sent to me. I also don't need to endlessly go in a loop about how you feel about that on a recording, but I am also interested in knowing… we've talked about this in many different ways, but about like the difference in our voices and our personas or like our presentation of self, you know, whether we're leaving messages for one another, whether we're using our podcast voice, whether we're using our introduction voice, our conversational voice recorded, not recorded all this stuff.
And so like now we're doing this new podcast, and so part of what I wanted to do by sharing that audio with you is to talk about the audio, to talk about the contents of the audio, to talk about how you feel about me kind of pushing you into this meta meta space that you kind of didn't want to go into, but also to just open up the topic of the different people we are when we're interacting with each other and others in these various levels of public, private, recorded, not recorded, phone call, text message, audio message, our own podcasts, this podcast, and then also about how you think, how you predict or imagine our relationship might change, based on this new thing that we're doing together.
So those are, those are like way too many. I'm violating all the podcast rules by just blurting out a million questions in the beginning.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Okay.
[19:56]
So in terms of how I feel about having what I thought was going to be a private conversation between us be made public, I think it's worth noting that the audio that you sent is not unedited. Like, there are things that you took out of that message, which I really appreciate. So, and it's interesting to me what you chose to leave in and what you chose to take out, because there were things, most of the things that are sort of personal to me, you took out and, but only some of the things that are personal to you were things that you took out, which I thought was interesting.
Also it's not so much that I feel a vulnerability about having my quote unquote “private thoughts” be revealed, because I think that, you know, I come off fairly well in that message. It's more that it's actually more the message you left about the message in which you're describing me as this like font of wisdom and your own personal philosopher. And I feel like you're making a little too much out of it. Like, I have this discomfort with being put on a pedestal, especially because it's very apparent to me, and it's apparent to other people as well, exactly how fallible I am. So, and as I was re-listening to that message, I don't know, nothing in it struck me as particularly profound.
So, that's, I guess how I feel about it. And then, you know, in terms of me having a discomfort with being too meta on this podcast, I guess the thing that I'm thinking about is, who is going to want to listen to this, which is sort of a question, I guess, in general about why anybody makes a podcast.
The two of us do have something of an audience already, yours is bigger than mine, and something that was occurring to me as I was listening to both your message and my message is that this is a very Rachel Zucker kind of thing to do. That it's really not that different from, you know, your poetry or this, this novel that you're writing in which, you know, I don't know if you want me to reveal this, but you've told me that I'm a character in this book and that transcripts of my messages to you do appear in this book.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yep.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And you've told me that I come off as like heroic in this book, which again, you know, since that book is, you know, autofiction, but presented as fiction, not as a memoir, I mean, having a character come off as heroic is, is fine, but it's you know, and it's, there's nothing sort of inherently unliterary about that or like, you know, whatever.
I do think that there is something also very, it's very weird to me to ever be in a position where when I'm talking to a woman, that I come off as someone who has any kind of expertise or wisdom or teaching anything because that's really not how I think of myself. I don't think of myself as someone who has anything to teach you. You're like, seven or eight years older than I am. You are certainly much more accomplished than I am as a writer and as a podcaster. And you know, it's not to say that your life experience is somehow more than mine or more instructive or better than mine, but you know, your life experience and my life experience are different from each other, so I just, I never feel like I have anything to teach you, I just, want to like I was saying in that message - I'm not trying to give you advice about things. I'm just sort of thinking through things. And also you know, this may not have been apparent in the cut down version, but I'm also trying to think through how these things, you know, how to view my own life and the things that are going on in my own life, what can I take out of the conversations that we have that are applicable there? Is that a good place to start? [Laughs]
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah, that's a great place to start. I mean, I think one of the reasons that I wanted to do what I agree is a very Rachel Zucker thing to do, which is like, play the message to your own message back to you, and yet-
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: In front of an audience.
RACHEL ZUCKER: In front of an audience, right. So this is something that I am working through and is something I've been working through on the podcast, IN my novel for sure, IN my poetry, in my lectures, like over and over again.
[25:00]
And so there's so many different reasons why I keep doing this. Some of them are, you know, for my therapist and my psychiatrist, although also for you, and for this audience, and some of them are also like, I've been thinking a lot about this podcast, whatever it is, and thinking that, like, you keep asking this great question, which is like, “Who will listen to this?” Right?
I'm asking that same question too, in a little bit of a different way. And I think that sharing that message was one way, not the only way of trying to answer that question in a sense, because I don't know who's going to listen to this. I don't know why, but I do know that at the heart of what I think is most interesting about this is our relationship. And I don't know quite how to describe to the listener, who's listening right now, our relationship, without demonstrating it, and demonstrating it as we're chatting right now is one part of it.
But as we both know, the messages that we leave each other, which we don't expect will be played in public, and I think that's part of why they're they're different - they're different than this conversation, they're different than the conversations we have with David, they're different than the conversations we have on our podcast. Like those messages are… we've talked about this before, like the fact that they're asynchronous, the fact that they can be as long as we want them to be, the fact that the there's no response until after the whole message, the fact that, like, you know, you can leave me now even longer than 30 minute message. Before we used to have the constraint of WhatsApp for like 30 minutes, without worrying, even though you do worry and I worry also that it's like, “Oh my God, it's too much. It's too much. It's too much.”
You know, that like, I'm in charge of when and whether I listen to that. And so the technology encourages and relieves us in certain ways. Right? So, but then we're like, okay, well, we're both podcasters. We're friends. We have this relationship. We want to do this new podcast. And I think for me, you know, I'm trying to explore like what's going to be different for me in this format with you different from Commonplace? What will I be able to talk about in what ways that I can't or don't want to do, you know, somewhere else?
And part of that is about the relationship that we have. And the relationship that we have is built on these messages, which I don't know how to communicate that to a listener without playing it for them. And part of what you're saying, like the way that you're resisting being seen as heroic or an expert or an authority or telling me what to do or resisting telling me advice, like there's so many aspects to that. And that resistance is something that you talk about in almost every message to me, at the same time that you then also do give me advice. Or tell me a story about your own life that helps me figure out what to do with my life. So it's not always, it's really rarely advice in that, in that way.
And then this has to do with masculinity. This has to do with our relationship as cis man and cis woman who are not romantically involved and like how we navigate that difference. And I don't know, like, as you know, my relationships with men turn out to be very complicated for me. And so in this message, you were talking to me about a relationship that I was in, that since that message has ended, you know, and it's, that's an interesting part of this too, like you were encouraging me to be, not necessarily encouraging me, but like saying, “Well, here's something you could do, with Mark, which is to be more clear with him about your feelings.” My feelings at the time being like, I wasn't sure that I was that into him. I wasn't sure he was that into me. I wasn't sure what that meant. I wasn't sure, you know, I haven't had very many dating experiences, so this was new for me to like someone in some ways, but not in other ways and know whether that meant to continue the relationship or not or, you know, what that meant.
And then he broke up with me by text and basically said, “I don't want to keep seeing you. There's not enough chemistry and connection,” which was exactly what I had been saying to you. So, you know, you might not feel heroic, and heroic might not be the right word.
[30:00]
And you might not feel like you want to be responsible for, or it's inaccurate to be my own personal philosopher. You're not. And yet the act of describing my life to you in these messages and getting your response and hearing you describe your life to me and being able to respond to you, something about that is of enormous meaning and value to me.
And I think that this podcast in a way comes out of like, it's like, we wouldn't be doing this, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for that foundation of those messages and that process. And it's not that I want this podcast to just be endlessly like us playing those messages, which are just meant for you and me, but I do feel on some level that like, bringing that into this space in some way seems kind of essential to me.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Well, you know, I mean, I guess I just, I still sort of wonder what it is that we're doing here, because this is our third episode. And I feel like, at least the first and third and to a lesser degree, the second episode feel like they're setting the table for what's going to happen instead of just doing that, whatever it is. Ostensibly, somebody is going to listen to this at some point. And if we want this to be something that people are going to be listening to, something that has an audience, then on some level, the things that we do here, if it's to be successful in that way, is going to have to be, at least a little bit, about building some kind of a relationship with this hypothetical audience. And having ourselves be in it more than just having something to talk about like other chat shows where they just talk about books or they just talk about food or whatever, right? Politics. Having us talk about our relationship is sort of foregrounding something that's usually left as subtext, which is also a very Rachel Zucker kind of thing to do.
But I guess, I just wonder, what is it about our relationship that you feel like you need to present to an audience? Like what, like, you said you can't explain our friendship without showing it to people.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Why, do you need to show it to people?
RACHEL ZUCKER: It's a great question. While I think about that, I have a few questions for you.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Okay.
RACHEL ZUCKER: What's the difference between a conversation and a chat?
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Mmm, I mean, I'm not sure there necessarily is a difference, but I think that the word chat sort of implies a certain level of casualness. I mean, in the context of podcasting, “chat show” is just sort of a part of the jargon. It is sort of a recognized genre of podcasting, probably the most common genre of podcast. And I think that although quote unquote “chat shows” have a range of formality and a range of styles and formats that the typical, the sort of stereotypical connotation is like four guys with microphones just bro-ing out, you know? I think that shows that are self conscious about conversation in the way that Commonplace and Keep the Channel Open are tend to be ones where, even though there is a level of casualness or of vulnerability or of… both of us have a way of, when we're speaking with our guests on our respective shows, we do offer something of ourselves rather than sort of a Terry Gross style thing where the interviewer is just sort of a cypher or even, you know, what David does on Between the Covers.
He more recently has been offering a little bit more of himself, but the way that you tend to get to know David on his show is more indirectly through the questions that he's asking. Whereas with us, we'll just say, “Well, this is what I think,” or “This is a thing that happened to me.” There's something about saying the word “conversation” in the context of a podcast makes it, it puts it in a different register, you know?
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah. Right. Like you and I have taken care to say we're not interviewing so much as having conversations. That's what we're hoping to do. And sometimes the conversations are very interview-y and sometimes they're much less interview-y. But if there's kind of a spectrum, there's like interview and then conversation and then maybe chat is like on the other side of conversation from interview.
So is this a chat show? It's a chat show, right?
[35:00]
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I mean, as that genre is defined, I would say, yes, it is.
RACHEL ZUCKER: And Keep the Channel Open and Commonplace are not chat shows.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: No, those are interview shows.
RACHEL ZUCKER: They're interview shows. Right. Okay. So I was thinking about the podcast, Harmontown. Do you know that show?
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I've never listened to it, but I know of it.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Okay. So I, I've listened to a few episodes, not that many. My oldest kid, Moses, that's maybe the most important media of his life. Like he's listened, it's many years long, I don't remember how many years, and he's listened to it at least three or four times. He's listened to it start to finish. And then he listened to it backwards. I'm not quite sure why he decided to do that, and then forwards again, and then possibly one more time. So that's an enormous amount of time that he spent with Dan Harmon. And I think Harmontown would be considered a chat show, but maybe sometimes there's conversation slash interview because he also invites people up to talk to him. Are there chat podcasts that are important to you?
My poet brain is so obsessed with form and format and register of speech. Even though the part of me that you keep calling Rachel Zucker is obsessed with or compelled to, as soon as I have a sense of like what is the form and format expectations, to like break them, but I'm like trying to do both in a way.
So, like, if this is a chat show, which I think it is, who are we like? Who are we not like? And all of this is, I really am not forgetting your question about why do I feel like I need to show or share our private relationship in this public space with the listener?
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: There are not a lot of chat shows that I listen to anymore. It used to be that I listened to several others. I think the only one that I'm still listening to regularly is a show called The Flop House, which is on Maximum Fun. And that is a show where they watch a bad movie and then talk about it, it's three guys and it's been going on for like, I don't know, 12 or 13 years. And it's a comedy podcast and it's a pop culture pop podcast. I like the interplay between the hosts.
Previously, I used to listen to, for actually, you know, for a long time, one of the first podcasts I listened to was one called On Taking Pictures, which is two guys, it was a photographer, portrait photographer in New York, whose name is Bill Wadman, and a sort of photo enthusiast and, and painter whose name is Jeffery Saddoris. I actually had Jeffery on the show, on Keep the Channel Open, probably in the first year. And they would just talk about, you know, each week, I think it was weekly, they would bring in topics from around photography world and just talk about it, you know, sort of, it seemed like what they would do is like, look at what people were talking about in photos, social media, and just talk about it. And I liked that show. It did get a little repetitive after a few years. You kind of got to the point where you, you know, I kind of knew what they were going to say about pretty much everything. But again, it was just still something that I enjoyed spending the time with them. I used to write to them a lot. I would send these like 1500 word emails [laughs].
And then the third one that I can think of that I used to listen to religiously was NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, which in the beginning it was a four person panel who would just talk about the pop culture news of the week. They would do one, once a week, hour long show where they would have like two or three segments. Then one of the hosts actually left, so they had a rotating fourth chair, but it was still the three main hosts. And then eventually they split it into multiple shows a week that were shorter. And then they started having it where instead of having, you know, the three person panel with one guest, it would be a three to four person panel and one of the original hosts would be talking to different people. And they did that because they wanted to bring in more voices because they had this recognition that it was, hey, it's like three white people who are all middle aged and it's not that there was no diversity in the group, like it was, there were one woman and two men, two straight people and one gay person. Like, you know, but they wanted to have different voices on, but then it, to me, that really killed the format because it was like, what I liked about that show wasn't the topic that they were talking about, it was the interplay between the hosts.
I guess you could consider, I listen to, once a week NPR's All Songs Considered does an episode that is about the music that came out that week. And that is sort of a chat show in, insofar as it's people talking about a thing.
[40:00]
But that one doesn't feel like a chat show because it's not always the same people. They have a, it's not even always the same host. So I don't know if I think of that one in the same space. And it's an interesting thing that as Pop Culture Happy Hour moved from what I think of as a chat show to something more, more like a radio presentation, what I liked about it, the intimacy of it, the relationship that I had felt like I had established with those hosts just kind of evaporated. And so I lost interest in it.
I do spend a lot of time thinking about form and thinking about why I like the things that I like, what is valuable to me about those things. I'm not sure I've ever really been into pure chat shows, like there's always a hook, right? Like with The Flop House, they're talking about movies and it's funny, you know, with Pop Culture Happy Hour, they're talking about the sort of important, pop culture stuff that was happening recently. With On Taking Pictures, they're talking about the discourse in photo land.
There are shows where it's just two or three people just kind of shooting the shit. There's a show that's called the something yard. I can't remember what it's called. I only know about them because the clips of it show up on TikTok all the time. It's these two guys. They look like they're in their mid twenties, maybe early twenties, and they're just talking about whatever and they, they seem funny. Basement Yard. That's what they call it. The Basement Yard. They're funny. They're kind of bro-y, you know, I don't think I would listen to that show as a, you know, as a podcast, but it's always funny, the clips that they pull out for tech talk. I don't know.
My Brother, My Brother and Me is one that might be a chat show. It's, you know, ostensibly that's an advice show that the McElroy brothers do, but it's, it's really more like, you know, the advice that they give isn't really usually meant to be good advice. It's more like an opportunity to riff. So whether that's considered a chat show or an advice show or just a straight up comedy show, I'm not entirely sure, but I think it has a lot in common with the chat show format.
RACHEL ZUCKER: And, and what is a show like This American Life… what's the format of that called? I'm like, you know, or Invisibilia, or, you know, not that there's, yeah.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I’ve never listened to Invisibilia, but like, I put This American life and like Radiolab into the same space. And I think that the terms that I usually think of those in are, you know, public radio shows and then also short documentary. There's a British show that's called Short Cuts that I listen to pretty regularly that's a similar thing to This American Life except it's not all American stuff.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And it's just it, and they get more experimental than, than This American Life does also, but I would, I would say that that is a short documentary anthology.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Okay. So some people advise in writing, you know, or in art making, like make the art that you want to consume. That's never really sat exactly right with me. And it, it occurs to me right now that like the podcasts that I have loved, I mean, I've listened to a few chat shows and I've liked them, but they've never been my thing, honestly.
And yes, conversation shows like the one I make, but like the podcasts that I love are serial audio documentaries, you know, or anthologies, and like Kaitlin Prest's work Appearances or The Heart -
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Or Mermaid Palace stuff. Yeah, she's great.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Exactly. Yeah. Like those, as a listener, that's what turns me on the most. That's what, you know, that that's like the gold of podcasting for me in a way. I don't want to make that show. I don't have the resources or the time or the energy.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: If you did have the resources or time or energy, would you want to make that kind of show? Something like The Heart?
RACHEL ZUCKER: In some ways yes. And in some ways, no, because I think that kind of creative energy, right now anyway, is going towards my novel. And then a next piece of my creative energy is going towards Commonplace, but also the school and this certain kind of like, flow, energy, attention, a kind of like sacred meditative zone that I get into with the novel, let's just say, and sometimes with Commonplace.
So why… it's interesting to me that like, in some ways, you and I are in reversed kind of stereotypical gender roles where I hear you as being more accommodating and concerned for the experience of the listener than I feel
[45:04]
I feel like I keep hearing you and I'm just like, “Yeah, but what do you want to get out of it, Mike? What do you want to get out of it?” And I'm very, I'm very kind of focused on what I want to get out of this.
And what do I want to get out of this? I mean, in my life, I am in so many different ways looking for a partner. I wish I had a partner in my business, in the school. I wish I had a partner on Commonplace. I wish I had a romantic partner. I wish I had a co-parent. I wish like, I'm at a stage in my life where I'm looking for partnership. Which is very complicated for me, given the fact that I work 20 times as much as I should, and I'm very solitary in a lot of ways, and I'm very ambitious and, you know, probably a lot of other things, you know, bossy, trouble delegating, you know, visionary, let's put it, let's put it positively for once.
But so part of what I want with this experience is around collaboration and partnership. And I almost don't care what we make, except for the fact that, like, I have a limited amount of, like, sacred creative energy flow, and I'm already overtaxed. So, I want to make a chat show even though I'm not sure that as a listener, that's my favorite thing. And I wonder if that's part of what makes me care less about the listener.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I mean, I think that the question for any artist of what their relationship is to the audience is an interesting one and a complicated one. You know, I am just generally of the opinion that it's not a sustainable practice to make things because you think that's what other people want. I mean, it could be a lucrative practice, I imagine. But I just don't, I don't find that to be either creatively satisfying or sustainable in the long run, because if I'm spending my time creating something, working on something, and I don't like the thing that I'm doing, and I'm not being paid to do it, you know, then why am I doing it? I just end up getting frustrated and resentful.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Well, is it a sustainable practice to make something that's just what I want?
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I don't think I ever said that this is just what you want.
RACHEL ZUCKER: [Laughs] I know. I'm half joking and half serious, right? So the joke is what I want, and the seriousness is what we want. What we want to make, you know, without too much…
Let me ask this in a different way. Okay. In a, in a less, slightly less self obsessed way. Bringing you the audio message was, it was kind of like my turn to bring the hook. And I was like, let's bring a hook that's already, that we've already swallowed, so to speak, which is a weird metaphor. Let's cut ourselves open, gut ourselves, find the hook that we already swallowed, and use that as the hook to talk about it.
You know, here, here are some other things that we could have talked about in this episode, I listened to a 2020 March, 2023 episode of Ezra Klein's show with Jane Hirschfield, the poet, and it just blew me away. I thought it was like one of the most perfect podcasts episodes that I've heard, we totally could have talked about that.
We could have talked about my breakup. We could have talked about, and we still can, we could talk about the student protests. I have a lot to say about that. We could have talked about another podcast that I listened to that I was like really blown away by. We could have talked about like other current events or personal events of the past week. We could have talked about, both of us did different podcasting things this week, not related to this podcast, but related to our other podcasts that are a little bit unusual for us. We could have talked about that.
I had a big breakthrough last night, very late last night, with my novel where I realized that I'm going to put the entire transcript of the confessional lecture, the confessional episode, which includes a conversation between us as the bumper to that show, and then the lecture itself into the novel as is, as a formatted transcript, and it like opens up so much for me in being able to tell the story that I'm trying to tell, in the novel.
[49:50]
So, you know, in some ways, giving you that message was a formal creative choice that is mirroring other creative, formal choices that I'm making, you know, in my other, in my novel, in my other podcast. Okay.
So we could have talked about any of those things. That could have been our hook. I sense that you're either frustrated or concerned, maybe concerned, about the fact that this is episode three, and we're still talking about what we want the podcast to be.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I think what it is, is that, okay, so just to go back slightly, one, when I listen to chat shows, I, I only ever start listening to a chat show because of whatever the hook is. I continue listening to a chat show because of the people, but I only ever start listening because of, you know, because they're talking about movies or because I think I've heard it's funny or whatever.
Two, when I listen to other podcasts that are in forms that I don't do, I do actually often want to make those things. Like I listen to Short Cuts, you know, they'll do, you know, eight episode seasons, a couple of times a year. And every time I listen to it, I think to myself, I should make a short audio documentary.
Or, you know, I still listen, I still do. I listen to LeVar Burton Reads and that was why a big part of why I ended up making LikeWise Fiction is because I just, I was like, I could do that. I want to do that. So I did it in terms of like what we're doing here, what I, what I want to get out of it. You know why I'm talking to you is because I like talking to people and I like talking to you and there's stuff that I want to talk about with people that I don't, I don't have anybody else to talk about with.
And I don't mean that in the way of like, well, you're the best that I could do. But what I mean is that I don't know anybody, either in person or online, who I have access to, who can meet me on the level that I want to be at regularly. And so I'm very grateful that I get to talk to you about stuff.
And we do talk regularly about all kinds of stuff via our WhatsApp messages, but I have a hard time with just being able to say, “Hey, I read this book or I read this article and I want to talk about this article,” and just do that and just say to somebody I know, say to you, even, on our WhatsApp messages, “There's a topic that I want to talk about and, it's not just life, it's like some idea that I want to talk about or some artifact that I want to talk about. So let's do that.”
Right? Because the, for lack of a better word, genre of our WhatsApp messages is our family and romantic lives mostly. Right? Occasionally we talk about other stuff, like I would say the three topics that we generally talk about are our romantic lives, our family lives, and our mental health. Okay. So talking about stuff that is outside of just, you know, what's going on in my life, feels strange. And so having an excuse to do that, that's the draw of making a show like this.
In terms of like me being frustrated or concerned, I'm not sure that those are the right words, but if I think about myself as a listener, a podcast listener, and I probably listen to a good 20 to 30 hours of podcasting a week, right? And also just having, you know, seen a lot of people, other people talk about how they listen to podcasts and, you know, having read about stuff like, you know, how and why to make a podcast and that kind of thing. Like I said, I don't approach a show unless there's a hook, unless there's something, there's some reason for me to to spend my time listening to that show because I could be doing something else with my time.
And it's a little bit difficult for me to imagine that I could be a hook, you know, that because if it's just us talking about ourselves, I don't know why anyone would want to listen to that, except that, I could imagine you being a hook. Like I could imagine that because there are people who read your books and there are people who show up to your readings when you go, when you give a reading and there are people who listen to Commonplace and I'm not sure that I think of you as a celebrity exactly, but I think that you have a more of a celebrity factor than I do. So I could imagine someone being interested in a show that is about Rachel Zucker. I don't think that I see that so much in terms of someone being interested in arriving at a show because I'm on it, you know, and does it matter? Does it, like, if nobody listens to this, I mean, there are literally millions of podcasts in the world. When I was doing the research for this one, I discovered three other shows that had the exact same title, all of which were started at the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns and put out a trailer and nothing else.
[55:14]
People start shows all the time when they are,you know, a very, one of the podcast genres that I spend a lot of time listening to is called “actual play,” which is where it's, you know, three to five people playing a tabletop role playing game, playing Dungeons and Dragons basically. And the ones that I listen to tend to be fairly high production with music and sound effects and they're very highly produced and they have good recording equipment and they're really well acted. But there are thousands of actual play podcasts that are that are literally just, you know, four people on a Zoom, with crappy audio quality, with no production, and nobody listens to it except the people that are playing and maybe a couple of their friends.
You know, when I talk about the fact that Keep the Channel Open is a fairly small show, there are people who listen to Keep the Channel Open who I have no idea who they are. There are shows out there like some of these actual play podcasts that literally have seven listeners and they still make it. Because they want to, because there's, maybe because having the, you know, schedule to record makes them get together and play.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And there's nothing wrong with that. And if this show ends up having seven listeners, that's fine. I probably would still want to make it because it's an opportunity to spend time with you. But I still have some feeling that if I'm going to put something out for public consumption, I'd like it to be as good as it could be, you know?
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm hmm. This is fascinating because I feel like we are doing a thing that is very familiar to me in some ways, which is making something before we know what it is. And it's a very uncomfortable position. And it's a position that I put myself in over and over again. And I think it's, sometimes the most exciting things are the things that are made like that, and sometimes the most annoying, you know, self indulgent, you know, not good things are made like that. And I just think we don't quite know.
I mean, I think, I think we don't have to choose, in some ways, but, and that's both an asset and a detriment in the sense that like, okay, well, what we do know is that we would like to spend time together in this way, not sure why, fully, but we want to, we're both on the same page about this, and that there is something different about spending time together in this way than the messages that we leave for each other or the conversations we have with David, or if we just had, like, added phone calls to our repertoire of contact with each other, there's something about this. And then I hear two other things that we do know. One is you want a place to talk specifically with me or someone like me, but me in this case about some things that in your life that are not under the big three that you like to leave messages and get messages about, which is family, romantic life and mental health.
And so, yeah, that so whether those other things are a hook or a good enough hook, we don't know yet. Because we haven't even released any of this. But we should keep talking about those things, the things that you want to talk about with me that you don't have someone else to talk about or whatever, like, we, we just, we got to keep doing that. The things that I want to talk about with you, I think mostly, but not entirely, do fall under the things… they're similar to the things that we already leave messages about; family, romantic life, mental health, but I want it in a different format. I want the interchange between us. I want to be in a relationship with you hat's more like, you know, the book club episode that I did with you and the podcasts, you know, that we've done together, but more informal and more frequent and more, like, reliable, like to be able to count on that, to be able to look forward to it, whatever frequency we decide on, and I don't know if this is an example of what I'm talking about at all, but I feel compelled to tell you this brief, probably inappropriate thing and I, and maybe you will have a way of reflecting back to me why and how this is related to the podcast, which I really think that it is, which is part of what you do for me in our messages that I really appreciate.
[1:00:19]
Okay. So, as I mentioned to you just now, and in our messages, so I was seeing this guy, Mark, a lot of good stuff, some not good stuff, confused about it. Talked to you about like, should I break up with him? I don't even know, blah, blah, blah. And then I got his breakup text and it was very short and direct. And I wrote back just, I said, you know, thank you for being clear and kind. And he wrote back, sure thing. And there's been no contact since then. And that was almost a week ago.
And there's a whole bunch of things this week that fall under the same sort of chapter title for my life, which is relief and rejection. I feel relieved and rejected by Mark and by, this =like keeps coming up for me. And so I've been trying to think about, like, what is this feeling of relief and rejection? Sometimes it feels more relief and I'm just like, this is great, you know, I didn't have to send him a text and I didn't have to worry about, you know, whether I was leading him on or any of these things. Like it's over. Yay. Great. I learned a lot. He was really nice in a lot of ways. Like, okay. And then there's the rejection, which feels shitty, but there's something, there's something else that I've been really, really struggling with.
And I think it has to do with why I wanted to share this message with you, your own message, and with the future imagined audience. And, you know, I tried to sleep at Mark's apartment twice during the relationship and both times, as you know, I couldn't sleep. I was very happy. And then all of a sudden felt trapped, like I have to get out of here. And both times ended up basically like sneaking out at like four in the morning and going home.
And one of the things that I felt when I felt trapped and like, Oh my God, I got to get out of here, this is this is not right, I don't want to be here was the kind of like emotional whiplash or jet lag of being in bed with someone that had previously very recently been a stranger to me. Like that shift from not knowing someone at all, and then meeting them and having a few dates and then having all this intimacy. I don't know if it was too fast, but it was just very, very shocking for me. And now, there's no need for me to like, hash this over with him that we're not seeing each other anymore, but there's something so sudden and shocking about having been intimate with this man and now he goes back into the realm essentially of stranger.
And I think that everybody has their own kind of sensibility around these kinds of shifts and relationships. And, you know, mine comes from my own psychology, childhood stuff, you know, being in a 25-year marriage, you know, my parents, et cetera, et cetera. But what I will say is that one of the things that I've learned in this past week and from this particular relationship is that you said in your message that having shared values is essential to some extent to you for being able to trust someone and to be able to fully be yourself in a relationship with someone else.
I agree, and I think that that is something that you and I have, which is enough of shared values, shared priorities, to be able to disagree with one another when we do or to be able to really speak freely with each other. Another thing that I think I require in order to have a relationship with someone, whether it's a romantic sexual relationship or a friendship or a podcasting relationship, like a public relationship with someone is a feeling of I'm not going to be abandoned. And the person is not going to turn from someone I don't know into someone I know very well, or back into someone who I wouldn't even like stop to say hello to on the street. And one of the moments that was weird with Mark was when I actually described our relationship to him. And he said, “Well, I just don't understand that. Like if you like Mike and you have this friendship with Mike and you like talking to him, why don't you like see each other in person?”
[1:05:10]
It was not something he could understand, like how we could have this relationship across so many years without, you know, any face to face relationship, and I think, I think one of the reasons that I needed to play that message or I wanted to, was that I'm not great with object constancy. I have a lot of insecurity around people disappearing or… yeah, disappearing, I guess. And so I don't know, you said, why did I need to, why do I need to show that to the listener? I don't know. Maybe I needed to show it to myself in front of the listener. Maybe I needed to say like, this thing that we're entering into, that we're calling chat, is actually kind of a big deal for me, even though I'm very cavalier in a lot of ways. And I'm like, let me tell you this thing about my sex life.
Like, I'm not private, but I'm fragile in certain ways. And the level of trust that I have with you is very, very unusual to me in my, in my relationship. And so I guess on some level, I felt like compelled to, to talk that through publicly or acknowledge that publicly. I still don't totally understand this. I don't know. Does this make any sense to you? Is this helpful in any way? Or is this just like me talking? [Laughs]
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I do often wonder what it is about me that makes not just you, but like a lot of people trust me so much, because I'm not sure if it was in that message and you edited it out or if it was in another one that was just near there, but oftentimes when I send you a message and it's me sort of pontificating about whatever it is that you've been talking about, you know, and then I don't hear from you for like a day or sometimes two days or sometimes a week, and I'll get worried that like, “Oh, this is the one where Rachel's going to tell me to fuck off.” And it hasn't happened yet, but it doesn't mean that it won't. So I dunno, I think I have worries as well that people are going to get sick of my shit. But not least because, you know, similarly, after a 25-year marriage, I also had someone get sick of my shit and decide to leave.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-Hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Which, that is something that's a little different between your situation and mine, is that, you know, in my situation, I was left and in your situation, you, you were the leaver.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-Hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But let me, there's two things that I'm, I'm thinking of, one, both personal, but one a little more general. One is that, and something I think a lot about is, why do I spend so much time putting my thoughts and feelings or sometimes even my intrusive thoughts, on social media, especially on public social media, like, like I used to on Twitter, and like I do now on, on Bluesky and on, on TikTok? Why do I do that instead of writing it in my journal? Tweeting or making TikToks like that should have, you know, that can just go in your journal, you know, you don't have to put everything out there. And there is something for me about… it's, it's more than just the acknowledgement of myself or the recording of myself or getting it out of myself. That there is something important about being witnessed that makes me feel like I exist. And I'm, I understand that about myself now. I don't understand why, and I don't really understand how it works, but there is something about having an audience that makes me feel real.
The other thing that I was thinking about here, and this is a little bit more, less about the idea of this podcast in general, and more specifically about that message that you decided to share. Several years ago at this point, I don't remember exactly when, like 2010, 2012, something like that, I made a photo project. It started off as a blog post. I think it might've been even on Valentine's day, where I made a bunch of photographs of my unmade bed, in sort of like a, you know, textural sort of sculptural, very, you know, beautiful kind of way. And I paired it with some text that was a love letter to my then wife. Basically the love letter saying, “I, I don't do this for myself.” Like, “I never made the bed before we were together. And I still don't really even care whether or not the bed gets made, but I do it every day because you like the bed to be made.” And I just did that as a blog post.
[1:09:57]
And then somebody, I was in a workshop with a bunch of other photographers and somebody else who was in that workshop, a woman named Claudia, she said, “Oh, I saw that poem that you wrote. And it was so beautiful.” And I was like, “Oh, I didn't really think of it as a poem. That's interesting.” She said, “You should do something with this. You should make it like a book or something,” because she makes books. So I taught myself how to make handmade books. And I made them. An edition, I planned an edition of 10 handmade books and then I made an edition, I think I made three of them. And then I made an edition of a hundred trade paperbacks.
And I've sold probably 20 or so of them and I've sold, I think, two of the handmade ones, and the idea of selling this thing. Sometimes people would ask me, “Why, why are you, why did you make this into an art object? Why did you make this into a trade paperback book that you're selling?” And to me, part of the reason for doing that was that the act of sharing it with the rest of the world was also an act of devotion, was also me saying to my then wife, I love you this much. And I also want to show the whole world how much I love you. And that that will be something that is also, that the act of me sharing it is also an act of me showing you how much I love you.
And the first copy was one that I actually, it was hers. I gave that to her. Like, “I want the first one that I make to be yours.” And it's actually still sitting on a shelf over, just off to my right over here. Because obviously once we got divorced, she didn't want to keep that. And so now I have, I'm looking over at my shelf. I have one fully finished copy. I think I have three that are almost finished. They're assembled. They just don't have the cover, the cover print tipped in. And then I have a pile of, like, wrapped book boards and printed out copy, like pages that I just haven't sewed together yet. And I probably never will. Cause why would I at this point? That book doesn't mean what it used to mean because of the fact that that relationship doesn't exist anymore. And I'm, I've been noodling on some ideas of what could I do with those leftover discarded materials? Could I make some other kind of art out of it? And if I do, am I going to show that to people? And if I do show it to people, why am I going to show it to people?
And I think that there is something in both the creation of the original art piece, and whatever I'm going to do with it in the future, where again, it is the witnessing of, it is the fact of an audience that gives it a certain gravity, that it might not have had otherwise, whatever existed between me and my ex-wife while we were married. There was something about having it be witnessed that made it more.
And in fact, I think that there's something even about the practice of having a wedding that I've, I remember, I don't remember if this was at our wedding or some, just somebody else talking about like some officiant talking about weddings and how the purpose of a wedding, the reason why you have a wedding celebration is because there is something about having it be witnessed by a community, makes it bigger than just yourself. And makes it more real and more accountable than just, you know, going off and, cause you could just get married by going to the courthouse and signing a paper together. And sometimes people do that and that's, there's nothing wrong with that. But for most of us, there is something about being witnessed that creates a different, it puts it in a different register. So I don't know if that's reflecting back to you what you were saying exactly. But that is something that I'm thinking about.
RACHEL ZUCKER: That story is beautiful, and I really am so interested to know what you decide to do with those materials. And this question of like, why we share our story, you know, you asked me in the Confessional Episode on Commonplace, why do we need to share? Why do we want to share our story with other people? And this story is a really kind of amazing one. It also, as you were talking, I was like, oh, right. The hook for me of this podcast is the relationship between us. That doesn't mean that that's what we should endlessly talk about, but that is the hook for me.
And I think that's the hook for other people. They might come for different reasons or they might not come at all, but I think that to me, what is, what we have to offer each other and listeners is this kind of interesting contemporary friendship in this strange format between the two weird people that we are, that we're like, kind of committed to invest it in interested in spending time together talking, that's what we do, and that there's something for me anyway, that's like profoundly meaningful, provocative, surprising, sustaining about this relationship, and I don't fully know why I would like to share this relationship with others or have others witness the relationship, whether that's for other people or for us or for me. I don't totally know yet. But this, this actually was enormously clarifying, but also we need to end.
[1:15:38]
And also I think we should just briefly talk before we end, on the recording, what do you think we should talk about in the next episode? And I don't think it should be one of our audio messages. And I would like you to be the one to either bring it to us, or I'm happy to bring an outside... I do know what is, I do know that there is a world outside of my own life [laughs].
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I don't know specifically yet what I would like to talk about next time. I am imagining that it might be an episode of television. I know we both watch Star Trek.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yes.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: It might be, you know, there are a number of newsletters that I read that, you know, I read one that was by Devin Kelly recently that I found really moving. It might be something I saw on social media, but I think that it's probably gonna be something along those lines that I haven't actually experienced yet.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Awesome. Okay. Well, I just wanted someone who's listening to this episode to know that the next episode will have something that Mike is really interested in that he hasn't experienced yet.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: [Laughs]. Okay. Insert tagline here.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah.
[Music]
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: You've been listening to Hey, It's Me, with Rachel Zucker and Mike Sakasegawa
RACHEL ZUCKER: Hey, It's Me is a production of Rachel Zucker and Likewise Media
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Editing on this episode is by Mike Sakasegawa. Music is by Podington Bear and transcription help is by Leigh Sugar.
RACHEL ZUCKER: You can find more information about the show, including contact information and transcripts, at heyitsmepodcast.com.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: If you'd like to hear more from us, you can find Rachel's other show Commonplace at Commonplace.today.
RACHEL ZUCKER: And you can find Mike's other show, Keep the Channel Open at Keep the Channel Open.com
Thanks for spending this time with us. Take care.