Episode 646

Jan 3

Introducing "Damp January" podcast, plus Adam Gopnik and Dessa

In a special episode of Live Wire, host Luke Burbank introduces our new limited series podcast Damp January. Over five episodes in January, Burbank explores his sometimes complicated relationship with alcohol through conversations with writers, podcasters, and others. In this selection from Episode 1, he chats with his mother, Susie Burbank, about her journey to sobriety. Then, The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik discusses his book The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery, in which he learns how to drive a car at age 55 and pee in public, before poet and singer Dessa performs her track "Crash."

Adam Gopnik

Staff Writer for The New Yorker

New York Times bestselling author Adam Gopnik is a writer that can do anything—and do it well. He has published over nine books including the #1 national bestseller Paris to the Moon. His latest book, The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery, explores the fundamental question of "how do we learn—and master—a new skill?" with exquisite, probing prose. Gopnik has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1986 while remaining an active lecturer, lyricist, and libretto writer for many musical projects. He has won the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism three times, as well as the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting, and the Canadian National Magazine Award Gold Medal for arts writing. His work has been anthologized in “Best American Essays,” “Best American Travel Writing,” “Best American Sports Writing,” “Best American Food Writing,” and “Best American Spiritual Writing.” Website

Dessa

Singer, Rapper, and Writer

Dessa has made a career of bucking genres and defying expectations—her résumé as a musician includes performances at Lollapalooza and Glastonbury, co-compositions for a 100-voice choir, performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, and top-200 entries on the Billboard charts. She contributed to the #1 album The Hamilton Mixtape and the RBG documentary; her track, “Congratulations,” has notched over 20 million streams. As a writer, she’s been published by The New York Times and National Geographic Traveler, broadcast by Minnesota Public Radio, and published a memoir-in-essays (My Own Devices, 2018) in addition to two literary collections. As a speaker, Dessa has delivered keynote speeches and presentations on art, science, and entrepreneurship; guest lectures at universities and colleges across the US; and a TED Talk about her science experiment on how to fall out of love. She’s also the host of Deeply Human, a podcast created by the BBC and American Public Media. Dessa has been covered by Pitchfork, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal, amongst others. The LA Times says she “sounds like no one else.” NPR’s All Songs Considered calls her “a national treasure.” On the stage and on the page, Dessa’s style is defined by ferocity, wit, tenderness, and candor. Website • Instagram

Show Notes

Introducing Damp January

Luke introduces Live Wire’s new limited-series, Damp January, an honest look into the meaning of moderation for those who have been meaning to moderate.
Expect a new episode every Wednesday morning in the month of January, featuring guests such as authors Nora McIreny and Gary Shteyngart, as well as comedian Moshe Kassher.
Take a listen to the full first episode here.

Adam Gopnik [00:24:30]

Adam’s latest book: The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery
Luke and Adam talk about the 18th century chess machine, The Mechanical Turk.
Adam shares his experiences working with Cate Blanchette in the movie Tár (2022).
Ever heard of paruresis? Adam shares all about this phobia known as “shy bladder syndrome.”

Dessa [00:47:44]

Dessa plays the song “Crash” from her latest album, Bury the Lede.

Luke Burbank: Hey there, Live Wire listeners. It's Luke Burbank, your host. I know that this is typically the part of the show where you would be hearing the dulcet tones of our announcer Elena Passarello telling you who is on the program this week. But we are trying something a little different, a little special, and that is we are launching a new limited series podcast. It's called Damp January. And the first episode is actually out right now. You've probably heard of Dry January, right? So when people decide not to drink for the month of January, which got us here at Live Wire kind of thinking like as a show, what exactly is our deal with alcohol? And also specifically, what is my deal with alcohol as the host of the show? And also, how are our guests doing with their relationships with drinking? So we decided to record a series of interviews, not really with the goal of making the sobriety podcast or one that, you know, celebrates mindlessly getting wasted. We just wanted to have some really honest conversations about living at various points on the booze spectrum and maybe, you know, find out if mindful consumption is the thing that can actually be achieved, possibly for radio hosts named Luke. So anyway, here we are with Damp January, We are going to be releasing a new episode every Wednesday this month. We're going to be talking to people like the comedian Moshe Kasher, also the bestselling author Gary Shteyngart. And from Terrible, Thanks for Asking. We're going to talk to Nora McInerny. First, though, we are going to start at the source of my life. Yes, that's right. My mother, Susan Burbank, who agreed to sit down with me the other day at the dining room table that I grew up eating on to talk about her journey with drinking. Are you planning to actively eat the cheesecake while we're talking?
Susie Burbank: That's what I was hoping for. Would you rather we just kind of wait on it? It'll sit just fine.
Luke Burbank: I mean. Or you could have it now, and I could wait. It's kind of your call.
Susie Burbank: I'll just let it sit. It's got some whipped cream on it. Sort of. Kind of melt into the cheesecake. So good.
Luke Burbank: How did you think about drinking when you were a young girl? Like before you got involved in the church and that became your life. Did you drink a lot? Did you feel really good when you drank? Like, what was your relationship with alcohol like in a pretty brief window for you of, like, you know, high school into before you got to the Lighthouse ranch because then obviously things changed.
Susie Burbank: Well, the first time I ever actually, I guess, got drunk. I was really young and I was going to a dance. I think I was 13 or 14, a neighborhood dance. But it was actually Thanksgiving night. And I drank a bunch of my mom's, my step mom's gin, and I just got the low down like I put it in a little tupperware container, put it in the basement. And then I just thought, okay, I'll just gulp this down. And it was like, my gosh, I don't even know how I got to the dance, how I got back from the dance because that set off this chain of not just drinking, but drinking to get drunk, you know?
Luke Burbank: So even as a teenager, that was the goal. You wanted to kind of erase your feelings or just not be in your head?
Susie Burbank: I think so, because my you know, this dysfunction in the family, I totally love my dad. But my dad was you know, like I said, he did marry well the second time, you know, to my stepmother. And there was a lot of problems in the family. And I did not get along with my stepmom at all. So there was a lot of escapism going on in my heart. Like I was always out with my friends as much as I could get out of the house.
Luke Burbank: What I think is so interesting about your life story, mom, and your relationship with alcohol is that basically you go from being this sort of wild kid in Philadelphia to moving out to California, to getting saved, to becoming part of this, you know, evangelical Christian movement where like nobody's drinking. And so for basically the intervening, I don't know, 20, 25 years, you're not really a drinker, right? Like you did you did you crave alcohol? Did you think about alcohol when you were, you know, raising kids and living in this kind of social environment where, like, no one ever drank?
Susie Burbank: And no, I really didn't think about alcohol. And I used to love marijuana. I didn't think about marijuana. Those things were like not even a part of my my day to day life at all. So it was kind of interesting how I snuck back in.
Luke Burbank: And my my sense of that is really that it was kind of us kids in a way because we, you know, a couple of us, the older ones had grown. We were now over the age of 21. We'd come home for things, the barbecue or whatever, and or, you know, holiday, and we would bring alcohol because we now liked to drink and that kind of put it back in your mind and to some degree, but a lesser degree dad's mind?
Susie Burbank: I really think so. And I wanted to relate to my my boys. So I started to really get interested in football and especially the Seahawks. Well, the same thing happened with the alcohol back then. It was like when my grown kids would come over and they'd bring a bottle of wine or something. It was like really fun to drink with them. And but for me, I couldn't stop with just like a glass or even two of wine. It's like it triggers something inside of me. And I just wanted more and more and more.
Luke Burbank: So there was pretty quickly when you kind of reconnected with alcohol, there was like secrecy around it and kind of having more than everybody else would kind of be aware of.
Susie Burbank: Yeah, I think so. I think it was really secret, but I knew there was something not quite right. I knew there was something not right almost from the get go because when I stopped drinking at 2021, whenever it was, I was pretty much on the road to full on alcoholism, although I didn't identify it that way. But then when I started drinking again as a well, 40 year old, it was almost like you pick up where you left off because it triggered something in me that it just gave me that sort of like buzz that I really liked. And I wanted to really, like not think about some things. There were some things coming down. We had moved and there was like a loneliness there, so it kind of met some of those needs. And yeah, that's pretty much what happened.
Luke Burbank: What was your thought process once you realized, no, I'm in a bad place with this, but I don't know how to stop it. Were you just kind of thinking, I just got to make better decisions starting tomorrow? Like, you know, I know the feeling personally of, like, having too much to drink and then waking up the next day and thinking, okay, I'm never drinking again or I'm never making these kinds of bad decisions and that's going to fix it. When you were in the midst of, as they would say, your addiction, what was your mentality?
Susie Burbank: Well, I never had hangovers and I don't I, I guess I was spared them for lack of better term. So it was like I really didn't come to terms with me being an alcoholic. I was in denial. But I knew something was wrong when I would be in town and I would call my husband. You know, we had cell phones and I would call and say, not are we out of milk because we still have kids at home. Are we out of wine? And he'd be like, Yeah, we are out of wine. And I would like beeline right back to the store because to me, being out of wine was more critical than being out of milk. And there was something really wrong with that one.
Luke Burbank: I'd forgotten that, you know, the youngest kids were still at home in high school or whatever. What do you think the impact was on them, of them being home in this period of your life as much as you can kind of like know that from your perspective?
Susie Burbank: Well, I really did hide it well. But what I would do is if I was drinking a lot, I would just say, I'm tired, I'm going to take a nap or I'm going to go to bed. So it wasn't really addressed until it got to the point where it had to be addressed with the kids and with my husband. And yeah, that came pretty abruptly. So I hid it for a really long time. But I knew something wasn't right when I would not only drink wine, you know, like in the early evening, but I would buy port, which is like just to think of the taste right now, you know, cheap port. It was so sugary. But I would put it up in my bedroom and hide it in different places, and then I would just guzzle port, which had quite a bit of alcohol content in it.
Luke Burbank: Just the sugar content of that is difficult to imagine. Like, you know, a lot of people that struggle with kind of secretive drinking, they switch at some point to vodka because it doesn't have a lot of smell. And it's pretty clear it doesn't you know, it's like an unfortunately, it's like the way that you can sort of get by with it. Port is not usually on the list of the things that people secretly guzzle.
Susie Burbank: That's very true. But for some reason it went down really quick. It wasn't like I had to like cough it down or anything. It was easy to drink, but I knew when I was actually hiding it, like in the hamper, wherever it was, there's something that was just in check in my mind, like something's gone a little over the top here.
Luke Burbank: You're listening to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank. I know this doesn't sound like the typical episode of Live Wire. We are doing something a little different this week. We're playing you some excerpts from our new limited series podcast, which is called Damp January. And it's just basically me talking to various folks, some of them kind of famous, some of them my actual mother, about their relationship with alcohol. Hence the name Damp January. We have much more of this conversation with my actual mom. Coming up here on Live Wire. So stay with us. Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank. We are doing something a little different on the show this week. We are playing you an excerpt from this new limited series podcast that we are releasing. The show is called Damp January. And the idea behind it is that I'm going to talk to various kind of well-known folks from comedy and writing and podcasting about what their drinking habits actually are like, for better or for worse. This is not a sobriety podcast per say. It's just kind of, I don't know, like a check in on what kinds of different relationships people have with booze. And we figured for me, my relationship to life like to being alive starts with my mom, Susie, who actually has her own story with alcohol. So we're going to get back to that conversation recorded in my parent's actual dining room in Silverdale, Washington, recently. Take a listen. So then you sort of had this moment where you had way too much to drink and it was kind of a scene and dad came and got you. And I was, I think, maybe living either in L.A. or New York at this time. But I just heard the sort of story of it, and it was you'd had way too much and it was kind of a situation. Luckily, law enforcement was not involved, but that basically after that, there was a family meeting and the conversation was like that You can't keep doing this. Did you kind of know right away in that family meeting or maybe we'll call it an intervention or did you understand instinctively? Yes. This is the end of the road for me with this alcohol thing. Or did some part of you think these guys have it wrong?
Susie Burbank: No. The second time I knew it was definitely, you know, I had to stop. But the Christmas before that May, when I, you know, realize I need help. I got really drunk over the Christmas time and it was we had company over my sister from Seattle and her family and they were actually missionaries at the time. And so it was really uncomfortable for me that they were coming over because I kind of like had to hide my problem. Instead, I intensified it by getting, you know, running errands and doing things the day they were arriving and just drinking like, you know, Dr. Pepper from Burger King with just booze in it, you know, like driving around. I just like the nervousness of them coming and thinking my sister was going to judge me. So I just drank so much that I was totally plastered when they came and I had to pick them up at the ferry. It was just pretty scary. And that was like that wake up call happened because I basically went to bed and it wasn't Christmas Day, but it was close to Christmas. And they I woke up to hearing the dishes being put away, you know, washed. And I could hear kitchen activity and I wasn't a part of it. So dinner had already been eaten. And I was so embarrassed because I had nieces and nephews here and my own kids. And I remember coming downstairs and saying, I'm so sorry, I'm an alcoholic. This was Christmas time. And I remember them all like downplaying it. And the adults, you know, like, no, no, no. You just had a little too much to drink and really downplaying it to the point where I was like, maybe I'm not. Maybe that was just a really weird thing that I did. So I just had like five months of that questioning, like, am I really an alcoholic until May 26th, to be exact. That was kind of the stopping point right there.
Luke Burbank: So that time that the second time that there was, again, kind of a and it sounds like the first thing wasn't so much an intervention, almost like a reverse intervention. You were trying to tell everyone else, hey, I got a problem with this. And then the second time it was everyone else saying, Hey, it seems like there's a problem with this. And that second time, did you just kind of feel in your heart like, okay, I'm done?
Susie Burbank: Well, what happened was I, I was in the habit at this point of buying pork, you know, and just like, hiding it in the trunk of the car, you know, because my husband had his truck and I had my car, but I picked up my youngest daughter who was working at a little consignment store around here and took it to a nail place to have her nails done because she was begging me. And so I took her. And then when she was in the nail place, I remembered I had this like bottle port that was still in the trunk that was like partly drank. So I thought I got to get rid of that. So I guzzled that port. And then, I mean, I was beside myself with, you know, with the reaction from it. And I just remember going into the nail place to go to the bathroom and leaving my keys on the counter. And it was just it was so scary because I didn't remember doing that. Of course, I'm in like blackout. And I come back out to the car and as I pass through. My daughter says I'm almost done you know, my nails are drying and all this. So I go back out to the car and I'm looking for the keys. She comes out and I have the glovebox open, spilled out all this stuff and I'm looking in my purse. Same thing all opened up. Couldn't find those keys. And I was just beside myself looking for the keys. And even my daughter said, Mom, what is wrong? And my husband happened to be at a movie with the two youngest boys, so she was really scared that I was going to find those keys and try to drive home, which was only about four miles, but still. So that's when really it came down to it. Then my husband did show up after she had the police come or the sheriffs, and they all kind of came at the same time the movie was over and so on, and she got a hold of them. But it all kind of the whole crowd was there. And I remember the sheriff saying, if those keys were in the ignition, we would be giving your wife a DUI right now. But I hadn't been able to find the keys. And the the gal from the nail place came running out with these keys jingling. And that saved me from DUI. It really did.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. So then when you actually went to your first AA meeting, was that intimidating for you? Was it a relief? What did that feel like for you?
Susie Burbank: No, I was really scared because I felt really like vulnerable and very alone. And there was a gal in our church that was going to meet me there at the hall, which I was glad of, that I found some comrade in the church, you know, I didn't really know her, but I remember parking and going into the meeting and I was just petrified because I didn't really know at that point life without alcohol. And I was like so afraid of what it was going to look like.
Luke Burbank: And how important has AA been or was AA to your sobriety?
Susie Burbank: It was vital. You know, this was a whole new group of people that understood what alcohol could do to me, you know, or to them. I mean, it was like we understood. And other than that, we had nothing in common. You know, it was just like there were people of all ages, but a lot of people that were, quote, worse off than me. But you see that. Okay. You have to look at, at least in my case, alcohol as like you're allergic to it because I couldn't just think at that point. After going to a few meetings, I understood. I couldn't just think, you know what? I'll just lay off for a while or I'll just really know. It was like an allergy. So once I had a drink, like they say, all bets are off. So that realization was a little bit, I don't know, unnerving at first, but it really began to sink in. And I met some of the most wonderful people I'll ever know in this halls of AA.
Luke Burbank: Have you had any close calls? Have you had any kind of moments in your almost 20 years of sobriety where you've forgotten that you're allergic to it?
Susie Burbank: Actually, no. Which is really interesting because I have a super addictive personality. You know, like I'll be watching like a series on Netflix and I'll just like, prop my eyelids open, you know, to watch every single episode until it's over. So I have that tendency to be that way. But I was a little nervous about like, you know, occasions like a wedding or toasting or but it really sunk in pretty quickly that life without it was very doable because I had done it for several years and life really had a lot of up times to it. And, you know, if I felt low, I felt depressed. There was other things I could do besides drink alcohol.
Luke Burbank: How much of a factor in your recovery was the fact that Dad was very happy to just not drink anymore? You know, not that he was ever a heavy drinker, but he was very happy to just be a non-drinker so that it would support you.
Susie Burbank: That would have just been a deal breaker. I know it because of my tendency to be that way. And I don't know if he was so much happy, but he's a very loyal person. So he was like, Hey, if you can't drink, honey, if you don't drink anymore, I'm not drinking anymore.
Luke Burbank: So then when you became aware that you had a problem with alcohol, did you then at some point start to be concerned? Or have you been concerned about your kid's relationship with alcohol, specifically like me, as somebody who has at times been a pretty heavy drinker?
Susie Burbank: Yes, definitely. But, you know, when your kids get to be a certain age, they're they're adults. And so all the worrying in the world isn't going to make a difference until they realize if they indeed have a problem. And like they say in AA, there's some things that I used to think were pretty harsh. It's not my business. Keep my side of the street clean, you know, sweet. And when it came to my kids, it was harder because, of course, I love them with all my heart and soul. But that wasn't my role anymore as a mother to, like, worry about them and just, you know, pray for them. If there was concerning things and it was things other than alcohol, but not like get in their business, you know?
Luke Burbank: Sure. But I guess also, it's sort of like, you know, there's a lot of kids in the family. And I would say generally when it comes to the topic of alcohol, which is what this sort of podcast series is about, I feel like most of my siblings have a very, very casual relationship with alcohol, like are not really heavy drinkers. And I think that's also probably related to their biology being different than mine. They're technically speaking, half siblings and they've also got dad's, you know, Walt's genetics and he's the person who's had no problem kind of having a beer or never having a beer. I'm so directly related to you and the the Kellys and this sort of family history and the biology on my father's side. I just wonder, like, do you feel have you worried that I'm sometimes maybe too much of a chip off the old block?
Susie Burbank: Yeah, I think so. Because, yeah, Luke and I are so we're so much alike, you know? But with my dad, I'm. Get back to my dad here, I remember an incident when I was back in Philly as a single mom for, you know, half a year or whatever. And I came to my parents house and my dad and my step moms to do some laundry. And it was early in the morning because I had things to do. And I had a little apartment but didn't have a washer and dryer. And I came over there and my dad was already in the basement with washer and dryer was and with a shot glass of, you know, a of whiskey and a beer. And I remember saying to him, Dad, it's 8:30 in the morning or nine in the morning. And he said, Sue, c'mere. And I went over to him and he said, I want you to touch my chest. And it was just quivering. He said, I have to have it. And that was like there was nothing I could do to help him in any way. And I felt that this before my whole experience with, you know, alcoholism to the extent that it got. But I didn't know anything about AA or resources to help. And I'm so grateful that there are resources in places that people can and even Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas, they have these alcohol. And so anybody who's struggling with, you know, being at places with their family where there's a lot of alcohol, they can come there and they, you know, pretty much 24 seven will have support. It's a really beautiful thing.
Luke Burbank: That's me talking to Susie Burbank about drinking and also about being my mom and how she got sober. It's part of our new limited series podcast that we're releasing. It's called Damp January. New episode every Wednesday this month, including a conversation with the journalist named Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall. This guy literally wrote the book on Finding the Cure for The Hangover. We're also going to talk to Gary Shteyngart, Moshe Kasher, and podcaster and writer and friend of mine, Nora McInerny. It is going to be a really fascinating series. Please go download Damp January. Wherever you do that kind of stuff. And thanks.
Luke Burbank: All right. Let's get back to some maybe slightly more normal Live Wire action. Our next guest has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1986. He's also a New York Times bestselling author who's published many, many books, including the bestseller Paris to the Moon. His latest book is The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery, and it explores the fundamental question of how do we learn and master a new skill? I think something we're always trying to do, and many of us, myself included, are challenged by actually accomplishing that. We thought this would be an appropriate conversation here at the beginning of the year when folks are trying to start doing new things and maybe stop doing old things. Also, by the way, Adam Gopnik appeared in the Oscar nominated film Tár starring Cate Blanchett, where he appeared in a role that was specifically written for him. Take a listen to this interview with Adam Gopnik. We recorded it at Town Hall in Seattle, Washington. Hello, Adam. Welcome to the show.
Adam Gopnik: Thank you. The last time I was here, I was doing my one man show here.
Luke Burbank: Here in Town Hall?
Adam Gopnik: In Seattle, yeah. [Luke: Wow.] This is Seattle, right?
Luke Burbank: Yes.
Elena Passarello: I think so, maybe.
Luke Burbank: Yes. As we're recording this, you're at the beginning of a tour promoting this new book, which is amazing, by the way. Can you talk about what the real work actually means to a magician's turn?
Adam Gopnik: Sure. Yeah. I learned this term from magicians when my son Luke. Luke was was about.
Luke Burbank: This is one of those Luke. I mean, not your father situations.
Adam Gopnik: Exactly. Exactly. In that case, I am his father. When he was about 13, he got obsessed with card magic, which many 13 year old boys do. But he got really quite good at it. And when ended up going off to Las Vegas with his teacher, wonderful magician named Jamie Ian Swiss. And we spent a lot of time among magicians. And what I noticed is magicians have the most wonderful shoptalk of any human being. Shoptalk is the best kind of talk there is. But right. Writers don't really have shoptalk because all we can talk about is advances and book tours. That's the only thing that ever happens to writers. But magicians have fantastic shoptalk because they can only talk with each other, right? Because they can never tell a civilian what it is that they're doing. And the phrase that kept coming back again and again, at 3 a.m. in a diner in Las Vegas was the real work. Who's got the real work on that? So you can have the real work on that. She's got the real work on that and what they meant by it. I realized after time was not who invented the trick or the illusion, not even who had perfected it, but who did it in the most credible and spontaneous and persuasive way. That's the person who had the real work. And as soon as I heard that term, I said, my goodness. Because we all know what the real work is in the field that we're a master of. We know instantly who's got the real work on anything. And I was at the stage in life where I was doing a lot of compensatory work, you know, wanting to study things that I had missed somehow or failed to do. And so I realized I was in pursuit of the real work.
Luke Burbank: You, after being an art critic for many years, you started taking a drawing class, which feels like the punch line kind of writes itself. Like, you know, after critiquing so many other people for so long, you then tried to put sort of pen or pencil to paper. How did that go for you?
Adam Gopnik: Very badly. I was probably the single most unskilled draftsman since the Renaissance. In fact, I think they wanted to cancel the Renaissance once they saw what I made of drawing. But it was. It was, you know, useful for me. Now, you can make the case that you don't have to be a skilled drawer to judge art. But I think it's generally true that if we don't have some basic, empathetic understanding of the enterprise that we're talking about, that we're criticizing or judging you, none of us will ever be able to hit a 100 mile per hour fastball. But if we've swung at a 40 mile per hour fastball, we have some vague general idea of what that task is, how difficult it is, and what the skills are you need. So I studied drawing, looked at a lot of naked people who come into the room and and stumbled to get them right.
Luke Burbank: I don't want to give too much away from the book, but there is a memorable moment where a naked person you've just drawn comes over and observes.
Adam Gopnik: Yes.
Luke Burbank: How the drawings going?
Adam Gopnik: Yes, exactly.
Luke Burbank: Which seems like it be a lot of pressure on you.
Adam Gopnik: It it was it was immense pressure because she was about four feet tall, you know, and I had done this with this magnificent, terrible drawing of her at the time. And she came over with a heavy New York accent. She said, Is that me? Right.
Luke Burbank: And the and the and I assume she was the only nude person in the room. Right. Right. So that she had to ask.
Adam Gopnik: Yes, exactly. You know, what was so cool though about learning to draw is that you don't learn to draw by looking at something and then saying, I'm going to get it down. Right. Because that's totally numbing and totally paralyzing. What you learned to do is all these tiny little steps and stunts. So my drawing teacher, great, totally reactionary guy who thinks that art's been on taking the wrong course since 1855, basically hates all art since 1855. Cézanne, Van Gogh, whoever- doesn't, you know, thinks they're all on the wrong track. But what he taught me was that the way you draw a face is not to attempt to draw the face, but just to imagine the face as a clock face. And you see the way you tilted your head right now. This is a great radio moment, right? When I say...
Luke Burbank: It's a highly visual medium, I believe.
Adam Gopnik: You will see the way you just tilted your head. But you did just tilt your head and you tilted it right at 1:00, you see. So if I draw a clock face and you, I can get the tilt of your head right at 1:00. And I spent weeks just doing tilts in time. And just those little crude schematic steps over time turn into the seamless illusion of a drawing of a better drawing, if not actually a good drawing. And if there was a continuity in everything I did, you know, I learned to drive and I learned to dance and I learned to box. And what all those things have in common is that you learn these horribly embarrassing, stumbling little steps. And just through sheer perseverance, they begin to turn into the illusion of a seamless sequence. And that's. Invariably the nature of the real work.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire Radio coming to you this week from Town Hall in Seattle, Washington. We are talking to Adam Gopnik about his latest book, The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery. One of the stories that you tell in this book is of this chess playing machine called the Turk.
Adam Gopnik: Yeah, this is in the 18th century. A magician really built this machine that seemed it was dressed in Ottoman garb and it was brilliantly designed. So it seemed to be a robot playing chess. They didn't have the word robot. They called him in the automaton, and it defeated Napoleon and Ben Franklin and every celebrity of that time and great chess masters. And nobody knew how it worked. If it's a machine that plays chess. Now, if they had been thinking clearly, as none of us ever do, they would have said, Well, if there's a machine to play chess, there should have been a machine to play checkers before it, right? It's kind of come out of the blue, this machine. And of course, it wasn't a machine. It was an illusion. There was a chess player buried inside the chess to the bottom of it that was manipulating the pieces.
Luke Burbank: They would, like, open the cabinet and show these [Adam:Yes] like gears.
Adam Gopnik: Exactly. And the chess player would be on the kind of, you know, a springboard and he would come back up and then he would slide back down and all of it. Here's the fascinating thing about it to me. Everybody speculated, including Edgar Allan Poe, if you can imagine, how was it that this thing work? Because they said it has to be this insanely great, tiny chess master, a child who's been drugged for life. Right. Or a little person who's been enslaved to do it. Here's how it worked. The magician whose name was Von Kempelen, would go from town to town, come to Philadelphia or Boston or Paris, and he'd go to a chess café and he would say, "Is there anybody here who needs a gig and doesn't mind very close working conditions?" And in each town he went to, he found a strong enough chess player who, once you put him in this very, very impressive garb, suddenly became a great chess player because it's sort of like the Wizard of Oz, right?, it's the little man behind the curtain. We are impressed by the atmospherics of things as much as we are impressed by the efficacy of someone doing it. And so a mediocre or a good chess player became a great chess player in the garb of the Ottoman-- a basic lesson there.
Luke Burbank: And the other thing, too, that you point out with that story is there are a lot of people who are like pretty good at stuff.
Adam Gopnik: Exactly.
Luke Burbank: Like he could find chess players, enough of them to really wow people.
Adam Gopnik: Absolutely. That's one of the truths about modern life, is that we have a plurality of masters. Which raises the question, what is it that distinguishes the people who we think of as being uniquely good at doing something? And invariably, it's not just that they have a level of technical virtuosity. It's that they have some they've discovered some form of personal, human way of vibrating, of altering the technical virtuosity to give it a uniquely human signature. Jimi Hendrix, child of the city we're sitting in, we love Jimi Hendrix, not just because he's technically amazing, but because of the distortion in his guitar playing, because of the way he found a whole new realm of sound to play with. That's what distinguishes a very good guitar player from a uniquely great guitar player.
Luke Burbank: Well, speaking of recognized masters, the actor Cate Blanchett is in this movie, Tár, that's nominated for an Academy Award. I think of it really is an Adam Gopnik picture. Absolutely. Because you are basically the first 15 minutes of the film. It's incredible. I mean, how did that come about and was that a really nervous making for you to be on this set with somebody like Cate Blanchett.
Adam Gopnik: Todd Field, director and the writer, wonderful guy, called me out of the blue and said, I've written a movie for Cate Blanchett, and there's a character in it named Adam Gopnik. Would you consider playing him? At first I said, You know, I'm a writer and I'm a serious intellectual, and I'm concerned with, you know, with the crisis of incarceration and the national emergency of Trump. And I don't do things like that. And he said, that's such a shame, because Cate was so looking forward to working with you and will be so disappointed if you're not there. And I said, Hold on, let me call Mr. Gopnik to the phone. And off we went to Berlin to do it and we spent two days doing it. Cate, my friend Cate, yeah, actress Cate and I did this.
Elena Passarello: We'll talk about Mastery. Did-- were you working on the book project while you were working with Cate Blanchett?
Adam Gopnik: And truly, it was one of the things that drew me to do. It was because I thought, this will be really interesting to work with a master actor like Cate Blanchett. But what was most amazing about her was her professionalism, which I know sounds like a minimal way form of praise. What else would she be except professional? But by that I mean that she had found psychological motivation in every line of that very what could have been an extremely tedious, what may have been an extremely tedious scene. Otherwise she had found a way into it. And she always found a little variation on it, but never departed from the the path that she had chosen. And it was amazing. It was like playing tennis with somebody who's a master tennis player and keeps hitting the ball just over the net in a way that you can handle.
Elena Passarello: So she could be consistent take after take after take, take, take, which makes it easier to make a movie out of this thing that she's sort of pulling out of herself.
Adam Gopnik: Exactly. And they had to remind me that once I'd done an improv that was successful, they could keep it, but they couldn't. I couldn't change it. Shot after shot as we'd worked it over for two days. And in fact, the audience, though it was supposed to be in New York, was made entirely of Germans, Berliners, German speakers. And there had to be a German assistant director who would tell them when to laugh at my jokes. And I would hear him saying, you know, something going on. If Germany is the best place for a comedian to work, actually, because they have assistant directors who reinforce laughter at every turn.
Luke Burbank: You also in in this book decided you wanted to get your driver's license. And how old were you when you got in?
Adam Gopnik: I was 55 when I got my driver's license. Only in the. Thank you. Only in New York. Can you survive that long without knowing how to drive? But I believe that I am distinguished. I believe I am the only person who ever got his driver's license on the same day, the same afternoon as his 20 year old son. I went into the car and did the test. Then I got out. Luke got into the car and and did the test. We both passed. They passed him because he could drive. I think they passed me as a kind of experimental joke. What will happen if we allow this guy out on the streets and what, you know, what will be the final result? I'm sure they're still laughing about it at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Luke Burbank: You know what I actually I found so charming about that part of the book was that you, upon getting your license, called your dad?
Adam Gopnik: Yes, I did. Well, my dad, one of the themes of the book, if I can be serious for a moment, is that all of the things we learn to do are never about technique. They're always about another person. I have a chapter about learning to bake, and it's about my relationship with my mother. The chapter about learning to drive is about my relationship with my super competent father, and we all make ourselves in the shadow of our fathers, but also searching for sunlight that they don't eclipse. And my father was super competent, and that was one of the reasons I had never I had never learned to drive. I had spent my entire marriage in what was traditionally gendered as the woman's seat. You know, I was the one who was always saying to the kids, Just be quiet. Your mom needs to find the exit. You know, please, can we let's just keep it down for one second while your mom, your mom is focusing. And I ended up doing it. But I had a great teacher. You know, the book is very much about great teachers, and there was never a better teacher than Arturo Leone, who was my driving teacher, because he taught me the single most important thing in driving, which is the hand. And he said, whenever you're likely to be in any kind of conflict with another car, he said, just use the hand, just hold up, use the hands because the hand means everything. Said the hand means do, the hand means bless you. The hand means thank you. The hand means wait a moment. The hand means I'm exiting. The hand means I'm just use the hand at every time. And I have been using the hand ever since.
Luke Burbank: Have you brought it into other parts of your life?
Adam Gopnik: The hand will work for everything.
Luke Burbank: Going to the airport, wherever you are.
Adam Gopnik: Just like. Exactly.
Luke Burbank: It's sort of. You're right. I mean, it's it's you're not taking any more crap from this person, but you're also not giving them, like. Right. Something that's openly aggressive or hostile.
Adam Gopnik: They can interpret it as broadly as they want to. Right. And that's it. And Arturo's point, which is a good one, is that the reason the thing I learned about driving is that it's actually not that difficult, even if you're 55, when you start.
Luke Burbank: For the fact that he apparently picked you up in front of your house in Manhattan. Yeah. And was like, get in. And that was your beginning of driving.
Adam Gopnik: I was paralyzed with fear as I went up Madison Avenue with taxis honking and 16 wheelers surrounding me. But that's the thing about driving. It's not really that difficult. It's just incredibly dangerous. If you learn to do it when you're 15, you don't understand danger as a concept, right? Because you're immortal and nothing will ever happen to you if you're 50. Five. All you can think about is I've got three tons of metal at my command and no one is stopping me from plowing into the next car from running through the light. And it's it's terrifying. I mean, if they if anyone looked rationally at what driving is, we would never allow anyone to drive. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Adam Gopnik here on Livewire about his new book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. That's a typical reaction in Seattle when you mention the end of cars.
Adam Gopnik: Yes, uniquely.
Luke Burbank: Most of the people recumbent bike here. This is Live Wire from PR X. We're talking to the writer and essayist Adam Gopnik about his latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. We have to take a very short break, but when we return, Adam is going to tell us about conquering his biggest fear. Peeing on airplanes. It's actually a very real thing and a very serious thing for Adam. So stick around. I know you're actually going to want to hear this coming up on Live Wire. Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank. We're listening back to a conversation we recorded with the writer Adam Gopnik talking about his book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. We recorded this at Town Hall in Seattle. Check it out. This book really took an unexpected turn for me, sort of towards the end after, you know, you're talking about learning to drive and do all these things that you wanted to sort of master and a thing that you also decided you wanted to master or at least improve on was the ability to pee on an airplane.
Adam Gopnik: Yes. I suffer from a condition which I suspect somebody else in this room does. If the statistics are right, the extreme shy bladder, which is called paruresis, it has a medical name, paruresis. And it sounds like the most it is the most embarrassing condition you can possibly have. You can't urinate in public places and certainly not on planes. But it exacts an enormous price because if you think about it, if you're on a 7 or 8 hour flight and you're in extreme discomfort for most of the flight, and it's one of those things that's simultaneously trivial and embarrassing and very life dominating for anybody who suffers from it. It's one of those things like insomnia or claustrophobia or something that is only as trivial as it is unless you've got it. And I went to work with a cognitive behavioral therapist, wonderful guy named Dan Walker, who does nothing except treat guys with paruresis. I won't repeat how he describes his daily work.
Luke Burbank: In the book.
Adam Gopnik: It's in the book.
Luke Burbank: It's worth purchasing the book for.
Adam Gopnik: But that's what he does. Because the answer to paruresis, as with most phobias and that we suffer from, is just to practice your way out of it, just to practice your way out of it. And I set about doing that. The funny thing that happened is the Dan, bless him, a wonderful guy, is a fanatic bicyclist. He loves his like as here, loves biking through New York. And he encouraged me to get on my bike and follow him to all of these public bathrooms where we would practice urinating in public. Now, here's the difficult thing, right? It's actually not at all dangerous to pee in any public place. It is incredibly dangerous to bicycle in New York City. So he got me out of one phobia, which was painful, but not, in fact, dangerous by encouraging me to pursue an activity which is not painful but is insanely dangerous to be doing because there are monuments to fallen bicyclists all around New York, right? There are no statues to guys who couldn't pee on planes.
Luke Burbank: But I have to say, like, I really appreciated you being vulnerable enough to write about this, because I think and you sort of say this in the chapter, the term shy bladder. In a way, it diminishes it or makes it seem like, hey, why are you being so shy? But it's a it's on the same sort of continuum as a sort of a small panic attack, right?
Adam Gopnik: It is. It is a form of a small, small daily panic attack in 1 in 1 little room. You know, the truth of it is and this is something that I wanted to draw attention to, of course, it was difficult and embarrassing, and I was at some moment reluctant to do it. Everybody's got something. Every single person in this room and in any room you turn into is struggling with something. And that's part of our common humanity. We struggle with our phobias. We struggle with our anxieties and. It's sort of the reverse of the of the accomplishments I'm talking about. You build accomplishments in skills out of all of these tiny little steps. And then somehow in life we do the reverse. We build things that imprison us and limit us out of those tiny steps that we don't even remember from our childhood. And then we have to disassemble them so that we can enter more fully into into contact with other people. And I just think that that's the single most important thing you can learn. You build up the real work through little steps and you disassemble the bad work through the same kinds of little steps. That's what that's the task for all of us in life.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. The book is The Real Work: On The Mystery of Mastery, written by the star of the movie star, Adam Gopnik. And. That was Adam Gopnik right here on Live Wire. His latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery, is available now. You are listening to Live Wire. Before we get to our musical guest this week, a little preview of what we're doing on the show next week. We've got something for everyone, my friends. First up, it's the writer Noé Álvarez, discussing his book, Accordion Eulogies. It's such a fascinating piece of writing. It's kind of part travelog. It's part family history. It's part deep dive into the history of the accordion, which it turns out has like a really interesting back story. Also, I get to hold an accordion on stage, which felt like a lot of pressure. Honestly. Speaking of pressure packed situations, we are going to meet Jon. Jon is a tiny robot who will be performing stand up comedy for us. And for you, Jon is the invention of a professor named Naomi Fitter at Oregon State University. And I feel extremely confident when I say that this will be the first public radio performance from a robot stand up comic. You really, really want to tune in for next week's show. It will also include music and storytelling from our pal, the one the only John Craigie. This is Live Wire. Our musical guest this week has performed at Lollapalooza and Glastonbury and contributed to the Hamilton Mixtape and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary. On the writing side, she has been published in the New York Times as well as lots of other places. The L.A. Times says she sounds like no one else. All Songs Considered calls her a national treasure. And we are so proud to call her a friend of the program. This is Dessa, who joined us on stage at Town Hall back in March of 2024. Take a listen. I feel like. I feel like you may have gotten the loudest cheer. I mean, I feel like you've got some fans here.
Dessa: I feel like there's no better way to sit down a really pleasant evening than with an utterly demoralizing song.
Luke Burbank: Good. What's your... What song are we going to hear?
Dessa: This is a song called Crash.
Luke Burbank: All right. This is Dessa right here on Live Wire.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Dessa: [Dessa performs her song Crash]
Luke Burbank: That was beautiful. That was Dessa right here on Live Wire. Her album, Bury the Lead, is available now. All right. That's going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests, Adam Gopnik, Dessa and my mom, Susie Burbank. Make sure you do check out our new limited series podcast. It's called Damp January, coming out every Wednesday. This month, by the way, Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather De Michele is our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko Eben Hoffer is our technical director. Leona Kinderman is our assistant technical director and our House Sound is by D Neil Blake. Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our assistant editor and he makes this episode along with the fabulous Molly Pettit. Ashley Park is our production fellow and Andrea Castro-Martinez is our intern, our house band. You're wondering? Well, that's Sam Tucker, Ethan Fox, Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Our Damp January music is composed by Benjamin Cleek. Additional funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the state of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff this week. We'd like to thank member Kirsten K Klym of Portland, Oregon, and Tiffany Stevenson, also of Portland, Oregon. What are the chances? For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.

Ashley Park