883: Call Your Parents
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WBC Chicago is American life. I'm out of class. So when I was 36 years old, the earth started this American life. My relationship with my parents was not the greatest. I've been working in NPR since I was 19, and they were not into it at all. Like they were not into public radio, they were not into me working in public radio. They saw public radio as this like sad little backwater when they were listening to all things considered morning edition, which were shows I was working at I remember they would complain like why are the stories so long? They especially did not like that I wasn't making much money. I did not make much money. They were both people raised in families where there was never any money and they really organized their lives to get themselves firmly into the middle class and they really did not understand why I didn't want to make money. And then also they've been a period in my early 20s when I was kind of judgy about certain choices that they were making and I heard their feelings and by my 30s I tried to make amends and fix that but it still wasn't quite right between us and really I felt pretty distant from them. They did not hide the fact that they disapproved of pretty much all my life choices and I didn't feel a lot of patience for that disapproval and I didn't have like a combative relationship with them but it's just distant. I would go a month or two all the time without talking to them and you know they were busy people but I am sure this hurt their feelings. We talked about it later in our lives and then I started a radio show. I have to say the single most surprising thing that happened in my life because of the radio show is that it fundamentally changed things between me and my parents. It healed things in a way I had not suspected could ever happen and what I'm going to do today is I'm going to play you four of those conversations that I had on the air with my parents. I'm going to talk about that change. A lot of the change happened I think because I was just including them in this big project I was doing. I would have them on the show and they were part of this project that meant so much to me. They were on the show five times in the first year that we were on the air. Really it wasn't even the first year it was just like the first eight months and we just got into a rhythm of that and they really liked it. They liked the attention from me. They liked being on the air. They each but especially my mom had a kind of performing, hammy side. I'll play you some of these. I think you'll be able to hear that and never ask them about this but I think they also like what a kind of like public sort of affirmation it was of them as parents like oh see we're a nice family like see they were good parents and it really changed things between us like my parents are both dead now and it still kind of force me as it's a lucky thing in my life that I just stumbled into and so what I'm going to do today is play some of their appearances on the radio show and maybe jump in just a little here and there to point out things that I am noticing and there's one that I'm going to play at the end this is a conversation with my mom that still honestly it makes my skin crawl today the way it did the day we recorded it. This whole episode today the way this came about is that about a year ago we started doing these bonus episodes that we put out in our podcast feed and so I'm constantly trying to think of behind the scenes stuff to share with listeners in these bonus episodes and that led me back to re-listen to these old interviews with my parents and then a couple weeks ago I put these four interviews into a bonus episode and honestly it came out so nicely that we thought like we should put this out as an actual regular episode of our show one that anybody could hear and so that's what you're hearing right now and where we want to start things this first excerpt is from an episode that we did called adult children this is the fourth time I had one of my parents on the radio show this is May 1996 which means that my mom in this recording is younger than I am right now she is 60 years old in this recording and I picked this one to begin because it's one that directly addresses the actual tensions between my parents and their three children though as you'll hear it addresses them in kind of a light way that does not get too deep or heavy but you can also feel that there's something real under the surface I think okay so I'm going to start this with the open of that episode where I tell a little story very brief story that kind of sets up the interview that then will happen with my mom here we go well when I picked up the
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