David Byrne Rode His Bike to Our Office and Talked About Everything
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2018
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's show, host Jamilah King interviews the prolific artist, David Byrne about police shootings, Janelle Monáe, stage fright, “True Stories,” and fake news. Since the late-1970s, when Byrne formed Talking Heads, his career has been an endless stream of fascinating side projects, starting with his super-weird, super-cool Brian Eno collab, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts." He founded his own World Music label, and his obsession with the National Color Guard Championships led to a documentary, "Contemporary Color." In November, as his American Utopia tour wrapped up, Byrne re-released his 1986 film, True Stories, which explores the inner lives and outer quirks of residents of a fictional Texas town. “It’s like 60 Minutes on acid,” Byrne once said. The timing was brilliant—but coincidental, he admits: “I hadn’t looked at it in a while. And a lot of it does seem prescient and newly relevant. There’s a lot of stuff that seems oddly like, ‘Oh. I recognize this! It seemed like fiction in the movie, and now it’s fact.’” Our interview with Byrne kicks off a month-long special holiday series, featuring some of our very most interesting studio interviews.
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Mother Jones Podcast. I'm Jamila King in New York. |
| 0:05.0 | On today's show, it's that time of year. Happy holidays. As a turbulent and |
| 0:18.8 | trying 2018 finally winds down and you start thinking about what the new year will bring. |
| 0:26.0 | We've been storing up what we think are some of our best studio interviews for you. |
| 0:30.8 | To listen to is you hopefully get to spend some time with family and friends or |
| 0:35.4 | however you mark this time of year. The Mother Jones Podcast team is bringing you a series of |
| 0:41.6 | fascinating conversations |
| 0:43.6 | with artists, thought leaders, comedians, and activists, |
| 0:48.3 | and even one moral philosopher. |
| 0:50.8 | These are chats with folks who share their insights into the creative process, their |
| 0:55.2 | passions, their politics, and how to stay human. Today, former talking heads frontman, the ingenious prolific artist, David Byrne. Instantly recognizable, isn't it? |
| 1:15.0 | Instantly recognizable, isn't it? Let the water hold me out letting the days go fine. |
| 1:24.0 | Water throwing under the |
| 1:27.0 | into the blue up here. |
| 1:29.0 | After the mottie's gone, once in a lifetime. |
| 1:32.0 | Water flowing under. |
| 1:35.0 | Cycle killer in Kask you say, |
| 1:39.0 | baa, ba faa, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, |
| 1:41.0 | ba, ba, ba, ba, bah better run run run run away. |
| 1:47.0 | Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, |
| 1:52.0 | a yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you. There's just some music that becomes indistinguishable from a period of time in America. |
| 2:00.0 | So influential, it becomes timeless. |
... |
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