Back in May of 2021, I booked an interview I was really excited about.

You're doing a piece on fame or something?

Yeah, so we make this podcast called Decodering.

And every episode's about singing.

The interview was with Justine Bateman.

Justine Bateman is most famous for having played Mallory Keaton in the 1980s sitcom Family Ties,

in which she co-starred across from, among other people, Michael J. Fox.

I will not have my communication governed by one of your silly charts.

A 45-minute discussion about somebody's leg warmers.

You call that communication?

Who asked you to listen to my phone conversations anyway?

Mallory, the human eardrum is designed to make a

huge hit, the number two show in the country, at a time when network TV was pretty much all

there was to watch.

It made Justine really, really famous.

And that's what I wanted to talk to her about.

Being famous.

We were starting to work on an episode about the psychology of fame.

It was a pretty hazy idea at this point, but that's normal.

Sometimes the way it works is we have an idea and I start talking to people, hoping they can

help me sharpen that idea. Figure out what the idea really is. And Justine seemed perfect for that.

In the years since family ties, she's done some acting and directing. She got a degree

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