Welcome to Rumble Strip and welcome to the third episode of Problems.

It's a series about Pam and Joel, two old friends who support each other through their problems, because no problem is too small to complain about.

This is a special episode featuring special celebrity guest Steve McFadden.

McFadden is an acclaimed performance artist from Chicago whose work is a natural extension

of the groundbreaking performance art that was happening in the 1970s,

where the artist's own flesh is the canvas.

McFadden's work is extreme and always dangerous.

He spoke with Pam this summer. Pam was conducting the interview on behalf of

her daughter, River, who was uncomfortable conducting the interview herself, which was

a problem. Here's Pam and Steve. Welcome.

Hi, it's Pam. I'm here with my friend Steve McFadden from Chicago.

He's a performance artist, an old friend of mine, and he agreed to be interviewed.

So River has an oral history assignment at school and the assignment was to interview a

grown-up in her life and the reality was that she just doesn't want to do it and she doesn't want to do it because it makes

her uncomfortable and I think that at her age I'm really sensitive to her feeling

comfortable in her own skin. How old is she?

She's, it's a ridiculous word to use, but she's gifted,

and she's not comfortable with the eye contact, with a grown-up, which I understand I remember feeling that way. And so I said to her listen, Steve's coming from out of town, I'll just do it for you. And then she, the way that she can incorporate this into the school work is that she will log the tape,

meaning she'll write the things down there said, and then I'll help her pull the segments that she finds,

not me, but what she finds most interesting.

So...

Is River afraid to talk to...

...