Susan Orlean on the Trail of Tonya Harding

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2017

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan was kneecapped in an attack by friends of her rival Tonya Harding, the scandal riveted the nation; twenty-four years later, it’s the subject of the new film “I, Tonya.” In 1994, the New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean went to Harding’s home town of Clackamas County, Oregon, to report a story that was published as “Figures in a Mall.” Orlean read from the piece and talked with David Remnick about the enduring relevance of the story at a time of rising class resentment in American culture. Plus, Nicholas Thompson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, explains the imminent vote by the F.C.C. that will likely end government regulations on net neutrality. Internet service providers hold near-monopolies in many areas. If the F.C.C. ends its net-neutrality regulations, what will I.S.P.s do to consumers?

Transcript

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0:00.0	These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.
0:09.0	And I think it's interesting to really try to unravel what his ties.
0:13.0	There's this sort of country city divide for their own convenient, and then it's not clear where it goes next.
0:20.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production
0:24.6	of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:29.1	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The case of the skater, Tanya
0:33.8	Harding, and the kneecapping of her Olympic rival, Nancy Kerrigan, is still like some
0:39.6	kind of catnip for that tabloidy part of your brain.
0:42.8	Kerrigan won a bronze medal at the last Olympics, and after winning two big competitions
0:47.3	last year, she was considered the favorite for a gold medal at the upcoming Olympics.
0:52.3	Doctors say there is a chance her knee could heal quickly
0:55.4	enough for her to compete at Lillehammer next month. Neither Perrigan nor her parents, though,
1:00.5	could understand how or why anyone would want to harm her.
1:04.2	Twenty-four years later, a new movie about Harding has just come out. I'll revisit the story
1:09.2	with Susan Orlean, who reported from Harding's hometown,
1:12.4	just as the scandal was breaking. That's later this hour. On December 14th, the internet, and
1:19.2	everything you do on it, is very likely to change. The commissioners of the FCC are going to vote
1:24.3	on regulations about net neutrality.
1:30.2	And if you think this doesn't concern you, you might want to listen.
1:36.6	Net neutrality means that your internet provider can't change your data speed to favor certain websites or charge you different rates for different content.
1:40.1	And this has been a principle since the founding of the internet.
1:43.5	But now over the objections of websites great and small, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, and Kickstarter,
	...

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