What to Do with the Problematic Past, Part I

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We draw meaning and comfort from traditions, but when the world changes, traditions can stop reflecting our values and cause us pain. This episode features three people struggling against traditions that have become problematic. The producer Ngofeen Mputubwele talks with Jeanna Kadlec, the author of “Heretic,” a memoir of leaving the evangelical church; and the actor Britton Smith, a leader of Broadway Advocacy Coalition, which seeks to make Broadway an equitable workplace for performers of color. “The fire was loud and the reckoning was very visible to everyone,” Smith tells Mputubwele. “The fire crumbled into ashes, and now the ashes are starting to settle.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.3	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:12.8	I'm GoFen Blu-Tuella.
0:15.1	I produce stories on this show about how we all use language and music and theology
0:22.6	and even law to order the world we live in.
0:27.7	Now, we all enter this world, make it.
0:34.9	Then, little by little, we get things.
0:39.0	Within seconds, we get swaddled and blankets, then wrapped in diapers, we get booties,
0:47.0	and then clothes.
0:48.6	All these things that were here before us are laid on top of us.
0:54.5	As we grow up, it's not just clothes on our backs anymore.
0:58.5	We're wrapped in beliefs, in practices, in traditions, in songs, in all the ways that
1:05.2	things are done, and have always been done.
1:09.8	So by the time we're adults, we may not even notice everything we've acquired, it's
1:13.9	wrapped so tight.
1:17.2	But then, at a certain point, something changes.
1:25.4	One or more of the clothes that were laid on you starts itching, chafing.
1:30.0	Something doesn't quite fit, right?
1:31.8	It's binding you, and you break out in hives.
1:35.5	That's where things get interesting.
1:40.1	In the spirit of starting a new year, this episode is all about that moment when you realize,
1:46.0	wait, I don't think I want to wear this anymore.
	...

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