592. How to Make the Coolest Show on Broadway

0:00:00 (dramatic music)
0:00:02 When I first moved to New York City years ago,
0:00:06 I went to a lot of Broadway shows.
0:00:08 My girlfriend was an actress,
0:00:10 a lot of our friends were actors,
0:00:12 and we would scrounge tickets for cheap,
0:00:14 or more often we would second act the shows.
0:00:17 That’s when you just walk in the theater at intermission
0:00:21 and find an empty seat.
0:00:22 It’s harder to do that these days.
0:00:24 And then in my first real journalism job at New York Magazine,
0:00:29 I wrote about the theater a good bit,
0:00:31 and I was suddenly invited to become a voter
0:00:33 for the Tony Awards.
0:00:35 I thought this was an honor of some kind.
0:00:37 It turned out to be more of a punishment
0:00:40 because a Tony voter is supposed to see every show
0:00:44 that’s nominated for any category,
0:00:46 which means you see a lot of theater
0:00:48 that just isn’t very good.
0:00:51 I don’t mean to be cruel.
0:00:53 I know that everyone involved works really hard,
0:00:56 but making a great piece of theater,
0:00:59 great piece of anything, takes more than hard work.
0:01:02 It takes talent and luck and endurance,
0:01:07 and something that feels like alchemy.
0:01:10 Anyway, after seeing 20 or 30 Broadway shows a year,
0:01:15 many of them mediocre at best,
0:01:18 I pretty much gave up on it.
0:01:20 I also stopped following the business side of theater,
0:01:23 which I had found fascinating and weird.
0:01:27 But I moved on.
0:01:28 It just felt like in a world
0:01:30 of rapidly expanding entertainment options,
0:01:33 Broadway had been left behind.
0:01:35 Meanwhile, the tickets kept getting more expensive.
0:01:39 These days, the average Broadway ticket costs over $125.
0:01:43 The average household income
0:01:44 of a Broadway ticket buyer today is over $270,000.
0:01:49 This steep inflation was actually predicted
0:01:52 back in 1965 by a pair of economists,
0:01:56 William Baumol and William Bowen.
0:01:58 They published a paper called On the Performing Arts,
0:02:01 The Anatomy of Their Economic Problems.
0:02:05 Even back then, they saw that when an industry
0:02:08 is not able to use new technologies to raise productivity,
0:02:12 which is what most industries do,
0:02:15 then prices would spike
0:02:16 since the cost of labor continues to rise.
0:02:19 This phenomenon came to be called Baumol’s cost disease.
0:02:23 Today, it helps explain why sectors like healthcare
0:02:27 and education have also seen massive inflation.
0:02:31 There may be a lot of new technology in those fields,
0:02:33 but it doesn’t change the basic fact
0:02:35 that they require a lot of real people
0:02:38 spending a lot of time doing or making a thing,
0:02:42 and real people are expensive.
0:02:46 Can you think of an industry more vulnerable
0:02:48 to this cost disease than live theater?
0:02:52 For starters, you can’t scale it.
0:02:55 It takes dozens of people, sometimes hundreds,
0:02:58 working very hard for many hours every day
0:03:01 so that you and I can plop ourselves in a seat
0:03:04 and watch something that is essentially handmade,
0:03:07 and that’s not counting the thousands of hours
0:03:10 and dollars spent creating the show in the first place.
0:03:13 Writers, directors, producers, musicians,
0:03:16 lighting and costume and scenic designers,
0:03:19 then there are the staged readings and workshops,
0:03:22 rehearsals, sometimes fistfights.
0:03:25 But if all the elements line up,
0:03:28 the talent, the luck, the endurance, the alchemy,
0:03:32 it can also be something spectacular
0:03:35 and unique every single time.
0:03:37 A while back, we got an email from a listener.
0:03:41 We had just put out a series on the airline industry,
0:03:44 and this listener suggested something similar
0:03:46 on the theater industry.
0:03:48 So we started looking into it.
0:03:50 We did a bunch of interviews,
0:03:51 feeling around for a center of gravity, a hypothesis.
0:03:56 One obvious working title came to mind.
0:03:59 Is theater dead?
0:04:01 Or maybe this time is theater really dead?
0:04:05 Because the demise of theater has been predicted
0:04:07 for decades, if not longer.
0:04:10 It is, after all, one of our oldest art forms,
0:04:13 going back to at least the ancient Greeks.
0:04:15 It’s more than 2,500 years ago.
0:04:18 And who says everything has to last forever?
0:04:21 Maybe live theater had just outlived its time.
0:04:25 During those early interviews we did,
0:04:27 it became clear that the economics of theater
0:04:30 are still fascinating and weird.
0:04:33 For those of us in New York,
0:04:35 Broadway is just the visible tip of the iceberg.
0:04:39 Beneath it are many hundreds of professional,
0:04:42 not-for-profit theaters,
0:04:44 regionals and repertoires and university programs
0:04:47 and others, and their economics have become dire.
0:04:51 Even before the COVID shutdown, which hit them hard,
0:04:55 a lot of the nonprofits were in financial trouble.
0:04:58 Part of the problem is that they’ve always relied
0:05:00 on philanthropic donations,
0:05:01 and most younger donors just aren’t that interested
0:05:04 in the theater.
0:05:06 But this is a big problem for the commercial theater too,
0:05:08 for Broadway, because the nonprofits are the farm system
0:05:12 for Broadway shows.
0:05:14 Of the 26 new plays or musicals
0:05:17 that opened on Broadway this season,
0:05:19 23 of them came up through the farm system,
0:05:22 most in the U.S. and a few in the U.K.
0:05:25 As we were trying to figure out
0:05:27 how to make a radio series about all this,
0:05:30 I started going to see shows again, quite a few,
0:05:34 in New York and London and a couple other places.
0:05:38 I am sorry to report that once again,
0:05:40 most of them weren’t great.
0:05:42 I’d still get excited every time the lights went down
0:05:46 and you’d feel your heart beating faster.
0:05:49 What am I about to see?
0:05:51 Where will it take me?
0:05:52 Because there is a thing that can only happen in theater,
0:05:56 and I kept looking for it for something
0:05:58 that didn’t feel like it was trying to be a concert
0:06:01 or a sitcom or a theme park ride.
0:06:04 I went to see a musical version of Back to the Future.
0:06:07 The highlight was, toward the end,
0:06:09 the DeLorean flying out over the audience.
0:06:13 I didn’t actually see this happen
0:06:14 because I left at intermission,
0:06:16 but maybe someone else second acted the show
0:06:19 and got to see it from my seat.
0:06:21 I hope so.
0:06:22 I recognize everyone has their own taste.
0:06:24 I’m not trying to yuck anyone else’s yum.
0:06:27 I was just looking for something
0:06:29 that could only happen in a dark room
0:06:31 with real people on stage doing and saying things
0:06:36 that you won’t see or hear anywhere else,
0:06:38 or at least not as intensely and intelligently.
0:06:42 I guess I was looking for a jolt.
0:06:45 And finally, I found it.
0:06:48 And the person responsible for creating it
0:06:51 feels the way I do.
0:06:53 – I wanna feel electricity
0:06:55 and I wanna feel alive in a new way.
0:06:57 I wanna feel something unpeeling or unfolding
0:07:01 in a very surprising way when I go to the theater.
0:07:04 – His name is David Ajmi.
0:07:05 He’s been writing plays for many years.
0:07:08 This one, it’s called Stereophonic.
0:07:11 It took 11 years.
0:07:12 Stereophonic is about a rock band
0:07:14 in the 1970s recording an album.
0:07:17 It’s a show about music, but it’s not a musical.
0:07:20 It’s got the feel of a documentary,
0:07:22 but it’s more intimate and more interesting.
0:07:26 It might not seem theatrical, but it is.
0:07:29 It’s just not performative
0:07:31 in the way that so much theater is these days.
0:07:34 Anyway, I loved it.
0:07:36 And I wanted to tell you about it.
0:07:38 And I wanted to hear from the people who made it.
0:07:41 So we are still working on that series
0:07:44 about the economics of the theater industry.
0:07:46 That’ll come out later this year, I hope.
0:07:48 But Stereophonic is having a moment right now.
0:07:52 It is nominated for more Tony Awards
0:07:54 in any play in history.
0:07:56 It’s the show that rock stars are going to see
0:07:58 on their nights off.
0:08:00 So today on Freakonomics Radio,
0:08:02 the first of a two-part series, trust me, it’s worth it,
0:08:06 to find out how the alchemy happened.
0:08:09 We will hear from the creators.
0:08:11 – We’ve been told throughout this show
0:08:13 to have a bit of hostility to the audience.
0:08:15 – It’s not a very fashionable play.
0:08:17 It doesn’t have to do with identity politics.
0:08:19 – It’s about nothing and it’s about everything.
0:08:22 It’s about being in a room with creative people,
0:08:26 making something or at least trying to make something great.
0:08:29 – And we’ll hear from the producers.
0:08:32 – If you follow a formula for Broadway,
0:08:34 what I’ve found is the biggest successes on Broadway
0:08:37 tend to break that formula, and this is one of those.
0:08:41 – How to break a formula, break some hearts,
0:08:45 and in this case, break the bank.
0:08:48 The unlikely success of Stereophonic
0:08:51 and what it may say about the future of live theater,
0:08:54 starting now.
0:08:55 (upbeat music)
0:08:59 (clock ticking)
0:09:02 – This is Freakonomics Radio,
0:09:08 the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything
0:09:11 with your host, Stephen Dubner.
0:09:14 (audience cheering)
0:09:17 – Going to see a piece of live theater
0:09:25 takes time, effort, and money.
0:09:27 Sometimes a lot of money.
0:09:29 You could watch thousands of movies on Netflix
0:09:32 for the cost of one Broadway ticket.
0:09:35 So what does theater have going for it?
0:09:38 What does it still do that nothing else can?
0:09:41 Here again is the playwright, David Ajmi.
0:09:44 – It is live and the audience becomes an organism
0:09:49 and they are in collaboration with the actors.
0:09:52 So there’s something about that kind of liturgy,
0:09:55 the ritual of being in a space together,
0:09:58 creating a new thing every single night
0:10:00 because it is totally different every single night
0:10:03 and the energy and the electricity,
0:10:05 what makes something funny or moving one night
0:10:08 can be completely discrepant with what happens the next night.
0:10:12 That kind of knife edged liveness
0:10:15 is something that you only can really get in the theater
0:10:18 and it’s a temporal art form.
0:10:20 It takes place within a compressed amount of time.
0:10:23 There’s a beginning, middle, and end that you can feel
0:10:25 when I was writing my memoir,
0:10:27 I couldn’t get a sense of the shape because it was so big.
0:10:30 There were so many hundreds of pages that I was like,
0:10:32 oh my God, I can’t even get a sense of what this shape is.
0:10:35 In a play, it’s much more skeletal.
0:10:37 You can feel the shape of it.
0:10:39 You can trace the vertebrae of it when you’re writing it.
0:10:42 It’s much easier to wrap your head around it.
0:10:44 – Ajmi grew up in a fairly strange, often dysfunctional,
0:10:49 always loud family of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn.
0:10:53 In his memoir, Lot 6, published in 2020,
0:10:57 he writes about seeing Sweeney Todd
0:10:59 when he was eight years old.
0:11:00 Sweeney Todd is a musical by Stephen Sondheim
0:11:03 about a barber in Victorian England
0:11:05 who, having suffered a great injustice,
0:11:08 gets revenge by slaughtering people in his barber shop
0:11:13 and with the help of his confederate, Mrs. Lovett,
0:11:16 turning them into meat pies.
0:11:19 – That play was about a real outsider, a cultural outsider,
0:11:23 and it was my first time seeing something
0:11:24 where an outsider, an anti-hero,
0:11:27 was presented at the center of something.
0:11:30 The violence of his emotions and the injustice of the world
0:11:33 was being propounded in these crazy songs
0:11:36 and in this wild comedy,
0:11:37 and it was all kind of cross-hatched together.
0:11:40 That was very thrilling for me,
0:11:42 and it was showing me something about my psyche
0:11:44 that I didn’t have the language for,
0:11:46 ’cause I was too young to know how to speak about my life,
0:11:49 but he became like an avatar for me.
0:11:51 He scared me, and he scared me because he was in me already.
0:11:55 – You mean Sweeney, not Sondheim.
0:11:56 – Sweeney, and probably Sondheim,
0:11:59 ’cause I think Sweeney is a part of Sondheim.
0:12:01 I think all artists have that part to them,
0:12:03 the exile, the outsider, the person who doesn’t fit in
0:12:06 that nobody understands and needs to be seen
0:12:08 and needs to get revenge and needs all these things.
0:12:10 So I was very taken by that show,
0:12:13 but I couldn’t understand it, and I have a language for it,
0:12:15 and it was almost like I was knocked upside my head,
0:12:18 and I like theater that creates that experience
0:12:21 for the audience.
0:12:22 – Sweeney Todd was recently revived on Broadway
0:12:27 with Josh Groban playing Sweeney for a time
0:12:30 beside the endlessly entertaining Annaly Ashford
0:12:33 as Mrs. Love It.
0:12:35 And there’s another Sondheim revival on Broadway right now,
0:12:38 merrily we roll along,
0:12:39 which, like David Ajmi’s Stereophonic,
0:12:42 may win some Tony Awards.
0:12:45 But Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021,
0:12:48 is more of a theater person’s theater person.
0:12:51 He did win many awards, and some of his shows,
0:12:55 like Company and Into the Woods,
0:12:57 did have long Broadway runs,
0:12:59 but you have to go back to West Side Story and Gypsy
0:13:03 to find a time when Sondheim was considered mainstream.
0:13:06 When you look at the shows that make it to Broadway today,
0:13:09 especially the musicals,
0:13:11 most of them are targeted at tourists
0:13:13 who want a fun and familiar piece of entertainment.
0:13:17 Not that there’s anything wrong with that,
0:13:19 but people like Sondheim and now David Ajmi
0:13:23 have always offered something different,
0:13:25 something more original, more off-kilter
0:13:30 than the blander entertainments in the Hollywood adaptations.
0:13:34 But why isn’t there more of that?
0:13:37 – There’s no funding for it,
0:13:38 and people are discouraged to do it
0:13:40 because they wanna be produced,
0:13:41 so they think they have to make their work producible,
0:13:43 so they’re chasing trends,
0:13:44 and the artistic directors are trying to appease their boards,
0:13:47 and they’re trying to bring subscribers in,
0:13:49 and everyone wants something a little middle-brow
0:13:52 ’cause it’s easier to digest.
0:13:54 – What Ajmi is talking about here
0:13:55 are the nonprofit theaters that feed Broadway.
0:13:58 The theater is in places like Seattle and Chicago,
0:14:01 La Jolla and Hartford.
0:14:03 – A writer really has to risk being a splinter.
0:14:07 Someone who comes in and disrupts,
0:14:09 and you are not going to make money doing that, probably.
0:14:12 – Well, you might.
0:14:13 – Now I can.
0:14:14 – But like, this is lightning striking.
0:14:16 This is a rare occurrence.
0:14:18 – It is, and this play,
0:14:19 I didn’t try to do this to be commercial or anything like that.
0:14:22 I made it the same way I make everything else,
0:14:24 but it has music in it,
0:14:25 and I’m working with a brilliant composer
0:14:27 and people like music,
0:14:28 so it kind of abuts being a Broadway musical,
0:14:31 even though it has nothing to do with that.
0:14:32 – The brilliant composer he’s talking about
0:14:34 is Will Butler from Arcade Fire,
0:14:37 the Canadian band who’ve made some very good records
0:14:39 over the past couple of decades.
0:14:41 His brother, Win Butler, is the frontman.
0:14:43 He was recently accused of sexual misconduct
0:14:46 and bullying.
0:14:48 By then, Will Butler had already quit the band.
0:14:51 Some of the music he wrote for Stereophonic
0:14:54 sounds like Arcade Fire.
0:14:56 It is dark and bright at the same time somehow.
0:15:00 It is traditional in some key ways, but also modernist.
0:15:05 But the band that Stereophonic really reminds you of
0:15:08 is Fleetwood Mac.
0:15:10 The demographics are identical.
0:15:12 There is a British husband and wife
0:15:14 who were in the midst of breaking up
0:15:16 as were Christine and John McVeigh
0:15:18 when Fleetwood Mac recorded their blockbuster record rumors.
0:15:21 There is an American couple,
0:15:23 very much like Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks,
0:15:26 who are also in the middle of breaking up.
0:15:28 Their names are Peter and Diana in the play.
0:15:32 If you’re looking for further Fleetwood Mac parallels,
0:15:34 both Lindsay Buckingham and the Peter character
0:15:37 happen to have a brother who swims in the Olympics.
0:15:41 And the fifth member of the Stereophonic band
0:15:44 is a drummer who is also British, as was Mick Fleetwood.
0:15:48 The entire play, more than three hours long,
0:15:51 happens inside a recording studio.
0:15:53 The band is making their second record.
0:15:55 They’re first at a slow start, but now it is caught fire
0:15:59 and they are turning into big rock stars.
0:16:02 Although that’s all happening outside the studio.
0:16:04 We feel it, but we never see it.
0:16:07 We also feel the sudden pressure of huge expectations.
0:16:12 There are also two recording engineers in the play.
0:16:15 So seven people hermetically sealed on this stage
0:16:20 of fishbowl of ambition and talent
0:16:24 and exhaustion and frustration.
0:16:26 It is both thrilling and painful
0:16:29 to so thoroughly eavesdrop on them.
0:16:32 David Ajmi is in his early fifties
0:16:35 and he had written several plays before this one,
0:16:37 but Stereophonic will end up being more commercially successful
0:16:40 than the rest of them put together, maybe times 10.
0:16:44 I asked him where the inspiration
0:16:46 for Stereophonic came from.
0:16:49 He said it was from listening
0:16:50 to a Led Zeppelin recording one day.
0:16:53 – I was on a plane ride and I was going to a conference,
0:16:56 a theater conference and I was listening to In-Flight Radio
0:16:59 and that song, “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,”
0:17:01 which is the cover they did, came on.
0:17:04 – That song was written in the 1950s
0:17:06 by the folk singer Ann Burdon.
0:17:08 It was first recorded by Joan Baez
0:17:10 before Led Zeppelin covered it.
0:17:12 – My brother, when I was a really little kid,
0:17:14 my brother’s much older than me.
0:17:16 He used to play that over and over on his guitar
0:17:18 when he was teaching himself how to play guitar.
0:17:20 So I knew that song just from those chords,
0:17:24 but then I started listening to the vocals
0:17:27 and it’s just so crazy and so volatile
0:17:30 and so emotionally intense.
0:17:33 ♪ I’ve got the power ♪
0:17:36 There’s something about it was just so transfixing to me.
0:17:39 ♪ I’ve got the power ♪
0:17:41 – And I just imagined the studio.
0:17:43 I was trying to visualize it
0:17:44 ’cause you’re trapped on a plane, what are you gonna do?
0:17:47 It activates the imagination and then I sort of went,
0:17:49 “Oh, wait a minute, what if that’s the set for a play?”
0:17:53 And I just immediately knew
0:17:54 that I was gonna write this play and I thought,
0:17:56 “But how am I gonna write this play?
0:17:58 “It’s not so interesting.
0:17:59 “They’re just gonna record an album, what is it?”
0:18:02 And so I just sort of let myself not know
0:18:04 for a really long time how I was gonna do it,
0:18:07 but I just knew sometimes you just kind of know.
0:18:09 – I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard anybody
0:18:12 have the genesis of a great piece of art
0:18:14 come from in-flight radio.
0:18:16 – Welcome to me.
0:18:19 – From that day until today is about how many years?
0:18:23 – That was 11 years ago.
0:18:24 – Were you working on it during that time
0:18:27 or did you just let it germinate for a while in your mind?
0:18:30 – I let it germinate for a while.
0:18:31 I was doing other things.
0:18:32 I was supposed to write my book.
0:18:33 I was late with my book and I had another project
0:18:35 that I was commissioned to do.
0:18:36 And so I was doing this like on the side.
0:18:39 And the way that I decided to make it was,
0:18:41 I just decided to invite a director to come on
0:18:45 and invite my composer and invite the music director
0:18:48 and invite a team.
0:18:50 Before I had a word on page, I just said,
0:18:52 “Would you guys all just commit to doing this with me?”
0:18:55 It became almost like this weird totemic force,
0:18:58 this kind of weird–
0:19:00 – Well, you formed a band.
0:19:02 – I formed a band and we are a band.
0:19:04 It feels like it.
0:19:05 – Had you been in a band before?
0:19:07 – Never ever.
0:19:09 I knew I wanted to work with Arcade Fire
0:19:10 from the first time I heard the funeral album.
0:19:13 And then when I thought about this project
0:19:14 and just the feeling of the music that I wanted,
0:19:17 I just thought of them.
0:19:18 So I had a friend who knew the creative director
0:19:21 of Arcade Fire, so we reached out to Arcade Fire
0:19:23 and Will was the only one who came back
0:19:25 and said, “I’ll meet with you.”
0:19:26 – Where was he living then?
0:19:27 – He was living in Montreal right before that,
0:19:29 but he’d just moved to New York.
0:19:30 So it was kind of perfect timing.
0:19:32 We met and we talked about like Herman Melville
0:19:35 and Moby Dick for a really long time.
0:19:37 Will’s a polymath and so he’s not a normal rocker.
0:19:40 He’s really smart, really smart.
0:19:42 He knows about everything.
0:19:44 And so I just was like, “This guy’s cool
0:19:46 and he’s a unicorn.”
0:19:47 I could tell right away he’s adaptable.
0:19:50 He can do different kinds of things.
0:19:51 And I said, “This isn’t gonna be the kind of thing
0:19:54 where you come in with a song and then we put the song on.
0:19:56 Like we have to go through iterations.
0:19:57 It has to be right for this play.
0:19:59 It has to fit exactly into what I’m doing.
0:20:01 Are you open to that?”
0:20:02 And he said, “Absolutely.”
0:20:03 He was super cool about it.
0:20:05 And so he agreed to do it in 2014.
0:20:07 And then I don’t think it was until 2018
0:20:10 that I had a draft that I could show him.
0:20:13 And we read it together.
0:20:15 Will played some parts.
0:20:16 I played parts Daniel and my music director.
0:20:19 Yeah, my director and the music director.
0:20:21 We all kind of read it together a couple of times.
0:20:23 And then he went home and he read it.
0:20:25 And then he like built out songs in character.
0:20:28 – Did he build out many of the songs
0:20:30 right in that first round of writing
0:20:31 or did it come slowly?
0:20:33 – No, he had a couple and then a few that we didn’t use.
0:20:37 And it went on like that for a while.
0:20:39 Like Masquerade didn’t have a bridge.
0:20:40 And I was like, “Dude, that song needs a bridge.
0:20:43 Can we do this and that?”
0:20:44 I’d say I want it to be a little more heterogeneous.
0:20:46 I don’t want it to just have one feeling to it.
0:20:49 I want it to switch and turn more.
0:20:50 And I would like dramaturg the songs.
0:20:52 He let me do it ’cause he was cool like that.
0:20:55 And when he didn’t want to,
0:20:56 he wouldn’t and say, “Okay, I’ll shut up.”
0:20:59 ♪ I might take you to the Masquerade ♪
0:21:03 ♪ Soul is sold on the money paid ♪
0:21:06 – I was researching this play by, I mean, I read books,
0:21:09 but I also watched a ton of documentaries.
0:21:11 – What were some of the docs
0:21:12 and what were some of the bands that you watched and liked?
0:21:15 – So many.
0:21:16 – I mean, I’m guessing there was a Fleetwood Mac doc.
0:21:18 – There were definitely Fleetwood Mac docs.
0:21:20 They have one, I think it’s from when they were making Tusk
0:21:22 that has a lot of great, very private feeling stuff in it.
0:21:26 The Metallica documentary, some kind of monster.
0:21:30 There was something about this documentary style
0:21:32 and feeling that I myself was watching eavesdropping
0:21:36 on these people in this very private recording process
0:21:38 because nobody gets led into these studios.
0:21:41 So the fact that I was watching them
0:21:43 and hearing these Soto Votre conversations
0:21:46 and seeing these private moments.
0:21:48 – Yeah, but here’s what I like about your show more
0:21:51 than those docs, which I also like,
0:21:53 but when you are a musician in a studio
0:21:55 and there’s a camera, you know, it’s there.
0:21:58 You may act as if it’s not
0:21:59 and you might forget about it once in a while,
0:22:01 but generally you will behave in a way that burnishes
0:22:05 in your mind your reputation at that moment
0:22:08 because you understand you’re being observed.
0:22:11 So it might look like real life, but it’s not really.
0:22:14 Whereas in your fictional version,
0:22:17 it feels more like nonfiction
0:22:19 because you don’t have those constraints.
0:22:21 It feels like we’re eavesdropping for real.
0:22:24 Well, thank you for saying that.
0:22:25 That’s a real compliment to us.
0:22:27 Whether it’s an illusion or not,
0:22:29 that was what was so seductive to me
0:22:30 about those documentaries.
0:22:32 And so when I was composing the play
0:22:36 and I wanted to use a different style
0:22:38 and realism for me as a style,
0:22:40 I started to sort of borrow from that.
0:22:42 And that’s why there’s so much overlapping dialogue
0:22:44 in that first scene.
0:22:44 I really wanted people to understand like,
0:22:47 no, you’re not gonna get it all.
0:22:48 This is not for you.
0:22:50 You have to lean in from the beginning
0:22:52 and know you’re gonna miss stuff
0:22:53 because you’re eavesdropping.
0:22:55 So that creates the kind of lattice work
0:22:58 through which you peek in and watch the play
0:23:00 from the very first scene.
0:23:01 That was very deliberately constructed.
0:23:03 – Can you check to see if the mic pre is on?
0:23:07 – My head is like a brick.
0:23:09 – It’s on?
0:23:10 – Grab some aspirin.
0:23:11 – You don’t need an aspirin.
0:23:11 I need to get like one hour of sleep.
0:23:13 This is insane.
0:23:14 Did you sleep through that?
0:23:15 – Look at my eyes.
0:23:17 – Oh, their blood shot.
0:23:21 – So I used to play music and record music.
0:23:23 And of many things I love about your play,
0:23:25 one is simply how well the playing of music is rendered.
0:23:29 It just feels real and thrilling and painful
0:23:33 and all those things you feel when you’re in a band.
0:23:36 But I also loved how well you rendered the recording process,
0:23:39 which is a totally different animal.
0:23:41 So can you talk about how you got to that?
0:23:44 – So much of it was me faking stuff early on.
0:23:47 I would look at things in documentaries
0:23:49 and they’d say these phrases and I go,
0:23:50 “Ooh, that sounds cool.”
0:23:51 And I’d write it down.
0:23:52 Just every time a phrase sounded like something cool
0:23:55 that I would believe sounded like a real production thing,
0:23:58 I would write it down.
0:23:59 – Like your snare is rattling a little bit.
0:24:00 – Well, yeah, and that I got,
0:24:02 I knew I wanted to be a problem with the drum.
0:24:05 And I didn’t know what kind of problem
0:24:07 would happen with the drum.
0:24:08 So I said to my sound guy, Brian Rumory, who’s brilliant,
0:24:12 what kind of problem would happen
0:24:13 that would cause this drummer to melt down?
0:24:16 And what would he do to fix it?
0:24:17 And then how could that go wrong?
0:24:19 I wanted to construct a scene where he goes down a black hole
0:24:22 as so Ryan really talked me through it for about an hour.
0:24:25 That’s how I did that scene.
0:24:26 – Now the snares are ringing again.
0:24:31 – I didn’t hear it that time.
0:24:33 Did you hear it?
0:24:33 – No.
0:24:34 – I didn’t hear it that time.
0:24:35 – I wanted to fix it and it keeps making everything worse.
0:24:38 You know, I wish we hadn’t touched it.
0:24:39 I really do.
0:24:40 I really do.
0:24:41 I wish we just left it alone.
0:24:42 – Sorry, man.
0:24:43 – A drum is a piece of wood.
0:24:48 It’s ephemeral.
0:24:49 You can’t keep changing things.
0:24:51 Now we’ve changed everything and I can’t change it back.
0:24:53 – Stereophonic is about a band.
0:24:58 And it’s about a band early on in its career
0:25:01 that’s finding fame.
0:25:02 They all happen to love each other
0:25:05 and have relationships with one another.
0:25:07 I’m Sonia Friedman and I’m a theater producer.
0:25:11 – Friedman, based in London, is one of the most prolific
0:25:14 theatrical producers in recent history.
0:25:16 At the moment, she has more than a dozen shows
0:25:19 in production on the West End in London,
0:25:21 as well as on Broadway and in several other countries.
0:25:24 Her shows have won more than 60 Olivier Awards in Britain
0:25:28 and as of this recording, 39 Tony Awards.
0:25:32 I asked Friedman why she’d been attracted to Stereophonic.
0:25:36 – We watched them through the course of the making of
0:25:40 an album which will end up being a great album
0:25:44 for the ages, but they don’t know that at the time.
0:25:47 Watch them battle through creativity,
0:25:50 trying to find their own individual voices,
0:25:52 but also be as one and crash through their relationships
0:25:58 and see them just battling through.
0:26:01 And the thing is that what David the author and Daniel,
0:26:04 the director have done is they’ve been incredibly bold
0:26:07 with this show because there’s this rule in New York.
0:26:12 You know, there’s this rule in New York.
0:26:13 You can’t have shows running over a particular length of time
0:26:17 and you know, it’s got to have stars in it.
0:26:20 If you follow a formula for Broadway,
0:26:23 actually what I’ve found is the biggest successes
0:26:25 on Broadway tend to break that formula.
0:26:28 And this is one of those.
0:26:29 It has to run at three hours plus because you have to get
0:26:34 this sense of this album taking forever to make.
0:26:39 And you never, ever, ever feel the length.
0:26:41 You want to be with this group forever.
0:26:43 And of course, the music is sublime
0:26:47 and they’re really brilliant with the way they tease the music.
0:26:50 They don’t give it to you easily.
0:26:52 You have to wait, you have to wait.
0:26:54 But there’s this moment of absolute ecstasy
0:26:57 when, you know, 45, 50 minutes in, you hear it and you go,
0:27:00 “Oh God, that’s what they’re making.”
0:27:02 Oh wow.
0:27:04 ♪ Never wakes you in the morning ♪
0:27:10 ♪ Whatever keeps you up at night ♪
0:27:14 And it sort of begins to make sense as to why this group
0:27:18 who seem at each other’s throats,
0:27:20 and then they get in the room together and they make magic.
0:27:24 And that’s art. That’s art.
0:27:25 The band in Stereophonic is never named.
0:27:32 The actors do have a pet name for the band,
0:27:34 but I promised not to tell.
0:27:36 They are led by Peter, who writes, sings, plays guitar,
0:27:40 and winds up imposing his will on everyone else.
0:27:44 We hear about Peter before we see him.
0:27:46 Here are Simon, the drummer, and Diana, who writes and sings.
0:27:51 She’s also Peter’s girlfriend.
0:27:53 – The last album took three weeks.
0:27:55 So this can’t take more than another two, three weeks tops.
0:27:57 We can make it two more weeks.
0:27:59 – Peter said last night he was ready to snap,
0:28:01 and he wanted to confront Reg and I said, “No,
0:28:03 don’t escalate things.”
0:28:04 – It was good you did that.
0:28:05 – “And now you have to do your part.”
0:28:07 – All of the characters are interesting
0:28:11 and at least occasionally charming,
0:28:13 except for Peter, who doesn’t do charm.
0:28:17 – He’s got a very, very difficult role,
0:28:20 because how I see him, that’s maybe because I’m a producer,
0:28:24 I see him trying desperately to wrestle this group
0:28:29 and keep this group together, and he has a vision,
0:28:33 and maybe he’s got such a strong vision
0:28:37 that he’s not seeing what’s going on around him.
0:28:39 – Peter is one of the lead vocalists in the band.
0:28:43 He’s the lead guitarist of the band
0:28:46 and becomes the producer of the album as the show goes on.
0:28:50 I’m Tom Fasinka and I’m an actor.
0:28:54 – How would you describe the Peter character emotionally?
0:28:58 – He’s a control freak, but there’s reasons why.
0:29:02 He’s a guy that is a survivor in a lot of aspects.
0:29:06 I won’t go into all the backstory of his father
0:29:09 and all that stuff, ’cause I think that’s sort of for me.
0:29:12 – Some of it’s in the writing.
0:29:13 – Some of it’s in the writing,
0:29:14 but I think the emotional landscape is for me.
0:29:18 I think he’s been taught a certain amount of savagery.
0:29:22 He’s had to develop a work ethic that can be harmful
0:29:27 to himself and to others, but can also produce great results.
0:29:31 – What does it feel like to play this character?
0:29:33 Forget about the endurance requirements of a three hour show.
0:29:37 I mean, you’re on stage, everyone’s on stage a lot,
0:29:40 but what’s the experience feel like?
0:29:43 – This show has been an incredible experience
0:29:47 and a challenging one in the fact
0:29:49 that my character is not the most palatable person in the room.
0:29:53 So, you know, I’ve been heckled.
0:29:56 There’s loud groans of disapproval.
0:29:59 I always used to say that,
0:30:01 oh, I’m an actor who doesn’t care if he’s liked or not.
0:30:03 That’s not what an artist cares about.
0:30:06 But I think deep down, as human beings,
0:30:08 we all care if we’re liked even a little bit.
0:30:11 So I think the universe brought this play into my life
0:30:14 to sort of be like, yeah, prove it.
0:30:16 – What’s a line in Stereophonic that you know
0:30:20 that every night you say it,
0:30:21 you’re going to become the objective scorn?
0:30:25 – No, she asks me, can I speak with you privately?
0:30:29 Can I say no?
0:30:31 And before that, I say,
0:30:33 then don’t get in your own head, be a professional.
0:30:36 So those are two guaranteed groans from the audience.
0:30:41 – I think you romanticize who you are a little bit.
0:30:45 You’re looking out for yourself just as much as I do.
0:30:48 You’re very ambitious.
0:30:49 – I am not ambitious.
0:30:51 Don’t sling mud at me.
0:30:52 – You want to use me to arrange a song,
0:30:53 but then when I’m telling you it’s too long
0:30:55 or to cut something, you have no interest.
0:30:56 And then you take it as criticism.
0:30:58 Then don’t ask me to arrange a song.
0:30:59 – Because you can be very aggressive, Peter.
0:31:01 – How am I?
0:31:01 – I don’t like to be forced.
0:31:02 Okay?
0:31:03 He says some pretty out of pocket stuff.
0:31:07 I’m Sarah Pigeon, I’m an actor
0:31:11 and I’m currently in Stereophonic playing Diana.
0:31:14 He also says, if I don’t force you to have a baby,
0:31:18 then it’s never going to happen.
0:31:19 It’s like, oh, you don’t say that.
0:31:22 – Is it hard for you as a female actor in 2024
0:31:25 to get into that mode in 1976 and 1977
0:31:29 where those things were said by a man
0:31:32 and not respond the way you might want to respond in 2024?
0:31:35 – Yeah, I think that was one of the more difficult hurdles
0:31:39 that I had to get over.
0:31:40 I was judging Diana a lot at the beginning
0:31:43 for staying in this relationship.
0:31:45 And I was bringing my 2024 self to it.
0:31:49 Like a guy just should not talk to you that way.
0:31:51 And how have you stayed in it for this long?
0:31:53 But she doesn’t know what feminism is.
0:31:55 She doesn’t know who Gloria Steinem is.
0:31:57 She knows she has these feelings.
0:32:00 It’s a time in I think rock history
0:32:02 where there’s no one to look to for direction and guidance.
0:32:06 I don’t think that there’s this feeling
0:32:07 that she can go off on her own.
0:32:09 I don’t even think it crosses her mind
0:32:10 until she’s offered a solo album.
0:32:12 I think her understanding of her artistry
0:32:15 and songwriting is so tied to Peter’s orchestration of it
0:32:20 and his editing and his advice.
0:32:23 – Here is David Ajmi again,
0:32:25 talking about the Peter character.
0:32:27 – That character is very similar to me in a lot of ways.
0:32:30 He’s very damaged and that’s a lot of my damage.
0:32:34 It’s all kind of this weird cross-hatching,
0:32:36 but in the end it’s a self portrait.
0:32:38 And I think all great art has to be that.
0:32:39 You have to put skin in the game.
0:32:40 You can’t just write about those people over there.
0:32:44 They have to be inside of you in some way for it to really work.
0:32:47 – What I love about Peter,
0:32:48 even though he’s sort of odious sometimes,
0:32:51 is that he sets the bar really high
0:32:54 and that pisses everyone off,
0:32:56 but they’re also grateful for it in the end.
0:32:59 How much of that is you?
0:33:01 – That’s me, it’s all me.
0:33:02 – Remind me not to collaborate with you.
0:33:05 – I just maintain and I’ve said it over and over
0:33:07 to the cast ’cause I’m a big staunch defender of Peter,
0:33:10 even though I know he’s got a lot of problems.
0:33:13 Peter’s biggest flaw is that he has no bedside manner.
0:33:15 He doesn’t understand how to be politic
0:33:18 about offering his criticism and he has bad timing.
0:33:21 If he just could be more gracious and more kind of tricky
0:33:24 about how to deliver these criticisms
0:33:26 and he could lie better, but he’s not a liar.
0:33:29 He’s really, really blunt.
0:33:31 And it’s part of an ethos that makes him great,
0:33:35 even though it’s really annoying
0:33:36 and it’s hard to work with somebody
0:33:38 who doesn’t attend in a sensitive way to your feelings.
0:33:42 When this process is so, everything is so charged
0:33:45 and heightened, you need to be sensitive to people.
0:33:48 You can’t just deliver these like sledgehammer criticisms,
0:33:52 but he’s right a lot of the time.
0:33:53 And in the play, you see how he’s right.
0:33:56 And it drives everybody crazy that he’s right,
0:33:58 but I don’t judge my characters.
0:34:00 I think Peter is sexist because he grew up
0:34:03 in a sexist culture and it was 1976.
0:34:06 I don’t think he’s a bad guy.
0:34:08 I think he’s living in a kind of weird soup of the time.
0:34:14 It was sort of a tight wire act
0:34:15 because I really don’t want people to turn against Peter.
0:34:19 They do, no matter what I do.
0:34:20 I mean, they do and they don’t like him, but I love him.
0:34:25 – Were you tempted to rewrite to make him
0:34:27 a little bit more likable at least in moments?
0:34:29 – No, Tom Pysenko who plays Peter is really adamant
0:34:33 that we stay true to the character.
0:34:36 He is a hardcore man.
0:34:37 I just love that guy because it comes from an ethical spine.
0:34:41 He’s like, my job is not to make you love him.
0:34:43 My job is to show you who this person is
0:34:47 and to show him in as much dimensionality as I can.
0:34:51 And he does that beautifully.
0:34:53 – I love that he said I have an ethical spine
0:34:57 because I think I do as an artist.
0:34:59 Like I have strong artistic values and I don’t care
0:35:04 ’cause it’s not me.
0:35:08 I don’t know if it’s like because we live in the age
0:35:10 of social media or we live in the age of reality television,
0:35:13 people just assume that, oh, well,
0:35:16 you must be like your character and it gets to you.
0:35:19 Off-Broadway, someone was like, I hated you or I hate you.
0:35:23 And I was like, you hate me?
0:35:24 That’s insane.
0:35:26 It’s not my job to make people like Peter.
0:35:28 It’s my job to make people see Peter
0:35:31 and be in the room with him, which a lot of people don’t like.
0:35:34 And maybe it’s because I’m a bit of a contrarian
0:35:38 or I’m a bit of like a, I don’t know.
0:35:40 I don’t even know what the right word is,
0:35:42 rebel or something.
0:35:43 But part of me loves it, part of me loves it
0:35:47 because it’s like you are throwing all your manners
0:35:50 out the window as an audience member to jeer at me.
0:35:54 I’m triggering something in you that’s real.
0:35:56 – We’ve been told throughout this show
0:36:00 to have a bit of hostility to the audience.
0:36:02 – By whom? Your director?
0:36:03 – Our director, yeah, Daniel Ockett.
0:36:05 There’s a lot of laughs in the show
0:36:07 and there’s moments and beats and pauses
0:36:09 and there’s a lot of musicality outside of the music
0:36:12 just in David’s writing.
0:36:13 The hostility is in the sense of not allowing
0:36:17 the audience’s reaction to throw us off
0:36:20 the rhythm and tempo that we’re exploring in the show.
0:36:23 – Coming up after the break,
0:36:27 how did that rhythm and tempo, those beats and pauses
0:36:32 turn into such a big hit?
0:36:35 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:36:36 This is Freakin’omics Radio.
0:36:37 We’ll be right back.
0:36:39 (upbeat music)
0:36:42 – David Ajmi was originally given a commission
0:36:49 to write Stereophonic by two nonprofit theater companies,
0:36:53 second stage in New York
0:36:55 and center theater group in Los Angeles.
0:36:58 – It was a co-commission from the two of them.
0:36:59 So they paid me for the commission,
0:37:01 but I mean over the course of 10 years,
0:37:03 if you divided what I got paid,
0:37:05 it’s, you know, you get more working at McDonald’s.
0:37:07 – Would you get paid for the commission?
0:37:09 – I think I got something like 30 grand.
0:37:11 – What did you do with all that money over those 10 years?
0:37:13 – I survived.
0:37:14 I mean, I paid my credit card bills.
0:37:15 This is what you have to do.
0:37:17 – It does strike me that committing to a life
0:37:19 in the theater, as you did pretty early,
0:37:22 and as many people still do,
0:37:24 is essentially a commitment to poverty and struggle as well.
0:37:29 – Oh yeah.
0:37:30 – I mean, what’s happening now with you is an anomaly
0:37:32 and it’s a great break and I’m so, so happy for you.
0:37:36 But can you just talk about,
0:37:37 not only for all the other writers,
0:37:39 but the performers and everybody else
0:37:41 that goes into making these things that, you know,
0:37:44 we just show up and sit down in the seat.
0:37:47 Can you just talk about what that kind of commitment
0:37:49 is like to a life like that?
0:37:51 – Thank you for asking that question.
0:37:53 Look, I was able to write this play
0:37:55 because I had patrons essentially.
0:37:58 There were two architects, very wonderful,
0:38:00 well-known architects living in the Hollywood Hills,
0:38:03 who had a floor of their home and I hooked up with them
0:38:05 and they let me live in that floor.
0:38:07 I lived there for about seven years,
0:38:09 gratis, and I did a little bit of TV work,
0:38:12 but basically not that much.
0:38:14 That’s how this play was written
0:38:16 because of their generosity.
0:38:17 – There are people who argue
0:38:20 that the government should just support the arts more.
0:38:23 They argue there’s a compelling rationale for that,
0:38:26 et cetera, and many other countries,
0:38:27 especially in Europe, do that.
0:38:28 What’s your position there?
0:38:29 – Yes, I absolutely agree with that.
0:38:31 I think it’s obscene that we don’t fund our artists.
0:38:34 It’s the hallmark of a civilized society.
0:38:36 Paula Vogel told me that in 1975,
0:38:39 she got a grant from the NEA,
0:38:40 which at that point funded individual artists
0:38:43 before Trent Lott and the moral majority
0:38:44 got involved in the ’90s.
0:38:46 And she got $25,000,
0:38:47 which was enough to live on for a year at that point,
0:38:50 and she was able to kickstart her career.
0:38:52 I was fortunate ’cause I ended up getting private grants.
0:38:55 Like I was at one point locked in a job
0:38:58 as a paralegal in “30 Rock,”
0:39:00 and I was working all day and I had no time to write.
0:39:03 I was like, “I’m never gonna be able to be a writer.”
0:39:06 I don’t know how to eat cattle living.
0:39:07 And I got this miraculous call
0:39:10 saying that I won a grant for $25,000 in 2003, I think it was.
0:39:14 And I thought, “Well, I can really make this last
0:39:16 if I move to Germany.”
0:39:16 So I moved to Berlin.
0:39:18 I lived in Prince Lauerberg,
0:39:19 which is a gorgeous neighborhood.
0:39:20 It’s like the West Village.
0:39:22 My rent was $200 a month.
0:39:23 That’s how I generated the beginning
0:39:26 of my body of work that made my name.
0:39:28 – Ajmi wrote plays that ran off-Broadway
0:39:33 at regional theaters, at the Royal Court Theater in London.
0:39:37 It was a relatively successful career for a playwright.
0:39:41 So what was his thinking before writing “Stereophonic”?
0:39:46 – Ironically, I was sort of planning
0:39:47 to quit plays altogether.
0:39:50 I had a very bad collaboration,
0:39:52 actually a really torturous collaboration.
0:39:56 I made no money from the production
0:39:57 and I was so beaten up.
0:39:58 I thought, “I’m not gonna do this anymore.”
0:39:59 – What was that, if you don’t mind me asking?
0:40:01 – That was a play that went sideways.
0:40:03 I’m not gonna talk about too much,
0:40:04 but it was a play about the composer, Oskar Levant.
0:40:06 So it was another play about music,
0:40:07 but a very different kind of play.
0:40:08 – And the producers were regular, standard,
0:40:11 Broadway commercial producers who liked your stuff?
0:40:13 – Yes, but they came with an actor attached.
0:40:16 We talked a little bit and I came up with this idea
0:40:19 and thought, “Oh, what about Oskar Levant?”
0:40:21 Then I said, “Okay, I’ll write this play.”
0:40:23 But you know, they had deadlines,
0:40:25 all you have to do by this time and stuff.
0:40:26 It was a little more stringent
0:40:27 because it was a commercial theater apparatus.
0:40:29 – So this was a commercial production
0:40:31 from the outset, correct?
0:40:32 – Yes.
0:40:33 – What kind of house or theater
0:40:34 would it have gone into initially if it had worked out?
0:40:37 – Broadway.
0:40:38 – Straight to Broadway?
0:40:38 – Yeah.
0:40:39 – I mean, that almost never happens, does it?
0:40:41 – When Broadway producers commission you
0:40:43 and there’s a star attached, then yeah, you can do it.
0:40:45 – I see.
0:40:46 So it was really about the star here?
0:40:48 – Yeah.
0:40:49 – Because then you’re guaranteed whatever,
0:40:50 24 weeks of box office.
0:40:52 – Exactly.
0:40:53 – Otherwise, you’re guaranteed like nothing.
0:40:55 – Yeah, exactly.
0:40:56 If there’s no star attached, you’re not gonna do this.
0:40:58 – Okay, so when that fell apart
0:41:00 and you were thinking about quitting the theater,
0:41:02 were you willing to go back to your paralegal career?
0:41:05 – No, I was gonna do TV.
0:41:07 That’s why I moved to LA.
0:41:08 And then they sucked me back in
0:41:10 ’cause I got this commission for the Broadway people
0:41:12 and then I got a grant.
0:41:14 It was a three year grant from the Mellon Foundation.
0:41:17 And they said, well, you have to write a play
0:41:19 as part of the grant.
0:41:20 And I thought, okay, well, I’ll do it,
0:41:22 but I’ll do like a one act play.
0:41:23 And I thought that’s what this play was gonna be.
0:41:25 My one act short little throw away play.
0:41:28 – And instead it’s like three hours and 15 minutes.
0:41:30 – It just grew and grew.
0:41:31 – You have no self control, do you?
0:41:33 – No, but you know, as I started researching it,
0:41:35 I realized, oh, I can never leave the theater.
0:41:37 The play became about me wanting to leave the theater
0:41:40 and knowing I couldn’t ever leave it.
0:41:42 Babe, I’m gonna leave you.
0:41:44 – So, Edgeby didn’t quit.
0:41:48 He kept grinding away on Stereophonic
0:41:50 thanks to a free place to live
0:41:52 and a commission from those two nonprofit theaters.
0:41:56 – During COVID, everything just fell apart.
0:41:58 And we went through various iterations
0:42:01 of potential commercial producers,
0:42:02 but then they all fell apart.
0:42:04 And then my agent sent it to all these
0:42:06 nonprofit theaters in New York
0:42:07 and everyone said they didn’t wanna do it.
0:42:09 – Is that because it was tainted
0:42:10 from the falling apart or no?
0:42:12 – I don’t think so.
0:42:13 You know, it’s not a very fashionable play.
0:42:15 It doesn’t have to do with identity politics.
0:42:17 It wasn’t really of the moment at all.
0:42:19 It takes place in 1976.
0:42:21 It doesn’t have a particular agenda.
0:42:23 And so I think they were like,
0:42:24 well, why would we do this?
0:42:25 And it’s expansive and who cares?
0:42:27 – And long.
0:42:28 – Yeah, and it’s long and maybe they didn’t even read it.
0:42:30 I don’t know who knows why.
0:42:32 And I knew Adam Greenfield,
0:42:34 the Artistic Director of Playwrights Horizons for decades
0:42:37 because he produced my first play in Seattle a long time ago.
0:42:41 So I said, can we go back to Adam?
0:42:42 We’d gone to him initially like a year or two before
0:42:45 and he said, no, no, I have too many plays backed up
0:42:47 because of COVID.
0:42:48 I can’t think about this.
0:42:49 But when we came back to him, he said, listen,
0:42:51 this is really expensive.
0:42:53 Tell us what you feel you need to produce this properly
0:42:57 ’cause this is gonna be a big production.
0:42:59 And my director and I said, this is how I think
0:43:01 we need to do this.
0:43:03 We’re gonna need a soundproof booth
0:43:04 and we’re gonna need a functioning recording studio
0:43:06 where we’re gonna probably need music lessons
0:43:07 for the actors and we’re gonna need more rehearsal time.
0:43:10 And he said, okay, if I can get the money, I will do it.
0:43:13 And a few months later, he called back and said,
0:43:15 okay, I have the money, let’s do it.
0:43:17 – How much was it?
0:43:17 – It definitely cost over a million.
0:43:19 – Wow, for Off-Broadway, that’s a lot.
0:43:21 – Ours is the second most expensive thing they’ve ever done.
0:43:24 And they had to sort of rejigger the season
0:43:26 to accommodate the play.
0:43:28 But that’s how much he believed in it.
0:43:31 – Here again is Tom Pesinka, who would be cast as Peter.
0:43:35 – There are many workshops
0:43:36 and some of our casts had been part of those.
0:43:39 I was not part of any of the workshops.
0:43:40 I just got a cold audition to audition
0:43:42 to play Reg and Grover.
0:43:44 – Reg is the bass player, Grover is the main engineer,
0:43:46 correct?
0:43:47 – Yes, and then I got called into the room for a callback,
0:43:51 an in-person callback for the entire team.
0:43:54 Apparently, I sucked the air out of the room.
0:43:57 This like legendary audition that I can barely remember.
0:44:00 – Meaning you brought something to Peter
0:44:03 that is similar to what Peter is now?
0:44:05 – Yes, when you’re doing it, you don’t know.
0:44:07 And I felt like it was great.
0:44:09 I definitely embraced the connections
0:44:13 between myself and Peter in a way that I don’t know
0:44:15 if I had ever done in an audition.
0:44:17 So I could feel that for sure.
0:44:20 You never know if it’s gonna make an impact
0:44:21 or you never know if like the stone cold faces behind the…
0:44:25 I mean, I do remember David Ajmi nodding furiously.
0:44:29 So I was like, okay, well, maybe that is good.
0:44:32 But other than that, no.
0:44:34 Then I got some messages from my reps being like,
0:44:37 they want you, you were the best actor in the room,
0:44:40 but you need to play guitar way better.
0:44:44 I played sort of garbage guitar
0:44:46 and I had to really up my game.
0:44:48 Then they put me in guitar lessons twice a week
0:44:50 for two months and I had to send them video updates every week.
0:44:55 And then I was down in DC with my girlfriend.
0:44:58 She was doing a show at the studio theater.
0:45:00 I thought it was done.
0:45:01 I thought, you know, they were ready to make a decision.
0:45:03 And then my manager called me and said,
0:45:05 they want one more tape.
0:45:06 And I almost jumped off the balcony in frustration.
0:45:10 And then I went to a guitar center
0:45:12 ’cause I didn’t have a guitar with me.
0:45:15 I bought a guitar.
0:45:16 I was gonna return it.
0:45:17 And then I got the part.
0:45:19 That guitar now is in my dressing room
0:45:20 with the Golden Theater.
0:45:22 I think so many actors are like frustrated rock stars.
0:45:25 Like they want to be a rock star.
0:45:26 I knew I did because rock stars have their own character
0:45:30 and you’re adored.
0:45:32 And I think it taps into that thing when you’re little
0:45:34 and you do the first play and you hear that applause
0:45:38 and like you get addicted to it.
0:45:40 In order to have a career,
0:45:42 you have to sort of get past that at some point.
0:45:45 Being in a band and making music
0:45:48 and creating something live every night
0:45:50 is so incredible.
0:45:53 It’s like a mainline into your veins of just like artistry.
0:45:57 It can be also really nerve wracking.
0:45:59 Just like, oh, what if I mess up
0:46:00 or what if I sing the wrong line?
0:46:02 The first month, most of the rehearsal day
0:46:05 was just making the music
0:46:06 and learning how to play the music.
0:46:08 I think the direct results
0:46:10 and I think you see it in the play
0:46:12 is like we know each other as an acting company
0:46:15 so much better than probably any acting company
0:46:18 because we have to rely on each other
0:46:21 and we have to trust each other
0:46:22 that like the songs are gonna sound good.
0:46:25 It’s a build.
0:46:26 ♪ I feel it once again ♪
0:46:30 ♪ I feel it once again ♪
0:46:34 – Here is Sarah Pigeon again, who plays Diana.
0:46:37 – Off Broadway, the fights were not as equal.
0:46:40 We’re coming up on like nine,
0:46:43 maybe 10 months of knowing each other.
0:46:45 We know each other better
0:46:46 so there’s this sort of push and pull
0:46:48 that feels more reflective of an actual relationship.
0:46:52 There is a certain amount of intimacy and trust
0:46:55 and knowing of each other
0:46:58 that was different from when we started in August.
0:47:00 We were sort of playing at this idea
0:47:01 of like having been in a relationship
0:47:03 with someone for nine years.
0:47:05 Like, well, I haven’t known Thomas Inka for nine years.
0:47:08 – Familiarity goes two ways.
0:47:10 Familiarity is like lovely,
0:47:12 but you can hurt someone more.
0:47:14 – Right, you know how to hurt them.
0:47:17 – You know how to push their buttons.
0:47:18 You know how to like unravel the thread
0:47:20 like Diana says in the play.
0:47:22 I mean, they would never say it,
0:47:24 but like I know Sarah and Juliana were pissed with me
0:47:27 certain times when like I got the harmonies wrong
0:47:30 or like when I was so nervous playing masquerade
0:47:33 that I would like drop out of the song.
0:47:34 Juliana would have to pick up the slack.
0:47:37 We never talked about it,
0:47:38 but like, you know, I get it, I get it.
0:47:42 And same way for me, like when they were getting on me
0:47:44 about the harmonies, I was pissed off,
0:47:46 but like it’s all love, you know?
0:47:49 It’s like, it is.
0:47:50 I mean, it’s so cliche, but it’s like, it is family.
0:47:53 It’s family.
0:47:54 – So at the non-profit off-Broadway theater
0:47:58 Playwrights Horizons, the band was coming together.
0:48:02 During previews of the play, Word of Mouth started to build.
0:48:06 Would stereophonic become one of the rare shows
0:48:09 that make it through the non-profit farm system
0:48:12 and onto Broadway?
0:48:13 Here is David Ajmi again.
0:48:15 – We talked to a bunch of commercial producers,
0:48:17 but it never fully congealed.
0:48:19 Either I was having misgivings or they had misgivings
0:48:22 or they wanted to make changes or whatever.
0:48:24 And then there was another commercial producer
0:48:26 that was at one point attached at Playwrights Horizons,
0:48:29 but then in the middle of the audition process,
0:48:32 that fell apart.
0:48:33 – And then the show opened at Playwrights Horizons
0:48:36 and the reviews were very enthusiastic.
0:48:41 – And then they all started coming.
0:48:42 Like one commercial producer would talk to another
0:48:44 and then they slowly started.
0:48:46 I had no idea how this all worked
0:48:47 ’cause I had never done anything commercially before.
0:48:49 I thought it would be like,
0:48:51 the different commercial producers come
0:48:53 and then you interviewed them.
0:48:55 You know, like, why should I let you commercially produces?
0:48:59 But instead it was more like they formed a cartel
0:49:01 and then some got kicked out and some congealed.
0:49:04 And then we met the leader of the cartel.
0:49:06 – The cartel actually had a few leaders.
0:49:11 After the break, we hear from two of them.
0:49:13 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:49:14 This is Freakonomics Radio.
0:49:16 We’ll be right back.
0:49:17 (upbeat music)
0:49:26 – John Johnson is one of the lead producers on Stereophonic
0:49:31 and he has produced many other shows on and off Broadway
0:49:34 over more than a decade.
0:49:35 Along with his business partner, Sue Wagner,
0:49:38 he is half of Wagner Johnson Productions.
0:49:41 They act as both producer and general manager.
0:49:45 This hybrid business model is common in London
0:49:48 and used to be common on Broadway
0:49:49 but is much less so today.
0:49:52 Let’s start with this.
0:49:53 What does a producer do?
0:49:55 – So the pure producer side is from, you know,
0:49:58 conception of the show,
0:50:00 either commissioning a writer to write a play or musical
0:50:03 or getting the rights to a play or musical to revive
0:50:07 all the way to assembling the creative team around that,
0:50:10 to the raising of the money,
0:50:13 to the marketing of the show, to securing a building.
0:50:16 That is the job of the producer.
0:50:19 If each Broadway show and each off Broadway show
0:50:21 is essentially an individual small business,
0:50:24 they are the CEO of said small business.
0:50:27 – Okay, and what does the general manager do?
0:50:30 – The GM is the person that does the contracts,
0:50:33 does the budgeting, does the day-to-day operations,
0:50:37 hires the staff surrounding the show.
0:50:40 And the producer is involved in that and advises on that,
0:50:44 again, using the small business kind of analogy,
0:50:46 both the CFO and a COO sort of combination.
0:50:49 – So how did John Johnson become co-CEO, CFO
0:50:54 and COO of Stereophonic?
0:50:57 – Remember, when the show premiered off Broadway
0:51:00 at Playwrights Horizons,
0:51:01 it had no commercial producers attached.
0:51:04 – Sue went the first week of previews
0:51:06 and absolutely lost her mind,
0:51:08 called me and said, you have to go see this play.
0:51:11 – Did you lose your mind too?
0:51:12 – I went after it opened.
0:51:14 So I go after my partner sets the bar a certain level high,
0:51:18 then the reviews come out and the reviews are transcendent
0:51:21 and it sets another level high and I went
0:51:23 and it cleared both those bars.
0:51:25 – What month and year are we talking about now?
0:51:27 – We’re talking November, 2023.
0:51:30 – Okay, so the COVID shutdown was over by now
0:51:33 and business was returning to Broadway,
0:51:35 but the overall numbers were still way down
0:51:38 and costs had risen a ton during COVID.
0:51:42 And from what I understand,
0:51:43 all the theaters were already full, yeah?
0:51:47 – At the time, there were no buildings available on Broadway.
0:51:49 There was another show that was not announced for the Golden,
0:51:52 but everyone kind of knew like,
0:51:53 “Oh, that’s what’s going into the Golden in the spring.”
0:51:56 – The John Golden Theater is one of the smallest on Broadway
0:52:02 with roughly 770 seats.
0:52:04 It is owned by the Schubert organization,
0:52:07 the biggest landlord on Broadway.
0:52:09 Their CEO is named Bob Wankle.
0:52:11 There is a famous old saying about Broadway economics.
0:52:15 You can’t make a living, but you can make a killing.
0:52:19 What’s that mean?
0:52:21 Most people in the theater work very hard
0:52:23 for relatively low pay.
0:52:25 If, however, you are involved in creating a hit,
0:52:29 something that plays for years and lives on
0:52:32 in touring companies, maybe a film, you will make millions,
0:52:36 but that’s rare.
0:52:38 The best way to make a killing is to be a landlord.
0:52:43 The Broadway business is, to a large degree,
0:52:45 a real estate business with a handful of owners
0:52:48 controlling the vast majority of theater space.
0:52:51 – We had gotten the show on the radar
0:52:53 of the Schubert organization.
0:52:54 We had heard there was the potential
0:52:56 of the Golden being available.
0:52:58 And at the time, Bob Wankle had given it to Sonya Friedman,
0:53:01 who’s a legendary producer in London,
0:53:03 as well as in New York.
0:53:05 I was in London and I went to Sonya and I said,
0:53:07 “Are you going to do this other play at the Golden?”
0:53:10 And she said, “I can’t fit it in the Golden.
0:53:11 I need it to go somewhere else.”
0:53:12 And I said, “Well, we want to do it for Stereophonic.”
0:53:15 And she said, “Well, I need to do it with you.”
0:53:16 And at the time, she was opening Stranger Things
0:53:18 on the West End.
0:53:19 She had not been in New York in weeks.
0:53:20 And I said, “Well, you haven’t seen the play yet.”
0:53:21 She said, “I don’t care.
0:53:22 Everyone I know who’s seen has loved it.
0:53:24 I need to be a part of it.”
0:53:25 – That is a first for me.
0:53:28 I have never been involved with a show before
0:53:30 that I pitched myself heavily to produce
0:53:32 that I hadn’t actually seen.
0:53:34 I’d read it, but I was in London when it opened
0:53:36 and I couldn’t get there.
0:53:37 – And by early December, we stood on stage
0:53:40 and told the cast that we were moving it to Broadway.
0:53:42 – What was that like?
0:53:43 – It was incredible.
0:53:44 I mean, for six out of seven of them
0:53:46 to find out they were going to make their Broadway debut
0:53:47 was amazing.
0:53:49 This is a playbook that we’ve run before.
0:53:51 Here’s the hot play of the fall
0:53:53 and we’re gonna take that momentum from the fall,
0:53:55 find a building for it in the spring
0:53:57 and run the awards playbook
0:54:00 as well as the prestige playbook
0:54:02 to have it catch on with a newer and larger audience.
0:54:05 – Tell me a little bit about your investors on this show
0:54:08 and the capitalization of the show on Broadway,
0:54:10 how it compares to other things you’ve done.
0:54:12 – It was demand unlike anything that we’ve seen
0:54:15 post-pandemic in terms of folks wanting to get in.
0:54:17 – Meaning it had to turn people away?
0:54:19 – Yeah, we absolutely to turn people away.
0:54:20 – What was the minimum investment you accepted?
0:54:23 – 25,000.
0:54:24 – I mean, traditionally that’s really small.
0:54:26 Producers didn’t used to do that kind of thing very much,
0:54:28 did they?
0:54:29 – Yeah, and there were some people who wrote
0:54:30 $150,000 checks or more
0:54:32 and then there were others who would bundle $25,000 units
0:54:36 to come up with a larger.
0:54:37 But again, our capitalization
0:54:38 because we were taking the production from playwrights
0:54:41 was capitalized at 4.8 million.
0:54:43 We spent less than that.
0:54:45 You wanna build in a certain amount of reserve
0:54:47 because we didn’t know how I was gonna sell at the beginning.
0:54:49 We were lucky enough to break even
0:54:50 in those first couple of weeks,
0:54:51 but having a little bit of a cover if it had not
0:54:53 was something we wanted to build in.
0:54:55 – Here’s a line from the New York Times review
0:54:57 when it opened on Broadway.
0:54:59 The play is a staggering achievement
0:55:01 and already feels like a must see American classic.
0:55:04 Where were you when you read this?
0:55:06 Who were you with and how did it make you feel?
0:55:08 – I was with Greg Noble and Sonia Friedman
0:55:10 in the press room at our opening night party.
0:55:12 The review came out, we opened it,
0:55:14 we read that first paragraph and we all looked at each other
0:55:16 and said, “Wow.”
0:55:18 – So let me just ask you now several weeks
0:55:20 into this run that is very successful
0:55:23 and looks to be even more successful,
0:55:25 especially if you win a boatload of Tonys.
0:55:28 Do you wish in a perfect world
0:55:30 you would put it into a bigger theater than the Golden?
0:55:32 – No.
0:55:33 – Because why not?
0:55:34 – Because it’s the perfect fit.
0:55:37 It has this way of wrapping its arms around a play
0:55:39 and making it intimate.
0:55:41 As with all shows, plays and musicals,
0:55:44 finding the right fit of building
0:55:45 and sometimes you don’t get a choice,
0:55:46 but this is where the timing worked out in this way
0:55:49 because it could have easily been,
0:55:50 “Oh, well, we don’t have the Golden or the Booth available,
0:55:52 “but we have this 1,100 seat theater available
0:55:54 “with a second balcony.”
0:55:56 And I don’t know necessarily
0:55:57 if it would have had the same reaction.
0:56:00 – On Broadway, as elsewhere,
0:56:04 awards drive ticket sales
0:56:07 and Stereophonic is nominated for 13 Tony Awards.
0:56:11 It can’t possibly win that many
0:56:13 since some categories contain multiple Stereophonic nominees.
0:56:17 Tom Pesinka, for instance,
0:56:19 is nominated for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Play
0:56:23 along with two other male actors in Stereophonic.
0:56:27 Will Brill, who plays Reg, the band’s bassist,
0:56:30 and Eli Gelb, who plays the recording engineer Grover.
0:56:33 I asked Pesinka what it’s like
0:56:35 to compete in the same category against his castmates.
0:56:40 – It’s awesome.
0:56:42 I’m like a super competitive person
0:56:44 and super ambitious person.
0:56:46 That’s why I think I can play Peter
0:56:48 ’cause I definitely have had many years of therapy
0:56:51 that have brought me to this place,
0:56:53 but deep down in my heart, I just wanna win.
0:56:56 The morning of the nominations,
0:57:00 I got a text from Will Brill that said, “Man you.”
0:57:05 And that’s how I found out.
0:57:08 – Man you, like the football club?
0:57:10 – No, like it’s you, man.
0:57:12 – Oh, I see, okay.
0:57:13 – Yeah, and then I called him and then I called Eli
0:57:15 because like so many shows are like it’s an ensemble piece
0:57:18 but like our show really is.
0:57:20 If someone is not at their best every night,
0:57:23 the show can so easily fall apart.
0:57:25 Everyone is so dedicated.
0:57:27 It’s funny that like I auditioned for those two roles
0:57:31 and I know for a fact why I didn’t get those roles
0:57:34 because those guys are perfect
0:57:36 and I’m perfect for mine.
0:57:39 – Would I like to win a Tony for sure?
0:57:42 And I keep joking that I’m gonna like
0:57:43 break their legs or whatever.
0:57:45 But ultimately like, God, this is my Broadway debut
0:57:48 in this play with this part and I got a Tony nomination.
0:57:51 All right, whatever.
0:57:52 – You’re saying like whatever,
0:57:53 like you don’t even need to win it, you’re saying?
0:57:55 – No, no, no, I want to win it.
0:57:57 I’m telling you, I wanna win it.
0:57:58 But if I don’t win it, it’s like, again, it’s cake.
0:58:02 – Okay, so Tom, you are 36 years old.
0:58:05 You’ve been at this for a while.
0:58:06 This is your first time on Broadway
0:58:08 and you find yourself in the kind of hit
0:58:11 that happens quite rarely.
0:58:13 Are you worried about, you know, what comes after?
0:58:18 – I’m not worried, I’m more excited.
0:58:20 And I don’t even think I know how much
0:58:22 it’s opened the door to certain things.
0:58:25 The morning of the Tony nominations,
0:58:28 I was sitting with my girlfriend and I was like,
0:58:31 okay, like a certain era of struggle for me is over.
0:58:36 And that feels liberating.
0:58:38 It was like a good 10 years of eating crap.
0:58:42 I’m not worried about the next job
0:58:44 in the same way that I was.
0:58:46 – How struggling was the struggle?
0:58:48 – It feels worse than it was.
0:58:50 I’d been working pretty consistently.
0:58:53 I’m very ambitious and like I wanna do the big stuff.
0:58:57 My therapist said after I called her on Tony morning,
0:59:00 she was like, did you think this would happen?
0:59:02 I said, no.
0:59:03 And then she was like, yeah, you did.
0:59:04 Like, you were confused for so many years
0:59:07 as to like, you knew that you were great
0:59:09 and you knew that inside of you,
0:59:10 you had something to offer,
0:59:12 but like people weren’t recognizing it.
0:59:14 And so that frustration, I think,
0:59:17 was more of the struggle than like getting a job.
0:59:20 – Sarah Pigeon is also nominated for a Tony Award
0:59:26 in the same category as her castmate, Juliana Canfield.
0:59:30 I asked Pigeon what it’s like to compete
0:59:33 against her onstage bandmate and real life friend.
0:59:37 – I’m just really excited to see everybody dressed up.
0:59:39 It’s like theater prom.
0:59:41 I sort of feel like we’ve all just won already.
0:59:45 I remember taking the stage combat class
0:59:47 and like, it doesn’t matter how good you are
0:59:49 at doing a fake punch.
0:59:50 If your partner doesn’t sell it,
0:59:52 it’s like we’ve created this sort of spire web
0:59:55 to hold each other up and support this piece
0:59:58 that we all believe in so much.
1:00:00 And theater people are amazing
1:00:02 because they spend like hours every single day
1:00:06 in dark theaters playing make-believe.
1:00:10 Figuring out how to make most sense and be so magical
1:00:13 and be thrilling and exciting and true.
1:00:16 – Are you a little surprised
1:00:17 at this relatively late stage in our civilization
1:00:20 with so many modes of performing and entertaining,
1:00:22 most of which are, you know,
1:00:24 electronic or digital in some way now.
1:00:26 Are you surprised that this old fashioned,
1:00:29 hand-made theatrical thing still exists
1:00:33 as intensely as it does?
1:00:36 – I think that, you know, people like something real.
1:00:40 It’s like a home-cooked meal.
1:00:41 Sure, you can go and get, you know,
1:00:43 penne pasta with vodka sauce in the freezer section,
1:00:46 the Ralph’s, but like,
1:00:48 if somebody makes you homemade penne pasta,
1:00:51 it’s gonna taste better and you’re gonna wanna eat it.
1:00:53 And then also with theater,
1:00:54 and in particular with this show,
1:00:57 it all happens in front of you
1:00:58 if this were to be a movie one day.
1:01:00 I would be curious to see how do they make,
1:01:02 I think what’s so thrilling about this
1:01:03 is that you see it all happen in real time
1:01:06 and the music’s all live and you see the mess-ups
1:01:09 watching someone do like a high-wire act of theater.
1:01:12 They walk on stage and there’s nothing but the set
1:01:16 and their body and their scene partner.
1:01:18 And you can’t call cut and you can’t do it over
1:01:21 is what’s so thrilling.
1:01:22 It’s like one of the oldest art forms in the world,
1:01:24 just storytelling.
1:01:25 And I think there’s a reason that it’s lasted so long.
1:01:28 I don’t think people go to see a robot theater performance
1:01:31 maybe once, but I feel like it’ll close
1:01:35 like six weeks after opening.
1:01:36 – And I went back to David Ajmi, the playwright.
1:01:43 Without him, none of this other stuff exists.
1:01:48 I asked Ajmi if he wins the Tony for best play,
1:01:52 what kind of speech she would give.
1:01:54 – Or they just told me about this the other day.
1:01:56 My publicist said I had to do it.
1:01:58 – You hadn’t thought about it
1:01:58 until your publicist told you?
1:02:00 – No, because I’ve never done anything like this before.
1:02:03 I don’t usually get these kind of prizes
1:02:04 where you sit in the audience
1:02:05 and then they call your name or they don’t call it.
1:02:07 – Let’s assume that you’re drafting
1:02:09 the beginning of an idea right now
1:02:11 for your Tony acceptance speech, should you win.
1:02:13 And maybe that’s terrible luck to even think about it,
1:02:15 but if you’re willing to engage, what do you wanna say?
1:02:18 – Well, Sue said, our producer said something like,
1:02:21 I mean, we were talking about this the other day
1:02:22 and I was like, Sue, let’s not have this conversation.
1:02:24 But she said, you should not thank a lot of people.
1:02:27 You should more say some personal thing.
1:02:30 I can extemporize without going too crazy.
1:02:33 So maybe I would extemporize on stage
1:02:34 and just say what was inside of me.
1:02:36 That’s what I like seeing.
1:02:37 I wanna see someone talk about something
1:02:40 that’s real to them in the moment.
1:02:42 I mean, in the theater, everyone struggles so hard
1:02:45 to get to where they are.
1:02:46 It’s such a hard job.
1:02:47 It’s a really weird job.
1:02:49 – And there’s just something so moving
1:02:50 about theater artists getting together
1:02:52 and celebrating each other,
1:02:53 not in the spirit of competition,
1:02:55 but just like, look at us.
1:02:56 Like we’re all doing this
1:02:57 and somehow we’re surviving.
1:02:58 How are we doing it?
1:03:00 So that’s sort of maybe the spirit of which,
1:03:02 if I’m lucky enough to be up there,
1:03:03 I would say something like that.
1:03:04 – That was pretty good to see.
1:03:07 I told you I could do it.
1:03:08 ♪ I’m gonna see you when I get there ♪
1:03:11 ♪ I’ll see you when I get there ♪
1:03:14 – The Tony Awards are on Sunday, June 16th.
1:03:17 How many will Stereophonic win?
1:03:19 We’ll let you know next week on part two.
1:03:23 Also, what will the success of Stereophonic mean
1:03:26 for the future of an industry that’s been dying forever?
1:03:30 – I think the reason why,
1:03:31 especially a lot of young people
1:03:32 are coming to the theater in 2024 is that we forget
1:03:37 because I think we have collective PTSD,
1:03:39 but we were locked in our houses for three and a half years.
1:03:42 And I think people want to be around each other.
1:03:46 That’s next time on the show.
1:03:47 Until then, take care of yourself.
1:03:49 And if you can, someone else too.
1:03:52 (upbeat music)
1:03:54 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
1:03:58 You can find our entire archive on any podcast app
1:04:01 also at freakonomics.com,
1:04:04 where we publish transcripts and show notes.
1:04:06 This episode was produced by Alina Coleman.
1:04:09 Our staff also includes Augusta Chapman,
1:04:11 Dalvin Abouaji, Eleanor Osborne,
1:04:14 Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippen,
1:04:16 Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, Julie Kanfer,
1:04:19 Lyric Bowditch, Morgan Levy,
1:04:21 Neil Coruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas,
1:04:23 Sarah Lilly, Teo Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski.
1:04:26 Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune” by The Hitchhikers.
1:04:29 Our composer is Luis Guerra.
1:04:32 Additional music in this episode by Will Butler,
1:04:34 Justin Craig, and the cast of Stereophonic.
1:04:38 As always, thanks for listening.
1:04:43 – Oh, thanks, you gave me some tissues.
1:04:45 (blows raspberry)
1:04:46 – Mm, glad we got that on tape, though.
1:04:47 (laughs)
1:04:49 – I hope you can cut that out.
1:04:51 (upbeat music)
1:04:53 – The Freakonomics Radio Network,
1:04:57 the hidden side of everything.
1:04:59 (upbeat music)
1:05:02 Stitcher.
1:05:03 (upbeat music)
1:05:06 you