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[0:01] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm Ruthie Fierberg, and this is Why We Theater.

[0:06] Ruthie Fierberg: The Intersection of Theater and Social Justice.

[0:09] Ruthie Fierberg: This podcast digs into today's most thought-provoking and urgent onstage works with the artists who made them and real-world experts who advise us on how we can create impactful change in our offstage lives.

[0:22] Ruthie Fierberg: After all, that is why we theater.

[0:26] Ruthie Fierberg: Today we welcome director Leigh Silverman and experts Ira Glass and Barbara Brandon-Croft to discuss the lifespan of a fact.

[0:35] Ruthie Fierberg: For those of you who haven't seen the show, a brief primer.

[0:39] Ruthie Fierberg: The play follows the editorial battle between real-life essayist John D'Agata and his low-level fact-checker Jim Fingal as they go line by line to vet John's interpretive story about a teen who died by suicide in Las Vegas.

[0:55] Ruthie Fierberg: After leaving the building ledge, did the boy fall for eight seconds or nine seconds? Were the building bricks red or brown? What is true? Are any facts negotiable? If so, which ones? And who decides?

[1:16] Ruthie Fierberg: Well, Leigh, I want to start with you. As the director of this incredible play, which raised so many questions, how did you first come across the story of Jim Fingal and John D'Agata?

[1:29] Leigh Silverman: Did it come to you as a finished script?

[1:31] Leigh Silverman: It did. So the script was sent to me with the idea that there was going to be a Broadway production of the play, The Lifespan of a Fact.

[1:44] Leigh Silverman: And it was when I read the play, I was quite intrigued by it, although nervous about the idea of doing a new play straight on Broadway without any, I mean, that's sort of unheard of.

[1:58] Leigh Silverman: And when I read the source material, which is the book written by Jim Fingal and John D'Agata, The Lifespan of a Fact, I became really obsessed and fascinated with how this book, which was essentially a theater piece in and of itself, the way that the book is written with the essay in the center and Jim's notes along the outside, the conversation that was already happening in the book between Jim the fact-checker and John the essayist, the figuring out how to then translate that into the theater piece and taking this script and figuring out how to make something which is exciting but not necessarily obviously dramatic and not necessarily something obviously entertaining and turning it into a theater piece was, I was like, well, this seems impossible. Let's do it cold on Broadway, why not?

[2:59] Leigh Silverman: You know, it was really that kind of sense of, you know, as a theater maker, we're all the time taking from real life and interpreting and extrapolating and presenting, and unless you're really doing documentary theater, you're all the time looking for both inspiration but also real-life stories and narratives to take from and pull from and present. And I think the idea of, you know, what makes a good story, what makes a good essay, what makes a good theater piece, when you juxtapose that against certainly our current administration and the idea of fact and how do you communicate in this case the story of this young boy's death most effectively? Is it through beautiful writing or is it through fact? And so that's really the question of the play and what drew me to it.

[4:05] Ruthie Fierberg: What's so incredible is how entertaining you were able to make it. And I'm wondering when you read it, what did you believe could be added by doing it on stage that you weren't getting in the book? How could it become compelling drama?

[4:21] Leigh Silverman: Because I don't know, fact-checking is not always the most compelling thing to watch happen. Yeah, it seemed impossible. Obviously having the enormous talents of Daniel Radcliffe and Bobby Cannavale and Cherry Jones was very essential to the fabric of the piece. But I will also say that while I was reading the book, there's a debate going on, a rigorous debate about the nature of truth and fact and storytelling and these themes, as we said. And I thought, if I could figure out a way to make that live on stage in a way that people were pulled back and forth, then there was the possibility that the engagement that people would feel would be that they too would be pulled back and forth while they were watching the play, and that sometimes they would be on Jim's side, and sometimes they would be on John's side, and that they would be surprised at their own flexibility, let's say, to the different arguments, and that they would find themselves thinking about the topic in ways that they hadn't before, not necessarily because of the rigor of the intellectual debate, but because of the way that the emotion of the story and the idea of how fun it would be to sort of, particularly in our current times, and in the times of fake news, and certainly when we were previewing the show, it was during the Kavanaugh hearings.

I mean, there are all kinds of ways in which, against the backdrop of the world that we've been living in, having someone, particularly in this case, the character of Jim, the character of Jim Fingal, the fact-checker, was someone that the audience was fully on the side of. And I don't know if we had done the play at a different time in our political history if that would be the case. I wonder if people would be on the side of the art. And in fact, the way that people got on the side of Jim Fingal, and every time he nailed the character of John D'Agata for an inconsistency, the way that people responded in the audience was thrilling and I think a little surprising and very specific to the point of time that we were in, which is I think part of what made doing the show exciting.

[6:48] Ruthie Fierberg: Well, I think it's fascinating that you could feel the audience in that way, and that you could really feel them siding with one or the other. And as you were talking, I was actually almost thinking of Frost/Nixon, that is this huge debate about, you know, ethics and, I mean, that in particular government, but it's an interview, and what you have in this play is you have the balance of three characters, and I'm wondering what was it important for you to convey with each of the three characters? Did each of them have to have a different ethos to balance the stool in this land of ambiguity?

[7:27] Leigh Silverman: Yeah, that's an interesting question. I will say that I have felt that in fact there was no protagonist of the play, which is a really weird way to talk about a play, but to say that for me the protagonist was the argument because the argument was the thing that changed and evolved. Everyone else stayed the same. And that there's a way in which it's a polemic. It's, there are Frost/Nixon is a great example. A play like Art is another example of plays like this that I think are particularly most of Lifespan of a Fact takes place in sort of real time over the, there's sort of the front part of the play, and then most of it takes place in real time. And really the thing that you're watching is an argument unfold and progress, and it's not a character study, it's how do you present how do these people present their cases in a way that feels surprising, theatrical, funny, and certainly I felt like that was my challenge going into it.

I also think that because I felt such a responsibility because John D'Agata and Jim Fingal are real people, and so there was also I think the added bonus challenge of trying not to make anybody easily dismissible. And that they wanted to, I mean, not only for the theater of it, it makes better theater, but I think these are real people. This is a situation that was essentially based on a real situation that happened with Jim and John, although it's been much theatricalized. But that in itself, it's also another meta level of the play, which is that it's based on a real thing, but it's not really the real thing.

[9:18] Ruthie Fierberg: Well, we're gonna get into that.

[9:20] Leigh Silverman: We're gonna get into it.

[9:21] Ruthie Fierberg: Okay, great. Was it important to you? You're saying it's not a character study, and yet each of these three characters is such a fully real person with distinct perspectives. Was it important to you to make it feel like it was balanced? Because sometimes you don't balance, sometimes you really want people to land on a different side.

[9:46] Leigh Silverman: Yeah, I think it was important in the triangle of these three characters that it feels like you're pulled to different to each of them at different times. And I think part of the fun of the play and the rhythm of the play and part of the comedy of the play is what how that starts to move more quickly throughout the course of the play or slow down. And I would say the other piece of it that was important to me was that it didn't feel like we wrapped it up neatly, that we were left with sort of the intriguing question hanging at the end, that we didn't know exactly what happened. And I will say that, you know, my mandate is to make an entertaining piece of theater and hopefully not do harm to anyone or the world in the process, and particularly on this kind of show.

So I was also trying to at every point make it clear that, you know, obviously this was a piece of theater. We're not trying to make it a docu-piece of theater. This wasn't any sort of, you know, this was an adaptation of a book, which was an adaptation of a thing that happened, and you know, there's many frames inside of that.

[11:02] Ruthie Fierberg: Well, I'm wondering how does the play differ from the book? Are there moments in your play that are fictionalized, even as we're watching something that we know involves two real people and an article that did get published?

[11:17] Leigh Silverman: There's so much fiction, yeah. I mean, well, first of all, Cherry's whole character is a kind of amalgamation of a number of different people. So just to say one whole part of the triangle is a complete fabrication, and you know, she's based on a couple of people editors that John has dealt with, but she's not a real person in any real way.

[11:44] Leigh Silverman: That wasn't from the editor-in-chief in particular who worked on the story in The Believer. That was the real magazine. Yeah, she's more of a combo package of people, I think, who edited who was the editor for John over the development of that piece that he wrote.

[12:04] Ruthie Fierberg: So aside from her, did it, I mean, is it true that Jim Fingal flew across the country to Las Vegas? Like were those pieces true?

[12:11] Leigh Silverman: Well, there's a lot of the, a lot of it is true as based on the book. How much of the book is true? I don't know that I can really speak to, which is also part of the puzzle of the whole thing. I will say that just as like one tiny detail to out about the show, which is that I worked on this play in development and for about a year before we went into production, did the whole production and did not know until the opening night of our show on Broadway when I met John D'Agata's mother that she was alive.

[13:06] Leigh Silverman: So much of the play is sort of hinges on this, um, right? That story that he tells about his mother dying. Yes, about his mother dying. And so that is, I will say, an example of things that, um, uh, and again, I I didn't want to know. I actually took everything that was in the book because I, for me, that is what was true, and then we adapted it. We took different elements, and then the writers and I worked together to figure out what made the best piece of theater. And on some level, I feel like I lost along the way, um, my own sense of actually, um, what was true, because sort of my North Star or my compass was to make a good play. And so, you know, I think that we also in that tried to make it really clear, um, that we were not representing, you know, this is what journalism is, this is what, and you know, because hopefully it's, you know, there was nothing about it that was like trying to promote it as, um, as um a real life rip from the headlines true event kind of a play.

I mean, I think it was, um, and we never sort of advertised it as such. So I think that that is also part of the responsibility that we tried to take, although it is true that this boy died, and we also wanted to take responsibility for that side of it as well. And the fact that people are walking into a theater is a type of, would you say that that's a type of permission, that because of where the story is housed, that it comes with different rules? I mean, it's an interesting question. I mean, I guess I would say for our purposes, if you're going to see a comedy on Broadway, um, you know, are you really, um, investigating it for, um, its like most, uh, real to life truth, hard biting facts?

I don't think that that's where people go to get that kind of, um, uh, story. Um, and I think we were clear about it being sort of based, um, on something and not, um, not, you know, it not being a piece of news. Um, and I I also, you know, want to say that John D’Agata, and I think this is really important, and when you were talking about character, John wrote this book and used himself as a character and foil to tell this story and to explore this question. He did not write that book, um, and, uh, you know, to try and represent anything other than a, this for him, what became this very compelling argument to excavate. And he sort of uses himself as something of a foil for the character of Jim. And he is almost conducting his own hypothetical in the book.

[16:18] Ruthie Fierberg: Oh, that's so interesting. Because reading the book reviews from that time, from the book, The Lifespan of a Fact, so many of those critics who are journalists were upset at the portrayal of their profession. So learning that this was kind of an experiment in and of itself is fascinating. And did meeting Jim and John in the flesh and working with them on this confuse things, help things in the development?

[16:53] Leigh Silverman: I loved meeting them. You know, I would say this was a very unusual project. Um, if I can just speak to the genesis of it, which was that many, many years before I was brought on, um, a producer named Norman Twain had read the book in 2006, I think, and had optioned it. So it had gone through a big development period. It had two writers, and then those writers left the project, a new writer came on, then that writer left, the first two writers came back. So there had been many versions of the play before it got as far as, um, into my hands. Um, I was also wondering how you end up with three authors on a play about two sides of an argument. Like that's in and of itself. I was like, three authors?

Okay. Three authors, um, based on a book written by two. So it was, there was already a lot of, um, a lot of people. But when Norman, so Norman unfortunately passed away, and one of his last wishes was that this play, which he always felt would be an amazing, amazing play, um, was handed to Jeffrey Richards, the Broadway producer, who in turn had sent it, um, to me. And it again, when I I wasn't sure really when I read the script. I didn't quite understand. I hadn't, I didn't know these three writers. I didn't know what it was. And when I read the book, I was hooked. I felt that there was real opportunity, um, to explore this issue in a medium that didn't seem like the most natural fit. And, um, I think it was a little kamikaze.

I mean, I think about it now a little bit, and I'm like, wow, okay, that was really adventurous of us. But, um, but it did feel like, um, particularly in that moment, the idea of, um, uh, what is the best way to tell a story, and, um, what is the difference between news and story, and what is the difference between, um, uh, really trying to reach people, um, you know, through something like an essay versus something like nonfiction, and why are those things different? And certainly this, this is a very, as in many different kinds of art forms, it takes a kind of extreme case or an outlier kind of case to bring that topic kind of up and to make people really think about it.

[19:22] Ruthie Fierberg: Um, well, that's really the perfect segue, but right before I enfold our other guests into this conversation, I want to ask you just in general, as a dramatist, we talk about truth in the theater all the time. Just this pursuit of the truth. And I'm wondering what is that for you? Whether it's a play about getting to the truth or whether it's a play about climate change. Like what is the pursuit of truth feel like to you? And how do you know when you've reached it as a dramatist?

[19:59] Leigh Silverman: For me, it's about emotional truth. I mean, I don't think theater is the medium for a kind of accurate real life thing. Theater doesn't do that. You know, someone wears a white dress in life, it's a white dress. Someone wears a white dress on stage, it means something. You look at theater, we're all the time making connections in theater that aren't there in regular life. We're all the time putting meaning and metaphor into the things that we see on the stage. That's what theater does best. It lifts actually out of the realm of, um, I would say hard fact into a different kind of realm. And so when I look for truth, I look for emotional truth to help connect people, align people, um, wake people up, shake them, stun them, horrify them, whatever the thing is.

But you, to me, you get that through an emotional truth, which is in fact the opposite of, um, I think other kinds of journalism. And I actually don't, as a theater maker, I don't pursue truth in the sense of, and I think we're using a lot of different words that are synonymous but different from truth, but I think that it's not what theater does best. You know, a play that is about climate change that, um, like a play that I directed last season that included like a visit from, um, from the, you know, which was an adaptation of the Bacchae. And so that play, which had no actual real life, uh, comparison, because there was like a giant, you know, um, lesbian orgy in a cul-de-sac in the middle of, you know, the end of the world.

But like that, that may not be like a thing that has, um, a real life, um, accurate thing, but the emotional truth of what people do in an apocalypse and a climate change apocalypse, you know, that, that, that the thing we were after was a kind of, um, uh, emotional truth as a response to a moment. And I think as a theater, as a, as theater makers, that's what we try and find and hone as opposed to something that feels like we're delivering straight up, um, new news or direct correlations. Although there is some theater that does that. Certainly, there's quite a bit of documentary theater. Um, that that's just not the kind of theater that I make.

[22:25] Ruthie Fierberg: As we weigh this idea of emotional truth, factual truth, all these things, I want to fold into the conversation our other two guests. We are lucky enough to have, um, Mr. Ira Glass, the executive producer and host of This American Life with us. Welcome, Ira.

[22:43] Ira Glass: Thank you for being here.

[22:45] Ruthie Fierberg: Nice to be here. We have, um, Miss Barbara Brandon-Croft, who is the research director at Parents Magazine. Um, I personally worked with her when I worked at Parents. She is also a very gifted artist herself as a cartoonist and the first female African-American cartoonist to be nationally syndicated in the mainstream media. So we've got artists and storytellers all. And what I want to know, I mean, first, let's start with you, Ira, because I feel like you're eager to jump in about this idea of emotional truth versus accuracy, facts versus truth. All these words that we, you know, we even use the words storytelling and journalism interchangeably. How does that all sit with you?

[23:33] Ira Glass: I would say I saw The Lifespan of a Fact, completely enjoyed it and have no qualms with the idea that Leigh and the writers would, uh, change around facts or the fact that the guy's mom is alive and the play very pointedly says that she's dead. I kind of feel like that sort of thing happens in the theater. And I feel like as long as it says sort of based on real events or something, and doesn't say these are accurate and true events, that that seems like exactly what somebody has to do in adapting, uh, true events to a film or to a play. Like that seems utterly normal. There have been films that have been made from stories from our show and things get altered around. You just, it's, there's just different forms.

And in order to make something that has feeling in the way that a play or a film has to have feeling, like you just have to do that. It's just impossible to do, I think. Or it's very difficult to do any other way, or the facts just have to be very unusually dramatically satisfying in a way that they rarely seem to be in real life. So, so I feel like that kind of project, I don't have a, I don't have a problem with. I mean, I mean, I think when you're in the context that I'm in, you know, like I work with journalists and in our context, like everything we do is true on This American Life. If we're doing a piece of journalism, we don't move around. We, you know, somebody, we don't change the story so somebody meets somebody earlier because it'll make a better story, or you know, we don't, we don't move around the dates or times, or we don't move around anything.

There's a fact checker. There are fact, there's a team of fact-checkers who fact check right everything on the show, which basically means re-reporting every single thing. If there's a thing that we can't figure out, is it true or not? It generally goes, you know, like we don't say it if it's not true, or if we can't ascertain that it's true. And so, and so working as journalists, um, I was disturbed watching Leigh's show. Watching those two people hash it out, that did not ring true to you as a journalist. I just sat in the theater like I was entertained, I laughed, I wanted, I just wanted to scream so much of the show. And the reason why is because the person the show is about, this guy, De Gata, he's just a fringe character. Like, like, I mean, and it's not Leigh's job to diagnose like the state of journalism or who he is in journalism.

[26:02] Ira Glass: He's the ultimate extreme, as the guy who says, I'm not a journalist, I'm an essayist, I'm an author. This is not an article that he is he is the outlier in any sort of reality. If he's this is the reality, like to give you a sense of how much of an outlier he is. I have never met anyone. Like I've been in journalism since I was a teenager when I started at NPR in Washington. I've met hundreds of journalists, I've edited hundreds of stories. You know, like I've literally never met a single reporter who says anything like what he says. I've never met anybody who says because he doesn't say that he he have you ever met someone who doesn't call themselves a reporter? Well, well, that's the thing.

Like, like right, he says in the play, he's not a reporter, he's like an essayist or something. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, SAS, yeah. And I think that that's totally fine. I just think that that's not I I the thing that I worried sitting in the theater is do wait. Do people think that's this is how it works? That like a reporter comes back, a magazine writer comes back, or like and says, like, well, you know, it just sounds better if we say it happened on this night, or if like, you know, if we say, you know, it has this color, this number goes better with this thing. It just sounds better. Like, we just the thought that people, you know, you're packing him in like 1500 at a time or whatever it is, would think that like any journalist worked like that.

Like, it's just so like just nobody there's like that fight that they're having on stage. Like, I get that some version of it did happen in real life, but I've never witnessed that. Like there's differences when you're talking about even just news and magazines, because when and when you're talking about personal essays, and when you're talking about iterations of the form, like with memoir versus nonfiction. And so, Barbara, I'm actually wondering from you like did this story ring true to you? Was it familiar to your reality at all?

[28:04] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Absolutely it was. It was completely familiar. And I was, you know, like I, you know, I had my husband take me as a musician and I'm sitting there and I was like I wanted you to know what my life is like I'm the fact checker when when I go to my job this is what I do he he thoroughly enjoyed it I was so so pleased but I'm telling you I've run into crazy things like this I mean I've not you know I worked at a lot of different magazines and um there was a moment that I was working at um Rosie was became Rosie McCall's McCall's became Rosie anyway with a story on um the Timothy McVeigh bombing the um and it was a you know it was heavy you know it's like there's a story but it was still told in an essay like style and um and I'm talking to the different people that they talk to and the what sticks in my mind is somebody the writer said, you know, I sat there and talked to this woman who experienced this and she had on this um she said what she had on the writer said what the woman was wearing and I just kind of casually mentioned it to the woman and she's like I don't own a suit I was like what the writer said that she was wearing a suit and the woman was like I don't even own a suit and I was like well that makes me a little uncomfortable about everything else this writer has given us but of course I mean that's little but it's I mean the the movie kind of I mean the movie the play um kind of um showed a lot of things that I've seen really like wait it didn't did you change that did you change it in the absolutely I was like we can't say this you know and and they changed it but but also um the I love the fact that you had the editor in there you know that kind of made a difference for me too because between just the you know like from the book it's just the writer and the fact checker but with that that extra added thing which felt rang so true to me you know she's trying to mediate you know it's like hmm well can we say it this way if we do this and I'm I think it easy you know like all right I guess I get what you're saying but for the record that's not true it seems to be implying this and maybe we shouldn't say it um so I I that's what my role has been as a.

[28:11] Ira Glass: I want to back up for a second because what you're speaking to is like very similarly mirrored in the play where there seem to be like degrees of egregiousness right like first it's just like the bricks are red or are they brown and you're like yeah I know I know what they mean because bricks are always kind of reddish brown but then suddenly you're talking about you know this other person who died by suicide that day and he changes it to a hanging when it is um you know that this other woman died also by jumping off of a structure and and I feel like the audience is feeling like okay we'll forgive the bricks but we will not forgive this other thing like you can feel that like Lee was saying you can feel things in the audience so and I find it interesting that you're talking about in this McVeigh story the woman's suit like even that to you did not feel okay so that's almost the equivalent of the bricks so like what is it about those smaller facts that matter, like make case for the small fact.

[31:34] Barbara Brandon-Croft: When I see a little thing like that, that makes me it a little wary. I'm like, okay, you've kind of lost your credibility a little bit. It's sliding, you know, so I'm starting to wonder. Um, but you know, you keep going on and you keep checking out the different facts and you keep finding out that this is right, this is right, this is right, okay, we can go with that. And then I go to the editor and I'm like, um, can we just not mention the suit? Can we just not say, you know, she sat there and they talked, you know, let's let's eliminate that. And and usually that's what they do. Lee, as a director, you know how important light costume is to a character. That seems to me what the writer of that story was trying to do is establish character.

And so it suggested this was a you know, a businesswoman, you know, like it's this that's what it suggests. I mean, maybe she was, but she was not wearing a suit. Um, and if you wanted to say she was a business woman, maybe you should say that because that's what the story is supposed to be. I mean, it's that kind of thing. So it is true that I have seen this kind of thing. I've I've even seen um, I mean, not straight up, nothing that would hurt anybody, you know, nothing that would um, you know, um make a big deal, but uh something about a number of um names on the wall or whatever. And you know, count those names, like those billion names, and I'm counting them. And they’re like, Oh no, we don't like that number.

I'm like, what? You know, it's it's that kind of silliness that happens to fact checkers. That's why I was and but I went on both sides while I was watching the play. I really I was like, all right, he's getting to be a little too ridiculous, you know, he's he's going too far.

[33:13] Ira Glass: What was too far that Jim Fingal did for you as the fact checker?

[33:19] Barbara Brandon-Croft: There was so many things that was so funny, you know. You know, like he's got a story, it's like a two sheets of paper, and he's got a stack of backup. And it's like, that's what we do. We have to go through all this to figure out what this all of that was hilarious. Myra, was there any was there ever a moment for you that you thought uh the fact checker has gone too far?

[33:37] Ira Glass: No. In fact, there's a moment No. No, there's never a moment like that. In fact, there's a moment that got a big laugh the night that I saw it, where uh I think it's something that Bobby Canavale, the writer character says, where he's like, Can you believe this guy? I said in the I said in the play that it was a full moon, was it a full moon league? Yeah, there was a in and he checked that date for the phase of the moon, and then can you believe it? And the audience laughs, and I was like, Yes, of course he checked. That's a checkable fact. Of course, that's his job. Yes, of course. We would never any journalist would check that. That's totally the fact that people laughed. I felt like, wait, whose side are you on?

You know, and I don't know. That's so funny, because that is what you check. You know, like this the I think the people said it for the um when he was um when Timothy McVeigh uh was um, you know, put down. I don't know if that's not a word I'm looking for, but the families were leaving at a certain time to get to this um his execution. That's the word I was trying to find. And um, and I looked that up. I was like, they said it was dark. It was like, where they were coming from here, if they were going to here, was it really dark at that? Well, that's the kind of thing you look up. That's the kind of thing you do.

[34:49] Barbara Brandon-Croft: And that's totally normal. That's like the normal, that's like the garden variety. That's like that's like actors being off book. You know what I mean? Like they got to memorize their lines, we check every single fact. Every single fact.

[35:02] Ira Glass: That brings me to wonder, like actors always have to be off book. It's not really, there's no actor's handbook that's written there that says that. That's just common knowledge and we know it. Is there a written code of ethics that we can look to that covers all of this?

[35:23] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Like I was, you know, I know that there's obviously ASMI, the American Society Magazine editors, there's the Society of Professional Journalists. Like there are establishments, but like where do you get your rules?

[35:37] Barbara Brandon-Croft: I mean, I I've written my fact checking one-on-one for people who come to work for me. You know, it's like, okay, these are the things you have to know. These are these are not reliable sources. These are reliable sources, sources. I let my editors know that the writers have to give backup. You know, you have to know where I need an original source. I said you can't give me a new this is in the New York Times. It's like, yeah, and that's not good enough. You know, it's like I need the original source, or we I need to be able to find it.

[36:03] Ira Glass: So define for us an original source for our listeners, because I don't think people understand what that means.

[36:09] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Oh, well, um, if somebody says, well, it was written in the New York Times that um, the CDC said blah blah, you know, whatever it may be, I don't need it from the New York Times. I don't I don't accept it from the New York Times. I go to the CDC. I go to some and and contact someone there, go to their website and find out if that's accurate. You know, that's kind of what you have to do.

[36:31] Ira Glass: And and you're asking like, is there a central thing? There's no central like set of rules that I've ever heard of. It's more just like every little journalism shop does their own way in the way that everybody who directs a play has their way of like getting everybody organized and getting the blocking organized. And like it all that you know is at the end, the thing has to be factually true, and there's certain things that that generally are done to do that. And and like Barbara says, yeah, you you check every source back to the beginning and can I just um say I want to just say tell you what the lines were that Ira was um was quoting which is that Emily the um editor says she is quoting a thing that um that is in the essay which is you could only see 12% of the moon that night so the moon was not half full so this is something that Jim has fact check and then she says who the hell is gonna check a moon chart and Jim says I did I don't have a code book that tells me what matters and what doesn't and Emily says there is no code book it's called judgment yeah that exactly so well so I'm wondering even to all three of you because Lee as a consumer and the creator and and Barbara and Ira what would you want in the journalists code book like what rules what Barbara what's in your fact checking 101 my fact checking 101 I have um it's it's really kind of what I have to do is be clear what what people think might be a good source is not a good source.

It's like okay you got that from a blog that's no good. If it's a disease you can't go to the the um support group website you need to go to the uh association or or universities and you know you have to go through the real folks legislation you go to the government you know there are places to go um for studies you can the NIH has a a very large um uh number of studies that you can find there, you can almost find everything.

[38:36] Ira Glass: The real research.

[38:38] Ira Glass: The real, yeah, I mean statistics. You know, we look up trademarks, you know, there's a trademark website that you can check out.

[38:45] Ruthie Fierberg: And Ira, what would you put on that list?

[38:49] Ira Glass: I mean, I mean, like fact-checking things is very much a moving target, and the customs of it are a moving target, partly because we exist now in a political environment, a cultural environment where untruths are stated at such speed on live television.

[39:04] Ira Glass: And so one of the things I think it's interesting that you've seen grow up over the recent years is that you'll see people like Jake Tapper on CNN or Anderson Cooper do real-time fact-checkings at George Stephanopoulos of interviews as they're happening. People will say things. I've seen George Stephanopoulos on with White House officials. You know, just basically they'll say something and he'll say, "Well, that's not true," and he'll say, and just go on to the next question, not give, not even give. I saw him do this with Stephen Miller, the president's not give a chance for a rebuttal. Well, yeah, just just just like just point out because there's a thing right now where untruths are standing out there unchallenged.

It's interesting seeing what happens when the president gives an address or talks about, you know, recently it's been talking about coronavirus and, you know, and just stating things that are not true, saying that everyone that there are tests available right now, and you know, there are plenty of tests, and you can get a test, anybody wants a test, and watching anchors having to jump in on the live feed, you know, just as soon as it's done to say, like, "Well, actually that's not true."

[40:07] Barbara Brandon-Croft: The fact checkers, it's a column.

[40:09] Ira Glass: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[40:10] Barbara Brandon-Croft: What did they have that column?

[40:11] Ira Glass: Though how many people read that column? Like where you want to be is you want to be as close to the untruth with the truth. And so, and so, you know, so everything that Barbara's saying has just gotten way more, way more intense. Like it's very much like a war for factual information and to establish what the truth is. In a non-news situation, especially, you know, Barbara, you're editing magazine stories that aren't always, you know, reporting the latest study on raising toddlers. And Ira certainly you have a lot of editorial control in these narratives and these themes like what are you looking for in a story before you decide that it needs vetting like before you're what are you looking for at the substance of something that says this is worth telling if it is true.

[41:03] Ira Glass: Well I mean there are criteria aren't that different. I mean for me are like aren't that different than Lee's like you want something that will connect to people and be moving like for This American Life like you know we're an experiment at doing stories that are factually true but also have the kind of emotional feeling to them that a great drama can have or at least a drama I wouldn't even say a great drama just a drama where people go through story arcs, people go through changes and we register their feelings along the way and the events of the plot, you know it's structured around plot and the events of the plot drive people through different feelings and you want to chart what their feelings are at each spot in the way that a good dramaturg would and chart where they begin, chart where their feelings end, but every beat of it is true.

So for us, you know, what we need is we need there has to be a plot the plot has to be surprising generally we need it to drive it some thought about the world that you haven't thought before which I'm sure is very much part of Lee's job and Barbara's job too. I mean and then and you know then we go and report it out and you know, if the story turns out to be true, like you know, we verify everything. We do get into like a certain territory, like since we do so many stories that aren't news but are just personal stories, that the only people who can attest to the facts are the people who we're interviewing. You know, it's just something that happened in a room with two people 15 years ago, and there the best you can do is like talk to everybody around them, talk to the people who are involved, and at some point you just have to decide if you trust them, if everything else they say seems to add up.

[42:29] Ira Glass: The switched at birth episode of This American Life with those mothers who were really the only people who could talk about why they didn't share the information, and they're I mean, and they're very elderly, and those are the only memory sources, yeah.

[42:47] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Yes, yes, yes.

[42:48] Ira Glass: Yeah, that's a story where basically one mother knows that the babies were switched at birth, she waits three or four decades to let everybody else know and say, like, "No, no, that one's my kid, this one's your kid," and then why she did that, you know, and why she didn't tell the truth earlier. Like the only person who can answer that is her. Um, but that's a story very much structured, like a drama, the way I think any dramaturg would where basically you hear a bunch of people, you know, shit talker for like 45 minutes before you get to and you should feel like what's wrong with this lady, and then when she finally explains why, like your heart really goes out to her and and all your sympathies switch in the way that Lee's saying, like you want people's feelings to switch back and forth and sympathize with one character and another.

[43:30] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm wondering too. I'll pose this to the group. Like, we've been talking kind of about two types of truth that there's an emotional truth and there's a factual truth. Are they equivalent?

[43:43] Leigh Silverman: No, they're not equivalent.

[43:43] Ira Glass: No, of course not.

[43:46] Leigh Silverman: No.

[43:53] Ira Glass: Like things can seem because things can have a lot of feeling, but not be true. Like, like the lots of great people are making a good living doing really wonderful work. No, like Fleabag isn't factually true, but it's emotionally true, you know.

[44:07] Leigh Silverman: Mm-hmm.

[44:08] Ruthie Fierberg: I guess is it I'm almost thinking just as like human beings though. To me, sometimes emotional truth, like, and I think this is what John D'Agata is saying is that emotional truth can feel more important, that there is something to be gleaned by, you know, the mother of this boy who jumped off a building saying, "It's my essence, it's the essence of my child."

[44:33] Ira Glass: It 100% feels more important. It always does, and I think it always will. Emotional truth is like so much more important to us than factual truth, which is why we live in the world we do, you know, like like people don't vote based on the facts, people vote based on their feelings. Like everything we do is based on our feelings. Emotional truth runs the world, it's the most important thing. We were talking about, you know, since the beginning, you were very clear that like this is a drama, this is a piece of theater. And um I often wonder, like, why didn't John D'Agata just call his like why didn't they just label it fiction in the magazine? And that we have such a desire as people, or that we have this belief that things are more powerful if they are true. And I'm wondering just what your general thought is on that. Like, why do things why do we need things to be true? If I can ask you to philosophize.

[45:29] Leigh Silverman: Oh God. Um, you know, I don't, I can't speak for John. You know, I think he had an intention with writing this book that was understood by some and misunderstood by many. And I think he felt, you know, the reaction that he got from many journalists was, you know, quite angry. And I think people felt like he had sort of abused the form. It's my job to provide people whether it's funny or not, or a drama or not, or a thriller to give people something to think about that they haven't thought about in this way. And um I feel like what this topic has and what the play hopefully did for audiences was really question in a deep way what is the slippery slope around fact. And that for me is the fundamental question. And yet we are obsessed with this idea of the truth. Like that we want things to be true. Not just that we want it to feel true, but that we want it to actually be true.

[46:54] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Yeah, but you're also talking about something that is um, I mean, it's really di different people feel truth in a different way, you know. So it's not like that, and so I think it's that's one of the contributing factors to the chaos right now is um there's the truth people, you know, it's it's um it it's not it's not like oh, and this is the truth, and everyone agrees on it. Everyone feels differently about what the truth is. It's not one thing that it's ever changing depending on who's looking at it or describing it.

[47:25] Barbara Brandon-Croft: And I mean, I think that for me, one of the things that's so amazing about what Ira's done with This American Life, which is like a show that I feel like you know, I the people on This American Life feel like my friends because I have listened to every episode sort of fanatically. And I think the way that Ira tells stories is so incredible because actually he is aligning the stars in a way of a real true situation, an autobiographical situation, and and being able to connect it to an emotional truth and to still have elements of surprise in theater. And I mean, I often feel, and and I know many of the This American Life stories have translated into other mediums because of this, because they feel like the farewell.

It, you know, that is a perfect example of a piece that was, you know, one it was it was a documentary radio piece that turned into um a whole other form. And I think that so much of the work on This American Life does that, and and it's really a question of credibility in a certain way. So, what's what makes a show like This American Life credible is because it is based foundationally in the ethics that I feel like Ira was just talking about. But what makes art credible are they're different foundational beliefs.

[48:56] Ira Glass: Can I just say like that was really nice to hear you say, Louis? But but also like I feel like that what This American Life is, it's like journalism done by somebody who basically grew up watching Fiddler on the Roof, you know. Like, like I feel like the aesthetics of the show are so are so defined by by the plays I saw as a kid.

[49:13] Leigh Silverman: Well, your show's structure as prologue, act one, act two, act three.

[49:18] Ira Glass: Yeah, that's true. Like, like it really like it, like it was the plays that I saw. I feel like like I w when I started doing reporting, like at some point, I was just like, I want the journalism to have the feeling I would get from those the experiences I've had, like watching musicals, actually, when I was a kid.

[49:35] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm wondering where is the in your opinion, the place for perspective in journalism.

[49:44] Ira Glass: What do you mean by perspective?

[49:46] Ruthie Fierberg: Like, I think that um like style and the writer's point of view. Like when I write a profile, someone is going to read that and then see my subject through my eyes. And I take that as a given of my type of journalism. But is it a given of a type of journalism? Is a is I think you have a perspective as an editor in chief of the kinds of stories you like. Like, where is the place for perspective and personal point of view? Much like what you're describing it in writing a feature story like the way you write. That is, we assume that like there's there's something out there we want to document, and we assume that the writer is an interesting enough enough person that that when they have a perspective, when they have thoughts and feelings about the thing that they're documenting, like we want them to put that into the story.

It just makes it a better story if the person documenting it is a human being and not just like some newsy robot. And so and so very much we exist in the magazine it like it's a long tradition in journalism, like in magazines and elsewhere, that the writer can have a voice and have a personality. And uh and uh, but within that, like, you know, we want everything they say, everything they say has to be true you know uh like and stand up to to proper fact check well to me one of the questions that was being raised is like whose truth are we in pursuit of and I also wonder in terms of like making a judgment call Barbara on your end because like there are so many things ringing in my head as I think about this whether it's like that line in Wicked that goes it's all in which label is able to persist is what makes history like that there are synonymous words um but it's based like this is where the question of perspective comes in.

So like as a fact checker when do you allow that perspective and that style to be heard so that we have author's voice so that we have stories so that people actually want to read things but that you're maintaining truth.

[51:56] Barbara Brandon-Croft: You know I'm just really going through the stories and and not trying to necessarily editorialize and I you know like consistently put in notes in people's stories BBC's two cents and just make it as vague as possible but still accurate.

[52:13] Leigh Silverman: I kind of leave it on the editor. That's why I'm so glad to say the editor in your play because that's exactly, you know, like I kind of dump it on them. You know, I'm like, I want to go for the record the fact checker says this, but I'm gonna let you decide what you want to do with it.

[52:28] Barbara Brandon-Croft: But that's also so interesting that sometimes we would rather err on the side of vagary than on the side of incorrectness.

[52:36] Leigh Silverman: That sometimes I just think to myself, like, oh, so if he had said some instead of just saying a number, like would that have absolved him? And why not just say that? But at the same time, like, do we want people to be getting more vague?

[52:52] Ira Glass: Right. I mean, it depends on when your deadline is too.

[52:55] Leigh Silverman: Right. It's really down to the wire. You're like, okay, we cannot verify this.

[53:00] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Right.

[53:01] Leigh Silverman: I can sit with it if you say some instead of this number, because I cannot confirm this number.

[53:07] Ira Glass: And that's what the editor did in the play throughout, right? Is she keeps saying, well, what if we go this way and what if we go this way? And she's trying to get the thing to print. I mean, that's sort of another one of the interesting things about the structure of the play, which is that all three people want the same thing. They all want the article to get published.

[53:25] Leigh Silverman: Right.

[53:26] Ira Glass: Until Jim, the fact checker, decides he doesn't want the article to get published. But really, the three of them all want the same thing, and they want it to go. So there's this, you know, and then because it's a play, as the time gets closer, the stakes get higher and the boiling point reaches, you know, a place of kind of what is hopefully a super delightful hysteria, but you know, it is that thing of wanting to figure out how to get it done.

[54:01] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Right. But I just keep coming back to this idea of like whose truth and whose perspective, because the coroner says it was eight seconds, but the parents say it was nine. So whose truth gets to prevail?

[54:14] Leigh Silverman: Right. Or, you know, even John's example of the coastline. Like he says, okay, what's the coastline of England? How, uh, what is the distance of that? Okay, well, if we're going by the circumference, it's one number, and that is a fact, and that is true. But if you start hugging it and go every inch, that is also true. It's like when we say it's the number one movie in America. Is it number one by the critics? Is it number one at the box office? Is it number one at the national box office or the international box office? So, like, how, Barbara, how do you take those things and decide like whose truth is the one that we're trying to tell?

[54:57] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Well, um, those are the things that like if I see a number in a manuscript, I'm like, oh no. You know, it's like this is got this is this is put you on high alert, you know, because we'll say if, you know, we'll do a travel story. It's three steps away or just across the street from, and like, actually, it was next door. You know, you don't have this right, so we make that change. Um, because that's that's a fact, you know, across the street and next door are two different things. But, you know, I think the writer felt that, you know, that it sounded better. Oh, it's just across the street from. And so again, I put it back on the editor when I talk about, you know, whose fact works. It's mine, it's on the fact check.

[55:36] Ruthie Fierberg: Ira, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about your experience with actually publishing a story and finding out it was not true with the Mike Daisy and the Apple Factory episode of This American Life.

[55:51] Ira Glass: It's the exact thing of, you know, someone put theater on the stage. I agree with you that it was marketed as documentary theater, which is different than Lifespan of a Fact, which was not marketed as documentary theater. And that to you was a compelling enough emotional story to look into it and want to create a journalistic piece off of it. And obviously, there was a very retraction, and you took very clear responsibility about what went wrong in that process. But as we talk about vetting and things that are unverifiable and all those things, I'm wondering how that experience changed how you moved forward in your story choosing process in your vetting process.

[56:42] Ira Glass: Okay, so just to summarize for people who didn't know the history of the radio show I work on in such an encyclopedic way. So there's this storyteller named Mike Daisy who performs all over the country when he's in New York, it's often at the public theater. He's like an incredibly skilled, like wonderful performer. And I'd been a fan for a long time, and I saw this thing that he did about, um, about, uh, he loves Apple products, he's sort of a geek for that, knows everything about them. And so he's just like ecstasy of Steve Jobs was the name of his show. Right. And so, and so at some point he started to read about like, well, how do they make these things again? He's like was very disturbed at what he read about the conditions under which they're made and the people who make them, and so he decided to fly himself to Shenzhen, China, and try to go into the factories.

He couldn't get a factory tour, but he could stand outside the gates and talk to people as they entered and exited, and um, and really tried to document like how do they make these things that I love? And he put together a really beautiful, very moving, very funny show about it that I saw at the public in New York. And afterwards, I approached him and I said, like, that's just such an incredible piece of work. Um, could we excerpt it or do something from it for our radio audience? Uh, and I said, like, look, I understand when you're putting together something for the stage, like you compress events and like not everything is going to be true. And that's entirely appropriate to the medium you're working in.

But like what we would do is we would just take sections that are exactly verbatim true. You know, and so like, let's just talk about that. You know, is there anything in here that isn't verbatim true? Because like we'll just leave that out. We don't need to get into that. All we want is the stuff we're a journalistic outfit. What you're saying is so powerful. Let's do that. And he agreed to that. And um, and I said, we're gonna fact check this, you know, we're gonna like submit it, you know, go through fact checking. And he's like, that's fine. He's like, it's all true. And so we basically condensed his thing down and figured out for him how to perform it, which actually was a fascinating thing because he performs as sort of big, but on radio, you actually have to perform kind of small because you're talking one to one to a person.

It's like a camera that's always in close-up. And so we put him into a room in a very dark, small room with a very small audience that had to perform to them. And he's an amazing performer and he did great. And um, and so we had this incredible recording and we put it out, and really it was the most popular episode we had ever done. And then like just saying, like, look at how these things get made. And then, and then a reporter in China was just like, this doesn't this doesn't sound right. This doesn't sound right at all. And then the thing that tipped off that reporter was that Mike talked about meeting with an activist who, like, you know, is, is, you know, worried about the conditions in the factories, they met the activist in a Starbucks. And this, yeah, it was that detail and the other detail about the gates, the guards at the gates having guns, and knowing that guards in China outside the military were not allowed to have guns.

[59:39] Leigh Silverman: So it kind of brings us back to like that idea.

[59:42] Ira Glass: Yeah, very tiny, yeah. And as Barbara was saying, every fact counts.

[59:48] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Yes.

[59:49] Ira Glass: Barbara is exactly right. And guards were strange. If Mike Daisy had simply consulted with Barbara before putting this on stage and putting on this radio, he'd be fine today. This all this would never have happened.

[1:00:04] Ira Glass: Okay. So, um, and so this reporter found, uh, and we did fact check the story, and we, we as best we could from the United States, and we really like we talked to many, many people who knew what was going on in the factories in China, and it turns out like everything Mike said was happening in the factories was true. Um, with one thing that did not seem to be true. He said that he met somebody who was underage working in an Apple factory. In fact, Apple is in fact incredibly aggressive about keeping out underage workers from working in their factories. Uh, but you know, like it's possible that there was somebody who actually was underage, you know, somebody slipped through the cracks, but it's very atypical.

In any case, we did our fact-checking, put it on the air, and then this reporter in China said basically they ran it down and they found Mike's interpreter, and we had not like Mike gave us her phone number, we tried it, it didn't go through. He's like, I don't know who it is. It's like some lady who was I met at the hotel, you know. And honestly, that was our mistake. That's we should never have aired this without talking to his interpreter. We should have really insisted, and we should have run down, we should have hired a reporter in China to find her. Anyway, this reporter found the interpreter, and the interpreter said that um, that no, these things never happen. Like Mike, you know, recalls meeting somebody whose hand got mangled in a machine.

Mike tells very dramatic stories, and so in telling a good story, Mike had made up incidents to clothe the facts about what's going on in these factories. Because he's going for an emotional truth because that is properly Mike's business. That's his job. And it's can I say totally fine for that to be his job? He just shouldn't represent it as the factual, he's a theater artist. Like it's totally fine. He just shouldn't say this is fact for fact true. He could say this is inspired by true events, this is inspired by my trip to China. Like, oh, that would be fine. Um, and he shouldn't put it on to and like honestly, even if he he had told that to us, maybe we would have said this isn't actually true, but the things he's depicting are true.

[1:02:05] Ira Glass: Um, you know, right? Like editors know that there's no these these events did not many of these events did not happen, but the thing he's saying about the factories, you know, are basically true with this one exception. Um, but he pointed to many other things besides that. And um, and uh, you know, and and so basically once we found out that it wasn't true, we did an entire episode and said, like, look, like these things didn't happen. These incidents, he didn't meet these people, he didn't have these conversations that he's tells so movingly, you know. And then we had tried to be very precise, but let's be clear what is true about what he said, and we tried to say, like, you know, labor activists and people in these plants and and and people who know what's going on in these plants, these other things, like this, these things are true.

The story he told is not true. And and I feel like, you know, again, my job is different than Lie's, like, you know, like I'm in the fact business and uh and in the feelings business, actually. Um, and so in a way that's very different than Lee's job. And and honestly, like I after that, like I I really like like in a no joke way, really thought we people might not. I really thought maybe the show was over. Like, like to have the most popular episode you ever do, where you take on the most profitable company in the world and say all these things about them for it to not turn out to be true. Um, that is not that is not uh a way to run, you know, any kind of journalistic outfit. And really, I really did think like maybe the show's over and we're all gonna do other things.

And and but anyway, so you know, we very much we spent a nut we did an episode that's an hour long, sort of explaining here's how this happened, here's what's not true, here's what is true, you know, and then just kind of held our fingers. The thing that we added after that is before that, we would hire a fact checkers on an occasional project here or there, if it was a investigative story or something. But generally the way we fact check the story is so the way that reporters and editors do it in a newsroom. Like I came out of All Things Considered in Morning Edition, the MPR news shows. And and in those contexts where you're just turning out a story that same day, there's no fact checker. You know, what happens is you and your editor talk about like, wait, where'd you get this?

What is it? Is this true? And it's just it's something that you'd negotiate between you and your editor, and that's the way we had always done it up until that point. And then basically after that point, we're like, let's do this the way the New Yorker does, or the way the New York Times magazine does. And we basically hired, we have, you know, a team of fact checkers led by a wonderful fact checker, Christopher Swatala, who wrote a really lovely piece actually about your play, Lee. Um, you know, you know, like basically going in and re-reporting every fact in every story. One of the things that I think was really exciting to me about the Lifespan of a Fact, and to the point also that's something that Barbara had said earlier is that I didn't think that people really had an understanding of what the process was like, and actually how aerobic it is, and how many questions there are.

[1:05:10] Leigh Silverman: And what um, because it is, you know, this is the question of the play is is it clear what is fact and what is not? And at any point, and the more you think about it, it's like one of those things, like it it exponentially gets farther away every time you get closer to it, like you can never get there. And so, you know, I thought putting that on stage would actually, um, although I know it kind of makes Ira's head explode, I I did feel by theatricalizing that debate, it it wouldn't lean us in the direction of oh, um, journalists are bananas, but that in fact it would um help us understand the process by which and the ambiguities and the inconsistencies and the questions that go into things that uh ostensibly are black and white.

Is it true? Is it not? And that there is um much more vagary attached to it, and therefore it's a much more complicated conversation, and it's a much more um uh uh sort of thrilling exercise. Well, our relationship, Barbara, when we worked together and I was the writer and you were the fact checker. I mean the moment when he picks up where's his backup, and it's that one sheet of paper, and I just remember having to hand backup into you, and it was my whole transcript of an interview. It was the original printout of the study from you know the medical journal and everything, and like what really constitutes good backup versus bad backup so that you can do your job.

[1:06:50] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Yeah, I always do have um I have a list of things that that writers need to comply with, you know, just um, and and you know, I can I can wiggle a little bit. I'm like, if you don't have the exact study, at least have the public relations or the PR uh release from the university that gave you that study. You know, that's closer. I can reach out to the study author. They're thrilled when I reach them. I'm like, all right, we're gonna take your giant study and make it into a sentence. They're like, I'm so glad you asked, you know. And that's the reaction I get. Well, you know, a lot of them, you know, are very calm about it. Well, that's fair to say, you know, like, is it true? I know you said it was fair, but is it true?

You know, it's it's funny, you know, but that's the way I handle it. That's the way I try to I just wanted to actually quote something from the play, maybe as a just as an example of this, which is um a part where Jim has said um to Emily, the uh Jim, the fact checker has said to Emily, the editor, um, are you gonna print it? And Emily says, I don't know. It's a moving, meaningful and rare piece of writing. I have my magazine to put out, I have a hundred union members that I'm currently paying overtime so that my intern can be comfortable with a one-second discrepancy and an 1100 footfall. And Jim, the fact checker says, How can you even for a moment, claim that facts are negotiable? And even if they are, you're asking an intern to defend the actual nature of the world as it stands against white lies, maybe, but lies.

[1:08:27] Leigh Silverman: Exactly. It's really important to me that we provide action steps for our listeners to take forward. And I want to know either just what content creators should be doing to preserve truth or what readers should be looking for to make sure that what they're reading is true. Like what are your like what's a best practice moment for people to take with them?

[1:08:54] Ira Glass: I mean, when you get to that, like our country is like truthfully, like our country is completely fucked. You know, when you look at the pew surveys of like of uh what people can tell about what is fact and what is not, like I don't remember the numbers offhand. I guess I should have looked them up before this, but but generally um people generally a huge swath of our country does not discern uh the difference between fact and opinion. And and so, and so uh so people do not like read newspapers or or watch the news, uh whatever channel they watch, where the thought of like, oh, this part is the fact part and this part is the opinion part, you know, this is an opinion segment. And so, and so um, you know, I just think just as a country, we're doing a terrible job making clear to children as they as they learn to like as they learn to like go out on the internet to discern like what is what what is a reliable source, like Barbara says, and what isn't, and you know, just like I I don't have a brief summary of best practices, like in a way like I feel like even asking for it isn't isn't rep isn't understanding like the scale of of the problem we're in.

Like what we have right now is we live in a in a country where where we are tribally divided, and you know, there's one team, the mainstream media, which is doing fact-based news and journalism. And there's another team, which often, I will say, does rely on the facts, but often is not feel bound by them. Um, or we'll just ignore the ones that are inconvenient and focus on the ones that are convenient. And and uh, you know, and there are two realities to everything. You know, it was really it's only since the president came out and said, like we are in a national crisis that lots of people really believed that the coronavirus epidemic uh pandemic is is more than just like a left-wing media hype to make the president look bad.

And like, you know, and I feel like that's completely um like we live in a world where all of us for the rest of our lives are are going to are going to exist in this world where there's uh like a fact-based fact-based kind of like journalism out there and a non-fact-based kind of journalism. And and that in that war right now, I have to say, I believe the fact-based journalists, we are losing. We are losing ground. I feel like the other side is better funded and sees it as a war. And I feel like, you know, we're holding our own. I feel like every day there's journalism happening that's factual that I feel proud of. Uh being life makes me feel proud to be a journalist, but um, but uh, but uh like I feel like we have not like those of us in the in the fact community, um, we have not figured out how to effectively counter what's happened and as a result.

[1:11:38] Leigh Silverman: Well, so perhaps it's a matter of putting our putting our money behind the fact based outlets.

[1:11:43] Ira Glass: There you go.

[1:11:44] Leigh Silverman: There you go. Uh uh, sure. Donate to your public radio station, describe to the New York Times or Washington Post. Sure. Support the stuff you like and the way that you would support a play that you like.

[1:11:52] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Absolutely. Maybe Barbara, I'm wondering what we can take away. How how do we best protect journalism? Is it a matter of writing to publishers and saying you need to fund your fact-checking departments better? Is it a matter of writing to editors in chief and saying, uh I noticed this is wrong? Or like what should we be demanding as the public to get out of this screwed over world that IRA is convinced we're in?

[1:12:25] Leigh Silverman: Yeah, that world of alternate facts. What is that? You know, it's that whole idea that often, you know, we are, you know, we we're they make smaller and smaller um um editorial staff and then it's left to the fact checker who's getting things done at the last minute. And you you have to start getting, you know, um it's overworking the fact checker. And then and that's fundamentally that's what the uh magazines it has to rely on. We're we're we're really um um providing um uh a service for the magazine for people to know I know I can trust this magazine. I know I can trust this because I'm getting facts from this magazine. And you know, um people are quick to write when they see something wrong. But um it would be nice if people wrote in and said, Wow, glad you did that story, because that's something that's been misleading in the somewhere else I read it, and I was glad to see it.

[1:13:22] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Is there a list of publications and or outlets that have fact checking departments so that you know if what you're reading is has that as part of the process? Um, I don't know that there's a list like that, and it and I think if there is a list, it's getting smaller and smaller because people are um, you know, publishers are starting to figure out how we can get this out faster if we just get it out, but it to get it out fast is not to get it out right.

[1:13:48] Ira Glass: Well, it's like in the play when she says we don't have a fact-checking department anymore, and it's how an interesting on the story.

[1:13:55] Barbara Brandon-Croft: Totally.

[1:13:57] Ira Glass: Um true. Um but that's that's the reality. Um, and um, but of course you can look at the mascot and see is there a research director, is there a research team, you know, and see if they actually have fact checkers. We need um publications that have departments like the ones that Barbara just said. We need people to take their own responsibility for getting information from places like that to for understanding the difference between fact and opinion. It becomes, I think, incredibly dangerous. And so I find myself a person more and more, uh, surprisingly so. And I think like that audience, I mean, I was sort of described people laughing and uh, you know, at the play and and and how crazy it made him feel.

And it I I understand that, but I also feel like part of what people were laughing at and part of what their experience was was a sense of understanding and desire for the thing that um that Jim was saying, which is that they understood even though it was crazy, 12% of the moon. What do you what does that even mean? That's such a small detail. But I think part of what the sound was coming out of that audience was a comprehension and an understanding that in fact the those things are important because that's where the slippery slope starts that ends us up where we are.

[1:15:10] Leigh Silverman: You want people to have the trust.

[1:15:12] Ira Glass: Yeah.

[1:15:12] Leigh Silverman: And like Ira was saying was when he was talking about the Mike Daisy episode. I think that the reason he thought they were done was because he felt he had betrayed a trust. I think that that's probably what all this comes down to. When it comes to trust, I want to make things easier for you, the listeners, to navigate. So, consumers out there, check out the resources at YWETHER.com as well as in the episode description. Take the quiz to see if you know the difference between fact and opinion statements. And if you struggle a little bit, that's okay. There's resources there to learn the difference between fact and opinion statements. Know how to check your sources. Like Barbara was telling us, go to the original source.

Don't just read it on a blob on a Facebook post. Go to the CDC website if you have coronavirus questions. Also, be aware when reporters are what we call editorializing, which is commenting on the news. So a statement such as a tornado happened in Oklahoma, God that's awful. A tornado happened in Oklahoma is the fact. God, that's awful is an editorializing comment on that fact. And these are important distinctions to make.

[1:16:39] Leigh Silverman: Stay aware, check your sources, and for the content creators out there, invest in your fact checkers.fm slash W W T or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to leave a review and tell your friends. Our theme music is by Benjamin Velez. WyWe Theater is recorded in part on the traditional lands of the Wapinger and Lenape peoples. I acknowledge this land was unjustly taken from them and pay my respect to elders both past and present. Special thanks to Dory Berenstein, Alan Seals, Lee Silverman, Patrick Taylor, Tony Montaneri, Wesley Birdsall, Elena Mayer, and Suzanne Chipkin. For more resources for change, info about our guests, and more, visit us at YWeTheater.com.