CLASSY
a classy (and uncomfortable) laugh with terry gross
How do we change ourselves to fit in at work? Jonathan unpacks class divisions in the workplace with his former boss and public radio legend, Terry Gross.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
JONATHAN MENJIVAR: All I ever wanted to do was make radio stories. It took me five years to figure it out. I was living in Chicago, working temp jobs and then I’d come home at night and work on my little stories … like they were model airplanes. Just this silly hobby I’d play with. I really wanted it … I just couldn’t figure out how to get a job without working an unpaid internship. In 2005, I had finally given it a go. I was freelancing in public radio … and realizing that I was not very good at the hustle. I made $12,000 that year. I desperately needed a real job.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Six months later, I was sitting at a desk at WHYY … the public radio station in Philly. … working for legendary interviewer TERRY GROSS and her show Fresh Air. It was everything I’d wanted. It was like radio grad school. I was learning to cut tape and write and just … think really fast. It was the first place I’d ever felt radio consume my whole body. I could feel voices flowing through me as I worked. But I was also consumed with fear … and this new awareness about class that felt destabilizing. And it had nothing to do with money. It was a public radio station, no one was really making much money at all. It was more about taste and a kind of shared cultural knowledge that can be its own little elite world. I was surrounded by all these people who knew how to understand and break down the news … and ask interesting questions … and have sophisticated opinions about movies … I don’t know, I just … I’d never been around people like that. Once, another producer came up to me and felt my sweater between her fingers. “Is this cashmere?” she asked. It was acrylic, from the thrift store, I didn’t even know what cashmere was. I don’t think she meant anything by it … I think she genuinely liked the sweater … but it put up a wall between us. A very fine wall made of the downy fur on the belly of goats from Mongolia.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: But I tried to blend in. I saw someone reading The New Yorker for the first time … and thought maybe I should read it too. I couldn’t believe how long the articles were. I bought my first designer shirt. I was clearly copying the people around me. And then one day I was at home and something weird happened.
HILLARY FRANK: I must’ve said something or like something made you laugh.
JONATHAN: This is Hillary … my girlfriend at the time. She’s my wife now.
HILLARY FRANK: And your laugh sounded different than it had ever sounded before. Because, you snorted. Like (makes snorting sound).
[MUSIC]
HILLARY FRANK: And then it started happening pretty much every time you laughed. Like if you thought something was really funny, there was always a snort. And once it became a pattern I was like, oh my god, this is Terry. It’s contagious, you’ve caught Terry’s laugh.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: It’s true. Terry Gross… she snorts when she thinks something’s really funny. I think it’s totally endearing … and it’s kind of a prize if you can make her laugh that way. It means you’re getting the real Terry. But hearing it come out of me … it was like … you know that scene in Pinocchio where he starts to turn into a donkey and let’s out a bray? It would just happen like that, I wasn’t trying to do it … I couldn’t control it. Somehow in trying to fit in and be like the smart, confident people around me … I accidentally took it too far. And I know I’m not the only one to do something like this at work. Why do we do this? What is it about taste that makes us feel like we need to change in order to fit in? And how can a snort be a class signifier? From Pineapple Street Studios … I’m Jonathan Menjivar…This is Classy, a show about the chasms between us that are really hard to talk about, but too big to ignore.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Today … we talk about how work can change you with the one person who knows how to handle deep and occasionally awkward conversations.
TERRY GROSS: I feel like I’m in denial that you’re telling me something that I’m unwilling to hear. Probably out of a sense of self protection or self justification.
JONATHAN: It’s that lady from WHYY … my old boss Terry Gross. .
[MUSIC ENDS]
JONATHAN: So yeah. I told Terry about the snort … and a whole lot more. But before I got into that, I wanted to know more about her and her experience with class. I knew she’d grown up in Brooklyn, and then started working in local radio in the 70s back when public radio was still basically an experiment. How’d she get from that … to being someone who tells people all across the country … these are the books that are interesting … this is an actor that should be on your radar? She’s basically a totem of the kinds of things you should know if you want to belong to a certain intellectual class.
JONATHAN: Can we start with the question that you often ask people? Can you tell me about the neighborhood that you grew up in?
TERRY GROSS: Sure, yeah. I grew up in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn. And it was a kind of working class/middle class, mostly with kids. Mostly Jewish. It was a very Jewish neighborhood, and there were a few private houses across the street. And I always thought, like, how unusual because I was so used to like an apartment building.
JONATHAN: Terry’s mom had worked as a secretary before she met her dad. He was in the hat business … selling fabric and ribbons and little flowers to hatmakers.
JONATHAN: How did your family compare to everyone else in those apartment buildings?
TERRY GROSS: This was not an artsy neighborhood. People weren’t in the arts. People were, I mean, the fathers I knew, it varied from like being on the road selling Tootsie Roll lollipops, managing the produce section of a grocery store, to like being in the advertising end of an alarm company, which seemed like pretty fancy to me. It was a really nice neighborhood in so many ways, but it was a little boring, too. I mean, there were no record stores or bookstores. You know, if you were buying a book, you'd buy a paperback at the stationery store. If you were buying a record, you'd go to the, kind of, candy store, it was like a store you passed on the way to school that sold candy and they had like a few records.
JONATHAN: In high school, Terry started to imagine a life outside of Brooklyn.
TERRY GROSS: I wanted out. You know, I just wanted a different life. You know, my… all the mothers in the neighborhood were mothers and homemakers, mostly full time. I knew very few women outside of my teachers who had jobs. And if they did, they mostly worked for their husbands or they were in like one of the traditional women's professions, like teaching or nursing or secretary. And it's just not the life I wanted. I wasn't sure exactly what life I wanted, but it wasn't that one.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Terry ended up at a state school in New York … the University at Buffalo and there she was able to start playing around with different ways to live her life.
TERRY GROSS: College was a complete 180 for me. You know, I started kind of reshaping my life. After my first year in college, grades became much less important to me. I became an aspiring hippie. I really didn't have the mind for it because I'm a very, you know, a fairly anxious person and I worry a lot. My mind needs to be like engaged with things. And what I was modeling myself on was kind of disengaging in a way, and trying to be more whatever about things which… I'm really not that. You know, it was a period when people were fantasizing about communes in Vermont and things like that. And that would be a horrible life for me! I'm such a city person. But, you know, I got caught up. I think I got caught up in some other people's fantasies. So I really kind of transformed my life, transformed how I dressed, transformed my mind. And then I feel like I eventually found who I was.
JONATHAN: Yeah. I'm trying to imagine you on a commune, like they don't even have, like, the candy stores with the records there.
TERRY GROSS: Yeah. No, exactly. No movie theaters. Yeah. Like, Yeah. What was I thinking?
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Terry says she doesn’t regret any of this … trying and failing to be a good hippie. She had no real role models for the person she wanted to be, so she had to try on lots of different personalities. Eventually she settled on a world view that rejected middle class American values. She was more interested in ideas than money.
JONATHAN: Did any of that have to do with class?
TERRY GROSS: No. No. In fact. Well, really, nobody wanted to be a quote bourgeois. That was like a dirty word.
JONATHAN: Yeah. So not not being bourgeois, is that like you sort of described everybody sort of just trying to be laid back and.
TERRY GROSS: Well, I think I think, you know, if money is status, there's other ways of defining status. In the period when I was in college, it was more about skills, talents, artistic abilities, political engagement, activism, setting up alternative systems.
JONATHAN: Mm hmm.
TERRY GROSS: So if you were good at any of those, that's what status was.
JONATHAN: And the money part of it just didn't didn't matter.
TERRY GROSS: Um, I don't think during that period that the people I knew were all about money, you know, And a lot of people, including people I lived with for a while, would pool their money. You know, if you had an odd job you were doing like waitressing or, you know, whatever, for a period, the money would go like in a cigar box and just be shared. And you could tell if you could fit in a cigar box or wasn't, it wasn't that much.
JONATHAN: Were you waiting tables then?
TERRY GROSS: Oh, I. Very briefly. Very, very briefly. I kind of spilled too many things too quickly to be allowed to stay there too long. It was a diner that was attached to a bowling alley, so I'd have to carry pitchers of beer with beer bottles and glasses from the diner part to the bowling alley part. And that didn't go well. I was told that this was not my calling.
JONATHAN: Were you fired?
TERRY GROSS: Yes, I was fired.
JONATHAN: Can I just say … not wanting to be bougie, which I get. I totally identify with that … but having the freedom to make the choice to not care about money is its own kind of bougieness. After college, after being fired from the diner, Terry took a job as a middle school teacher. And was fired…again. So she started volunteering at WBFO … a public radio station in Buffalo.
TERRY GROSS: I didn't have an alternative and I had no idea what to do with my life. So when I discovered radio and fell in love with it, it was like a defining moment for me. I found something that I loved that seemed willing to at least, you know, partly open the door to me.
JONATHAN: Mm hmm.
TERRY GROSS: But it opened up a whole world for me because suddenly I literally had a voice. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And it fed into all the things that kind of interesting to me. You know, I liked reading books and talking about books. Well, I could do that, but on the air, I, you know, I knew how to, quote, do my homework, which I needed to do for the interviews that I did. I was, you know, very excited by the women's movement. I was a part of the women's show for the first like year, year and a half that I worked in radio.
JONATHAN: That show was called Women Power. In 1975, Terry moved to Philly and started hosting a local version of Fresh Air, which like the show today … kind of covered everything.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, FRESH AIR] TERRY GROSS: That was Wordell Gray from an album called Central Avenue and that was Sweet Lorraine. You’re listening to Fresh Air, this is WUHY FM in Philadelphia. For the next while on Fresh Air we’re going to be talking about some of the personality traits of dogs which uh probably… (fades under)
[ARCHIVE CLIP, FRESH AIR] TERRY GROSS: John through your book and the investigating of Woodward and Bernstein, and the investigation of many others, a lot of the Watergate story has been told and is now available to the public. But I’m wondering, what are some of the questions do you think about Watergate that haven’t as yet been asked and need to be asked? JOHN DEAN: Well in the book I raise a couple of those questions. For example… (fades under)
[ARCHIVE CLIP, FRESH AIR] TERRY GROSS: We’ve all been unhappy. We all experience unhappiness and I’m sure we all experience depression. But is there a difference there between unhappiness and depression? (fades under)
JONATHAN: Finally, Terry had what she’d wanted. Something she was good at. All this tape is from 1976 and other than sounding younger … she’s got her voice figured out. She’s Fresh Air TERRY GROSS. I know she sometimes gets portrayed as being a kind of stuffy NPR lady, but I think she’s radical and edgy. Most people don’t talk about sex or death on the radio the way she does. Even before the show went national in 1987, Terry says that being a radio host … she felt a new kind of status.
TERRY GROSS: I remember being online. I don't mean online on the Internet. I just mean standing in line waiting for something during a weekday. And there were, like businessmen in the line, too. And I'd always feel like they looked at me like, well, I'm more important than she is. I should be taken care of first. And then once I got into radio, I thought, like, I matter. Like, I have a deadline. I actually have a show. So, like, you can't assume that I am totally unimportant, whereas you are very important.
JONATHAN: Yeah. Yeah.
TERRY GROSS: And and so it just, you know, helped me give, help. Give me a sense of confidence, which I really needed.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN : Fresh Air becomes kind of I don't know how to say this other than saying like you're kind of a national tastemaker. You know, like so much of the show is determined by your own taste. And then, like things that are on your show, people are going to go read, they're going to go watch. You know, there are going to be people at parties this weekend saying, like, I heard this thing on Fresh Air or I've heard people say like, I heard this thing on Terry Gross. They say your name, you know. And I wonder, like, are you aware of that, that power?
TERRY GROSS: Yes and no. I mean, on some level I am on some level I try not to think about it very much.
JONATHAN: So you try not to think about it. But do you ever.
TERRY GROSS: Yeah, I mean, sure. Like, I, I'm not on Twitter, like, I don't tweet, but I'm there. I'm there under an alias. So, so that I can read other people's tweets. So I follow what's, what's being said and who's hating on me and who's like and what our show did. And so I have some sense of how things are registering.
JONATHAN: Do you feel like you've had any sort of class shift in the, in the years hosting the show?
TERRY GROSS: Well, I mean, I'm certainly making more money than I did when I started, you know, I mean, that was my first job in radio when I started hosting the local version of Fresh Air in 75. And, you know, I think I was making $10,000 a year, which seemed like an enormous sum to me. I thought, like, that is just a remarkable amount of money, which of course, it wasn't. And yeah, so, I mean, financially, my status has certainly changed. But… it's nice to have a measure of financial security. No complaints about that. But in terms of like my lifestyle, like I have like a 2009 Hyundai Elantra that I drive, that's all dented up, which is nice in the sense that you don't have to worry about denting it. It's like, it's already dented, you know?
JONATHAN: Yeah. Yeah.
TERRY GROSS: If you get, if you're in a parking garage and you drive into a pole or something slowly and there's another dent and some of the paint from the pole, no problem.
JONATHAN: Mm hmm.
TERRY GROSS: And our home is very small. We outgrew it years ago, but we're not moving. And our house is just kind of littered with books and vinyl albums and CDs and papers. And it's… it's not, it isn't never going to be a showplace, let's just say. You know, the furniture is totally destroyed by our cat.
JONATHAN: Yeah. You could get a new car, Terry!
TERRY GROSS: Yeah, but, you know, I mostly don't drive very far, so I don't feel like I need one. And for me, shopping for a car is like being in hell.
JONATHAN: Uh huh. (Laughs)
TERRY GROSS: Because, maybe it's because I grew up with the sense of like, being thrifty or something that to part with that amount of money at one time or make a commitment to paying that amount of money over time, it's, it's just upsetting.
JONATHAN: Yeah. Yeah. Is any part of it Not like the old hippie you that doesn't want to be bourgeois and drive a new car?
TERRY GROSS: Oh, I wouldn't mind having a new car.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: When we come back … I guess I’m telling Terry about the snort.
[AD BREAK]
JONATHAN: OK this is me again … your very classy host … Jonathan Menjivar When I reached out to Terry initially, I told her I wanted to talk to her about her own class journey … but that I also wanted to talk about my time at Fresh Air, because it’d been a time of significant class shifting for me.
JONATHAN: I don't know how much you, you know about my background at all?
TERRY GROSS: Not that much, Jonathan.
JONATHAN: So. So my parents were both immigrants. My dad's from El Salvador. My mother… (fades under)
JONATHAN: I told her a kind of Cliff Notes version of where I come from. Parents divorced, factory jobs … stepdad who was a truck driver.
JONATHAN: And I went to go to college, but I went to a state school and it was all mostly like working class kids. Like I even commuted there. I lived at home, you know. So, like, I think college is like such a place of transformation for people. It sounds like it was for you.
TERRY GROSS: Definitely.
JONATHAN: Like, a lot of that didn't happen for me in college. I was still like, I was working full time. But I think like the, the kind of transformation that happened really happened in work. And like, and working for you was one of those like the first big step, you know? But the other part of it was that like Fresh Air was a big culture shock for me. Um…
TERRY GROSS: How so?
JONATHAN: I just like, um, I guess like the things that people were into and knew about were not things I knew about, you know, like I, I was not into musicals. I had not seen, like all of Scorsese's movies. I kept, I kept this a secret from you, but I had never even seen The Godfather.
TERRY GROSS: Oh, we would not have hired you, had we known that. (Laughs)
JONATHAN: No! (laughs) I know how important that is to you and everybody else there. But I felt so scared, like for the first, like, year and a half there, I just felt really out of place.
TERRY GROSS: I didn't know that.
JONATHAN: No?
TERRY GROSS: No, I really didn't know that.
JONATHAN: Um, I guess I blended in well enough.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: She didn’t notice. Why would she? I was new … I was learning. And I did a good job of blending in. Over time, I even became a little elite myself. I was hanging out with friends who had nice furniture and knew when asparagus was in season. One time I showed up to a dinner party wearing a bow tie. But you know … I didn’t make all this up. In the beginning, I was out of place, I was uncomfortable. And it manifested in this weird contagion where I started laughing like her. Eventually … I had to tell her.
JONATHAN: Um. you know how when you really enjoy something and you really laugh, you snort?
TERRY GROSS: Yes. Mm hmm. Yeah.
JONATHAN: I, I caught your snort.
TERRY: (Laughs)
JONATHAN: I started laughing like you. Hillary was like, What are you doing? What is this thing? Like, where, where did this come from?
TERRY GROSS: Oh, but that's probably because you had to listen to so much of my tape. It's so easy to pick up on things you listen to all the time. It's like people… when I was first starting in radio and living in Buffalo and I listened to the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, a lot, I started saying, like “aboot” you know -
JONATHAN: You did?
TERRY: Yeah, more or less because I heard it so much. I mean, I think people just naturally pick up on sounds they hear a lot. So… but anyways, that's fascinating to me! (Laughs)
JONATHAN: (Laughs) I think it's fascinating, too. And I think it does have something to do with this like class shifting that was happening in me and this like, like discomfort that I felt, you know, that like, I, I think I was like, you know, looking to the people around me, trying to be like, how do I fit in? How do I, how do I be like them?
TERRY GROSS: You know? Can I just say I'm… I so much I don't want to think of, like, class divisions within our show that I'm kind of trying to come up with all these other explanations, like, well, of course you didn't care about Broadway you're not from New York or even the East Coast. Well, and you didn't see The Godfather, well that's a generational thing, you didn't grow up with it. I saw it in a movie theater when it came out. And, you know… see what I'm, see what I'm doing? I'm, I'm trying to say, “oh, no, no, it wasn't about class. It was about your geography, your age.” You know what I'm saying? Because I don't, I like, I don't want to, I don't want to feel bad about class divisions. So I think maybe I'm in a little denial about that.
JONATHAN: Yeah, I don't know -
TERRY GROSS: Room for alternate explanations (laughs)
JONATHAN: Yeah, I know and those alternate explanations are probably valid. I think it's a mix of all of these things, you know? Um, but for me, I think the class thing was a thing I was really feeling.
JONATHAN: We circled around this for a while. Sometimes I felt like I was standing on Jello … like I just must’ve had this wrong the whole time. Sometimes the Jello melted and I felt more certain. More than anything though … it doesn’t feel good to have this kind of conversation. Bringing up this kind of class discomfort … there’s a reason we usually don’t do this. Once you start talking about it with someone, especially someone who was your boss … it starts to feel like an accusation. Like I was telling Terry it was her fault. I understand why she was looking for alternate explanations. But I know it’s not just me. I’m not the only one who’s taken on weird behaviors in the office. My editor Joel says that when he first started working in the magazine world … he looked down one day and noticed he was walking like an editor he admired. Another person told me they subconsciously stole someone else’s handwriting.
JONATHAN: I don't know, Terry. I mean, I, I, I don't think we're ever going to get to the bottom of this for sure, you know? But -
TERRY GROSS: I’m sure, I'm sure a class was a, you know, I don't doubt class was a part of a lot of what you're saying. It's just that, that, that voice thing, I think…
JONATHAN: Yeah. Yeah.
TERRY GROSS: I think people mirror each other all the time.
JONATHAN: Yes.
TERRY GROSS: - in ways that are irrelevant to class. Which isn't to say that there aren't times when they're relevant to class.
JONATHAN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is like a certainly like, you know, like I talk differently than my parents talk, you know, and that, that may be because I mirror the people around me. But it, it has turned into a class thing, you know,
TERRY GROSS: Mhmm.
JONATHAN: So much so that sometimes there is, like a little bit of a disconnect of, like, trying to talk to each other.
TERRY GROSS: Right.
JONATHAN: Because we don't exactly speak the same language.
JONATHAN: I think we’re both right. So much of this is clearly about where I came from. At the time I felt like I’d only moved a few inches away from home, from the person I used to be … even though I was almost 3,000 miles away.But how do you weigh that? How do you add it up? The kinds of class things Terry and I were trying to parse … they’re emotional. And squishy. All I know is that working in radio … Terry found her voice there. And there have been points in my career … where I felt like I lost mine.
JONATHAN: I think for me at the time, I was just reading every deficiency that I had. I just mean like the, like the places where I wasn't like everybody else, I was feeling those things so heavily in a class way because it was because there was, like, such a shock to my system in a way.
TERRY GROSS: I feel bad knowing now that you felt that way and not being aware of it at the time. I'm not sure what would have changed had I been aware of it, but I feel bad that I was so unaware of it.
JONATHAN: Well, I don't think..
TERRY GROSS: That I attributed everything you were saying to something else. Or maybe I didn't even realize. Or maybe I just didn’t remember that you hadn't seen The Godfather. Do you know what I mean?
JONATHAN: Yeah. I don't think you should feel bad. I think I was like, this thing was happening to me, but I don't think I'd figured it out yet, you know?
TERRY GROSS: Yeah. Yeah.
JONATHAN: So I don't. I wouldn't have been able to tell you about it. So… I just knew I felt uncomfortable and, like, uncertain of myself.
TERRY GROSS: Right.
[MUSIC]
TERRY GROSS: I feel like I'm in denial that you're telling me something, that I'm, you know, that I'm, that I'm unwilling to hear probably out of a sense of self-protection or self-justification. So it's kind of so interesting to hear you talk about this, because I had no idea this was going through your mind during the years you were on our show. But, you know, I accept obviously, I accept what you're saying as you know, as, as, as, as you're, your truth.
JONATHAN: Mhmm.
TERRY GROSS: And I accept that your truth is more important than, than my perception when it comes to what was going on in your life and in your mind, you know?
JONATHAN: Yeah, well, I think the biggest thing I would want you to take away is that you and that place was so essential for me. And like, in doing the things that I wanted to do, into, like, me becoming the person that I, I wanted to become but didn't know how to become yet. You know, like, despite all of this, like, you guys gave me the tools to, to figure out how to, how to take the next step and, like, be who I wanted to be. So I'm really grateful and appreciative of that.
TERRY GROSS: Well, that makes me really happy to hear Jonathan.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: That’s Terry Gross … Terry Gross people! One last thing I should mention … I still listen to Fresh Air all the time, but I don’t laugh like Terry anymore. It stopped when I took another job … and Terry wasn’t my boss.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Trying to blend in … trying to assimilate … it can really mess with your head. Especially once you add race to the picture. You can either suck it up like I did, or you can say “nah, I’m not going to play this game.” But that’s not easy to do. It’s also our next episode of Classy.
[MUSIC]
[CREDITS]
JONATHAN: Classy is a production of Pineapple Street Studios. It’s written and produced by me, Jonathan Menjivar. Our Producer is Kristen Torres. Associate Producer … Marina Henke. Senior Managing Producer … Asha Saluja. Our Editor is Haley Howle. Executive Editor … Joel Lovell. Our Assistant Engineers are Sharon Bardales and Jade Brooks. Senior Engineers are Marina Paiz and Pedro Alvira. Our head of Sound Design and Engineering is Raj Makhija. Fact checking by Jane Drinkard. This episode was mixed and scored by Marina Paiz, with additional scoring by me. Music in this episode from Joseph Shabason courtesy of Western Vinyl, Joseph Shabason & Vibrant Matter and Shabason / Gunning courtesy of Seance Center, additional music from Epidemic Sound. Our artwork is by Curt Courtney and Lauren Viera of Cadence 13. Marketing and promotion by Grace Cohen-Chen, Hillary Schupf, and Liz O’Malley. Legal services for Pineapple Street Studios by Kristel Tupja at Audacy. Special thanks to: Danny Miller and Julian Herzfeld. Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky are the Executive Producers at Pineapple Street. Episode 2 is available in your feed now! Make sure to listen on the Audacy app, or wherever you get your podcasts.