Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. You can listen to this conversation by clicking the LISTEN button above.
Rick Brewer: A new program debuts here on WCMU tomorrow morning: Wild Card from NPR. It will be sharing the 11 a.m. hour with It's Been a Minute. Our program director Mike Horace spoke with the hosts of It's Been a Minute and Wild Card, Brittany Luce and Rachel Martin, about this new hour of culture, interviews, and more.
Mike Horace: Rachel, I would like to start with you. Tell us all about Wild Card.
Rachel Martin: So, it's an interview show, but we really flip the script because I'm sort of subject to the questions too. We've made a deck with existential philosophical questions on each card, and I hold up three at a time, and a guest will pick at random.
So every question is a question I would love for someone to answer, but I'm not in control. Which is really liberating as a person who's been in control of interviews for 20 odd years to just surrender to the cards and to chance.
And then they can flip a question on me. Our guest can flip a question on me, so I've also got skin in the game and it levels the playing field a little bit, so it's not so much an interview as it is an actual conversation. And hopefully the questions are universal in nature, so a listener will hear a particular question… Yes, they want to hear what their favorite artist has to say about it. But hopefully they ask that question of themselves and how it pertains to their own life.
MH: And Brittany Luce, host of Its Been a Minute. How will that program play into this new hour of radio?
Brittany Luce: We are… always digging deep into the machinations beneath our biggest, and also, you know, perhaps hottest cultural trends and cultural shifts that we're seeing out in the world right now on IBAM. We're discussing in the ways that the culture makers on Wild Card are making.
So, whether that is unpacking why we have seen the same theme over and over again during Oscar season and you know, across a bunch of different films or whether we are getting to the bottom of why everyone's healing call lonely right now.
We are going to be going deep and answering some of your biggest questions and curiosities about what's going on in our world and how we all live right now.
MH: Brittany, I know It's Been a Minute has evolved a few times over the last few years. What is exciting you the most about this latest iteration of the program?
BL: Well, first of all, I'm excited just to be able to give our radio listeners just a really great show with a ton of variety. Being able to have that gamified interview element with Wild Card, I think just complements and adds so much to the IBAM Radio Hour adds so much to our show.
But specifically it's really all about distilling what we do on IBAM in being able to give that distillation to our radio listeners so that they are getting the most pressing, the most interesting, the most curiosity satisfying elements of our show so that they can enjoy them every single week.
MH: Rachel, what is exciting you the most about this format, and how do you think this program stands apart from the other typical interview programs you hear on NPR?
RM: Well, it's like nothing else on NPR.I mean, as a person who has worked in so many different capacities for NPR as a reporter, as a host of a weekend show, as a host of the Morning News show, Morning Edition, I can tell you I've been around the block and there's nothing else like this because it gets our guests off of their talking points and you think to yourself, do people talking about their own lives actually have talking points?
They sure do. They have anecdotes that they have honed over years and years of being in the public eye, and the beauty of our show is it gives them the opportunity to actually think and poses questions that they haven't been asked before.
You know, like, what's an emotion that you understand better than any other emotion? How big a role does fear play in your life right now? I mean, these are really deep personal questions.
And then to be partnered with Brittany and the IBAM team is a dream come true, because at the end of the day both of these shows are little empathy engines. We strive to get people to sit for a minute and understand how other people walk through the world and what would that look like.
And how do I interact with that and how am I navigating the world? And am I living up to my own expectations of myself and how to be? And I think we need that. I think all of us right now in this moment need to be able to look deeply at ourselves, and then look outside of ourselves, and see what kind of difference we're making in the world.
MH: Brittany Loose is the host of It's Been a Minute from NPR, and Rachel Martin is the host of Wild Card, and you'll be able to hear both programs during the 11 o’clock hour Saturday mornings right here on WCMU.
Brittany, Rachel, thank you so much for some time with us today.
RM: It was so fun.
BL: This is great, thank you so much.
