Kate Zambreno

Driving to class in Hyde Park during my brief flirtation with graduate school, the National Public Radio program "Odyssey" became my midday rush-hour ritual. I got hooked on listening to host Gretchen Helfrich banter with various intellectuals about the topic of the day, monitoring debate on everything from what is art to the First Amendment to the timeless allure of Marlene Dietrich. As I rounded Lake Shore Drive past the WBEZ headquarters on Navy Pier, I would think, Wow, to have Helfrich's gig would be an autodidact's wet dream. It would be like "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," where they journey to the past to talk with great minds in order to finish up their history report. Want to talk about multiculturalism? Let's call up Homi Bhabha. Feminism? I don't know--Do we like Judy Butler or does she just babble on? A quotidian crash course in Everything. Or something like that.

So I decided to spend a day behind-the-scenes at "Odyssey," in order to soak up some of the studied seriousness, immerse myself in a day spa of theory, maybe leave the experience a little more highbrow in the process. The 5-year-old show has enjoyed more press coverage since it became nationally syndicated in November. But as a fan I wanted to be a fly on the wall during fierce brainstorming sessions with Helfrich and the show's producers and to listen in as well-toned minds continued to tackle whatever topic long after the headphones were off. Maybe I would contribute a comment that was particularly erudite yet funny at the same time and then Gretchen would laughingly concede my point and then ask me to come on as a guest the next time they did a show on alternative journalism or quarter-life crises or just, stuff, and then Homi's and my eyes would meet and he would ask me to look him up whenever I was at Harvard...

It's 9:30 the week before Christmas. I'm late, having gotten lost winding through the human carnival that is Navy Pier. I try to explain to the receptionist in the little white room that I'm doing a story on "Odyssey" and am not there applying for an internship. See? I say, pointing to my official-looking notepad. Helfrich comes swooping in all in business black, carrying a book on masculinity under one arm. As I follow her heels she explains that everybody's busy prepping for today's show on personality, which, in the planning process, morphed into a show on masculine identity. More explicitly, in one of "Odyssey"'s typical thesis statements, "How does culture generate possibilities for masculine personality types?" A picture of Martha Plimpton wielding a gun as Hedda Gabbler is taped to the door of the tiny office, presumably because Helfrich resembles the plucky blonde actress. After a round of introductions with Josh Andrews, the boyish-looking senior producer, and Alison Cuddy, another producer, as well as an intern from the University of Chicago, I am planted with a cup of coffee in a chair squeezed between Andrews' and Helfrich's desks and swiftly ignored.

The room is like a university office. Stacked on a desk next to a tray of cookies are earth-tone library books. Some of the wildly divergent issues this month on one of the two large dry-erase boards: "emotions," "building the middle class," "parties and ideology," "faith and history," "civil wars," and the tongue-twisting biweekly film topic, "What do we learn about a film from the film within a film film?" Scrawled in a column marked "incubator (love oven)" are a wish list of ideas: "intelligence community," "libertarianism," "the unconscious," "structure of time," "imperialism," "Shakespeare and pop culture," "intellectual legacy of feminism," "magical realism" and just "FACTS."

Helfrich calls an upcoming guest to clarify something, presumably the author of the book she's been carrying. "When you're talking about the emergence of the model of the self-made man before the republic," blah blah blah. "I guess I'm wondering what a tool of power is. Aristocracy is still aristocracy, right?" It's an impotent eavesdrop. I have no idea what she's talking about, I scribble in my notebook.

Delia Lloyd hurries in with another stack of books, talking fast. As today's producer, this show has been her territory for probably a month of planning, researching and fine-tuning. Helfrich has taken an immersion course in masculinity just in the past few days. Lloyd and Andrews discuss economics as the unifying theme between the three speakers, who are from various disciplines and whose work spans turn-of-the-century to modern day. "I'm going to die. I just had seven minutes shaved off my life!" Helfrich announces to the room as she hangs up the phone. She's panicked because Michael Kimmel, who is doing the show by phone in order to stay at home with his 3-year-old son, originally thought the show was at 2, not noon.

The debate is who should go first. Tom Pendergast, a Seattle historian, has written the book "Creating the Modern Man: American Magazines and Consumer Culture." Kimmel, a sociologist at the City Colleges in New York, has done a lot of work on masculine identity. And Emily Martin is a bit of a wild card, an anthropologist who does work on mania which the show will attempt to link to masculine stereotypes. Lloyd: "Well, we can start with Kimmel. Oh, he's on the phone. Bummer." Andrews: "Yeah, I don't want to start with that." They volley back and forth as Helfrich hurries out to walk around and think about her intro. Lloyd: "Unlike the other two, Martin will be less likely to give a causal argument." Andrews: "Observation's all right to start from." Words are thrown like "links" and "bridges" and "payoffs." Lloyd: "Martin's the classic third guest. She's got an interesting piece but nothing to lay our hats on."

Helfrich walks back in and takes a cookie from the tray. "Here's the problem I have with that. If you were writing the first chapter of your book, you'd start with an anecdote." Lloyd: "But she can't do that. She's 'manic man.' "Andrews: "I see what you're saying about the third guest but she might serve as a bridge to the listener." Helfrich: "I think we want to wait, I want to see how strong she is. She had this sort of 'Aaahhh! I do something different than what you do' thing on the phone." Lloyd: "How about this: Martin, Kimmel, Pendergast." Helfrich: "It doesn't have to link. We can switch years." They quickly disperse.

I wander off to find the bathroom, and get lost in a sea of horn-rims. Someone has to direct me back to the "Odyssey" office. Helfrich is writing her introduction. Andrews and Cuddy are working on the promo for tomorrow's show on tribal trust. They obsess over exact wording. State or Status. Rethinking or Reworking or Reexamining. Helfrich looks up at me for the first time. "I like your eyeshadow," she says. "Thanks," I reply. This wasn't the conversation I intended. "What color is it?" she peers intently. "Oh...just brown," I say. "Hmm, it's nice."

More glib back-and-forth. Helfrich: "I blew a fuse again." Andrews asks what appliances she had on. Helfrich: "A hairdryer. A highly demanding tool in terms of energy." Andrews: "And what else?" Helfrich: "Maybe two TVs." Andrews: "And what else?" Helfrich: "Lights." They go back to work. "I'm convinced I've got a lemon of a house, though," she adds later.

The ceiling is starting to drip between Cuddy's and Helfrich's desks. They secure a trash can. It's now about 10:30. My pen runs out of ink. Andrews loans me another. People drift in and out of the office. Andrews and Lloyd struggle over common masculine stereotypes to include in the promo they're going to tape. Helfrich: "You know what? No one knows what a genteel patriarch is. How about NASCAR Dad?" Lloyd: "Marlboro man?" Andrews: "Lonesome wolf?" Helfrich (getting a little hyper): "From Lenny to Squiggy. From the strong, silent type to the sensitive male." Nina: "Sensitive in quotes." Helfrich: "I don't read quotes." Nina: "But it signals you to gently caress the word." Cuddy (popping up): "Use italics."

Helfrich reads aloud tomorrow's promo in a muttered radio voice. "Ummm..." she puts her hand on her head. "'In multiple lawsuits, they're suing.' That's repetitive." "What's that?" Lloyd notices the air vent. "We have a leak," Helfrich says. Andrews (on phone): "It's a good meter away." Helfrich: (laughing to no one in particular) "A meter." Andrews hangs up the phone. Helfrich: "Nice use of the metric system."

In the recording studio we watch Helfrich tape tomorrow's promo through the glass wall. The twangy theme song written by OK GO is cued up. "Multiple lawsuits..." rolls out the controlled, familiar voice, sassy yet sure. Lloyd coaches into the microphone: "Don't shout." Helfrich: "I'll shout if I want to." Technical producer Steve Waranauskas (not in the microphone, so Helfrich can't hear his joke): "It's prima donna Wednesday." Helfrich decides to say 'several' instead of 'multiple.' "I don't like 'multiple.' It's a stupid word." She does this one too fast. Waranauskas: "Pace uneven." Andrews (leaning against wall): "Yeah it wasn't a good read." Helfrich (a little saucily): "Anything else? 3,2..." She screws up her line again. Waranauskas: "Some things just get held for the outtake file."

It's now 11:20. We're back in the office. A man pokes his head in. Helfrich, the damsel in distress: "We have a huge leak! Help us! You can't help us. You just look like a handy person." A large map sits above Andrews' desk, where pins denote the stations they've picked up for syndication. I lose track at 16 pins. "Odyssey," which originates live five days a week at noon from Chicago, is available in eight stations daily, and in the double-digits in terms of syndicated stations weekly. They have nine stations in New Jersey. They just picked up Jacksonville, Alabama the day before. Helfrich: "We have seven in New York." Andrews: "I don't know what's happening in Hawaii. But we own Montana." Cuddy: "I don't feel secure about Montana." Helfrich (laughs): "We've gotten so complacent. There was a time we had five stations and we could rattle off where we were."

11:35. "'The Anthropology of Mood.' That just sounds so cool," muses Helfrich on the title of Martin's book as she waits in the empty studio. Today there are no local guests, so Pendergast and Martin are hooked up at their respective NPR studios. Kimmel's at home. "The challenge is to have a productive atmosphere with no one there," says Andrews. Martin has an echo. She sounds nervous. Helfrich asks them all to say what they had for breakfast to test the sound. Waranauskas motions her to angle her microphone away. "I'm afraid she's going to pop something if she gets excited," he says.

Helfrich finishes briefing the guests, her black sleeves held at mid-palm. "I know that's a mouthful I just gave you. So don't worry about it. Just talk." Lloyd's pacing in front of the glass window. "High level of confidence in this group, Delia," assures Helfrich."Hold that thought. "Hold the good stuff!" she singsongs to Pendergast who's already started talking. Andrews types notes on a screen that flashes in front of Helfrich: "Nice and slow. One question at a time."

"Everything's working. This is unusual," says Waranauskas. It's just before noon. Three minutes left to go. Where's Pendergast? A brief flurry. Oh, he just got up for a second. Lloyd laughs nervously. Time to start. She directs the opening. "Stand. Open (points). Fade." Helfrich introduces the subject. "Joining our conversation..." continues Helfrich. She puts her hands on her head with her elbows jutting out as she listens. "That was a nice link he made," comments Lloyd of Kimmel. Andrews types in for Helfrich to move to Pendergast. The producers flash signals from the side: "Mix guests!" Martin hasn't been called on in a while. Helfrich ignores the sign. She's in the zone. "Let's develop the notion of the self-made man versus its competitors," instructs Lloyd. Pendergast pauses, dead radio air. Kimmel, by contrast, is a natural for radio--funny, quoteworthy. "He's the glue on this one," agrees Lloyd, holding a cutaway sign to the glass. They need to go to break. Helfrich makes a pouty face. She doesn't want to cut off Pendergast.

During break, Helfrich puts her chin on the desk and shields her eyes. In the second half of the show, Andrews screens calls, all male callers. Helfrich directs a "Fight Club" sort of question about the difficulty of being masculine in the modern age to Kimmel. Kimmel: "I think that's half true." Helfrich (laughs bubbly, throwing arms out): "Typical academic, yes and no."

After the show everyone hurries into the office for a "spin-down." Martin was low-energy; Pendergast paused too much. Helfrich walks fast. "I did not like Kimmel. Men now are under more pressure than ever? Every era someone makes that claim." Lloyd is diplomatic. Kimmel provided cohesion. Helfrich (really juiced up): "He was so saturated with this nostalgia for an earlier era. Things are so much harder now, there's so much more pressure now. Hello? Sorry, I don't buy it." Lloyd: "It didn't trouble me." Helfrich (still going): "That's at the same time true. But he still drove me crazy. Competition's getting worse, people getting tougher. Bullshit! It used to be easy to be a man, and now it's hard. I don't buy it."

Helfrich had asked the historian a question directly related to his book. Lloyd: "You lobbed a softball to him and he didn't catch it." Helfrich (not paying attention): "Yeah, that was like pulling teeth." Lloyd points at Helfrich over at her desk. "You're just seething over there." Helfrich (still jazzed up from debate): "It's ahistorical to say the market's always meaner."

I have some time to chat with the show's originators--Helfrich, who started at WBEZ as a pledge-drive volunteer in 1993, and then went on to produce "Worldview," the station's international-affairs program, and Andrews, who began as an intern. The idea-based show has cultivated a cult of listeners in Chicago, and locally outperforms such national shows as "Talk of the Nation" and "Fresh Air." "Odyssey" does remarkably well with the younger set, luring in that hard-to-crack and elusive 25-34 demographic too hip to tune into public radio, except perhaps "This American Life." "Part of that is maybe Gretchen has a lot of energy; she's not Karl Kastle," says Andrews. "But I will be someday," quips Helfrich.

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune profiled a group called the Public Square that meets in local coffeehouses, engaging in salons based on topics chosen from "Odyssey." While in grad school, one of my professors used to make us workshop our readings by setting up a forum where we would play the scholars arguing our competing views. He would play Gretchen Helfrich. In a world where there are academic trading cards, it seems like the show is offering a stage for the public intellectual to play rock star. Helfrich frowns at this characterization; it's not about an elitist world of academics, it's about the idea. "The star of the show is the idea," she argues. Neither she nor Andrews went to grad school, although the new producers have. But what if you could have anyone on the show, who would it be? Helfrich hesitates to answer. It's a sophomoric question along the same vein as "If you could meet anyone, who would it be?" I say something about the usual answers expected, Jesus, Eleanor Roosevelt, Homi Bhabha. Helfrich leans in conspiratorially. "Homi loves to be on our show."

At about 4pm, Andrews leads the idea meeting. Attention is directed to the dry-erase board. "I think I've tapped out my incubator," says Lloyd. Helfrich (plopping her knee-high Ralph Lauren boots on her desk): "I want to work more on clean-air stuff, in terms of economic growth. Loss of jobs not health. I think that's what it's about, but it may suck. (Thinks about it.) Something like, was it worth it?" Cuddy: "Do we still have clean air? Didn't Bush dismantle it?" Andrews adds "Clean Air" to the board.

OK, what else? "Libertarianism," "unconscious," and "agency." There's a huge collective groan. The agency idea is centered around a book about Protestant agents. "Very theological," notes Helfrich. Lloyd: "I'm just dubious that any of us can divine what it's about." Andrews: "So and so would be great." Everyone agrees. Lloyd (in mock radio voice): "Agency: what the fuck is it?" Helfrich: "Why don't we have a show called 'Obfuscation? What the hell are you talking about?' "

A few topics get pinned down to specific dates; others are left to rest in the chalk lines of the incubator. Delia: "Let's sit on it." Helfrich: "Let's sit on it, let's make it go away." They bounce from lighter to serious moments, discussing holiday plans, debating the pronunciation of feng shui. Cuddy wants to do a film show on new auteurs. Helfrich: "Do we want to do the story on the intelligence community?" Lloyd: "Do we really know what that is?" Helfrich's face is in her hands. "What if we picked it apart?" Lloyd: "I think it sounds too nuts and boltsy." Andrews: "Widgets and wadgets and red tapes and closed doors." Lloyd (reading the list): "I hate to raise the specter of unions again." Helfrich: "You think there's no there-there?"

University and the arts? Lloyd: "Too inside baseball?" "Why not?" Helfrich almost shouts, then after going around a round asks Andrews what he thinks. "Cave, cave," she whisper-chants.

It's now after five. "Does Ibuprofen have any effect on headaches?" asks Helfrich, conducting the conversation muffled by her hands. Lloyd brings up the idea of doing a show on European identity in wake of European Union expansion. Andrews asks whether she means freedom of mobility in the wake of the EU. Helfrich perks up. "You mean just saying 'Whoaa...what does it mean to be able to move around?'"

Cutter asks when "intellectual legacy of feminism" is slated. The intern gets laugh points by suggesting Valentine's Day. Andrews brings up a study on memories he read about in the New York Times. By this time I am sitting on my hands, wanting to jump in that this could link to the show on the unconscious, but I don't.

Someone else does, though.

(2003-01-22)

Also by Kate Zambreno

Doggie smile
At Sutton Studios in Evanston, it takes a communal effort to get an 8-year-old panting golden retriever named Summer to sit still enough to be captured in a candid pose with her owners.
(2003-01-15)

Afterlife, unlisted
It's a bizarre truism of our consumer society that corporations now own your name long after you no longer exist.
(2003-01-15)

Red Hot
The name Elizabeth Crane--Betsy to friends--is one you might soon casually drop at smart cocktail parties.
(2003-01-02)

Bubblicious
The traditional toast for ringing in the New Year is enjoying a year-round surge in popularity, especially among the club set, who sip the sparkling wine through straws in single-serving splits.
(2002-12-26)

The War on Nightlife
(2002-12-12)

Caught on tape
(2002-12-04)

Being Ira Glass
(2002-11-26)

Bull masters
(2002-11-26)

Splendor of the night
(2002-11-20)

Your chariot awaits
(2002-11-20)

What a Riot
(2002-11-13)

The Art of Dzine
(2002-10-30)

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