THE GREAT CREATORS WITH GUY RAZHOSTED BYGUY RAZ | WONDERY
Become a more inventive, imaginative you. Every week, Guy Raz (creator of How I Built This) leads a deep dive conversation with someone at the top of their game. From conquering stage fright to learning to be more present and focused, you'll learn how each guest mastered their craft and ultimately became more successful in life. The result? An arsenal of tools and techniques you can apply to your own life and work, allowing you to harness your talent and become a better version of yourself.
Being an academic, but by being an artist, but it was also accepting their value system. So it was the perfect kind of rebellion for man. I never looked back. I've never done anything with theater. I mean, this is amazing because at 12, you kind of fall into this world because it's 80 bucks a week, and it's a non profit program. It's an after school thing to do. You weren't like, yeah. So I wanna go see the like, because there are twelve year old kids. I know some who are, like, they have their parents take them to New York for a few days, and they just do, like, 17 Broadway shows. You were not that kid. No. And it and and it didn't come from seeing theater, it came my interest came from doing it. And one of the things that I discovered is that to my great surprise is that it was a match for my personality in a way that I had never found that, you know, we've talked about Minnesota. Well, for Minnesota, I did not quite fit in. I was too loud. I was too demonstrative. I was way too emotional. I I laughed too loudly. And, boy, I cried way too easily for a twelve year old boy in Minnesota. And suddenly in the theater, all of these things that marked me out is kind of a an outsider and a weirdo were embraced. The theater loved all those things about me. I felt at home there. I guess at at 14, you saw hair. You were in you went to London. You were taken there by a parent. No. I was I was hitchhiking around. I you know, it's a different era. Yeah. 14. Hithiking. Well, we were we my stepfather's on sabbatical, and we were living in Denmark. He was at the Neil's Borer Institute. And, you know, my parents gave me permission to get on a boat and take off to Edinburgh and then hitchhike around, England. And I can tell you now, I was actually terrified the entire time, and I never let anybody see it. I I I was fronting. Oh, that's pretending to be okay and cool on the ground. I would just terrify
It totally backfired. But, yeah. I mean, going out there, I had such a clear plan in my head. And this is I mean, it just kind of, paints a picture of my neurosis. I was, like, I'm going to move to New York. My my best friend, Noah, was in my band, didn't really have any other prospects other than the band. So I was like, okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna take him with me to New York, and I'm and I'm gonna take my brother to New York, and we're all gonna live together, and I'm gonna put this whole thing on my back, and we're gonna be in a band, and we're gonna make it happen. 1000%. I I knew that I wanted to be the lead singer of of a band. I also loved being on stage. I loved acting. But I one of the reasons why I I think, in retrospect, music superseded that was because, a, I got to do it with my brother, my and I think that was such an important thing to me. I also felt like with music, I had so much more autonomy and freedom. You know, I I was able to I was able to create these worlds that I would be performing in myself and have a lot more control. So I guess it was around 2009 where where the 4 of you started to play music as the ambassadors. Right? Yeah. And this was I mean, you're in New York. I mean, the 1st decade of the of the of the 2000, a second decade of 2000. I mean, they were these were very distinctive, very sort of Oh, the important kind of musical periods, right, in New York. Like, the early 2000s of Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the airport and all those bands. And then you've got, like, the 2,000 tens, TV on the radio, and grizzly bear, who else is was was, forgive me for forgetting. Yay Sayer.
Her mom listened to albums by Petula Clark, The Beatles, Al Green, and Aretha Franklin, and encouraged her kids to study music. And although Natalie was shy, she found a way to express and understand herself through her own music. I was a teenager. I didn't have a lot of confidence. I mean, I had a strange kind of confidence, which a lot of performers have, that in the context of the stage, I was oddly comfortable, more comfortable than I would be in a normal social situation. When I was younger, I was very timid. I'm not anymore. Not timid at all. Yeah. Which I which is yeah. I mean, it's it's it's interesting. As you get older, you get more I mean, it's normal. We all get more comfortable in our skins. I wonder about your voice. I mean, as I I read that you described your mom at one point saying something like, listen, life is about getting a job that you hate, working for people you hate, and that's the way it is. And there's some truth to that, actually. I mean, there was some kind of an element of, you know, a hard truth there. But at the same time, it was almost like the message was don't feel like you're special because, you know, we're not special. Did did you ever when you were a kid or when you were a teenager, did you ever feel like you had something different? That you had this voice? That you had something to say? That there was something special about what you could do. Well, my mother's message was mixed because she loved art. She loved music. She was a a massive fan of classical music. And she was even though she was a poor single mother, she somehow made sure that we were exposed to culture of any sort, even if that just meant going to the library once a week and borrowing.
You had this this this community in this world in this culture that you were part of, but, like, people had no idea what that was. Yes. So as if all of the oddness and disconnection I had previously described was not enough, then we were a member of an obscure, weird sounding eastern religion at the same time. And that didn't help my social prospects. Like, we wanna hang out with with weird Rain and and his weird Baha'i parents. And then on top of that, then I play then I end up playing the bassoon, and I'm on the chess team. And it's just like I'm just Dungeons and dragons? Dungeons and dragons. I'm digging my back when Dungeons and dragons had nothing cool about it whatsoever. In 1982 Yep. 1983, there was zero cool about D and D. Yeah. So I I dug my grave pretty deep, there. When did you I mean, I know that you you guys moved to Illinois when you were 16, because I think your your dad got a job at the Baha'i National Center at the time, and you moved, to, like, a maybe it's a suburb of Chicago. I think it's not Chicago? We were just north of Chicago in Wilmette, Illinois. Mhmm. And that's really when you because from everything I've I've read about you and your own descriptions of your early childhood, it's like, k. I was just awkward kind of geeky kid, you know, just didn't fit in. But then in high school, you somehow got involved in the drama program in this in this high school had like a really good drama program, which requires you to, like, come out of your shell. Tell me how you, like, were you secretly always interested in performing and getting on stage? And it didn't and then all of a sudden you're 15 or 16. You're like, I'm gonna now I'm gonna show people this thing. You know, it's so much more simple than that, and it's so
Good stuff. And that's really how I learned, and I still use a lot of the techniques. I had our choir instructor, his name was Dennis Faulkner. And if he ever hears this, Dennis would be much older now. He'd be in his sixties, but, I need to tell him that I still do the diaphragm exercise dumbest thing I had ever seen or heard in my life. It's where you get a big breath of air and you put your hands on your diaphragm and you go, you know? And it looks ridiculous, but, you know, I mean, here we are 30 years and 35 years later. I'm curious because, you know, you're in Texas and growing up in Texas. You know, high school football is a big deal. Like, there's a you know? And and I wonder, like, how did you how did you get into singing at church with like, did did were you comfortable doing it? What what did you ever think, oh, this is not cool? Or or or or to the contrary, you actually really dug it and and were happy to do it. I loved it. I never was a soloist. I always sang with the with the other kids. I never was the the standout singer. I wasn't good enough to be the standout singer, really, frankly, at that time. I've never been the best singer. I'm still not. I I really I enjoyed it. I didn't think that that's what I would be doing. I played high school football. You know, I know how big that is, you know, especially, you know, here in the south and in Texas in particular. I didn't think I was gonna be a football player. I wasn't big enough. I didn't think that I was going at first, I thought I would probably be an actor when I was little, more before I would I would be a front man in a band, But by the time I was in high school, I think it was pretty clear what direction that was headed. So you mentioned your dad. And I read that your dad, as a kid, he taught you to play, a little bit of
