The legendary Audie Cornish—anchor, correspondent, journalist, host, and interviewer—joins live from the Design Matters Tour to talk about her career in journalism, covering national, political, and breaking news for over two decades.
Roxane Gay:
Audie Cornish has been one of the most familiar voices in radio, and now, television, and she’s been working as a journalist for more than 20 years. From the Associated Press to NPR, she has covered everything from politics to the American South and everything in between. If you have listened to her, you know that she has a warm, welcoming voice, a voracious curiosity, fierce intelligence, and the ability to ask incisive questions that demand thoughtful answers. Audie joins us here in Philadelphia tonight on Design Matters Live. So please, welcome Audie Cornish to the stage.
Audie Cornish:
In the hot seat.
Debbie Millman:
Welcome. Welcome, Audie.
Audie Cornish:
I like this architecture, because I can’t escape.
Roxane Gay:
Nope, you are caught [inaudible 00:00:50].
Debbie Millman:
I know. Actually, you get a little bit of ping-pong here.
Audie Cornish:
I do care about how interviews are set up, so I see what you did there.
Roxane Gay:
I also like that you coordinated your shoes to the microphone and your sweater.
Audie Cornish:
I’m into branding now. That’s what happens when you go au de TV.
Debbie Millman:
Audie, I understand you got your first job when you were 13 years old.
Audie Cornish:
Oh my God.
Debbie Millman:
You were living in Randolph, Massachusetts and you worked in a bagel bakery wherein you boxed up rugelach and sliced bagels that whole summer.
Audie Cornish:
Yeah. Shout out to Zeppies.
Debbie Millman:
What are some of the things, working in customer retail service, did you learn?
Audie Cornish:
What did I learn? I was so young that in Massachusetts, at the time, you needed to get your parents’ permission to work. You actually had to get a permission slip to get a job. And I think I actually liked meeting people and meeting them in a moment when they’re kind of full of joy because they’re buying pastries. They’re going through some Saturday morning ritual or whatever that is part of their family life, and so they were kind of cheerful and tied up the box with a little bow. And I think it was just a good exercise in interacting with adults outside of my comfort zone. Because I grew up in the church and I didn’t really interact with that many adults, you were 13, except for your parents, your teachers, people at church. So it was an opportunity to start to understand the world around me.
Debbie Millman:
Which do you prefer, raspberry or chocolate rugelach?
Audie Cornish:
I like apricot, actually. That’s a thing.
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Audie Cornish:
A lot of-
Debbie Millman:
I know.
Audie Cornish:
The holidays are upon us, so I’m glad.
Debbie Millman:
And I only have one other question about that experience. What did you use your first paycheck to buy?
Audie Cornish:
Rollerblades. Yeah, it was the times. Although the other day I was in New York in Central Park and I saw some people on Rollerblades and I’m like, oh, is it back? Did it never leave? Is that a thing?
Roxane Gay:
I have to tell you. They’re coming back. And it started before the Barbie movie, but the Barbie movie really was, I think, for many people, the tipping point.
Audie Cornish:
I am ready. That’s how old we are, when things that you were into have come back and I can’t tell to be excited or depressed. I saw someone walking down the street recently who had a flannel shirt and I was like, oh, that’s so sweet. And I touch it, and it’s not real flannel. It was like a flannel print, which, Urban Outfitters, unnecessary. Flannel’s not expensive, just go for it. And yeah, it’s very weird to see Nirvana t-shirts on toddlers or realize that these things that at some point were supposed to have a kind of subversive quality have been fully absorbed into the culture and-
Debbie Millman:
Become nostalgia.
Audie Cornish:
Yeah, nostalgia. I didn’t want to say that word. Thank you.
Roxane Gay:
Now, your parents came to the US from Jamaica in the early ’80s and moved to a part of the country that was not particularly friendly to people of color.
Audie Cornish:
You can just say Boston.
Roxane Gay:
Boston. And it’s funny because I went to high school and college in New England and I’ve spent a lot of time in Boston, and I hate Boston with the heat of a thousand Suns. But some people love it there.
Audie Cornish:
I do.
Roxane Gay:
And it’s okay. That’s okay. But especially back then, it was tough to be black in Boston. How were they able to manage both raising a family and trying to raise happy, confident children and finding their own ways in a hostile environment?
Audie Cornish:
Oh, that’s a good question.
Roxane Gay:
Thank you.
Audie Cornish:
Is there a not hostile environment for Black Americans to raise families?
Roxane Gay:
That’s a really good question, and I wonder about that. I can’t remember who I was speaking to recently, but they talked about growing up in the South in a predominantly, oh, Roy Wood Jr. who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, which is 80% Black.
Audie Cornish:
And his dad was a journalist.
Roxane Gay:
Yes. And he talked about how, there, black people were the center of gravity in his world and the center of his universe. And so he didn’t understand that we were minorities elsewhere or that we were marginalized because he only knew Black community and Black middle class and things like that. And that was interesting to me because so often we associate the South with racism and the horrors of Jim Crow and, of course, modern day Jim Crow. So to hear a different perspective on that was really interesting.
Audie Cornish:
I think that it was probably harder for them as immigrants. And I say this because they came through kind of family connection. We had an uncle here or something. And it’s very hard to meet people. I actually think that’s what makes Boston hard. It’s not just cold, et cetera. It’s that it’s actually hard to meet people outside of your little clans and neighborhoods. And I think as a result, we’re a very close nuclear family, but I know it must’ve been hard for them because they both came from families where they had seven and eight siblings, and really came from community in Jamaica.
So they are extremely resilient, they’re extremely persistent, and they do not believe in marginalization. They have that kind of immigrant upward mobility focus where they feel like, I’m going to go wherever I want. I’m going to do whatever I want. My kids are going to do whatever they want. And that’s it. That’s it. Which is great, helpful, a lot of pressure as a kid to pull that off. They can pull that off, but sometimes you just feel lonely and scared and you’re like, why are you making us do this?
Roxane Gay:
Yeah, absolutely. I too am the child of immigrants. And I can say that, looking back now, I recognize how isolated my parents must have been in Omaha, Nebraska.
Audie Cornish:
Yes.
Roxane Gay:
But they never let us know. It’s only now that we’re all adults, sort of, that they let little things slip. And I think it must’ve been hell on earth.
Audie Cornish:
It’s a different relationship. And now that I have my own kids and I’m like, wait, how did you do this with three of us in a new country? I can barely, we take a trip anywhere. And I’m like, this is hell. Let’s go home soon. But the other day we did an episode of our show about Greek life and sororities and the interest in rush talk and things like that. And my mom’s review of the show was basically, I met so many women in America who were in sororities and I was always on the outside looking in. And she was talking about other black women. It was one of those glimmers, like you’re saying, where suddenly you’re learning something about what it must’ve been like for them in their thirties and forties. And she was lonely. It’s very different.
Roxane Gay:
And I think the immigrant experience is such that you may not necessarily fully connect with white people or Black Americans because there are so many cultural differences. And I know that, growing up, you and your family would have very animated conversations. And you said, in fact, that everyone had a literal seat at the table. And my family was the same way. And I recognize now that we were sort of their social circle, and I also know that that’s kind of where I first learned to argue. What did those conversations you and your family had and that ability to have a seat at a table do for you, and what did it teach you?
Audie Cornish:
Well, first of all, I was bringing home information to them. I was bringing home cultural references. I was bringing home idioms and things that maybe they may not be familiar with and things that are even just sort of childish complaints where you’re like, “I want hot dogs.” And now I’m like, “I can’t give anyone a hot dog. That’s disgusting.” But at the time you’re like, “I want to be American.” Those conversations were helpful to them, even sometimes the way they would pronounce words. I do think sometimes my own diction comes from those years of saying, “Dad, it’s this, not that. Or Dad, this is how they pronounce it.” And of course now I wish I had their accents. But I think mostly, you’re right, we were their friends and that’s really hard.
Roxane Gay:
It’s a lot of pressure.
Audie Cornish:
It’s really hard because you’re not really friends.
Roxane Gay:
No, no, no. And they always remind you like, “I’m not one of your little friends.”
Audie Cornish:
They love saying that.
Roxane Gay:
And I’m like, “No, you’re right.” But you are also my best friend.
Audie Cornish:
Yeah, exactly. Or also, I’m doing child care for you. I’m helping to cook. I’m helping you to figure something out at the cash register. You are in this weird parentified space. And there’s been sort of pluses and minuses to that that I’ve recognized now as an adult having my own kids.
Debbie Millman:
How clear were they, as you were growing up, about their expectations of what you would become?
Audie Cornish:
Oh, I think it’s a little bit like what you were describing with Roy Wood Jr., which is that they had come from a Black middle class and they had come from an upper Black middle class and they’d come from a Black society. And so it was more that there was no avenue that was closed, and they were very worried that I would somehow absorb what they heard were limitations for Black American life. They were disinterested. And to this day, my mom is very harsh on the news and even harsh on public media news, because she’s like, “I turn it on and I hear about trauma and the trauma of Black people, and I don’t think that’s right.”
Debbie Millman:
You mentioned your mom giving you feedback on one of your previous episodes.
Audie Cornish:
She texts every Thursday afternoon. She made the show post and there is a review with the weird grammar like your mom does, and then an emoji that’s like two spaces later. It was like, what’s involved in this texting process?
Debbie Millman:
It’s so interesting. I do not have a particularly close relationship with my mom. And when I met Roxanne, I was suddenly aware of how deeply close a mom and daughter could be. And I love it now because I feel like I have a mom too.
Audie Cornish:
But we were not always like that.
Debbie Millman:
Well, I don’t think they were either.
Roxane Gay:
Oh, never in life, not until I turned 40.
Audie Cornish:
It was a long stretch, exactly, where I was just like, girl, bye. I didn’t call home. I didn’t go home on vacations. I never went back to my hometown. I was just a person who was like, I need to get out of here. And she kind of represented home, the home I was trying to get away from. And then when I started to have kids and I started to go through all the things that you go through when you go through miscarriages, where you go through depression, where you go through whatever, and I think she saw that as an opening to have a real connection with me. Suddenly we had really something in common. And now we talk almost every day. And I can tell you, ten years ago, I would never say I was the person who would call my mom every day.
Roxane Gay:
For sure. I’ve told Debbie as recently as probably yesterday that this relationship you see with my mom calling every day is very, very new for me. It was not indicative of the first 40 years of my life.
Audie Cornish:
Yeah. And some of it is I think her coming to grips with the way the world has changed. She was like, “Look, when I had my kids, I quit every job I had. That’s what you did. And I’m so excited that you can work. Can I babysit?” I think for her, she’s getting to relive and redo some decisions. In a way, I’m kind of glad I can do that with her, build that kind of new version of the story together.
Debbie Millman:
You started your career in journalism at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. And you interned with NPR and worked at the radio station, the campus radio station, WMUA. What made you choose journalism? Had you always been interested in writing and reporting as you were growing up?
Audie Cornish:
No, definitely not. I don’t know if you’ve ever met a student newspaper reporter. It’s extremely irritating. Yeah, I’m not taking it back. It’s a whole personality. And I was like, hard pause. I don’t want that. And then when I went to college-
Roxane Gay:
It’s one of the best years of my life.
Debbie Millman:
Of course.
Audie Cornish:
But I was like, I can’t do this. And when I was in college, I met somebody who was starting up the radio station. And this is a foot note I haven’t said to anyone yet, that man is named George Chidi and he is currently one of the witnesses before the grand jury in the Georgia Trump trial. You may have seen him in the news basically, tweeting, giving testimony. He’s always been like that. Really just one of those people who you.
Debbie Millman:
You just sort of predict their future?
Audie Cornish:
And you’re like, you are everywhere in a very weird way. And he had flyers around and was like, “Come join the student radio station.” And we had a meet cute where I picked up a flyer and I looked up and he goes, “Hey, you.” And I did the, like, “Me?” Like I’m AT, like cartoon. He was starting a radio station. And because he had been in the army, he had done some journalism and that was it. It was radio the first time I really did any kind of reporting, and we just started doing it. I think if I had to sit through a class, I would be very disinterested.
Debbie Millman:
One of your professors at UMass was Nicholas McBride. What influence on your thinking about the discipline of journalism did he have on you?
Audie Cornish:
Well, he treated it like a discipline and he spoke about discipline and craft. I think it’s very easy to enter journalism through a kind of workman like, inverted triangle kind of conversation that’s very almost literal of the who, what, when, where, why, with a little bit of hero worship sort of dashed in, sort of Woodward, Bernstein type thing. And he was not like that. He was more like philosophy. What is the nature of truth? What is storytelling itself? He came up, in his reporting career, I think at the Christian Science Monitor. He also had done some work in the late ’70s when Black politicians and many chocolate cities, so to speak, were kind of on the rise and that kind of post-integration burst of political energy. And that’s sort of the environment he came up in, in the Black press, and then alternative press. So he just introduced me to journalism not through mainstream journalism. And I think that had a lot of impact.
Roxane Gay:
Has your understanding of journalism shifted from those early days when you sort of, not fell into it, but came into it from a different way than the way most people come into journalism? Because when you look at many of the most prominent journalists, they were sort of working in their grade school newspaper and then partly-
Audie Cornish:
And then they went to Columbia.
Roxane Gay:
Yes. And they go to these big name journalism schools and then have those connections. And I’ve read in many interviews about how you just don’t have the background that many of your colleagues in journalism did, and you had to find your own way and prove yourself over and over again.
Audie Cornish:
And still.
Roxane Gay:
And isn’t that exhausting?
Audie Cornish:
It is a little bit.
Roxane Gay:
To get this far and still have to prove yourself?
Audie Cornish:
That happened with this transition from radio to TV.
Roxane Gay:
In what way?
Audie Cornish:
There was a lot of, I was just untested. I was just untested, and I was untested in a sort of ratings environment. I knew that. I had done something new because I wanted to be scared. I wanted to try something new, I wanted to be challenged. And there’s always that nugget, I think in our own hearts where we know we can do something and we don’t want to admit in case it goes wrong. But you kind of fucking know.
Debbie Millman:
Well, some people use that as a way to not ever try.
Audie Cornish:
That’s true. I don’t know how to do that. I always have five jobs going. I always have multiple irons in the fire. And I always have a plan B and a plan C, which is not that emotionally healthy. But I think as a result of what you’re talking about, there’s no safety net. No parent can bail you out. Nobody’s got a stash of money anywhere. What I’m making, I’m going to contribute to the household, so I can’t be a drain on the household. I mean, you mentioned me working at the campus radio station. I also showed up on the doorstep of the public media station there. Literally it was just like, “Do you have interns?” And they’re like, “No.” I’m like, “Well, you do now.”
I worked for a campus newspaper. I worked as a bank teller during every school break. I was a substitute teacher during every school break. I was just totally Jamaican. I just had a bunch of different things going, and at every place was always trying to get ahead, like accosting an executive with your little baby resume that you’ve printed on your little word processor.
Roxane Gay:
Oh my goodness, you’re taking me back.
Audie Cornish:
It was a lot of that.
Debbie Millman:
What was behind that drive? I was very similar at that age. In many ways I still am now, but what I’ve come to recognize for me was that a lot of the drive to do a lot of different things all at the same time was fueled by wanting to distract myself from horrors of childhood or feeling unworthy or feeling like I didn’t have any real purpose. Where was your drive coming from?
Audie Cornish:
I think mine was twofold. One is like your parents came all the way to America, try not to mess that up. That’s the least you can do. And the other thing was encountering wealth and class at a very young age, because I had been in a school integration program. So you go to some kid’s house and it’s enormous, and they have a dining room and a breakfast nook, like two separate places to eat, and trophies. I had never seen a trophy in real life. I thought it was just like a prop on a television show. And I felt behind.
And there were so many times in my life where I think I had a real burst of creative energy because I’m like, I am not going to be left behind. And that happened when I was ten, 11, 12. That happened in college where I was like, I’m at the state school. I barely got in. And there’s some kids down the street at Amherst College and they’re already ahead by doing nothing, by showing up on the first day and then getting into public radio. Same feeling, oh wait, you’ve been to grad school too? Oh, you uncle is blah, blah, blah. You’re behind. You’re behind. You’re behind. And I’ve done it to myself again. You recreate those same problems to solve over and over again. I created a new scenario where I’m behind and clawing to get ahead again, and it’s taken a while to even recognize those patterns.
Roxane Gay:
Do you think that there is something productive about that feeling of being behind, because I first encountered it-
Audie Cornish:
I mean, my therapist says no.
Roxane Gay:
Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure.
Audie Cornish:
Sorry, Amy.
Debbie Millman:
Mine does too.
Audie Cornish:
When I turned 13, I went to boarding school and I had been a normal middle-class girl. And then I realized, oh, my God, I know nothing about the world. I know nothing about what real wealth is until you realize you’re going to school with kids whose names are on the grates in the bathroom, which true story. And then this other kid who was like, oh yeah, and his name was Heinz. And I was like-
Debbie Millman:
Like the ketchup?
Audie Cornish:
Yeah. And you realize, you think you have something and then you realize, oh my gosh, I have nothing. And I found that very motivational and probably a little too motivational because then I went into overdrive and I was already a very intense child because immigrant parents, have to get A’s, blah, blah, blah.
Roxane Gay:
How do you balance ambition and recognizing or trying to believe that you’re exactly where you should be and are no longer falling behind or are behind because you are simply excellent?
Audie Cornish:
Oh, wow. I want to get there. Tell me about that place. I think that the last two years of my life have been really eye-opening in that respect. I think that one of the things that happens when you seal yourself up in that cocoon of anxiety and ambition is there’s no air in there. You don’t really have a good sense of yourself. You almost have a kind of personality dysmorphia or something. And to all of a sudden have this, and this is not to place my own value in the hands of other people, but to all of a sudden have this kind of objective review of my career. Even the introduction you read at the beginning, I was like, I’ve been doing something for 20 years. Go me. It sounded great when Roxane Gay says it, my must be great. But it was helpful. Even the kinds of questions people ask me, I realized like, oh, I can answer. I have an answer.
And when you’re feeling behind, you can trick yourself into thinking that you don’t have those things. And it’s very easy to do at a place like NPR where everyone is a very creative star, and they’ve got books coming out. And so you just start to think, well, I must not have anything. I’m not anything. And having to stand on my own two feet in that way has been good and helped me. It has helped me feel secure, because I think TV can really tear at your sense of ego and security. And I think coming into it, not an ingenue, not a baby who’s trying to have my own show or whatever has been great for my mental health because I have a very like, oh, you don’t want to do this. Great. I’ll do the podcast. I don’t care. I just know I have my own thing to hold onto.
Debbie Millman:
When you found out that CNN Plus wasn’t going to be CNN Plus, and that meant your role there was going to be very different, how did you come to terms with what that role was going to be?
Audie Cornish:
It’s interesting. I let myself, and to CNN’s credit, they gave me space to go through that process. There was not like, “Oh, we’re canceling this thing. And guess what, tomorrow you need to be doing blah, blah, blah, blah.” It wasn’t that. It’s a lot of turmoil, these big, public shakeups and changes and job losses, and they kind of let us grieve a little bit because one thing that people couldn’t tell from the outside was that it had ramped up to an enormous production. There were literally 500 plus people who were working on it. So we were our own startup in the company, and I’m talking a whole floor of young, interesting people who had come to the business because they wanted to make something that wasn’t TV in the way we all thought. So there was a palpable sense of loss for us.
Now, the flip side is I think over the next couple of months I had to really think about, I had to design, okay, what is the next chapter? This thing that you thought was going to be all planned out, nothing you planned is happening. Nothing. Every time I talked to an executive, they’d disappear a few days later. It’s that kind of thing.
Debbie Millman:
Did you ever worry that you would be asked to leave?
Audie Cornish:
I didn’t. I probably should have. It just was all happening so quickly. But I think because I had just had this very public exit from my old company, a lot of people came out of the woodwork to be like, “Hey, would you want to work with us?” And all of a sudden I went from a person who was like, if I don’t perform a certain way, I am going to lose my position, my station, my upward mobility. I’m going to be living in my car kind of thing.
Debbie Millman:
Do you still worry about that?
Audie Cornish:
It’s in my brain, you know what I mean? I’m one of those people that has money stocked away in weird places because you’re like, what if you have to run? Because I had just had that outburst of job offers, I think I felt like, oh, okay, if this doesn’t work, guess what? You’re okay. And it has been nice. You do operate different in the world when you have a little bit of that confidence behind you.
Debbie Millman:
Did you ever think about going back to NPR in that time?
Audie Cornish:
No. I mean, I know people want a more dramatic reason for leaving or that there was a turning point or it was just like racism. But that’s not a reason to leave a job.
Roxane Gay:
Because that could happen at every job.
Audie Cornish:
Yeah, exactly. That’s just, the bar is too low there. I was calcifying. I was mercenary in my interview style. I could do things quickly, too quickly. I could edit things too easily, and I didn’t want to become a person who says no a lot. That happens a lot in newsrooms, like, “We can’t do that, five years ago I did it.” Like, what? Who cares about that? And I really, really was already trying to do more jobs there and they didn’t want me to. They were like, please stop doing more. And now I’m in a job that is weirdly right for me. When I went to CNN, I remember one of the other anchors said, “Welcome to the fire hose.” Turns out that’s a good fit.
Roxane Gay:
I think that’s really interesting because at NPR you were at a legacy media property. And when you joined All Things Considered, that was one of their flagship shows. And then you move over to CNN, which is in its own way, a legacy media company, but then you get to do new things, whether it was trying to launch something on CNN Plus and now The Assignment. And so what are the pleasures of being able to decalcify yourself, be flexible, have to experiment? And as you yourself have noted, with experiment comes failure.
Audie Cornish:
Yeah.
Roxane Gay:
So what have been the pleasures of just being able to do something different to stop having to say no?
Audie Cornish:
I like failing fast. That was one great thing about Plus, it wasn’t going to work, and everyone moved on and I was like, great, what are we doing next? I like building things and I love collaboration. I am terrible on my own creatively. My husband is a book editor and I just must be the only person in the world that doesn’t want to write a book, just zero. Just the thought of toiling by yourself and then having to promote it everywhere. I’m just like, no, I can’t do it. I’m sorry. No, I can’t do it.
Roxane Gay:
I completely agree.
Audie Cornish:
And then answer questions about it. It’s like, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I just wrote it. I don’t want to. I like tennis. I don’t have a keynote speech in my pocket. Whenever anyone asks me to give a speech, I say, “Can you turn this into a talk? Who do you want me to interview? Who do you want to interview me?” I just feel like building something together is so special. And even how we’re having the conversation right now is different because all of you are here. How many people are in the room versus not? When I look out in the crowd, who makes eye contact? Who doesn’t? You do something together. And I don’t like the silence when you’re trying to be creative on your own.
Roxane Gay:
Collaboration is wonderful. It’s something I’m learning to enjoy as I’ve gotten into comic books, which is very collaborative, and film and television, which is deeply, deeply collaborative. But it’s a skill.
Audie Cornish:
It is.
Roxane Gay:
It’s a skill to learn how to give and take, to listen.
Audie Cornish:
And young people struggle with it.
Roxane Gay:
Yes, which is also interesting. So what are the things that are best practices for collaboration? And how do you make sure that you’re staying nimble as a collaborator? Because I know you work with excellent producers, and like you said, the interview is an act of collaboration.
Audie Cornish:
I think that first of all, being face-to-face is helpful. There are minute changes in inflection, in facial expressions that you come to understand about your collaborator and that help you build a shared language for creation. I know that’s not a very popular thing to say in the remote work era, but it’s meaningful.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, you can tell a lot from a person’s eyebrows.
Audie Cornish:
It’s not the same in a video conference. It’s just not.
Debbie Millman:
How do you prepare for interviews?
Audie Cornish:
Panic. No, I do a lot of reading. And it’s funny, when I very first start out, and my show runner is here in the audience somewhere, Matt Martinez. If you see him, say hello. Matt and I worked at All Things Considered when I very first started, and I used to prepare for everything because I wasn’t Robert Siegel. I just did not grow up reading The New Yorker or The Economist or whatever and had not gone to Harvard, which is what much of the staff had. So I felt like I was constantly having to read in and catch up. Again, that thing of feeling behind. Now, I don’t feel that way. I think now I am a little more educated about the idea of curiosity and how there is a way that if you let your curiosity lead you, it is far more interesting than if you are looking through the series of quotes from past interviews and ordering them and then trying to get the interviewee to somehow dialogue around things they’ve already said. But that took such a long time for me to get to that point.
Debbie Millman:
You talked about how you watched the podcasting boom from the outside and felt that you had missed it. And then you saw streaming and thought, hey, this is another industry that’s changing, and that was another opportunity to try something.
Audie Cornish:
Having trouble catching that wave. That one’s a little of a bumpy ride.
Debbie Millman:
How is podcasting different from hosting a radio show?
Audie Cornish:
It’s so different because NPR and All Things Considered, they’re not radio shows, they’re networks. They’re as sort of powerful and all encompassing and 24/7 as any cable news, they punch above their weight, and staff, et cetera. And so you really have much more of a sense of the news, the news, the news. You’re on this freight train and it’s just constantly going. The thing I had to figure out is, without that engine just roaring in my ear, what is it that I do? What is it that people like? What possibly could my interview style be? Who would be interested in that? Because now I was entering a world where the popular people were the Smartless guys or Dax Shepard. You know what I mean? I’m not a comedian dude. I didn’t know who I was.
Debbie Millman:
What did you discover? How would you answer those questions now?
Audie Cornish:
Which one?
Debbie Millman:
All the ones you just listed?
Audie Cornish:
I don’t know still. I mean, the show is really young. Maybe one thing people have found appealing is that I am someone who is surviving in these very big, mainstream, high profile spaces, but I’m not afraid about vulnerability and I’m not afraid to say I don’t know something. And I think that among the gatekeeping elite media class, that’s not so common. There’s a lot of always trying to show that you’re the smartest person in the room. I’m not the smartest person in the room or else I wouldn’t be doing the interview. I’m asking you. You have the knowledge. I think there’s something that’s appealing to people about that. But I also think that I’m doing that as a generational thing. More people are likely to talk about having a miscarriage publicly. More people are likely to talk about having depression publicly. So I don’t have to hide in some way. And I think maybe the audience and I have that in common.
Roxane Gay:
On your new show, one of the things that I’ve found most interesting is that you’re going beyond the traditional sort of a celebrity has something to flog and you try and find a news hook to pin it to and have a conversation. That can be good, but is maybe not the most scintillating.
Audie Cornish:
We’re literally bored describing it.
Roxane Gay:
Yes, exactly. So now you’re looking for everyday people who are connected to some of these major issues that we’re dealing with in the world. And so, does your approach to interviewing them differ? And also, you’ve talked about how you’re looking for these stories that fall through the cracks. So how do you find them?
Audie Cornish:
Well, first of all, it’s pretty easy because in the news business, I think we’re hyper-focused on big headline things. It’s very easy for me to do a story where I interview two wild land firefighters because everyone else doing that story is in Hawaii, and they’re doing the story and that’s really important. And they’re trying to find out what happened with the power company or the insurance companies, or they’re talking to the governor. There’s so much going on, they don’t have time to do this weird conversation that I chose to do. But those two people were fascinating. It was like two women, wild land firefighters, one had been in the business since before there was officially a wild firefighting unit. They had fascinating things to say about climate change and about the ability to talk about those things publicly or not. What’s it like within their community, having that dialogue.
And I think that because as journalists, we only touch down with people in moments of crisis, it does feel different for people to come and listen to a show that’s not crisis driven. In fact, some of the people we talked to after their crises have passed and we are like, how do you live now? How do you live with that, whatever that thing was? How do you live with the decisions you’ve made? Those are things everyone can identify with, I think. To answer your question from earlier, I do treat what I call civilians, regular people differently than people who are media trained. People who are media trained, they’re so message driven. It’s really about just talking to them about anything other than their official message.
Debbie Millman:
Right, because they’re just going to lead you to the thing they want to say.
Audie Cornish:
Yeah, which is fine, but it’s not 45 minutes of fine. Who wants to listen to that? But it does take some time to help people tell their story, because that’s what media training does, it helps you to tell your story in a succinct, smart, digestible way. And I often come to people and bring people on the show who don’t really know they have a story. They’re kind of like, “I don’t know why you’re doing this, why you’re interested in this.” And then once we get into it and they start talking the way they talk amongst themselves, which is my fantasy goal, they are able to tell stories the way you tell stories when you meet someone at the airport bar or someplace where two people come together in time and space, they have no real connection, but suddenly they have a connection. And that’s what we’re creating every week.
Debbie Millman:
You are starting something brand new. You’re creating it from the ground up primarily because you didn’t want to be doing the same thing again and again and again and again. How do you come to create something that hasn’t been done before in an environment as big as CNN?
Audie Cornish:
I haven’t. It’s still just people talking. Sometimes I talk to people who are like, “I want to start a podcast and I think it should be this, that and pizzazz.” And I’m like, “Stop right there. This is cave paintings of the fire. No matter what technology comes along, we like hearing each other tell stories. You guys all pay tickets to see us talk. We’re not even dancing.”
Debbie Millman:
Just wait, the night is young.
Roxane Gay:
There is a bar.
Audie Cornish:
Yeah, that’s true. And I think that’s amazing. There’s Web3, there’s a lot going on, and you can still, no matter what technology has come along. Think about how podcasting happened, in spite of Apple, if we’re being honest. Maybe people will ham radio on this, I don’t know, buy some music. And slowly but surely, you are one of those pioneers. It became an enormous business that we don’t even have our arms around fully.
Debbie Millman:
It’s so young.
Audie Cornish:
It’s young.
Debbie Millman:
It’s so young.
Audie Cornish:
It’s young and it’s old, right? It’s radio and it’s storytelling.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, that’s what I love about it.
Audie Cornish:
It’s oral storytelling. So no, I have not reinvented the wheel. I think all I’ve done is go into the mainstream space and do all the things that your editors and managers and bosses usually tell you you can’t or shouldn’t do. This is too long. Who are these people? Who cares about this? This is a deep dive into something. This is too light. This is too fluffy. This is not serious enough. It’s just like, I took all that and balled up and started to make a show out of it.
Roxane Gay:
Now, earlier you were talking about having many different jobs. And when talking about taking on too much, you’ve said that when you’re really ambitious, the only thing that’s going to stop anything is you.
Audie Cornish:
People were really into that.
Roxane Gay:
I mean, listen. I felt like that was a bit of a sermon. I was like, yes, and you’re right. I am my own worst enemy. And it resonates, I think with a lot of people, myself included, and I would say also Debbie, who we all suffer from several jobs. Have you learned to be the change in your life that you need to stop yourself to say, I don’t need to do five things or 20 things, I can do maybe two? Other than, of course, parenting, which is its own thing?
Audie Cornish:
Let me see. I think my producers would say no. I think what I’ve learned is that I do need a certain amount of inputs and activity for my brain to work well, and that when I’m just sitting and doing one or two things, I actually just start to get anxious and feel like, oh, I’m not doing enough. Maybe I should blah, blah, blah. But I’ve also learned that what I consider quiet is still quite busy to other people. And maybe then that’s okay. I’ve also learned to prioritize the thing that brings me joy, and that’s really hard because I think one of the things about ambition, for me anyways, there was a part of it that was resting on the scarcity. There won’t be enough opportunities, so I have to take advantage of each and every one, whether or not I want to do them or not. That’s how you did it.
The ability to say no, I’ve really only come into that in the last two years. And the first no was leaving my job. I was thinking back to when I left and they were like, “Well, can you stay another two or three months?” And I said, “No.” And everything in my being told me they want the staff. And I, for myself, said no. And ever since then, I’ve probably delighted too much in saying no. I’m addicted. But I think part of it is just saying, what gets me up in the morning? I don’t want to do things anymore where I’m sitting there thinking, why am I here? It’s like, don’t do that. Don’t do that. And I’m not a person who says, “Go out and do what you love and you’ll automatically make a living.” That’s not how it works. But you won’t be good at something you hate. It’s just hard.
Debbie Millman:
And everything is hard. Every job is hard.
Audie Cornish:
Exactly. So you might as well kind of like what you’re doing.
Debbie Millman:
You were asked if you considered yourself an entrepreneurial person. And your response was an emphatic no, absolutely not. My question to you is, really?
Audie Cornish:
You are entrepreneurial. You are entrepreneurial. This is your show.
Debbie Millman:
Thank you.
Audie Cornish:
This is not my show. No. I like going into an office. I want someone else to deal with healthcare. I don’t want to really manage people that much.
Debbie Millman:
I don’t want to do those things either. No, you’re creating something where nothing has been before. Your idea of doing that is the definition of entrepreneurial.
Audie Cornish:
I guess I think of entrepreneurial as people like Kara Swisher, who I’m obsessed with and who has very definite ideas about how to have creative control of your life. I feel like I’m only just now entering that process because I did not have creative control, not the way I really could have, up until very recently. And now that I have it, I even sometimes am a little sheepish about it. I’m afraid to be like, “No, no, I want it this way,” because I don’t want to be a bitch. You don’t want to be that boss that everyone hates. But I want it. I want it done well and right, and I have a vision and I want to do it.
Debbie Millman:
Well, you’re saying bitch like it’s a bad thing.
Audie Cornish:
I know. And that’s true.
Roxane Gay:
You speak to a tension that I think a lot of black women in particular struggle with of knowing what you want, knowing when it’s not there yet, knowing that you might need to say something to get it to where it needs to be, but being afraid of being portrayed as a bitch or angry, for having standards-
Audie Cornish:
Or like, who am I to have it?
Roxane Gay:
Yes. Have you found ways to recognize that I’m allowed to ask for what I want from my team and care less about how it’s going to be perceived? Because I think you know I’m not what could be said. But how do you get over the fear of what people could say or think or do just for doing something well?
Audie Cornish:
I’m not over it. I’m not over it. I’m very anxious about how my staff sees me. I’m very anxious about working with people and being seen as professional and smart and kind. I also hate bad bosses. When I see men behave that way, I’m like, oh, this is total BS. I could never do this. And I resent it.
Debbie Millman:
I don’t understand how they can, I’m just flummoxed by that.
Audie Cornish:
It’s because we let them.
Roxane Gay:
It’s because they’re allowed. And then corporate feminism at some point told women that the way to succeed and that the promised land was if women started acting like men in the workplace. And so then you have women imitating these same toxic behaviors.
Audie Cornish:
I disagree. I think there are some women, I have seen some behaviors in the workplace that come from people learning about different ways to exert power, the worst of which for me is passive aggressiveness. I want you aggressive aggressive. Just tell me what’s going on.
Debbie Millman:
I’d rather somebody be a bitch.
Roxane Gay:
I prefer aggressive aggressive.
Audie Cornish:
I don’t want death by clipboard. But either way, it’s where the collaboration process goes wrong. And fundamentally, I value collaboration in a way that I don’t want to damage those opportunities. I haven’t figured out, in this new environment where people are much more questioning of power dynamics, how to be in a good and rich dialogue in which I can still impart information in a way that someone can receive it without me being run over or taken advantage of.
Debbie Millman:
I want to ask you, I found a word that you used in an interview, and I was like, “Roxanne, look at this word.” And I want you to tell us more about it. The word is awokening.
Audie Cornish:
Oh, the Awokening trademark sound. That’s from 2020 because we got woke. I don’t know. It was short-lived.
Debbie Millman:
I don’t know. I like the word.
Audie Cornish:
I don’t know. Where did I get the awokening from? That was such a befuddling period of time, especially for people who had done any kind of research or work or writing about racial justice issues. My very good friend at NPR, Gene Demby, who’s at Code Switch.
Debbie Millman:
Of course.
Audie Cornish:
We were texting each other throughout, just being like, “What is happening?” Because it had been a decade of deaths, at least in this particular media outrage cycle. It was just genuine. And since then there’s been a lot of theories about people being home and et cetera. I don’t question it anymore because I feel like there are conversations I can have now that I couldn’t have three years ago. I just had someone on the show and they were talking about their youth experiences. And one of the things they brought up on their own, unprompted, was the idea of interrogating their own privilege, interrogating why are most of my friends white? How have I lived in social structures that have benefited me? Just really kind of sophisticated conversation that was impossible to have even six years ago.
So, as much as I sort of mocked the awokening for a long time, I have come to see it as it was an inflection point. We didn’t get to some nirvana. Things are not solved. But I think every time there’s an infusion of new language and new understanding and collective understanding, you can have a dialogue. It won’t be perfect. But if you don’t even have those basic shared vocabulary, it’s very hard. And I do think sometimes the anti-woke movement is about clawing some of that back.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, absolutely.
Audie Cornish:
Just being like, “No, no, no, no, no. We’re not doing this. We’re going back to the way it was.” And people aren’t doing it.
Debbie Millman:
Audie Cornish, thank you so much for making so much work that matters. And thank you for joining me and Roxanne tonight.
Audie Cornish:
Thank you. Thank you for your questions.
Roxane Gay:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
You can talk about making a difference, you can make a difference, or you can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.