How to Make Dolly Parton Cry with Shima Oliaee

show's host and her boss, jad Appenron. I wanted to have her on to ask all the questions about producing and about what it was actually like to be in the room with Dolly and with jab Who's I mean?

I think the first podcast voice I ever heard when I discovered Radio Lab while I was driving through the backwoods of Virginia in trying to find these like really isolated locations where we were shooting the movie Loving Anyway, I remember hearing Radio Lab and going, oh, this is podcast, um, And I wanted to have Sima on to talk about her own voice on Mike, which I was really intrigued by as I was listening to the series as well as off as the child of immigrants, as a reporter

who you know, has to ask tough questions and who as she talked about here, Jad relied on to speak up with a quote unquote love shove every once in a while during extremely intense interview moments. And also, you know, as a woman in radio trying to own her own creative vision. I was so taken with the Dolly Parton series. And I mean, clearly I'm not alone. It won every award for Best Podcast in twenty and you know, I had a feeling that Shema would be full of wisdom

and insight, but truly was blowed away. Nonetheless, if you were in the mood for surprising and deep and balsy, sister, uh, this is Shema only I part of my experience listening to Dolly Parton's America among the various you know, it's sort of insane universe of journeys that we were able to follow one of them. And why I wanted to what my like inspiration moment was to have you on this podcast is that I felt like we were also

listening to the journey of your voice on air. Oh wow, did you feel that because you were at first a just a name, yeah, and then by the end you were very much a part of the you know, obviously the intimacy of podcast is that we have your we have these voices in our ears, and you know, I remember I think I even like might have lightly gasped in the car driving listening with the first time that I heard you on air, and that it wasn't sort of cut around your question. It was very much like

integrated in and I was like, there she is. I love your podcast because of this, and I'm like, oh, she gets it. We really had a blank slate going into this, and there are so many moments. I mean, there's four hours of tape, so altogether it was six hours and seventeen minutes of the nine episodes, um plus the two music episodes that we released as bonuses. But can you imagine four hours went to six hours. It was a very personal journey for me too, and people

don't get to hear that. That was also deliberate because to me, the interesting aspect of this idea of oneness. The first idea I had was Dad's Dad and Dolly felt like one person to me viewing them, and I also have a Middle Eastern background. And when we were in the Kansas Plans with Grandma Betty and sarah' smrsh I actually this is three months before we got to the Tennessee Mountain Home. I had an emotional breakdown in the car which is on tape where I start weeping.

I'm talking with Sarah Smarsh. Grandma Betty has just shared about all the domestic abuse and violence and her in her love life and with her seven to eight husbands, and I start weeping in this car as we've visited the graveyard of her ex husband, and we're driving through the Kansas planes and I start talking about my cousins and my grandma in Iran. And these are women that went through Grandma Betty stories like they lived Grandma Betty's life.

But I was separate from them because I was in America. And when I met one of my cousins, she cried to me and said, you know you were lucky you were there, but we suffered here. I have an accent. I can't live in America. I don't have a visa to do so. Um so she's she'll always be seen as another on the world stage. And so I had flashbacks of my cousin during that visit, and also when I met the University of Tennessee kids when they were sharing about the accent. That's that was the first reporting

trip I went on. They all just started bearing their souls and that moment, plus that Sarah Smarsh breaking down about feeling my grandma and her village in the Kansas Plains. And then on top of that, hearing Dolly talk about Dad's dad, which we never planned to use at the start, but she was kind of teasing Jad's dad about his accent. And one of these interviews, in the first interview Jad did that. I wasn't there in the one where she steam rolls him and where she steaming his chad a

bit um. But when I was listening, I thought, this is funny. This is a woman with a thick Southern accent teasing this Lebanese man about his accent. And I'm someone who I grew up with parents with an accent. So this oneness of like the Middle East and the South, and of people being other that you don't expect to be mothered, of friendships that form an unlikely places, I

think that that was my soul. The entire journey and what you cannot be captured, you know, which cannot be understated, and which I have not really like expressed in any interview, is it was such a spiritual experience. Like I don't want to say spiritual because it sounds so kind of goofy, you know, or whatever. But there were so many moments where Jad and I turned to each other and it

was healing wounds of our childhood. It was healing wounds of of being first generation Americans with parents from the Middle East. It was for me, it was healing wounds of domestic violence amongst women in your family, of poverty, um, of all of that um. Anyway, so I think naturally that happened. I was just supposed to be the producer behind the scene. I didn't even want to talk in interviews, but Jad actually encouraged me. He said, no, be a Robert.

You're like Robert crow Witch, you're crazy, like you're kind of you. Just say the crazy thing, just do it. And I said, no, I don't want to do that. I want to be serious. I want to be so serious and I want to be taken seriously, and he said, no, just be yourself. But I did see my role as a behind the scenes kind of Ninja and that was my role. But then naturally, as the series evolved, my voice just entered it because my ideas were, so we're

we're are everywhere in the series. My work is everywhere in the series. I think also Jad has a brilliant audio mind and he hears things as music. And I was a flute. I was the pan flute, like it was like I started out little like I was not the main I was not the piano, right, I was not the main course. That might have been actually Dolly, but like you know, and there's a conductor and there's

it was an orchestra to make those nine episodes. But I think I was a pan flute maybe once in a while a saxophone or something that would come in and it would help. So if it helped the whole series, it would happen. But if it didn't help the series, those parts were not there. What helped the series is what we put in there. I mean, in theory, this is why we should speak. Ever, you know, it gets when we're when that when eyes are on us, it can become oh god, I I better be clever um.

But if we can always think you know, am I opening my mouth? Am I giving myself permission to speak? Because what I say is going to be of use? You know. I'm also such a self editor. I'm very self critical. And it was an intense experience. I mean, as as beautiful and gorgeous, it was also really intense. I mean, for two people to do something like this

was insane. People were asking other people I work with, you know, oh, Jad's got a team of twenty, right, and you would tell, you know, heads of in of this industry would have be having lunch with my coworker and they would say, oh, Dad's got twenty doing that dollar series, right, And my coworker would say, no, it's one this one girl. She's not sleeping, you know. But um. But it was the opportunity of a lifetime. And I am self critical, and I do appreciate that Jad also

championed me like we would. You know, when you're in a creative um environment like that, it's like a crucible, so it's like pressure, it's gorgeous, it's like you're making a diamond like that. We were trying so hard and we were so in there now and I even hear a bit of the series I think, wow, I was on another level. But it's also you know, going back and forth and know it's gotta be this and gotta be that, and then how do we say this and how do we say that? And I was definitely behind

the scenes too, so I was championing him. But then when I would be pulled in, you know, he knows what he's doing. He's had twenty years of experience, and so when I felt, Chad, I don't even want my voice right there, he would say, no, let it be right there. That first interview, right it was just the foundation to create a relationship with Dolly. So you know, he asked me to draft questions for her and then but he let her kind of do her own thing.

She did steam Roland, but he also led her like it's a It was a first meeting, but he knew we would go back, and that second interview we prepared for months. I was on the phone with anyone who had ever written anything about Dolly. I was I was

reading everying on our life. I was trying to find things no one had found, and my goal was I wanted and I told Jad this, and I think he did a Life Hacker article at that time where he says Shema is a unicorn and she makes famous people crying interviews because I told him, I said I want to make Dolly cry and he said, you're crazy. We can't make her cry. Did you hear that interview? And I thought, no, we can. We can find a way. I want her to get to a real moment of

something she's never told anyone. I really wanted that, and he invited me on that second interview, and we prepped. We had a four hour trajectory of an interview. We had video, we had audio, we had a we had I had done massive research and then we compiled it all, we organized it, we made it multimedia, and we set the agenda. I remember we were sitting in the car, I think this was his dad's car outside of this Nashville studio, and we were both nervous. Like Dad was

visibly nervous, I was nervous. At that point. He had done the first interview with Dolly and he had interviewed the class by himself, which was okay, But then the second time he brought me because the Dolly professor is a staunch feminist and thought she must would go and

told Jad and Jad was like, oh, yeah, okay. So Jad brought me second time and that's all the kids shared about shame, and Jad and I both connected with that because we are we have felt other two as first generation Americans, and we were in awe of that second of that second Knoxvill trip that in that which was my first reporting trip. Then he takes me to Dolly.

We're in the car, nervous as hell and almost it was a state of prayer going in and we walk up to the studio and they could see us, but we couldn't see them because the studio has like the reflective you know, mirror windows or whatever. And I hear Dolly go, there's a girl out there? Why is there are girls? Like? What is happening? And then they opened. She did not know I was going to be there.

We go into the studio. There's one engineer, one Mike, Jad and I sitting in front of Dolly, and um, I was on a couch at first, but then I yeah, anyway, we were sitting in front of Dolly. That's interesting. There was like a moment when you when you like scooted forward from couch to Yeah. I started on the couch the first hour. I think I was on the couch and then we had a bathroom break. In the first

hour we went in, we went in hard. The first hour, the suicide was brought up, the Satas songs was brought up, mental illness, the abuse in her family amongst women, poverty. Then we come back and then we do another three and a half hours, and it felt like we left the planet. It was. It was so intense, and it was every moment felt like you're on a high wire. It was not a relaxed interview, but it was UM.

We were just trying to open doors. And she cried twice in the interview, and I served at that time. I mean I was not planning to talk at all. I knew the entire trajectory and I really felt like I was invisible presence. I was there to make her say what she needs to say, just invisibly. It's with when I've talked to other producers. I have a friend of mine UM Eleanor Kagan. We were describing this UM

being the producer that's supporting a host. It is a very freaking cool experience that I don't think people talk about where you are the invisible like maker of magic, but no one knows because you cannot talk, you cannot rue it. But you've got to make You've got to make everyone the best they can be without saying a

word until it's necessary. And so there'd be a moment where there were two moments where she she would stop the question and then I would love shove, I would I would come in, and one time was she would not go into the suicide. And I knew the story because I had done my research, which didn't make the podcast, but I know everything about it, and so I discovered exactly what had happened, what was going on. But you know, and Jad also has to be polite and kind, kinder

than me. I can do more in the Bad Cop because he has the personal relationship right. And we had to get another interview that wasn't our last interview. So what is the love shove? So the love shove is, you know, she's she answers to cut it off. And then I kind of a tiptoe. I kind of tiptoe in in my awkward way, and I was like, and I said, um, I heard there was a gun, so I just put it out there and she goes, there

was no gun. Did you read that? And this I said, actually, yeah, I know from this and this and this, and then she says, you know when I needed a gun. I'm that's when That's when we got to the Porter question. Right. So there's a moment that when you push someone says something that might not serve that moment but became like the opening of the Porter story. And that was next on our agenda, so you dive into the Porter story. And then with the Trump moment, that was a moment

where she just stopped. She would not answer what happened at the Emmy's with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. Um, when they were bashing Trump and she was expected to, you know, banter with them, she wouldn't go into it too deeply. And Um, that was a moment where all my research paid off because I knew I knew all about her story about Porter and forgiveness, and I thought, oh, if she could forgive Porter, who pointed Lee came for her, she's going to have compassion for She just doesn't like

she's gonna have compassion for Trump. She doesn't jump on bandwagons. If you look at her, like the even the cheesiness and the butterflies and the Dollywood and she's in her own world. She is in her Dolly world. She is in her own sphere. She doesn't she does not join

any kind of group. And that was part of the fund That was the answer to the feminist question, that was the answer to the Trump question, that was the answer to even she could have joined me and Jad going hey, let's let's really unpack porter, like, let's really just say come on, he was kind of he was me come on, Dolly. You know, she wouldn't even jump with us into that question. So I think even with the me Too movement, she wouldn't really even jump into that.

She wouldn't. She doesn't jump into any kind of trend or group anything like that. She totally sends as an individual. And at the end of the day, I also think that would link to her faith, that she feels like she has her own mission on this planet and with her faith and her and God or whatever you might call that spiritual essence. She prays every morning at two am and then writes she's on her own train. I want to talk about this moment that you're talking about,

where the where the energy changes in a room. Sometimes it's as obvious as like literally the person you're interviewing saying I'm not going to answer that, but sometimes it's not. It makes me think of Anna Davir Smith, who does these amazing one Woman shows where she embodies all the

characters that she's interviewed. She writes about listening for and this is sort of a Shakespeare metaphor, but you know Shakespeare has this um da da dada i ambic pentameter and um, and that that da dada is sort of meant to reflect the heartbeat and when it goes off when it's data data data data datta. Shakespeare used that very specifically to mean like something's really wrong with the world, like something on a on a on a grand psychic club.

And so what Anna Davir Smith says is she listens for the trophy, the off rhythm in the I can beat, And that's her metaphor. I don't think it's literal, but that thing of like when someone talks in a way that accidentally reveals something and you want to go in there. Okay, so this is what happened. I was I started as the main researcher on this project. Then I go into produce, which producing means very different things in very different places. But because it was a two person projects, it meant

a lot more than you would expect. You were clearly nineteen of the twenty people that works. So it was, you know, Jet, it was probably ten and ten, you know, maybe sometimes fifteen and five not I love it, and but it was it was a lot. When I push he knows I can push in away that he has to be her sturdy ship, but I can be the wave to rock it around a little bit and see what comes up. Then towards the end of that four hour trajectory, my research became that gut, the gut feeling

is not just intuition, which is very important. My masters was in psychotherapy, so a big part of my life and also my personality is if someone is suffering, I kind of want to know what's going on. This is also part of my Buddhist background is I've met thousands of young women that would tell me what they're suffering was right, So I naturally I don't want people to be superficial with me at ever, it's almost kind of inappropriate.

I think I don't want small talk. I want to know what's really going on, and it's out of love. I really I really love people, and I think that through someone sharing, everyone is healed because everyone is human and understands. Right. So there's that Trump moment. She just cuts it done, I'm not talking about it. Jad that she couldn't say anything, and I actually shared a story about my life in that moment, and I think Dolly was like, where the hell is this girl? What is

she talking about? The silent little She wasn't even supposed to be here. She was supposed to be here. What's her name again? You know it's for him? Why why did Jad bring this? For? Who is where she come from? She had no idea and I had this my huge curly hair. It's like I looked like I was like and m and I was very quiet until this moment where I just share the story and then she still answers in a quick way. And then I go in

and say, hey, didn't you want to protect him? Like didn't you just want to protect this person in the room? And that's when she said yes. I wanted to say, let's pray for the president. Why don't we pray for Mr? And I knew I sensed what the answers, but I didn't know what her answer was. Right. But that's because I knew about Porter. I knew about her family, I

knew about her heartbreak. I knew about things that she wouldn't even share with us, and so I knew that, and so I shared a story that I felt like she would know. I got it, And I think that was true. I think she goes, Oh, she gets it. She's not trying to get me, she's not trying to trick me. She gets it. And when we left that interview, we were so high. Jad and I had reporters high. We could not believe the places we went. That four and a half trajectory was the foundation of the entire series.

And she cried twice. So I became this kind of good luck charm. I became like the lucky rabbits fook for jab After that, he said, Okay, I'm taking that was your goal, like you achieved it way too early in your trajectory. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay, we're back. Can I ask you when you come up with questions? I as someone relatively to question asking in a formal sense rather

than a cocktail party sense. Um, I would to say I have no idea what I'm doing, And I go back and forth between coming up with questions that I truly want to know the answer to and coming up with questions that I think will elicit the types of answers from my um guests, that readers, that readers, that listeners will need to know, but that I'm a little too like inside Baseball, I already know the answer, which

makes me feel. You know, I wonder since obviously some of the secret to your brilliant question asking prep is prep is just the amount of work you're doing. But I also wonder, like what is that? Like that's a good question or I want to know about that, but

how do I ask it to get in? Yeah, I think um so researchers the first step right, and then wanting surprise, wanting to like even me and you, well this is so meta or whatever, But for me and you, I mean, I'm going to enjoy way this interview more if I get surprised by things I discover, especially I mean, I've only spoken about the Dolly series maybe five times in interviews, you know, I'm still learning how to talk about it. But I even hear myself repeating things that

I've said before because it feels comfortable. Dolly has done that a billion times over fifty years, like she has answered the same questions a billion times. So she has these sayings that are funny, charming, genius that she just uses over and over again. And as you do research, you realize, oh, when you think she's being so spontaneous with you, she's not. She's playing you. You know, even

in concert, she's playing you. And what was crazy was right before I moved to New York, I saw her in concert, the only time I've ever seen her in concert, and I heard these stories of her Tennessee Mountain home, and I thought, wow, wow, wow. And then when I did research, I saw she's been saying this story sorry for thirty forty years, and how does she make it sound so new? So I didn't want her to do that. I wanted to shock her. So the research helps because

you find questions that have not been asked. You try not to go down the path someone else has gone, but you utilize that knowledge to lean into things because I don't know everything, so I've got to push. I think one thing that we don't talk about much, which um Jad and I would do, is the structure of the questions matters where you start, where you head, where you go. It's not just random, random, random, Like we

had almost a movie like trajectory. We used audio, we used video, We tried to find things of her that she hadn't seen, we were hoping she hadn't seen. Do you think about structuring questions to get um like stories versus facts? Do you think in those terms at all? You know? I find like a lot of the surprise comes in when people are really trying to search themselves

for how something felt or how something went down. I think some of the some of the most surprising, I think some of the best, the deepest moments came from she would say something in an interview and we wouldn't understand what the hell she's talking about, and so in that moment, we you lost that moment, Like when she talks about the Appalachian murder ballads, we just we just glided by it in that same four and a half hour interview, which was which was amazing, but we didn't

catch it. And it was only in listening afterward where we went, wait what did she say about murder ballads? About the Knoxville Girl? Wait what? And then that took us down a rabbit hole and we had the opportunity

to interview her again. So what you're getting, um. Also, I think one of the beauties of interviews of Dolly in the series is you're getting like fifteen I don't know how many hours by the end that we had, maybe fifteen, I don't know, but where we could go deeper and deeper and deeper and say, remember when you said this, Well what about this? Remember when you said this, well, what about this? So we could come at her from

every angle. So I would say we had the luxury of repetition, which helps us because we're not really just doing an interview. We're creating a documentary experience. And it sounds like that's also something that you're doing with the other people that you referenced for your next project, that it is about these longer conversations that layer. Yeah, but that actually came out Yeah, yeah, yeah, that came out

tweeks ago. Yes, But I do think Lauren and Kiss, who were in the Flag in the Fury episode, they told me things in the last week of production that there's no way they would feel comfortable saying that in my first call with them. They knew me. By that time, they trust at me, they knew I understood, they knew what I was trying to do. Even John Hawkins uh is in that episode, and he's the cheerleader at all miss from three who refused to waive the Confederate flag

and all hell broke loose on that campus. He's only done one another interview ever about that that situation because it was so painful. He was getting death threats and he was waiting for the right time. I had to talk to him for two hours before he would even agree to one interview because he wanted to know if I was a person that he could trust or if I had if I if I knew what I was talking about, what I thought about Mississippi, Um, where's my heart?

And so those things build over time. That a lot of being a producer is being someone that is actually that people know that you care about them, even people that I interview, people that have opposite opinions, you know, like don't agree the mrs the story I just did. People did not agree with each other. But I loved everyone I talked to and I could see their truth and whatever they were telling me, I thought, that is

really true. That is a great point. But then I have to create the story based on all of these like three thousand truths, because that's the reality of life. And I'm now the storyteller telling this to the best of my ability. No, And I think that's part of your your genius, perhaps the unicorn like quality of you.

Besides having all these different, you know, literal skill sets that you're bringing to the table, is that you very much live in and value the gray area rather than always being like, this is the answer, this is the the truth. You know. My my, my dad had this shirt that he used to wear when I was little bit. At the time, I thought was ridiculous, and now I'm like, ah, it is the deepest wisdom of life, which is bring me into the company of those who seek the truth

and deliver me from those who have found it. I mean, that's what's hard is the stories I feel like I most want to listen to right now are people that don't get to tell their truths. And Dolly couldn't either. She told the truth through her songs The Ugly Ship about being a woman. She does not talk about that in interviews. She laughs, she jokes about her breasts. She is fun and flirty, but when you go to her songs,

she is telling you the effing truth. And so that's why we based our questions on the songs, because she was saying things in the songs she was not saying even in her autobiography, she's not saying that in her songs she's sang a lot. More So, it's also doing the research we would find the places where she was saying things she was not saying anywhere else. But in terms of the idea of stories, I think it is a chemistry. You know, I'm really understanding this more, especially

as a creative. There's so many times where I go, I like cross my arms and I think, why can't something be like this, Why can't we do it this way? Why isn't it like this? But being a creative is not working for a bank. A lot of it is the intangible stuff. It's really interesting because there's things that look really nice. You know, constantly we're getting offers for

other projects or do this or do that. But um, the chemistry of life, the chemistry of two people talking, the chemistry of ideas, the chemistry of story building, the chemistry of the pre interview, the chemistry of the actual interview, the chemistry of the research, like having the taste when you read something. And this is where Dad was my cheerleader, especially when I was first starting and I was like very timid and I didn't want to talk. I thought

I was not supposed to be talking. He he pointed out, he said, oh, you do the thing. I said, what do you? What do you mean I do the thing? He says, you get random, like you tell this story and know the person has no effing idea what you're doing. You just come out and just associative. You have an associative mind. Yeah, so when you know, I'm learning a book right now and I'm trying to figure out that,

I think that. I think the point of the book, which is really meant to be practical as well as big idea, is to somehow get onto paper like the associations that just happened in my mind, you know where it's not actually like a logical progression. But nor do I think that's how people learn best necessarily. I think there's different kinds of thinkings. I think part of it is also language, Like people who speak different languages they

have different loops of how they think and talk. And I also think it's partly because my parents are not native English speakers, so a lot of my thinking is associative. And I think that Jad could recognize that too, and he's like, oh, you think like me. You're an a social thinker, but I've learned how to taper it. But you also are a wild You're not afraid of being

I'm not afraid of being vulnerable in an interview. So I'll just share the thing and the person will just get so confused by my non seque which does make sense, which does connect to something, but they're trying to follow me because I'm going to start when when they refuse to answer the question, I then hit a ball. It's like way in the sky and they're like, wait what is that? Wait what? And then I take them back

to them that's standing on home plate. It makes me think of um, you know a land about Tom the the British philosopher. He was on this podcast UM with Elizabeth Day called How to Fail, and he said that it's so it's so like basic but so profound. He said that the only way to truly connect with somebody is to be vulnerable, and for them to be vulnerable back to you that's like it, you know, and and I and I also really love to think of vulnerable.

You know, vulnerable means literally like showing your weakness. So the idea that their strength and showing your weakness. It's equality and respect. It's like I bow to you, I am offering my soul and then you offer me whatever you want to offer me. I have no attachment of no judgment. And I think also people feel that there's this famous quote about people. People have it. I'm going to change it in my own words, but people have an innate bullshit detector where they know if you are

sincere or not. They know if you give a ship or not. People just know, even if they're not aware, they know. In the interview tape, you can hear that they knew we weren't bullshitting, so that the results we got in the tape was amazing because people knew we were not playing around and we were Sincere. I was fiercely Sincere. I wanted I wanted to know what people knew. I wanted them to share whatever they needed to share, Um, including Jad Zad, including Jad you know. UM. There's also

this amazing research out of University of Glasgow. I think where they can tell in the first millisecond where somebody says hello, people have a instantaneous opinion about whether or not that person is trustworthy. You know what. I love that, And I mean it sounds wrong right because it sounds like you're you're maybe judging. But people have wisdom even if they don't can't necessarily put it into words. We have wisdom. There's a girl, um So Buddhist girl. Her

name was Sunny Kim. She told me the story that in Korea, um where like she grew up with her family and they went through a lot of trauma as a young person. Her mother almost died three times in one year. And she said, like, through that suffering and through prayer and and really taking care of other people during that time, what would happen is like she'd go visit someone who was struggling, and she could hear by

the way they would answer the door. She could hear what their life state was by the way they would unlock the door before they open it. I talk about this a bit because you know, obviously I'm the voice is my jam and not just the voice in and of itself. Um As we just talked about in the mail bag episode. But really because it's so revealing. It's so revealing of what are as you say, our life state.

And I think that there's something. I mean, this is not true for everybody in every moment, but um, I think there's something about how each of us uses our voices that either reveals our life story or our state of mind, our choices, our where what's led us to this moment, or it doesn't. And what we're hearing is the concealing. I hope and this is my cha championing

women too. I hope that we can hear better because there's a lot, like think about all of the all of the reality is coming to the surface right now where people are saying it's so bad, and people that have been suffering under these realities say, no, it's always been like this. But you can't hear the voice if

you weren't a victim of that voice. But if you have suffered and been marginalized and been bullied lost even though it was unfair, if you've ever been in a situation where you were punished for something you did not do because of the of the positions of power of people in power, well, if you think about it, people are getting a microphone right now that did not get a microphone. If you even think about who has been

hosting radio shows, it has been white mett Okay. So also there's a trajectory happening where people are realizing something is wrong, so they're shoving everyone into the spotlight. But they didn't give any of those people the tools that they gave a whole other generation of people in privilege. So even for me, that's why it's very nerve racking, even as I'm coming into the forefront and my voice is being allowed to have a little bit more space.

I'm very self uh, self editing critical maybe yeah, self editing and and self critical and not. I just don't think I deserve a space to talk. And many people don't even think like that. They just think, yeah, I am, I deserve to talk. You know, they've they've done these studies. And actually the Dolly Parton's American professor told me this. She's a fierce feminist and was a lesbian lawyer in the nineteen seventies in Chicago, so she would tell me stories.

This is before I even met her on the phone, and this is one of the reason why she fought for me to be in the series, and she was like, Sheima gets this, bring Dad, you should bring shema. You know, it's these invisible spaces where people just think they deserve a raise. They just think they deserve a promotion. They don't think they need to do anything to get it.

They just think they deserve it. And and you know, there's very famous studies, very well known studies that women will apply for jobs that only they fit of the criteria cos and men will like apply for jobs where they fit the criteria. And so there is a growth spurt happening right now. But uh, it's on both sides. It's it's awkward for everyone. And so even for myself, I'm like, I don't want to I personally don't want to sound trill. I personally don't want to sound dumb.

I personally don't want to sound like to like I don't know, I just want to sound like myself. But I'm also scared because getting an opportunity is so rare. It's not an everyday occurrence. So that's because of the way things are set up. Like when AOC just got up and gave that freaking speech, it's it's it's just so great for a young woman to stand up and just piss off so many men and be like, Yeah,

I'm just gonna piss you off. I don't care. And I mean, she's doing some of it for very good reasons. I wrote it. I wrote a piece about this too. Actually, right before she did her um she gave that speech unrelated related just to her being her, about how like, what is surprising about her and what is what is a lesson for us and for anybody listening, who's who's like, you know, feeling any residents here is that what's so

surprising about her? The reason that we don't associate her voice with power historically, leadership historically is that she literally sounds like who she is and where she's from. Yeah, and so many of us have this sense, whether it's turning on a radio voice or turning on a politician voice, that the way to get ahead and we might be right is to shave off those edges of ourselves that are the most authentically us, the most real, and go

into this generic land and by the right. The reason I say we might be right is obviously on the way up. And then the dream is at some point we have enough power and you know, AOC was able to do it in this like sooner than expected way, which is partly her bravery to say I have enough power to let that crap go and actually say, Okay, here's what I really sound like, and I shall not

apologize in the moment. I mean, what you're talking about is also this thing I'm always on the kickoff and I and I absolutely have to police myself on, which is about Apolo jizing for taking up time and space. She is okay being hated and that is such a superpower like that that that's what I find the most in awe about her is she does not care if she's hated, And I think, wow, I wish I were more like that. I'm not that that's something, but I'm also I'm a different I'm a different flavor. I'm a

different instrument. But in a way, I would say, part of what your job was, part of of the of the puzzle piece that you, you know, provided in what you talked about with your you know, dynamic with Dolly, is that you were willing to say some things that were came out of left field or were not the good cop there. You know, you have your own ways. I mean, I don't need to defend you. You can

defend yourself. But you know what I mean, Like there we we the ways in which we experiment with being brave enough to be unliked, is I think, really really helpful. Even speaking up as I worked with jad right, like speaking up yes in private with I had a question about how you guys agree or disagree and what that process is. So if I were just thinking about Shema and my career, I would not have spoken up about

some things. I would not have said, hey, we need this. Hey, like I just wouldn't have said it because I'm in a v I love my job. I don't need to speak up. But I was as per Dolly. I was praying a lot about the series, and I felt like it was a chance to tell Talk to America. I felt like it was a chance to tell Dolly story.

I felt very personally connected to the story um as a woman and and and with my roots in the Middle East and all of the things that were all of the ideas that you hear in the in the in the trajectory and the adventure that we go on. But I remember praying, I want to open the gateway for all women through this series. And part of that is how I stand my own as a creative behind the scenes, even though I am this person's junior and

they are employing me. Yeah, I don't know if anyone would have listened to me if this guy didn't give me a shot, you know, like was anyone going to give me a shot? Like someone has to see your genius too, Someone has to see your talent then you

can do what you want with it. There's another part of that puzzle which I really don't want to miss out on, which is that because you were doing this work on yourself, on on the on the why you were speaking up in a way that wasn't just speaking up for Shema, and in fact may have been if

things had gone differently against your best interests. But you were speaking up on behalf of and that is I mean, I think that is part of what was so successful about this this you know, viral moment that um that AOC created. That she it was not just like this guy said something mean to me, and I would like to say that I don't want to be treated that way. It was not that at all. In fact, she spent the whole first half saying it has nothing to do with me and how I'm treated. It has to do

with a history of this. Do you know how many women we're sitting at home, like millions have seen that video now and I and so the reality is I'm thinking I have two thoughts when I watched that. I think this is insane, that this is what's happening in Washington, Like this is taking up time during a period in the country where people are dying off and like the thousands and perhaps like and we don't know how much it will snowball too. It's it's a it's a it's

a horrific time in American history. And she has to take time to address this. But every woman at home that has ever been just spit at, like I mean spit at for doing nothing, for just walking on the street,

called called whatever. And in fact, it's connected now that I hear you talk about this, because yes, I had the same thought of like, it's insane that she has to sort of like speak about this, this sort of triviality of these two words getting getting strung together and thrown at her, you know, among the billions that she's received.

Why you know why. But it's connected to the fact that those same women that you're talking about that we're home listening to this are also the same women who have had to deal with, you know, life since since November and what that moment was. Okay, one more question before we take another break. Here's what I really want to know. At the top of the final episode, you get on the microphone and ask for money. It's so fucking good and it's a it's a money ask I

have never heard in my whole life. Like, there's no apology in it. It's so you like, what was that and what how did you prepare for? What did you think as you were going on? Mike? It's so money that you asked that, because I find that I find that money asked to be a microcosm of the series, which is I did not expect to do the money ask I did not I and then I got asked to do it. I work for Jad's company. I don't really work for w N y C. Right, So Dad

said I want you to do the money asked. And I think it was also him giving me a moment to say, hey, I produced this thing, and I was scared. I've never asked for money, and I did a very standard one in two episodes previous to that one. But I got because I've already done it. I was thinking, what do I want to do? How do I so

I just built something I took. I was trying to think how I was thinking about the Victory lab because the last episode is a lighter one, so we're really just like we talked about our tattoos, we talked about two years from that. You had also been getting feedback by that point from listeners, right, so, like you, it did strike me as as a different type of ask then you might have done before this had had like

hit air. Yes, it was. It was me talking directly to people that we're in the series with us and like knew who we were and and we're enjoying it or hating on it whoever. But I just I was speaking to the listeners, you know. And it started with I knew I had to do it. I knew I wasn't going to narrate any part of that last episode. You hear me in that last episode because I ask about the tattoos with the kids with the ut, you know,

And I love that. I love that when he's when he's like, by the way, that with Jama's question about the kid's question. The best part of that is just the kid's reaction because they're like what I thought? What? No one knows just but they were actually kind of the highlight of all of that. But um, you know what I do want to say that that the act of using their questions and then putting them into Dad's

mouth was like, yes, dream that, just dreamy. After we met with the UTI kids, that was another bright idea of coming back to Dolly and doing another interview with Dolly's just putting their questions in front of her. So it gave us the space to not be critical, but to be critical, like, hey, the kids wanted to know this. The kids wanted to know, what do you think about your accent? You know they kind of feel ashamed of it?

Why don't we don't know? What? Thank you? So we we to ask the things that are a little bit but to voice, to to give voice to the students who felt like so distant you know literally and come metaphorically from Dolly and then to have their questions be directly asked to her was like a real I mean that actually now that I say it felt like it was a real um crumbling of of a of a like you know, power structure. Yeah. And they were so happy too, because they wanted to ask those questions, right,

So they were real. They were like real quest My gosh. I love those students. By the way, I still talked to some of them. They're any brilliant, brilliant in people. Um, so the ask, Yeah, I was terrified. I asked membership services at w YCE. I actually had a meeting with them. I said, I'm very scared. And then they told me they told me Dad's record for how much someone gave. This explains a lot of my relationship with Jad, they explained to me. When Jad asked once, people responded with

this kind of figure. So this is so much. I mean, this is the beauty of my religor is like we this is like, this is the this is the invisible like chemistry, right, Like we compete too. We try to outdo each other. I probably do it more because I'm free to do so, because I have because I am like the young kid coming up or um you know, I kind of I feel like I'm like the younger sister figure and I go, hey, I wanted to you know. So we were editing the final episode. I thought, hey,

this is my last moment. I'm going to be creative. So I built the start, and then I put in the questions. I put in the moments that I knew people loved the most, you know, and then I made it and then I sent it to Jad. And Jad was just expecting me to do a straight up ask with no music, no nothing, no build. And then when he saw it, even though he's like tired and he's like, we're wrapping the thing, he saw what I did and then he built on it. So then he built a

middle moment, and then I built the final moment. So even though we would we didn't expect to do that. That was that was the genesis of the Dolly series too. Was like I would throw him more than he asked for, and then he would respond in a glow in a generous way, and then I would push back in a generous way, and then we would get to something that was just unexpected. It was just supposed to be a

straight up asked, no sound, no nothing. But I took a moment and I made what I could with it with the time I had and with the feelings I was having. I also wanted it to feel like a victory lap for all the listeners with us to just go over like reminisce and then and to ask a very sincere question, which is, you know, public radio cannot

exist without listeners. I mean, to this day, especially in this time of the pandemic, it's really beautiful that people are still giving, even UM, even though circumstances are much tougher. So I really tried to think about people and be appreciative to the audience, even if they didn't give. I wanted to be appreciative for everyone who had listened. So

that's what I did. And as lessons go, you know, there's a lot in that, but one thing that I'm hearing is that in various ways, you really gave yourself permission to bring your actual voice to that microphone. And one way you did that was to really connect with the who you know out there. One way was to connect with um, how proud you were what you've made at that point, to just trust that it was not something you needed to sort of like if you liked this, you know, which is a trap that any of us

could have fallen into. UM. And then and then also, you know, a healthy competition, nothing like some some I'll show you energy. Okay, we're gonna take another break and we'll be back to find out who you brought in for us. I just feel like this could definitely be like UM, a multi episode series about UM, you and us in our take on the world, which is just a different it's a different format. What can I say? UM, Okay, will you tell me who you brought in for us?

So I brought in MICHAELA. Cole, who is who should be president even though she's not American, but she should be. She should be president and she should be queen. But I brought her in because not only is her series, her newest series, the greatest thing on this planet right now in my opinion at this moment, but her business practices and the voice she's giving to them, and the boldness is at which she is expressing what is happening behind the scenes in those business practices I find to

be wholly encouraging, courageous, and onspiring. She is what she is what I want I want to be. I wish I could be things I asked for but do not get. She is asking for them and getting getting them. She was offered a million dollar deal with Netflix. She turned it down because she couldn't own the rights to her show, and she just wanted like a certain percentage of the shares, and these wouldn't even give her that, and she just said forget you at a time when no one said

note of Netflix. I think she's awesome. Every young person I know, every woman I know, is she's become the blueprint just coming up. She's not a she's not a twenty year veteran that's becoming the blueprint. She's an up and coming artist that is the blueprint. I think she's spectacular. And then her series takes on sexual assault. And I hate to even say that because I don't want to turn anyone off from watching it, but I may destroy you.

It is so good and is saying so many things, is giving a voice of things that people have not said, and and giving you a space into places that people don't see from a vantage point of someone you never hear from or see from. And every episode I was lucky that I watched it with a friend of mine.

Um I normally you binge something on your own, but I actually watched it with a friend, and every time an episode ended, she would share about what what what she what she related to and then I would share, and then we would share about other stories we knew, and then we'd watch the next episode, and then she

would share and I would share. And so MICHAELA. Cole's art was giving us a voice to share her business practices, and her speeches about her business practices made my coworkers they would like send me her speeches like because the girls, girls have their own hidden community where they're pushing each other to ask for more. But all of us, a lot of us are getting said no to. But and and even sometimes I'm told by other young women around me, you should ask for this, but they would never ask

for that. But I'm kind of the guinea pig. And then I asked them and it's like, no, you can't get that because you know who are you. So I think that's happening everywhere. I don't think it's personal to me or anyone else. I do think the ideas of ownership, of artistry, of being a woman, of being, the idea of sexual power, the idea of business power, all of that is encapsulated in this phenomenal human called MICHAELA. Cole. We're gonna listen to a short clip because you said,

up the way you did. I'm switching. I was trying to decide between two, but I'm going to do a little bit from her mc taggart lecture. I bet you've heard this, Yeah, I think so many of us in this industry, this world are on creaking ladders, climbing, surrounded by noise, stress, and nothing real, not even the ladder itself. It could make the future feel bleak and devoid of peace, leaving some feeling isolated to the point of suicide. I think of Antony will Dane, who entered his who ended

his life on Jean eight while shooting a series. I think of Alex Beckett, an actor who ended his life April twelve mid a theater on had worked with him in that place far away is their care for anyone's mind? Oh my gosh, right, yeah, I mean talk about what of voices conveying? She is nothing but a humanist, like she sees people, she hears people, and she's very connected to her own probably because of her own trauma too. She's she sees the person deeper than she sees the artist.

And I think in realms of creativity we forget that there is a person in front of us, and the person matters more than the art. At the end of the day, the person fucking matters more than the art. And that is not part of our society. It's not how we view things, it's not how we measure them. It's why the countries as it is right now, people, it's everything else matters more than the person, the one person.

We've forgotten the person for a lot of the fucking circus, whether it's an art, Hollywood, sucking, politics, fame, fortune, I mean, something that came up with up with um at least hog my previous guest is this idea that I think about a lot about how we don't really talk about this aspect of the patriarchy quote unquote, but you know, part of it, um magic lies in trying to dissociate our brains from our bodies. And this idea that like,

if we don't have bodies, well, that's convenient. And it's also very convenient for capitalism, by the way, because then we can work eighty billion hours a week and we can skip pea breaks and we can not go outside for lunch because who needs that? You know, work, work, work, The more you work, the more you make. I mean, if we start to think of all of that. As you know, I don't know if a lie is the right word, but as certainly a truth that's sort of

somebody besides us. Then we can start to think about what what what is it to not live that way? Then if you think about like the history of women, I'm like, this is so my jam. There are thousands of etiquette books for women on how to behave And why are there thousands for women and not thousands for men. It's because you are property. If you were not picked, you die, like you think basically that's my extreme version

of it. But you are an old made you end up in poverty or like you're an outcast of society. You have no say in the world, and so you have to learn how to harmonize in order to live, to just live. And this is where Virginia Wolf is like, my Virginia Wolf is my favorite voice that you know, there are audio, there is audio of her. She is my She's my I mean, michaelical living person without it

at this moment of time, without a doubt. But Virginia Wolf says that when she got an inheritance, I think from her aunt that mattered more, that money mattered more. So she could have her own room. That's why that book is called a Room of one's own. That mattered more than getting the vote. Can you imagine that this is not what we're taught in school. Her having that money to be able to create mattered more than having

the vote. Like thinking that. It's what mickayl La Cole is living right now on in the realm of life and death, watching other artists feel so lost and without power killing themselves like to that exact, I mean, that's that's what I love about this moment. That's what I also feel like we have so far to go. So when I got my first recording studio job, I was the only girl hired. I was the only woman on staff, and I learned how to be tough when there was

a joke about sex. When there's a joke about me or my body or a woman, you learn how to spit back and you feel good and you feel like you're the one in control and you feel cool and you you know yes. And there was a moment where I got I heard my real voice, and I woke up one morning and I thought, oh my god, I'm miserable. This job looks shiny, but I am miserable, and I am I have to fucking play the game. I cannot even be myself. I just look tough and I have

to do it to survive. But I hate this job. No matter how good it looks, no matter how sexy it is that I'm recording with this artist or whatever. I hate it. And I fucking quit music at that time. And I was a second grade teacher for the next year of my life, and being with kids melted me. I thought, oh wow, I have so much. There's so much between what my soul or whatever is. My inside and my outside are so estranged from each other, and

it took years to collapse that. And most people live in the space between they It's it's so difficult to collapse. It takes a lot of guds. You have to be able to when someone hurts, you be able to have a dialogue with them. You have to be able to if you have trauma and your family address the trauma, see the people like you have to love your parents no matter what you've got to. You've got to have friendships with people from all walks of life. It's a process.

You've got to constantly push your boundaries with your voice connecting with other voices that that ship starts to heal, and those the wall of the outside of what you project as you to people and what is actually happening on inside, so that distance collapses. And as an interviewer, I am listening for the space and I am desperately trying to collapse all of it. But it takes someone to kind of be the catalyst, to be the elixir, and art can do it. That speech, Mikayla did that book.

Virginia Woolf wrote that series a podcast like the reason I wanted Dolly to cry is sometimes when I'm lost, it's because I haven't cried, like I've gotten so frozen because I'm surviving in the world and I can't feel myself anymore, and I have to get to a place where I can feel what the funk is going on? What have I just lived through? What is happening? Because things are moving so fast? Anyway, we should probably on the episode, Sheima, thank you so much for coming in.

This is fun. Thank you to Shema for joining me. You can find out more about her and her shows in the show notes or on our website Permission to Speak pot dot com. I'm back to doing I G lives every Thursday. So join me tomorrow at Permission to Speak POT on Instagram, Q and A style, So feel free to ask me any questions you have, send me d M s, comment, tell me what's going on with your voice, and um, I'm so grateful for all of you. Thank you to Sophie Lichtterman and the team at I

Heart Radio and all of you. We're recording this POT podcast at various locations around Los Angeles on land that is the historic gathering place for the Tongva indigenous tribe, and you can visit U S d A C dot us to learn more about honoring Native land. Permission to Speak is a production of I Heart Radio and Double Vision executive produced by Katherine Burt Canton and Mark Canton.

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