Pushkin Solvable listeners, I want to introduce you to Ronald Young Junior. You might be familiar with his name from other work in podcasting, leading shows like Time Well Spent and Leaving the Theater. He's a sometimes guest contributor around NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. We are really excited to make it official that Ronald is going to be the newest host of Solvable. Thank you, thank you for having me. I'm so so excited to be here so publicly on
the team. Believe it or not, Hosting Solvable is not my main job. My main job is being CEO of Pushkin and Pushkin. Over the last year in Lockdown has like doubled in size. We have almost fifty people now and it's exciting. There's a lot going on, but it's sort of crowded out the time that I like to spend preparing and figuring out guests. And also, I'm not really a host. I don't know if you noticed that
I think trained. I'm an untrained to host. I have certain host qualities, mainly that I'm really interested in talking to the guests on the show, and I have a lot of drive to learn, But I don't have that quality of hostliness which I hear in your voice, and I really want to know how that's done. Well. First of all, I don't know if that's that's the message I want to be saying, Like we got host Steven
Kosterson coming on host Oar show. No, I don't mean though, you know, I've always found it easy to talk to people. I've always found it easy to connect with folks and ask questions that I'm curious about, and mostly because as a child I was always encouraged to ask questions, whether it was to friends, the families, to teachers, and I think that's what helps with being a good host and with conducting good interviews, which you do a great job of. Well thank you, Ronald, But yeah, no, I think that
just that basic quality of curiosity. You know, if you if you don't want to know, you can't read someone else's questions. I mean, the producers on the show do suggest a lot of great questions for us, but ultimately you ask the ones that are your questions, that are the things you want to know. Yes, it's funny because, like you know, working with the Solvable team, it certainly
is a team effort. But I think what makes a good host, And what makes a good interviewer is the ability to read the conversation and to know when it needs to take a turn, when it's about the pivot, or when your curiosity might push the interviewee a little deeper into their subject matter and even make them more comfortable and ready to answer more questions as they go. So and I really enjoy doing that. So this is
a very exciting role for me. You do do something, I mean, since we're on this topic, you know, I do think being a really good host goes beyond just the flow of the conversation asking the right questions. There's something about creating this environment, this kind of comfort, and even this sense of place. And here is what I
don't feel that I really know how to do. But I hear in your voice, you know, and a lot of the people who are just really good hosts of shows, Terry Gross, you know, you just feel like you're at her place. Yeah, like you're in her world, and you know, and the guest is coming into her world, and you feel as a listener, you're made to feel welcome and comfortable there. How do you do that, Ronald? You know, I wish I could say there was a trick. I wish I could tell you, hey, do this thing and
this will this will work. But for me, it's just it's hospitality. It's really being genuinely interested in what they have to say. It's paying attention to them, not necessarily thinking so far ahead that you can't be president in the conversation, creating that warm sense of environment. It really comes from like a genuine place inside people. And I think most people that talk to you will tell you
that this is who I am all the time. So it makes it easier for me to just bring this with me to a hostly role, whereas some people I think are very good at being a host, and then you know in the rest of their lives are not nearly as hospitable or friendly. And I can't say anything about Terry Gross, but I know that good host is being able to create that sense of hospitality in the
conversation that they're having in that moment. Yeah, I mean, I think of the great hosts of my childhood, Dick Cabot, who was on TV obviously long before your time, but back in the days before cable when there are only a few channels every night, Dick Cabot was having these interesting people on his show, and he's charming, he's charmed by the gas and a lot of what he's trying to do is, of course, just inject wisecracks. I've got a clip here that's a good example of that. It's
Cabot talking to the comedian Don Rickles. I know it's hard for you to be serious, but it is. I think people don't admit that deep down inside. If I may be serious for a moment, that you do something on the stage that all of us would like to do if we had no class. The other host I think about all the time as I grew up listening the radio growing up in Chicago, the Studs Turcle here, just as one example is Studs Turkle interviewing Muhammad Ali in nineteen seventy five. Why do you think it is?
And Ohish in this particular theater, so many different people are why were they rooting for you the outsider? Well, I think the mass is root for me because they're scuffling. They've been a persecuted and they figure them about the haigh taxes and whatever. They've underdogs. People are basically underdogs
as the whole. And the things that I say from black mind people and the freedom involved people and the way I speak out in the title that they have and the and I don't let this stop me from recognizing everyday man, I think this is what they're wanting, whether they'd be black or white. The mass of people are hard working people. The amazing thing about Studs Tircle,
I mean Studs Turcle. He was so good at talking to anybody, you know, on a day to day He would have you know, a janitor, and then he would have you know, an opera singer, and then he would have you know, a former vice president or politician, and he just part of what was great about him was he would talk to everybody the same way. Yeah, I think. I mean, there's a sense of empathy that comes with
no matter who's in the room. It should be able to be extended to anyone who's sitting opposite from you, whether they be the janitor or the president of the United States. The other thing is not being afraid to ask even a question that may not sound as smart as you think it does. I think Larry King once said, um, he was on a was on he was talking to Jesse Thorne, my friend Herbie Cohen, who wrote, you could
negotiate anything. We grew up together. He says to me, Larry, A secret of your success because you're dumb, and dumb is the great road to success because you're not afraid to say I don't know, tell me help me. That's a lot of my interviews. Help help me. That you're you're a brain surg You've got brain surgery tomorrow morning. Think about it tonight when you go in, do you
check your hands if they're steady? And so then all of a sudden you have this very poignant moment because Larry King asked a question that it's like, wow, I would have and even me, I was sitting there, I was like, Ronald, do you do I do that? I was like, I want to make sure that I do that. But having that empathy allows you to just be in the seat across from you, like I said, whether it's the janitor or the president of the United States. Yeah. So for this show, you know, we do interviews with
a particular kind of focus. How is problem solving and how are people who have ideas about solving problems making the world better incapable of making the world better? And that's the thing that that can be a big range of stuff. Yeah, if you look out there, Let's say you're your house is near the water, and you look out there and you're just like, the water seems to
be creeping closer and closer. And if you're only thinking about what's going to happen when the water reaches your house and all the horrible things that can happen as the water continues to rise and the flooding. When you start to think about all that, it kind of changes your posture versus if you think, how do we stop the water, how do we get the people out? How
do we keep my house dry? And I think in terms of this podcast, I like that it's it's pivoting from us talking so much about what the issue is, because in most cases we know what the issue is. What we really need to know is what's the best way forward. How can we like either neutralize whatever this problem is or at least adjust our lives so that
the problem isn't what it is. Do we need to build a bridge, maybe we need to build our houses higher, whatever that means in order to get out of the water. I think it gives a bit of optimism to the world that I think is one necessary right now. It is optimistic. I mean, it's looking at things that are in many cases terrible. But the show always makes me feel really good because the people we interview believe in
positive change in a very practical way. I mean not just in a I have faith way, but I've looked at this and I'm working on ameliorating this thing. Yes it is. Yes, That's what makes me feel good about listening. There's a lot of doomscrolling over the last year. We talked about doomscrolling, which is when you're just looking at your phone, just looking at all the headlines that have to do with COVID, all the horrible things that are happening with the election, all the horrible things that are
happening with the presidents or politics in general. We're just doomscrolling. It feels good for someone to come with you with a problem and a solution, or at least a proposed solution, or saying we're working towards a solution for this problem. It makes me look at the problem as temporary rather than as something that's going to grow and overtake us.
And that just makes me feel really good. When you step back and get the big picture of what's been happening globally over the last forty years been tremendous human progress and almost everything that counts. There are billions fewer people living in extreme poverty, that is, you know, living less than two dollars a day. Hunger has become fundamentally a problem in conflict zones or where you have political breakdown. You don't have areas of the world that are subject
to famine as kind of natural disaster. There are people dying of various communical bold diseases. You know, despite the pandemic this year, number is getting better. And I've tried to find interviewees who recognize the progress we've made and are focused on accelerating it or talking about how we can extend it to other areas. I mean, it's going to put us all in a different mindset to say that how can we make it even better. I think that's the spirit of the show and it's continuing in
the right direction of optimism. Ronald, our listeners are going to get to know you over the coming weeks and months, but I wanted to make it a little more personal and ask you about yourself. And you know, we've frame it to the extent you want around problem solving, but tell us a little bit about your career and you know what problems you've had to face. So shortly after Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, they had that incident where
George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. I remember I was on Facebook and I was getting into arguments all the time with folks about racism, about you know, the rights of people to take the shortcut through the alley without being shot, like to think about I was thinking through all tho scenarios, and I was getting into these arguments over and over again. And there were several different Facebook discussions in which I would post this long post. People would jump into comments.
I would argue with them in the comments. We'd go back and forth, and then people would say, Ronald, you're being rude, You're belittling people. This isn't right. Why do you talk like this? And I'm like, no, I'm not. I don't think you guys can hear my voice. Like you guys, you're just seeing my words and you're not You're not hearing my voice. So I thought, you know, maybe it would be easier to have these discussions if
people could hear me. So as a result of that, I started a web show called ten Minutes with Ronald where I talked about it. She's like this, I talked about it. She's like, raise, I'll tell you. And I did old Facebook Live with Facebook Live or start. It's not talking about issues of police brutality, politics, all that talk about even movies that I liked. We talked about all of that, and people really responded positively to that because instead of reading my words, they could hear me.
That led to me starting my podcast Time Well Spent, and it really it kind of pushed me down this path of really being able to push these types of transformative conversations that people are having in the comment section on the internet with no empathy, with no tone, like
one whole. And I think that's one thing. We're striving towards a world of communication where everything is written and everything is in text form, and people think that that's effective, and I'm like, there are scenarios in which that is effective. But body language and tone are important. They're very, very important, and when we take those out of a conversation, all you're left with is the words, and in your mind, your imagination places the tone and the body language in
the words. So even if Jacob you said me an email for Pushkin, that's like Ronald, have a nice day, and I'm like, well, don't talk to me like that. They'll tell me what you might have said it, like, hey, ro I don't have a nice day. But I couldn't
see that. So I think this isn't necessarily a problem that I've solved, But at least for myself, what I'm working on solving is being able to present myself in a way where people could hear me see that I'm smiling, see that I'm upset, see that I'm sad, all of that through my tone based on the media that I'm putting forth, whether that being podcast form, video form, or
whatever other form. But most of the work that I do is all has to do with being able to tell people's stories, talk to people on a personal level, talk to people one on one, or at least, you know, give them a piece of work from a podcast. The other thing what was interested to ask you is what you think the biggest or most interesting problems are right now?
You know, we will have a meeting every week and try to come up with ideas and guests for the show, and I'm interested in what you're interested in, because inevitably what the host cares about is going to drive a
lot of who we hear from unsolvable. I honestly, for me, the biggest problem that I'll always loop back to will always be around racism, and it's hard to get away from it because the more I read about history, the more I look at the history of the United States from the founding to now, and the more I think about all of the stories that have been told over the years, some that have been forgotten, some that have just recently been brought to light, it makes me realize
that we've really missed the mark on really bringing the country together in a way that is actually meaningful and intentional. And I don't know, I don't know how to solve it, because I think for a lot of people, they just think racism is solved by diversifying a room. Racism is solved by, you know, acknowledging some of the hurt and racism is solved by those things. But to me, I
think it's a multifaceted solution. I think this is another one of those thematic problems that has like many problems underneath that each need to be solved before we can really get to a place of harmony in the country and in the world. And it doesn't necessarily keep me up at night anymore. I mean, depending on what night, maybe it does, but it doesn't necessarily keep me up all the time. But it's something that I constantly think about, where I say, I know we're not there yet. I
think we're heading in the right direction. A lot of people are acknowledging it. But I don't necessarily want to pivot this show to be in like solve racism right now, because I don't think it's that simple. But it is something that I think, like, what are the aspects of which we could be doing a better job and pushing even more forward beyond kind of the obvious initiatives or the splashy initiatives that we do. So yeah, that's kind of what I think about a lot. And I would
love to hear from the listeners. I would love to know what problems keep y'all up at night. What are you guys thinking about? What would you like to see solved? Go to Twitter at pushkin pods hashtag solvable and tell us the type of problems that you'd love to hear us talk about solving I'm really glad you said that, Ronald, because we've always thought of this is a really participatory show. You know, we usually and by asking our guest what listeners can do if they want to get involved in
solving the problem we're talking about. And you have your list of problems you're interested in. I have my list of problems I've been interested in. We get a ton of great ideas from our producers, but we really want to know what listeners think we should be doing, both specific guests and specific problems. And I'm really glad you're here. I'm excited now to be someone who's listening to the show with what you're going to do with it. I
appreciate you guys bringing me on. I'm really excited to be a part of the team, and I'm excited to see where we go, Like I mean, this is gonna be We're we're gonna have a good year, all right, there's that optimism. Thank you, Ronald, Thank you, Jacob. I appreciate you. Solvable Senior producer is Jostin Fry. Booking by Lisa Dodd, Research by David Jah. Our Managing producer is
Sasha Matthias and Meil LaBelle is the executive producer. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review. It really helps us get the word out. You can find Pushkin podcasts wherever you listen, including on the iHeartRadio app and Apple podcast. I'm Jacob Weisberg and I'm Ronald Young Jr. Talk to you more next week.