Heavyweight: Live from New York

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

0:31With me, Dr. Laurie Santos, wherever you get your podcasts.

0:40Pushkin.

0:48In October, the heavyweight gang gathered in New York City for a live event at Caveat on the Lower East Side. If I may be so bold as to speak on behalf of the crowd, the waitstaff, and Pushkin Industries as a whole, a lovely time was had by all. There was a wall to write down your regrets and a meet-and-greet where you could take a picture with yours truly. Three, two, one. Thank you. I feel like you're smiling in all these pictures. So what you're doing is not quite a smile. Feels like you're my soul animal, so good luck to your soul. Anyway, the first episode came out when I was 12. I'm going 22 next week.

1:25Now I feel like I practically raised you. If you weren't able to attend, fear not, we've recorded the event so that you can still experience it at home, half undressed and drinking less expensive beverages through the miracle of audio. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for coming to this live event celebrating the launch of the new season of Heavyweights. We're so glad you're here. My name is Greta Cohen. I'm the CEO of Pishkin Industries. We are the audio network that is the home to Heavyweight, and we are so thrilled that they are part of our network. The new season is wonderful. I'm sure you've all been listening to it, and today you're in for a real treat.

2:05Later on, the producers of the show, Stevie Lane and Kalila Holt, will be coming on stage, and they're going to answer, along with Jonathan, some of your questions that you've submitted. But first, Jonathan will be joining us to do a live reading. He has asked me to read an introduction to this reading. Okay. Jonathan asked me to read this introduction to his reading of the Old Testament of Cain and Abel. For those of you heathens who have never cracked open a Bible or unscrolled a Torah, Cain and Abel were the sons of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve lived in a beautiful garden called Eden where they frolicked in the nude all day.

2:44But relax. Back then, nudity was less a Rio de Janeiro HBO After Dark thing and more a Nordic health spa thing filled with good, clean living and fruit platters. Also, everyone in Eden got to live forever and not have to go through painful childbirth or work for a living. It was a pretty groovy trip until the whole tree of knowledge thing went down and Adam and Eve were expelled. Jonathan has here chosen to retell the story of Adam and Eve's kids, Cain and Abel, who were born after the expulsion as an illustration of the very first heavyweight, a heavyweight in which two beefing brothers are reconciled by the Lord.

3:21On heavyweight, the role of the Lord is played by Jonathan Goldstein. Ladies and gentlemen, Jonathan Goldstein.

3:53Back in those first days, things changed very quickly. A new person being born meant there was a giant spike in the population. For Cain, his younger brother, Abel's birth, made the planet feel lopsided. He watched Eve bounce Abel in her lap and felt the Earth's gravity tilt in their direction. It pulled at the insides of his stomach and made him seasick. Years later, Adam and Eve would have many more children, but just then, there was only Cain and Abel. Because there was nobody else, the brothers grew close. They played each other's stomachs like snare drums, cracked each other's knuckles as though they were cracking their own.

4:35They were different, though. Abel was a thinker. He thought about things. If he bit off his own pinky toe, would it grow back? Cain, on the other hand, was a doer. He'd reel back his fist and break a donkey's nose for the sheer thrill of it all. One day, when Adam and Eve thought the children were old enough, they sat them down and told them about the screw-up. What does it mean to die? asked Cain. We're not exactly sure, said Eve, but basically, one day, and this is not any day soon, we will no longer be. There was silence. Then Abel spoke up. If we won't be, he said, then we won't even know that we're not being.

5:18There will be no we to see that we can no longer be. Yes, I guess that's true, said their mother. Well put. Abel smiled and went back to mashing a mutton liver into pate. Cain, on the other hand, felt like a sharp plum pit had been forcefully lodged down his throat. All his life he had felt like himself, that his face and fingers, that his thoughts were his own. Now he felt like they were someone else's, someone who could yank them away at any chosen moment. Until then, it had never crossed his mind that such a thing could even be possible. The brothers continued to live their lives, but all the while Cain felt a new sadness.

5:59It ate with him, worked with him, and in the morning it raised from his bed with him, dying. It just didn't make any sense. He knew this deep in his heart. He thought nothing was more important than making God change his mind. He began to take his sacrifices more seriously. They became elaborate and garish. They involved richly choreographed interpretive dances, colorful oblong facial masks, and the very best of his legumes. But God never answered. Cain started to change. When he got a splinter, he cursed the heavens all out of proportion. Back in the Garden of Eden, there were no splinters. He even started to resent his parents.

6:42He spoke of them as though they had gambled away his inheritance. If it hadn't been for dumb-dumb number one tempting dumb-dumb number two, we'd be living in luxury. Cain tried to get Abel all worked up about the whole thing, too, but Abel had an easy-come-easy-go-we-all-have-to-die-someday attitude that drove his brother nuts. Cain invented a game. He called it Get the Hell Out of Eden. He always insisted on playing God. Get your naked asses out of here, yelled God. What? But we just got here, yelled Adam and Eve. Maybe there's some kind of mistake. The Lord does not make mistakes. God would then kick his brother, who would fall to the ground.

7:26Please, please have mercy on me, his brother would cry. Let's play something else. But God would only laugh. Abel also made sacrifices to God. Every week he would choose the fattest sheep as an offering. Everything Abel did in life was for a reason. He ate so that he would not be hungry. He made clothes so that he would not be cold. But making sacrifices to God, he did it for reasons he could never know. He did it simply because he was told to. There was something about that that made him feel clean and deep. Adam and Eve made their sacrifices out of fear of being further punished. And Cain was pleading for answers and changes.

8:06but Abel fulfilled his obligation and walked away expecting nothing from God. He was glad with the way things were and God could not have helped liking that. Meanwhile, Cain decided to test out a new approach with the Lord. He believed that God would have greater respect for him if he did not kowtow. He's going to kill us, he thought. He wanted God to understand that he couldn't walk all over people and then still have them come crawling back with their arms loaded with gifts. No, they had to get tough. So Cain's sacrifices grew lackadaisical. He didn't even bother to check if his gifts were being received.

8:42That would look like he was caving. Then one day, while Cain was lying in a field, Abel came running over. God spoke to me, cried Abel. Cain sat up and looked at his brother. What did he say? He said he was a great fan of my lamb chops. He told me to keep up the good work. Was my name mentioned? Ask Cain. It didn't come up. What was it like to hear his voice, asked Cain. Look at me, said Abel. I'm still shaking. There was a certain pang that Cain started to feel. It was in his stomach. He felt the pang grow sharpest when he looked upon his brother. He could hardly speak with him without having to hunch over in pain.

9:24Since the world was still new and no one had yet felt this way, Cain did not know that it was jealousy he was feeling. Instead, he decided that his stomach no longer wanted to be his stomach. It wanted to escape his ribcage. It wanted to be Abel's stomach. This was because he wanted to be Abel. There was no shame in this. Being Abel meant being happy. Being Cain meant being wretched. He had a plan. He approached Abel with it. He decided to just spring it on him. I am no longer Cain, he said. I am now Abel. We are both Abel. All right, said Abel. The two Abels performed routines for the amusement of their brothers and sisters.

10:08How's that apple, Abel? It's fine, Abel. But then one day Cain asked, if I am able, am I just as much able as you yourself are able? I suppose that's true, said Abel. Then before God are we both not able, asked Cain. Well, in the case of being before God, God, I think at that time I would be Abel and you would go back to being Cain. Cain's eyes lingered on his brother. He looked at this other Abel as standing in the way of who he was. He was Abel. He knew this in his heart. He simply wanted it more. Abel was among his flock when Cain neared him. Slowly, Cain pulled out his rock, and slowly he lifted it into the air.

10:53This way, God will have to show himself. This way, God will have to stop playing possum and get directly involved. These were Cain's thoughts. Still, though, there was no sign of God. He looked at the back of Abel's head. Then he looked into the sky. Just in case God was reading his mind, he thought to himself, I'm really, really going to do it. He brought his rock down onto his brother's head. He could hear no sound at all. Abel just toppled over. He toppled over the way he did everything, with an easygoing acceptance. He sank to the earth as though thinking, I must fall, so I will fall. I am falling.

11:31I have fallen. Here it was. Death. Cain couldn't believe it. He'd been sure that at the last moment God would step in. He'd have thought only God could take a person's life, but it was as simple as killing a sheep. Abel, his eyes wide and unblinking, stared directly into the mystery of life and death, and he was not saying a word about any of it. The sheep continued to graze and the sun continued to shine There were no bolts of lightning, no booming voice from behind the clouds Life went on That night God appeared before Cain in a dream Where is your brother? asked God It's always about my brother, said Cain You ever ask where I am?

12:14No, that you don't think of What have you done? asked God Am I my brother's keeper? asked Cain God did not answer He just gave him a look. It made Cain feel naked and small. He then felt the finger of God upon his forehead. It sank through his head and into his brain where it spoke. The earth shall scorn you, said the voice from the finger. I shall scorn you. You will wander the earth and death will not come. There will be no escape. All will look upon you and none will dare kill you, for they will know you by your mark. God withdrew his finger, leaving behind a fingerprint on Cain's forehead.

12:54It was shaped like a teardrop. At first he tried to convince himself that the mark was to protect him, that he had a secret pact with God, that they understood each other. For a while he would wake up in the morning and pretend to be immortal and famous, but he was not very good at pretending. As the centuries passed, Cain abandoned farming and roamed the earth. He walked with a sense of purpose, just in case anyone was watching. but in his heart he knew he had nowhere to go. He became so lonely and full of regret that instead of fearing death he became yearnful of it. He would chase after bears and they would scamper away.

13:31They haven't the guts he'd say. Run you little cowards. He'd call after the tigers. Look at me he'd cry into the face of an alligator as he tried in vain to pry open its jaws. More centuries passed and Cain's desire for death became nearly constant. He would think about Abel up in heaven, palling around with God, flying through the clouds on God's shoulders while he was left to putz around for hundreds of years, begging his own children to drive sharpened branches through his heart. In life, Cain had been jealous of his brother, but it was in death that he became more jealous than he ever thought possible.

14:09Over time, Cain could no longer remember very much at all. 20 years after the death of his brother, it seemed like it was only yesterday, but after 200 years it felt like something that might have happened in a dream. There were details he remembered that now seemed improbable like the way he saw his brother's soul leave his body and the way he'd waved goodbye to him and winked. After 300 and 400 years it all felt so long ago that who he was back then felt like someone else. When people he met asked him questions about the old days he just made stuff up. We had wings he said. after 500 years his story was repeated so often that he only remembered the repeating not the events themselves it sounded like a fable something that might have just as easily happened to a fox and a rabbit as to himself and his brother he began to doubt everything he even began to wonder whether he had actually ever heard god's voice whether the mark on his forehead was the mark of god and not just another liver spot was this a part of the punishment he wondered, to be left so uncertain of whether God really was or whether God was only something inside his own head.

15:21After 700 years when he told the story to himself or heard it told by others, he felt nothing. He was too old to feel guilt or remorse or anything. He didn't even miss his brother anymore. He wanted nothing from God. He wanted nothing from the world. The world was what it was. He didn't need it to change. And in this way, he finally got his wish to be just like Abel. And then God let him die. Thank you.

15:54After the break, a Q &A with Stevie, Kalila, and me. But first, our producer Phoebe headed to the wall of regrets to see what regrets were trending. Can I ask you about your regret? I just really regret not going to see the catacombs when I was in Paris. I really like skulls. I wish I'd caught them. I regret that I didn't stay enough in contact with certain friends of mine who are, like, religious and are now getting married, so I'm not getting invited to the weddings. And God, do I want to be at the weddings, just because I really like weddings. Do you guys mind just reading these aloud for me, like some of the ones that you're looking at?

16:32Yeah. Not finding a therapist. Saying no to a reason. Not being more patient with my mother's cognitive decline. Lacking patience with my brother's behaviour than he died. How I said goodbye to my best friend before he died. I wish I joined a band.

17:06When it comes to love these days, we like to think that we've got it all figured out. We have this false sense of, I have control over this. I can filter for someone who's over six feet tall. I can filter for this religion. But it's not a filter to turn on to say, how kind am I? How loyal am I? This Valentine's season, The Happiness Lab is digging into what really shapes our closest connections with smart, practical insights from experts on love, intimacy, and belonging. Listen to The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, wherever you get your podcasts.

17:40so now we are going to move into the q a portion of our event today and i'd like to welcome to the stage kalila holt and stevie lane the producers of the show

17:59Hi. Hello. Hi, everybody. Hello. Hi. Bye, all. So we asked you questions that you wanted to hear the heavyweight team answer about the show, and we got so many. I think we are also going to have a little bit of time today to do some audience Q &A. Kicking things off with our Q &A here, what does Jonathan and Jackie's off-show relationship really look like? Should I take this one? It's about you, so... Yeah, but you might have a more objective window. I don't know. I think it's a pretty accurate glimpse into our dynamic. We've been friends since childhood. She likes to laugh at me and hang up, and I don't know.

18:49I mean, the first time I met Jackie, I remember we really bonded because she was like, isn't he annoying? And I was like, yeah. I feel like that made her like me. The first time I met Jackie, I was like, I want to be you when I grow up. She's very powerful. She's a very powerful person. Yeah, and she's a really nice person, too. I mean, I just bring out the worst in her. It's not her fault, I don't think. She's like, yeah, she's a doctor. She helps people. She does good works. And I just bother her, you know? So I hope it's bringing some levity to her life, but truly I don't know. But she was, for the people who don't know the backstory.

19:32There is a backstory? Well, just that you went to school together and she was like a popular girl. She was very popular, yeah. If you really want to go deep on the backstory, I did a story about our relationship on This American Life called The Allure of the Mean Friend. And I just talked to people about what Jackie Cohen meant in grade school and in junior high. And she meant a lot. Yeah. What was the hardest episode to record and why? Slash which call has made you the most nervous to dial? I was the most nervous calling sorority girls for Rose. They were very... I remember there was like a Facebook thread where they were like, a sketchy sounding woman left us a message.

20:20And I was like, I thought I sounded really nice and normal. I think for me it was very early when I had just joined the show. And you guys were working on a story at the time. And you were trying to find this two or three fingered man who had hung up on you many times. And I was just like new and bright eyed. And I was like, what can I do to help? and Jonathan was like, you could try calling this guy. And I called him and he told me he would find out where I lived and killed me. Yeah, it was like a rite of passage. Everybody who was new on the show had to call. His name is Carl. But yeah, that would have been a good story too.

21:02The one where he finds me and murders me? He threatened to kill me. That's Carl. Then you've got a true crime series, you know? Yeah, it's true. My hardest call was there was an episode where I was trying to find out about my psychiatrist that I had when I was a teenager and find out if she was a really good psychiatrist. You just don't know with a psychiatrist because it's so sealed off. You don't get, or do you get Yelp ratings? Maybe now you do. Back then you didn't. And I remembered someone that used to be in the waiting room when I would leave. He was a professor I once had when I was in college, and I thought, maybe I can ask him.

21:42And so I had to call him and say, hey, I used to see you in the waiting room of my psychiatrist 30-odd years ago. That was very weird. That was even for me. That felt very weird. He had retired. He was living in Jamaica. That was a weird one. Who is a dream celebrity whose problem you'd want to solve? Stevie. Oh. So. Sarah Jessica Parker is a fan of the show and all that I want is to reunite her with Kim Cattrall and I email her agent every year when we're looking for stories and I'm like just checking in wondering if Sarah has anybody she maybe needs to reconcile with has she given it any thought so far she's been too busy but now that in just like that is over I feel like she might have more time perfect time yeah anybody else I don't know celebrities don't have problems do they Augie has one oh Augie you yeah who did you just say oh yeah Kendrick Lamar and Drake Augie is my son and he's a very big rap fan he wants to see me reconcile the whole.

23:04That would be huge numbers for us. I'm like, that's a great idea. Perfect for audio. So good idea, actually, Augie. We should pursue that. I know. Why can't you fellas just... Because that whole Super Bowl thing was really out of hand. I mean, that was rough. Do we maybe have an opening for a new assistant producer? Is Augie looking? Yeah, he's going to be nine, I should also say. Part time. You can balance it with school. um okay sometimes it seems like there's no progress or revelation to someone's journey until weeks or months later how does the team maintain the morale to not be discouraged and years I mean I think I am discouraged most of the time I think I don't maintain the morale would be my answer yeah I sort of feel like I think I have the attitude that just like I just believe it actually will always work out because I think we've there have been a lot of stories that we thought were dead, and then years later, something changes, we get back in touch, whatever, and then they end up happening.

24:09So I think it's blind optimism. I was going to say, I think Stevie brings optimism for all of us. Yeah, and you have your work cut out. Yeah. For me, it's desperation. That's what passes for hope, I think, is the desperation. If you could expand any episode into a season-long series, which one would you revisit? and what avenues would you take to further explore within that story? Well, do you remember when we did that two-day descent into madness where we laid out that whole whiteboard? Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, again, desperation. I mean, it came about the shorthand that we were using. We were going to S-Town it.

24:52Yeah, we were like, this is going to be our S-Town. This is going to be our S-Town. Also, S-Town just became a verb. It was like, we're going to S-Town this season. Yeah, it just felt like none of our stories were working out, but we thought that, like, you're too young to get the reference to the love boat, but, like, where you're visiting different characters. Thank you. You know, like, we couldn't solve the story, but, like, maybe from week to week we could drift from character to character and, like, keep working on them and, like, tangle them all up together. And then nobody would notice that none of them had an ending.

25:24But truly we spent, like, I think two whole days laying out, like, what the structure would look like. And then at the end of the two days, we were like, this is insane. And we just erased the whiteboard. I think it might've been more than two days. It felt like a big, a sizable chunk of time. Yeah. I don't know. There's like my friends, I don't know where they are. The Ehrlichs are here, Gregor, and his, yeah, you're right to gasp. And his brother, Dimitri. And I mean, I feel like we could do a season of just like called the Ehrlichs where there would be so many good stories, you know?

26:02Yeah. At a time when people are increasingly concerned about privacy, how do you get people to speak to you and spill their hearts out on tape? Well, I have noticed a lot more people do the I thought it was a scam, so I didn't answer you. And I don't know if people actually think we're running some elaborate, confusing scam or if that's kind of just like a shorthand for like I didn't want to respond to this. Yeah, because what kind of scam would it be, really? Not a very good one. Like a real long con. Yeah, yeah. And also people don't answer the phone anymore. People will answer it on no number.