Jean Smart bids farewell to ‘Hacks’

to get more intense this fall. So this summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet

“is calibrated. I'm Layla Faudzile, on up first we unpack the three biggest stories every morning”

so you can stay informed and get on with your day in less than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe to

up first today wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. The HBO series

hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys. That's a record-breaking number for a comedy series in a single year. It finished its fifth and final season this past spring. Our guest is the show's star, Gene Smart. She spoke with guest interviewer, Arthur Shahani. Arthur is a veteran NPR journalist, host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of the memoir, Here We Are. Here's Arthur. Gene Smart is on the cusp of making TV history. The star of the hit show hacks has been nominated

again for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series. She wanted that category for every previous

“season of hacks. The show is about two female comedians. One at the start of her career, the other,”

played by Gene Smart, at the purported end of hers. While they can't stand each other at first,

they are also a ravenously ambitious. That is what fuels a zany journey that becomes about the creative process, chosen family, and finding love for a person whose worldview is antithetical to yours. Today, hacks star Gene Smart returns to Fresh Air to talk about her iconic role as the character Deborah Vance, and also her life's work. Smart has previously won Emmys for her performances on the show's Frazier and Samantha Who, her first claim to fame was starring in the 1980s sitcom

designing women. She's performed in dramas like Fargo, Watchman, and Maravise Town, and also on Broadway. She is a real unicorn in Hollywood, a mainstream female actor who has spent decades on the screen in many stories focused on women's relationships with each other, not with a man at the center. Gene Smart, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you. Happy to be here. I want to start with one of my favorite episodes in all of TV history, and I've watched the

show. Wow. Yes. Seriously. In Chuckles the Crown. You, you did it. In Season 5 of Hacks, your character, Deborah Vance, is preparing to do her big comeback show at Madison Square Garden. She gets it in her head that she just needs to wear her this iconic, beaded white jumpsuit that was worn by her

comedy hero, Carol Burnett. The problem is that the current owner is another female comedian,

who is a lesbian, and she and Deborah have bad blood. In part, because Deborah has said some very homophobic things in the past to her. Now Deborah is trying to butter up the jumpsuit owner to get her to sell it. The owner lives in a dream home in Montesino with her super hot younger girlfriend. They've invited Deborah to come spend the weekend. Deborah shows up with her business partner and young protege, Eva Daniels, and once they arrive, Deborah tells Eva, oh, you're going

to pretend to be my lesbian lover over the weekend so we can endure ourselves to the host and get the jumpsuit. Eva, who is queer herself, is furious. Let's hear the clip. Deborah, this is insane. I am not pretending to be a lesbian couple with you. I need that jumpsuit. Please, I mean, it's a lot to me. I guess it wouldn't be too bad to spend some time with the wife. You're my girlfriend. Do not flirt with her and blow up my spot. You and I are in a committed loving relationship.

You're sleeping in the tub. I am not sleeping in the tub, okay? You know, if you want me to do this, you've got to give me a thousand dollars. Your reaction, Jeanne Smart, the first time you read that scene. Oh my god. It was funny because it was so clever because it was the first time in the entire series that we've seen Deborah completely at Eva's mercy and at a loss for words. She couldn't say anything to defend herself. So, Eva just took full advantage and said, and did all these dreadful things.

Yes, it was such a great role of rehearsal. Oh my god. It was so much fun that episode for all of

“the rehearsal going on. I remember watching Deborah in season two, back when she was supposed”

to be entertainment on a lesbian cruise and she just offended everyone there. Put off the ship. And then by season five, your character is kissing Eva on the lips.

In addition to the fashionista mandate, what's important about this evolving relationship between

“Deborah and lesbians? Well, I was very pleased that, I mean, from what I read and what I heard,”

that a lot of our lesbian fans really enjoyed that episode didn't feel like they were being catered to or pandered to or treated with this respect. And that they felt that it was truthful, but still sort of satisfied with whatever fantasies they might have had about Deborah and Eva. I just, I thought it was just written so cleverly and done so well and Paul directed

it brilliantly. And it was really fun. Yeah, but me, it's like this very interesting wish fulfillment.

Without, without truly being with it. Well, it's such an interesting relationship. And I don't think, I can't think of any other movie or TV show that has had a relationship like this one. It just is so nuanced and so deep and so, but also has been fraught with a lot of pain. I mean, that relationship was, it was mother-daughter. It was best friend. It was enemies for a while. It was respectful co-workers. I mean, it was, you know, in Deborah had

“such an unhealthy relationship with her daughter. I think that filled a huge hole in her life”

in a massive amount of guilt that she had about her daughter. It's interesting because I was very, well, I mean, I was very close to both my parents. My dad was kind of like my favorite

person in the world. And I think I always kind of got along with men easier than women. And I could

see that in Deborah is that she's had this gap in her life of feminine energy that Eva kind of disrupted and just thought, what is this, you know, who is this person striving me crazy? I think you just named what was landing so deeply for me. It was at so many modern women actually have this, you know, we survived by, you know, forging alliances with men. And I you see her thriving with this growing feminine energy. You and your co-star Hannah Eynbinder, who plays Eva Daniels,

have an interesting parallel and real life. You both at the very beginning of your careers got cast and hit shows about female friendships that went on for many seasons. Do you find yourself trying to mold Hannah in your image? Oh my god, no, she and she wouldn't be remotely interested. Yeah, no, she, she's going to be so annoyed. It's like, I tell her every time I tell this next story,

“I always say, I'm never going to tell the story again, I promise, but can I tell it one more time?”

And then I, you know, it's when she was still in awe of me, which was years ago. Shortly afterwards, she was shooting the show and I think she, you know, really listened to my advice and everything, but she came up to me and she said, I just have to thank you because I heard you really, really went to bat for me, you know, when I auditioned and I said, I told the producers, you know, I thought you were, you had to be the one. And in fact, I said that if they didn't hire you,

I was like, I'm going to do the show and she looked at me and she said, really? I said, no, what are you nuts? How do you crazy? And as it was coming out of my mouth, I thought, oh, Gina, can't believe you're going to say this, you don't even know this girl. I said, please laugh, please laugh. And of course she did. Thank God. I just couldn't resist. You know, of all the shows that you have starred in, I've heard you talk about Fargo with the most,

you know, reverence or nostalgia. And in that series, you play Floyd Gerhard, matriarch of the Gerhard crime family. Yes. After her husband has a sudden stroke, the question becomes, who is going to run the family business? Let's play a scene from Fargo season two, when you as Floyd Gerhard are sitting at the dining room table with your son,

how things go in the next few weeks? What the side? That's why, let me finish. Your grandfather,

left the ashes of the Wymer Republic and came to this country to build a name for himself. He built an empire from a shushine box. And then, and only then, did he send for your father? My, no, the story. No, you don't. Because if you did, you know that you are just a small part of it.

“That's what an empire is. It's better than any son or daughter.”

Eat. I'm not hungry. I'm your mother. You'll eat with me. Your time will come. Well, but this isn't it. And if you stand by me now, I promise you, as soon as this crisis is over, I'll hand you your legacy and I'll turn my thoughts to the grave. Your reactions to that clip? Oh, I forgot about that scene. Yeah, that was a, that was a great scene. I know a holly. So, so brilliant writer. It was, but it was one of those

parts where I had the same reaction when I read the, I had a certain speech that he sent me to audition with. I had the same reaction to it that I had when I first read the pilot's group for Deborah Vance. For her. Was that I just, I could hear this one when I had, I knew exactly who

she was, what made her tick. And the fact that she was named Floyd, and I never asked no

a why he named her Floyd, because I just, I came up with my own theories and I didn't want him to just sort of disobuse me with that. But I did ask him when we were done, because I had come up with this whole backstory of how she, her father had always wanted a boy, and he was going to name him Floyd, come out of high water, but he had a girl named her Floyd anyway, and taught her how to, you know, be a rancher, and how to ride, and how to shoot, how to hunt, how to be tough, how to, you know,

everything that he would have taught his son, and that he named Floyd. And so I asked no,

finally when the, our season was done, I said, why did you name her Floyd? And he said,

"Oh, my wife has an ant named Floyd, it's not as kind of cool." Oh, okay. Well, we're thinking it helped you. Go look at it. Yeah, but I'm not sure. I'm sorry. Not a lot. I mean, I somewhat, I mean, when I was doing 24, the brilliant Gregory, it's an, and I who had actually done a play together years before, and so it was the great fun to get back together with him. He and I, he was playing the president, and I was playing the first lady, and he and I came up with a

little bit of a backstory about did we ever have kids, and if we did, what happened, and where are they ended up? And so we, we told one of the producers one day, and he just kind of looked at us, like, "Oh, yeah, okay, just, that's nice to hear the little actory thing, that's nice, okay."

“Well, it, in plain Floyd, the matriarch mafia boss, how did you grow creatively in that role?”

Is that your great role? I loved playing her. I would have loved to play her a little longer, and it was so nice to be just rid of any kind of physical vanity. I, if the clothing, the hair, no makeup, everything, and just be able to just do the work, and I'd think about all the other superfluous stuff. Although I do remember, because I said to the, I said to the hair gal, I said, I said, "I don't want to wear a wig, I want to be a little like grab my hair, touch it, or whatever,

I want to do. I don't want to wear a wig." And I said, "Just cut my hair really short and put it around." That hairdo is your idea? Yeah, I said put a brown, mousey rinse in it, and, and

“permit, or whatever. And, and she did. I just remember, I learned wearing a star almost started to cry,”

but I went, so there she is. There she is. Yep. There she is. Wow, transcendent vanity. That's great. Yeah. Well, it's nice because you think, "God, the men get to feel this way almost all the time,

make a part of my powder them for a second, you know, and they get to just think about the work.

“Not like, "Oh God, how come you're lighting me like that?" Or, "Oh God, I have to hold my stomach in her."”

"Oh God, this or that?" You know, and it's, I've had a few roles like that, and it's so freeing. But that was, and, and it was, I was surrounded by such remarkable actors. I mean, I've, I mean, I've had that experience on somebody's show, so it's been so lucky. But there was something about that show. I mean, every single human being on that set, in front of the camera behind it, was on their A game, and it was the most extraordinary experience

doing no as script.

Let's rewind back to the very beginning, by which I mean 1692.

You descend? Oh my god. Oh my god. We were going to go there. You descend from a woman prosecuted in the Salem witch trials.

“Yeah, my eight times great grandmother. I can't believe you brought that up.”

As I was looking at my closet, I went, "What should I wear?" I mean, and I didn't know if the studio was going to be cold or not. So I almost grabbed my 1692 hoodie. Oh my god. I had my hand on it. That's so weird. And it says 1692, they missed one. Because she was not hung. She was not. She was not. She was not. She missed. She missed being hanged by one day.

She confessed, in quotes, and they think that she was actually very clever, and she noticed that people who confessed, it bought them some time. Because they wanted you to examine your soul, and I was kind of so because of course nothing back then, nothing they loved more than a repentant center. And people who didn't confess were hanged immediately.

“But she was, what I found out about her was she was an eccentric gal, grandma, and I think was probably”

very, very easy to accuse her of being a witch. She had kind of gotten in trouble a couple of times, and she was now an older woman. And she had owned a book on fortune telling, which back then was considered very suspect. She had also gotten in trouble because she and a couple of her daughters sort of had a little cat burglary ring in Beverly, Massachusetts, which is outside of Salem. And her daughters would make friends with the maids of all the rich people in town, and steal stuff for us. And also too,

I found out, this was not on part of the show, which I did, which was called, who do you think you are, the genealogy show. But I found out through Wikipedia and some other source that she had a lock of hair that was, quote, of another color. I'm assuming white, what other color could it be? And it was what they call an elf lock, which from what I've read, is like a dreadlock where your hair has become matted and twisted, and it was four feet seven inches long when they arrested her.

And she can't have been taller than that one at the time. And when they arrested her, they might have cut it and she flipped out and said if they cut it off, she'd die. So she was, she was an interesting person. And that's certainly related to you. Yeah, certainly been to help her cause when she did that. But when I found that out of these tears, just sprang to my eyes, I just thought, I couldn't believe my eyes. I was reading, they actually let me hold original

transcripts from the 1600. And I was reading her arrangement. And I saw those, but when I first saw

the words witchcraft, I just couldn't believe it. And when I brought my grandmother into the room, these young women started screaming and pretending to faint and it was, and you could tell it first she was frightened. But then she started to get angry and they had to tell her to calm down. But it was weird because I thought, am I having some kind of weird past life or aggression because the names were familiar to me? And I'm thinking, okay, this is really crazy. It was like right

out of a scene from the crucible that famous play by Arthur Miller about the trials. And then I realized that of course Arthur Miller, when he was writing that play, he had access to all the same history that I had was being given by these historians and genealogists. And it was just bizarre. It was just because it was just crazy. We're listening to guest interviewer Arthur Shahani's

for the first four seasons of the hit series Hacks. She's nominated again for Hacks fifth and final

season. Will there more of their conversation after a break? I'm Terry Gross and this is fresh air. Zendaya and Tom Holland are back in Spider-Man brand new day and the movie has a more grounded

“tone than we've seen from the franchise. But does it strike the right balance of fun and darkness?”

We'll talk about it on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. The fatal shooting of a teenager at a protest in Seattle has gone unsolved for six years. This is open in your face to how are there no answers. Our investigation has uncovered

new evidence and witnesses who say they've never talked to police. Did police ever call you?

Not once. Listen to we keep us safe. A new true crime series on the embedded podcast from NPR. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the conversation guest interviewer Arthur Shahani recorded with after Gene Smart. Smart stars in the HBO series Hacks about two female comedians played by Smart and comedian Hannah Inbinder, who form a close bond despite being at completely different stages in their lives and careers. Hacks concluded its fifth and final season

in this past spring and is now nominated for 24 Emmys breaking the record for most nominations received by a comedy series in a single year. In its first four seasons, Smart won Emmys for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series and she's nominated again this year. Gene Smart's first claim to fame was starring in the 1980 sitcom Designing Women. Since then, she's appeared in a number of shows including Fargo, Watchman and Mayor of East Town and she's performed on Broadway.

You met the love of your life, Richard Gilliland, on the set of Designing Women.

“I want to ask about him first. How did you know that Richard was the one?”

It was just an instant thing. It really was. It was just instant.

The day we met, we were never apart after that and he just, I mean, I don't know. I mean, nobody

made me laugh the way he did. He was so warm and so easy to talk to and so funny. I remember I walked into this building over Warner Bros. where we were getting rid of a table of episode five and the show had never aired yet. We weren't on the area and we were shooting at the fifth episode and I looked up the stairwell and I saw this guy talking to somebody and I recognized him. I'd seen him on television. I didn't know it was name but I thought, I don't know,

I've seen that guy before but I just hit these great little smile lines. He just, he just looked so and I thought, "Oh, I wonder if he's here to be on our show because there were other productions in the building." And yeah, there he was. And so I walked in the room and I knew the sitting across from man and yeah, it was just instant and I started inviting him into my trailer to play the crossword puzzles and then he invited me to see a play that he was in,

which was pretty bad but he was absolutely hysterical at it and I went about 12 times and all. You guys were married for 35 years, which seems like a very rare thing in Hollywood.

“That's my life. How'd you manage to stay married together for that long?”

Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know if the statistics are compared to other professions, I don't think they're probably drastically different but I do think that at least for actors you're constantly meeting attractive, interesting people and different people all the time, all the time you're supposed to different people and sometimes you're out of town working with these attractive, interesting people who are all kind of at their most attractive and interesting

because they're working and so that can be of course very hard on marriage. But like I said, we had similar values, we'd both been married before and again, I mean, it's just I don't know. It's the nobody made me laugh again. His career as I understand it took a bit of a back seat so that the family could focus on your career

It kind of evolved that way and it was difficult. It was hard on him. We're trying to understand and you know, both of us grew up in the 50s where it was traditional family values and traditional role models. So that was difficult and we actually separated for a year and that was excruciating but it was also probably ended up being a good thing because

“I really, I think I really understood what wedding vows meant. I was very humbled by the fact”

that Richard did not ever give up on us and I had and I felt bad about that that I put him through that.

But he always believed that somehow I'd get back together and and we did. I think that next

Christmas after we got back together, we were having a Christmas party and a friend of ours was there who had recently been ordained so he could marry some other friends of ours and I said, hey, Greg's here. Let's, let's, let's renew our vows. They said, oh great! And so we didn't hold anybody, it was just sort of a spur of the moment thing. And so my son who was about eight nine then, he, he and his buddy, I said, set up some chairs, you know. And so he's doing his

“friends with setting up rows of chairs and people thought, oh god, Jane and Richard are going”

to put on a little show or something, you know, I don't know what they thought. And I was wearing, I was just wearing a pair of black pants and a leopard print sweater and he had a Hawaiian shirt and jeans and I said, well, this won't do, you know, so I went and I got some fake flowers and I put them in my hair and he went and got his Texito jacket and put it on over his Hawaiian shirt. Oh, I'm sure we looked ridiculous. And we just said, what was in our hearts and how grateful

we were to be back together and it was great. One more question about your personal life. You gave birth to your first child when you were 37, 38. The, what they called the very turn of age. 30, yes, 38. And then at age 57, you adopted a baby. Yes, I explained that. Well, we knew two couples who had adopted babies from China and just, and I had, I wanted to have another child, but it just wasn't in the cards and I had a miscarriage and that was

really painful and I just thought I really, I really wanted to be a baby. And

so we started talking about it and Richard would always say, oh, no, no, no, no, not too old or too

old. And I, one of the time we finally did it, we probably weren't. It took so many years to talk and do it. And at one point, we were actually going to start the paperwork, but then my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and I just, I couldn't deal with it. So I kind of put it on the back burner for a while, but then we started again. But unfortunately, that was right when China was

“hosting the Olympics, I believe, and everything just slowed down to a snail's pace. So it took”

about five years once we started the paperwork and the paperwork was overwhelming. It was just endless. It was just endless. It was worth it. But it was took a long, a long time. But at that age, I felt like I peaked in my fifties. I felt like I could do anything. And it was just a thrill. And it was so cool because when they placed that baby in your arms, you realized in that split

second that it doesn't matter that you gave birth to that child or not. It's just, it was just

instant. It's like that just thing of this, I'm going to love you and protect you for the rest of my life and it was just really cool. But it was, it was a little, a little, it was kind of dismayed that some of our friends, most of them probably seemed to disapprove when I told them what we're going to do. And but when we brought the baby, oh my girlfriends are just so jealous. They're like, oh my god, and all the husbands were like, thanks a lot, Richard. Jesus, she doesn't stop talking

about this. My guest is actor Jean Smart. She has won seven Emmys, including four for playing the comedian Deborah Vance on Hacks. She's nominated again this year for outstanding lead actresses

This week on shortwave, the universal vaccine. One vaccine that can protect against multiple

“diseases for years. It's not just theoretical, it's possible. The question is, how do you”

translate this safely into humans? Why the future of vaccines could be a one-stop shop on shortwave. Listen on the Emperor app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so you're driving to work, or you're on a walk, or you're at the gym or whatever, and you just need to clear your head. That's the perfect time to hit the play button on NPR's All Songs Considered. It's not the news, it's not work, or whatever else is weighing you down. It's just a good time with good friends

and great tunes. Listen to All Songs Considered every Tuesday in the NPR Music podcast. How did we get here? That's a question we have been trying to answer a lot. Here at NPR, we are exploring global histories on throughline, where hearing from national security experts on sources and methods. We're watching the markets with planet money. You can support this work across all our podcasts with NPR Plus. Find out more at plus.npr.org.

This is Fresh Air, I'm Arthur Shahani, back with actor Jean Smart. She stars in the critically acclaimed show Hacks. She's won four Emmys for her role and has been nominated again this year for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Her other shows include Designing Women, Frazier, Fargo, and Mayor of East Town. Okay, this last part of our conversation is a spoiler for anyone who has not seen Hacks season five, so you have officially been warned. In the last

episode of the season, Deborah Vance and her young sidekick, Ava Daniels, are in Paris. Deborah has been diagnosed with cancer, is refusing treatment, and wants to go out on her own terms. So Paris is supposed to be their last rendezvous before Deborah checks herself into a European center for assisted suicide. In this scene, they are at the train station waiting for their train eating. Let's hear the clip. So, what are you gonna ask if you get to, you know, meet your

maker? My plastic surgeon? Oh, no, really. In 1980, Bert Reynolds called me and I called him

“back, but he never returned. What was that about? That's what you want to know. I pretty much”

have everything else figured out. In fact, I think he, or she, or they, them, might have some questions for me, actual. They, them. Okay, non-binary God. Love. I'm at more of an energy. I don't think there's going to be a gender fluid barista waiting for me at the program. It's too bad. I love a monster when I get there. Yeah, yeah, go for it. It's the best part of dying for a person with disorder eating is having a second croissant. Actually, the best part of dying is not having

to save receipts because you know you will never get audited again. Actually, I think the best part

of dying is knowing how pissed people are going to be when they realize how much money you left your dogs. But the worst part of dying is that I don't get to see how my court used to decide to spend that 550,000. What do you think of that scene? Yeah, that was a great scene. But Ronald, you know, it was so, it was very much in character, you know, for Debra to make that decision to do that. You know, you were mentioning earlier, you think that Debra's character

“really unfolds over the course of the series. And how would you summarize what that evolution is?”

I think she just becomes so much more relaxed, you know, and she's made peace with her daughter

even though it's kind of unpleasant peace in the sense that she realized she was never going

to be able to repair that relationship that it was never going to be what it should have been. And that's a whole that Eva fills to a certain extent. So she's kind of been making peace with people even before she realized that she was sick. It's like she's relaxing in her life a little bit and she's allowing, she's allowing Eva to sort of, you know, sometimes take control or give her

that's a huge thing for her, very freeing, very freeing. And she's thinking, screw it, I don't need Madison Square Garden. I don't need the money from the ticket sales. I just want to talk in front of people who want to hear me talk. And so just get me at stage in the park, let anybody who wants

to come come, you know, you never, she wouldn't have done that season one or two.

Is Deborah Advance and Hacks a creative challenge for you or more like the easier word after a lifetime of challenges? There weren't things like I didn't, you know, because there was a

“slight accident involved with Floyd, which was adds, you know, another layer that you need to work”

through so you can get to, you can just stop thinking about it and let it just come naturally. That's another sort of added challenge. But they were both emotionally demanding, but in very different ways, you know, they were similar in the way in the sense that they both were kind of held

a lot of their feelings in, you know. But the thing about Deborah was it's just so fun to

make people laugh and just to see how people responded to the show was such a, such a thrill. And she got to be just more and more, three-dimensional, more and more human and less guarded as time went by, which was really nice. You know, Jean, you are kind of making a case for me, all right. I wanted to have this conversation, I wanted to have this conversation with you for a little bit of a hidden agenda. Okay. Which is that yes, you all say hacks is over,

season five was the last season, but I think it's the wrong call. I don't get why.

Well, it was written as a five-year show from day one. They had every season already in their heads,

written in their heads, if not already written, from years before they even met me.

“That's how they sold it. That's how they pitched it to me. That's how they pitched it to the network.”

They felt that it ended in an appropriate way. Of course, they had no way of knowing how big the show was going to become. And I felt that I was ready to move on from the character. So it all kind of jelled nicely. I know you're okay with it being over, but just if I'm one more question, I think about is how are you feeling now that you are a little bit away from the filming of it? Well, I'm not missing getting up before in the morning and wearing high heels

all day. You've got not known if you noticed that the heels got shorter and shorter as the season. I wore some killer heels, season one that I couldn't wear today. The thing is, unlike our darling crew, who had to kind of rip off the bandaid for us in the cast, particularly Hannah and I,

“we have an entire award season coming up. So we're going to still be living with the show,”

talking about the show, doing interviews about the show, going to ceremonies and things that through the next February. So after that, it might feel a little more real. Well, Gene Smart, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Gene Smart spoke with guest interviewer Arthi Shahani. The fifth and final season of Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys, including one for Smart for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. Arthi is a veteran NPR journalist,

host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of The Memoir, Here We Are. Coming up, Marine Caragon reviews a new novel by Daniel Mason, who she says has a magic touch as a writer. This is Fresh Air. On this season of Planet Money Summer School, we follow the money, and not just the dollars we're following the Yuan, the Naira, the Krona, and more. Every Wednesday this summer, we're taking you on a world tour to meet the people,

trying new solutions to old economic problems. Planet Money Summer School, perhaps some friends, pack your bags and don't forget the sunscreen. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. You've got a lot of ways to get news, and a lot of podcasts in your feed that take a long time to get to the point. Here and now any time gets to the heart of the day's big story, all in about 20 minutes every afternoon. Get smarter and expand your world fast. Listen to

We're often told to bring our full selves to work, but my guess says that's actually a trap.

“You've got to run, run girl. You and Angel Girl.”

Listen to NPR's code switch podcast and the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air. Many writers hold down day jobs to pay the bills, but Daniel Mason is that rare literary creature. His 2020 short story collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and his 2023 historical fiction was a finalist for the National Bookritic Circle

Award. Simultaneously, Mason has maintained a second career as a psychiatry professor at Stanford.

Our book critic, Marine Carrigan says that academic background stands him in good stead for his latest novel, Country People. Here's Marine's review. Shakespeare was wise to the fact that most

“folks prefer lighter entertainments in the summer. Hence, amid summer night stream, that”

confection of a play in which rustics and royals and metal some fairies collide in a forest. Country People by Daniel Mason is a satisfying spin on the barbs bubble of an amusement. For anyone's slow to catch on, Mason even ends his novel with an elementary school performance

of a mid-summer night stream. The wanders into a Vermont forest here are not exactly royals,

but you might say they're the kind of people Jefferson had in mind when he proposed that the United States be governed not by an inherited aristocracy but by an aristocracy of the intellect. Or perhaps not. Kate is a hot shot, a distinguished scholar of Blake and Milton. Currently teaching

“in California, she has been offered a one-year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont.”

Miles, her husband, has been working sort of on his dissertation for the past 14 years, something to do with Russian folklore. To be fair though, Miles, an eternal graduate student,

does provide caretaking to the couples too young children, as well as for Kate, who's been diagnosed

with MS. He also tends to their dog, Giuseppe, who's possessed, much like Miles himself, of a fairly useless skill. Giuseppe has been bred to hunt truffles, energized by the thought of a year in their new place, the family drives cross-country, arriving at a silver wood where they'll live, suspiciously rent free in the house of a faculty member on sabbatical. The divisive plot of country people contains golden threads of academic force. To my taste, passages like this one,

contrasting Kate and Miles' student evaluations are some of the funniest in the novel. Our omniscient narrator tells us that Kate taught popular courses, which according to her teaching evaluations were super fun and interesting, probably not useful for a job, but still mind-blowing. The narrator continues to fill us in. Over the past decade, watching their course enrollments dwindle, Kate's colleagues had been forced to pander, changing English seven, Shakespeare,

to sex in Shakespeare. English 28, middle-march to learning programming from middle-march, a novel. But Kate was hardcore. Again, according to our narrator, the reviews for the courses Miles taught as a teaching assistant described him as "nice" if sometimes hard to follow, and said that he got caught up in arcane topics, so that a lecture on Targanyev would somehow end in Ecuador. Once a student wrote that Miles was disheveled, not in a gross way, in a nice way.

Another wrote, "My friend had a crush on him, which we thought was funny. As the novel settles into Vermont, its humor shifts from the dry, wet variety to the wacky excess of tall tales. Miles is jazzed to get to know some actual rural folk since his dissertation, after all, involves peasants. The locals he talks to on nature trails, and in the waiting room of the emergency clinic, espoused beliefs that make the witches and dragons of Russian folklore,

along with the conviction that the area is studded with massive subterranean super-ratlines,

“a veritable vermin expressway, one of which is said to run under the house,”

Miles and his family now occupy. And seductive fairies spring up in the shape of a children's ski coach and an erotically charged drama teacher, who entices Miles into helping her stage an unbound-larized version of a mid-summer night stream. Two inevitably, quote, "pucks in mortal line, lured what fools these mortals be." Thanks to Mason's own magic touches a writer, country people mostly charms, rather than condescends. Sometimes his jokes do go on for too long,

like the footnote, sprawling over three pages, listing adults who attended the school play,

“and sometimes much like the hollow earthers. I was conscious of the absence of a solid core to the”

novel, but then I reminded myself that silliness for its own sake is an underrated virtue in art, and their silliness of plenty in country people to keep readers entertained. Marine Cargan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. He reviewed country people by Daniel Mason. Tomorrow on fresh air,

Donald Trump took in about $2.2 billion last year while serving as president.

New York Times journalist Eric Lippton will talk about his Pulitzer Prize-winning investigations

“into Trump's profits and related conflicts of interest. Last month, Lippton was one of”

the Times reporters, subpoenaed by the Justice Department, in connection with reporting about Air Force One. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh air's executive producer, is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineers, or if you've been to them,

our engineers today are Charlie Chire and Adam Stannishewski. Our senior producer today is Roberta Chorock. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Fyllis Meyers and Rebloodonado, Lauren Crenzel, Monique Nazareth, Fayette Chorock, Susan Yucundee, and Abelman and Nico Gonzalo's Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivine Esper. To recent madden directed today's show,

our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. When life gives you lemons, what do you get? Negative utility. Do you think this is Darian? See you to get a full plate of money, the home of economic nerdiness we have learned it. Well, you can not only listen to our show, but you can read us in our weekly newsletter

that comes out every Friday morning. Sign up now at mpr.org/indicatornewsletter.

Death has never stopped the grateful dead.

60 plus years after their first gig and 30 plus years after the death of Jerry Garcia, the dancing bears are still dancing. This August, come along with us to meet deadheads wherever they are and hear the different ways they plan to keep the jam going. Listen to Dead After Death, a two episode series available starting on August 1st. Find it on the npr music podcast wherever you listen.