Title: Dating is Comedy Gold

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Tiffany Hansen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen. So glad you're with us. Right now in studio with us is Lane Moore. We are celebrating the 10th anniversary of Tinder Live. Lane has a special at (Le) Poisson Rouge this Friday. Also talking about this Tinder Live is a special guest, Janeane Garofalo. Janeane and Lane, thank you so much for coming in studio today to talk about it. Listen-- you could say--

Janeane Garofalo: I was just going to say thank you for having us.

Lane Moore: I was too. I was too. Then I was like, I don't know. Does she want us to talk?

Tiffany Hansen: I love that we both had that moment.

Lane Moore: I was like, "God."

Janeane Garofalo: We've deconstructed it. We've deconstructed it. We've now explained.

Lane Moore: Now everyone feels comfortable.

Tiffany Hansen: Everyone is so good. Now we're going to bring the listeners in. Listeners, we want to hear about your Tinder horror stories. Look, we know you have them, and maybe success stories as well. Dating tales, New Yorkers have them. Text us, 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. You can text us, as I said, at that number as well. For the last decade, Lane Moore has been projecting her Tinder profile on screen and letting the room decide whether to swipe left or swipe right. The show has been called by the New York Times, "Truly addictive entertainment."

Lane, I don't know that there are many people who would be willing to get up on stage, A, with their Tinder profile. I have questions about that.

Lane Moore: Sure.

Tiffany Hansen: Then B, to just carry-- This is a human experiment in real time. First, how did you come up with this? Then how do you not just get completely creeped out every time?

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Lane Moore: No one said I didn't, to be fair. I had the idea to do it 10 years ago. The first time I went on Tinder was the only dating app at the time, so that's the only reason that it was. The second I saw it, just any woman who swipes through men's profiles knows it's just the weirdest profiles you've ever seen. Just men yelling at women, men holding fish. I guess they're trying to prove they can provide for us.

Tiffany Hansen: The fish is a thing.

Lane Moore: There's grocery stores, so we don't need them to do that. Just seeing all these things, men yelling at women, like, "First of all, you better be like this." Just all of this, just the craziest stuff you've ever seen. I immediately was like, "This needs to be-- Frank Conniff, if you're familiar with him, one of the creators of Mystery Science Theater, he always says, "It's like Mystery Science Theater but with Tinder," if the movie could talk back. Essentially to have it so that it's projected on the screen. We're all going through it together, and I'm playing a character on the show who is not me, but really is a version of what I think the weirdest profiles on Tinder want, where it's like I think a lot of guys on Tinder want someone who's very submissive, very stupid, very just kind of, "I don't know. You tell me about it. What?" You're right. You rolled your eyes because you know.

Janeane Garofalo: Well, actually, if I can interject, there are some earnest people on it, and this is not about cruelty. I myself have never used Tinder I think the first time that she had me on, and I was agog at-

Lane Moore: I was going to say, what was your reaction?

Janeane Garofalo: -modern culture. Just interesting. I also don't like cruelty. What I found is that the people that were kind and earnest tended to be less likely to connect in a strange way. There was people who-- I'm still fascinated by it. I don't fully understand it. I'm a bit of a Neo-Luddite. That is a value-neutral statement. I'm not bragging. I'm 60. Also I've been with the same person for 26 years, which is more about inertia in real estate than anything. I'm fascinated by it still. Lane is very clever and funny when she does it, and it's amazing. This transcends gender, how people operate on this.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, absolutely. There's not a sweeping generalization of, "The guys will do this, the women will do this, the LGBTQ will do this," that or the other. It is part of the human condition to behave in certain ways. I am fascinated by it. The audience is pretty polite.

Lane Moore: Yes. They're on the same page. If a guy comes in--

Janeane Garofalo: They're nice and people aren't mean.

Lane Moore: I think that's something that's such a-- anyone who's seen Tinder Live, it's known for being the kindest show. It's not what you would think. It's not a bloodbath that really is like--

Tiffany Hansen: Well, yes, it was going to be one of my questions, which was, this inherently sounds really judgy.

Lane Moore: It couldn't be less than that, and it wouldn't be such a--

Janeane Garofalo: Well, there is aspects of it, but I do think that it's not encouraged.

Lane Moore: Well, the judgments it's like-- the way as David Cross said it where he was like, "They're hanging themselves by their own petard. That's what it is. If we're judging them, it's because they're being openly--

Janeane Garofalo: Right, totally.

Lane Moore: They're being openly hateful, being openly ridiculous. It's like you're only going after the profiles that any woman is sitting at home and being like, "What the hell is this?" Those are the profiles we riff on. If there's a guy who's really nice, like Janeane was saying, we throw him back into the ocean. The thing that people, if you've never been on a dating app don't know, is that it's mostly the weirdest profiles. That's the majority of what we have to sift through. Then the nice guys I feel like they're always in on the joke. They're always laughing.

Janeane Garofalo: There are some people that seem to understand something funny is going on, and there's some that don't seem to understand as Lane gets more seemingly absurd in response to that person's. It's not like it's the weirdest profiles. Again, I don't claim to understand a lot of what's going on in the main of modern with young people and dating and stuff like that, but there is, I think, a need online for people to present a version of themselves which may or may not be particularly accurate. The pictures are not particularly accurate.

Lane Moore: Of course.

Janeane Garofalo: The theater of success, I think it's called, where you want to present. People do that in real life too. Now it's just out there, and there's people's ability to swipe and things of that nature. It's fascinating to me to be a part of it and see Lane's facility with it and also all the people in the audience. This is just the most normal thing.

Lane Moore: It's such an interactive show.

Tiffany Hansen: That's what I was going to say, describe for us. I hand you my ticket, I'm coming to the show. How is this going to work?

Lane Moore: What it is is, first of all, at the top of every show, I explain the way the show works. I explain that any guy who seems really great and nice, we swipe left on him. Have a good night. We wish you well. I always tell people at the top of the show, the only people we want to swipe right on, and the example I always give is like a white guy with cornrows whose name is Amen. Just like the weirdest, like, "What is happening? We've got to dive into the chaos." We only do that. I lay the ground.

Tiffany Hansen: For people who don't know the difference between left and right, lay the--

Lane Moore: Oh, yes. Right is yes and left is no. I explain all of that. Then--

Janeane Garofalo: Which seems counterintuitive. I feel left should be for good because the left is a good thing, the right seemingly should be bad.

Lane Moore: It's different on--

Janeane Garofalo: I believe that the person who invented it may be on the wrong side of history, so they did it that way.

Tiffany Hansen: Left is I like you-- No, no, no. Other way.

Janeane Garofalo: No, no, no. That's what I'm saying now, it should be that I like you.

Tiffany Hansen: Okay. You get up, and this is on a screen, right?

Lane Moore: Yes.

Tiffany Hansen: We see your profile. All right.

Lane Moore: It's all projected, and then we're swiping through the profiles, and we'll kind of--

Tiffany Hansen: You're commenting.

Lane Moore: We'll analyze the profiles. Really this show was created before people were doing this, but now I hear from so many women that they'll go home and do Tinder Live with their friends. Even people who haven't seen Tinder Live, it's become so ubiquitous that we do a version of that. Basically, we're on a projector screen and we're swiping through like you would with your friends, where you're just like, "Okay, we've got, Jason, 25. He's wearing the same shirt in every photo." Interesting. Interesting. We were just pulling the information. "Oh, he says this. How do you feel about this?" He says, "No drama." We all know what that-- you have every woman in the audience screams, "Oh, God, run from this profile."

There's all these things. It has this sense of community because so many women, when they're swiping, they feel like they're the only ones who are seeing these ridiculous or obnoxious or whatever it is things that, like Janeane said, I really think a lot of men don't know how they're coming across. It really is nice for the men in the audience who are like, "I didn't know that came across that."

Janeane Garofalo: I think who are transgender. I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I feel like this isn't just about women or however one identifies. This is part of the modern landscape now. I think there's as many because there's as many males or what seem to be cis-gendered males, however one identifies in your audience as there is females. I'm sure there are plenty of very kind, nice males who have had similar experiences of feeling what you feel when you do it. I just feel like many people, I think just from what I gauge from your audiences, feel these things.

Lane Moore: I think they all relate to it. It's more universal than you would think because the guys who are on there, who are good, nice guys, are having a hard time too.

Tiffany Hansen: We have a guy on the phone who wants to join us. Richard in New Jersey. Welcome, Richard.

Richard: Hi. Thank you.

Tiffany Hansen: You've been on Tinder?

Richard: Yes, I have. Sure. Go ahead.

Tiffany Hansen: No, your experience.

Richard: Oh, well, I had a little vignette. Everything's about sincerity, and I think whatever people's b's are in relationships, so does Tinder go. I had gone on Tinder, and like many dating apps, I had my own stereotypes of what I might find and concluded that you have to look at the pictures carefully and what people are telling you about themselves. I picked a very nice looking lady who seemed very, very family-oriented and there was no revealing pictures or anything like that. We texted and then we talked and she called me from a concert and we were having a time. Then we agreed that we would meet in person. She said, "Well, my adult kids are coming in, when they leave, I'll give you a call." Needless to say, I was waiting for a call.

In the interim, she really didn't tell me-- She told me her name, but she didn't tell me who she really was. I'm a good googler and out that she was fabulously wealthy from a prominent family and I just wouldn't fit in. I'm a regular guy from New Jersey, psychologist, and we work for a living.

Tiffany Hansen: Richard, thank you so much for hearing about your experience.

Janeane Garofalo: I don't think he got to what the-- was there some terrible thing that happened at the end or was it just--

Tiffany Hansen: I think it was just that he realized they wouldn't fit together. I think what's interesting to me that I would like to get it back to the show is how often do you hear stories like this during the show? Do people--

Lane Moore: Well, I don't know what that story was. [chuckles]

Tiffany Hansen: Do people come up and say--

Janeane Garofalo: No, I think he was saying it seemed as if he realized and then maybe he didn't get the call that he was waiting for or something like that. People also do google. That's the thing about modern culture too, people will investigate you.

Lane Moore: Well, to me-- the reason I say I don't know what that call was is because to me, it sounds like he found a hot rich woman who wanted to date him.

Janeane Garofalo: No, that's not necessarily what he was saying. I guess he was saying, but we don't know yet because we didn't have time to get to the end of it.

Lane Moore: I'm just going to answer based on what I heard from that call. What I heard from that call is she was rich and I was overwhelmed because I'm just a working-class guy. That's fine. That's fair to have those feelings. [chuckles] I also just feel like-- I don't know. I'm not sure how to say it, because what I want to say is that the reality is that so many women, their worst experience is way worse than that. I have to say that that's--

Janeane Garofalo: That's not fair. We didn't get to hear all that. That's why I should have never-- I was like, "Lane should be the only one talking here. I'm only just interrupting," but I am--

Lane Moore: No, no. All I'm saying about it is that--

Janeane Garofalo: Richard could have said it could have been a real tragedy. It could have been like a Netflix series we didn't get to it.

Tiffany Hansen: Wait. Time out. I want to broaden out from Richard because I think we don't need to get into weeds about Richard.

Lane Moore: We don't know what that was. It didn't sound like an--

Janeane Garofalo: Well, no, because we didn't get to hear all of it.

Lane Moore: We didn't get to hear.

Tiffany Hansen: Thank you for your call. What I'm saying is, in the show, do you allow space for people to come forward and tell their stories about what they experience on Tinder? Is that part of this?

Lane Moore: No, because it's a comedy show. It's an improvised comedy show. We're doing something that's so silly.

Tiffany Hansen: People don't pop up and say, "Yes."

Lane Moore: They do say, yeah, but it's not like a therapy group thing You know what I mean?

Janeane Garofalo: Well, sometimes there are people that you start talking to because they are like, "I think I know that person." If you know the person you tell her.

Lane Moore: Right. Someone in the audience will be like, "I know that person," or things like that, and so that's really exciting and stuff like that. It's fair. It's just a very, I think, the thing people haven't seen it. It's a very silly, very kind, very funny show. It's something that-- I don't hear from that during the show, but what I do hear after the show is I hear the same things from-- women will tell me, "This is so cathartic. I laughed more than I've laughed in months. I didn't know I was the only one. It makes me realize I don't have to take this so seriously. I'm not the only one seeing stuff like this."

Then I hear from men saying, "Wow. It makes me realize my profile is pretty good." It's something that everybody walks away feeling seen and laughing a ton and feeling really good. Which is the point, because using these dating apps, I will say from what Richard said, he didn't feel good after that experience. This is creating a comedy show where we can laugh at how-- most of us are not really feeling good at this, so how can we come together, laugh at our collective experience? Because it's not individual.

Tiffany Hansen: We have a text that I just want to read for you guys. "I got a match on OkCupid. The guy's a psychiatrist. Somewhere along the way, he tells me he had been unfairly accused of a sexual crime and over-administering drugs to his patients." This is what you're telling me you're hearing more of?

Lane Moore: That's what I'm saying. That's all I'm trying to say. I don't know what happened with Richard's story, but I'm just saying that I hear after every single show, so many women will say like, "I've had so many scary things happen to me. Watching this and watching a woman take the power back, swipe through, call out this toxicity, is so powerful through comedy." That's what comedy should do.

Tiffany Hansen: All right. Tell us about the show because we have one minute left. How can people see you?

Lane Moore: I'm doing the show this Friday in New York City. Jeanine Garofalo is going to be there. Will Butler from Arcade Fire is going to be there as well. We're going to be swiping live through New York City Tinder. We might swipe through your ex. Very exciting. You get to choose who we swipe right or left on. You can get tickets at lanemoore.org, and if you're listening to this outside the city, I'm also on tour and I do livestream, so you can watch it from anywhere.

Tiffany Hansen: It's at (Le) Poisson Rouge this Friday. It's the 10th anniversary of Tinder Live. Yes, we've been talking with Lane Moore and special guest Janeane Garofalo, who will be there on Friday. Right, Janeane?

Janeane Garofalo: Third wheel Janeane Garofalo.

Tiffany Hansen: Third wheel Janeane Garofalo, who will be there on Friday-

Janeane Garofalo: Yes, I will be. I will be there.

Tiffany Hansen: -standing there.

Lane Moore: Riffing on the profile.

Tiffany Hansen: Sounds Great. All right. 10 years of swiping left and swiping right. Thanks so much for your time, ladies.

Janeane Garofalo: Thank you.

Lane Moore: Thank you.

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Tiffany Hansen: Coming up tomorrow on All Of It, we're talking about a newspaper in New Jersey that is discontinuing its print edition. We'll talk with WNYC's Nancy Solomon about that. More on the way for All Of It tomorrow. We hope you'll come back. I'm Tiffany Hansen. Thanks for your time today.

Speaker 4: It's another dive into the archive for WNYC's 100th anniversary. The year is 1963. The pioneering modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham is interviewed for the series World of Dance.

Marian Horosko: Ms. Graham, we're very pleased to have you.

Speaker 4: Graham gives the host, Marian Horosko, a tour of her studios.

Marian Horosko: Well, I can see it's a very disciplined place then.

Martha Graham: It's disciplined because there's only one freedom, and that freedom is discipline.

Marian Horosko: That's a beautiful philosophy for dancers, isn't it?

Martha Graham: I think it's a philosopher for everything.

Speaker 4: Graham goes on to explain that you have to learn the laws, the law of writing, for example, the law of language, or whatever law interests you.

Martha Graham: If you're not willing to learn that law, then you do not have the courage to break it, and those people who have broken it are those who have become the great figures.

Speaker 4: This is clearly a belief system from which Ms. Graham does not waver.

Martha Graham: You learn certain wonderful, marvelous rules, but when you decide to depart from them, you do not depart because you do not know. You depart because you do know.

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Speaker 4: The wisdom from rule breaker Martha Graham. For more on air centennial, visit wnyc.org/100.

Speaker 7: WNYC supporters include the New York Phil Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 is performed alongside Oh, To Believe in Another World, a film exploring Shostakovich's complex relationship with the Soviet regime. December 5th through 7th, tickets at nyfield.org.

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Brian Lehrer: On the next Brian Lehrer Show, President-Elect Trump says he wants to abolish the United States Education Department. It's also a priority of Project 2025. We'll look at what the Education Department actually does, who supports or objects to its existence, and why, and what the real world impact might be on children and their communities if the Education Department goes away. That and more on the Brian Lehrer show, weekdays at 10:00 AM on WNYC.

Outro: This is WNYC, FM, HD, and AM New York.