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Melissa Harris-Perry: I am Melissa Harris-Perry, and this is The Takeaway. Thanks for being here with us in the final weeks of the show as we're counting down to our last episode on June 2nd. We're continuing our Producer Appreciation Weeks and in today's spotlight, Ryan Wilde. Hey, Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Hey, Melissa. This is exciting. Thanks for doing this.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Absolutely. Now Ryan is going to stick around here at WNYC as a producer at the Green Space starting next month. Ryan, when did you first get started in radio?

Ryan Wilde: My first and very amateur start in radio was at 104.5 Ice Radio at McMurdo Station, which is in Antarctica, actually.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What were you doing in Antarctica?

Ryan Wilde: McMurdo is a National Science Foundation research station down there, and when I was 21, I was eager to see the world and I took a job washing dishes. They have this volunteer-run radio station as well. I had no idea what I was doing, but I just got on the air and played some records and chatted with some scientists and community members, and broadcasted into what felt like the vast empty void that is Antarctica.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You know, I have to ask the question, did you interview any penguins?

Ryan Wilde: [chuckles] No penguins or polar bears. Everyone always gets that confused too. Polar bears are in the Arctic, not the Antarctica. Here's a quick story. One time we somehow managed to get William Shatner on the air because there's a lot of Trekkies down there, naturally Science station, but none of us knew how to conduct an interview. I'm pretty sure I remember Captain Kirk just hanging up on us. It might have been in frustration or maybe we lost connection, but either way, I don't blame him at all.

Speaker 3: This is a terrifying idea.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As an [unintelligible 00:02:00], I'm jealous. Now here on The Takeaway, you've made some great radio. Tell us about the recent political series that you've produced.

Ryan Wilde: Sure. During the 2022 midterms, I pitched the Downballot Series, and more recently, I've been leading the series on 23 Mayors in 2023. Both come out of a similar impulse to tell our political stories a little bit closer to the ground. Previously, I worked on a few local public radio programs, and in network, I really learned the impact that local politics has on our lives. With these two series, I was trying to imagine a way that even if we aren't talking to your mayor or your city clerk, you can still get a sense of their jobs. You can still understand the important ways their decisions impact your life, and you can hopefully leave feeling a little more informed or more engaged, and hopefully, you can be a more active participant in the politics in your community.

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Ryan Wilde: Let's take a listen to a little bit of the Downballot Series where we spoke to Alex Niemczewski, the CEO of BallotReady, which is a nonpartisan resource where voters can find information about every race on their ballot.

Alex Niemczewski: We know that about 30% of people don't complete their ballots, but also we know that a lot of people guess. Many will say, "Oh yes, I wasn't sure about who to vote for, for all these judges on my ballot." We've also seen research that shows people guess based on the candidate names, gender, ethnicity, and sometimes even the order, the position that they are on the ballot. Candidates who are listed first on the ballot can receive up to a 5% increase in votes. We know voters are not as prepared as they could be when they go to vote.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: I understand that part of your interest in this issue come from a personal experience. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Alex Niemczewski: Yes. In 2014, I was set to vote in those midterms, but I saw my ballot ahead of time and I saw there were 92 races on my ballot. I knew who I was going to vote for at the top of the ticket, but through all these offices, I didn't even really understand what they do like Water Reclamation Commissioner. I hadn't even heard of that before, let alone I didn't know who the candidates were, so I felt frustrated. I knew my vote was powerful and I wanted to be able to confidently vote in all these races. I made a website just for myself to keep track of what the candidates were saying, who was endorsing them, their stances on issues.

When I talked to people about this, it turned out this was not only a problem that I had and basically everyone I talked to about it was like, "Oh yes, I don't know who to vote for." I even talked to the mayor of a certain very large city who admitted to guessing when he voted. I talked to political science professors who didn't know who to vote for in local elections, but it's a lot of information. It is understandable that I'm not the only one who has faced this problem.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: This was such a fun series because of the kinds of folks we had a chance to talk with on air, a county clerk, a county coroner, a school board member, a local judge.

Ryan Wilde: We wanted to understand what some of these locally elected leaders actually do, what their job entails, how voters can research their own local candidates, and what folks should think about when considering these candidates. We focus on folks who are either not up for reelection, running unopposed, or even retired. More so that they could hopefully speak less like a candidate and more candidly about their work and experience. Let's listen to a bit of the conversation you had with Darnell Hartwell, Chief Deputy Coroner of Berkeley County, South Carolina.

Darnell Hartwell: I have investigated, well, over 5,000 deaths, have several thousand hours of death investigating training, law enforcement training, medical investigating training. One of my campaign stumps was experience matters and you would want your coroner to be experienced. You want to be experienced in investigations, you want to be able to have community connections, great relationships with law enforcement agencies, doctor's offices, hospitals. Throughout my career, I was able to build great relationships with all those entities here in Berkeley County.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I was appreciating that on your website, you actually have a list of more than 30 trainings that you've been part of and some of them made perfect sense to me, forensic death investigation, FEMA incident command, but the one that I have to say, I might just take a drive down and you might help me through this training. Number six training was working with difficult people. I was like, "Well, that does seem to be an important training in all kinds of contexts, including this one."

Darnell Hartwell: Well, of course, dealing with death every day, it brings out the worst in people at times. We have to be ready and equipped to handle those situations. More times than not, they just need a listening ear, emotions are high at that time. Again, part of our job is to be that listening ear for these families, for these loved ones, because think about it, this is probably the worst day of their lives where they just got informed that they will never see their loved one again. There's a hole now in their family that will never be closed again and they have to learn to deal with that.

Again, at times, they just need a listening air. That's the job of coroners. Coroners has a difficult job. It's a calling with all the relationships I have with coroners, we don't do it for the money. It's definitely a calling on our lives to be able to serve in a position like this. We constantly on the go, the phones are constantly going off. Again, it's a great job to have to be able to be there for the families.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, I understand that you're running as a Republican, but what does political party have to do with this elected office?

Darnell Hartwell: That's a tough question, but I'm going to get the best answer that I can. Personally, I don't agree with it. Again, out of the thousands and thousands of death I have investigated or been a part of, when I knock on a loved one door to bring them the most horrific news, I never had the first family ask me what political party that belongs to. It doesn't matter. In a position of coroner, our job is to serve all people.

Our job is not to create laws, our job is to just make sure that the laws that's on the book are seen through. That's what we do as coroners each and every day when we out here serving our constituents, is just to make sure that they're being taken care of. The laws that's already on the book that was put there by our governors, our senators, our representatives, our job is just to see to it that those laws are being handled and being handled the best that they can be.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: I got to admit, I found Mr. Hartwell fascinating, but my favorite Downballot office holder came to us from Idaho.

Shiva Rajbhandari: My name is Shiva Rajbhandari, and I'm an 18-year-old member of the Boise School Board.

Ryan Wilde: Shiva was also a high school senior when he defeated an incumbent. Let's listen more.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What made you make the decision to run for office?

Shiva Rajbhandari: Gosh, I just think students belong really everywhere decisions are made, but particularly where decisions are made on education. I was part of a campaign to get a clean energy commitment and long-term sustainability plan in our school district where over two years, we were reaching out to board members and we were asking for meetings, we were meeting with our power company and turning out the heat on our board members.

It just felt like we weren't getting the engagement that we deserved as students from our board, as if we, as students, weren't constituents of the board of trustees when really, we're the primary stakeholders in our education. I set out to change that dynamic and show just how much students can bring to the table when we're given a seat.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Speaking of being given a seat, do you think that should be potentially standard on school boards across the country?

Shiva Rajbhandari: Yes. Unequivocally, yes.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Shiva, did you run a full-fledged campaign? What does a campaign for a school board look like, whether you're 18, 28, 58?

Shiva Rajbhandari: My campaign was certainly full-fledged. We raised over $10,000 from over 150 donors, so it was completely a grassroots campaign. We knocked on over 5,000 doors, hired 15 paid door knockers. I'm really proud that we were able to hire students and pay them for their work. We got endorsements from former Supreme Court Chief Justice in Idaho, Jim Jones, from legislators, from city council members, from candidates, and I think we saw the results. We won by 56%, 10,900 votes in the largest turnout election that the Boise School District Board has ever seen.

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Ryan Wilde: Shiva was super inspiring. I've also been pretty inspired by some of the city leaders in our latest political series, 23 Mayors in 2023.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Of course, Ryan, we branded that series before we knew that The Takeaway was being canceled by execs here at WNYC. There's no way we're going to hear from 23 Mayors this year, but the ones we have spoken with are pretty great.

Ryan Wilde: Agreed. Wilmot Collins, the mayor of Helena, Montana. Mayor Collins has a really fascinating story. He was born, raised, and educated in war-torn Liberia, West Africa. He sadly lost two brothers to the war. He eventually managed to flee with his wife, and they ended up in Helena, where he is now mayor, in a city and state that is less than 1% Black. Let's listen.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to talk about democracy and what democracy means to you and for you as a Liberian refugee living in this crazy part of America that we call Montana.

Wilmot Collins: [laughs] Melissa, I'll tell you this, I did political science and sociology as an undergrad at the University of Liberia. My favorite subject was the American government because I saw that there were three separate entities, the judiciary, the legislative, and the executive, and they worked together, but they were separate.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, I didn't make it out to Helena, but it has been particularly insightful when I've had a chance to spend time in these cities with the mayors. It's so revealing to watch them interact with the city and with their constituents.

Ryan Wilde: You really took the series to a whole nother level with those. To hear you in person walking around these cities, to hear your footsteps, I felt like I was there too. Here's a clip of you with Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway of Madison, Wisconsin, and she took you on a little tour.

Satya Rhodes-Conway: This is Monona Terrace, that's our Community and Convention Center office flanked by the state's DHS building, part of Health and Family Services, and the Madison Club and the Hilton, which has the room blocks for the convention center generally.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Built in 1997, the Convention Center is based on plans designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1938, and Wright's aesthetic is instantly recognizable in the sweeping curves of the low-slung building that hug the bends of Lake Monona, still frozen on a March afternoon. If I walked out on that lake right now, would it hold it?

Satya Rhodes-Conway: It is that frozen, but it's on the edge of, I might not, I'm trying to look over on the bay. I think-

Melissa Harris-Perry: You can see people on there.

Satya Rhodes-Conway: -there's still ice fishers on the bay, so that's how you know.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about indigenous communities and their relationship with the lake.

Satya Rhodes-Conway: We're on the ancestral lands of the [unintelligible 00:14:27] Nation. They lived here all around the lakes for hundreds of thousands of years. We actually have evidence of that now because we found in Lake Mendota, a diver from the Historical Society who was out for a recreational training dive, found a dugout canoe. This was two years ago maybe. We did this whole process. They found it and excavated it and brought it up and we started to preserve it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Of course, the Mayor of York, Pennsylvania was quite memorable too.

Michael Ray Helfrich: My name is Michael Ray Helfrich, and I'm the mayor of York, Pennsylvania. The reason why I said that this was the building to meet in because it represents a time period of the Victorian and early 20th century industrial age when York was a real center of wealth creation, where people had ideas and then they took those ideas globally and brought the money back here. The buildings you see around here are a result of that. The beautiful architecture from basically the 1860s through the 1920s is really a result of that investment back into the community by those that were given opportunities by the community.

York is a place of second chances and third chances and fourth chances. While we can be a little bit rough and blue-collar around here, also, we can tell if people are really trying to change themselves, improve themselves. York gave me a chance. This isn't, I guess, the best thing to put on the resume, but I'm the only mayor in Pennsylvania that has felonies.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Ryan, I understand that you're taking us back to Mason, Tennessee.

Ryan Wilde: Yes, this was one of the first stories I produced here. I was just a couple of weeks into the job and Vince Fairchild, our sound engineer, pitched this great story on how the state of Tennessee Comptroller was trying to take over financial control of this historic little town of Mason, Tennessee, population 1,300. Initially, I thought we would just interview the Vice Mayor at the time, Virginia Rivers.

Virginia Rivers: Mason matters because we have been here the majority of us all our lives. This is our heritage and we matter because we are a people, and we are not just somebody who you can just push over, walk over. We are just as important and we will survive this.

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Ryan Wilde: Then it was clear that there was much more to this story. It was clear that if we were going to understand what was happening in Mason in the moment, we needed to understand the town's history.

John Marshall: I'm John Marshall and my family has been in Mason for six generations.

Melissa Harris-Perry: John Marshall grew up in Mason. Now his was one of those families that came to Mason from Virginia in the 1830s. His great-grandfather owned a cotton gin and was Mason's mayor in the 1920s. His grandfather had an insurance business in Mason, and his family still farms the area. Today, John works as a judicial magistrate in Memphis, but his first love is history.

John Marshall: I suppose I got so interested in Mason by listening to my grandfather who lived his entire life there from 1912 to when he died in 1993. He was a great storyteller and captivated my imagination when I was just a child, knew everybody, of course, Black and white. When I was still just a teenager, I started asking questions of older people in my family, of older Black people as well. I was just very curious about how we were all interconnected. The fact that a lot of us had the same surnames was always interesting to me in the Black and the white community and how that had all come about.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Marshall got a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge before pursuing law. As an amateur Mason historian, John has written two books about his hometown. These are the type of humble local history books you probably find on a dusty shelf at your municipal library, maybe not on the New York Times Bestseller list.

John Marshall: The railroad came through in the 1850s, the Memphis to Omaha Railroad. The old story is that it came right through Mr. Mason's pigpen. It was on his plantation and the railroad was coming right through where he had his hogs. A lot of the early railroad engineers nicknamed the town Mason's Hogpen. [laughs] It was not a very pretty name, but there's still a street in Mason today called Washington Avenue that all the locals refer to as Pig Alley. Very soon, he gave plan for a depot, and hotels and stores started up, and it was right on the end of the Civil War.

Melissa Harris-Perry: According to Marshall, census data from 1860 show that the areas around Mason were 75% to 80% Black. After the railroad came and then the Civil War, formerly enslaved people and their ancestors from Mason and its surrounding areas, they mostly stayed. They're always there, inextricably linked to Mason's identity and to its self-determination.

Ryan Wilde: The gist is that Mason had this 153-year-old charter, but the town had run into some financial problems under previous white leadership. The new Black leadership said they were working to fix these financial issues, but the state Comptroller stepped in and seized control over the town's finances. The timing was questionable. Let's listen to a clip. First, you'll hear Otis Sanford, a political columnist for the Daily Memphian, and then you'll hear Virginia Rivers again.

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Otis Sanford: It was originally called the Memphis Regional Megasite. This regional mega site just happens to be located about five or so miles from Mason. It's a site that had been part of development plans for the state of Tennessee for years. It's a lot of space out there. It's close to the interstate and it was a choice location and the state was just hoping to get some major manufacturing company to show some interest in it.

Finally, last year after a lot of money had been put into infrastructure there already, the Governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee announced that Ford Motor Company had agreed to build an electric truck, plant, and battery assembly plant on that site, which is the biggest economic development project in Tennessee history. It's a $5.6 billion development.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ford's mega campus has been dubbed BlueOval City because it will be the size of a city, massive, nearly 3,600 acres or six square miles. Ford says it will be a hive of innovation that will build a new generation of electric F-series trucks and batteries. Tennessee is even building an onsite trade school to train workers from surrounding areas set to be completed by 2025. Ford says the campus is going to bring an estimated 6,000 jobs directly to BlueOval City and an estimated 26,000 jobs to the surrounding area as a whole.

Virginia Rivers: It would mean jobs because they're going to have a training site where people can go and be trained to work for them. That means that our citizens will be able to have better jobs, our town can have gas station, grocery stores. We can and we will grow, in another five years if we be left alone by the Comptrollers and allow the money to come to Mason, that is rightfully Mason, that we rightfully deserve that we'll be able to prosper just like any other city.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ryan, it's been a year since the story originally aired. What's happened since?

Ryan Wilde: The residents of Mason, with the help of the local NAACP chapter, filed a lawsuit. They allege racial discrimination and challenged the authority of the Tennessee Comptroller to take over Mason's finances, but they ended up reaching an agreement and dropped those lawsuits. In that agreement was reportedly a more favorable arrangement. As it stands right now, the Tennessee Comptroller still has a lot of control and oversight over Mason's finances, but at the time of the agreement, Mason officials said that the revised plan did give them a little bit more autonomy and breathing room.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We've got more coming up with producer, Ryan Wilde right after this. It's The Takeaway.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We're back on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and I am still talking with Takeaway producer, Ryan Wilde. It's part of our Producer Appreciation Weeks.

Ryan Wilde: Hi, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Hey, Ryan. What kinds of stories do you find kind of most fulfilling to work on?

Ryan Wilde: I find it really rewarding when we're able to explore issues of social and environmental justice but also center the people who are actually living through them. Talking with reporters and experts is great, but when we can hear directly from the people who're actually living through these experiences, I think the stories hold more truth and are all the more powerful.

Melissa Harris-Perry: One example of that is the segment you produced about the salmon people.

Ryan Wilde: Let's listen to a clip from the segment to set this up.

Katie Campbell: The Columbia River is home to several native American tribes that refer to themselves as the salmon people. My name is Katie Campbell. I'm a documentary filmmaker with ProPublica. I'm director of the documentary film, Salmon People: A Native Fishing Family's Fight to Preserve A Way of Life. The Yakama people have been fishing for salmon since time immemorial. It's been the bedrock of their economy. It's not just a food that they eat, it is a major source of their diet, but it is also the basis of their cultural practices and their religious and spiritual practices.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ryan, you spoke with Randy Settler. He's featured in the documentary. Tell us about him.

Ryan Wilde: Randy is a Yakama tribal member, and the Yakama's connection to the Columbia River and its salmon stretches far back into the past.

Randy Settler: My connection to this land, knowing that if I look west, if I look north, if I look south, if I look east, that our families are buried all along in this river. Our ancestors are buried here and that there was great civilizations here of people who were able to do great things. We drank the river water, we bathe in the river water. We lived on the banks of the river year-round.

Ryan Wilde: Unfortunately for the salmon people, their way of life is disappearing due to public policy, forced displacement, and broken treaties. The salmon are also disappearing due to over damning, overfishing, and climate change. I think Randy's stories really brought this issue to life.

Randy Settler: On the Yakama Reservation, I caught my first big fish when I was two or three years old. I was fishing with all my family, my brother, and other families that were all around us. We were all related and got that fish up that was probably as big as me in terms of length. The oldest of the boys that was there, he told me that I had to give that fish to an elder, and that was a custom and tradition and so carried that fish up past our home and gave it to his grandmother. Her name was Mary, and that was my first catch. She prayed for me and thanked me for the catch in our traditional language, our Yakima nation language and so my whole life's been about fishing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ryan, tell me about talking with Randy.

Ryan Wilde: Randy was so wonderful. He lives in a really remote part of Washington state and he still fishes every day. He's very much connected with his community and with the nature around him. His appreciation for time is like quite different from many other people. He doesn't have internet, very little phone service. It was a little bit of an adventure trying to schedule a time to speak with him, but we eventually got it figured out.

The first time we spoke was for two hours. Then a few weeks later, we recorded the interview, and that was another two or three hours all for maybe six or seven minutes worth of tape for this segment. He shared with us the obstacles that his people have faced. Let's listen.

Randy Settler: The United States government removed people from the Columbia River forcefully to Reservations, and those that wouldn't remove, they were killed and sold into slavery. That relocation happened into the 1940s when the government was building the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where they built the atomic bombs. Those people that lived in those areas, bands of the acclimation were removed, and bands of other tribes besides the acclimation were removed

Melissa Harris-Perry: Throughout this history, the tribes of the Columbia River sought to have the treaties enforced through the courts.

Randy Settler: We, as tribal people, had to litigate even into the early 1900s throughout the 1900s where tribal people were trying to exercise their treaty rights to provide their ceremonial food and any kind of commercial opportunity that they had. It's been a struggle not just for my family, but thousands of families to maintain that connection to the salmon.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ryan, where are things now?

Ryan Wilde: Despite many broken promises from the US government, Randy has some hope for change, and the Biden administration has met directly with leaders of the Columbia River tribes, but the struggle continues. Here's another really beautiful story Randy shared with us, where he connects the perseverance of salmon with the perseverance of his people and their ongoing fight to preserve their way of life.

Randy Settler: There's this thinking that fish don't have no feelings, and I want to share what I've witnessed, and you can look at our ancestral fishing grounds, the size of the falls that this salmon jump, and I've been on those banks, on those rocks looking down in the water and I've seen these fish jumping up those falls. It's truly amazing. Once in a while, you'll see a salmon that jumps and it gets hit by a different cascade of water and it forces that salmon to the bank, it can't get back into the water. I've seen those males come out of the water and bite onto those fins of that female and drag her back into the water.

It's truly remarkable to me to witness that. You talk about [unintelligible 00:30:48], the spirit of the salmon. These beings that have come back, these living things that we value so much and we've been linked to so long, when you are able to be as close to the resources I have and seeing their spiritual existence, to see their journies, it's remarkable that no matter what I can say, until you see it, you can't really believe how these salmon care for each other.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Ryan, what's next for Randy Settler?

Ryan Wilde: Well, Randy invited us to go fishing with him. I'm thinking we should all have a team Takeaway reunion out with Randy someday.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I Would love that.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, Ryan. I'm so thrilled we get an opportunity to re-air this next story because it was definitely you through and through. Tell us about the Ryan meetup.

Ryan Wilde: This was so fun. It all started with a text message from a former colleague. I had no idea what to expect but figured, "What the heck, I'll just go to this Ryan meetup and record and see what happens". I think a lot of our work on The Takeaway can be really serious and quite important, but I also love that there's always been room for some fun and joy here too. I hope that this story provided some joy and levity for everyone unless, of course, your name is Bryan. [chuckles] Let's listen.

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Ryan Wilde: I got a text that said, "Hey, Ryan. Saw this today and thought of you." It included a photo of a flyer that said, "Is your name Ryan? Want to meet other Ryans? Come to the Ryan meetup." There was a QR code with details for the meetup. Below that, it said in no uncertain terms, "No Bryans allowed." Now, I've always felt fine about my name, I guess, but Ryan never felt like a super special name either so I was intrigued. I had no idea what to expect, but maybe meeting a room full of Ryans would boost my Ryan pride.

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Ryan Wilde: On a late March day, I found myself rolling up to a bar in Manhattan. The name of the place fittingly, Ryan McGuire's. Hey?

Speaker 1: Good. How are you doing?

Ryan Wilde: How are you?

Speaker 1: Good. How are you?

Ryan Wilde: Is your name Ryan too?

[crosstalk]

Speaker 1: No, it's not. My middle name's Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Really?

Speaker 1: Yes.

Ryan Wilde: Your middle name's Ryan. I'll have Ryan's lager [unintelligible 00:33:30], and then you can start me a tab. Just put it under Ryan.

Speaker 1: Yes.

[laughter]

Ryan Wilde: With a Ryan lager in hand, I headed towards a room in the back where I saw about a dozen Ryans mingling. I'm here a bit early to interview Ryan Rose, the organizer of this whole thing. Are you founder Ryan?

Speaker 2: No, that would be Ryan Rose.

Ryan Wilde: Okay. Ryan?

Speaker 3: Oh, Ryan Wilde. Thank you so much.

Ryan Wilde: Do I get a name tag?

Speaker 3: You do get a name tag. Here you go.

Ryan Wilde: There's a table full of about 100 red "hello, my name is" name tags. Every one of them is already filled in with the name Ryan. I see three guys standing around in a circle. I nudge my way in. How are you doing? I'm Ryan. What's your name?

Speaker 4: Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Ryan-

Speaker 2: Oh. Hi, hi.

Ryan Wilde: Me too. Yes, well, I'm Ryan.

Speaker 5: I'm Ryan. Nice to meet you.

Ryan Wilde: Nice to meet you. Ryans all around but no Ryan Rose. Press on in any way. One of the Ryans speaks up. This is Ryan Stewart.

Ryan Stewart: I'm trying to figure out what the commonalities are in the parents of the people who would name their children Ryan. So far we have an Irish culture.

Ryan Wilde: Oh, okay. Now, Ryan Neff jumps in.

Ryan Neff: These are a lot of Ryans in the late '80s, early '90s that the name would become really popular, but then it fell out of style for some reason, I don't know why. It's a great name. That's my hypothesis.

Ryan Wilde: I notice one person who really stood out amongst the group. Hey, I'm Ryan.

Ryan Rose: Hey, Ryan. [chuckles]

Ryan Wilde: What's your name?

Ryan Rose: Oh, Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Your name's Ryan too?

Ryan Rose: Yes.

Ryan Wilde: Wow. Tell me how you got to this meetup.

Ryan Rose: What do you mean? How it started?

Ryan Wilde: Oh. Are you the Ryan?

Ryan Rose: I'm the Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: You're the Ryan. It's so nice to meet you.

Ryan Rose: Yes.

Ryan Wilde: I admit. I foolishly assumed that Ryan Rose was going to be a guy, and I'm not the only one who makes this mistake. How was growing up with the name Ryan?

Ryan Rose: Growing up, I didn't like it too much because I'd always get mixed up as a guy. In one of my yearbooks in sophomore year, there was a picture of some other male and my name underneath. My ID for that year was just not me. [chuckles] I'd always get boy scout mail and I'd get mixed up in sporting events, being put in guys' categories but now, I love it.

Ryan Wilde: I asked her, "Why bother with all of this?"

Ryan Rose: It's not too deep. I just wanted to bring all the Ryans together. I thought it'd be fun.

Ryan Wilde: Only three Ryans showed up to the first meetup in February. For this one, she put over 500 flyers across the country.

Ryan Rose: I recently did a road trip down to Taxes, so everywhere along the way, I was plastering Ryan flyers. I put them in front of the White House, every Waffle House, South by Southwest, Myrtle Beach, Bourbon Street.

Ryan Wilde: This is a national movement?

Ryan Rose: I'm trying to make it a national movement.

Ryan Wilde: One of the things I was very intrigued by with the flyer was, no Bryans allowed.

Ryan Rose: Everyone loves a little drama. Also, in the Ryan-Bryan realm, there is a constant battle of who is better than who.

Ryan Wilde: I soon found evidence of the Ryan meetup being a national phenomenon.

Ryan Hatfield: My name's Ryan Hatfield. I'm 19 years old. I'm coming up from Texas. Very excited for that.

Ryan Wilde: Are you visiting from Texas?

Ryan Hatfield: Yes, indeed.

Ryan Wilde: Just for the Ryan meetup?

Ryan Hatfield: I did. Oh, this is beautiful. Yes.

Ryan Wilde: Are there a lot of Ryans in Texas?

Ryan Hatfield: I have met so many Ryans. In fact, my mom's maiden name is Ryan.

Ryan Wilde: Texas Ryan's story here reminded me of the origins of my own name steeped in my own Irish heritage.

[phone rings]

Ryan Wilde: Hi, mom.

Speaker 7: Hi.

Ryan Wilde: Tell me why you decided to name me Ryan.

Speaker 7: I think that we named you Ryan because it was in reference to your grandmother, and her name was Marcella Ryan. I think we wanted to honor her in that way, and I'm glad that we did because she was the best example of unconditional love so there you go.

[music]

Ryan Wilde: Lots of the Ryans were named after grandparents. I met one Ryan who was conceived in the room of their parent's friend named Ryan.

Speaker 8: Okay then.

Speaker 9: Okay then.

Speaker 10: Okay then.

Ryan Wilde: Some Ryans were named after other famous Ryans, like this Ryan.

Ryan Sebastian: I'm actually named after two runners, Jim Ryan, and Sebastian Coe, and Sebastian's my middle name. Jim Ryan is my namesake because my dad is a long-distance runner and very into physical fitness.

Speaker 11: On the homestretch, Ryan's long effortless stride had taken him 30 yards ahead [unintelligible 00:38:05]. At the Tate Pete's Master world record by two and a half seconds, a tremendous win for Ryan.

[music]

Ryan Wilde: Jim Ryan was the first high schooler to run a sub-four-minute mile in 1964. In 1968, he won a silver medal at the Olympics. He later served as a congressman from Kansas for 10 years. Do you feel like there's a lot of pressure to be running Ryan?

Ryan Sebastian: I was running Ryan, and actually, my last name is Dunning. My dad was running Dunning. I was also running Dunning. I kind of lived up to my namesake there.

Ryan Wilde: Jim Ryan's last name is actually spelled, R-Y-U-N. Now, I applaud his parents for not naming him Ryan Ryan, but also he probably was never at risk of that. Ryan just wasn't a name parents were considering for their newborns in the '40s.

[music]

Ryan Wilde: The Social Security Administration tracks every name given to newborns. In 1947, the year Jim Ryan was born, Ryan was the 689th most popular boy's name behind names like Wilton, Benedict, Sherwood, Milford, you get the idea. It wasn't until the late '60s and '70s that the name Ryan really burst onto the scene. The name Ryan wasn't popular at all until the 1970s.

Cleveland Evans: My name is Cleveland Evans. I am a Professor Emeritus of psychology at Bellevue University and past president of the American Name Society.

Ryan Wilde: The American Name Society was founded in 1951 to promote onomastics.

Cleveland Evans: That's the scholarly study of names.

B

Ryan Wilde: He says that when parents are naming children, there are certain patterns that they follow.

Cleveland Evans: They always say they want to find something which is different but not too different so they're looking for something which sounds like something which was popular before.

Ryan Wilde: Ryan gained popularity on the heels of another popular name at the time.

Cleveland Evans: Ryan, in a sense, got popular because Bryan had previously become popular a generation before. People were looking for an alternative to Bryan, something that was new and cool but sounded like Bryan.

[music]

Ryan Andrew: Ah, I stumbled upon the origins of the Ryan-Bryan rivalry, but there are more reasons why Ryan catapulted up the baby name charts and into the hearts of new parents.

[MUSIC - Peyton Place]

Cleveland Evans: When Ryan O'Neill first got famous on the TV show Peyton Place, it does its first little jump up in the '60s, and then in 1971, right after he becomes a huge mega star in Love Story.

[MUSIC - Where Do I Begin? Love Story]

Ryan O'Neill: What would you say if I told you, "I think I'm in love with you?"

Cleveland Evans: Then it starts absolutely skyrocketing in the early '70s, and that's because everybody who was looking for this different but not too different alternative to Bryan heard it at the same time by becoming aware of Ryan O'Neill's existence.

Ryan Wilde: Whether it was parents naming their kids after Ryan O'Neal or the runner, Jim Ryan, or some other reason entirely, the name Ryan hit the top 25 most popular boys' names in the '70s, stay there for the next four decades.

[music]

Ryan Wilde: Now, the name Ryan has its origins in Ireland.

Micheal O Mainnin: The name Ryan is a very old Irish name, so it's probably at least 1,000 years old and probably closer to 1,200 or 1,300 years old. It's also found in the common Irish surname, Paul Ryan or Sophie Ryan, whatever the O. My name is Micheal O Mainnin, and I'm a professor of Irish and [unintelligible 00:42:04] Queens University in Belfast.

Ryan Andrew: As English power in Ireland grew in the 17th century, Ryan became anglicized, and the name evolved from a last name to a first name.

Micheal O Mainnin: It's taught to be derived from the Irish word for King, which is Rí, the R-I was [unintelligible 00:42:21]. This is still the ordinary word, an Irish for King, and at the end means little in Irish is the definitive ending. Ryan does in deed mean little king.

Ryan Andrew: Back at the Ryan meetup, there were lots of folks in their 20s and 30s, and 40s, but managed to find the littlest king of them all.

[background noise]

?Speaker 12: Ryan is nine months old.

Ryan Wilde: Nine months. Can I ask why you decided to name him Ryan?

Speaker 12: Boys' names are really hard. There are two that I like, and Ryan just happens to be one of them. He really wants to eat your microphone.

Ryan Andrew: The thing about names is that, when you're a baby, you get no say in the matter. In life, we can choose our career, our friends, our partners, but our first names, not so much or so I thought, meet Ryan Chen.

Ryan Chen: I was actually born in China. When I came here, my parents were hoping that I can choose a name. One of the options they gave me was Ryan and they told me that it meant some kind of a king or something like that.

Ryan Wilde: A little King not by birth, but by choice. I feel like most people here probably were assigned the name but you chose Ryan.

Ryan Chen: I did, yes. I had many options. I could have been a Zachariah. Thank God I wasn't a Zachariah. I could have been a Michael, a little bit bland. The other option was Kevin, which I dodged the bullet without one. Can you imagine a Kevin meetup?

[background noise]

Ryan Wilde: By now, the place was packed. There must have been about 70 Ryans and the pride was through the roof.

Everyone: [chanting]

Ryan Wilde: Every king, even a little king, needs a castle. As luck would have it, I found Ryan de Castle, and yes, seriously, that's her name. I'm curious, what brings you here today?

Ryan de Castle: Literally, the Ryans have brought me out, and obviously the prospect of me being around so many others who I feel like are also probably were surprised, not a lot of Black girl Ryans, so that's very fun.

Ryan Wilde: I asked her how she got the name.

Ryan de Castle: I knew that it was a majority-male name but I asked my parents why did they name me something a little bit more masculine? They just said, "Why? To be a queen, you need to be the king." I thought that was great, and I've been Ryan [unintelligible 00:44:47] ever since.

Ryan Wilde: I caught up with Ryan Rose again, the organizer of the Ryan meetup.

Ryan Rose: I don't think there is an icebreaker which is beautiful. We all just feel like we already know each other. Any Ryan in this room could talk to anybody and they just immediately bond. It's a great interview.

Ryan Wilde: That's true. There was something egalitarian about the entire premise. Typical conversation norms went out the window at the Ryan meetup. You could skip the formalities. The whole, "Hi, my name is." You can just jump right in. The one thing that people were the most eager to talk about, Bryans.

[music]

Ryan Wilde: This is Ryan Chen again. He's the one who hand-picked the name Ryan when he was 11.

Ryan Chen: Bryans are our natural enemies. Maybe they have this aura or voodoo that prohibits our name from being spelled correctly. I think it's a conspiracy.

Ryan Wilde: The Bryan conspiracy theorists were on high alert. This is Ryan Grippi.

Ryan Grippi: If I'm being honest, coming here I thought this was a setup for the Bryans. The Bryans were just coming to trap us because we have always had a name so similar to Bryan that people at Starbucks specifically mishear us and think our names are Bryan.

Ryan Wilde: This definitely happens to me all the time. It's gotten to the point where I deliberately emphasize the R when saying my name, like Ryan, but people still call me Bryan. Here's Ryan Neff again.

Ryan Neff: I think there's a lot of times where it's confused with Bryan. Actually, there was one person that I met at an event and his name was Bryan, and my name was Ryan, so we were introducing ourselves to each other. He was like, "Hey, my name is Bryan," and I would go, "My name is Ryan." He'd be like, "No, no, my name is Bryan." I'm like, "Yes, I know. Hi, Bryan. My name is Ryan." It was this back-and-forth, and it was super awkward because I think we both got our names confused for each others.

Ryan Wilde: Another Ryan, Ryan Mitchell offered a diplomatic solution to the whole Ryan-Bryan war.

Ryan Mitchell: I feel like it comes with the Ryan lifestyle like you just have to own up to it, but also be calm about it, be humane about it. Just be like, "Hey, sorry, man, I think you got that the wrong way." That's not even the worst of it, that's the tip of the iceberg. One time, I went to a fast food restaurant, and my name came up on the receipt as Rain.

Ryan Wilde: As the party was wrapping up, I couldn't help but feel like I was in on something, in on the joke, part of the in-crowd. I wish that other people, people whose names are not Ryan, got to experience it all. At the end, I asked Ryan Rose, the organizer, if every name should have a meetup.

Ryan Rose: I would love for other people to have meetups with their same name. I think it's beautiful and everybody should experience it at one point, except for Bryans.

Ryan Wilde: My thanks to the dozens of Ryans I met at the meetup. See you all at the next one.

Everyone: [chanting]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I will always love that segment, and probably play it for all my friends named Bryan in the future. No, listen, that's all we've got for today, but before we go, Ryan, I just want to take an opportunity to say a few words to you, because it has been a real pleasure to work with you here on The Takeaway. It has been so much fun to listen to you play with different strategies of storytelling. I mean, you can do the serious political history of a place like Mason, Tennessee. You brought us these fully embodied experiences, like in your reporting on Music for the Deaf. I loved the piece on the emerging market of dry bars. Then, of course, the underground world of people named Ryan.

Listen, I know that your creativity, your commitment to getting the story right, and your willingness to head out into the field, they're all going to be really enormous assets for you, as you continue when I'm sure it's going to be a great audio career. I'm just hoping that this stop here at The Takeaway is at least as valuable as hanging out in Antarctica, scooping ice cream, and all of the other amazing gigs that you've had.

Ryan Wilde: Thanks, Melissa. It's been the honor of my career so far to work with you. I've learned so much from you. I'm just like deeply, deeply grateful for the one year that we've had together, and I will carry with me forward so much so thank you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Thanks, Ryan. We will be carrying your work with us as well. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and this is The Takeaway.

[music]

 

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