Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and this is The Takeaway.

Thanks for starting your week with us. Late last month, we announced some sad news to you, our Takeaway listening community. After 15 years as the only daily national radio show and podcast produced by WNYC, the executives here at New York Public Radio have decided to cancel The Takeaway. Our very last episode will air on June 2nd.

As part of this cancellation, WNYC chose not to reassign any member of our fantastic team of radio makers and sonic storytellers. Listen, we just can't let this all go down without taking some time to showcase the truly extraordinary team of professionals who've been bringing you the stories that you value and the shows that you love. For the next two weeks before the final episode, we're going to be highlighting some of the work of our fabulous producers. We're calling it Our Producer Appreciation Weeks. Trust me, you do not want to miss these episodes. We're starting it all off today with our producer, Katerina Barton.

Katerina Barton: Hey, Melissa, great to be here behind the mic with you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes. Now, you're one of the four people on our current team who've been here at The Takeaway the longest.

Katerina Barton: I mean, I have nothing on Jay and Vince. They've been here for 15 years at WNYC, but, yes, I started back in January 2020 as an intern at The Takeaway, and around the same time that our line producer, Jackie Martin also started. Then I came back in 2021 and started working with you and this amazing team.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I totally remember that. It is an amazing team. Katerina, you're definitely one of the stars. I hope you know just how much I've relied on your sophisticated news judgment, your careful research, your clutch writing, your flawless editing, and one of the most important roles you've played for this team has been articulating our mission and helping all of us to think about the reasons why we make this show.

Katerina Barton: I really appreciate that. I think what I have loved most about working with you and producing for The Takeaway is that we cover daily news, but we also cover stories that you might not be hearing in other places. We also speak to people on the ground about how issues are impacting them. That's what we did with the residents of Gordon Plaza.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love this story. Remind our listeners about it.

Katerina Barton: I started talking to the residents of Gordon Plaza last year in April. Gordon Plaza is a subdivision in New Orleans. It was established in the late 1970s, and it was built and advertised as a place for middle and low income, predominantly Black families to create new opportunities to help them buy into the American Dream.

Melissa Harris-Perry: But that American Dream soon became a nightmare.

Katerina Barton: Exactly. What many of these families didn't know was that this land used to be an old landfill and it was just a general dumping ground, and all of this waste was leaching into the soil.

Speaker 3: We're being told we're living on top of a toxic waste landfill. We weren't aware of this when we purchased our homes.

Speaker 4: We are the second highest cancer causing neighborhood in the state of Louisiana.

Katerina Barton: It wasn't until 1994 when the EPA tested the land and designated it as a toxic superfund site.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Which means people are not supposed to be living there, right?

Katerina Barton: Yes, I remember I spoke with Wilma Subra. She is a technical advisor to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, and she had been working with the residents in the '80s and '90s trying to get the EPA to test the land. Just her description of it was kind of shocking.

Wilma Subra: Then you had benzene, toluene, xylene, ethylbenzene, the volatile organics that are known as suspected to be cancer causing agents, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons. Then you also see the heavy metals, mercury, lead, zinc, all of these things were combined in that landfill that this entire subdivision was built on top of. You could actually sit in people's yards and just with your hands, you could dig the grass and the very shallow surface soil out and get to the waste. The exposure was right there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh, that list of chemicals. Now, this story is from last year, but there have been some updates?

Katerina Barton: Yes, there have been some updates, and the city has moved forward with trying to relocate the residents. First, I think there's a lot of value in listening back to this segment before the city took any action and hear what the Gordon Plaza residents have gone through in their own words.

Jesse Giovanni Perkins: My name is Jesse Giovanni Perkins. I moved in Gordon Plaza in May of 1988.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Jesse bought a house for his mother and himself, and he told us he was "full of happiness" to be able to buy it outright without a mortgage, but he wasn't aware the home was built on toxic land.

Marilyn Amar: My name is Marilyn Amar, and I'm a resident of Gordon Plaza. My home was sold to me by the city of New Orleans, built on the top of the Agriculture Street landfill.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Marilyn first moved into the apartment complexes in the Gordon Plaza subdivision and then bought a home there.

Marilyn Amar: I moved in this area in 1970, not knowing this was a former dump site or landfill. That was not told to me when I moved into the apartment complex and lived there for years and then bought the home in Gordon Plaza, which is just a one block difference. That was not told to me about being a landfill where chemicals were dumped.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Both Jesse and Marilyn have been outspoken advocates for their community over the past three decades, and they've sought help from the city for relocation expenses, but they just don't feel like anyone is listening.

Jesse Giovanni Perkins: I'm under the impression that they don't really care. We're not a priority. Anytime you say you care about your people and the quality of life and public safety, then what is a bigger public safety issue, a quality of life issue than what we are being faced with? What else does it take? We don't live near a superfund site. We live on top of a superfund site.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Jesse told The Takeaway about the steps he takes to protect himself, his neighbors, and his family while doing everyday things like yard work and mowing the lawn.

Jesse Giovanni Perkins: I do the lawn around here, all my neighbors, I just do it. I do the entire block. When I'm doing it, I used to wear long sleeves, but I make sure when I'm stirring up the grass and the dust and everything else that's in there that I have a mask on. I was wearing a mask way before COVID came out because I didn't want to have all of that stuff going into my lungs and possibly exposing me. There's different transmission rates through the skin, from the pores, through ingestion and just breathing. I try to limit the amount of dust particles that I breathe when I do the lawn.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Jesse also wanted to put up swings and a slide in his backyard so his granddaughter could play, but he was concerned about exposing her to toxins in the soil.

Jesse Giovanni Perkins: We try as best as possible to give her as less contact with, especially bare spots in the yard. I try to mitigate those things if I got to put something over and cover it, but then I had my yard tested about three years ago and lead contamination was, I think, over 1,200 parts per million and I think that is more or less designated for a non-play area. I'm like, "My yard is an extension of my home so it should be a play area." We really, really became concerned for her because of her development and growth. What we did was we put a trampoline up and she goes and bounce on that and she's about 4ft above the ground and we feel comfortable with that. Not totally, but a little peace of mind.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Even as they try their best to keep themselves and their families' safe, illness and cancer have become routine realities for them. According to a 2019 report from the Louisiana Tumor Registry, Gordon Plaza's census track has the second highest cancer rate in the state, although the report also says it's hard to prove links between cancer and certain exposures, but Jesse has plenty of stories.

Jesse Giovanni Perkins: Two of my board members, one lady is about 78 years old and the other is about 72. They both are in remission from cancer. We have two people that are unofficial officers. They organize with us also. They both are in remission from cancer. Also, we've lost two people right down the street from where I live from multiple cancers, including brain cancer and bone cancer.

Right around the corner, a 16-year-old girl died from leukemia. Next door to that young lady, a 63-year-old lady passed from multiple myeloma. One of the ladies who in remission from cancer, her husband died about six months ago to colon cancer. One of the ladies that's in remission from cancer, her husband is currently battling colon cancer. One of the other neighbor's husband, he's on his third trial of chemo and radiation. It's very widespread throughout the community.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Marilyn has experience with this too.

Marilyn Amar: I'm a five-year breast cancer survivor. I have respiratory problems. I have skin ailments from living on this toxic landfill.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's not only cancer.

Jesse Giovanni Perkins: Five people within a one-block span of where I live including my mother developed dementia. I guess people would say, "Well, what does dementia have to do with these carcinogens?" Well, arsenic from the research that I've done is linked somehow to dementia.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As the Louisiana Tumor Registry report noted, these things are hard to prove, but Jesse and Marilyn, they're quite convinced.

Marilyn Amar: Well, my children grew up here, but when they finished college, they left Louisiana. My son was ill for years. He had to drop out of college for some time. He had to have different types of surgeries because he had stomach problems and part of his intestines had to be removed because of living on this chemical landfill dump site. He had to drop out of school, go back when he was well, drop out again, go back, but when he finally graduated from college, he left Louisiana altogether. He comes to visit, he cannot stay over two days, he gets ill. My Children live away from Louisiana and they live away from New Orleans. They very seldom come back to this area.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, some people might be listening to this and asking, "Why not just move?" You have to remember this was a community built for elderly and low-income families in the 1980s. The land has depreciated in value because of its status as a superfund site. The 54 families left in this development, many feel trapped, but they continue to fight to be relocated.

Marilyn Amar: I can't afford to leave. I'm retired on a limited income, no one is going to give me a loan to buy another home, plus I'm a senior citizen, I can't afford to start a new mortgage. If I could, I would not be here.

Jesse Giovanni Perkins: People question that, "Well, if you know it's there, why don't you all just leave?" If it were that simple, we'd all be gone. It's much more complicated than that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Jesse says even if you can afford to leave, there's still a matter of principle.

Jesse Giovanni Perkins: Let's just say it's not just about the money. It's going to take money to make this situation right for us. It is. There's nothing else that's going to do it, and the city has the money. That is the sad irony of this whole situation. We don't want to die out here. We're going to die one day, all of us are going to die, but I don't want to die because my city neglected to do the right thing to remove me from a toxic waste landfill.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The residents have called this a prime example of environmental injustice and racism.

Katerina Barton: That's right. Here's one last clip from Marilyn.

Marilyn Amar: We're Black families. These homes were sold to low and moderate-income Black families. This is why we've gone through six mayors. This is why we are still here. The fight was really strong back in 1994, but the people just gave up, died out, and gave up. Now, since Hurricane Katrina, we started up again with the fight and we're not giving up because we want to live a quality of life not on this toxic landfill. We want our future generations not to have to live on this landfill. That's why we're still in the fight and we're not giving up, but I do believe because we're all Black families, and that is one of the reasons why we're still here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, KB, earlier you said that there are some updates?

Katerina Barton: Yes, Melissa. Those families are still fighting. Last year, there was some movement in that fight, and in June, the New Orleans City Council allocated $35 million to buy the Gordon Plaza homes from residents and pay for their moving and relocation expenses.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That means there is some good news?

Katerina Barton: Well, yes, but it's still an ongoing process. The residents are still negotiating with the city council, and as you can imagine, there's a lot of bureaucratic red tape around how taxpayer money can be spent. It's a slow process, but I talked to Marilyn and Jesse recently, and they're hopeful that this nearly three-decade fight may be finally drawing to an end.

[music]

Katerina Barton: This segment is one that we were really excited about because it accidentally became a segment about lady truckers.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Lady truckers. This is like a cool classic favorite segment for me. I loved hearing from them.

Katerina Barton: Me too. I loved hearing a different side of the trucking industry than you normally hear about. This story started out as a pitch about the supply chain shortage and the shortage of truck drivers during the beginning of the pandemic, but I ended up reaching out to two lady truckers and they had some great insights to share. Just a side note, shout out the amazing control room for the music and sound effects you're about to hear.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Trucking is an overwhelmingly male industry, but that is slowly changing.

[MUSIC - Jerry Reed: East Bound and Down]

Melissa Harris-Perry: A 2019 survey for women in trucking shows that 10% of over-the-road or long-haul truckers are women. That's up to 7.8% the year before.

Gretchen Waters: Yes, here we go again. Can you imagine having to be at work all day and listening to this beeping sound?

Melissa Harris-Perry: This is Gretchen Waters. She's an over-the-road truck driver and travels all over the country making deliveries. Right now, she's hauling dog food from Joplin, Missouri to Atlanta, Georgia. Now, that beeping sound is a motion detector and it goes off any time a car cuts her off. Despite that regular annoyance, Gretchen genuinely enjoys driving trucks.

Gretchen Waters: I really like it. It's a job that you get paid the same no matter what you look like, no matter what age you are. All they really want is for you to be on time, communicate effectively, keep all the tires pointed in the right direction. [chuckles] That is not hard to do. It really isn't.

[music]

[sound effects]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Trucking is not just about working on the road, it's about living on the road.

Gretchen Waters: It's kind of like working from home in that you're living in this little studio apartment situation. Personally, I sleep up on the top bunk for safety. If somebody were to break into the truck in the middle of the night, I would much prefer to be up above where they might not be expecting me and where I can try to deal with the situation from above, and I have a piece of finished plywood on the bottom bunk which allows me to cook, allows my dog space to be. It allows me space to roll out my yoga mat and workout and work on some of my arts and craft projects and stuff.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love that Gretchen is doing yoga and arts and crafts on the road, but supply chain delays and worker shortages not only affect consumers, they also impact workflow for drivers like Gretchen.

Gretchen Waters: It just means that it's a lot harder to manage the personal aspects of my life. It's harder to manage my time because this job really is a lot about discipline and time management. There really are only so many hours in the day to be able to live out all the different parts of who you are as a person. That has to get worked into a lot of unknown variables which already includes construction traffic, urban traffic, breakdowns, and equipment. Out here, you just really have to be ready for literally anything.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: While she does love her job, she acknowledges it can be draining.

Gretchen Waters: A part of the reason that there is a truck driver shortage is that this job is not for everybody. It really requires an incredible amount of personal endurance and stamina, a lot of solid support in your home life. It really is a big deal to have a stable situation at home. I know a lot of people get off the road because they cannot be present for what's happening at home, which is just as important to them as what's going on out here, but the sacrifice that truck drivers make is that you are never anywhere and you're also never really at home. That's a big reason why a lot of people can't stay in the industry and why it's hard to attract new people.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Early hours requiring stamina, endurance, and sacrifice just might be part of the story of the truck driver shortage.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. Of course, you know the classic car talk. We're doing some truck talk.

Katerina Barton: Right. I love the thought of Gretchen in her truck reflecting on her job and sending us voice memos. In this segment, Melissa, you also spoke with Jennifer Smith, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and Tierra Allen, also known as The Sassy Trucker.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Tierra, you really are The Sassy Trucker. I've seen you on Twitter and Instagram. Talk to me a little bit about what it means to be a woman and a good-looking young woman who is driving trucks. Are people surprised when you get out of the truck? Are they helpful and happy or do you face discriminatory practices?

Tierra Allen: Well, me being a young female truck driver, a lot of the people are surprised when I get out of the truck. Some people are very helpful. Sometimes when I'm at the shipper getting loaded and unloaded, they may offer to help me back up the truck. Sometimes they may even ask me, they buy me lunch. With me sometimes, I love that because I the attention that comes with it and the benefits.

Also, I like how sometimes I'm at the fuel station, they even come over to offer to pump my gas. Since I do YouTube and I share my stories along the way, a lot of people from social media, they notice me at the truck stop. They say, "Hey, you're The Sassy Trucker. I watch your videos all the time. I like how you inspire other women truckers to become truck drivers as well."

Melissa Harris-Perry: I wonder, Tierra, do you ever worry about personal safety as a result of that? We were talking with another woman driver who was talking about if someone were to break in for example. I just wonder when you're driving by yourself, do you still feel secure?

Tierra Allen: I feel secure because my truck has a little alarm on it, a button, it's called panic mode. It's in the back of the sleeper, so if someone comes near the truck, it'll just go off and they'll alarm my dispatchers that there's someone near my truck. That's one thing that I do like about it. Also, I use the seatbelt technique where you put the seatbelt around the door so someone tries to get in, they won't be able to get inside of the truck.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love it. You've thought about those thighs. Jen, I'm wondering in an industry trucking where you have such a high percentage of men, very few women, and we know that so many women have been pushed out of the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic if one of the things that's happening is that trucking companies might actually be seeking to recruit women, and if so, what they're doing in order to make that possible?

Jennifer Smith: Well, trucking companies have been trying to recruit female drivers for some time. In part, that's because they tend to have slightly better driving records, which maybe, I don't know if Tierra has some thoughts on that. They've been pushing for a long time to try and get more women in the industry. For the reasons that were outlined at the opening of the segment, you're away from home a lot. One of the reasons women have been pushed out of the labor force during the pandemic is because the lack of childcare.

The pandemic is exposing issues in the industry that have been happening for decades. I am sure they would love to hire more women. I actually did speak with a young woman who had just started trucking recently in the last couple months and she loves it. There may be more folks like her and Tierra out there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Well, Katerina, since we're all out here looking for work, maybe team Takeaway needs to think about trucking as our next long-haul gig.

Katerina Barton: Oh yes. Takeaway truckers. One thing that wasn't in the original story but Gretchen shared with me is that she listens to Public Radio out there on the road and also gave us a little shout-out.

Gretchen Waters: My home radio station is WUGA in Athens, Georgia. I listen to The Takeaway. It comes on at 3:00 PM, I listen online. One thing I really like about my job is it allows me to just really take in a lot of new information. It's really great having the freedom and stress-free, pressure-free situation in order to just be able to learn new things and opened my mind. I want to thank everybody who works in public radio for all the content that you produce and for keeping me company out here on the road.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Gretchen, if you're out there and still listening, thank you. We are so proud to have kept you company. You're listening to The Takeaway, I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and today, we're drawing the curtains back a bit and getting a little behind-the-scenes look at how we make The Takeaway. Still with me is one of our producers, Katerina Barton.

Katerina Barton: Hey, MHP, it's KB here, and I know that sometimes people don't like to know how the sausage gets made, but hopefully this will be a little fun insight into The Takeaway team.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh well, listen, we're not making sausage. No animals were harmed in the making of this radio. In fact, pups and kitties and noisy neighborhood bird life make pretty regular appearances in our morning Zoom meetings.

Katerina Barton: That's true. Your dogs are often a current appearance and those pet-filled remote morning meetings are where we pitch new ideas and it's where we give feedback on what we've already aired. Last June, during Pride Month, we'd already produced many segments talking about and with people in the LGBTQ+ community. We had a series called Aging While Queer and we talked about the new queer romcom Fire Island, which was fire.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Of course, we had our ongoing series, Black Queer Rising.

Katerina Barton: Right. Across all of it we were using the word queer, and then our executive assistant, David Gebel, posed a bit of a challenge to our team.

David Gebel: I think if we would take everyone on The Takeaway team and we are a very diverse team and have them each write down the definition of queer on a piece of paper and one by one read them, we would get wildly different answers. What does it mean?

Melissa Harris-Perry: That's when it got really interesting because we had all the questions just within our team, what does queer mean to folks from the academy versus broadway, seasoned journalists versus young reporters, Gen-Xers, Millennials, and Zoomers. I mean, what does the term mean to those who are in community and those who are allies?

Katerina Barton: Exactly. We turned all of these questions into its own segment and interrogated our own use of the word queer.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Of course, we had some great listeners who called in to tell us what queer meant to them.

Francine: Hi, this is Francine from Petersburg. How do I feel about the word queer? I love the word queer. I wear it as a badge of honor. It was one of the first words that felt like home to me.

Dawn: Hi, I'm Dawn from San Diego, California. I was working at a gay and lesbian bookstore in the '80s and I couldn't stand the word queer. Then a friend came by wearing a Queer Nation shirt and I said, "What is this? How can you do this when that's the word they call us." He said, "My dear, they're going to call us queer no matter what. I'm taking back a word and I'm proudly wearing it and you should too." I did and I proudly identify as queer.

Katerina Barton: To dive more into the history and etymology of the word queer, we spoke with Michael Brodsky a longtime activist and author, and currently a professor of the practice at Harvard University.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about how this broad term queer can be so disruptive. What does it mean to embrace disruption rather than ask for inclusion or are they part of the same project?

Michael Brodsky: I think it's very instructive to think about where the first use of the word queer as a reclaimed word is 1990 from a group called Queer Nation. That happens after 10 years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in an ocean of enormous anger and hurt and pain. At that point, people, activists were so angry of government inaction of common apathy towards men with HIV and AIDS that they needed a word that would actually disrupt the more common civil discourse of gay rights or gay politics and queer did that. Queer was shocking. Queer was in your face. Queer said, "We are queer and we're angry and we're not going away." In that way, if you look at a politic of queer disruption, meaning to upend the system, very different than to assimilate into the system.

Katerina Barton: I went to the Brooklyn Pride Parade in Park Slope and I talked to people on the street about the word queer and what it meant to them.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What was it like going out and interviewing folks in person?

Katerina Barton: It was my first vox pop reporting, so I was a little nervous. I actually brought some friends out with me so I didn't look so awkward standing there alone with a microphone. I was really hoping people wouldn't be annoyed with me for trying to interrupt them and trying to talk with them, but everyone was actually really nice and we had some good conversations.

Speaker 15: Everybody knows that the best Pride happens in the center of the universe, that is Brooklyn, New York.

[crowd cheering]

Speaker 16: I use the word queer to describe myself. I think that it's all-encompassing description of a community and I think it brings us all together.

Speaker 17: I love it. I think it's powerful. I think it's an umbrella term. Whoever wants to use it uses it.

Katerina Barton: How do you feel about the word queer?

Speaker 18: I know the young people have reclaimed it, but it really doesn't work for me.

Speaker 19: At first when the word queer came out, after high school for me, it was strange for me to hear that. Once I found out the definition of it, I think it's beautiful. I think it's good. Yes.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love this segment because we really had an opportunity to hear from people with such a wide range of opinions about this word.

Katerina Barton: Yes. I really learned a lot. We even posed this question to our guest Michael Brodsky from Harvard University, who was giving us a little background on the history of the word. We first heard from Jude who is non-binary and queer.

Jude: I think queer inherently is permission to be in a community of individuals that don't want to be a part of the status quo, can't be a part of the status quo, and are just fulfilled and happy being themselves and with other people and exploring who they are as individuals outside of the confines of what it means to be in a binary, whether it's gender or sexuality or whatever.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Michael, what do you hear in the ways that they're making use of queer there?

Michael Brodsky: It's a liberatory word and I think if you look at the history of the gay movements, because I believe there are multiple movements that have always been happening in the United States, right? There's a gay liberation movement that started right after Stonewall with the Gay Liberation Front, which actually has its roots in the Black Liberation Movement and Women's Liberation Movement. Then there's the Gay Rights Movement. Both of these are completely valid movements and both of them sometimes work in concert and sometimes you're up against one another. What queer does, right, it really speaks to the impulse of gay liberation, meaning to be liberated from the norm.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In that sense, is the word too much of an umbrella? By creating space for so many, does it remove specificity about very particular histories and experiences?

Michael Brodsky: It has that potential and it certainly has had that actuality in many people. I can remember being at a queer studies conference at Harvard in 1990. At the end of the conference, a lesbian stood up and she said, "I hate the word queer, it's one more way for gay men, not to say lesbian."

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. I want to hear from Sarah and Shep, both in their 70s, really around this issue.

Sarah: I find it offensive. We were beaten for too many years and called queer. I'm a lesbian, I'm proud of being a lesbian. I find the word queer offensive.

Shep: I know young people like it, but if they were victims of homophobia back in those days and being called queer, they would not like it so much. I don't like when they say reclaiming it, because it was never ours to begin with. They're not reclaiming it, they're co-opting it from heterosexuals who use it against us.

Michael Brodsky: Shep's argument that it's not reclaiming but it's co-opting is really interesting. This is argument I've never heard before. I think what we're hearing right is differences of experience. What Sarah was saying I think is quite correct that if people had lived through a certain time period, then creates an identity that is very specific to that time period, and that identity may not adapt to the present or what younger people are feeling. I completely respect people who are uncomfortable with it. I respect their experience and their opinion. They're fighting an uphill battle against history because it is so commonly used now.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, we've got some more segments highlighting the work of our producer, Katerina Barton, when we return. It's The Takeaway Producer Appreciation Weeks.

[music]

Thanks for sticking with us on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. I'm back with Takeaway Producer, Katerina Barton, as we're kicking off our Producer Appreciation Weeks in advance of the final episode of The Takeaway on June 2nd.

Katerina Barton: Hey, Melissa. Now I know it's May and we're hearing some Christmas music playing in the background, and I know you agree with me because I've already seen your holiday sweater collection, but it really is the most wonderful time of the year.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh, it really is. Thank you for noticing that my Christmas sweater collection is staggering.

Katerina Barton: Oh, yes. A different sweater for every meeting. I also know that you also love a good holiday movie because we definitely talked about it, and I do too. My cousin and I once had high hopes for starting a movie podcast where we would just watch and review all of the amazing and terrible Christmas movies that start coming out around Halloween.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Katerina, have you just revealed your post-Takeaway plans?

Katerina Barton: I mean, all I need is a podcast name now and we're good to go. [chuckles] One of my favorite things about The Takeaway is that we do the serious news topics and analysis, but we also have a lot of fun on the show. We have our very own movie critic duo who like to bless us with their movie prescriptions for the various occasions.

Kristen Meinzer: I'm Kristen Meinzer.

Rafer Guzman: I'm Rafer Guzman.

Kristen Meinzer: Together we host Movie Therapy with Rafer & Kristen.

Katerina Barton: By the way, Kristen and Rafer are Takeaway family. Kristen was a producer here for years. Kristen and Rafer were the show's regular on-air movie critics. Obviously, this movie therapy session that we're about to play for you is focused on holiday movie prescriptions.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Easily one of my all-time favorites for these two. I still can't get over what Kristen said about how many movies she watches.

Kristen Meinzer: I usually try to watch about 60 holiday movies in 60 days in the lead up to Christmas all the way through early January. I see them in the theater. I watch made-for-TV movies. I watch classics. I don't discriminate. I'll watch everything from the latest on Hallmark to the very exciting and very violent action movie, Violent Night. I will watch it all and I will love it all and I will stand up and cheer and I will feel the holiday magic.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love it. How about you, Rafer? Are you with us on this?

Rafer Guzman: For some strange reason, I'm not a big Christmas movie fan, but my Christmas spirit comes from music, and I have a playlist of probably a few thousand songs and they're all very obscure. You can't find them on streaming services. I compile them all on an old iPod and I plug it into my stereo and I drive my family insane with all these bizarre Christmas songs that I play every year. That's my Christmas ritual.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love that your Christmas gift to others is something that they hate.

Rafer Guzman: That's exactly right.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That's the spirit of giving there.

[music]

Katerina Barton: All three of you together just brings me so much joy. I can't even explain it. These segments are so fun for me to produce. I always get some new movie prescriptions from Rafer and Kristen too.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's listen to a couple of those movie pics. Kristen, I want to get right into your movie prescriptions. You have one from this year. You say that this is the best Hallmark holiday movie. Let's take a listen.

Sam: Who are you?

Jason: Jason, we're your family's neighbor.

Kathleen: Jason's great with kids.

Sam: I just need someone to help me until I get the hang of things.

Kristen Meinzer: Oh, my gosh. This is The Holiday Sitter and it is Hallmark's first official gay Christmas romcom. It's star's Hallmark holiday star Jonathan Bennett, who many of us know best as Lindsay Lohan's crush in Mean Girls. In The Holiday Sitter, he plays a child-free commitment for big city, New York single who gets cornered into babysitting his sister's kids in the suburbs during the holidays. Along the way, he enlists the help of one of his sister's neighbors, a very handsome handyman who happens to be great with kids played by George Krissa. Of course, the two hit it off, but can they overcome their differences? Will Christmas magic prevail? I'm not going to tell you. You have to watch to find out. It is a delight.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's a Hallmark movie. Is Christmas magic going to prevail? Come on.

Kristen Meinzer: [laughs] No spoilers here, but yes, it will.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Rafer, you also have a prescription for this season, a best movie version of an ugly Christmas sweater. What does that mean?

Rafer Guzman: Well, yes, I call this an ugly Christmas sweater. I'll explain in a minute. This is a Netflix movie. We all have a Lindsay Lohan connection here too. This actually is the comeback of Lindsay Lohan. It's called Falling for Christmas. It is her first major movie role in nearly a decade. She plays Sierra Belmont. It's a thinly disguised version of Paris Hilton, if you ask me. She's a rich, spoiled hotel heiress who's never worked a day in her life.

One day, Sierra goes up to a mountaintop with her boyfriend Tad, who surprises her with a proposal just like Paris Hilton's fiancé did, as you may recall. In this case, Sierra accidentally falls off the mountaintop, bumps her head and develops amnesia. Oh no. She wakes up in the arms of a handsome, conveniently widowed guy named Jake, played by Chord Overstreet. Of course, now rich Sierra, will have to be put to work in Jake's humble ski lodge. Now, okay, here is why I call this an ugly sweater movie, because I personally found it eye-watering. I could barely look at this film while it was playing on my television screen.

Kristen Meinzer: What, Rafer? I loved it.

Rafer Guzman: Oh, I knew you'd love it, I knew you'd love it, Kristen. I gave this one of my rare zero star reviews. However, the movie was a hit for Netflix. It was their number one movie briefly in November. You can find some pretty positive reviews out there. I will say Lindsay Lohan is actually not bad in it. You can see a little glimmer of the old magic there. I would say some people found this ugly sweater of a movie to be charming and endearing. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing it, but some things are a matter of taste. If you're a Lindsay Lohan fan, check out Falling for Christmas.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I would wear that sweater year-round, Rafer. I mean amnesia, Lindsay Lohan, Christmas?

Rafer Guzman: Yes, it's a little bit like It's a wonderful overboard is how I would put this movie.

[laughter]

[music]

Katerina Barton: This is such a fun segment and I love how grumpy Rafer is about Hallmark movies, and you and Kristen are just so into them, and I really hope our listeners are having as much fun with this as we are.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I hope so too. I'm going to miss being able to do this, this holiday season because there's nothing better than sharing some holiday cheer with a healthy dose of holiday movie prescriptions from Rafer Guzman and Kristen Meinzer, even if it's May.

Katerina Barton: This next piece is another fun one and has everything to do with the word play.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Right, because we did this as part of our summer play series. We were all trying to think outside the box about how adults play and have fun and preserve their childlike spirit well into adulthood.

Katerina Barton: While I was researching some ideas, I came across a unique spin on what everyone calls America's national pastime.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Now a lot of people have been calling baseball too long and too boring for many years, so much so that this year, Major League Baseball made a few key changes to make the sport faster-paced and to draw in new audiences.

Katerina Barton: Yes, but I heard of a minor league team out in Savannah, Georgia who was already doing this and it actually looked like a lot of fun. The Savannah Bananas are an unconventional baseball team that has nearly six million followers on TikTok. That's more than any major league baseball team. I would be lying if I said I didn't spend a few hours watching Savannah banana TikToks for the research.

Melissa Harris-Perry: [chuckles] All right then, let's roll that tape.

Hype man: On three everyone in this stadium is going to say play ball. One, two, three.

Fans: Play ball.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This wildly popular minor league baseball franchise has sold out every home game at their historic Grayson Stadium in Savannah, Georgia since its founding in 2016. Fans come from miles away to watch the bananas collegiate team in the summer and the pro banana throughout the rest of the year. These pros have become famous for their high energy quick pace and quirky game of banana ball.

Hype man: This is not baseball. This is not your granddad's pastime. This is the time for all 4,000 people here tonight to get up on your feet and give me your voices because this is the greatest show in sports. This is banana ball.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you just heard, it's not just a game, it's a show where fans, players, and coaches alike dance, sing, and play. A number of sports reporters have compared the team's fun-filled approach to the trailblazing style of the Harlem Globetrotters. Savannah Banana games include choreographed dances during the game, iconic walk-ups, players in kilts, and sometimes even a pitcher on stilts and of course, lots of banana costumes. Before the first pitch is thrown, there's a Lion King-themed tribute to a different banana baby each game.

[music]

Hype man: Keep them going fans, because it is now time to be tonight's banana baby.

[applause]

[crowd cheering]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Here with me now is Jesse Cole, owner of The Savannah Bananas. Fun fact, he owns seven yellow tuxedos and wears one to every game. Jesse, welcome to The Takeaway.

Jesse Cole: I am so excited to be with you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Maceo Harrison is the first base dance coach and choreographer for The Savannah Bananas. Maceo, welcome to The Takeaway.

Maceo Harrison: Hello, I'm so excited to be here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Maceo, can I start with you because there's all kinds of debate about this? Are you the first base dance coach or the dancing first base coach?

Maceo Harrison: [laughs] Well, it's either or. It's however you play it. Whatever you're comfortable with. I always say first base dancing coach, but dancing first base coach is fine as well.

Melissa Harris-Perry: [chuckles] I love that. It's just, I was saying to my doctor, I was like, "Is the skill that he's teaching first basing or is the skill that he's teaching dancing." [chuckles]

Maceo Harrison: It's dancing and entertainment and goofiness, but yes, whatever rolls off the tongue the easiest for people, I just let it happen.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What is banana ball, Jesse?

Jesse Cole: [chuckles] It's the world's fastest and most entertaining game of baseball. Yes, we invented a new game with a two-hour time limit, where batters can steal first, batters can't step out of the batter's box, there's no bunting. Even if fans catch a foul ball, it's an out. It's crazy.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love the idea that fans catching it also constitutes an out. It gives everybody with some stake in this game. You spoke a little bit here about the inspiration to make these kinds of changes, going from being a player to being an observer and suddenly having a different experience of the game, but what are the other core inspirations for you, Jesse?

Jesse Cole: Well, seven years ago, my wife and I came to Savannah to launch a brand new team. We only sold two tickets in our first few months. By January of 2016, we overdrafted our account, we were completely out of money. We had nothing left, we were sleeping on an air bed. We knew we just had to do something that could get a bigger group of people excited to come see us play. I read every book on Walt Disney and PT Barnum and started looking at the people that have brought so much fun to the masses.

We said, "We're not in the baseball business, we're in the entertainment business." We just started asking every question, "What can we do that fans first and what can we do to entertain always?" We've been fortunate now, every game sold out and the waitlist is over 75,000 for tickets. It just blows my mind from where we started.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's funny, as you are saying that, this is part of our ongoing segments around the issue of play. Jesse, I guess I'm wondering when you are in that moment that is sleeping on the air mattress, right? I've come to these kind of what feel like end-of-the-road moments in-- It can be hard to feel playful, especially if your spouse is there, if your family is there, how do you maintain a sense of experimentation and play when you're facing like, "Okay, we got to pay some bills here."

Jesse Cole: [chuckles] We had no other options. I wish I'd go back and say it was this clear thing that we did, but we just got up every day, showed up, and we believed in something. When you truly believe in something and you believe in every game our players deliver roses to little girls in the middle of the game, every game Maceo not only does dancing and people go crazy, but he gets in the crowd, he interacts with thousands of fans in the middle the game.

I knew that if we could do that, we'd break down the barriers, and so it's hope, it's optimism, but it's just showing up. I realized that, my wife and I, that if we could just get people to show up that first game and see it, we'd be okay. Luckily, they came and the rest is history.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Jesse Cole is the owner of The Savannah Bananas. Jesse. Thanks for joining us.

Jesse Cole: Thank you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Maceo Harrison is the dancing first base coach or the first base dance coach. He's also the choreographer for The Savannah Bananas. Maceo, thank you for being here.

Maceo Harrison: Thank you so much. This was a blast. I love talking to you guys.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, folks, that's it for us today. Before we go, I just need to take a minute to say a few words about Katerina Barton.

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Listen, making radio is definitely a team sport and Katerina is what we call a franchise player. She does it all. The pitches that she brings to the table are relevant, timely and on brand. She also services lots of original, engaging, unique, and as you heard, fun ideas. Well, she's more than just an idea factory. Katerina is unparalleled in execution. She finds guests, she dives into facts, she preps questions, and she writes the cleanest copy around, but wait, there's more.

On any given morning, Katerina might be playing the role of fill-in line producer. She might lead the morning meeting as backup for a senior producer. Afternoons could find her out in the field on assignment, and evenings she might be helping out with script edits for the team. She's steady, accountable, kind, and incredibly talented. Katerina is simply a quietly inspiring team leader. But for me, what sets Katerina apart is her heart for the stories that she tells. I know you heard it today. Her heart isn't every single one of them. Thanks so much just for being you, KB.

Katerina Barton: Oh, thank you so much, Melissa. The Takeaway has been home for me for a really long time and it's nice to hear those words.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, everybody. Thanks so much to all of y'all for listening. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. This is The Takeaway.

 

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