First today, Dan Taberski has been making podcasts for nearly a decade. His first podcast might be the one you know him for the most. "Missing Richard Simmons" was released in 2017 and left some listeners with mixed feelings. His latest podcast is called "Dan Taberski's Manifesto," and his work continues to make you feel things. For example, he says he thinks manifestos writ large get a bad rap.
Taberski: They get a scary rap. Most of the time when I hear manifesto, it's after hearing about somebody murdered like 12 people or somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through someone's window, or somebody shot the UnitedHealthcare CEO, like that type of stuff. But it's a shame. They shouldn't get a bad rap. And so that's part of the project, is that I'm trying to avenge the honor of the manifesto and take it away from people who use them for violence and bring it back to where it belongs. People with an eye in the future.
Moore: Why was that important for you?
Taberski: I've just been interested in them for a long time. I bought a book like 15 years ago called "101 Artist Manifestos," and I just thought it was the most interesting thing and the most interesting way of framing history and social movements and what the future could be. And I just thought it was really inspiring. And I would start seeing manifestos everywhere. But then they started to be attached to violence more and more. And I don't like that. I think it's almost a misuse of the name manifesto and it's a misuse of the real good that manifestos can do.
Moore: Throughout this series, you're not only telling us stories of manifestos, both good and bad, you're also creating your own manifesto on manifestos.
Taberski: Yes.
Moore: Why do you think it's important for people to know how to make a compelling manifesto?
Taberski: I think that's how big change gets made. I think people get sort of trained and lulled into thinking that big change comes from above, from like presidents and kings and legislators and money, big money, trillionaires, and things that you have no control over. And you're just kind of helpless in sort of accepting the futures that more powerful people decide are yours.
And I think manifestos, when you look at them close enough, and you start to notice them everywhere and you look at them throughout history, you start to see that time and again, manifestos are ways that regular people take power and decide their own futures. And they turn their anger into action. With a little bit of poetry and a lot of luck and nerve, you can change the course of history. And it comes from people. It comes from the bottom up. And I think that's really inspiring. And I think it's really like an important part of social change that I want to keep alive and really freaking celebrate.
Moore: Why do you think so many manifestos don't accomplish what they set out to do? The Occupy Wall Street one is one you focus on early in the series, and something that really drew me about it was the idea that there was this manifesto and there was this big movement. And one of the parts of the manifesto was that like, we won't decide what we say we're for until we all gather together, and then nothing ever really comes of it, right?
Taberski: Yeah. The Occupy Wall Street. First of all, most people don't realize that Occupy Wall Street started with a manifesto. It started by somebody sending out their thoughts and their feelings and a little bit of poetry and a big plan of action to 90,000 followers and posting on their blog and hoping that people would listen. Like, first of all, who would have the sort of nerve and ego to think that you could do that, that like, maybe I'm the one that's going to say the right thing and get people to act, that really move people to act. And in that case, it really worked. It was remarkable. And hundreds and then thousands and then tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of people all over the world reacted because of this manifesto.
Unfortunately, part of what was exciting about the manifesto is that it said, what's our one demand? We're all going to decide together. Part of the problem is that it said, what's our one demand? We're all going to decide together, and that nobody could decide. Nobody could agree on what they actually wanted for the future. They could agree on their anger. They could agree on their frustration that something about the system is not working. But the failure in that manifesto for me is that it didn't tell people, it didn't have a vision for the future beyond that anger. And I think a manifesto needs that. I think a manifesto needs to not just tell us what we're angry about, but tell us what we're going to do about it. And I think that's an important lesson to be learned from that one.
Moore: I wonder if there is an element of, people are afraid that the change won't be big enough, that their anger is big but the change won't be big enough, and therefore they don't move forward on a manifesto. Do you believe that a manifesto has to have a seismic change to be productive?
Taberski: No. I mean, Communist Manifesto is huge. The Declaration of Independence, huge, like changed the course of history for not just countries, but the world and the way we think about how we're governed and what's possible for people. But most manifestos are really small. Not small because they're all big in their ambition, but the sort of sphere that they're dealing with is small.
It could be about women's rights, it could be about gay rights, it could be about what it means to be a radical skateboarder. One of my favorite manifestos is the radical skateboarder manifesto for the 1980s. There's a manifesto for singles that was written in the '70s about singles who were sick of being treated as second-class citizens because they weren't married. And so they wrote a manifesto about, look, this is what it means to be single, and this is awesome, and the future is for single people. And there's a great manifesto about saving polka music that was written by a band called The Dreadnoughts. And so manifestos can be about big things, but they can be about really small things and really affect change in that way. And that's what makes them so exciting, is that you can have a manifesto inside of you.
Moore: There's a portion of the third episode of "Manifesto" where you interview a Thomas Jefferson impersonator as though he is actually Thomas Jefferson.
Taberski: Yeah.
Moore: For me, it was interesting because there's a moment where I can hear in your tone where it moves from a bit that you were playing a role in, to some sincerity. What was that moment like for you, where you went from this almost like Daily Show-esque, let's just see how far this will go, to I'm asking him actual follow-up questions and taking his responses seriously.
Taberski: Yeah. Well, first of all, he wasn't just a Thomas Jefferson impersonator, right? He was the Thomas Jefferson impersonator. He has been doing it for, I believe, most of his life, over 30 years for sure. He started doing it in Philadelphia, and then he moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, and started doing it there. He did it for like 20-some-odd years there. And then he got called to Monticello, and now he is the Thomas Jefferson impersonator who lives and works at Monticello. So if you go to Monticello, Jefferson's home in Virginia, you'll find him there.
And it's not just that he's acting like Thomas Jefferson with his wig on and the accent. But he's read all of his letters, and he's read everything he's ever written, over and over. And he spent years responding to people's questions as Thomas Jefferson. And there's a certain magic in that, to not just be an expert in somebody, but to embody that person. And I think he slipped in his mind to like, is he Thomas Jefferson or not?
And I almost didn't want to have that conversation because it is very Daily Show. And I was a producer of The Daily Show for years, and that is a very Daily Show thing to do, is talk to an impersonator, right? But there is a magic moment where I'm talking to him where I do feel like you do forget that it's not really Thomas Jefferson. And I really forget that it's not really Thomas Jefferson. And to be able to ask him if he was scared when he was signing the Declaration of Independence, and he gives a really moving answer. It's a special moment, and also just reminds you how perilous it was to be writing and signing the Declaration of Independence. It wasn't the Fourth of July fireworks when they were doing it then. It was a scary freaking thing they were doing. They were putting their necks on the line and it changed everything. So yeah, that's a really special moment for me. I'm glad you enjoyed that.
Moore: It is great because I think it really kind of is something you can only do in podcasting, if we're being honest. It's really only something where you can suspend disbelief and the farcical nature of it and still hold it as a sincere and intentional choice.
Taberski: Yeah, thank you. I agree, you can do things in audio. There's something about distilling everything away and just the voice, and not just the voice, but the pauses in the voice and the moments where he's thinking and I'm honestly reacting. There's a simplicity in that form that really allows you to sink into moments like that. That's why I could not love audio more, and especially for reasons like that.
Moore: Well, you are a prolific podcaster. People may be familiar with your show "Missing Richard Simmons." It's probably the show you're most known for. And some of your other work, like "Surviving Y2K," "9/12" and "Hysterical," all seem to have this common thread of memoir meets media analysis. Why do you think you're drawn to these types of stories?
Taberski: I really like breadth. I like a story that, it's the story, it's what's happening. It's, you know, Richard Simmons has disappeared. What does that mean? Or a bunch of girls have a potentially hysterical illness in upstate New York. What does that mean? But I like things that you can really expand out on. And it's not just that story, you can really see where that story sits in the larger world. So you're bringing other stories in and other conversations and people who have outside perspectives on it. And it just allows for this real creation of a universe.
And so by the end of six or eight episodes, if you've made it to that last episode, you're in, man. Then you can do and say anything and your heart is really open, cracked open a bit, to be moved in a way that I don't think happens in any other medium. And so it's a lot of work to get to that place, but it's pretty special and pretty unique to podcasting.
Moore: The podcast "9/12" is something that is a little special to me because my birthday is September 12, and I have a very visceral reaction to remembering 9/11 happening.
Taberski: How old were you at 9/11?
Moore: I was just getting ready to turn 12.
Taberski: Wow.
Moore: And the thing that sticks out to me about "Surviving Y2K" and "9/12" specifically is that these are moments that everyone has a story about, who was there and who was present at this time. And I think that's something that I'm sure helps you in your storytelling too, is that there's a bit of country music happening here, that the personal is the universal in these experiences, and that everyone has a personal experience with Y2K, who was there with 9/11, who was there. And I think that's a really creative way to tell stories too, is to take these very universal experiences and find hyper-personal experiences with that. And to that point, in a lot of your work, you include your own personal experiences in these works. Why is that important to you?
Taberski: I don't know that it's important. It's just where it always ends up going. And I think that started with "Missing Richard Simmons," in that I was doing this whole thing about Richard Simmons, and by the end it was like, well, what is my deal? Like, why will I not let this story go? Why is this so important to me, what's happened to this man, and trying to understand what's wrong. And I think it just reduced down to where I was and what it meant to me. And it was a real lesson.
I think there's something really beautiful about taking, forget me for a second, I think there's something beautiful about, especially with "9/12," about taking people's personal stories about that day and that experience and framing them in the larger context of all these other stories. It makes every single story much less alone. It makes every single personal experience much less solitary and more in communion with the rest of the world. And I've found it can be a really beautiful thing to do for other people. And I found that it's also a really moving thing to do for myself.
Like even just with "Surviving Y2K," my Y2K was a nightmare, right? It was like my whole world blew up, and I won't even get into the story, but my marriage ended on that day and it was just a mess. And I had always sort of ruminated on Y2K, on that day, as my own story and my own almost tragedy, right? But it wasn't. Now I look at it as like I was just one satellite of millions, like all rotating around one sun. And I was in concert with all these other stories, having all these other feelings and expressions of that day. And it made me feel less alone. And I think it does the same for other people. And I think the listening experience, when it works, is a very sort of, it just makes you feel part of the universal. So I think putting my story in there when it's warranted really helps do that, and really helps get me in that frame of mind.
Moore: In a world where podcasting is becoming synonymous with celebrities interviewing other celebrities with big studio microphones in front of their faces for an hour or so, you continue to make sound-rich, researched, deeply reported and written podcasts that would never work as a second-screen YouTube experience. Why?
Taberski: I don't know. I'm just very focused on what I want to do, what I have to offer and what is most satisfying for me to make. Sharing what I make is an enormous part of what I do. But the truth is, 90% of it is the making. 90% of it is me getting to have conversations with people and me thinking about their experiences and how we connected and how their experiences connect to other people's, and sort of writing to that and seeing what songs or movies or books it reminds me of and bringing that in. It's an experience for me. And so I'm just unwilling, in a very greedy, selfish way, to let that go.
That being said, I've evolved a million times with media. I started in news magazines and I went to basic cable and The Daily Show, and I went to television and then I went to film, then I went to podcasting. I'm no stranger to evolving, but I think at some point you dig in and you realize how much work you have left to do and how much more you have left to learn. I'm just going to keep doing that. And then maybe it'll come back around and I'll evolve in little ways as we go. And I'm still working on films and stuff, but I won't let this kind of storytelling go.
Moore: Dan Taberski is the host of the podcast "Dan Taberski's Manifesto." We spoke over Zoom yesterday.
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