"I Just Am That B*tch": Ilana Glazer on Broad City, Broadway and Bursting Bubbles

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Pablo Torre: Hi, Pablo. Good to see you. Thanks for coming in.

Ilana Glazer: Hi. Nice for having me.

Pablo Torre: I hope this wasn't an annoying commute.

Ilana Glazer: No. Why would it be A, annoying, or B, more annoying than any other commute?

Pablo Torre: I don't know. Commute. Thank you. Do you do the headphones?

Ilana Glazer: Doesn't matter.

Pablo Torre: Why not?

Ilana Glazer: Let's do no.

Pablo Torre: So it's like UN General Assembly week. So genuinely a horrifying traffic proposition.

Ilana Glazer: Oh, yeah, sure, traffic, but the whole thing is horrifying.

Pablo Torre: Yeah. Do you feel represented geographically? Where you live, does it feel right for you?

Ilana Glazer: It does feel right because I'm now a washed dad.

Pablo Torre: Copy that. I didn't know you were a dad.

Ilana Glazer: I have a five-year-old who started kindergarten. Washed.

Pablo Torre: Ugh, I just learned about this slang. Get over it.

Ilana Glazer: Get over it. You're cool.

Pablo Torre: Shut up. Also, you're a nerd. Me too. Like, great. All of these things can—we can contain multitudes.

Ilana Glazer: That's right. We have a five-year-old, you said.

Pablo Torre: Yeah, yeah. And you have a—

Ilana Glazer: I have a four-year-old.

Pablo Torre: Okay. Yeah. So, I feel represented because I'm surrounded by either small children and their parents or extremely old people who I aspire to be one day.

Ilana Glazer: A hundred percent. Desperate, honestly. Like a little desperate to be them.

Pablo Torre: Yeah. I've gone from, oh, I wish I was in a cool neighborhood to I want to trace the arc of the life I wish to live every day when I walk outside my building.

Ilana Glazer: I love it. That's honestly beautiful to me. I was just talking to a comedian yesterday. She's 27 years old. She lives in Murray Hill and she's ready to make the move to Brooklyn, which means I'm older now to her.

Pablo Torre: So it's like Murray Hill, that's I wouldn't call that cool I'd call that a party neighborhood.

Ilana Glazer: So what's so funny is that I grew up there.

Pablo Torre: Oh right, you're— I mean your characterization is correct as I often have to point out to people it wasn't always a place where consultants went to vomit.

Ilana Glazer: Oh my god.

Pablo Torre: And now of course it is entirely that. It's only that.

Ilana Glazer: Oh god, it's so pukey. I'm shook that you grew up in New York City because I'm from Long Island and it's just mostly transplants if not from around the world, from the suburbs.

Pablo Torre: So you grew up here.

Ilana Glazer: I grew up here. That's major.

Pablo Torre: That's major. Thank you, Ilana Glazer, for being here, by the way.

Ilana Glazer: Thank you, Pablo Torre, for having me. I introduced myself to you. We had not met before earlier this year, and you came to the set of Morning Joe, where I happened to be co-hosting that day.

[Clip plays]: Joining us now, one of the stars of Good Night and Good Luck, Emmy Award-winning actor Ilana Glazer, who is also making her Broadway debut. She plays the trailblazing CBS News journalist, Shirley Worshba.

Pablo Torre: And I accosted you in a way that in a deposition, I would be arrested for.

Ilana Glazer: Girl, no. It was not accosting, but it was shocking. And I wouldn't say aggressive, but it was like you had literally, we had shared space. At different points in time.

Pablo Torre: At different points in time. So tell your people, tell the people. So what I told you as I leaned across the table past the other co-hosts, and I was like, hey, just so you're aware.

Ilana Glazer: Just honing and just focused in. I was the bullseye.

Pablo Torre: Here's a thing I've been meaning to tell you, Ilana Glazer, for literally 10 years.

Ilana Glazer: Cup it out.

Pablo Torre: Despite never having reached out to you before, which is I'm pretty sure we lived in the same apartment. And we had.

Ilana Glazer: Let's not say the address, even though neither of us live there anymore.

Pablo Torre: You don't want to retroactively dox us?

Ilana Glazer: No, it's like scary. Just exact addresses are frightening.

Pablo Torre: But we had. I will say that it's in the East Village, generally speaking. And I'll say that because the reason I knew this is even creepier because I went through my email and I was like, when? So me and my roommate, to be clear, this is a lovely two bedroom.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah.

Pablo Torre: In the East Village. Right. Recognized first and foremost, I would say, for its enormous patio.

Ilana Glazer: Enormous. Can you please explain for people who didn't visit our apartment what this was like?

Pablo Torre: Okay, can I? I'm just sorting this out and getting my feet on the ground here. So first of all, you are overcorrecting for, yes, it is a creepy thing, period, to be like, I know where you lived.

Ilana Glazer: Yes. And you're a man. So it's like.

Pablo Torre: I've slept in your bedroom, potentially.

Ilana Glazer: Yes. Depending on your setup. It is scary. You're a man. I'm a woman. I get it. It is intense. But you were not weird. And this happens in New York. I'm remembering that I lived in South Slope. And it happened to be the same apartment my friend Boris had lived in. Boris Kuyken from Comedy. Shout out to Boris.

Pablo Torre: Shout out to Boris.

Ilana Glazer: But I got his mail. And literally, there were roaches, weed butts in the brick from Boris. And I don't think you got that from me because that's not exactly the type of stoner I am. But we had the same experience. So it's not, I just want to say New York City vibes. And you grew up here. It's not the craziest thing.

Pablo Torre: It's not the craziest, but just to be very clear about me discovering this in 2015. And Broad City came out 2014. So this is like, you're like, what? And I'm, to be very clear, a super fan of Broad City.

Ilana Glazer: Really? I didn't know that. That wasn't clear.

Pablo Torre: Oh, me and my wife, we watched it together. My roommate, we watched it going through. This is not just me blowing smoke up your butt.

Ilana Glazer: Oh, that's crazy.

Pablo Torre: My Gmail archive was full of Broad City references. And I'm like, oh, that's so now March 10th, 2015. It gets creepier now.

Ilana Glazer: OK, you're overcorrecting, but OK.

Pablo Torre: No, it's just that I put on this show where I find out stuff. I was finding out stuff 10 years ago, it turns out. And I had found your then roommate's Instagram account because there was an article in New York magazine in which was referenced that you lived in the East Village. And you lived with, again, not to dox him, but a writer for BuzzFeed. This is published, so I feel comfortable saying that.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah, yeah, cool.

Pablo Torre: And I was like, oh, wait a minute. I know people who work at BuzzFeed. Who is it? Is my mental process.

Ilana Glazer: Sure, for sure.

Pablo Torre: And I looked up on Instagram, your roommate, and dropped my phone on the ground. And I was like, why? You knew him?

Ilana Glazer: I just recognized my apartment.

Pablo Torre: Yeah. In the photos.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah, crazy. I lived there before you guys.

Pablo Torre: Oh, I thought you had lived after.

Ilana Glazer: Oh, no, no, no. So you weren't receiving my mail. I literally was receiving yours.

Pablo Torre: Yes, dude.

Ilana Glazer: Yes, Pablo. I literally, it just hit my brain of seeing mail. And being like, oh, who's Pablo?

Pablo Torre: Literally, dude.

Ilana Glazer: That's, oh, it just hit me. It's me.

Pablo Torre: Copy that. Okay. Wow, that's so funny. If the New York court system is looking for me, blame Ilana Glazer for never forwarding the jury summons.

Ilana Glazer: I, now it just hit me. Oh, my goodness. Wow. Wow. So our deck was crazy. It was huge to a—

Pablo Torre: Comical. It was clear that a mistake had been made.

Ilana Glazer: Yes. And then they slapped some walls around it, and they were like, it's a huge deck or whatever, which was smart. But the grotesque part was that it was visible by thousands. Thousands of trapped New Yorkers in tiny apartments could look at the deck we shared across space-time. It was not chill.

Pablo Torre: We called it, this is again a very nerdy nickname for it, we called it the Panopticon. Because everyone watched the deck.

Ilana Glazer: Is that a word?

Pablo Torre: It is, and it's a very highfalutin word for just like, I think Foucault may have talked about how in a certain vision of a prison, one way to keep the inmates always under surveillance is to just make them feel perpetually watched. And so for us the joke was we are being watched in this basically canyon of air conditioners and windows.

Ilana Glazer: Ugh, an alley of just apartments looking down grotesque on— I don't even know what the square footage of this thing was, like 600 square feet. The deck was bigger than the bedroom.

Pablo Torre: Yes, it was way bigger. And the joke was we're just out here like— I'm seeing it on mail, go on.

Ilana Glazer: We put a kiddie pool out there and sat in it for a while.

Pablo Torre: Yeah, you did.

Ilana Glazer: But yeah, we just unrepentantly got high in front of the Lion King Canyon. Before it was decriminalized, it was brave. We were pioneers.

Pablo Torre: Panopticon and Foucault are the homework I got to do. This is the kind of podcast you've wandered into. 2014, Broad City's out. You're living in this two-bedroom apartment. You're kind of living in a place that feels, given your level of rising fame, I would say beneath your station. You're still living like an actual young New Yorker.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah.

Pablo Torre: And things are happening.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah. I was city biking today with a backpack, a heavy backpack on the basket of the city bike, strapped to the city bike. And I was like, I just am that bitch. I'm just the person I've always been and will always be. I don't think I was living beneath my station is so funny. I think I was financially smart to be renting at that time until I could afford to buy. A very economical price point in my memory. I was living with Matt. We were sharing groceries. We were eating tuna on spinach salads. And I like to live feeling connected to people and sharing reality. In a personal sense, Broad City was like, what a miracle. It felt like Abby and I were straddling that star and riding across the sky. And we were just riding it. All we could do is ride this shooting star.

Pablo Torre: Were you surprised by how widely popular it was? I'm a New Yorker, so I have a very biased point of view, but were you surprised?

Ilana Glazer: I was surprised to be the person in that position, but given Broad City, the artistic entity, I'm not surprised that it was so good.

Pablo Torre: Thank you so much. It really is. I love it. I went back and watched some of it. I'm like, this is good.

Ilana Glazer: I love it. And I just think that people, all different kinds of people, are starving for an honest female lens. I think it is particularly funny to move through a story with a woman because the way women move through the world is absurd. We're placed in a box and then we try to embrace the box and then the box fucks us, but not the way we want to be. It's a funny pickle women are in. And I'm not surprised looking at the work of Broad City that it was successful. But then it was a phenomenon in New York and a phenomenon among a certain type of thinking and feeling person. It stayed kind of niche and was never embraced by the establishment in a way. It stayed for the people who knew about it.

Pablo Torre: It did have this thing, which I love as a true, genuine, unapologetic New York elitist.

Ilana Glazer: Do you have an example? Because lately I'm rethinking this concept elitist and I want to talk about it.

Pablo Torre: Sure. But when you say New York elitist, do you mean the understood shared value that everybody's equal on the subway? Is that what you mean?

Ilana Glazer: I mean it very simply, like greatest city in the world. And I wish there was another place that provided me— again, the vast diversity inside of what feels at times like a little town.

Pablo Torre: Yeah. And so the whole idea of New York's a bubble, I'm like, it is, but it's also a bubble containing the biggest possible most diverse sample of humans in which we all have to interact.

Ilana Glazer: Yep.

Pablo Torre: Including on the subway, including on the sidewalk, including on lying at whatever. It's just like, and there's that level. Anyway, this is just, I'm not trying to give a stump speech for New York City.

Ilana Glazer: No, I am.

Pablo Torre: No, not even for New York, because also New York City is really tough. It's really hard to live in.

Ilana Glazer: Yes, it's incredibly difficult. It's also since COVID, I think the income disparity has widened even further. And it's been impossibly heartbreaking to see this suffering rise in visibility. And I'm not saying it should be in the shadows, but it has become more visible. We pay so much taxes to live here. Why are people starving in our faces? Why are people not sheltered? Why are people unhoused and feeling unsafe even in shelters? So people are on the street, on the subways, suffering. It is hard to live here. And the wealthiest people don't even live here. It's a tax haven for whatever. And their brownstones are empty. It's infuriating and upsetting. And so many people need their basic needs met here in New York City. And the idea that it's some utopian bubble is the thing that I want to push back against. Because Fox News and a very enormous, beyond what we can really see, trillion dollar hate propaganda machine that is actually bigger than Fox News, but Fox News is perhaps the largest container for it, has sown this narrative about coastal elites being against people who live in smaller cities or suburbs or rural areas. Meanwhile, Fox News comes out of midtown Manhattan.

Pablo Torre: Oh yeah.

Ilana Glazer: And the people stumping for hate are multi, multi, multi millionaires, manipulating people who don't have their basic needs met to profit themselves. And I'm like, we don't live in a bubble. We live in a hard place where we confront our differences and accept each other all day, every single day. And the elitists are the Fox News hosts and the Fox News producers who are creating these narratives to divide the people that they consider beneath them.

Pablo Torre: I think Jesse Watters is a good guy. I think that guy's all right. Dude, I have a good thing about Jesse Watters. My friend went to high school with him and they went to, I believe, a private high school in the suburbs of Philly. And Jesse Watters, I learned from my friend, posting the day after Trump got elected the second time, that Jesse Watters would play the recorder every morning at morning announcements. And it was not a recital. Nobody else was performing. Jesse Watters would play the recorder because he wanted to. Nobody wanted this. Nobody wanted this. And also this young creative person wanting to be seen and heard and then probably wasn't met by the external world the way he had hoped. So then to turn into this hateful propaganda machine. It's just like, dude, you chose this and you know better, is what I think.

Pablo Torre: And this is where I just got to jump in here to point out that we here at Pablo Torre Finds Out did, of course, reach out to a Fox News spokesperson to fact-check Ilana Glazer's friend's story about Jesse Watters unilaterally serenading his suburban high school with his recorder during morning announcements. And what the spokesperson told us is that, quote, "Jesse doesn't recall the exact morning announcements." End quote. Fox News also did not deny to us that Jesse Watters was pretty into the recorder in high school. Which brings us back, I suppose, to that television network as an institution and the truly bizarre origin story of a different television career. So I've done sports television for over a dozen years now. The first appearance, the first hit, was on the O'Reilly Factor.

Ilana Glazer: Wow.

Pablo Torre: And I had no idea.

Ilana Glazer: How old were you?

Pablo Torre: It was 2008. I was 23.

Ilana Glazer: Oh my God.

Pablo Torre: And Bill O'Reilly, this is '08 O'Reilly.

[Clip plays]: Now, I can't read it. There's no words on it. OK. OK, sure. There's no words there to play us out. What does that mean? To play us out. It's Sting is going to do. It's a video. Sting video. What is for credits? I don't know what that means to play us out. What does that mean? To end the show? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Go. Go. In five, four, three. That's tomorrow. And that is a. In five, four, three. That's tomorrow. And that is it for us today. And we will leave you with a. I can't do it. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Fuck it. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. That thing sucks. In five, four, three. That's tomorrow. And that is it for us today. I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thanks again for watching. We'll leave you with Sting and a cut off his new album. Take it away.

Pablo Torre: Oh, incredible. I'll never forget. And so I walked into a television— and inside you're a little baby, you're 23 years old— the first floor of the Fox News building with those big windows up against the sidewalk.

Ilana Glazer: Oh my goodness.

Pablo Torre: And there was literally a panhandler making noise.

Ilana Glazer: Oh my goodness.

Pablo Torre: And he was yelling for silence as we're counting down in our ear and our IFB. Bill was?

Ilana Glazer: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pablo Torre: And so I'm like, in my mind, I'm thinking are we about to get another "We'll do it live"? Am I about to be like the— Am I going to witness this? Am I going to be in this viral video? And however it happens in a way that I presume is also horrifying. The panhandling sound stops, and suddenly I am being told by Bill O'Reilly about Michael Phelps' swimming career through the lens of his experience as a high school swimmer on Long Island. And that's what it was. That's what I was there to do, was just listen to Bill O'Reilly talk to me about swimming.

Ilana Glazer: About himself being a swimmer?

Pablo Torre: Yeah, he had takes as a swimmer.

Ilana Glazer: Because Michael Phelps smoked weed? Is that the thing?

Pablo Torre: I wish that there was any more depth to what the conversation could and would have and should have been. It was entirely just, man, this guy's really good at swimming. Let me tell you about swimming.

Ilana Glazer: Oh, that's it.

Pablo Torre: I was just a representative from Sports Illustrated. It was entirely irrelevant what I said or thought. And by the way, that's fine. That part's totally fine. I just say that to say when you go to that building, you realize how it's right across the street from MSNBC.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah.

Pablo Torre: It's right across the street from every other, every fancy restaurant that is lampooned as elitist is where they eat.

Ilana Glazer: That's right.

Pablo Torre: And the premise of their black car service taking them through real America is like, nah, Sean Hannity wasn't doing that shit.

Ilana Glazer: And also, definitely, I imagine Bill O'Reilly grew up swimming and golfing and whatever, him describing his illustrious—

Pablo Torre: Oh, yeah.

Ilana Glazer: His origin story begins in Levittown, the cradle of suburbia.

Pablo Torre: That's right. So he's a real American. Goddamn. I say all of this to say that when those guys are traversing their version of New York, it's a very both familiar experience to any New Yorker who's also just been around it, but also for you, your particular version of fame in 2014, 15, to go back to that era. That must have been fun.

Ilana Glazer: The fame part wasn't fun, but making Broad City was so fun. But the fame part was overwhelming, and I was really young. And also people were understandably confusing our characters with who we were. You're in New York City living as you do on the show.

Pablo Torre: Yeah, because I am who I am.

Ilana Glazer: And it was funny. We would often get asked if the show was improvised. And it's like, no, we're really good writers and producers, and we're directing this. Amy Sedaris showed up and was just like, we're just going to vibe.

Pablo Torre: Right, right.

Ilana Glazer: But people really were confused. I think it was so good and such a touchable texture that it was hard to parse from reality. And also, I think it was a new way to see women so honestly and so funny. So it was just hard to make sense of for a lot of people.

Pablo Torre: How do you describe the show for people who have never seen it?

Ilana Glazer: I don't. You have to see my show. It was a millennial— I don't know. Two women in that way, almost like a buddy cop sort of dynamic, was for me something I'd never seen before in that way.

Pablo Torre: Yeah. By the way, Amy Poehler had blessed the show. She was your executive producer.

Ilana Glazer: She was our executive producer. We pitched it with her and she was also in our web series finale.

Pablo Torre: Right, right, right. And so here was just this legitimate— it was immediately like, okay, so what's this gonna be? And then it ended up, as I've ranted and raved about, just like this special thing. And when I try to explain it, I don't know, I'm like, you should watch the scene where Amy Sedaris is giving a tour of a quote-unquote railroad apartment to Ilana Glazer and Abby Jacobson.

[Clip plays]: Well, what do you think? It's a hallway. It is a beautiful railroad-style apartment in your budget. Where's the bathroom? Where isn't the bathroom? Geez, wear a catheter. Go in the corner. You can fit a king-size bed in here. Yeah, if you fold it up like a taco. God, why am I so turned on right now? Ew. Pam, this place is horrible. Let's just move on. Look, don't bully me, all right? I can't take it. I was cyberbullied within an inch of my life last night.

Pablo Torre: Two knuckleheads running around New York City in their 20s is how it feels to me. The show was also part of this robust moment for Comedy Central, which was my go-to channel growing up.

Ilana Glazer: That era.

Pablo Torre: Oh, that era. That era of Comedy Central of Amy Poehler, Upright Citizens Brigade, and The Daily Show when Jon Stewart took it over, Chappelle Show, Strangers with Candy, Amy Sedaris also. I remember being on Long Island watching Comedy Central and being like, where is this all being made? It was being made in New York City. It was right there. And then to be part of this other sort of rise in Comedy Central's portfolio, it was such a family vibe at the time. And we didn't really realize it would be the last gasp of the channel and also TV in that way.

Ilana Glazer: Right, right, right, right.

Pablo Torre: I mean, you guys were clearly internet fluent, but you were being housed in a way that was linear and analog.

Ilana Glazer: Right, right, right. It was traditional television. Straight up.

Pablo Torre: And that lineup just in a sports sense, it's just like an insane lineup. It's just like, okay, that was all there at the same time.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah.

Pablo Torre: And now we can never have that again.

Ilana Glazer: Right, right. But we will in our own ways.

Pablo Torre: Will we?

Ilana Glazer: We'll find our way back, I think. I don't know. I don't know. I think there's going to be different ways of it that don't seem one-to-one like an analogy. But what are we going to do? Disappear? What are we going to do? Just fall over and die? We're living in this world that we live in, and everybody's got— we're human beings with engines inside of us, spiritual engines, where we, just like Jesse Watters playing the recorder at morning announcements when nobody asks, just like Jesse Watters playing the recorder, it may not be in the same form. And I think the establishment TV and film has stopped bringing in fresh blood and has really clung to its tentpoles. That's sometimes comforting, sometimes frustrating, but I'm a hopeful person and I'm a faithful person. And I do have faith. I practice the faith that new voices will keep speaking up and being heard.

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Pablo Torre: I think right now what you're describing, which again is seen every day online, is like the open battlefield of content. And we're all elbowing each other and no one's watching the same thing. And people are, again, blessed by various financial instruments and or tech companies. What I miss about a channel is that if you trust the people on any level who used to run it, and of course, they were wildly imperfect and made horrible decisions at times and all that, they still had the power to help and enable and platform someone that they thought was good. And in that way, I'm just like, oh, now, but now we're just all competing in the open battlefield of content. And that's just a different way.

Ilana Glazer: This moment where authoritarianism has a chokehold on our democracy makes me look back at our history and say, has it always been this way? It's hard to draw the line of when democracy was doing its thing because of the genocidal framework on which this country was built.

Pablo Torre: Yeah.

Ilana Glazer: The whole thing of, when would you like to have gone back to? It's just like, well, tough for lots of people to even pick anything before 1990.

Pablo Torre: Yeah, if that, if that.

Ilana Glazer: And what has historically happened here against Native Americans and Black people and immigrants, it's just like, what democracy for whom? So it starts to blur the lines for me. And when you're talking about these institutions and I'm thinking lovingly about TV and turning on a channel, and now it's kind of perverse and creepy the way tech companies pretend like they care about humanity and are trying to maximize for humanity, but they're really trying to maximize for their own profit. And also they're focused on AI and trying to create that as a new species that takes over humanity, not really humanity. So to see their soft colors and a soft move and Helvetica or whatever, and they put that together and try to act like it's progressive, but it's really just a choice of optics.

Pablo Torre: I should be very clear that my nostalgia for that time is rooted in a just like despair at the lowest bar that I wish we could clear, which is that someone who had a ton of money and a ton of power and authority over what America broadly was consuming could feel anything like shame or accountability, even if it was on a relative basis.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah, right.

Pablo Torre: That I'm like, man, that sounds great relative to the utter state of nature.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah. And I'm also not— I mean, I really love disagreeing and getting into it to find the middle space, but I'm not even disagreeing with you. I'm exemplifying how hard it is for me to parse right now. Where does the line get drawn?

Pablo Torre: Totally. And so this is my extraordinarily long segue to explaining why you were on television at that table with me because you decided to do a thing that seems so hard to me and so ancient by comparison to all the things we're talking about, which is you did theater.

Ilana Glazer: Broadway.

Pablo Torre: Broadway. You did Good Night and Good Luck.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah.

Pablo Torre: Which I got to see. And I saw you in the audience. Was that incredible?

Pablo Torre: That's when I was just like, I hope she understands that this is, I'm just like locking eyes with you. No. I appreciate it so much, but you were overcorrecting for a creepy factor that isn't there.

Ilana Glazer: Great. But I love it. Great. I love it. I did lock eyes with you, and it's the sort of thing where I was just like, Jesus, I have no idea what you can see in the audience. Like the curtain. Every face.

Pablo Torre: No, and I'm like looking at every face.

Ilana Glazer: Because I also like, so I did *Good Night and Good Luck*. Yes. Written by George Clooney and Grant Hesloff, starring George Clooney.

Pablo Torre: As Edward R. Murrow.

Ilana Glazer: As Edward R. Murrow. And this is based on a film that he directed, I think it was like too young at the time to play Murrow, who like brings this sort of heft and seriousness. And then he was able to play Murrow for the Broadway show. And it was an incredible experience. I was nervous for previews to like break into from rehearsal to performances, but I wasn't nervous after a certain point. And I attribute that to having gone on the biggest stand-up tour I'd ever done just the year prior. And I was really missing stand-up because you look at people's faces and it's almost like a conversation, but it's not, but it like, it's just a different connection and like on stage, I'm laughing about seeing you because I'm like desperate to look at people's faces and talk to them like at stand-up when I was doing Broadway. It was interesting to have that fourth wall, they call it.

Pablo Torre: What? So for, again, to make you do the thing of like summarizing what this was about, For people who are not familiar, Edward R. Murrow, a true standard bearer of what it meant to represent the public interest as a journalist, was a war reporter. But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear. He merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night, and good luck. And your role in this newsroom, which again, I long for despite the fact that we're talking about like the 50s.

Ilana Glazer: Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Pablo Torre: But I'm like, man, look at that, an institution with people who care about this thing. You played the role of?

Ilana Glazer: Shirley Wershba. So, yeah, Edward Armour was a true patriot. You're right. I love the way that you said that, like, representing the public interest. It's so true, and it felt so good to embody that. And Shirley Wershba is an unsung hero of broadcast news.

Pablo Torre: Yeah.

Ilana Glazer: She was there the whole time. She was a journalist who worked with Walter Cronkite, too. Like, an illustrious career. But the whole notion now of like doing this play at this time in which McCarthyism is, that's like the plot.

Pablo Torre: Yeah.

Ilana Glazer: Is that Joseph McCarthy, Senator Joseph McCarthy, he's rooting out communism in America and particularly in the news media, in the press, in this case. And I don't know, I was watching it and I was like, this feels both incredibly important for people to hear and learn about again. And also in comparison to what's happening now, almost quaint.

Pablo Torre: Yes, that is exactly what my husband said. Quaint is the exact word my husband used. And it was like, shivers me. So another way to summarize this, also this play, is that Edward R. Murrow went to battle for free speech. the group of journalists were building up to fully cover McCarthy and show what an unpatriotic politician he was being by causing terror. And like, who really wins? We would talk about in rehearsals and shaping this play, like who really wins? Because McCarthy was censured, but he's still in the Senate. And Edward R. Murrow's program was knocked down to a Sunday afternoon like civics lesson. And yet it happened and that sort of notch in history was carved out. So at least we have it to look back at. But I think the onslaught, the overstimulation that we are facing right now and all feeling crazed by was such a useful tool to disempower the masses. Whereas at the time, you weren't constantly taking in signals and stimulation and screens. So I think with, I really believe that with enough quiet, people really share values and share the value of freedom of speech. When you're saying I'm longing for this like 1950s newsroom, but like at least it was quiet enough that people could look at each other and hear each other and hear themselves. And we really do, I think, share values, most people around the entire planet.

Pablo Torre: Oh, and this one way specifically, freedom of speech, it is the thing you hear all the time from the MAGA Republicans. It's ostensibly a thing they care deeply about. It is very conveniently the thing they care deeply about when it is their speech. And so the premise of like, is this on paper the thing that everybody can unite around? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah.

Pablo Torre: We hear it rhetorically all of the time. It's just that when it comes time to actually enforce it? And who must feel like, in this case, it's the FCC and the literal president of the United States. In this case, it is them feeling like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't say that about us. Now it's absurdist. It's so painful.

Ilana Glazer: Oh my goodness.

Pablo Torre: Yeah. From a trying to do the play perspective, at what point does it stop feeling surreal that you're looking into the eyes of George Clooney. When do you normalize that?

Ilana Glazer: Well, it's like you're talking about me living in the apartment that we both lived in, right? And that it's beneath my station, but I'm like, no, it isn't. That was the right place for me to live at the time with my friend and roommate. So with George Clooney, when I first met him, just at a workshop for this play, He was so down in the soil in the process of it that it wasn't like the Casamigos' very own George Clooney. You know what I mean? It was like he just had thoughts and ideas and we were just talking about the play. He made it easy to just be in it with him in a real way. He's so grounded. It's, you know, there's people, I think, in this, in my business who are kind of in the business to get to a position where they can perform fame in personal settings. That's so far from who George is. But he really, and as you could see in the play, oh, my God, he cares about democracy. He's a true believer. I mean, the whole idea of like, I'm going to make one of my causes journalism. I know he comes from a family. His father was a journalist.

Pablo Torre: That's right.

Ilana Glazer: It's just something that, man, like journalism as a concept, I often talk about this on this show, we just need better branding. People don't think it's cool. They don't understand what it is. You sort of need a cosign from someone cool.

Pablo Torre: Yeah.

Ilana Glazer: And I share your sort of like some version of your nerve endings where it's like you meet enough famous people and you're like, okay, I get the general gist. This is not like perpetual like sticker shock. But with him, I just see this public confidence and comfort, even how it comes out for, like, the curtain call, just like the way he walks, as if, like, he's, and again, I'm going to sound like I have a, I do have a crush on him, but, like, the way he just is able to be the balancing point between I know I'm f***ing famous, but I'm going to sort of, like, arch my spine in a way that suggests that I am also not above all. It's just like there's that. You know what I'm talking about? Surreal is what's sort of tripping me up about your question, where I'm like, surreal, surreal. Like he's so grounded. And for me, it was the artist and the leader that it just takes the surreality away. It's like he's just such a leader that, again, the shared reality and the common values that we all share if we quiet ourselves enough and turn off our phones. George is leading with those values. He leads with his heart. He believes in what he does and what he says. And it was just so inspiring. He really is my hero. Part of my concern, I was like, man, is this going to feel over the top? It's giving a portrait of journalism through this man, this iconic figure for whom, like, awards are named after that we strive to win. how much of that is going to feel like, oh, this is a little on the nose. And then you sort of like zoom out to what's happening in real life and you're like, yeah, this feels like a useful thing for people to be reminded of. Somebody had asked me in an interview about the show, do you think it's an echo chamber? Do you think it's like you're doing this for the, you know, for New York's elite? First of all, New York's true elite are so conservative. That's the other part about the New York bubble that people don't realize. I'm like, is the richest people controlling so much of the narrative? The New York elite are conservative. What was so brilliant about this play was the Trojan horse of George Clooney and people coming to see this, the icon that you ask if it's surreal, but they're meeting the artist and activist and advocate that I so admire. And some people leaving, getting up and leaving.

Pablo Torre: How often did that happen?

Ilana Glazer: Not often, because I think people were like, wait, what happened? Like, we don't know this story well enough that Edward R. Murrow went to battle against Joseph R. McCarthy and took him down, but was also somewhat taken down in the process. We don't... It's a fascinating story. It was told so beautifully. But his network yes under pressure from political obvious political forces decided we need to compromise our principles to support the business and the cooperative relationship we want to have with the most powerful people in our country

Pablo Torre: That's right.

Ilana Glazer: And the thing I also want to say is it was New York's elite, which are deeply, violently conservative, but then also tri-state area people. I grew up on Long Island. These are the conservative people who made Fox News happen. I remember being a caterer waiter at the golf club in the rich part of my town and like seeing Fox News play. And it was moderate back then. So it was kind of similar to what was on NBC and ABC. And tri-state area people who live in Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island who are coming to Broadway to see what they imagine is Ocean's Eleven, George Clooney or whatever, coming in like really learning something and seeing him stand up for what he believes in. Seeing people stand up for human rights and what they believe in is rare these days. Not because it doesn't happen, but because it isn't distributed by the algorithms.

Pablo Torre: Yes.

Ilana Glazer: So I see these people like moved and it was important that these people are moved and know where we're at. The other thing about why it's meaningful to me for like a very famous person like George Clooney to stand up for journalism is that I presume as a default at this point that if you're a very famous person who's been reported on, you resent the general genre of the profession that is doing that to you. And of course...

Pablo Torre: And do you mean reported on like famous stuff? I just mean public scrutiny from people who call themselves reporters that may well be, as well as tabloid people who are not but wear the costume of it.

Ilana Glazer: Right, right, right, right.

Pablo Torre: But just like the general thing of like, I can understand if that guy's like, if anyone in that position is like, yeah, this isn't going to be my cause. But the fact that it is for him, I mean, I just presume that very few super wealthy, super famous people are like down to ride for the institution of journalism when it means that they themselves might be investigated at some point for any reason.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah, you're right. And here's this dude who's like, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to teach people about how this is important. So inspiring. And like the act of George standing up there every night. And can you believe the montage at the end?

Pablo Torre: I know. The montage.

Ilana Glazer: That was the only part that I was like, woo, it's on the nose. It was like a nail and a hammer hitting that nail. And so that's the thing I was referring to where I'm like, is this necessary? And the more I think about what's happened since, I'm like, it's actually more subtle than it could have been.

Pablo Torre: I know. Given every, again, given whatever. Pick your example from the last several days.

Ilana Glazer: For people who didn't see it, the montage was basically a history of television through journalism. Like newscast. It's the post-credits scene of like a comic book movie. It's like, this is what happened after. And George would stand there and the montage would play behind him and it would get worse and worse and worse. And this was something that he like would always like hit him. There was this Jerry Springer beat And it's Jerry Springer, like having poor people wrestle each other on his show. And George would specifically, and you're asking, could we see out? We could see everybody. And he's looking at the faces of the American people to see how they're responding to the montage behind him. And at the Jerry Springer point, he would look for who was laughing and thinking this was funny. But I think also they were like, people were confused and also shocked and the anxiety building of watching this montage. And it would build to Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute at the presidential inauguration, which happened just this year. So it meant so much to me as a Jewish person who's stood up for the dignity and safety of Palestinian people in this moment of Israel's war against Palestine. As a Jew who is afraid for Jewish safety, too, to see that montage end, highlighting the Nazi salute was so meaningful to me. And I just felt like so, so grateful to him for that.

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Ilana Glazer: I feel this as I walk through my neighborhood and encounter very old people. I'm like, you guys, you guys were onto something.

Pablo Torre: In what way?

Ilana Glazer: The way of life that came before the disruption of the internet. It's the noise. And it's not even, I don't know, like the, it just didn't get regulated soon enough.

Pablo Torre: Can I give you my political platform for how to solve the internet?

Ilana Glazer: Yeah, please.

Pablo Torre: I hesitate to do this. But I think we should all go back to 56 kbps modems. I think high speed internet.

Ilana Glazer: Say it again.

Pablo Torre: 56 kbps modems. Like the fastest of the modems that would scream at us.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah.

Pablo Torre: That, when like, as I say, like when a JPEG really meant something. When it unfurled like a tapestry on your computer screen.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah.

Pablo Torre: I just feel like you earned it.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah. I mean, the slowing. I think everything needs to slow down. The quiet. I loved what you said before about like in the quiet of just like fewer. distractions, noises, voices as much as we want, lots of voices, the more that we can just like really like just sit and not be assaulted.

Pablo Torre: Yeah.

Ilana Glazer: And when you were making me think like picturing Shirley Wershba in the newsroom and like the quiet of going out to get a newspaper or whatever or going out to get cigarettes, like on your walk, you're not checking your phone. It's the pace. The pace is part of the assault. And we have to, unfortunately, you know, like the fossil fuel companies have made us think that we're the problem. So we have to recycle. And then it's like.

Pablo Torre: That's right.

Ilana Glazer: And then it's kind of unclear where the recycling is going.

Pablo Torre: Right.

Ilana Glazer: And I did. I think we all agree that the recycling isn't going anywhere that we thought it was.

Pablo Torre: I know. It's not. Is my sense as well.

Ilana Glazer: And then in the same way, I've been taking it upon myself to slow down my intake of social media and the internet. But I'm making that connection now to like recycling where it's like it really isn't our responsibility individually. It needs to be – and parents with children, like we have to shape very carefully how they're going to be taking in this or that. And screens are everywhere now. we have to talk to our kids constantly because it's genuinely unsafe for our children. The tech billionaires know that. They're not being tracked the way we are. But there needs to be government regulation. And right now we're in such a crisis. I'm laughing at the idea of like regulation. It's like, yeah, it would be nice. It would be nice. It's hard right now. Things are so upside down and so absurd. It's hard to even think about asking for reasonable things or demanding reasonable things or protesting for reasonable things. But I do think that's going to be part of moving forward to keep naming the baseline like health care, access to health care for everybody and to keep naming it as what would be normal because we're in such an abnormal time.

Pablo Torre: I think I just generally would like our elected officials in this administration to just feel the watchful gaze of thousands of eyeballs upon them as if they are sitting on a patio in the East Village in New York City. Just like knowing you're being watched.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah. We see what you're doing.

Pablo Torre: Millions. I'm hoping it's millions. There's like 330 million people in this country. You know, at a time like this, as we go around the table and say what it is we found out today, on a show called *Pablo Torre Finds Out*, a show about finding stuff out, I have found out that in the quiet, it's important to distinguish between voices you want to hear and the sound of a lonely recorder being played by a Fox News host who just wants to make everybody listen to the s***. That's coming out of his mouth. I've found out today that you are a Clooney head. You're a full-on Clooney head, dude.

Ilana Glazer: I am.

Pablo Torre: And you have good taste. I'm unrepentant about that.

Ilana Glazer: Wait, can I say what I've found out actually more personally? Today what I've found out is that I was getting your mail. And I had the memory, truly the memory, of seeing Pablo Torre on mail and being like, you know in New York well I'll never meet them and it just hit me in recording this that I like have seen your name since yes 10 years ago yes how cool is that like that is magic dude it's one of the reasons I love New York City it's also another one of the reasons why I'm missing a lot of Sports Illustrated's so if you wanna those are that's what you're get those back this direction yeah Sports Illustrated it's just like one sexy issue a year right

Pablo Torre: Well, it depends on what you're into.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah, that's right. Because other times, those guys.

Pablo Torre: Yeah, them football costumes.

Ilana Glazer: Yeah. So into it. I should watch football. I would watch football more if it weren't so scary.

Pablo Torre: Oh, there's that. They're just everybody's getting so hurt.

Ilana Glazer: They are hurt, but.

Pablo Torre: But.

Ilana Glazer: But they're buts?

Pablo Torre: Yeah.

Ilana Glazer: I know. Alana Glazer, thank you for doing this.

Pablo Torre: Thanks for having me, Pablo. This was so, this closed the loop for me as well. And I'm just so pleased to talk to such a smart man in my generation. Smart, feeling, thinking men have been so f***ed over through representation. So it's really nice to talk to you and remember that my husband isn't the only— My husband and George Clooney aren't the only good men.

Ilana Glazer: The holy trinity. Me, your husband, George Clooney.

Pablo Torre: You're not the only good men out there. There are more. I feel like, though, on the metal stand, that's a pretty good big three.

Ilana Glazer: Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

Pablo Torre: This has been *Pablo Torre Finds Out*, a Metal Ark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time. Thank you.

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