The Sunday Story: Wild Card with Rachel Martin

This is a Sunday story. I'm Aisha Roscoe. You know, that moment in a conversation when things get real, you know, there's that subtle shift. And you realize the person you're talking to is really speaking from the heart. Like they're trusting you with the things they think about the most. It's a really good feeling.

Pick a card one through three.

Guests pick questions to answer at random, and Rachel follows wherever they lead, whether that's comedian Jenny Slate talking about the birth of her daughter.

It was the most positive experience of my life because I exceeded all of the limits of what I thought I was capable of.

Or the actress and producer Issa Rae reflecting on turning points in her life. The Paris trip I always wonder, like, what would my life have been if I had taken that trip? Joining me now is the host of Wildcard, Rachel Martin. Hello.

Hi my friend, how's it going? You know, it's going, I'm hanging in there.

Cool.

Well, congratulations, and it's very exciting about the new show.

Thank you.

And I understand that you brought some cards with you and that you're going to put me in the guest seat. A little bit, totally. But how did this, like, come to be? Like? Um, because you know, you're no stranger to up first listeners, that's true.

It's good to be back.

It's good to have you back. So why did it feel like you wanted to try something new and something very different from the very hard, hard, hard news?

I was just craving a change. Aisha Like, the news is heavy. You know that I started Morning Edition right after President Trump was elected, and it was just the pace of the news was relentless. And then Covid.

Yeah, yeah.

It was a lot, those particular years, and you know, not to get too heavy, too fast. But my dad died suddenly a couple years ago, my mom had passed a long time ago and all of that. All of that led me to this place where I was asking all these existential questions, and it's sort of all I wanted to talk about.

Well, why did you settle on turning it into a game?

Because some of these conversations could get to really heavy places and beautiful places. But it helps to have this light game architecture around it, it's really inviting, it makes the whole thing feel less intimidating. Yes, it's in this game format.

Yeah, well, my final question then is like, Do you have any advice for me? Now? I'm not, there's no winning at this game, right? because I don't, I'm not competitive.

Everybody, here's the secret, Aisha.

Everybody wins.

Everybody wins. Okay, well, that's good, I like that sort of game.

You're going to be good, okay, it's going to be fine.

Today on the Sunday Story, The game of wild card, stay with us.

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We're back with the Sunday story. I'm going to do a little handoff now to NPR's Rachel Martin. She's going to lead me through the game at the heart of her new podcast Wild Card.

So I've got this deck of cards in front of me, each one has a question on it. Okay, I'm going to hold up three cards at a time, and you are going to choose one at random to answer. There are two rules, you get one, skip.

Got it?

And because it's a game, there's a prize. What's the prize? I'm not telling you right now, you've got to wait, you've got to do it, and then I'm going to tell you about the prize.

I'm going to go with one.

Who was a person you wanted to emulate growing up?

Oh my goodness.

I also learned.

Whoa, I thought you were going to be like, I learned how to really sit in an interview and like, make someone comfortable.

No, I learned, like, life skills, you learned survivor skills. Yeah, like, don't go to the second location. Another thing that I really learned, and this was very, you know, important as a kid is like, I learned about abuse. I was not a victim of, like, you know, sexual abuse or anything like that.

Yeah.

I've never met Oprah Winfrey, but if I ever do get to talk to Oprah Winfrey, that would be like, Oh my gosh. Because like all of the people in my family, they know Oprah Winfrey. And it's like, if you talk to Oprah, it's like, you made it, yeah, like, if my grandma was still alive and she knew I'd, you know, it's like, I will always be that person.

Until now, like your grandma would be like, Oh, whatever, she's on some radio show, blah, blah.

No, my grandma was always excited about everything I did. But from this point on, it would be like, you know, that's Greg's daughter. She talked to Oprah, That's Phyllis daughter, you know, the one that talked to Oprah.

Okay, so we're moving on to a different round. Yes, okay.

Round two insights.

This is stuff you're working on now. Three questions, one, two, three.

Let's do two.

What's a disappointing experience that now feels like a blessing?

I was working at another place, not NPR, uh-huh, and I had been there for about five years. And I was disillusioned with journalism. And I just was like, I don't think this is for me.

I guess I'll just stick around here.

And I didn't go nowhere for another five years. I was like, Well, fine, I'm just going to focus on having kids and I'm not going to. —And this was the whole lean-in time, I was like, I'm not leaning in.

Okay, beliefs.

Okay.

Round three.

All right, here we go.

One, two, three.

Let's do three.

Do you have a belief system that helps you make sense of the world?

Yes, yes, I do. I think people know that. Yes, I know you do. Yeah, I know I do.

How do you articulate it?

I am a Christian, I am a believer in Jesus Christ and all. But I do think it is deeply personal to me, right? And I think some people can use faith as a way to kind of beat other people down, yeah.

How do you hear answers? How do they manifest for you?

I would say,—now, I've never heard something like, do this or you shut up. And often I don't necessarily get like, go this way, go that way, but what I kind of arrive at is this. First of all, there are decisions that you have to make in life, that there's no right or wrong answer. Like, you can go to the Bible, it don't say. When I was deciding to go to Howard, I was trying to figure out, is this the right decision?

That is one of the most beautiful articulations I think of Christianity that I've heard as a disillusioned Christian myself. Because in what you just said, it just basically means trust yourself and you will not be alone.

You will not—that is the key. I think that sometimes we miss, and it's that I—it's that the Lord is with you, He will not leave you, nor will He forsake you. And that is where I have had to go. And as a Christian, I grew up in a church that was very holiness of hell.

And there was all of that, right.

And there was,—and what I came out of that was with a lot of fear of the Lord and not a lot of love of the Lord. But I think that that holds you back, because when you are,—how can you experience the love of God? If you're constantly thinking he's out to get you, he's just waiting to jump on you?

Thank you, I really appreciate you sharing that and with that, Aisha Roscoe, you have won, you won the game.

What is the prize?

Okay, the prize, the prize, the prize is a trip in our memory time machine. Oh.

Oh, that's a good one, let me think of it.

Thanks for doing this.

Thank you.

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